Love Finds Its Pocket

by Mary Scarpelli

  She spoke on the phone with Antonia at least twice weekly; their bond was being forged more strongly with every conversation. Part of her wanted to record their discussions and shove them in her biological mother’s face as an admonishment on how a mother should love her daughter but didn’t want to sully the experience with Antonia by dragging her mother into it so let that idea slip away.

  “Sorry about this abrupt segue, but I wanted to let you know that Antonia and I have been discussing Monica.” Kat wanted to broach the topic days before but there never seemed to be an appropriate time.

  Kat certainly didn’t want it to be brought up by Antonia without first giving Toni fair warning. Toni voiced a brief complaint that such a conversation threatened to ruin her appetite but knew Kat well enough that she wouldn’t have brought it up without good reason, so steeled herself to suffer through it, if only to find out where it would lead.

  “I never knew that your mom was so intuitive and progressive. She really is quite a wonderful, amazing woman,” Kat paused to collect her thoughts.

  “Are you going to leave me for my mom?” Toni teased.

  “The thought had occurred to me,” Kat teased in return.

  “Fine. Let’s see how long it takes for you to lose your mind. You were saying?”

  “She knew that Monica was a depressive, borderline personality type who was holding onto life by a thread. She worried day and night that Monica might drag you down with her, knowing that your heart was soft and had no frame of reference for the negativity and anger that Monica had simmering barely beneath her surface layer.

  “She said that when she hugged Monica during their introduction, Monica stiffened, grimaced and nearly recoiled in revulsion. She didn’t understand what you saw in her – how you could be in love with someone so obviously devoid of the capacity for love, someone so guarded that affection was reacted to with repugnance.”

  “I remember that day. It was horrible. She went to my parent’s house like only two more times after that; she said it was because of Giovanni but I knew better. She was cold to all of them; I was embarrassed and upset and totally at a loss about how to handle it.” Toni put down her fork, unable to continue eating. “I didn’t realize my mom got so upset.”

  “Worried, Toni. I said she was worried. I’ll get to my point so that we can move off of this topic. I’ll be quick about it,” Kat explained.

  “Your family is fairly religious – Catholic, right? So they harbor an absolute respect for human life but your mom... Toni, your mom said that there simply are some people for whom the right to end their lives should be sanctioned. Yes, we were specifically speaking about Monica. She’s wise enough to see that there’s nothing anyone can do to save her. I just thought you should know that; you know, just in case you’re holding on to a tenet because you think it’s part of a doctrine that you are somehow expected to follow.” Kat said, immediately regretting her decision to take it that one extra step.

  “Seriously Kat? Do you really think I’m so provincial that I have to refer to some antiquated text to receive guidance because I’m, what, somehow incapable of thinking through a moral quandary on my own? Geeze, you really do think I’m dumb, don’t you?” Toni was quickly becoming infuriated.

  “Hey, slow down there, partner. I never said, nor did I mean to imply anything of the sort so please tuck away your sensitivities so I can finish my thought, okay?” Kat wished that Toni could jump into her head and cull-out the point she was desperate to make so they could move on to a less morbid topic but since that option did not exist, pulled back a bit and tried once again to continue with her commentary.

  “I’d been trying to wrap my head around this Monica thing myself, but kept hitting a wall so that’s when I decided to discuss it with your mom – sorry, just ‘mom’, and she totally surprised me with her open mindedness and willingness to embrace something so outside of her normal frame of reference.

  “I guess I’m bringing it up because after speaking with her, I’m no longer conflicted about euthanasia or a person’s right to die even if their mortality isn’t in imminent danger due to having a fatal disease or something equally tragic and was hoping you too could at least try to reconsider your position.” Kat said, almost begging.

  “It’s not that I don’t understand where you’re coming from – and by the way thanks for ganging up on me with my mother; slick move, Kat.

  “But here’s the thing. It’s not that I don’t think Monica wouldn’t be better off dead because she is and always has been miserable, angry and severely depressed. Maybe I’m a naive idealist – I don’t know, but I think that once you start making these types of allowances for non-imminent death via suicide, then it’s a slippery slope and the morality issue will get murky before you realize what happened.

  “You know I’m right so please hold off on your rebuttal – yeah, I can see it forming on those lovely lips of yours. I’m almost done so hold on.

  “Ironically, people living in so-called free societies have been making similar arguments against legalizing certain actions/behaviors; take gay marriage for example. Stupid people use the argument of ‘if we legalize that, then what’s next, bestiality?’ like those two things are somehow joined at the fucking hip or something and then with marijuana, the nay-saying dumb asses say ‘if you legalize that gateway drug then we’ll end up with a drug-addled society and in due course all of our kids will move on to heroin’, when their focus really should be on alcohol because that one clearly is the most dangerously destructive, easily available gateway drug there is, so addictive and lethal, but none of the policy-makers will say jack about that bad boy. I’ve even heard people say it shouldn’t be classified as a drug.”

