I Love You and I'm Leaving You Anyway (35 page)

Both, probably.

What I’m not prepared for is the shock of a lifetime.

She
answers my ad. Jessica. Paul’s twenty-one-year-old whatever-you-want-to-call-her. I know it’s her because I saw her on Paul’s MySpace profile.

I take a deep breath and calmly decide to reply to her just like everyone else. The fact that she answered the ad is just
too
goddang random and I should treat this as the opportunity of a lifetime—life imitating art imitating life. So I write Jessica back with the time and place of my open call, just like I do for the other 119 girls.

She shows up. And for one hot second it’s weird. My mind wants to get hold of what is happening and start a big meta-conversation about her, and me, and him, and her, and being twenty-one versus forty-one, and…
blah blah blah
. But all the growth I’ve experienced since Paul and I split and all the meditation I’ve been practicing kick in, and I just stay present in the moment, giving her—
Jessica
—the same exact explanation of my project that I’ve given to fifty other girls today. The movie, the gallery show, the whole enchilada.

Jessica nods her head and says how she wants to be a model, and I look at the acne on her chin, the amateurish black eyeliner, and her childish gestures, and I feel a lot more like her mom (i.e., protective) than I do her rival. She’s just a barely-out-of-her-teens, somewhat
naïve girl from Toledo who probably felt pretty powerful to have a married director guy eating out of her hand. She did the job for Paul, though. He
has
been working again—in Toronto. Of course, he brought her along on the trip.

I later read on Jessica’s blog about how she’s fucking a D-list celebrity and how she’s never had an orgasm with a guy but she fakes them so well no one knows. If I were her big sister, I’d tell her this is Hollywood. It’s not that they don’t know, sweetie, it’s that they don’t care.

Same story as a million girls with pretty blue eyes in this town. Maybe she’ll find the validation and stardom she seeks before she ages out of the system, or maybe not. I will say this: I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that she’ll probably relate to a lot of what I’ve written here. But not for another fifteen years. Sometime after she marries a guy she’s superhot for who turns out to be just like Daddy, I mean Paul, I mean Daddy…

At the moment we’re both acting like each of us doesn’t know who the other is. For my part, it’s not that I’m trying to be a crazy stalker-ish liar. It’s that I’m not really sure if she does know who I am, so what am I going to say, I’m the wife of the guy you cheated with? The one who called you after discovering the
Hey there, married man!
text message? If I say that and she doesn’t know who I am, that’s going to be sooooo weird.

Weirder still, she may not know if
I
know who
she
is either. So should she bust out that fact right now? At Borders Books and Music? (Notably, the same one where I first met Paul, in the Art and Architecture section.) Naw. It’s definitely the better part of valor for us both to keep our mouths shut. Instead, we just have a little conversation about the Diana Project. Jessica says she’s very interested and she’d love to do it. By the time it’s all over, I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have any idea who I am.

Twenty minutes after she leaves, I get a phone call from Paul.

“So. I hear Jessica wants you to take her picture,” he says curtly.
Apparently she walked out of Borders and immediately got on the horn.

I think this is hilarious. Ashton Kutcher himself couldn’t have come up with anything better on
Punk’d
. “Oh yeah? I guess I’m going to take Jessica’s picture then,” I say.

“Over my dead body.”

“You can’t stop us!” I laugh out loud. I’m taunting him. I’m not big enough not to. The karmic payback of this whole thing is just too awesome. What a nightmare for Paul! The girl he cheats with and the wife he cheated on, forming a creative alliance. You couldn’t make this shit up.

“She thinks you’re cool,” he says.

“Of course she does.” I laugh. “How funny is it that of all the people in the world to answer the ad for my project, she does? Somebody up there hates you, dude.”

I never do take Jessica’s picture. But she does call me, and we do have a conversation. I tell her I should probably send her a fruit basket—without her, I might never have seen the truth about Paul, about my marriage, about myself.

And I might still be looking for Daddy.

Actually I don’t say that last part. She’s going to have to figure that out on her own.

