“How can I learn to live with it?”
“That’s your business. That’s what life is all about. Playing the hand you’re dealt.”
I have to let that one sink in awhile. I bite my tongue for the second time that day.
“You sound like Ms. Pushpa.”
“I seriously doubt that.”
“It’s true. You’re saying it in different ways, but ultimately she said I should accept it. And you think I should forget this nonsense. That it’s none of my business. I need to learn to live with it. That’s what you said, right?”
He sighs. “I can see that you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. Maybe you’re right and I’m an old fart. If she forgives him and he goes away, you’re done with it.”
“And if not?”
“I just hate to see you decide you can’t have a happy marriage unless you can fix somebody else’s unhappy marriage. Especially since one of ’em is dead and the other one doesn’t want anything to do with you. Seems to me it would be easier to figure out how to live with what you’ve got.” He pushes the footrest of his recliner into the upright position. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get my beauty sleep.”
I grab a light cotton sweater, wander out onto Pa’s front porch, and settle into a lawn chair in the night air. I reach for my cell phone. When he answers, I can’t tell who it is. It’s Eric’s voice, but I can’t tell which one of them is talking. So I hate it, but I have to ask.
“Eric? Is that you?”
He hesitates. “Yeah. Come on, Shel. I mean, what am I supposed to say? Yeah, it’s me.”
“This is going to be weird.”
“Not unless we make it weird. It is what it is.”
“Can we talk?”
We’re on the phone for hours. Listening. Explaining. Recapping. Apologizing. Negotiating. No more secrets. Again. By the time we hang up, we have a plan. Core competency of the Buckners? Making a plan and making it work. No matter how ridiculous the problem we’re trying to solve. Step one is agreeing on the problem. Step two is agreeing on the goal.
No matter what Ms. Pushpa and Pa say, learning to live with it is not the goal.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
*
PHASE ONE—KAY
Eric and I get right to work. Phase one, step one: contact Kay. In a world where we’re all so overconnected, it’s amazing how hard it is to reach someone who doesn’t want to be reached. Kay’s not exactly on Facebook. I leave a message on her home phone, which she doesn’t answer. We give it a week before we decide it might work best if I write her a letter.
Dear Kay,
I’m not quite sure what to say about the way our visit ended.
“Don’t say that,” Eric advises, looking over my shoulder. “I don’t think we should mention it. Just write to her like nothing happened.”
I reach for another sheet of stationery.
Dear Kay,
Toby loves the puppy. We named him Buster. He’s growing like a weed! Already, his legs seem like they’re two inches longer than when you were here. His spots are starting to show, too. He’s got a big one right at the base of his tail. The ones around his face look like freckles. Here’s a picture.
“That’s good,” Eric says. “Should I put Toby in the picture? Or just Buster?”
“Just the dog, I think. I don’t know if Toby is a trigger for her. We don’t want to make it worse.”
The process of getting a decent picture of a rambunctious puppy distracts Eric long enough for me to write the rest of the letter in peace. I won’t try to name it, whatever transpired between her and Eric. I refrain from speculating about John’s unfinished business. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Kay—and I’m sure she would deny this—the direct approach absolutely does not work with her. If we’re going to talk again, it’s going to be on her terms. All we can do is extend ourselves. I’m not sure I could hit the right note if I had to say it, especially not to her face, so I’m grateful for the smoke screen the letter allows me. No matter how I feel, we have to leave the door open.
I wanted to say I’m sorry for the awkward way our visit ended. I understand if you need some space, and I want to make sure you know we hold no ill will toward you. I hope you feel the same. Your visit affected me (and my family) very deeply. We will never regret meeting you or forget your connection to us. We mean no harm. Please write to me and at least let me know that you received this letter.
We consider you a part of our family.
Maybe I went too far with that one. Even as I write it, I’m convinced she’s going to call bullshit on me. But I don’t erase it, and I tell myself it wasn’t too much.
