Back story on Marie, after college

[This entry was written and posted on Sunday, March 6, 2016.]

 

So I had graduated. But the story doesn’t stop there.

 

My first year after graduation, I didn’t do a lot. Hung around home, but didn’t find a job. I thought I wanted to go to graduate school, so I sent out applications – even though at some level I knew perfectly well that I had no desire to spend more time in school and that I was doing it because I didn’t know what else to do instead. And I wrote a lot of letters to my friends back at college. I forget if Marie was one of these. I do remember that I went up to visit campus at the end of the next school year, when the school puts on a big party; and I remember trying to come on to Marie drunkenly in a bathroom that weekend. She rebuffed me very curtly.

 

At the very end of that summer, I met Wife. Within a week we were sleeping together. Within a couple of months I was living at her apartment. The summer after that we were married, and left for graduate school in earnest. And it was during the two years we were at that school that Marie wrote to me. Dear Hosea, You have expressed a desire that we should remain friends, but “just friends.” That doesn’t work for me, so I have decided to break off communication with you. If you want to say goodbye, you can write back. After that, please do not contact me again. Marie.

 

It sounds like the end of the story. But no.

 

After two years in graduate school, Wife and I came back home. (That story deserves a post of its own, some day.*) I got a job where I stayed for four years, while Wife taught high school at a couple of different schools. Then we moved to a new city to allow Wife to go back to graduate school. I got another job. And after another year and a half – probably a little more, in fact – I heard from Marie, out of the blue. She had been working with the Landmark Forum, a program that encourages you to make dramatic changes in your life and heal old wounds, all in a few easy steps. She wanted to be friends again. I was thrilled. We wrote, and she came to visit Wife and me. After that we continued to keep in touch.

 

But this, too, turned out awkwardly. Wife was involved with Girlfriend 1 at that point, and told Marie all about it. Marie concluded that Wife and I had agreed to be non-monogamous on principle, because of course Wife never explained how upset her infidelities made me. And so she wrote me a letter saying that she understood Wife had a lover, she understood it was OK with both of us, and so she wanted to be mine.

 

I did not handle this well. I told her no, she should go find somebody of her own. I felt scared and exposed, and I was mad at Wife for putting me in such an awkward position with her big mouth and clueless braggadocio. Marie accepted my decision and we kept writing each other, … but at longer and longer intervals. Finally we just had nothing more to say to each other, and stopped.

__________

 

And there it sat. I could have let it sit there forever. But you know that I have wanted more friends in my life. And I never felt good about … well, really anything in my long, tangled, confused and confusing relationship with Marie. So when I met up with Schmidt again last summer after a dozen years, I asked him for Marie’s address. And I got in touch with her. And that has turned into a whole new story of its own.

* You can find that story here, as "The Oscar Diggs problem."