Fairy Tale Blues (5 page)

“Where the hell did all this junk come from? It's not that colored gal's, is it?” My father held tight to his suitcase, waiting for my answer.

“It's my stuff.” I wanted to reprimand both his use of “colored” and “gal” in referring to a black woman easily as mature in years as he was, but Dad didn't take censure well.

“Thought you up and left without a stick.” He set his suitcase beside the door and picked up a Mexican pot, its once gaudy colors now faded.

“I found some garage sales and a flea market. Florida is full of secondhand stuff.”

“That's because everybody dies in Florida.” He set the pot back down and started for the sink to wash his hands. “Stick around long, you'll start dying like the rest of us.” He dried his hands on a paper towel I handed him. “This isn't too hygienic, you know, bringing in stuff from a bunch of dead people. We got homosexuals down here. They die and infect things.”

“Dad, gay men don't infect things, even if they do have AIDS.” I advised myself to back off. My dad had been known to stop speaking to people for similar retorts. Even family. As teenagers Daisy and I got the silent treatment for offering opinions absorbed from the world beyond his realm. I needed my father just now. I picked up his suitcase and carried it to the smaller bedroom behind the kitchen, as if I could secure his company by holding hostage to his belongings. “I know you're just worried about me, Dad.”

“Actually, I'm more worried about myself. Getting old, you know. I could pick up something from all this garbage that'd hurry things along.”

“Wouldn't want that,” I said under my breath, suddenly quite annoyed with him while at the same time relieved not to be alone for a while.

Dad followed me into the bedroom.

“By golly, this looks nice.” He peeked out the window. “I'll be comfortable here.”

The room was bare as a blown egg. Perhaps he was also advising himself to back off, also relieved not to be alone for a while.

I said, “We'll have to get mattresses delivered today and pick up some pillows and sheets.”

“Let's go shopping then, but none of that used junk. Can't stand to breathe inside those musty places. With your K-Marts and your Targets you don't need to pay more than five bucks for anything brand-new these days. Lamps, pots and pans—all five dollars.”

Mom had played hell keeping Dad out of those places. He had often brought home large plastic bags filled with his bargains from discount stores, bragging how little he'd paid. I was probably heading for the same situation.

You looked forward to seeing your parents when you'd been separated a while. Thought you had so much to tell them and share about your life. Then, about twelve minutes into the reunion, you remembered how damn irritating they were and why you moved away in the first place.

Back in the kitchen, Dad screwed up his face. “You don't know what you're getting into, honey, buying other people's problems. Let me take care of furnishing this place.” He rinsed his hands again. “Once at K-Mart I got your mother a beautiful chair for her dressing table. The back of it, see, was wire, bent kind of heartlike.” His wet hands described the shape in the air as I gathered my tote bag and keys. “And sparkly, like gold. Then this heart-shaped cushion on it. Pink, I think it was. You know what she did?”

I handed him another paper towel. “Jump with joy?”

“Made me take it back. Said it was a cheap piece of crap.”

He finished the story as we headed down the outside stairs. I held the side-yard gate open for Dad while blocking Shank and Lucille's puppy with my foot to prevent her escape.

“She said it wouldn't last a year.”

“Well, this will be perfect then.” I bent over the fence from the sidewalk side and rubbed the puppy's ears, missing my own dogs. “I won't be needing this furniture as long as a year.”

Even though Mom had died, I still got a spark of pleasure from taking Dad's side against her—the daughterly “I can be a better wife to Daddy than Mommy can” routine. Daisy and I laughed about this now, but right after Mom died we carried a lot of guilt over our behavior. We also learned quickly what a pill Dad really was and wished we'd sympathized more with Mom.

