Affairytale : A Memoir

by C. J. English

  So much had changed. I was single and in disbelief at how fast it had happened, it had only been a few months since that first night I stayed at Grants. Now I was divorced, living on my own for the first time since I was seventeen, overjoyed by the greatest love I’d ever known. Yet simultaneously lashed with pain.

  As I stood in front of the mirror I was naked in every way a person could be naked. I’d demolished the only relationship I’d known for the last twelve years, left my home, left my dog, and tore Dani’s heart into pieces in the process. I’d drained my bank account and could barely work to rebuild what I’d spent because my back was broken or something worse. I was lying to everyone about everything, stripped bare to the innermost layer of who I was, everything I knew and almost everything I had was gone, and now, with no one and nothing that could do it for me, I’d have to rebuild. I’d have to create a new life and a new me.

  Twenty-four hours after our erotic holiday we surfaced hazy and depleted like creatures from the underworld. I grabbed the wine cork from the counter and stuffed it into my bag, he’d written on it:

  G+C

  “The Cottage”

  I left a thank you card on the arm of the sofa just before we walked out.

  “What did it say?” Grant asked.

  “It said thank you for letting us fuck our brains out on your bunk bed, be sure to have the maid change the sheets.”

  I looked at him and we laughed like crazy.

  ***

  I didn’t know what it was at the time, but looking back on it now, I am certain it was an out-of-body experience. The news in the letter was devastating…

  Chapter 39

  “WHAT THIS POWER IS, I CANNOT SAY… ALL I KNOW IS THAT IT EXISTS.”

  —ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL

  Whether some part of my weightless consciousness actually separated and drifted away from my weighty earthly body…I can’t say. But the perspective that my mind experienced was exactly that. Exactly what others have described as being out-of-body.

  I was a teenager when the first happened. I never told anyone, frightened they’d think I was practicing some sort of satanic ritual and commit me to an asylum. My mind seemed to sink into itself, retreating inward to the center of my brain where my consciousness lives. Then, condensed into its smallest molecule, the weightless form broke free from its earthly body.

  Each time it happened, I drifted upward into a corner of the room and my vision became acute tunnel vision that only allowed me to see straight forward. The periphery of the room was shrouded, inaccessible in that moment, and looking to the right or left would cease the episode and snap me back into my body. It took a tremendous amount of focus to stay in that elevated perspective, like looking into a black and white pattern encrypted with a three dimensional image. If I could hold my focus long enough, I would stay afloat, but as soon as I broke my concentration, I was snapped back into my body.

  These out-of-body-episodes stopped happening when I was in my early twenties. After they stopped, I realized that each one of them had coincided with a traumatic event. I guess it was my mind’s way of getting out, if only for a little while I was able to escape my body and whatever it was that was causing the pain. It had been ten years since the last episode; I’d almost forgotten that they’d even occurred at all. Until Master showed up. The pain had gotten so bad I’d given it a name, Master. He would summon me and I would lay at his feet. I would cry and beg for mercy but the grip of his bone crunching fingers was inescapable. I was nothing more than a fragile human puppet at the mercy of my Master. He moved the strings and I did what he said, if I disobeyed, the punishment was severe.

  I laid my head in my hands and wept before I’d even opened it. I knew it would be bad. We’d gone to see a spine Doctor in Minneapolis, the best of the best and the results from an MRI and new series of tests had come in.

  Dear Ms. Summers,

  It is conceivable that it may require more than one surgery to relieve your pain. Our findings indicate the following…

  The list was long and insurmountable, and written in a vernacular only an orthoneurospinal surgeon would be able to decipher with words like “thecal sac” and “cauda equina.”

  There were a few things I did understand though, like rupture and compression, degeneration and narrowing, arthritis and stenosis, words that belonged on a letter to an eighty five year old man who’d worked construction all his life. Not on a letter to a five foot four, hundred and ten pound, thirty year old vegetarian fitness instructor.

