by Hope Tarr
A Lost Friend, A Movie Star, A Man to Love Forever
By Elf Ahearn
You might say it was a love triangle, but not in the technical sense. I was never torn between lovers. It’s just that I met my husband and his best friend on July Fourth in 2002, and apparently, they were both attracted to me. That I married one and the other died has less to do with me than with what happens when a man’s life stalls and he can’t find a way to start it back up. At least that’s how I think of it.
On that fabulous, fatal fourth, we were under the branches of a pine outside our hostess’s clapboard home at Candlewood Lake in Connecticut, sitting on white plastic chairs and leaning our elbows on a rickety card table. Patrick, my future husband, sat next to me, and Peter, his best friend, stood at the grill cooking hotdogs. We were talking about our favorite musicians, and though we’d met only about a half hour ago, we were already joking and laughing. If puzzle pieces get happy when they fit, that’s what we were feeling—puzzle pleased.
Patrick had an arm tossed over the back of his chair, and while he named folksingers, he looked at me in that searching way men have when they’re seeking an invitation. They don’t know that’s what they’re doing, but they let their eyes rove and rest, rove and rest on parts they like. Then they check back with your face to see if you’re doing the same thing. But on that sunny afternoon, I gave the man no feedback. I was busy dating a psychopath and had just gone through a divorce, so I wasn’t much interested in starting something new.
Then Patrick mentioned my favorite folksinger, Susan Werner, and I leaned a little closer. The card table creaked, and his deep, sexy voice got a hint more animated. He is six-foot-three. All that leg was sprawled out in front of him, and for the first time that day, I let my eyes rove and rest, though, as I said, my plate was full.
Peter chimed in that John Prine was his favorite folksinger. Back then, I didn’t know who John Prine was, so the conversation switched to actors. Peter went inside for potato salad, while Patrick waxed poetic about Al Pacino versus Robert De Niro. And then he said Oscar-winning actress Ellen Burstyn was right up there with them. He wasn’t trying to impress me, and he didn’t come up with an actress just because I’m female and used to be in the theater—he actually started naming her films: The Exorcist, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Resurrection…
“I saw Ellen Burstyn in a movie that no one’s ever heard of,” I said, looking a little more closely at this big-boned Irishman with the gray-blue eyes. “The film was called A Dream of Passion, and she was brilliant.”
To this day, I will never forget the expression in Patrick’s eyes when I said the name of that movie. This doesn’t sound romantic, but it was like a lizard snapping to attention—the twist of the body, the gaze that locks on. “I have a video of A Dream of Passion,” he said.
At that moment, Peter slipped between us, dumping a bowl of potato salad on the table.
As dusk crept in and we waited for the fireworks over Candlewood Lake, I realized I had stumbled upon a gold mine of funny, intelligent men. Patrick, Peter and I talked and laughed about actors, movies, music and books. A citronella candle glowed in the center of the table, and we glowed back at it. Other partygoers sat down, ate their food and made a comment or two, but the bond was unbreakable. We weren’t interested in talking to anyone else—only to each other.
The fireworks began at nine P.M. Just around the corner from our hostess’s home was a causeway where we could sit and take in the show. By the time we walked there, it was crowded with onlookers. All the good places to sit, on the curb, or with your legs dangling under the guardrail, were taken. Patrick said he had folding chairs in his car, and I volunteered to help carry them back.
Peter jumped to his feet, dusted his backside and said, “I’ll come, too.” I could tell Patrick bristled a little at that, but like I said, I wasn’t looking, so it didn’t bother me.
More talking, more laughing. The three of us sat together in a row. Peter, me and Patrick, while the fireworks burst overhead, sometimes so near you’d swear the sparks would ignite us.
And then the display was over. We all said good night, and a drunken neighbor offered me fifty dollars to stay. He’d put on a show earlier throwing lit firecrackers for his German shepherd, who snapped and barked. The poor animal could have burned its tongue. Not a great way to end the evening, but I was really happy to have met these two awesome guys. We shook hands affectionately, and I gave Patrick a little tap on the back.
