Debbie's gone

It’s Wednesday night, though I suppose this won’t post till Thursday.  And I don’t know how much of this I have the heart to write.  But I had better mark the day, at least.

Debbie was in town today.  We agreed to meet at my apartment after work, to cook dinner.  When she arrived, she brought a bunch of things for dessert too … sweet and very tasty.  So we cooked dinner together, spending an hour chit-chatting about what’s going on in her life and in mine.  Then finally we sat down with some food, to talk about what’s going on with us.

I’m not going to try to trace the whole conversation.  But she said her therapist told her, “In every relationship there comes a point, between three months and a year into it, when it becomes real.”  We’d had various sticky spots, and she had tried to decide what among them was important and what not.  She decided that two points were critical: then, if we could meet on these, she could let the rest go. 

First, she thinks I have a lot of psychological work to do still before I recover from being married to Wife.  Bad habits buried deep.  Dysfunctional reactions etched into my soul.  That kind of thing.  For her it took many years and a lot of therapy to get free of her baggage; she says even if it takes me less time than that, it’s still way too early for me to be starting a new intimate relationship.

Second, she decided that she really can’t be involved with me while I am still married to Wife.  Partly because it will tie up my “energy” in ways I may not even see or understand.  And partly because there are social norms against that sort of thing.  She actually used the words “social norms.”

I told her I can understand the first point – that is, no, actually I don’t understand it at all but I can imagine what it would be like to understand it.  I can imagine what it would be like to be involved with somebody whose head was all twisted around, and to want to say, “Look, get your head on straight and then call me.”  I can imagine that.  So while I don’t really have any idea what she thinks is batty about me, what neuroses she wants me to process, I’m not going to argue with that one.

I cannot understand taking “social norms” that seriously.  Sorry, but I just can’t.  I won’t argue in the sense that she has to decide where her boundaries are and I can’t decide for her.  But that one I just don’t get.  At all.

And in any event, that one’s the dealbreaker.  Because as near as I can tell the future – and I admitted that I am notoriously bad at it – divorcing Wife just ain’t gonna happen.  For all the reasons I explained to you in my last post.  I told Debbie that if I did agree to her terms, then that is the point at which she should break it off, because it would mean that I was faithless and cruel.

She was just sad and quiet.  We both were.  Because it was clear to both of us that this meant it was over.

Finally I asked her, “Didn’t I tell you all of this before, months ago?”

“Yes, you did. Back when we first got together.”

“Well then … what did you think I was going to say now?”

“I didn’t know.”

“How could you not know?”

“I just didn’t.”

“If I thought you were that devious, I’d think you did this on purpose so you could find a way to break up with me that would be face-saving on both sides.”

“I understand why it could look like bait-and-switch to you. I’m sorry. But I think we both have to be true to ourselves.”

I still don’t know what that means.  I still don’t get why a woman who has had two husbands and well over a handful of lovers – a woman who has lived abroad in a dozen countries and is starting her third career – can be so intimidated by “social norms”.  I just don’t get it.

We finished dinner and dessert.  We cleared the table.  She gave me back her copy of the key to my apartment.  I gave her back my copy of the key to her condo.  We both said that we wanted to keep the friendship, but that we were both too sad to trust our emotions right now to figure out how to do that.  We kissed – a long, torrid, passionate kiss that went on and on.

And then she left.

I feel numb.  I have no idea how I’ll feel tomorrow, or next week.  I don’t even really want to drink, though I’ve had just a little bourbon to sip as I write this.

I just don’t get it.

It's complicated

The other thing my friend asked me after the lecture Sunday afternoon is how the relationship with Debbie is going.  He and his wife knew Debbie and her ex-husband years ago, when their daughters were taking violin lessons together, or something like that.  Anyway he knows us both and thinks it’s a great match.

 

The only thing is, I didn’t know what to tell him.  It’s complicated.  Actually, it’s been a complicated month.