  I felt my essence, all that remained of me, starting to leave. I didn’t want that body anymore, I wanted to leave it behind and find a new one. That’s when my unconscious mind granted my wish. Me and the letter drifted upward and into the corner of the room where I could see myself below, sitting beside my bed in my lonely apartment, weeping. I don’t remember why or when I snapped back but when I did, I called Grant.

  A boulder had rolled down my throat and lodged itself, preventing the formation of clear words. I read Grant the letter with a wounded whimper.

  “Baby, we will get through it,” he said, listening patiently while I choked on my tears.

  A few minutes later, he was knocking at my door.

  Chapter 40

  Yesterday, C.J. had the first of two procedures that will help to reduce her back pain. Based on the results of the previously done nerve blocks, this most recent, more permanent procedure looks very promising. But either way, we will solve this back problem, as I, along with her are making it a mission. And there is no mission failure here!

  -Grant

  Chapter 41

  “LIFE IS NOT A FAIRY TALE.

  IF YOU LOSE YOUR SHOE AT MIDNIGHT,

  YOU’RE DRUNK.”

  —UNKNOWN

  Dylan took the news about Grant and I being together surprisingly well.

  “I already know,” Dylan said when I confessed I’d been discretely dating Grant since after my divorce.

  “What?” I wrinkled my face, “how do you know?”

  Dylan gave a slim detective’s smile, “It wasn’t hard to figure out. You two always disappear together.”

  Good work, Detective, good work.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, there’d been signs that our family and friends were suspect of our sneaking. There were even signs that some of them were hoping we’d get together.

  Grant’s sister, known for her matchmaking efforts had asked him, “What about Dylan’s sister? She’d be a good pick.”

  “Yeah, maybe. But I think she’s married.” Grant said.

  Over dinner one evening Dani suggested, “Mom, maybe you should date Grant.”

  My mouth dropped open and food fell out. “Maybe I will,” I said.

  One of my clients, who happened to be Grant’s cousin, offered to set me up with him. “You’d be perfect together,” she said.

  To which I blushed and replied, “Maybe someday, I don’t think I’m ready to start dating yet.”

  When Grant’s mom found spinach and soymilk in his refrigerator she accused him of dating someone in secret. “I drink soy milk and eat spinach!” He said, but she was keen to his lies and since she cleaned his place, surely she found makeup residue in the bathroom sink or long brown hairs on the floor when she cleaned.

  It was endearing that people closest to us reaffirmed what we had without knowing we had anything at all.

  “Does Levi know?” Dylan asked.

  “No. I don’t think so.” I said. “Why?”

  “Because he’s going to kill you when he finds out. He already suspects you’re with somebody.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “He called me.”

  “Levi called you? Why’d you answer?” I crossed my arms and shook my head. “I don’t talk to your ex-girlfriends. I don’t want you to tell him anything about me,” I spit as I said it, “and don’t be the one to tell him about Grant.”

  “I won’t.” Dylan said.

  I d
idn’t believe him. If Levi asked about Grant, Dylan might tell him the truth. He didn’t cover for me when I got thrown in juvenile detention for drinking and driving, and he wouldn’t cover for me now. He felt sorry for Levi and didn’t like what I had done to him, didn’t like how quickly I left. Dylan said Levi was devastated by the divorce and depressed. That made me feel terrible so I asked him not to tell me or talk to me about Levi again, that I needed to move on like he’d moved on.

  Dylan had found the love of his life in a girl named Nikki. She was standing next to him when I divulged my secret relationship, but she already knew. She’d pieced it together over the summer and asked me what was up between me and Grant. I was tired of lying, I needed to tell someone about the wondrous love I’d found. So I confessed my indiscretions to my future sister-in-law. The girl with the most rad tattoos I’d ever seen. Tattoos unlike my own mistakes, which I was now covering with Band-Aids and Dermablend. No, she’d made good choices, bad-ass, hot girl tats that looked so right for her body they seemed to take on a life of their own. Nikki had long straight hair and a rock star way about her, she was the perfect female match for my death-metal-meets-country-music brother.

