by Sarah Lassez
So what he was doing now, looking pained and uncomfortable as we “enjoyed an evening at home,” was supposedly relaxing, but I could tell something was wrong. I’d been studying him for twenty minutes, and I’d noticed that his eyes weren’t tracking movements on the TV, and he hadn’t cracked a smile at the ridiculous lengths women went to to get their man.
“What’s wrong?” I finally asked. “Something’s bothering you.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem fine. You know you can talk to me. I can help. Tell me what’s on your mind.”
To my words he showed his comfort, his ease, his relief, by reclining a quarter of an inch. I could tell he was thinking everything over, trying to decide what to tell me, holding up his fears and worries to a mental light before handing them over. It’s okay, Wilhelm, I thought, you can tell me anything. I’m here for you.
“It’s work,” he finally said. “I’m having problems with Franklin.”
I nodded sympathetically, as I’d heard him complain about the head chef many times. Franklin was the cause of much beer consumption, many smoked packs of cigarettes, and countless hours of hard-chair-sitting, and for this reason I had problems with Franklin as well.
“I don’t know,” he continued. “I feel as though I’ve gone as far as I can there, that it’s time to move on.”
Now, as a general rule, unless you’re the one talking, the words “move on” are never good. “Move on where?”
“I don’t know. There are so many questions I’m trying to answer. It might be time to leave Los Angeles. I don’t even like it here.”
My heart rate spiked. Shimmery red dress. Piano. Lounge. Would I be ready when he gave me the word? Sure, why not. The plan would be sped up, the move would happen sooner than anticipated. Not a big deal. I’d tell him I was okay with this, which would undoubtedly ease his mind. In fact, maybe now he’d propose, relieved by my support and seizing the moment to ask if I’d be his wife and travel the world! Perhaps this whole time he’d been worried I’d want to stay! Maybe that was it? A fear of losing me!
Now say it like you did before, I thought, coaxing him with my mind. Tell me I’m going with you. Just give me the confirmation. I took a deep breath, counted to ten, and asked, “What happens to us if you leave?”
But he didn’t say it like he had before. He actually didn’t say anything. Instead he looked slightly nervous, lit a cigarette, and took a deep drag, holding the smoke in his lungs. “If only I was further on in my journey.”
Journey? What are we, in The Lord of the Rings? What the hell was he talking about? Where did this “journey” come from?
He exhaled and continued. “I’ve always dreamt of traveling and working all around the world, but I dreamt of doing it alone. I’m too young to settle down. I couldn’t possibly take care of a wife. It’s too much…responsibility.”
Now my heart was racing. What the hell had happened here?
“You don’t have to take care of me,” I said, managing to be completely freaked out and offended at the same time. Okay, yeah, I’d actually been looking forward to being taken care of, but if I had to, I could certainly continue the job myself. It wasn’t as if I’d be some weighty wifely appendage who couldn’t go out and get herself a job as a lounge singer. In fact, I’d probably end up making more money than he did. “I wouldn’t be your responsibility. I’d take care of myself.”
He shook his head and sighed in that “This is hurting me more than it’s hurting you” way—and that’s when I knew.
I wasn’t going with.
I closed my eyes. My soothing, sparkling vision of life as a lounge singer started to go awry, and in it I stopped singing. I dropped the microphone. I fell off the piano. There was no piano. There was no me.
“What—,” I said, and heard my voice splinter with anger. I stopped. Calm. Calm and rational. Men, Gina has always said, are like dogs. It never matters what you’re saying, it matters how you’re saying it, if you’re using your Good Dog Voice or your Bad Dog Voice. The Bad Dog Voice sends them scurrying behind the couch, even if you’re professing your love, and that’s the end of it. The Good Dog Voice keeps them in the room even if you’re detailing your hatred and informing them that the plan is to dunk them in an ice-cold bath and then toss in a toaster just for fun.
I tried again. Good Dog Voice. “What about what you said before? That I’d go with you? All that stuff about marriage?”
