Mennonite in a Little Black Dress (Memoir) (2010) (2 page)

Having Regina for a mother would have freaked anybody out. Would Nick be so repelled by the sight of a feeble female that he would be unable to take care of me?

The lion's share of the gross-out work would fall on him-changing dressings, cathing me, emptying my pee bag into a basin, disposing of my urine like a good old-fashioned chambermaid. "I'll do my best," he said gamely. "But that pee bag's fucked up."

Then Nick surprised us both. He turned out to be a natural in the sickroom. Crisp, competent, almost jovial, he sailed into my sickroom opening windows, fluffing pillows, and lubricating tubes. He appeared with cups of coffee and odd sandwiches. I'd wake to a tray of peanuts, a new maroon nail polish, and a literary journal. "Here," he'd say briskly, handing me a midmorning gin-and-tonic. "Time to take your pills!"

My best friend, Lola, happened to be in the States that summer, and she flew in to hang out with me. Lola was kind of like a support group, and her timing was perfect. I didn't want Nick to have to bathe and toilet me too; it was bad enough that he had to swish my pee. We were the type of married couple who prefers not just separate bathrooms but bathrooms separated by two thousand square feet. I had been intermittently sharing bathrooms with Lola, however, for upwards of thirty-five years, so during her visit, she helped me into and out of the shower. I had gotten so weak that I couldn't even wash my own hair. But Lola and I hardly ever got to spend time together now that she had married an Italian, so, pee bag notwithstanding, what we really wanted to do was maximize our two weeks together. We were on fire to go shopping.

In Italy, most expat Americans find the shopping scene challenging. One, things are hugely overpriced. Two, Italy has a sale only twice a year. Three, Italy does not offer clothing sizes for women with generous opera-singer bottoms. So Lola has to wait to go shopping until she comes stateside, and that summer, in spite of my postsurgery frailty, we were itching to go to Nordstrom Rack. We were trying to find a way to make an afternoon at Nordstrom Rack a reality. "Let's just tuck your pee bag into a colorful tote, and then you can carry it like a purse," said Lola.

"But you'll be able to see the cord coming out of the bottom of my skirt," I objected. "And what about the fact that I can't walk yet?"

"You can lean on a shopping cart," Lola said. "It will be like one of those walkers with a built-in basket. And I don't think anybody will really notice your pee tube, since it's transparent."

"Yes, but bubbles of urine are passing through it all the time," I said, worried. "Look, here's one now, this very second." As it drifted by, my cat Roscoe tried to attack it. "Hey, dumbass," I said to him, "that's not a toy. That's URINE. I don't know, Lola. Am I ready to pee in public?"

"You know what?" said Lola. "Just put it out there. Like a disability you've come to accept. Love me, love my pee tube. People diddle around in public with their gross psoriasis, scratching and brushing. Or think of that guy at the diner who showed up for breakfast with an open wound on his head. Waffles and pork links and a big tender scab with the blood barely clotted. Or think of new mothers who whip out their nipple and breast-feed in public, in front of God and everybody!"

"That's true," I said, much struck. "None of the local diners appreciated the head wound, but
everybody
thinks it's just fine to breast-feed in public! If women can whip out a big milky nipple, maybe I can flaunt my pee tube."

"If you got it, flaunt it!" Lola urged.

And so it was that I sallied forth into public carrying my pee bag in an aqua patent tote, shopping with urinous enthusiasm. The excursion was extremely successful, too, except for the part when I accidentally stepped on the pee bag's clamp and flooded the passenger side of my car with my own urine. Lola stoically hosed out the VW, reasoning that urine duty was a small price to pay for all of the excellent deals we had found. And less than a week later my doctors upgraded me to the kind of pee bag you strap on with Velcro around your leg, under your skirt, like a nasty secret. I taught for half the semester like that. And dang, I'm here to tell you that when it's ninety degrees outside, nothing reminds you of your own mortality like a steaming hot bag of urine hugging your thigh.