PAUL AND I MEET AT STARBUCKS
to sign the divorce papers. I choose the one near the Costco in Glendale, because I know I won’t run into anyone there, and it feels like signing your divorce papers is something you should do in anonymity.

There’s a strapping breeze outside and it’s ever-so-slightly chilly, in the midsixties I’d guess, with a flawlessly blue sky. Southern California weather is a study in different kinds of perfect. Who knew there were so many? Paul is already seated when I walk in, clutching
a manila envelope on which he’s written
Our Big Divorce
. I laugh because this is funny.

“How are you?” he asks in his clipped tone, with the emphasis on the word “are.” Maybe it’s just me, but he seems a little embarrassed, like he knows it’s his fault we are here. He has a hint of a smile. He still likes me, I can tell.

“I’m fine,” I say. And I am. At this point, most of the emotion I had for Paul has cooked down. All that’s left are some warmish memories, like Chinese food on a steam table.

There are a zillion papers to sign, so we get down to it. Paul has brought two pens. He gives me one of them. As we initial here and initial there, Paul cracks jokes and talks in his Donald Duck voice. I haven’t heard that in a long time.

“I wonder what these people would think if we told them we were signing our divorce papers,” I say, looking around at the unsuspecting Starbucks patrons. They’re not getting a divorce. They’re just having coffee.

When we’re done signing, we walk over to a mailbox and drop the envelopes inside. It’s all done now. We hug and say good-bye.

“Well. Good-bye,” I say.

“So long,” Paul says in a Donald Duck voice.
Woo-hoo!

He walks me to my car. As I unlock the door, Paul continues making small talk, the way people do when they want to prolong something just a little bit longer. But my keys are in the ignition, and that’s causing the warning bell to ding incessantly, so…it’s time to go.

On my way home I can’t help but reflect. None of this is really a surprise. The child in me knew all along—at some level—exactly how things would end. God knows there were signs! But that little girl in me wanted Daddy, and she knew Paul would deliver. She knew that, for her at least, there was no way around her life—there was only through it.

From where I sit now, I can see that my relationship with Paul unlocked pieces of myself—corner pieces in my jigsaw puzzle—that in forty years of living I couldn’t seem to get to any other way. And with those pieces in place—like self-love, for instance—I have been able to become more myself, move forward in my career, and (perhaps best of all) be freed of the old beliefs that locked me into unworkable relationships with men.

So I have no regrets. Because it all led me here. And here is pretty damn good.

IT’S TIME TO SELL
my wedding rings. I have four beautiful wedding bands: one plain gold, one platinum with five good-size diamonds, one alternating diamonds and sapphires, and one extremely thin platinum studded with itty-bitty diamonds. When we created the set, Paul and I imagined that each ring stood for one member of the family we were creating—gold was him, platinum-diamonds was me, the sapphire was Sam, and the thin band was Paul’s son.

But now that the divorce is finalized and I’m starting to get low on money, I’m going to take the rings to a nice estate jewelry store near my house and sell them all. I hand them to the guy behind the counter and he takes them all into the back room. After ten minutes, he comes out.

“I’ll give you eight hundred dollars,” he says.

That’s a fraction of their worth. I’m fine with it, though. I need the money, and to tell the truth, it’s going to be nice just to get them out of the house. It’s a bit jarring to be rummaging around looking for a bobby pin and come across the four rings from your third marriage.

Months later, I am walking down the street, talking on my cell phone. I pass by that same jewelry store window, absentmindedly gazing at the pretty gems. One of them catches my eye. It’s lovely.

It’s also mine.

I move in closer.
Yes. That was mine
. It’s the platinum one with the diamonds. The one that used to signify me. Now it’s tucked into a red-velvet box with a halogen light shining on it. It’s been polished and cleaned. It looks just like new.

And so do I.

PAUL CALLS ME RIGHT AFTER
he gets the electroconvulsive therapy. I’m peeing, but I answer the phone anyway. I want to hear how it went.

“Good news!” he says.

Wait, don’t tell me.
“Let me guess—you’re fine now.”

