As I push open the hospital exit door, I'm greeted by a blast of frosty autumn air. I gulp it greedily. The kindly valet appears with an offer to retrieve my car. He doesn't need a description; it's the only car in the lonely lot across the street.
As I wait, I check out the world around me. The stars are still shining, the wind is rustling tree leaves, the moon is playing hide and seek with a cloud. It's amazing: The world the valet lives in hasn't come to an end. I envy him.
He returns in a flash with the car. Refusing my tip with a smile, he gives me directions back to the state highway. Thus I embark on one of the loneliest journeys of my life. From that point to my driveway, 75 miles away, I never see another human—or even a pair of taillights.
It's a straight shot to the Interstate, interrupted only by two or three stoplights. Once I'm on Highway 57, I relax a little. At least I won't get lost. No sooner do I think that thought than a wisp of fog momentarily blurs my vision. Hope that doesn't continue. As I leave the city limits, I flip on my cruise control. “Watch for deer,” a sign warns me. It's the last sign I'll see for hours as the fog envelops my car. Damn, I can barely see past the hood. What am I going to do? Better turn back, my good sense suggests. How? I can't see an exit sign. Where are the crossroads? I step on the brakes . . . 60, 40, 20 miles per hour. Even that's too fast, but, gosh darn, I want to get home. Okay, 15 mph. At least, I'll be able to see the deer before I hit it. All right, now. Relax. Take it easy. Just make it home safely. There's a reason for this foggy setback, though I can't fathom what it could be.
Luckily, I'm more tired than sleepy. I say a prayer to the nowdefunct Saint Christopher, patron of safe travel. “Dear Saint Christopher, or whoever your replacement is, please get me home safely.” I smile at my lame prayer . . . whoa. I slam on the brakes. I can't see diddle, not even the end of my hood. I pray no one's following behind me. No chance of that. Slowly, I pick up the speed, 5, 10, 15 mph again. I wonder if cruise control even works at this speed. Okay, ever onward.
After about ten minutes, I totally forsake the idea of turning around. I'll just aim for staying on pavement. As I drift into a daydream state, the first thought that dances through my head is that Eve and I missed our favorite TV show, ER, tonight. I guess we starred in our own drama. And that cute radiologist would've given the ER docs a run for their money. What I wouldn't give to have spent a semi-boring night in front of the tube, a cat in each of our laps, and my biggest decision being whether to indulge in a bowl of ice cream or stick to my diet.
Flashing back to my discussion with the neurosurgeon, a thought creeps in. We may never have another routine night. What the hell does a brain aneurysm do to you, anyway? I'm still clueless. Jesus, I hope the surgery goes okay. Please, God, no “I'm sorry” messages on the answering machine. I can't take any more tonight.
“It wasn't supposed to go this way,” I shout at the fog. All we wanted was a little piece of the American dream . . . a little art gallery in Door County. Damn, if we had stayed in Naperville, I wouldn't be alone tonight. I'd at least have our A.A. buddies to sit and watch with me. We were stupid to be so adventurous in our fifties. I can hear both of our dead mothers yelling at us for even daring to dream that we could break out of the mundane middle-class way of living.
But really, Mom, what choice did I have? My freelance writing jobs were drying up. Opportunities in the advertising industry were dwindling in Chicago . . . and if anyone was going to get one of the few remaining writing jobs, it wasn't going to be a 51-year-old woman who had blown her career—thanks to alcoholism—15 years before. Even the lower-level jobs I had used as filler between freelance assignments were harder to come by: plum jobs such as lingerie salesclerk, water meter reader, 800-number operator, shelf-stocker, and the one I dreaded most—cleaning lady. God, I was a lousy cleaning lady. I chuckle as I recall one client screaming at me because I didn't comb the fringe of her living room rug.
