At that point, I wasn’t just disappointed by his reaction; he was actually starting to scare me.
“It’s not like that, baby. I thought we could make some memories of our own there. I saw Italy as a fresh start for us, not as a way to recapture some old dream of mine. If you want, we can trade the tickets in for—”
“Just get your money back. I don’t want these,” he barked as he thrust the envelope back into my hand and shook his head as though I’d given him a pink tutu.
I stood there with my face furrowed, ready to give him what for, when he started in again.
“As if it wasn’t bad enough that I’d agreed to this whole Christmas thing to begin with. Do you know how much crap my mother’s given me? And, on top of it, you made a fucking ham!”
Paul’s truck came to a halt at a stoplight and I was jolted awake. The four of us were making the short drive back to Flagstaff from Sedona. It wasn’t a dream I was having; it was a nightmare I was reliving. That nightmare was my life.
It was our first Christmas together, and it had turned out to be our last. Evan, being a Jew, had only reluctantly agreed to allow me to celebrate Christmas. I had committed the cardinal sin of preparing a non-kosher meal—among other things. He spent the next several days punishing me with his snide remarks and cold manner. I think I knew there and then that I had made a horrible mistake, but I’d wanted so much to please him, to make things work, and I couldn’t figure out where I’d gone wrong.
Italy was an expansive nation. Evan’s cruel ban on the whole country couldn’t just be about the fact that Michael and I had wanted to live in Florence once upon a time. There were any number of other cities, villages, provincial pockets, islands, vineyards, and monasteries we could visit instead. I was even willing to take my top off at one of the nude beaches if it would make Evan happy. None of it was really about Italy, or Michael for that matter.
Strangely, when your reality is made up of enough illogical events, they start to make sense to you. Up and down can only be reversed so many times before you begin to lose track of which is which. The same holds true with basic logic. If you find yourself on the wrong side of someone else’s logical equation enough times, you start to actually believe that you are the illogical one. You are just too dense to see the reason in it all. The illogical becomes the norm and self-preservation, a monumental priority.
I started to behave in a way that I hated. I did things against my better judgment, just to avoid conflict. I fantasized on more than one occasion that I had just gone on the trip without Evan, and never looked back. Naïvely, I thought that having a baby might mellow him out and refine his priorities. Somehow then we would share a common axis of truth. Someone or something was looking out for me in that respect; I couldn’t imagine how much therapy a child would need after receiving Evan’s version of childrearing.
Of course, every misdeed was always accompanied by a lavish gift or Evan’s version of an apology several days later—just enough positive reinforcement to continue the up-down-up-down cycle. For brief moments I truly believed that he’d recognized the error of his ways and everything would be good from that point on, but it never lasted long. And those brief moments of contentment had grown fewer and farther in between.
With reality on the verge of bitch-slapping me in the face, I was now forced to make some difficult decisions. Should I go back and face the music at home—tell Evan that I have cancer and don’t want treatment? Tell him that I’d found more inner peace during the two days I’d spent in Sedona, than I had in the entirety of our marriage? Make him grasp that I would rather seek enlightenment from strangers than sit around and be dictated to by a man who has his head so far up his ass he needs a periscope to watch television? As it turned out, I would need to make that decision instantaneously.
“No!” I shrieked when I spotted Evan’s black Lexus parked in front of Paul’s house. “Just keep driving, please!” I pleaded.
Paul just fixedly stared at me in confusion. Thankfully, the urgency in my eyes indicated that he should first abide by my demand, before asking, “What the hell is going on, Stacia?” as though a straight jacket might be in order.
“My husband is parked in front of your house,” I explained breathlessly.
“I’m deducing from your tone that he’s someone you’re not in favor of seeing right now?” Paul replied.
“No! I don’t know how he found me.”
“I do,” Wilbur offered nonchalantly as we drove around the block. “Didn’t you say you left your cell phone at Paul’s?”
“Um…I think I did.”
“He probably just tracked it.”
“You can do that? You don’t have to be FBI or CIA or something?” I asked, horrified.
