The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost

by Robin Rinaldi

  29

  The Broken Heart

  I WAS DOING SIT-UPS at the gym when my brother Rocco called at 7:00 a.m. Our dad had gone to the hospital the day before to detox, and last night he’d had a heart attack. Besides the fact that his body had been through so many instances of withdrawal over the years, complicating the situation was his tracheostomy, the result of a bout of throat cancer many years ago. They were keeping him sedated in intensive care while they awaited test results.

  “How serious is it?” I asked.

  “The doctor said if he makes it through the next twenty-four hours, he’ll probably be okay.”

  “I’ll get the first flight out and call you from the airport.”

  I landed in Scranton at 11:00 p.m. and Rocco drove me to the hospital. We pushed the intercom at the door to the ICU and the nurses let us in. Between two thin pink curtains my father lay surrounded by machines and LED printouts, face gray, mouth agape. A thick, ridged tube connected the trach at the base of his throat to a ventilator, and white plastic cuffs pinned his swollen hands to the gurney.

  Rocco had been there all day. “Every now and then he opens his eyes for a few seconds,” Rocco said. “But he’s totally out of it. The nurse said he’s probably not really aware of anything even when his eyes are open.” He went downstairs to get coffee.

  I sat there watching the ventilator expand and contract his barrel chest. Its movement, so decided and dependable, made it appear sentient, possessed of its own will. We liked to joke about how tough my dad was, how he had nine lives, even though we knew the truth. All those rehabs and withdrawals. With the throat cancer he’d been hospitalized for weeks after having his larynx removed. He’d also done two stints in federal prison for bookmaking, once for eight months and once for four. I hadn’t seen any of it. My brothers had gone to the Sunday rehab meetings, the cancer hospital, the prison visiting room while I stayed far away in California, unable to face it.

  Time and awareness, and now there was perhaps less than twenty-four hours remaining in the story of my father and me. How did I want the story to end?

  I stood up, put my hand over his, and leaned down close to his ear. “Daddy,” I whispered almost inaudibly, “it’s Robin. You’re going to be okay. We’ll take care of everything.” I took a breath. “I forgive you, Daddy. I love you. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  I looked down at his placid, sunken face, asking God or Goddess to carry the message to him somehow. Then I gathered up my purse and, for the first time in twenty-five years, went to my mother’s house to sleep.

  * * *

  I woke up in my old bedroom and headed to the hospital with my dad’s wife. My brothers were there already. We waited all day and night for the cardiologist to give us a prognosis, but time and again he was called into surgery. Finally, the following morning, he gathered us around a small conference table off the ICU waiting room. He was a tall, tanned, handsome sixty-year-old with cropped white hair and an efficient Nordic name, the picture of health.

  “Your father’s heart is this big,” he said, spreading his palms about eight inches apart in front of his face. “It might be the biggest one I’ve ever seen. It’s the size of Wyoming.”

  “Is that good?” Rocco asked.

  “No, it’s very bad,” Dr. K said. “His heart muscle has been stressed beyond the maximum. He hasn’t taken care of himself.” He met our eyes and for a brief moment I felt ashamed that he was called away from patients with genetic heart disorders in order to save a man who had most likely smoked, drunk, and eaten his way to heart disease. Then again, guys like my dad probably kept him in business.

  Dr. K said three of Dad’s five main arteries were almost fully blocked; he was a five-alarm heart attack waiting to happen and needed a triple bypass immediately. But his body also needed another two days to recover from acute alcohol withdrawal before it could endure more stress.

  “We’re gambling with the timing here,” Dr. K said somberly. “Hopefully he doesn’t have a major heart attack before we get him into surgery. Your father’s blood oxygen level is sixty-two. Normal blood oxygen is near one hundred. I’m not sure how he’s still alive.”

  “What’s the survival rate with a triple bypass?” I asked, looking up from the notes I’d been scribbling.

  “Normally, when the patient doesn’t have other problems, ninety-nine percent.”

  “What about a patient with all his other problems?”

  “About ninety percent.”

