by Cj Paul
Come the first Sunday of spring, Mom and I are out wrestling with some sort of viney thing that requires some sort of stringy thing and a stake to attach it to. We are in each other’s way and becoming increasingly physical, jockeying for position to grasp the vine. I have a mind to grab the stake and drive it through her...
Oh, she has no idea how that bell just saved her! Without looking at my cell phone I answer it, relieved to have been pulled away from the petunia power struggle and avoiding the possibility of spending the rest of my days wearing orange, when sent to the pokey for murdering my own mom. Though I really wonder at times if any court in the land could convict me if they knew my mother.
After a distracted hello, I freeze.
“Hi baby. I miss you.”
It’s Bret.
And what’s worse, Mom knows it. She adopts a smug smirk as she proceeds to tie down the vine her way, appearing quite self-satisfied with her mad gardening skills, as well as her spot-on mother’s intuition.
Without an available hole to crawl into in the garden, now that we just finished planting, I slink into the house, searching for privacy and my wits. I look to the menagerie of wise animal faces in the sunroom, and even knock on the chakra shack within, determined to cobble the perfect pithy response to Bret.
“Hey,” is all I can muster. The chakras hold up their score cards. Zeroes across the board. Except for indigo girl. She’s given me a 3. Aww, suddenly indigo has become my favorite color. Wait, what’s that? She’s got a large red Sharpie and has marked a hyphen symbol before the 3. Negative 3? What the heck?
“Claire, when can I see you again?” he coos with that warm Kahlua voice of his, as if nothing happened and he was not married.
“When can you see me?” I purr. “Why the moment you’re single, of course,” I add disingenuously.
“Yeh, about that.”
And in that instant I am no longer concerned with Bret and the state of his connubial bliss. No, at that moment my mind flies back to David, as it nearly always does. The memory of the day I found out about his girlfriend is seared into my brain. And I found out from her, no less!
David and I had been close for about a year when I got involved in a charity event he was chairing. He wanted a celebrity name attached and seemed to think I fit the bill. Me, a celebrity? What a laugh.
After I learned a bit about the event I became interested in it on its own merits. It was geared toward assisting women who had experienced domestic violence – helping them to move out and move on – that sort of thing.
As I got into the spirit of the event, David suggested I chat with his co-chair, Gigi, a sweet gal who could use some help from someone more seasoned than she. Based on his description, I envisioned a dowager in her sixties with wiry, salt-and-pepper hair, about a hundred pounds of extra weight, decked out in red and purple, a hat the size of my car, and dripping with bling. At his urging, I called her and found her to be sweet and endearing...and about thirty years younger than I expected. We began contacting each other on a regular basis for purposes of planning. We also engaged in a bit of innocent girl talk.
When I got to know her, I found her to be bright and charismatic. There came a point when she sent me a photo of herself with a friend, captioned Chenguang and Giselle. It showed two women, one a petite little Asian gal around fifty years of age, and the other a striking supermodel type in her thirties. Dear Lord. Gigi is short for Giselle! And she’s a knockout!
During our discussions about the event, the topic of date escorts came up. She asked who I would be bringing to the gala. I answered that I was accustomed to flying solo and would love to sit with her. I inquired if she was going with anyone and she giggled adorably.
“Well I’ll be going with my boyfriend, of course.”
“Oh, you have a boyfriend?” I asked, always delighted to hear of the fortunes of those who have found rapturous romance. “I’d love to hear all about him. What’s he like? How long have you been together? Tell me everything.”
“Oh, you mean you didn’t know? David and I have been together for the last five years, if you count the time I spent in Italy.”
That was when the other shoe dropped with David – more like the glass slipper that shattered. I always believed David too good to be true, but was not prepared for this. After the girlfriend exposé, I found a way to bow out of the gala planning. Giselle had no idea as to the the reason why, and I never let on that her boyfriend had been flirting wildly with me for over a year. Oh, the pictures I could forward to her!
