Fairy Tale Blues (31 page)

Soon the rain eased and we spread out from under the canopy and draped ourselves over the sides of the boat to watch the fish underwater and try to spot the shy manatees. As the sun broke out more strongly, the river swamp enlivened. Birds waded out and flew overhead—a great blue heron, an osprey. Mullet jumped, piercing the water surface suddenly, making our heads spin in the direction of the splash that indicated the event was already over. We, ourselves, became talkative, when before we had only whispered or pointed fingers when spotting something interesting.

I crunched a carrot stick. “Yesterday in psychology class I learned that psychologists agree on what constitutes a healthy-minded person.” I'd been thinking about this.

“Oh, gee,” Sara said. “I'm afraid to hear it.”

“That's how I felt. I've been worried ever since I did hear it.”

“And now,” Marcy said, “in the role of a loving friend, you are going to pass this worry on to us, aren't you?”

“I thought if all four of us discovered we were unhealthy together it would help.”

“Okay.” Perry tossed her bangs from her face, held a palm out in invitation, gold bangles clinking. “Go for it.”

“Well, the professor said that a well-balanced person knows which responsibilities belong to her and which belong to others, and she only takes on her own.”

Sara raised her hand, posing as a confident game show contestant answering a thousand-dollar question. “What . . . are . . . boundaries?”

“Somehow it was the way she said it. I didn't hear it as another reminder about setting firm boundaries, once marriage and motherhood has smashed them to mush. Yesterday, it felt different. As if this were a basic kindergarten first-day-at-school rule: ‘This is yours. This is your neighbor's. Leave your neighbor's alone.' You know? I got it.” I added, “And I am not healthy.”

“I don't know which responsibilities are mine or which are Guy's, and when I do, I take his on anyway, just adding a huff and a sneer to let him know that I resent it,” Marcy said.

“Exactly,” Sara agreed.

Perry said, “Well, I can't do that with Alex. He has to maintain his area of capabilities or he loses ground. And he doesn't know how to take on mine. Which makes him a sweet person to live with, because he hasn't a judgmental bone in his body. Though, really, he is just sweet at heart.”

“Perry is healthy,” I announced. And I thought to myself that Jess lost ground every time I took on his stuff, too. Pick up his dirty socks once and I was assigned the job for life.

Perry stood up. “Did you see that?”

“What?”

Perry whispered, “It was a manatee. It just poked its nose up through the water right there and slipped back down.” She pointed toward the shore a few feet away, and we all sat still and hoped for another sighting.

Marcy said, “I don't think my problems are about boundaries.”

I poured her a bit more wine and said, “What's up?”

“It's just that when Guy and I got married our motto was: gather experiences, not things.”

Marcy swirled the wine in her plastic cup and studied the effect.

“But now he wants two brand-new cars every year, plus talks about getting a bigger boat. And he gripes about me working in the college library instead of taking a higher-paying job to build our savings. I said to him, ‘Guy, I thought we were always going to be grasshoppers. Now you want to be an ant. We could spend our whole life getting ready for winter.' ” She swallowed back tears, set her wine down to pat her pockets for a tissue. “He's changed his goals, but I haven't changed mine.”

Perry said, “He needed to be reminded of those early plans.”

“He called me irresponsible. Which I am.” She held up both arms in a hopeless surrender. “I thought that was the
plan
.” Her voice cracked.

I passed her a tissue from my purse.

“How about some dessert?” Sara rifled through her bag and lifted out a covered container.

I said, “Funny, one of the recommended criteria for choosing a mate is shared values, yet it doesn't really make sense.” I took a brownie from the plate Sara held, broke off a bit of walnut from the edge and ate it. “Values are personal and subject to change through our different experiences. Just because the person we live with changes his value system doesn't mean we should change ours to match.” I thought a moment about people who don't change or grow, like Alex and perhaps Jess in some ways, and added, “Or vice versa. If our partner doesn't grow, that shouldn't mean we stop as well.”

I remembered Daisy's explanation that Marcus frowned on her purchasing books because he wanted to support the library—a value of Marcus', not Daisy's. And I realized that though this problem of shared values seemed unrelated to the problem of honoring each other's personal boundaries, they were two parts of the balancing act required in a marriage.

Perry said, “Marcy, carry on with your life as a grasshopper.”

“But I use the new cars he buys.”

Sara said, “Get your own car. Whatever piece of junk you can afford.”

Marcy's face opened at that thought. “I could do that. Or, considering my small salary at the library, I could at least start gathering parts.” She laughed and blew her nose.

I said, “I turned in my rental and bought a used car. It's been freeing to drive without Jess' piles of junk rattling around.”

We each took a second brownie and sat quietly eating with far-off looks across the water. Possibly each of us was imagining the ways in which we could keep both our integrity and our marriages, because that was the issue at stake for us.

Soon we tucked our picnic supplies away, pulled up the anchor and continued down the river.

Once again we settled into a silence, this time basking in the sun that steadily burned the clouds away to expose more and more blue sky.

When I had learned about the accident that had killed Jess' mother, I saw in tall, handsome Jess the little boy who woke from his sleep when help arrived and stood bewildered on the side of the road as all about him struggled to revive his mother. And I saw the little boy who stood alone in the graveyard, the adults of his family moaning and sobbing, occasionally patting his head, as if this child were too unaware to see and hear the death and the sorrow surrounding him. An aunt had handed him a small top to play with; an uncle pulled a quarter out of the little boy's ear; his own father handed him sugary treats all through the burial.

These were people who could barely contain their own loss and were blind to the loss of the small boy. That boy became invisible to them and even to himself. Feelings, left unacknowledged by the grown-ups around him, became nonexistent to the boy. The grief went on for years with this family, and the invisibility went on just as many years with the boy.

