A Cup of Comfort for Couples (15 page)

“Just because I can't see her smiling on the outside doesn't mean she isn't smiling somewhere else,” he would say. “She's still my girlfriend and she likes presents.”

Dad was invited to Europe to visit my sister, but he refused. He couldn't leave his girlfriend that long. “She might get lonely and take up with another fella,” he joked, but stuck to his no-travel policy.

Dad's second heart attack came as a surprise for us. Perhaps some part of him knew that Mary was beginning to fail and that is what triggered it. Regardless, forty-eight hours after my father was pronounced practically brain dead, he left the hospital, barely alive himself and in a wheelchair, to go find Mary.

The doctors were against it. The nurses were against it.

He didn't care. He said he was going, with or without their permission. His wife was not expected to live through the night, and he was going to be there, full stop. Seeing his determination, they reluctantly gave him a twenty-four hour pass.

Dad went straight to Mary. Not all of his body functions had come fully back on line yet, but he ignored it all and went to her side, took her hand, and in as strong a voice as he could muster, he said, “I'm here, girlfriend.” He repeated it again and again. “I'm here, girlfriend. It's all right. I've got you.”

My father fought his way back from death's door so he could say good-bye to the love of his life. He had made a promise to take care of her, 'til death do they part. And he did.

He loved his wife with all his heart. He used that heart, the heart of a lion, to fight his way back from the dead so he could fulfill his promise to always be there for her. If he had not fought his way back, they would have died within hours of each other. But each of them would have died alone.

Instead, he saw her through her death, her funeral, and her interment. He hung on until all the important questions could be answered and arrangements made. Then, a few weeks later, my father finished his journey and joined his girlfriend in the ever after.

—
Allison Maher

Intestinal Fortitude

I
'm too bossy. Sometimes I can't stand myself. For instance, the other night my husband and I were at a wedding reception. We stood near a long buffet table spread with a variety of dishes. On the opposite side of the room, across the dance floor, was another banquet spread.

“Let's go over there and see what it is,” suggested my husband eagerly.

“It's the same thing,” I said.

“How do you know?”

“I can see it.”

This was not true. I just didn't feel like hustling through all those folks meandering about and mingling while waiting on the groom and bride to appear and do the traditional first dance. After the dance, the wait staff would let us guests pounce on the shrimp and crab smorgasbord.

I'm a know-it-all. When we first reached the country club, my husband saw everyone else going through the front door and ushered me that way.

I said, “They didn't read the invite carefully because it clearly said the wedding was outdoors. Look!” I pointed from the parking lot to the grassy lawn behind the club. “I see the white chairs and arbor set up in the back. Let's just walk around to that rather than climb the front stairs and have to go through the entire building and out the back door and back down the back staircase.”

My husband acquiesced.

As we rounded the corner of the clubhouse, we spotted the groom's parents on the veranda greeting folks who emerged from the club's back door.

“We need to say hello to them,” my spouse pointed out.

So we trudged up the steps to say “Hey” and then down the spiral steps to be escorted to our seats.

The white seats were placed closely together, so I had to sit sideways in mine; otherwise, part of me might have lapped over onto the stranger seated next to me. Then I noticed that all the other guests had fanlike programs.

My husband looked around to see where to get them. I had already figured out that they were given to the invitees as they walked through the building en route to the lawn area where we now sat. But I kept mute. Well, it would have helped to have had a program, because the mike was detached from the minister and attached to the machine of the videographer so the service could be recorded. There was only one outlet for the plug, and that was why we attendees were totally oblivious to what was happening at the altar. Occasionally I'd hear something like, “Let's bow our heads.” But mostly it was a domino effect as the first rows heard the minister and then the second row monkeyed them, and so on. But when folks chuckled, I had no idea what the joke was about. So it was like watching a silent movie. I guess nowadays it is more important to have the words spoken for posterity's sake than for those listening here and now.

After the ceremony, we promenaded up the stairs again and waited in line for the reception to start. That was a bit awkward for us because the only folks we knew were the groom and his parents. Of course, I can talk to a gatepost, and I believe I did while we waited in line. My husband nabbed a couple of Arnold Palmer iced teas and a couple of crab cakes.

Once the groom and bride finally danced their first dance and a few announcements were made, they opened the floodgates and we were allowed to feast. A huge spread of shrimp, crab claws, sushi, and smoked salmon was piled high on the table near the veranda doors. My husband and I piled our saucers high with seafood.

“Where's the cocktail sauce?” he asked me.

Being the know-it-all
sans pareil
that I am, I scanned around and glimpsed other guests putting little tumblers of a reddish liquid on their plates.

“Oh, it's in these little cups. It's already done for us individually. How cute.”

So we scoured the room for seats, found none, and quitted to the dark balcony near the bar. Since we didn't know anyone, I conversed with the bartender, and he's the one who let me in on why the mike didn't work and why I couldn't hear any vows. He had one meager lantern to serve by and was having a time of it, while we munched down on shrimp tails in the dark.

“This sauce is not very good,” I said. “No flavor. Needs horseradish.”