I wrapped up all of my work on the gala and emailed it to Giselle. She was genuinely sad to lose me as a co-worker, as well as a cohort, and made a respectable effort to stay in touch. Claiming an excess of work, I dodged her at every turn until she finally gave up.
“You don’t understand, Claire. It’s you I want to be with. I’m in love with you.”
“Me too, David.” I whisper, resignedly.
“David? Who’s David?”
“Huh, what?”
Bret’s voice snaps me back into the present moment and my predicament with him. But what was that he just said?
“Oh, I am doing some gardening here with my mom and my neighbor David came to help us move a big pot. He said he thinks my mom is doing a stellar job in the garden and I said ‘Me, too,’” I lie.
He goes on to tell me that he loves me and wants me and wants to build a life with me. It’s just that things are really tough in the economy and he can’t ‘afford’ to split from his wife right now, not with a young child and all.
Numbed by the surprise of his phone call, the pledge of his troth, and my reminiscences of David and Giselle – or Gisavid as April refers to them – I respond to Bret in pat, canned phrases, without knowing what I’m saying. One minute I am blithely arm-wrestling with my elderly mother, the next my heart is being ripped in twain by thoughts of two of the men I have cared for, both of whom have lives with other women.
I manage to extricate myself from the Bret call, not without promising to stay in touch and even see him – saying anything that will help me to get off the blasted phone.
Like a ‘dead woman walking,’ I trudge back to the garden to find things neatly planted and secured. We have just a little bit left to do, and I am in charge of digging in the dirt. Even wearing gardening gloves, it feels good to plunge my hands in the soil, scratching at the raw earth to soothe my heart in quiet desperation. My mother waters the new plantings and I tamp the wet ground around them. My gloves are caked in mud, as are my arms and somehow, my face. It’s cathartic to connect with the soil this way.
During this last round of gardening, Mom sees fit to lecture me on my appalling taste in men and my inability to find emotionally available ones. Still numb, I fail to react. She finally crosses the line of decency, telling me how disappointed in me my father would be.
I look at her with vacant eyes and stand up, using her knee as leverage, her white-panted knee, now covered in mud. Woops.
Chapter EightI am out of sorts, ill with a headache and a hefty case of the blahs.
I remind myself that it’s spring, my time of year. Earth’s annual rebirth with its vibrant colors, lyrical sounds and yummy aromas always makes me inexpressibly happy. In my garden, which I naturally refer to as the Garden of Eden, the fruit trees are in bloom and their fragrant blossoms are nothing short of intoxicating. My pansies are proudly showing off and the sleepy violets are just starting to lift their heads. Despite my ineptitude in the garden, the herbs are flourishing. Mom and I planted everything I might use most: lavender, chives, rosemary, basil, cilantro. And I am happily in the routine of meandering out back to snip a little here, a little there, when preparing to cook. Martha Stewart, watch out!
This morning I have come early to the Muir Woods for my weekly Sunday hike – before sunrise, actually. It’s the perfect time. I am on the outskirts of the park proper, and if there are any humans here, I don’t see them. All of creation is speaking t
o me, offering Valentines of loveliness, not because of my own deserving, but because of its universal generosity. Since that truckside tryst with Bret and my first experience with the chakra shack, I have spent some time looking into what it all might mean, on a spiritual level.
My mom grew up going to church and is into religion in a big way. Me, not so much. Though I’ve not encountered a church with which I’ve wished to align, I very much love spirituality, and feel a growing urge to cultivate that part of me. The chakra thing awakened me to that need. So, I’ve begun taking longer hikes, more like meandering walks these days, while in the woods. I want more time to think and listen. And I find the inspirations I get while allowing my mind and body to wander in nature to be so profound and ineffable that I feel I have no choice but to seek out the woods and their wisdom. Each time I do so, my favorite quote comes to mind. It’s by Thoreau and has been my favorite as long as I can remember. It’s really more of a personal creed at this point in my life.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...
