Next thing I know we’re flying home to Michigan to meet my folks. (I’m from Traverse City, originally. Got to talking this way on account of living down here so long. My brother Ted gives me a hard time about it. I tell him you gotta talk the talk in the business I’m in.)
Maybe it was Michigan that did it. It was wintertime. I took Johanna snowmobiling and ice fishing. My mama would never have seen eye to eye on the whole green-card thing, so I just told her we were friends. Once we got up there, though, I overheard Johanna telling my sister that we were “dating.” On perch night at the VFW hall, after drinking a few PBRs, Johanna started holding my hand under the table. I didn’t complain. I mean, there she was, all six-foot-plus of her, healthy as can be and with a good appetite, holding my hand in hers, secret from everyone else. I’ll tell you, I was happier than a two-peckered dog.
My mother put us in separate bedrooms. But one night Johanna came into mine, quiet as an Injun, and crawled into bed.
“This part of the Method acting?” I said.
“No, Charlie. This is real.”
She had her arms around me, and we were rocking, real soft like, the way Meg did after we gave her that kitten, before it died, I mean, when it was just a warm and cuddly thing instead of like it had hoof and mouth, and went south on us.
“Feels real,” I said. “Feels like the realest thing I ever did feel.”
“Does this feel real, too, Charlie?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And this?”
“Lemme see. Need to reconnoitre. Oh yeah. That’s real real.”
Love at fifteenth sight, I guess you’d call it.
* * *
I look up at my house and cogitate some—I don’t rightly want to say what about. The thing is, I’m a successful man in the prime of life. Started DJ-ing in college, and, OK, my voice was fine for the 3:00-to-6:00 a.m. slot at Marquette, but out in the real world there was an upper limit, I’ll admit. Never did land me a job in front of a microphone. Telemarketed instead. Then the radio itch got back into me and I started consulting. This was in the eighties, when you had your first country-rock crossovers. A lot of stations were slow to catch on. I told them who and what to play. Started out contracting for three stations and now I’ve got sixty-seven coming to me asking, “Charlie D., how do we increase our market share? Give us your crossover wisdom, Sage of the Sagebrush.” (That’s on my website. People have sort of picked it up.)
But what I’m thinking right now doesn’t make me feel so sagelike. In fact, not even a hair. I’m thinking, How did this happen to me? To be out here in the bushes?
Find the Bad Guy is a term we learned at couples counseling. Me and Johanna saw this lady therapist for about a year, name of Dr. Van der Jagt. Dutch. Had a house over by the university, with separate paths to the front and the back doors. That way, people leaving didn’t run into those showing up.
Say you’re coming out of couples therapy and your next-door neighbor’s coming in. “Hey, Charlie D.,” he says. “How’s it going?” And you say, “The missus has just been saying I’m verbally abusive, but I’m doing OK otherwise.”
Naw. You don’t want that.
Tell the truth, I wasn’t crazy about our therapist being a woman, plus European. Thought it would make her partial to Johanna’s side of things.
At our first session, Johanna and I chose opposite ends of the couch, keeping throw pillows between us.
Dr. Van der Jagt faced us, her scarf as big as a horse blanket.
She asked what brought us.
Talking, making nice, that’s the female department. I waited for Johanna to start in.
But the same cat got her tongue as mine.
Dr. Van der Jagt tried again. “Johanna, tell me how you are feeling in the marriage. Three words.”
“Frustrated. Angry. Alone.”
“Why?”
“When we met, Charlie used to take me dancing. Once we had kids, that stopped. Now we both work full-time. We don’t see each other all day long. But as soon as Charlie comes home he goes out to his fire pit—”
“You’re always welcome to join me,” I said.
“—and drinks. All night. Every night. He is married more to the fire pit than to me.”
I was there to listen, to connect with Johanna, and I tried my best. But after a while I stopped paying attention to her words and just listened to her voice, the foreign sound of it. It was like if Johanna and I were birds, her song wouldn’t be the song I’d recognize. It would be the song of a species of bird from a different continent, some species that nested in cathedral belfries or windmills, which, to my kind of bird, would be like, Well, la-di-da.