Geez, I think I've got a fever, I note, as I squint to see past the headlight glare reflected back at me. My head aches. I'm so tired. Maybe I can amuse myself by trying to figure out where we went wrong. Eve and I had met seven years before at an A.A. meeting. I was working late for one of my west suburban clients and it was time to call it a night. The thought occurred to me that I wouldn't get home in time for my northwest suburban A.A. meeting. No problem; I could make an 8 P.M. meeting in Naperville. It was a plan.
Normally, I'm a little nervous going to an A.A. meeting I've never attended before, but I was pleasantly surprised by the warmth and career orientation of some of the women in the group.
After the meeting, Eve and another lady approached me. “Hi, welcome to the group. I'm Eve, in case you forgot.” I looked down at the grinning, short, silver-haired lady before me. She had some spunk about her. “We're all going out now for coffee,” she said, “and hot fudge sundaes. Want to join us?”
Well, sure, why not? I needed an A.A. meeting close to work—a place where I could feel comfortable dumping my work frustrations. We headed out for Grandma Sally's, a Naperville coffee shop that welcomed the nightly invasion by one A.A. group or another. Fortunately, they had a smoking section. (Gotta hang on to one or two addictions in order to feel “alive.”)
As I recall our conversation that night, one of the women, an instructor from Northern Illinois University, suggested that we take in a student play that was scheduled for the next Friday. It was an update of a classic Greek tragedy, set in war-torn Bosnia, she explained. Most of the women politely declined. But it sounded weird enough to be fun to me. I had no “life” and the tickets were only five dollars.
“I might go,” I piped up.
Eve turned to me, eyes twinkling. “If you'd like to come over to my house after work next Friday, I'll drive us both to De Kalb. Maybe we can squeeze in dinner before the show.”
“Sure,” I responded. “I'm game.” I could use a new A.A. friend, especially one who's intelligent enough to think that seeing a modern day Greek play would be a “hoot.”
During the one-hour drive from Naperville through the cornfields to NIU, Eve and I amused ourselves by sharing our stories A.A.style. That means we tell it the way it was in our drinking days, what happened to bring us into the program, what our lives are like now, and what we hope for in the future.
We discovered that we shared similar semi-strict Catholic upbringings. Though she was a “Southsider,” Eve attended Marywood High School in north suburban Evanston. It was a boarding school about three miles away from my parochial high school, Saint Scholastica Academy. Eve was five years older than I, but, interestingly, we both knew some of the same students and teachers.
Eve went on to major in English Lit and Theater Arts at Chicago's Loyola University, and I went south for my advertising communications degree at the University of Illinois in Champaign. Her parents had owned a thriving funeral home business in a Polish neighborhood on Chicago's south side. I figured they had more money than my parents because Eve did her junior year at Loyola's satellite campus in Rome, Italy. I spent my junior year staring out a dorm window at the experimental cornfields across the road.
Eve shared how her drinking had escalated after her husband died at the too-young age of 48. It was obvious that she was still very proud of him. He had been a career Army Ranger during the Vietnam War. In fact, she attributed his death from complications from testicular cancer to the fact that he was Agent-Oranged in Vietnam. But that, she said, was hard to prove. It had been seven years since his death, and she was finally ready to think about letting go of her too-big, four-bedroom Naperville house. Her 80-year-old mom, who had been living with her, was happier residing in a nearby fancy residential retirement complex.
“And so, Donna, what's your life like? Advertising's an exciting business, isn't it?”
I replied that maybe real “advertising” was exciting, but not catalog writing. Writing Sears catalogs was my first job out of college. That was followed by many years in business advertising, mainly selling electronics and food. Now that was challenging. But since the alcoholism caught up with me, I was back to lowly catalog writing— and damned grateful I had that job.
Eve asked, “So what do you want to do when you retire? What's your dream?”
“Huh? Retire?” Obviously, Eve had no concept of “poor.” Between making enough money to pay the bills and going to A.A. meetings, I hardly had time to dream. But why bore her with reality? “Well, since you asked, I guess all I ever really wanted to be was an artist, maybe with my own art gallery, preferably in Door County. That's my impossible dream.”
