My Life, Deleted (14 page)

Asked if we owed money on any of them, Joan said just my BMW. “I guess we could sell the Chrysler 300 if we wanted,” she offered reluctantly.

Taking that as permission, I started figuring out how to sell it. I knew I'd been in sales, so I must have had an aptitude for it. By Googling “How to sell a car,” I found countless methods listed, but I was determined not to spend days focusing on this task.

I stopped after just two hours of research, partly because I didn't understand much of what I was reading to be able to differentiate between options such as going to auction on eBay, selling on Craigslist, or doing a private party sale. I asked Joan if we knew anyone in the car business, and she said yes, a friend and former minor league baseball player named Jeff Kipila, whom we'd known for five years. “Why don't you give him a call and see if he can help you?” Joan suggested.

After finding Jeff's number in my phone, I had to psych myself up to make the dreaded call to a stranger who knew me but not vice versa. Similar to what happened with Jerry Pinto, I tried to explain what had happened and he thought I was kidding. Not surprisingly, I had the same reaction and got upset. “I'm not joking. This is a real difficult time in my life, and I need some help,” I said.

After he apologized, I told him I was interested in selling our 2009 Chrysler. Jeff suggested I call a friend of his who was the sales manager at a local Chrysler dealership. But first he told me to go online and pull up the value of the car on the Kelley Blue Book website, which I did by plugging in the options from the original sticker I'd kept in my file cabinet. I noticed that the car's value had dropped $5,000 from the $27,000 I'd paid for it six months earlier.

Jeff offered to give a heads-up to the Chrysler guy before I called over there.

“I would appreciate that,” I said.

The next day I made an appointment to see Jeff's friend.

“What are you looking to get out of this?” he asked me.

Pulling out the Kelley price quote I'd printed out, I said, “It shows here $22,000 is the value, so $22,000.”

He just laughed. “Well, that's not going to happen,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because we can buy them cheaper at auction and I have thirty on the lot now with a $4,000 rebate that wasn't available when you bought yours,” he said. He explained how the economy had cut deeply into the automakers, Chrysler included, even with the bailout.

I'd been feeling pretty positive up until that point, but my good mood quickly plummeted. “So what will you give me for it?” I asked sheepishly.

“Probably around $19,000, but I'll need to look at it first,” he said.

He took the car for a spin down the street, inspected the exterior for damage, then came back inside to confirm his initial quote.

“Well, let me go home and talk to my wife,” I told him. “I'll give you a call later.”

On my way home I called Jeff, and he said that $3,000 less than the blue book price was fair if I really wanted to sell it. When I told Joan, she wasn't happy about the prospect of losing $8,000 on our car after buying it only six months earlier, so now I found myself doing a sales job on Joan.

“Think of it this way,” I said. “It's $19,000 in our pocket now, when we really don't need this car sitting out on the street. And it will relieve some of the stress you're feeling. So let's just do it.”

“But it's probably the most comfortable car to go back and forth to California in,” she said.

I told her what Jeff had said and noted that selling it to the dealer meant we didn't have to go through the hassle of posting it online or worrying about strangers coming over to the house.

Ultimately, she gave in. “Well, let's just go ahead and get rid of it then,” she said.

When I walked out of the dealership later that day with a $19,000 check in my pocket, I felt pretty damn good, as if I'd earned my first paycheck. I'd done the research, I'd gotten people to help me, I'd put my trust in a friend, and it had paid off, relieving some of Joan's stress, not to mention my own. Rather than adding problems to the family, I'd actually helped ease one, and I'd done about 85 percent of the work on my own. “We're going to save on insurance too,” I bragged to Joan.

I still didn't know much about the world, but I now knew how to sell a car. And that was a major accomplishment, my first since the accident. I couldn't have been more proud of myself—so proud that I wanted to do it some more.

With gas prices skyrocketing and Taylor driving so many miles between school, work, and cheerleading practice, we felt it would be wise to get her a more gas-efficient car than the Chevy Tahoe. Seeing that I wasn't driving much, I took over driving that vehicle, which seemed to fit me better than anyone else in the family, and traded in my 2007 BMW. After paying off the $45,000 I owed on it, I was able to buy Taylor a much cheaper BMW 328i with a good financing deal and walk away with $11,000 in cash. Taylor was still an inexperienced driver, and I wanted her to have a safe and reliable car that wouldn't break down rather than a cheaper clunker that could leave her in a vulnerable situation.

