Perfection (30 page)

Legitimate polygyny would have suited Henry very well. But, along with all the other fast changes in modern life, women’s expectations and options have shifted radically, in a flash, evolutionarily speaking. Reclusive Mormon cults aside, most modern
women would not be content to live as one of a number of partners rearing one man’s children. Polyamory, the more hip approach to multipartnering, seems problematic as well. My conversations with a few practicing polyamorists suggest that we are hardwired for jealousy—and overcoming that jealousy so we can have more partners can bring misery along with pleasure. Perhaps future generations will find a solution.

What did I take away from my exchanges with Don Symons? I learned that we humans are unplanned and therefore imperfect. In our physical and psychological adaptations, we are more suited to that ancient time when we roamed the plains in family-based bands, hunting and gathering, moving with the seasons.

We are not well adapted to this age of speed, technology, anonymity, and easy availability. Even the concepts of the monogamous couple and the nuclear family are new for us. Without the established rules of culture, religion, a nagging mom, or whatever we individually call moral grounding, we will likely succumb to our ancient impulses. We cannot easily restrain ourselves now that our urges can be so easily gratified. After my exchanges with Don, I felt a new appreciation for traditions like Buddhism, where the goal is to calm the body and, thus, calm the mind. Without understanding the physical mechanics of how the mind and body work, those monks did come to understand so much about how to cope with what we are and what we cannot change.

Men and women can’t live with each other easily, but we must live together, otherwise we’ll all die out. So we must muddle along, not quite understanding each other. Couples fall in love and out of love, and in many cases it might be best to end unions.
Whatever happens to couples, children must be cared for, and obligations fulfilled. There are honorable ways to end unions and honorable ways to live.

Perhaps the project of conducting a relationship can remain a work in progress, an ever-changing, amoeba-like creature that must be fed and nurtured, occasionally tamed, but not overtamed. The trick, of course, is finding the balance between what we are in our essential nature—late Pleistocene men and women with cell phones, laptops, and fast cars—and what we can be when we live our lives with thoughtful and honest effort.

October 2004

Once I had made the decision to move,
there were a few days of startling clarity, when I had a sense of the infinite possibilities of truly accepting change. One day, an “ordinary” day, still shines in my memory as one that gave me hope that other days like it would follow.

On this weekday morning in October 2004, I wake up at 6:30 to get Liza ready for school. Sometimes, most times, we still sleep together. Before waking her, I enjoy looking at her resting hands, which more and more resemble my own, as they might have looked had I not bitten my nails when I was young. I am most pleased to see her peacefulness and the absence of the nervous habits that plagued me as a child. This reassures me as I begin my day. I have struggled to preserve her childhood. Wedged
between a cat or two, I reach for the clock to turn off the alarm, disturbing a stuffed animal, one of the several that, along with the live cats, make the bed feel like a small petting zoo.

We dress, and Liza spends some time brushing her hair, fussing over the part and the stray strands that pop up disobediently. I remember that age when you imagine that the waves in your hair are going to rise up like so many unruly elves and embarrass you at the lunch table. After she beats them into submission with hair goo and brush, we trot down to feed our cats, who circle and whine hopefully when they see me rummaging in the cupboard. I know my place in their world. I am the designated can opener.

Once the cats are guzzling at their dishes, I cook some eggs, and Liza and I eat while discussing any of the topics of these days—the complex and ever-changing social dramas at school, why we are even on the earth anyway, how do batteries work? (Dunno, we’ll have to look that one up), how are snowflakes formed? (Ditto). What is gravity? (I forgot that physics lesson). And that old favorite, why is the sky blue? And what’s a rainbow? I have finally looked up those last two and can now discuss light refraction and absorption competently. We ponder daily the eternal question of why our cats’ poop is so smelly and why one in particular has a knack for dumping a big one just as we are ready to begin eating.

Some mornings we edge into a discussion of the day Henry died, as Liza has an eidetic memory of the events of that afternoon and evening, which altered her life so completely. Over and over she asks me to explain why he died. My medical descriptions never vary, though more and more I feel, but cannot yet tell her, that the physical events that caused his death were part of a much larger picture. A spiritual and emotional collapse came first. Just
at the end of his life, he might have tried to crawl out from under, but he lost his grip and slipped away.

I keep an eye on the kitchen wall clock, which is set seven minutes fast, just confusing enough so that I will follow the time indicated without second-guessing. At 7:25 by the clock, we are pulling on our shoes and jackets and then skittering across the gravel drive to our wine-red station wagon for the short drive to her school van.