For instance, regarding the fire pit. Didn’t I try to corral everyone out there every night? Did I ever say I wanted to sit out there alone? No, sir. I’d like us to be together, as a family, under the stars, with the mesquite flaming and popping. But Johanna, Bryce, Meg, and even Lucas—they never want to. Too busy on their computers or their Instagrams.
“How do you feel about what Johanna is saying?” Dr. Van der Jagt asked me.
“Well,” I said. “When we bought the house, Johanna was excited about the fire pit.”
“I never liked the fire pit. You always think that, because you like something, I like the same thing.”
“When the real estate lady was showing us around, who was it said, ‘Hey, Charlie, look at this! You’re gonna love this’?”
“Ja, and you wanted a Wolf stove. You had to have a Wolf stove. But have you ever cooked anything on it?”
“Grilled those steaks out in the pit that time.”
Right around there, Dr. Van der Jagt held up her soft little hand.
“We need to try to get beyond these squabbles. We need to find what’s at the core of your unhappiness. These things are only on the surface.”
We went back the next week, and the week after that. Dr. Van der Jagt had us fill out a questionnaire ranking our level of marital contentment. She gave us books to read: Hold Me Tight, which was about how couples tend to miscommunicate, and The Volcano Under the Bed, which was about overcoming sexual dry spells and made for some pretty racy reading. I took off the covers of both books and put on new ones. That way, people at the station thought I was reading Tom Clancy.
Little by little, I picked up the lingo.
Find the Bad Guy means how, when you’re arguing with your spouse, both people are trying to win the argument. Who didn’t close the garage door? Who left the Bigfoot hair clump in the shower drain? The thing you have to realize, as a couple, is that there is no bad guy. You can’t win an argument when you’re married. Because if you win, your spouse loses, and resents losing, and then you lose, too, pretty much.
Due to the fact that I was a defective husband, I started spending a lot of time alone, being introspective. What I did was go to the gym and take a sauna. I’d dropper some eucalyptus into a bucket of water, toss the water on the fake rocks, let the steam build up, then turn over the miniature hourglass, and, for however long it took to run out, I’d introspect. I liked to imagine the heat burning all my excess cargo away—I could stand to lose a few, like the next guy—until all that was left was a pure residue of Charlie D. Most other guys hollered that they were cooked after ten minutes and red-assed it out of there. Not me. I just turned the hourglass over and hunkered on down some more. Now the heat was burning away my real impurities. Things I didn’t even tell anyone about. Like the time after Bryce was born and had colic for six straight months, when in order to keep from throwing him out the window what I did was drink a couple bourbons before dinner and, when no one was looking, treat Forelock as my personal punching bag. He was just a puppy then, eight or nine months. He’d always done something. A grown man, beating on my own dog, making him whimper so Johanna’d call out, “Hey! What are you doing?” and I’d shout back, “He’s just faking! He’s a big faker!” Or the times, more recent, when Johanna was flying to Chicago or Phoenix and I’d think, What if
her plane goes down? Did other people feel these things, or was it just me? Was I evil? Did Damien know he was evil in The Omen and Omen II? Did he think “Ave Satani” was just a catchy soundtrack? “Hey, they’re playing my song!”
* * *
My introspecting must have paid off, because I started noticing patterns. As a for instance, Johanna might come into my office to hand me the cap of the toothpaste I’d forgotten to screw back on, and, later, that would cause me to say “Achtung!” when Johanna asked me to take out the recycling, which would get Johanna madder than a wet hen, and before you know it we’re fighting World War III.
In therapy, when Dr. Van der Jagt called on me to speak, I’d say, “On a positive note this week, I’m becoming more aware of our demon dialogues. I realize that’s our real enemy. Not each other. Our demon dialogues. It feels good to know that Johanna and I can unite against those patterns, now that we’re more cognizant.”
But it was easier said than done.
One weekend we had dinner with this couple. The gal, Terri, worked with Johanna over at Hyundai. The husband, name of Burton, was from out east.
Though you wouldn’t know it to look at me, I was born with a shy temperament. To relax in a social context, I like to throw back a few margaritas. I was feeling OK when the gal, Terri, put her elbows on the table and leaned toward my wife, gearing up for some girl talk.
“So how did you guys meet?” Terri said.
I was involved with Burton in a conversation about his wheat allergy.
“It was supposed to be a green-card marriage,” Johanna said.
