Love Finds Its Pocket

by Mary Scarpelli

  In Her Mother’s Loving Arms

  As Toni felt herself falling into a deep slumber, not having slept a wink the night before, she recalled the argument she had with Kat about why, after her break-up with Monica, she made the decision to pursue other lovers rather than return immediately to the person she wholeheartedly believed to be the love of her life. Kat demanded to know why, after being liberated from those depressing chains of Monica’s emotional instability, she felt the need to seek out lesser beings when she knew damn well her best friend had been patiently anticipating her return with open, eagerly awaiting arms. That slice of history had festered into an unacceptable sticking point that Kat hadn’t realized upset and offended her so deeply until she actually verbalized her anger. Toni didn’t know how to respond; she herself didn’t know exactly what that detour into poor decision making was all about. She found it near impossible to have a conversation about a topic on which she was wholly ignorant, irrespective of the fact that she was the one who should have had the answers.

  Kat had been otherwise entangled at the time but Toni should have known that Kat would have quickly extricated herself from any other lover had an interest been shown in rekindling their affair. Kat had already made the personal revelation that Toni was the one for her and that no one else would ever come close to making her as happy and there would be no one else with whom she would want to spend the rest of her life – her life-mate: that term was always applied to Toni, whether directly to her or when she spoke of Toni to friends and colleagues. No one dared correct her or advise her that perhaps she should just move on as that ship had already sailed as they knew that once Kat made such a definitive proclamation, especially one with such enduring ramifications, nothing short of death could dissuade her from believing that somehow, some way, things would work out in her favor.

  The reality of their situation spoke to a far different conclusion but Kat refused to concede defeat. So when Toni advised her that she had ended her relationship with Monica, this time for good, three strikes and all that, Kat’s immediate elation was ripped from her heart when Toni stated that she intended to start dating Jess, or as Kat liked to refer to her, as ‘that hot fucking Mess’.

  “What the fuck, Toni - why her? What does she have that has so attracted you to her to the exclusion of all other options? What’s your rush, anyway? I thought your heart was crushed by Monica so why are you running into another relationship before you’ve had a chance to heal? You aren’t making any sense!” Kat was infuriated but refused to let Toni know that her anger was entirely personal.

  “Because, Kat. Because she’s not at all my type so I won’t get serious about her; she can’t hurt me. This time it will just be me having some fun with absolutely no possibility of falling in love or having my heart ripped out again. I like her and all that, but I’ve never had a girlfriend that I haven’t been in love with and I think I need to experience that lightness at least once in my lifetime. I’ve been so fucking serious, so committed and all I’ve ever gotten as my reward is to be shit on.” Toni shrugged her shoulders in hopes that her explanation would suffice.

  “That’s bullshit, Toni. Don’t try and feed that nonsense to me, ‘cause I’m not having it. First of all, I’ve never shit on you. Secondly, you aren’t a casual kind of gal – never have been, never will be. So what do you think you’re going to gain from the experience?” Kat’s temper was reaching her boiling point. She felt powerless to control its heated momentum.

  “And anyway, it wasn’t the fact that you were in a relationship that has crushed you so, it’s that you were in a relationship with the wrong girl! God Toni, sometimes you’re so fucking dense. For someone so smart, how can you be making such a stupid decision?” Kat’s exasperation was now complete. She looked over to see Toni’s eyes, hurt and unfocused.

  Kat walked over to her in an attempt to apologize but Toni turned on her heels and walked away as quickly as her legs would take her. She started crying uncontrollably knowing only that she had no more fight left in her. Even one more argument with anyone, Kat especially, would have sent her over the edge. Life with Monica had emotionally eviscerated her; continuing to listen to Kat’s criticism would have killed her spirit entirely.

  Toni and Kat didn’t speak for the entire duration of her relationship with Jess, or the equivalent of nearly six months, save for the exchange of a few pithy text messages and emails. Their correspondences always found Kat trying to edge her way back into Toni’s world but being subjected to responses that were bland, curt and formal. Kat, of course, had been dead-on accurate with her assessment of Toni being a relationship girl and how utterly bored she would become, wading in such a perpetually shallow pool. It wasn’t until she reached the end of her superficial relationship that she was finally able to put aside her resentment about Kat knowing her better than she knew herself.

  Toni needed desperately to reconnect with her best friend, the absence of which had become unbearable. She’d read on Kat’s Facebook page that she planned on attending a literary event several weeks hence so Toni clicked ‘like’, cleared her schedule and worked on her act of contrition, hoping to beg Kat’s forgiveness for being so pig-headed and to request re-entry into her life.

  Toni strode through the double doors of the event looking lovely in a dress she purchased especially for the occasion, having gone to an upscale hairdresser to cut and style her coif so there would be no misunderstanding her intentions for being there. She was feeling radiant, floating several inches above the floor as she searched out a waiter carrying a tray of wine, and Kat, in that order. When she finally spotted Kat, arm-in-arm with some strapping young man she didn’t recognize, so obviously smitten with her as she appeared to be with him, her heart sank almost to the depths of death. Her vision became bright white and she felt herself losing consciousness.

