Honeymooners A Cautionary Tale

by Chuck Kinder

  R.

  Dearest Ralph –-

  At home downstairs – a change, like al the many changes within me and around me. Skullcap of black madness playing ninepins with despair/ennui. Haven’t moved much since I returned home. Go through the motions – back to the schedules that spare thinking, occasional flashes of wit, sardonic, without soul. Look at the order around me that is becoming me and grieve that I’m powerless to stem the tide.

  A week ago we said goodbye and tried in 15 minutes alone to undo the anxieties of the past week. Not enough time. I sit here facing north. You are souh, behind me, shrouded in heavy silence. That silence was beginning before I came down for reasons neither of us could begin to explain. I do love you. That may not be enough. We came to the place where we saw each other without all the intervening variables. Saw what each of us would need, require from the other. Perhaps love is not enough. Terribly sad, my darling. Wish like hell you would simply communicate what you are feeling. See these notes as pieces fluttering off into space too late to find you, too late.

  Have fallen into a quiet existence. Patient without patience. Waiting for Godot, I think. Maggie and I trooped to the Flame last Friday and talked to people for a while. No heart for it. Bill had kicked Kathy out of the house again, so she spent Friday night with me. Sat around Saturday and stoned ourselves to death. Then did a dinner shot. Just too sad. Left Kathy with Maggie and came home. Haven’t been out since. Maggie, if I haven’t told you, has fallen love, head over heels. She spoke with Crumley last week and advised him not to wait for her to become more amenable to their rejoining. Still won’t predict the outcome of any of this; o much has passed between them that was too painful. Time may not be able to smooth the differences and currently that is about all they have going for them. I love them both dearly. Just more sadness. I know you thought Crumley was just another macho-man, but he is so much more than that stance he lets himself slip into. He is a wonderful, but so very complex man.

  Soaked in a bubblebath for what seemed like hours today. Just kept running more hot water. Lay there and tried to let my head rest. But the perfidious mind always found something I didn’t want to think about and the stomach knotted up again. I can see why people become alcoholics. It doesn’t simplify life, but for the moment it makes it tolerable. I was very nervous last night, a true case of the willies. Think tension also relates to ennui. I had secured some MDA. It’s a mild hallucinogenic. Haven’t taken any of that stuff since my dopey married days. Was told this stuff would have a calming effect. So I locked my doors, turned on the TV to the Miss U.SA. pageant and dropped it. It was mild indeed. Could watch that absolute shit on TV and feel anger and feel it was dispassionate anger. About the only real effects were a floating sensation, occasional blurring of vision, and a real distance from reality, which was something I needed in the worst way.

  Kathy had a rather mild misadventure lately which might amuse you. Her life does follow certain patterns. Kathy has recently made the acquaintance of a Math department oddball by the name of Fred, who has apparently fallen in love with her and follows her around bar to bar, from bike route to asparagus patch. Fred has just learned to “swing,” I guess, for he was not sighted until a month or so ago and now can be found any given night of the week at the Flame. He calls Kathy constantly at home. Bill doesn’t take him that seriously but has finally gotten a bit miffed about all that. Says he doesn’t like the guy’s audacity. The other night Fred told Kathy that Bill’s infidelity is known throughout Missoula. Guess he thinks that if that is true, Kathy will be willing also. Anyway, she literally trips over him every time she turns around. And, the other night, at the height of debauch, she took off with him to see his small home away from home (he is married, of course), and to get stoned. She said she got horribly nauseous on the ride over to his hideaway, probably owing to the virulent combination of tequila and orange juice and very heavy dope. So, just as they pull up in front of his little bungalow, who else but our Buffalo Bill roars up behind them in his car, beating the horn, yelling out the window. Bill jumps out and begins banging on poor little Fred’s car. They barely had time to roll the windows up and lock the doors. Fred is gesturing wildly through the window and trying to tell Bill he has the wrong idea, that everything is really on the up and up, that he has no designs on Kathy whatsoever. Bill just continues roaring and ignores Fred, of course, and he keeps circling the car banging on it with his fists. Bill finally needs a breather, so he stretches out on the car hood and announces that he will wait them out, that sooner or later they will have to come out of the car and at that point he plans to choke them. Kathy tried to convince Fred just to keep his cool, that sooner or later Bill would pass out, and then they could make a getaway. Fred doesn’t buy into this and he is absolutely terrified. He begins to babble a mile a minute. At that point Kathy feels very ill, so she leans over the backseat and lets heave, just does it, all over the back floor. Fred doesn’t say a thing about it, he just keeps babbling about Bill and being too young to die, and Kathy swears that now and again poor Fred would break into a few, assorted Hail Marys and scat a few lines of the Lord’s Prayer. This goes on for a time, Kathy now and then tosses her cookies into the back seat and Fred prays with a true passion for deliverance, until Kathy can hear Bill snoring. She then jumps out of Fred’s car and bolts back to Bill’s (he had left it running naturally) and roars off into the night. How or when Bill got home (or whatever happened to poor Fred) she doesn’t know. But she found Bill asleep in the front bushes the next morning when she went out to get the paper. Also, Bill didn’t seem to remember a thing about it, for not a word has been said on the subject. Nobody has seen Fred at the Flame since, so his swinging days must be over.

