by Hale, Mandy
Mr. E and I stopped to grab sandwiches on the way so we could have a picnic dinner. It was pitch-black when we pulled up, as Cannonsburgh was already closed for the night, but I grabbed Mr. E’s hand and we dashed across the wooden bridge to the village anyway.
Mr. E and I sat under the stars at a picnic table and had a quiet dinner; both of us, I think, were thinking of the next day when he would return home to Boone. We had been together almost nonstop for over a week at that point, and the idea of not knowing the next time I would see him made my heart hurt a little. But the past week had been so magical, I didn’t want to ruin it by focusing on it coming to an end. After we finished eating, I jumped to my feet.
“I have a surprise for you!” I said excitedly. I dashed over to the gazebo, and, with a flourish, hit the light switch. Suddenly the gazebo lit up brilliantly in the night, creating the effect of hundreds of twinkly stars shining above us.
A look of affection crossed Mr. E’s face. He knew me well enough to know what a movie moment like this meant to me. He crossed over to where I was standing in the gazebo and brushed a few strands of hair away from my face. Then he held out his hand.
“May I have this dance?”
And that’s how, underneath the twinkly lights of the gazebo in the center of the small-town colonial village I loved, a moment I had pictured in my mind for years came to pass, in a way that was so much more special than I had ever dared to hope it would be. Mr. E and I slow danced under those lights, with nothing to keep the beat except the sound of our own hearts.
It was and remains one of the most romantic moments of my life.
Then he dipped me grandly, holding me there in place so I could stare up at the twinkling lights above us.
“I want you to remember this moment forever,” he said quietly, not unlike that night long ago atop a construction crane in downtown Nashville.
And also just like that night, I knew that I would.
Early the next morning Joy came to get Mr. E so they could set off for North Carolina.
Mr. E and I stood outside Joy’s car, face-to-face, not saying a word. I was holding back my tears. I didn’t want to cry until he’d gone. I didn’t want any sadness to mar the beautiful week we had just spent.
Suddenly he pulled me into a fierce hug, holding on to me so tightly I could hardly breathe for a long moment. Then just as suddenly, he kissed me on top of my head, got in the car, and a moment later he was gone.
I watched with my heart in my throat as Joy’s car disappeared into the early-morning light, carrying away my love. Then I wiped away a tear, mentally handed the situation to God, and went about my day.
I never could have imagined in that moment that our goodbye outside Joy’s car would be the last time I would lay eyes on Mr. E for more than a year.
Chapter 17
Finding My Own Way
Over the next couple of weeks, Mr. E’s dad’s prayer began to yield powerful results. The Single Woman Twitter page took off in leaps and bounds, surpassing one hundred thousand followers in just under six months. As I watched the numbers grow exponentially every day, I was struck by the trust God was placing in me to speak into the lives of these precious women. E-mails started to pour in from all over the world. I noticed I seemed to have a particularly large following in the Philippines and in South Africa, which simply astonished me. My toes had never so much as touched the soil of those countries, yet my words were being heard and their impact was being felt there. I continued to lay hands on my computer screen at least once a week, crying out to God on behalf of the souls of each one of my Twitter followers and blog readers. “More of You, less of me, Lord,” I would pray. “I am humbled to be Your vessel, and I pray that You would help me get out of the way so You can work through me. Give me the right words to say to speak hope, life, love, and healing to these women.”
I also continued to pray for God’s guidance with the Mr. E situation. Much to my disappointment, in the weeks since E’s visit to Tennessee, he seemed to be growing distant. It was beginning to feel like “Two Years Earlier: the Remix.” Though we still spoke every few days, he seemed to be becoming more and more disengaged and cool in our conversations, and his text messages and e-mails eventually all but stopped. He was also floundering a bit after the loss of the election and the end of his campaign management run. He seemed unsure about what to do with himself and his career. Each time we spoke, I could sense him growing increasingly restless. And I knew what happened when Mr. E got restless. He changed jobs, changed cities, changed girlfriends, changed lives. I sensed something big was coming but had no idea what it might be.
Until a few weeks later when he called me up to tell me he had just accepted a job in Seattle.
“Seattle?” I asked in shock.
“Yeah,” he replied with no real emotion. “There’s a reporter position out there that a friend recommended me for, so I’m headed out there next week. I can’t keep sticking around Boone. There’s nothing for me here now that the election is over.”
“What about your family? Aren’t they going to be sad to see you go?” I knew they must be heartbroken at the thought of E running amuck on the other side of the country after he had been living so close to them and doing so well for the past two years.
“They understand,” he said in a clipped voice.
“Well, I’m happy for you if you’re happy,” I said. “But you don’t really sound all that overjoyed to me.”
“I’m happy, Mandy.”
“Well, can I ask . . .” I hesitated for a moment. “Can I ask where this leaves us? I mean, Boone is six hours away, but Seattle . . .” I trailed off.
