Absence
To Ms. Deborah Meyers
Before the dogs woke, before the men scraped the ice off their windshields and went off to work, before the sun got up, in the dream-before-wake did Mark Morse begin to grasp how his ex-wife, Lisa Hoodd, was still in him and how she wasn’t. And what wasn’t her was actually him and what wasn’t him was somebody, something else or God.
Before he could pee, bitterness would rise from his heart and poison what good she had imparted in him. At first he could not see the venom destroying what was left, but after many mornings where he drew the covers over his head and howled to God did he begin to see how little his bitterness was. It was then, as he held the silly and the sad, the truth and the deceit, did he feel the dynamic of the marriage. It was then he wondered if he was wrong for marrying her, wrong for leaving, or was the whole damned thing God’s will.
This suspicion slowly ate a hole in his heart. So when he was tired of the bleeding, at two and a half years, Mark took it to John Lobos, his therapist. He remembered John’s calm voice at the session when he responded to Mark’s distrust with, “It didn’t work and it won’t work and you know it. She wanted the divorce! Has she given you any indication that she wanted to try it again? Mark you didn’t respect her and you don’t trust nor respect her now. Dude wake up!”
Mark realized all his verbiage about the sacredness of family and staying together for the kids’ sake was bullshit. All he wanted was not to be alone, no matter what lies he had to live, no matter who he had to hurt or how much he was hurt.
“Why do you still try to make it work in your heart?” John said.
“Cause I love her,” he said automatically, amazed at what stumbled out.
“Yes, you might have, but it’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“We have talked about this before. She represents Mom…
“…and I want to make it right?”
All you could hear was the clocking ticking above Mark’s head.
“OK. It’s what my couple’s counselor, Barbra Bayer, said fifteen years ago. I wanted the Universal Teat and Lisa didn’t want the job. What do I do with what’s left of her in me?”
“You know.”
“Do I?” asked Mark, as he looked Jon Lobos in the eye as John glanced at the clock and intoned, “It’s time.”
* * *
A week after Mark’s session with John, Lisa called to talk about his visitation schedule for the next two months. After the scheduling was done there was a lull in the conversation, which usually meant it was time for Mark to bid his goodbye. Instead he heard himself offer. “In our absence our presence is defined.”
“What do you mean?” Lisa Hoodd said, surprised.
“The space in each of us that was filled with the other is absent. What is left now is perhaps, the essence of the other.”
He waited in the heavy stillness and through it he heard her heart beating in her breath.
“Like negative space?”
“Yeah like negative space.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I agree with you.”
“OK,” said Mark.
The silence was so pregnant with meaning and without meaning it shivered Mark’s back; he didn’t want to know its meaning so Mark broke the silence with, “I think I’d better say goodbye.”
“Goodbye Mark.”
* * *
“In our absence our presence is defined,” thought Lisa Hoodd, fresh from her bath, as she walked across the street to the Dunn’s to pick out a kitten for Mike, her younger child. Lisa chewed on Mark’s statement as she chewed chocolate: slowly, savoring every crumb, allowing the rich taste to float into her being and fill her instinctive need for solace. When she was with Mark, she allowed his words to flow threw her and she compulsively looked for hidden meanings in them. She was dedicated to always striving to be growing, always analyzing anything and everything that went on inside and outside her. She knew what he was saying and doing had a deeper meaning and that meaning had another level and her life was committed to find those levels and always be aware of where the levels were and how they came and went. Mark didn’t care. All he wanted to do was to go to work, write, make his models and take care of the kids. He didn’t mind her analyzing what was in her and what on the outside was affecting her. He would listen and, when asked, give his comment, but he didn’t want Lisa going “inside his head” and being his therapist. That was Barbra’s job, not hers. When she did it, which was often, it would drive Mark nuts. He didn’t want to live his life committed to “self realization.” In fact every time he said the word it would come out in a shell of mockery.
When they split, her need to hammer out the hidden meaning of Mark’s words vanished. So when he made the statement about absence, she was expecting it would roll over her, but it didn’t. Somehow a small hidden piece stuck in her mind and she mulled it over and over trying to see if it was true for her, and it wasn’t. There was a pain, a guilt, a remorse that something of Mark didn’t stay in her. Thirteen years of marriage and she could walk away and never think of him again. Something was sad about that, something terribly sad.
Lisa was thinking about this when Hank, Mike’s first cat, popped into her mind as she walked over to the Dunn’s, to look at a new litter of kittens. When Mark left, Lisa had promised Mike a cat, and had kept her promise. Mark, like her father, hated cats, so in the past when Mike had wanted one, the answer was always no.
Mike called Mark and they all went to SPCA together. Mike started to wander through cages of cats, and couldn’t make up his mind. Mark had found an old black male cat, scarred, beaten up and mean. He was playing with him as if he was a kitten. A young volunteer at the SPCA was watching in amazement as Mark petted the cat. He asked the volunteer if he could hold him and the kid said yes. The kid opened the cage and the cat walked out into Mark’s arms. He cuddled him and the cat purred. Mike came up to Mark and began to pet him as well. When Lisa and her older child, Joe, tried to pet him, the cat would pull away and snarl. Mike asked Mark if he could have the cat and Mark said yes on one condition: Mark could name him. Mike thought about it for a second and nodded his head, yes. Mark held the cat up over his head by the scruff and said loudly, “This is life and his name is Hank.” The boys and she turned red in embarrassment: Mark didn’t even notice.
He was always doing that, doing things that embarrassed the boys and her. It made her so mad, him embarrassing her and the boys with his strange behavior. That is another reason the marriage fell apart, besides the abuse: he wouldn’t behave as she wanted. He said he would try, do what she wanted him to do, and then act so silent and stiff that it made her angrier. He wouldn’t just be relaxed and interact with people in a relaxed way,
She never could break him of it. Mark wouldn’t conform to what Lisa thought was right. Barbra said to both of them that they were fighting for power in the relationship, and this could be true, but it sure felt like he was trying to embarrass her in front of people to prove a point. When they talked about it, Mark always blew it off and this led to her saying something and then to him saying something, and it went on and on, getting more vicious all the time. Finally, if lucky, Mark would leave the house screaming that she was not his mother. She knew that. All she wanted him to do was to behave in a way that wouldn’t embarrass her in front of people. He just couldn’t or wouldn’t do it.
After he left and he came over to see the boys, he would be very quiet and formal like a mannered guest, which he was. But she could tell that he was holding back something and she didn’t like it, still. She didn’t mention it.
All she ever wanted was for her marriage to be successful. And when it wasn’t, or when she realized that it wasn’t going to be, she became a bitter vindictive bitch, and she knew it. She had wasted 13 years of her life with a boring brute who had beaten the love for him out of her. Whenever he came over to see the boys, she cold feel her cheeks suck in as if she had eaten a dozen lemons and she would be cold and short with him.
But when Patt came over, she and the boys would play board games or listen to his stories or watch movies. Everything would be light and fun. Not the weary-gray boredom that Mark brought with him.
Hank didn’t last either. It was total Hell. Mike let Hank out at night and he fought anything with four feet. The fights kept her, Mike, and the neighbors awake every night for nearly three months. She couldn’t bring herself to take Hank back. Mike would spend hours playing with Hank as if he was a kitten. Mike could even stroke his scars and fresh wounds. Hank would sleep on Mike’s belly when Mike took a nap. Mike loved Hank and Hank loved Mike. It would break Mike’s heart and she wouldn’t do that again.
The cops had just left for the second time that week after there had been a call about Hank disturbing the peace. Lisa finally had to admit that it was better for all concerned to take Hank back to the shelter and try another cat. She was about to tell Mike that when a red Ford 150 barreled around the corner and drove over Hank as if he was a beer can and drove on with black smoke belching out the tail pipe.