First, Dad and I looked for a store to buy mattresses and bed frames. While he drove Dad talked about how much he always liked this little beach town and how he wished Hibiscus were big enough to warrant opening an extension of the business. Teague Family Sports started in Cincinnati. He sold that store, moved to Florida and opened a store in Miami, then moved up the coast with the population growth to a second store in Fort Lauderdale, a third in West Palm Beach and a fourth in Stuart, where he and Daisy and her family lived now. The fifth store was added when Jess and I moved to Jackson Hole.

“You saying you'll go back to Jess before your furniture wears out?”

“I just need to deal with some things, find some rules.”

“Rules?”

“I mean . . . rules. Like how to be close without being trampled.”

“You make Jess sound like a Brahma bull. He's a damn nice guy.”

“That's part of the problem.” True, but I shouldn't confuse Dad with trying to tackle that right now. I was too confused myself. How could I feel this miserable over such a nice guy? Like the gift of blue topaz ear studs, many of Jess' actions held both stars and nettles. While I nursed the sting of the nettles, Jess expected me to glow over the stars. I was invariably the troublemaker for pointing out the problem, while he steadfastly showcased the gift. “Hey, don't I get any credit at all for getting you a present?” he'd asked before I ended my call to him the morning I had arrived here.

I sighed. “I love him, Dad. Jess loves me. I just have to learn how I can live with him happily.” Dad craned his neck to read store names on both sides of the street. I stared straight ahead out the windshield. Day four of my marriage sabbatical, and I felt less sad and more angry, which seemed to empower me to relax into my decision to spend the next few months on my own. I'd had a great time this morning shopping for household items. Unless sharing a college dorm room with Gina counted, I had never lived on my own. And though I chose Hibiscus by default—the beach town closest to the airport—it was a sweet place, and I was beginning to like it. I sat quietly, assessing this rising sense of excitement about my new life.

Dad said, “Well, I don't know why everybody thinks marriage has to be happy all the time. People get on each other's nerves, and that's just a fact.”

This was Dad's way of feeling out the problem. Trouble was his antennae tuned in only two channels—extreme or inconsequential. Which meant that I often experienced trouble discussing things with him. From his perspective either I left Jess because he was a polygamist or I was being too sensitive and should shape up and ship back home. No middle ground. Maybe all Dad wanted to hear was that a happy ending was coming up.

“We'll work this out,” I assured him. Not exactly the truth.
I'll
work it out. Jess would
wait
it out.

I said, “Just need a few simple rules. Then I'll go home.”

A few? I'd settle for one good rule, anything to firm up the shores of this container called marriage. Any rule that allowed an adult human to live with a love partner while maintaining a sense of self. Because that was my problem.

About five years ago restlessness with my marriage stirred up the realization that I hadn't intended to work full-time at our store or to center my social life around family. Somehow I had ignored my own interests to the point that I no longer knew what they were. The boys were in high school with lives of their own, and the store was firmly on track and thriving. Resentment toward Jess cooked as he filled his days entertaining customers and sales reps on the ski slopes and hiking trails, defending his actions as his contribution to our business partnership. I tried to discover who that person was who lay smoldering beneath the daily demands that were doubled by his absence. I bought a journal. When I looked back, that seemed my first act of insurrection, because the examination of my life through writing led to changes that started out small, but had now ended with me in Florida buying a new bed.

Immediately upon my purchasing the journal, the sad realization had arisen that I had nothing to write in it. Somewhere along the way I had become estranged from myself. For the prior two decades if my thoughts and emotions hadn't complied with the company line, I disengaged my energy from them. I had only so much energy after all, being a mother and managing the store. Jess helped, both at home and with the business, but saw himself as my assistant, not my partner. And he did have energy left over. He hiked, fished, skied, met his buddies for beer at the pub, messed around with his designs in his garage.

Almost as if I were mothering myself, I began to tend to my life. I started with my body, eating only when hungry, instead of looking at my watch or appointment calendar to see if I had time for lunch. I stopped answering my cell phone during bathroom breaks, which used to end with me hurrying to get back to my desk. I reported in my journal how my body felt and what I noticed about my surroundings through my senses: smells, tastes, sounds, textures. Soon personal feelings nudged into my consciousness, rising timidly at first, like a beaver noses out of water, body submerged, beady eyes darting around for predators.