We made a big mound of debris from our seafood bonanza. The waitress came to collect our plates. I had put tails in the ashtrays even. She picked up our refuse and asked, “Don't you want your shooters?”

“We are drinking wine,” I explained.

“Your oyster shooters.”

“I didn't see oysters.”

“Well, it's hard to see them in the bottom of the glasses.” She held up the tiny tumblers.

“What?”

“These are oyster shooters.”

I laughed. “I thought they were watered-down cocktail sauce!”

“Okay. I'll take mine,” said my spouse.

“You can have mine too,” I said.

“I guess we are the Beverly Hillbillies,” I joked.

I worried that seafood debris might be in the tumbler my husband tipped up to drain and hoped he wouldn't choke. The waitress took the empty containers and departed.

We sat and stared off.

“I guess we can get more shrimp,” I said.

The bartender piped up. “There's a roast beef station, a cheese station, veggies, and pasta on the other side of the banquet room.”

My husband arched his eyebrow.

“Thanks. Let's go.” I sprung up and grabbed my husband's arm.

As we strolled over to the banquet spread, I said, “I am such a know-it-all. How do you stand me?”

“Intestinal fortitude,” he answered.

We got our plates full of other good stuff, and dodging dancers, retreated to our own little tête-à-tête in the dark corner of the veranda.

“It is beautiful out here with the moon,” he said.

I agreed. “After we finish eating, can we try dancing?” I asked, poised for rejection.

He usually doesn't like to dance but said yes. So once we'd polished off round two of the feast, we went inside and danced the swing as others did the shag or whatever they did. We had fun.

We gorged on wedding cake, met a few more folks, and then thanked the bride's parents for a wonderful evening and strolled out to the car.

“I'm sorry I'm so bossy,” I said to him. “How do you stand it, seriously?”

“I ignore a lot of what you say.”

“And here I thought the reason you never listen to me is because you're just preoccupied. Instead, you're actively screening my comments?”

“What did you say?”

“Never mind.”

“Okay.”

We put down the top on my convertible Sebring and blazed off on a moonlit night, and I found there really was no need for words, no reason to rehash the evening, no instructions to give. Sometimes, it's good to be quiet and not to be center stage, little miss know-it-all, the tour guide. So I lapped in the night air like a dog hanging its head out the window letting the breeze blow back its ears and enjoying the moment. And I didn't yap the whole ride home.

—
Erika Hoffman

Café Amoré

E
ach morning Andrew walks to the bed cradling the mug in both hands so it won't spill. Like the magi offering a gift, he presents my morning coffee with love and reverence.

“Here you go,” he says, hovering by the bedside until I take my first sip. “How is it?”

As always, it — and everything else — is fine.

This morning, something in the way he moved the mug toward me reminded me of our early courtship.

“It'll never work between us,” I told him as we walked through the mall, hot coffees in hand. I held my hazelnut latte under his nose and took perverse pleasure as he recoiled from the sweet aroma. “See?”

“That's not coffee! That's dessert.” Andrew shoved his extra-burnt Starbucks' French roast at me. “
This
is coffee!”

“It smells like tar,” I said. “Why don't you just go outside and lick the pavement?”

Passersby turned to look at the arguing couple. Surely, ours were irreconcilable differences.

“I drink mine with milk,” I challenged him.

“Black,” he fired back.

Clearly, we weren't each other's type: Aries/ Gemini, conservative/liberal, traditionalist/bohe-mian. Coffee was the tangible evidence of our dissension. But Andrew persuaded me that coffee could be unifying. He phoned to make dates for a cappuccino and a movie or to rendezvous at a café for a chat over java. He punctuated our favorite activities with coffee.

Just as I began to see his point, I left for a year in Australia. He would mail me my favorite blend and send photos of himself drinking his morning “cuppa joe” alone.

When he came to visit, we explored the cafés of Sydney and Melbourne and learned a whole new vocabulary to underscore our counterpoints. He ordered long blacks. I drank flat whites. Black/white: another contrast. But opposites attract, and we got engaged shortly after my return.

Instead of fighting over closet space, we began our marriage negotiating coffee storage. As we unpacked the kitchen in our new home, I opened the appliance garage and began to unload my gadgets. Andrew wanted it for coffee.

“It's called an appliance garage because it holds appliances,” I said. “Otherwise, they'd call it a coffee garage.”

“I make coffee every day,” he said. “How often do you use those things?”

He was right. My food processor and blender were relegated to a cupboard above the fridge. Crisis averted.

Then he discovered we couldn't share the grinder. My nut-brown flavored beans, smooth and rich as vanilla pods, tainted his glistening dark French roast.

“Your hazelnut coffee contaminated my beans,” he complained. How he could taste the subtle flavor under the palate-stripping tar he drank was beyond me.

I pulled my old grinder out of storage. His and hers.

And separate coffee systems, too.

A professor of history, Andrew's coffee system parallels his conservative approach to life. Conefiltered coffee, no modern electronics or warming plates. He counted scoops of ebony beans and ground them to a fine powder. He measured the water in the kettle, and as soon as it reached the boil, he metered out a slow, steady stream, like a scientist.