Usually Hank would barely miss at getting hit by an inch but this time he didn’t. Maybe it was because his left eye was almost closed with bandages from last night’s fight or maybe it was from the vicious scar on his left hind leg he got from a fight with an opossum last week. Whatever it was, Hank froze when he heard the truck rounding the corner, looked the driver in the eye, snarled and jumped into the truck’s tires, fighting the tires with all his might.
There was a quiet that was unique for the neighborhood. No birds singing, no Harley riding up, no deep thunder of the latest Gangsta rap as their low riders full of bling hit the speed bumps. Nothing.
A young male cat across the street saw the whole thing. He came over to Hank, sniffed at what was left and then stood guard. Hank had fought him last week and he still bore the wounds of that battle. Lisa grabbed a box and ran out to the street and picked up Hank and took him back to Mike, who was stunned. The young male cat followed her up the porch steps and lay underneath the wooden bench that ran around the porch, like Hank used to do. He began to meow a fugue, a fugue for a fallen enemy.
Mike took the box from Lisa and went to his room and cried for over an hour; just like he did when his father had left. She felt so helpless: just like when Mark left.
Mike called his father later that night and Mark drove in from Benicia to comfort Mike. Mark sat on the couch with Mike and said nothing for a long time. Lisa wanted Mark to say something, ask Mike how he felt, but she knew that to say something would do more harm than good and so she stayed silent
That was a year ago. Since then Lisa asked Mike if he wanted another cat and he said no. And kept saying no until yesterday when the Dunns asked Mike if he wanted to come over and to play with some kittens. Mike went over after supper and stayed for an hour. When he came back, he had picked out a kitten and named him Mocha after the mocha coffee drink. He asked if he could have a kitten and Lisa said of course he could.
Now, they were going to pick up Mocha. She had gotten all new stuff that morning and looked forward to raising a new a kitten.
“Hi Cathy. How do you feel?” Lisa said to Cathy Dunn as she waddled down to the stairs steps, 6 months pregnant. Cathy’s hubby, Frank, had opened the garage underneath the house and let Mike play with the kittens.
“Ready to pick up Mocha?” Cathy said to Mike and he replied with a head nod of yes.
Cathy had waddled over next to Lisa and whispered to her, “Who owns the blue van that I have been seeing around lately?”
“That is Patt’s, a former student of mine.”
“Is that a perk for teaching high school?” asked Cathy.
Lisa smiled.
“Mommy can we go now?” said Mike with Mocha purring in his arms.
“Yes, we can. Thanks Cathy for the kitten.”
“Anytime, feel free Mike to come over and play with the kittens any time you want. We won’t be keeping them for long”
“Thanks Cathy,” said Mike as he held the kitten in his arm and nuzzled it with his nose.
Lisa and Mike walked out of the garage and back across Majestic. “Nosy bitch,” Lisa muttered under her breath.
* * *
The next day found Mark at the First Street Pier’s parking lot in wet cold fog so thick that he thought he heard Boggy talking about a “beautiful friendship.” He was visiting Donald and Danielle, a mallard couple he knew. They would listen to him as he dumped his woes about looking for work, missing his boys, Lisa and other assorted things; like his sensitivity about his height or when in the Hell should he do The Steps.
When he left Lisa and everything fell apart, he would go to the First Street Pier to feed the ducks. One day when he was at the pier, Danielle and Donald waddled up to him and began to eat sour dough baguette out of his hand. It struck him this might be a sign from God, so he began talking to them, when no one was around. It worked better than his humans sponsor; the ducks had less tolerance for bullshit.
He knew he was crazy, thinking ducks actually knew what he was saying, but it appeared they did. Donald would peck at him when he had his head up his ass and Danielle would nuzzle him when pain would come.
After half a loaf Donald was getting full of bread and Mark’s bullshit and was walking toward a puddle of water to relieve himself when a new steel-colored Volvo station wagon whipped into the parking lot and nearly hit him. Donald flew away squawking at the rudeness of the driver. Danielle was beside herself and yelled at Mark to do something to curb his kind.
Mark sighed as he rose and began walking over to the Volvo. He was 15 feet away when the driver’s door suddenly opened and out popped Barbra Bayer, his ex- therapist. “This is strange,” muttered Mark as Barbra hurried over to Donald.
Barbra Bayer was a small, thin woman with bright eyes and a shoulder-length auburn perm. She was quiet, read some of the same books that Mark did, and called him on his shit. Also, she was Catholic and understood the quagmire that was Mark’s relationship with God. Lisa and Mark saw Barbra before they got engaged and for the next five years as a couple and then for another five seeing her separately.
Mark ended his relationship with Barbra three years before he left Lisa by saying that he didn’t trust her anymore. Barbra asked why and Mark couldn’t say. He knew intellectually that she had his best interest at heart and was evenhanded with him and Lisa. Mark knew that she loved him and would do anything to keep the relationship together. But in the end for some unknown reason Mark’s trust in her stopped and he had to leave.
It wasn’t until he had left Lisa, for a good two years, before Mark ever found out why the trust in Barbra had left. He couldn’t live with her loving him as he was so he had to run away. Barbara saw all of him and didn’t run nor laugh, just let him be himself and loved him for him. He finally had a taste of what he dreamed about all his life and walked away from it. He couldn’t stand it , it felt as if the world pressed him into the earth.
There was something else; something that had lately come to him, Barbra didn’t understand Mark’s alcoholism. It wasn’t until Mark got back to meeting and working The Steps did he realize this. He wasn’t mad. Many in the helping professions didn’t get it either. Only those who are in recovery or a few “normies” got what it was to be an alcoholic and Barbra wasn’t one of them. Something told him it was time to go, so he left.
“Did I hit him?” Barbara said as she ran up to see Donald shitting in the water. She looked up from Donald startled and whispered, “...Mark?”
“No, you didn’t hit him,” Mark said as Donald waddled over to Danielle and began to nuzzle her.
“Friends of yours?” said Barbra.
“Yeah, they are my the-rapist,” joked Mark.
“Hmm,” said Barbra and looked Mark straight in the eye. Mark didn’t crack a smile and wasn’t going to until he thought he’d better do it or else he would end back in the hospital for more than six days this time. Barbra’s eyes lit up and she laughed, “You haven’t changed.”
“No, I have,” Mark deadpanned.
“Oh,” she said, as she looked him the eyes. He felt her just being with him.
“I better go before I make a fool out of myself,” said Mark as he turned and walked toward his car.
“It is good to see you,” said Barbra to his back
“And, it was good to see you,” Mark responded.
When Mark got to his car, he turned and watched Barbra walking to the pier in the fog. Donald and Daniel waddled after her, telling Barbra all about Mark and how much he had changed in the two and a half years he had been in Benicia. Barbra stopped and allowed the ducks to catch up, and they walked out together towards the pier. It looked like Barbra actually understood them. Mark thought to himself, “Man this is weird.”
He was about to get into his car when a thought blazed through so hard it buckled his knees. It told him to ask for a session. Mark knew it was God and he’d better do it or else shit would happen until he did it. He called out to Barbra,” Wait up,” as he ran over to her.
She stopped.
“What’s up?” She said as Mark approached.
“Is the door still open?”
“Yes it is. I don’t have my book with me.”
“I’ll call. Same number?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” said Mark, looking her in the eye. He had meant more and Barbra got it.
“You’re welcome,” said Barbara.
* * *
The storm exploded in a torrent as Mark parked near the corner of Shattuck and Ashby. Thru the downpour in the traffic-stream Mark saw raindrops catching headlights becoming glass drops. When they broke on the Shattuck’s shinny blackness they explode in a thousand more tears. Mark watched rain until the alarm on his cell phone went off. He took his brown plaid cap off the passenger seat and got out of his Rav4. He walked 10 feet to the outside gate, dialed in the security code and went in.
Across a patio from the entrance he dialed the same security code in the second door, walked past Barbra Bayer’s door and into the waiting room.
