Fairy Tale Blues (28 page)

“Shank needed to learn some survival tools living with his alcoholic mother and no father on the premises, and he learned to survive well. Trouble with our marriage is that he can't move on now, give up those tools he no longer needs to survive. He is still living in an imagined household of a drunken mother and eight children he must get ready for school. And I live in it with him.”

Jess, too, I realized, had brought to our marriage old survival skills from his childhood that he no longer needed, particularly an insulating emotional position. And they impeded his relationship in marriage in a different way from Shank's, though just as forcefully.

“How do you manage?” I asked Lucille, imagining Shank overwhelming her on a daily basis with his need for wielding power from big things—finances—to small things—where to place the sofa. “You've been together . . . what? Thirty years?”

“Spaces in that togetherness, that's how I manage. We have a wonderful home life and we enjoy each other, but we are not together all the time. I cannot change him or anyone else; I learned that in the twelve-step program. So I have adjusted my idea of marriage. We are together—even now during our retirement—only in the evenings and one day or so on the weekend. The rest of the time I go my way, he goes his. We have lovely dinner conversations, telling each other what we did during our time apart.”

“So he agreed to this?” I tried imagining setting up such an arrangement with Jess, because I recognized that our marriage held a lot of togetherness and could also benefit from time apart.

“No.” Lucille smiled. “I quietly took action on it, bit by bit creating a nice life for myself. And I've since learned, talking to other women, that this routine isn't all that rare.”

I refilled our tea and refreshed our ice cubes, using the pause to absorb my surprise over how wrong I'd been to assume my neighbors' marriage was as conventional as cooked corn. Before I sat back down again, I wondered if my few lone getaways the past couple years had been my attempts at creating breaks in togetherness.

Lucille took a sip and replaced the glass smack in the original circle of sweat left on the table. “Where we got the idea that just because we are married we have to do everything together is beyond me. I met a married woman the other day who has her own house.”

“Really?” That sounded rather nice.

“They have a little cottage out back of their main house, and one day she slept out there because her husband was snoring. She liked it so much, she moved in. She enjoyed her own company during the day and came in the main house to have dinner and spend evenings with her husband.”

“That takes money.”

“Maybe your own cottage, but not creating your own life. I have my good friends, events we attend together, and times I just prefer my solitude and spend the morning at the library and the afternoon in my sewing room. Every week I discover something new I enjoy doing. Like this jam. Why, I had a big day making that.”

Lucille had also been gardening, so we walked downstairs together to admire her work. Along the side I had always considered their private yard, beside their screened Florida room, Lucille had created an area with flagstones, ground cover and accent plants. Fountain grass spouted along a short stone wall, dracaena plants sat in pots and flame vine climbed the porch pillars. It was lovely, cool and colorful. We said goodbye after that, and Bijou and I headed for our daily walk on the beach.

I strolled four blocks through our neighborhood of older Florida homes, originally small houses with added bedrooms, extended living rooms, newly built screened porches and decks.

Everything that had made life good for me during the past few weeks had risen in a pure, energetic way, as if there were a luminous cord that spun up my spine, holding my body straight and sizzling my mind with new vitality. But along with this I worried about Jess, as if the farther I traveled into my own life, the farther away I traveled from him. It wasn't because of the three thousand miles between us, but because of this personal place I had created within myself. We had both become used to me carrying him and his life in my consciousness—remembering where he'd tossed his wallet, keeping him current with friends and family, scheduling his store meetings with product reps. Where he once resided, now my own life took up residence and this created a sense of distance from Jess that I wasn't used to feeling.

As I reached across that distance, my fear arose. I became afraid Jess would do something to harm himself. Not deliberately—he did very little deliberately—but rather act rashly and without paying attention. I worried about his going backcountry skiing alone. If he packed his survival gear as carelessly as he placed his car keys, I'd never see him again.

On the beach, I snapped off Bijou's leash and she began her romp toward the water's edge. She got distracted by a sand crab and chased it until it disappeared mysteriously on her. I watched her turn circles trying to surprise it with a pounce.

This separation anxiety was all in my mind, of course, not so different from the mental space that opened for me when the boys first attended grade school. I worried about them even as I learned to let them go. Now I had to let Jess go. In part, that was what Lucille was talking about. Letting go, moving on myself.

My heart cramped suddenly and I was overcome with a bleak realization: I was helpless to create the fully engaged relationship with Jess that I longed for. I couldn't accomplish it alone. And Jess didn't share my dreams of love and closeness. Maybe he never would. It was as much a fairy tale as a wedding at Cinderella's castle.

I sat on the sand in despair. I wrapped my arms around my knees and buried my face them. My greatest fear since leaving for my marriage sabbatical was that I would discover I could not return. Was that the truth I needed to face now?

I lifted my head. But maybe I didn't have to leave Jess.

Wasn't that what Lucille was telling me, too? Change yourself, not the other. I sniffed and let the wind blow my tears into my hair.

After a bit, I got up and began walking again. I watched a sail-boat far out in the deep navy blue water, where the setting sun illuminated the triangle of white sail. Bijou darted after terns that rose as a single body and flew low over the waves, two dozen striped wing bodies all perfectly spaced. Then as one, they flipped their angle and the image turned to flying white breasts flashing against a blue sky.

My heart swelled at the sight and somehow I felt reassured that whatever force orchestrated that rhythm and beauty was available to lend rhythm and beauty to my life, too.

I had been trying so hard to produce something I'd imagined, molding myself and my mate into some fairy-tale image, resisting anything that didn't fit it. When all along, like the terns moving in response to the moment, I had needed to live in tune with reality. My confusion over my marriage came from the reality not matching the firm grip I held on the fairy tale.

