Casual Choices

by Tom Corbett

  Another pause. “Yes, I do have a theory. We were burdened with a moral compass. We cared. I think it is called a conscience, a soul. Do you have any idea how easy it is to go through life without one of those damn things? You just live out your years. You fill in the time between birth and death with stuff—work and eating and crapping and enduring an endless series of trivial events and fucking when you get a chance. What’s the meaning of all that? Who cares? Why care? You are just part of an endless series of relatively meaningless lives, just follow your given script, find your marks on the stage, and read all your lines. Then all will be okay.”

  He took a deep breath. “But Rachel and I did care, a lot. I think she was much better at redirecting her inquisitiveness into science and her caring into a healing profession while I got stuck in the labyrinth of the primeval, metaphysical forest and political theory. I couldn’t let things go. I tried to make sense of stuff, impose some moral certitude on an immoral and senseless world. I always had to think about stuff, figure everything out for myself. I remember, as a kid, walking down the tough streets of my neighborhood thinking that we had so much in this country. Why weren’t we giving our excess food stuff away to places that needed it, those godforsaken countries where children were starving to death every day? Why were we not turning over heaven and earth to help? I kept thinking that we should be working toward one government for the entire planet. All these separate nations were silly. Anything that kept people apart was ridiculous and counterproductive. This was when I was like ten or twelve years old. Even then, I was appalled by the way we treated blacks. Another cause not particularly favored among my Irish tribe. Wow, I can still remember arguing that the Supreme Court had a right to end school segregation. Less than two decades later, South Boston blew up when they tried to bus kids for the sake of school integration. Even Whitey Bulger got involved in that to save his Irish tribe. Do you know how many other kids in the hood thought such things? None, zero, nada, zip. Those kinds of feelings are a curse, a terrible disease that needs to be cut out like a fetid tumor.”

  “Josh, that’s where you’re dead wrong. Don’t you see? That is why I love you.” She stopped. It had just come out. She did not mean to confess it so easily. But it was out there. “Damn it to hell, I do. Do you really think I would have exploded last night if I didn’t care so much? I would have just kicked your ass to the curb. I couldn’t, damn it, you’ve gotten into my head.”

  In silence, they started walking again through a wooded section near the west end of the campus. Connie put her arm through his without ceremony. He did not react outwardly but felt a warmth throughout his body as she moved against him, her breast pushing against his side. He was surprised by his reaction, a kind of peace that seldom accompanied any sign of affection.

  “Sure, that’s what all the girls say. You do know I have done research on this topic. After years of intensive field work, I’ve found that deeply felt ideals and a five-million-dollar bank account will draw women like flies.”

  “I want to warn you, old man, that your sister has given me detailed instruction on where to best whack you in the stomach. Wait, you have five- million bucks?”

  “That’s for you to find out.” Josh cracked his habitual smile. “You know, when we were young, when I wasn’t playing ball or the piano or hanging around my dad’s bar listening to stories of ‘the troubles,’ I would watch television with Rach. She would lie next to me with her head on my thigh. I would stroke her hair. We watched Gunsmoke and the Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger, all those westerns. Our favorite show was You Are There, where Walter Cronkite would narrate some great moment in history. Then we might chat about what moment we had just watched. I could tell that she was precocious. She was going to be a star. I felt such affection for her. I can stand a lot of pain, but running out on Rachel was the hardest thing about leaving. It was so hard. I remember sitting in a small room in Toronto, drinking cheap wine and crying into the night. I cried for a lot of reasons but for none more than my sister. She meant so much to me, she means so much.”

  “And she knows this how?”

  “I think. Doesn’t she?” Suddenly, Josh was concerned. He was sure he had expressed his feelings to her, but the more he searched his memory, the less certain that he was. Why did he assume that people knew what was inside him? How would they know? There was no running story line across his forehead. It was just that expressing himself was not the easiest of tasks. “I do hide, don’t I, behind that damned wit? You know, the wit is real. It just comes out naturally, unconsciously.”

