ONCE UPON ANOTHER TIME

by McQuestion, Rosary

Laura’s hand found mine. “I know I’m not much of a consolation prize, but you still have me. We have each other, and I have to believe that someday we’ll each find that one guy who’s perfect for us. Right?” Laura asked imploringly, as tears of sympathy welled in her eyes.

  I wanted to reassure her that everything was going to be all right, and that we’d one day marry the men of our dreams. I wanted to tell her we’d both find the epitome of happiness and love and that everything would work out fine, and that we’d never be alone again. However, as I looked into her eyes, all that came to mind was that I wasn’t sure any of it would ever happen for either of us.

  “Sure we will,” I said, as I stood and pulled Laura to her feet. “Come on, let’s go home.”

  Lightning flashed across the dark sky, clouds let loose, and heavy pellets of rain poured down. Puddles of dingy water splashed up under our feet as we dashed across the parking lot to Laura’s car, while sheets of rain cleansed the tears from my face.

  * * * *

  It was well past midnight, as I sat in the darkness of my living room and gobbled spoonfuls of Ben and Jerry’s Chunky Monkey. For hours, I had dissected every aspect of my relationship with Gavin--in excruciating detail.

  Did he throw me over for Vanessa because I’d break out in a rash whenever he watched the ESPN channel, or because I’d written letters to my dead husband? Maybe it was because I wasn’t as pretty or as sexy or had a great body like Vanessa, or maybe he preferred women who lack depth, intelligence, and personality and spoke in an annoying breathless kind of way.

  Anticipating he’d call to check in with me that evening, I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep it together. So as soon as I’d arrived home from the mall, I left a message on his home recorder telling him Laura had a relapse of sorts or some dumb lie that I couldn’t even remember the details of ten minutes after I’d said it. Another fat lie was telling him I’d call him in the morning.

  Confronting him about his secret little life and listening to deceitful explanations for why he wasn’t at work would have been too gut wrenching. Mostly, I didn’t want to hear him say goodbye. I needed time to get things straight in my head. Knowing I’d be a mess at work the next morning and that I’d never be able to avoid seeing him, I planned on calling in sick. Returning to work on Tuesday would work out much better, as Gavin had scheduled a flight out of town to bid on a huge construction project and he wouldn’t return until Thursday. Like any good lawyer, this gave me time to prepare my brief.

  As I dug into the carton of melting banana ice cream chocked full with chunks of chocolate and walnuts, I tried to focus on how happy Gavin and I were. However, none of it could wipe away the image I had of Vanessa. Her sleek naked body sprawled on his bed, her lustrous auburn hair cascading over his pillow and Gavin looking down at her with the look of rapture on his face.

  Twenty-nine

  Afternoon sunshine streamed in through the open patio doors, whitewashing the top of the cherry wood kitchen table. A salty breeze blew in, carrying with it the gentle whooshing of waves breaking over white sands and raucous squawking of seagulls.

  The atmosphere seemed too bright, too cheery, as I sat at the kitchen table in my breakfast room systematically plucking the raisins from a loaf of cinnamon swirl bread. I wanted the day to be dark, bleak, dreary, and rainy to fit my defeated mood. I wanted to plug into my iPod and torment myself with old songs like “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face” and “How Am I Supposed to Live Without You.”

  Popping the extracted raisins into my mouth, my reflection stared back at me from the small flat screen TV on the kitchen countertop. At least do something constructive today it seemed to say. My fingers stuck to the remote control as I pressed the “on” button. I licked the sugary cinnamon from my fingers and swiped the remote across the sleeve of my cotton robe to clean it off. Thankfully, I had managed to make Nicholas breakfast and get him on the school bus that morning, which had seemed to be an ambitious feat.

  Putting a cigarette between my lips, I ran my thumb over the wheel of my lighter, igniting the flame. Mindlessly staring at a paid programming station, I drew in a deep inhale on the cigarette. A group of old people wearing baggy sweat suits were stair stepping to a geriatric hip-hop version of “Shake Your Booty.” As I puffed out one perfectly eternal, endless ring of smoke, perpetual love came to mind followed by an image of Gavin in my head.

