Falling in Love

by Stephen Bradlee

  Dressed in a tuxedo, Gregory looked elegant, and distraught. “I’m sorry but Elaine’s cell is off and John’s and—I can’t believe it!”

  He threw up his arms as he paced across the room. I glanced at the newspapers, magazines and clothes strewn about and vowed to keep the place tidier should unexpected important guests like my landlord decide to visit. Gregory didn’t seem to notice. “I just had a fight with Skip,” he spat in disgust. “It was my fault, of course. Christ! Fourteen years sober, and I’m still craving to self-destruct.”

  I stared at him, dumbfounded. “Fourteen years?” That seemed like an eternity to me.

  Gregory turned to me and snapped, “Deary, you can be a million miles down that fucking road to recovery. And you’re still just one foot from the gutter!”

  I glanced at the clock. Seven minutes.

  “God, I’m just spouting twelve-step bullshit. It’s a goddamn cult, you know? Only I don’t know where to get deprogrammed.”

  Gregory circled the room, narrowly missing the small antique coffee table that Claire and I had found on Jane Street and had hauled it home together at the height of our love. One of the legs still needed a good shot of glue but she ditched me before we got around to doing it. For some reason, I cherished that rickety antique with only three good legs but now I feared one of Gregory’s errant whirling knees might snap the leg beyond repair. But I couldn’t bring myself to utter, “Mind the coffee table, please?” I didn’t even bother looking at the clock again. I knew tonight was a goner.

  “I’m scared to have friends outside the program,” he rattled on, “because I might fuck them.” He swirled around, barely missing the crooked leg again. “And who do I fall for? Skip! You know what his problem is?”

  I played along. “No.”

  “He’s goddamn normal! He doesn’t understand this goddamn disease. How could I fall for a man who doesn’t have a clue who I am?”

  I shook my head.

  “And his parents! God! They live in some burg in Midwest where the only gays are on TV. I mean, I’m the first man he ever brought home, right? I was wondering whether to wear designer body armor and you know what his parents’ big concern was when they met their son’s faggot lover?”

  I shook my head again.

  “If we’re going to adopt them a grandchild? Who are these people?”

  Gregory broke down in tears. I went over and hugged him. Finally, he stopped sniffling and wiped his eyes, trying to pull himself together. He said softly, “Love’s a bitch, ain’t it?” He tried to smile. “I’m really sorry.”

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “Do I look okay?”

  I studied him. Except for the puffy eyes, he still looked pretty gorgeous to me. I nodded.

  Gregory smiled. “Then I probably am.” He kissed my cheek. “I’ve got to run. If I don’t show for this thing, he’ll probably think I killed myself.”

  Gregory rushed out with the leg on my coffee table still intact and my clock reading: 7:01. I had another week to avoid the call, another week of fantasies.

  That Friday was Claire’s three-month anniversary. I wondered if maybe she had only wanted to have had coffee with me. I almost didn’t go, unwilling to admit that Claire had been sober longer than me but that seemed childish. Sobriety wasn’t a battle against anyone else, only against one’s own demons. Actually, I was really happy for her. Anyone who could last more than a few hours in recovery from this addiction deserved my applause. And maybe there was hope for me, too.

  I even managed a smile when I saw Claire standing proudly before the group.

  Tonight, as always, her sponsor, Katherine, looked stunning in a seemingly-tailored suit. “We all know how hard Claire has worked,” Katherine said, “and it is with great pride that I present her with her ninety-day chip.”

  Claire gave Katherine that killer smile as she took the chip and I remembered how much I loved that smile. Then, Claire burst into tears.

  “I slipped three nights ago,” she said softly. “I just didn’t have the courage to tell you.” Claire handed back the chip.

  Katherine embraced her. “We’re tied,” she said softly. “Neither one of us has acted out today.”

