Coming to Grips

The actual words were just scrambled eggs in my head.  

It started with, “We need to talk”, the scariest four-word sentence I know.  

I got up from the couch leaving Gwendolyn and Cecily curled up together. Since we got them as kittens a year ago, they’d been inseparable and impossibly cute.  Ann slid into the dining alcove I always considered cozy, but now as I sat down on the opposite side, I felt like a defendant awaiting a verdict. She looked directly into my eyes but with little emotion that I could see. 

“I’ve got some things to think about, and it would be better if you left”. 

The words were delivered in a gentle but firm tone, as if this would be good for me. No recriminations. No accusations. It was hard to respond to. It was like being given a test I was unprepared for; or “the actors nightmare” where you’re on stage in a play you’ve never heard of, so you make up a line: 

“You mean for good?” (You can’t mean that, can you?) 

“I don’t know,” she said. My stomach dropped out, and there was a palpable pain in the middle of my chest. It was warm for November, and I had the fleeting thought that the neighbors, whose house was ten feet away, could hear this exchange through the open window. Something in my brain launched a protective shell around me and prevented me from saying, “How could you do this to me”? I thought you loved me” and “What am I going to do now?” 

It also seemed to prevent me from saying “I love you”. 

Instead I said something like “Give me a chance to find someplace, and I’ll be out of here as soon as I can”.  My head felt like a Cuisinart whirring with a million questions I’d have to answer. 

Where will I live? 

Who should I call? 

Is this really temporary? 

Does she have someone else? 

What will my life look like? 

It’s three weeks to Thanksgiving-what will I do? 

“How long do I have?” I said out loud. 

“As soon as possible would be good”.  

As it was Ann’s house, and I moved in with little more than my clothes and a computer, there wasn’t much room to negotiate. 

“What about the girls?” I don’t remember who asked the question.  

“I don’t think we should separate them” I said. 

“I agree, she replied. If you want to take them, you can.” 

I looked back at the couch. They were curled up so close together that they seemed to blend in to each other. As sisters, their calico coloring looked like a furry abstract painting. How could Ann let them go?  

In a response that was both instinctive and surprising to both of us, I said, “I will”. 

Looking back, it may have been the only part of this narrative I could control.  

I wonder if my getting the cats is how a football player feels when he scores three touchdowns, and his team still loses. It’s just that this time, there’s no game next week, and all I feel like doing is sitting in the locker room in my dirty uniform wondering what I could have done to change the outcome. 

* 

I was at my cousin’s wedding many years ago. It was officiated by a priest and a rabbi. The Rabbi’s turn at a sermon included a proscription to the groom which was, “There are three little words you must always remember to say to your wife, (pause for effect) It’s my fault”.  In my quest to understand what has gone wrong in my life I keep landing on what I might have said or done, to cause the problem or what I could have done or said to fix it. I realize that this is massively ego-centric, but even now, when someone is upset in my presence, I immediately assume it’s my fault. After many years, I felt like I could trace my fear of abandonment (and corresponding fear of commitment) back to my mother dying when I was very young. But I can’t help wondering if the seeds for self-blame were sown a year before. 

* 

“Is it far? “, I asked 

“No”, my mother replied, “you won’t get car sick” 

I had determined at the wise old age of seven that sitting in the back of the family’s car and going for extended trips was nausea-inducing. While I sought to avoid these jaunts whenever possible, this Sunday’s trip was unavoidable. My father, mother, four-year-old sister and I were off to the Chevrolet dealership. My Father was going to buy a new car. 

I had exactly zero interest in this adventure. My preference was to stay at home, on my street, navigating the uneven topography of the black and gray asphalt while trying to hit a small pink ball with a broomstick. While this may sound like a reality show contest, it was run-of-the mill Bronx stickball. This Sunday, however, I was relegated to tolerating my younger sibling on our family adventure. I amused myself by reading the white and green highway signs as they whizzed past, wondering who Major Deegan was, and why an expressway was named after him. 

True to my Mother’s word we were at the dealership in short order. A large oatmeal-colored building with blue lettering that spelled out Chevrolet, seemed to be almost entirely windows, displaying shiny new cars, mostly red or black, with some two-toned models as well. While my parents were immediately engaged by a salesman, my sister Renee and I, knowing our jobs as bored children, fidgeted to the annoyed distraction of the adults. The salesman, not wanting his prospective buyers distracted, called my sister and me over to his desk. 

“I’m sure your parents won’t mind if you play with these outside.” He then handed each of us a red and blue yo-yo with CHEVROLET written in gold across both sides. My parents took the bait and shooed us outside to play with our new toys. To be honest, Renee and I were both pretty happy, as we had absolutely no expectations for this trip to be anything but boring.  

Seeing me trying to manipulate my yo-yo, Renee began to imitate what I was doing, however unsuccessfully. She, however had more tolerance for frustration than I, so she did not copy me when, annoyed by not being able to get the yo-yo to do any of the things I’d seen it do on television, decided to hold the end of the string and whip the red and blue disc over my head as fast as I could. I was fascinated by how the yo-yo’s color seemed to change as I whipped it around. Unfortunately, I lost my grip on the string. The next sound I (and everyone else in the vicinity) heard was the shattering of a 20 foot picture window. The red carpeting in the showroom looked like a showcase for diamonds, with small pieces of glass everywhere. My parents (and the salesman) came running, accompanied by Renee’s crying. I don’t think she knew why she was crying except she knew something was very wrong. 

Once we were deemed to be unharmed, my parents hustled us into the family car. My Father, red-faced, and as mad as I had ever seen him told us to “sit, shut up and wait” for them. He then came back and added, unnecessarily, “and you’re not getting the yo-yo back”. 

“I hope you die!” I wanted to say to him, but I didn’t have the nerve, so I screamed it at my mother, when, minutes later, she slid into the car. 

A year later, the broken window was a faded memory. Two months before, my life had been altered by two big events. The Yankees had won the World Series, and my little brother had been born. I was way more excited about the Yankees than I was my little brother, who didn’t seem to do much but cry and sleep. My mother had been sick for a while, and my grandmother came to help out until “Mom was back on her feet.”   

That day, I headed home from the grind that was third grade at PS 89, navigating the five blocks to my parent’s attached house and climbing the 17 steep steps from the sidewalk to the front door, looking so forward to my after school treat of Hostess Cupcakes and milk.  

As soon as I got to the first step, I saw my Father on the porch. I was confused. He wasn’t usually home at this time. He had clearly come from work wearing his taxi driver “uniform” of a white, short-sleeved, button-down shirt and gray chinos. From the sharp angle of the stairs, he looked even bigger, his broad form filling out the doorway to the enclosed porch. But somehow, he seemed weaker. His customary slumping shoulders were even more pronounced, turning his body into a human question mark.  I thought I heard people crying from inside the house. My stomach hurt. My heart was beating faster. My father never expressed emotion very easily. And truth be told, I can’t remember what he said. But his inability to look at me, his uncharacteristic sadness and halting speech, combined with the plaintive sounds coming from our living room, told me the news without him saying anything. 

My mother had died. 

It’s funny the things you remember and the things you don’t. I don’t remember what my Father said to me. I just remember I was sent across the street to a neighbor’s house to have dinner and spend the night. My sister went to another neighbor. The only thing I remember is what I ate (spaghetti and meatballs) and what I watched on TV (Sargent Preston of the Yukon). I don’t remember what anyone said to me that night. 

There was a monumental effort made on behalf of my sister and I to make it seem like nothing had happened and life was just going to go on. So it did. So I did. But I was eight and had no idea how this event would shape the rest of my life.