The registration line for all summer classes at the rec center meanders down the sidewalk, through a grassy section of Washington Park and out to the parking lot. I find Dolores in line and cut in to the disgust of those farther down, a collection in the main of mothers and fathers dressed for the summer heat in khaki shorts and plaid shirts. These (the parents, not the clothes) call with regularity to an assortment of children of varying heights, clothed in their uniforms of miniature khaki shorts and plaid shirts. The kids ignore their parents’ cheery commands tinged with desperation, in favor of chasing one another over the lawn, screaming at high pitch.
“Sorry,” I apologize to the woman directly behind me with two preschoolers hanging on her legs. The kids lick ice cream cones half-a-scoop too large for their mouths. “My space was being saved.”
“Just listen,” Dolores breaths out in awe. She reads from a newspaper-sized catalog of classes. “Ceramics—a good introduction to the wonderful world of creativity. Express yourself! You’ll choose from striking wall hangings, decorative statues, useful serving dishes. Make items for yourself or for gifts. Doesn’t that sound wonderful? I’m going to save mine for Christmas.”
I’m dubious. “I’m not very artistic. I’d better keep my stuff. I won’t be getting much for Christmas anyway, so I’d better build a cache of presents to myself.”
Slowly as the toddlers’ ice cream cones melt, the line moves forward. Minutes turn to half-hours turn to hours. An assortment of teens—male, female, or undecided—cling to one another’s arms and shoulders as if unable to support their weight independently. They ricochet up and down the line as they sport friends spreading the rumor that the computer system has utterly crashed, that registration has to revert to the old-fashioned pencil and paper and clipboard system. People shuffle one-by-one to the registration table in a test of endurance under the beating sun. Periodically, a collective moan ripples down the line as word comes that a popular class has filled.
“Maybe we won’t be able to get into ceramics,” I say, suppressing a note of hope in my voice, springing from my disastrous attempts at self-expression during art classes from first grade onward. Even maternal affection couldn’t inspire Barbara to enthusiasm to praise my efforts. One particularly stupendous failure started as the outline of a leaf in clay, only to achieve final form looking like a three-legged dog.
“We’re almost to the front,” Dolores points out. “Don’t worry.”
Finally, three hours after we met, Dolores and I reach our goal. Several perky, athletic girls in shorts and tee-shirts, looking hardly old enough to be in high school, let alone run recreation classes, sit behind mounds of official papers. Abandoned computers function simply as massive paperweights, so the rumors must be true.
“Do you have your forms?” asks one.
“Oh, yes,” says Dolores. “Beginning ceramics.” She presents her sheet with a flourish. I slide mine across the table.
“Sorry. Just closed,” says the girl. “I can put you on a waiting list or you can sign up for another. If you see it on the list posted behind me. Otherwise, you’ll have to get in another line.”
Without hesitation Dolores picks. “We’ll take Saturday morning exercise.”
“What?” I shriek.
“Both of us,” Dolores continues firmly. “There’s room in that, I trust.”
“Oh, yes. Exercise is held outside. We can add to it until the park’s filled. Anyway, lots of people drop out.” She throws a dubious glance in the direction of our plump figures.
“I agreed to ceramics. Not exercise,” I protest.
“Calm down. It’s only once a week. Besides, I’ve heard that class is a great place to meet men.”
The girl endorses the forms before I can raise more fuss, shuffles the papers to the side, and motions to the next person, the weary mother of two, now bedraggled and sweaty from the effort of controlling her irritable youngsters. Dolores and I gain the best incentive to move on when the little boy threatens to go pee-pee right in line if his mommy won’t take him to the potty.
Leaning earnestly to Dolores’s ear, I continue my complaints as we walk away. “Ceramics. You said ceramics. I haven’t exercised in years. I can’t do it. I don’t want to do it.”
“You agreed to one class. Exercise is one class. You weren’t that keen on ceramics anyway, were you?”
I shake my head.
