Old

by Stan Charnofsky

  I was disposed to scold her back with, “You mean sensitive, like that boorish friend of yours, Tillie the Hun?” Instead, I retreated, chastised and wounded, feeling woefully sorry for myself.

  So, the intimate part of our marriage also began to unravel. As a therapist, I know that the bedroom piece is only one of many that suffer when a partnership decays. It is, certainly, a significant one since the way I look at lovemaking is that it is a celebration of a love feeling. When a love feeling shrivels, why would one want to celebrate?

  Another thing I know is that if you aren’t—as the saying goes—getting it at home, you might begin to roam. Well, I was not about to, but I began to worry about Julie, especially with that psycho hanging around so regularly.

  What happened could not have been anticipated, but it had a crushing effect on our lives.

  I received a phone message on my university line, which I didn’t pick up for a couple of hours. When I did, I rushed home with disregard for speed limits, stop signs, or traffic laws, nearly crashing twice. The message had been a sob and a barely audible muttering, “Oh, Ted, I need help.”

  When I first arrived, I found our son crying in his bedroom, the door shut, and Julie in our room, lying on the bed in a fetal position, staring at the wall. She said the few words that revealed what happened, and I asked, “Police?” She shook her head and in a strident tone, said “No!”

  Good old Tillie De Main had forced himself on her over her panicked protests, a full-fledged, violent rape.

  For almost an hour she said nothing, did no more than lie in my arms, blankly studying our bedroom wallpaper. I didn’t want to ask too many questions, but it was killing me to be there with her without knowing details. I wanted—with a fury I didn’t remember having before—to tear the heart out of that pathetic man. I knew that, after a time, Julie would have to belch out her own anger, mixed, of course, with terror and disgust.

  It may seem like an insensitive thought, but I must say that those moments holding Julie were the closest we had been in a few months. She needed comfort. She needed love. The horrific loss of her daughter had kept her off balance for a year, and now this abominable violation. I tried to put myself in her place—in any woman’s place, so defiled—to comprehend the helpless, hopeless feeling. I’m not sure a man can fully catch the depth of the despair.

  Now, an hour later, at last, she turned and looked up at me, and whispered, “It isn’t fair.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  It is sobering how human-calculated years pile up, one after another, certain as migrating birds, tribute to a revolving solar system that closes the gap with stolid indifference between youth and old age. What most grievously affects me, and maybe others, is my cavalier unawareness when it is happening, my attention drawn to simple pleasures: Ruth Chris steaks once a month, broiled or poached salmon thirty times a year, an ice-cold dry, Boodles gin martini each week, live theatre, concerts, tennis, a good movie.

  Then, all at once, I am old and don’t know how I got here. I look back on the journey and wonder how in hell all those years tumbled by without me noticing?

  I suppose that is the bane of old age, that we now know how precious each single moment is, and no longer have the same energy to experience it. I am reminded of Goethe, the German philosopher, who, when he was elderly, proclaimed: “I have learned how to live; time, oh ye gods, grant me now!”

  Well, time piddled around for a while after Julie’s defilement, seeming almost to stand still. I tried to plot some way to punish Tillie for his trespass, but knew I would have to do it surreptitiously, since Julie would have none of it. The quicker she could forget the event, the better for her emotional balance. The “he said, she said” scenario that occurs when rape cases are brought into court was not something Julie would tolerate—and, after all, what other proof did she have?

  My revenge skills were not well-honed. Besides, I was not sure I could even find Tillie any more. He was sure to have fled the scene and re-located somewhere, though, as a would-be actor, he probably left a trail of contacts. What I wanted was a way to hurt him, yet not bring fault to me. I thought of hiring some kind of hit-man, but didn’t know how to locate one. I thought of his dreams and a way that I might (wouldn’t it be the ultimate irony!) find him crossing a street and run my car into him, tossing him high and far, the way he wanted to do Lanny, his wife.

  I said to Julie, “None of my schemes have substance. I’m not one who can physically assault another human being. I have to hope (send energy, as they say in psychology) that Tillie De Main will get his comeuppance, that his life will be a torture pit, and that he’ll come to regret his foul deed.”

