As Long As It's Perfect

by Lisa Tognola

  “It’s stunning,” I replied, watching a tiny sailboat in the distance, seagulls soaring overhead, my body aroused by the warmth of his hand on my hip, the weight of it comforting and protective.

  He drew me in and kissed me on the lips. Blood rushed through my veins, a surge of adrenaline that ricocheted through my body like a pinball in a machine, setting offlights, bells, and buzzers.

  After Sagres, the four of us moved on to Lagos, where we witnessed live chicken races on the beach, watched our first bull fight, and were nearly trampled by an angry bull that had jumped the wall and entered the stands. Lagos is where Wim and I fell in love.

  Our last night together, he and I sat side by side on the dock of a small marina, marveling at our chance meeting. The past three days had been a whirlwind of emotion that neither of us wanted to end.

  “I don’t want to leave,” I said, looking out at the moonlit night. Wim turned abruptly toward me. “So don’t. Stay and travel with me.”

  “I wish I could.”

  “You can,” he said. “Take a break from school. Sublet your apartment.”

  I shook my head, knowing I’d sooner fight an angry bull with my bare hands than disappoint my parents.

  I leaned back into his arms and rested my head on his shoulder, gazing at the stars filling the night sky.

  He turned me toward him, brushed my hair behind my ear, and then, cupping my chin, brought his lips to mine. His mouth was warm and tasted like tobacco—pleasantly masculine and sexy. My lips grazed his ears, small and soft. He groaned quietly and pulled me down onto the rough wood of the pier, stretching his body out next to mine. The hard surface beneath us didn’t matter. His hand inched up to the highest reach of my thigh. My breath quickened as everything began to move faster, the heat rising between us until every point of contact felt like fire.

  After we made love, we continued to lie there, lulled by the gently lapping water, our half-naked bodies dappled in light cast by the moon shining on the bay. Eventually, we fell asleep.

  We awakened to the morning sun, our bodies cold and stiff. I struggled to my feet, the smell of seawater coming off the light breeze, the sky over the bay scattered with clouds. Wim lay beside me, gazing at the still water. I could feel that something had deepened between us, unspoken and powerful. It was as if we’d claimed new territories, like new stamps had been marked on our passports. Wim reached out his hand and cuffed my ankle, a single touch that sent a jolt through me. “Don’t forget last night,” he said.

  What does he mean? That we’re committed now? Or is this goodbye?

  I hardly knew him, yet I couldn’t stop wondering whether there was a future for us—whether I could see myself spending my life with him.

  That night, I boarded the plane back to my home in California with a heavy heart, already feeling Wim’s absence.

  Three months after Wim and I said our goodbyes, I stood at my apartment mailbox, wading through bills and junk mail. There in the pile was a blue featherweight airmail envelope bordered in red, my name and address printed neatly across the front in black ink. On the back was his name, Wim Margolis, and a tiny heart with an arrow through it.

  I smiled. Reading his letters was like getting a piece of him; other than our occasional long-distance phone calls, they were our only connection.

  An elegant stamp adorned the envelope: Helvetia, the female national personification of Switzerland, in a flowing gown with a spear and a shield emblazoned with the Swiss flag.

  I ran my finger under the envelope flap and slipped out two separate letters, four thin pages folded neatly into thirds. After several months of correspondence, Wim’s handwriting had become familiar to me, a sophisticated blend of printing and script written in clean, confident lines.

  My eyes flew across the page, but at the end of the second paragraph, I paused, grief-stricken. My backpacking boyfriend, who didn’t speak a word of German, had just been offered a job at a major computer and electronics company in Switzerland.

  He wrote:

  I should be elated. Flowing with joy. Jumping up and down. Shouting. Getting drunk. Making love to you. And what am I doing? Pouting. Maybe I’m sad that so many miles separate us—that we can’t be together—that it will be too long before I see you again. The holidays will be here before you know it. Don’t forget Switzerland is calling your name. It’s not really Switzerland, it’s me, and I’m losing my voice. My dream has come true and I wonder if it is really what I want.