  Every night, I was taking longer and longer to get to sleep, as conversation after conversation with my mother raced through my mind. How many conversations could we possibly have? Endless, it seemed. By Thursday, I was exhausted and secretly hoped that Gregory, Elaine, anyone, would interrupt my vigil. But as the digital clock clicked 8:45, there would be no reprieve. I stared at the now-soiled slip of paper despite the number having long ago been burned into my memory. I dialed the area code and hung up. A minute passed. I dialed again, then again, each time adding another digit, as if building up my bravery. During each pause, a loud bleating would blast into my ear. Finally, I got to ten digits. I held my breath but not for long as the phone barely rang before being snatched up and a teenage voice cried out, “Phone my cell. Mom’s expecting a call.” I slammed down the phone.

  Was that my half-sister? Jack hadn’t mentioned if the two children were girls or boys, or their ages. Maybe I misdialed myself into some other family’s drama. But I knew I hadn’t. My mother was expecting an important call and it sure as hell wasn’t me. But what could be more important than talking to her long-lost daughter? I didn’t want to find out.

  I decided to give her an hour to rid her life of its daily rituals and then give her the surprise of her life. I lay down on the sofa clutching to my breast her copy of A Child’s Garden of Verses. I didn’t read any of the poems. I knew them all by heart anyway. Softly, I recited, “You too, my mother, read my rhymes, for love of unforgotten times, and you may chance to hear once more, the little feet along the floor.” Within minutes, I was asleep.

  When I called the following Thursday, the phone rang several times before the lovely voice of an adult woman answered, “Hello.” My mouth moved but in stone silence! Talk, Fool! I clutched the handset to my ear. She repeated, “Hello,” now irritated. “Mother?” I tried to groan but it was only a gargle. She hung up and the line went dead. Then the bleating shook me out of my paralyzed state. I hung up. I wanted to call right back and explain who I was and what had happened. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  As the weeks went by, my calls became sick rituals. Sometimes I’d hang up before it rang, sometimes after someone answered. But I never managed to utter a word. I finally stopped, afraid that she would change her number.

  The longest conversation we had was on a rare Friday call. My mother sounded so lovely that I decided I would say something, anything just to talk to her. Although I wanted to say, “Hello, Mother, this is your daughter, Sherry,” I instead heard myself ask, “Is Debbie there?”

  “No,” she said. “I think you have the wrong number.”

  “This isn’t the Jordan residence?” I asked, trying to keep her on the line.

  “Afraid not,” she replied cheerfully. “What number are you calling?”

  Despite her number being burned onto the back of my eyelids, I couldn’t even remember her area code. In a panic, I blurted out an old number of mine in Indiana. Then I panicked, afraid that she might realize that the area code was near Rosebud.

  But she had been gone so long that the number didn’t seem to register with her. “Wow,” she replied. “Some wires must have really gotten crossed. That number isn’t even close.”

  “You didn’t sound like Debbie’s mother,” I said merrily.

  “That’s because I’m not. Goodbye,” she said and hung up.

  You’re not Sherry’s mother either!

  She had sounded so friendly that I was angry with myself for not saying my name and I tried dialing her again but it was hopeless.

  I finally decided that a phone call was too big for both of us and that a letter might help soften the shock of hearing from me. I spent three hours sailing through stationary stores, before returning home armed with a box of pale pink letter stationary with a smal
l rose on a top corner. Like it mattered? Three hours later the entire box adorned my wastebasket with drafts of Dear Mom letters, or rather Dear Mom, Dear Mother, Dear Barb, Dear Mrs. Paulson letters. And that was only the salutation.

  What was I going to say? Tell her my whole sordid life or limit it to my hopeful recovery. A lifetime is a lot to cover in one letter.

  Ask her questions? Should I keep it simple and unreal—’How’s the weather in California?’—or get serious and real—’Why did you leave me?’

  Still, I made myself a deadline to write her by December 10th. I didn’t want to wait any longer and risk this colossal missive getting lost in some Christmas rush.

  My favorite fantasy was that no matter what I wrote she would be so thrilled to hear from me that she would immediately board a plane to come to me. Leaving her family alone so close to Christmas probably wouldn’t make sense to most people but I rationalized that she would want to get to know me first before springing her secret past on her new family. Of course, we would both fly back to San Diego in time to all have a wonderful family Christmas.