“Won’t hurt to try it. Both you and I could stand to firm up and lose a little.”
“Enough, enough,” I say in mock surrender. “Now, come on. Let’s indulge ourselves with a bagel at the coffee shop. We’ll have to face the music next Saturday.”
* * * *
A week later I pull on my oldest, baggiest slacks and a sweatshirt. Next come pristine running shoes, purchased several years ago and never worn. Last, a scarf to cover my entire head. I only wish I could cover my face, too. A merciless, all-exposing, early summer sun beats down, revealing every pore and incipient wrinkle.
I join Dolores under the shade of a huge cottonwood. Dolores has been shopping, I note, and is dressed in a new set of hot pink nylon shorts and tank top. I can’t see decking yourself out in skimpy, form-hugging exercise clothes unless you have the shape for it. Dolores is better equipped than I, but she doesn’t equal most of the hordes now surging toward us to occupy the open meadow where class is to be held.
Many of them boast near-perfect bodies. Skin-tight pants cropped at knee level, paired with teeny leotards that flaunt rounded rear ends, are the order of the day for women. Men are even more exposed. Most of them don’t bother to cover their chests, which bulge with muscles and match their firmly defined thighs and calves.
A woman with the smallest, tightest outfit over the thinnest body prances to what appears to be the front of the group. She flicks on a portable CD player and shouts, “Are you ready?” over the blaring music. An enormous roar rolls back at her. “We’re ready!” The leader immediately begins throwing her arms around and around, simultaneously gyrating her entire torso in a circle.
I’m not ready. I don’t understand how these people can focus, let alone move, at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. But Dolores has positioned herself at the back of the class and is turning in time to the music. Unless I want to collapse under the tree in full view of the group, I have to follow Dolores.
I join Dolores and try a few small swivels. I don’t want to throw a joint out of whack. Just as I catch the beat, the leader switches to forward thrusts of the upper half of her body, held horizontal to the ground.
“Where are your smiles, ladies and gentlemen?” yells the leader. “This is fun!”
Around me, people grin and cheer. The unrelenting torture continues for an hour. Every muscle that can be stretched or twisted is. Each bone that can jolt or pound does. Heartbeats accelerate to eighty percent of maximum rates. Except mine, which must be accelerating to one hundred and twenty percent and feels like it’s ready to burst.
“A few slow wrap-up moves, ladies and gentlemen. We don’t want to shock our bodies,” announces the skinny leader. With a dancer’s grace, she flexes her knees, breathes deeply. In unison, everyone except me mimics her perfectly.
Shock is the wrong word, I think as I collapse on the grass. Paralysis is more like it. “You’ll have to drag me home by my heels,” I tell Dolores. “I can’t even twitch.”
Dolores prances with her head back. “I feel great. Exercise is so invigorating. And did you see the men? Some of ‘emwere boing-bingo!”
Lifting my head from the ground, I fix a steely look on Dolores. “How could I? Sweat was pouring off my forehead.”
“They were super, believe me. And you’ll get used to this,” Dolores promises.
I drag myself up. “Since I’ve been so good, let’s go reward ourselves with a bagel.”
* * * *
I use exhaustion as an excuse to do almost nothing the rest of the day other than drive to the grocery store and poke through piles of limp celery and flaccid lettuce that resemble my physical state. I’m even too tired to pull dinner together and opt instead for a huge bowl of popcorn and a chocolate milkshake.
No wonder you’re putting on weight, eating crap like that. A sigh of rebuke as if from a ghost pulses in my ear. A reprimand, an attitude frequently exhibited by James, familiar from the months before he split, when all he seemed able to do was criticize, criticize, criticize. Thank the powers that be, I don’t need to heed such slights any more. I answer to no one about my food choices, whether good or bad. There are definite advantages to being alone.
Carrying my off-balance meal to the living room, I thumb through the television schedule. Hmmm. On the classic films channel, Joan of Arc with Ingrid Bergman is playing tonight. An easy way to discover what Dolores has been yammering about. My patron saint. Who’d have thought I had one? Deserved one? I settle down for a few hours of forgetfulness.