  I didn’t confess everything to her of course, just enough to satisfy the part of my soul that wanted to scream it from the top of the boat tower over the whole lake. I’d asked her to keep it from Dylan until I was ready to tell him.

  “Does Dani know?” Dylan asked.

  “No, and she won’t know until there’s a ring on my finger.”

  “Does Grant know that?” Dylan said in the most unsupportive way. “You think it’ll come to that? He’s just so picky.”

  “Yes, he knows that. And thank you for reminding me of how picky Grant is.”

  “C.J., Grants had a lot of girlfriends. That chick from the Hamptons, the one he flew across the country for, and the blonde who went to Australia, I think she still stays with him sometimes, he’s been with some hot women and he’s dumped all of them. Even Molly, he even dumped Molly. Don’t get me wrong, Grant’s a great guy, the best, but he’ll never settle. That’s all I’m saying.”

  I stared at the floor and watched a single tear fall from my chin. “I know, he’s too good to be true,” I said.

  I was crushed at the thought of Grant with other woman. Dylan’s discouraging words made me feel insignificant and foolish for ever thinking Grant would choose me. I instantly doubted everything about what we had.

  How could I have been so naive?

  This is going to end in disaster. I guess that’s how affairs are supposed to end. I guess I’ll get what I deserve for cheating.

  More tears dropped as I regressed back to the girl who knew that everything about Grant was a farce. That he was just leading me on, lying to me. That he was only staying around because he made a mistake and didn’t want to dump his best friend’s sister, or felt guilty that I’d gotten divorced

  “I just don’t want to see you hurt,” Dylan said. “It would be great if it was real, my best friend and my sister, we’d take amazing vacations and travel the world together, it’d be perfect. But, C.J., Grant’s never been able to pull the trigger.”

  Dylan was right. There was so much I didn’t know, so much I’d overlooked; so much of Grant’s past that he hadn’t shared. Things you’d normally disclose to the person you love, thing’s Dylan knew that I didn’t.

  I wept as I left Dylan’s house that day and lived on an emotional teeter totter each day after. Up, down, he loves me, he loves me not. I didn’t know what to believe. I only knew that the one thing capable of dispelling all of my doubts, would be a ring.

  ***

  Four Months Later

  The first blizzard of the season revealed its fury in the dark night. An icy wind whirled around our feet as we wedged our luggage into the trunk of a taxi glowing neon yellow in the four am darkness. Our flight was leaving in less than two hours. Dylan sat in front, Grant, Nikki and I squished into the back. Grant and Dylan had forgone their yearly guy’s trip to Jamaica and instead, it was just the four of us.

  We’d tried to be good travelers and go to bed at ten, but anxiety and excitement over the coming trip fluttered through the air keeping everyone awake, and falling asleep in the same house with Dylan was risky. It significantly increased the probability of waking up with Sharpie on your face or a dick in your ear.

  So instead of resting for the long flight, we walked through a winter white-out to Bodega. On the plush couches next to a sizzling fireplace, we drank Red Rock Merlot, ate stinky cheese and salty olives. Dylan and I exchanged awkward glances. It was the first time he’d seen Grant and I together as a couple. The first time he saw how we looked at each other, how Grant looked at me, how he kept his hands on me. Dylan was able to confirm with his own eyes that his best friend really was sleeping with his little sister, and that just maybe, it was love.

  Because Dani was staying behind with Levi, I had a conundrum.

  Do I tell him exactly who I’m going with before he finds out on his own?

  Since who I was going with really was of no concern to him, when we discussed the arrangements for Dani, I simply told him I was going to Jamaica with Dylan and a few friends. He was suspicious, I could tell by the long pause of silence. But he didn’t ask any questions.

  A deal is a deal and ours was that I would give him every dollar of child support back, which I did, in exchange for total autonomy. In every way that didn’t deal with Dani, we were over and I had no obligation to him whatsoever. I knew that after we got back from Jamaica he would find out somehow, pictures and gossip would circulate, someone would tell him the group of friends really was two couples and all his suspicions from years prior would be confirmed.