  “Breathe, Toni,”

  “Sorry - I think that regular folk are just plain morally weak and stupid and inclined to make only self-interested decisions. You should know better than to bulk me in with those butt-heads that reside at the apex of the bell curve.

  “I’m offended that you’re not giving me any credit for having thought this through - that you would just assume I’d lazily accept someone else’s argumentation as my own. Geeze.” Toni was clearly upset, which was quickly putting a damper on the evening.

  “Toni, Toni, I never meant to offend you; and I don’t think you’re stupid; you should know better than that so I’m asking you to trust me, okay? I just thought your moral and ethical structure was so firmly fixed that once you’ve made a decision, you’ll be dogmatic and not allow any personal situation to sway your opinion toward changing your mind to the opposing view, that’s all,” Kat said by way of a deeper explanation.

  “Not helping, Kat, Not helping at-fucking-all.” Toni shook her head although she was feeling far less hurt than her tone implied.

  “Okay then, let me give it a shot. I’ll try making your argument but from a different angle. Let’s go back to our favorite societal topic, ‘freedom of choice’. We’ve agreed that it simply doesn’t exist, right? Right. Not even in this supposedly ‘free’ country because if it did, then the power brokers wouldn’t be able to control us enough to distinguish us from them or be able to place us under their domain of indentured servitude for the purpose of their continued exaltation. The loss of decent wages in this downturned economy will hasten society’s complicity in their little power play.” Kat was pleased to see that Toni was nodding in ascent, so decided the water was going to be the perfect temperature for her to dive right in.

  “We’ve seen how individual control and decision making authority has been systematically wrested away from the individual citizenry under the auspices of the need to enact then enforce laws and regulations to ensure the continuation and preservation of the greater good, right? The broken windows policy and all that.

  “Problem is, once we start applying proscriptive restrictions to behaviors, moral quandaries notwithstanding, we steal away personal responsibility, which begins to dull an individual’s self-reliance and decision making abilities to
the extent that external motivations and excuses soon become spuriously assigned – remember the Twinkie defense?

  “Political egoism feeds off of its belief that government can cure humanity’s ills by holding themselves up as saviors, by proposing more and greater invasions into our personal freedoms, always admonishing that we’ll somehow stand to benefit from their intervention or suffer mightily without it.

  “Obviously, there are certain moral and ethical codes that we should adhere to as a matter of course, doing no intentional harm to others and the preservation of human dignity being the most foundationally fundamental tenets of ethics there are, but once a governing body, be it state or religious, starts placing doctrine against all manner of actions, dictating to others how they must behave or treat themselves, then one begins to lose their confidence, competence and identity. Ideas, rather than originating from the individual, are culled from the collective; group-think, that insidious virus, becomes embedded in our minds before we realize it has taken root.

  “Decisions such as assisted suicide, drug use, gay marriage, freedom of speech and the like, come under the control of someone or something outside of the individual. At that point, you are simply deferring to others what your moral code should be and that’s where people’s responsibility for their own actions begins and ends.

  “Then, to make matters worse, injury on top of insult after having kicked integrity in its ass, insane excuses for inhumane behaviors are offered up as a matter of course, regurgitated and digested so often that sensitivity to the horrors have become dulled; a society inured to the atrocities against man and beast alike. Any manner of offense against individual, society or the environment, are responded to with a fine, imprisonment or simply a wrist slap while providing a ready-made absolution.” Kat’s momentum was interrupted by a palm held up in front of her face.

  “Just hold on a minute. I’m not disagreeing with you.” Now it was Toni’s turn to be interrupted.

  “There’s a ‘but’ statement hanging onto the end of your comment, and that’s where I’m going with this diatribe. So hold up. Patience. Please.

  “We cannot equally apply a cookie-cutter series of rules to everyone because you know what? We’re not all created equal. There, I said it. Some people are wired differently and you can argue as much as you want about nature versus nurture versus external environmental factors but that doesn’t alter reality.

  “Laws should be applied in broad strokes, intelligently and with the benefit of human evolution at its core rather than thinking that regressive, restrictive nonsense is the direction in which we should be heading because, what the hell, it’s somehow more noble to live an utterly simplistic life in the wild while wiping one’s ass with a leaf rather than find a more efficient, less profitable way in which to generate toilet paper.

  “But on an individual level, let’s take your brother for example. Raised in the same house with the same parents, same rules, same love as the rest of you but there’s a dislocation in him that nothing seems to be able to resolve. He has a propensity to silently seethe; he seems so angry and bitter while the rest of you are well-adjusted, loving and generally happy people. His interpretation of life, his world view, must be vastly different than the rest of the family’s and seems unalterably skewed toward the negative for reasons no one can quite pinpoint. So, one wonders, what the hell happened to him?

  “Your mother, of course, blames herself but that’s bullshit because she’s a wonderful mother whose strength and love would hold up even under the most intense scrutiny. She has taken responsibility for him because it’s easier than blaming her son, someone for whom she would dive in front of a bullet if that would make him a happier man.” Kat paused to make certain she hadn’t lost Toni. Family matters were a sensitive topic for her and she didn’t want her intentions to be misunderstood.

