War in a Beautiful Country

by Patricia Ryan

  It was true, Regina thought. She often saw the unsuspected scope of her own personality when crashing against another person in intimacy. She had already begun to consider her own lack of peachy-ness there. Intimacy could make her a tyrant, with her irrational rages against bad coffee and cheddar cheese.

  “Don’t you know me?!” she would scream, “do you willfully disregard who I am by making assumptions for me by switching vegetables?!”

  No wonder somebody wants to blow me up, she sighed.

  CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

  i.

  In her exhaustion from trying to keep panic at bay, she had picked up a new nervous habit.

  She compulsively read signs.

  Over and over and over again.

  If she stopped at a beautiful alpine overlook, she would turn from the vista to read the signs: NO LITTERING. NO BALLPLAYING. TRUCKS PROHIBITED. Not once, but all during the time she remained there.

  She could not help reading every sign no matter what or where it was. If there were signs in places where she went everyday---NO EXIT. NO SMOKING. IN CASE OF FIRE DO NOT TAKE ELEVATOR. BATHROOMS FOR PATRONS ONLY. UTILITY SHUT-OFF LOCATIONS. OUT OF ORDER. TOILET SEAT COVERS---she would read those signs like it was the first time, every time she went in.

  She read messages on store awnings—GROCERIES. APPITIZERS. GORMET DELI. EAT IN. TAKE OUT. FREE DELIVERY. 24 HOUR DINER. When stopped for a light, she would read a billboard---UNBEATABLE AUTHORIZED DEALER. GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE--again and again even if she passed it often and had read it many times before. She read the sides of trucks and buses: CAREER OPPORTUNTIY. NO INTEREST FOR ONE YEAR! VARICOSE VEINS GONE FOREVER.

  Each time she would read the same sign she would say: “I already saw that,” and then force herself not to look at it anymore and the next time she came across it, she would read it all over again. In fact, at this moment she was reading the same advertisement on Angela’s tea mug every time she lifted the cup to her lips.

  But not just signs. When she passed a place that had been part of her personal history, she would go through that history in her head each time, on every street, at every house where a friend had lived even if the friend were long gone. Or at a place where she once worked. “I used to work there,” she would say to herself as she drove by, even if she had said it to herself every time before.

  She had started going through her loft making strange sounds, little moans of aloneness; then talking out loud and progressing to inadvertently having audible conversations with herself in ladies’ room stalls, becoming one of those people she always thought when she heard them: “Well, they’ve lost it.”

  It might be ok to live with these new obsessions. She would just say to herself, “This is nuts. I’m nuts,” and then accept it. But this inner agitation was taking its toll. One would think that in the face of perceived sudden death, she would have developed a wide, generous view of daily life. But instead she had become teeth-grindingly irritated…when paper clips stuck together, when the clerk was too slow to give change, at the friend who could never remember how her stove worked.

  And at herself, for the life that was not what she had originally seen in her mind’s eye.

  She needed a new vision for her mind’s eye.

  ii

  Her mind’s eye couldn’t see one.

  All it could see was the cold, gray fog of being left behind.

  By everyone, it seemed, all at once.

  Now, when she needed them most.

  iii.

  It was tiring, trying to make a boy take the place of the man she lost.

  Drew had become a collection of traits Regina could see without awe. “I don’t know what to do,” she told Nina, “After all, I care about him enough to protect him from my opinion of him.”

  As it turned out she didn’t have to do anything. Her ordinary behavior did the job: her fear, crankiness, depression, unavailability; her never wanting to go out, always wanting to be back early, the involuntary curfew she imposed on them both.

  “There is too much life in life for you to miss it on purpose,” even Detective Angela Vega had chided her.

  Regina had gotten rigid about places she would go in the city, never wanted to be away on vacation, and didn’t go to see Drew in the theater anymore.

