The gentleman across from me in the hospital waiting room began rummaging in his pants pocket for a pen knife. His wife started to laugh when he pulled it out and unfolded the miniature screwdriver. ”Now don`t you try to fix the coffeepot for those ladies. You`ll break it worse than it was before.”
I looked behind me. His wife was a lovely woman, with enormous laughing blue eyes and the kind of skin women over 50 don`t usually have: firm and smooth and pink.
The sick coffeepot in question was beside me. It was in the care of two skittery hospital volunteers who didn`t know how to make coffee. Not an earth- shattering dilemma, but inconsequential in a place where people were being checked for cancer.
Before turning to go, his wife waved an indulgent hand at me and cautioned teasingly, ”Don`t let him break it any worse.”
I didn`t say a word. I know better than to let myself get drawn into an old lovers` quarrel, even a good-natured one. My parents, for example, are grumpy these days. They don`t exactly bicker, but they don`t bill and coo either.
”What do you do?” I asked the would-be coffeepot repairer.
”I`m retired,” he said. ”Sold tires for 40 years,” he explained. When he talked, there was a gentlemanly shyness that harkened back to when he was a boy and awkward in the company of girls.
”She,” he said, motioning with his head toward the door his wife had exited, ”can`t stand having me around the house underfoot. Yesterday, I walked out to the back yard where she was to see if I could help her plant an azalea bush. She looked up and said, `What do you think you`re doing out here? Do you think I need you?` ” He laughed with affection when he repeated the conversation.
Do you think I need you? Would my blood run cold if someone I loved said those words to me? His did not. Her words to him sounded harsh, but his interpretation of them wasn`t. To him, they were words of love. They reminded me of some of my parents` verbal exchanges.
Daddy speaking to Mother: ”You don`t love me anymore.”
Mother: ”I love you enough to kill you if you don`t leave me alone while I`m working my crossword puzzle.”
Me jumping in where angels fear to tread: ”What`s it like being married for 40 years?”
Daddy: ”Hades.”
Mother looking up from crossword puzzle, rolling her eyes: ”Wonderful.” Daddy: ”What have you got to complain about? Who else do you know who has a husband who still writes her love letters?”
Mother: ”You copied that last love poem out of a cartoon from the newspaper.”
Daddy cackling, rubbing his hands together with satisfaction: ”You fell for it just the same, Shortie.”
Me: ”That`s plagiarism, Daddy. You`d get an `F` in English composition for that.”
They both look at me as if I`m crazy. It was not an appropriate comment for two people wrestling to continue creating who they are as a couple. Do psychologists have a name for people who can do this without therapy?
I looked at the retired tire salesman across from me. He was still playing with his pen knife and eying the sick coffeepot. I could see an eagerness to fix it and prove his wife wrong, because then he would have something to tease her about.
When his eyes caught mine, I did his wife a favor and shook my head from side to side. He risked a sheepish grin and slipped the knife back into his pocket.
I saw his eyes flit anxiously to the clock. ”Everyone told me I wouldn`t be able to stand being home every day. But the second morning home, I adjusted. No phone ringing off the wall. Just her to put up with.”
The two hospital volunteers clucked their tongues, a manifestation of their calling-to be sympathetic to those in pain. But this wasn`t real pain. It wasn`t codependency, not misplaced anger nor even an armed truce. This was a lifetime love lived out by two people who were good at it. Nothing here besides the coffeepot needed fixing.
