Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight (2 page)

Her parents had died young, in, ironically,
a plane crash, when she was in college. Somehow she managed to pull
herself together and graduate a year later. Then she began working
at the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, where she
first met my dad, Matthew Mayne, who was the ideal in Scandinavian
male physical attributes: thick blonde hair in a crew cut, tall and
muscular, handsomely squared features with piercing blue eyes that
were glued to her while she assisted him with his quickly
improvised research project.

He had spotted her weeks earlier at the
Kentucky State Fair and trailed her then, but gave up the pursuit
when he mistook one of her cousins for her date. When chance
brought her to his attention again a month later at a downtown
café, he followed her back to the library to investigate and engage
her further. I would love to have a stalker like that.

Monica Herron was petite and very fair
skinned with lovely, expressive brown eyes and long, smooth, dark
brown hair. It was way down her back when my parents first met. I
could certainly understand his interest in her, especially as it
relates to the attraction of opposites. Plus she was extremely shy,
which if you didn’t know her might make you think she was just
unavailable. Beautiful and seemingly off limits—is there any
greater appeal?

Her extreme aversion to all things
aeronautic was unquestionably a complication for my dad. He managed
to keep his true occupation at UPS concealed from her for several
months while they dated. He even wore the brown uniform in front of
her a few times early on, not sharing the detail that it was
borrowed from one of his buddies in the ground transportation
division.

When he finally came clean in preparation
for a proposal of marriage and explained rather than confessed the
truth—for he had never actually lied, she just had never pressed
him for a more detailed explanation of ‘Air Loads Expeditor’—she
nearly broke it off. But it didn’t take her long to realize that
she couldn’t live without him, no matter how fearful she was about
his profession. Fortunately, he soon moved into the training
department which kept him on the ground most of the time. They were
married soon after. I was born a few years after that.

The funeral we were attending this day was
different for her. Traumatic to be sure, but not the searing and
disastrous lightning strike the death of my father had been. My
grandpa was her father-in-law, and though he was the family head
and had stepped in to take care of us, his loss, though sudden and
heartbreaking, didn’t leave her cut in two like after the last
funeral we had attended in this very room.

I felt the loss more acutely. I had lost
another father figure and that hole in my universe had torn open
wide again. Being here was an extremely painful kind of déjà vu and
my heart ached with an echo.

Samuel Mayne was seventy-eight years old and
had died in his sleep. I was the one who found him—peaceful and
still. It was not an altogether bad way to go. It’s just bad for
the people left behind who miss you terribly and regret not getting
to say goodbye.

I did not panic that morning, and no one was
more surprised about that than me. Perhaps the reason was because I
knew he wouldn’t want me to be. Though that was possible, (and the
explanation I preferred) probably it had more to do with the defect
in my fight or flight instinct, which included a third option:
cataplexy (sudden, brief attacks of muscle weakness or immobility
usually triggered by strong emotion). A related word that gives a
feel for this state would be catatonic. After a fairly brief
session as a terrified statue, I went next door, informed my mom,
and assisted her through the worst nervous breakdown I had ever
witnessed.

Today it was the very same group of family,
friends and co-workers there to condole with us. Even the same
folks from UPS were there, though not because they had kept in
touch with their former UPS colleague Matt Mayne’s widow, but
because of a death in the family of their co-worker, Hoyt
Montgomery, my mom’s new but much older husband. Mom and Hoyt came
together after the crash because they had both been widowed that
day. Hoyt’s fiancée, Amanda, had been flight engineer on that trip.
Their shared tragedy blossomed into comfort and love and marriage
about three years later. Hoyt could never take the place of my dad,
but he made my mom happy again and I loved him for that...among
other reasons. He was also in the flight operations department at
UPS, but close to retirement, thank goodness.

The morning of the funeral my mom was being
weirder than normal, even for a grieving next of kin. Though
bleary-eyed and shaky, she insisted on dressing me and doing my
hair and makeup, which admittedly I never did very well or even at
all, sometimes. I objected to the eye makeup citing the mess it
would make with the river of tears I was sure to be crying. She
didn’t argue and she didn’t stop. She just said, “It’s waterproof,
honey.”

As much as I wanted to resist and flee, I
relaxed and submitted when it occurred to me that this must be
something she needed, something that was helping her cope. There
was no such therapy available for me.

I just really wanted to be sad by myself. It
was intensely uncomfortable for me to be the object of so much
sympathetic attention. Like my mom, I too was very shy by nature,
and though I always had a lot to say in my mind, my thoughts very
rarely crossed over into spoken form in mixed company. Sometimes a
comment would manage to break free and everybody would be shocked
and then be overly encouraging, which was still more embarrassing.
Consequently, I would go for consecutively longer stretches between
public editorializing. I didn’t like being this way, but the louder
I beat myself up about it on the inside, the quieter I seemed to
get on the outside.

Standing here in this group of friends and
acquaintances, I thought about how the only two people who truly
knew the sound of my voice in sentences were my mom and my grandpa.
So now there was just the one.

Chapter 2
–
Fantasy

I couldn’t remember ever having seen him in
a suit. I wouldn’t have thought that there would be any way to
improve him, but dressed formally, looking like a model for Armani,
right down to the tousled blonde hair and perfectly chiseled
features, it seemed like I’d been wrong about that. Seeing his face
for the first time in so many months, it suddenly occurred to me
that I’d been wrong about something else…my mom wasn’t the only
person left who knew the sound of my voice in sentences.

