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Feline love

It was a year ago today that my sweet, sweet cat Ollie died. I wrote about it ad nauseum on this blog. I'll spare you the details now.

It's enough to say that I still miss him. A lot.

A light green

The first part of this story, Greener Grass, can be found in my right sidebar under I Like To Write.

*****

Brad, once he got started, was all too happy to divulge the details of his firing. Which had to do with a buggy website and security breaches and a supervisor he didn't get along with personally.

Tamara ate cereal while he talked and, later, lay on the couch half asleep, listening to him tinker with his laptop, verbally planning how he could submerge the whole agency with a few bits of code.

"Don't do it," she mumbled. "Just take the high road. You'll find something else in no time."

"Ha!" Brad said. "In this economy? Ha!"

Tamara thought about Dave and his always unfailing optimism that he'd be able to support himself and the family, whatever catastrophes the world presented him with. If he had to, he said, he'd go back to being a pastry chef for a few months.

Which was why, she supposed, he was cool with buying boats and motorcycles and expensive tennis shoes without consulting her.

She remembered one especially maddening episode when they'd lain in bed, Tamara lamenting how hard it was not earning money, not contributing, not bolstering her identity in that way.

"It's okay," Dave had said. "We'll get by."

"But the heater needs to be fixed and we're late on Caitlyn's preschool tuition and you just bought that leather jacket."

His voice shot into the darkness, "If you're so worried, get a damn job."

"And pay for full time care for three children? There's no job I could get that would be worth it."

"You did pretty well selling ads."

She rolled over onto her side, facing away from him. "I can't go back."

"Why not?"

Because, she'd thought. Because. I cannot imagine cowtowing to clients all day long the way I cowtow to you and the kids. I cannot take on more bosses. I cannot trade my soul like that again.

"It was okay when I was younger," she said and sighed. "It was okay when I didn't know better. But, holy shit, Dave, I can't convince companies to spend tons of money on four-color spreads while the kids are in daycare."

"But you don't seem all that happy staying home with them," he said. And his voice was accusatory.

"Well, I mean, there are good days and bad. But, I think I hide it well, enough." She meant her resentfulness. Her misery.

Dave said, "Not from me you don't."

The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Over the baby monitor that sat on her night stand, Tamara heard Eli moan in his sleep. "Maybe I'll go buy myself a four-hundred-dollar leather jacket. Maybe that will help."

He rose halfway, pounded his pillows into new shapes and flopped back down onto them. His teeth were clenched as he said, "I work my fucking ass off. I deserve to treat myself once in a while."

"Right," she said. "You deserve your treats."

She waited until he'd fallen asleep, then got up, padded into the kitchen and made herself a vodka tonic. She took it to the deck, where she sat in the dark, her knees tucked under her chin, her nightgown grazing her ankles, and sipped.

Brad said, "I could fuck them over so hard." He laughed gleefully, following some path through his laptop that could lead to the fucking over.

"Don't," Tamara mumbled. "Keep your bridges intact. I'm serious."

His head snapped up from his computer. He pushed his glasses back on his head and looked at her. Looked, sort of, into her. "You're shitting me, right?"

She blinked at him.

"Where are your bridges, Miss Milwaukee? They look awfully singed and rickety to me."

"They are."

Slowly, he closed his computer. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

She tried to sit, but felt a sharp pain in her abdomen and lowered herself back down. "I wish I knew," she said. "Looking for my other life?"

*****

Paul never came in that night.

Tamara barely slept, could only doze. And in the twenty minute snatches of sleep she did get, she dreamed--crazy tableaus where she had orange, clownish hair and wore sequined one-piece leotards and patent leather platform boots and carried a boom box around on her shoulder listening to Chairlift. She had no children, no husband. She lived in a studio apartment with two transvestites and watched them shooting heroin.

She woke up panting, sweating so much she changed clothes twice.

And the next morning, she had to do laundry in the dank basement of Brad's building, plucking quarters from a roll she got at the smoke shop a few doors down.