  Future accounts of her reaction would have her standing there, mid-sip, mouth agape, as tears formed then flowed freely down her cheeks. Her level of devastation could not have been more complete. Without having made eye contact, she turned tail and immediately ran from the event, flinging open the double doors before vomiting into a flower pot adjacent to the front door. Several of Kat’s friends witnessed the entire meltdown but Toni was too dazed and ill to notice.

  Toni had never been the type of woman for whom high drama was her default reaction to a stress-inducing situation but she became stricken with a paralyzing fear that she had lost her opportunity to reconnect with the person best suited for her, the love of her life, the woman with whom she could be herself and in whose arms she was most at peace – her soul mate. She wondered then, after rinsing out her mouth with the bottled water she had stowed away in her handbag, why she felt smugly justified in not having retained her friendship with Kat while conducting her noncommittal affair. Perhaps guilt played a part in it, or perhaps she was just angry with Kat for being so dead-on accurate about Monica and her own fraught-with-idiocy decision making skills. Regardless, she was too close to the situation to unearth her rationale so sought out Gene in hopes that he could provide some much needed distance, hence clarity.

  A Pointless Re-Boot

  “Toni, Toni, so tortured and lonely, running from love and crashing headlong into your worst nightmare. If you had been thinking clearly, then you would have made a different decision but six years of hell with Monica left your intelligence murky and your heart, wounded.

  “Even if you had made the decision to re-engage with Katherine straight away, you would not have been in the right emotional frame of mind to make another long-term relationship work. At some subconscious level, you knew you simply needed a no-strings-attached, sex only liaison devoid of an emotional component so that’s exactly what you sought out.

  “Timing is everything Toni, and in relationships, it’s crucial, so you should be happy that you didn’t engage with Katherine at that point. You had quite a fragile heart after having endured such an emotional upheaval and you’ll have to trust me on th
is one - you would have played off all of your hurt, anger and frustration that you weren’t able to express with Monica, onto Katherine and quite possibly could have ruined any future the two of you may still enjoy. So please, don’t beat yourself up; masochism isn’t your style – it’s beneath you.” Gene paused to light a cigarette, one of the few he allowed himself since employing the patch. He decided to continue when Toni remained quiet.

  “What makes you think that your opportunity with her is lost? You’ve always said that she moves quickly from lover to lover so why not just wait it out and see what happens? It’s not like you to give up so quickly,” Gene said with as much optimism as he could muster under the circumstances. Seeing such despair in Toni’s eyes was breaking his heart.

  “Why don’t you tell me what it is that has troubled you so.” Gene implored.

  “You didn’t see her, Gene. They were walking in lockstep, arm in arm, looking like the perfect couple, so tall, gorgeous, lily white – so perfectly matched, so madly in love. I know that look in her eyes. She used to give that look to me. I wish I hadn’t seen it. I’ve been having nightmares about it ever since.

  “Those stupid dreams are driving me nuts. I’ll be hanging out somewhere and then the happy couple appears out of nowhere, holding hands, laughing merrily, kissing then laughing some more and then they spot me. Kat walks over to me, lowers her head to whisper something in my ear but then she stops short and starts to laugh instead. Then her dick-headed boyfriend starts laughing too and tells her they should leave so they can go home and fuck.

  “At this point in the dream I’ve fallen to the floor in a crumpled mess, unable to move or speak. I’m still asleep, dreaming, but consciously I can feel a pain emanating from my chest, tightening its grip, which sends shivers throughout my body. They both look back at me and start laughing all over again, heads tilted back in a gesture that put me in the mind of a person whose mocking dismissal of someone they find repulsive can’t be communicated rudely enough.

  “Every time I have that dream, which is becoming more frequent, I wake up in a cold sweat, body shaking uncontrollably and feeling awfully sick. And then, like the rejected, laughingstock numb nut that I’ve apparently become, I cry until my ducts run dry. This is killing me and I don’t know what to do to get over it. My pain hasn’t abated one iota and I’m afraid it never will.” Toni was speaking in monotone, eyes staring far and away.

  “You have to wrest back control of your life and if that means cutting her loose and moving on, then so be it. Sometimes circumstances are beyond our control and it’s a sign of rational intelligence to know when to apply either the fight or flight solution. Do you really think you’re in a position to know the difference right now because all I’m hearing from you is a mewling self pity!”

  Gene stopped Toni from forming any protestations because he wasn’t finished. He feared for her emotional well-being because she looked as though she were about to toss herself into the abyss. She’d obviously not been eating, her eyes were puffy, her skin tone, ashen and uneven.

  “I am going to reiterate that you need to make a plan. You cannot continue to feel victimized – that is what will kill your spirit. You will make yourself feel demoralized and that’s what will drive you to make even more ill-advised decisions – it’s a vicious cycle, Toni. You cannot assuage your hurt by inflicting pain on another or yourself. You cannot fill the emptiness by engaging in mindless activities. You cannot turn-off your intelligence with drugs or sex or food or religion or self immolation.

  “You have to face this thing head-on or it will consume you. I guarantee that if you don’t stop the momentum, right now, you will not like the person you turn into. Do you want to become embittered and cynical? That’s an ugly, unnecessary conclusion - especially for you. Don’t let that happen, Toni.

