That’s when it hit me…Shit! Where’s my purple shirt?
When I got out of bed, I was wearing my white undershirt. Where was the pale purple burn-out tank that went over it? Shit!
I searched for it under the bed and between the sheets, nothing. I slipped on my flip flops and clicked out to my car. I rummaged around in the back seat, the hatch, under the driver’s seat, under the passenger seat, in the glove box…nothing. Shit!
Levi was insidious as he crept up behind me. “What are you looking for?” He asked.
Before I could respond or stand up from my stooped over position, he pressed against me. “I’d like to get some of that later,” he said, antagonizing me. I shoved his hands away in total disgust. “Figures.” He huffed, then walked away. I went back to my search and continued to retrace my steps.
Did I come home with it?
I wasn’t sure.
Did I leave it at Grant’s?
I wasn’t sure.
I couldn’t call him or text him, it was too risky. I could only hope he’d find it before someone else did or that it would turn up somewhere I’d have an explanation for.
At home later that evening, Levi and Dani were at the kitchen table coloring with crayons when I overheard their conversation.
“Did you have fun at the lake this weekend?” Levi asked her.
“Yes. But I cried when Mommy didn’t come home last night.”
I gasped then flung myself off the couch. “What?! Yes I did, honey.”
“No, Mommy,” she was angry, “I woke up and you weren’t there,” she said with her head down, sulking. “Grandma laid with me and I cried,” she tilted her head and examined her picture.
“Honey,” I said in the sweetest most convincing voice I could, “it was late, but I did come home. I snuggled in next to you.”
Levi was staring through me now, his mind working on overdrive making connections, piecing it together, examining all the possible reasons behind my odd behavior and Dani’s accusation.
“Dani,” I said, “we woke up together this morning…remember?” It was half question, half leading the witness.
I’d wondered if my feelings toward Grant were so obvious, they might be detectable by others. Now, by the scorned look on my husband’s face, I guessed I was right. If it was true I didn’t come home, he knew who I was with.
He’d pieced it together, figured it out.
He knew.
I wouldn’t lie—I would just omit. I would tell the truth, but leave out a few hurtful details that would be best left undisclosed.
Levi threw down the crayons, stood up, then stomped up the stairs without saying a word. I ran after him.
“I fucking knew it,” he’d turned around at the top to confront me. “You were with him. Weren’t you?” He was more livid than I’d ever seen him.
I held my ground, stood by my lie. I looked at him with a blank stare, uncomprehending, “What are you talking about?”
A red-hot, raspy voice gurgled from his throat. “You know what I’m talking about. You were with him weren’t you,” he said in such a satanic tone that my bones shuddered.
He didn’t believe my dumbfounded expression. I tried another tactic, invoke my right to defend against being wrongfully accused.
I showed him an equally enraged face then yelled, “I don’t know what you’re talking about! How dare you accuse me!” Then rambled through my lie, “a bunch of us went to Willy’s for drinks, we stayed out till midnight.”
“Who’s a bunch’?” he asked, and by the confident look on his face, he knew I couldn’t answer.
I couldn’t say the name of one person. If I gave anyone’s name, he could call them and check out my alibi.
“You know, the usual crew, there were a lot of us.” I walked away, hoping he wouldn’t follow.
“Who?” He snapped.
“Everyone!” I shouted, not knowing what else to say.
“Grant?” He said calmly.
Shitshitshit.
“Was Grant there?” he demanded.
“What? What are you talking about?” I was fucked—I didn’t know what to say.
Levi stepped closer, “He was, wasn’t he?” He said, backing me down the hallway.
My heart pounded in my throat. “Yeah. So what? I don’t know why you’re being such a jerk?”
“Oh, I’m a jerk?” He pointed at his chest.
“Yeah, you are,” I said. “So what if I go out with friends for one night. I go out twice a year at most! Big fucking deal.” I shook my head in disgust and tried walking away again. He followed me.
What I said next was a below the belt shot, a desperate attempt to divert guilt away from me and onto him. “At least I don’t go to the strip clubs and jerk off to other women when I go out.”
“You bitch,” He said, shaking his head. Fed up with me, he walked into our bedroom and started packing.
“What’s new, I know you think I’m a bitch. I’m used to it, it doesn’t hurt me anymore.”
He shoved clothes from the top drawer into a dusty old duffel bag.
“I knew it,” He mumbled. “I fucking knew it, I knew you wanted to fuck him. You did fuck him, didn’t you?” He stopped packing, looked at me, and waited for my response.
“No. Do you want me to?”
“I really don’t care what you do,” Levi said.
I should have fucked him then. Maybe I will next time.
“Then why are you with me?” I said in disgust.
“Why are you with me?” he snapped back.
Evil expressions unconsciously formed on his face as he fought back the urge to strangle me. I found him hideous, it was easy to hate him. “Good question,” I replied, “Good question.”
The anger between us reminded me of how much I hated him, how dysfunctional we were together, and how horrible it was of us to fight with Dani sitting downstairs. I wanted him to leave, I welcomed it.