One hundred minutes later, my jaw snaps shut between the tracks of tears down my cheeks. It aches from hanging open so long while I soaked up the excitement, the challenge, the drama of a classically beautiful Swede acting like an impeccably clean French peasant who chats regularly with God. And who wears metal armor without sweating. And faces death by fire, a smile pinned on her radiant face. Wow! What a woman. That’s definitely the way I want my life to be, where I’m the one in charge, and courage, if not a sense of self-preservation, is my creed. I stagger off to bed, still under the movie’s spell.
* * * *
The next morning I leap out of bed, ready to do battle with the world, just like Joan of Arc. My legs buckle from the aches of exercise class and my right shoulder feels wrenched. But I’m determined to view the class in retrospect as fun. Maybe the uniqueness of the experience colors my view. Or the pride I feel from simply surviving, the obvious physical differences between me and most of my fellow classmates notwithstanding. Soon I might come closer to their standards of fitness, I muse. Anything is possible with enough determination! Like Saint Joan. She was determined and she certainly was fit. She had to be to wear that heavy armor and lug around that humongous sword and shield. It’s a wonder she ever was physically able to drag her way to the head of an army. I shake myself out of this train of thought. In any case, the resolve that possessed me after last night’s film sustains me as I begin Sunday’s housecleaning.
I’m tackling James’s closet, or, rather, what used to be James’s closet. I’ve put the task off far too long, dreading the memories sure to arise.
They don’t. Without a man’s suits, pants, shirts, ties, the closet is only an empty space that can be filled with whatever I choose. I sniff. Even his scent is gone or maybe I’m getting a head cold, brought on by too much exercise. No, that can’t be—exercise helps you fight viruses. In any case, I waft disinfectant and spray cleaner with a vengeance, just on principles—anti-viral and anti-James. A cloud of perfume next, to convert the closet into woman’s territory.
Storing winter clothes, I decide. The perfect use for the closet. I’m lugging two armfuls of seasonal dresses from the bedroom when the doorbell rings.
My mother stands at the door. Barbara only visits at times she thinks won’t conflict with my social life. I’ve always been perfect in her eyes. She’s convinced that men only have to see me to desire me. Therefore, according to Barbara, the divorce is completely James’s fault, he’s never been quite good enough for me, it’s just as well he’s out of the picture, her daughter was destined for greater things and better men. Hasn’t Barbara always said so?
I allow Barbara to continue in these faulty assumptions. At least someone thinks me flawless. Easier than explaining that I have no social life. A few couples nearby, our friendships based solely on convenience and propinquity, have dropped away through my neglect and their disinterest. Until the break-up, I thought James’s honey Maureen was my best friend from several years back, whom I’d nursed through her own divorce.
“You’re up early,” Barbara says. She pulls off a denim baseball cap and fluffs out her short reddish-brown hair with her fingers. People often comment on the physical similarities between Barbara and me, adding, “You two could be sisters.”
A not surprising comparison. Identical hair color and texture, golden-brown eyes, strong profiles, dark eyebrows, height pushing six feet. Except Barbara possesses a self-confidence and sophistication that I can never claim. Where she got it, I can’t guess. Barbara was born in Clear Fork, Colorado, population five-hundred, to a rancher disillusioned by the Depression and the constant dust storms of the plains. Her father had eked out a living running a hardware store with dirt-encrusted windows and cluttered counters, selling nails by the gross, screws in pairs, and paint as unvarying as the colors of the grasses of the prairies. Although she was both valedictorian and Homecoming Queen, Barbara never progressed past high school and, like me, married a classmate.
