Conundrum (3 page)

What if Raff’s real problem was not manic depression? What if it stemmed from the years of pain and anger roiling under the surface of his self-esteem? What if abandonment mixed with misunderstanding
had
created a poison just as debilitating as depression? What if the truth could be uncovered?

I dared to imagine
.
 
.
 
.
what if there was some truth out there that could set him free? Was the freedom in the absolution? Or in knowing the truth? Could I single-handedly solve this one conundrum—the only one that really mattered?

Our father’s expertise was in something called Boolean algebra. It sounded like some Middle Eastern dance to me. That form of mathematics was a precursor to the developing of computers, something my father worked on in the
fiftie
s. A system of logic operators where a question could be answered in one of three ways:
a
nd, or, not
. Only recently, I had been thumbing through a book of brain teasers and startled at finding a Boolean algebra conundrum, of all things.

Two guards each stand before a door. Only one is the door leading to enlightenment. One of the guards always lies
;
the other always tells the truth. You want to open the door to enlightenment, yet you can only ask one question, and only of one guard. What is the only question you can ask that will tell you, with certainty, which door you must
choose
?

Well, without going into a lengthy discourse to explain how the algebra figures in, the answer was this: Ask either guard this question: “Will the
other
guard say he is posted at the door that leads to enlightenment?” If the guard you asked answered yes, the door behind him was the correct door. If he said no, it was the other door. It’s simple, once you saw how the parts all broke down. Boolean algebra reverted to simplicity. In any problem, there was only AND, OR, or NOT. Either “this answer AND that answer are both correct,” or “This answer OR that answer is correct,” or “NOT any of the answers
are
correct.”

As I hugged Raff good-bye, leaving him floundering in his pain, venting his anger at me, I thought about finding that door to enlightenment. I thought about the answers we’d been given for our father dying. Maybe we never asked the right questions that led to the right door.

I grunted as I started back down the stairs. We never asked
any
questions, did we? So how did we know whether or not the guard was telling the truth or lying?

My mother’s face came to mind. Every time we had tried to ask her questions about Dad, she changed the subject. Never once in my entire childhood
had
she talk
ed
about him, or her marriage. The facts I had about my father would barely fill half a page.

He grew up in New York. Spent years in one foster home after another until that nice
couple
took him in and raised him. Had a brother who was adopted with him into the Sitteroff family. Married our mother, joined the Merchant Marines near the end of the war, came back to work in LA for the Penwell Corporation. Spoke seven languages, accepted some award in Belgium for physics, took our mother to Paris for their honeymoon. Twelve gloriously happy years of marriage until the day he decided to die—the truth according to Ruth Sitteroff.

I’d only seen two photographs of him—that’s all our mother had. One of him in his
Merchant Marine
uniform and the other a family portrait right after Neal was born. Eight months before our father died. A lot of blanks to fill in. And just what happened to that brother of his—my uncle? Was he still alive, and why had we never seen him while growing up?

Suddenly, I had way too many questions. They overflowed, like lava spewing from a volcano, burning my insides. I rushed out of the hospital into the foggy street, thinking obtusely how the gray swallowing up the
streets of San Francisco
reflected my mental state. I knew just where to go first to look for answers, but I doubted they would be readily forthcoming.
“
And should I then presume? And how should I begin?
”

My mind brewed with ideas, and I felt a headache coming on from lack of sleep. After a volatile argument that had dragged on past midnight, I hadn’t been able to konk out until after three a.m. Thinking of finding Jeremy waiting at home flared the ache in my sinuses. But where else was I to go? I had a barnyard of orphans waiting to be fed, and a doe about to kid.

“
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
”

I couldn’t get the image of the man in the restaurant out of my head.

I’m free
, he said.

Did the truth really set you free? Or was that too simple? Maybe there were no answers at all.
And, or
, or
not
?

I loved the last lines of Eliot’s brilliant poem.
“
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
.
 
.
 
.
by sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
.
 
.
 
.
”

Those lines tickled my consciousness the whole drive home, over the Golden Gate Bridge, up the corridor through Marin
County
, even as I bounced along the long rutted dirt road with the brown rolling hills languishing in early summer’s heat a backdrop to my small farmhouse in Petaluma. I pulled up in the circular drive and cut the engine. Buster and Angel, my two rescued mutts, galloped from around the side of the house and panted with excitement at my arrival.

My mind fell suddenly quiet.

Jeremy stood by his truck, a bundle of clothes draped over his arm. My eyes took in the load of U-Haul packing boxes neatly stacked in the truck bed. I opened my car door and got out.

“Lisa
.
 
.
 
.
” His voice sounded
as if
it drifted up from the depths of the sea. Faraway, muted. “I wasn’t expecting you back so soon. I thought it would be less painful if—”

He gestured apologetically to the cowardly scene I had stumbled upon. My nausea returned with a vengeance as I looked with confusion at my husband of ten years, Jeremy, the only man I ever loved, oh, so loved.

Like waves breaking against a rocky shore, his words slapped me awake from some sleepy stupor I had been lingering in—for the better part of my adult life.