  We all looked at one another, then started laughing. Two of my brothers had inherited my father’s gambling gene. The oldest one leaned over and swiped Dr. K on the arm affectionately. “Ninety percent! I thought you were gonna say thirty! We’ll take it.”

  Our moment of levity was soon overshadowed as we sat alongside my father’s bed watching his blood pressure surge, then plummet, his blood oxygen level creep toward the 50s, and his heart rate hover at 120 over the next two days. Every so often, he emerged briefly from sedation, opening his eyes in abject fear, turning his chin to pull away from the tubes, and arching his back in a struggle against the wrist cuffs. As he twisted, the ventilator began beeping its loud alarm, and the nurse came in to put him under again and readjust the lines.

  My dad’s closest brother gave me a medal to put around his wrist. The small saint engraved on it was called Padre Pio. “When I was in the ICU that time with kidney failure, remember? I was there for seven weeks. No one thought I’d make it, but Padre Pio saved my life. I believe that. You put this on him and he’ll be okay.”

  My father was unconscious for five days. His sister drove in from Philadelphia with her husband. His oldest brother flew in from Florida with his wife. My cousins came. My stepbrother came. My sisters-in-law came with my nephews. Each morning I picked up my dad’s wife on the way to the hospital and each night I drove her home. My mom accompanied us several days in a row. She and Dad’s wife hadn’t always gotten along; now they went for lunch together and sneaked outside for a smoke. When I got back to my mom’s house late at night, I’d change into my pajamas, have dinner with her at the kitchen table, then go lie down in my childhood bedroom. All the vicious 3:00 a.m. fights I’d heard from that room receded back into its walls, neutralized by the more pressing life-and-death concerns of the present.

  After the surgery, an aortic pump kept my dad’s heart going while the respirator worked his lungs. Days later, when he finally began to wake up, we gathered round the bed. His wife went to his side. He looked at us slowly, then up at his wife, and began mouthing words. His mouth was free of tubes because the ventilator attached to his trach, but since he needed to cover the trach with his finger in order to talk, and his hands were still restrained to the bed, he was rendered mute. We had to read his lips.

  “Rak-ton,” he seemed to say, slowly and with great force.

  We looked at one another. “Traction?” Rocco asked.

  He shook his head no.

  “Dad, are you in pain?” I asked.

  He nodded no. Then again, “Rak-ton.”

  We stood there helpless. “Crand,” he mouthed.

  “Cramps?” his wife asked.

  He looked down at his cuffed hands. This went on for several minutes until he was exhausted.

  “Scranton,” my mother suddenly said from the foot of the bed. “He’s saying Scranton.”

  My dad opened his eyes wide and nodded, mouthing, “I want. To go. To Scranton.”

  “He wants to go to Scranton,” my mother repeated.

  “You’re in Scranton, Dad,” I said. “You’re at Mercy Hospital.”

  Relief flooded his face. He closed his eyes. Later on, when he could talk, he told us that he dreamed he’d been transferred by train to a hospital in upstate New York, where he kept telling all the nurses to please take him home to Scranton.

  I stayed home for two weeks, until he left ICU for a regular room, spending most of every day at the hospital and each night in my mother’s kitchen. As the nurse changed
my father’s medication bag one night, I asked her, “Doesn’t that man next door have any family?” Every day I passed by his room and no one was ever in there. He lay alone amid tubes and machines.

  “I don’t think so, honey.” She unhooked the empty plastic bag and tucked it under her arm on her way out. “Your dad’s lucky.”

  I looked at my father, asleep in the dim light of the Turner Classic Movies channel, at his wife’s purse on the nightstand, at Rocco out in the hallway, at the cell phone in my hand, with which I’d just texted an update to ten people. My uncle’s Padre Pio medal dangled from his wrist, glinting silver in the glare of the television.

  “We’ll always have each other,” my dad used to say from his cigarette-strewn corner of the kitchen table while I seethed silently. “Your mother and me, your brothers, those are the people who will be there come thick or thin. You don’t understand this now, but you will when you’re older.”

  Now I was older.