“At first,” I said, butting in.
Johanna kept looking at Terri. “I was working at the radio station. My visa was running out. I knew Charlie a little. I thought he was a really nice guy. So, ja, we got married, I got a green card, and, you know, ja, ja.”
“That makes sense,” Burton said, looking from one of us to the other, and nodding, like he’d figured out a riddle.
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Charlie, be nice,” Johanna said.
“I am being nice,” I said. “Do you think I’m not being nice, Burton?”
“I just meant your different nationalities. Had to be a story behind that.”
The next week at couples counseling was the first time I started the conversation.
“My issue is,” I said. “Hey, I’ve got an issue. Whenever people ask how we met, Johanna always says she married me for a green card. Like our marriage was just a piece of theater.”
“I do not,” Johanna said.
“You sure as shooting do.”
“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”
“What I’m hearing from Charlie,” Dr. Van der Jagt said, “is that when you do that, even though you might feel that you are stating the facts, what it feels like, for Charlie, is that you are belittling your bond.”
“What am I supposed to say?” Johanna said. “Make up a story to say how we met?”
According to Hold Me Tight, what happened when Johanna told Terri about the green card was that my attachment bond was threatened. I felt like Johanna was pulling away, so that made me want to seek her out, by trying to have sex when we got home. Due to the fact that I hadn’t been all that nice to Johanna during our night out (due to I was mad about the green-card thing), she wasn’t exactly in the mood. I’d also had more than my fill of the friendly creature. In other words, it was a surly, drunken, secretly needy, and frightened life-mate who made the move across the memory foam. The memory foam being a point of contention in itself, because Johanna loves that mattress, while I’m convinced it’s responsible for my lower lumbar pain.
That was our pattern: Johanna fleeing, me bloodhounding her trail.
* * *
I was working hard on all this stuff, reading and thinking. After about three months of counseling, things started getting rosier around La Casa D. For one thing, Johanna got that promotion I mentioned, from local rep to regional. We made it a priority to have some together time together. I agreed to go easier on the sauce.
Around about this same time, Cheyenne, the little gal who babysat for us, showed up one night smelling like a pigpen. Turned out her father had kicked her out. She’d moved in with her brother, but there were too many drugs there, so she left. Every guy who offered her a place to stay only wanted one thing, so finally Cheyenne ended up sleeping in her Chevy. At that point Johanna, who’s a soft touch and throws her vote away on the Green Party, offered Cheyenne a room. What with Johanna traveling more, we needed extra help with the kids, anyway.
Every time Johanna came back from a trip, the two of them were like best friends, laughing and carrying on. Then Johanna’d leave and I’d find myself staring out the window while Cheyenne suntanned by the pool. I could count her every rib.
Plus, she liked the fire pit. Came down most every night.
“Care to meet my friend, Mr. George Dickel?” I said.
Cheyenne gave me a look like she could read my mind. “I ain’t legal, you know,” she said. “Drinking age.”
“You’re old enough to vote, ain’t you? You’re old enough to join the armed forces and defend your country.”
I poured her a glass.
Seemed like she’d had some before.
All those nights out by the fire with Cheyenne made me forget that I was me, Charlie D., covered with sunspots and the marks of a long life, and Cheyenne was Cheyenne, not much older than the girl John Wayne goes searching for in The Searchers.
I started texting her from work. Next thing I know I’m taking her shopping, buying her a shirt with a skull on it, or a fistful of thongs from Victoria’s Secret, or a new Android phone.
“I ain’t sure I should be accepting all this stuff from you,” Cheyenne said.
“Hey, it’s the least I can do. You’re helping me and Johanna out. It’s part of the job. Fair payment.”
I was half daddy, half sweetheart. At night by the fire we talked about our childhoods, mine unhappy long ago, hers unhappy in the present.
Johanna was gone half of each week. She came back hotel-pampered, expecting room service and the toilet paper folded in a V. Then she was gone again.
One night I was watching Monday Night. A Captain Morgan commercial came on—I get a kick out of those—put me in mind of having me a Captain Morgan and Coke, so I fixed myself one. Cheyenne wandered in.
“What you watching?” she asked.
“Football. Want a drink? Spiced rum.”
“No, thanks.”