Wearing a big smile, Barbra came out a few minutes later in a white linen jacket and matching calf length skirt. Underneath the jacket she wore a cornflower blue silk top. A set of white pearls hung slightly below the top of her collar.
Mark rose and followed her to her office and sat down on an ocher couch that matched the carpet. He listened to those fiercely falling raindrops as his palms sweated. He stuttered.
“I need to say something about the way I left therapy. I lost trust in you because you saw me down to my bones and loved me and I couldn’t handle it. It was all I ever dreamed about, to be loved for me. Yet when I had it from you I was scared. So instead of biting the bullet and staying with you, I ran out of fear, fear that I would love you and then you would leave.”
“There is a lot to love Mark and I wouldn’t have left.”
“Then why couldn’t Lisa love me like that?”
“Ask Lisa.”
The raindrops were dancing less viciously in their dance on the windowpane while the wind whistled.
“I discovered something,” said Mark, staring down at the floor
“What is it?”
“That in our absence we define our presence.”
Barbara thought for a moment then bowed her head slightly and smiled. Mark returned her bow and felt his cheeks warm as they drew up toward his eyes in pride.
“You are proud of yourself,” said Barbra.
“Yeah, I am.”
The wind drove sheets of raindrops into the windowpane for what seemed like a long time. The wind was a Greek chorus in some forgotten play.
“You know she is not coming back,” said Barbra finally.
“Yeah. I got the final decree last week.”
‘No. The decree is just a piece of paper, Mark. Get it out of that fantasy I know you have, that she is coming back. She is done with you. It is over. If you don’t accept that, you will get sick.”
“So she discards me like a used coffee cup?”
“Mark. Does it really matter? She doesn’t want you.”
“I doubt she ever did. All she wanted were the parties and the doll house I couldn’t build for her.”
“You know it is not about her.”
“Yeah,” Mark said dejectedly. “It’s about good old Mom. The scar that won’t go away.”
“It won’t. You have to learn to live with it?”
The rain came in waves growing louder and louder until it drove them to silence. After a minute the undertow returned and they could speak. Mark sat up and put his elbows on his knees and stared down into the floor.
“You know of breath work?”
“Yes,” said Barbra.
“I went with a friend to a free workshop and found an image that gives me peace when Mom pops up. It is of me looking at my mother when I was nursing. Her head is draped in a blue veil and she is dressed in a white smock. Her skin was like a cool, pale,
off-white porcelain. I am looking in her eyes and she wasn’t seeing me, she was far away and very overwhelmed. Her breast, so full of milk, always has a drop waiting to drop from the exposed nipple. I desperately want but can’t get it, ever. At first, when I had this image, hate would come up and it would become adrenaline flowing thru my veins. My righteousness would strut out with all of its mock nobility and then I would stumble, fall and make a fool out of myself. After I would pick myself up, I would have the strength to see what Mom is and what Lisa is. Afterwards I feel empty, alone and I know that I am not going to find peace until I accept what I got and didn’t get from my mother and move on. I will always be desperate for the breast, but the breast must be mine, not my mother’s. When the hate comes now, I pray and it becomes a whisper from my past.”
“Sound like you learned a lot.”
“I have known it for a long time. I get it now on a daily basis. Why didn’t you stop the mess that was my marriage before it started?”
“I was there to support the relationship.”
“Relationship space ship. It was shit from the beginning and you know it. Lisa abused me from the very start and then I began abusing her to defend myself. Why didn’t you say something to stop the abortion before the kids came? I brought two lives into this world and scarred them permanently, trusting that you would say something when it was beyond hope. We spent a good 10 years on this fucking couch and Lisa is still here. Hell, we bought you a fucking new car. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because you wanted it to work.”
“But it was a shit pile pretending it was a house!” Mark cried out, collapsing back, sobbing so deeply that his torso rocked the couch.
“Barbra, the kids, I wrecked their lives.”
“Kids are strong.”
Mark shot up from the couch and stood towering over the seated Barbra. “And that is bullshit and you know it. In our case the scars from divorce didn’t have to be. ”
“Mark, please sit down or leave. And quit blaming me for your mistake. You were and are responsible for your own well-being. All I am is a tool.”
“A fucking tool that didn’t work,” mumbled Mark as he sat down on the couch exhausted. He threw his head back.
The raindrops were pinging instead of pounding the windowpane. The wind hummed.
“Mark,” said Barbra. “What did Lisa leave in you?”
“Nothing,” Mark said bitterly.
“I think she gave you something that is pretty great.”
“What’s that?”
“She gave you enough love to heal you enough to see that you are worth more than a bad relationship.”
Mark didn’t say anything so Barbra continued. “And what did you give Lisa?”
“Beside a lot of shit?”
“Yes, besides that.”
Mark thought hard for a minute and said, staring down into the carpet. “She once said to me, before I left, ‘Thank you for loving me enough so I could love myself.’”
“Mark, look at me,” demanded Barbra.
Mark slowly lifted his head like a man lifting a weight that is almost too heavy for him. He stared into Barbara’s eye and saw something that he didn’t expect to see. It was Barbra without the wall of therapist. She had let her guard down for a brief second and Mark could see a frightened child being held by a scarred woman. He finally understood why she hadn’t stopped trying. She was trying to make it work for herself.
“You acted out your own past in us. You tried to make you and your parents’ failed marriage work,” said Mark in a calm voice.
Barbara’s left eye twitched. She let out a giggle. Mark observed in silence. In his heart, he knew he was right. She darted behind the therapist wall.
“Do you think that I would do that?”
“Not consciously. No”
“Why unconsciously?”
“Because on some level you wanted us to succeed where you and your parents failed.”
“How did you know that my parents’ marriage failed?”
“Lisa told me.”
“Oh, OK for boundaries.”
“Some boundaries are meant to fall,” said Mark
There was a long exhausted silence. It was time for him to leave.
“There is one more thing,” said Mark. “Thank you for being in my life. For all the anger about what you didn’t or did do for me, what you did helped me immensely. I couldn’t have survived without your work.”
“And yours too.”
“Yes and mine too. Thank you,” Mark said and looked straight into Barbra’s eyes. In that moment he felt met. “There is one more thing that I need to say. I felt you never accepted Mark as the drunk. You don’t understand alcoholism.”
“Mark, you are more than a drunk.”
“No. I am a drunk and a dope fiend. I am complete in that.”
“Mark, you are more.”
“I am a drunk and dope fiend,” Mark said, looking in her eyes.
“Mark, you are limiting yourself. You can grow out of that place into something more.”
“I am a drunk and a dope fiend,” Mark said, as he still stared into her eyes.
Neither would give an inch and Mark knew it. He got up and walked towards the door.
“Mark,” said Barbra as he had his hand on the door. He turned and looked at her. Mark could make out a tear forming in her left eye.
“Mark, I have felt your presence by your absence.
“And I am so sorry it didn’t work.”
Mark bowed and left
* * *
“I would like to talk about Mark for a minute,” said Barbra Bayer.
It was the week after the session with Mark and there was a knot in her stomach bottom that perturbed her. She didn’t know the why of it, but she knew the how of it. She must talk to Lisa about her and Mark.
“What about?” said Lisa, dressed in a white linen pantsuit. Underneath she wore a light blue silk top. Around her shoulders she had a gray wool shawl that matched the gray in her shoulder-length auburn hair.
Barbara was dressed in black jeans and a black turtleneck with a black chamois shirt over it. A dark green shawl was draped around her shoulders.
The second storm of the season had blown in the day before, and Lisa could hear the rain as Barbara spoke. She felt as if she would be sick if it rained anymore that winter. She felt cold, she always felt cold, and drew the shawl tighter around her and focused in on what Barbra was saying.
“Cold?” Said Barbra.
“Yeah. I have been cold since Halloween.”
“Yeah I know. Want me to turn the heat up?”
“No. I am OK. What about Mark?”
“Do you blame me for not telling you the marriage wouldn’t work?