“
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
”

Chapter 2

“It’s just for a while—to give me time to clear my head,” Jeremy said. I noticed the tremble in his throat. Shreds of cloud skittered overhead and threw strange patterns on his freckled face as he searched my eyes. “I’ll only be down the way, at Daniel’s place.
”

His store manager’s house. Daniel was in his early twenties, single. I pictured a small spare bed in a cluttered den
.
A
couch with some blankets and a lumpy foam pillow thrown over ratty upholstery. Jeremy, six foot six and
hefty
, could barely sleep comfortably in our California King. An expensive bed he had picked out and paid for.

“Don’t do this, Jer, please.” Even though I meant the words, part of me hoped he would get into his truck and drive away. For now. I was too exhausted to go another round. But maybe Jeremy felt the same way. Our marriage was like a gracefully spinning gyroscope, so steady and almost perfect in its spin until decay set in, and with friction threw our shining relationship off balance into a wobble and decline. Toppling was inevitable.

He offered his hand to me in a conciliatory manner
,
and I took it as the breeze blew through my hair and cooled my face. His skin was warm and soft, his grip meant to be reassuring.

“I can’t take any more fighting. It’s making me sick. I can’t concentrate at work.” The edge had left his voice.

I nodded. My queasiness subsided as he spoke. Buster, a chunky yellow Lab with some Chow in him, licked my hand, demanding attention. I mindlessly scratched the top of his head until he had his fill and trotted over to the front stoop to plop down beside Angel, a border collie mix that couldn’t resist herding all the goats in the pasture at every opportunity.

“And I can’t take your mother’s ranting. Coming over here and running our lives.” His voice sounded more tired than angry. He squeezed my hand, then let it drop. “I mean it, Lis.”

I had no answer for him. We’d been over this a thousand times. I understood how frustrated he was. We had spent the last ten years building this house, putting in gardens,
and
adding a deck, Keystone fencing around the pasture, split-rail fencing along the drive, a
complex
water system with two one-thousand
-
gallon tanks, over a hundred old roses
. We had reclaimed
an orchard back from brambles of blackberry bushes, had even dug a huge pond, landscaped like something out of
Sunset
magazine.
W had invested a
ll our savings,
untold
hours of manual labor, all our
disposable
income, but
we owned
none of it.

My mother
ha
d
bought this property for us when we first married. Just as she
had
supplied the down payment on Raff’s fancy home overlooking the
b
ay before he got his promotion at the bank. She
had
only wanted to help us get started, get on our feet
,
when the feed store first opened and we didn’t have any savings. I saw it as an act of love, but Jeremy read it as a noose. Something she could use to lead him around with, make him do her bidding, make him beholden to her. His upbringing in rural Montana
—
coming from a traditional
two-parent home—
dictated that men provided for their families. It irked him that I had gone to my mother and asked for help. She
even
offered to loan us money as starting capital for the store, but that’s where Jeremy drew the line. He
buckled, though,
when I found this five-acre parcel for sale, reduced in price, the property of my dreams, complete with a babbling creek hugging the foothills. Now Jeremy cursed the day he said yes, letting my mother buy it for us. Keeping the title in her name.

Jeremy slammed his cab door shut and nodded to the house. “I still have a few more things inside to
. . .
put in the truck.”

I couldn’t help myself. A sob tore out of my chest without warning, and tears flooded down my cheeks. Jeremy only hesitated for a second before coming over and gathering me up in his comforting arms. Arms that only last night longed to lash out and smash something.

Rafferty’s voice poked the back of my mind.
“
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.
”
Which poem was that from?

“Hey, shh, now. It’ll be okay.” He let me cry for a minute, then lifted my chin and wiped my face with his cuff sleeve. He was wearing the green plaid flannel shirt I bought him for Christmas. The colors made his rusty hair look redder than usual.
With his jaw clenched, h
is smoky eyes caught mine
,
and I saw my pain reflected back.

Everything felt skewed, even the way he held me. So right and so wrong at the same time. I ached for his comfort, but I had to resist the urge to push him a
way and wiggle out of his arms.

I let him hold me like that for what I deemed the proper length of time, swatting away the memories of his acerbic attack of last night. The screaming, fist-pounding fury he had unleashed at me made me roil with anger. Why did I find those arguments so hard to let go of
?
Did
I suffer some sick addiction, needing to mull over each hurtful word, relive the sharp barbs until bleeding began
again—like pushing Rewind on a tape recorder
?
More l
ike picking at scabs and poking at wounds. Maybe I thought if I replayed those words over and over, they’d come out differently.

“
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
”

Yeats. How could I forget—the famous “Second Coming”
?
I could hear every word in Raff’s dramatic Shakespearean actor lilt.
“
The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
”
In Raff’s estimation, the former disdained group Yeat’s referred to included most everyone in the world. The latter—most notably himself, and maybe a handful of others. Pitiful, intense, hopeless romantics. The world needed more like him, or so he protested
in defiance of Yeats’s
declaration
.