When Paul and Cornelia finally did arrive, late in the afternoon, their faces were flushed, moony. 

Tamara had a hard time looking at them head on. She glanced at Paul, then down into her lap, then sidelong at Cornelia. Then at Brad. Who was fidgety himself.

Well, here I am, she thought. Here I fucking am. This is what I'm choosing to do with my freedom. What a damn fine idea this was.

She'd been in New York almost a week. The time had come to move forward or go home.

But her feet and her ass and her head felt like they'd been tarred to Brad's sofa and the thought of potty training and baking cupcakes and arguing with Dave about money still made her retch. Worse was her family's smug assumption that she'd always be there to do those things. 

Six days wasn't enough time. It was a blip. If she went back now, they'd soon forget this little trip had ever happened and she'd be right back in her kitchen. Right back in their small bathroom. Right back in bed next to Dave, who she wasn't even sure she liked anymore.

She might have been interrupting a conversation. She would've known for sure if she hadn't been so lost in her thoughts. But she looked right into Cornelia's scrubbed, dewy face anyway and asked, "Is there someplace around here that offers free classes?"

"Like what?" Cornelia asked. "Business courses? Spanish?" her voice was sumptuous and low, fringed, ever-so-slightly, in sarcasm. No wonder Paul couldn't resist her.

"No," Tamara said. The three of them had opened beers and she could smell the hoppy miasma floating just above her head. She closed her eyes, wishing you could block out aromas like you could sights or sounds. "I don't know. Pottery or painting or creative writing."

Brad said, "How about HTML?"

She only shook her head at him.

Cornelia thought for a minute, then said, "There are places. Let me see what I can find out and get back to you."

And, for the first time in a while, Tamara felt a lightness in her chest, across the tops of her shoulders. 

A lightness that, if she wasn't careful, could carry her away.

Barnacle heart

Accusations flew around our house yesterday like silver-winged birds. Or that was how it felt. I knew I needed to reach out and catch the small birds, to release them outside.

But, largely, I failed. I was clumsy and I was not open-hearted and I was grumpy.

We took it, the unease, to the beach, where we usually have a good time. Where the tide was ridiculously low. But I ended up striking out on my own, walking over rocks and sea glass, peering into the tiny caves of barnacles. 

The barnacles' beaks were at rest: straight, wise lines that seemed like they, if a topic struck them as worthy, would speak to me.

The kids did not get the best of either J. or I. But then, it's impossible to sustain for days on end, the devotion and attention they crave.

Fruit Bat has a big, exciting field trip today (to the beach again), but can only think about a play date tomorrow where he'll pretend to be teacher to three girls (the students). When he talks about it, his eyes gleam and he bares his new, jagged teeth.

Playing teacher, I think, is his way of exerting control over his world.

This morning I dropped Kitty Cat off at preschool and she opened the metal double doors herself and insisted that I not walk her in (this is new, as before she insisted I accompany her to the very back of the room). She stood in the door's opening, smiled, waved, said, "I love you, mom."

And my heart flew open.

I'm trying to prop it with toothpicks and drift wood and wadded blankets and quiet moments, so it will stay that way.

The very long weekend

Here's the thing about weekends when you have small children: Saturdays and Sundays are not your own. 

Not like they used to be, when you could roll out of bed at nine, relax over a cup of coffee, read the paper, listen to This American Life, maybe plan a hike and pack a picnic lunch.

You can still have coffee and picnics, but none of it's on your time table. It's not especially leisurely. Often, it's downright aggravating. You want mellow. You want sweet silence, just for a short time. And what you get is ebullience.

And you have to, at least attempt to, embrace it. Because there are only twelve or so years (which sounds impossibly long to me right now) before your children don't especially want to interact with you. Before they start hiding what they're doing rather than shouting, a hundred times, "Watch this! Watch me!"

I get that.

Which is why I try so hard to also get this:

A sinking green

You can find the first part of this story, Greener Grass, in my right sidebar under I Like To Write.