“No,” said Lisa curtly. “I want to do Clear Compassion work,” Lisa whined.
“Did you ever love him for him?”
“No.”
“Do you feel that he loved you?”
“After or before he abused me?”
“Before.”
“And was it me or his mother?”
“You.”
The rain quieted down as Lisa almost whispered
“Yeah, in his own strange needy way.”
“Why did you marry him then?”
“Because I thought I loved him. All I wanted him to do was to be more acceptable, but he couldn’t. He said the wrong thing at the wrong time at parties and it was like pulling teeth to have him to take me out anywhere. We didn’t have any friends and the friends I did have never liked him after they learned about the abuse. They all thought I was a loser for staying with him.”
“Why did you?”
“The boys and what we have talked about before, I am a Four on the Ennegram and needed to make my relationships work. We have been over this and over this.”
“You told me, before you got married that you could always get a divorce if it didn’t work out. Does that seem strange to you?”
“Not given the circumstance I went through before I married him.”
“Do you believe in, ‘until death do us part’?”
“It’s nice if it happens. What is going on?”
“I just wanted to check something out for myself.”
“I don’t want to talk about my relationship with Mark. It is over and I want to go on. The girl who married him is gone and the woman who divorced him doesn’t want a boy who clings to his mother’s teat. I am not his mother. He disgusts me in his weakness, buying me flowers and saying it was from the boys.”
“He still cares.”
“I don’t want to hurt him, but it is over. It has been two and a half years. We are not getting back together. I am done with him.”
“And that is that?”
“Yes, that is that.”
“And you throw him away like a used coffee cup?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Do you feel his presence?”
“With or without the boys?”
“Either.”
All Barbra could hear was the steady hiss of car tires on Telegraph.
“Why?”
Barbra looked away from Lisa, dropped her eyes to her left and stared at the ocher carpet for what seemed like forever.
“I ran into Mark last week on Shattuck, and the only thing he said to me was, ‘in our absence we define our presence.’ ”
“Yeah, he told the same thing a while ago.”
“And did you think about it?”
“No. I have been too busy. I had a feeling it was about us and I didn’t want to go there.”
“It is and it isn’t. What I got from it is that when we leave, we leave the best and/ or the worst of us in each other.”
“And it is not black and white.”
“No, it isn’t. It is gray like the color of your shawl. It is mixed and messy and it gets everywhere and in everything. What I am trying to say is that some of Mark is in you and some of you is in him, and no matter how hard you try to build walls around you to keep that out you, you can’t. It is there and you can’t run from it, or change it or hide from it. I suggested that you look at it. God does talk through mouth of babes.”
“ ‘… And assholes of drunks,’ I know, I heard it many times from Mark. Why bring this up now? We have worked through my wanting out of the marriage. Why two and a half years later do you bring it up? Aren’t I supposed to be moving on? Aren’t we?”
“I know, and we have, but the onion is peeled constantly and it must be honored.” The knot that was in the bottom of Barbra’s stomach eased and she knew, in time, that it would disappear but she still felt like she failed and she didn’t know why.
* * *
Barbra let the professional 10 minutes lapse after Lisa’s appointment before she locked her office and began the commute home to Walnut Creek. It was smooth and she turned on the radio to let it drive the sadness and guilt out of her heart.
She smelled her husband’s spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove as she opened the door. He must have gone into the bedroom, she thought, as she heard the bath being run. She dropped her things on the bed and went into the bathroom.
“Hi,” she said to her husband’s back as he stood up from testing the water. Soap bubbles were on his hands as he grabbed a hand towel and dried them and walked toward her.
Barbra walked into his outstretched arms and buried her face in his chest and sighed. “This feels good.”
“Yeah, it does,” sighed her husband. “How was your day?”
“OK, and yours?”
“Great! “
Barbara began to sob.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing I can talk about. Just hold me. I need to be held.”
Barbra Bayer’s husband held her as her mascara ran down the front of his white dress shirt.
* * *
Lisa walked through the door and into her ten-year-old Mike’s arms. It was Tuesday and it was Mark’s night to bed with the boys. She could smell Mark’s chicken cacciatore and as usual it smelled delicious. She held her youngest tight and looked at the curl of his hair, just like Mark’s. She looked gently into his eyes, and saw Mark’s wide face, his cleft chin. It was too much; she broke the embrace.
“Hi,” said Lisa to Mike.
Her oldest came out from the kitchen and embraced the both of them. Lisa drank this and held it. She felt Mark’s essence in the boys. Finally she felt filled and broke the hug and kissed both of them on the cheek and walked through the living room/den into the kitchen.
“Where is your father?”
“He had to get back to Benicia to go to a meeting,” said Mike.
Lisa lifted the big pot of Mark’s chicken cacciatore. He didn’t cook much, but when he did, he did it well, thought Lisa as she put the lid down. She lifted the lids of the two other pots and saw the raw broccoli in the steamer and water with a swirl of olive oil in the other. She turned the heat on and walked back into the living/den area to her desk to check her messages.
“He did everything. He said that all we had to do was to cook the noodles and we could eat,” said the oldest, Joe, as he played on the PC next to her desk. Mike looked over his shoulder while he played.
“Any messages for me?” Lisa asked the boys.
“Patt called,” said Mike. “And he wants to know if he can come over tonight around 8 and what are you doing this weekend. He will call back later,” said Mike as he watched Joe defeat the Republic as Luke Skywalker.
“Oh,” said Lisa as she walked back through the kitchen and into her room. She felt like running a bath. The boys could watch the noodles and the broccoli, while they cooked, thought Lisa to herself. She yelled out to the boys, “I am going to take a bath. Joe, watch the broccoli and the noodles. I will be out in a few,” she said as she undressed and got into her bathrobe.
The tub filled quickly with the scalding hot water while Lisa put bubble bath and some bath oil into the water. They were presents from Mark when he got his new job. When the tub was full and before she got in to soak, Lisa went back into her bedroom and got her cell phone. She left it on the tub’s edge when she got in.
After 5 minutes or so of the bath’s delicious warmth Lisa looked at her phone to check the time. Mark would be at the meeting so he wouldn’t have his cell on, she didn’t want to talk to him, just leave him a thank you for supper. She pushed his speed dial number on her cell phone and eased back into the soapy warmth of her bath. To her surprise Mark picked it up.
“This is Mark. How can I help?”
“Aren’t you at a meeting?”
“I am walking into one right now. How can I help?”
“I just want to say thank you for fixing your killer butt chicken cacciatore dinner.”
“It was my pleasure,” said Mark in a calm, cheerful voice.
There was a long, awkward silence. Usually they would play the game of seeing who could hang up first. Both of them still wanted power. It had been going on ever since Mark had left. Lisa felt disgusted by this and knew it also troubled Mark, but neither of them would change or even mention it to the other.
“Is that all?” Mark said.
“No, it’s not,” Lisa said, relieved not to have to be the first one to go. “What I need to say I need to say now or I would lose what courage I have,” said Lisa, watching the words tumble out of her mouth in horror.
“So say it,” Mark said bracing himself for the worst, that she was pregnant by Pat. He knew of Pat from the boys and had to bite his tongue every time his name was mentioned. He could taste the warm blood from his tongue as it filled his mouth. He waited for the worst.
“I saw Barbra and we talked about what you said to her, your thing about absence. I found out that it was true for me. In your absence I feel your presence. Every time I look at the boys I see you, especially in Mike. And I just wanted to say that.”
“Do you feel my presence without the boys?”
Lisa went inside and poked around her heart and found nothing but scars draped in 3 a.m. screams.
“No.”
Mark hung up. Lisa put the phone on the side of the tub, closed her eyes and felt sadness run her mascara down her face, forming puddles before the iceberg-bubbles between her breasts. She began to think of Pat and began to play with herself.
End
M.R. Merris
copyrighted by the author.