He stared at his hands. “I meant it, at the time.”
It was official, I was panicking—and completely overcome with the need to burst into tears, furiously hurl sharp and pointy objects at him, and at the same time tell him that he didn’t have to worry, I would take care of myself as a lounge singer and he could propose as planned and I’d say yes.
I tried to focus. “So…what you’re saying is…you don’t mean it now?”
Still unable to meet my eyes, he simply shrugged.
Now I was mad. Wilhelm was a bad dog.
“So, what, our relationship had an expiration date? You didn’t bother pointing it out to me? You totally led me on and now you’re just gonna go, leave the country, and it’s over!”
Although he was still silent, I caught him scoping the room as if trying to determine the fastest way out.
“Just because things don’t match up with some vision you created years ago doesn’t mean things are wrong. So your life doesn’t go according to your master plan, so what? Sometimes when you love someone you have to make sacrifices.”
Now his green eyes took me in, his mouth became a smirk, his face smug. “And what do you have to sacrifice, being with me?”
Oh, hell no, I thought. This motherfucker’s going down. For the first time since I’d met him I felt the air that separated us, everything crisp and clear. “Well,” I said calmly. “For one thing, I have to sacrifice a satisfying sex life.”
His mouth fell open, and I quickly landed the next blow.
“And it’s not like you have much money.”
Honestly, that last point didn’t really matter to me, as I made it a habit to date men without jobs or any source of income, so in truth Wilhelm was rich in comparison. But I knew that he’d reel from that one because he was a prideful man, and all I wanted to do was give him a taste of the hurt I was choking on. And I think I did. He looked genuinely shocked. Tears, I could’ve sworn, were welling in his eyes. Don’t feel bad for him, Sarah. He’s the Antichrist.
“Well,” he said after a pause. “I’m too young to make sacrifices. I want my freedom. I can’t be tied down right now.”
“So, let me get this straight. Though you spoke of marriage, of our marriage, and led me on, the actual truth is that our relationship will last only as long as you’re in Los Angeles, and who knows how long that’ll be. There is, essentially, no commitment. So what it boils down to is that I’m nothing more than a story you’ll tell your grandchildren, the actress you had an affair with during your stay in Hollywood.”
“Sarah, don’t say that. You know how much you mean to me.”
“Yes, Wilhelm, I’m just now finding out how much I mean to you. And in addition to that, I’m also learning you’re not a man of your word. You’re a man of ‘I meant it at the time.’”
He stared up at the ceiling, as if asking for assistance from God, perhaps requesting an earthquake that would bounce me out of his apartment. “If only I was a little further on my journey.”
I sighed. Again with this journey business. If this journey was so important, why was I just hearing about it now? Sure, I knew he wanted to travel and work around the world, but he’d never spoken of a journey, a journey that evidently involved him by himself. Why hadn’t he mentioned this when we first met? “Hi, I’m Wilhelm and I’m on a journey” might have been a bit odd as an introduction, but at least it would’ve been fair and honest. “So is it over? Are we over?”
And to this, he said nothing.
Let me interrupt here to explain that on
e of my least shining moments in life, in fact my most dulled and marred moment, happened during a breakup. It occurred in my early twenties and involved the abandonment of all dignity and pride while I literally begged a guy not to leave me. Yes. His last image of me was shameful: a crying, crumpled mess on my knees, arms outstretched as I wailed at the top of my lungs “Please don’t leave me, please don’t leeeeeave meeee-EEE-eeee!” And though that was his last image of me, that certainly wasn’t the last he heard of me. Upon his shutting the door to his apartment, almost crushing my desperate, clinging fingers in the process, I planted myself right there and sobbed uncontrollably, begging to be let in. It wasn’t till a neighbor with a gun—a man who must have mistaken being a part of the Neighborhood Watch for being on Dragnet and was apparently under the impression that robbers tended to sob uncontrollably at front doors before they broke in—rounded the corner and scared the shit out of me that I finally fled home. Once safe, I enlisted my phone and my ex’s answering machine in my mission. Since then I have vowed to always maintain my dignity, to be strong and stand tall even as my heart is breaking.
