Rob Delaney - A Heart That Works

A heart that hurts is a heart that works.

Juliana Hatfield

ALSO BY ROB DELANEY

Rob Delaney: Mother. Wife. Sister. Human. Warrior. Falcon. Yardstick. Turban. Cabbage.

www.spiegelandgrau.com

Copyright 2022 by Rob Delaney

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission from the publisher.

Spider And I

Words and Music by Brian Eno

Copyright 1999 by E.G. Music Publishers Ltd.

All Rights in the United States and Canada Administered by Universal Music - MGB Songs International Copyright Secured All Rights Reserved

Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC

Jacket design by Strick & Williams

Interior design by Meighan Cavanaugh

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Upon Request

ISBN 978-1-954118-31-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-954118-32-4 (eBook)

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For Henrys mommy

Pardon this gush of sorrow; these ineffectual words are but a slight tribute to the unexampled worth of Henry, but they soothe my heart, overflowing with the anguish which his remembrance creates. I will proceed with my tale.

M ARY S HELLEY, Frankenstein

A Heart That Works

ONE

I swim most days now in a pond near our house. There are ponds of various sizes scattered around London, and Im lucky to live near enough to a couple of them that I can run or cycle a short distance and get wet in a natural body of water. My favorite pond is managed by the city, and if you attend a short briefing, give them eight pounds, and put on an orange swim cap, they let you have at it. Its roughly one mile across and ringed by tower blocks and newer, shinier residential buildings. One time, a heron carrying a dead frog in its mouth flew over me as I swam. I went home and told my four-year-old, and he started crying and told me that the frog was his friend.

Had you told me even five years ago that I would be a habitual swimmer in a body of water that was not the ocean, I wouldnt have believed you. I grew up next to the ocean, at the beach as often as possible, or sailing around the little islands off Marblehead, Massachusetts, in a tiny little sailing boat called a Widgeon. So the ocean was not a problem for me, but Ive spent most of my life afraid of lakes and ponds. Frankly, I wasnt even crazy about pools.

The way I intellectualized it was that if something killed me in the ocean, I would understand what had happened; there would be no mystery. My autopsy would read shark attack or run down by drunken teenager in a Boston Whaler and hacked apart by engine blades. It would be awful, but anyone who read the report would understand what had happened. Whereas if I met my end in a lake or pond, that would AT BEST mean that sentient vines had reached up from the pond floor and coiled around my thighs and waist and pulled me down, not even allowing me to scream because theyd tightened around my throat and crushed my larynx. Or, more likely, that the gas-bloated zombie-corpse of a murdered postman had slipped a rusty handcuff around my ankle and was going to yank me down and make me be his wife for eternity.

Better the devil you knowwhich, in my case, was sharks and drunk teenagers. I suppose I thought dying in the ocean was just the cost of doing business, whereas dying in a lake meant you could only have been murdered by someone or something that derived erotic pleasure from your gurgled screams.

A S INSANE AS my aquatic-death belief system was, it was my own and I lived by it for decades. I believed it fervently and planned my swimmingor not-swimmingaccordingly. My wife, Leah, however, grew up near plenty of lakes, ponds, and rivers, and her mother was her high schools swim-team coach. Shed swim anywhere, anytime. She even went swimmingprepare yourselfin the winter . Id heard about people doing this here and there; like maybe going for an instantaneous dip in Norway if you had a sauna inches from your hole in the ice, or for a similarly brief dunk on New Years Day in Maine if you had a running car with the heat blasting right at the waters edge. But deliberate, frequent swimming in a natural body of water, in the winter, without a wetsuit, was not something I realized people did. Id assumed that being in cold water for more than a few seconds meant that you would contract bronchitis or pneumonia straight away, and you should notify your local hospital to have a bed ready, just in case.

We hadnt been in London for too long before Leah had assembled a comprehensive list of local swimming areas, which are myriad, and included lidos cold and warm, ponds, reservoirs, and even the Thames, if youre disgusting. I thought, Good for her! I wasnt afraid for her; the bloated postman only wanted me. Twas only for me that the slimy vines ran drills, coiling around driftwood and otters, preparing for the day I mustered the courage to enter their murky lair. Others were safe to swim, splash about, tube, or whatever else they felt they needed to do.

When our son Henry was sick and in the hospital, what Leah needed to do was swim, and many a morning shed find her way to a nearby body of water for a quick dip. She had friends who did it, and she made more friends by doing it, all of whom seemed like lovely people. Insane, but lovely.

Leah knew about my terror of the deep, but for some reason she didnt think it was worth countenancing in an adult man. So over many, many years shed invite me to come with her, and Id conjure a malady whose only remedy was an immediate nap. When Henry was ill, I had far more excuses, but no energy to find the words to use them, so one autumn afternoon, we trundled off to Hampstead Heath, which has a ladies and a mens pond, and brought our dear Henry and his favorite carer, Angela. Angela stayed with Henry while Leah and I sexually segregated ourselves and walked the short distance to our respective ponds. I took off my clothes in the outdoor changing area and put on my bathing suit. It was cool, maybe fifty degrees, but that didnt bother me. I walked purposefully out to the little pier that extended into the pond. It was a beautiful, bucolic sceneto most. But I knew what evil awaited me in the water. I jumped inand then out, so fast it probably looked like a tape played forward then instantly backward at the same speed. Fuck this, I thought, as I toweled off. I joined Henry and Angela, and we all waited on the banks of a different pond while Leah swam leisurely, enjoying herself quite thoroughly. I, on the other hand, had narrowly escaped being eaten, or at least aggressively probed, by the amphibious zombie-priest living in a barrel at the bottom of the mens pond. Never again, I vowed.

S OME MONTHS AFTER Henry died, Leah and I took a scuba-diving course to get certified. Leah had always wanted to do it, so I got us the classes as a Christmas present. The first few lessons were in an athletic center in Soho. Funny that there are so many thousands of things happening mere feet from you in a city as big as London, and one of them is grieving parents learning to scuba-dive in an old pool on the same street as theaters, pubs, and Pret-a-Mangers.

When you learn to scuba dive, you do all the straightforward things youd imagine, first studying written material and then learning how all the equipment works and how to communicate with your partner. But you also practice situations for when things go wrong, from running out of oxygen to losing visibility if your mask is compromised for some reason. For that particular drill, we would sit at the bottom of the deep end of the pool with no masks on and our eyes closed for a few minutes, then ascend blindly to safety. Before we submerged, the instructor explained that it would be scary, and we might want to freak out or, indeed, might actually freak out. A couple of people in the class were visibly scared. I was not.