51/50: The Magical Adventures of a Single Life

by Kristen McGuiness

  Ben tells me how when he was eighteen, he lived an entire year making decisions with a flip of a coin. He was already sober at the time, so he agrees he could probably chalk it up more to youthful folly than actually being fucked up. But almost every decision that year was made by the toss of one very fateful quarter.

  “It was my higher power,” he explains. And so he decided not to go to college right away (tails); he decided to break up with his girlfriend (also tails); he decided to move to Israel for six months (heads); and he decided to sleep with his best friend’s girlfriend (heads, again). When I hear this I am in awe—what an incredibly ridiculous form of faith. To truly give up all power to some seemingly insignificant quarter and then to follow suit on it seems like exactly the type of ruthless bravery I have been searching for in another.

  “I still kind of live that way,” Ben says with a shrug. And I realize two things: one, I will use that story anyway; and two, it might not be the allegory I wished it would be. Because that’s the thing. Ben is fine with going wherever the flow takes him. In fact, he seems so nonchalant about whether he finds love or passion or the house and kids, I wonder whether he will ever be able to stop flipping that coin, not caring about the outcome.

  Ben and I walk back to our cars and hug. I can feel that something is there, some spark of intimacy and knowing. Much like the reflection I once so desperately sought, I see myself in Ben and him in me.

  I get in my car and see that my dad has called. I call him back because, just that day, I bought my ticket to Texas. He answers the phone, but I can barely hear him.

  “Dad?” I shout.

  “Hold on.” There are loud music and laughter and women’s voices in the background. It sounds like a saloon. It takes a moment for the noise to die down, and then I can hear him.

  “Hey, K.” I can tell he got my message. I can tell he is excited. “I’m in Mexico tonight. And God it’s beautiful here. The stars, the moon...we’ll come down here for a night when you visit, okay?”

  I smile because I am just as excited. “That sounds great, Daddy. And it’s perfect. Because I’ve decided that you’re gonna be my fiftieth date, so we’ll have to have it in Mexico.”

  “Oh, I’m gonna be your best date.”

  “I know you will, Dad.” And though I still feel a little awkward here, I know he will.

  I tell him that I am flying into Dallas, but that I will be able to spend two to three days at the farm. Though he wants me to come for a whole week, I am learning not too rush so quickly into things. We hang up the phone as I arrive at my own house. I walk home, down my favorite street, and I look up at the stars and the moon my father and I share, and I flip my coin.

  44

  Date Forty-Four: The Magic of Growing Up

  Three weeks after my night with Eli, Noelle calls me into her office. I have not spoken to Ben since our night out for tea, and I am beginning to feel that this adventure isn’t getting easier. I am not sure if she can sense the crack in my spirit, but when she offers me her home for July Fourth weekend, I smile for the first time in a week. I tell my mom about Noelle’s house, and it only takes a few minutes on the Internet for us to do something we have never done before. My mom and Nana will both be coming out that weekend to spend it with me, in Noelle’s La Cañada and in my Los Angeles.

  The next day, I go to my agency’s staff retreat, feeling as though neither of these opportunities are going to save me from the disappointment I have been carrying around lately. But that’s the funny thing about faith—it will always show up if you make room for it.

  I am sitting in the retreat, bored. It is at the Los Angeles Cathedral. I look down at the agenda and am pleased to see that the next portion will be a client panel, meaning some of our clients will be coming to speak to us. They are parents of our children, teens from our youth center, young mothers and grateful fathers. As one of our clients speaks, telling us that our agency is the bright light in their dark world, that they would not be able to survive without the work we do, that they are so grateful to us for making their children’s worlds a safer place, I see that bright light. And I know that I might make my mistakes, but I also make this. I am part of something wonderful. After the panel, a new presenter comes on to discuss child abuse. I walk outside and find three of our younger panelists sitting in the lobby. They cannot hear this part, these truths, these horrors of childhood that I fear some of them might have already endured.

  Since they are bored, I offer to take them on a tour of the Cathedral. One of the younger boys, Michael, tells me he has never been, and we all walk over together. I have known Michael since he was eight, and as he approaches fifth grade, I am beginning to understand what it means to watch children grow up. That there is a magic to seeing these young lives mature. Michael takes my hand as we walk into the chapel.

  I do not attend Church. I might have been born Roman Catholic, but outside of the traits of sexual shame and familial guilt inherent to its principles, I do not practice anything close to its demands. But as we kneel down on the padded bench, it doesn’t matter what I believe. I sit next to these beautiful young children, who without the right education and the right direction will spend their lifetimes on their knees. They bow their heads, and there the four of us pray.

  Two weeks later, I show up at Lidia’s and immediately see that the “For Sale” sign is down. I am saddened by this. I love Lidia’s house, with its Prius and work truck in the driveway, the aquarium in the foyer, and the large rambling front yard that I stare out at while talking with her. I ask if she is sad, and she says, “Oh no, not at all. I’ve found the perfect place.” She tells me about her new home, set off a dirt road up in Box Canyon deep in the hills around Chatsworth. She says it’s like entering a different world, and I can see in her eyes that this is all a good change. The divorce, the move, the next stage of her own journey.