 

Christmas seemed OK.  You remember that I had custody of the boys through the afternoon of December 24, that we stayed with my parents, and that we had a virtual Christmas there on the 22nd.  The next day, Debbie stopped by to visit.  She brought presents for my parents and the boys (books all around).  We had some coffee and cake and then ordered out for dinner.  The boys felt a little awkward around her, or so it seemed, but otherwise it went fine.

 

On Christmas Eve I delivered the boys to Wife’s place.  Debbie’s mother had invited me for Christmas Day, so I drove there next, arriving late for supper but in time to follow Debbie to her hotel nearby where we tucked ourselves all snug in the bed and watched for visions of sugarplums.  Christmas morning we opened presents at Debbie’s mother’s house, along with Debbie’s daughter and her husband, plus other assorted family.  We ate too much dinner, then ate too much dessert, then ate too much again.  As they say, Christmas comes but once a year. 

 

The last Sunday of the year, Debbie and I entered a week-long silent retreat held a few miles away by a noted Buddhist teacher who does this sort of thing.  If you had asked me a year ago whether I would expect to spend (part of) the Christmas season in a week-long, silent, Buddhist meditation retreat, I would have looked at you funny or asked what you had been smoking.  But Debbie was full of good things to say about this teacher, and other people that I have met (in the almost-a-year that I have been meditating) have told me they’ve found a lot of value in silent retreats.  Besides, Debbie paid the registration fee so how could I say No?

 

It was interesting, and I’ll probably do it again some day.  But by the end of the retreat I found the long silence had made me more sensitive than usual and therefore touchier.  As we drove back to civilization, Debbie and I found we weren’t connecting quite right.  We talked for a while after getting to her apartment, before I drove on to mine, but somehow couldn’t click.  There had been no sex during the retreat, and now we weren’t synchronized enough for it.  (Though honestly, I think fucking might have put us back on track.)

 

We talked over the next couple of weeks – saw each other, took in a couple of movies, e-mailed as usual – but still it seemed a little off.  Then in mid-January we took a four-day weekend that we had planned a couple of months ago, to visit several of my relatives in another state.

 

The drive there was difficult and we seemed to spend too much time misunderstanding each other.  The visit itself was great fun.  Debbie connected with my relatives on many different levels at once, so it was easy and natural and pleasant.  I wondered if maybe we were finally getting back to where we belonged.

 

Then the night before we left to come home, Debbie told me she wanted to go back to being “just good friends” … like we were the first month or two, when we got together for meals but not sex.

 

What’s this about?  I have no idea, and so far we haven’t taken the time for her to explain it.  What she said is that she feels funny knowing that I am still married, and that she has come to the conclusion that the relationship “won’t work” for her unless she knows I am on a definite path towards a divorce, towards being “free”.

 

But free for what?  To marry her instead?  Ain’t gonna happen.  I’ve been resolute in saying that I can’t see the long-term future one way or another, but I’ve also said that it’s clear to me in the short term (all the future I can see) I don’t want to be married again.  Nor quasi-married.

 

And divorce?  I thought I’d been pretty clear about that too.  I made a deal with Wife that if we could stay out of Court then I’d settle for separation instead of divorce, so that she can keep my medical insurance.  She has kept her part of the deal, so I have to keep mine.  Does Debbie want me to welsh on it?  Really?  Because the way I treat Wife should be an indicator how I’ll treat her if things ever go south between us.

 

Besides, depriving Wife of medical insurance – I mean, gratuitously depriving her of medical insurance – would be pointlessly cruel.  Is that what Debbie wants?  Again, really?  I would have thought that seeing me be needlessly cruel would be a motive for her to run the other direction.  Because the way I treat Wife … oh right, I already said that.

 

Anyway, it ain’t gonna happen.  If Wife keeps her part of the deal, I’ll keep mine … for both those reasons.  Debbie must not be thinking, or must have forgotten.