Two weeks later, I’m keeping watch on our mailbox as if it’s going to vaporize when I’m not looking. Lakshmi catches me checking it one more time on my way to the park. Toby runs ahead of me with Buster on the leash. I wave and join her on the patterned blanket that has absorbed all our park conversations. We sit side by side in the shade.
“Nothing yet?” she asks, watching me cram the junk mail into my tote bag.
I shake my head and watch Buster drag the two boys on laps around the park. “It would be a lot easier if she’d just answer one way or the other. If I knew for sure that she absolutely refuses to allow any contact …”
“Um …”
“I know, I know. Fourteen empty mailboxes in a row. That’s an answer, isn’t it?” I bark out a noise that’s supposed to sound like a laugh.
“You knew it was a long shot, right? Given what you know about her. She was furious when she left.”
“At John?” I ask. “Or Eric?”
“Does it matter?”
“Probably not,” I admit. “All that matters is whether or not she can get over it. And it doesn’t seem like that’s her strong suit.” I flop onto my back and pull at my hair, making a face. “Aaack!”
“Momma?” Toby flies his airplane nearer to us.
“I’m okay, baby. Momma’s just ripping her hair out, that’s all. Go crash your plane.”
Lakshmi gives my arm a squeeze.
I sit up and turn toward her, sitting cross-legged. “You’re right. I need to face reality. She’s not going to write back. Even if I call her every day, she won’t answer, and even if she did, she wouldn’t let me or Eric anywhere near her.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Are you giving up on phase one?”
“Not unless I have to. There has to be another way to reach her.”
“You could go back to Branson.”
“Yes. We know how well that worked out last time.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m not sure. We can’t force it. She needs to be receptive in order for this to work.”
As we return home from the park, we wave as Eric turns off the mower to greet us. Toby wedges himself between us, holding our hands, begging us to swing him. One, two, three, whee!
Eric beelines for the refrigerator and tosses me a bottle of water while Toby goes upstairs to play. Eric glugs his entire bottle without taking a breath. When he’s finished, he gives me a big “aaah!” like Toby.
“You know, we could call her church. Maybe tell her pastor that we need to talk to her.”
Eric’s face contorts, like he just licked a lemon.
“Think about it,” I say. “We could tell him we’re trying to make amends. Convince him that she needs to hear us out. To give us peace in our souls.”
He says, “You’re working on the assumption that he knows. What if she hasn’t told him anything about us? Then we’ve created a problem for her, and she’ll have to explain it. Or lie. Either way, it’s not going to make her want to talk to us.”
“Do you think she’s told anyone?”
“I don’t know,” he says, on his way to take a shower. “I’m not clairvoyant. Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Well, not really,” I mutter under my breath. John Robberson knows whether or not Kay would tell her pastor. He probably kn
ows the best way to get her to talk to us. But the more we bring John to the surface, the higher the risk that Eric fades away. That’s a risk I’m not willing to take if there’s any other way.
One of my conditions, as we’d determined our strategy, was that we’d set limits. No matter how much mental shuffling I manage, I still don’t want to be married to John Robberson. I want to be married to Eric.
After much discussion, and after Eric spent two days poring over all those lists I’d made back when I was observing Toby, he saw the pattern: John Robberson was only strong enough to appear when Eric was in a reduced state of consciousness. So we agreed that the best way to control John’s appearances was to shut off those avenues.
So Eric doesn’t drink anymore. I joined him out of the same compassion he showed me when I was pregnant. We don’t really miss it. Sure, it might be nice to have a cold beer on a hot day, but it’s easier to not have it in the house. We weren’t everyday wine-with-dinner kind of people anyway. Binge drinking just doesn’t hold the appeal it did in college.
We lock the bedroom door, and I keep the key. No more sleepwalking chats with Toby. We both agree Toby has to be protected. We’re not taking any chances.