So, after I waited for Wilhelm to say something, anything, I took a deep breath. Dignity, pride, here I come.
“Fine. I’m not going to be your entertainment for the rest of your stay in L.A. You want your freedom, you got it.”
And with that I held my head high, grabbed my purse, and sashayed out of his apartment and to my car—where I then collapsed in silent heaving sobs, my head against the steering wheel. Just in case he was peering out the window, I quickly gathered my composure, started the car, drove a bit, and then, once safely out of earshot, started howling.
Somehow, amid sobs that racked my body and made it difficult to drive straight, I careened down the freeway and made it home. I collapsed on my bed, exhausted and now in a rather shocked state. What had just happened? Had we really just broken up?
I rolled on my back and stared at the overhead light, noting the silhouettes of dozens of flying creatures trapped in the glass fixture—now thankfully dead, but alarmingly once alive and most likely having taken respite on my forehead as I slept. It was August, late August, and instead of getting engaged we’d broken up. What had gone wrong? Had I done something wrong? Maybe we weren’t meant to break up and I’d forced it? Maybe this was my fault. Oh my God, I’m single.
But it still didn’t feel real. Nothing felt real. Was it real? I closed my eyes. I’d paid a lot of money for my future, and something had gone amiss. Were all the psychics I’d been talking to just wrong? Unreliable? The brash, disagreeable voice of Evangeline the Evil scratched its way into my mind…“M’dear, your relationship is an impendin’ train wreck.” This, I believed, certainly qualified as a train wreck, and while it occurred to me I should call Evangeline, as clearly she’d been right, I just couldn’t handle her. She was the kind of insensitive person who would cheerfully declare “Why, yes, darlin’, you will be miserable and in just a matter of time you’ll slit your wrists in the most adorable little pattern!” No, I needed comfort; I needed someone who knew me and knew Wilhelm, someone to tell me that this was some horrible mistake that would be fixed in the morning when my love recovered from his bout of insanity. I needed a friend.
Within minutes I was on the Psychicdom Web site, studying which psychics were online and ready to take calls. There was Erlin, my tux-clad hero, gazing at me with an expression that said, “Sarah, I’ve left the ball and am waiting to give you comfort.” Oh, Erlin, I thought, I won’t let you down. I’m coming.
And thank God for Erlin. His voice calmed me; his words stopped my sobbing. He assured me Wilhelm and I were not over, and he affirmed his prediction—we would not only be together, but we would still marry. I sniffled, and he continued.
“You should feel confident, Sarah. I see all this so clearly, the two of you together, happy and as one. He loves you, and the intensity of that emotion scares him. You’ve heard the expression “cold feet”? That’s what’s happened here. What you need to do is stop thinking about him. Right now he’s thinking of himself and you’re thinking of him as well—so who’s thinking of you? You need to take care of yourself, focus on you, and he’ll come back around.”
Eventually I hung up, breathed a sigh of relief, and then hid my MasterCard inside a stack of bills, with the hopes that by tomorrow I’d either have forgotten where it was or be so horrified at having to rifle through the multitude of bills that I’d leave it be. Of course, Erlin was right. Wilhelm simply had cold feet; he’d come back around. Nothing was over. We’d just hit a snag because of how much he loved me.
The comfort and relief lasted for all of about ten minutes, and then the crippling anxiety returned. What if Erlin was wrong? What if Wilhelm didn’t come back? What if it really was over? Like the true psychic junkie I’d become, I needed another reading. Another one would make me feel better. If someone else said the same thing, I’d believe it. Tearing through my stack of bills for my credit card, I reached for the phone again…and again…and again.
