Fairy Tale Blues (27 page)

We reached Daniel's boat.

“Thank you for lunch.”

“Come back to visit, will you?”

“I'll be back.”

And I would. I wanted to offer my companionship during his struggle, and I wanted to enjoy his company during my own.

Before boarding his boat, Daniel glanced down the pier toward Burl Stocker, who was using his cell phone. “If that guy calls for a take-out order of key lime pie again this afternoon, I'm walking right over there and dumping it in the trash.”

I threw back my head and laughed.

Either Daniel's training as a pilot and Customs officer accounted for his vibrant alertness, or he was drawn to the field originally because of his desire and ability to be exceptionally present. I found his bright attentiveness to life around him refreshing. On the walk home I realized that being in his company awakened the memory of how I, too, was once considered by my friends and family to be especially lively. I used to take pleasure in every aspect of my life to a degree that others seemed unable to reach. Jess told me long ago that he had fallen in love with me for that exact reason. Always happiness had pulsed inside of me and made me vitally awake. Somehow, during the past few years, life seemed to have rolled me over often enough to have rounded off those ebullient spikes, subdued those effervescent peaks. That was another reason I would be back to see Daniel. I needed reminders of that enlivened person I hoped to become again.

Jess

 

 

O
nce AnnieLaurie and I sat in the movies and watched a black actor up on the screen, his naked back rippling with muscles, his shoulders broad as a ridge beam. In the film his character was eating a piece of toast and rhapsodizing at length about the texture of the bread, the creaminess of the butter, the joyous complexity of the orange marmalade smeared on top, until the theater audience howled and understood this character was in the grip of an extraterrestrial force. With wonder, I turned to Annie and whispered, “Shit, you eat breakfast like that every day.”

A bit of an exaggeration, yet Annie recognized what I was saying and laughed self-consciously. She took great pleasure in the small events of daily life. For me, “Nice toast” said it. For Annie, a soliloquy celebrating the toast wouldn't be unusual. But then, according to her, I flattened the highs in life and belittled the importance of the lows.

The thing was: she wasn't all that easy to be around in some ways. Maybe it was just in contrast to me, but she seemed excruciatingly exuberant at times, and I don't think I was the only person who found that uncomfortable. I mean, it was like living with a psychiatrist who could read deep meanings in each of your actions combined with a goddamn mystic in ecstatic relationship with unseen forces. She was so
there,
I needed to hide from her. It wasn't like I was one of the store employees who was buoyed up by her happy presence, then got to go home at the end of the day. There was no rest around that girl unless I created mini-spas by absorbing myself in TV shows, newspapers or just plain spacing out. Then she accused me, “You don't listen to me, and if you do listen, you misunderstand, and if you don't misunderstand, you forget what I've said. There's no pinning you down, is there, Jess?”

Not if I could help it.

Who wants to be pinned down by a psychic surgeon—no anesthesia?

But now without her, without the fear that she could overrun me, a big, empty ache sat beside my heart.

I'd always suspected I'd feel this way without her, but couldn't stand to think about it. How could I have acted like a man while confronted with this knowledge and her bright presence at the same time?

Before this, I had caught glimpses that sideswiped me with the full brunt of knowing how much I needed her in my life. I remembered stepping out of the shower one morning after we'd made love, and just as if the shower door itself had slammed into my body, I suddenly felt the impact of her effect on me. I loved her; I loved her with my whole being, and somehow that knowledge threatened me, as if she held some power over me that gave her too much control. I felt afraid, thinking, What if I lost her? And then I felt an unreasonable anger toward her, as if she had plotted to get me in this place of vulnerability. None of this came to my mind in words, just one wash of feeling after another.

Sometimes I felt the urge to punish her for making me feel this way.

That morning, without thinking, I flung my wet towel on Annie's white cashmere sweater that she'd hand-washed and laid to dry on her end of the bathroom counter. The towel was a red, beach-sized sample embroidered with JACKSON HOLE, which a salesman had left at the store and I'd brought home and used without laundering first. That morning I didn't pick up my dirty clothes from my side of the bedroom, and I ate Annie's piece of coffee cake along with my own before taking off for the store.

We'd begun a routine of me opening the store; then Annie came in an hour later and stayed an hour after me to close up. That morning, first thing after kicking the office door closed behind her, she upended a large canvas bag on top of my desk, inches beneath my nose. My dirty clothes, the red towel and the now pink-stained cashmere sweater. Not a word. Just walked back out of the store, and I didn't see her again until late that night.

I learned afterward that she'd spent the day at the movies, watching two in a row, then went out to dinner alone. When she got home I called a friendly greeting from the sofa like nothing had happened. When she answered back, I thought, Whew.

I never brought up the ruined sweater and waited and waited for her to indulge in her usual rant about my deficiencies, but it never happened. From then on I felt suspicious about what was going on with her—when I thought to think about it at all—because she stopped reacting in the expected ways. Sometimes I thought that was her insidious revenge, keeping me wondering like that.

I fixed her; I stopped wondering.

But now I had to realize that Annie had left me; these old methods weren't going to work anymore. Many times she had told me that insulating myself against my feelings was damaging our relationship. And during our counseling, Lola had backed her up. She had suggested that my philosophy of what you don't know can't hurt you worked for me as a child after my mother's death, but was working against me now.

I closed the office door at the store, sat at my desk and lifted the phone. It felt as heavy as a log. I gripped it with both hands and rested my forehead against it. If I started down that long road, I might never again return to being the innocent boy before the accident. I might find it harder and harder to escape in the outdoors, in front of the TV, in numbness.

But maybe one more appointment wouldn't kill me.

I dialed Lola's number.

