The Interruption of Everything

by Terry McMillan

  “Did you try talking to your wife? She lives right here in this same house with you. You wouldn’ta had to catch a plane to nowhere that was five thousand miles away. And it woulda saved you a whole lot of money.”

  “You need Jesus, I’m telling you again,” Arthurine says.

  “Marilyn doesn’t understand.”

  “How in the world can you stand there and say that?”

  “Because she doesn’t know who I am anymore and I don’t know who she is, Mother.”

  “What in the world are you talking about, Son?” Prezelle says.

  “I don’t know what to do anymore to make her happy, to make her smile. So I’ve just been winging it. And guessing. But apparently these methods and strategies aren’t so effective.”

  “Methods? She ain’t no building, Leon. Or no golf ball.”

  “Son, have you ever bothered to ask her what makes her happy?”

  “No.”

  “Has she ever told you?” Prezelle asks.

  “Yes.”

  “And did you do any of those things?”

  Silence.

  “Did you ever try?”

  Silence.

  “You got to think about it?”

  “Not very often,” he says. “Sometimes they were things I just didn’t want to do.”

  “Don’t get me started,” Arthurine says. “Too late! So you didn’t wanna be inconvenienced, huh, Leon? Well let me tell you something, boy. If all women ever did was what we wanted to do, men would be—please forgive me Lord for I am about to sin—shit out of luck.”

  “But Marilyn’s never really asked me either. Not lately.”

  “Wait a minute, now,” Prezelle says. “So you trying to tell us that neither one of you ever does what the other wants?”

  “Not exactly. She thinks the things I like to do are boring.”

  “They are,” Arthurine says. “You study earthquakes, Son, now how exciting can that be? And this is what you do all day long. But that don’t mean you necessarily boring, Son.”

  “I think it does,” Prezelle says.

  “Well, it works both ways, but this is one of the things that was brought to my attention in Costa Rica.”

  “Let me save you a stack of money for the future, Son, because the one thing you don’t seem to understand even after all these years is that a good marriage requires something folks just don’t seem to like to do, and that is compromise. Not sacrifice. But compromise. Ain’t no other way. And if you want to have a healthy strong thriving marriage, like me and your mother intend to here, then put your wife’s needs first whenever you can. If she is willing to do the same, then you two might have a much brighter future.”

  “You seen a doctor about any of your problems?” Arthurine asks.

  “They’re not medical in nature,” Leon says.

  “How do you know that?” she says.

  “Because I’ve recently had a physical and I’m in very good health.”

  “Did you dye your hair, Son? It wasn’t that black when we saw him last time, was it, Prezelle?”

  “I don’t remember, Reeney, but if he wants to tint his hair, that’s his prerogative.”

  I guess so, Prezelle, because you’re a member, too!

  “I tried explaining some of what I’ve been feeling and she just dismisses it.”

  That’s not true! Is it? Is it?

  “Like what?” Arthurine says.

  “Well, I’ll put it this way. I’ve pretty much reached the top of the ladder at our company and I feel like I have nothing else to prove. I’m bored doing what I do. It doesn’t do it for me anymore. And I’d like to try something different.”

  “Did you tell her that?” Prezelle asks.

  “Not in those exact words.”

  “Then what other words did you use?” Arthurine asks.

  “Well, none, at least not in this regard,” he says.

  “If this is how you get your point across, no wonder she don’t understand you,” Prezelle says, “because you ain’t really said too much of nothing too clearly since we been here. You beat around the bush, Leon, when you need to come on up from around it and just spit it out.”

  “I’m trying to.”

  I do not want to hear the rest. I would like to go down those stairs and snuggle up to Prezelle’s free side and let Leon have the spotlight at his very first Pity Party. But I’m afraid if I were to appear right now, it would ruin what he’s doing, which is talking, for a change, and being honest. Although I still want to know who the woman that was his wife who supposedly doesn’t exist is.

  “We can see how you’re struggling, Son, but we are not the ones who need to hear it. She’s upstairs. Sleeping her blues away. Think about what you going to do about her blues and your blues. If you didn’t come home with no more clues than what you left with, then you should get your money back from that place and go find yourself a motel ’cause you ain’t going to do much good around here,” Prezelle says, as he and Arthurine both help push each other to a standing position.

  “Jesus will wait. So you better drop down on your knees tonight and repent and beg for forgiveness for fornicating and frolicking and being downright frivolous with the love you promised to give to my daughter-in-law till death do you part. Be the man me and your daddy tried to raise you to be, Son. And keep your promises. As many of them as you can.”

  “I’m going to try,” he says. “And for the record: I have not been fornicating. And what would you two know about that anyway?”

  Prezelle looks at Arthurine. And Arthurine looks at him. They then look at Leon and start laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Leon asks. “I know you guys don’t…you couldn’t possibly…”

  “We can and we do,” Arthurine says. “Come on, Seattle Slew, let us go and study the Word of God and then how about some KFC tonight?”