However, Barbara must have cherished ideas of life on a bigger scale, nurtured by those old true-confessions magazines in Clear Fork’s sole beauty parlor or paperback romances from the library. Once my father left mother and daughter, perhaps because his wife challenged him in too many ways, Barbara simply marked time until I left high school and married. Then, as if detonated from a cannon, she cut out for the biggest city in the state and non-stop career jumps from administrative assistant to office manager to salesperson to unit director. Volunteer work supporting Opera Colorado, self-development classes in yoga and gardening and elaborate dinners for select friends based on Julia Child’s recipes.
I automatically turn in the direction of the kitchen and the gourmet coffee brewing there, a favorite of both of us. Barbara breathes the aroma before she continues her imaginary version of my life. “You’ll wear yourself to a nub combining late-night fun and sunrise chores. I called you about eight, but I didn’t get an answer. Where were you? A party? A play?”
Thinking of my Saturday evening television movie and giant bowl of popcorn, I shake my head and change the subject. “I’m on a new regime. An invigorating exercise class every weekend. My energy’s doubled,” I cheerfully equivocate.
“That’s good. You’ve let yourself go lately.” Barbara touches my hair. “Like that ponytail. Not that your bone structure doesn’t look great with your hair pulled back. But it’s almost like you don’t care.”
“I’ve been miserable, Mom. I haven’t felt like fixing my hair. But I have a goal now. I’m sweeping the remains of my husband from my life.” Balancing the mug, I start back to the bedroom closet, Barbara close behind, and gesture at the heaps of clothes on the floor. “I’m converting his closet for off-season storage.”
“About time, Joan,” Barbara approves in the voice she saves for lectures. “You wasted more than ten years on James. He’s a nice enough boy, but nothing special. Just like your father. You deserve someone special. Are you seeing a particular person now?”
“No, Mom. Only the regular run of promising actors and budding entrepreneurs with an occasional expensive attorney thrown in beating down my door. Why don’t you give me a hand?”
Barbara reaches for a hanger. “You really should get rid of the house itself. It ties you down. Think of what you could do with the money, not to mention the free time. Travel to Europe, lounge on the Riviera. Or buy one of those fancy little sports cars. Bright red.”
Barbara’s eyes haze over as she indulges in a private daydream. I guess the sports car is a recurring character in my mother’s fantasies.
“Mom, why don’t you buy a sports car? You’d look great in it. Your hair would be tousled from the wind, your face tanned, your mouth wide in a silly grin.” Then, with a sly touch, “A young, handsome millionaire sitting beside you? An oil baron who adores opera?”
“Joan, you’re mad. James drove you around the bend.” Barbara is flattered, nonetheless. She drapes a pair of my winter slacks over the hanger and turns to the closet. “I want you to have everything I didn’t. Oh, I don’t regret my life, staying in Clear Fork until you finished school. Everyone has to make choices, weigh one action against another. But it’s as if you’ve been given a second chance now. Take advantage of it.”
“I’ll do my best, Mom, starting with this closet. And I have been considering selling the house. It’s too big for one person.”
We’re making real headway into the task when the doorbell rings again. My ex-husband props his thin body against the door frame as if he lacks the strength to stand up straight, a woebegone expression that surely has taken hours of practice to develop plastered on his face.
“Hello, Joan. Got a few minutes? We’ve got a major problem.”
My heart bounds despite my head’s caution and my newly acquired determination to build a new life. Can this finally be a plea for a reunion? Will my defeat turn into a victory? I stand to one side and gesture a welcome.
James spots Barbara in the hallway behind me, pauses, shrugs his shoulders. He knew from the first disagreement over honeymoon location that he wasn’t Barbara’s favorite person. (Barbara thought a weekend at a suburban hotel an inauspicious beginning for her daughter’s marriage and had no hesitation in telling James so). He goes to what has traditionally been “his” chair in the living room, an overstuffed corduroy recliner that still bears the imprint of his body from parking himself to watch television, year after successive year.
A breathy whisper comes out of my mouth. “How about an iced tea?” Or something warmer, more intimate? A hug? A kiss?
“Fine,” James replies. Anything to stall until Barbara takes a hint and leaves, I’m guessing. But she ensconces herself on the couch and calls for a glass, too.