Eve nodded and said, “What an intriguing dream. I used to volunteer at the local arts council. It was fun. Why don't you show me your paintings sometime? Maybe I could represent you. You know, sell your art work to some galleries.”
“Uh, that would be great, Eve. But other than a few emergency advertising layouts on the job, I haven't picked up a paintbrush since my last art class 15 years ago. We're discussing hopes here, not realities.”
“Oh,” she commented, disappointment obvious in her voice. This woman's bored with her life, I thought to myself.
I was right. Over the next year, we became friends. She took a few steps into my world and seemed to enjoy finding cheap or free artsytype things we could do on a weekend. I appreciated that. During this time, Eve's mom passed away and I helped her walk through her sorrow as best I could.
Soon came an offer I just couldn't refuse. Eve was finally selling her house. Her question was if she bought a Naperville townhouse, did I want to move in with her? Let's see: I lived in a studio apartment in a working-class industrialized area of the so-so suburbs. Eve was talking about luxury living in ultra-chic Naperville. What was the question?
Before I could say “yes,” a mental picture of my A.A. sponsor, looking oddly like a “Big Brother” poster, popped into my head.
“Oh wow, Eve. That would really be cool. But only if you figure out a fair-market rent for my room . . . and we split the other stuff.”
“Yeah, yeah. Have it your way,” Eve grinned. I could see she was not taking me very seriously. I already knew she was generous to a fault.
“I mean it, Eve, or else my sponsor will have my head.” There. She could understand that. She had met my A.A. sponsor a few times. Actually, once was enough.
Now I'm crossing the bridge over the canal that joins Lake Michigan and Green Bay in Sturgeon Bay, Door's county seat. All of a sudden, the fog doesn't seem quite as dense. Only 30 to 45 minutes to Baileys Harbor from here, but I'll figure an hour. Who knows what's up ahead?
Now, where was I? Oh yeah, so I moved in with Eve . . . and that was the beginning of our great adventure in free and easy living. Finally, I was able to save some money. Naturally, I wanted to spend it, preferably on a vacation. I hadn't had one in over a decade. We decided on Albuquerque–Santa Fe for our first destination. We so enjoyed the artistic flavor of the Southwest that we set our sights on northern Arizona for the second adventure. We both had dreamed about the sunny high-desert country as a possible relocation option a few years down the road.
By this time, I had become well acquainted with Eve's good friend, Cass, and the three of us did most everything together. Cass couldn't join us on our Arizona trip, but she offered a rather unique way to get a guided tour of our future living options. Call some local Realtors down there, she said. If they're bored, or hungry for new business, they'll show you around town. It's part of their job.
We had a list of five towns we wanted to visit: Prescott, Payson, Cottonwood, Camp Verde, and Sedona, aka Red Rock Country. All of our choices were reasonably affordable, except for incredible Sedona, where we reserved our hotel room. After all, we were on vacation and, besides the Grand Canyon, Sedona was a primo destination.
I was still working 40 hours a week at Spiegel catalog. I briefly debated the wisdom of taking time off when there were rumblings at Spiegel about a major corporate shakeup. I was a freelancer, however, so I didn't really have a job to lose. Meanwhile, lady-of-leisure Eve was planning our itinerary. A couple of days before the trip, she announced that the only Realtor who was interested in Cass's idea was from Sedona.
“Does he understand that we're not multimillionaires?” I asked, remembering photos of Sedona's mansionesque residential dwellings.
“He says he does,” Eve shrugged. “I set it up for the second-to-last day. Perhaps we'll be bored and want to see a few luxury ranches.”
And so we eventually arrived in drop-dead-gorgeous Sedona. After a week of touring towns that could never compare, we met up with the Realtor in the parking lot of his office. “Okay, what price range are you interested in?” he asked. Eve rattled off the market value of our Naperville townhouse, while I nonchalantly added that I was only interested in a house with one of the awesome Red Rock views. Eve and I exchanged smug smiles in the back of the car, knowing there was no way we could afford Sedona, so we would just enjoy the tour.
