Fairy Tale Blues (19 page)

The guys were due in at ten Friday night. I drove to Orlando in the afternoon to check out the yarn shops. I walked with Bijou around a small lake in a pretty city park, and sat beneath a huge shade tree and read and knitted while she played near me in the grass. For dinner, I found a nice outdoor bistro, then caught a movie before heading to the airport in time to meet their flight.

Now, past eleven o'clock at night, Cam and Saddler and I drove through sparse traffic until we reached the stretch of dark inland swampland on the way to Hibiscus. Along this part of the route traffic was practically nonexistent.

Saddler, sitting in the front seat next to me, said, “I can't believe how black the night is around here.” My older son took after Jess with his tall, dark-haired good looks. Yet he had a head for business that I liked to claim.

It was so dark that I had dimmed the dashboard lights, because they glared and bothered our eyes.

Cam agreed from the backseat, sitting behind his brother with Bijou on his lap. “I thought Wyoming was the darkest place in the country at night with cities almost a hundred miles apart, but here it's like these swamps suck up starlight.” My younger son carried golden tones in his hair and skin and this extended to his personality. He glowed with goodwill.

“Weren't you scared driving all alone on this road late at night when you first got here?” Saddler asked.

So I didn't have to wait as long as I had feared for this tender topic to open. With relief, in the comfort of the dark car, on this narrow road, crowded on both sides with walls of solid growth, I said, “I was too surprised by my actions to be scared.”

Yet the whole truth was that I was too miserable. I remembered how the outside bleakness of dark and lonely road mirrored my inner hopelessness. I didn't say so out loud, but that night some part of me had invited disaster. That feeling had scared me. Inwardly, I had beckoned a horrible accident to occur, as if that would explain or match the mangled way I felt inside.

“I love your father. I loved him the night I left. But I had become unhappy with my life and my relationship with him. In order to save my marriage, I temporarily left it. When two people fill their lives with the love and care of their children and those children move on,
as they should,
into their own lives, it takes an adjustment. The old rules no longer apply. Instead of thinking what was best for the family as a whole, I had to consider what was best for me. I had lost the knack. Your father adjusted better than I did.”

From the backseat Cam said, “That's because he'd been practicing all along.”

“What?” My whole body became an ear in the darkness. I felt myself tense with the need for absorbing those words.

Cam repeated them and added, “Dad knew you were taking care of everything, so he could pretty much do what he wanted.”

Saddler said, “It's a male thing from your generation.”

“It is?” I felt like a child, as if my sons and I had exchanged places in this disembodied blackness.

“Yeah,” Saddler said. “Men from your generation learned how to take over from watching their own fathers, but they don't get how to share being in charge.”

Cam said, “It's like you two tried to be less traditional in your marriage than Grandma and Grandpa were, where he went to work and she stayed home. With you and Dad, nobody was in charge either place. So you took over both places and Dad just helped . . . when he wanted to.”

Saddler said, “We're not on anybody's side or anything; we just noticed this stuff.”

“I want a marriage just like you guys have,” Cam said. “But I want both of us to have fun.”

Saddler said, “You should have more fun, Mom.”

My throat swelled and ached; I kept swallowing. The top of my nose stung, and my eyesight blurred with the tears that lined my lower lids. I blinked, hoping to absorb them, but more tears gathered and they slid down my cheeks anyway. I felt safe in hiding my wet face in the density of the swampy night. No faraway town lights, no moonlight visible through the narrow slit of sky directly above the road. Then the headlights of a rare oncoming car gave me away.

“Aw, Mom, don't cry. You made her cry, Cam.” Saddler rooted around in the glove department for tissues, and I sniffed and wiped the back of my hand across my face. Saddler was as uncomfortable as Jess with negative emotions, and often assigned blame.

Cam found my purse in the backseat, handed me a tissue from inside it and said, “Pull over. I'll drive.” The sensitive son.