  30

  The Message

  WHEN I RETURNED TO SAN FRANCISCO, a sense of calm settled over the house. While in Scranton, I’d bought a small figurine of a rabbit sculpted out of anthracite coal. I’d intended it for my makeshift altar, to represent roots and family. I placed it amid a laughing Buddha, a crucifix, the Venus of Willendorf, and a red-stone carving of Pele.

  In bed, Scott and I began to go down on each other again. I gave up on trying to say the nasty things I’d so easily uttered to my lovers. I was no longer a little slut, a sexy bitch, a fuck-toy, or a goddess. I was kitty, noodles, doll. I used the blindfold we’d bought as a sleep mask on the mornings when I slept in. Now that I was through with the project, I tried to have faith that I might finally adapt to the dispassionate kind of love my marriage required, a strong love that ran like a vein of gold in bedrock. Even if it rarely surfaced in enthusiastic expression, I knew it was there.

  I focused on my job, where I had recently been promoted to managing editor. I spent nights and weekends working on the newest editions of two dance books I’d previously written. I finally got around to editing Scott’s wine manuscript. I took a peek into a book proposal I’d started back in Philadelphia, which I’d titled Preconceptions: Letters to an Unborn Child. The rough chapter outline described about twenty letters I had planned to write as meditations on the question of motherhood, their titles clearly conveying both my hope and ambivalence: “All the Right Reasons,” “All the Wrong Reasons,” “What I Can Teach You,” “What I Cannot Teach You.” When I got tired of staring at computer screens, I changed into my workout clothes and headed to the gym.

  About once a month, Scott had dinner with Charly. He told me he wanted to remain friends with her and encouraged me to remain friends with my ex-lovers as well. I knew she was having trouble adjusting to his absence: I knew because I looked at his phone and saw her email apologizing for crying at dinner. There were other emails too, flirty midafternoon notes reminding him how close her office was to his, calling him babe.

  I saw Jude every so often for lunch, Paul now and then for coffee or a drink. I still attended the occasional workshop at OneTaste. Scott said he was fine with me continuing to OM with others, since he wasn’t interested in it. So I tried it. I scheduled an OM with Roman, who was in the same boat as me; he and Annie had returned to monogamy. We met in one of the empty rooms of the residence. We hugged, chatted a little, and got into position. His touch set off a slow, thick whirlpool in my middle, descending and stirring up sediment. I groaned and arched under his hand. As he inserted his finger into me at the end of fifteen minutes, I opened my eyes and exhaled slowly.

  “Are you getting enough sex?” he asked.

  “I think so. Why?”

  “You seem … I don’t know, ready to erupt.” He laughed.

  I sat up and pulled my pants back on. “It’s probably just the sexual energy between you and me. I feel good, actually.”

  I didn’t schedule another OM with Roman, or anyone else, again.

  * * *

  I sat staring at my Gmail. It wasn’t my main email and I only checked it once or twice a week. Alden’s name cemented me to the seat. I had forgotten he had this address, given that we’d done almost all our communicating by phone. The date stamp showed he’d sent it two days ago. I’d been home from Scranton a little more than a month.

  Head: Delete it. It will ruin your life.

  Heart: Open it.

  The email was formal and friendly. He was just saying hello after seeing my profile on the Deida Connection, hoping I was well, noting it was a year to the day that we first exchanged messages on Nerve.com. True, we ended on a rough note, but he often thought back to those weeks with affection and gratitude. Hope you’re not upset that I wrote. Please don’t feel obligated to write back.

  I sat still a long time before daring to type. I’m not upset that you wrote. Between the harsh ending and complete severing of ties, we made things more dramatic than they needed to be. I’d welcome the chance to be friends. Feel free to be in touch.

  The next week we agreed to meet for a drink downtown. I told Scott exactly where I was going and what time I’d be home, giving myself an hour and a half. Alden was sitting on a low banquette in the back of the bar, one long leg bent atop the other, ankle resting on thigh, arms spread wide on the seat. We said hello and I sat down. We didn’t touch.