We figured the Realtor knew that at some level but didn't have anything better to do the first week of December. We were barely paying attention to his chatter when we realized that he was saying, “I've got a perfect three-bedroom ranch I want you to see, three miles down the road. It has wonderful Red Rock views.” He was right; Eve bought it in a “bliss blackout” the next day. Four months later, we moved to paradise.
I had brought along a couple of little freelance accounts, but Eve had been emphatic that I had a new direction. “Go learn to be an artist,” she commanded. “I'll carry us financially for a couple of years. Maybe we'll set up a gallery, or maybe we'll just sell to them. If you're worried about your pride, sell your car. We'll just use mine, and you can throw that money into the pot. Let me manage the finances while you paint.”
I tried to tell her that I didn't think I had enough talent; but she really liked my art style, so there was nothing to talk about. Nobody had ever believed in me like that. I said I would try my best.
Two and a half years later, I was selling a painting here and there . . . but I was still a ways from big-time gallery appeal. Meanwhile, our social life was primarily built around A.A., which isn't bad except that most Sedona meetings were infected by the kissy-huggy style from that land to the west, where many A.A. groups were little more than social clubs.
Truth be told, I missed the occasional miserable Midwest overcast day. And it appeared that Eve had descended into a funky depression mode. From my viewpoint, she was addicted to the Internet . . . and once a month she did battle with a whopper migraine headache. Though she denied unhappiness, I figured she missed her multitude of friends in Chicago. I pushed hard a suggestion to move back and, finally, she relented. I had heard around the A.A. tables the folly of the “geographic” cure. I thought our case was different, but Eve's headaches and depression continued.
Meanwhile, I scrambled to find some freelance accounts. We were living in a rented condo in Naperville and shopping around for a townhouse. We had been back almost nine months when we decided to take a break and head up to Door County, Wisconsin, for a three-day weekend.
We had promised each other we wouldn't look at real estate on this trip. We already knew we couldn't afford the lakefront home I always dreamed of, and anything else seemed unbearable to me. Anyway, the entire county job market was based on tourism, and though Eve didn't discuss finances with me, I knew the move from Sedona had cost us dearly.
It was a rainy spring weekend in Door County. I took off for the state park to take photos of wildflowers in between the showers. Eve said she wanted to walk around Baileys Harbor and browse the shops. The way she told it, a cloudburst sent her scurrying into a Realtor's office for shelter. While she was waiting, she thumbed through a February home listing guide. There on page 33 was a modest ranch house boasting 100 feet of shoreline, listed at the price of our Sedona house.
As it turned out, the house was owned by a Realtor I had known from my family excursions to Door County as a teenager. Two days later, Eve bought the house. I wasn't sure if she was completely crazy, but I would hardly ever object to her buying my dream home on the lake.
Surprise, surprise. The 50-year-old house had quite a few more faults than the building inspection report revealed. For example, the bathroom floor was rotting under the tub. Thirty thousand dollars in necessary improvements forced Eve to take out a loan, a five-year mortgage we would pay back by getting jobs, but not until the next summer.
Now I'm rounding the bend that offers a panoramic view of the Lake and Baileys Harbor in the daylight. Oh, boy. Daylight, I ruefully note, is only two hours away. And then I have to slam on the brakes again. There, in the middle of the highway in town, are three deer standing at attention, transfixed by my headlights. “Oh, go away,” I mutter exhaustedly. Surprisingly, they do—but they sure take their sweet time about it.
While I wait, I take the opportunity to thank all the higherpowers-that-be for my safe trip. I continue to pray all the way to my driveway, out of the car, and into the house. Oh, no—the answering machine is blinking. I tentatively touch the button. Thank God, it's only Cass, confirming her departure time of 6 A.M. That's only two hours from now. God, I'm tired—sick, too. I fall into bed, and a fitful sleep follows.