This was the man I had married. The man onto whom I projected my expectations and with whom I was to share values.

I didn't know whom to feel sorrier for: me or him.

But it occurred to me as I again recalled the scene in the photographic gallery that Jess had learned about manipulating emotions—his own—as that little boy at the funeral. And he had also learned to downplay or dismiss the emotional responses of those around him. I might remember that and not feel as if I had to bend my own personal values to match his perspective.

Each time I stumbled across a marriage rule it took me by surprise, despite the fact that it had usually made repeated appearances before I recognized it.

MARRIAGE RULE #5: Honor Your Values.

Jess

 

 

I
made the mistake of telling AnnieLaurie that I had met once with Lola and scheduled a second session. Annie phoned last night to see how my appointment went.

“Did you meet with Lola again?”

“Yeah, sure. I . . . I met with her. Valentine's Day.” No need to mention I'd stood Lola up and she'd found me on the ski slope.

“Oh, we talked that morning, but you didn't mention it. So I was picturing you skiing the King that day.”

“Well . . . I did both.”

“You sound hesitant. I just realized, this is your business, not mine. I shouldn't be asking about it.”

“No, it's okay. She said something pretty important. She used this term to describe my role in my mother's death: causal link. She just set me free with that.”

“My gosh, that's so wonderful.”

“Other than that, it wasn't a great session in some ways. I probably won't be seeing her again.”

“No?”

“Remember when she called me a ‘cuddly predator'?”

“I do.”

“You say that rather cheerfully.”

“Well . . . go on. What happened?”

“This time she called me a vampire.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What the hell do you mean ‘uh-huh'? What kind of therapist calls her patient names?”

“What else did she say?”

“That I was a great date, but she'd hate to be married to me. As if I'd spend another minute of my life with her, anyway.”

“Because . . . ?”

“Because she doesn't
like
me.”

“No, I mean, she'd hate to be married to you because . . . ?”

“I don't know. I don't remember.”

“You always say that. You ‘don't know' or ‘don't remember.' ”

“Now you sound like Lola. What does it matter?. It wasn't a real appointment. She never even sent a bill.”

“What's that about?”

“Annie, for God's sake, do you have to drill me? I thought you phoned to have a nice conversation. You haven't even asked how I am.”

“That's what we're talking about: how you are.”

“Well, forget it. As usual, talking to you just pisses a guy off. Goodbye.”

“Bye, Jess.”

 

This morning in the store, Hadley looked worn down. Made me think of Lola saying I used everybody up. Hope she didn't mean Hadley, too. Couldn't let that happen. If Hadley wasn't here, I'd have to work in the store every damn minute of every damn day. Forget my powder runs. I checked my watch; the lifts would open in half an hour and I planned to lay first tracks on that snowfall we got last night.

I hollered, “Hadley, could you pop in here when you get a chance?” A minute later she came into the office.

“What do you need, Jess?”

“Just checking on you. You look done in lately.” I got up and closed the office door.

“Things aren't going so well at home. Nothing new, I guess, but I can't put off making some decisions.”

“And you're losing sleep over it.” I sat at my desk again.

“Losing sleep, losing weight.” Here she pulled her waistband out to show a three-inch gap. “Losing sanity.” She leaned against the edge of Annie's desk—now Hadley's—and folded her arms. “Don't know where to go with this problem, but it seems to be escalating.”

I sat in my favorite position, swiveled sideways in my desk chair, feet resting on the overturned wastebasket. Shameful to say, but this might have been the first time in weeks that I really looked at this woman. I fiddled with a pen while I checked her out. She looked tired all right. There was a dark smudge high on her cheek-bone beneath her left eye. Probably a shadow cast by the overhead lights, but it reminded me of a couple times earlier in the season when I thought she looked roughed up—a lip that sat lopsided, despite lipstick drawn outside the line, a row of small bruises around her wrist and lower arm. I hadn't really thought about what was going on with her.

I started to feel bad about that, but somebody was guiltier than me. I nodded to her face.

“Is that a bruise?”

“Not the first.”

“That piece of shit.” I dropped my feet, sat upright and slammed the pen on the desktop. “I'm calling the cops.”

“It's two days old, Jess.”

“Leave the bastard.”

“Yeah?” Hadley raised her voice at me; she had never raised her voice at me in our long history together. “How am I going to do that, Jess?”

“What's holding you up?”

“A roof over my head.” She put her forehead in her hand a moment, then looked up and spoke more quietly. “Leaving Paul means leaving the valley . . . my friends, my work.” She gestured out the window, to me, to the office. “He's an attorney; he knows how to play it; he's warned me about that throughout our marriage. And besides, I couldn't find a lawyer to take my case in the state of Wyoming who didn't owe Paul a favor or hope to get one owed in the future. That's how it works, at least according to Paul.”

Hadley moved around to the other side of her desk, tidied paper piles, keeping her head down. “Without my savings or the investment I made in our house, I couldn't begin to make it here. You know that. I'm looking into moving away, but . . . this is my
home
.”

Hadley choked on that last word and suddenly “home” took on all the meanings I had always taken for granted and all the meanings I had longed for since Annie left. Home. “Home” meant more than shelter; it meant the place where we loved and were loved.

Teton County, the most expensive county in the United States, was not a place just anybody could afford to live. Half the service industry that supported the valley's resort businesses had to drive in from another state—Idaho. The other half from another country—Mexico. There were a lot of houses in our valley—the wealthy loved to buy land and build houses in the world's most beautiful places and spend a few weeks in each of them. But there were far fewer homes—places where people kept their hearts. Hadley's heart had been kept in this valley since the day she graduated from college, some thirty years ago.