“No—you can just be any garden-variety asshole. You can go online with your cell phone provider and use the GPS. It will actually give you an exact address,” Wilbur said.
“Evan’s no garden-variety asshole. He’s in an asshole class of his own.”
Wilbur chuckled.
“Why don’t I take you and Misty straight to the garage to pick up Misty’s car? How badly do you need your phone back?”
“Not badly enough to face a showdown with Evan,” I said. “Thanks, Wilbur. I appreciate your help.”
“Well then, I guess that means it’s good-bye for us, baby,” Misty said to Paul.
“But what about Evan? He’s sitting in front of your house,” I asked.
“Don’t worry,” said Paul defiantly. “I can handle him.”
Paul wished us luck on our adventure and dropped us off down the street. Misty, Wilbur, and I hid behind a low hedge and watched as Paul made a big show of pulling his truck into the driveway. It only took seconds for Evan to burst out of his car and come barreling toward him. We used the time that Evan was distracted to jump into Wilbur’s car, which was parked less than twenty feet away. Misty sat in the front and I ducked down in the back like a fugitive from the law as we did a slow drive-by to make sure neither Paul nor Evan was throttling the other. Once we determined that they were engaged in what appeared to be a civilized chat, we sped away. I prayed that Evan would just relent and leave before persuading Paul to tell him about any of my adventures over those last few days. Luckily, I had left Paul with plausible deniability regarding my intended destination, mainly because I had no freaking idea myself.
Evan was never violent, not really—although he hated being walked away from. He’d grabbed my arm a couple of times in the past when I’d tried to walk away out of sheer frustration with his all-talk-and-no-listen mode of communication. Most of the time, our arguments couldn’t even be classified as exchanges of grievances. They were more along the lines of high-volume lectures directed at me. Evan’s laundry list of red-flag behaviors, criticisms, and “helpful hints” was ever growing. He had an insatiable appetite for trying to mold me into his version of the perfect wife. I’d been forced to come to terms with the fact that this was a goal that could never be achieved because Evan kept moving the goalpost. I hadn’t ascertained whether this was because he was a masochist, secretly scheming against his own ability to be happy with anything or anyone, or a sadist intent on keeping me as unhappy as possible. It didn’t matter much which motive drove him because both results had become our de facto reality; the two of us were irreconcilably miserable with each other. Why did it have to take a tumor for me to realize that simple truth?
The fact remained that even though I had no further use for Evan, it was never my goal to see him hurt. I hoped his encounter with Paul wouldn’t become one of those moments that would put him over the edge. He was generally quite charming with strangers. In fact, everybody loved him—everyone who wasn’t married to him, that is. However, confronting a man that was in possession of his wife’s cell phone—and possibly his wife—was likely to make him less than charming. The implications of my missing phone would be clear to him, even if they were patently untrue. I started to worry.
“Maybe we
should go back. I don’t want to leave Paul to have to deal with him,” I finally managed.
“Don’t worry, darling; Paul’s got a black belt in Tai Chi,” Misty chuckled.
Wilbur laughed along with her, but I didn’t see the humor in the situation. One glimpse of Evan, and all the good that the last few days had done me vanished into a blur of anxiety. At least he had served the purpose of catapulting me into the realization that I wasn’t ready to go back, and never would be.
We arrived at the Quick Fix Garage to retrieve Misty’s Bug just as they were opening.
“There’s Old Reliable,” Misty purred as she pointed to her little beater in the garage bay.
Misty jumped out of the car even before Wilbur had come to a complete stop. She gleefully rushed over to talk to the mechanic, leaving Wilbur and me alone in the car. I glanced at him awkwardly, embarrassed by my seemingly odd avoidance of Evan.
“I’m officially never getting married,” Wilbur laughed.
I reddened, but I couldn’t blame him.
“I don’t think that my situation with Evan is the example you should be using to make any sort of judgment about marriage.”
Wilbur was about to refute my statement when Misty plopped back into his car.
