Until a short while ago I wondered how elderly people who had been married for decades could still find in each other sources of surprise and wonder, even elements of excitement and provocation. I would visit my father and mother every day in their small apartment, for an hour or so, and chat about baseball and hockey and prize fights on TV, maybe a few words about the latest scandal in our small city, or who had died and married, been born.
Now and then, sitting there, drinking the tea my mother inevitably brewed for me and helping my father out with the New York Times Sunday puzzle, searching for the highest peak in the Philippines or the name of an obscure Swiss commune, I would wonder with part of my mind, how it was with them in their hearts; how they picked up and juggled the days and made them sparkle, or if they did.
They were in their late seventies and their lives were quiet outside as one could imagine – as quiet as the snow or the rain or the rustle of trees in midsummer.
I would go home to where my wife and children were bustling and bickering, growing up and growing older, partying and dining and hoping for Paris or Broadway or Cape Cod, dreaming of yatchs and sleek motors and brave deeds, impulsively finding life filled with twists and turns and fascinating reflections of unseen lights, beckoning toward them some adventure or other.
I loved them and encouraged them. Life is to be lived, savoured, salted and consumed. But what do you dream about when you are almost eighty and have been in love for fifty years? Is not every avenue long explored, every lake sailed, every wave broken across a finite and decided shore, every star discovered?
Now and then, my wife and I would take my father and mother on short trips. These trips excited but did not overwhelm my parents. They were pleased but not moved. ‘It’s good to get home’, my mother always said with a sigh, at last. My father said, ‘I don’t sleep all right in a bed that’s not my own’. ‘I sleep all right’, my mother said, ‘but I eat too much’.
‘It’s nice to get back’, my father would say.
My father gets up at seven-thirty and takes a briefcase and goes for a long walk, all dressed up as if he were an attorney about to stage his most thrilling case. He goes to a downtown hotel and sits in the lobby and smokes a cigar. He likes it there in the lobby early in the day.
After that, he walks for miles through stores and shops and the public library. He knows many people, small people, or should I say, working people: clerks, butchers, newsboys. He talks with them about the weather and the latest sports events. Then he buys half-a-dozen doughnuts, puts them in his briefcase, goes home, and takes a nap.
My mother markets and plays canasta with her three girlfriends once a week. Otherwise they watch television or listen to the radio. They never go to the movies. Years and years ago my father played in movie theatres for silent pictures and afterwards for pictures vaudeville. He is just as happy if he never sees a motion picture again. I don’t believe he has seen one in ten years with a single exception we shall come to presently.
So, the life of my mother and father had flowed on, with me always wondering, ‘What do they think about? Do they notice each other? Do they have strong emotions for each other? But how could they?’ The blood has slowed down. The arms are inelastic. The eyes are dim.
The fingers of my father which once rippled along a violin can barely make an unpleasant squeak on that instrument anymore. My mother walks carefully, for her glasses do not focus properly where her feet meet the stairs and sidewalks.
Yet, one morning I came on my usual call, bringing a New York paper, as is my custom, and some Cape Scallops, which are a delicacy both my father and mother appreciate but cannot afford.
When I got in the apartment, they were fighting.