“A man’s capacity to feel sorry for himself is bottomless: once you take that first step, it’s an easy slide down.” A Personal History by Charles Bock.
A dusting of frost coated Fourteenth Street; the taxi continued driving away from the hospital, crossing the line dividing downtown from the rest of this dark and morbid city. December 8, 2011. Not a word from the driver. I was tired beyond words. Throbbing, from behind my eye sockets, extended into my molars.
My sister, Crystal, lived nearby and supplemented an acting career by planning children’s birthday parties; her West Village apartment was converted to a wonderland of toys, the perfect celebration spot. When Lily arrived, toddlers were already high on sugar, running around and flapping their arms, wrestling on mats, crawling their way through the extensive, circular, brightly colored tunnel.
My daughter’s eyes are unnaturally large, and give her face a particularly moonlike quality. For the rest of my days, I’ll be tortured by how, in these moments, those eyes grew, widening, focussing.December 19th. Eleven days after Diana passed—eight days after Lily’s third birthday. The holiday season was heading into overdrive, most everyone hightailing it out of town.
I tried to get to my feet, but, when I pressed down, putting pressure on my right foot, trying to push upward, white-hot pain ran through my right side. Blinding pain.Silence through the lobby. No one coming or going. An only child. A child of divorce. A polite Southern girl. She’d adored the cousins she’d grown up with in suburban Memphis; some of her happiest times had been spent in her aunt and uncle’s house when all the relatives were over, celebrating Thanksgiving. That was what she’d idealized: a house full of joyous children. It was what she’d wanted more than anything. To be a mother.
If I opened a drawer, if any random object came into my line of vision, some version of this memory hole opened: a deck of cards connected me to poker nights in Memphis with Diana’s family; a Buddhist tchotchke reminded me, for whatever reason, of the time my Shih Tzu went missing, and Diana paid for a phone session with a pet psychic to try to find him, and I’d heard this news, and got confused, and a little mad, and then suddenly, also, I’d had my long-overdue verdict—finally I’d understood...
Yet the question remained: how? Of all people, the Grimm brothers provided an answer. And this answer had survived through the centuries, having been employed in their fairy tales, appropriated by cartoons, and promoted via some of our most popular movies. Indeed, this method was the certified gold standard for all widower daddies:Think of Bazillionaire Warbucks handing off the orchestration of all orphan-raising-related tasks to his assistant.
Laid out on the sofa bed Diana and I had purchased at a vintage store, I kept dribbling my basketball against the glazed brick wall, thereby increasing my hand strength, dexterity, and coördination. Lauren bartered with her ; Liza always took her to the CVS . When Lindsey came around, Lily asked, “We go to Baskin-Robbins?” Lindsey made her promise: afterward, she’dCorralling those golden tresses into her knit cap, Lindsey confirmed the dates of her next visit, slipped the check into her coat pocket. “O.K., I’m leaving.” Her voice was purposefully theatrical. “Anybody want to say goodbye?”
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