6
Good morning. Having my tea. Thinking of you. My body is happy.😊🌠
Him:😊Mine too. You are lovely and the dance is wonderful.
He walked into the living room for something, then forgot what it was, heart pattering, then realized he’d filled the kettle in the kitchen but hadn’t turned it on. Later, she texted she’d been having a good but busy day and had taken time to lie around between activities to think about him. She asked him if he wanted to get together the next day, afternoon, or evening.
His thumbs hovered, wondering what to text. Oh no, I’m freezing, he thought, no, no, no – this happens when I’ve invested too much, which, even if he wanted to pull back, felt irreversible. He wanted to say the right thing to have the right effect on her, to move them forward. Just be honest, he told himself and wrote: ‘I would fucking love that,’ but deleted it quickly – too desperate – and instead:
That would be great😊
He immediately regretted sending it. It was dull. He typed: ‘I’m looking forward to it’ then deleted it. With forced resolve he put down his phone and walked the length of his condo, digging his nails into his scalp, then walked back and looked out the front window for solace. Be careful!
The next morning she texted:
Still want to meet up? I could head up there.
Him: Yeah, sounds good, come on over 😊
Her: Cool. I’ll text you when I’m leaving. Sometime between 4-5. Look forward to seeing you.😊
Him:😊
He was being short and cool to hide how desperate he was because the odds of connecting with someone like her, playful, exciting, smart, and sexy, at this age, were close to nil. This was it, the last one. Don’t mess it up! She would feel the truth of his passions when she arrived, he told himself, texting is a joke. It was Saturday and he had the whole day to prepare for her visit and even though he habitually kept his place ordered and clean, he got busy with vacuuming, a vigorous bathroom polish, laundry, and decluttering, voiding the place of anything that could be criticized.
Something had to be done about the picture of the Irish countryside hanging in the living room. It was only a matter of time before she asked about it. It would be impossible to explain why he’d taken Jenna after they’d divorced. They had had separate hotel rooms and never slept together but would she believe that? The other option was to lie and say he went there years ago. But he didn’t want to lie, not even a white lie to save feelings. He was falling in love with her, or might already be, and lying would drive him mad with discord. But was that cowardly? The brave thing to do was suck it up and tell the white lie. Yes, but no – she might ask questions and unearth deception, her trust would be broken. What else does he keep hidden? So, could he convince Eva that it wasn’t a romantic trip and that he didn’t harbour feelings for Jenna? Separate rooms and no fucking the whole time? Yeah, right.
The best option was to take the photo down and hope she wouldn’t notice. He carefully unhooked it from the wall like an incapacitated friend with no agency and marched it down to the basement storage lockers. He had to re-arrange everything to make it fit, and when he shut the locker door, he felt as if it was weeping. He went upstairs. You have to do what you have to do. Life is complicated! In its place, he put a meaningless painting of a tree in a meadow that had been in his office. It was smaller and square compared to Irish’s grand panoramic. His ears reddened and his heart fluttered with some pain. He missed Irish, regretted Jenna, and resented Eva. I should crawl into a hole and never come out. Twenty minutes later, Irish was back in its spot in the living room. Spencer stepped back to see if it was straight and said aloud, “I’m sorry I did that.”
WTF now? This wasn’t all going to fall apart, was it? The only option left was a mature response, own the act of going to Ireland with his ex and have faith in Eva’s compassion and understanding. Perhaps it was best to be preemptive and tell her about Ireland before she asked.
He imagined telling her: ‘…I feel weird, not because I still love her, I don’t, I mean, I do, you know, I always will in a certain way, we had kids and we both love them dearly, but because it feels weird hanging there and you don’t know about it.’
‘Don’t know about what?’
‘That I feel weird about it.’
She’d probably dump you then and there.
The doorbell rang near 5 PM. He guided her into his arms for a long-awaited kiss. They both released a satisfying sigh before separating slowly, knowing this was just the start of their evening. She kicked off her sneakers at the door and stepped into the living room, where the sun cast a soft orange light. She set down three cans on the counter: a BC cider, an IPA, and a wine cooler thing. And a small bag of plain potato chips, which she immediately opened and ate noisily.
“Which one are you having?” he asked.