  Now, many years later, I am prone to think of my mind-set as squeamish, a chicken way out. Now, I say to myself that this callous, and utterly deceitful rapist, at least ought to have experienced a decisive response that would have taught him a life-long lesson.

  But, because of how my personality worked, I was focused keenly on Julie and how she would, over time, handle the offense, whether a resilience would surface that would allow her peace. After all, this event was an affront that was piled on top of the loss of her daughter, a tragedy she had not come close to resolving.

  The way it all played out was the second real calamity in my life, coming close but not equaling my Annie loss, even if Julie and I did have a home and a child together. It wasn’t a death, though, and I admit to not being as passionately in love with Julie as I had been with her sister.

  Weeks passed with Julie moping about, the care of Aidan largely falling on me. She didn’t ignore him, but simply had little patience for his “terrible twos” behavior. I say that, realizing that he, our precocious little son, was no more difficult than most children his age, but was highly verbal and into everything, wanting answers, wanting to be read to, demanding “one more” ginger snap.

  The quiet friction between Julie and me came to a nightmarish climax one Saturday afternoon. I had taken Aidan to a Chucky Cheese place for some awful food and lots of noise, and when we returned home—he asleep in his car seat—I found an envelope on the kitchen table. I looked at it with trepidation and decided to settle Aidan in before reading it.

  I sat on a hard, straight-back chair in the garish light of those long, tubular ceiling bulbs, and read:

  “Ted: I need to get away. It isn’t for good, but I know you will figure out a way to care for Aidan while I’m gone. I’m sorry. Too much has happened. There is nothing left for me to give, and that isn’t fair to you. I’ll be in touch. Love, Julie.

  Did I fall to pieces? I am happy to report that I did not. I was both wounded and furious, wounded that our already damaged little family would now be cut into pieces, and furious that a mother could abandon her baby the way Julie did. As I pondered my strategy, I began to realize she was so fractured by the events over the past year, she saw no other possibility than to run away. The thought also crossed my agitated mind that Julie was repeating a pattern that her daughter had initiated. Megan ran from whatever she saw as oppressive, and her mother ran from what she perceived as an intolerable life scenario. The final piece, I managed to understand, was that the act of rape is humiliating, and Julie probably had lost all ability to cope, both with me, and her now defiled life.

  I thought about trying to find her. I struggled to imagine where she would have gone. My friend, Zandor, cautioned me.

  “Ted, she wants to be alone. You have to respect that. If you track her down, you will interrupt her healing. It’s not you, it’s the situation she’s running from. She probably feels guilty, ashamed, unworthy, and even stupid for ignoring your reservations about the man. Let her be. When she’s ready she’ll show up.”

  Not the way I wish I could deal with the world. I wanted to be pro-active, not at the whimsy of someone else’s emotions. “You think I ought to put her on a sidecar and forget about her? Go on with my life—our lives, Aidan’s and mine—as if there is no mother-wife in the picture. How can we do that?”


  “I’m not too good at the ‘how’ business. I know the ‘what,’ but you’re the psychologist. You can figure out how to be in the new situation.”

  Typical of Zandor, to float a balloon advertising what ought to be done and leave it drifting in the air for someone else to steer—someone else, in this case, meaning me.

  “I’m super patient when it comes to my therapy work, and restless as hell when it comes to my private life.” I hesitated and said, “Really, Zan, where do you think she’s gone?”

  “You told me her parents are divorced. Maybe she went to stay with one of them. Who was she closest with, her mom or her dad?”

  “Not too close with either. She said they were so hostile to each other that it alienated the two daughters from them. Annie and Julie both felt estranged from their parents.”

  “Well then, check off that lead. What about good friends?”

  “A couple of women nearby, but I’ve phoned them and they don’t have a clue where she is.”

  “Hey, old buddy, you’ve got a talent for creating fugitives. Nah, just kidding! But it can’t feel good to have these lovely women vanish from your life.”