  He signaled to the waitress and ordered me what he was having, a gimlet. When it arrived, we lifted our glasses and sipped.

  “So, are you still married?” he asked, putting his glass down.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you still separated?”

  “No. We’re together full-time and monogamous.”

  He nodded, unperturbed. Since I’d last seen him, he’d spent several months in a relationship with a woman in Seattle. The distance had proven untenable and they’d broken up two months ago. He was dating again. He’d started the novel he’d had in his head for years.

  The air around us bristled. I took shallow breaths. I was still hurt by our final phone call but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something big was bound to happen between us. Of course I knew the theory about love interests who glowed with an aura of fate, that in actuality their physiognomy, gestures, words simply evoked those of our earliest caretakers, and in my case the way Alden broke things off was a powerful reminder of how quickly my father’s affection could turn to rage. Before the project, I would have reacted to such a possibility by completely avoiding Alden. Now I only noticed a curious mix of mistrust and admiration. Finally, I heard myself say. Finally I’ve met my equally vulnerable, equally ruthless match.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked as he signed the bill. He had a quick, linear, illegible signature, like a doctor’s.

  “I’m wondering what it would be like to be your girlfriend,” I said, staring past him. He paused at that, and I looked at him and shrugged. “That’s what I was thinking.”

  Outside the bar, I reached up to hug him goodbye. “Thanks for the drink,” I said.

  “You’re welcome. It was good seeing you.” If he was surprised that I wasn’t going home with him, he didn’t show it.

  I turned and walked toward the train. The lights in Union Square had just blinked to life. Throngs of tourists hauled shopping bags along the wide sidewalks while natives weaved their way faster, with purpose. Crowds gathered at stoplights and a thick line of people snaked down half a block waiting to board the Powell Street cable car. I stepped onto the subway escalator and it carried me underground, a current delivering me to an unnamed destination. From this moment on my choice would be binary: I could stay in the current or jump out. But I wouldn’t be able to stop it from moving.

  * * *

  I held out for a month. I don’t mean that I steered clear of him. I put myself in front of him, just out of reach, without giving what he wanted. It was as much a power play as a necessary delay tactic, so that I could observe him before losing my wits to sensation. Every minute we spent to
gether, every molecule of my being performed a preverbal scan: of his home, his clothing, his body language, his smell, the amount of papers piled on his desk, which photos he’d chosen to arrange on his shelf, the angle of towels hung in his bathroom. How often he used credit cards, how full he kept his gas tank, which TV shows he watched.

  Why try to fudge the truth at this point? In my forty-fifth year, I became a cheater. Actually, it happened in my forty-third year, that very first night at Paul’s door, though I subsequently dressed it up with the notion of open marriage. I harbor no shame about the open marriage but I’m deeply ashamed of the cheating. The right thing to do would have been to avoid Alden, or, barring that, to leave Scott.

  I didn’t do the right thing. One fall morning after Scott left for work at 6:30 a.m., I showed up at Alden’s door and followed him to the bedroom. The sun was still low on the eastern horizon. My legs spread, our eyes locked, and it quickly became apparent we were playing for keeps. No half measures or rationalizations. It was wrong and it was most definitely temporary. Within weeks Alden told me I needed to make a decision. “I’ll wait a little while because I don’t have a choice,” he said. “But I won’t wait long.”

  The sex was as passionate as I remembered, mostly fiery and forceful, sometimes whispered and meditative. If I closed my eyes or looked away too long he said, “Look at me.” At the end, when he pushed in and held it there, I could actually hear the liquid burst from his body into mine, the way you can sometimes hear your own heartbeat.

  When we fought, we fought hard and bitter. Not like my parents—we were both too old and therapized for that—but our anger had the power to cleave each other’s heart. One sharp word, one look, and we’d spiral into attack mode, hanging up the phone, slamming the car door. Alden didn’t let me get away with much. He fought back and wasn’t afraid to initiate conflict. Afterward, he was quick to apologize and forgive. He challenged me on points no one ever had, like my habit of talking over people and my condescending tone. I learned things during our fights. They changed me and brought us closer.