I'm happy to report that I made a full recovery from the netherworld of tube and clamp. Six months after the fix-it surgery I was back at the gym, pounding the treadmill with a new sense of gratitude for my interior plumbing. Whereas before I had taken for granted my miraculous ability to run without wetting my leg, I now silently praised my bladder. "Good show! You're holding up great in there, honey! Four more miles! You can do it!" I'd sneeze and think,
Brava! You have achieved true excellence, my friendly little sphincter!
It took about a year before I stopped intoning St. Francis of Assisi's prayer every time I sat down on a toilet.

Which is all to say that given the surprising events of the Year of the Pee Bag, I assumed I was safe from ill health and trauma for decades. But no.

Nick and I had recently moved to a small rural community about forty-five minutes from where I worked. Although the move dramatically increased my commute, Nick had a new job running the psych ward at the local hospital, and he needed to be close enough to troubleshoot at any hour. With his job had come a big promotion. We therefore bought a charming lake house that I wouldn't have been able to afford on my own. This was the first time in our fifteen-year marriage when I was dependent on Nick's financial contribution. Until we moved to the lake house, we had been living in a midcentury rancho close to my college. The rancho had been a fixer, but I had been able to afford the entire mortgage and all our living expenses on my modest academic salary. Nick, an artist by preference and calling, had never held a job long, and when he was employed, he prioritized his art. Painting in oils is expensive.

Two months after the move to the expensive lakefront property, Nick left me for a guy he'd met on Gay.com.

I don't know why it made it worse that the man's name was Bob, but it did. Bob the Guy. From Gay.com. It's funny how when your husband leaves you for a guy named Bob, you begin to revisit memories from the summer before, when hindsight sheds new light on your husband's role during the highs and lows of your convalescence. What you once thought of as evidence of your husband's tenderness you begin to imagine as guilt for dating guys with big wangs. What you once thought of as "Giving You Space to Hang Out with Your Girlfriend from Italy" strikes your imagination as "Threesomes with Ryan and Daren from the Gym." The truth hurts, especially when you're slow to see it.

And also: will somebody please tell me why husbands never seem to ditch their wives until the wives develop a varicose vein the size of a Roman aqueduct? It's like they're
waiting
for the vein. If our husbands must leave us for guys named Bob, why can't they do it pre-vein, while we are young and gorgeous? Why can't they do it pre-pee bag? Look, I know I'm not the ambassador of all women who have worn a pee bag while their husbands commence illicit relationships with guys named Bob, and so I wouldn't dream of speaking for all of us. But I do know that I would have much preferred to have been ditched
before
the pee bag. That whole pee bag summer I cherished Nick's brisk yet dear postoperative care. I adored how he'd come into the room chatting about a book, a friend, current events, whatever, and how he'd go down on one knee to empty the pee bag into a basin, talking the whole time of things unrelated to urine, as if squirting his wife's urine were no big deal-too insignificant to mention!

Well, here the Loewen genes must do the cosmic shrug. Life does not allow us the luxury of filling out our own questionnaires.

I heard the crunch, and I remember thinking it sounded hissier and more protracted than the big bangs of the movies. The whole collision was slower than it ought to have been. Gradually I became aware that the windshield was in my mouth. I began spitting, and I sat there for what seemed a long time, tonguing chunks of glass.

Somebody was saying, "Don't move, ma'am. Don't move."

Snow was drifting in. "Ma'am, you've been in an accident!"

I meant to say, with crisp acerbity, "Duh!" What I actually said came out in a feeble whisper. "Nick."

"Who's Nick?" They were strapping me to something.

"My husband." Snow was melting in my eyes. Melted snow was running down my cheeks in rivulets.

"Ma'am, we'll get Nick for you just as soon as we get you to the hospital."

Ah, that was one service the paramedics could not perform.

The nineteen-year-old who had hit me was being strapped into an ambulance. The good fellow confessed to the paramedics that the accident had been his fault. He even looked at me and said, "Sorry, Lady," before he passed out-heartbreaking, poor thing! He was covered in blood and his shirt was gone.