  “Feels rotten. I keep beating myself up with what the hell did I do to drive them away?”

  “The truth is that you did nothing. Other people did things. With Megan, it was a desire to become her own person. With Julie, it’s a burning need to accommodate an ugly hurt.”

  I was quiet for a time, taking in the reality of my new responsibilities without Julie. I would get a nanny for Aidan, someone to come in every day—or maybe even a live-in person, since my schedule could sometimes be demanding, both at my university and my private practice. I would place an ad in the newspaper, to run for a couple of weeks, asking Julie to rejoin us, that we needed her, and that things would get better. I would eschew notifying the police since Julie did not want any of her issues made public—and besides, there was a note clearly saying that her absence was self-imposed and there was no foul play.

  “You’re right, Zan. I have to let her find herself. But, damn it, I sure hope she knows, better than I do, where to look.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Now that I’m in—what do they call them?—my mellow years, I fill my time with students, music, theatre, Scrabble if I can get a worthy opponent, tennis, and reminiscing. The last-named is obvious, with all I’ve been writing. Reminiscing isn’t bad. It gets me in touch with my younger, energetic years, hopeful times when ambition lit up my life, and all kinds of opportunities presented themselves, personal and professional.

  Would I change things? Do I regret some paths I chose? Not really. My philosophy is that when I made choices, at those moments I did the best I could with the information I had. Did things turn out the way I wanted? Not always. Some devastating outcomes knocked me for a loop; like Annie’s horrible death; like Julie’s wounded manner and sudden departure.

  But, you know, the days come and go, regardless of individual angst, despite each person’s pain, indifferent to moments of joy and despair. The universe doesn’t have a consciousness. It just is. People invent motive in nature, create superstition to solve mysteries, and, when events occur, sometimes with eidetic clarity, soberly waggle their heads from side to side to confirm eternal Truths.

  In my mellow years, I have become something of a philosopher, albeit a curmudgeon of a one.

  Aidan and I became a sweet partnership of two. He asked for his mommy again and again, cried often, clung to me excessively, as if I, too, might go away. We bonded in a way that fathers and sons might not do when a nurturing mother is on hand. I will say that the woman I hired to care for Aidan was a jewel. Her name was Yolanda Morales, a twenty-two-year-old from Michoacan, a state in southwest Mexico, bordering on the Pacific. She spoke adequate English, became a teacher of Spanish for both my son and me, and cared for Aidan as if he were her own. After a few weeks, he began to refer to her as Mama.

  Our home had a separate room downstairs with an adjacent bath. It contained a long comfortable sofa, an oak desk with a swivel chair, a television, and two entire walls of book shelves; Julie and I had used it as an office, though, after the rape, I would sometimes sleep there to avoid her expected rejection. Yolanda was set up in that area, and was a twenty-four hour, live-in nanny. She left on Saturday mornings to find her friends in East Los Angeles, and returned late Sunday evening. As with others who work as domestic caregivers, she rode the bus from place to place, though on occasion, someone would drop her off at the house on Sunday night. She was a slim, pretty young woman, her skin a clear chestnut color, eyes black as olives, hair long, straight and ebony-hued. She smiled often, and had a wonderfully optimistic view of things. I worried that just when Aidan would be comfortable with her, Julie would appear, and there would be another loss in his young life.

  I was partly correct.

  Yolanda was with us for four months. In that span of time I heard nothing about or from Julie. As with Megan, she had dropped off the planet. I can’t exactly explain why I was not destroyed by that fact. Perhaps it was because, in her pain, she had so mercilessly pushed me away, that I had built up resentment to inure myself to further hurt. I know that resentment pulverizes intimacy.

  Near the end of the fourth month of Yolanda’s nanny-ship, I got a phone ring at ten in the night, and, when I answered, no one was there—or, at least, no one said anything. After my greeting, I held onto the phone without saying a word, which I sometimes did when this kind of game-playing happened, to see if whoever was there would ever open up. But, after a minute, a minute where I was getting more and more exasperated, I heard the faint click of the connection shutting off.

