Falling in Love

by Stephen Bradlee

  The closing was huge, a merger between two Fortune 500 companies. While dozens of lawyers were working on it, Adam was the main man and by Tuesday I was too busy to type documents. I was constantly making and fielding Adam’s calls, receiving and sending out documents and mostly parceling out Adam’s time. Some of the most powerful people in the corporate world wanted to talk to him and they all had to go through me. It was exhilarating.

  The closing took all day on Friday and my job was strenuous and easy. I did whatever Adam asked. When I was done with one task, he gave me another one. I couldn’t believe that with everything on his mind, he still made sure that I wasn’t overwhelmed. The closing was still going strong at seven when Adam told me I could leave. I felt great. I felt that working for Adam was a lot like being in recovery. I may screw up royally one day but I hadn’t done it that day. The best part of the week had been at five-thirty. Armed with a very important certificate, I rushed by Grace as she stood at the elevator waiting to go home and with a sunny smile, I said, “See you on Monday.”

  I went straight to group looking like a real business woman “dressed for success.” Even Katherine, Claire’s sponsor, commented on how nice I looked.

  Even though I was flush from my first real successful week of work ever, I was worried about the following week because I was beginning college. What if I failed? How could I become a teacher? Then what would I do? And what if I passed? At one course a semester, a degree would take forever.

  But when I voiced my concerns in the Shamrock, Gregory laughed, “You’re worried that you might fail and worried that you might succeed? A perfect addict’s attitude.”

  “But what’s one course going to do for me, really?”

  Elaine smiled. “It will get you one course closer than you are now. Maybe you’ll learn that you don’t want to be a teacher.”

  “But I do! But I’m afraid. Sitting in a classroom again might bring up memories that I’d rather keep forgotten.”

  “They are going to come out sooner or later, Sherry,” Elaine assured me.

  Gregory smiled. “Am I the only one who thinks it’s ironic that you want to be a teacher but are afraid of a classroom?”

  Just thinking about my last bout with college made me shiver. Finally, I admitted, “I’m not really sure why I’m so worried about being in a classroom. As I recall, the last time I was in college I spent all of my time in bars and beds.”

  “Small successes, Sherry,” Elaine reminded me. “If you are still sitting in that classroom at eight-thirty Wednesday night, it’s a success.”

  That weekend, I read the first two books in the course, Pickwick Papers and The Mill on the Floss. I wasn’t taking any chances. On Wednesday evening, I got to class early to sit there alone in case I threw up or something. Strangely, it felt great. My fear wasn’t about sitting in a classroom but about sitting there drunk or hungover or wearing the same clothes I’d worn the day before with half of my underwear missing.

  As the room filled up, I made eye contact with no one. The teacher arrived last, an elderly man with thinning silver hair, kind eyes and a cardigan sweater that looked as old as him. I immediately knew I could learn from him and I was right. By the end of that night I was hooked on the class and on learning again.

  Cracking books was hard while working full time but having a zero social life was a big help. My whole life soon consisted of working, gym, class, studying, eating, sleeping and, of course, repeating a thousand times a day that I would show love for myself but becoming the person I’ve always wanted to be. Whoever the heck that was.

  I had planned to write my first paper on Great Expectations but after reading Tess of the d’Urbervilles, so many ideas came flowing out of my head that I started to write them down. I thought it would be good practice to see what my teacher thought so I would have an idea of what he might be looking for. I carefully explained that I was writing my “real” paper on Dickens but that I had just “jotted down a few notes” about Tess. The next class he handed back my “notes” and on the front was a large A. An A! I had finally gotten an A in a college course!

  Excited, I could hardly wait for group to tell Elaine. The moment she arrived, I assaulted her. “I got an A on my first essay,” I proudly announced.

  “The one on Great Expectations? Sherry, that’s great.” Elaine was practically glowing.

  I shook my head. “I wrote about Tess of the d’Urbervilles.”