Although Joan loved her Porsche, she insisted that we sell it because we needed the money to live on. With her prodding, I traded her Boxster and our pickup truck and bought her a 2006 BMW 330i. This time I walked away with $24,000 in cash.

Now, as our bank balance dwindled, Joan was all for making these changes, and my salesmanship was improving with every transaction.

Baby steps, I told myself.

Chapter 13

J
OAN AND I HAD BEEN PLANNING
for some time to go to Oceanside, California, where we kept our forty-six-foot Meridian 411 yacht. I'd only seen photos and was looking forward to checking it out in person, but the primary purpose of our trip was to spend some intimate time together. I knew we were going to make love for the first time since the accident; I just didn't know when or how it would happen. I also didn't know how good I was going to be at pleasing Joan, and I'm sure I had more performance anxiety than most men who were about to consummate their relationships with new girlfriends or wives.

While we were there, I figured I'd also try to meet up with a new broker. Coincidentally, we'd put the boat on the market a couple of weeks before my fall, thinking we weren't using it as much as we'd anticipated and should put the proceeds back into our business or buy some new real estate. The broker we'd contracted with for ninety days hadn't gotten a single bite, and now that we really needed the money, we wanted to find someone more aggressive.

But before I was ready to take the helm, I knew I was going to have to relearn how to operate the controls so I didn't damage one of our most prized possessions.

As our departure date approached, I pulled up the Meridian website, found a manual, and began to soak up as much information as I could with Joan beside me to help make sense of it. The manual included diagrams of the control panel, for example, and broke down the complicated series of steps required to start the boat. If I didn't follow the instructions properly, I was horrified to learn that I could flood—and ruin—the boat's expensive Cummins diesel engine.

“Does this sound familiar to you?” I asked Joan.

“Uh, no,” she replied sarcastically.

Joan said we'd divvied up responsibilities, with her taking charge of the interior, such as the lighting, kitchen appliances, television and its satellite dish, toilets, and water tanks. I was responsible for starting the engine and operating the electrical panel and fuel systems. Because of my piloting experience, she said, I'd been able to learn to drive the boat in only a few lessons.

But that knowledge and experience didn't help me now, and because Joan couldn't answer my questions, she suggested I call our friend and broker Jim, who had handled our original purchase of the boat for $325,000 in 2007. “I'm sure he'll be willing to help you out,” she said.

The thing was, I wanted to learn as much as I could by myself first, to avoid looking stupid by asking dumb questions. Determined, I spent hours reading the diagrams and dry technical instructions until they sort of made sense and in my mind I could envision using the controls.

I also studied the overall layout, including the staterooms, bathrooms, galley, and two cockpits, and read the documents I'd saved from the purchase, a detailed maintenance history, and an appraisal, which provided me with extensive pictures of the components.

Hours later, it sadly became clear that I still had a lot to learn before I could safely operate this boat and not break something that would cost a significant amount of money to fix. I realized I had to swallow my pride and let Joan call Jim for help.

Joan explained what had happened to me, then handed me the phone. Shocked to hear about the accident, Jim proceeded to reassure me that I'd been a fast learner and a good captain who took pride in the upkeep of my yacht. “You know, Scott, you're a real bright guy,” he said. “Once you see everything, it's going to make sense to you.”

When Jim offered to help guide me on our maiden voyage, I thanked him for his advice and his offer. “I'm sure I'm worrying a lot for no reason,” I said.

Joan also told me about Davey, an eccentric old-timer with a great sense of humor, who owned the same model of boat as ours and even kept it at the same dock. He spent most of his days tinkering around on it and helping his neighbors, including us, with their boats. After hearing this, I knew he would be the one I'd go to for help if I needed it.