“I don’t know,” he responded flatly.
“You don’t know?” I asked incredulously. “Are we really back here again?”
“What do you want from me, Mandy?”
“What do I want from you? I want you to go back to being that sweet, open, loving guy from a few weeks ago. Where did he go?”
“I’ve never lied to you about who I am,” Mr. E replied. “You’ve always known that I’m not really the guy to settle down.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I felt blindsided. After everything we had been through, after he had finally opened himself up to me and started to let me in, after I had laid my heart on the line for him, we were back to square one?
I honestly don’t know why I was so shocked. This was typical behavior for someone who only allows himself to get so close to someone else before he hides behind physical or emotional distance—or in really special cases, both.
“You know what?” I responded. “I have to go. I wish you the best in Seattle. I really do.”
With that, I disconnected the call.
In the past, I would have mourned the ending of yet another chapter of Mr. E, marking it perhaps with the type of angst-filled gestures that I’m famous for: writing his name on a big red balloon and releasing it into the sky; driving past all our old spots with Taylor Swift blasting at top volume; deleting him from my Facebook page in an attempt to delete him from my life, then immediately regretting it.
But not this time.
This time something was different. Something had shifted. Something had changed.
Was it my increasing impatience with and lack of tolerance for his inability to commit to a relationship, a career path, or even a city? Was it my preoccupation with my own life and the addition of so many new dreams and goals that kept me from dwelling on the subtraction of his presence from my life? Or did I just assume that, like most of his dramatic exits, this one was only temporary, and before I knew it, the invisible rubber band that bound us together would snap him back to Tennessee and back by my side?
Or was the “something” that had changed . . . me?
There comes a moment in every relationship when taking up permanent residence in the gray area between what is and what isn’t is no longer enough. When the need for clarity surpasses the need to make things work. When you start to
realize that the constant limbo of an undefined relationship isn’t as fun as it was when the music first started. When you have to seek your own closure, because the other person cannot or will not give it to you.
In the movie The Thing Called Love, the characters talk about an old wives’ tale that goes something like this: if you want to render a relationship null and void, you must go back to the place where you first met the person and say, out loud, “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you!”* Theoretically, this works even if, as in my case, you’re not actually married to the person. What a concept. In the movie, Samantha Mathis’s character “divorces” River Phoenix’s character, and since the film takes place in Nashville, I felt it was a sign. A few nights after my phone call with Mr. E, as I was on the way to grab dinner with Alli and a couple of other girlfriends, I quite coincidentally (and ironically) drove by the place where I first met him. Inspiration struck.
After dinner, the four of us went back to the scene of the crime and even managed to sit in the same booth I was sitting in when I saw Mr. E for the first time. Giggling, we grabbed a napkin and wrote out a contract, stating that as of this day, the twenty-ninth of July, I was free of Mr. E. All three of my ladies stood gleefully in agreement with me and signed the contract with the kind of gusto that could only come from friends who knew how much this single woman needed to symbolically release the past, once and for all, and move forward into the next chapter of her life. Then, as loudly and proudly as I could say it, I repeated the magic words: “I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you!” That’s the thing, you know. Until we are willing to close the book on what was, it’s impossible to fully embrace what will be. Sometimes all we need is a push in the right direction by a few good friends to give us the courage we need to surrender our will to God and let Him take care of the rest. Maybe some would say the whole thing was silly, but as I looked around at the faces of my friends and heard the band, quite by chance, breaking into “Free Falling” by Tom Petty, I felt a little piece of my heart that had belonged to Mr. E for the past four years finally return to me.
And aren’t we all free-falling just a little bit? We’re free-falling into love, free-falling out of love, free-falling into a new career or a new city or a new life completely. Maybe at the end of the day, all we can do is cling to what completes us (like our best friends) and release what depletes us (like a guy who can’t see the crown jewel standing right in front of him). Maybe when a romantic interest can’t decide if he wants to love us or not, we have to take away his right to leave us stranded in relationship purgatory for even one more minute. After all, shouldn’t there be a statute of limitations on how long a person gets to take deciding whether or not they want to love us and let us know, or gently let us go? Sometimes in life we have to create our own closure. Sometimes we have to decide when enough is enough and walk away. So whether you try a relationship fast; or have a bonfire with all the things that remind you of that person like Monica, Rachel, and Phoebe once did on one of my favorite episodes of Friends; or whether you, as I did, go in search of the end by going back to the place where it all began; I urge you to find a way to peacefully close the door on your past so you can walk away with your head held high and with no regrets. Because at the end of the day, sometimes it takes opening a door to get to a new place.
And sometimes it takes closing one.
It was the beginning of August, and my glorious summer was drawing to a close. Alli was leaving to go back to school, Mr. E had just left to move to Seattle, and my lease at my apartment in Murfreesboro was expiring. It seemed that everything was ending to make way for a new season.