She stared at the three cans as if it was a weighty decision, and he couldn’t help but think it had something to do with some waryness of imbibing alcohol, despite the fact that she was the one who bought them. He half expected her to refuse, but she chose the cider. The IPA was obviously for him, which he took. For the sake of his nerves, he was happy she brought drinks. They settled onto his comfy couch and ordered Thai food, then got to chatting, sipping, kissing, and caressing.
The food arrived. They sat close on the couch and balanced their plates of pad thai and green thai curry with rice. She stole a shrimp off his plate. “Hey! You naughty thing. Maybe you’d like a spanking?”
She held the shrimp above her mouth, flicking it with her outstretched tongue.
“I’m losing my appetite, in a good way.”
She dropped it into her mouth then quickly put her hand on his crotch and gave it a squeeze, then took it away, teasingly. “Gawd,” she said.
“What?” “You’re like a twenty-year-old. Men your age aren’t…up so easy.”
“It’s because you’re so damn sexy.”
She laughed through her nose, mid-chew.
“I’m serious. You’re hot.”
She rolled her eyes.
“A damn hot, sexy creature.”
He ran his thumb over the crease and sag below her cheekbone. “Do you…really think so?” she asked with her frail voice.
He nodded, his eyes deeply locked on hers. “I do.”
After dinner, they shared the wine cooler – he drank nearly all of it as they debated whether or not Nora in A Doll’s House was a strong, independent woman or merely mad.
“She’s mad,” said Spencer, “there’s nowhere for her to go in 1879, leaving her kids, and she said she wanted to commit suicide.”
“She’s the original feminist, one of many who sacrificed everything to stand up for herself, set an example.”
“Fair point, but I get tired when no one acknowledges that being treated like a doll by her father and then her husband clearly drove her mad, it would drive anyone mad – she has love for her husband and children, but because she has gone mad, she can’t make any good decisions.”
Eva looked away, thinking for a few moments. “Her father and husband drove her mad…”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“But she leaves her husband because he doesn’t love her,” she rebuffed.
“Yes! But she’s also mad! That’s what makes it such a great feminist statement – men drive the women mad and then attribute it to their gender.”
“Fuck.”
“Precisely.”
She got up and poured herself water. He followed and downed a glass himself and took her in his arms.
“Wanna fuck?” she whispered.
He followed her down the hall, she turned into his room. He kept on to the bathroom. When he came out, she was sitting on the edge of the bed in white underwear and a sleeveless top, her shoulders bare, feet dangling. She smiled at him in the half-light spilling from the bathroom.
“Just a sec,” he said. He lit three beeswax tea lights in bell-glass holders and brought them into the room. Faint orange accents slipped over their soon-to-be naked bodies.
“Oh, those are nice,” she said.
He undressed facing her, letting it fall to the floor, then advanced onto the bed to meet her lips. She lay down and he gave her a small amount of his weight as if holding her close while dancing. Each languid moment of joy drifted down like dreamy autumn leaves. After some kissing and roving, she said, “You can put some lube on.”
“It’s okay, take your time.”
She nuzzled up to his ear, “I love that you said that.”
Afterwards, they lay entwined, their chests rising and falling in the faint candlelight. “So, how did things end in your marriage?” she asked.
“Didn’t we have this conversation?”
“You said you grew apart.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?” The fiasco of removing and then rehanging Irish suddenly came to mind, he wondered if she might have noticed something and felt himself hurtling in the wrong direction. He didn’t want to have this conversation, but to refuse would be like inviting an elephant into the room. It needed to be a careful telling, with a few salient details and no bitterness or frustration that would reveal unprocessed feelings. He had no lingering desire to reconcile with Jenna, though a few times he’d allowed the idea some space in his thoughts and certainly that had been a consideration when he offered to take her to Ireland, but only lightly, like if he’d thrown some seeds on the ground to see if they’d grow without tending to them, maybe she, Jenna, would water them.
“I think she realized I wasn’t the man she had hoped I was.”
“What had she hoped for?”
“I’m not entirely sure, not me anyway. I can’t blame her, we got married one year after we met. I didn’t know her either.”
“What had you hoped for?”