When we still co-owned jets for our business, Joan said, we sometimes flew into the Carlsbad municipal airport, which was a fifteen-minute drive from Oceanside Harbor. Other times we'd make the five-and-a-half-hour drive in our roomy Chrysler. But after selling it off, this time we drove out in my BMW. With Joan at my side, I didn't need to consult MapQuest.

To keep my mind off my three-month-old headache, I took the wheel and talked to Joan, who pulled discussion topics from a book she'd picked up titled
4,000 Questions for Getting to Know Anyone and Everyone.
Leading us through politics to sex, favorite foods, spirituality, and sports, the book opened up new avenues for Joan to tell me stories about our past.

We stopped in Yuma, Arizona, for a much-needed break, where Joan explained we'd made the trip so many times that we knew where to stop for a clean bathroom, coffee, and healthy food choices. She also mentioned that we had other routines when we visited the boat, and she started to giggle.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well,” she said, pausing, “we always go to King's Fish House for a great lunch, then we go to the boat, and after you hose off the outside and I organize our stuff on the inside, we—well, you know—celebrate.”

She kept looking at me to see if I understood her inference, and I laughed nervously. She leaned over, kissed me on the cheek, and snuggled with me. Clearly, she had a plan, and I was happy to go with the flow, hoping I didn't ruin things with my headache pain. I wondered, though, was I going to remember how to make love? Would it be like driving the car, where my hands knew what to do? Was it going to come naturally or be a challenge? Was I going to be able to give her what she needed? I felt like a different person now, so would I make love differently too?

Time flew by, and we were soon approaching the harbor. Joan seemed to be testing me, seeing if I might figure out where to turn, but as usual, I had to keep asking her where to go next.

After lunch at King's—crab cakes for me and blackened mahimahi for her—we pulled up and parked at the dock marked
T,
which was about twenty yards from the shore.

“Wow, nice. We have beachfront property, don't we?” I said, genuinely in awe.

“Only the best,” Joan said. “The boat is our oceanfront floating Cali home that we always wanted.”

We grabbed Joan's rolling suitcase, my duffel and black sports bags, and a grocery bag of clam chowder, pecan sandies, sodas, bread, and peanut butter, and headed down the ramp to the boat. Twenty-five vessels lined one side of the dock, and a several-story weatherworn condo complex, with balconies running across the beige stucco façade, hung with beach towels and flowerpots, overlooked the harbor on the other.

“We're near the end of the dock, past where the building ends, and have nothing but sea air in front of us,” Joan said.

As we got closer to our slip, she said, “We like to start our weekend midweek—it is very quiet and
very
private,” she added, with the same giggle and mischievous look as before. The other docks had boats on both sides, and she was right—our spot was more isolated.

Our sleek white yacht, with its tan leather upholstered seats and beige carpet, Formica-covered cabinets and furniture, and its entertainment center, complete with a color TV and CD and VHS/DVD players, was quite impressive. I felt proud to have been successful enough to buy it with cash.

Joan confirmed that the Meridian was the one purchase I'd found most rewarding, and because I enjoyed it so much I called it my sanctuary. It was nice to know that at least one thing in my life hadn't changed. I located the hose to rinse off the salty, corrosive residue from the ocean mist while Joan went inside to prepare the cabin.

Once I finished, I came in to get a drink of cold water from the fridge and was surprised to find Joan in the master stateroom, lying on her side in bed, with the navy blue cotton blanket and gold sheets pulled up to her chin. Why was she in bed while I was outside working?

Peeling the covers back a bit, she patted the bed next to her, and I started to get the idea. Sweaty and wet from hosing down the boat, I dropped my shorts and T-shirt to the floor. As I pulled back the covers, I was pleased to see she was wearing a fuchsia lace camisole and matching boy-cut panties I didn't recognize. She rolled over to show off her backside and the rest of her outfit.

“Well, that's new,” I said.

“I have a lot of these outfits in different colors,” Joan replied coyly.

“I think I want to see them all.”

I climbed into the bed, which was elevated atop a chest of drawers, with two steps on either side of it, and modestly covered myself with the blanket. Joan had opened the porthole and top windows and turned on the fan, so a gentle breeze was blowing through. As she slid the covers down to expose my chest and cuddled up next to me, I started to feel warm all over.

“Are you still hot?”

“Yes.”