  Enough. Enough. And what is to become of us? Where are you? What are you doing? What happened to us on my visit? We did have some wonderful moments, I cannot deny that. There were sweet, close moments when we were as intense and tender as ever. But the underlying fears and sadness, the unspoken things between us. And the booze frightened me like it hasn’t done before. And I can’t believe I got so upset when I saw how untidy you are. I think what happened is that I realized how much Alice Ann takes care of you, how much she must mother you. And it frightens me that perhaps I can’t do that, not the way she must anyway. There are just so many things I don’t understand. Calvin rides my shoulders again. We have violated laws, my love. We had no right to do that. Now we violate each other. Christ, I am so sad. I am as sad as when Alice Ann’s two dozen roses arrived for me, the other woman.

  Will promise you a very few things. Believe you maybe as confused as I am, and know both of us need time to sort things through. I will wait for word from you, however long it takes for you to speak your mind truthfully. I will not write to you again. You don’t need my confusions to clutter your thoughts and you don’t need to feel responsible for my present state. I believe I have put myself in this place – my head, my heart. And, like you, I’m a survivor. Will return the books and mss. you sent me shortly. Don’t feel I can keep them here. No consolation for your absence.

  Take care, my love. For you have been my love. I will always, always cherish our times together. Something very special in my life, something I will never be without – the memories. Forgive these words. So impotent bedside the way I feel. Again, take care of yourself. Please.

  L.

  Dearest Madame Lindsey …

  Just ready your letter. Just had mailed you a letter. Got terribly drunk last night, and sad, sad, Jesus. Tom Zigal, Stark, Max Carver, Mike Rogers, Kinder, the usual worthless, drunken crew. Somehow ended up at a commie-Black Panther meeting/rally of some sort, at some commie Stanford professor’s house (Max is a serious commie, as I told you. He claims to know where guns and even bodies are buried.). Anyway, it developed into a crazy, even dangerous scene, with Stark almost getting into it with some monster Black panther sort, after Stark went around saying he was as liberal as the next chickenshit Stanford professor and believed that th
ere should be at least two watermelons in every motherfucker’s garage, or something like that. Somehow Max got us out alive. Crazy, and hilarious, but deep down I felt so sad, no amount of laughter could touch that darkness. Am aware of a great hole in my life – trying not to fall off backwards into it. Can’t believe that what we shared is not to be again. The Ralph and the Lindsey. Here I am, sitting here in this office, this overgrown office, which I have all to myself now, remembering when you came up to meet me for lunch that day. Remember? Said I wanted to make love to you right there and then. On top of the desk. On the floor. I was only half-joking. I wish with all of my heart we had done it, made love. So here I sit, writing this on the fly between students, trying to make the afternoon mail. Should be up there with you or you here with me and me looking so forward to getting off work, getting back, getting home, to you. What the hell happened to those days, those nights, that Lindsey. And, no, I don’t believe we violated any laws, unwritten or otherwise, and that now we have to pay for it. Huh-uh. But I’m a fellow short on philosophy -- that’s a fact – but long on feeling. I’m sorry things scared you so much, all the anxiety. I’m sorry Alice Ann found out about you being here with me. And those cursed flowers, those damn roses. Why she did that I don’t know. And I’m sorry I was so untidy. If we were together I would do better, really. But don’t make more of it than there is. Sure I’m used to Alice Ann picking up after me, but that doesn’t mean she mothers me, that I’ve gotten so used to her I can’t do things on my own, that she has been my main support and buffer against the hard realities of this world, all that just because I’m a slob, which I am the first to admit. I washed the dishes last night, let me tell you, or maybe it was the night before. But I made up my bed this morning, and yesterday morning too. And I intend to do it again tomorrow. I’m going to tidy up my life and keep it tidy too, I’m here to tell you. Must and will see you again, little fish. And you must not think of sending back to me my books or mags. of mine that I’ve given you. Couldn’t bear that. Don’t even speak of it. I love you so much, little fish. I love you, you. Told you once that I thought I could never love again. It happened. Lindsey. Lindsey and Ralph. Well, I don’t want to sound maudlin, or whatever, and, besides, someone is at the door. And I have this rotten class to teach. Must go. Please write again. I’ll send you the money I owe you the day after tomorrow. And that is a promise. Take are. All love.