A year went by. Reports drifted in via a friend that I’d made quite the impression on the boys, but as I said, I had that psychopath, so I didn’t pay much attention.
When summer returned, I heard our hostess planned to reprieve her party and that Peter and Patrick would be there. I was going to go, but at the last minute blew it off in favor of seeing my brother-in-law in a concert. The idea of meeting that drunken guy with the German shepherd didn’t appeal to me. I felt guilty about not going, though, so I e-mailed the guys that I’d be happy to meet for breakfast.
Peter didn’t write back, but Patrick did. He wasn’t available for breakfast, but he said he’d like to take me to dinner. It’s important to note that Patrick lived in New Jersey, about two hours away from my home in Connecticut.
On the night of our first official date, I pulled into the parking lot, and Patrick had his back to me. He was gazing at a decorative pond behind the restaurant, and when I called his name, he turned slowly and took off his sunglasses. I could tell he was trying for a James Bond cool. If he’d pulled it off, if he’d really been that debonair, I’d probably still be single, but how could I reject the sweetness of that goofy gesture? It meant he wanted to impress me—that he thought I was Bond Girl pretty.
We ate and talked. We talked so long, we closed the restaurant. Back out in the parking lot, I said something no guy had ever heard from me. “I’m not ready for this night to end.” So we went to the neighborhood bar, and when they kicked us out, I still couldn’t say goodbye. Chastely, I offered him my guest room.
A year later, Patrick and I were very much a couple. I threw a lot of parties in those days, and Peter always came early to help me prepare, to keep me laughing at his jokes and groaning at his puns. He’d lost his job—a communications business he’d started with a taller, more aggressive friend (Peter just topped five feet)—but they’d hired him back as a consultant. He had no girlfriend. His roommate’s dog made him smile, especially the time it got so excited it peed on my shoe.
Fourth of July 2004, Patrick, Peter and I convened at our friend’s home on Candlewood Lake. That year, Peter drove his brother’s vintage Cadillac convertible. Blue with a white leather interior, it was the one thing he’d held on to after finding his brother dangling from a rope in the living room. A suicide note said, “I just couldn’t hang on any longer.”
On that night, we loaded into the back seat, and Peter gunned the engine. He spun around corners and sped down straightaways. I felt like a 1950s starlet with her hair blowing in the summer air. There was something reckless and young about being in the back of that car, though we were all out of our twenties.
When we got back to the party, Peter drank a lot and wanted to take us out for another spin. We said no and left soon after. He kept drinking, though, and then he got into that big car, zoomed down the road and got pulled over by the cops.
The next time we saw him, he was making good use of the bicycle Patrick once gave him as a present. He’d lost his license on a DWI, and then the dog who’d peed on my shoe died.
Christmas Day 2004, Patrick proposed. We were at my sister’s house, and he’d bought me twelve presents. We sang “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as I opened each gift. The last line, traditionally “and a partridge in a pear tree,” had been substituted with “and garbage with a flip lid.” Yes, folks, he bought me a garbage pail.
Just before the “five golden rings” verse, Patrick stopped to make a phone call, which I thought was pretty annoying. Whe
n he hit the speaker button and my mother came on, however, he dropped to one knee and officially asked for my hand. (My father had passed in 1994.)
A long speech followed, and I don’t remember a word of it. I was crying and laughing, and my sisters were all doing the same. Then Patrick took a dazzling ornament from the tree—a purple satin heart covered in gold braid and sequins—and from it he produced a golden ring. It was the ring his mother had worn—a simple plated band with worn places where another alloy shone through. “Five golden rings,” we all sang at the top of our lungs.
Peter seemed genuinely happy for us when we told him, though we didn’t see him for a while.