I wrote those feelings down. I began to value the time I spent with my journal, and that prompted me to suggest a new schedule to Jess in which he opened up the store in the mornings and I closed it in the evenings, giving me an hour or two before my busy day began to be with myself, writing in my journal or walking alone with my dogs. That moved into enjoying my own company on long day hikes and drives into the national parks that surround Jackson Hole. On the first occasion that Jess put down my suggestion for a weekend outing, I dared myself to go alone. I drove through Yellowstone up to Paradise Valley, Montana, to Chico, a famous old hotel, with hot springs and a four-star restaurant. Once I moved past a sense of estrangement over being alone, I opened into a sense of pure liberation. Instead of watching the faces of Jess or the boys to see if the outing was a success or figure out how I could make it so, I experienced the full sensual awareness of being me on the earth, hiking in the mountains, swimming in the hot springs and dining alone with fabulous food and wine, while eavesdropping on a conversation between movie actor Dennis Quaid and writer Thomas McGuane, both of whom I knew lived nearby.

Without those little trips I could never have gotten on that plane and flown to Florida for a marriage sabbatical. Never.

Still, in order to return home, I needed rules.

“Did you and Mom have any rules?”

“I didn't. Maybe your mom did.” Dad smirked my way.

I was supposed to laugh. Ha, ha, men will be men. That was true at my house. Jess went about his life. I mopped up after him. Made the return phone calls, met his promises to others, wiped up his spilled coffee, apologized when he was late . . .

Must work on the bitterness.

Before leaving Wyoming I was often filled with such overpowering rancor that it burned holes in my chest, probably fried my cells.

What I wanted to figure out while on my marriage sabbatical was how to let Jess live his life without letting it inhibit my own. But there I went, putting Jess first, me second—my life as a byproduct of his. Let me start again: what I wanted was to figure out how I could live my life, allowing Jess to live his life, with both of us enjoying that . . . and each other.

Big order.

I could wear out several sets of cheap furniture solving that puzzle.

At a stoplight Dad glanced over, lifted his eyes pointedly to the top of my head in his old way of acknowledging that I wasn't wearing a store cap and reached into his backseat. “What color?”

“That's okay; I don't need a cap.” I sounded like I did as a teenager, balking at advertising the family business on my head—a must in our household. I noticed a comfort in my regressive behavior.

“One of our new citrus colors.” With his eyes on the light and one hand on the steering wheel, Dad rummaged blindly with the other hand in a box behind my seat.

I felt at home sitting beside my dad as he drove his big creamy Eldorado. For three days I had ached with strangeness here in my self-imposed new life.

“Here you go.” He sailed a tangerine-colored hat onto my lap. “I sent a box load of these to Jess before I left this morning, just so he'd know I wasn't taking sides between you two.”

I stuffed the cap into my tote and thought, Citrus-colored caps in a ski resort—that would go over big in January. But I didn't say anything. I tried to picture Jess at the store without me there. Selling ski goggles and powder cords, neck gaiters and polar fleece vests. Listening to people come in the door and remark on Cat Crap, the goggle lens defogger we sold, which some people bought just for the name. Jess and I often mimicked our customers as a form of relief from the repetition of doing business in a resort town where most of our customers were brand-new to the area, often from densely populated cities in the East, often so overstimulated by the vastness of the land, the enormity of mountains and the variety of the wildlife that upon arrival they were too overwhelmed to find their way out of the store. Jess and I stood in front of the postcard rack, as tall as I was, and said, “Do you have any postcards?” We stood in front of the local candy we sold and said, “Huckleberry bonbons. Hmm. What's a huckleberry?” We heard these remarks dozens of times a week. “Where is the hole in Jackson Hole?” Pointing to a plush toy moose: “This elk is so cute, I just have to buy it.”