On the Divinity of Second Chances (23 page)

BOOK: On the Divinity of Second Chances
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Sometimes, when I’m tired, I really wish I could cheat at the field day of life. If everyone untied their legs or dropped their potato sacks, it wouldn’t be a goofy field day anymore. It would be the Olympics, which is to field day what Heaven or enlightenment is to Earth life, and there’s time for that later.
For now, all I can do is wait for my clothes to dry after losing at the water-balloon toss of life. In the meantime, I have no comfort, no dignity, not enough warmth, and I’ve totally lost my field day spirit. In fact, I hate field day. I can’t remember why I thought it would be such a damn good idea to show up.
Anna on Martina and “Marriage Counseling”
(July 14)
Phil opens the door next to the antique shop for me, and together, we climb up the stairs. Our feet echo in the narrow hall. We stop in front of Martina’s door and pause. “Martina,” it says, “Wise to the ways of love.”
We knock. The door cracks open and an exotic-looking woman surveys us. “You will not talk,” she says firmly. “The only words here will be mine.”
What? Phil opens his mouth as if to argue, but holds his tongue.
Martina opens the door, revealing a dance studio lit only by hundreds of red chili pepper party lights stapled to the ceiling. Near the window grows hibiscus, gardenia, jasmine, tuberose, and ginger. Phil and I step in and awkwardly wait while Martina walks over to the stereo and puts on some music.
“Phil, you will put your hands on Anna like this,” she says, and puts one of Phil’s hands on my lower back. She holds the other one out. “Anna, take his hand. Put your other hand here.”
I open my mouth to protest, to say, no, we came for marriage counseling, but Martina puts one finger over my lips. “I am wise to the ways of love, not you. If you were wise to the ways of love, you wouldn’t be here. Do not question me. Do not doubt. You are in good hands.”
Martina stands at Phil’s side. “This is your job,” she tells him. “One, two, cha-cha-cha, three, four, cha-cha-cha. Do it with me like this.” Phil follows Martina. I wait for instruction.
“I see,” Martina says. “Notice your wife does not follow you. There are no boundaries between you. You walk all over her and she just waits for it to be over. You do not dance together because your arms are weak. Hold your arms firm. This is the space your body needs. You are not taking away from her to claim this space. You must claim it or she doesn’t know where she belongs.”
Where I belong? How archaic.
She looks at me. “You think I am sexist. American women always do. You do not understand the nature of women and the nature of men. In a dance between two people, one person must lead and the other person must follow.”
Phil firms up his arms, pushing me back and forth as he cha-chas. I make no attempt to dance. I step forward and step back when he pushes or pulls me.
“Do you like being pushed around?” Martina asks me.
I shake my head.
“Then you must participate in the dance.” She does the cha-cha steps for me to imitate. “You resent your husband’s leadership because he has been a poor leader. He is becoming a capable leader. You will soon be in capable hands. Begin to relax into that. Begin to allow yourself to trust him again. There. Doesn’t it feel good to not always have to run the show? He will take care of you.” She looks at Phil quickly. “You will take care of her, right?”
Phil looks like a deer in headlights.
“She cannot be a woman if you are not a man,” Martina says.
Phil opens his mouth, but before anything comes out, Martina stops him.
“Say nothing. Look at her. Tell her with your eyes that you will take care of her. Tell her with your eyes: Thank you, thank you for the children you gave me, thank you for giving me a family. Tell her with your eyes that you will always take care of her.”
I must say, I am not impressed with what I see in Phil’s eyes.
“Look at her. She is small. She is delicate. She has become toughened because she did not think you would take care of her. Soften her. Soften her with your love. Melt her like butter with love in your eyes.”
“Look at him,” she tells me. “Look in his eyes. He wants to love you. You must let him! Remember when you first met him. Remember him when he was a boy. He was crazy for you. He would have slayed dragons for you. You knew it. You loved it. You loved that he wanted to take care of you. Look at him. Look at what a good man he became. He has been a good father. Look at how his daughters made him tender.”
We both look at her, wondering how she knew we had daughters.