  “It’s all banal, obvious, shallow, with a fear of intelligence, and a love of clichés,” Regina jabbed at him when pressed about why she was absent more and more often.

  It was sad that in the little theaters where Drew acted, all the eager good will and hard work produced only an earnest mediocrity. In addition, these off-beat venues were hermetically sealed and claustrophobic. They smelled of old, unclean fabric. She felt she would scream if she had to be closed in captivity to watch one more bad play done badly in a bad place.

  She remembered when it used to be different. Once the theater was where philosophy and literature could collide in three dimension, provoking a thrill that would run up one’s spine. Apparently it became too strong an experience for the celebrating out-of-towners who bought the tickets, and the rich kids who formed the Yale School of Drama’s theater mafia.

  Poor Drew, if some of these plays ever made their way to public access television or the internet, he could have the privilege of being embarrassed for the rest of his life.

  iv.

  Even so, she expected Drew would stay content in their relationship as long as there was a lot of sex and a decent amount of laughing. Regina had changed even that. All the prized young trysting had started to make her feel well fucked but not well loved, at a time when she loved no one, but did not want to be unloved.

  “Since you worked so hard at pushing me away, you may want to congratulate yourself on your success,” he said, on the day he told her that he was moving to the West Coast.

  Like Marius, he tried to make it seem entirely her fault, blame her for something he was wanting to do, take no responsibility for what worked between them and what didn’t. In any case, she knew it was inevitable that sooner or later he would do this. He had often talked about going to Portland or Seattle. He had friends who had gone out there and they told him it might be easier to find work. Those areas had become hot spots for making cheap movies, and theater companies were not unheard of. Anyway, it wasn’t so expensive, life had a softer swing to it, and it was prettier; what more could someone without much soul stamina want?

  “Well,” Nina said, when Regina told her Drew was leaving, “You had a good run while it lasted. And at least he came from the generation that would never dream of prefacing what he wanted you to do for him with the words, …. ‘if your aim in life is to please me…’”

  v.

  Marius was getting married again.

  “Another one?” her sister asked, “He passes from wife to wife like an Olympic torch.”

  “I guess he is going to keep doing it until he gets it right,” Regina’s jealousy provoked her to respond. “But now is a bad time,” she lamented.

  “When would be a good time for you,” Nina pointed out.

  Regina no longer needed him to be her husband, but it was important that he remain available to her as her friend. Now, as nature would take its own course—as water would seek its own level, and all those other platitudes—he would simply drift away from her into his new life. It wouldn’t be--couldn’t be--helped.

  It was inevitable she would be without him.

  It was inevitable that one day in a theater, or on a street, they would run into each other and he wouldn’t even say “hello” because his new wife wouldn’t let him.

  Would he call the next day and say he was sorry and that he had made a pact with the devil and would never do it again?

  Would Regina forgive him?

  Would she simply explain to Nina: “He can’t help who he loves.”

  But for today she said only, “I hear she sells dolls through the mail. After all the years he tried to push me into it, I should have realized how important it was for him to have a woma
n in the mail order business.”

  What really upset her now was that the one thing she had counted on Marius for would be taken away from her before she could get to use it. She wanted to say to him, “There is information you have about me that would be very helpful, very important. Information that could help me correct mistakes of behavior. With this information I could stop whatever I was doing long before it damaged others, or myself. I wish you would tell me.”

  He wouldn’t have, anyway. He was afraid she would want to know from him why he could not continue to love her.

  But he didn’t know.

  CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

  i.

  Christmas was only a few weeks away and instead of all the people in Regina’s life coming together, they were moving apart.

  But which of them would she want to remain with her? Which of them would she want with her if these were her last moments?

  The facts were clear: Doris was dead, and Uncle Roscoe, the former butterfly turned caterpillar, had broken off with his perceptive niece. Nina was away, having discovered the anti-gravity forces near the bottom of the sea. Drew was fleeing Regina’s solemnness.