  Screw Gavin with his knight-in-shining-armor charisma and Dr. McDreamy wavy hair.

  Reminiscing over the way he’d always compliment me on my hairstyle, the way I dressed, my intelligence, I felt quite the fool. He had the gall to rave about my chicken and dumplings being the best he’d ever tasted, when I practically had to chisel the dumplings from the bottom of the pot. He missed his calling--could have been an actor in Hollywood, a lying, cheating, smooth talking, scumbag actor.

  Buster circled my feet, as I flicked my cigarette ash into an empty can of cat food. He jumped onto my lap and kneaded his paws into my bunched robe, while I continued to channel surf. It seemed like everything was about fitness that day. I stopped on the home shopping network. A woman in a pale blue suit with matching high heels and double strand of pearls walked over to a young woman in tights, tank top, and Nikes, running on a treadmill. The pitch woman ran her fingers over the handle of the contraption, pointing out special features and caressed it tenderly, as if she were practicing for her next date.

  Who cares if Gavin’s the only man in the past seven years who spun my heart out of control! But how could I have thought he was my soul mate?

  I let out a contrived laugh. “Could you believe it,” I said to Buster as I scratched under his neck, “that I actually thought there’d been a connection between Gavin and Matt?” Buster meowed, settled contently on my lap, and curled himself into a ball. I mashed my half-smoked cigarette into the bottom of the Purina can.

  Gavin could never be like Matt. Matt loved me unconditionally; he never would have been so callous. Still, I didn’t want to rack Gavin up alongside my other disastrous dating experiences. At least with Gavin, I finally knew I was capable of falling in love. Perhaps that was what the relationship with him was all about. Maybe it had served its purpose and that was all it was supposed to do. Or maybe I should have listened to the little voice inside my head that first evening we slept together. Unfortunately, the voice was whispering and I couldn’t tell if it was saying, go ahead, trust your heart and fall in love, or go have your head examined.

  Staring blankly out through the open French doors, I caught sight of a mangled yellow rose lying on the porch deck. Blowing out a breath of frustration, I wasn’t sure how’d I’d get Buster to stop destroying my neighbor’s prized roses.

  Pressing the button on the remote, I flew through twenty more channels before stopping on Judge Judy, a woman scarier than Dr. Hannibal Lecter. However, admirable, as she metaphorically sliced off the top of each litigant’s head exposing their lame brains, only to serve them back on a platter. As I’d studied her seemingly psychotic expressions resembling the devil incarnate one minute and displaying a Mary Poppins smile the next, I thought back to my own psychotic episodes. The mind reading, communication with the dead, and being so sure I’d found the answer that linked Gavin to Matt.

  A loud, flat thud caught my attention, sounding as if something had fallen. Buster was no longer on my lap. Scratching my itchy scalp, I got up from the table and walked through the living room to investigate where the noise had originated. My body felt languid due to the sleepless night I had lying in bed staring at the ceiling and talking myself out of driving over to Gavin’s house to see if Satan’s Lure was with him.

  I tightened the sash around my waist and tried scraping the caked on sticky dribbles of Ben & Jerry’s off the front of my robe. Glancing down at the floor, I noticed a second eye was missing from my Miss Piggy slipper. The same slipper that had the squished pink fuzzy nose, charred from getting too close to the fire pit the day Nicholas and I roasted marshmallows
.

  Buster scampered out of the study and charged across my path like a kamikaze pilot. The desk lamp had toppled over, no doubt due to Buster’s big jungle body tiptoeing across the top. Cats are cunning. You can always find evidence of their dirty deeds, but it was almost impossible to catch them in the act.

  As I righted the lamp, I noticed a book lying open on the hardwood floor, pages down with neat gold letters shown on the gray linen spine. Love Spirit. My heart sped up, full throttle. “Matt?” I said in a voice strung tighter than a sail in a hurricane. Automatically looking toward the bookshelf for Matt’s photo, it was gone. Frantically, I scanned the floor and searched under the desk, when the doorbell rang. Picking the book up off the floor and placing it on my desk, I was confused. I thought Matt was gone, that he was allowed to come back only to help me move on with my life, which I’d done. The doorbell chimed a second time. Has he returned?

