Silence. “I can’t believe that she would be making these phone calls,” Charles repeated.
“Who is Mara Winters? You still haven’t told me who she is.” I found my thoughts blurred and fuzzy. I could feel my heart beat faster, and I took a deep breath.
“She’s someone I met around the same time we met, and I’ve been seeing her every once in a while. I just can’t believe she would make these phone calls.”
“You mean you’ve been dating her? Sleeping with her?” My body shook, I was so angry. “I can’t believe that you’re more concerned with the fact that she made the phone calls than you are about the fact that you’ve been deceiving me. That’s much stranger and more upsetting to me.” I was confused, questioning the seven months we had been together, while Charles stood there, so calm, so rational.
After hours of talking that night, Charles and I decided to take a break from seeing each other. I went along with his plan.
“Let’s take a break to figure out what we each want,” Charles proposed.
I thought, You mean what you want. . ..
He went on, “Let’s take a minimum of two weeks with no contact, a maximum of five weeks. Then we’ll get together and see where things stand.”
Héloïse’s words resounded in my head: Lewd visions of the pleasures we shared take such a hold upon my unhappy soul that my thoughts are on their wantonness, instead of on prayers. I should be groaning over the sins I have committed, but I can only sigh for what I have lost.
“Okay, let’s do that, and you can decide what you want. I know what I want, but it has to include honesty.” Each word I said was like a pin stuck in my heart.
On the sixth day of our break, Charles called and asked if he could see me sooner. “I miss you so much. I’ve ended it with Mara.”
I was thrilled—until we got together, almost a week later.
“So, how did it go with Mara when you spoke with her?” I asked, pouring us each a glass of wine as Charles started a fire.
“Well, I haven’t actually told her yet. I just had one brief conversation with her on the phone,” he said casually, not turning from the fire.
“Charles, how could you? You had almost a full week before seeing me in which you should have taken care of it, but maybe you didn’t actually want to do that.” The muscles of my abdomen clenched like tightening coils. Hot bolts of anger welled up inside me and burst out: “You should have done it before you even called me, or at least before you saw me!” I shouted. “I feel like you’re playing games with me.”
Charles turned and stood there, perplexed. “Well, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. You really should try to be more sensitive to that.”
He was acting as if there was something wrong with me. My head spun. Why in the world should I be sensitive to her feelings? He should be sensitive to my feelings; this has nothing to do with this other woman. This is crazy-making.
Chapter Three
WHEN I TOLD CHARLES I WOULD NOT SEE HIM OR speak to him again until I was sure he had ended things with Mara, he ended the relationship with her within forty-eight hours. Somehow, at that time, my desire to work things out with him allowed me to believe it had been just a blip in the early part of our relationship.
Three months later, Charles went to court with me about the phone calls.
I don’t know what I expected, but Mara seemed nice. She looked like she was in her early thirties. She was slim, with short, dark hair and a pretty smile.
As we stood before her, the judge, a woman of about sixty, looked from Mara to me and said, “Ladies, believe me, you will both come to realize that no man is worth it.” She then looked at Mara and continued, “Ms. Winters, no more phone calls. Case dismissed.”
There was an uncomfortable silence as Mara and I both smiled at her, and then, out of the corners of our eyes, we looked at each other and we smiled.
Charles seemed strangely high-spirited as we left the courthouse.
“Why don’t we go have some lunch at Bonjour?” he suggested, pulling me close.
“Sure, that sounds good,” I said, but in my mind I wondered why he hadn’t said anything about having seen Mara.
“So, Charles,” I found myself trying to sound casual. “Was it uncomfortable for you to see Mara?”
“Why would I be uncomfortable? She’s nobody to me. I heard they have some new things on the menu at Bonjour—maybe we’ll experiment.” He laughed as he opened the car door for me, and I slid in, ignoring the hollow feeling in my gut. It was as if this woman Mara were a nonentity, as if he hadn’t known her, as if she didn’t really exist, had never existed.