In late June 2005, I got a call at work from Peter asking if I wanted to see folksinger John Prine at Town Hall in New York City. Patrick would meet us at the venue.
On the way down, Peter talked about the Newport Film Festival, how he’d gone with nothing more than a ticket in his hand but became a vital volunteer. They’d made him a bouncer. For a small man, that must have been the ego trip of a lifetime. He’d shaved his head, talked tough and rested a hand on my thigh, which pissed me off.
We stopped at a coffee shop and bought sandwiches for dinner. I picked roast beef, but it had gone bad. Peter promised to pull off the highway so I could pick up a slice of pizza or something, but he kept driving. In the city we ended up at an expensive restaurant, forgoing the opening act so I could eat. Now he was mad at me.
The concert was amazing, but the ride home was sullen.
That September, I rented out my house in Connecticut, quit my job and moved into a new home in New York State with Patrick. As we were setting up housekeeping, we heard occasionally from Peter that he’d become involved in a film festival in his hometown of Bethel, Connecticut. He promised to let us know when it happened, but we never got an invitation.
Then the woman with the house on Candlewood Lake called the morning of December 2, 2005. The night before, she said, her voice cracking with emotion, Peter had lain down on the tracks and waited for the eight-thirty commuter out of New York. When I told Patrick, he hit the top of the bathroom vanity, screaming, “No! No! No!”
As we prepared for our wedding, Patrick and I told Ellen Burstyn, who’d agreed to officiate, all about Peter. She promised to mention him in the ceremony—to say how strange it was not to have him there—because we’d been a trio. We’d been three friends who loved each other enough that Peter should have known he’d have a permanent place in our lives.
Before we exchanged rings, Susan Werner, whom Patrick hired as a surprise wedding gift to me, sang a song I wish Peter could have heard. It’s called “Attend the Sky,” and the first verse says:
Have you ever had life pour in like sunlight through the window
Have you ever had love pour down like summer in the rain
Have you ever had justice come and settle in your corner
Well if you never have
It will happen one day.
Elf Ahearn—yes, that is her real name—writes Regency romances “with a Gothic twist.” Having been an actress, she can’t resist ladling such high-tension drama into her novels that she feels compelled to warn of her Gothic tendencies. Her books, A Rogue in Sheep’s Clothing and Lord Monroe’s Dark Tower, are available at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and all the other online spots where reading material lurks. She is blissfully married to Patrick Ahearn, with whom she shares a pesky (yet adorable) cat named Sufie. Visit Elf online at www.elfahearn.com.
Acceptance
By Leanna Renee Hieber
I grew up in rural Ohio inventing ghost stories, was involved in any piece of theater or art I could have my hand in, started my first novel around the age of twelve (a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera because I didn’t like the ending), starred in multiple high school and regional youth productions, got my BFA in theater performance and graduated with a lot of drama under my belt.
And in my personal life.
Not only have I always been a dynamo of unwieldy energy, but it took a long time and a lot of tumult before I understood the concept of leaving my work at work. My love life was just as unpredictable and often unstable as my on-stage lives as I toured the regional theater circuit in different professional shows. But a girl can only take so much drama in every sphere for so long. My path needed a fresh perspective, in art and in life. I needed to be grounded, and I needed to make a brave, bold change.
So, with about two weeks’ notice, I packed up my Ford Taurus and drove to New York City, where I knew only my future roommate and one other soul.
I knew I would sort myself out in a city that would sort me. Creatively and emotionally, I was at an impasse. A big move to the enormous, daunting metropolis would force me to leave serially unhealthy relationships and finally live for myself and my dreams. I also hoped New York would help me determine which of my great loves would be my true calling: the stage or the page.
I worked random miserable jobs and went to innumerable miserable auditions, hoping I wasn’t delusional in thinking I was working toward something. My first year in the city, I occasionally dated, but I’m awkward. I was certainly not living Sex and the City. I hated the initial dating process as much as I still hate that show. I made friends and focused on myself. And, as a progressive left-wing Christian who always believed my artistic passions were a heavenly calling, I wondered what God had in store for me.
