Sorry I Worried You

The Armstrong View

186 The Armstrong View ”It’s a miracle,” Reynolds’s wife said, and surely his children believed it because all three of them, each old enough to be living away from home, looked awestruck. Their father had undergone brain surgery. His skull had been opened and closed again after a part of his brain had been removed. Not a large part, the surgeon had explained, just a blood vessel or two, a bit of cerebral cortex, and the hemorrhage that had threatened his life had been controlled, Reynolds discovered, without him turning into a drooler or a limper or one of those people who slurred their speech and stared vacantly at family members they could not remember. And indeed, he wouldn’t tell any of them, he’d expected the worst, yet here he was recovering so perfectly he was reconsidering his position on miracles. “What do you want for dinner to celebrate?” his wife said. 187 “Let’s go to the store together, Lauren,” Reynolds said. “Let’s impulse buy before all this giddiness wears off.” “OK,” she said, but as soon as they walked into the store, Reynolds realized he meant only meat, and Lauren waved him on, saying she’d pick up a few things while they were there. Ten minutes later Reynolds was carrying four pounds of strip steaks for his family, glancing down six aisles before he found her among the pet food. “There’s only the three of us,” Lauren said. “The boys can’t help you with that on their way back to Maryland.” She smiled like the happy puppies and contented cats on the bags and boxes, and then she glanced at the ceiling. “They’ve ruined another 70s hit,” she said. Reynolds listened to a song that seemed as unfamiliar as the ones he never recognized in his college fine arts course when the instructor had placed the needle in the middle of a movement and challenged the class to identify as many musical elements as it could. “Really?” he said. “Come on, Greg,” she said. “‘Stayin’ Alive.’” “That’s ‘Stayin’ Alive’?” “Sure. The tune’s still there. It’s just turned to mush by all those strings.” “I’m lost.” “You’re so literal these days. Fifty years old, Greg, fifty-one in less than a week—this should be the beginning of the figurative era.” “The Hope Metaphors. If they were so valuable they’d be under glass.” Reynolds lifted a carton of milk bones from the shelf. The dog on the package looked as if it were listening to the next song. His wife said “See, another one ruined.” “I’m sorry,” Reynolds said, “I don’t know that one either.” 188 “Stuck in the middle with you,” she murmured to the recorded tune. “Here I am, stuck in the middle with you,” bobbing her head as if she were wearing earphones. He looked back at the happy dog on the box and concentrated on the sounds from the ceiling speaker. “I’m still lost,” he finally said. “What’d they do, take out your memory of pop songs?” “No, I remember the song. ‘Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,’ Jesus, we have the record somewhere, but that doesn’t sound like Stealers Wheel. It doesn’t sound the same at all.” “Of course not. It’s muzak.” At dinner, while they finished the strip steaks, Reynolds’s daughter told a story: “They had auditions at the Upstairs today,” Sarah said. “The second biggest theater in the city, and this woman who went first belts out the song they were using—you know the one, the potato, potahto song.” “‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off,’” Reynolds said. “Sure,” Sarah said. “The Gershwin brothers.” “Exactly, only she sings it, ‘You like potato, I like potato; you like tomato, I like tomato.’ No difference at all.” Reynolds laughed. “The literalist,” he said. “Didn’t she notice the rest of the song? Maybe she’s been selling shoes longer than you have.” “But you don’t recognize the songs you own,” Lauren said, frowning . “A literalist is a middle-aged man who won’t admit he knows a song because it’s not the version he owns.” “Oh, it’s no big deal,” Sarah said. “I’ve been immune to Dad’s shoe store joke for six months. There’s a guy at work...