I have spent much time in the parking lot where the van picks up the children in the mornings and drops them off in the afternoons. The site is the cracked asphalt lot behind the village health clinic. I like to park in the particular spot that offers a view of a bit of meadowy lawn straight ahead and an enormous and wonderfully ovoid purple beech tree to the left that is beautiful in every season. In the mornings, all activity is rushed and practical, but in the afternoons, when the bus is late (often), I have knitted sweaters or dozed in its shade on a spring or still warm autumn afternoon. We have enjoyed throwing snowballs well into spring, as the last March snow is preserved in the shade of the tree’s branches. Mountains in the near distance fade backward into layers of softer and cloudier blue-gray. Sometimes flocks of hawks or turkey buzzards cascade down from the hills after an unseen prey in a burst that always startles me. The afternoon sunsets are dramatic in winter, with fast-moving clusters of watery gray clouds.

The passing seasons here are a movie I have watched like a time-lapse photography sequence: at the beginning of the school year, the purple leaves cascade into a ring at the foot of the beech tree; the leaves turn brown and blow away in blusters of wind rushing up from the river, leaving behind the bare skeleton that reminds me of the baobab trees I saw in Africa on my honeymoon. I feel lonely in this place, but it is a good kind of loneliness—I am
spending time with myself, a person I am coming to know clearly and fully appreciate.

I am rushed this morning. I need to leave for the city in a few hours, so I settle Liza into her van seat quickly. I kiss her goodbye, as always, delighting in the soft press of her mouth on mine. She extends her rosy lips with intention. I enjoy the kiss, wish her a good day, and remind her that Tanya will pick her up this afternoon. I walk off to my car as the van pulls away.

The aisles of the grocery store are still empty at 7:30
A.M
. The fruit and vegetable manager knows me by name, and I like talking with him. He is a man with a calling, who has absolutely improved my life, often giving me some exotic green or fruit to taste. I will genuinely miss him.

I stand in the checkout line, just long enough to make me feel agitated, with my half gallons of milk and Tropicana, and a chocolate bar for later. I have confused and anxious feelings about the pile of documents waiting for me in the city, which represent the end of my life here. I am officially selling my house today, though Liza and I will stay on, as tenants, till the end of her school year. The clerk at the cash register looks tired and harassed, as hers is the only register open at this early hour.
Things to do, train to catch.
I tap my fingers on the black conveyor belt as the woman in front of me pays for her groceries, counting out loose change, while the clerk slowly bags her purchases.

I remember a scene in a book I read recently,
Long Quiet Highway
. Natalie Goldberg watches her Zen teacher, Katagiri Roshi, standing on the street outside the Zen center in Minneapolis. Another student is due to arrive to take Roshi to the airport for a scheduled conference. The student is late, and Natalie is getting worried and anxious that Roshi will miss his flight, as we all might do if we were late and impatient and normal humans. She
describes the experience of watching him: he is standing but not waiting. He is experiencing the present moment, not feeling anxious about the future, over which he has no control.

Standing, not waiting.
I need something to focus on to keep me present. My eyes are drawn to two cobweb strands swaying gently from their attached points on a corner of the cash register. I look at them, enjoying the movement of their strangely beautiful forms. The breeze from the air-conditioning system gathers and releases the strands, and I marvel at their resilience. I note the light coating of dust on the strands. The cash register hasn’t been dusted in weeks, long enough for a spider to create an architectural wonder and then pack up and leave his home to move on to another, more fruitful location.

I see that, having been through a year of loss and change, I will change still more in this next time of my life. I will need to get comfortable with that idea and struggle to find a way to move through all this with some calm, though calm is not especially my nature. At least now my life feels like my own, after a marriage filled with noise and conflict.

Fear of change is the crippling thing. Because of this fear of change and death, we create fortresses we hope will protect us. I am about to let the last of my fortress go for a life that offers uncertainty, though I am also returning to a place where I have family and the prospect of a new life with Will. He tells me that he sees his life connected to Liza and me: that we can head forward as a trio. We will not be at sea in an unworthy boat.

I want to live life unafraid of failure and success, though it will always be in my nature to worry and fret. I want to teach my daughter at least one thing I have learned with so much pain: Be prepared as best you can, make effort, but be prepared to not be prepared. In fact, it’s best not to get too attached to the idea of al
ways being prepared. While still being prepared. Perhaps “being prepared” could be redefined as “paying attention.”

At last, I pay my bill and gather up my purchases in their plastic sack, while I continue to contemplate the threads of cobweb on the cash register.

At home I settle on an aqua blue velvet dress, one of my widow splurges, appropriate not for the meeting with my lawyer but for the PR event at Irena’s showroom that will follow in the early evening.

I have just time enough to make some phone calls, read and respond to the morning e-mails, flip through my bills, and grab a book and a bag of knitting for the train. I drive to the train station and park my car. I fumble for a few dollars for the parking meter, choosing the meter on the left—the one on the right ate five dollars the last time I used it and I haven’t forgiven it yet.

A few minutes later I am seated on the train, happily pulling out my knitting. One stitch at a time, I work, then doze until the train hits the tunnel at 125th Street, when I startle awake and, still bleary, collect my belongings.

