“Corky knows all about that fish camp,” says Ed, when Robin and I look him up in the boatyard. We cornered Corky at the local Wal-Mart, where he works as a greeter. “I don’t need the money,” the courtly, white-haired gent wanted us to know. “This lil’ old side job just gets me out of the wife’s hair.”
Turns out the Tenn-Saw fish camp was for sale, for, as they say, a song. Robin wouldn’t take more than $500 from me when we got around to making it all legal. “I don’t like to sweat,” she told me. “That’s your equity. The perspiration.”
“But Robin—"
“I believe the sun has set on this particular conversation,” she informs me in Aunt Ada’s strictest tone.
The next favorable forecast put the Fairhope town gazebo and the red cliffs of Eastern Shore at our stern as we motored back toward the skyscrapers of Mobile. Clothes laundered, cupboards bursting with provisions that would feed a fleet of towboat crews, we head 12.2 miles upriver to a new beginning.
***
Laugh if you want. The sky doesn’t care. The seagulls don’t care. The sun doesn’t care. These entities do what they do whether anyone is there to see them or not. I take great comfort in this.
The world does not revolve around me, Miss Hailey Marie. My little shack on the river is off the radar. Hence from 50 forever known as a mortal woman of a Certain Age, I spend a great many hours looking at the sky or water. Most mornings, I meditate with the heron who favors this swampy shoreline. We stretch together, a mix of yoga and Tai Chi. By the time he’s caught breakfast, I am ready for a raspberry-cranberry yogurt.
When I first settled here on the Tenn-Saw Cut-Off, I worried about being watched; worried that someone might see and jeer at my gyrations on the porch. The indifferent creatures intent on their own ministrations gradually reassured me that no one cares if I twist myself up to stretch myself out, shoulders crackling, hamstrings yawning on the first Down Dog. Falling is part of the practice. I laugh with no shame for my stumbles. The heron, oblivious to competition, maintains perfect balance, intense stillness and laser concentration. He’s my demonstration bird, his steady gaze as useful, if not more, than any human guru.
Living on the mucky banks of a brackish river 12.2 miles upstream from Mobile Bay has both charms and drawbacks. Flushes of freshwater dilute the salinity in rainy season, but the influence of the Gulf of Mexico is ever-present in the flatulent sulfur aroma of low tide. My mother calls it “a good stink.” Mother sharks sometimes venture many miles from their normal cruising grounds to give birth in the diluted saltwater upriver. I’ve never seen one but don’t doubt it. There is so much life in the water here. It takes courage to be as shy and powerful as the snakes, which never really intend to bother anyone but will strike when ambushed.
The old porch creaks and flexes in the after-waves of passing towboats, sloshing over the dock, rocking my clay geranium pots, bouncing the fishing poles. I have learned not to place anything too close to the edge; if something falls in the water a net is handy, but if it’s not an important item I let it go. Chances are I’ll find it washed up somewhere later.
The tow drivers who throw a wake are generally young bucks learning the ways of negotiating the river. Like a 16-year-old boy in his first Camaro, these dudes occasionally get out of hand on an open stretch and almost always exceed the speed limit, ignoring my boldly lettered “No Wake” sign. Robin says we should declare it a manatee zone, but I don’t think that will fly.
The speedboys are easier to understand than the veteran curmudgeons who deliberately disturb this abode because two uppity white women had the audacity to buy a broken-down old fishing camp in the middle of nowhere and turn it into a year ’round home. They steam on through as if those prissy geranium pots are a personal affront.
Robin’s latest plan for counterattack involves mounting a water cannon on Blackdog’s bow. “They don’t pay any attention to signs; let’s see them ignore this,” she says, pantomiming a full-frontal strafing. “Or what about a giant slingshot and some cantaloupes?”
This is her house, too, technically and legally. But since we both need solitude for healing she spends most of her nights aboard Blackdog, tied off from shore 300 feet downstream, at the line of the parcel we purchased on land contract. The little dock won’t hold 30,000-pound Blackdog; we’re building a bigger one. A proper pier.
“This way we can be alone, but never lonely,” says Robin.
Living alone offers many opportunities to feel true freedom. Eat whenever, sleep whenever and set your own schedule. I refuse to have another argument about passing out on the couch or the porch glider if that is where my body drops itself for the night. I cannot get over the fact that I can work out or bust a few dance moves to a pop song on WAVE radio whenever the mood strikes. I can sleep with the TV on all night or burn the lights until the wee hours consuming a good book. There are no critics to comment on my habits, demeanor or attire. I enjoy walking around naked.