  “Sounds good to me,” he says, and puts his Stetson on with one hand and slides the other as far as he can around Arthurine’s waist.

  “Tell Marilyn we stopped by to check on her and lend a hand and we’ll call or stop back around here sometime tomorrow just to make sure her and those kids and Lovey are all right.”

  “They’re all going to be taken good care of,” Leon says. “Trust me.”

  “That’s what Marilyn wants to be able to do. Don’t even worry about us, ’cause you ain’t our problem.”

  Tell it, Arthurine.

  You tell him.

  Chapter 32

  After I hear the front door close, I slide over to the top step and put my elbows on my knees.

  “Who is your wife?” I ask.

  “You are,” he says.

  “I divorced you while you were gone.”

  “I divorced you while I was gone, too.”

  “On what grounds?” I ask.

  “Because we’ve lost too much ground.”

  “And why was that, you think?”

  “Because I didn’t see you.”

  “This is true.”

  “And you didn’t see me.”

  “I thought I was, but listening to you tonight, maybe I had you pegged a lot differently.”

  “How so?”

  “You never told me when you first started getting tired of your job or how isolated you were feeling. You never told me any of these things.”

  “It’s hard to explain, especially to your wife, when you know she’s getting bored and fed up with you because you’ve become like a flat tire. That even though you still love her very much, you always thought your life would amount to more than this because you have worked hard to make sure she and the children were comfortable and never wanted for too much. But then emotionally you started missing in action because you realized how long you’d been doing it by the book and you were getting tired of the burden of holding it all together. On some days you fantasized about renting a black convertible—a Carrera—and driving down Pacific Coast Highway at ninety mph even though you had no idea where you were going but you didn
’t care. But then you reach over and turn off the alarm or spend an hour in traffic and some days you don’t even feel like getting out of bed because you know this day is going to be like all the others.”

  “You weren’t the only one feeling like that, you know.”

  Leon walks up five or six stairs and sits down. There are still at least eight or nine steps between us. I don’t want him to come any closer because his honesty might begin to fade again.

  “I didn’t understand what was behind all these emotions, to be honest with you, and it was daunting because sometimes I felt like I couldn’t control them.”

  “Mine is called perimenopause. And I do believe that the male version is called a midlife crisis.”

  “I don’t care what they call it, but the reason I took a chance in going to Costa Rica was because I needed some answers and didn’t know where else to look.”

  “Your mother said you should try Jesus.”

  He just smiles. “I never stopped, but some of this stuff we have to deal with on our own. Don’t you think?”

  “I suppose we do. Even though all of this feels negative on the surface, I think some good has come out of it.”

  “I agree.”

  “I haven’t been this honest with myself in centuries, Leon. It’s liberating knowing that I still have time to change some things I’m not happy with.”

  “That puts me on the top of the list, then, huh?”

  “Pretty much. But I’m afraid you get the silver and I get the gold.”

  “But I thought you were bored with me.”

  “Apparently I’ve been bored and angry with Marilyn much much longer than I cared to admit, and when I got tired of beating myself up or feeling sorry for myself for choices that I made, I made you my next victim.”

  “I’m not sure what you’re saying, Marilyn.”

  “I was actually relieved when I thought I’d finally caught you cheating because I now had a good excuse to take out all of my anger and frustration on you. It was as if I’d willed it. And you’re right, I blamed you for everything I wasn’t giving myself. I even made myself believe—and apparently you, too—that you were no longer interesting or worthy of my love, when really my fear was that maybe it was me who’d gotten stale.”

  “But it’s true, I was getting pretty close to molding,” he says.

  “It’s amazing how we can make ourselves believe what we want to. As Arthurine would say, ‘If you jump to conclusions, you make terrible landings.’”

  “I’m sorry for looking for you in someone else. And I can tell you now that I am going to try to better communicate my feelings and fears to you and just deal with the consequences.”

  “That’s what I’ve been doing and it’s expensive sometimes, too.”

  “But you know, some of your complaints are valid.”

  “The biggest one, honestly, Leon, is that I’ve felt unappreciated because what I did for you and the kids was expected of me and I performed it to the best of my ability. But as the kids grew up and needed me less, I thought you would come to realize how much more to me there was to discover. But it didn’t seem to be going that way.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I mean, here we were, finally, free to do anything we wanted and we weren’t doing anything. That’s why I figured you had somebody: you needed a thrill. It just seemed like you forgot that underneath the rubber gloves I was still the same idealistic wild woman you fell in love with. The mistake I made was putting too many things I wanted to do and try on ice. I held you hostage for it, but not the kids.”

  “It’s understandable, because I haven’t exactly been a cheerleader for you, Marilyn. I see what you’ve been doing in your art room, and how you get so much pleasure from it. The things you make are remarkable.”

  “Remarkable? You’ve never said anything like this about my work before, Leon.”

  “I thought I had.”