  I tell Lidia how I ended up at Eli’s house, and I tell her what happened there.

  “Why do you think you were so affected?” Lidia asks.

  I look out the window, and then I smile at Lidia with tears in my eyes. “Oliver.”

  Oliver. The ghost of this story. The memory I have yet to expunge. Lidia asks if I still fantasize about having a future with this man I have not seen in two years. But I don’t. I think Oliver wanted someone else. I imagine that the woman he marries cooks dinner every night using organic vegetables and amazing sauces. She plays the piano and works in an interior design firm. She probably has an absentee father or some troubled element in her childhood, but funnels it into being comfortable around a large, wood island in the middle of her Spanish-tiled kitchen. I imagine a lot of silk and linen.

  Lidia has me get on the floor. And I cannot figure out which stone to choose so I choose two. Lidia places them on me, and I realize that this is no longer uncomfortable for me. In fact, I find myself channeling energy and spirit a lot more on my own these days. The energy has been giving me strength, and though sometimes that strength may be clumsy and a little messy, it’s still there. As I lie down, I tell Lidia about one morning in La Cañada when I went hiking with my mother while we house sat. We had brought Rocky and were walking back to Noelle’s when I told my mom about a vision I had while I was dating Oliver. He had asked me what I wanted from my life, and I told him that I saw myself standing at the edge of a yard, overlooking a cliff, staring out at the Mediterranean Sea, with two children standing on each side of me. They are my children, and we are vacationing at a home somewhere in Europe. In the vision, I hold their hands and stand in front of a white fence that lines the edge of the yard. I turn around and watch as my husband walks out of the house to meet us.

  “Everyone has that dream, Kristen,” Mom replied.

  “Do you have that dream?” I asked. She said no.

  “I doubt that everyone dreams as big as to think that they will vacation on the Mediterranean,” I explained. “But it’s really not about the location, Mom. It’s more about what I’m looking for, ab
out what I want. I want a life filled with magic.”

  And as if on cue, Rocky sat down and would not move. My mom turned around to look at him. We were worried he was tired or sick, and then we looked up, and our breath stopped short. A deer stood there, having emerged from the woods. A doe peeked out from behind him. They skipped across the road not ten feet from where we stood and leaped into the crags of the mountain on the other side. The doe disappeared, but the buck stopped. He turned around and looked back. He looked directly at me.

  And I know that’s what Lidia and I are working on: magic. Oliver believed in magic, and maybe that’s why I still hold such a candle to him. But I also know that I cannot be true to the magic if I keep pulling disappearing acts. I need to stand strong like that deer. And despite the barking dog, despite the intimidating humans, despite all my fears, real and false, I need to stop, hold the gaze, and speak the truth.

  I lie on the floor; Lidia sits over me. “Kristen, we are made of mother earth. And there is nothing that we can do with our flesh that she has not given us the right to. We can throw out those dogmas of our childhood. We can have faith that we are all cut from the same cloth. You can do whatever you want as long as you are okay with it. As long as it is part of your truth.”

  “I know.” I am beginning to cry.

  “Are you now ready to speak that truth?”

  For a long time that’s why I drank and used. So I could leave; so I could find the abyss. Lidia asks me when I first checked out, and I can’t even tell her. I can see myself through the years doing it. At four, at five, at seven, at eight, eleven, twelve, sixteen, last week. I leave, but my choices and consequences are made in my absence.

  It seems an awfully unfair way to live. And certainly not one that is going to help me find, channel, and create that energy I now see everywhere in my life. It just won’t.

  “Are you ready to be present now?” Lidia asks. “To join the council of your ancestors, to create your destiny, to be a real part of this world, even when you are scared, when you are hurt, when you most want to run away?”

  I tell her yes, and she asks me to make the request myself. And I do. “Great Spirit, council of my ancestors, I ask for the strength, for the courage, to live my life here, now. To be present, to fulfill my destiny, to experience every lesson along this great journey.”

  The energy is thick in the room and tears stream down my face. I can hear Lidia getting emotional, and I realize that just as she is healing others, so she is being healed. And it makes what we do such a beautiful process. Because our energy goes both ways, it goes all around, and it fills the room.

  And then I let it go. I let it all go. Fear. Pain. Oliver. Magic. Doubt. My future. I let the energy flow out, and I feel more real than I ever have before. Lidia and I close the session, and I get up. We turn on the lights and open up the blinds, and I don’t even know what world I am in.

  She stands in front of me and says, “You are the last energy session I have scheduled to take place here before I move.”

  I could be bashful and pretend like it isn’t perfect, but it is, and so I speak my truth: “What a beautiful conclusion.” And she agrees.

  45

  Date Forty-Five: The Sparkling Ribbon of Time, Act II

  I am sitting in the button-down shirt I wore today and my underwear. A crumpled tissue sits by me. My eyes are swollen. My heart hurts. And I feel like I might have had one of the best dates of my life.