Once you hit 50, there’s a pain somewhere every day that cannot be ignored. Dancing and yoga are necessary to work out the kinks. It is my firm belief that every woman should stand on her head once per day. The recipe continues as thus: Once upright again, put on some shuck & jive music and perform at least eight high leg kicks on each side. Dance full-out to at least three songs. That’s the medicine. It requires the right type of music, which varies daily. On Monday “Mustang Sally” may be appropriate. The next day, “Little Bird” by Annie Lennox. The next it may be Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Johnny Cash, Johnny Rivers or Roy Orbison, Lady Gaga or Michael Jackson. The Black Eyed Peas if you please. Led Zeppelin if you will. There is enough music to dance to for the rest of our lives and it does the music a dishonor when we don’t dance. The oldest, saddest people I know don’t dance any more or have sex any more.
When I danced to the tunes of others, I was a sailor but not captain of my own ship. I was considered too flighty and impractical to be in charge. Physically and mentally abused, I cowered before everything, including nature.
The yoga came organically into our lives. The only station we could pull in with the ancient TV antenna was PBS. Robin was fascinated by Wai Lana, that flower-bedecked sprite in shouting colors (our favorite Wai Lana outfit is a flowered pink, yellow, green and purple jumpsuit) who bends, stretches and breathes atop Hawaiian cliffs. Her program airs at 6 a.m. weekdays. One morning we just started following along with her, Trish first, egged on by Robin. “If you think it’s so Echo Alpha Sierra Yankee, then you try it,” she said.
“That’s not a curse word,” Robin pointed out.
“Kiss my Alpha Sierra Sierra,” Trish responded smartly.
“In that position, you’re not asking for the impossible,” I said, resting my head on the floor and enjoying the inverted rush. It feels good to be goofy. Even Robin has to admit it’s “almost” as relaxing as a cigarette. Breathing and stretching while the morning coffee perks has become a replacement habit. Nature abhors a vacuum.
We miss Trish. She still comes to visit, at least once a week, but it’s not the same.
Trish pretended to be excited. She couldn’t fool us. Life in a ramshackle cottage at the edge of a quiet river is far from her idea of paradise. It was only a matter of weeks before she secured a chair at the hottest salon in trendy downtown Fairhope, along with a hunky boyfriend who crews on the Bobby Joe James. She insists on retouching our roots once every five weeks and ensures a regular supply of female caps to keep the hot flashes to a minimum. There are still those white nights when I have to have the talk with myself: “This is your last chance, mind! You go to sleep or else!” It’s the same for Rob.
But thanks to Trish we are the most serene middle-aged babes on the Ten-Saw River Cut-off. We often send her hair-dressing clients, but sometimes she’ll come to them by appointment, cutting, coloring and curling at Robin’s Muffin Top, LLC. We made the business official, and it’s doing better than projected in our small business plan. We bake several dozen muffins each day; but the enterprise turned out to be more than that, a sort of concierge service involving everything from selling bait and garden produce, to partnering with fishing guides to offer boat rentals and day trips on Briar Creek. One of our favorite services is dog walking for boaters: Do It Yourself on our property or let Robin and me fight over the job.
I just spoke to my mother last week about a loan for miscellaneous equipment, including another skiff with an outboard, a dozen life jackets and a new stove and refrigerator for the muffin end of the operation. It’s so good to be in touch again. I got the promissory note yesterday. She’s fine and well and promised to come and see the operation firsthand next winter.
Robin still won’t talk about what happened at Bobby’s. Both of us tense each time a dark-hulled sailboat enters our stream. I couldn’t murder Derek but I do think about killing, about how easy it would be to bury a body in these woods, kudzu covering the grave of the monster. When we hear the guns of duck and deer seasons cracking the air in every direction, we think about timing. At least I know I do. I believe Robin does, too.
The only thing she’s said to me recently is, “He should be dead.” We haven’t yet had the conversation I need entitled, “What if he does it again?” I’m going to give it a little more time.
It sounds improbable, but I can feel Robin’s happiness, her calm as she stirs the batter and spoons it into cups. When she is making her muffins she is at peace, drinking and smoking less, smiling often.
