Waltzing at Midnight

by Robbi McCoy

  And then Amy insisted on the three of us watching A Christmas Story together Sunday night.

  “I don’t really feel like it,” I said.

  “But we have to watch it,” she said. “We always watch it.”

  “That’s not a very good reason.”

  “Sure it is,” Jerry said, grabbing Amy around the waist, twirling her right off her feet. Both of them fell onto the sofa.

  “Right,” Amy said, sitting up and grabbing the remote. “It’s tradition.”

  Jerry smiled at her as she turned on the TV. “Come on, Jeannie. Humor us.”

  I sat with them to watch, for about the twelfth time, how Ralphie longs for a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. As usual, 150

  when appropriate, we all three joined in with the movie to chant,

  “You’ll shoot your eye out.” And every time, Amy and Jerry laughed in joyful collusion.

  When the movie was over, I went to my room, laid down with my face on a pillow, and sobbed quietly into it, listening to Amy and Jerry laughing in the other room. While under Rosie’s spell, I hadn’t realized how hard this was going to be. All I knew while I was with her was that it was absolutely blissful to be with her. But to really be with her, I would have to give up everything I knew and everything I had been for the last twenty years. I would have to become something that was a total mystery to me.

  I had no idea how to do that.

  Monday afternoon, she called and asked, “How are you?”

  “Torn,” I said, and thought to myself that the word was too mild. I was feeling shattered, shredded. “I’m actually pretty messed up. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

  “Did you know who you were before, Jean?”

  I didn’t need to answer that. I knew her opinion of that, and she was probably right, but at least I had words for who I was before. I was Jerry’s wife, Amy and Bradley’s mother, my parents’

  daughter. I realized as I thought this that the only way I had to describe myself were through my relationships with other people.

  I didn’t know if this was a bad thing. If I left this life for Rosie, then I would be her lover, and maybe still Amy and Bradley’s mother, and I didn’t see how that was any different. There had to be some other way to describe myself.

  “You’re feeling confused right now,” Rosie said. “It’s probably the worst possible time for this dilemma to come at you because of the holidays.”

  “Yes, probably. But I don’t regret it. It was absolutely wonderful. No doubt about that, Rosie. I loved every second of it.” “So did I.” Her voice was sincere.

  She was, perhaps, thinking of asking to see me again. After the last forty-eight hours, I knew I couldn’t face that. The huge emotional see-saw I was on was breaking my heart.

  151

  “I need to think things through,” I said. “This is just too hard.

  I can’t describe to you what it’s like here.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I understand.”

  “I want to see you, of course. I just can’t. Not now. Do you really understand?”

  “Yes, I do. You’re right. You need to be alone to work it out.

  It’s a complicated situation.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I do love you, Rosie. And I’m incredibly grateful.”

  “Try not to beat yourself up too much, Jean.”

  I didn’t talk to Rosie again before Christmas, but she did e-mail me to tell me that she was going to Portland to visit her sister. She said I could call her on her cell phone while she was gone if I wanted to.

  I did want to, but I didn’t. I lapsed into a paralyzing depression instead. Bradley’s absence wounded me deeply. It would have been so much better if we had all been together this year as a family. Jerry and Amy both noticed that my state of mind was troubled and my behavior was unpredictable. Jerry asked me what was wrong more than once. I found myself snapping at him, frequently, in irritation, because I was blaming him for my unhappiness, for standing in the way of what I wanted. Even though he didn’t understand it, he had started snapping back. It was a natural response.

  We spent Christmas Day with my parents, eating turkey and wobbly, can-shaped cranberry sauce and sweet potatoes with marshmallows melted on top, the same thing we ate every Christmas Day since I can remember anything. “It’s too bad Bradley isn’t here,” my mother said more than once. “Where is he now?”

  “He’s in Madrid,” Jerry said. “Boy, is he going to have some great memories from this trip. I wish I’d done something like that when I was young.”

  “You could have gone to Europe later,” I said. “Maybe not for six months, but for a couple of weeks. We could have done it together.”

  152

  Jerry glared at me. Must be my tone of voice, I reasoned.

  Maybe that was a resentful statement.

  “We went to England once,” Dad said. “I’ve got a little silver spoon with a Union Jack on the handle to prove it.”

  I saw my mother watching me, looking concerned. What, I thought. Everybody looks at me like I’m giving them the heebie-jeebies. Amy was mostly silent throughout the ordeal. She was sulking because she didn’t get to bring Norman, her current boyfriend. He was with his own parents, and I had refused to allow her to spend the day with them. I had no idea what had happened to Tommy. One day she was saying, “I’m going to the mall with Tommy,” and the next day, “I’m going to the mall with Norman,” without the slightest indication that anything had happened or that she had suffered in any way.

  When the kids get married, I thought, holidays will become terribly complicated, what with the in-laws wanting their fair share of children and grandchildren. And then I remembered my own complicated situation and became disconsolate. It would be so easy, wouldn’t it, just to resign myself to the life I’d made, to make a rule that you had to live with your original choices, even if you weren’t happy. Happiness was selfish, anyway.

