Assisted Loving by Bob Morris Page A

life,” she corrects me.
    I take a few notes for my column and thank her for her time.
    â€œWait a minute,” she says. “You know? I think I have someone for him, a friend of my mom’s. She plays bridge and winters in Palm Beach, just like your dad.”
    â€œBut where does she live up north?”
    â€œShe has a place on Fifth Avenue and a condo in Sun Valley, I think.”
    Fifth Avenue? Sun Valley? Whoa! I’d love that. But is all this too rich for him? This lady sounds very haute couture, and my dad’s so wash-and-wear. I pooh-pooh it.
    â€œI just think he’s way too down-market for a woman like that,” I say. “He isn’t worldly or cultured. He doesn’t even read the New York Times unless a neighbor drops it off. He won’t be up to the standards of someone so fancy.”
    â€œCome on, Bob, what kind of attitude is that?”
    â€œDefensive pessimism. It won’t work.”
    â€œMaybe it will, maybe it won’t,” this woman says. “But I’m going to call my mother right now and get a number. Her name’s Florence. And, Bob, don’t ever say he isn’t good enough for anyone. He’s your dad. And you love him, don’t you?”

CHAPTER 2
Date Date Goose
    I t’s a drizzly May evening. An ash blonde with no body fat named Ann is waiting outside her high-end condominium in one of Long Island’s Gold Coast towns. She is worried about the humidity and her hair. She just had a wash and set and hopes this weather doesn’t frizz it up too much. She reminds herself not to order ice cream for dessert because she left her Lactaid upstairs. Her heart is beating a little fast, it seems. She’s nervous. Scaring up a date isn’t easy for a woman her age, and this Joe Morris sounded so pleasant on the phone. His voice was smooth, his demeanor breezy. Geographically suitable, Jewish, a retired judge with two sons who have Ivy League degrees. What would he look like? She was picturing if not a Jewish Robert Goulet, then someone Alan King–like, may he rest in peace. “Tonight, tonight, won’t be just anynight,” this Joe Morris had crooned to her on the phone earlier. It wasn’t her favorite song or musical (she prefers classical music to show tunes and instrumental to vocal), and certainly it wasn’t her idea of suave, but his enthusiasm and spirit were encouraging.
    Maybe he could get her to lighten up. That might not be a bad thing.
    After waiting fifteen minutes in front of her building, she sees a silver sedan pulls up. It’s no knight in shining armor. If she’s expecting him to get out of the car and open the door for her (call her old-fashioned, she still thinks it’s a nice gesture), she soon realizes it isn’t happening and opens the door for herself and says hello. She gets in. Behind the wheel there’s a man who looks good for eighty—nice head of hair, young face—but is still eighty.
    Her husband had been eighty when he got sick. For three years she was his nursemaid, companion, and link to the world. Her children were not around. They live on the West Coast so they could only visit every few months. Friends stopped calling. They had their own problems. She didn’t keep up with them either. It was enough to keep the house and his medications in order, not to mention all the doctors and hospital visits, a full-time job, like taking care of a baby, only this time there would be no future in it, nothing hopeful. And as her husband’s mind and body drifted further and further out, she felt as if she were at sea with him, and each new medical trouble felt like another rogue wave tipping her boat just as it had barely righted itself from the last. He died last year. They were married fifty-five years. She’s still not over it. But now she’s in a stranger’s car on this—and there is no other word for it—date.
    â€œI thought we could