7th draft
Benicia library
7/15/2007 2:11 PM
To Ms. Deborah Meyers
Before the dogs woke, before the men scraped the ice off their windshields and went off to work, before the sun got up, in the dream-before-wake did Mark Morse begin to grasp how his ex-wife, Lisa Hoodd, was still in him and how she wasn’t. And what wasn’t her was actually him and what wasn’t him was somebody, something else or God.
Before he could pee, bitterness would rise from his heart and poison what good she had imparted in him. At first he could not see the venom destroying what was left, but after many mornings where he drew the covers over his head and howled to God did he begin to see how little his bitterness was. It was then, as he held the silly and the sad, the truth and the deceit, did he feel the dynamic of the marriage. It was then he wondered if he was wrong for marrying her, wrong for leaving, or was the whole damned thing God’s will.
This suspicion slowly ate a hole in his heart. So when he was tired of the bleeding, at two and a half years, Mark took it to John Lobos, his therapist. He remembered John’s calm voice at the session when he responded to Mark’s distrust with, “It didn’t work and it won’t work and you know it. She wanted the divorce! Has she given you any indication that she wanted to try it again? Mark you didn’t respect her and you don’t trust nor respect her now. Dude wake up!”
Mark realized all his verbiage about the sacredness of family and staying together for the kids’ sake was bullshit. All he wanted was not to be alone, no matter what lies he had to live, no matter who he had to hurt or how much he was hurt.
“Why do you still try to make it work in your heart?” John said.
“Cause I love her,” he said automatically, amazed at what stumbled out.
“Yes, you might have, but it’s not that.”
“What is it?”
“We have talked about this before. She represents Mom…
“…and I want to make it right?”
All you could hear was the clocking ticking above Mark’s head.
“OK. It’s what my couple’s counselor, Barbra Bayer, said fifteen years ago. I wanted the Universal Teat and Lisa didn’t want the job. What do I do with what’s left of her in me?”
“You know.”
“Do I?” asked Mark, as he looked Jon Lobos in the eye as John glanced at the clock and intoned, “It’s time.”
* * *
A week after Mark’s session with John, Lisa called to talk about his visitation schedule for the next two months. After the scheduling was done there was a lull in the conversation, which usually meant it was time for Mark to bid his goodbye. Instead he heard himself offer. “In our absence our presence is defined.”
“What do you mean?” Lisa Hoodd said, surprised.
“The space in each of us that was filled with the other is absent. What is left now is perhaps, the essence of the other.”
He waited in the heavy stillness and through it he heard her heart beating in her breath.
“Like negative space?”
“Yeah like negative space.”
“Oh, I don’t know if I agree with you.”
“OK,” said Mark.
The silence was so pregnant with meaning and without meaning it shivered Mark’s back; he didn’t want to know its meaning so Mark broke the silence with, “I think I’d better say goodbye.”
“Goodbye Mark.”
* * *
“In our absence our presence is defined,” thought Lisa Hoodd, fresh from her bath, as she walked across the street to the Dunn’s to pick out a kitten for Mike, her younger child. Lisa chewed on Mark’s statement as she chewed chocolate: slowly, savoring every crumb, allowing the rich taste to float into her being and fill her instinctive need for solace. When she was with Mark, she allowed his words to flow threw her and she compulsively looked for hidden meanings in them. She was dedicated to always striving to be growing, always analyzing anything and everything that went on inside and outside her. She knew what he was saying and doing had a deeper meaning and that meaning had another level and her life was committed to find those levels and always be aware of where the levels were and how they came and went. Mark didn’t care. All he wanted to do was to go to work, write, make his models and take care of the kids. He didn’t mind her analyzing what was in her and what on the outside was affecting her. He would listen and, when asked, give his comment, but he didn’t want Lisa going “inside his head” and being his therapist. That was Barbra’s job, not hers. When she did it, which was often, it would drive Mark nuts. He didn’t want to live his life committed to “self realization.” In fact every time he said the word it would come out in a shell of mockery.
When they split, her need to hammer out the hidden meaning of Mark’s words vanished. So when he made the statement about absence, she was expecting it would roll over her, but it didn’t. Somehow a small hidden piece stuck in her mind and she mulled it over and over trying to see if it was true for her, and it wasn’t. There was a pain, a guilt, a remorse that something of Mark didn’t stay in her. Thirteen years of marriage and she could walk away and never think of him again. Something was sad about that, something terribly sad.
Lisa was thinking about this when Hank, Mike’s first cat, popped into her mind as she walked over to the Dunn’s, to look at a new litter of kittens. When Mark left, Lisa had promised Mike a cat, and had kept her promise. Mark, like her father, hated cats, so in the past when Mike had wanted one, the answer was always no.
Mike called Mark and they all went to SPCA together. Mike started to wander through cages of cats, and couldn’t make up his mind. Mark had found an old black male cat, scarred, beaten up and mean. He was playing with him as if he was a kitten. A young volunteer at the SPCA was watching in amazement as Mark petted the cat. He asked the volunteer if he could hold him and the kid said yes. The kid opened the cage and the cat walked out into Mark’s arms. He cuddled him and the cat purred. Mike came up to Mark and began to pet him as well. When Lisa and her older child, Joe, tried to pet him, the cat would pull away and snarl. Mike asked Mark if he could have the cat and Mark said yes on one condition: Mark could name him. Mike thought about it for a second and nodded his head, yes. Mark held the cat up over his head by the scruff and said loudly, “This is life and his name is Hank.” The boys and she turned red in embarrassment: Mark didn’t even notice.
He was always doing that, doing things that embarrassed the boys and her. It made her so mad, him embarrassing her and the boys with his strange behavior. That is another reason the marriage fell apart, besides the abuse: he wouldn’t behave as she wanted. He said he would try, do what she wanted him to do, and then act so silent and stiff that it made her angrier. He wouldn’t just be relaxed and interact with people in a relaxed way,
She never could break him of it. Mark wouldn’t conform to what Lisa thought was right. Barbra said to both of them that they were fighting for power in the relationship, and this could be true, but it sure felt like he was trying to embarrass her in front of people to prove a point. When they talked about it, Mark always blew it off and this led to her saying something and then to him saying something, and it went on and on, getting more vicious all the time. Finally, if lucky, Mark would leave the house screaming that she was not his mother. She knew that. All she wanted him to do was to behave in a way that wouldn’t embarrass her in front of people. He just couldn’t or wouldn’t do it.
After he left and he came over to see the boys, he would be very quiet and formal like a mannered guest, which he was. But she could tell that he was holding back something and she didn’t like it, still. She didn’t mention it.
All she ever wanted was for her marriage to be successful. And when it wasn’t, or when she realized that it wasn’t going to be, she became a bitter vindictive bitch, and she knew it. She had wasted 13 years of her life with a boring brute who had beaten the love for him out of her. Whenever he came over to see the boys, she cold feel her cheeks suck in as if she had eaten a dozen lemons and she would be cold and short with him.
But when Patt came over, she and the boys would play board games or listen to his stories or watch movies. Everything would be light and fun. Not the weary-gray boredom that Mark brought with him.
Hank didn’t last either. It was total Hell. Mike let Hank out at night and he fought anything with four feet. The fights kept her, Mike, and the neighbors awake every night for nearly three months. She couldn’t bring herself to take Hank back. Mike would spend hours playing with Hank as if he was a kitten. Mike could even stroke his scars and fresh wounds. Hank would sleep on Mike’s belly when Mike took a nap. Mike loved Hank and Hank loved Mike. It would break Mike’s heart and she wouldn’t do that again.
The cops had just left for the second time that week after there had been a call about Hank disturbing the peace. Lisa finally had to admit that it was better for all concerned to take Hank back to the shelter and try another cat. She was about to tell Mike that when a red Ford 150 barreled around the corner and drove over Hank as if he was a beer can and drove on with black smoke belching out the tail pipe.