  As I tell Oliver as we walk past the Sparkling Ribbon of Time at the Observatory, “Some dates are romantic. And some are truth-seeking.”

  “So this is a date?” he asks.

  I shoot him a glance and smile. “Yes, but this is a truth-seeking one.”

  I called him yesterday morning after my 7:00 a.m. meeting. I leave a strong, professional, very dignified message, and he calls me back almost immediately. We talk for half an hour, and he is the same man I knew so many years ago. The same poetic rat-a-tat, the passion, the intimate knowing that always made me feel like he was on the inside of my brain. We hang up with plans to meet up, and my eyes swell with tears. Because I know instantly that I am still in love with him. And that no matter what, our date will end as the truth-seeking variety and not the romantic. At first, I say that it cannot end any other way. That I cannot go down that road again. But then I am talking to my sponsor, and she asks me why not.

  Lidia also asked me that, and I begin to ask the same. Why not? Why can’t this story end the way most people like them to—happily? The long lost romance reignites. The flame turns back on. Prince Charming returns home. But that was always the problem—I was never Oliver’s home.

  We meet the following afternoon at the Observatory. I set it up that way because I have so far taken everyone I love there, and Oliver is no different. I also love a good setting. I get there ten minutes late because I have been at the stables, and I need to spend some time with Arrow before I can spend this time with Oliver. I text him as much. I get there, and I don’t see him anywhere. I go inside and pull out my phone and see a message from him: “I’m jumpin.” I think he must not have gotten my text. I think he is leaving. I go outside to call him, realizing how cruel it would be if I finally show up, present, whole and ready to go, and because I am ten minutes late, I will have missed him.

  Thankfully, he is there. And after a couple of minutes, we find each other and go inside. I show him the ribbon of time. I want to stop and talk with him about the vastness of the universe and all the things that fuel my flame. But we are there for one reason—to talk about a little romance that happened between two people four years ago. Nothing more. And though we might lean slightly into each other, though we might still walk in perfect step, I can feel him holding back, and I know that there is someone in his life. But I don’t ask. Not yet.

  Because I don’t want to know yet. I want to pretend for a moment that there might just be a happy ending here. We get water. I chat with the cashier and offer to pay, and I watch as Oliver bends down nervously to pick up a quarter he has dropped. And I realize that I am calm and cool and strong in this, and that my dear friend is not. I am in this moment, standing in my riding boots and my tight jeans, standing with this man who is real and next to me and everything I have ever wanted. I know that he can tell that I have changed, that he can see it in the way I smile, the way I speak, the way I lead us outside and take control when before I had none. And maybe that’s what is making him nervous.

  We try to find a quiet spot, and we end up on the observation deck, overlooking the entire span of this great city where we met. I pull out the last chapter I wrote from when I was at Lidia’s, and I read it to him. Because in it, it says everything I could say, or want to say. It also opens us up to saying everything that needs to be said.

  And we do.

  Oliver tells me about me, about what I was like when we were together. He leans up against a pillar, and I can feel his energy. Not in an explosive way, though, just in the solid way that he is telling me things that have been sitting around for years waiting to be said. I listen to him as though he is describing what someone was like as a child. Because I don’t really remember what I was like before I got sober. I know some things, but I forget sometimes that I wasn’t all bad. That people loved me.

  I ask, “Did you love me?”

  He doesn’t hesitate as he holds my gaze. “Yes. Absolutely.”

  Oh, God. Oh, God.

  For years I never knew, and yet I always knew. I press forth. “Then, what happened two years ago? When we went out to dinner, and I stayed at your house?”

  He is prepared for me to ask this question. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I just got scared. I can’t tell you why. I just did.” He pauses, “And I think I might have just begun dating someone at the time. I think that’s when it started.”

  And I already know as I ask, “Are you in a relationship?” He nods his head. I try not to let it hit me. I had prepared myself for this. And then for some reason, I had unprepa
red myself for it. So it hits me. As I look into his eyes, as I talk honestly with him, I feel her presence in our conversation. Oliver tells me about her. How he knew her for years, how she has brought a quiet wholeness to his life. How she helps him to focus and listen and do the right thing.

  And I know right then what I have known all along: that Oliver found himself a schmoo. He tells me the woman I painted for him wasn’t quite right, and I agree. Because I thought he would have ended up going a little exotic. But that was silly of me, because that’s not what he would have wanted at all. He would have wanted to go home.

  Oliver and I revisit memory lane for a bit. A few great kisses, a few hungry moments. He tells me how he has been reading about St. Francis of Assisi. Oliver always loved telling me stories. We had both hidden in books when we were kids. Once we met, we found ourselves again under the sheets, making a tent, whispering late at night when the rest of the world was asleep. We made up stories about our future; we peeked out as dawn began to rise; and we pretended the night would never end. And then we left each other, before we ever got a chance to see what happened next. But Oliver’s stories, the poets he introduced to me—they were the keys that unlocked my sobriety and saved my life.