Tsunami Across My Heart

by Marissa Elizabeth Stone

  We had a light dinner, I was quiet, and he was avoiding our promised discussion. I was too stubborn to bring it up again, to uncertain of him and what I wanted anymore. When we went back to my place, he packed and I took care of a few details I’d let slide for the week. We had to go to bed early for him to catch a 6:00 am flight back to the west coast. We made love but it wasn’t memorable, and I didn’t sleep worth a damn knowing this romance wasn’t going to be salvaged, fully explored, and that it was really over this time.

  In a way I was relieved it was almost over.

  So he left, and that was that. Or once again, I thought it would be.

  Chapter 15

  As the summer passed and fall settled into the muggy South my contact with Eric was minimal. I heard from him a few times after he got back to California but I determined I’d let it slide and forget about whatever fantasies I had of turning our love affair into something permanent. Not that I didn’t want him, but the entire exchange with Dana had given me resolve to let him go once and for all.

  I moved from the little apartment in Buckhead to take on a more serious commitment towards my completing my conversion, and to immerse myself in the Jewish community. I had a new roommate, a dear friend and when everything else changes, your focus changes and I thought of Eric less often and never with any ideas towards a future we might share together.

  Within a few months David came back to Atlanta for a wedding of a mutual friend, and when I found him at my door, evidently working out on a regular basis, his long hair shining in the son, we reunited for the third and final time. Of course, Eric casually warned me not to indulge this fantasy again, and with resignation threw his hands up in the air when I did.

  Almost a year and a half had passed from the last time I’d seen Eric when David finally asked me to marry him. The shiny diamond that was on my left hand would grasp my attention and fill me with happiness every fifteen seconds. I thought I’d finally resolved our issues that I’d have a real family to belong to.

  While I hadn’t spoken to Eric in the better part of that past year, Eric was the only man I felt the need to tell I was going to marry David. I’m not sure why really; it just seemed that our friendship and our connection remained deep enough, and our pattern of staying connected strong enough, to tell him that it really was over forever. So I called him.

  “Oh Eric guess what I have on my finger???” I gleefully asked.

  “What?” he said it, not quite with trepidation, but surely he knew it was a likely event by now.

  “It’s a diamond ring!! David took me out for dinner on the 23rd and we were sitting at our table looking over the city when he handed me this card and a little box. I thought it would be earrings you know? But it was an engagement ring! I was so excited!”

  “Obviously you said yes then…” he said dryly.

  “Did I say “Yes”?” I asked incredulously, “Of course I said yes.” I replied

  “Girrrrrrl, you really shouldn’t do this. It’s a really, really, REALLY bad idea. You know this man has never really made you happy and never really will.”

  That was debatable; we’d had our tender moments. I didn’t respond, but it did dampen my enthusiasm.

  He continued, “I’m not saying that ‘I love you and marry me instead.’ I am saying you shouldn’t marry him, you should find someone else.”

  “Well Eric, I didn’t tell you so you would ask me to marry you instead of David.”

  “It’s not that I don’t care for you, I do. I’m not ready now, wasn’t ready before and besides, you’re half crazy anyway…”

  “HA HA HA. Well I didn’t expect you to jump for joy. I just thought I needed to tell you, no one else, just needed to tell you.”

  “Well, even if I think I’m right, I hope I’m wrong and that you will be very happy with David; even if he is an ass-hole.”

  It didn’t really make me feel good. I didn’t really know his motivation at the time, though now I think he was just being honest, and recognizing the authenticity that lived between us.

  And so, I completed my conversion to Judaism and married David, and it was truly the happiest day of my life.

  I don’t think I thought of Eric on my wedding day and probably not very often until later when it became clear that every promise David ever made was an empty lie designed to manipulate me into giving him whatever he wanted. Suddenly the marriage was becoming a very lonely place for me, and I found myself recounting the relationship with Eric as though it were lost in some fashion that I might have been able to prevent or remold into a different outcome.