Usually Hank would barely miss at getting hit by an inch but this time he didn’t. Maybe it was because his left eye was almost closed with bandages from last night’s fight or maybe it was from the vicious scar on his left hind leg he got from a fight with an opossum last week. Whatever it was, Hank froze when he heard the truck rounding the corner, looked the driver in the eye, snarled and jumped into the truck’s tires, fighting the tires with all his might.
There was a quiet that was unique for the neighborhood. No birds singing, no Harley riding up, no deep thunder of the latest Gangsta rap as their low riders full of bling hit the speed bumps. Nothing.
A young male cat across the street saw the whole thing. He came over to Hank, sniffed at what was left and then stood guard. Hank had fought him last week and he still bore the wounds of that battle. Lisa grabbed a box and ran out to the street and picked up Hank and took him back to Mike, who was stunned. The young male cat followed her up the porch steps and lay underneath the wooden bench that ran around the porch, like Hank used to do. He began to meow a fugue, a fugue for a fallen enemy.
Mike took the box from Lisa and went to his room and cried for over an hour; just like he did when his father had left. She felt so helpless: just like when Mark left.
Mike called his father later that night and Mark drove in from Benicia to comfort Mike. Mark sat on the couch with Mike and said nothing for a long time. Lisa wanted Mark to say something, ask Mike how he felt, but she knew that to say something would do more harm than good and so she stayed silent
That was a year ago. Since then Lisa asked Mike if he wanted another cat and he said no. And kept saying no until yesterday when the Dunns asked Mike if he wanted to come over and to play with some kittens. Mike went over after supper and stayed for an hour. When he came back, he had picked out a kitten and named him Mocha after the mocha coffee drink. He asked if he could have a kitten and Lisa said of course he could.
Now, they were going to pick up Mocha. She had gotten all new stuff that morning and looked forward to raising a new a kitten.
“Hi Cathy. How do you feel?” Lisa said to Cathy Dunn as she waddled down to the stairs steps, 6 months pregnant. Cathy’s hubby, Frank, had opened the garage underneath the house and let Mike play with the kittens.
“Ready to pick up Mocha?” Cathy said to Mike and he replied with a head nod of yes.
Cathy had waddled over next to Lisa and whispered to her, “Who owns the blue van that I have been seeing around lately?”
“That is Patt’s, a former student of mine.”
“Is that a perk for teaching high school?” asked Cathy.
Lisa smiled.
“Mommy can we go now?” said Mike with Mocha purring in his arms.
“Yes, we can. Thanks Cathy for the kitten.”
“Anytime, feel free Mike to come over and play with the kittens any time you want. We won’t be keeping them for long”
“Thanks Cathy,” said Mike as he held the kitten in his arm and nuzzled it with his nose.
Lisa and Mike walked out of the garage and back across Majestic. “Nosy bitch,” Lisa muttered under her breath.
* * *
The next day found Mark at the First Street Pier’s parking lot in wet cold fog so thick that he thought he heard Boggy talking about a “beautiful friendship.” He was visiting Donald and Danielle, a mallard couple he knew. They would listen to him as he dumped his woes about looking for work, missing his boys, Lisa and other assorted things; like his sensitivity about his height or when in the Hell should he do The Steps.
When he left Lisa and everything fell apart, he would go to the First Street Pier to feed the ducks. One day when he was at the pier, Danielle and Donald waddled up to him and began to eat sour dough baguette out of his hand. It struck him this might be a sign from God, so he began talking to them, when no one was around. It worked better than his humans sponsor; the ducks had less tolerance for bullshit.
He knew he was crazy, thinking ducks actually knew what he was saying, but it appeared they did. Donald would peck at him when he had his head up his ass and Danielle would nuzzle him when pain would come.
After half a loaf Donald was getting full of bread and Mark’s bullshit and was walking toward a puddle of water to relieve himself when a new steel-colored Volvo station wagon whipped into the parking lot and nearly hit him. Donald flew away squawking at the rudeness of the driver. Danielle was beside herself and yelled at Mark to do something to curb his kind.
Mark sighed as he rose and began walking over to the Volvo. He was 15 feet away when the driver’s door suddenly opened and out popped Barbra Bayer, his ex- therapist. “This is strange,” muttered Mark as Barbra hurried over to Donald.
Barbra Bayer was a small, thin woman with bright eyes and a shoulder-length auburn perm. She was quiet, read some of the same books that Mark did, and called him on his shit. Also, she was Catholic and understood the quagmire that was Mark’s relationship with God. Lisa and Mark saw Barbra before they got engaged and for the next five years as a couple and then for another five seeing her separately.
Mark ended his relationship with Barbra three years before he left Lisa by saying that he didn’t trust her anymore. Barbra asked why and Mark couldn’t say. He knew intellectually that she had his best interest at heart and was evenhanded with him and Lisa. Mark knew that she loved him and would do anything to keep the relationship together. But in the end for some unknown reason Mark’s trust in her stopped and he had to leave.
It wasn’t until he had left Lisa, for a good two years, before Mark ever found out why the trust in Barbra had left. He couldn’t live with her loving him as he was so he had to run away. Barbara saw all of him and didn’t run nor laugh, just let him be himself and loved him for him. He finally had a taste of what he dreamed about all his life and walked away from it. He couldn’t stand it , it felt as if the world pressed him into the earth.
There was something else; something that had lately come to him, Barbra didn’t understand Mark’s alcoholism. It wasn’t until Mark got back to meeting and working The Steps did he realize this. He wasn’t mad. Many in the helping professions didn’t get it either. Only those who are in recovery or a few “normies” got what it was to be an alcoholic and Barbra wasn’t one of them. Something told him it was time to go, so he left.
“Did I hit him?” Barbara said as she ran up to see Donald shitting in the water. She looked up from Donald startled and whispered, “...Mark?”
“No, you didn’t hit him,” Mark said as Donald waddled over to Danielle and began to nuzzle her.
“Friends of yours?” said Barbra.
“Yeah, they are my the-rapist,” joked Mark.
“Hmm,” said Barbra and looked Mark straight in the eye. Mark didn’t crack a smile and wasn’t going to until he thought he’d better do it or else he would end back in the hospital for more than six days this time. Barbra’s eyes lit up and she laughed, “You haven’t changed.”
“No, I have,” Mark deadpanned.
“Oh,” she said, as she looked him the eyes. He felt her just being with him.
“I better go before I make a fool out of myself,” said Mark as he turned and walked toward his car.
“It is good to see you,” said Barbra to his back
“And, it was good to see you,” Mark responded.
When Mark got to his car, he turned and watched Barbra walking to the pier in the fog. Donald and Daniel waddled after her, telling Barbra all about Mark and how much he had changed in the two and a half years he had been in Benicia. Barbra stopped and allowed the ducks to catch up, and they walked out together towards the pier. It looked like Barbra actually understood them. Mark thought to himself, “Man this is weird.”
He was about to get into his car when a thought blazed through so hard it buckled his knees. It told him to ask for a session. Mark knew it was God and he’d better do it or else shit would happen until he did it. He called out to Barbra,” Wait up,” as he ran over to her.
She stopped.
“What’s up?” She said as Mark approached.
“Is the door still open?”
“Yes it is. I don’t have my book with me.”
“I’ll call. Same number?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you,” said Mark, looking her in the eye. He had meant more and Barbra got it.
“You’re welcome,” said Barbara.
* * *
The storm exploded in a torrent as Mark parked near the corner of Shattuck and Ashby. Thru the downpour in the traffic-stream Mark saw raindrops catching headlights becoming glass drops. When they broke on the Shattuck’s shinny blackness they explode in a thousand more tears. Mark watched rain until the alarm on his cell phone went off. He took his brown plaid cap off the passenger seat and got out of his Rav4. He walked 10 feet to the outside gate, dialed in the security code and went in.
Across a patio from the entrance he dialed the same security code in the second door, walked past Barbra Bayer’s door and into the waiting room.