The first rule about John Robberson is that we don’t talk about John Robberson. Eric doesn’t want this to become a dinner-party anecdote, the interesting thing about us that others discuss among themselves. He believes it would damage his reputation at work and make him the object of ridicule. He thinks it makes him sound stupid.
The fact that it’s true doesn’t make it easier. For Eric, it actually makes it harder.
I think he doesn’t want to talk about it because it makes him vulnerable. The unimaginable has happened. We don’t have a way to talk about that in our culture.
So we set limits. He’s been even more diligent than I expected. After he read about the effect of music on brain waves, he made one more change. When he runs, now he listens to a book or podcast instead of music. He doesn’t like it as much, but we agreed it’s best to keep his cognitive functions alert. When he finishes his run, he calls me and I try to talk him out of his jelly doughnut cravings, like an AA sponsor.
That’s right. Jelly doughnuts.
We’ve been piecing it all together—all the unconscious influences. Naming the dog Thud, getting a Dalmatian in the first place, the mustache, all that flight jargon, the bomb story, even the CPR on Toby—we think all these came from John Robberson. But when Eric told me about jelly doughnuts, it knocked the wind out of me.
We’ve always been in complete agreement about food—organic, whole grains, nonprocessed, no chemicals. Nothing fried. Ever. I’ve never nagged him like I do Pa; I don’t have to. If anything, he’s more adamant about it than I am.
Every day since he started walking again, he’s made his way to Sunshine Doughnuts to purchase and consume not one but two jelly doughnuts. He’s been covering it up the whole time.
He says, “I finally understand food addiction. I’m powerless. One is not enough; it has to be two. And not the regular glazed kind; they have to be the kind with gooey stuff in the middle.”
“Yuck!”
“I know! I feel like shit and keep going back for more. I crash, like, within twenty minutes.” He laughs. “The guys in my group tell me they think I’m sneaking a smoke because I go outside and walk around the building every day now at the same time. Why do you think I’m running so much?”
“I had no idea.”
“Hey,” he says, “do you think it’s like the people who get transplants and start craving the food their heart donor wanted? Maybe this is my version of the oatmeal cream pie.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
*
HONEY SWEET
Since I’ve had eggplant coming out my ears, I’m baking a gigantic vegetarian casserole. We’ve invited Ian and Mamie, Lakshmi and Nikhil, and Carla and her (surprise!) fiancé, Steve. It’s the first time we’ve met him. This is the same guy she was moaning about at Ian’s party. He used to be her client. He also used to be married. As of last month, he’s neither. They’ve known each other for two years, but they’ve only officially dated for thirty days. Thirty. Three-zero.
“I’m happy,” she tells me. “So be happy with me.”
Maybe there was a time when I’d try to tell her what to do with her life, but I’m waaay past that now.
It’s the first time we’ve tried to integrate our Oasis Verde friends with our old crowd. I know Lakshmi and Nik don’t seem to go out much, so I want to make sure she’s comfortable. I’m not sure anything is going to make Nik comfortable, so I can’t worry about that. At least I know he likes eggplant.
It’s also the first time we’ve entertained since we found out the truth about John Robberson.
“Want me to set out a wine glass for you?”
“Sure,” Eric says. “I’ll fill it with water; nobody will notice. But you go ahead and have a glass so it’s not so conspicuous.”
“I think Steve is the only one who doesn’t know. I’m not sure how much Carla’s told him.”
“Ian and Mamie don’t know,” he says. “Unless you’ve spoken to them.”
“Not about this.”
“About any of it? Shel, I can’t have him even joking about it. Ian knows some of the guys at work.”
“I know. I haven’t said anything,” I say. “Lakshmi and Nik won’t say anything.”
“Think it will be okay to put some music on?” he asks.
“Eric. Of course.” I turn to fold napkins. “You’re doing fine. I don’t think a little background music is going to be enough to give him the upper hand.”
