by Tom Corbett
After Morris did his business, they headed back. “You’re such a cutie,” she said to the dog that waddled along next to her feet. He looked tough with his pugnacious face and strut, but he really was the sweetest thing. “I am taking you with me, is that all right with you?” Okay, she thought to herself, this confirms that I have gone around the bend. The chief of pediatric surgery is talking to a dog. I knew this would happen if I took a few days off.
The breeze blew off the waters. She found it refreshing; it tingled her skin. That previous evening, as she drifted off to sleep, her mind had wandered in a different direction. She could not get Usha out of her head. Just as the breeze now caressed her, the feel of Usha’s hands touching her skin flooded incessantly across her head. She tried driving it away, but the image would not disappear. How childish, she scolded herself. She was not a schoolgirl. She had complete control over her emotions, needs. What’s this? For years, decades, she had exercised command over her needs. Why now, when she had decided all that nonsense had been finally buried?
Perhaps what she was feeling was some empathetic association with her daughter. Don’t some husbands experience pregnancy symptoms? Maybe this was a similar condition. She so wanted to connect with her daughter, she was associating with her offspring’s life choice. How silly was that, she concluded. Then it hit her. She had been taken with her brother’s experience with love. He knew what it was, he had experienced it firsthand. She was jealous. Yes, that was it, she was jealous. She wanted to know what it was like to be in love.
Back in Josh’s house, Rachel fed Morris, who alternately devoured his food and looked up at her with appreciation. Perhaps some members of the male tribe were worth the effort. The secret to finding them was to avoid humans and stick with canines. As she contemplated her latest insight, Josh emerged from his room.
“Ah, I see my traitor of a formally devoted pet has been taken care of. Morning, Benedict Arnold,” he said in the direction of the dog happily licking an empty bowl.
“Sit,” Rachel insisted.
“The dog or me? You know, I’m thinking that maybe you should take the dog since I could never train him to do anything.”
“Same as with the women in your sorry life?” Then Rachel caught herself and returned to the task at hand. “You, Josh, sit!”
“What’s up, you have your game face on this morning.”
Rachel looked at him for a moment while she gathered her thoughts. “I couldn’t sleep. I looked over some of the e-mails, the ones with Eleni.”
“I suppose that’s why I gave them to you,” he responded without expression.
“Why did you do that? You didn’t have to, I didn’t ask. Hell, I don’t believe you ever mentioned her. If you had, I probably would not have recalled her name if asked.”
Josh reached down and picked up Morris. He scratched the pet’s ears. “I don’t know how to talk about certain things. Hell, there are things I can barely even think about without my head hurting. Leni has been inside my head for most of my life. No one has known about her, other than perhaps her name.”
Rachel looked confused. “Tell me one thing, why isn’t she here? Is it because she is married? I don’t understand, she obviously loves you. You and she love each other, it pours out of those e-mails. How can you stay apart? You never struck me as that principled. You would never let a little thing like a marriage contract stand in the way.”
“Not principled? I have many faults, but I always thought my biggest vice was being too principled. A conscience is a terrible thing. In my addled head, it was a quantum leap from my high school music teacher to this.” He tried a smile but could not quite get there.
“Be serious or I swear I’ll greatly diminish your life by taking your dog away with me. Then, you will be totally alone, more alone that you are now.”
Josh sighed. “Okay! Obviously, you didn’t get through all of them. Not surprising, they were probably all mixed up. I found her on Facebook, by accident as it turned out. It was quite a shock. Several decades had passed with no contact. I stopped writing letters to her about a year after she married someone else, husband number one.”
“That one ended unhappily, right?”
“Yeah, but after two decades of her trying to keep it together, commitments being sacred to her, she gave it up. She did have better luck the second time around. In any case, when I found her again, it was like asking for that first date. It took a while to work up the courage to send that first message, but she seemed thrilled to hear from me. Literally, within days, we were far more intimate with each other than we had been back then. The chemistry was amazing.”
“I could feel that. It exuded out of these exchanges,” Rachel interjected.
“But from the beginning, we developed a DNH rule or Do No Harm. She was married, and I was living with Connie at the start. This all emerged after Usha had found love. No matter what we shared, we vowed not to harm existing relationships. In truth, I probably used Connie as an excuse to make it seem as if we were on equal footing. It seemed safer.”
Rachel shook her head. “I don’t see how that’s possible, married couples don’t have connections of this depth.” Her voice was laced with incredulity.
“And this from the original ice maiden.”
“You are a shit!” she shot back. “But okay, I’ll stipulate to that.”
“Sorry, that was unfair and a bit sophomoric. In the end, though, it didn’t matter.”
“How could it not matter? You loved this woman, she loved you. How in God’s name can you be so cavalier about all this? Are you totally made of stone? Don’t you have a single thread of humanness in you? It had to matter.” Rachel exuded exasperation.
Suddenly, a voice came from another direction. “I want to hear the answer to that one.” Connie stood in the door of Josh’s room.