  But happiness wasn’t such a neat package that could be accepted or rejected intact. Since falling in love with Rosie, I’d become less and less content with Jerry, and had been seeing him, unfairly, as the source of all of my unhappiness. It came out…

  often, in a lot of little ways. Our marriage was falling apart. Even if I recommitted myself to him now, I didn’t think I could repair the damage. You can’t go back to the time before enlightenment, to innocence. So, really, turning away from your own happiness was almost a guarantee of misery for the people around you.

  I felt so completely alone. There was no one I could talk to. I had nothing to counsel me but clichés. You made your bed, girl, now lie in it. Or maybe poetry, and the only poem I had ever bothered to memorize, Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,”

  was startlingly apt.

  That poem had seemed quaint to me in high school, a nice 153

  little observation about life’s choices. But it was my youth that had reduced it to that, I realized. It seemed so much more now.

  I was standing at an ominous crossroad. One direction was well-worn and safe. The other was a total mystery. That path beyond the bend, that void of the unknown, no matter how hard I kept peering down it, its potential dangers and delights remained impenetrable.

  And like the poem said, it was extremely unlikely that I would ever be here again, facing this same choice. There would be no second chance to take that road less traveled. Looked at in a certain light, in the light of my quandary, it was a dark and oppressive poem after all. There was no signpost. There was no guide. You just had to have the guts to do it, to venture forth, not look back, and take whatever came your way.

  “What’s wrong with you today?” my mother asked as we stood side by side in the kitchen washing dishes.

  “What do you mean?” I knew absolutely what was wrong with me. I was standing at that damned crossroad in a yellow wood, trying to peer around that damned bend into that damned unknown that I had to choose that would make all the damned difference. Damned Robert Frost!
>
  “You’re testy. And you and Jerry seem ready to cut each other’s throats. Did you have a fight?”

  “Not especially.” I dried a large white platter with a turkey shape molded into it. “It’s nothing, really, Mom, nothing to worry about.” What could I say? What could I possibly say to my mother about damned Robert Frost?

  During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, I didn’t hear from Rosie. I knew she’d come home and was back to work as planned, as there were e-mails. Not to me, but to the business, to groups of people of which I was merely another group member on the cc list.

  I walked through my days like a woman in a trance, doing all the things I had learned to do out of habit, but living elsewhere.

  My unoccupied body continued to function, remarkably, without my presence, its atrophied heart and lungs still forcing through 154

  enough oxygen to sustain itself. I had lived all of my life without her and it had been okay. Why did I now feel like I was drowning every minute that I wasn’t with her?

  On New Year’s Eve, at midnight, as the firecrackers popped all around the neighborhood, Amy declared, “Two thousand eight is the year I’m going to become engaged to be married.”

  “No!” I shrieked.

  Jerry and Amy both stared at me through the zeroes in their red plastic 2-0-0-8 glasses. “That bad, is it?” Jerry asked calmly.

  “No, it’s not that. It’s just that she’s too young. Amy, it takes longer than nineteen years to find out who you are and what you want. Besides, it doesn’t even make sense to plan to get married when there’s nobody around you want to marry.”

  I wasn’t in the mood to make any resolutions myself. I didn’t dare think about the year ahead. I knew that whatever happened this year, there were changes coming, formidable changes that seemed too large to grapple with. I had never in my life looked with such dread into the future.

  When Jerry came to bed shortly after midnight, instead of sliding in beside me in the dark, he switched on the light and sat up on the bed in his shorts and T-shirt. I rolled over and looked up at him, seeing that he was full of purpose. We were going to have a confrontation, I realized. I shoved another pillow behind me and sat up. “What?” I asked.

  “I’ve had enough, Jean. It’s time you explained why you’re behaving the way you are, why you act as though you no longer want to be here. Don’t you?”

  I avoided his eyes, and looked instead at the stubbled depression between his nose and mouth. I hesitated, not wanting to answer. Then, deciding a lie would only make things worse, that I had lied enough, I said, “I don’t think I do.”

  His lips quivered. “You don’t?” he asked, unbelieving. That wasn’t what he’d expected. He had expected the opposite, obviously, had expected that we could find out what little thing was wrong and fix it and things would be good again. Something fixable, that’s what he’d expected. Forcing the issue hadn’t been a 155

  risk for him, so he had thought.

  “I don’t think so,” I repeated.

  “Since when?”

  “I don’t know since when. Maybe a long time. I was in the habit of loving you for a long time. I don’t know when it became just habit. I’m just not in love with you anymore.”

  He looked confused. Why are you making me tell you this, I thought. It’s going to hurt. If you knew how much, you wouldn’t ask. “I’m so sorry, Jerry.” I started to cry silently. Saying it aloud had made it seem more true. And now I had made a move forward, had taken a step that couldn’t be reversed.

  After a silent moment, he bravely asked, “What do you want to do about it?”

  “I don’t know what to do about it. Please give me a little more time.”

  He sat staring at me for a minute, probably trying to think of something to say, but in the end, he gave up. He turned off the light and lay on his side of the bed silent but, I knew, awake. We lay there in the dark, back to back, not touching, more distant from one another than we had ever been.