Gotta love the sagacity of Henry David, as April and I call him.
David – that name. I’d not really thought about David in awhile. Once in a blue moon, we’ll text each other something that reminds one of us of the other. It’s always something light and frothy and devoid of substance. Even more rare are the times when he says something flirty. Although I’d love to ‘go there,’ I purposely ignore the innuendo. After all, the man is taken. I can’t help but wonder if things would be different if we’d met. It’s nearly incomprehensible to believe that the man I fell for is someone I’ve never even met. Aside from April, the few people who know I’ve never come face-to-face with him unanimously scoff and say, “Yeh, it doesn’t count – cuz it’s not a ‘real’ relationship.” Well, maybe for them it wouldn’t be, but I have met in person a dozen or so online acquaintances – male and female, platonic buds and potential paramours alike – some of whom I’ve know for weeks, some for years, and without exception, they were exactly as I expected them to be in the flesh, if not better.
As for David, it’s not like I don’t know him. Jeez, we’ve probably spent...let’s see...2 years times 52 weeks times...carry the 1...about 1200 hours on the phone...plus who knows how many texts, photos and emails. Bottom line is I know this man. And what’s more, he knows me – knows me as none of my family or friends ever have, including April! He knows what makes my soul soar. He knows how to relate to my inner child. And he knows how to turn on my desire like no one ever has. Too bad he’s also a philanderer and a liar and a shmuck. Technically, he didn’t ‘lie’ to me. He ‘withheld’ certain facts. Yeh, he’s still a shmuck – just like Bret.
Wow, there’s another one. It somehow slipped his mind to mention he has a wife and child? He and I had only known each other a few weeks when the bold-faced truth was unmasked. But now, a couple months down the line, he’s not only still trying to woo me, but is in full-court press mode. He texts begging to see me, and sends me pictures of him holding his son, with the caption, “Your future stepson says hello. You’ll make such a beautiful wife and mother.” This he does to play on my vulnerability, as he knows how deeply I cherish the idea of being part of a family.
Aside from the shmucks, some other interesting characters have been vying for center stage – all online connections, naturally. There’s Stuart, an adorable twenty-something Londoner who, with his brother, owns the bookshop his deceased parents founded. He’s an idealist and a sweetiepie who habitually saves his ha’pennies to come and visit me with marital intent. What’s with all these guys and their marriage proposals? Are decent women really so hard to capture? I think not. Each week I talk to a variety of women on my show, most of whom are kind, open and yearning to have someone to love and call their own.
On the other end of the spectrum from Stuart is Ed, an older hipster who line dances and bird watches and genuinely seems to enjoy the bejeebers out of life. He is very fond of posting ‘affirmations’ on my Facebook wall and has a real knack for choosing the ones that have absolutely nothing to do with me and run counter to how I think – thereby aggravating me instead of making me smile, as he intends.
That sums up the list of my would-be suitors at present, except for Geronimo, of course. There’s always Geronimo. The more I flat-out tell him I am not interested and never will be, and that the whole idea of being intimate with him gives me the willies, the more he smiles and nods knowingly and does that old school brush-of-the-nose indicating that things are right on track with some sort of secret scheme.
With board meetings for the ballet company over for the season, I now have Monday nights available and have been spending them on Facebook in search of interesting topics for my Wednesday shows. They have been dull and uninspired lately, and so I look to others in my cyber, social circles for new and refreshing content, and for a peek at what ‘real’ life is like in the 21st century.
I have especially enjoyed perusing the page of Dr. Alexander Armstrong, the rock starrish writer, poet, and all around fun guy I met by way of April a little bit ago. Turns out, April knows no more about him than I do. They came across one another on someone else’s page, and when they found they had a few mutual Facebook friends they decided to do the FB friend thing. With her crammed schedule, she rarely has time to play online, and I’m left to ‘lol’ and ‘xoxo’ all by my lonesome.