  CHAPTER 3: KEEPING UP WITH THE EVERYBODYS

  Raymond Ave, Rye – July 2005

  One warm summer evening, sitting with Wim outside on our back deck, whispering so I wouldn’t wake up the kids—their bedrooms were just above us—I brought up the idea of moving. It was an idea I’d been toying with for months, ever since my neighbor, realizing her cramped family room was too small to fit her three kids and her Christmas tree, had moved to a five-bedroom colonial with a family room twice the size of ours in nearby Rye Township.

  The day she told me, I was sitting back in my lawn chair sipping coffee. I was so stunned by her news that I nearly dropped my latte. She’d been one of the holdouts, like me, who had stayed put while others sold their homes and moved to larger lots in the Township. I tried hard to smile. It’s not that I wasn’t happy for her. I knew that she and her husband had worked hard and made sacrifices. But so had Wim and I. And now I had to ask myself, What’s the point of working so hard if you don’t have something to show for it?

  Later that day, I drove by her new house looking for flaws—ugly siding, an old roof, small windows. It’s shameful to admit, but I was searching for any defect I could find to make myself feel better about my own house. Instead, what I saw was a handsome, two-story brick home with an expansive yard—a far cry from our small, plain-vanilla home on its matchbox lot. I drove home, fighting tears the whole way.

  “Do you ever think about moving?” I asked Wim hesitantly.

  “I thought you loved this house,” he said. He was looking at the abundant azaleas blanketing the yard. It occurred to me that the luxuriant foliage in our flower garden was the only part of our home I still loved.

  “I do. But we’ve lived here nearly ten years.” I paused, thinking about the peculiar dream I’d been having lately, in which I suddenly discovered new rooms in my house that I didn’t know were there. I wanted to feel like my home, a symbol of security and a wisely planned-out life, was enough. But I didn’t.

  While our home’s four bedrooms adequately accommodated our family of five, we had a dearth of bathrooms. The tiny master bathroom was my only sanctuary, and our kids, ages four, seven, and ten, had recently begun to overtake it. Long gone were the days of luxuriating in a tub filled with lavender spice bath foam and breathing in the relaxing scent of lilac candles. Now I percolated in Fizzy Wizzies bath suds and massaged my body with heart-shaped My Little Pony finger-paint sponges.

  This was not a home with marble countertops, crackling fireplaces, and a Juliet balcony. This was a launching pad to that home.

  “This is not the house I picture raising teenagers in,” I said. “Or the one I imagine having grandkids visit someday.”

  “You’re thinking pretty far ahead,” he said, talking to me as if I were a child.

  “I’m just afraid if we wait too long it won’t happen. We’ll just keep talking about it and never do it and then we’ll be stuck here, wishing we had. Doesn’t it make sense to move sooner and have more time to enjoy a house while the kids are still young?”

  I knew he didn’t feel the way I did, but he at least seemed to be considering my point. Then he shook his head. “It’s not a good idea right now. Housing prices are through the roof. Plus, if my career continues on this path and we stay put, I might be able to retire early.”

  “I understand,” I said, although I didn’t, not really. I wanted to maintain our current lifestyle, too—our yearly vacations, swim-club memberships, and dinners out. But not in this house.

  In
the weeks following that conversation—as I tripped over my children’s school backpacks strewn across the living room floor, herniated a disk reaching overhead for the pancake griddle stored in our inadequate kitchen, and scraped dried poop off my bird-bombed minivan because we didn’t have a garage—I realized this was a dream I could not let go of.

  We had tried to buy more time in our house by giving it numerous face-lifts, including an updated bathroom and a remodeled basement. As the years expanded, so had the house. We’d stretched it to its full capacity, until every square inch of the lot coverage was maximized. Further growth was not an option.

