Regeneration X (15 page)

Today would have been
uneventful
were it not for having received my acceptance letter from the LSPLA! Nothing yet from King James, UC Berkley and the rest, but except for these three, the others were fallbacks anyway. I was elated. My first thought was, it’s done, decision made! I bounced up and down, waving the letter around in the air until apprehension and guilt gurgled up to my throat like reflux. The time had finally come. I was going to have to instigate the conversation now. I wished, instead, I could have shared the excitement I felt with him. Sadly, it was another moment lost between us. But before I shared it with anyone, he needed to hear it first. This allayed my spirits considerably, and I was forced to contain myself through the rest of my workday as if it were any other.

As we sat across from one another one early May evening, savoring our meal of chicken marsala, which had come out perfectly. I tentatively brought up the acceptance letter.

“Maybe you can start part time; school or work. Shouldn’t be hard since you already work remotely. You have the ideal situation to make this all happen.”

“I want to immerse myself in school. I’m going to be submitting my resignation—Levy is probably expecting it.” I said pausing and getting a little suspicious, he didn’t realize I was talking about the Drama school in England. “I think my FES will get me by for living expenses, and cashing out the remains of my retirement savings should take care of the rest for a while.”

Peering at him sideways, I said, “I haven’t received my reply from all the schools yet, so I’m talking about the London School of Performing and Liberal Arts.”

“Ah, it completely slipped my mind,
that
one was an option,” he said, suddenly becoming quiet. The realization of my clarification occurred to him within the span of a moment. The change in him was visible. He tensed up and his breathing became slower.

“Yes, it was one of the options, but it’s my first choice and most of the others were out of state as well. I thought you knew this.”

“Mmhm.”

“You know I have to do this, right? We had a conversation before I applied and you knew I sent my applications in. You even said I had to take a risk.” After a pause, seeing he wasn’t relaxing, I knew I had to carry on. His silence wasn’t going to resolve anything. “After all this time, you are just now getting upset? Why?”

“I really thought that just because you changed your face it wasn’t going to change you, our life, and decisions we make
together
. I was hoping you were going to find something suitable near here, or enroll in an online program and take a few classes to start,” he admitted morosely.

“None of this sounds like making a decision together. It sounds as if you think I regenerated on a whim to iron out a few wrinkles. And let me ask you this: if you think I did it for vanity, why would I have chosen CR instead of something much less extreme like an eyebrow lift? You are the last person I expected to hear a comment like that from. What does my face have to do with it?”

“Forget I said it, it’s ridiculous. If you really want this school, I’m sure they have an online curriculum.”

“I could have taken online courses anytime. It still wouldn’t have made CR worth it. I thought you said, ‘we’d figure it out’ when I got accepted, but you seem to have decided what I’d do regardless of the school. If you had these notions, why didn’t you bring them up before? I can’t read your mind.”

“Let’s not argue. You just got your first response, so now we figure it out or we wait a while longer to decide until you get a response from the other schools. Either way, apart from UW, you’ll have to start with remote coursework, I imagine.”

“Michael! Again, I hope you aren’t being serious. How does one actually go about becoming an actress online besides making a career of HaloYou or some such? Even if this was something I’d consider, where have you been these past 16 years? You know it isn’t something I would do. You said you knew me and what I thought about everything?

 
“Honestly, this conversation is not making sense to me, ‘cause I’m getting the impression that first, you don’t know me as well as you assume you do and, second, you act like my Renovation is new to you, some superficial thing I did with no effects at all except in my appearance.” Circling my face with a forefinger, I provoked him, “Isn’t this rather a reminder that I did it for a particular reason?”

“Stop. I get it. I knew why you chose to, but I was just hopeful or maybe naive. If anything, you’re methodical in your thinking and I thought you’d apply to all those other places, but realize in the end that it just wasn’t logical. When I asked you why you wanted to undergo CR, you said because you wanted to change your career. It seemed very specific at the time, but now this would affect much more than your job.”

“A consequence I didn’t foresee, either. Only after CR did I realize anything in between wouldn’t be enough. It has to be all or nothing. I thought that was what I expressed when I told you I was applying to schools outside of Washington.”

“Do you really want to do this? You can’t do it here?” he asked, his argument deflated.

“Yes. If it helps, imagine I’ve lost my job, but found another one in a different country, and before I can start this job, I need the right training.

“If you made up your mind one way or the other about CR, it might be easier. Maybe it would become clearer whether you want to stay here or do something different. I can start planning. There are a lot of details to sort out.”

“What do you mean if I want to ‘do something different’? I don’t understand. I don’t want to change my career or relive my youth. Didn’t I already say this?”

“I meant you could teach in England so we could be together. Maybe you’d like to go back to school yourself to advance your career—teach art history to a different student body; or you could change your approach or materials and teach remotely for UW if you want. So much has changed since you were in school.” I rattled off a few considerations. “Because, just so I’m very clear, I’m not looking for an excuse to separate, but we need to have the full picture to make this decision. Are we doing this together?”

“Charley, this is the most difficult thing for me to comprehend. You say that, but you would still change everything. Change us?” he asked, reverting to mild state of confusion.

“I think a change in our patterns and how we live would be a good thing. I’ve said that before as well. So yes!”

Fergus rose and came to sniff at my face to see if I was upset. I wasn’t yelling, but he seemed to sense my irritation. He was diverted by the sound of footsteps on the porch and in a flash, he was at the door, “Ruhoo ruhoo ruhrf!” he interrupted loudly.

Michael got up to look out the window of the door. “Just the mailman. Thanks Shaggy,” he said, both of them sitting back down in their former places. “It seems to me we’ve talked about all this before. I’ve said I thought our life was fine the way it is.”