  My apartment would have to be presentable for her arrival and it didn’t exactly ring of Yuletide cheer. I decided that I needed a tree before I could write a letter because then I could invite her to come and see it.

  A man on Hudson Avenue sold me the biggest evergreen he had, and the most expensive. “You’ve got the best Christmas tree in New York,” he said, pocketing way more than I could afford.

  “The best tree is in Rockefeller Center,” I reminded him.

  “The second best tree then,” he said.

  I tried dragging the monstrosity across the West Village before two gay studs offered to flex their muscles and hoisted it on their shoulders. “You going to be able to walk around in here,” asked one, as the tree stretched from one wall of my living room floor to the other. I had high ceilings but this was New York where most living rooms were closets in other cities. But they politely set it up for me anyway.

  Undeterred, an hour later, I was stocked up with vibrant baubles, sweet little angels, sparkling stars, winking lights, stunning ice sickles, lovely holly and streams of shiny tinsel. Everything but mistletoe. To the jovial rhythm of Holiday music, I exhausted the next several hours meticulously decorating my green giant while breathing in its lovely fragrance that filled the room. I named it Eve and knew that even if reality set in and my mother didn’t fly off to the Big Apple, I could still share it with someone, Elaine or Dede who was back in New York for five weeks between cruises. Maybe even Gregory might drop by to freak out again.

  After midnight, I was admiring my creation when I heard footsteps in the hall. I could share it with someone right away. I swung open the door to see Paully, the superintendent, lugging his heavy tool case. He glared at me. “You got a leak, too?”

  “I’d like you to see something,” I said, stepping aside. Paully stared at my masterpiece. “Wow! You’ve got the best tree in New York.”

  “Second best.”

  The next night, as I sipped hot chocolate while admiring my towering bedecked evergreen, I decided on a new plan. I would send my mother a Christmas card. No tortured language detailing my boring useless life, no annoying raising of unanswerable questions. Just a simple missive wishing her Holiday cheer. The critical aspect, of course, would involve no real words at all, just my address and phone number. Let her struggle with formulating a way to tell me why she had abandoned me forever. If she just sent back a card with “Happy Holidays” or even ignored me, how much worse off would I be? It was perfect. I was a genius.

  I bought a box of the plainest cards in the store—a boring wreath on the cover and only “Merry Christmas” inside. I then proceeded to write the beginning of fifty different Christmas cards. I knew it was exactly fifty because I used up the entire box. Yes, I could find demons even in a Christmas card. What if I began Dear Mom and someone else opened the card, someone who didn’t know she had another daughter? Like my half-sister with the phone crisis, or worse, Mom’s mother-in-law! Ditto with signing it, “your daughter, Sherry.” But if I just signed it Sherry, she might think she didn’t know any Sherry and throw it out. In the end, I flipped the last card into my overflowing circular file and chalked up another failure in a life filled with them.

  But in the end the failure wasn’t the letter writing or the card. I could have sent anything and probably got some response. Even though I had told myself all of my life that I wanted to call or write my mother, I really didn’t. I wanted to her to call or write me. To show me that I meant something to her, anything, but something. Sure, I would have loved for her to admit that she had been wrong and expressed regret but almost anything would have been better than nothing. But all I had ever gotten from her was nothing and nothing was what she would get from me.

  But every night, I came home and sat on the sofa sipping hot chocolate while I admired my wondrous Eve and breathed in her fragrance, sometimes with Robie beside me, someone alone. I not only hadn’t invited my mother to see Eve but not even Elaine or Dede or anyone else. I had created that magnificent masterpiece for me. After a lifetime of hating myself and especially hating being alone with myself, I was finally enjoying my own company. When Dede wanted me to go with her to Palm Springs for the Holidays and Elaine invited me over for Christmas dinner, I told them both I had other plans.