“Oh,” Rachel exclaimed. “I didn’t know…”
“No matter, Rachel, we were chaste despite my best effort. But I want to hear this. I saw a couple of his exchanges with this woman, some time ago, when we were still we. They were on his screen one day. I felt awful about peeking. I guess I was curious about why he never seemed fully there, if that makes any sense.” Connie came into the room and took a seat. “To be honest, I suppose that is why I started withdrawing from you, Josh. I assumed you would get together with this woman, that I was in the way. I was surprised when nothing happened after I exited.”
Josh put Morris down and got up. He looked directly at Connie but had trouble sensing her mood. To Josh, she looked somewhere between wary and enigmatic. Damn inscrutable Asians, he thought. “What started as e-mails morphed into texts and phone calls. I should have told you, Connie. I still avoid conflict, I guess. It was intense, all-consuming, but in a limited way, if that makes sense. We were committed not to disrupt each other’s lives, that was our prime commitment. I had blown my chances with Leni the night I chose to head north, damn coin flip. There really is no going home again.”
Connie remained enigmatic. “Make me understand. Would it have been impossible to ask her here, for this milestone? You have so much of your life here, and she is such a part of your heart. I’m losing you here. You’re a clever guy, you could have figured out something. Hell, people manage affairs all the time.”
Josh permitted a look of anguish to cross his face before pushing it away. “Well, the ‘Do No Harm’ rule failed. Her husband discovered the e-mails, and she promised to stop. But neither of us could. That would have been like cutting out our hearts. We talked about elastic hearts a lot, being able to expand to let in more love. Then he found out a second time. That was it, it had to end.”
“And you could walk away?” Rachel asked. “Wasn’t that difficult beyond measure?”
“What was hard was not being there for her at the end, not being able to make her laugh…toward the end.” Then he just stopped as if hung in mid thought. “In my whole life, I never considered such pain was possible.”
“What end? Wh
at pain?” Connie asked in frustration. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“The end, the ultimate end! She was dying from cancer. She passed about a year ago. Her last words to me in her final e-mail were ‘I do love you.’”
CHAPTER 13
DAY 6
It takes a bit of time to get from Vancouver to Whistler, primarily a winter resort nestled high in the mountains north of the city. It looks and feels much like an Alpine ski destination, a feel Josh loved even if he was not into the sport himself. The journey itself is a big part of the attraction to him, a winding road up through rugged peaks. Two cars set out: in Josh’s SUV were Rachel, Usha, Meena, and Cate. Connie volunteered to drive Peter, Morris, and Carla in her vehicle. The small caravan drove through the center of Vancouver to pick up Highway 99. Turning west, they wove through Stanley Park, across the bridge, and up into the craggy peaks that guard the city’s northern border. It is a magnificent drive, replete with breathtaking vistas. He had taken Cate during her previous visits, but Rachel had never ventured up this way. Perhaps he could convince his sister that her future was in the great northwest. It was a thought.
Rachel sat next her brother and remained silent as Josh talked about what they would be seeing and possibly doing during their journey. Suddenly, she turned to him and broke into his travelogue. “It must have been difficult at the end.” She uttered the words sotto voce so those in the back sea might not notice. They were busy commenting on the majestic scenery.
“What end?”
“At the end with Leni, when she was sick, and you could not stay in contact.”
“Yes,” he murmured.
After a pause, Rachel added in a more insistent tone. “Let me say one thing at this point. If you think monosyllabic responses will suffice, there will be one less occupant in the car on the return trip. You do realize that it looks very much as if there are remote places ahead of us where they will never find your body. Just promise to reveal more when we can find a better place to talk, that you will share what is inside.”
Josh sighed. “Sorry, you deserve more. I gave you pretty much everything. Funny, I am not even sure why I gave you that stuff.”
“Not such a mystery, really. You didn’t want to carry the hurt alone anymore. Just talk about it when you, we can.” Rachel wanted to slap him but decided that attacking the driver might prove unwise. There were places where the drop off at the side of the road was dramatic and deadly.
His words came out slow, measured. “Well, it was agony. Throughout our reconnection, she had worried that someone would get hurt, one of our significant others would stumble on to our relationship and misunderstand, or worse, understand.”
“Does he mean me?” Usha asked from the backseat. Those in the back seat suddenly started paying attention to the conversation up front.
It suddenly occurred to Rachel that the backseat occupants must be clueless about where she had taken the conversation. “Sorry back there, selfish of me,” Rachel tried to apologize. “I was obsessing about something.”
“This must have something to do with your idiot brother, he is a lightning rod for drama.” Usha added.
Josh decided to resolve Usha’s confusion while ignoring another witty shot at his expense. “No, Usha, you were in Toronto when I ran across a woman with whom I had a relationship in college. I never mentioned her to you, I thought it long over then. I was yet with Connie when I found her again in cyberspace. It was one of those Facebook surprises that opened old feelings and wounds. Leni, that was her name, and I knew within days of reconnecting that the feelings were as strong as ever so we imposed a rule. We would never let this get out of hand. We would keep to a Do No Harm rule regarding the people in our lives. But yeah, she screwed up and her husband found out about our renewed connection twice.”
Wow, how soap-opera like.” Cate offered.