  Once arrangements for Dani were taken care of I couldn’t have been more thrilled to be leaving town, except that I couldn’t sit, walk or stand without Vicodin. Not one of the inhumane treatments had worked. Not one. There was no relief without straight up pain killers, alcohol, and sex, together.

  I’d been in and out of the hospital for months trying things, each time with Grant by my side, each time with hope in my heart, and each time failure soon followed. I agreed to one last treatment before Jamaica, a final round of nerve burns. A barbaric ritual in which a long instrument is inserted into your back and buttocks in all the places it hurts the most in an attempt to locate the exact nerves sending pain signals to the brain. Once located, they would be burned or cut, damaged so badly they’re rendered unconscious and can no longer send out their distress calls. It was a procedure they keep you awake for, but ask you not to move. A procedure so intolerable they send you home with flowers after each visit.

  I’d acquired a multi-varietal rose bouquet. I estimated each long stem cost about six hundred dollars. They stood elegant and tall in a clear vase on the kitchen counter top of my hollow apartment. Each beautiful petal reached toward the window, begging for sunlight, yearning to escape its unnatural, claustrophobic environment. I watched them wilt, dying to be outside but there was nothing I could do, I couldn’t uncut their stems and return them to a green field. So I just accepted their death and watched them die, one by one, adding new ones to the graveyard of the dead.

  I couldn’t throw them out. They were a symbol of what I’d been through and how many times I’d been through it. They tallied up my pain, quantified it, and somehow they seemed to die for me when I couldn’t. But long after they were gone, I was still the same; alive and crippled with pain.

  I had nothing more to lose, I was drugging myself heavily just to be able to walk. There were no procedures left for me to try, no other countries or research facilities for me to call, no more Guinea pig experiments to belly up for. I was out of money and out of hope. It was surgery or suicide.

  The surgery that I once was told didn’t work for people who only had back pain and no nerve pain had suddenly become an option. No one knew what to do with me or how to help, or if surgery would even work. I couldn’t even twist around
to wipe my own ass, so they could’ve suggested amputation and I would have consented. I scheduled the surgery, but had to wait five long months.

  Jamaica was a welcome reprieve from the gloomy reality I’d have to face once I returned. So I was off to the same island with the boyfriend I obsessed over on my honeymoon with my former husband.

  ***

  Honey, I’m so sorry about

  what u endured today.

  :( That sucks, so I’m

  already thinking of the

  many ways 2 make it

  better. :) Where should

  we go next?

  Chapter 42

  “LOVE IS MY RELIGION”

  ―JOHN KEATS

  “I’ll take care of you,” Grant said. “Jamaica will be good for you, for us. It’ll get your mind off things. We’ll get some sun, drink a few red-stripes. You can relax and don’t have to do anything, maybe you’re back will feel better.”

  I spent my days in Jamaica hopped up on pain pills, Heineken, and sex. The pain came and went in varying degrees of intolerable. While Dylan, Nikki and Grant strolled down the beach with an unappreciated ease, I walked behind, keeping pace with the one-legged man walking with a wooden crutch and guitar slung on his back.

  “C.J., you should try some ganja,” Dylan said from the sofa of our apartment on the beach. “It’ll help with the pain.”

  “Dylan, I hate pot, it makes me paranoid and fat. You do it. I’ll video tape.”

  Dylan sunk backward into the damp sofa, “Okay,” he agreed, then plunged his two fat fingers into a can of neon pink flarp (putty in a can that farts) that he’d brought with from the mainland, “so we could enjoy farting sounds anytime we want,” he’d said.

  Grant was right, ten days in Jamaica, laughing, drinking, and having drunken sex did more to remedy my broken back than three previous years of medical and alternative interventions.

  We explored the island on island time, we snorkeled the shores, drank Blue Mountain coffee, and ate papaya jam. In the evenings we sang songs and played guitar around the beach fire. The locals gathered to sing their reggae tunes and listen to our foreign songs. In the hot tub, under a million stars we drank lime margaritas until the bartender cut off the drinks and the electricity.