This Week, I’m Borrowing Marcel’s Crate

Dear readers,

I’m afraid Marcel won’t be joining you this week.

Before anyone starts imagining dramatic things, let me reassure you that he is very much alive.

According to the man himself, however, that remains “under review.”

He has a cold.

Not a remarkable cold.

Not the sort that doctors write papers about.

Just one of those ordinary summer colds that seem to arrive because the weather couldn’t quite decide what season it wanted to be.

If you were to ask Marcel, though, you’d think he had been chosen for a very important medical experiment.

The blanket has barely left his shoulders in three days.

Every sigh sounds carefully considered.

Every trip from the bedroom to the kitchen appears to require the determination of someone crossing the Arctic.

Yesterday he informed me that he wasn’t sure he would “ever be properly warm again.”

It was seventy-six degrees outside.

He insisted I write this week’s column.

“You can’t just skip a week,” he said, before asking if I thought people would remember him.

I told him they probably would.

Mostly because he keeps reminding everyone he’s ill.

Now, before the letters arrive, I should say this.

He really is sick.

He has a fever.

He feels miserable.

I know that.

I’ve made enough tea to float a fishing boat.

I’ve located tissues in rooms that didn’t even know they had noses.

I’ve listened patiently while he explained that this particular cold was “different.”

It probably is.

Every cold feels different when it’s yours.

But after forty years of marriage, you begin to notice something rather interesting.

Women get ill.

Men become patients.

There is a subtle distinction.

When I’m unwell, I usually find myself wondering whether I’ve remembered to move the laundry into the dryer.

When Marcel is unwell, he quietly begins preparing farewell speeches for people who haven’t asked for one.

Mind you, he doesn’t become difficult.

Quite the opposite.

He becomes extraordinarily polite.

He thanks me for bringing him tea as though I’ve personally negotiated peace in the Middle East.

He apologizes for “being a burden,” moments before asking whether I might possibly bring another blanket.

Then another pillow.

Then perhaps the thermometer.

Not because he doubts the first reading.

Simply because hope is an unpredictable thing.

This afternoon he asked me if I thought he looked pale.

I told him he looked exactly like a man who hadn’t been outside in three days.

He accepted that as medical confirmation.

I suspect every marriage has its own version of this little dance.

One person becomes dramatically convinced that civilization may continue without them.

The other quietly replaces the empty tissue box and asks whether they’d like some soup.

No applause.

No discussion.

Just soup.

A little while ago I looked into the bedroom.

He was asleep.

The thermometer lay beside him on the nightstand like an old friend that had done everything it could.

His notebook was there too.

Open.

A few unfinished sentences waiting patiently.

He worries far more about missing a conversation with all of you than he worries about missing dinner.

I don’t tell him that.

Some things are nicer left unsaid.

When he wakes up, he’ll probably shuffle outside with a mug of coffee and reclaim his upside-down beer crate as though he’d been away for months instead of days.

The neighbors will pass.

Someone will wave.

Someone will be carrying too many grocery bags.

Someone else will be pretending they know how the parking meter works.

And before long, Marcel will stop thinking about himself altogether.

Which, I suspect, is usually the first sign that he’s getting better.

“Now, Marcel,” I said when he insisted he might not recover in time for next week’s column, “if you have enough energy to predict your own funeral, you have enough energy to get well.”

He rolled his eyes.

Then he smiled.

He’s sleeping again now.

And, if I know my husband, he’ll be back on that beer crate before either of us is ready to admit how much we’ve both missed seeing him there.