Beyond Nostalgia (36 page)

Now the words didn't come so easily. I started to say something, I'm not sure exactly what, but Theresa stopped me. She put a fingertip to my lips. She wanted me to know I didn't have to say anything. Her voice, deflated as if the wind had been knocked out of it, said, "It's OK, Dean. I understand." My eyebrows rose and arched, the way those of sufferers do when caught in the deepest throes of pain. Slowly, withdrawing her fingertip from my lips, Theresa said, "That was a big part of our magic, Dean, that we always understood each other so well it was uncanny. And I think I still understand you!  No. I know I still understand you. And I know that, deep down inside, you don't want to make the same mistake twice."

She'd hit it on the head! Had we consummated this affair, it would have wrecked everything Maddy Frances and I had going for us. And I knew, now that I didn't want that. Nothing was worth losing Maddy. Shoot, I'd spent almost half my life with her. Sure I could have run off with Theresa. She would have gone with me. We could have ran off to her mountain, or her paradisiacal island, but I couldn't have hid! I would always be haunted, haunted by the knowledge that I had abandoned Maddy Frances, my wife, the woman who had so unflinchingly put up with me for so long, a first-class lady who for the past twenty years had loved me more than her own life, a near-saint who had loved me unconditionally while the whole time - what did I do? - I secretly fantasized, and hypothesized, and agonized over the very decision I had been confronted with this night. But now it was over. I had made my choice. And though that choice turned out to be very different than I had imagined all those years, it had been made. 

Theresa and I quickly neatened up a bit, she in the bathroom, me in front of the dresser mirror. Standing alone, looking at my reflection, running a comb through my mustache, something dawned on me, a revelation so ironic that a chill coursed my entire body. I knew that after all that had been thought about, said, and done, something positive had definitely come from the misdeed an eighteen-year old boy committed a long, long time ago inside a squalid bedroom of a Queens housing-project.     

A few minutes later, Theresa and I were downstairs in the parking lot. As we walked in silence to her big expensive car, I felt so bad for her. I felt so damn guilty. I realized that I had everything and she had nothing, that I had someone special, someone very, very special at home waiting to spend the rest of her life with me, and all she had was four booming businesses, a ton of money, three houses and another irreparable marriage. 

A few steps later, we reached her car. She unlocked the door, opened it then turned back around. Theresa studied my face in the moonlight and I studied hers. We stood like that for a long moment, before she said, "I'm sorry Dean. I just can't help it." Then she threw her arms around me one last time, buried her teary face in my denim shirt and squeezed me tighter than I ever imagined she was capable of. I knew well and good that she didn't want to ever let go. I hugged her back long and hard, our bodies gently swaying together. It was our last dance and we knew it. Both of us tried to be strong, both of us failed. Though her voice was muffled in my chest, I heard her loud and clear when she said, "I love you, Dean Cassidy … I always have, always will." And, with that, she began to shake and weep in my arms. I snugged her tighter and rolled my eyes toward the Georgia stars. Silent tears streamed my face and fell into Theresa's hair. Soon it was time for our dance to end and I looked down at her, and she up at me. There is no explaining the magnitude of hurt and the heartbreak we shared at that moment, no way of describing the excruciating sense of loss. I said to her, "I love you too, Theresa, and that I'll take to my deathbed. Weee … you and I … we were sooo right for each other. Hell, we're still right for each other. But we're still missing one thing, the one thing we could never get quite right, and that's timing."

Theresa didn't say anything. There was nothing to add. She just wiped her cheeks with her fingertips, stretched up onto her toes, kissed me hard and quick, then, just like that, she lowered herself into the car. More like fell into it. Then she started the engine, turned on the headlights and lowered her electric window. "Have a good life, Dean …" she said, " … you deserve it. You’re a good man, the best, the only man I've ever known." Looking like she was in deep physical pain, she paused as she struggled to muster up the strength for what she was about to say. "Dean, I hope that you and Maddy have a good life together, and that you stay together 'till you're both ninety, but … if somehow that doesn't happen … always remember, I'll be here … in Atlanta." 

With that, Theresa Wayman dropped her eyes to the gearshift, put it into reverse, and looked back up at me for the last time. There were new tears streaming her lovely heart-shaped face. She looked so small, so fragile, so broken and so very alone in that great big car when she said, "I know I can't have you, Dean, but still, I'll always be yours." And with that said, she managed one last smile, a painful half-smile, backed her car out of the spot and pulled away. My eyes followed her tail-lights as long as they could until the two red blurs were swallowed up by the river of night-time traffic out on the boulevard.

The rest of that night was the longest of my life. I didn't sleep well at all. I turned and tossed and wrestled with the pillows, the sheets and my thoughts. I had already made my choice, but that sure didn't stop me from scrutinizing it. My mind pulled back and forth, back and forth, between my two lovers. By the time my emotions had wrung themselves out enough to allow me to doze off, it was well after three AM and, even then, my sleep was not restful but broken, fractured in three places. Each time I woke to the same unfamiliar darkness, the incessant hum of the air conditioner, the same troubling considerations and the urges that opposed them. And each time the scent of Theresa Wayman was still on the sheets with me. 

When I awoke the fourth time, I knew there was no getting back to sleep. With one hand I felt along the top of the nightstand in the darkness until I found my Casio. With what was left of my index finger's nail, I depressed the tiny 'light' button - 5:03 AM. Yes, I really do remember the exact time. I dragged myself out of that bed. I remember too that my legs were leaden, dull and achy with fatigue, and that the rest of me didn't feel anywhere close to renewed. Nevertheless, I needed to get going. I had to get some distance between me and this place, these sheets, and Atlanta's Century 21 agencies. 