  “I was afraid of that.” Connie leaned in closer as they walked.

  “Yes, it is a blessing and a curse,” Josh noted, “but what it enabled me to do is avoid saying what I feel. I guess I did keep people at arm’s length, make them feel that I was happy and content even when I was dying inside. Those ancient Greek and Roman actors would run around the stage wearing masks which clearly identified the emotional content of their character. I ran around life’s stage wearing a comedy mask. Perhaps that’s the special burden of funny people, to turn sadness and worry and pain into humor. Still, it is a special gift from the Gods, I could always leave them laughing.”

  “Yes, that you did,” Connie agreed, “and frankly, there are worse things.”

  They reached the far western end of the campus, where Marine Drive separates the university from the bordering trees and beaches. After they crossed, they stopped on the compact sand of Wreck Beach. The sun was now in the final stage of existence for that day, finding its way through puffy clouds and reaching toward darker ones on the distant horizon. They stood silently for a few moments watching the display as if they had never seen it before.

  “You’re full of shit, you know,” Connie finally broke the silence.

  “A well-established fact, I concur. But you bring it up now because…”

  “Because I watched you and your friends closely and I talked with them on my own. Have you figured out why your friends were able to put things behind them? Of course not. Well, do you remember Jacob Marley, from Dicken’s Christmas Story? Jacob was destined to carry this ponderous chain around for eternity for the sins he committed during life. To me, you look like Jacob. You are dragging all this guilt and failure with you. Think about your college friends for a moment. They are not carrying all this crap around with them. In fact, they seem pretty damn happy.”

  “They are not Irish,” Josh tried weakly.

  “They are Jewish, for crying out loud, just as bad in that guilt thing. Okay, Peter isn’t. In any case, kiddo, it is finally time to put that Irish crap behind you. Hear me! You don’t hear me blaming stuff on my Chinese heritage.”

  “Hmmm, I thought that Chinese stuff was what made you so inscrutable.” Josh kissed her on the forehead. He was relieved when she didn’t pound him somewhere in the stomach area. Feeling spared, he went on. “In truth, I’m not sorry about the guilt I felt. Had I not felt such things, it would have been a clear sign that I was a sociopath. Everything comes back to the golden rule, the Aristotelian sense of proportion and moderation. Some guilt demonstrates that you are a real human, but too much paralyzes you. The trick here, as in everything, is finding the right balance. I can get there now. I’m sure of that. I will thank Peter for the rest of my life. He probably kept me out of jail and brought my college friends back to me. It is funny, thinking back doesn’t hurt anymore. I still remember being in the many sessions where we were trying to figure out what we would do about the war we all hated. Our emotions were following the escalation of the war. We also were spiraling ever closer to actions we could not take back. Everything then took on an apocalyptic aura. You thought, what would I tell my children and grandchildren about what I did to stop the insanity? Turns out that the next generations cannot even remember that war, it is a paragraph in their high school history book. Of course, I avoided any possible prospect of explaining myself to my own children by getting a vasectomy soon after getting to Toronto. No offsprin
g for me. If I could not prevent the insanity, at least I could avoid exposing more victims to it in the future.”

  “Oh my,” Connie murmured. “You were hurting.”

  “Yes. But I recall this night when Morris asked us all to make a commitment. Now, I can see that it meant little. We were just kids. We were making no legal commitment. But we felt as if it were a moral statement we were making, the most important decision of our life. It seemed real to us. As I have reflected many times, those days were so compelling. Every moment seemed fresh and unique. Every idea was new and exciting. Every relationship was monumental. You can never relive those fresh adventures. Little did we know that all else would be pale reflections of what came before. When the moment came to make a choice, I knew I should not do it. That was not me. Then I saw Peter get up and leave. He was always the sensible one. I stayed, not out of total conviction but a sense of loyalty to those I loved so dearly. I did not know myself well enough. Hell, maybe I thought I was being my dad in that moment, fighting the just cause.”