Wearing a big smile, Barbra came out a few minutes later in a white linen jacket and matching calf length skirt. Underneath the jacket she wore a cornflower blue silk top. A set of white pearls hung slightly below the top of her collar.
Mark rose and followed her to her office and sat down on an ocher couch that matched the carpet. He listened to those fiercely falling raindrops as his palms sweated. He stuttered.
“I need to say something about the way I left therapy. I lost trust in you because you saw me down to my bones and loved me and I couldn’t handle it. It was all I ever dreamed about, to be loved for me. Yet when I had it from you I was scared. So instead of biting the bullet and staying with you, I ran out of fear, fear that I would love you and then you would leave.”
“There is a lot to love Mark and I wouldn’t have left.”
“Then why couldn’t Lisa love me like that?”
“Ask Lisa.”
The raindrops were dancing less viciously in their dance on the windowpane while the wind whistled.
“I discovered something,” said Mark, staring down at the floor
“What is it?”
“That in our absence we define our presence.”
Barbara thought for a moment then bowed her head slightly and smiled. Mark returned her bow and felt his cheeks warm as they drew up toward his eyes in pride.
“You are proud of yourself,” said Barbra.
“Yeah, I am.”
The wind drove sheets of raindrops into the windowpane for what seemed like a long time. The wind was a Greek chorus in some forgotten play.
“You know she is not coming back,” said Barbra finally.
“Yeah. I got the final decree last week.”
‘No. The decree is just a piece of paper, Mark. Get it out of that fantasy I know you have, that she is coming back. She is done with you. It is over. If you don’t accept that, you will get sick.”
“So she discards me like a used coffee cup?”
“Mark. Does it really matter? She doesn’t want you.”
“I doubt she ever did. All she wanted were the parties and the doll house I couldn’t build for her.”
“You know it is not about her.”
“Yeah,” Mark said dejectedly. “It’s about good old Mom. The scar that won’t go away.”
“It won’t. You have to learn to live with it?”
The rain came in waves growing louder and louder until it drove them to silence. After a minute the undertow returned and they could speak. Mark sat up and put his elbows on his knees and stared down into the floor.
“You know of breath work?”
“Yes,” said Barbra.
“I went with a friend to a free workshop and found an image that gives me peace when Mom pops up. It is of me looking at my mother when I was nursing. Her head is draped in a blue veil and she is dressed in a white smock. Her skin was like a cool, pale,
off-white porcelain. I am looking in her eyes and she wasn’t seeing me, she was far away and very overwhelmed. Her breast, so full of milk, always has a drop waiting to drop from the exposed nipple. I desperately want but can’t get it, ever. At first, when I had this image, hate would come up and it would become adrenaline flowing thru my veins. My righteousness would strut out with all of its mock nobility and then I would stumble, fall and make a fool out of myself. After I would pick myself up, I would have the strength to see what Mom is and what Lisa is. Afterwards I feel empty, alone and I know that I am not going to find peace until I accept what I got and didn’t get from my mother and move on. I will always be desperate for the breast, but the breast must be mine, not my mother’s. When the hate comes now, I pray and it becomes a whisper from my past.”
“Sound like you learned a lot.”
“I have known it for a long time. I get it now on a daily basis. Why didn’t you stop the mess that was my marriage before it started?”
“I was there to support the relationship.”
“Relationship space ship. It was shit from the beginning and you know it. Lisa abused me from the very start and then I began abusing her to defend myself. Why didn’t you say something to stop the abortion before the kids came? I brought two lives into this world and scarred them permanently, trusting that you would say something when it was beyond hope. We spent a good 10 years on this fucking couch and Lisa is still here. Hell, we bought you a fucking new car. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because you wanted it to work.”
“But it was a shit pile pretending it was a house!” Mark cried out, collapsing back, sobbing so deeply that his torso rocked the couch.
“Barbra, the kids, I wrecked their lives.”
“Kids are strong.”
Mark shot up from the couch and stood towering over the seated Barbra. “And that is bullshit and you know it. In our case the scars from divorce didn’t have to be. ”
“Mark, please sit down or leave. And quit blaming me for your mistake. You were and are responsible for your own well-being. All I am is a tool.”
“A fucking tool that didn’t work,” mumbled Mark as he sat down on the couch exhausted. He threw his head back.
The raindrops were pinging instead of pounding the windowpane. The wind hummed.
“Mark,” said Barbra. “What did Lisa leave in you?”
“Nothing,” Mark said bitterly.
“I think she gave you something that is pretty great.”
“What’s that?”
“She gave you enough love to heal you enough to see that you are worth more than a bad relationship.”
Mark didn’t say anything so Barbra continued. “And what did you give Lisa?”
“Beside a lot of shit?”
“Yes, besides that.”
Mark thought hard for a minute and said, staring down into the carpet. “She once said to me, before I left, ‘Thank you for loving me enough so I could love myself.’”
“Mark, look at me,” demanded Barbra.
Mark slowly lifted his head like a man lifting a weight that is almost too heavy for him. He stared into Barbara’s eye and saw something that he didn’t expect to see. It was Barbra without the wall of therapist. She had let her guard down for a brief second and Mark could see a frightened child being held by a scarred woman. He finally understood why she hadn’t stopped trying. She was trying to make it work for herself.
“You acted out your own past in us. You tried to make you and your parents’ failed marriage work,” said Mark in a calm voice.
Barbara’s left eye twitched. She let out a giggle. Mark observed in silence. In his heart, he knew he was right. She darted behind the therapist wall.
“Do you think that I would do that?”
“Not consciously. No”
“Why unconsciously?”
“Because on some level you wanted us to succeed where you and your parents failed.”
“How did you know that my parents’ marriage failed?”
“Lisa told me.”
“Oh, OK for boundaries.”
“Some boundaries are meant to fall,” said Mark
There was a long exhausted silence. It was time for him to leave.
“There is one more thing,” said Mark. “Thank you for being in my life. For all the anger about what you didn’t or did do for me, what you did helped me immensely. I couldn’t have survived without your work.”
“And yours too.”
“Yes and mine too. Thank you,” Mark said and looked straight into Barbra’s eyes. In that moment he felt met. “There is one more thing that I need to say. I felt you never accepted Mark as the drunk. You don’t understand alcoholism.”
“Mark, you are more than a drunk.”
“No. I am a drunk and a dope fiend. I am complete in that.”
“Mark, you are more.”
“I am a drunk and dope fiend,” Mark said, looking in her eyes.
“Mark, you are limiting yourself. You can grow out of that place into something more.”
“I am a drunk and a dope fiend,” Mark said, as he still stared into her eyes.
Neither would give an inch and Mark knew it. He got up and walked towards the door.
“Mark,” said Barbra as he had his hand on the door. He turned and looked at her. Mark could make out a tear forming in her left eye.
“Mark, I have felt your presence by your absence.
“And I am so sorry it didn’t work.”
Mark bowed and left
* * *
“I would like to talk about Mark for a minute,” said Barbra Bayer.
It was the week after the session with Mark and there was a knot in her stomach bottom that perturbed her. She didn’t know the why of it, but she knew the how of it. She must talk to Lisa about her and Mark.
“What about?” said Lisa, dressed in a white linen pantsuit. Underneath she wore a light blue silk top. Around her shoulders she had a gray wool shawl that matched the gray in her shoulder-length auburn hair.
Barbara was dressed in black jeans and a black turtleneck with a black chamois shirt over it. A dark green shawl was draped around her shoulders.
The second storm of the season had blown in the day before, and Lisa could hear the rain as Barbara spoke. She felt as if she would be sick if it rained anymore that winter. She felt cold, she always felt cold, and drew the shawl tighter around her and focused in on what Barbra was saying.
“Cold?” Said Barbra.
“Yeah. I have been cold since Halloween.”
“Yeah I know. Want me to turn the heat up?”
“No. I am OK. What about Mark?”
“Do you blame me for not telling you the marriage wouldn’t work?