  And simply time itself, even without Marius’ impending marriage, was taking its toll on the wobbly friendship with him. As she had feared, he was available to her less and less, and with a more distracted sense of duty, as he got further into his life without her. She realized how strong her feelings of abandonment were when she was surprised by regret that even Detective Walker had no reason to call her anymore.

  She tried to rationalize that if she had no one in her life, it was the way she actually preferred it.

  This was only partly true.

  She was as sad about not wanting them as not having them.

  ii

  Was it only Angela who was left to her---only Det. Vega who insisted on being her friend? Could she replace her losses by turning Angela into the new “pal of the heart” she thought she needed?

  Regina had begun to think maybe she had not given Angela enough credit from the start.

  “I never give anyone else beside myself enough credit for anything,” she had chastised herself. “Perhaps I made up my mind about her too early.”

  But even as Angela’s support and concern for her continued to unfold before her eyes, Regina took a second look. Regina craved dialogue; with Angela she got monologue. And Angela’s house was like her conversation: it had the non-cohesion of mercury, the dizziness of a refracting prism.

  It was one more reminder of how first impressions remained true, no matter how much Regina wanted to accept a good idea wherever it came from.

  CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR

  I

  Over tea, Detective Angela Vega had watched Regina close herself off from any possibility they could be friends.

  She thought Regina seemed caught in a downward spiral of self-inflicted loss.

  Even so, she was disappointed in Regina’s unspoken rejection. Disappointed, but not surprised. Angela had an inkling that most people were generally pushed away by her critical and difficult world view.

  Still, she thought “…hell, people worse than me are loved. Ok, so I might be a little over the top. Maybe I should pull back, shut up a little, not pound everybody over the head with every thought that ever crossed my mind.

  After all, people hate it when you give them a good idea.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

  i.

  It was raining hard when Regina left Angela’s apartment.

  She had things to worry about, other than whether she was throwing away the opportunity to enter friendship’s golden door. Lord knows, she had been wrong before. More pressing was her awareness that the upcoming holiday was ripe for another card. Another threat.

  Her birthday. Thanksgiving. Now Christmas.

  In the rain, the car’s windshield was a vista of backlit, hazy streaks, an effect she much desired for her paintings, but which was unwelcome on the road. The wipers alternated between opaque and smear. When she finally got an opening onto the twisting East River Drive that bordered one side of the city, it took too long to catch up to the highway’s rhythm, so she thought it better to stay far over in the slow lane. Regina had driven this route so many times before that she just let the car wend its own way along in a kind of soothing waltz.

  The cold rain was beginning to form an icy layer over the curvy roadway and it was not possible to avoid the flooding caused by bad drainage. Nor the mysterious karma of the roadbed itself, which had been constructed with the rubble of London buildings bombed out in the German blitz of World War II, then carried to New York from a decimated Britain as ballast in the holds of returning American war ships.

  Where was the dreaded card for Christmas? she thought. The holiday was very near. Would she even get one? When? Could it get lost in the heavy holiday mail? If one didn’t come for Christmas would it keep her on pins and needles until New Year’s?

  Would the new year start with a real bang?

  Would it be worse if none came at all? The bomb guy said when bombers are serious, they don’t warn you in advance. Maybe he—whoever—was getting ready for the real one. Knowing another threat might, or might not, be in the works, she wondered how she could steady herself this time for its continuing impact on her life, either way. Every moment of peace and relief made her feel stupidly, innocently naive.

  The worst part was the BOO! factor, the irony that death, that sure thing, was uncertain. Waiting for something to happen, something to suddenly jump out at her from doorways and corners, produced a constant low, rumbling dread. Then confusion. What to do? Is it here? Is it there? A nightmare confinement of multiple mirrors.

  Suddenly the car flew out of her hands.

  Regina loved take-offs. While other passengers on the plane were white knuckling it and chewing gum, she absorbed into herself the pure joy of lifting off the earth. She also loved landing: the harsh, bumpy, practicality of it.