  Lately, I’d resorted to magic, employing the oldest trick in the book: mirrors. Round mirrors, square mirrors, oval mirrors—I hung them everywhere short of my bedroom ceiling (much to Wim’s chagrin). They didn’t add much, however, except for a carnival fun-house effect that delighted my seven-year-old and the fingerprint smudge–leaving playmates he frequently brought home, crowding our already bursting-at-the-seams house even further.

  Even after all that, during a first-time playdate, one young school friend, at the end of a quick tour of our home, asked, “Where’s the rest of your house?”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

  CHAPTER 4: WHERE IN THE WORLD?

  Raymond Ave, Rye – October 2005

  It took time, but I eventually wore Wim down. Maybe the countless HGTV shows I subjected him to were what did it. I’d become addicted to the channel, obsessed with home building and design. My guilty pleasure was House Hunters, a show that followed prospective homebuyers as they toured three properties for sale. The end of the episode showed the new homeowners all settled inside the house they’d selected, living happily ever after. It always triggered my own yearning for that ideal nesting place of pleasure and security. Whenever Wim watched with me, I prayed it would work its magic on him too.

  I watched and rewatched an episode featuring a second-floor linen closet that was larger than my entire kitchen. As the pangs sharpened, so did my complaints: “If we only had a mudroom, if we only had a garage, if we only had a larger kitchen …”

  One night, when I opened the swelling pantry door and a sack of dog food fell on my head like a bowling ball, I finally put my foot down. “I’ve had it. We need a bigger house.”

  I knew Wim would be happy to remain curled up on the couch, reconciling the checkbook and reviewing his 401(k) in our little house, all of us crammed together like feet wedged in shoes too small. But for some reason he said, “Okay.”

  “Okay?” I replied. “Really? You mean it?”

  “Sure,” he teased. “Don’t forget to send me your new address.”

  As we discussed our moving possibilities at great length, we began to formulate even grander ideas. We contemplated moving not just to another house but to an altogether different area of New York. Rye was an expensive place to live. We could spend the same amount of money and have waterfront property somewhere else.

  “How about Larchmont?” Wim suggested. “I could still work in New York but come home each day to my private dock and take my boat out for a cruise.”

  Larchmont was beautiful, but I had searched the listings online and learned that there, as in Rye, the only water we could afford to live near was the local water treatment plant. So we broadened our scope to the rest of the country. We had always dreamed of South Carolina. Why save those white-sand beaches and eighteen holes of golf for retirement?

  “How about Charleston?” I said.

  “What about Roanoke, Virginia?” Wim said.

  We even considered a place Wim’s job had nearly taken us to four years earlier: Tokyo.

  Seated at our favorite sushi bar in downtown Rye, we again debated the pros and cons of our current town over the delicate plucking sounds of a Japanese zither. Wim carved out a chunk of green wasabi from the small mound on his plate with a chopstick and stirred it into his soy sauce, turning it a muddy gray.

  “Maybe now’s the time to move to Japan,” I said. “The kids are older and the transition would be easier.” I still wasn’t certain how Wim felt now, four years later, about the job offer he’d declined in Tokyo. I searched his face for a sign. He was unreadable. I knew better than to ask him. Not only was my husband not outwardly contemplative; he didn’t like to talk about pesky things like feelings. Sitting here now, watching him dip a piece of yellowtail into the murky goo in the dish in front of him and pop the bite-size morsel into his mouth, I sensed his disappointment that we hadn’t moved abroad when the opportunity had presented itself.

  Suddenly he was coughing, a fit so relentless I feared he might fracture a rib. I pushed a glass of water toward him but he shook his head and waved the glass away.

  I waited for the coughing to subside. “You look like you just swallowed fire,” I said.

  He cleared his throat and dabbed tears from his eyes with his sleeve.

  “This really is a great area,” I said. Bolstered by my own enthusiasm, I started to list all the things that had brought us to Rye in the first place: the twenty-five railroad miles into Manhattan; the excellent public schools; the town’s pride in balancing modern amenities with old-world charm; the quaint brick library in the center of town; the cute shops lining the downtown streets.

