Escape Points (7 page)

It was only a few hours of waiting for prep, surgery, and recovery this time, and now when they wheeled Weldon away on the table for the operation, he was almost six feet tall but still mostly arms and legs.

In the recovery area, the doctor spoke to me confidently and showed me Weldon’s ear; it was perfect, pink, and well-formed, an exact match to his left ear. Hours later it would fill again and swell, but that would recede, Dr. Doshi promised. Less than a week later, Weldon wrestled in a match, his ear swathed in gauze bandages, his headgear secured with silver duct tape. He won the match. But he wrestled too soon; his ear did not have time to heal. He had the ear again. In spite of the operation and the drainings, he had the ear. When all the wrestling was over, after college, after it all, I told Weldon I was taking him back to Dr. Doshi and I was going to fix it.

Because that is what mothers do. I was going to fix it.

The following December, Brendan got the ear. He was wrestling junior varsity as a sophomore and apparently not wearing his headgear in practice either. As soon as I noticed it and Brendan confirmed it, we scheduled an appointment right away to see Dr. Doshi. His waiting room was crowded, a clientele of elderly, middle-aged, and very young. One was a beautiful teen who had multiple piercings on her ear, apparently infected. The nurses were kind and the magazines were decent—
National Geographic
and
Time.
I hated the waiting rooms with only golf magazines.

Brendan and I waited in one of the white-tiled patient rooms; Brendan reclined in the large leather chair that looked like a barber’s chair. Dr. Doshi was pleasant and reassuring. After Weldon’s visits and follow-ups, we were getting to be friends. This would go better than Weldon’s ear did, Dr. Doshi said, since we didn’t wait so long to come to him. Brendan winced when his ear was drained.
Unlike Weldon, Brendan agreed not to wrestle for a week to let it heal. So it did.

But in March of the next year, we were back. Dr. Doshi drained Brendan’s ear again, puncturing the engorged ear with what looked like an X-ACTO knife, then a surge of blood, a few black stitches, and it was bandaged. We went home. But a year later, Brendan’s ear appeared worse than Weldon’s. Dr. Doshi said plastic surgery can fix the ears, not like new, but they could be improved.

Colin never got the ear, and I reminded him constantly to be sure he was wearing his headgear in practice. You would think wrestling made an athlete deaf as well. Colin said he didn’t care; it would be OK, he would even like it if he got the ear. He called it a badge of honor. It made me incredibly upset, and I hoped he was not trying to make me upset, as sons sometimes do, just to temperature-check my reactions.

Because almost every time I look at Brendan and Weldon’s ears, I feel like crying.

I
had enough to do. I didn’t need the scrutiny. For several years after my divorce in 1996, I did not introduce my sons to anyone I dated, mostly to save myself from the boys’ interrogations and fears. First, I wanted to see if I even liked him enough to see him twice. Then, I could think about making introductions.

Raising the boys alone without financial assistance or physical reprieve kept me occupied, if not impatient. Meeting Mr. Wonderful was not the highest priority. In the time since my divorce, most of my first dates were coincidentally the last dates because I couldn’t wait to get home and call a friend or one of my sisters to laugh.

“How often are your boys away for the whole weekend?” one date asked.

“Never.” I noticed a perceptible shift in his demeanor.

The friend who fixed us up was apologetic when I told her on the phone.

There was the Italian accountant with the creaseless pants who asked early on our first date if I had my marriage annulled. He was
Catholic and wanted to remarry, and didn’t see the point of going much further if I didn’t conform to canon law.

Sure, some men were polite, attractive, and intelligent, but for years no sparks flew in my direction and no one was ever all that funny, interesting, or a better option than a hot bath, rented movie, or a stack of new magazines. I worked a lot—writing and teaching and giving seminars—and my kids were a lot. I didn’t want to risk crying, feeling insecure, or having to tell my sons I met someone and had no idea what would happen. Mommy doesn’t need a good time that badly. Dating strangers was scary—no sense risking ending up in pieces in the trunk of someone’s car just because you wanted to wear pretty shoes out to dinner.

I understand I was afraid.

The boys didn’t need any more surprises from a parent. I was predictable; I didn’t bring home any threats to their homeland security. I also had hundreds of papers to grade, articles to file for magazines and newspapers, books to research and write. I had to give speeches, go to conferences and meetings. I had to make dinners. I had to make lunches. I had to make breakfasts. It was easier to go to bed early, wake up early, and get on with my day.

“He was so boring,” I told Dana, my former college roommate, on the phone after a nice date with a nice man who was nice looking. “I think he went through his entire day minute by minute in chronological order.”

“Oh, honey,” Dana said. “They are all boring. You just forgot.”

There were men I met in airports, on airplanes, or in shared cabs when I traveled for work. A man on a plane sitting in the row behind me and the boys—on our one and only trip to Disney World, because honest to God who in her right mind would go back—asked for my card and if I wanted to go out for a drink once back in Chicago.