  156

  Chapter Fourteen

  Two weeks into the new year, Rosie left me a courteous voice mail asking me to meet her at my new office. It was ready to be occupied. She was there when I arrived, sorting through paperwork. It seemed like a lifetime since I’d seen her, but it was really just a month. When she turned and looked at me over her reading glasses, I felt the strength drain out of my limbs. The softness of her cheek and the curve of her lip beckoned me on some primeval level. It all rushed back at me in an instant, all the need and overwhelming singleness of purpose, as if I was nothing more than a fish in a stream or a turtle on a beach.

  She was dressed simply today in black slacks, a tan jacket and an unadorned print blouse open at the neck, revealing nothing. I wanted to dive into that blouse.

  “Good morning, Jean,” she said cheerfully, but with no indication that she shared my feelings.

  “I’ve missed you, Rosie.” There was no cheer in my voice.

  “I’ve missed you too. How were the holidays?”

  “Miserable.”

  “You look tired. There are dark circles under your eyes.”

  15

  “I’ve had some rough nights.” I put my new briefcase on the desk and looked around the office. It was small, covered in a fresh coat of off-white, still smelling slightly of paint. There was a computer, fax machine, copier, all the modern necessities of operating a business. On the door window, “Vision Partnership,”

  was stenciled in block lettering.

  “This is really nice,” I said. “Good location, too.”

  “Jean,” Rosie said, enthusiastically, “look what I got for us.”

  She showed me a four-foot wide framed sepia print leaning against the wall. “This is a photo of downtown Weberstown, 1877. It’s taken from the bank of the Deep Water Channel, you see, looking east at the heart of the city when that’s all there was of the city. The waterway is about the only thing you can recognize, but if you look here, right here where Main Street comes in, you can see the little red church, St. Mary’s, where it still is today, and the original Weberstown Hotel. You’ve got to admire the job they’ve done restoring that, don’t you think? I mean, it’s spot-on except that there are no horses out front at the moment.”

  I don’t know why, but I loved Rosie for loving her town. Her face was alive as it had been when I first met her, sparkling with optimism and innocent joy.

  “It’s perfect,” I said.

  “Well, it ties things together, I think, the past and the future of the town, and that’s what this organization is about. We can hang it up later.”

  “Thank you, Rosie,” I said. “I’m really grateful for all of this.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to earn your keep. This is not going to be an easy job. But I’ll help you as much as I can. The others will too, of course. Why don’t we start right away? Let’s go over the outstanding business.”

  Rosie was strictly professional. I wanted to know what she was feeling. Was I already something in her past? Had the holidays, with their huge emotional demands, stolen her away from me?

  Had she found someone else? After all, it looked as though all I was offering her at this point was misery. Who could blame her 15

  for leaving me behind?

  We sat together at a work table where she had arranged some folders.

  “The first thing I want to see is the itinerary for the Beijing delegation,” she said. “Who are you going to meet with, where are you going to take them? It’s important to plan everything for these people, right down to where they take meals.”

  “I have a tentative schedule,” I said. “I’ll e-mail it to you later today.”

  “Okay, great. I’ve made you this list of contacts,” she was saying. “These are the people you call when you have questions—

  government officials, community leaders, etcetera.” She handed me the list. “I’ll try to introduce you to some of these people personally, as circumstances permit. We’ll b
e asking for a financial report once a month, of course, so keep track of your expenses.

  You’ll be reimbursed for anything out of pocket, but it’s always better to use the company credit card or the petty cash account.

  Gordon has set all of that up for you.”

  I nodded.

  “Jean, are you paying attention? You don’t seem to be with it.” She sounded irritated.

  “Sorry,” I said. I felt like crying, but somehow managed to avoid it. “Yes, I understand. I’ve been keeping up. I set up a filing system at home.”

  “Good. Then you know about the Career Day we’re planning.

  We’ve got two months to organize it. Send out invitations to county businesses and send flyers to all the high schools and the college, of course. You’ll have to design the flyers yourself. Can you handle it?”

  “Yes,” I said emphatically.

  “That’s the first smile I’ve seen since you got here, Jean.

  You’ll be surprised what hard work can do for you, to distract you from your problems.”

  So that’s what she wanted, to distract me from my problems, namely, my preoccupation with her? She wanted to move on, then? I knew that I couldn’t ask her, not then. I would have 15

  broken down, and I knew she wouldn’t want to see that. I was too weak, too vulnerable. And, Rosie, I couldn’t read her today.

  She was all business and there was no affection in her voice, as if she had never held me in her arms and tasted my body with her brilliant tongue.

  After leaving the office, Rosie took me to meet the Superintendent of Schools, where we discussed Career Day specifics. I was feeling better by the time we left. Rosie wanted to stop at her office to check her calls, so we went there next, to the place where this had all begun. It was an emotional homecoming for me, walking into that office again.

  The posters were gone. The rainbow flag was gone. The big-screen TV was gone. There was nothing, in fact, to be seen from that riotous, euphoric episode in my life. It would not have taken much to persuade me that it had never happened. Tina was sitting quietly at her desk and everything was back to normal for Rosie. Her life seemed undisturbed by all that had happened between us.