Torn between actress and author, I wondered if I had to pick a side. I went to a Broadway callback and all I could think about was my book. I shifted gears. I stopped auditioning. I started querying the novel I’d begun writing while an intern at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company a few years prior.
I got a job as a tour guide on the big red double-decker buses in the city, hoping that would suit me better than working the frontlines at Starbucks Times Square and at a law firm, the latter a particularly ill fit.
As a lifelong Goth girl (no, it’s not a phase), wearing a white polo and khakis to work at the tour bus company was hardly my idea of style (the horror!). I certainly wasn’t looking for a date when I befriended the outgoing, exuberant Marcos, a fellow tour guide who said that overhearing me discuss my prayerful quest toward artistic discernment had piqued his interest. And he thought I was hot.
We were both vegetarians, liberal, Protestant Christians with Lutheranism and Methodism in our backgrounds. He was a dancer and musician. We were artists to the core of our beings. We had in common all the great things friendships are made of. I was not looking for a relationship. Not even dating. No. He’d seen me only in a white polo shirt, for the love of God. My inner Gothling was withering day by sunny khaki-clad day…. We hung out for a period of time after work. We would wave to each other from one tour bus to another. He sang me his songs. I told him about my books. We went to see a movie. We kissed. We fell into a relationship before we really knew what hit us.
But before I could really let myself go, I had one task for him.
I handed him the manuscript of what would become my debut novel, The Strangely Beautiful Tale of Miss Percy Parker, a Gothic Victorian saga about a group of ghost-busters in 1888 London at the time of Jack the Ripper, filled with sweeping drama, intense action and romance, underpinned by Greek mythology.
I handed him the tome and said, “If you want to really understand me, read this.”
Understanding me as an artist was the key to my heart.
And he did.
If he hadn’t accepted this early task, I’d have bailed. I needed my career and my passion to be as much a driving force in my life as my relationships were. The two didn’t have to be at cross-purposes.
Even though Marcos wasn’t a big fiction reader, he took this on with as much enthusiasm as he had our early adventures. And because his earnest interest made me feel safe, I allowed myself to fall.
He fit my type: tall, dark and handsome; enthusiastic; personable; clever; and talented. The difference from my previous relationships was that he was stable, respo
nsible, and unfailingly into me. That was new for me, that kind of confidence. We laughed at each other’s jokes and shared the same nerdy love for various sci-fi/fantasy fandoms. And our shared faith was something both of us had found severely lacking in past relationships. He seemed as interested in growth as a person and as an artist as I was. The foundations were strong.
There were bumps, as there are in any relationship, but we rode them out, realizing we wanted this to work more than we didn’t. I tried, and am still trying, to learn Spanish out of respect for his Puerto Rican heritage. I try to understand him as much as he has tried to understand me.
One early instance of his effort at understanding remains one of my favorite things anyone has done for me, something that crystalizes who he is and what we have.
During the first couple of years of our relationship, I had yet to get an agent or any nibble on my novel. I faced countless rejection letters as any aspiring author does, and I was feeling disheartened. One day I came home to find something on my bed in a FedEx envelope. It was an acceptance letter.
From God.
Marcos had written out, very Hogwarts-style (I’m obsessed with Harry Potter and very active in the fandom along with my best friends and family; Marcos had to accept this early on, too), an acceptance letter of my gifts, my talents, my pursuits, and my purpose. And he had it “sent” from what we both believe to be the highest authority and resource in the world: the Holy Spirit.
My partner had found a brilliantly, thoughtfully clever way to not only tell me he was on my side, but that he supported me on every level—emotionally, spiritually and literally. He knew how hard I was working, how disheartened I was at the whole long process, so a little clever letter was a big, delightful deal.