  I’m shaking my head.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Well, quite a few of my friends and colleagues have been bugging me about buying some of it for the longest time.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No, I’m not. I’ve taken digitals and brought a few colleagues over to see your work. I do think going to the Academy of Arts to get your master’s is a great idea, because you can only get better. We’ll figure out how to handle your tuition just like we have for everybody else in this house. And besides, you deserve it.”

  “Thank you,” is about all I can manage to say. I’m still in the ozone here.

  “Take a deep breath, Marilyn.”

  “What?”

  “Breathe in hard and blow it out slowly. I learned how to do this in Costa Rica, where I had one wake-up call after another. I mean so many things became obvious to me that it was pretty sad at first, even scary, to see just how much you take for granted and how I stopped participating in our marriage. But it wasn’t because of you. It was me.”

  After inhaling and exhaling three or four times, I feel like I’ve landed back on the ground. I’m glad we don’t always get what we wish for. I’m ashamed of myself for all the energy I wasted believing something that wasn’t even true. But my husband is right here and he’s talking to me and I can’t help it when I say, “I don’t know, Leon. Sometimes people just come to a dead end. Or there’s a fork in the road and they need to go in different directions.”

  “But where do you want to go?”

  “What?”

  “Where do you want to go?”

  I’m trying to figure out how to respond, since I’m not real sure of the answer, so I just say, “As far as I can.”

  He looks at me like he knows exactly what I mean. I don’t remember him ever looking at me quite this way. But I also don’t recall ever describing anything that wasn’t in concrete terms.

  “I don’t want to stop you,” he says.

  “I’m the only one who can stop me, Leon. I’m the one who’s been sitting at the stoplight all these years, waiting for the light to turn green.”

  “I’m sorry, Marilyn.”

  “I’m sorry, too, Leon.”

  “So who is she? Your Costa Rican wife.”

  He slaps his forehead with his palm. “That receptionist was not the brightest star in the sky. You remember Janice, Howard’s wife?”

  “You’re having an affair with your partner’s wife?”

  “No. That person was more a confidante than a lover and I’ve settled it, so it’s done. But Janice and Howard have been having serious problems, mostly about her infidelities, and since she knew why Frank and I were going down, she and her sister, who’s actually going through a divorce, registered for the same course, but in order to get the double-occupancy rate, we had to pretend to be couples. Frank and I shared a room—and thank God for queen beds, earplugs, and windows because that guy snores like a grizzly and has a bad case of gas at night—but as preposterous as it sounds, this is how it went.”

  “Why the secrecy?”

  “Because I knew you probably wouldn’t buy it under the circumstances.”

  “I know Janice well enough not to think she’d want you.”

  “Wait a minute, Marilyn. Do you find me that unappealing?”

  “I didn’t say that, did I?”

  “You used to find me attractive.”

  “Well, you used to be attractive to me.”

  “I’ve been working out, can’t you tell?”

  “I don’t mean on the outside, Leon.”

  “I know. But you look different. I like your hair short and what color is it?”

  “Red Hot Rhythm.”

  “Boy, don’t I remember.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  We sit here for several long moments. The house is still. And so are we.

  “You want me to move out?”

  “It might be a good idea for a while, don’t you think?”

  “Depen
ds on how we do it.”

  “Tell me what you mean by that, Leon.”

  “Well, I believe that even though we can’t turn back time, there are new things, even old things, about each other that we don’t really know.”

  “And?”

  “Unless you want to just call it quits, I wouldn’t mind taking you out on a date every now and then to try to get to know you as a person and not as my wife or the mother of my children.”

  “And eat where?”

  “Not dinner.”

  I think I’m going to fall down these stairs. “Then what other kinds of dates would you have in mind?”

  “Well, I don’t know. Something we haven’t done before.”

  I feel like I’m about to have a heart attack. But this is my husband talking and these words are indeed coming out of his mouth.

  “Haven’t you always wanted to walk across the Golden Gate Bridge when it’s foggy?”

  “Yes, I have, but you always said it was too cold.”

  “It is, but I’ll just wear a warm jacket.”

  “And you’re serious?”

  “I know I’ve been like Elmer Fudd for quite some time, and if my own mother thinks I’m boring…”

  “Well, I haven’t exactly been a thrill a minute, either.”

  “At least you tried, but I never quite rose to the occasion. And don’t you dare say anything. But like I said, I’ve learned quite a few things and I’ve also gotten a little assistance.”

  “So, you’ve been practicing, have you?”

  “I wanted to see if I could test out my new skills on you, first.”

  “Maybe. But right now I’m just beginning to thaw out. It was you who went to the seminar, not me.”

  “I wanted you to come with me.”

  “Then why didn’t you ask me?”

  “You know why. The whole baby thing and you were so angry at me.”

  I just nod my head up and down. It feels like it was years ago.

  “So, of course I was sorry to hear about your sister and I left at least ten messages but I had to change planes and got bumped and had to wait another twelve hours to get on the next flight which is what took me so long to get here. Where is everybody?”

  “The kids and Lovey are with Sabrina and Nevil.”