  “Do you know what that tells me? You consider things beyond yourself. There can be no doubt of that, none whatsoever. And Eleni? What about her? She has always been the big question in my head. Let me be clear if I can,” Connie said in a low voice. “From what I can figure it out, she was it for you. Like you said, most of us have some early crush that we never forget. But this is different. You appeared to have stunted your emotional growth after her. It really was like someone excised that part of your brain that controlled feelings.” She paused. “This is important, Josh. You need to restart that part of you. It is time.”

  “I understand.” But then Josh said nothing. He looked out over the water. He loved this place, the serenity that water always afforded. “Connie, I won’t lie. Losing Eleni is something I’ll always regret, never forget. This sounds like nonsense coming from a guy who could never commit, but it struck me at some point that maybe you have one great love in your life. I know, most guys go from pillow to post so that sounds ridiculous. But I only know what I felt. It was as if this was that one connection that could never be replaced. Why did I prefer my professionals, why did I jump into the fake marriage with Usha? Why did I never have a real marriage? I thought I could never fill in that hole where my heart had been. I patched all the wounds over with the anesthetic of humor, the narcotic of work, and a few diversions.”

  Connie stepped back a half step. “Josh, I—”

  “Please, Connie, let me finish, please.” He looked at her with an intensity she had not seen before. “Remember when we first got together. It was so casual and relaxed. We almost fell into living together. It was like, gee, this is a nice segue from Usha. Please forgive me for this, but one attraction you had for me was that you were not a threat. I didn’t think you cared for me all that much. I was a convenient person to share some things with, what the kids would call a friend with benefits. How great for a guy like me, the man who is deathly afraid of a real relationship, the guy who had never seen a mutually beneficial loving relationship in his own world, a man whose one loving connection was the source of unending pain.”

  “But those e-mails, so much love.”

  “And an equal amount of pain. I was never sure I wanted to feel anything again. You know, a child that burns his hand on a hot stove doesn’t touch the stove again, unless that child is an idiot like I was. Thing is, I never wanted to feel that kind of pain again. But then, I found that my simple and convenient arrangement with you was not working out. You were too comfortable for me, we laughed too much, could talk about so many things. You weren’t like those narrow, hard scientists I would meet in university committee meetings. One night, I remember waking up feeling very uncomfortable. I got up and started pacing. I came back to the door of our bedroom and watched you for a long time. It was coming back, that caring. I didn’t know you had come across some of the e-mails and was on the verge of pulling away. As you began to disengage from me, Leni declined and then died. For a while, I thought that it was all for the best. But it wasn’t. I knew it then, but I would not permit myself to accept the truth.”

  “Truth?” she asked.

  “That I had fallen in love with you.” There was no smile on his face. “Now, it strikes me that Leni came back into my life for a reason, to remind me how to love. She would leave the stage all too soon, but I would be left with an understanding about myself. I would be reminded of what I was looking for in another human being. It is you. Simple, in the end, once you get it. When you walked away, I knew I was in love with you. My sin was not chaining you to the house.”

  She put her head on his chest. “Josh, you have to understand. I also need to trust. You know I don’t need a man in any traditional sense. But yes, the thought of having someone in my life, an anchor, a center if you will, a…what is the word I am looking for?”

  “The word doesn’t matter. We know what it is.” Josh whispered. “That’s what I will always be grateful to Leni for. She showed me I was capable of love, but I wasn’t man enough to grab ahold of it with her. Then she came back into my life, just before passing, to whack me upside the head.”

  “What?” A flicker of recognition passed across her face.

  “Never mind. Connie, you know the old saying about ‘we get old too fast and wise too slow’ or something like that? Well, that’s me. This week has wakened me up. I can see what a total nimrod I’ve been.”