Firmly ensconced in my river refuge, I remain safe and sane, making a living by the sweat of brow and brain in equal measure. Despite the indignity of having both wrinkles and zits, grace has come to me on my dock on the river and for the first time I truly find myself beautiful. I shine. The sun has come into me; my life is golden. As I swim in long strokes toward an inner core of peace, through the banked fires of various desires, I have regrets.
I regret the days when I was gorgeous and I didn’t know. As penance I constantly remind my young friends to consider themselves gorgeous early and often. “Don’t look for compliments from others, see for yourself how beautifully you have been put together, how dewy and supple your skin, how unfettered your mind. Appreciate it! Twenty comes but once. Thirty is full bloom. But after 40 is best, because you will finally know who you are and what you can be in your second half of the century. By 50, if you’ve made it that long, you will look back and marvel at your beauty. And you will still be beautiful.”
The cosmetic changes of age still scare the Sierra Hotel India Tango out of me. Just when I think I can’t get any pouchy-er or withered, I do. I tell myself that these physical erosions are outweighed by the gift of wisdom. But all people are vain to a certain degree. The left-handed compliments catch me off guard. Being told “you look 10 years younger” after an appointment with Trish is as disconcerting as the upgrade from Miss to Ma’am.
Bah to the Botox; I am not allowing anyone to inject botulism spores into my forehead any time soon. I’ll just have to look like I look, although I do take very good care of myself. Thyme and lavender facial steams once weekly, followed by aloe vera gel slathered on straight from the plants I grow out back.
Sunscreen is mandatory for Robin and I follow suit. The cottage is comfy but tiny and unless it’s raining we’re both outdoors. Here I farm, growing all sorts of unconventional things, tending the fenced-in plots in between the chores involved with helping Robin deliver her muffins to the masses. Well, not masses, exactly, but we cleared $1,500 the first month off sales to boaters craving baked goods. Trishie’s hair-dos added an additional $500 to the general fund. It takes time to grow a business. As Robin always adds like she made the adage up herself, “It takes money to make money.”
Bankrolling such a wacko idea is proving to be “a once-in-a-lifetime golden opportunity” (thanks to my family she’s grown fond of mixed clichés). So far our growth projections are dead-on accurate.
Farmer’s markets turned out to be an extremely profitable venue for my fresh herbs: basil, thyme, cilantro, coriander, dill and parsley. I sell lavender in gallon pots. The sunflowers cultivated purely for pleasure turned into another money maker when I harvested and roasted the seeds.
“If this keeps up, by next summer we’ll have to hire help,” I tell Robin. Wistful, I imagine Joey and Lisa coming to stay for the season. I would gather my chicks under my wing, reveling in the simple pleasure of looking at them, feeding them, hugging them. I have written letters; they have not responded.
“Don’t be such a wuss, you should call,” Robin advises. “Kids don’t write letters these days. They text.”
“I put your cell phone number in the letters. Maybe they’ll text. And then I’ll have to figure out how to text them back,” I say. My children have not had children. Never having been one of those women who yearn for progeny upon progeny, I wait for the issue of my loins to be happy. I expect their happiness: it is there and they will find it. It is taking them a lot longer than it took me. I’m impatient. My greatest failure is as a mother. I adored doing all the right things; I can’t put my finger on what I did wrong.
I’m sure they think of me as a weird old woman, twisted in some way that other mothers aren’t. But in so many ways I am comfortingly conventional, washing clothes, administering advice and aspirin, always wanting to touch them more than they wish to be touched. Their standoffish body language, the instinctual stiffening, is, I think, so much like Derek. Some of us are born to touch and be touched. Others flinch. It is the way of the world. They know I will hug and kiss and fuss over them when they come to see me, if they come to see me. They will know that I love them and I will know that they love me. All other things pale before this simple wish.
I still seek my bliss, torn between the stable mother I should be and the sport-fucking temptress that I still haven’t worked out of my system. I think I am too damn old for hijinks. Often I resent having to surrender the things of youth gracefully. Why should lustful, moonlit nights come to an end?
The man challenge is more easily solved. Released from an abusive marriage, I continue to sample lovers, some of whom are or become friends. I do not consider myself sluttish for doing so. In fact, the idea of polygamy does not repel me, as long as it is the woman doing the picking.
And, as Trish notes, “For a woman your age there’s still plenty of action in the boondocks.” Gives whole new meaning to BFE.