  I didn’t make too much of it, since such electronic horseplay had happened to me before, and I had always assumed it was possibly a scared client, or a student with a secret crush.

  But, this time, the caller rang again about five minutes later.

  “Yes,” I said with a bite in my tone.

  Again, there was a silence, but finally a small voice whispered, “It’s me.”

  “Julie!” I screeched. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I mean I’m not physically hurting or anything. But I’m not really okay, either. I’m sick. I mean emotionally sick. I think I need help.”

  “Yes, of course. Tell me where you are. I’ll come get you.”

  “It’s not that easy. I did something awful. I’m kind of hiding.”

  I was confused, since in a broad sense, of course she was hiding—she had been hiding from her family for months. “What do you mean you’re hiding? What are you hiding from?”

  “First, tell me about Aidan. Is he okay? Does he cry about me?

  “He did for a long time. I have a nanny living in who takes care of him. She does a fine job. He’s okay. I’m sure he still misses you.”

  She began to cry and I waited.

  At last she said, “I’m in a city in the San Joaquin Valley. I’ve been here for over a month. It’s where my searching led me.”

  “What were you searching for?”

  “Not what, who.”

  “All right. Who?”

  “Him, your classmate.”

  “You mean Tillie? You went looking for him?”

  “Not at first. I simply had to be alone, to scrape away the cobwebs. But after a time, my anger took hold. I wanted to find him, to make him pay for what he did.”

  “Oh, Julie. We could have gone to the police. We could have asked them to track him down. He was a fugitive on the run, they would have filed charges, made him accountable.”

  “I’m afraid I’m the fugitive.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Though she seemed reluctant, she began a somber narrative in a tone that was clearly weighty. “I remembered he had told me about an actor friend who quit the business and moved to a ranch. He had mentioned the name of the small city it was near, and told me he liked to go there to get away from the franti
c pace of Hollywood. When I felt stable enough, I came to that area, rented a room, worked for a couple of weeks in a motel, as a maid, to earn some rent money, and began to ask questions about the actor friend whose name, I was sure, would be recognizable to most folks. It only took a few days to learn about the ranch, where it was located, how to get there––all that.”

  “Julie, that is so dangerous.”

  “It didn’t matter. I was on a mission. I took to driving near the ranch at different hours to see if Tillie would show up. I knew he would be there, and finally one evening, right before sunset, there he was, driving out the gate, heading for town. I did nothing that night, but kept my watch to see if I could find clues about ways to hurt him.”

  Her voice trailed away, then she resumed with a declaration: “That’s sick isn’t it!”

  All at once, I felt a strong sense of love for Julie, and said, “Listen, sweetheart, if I had the guts, I might have gone after him myself. It isn’t sick to want to hurt him, but it’s complicated for a non-violent person who doesn’t believe in weapons and who never hurt anyone else.”

  “Yes. I had no idea how I was going to punish him. I read in the paper here that there were gangs that shot at each other, one or two getting killed every few months. I thought maybe I could hire someone to make it look like a gang-fight gone sour, where an innocent bystander became the victim, but didn’t know how to arrange anything like that.

  “I have this old car that I traded for when I left home, and it needed servicing. At the garage, I made friends with the mechanic. He showed me that my brake fluid canister had a leak in it, and how he would patch it up. That’s when I learned that it was, as he put it, ‘dangerous to drive around with low brake fluid, since once it got too low, the brakes would fail and the car would not be stoppable.’ So, I began to hatch my plan to hurt Tillie.”

  I moaned. “I know where this is going.”

  “Well, between the ranch and the city there is an altitude decline of about a thousand feet, and the road has a series of S curves that make the driving a challenge. From observing him I knew he drove almost recklessly fast, and my plot was to sabotage his car, maybe at night when he and his friend were asleep, or watch for when they both were off on a hike, which I had seen them do once or twice. I would poke a small hole in the fluid bottle to make it leak slowly but steadily, and I reasoned it would be better if he were going down the steep hill, so that his little roadster would continue to pick up speed; but it might work either way, since without brakes he wouldn’t be able to steer around the curves.”