Saturday, March 7, 2009: Not quite awake, I lie close against Mike’s back, matching the rhythm of my breathing to his. Hints of sunlight filter through tiny gaps in the shutters of our upstairs bedroom. He rolls over to face me. A sweet, sleepy kiss on my forehead and then, “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I tell him, stroking his cheek.
Hovering just below the surface of fully awake, it’s as if things are as they’ve always been. We love each other. We are partners in each other’s lives, living out the “for better or worse” we both promised over four decades ago, with the scales mostly balanced on the side of “for better.”
We kiss again, this time a lingering kiss on the lips, something that could, perhaps, lead to more, though between Mike’s antidepression meds and my past-prime vagina, “more” is a place we don’t often visit. Still, the slight stirring is welcome and prolongs the illusion that things are as they’ve always been.
As with most signs of troubles that come to other people at other times—the barely discernible lump near the left armpit, the empty bottles of cheap whiskey wrapped in newspaper and buried under other trash on pick-up day—Mike’s recent cognitive gaffes allowed for an interpretation of benign causes, and I, not wanting to see what I was seeing, attributed missed appointments to his not caring enough to write things down. When we planned to meet for dinner at 6 o’clock at Chevys and he went to Casa Ramos instead, I was pissed that he hadn’t bothered to get even that simplest of plans straight. Then came the Daylight Saving Time fiasco.
On this Saturday morning, before our clocks are to “spring ahead,” Mike insists on setting his watch and every clock in the house forward an hour.
“Let’s wait until just before bedtime,” I say. “The time doesn’t officially change until 2 tomorrow morning.”
“I know,” he says, proceeding to reset all of the clocks.
Throughout the course of the day Mike believes that he alone has the correct time. When I suggest otherwise, he points to the clock in the kitchen as proof that what I and the rest of the western states are thinking is 2 in the afternoon is really 3. Troubling as this is, it makes no difference in our practical world until a little after 5 in the evening. We’ve just been served margaritas and dinner at our local Mexican restaurant when, after a quick look at his watch, Mike announces that it is time to go.
“The show doesn’t start until 7,” I say, taking the “River City Cabaret” tickets from my purse and pointing to the listed time.
Mike looks at the tickets.
“Dessert and drinks at 6:30,” he says.
“Okay, so we have an hour and a half, and the Elks Lodge theater is only 10 minutes away.”
Mike taps his watch. “6:15” he says, and calls for the check.
The waiter hurries to our table.
“Is anything wrong with your order?”
“No,” Mike says, reaching for his American Express card. “We have tickets to a show, and we don’t want to be late.”
When the waiter returns with our card, I ask him if he can give me the time.
He glances at the clock over the bar.
“5:15,” he says.
When he’s out of earshot I say to Mike, “See, it’s really only 5:15. The time hasn’t actually changed yet.”
Mike gets up to leave.
“Please don’t do this. Let’s just enjoy our margaritas and have a relaxed dinner.”
“I’ll be in the car,” he says, and walks out.
I take a few more sips of margarita, another bite of spinach enchilada, but it’s no use. I leave the restaurant, get in the car, and ride in angry silence to the Elks Lodge.
The woman at the ticket desk tells us it will be an hour or so before the theater doors open, but we can wait in the dining room if we’d like.
We follow her directions to a large room filled with white-clothed tables that are apparently waiting for diners. There’s a small bar set up in the corner, complete with a bartender. The capacity sign on the wall allows for 320, but at 5:30 there are only the three of us in the room.
“Would you like a glass of Merlot?” I ask Mike.
“No, thanks. I’ll have something when we go inside.”
I order a glass of Chardonnay and we sit at one of the tables. We comment on the room and the surprising largeness of the whole facility. We’ve driven past it hundreds of times but never really paid much attention.
After a few minutes of trivial conversation Mike decides to go back to the theater. Although it’s still a long time before the doors are to open, I don’t bother to say so.
“I’ll be in after I finish my wine,” I say.
From a rack near the bar, I gather printed information on Elks activities and take my collection back to the table. On the blank back page of an Elks brochure I write a frenzied account of my anger and frustration—Mike’s stubbornness, my missed dinner, this wasted time, Mike’s unwillingness to consider anyone else’s point of view, etc., etc.
Finally, another glass of wine and three defaced brochures later, puzzlement overcomes anger. I think back to other events of the recent past—going to his church choir directing job on Saturday, thinking it was Sunday, then being angry that no one had shown up. Missing a dress rehearsal for a small choral concert in which he was the tenor soloist. Showing up for a doctor’s appointment a day early. Calling the newspaper on a Tuesday morning to complain that the Sunday New York Times had not been delivered.