Bijou discovered where crabs hid and began digging just above the waterline, yet lost confidence when she didn't find one. Her underbelly was caked with wet sand.

Then the good news hit me: I didn't have to leave Jess, just leave him alone.

Give him room to do and be whatever he chose, give myself room to do the same.

I took in a big, shaky breath. A smile spread across my face.

Thanks to Lucille, I had found MARRIAGE RULE #4: Allow Space.

Jess

 

 

I
slapped my hand on the newspaper spread out beside my breakfast and dug in my pocket for my phone. AnnieLaurie had to hear about this. When she answered, I said, “Annie, remember when I told you about Wolf No. 9? That she wasn't expected to live much longer now that she was driven out of her pack?”

“Jess, did she die?”

“Well, you're not going to believe this.” I laughed and folded the newspaper.

“What? Tell me,” Annie pleaded.

“No. 9 . . .”

“She's alive?”

“She's alive. She's been spotted and is doing well. Really well.”

“Oh my gosh, that's so good to hear.”

“There's more. She's found a new pack and . . . are you ready?”

“Ready.”

“She is alpha!”

“No! This is great.”

“No. 9 and the male are the pack's dominant pair. One of the females from her old Rose Creek pack joined her.”

“I could cry, I'm so happy to hear that.”

“Isn't she something? The
Jackson Hole News & Guide
said that out of the one hundred and nine wolves born in Yellowstone since the reintroduction, seventy-nine of the pups are descended from her, children and grandchildren. No other wolf comes close to her contribution.”

“To think that earlier this winter they were expecting her to die alone in the snow. She is amazing.”

“They've named her new pack the Valentine pack.”

Annie sighed happily.

“So happy Valentine's Day, Annie.”

“I just opened your gift. Jess, it's so beautiful. I'm wearing the pendant right now. Looks wonderful with my earrings. Same intense blue topaz. Did you know that I pierced my ears with another set of holes, so I could wear both pairs of blue topaz ear studs you gave me?”

“Oh, God, you're going to make me look at those the rest of my life, aren't you?”

“Did you receive my gift?”

“And eaten some. Stuck two Honeybells in my pocket before I went snowshoeing with the dogs early this morning, and ate them while sitting on a snowbank.”

“They were late this season. Still, that's it for the Honeybells.”

“I love you, AnnieLaurie.”

“I love you, too, Jess.”

I flipped the phone closed and grabbed my gear.

 

Valentine's Day was the first day of the year that the sun shined fully on Snow King Mountain, often referred to as the Town Hill and—my favorite part—called the “steepest little son of a bitch in the West.” A north-facing mountain, it was cold and in shadow all day during the first half of the season, so I usually waited until mid-February to ski it.

Couldn't let a season go by without runs down the face of Snow King Mountain. On a clear day like today, the chairlift offered views all the way across the valley to Yellowstone, fifty miles away. I craned my neck around to admire the Grand Tetons and to imagine Wolf No. 9 and her new pack moving together across the snowfields farther north. I basked in the memory of this morning's phone call to Annie. When I'd read about No. 9 in the
Jackson Hole News & Guide
with my breakfast, I could hardly wait to tell her. I didn't mention that I was taking the day off from the store to ski.

This mountain, like the rest of Jackson Hole, had become busier over the twenty-five years since Annie and I first moved here. In fact, even a decade ago it was so quiet on this mountain that many days I was the only person on the chairlift until later in the day when school let out. Once in late March the only other rider was a robin who rode up the mountain perched on the chair ahead of me.

Our boys learned to ski as toddlers, but by the time Annie and I learned, we were in our twenties, our bodies rigid with the fear of falling. Annie still didn't ski fast enough to get her ears cold, but over the years I'd become fairly decent. I remembered, though, that first attempt.

Just to advertise our stupidity we drove to the mountain with our rented ski boots already locked into the bindings and the whole business—boots and skis—strapped to the top of our car. We looked ludicrous and arrived at the resort to find our boots had filled with snow. We skied that day with cold, wet feet.

We were dangerous that first time on the slopes and didn't realize it. We didn't know how to snowplow or traverse, just headed straight downhill. Annie described how she saw a wedge of people below her standing in line for the lift and could do nothing but plow right through the middle of them. When she finally managed to stop, no one was standing but her.

I looked like a big Hefty bag myself that first day, wearing a shiny black one-piece ski suit, also rented like the rest of the gear. I rode a chairlift to the top of a slope that didn't look too steep from below, but once I got up there, I realized I would be in big trouble if I skied it. Made me shake just to think about it. So I bent forward to take off my skis; my weight shifted and I started sliding downhill.

To this day I didn't know how it happened, but I unexpectedly came up behind a woman with one of my skis on either side of her, as she was skiing just ahead of me. Hard to say which one of us was more terrified. She had no idea who I was, other than the big lug who was gripping onto her for dear life from behind. Locked together like that, we tore down the mountain and the whole way, I kept panting in her ear, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

Eventually Annie and I learned a few skills. There were rules for idiots out there. The Rule of Three: most accidents happen on the third run, after three o'clock in the afternoon, and on the third day. All because of tiredness that leads to carelessness.

As bad as we were, Annie and I were bound to have accidents on all those Rule of Three occasions. And we did, but none of them serious. Still, the rule we needed the most we couldn't quite remember.

“RICE. That's what you do for injuries,” Annie had said.

I had twisted my knee in a fall, but not seriously enough to see a doctor. “RICE,” I said. “I've heard that.”

“Let's see. R is for rest. I is for ice. What is the C for? And the E?”

“That's probably it. Rest and ice. R—ICE. Get it?”