Why I Love Singlehood: (19 page)

So I ask you: is there such a thing as the love of your life, and how do you know when you’ve found it?

Sprinting the last block to get to my laptop in time before I lost any of my mental composition, I typed it up before I even showered. After dinner (I tossed the grilled chicken into the salad), I revised the blog entry and posted it, then went to bed with Jane Austin’s
Emma
. Better to get lost in someone else’s world than in my own.

18

Two Loves

THE “LOVE OF
Your Life” post elicited a slew of comments within the next forty-eight hours, some frighteningly harsh and painfully cynical (“Life sucks and then you die. Alone.”), while others just dripped of sweetness (“I just
know
he’s already here, so close you can touch him!”). Moreover, it seemed to bring out the storyteller in everyone, both in cyberspace and at The Grounds.

“My granddaddy told me that he knew the minute he saw my grandmama that she was the girl he’d marry,” began Jan, with the Originals and most of the Regulars in earshot. “It was his favorite story to tell, and I remember it clearly because he used to tell it every chance he got, even after his mind started to go. It was the summer of forty-eight, a scorcher, and they were at his town’s Fourth of July festival.”

“Back then it wasn’t about barbecues and shopping sales,” remarked Sister Beulah.

“You got that right,” said Jan. “He’d been in the parade with a couple of his war buddies, and was still wearing his uniform. She was a nurse, selling blueberry pies to raise money for the VA when he saw her. He tapped his friend and pointed to her. ‘There,’ he said. ‘That’s her. That’s the girl I’m going to marry.’ His friend said Granddaddy would be lucky if she even looked at him, so he marched right up to her and said hello.”

“And did she?” asked Spencer while Dean looked on, uninterested, no doubt from hearing the story more than once. “Look at him, I mean.”

Jan nodded, proud. “She smiled,” she said, and paused for a beat. “Now my granddaddy, he was smart. He lived on a farm in New England, and she was from the South. And he knew that if he was going to get her, he’d have to have her married by the time winter came because no Southerner in their right mind would ever choose to live on a Yankee farm once they’d seen what winter really meant.”

The Southern natives laughed.

“So that’s what he did. They dated all that summer, and before she left, he asked her to marry him. She came back and they got married that fall, and every winter thereafter she’d curse him for fooling her. He’d say he was just a fool for love, and she’d always—every time—say he was
her
fool, and she’d have it no other way.”

“That is just the sweetest story ever,” said Tracy, giving Spencer’s hand a squeeze.

“Isn’t it, though?” said Jan. “It just goes to show you, Eva, that true love is out there; and when you find it, it lasts. Even through the winter.”

My throat too tight to speak, I nodded and hastily left the group to assist Norman with the line of customers that seemed to appear out of thin air.

“Hey, Eva, a letter came for you. No return address,” said Norman when I came in for my afternoon shift the following day. Retrieving it from under the cash drawer of the register, he pulled it across his face and took a whiff. “I don’t smell any Old Spice. You got a secret admirer you’re not telling us about?”

I snatched the creamy vellum envelope from him and studied it front and back. It was postmarked Wrightsville Beach, but I didn’t recognize the cursive penmanship, almost calligraphy, that so elegantly and formally spelled out my name and The Grounds’s address. Unable to resist, I too put it to my face and inhaled, looking for signs of scent that would offer some clue, but came up with nothing.
Another member of the Club?
I wondered as I grabbed my apron off its hook. Rather than open it here, my gut told me to save the envelope for when I got home at night, that it was deserving of my full attention.

And so I did. Showered and powdered and tucked into bed, Scott asleep beside me, I gingerly tore the envelope open and pulled out three sheets of the same creamy, vellum paper, carefully creased and filled with the same elegant script. With a fountain pen, I realized.

Dear Eva,

When I read your post on WILS last night, I knew I had to respond, but not publicly. I know how close you are to Minerva and some of the others, but I would prefer that what I am about to tell you be kept between us.

You asked about how one knows if the love of your life is indeed the love of your life. I want to tell you about my two loves.

When most little girls were playing “house,” mothering their baby dolls and cajoling their little brothers into being the daddy, I was playing “church,” which consisted of my dolls taking turns reading from the Bible and my giving homilies and feeding Necco wafers to those same dolls at Communion time. Catechism classes far surpassed my interest in math or American history, and my parents practically had to drag me out of mass every Sunday. I studied every mannerism of the priests the way my friends studied every move of the Beatles. These were the days just after Vatican II, which probably means nothing to you, but it was an exciting time for the laity of the church. The masses ceased to be in Latin, and parishioners started to play a more important role. That, along with the women’s liberation movement, gave me hope that one day I, too, could become a priest and pledge my devotion to God.

But sadly, women’s lib stopped at the altar, and my dream was not going to be realized. I wasn’t sure that a vocation as a nun was right for me, so first I went to college to find my way. There I met a girl named Lily, and to my surprise, I fell deeply in love with her, and she with me. In those days, the sexual revolution had come and gone, but homosexuality was still seen as a sin against God. But how could something like
love
ever be sinful?

I now had two loves of my life: God and Lily. We talked about moving somewhere like New Hampshire or Vermont, someplace tolerant where we could open a little store and sell homemade maple syrup or something wonderfully hippy-ish like that. I thought I could still serve God by getting involved in a small parish or volunteering at a hospital. Lily and I desperately wanted to be married, but same-sex marriage seemed to be farther from our grasp than female ordination. I confess that I was even mad at God for a while—how could She let me feel such love, both for Her and Lily, and not give me the means to express it? What if it really was sinful, and there was something wrong with me? Lily and I even separated for a brief period of time in an effort to date men (at least we were able to laugh about it years later), but there was no denying who we really were.