What I have not wanted to see flares before me like the blinding bright lights of an oncoming car on a dark country road, and I know in the depths of my being that Mike’s sense of time has been ripped apart, as if it has gone through one of those cross-cut paper shredders, and there is nothing either he, or I, or anyone else can do to paste it together again. A sense of impending disaster fills my consciousness, casting all else aside. Our upcoming trip to Florida? The dry rot in our patio eaves? Tomorrow’s manicure appointment? Our 3-year-old granddaughter’s sudden emergence as a master of the English language? All such thoughts of the everyday joys and challenges of life are but grains of sand, buried deep beneath the avalanche of impending doom.
I sit at the table, surrounded by all of those other empty tables, practicing deep breathing, practicing the serenity prayer, practicing detachment. Finally, as a distraction, I read the front of the first sullied brochure, surprised to see that the Exalted Ruler of the lodge is a woman. I fantasize briefly about joining the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks. They offer a number of significant scholarships each year. As a retired teacher I’m all for supporting education. We could come to the Wednesday night spaghetti dinner for only $5. I like the bartender.
After a brief time in the Elkland fantasy, I remind myself that I’m not the club type and go in search of Mike. The doors to the theater are now open, and people are gathering at tables and lining up for drinks and desserts. I find Mike at a table near the stage. “Here, I saved you a place,” he says, smiling, as he stands to pull the chair out for me.
Halfway through the show, a small ensemble sings a song that, for all its overdone familiarity, still conjures cherished memories of our shared history. “… I’ll be loving you, always, with a love that’s true, always …” Mike reaches for my hand. With the warmth of his long-familiar touch, I rest my head lightly against his shoulder.
“… Days may not be fair, always. That’s when I’ll be there, always …”
Melody and memory fill me with the sweetness of so many times past—newly married, dancing in the lounge of the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. A few stolen moments with the old VM hi-fi, kids finally asleep. Mike’s brief glance my way from the Pasadena coffeehouse stage, as he sang in his strong, pure, tenor voice “… Not for just a year, but always …”
On the way home, Mike suggests that, since we don’t have to worry about getting up early in the morning, we stop for dessert.
“Didn’t you say you called the choir for an early rehearsal tomorrow?”
“Not tomorrow,” he says. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”
“No. Tomorrow’s Sunday.”
“Saturday,” he says, turning onto the street of his favorite pie and coffee place.
Mike orders a piece of apple pie with ice cream and a cup of decaf coffee, as he always does. I order a cup of real coffee with cream, as I always do. But, as I learned in my long ago English major days, “the moving finger writes; and having writ, moves on…” and the bold, indelible writing on this page of my life declares that “as always” is no longer, and will never again be.
June 2012
Dear Mike,
I hardly ever have occasion to use Sunrise anymore, that congested thoroughfare we once used on a daily basis, Gold River to the freeway, or up to Macy’s or Trader Joe’s. But yesterday I decided to browse Christopher & Banks for a new summer T-shirt. It’s strange how very familiar yet foreign that part of the area now seems.
Waiting for the signal to change, a gold 2005 or so Honda Accord turned left from Gold Country Boulevard onto Sunrise. Sunroof open, man sitting tall behind the wheel. Your area. Your car. Your posture. In that millisecond of recognition my heart stopped, quickened, then fell. How is it that you can be absent for so long, then suddenly come to me in the guise of a stranger in a strange car? And how is it that I still expect you? Whenever will my unconscious feeling self catch up with the conscious thinking self that knows you are gone, that you are never coming back to that corner, that car, that posture?
Unlike the old days, I now have the cheapest cable service possible and so don’t find much of interest on TV. But I allow myself the luxury of a basic Netflix membership. Last night I watched “The Iron Lady” on a Netflix DVD. I’d missed it when it came out in 2011. Having never been a fan of Margaret Thatcher’s politics, I was mainly interested in seeing it for Meryl Streep’s Academy Award-winning performance. The movie is framed by the older Margaret Thatcher in the early stages of dementia, with flashbacks to her earlier life and the high and low points of her reign as prime minister. It was a compelling production with any number of poignant scenes, but the scene that brought me to tears was when the older Thatcher was going through her long dead husband’s closet, determined to finally get rid of his clothing. I started crying when she buried her face in his tuxedo.
How hard it was for me to send your tuxedo to the consignment shop. Your tuxedo, so indicative of you, still with a hint of your scent if I buried my face deeply enough into the jacket. So hard to part with.
My tears didn’t last long. The scene soon shifted and with it my attention. Like life.
I still have your pitch pipe in the middle drawer of the desk that used to be yours, but that I now use. The desk from my old office was much too big for my present scaled-down life. Matt now has my old desk in his office in Walla Walla. But your pitch pipe, in its little red velvet pouch, still sits in the middle drawer. It takes up so little space and still, in a way, holds the spirit of your lips, your breath. Your clothes, though, are gone.
Tomorrow I’ll bring cookies, and a picture of Lena and her band, and a picture of Subei at graduation. You will likely look at each one for just an instant, then put them on the hall table on your way out. Maybe you will pick them up again on your next round, then place them on one of the living room shelves as you complete a loop. I don’t think the pictures will mean anything to you, but who knows? I’ll give it a try. Just in case.
Still missing you,
Marilyn