Minutes later, in the lukewarm Southern darkness, a foam cup of steaming coffee in one hand, I climbed into the van behind my suitcase and cranked her up. The old Caravan coughed and sputtered as we rolled slowly through the parking lot because, just this once, I hadn't taken the time to warm her up. I didn't have the time. I wasn't about to wait for anything. I wanted out of “Hotlanta”, pronto.   

But, anxious as I was, when I idled out of that lot, I just had to steal one last glance at the place where Theresa and I had said goodbye. As I rolled past the lounge, in unison my stomach tightened, my shoulders lurched, and I sniffled a few times. Despite the lead in my chest, I forced my head around, tightened my jaw, jutted it over the steering wheel and motored out onto the all-but-deserted boulevard. Once in the marked lanes, I drove as fast as I legally could. I made jackrabbit take-offs after every red light and quickly ate up the four or so miles to I-75. As I climbed onto the highway entrance ramp, something very strange happened. Although I hadn't seen any C-21 agencies along the way, I suddenly felt a small but very warm glow inside because I knew they could always be found.     

Had my mind not been full of Theresa, I would have savored the peaceful feeling I always get when driving in early morning along uncrowded Southern highways. But it was and I couldn't. Still half-dazed from sleep and the lack of it, I couldn't fight off the thoughts of Theresa that still jammed my mind, remembrances of last night, in the bookstore, in the lounge, in my room, and our heart-wrenching goodbye.  The few thoughts I was able to compose on my own were very, very disturbing. Things like,
I can turn around right now, get Theresa, finish out my life with her.
After all, wasn't she my high school sweetheart, my first love, the woman I'd dreamed about so many times, the lover I damn near killed myself over? 

But I didn't turn around. I pushed south and, as the day wore on, as the miles and miles of hot asphalt rolled beneath my wheels, those hauntings slowly thinned. Gradually my ability to process my own thoughts returned, and strengthened. As it did, something became clearer and clearer. I realized that the farther I was getting from Theresa, the closer I felt to Maddy Frances. By mid-afternoon that Wednesday, May sixth, 1992, as I was cruising down Florida's Turnpike south of Orlando, something came over me, a feeling, a spooky feeling that had come on as suddenly as a panic attack. Out of the clear blue I got this intense, urgent feeling that I had to call Maddy Frances right now, a scary, palm sweating, soul-jarring premonition that for some reason I might never hear her voice or see her again. 

A long twenty minutes later I pulled into a rest stop at a place (and I kid you not) called Yeehaw Junction. When I eased my legs out of the van, they felt as if they'd come all the way from Atlanta on horseback. The bright, scorching Florida sun beat heavy on me as I pushed my tired body, one step at a time, across the parking lot to the entrance of the characterless state facility. Once inside, I got change of a few bucks from a cashier who, when she fished it out of the register, acted as if it were coming out of her own dwarfed salary. I thanked her anyway, dragged myself across the tiled floor through a buzz of faceless travelers to a bank of pay phones along a wall. I dialed Maddy's work number.

You can't imagine how relieved I was to hear her voice. And did she flip when she heard mine. You would have thought the Publishers Clearinghouse entourage had piled out of their van again, the cameras, balloons, giant cardboard check, the whole schmear.

"Ohh, Dean," she said, "I'm so glad it's you! When will you be home? I don't think I can wait another hour. I'm so excited!"

I told her where I was, that I had left early that morning, made good time and that I'd be home around dinner time. 

Then, all the excitement leaving her voice, she said, "Honey, I don't e-v-e-r want to be apart like this again. Do you hear? I mean it!" 

"Me either, Maddy. Me either. It's just something I had to do." 

"I know. But it was horrible." 

Just as quickly as it had deflated, her voice puffed up again, and she said, "Anyway, Dean, I'm so glad you’re coming home. God, I don't believe it, I'm so excited I almost forgot to tell you the latest fantastic news. You're not going to believe this.  Are you ready?"

"What? What is it?"

"Fran called me last night. She didn't want to bother you at the motel, it was late and, knowing how tired you must be, she was afraid she'd wake you. Anyway, take a deep breath, honey. Brace yourself. You’re not going to believe this. It's the best thing that's ever happened to us, well almost!"

"Come on Maddy! Tell me! What is it?"

"Alright, here goes. Fran – got – word – yesterday that 'Look What They've Done To Our Dream' is going to be on the best seller list. It's going to be number eight on this week's New York Times list. DEAN, you can quit your job! Fran said that Olympus is going to send you a contract for the new book you're working on, AND … THE NEXT TWO AFTER THAT! And Dean, that's not all. She said, there will be, and I quote, a SIX-FIGURE ADVANCE. You've done it, honey. You're a writer!"

My legs jellied beneath me. A chill coursed every cell in my body. I had to put my free hand on the tile above the phone to steady myself. "Maddy...you're serious, aren't you?"

"Of course, I'm serious. We're home free! God, I want to see you so bad I can't even think straight. That's it, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to ask Darwin if I can get off early. He'll let me. He knows you're coming home today, everyone here does. Oh, Dean, I love you so much. I'm the happiest I've ever been. I'm gonna go home and cook you a really nice dinner. What do you feel like?"

There she goes again, I thought, true to form. Good old selfless Maddy Frances, always thinking of me first, Dean this, Dean that, what do you want Dean?  

"Maddy, listen … don't put dinner on. Let's go out and celebrate, nothing heavy, I'm too tired, just a nice quiet dinner somewhere."

“
Sure. That sounds great. I'd love to go out. What do you feel like - Mexican, Italian, seafood?" 

Slowly, I turned away from the pay phone. I leaned my travel-stiff back against its partition. Massaging my temples, shaking my head side to side, I said, "Nooooo, Maddy Frances … Listen to me. This time I want to know what you feel like."