*****

Tamara walked awhile. She passed overflowing dumpsters in alleys and delis the size of closets and flocks of glistening pigeons and a guy with an orange t-shirt that said, in stenciled letters, Support Your Local Midwives. 

Neon lights illuminated dark doorways of bars, even though it was middle of the day.

She found she couldn't go as far as she could before the D&C of a couple days ago. She was sore. And tired. She stopped and sat on a bench along a strip of grass that was less a park and more an optimistic belt of green.

She thought of Craig when she looked at it. At his preposterous pride in his lawn. At his preposterousness in general. What had she been doing with him? What kind of game did she think she was playing?

It hadn't even been enjoyable. Oh sure, there were moments of excitement, a rush from doing something she wasn't supposed to, and occasional bursts of physical pleasure.

But the first time they'd had sex was anticlimactic: a casual, shrugging flop onto his couch while the kids were off at school. It had been that, rather than a gasping, elated falling into each other. And, if someone were going to risk everything, they should at least do it for the joy. Not for the debauchery alone.

A woman cruised by in a motorized wheelchair, one rear wheel spinning in circles as if it belonged on an old shopping cart.

Tamara stared after her until she was lost to the crowd of pedestrians. She wished she'd bought a scone at the coffee shop. But she'd been too desperate to leave Paul and Cornelia to their new love. 

So she sat there, hungry, thinking that she should count her money and see what she had left. See if she could even afford to buy scones.

The woman in Milwaukee, the one who'd given her the cash–-Tamara would like to thank her again. She'd like to be able to talk to her. 

Tamara couldn't talk to her more, because she'd come to New York with a belief that what she was doing had to be done and that the woman understood and so Tamara was going for both of them. Was heading off in search of...something. Now, though, that didn't seem enough. It seemed, in fact, ridiculously self-indulgent. And she hadn't gotten a phone number. Or even a name.

*****

She expected Brad's apartment to be empty, for Brad to be at the agency where he designed web sites. But, when she came through the door, using the key she and Paul shared, he was in the kitchen, pouring cereal and milk into a bowl.

Tamara crept to the couch and sat down, grateful to be somewhere soft.

Brad carried his bowl to an Ikea chair, a PO
ÄNG, she thought they were called, and shoveled spoonfuls into his mouth. 

A band she'd never heard (unsurprisingly) played through ceiling-mounted speakers. On an open laptop resting on the coffee table, she watched the equalizer and saw that the name of the band was Chairlift. The music was dancey and light-hearted. Completely at odds with how she felt and with how Brad looked.

She watched him lift his spoon to his mouth, milk running back into the bowl and the occasional rogue bran flake sticking to his chin before he knocked it off with his thumb. Over and over, the same gestures. Until he finally noticed her.

He set his bowl aside, swallowed with some effort, and said, "Where's Paul?"

"With Cornelia."

"Ah," Brad nodded. "Lucky bastard."

Tamara asked, "You like Cornelia?"

He shrugged. "Yeah. I mean, she's sweet and cool. She's from the Midwest but doesn't make it back there. She's kind of...wholesome. You know. Compared to some of the other chicks you meet in this city."

"Oh, come on," Tamara said. "In a place this size. There's gotta be all kinds."

Brad leaned forward and tapped the sound button on his laptop, raising the volume of Chairlift.

Over the music, he said, "I'm sure there are. It's just finding them that's the issue."

He jumped up then. "Want to see something?"

Tamara nodded.

Brad disappeared into his room and when he came back, he held the Crown Royale sack she'd found in his dresser drawer. He pulled it open and dumped the ring into his palm. He handed it to her.

"Gigantic," Tamara said, turning it over and around. "What's it for?"

"For Paul to give Cornelia."

Something sunk inside Tamara. It wasn't jealousy, exactly. She barely knew Paul. She wasn't sure, though, what else it could be.

She slipped the ring onto her finger. It clicked against her wedding band. She asked, "Why do you have it?"

He sighed, paced around the room and said, "It's a long, convoluted story having to do with my brother and his friend and his friend's grandma. But Paul sent me the money and I got it and the ring's waiting. Waiting for the right moment."