He couldn’t. He was just as codependent on our dysfunctional marriage as I was. We were perfect for each other in that way, both too cowardly to leave, too selfish to change, yet too wounded to be happy.
***
A week later I was still mulling over Grant’s every touch, the smell of his skin, his hand over my heart, his liquid voice when he sang “Could You be Loved”. I re-lived each caress in slow motion, committing every second of that night to memory. It was a week filled with torture and obsession in equal measure.
I had to talk to Grant, tell him I couldn’t stop thinking about him, tell him I couldn’t breathe without him. But if I called Grant or texted him, and Levi found out, he would have all the proof he needed to leave.
I didn’t want Levi to leave, in a heated moment I did, yes. But if I couldn’t have Grant then I didn’t want to be alone and being with Levi was better than being alone—I couldn’t bear to be alone. As much as I wanted Grant, and as much as I hated Levi at times, I was still clinging to a dysfunctional life with someone, rather than a life without anyone.
At eight o’clock on a Monday morning I sat in an empty parking lot staring down at my phone. I composed a text, erased it, and then re-wrote it again. Not knowing what the ramifications might be, I forced myself not to care. I closed my eyes and hit send.
U don’t need to respond.
I just wanted u to know
that I don’t regret 1
minute with u.
Then I deleted the sent message, and agonized for days wondering if and when he would respond. But getting a response from Grant was like finding the Hope Diamond in a Walmart parking lot—it just wasn’t going to happen. It didn’t happen. Days went by, then months and my phone was still silent. It was over.
I needed to get away from him, get away from the dream of a life with Grant so I could live my life with Levi. There was only one way to do that.
I would move.
Yes.
I would move.
Chapter 16
“I HAD THAT FAMILIAR CONVICTIO
N THAT LIFE WAS
BEGINNING OVER AGAIN WITH THE SUMMER.”
—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, THE GREAT GATSBY
North Carolina—no, Maine—no, Maryland—no, California? I channeled my obsessive energy into a project…we would move.
I was qualified, educated, talented, even. I could turn a fifty pound overweight woman into a size four bodacious bombshell or give a skinny white chick a booty like a Brazilian beach model. I’d built up a large clientele, I was traveling, teaching workshops, and working part time at a local university. I was hired by corporations to help their employees get healthy, and every day people who just needed accountability. When it came to weight loss, breaking habits and establishing new ones, I knew what I was doing and I knew how to get it done.
I sent my resume out, blanketing the lower forty-eight looking for something new and exciting. I took a few trips, received a few offers but none of them felt quite right. Then, when I least expected it, my opportunity arrived heavenly and sprinkled with gold. It was like finding my very own north star, a ray of golden light pointed the way home—inviting me in to explore its secret gardens that longed for my return. I went deep into the hills of Southern California, to explore this new land and make it our new faithful home.
It was a sprawling mountainous village of solitude for the ultra-rich. A getaway for celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Barbara Streisand, CEOs, and business tycoons—the one percent. I read an article in a San Diego newspaper that said, “A millionaire is not enough, we’re talking about the super-rich, they’re the ones that go there.”
It took six months of strategic planning just to get my resume through that shimmering door and truthfully, I never expected a call. So when the call did come in, I was thrilled that all of my planning and schooling had paid off. Within a few weeks, I was on a plane from the frozen tundra of Minnesota to the sun drenched San Diego valley.
I rented a car and drove through miles of unfamiliar winding hills. Then, tucked away from the main road, I found the entrance. Just like I was told, if you didn’t know what you were looking for, you’d never know it was there. I pulled up to the black iron gate and looked into the security camera. A pleasant voice greeted me through the speaker.
“Can I help you?”
“Mrs. Summers, here for an interview.”
“Welcome Mrs. Summers. One moment please.” Then without another word, the gates clicked open then closed behind me.
I parked where I was told, took the walkway I was directed to.
That’s when I saw it:
The Golden Door.
A stunning symbol of wealth and luxury, peace and new beginnings and I walked through without looking back.
It was a health and fitness resort of magnificent grandeur, a purported six thousand a week. For someone like me, staying there even for one night, was unfathomable.
A lone coyote howled at night outside my bungalow, songbirds sang unfamiliar tunes, and the sound of trickling water from the endless streams in the Japanese style gardens was ever present day and night. There were endless boardwalks, fruit tree orchards, organic vegetable gardens and private trails with sweeping views of the mountains or the ocean. It was an exclusive community where people, animals and nature existed in harmony.
Each day was dedicated to a string of simple pleasures: sipping matcha, sitting in the lemon grove, walking the labyrinth, or going to a meditation class. My personal favorite were the miles and miles of unadulterated hiking trails.
My soul could thrive among the organic vegetables and uncomplicated life of a Yogi. I would dwell within the golden walls, drag a rake through the Zen garden, and sit for hours contemplating the perfect placement of three rocks. I would teach restorative yoga, and salsa dancing, and lead hikes at six am. I would do what I did best—I would make women skinny and in the process, and I would forget about Grant. Erase him from my memory and get so far away from what I had done, that I could live like it hadn’t even happened.