Around that same time, Charles and I had introduced my dear friend Allyson to his close friend Harry, and they had really hit it off. Being a foursome with our closest friends made it much easier to ignore those quirks of Charles’s that I didn’t want to see. I could brush off the behaviors I noticed, like his dismissal of Mara; or the characteristics I wondered about, like the times he discounted something I’d said and then the next day would say, “I have this great idea . . . ,” and it would be exactly what I had suggested; or the fact that he was still so angry at his mother. These things didn’t happen all the time, and it wasn’t as if I didn’t question anything he said or did: I just thought I was accepting that this was Charles and there was so much about him that was good.
One morning in May, as Charles and I were leaving the house, my landlord stopped by.
“Hi, Ken. I haven’t seen you in a while,” I called to him as we were getting into the car.
“Hi. I’m glad I caught you before you left. I just wanted to drop off your new lease. Look it over, and if you have any questions, just give me a call, okay? It’s pretty straightforward: no changes; rent is the same.”
“Great. I’ll get back to you with it. Thanks for dropping it off.”
“No problem, Di.”
That evening after dinner, as Charles was reading, I pulled out the lease that I had gotten from Ken.
“What’s that?” Charles asked, looking up from his journal.
“Oh, it’s the new lease that Ken dropped off.”
“Are you going to sign it?”
“I was planning on it.”
“Oh. I thought this might be a good time for you to move out to the country—for us to live together.”
Things had been going well, but I hadn’t been expecting this—not yet. I just sat there, smiling.
“Well, what do you think?”
I did love my place and my independence, but I also knew I loved Charles and wanted to be with him.
“I think it would be wonderful; let’s have some wine to celebrate.”
Charles got the wine as we laughed and tore up the unsigned lease. In July, we packed all of my stuff into a U-Haul and I moved out to the country to live with Charles. I loved the peaceful rhythms of our life. The early doubts seemed to be gone. I felt as if I had found someone with whom I could have both independence and intimacy.
We added to our family of sheepdogs. The person from whom I had gotten Winnie could no longer care for Winnie’s mother, Ginger. She was old and overbred, but she was very sweet. We loved Winnie—how could we say no to his mother? And so Ginger came to live with us. We still wanted Winnie to have a playmate, though, and so we also got a sheepdog puppy, Benjamin Disraeli, whom we called Dizzy.
Life was good. The dogs came with us cross-country skiing across the snowy fields. We laughed as Ginger barked fervently at Winnie and Dizzy when they ran out onto the ice-covered pond, chastising them for their risky frolic. Afterward, we went home and sat with hot drinks in front of the fire, surrounded by our furry family.
As the snow began to melt in Maryland and the crocuses began to push their colorful heads upward, Charles suggested a whitewater canoe trip. “I have a friend in Maine who’s an outfitter and guide. How about I call him and see if he can arrange a canoe trip down the St. John River during ice-out? The water will be moving, but it won’t be t
oo difficult for you. It’ll be fun.”
I could tell this was something Charles really wanted to do. “Sure, it sounds like fun,” I agreed, “but I’ve never done any whitewater canoeing. Two weeks sounds like a long time to be on the river.”
“You’ll love it. The St. John is really an amazing river. In the summer the water can get so low that you can wade across it, but during ice-out, in early spring, it’s another story. There can be blocks of ice thirty feet tall that crash through the trees and the river channel.”
“It sounds spectacular. I just don’t know if I have the skill for that kind of trip.”
“I can get us through the difficult stuff; most of it won’t be too hard, though. These are mostly Class II rapids, so they’re easy—only a couple of Class III. Haven’t you enjoyed the canoeing we’ve done? And I know you love white-water rafting, so you’ll love this, too. It really will be an adventure.”
It was hard to not absorb Charles’s enthusiasm, and I did like adventures. “Okay, I’m in.”
Charles made all of the arrangements for the fourteen-day river trip. Over the next few weeks, we got our gear together, including a heated snifter to enjoy a little warm brandy in the tent after a long day on the river.