“You know those thongs I bought you the other day? How they fit?”
“Real good.”
“You could be a Victoria’s Secret model, I swear, Cheyenne.”
“I could not!” She laughed, liking the idea.
“Why don’t you model one of them thongs for me. I’ll be the judge.”
Cheyenne turned toward me. All the kids were asleep. Fans were shouting on the TV. Staring straight into my eyes, Cheyenne undid the clasp of her cutoffs and let them fall to the floor.
I got down on my knees, prayerful-like. I mashed my face against Cheyenne’s hard little stomach, trying to breathe her in. I moved it lower.
In the middle of it all, Cheyenne lifted her leg, Captain Morgan style, and we busted up.
Terrible, I know. Shameful. Pretty easy to find the bad guy here.
Twice, maybe three times. OK, more like seven. But then one morning Cheyenne opens her bloodshot teenage eyes and says, “You know, you could be my granddaddy.”
Next she calls me at work, completely hysterical. I pick her up, we go down to the CVS for a home pregnancy test. She’s so beside herself she can’t even wait to get back home to use it. Makes me pull over, then goes down into this gulch and squats, comes back with mascara running down her cheeks.
“I can’t have a baby! I’m only nineteen!”
“Well, Cheyenne, let’s think a minute,” I said.
“You gonna raise this baby, Charlie D.? You
gonna support me and this baby? You’re old. Your sperm are old. Baby might come out autistic.”
“Where did you read that?”
“Saw it on the news.”
She didn’t need to think long. I’m anti-abortion but, under the circumstances, decided it was her choice. Cheyenne told me she’d handle the whole thing. Made the appointment herself. Said I didn’t even need to go with her. All she needed was $3,000.
Yeah, sounded high to me, too.
Week later, I’m on my way to couples therapy with Johanna. We’re coming up Dr. Van der Jagt’s front path when my phone vibrates in my pocket. I open the door for Johanna and say, “After you, darlin’.”
The message was from Cheyenne: “It’s over. Have a nice life.”
Never was pregnant. That’s when I realized. I didn’t care either way. She was gone. I was safe. Dodged another bullet.
And then what did I go and do? I walked into Dr. Van der Jagt’s office and sat down on the couch and looked over at Johanna. My wife. Not as young as she used to be, sure. But older and more worn out because of me, mainly. Because of raising my kids and doing my laundry and cooking my meals, all the while holding down a full-time job. Seeing how sad and tuckered out Johanna looked, I felt all choked up. And as soon as Dr. Van der Jagt asked me what I had to say, the whole story came rushing out of me.
I had to confess my crime. Felt like I’d explode if I didn’t.
Which means something. Which means, when you get down to it, that the truth is true. The truth will out.
Up until that moment, I wasn’t so sure.
When our fifty minutes was up, Dr. Van der Jagt directed us to the back door. As usual, I couldn’t help keeping an eye out for anyone who might see us.
But what were we skulking around for, anyway? What were we ashamed of? We were just two people in love and in trouble, going to our Nissan to pick up our kids from school. Over in the Alps, when they found that prehistoric man frozen in the tundra and dug him out, the guy they call Ötzi, they saw that aside from wearing leather shoes filled with grass and a bearskin hat he was carrying a little wooden box that contained an ember. That’s what Johanna and I were doing, going to marital therapy. We were living through an Ice Age, armed with bows and arrows. We had wounds from previous skirmishes. All we had if we got sick were some medicinal herbs. There was a flint arrowhead lodged in my left shoulder, which slowed me down some. But we had this ember box with us, and if we could just get it somewhere—I don’t know, a cave, or a stand of pines—we could use this ember to reignite the fire of our love. A lot of the time, while I was sitting there stony-faced on Dr. Van der Jagt’s couch, I was thinking about Ötzi, all alone out there, when he was killed. Murdered, apparently. They found a fracture in his skull. You have to realize that things aren’t so bad nowadays as you might think. Human violence is way down since prehistoric times, statistically. If we’d lived when Ötzi did, we’d have to watch our backs anytime we took a saunter. Under those conditions, who would I want at my side more than Johanna, with her broad shoulders and strong legs and used-to-be-fruitful womb? She’s been carrying our ember the whole time, for years now, despite all my attempts to blow it out.
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