I think it would be quite handy to have several men as companions on the journey of life. With this one, you could read and discuss great books, ramble through museums, debate the news of the day. That one would install new floors, maybe some new kitchen cabinets and take you boating on the weekends, all the while looking like a Playgirl centerfold. The third one would be a gourmet cook with a four-star sensual appetite. The fourth would be an affluent businessman so infatuated that your every wish was his desire …
If there is one thing I have finally learned about men, the secret to the whole find-a-guy-game is never being the hunter. I do not hunt. Find me if you wish to see me. I am not prey. I do not seek to harm, but will attack as required. I can live with that. I do live with that.
Who knew there would be so many men who wish to see me, some of whom are, as Alanis Morissette puts it, “Friends with benefits?” If they don’t like visiting me, they don’t need to come back. And if I don’t like it, they won’t be coming back.
Derek comes back. As many broken couples find, we are better apart than we are together. He can no longer yell me down with his raised fist and red face. No one hits me. No one. No one ever tells me that I am worthless because I don’t fit into his particular agenda. I’m immune to such ridiculous drama. I don’t run my legs or life by his clock or his cock.
The gaslighting is over.
He’s living on the boat at a marina in Dog River, on the west shore of Mobile Bay. I tell him he should continue heading south, as he’d planned, or go north back to what’s left of his life in Michigan. “I’m not going with you. Hurricane season is over, so there’s nothing stopping you from sailing where you want to sail,” I tell him. “My sailing days are done.”
But he keeps coming back.
One evening after a scrumptious dinner featuring Key West pinks, my excellent herb-garden salad and fresh-mint mojitos, Derek asked me why he shouldn’t just move in. It wouldn’t be moving back in, because he’s never lived here. We never did the legal paperwork for a divorce. I don’t need to be divorced because I’m never getting married again. Our familiar closeness is sometimes thrilling and always comforting, but in general I really like being alone. In his favor he does make excellent coffee with a never-the-same grind of specialty beans. And his morning face is the sunniest I have ever seen, beaming with the promise of a new day.
“A lot of my stuff is here anyway.”
“But not enough that it couldn’t be moved out in about 10 minutes flat. You just had a good dinner and we’re having a nice time but May is coming and we always fight in May.” Having switched to vodka I tipped back the icy lime dregs of my Grey Goose vodka tonic for one last quenching swallow. Two is my limit.
“I am not going to get any easier to live with and I like things the way they are,” I tell him. “Let’s leave it at that. I am sorry that I couldn’t be a better wife, but about one week per month spread out is all I can take. I mean the days spread out, not me.” I laugh. Derek’s mind didn’t go there but mine did. Sex has always been on my mind just as much as any male. I severely distrust the celibate lifestyle. Such monkish behavior reminds me of the boxers saving their semen in abstention before championship bouts. People that are so closed to the animalistic side of our beings have my sympathy. Engaging in sexual activity is healthy. Love is sex and music and dancing. I say shoot your wad whenever you can. But this attitude sometimes results in double entendres that I do not mean to introduce into conversation.
Derek withdraws, retreats, waits.
Women friends come to the river more often than men do. They understand. We are simpatico. There will always be a whistling teakettle, a bottle of wine, an iced tub of beer for my fellow runaways and other females who flock to our pine-carpentered dining table with the red-checked runner in the aromatic great room to talk about where we’ve been, where we’re at, where we strive to go next. We don’t bash men, but often we hammer at each other. We are scarcely moved in when Trish brings Aunt Ada, the Florida Cracker who gave us our rallying cry, “I didn’t run away, I just went.”
“Honey, you got to use him for whatever he’s worth,” she tells me, after eyeing Derek up and down. “But now that you got up the gumption to leave, don’t let the dirty dog come crawlin’ back like nothin’ happened.”
Ensconced on the porch slider, she clucks at the proximity to the water. “This is the dry time in a drought year, Miss Hailey. You want to live on the water; you could end up living in the water.”
“I know, it’s a gamble,” I say. “But for now, this is where we landed and where we stay. More tea?”
She nods. “Bring the sugar bowl with you, darlin’,” she instructs. “You Northern girls need some lessons in sweet tea.”
I envision this house of supportive women as it grows through the years. Some of the women will be sad and lonely when they arrive, but it won’t last. We’ll laugh and sing, gathering at my table, sitting on my porch or lolling on chaises in the “guest” gardens, divided into flower and vegetable plots. We’ll track the scents in the herb garden and baby the tender fruit trees — orange, apple and loquat-that I’ve planted and that no one but me expects to thrive.