Dr. Armstrong has become a breath of fresh air for me. I often visit his page along with buddies B&J – I’ve been spending so much time with Messrs. Ben and Jerry that they’ve become initialized. Alex is always good for inspiring insight, a gentle smile and sometimes an outright belly laugh. His last update, posted in the wee hours of my time zone, was just the ticket for me this morning, and the inspiration I needed to get out of bed and into the woods:
Enjoying the morning’s zen, I smile at realizing my headache is gone. Nothing like fresh air and growing things to make you feel alive and vital. Thinking back on Alex’s post, I realize I have been hanging over an abyss of oblivion for months – settling for crumbs of attention from men who have chosen others over me – men who are not there to grasp my hand and pull me up to safety, because they are already holding hands with someone else. Some her else. All of this ends now.
It’s time to get back home and go about my day. I think I’ll break routine and do something different today. It’s time for defiance. It’s time for the dawn.
Chapter NineThe city has never looked so beautiful. The lights twinkling on the water appear more like fae beings than the cast-off illumination of municipal street lamps designed to keep traffic accidents to a minimum. I love the city at night, sipping cafe au lait, nibbling mille feuille (Napoleons, to the uninitiated), and ogling the sophisticated styles. There really is nothing like Paris in the springtime. David rests a loving hand on mine and gives it an appreciative squeeze. When I look into his classically handsome face, his eyes are warm and full of emotion. He slowly leans in to kiss me, never taking his eyes off of mine. As his mouth nears, he speaks low, “Close your eyes.”
I do. When I open them, I am a mass of confusion. Where is David? What am I doing here? I look around my bedroom, concerned and bewildered.
Why a dream about David? Why now?
It’s a Saturday in June and I get out of bed just in time to make it to tai chi. My participation is no longer merely based on the fact that the activity is my tradition. Rather, the exercise has become an important part of my life because it connects the mind and spirit with the body.
My whole routine has changed over the last several weeks. Dinner at Il Fornaio and the Steam Donkey have been replaced with either eating at home or act
ing on a whim. Life is quieter than it’s been in ages, and yet I find myself restless much of the time. It’s becoming tiresome. I’ve tried to ferret out the reason for this ennui and turned to the chakra shack for guidance. Turns out they’re on spring break in Ft. Lauderdale. I look to the menagerie for their take. My cat, Jasper, indicates that what I need is one of his tongue baths. It helps a little. Bulldog pup Persephone seems to be of the mind that if I give her more treats and rub her tummy, somehow I will feel better. Daphne, my adorable box turtle, advises me to take things slowly. Meanwhile, my quartet of parakeets suggests I sing. Perhaps they’re right. I should be singing praises of gratitude and looking for the joy and beauty in everything. As I listen to my birds’ sweet voices, I could swear they are crooning “Love is a Many Splendored Thing,” in perfect four-part harmony. Clearly, I have come to the right place for counsel. The menagerie has been stellar. Treats for all! “No, Persephone, the other pets’ treats are not for you.”
These days, I am almost always alone. I’ve been going out more often, visiting the city, attending fun, silly community festivals, going to the theater more, but it’s always just me, unencumbered except by my thoughts. Ironically, attention from the male quadrant is at an all-time high. Bret is in hot pursuit, sending flowers, lovey-dovey texts and is supposedly unable to eat or breathe without me. So, has he separated from his dear, unwitting wife? Not a bit of it.
David has been contacting me more, often in my dreams. I’m gratefully relieved that I have at last (fingers crossed) gotten over him. I’m able to hear about his life without pining to be part of it. I’m able to listen to his zany stories without feeling pangs of jealousy for all we’ll never do together. I’m even able to be sincerely happy for him and gorgeous Giselle, and for the presumably incredible relationship they share. I don’t know how or when I lost the pain and melancholy surrounding him, but I give dual credit to the chakra shack and the menagerie for curing me of David.