"Why are you so...hyper?" He reminded her of Eli after he'd eaten a cupcake.

"It's the cereal. Full of whole grains and shit. It gets me going."

"Are you taking the day off?"

"Nah, I just got fired."

"What?" Tamara said. "Why?"

He stopped pacing and looked at her pointedly. "That's another long, convoluted story."

"I've got time," she said. Because what else was she going to do with her day? Search for a job? Look online at bus schedules to Milwaukee? Find her way back to one of those bars and drink?

"I can't," Brad said. "It's, you know, a terrible economy and then there's some other stuff I don't want to get into. Personnel stuff."

"That's fine. I'm just some stranger mooching off you right now. You certainly don't owe me anything. But if you want to talk, I'd like to listen. That's about all I've got to offer. An ear."

Brad nodded. Handsome, young Brad, with no Cornelia of his own.

Tamara said, "In the meantime, would you mind if I had a bowl of that cereal?"

So much good

Keeping on here: making appointments with a gastroenterologist, looking into bread machines with gluten-free settings, researching cookbooks and tentatively testing the GF fare that's out there...some of it great, some of it decent, some of it wretched.

Thank you to all the good people who've commented recently. All the sweetness coming in, all the sympathetic humming. It makes it easier somehow.

To amuse myself, I've been working on these*:

*Thanks to my friend for the suggestion.

Celiac rears its hideous dragon head

Usually, it's hardest when you wake up the next morning. When you stir slowly and bits and pieces of your life come back. Then you remember. The bad news. That thing.

But I woke up today already knowing. It never left me while I slept. The understanding that Kitty Cat has celiac disease. Celiac. Celiac. Fucking celiac.

Avoiding gluten isn't the worst thing in the world. There are diseases much more sinister. 

Tell that, though, to the 4-year-old girl who wants the doughnut in the grocery store, or who wants to eat the same cupcake everyone else gets at a birthday party, or who wants a cracker. A simple saltine. And she will tell you it is the worst. That celiac disease is the worst thing ever.

I am (we, in our family, are) prepared for food allergies–-the immediate histamine response of an ingested peanut or milk or eggs (but not really, because who's ever ready to find their baby in anaphylaxsis?). But celiac is brand new.

We will be eating a lot of rice around here. A lot of carrots. And apples. A lot of pure chocolate (because that is not banned yet).

J. and I...some combination of our genes...leads to autoimmune strangeness. I think it's probably mostly me. That's how my brain works.

It's a process of acceptance, I know. And we'll get there...we'll learn what to avoid and what we can have and we'll give Kitty Cat as normal a life as possible, punctuated by moments of heartbreak when she can't have a delicious wheaty food.

But I am still in the place where my eyelids are swollen from weeping and I can think of nothing else and I'm gnashing my teeth at the universe because it's unfair.

There is no "fair".

And, Kitty Cat: I'm so sorry.

A forbidden green

You can find the first part of this story, Greener Grass, in my right sidebar, under I Like To Write.

*****

Megan showed up twenty minutes late the next morning.

"Sorry," she said, dropping her bag to the floor. "I had to wait for my dad to get home from work before I could leave." Her dad worked nights at a Harley-Davidson powertrain plant out in Wauwatosa.

Dave drained the last of his coffee, set his cup on the counter a little harder than he meant to and said, "You know, I count on you to get here in a timely manner. I have a meeting."

She looked at him, stricken. "I'm sorry," she said again. Her eyes moistened. "I tried to call you on the way but then my phone died."

The kids were all watching Nick Jr. in the family room. They talked to the TV screen and sometimes screeched when one encroached onto another's section of rug or couch.

Dave said, "It's okay, just...Maybe I need to schedule stuff for later in the day."

Megan nodded and busied herself with tying her long, shiny hair into a rubberband. Even from the side, he could see the sheen in her brown eyes.

He stepped closer to her. "Megan. Apologies for being a jerk, okay? I'm a little stressed about this whole...situation."