  “We pay the price for all that,” he reminded me.

  “But they’re all the things that are important to us,” I said, reminding him of the historic architecture, the occasional sighting of backyards dotted with laundry strung on lines with clothespins—hallmarks of a bygone era.

  I looked out the window and across Main Street to the local watering hole, Ruby’s. Next door were the peppermint-like swirls of Frank’s Barber Shop, where Anna, a Russian hair stylist with a thick accent, cut Wim’s hair each month, and Blooming Nail Salon, where I occasionally treated myself to a manicure. These were the kind of mom-and-pop establishments that created a feeling of belonging for me.

  I watched a ponytailed woman take her daughter’s hand and shuffle across the street to Arcade Booksellers. Gazing at the woman—dressed in crisp tennis whites and a matching white cap, her freshly manicured, cherry red toes separated by strips of fuzzy cotton and poking out of disposable paper sandals—it occurred to me how fortunate we were to live in what used to be a summer resort town and now felt like daily resort living.

  Despite its wealth, Rye had a low-key feel about it. There were a few high-end restaurants, but no ritzy hotels. Most people were community oriented. Every summer, our street held a pot-luck-style block party where dads manned the grills, moms chased after toddlers, and kids rode bikes in the street. One summer, we roasted a pig on our front lawn. This neighborliness was a delightful but foreign concept to a girl from Los Angeles, where competition and self-interest run amok.

  But it wasn’t perfect. Many people in the community were conservative and conventional, with values and beliefs that differed from mine. I brought that up now.

  “Listen, no place is going to be perfect,” Wim said. “The kids are settled here. We’ve made close friends. I don’t know why we keep thinking about somewhere else. We live in a really nice town.”

  “You don’t have to convince me,” I said. But by this time, we both needed convincing. I had planted the seed that we deserved more. This was 2005: Jobs in finance were relatively easy to get, and the economy was booming. We had choices. We could pretty much live wherever we wanted, as long as it was near a large financial district. The problem with having so many choices was that we couldn’t feel satisfied with our current state because we were always thinking about what was next. In our endless pursuit of happiness and success, we tortured ourselves with the thought Could our lives be better someplace else? We were bent on finding just the right setting, just the right house. We thought this would fulfill our fantasies of having it all.

  How ironic that after considering cities the world over, we ended up right back where we started.

  CHAPTER 5: HERSHEY’S BARS

>   Downey, CA – September 1974

  Dr. Sosa’s office was bright and airy. The reception desk held a bowl of candy—not the butterscotches and fruit-filled hard candies that Grandma kept for her mahjong group, but the real deal, mini Hershey’s and Nestlé Crunch bars, the kind of sweets my parents allowed only on Halloween.

  Every week Dr. Sosa and I sat together at a small table in her office, and she pointed to a shelf stacked with board games and puzzles. “What would you like to play today?” she asked.

  My answer was predictable: “Mousetrap.”

  Although only in her sixties, Dr. Sosa seemed ancient. She wore her short red hair layered, and she reminded me, with her shriveled but kind face, of an apple-head doll. Together, we’d unfold the cardboard game board and lay out the plastic pieces—the blue and yellow assembly parts, the smooth metal ball, the die, and the colorful mice. Piece by piece, we’d build a trap.

  Why was I drawn to that particular game? Perhaps it was the challenge of building something tangible that I could control; it lent a sense of order. Maybe it was the excitement of the unknown, the thrill of competition, and the triumph of winning. Maybe it was the way the pieces came together in one assembled unit when I turned the crank to start the mousetrap, booting the marble down the chute, propelling a plastic man into the air, and releasing the trap to capture the mouse.

  I didn’t know what separation anxiety disorder was, or what a clinical psychologist did, exactly, but I trusted that this nice apple-head lady who played games with me and gave me candy each week would make me better.

  My childhood was not trauma-filled. But there is one incident I still recall in vivid detail.