  Elaine’s face darkened and she shook her head. “Are you serious? A novel about a virgin who gets raped and it then goes straight down hill until she is hanged? You don’t see any correlation here?”

  “I got an A,” I said weakly. “An A. I wanted an A.”

  Elaine wasn’t mollified. “Let’s see if you can get one for Great Expectations. Or Jane Eyre.”

  I didn’t speak to her for the rest of the night and I didn’t go to the coffee shop afterward. Elaine called to make sure I was all right. I didn’t answer.

  I couldn’t wait until spring finally sprang. I was getting tired of sitting in a gym riding a bike to nowhere while watching an all-news cable station or sports shows pondering whether or not the Knicks or Yankees or Giants will make the playoffs but I never had the courage to change the channel. Besides, I was always clicking away, trying to tell myself I would become the person I’ve always wanted to be. The instant an hour was up, I would quickly shower and run outside so that I could have a cigarette. I got so good that occasionally I could make the transition from jock to smoker in less than seven minutes.

  Because I tried to make myself as unattractive as possible, bundled up in sweats with a baseball cap pulled down to cover half of my face, men usually left me alone but one afternoon, as my parole time neared, a muscular young man mounted the bike next to me, even though there were several other vacant bikes.

  “Good workout?” he asked with a smile

  I nodded without looking at him.

  “I’m Carl. You like the bike, huh?”

  I nodded again and then glared at him, hoping he would realize that I didn’t want to talk. “Afterward, would you like to get a glass of juice or something?” I shook my head. “Come on, how about a quick drink?” I shook my head again. “Then maybe tomorrow. I see you here all the time.”

  I turned toward him. “No,” I said emphatically.

  “You got a boyfriend?” he asked.

  I answered, “No, but…” Why didn’t I just say yes!

  “Then let’s go out. See if we hit it off. How about this weekend?”

  I got off my bike. “No,” I repeated.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve got to go.”

  I started to walk away but he grabbed my arm. “Come on, I’m harmless. Give me your number.”

  I ripped my arm away. “I said, no! Damn it! NO!”

  I rushed for the door. “Jesus. What a bitch.”

  I turned around, unsure of what I had just heard. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me.”

  I flushed with anger but after a moment I smiled. On my 113th day of sobriety, for the first time in my life, I’d actually said no to a man.

  “Thank you,” I replied, and walked out.

  I returned home to hear my phone ringing. Dede had been back in town for two weeks but I hadn’t had time to see her. Now she desperately needed my advice. A half-hour later, we met in a Chelsea bar called “Plants,” a combination plant shop and a bar adorned with beautiful fernery. Dede wasn’t at the bar flirting this time. She was in a corner table by a fern, looking lost in thought.

  “Thanks for coming,” she said, after I’d sat down and ordered a diet Pepsi. She looked really glad to see me.

  “I just had a drink with the director of the OBP,” she told me. When she saw that I had no clue what that was, she added, “Off Broadway Playhouse. It’s on Forty-Second Street, between Eighth and Ninth. It’s a great role. I could get a lot of work out of it, maybe even TV.”

  Dede mentioned three T
V actresses and one movie actress who had gotten their breaks after starring in an OBP play. Then she added, “I just don’t know whether or not to take it.” She sipped her Fume Blanc and added, “In basically every play that OBP puts out, the female lead is always young with a great body and has to do a nude scene. But my mother will throw a shit fit.”

  “Is she that religious?” I asked.

  “Christ, no. It’s just about control. When I told her I might want to be an actress, she immediately said that if I did a nude scene, she’d disown me. Christ, I was nine at the time. I didn’t even know people appeared nude in movies.”

  Dede drained her glass and then ordered another one. “Knowing my mother, when she’s seventy, she’ll probably meet some toy boy and leave it all to him anyway, or to her horse. But she would love to hold that threat over me.”

  “But it’s not like a movie,” I protested. “She’ll probably never find out.”