To kick off the journey, we took a leisurely drive through New England, stopping at inns along the way. We arrived in Bangor, Maine, and met Barry, the outfitter who’d drop us off at Fourth St. John Pond, where we’d put in, and then would pick us up fourteen days later.
There were four of us who would be paddling: Sean, our guide; Susan, a single woman, paddling solo; and Charles and I, paddling together. The air was chilly, the sky dishwater gray, as we started out in the back of Barry’s pickup for the north woods. We drove for a couple of hours on back roads darkened by towering spruce and alders.
We arrived at Fourth St. John Pond late that afternoon. Barry, Sean, and Charles unloaded the canoes while Susan and I unpacked the rest of the gear from the truck. Then Barry took off for civilization, leaving us in the wilderness. The dense, still forest surrounded us as we set up camp and evening fell. We hadn’t eaten for hours. Thankfully, Sean was a great cook—the hobo stew and cornbread he made were delicious—and Susan and I put together a pretty good apple crisp. After we ate, we sat around, telling stories.
“I have a story,” Charles began. “It’s supposedly true. Pretty Face was a beautiful young girl. More beautiful than all the others. She thought she was too good for all the young men in her tribe. One day a strange man arrived in the village and approached Pretty Face’s wigwam, saying that he had come to marry her. Her parents objected; they didn’t know this man. But Pretty Face would not listen to reason, and she agreed to marry him.
“Together, they went to the river. ‘Amankamek, you should not have brought her here,’ the man’s mother yelled in anger at her son when they arrived at the river.”
Charles’s voice got deeper as he continued.
“‘Amankamek? I know that name. That is the river snake.’ Pretty Face remembered that this was the great snake who could change his shape and devour women. ‘What a fool I’ve been.’ She shuddered.”
A cacophonous boom interrupted the story. At that moment, we felt the first splatters of rain. Thunder rumbled; heaven’s clangorous clap of fury drummed and rolled in with rage. A flash stunned the cracked sky, and torrents poured down. We ran for our tents, but the zipper on ours was stuck. Charles and I were soaked, along with everything in the tent, before we could get it fixed.
Charles slept soundly that night, but as I listened to the pounding rain and roaring wind, all I could think was, why did I agree to do this for my vacation? I was cold and wet, lying there in the dark, shivering and wanting to scream. It didn’t seem like an adventure anymore; it was a nightmare.
Morning came. The wind still wailed, and the rain battered us mercilessly. Still, we stowed our gear in the canoe and paddled across the pond. I stared at the towering stands of trees surrounding us and felt this eminent and lofty wall of green closing in on me. There was no way out. Charles tried to speak to me, but I was silent. I felt like a trapped animal, and I knew if I spoke, I could easily attack. I was a prisoner in this mad folly until we got to the other end of the river. I looked up into the sky and imagined sending a rescue signal to some helicopter flying overhead. That was my only possibility for escape. Short of that, I was stuck.
Suddenly, with that thought, I started to laugh. It was a soaking-wet epiphany. There was absolutely nothing I could do. I could be miserable and angry for the next two weeks, or I could just accept that this was where I was. I had agreed to go on the trip, so I could make the best of it and maybe even enjoy it. It was up to me.
Until then, I hadn’t been talking in more than monosyllables to Charles. “I’m sorry I’ve been such a prig this morning. I was indulging myself, but I’m okay now. I really do want this to be a fun adventure, even if we’re wet, muddy, and cold. Even if my hair is frizzy.”
It rained the first three days and nights, and I was surprised at how exhilarating it was, feeling the force of the river on my paddle, the wind and rain in my face, and the feeling of just being present in the moment. After dinner each evening, Charles and I returned to our tent to drink warm brandy and laugh about the day’s adventures.
When we awoke on day four, there was a thin coating of frost on the tent, the air was cold but dry, and the wondrous song of loons echoed through the forested hillsides. The rain had stopped, and the sun reflected brightly on the water.