“Exactly!” He not only misses the irony, he can’t wait to keep sharing. “It’s like the doctors just knocked out that busy hallway between the part of my brain that thinks and the part of my brain that despairs,” he enthuses. “I have negative thoughts, but they don’t make me want to jump off a building anymore. It’s awesome!”

“Wow,” I say. I’m trying not to talk too much because it’s really echo-y in here and it might be weird that I’m talking to him while sitting on the toilet. “That sounds great.”

“It
is
great! I’m just…happy all the time!” He laughs, extra hard, to make sure I can tell how happy he is. “It’s wonderful!”

I’m not buying it. After all the years I’ve spent slogging through the old traumas and the broken paradigms—I had to marry Paul to get a healing, for god’s sake!—it’s not my experience that people can just get an operation and be “cured” of their lifelong ills. No one is
ever
cured of their past. It only goes into remission. And even then, only for one day.

“So what about your tortured childhood?” I snark. “Any need to go back over any of that?”

“Not really,” he says, missing my scorn. I’ll say one thing: that electroconvulsive thing may have successfully disconnected his sarcasm button. “That’s another great thing about it. The laser just zapped all that out of there. Not that my childhood didn’t happen. I just don’t feel bad about it anymore.”

“Great,” I say.

“So,” he says. “How are you?”

Paul can’t honestly think I would be willing to open a serious dialogue with him! It’s obvious Paul’s in no shape to even talk about creating anything even approximating a healthy relationship.

What’s interesting is how I
ever
thought he might have been capable of one. I think two things have happened—I’ve changed for the much better, and Paul’s changed for the somewhat worse.

“Are you really suggesting I should date you again?” I ask him. By now I’m in the living room, sitting on the sofa.

“I think you should consider it,” he says. Paul has a way of sounding rational. If you didn’t know better—like if you were me, pre-Paul—you might be fooled by it. If you were me post-Paul, you’d find it fascinating. In a mental-health-evaluation sort of way.

“But what about the womanizing and the compulsive trolling on Internet dating websites? That’s just gone, too?” I have no doubt Paul’s still up to his old tricks. Or soon will be.

“Absolutely,” he says patly. “All gone.”

Just for fun, I log in to a popular dating website, the one where I met Paul. While we’re still on the phone. I search Paul’s zip code for men between the ages of forty-two and forty-two, since Paul is now forty-two. His picture pops up on the first page. With a flashing
Online now!
icon. Ironically (tragically?) it’s the same photo I married.

Oh, Paul. Sweet, sweet Paul. You
are
a silly goose.

It’s all I can do to not bust out with hysterical laughter. As a trailer-park friend of mine used to say,
Hot dog, everything’s goin’ normal
. And she was right; there’s something comforting about knowing no one ever really changes. At least not with electroconvulsive therapy alone.

“Paul?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll love you forever, but it’s over,” I say.

I hang up, knowing that even though I’m going to skip the reconciliation with Paul, there is only one way to ensure that I never ever have to go there again.

I have to go make peace with my dad.

I CAN’T FIGURE OUT
what to wear. My visit with my dad—the first in eleven years—is three days away, and I’m obsessed with finding an outfit. Somehow I have it in my mind that I have to look super, super cute for the visit. Complicating matters is the fact that two days ago, while walking across the street with Sam and one of his friends, I stepped into a pothole with my eighties-style boot, twisted my ankle, and went sprawling—doggie style—right in the middle of Vermont Avenue. Damn those
Purple Rain
asymmetrical pirate heels! They might look cool, but they’re a real health hazard.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Sam asks in his precious perfunctory-and-yet-sincere monotone. Right this minute I know that the $8,000-a-year hippie preschool I sent him to—where they teach the kids to ask “Are you okay?” whenever another kid gets hurt—was worth every penny. The fact that he’s a bona fide tween and doesn’t even
care
that his mom is splayed out in front of the cutest Sunday brunchers on Los Angeles’s east side is a mark of great character. Dan and I have really done something right with this kid.

“Actually, muffin, I think I’m hurt.” I look down at my legs.
Both knees are skinned and bleeding, and my left hand has a not-so-adorable case of road rash. “Look.”