After the midtown real estate transaction, I begin my walk to Irena’s jewelry showroom. Snippets of conversation along Thirty-fourth Street, a singsong of world accents, blend into the modulated tones of a familiar melody that is my birthright. I feel at home again in my city.

Irena’s showroom is lushly arranged with her beautiful jewelry, food and drink, and the women from fashion magazines in their This Moment’s Uniform of pointy spiked heels peeking out from under tight, low-slung jeans and trousers. I take a glass of Veuve-Clicquot from a waiter’s tray. I nibble a little chocolate cookie treat and wonder if I can negotiate a chocolate-dipped
strawberry without dribbling on my velvet dress. I chat with Irena, friends, and colleagues and take a moment to enjoy the splendid view of the rooftop city from her high-up windows. The aroma of chocolate and strawberry mingling with the scents of women’s perfume diffuses in the heat of the overhead spotlights. In the midst of this moment of urban glamour, Will calls on my cell phone, and we arrange to meet back at Grand Central in an hour’s time.

Back outside, on Seventh Avenue and Thirtieth Street, I pause after spotting a young guy with one of those new bicycle taxis. It is painted robin’s egg blue, like a bag from Tiffany.

“How much to Grand Central?”

“Ten dollars,” he replies. It seems extravagant to me for such a short trip, and I hesitate for a moment, admiring again the blue color of the carriage.

“It’s really fun!” the young man adds exuberantly.

I decide that fun is required. I hop in. A smile plasters itself on my face as soon as he pedals into the street, as if I were my own eight-year-old daughter on a ride at the small-town carnival we went to a few months earlier. The driver careens with verve and confidence through the traffic. It is a still tender fall evening, not too cold. The city looks glorious, the last sunlight glittering in the skyscraper windows, gilding the top of the Chrysler Building, the sky the deep, rich blue of a Magritte painting. I can hear strains of Leonard Bernstein’s dissonant ode to the city—
It’s a hell of a town!
I begin crying in the happiest way as we speed by pedestrians waiting on the curb corners. Sometimes they look at me, and, because I am smiling, they smile back.

I arrive at Grand Central and wait for Will at the information
booth. A black-tie event is about to begin in Vanderbilt Hall. The invitees stand milling in their fancy outfits: men in tuxedos, women in gowns. I feel a longing to be part of this other, glamorous New York City evening about to unfold, but I am also grateful just to observe it—to see and enjoy the details of my life again. This has been the real gift of everything I have experienced since Henry’s death.

A tap on my shoulder. I turn away from the elegant scene to find Will looking at me. He has submitted to a radical haircut this very morning—shaving off most of the remains of his hair. He is wearing a black newsboy cap I gave him, and he takes it off to show me his clean-shaven head. I laugh because he looks so boyish. His blue eyes sparkle in the lights of the hall. He reports that his shaved head has gone over well at his office.

We eat some pasta hurriedly in one of the downstairs restaurants and board the 6:40 train, packed with commuters. Too late, Will realizes he has left the black newsboy cap at the restaurant.

A genius catnapper (a talent I envy), Will dozes for a while, his head resting on my shawl-draped handbag. I stroke the grayish velvet nap of his newly buzzed hair, play with his gently pointed ears, and pat his still brownish-reddish beard. Then we talk and kiss a bit. Some people stare, and I wonder if they find us tiresome. The woman just opposite us in the four-seat section near the doors moves after another space became available. So I guess we are tiresome.

From the parking lot in town, we drive to pick up Liza. We walk through Tanya’s mural-covered house into the backyard garden, where she has arranged branches into fanciful fencing, topped with a plastic rocking horse she found discarded on the street. Her two cats and bunny roam the yard, dodging some of
the neighborhood children. Liza and a half dozen other kids are squealing with delight on the trampoline, but Liza comes away cooperatively after a brief hunt for her shoes.

Liza does not like Will’s new haircut. She pauses, screwing up her face before delivering her assessment of the situation: “It looks like a teenager haircut, but the face doesn’t match!”

He laughs. “Thanks for your honesty, bub.”

Back home, after dishes of fruit and ice cream, Liza asks if she can have a bath and if we will read to her. The full restoration of reading time in the evening is an unforeseen benefit of this new relationship. In the face of crisis, such niceties were discontinued for a time—there was laundry to do and work to catch up on.

Upstairs, I run the tub and Liza steps into the water in her cautious way, easing into the froth of bubbles with a grateful
ahhh
. Will and I take turns reading. After the bath and teeth brushing, we resume reading in Liza’s bedroom, the three of us squashed on her narrow bed. Then I turn the lights out, Will heads for the bathroom, and Liza and I snuggle for a while. I feel tired after the day, afraid I will drop off, as I used to do when she was younger. But I want to have sex more than I want to sleep.