 

Or else she remembers perfectly, and that’s her point.  Maybe what she really meant is not, “I want you to divorce Wife so you can marry me,” but rather, “I want to dump you but in a way that doesn’t crush your ego, so I’m going to ask for conditions that I know you’ll never agree to. That way it looks like it’s your choice to end it, and I’m off the hook without having to say bluntly that I wanted out.”

 

On the whole I don’t think Debbie is devious enough for that.  She forgets other simple things, so I’m willing to believe she’s just spacey and inattentive.

 

On the other hand, the whole point of mindfulness meditation is supposed to be that it makes you more attentive, and she’s practiced it steadily for fifteen years.  Maybe she is really every bit as attentive as she needs to be.  Maybe she just wants out.

 

I’m puzzled, and it’s complicated.

 

 

Phone call from nowhere

Friday at lunch I was stretching my legs out of the office, because I didn’t like any of the things that were piled up on my desk for me to work on.  And as I strolled along trying to mull how to handle one problem in particular, my phone rang.  Didn’t recognize the number, but I answered as cheerily as I could manage, “Hello?”

“Mr. Tanatu? This is Daisy … do you remember me?”

Good heavens.  Daisy?  Long long ago, back when Wife and I were still together and the boys were small, Daisy worked in the pharmacy closest to our house.  She was always friendly, and we used to chat whenever I had any prescriptions to pick up.  (I’ve alluded to Wife’s medical history in plenty of other posts, so it will come as no surprise that this was generally several times a week. For years. Yes, for the most part Wife sent me out to get her drugs for her and I did it.)  There was never anything improper between us, just a casual friendship of the kind that it is easy to strike up when you see someone regularly.  But it always cheered me up to see that she was on duty if I had drugs to collect, and she seemed to brighten up whenever I caught her eye.

I say there was never anything “improper” between us, but that’s not quite true.  There was never anything sexual or romantic.  But improper?  Well at one point I was out of work for about a year and a half.  I got unemployment insurance, and I had a severance package from my old job, so we had food on the table.  But “out of work” meant “no medical insurance.”  Wife was too sick to work at that point, so there was no group plan anywhere to cover her drugs.  All of a sudden we had to pay list price for them all, and in some cases that meant $1200 for a one month’s supply of a maintenance medication.  That’s more than my entire unemployment insurance added up to, even assuming I didn’t care about paying the mortgage or the gas bill.  We had no idea what to do next.

I mentioned this to Daisy the next time I was picking up some of the cheaper medications on Wife’s list, and she frowned.  “Oh, that’s really bad. What are you going to do?”  I admitted that I didn’t know.  Daisy thought a minute and then she said, “You know, … we get employee discounts on any medicines we buy for our personal use. Which ones are you having trouble affording?”  I told her.  She had them in stock – exactly one month’s supply of each because they were rare drugs and Wife was the only one taking them (so they stocked a month’s worth at a time just for her) – so she brought them out, looked around to make sure her manager was nowhere nearby, and then punched a long string of numbers into the cash register.  And suddenly instead of $1200 the bill dropped to $130, by magic.  I thanked her – many times – and went home with the good news.

She gave us this discount for a year, spelling us while I looked for work.  And the very day she told me that the company had revoked their policy allowing employee discounts on medication, I was able to tell her I had a new job.  It was bad news for her, I’m sure, and for the other employees.  But I understand why they did it.  Somewhere along the line they had to have figured out that they had lost somewhere in excess of ten thousand dollars in sales in the previous year, all draining out through this particular loophole.  At the time, I have to confess, I was mostly thrilled to be working again.  I told Daisy that I couldn’t imagine what I could ever do to repay her: but if she could ever think of something, I’d do it.

Not long afterwards, I saw her in the parking lot of the grocery store.  She said that she had decided to leave the pharmacy business and was applying for jobs elsewhere: would I be willing to give her a recommendation?  Of course I said yes, though in the back of my head I tried to imagine what such a recommendation would sound like.  “Yes, Mr. Squeezeblood, I can absolutely guarantee that Daisy will be an employee with the highest ethical standards. She will gladly steal from her employer – any day, in a heartbeat – if she thinks that he is screwing over his customers with his high prices.”  Hmmm.  Maybe not.  In the end I talked about her dedication to excellent customer service, but the spin I put on it was to highlight how dreadfully complicated Wife’s prescription regimen was (this part was absolutely true), how other pharmacies regularly screwed it up (also true), and how Daisy was scrupulous about keeping everything in order (also true).  But I was silent about her biggest service.