She nodded again.

He could smell her shampoo. Something flowery that brought to mind a room full of lilacs in vases. A bedroom, with a mirror whose edges were rimmed in photos: of friends, a dog, a prom. It brought to mind short skirts and jangly bracelets and round teenage asses and Mike's hard Lemonade.

Dave moved away. He inhaled hard through his nose. He said, in what he thought was an amazingly controlled tone, "The kids are watching the tube. Help yourself to cereal or coffee or whatever. Do people your age even drink coffee?"

She laughed and quietly said, "Of course." She moved toward the Chemex pot on the stove, found the filters and started scooping grounds. "Thanks."

He watched her smooth, unfreckled arms as she worked. The stretch of her thin torso as she reached to put the coffee back in the cupboard. The set of her shoulders as she filled the kettle with water. "You've been a big help to me, Megan," he said.

Turning her head halfway and glancing up without really seeing him, she said, "Oh. Good."

"I, uh, just wanted you to know I appreciate it."

He imagined her pivoting and saying Did you tell your wife that? Ever? Enough?

But of course she wouldn't. She was a teenager. And a fairly timid teenager at that.

Dave had to get out of there. 

Abruptly, he grabbed his briefcase and keys and strode out to the driveway where he'd left the car overnight so he and Joshua could use the garage to build a soapbox derby car for Cub Scouts. The leather was already hot, the interior stuffy as hell. He rolled down the windows and blasted the air conditioning.

He laid his forehead on the steering wheel, willing himself to stop thinking about Megan's arms and torso and shoulders and ass.

"She's only ten years older than my oldest kid," he muttered to himself. He was a thirty-seven-year-old man. What would his over interest do to her? Psychologically?

But what was she starting to do to him physically? Fuck. And where was his wife? And would his life ever be normal again? And didn't he deserve to feel a little arousal? Even if it never led to anything. Just the thought of it...just the thought of it.

He groaned and backed out of the driveway, got safely out onto the highway so he could insert himself safely into his office, surrounded, safely, by binders and monitors and illuminated by fluorescent lights.

When he got to work, he poured himself some shitty Costco coffee, checked his email and chatted with his secretary, Theresa: a heavy-set fifty-something woman with the same shiny hair as her daughter's and who wasn't as efficient as she was personable. She commented on Dave's general pallor, as she liked to do. "Ruddy," she said. "Ruddy-ish. You look healthy, today."

She was frequently wrong. Or was just trying to bolster him. He wasn't sure.

"How's Megan doing?" Theresa asked. "She really enjoys those kids of yours."

"She's fantastic," Dave said. "I don't know how I'd do this without her."

He wasn't sure how much Theresa knew about what was going on at his house. He assumed Megan had told her mother what she knew, which was that Tamara was on an extended vacation. Alone. But as far as he could tell, Theresa hadn't spread any gossip around the office. Yet.

Then he went to a meeting where he met with other engineers about the pump station. The wretched pump station.

In the beginning, he'd been excited about being head of the project, about all the logistics, the legal hoops, the team he was working with.

Now, though, it seemed so dry. So dumb. They were putting all this work into a pump station, for christ's sake. Necessary for Milwaukee, yes. But, ultimately, it would be a nondescript building that people walked and drove by without seeing. Or, if they did notice it, would view it as an eyesore. Maybe a few artistic types would take photos of it on sunny days, and some of those shots would appear on walls of coffee shops and Dave would come across one and say, Would you look at that. It's the west corner of the pump station's roofline and someone has turned into this pictorialization. Crazy bastard.

Blaring from the speaker in the center of the conference table was the voice of Barbara Aster, the pump station's architect. Dave wondered how she felt about designing pump stations. He'd worked with her on a park renovation project once too. Not a glamourous gig either. But at least a place people could enjoy. Tamara had taken the kids there when it was first finished, had shown them what he'd done and they'd played on the new slides and swingsets and charged across the little wooden bridge that arched over a drainage ditch.

