Four days later, though (FOUR. PAINSTAKING. SEEMINGLY MONTH-LONG DAYS!), I’m sitting in my living room with my legs on the wall, letting the blood circle back to my diseased and miserable heart, with no word from Hans. I feel like a flaming cheese plate at a Greek restaurant: I look great and delicious from afar but when anyone’s tongue gets near for a taste, I burn it. I miss the days when I felt I was better up close.
‘Have you called him?’ my mom asks as she whizzes by, fresh off a date with a senior citizen she’s convinced doesn’t need Viagra because he’s chock-a-block full of man, which of course makes me envious because all thirty years of youth in Hans couldn’t stand up against the limp-inducing effects of alcohol on our night of passion. My successful date with Hans reinvigorated her, as I imagined all this time it would, although now that it’s not working out I panic, hoping it doesn’t affect her newfound giddy with the old guy. I’m also overwhelmed with embarrassment that I told everyone, including Michael, the owner of the local Canyon Gourmet Foods grocery store while ordering spicy tofu slices, that I found the man I was going to marry and that this time, it was for real. Now I’m going to have to explain it wasn’t. Goddammit, I should have kept my mouth shut.
‘Yes,’ I reply to my mother, but the breath barely slips out of me, I’m so tired. ‘I’ve emailed him and texted him.’ No response. Not a wink or an emoticon or even a friend request on Facebook. I’ve replayed everything from that night, wondering where it went wrong. Wondering how my playing it cool brought the demise of what could have been everything. I decide I’m going to work out everyday from now on.
After a painstaking waiting period, he texts me back explaining why we can’t be together. I’m a pessimist. You just make me feel worse about myself because you’re an optimist, he wrote. I pleaded and attempted persuasion but nothing worked. I was dumped for being too positive. Talk about a catch-22. Maybe it’s my mom’s fault for never telling me, ‘No.’ Everything’s always been within reach, or at least it seemed that way until I fell off the ladder.
That, or maybe it was because I drank so much that I face-planted. That’s usually a no-no on a first date. No wonder he ran.
‘You didn’t even know him,’ Brenda says as she puts on the last of her makeup. She always looks at herself in a certain way when she’s putting on makeup. The squinty, bird-like makeup face afflicting women worldwide.
‘Send him cupcakes at work,’ my mother poorly suggests. ‘Dessert always works.’
‘Mom, that’s a terrible idea,’ Brenda interjects before I let the option sink in. ‘That’s insane, psycho behavior. Your best option is to just do nothing. If he’s interested, he’ll call. Otherwise, move on. This is why I don’t date. It’s the fucking worst.’
‘Oh lighten up, you two sour birds!’ my mom says in a voice on par with her level of reverie. ‘It’s just a date. What’s the worst that can happen? You might as well try; you’ve got nothing to lose!’
My mom’s only like this because she’s back on the dates. Love is her drug but she never buys enough to give us our fix, too. She just gets high and overdoses. Dorothy Parker is hidden under the bed but will surely be taken out to join her bedside table once she’s taken off the drip and goes into withdrawal. If she were in that state now, she’d be telling me that cupcakes are for pussies and that I should never, ever call him.
‘Well,’ my mom adds. ‘He didn’t look smart in his picture. I didn’t like him anyway. You can do sooooo much better. Sadness is infectious, you’re better off sticking with us.’
This is the kind of shifting she’d always done that’s confused me since I was old enough to understand logic and why I vacillate so often between mindsets. It’s screwed up my paradigm for dating. I’ve attempted to dissuade myself from using logic (or at least, my mother’s logic) to the best of my ability; it just doesn’t make sense. This upsets me though, because if Hans and I do work out, then I don’t want to know this shit. I want to know she liked him. That she thought he was smart. It’s like when you break up with someone and everyone says he was an asshole but then, when you get back together, everyone who said something negative doesn’t know what to say, because now you know they don’t like him. It’s doomed; how could you ever get married to the person you know everyone thought was a dipshit?
‘But he works in a library!’ I say, defending him, just in case.
