Love and Fury by Richard Hoffman

Author:Richard Hoffman
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780807044728
Publisher: Beacon Press

In the days before Kathi’s surgery in early September, just a few weeks after my father died, we were once again renegotiating our intimacy. I would not have said so at the time, but now I don’t know how else to describe those conversations. She didn’t want me to come with her, insisting there was no need and asking only that I be available by phone so she could call me to pick her up. I wanted to wait downstairs in the hospital cafeteria, close by, in case anything went wrong.

“You just want to get out of that first faculty meeting,” she said. It was a good-humored reference to our frustration with academic bureaucracy, but I mistook it for an accusation of selfishness. Instead of responding the way Kathi had expected, I pouted. It was as if she had spoken from within our history, our shared understandings, but I had responded from outside of that intimacy. Maybe because I was still mourning my father, I was more his son than Kathi’s husband just then. Maybe I was already so full of self-accusation and guilt that I expected to be chastised.

Things were changing. Robert was getting on his feet. He had found a job and moved into a place of his own nearby. Veronica had begun her career as a nurse. D was in daycare. Damion was in jail. A new semester was about to begin, and though I am usually excited to meet my new students, I was feeling only drained and tired. I felt as if Kathi was holding me at arm’s length when all she wanted was to keep things as normal as possible. I complied with her wish, and when I got the phone call I picked her up and brought her home, where Veronica was cooking something on the stove and D was in his highchair smearing slices of banana around on his tray and eating dry Cheerios.

Three weeks later we got the news that Kathi needed another surgery. The oncologist reassured her that the cancer was not invasive; however, the surgeon had not gotten “clear margins” around the cancer they removed. A second surgery in this case had only a 60 percent rate of success. If the second surgery failed, the alternative would be a mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy and radiation.

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