Anyway, that was years ago.  I think she got the job, and I never heard from her again.  But why would I?  We never expanded the scope of our friendship outside of the narrow little bubble in which it had grown.  Except for that one time we met by chance in the parking lot, I think we never even clapped eyes on each other outside the pharmacy at all.  It is true that I gave her my cell phone number, but only so she could put potential employers in touch with me.  It never crossed my mind that she would keep it after that, let alone call it.

So there I stand, Friday at noon, trying to escape from my office and get a little fresh air.  My phone rings, and the voice on the other end asks:

“Mr. Tanatu? This is Daisy … do you remember me?”

“Daisy? What – Daisy from the pharmacy? Goodness yes! Of course I remember you! Gosh, it’s been … years. What’s the occasion?”

I never got a really clear answer to this question, the question why she was calling me.  She asked about the boys, and so I told her they are in high school and Son 1 is applying to colleges.  She asked about Wife and me, and so I told her we are separating.  I explained we have already sold the house and moved, respectively, into new digs.  She made politely sorry noises about the separation, and I said it was a long time coming – also that once the dust settles we’ll both be better off.  A couple of minutes later she made a point of casually mentioning a boyfriend of long standing … maybe I’m overcautious, but I assume this was just in case I had any predatory ideas now that I am newly-single.  So what’s going on with her?

This is another question to which I never got a really clear answer.  She said that her company (“the job you helped me get”) isn’t doing too well these days and so she is thinking of looking for another job.  She said she has had a lot of “life-transition events” happen to her in the last year.  And somehow these two facts meant logically enough that she found herself sorting through a stack of her old contacts and … what?  Systematically calling every number on the list just to see if it is still a live number, so she can discard the ones that aren’t?  Systematically calling everyone she has ever known in her life just to hear a voice at the other end of the line?  Neither of those makes any sense.  Is there another explanation?  Surely there must be, and I’m just not clever enough to see it.  I can’t help feeling that I should have asked a little more insistently, “So what’s going on with you, anyway?”  Or maybe she was calling from some place where she couldn’t discuss it?  I don’t know.

I gave her my e-mail address this time.  I guess I’ll wait to see if she uses it.  Or I suppose I could text her (since my phone stored her number), but that seems a little odd ….

It’s really kind of a puzzle.

"Have you been writing?"

I went to a public lecture this afternoon and saw three people I know – from totally different contexts.  Two are faculty at Durmstrang (one of whom is my son’s advisor); the third is a guy I used to work with long ago at a past employer.  I suppose it’s inevitable that I run into folks I know whenever I go out: plenty of people call this a small town.  At any rate it’s a very small town for its size.

 

As I talked to my ex-colleague after the lecture he asked, “Have you been writing?”  Well, no.  Not exactly.  Not at all, in fact.  Of course I’ve got reasons: I’ve been busy and there’s been a lot going on and the dog ate my homework ….  But that’s all just chatter, and at least I had the decency not to make excuses out loud even as I rehearsed them in my head.  All I said was “No.”

 

So my friend started to talk about procrastination, and about how to tackle a big project by breaking it down into little itty-bitty projects and then knocking them off the list one at a time.  Of course he’s right.  He’s also the one who first encouaged me to start blogging, five years before I started writing under the name “Hosea”.  (The first things I ever posted, under my own name, are no longer on the Internet so far as I know, and the Internet is a richer place for their absence.)  So we chatted some more and then went our separate directions.  But all the while my mind was starting to murmur to me, “Get it in gear, Hosea. None of this stuff is going to write itself, you know.”

 

Wouldn’t it be nice if it did?