The accident left me with assorted broken bones and Franken-bruises the size of my head. I spat compulsively for two days. When the doctors let me go home, my body looked just as it felt: hips, thighs, and breasts mottled the same steely blue of the lake. I'd cracked my patella, but I couldn't use crutches because I had two broken ribs and a fractured clavicle, so I wheeled myself around the house on my office chair, pushing off with my left arm.

In the days that followed I had plenty of time to wonder if I had somehow been complicit in my own accident. Curtis, the young man who had hit me, was still in Urgent Care; I couldn't talk to him about what had happened. And I couldn't trust my own memory, since I had sustained a granddaddy of a concussion. The doctors told me I had passed out on impact. This information directly contradicted my vague memory of consciousness throughout the experience. Had I had time to swerve and failed? Had my misery pulled Curtis's Jeep Cherokee down on me? Was I a magnet of self-pity? I rolled pensively around the house in my office chair, smelling the candles, lotions, and bouquets my girlfriends had promptly lobbed at me. "Do something for YOU, sweetie!" the cards urged in Oprah-like tones. And I was obedient. Never in all my years had I been so pedicured/exfoliated/fragrant/ditched for a guy named Bob.

Nick was gone. My marriage was over. Under circumstances like these, what was a forty-three-year-old gal to do?

I'll tell you what I did. I went home to the Mennonites. Oh, I had been back to California for the occasional holiday, and I had flown in for my father's enormous retirement bash five years earlier. But in twenty-five years I had not spent any real time in the Mennonite community in which I'd been raised. When Nick absconded with Bob, I could no longer afford the six-month sabbatical I had planned. To study away from home for six months, I would have had to rent an apartment and pay for living expenses, in addition to paying the mortgage and utilities at home. I was broke and broken. Clocked in the chops by a lead glove, I was out cold. What the hell-it was so bad it couldn't get any worse.
Bring on the Borscht
, I thought. So after mending in Michigan for two months, I went home for the holidays.

In the style of Mennonite autocrats, my father likes to exercise his right to bellow for my mother to drop whatever she's doing and come and see something in the study.

My mother was up to her elbows in flour, bunning out Zwiebach in the kitchen. "Mary!" came the stern shout. "Come see this!" My mom obediently scooted, holding her forearms upright in front of her, doctor-style. I knew what would be next, and I refused to set down the manuscript I was editing until I had to. A few minutes later my father's voice, full of preacherly gravitas, called once more: "Rhoda! Come see this!"

Dad was at his most dadlike when I was trying to work, and I needed to concentrate. I needed money. Fast. The waterfront house was now on the market, and my realtor had tranquilly assured me that it would sell when the time was right, but I was nervous. It was a beautiful house, but it had its drawbacks. I wondered what would happen if we all wrote truthful ads for our real estate.

Gorgeous lakefront property, just an icy commute away on deadly highway! This special house is so big you'll close all the vents and pray for a mild winter! Unimpaired views for peeping toms! Possums visit the deck! Finished walkout with carpet you wouldn't have picked! In fact, this carpet is downright unattractive! Current resident selfishly intends to take Bosch dishwasher and Lord of Refrigerators. Two sex offenders just blocks away! Schedule an appointment today!

Because of the house situation, I had agreed to ghost-edit a scholarly monograph on sacred dramatic literature of the late fifteenth century. I was working on the second chapter, which was about Feo Belcari's mechanical innovations in the staging of the
sacre rappresenatzione
. If you are one of the folks who have never heard of Feo Belcari, I can fix that right up for you. You know those Christmas Eve church plays in which your white-blonde niece gets to play the angel Gabriel year after year because she has a startling strange paleness that looks, and I mean this in a good way, a little like an albino? And remember the moment when she appears in a white sheet in the baptistery, maybe singing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" in a threadlike soprano? Feo Belcari was the guy in the late 1400s who figured out a way to have your niece/Gabriel come down on metal wires at the front of the church. That about sums it up, but the chapter I was editing was fifty pages or so.