“But,
before
was before my surgery. It’s a completely different story now. And
your view
of
our
life was fine, but every decision I tried to make for myself then seemed to I require your permission. I felt helpless to make choices for myself. Renovation was supposed to be a way of urging those decisions. In this way it was selfish of me because now it’s you who has to decide what to do about it. It’s done. I’ve already done it.

“I know you don’t understand what it feels like to work over 25 years at something you sustain because you have to, but not because you truly want to. There is a whole other life I might have had if I made different choices, and now I have the chance to retry. And I’m sorry, but being married is not enough. So again, since my career effects our marriage, I would change us, too.”

 
“I
do
understand, but what I don’t get is why it has to change our lives in every other way.”

“Why? Well, for me it is amazing. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s
not
as if our life together never happened, and I don’t have to take back anything I’ve already done. I have a suitcase of memories and experiences for half a lifetime. Well, minus maybe the last ten, which you have to admit is what started all this. But that is the past and I’m talking about the future. I am re-imagining the future and creating a new past because I don’t want
fine
anymore. Actually, I’ve never wanted
fine
. That’s why.”

“Okay but you also said, you’re not asking for a separation, but if you go to London, then this is exactly what you are saying. How is this my decision?”

“Well, at this very moment we live together and while I hope this doesn’t change, it is not my choice to make. Just as my going isn’t your decision. Your decision is whether you come with me or not, at the beginning or later, and if there are some adjustments you need, or want, to make for the future of
us
. So, I … we … really need to think this through, but we can’t do that, you see?”

“You
are
asking me to Renovate.”

“No. I’m not. I’ve always wanted it to be your decision and yours alone. This is one reason why I didn’t ask you again or push the idea. Honestly, I’ve wanted to a hundred times. I did hope you would, but even then I wasn’t sure we’d be on the same path afterward.”

“What do you mean? You thought we were eventually going to go our separate ways?”

“No. Think about it, if you choose not to regenerate, you’re old and I’m young. At least this is what it looks like, anyway. But, let’s say you decide to go ahead and Renovate. Then you might want everything to be the same afterward and I want more than to just be some robot going through the steps waiting for the end of my days. Either way, appearing as father and daughter or having completely different ideas of what we want from life … how long can we go on like this?

“So I made my decision and I want you to make yours. I don’t want to choose for you. I’ve been waiting for you. Naturally, I thought you were thinking about your options as a consequence of the one I made. I didn’t realize you thought everything had been sorted out. And I’m really sorry. If I could have foreseen how this would affect us, I don’t know if I would have gone through with CR.”

There was a lull in the conversation at this point and I wasn’t exactly sure whether anything had been resolved—with the exception of both of us understanding one thing: I was leaving.

Chapter Thirteen

Perhaps is but prolong’d: have patience and endure.

—William Shakespeare,
Much Ado About Nothing (4.1)

・
・
・

May 18, 2025

You know those Meyers-Briggs tests they used to do back in the ‘90s? Well six months ago, I was probably the introverted, thinking, and perceiving type, but recently I’ve moved into the assertive/decisive category (at least for my cause). Before CR my mind was overactive but restrained. It could also have something to do with the fact that it’s been over 3 months since regeneration and I’ve never had to wait this long for Michael to make a decision.

When he said he’d forgotten that I applied specifically to the schools abroad, it really grated. Geez, I would have brought it up 20 times before if I knew he could shove something like this off as a distant memory. How was I to know he thought UK automatically equaled remote? What was the point of telling him where I was applying at all so long as UW was on the list?

I’m a bit miffed he dismissed my aspirations as if a few appointments with a therapist and surgery were Band-Aids for an invisible cut. While he seemed to be hearing me, he hadn’t been listening—or he’s a master of selective understanding.

And I’m still baffled how he could think it would be just a matter of time before things settled back to their old, normal ways. I hope now at least he understands he has to make some effort.

It’s times like these I wonder if it is possible to know someone, even close to completely. So many years together and his biggest concern no doubt is his own career. If he could worry about himself, why couldn’t he understand my own drive? We were supposed to be united in goals, love, losses, and all that jazz.

I know it’s not that he doesn’t care. He’s just not driven; he doesn’t need to be. It was Becks who pointed out there’s a difference: Michael can understand, but he can’t empathize. She said married people make assumptions about one another; they assume those two things are the same after a while. Still, it was rather discouraging.

She also suggested that while I’m getting impatient because I want so badly to get a move on, my marriage is going to change as a result, and maybe Michael sees this better than I do. I see it pretty clearly, but I haven’t told Becks so. The truth is it’s probably for the best this happens. I want Michael and I to be as we once were and equal in our passion for life. Only if we start over would this be possible again.

Believe it or not, things went back to complacency for another week until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I came downstairs to find Michael making dinner as usual. He turned from the counter he was standing in front of and smiled. As I set the table, we chattered about the property tax bill and the possibility of installing a new tankless hot water heater. The same conversation dragged on through dinner and, finally afterward, I renewed the topic that mattered to me more.

“Michael, please let’s not leave it the way we did. I don’t want to argue, but not talking about it isn’t going to make it go away. Can I know what your thoughts are now?”

“Let’s sit down. I’m going to fix myself a drink. Do you want a glass of port?”

“Sure.”

While he grabbed our drinks, I tried to push away the resentment I felt for always having to bring up an issue. I didn’t want to be a nag, but it was impossible not to be sometimes. I made an effort to bottle my irritation. As I said, I didn’t want an argument and it wasn’t productive.

“Thanks,” I said taking the glass he offered. He was having a bourbon on the rocks. When he sat down, I nudged closer to him. Thankfully, he started speaking.