I have my own reasons for wishing my mother would leave. If James wants a reconciliation, how can I nudge him in that direction with my mother looking on? She’ll never keep her mouth shut if she thinks I’m crawling back to James after all the humiliation he’s put me through. Her inherent enmity is aggravated now by her belief that James is the same love-’em-and-leave-’em type as my father. I offer a subtle suggestion with the refreshments. “Here you go, Mom. I know you can’t stay too long.”
“I’m in no hurry,” Barbara answers as she settles back into the cushions and pounds some throw pillows into a more comfortable shape. Nothing short of dynamite will shake her loose now. She assumes an attitude of intense interest consisting of lips pursed so tightly they wrinkle and eyebrows pushed together.
Under Barbara’s eyes, as watchful as a broody hen’s, James has to put up or shut up. Desperation or fear prods him past common courtesies of how-are-you and not-bad. He begins abruptly.
“I’m here about the house. You’ve got to put it on the market immediately.”
The delusion of a reunion splinters, shatters, and falls in shards in my mind. This isn’t an attempt at a settlement complete with soft, yielding embraces and pleas of forgiveness. It smacks of the concrete-hard-headedness of a man sent on a mission by a determined woman, an other woman, bent on feathering a nest for her mate.
Disappointment clutches me right about the level of my diaphragm and chokes out my response. “No. Not now.”
I don’t know what I expect, but it’s not James’s leap out of the chair and his frenzied pacing back and forth like a caged stray dog. Nor is it the gush of his words streaked with desperation. “Be reasonable, Joan. I’ve got to have the money. A house, I’ve got to buy a house as soon as humanly possible.”
“Use your ill-gotten gains from Power Ball,” I toss at him.
James throws his hands in the air. “Gone. All gone. God knows where. But right at the start, wheet!” he whistles, “fifty percent to the feds. Then the new car. A few dinners out, some decent suits...” His voice trails off and his eyes get a far-away glaze as if he’s trying to remember how his winnings disappeared.
“Guess you should have followed the advice you were always giving me about saving for a rainy day,” I say without the least compassion and turn my attention to my iced tea.
“Joan, I’m begging you,” bursts from James by the fireplace. He leans so far forward, he nearly falls. “You’ve got to be reasonable. Maureen is pregnant. Without my share of this house, I have no chance of buying a place for us and the baby.”
“Pregnant? Reasonable?” I whisper. They sound like incomprehensible nonsense syllables. I hear an increasing buzzing in my ears and black spots appear in my vision, whirl, meld into streaks that threaten to block all sight. Maureen is pregnant? After I tried for so many months, years? Prayed, wished on stars and wishbones, subjected my body to the most humiliating and invasive physical procedures? Spent every spare nickel and a hell of a lot of un-sparable dimes on doctor visits? And Maureen turns up pregnant without even trying?
Something seems to snap in the vicinity of my brain immediately behind my eyes. “Reasonable!” I shriek back. Everything is happening too fast. My security, my wifely status, the definition of my “self,” my hope for a child, my husband, my stability. All vanished, gone. Now, my home.
I no longer have control, no influence over the forces affecting my life. Well, I’m tired of being polite, frustrated with rationality, fed up with hopelessness. Maybe a tantrum will relieve my frustration. I leap to my feet and hold a cushion over my head, ready to throw it at James. “You walk out on me, destroy our family, and now you want to steal my home? That’s reasonable?”
Taken completely by surprise by this show of aggression from his normally buoyant and complaisant wife, James cowers at the threat implicit in the dangling cushion. “Take it easy. You’re right. No real immediate rush. Just think about it, okay? Has Kevin contacted you? He’ll do a good job for you.”
I look up at the cushion in my outstretched arms, then back at James, fearful of feathers. I nearly giggle but realize I’ll lose my psychological advantage if I do so. Slowly the cushion lowers.
Tightening control over my emotions so I can react with dignity, I command, “Get out of my house.”