A Cup of Comfort for Couples

by Colleen Sell

  My husband and I are two halves that make a whole. We’re happy with each other, our family, our music, our church life, our baseball games (big Mets fans), our bike rides, our son’s recitals, and all the various things (exciting and less-than-exciting) that are part of our life together.

  We are who we are, and we are in love. He is my guy, and I am his girl. We are perfectly, unashamedly, and unromantically blissful . . . together.

  — Mary C. M. Phillips

  Who Could Ask for Anything More?

  I looked out the window and watched my neighbor remove the last five snowflakes from his driveway. After he used a shovel to scrape the places that the snow blower had missed, he brought out a finebristled broom to scrape up any snowflakes still caught in the rough pavement.

  Just then my husband came in the back door, covered with more snow than he had removed and announcing that if I really wanted to get out of the driveway I should take the truck, which had four-wheel drive.

  “Gee, did you notice our neighbor’s driveway?” I asked, trying not to sound like I was comparing the two.

  “Hello? Can you believe that guy?” my husband chuckled. “Isn’t it enough that you can eat off his driveway in the summer? Does he know he’s making the rest of us look bad?”

  “He’s probably just fussy when it comes to his driveway,” I said, even though I knew better. In the summer, his lawn not only is raked, it’s also combed, and the trees are manicured to the point where he removes any leaves that don’t look quite right and dresses the chipmunks in formal attire. They’re really quite adorable. He scrapes the lichen off the tree trunks, and his birds are not only well fed but always look neat as a pin to boot.

  “I can’t imagine what the inside of his house looks like,” my husband yelled from the living room through a mouthful of potato chips. “I bet he drives his wife crazy.”

  Oh, I bet he doesn’t, I thought, as I cleaned up the pathway of chips my husband had dropped, à la Hansel and Gretel, from the kitchen to his easy chair. I bet he wipes his feet at the door and then shakes the rug out, washes and puts away the bowl he used for a midnight snack, and makes the bed in the morning as soon as his wife gets up to go to the bathroom, I thought, allowing myself to dream. That might bother some people, but it sounds like a little bit of heaven to me.

  I rescued the half-eaten bag of chips from my husband’s lap when he jumped up to cheer for his favorite team, brushing a handful of crumbs off his shirt and onto the carpet.

  “You know, ants like potato chips,” I said, trying not to sound like a nag.

  “In the winter?” he replied without taking his eyes off the game. “That’s what I’m talking about!” he yelled as the Patriots scored a touchdown.

  I returned the bag of chips to its rightful spot in the pantry, and contemplated getting out the vacuum and running it across the living room and up the front of my husband’s sweatshirt. I’m sure he figures that as long as everything gets vacuumed by spring, our house will be safe from unwanted wildlife.

  When the game was over, my husband came into the kitchen.

  “Hey, I think I’ll check out the movie channel,” he said. “Or would you like to watch one of our own? How about Casablanca? We haven’t seen that one in a long time.”

  He got halfway down the hallway, stopped, and turned around, “Any idea where it is?”

  “Yes, it’s in the video bookshelf, top row, third one from the left, right next to Caddy Shack,” I answered without hesitation.

  “Wow, you have our movies in alphabetical order? When did you do that?”

  He grabbed the movie and got ready to settle down for the night. “Are you ready?” he said as he reached for the light switch.

  I grabbed the rest of the potato chips and a bowl that had been on the counter since the night before. I picked up a couple pillows off the floor and moved some of the golf magazines from the top of the coffee table to create a space for my feet.

  “Here, let’s cover up those tootsies of yours before they get cold,” he said as he threw the blanket over my bare feet. “It wouldn’t do for my little Ingrid Bergman to catch cold.”

  I snuggled up against my husband, chips and all.

  He isn’t perfect, I thought to myself, but seriously, who is?

  As he put his arm around me, he gave me a little squeeze and whispered, “Here’s looking at you, kid,” holding out the bowl for me to reach and help myself to a few chips.

  He gave me a wink, and I melted into his side. In an imperfect world, I had the most perfect guy, crumbs and all. Who could ask for anything more?