  The truth be told, while there were other men I cared for and spent more time with, once I married they were forgotten. But I never forgot Eric as my lover, or my friend, and this I tried mightily to do. The connection with him was too hard even for me to put into words and it had a way of making me feel isolated and alone in an acute manner. It would echo in the memory of my reaching for his hand quietly north of Santa Barbara or the feel of the wind and smell of the surf on the beach in Carmel, or in the confidences he whispered to me lying in his bed so long ago in the little bungalow on the harbor.

  Chapter 16

  One afternoon during the first year of my marriage the strangest thing happened. I was making sales calls to life insurance companies. A man answered one of my many calls, and we had a lovely conversation. The connection was easy and light and he had a kind, wry wit. After a long while, I was taking his name and address he told me his full name; Saul Davis. I said, “I was very much in love with someone with your last name once. His name was Eric.”

  “Oh?” Laughingly he says, “My son’s name is Eric.”

  “Well my Eric was Eric Ashley Davis, and he was named after his aunt and uncle who died in a car wreck the night before he was born.”

  “That’s not your Eric Ashley, that’s MY Eric Ashley” said an incredulous Saul.

  Unbelievably, I was on the phone with Eric’s father! I can’t even imagine what the odds of that occurring might have been. When Eric’s father revealed this amazing coincidence to me, I simply, quietly said, “I was once very much in love with your son.”

  “He’s an easy man to love.”, and it was true, he was easy to love.

  “Yes, he was.”

  Suddenly there was a thread of information between myself and Eric once again and it was delivered less than a year after I’d told him good bye in order to marry David. A coincidence such as this? Of course Saul was bound to tell Eric about our telephone acquaintance. A few short weeks and late one afternoon the phone rings when I’m alone in the little studio office I shared with David.

  “Hey Marissa, it’s Eric, Eric Ashley Davis. How’s married life? Are things going relatively well?”

  They say that you cannot tell your heart what you want, that your heart will tell you. My heart was suddenly pounding in my chest and I was worried I’d be breathless when I spoke.

  “Eric! Hey! Well it’s going pretty well I guess, all things considered.” I didn’t share my disappointment in the honeymoon trip; how David’s sexual appetite couldn’t seem to be satiated unless he found some way to denigrate me during that week. That he felt distant immediately and that I was struggling being away from my friends and my family in Atlanta, or that David had made up the song “Atlanta Is a Cesspool” to comfort me in my loss, or that he constantly called me Mary, and I hated the name.”

  “Is he working any harder than he was before the wedding?” I could almost see the look on his face in my minds eye. As though he knew that David’s apathy towards occupational effort would never dissipate.

  “Well, I had the shock of discovering that he had never written a check before, five days after we got back from our honeymoon…and that totally took me by surprise.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Eric laughed uproariously.

  “Nope. But he’s learning a lot. I just really didn’t have any idea how much he needed to know.”

  “I’m here in town�
�� he changed the subject, “I have a number of customers across the river from you. Come and see me.” I could hear it in his voice, not that he assumed I would come and see him, but that he genuinely hoped I would.

  “Eric, I can’t do that. You know I can’t do that.” I annoyed myself by being flattered and disappointed myself by actually tossing around a few ideas about how I might be able to go, lying to myself about my attraction to Eric.

  “Well bring David with you then.” Eric says innocently, as though I only imagined what I thought I’d heard in his voice.

  “Oh yeah, that would go over very well. I won’t even make it to a year married!” I laughed. “I really can’t make it. We’re glued to the hip, and he would never understand my wanting to remain friends with you.”

  “Ok, ok. I’ll just have dinner on my own then. Nice little town you live in, where should I go?”

  “Mmmmmm, I don’t know. So sorry I can’t play Ambassador again… There’s a few good rib and seafood places down on the river. David asked me to marry him down there. Food’s good, service is good; it’s close to your hotel. Try Mike Fink’s.”