‘Did you tell him you were fertile this time?’ Brenda asks with a monkey’s smirk.
‘You know what? No. I didn’t. You know why? Because I knew it would mess it up. I followed the rules, well, not all of them. But I didn’t make any first moves, I played it cool, whatever that means, and it’s fallen flat and I have no idea why!’ It’s hard to breathe all of a sudden. My chest hurts. I hate dating.
‘Welcome to the real world,’ Brenda says.
‘Well, I hate the real world!’ I counter. It’s the best comeback I have at the moment, in this kind of heart-crushing heat. The day after the date, you couldn’t have wiped the smile off my face. The birds chirped sweeter, the sky was so magnificently blue I almost had to shut my eyes before the beauty and sunshine brought me up so much it ended up withering me. He had told me that I was ‘sexy’ and how he loved my tongue, how it presumably circled. He asked, as we were parting, where I’d been all his life. ‘I’ll see you soon, babe,’ he said as he gave me a wink. I wanted him to ask me how my heart was, but even though he didn’t, I ignored it. I brushed it off, convincing myself it didn’t matter. The worst thing is that (besides my fall) I did everything right, and it still didn’t work. I want to have a real answer to why he didn’t like me; the vague optimism comment and lack of communication out of nowhere is just disheartening. I can’t imagine how upset I’d be if we had actually been able to have great sex; his limp whisky dick saved whatever is left of my heart. Maybe Brenda is right; maybe this is how people behave now. Maybe this is why dating is so confusing.
Just like my mother, I hear my thoughts fluctuating. It’s all going to shit one second to I’m going to be fine the next. The reality of someone not wanting me after I didn’t do anything wrong, after I played the game the ‘normal’ way, has my psyche spasming in the way I wish his dick did. My head throbs and like a dirty rat a migraine slithers in and attacks me. As I’m bracing my head, pressing my fingers firmly against my temples, I see myself stuck in my aura. I don’t know much but what I do know is that I’m as lost as I could be. My optimism is shivering and I have no blanket for it. I want to tell it that it’s going to get warmer and not to worry, but I just don’t know. I can’t lie when I know the forecast is so dismal.
The not knowing why he never called is worse than an unflattering truth being revealed because you’re left in the dark, with no closure, and there’s nothing you can argue because you weren’t even privy to the fight.
‘But he did give you an answer, darling. Some people just can’t be around too much sunshine. There’s nothing more to explain. Closure is for the very lucky,’ Delina tells me over the phone when she calls the house to check on me and see how the date went. ‘You can never count on it. It’s a luxury for even the fortunate. I’m afraid, my darling, that we aren’t necessarily one of those lucky few.’
I try to steady my legs on what feels like quicksand. ‘Delina?’ I start, trying to order my thoughts into some coherent state. ‘Does it get any easier, or does it always feel this way?’
‘Oh darling,’ she starts. ‘I don’t think it ever ends. We’re all just little girls, waiting for someone to love us.’ And that’s what did it. That’s what drove the dagger through my already wobbly chest. Maybe Chrissie Hynde was right, too, just like Delina. If they all thought so, there must be something to it. We’re all just exactly the same. Lions, sheep: we all just want to be liked. But then the idea that I need someone to love me angers me. I don’t need anyone to justify my worth. Yet I spend the next week writing down on paper my affirmations that he’ll call me. He never does. I hope he calls to tell me he lost
his phone, that it was all a big mistake. He never does. Two weeks, three weeks, they all blend together. All without a word.
I realize all I have now, instead of a string of adventures, is just a pile of shitty stories with bad endings. One big face-plant, and the fighting doesn’t even matter because there’s nothing to fight for. I just keep getting kicked. The next morning, I hear this woman talk to me. She says, ‘Don’t be scared, toots. Don’t be scared. You’re a babe. You’re going to be better than fine. I promise.’ I wonder if it’s Heralda but the voice is different. She could have aged since I last heard from her; she’s probably more wise. Oh man, I miss her. It’s 10 a.m. and I wonder if it’s too early for wine. I tell myself that drinking early is okay because I can’t shake this sadness, this relentless cycling of negative thoughts. This is why I’ve always been an optimist; I can’t take life’s lurid reality; prefer to be delusional.