  — Beverly Lessard

  Live, Love, Laugh

  My twenty-two-year-old husband slipped off his sweats, wiggled into yet another hospital gown, and shuffled toward his bed. The growth of the tumor below his left shoulder blade bowed his back, putting more pressure on one foot, giving his walk a beat — sort of a shuffle, thump, shuffle, thump sound.

  “Move your hambone, Ron,” I said, trying to tie the gown in the back.

  “What one part of me would be ham?” he asked with a grin that had refused to be chased away by the pain.

  “You’re right; you’re one big ham,” I agreed.

  When we had arrived early that morning to the doctor’s office for his chemotherapy treatment, the nurse said his white blood cell count had dropped. Again. The doctor ordered us to go to the hospital, and we settled into our usual routine for such days. We found M*A*S*H listed on the TV’s onscreen guide and prepared to count how many episodes we could find in a row.

  My husband pushed the button to raise the head of the bed, scooted over, and patted the turned-down sheet, requesting a snuggle. I kicked off my shoes and hesitated. We weren’t in the usual hospital on our regular floor, and I didn’t know these nurses. This time they had put him in the cancer ward. As soon as I gave into the request and sat on the bed with him, the door opened and his nurse appeared.

  “Ron, I’ll be your nurse today,” the young woman said.

  “Good. Too bad a nurse-a-day doesn’t keep the doctor away,” Ron answered.

  She half-smiled and opened the chart.

  “Who is your doctor?” she asked, mostly to herself, while flipping through the chart.

  “Aww, you know him,” Ron said bobbing his hairless brow up and down like Charlie Chaplin on chemo. “He’s the one wearing white, with twelve interns following him, trying to heal the sick.”

  “His name is . . . ?” she began, not quite understanding who she was dealing with.

  “Don’t worry. You won’t see him much in here. I seem to present some kind of challenge. I make his complex more complex,” Ron said.

  The nurse peered over the chart and closed it. Smart lady, I thought. She realized reading with Ron in the room was like trying to enjoy a novel and jumping from an airplane at the same time.

  “How are you feeling?” the poor woman tried a different tactic in an attempt to do her duty.

  My husband grabbed my thigh. “With my hands. Isn’t that right, honey?” he asked me with a wide grin sporting dried, chapped lips — an effect of the chemo, “I feel with my hands.”

  I could smell his metallic breath, the way it had smelled since he started the treatments.

  I said nothing. I knew my role: Mindy to his Mork. On cue, I rolled my eyes and looked the other direction.

  She put the chart under her arm and said, “Oooookaaaay then. I’ll return with your tray.”

  “Well, Ron, we’ll be left alone today,” I said. “I think you frightened her. She looks new.”

  “Fine with me. A day alone with you anywhere is paradise.”

  He can’t be serious, I thought. I looked at him evenly, but all the Charlie Chaplin mimicry had disappeared.

  A few minutes later, the nurse returned with a tray. Instead of ignoring me like most of the nurses had in the past, she looked me up and down as if I were a pear tree growing apples. I thought it was because I was still snuggled beside my hubby
on the bed. When she left without any conversation, I felt relieved.

  Just two minutes later, the door opened again and the nurse brought in a second tray. “I know you weren’t planning a hospital visit today, so I thought you might be hungry, too,” the nurse said with a smile.

  “Uh, thanks . . . Thanks,” I stammered.

  I knew rules prohibited visitors from eating even the leftover food on the patients’ trays, and never before had a nurse brought an extra tray for me. I searched for a reason for her actions. I thought about my clothes and my appearance. I wore nice gym shoes, a name brand. My jeans weren’t faded or holey or anything other than, well, jeans. I wore the sweater my mother-in-law had given me for my birthday; it was new. I had put a bit of makeup on before coming, and my hair had been cut at a salon. I didn’t look needy. I couldn’t understand why she had brought me the food tray.

  I shook off the list of her ulterior motives forming in my head. Having breakfast with my husband, watching M*A*S*H, and not watching Ron puke all afternoon felt like a reprieve from the agenda we had expected. Although we knew he needed the chemo, we almost celebrated during breakfast. After all, he had lost about 60 pounds, so it was good for him to eat and keep it down for a change.