  Slowly walking out of the room, my thoughts were on Matt, when I suddenly caught a reflection of myself in the mirror that hung in the foyer. My hair stuck out from my head like wavy bean sprouts. As I grabbed hold of the pewter doorknob, the phone shrilled from the kitchen. I stopped and listened as the answering machine picked up the call.

  “Aubrey?” Gavin’s voice reverberated through the house. My body stiffened, as I released my hand from the doorknob.

  “Are you there?” he asked, while pausing.

  I skittered through the living room and tiptoed into the kitchen, trying not to make a sound, when the doorbell rang again. “Dammit!” I winced, as my eyes darted toward the answering machine, as if he could actually hear my voice.

  “I phoned your office and Ashley told me you called in sick today. I’m worried about you. Give me a call to let me know you’re all right. I also want to talk to you before I leave town on business. It’s important. If you’re feeling better later, can we get together tonight?”

  Talk to me? Ha! I was sure he wanted to give me the big kiss-off. That way he’d feel less guilty about taking that humanoid blow-up doll Vanessa, with him on his business trip.

  “So, give me a call,” he said. “If you can’t reach me at the office, try me on my cell phone.”

  Like hell, Mr. Gigolo.

  As I sneered at the machine wondering how his little tryst with his playmate doll went the night before, I heard banging on my front door.

  “Talk to you soon,” he said and hung up.

  Unnerved by the relentless banging, I stormed out of the kitchen and though the living room to the foyer, and flung the door open.

  “Hi, my name is Dweezil,” said the handsome, middle thirtyish aged man who stood on the porch, clipboard in hand.

  As in Zappa?

  I was tempted to ask if his mother and father had met at Woodstock. I’d always been fascinated with finding others who had parents that had once lived in a yurt. The feeling was much the same, I’d expect, as an adopted child wondering about her biological mother or father.

  “How are you doing today ma’am?” he asked cheerfully.

  I wanted to ask him if reeking of stink from not showering, and wearing a bathrobe with caked on dribbles of ice cream at 2:00 on a sunny warm afternoon, gave him any clue as to how I was doing. Before I could open my mouth, he started yapping.

  “Our cable company will be doing installations in your neighborhood next week. They're offering great deals.”

  “Thank you, but I’m not interested,” I said, as I began to close the door.

  “But I haven’t told you the best part,” he said, as he put his hand on the door pushing it back open. “The first two months are free!”

  Great, he memorized his tip sheet on possible answer scenarios.

  Putting on my get-the-hell-off-my-front-porch face, I told him I didn’t like cable, I didn’t watch television, nor did I listen to radio. A bold lie of course, but I knew I’d have to take drastic measures to get rid of him, so I could get back to the study--back to Matt.

  “But we offer over eight hundred channels, more than forty are movies and sports packages and--”

  “Listen, cable TV is a marketing tool for the devil,” I interjected, my voice sounding a little loud. “Perverts, drug lords, thieves, only sinners like that and those of questionable character, like people who hide their unscrupulous lives behind religion, or men who take advantage of women by telling them lies, and making them fall in love with them only to dump them would watch cable TV. Therefore, I am not interested!”

  The way his eyebrows shot up and his jaw dropped he looked as if he was going to make a run for it before I brought out the butcher knives. Then all at once, his expression changed to bewilderment. “Well then, how about the Internet? Do you have high speed?”

  Oh, for the love of God.

  “Only if I was an axe murderer,” I said and slammed the door shut.

  He poked his face around to the sidelight window and talked through the door. “Well, if you change your mind,” he stammered, “just give us a call.” He hurried down the front walk and headed toward Sallie’s house. He had a good chance of making a sale there, and I wasn’t thinking cable or Internet.

  I hurried back to the study. There was no sound of wind chimes or feeling of Matt’s spirit in the room. Thinking back to where I had last laid the book, it was on my desk, which meant it was conceivable that Buster had knocked it to the floor. But I couldn’t be sure. Weeks before, I wouldn’t have questioned the book lying on the floor, figuring it was Matt letting me know he was there.