“Mom, he’s still smiling at you,” Brendan said, his face contorted in complete disgust.

Some men who approached me were as old as my father would have been, and two were as young as thirty.

Most of the time I met them and that was it, no first or second dates, no phone chats, no follow-ups. Meeting someone was not dif
ficult. Men talked to me in grocery stores. Not that I am all that flirty, but I answer them, even if I know the question about where are the sundried tomatoes is just a ruse. Still, meeting someone who was worth taking a risk on was nearly impossible. The idea of being close emotionally or physically with someone—anyone—was far too unsettling. I said no, thank you, to any offers but took the compliment they extended and that was all I needed for a while. It may seem as if there were a lot of opportunities, but spread them out over almost a decade and it worked out to twenty or so in about one hundred months, so not so many. Fewer than the number of phone solicitations in a year for aluminum siding, but more than your jackpot lottery win. I guess I could have taken a chance on one of them and fallen in love. But I dared not; the terrified of being fooled again thing.

I was realistic and knew my limits; I am not a woman all men find irresistible. But I do not hate any part of my body, because life was just too short for that brand of self-loathing, even if it was in jest. I want to be healthy and I consider myself attractive, but I do not obsess. I noticed that every year it took about ten more minutes of serious prep time to get to neutral, an additional fifteen minutes to appear as if I had a good night’s sleep. Twenty more minutes on top of that to look good. An hour plus if the event was black tie and I had to do something inventive with my hair. Oh, and concealer, well, that’s a given.

Years ago at a neighbor’s cocktail party, I told the popular plastic surgeon who hosted Botox parties I was never invited to that I would prefer to be viewed in candlelight throughout my middle age rather than undergo any treatments that involved a knife or laser. I told him how I felt proud to be about much more than my looks, and that I was confident I was interesting and desirable without a breast job or eye lift or anything that would freeze my age lines with a poison ingested any other way could kill you. I also told him I did not want to have any surgery described as plastic. I wanted surgery that involved steel. He looked me up and down as if he was sizing up a horse he intended to buy.

“You can use some work,” he said.

I didn’t throw the drink at him. But in my fantasy it was red wine.

If I did go out, I was a good date. Polite, well-dressed, punctual. Didn’t pick my teeth with a credit card—which I saw a woman do once at a friend’s birthday party. I sat through a date’s excruciatingly detailed stories of high school and college sports and asked appropriate questions. Smiled frequently.

I ordered the chicken—I always ordered the chicken. It was a lesson my brother Bill taught me when I was thirteen. I was getting ready for the homecoming dance my freshman year of high school in 1971. I wore a midnight blue jersey halter dress my grandmother made for me, and my hair was set tightly in the pink electric rollers with the steam. Bill walked by the room I shared with Madeleine with the green flowered bedspreads, a transition from the zebra print we had in an earlier phase. I was painstakingly applying blush and shimmer lip gloss in the mirror.

“Don’t order the most expensive thing,” Bill said. “Look at the price, don’t get the steak.” And then he went upstairs to his bedroom on the third floor, the one with the separate bathroom built for the servant couple who lived there with the original owners. We needed every room in the house for the eight of us, no servants.

Bill had his reasons for warning me. It was a cautionary dating tale in our house that his formal date his senior year of high school ordered lobster at a downtown restaurant. The young men at the table scraped together enough to pay his share of the bill, but barely. I was allergic to seafood, so I knew not to order that, aside from the price. The steak, no one had told me to avoid. This was practical, useful information, a major plus to having brothers. The next morning I proudly reported back to Bill about our meal at the revolving restaurant on the top floor of the Holiday Inn on Lake Shore Drive.

“I just ordered the house salad,” I told him. “Nothing to drink, no dessert, no entrée. I think the house salad was about two dollars. Good, huh?”

He looked disappointed. “You should have ordered something. Guys don’t like girls who don’t eat.”

I apparently exceeded the unspoken timetable for unattached healing when another calendar year would pass since my divorce and I was still available, on the market, my vacancy sign still flashing on the front lawn, still going to all-couples parties and black-tie events alone. Because no one had claimed me yet—and I had claimed no one for myself—it was as if I was doomed to rot, like a nectarine gone bad in the fruit bowl. I took offense at that, and sometimes said as much, when people would ask if I was seeing anyone. To everyone in the universe, being half a pair was a measure of my mental health and personal success.

“Are you remarried?” someone would ask as if we all were playing a matrimonial game of rock, paper, scissors.

I developed the pat answer that having a partner was not the measure of my well-being. I was well without one.

Staying out of the game was also about more than not wanting to waste my spare time. It was about my ability to trust someone, anyone outside my immediate family. When you get trampled, really trampled as I did in my marriage, it is not high on your to-do list to throw your heart into the center of U.S. Cellular Field or Yankee Stadium. I never understood people who had multiple marriages, one after the other, trading one in for the next like running shoes. They accumulated two, three, four spouses. Five even. I had a hard time talking to the same person on the phone two nights in a row.