  “Are you suggesting that Massimo and Monica get together and off themselves in a mutually inclusive suicidal ceremony? Two depressive birds, one fatal stone, right?” Toni’s sarcasm fell with a thud.

  “Oh, Toni; please don’t. I’m just trying to illustrate that one shouldn’t have to be in their death throes, gasping out their last ragged breaths of life in order to seek release from their hell at some state-sanctioned hospice center.

  “Last year, I agented a book about the reality of dying, an expose of sorts, by an author who was a career hospice nurse and I learned so much from her during the multiple rounds of editing and discussions and wanted so badly to share her advice with the world that I pushed hard to sell her book.

  “The so-called ‘natural’ process of dying is so much more brutal, complex and inhumane than any manner of assisted suicide could ever be. There’s no death with dignity as you are wallowing away your final days, slowly declining, bowels loosening, vital organs shutting down one by one, while a steadily increasing drip of morphine dulls your senses to the point where you cease being your ‘self’ long before you’ve pulled in your last desperate breath.

  “So my point is, why is it considered moral and noble to remain alive while attached to man-made devices that were designed solely to sustain ones most basic bodily functions, being drugged into oblivion while you wait in frightened anticipation for your body to die, versus taking matters into your own hands and exiting on your own terms, lucid and still in control, dignity intact?

  “And that’s just the corporeal aspect of the debate. What we’re confronted with right now is a physically healthy but emotionally damaged woman desperate to end her life. It’s ridiculous that she has to beg for our complicity on the QT.

  “When did the politicians become society’s moral police, enacting laws that force life upon someone who clearly no longer wishes to sustain it? What some see as morality, I simply view as an imposing, proscriptive dogma that dismisses our freedom of choice.

  “We all die, Toni; that’s the only damn thing we all have in common. To try and ignore the implications of that fact is simply childish.” Kat paused to secure some sustenance and sip her wine so Toni took that opportunity to comment.

  “I read that book,” Toni said. “I was captivated from start to finish,” then after casting her eyes downward, continued with, “I read everything you got published while we were apart. It helped me to feel closer to you.”

  Kat put down her wine glass and sat in silence, looking over at Toni.

  “Look, I don’t begrudge her the right to die; I’m just not ready to be complicit in it. I’m too conflicted. Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future – I’m open to change but I also don’t want to force it. If it doesn’t feel right to me, then that means I’m not ready to accept it. Does that make sense?” Toni said, now exhausted from their conversation.

  She hadn’t expected it to become so draining, but there she was, with barely enough energy left to digest her meal. Kat, on the other hand, felt strangely invigorated. She knew she had made significant progress with Toni and that was an excellent first step.

  Kat was starting to feel uncontrollably amorous so was just about to suggest to Toni that they relegate the apple tart as their second dessert when she was interrupted by the sound of their simultaneously ringing cell phones. Toni still had a special ring tone attached to Monica’s number; they both looked at their phones then at each other, and answered the calls on the count of three. On the other end of the transmission was an automated attendant, politely requesting their presence at the studio of one Monica Girbaud. The call then immediately disengaged. Toni put down her phone but before making eye contact with a patiently awaiting Kat, forced down the remainder of her wine. She would have taken a few tokes of a nice, fat blunt as well but assumed that police would be involved so didn’t want to compound the tragedy of the evening by getting arrested for public intoxication. Kat and Toni solemnly put on their coats and quietly left the apartment.

  The Discovery

  Richard and Desmond were waiting in the alcove of the building’s front entrance on Hudson Street, just south of W
est Houston. It had started to rain and neither one had come prepared to deal with a chilly, wet New York. The overcast sky and pervasive chill in the air sliced through their already porous resolve. They had specifically decided to relocate to a city that promised to provide more temperate, predictable weather, which made the Castro neighborhood of their beloved San Francisco their first and best choice. They would always be New Yorkers – the city simply stows away within the hearts of those foolish enough to leave it, a jealous lover stalking its prey in anxious anticipation of ones return.

  The ease with which they had been able to forget the less pleasant aspects of petulant Northeast weather conditions was something that never ceased to amaze Desmond. They agreed that being back on such a gloomy day under a horrific premise was apropos. He looked over at Richard when he spotted Toni and Kat rounding the corner.

  “Okay then – it’s show time.” Richard said to the open air as he left the sanctuary of the alcove to embrace Toni. Desmond quickly followed suit, together turning Toni into the filling of a big, gay sandwich.

  “You must be Katherine, sorry, I mean Kat. So pleased to finally meet you.” Desmond extended his hand.

  Richard quickly shook her hand as he said ‘likewise’, always slow to warm up, especially to anyone he found intimidating and Kat’s stature and beauty took him by surprise; coupled with the bad press she’d received at the acidic tongue of Monica, he wasn’t quite certain what to make of her or how to handle her presence. He’d been forewarned that she had been invited specifically because she was Toni’s center, but aside from that, he didn’t quite care that she was Toni’s inamorata.