  Together, we weighed 260 pounds. We thought of most things that way — together.

  While we ate, the nurse returned again. She brought in supplies.

  “You did bring a comb?” Rob asked, rubbing his bald head.

  This time she smiled a full smile with one eyebrow raised as if to say, “Okay, I got your number now.”

  Before the M*A*S*H episode ended, she returned to chat, making it hard to watch the conclusion. Not that we cared, really. TV was just a distraction, and a real human to talk with in a hospital room was a better distraction.

  After she left, I asked Ron, “Doesn’t she have other patients? You’ve never been given so much attention.”

  “Maybe you’d better ask for a recliner and stay the night. I think she has a crush on me.”

  I laughed. “Yeah,” I replied slowly. “Must be the lack of hair. It’s a real turn-on.”

  “Makes me look tough,” he said as he tried to flex an AWOL muscle.

  The nurse returned. Ron and I suppressed smiles.

  She stood at the end of the bed and looked at Ron with much consideration. “I wouldn’t ask this if I didn’t like you,” she began.

  Ron nudged me with his elbow.

  The nurse continued. “I need you to do a favor for me, Ron. I need your bedside manner. The young man next door is just a couple of years older than you. He has cancer of the nose and throat. They removed his nose two days ago, and he hasn’t turned on the light, spoken to anyone, or eaten anything since. I need you to go and cheer him up.”

  Ron wiped his mouth with his napkin and said, “Oooookaaaay,” with a twinkle in his eye. He stood up and shuffled away.

  The nurse said to me, “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk to the young man next door and if you stay out of sight, at least at first.”

  The woman who had brought me a tray now didn’t like me for some reason? The extra attention, the request to go help another patient, and now her wanting me out of the way just wasn’t adding up to “normal” nurse behavior.

  “You see,” she continued, “his wife walked in his room the day before his surgery, their two-year-old in her arms, and laid her wedding ring on the side table. She told him she would be in California with her relatives. Before she left, she gave me her phone number and asked me to call when he died. She said she’d come back to make the funeral arrangements.”

  Then the nurse looked at me with those x-ray eyes again. I returned her stare. She was about my age and wore no wedding ring.

  “Why are you different than the other wife, I wonder?” she asked quietly, as if talking to herself.

  I felt like a timepiece on a watchmaker’s workbench having my gears inspected. The nurse wanted to know what made me tick. None of us really know the answer to that one.

  Past the curtain I saw Ron walk up to the door. I stepped behind the curtain as best I could so the guy without a nose wouldn’t see me.

  “We’re going to the weight room,” Ron called in. “My new friend likes to lift weights.”

  “Heard you,” the nurse said, flashing an approving smile at Ron.

  “You’re wondering what makes a marriage work even in the tough times?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  She turned to look at me again. She saw me as someone possessing guru-on-top-of-the-mountain wisdom, and she had no right to expect so much of me. I was just a regular person in an irregular situation.

  I answered with a chuckle. “I don’t have that kind of wisdom to teach about love or devotion or some universal truth. I’m not Kahlil Gibran. Not even close. I’m not even Helen Steiner Rice.”

  “Okay, maybe you have one answer. What makes you two stay together?”

  “Me? I just want to see what he’ll do next.”

  She smirked and nodded. As she left the room, she probably thought we were just a pair of smart-mouthed people who couldn’t live without each other. But I knew I had to learn to live without him. Meanwhile, I functioned as his juicer, helping him squeeze life out of every moment.

  Ron returned, ready to rest. He looked paler than he had a couple of hours before.

  I flipped through the channels to another episode of M*A*S*H. On a piece of paper I had placed on his tray, I wrote down the time and “episode #2.”

  “How much did you lift in the weight room?” I asked.

  “Five pounds. The guys at the firehouse would have laughed,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter what two people do together, all that matters is the two people find something to do together. Now let me hold you,” he said, patting the bed.

  The theme song for M*A*S*H had started to play.