  R.

  Dearest Ralph ___

  I just can’t tell you how happy I was to get your letter today. I have been terribly unhappy – the kind of state where nothing matters. It hurts to get up in the morning. Can’t sleep at night. And the most violent nightmares. How to describe them. Confrontations with the devil, cats changing into horrid, rubbery ghouls. Woke up screaming one night. So frightened I got out of bed, went to the john and was afraid to flush the toilet. Wend downstairs, turning on every light in the house. Sure this time I was going made and I didn’t want to. That’s why the schedules I wrote about last letter and couldn’t really explain, how somehow they kept me sane, with something to do right before me, not having to think. My god, Ralph. Just unable to bear the idea that I would never be with you again. And I had created the tension, broken faith with our love.

  These past two weeks without you have been more than I thought I could bear. No one to talk to about it. Kathy knew I was depressed, knew it was becase of you, but someone else just can’t know how much I love you. Spent weekends here in the livingroom, looking out through the curtains at lives passing in the street. Felt 80. Felt alone. Felt ready to call it a life and let it go. But knew prison has no mercy – I still had 50 years to go. Alone in some apartment in some city behind curtains with just the memory of a love to taunt me. I know this is maudlin. I can’t help it. Crying now for the pain I’ve caused you and me. In mad moments I imagined throwing all my gear in the car and driving down to Berkeley, but was afraid I might not find you there, or might find you there, already into another life which had no place for me.

  Would like to explain in greater honesty why I think things were so difficult between us. It really wasn’t your fault, love. I mean, the things I mentioned, the heavy boozing, even the untidineass, as silly as that sounds, and the feeling of being the other woman, with everything being topped off by Alice Ann‘s two dozen red roses, all these things did take their toll, of course they did. They had to. But something else was wrong. I can’t tell you how much I’ve needed you in the past weeks, months. I have needed you terribly, terribly, at times. I wanted to talk to you, have you hold me, have you reassure me. There was another man. Not an affair, I promise you. But he is somewhat older than us, very wealthy, and his life was not complicated in the way each of ours has been, and he seemed very wise in ways I am not, and he was very interested in me. I liked him. I didn’t and don’t love him. But he presented contrasts to me – not in words, not intentionally. Just his way of life, which seemed so much easier than ours. When I would call you for reassurance, I found none. Instead you needed me to reassure you, and I was so confused about everything I felt my words were false, that I was betraying you because I was not nearly as strong as you would believe. By the time I arrived in Berkeley I was in the midst of a giant upheaval. I just wanted you to hold me, as though I were a child, perhaps, and promise me that we would make it, that we would find our easy life together. You were ill-prepared for that, my love. There I was in a strange town, in a strange old car that whooped and bucked worse than my own heap, neither of us had any money. And I grew more desperate, more frightened. The more anxious I became, the more anxious you became. There seemed no way to stop it all, slow it down and catch a breath, see each other really and know that our love was what was most important. The days shot by, there went our time, and all the drinking we did, you half drunk half the time, or me, us. Not an ideal setting for dealing with us. And when everything was topped off with Alice Ann’s flowers, that stoke of absolute genius on her part and when I had to drive you up to that wretched place, that farm for drunks, and leave you there, so broken and frightened and sad, and had to drive that bucking old car back to Berkeley alone and absolutely terrified that it was going to blow up at any moment and then I had to get myself to the airport alone, terrified that I wouldn’t even have enough money for the cab, all these things just overwhelmed me. I was absolutely undone by all that business. And as I took that sad early flight out, I began to speculate that perhaps it was better that we did separate – that life together would be far more difficult than life apart.