We paddled all morning, stopping for lunch, and then spent the rest of the day at the next campsite, where we swam in the cold water, ate freshly caught trout, and laughed.
When Charles, Susan, and Sean decided to go for a hike, I stayed back at the campsite to wash my hair, read, and relax. They were gone for quite a while, and while I sat in our wooded campsite, I could hear coyotes howling in the distance. I wasn’t afraid, but I began to think about what it would be like to have to survive in the wilderness. I began to think about feral children.
That night, as Charles and I lay together in our tent, I said, “You know, I had some interesting thoughts while you were off hiking this afternoon. There was something surreal about being all alone in the woods, hearing the coyotes in the distance.”
“Were you scared?”
“No, not really. It just made me think about feral children and also about how someone can become paranoid or how baser instincts can emerge when someone is isolated and has to depend totally on their own resources.” I waited for Charles to say something, but he was quiet. I kept talking.
“I could just understand, in a way that I hadn’t thought about before, how a person’s interpretation of what’s going on around them can be dramatically influenced when survival is at stake.” Charles was still quiet.
“Anyway, those thoughts took up a lot of the time you were gone.” I laughed self-consciously as I finished.
He looked at me oddly, but I never gave any of it a second thought. I noticed something, but once again I failed to question. I didn’t think, though, that Charles had an internal life that I knew nothing about, that his slowness to respond was designed to make sure his response was what he wanted it to be.
I really didn’t need to worry about my inexperience with whitewater canoeing, either. Charles was a great teacher and support. In the couple of situations where my stomach was doing somersaults, his calm control and skill gave me some confidence, too. We developed an easy rhythm to our paddling.
We took out at Allagash Village after nearly 143 miles of paddling. Barry picked us up, and we drove back to Bangor. We looked as if we had been in the back woods for months when he dropped us off in the parking lot. We were covered in dirt and mud as we packed our gear back into the car.
We traveled through New England on our way back to Maryland. As we drove, Charles said, “You know; I think we did pretty well on that trip. It’s not so easy to paddle tandem and get along, but we didn’t have any
problems.”
I thought about our two weeks together. We had laughed at every problem. We had slogged through rain, paddled miles and miles, mostly laughing, and drinking brandy by candlelight at night. We had learned a lot about ourselves and each other on that trip. It turned out to be one of the best vacations we ever had.
“You’re right—it was an amazing trip, and it could have been a disaster. I think it says a lot about us as ‘us.’”
When we got home, after picking up the dogs at the farm where they were boarded, we crashed. We worked all week, and the next Saturday night, we went to our favorite restaurant for dinner. On our table, I spotted a bouquet of yellow flowers. After I experienced my usual response of not realizing that the flowers were for me, I noticed the note: Di, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me? I love you. C.
I looked into Charles’s eyes, smiled, and then threw my arms around him and gave him a big, salty kiss. “I’d love to be your wife, forever.”
We spent the next few months crafting handmade invitations, creating a wedding canopy, and planning our at-home, outdoor wedding. For weeks beforehand, we picked mounds and mounds of grapes, blackberries, and raspberries, freezing them to be part of the wedding feast
September arrived, along with the prediction of a hurricane. We were not sure how it would play out, if the storm would actually hit us, but then, only thirty-six hours before our wedding was to begin, the clouds rolled in. What was at first dusky gray cloud cover turned to black, ominous masses covering the entire sky above us. There was an eerie calm; then the dogs began to bark and run in circles. The trees swayed. The breeze picked up, and the first crash of thunder sounded.
The wind howled throughout the night. Pellets of rain shot at the windows like bullets. The shutters, which we had neglected to close, smashed against the fieldstone walls outside. By now, all three fluffy sheepdogs were huddled together under the bed. There was no power and no phone service. Charles and I sat by candlelight, listening to the pummeling of the storm, drinking wine, surrounded by baskets of flowers, trying to decide what we would do if the weather did not improve enough for us to host our wedding.
Lost in the Reflecting Pool Page 3