When In Disgrace with Fortune: a Firefly Story

On a Saturday evening in October 2000, Kathleen and I giddily dressed, ready to celebrate the wedding of a dear friend. We knew that lives were about to be even more closely joined in love and changed forever that evening. With the babysitter knocking at the door, Kathleen wiggled into the short black velvet dress we both acknowledged was the finest gift I had ever given her.

Several winters before then, Kathleen and I came to realize that Christmas had become a creeping escalation of presents and cost. We needed to mutually disarm. So I proposed a new approach. What if we decided that we could spend no more than $100 on presents for each other, spread across at least four gifts? That way, we could move back in time to when Kathleen had little money and I had none, to a place where thoughtfulness and surprise meant more than shiny jewels or fancy names on a label.

Kathleen, who would have been happy receiving a ball of yarn for Christmas, and who generally hated shopping, readily agreed.

“Now we will see which one of us is the most creative,” she had said.

By Christmas Eve that year, our first in Connecticut, Kathleen’s holiday stocking held a pair of comfy socks (stockings in her stocking), and her gifts under the tree were a candle (for the light of my life) and a faux pearl bracelet (for the oyster of my eye). But I still needed a fourth gift. And my wife’s added challenge – “Now we will see which one of us is the most creative” – had elevated this to a competition of love. So with $23 left to spend and time running out, I ventured out to find that one final gift that would make her step back in wonder, smile and wordlessly acknowledge defeat.

But this would not be easy, for there is no more desperate time to shop than late on Christmas Eve, especially when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for. Frustrated and dejected, I wandered into Banana Republic with just 15 minutes until closing. That’s when I saw, orphaned on a sale rack, the perfect black dress. This sleeveless velvet number had a V-neck that was just deep enough to tease. The rest was a simple A-line that would fall about four inches above Kathleen’s knee. It had started life at $159 and, through neglect and a series of discounts, now waited for someone to adopt it for $24.99. I grabbed the dress, considering it a sign that it was a “small” and would fit Kathleen perfectly. The one problem was that the dress was two dollars more than I could spend.

I headed for the checkout counter, not knowing exactly how to solve this quandary, one created by a set of rules that I had – now annoyingly – imposed on myself. I shared my dilemma with the cashier without any idea of how she could help or why she should care.

“You don’t have the two dollars?” the cashier asked, eying my rather expensive watch.

“Well, I have it,” I said. “But I can’t spend it.”

“You can’t spend it? What do you need it for?”

“Nothing in particular.” I smiled weakly.

“Well, how much more than twenty-five dollars do you have?” 

“Lots,” I said. “That’s not the issue.”

The charm of this interaction was lost on everyone but me. The cashier looked on, dumbfounded. The lady behind me muttered “Yagattabekiddinme” in a Brooklyn accent that felt like home, and the beefy guy behind her looked like he was calculating whether he could take me in a brawl. I straightened up slightly and widened my smile. Sensing that we could be just moments away from inspiring a startling headline of holiday violence at a Banana Republic, I explained the Christmas challenge to the group.

“So, I can’t spend more than twenty-three dollars,” I said. “That’s all I have left.”

“Why don’t you just tell her it cost twenty-three dollars?” the lady behind me asked, warming to my unique problem. 

“Fuck it,” the beefy guy said. “I’ll give you the two dollars.” 

“That won’t work,” I replied. “She might demand receipts, and there are penalties involving dirty dishes and limitations on Sunday football if I go over. Also …” I added sheepishly, “it can’t cost twenty-three bucks because I have to pay sales tax, too.” 

Through some wizardry, the cashier was suddenly my Merlin. Perhaps owing little to my charisma and more to the advancing hour, she conjured a 15% “you’re an annoying customer on Christmas Eve” discount and stuffed the dress, a box and a sad but oddly appropriate (15% less pretty) bow into a plastic bag.

Mission accomplished.

As Kathleen wiggled into that perfect little black dress the night of the wedding, I noticed her legs – a runner’s legs, toned, strong and … bruised. Each leg held a series of small black and blue islands. They dotted her thighs providing an unwelcome contrast to her pale Irish skin. Kathleen, who was all at once graceful and clumsy, was known to cut an occasional corner too closely and bump into the sharp edge of a desk. So it was not unusual for her to have a bruise. But this was different. These bruises materialized without introduction. Like the moment a drunken uncle unexpectedly appears in your doorway, I knew instinctively that this unwelcome visit portended some future unpleasantness. But for the moment, I was focused on the wedding.

 “You can’t wear that dress,” I nonchalantly mused. “People will think I kicked you all night in my sleep.” 

“But you are the stillest sleeper I’ve ever known,” she replied, leaving an unasked question in my head.