In the summer of 1980, Lily got into a car accident and I went to the hospital to be with her. That’s when her parents discovered we were more than best friends, and they were outraged. They forbade me from seeing her, and forbade Lily from contacting me. They intercepted my calls and letters to her. When she recovered, she made her way back to me, but the writing was on the wall—we were never going to be able to have the life we wanted without losing the ones we loved. And Lily was terrified of being shunned by her family at the time. My family would have an easier time with my being a nun than my being a lesbian, and I didn’t want anyone other than Lily.

You may think I settled for a life I never really wanted, Eva, but I didn’t have the choices that your generation has (or I believed I didn’t). I had too much to lose, although losing Lily was one of the hardest things I’ve ever endured. Being a nun has had its ups and downs, especially in the wake of all the scandals of the Church. I have considered leaving the vocation many times. Lily and I recently reconnected thanks to Facebook. She had married a man in an attempt to please her parents, but divorced several years ago. With our parents so aged and the times more tolerant, it may finally be time for us to live the life we’ve always wanted. I’m not sure. I adore my parish and its people, and I love my Grounds family, too. And I still love my Lord. I don’t want to renege on my commitment to Her.

I am praying for answers to this next course of my life. I hope you’ll pray for me as well, as I have been praying for you, Kenny, Scott, Minerva, and Norman, and all those looking for the loves of your lives. Just remember that love comes in many forms. Never settle, and know that what one has torn, another can mend.

Most of all, the love you really want is in you, Eva. Don’t go chasing rainbows. Just open your eyes and admire their ever-present beauty.

Yours,
Beulah

It took a moment for me to register that “Beulah” was
Sister
Beulah. Never in my life had I received a letter so beautiful, so thoughtfully and carefully written and delivered. I mean, she could’ve just handed it to me and asked me to read it in private, or mentioned it to me when we were all sitting together while Jan told her story. She could’ve sent an e-mail. She could’ve bought a Hallmark card. But no. It was like a secret between a mother and daughter, or sisters. She had wanted it to be special, right down to the LOVE stamp on the envelope.

Minerva and I had once secretly speculated whether Sister Beulah was gay. Stereotypically, she matched neither orientation description. She dressed plainly, her coarse but well-coiffed hair a salt-and-pepper mix, and she wore little if any makeup at all other than an almost fuchsia-colored lipstick that could only look good on her and somehow drew attention not to her lips but rather her long eyelashes. The cross that rested comfortably on her chest was made of olive wood that she bought in the Holy Land, as she called it, and anyone might mistake her for a curio shop owner or a grandmother rather than a nun.

We all loved her dearly, of course. She was a mother hen to us all, listening to all our chatter, comforting any one of us having a bad day, giving us a run for our money when it came to book or movie trivia, and insisting that the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole were “the Chosen Ones.” And even though we all called her Sister Beulah, despite her telling us early on not to, I think most of us forgot she was a nun. She was simply one of us.

I reread the letter, carefully smudging away each stray tear before it could drop to the page, blot the ink, and blur the words.
The love you really want is in
you,
Eva.
Watching Scott sleep for a few seconds, his back to me, I reached out and ran my fingers through his hair gently, hoping not to stir him. He didn’t budge. I then turned out the light and offered a prayer for Beulah and Lily, my mother and father, and one for me, hoping I’d dream of rainbows.

19

They’re on to You

I WASN’T DUE
in to work until later in the afternoon. Normally, this was a good thing. Depending on my mood, mornings off either gave me the momentum to be super productive (as if I had already spent a full, accomplished day by the time I got to work) or to treat myself to pampering and lazy relaxation.

This morning, however, I could neither sit still nor focus long enough to accomplish anything. I felt edgy, agitated, unfocused. I hated days like this, and my frustration only compounded as I wandered from room to room, task to task, without finishing any one thing or setting it all aside.

It was a gray day, too. The kind where the sky is cast in shades of slate, almost purple around the edges of clouds that slide beneath more clouds. Wilmington weather forecasters called for a thirty-percent chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon, and I could practically taste the electricity on the air.

Giving up on the stack of bills I’d barely managed to sort, I grabbed my keys, tucked a pen and a small dog-eared journal into a tote bag along with a bottle of water, and headed out.

I lived within biking distance of the beach, but if I drove straight there and back, I’d have more than enough time to sit by the ocean and let the rhythmic roar of the waves restore my balance. On the way there I kept a watchful eye on the sky, scanning for lightning bolts showing up ahead of schedule or illuminated clouds that might be masking their presence.

By the time I arrived it had started to rain, a fine mist like those manufactured to soak vegetables while thin recordings of Gene Kelley’s “Singin’ in the Rain” hummed from speakers in grocery stores. I stepped out and sighed, lifting my face to the wetness before pulling my hood over my head and tucking my ponytail in. The beach near NCLA was a mix of white, flat dunes peppered with broken bits of scallop and clam shells and pebbles. Its ocean was a lackluster gray-green today, untamed and creeping far up the shore. The air had a harsh tang of salt, and the mist fell softly. Stillness seemed to settle along the beach, but the ocean roared with each crashing wave, pulling me closer to it as each one receded.