“Someone happy with me.” It sounded narcissistic when he said it. “We tried to make it work and things just got worse, so-” He shrugged, cutting himself off as if there was nothing else to say. He feared Eva would detect his self-hate and never be able to unsee him that way, repulsive.
She sat up.
He got up, “Want some water?”
“Sure, thanks.”
He came back with two glasses. “Do you want to stay?”
She thought for a moment after taking a drink. “I’ll go, I sleep better at home.”
“Who said anything about sleep?”
“Ha, ha. Yep, well, sleep is a big deal for me.”
“Yes, good. I’m glad you know what’s best for you.”
He saw her to the door, her white sneakers with the green stripe pulled on with a stamp on the tile floor to get them right. He kissed her and smiled. “Take care,” he said, which to him sounded detached and stupid.
“Yeah, Goodnight. Thanks,” she looked in his eyes and smiled like she’d got what she wanted on her birthday. It surprised him.
He blew out the candles beside his bed and comforted his longing with the balm of her scent and the lovely cool wetness on the sheets against his skin.
He woke early with a warm heart. He thought of her curly bob, her smiling eyes, the crest of her lips inviting his. He seemed to be doing things right, she seemed happy.
It was Sunday, he had nothing planned and no one to plan it with. He’d always been able to count his friends on one hand. More than that felt unmanageable. During marriage, his social life was mostly family, his in-laws who wanted to be around their grandkids and his kids wanted to be near their cousins or their friends. Parents would have each other over for dinner and drink wine while the kids played in the next room. Spencer enjoyed family and parent get-togethers, he was a proud father and liked to eat, drink and entertain, but there was nothing deep about these relationships. His own parents had passed on. Of course, he never saw Jenna’s side of the family anymore. And none of the relationships with other Dads went anywhere. School friends had faded too, they moved or moved on. Dillon lost the will to stay connected, often cancelling so he stopped trying. Friends had been mostly party buddies, anyway. They would sometimes cycle, play tennis, or rollerblade, but it was always a prelude to the real event: food and drink. Always drinks.
He had little motivation to make new friends. He felt strangely obligated to pull up their feelings, entertain them. Alcohol reduced this pressure, people enjoyed themselves more when they drank, it was better for everyone. He didn’t want new friends on that basis. He joined a cycling club for a while, then a jogging club, and audited some history and astronomy classes. He tried to connect but felt they wanted to maintain a distance, and if they were communicative, their egos yapped or unloaded their woes as if he wasn’t even there. Given the choice, Spencer preferred to read a book, cycle, or walk alone, but it felt unhealthy, as if he wasn’t eating enough vegetables.
The weather called for clouds and cool, likely rain, but he had to get out and move to let his nerves calm amid the chorus of emotions, all of them vying to be heard over one another: joy, uncertainty, desire, guilt, fear, shame. He donned his hikers and headed west toward the Endowment Lands, expecting to be out most of the day. He resolved to spend the entire time deliciously thinking about Eva, which, beyond joyful, felt necessary, not just to give due attention to what was most important to his heart, but to outrun every other feeling clamouring in his nerves. Her eyes, her frail voice, her laugh, the high ground of her neck into her curls. Oh, you are such a goddamn lovely, amazing fuck!
He packed water, power bars, an extra long-sleeve layer, and his umbrella. Eva had said she was meeting friends. He imagined her with girlfriends, warm in conversation, laughing, perhaps saying this and that about him. How much would she tell?
Each stride on the trail that wound its way through the comforting towers of resolute fir, cedar, maple, and hemlock was another step away from the previous night, the joy and its memory seeping out of him and leaving a chasm of longing for the next time. He kept trying to conjure the previous night, and the Biltmore, and the first kiss, and their first fuck, and the second, but they were fading and felt increasingly unreal as if they’d never happened. The best he could do was invoke flashes, but a wildfire of longing was turning them to ash.
He sat down on a decaying log to eat a power bar and let the trees speak to him, assuring him that Eva would, with each day, feel and embrace his steadfast heart. Look at us, they said, look at how we grow tall and hold hands with each other. It was comforting but disconcerting. It made him feel like he’d forgotten something, or that something had gone missing, or he was supposed to notice something.
* * *