“Okay, on to plan B. Car won’t be ready for a couple more days; she needs major fixing. It’s more than the head gasket—Old Reliable needs a rebuilt engine.”
“Oh, bummer. What’s plan B?” I inquired.
“I was hoping you would know,” Misty chuckled.
I panicked as Wilbur and Misty both turned to me for an answer. Evan had never looked to me to make a decision, and when I would contribute one, it was always met with harsh criticism. I finally had complete freedom. There were millions of different options for me, and yet I couldn’t come up with a single one.
“I’ll take you back,” Wilbur offered. “I could check in on the Arizona boys on the way back home.”
I looked at Misty.
“Arizona boys? Please translate.”
“Wilbur owns a company that specializes in traveling to hard-to-reach places.”
“In Arizona?”
“All over, actually,” Wilbur replied. “But Arizona does have a couple of spots.”
“Well, if you don’t mind,…” Misty said to Wilbur.
“Not in the least. I enjoy the company.”
Misty texted Paul to inform him of our plan B, and asked if Evan was still there harassing him. Paul texted back that Evan had grudgingly vacated the premises only after Paul tried to convince him that there was some sort of mistake. That process, according to Paul, had taken almost forty-five minutes. He’d even let Evan make a sweep of the house while he kicked my phone under the couch.
“Do you want to go back for your phone now that the coast is clear?” Misty offered.
“That’s all right; I don’t think I want or need it,” I said. “But it would be great if Paul could run it over with the truck a couple of times.”
When we arrived in Las Vegas, Wilbur drove Misty to her condo first. It was a modern building with a pool and all the amenities. The inside was a stark contrast to the outside. It was a modern-day hippie haven. It even contained a meditation corner. The smell of incense was still lingering from what must have been days before. I gave her a hug while silently hoping that I would have the opportunity to see her again before the end came knocking. I thanked her profusely for taking me along on her adventure.
Wilbur then drove me to the Imperial Palace parking structure. As his car ascended the switchbacks of the claustrophobic garage, Wilbur asked, “Are you gonna stay in Vegas?”
“I don’t think so. He tracked me down with the credit card already. I just have to find some quiet motel somewhere that will take cash.”
I pointed upward.
“I’m parked on the roof.”
He drove to the roof, but there was no sign of my car. I knew exactly where I had left it. We drove up and down throughout the entire parking structure. The car was gone. Wilbur parked and accompanied me to the concierge desk.
“No, Ma’am. We keep a list of all the cars that have been towed. Yours isn’t on it,” the concierge explained, showing us the roster.
“It’s gotta be Evan. He called my room a few hours before we left for Sedona. He knew I was here. He must have taken it.”
Wilbur was outraged.
“It’s one thing for him to chase the woman he loves…if that’s what this is all about. It’s another thing to try to bully you back before you’re ready.”
He tried to talk me into filing a police report to teach Evan a lesson, but the only thought that ran through my head was life’s too short. For me, the cliché was never truer. I didn’t wish Evan any real ill will; I just wanted him to leave me alone until I could get my head screwed on straight.
Instead, Wilbur and I walked across the street to Caesars Palace, which had a Hertz Car Rental station. I figured that even if Evan found out that I’d rented a car, by the time I was off the property, I’d be safe. But Evan had reported all of my credit cards as stolen. It was all I could do to convince the rental agency not to have me arrested for identity theft. Fortunately, they agreed to simply drop the matter and let me leave.
“Why don’t you come with me?” Wilbur suggested. “There’s something I think you should see.”
I knew that seeing anything of Wilbur’s would probably spell trouble for me, but my alternative was becoming a car-less transient. I had no cell phone, nor did I want one after hearing about the nightmare of GPS tracking. And I did enjoy Wilbur’s company; he was great at making me forget my troubles. Since I had abandoned my rigidly planned life and he had led one so gloriously opposite, I wanted to discover what it was that Wilbur thought I should see. Still, I hesitated as I contemplated whether it was wise to climb back into Wilbur’s car.
“Where exactly are we going?”