  Tried to live these past two weeks with the conviction that all was for the best, in the long run. But my treacherous heart has not given me any rest. I’ve read stories and wanted so much to talk to you about them, only you. Watched spring come on and wanted to touch you, only you. Even my friend, the older man, though he is very kind and understanding, has been no solace, for he wants what I cannot give him, he wants what I can give only to you, my love. Let me end for now with just saying this: “See, we still love each other, in spite of everything. See, we’ve made it through almost a year now, and this whole new world is unfolding for us. Come on, love, let’s walk out into this new springtime together. The Ralph, the Lindsey.

  L.

  Dearest Ralph –

  This is an Easter letter. A long note, reportage of the scene, and a serious note; you have had a plethora of those of late.

  Events first. The scene continues unabated in these parts. Have held fairly close to my resolves. Seldom go to the local pub and when I do I leave before too much time has paased or booze awilled. Bill and Kathy had a party for Dick Hugo last weekend, Friday. Guess it was a rather bizarre but uneventful evening. Hugo had brought along the woman he claims was the “lady” from Kicking Horse Reservoir, but as soon as he spotted Maggie Crumley, he abandoned said “lady” an spent the evening mooning over Maggie, whom he has been smitten by for years. The evening generated no real juicy scandal however. Apparently Bill was his usual babbling insane self and fell in lov
e a lot, but nobody even notices that act anymore. I chose to remain at home, still preferring to avoid a gathering where Milo might be present. He and I have finally settled the house deal – he buys me out for a mere $1000, the sum I invested initially as the down. A stupid deal on my part, I know, but I want donw with this business. I see no possibility of friendship wi him ever – too much eo damage to make suh a thing feasible in this short lifetime.

  After congratulating myself on foregoing the literary debacle, I acceped an invitation from Kathy the next day to jin her at her house. We sipped gin for a couple of hours while various people came and went. Bill and Ji Welch were at hugo’s and returned smashed. Kathy asked Bill to please carry out soe garbage. Bill plucked a rose from a bouquet oon the coffee table and tossed it, a fillip, over his shoulder. A rather funny geture, something like Ferdinand the Bill. Kathy, however, ws not amused and indicated same, whereupon Bill dragged her out of her chair and screamed into her face that Dick Hugo had finally confessed that very afternoon that he and Kathy had been having an affair. Completely crazy. Bill then roared out of the house announcing that Dick Hugo was a dead man. Kathy went upstairs to take a nap. I was rather smashed, totally stoned, so I went home and crashed. Next thing I knew I was on a white slab in the amergency ward at St. Pat’s. A nurse was bending over me, trying to get me to identify the drugs I had taken. This was a serious nightmare. I was so drunk and out of it, I cold hardly talk, but I was afraid if I didn’t do something they would pump my stomach. The interrogation continued while I slipped back into slumber. Wa acused of being uncooperatibe, asked to level with them. The somehow Bill appeared and joined the attendants in their questioning. Only he kept calling me Kathy, which freaked me out. And he also kept telling the attendants that he and I, hiw wife, Kathy, had lraady lost one baby. I kept waiting to wake up. Then suddenly Bill was gone, the attendants were gone, an I drifted off again. Don’t know how much time passed, but suddenly Bill was there again, telling me that it was time to get going. I sat up, vomited immediately in their emergency bedpan, and staggered to my feet. Don’t remember much from here on, but apparently Bill and Jim Crumley (and this really amazed me, for I didn’t even know Jim was back in town; I thought he wa still in Texas, trying to stay away from Maggie) strolled me out to Bill’s car. And then Maggie was there, looking terried, at the way I looked I guess. At any rate, she apparently followed us in Jim’s truck. We reached the Orange Street underpass and I began to vomit again. Jim opened the car door and dropped my head out. According to Maggie I was bobbing about 4 inches from the pavement. There was a bit more maneuvering. For some reason, probably a sudden fit of Buffalo passion, we stopped at the East Gate, where Bill’s latest love, Delores, was barmaiding. We all staggered in. Bill immediately accused Delores of wanting to fuck this table full of cowboys. Jim and Maggie were supposed to take me home, but Maggie went to the restroom and by the time she came out, maybe three minutes later, Bill had somehow hustled me back out into his car and we were cruising off into the night. I can vaguely remember staggering into a few more bars. Bill kept saying we had to find, listen to this, me, moi, Lindsey. He kept calling me Kathy and saying that we had to find Lindsey, that Lindsey was lost, misplaced, misplaced in America, and we had to find her before it was too late. Tell me about it.