My chest felt crowded and my breath was ragged in my attempt not to sob out loud and alarm my boys. I pulled over, and we all got out for the shift in seating—Saddler was going to sit in Cam's seat in the back so I could sit up front. Outside, on the edge of the road with the car motor off, the air sang with the watery sounds of frogs and the rasp of insects. Cam handed me another tissue and I blew my nose loudly. The noise of that created an abrupt alert to the swamp creatures. Utter silence descended.

In the dark, it felt as if all my senses were cut off. Then my sense of smell was alerted by a powerful sweetness that perfumed the silky night. I inhaled deeply.

With wonder lacing my voice, I said, “Blossoms.” And I stuffed the tissues in my pocket, tipped my head back to take in the heavenly fragrance. Cam and Saddler did the same and we stood together silently. Bit by bit the sounds of swamp life returned. First a single night bird chirped; then frogs croaked in unison, and a soft insect buzz stitched in the background. My eyes were adjusting to the night and I caught both guys watching me. I grinned at them, pleased to have them with me, proud that they had become such good, caring company.

Cam reached over and hugged me. After a moment, I pulled Saddler in with us. We stood together for another moment, arms around one another with our heads tossed back, inhaling the perfume and listening to the noisy night. It seemed as if the wildlife was celebrating something wonderful with us.

When we got back in the car, I considered Saddler's hesitancy in hugging me just now and earlier at the airport. Over the years I'd found this to be a sure signal. When the guys had girlfriends, it was harder for them to sort out their demonstrations of affection, and I was rightfully the woman set aside. Greetings and goodbyes turned briefly into stilted affairs, until the girlfriend became more familiar or the relationship moved on. I always honored that insight into their private lives.

I turned sideways toward the backseat. I said, “Saddler, do you have someone special in your life now?”

“I don't know.”

Cam glanced in the rearview mirror and said, “Tell her, Sadd.”

“We weren't finished talking about Mom's stuff. We should finish that.”

I said, “Well, to sum it up: it's entirely possible that you're both right, and much of my misery over my life and marriage could be healed by having more fun.” Such a simple idea. Yet it struck a note of pure truth with me. “I'll begin having more fun this very weekend with you two. Now tell me about your girlfriend.”

“Her name is Ella.” And from the darkness of the backseat while Saddler held the sleeping Bijou on his lap, I learned—more from what Saddler didn't say than from what he said—that my elder son was in love. I had thought at the airport as he approached me that he looked so much like Jess when I'd first fallen in love with him. Dark, wavy hair; tall, athletic body that could as easily climb rock walls as contort itself into a kayak and somersault down fast water. Ella, I learned, was a junior along with Saddler. They planned to live together this summer, probably in Telluride, Colorado, where Ella's family had a vacation cabin, but that was still pending on what jobs became available. They were both acquiring degrees in hotel management and would look for experience in their field. Saddler had loved Ella from afar last year while she was still involved with a boyfriend from home.

“Finally she wised up,” Saddler said, and laughed.

“She's a looker,” Cam said. “And really nice.” He added, “I'm glad I haven't found anybody special yet.”

“Me, too. You're too young.” Though at the moment, I was feeling Saddler was too young, as well—a mother's perennial perspective, I guessed. He was two years older than me when I decided to marry Jess. But they weren't talking about marriage, I reminded myself.

We drove several miles in silence.

Then Saddler said, “I just don't know why it doesn't work sometimes. I mean, when you love somebody, why doesn't it last, like you think it will?”

The question at the crux of separation. The ripples that disrupt more than just your own life when a marriage doesn't work. Cam and Saddler were in the process of building their understanding about long-term love, and I had slipped out some key supports when I left their father, even though temporarily. I owed Saddler and his brother an answer that lent strength to their understanding. I considered what I wanted to say. That old fairy-tale ending of happily ever after would never pass muster with this generation of kids, whose parents had a divorce rate that exceeded by far any before them.