My eye keeps catching the phone. It’s like a bag of heroin a sober man finds in an old pant pocket. I want to talk to someone but I have no one to talk to. I pace for a few minutes with my hands on my temples like actors do when they look like they’re thinking, and surprisingly, it works. A thought appears like doves under a magician’s hat: boom. I start dialing numbers randomly, letting my fingers move wildly around the pad just to see what happens, like I did in the old days, but then I realize what I’m doing and hang up. It feels wrong now. Fake. The phone rings again. Maybe it’s star 69 and he’s called me back, thinking I’m someone important trying to reach them, but when I answer, the reception is bad. I can’t hear him.
I am running around my living room screaming into the phone, ‘Hello?’ and ‘Speak up!’ I am jumping over couches, saying, ‘I can’t hear you!’ I panic and jump off the couch but trip on my way down and I fall, smack, on the ground so hard it’s like I jumped from the apartment above me. And the phone is now sliding across the room with momentum from the crash and I can hear his voice but it’s getting more and more faint until all I can hear is the sound of the line going dead.
I lay there limply for a while, a dead fish in a room with harsh lighting, under inspection like a mental patient. I can’t even lift my hands or face off the ground, so I let my cheeks rest fully, feeling the wooden panels. They are cooler than my feet have relayed in the past. I am embarrassed I called a stranger, embarrassed I’m not growing up. I really just wanted to call Hans.
My mother comes into the room and rushes over to me in horror. ‘Tabby!’ she screams, thinking I’m dead. ‘Tabby, what’s wrong, baby? Tabby!!!!!’
‘I’m okay, Mom,’ I say, surprised she had such a violent reaction. It takes me a moment to process her interest and response, as usually she’d just pass by and say, ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get off the floor.’
Instead of pulling me up, she gets down with me. Both of us on the floor, side by side, and for the first time she doesn’t give me advice, or tell me an anecdote of her time as a Playboy bunny or a whale watcher, or someone who shagged Tom Jones in the sixties. She just lays with me in silence. The sounds of our chests rising with hope and falling with loss.
‘Mom,’ I say, unable to look at her. ‘Are you happy?’
‘Happy?’ she says. ‘I don’t know how to define that word anymore but I’m damn well trying.’ I turn over so we are both looking up at the ceiling together, silent and pensive and surrendered.
‘I thought lions were happy but sometimes they just got lost, so they made friends with a bunch of sheep until one day, they were so used to being around sheep that they forgot who they were. I thought after Dad left that you forgot you were a lion.’
She laughs and reaches out to grab my hand, to let me know we’re fraught with this disease of incurable romanticism together. Together, fucked by genetics.
‘I saw Dad the other day,’ I tell her. ‘It was hard to see him, but harder to hear what he said. That you were too much to handle. Maybe we’re both too much to take on because we want it all. We want fun and romance all the time. Maybe that’s impossible.’
‘He’s probably right,’ she tells me. I’m shocked, because she says it like she’s known this whole time. ‘It might be impossible, but I am what I am. He was who he was. Square peg, round hole.’
‘But did you learn from it?’ I ask. ‘Didn’t it change you?’
‘I learned that it’s not easy. That you have to be accomodating but also find someone who gets you. You can’t be with someone who wants you to change. We all have things to work on, to improve upon, but we are who we are. I might be crazy. I might be impossible, but if I dampen what keeps me going, then I’ve lost who I am. If I get someone being another person, then that’s not what I’m looking for. Eventually, it won’t work. You have to just think of what you’ve learned from each thing and be grateful for it,’ she says, ‘even when it’s hurt you. Anytime you get sad, just remember you’re a piece of stardust. You’re nothing and you’re everything.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘If you listen to the good stuff, then it means you have to also listen to the bad stuff. You just keep living, knowing there’s good and bad but you pick up neither. I heard Maya Angelou say that once when she was asked about being an idol and receiving praise. And if you realize we’re just vessels through which breath comes in and comes out, we’re no different from this wood here,’ she stops to knock on the floor, lets the ring reverberate through us. ‘That wood used to be alive once. It used to breathe like us, so look how lucky we are. You can’t take all these rejections personally. You and I, we’re not your average woman. Men are just big babies. They can’t handle us.’