“I can always tell a man with daughters. They have a tenderness about them the others lack. All men should have daughters.”
Then she turns her attention back to me. “See his sweetness. He still wants to be your husband. He is dancing with you. He still wants to be your husband. He wants to know if you still want to be his wife. Remember how you felt during your first kiss. Now look at him and tell him with your eyes that you still want to be his wife.”
The memory of our first kiss makes me smile a little. He was so nervous. When I look in Phil’s eyes, I can see that he is thinking of it, too. I look at him and I think about what it means to have this much history with someone, how I can guess what he is thinking and be right, how there are so many secrets just the two of us share.
“Phil, tell her with your eyes that you are sorry for times when you were too insensitive and rigid and pushed her around. Tell her you are sorry for the other times she needed clear clues and your arms were limp. Anna, tell him with your eyes that you are sorry for dropping out of the dance. Tell each other you have many good times ahead. Do not look away from each other. Eyes are the windows to the soul. You must look in each other’s eyes to find what you fell in love with in the beginning. Now we will just dance.”
Martina goes to a corner of the room to cha-cha under the red party lights by herself.
I look in Phil’s eyes, but I don’t see him telling me anything. I see only questions. Do you still love me? Do I even know who you are? Is it possible to find our way back to each other?
And in my eyes, I feel questions, too. Do you still think I’m beautiful? Can we recapture the feelings we once had? Do you have any idea who I am?
We keep dancing, and the questions in our eyes slowly become more comfortable and less intense. How hard it is to look at each other for so long.
At eight o’clock exactly, Martina turns the music down a little. “You may not talk to each other. If you need to tell each other something, you will tell it to each other with your eyes, or with a gentle touch. You will come here again not tomorrow, but the day after at the same time. Is that a problem?”
We shake our heads.
“Here is a list of music. You may listen only to music on this list while you are learning the ways of love. Nothing else. You may only listen to these Brazilian artists. Brazilians know the ways of love. Brazilian music will help teach you the ways of love. You will go to the music store tomorrow and buy at least three CDs on the list. Raul will be expecting you and will call me if you do not follow through. You must not talk to each other. You will undo my work if you talk to each other. You must not do this. And you must not make love. There will be no lovemaking for a long time.”
Oh, please, not that, I sarcastically think. I feel relieved.
We each shake her hand and walk out in silence.
We drive to the house in silence. Phil parks the car in the garage and holds up a finger for me to wait. So, I wait. He opens my door, and I look at him to ask what he’s doing. He points to the house and then to the backyard. I motion toward the backyard. He gently touches my lower back, guiding me toward my tree house. I walk just ahead of him. At the base of the ladder, he takes a step back. I start up the ladder, but pause to look down at him. He gives me a look that thanks me for initiating some attempt to stay together, for reaching out to him. Then he turns and walks away. Since not talking takes away the pressure to fill space or leave it, I feel freer to watch him for a minute, to watch his walk, to remember rushing to the living room window after he dropped me off when I was a teenager so I could watch him walk back to his car, so I could look at him for a few seconds longer.
I finish climbing the ladder, crawl onto the futon I bought yesterday, and light some candles.
I think about Martina’s words. “Do you like to be pushed around? Then you must participate in the dance.” I think about how I felt in that moment, how much I’ve disassociated with my body, my husband, life.
When I think of my heart, I think of a nuclear fallout shelter. I remember considering nuclear fallout shelters when I was a kid, thinking there was no way I’d go into one because life inside a fallout shelter wasn’t life at all. Now here I am. It’s a different kind, but the result is the same.
I wonder what there is about me for Phil to even love. I have hardened so much. I’ve been a dutiful wife, but not a loving one.
God, please soften my heart, I pray.
I remember a time when we were sixteen, sitting on top of the Ferris wheel at the county fair. When it stopped to load more people, Phil reached over and took my hand. He looked at me with a vulnerability I had never seen before or since. It appeared as if he wanted to tell me something, and indeed that look did tell me something, but it remains something for which there are no words. Nonetheless, the memory of that look softens my heart.