“People fall in love for all kinds of reasons—some healthy, mature, and realistic; some not. When choosing a life partner, you question yourself about this quality of love and whether it has components of need to it that will burden the relationship.”

I thought for another moment and continued. “What can't be factored in is the uneven growth patterns of individuals. So this love has to hold patience within it and acceptance.”

And then to lighten up the conversation, I added, “But you guys are lucky. Your mother will choose both your wives for you.”

They'd heard that empty threat before, but laughed anyway.

 

Like his father, Saddler was a collector of brochures. By the time we'd ordered breakfast at the Green Bottle Café the next morning, he'd wandered off to the rack by the front door and picked up brochures about every adventure opportunity within a couple hours' drive. We passed them around to one another, discussing their merits while eating, and decided by the end of breakfast to kayak the Loxahatchee River that afternoon.

We loaded one of my canvas grocery bags with drinks, chips, cheese, salami and three apples, drove an hour to the river and rented kayaks from a man inside a shabby trailer. The adventure was advertised in the brochure as Florida just as it appeared in the 1930s. The boys and I joked that meant the owner's residence and his lack of plumbing.

Outside, behind the trailer, a big hand-painted sign warned about the danger of alligators. NO SWIMMING, it said. The owner's son outfitted us with three muddy and faded kayaks and eased us off the banks of the Loxahatchee into shallow red-brown water, where a gentle current floated us around a bend and into the silence of a bald cypress swamp.

Immediately our faces opened in delight at the strange environment. Hundred-foot bald cypress trees arched over the river, the limbs leafless at this time of year, though draped elegantly in Spanish moss. I had always read about cypress knees and had wondered what they looked like. They looked rather like the knees of scrawny skeletons, and they poked out of the water a couple of inches or a couple of feet, as part of the trees' vast root systems.

Cam spotted the first alligator.

“Hey, look,” he whispered, lifting his oar and pointing left toward shore.

Saddler paddled up near his brother. “Mom, check it out.”

“Oh, my God. Keep your hands in,” I hissed in a loud whisper. “Boys, do you hear me? Keep your hands in the boat and get out of here. Quick.” I paddled up behind them. “Go, go.” Sweat plastered my hair to the back of my neck. Forgetting I was the mother of two men now, I felt suddenly responsible for putting children in danger.

Both of them laughed at me.

“Let's go pet it,” Cam teased.

By now we were back-paddling in order to maintain a steady view of the alligator. The river water was a rusty brown around us, except in the sunny spots where it looked orange-red. The alligator's five-foot-long body was lying in a slice of orange, sunlit water near shore. Its bumpy-skinned shape was wedged among cypress knees, its head lay floating on the surface of the water and it looked far more at ease than I felt, even shielded in a kayak and sandwiched between two men. I wished we were wearing armor and helmets. When the alligator failed to leap out of the swamp and swallow one of us, I eventually relaxed.

Saddler started to laugh quietly. “I was just remembering when I turned sixteen and we were walking to our car after getting my new driver's license,” he whispered.

I whispered back, “I remember that day.”

“We came to a busy street and you reached out to hold my hand before crossing it, like I was still a toddler.” Saddler laughed again and Cam joined him.

I said, “I remember that, too. The best part was that you didn't say a word and just let me hold your hand all the way to the car.” I smiled at the memory. “That's when I knew you had grown up.”

We paddled on. Half an hour later, we came to a dam built of logs, where the water spilled several feet lower into a rowdy swirl of dips and waves, nothing like Wyoming whitewater, but fun for the guys and intimidating to me. Cam and Saddler swooped over the dam with ease.

I gave wide berth to the fast-running water, in order not to get pulled in, and worked my way toward the portage.

“You can do it, Mom. Cowboy up,” Cam called.

“I don't think so.”

Saddler said, “It's easy for a Wyoming Woman.”

I wanted to be a good sport, and my sons were longtime judges of what I was capable of. So I paddled over to get in position to take the rapids.