‘But that’s also kind of unfair to them, don’t you think? I mean, it’s impossible to expect that life is going to be as good as our dreams. To live a lackluster life, to be married to someone who you think is just okay, to have a career your whole life that resembles nothing of your personality, that’s reality. Expecting it not to be is just a slow death.’
‘I raised you to be an independent thinker, to “be the one who loves the less” so you stay in control but I also let you be free because I can’t imagine anything worse than being constrained.’
‘That’s so confusing, Mom!’ I scream. ‘They’re polar opposites!’
‘I just didn’t want to quiet your spirit. My mother did that to me and it made me even more wild than I already was. As far as dating is concerned, of course, you have to put in the effort yourself, as I’ve always told you, because you’re the fighter. You have to make yourself happy. But you also need to find someone who wants to jump in the car for the ride. And when it doesn’t work out, you have to keep your head up high. What’s one good thing you learned from this . . . what’s his name . . . Hans?’
‘That a man will run me a bath and bring me coffee without me having to ask for it.’
‘Good! You see? He did what you’d want without even asking for it. So use that in the future. Be in control but also surrender enough to trust the universe to let the magic happen!’ There she goes again, being confusing. ‘You learn from them, you find something they taught you, you grow and stop doing the stupid shit that ruined the last one and just remind yourself that the best stuff is still coming.’
This is all getting a bit too earthy even for me, but her words, like Dorothy Parker’s all those years ago, sink in and get comfy, creating a bed, a home, and for the first time maybe I think Parker was right. Maybe you have to protect yourself. It makes me sick because I know it’s true; I know where I get it from and for the first time I realize there might not be a cure for it, this insatiable need to love and be loved in the way you know it should be, it can be. And just as there’s no cure for curiosity, there’s no cure for optimism. I realize in that moment my mom and I are just a couple of Heraldas, trying to fit into a place we don’t know how to be a part of, lost spirits in a physical world. But just as I think she’s getting soft, opening up, she starts looking around the room in panic.
‘I can’t find
my socks,’ she says. At first it’s always quite calm, then as the rush of losing something rises, her eyes bolt around the room. And that’s when it hits me, here on the ground, as I lie depressed and hopeless, unable to feel the outline of that lion I’ve been hanging on to. As my mom searches for her socks that surely are just in her coat pocket, I realize I too have been searching for something that’s probably not lost. I move my head around on the ground, just to feel where I am, to feel the wooden boards under me, to locate some spine or splinter of a foundation. The same floor on which I once felt I know everything was now reminding me I know nothing. Not understanding my mother, my world, myself was like having a wound I couldn’t see. I wanted to believe it was superficial because then I could heal it, I would know where to put the bandage. But the deeper it is, the more impossible it is to know how to fix. I want to ask her why she’s always given me terrible advice, but how can I? I did the same to Mary. Not because I was trying to trick her, feed her intangibles, make her believe in unicorns, but because I wanted to believe it too. My mom and I, we were living the life we wanted to believe existed, despite knowing deep down it probably wasn’t real.
My mother was flipping from paralytically romantic and hopeful to jaded and indifferent, like a beached whale. She still had life in her, she still had fight, but with each breath she was dying. I had always assumed her sadness was because she’d been around men who didn’t get her. That’s why I’d fought so hard to prove to her that a man who’d love her the way she was loved in her dreams was out there, just around the corner. But now that I know it’s because it was us, being unrealistic, impossible, unlovable, I can see that being cynical wasn’t just a protective measure against being hurt, it was the whale knowing it can’t un-beach itself.
We must have fallen asleep on the floor because I woke up frantic, knowing I should be somewhere but having no idea not only where I was, but where I was meant to be. This happens to me pretty much every day.
The Optimist Page 25