Susan has promised to come soon. She’s bringing a special crystal with exceptionally powerful energy and is bound to have a few good dating stories to crack us up. Her May-September adventure with a 25-year-old Chinese university student is a favorite, a classic referred to as “Looking for Love in All the Wong Places.” I can’t wait for Robin and Trish to hear that one.
The water flows past my bedroom just off the porch-dock, undulating with tides and tug wash. Heeding Ada’s admonition and knowing all too well that the water is not always kind, I am grateful for the temporary occupancy permit granted by Mother Nature. The water may someday drive me and that which I hold dear from this cabin. My “camp,” my enclave, my cottage, my gardens remain a work in progress that may have to be abandoned at any moment in this impermanent world.
Here I never look for black trucks other than my old F150 parked out by the barn. The obsessive compulsive jerk reflex to examine every large truck, searching for a glance of the Most Dangerous Lover of All passed on the day I took title of the black beast. It is a relief to let go of the what-could-have-been addiction to focus on what is now. Maybe all that I ever really wanted was that truck. The dangerous lover, the fourth lover, was just an accessory. It is a relief to stop looking.
But what to do with the guilt? The distractions are many; I’ve no time to wallow in the residue of my many messes and mistakes. The garden needs tending and the bulk of my day is spent taking care of family. If I can forgive others maybe one day I’ll be able to forgive myself.
Robin still talks about taking the boat farther south. If she wanted to leave now I’d just let her go. True friends are like bobbers on a fishing line. Sometimes they just float out there and you wait for the bobber to go under to let you know it’s time to reel in. Whenever she talks about going away, she always asks, “If I call you from wherever I am, will you come?” Yes, I always say. Yes. “I will come to you wherever you are.”
Robin won’t be going anywhere until KC has her puppies. We spotted the telltale teats one morning when KC rolled over for a belly scratch at Eastern Shore.
“Holy Sierra Hotel India Tango!” Robin exclaimed. “I guess she and Hooch touched more than noses at Midway.”
On her bad days, Robin looks like she’s about to die, pallid, skeletal with mottled purple-and-white skin and deep ebony-grape circles under her eyes. We’ve made more than one trip to the nearest hospital. But she’s not dead. Not even close. The flares are few and far between, and for that we are both thankful.
There is a certain class of people with life-threatening illness who simply go on and on, having frightening medical episodes and somehow surviving. Robin is my Elizabeth Taylor/Liza Minnelli, Queen of a thousand medical procedures and a couple of bad husbands (just found out there’s more than one). There are days when she won’t do yoga, when the Miller Lites have rendered her insensate, all chain-smoking bravado and hectic butterfly blush fluttering across her steroid-plumped pixie cheeks. These are the days when I cannot halt her headlong rush into self-destruction, basically flipping the bird at the Grim Reaper.
I admire her bravado even as I gather her tiny whip of a body into my arms, such light bones holding such a big personality. As physically weak as she is, I still feel like she could kick my ass or cut me to the marrow with a single nasty comment. She never does, because she would never hurt me.
It’s like the vintage hair-color commercial: My husband. I think I’ll keep her. This is one of the healthiest relationships I have ever had in my life.
We have lived through biting dogs and insane rapists, lurking husbands and alligators waiting to strike. We know each other at the gut level. There are many things we need to talk about, talk out. And we will, in time.
We both know when to back off. And I like having me to myself. The Haileyness of Hailey is enough. Solace doesn’t come easy, even up a backwater creek. Constant interruptions continue to punctuate my day, most often when I’m trying to meditate but at other intimate times, too. It’s enough to make me envy the monks.
There’s a universal Murphy’s Law that draws visitors to the human being looking forward to totally private time. Caught naked, caught masturbating, caught dirt-caked in the garden or mowing the one small patch of conventional grass in my back yard, it’s all the same to me. One simply shakes off the previous private mood and plays the gracious host, rising to any occasion. Getting older is a quest for the serenity beyond embarrassment, a place where order emerges naturally from chaos. I ponder the compost pile, proof that messes left to percolate are transformed into a rich and invigorating catalyst for growth.
Oh, great revelation, being myself seems to attract the kind of creatures and friends that suit me best, although sometimes I have to shake my head at the characters who fly in to see me, sleeping in the trees and using the dock as a toilet — and it’s not just the birds who accomplish these feats of disruption. Love comes to me on the river every day in every way.
The hot flashes continue. But the mental pause is over.