Marriage Vow
OUR FAMILY VISITED OUR PLOT at Oak Hill Cemetery in Lampasas after the tombstones for the three of us were in place. My parents thought there was room for a fourth, and I told my mother I might marry. Surprising to a degree, she seemed to find pleasure in that, rather than regrets the union might occur after her death.
"You might marry," she would say later.
The stumbling block to marriage for a good many years after I left home was my determination to avoid the closest of relationships with women. For all I knew they were all as unreasonable as my mother. It would remain for a psychiatrist years later to label her invectives emotional abuse.
One incident in her later years conveys the tone of the life-long strife with my mother. After moving home and after seeing more and more meals served out of cans, I suggested that I take over cooking duties. To that she staunchly replied, "I'm not going to give up control of the kitchen."
Nor did it help for my mother to find unforgivable fault with each and every woman I dated—with one exception. That exception I found unattractive because we had no spark—no romance—between us. With the most favored of the others, mental illness had, of course, intervened. From my mother's perspective, it appears that she would approve of her child's marriage only after she would, by act of God, have to let him go.
AT THE GRAVESITE, my mother extended a promissory note that marriage was, finally, okay. And there was the promissory note on the part of the son that he entertained seriously the idea of marriage, even in the sixth decade of life. At this late stage, for better or for worse, I have a growing sense that it is an institution of companionship, hang the children, that should not pass me by. I am convinced that—let my mother be the guide on this—that in the end we need to hold on to each other the most.
I missed the boat the first time, where 90 percent of us will wed at least once by the age of fifty, and I don't want to miss it again at sixty.
Whether I marry depends on the contemplation of an altered landscape. First, I now know women to pursue where none could be found in the social chasm at the onset of aging and financial woes. Second, e-mail has enhanced communication. Even those only slightly interested will drop a line on the 'net, and serious chats aren't rare.
My friendship with Mary (not her real name) was reborn on the Internet after a forty-year hiatus. Her e-mail address had shown up in a high school classmate listing.
"Hi, Mary, hope to see you at the reunion. Your name has come up more than once lately. First, my mother died and I learned a little later of your mother's death. Sorry to hear it. Then, in going through papers my mother saved, I discovered two letters you wrote during a summer I spent in Arizona."
Mary replied:
"I can't tell you how good it is to hear from you. Thx for taking the time to let me know about the letters. Sorry to hear about your mother, too. If you're moving back to Houston, give me a ring. We've lived here for five years. I guess I won't say "we" much longer. Two weeks ago my husband of thirty-eight years left me and wants a divorce."
My ears perked up.
About that time I was also online with Denise (not her real name), one of my more faithful correspondents. Though she lived in Austin, she followed Houston Rockets basketball. To my query, she replied, "Yes, I saw the fight... about twenty times. You know how they do the replays over and over from all different angles. Shaq started it, but Charles shouldn't have bounced the ball off his head."
At fifty-three, I liked her bounce. And we went back a ways. Two years earlier, she was down on her luck in a Houston suburb. Her husband had left her, she had lost her job, and she had dropped out of a doctorate program in public health. I dropped her a Christmas card; she called. I drove out. Despite it all, despite the emptiness of a 3,000-square-foot house taken over mostly by cats and dogs, we savored the moment with coffee before a fresh Christmas tree.
Her mother rescued her from her financial plight.
And Denise rescued my spirit.
She always had, with a gangly brood of twenty-three cats and six dogs, four of them greyhounds.
She also has a history of husbands, the history part of which attributes to depression, serial marriages that she doesn't tell about on the first date. But she still was a great source of cheer and general spirit raising. After all, she came to see me at Rusk State Hospital, where visits are rare. I told her then (she thought I was manic) that her men were like chewing gum, she chews them up and, once satisfied, spits them out.
But forget gum. Relationships are more like sand, shifting, always shifting.
Mary and I attended many theatrical events for a year. Then her husband came back.
Denise found a former classmate through e-mail, and they were an item for a year. Then he told her goodbye on the 'net.
But, lo and behold, now enters Jill (not her real name), a former classmate and a family friend with whom I talk freely. She is seeking a divorce after forty years marriage. My ears perk up once again.
Chapter 22
Family
ACORNS FELL in unusual abundance that year. And what the squirrels left, the little dog Chica collected in a loose pile on the patio's orange and blue tiles. It was Thanksgiving, and she had brought her offering to the table (well, to a table leaf placed at a suitable height).
When she was young and I was comparing her wistfully to the old Boston terrier, Chico, a handyman gently and wisely said, "Give her a chance." Well, she added seven years, and I guess I hadn't been paying attention — but, all of a sudden, she was smarter. On a walk, I'd say "Back," and she would turn back for the barn.