  “I think I’ll have ribs then, though I wish you’d be there…” his voice trailed off.

  “You call all your old girlfriends while you travel?” Boy Slut, I thought, he’d turn my marriage inside out for absolutely nothing.

  “Well, a few, yeah, I keep in touch. I like to keep up with you and Katrina. I was nuts about you both, just don’t know which one of you is crazier.”

  “What about Elaine, she certainly tries hard enough?” I suppose I could have left that alone.

  “At that she does, she certainly does. We keep seeing each other on and off. I just don’t think it’s going to work out though.”

  “You should spare her the agony of unfulfilled desire Eric. It’s cruel, wanting you and not having you, don’t you know?”

  “Uh huh. I see how you’re suffering without me. You sure you won’t come and see me?” One final roll of the dice.

  “Yeah, I’m sure. Take care Eric.” I was proud of myself for letting it go, I felt stronger.

  “You too…you too.” And he said good bye with a click.

  For the next few years I knew through Saul how Eric was and what he was doing. In all honesty I’m sure I called on Saul much longer than I needed to just to hear little bits of information. Eric would call periodically if he was in town and we’d always have the exact same conversation we had before. When email became widely available he’d write now and again and my heart would betray me with its hard thump in my chest each time I heard his name, his voice or saw his name in the inbox.

  Eventually Saul told me that Eric had finally gotten married. It had been a long time since I’d spoken to Saul or heard from Eric either. I was reasonably happy with David and our business life was going well too. I continued to convince myself that Eric was just a highlight in my former life.

  I learned that he’d moved to Atlanta of all places, and knowing the irony of his being there after I left always bothered me more than I wanted to admit to myself, much less to David. I lost track again when Saul no longer used the kinds of services my company provided and continued sales calls were no longer appropriate. Not knowing what happened to Eric sort of bothered me, but I wasn’t willing to compromise my marriage by deliberately finding out what happened with him. I wanted my marriage to work, and I loved my husband.

  Chapter 17

  A year or more had passed by, and one afternoon I was working, absorbed in the operation of a thriving business I loved and was so happy running.

  My secretary announced over the loud speaker, “Eric Davis on line four. Eric Davis on line four.”

  Instantaneously, my heart was absolutely pounding. Damn it, damn it, damn it. My hands were sweating and shaking. THIS was not the behavior of a happily married woman. I knew it. I hated it. I didn’t have to answer the phone. I knew this, but I did. I was so nervous, as I picked up the phone and simply said “Hello.”

  “Hello there little Miss Marissa, how are you this fine afternoon?” his voice danced across the phone.

  It must have been yet another year since we’d spoken this time, why did it always feel like just a few days?

  “I’m just fine Eric Ashley Davis, how are you?” My eyes smiled at him though he couldn’t see that at all.

  “I’m just great. Back in town again, thought I’d give dinner with you a stab again.”

  I longed to show him my success and would love to have him see my own little world. The world I thought I’d created to negate every harm or shortcoming I thought I’d experienced. I couldn’t deny the force of my feelings. But, I couldn’t risk going to see him. Though in my mind I raced through the possibilities, I never could do it.

  Of course I knew David would not appreciate or approve of his overtures anymore now than he would have a few years ago, or of the part of me that wanted to see Eric again. It bothered me, no tortured me, that when Eric would call that my heart would leap out of my chest, it would just pound the whole time, my breath quickening and my hands sweating. I’d have to go through the whole process of telling myself that it was over for a reason. He’d never made it happen, wasn’t that enough? Just stop it!!!

  “How are you?” he asked me, seriously.

  “I’m great! Things are wonderful.” I wasn’t lying. They were great. It wasn’t as though I thought of him every minute of every day, not anymore. “How are you?”

  “Business is awesome; I’m having another amazing year.” This was always the case, one year better than the one before. He was a business wizard, a sales genius. Never mind I had to argue with David to get to work, stay there, and not leave for home early every day.