  “No, Josh, you’re being way too kind to yourself. Besides, it is my job to make you feel like a shit, you hopeless nimrod.” She had taken one of his favorite lines and found she could smile.

  Josh laughed out loud. “There it is. That is exactly why I love you.” Everything stopped for a moment. Each looked at the other as the smile returned to his face. Josh said the following words slowly: “That’s why I love you, Connie.” He took a deep breath. “Wow, I can say the word without breaking out in hives.”

  Connie stood still for what seemed an eternity. Finally, she moved against him and pulled him close. She had missed him, his body. She realized she was rubbing up against him ever so slightly. “You are on probation, you know.”

  “Okay, is it like a civil service thing, six months and then I am off for life?”

  “No, the probationary period is indefinite. But I’m sure you will screw things up in six days or less. In the pool, Rachel has six hours before you screw up. And about Eleni. I had to ask. At the same time, I understand. Not totally, I am still mystified that such a short and nonintimate relationship formed so long ago can hold on so tenaciously to people who otherwise seem sane. Well, she was sane, I am sure, despite falling for you. Still, I’m glad you had her in your life. Without her, I would not believe you would be capable of love. You would not have even made it to probationary status.”

  They took one last look at the western sky. The horizon was shading toward pink. Then they turned for home. “You do realize that you still will be subject to the withering Connelly wit?”

  “I do,” Connie said solemnly. “We Chinese have suffered much, I can take it.”

  “Good, because you cannot take out what God has put in.” Then Josh assumed a serious tone. “Thanks for giving me another chance. I’m thankful, really.”

  Connie put her head on his shoulder. “I know, I could feel your appreciation rubbing up against me. It was hard to miss, pun intended. And while I admit that the very thought of you inside me makes me, how shall I put it, moist with anticipation, no, we were never going to do it on the beach.”

  “Damn,” Josh murmured. “You must admit that is a kinky thought, two old farts going at it on Wreck Beach as the sun sets.”

  “No way, Romeo. First, it would have been one old fart and one totally foolish but younger woman. Second, all I would need is for a colleague to drive by and see me screwing my brains out on a public beach. Think that would look good for the next chair of my department?”

  “Really, the next department chair? What sins did you commit to warrant that sentence
to hell?”

  “Falling in love with a putz,” Connie responded.

  The big Irish smile was back on Josh’s face. “Do I know this loser?”

  They continued walking hand in hand as they traded insults. Any random person passing would assume this was a long-married couple enjoying a lovely evening.

  They found Rachel and Usha nibbling on some food when they got back.

  “Good to see you back. We were just about to give Morris your scent and use him to track you down,” Usha said.

  “My bet,” declared Rachel, “was that Connie was burying your body somewhere along the shoreline.”

  “And you wanted to rush out and save me?” Josh asked, knowing the answer.

  “Hell no, I wanted to help her.” His sister laughed.

  Rachel then took Connie’s hand. “Come and help me in the kitchen. We’re putting something together.”

  Off the two went. Josh was certain that Rachel would be grilling her on what had happened. Wow, he thought. She does care about him. No matter how badly he behaves, people care. Then Usha walked over to Josh and kissed him on the cheek. “I take it all is okay with Connie.”

  “Yes, I am on probation. I guess there really is no accounting for taste.”

  Usha smiled; she was exceptionally fetching when she smiled. “I’m so happy, and Rachel will be thrilled.”

  “I have often thought about this.”

  “About what?” Usha asked.

  “Why do women want to punish men by getting them into relationships?”

  Usha started to chide him and saw his crooked Irish smile. She had never fully embraced his humor, mostly deadpanned and dry. Connie was perfect for him. Rather, Usha went on in a low voice. “It is okay between Rachel and me. You are okay with us as a couple. We haven’t talked, and I don’t want anything under the surface.”

  “Well, there is one thing that bothers me.” Josh looked very serious.

  “What?” Usha was concerned.