Read Online Love and Fury by Richard Hoffman - Free Book Online

the baby, who turned his body away and deeper into his mother’s arms, but not his face.
    â€œAnd who are you? What’s your name?”
    â€œSay, ‘My name’s Damion!’” said Veronica. “Hi, Poppop,” and she kissed his cheek.
    â€œCome in. Come in.”
    Inside the door my father clapped his hands softly twice and opened them to the baby who leaned from his mother’s arms, happy to be held by this smiling man whom he’d not looked away from for a moment. Veronica touched my shoulder as if to acknowledge what we’d just seen.
    My father handed the baby back to Veronica. “Just hold him for a minute, will you, honey?” He walked over to his chair, reached behind him for the arm of the latest incarnation of big recliner that has occupied the spot by the window since my grandfather’s time, then pivoted and settled himself into the chair. I noted that beads of sweat had broken out on his impossibly white forehead. “Okay, now,” he said. “Let me see that boy.”
    After a while we spread a blanket on the carpet with some of D’s toys, his teething ring, a couple of rattles. My father got down on the floor to play with him. I wondered if that was a good idea, with his arthritic knees, his bad back, his sudden bouts of fatigue, but there was no stopping him. My brother Joe came home from work. He fetched a stuffed Penn State Nittany Lion from another room; battery-operated, it did a little dance and played the Penn State fight song. To my father’s delight, the baby couldn’t get enough of it.
    It was hard to imagine where my father was getting his energy. For months, even before his diagnosis, his fatigue was the main symptom of his illness. I’m tempted to credit my grandson—
babies bring their own joy
—but it is more that D awakened a joy in my father that had lain dormant for a long time. I remember his delight with my own children when they were young. And before that, the way he delighted in my cousins’ children. He was never entirely comfortable with infants, as if he were afraid to handle them too roughly, but once he could play with them, once they could respond to the faces he made, the tickling, the goofball sounds, the mock surprises, he would happily play the clown.
    As my father hoisted himself up from the floor he looked at me and said, “That boy is all right.” It took me several minutes to realize that what he meant was that he’d been examining him and there was nothing wrong with him, no muscular dystrophy.
    The next day my cousins Elizabeth, Maryann, and Margaret arrived with what seemed like a truckload of gifts for the baby. They ringed Veronica and D, effusing and assuring her that they were there for her come what may. They passed the baby, who seemed to be enjoying his celebrity, from one to the other.
    The entire time of our visit was passed in this positive, uncomplicated way, my father’s numbered days notwithstanding. The baby seemed to nap when he did, as if they’d fallen into a shared rhythm.
    And where was the baby’s father? The official story was that he was working, was sorry he couldn’t join us, would definitely come next time. A lie. Call it a white lie.
    Of all my memories of that weekend, the one that will stay with me longest is the moment I turned round to see my father, sitting in his chair, planting a loud belly-kiss on my grandson’s stomach, smiling from ear to ear, the tickled baby squealing with delight: my father with his black great-grandson held above his head, the two of them laughing, there by the window in my grandfather’s chair.
    An undertaker met me just inside the door and led me to a room where I could have some “private time with the deceased.” Before she opened the door, she wanted to be sure that I knew that this private time was out of the ordinary but that they were glad to do it. “Yes, yes. Thank you.”