Annie

 

 

L
ucille made raspberry jam from tomatoes and strawberry jam from zucchini. She had told me this a few days ago, while we stood in her backyard and watched our puppies romping adorably. Today she huffed up the steps and handed me a jar of each. They sparkled in the sun like pink lamps as she held up a jar in each hand to announce her reason for visiting.

“I told you, dear, that I'd bring you some,” she said, once she caught her breath. Lucille, who was seventy-six and had spent the past four decades teaching history—American, Florida State and European—at the college, had just this year retired. She was plainly delighted with her free time. She and Shank had met at the school. He had worked in janitorial services and had also just retired recently. They'd never had children and Mitzi was their first pet.

I hoped to keep suspicion clear from my expression, but I was expected to ask: “So . . . how do tomatoes turn into raspberries and zucchini turn into strawberries?” I held open the door for Lucille, inviting her in.

“Well, dear, here's the secret: Jell-O. I use flavored Jell-O and you don't even know that you're not eating what the name of it says.”

Though that sounded like many items on a fast-food menu, I felt compelled to express my surprise at the ingenuity of her cooking. “I have toast for breakfast most mornings; I'll try some right away.”

“If you like it, I'll bring you some pineapple jam made from yellow tomatoes.”

I thought, Here's a no-win situation, but I said, “Yum.” I took the small jars and we stepped into my kitchen. She and Shank had been stern about allowing me my privacy and hadn't been inside my apartment since I'd moved in. I, on the other hand, had visited downstairs several times—for lemonade in the late afternoons after I'd taken Mitzi along with Bijou for extended romps on the beach and a couple weeks ago with the boys for Sunday morning tea and muffins. Lucille's muffins were spectacular; I hated to think what this jam was going to do to them.

Lucille and I shared the recently found pleasure of pursuing personal goals. When I told her about the joyous frenzy in which I had gathered my household decor and showed her the variety of items on my worktable where I was putting together a collage for my textile class, she understood completely. I dragged out my knitting projects, holding back on the surprise I was working on for her pup, a collar Caridad had helped design with lacy petals. Mitzi could wear it for Shank and Lucille's Sunday teas.

I showed Lucille around, introduced her to Kia; then we sat on my screened porch with glasses of iced tea. “I've been experimenting a bit myself,” I said. “I've mixed herbal iced tea with raspberry juice.” And used not a single tomato or zucchini, I added to myself. Mixing juice with iced tea wasn't originally my idea; I had borrowed it from the Green Bottle Café.

I liked imagining Lucille's love affair with Shank. The elegant, heavy-chested Lucille always dressed in either all white or all black, with a colorful silk scarf. I pictured her in the classroom—graduate degrees and faculty position with tenure—punctuating her lectures with petitions sent downstairs to the Department of Maintenance for help with jammed windows or hanging posters. And then I liked to picture the strong, hefty Shank grabbing those requests to do first.

I started my inquiry into the romance by saying, “So you and Shank met at the college.”

“Shank saved my life. Of course, that's not why I fell in love with him. That happened first.”

“Then he saved your life.” No questions. I didn't know her well enough, and she carried a strong sense of personal dignity about her—a shield I supposed she needed to erect, living in the public realm of teaching in a small community.

“I was a secret drinker, dear. Fooled everybody but the one who loved me.”

“Oh, gosh . . . that's a hard one, drinking.”

“Harder on the people who care about you. Not so hard on the drinker. As long as you keep on drinking, that is.”

“I once heard about a woman who was an alcoholic and learned she was dying of cancer. She decided to quit drinking because she didn't want to die drunk.” I heard awe in my voice.

“Well, I quit because I didn't want to be loved drunk.”

I didn't quite follow that remark and tipped my head, puzzled.

Lucille said, “I loved Shank and I could see he loved me. However, he had grown up with an alcoholic mother, so, Annie dear, I felt like home to him. He knew just how to love a drinking woman. I wanted him to love me for my true self. I began my drinking about ten years or so before Shank came to the college. It was my first teaching job; I was the only black instructor there and one of only three women.”

I thought about conditions for black women forty years ago in the Southern states and marveled at Lucille's courage.

“I was so scared,” Lucille continued, “that my voice shook even greeting students in the hallway. I had intestinal problems throughout the day, most especially dramatic in the middle of my lectures. In the classroom there was so much I wanted to tell my students, yet I could barely glance at them.”

She took a long look at the triangle of ocean between the rooftops.

“I don't think they intended to let me stay past that first semester. I discovered that if I had a bit of vodka with my orange juice at breakfast, I was steadier. You know how that goes—more vodka, more steady. Me, orange juice and vodka created a fine career for the following decade. I was commended with teaching awards and was popular with the students. I have always loved my students.”

Lucille sipped her tea. “One day Shank showed up to repair my desk chair. We recognized each other, like you often do when real love happens by. But I wouldn't marry him until I had been drink-free for one full year. By then, though I hadn't realized it, I didn't need to drink any longer to conduct a classroom. I needed it for itself.”

“Well, congratulations. I admire your taking on the struggle.”

“I loved Shank and I had always wanted to be married, though by my midforties I had given up on the idea.”

“A fairy-tale ending,” I said.

“Marriage, dear. No fairy tales involved.”

I told Lucille something of what I was doing living on a six-month lease above her garage. No fairy tale there, either.

“You know, some of us learn the most about life and ourselves through relationship. That was what I wanted when I took my vows with Shank.” She raised her eyebrows and took on a Southern black accent. “And class ain't over yet.”

We laughed.

Lucille said, “Shank struggled with being married to someone in a higher position on campus and making more money. I offered wide berth for that and excused his need to be in control. Yet time passed and I soon realized that his upbringing had instilled in him a need to keep an upper hand, as he had been in charge of the home life as the oldest child for his first thirty years or so.