A little more than a week passed and I’d already lost ten pounds on the Heartbreak Diet, as saltines and ginger ale were the only things I could get down. My upset stomach and inability to chew was a typical Sarah reaction to suffering, but in this case it was confounded by the fact that food itself reminded me of Wilhelm. My kitchen reminded me of Wilhelm. My pots and pans, my refrigerator, my wineglasses. But then, of course, my hallway, my front door, even my loofah, which he used because he said it made his skin so soft—everything reminded me of Wilhelm. I was living in a trap of Wilhelm-ness, each memory a nail on which I couldn’t avoid stepping.
On top of the torturous reminders, it was hitting me that it was real. I wasn’t about to wake up with relief from some horrible nightmare, Wilhelm beside me in bed asking if maybe I’d had a bad dream, because I’d been crying in my sleep. No, we’d actually broken up. The understanding that I was alone and might never see him again rose before me, growing like a mountain I had to climb, one that just kept getting higher and higher, one with cliffs in every direction.
I couldn’t leave my house. I couldn’t face friends or family. Gina left messages, many long rambling messages, but since she had no idea we’d broken up, she was under the impression I was in some Wilhelm state of bliss. “Step away from your man, leave the kitchen, pick up the phone, and talk to me!” she’d scream into my answering machine. “I met someone! Don’t you want to hear about him? We like each other! He’s like a young Jeff Bridges. I love Jeff Bridges. Don’t you love Jeff Bridges? Who doesn’t love Jeff Bridges? Uh! But thank God he’s not an actor! Where are you? Are you at Wilhelm’s house? I’ll try your cell.”
I’d listen to her message, then to the sound of my cell phone ringing from my purse, and do nothing. My entire existence was about doing nothing.
Well, that’s not entirely true. The one thing I could do, and did quite well, thank you very much, was take it upon myself to test every single psychic at Psychicdom. When I wasn’t curled in the fetal position in a state of shock, I called psychics with such fervency that one would’ve thought I was the one getting paid. Credit cards fanned by my side, I started each day lovesick and on a mission to find the perfect psychic. Erlin was great, but I couldn’t keep calling him, he was just too expensive and had to be saved for special occasions. I needed someone I could consult with daily, maybe twice a day, without going bankrupt by the end of the week, and until I found that person, I knew I had to call as many psychics as I could. It was my mission, my goal, my duty.
Let me tell you, psychic duds abounded. Not that Andre was a psychic dud, but after the fabulous reading he’d given me, he promptly disappeared from the site. What good was he if he could no longer be located? Then, in addition to the woman who compared our relationship to celery, and Glenda the sultry bonbon-eating psychic, there was a slew of others who seemed determined to confuse or enrage me, or just piss me off by telling me I needed a room filled with crystals.
; “In particular, rose quartz,” Miss Aura said. “Tons of it.”
Rose quartz? It was some random day of the week, I had no idea which one, and I’d awoken in a fit of panic and reached for the phone. Now I was being told I needed to live in a geode.
“You need to recharge the crystals during the next full moon,” she continued. “Put some under your pillow when you go to sleep. Yes, I feel you need this. Rose quartz inspires feelings of love and friendship and removes repressed anger. I sense repressed anger. And the rose quartz, it aids the spleen—has anyone told you about your spleen? It’s often overlooked as an important organ. May I tell you about your spleen?”
“No,” I wanted to scream at her. “I can safely say I’m in no mood to learn about the wonders of the spleen. And as a psychic you should’ve known that, so clearly you suck!” Of course I didn’t say this, as there was always the possibility that she could put a curse on me, so instead I simply hung up and decided to call someone else.
Unfortunately, freaky crystal/spleen lady had exhausted the money I’d had in my account, so it was time for another deposit. I emptied my mind of any thoughts that would point out the insanity of my actions, gathered my credit cards together, closed my eyes, and shuffled them as best I could. Without looking, I spread them on the bed and ran my fingers over their numbers. My hand stopped on one particular card. I opened my eyes. Well, hello, little MasterCard, how would you like to lead me to my future?