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They say that Hope is happiness—
... Alas! it is delusion all—
The future cheats us from afar, Byron, 1816
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Well?!" she says in a rising tone of demand as she walks past to the bedroom to ditch her work clothes. From there she shouts, "What did they say?"
But I'm not really listening. This old verse verse has been chasing around in my head: "They say that hope is happiness..." It springs to mind every so often like a persistent hiccup and then dominates thought like a sore point in an old argument. I turn it over and over again never sure if it's bitter or sweet until the next line of confirmed melancholy pops into consciousness. "But genuine love must prize the past."
It's been that way ever ever since a girl I did not appreciate wrote them out for me as we sat on a bench high above Lake Austin at a long forgotten pot party. It's baffling. What is it about these unwelcome lines? And what about the present? Is it just lost between future and past. And then just at the point I think I am free, I half-remember the last line, "Alas it is delusion all," which I know is wrong and is the reason I'm standing on the chair.
"What did they say?!" she shouts. We often shout between rooms. I usually act as if I didn't hear because we are a house divided by rooms and spousal politics. One one side of the divide you become a subject of whim; on the other a domineering cad. It's hard to imagine any time or any place short of tyranny where a man was king of his house which is probably why household tyranny is commonplace elsewhere. But now, with the whole verse before me, the words have knotted me up. Present. Past. Hope. Happiness. Surely this delusion is folderol. Then it starts again: "They say that hope is happiness..."
She appears in the door. "What are you reading?"
"An old poem."
She crosses her arms. "The preqs of the retired. Are going to keep me in suspense?"
I put the book back behind the front books and climb down. "Sorry. I am preoccupied," which is an excuse that's long since lost its currency with Lilalee who just levels a steady, silent, disconcerting glare. I want to ask her to try to boil a cup of water with that glare, but think better of it.
"They've scheduled an MRI."
"About goddam time," she proclaims. Her impatience is understandable. I've been dragging my feet, but I don't much like it. I don't really want to talk about it. "Anything else?" she asks.
"Nothing much. The Doc just said she thinks something is pushing on the sciatic nerve. Depending on what they see, she'll figure out what comes next."
"Like?"
"Physical therapy, or a cortisone shot in my spine, or surgery."
"Back surgery? Isn't that a big deal."
"She did say that surgery was a last resort."
"Would you do that?"
"Maybe. Don't know."
"Maybe you should find a new passion," she says. "Something that won't make your leg go numb. Like dinner. Let's go get some pizza."
And just then I realize I am really starved and the words are no longer in my head.