  “Yes, she will. The director will take pictures at the dress rehearsal, including of me topless. If, later, I get a TV show, or something, then he’ll sell the pictures to the tabloids for big bucks. He says that the only way he can keep the theater open every year is by selling nude pictures of the actresses that got breaks out of his plays. It’s probably BS but what am I supposed to do?”

  Dede again drained her glass and motioned for another one. “You know how many female leads there are in plays on 42nd Street within two blocks of Broadway? Seven. I counted them. And I can be one of them. I can show what I can do.” She looked at me, “What do you think I should do?”

  With my background advising someone to take off their clothes was probably the last thing I should do but I heard myself saying, “If you do the play and nothing happens with your career, your mother will probably never find out and if you get a TV show and it becomes a hit, you may get rich enough that you won’t need her money.”

  “You’re right,” she said, “I’m doing it. Thanks. Where should we eat?”

  At a neighborhood Italian restaurant, Dede mostly talked and I mostly listened. I loved that Dede was so open. Within two hours, I felt like I knew everything about her life, her problems with her boyfriend, her dialect coach, her scene partner. Everyone else I knew seemed to have so many secrets that they were holding in and I probably held in the most of all. Dede held in nothing. I wanted so badly to be like her, to just let everything all out. But me doing that was a dream, or maybe a nightmare.

  Dede later gave me a ticket for opening night and both Dede, and her breasts, were awesome. The play was an instant hit and Dede was touted in all the papers as a rising starlet.

  Within a week, she called me to say that she no longer did the nude scene. “The director is afraid that someone might sneak a camera into the theater and take a picture and sell it to the tabloids before he can sell his. Ironic, huh? The play is now a hit and ninety-nine percent of the people who see it are going to see me with my clothes on. It’s all because of you, Sis. You got me to do the play.”

  Somehow, I didn’t think Dede’s success was due to me but it was nice hearing it anyway.

  I was drawn to a drugstore window adorned with a large photo of a stunning silk swallowtail butterfly kite soaring above a sunny beach. I was mesmerized by the butterfly, remembering that such a beautiful creature with its array of brilliant colors was once a slimy caterpillar. Within minutes, I was en route to Central Park armed with my own butterfly kite in its gift box with a card that the clerk was kind enough to inscribe, “To Sheryl. With Love.”

  At the edge of the Great Lawn, I unwrapped my ‘gift,’ set it on the spring grass and admired it before setting about threading the bamboo rods into the wings’ pockets and down its spine and looping the line to the keel. The breeze seemed fine to me but every time I tossed the kite into the air, my brilliant butterfly crashed to the ground.

  “There’s not enough wind near the ground,” a small voice informed me. I turned to see a young black boy in a T-shirt that read “Future Rock Star” above jean shorts and dirty knees. “You’ll have to run with it.”

  Rock showed me where to hold the string so that it had enough play to let the wind catch it and then together we raced into the breeze. Suddenly, the string leaped out of my hand as the kite sailed upward. “Let it out slowly,” Rock advised me. As I did, my gorgeous butterfly dipped downward, heading for a crash. “Pull on it. Run!” Rock exclaimed. I did as I was told and my butterfly soared upward, its rainbow array of colors sparkling in the sunlight. I was thrilled!

  “You’ve got it now,” Rock assured me.

  For the next half-hour, with Rock’s assistance, I flew my butterfly higher and higher until we could barely see it reaching up toward the skyscrapers and my spool of string was gone.

  “I love this,” I let Rock know. Then I asked, “Where’s your kite?”

  “I don’t have one. I was flying my friend’s but now he’s flying it. Did you lose your kid, Lady?”

  “Yes,” I smiled. “But I’m finding her.”

  He looked around. “Where?”

  “Do you like this kite?”

  “Are you kidding? It’s great.”

  I handed him the spool. “Well, now it is yours.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  “Sometimes. But it’s still yours.” He beamed with delight. “Take good care of it,” I told him. “It’s always been good to me.”