“Yeah, but they won’t know that,” I reminded her. I tried to ignore and explain away my advancing alarm. Perhaps there was a logical reason why jigsaw puzzle pieces in shades of purple and blue had appeared on my wife’s lower limbs. Perhaps I was just spooked by the breast cancer Kathleen had recently beaten into remission. Or perhaps I did thrash in my sleep last night.

Kathleen agreed to swap out the black velvet dress for a chic Armani pantsuit that I had given her at a more exuberant Christmas past. But as she dazzled everyone at the wedding that night, I couldn’t contain my growing alarm. I suggested that perhaps she should visit her doctor to have him look at the bruises. She ignored my proposal while staring at me intently, eyes slightly altered to form “the glare.” I knew that look. The first time I had seen it was 13 years before; 13 years, nine months and three weeks before, to be exact.

She had unveiled “the glare” shortly before our wedding, when it was suggested that our brothers should throw me a bachelor party. Kathleen’s brother Danny proposed an evening of revelry that would include a visit to the bachelor party temple, the strip club. When I broached this idea with Kathleen, I got “the glare” for the first time. With an almost imperceptible squint and slight tilt of her head, she was able to convey mystification, disappointment and a little contempt. That was all I needed.

To this day, in an era when women take their boyfriends to strip clubs and purchase lap dances for them; when pole dancing is a middle-aged suburban aerobic activity; and when the internet is, well, the internet, I have never ventured into a strip club. Such was the power of Kathleen’s glare. So, my suggestion of a trip to the doctor was a nonstarter.

The wedding wasn’t our only social event that weekend in October 2000. The next morning, we jumped from our bed, ready for more action, this time in our home. In a few hours, 40 members of the Yale Law School class of 1985 and their spouses would invade our house for their 15^th reunion brunch.

Kathleen, who had now been a clinical professor at Yale for eight years, sought to host the class of ’85 brunch because it included my closest friend, Howard Shapiro, our buddy Gene Sperling, and a colleague of Kathleen’s from the Yale faculty. Brunch was scheduled to be a rolling affair, with celebrants arriving and departing throughout the day.

The event turned out to be a great success, and when it was finally winding down around 5 p.m., Howard and one of his classmates were chatting with me in the kitchen. This classmate’s wife, who was also present, happened to be a doctor. I now had the cover I needed and asked the doctor to take a look at Kathleen’s legs. My wife, not pleased that I chose to end this successful collation on this topic, reluctantly headed upstairs to change into a pair of shorts.

When she returned, her legs seemed to have even more bruises than the night before. The doctor took one step towards her and froze.

“You must see your doctor tomorrow,” she said. Nothing more needed to be spoken.

The following day, Kathleen and I went to see her oncologist, Dr. Arthur Levy, the man who had shepherded us through Kathleen’s successful breast cancer fight just a few months before. Dr. Levy was initially pleased to see us, but when Kathleen showed him her bruised legs, his mood darkened. Confirming tests still needed to be conducted, he said, but he was sure that it was leukemia. He wanted to hospitalize her and begin testing and treatment immediately, picking up the phone to call Yale New Haven Hospital. 

“Wait,” I said. “I can’t pick up Victoria from school and tell her that her mother is in the hospital. She might fall apart. And I certainly will. You need to give us a few days to digest this.”

We negotiated a week’s delay so we could get ourselves together and seek a second opinion, just in case. As we walked out of the Yale clinic, our souls in tatters, I asked Kathleen to stop walking for a moment. I then leaned on the one thing that has always comforted me in my most desperate moments, Shakespeare’s Sonnet #29. I turned to Kathleen and began reciting:

When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising

Haply I think on thee, and then my state

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate,

For thy sweet love rememb’red such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings. 

These words never fail to calm me, telling me that my situation is not as hopeless as I imagine. Reciting them to Kathleen in that moment reminded me that the thought of her, Victoria and their love redeemed me and elevated my circumstance. I could only hope that they said the same to Kathleen.

Later that day, Victoria was met by both of her parents as she left St. Thomas’s Day School. She celebrated this rare event with a squeal and a small happy dance – the dawn before the darkness. But she soon put together the pieces of this jagged puzzle. Both parents walking her home from school, a rare occurrence; smiles that did not embody joy; and sweaty palms holding each of her hands on this cool New England afternoon. She knew something was amiss.

As we walked the four blocks to our house, we delivered the news to Victoria as breezily as we could. Her mother needed to go into the hospital to have her legs checked out. We didn’t know how long she would be there. We did know that chemotherapy was again in our future, but this time, not on an outpatient basis. Victoria’s reaction was careful and stoic.

Silence fell over us as we walked to our house. We clasped our hands together, swinging our arms deliberately as fallen brown leaves swirled at our feet. Little could we have imagined that the three of us would never take another autumn stroll together again.