  While walking back to the kitchen, I looked into the other rooms trying to find where the photograph of Matt had gone, when there it was on the coffee table in the living room. In all my misery over Gavin, I had forgotten I’d set it there the night before, while blubbering over Matt not being with me.

  Picking it up, I went back to the kitchen holding the silver-framed picture of Matt to my heart. As I flopped down on the kitchen chair and set the photograph on the table, I thought back to what Laura had said to me the evening she found out David was married. She’d made the comparison of her ex-husband and David purposefully hurting her to the positive aspect of dying, and that Matt never intentionally hurt me.

  I could definitely appreciate her statement after what had happened with Gavin. However, there were positive aspects of our relationship that I couldn’t push aside, because it was during all those weeks we dated that my life turned around. Matt had helped me heal and let go of my guilt and Gavin made me realize I was deserving of happiness. Although I had my heart broken when Matt died, my relationship with Gavin confirmed that it was actually possible to love again.

  Running my index finger lightly around the outside of the picture frame, I smiled as an old movie played on TV. Ah, the romance of black and white movies.

  Thirty

  Leaning my head against the cool elevator wall riding up to the twelfth floor, I was angry at myself for getting into the office late. Twenty-four hours without sleep showed in the whites of my eyes resembling roadmaps of red, affecting my vision to the point of seeing edges of the red-lighted numbers overhead blurred with the black background. Exiting the elevator and passing through the lobby, I managed to make it all the way down the hall to my office by putting one foot in front of the other, nine times out of ten.

  Get it together!

  While placing my briefcase on my desk, I glanced down at my skirt. I twisted the waistband so the side zipper was no longer at the front. As I sat at my desk I reminded myself that not sleeping for two days was one thing, but I wasn’t about to let my life come to a complete halt just because my phony, soon to be ex boyfriend played me for a fool. However, I would have been doing a lot better had I broken it off with Gavin before he left on his business trip.

  I needed closure--double closure!

  My head collapsed into my hands, as I scolded myself for not breaking my relationship off with Gavin the very day I saw him at the mall with the skank. Then there was the worry of how I was going to explain this
all to Nicholas. It was difficult enough dealing with my own emotions, but more importantly, the last thing I wanted to do was give my son news that was sure to break his heart.

  I lifted my head out of my hands, reached for a tissue, and dabbed the corners of my eyes.

  Stop blubbering and focus!

  As usual, the flashing red message light on my phone was panting like a puppy waiting for its master. I pushed the speaker button to play the messages. “Aubrey, stop by the house if you get the chance,” said Mother. “I have a terrific new smoothie recipe I want you to try.” Since she and my father were close to finalizing the business plans for their new business venture, which they named “Good Vibrations,” Nicholas and I had become her guinea pigs.

  Punching three to erase, I went to my next message, left at eight-thirty that morning. “Hi, I’m at the airport.” My heart skipped a beat when I heard Gavin’s voice. Quickly, I picked up the receiver. He’d called to let me know he was about to board his plane, but thought he’d be able to catch me at the office, and hoped I was feeling better. I detected edginess in his voice when he ended with, “I really wished you’d been well enough to have seen me last night.”

  Hearing his voice made me feel weak, like I was about to cave and give in to fits of crying. Instead, I hung up the phone, opened my file drawer, and pulled out the phonebook. I flipped through the yellow pages, found the listing for hair salons, and quickly ran an index finger down the column. Angel Hair, Beehive, Creative, DaDa’s, Erenias, Gemini’s, Giorgio’s--that was it, Giorgio’s, the salon where Vanessa worked.

  I grabbed the phone and punched in the numbers, hoping Vanessa wouldn’t pick up the phone, and on the other hand, hoping she would.

  “Giorgio’s, Adrianna speaking, may I help you?”

  “Yes, could you tell me if there are any openings for Vanessa today?”

  “No, I’m sorry she’s not working today or tomorrow, and she’s booked on Friday and Saturday. She’ll be back on Thursday if you want to call back and talk to her about possibly squeezing you in.”