Carla’s early and doesn’t ring the doorbell; she just “yoo-hoo”s to get the party started. Right behind her, Steve shows up with two bottles of wine—in each hand. He’s gracious and almost embarrassingly glad to meet us, but I get the impression he’s a little … disappointed, maybe, that we don’t have two wine glasses at each place setting and two more available for backup tastings. I’ve got four red glasses and four whites, total, and every one of them is on the table.
“No way I’m getting away with water tonight,” Eric whispers.
“It’ll be fine,” I assure him.
The sauvignon blanc is divine. Carla and I take ours into the kitchen and finish the salads. She’s planning her wedding even though they’re eloping. They’re getting married on a beach in Cabo San Lucas next weekend.
“You mean eight days from now?”
Eric comes in with one arm around Steve and raises his glass. “Here’s to beach weddings!”
Ian and Mamie show up next, straight from a friend’s gallery showing. When Lakshmi and Nik arrive, Carla and Steve share their news, which kicks off a long discussion about weddings that lasts until well after we’re at the dinner table. Lakshmi’s wedding ceremony lasted three days. I would’ve loved to see it: the henna hands, the opulent saris, the rituals, especially when they put rice on each other’s heads.
“What were your vows?” Carla asks. “We’re debating between writing our own and saying the traditional ‘to have and to hold’ thing to each other.”
Eric and I opted for the traditional vows, mostly because I didn’t have much confidence that I could come up with something more meaningful. I didn’t want to look back and realize my most sacred pact on earth was based on some lame, sappy song lyric.
“They’re based on the Seven Steps,” Lakshmi explains. “Not everyone has the same vows. We stayed pretty close to the Hindu ritual. The steps are: healthy living, spirituality, wealth, trust, fertility, longevity, and lifelong partnership.” She counts them off on her fingers and looks over at Nik. “Am I missing one?”
Nik’s expression breaks into a true, clear smile that I haven’t seen before on his face. He picks up his glass and lifts it to Lakshmi. His voice has just the right measure of Ms. Pushpa’s singsong accent.
“May the night be honey-sweet for us. May the morning be honey-sweet for us. May the ea
rth be honey-sweet for us and the heavens be honey-sweet for us. May the plants be honey-sweet for us; may the sun be all honey for us; may the cows yield us honey-sweet milk. As the heavens are stable, as the earth is stable, as the mountains are stable, as the whole universe is stable, so may our unions be permanently settled.”
His words hang over the table like fireflies. Mamie grasps Ian’s forearm and squeezes it. The music from the stereo picks up where our voices left off. Bluesy tones from a saxophone fill the air, making Nik’s glass, which remains in the air, seem like an invitation for his wife to join him in his memory. She lowers her eyes and nods before her glass meets his, with a faint clink that feels like a kiss. The rest of us are holding our breath.
“Honey-sweet,” Steve whispers, raising his glass.
“I feel sorry for you, buddy,” Ian says, “because that, my friend, is a freaking hard act to follow.”
“It is,” Lakshmi agrees, when the laughter dies down. “But did you notice what is not included in those vows?”
We shake our heads.
“Love. We never look each other in the eye and promise to love each other unconditionally forever.”
“You’re kidding,” Carla says. “What about the ‘I cannot live without you’ part?”
“Even better, the ‘you will not live without me’ part,” Ian laughs. “Is that the most elegant veiled threat you’ve ever heard?”
“Are you the most cynical person I’ve ever met?” Carla asks, before turning back to Lakshmi. “Why is there no promise to love? Does that bother you?”
“Not really. Don’t you think everyone’s marriage would be a little better if they simply agreed to live cooperatively with each other?” Lakshmi says.
“Of course, but isn’t that implied when you love someone?” Mamie asks. “Isn’t it just a different way to say the same thing?”
“Let me put it this way: if you couldn’t have both, which would you want? Living peacefully together, or being ‘in love’?” She uses air quotes.
Eight Minutes Page 24