I understand I have issues.

It was easier to be alone. It was cleaner, less dangerous, less fussy, and it definitely made me less insecure. No heartache. I spent so many years without romance, filling up my life with my children and my work and every detail to keep it all afloat, and my needs receded. It was not even noticeable at first; I stopped wanting and figured that wasting my time mourning the loss of real affection was like ranting at a sunset or a rainstorm. When you let go of the need, the need lets go of you.

Besides, I have had my heart broken open. So my heart opens only a little bit at a time.

Then in the summer of 2004, I suspended my fears and disbelief and waded slowly into a relationship with a man who was completely unlike my former husband. I regularly patted myself on the back for slowly falling—it was more like tipping or leaning—in love with a man who was kind, sensible, methodical, calm, and everything else my former husband was not. I loved him for who he was, but mostly for who he was not. And it was addictive, the feeling of being loved. I liked being able to relinquish control, even if just in the restaurant ordering wine. We were together for almost six years. It was great, until it wasn’t. Nothing traumatic happened, it was just over; his choice.

But here is the thing, and here is what so many men miss. Women who are charged with doing it all—women like me who care for children and sometimes elderly parents and homes and careers—sometimes we want to do one less thing. Sometimes we do not want to be the only one to take out the garbage and drive to the store. Sometimes we are so tired of being together and in charge, we do not even want to talk, listen, or pick out a movie. Sometimes we would rather have a hot stone massage from a total stranger than a conversation of substance. Sometimes we want to melt quietly for a little bit before we go right back to being CEO of the family corporation. We don’t want to be Super Woman all the time because it is tiring. So men need to know that we have to go back to that life, not pretend it does not exist. We just want a reprieve for a few hours. It’s good if a nice, kind man is there too, one who reads a lot and can talk about the latest books. Not so good if he always acts like what I can give is never enough.

Many dates have told me I need to relax. Some have said I am an intellectual snob—I wasn’t even trying that time my date said he had no idea what I was talking about, the references I made to stories, websites, events. Some say they can’t keep up with me. Most say I am intense—the intensive care unit doctor for one, and I found that almost funny.

Here is what I want to tell any man who chides me for being too busy or too ambitious: I love what I do. I find exquisite meaning
in writing things of topical importance, teaching young men and women to love a profession that I feel matters, mentoring adults and teens to find their voice and the need to contribute their ideas to a complicated world. I like standing up in front of an audience and telling stories. I like writing books. I like book signings and the line of people waiting to tell you that your words matter. I like learning, exploring, and discovering new ideas—feeling as if my time on the planet has meaning.

So there are times when it would be more romantic for you to pick up the prescriptions at the pharmacy because I don’t have time to get them than for you to prepare a candlelit dinner for the two of us and ask me not to talk about what is going on in my head. To shush and be quiet. I want to listen to you, yes, I do, but I want you to listen back. Women like me will listen to you, honor you, but we can’t take care of you. And I know how to nurture someone, yes, I know how to love someone well. I will do that for you. But please love me the way that I ask to be loved.

The problem is, no matter how much we say we are here for you, we can’t be here for you only. We just can’t. It’s not a lie that we love you deeply and we do wish we could be yours alone, but we can’t. There are other people we are in charge of, who have no one else.

We can pretend well enough in our lace dress with the Spanx underneath on a Saturday night to be sexy and carefree at the Brazilian restaurant that doesn’t get moving until eleven or so, but it will be Sunday soon when we will have to go to Target to buy deodorant and peanut butter and poster boards. And then we will have to help with an English paper or a history project, and we can’t tell you how much we desire you all the time because hot Beyoncé/Jay-Z desire is not something a single working mother can afford much of on a regular basis, especially when she is concerned about paying the mortgage and college tuition at this moment in time.

We hope you understand, but the truth is few do. Being in demand at work and home is not an aggressive act on my part. It is not at all about abandoning your needs. If it upsets you that much that I cannot sit in your den watching
CSI
every night, please go to the grocery
store for ground sirloin, milk, and hamburger buns, and I will have an extra hour to spend with you and give you my full attention. I will watch
CSI
, but just one episode.

A romantic gift would be new tires for the car and an electrician to fix the kitchen light. For the past two decades, I didn’t just need to forget my worries, I needed someone I trusted to talk out my next move at work, plan the book tour, the next website launch. I needed someone to help me navigate the teen years, and talk to three boy-men who sometimes were angry over everything, every day, all the time and I had no idea why. I needed someone to do more than just wait for me to stop talking so we could go to a concert. I needed someone to applaud my energy and not sigh with exasperation that I had a new project planned as soon as the current one was turned in. I would reciprocate, of course.