I hold my hands out to Sam to show him. At first he doesn’t say anything, but I can tell he cares. “Sorry, Mom.”

“It’s okay, honey.” I brush myself off and stand up, a little amazed that I’m not dead already of embarrassment.

The waitress at the outdoor café has witnessed my wipeout and goes to get me some Band-Aids and Neosporin. I’m going to need two for each knee. At least. “Don’t worry,” the waitress says. “I ate it crossing Sunset and Alvarado last week.”

I peel the wrappers off the Band-Aids and stick them on my knees. The bandages are colored the brightest blue, a shade you’d swoon over on your Greek islands getaway but wouldn’t especially want to see patching up one of your knees, let alone
both
of them.

Now I’m sporting two servings of
medallion de scab
—resting on a bed of purple bruises—right where my darlingest little cotton dresses come to their summery end. At the top of my knee.

I guess I won’t be wearing
those
to see Daddy.

And it’s not lost on me, either, that I have managed to acquire a little girl’s injury in the days leading up to my visit with him. This is so poetic-slash-cheesy-slash-karmic, if I tried to pitch it in a TV writer’s room, it would probably be rejected for being too on-the-nose.

I know it seems minor, but looking good on visiting day is as ingrained in me as wearing a hat to church pre–Vatican II. And since I don’t believe in coincidences, I’m left to wonder why. All I can come up with is that the Universe doesn’t want me trying to be cute enough for Daddy. That maybe a pair of skinned knees is the only way I’ll figure out that he will love me no matter how I look or what I have on.

At least he better.

SAM AND I ARE STAYING
with Betsy. We’re spending July 4 in Minneapolis, then making the three-hour drive up to the prison camp early the next morning. Betsy lives a block away from Lake Harriet with her husband Jeff and their two girls, ages eleven and nine. Looking at Betsy’s daughters, especially her older one, is like getting into a time machine. She looks so much like Betsy at the same age! For all the crazy shit that’s gone on in my life, it’s pretty amazing that here we are, thirty-five years later, sitting in Betsy’s kitchen telling the kids to go out and play.

Maybe it’s just because it’s summer, but I’m in love with Minneapolis. Compared to Los Angeles, it feels like someone turned off a very high-pitched noise machine that I didn’t even know was on. That noise is the sound of desire—for someone else, for something else, for fame, for money, for power. It’s exhausting.

We are only here for forty-eight hours, but Sam and I are doing all the things you do when you’re a kid in Minneapolis. We’re going fishing at Lake Harriet—tying a hook to a piece of dental floss with frozen corn as bait and dangling it right off the dock. We laugh as the tiny little sunfishes nibble it. We even catch one.

“Look, I got one!” he says, grinning. I couldn’t be happier.

After that, Betsy and I take the kids swimming at Forty-sixth Street beach.

“There are no waves, Mom,” Sam says while splashing in knee-high water. He’s used to the Pacific fucking Ocean, which on any day of the week has waves that will literally knock you off your feet if you’re not paying attention.

“I know. That’s what’s great about it!” I’m hollering from a few feet away, where Betsy and I are sitting in the sand, chatting about the kids—their quirks, their strengths, their weaknesses—while we watch them play in the water.

It’s the same beach where Betsy’s mom used to bring us when we were Sam’s age. Where Betsy’s mom sat in the sand, probably chatting with Ellie, her best friend, while
we
played in the water. It’s also
the same beach where Scott and I used to go skinny-dipping on hot summer nights, before I went away to college and ruined everything.

I am having the time of my life sitting on this beach.

Later in the afternoon, Sam and I take a long leisurely walk from Minnehaha Falls (much more impressive than I remember!) to the Mississippi River. I figure this is as good a time as any to talk about the reason we’re in Minnesota: to see my dad.

“I think you’re going to like your grandpa,” I say by way of a conversation opener. “He’s a pretty good guy.”

The thing is, with my kid, an opener is just as often a closer, too. But this time, he’s going for it.

“I don’t really think of him as my grandpa,” Sam says matter-of-factly.

