Assisted Loving by Bob Morris Page A

you’re not into mourning. But are you so incapable of being alone for a year? Look at me, I’m always alone, and I’m not lonely. I have lots of friends, and so do you. What is this desperate need you have to be in love?”
    He shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says. “It just worked so beautifully with your mother for fifty years that I’d love to do it again.”
    Do it again? I’m thinking. Do it again? First of all, he’s old. Hasn’t he had enough? Second, was it really so great? Mom used to call herself a tennis widow and him a married bachelor. He was late for his own wedding because of a tennis game, and when he showed up he had forgotten his shoes. He was a barely manageable husband who poured low-cal maple syrup over Mom’s labor-of-love noodle pudding and drove her around in a car that smelled from dirty socks and a long forgotten fish sandwich. He was moody, tardy, impossibly willful, and prone to explosions when crossed. “Damnit, Ethel” was his trademark eruption. It could be over the littlest thing—a wrong turn on the highway, a botched volley at net, a decision she made without him.
    Of course there were times when he had reason to feel frustrated. She was a timid driver, just as she was timid in life, a woman who would cancel all plans if the rain was coming down too hard. That’s why she was so often telling him no. On vacations he’d want to look up people they hardly knew, take leftover food off plates from empty restaurant tables, and start sing-alongs at big parties wherehe didn’t even know the hosts. She couldn’t help being the naysayer in the relationship. But the thing is, he’d do whatever he wanted anyway, so why aggravate him by being negative? She put her foot down hard enough to make a difference only once, early on in their marriage, when he came in after midnight from a card game and found her in tears. He never did it again. He cared too much to upset her. Yes, he could have been around more for her when she was sick. But good-time Joe could take only so much of her infirmity. Well, maybe that was her fault for insisting she didn’t want a health-care aide as much as we begged her to hire one. Her thrift made things hard for all of us in her last years. His didn’t help either. “I’ll be back before supper” is all he’d say as he left her alone in the house.
    But then I think of the times he made her happy even at the end, shuttling her to concerts and parties with old friends and bringing her chocolate cake from the diner where he stopped after bridge. She loved the sweets he’d bring her, the cheesecakes and milk shakes she needed to keep her weight up, even as my brother and I nagged him to make sure she was eating greens and healthy foods, too. And there were all those times he made her laugh with his absurdly obscene jokes.
    And there was the singing. Often, as a kid, I’d look out my bedroom window and see them in the backyard, singing love songs to each other. They weren’t therapized people. They weren’t the cosmopolitan or mod parents of their era, having key parties and chardonnay spritzers in modern glass homes. They didn’t have the language or the big ideas. But they had their songs, and two unusually lovely voices that wrapped around each other withthe ease of wisteria branches. Sometimes I’d sneak down the stairs in my pajamas and spy on them dancing to cha-cha records in the den and laughing into the night. They weren’t stylish, but they were beautiful dancers. Dad was smooth enough on his feet to make Mom seem like a natural. “One, two, cha-cha-cha,” I’d hear her count carefully. And around she’d go, one hand in his, one held up in the air for balance. Whatever skill they lacked they made up with their joy. They were so happy, long after couples got bored with each other and took each other for granted. That