“No,” said Lisa curtly. “I want to do Clear Compassion work,” Lisa whined.
“Did you ever love him for him?”
“No.”
“Do you feel that he loved you?”
“After or before he abused me?”
“Before.”
“And was it me or his mother?”
“You.”
The rain quieted down as Lisa almost whispered
“Yeah, in his own strange needy way.”
“Why did you marry him then?”
“Because I thought I loved him. All I wanted him to do was to be more acceptable, but he couldn’t. He said the wrong thing at the wrong time at parties and it was like pulling teeth to have him to take me out anywhere. We didn’t have any friends and the friends I did have never liked him after they learned about the abuse. They all thought I was a loser for staying with him.”
“Why did you?”
“The boys and what we have talked about before, I am a Four on the Ennegram and needed to make my relationships work. We have been over this and over this.”
“You told me, before you got married that you could always get a divorce if it didn’t work out. Does that seem strange to you?”
“Not given the circumstance I went through before I married him.”
“Do you believe in, ‘until death do us part’?”
“It’s nice if it happens. What is going on?”
“I just wanted to check something out for myself.”
“I don’t want to talk about my relationship with Mark. It is over and I want to go on. The girl who married him is gone and the woman who divorced him doesn’t want a boy who clings to his mother’s teat. I am not his mother. He disgusts me in his weakness, buying me flowers and saying it was from the boys.”
“He still cares.”
“I don’t want to hurt him, but it is over. It has been two and a half years. We are not getting back together. I am done with him.”
“And that is that?”
“Yes, that is that.”
“And you throw him away like a used coffee cup?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“Do you feel his presence?”
“With or without the boys?”
“Either.”
All Barbra could hear was the steady hiss of car tires on Telegraph.
“Why?”
Barbra looked away from Lisa, dropped her eyes to her left and stared at the ocher carpet for what seemed like forever.
“I ran into Mark last week on Shattuck, and the only thing he said to me was, ‘in our absence we define our presence.’ ”
“Yeah, he told the same thing a while ago.”
“And did you think about it?”
“No. I have been too busy. I had a feeling it was about us and I didn’t want to go there.”
“It is and it isn’t. What I got from it is that when we leave, we leave the best and/ or the worst of us in each other.”
“And it is not black and white.”
“No, it isn’t. It is gray like the color of your shawl. It is mixed and messy and it gets everywhere and in everything. What I am trying to say is that some of Mark is in you and some of you is in him, and no matter how hard you try to build walls around you to keep that out you, you can’t. It is there and you can’t run from it, or change it or hide from it. I suggested that you look at it. God does talk through mouth of babes.”
“ ‘… And assholes of drunks,’ I know, I heard it many times from Mark. Why bring this up now? We have worked through my wanting out of the marriage. Why two and a half years later do you bring it up? Aren’t I supposed to be moving on? Aren’t we?”
“I know, and we have, but the onion is peeled constantly and it must be honored.” The knot that was in the bottom of Barbra’s stomach eased and she knew, in time, that it would disappear but she still felt like she failed and she didn’t know why.
* * *
Barbra let the professional 10 minutes lapse after Lisa’s appointment before she locked her office and began the commute home to Walnut Creek. It was smooth and she turned on the radio to let it drive the sadness and guilt out of her heart.
She smelled her husband’s spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove as she opened the door. He must have gone into the bedroom, she thought, as she heard the bath being run. She dropped her things on the bed and went into the bathroom.
“Hi,” she said to her husband’s back as he stood up from testing the water. Soap bubbles were on his hands as he grabbed a hand towel and dried them and walked toward her.
Barbra walked into his outstretched arms and buried her face in his chest and sighed. “This feels good.”
“Yeah, it does,” sighed her husband. “How was your day?”
“OK, and yours?”
“Great! “
Barbara began to sob.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing I can talk about. Just hold me. I need to be held.”
Barbra Bayer’s husband held her as her mascara ran down the front of his white dress shirt.
* * *
Lisa walked through the door and into her ten-year-old Mike’s arms. It was Tuesday and it was Mark’s night to bed with the boys. She could smell Mark’s chicken cacciatore and as usual it smelled delicious. She held her youngest tight and looked at the curl of his hair, just like Mark’s. She looked gently into his eyes, and saw Mark’s wide face, his cleft chin. It was too much; she broke the embrace.
“Hi,” said Lisa to Mike.
Her oldest came out from the kitchen and embraced the both of them. Lisa drank this and held it. She felt Mark’s essence in the boys. Finally she felt filled and broke the hug and kissed both of them on the cheek and walked through the living room/den into the kitchen.
“Where is your father?”
“He had to get back to Benicia to go to a meeting,” said Mike.
Lisa lifted the big pot of Mark’s chicken cacciatore. He didn’t cook much, but when he did, he did it well, thought Lisa as she put the lid down. She lifted the lids of the two other pots and saw the raw broccoli in the steamer and water with a swirl of olive oil in the other. She turned the heat on and walked back into the living/den area to her desk to check her messages.
“He did everything. He said that all we had to do was to cook the noodles and we could eat,” said the oldest, Joe, as he played on the PC next to her desk. Mike looked over his shoulder while he played.
“Any messages for me?” Lisa asked the boys.
“Patt called,” said Mike. “And he wants to know if he can come over tonight around 8 and what are you doing this weekend. He will call back later,” said Mike as he watched Joe defeat the Republic as Luke Skywalker.
“Oh,” said Lisa as she walked back through the kitchen and into her room. She felt like running a bath. The boys could watch the noodles and the broccoli, while they cooked, thought Lisa to herself. She yelled out to the boys, “I am going to take a bath. Joe, watch the broccoli and the noodles. I will be out in a few,” she said as she undressed and got into her bathrobe.
The tub filled quickly with the scalding hot water while Lisa put bubble bath and some bath oil into the water. They were presents from Mark when he got his new job. When the tub was full and before she got in to soak, Lisa went back into her bedroom and got her cell phone. She left it on the tub’s edge when she got in.
After 5 minutes or so of the bath’s delicious warmth Lisa looked at her phone to check the time. Mark would be at the meeting so he wouldn’t have his cell on, she didn’t want to talk to him, just leave him a thank you for supper. She pushed his speed dial number on her cell phone and eased back into the soapy warmth of her bath. To her surprise Mark picked it up.
“This is Mark. How can I help?”
“Aren’t you at a meeting?”
“I am walking into one right now. How can I help?”
“I just want to say thank you for fixing your killer butt chicken cacciatore dinner.”
“It was my pleasure,” said Mark in a calm, cheerful voice.
There was a long, awkward silence. Usually they would play the game of seeing who could hang up first. Both of them still wanted power. It had been going on ever since Mark had left. Lisa felt disgusted by this and knew it also troubled Mark, but neither of them would change or even mention it to the other.
“Is that all?” Mark said.
“No, it’s not,” Lisa said, relieved not to have to be the first one to go. “What I need to say I need to say now or I would lose what courage I have,” said Lisa, watching the words tumble out of her mouth in horror.
“So say it,” Mark said bracing himself for the worst, that she was pregnant by Pat. He knew of Pat from the boys and had to bite his tongue every time his name was mentioned. He could taste the warm blood from his tongue as it filled his mouth. He waited for the worst.
“I saw Barbra and we talked about what you said to her, your thing about absence. I found out that it was true for me. In your absence I feel your presence. Every time I look at the boys I see you, especially in Mike. And I just wanted to say that.”
“Do you feel my presence without the boys?”
Lisa went inside and poked around her heart and found nothing but scars draped in 3 a.m. screams.
“No.”
Mark hung up. Lisa put the phone on the side of the tub, closed her eyes and felt sadness run her mascara down her face, forming puddles before the iceberg-bubbles between her breasts. She began to think of Pat and began to play with herself.
End
M.R. Merris
copyrighted by the author.
7th draft
Benicia library
7/15/2007 2:11 PM