“You’ll see. Trust me; it’ll be worth it,” Wilbur assured me, flashing that crazy smile that was increasingly impossible for me to resist. Before I could talk myself out of it, I hopped in his car and strapped myself in, primed for whatever adventure Wilbur had in store for me.
On the way to our mystery location, Wilbur took me on about an hour’s drive to Hoover Dam. We spent several moments gazing out over this national treasure, and then embarked upon a tour inside. He knew a curator there named Charlie who took us to see a number of areas that have been inaccessible to tourists since the 9/11 attacks. I felt a thrill, being with a man who “knew people.” As we descended into the bowels of the facility, Charlie told us about the one hundred twelve people who had died building the dam. Legend has it that there are a large number of bodies encased in the walls themselves.
It was so incredible to see to the ingenious way that man had curbed the power of nature, although it made me feel insignificant and useless that I had done almost nothing with my short life. Then I thought about whether man should control nature at all. Perhaps, I thought, humankind should stop trying to control everyone and everything, just as I was refusing to control the course of my illness.
The Dam was much more beautiful than I had imagined some structure designed to channel water could be. Our tour involved more than a mile of walking—a virtual marathon for a woman in my condition. I was worn out once again. I dragged myself back to Wilbur’s car and we departed. I decided to not ask questions and just go along for the ride.
The mammoth canyon walls blocked by the dam gave birth to Lake Mead. Wilbur was in the midst of describing the spring break drinking and boating activities of the area when I drifted off into a deep sleep. When I awakened several hours later, we were in the woods. The smell of pine permeated the air as we drove past a sign for Tusayan, Arizona—a place I had never heard of.
Wilbur pulled into the parking lot of what looked to be a modern hotel. It was nighttime, and as much as I’d found myself enjoying the great outdoors, a soft bed sounded very appealing. Wilbur graciously paid for two
rooms at The Lodge at Tusayan.
Wilbur insisted upon treating me to dinner at the hotel’s café. Though the conversation had flowed easily earlier in our journey, I suddenly found it awkward sitting at the table alone with him. The silence proved to be a reminder that I was venturing out alone with a man I barely knew. The original offense I had taken to his good looks was beginning to fade and it came to my attention that I might actually like him. I had literally run away from my husband and all of my responsibilities. If I had believed in Hell, I was definitely headed there.
CHAPTER 8
“You want me to do what?”
“Get in, relax, and enjoy the ride.”
“Who’s gonna fly it?”
“I am.”
“Why do you have a helicopter?”
“It’s part of my travel company.”
“Of course,” I allowed, because that would be one of the only logical reasons to have a helicopter lying around.
I had a horrible fear of heights, and a worse fear of any sort of flying contraption—especially one designed to tear itself apart from the inside out. Motion sickness was an unpleasant factor as well. But I told myself, don’t be yourself. Live. Just go with it. What’s the worst that could happen? If the helicopter crashed, I would die while truly living rather than just shriveling away. So I jumped in and covered my eyes.
“You really don’t want to do that.”
“Yes, I really do.”
Wilbur fired up the engine and let it warm for a short while. In the meantime, I peeled my fingers away from my eyes and faked a good smile—right after I leaned out and threw up.
“That’s better,” Wilbur said as I buckled myself back and tucked my hands stiffly beneath my thighs. “You’ll want to see this.”
I wondered what Wilbur thought of my somewhat regular vomiting, but he played it off as though he didn’t notice.
Within seconds of liftoff, I realized exactly where we were. We flew only a few feet above a plain and then the ground dropped out from under us. For a brief moment my heart dropped with it. The Grand Canyon was much more enormous and incredible than I ever could have dreamed. We flew weightlessly over the layered rocks, hills, cliffs, and valleys. All at once, I abandoned my fears and found myself entering into some sort of alternate celestial universe. I was completely overcome by the splendor of the Canyon from our bird’s-eye view. I fantasized that I was a little closer to Heaven, if there were such a place. It was complete nirvana. I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time, but for fear of appearing psychotic, I simply smiled.
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