  “I will do whatever I can to help but this is your life so the plan must be yours. You must ‘own’ it or you will never take responsibility for it and failure will be assured. Do you understand what I’m saying to you?” Gene furrowed his brow, more worried than he had ever been about Toni’s emotional well being.

  “I have to leave; my wife and baby require my attention. We’ll speak again soon. Until then, put some thought to what I said,” and then Gene leaned over to kiss the top of Toni’s head before walking out of the cafe.

  Despite his reluctance to betray a confidence, as soon as he arrived home, Gene informed Marcella about his conversation with Toni, expressing his concerns about her well-being. She then proceeded to invite Toni to spend the week with them at their apartment, using some ruse about suffering through a bout of post-partum depression and needing her best friend and sister to be by her side. Although Toni correctly read it as the ruse that it was, she packed a bag and headed out. She too feared for her emotional stability as every thought jamming into her head contained a destructive conclusion.

  If this was how her life was destined to play out, then she wanted no part of it. Irrespective of how badly she thought she wished for death, something deep within wasn’t quite ready to let go; she’d never before been a depressive type and didn’t intend to become one. She hoped that some of Gene’s strength and wise counsel would be enough to keep her afloat until she could once again regain control over her life.

  By the end of that week, with Toni’s feelings of rejection having lessened considerably, she secured another lover, a man this time, in an unconscious attempt to hurt Kat irrespective of the fact that Kat had no knowledge of Toni’s actions so couldn’t possibly have been negatively affected by them. But regardless, the bad decision had been put into motion which rendered Toni’s response to feelings of powerlessness nothing more than a display of a weakness in her character, a potentially fatal flaw, as Gene none too subtly commented.

  Gene felt disappointment in spades at how childishly Toni had chosen to deal with her hurt and anger over having lost Kat to a man. He accused her of having relinquished her integrity to the vagaries of idiocy, stating that her soul was now an empty vessel, lacking content, further commenting that she knew full well her condition of love precluded her from falling in love with a man, that her manipulations were precisely targeted to convince that poor young man to believe his heart was being well tended and that it was quite all right to let down his guard and fall in love with her - a prudent and well founded decision. It did nothing except make Gene feel contempt, bordering on disgust that Toni would so blatantly need to psychically hurt another simply to engage in an adolescent revenge scenario.

  It wasn’t until Toni was nearing the four-month mark with her boyfriend that Gene exploded one evening. Marcella had never before witnessed him express anger of that magnitude – indeed, he was not inclined to be anything other than wholly rational, but he saw Toni as his protégé, so took great personal offense at her irresponsible behavior. He feared that his counsel had been for naught and that perhaps one simply cannot break from and rise above longstanding limitations.

  “And in having executed your most spiteful retaliations, have you been able to sleep better Toni? Have you managed to make the nightmares stop? Are you pleased with yourself now that you’ve casually discarded your integrity with such unconscious spite?

  “I simply cannot bear witness to this charade any longer. You are no longer welcome to bring your boyfriend to our home. I will not sit idly by and bear witness to his destruction when you willfully drop the anvil on his head, then eviscerate his entrails simply to engage in your revenge fantasy against someone who isn’t even paying attention! I wash my hands of this,” Gene said as he made a wiping motion with his hands and asked her to leave the apartment. They didn’t speak again until Toni advised him that she’d made a clean break from her beau and was, once again, flying solo.

  “I hope you didn’t end your affair simply because I told you that it displeased me. You must be clear on your own accord that you behaved like a small minded, spiteful person and that your unethical actions could have had a disastrous effect on
a fellow human being.

  “You’ve spoken of true freedoms being a ruse? Perhaps from a Big Brother standpoint that may well be accurate but what we do know to be the truth, meaning that over which we have some measure of control, is our integrity, honor and moral character. You may think that I’m being intolerant but there’s a reason I am this way.

  “I am subjected to the regrettably unenlightened in my everyday working life, listening to people spew their drivel in an endless stream of nonsensical, self-serving commentary, but my personal associations are another matter entirely. I reserve the right to maintain only a cadre of associates that possess aspirations higher than to dedicate their lives to small-mindedness, revenge, spurious hatred, self-loathing and pathetic jealousies.

  “I simply have no room in my life for the lowness of that mentality and even less for those who would attempt to ingratiate themselves with someone by taking an action simply to curry favor or appease another without it being something they know to be right.

  “Either way, it’s an unacceptable game stopper.” Gene’s tone, although serious and even, conveyed hope that Toni had indeed learned a valuable lesson and that his admonishment had struck as far deeply as he had intended. Anything less would have caused him to follow through with his threat to cut her out of his life for good.

  Toni nearly shriveled-up into a ball in an all-encompassing embarrassment. She assured Gene that she had learned her lesson and that although her intention all along had been to coerce her boyfriend into falling in love with her simply so that she could parade him in front of Kat, partly to push Kat into a jealous rage but also to prove to herself that she wasn’t as unlovable a piece of shit as she felt she was, that she had been feeling guilty about her contrivances and had already been planning her exit strategy prior to being read the riot act.