Unsure if she was being literal, I watched her adjust the fan and felt her run her fingernails up my side, which caused goose bumps to erupt across my chest. Joan told me that I'd worked construction during summers in college, and when I came home to our apartment, which had no air conditioning, she would cool me down using this same method. It was working all right, but it wasn't the temperature that was making me sweat this time.

Joan sat up and faced me on the queen-size bed, and I took in her beauty as I ran my hands down her silky smooth arms. She'd brushed her hair and put on some of that Versace perfume I liked. Her skin had a rosy glow, and I wondered if she was as nervous as I was. When she smiled warmly, I felt safe.

“How's your head?”

“Shipshape,” I replied with a chuckle.

She leaned over and kissed me softly, and I could feel some of my fear turn to arousal.

“With your insomnia, I'm sure you've watched a lot of Showtime in the middle of the night, and even though I don't look just like those girls, I don't think you'll be disappointed.”

Joan was referring to the soft-core adult entertainment programming, featuring topless women having simulated sex with men, that ran in the wee hours. “Yeah, I've seen it,” I said, “but—”

“—don't worry, I'll be gentle with you, my forty-six-year-old virgin. This might be fun. I'm also relying on your unaffected procedural memory to kick in somewhere.”

And with that she kissed me again. I felt her breasts under the lace top brush against my chest. Imitating what I had seen on TV, I slipped the strap off her shoulder and began to caress her. Part of me wanted to lie back and be seduced; the other part wanted to show her that I was still a man who could take control. But as much as I wanted to feel manly, I still didn't know who I was, so mostly what I felt was confused. And, seeing that the ceiling was so low that my petite wife had only a foot of clearance above her head, it made sense to let her take the lead in this dance, at least for now.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

I looked down and said, “I think this means I'm more than okay.”

Joan playfully controlled the experience, but she treated it—and me—with levity so it didn't feel like a lesson. I was still nervous but relieved that she was guiding me along as we moved forward. Better that than for me to take charge and get it wrong.

“I know you don't remember, but we've been down this path many times before, so just go with what feels good, and hopefully it will come back to you,” she said. “And just remember, I love you.”

Well, they say it's like riding a bike, but it isn't if you have a brain injury like mine. I was so preoccupied with doing things right, fumbling around and not knowing what order to do things in, I couldn't really enjoy the experience. Like many virgins, I just wanted to get the first time under my belt. The bonding feeling I'd heard about didn't come until afterward, when we were lying there, talking it over.

“See, I told you it would all come back,” she said.

“Okay, if you say so,” I said, wondering if she was just trying to make me feel better.

Even though it was hard for me to talk about this, I asked what I'd done right and what I could do differently, hoping to improve for the next time. I could tell Joan was trying to be encouraging, but I had to admit that she looked relaxed and happy, so I figured I must have done something right.

We'd been lying there, talking and snuggling for about forty-five minutes, when Joan started crying.

“What's wrong?” I asked.

“It's overwhelming,” she said, explaining that she was happy
and
sad. Making love had been nice, but it was so different, so tense, and I'd seemed so scared.

Hearing her say that, I wondered if I'd ever be the same—if
we'd
ever be the same—and be able to please her as I had before. She kept saying we'd had a healthy sex life before; I was hoping that practice would help, and practice we did. I soon began to develop a repertoire of moves that seemed to work well, and I grew increasingly comfortable initiating them. By the fourth or fifth time, I felt better about my performance—and us—although, just as in the rest of my life, my confidence was still low and I took rejection personally. But once I'd finally tasted the proverbial apple, I realized how much I liked it, and started wanting it more—and more often.

We were still enjoying our alone time together when Grant called on Saturday and said he was struggling not to use drugs. “All I want to do is take all the money out of my account and go get high for a few days,” he told Joan.

Every couple of weeks Grant had been calling with some crisis or other, not having enough food or money or needing a ride somewhere. His problems never seemed to end. In my view they were all the result of the life that he had
chosen
to lead, and I was tired of dealing with his problems when I had so many of my own. That said, I didn't dispute the way Joan was handling this—helping him whenever he asked—because she'd been dealing with him for much longer than I had.