The table leaf for Chica helped round out the place settings for family as I regrouped from the throes of death and an emptiness borne out my own dereliction with relations. I had noted to an old acquaintance in another city the lack of siblings, parents, children, and in-laws at my table, and she had answered the e-mail:
"I certainly know what you mean about family. I am the only one left to speak of in my family. My brother is a lost cause — never know where he is and I am really better off if I don't know. He would only want money! Of course, since my mother was a single parent since I was six, there are no connections there. Anyway, I do not know what I would do without my two sons and darling daughter-in-law whom I am very fond of."
ROSE CROWELL, the top hand at the Dixie Dude ranch, had wisely schooled me, "Some are better than family."
And to contemplate whom Chica and I sit with leaves no room to bemoan a bare cupboard, but is for us to partake a rich broth.
In the first instance, I was fortunate to have a friend of thirty-five years and his wife sell a Los Angeles newspaper at the inception of my greater freedom. It gave the couple, James and Codette Vowell, greater freedom to play. And they kept up the highly energized image of California.
When I visited, the week stacked up something like the nursery rhyme about household chores. Wednesday was tennis on a lighted court atop a nine-story building. I went along for the ride, but must confess that I spent my time on the rooftop watching far better players, if only because they knew how to keep the balls out of the traffic below. Thursday was exercise with a trainer, in which I did participate. Friday was the start of weekend skiing from the Vowel's A-frame on nearby Big Bear Mountain. I had not skied for fifteen years, but love the sport and stayed up on the bunny and beginner slopes. Minus the black- and blue-diamond runs, it was still a thrill.
A few years earlier, over on the mountain at Whitefish, Montana, I had encountered a pair of Canadians, who had taken up the sport at sixty and were intermediate skiers. That told me it could be done. James wasn't much younger, fifty-seven, and kept up with the feistier Codette, forty-five. Well, most of the time. Together, they were separated only by age—gentle dispositions, enthusiasm for an infinite variety of activity.
We adjourned from the ski slopes to an intimate Valentine's Day dinner that Monday. A special guest, Erin Fortenberry, nineteen, joined us. She was trying to make her way in film and was the daughter of Gary and Gail Fortenberry, who live near Seattle. The Fortenberrys were also old friends, he by a few months on James. The daughter carried the same black hair of her father at a slightly earlier age and the same incisive reasoning.
Gary had broken into backpacking, whitewater canoeing, and skiing with me, possessing a trusting mother. For years he told with relish about our misadventures, remembering them long after I had forgotten. Well, not quite. I still remember telling him that we should slalom a line of trees in the Guadalupe River, and we didn't make it. We wrapped a fabric Foldboat around one of those trees, and the outing got worse because of a storm.
But Gary still hasn't forgotten, and he and Gail have been paying me back, with train trips to their home overlooking the San Juan Islands, sailing and mountain camping.
This year they were warming up in a Volkswagen camper van for a long haul through Europe and Asia, taking me through frigid North Cascades National Park, letting me savor the multitude of snowy peaks. And the tall timber was so magnificent I vowed to return for more again and again.
There was a practical side. I could buy prescription drugs cheaper in Canada.
Back home, Dorothy and Sonny Novak of suburban Spring extended a family tradition, welcoming the Leatherwood entourage on Christmas Day and keeping in touch throughout the year. She had been "the daughter I should have had" for my mother.
As my mother neared her end, Dorothy comforted her, talked in terms I could not. "Carlton will be all right?" the cancer patient, but above all mother, asked. I can only guess the answer, for I have not been lonely since.
Meanwhile, the Vowells came to Texas just to join me in a game of golf one weekend, over at Horseshoe Bay in the Hill Country. The traps there do yawn, but James and Codette stayed stony-faced and finished each hole despite burying a few balls in the sand. I won't deny it—I picked up out of frustration several times. But it was on this trip that Codette said at dinner, "Carl, do you want to go to Paris and Crete with us. I haven't checked with James, but ...."I didn't hesitate to accept. "Those are the places I've always wanted to go back to," I said.
So we went, and one of the supreme treats was the full moon over a harbor. I said to the girl who brought me cognac and pistachios atop my hotel in Iraklion, the capital of Crete, "See, see, the moon has come up." And she with wry wit and good English said, "Finally."
We played golf on Crete, but before we got to the course, we walked Samarian Gorge. When remembering the friendly Greeks, I also think about my friend James, who, after my legs gave out on the hiking trail, offered a helping hand all the way to the sea, to the blue, blue sea ... finally.
No comments:
Post a Comment