“I suppose. Toward the end, we were at it daily…e-mails, texts, and discreet phone calls. She must have gotten careless as she weakened and he found out a second time. We had to stop. For me, the agony was not being able to give her any comfort as her condition worsened, even from afar.”
“Condition? We’re clueless back here.” Cate asked, trying hard to catch up.
“Sorry…cancer,” Josh interjected. “I could always make her smile, laugh. It wasn’t always easy as the disease progressed, of course, but still I could do it. She was so courageous, so brave. A couple of times, when we were still connected, she had bad episodes where she almost died, but her bright outlook never wavered. When she was terribly sick, she had a saying that she was ‘down a quart of oil.’ I would have been whining uncontrollably. But she never lost her optimism, her brightness.” His voice quavered, and he tried to hide it with a cough. “He once sent me an e-mail—her husband—after we finally broke off communication. He warned me against contacting her again. Of course, I had no such intention. It would bring way too much anxiety to her at a time that she did not need it. But I knew there was no chance of seeing her before she passed. It could not happen. But I told him that the most important thing, the most important thing by far, was for her to be comfortable in her last days. I just hope she was. Damn, it killed me.”
The backseat had been silent through this. But Cate spoke up now. “I’m still lost here.”
“I’ll fill you in later, dear.” Rachel turned to her.
Josh continued. “She had one of those sites, I forget the name now, where people can keep track of what is happening and send best wishes. Maybe it was Caringbridge, that sounds right. God, I cannot even recall now how many people sent her notes and thoughts and prayers. There were thousands. If it were me, I would not reach double figures unless I went back to Rent-A-Friend.”
“Or those escort service girls might remember you or your money at least,” Cate offered to lighten the mood. Rachel was glad for her daughter’s biting wit, scolding herself for being too timid to respond at this point.
Josh chuckled. “They better given their prices.”
“What about Sarah?” Rachel suddenly became afraid that talking about Leni would get too deep for a public discussion, though her interest remained compelling.
“What about her?”
“Did you invite her to all this?”
“In fact, I did. We talked. She is still a dean at Rutgers but beginning to think about hanging it all up. Maybe a couple of years, she told me. She thought it would be a blast to come out to this, but it conflicted with her own graduation responsibilities, being the dean of a school and all. Everything you would have predicted for her came true—good career, strong marriage, successful kids, and now grandkids. Of course, she married a different guy from the one she was with when I knew her. Perhaps what made it easy for her to be with me is that she did not like this first guy all that much. Either that or she moved up in class though. After me, all guys would pale in comparison.”
Rachel guffawed. “Right! Compared to you, any man with a pulse would be a step up.”
“Hah, hah, good thing Connie is in the other car, I would be dog meat by now.” Josh laughed.
“Still lost back here. I’m going to need a scorecard if we’re heading down memory lane about Uncle’s conquests. I know, let’s talk about his use of prostitutes. Really, what was with that? Frankly, I was rather shocked when I learned about that,” Cate complained lightly but with a bit of truth attached. “I don’t know why but I was, probably had you on a pedestal.”
Rachel turned to Cate. “You will be sorry, he will go into his speech about male-female relationships. Pure BS. That pedestal will crumble away as he speaks.”
“Not prostitutes! And not BS, I only pontificate on sound insights that clearly emanate from a brilliant, intellectual mind. These women were professional service workers, very high class, and who told by the way?”
Cate laughed. “Hell, it is all over the internet. Okay, I cannot tell a lie, Connie did. She is a pistol, I like her a lot. She is funny as hell and very open. She tel
ls me everything about you. The ammunition I have now. Oh, and by the way, from which brilliant academic mind do you steal all your ideas. Surely, you don’t think them up on your own?”
“Why me, oh Lord? Please spare me. Why am I surrounded by a family of malevolent female jokesters? I feel like Job. And stop calling me Shirley.” Josh and Cate were always fond of this reference to a scene from their favorite movie…Airplane.
“You’re just lucky I guess.” Cate continued. “Tell, me, what line of crap did you give my mom about this prostitute thing making sense.”
“Oh shit, I should’ve trained you when you were young and malleable.” Josh sighed. “Listen up, now. I’m only going through this once. Payment for sexual services rendered is the bedrock of our way of life.” He tried not to smile. “These professional women perform an essential social service, they correct the supply-demand imbalance respecting sexual gratification. Moreover, it makes sense in terms of economic principles. The exchange is transparent, the price known, and the interaction ceases upon service delivery, or orgasm, whichever comes first. Then, and this is most important, both parties walk away without complications.”
Meena let out a small noise; she seemed embarrassed, but Cate whispered to her and she smiled. Meena then added, “So you reduce love to an economic exchange, do I understand you correctly?”
“Absolutely,” Josh affirmed. “Almost all human interactions have an exchange calculus as their foundation where some sense of equity is realized. Here we are talking about sex, not love. Very different.”
“You mean men see them as unrelated, because we all know men are, when all is said and done, pigs,” Rachel threw out.
“Hmmm, as I think on this, I’m really outnumbered in this car. Only Connie is missing from the usual gang of my female torturers. However, the men-are-pigs comment does remind me of a great joke.”