He caught me staring and came right up.
Pausing a step away, he looked me over without comment. Then sort
of abruptly he gathered me up into a tight hug that lasted for a
wonderfully long time. When he finally released me, he looked me
over some more. Then his hands came up to cradle my face,
fingertips pressing lightly behind my ears and thumbs brushing back
and forth to wipe away some of my tears. His probing eyes bore into
mine for longer than I could stand and I had to look down. After
what seemed like an eternity of me fighting with my eyes to get
back to business and stop wasting time being ridiculous, he leaned
in and kissed me…on the forehead. Very softly he whispered, “I’m so
sorry.”

Then he hugged me one more time, kissed me
on the top of my head and walked away.

Was I having a grief-induced delusion? Some
coping strategy my mind had fabricated to make me feel better?
Well, it was working. But then with horror and self-loathing I
realized that I hadn’t said a single thing to him, like “Hi” or
“Thank You” or “I Love You”.

IDIOT!!!

I tried to soothe myself with reason and
logic. Despite the endless scenarios of girlish fantasizing that
I’d engaged in since we’d met, always with him in the starring
role, I had been slowly facing up to reality. There were some
things that placed me far, far outside of his league—things like
the fact that I wasn’t gorgeous, or cool, or an adult. Over time
and especially recently I had come to terms with this reality. I
thought I had finally moved past it.

So although our brief encounter had felt
amazingly good—and I’d take an amazing reality over an amazing
fantasy any day—I knew it would soon result in the infliction of a
terribly painful mental and emotional setback for me. That
knowledge converted into reality, which set in immediately and with
a vengeance.

Just like the rush of the most pleasurable
high imaginable, from the most illicit drug available, thinking
about that hug and especially the way his hands and lips had felt
on my face was completely irresistible. It would start before I
could stop myself, taking me by surprise and debilitating me,
stringing out into various memories or fantasies, each with their
specific appeal. Then just like with an addictive substance,
following my high was a hideous torturous crash. For one thing it
reminded of the funeral, and my holes. But then I also would have
to face the facts about the past and the future. The truth was that
Gray had never been mine and he never would be. The truth about the
present was the worst of all. He wasn’t with me now and neither was
my grandpa.

Sometimes I would get mad. Why did he do
that to me? Did he really come all the way over from school in
England to hug me?

Fantasy Answer: Our time together in Iceland
had bonded us in an eternal way.

Real Answer: His dad made him come to the
funeral and he was sorry for me because my grandpa died—nothing
more.

Then I would crash…again.

Chapter 3
–
Recovery

The mental self-destruction lasted longer
than it should have. It felt like an eternity. Maybe it was the
dual nature of the torment, making it seem to last twice as long,
or just the absence of people I dearly loved making time drag. My
mind was trying to deal with a fresh wound (losing my beloved
Grandpa) and an old wound opening back up on me (a strongly
entrenched crush I thought I’d finally beaten). Which was more
painful? It was hard to say. But the combination was greater than
the sum of the parts, and the sadness stabbed at me from different
directions. I was miserable all the time and I couldn’t escape,
though I certainly tried.

My coping strategy was all about defense and
evasion. Strange things like a commercial would spark a memory and
the sadness would crest over me like a wave. Sometimes I’d
literally get wet from it…breaking out in a cold sweat or, most
usually, getting soaked from warm involuntary tears. I felt totally
out of control and very embarrassed with myself. So I began to
retreat. I spent a lot of ‘quality’ time in my room, quiet and
alone. Being around my folks meant the presence of TV, or movies or
music and I just couldn’t handle the effects.

Over time I realized that I had myself boxed
into an imaginary padded cell. And though it was boring and lonely
and I felt trapped by it, my painful reflections had no such
restrictions and still managed to come and go as they pleased,
totally unhindered by the perimeter of protection I’d tried to
construct.

Mom and Hoyt had mercifully given me lots of
space in the beginning. They didn’t try to pull me out or push me
into anything I didn’t want to do. Though I felt free to privately
wallow in my own sadness, I tried to be discrete about it around
them. I worked very hard not to be moody or unpleasant. But there
was no sense in faking happiness. It’s like faking big muscles when
you’re weak and thin. Trying to be myself in front of them was the
hardest thing I had ever done. For once I was glad that I was shy,
it meant I didn’t have to try quite so hard to be outgoing or
bubbly—things I had never been before. Still, I knew I wasn’t doing
it right, pretending to be normal for them, that is.

It was when Mom started hinting around that
grief counseling might be a good idea for me that my attempts at a
more convincing recovery began in earnest. In the deck of negative
emotions, fear will always be the high card, for me, at least. In
this case it was fear of the very real threat of having to discuss
my ‘feelings’ with a therapist. I was suffering greatly but I still
couldn’t imagine a more acute form of torture!

Just thinking about that possibility was
enough to affect the most immediate and miraculous emotional
recovery in history...outwardly. Though, the inward recovery was
not too far behind. That began in earnest when I initiated my own
therapy sessions with myself. I told myself that I was going to
have to accept that I may never get over any of this, so I would
just have to settle for getting through it.

I made an agreement with myself to hold on
to the hope that maybe someday, in the far distant future, perhaps,
I could be happy again. After all, wasn’t my mom happy again? I
never would have believed that possible. Of course, right now my
problems were tainting her happiness, and I didn’t want to be
responsible for that. So I needed to start moving forward if I had
any hope of getting to that happy future which I had never
questioned until recently. Although, to be honest, moving forward
with life was almost as scary as dealing with a
therapist…almost.

One way that I chose to ease back into
normalcy, at least from my mom’s perspective, but certainly not by
any other measure, was to engage her in our thing that we did—just
her and me.

If I’d had any notion of how strange and
lame it was I would have never played along. But it had always
seemed perfectly normal and fun to me, and now after years of
participation, I couldn’t give it up even if I wanted to.

It was the peculiar little game of words
that my mom had played with me ever since I could remember. It was
basically a game of word switching where the players replace a
normal word with some random, scarcely known and rarely used
synonym, and then try to understand each other.