The Pleasure Was Mine by Tommy Hays.
St. Martin’s Press, 2005. $23.95 — 272 pp.

Someone once said that bad cases make bad law. The Terri Shiavo case makes this point in spades.

Passing by the fact that arrogant judges are now deciding many of the issues, great and small, of our “republic,” passing by as well the behavior of so many members of our legislative and executive branches, both at the federal and state levels, who lack the guts to decide one way or the other whether we should begin putting infirm citizens to death, we are still left with the ignoble Michael Shiavo himself, the “caretaker” of Terri Shiavo, the man who used much of the insurance money intended for Terri Shiavo’s treatment on himself, the husband who now has children out of wedlock with another woman, the medical expert who now claims to be certain that dying from thirst and hunger is relatively painless for his wife.

Wherever we may stand on the Shiavo case, most of us would surely wish for a nobler personage than Michael Shiavo as a basis on which to attack or defend this issue. Doubtless many of us know such people, men and women who have suffered intensely caring for a spouse, child, or parent, who have walked the same hard road as Michael Shiavo without covering themselves as he has with the mud and grime of that highway.

In his recent novel The Pleasure Was Mine, Asheville writer Tommy Hays gives us the story of a husband who, when confronted with his wife’s increasing loss of memory, behaves with great dignity and love in a terrible situation. Prate Marshbanks, a house painter, marries Irene, a tall, thin, graceful high school English teacher, in 1952. Prate, who is himself short and stocky with a dark complexion, is as much astonished by this marriage as any of Irene’s friends. He and Irene raise one son together, Newell, an artist who marries happily. Newell and Sandy themselves have one child together, also a son, and are expecting a second baby when Sandy is killed in an automobile accident. Offered an opportunity to paint for the summer at Penland, an art and crafts center in Western North Carolina, Newell asks Prate to care for Jackson during that time. The Pleasure Was Mine is the story then not only of Prate and Irene, but of Prate and his grandson Jackson as well.

What Hays gives us in this well-written, gently told tale is a view of human beings often overlooked in a culture dedicated to entertainment, pleasure, and the self. In Prate Marshbanks Hays shows us a temperamental old man who, though burdened by the demands of family, nevertheless retains his sense of humor and of justice throughout his struggles. As we become better acquainted with Prate and his circumstances, we realize in fact that he is pointing out some life lessons in a profound way, showing us that a gift for laughter can soften the harsh realities of life, that love truly can carry us through the troubled shadows that touch every life.

The Pleasure Was Mine also serves to remind us that what we often perceive as the end of something can be the beginning of something else. Trite and banal as such a thought may seem, many of us forget that a death, a terrible illness, a family rift or any other such catastrophe may open as well as close doors. Prate begins his story thinking that his own story is at its end — and certainly it is nearing its end, in terms of his age — yet throughout the story we witness him awakening again to life, finding strength in his memories of his earlier life with Irene, discovering an unexpected source of deep affection in his regard for his sad little grandson, and arriving at a better understanding of his son. He even becomes a sort of matchmaker for his son and for Billie, a young woman who has befriended Irene and who develops in the course of this story a quirky friendship with Prate as well.

In coming years, as the population of our country and of the world grows older, enormous pressure will be exerted to “ease” the lot of the infirm and the elderly, of people suffering from dementia, Alzheimer’s and other such illnesses. Those without great economic resources will in particular find themselves encouraged to euthanize their relatives. A chorus of voices has already risen to remind us of the heavy burdens placed by such patients on our economy, this economy which at the same time can afford to support a war machine inferior to none, a government composed of tens of millions of workers and a nation of consumers. Whatever we decide in this debate, we would do well to remember that the way in which a nation treats its ailing and its infirm, its weak and its poor, will tell us much about the heart and soul of that nation.

(Jeff Minick is a writer and teacher who lives in Waynesville. He can be reached at saintsbookco@aol.com.)