  But not this.

  The car shot across two lanes of oncoming traffic, bounced off the concrete barrier which separated automobiles coming in the opposite direction, and careened back across the highway before coming to a stop against the opposite wall, totaling the car.

  As she was flying through the air, she unexpectedly took on the passivity of snow and said to herself, “Ah, so this is when I die, and where.” She became extremely happy that she would die in New York City and that at her funeral they most likely would play the song, “She’s a Native New Yorker.”

  She was amazed at how accepting she was, how she saw her own death as just some lackluster stupidity. It wasn’t that she didn’t care: she just didn’t care right then. She was more interested in the information than the consequences. This was probably a better way, she thought. Everyone is curious about when and how they die. If this really were a bomb instead of a slow motion car crash she wouldn’t have the gift of time to appreciate her own demise.

  She didn’t die.

  But she had become fragile as an egg from the simple act of driving in the rain.

  ii.

  A pleasant and methodical emergency room nurse had just given her a tetanus shot. And a tranquilizer. The deep gash in her forehead had been cleaned and prepped with local anesthesia for stitches. Every muscle hurt from the contradictory momentum of her body being pulled by the force of the crash while at the same time being grabbed back by the seat belt.

  Even so, it was comfortable lying there on a soft, steady surface with her eyes closed to the bright overhead light that felt like sunshine.

  She lay there quietly and was appalled that she had not been afraid to die.

  iii.

  Even the sky fades. And if the sunset, or the rainbow, lasts too long, you are glad the beauty finally goes away. There isn’t time for it all. Throughout her life, Regina’s half-hearted attempts to put her daily concerns second to the universe, had failed her. Perhaps now a new perspective was presenting itself.

  “I thought I
was going to die, and even I didn’t care.”

  Lying there, looking at the ceiling, being interrogated by the penetrating light directly above, feeling woozy enough from the pain killers to prevent her from marshalling her psychological defenses, or rationalizing her emotional habits, she couldn’t fight seeing how wrongheaded her life had been, how she was generally on the wrong side of what worked.

  She had the opportunity that near unconsciousness brings of the uncomfortable awareness of all her past transgressions, large and small; of seeing full force her mistakes, vices, annoying idiosyncrasies, her exaggerated sense of self-importance, her unintended cruelties, thoughtlessness, stupid comments, and bad- tipping, which loomed up like hallucinations to devour her. Some of them she just made up on the spot to fit her feelings of regret. She knew she wasn’t terrible. She didn’t have anything so interesting as a dark side. She was merely a dreary and mistaken person.

  Yet in her condition she did not have the strength to stop herself from being embarrassed by herself. If it’s true, she thought, that all the bad things you do come back to you, why not the good things too, which never seem to return. However, she could not bring the good immediately to mind.

  “I don’t love well,” she told the overhead light. “Because my passions are fierce and my pain sharp, I believe I love well. But this is just one more misunderstanding.”

  She was going to have to do better. She would have to change.

  But how to do it? To say “change is hard” is well worn enough to be elevator music. For Regina change might be too hard; knowing she could be stupid didn’t mean she knew how to fix it.

  As the drip from the intravenous tube started to make her sleepy, she tried desperately to hold on to the thought that was pushing itself into her vanishing awareness: “Obviously I can’t take myself so seriously anymore, can’t keep sleepwalking my life away with this continuing fear of death…which, apparently is not even real! Instead, I should hurry to welcome the two-sided devil of joy and unspeakable sadness. The universe may have time. I don’t.”

  Regina moaned as the nurse came in to check the bandages on her face.

  “This wisdom thing is killing me,” she said.

  To the nurse’s amusement.

  CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

  i.

  After having lived in paralyzing fear for so long, the knowledge that she wasn’t afraid to die seemed strange to Regina. Now she felt keenly interested in pursuing the mad dash of time in a new way.