In a way, I was kind of relieved to give up the apartment in Murfreesboro. Though I loved the community itself, it was where I had lived with Steven, and it was time to close that chapter once and for all. Plus, as I tended to do about once a year, I was getting an itch to move back to Nashville.
So that’s why, in August 2010, I moved back in with Crawford; though since the last time I had lived with him, he had acquired a cat, two gerbils, and a bird, plus you toss in Jeeves, and we were ready for our own bizarre, much furrier version of The Brady Bunch.
Other than my expiring lease and my desire to be back in Nashville and closer to work, another big reason I was moving back in with Crawford was to help see him through what was possibly the most difficult time of his life. It was a season of growth and pain and change and uncertainty for him, when circumstances beyond his control had broken his heart but never his spirit. His ex-wife was planning to move and take their seven-year-old son with her. And did I mention she only announced this after Crawford showed up at her house to pick up their son one day to discover her entire house, even the goldfish, packed?
“What are you going to do?” I had asked him that night after he came over in a daze from another day of prepping for a custody battle he was hoping desperately to avoid. It was Friday night, which meant our signature chocolate and caramel candy bars were present and accounted for, and we were going about our usual routine of watching movies and eating everything that wasn’t nailed down.
“I’m going to fight it,” he said without hesitation, with a resolve and a fire in his eyes that I had never seen before.
“Really?” I asked incredulously, not doing a very good job of hiding the surprise on my face. If you meet Crawford, you’ll pretty quickly discover that he tends to be more of a lover than a fighter, with his temperament hovering somewhere near that of a Muppet Baby. He had let his ex push him around for years now, all to avoid an inevitable confrontation, much to my great frustration. But now fate and circumstance had put him in a position where he could not back down, and I have to say, his new and improved and somewhat Chuck Norris–like disposition was a welcome change.
“I have to,” he said softly, looking pained yet determined. “It’s my son. I have to fight for him.”
And I knew he meant it. There is nothing Crawford wouldn’t do for his precious son, Adam. His relationship with him was like the kind you see in movies—the kind of father-son bond that all kids dream of but few actually realize. He spoke to Adam on his level, teaching him about the world, about God, about movies and art and books. He was firm when he needed to be, but he never disciplined him without explaining to him exactly what he had done wrong and why he was in trouble. As a result, you can sometimes carry on a conversation with Adam for hours before remembering you are shooting the breeze with a seven-year-old child. He is brilliant and outgoing, with a sunny disposition and a personality that never knew a stranger. He loves life and exudes happiness and light. And now he might have to go away, to a new state, a new home, a new life—far away from Crawford and everything he had ever known in Tennessee. The thought of having to stand by helplessly and watch Crawford lose custody of his son terrified me. I am a woman of action who likes to formulate a plan of attack for every situation, and this time my hands were tied. There was nothing I could do for my friend but be there for him.
And so I was. Literally. I had packed up my apartment, put my furniture in storage, and moved back into my old bedroom in Crawford’s tiny stone cottage. My full-length mirror was still waiting for me in the closet. My shoe rack was still hanging on the back of the door. It was eerie. I had to pinch myself a few times to make sure that it was, in fact, 2010; and that I hadn’t fallen asleep like Victoria Principal did in the hit eighties show Dallas and woken up back in 2008, with the entire past two years having just been a dream. (And Patrick Duffy in my shower. Now that would have been creepy.)
A couple of weeks after I moved back in, Crawford started the process of the long, trying, uncertain custody battle.
One day he came home from work and crumpled onto the kitchen floor in a heap of sobs. The case didn’t look good, he said. The mother almost always gets primary custody, especially when she has been the child’s main caregiver for his entire life. It was going to take a miracle to make any judge see that uprooting Adam from the only city and home he’d eve
r known was not in his best interest, even if it did mean keeping him with his mother. Plus, his ex was raking him over the coals, portraying him as a liar, a cad, and a womanizer—which was so ridiculous, it was beyond laughable. I mean, Crawford is attractive and has a lot going for him, but he’s truly one of those rare gems of a man who treats women like ladies and not playthings. He’s respectful, he opens car doors, he doesn’t play games; basically, Mr. Bean is a bigger womanizer than he is.
Another day he was so distraught over the circumstances he was up against, and so worn down by the battle he was facing, that I came home to find him lying flat on his back, in the middle of the living room floor, staring at the ceiling without expression. His sadness was palpable, and he was completely oblivious to the messiness of the floor he was lying on or our cats sniffing curiously around him, or even me staring down at him with concern. Without even thinking about it, I lay down next to him, in my dressy work clothes, flat on my back, staring at the ceiling right along with him, in the only way I knew to show him my camaraderie and support. We must have stayed there for twenty minutes or more, not saying a word, just staring at that ceiling as though it had all the answers to the mysteries of the universe. Finally I reached over and took his hand, and together we stood, ready to face the world again.