  I walked away feeling glorious.

  I was still repeating my aphorisms a thousand times a day but not always giving it my full attention. I began to fear that muttering, “I will show love for myself by becoming the person I’ve always wanted to be,” might be watered down in my subconscious mind if at the same time I was crying about Elsa leaving Rick at the end of Casablanca. If I had to constantly “show love” for myself, I wanted to make sure I got the full effect.

  I also wanted to try to stay in some like of shape. I hadn’t worked out since being called a “bitch” at the gym but now that the weather was continually advertising spring, I decided to try running. I figured that jogging on the streets of New York City was probably a death-defying experience and since a sizable portion of the City’s population seemed to be jogging in Central Park, I decided to be one of them.

  Jogging around the reservoir again appealed to me. The water felt tranquil and the budding leaves on the trees seemed hopeful. Every semi-sunny day, I gasped and slogged around that one-and-a-half mile oval three times. That was enough. I wasn’t training for any marathon, especially since my favorite part was flaming up a cigarette as soon as I finished.

  When the prospect of running in a circle seemed too boring, I trotted along the bridle path that wound its way through the park’s splendor. I was forced to keep an eye out for the horses galloping by but they were often so beautiful and graceful that I usually stopped to watch them, feeling very much like the awkward two-legged that creature I was. They also offered the challenge of sidestepping mature.

  One day after I’d finished dodging horses, I was walking toward the subway while whispering my affirmations and clicking my counter as I avoided looking at a nearby group of women kicking a soccer ball around.

  “Look out!” I heard and turned to see a stray ball heading straight for my waist.

  Instinctively, I trapped it and kicked it into the center of the group. As I walked on, an older pretty brunette came running up to me. “Hi? You play?”

  I keep on walking. “A long time ago.”

  “Listen, the League hasn’t started yet. But we were hoping to scrimmage today, only we’re a couple of players short. Would you like to practice with us?”

  I shook my head as I turned around. Then I stood still stunned and speechless. She couldn’t be the world’s greatest women’s soccer player ever? I stuttered, “Are you Paula Harper?”

  She smiled softly. “What’s left of me.”

  No! Paula Harper couldn’t want me to play with her! I laughed. “You’re kidding, right? You don’t really want me?”r />
  “Yes, I do.” She smiled softly again. “Come on, we’re really just kicking the ball around. It’s early in the year. What have you got to lose?”

  I was shocked. Paula Harper wanted me to walk on the same field as her? I had always desperately missed soccer but I had so many bad memories, especially one, that I had never attempted to play it again. But in recovery I was now trying to face my past demons. How much could a scrimmage hurt? Besides, no matter how badly I played, for the rest of my life, I could say that I once played with Paula Harper. “Okay. But consider yourself warned.”

  She held out her hand, “Please to meet you…”

  “…Sherry,” I said, shaking her hand. “Sherry Johnson.”

  “Then let’s do it, Sherry.”

  We walked toward the field. “Don’t you want to strip off your sweats?”

  Ostensibly, I had always been swaddled up in a sweatsuit to make me perspire more and thus give me a better workout but in reality sweats were my security, protecting me from revealing my body to anyone. I looked around. There wasn’t a guy nearby. The other soccer players, who had stopped to wait for Paula, were staring at me. In the middle was attractive blonde who, despite wearing a knee brace, had the most beautiful legs I’d ever seen. I couldn’t believe that any guy would ever look at me if I was within fifty yards of her. I quickly stripped off my sweats and sprinted onto the field.

  “This is Sherry,” Paula called out to a chorus of greetings. One woman, a tall redhead, came over to shake my hand. I recognized her as Christine Cane. She was now a sportscaster who had recently covered the Olympics. She had played with Paula throughout her career and together they had chalked up two Olympic gold medals, one silver and two World Cups. I looked for the third member of their triumvirate, Rachel Miller, who had been their goalkeeper, but I didn’t see her. Maybe she was one of the missing players.