He tried to focus on Barbara's voice filling the room. She pronounced her R's much the way Eli did. With a hint of "W". Despite her speech impediment, she had nice intonation: soft, grateful and commanding at the same time. Her voice made you want to go the extra mile for her, if she asked you to. Which she often did.

Thinking about her was way more PC than thinking about Megan, so he imagined Barbara's drapey rayon blouses (Tamara hated it when he used the word Blouse. Or Slacks. Or Panties.), her skirts that were on the short side, the black yoga pants she wore when they had to work weekends.

But no. His mind would not stay with Barbara. It would wander after a few seconds. She just...she was Barbara. She wasn't Megan. She wasn't Tamara. She wasn't even the mysterious Angel Telkowsky.

In the end, he found it easiest to just participate in the meeting. To sip his burned coffee and go through the rote, safe motions of what it took to construct a pump station.

Moments that make a day

Yesterday I did some work. 

I met a good friend for coffee.

I cringed as an old man came into Caffé Ladro and screamed at a young guy that he was going to blow his fucking head off. It was clear they didn't know each other.

I watched Kitty Cat sing an adorable song at preschool (for which she had the hand motions down better than anyone, had the biggest flourishes).

I stared glumly at the rain.

I basked in the few late-afternoon rushes of sun.

I had a wine play date with another good friend, though neither of us actually drank because we were too tired. 

I said something cruel to my husband. 

I spent an amazing 20 minutes alone with Fruit Bat where his sparkly eyes looked right into mine and he let me wiggle his loose tooth.

I slept hard. Dreaming and dreaming and dreaming.

Today. It was Day 2 of our new morning routine. I had to get up earlier, but I was more present. I was more relaxed. No frantic scurry at the end to get out the door.

I let Kitty Cat take pudding cups in a bag and put them in her cubby. I didn't know how to say no.

(I took this photo in Arizona.)

The beginning of the end

I wrote this, today, while witnessing the scene at my coffee-shop-of-choice:

They grip each other's forearms across the table. 

The woman cries, her brows pulling inward, her lips curling, looking imploringly into the man's eyes. He returns her gaze, but his is more sympathetic and contrite and less one of devastation. He reclaims one hand and cups his chin. His body language is apologetic.

He gets her coffee from the counter. She takes it and allows her shoulders to curve inward, her body to convulse for a moment. Then she straightens again.

Sitting at her feet is a massive backpack with an airline luggage tag marked SEA. Has she come all this way to get dumped?

She whispers. He shrugs.

I try not to look. I have to look. My eyes twitch back and forth and up and down like a golden retriever's. 

I have been thinking hard, lately, about significant people slipping into our lives...about that first moment when we see or meet someone who is to become crucial (a friend, a husband or wife), an axis on which we revolve, or, probably more accurately, a body that revolves around us while we revolve around her or him.

If only you could know this when you first come into contact. If only you could actually see the glint, like orange streamers of light shooting off a sparkler that would tell you: this person is going to mean something big. This person is going to change how you think, how you feel, what you want. Perhaps subtly. But still.

I know, though, that wanting this instant recognition is just the writer in me. The writer with a taste for what is cinematic.

It's best, I'm sure, that things unfold, quietly at first, undramatically. Otherwise we'd be too self-conscious. The weight of what's coming might cause us to botch things completely.

I wonder if the woman saw the streamers when she first met the man. Or if their relationship progressed at a slow, sensible pace.

She drinks her coffee. She doesn't taste it. I know this. She doesn't see me. She doesn't see the group of fifty-somethings sitting around a low table or the blank backsides of laptops. She doesn't feel the cool May air on her bare shoulders.

The man looks down now, chastened. He met a person (her) who meant something to him, who he meant a lot to, and now he's closing it down. Snuffing out the brightness.

She wipes her face. She takes money from her wallet and hands him a five dollar bill. They stand. She hoists the pack onto her back with no help from him. They leave.

I see them walk past the window, her face still contorted, his solemn.

I wonder if it's really over. Or if it's just the beginning of the end.