  Again my heart has a mind of its own. My body is not cooperating with my head, which is telling it not to act like it is in love with Eric anymore. So I said, “I’ve got some news!”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m pregnant! We’re having a baby!” I exclaimed, and I truly was happy.

  “That’s great!! When’s it due? Do you know what you’re having? A boy or a girl?” and so on until I said when I was due and we were having a girl, and we’d bought a new house, and a new car and the business was going gangbusters. Finally the excitement died down and there was a little silence between us on the phone. Long enough for me to just feel awkward about my conflicted feelings of excitement about my married life, my new baby, the business and the way my heart still pounded like a silly girl’s when he called.

  “Are you happy?” he asked me, and he really wanted to know.

  I didn’t answer immediately. I was happy enough, but David did have his weaknesses and at times they did make me weary. “We have our ups and downs Eric, but mostly I feel like his strengths are my weaknesses and that my strengths are his, and we’re making it work. I love him. You know this.”

  “Yeah. I wish we could still be friends.” He said.

  “Eric… He would be furious about our talking. He would never understand. I’m pregnant with his baby. We’ve been married a long time now. It isn’t right for you to call, you know?”

  “I’m friends with a lot of my other old girlfriend’s and no one else acts like he does….” And he just stopped short. Surely he understood there was truly something for David to actually be jealous of? “You don’t want me to call again?”

  “I will always want what’s best for you, for you to be happy…but I just don’t’ feel right about it. I’m sorry.” I said. Something inside of me wanted to cry, and I hated that. It felt like self betrayal, and marriage betrayal, and maternal betrayal, and what’s more it was a connection that couldn’t do anything but get lost in a maze of inappropriate feeling and attachment.

  “Ok. I understand. You take care of yourself. I’m happy for you Marissa. I won’t call again - even if it is really hard not to do.” He quietly said.

  And he didn’t, he didn’t call me again.

  Chapter 18

 
; A few short months later I had my daughter Brittany Nicole and her birth was fraught with crises and making sure both she and the business stayed alive became my only occupation. I was focused more on surviving than on thriving after I became a mother, and my son Joshua followed quickly upon the heels of Brittany. I found myself the President and CEO of a four million dollar technology firm and the mother of two beautiful children.

  My business grew wildly and then deteriorated, a perfect mirror of a wild roller coaster economy until finally the NASDAQ crashed and the media sugar coated it by saying it had “corrected”. I used to wryly say, “Yeah, the NASDAQ corrected my whole freaking life.” But I was in good company and there were many young and spirited CEOs taking their lumps and figuring out what to do next.

  David and I struggled tremendously through the loss of the business. It was impossible for me not to feel that his lack of commitment and enthusiasm to the task hadn’t made a big contribution to the impending failure of the enterprise. David was entirely too creative in his efforts to pull us out of the hole and save the business and I was constantly having to play moral advocate to his relaxed sense of ethics. Our time was spent more and more with consultants and accountants and bankruptcy attorneys. We were about to file a Chapter 11 but we had a reorganization plan that seemed like it might work if all went well. I felt this was a bump in the road, not the end of the road, and I had confidence in my ability to do it again if I needed to.

  We were on vacation on Cape Cod when I told David I wanted another baby. He thought I was crazy to want another child while we were having our first breathing room in years. We didn’t really finish the debate about getting pregnant. That night, I partied for the first time in fifteen years. The next morning we got up and went whale watching on the Atlantic and I was in heaven.

  Within days of our return though, my health suddenly seemed precarious and I just didn’t feel quite right. Shopping for groceries a few days after our return the smell of salmon in the store threw a wave of nausea over me. I was falling asleep at 7:30 in the evening and no amount of coffee seemed to make me energetic. I had all the symptoms I’d had so many times before. I wasn’t just wondering if I were pregnant, I was pretty sure of it, but I kept getting negative test results for a whole month.