Free A Happy Marriage by Rafael Yglesias

Margaret, that compared to most cancer victims and their families, he and Margaret were lucky. Their medical bills wouldbe paid by Enrique’s excellent insurance through the Writers Guild of America, the union of screenwriters. Other indulgences, such as the faux hotel suite at Sloan, were available to them thanks to the generosity of Dorothy and Leonard, Margaret’s parents. Enrique was a writer and could either drop his work entirely or shift it to odd hours so as to be available to Margaret and to Max and Gregory. They had many friends who had rallied around them. They had both the intellect to negotiate the hierarchical world of medicine and sufficient contacts among the bullying powerful of New York with which to cajole doctors. He said it so often, he felt a little insincere, like a candidate making a stump speech, “This is a terrible piece of bad luck for Margaret, but compared to most families who have to deal with this, we’re lucky.” He meant every word. At age fifty, it seemed to Enrique that too much of his life had been wasted in a twisted shame of self-pity for what had been the petty frustrations and mistakes of his career. Faced with this, a true misfortune, he was surprised to find himself more often grateful for the allies and resources that he had been given to help him fight on Margaret’s behalf than discouraged by an opponent who didn’t even know he existed.
    He could not and did not ask Margaret or his boys for comfort. His father was dead. His mother too old and too self-pitying to be a solace. His in-laws too frightened and too bereft themselves. His half brother, Leo, too anxious and too selfish. His male friends too distant from the realities and too uncomprehending of the experience. Margaret’s best friend, Lily, too preoccupied comforting Margaret and herself. His half sister, Rebecca, who had been present and understanding and so great a help, could spell and reassure him, but she could not provide, no one could provide, what he had forsaken for nearly three years, what cancer had taken from him, and would soon take from him forever: Margaret’s attention.
    Lying beside her, waiting for the paperwork to bring her homefor the last time, he expected that soon they would begin their final conversations, their farewell to each other. The struggle to live would no longer dominate. He was lucky even in this, he thought. She hadn’t been incinerated by a terrorist’s plane or shattered by an errant taxi. Even in her dying, he consoled himself, she was giving him something precious, a time for them to part with grace.
    But he had miscalculated. Her decision to die brought a crowd.

chapter five
The Orphans’ Dinner
    H E TRIED TO be late. Not truly late, just the proper ten or fifteen minutes so he wouldn’t be the first to arrive, which was odd, because he wanted more than anything to be alone with her.
    He was dressed an hour and a half ahead of time. He wore black jeans and his sole white Brooks Brothers button-down shirt, which he ironed twice on a towel covering his butcher-block table. The second pass was necessary because the first left a crease on the collar that would symbolize something bad about him, he couldn’t say what. Once all the creases were eliminated, he thoroughly concealed the white shirt underneath an equally white and very puffy hand-knit wool sweater. Looking at the total effect of this ensemble, few would have suspected how much thought had been put into it. It certainly wasn’t flattering. The puffy sweater had beengiven to him as a Christmas gift by his Jewish mother and atheist father, purchased from a local craftswoman who lived near them in Maine. It would have worked best for a beer-guzzling bear of a man, concealing the overhang of his stomach and making great round thighs seem proportional. Instead, in this wad of white, Enrique resembled a pregnant anorexic, or perhaps an enormous cotton ball impaled on a pair of sticks.
    He had a persistent suspicion