  — Tami Absi

  Love Imitates Art

  Above our heads the painterly clouds dab the sky, perfect as an Impressionist landscape. I consult the visitor map and point the way, my sandals padding the grass beside my husband’s black sneakers, but my step is springier than his. With a glance, I take in an image of Bart. His downcast eyes and solemn beard seem to lengthen his Russianicon face. Well, I think, at least I got him out of the house.

  Barely an hour before, my husband lay camped out on the family room sofa. He didn’t feel like golfing, he said. He didn’t feel like going to the gym. He didn’t feel like doing anything.

  “It’s a beautiful day,” I offered, gesturing toward the window where the September sun washed in.

  “I don’t know,” he sighed. “Faith, I just feel so . . . so betrayed.”

  “Me too. You used to say Susan was the sister you never had. Remember how you brought her soup when she was sick? And for months, she was planning this.”

  My husband is the only insurance agent I know who plays Hindu chant CDs in his office. “It’s so soothing,” he says. But nothing could calm him this tumultuous week. Five days earlier, he’d made a shocking discovery about a saleswoman we both trusted, not just as a coworker but also as a friend. Now, Bart had filed a lawsuit against a person he used to have lunch with every week. Friends called to say, “Bart’s too nice of a guy.”

  I thought I knew what we needed: a change of scenery, something beautiful to wipe away the ugliness of the past week and replace it with color and texture. I thought first of the art museum. Although art is more my interest than his, I love the way my husband’s eyes crinkle as he savors my enthusiasm over a work by Cezanne, Monet, Kandinsky, or Noguchi. But it was such a beautiful day. A park maybe or an arboretum?

  Then I remembered a place we’d been meaning to see, a sculpture park several friends had raved about, about 45 minutes from home.

  “How about Grounds for Sculpture?”

  He shifted his body, adjusted a throw pillow.

  “It’ll do you good to get some fresh air and sun-shine.” Even I recoiled at the chirp in
my voice, sharp and artificial.

  Miraculously, he rolled into a sitting position, sighed, and reached for his sneakers. He was only humoring me, but I hoped that art and nature would work their magic in spite of his reluctance.

  An hour later, we follow the winding path through the trees, past a chrome behemoth that resembles a double-helix strand of DNA. I squat down to fit the entire sculpture into the frame of my digital camera, wobbling a bit as I get up.

  At parties, when people ask, “So how did you two meet?” Bart and I grin and answer almost in unison, “At a Puerto Rican pig roast.” Our story is always a hit.

  Some thirty years ago, I was a shy graduate student in jeans and a peasant blouse, just off a bad relationship. A friend invited me to a party at the home of a couple I barely knew. She thought it would do me good to get “back out there.” Having nothing better to do on a Saturday night, I made my entrance to a living room full of strangers. Seeing no available seat, I plunked myself down to sit cross-legged on the floor, wedged between the artsy freeform coffee table and someone else’s shoes.

  As the mass of voices around me sifted into individual conversations, it dawned on me that everyone else was speaking Spanish. So I sat there on the floor, longing for subtitles and smiling a smile that felt carved into my cheeks.

  Then I saw him: a bearded guy with sleepy eyes right out of a portrait by Modigliani, slouching against the wall, wearing a look as lost as mine.

  The sweet scent of roasting pork and a shout of excitement accompanied the hostess’s friends and cousins as they hauled in a huge plank bearing something I’d only seen in cartoons: an entire freshly roasted pig, complete with apple in mouth. As the paper plates were passed around, amid rapid-fire Spanish dialogue, the first stumbling words passed between me and the man I would marry.

  Back then, I wrote poetry and dabbled with a paintbrush. He was a philosophy major, stunned to find himself stepping into the family insurance business after his father’s heart attack. He played basketball and read Sartre “for fun.”

  Eventually I gave him a key to my first apartment. Once we had a fight. Every night for over a week I checked my answering machine in vain for one of his goofy phone messages. Then one night I trudged home from work and noticed the light glowing under my door. A note greeted me in his scratchy handwriting: “Don’t be scared. It’s only me, the Doctor J of the Insurance World.” Just like that, my mood melted, my body lightened, I flung the door open and raced to him.