I spent several days auditioning, interviewing and I never expected to get offered a job, there was a line of applicants wanting to get it. Most of them were willing to work for free just to make the kinds of contacts that stayed there.
I returned home with stars in my eyes and plans to start as soon as possible. But not long after I left that golden valley, the haze wore off. The magical spell a place like that casts upon you had disappeared. I realized that it might not be a good idea to move my family three thousand miles from home, where we knew no one, and had nothing.
It turns out that if you want to work in paradise, they don’t pay you in cash, but rather you are given three magic beans and a hand full of dirt in exchange for your services. It wasn’t enough to stuff my life into a U-Haul, drag Dani, Levi, and Nanook thousands of miles from home, hoping to grow a magic bean stalk. I rescinded the offer as quickly as I had accepted it.
It was late winter when I came back from California and another summer was approaching. Another summer of temptation and confusion. I had to stay away from Grant. I promised myself I would and that’s what I did.
I avoided the lake that summer. Instead I broke my back, literally broke my back pouring every last drop of energy I had into my work.
I had no idea our night together would find a way into his heart forever.
It wasn’t over, it hadn’t even begun.
***
Oh God, ur so worth it.
What time can I have u?
Chapter 17
“EVERY HEART HAS ITS OWN SKELETONS.”
—LEO TOLSTOY, ANNA KARENINA
I stuffed ice packs into the fold of my yoga pants wearing them like Band-Aids everywhere I went. The pain hadn’t gotten any better and it’d been months since the first episode. Everyone I talked to had a remedy to fix me, but nothing worked. I was deteriorating. My usual spirit which generally overflowed with conquest and curiosity was now drowning in pain.
The pain was persistent-sharp-dull, nagging-stabbing-throbbing, multi-dimensional, bone-pain. It was everything and nothing I could articulate when someone asked what was wrong. Except to say that it gnawed on me like a flesh eating bacteria. No words seemed catastrophic enough to describe it,
The first time I heard a “pop”, I was teaching Pilates for Dancers to a flock of teenagers who resembled pink flamingos.
“Inhale, exhale, circle-and-sweep, lift-and-point,” Pop—Pop!
A searing pain pierced through my lower back like a lightning bolt. My knees buckled, and I fell to the floor in the front of my class.
I’d been teaching ten classes a week. Yoga, Pilates, Latin dance, and half a dozen other formats, in addition to seeing clients, speaking, and cooking. It was nothing new or strenuous, it was just my job.
“C.J., are you okay? What’s wrong?” The flock surrounded me.
“Um…I’m not sure, I need a minute.” I clung to the ballet-bar on the front wall as the aftershocks hit me in waves and charlie-horse cramps seized my body. “I need a breather. Let’s take a quick break,” I muttered as I lay draped over the cold metal.
I didn’t want to lose my job because of an injury and sixty bucks an hour teaching at a dance studio wasn’t something I could afford to give up. I couldn’t get hurt, I had no time for an injury.
A pair of look-a-like teens in snug pink shoes helped me to my feet. I hobbled across the polished wood floor and into the hallway where I could be alone and assess what-in-the-hell had just happened. The pain was an eight out of ten.
I can still finish class. I have to.
Besides, I was acclimated to punishing pain, chronic sprains and never-ending tendonitis. It was the plight of a fitness instructor, the dark side of working out for a living. Taking time off work to heal an injury was not an option. I dug out an extra-large bottle of ibuprofen and sloshed back another eight hundred milligrams.
I clapped my hands, took a step back into the classroom and secretly winced, “Ladies,” I barked, trying not to show weakness. “I must have sprai
ned something in my back, I’m going to take it easy tonight, but let’s keep going. Do what I say, not what I do.”
Any weight on my right leg made the lightning bolt strike and caused me to make a hideous grimace. I stood in one place for the remainder of class trying not to show the pain on my face.
Whatever it was got better over the next few months, dropped from an eight to a four, but never fully healed—only hibernated under the surface, threatening to club me if I did too much of anything.
As the months passed, physical pain turned into emotional pain, then emotional pain turned into depression. The injury that never healed was the catalyst that sent my already fragile emotional-balance plummeting into a bottomless chasm.
An inherited proclivity toward severe depression had turned on like a genetic light switch. The right combination of emotional stress and physical strain had formed the perfect storm and now a black plague of depression was allowed to thrive indefinitely and uncontested within my mind.
I slowly became a recluse, an emotional shut-in, masquerading like bamboo—green and fit on the outside to hide the hollow within. I further abandoned my marriage. Incapable of contributing anything positive, we’d become nothing more than a complete and total shit storm.
When I expressed my unhappiness, “I can’t live like this anymore. We don’t get along, all we do is argue and nothing changes.”
Levi’s response was always the same, “It’s not that bad, you’re over-exaggerating.”
My every feeling, every opinion, every expression, concern or emotion, was thoroughly invalidated. What I felt and thought didn’t matter, and thus, I didn’t matter. Levi remained oblivious and in denial of our dysfunction as my discontent, depression and pain metastasized at an unprecedented rate.
Affairytale : A Memoir Page 10