  On Christmas morning, I showered, fed Robie, watered Eve and opened the two presents under her, a CD and a purse, both from Santa Sherry. I had purchased a 15-pound turkey along with stuffing, potatoes, corn, yams, marshmallows, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie with whipped cream. Having searched the internet for various turkey cooking instructions, I settled for one in a bag. That turned out to be a great idea because even though the turkey was supposed to have thawed out in twenty-four hours on Christmas morning it still looked like a slab of concrete with legs. When I finally got it unfrozen, the bag cooked that sucker in three hours. I didn’t need a thermometer. Robie, on his hind legs and stretching his nose as close as he could get it to the oven, was enough for me.

  I made my first fire in the fireplace and Robie and I proceeded to gouge ourselves until we were almost sick. Then I lay back on the sofa and looked lovingly at the glowing embers playing pretty shadows on Eve and fell asleep. It was, far and away, the best Christmas of my life.

  I didn’t want my tree to become another dried-up crumbling fantasy so on New Year’s Day, I stripped Eve down and packed all of her splendid trappings in a closet. But I couldn’t part with her yet. So I enjoyed one last evening of admiring her natural beauty. The next morning, I couldn’t bring myself to set Eve beside by the garbage cans. She deserved better. Instead I set her by the front steps, letting her stand tall, and for the world passing by to enjoy glimpses of her beauty. When I returned home from work that night, Eve was gone.

  When Dede learned about my Christmas and related the horror she had endured in the desert with her mother and her new stepfather, she let me know that she wished that I had invited her to spend Christmas with me rather that the other way around. But then she quickly chided me for working for less money instead of returning to Whitney, White and Spencer. “You quit for a full-time job. Fine. It didn’t work out so now you go back. That’s what temps do, Sherry. It’s not like you screwed up and made a fool of yourself.”

  If Dede only knew. But she was right. Whitney was so big that they could find a place for me, hopefully with some lowly first-year associate. I decided to give them a call but promised myself that the moment I acted out, or even had one drink, I would call in sick and never return. Dede said that she now had her choice of cruise ships but I knew that if she literally broke a leg, she could well be back at Whitney and I didn’t want to soil her star status.

  “Johnson. Johnson,” said the new secretarial supervisor, a stunning-looking black woman, as she studied her computer screen. Then slowly, she turned toward me. “You’re Sheryl?”

  I nodded.

  She clic
ked another screen and mused, “He still doesn’t have a permanent.” With an odd look, she said, “There’s a note that if you ever returned here, Mr. Turner wants you to work for him.”

  No! If, or probably when, I screwed up again, I didn’t want to do it to him. “I’d prefer someone else,” I tried to say cheerfully.

  She laughed out loud. “This place is filled with rainmakers but Adam Turner is a tsunami. If he wants you, he gets you.”

  “No, please!” It sounded like a plea. It was.

  Her eye became slits. “Look, I don’t care how big he is. If anyone messes with my—”

  “No!” I practically screamed. “He was always a perfect gentleman, a great boss and…”

  She waited, “…and?”

  “Nothing.”

  She stared at me for several seconds. Then her face softened and she leaned back in her chair, never taking her eyes off me. “Well, Ms. Johnson, let me put it this way. You will work for Mr. Adam Turner or you will not work at Whitney, White and Spencer. Now, where do you plan to be at ninety-thirty next Monday morning?”

  At nine-fifteen the following Monday, wearing Dede’s smartest suit, I sat at my station outside Adam’s office with a body filled with more mixed feelings than I had felt in a month—tingling fear, upset stomach, dry mouth, slight perspiration. I longed to take off my suit jacket but I wanted to make my best impression on Adam.

  Then I heard a loud sniff and knew that Grace had come onto the floor. She was holding a sheaf of phone messages. I had forgotten to stop by reception to pick up Adam’s early morning calls! Grace stared at me, then sniffed again, “At least, you won’t last the week.”

  She was almost right. A few minutes later, Adam rushed in and set a couple of documents on my inbox with a quick smile. “Hello. Welcome back.” Then he began returning phones calls. I barely spoke to him all day. I tried to rush the changes on the documents and messed up most of them but Adam patiently told me to relax and take my time. The closing wasn’t until Friday.