“Really? What do you think of him as?”

“
Your
dad.”

Damn. Sam has this way of breaking things
down
. Just calling it like it is. And he’s absolutely right. As far as he’s concerned, my dad is just
my
dad. Just a voice on the phone and a well-dressed guy in a couple of old photographs wearing a pinky ring. Once or twice my dad asked to speak with Sam, but it seemed a little bit weird to ask a kindergartener to talk to someone he’s never met in person. Besides, Sam’s not much of a phone guy.

“Yeah, I guess you’re right,” I say. “I can see why you’d think that.”

Sam’s known for a while now that Freddie is in prison. I told him—after much consulting with Saundra and Dan’s mother, Marie—when he was seven. I wanted to make sure Sam was old enough to process the information when he heard it. But it’s not really the kind of information
anyone
can make much sense of.

Much less a little kid.

So I change the subject to what’s right in front of us—this pretty trail leading down to the Mississippi River. We see a giant old turtle tucked into an eddy in Minnehaha Creek, and we carve our names
into the sandstone outcroppings along the trail’s edge, the same ones I carved my name into as a little girl. And soon we’re at the river, the longest one in America. I forgot how beautiful it is.

Prison will have to wait until tomorrow.

LAST TIME WE WERE
in Minnesota, Sam was only five. Visiting Freddie was never an option, because he was still in prison in Wisconsin, five hours away. Besides, five is way too young for prison.

The visit was brief, a long weekend, for the purpose (I thought) of attending my twenty-year high school reunion. But really we came for a much more important reason.

To say good-bye to June.

She and Gene had long since retired to an assisted-living facility, and I phoned hoping maybe I’d be able to stop by and say hello. June had met Sam once when he was a baby, but I hadn’t been back to Minneapolis since then. Gene answered the phone.

“Oh, Tracy, hello,” he says, like we’d just spoken last week. “June is in the hospital. But I’m sure she’d love to see you.”

I walk into the hospital room. Carl, my Ericson brother, is standing there. It’s probably been fifteen years or more since I’ve seen him. We hug.

“Good to see you, Tracy,” he says. He’s got that way of speaking that all ministers have—Gene has it, Dan’s dad has it, too—designed to put you at ease. “Is this your son?”

“That’s Sam,” I say. Sam is reticent around new people, especially adults. But Carl is great with him.

“Your mommy was just about your age when she came to live with us,” he says to Sam.

Funny. I never thought of how Carl must have viewed that little girl in the Polly Flinders dress who walked into the house one January morning in 1969. He was in his early twenties then. He must be in
his fifties now—still married to Missy, of course, and a grand father a couple of times over.

“Come on in,” Carl says. Then he calls out to June. “Mom, Tracy’s here.”

As we step more deeply into the room I see June, lying curled almost, in the bed. She has no hair. She is obviously nearing death. But she is still plenty lucid.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” June says. “Or I’d have bothered to put on my wig.”

June is still funny. Even on her deathbed.

“It’s okay,” I say. I don’t know what’s appropriate in a situation like this. I’ve never really seen anyone this close to the end of life before.

June calls Sam over. “Let me see you, Sammy,” she says, opening her eyes. She looks almost like a baby lying there. “Oh my. You look just like your mom. Don’t you?”

Sam doesn’t know what to say, either. But he is surprisingly not freaked out. June has that effect on a person. She just manifests the presence of the higher thing, the all-that-there-is. God. “You know, I always say your mommy was the smartest kid I ever had.”

I’m kind of flattered, and embarrassed, at that. I don’t really know what she means. It’s not like June’s kids were any dummies. Everyone in the family is a college grad. Several have graduate degrees. Okay, so maybe they never dismantled the sewing machine.

“And I always say you were the best mom I ever had,” I counter. It’s true. June saved my life. Without her, I’d probably be fulfilling the socioeconomic destiny I was born into—on Section 8, with several children, some of them wards of the state. Maybe with a crack pipe.

I certainly wouldn’t be here.

We make a little more small talk, maybe five minutes’ worth, before it’s time to go. June is fading.