Olive on the Genders Within and Annie Get Your Gun
(July 14)
“Within each of us is an inner male and an inner female. When you’re in a relationship with a man, you not only need to have balance between you as a woman and him as a man, but your inner male needs to have balance with his inner female,” Hazel says as we put on our tap shoes. “This is very complicated.”
“Tell me about it,” Beatrice mutters as she walks by us to get a glass of wine. Tonight she seems particularly sassy, her cropped hair fluffy from just being washed. She wears wine-colored pedal pushers and a pink sleeveless shirt. Her cat glasses accentuate her wit.
“Okay, ladies, did you bring your hats?” asks Grandma Pearl. We all put on our cowboy hats. “Guns?” We put on our holsters. “Here, ladies, here are your cap guns.” As per Grandma’s suggestion, this number is going to include the discharge of firearms. She wanted to go with real guns and blanks, but decided that noise wouldn’t be good for the baby.
“Flap-heel-heel, flap-heel-heel, eight times. Scuff-heel-toe-heel, scuff-heel-toe-heel,” Grandma Pearl leads. “Now here we’re going to do a little square-dance kind of thing. Flap-ball-change, flap-ball-change, shuffle-shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, around each other like that.”
Fiona takes a drink of her wine and says, “I would think a woman who has a highly developed inner male would need a man with a highly developed outer male so that her inner male could finally rest.”
“If he does not have a highly developed inner female, her inner male will have nothing to do and go to war with his outer male out of boredom,” Hazel says.
“Okay, I can see how that works in theory, but take me. I have a highly developed inner male,” Fiona begins.
“Clearly,” Grandma Pearl says, eyeing the National Organization for Women T-shirt Fiona’s wearing.
“You should talk,” Beatrice says in Fiona’s defense.
“As I was saying,” Fiona continues, “I don’t dream about having a man with a highly developed inner female. I dream about meeting a man where just once I don’t think, ‘Yeah, pal, I’m twice the man you’ll ever be.’ ”
“Yeah, I gave up on that a long time ago,” Grandma Pearl laughs. I think every single one of us has a wisecrack for Grandma Pearl, but none of us says anything. “Well, ladies, we could suck down more wine and gab all night about how manly we are, or we could just keep tapping and get to the place were we fire off our guns. I vote for guns!” Grandma exclaims. Of course she does. “Okay, ready? Flap-ball-change, flap-ball-change, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Bang!”
“So Olive,” Fiona says, “what’s this we hear about you building a mud house?”
“Yes, my inner male is building a small mud house. It’s only two feet tall right now.”
“What happens when it rains?” Hazel asks.
“Nothing,” I answer. “It’s waterproof. The mud is a mix of clay, sand, and concrete. When it’s finished, I’ll plaster the inside and outside. Similar building styles were used in Europe for hundreds of years and those structures are still standing.”
“Are you going to have plumbing and electricity?” asks Hazel.
“Yes,” I answer. “My inner male is a good man who would never let a woman live in discomfort.” Fiona hands me a glass of sparkling cider. “Eventually I’d like to get off the electrical grid and go solar, but that will take a considerable investment, so for now, I plan to just hook in.”
“I would like to see what your inner male is building,” Hazel says.
“Anytime,” I tell her.
Phil on Failure and Corsages
(July 16)
From the time I was old enough to know what was going on, I knew the bank was one step away from foreclosing on our farm. I watched my father work himself into the ground, and during the harvest, I worked myself into the ground, too. In the end, it wasn’t enough. When I was fifteen, the bank foreclosed.
Grandpa Fritz said it was all directly due to birth control. He said when there were ten kids to ride on five junky tractors, a farmer could come out ahead, but when a man didn’t have all those kids, he had to buy a colossal, fast, and expensive combine to compensate. That specialized combine locked him into a crop that wasn’t always in high demand, and locked him into more debt than he could usually pay off. Grandpa Fritz even drew me a time line to show when birth control was invented and when the farm crisis began. He drew a bar graph showing the average number of kids a farm family had and the number of bank foreclosures on farms.
BOOK: On the Divinity of Second Chances
11.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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