by M. Mabie
“I denied it. I didn’t know what to do. There I was, thinking I needed to find a way to break up with Grant, and then getting those messages from her and realizing that maybe Casey had been misleading me the whole time. I was confused and…and sad.”
“Not to mention vulnerable, I’m sure. Here you’d fallen in love with a man—through no fault of your own. Love happens sometimes, uninvited and inconvenient. Okay, so then what?”
“I didn’t say I was in love with Casey back then,” I corrected for accuracy’s sake. Had I said that? Surely, not. At that point I’d only met him a few times. I was curious. I liked him. I couldn’t stop thinking about him to the point of obsessing, but had I been in love with him then?
“You didn’t have to. You were in love with him. I can already tell. When you told me about meeting Grant, you seemed content and your pace was easy and slow. When you told me about meeting Casey, you sped up and became animated with your hands. Casey puts life in you. How could you not love that?”
I looked at my watch, I’d already been there for two hours. Weren’t therapy appointments supposed to be sixty minutes?
“I’m sorry. It’s almost eight o’clock,” I said.
“So? I’m an empty nester and I have to know what happens. We’ll break for the night in a while. Keep going.”
And so I did.
We stopped at a vending machine and she bought us a pack of Starbursts and some bottled water. We sat in the back of a lecture hall, and when I got to the part about Valentine’s Day and breaking things off, her eyes went misty and she kindly held my hand.
“Blake, why did you keep doing that? What was your thought process in making the decision to choose Grant over Casey, when you loved Casey so much?”
The black and white of it all was so simple to explain.
“It sounds so stupid now. Living it was different. I didn’t know where his head was. He never pushed back or demanded more from me until later. At that time, to me, it seemed like he thought we just had great chemistry. And we got along great…and it was fun. I didn’t know he wanted more. I didn’t let myself see that as a possibility. What I knew was, I was marrying a man my family loved, and who promised to give me things I was used to seeing in a family. Does that make sense?”
“You wanted stability. You wanted your family to be proud. That makes perfect sense, but how did you feel?”
Wretched. Torn apart. Lost. Bereft. Alone.
“I felt commandeered. Like what was expected of my life had taken over my real life. I had no idea someone like Casey was even out there when I’d started on that path with Grant. I didn’t know it could feel like this.”
“So how did you feel, after you told him it was over, and he left you there on Valentine’s Day?”
“Lonely. I felt like I’d found and lost these two new, amazing people—me when I was with him, and him. I’m different with him, even I’m aware of it. It feels so much more natural being that Blake. Being his Blake.”
“What’s she like?” she asked, leaning her head on the arm she’d draped over the back of the seat.
I looked at the ceiling and thought about what I was like with Casey. I’d never dissected the two halves of me for anyone before.
“With him, I’m calm and chatty. I say whatever pops into my mind. He’s never made me feel stupid or that I’m being ridiculous. He might be thinking it, but Dr. Rex, I think he likes it. We talk about everything. Things that do not matter.”
“So you’re freer in a sense?”
“Yeah, I don’t have to filter things with him. I don’t have to pretend.”
“Why do you pretend with others?”
“You know,” I answered, looking for the exact description or reason, “my mom and dad are like the perfect couple.”
“They are great together. Your dad has always been very proud of his marriage and family. And for good reasons.”
“Yeah, you know them. So, when I was growing up, I thought that was what being happy looked like. Parents home at five for dinner. My mother was home with us all summer, and most of the time my dad was, too. I had two older brothers that tormented me, but they’d murder someone for me in a heartbeat. Kisses goodnight. Board games. Family vacations. That’s what I knew. I’ve never seen divorce. I’ve never seen a breakup. I’ve never even really been broken up with. I had a few boyfriends in high school, but those all ended with me just wanting to be friends.
“So when I met Grant, I fell in love with the idea of having that life. I knew how happy that life could be. The one I thought I was supposed to have.”
“So that kept you tied to him.”
“Yeah. Casey is from a divorced family, he knows what that’s like. He lives out of a suitcase and I would have only seen him every few weeks at the time—if we were lucky. He’s impulsive and reactive. I didn’t know if that was him or just him with me.”
“You’re obviously not a gambler,” she teased and bumped her leg against mine. I’d only met the woman twice and I already knew I needed her. It was so comfortable talking to her. I bet her patients loved her.
“You know, talking to you is a lot like talking to him.”
“Good. I want you to feel like you’re talking to a friend.”
“So am I crazy?”
“Yes.” Her smile was infectious.
“Then I finally have an excuse.”
On the way back to her office she stopped me and asked, “Do you have a picture of Casey. I can almost see him in my head.” I laughed, truly laughed.
And there it was. She didn’t ask for a picture of Grant and she was a doctor. I wasn’t crazy. Or I was crazy in love.
“Yeah, I have a few,” I said trying to play off the fact I had many. When I activated my phone, I noticed I had a message.
Casey: Do you know how to cut up an onion so that I don’t question my manhood every time I do it?
Casey: If your doctor hypnotizes you, please have her remind you how curious you are about anal.
I felt the smile reach my eyes and the warmth of his silliness light me from the inside out. He was my normal. He was my home. He was everywhere I wanted to be and the place I most wanted to go. I just had to accept that it was good. That we were good. And even though what I’d done was awful and hurtful, I was just learning how to love someone who loved me the way I’d craved. But most surprisingly, I think I was just learning to love myself a little better. The actual me that Casey had helped bring to life. The me I wanted to be.
I typed back a short message.
Me: I’ll call you in a little bit, pussy. I’m not curious about anal. I’m firmly pro-anal. I just never wanted to hurt your delicate ass.
Casey: You’re so thoughtful.
I scrolled through the saved pictures on my phone and found one of him I’d taken in Costa Rica. He lay on his belly on a beach towel looking up at me. He’d just told me that I had a huge wedgie and offered to rectify it for me. His face was all ornery and playful. His face was all Casey. And his hair looked rocking, too.
“Son of a bitch, girl. I see where you had your doubts. He looks like trouble.”
I looked at my phone with her and we gazed at the photo like two junior high girls gawking over the newest issue of Tiger Beat magazine.
“I like his trouble. I always have.”
I supposed, at that moment, trouble was a two-way street. If it took giving more to get more, I’d give him everything.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
WE WERE ON COMMON ground. She talked, I listened. When I talked, she understood. We weren’t just zooming past everything that we could push off for later anymore. We were meeting things head on.
Days peeled away. Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and so it meant we’d have six more weeks of winter. It normally wouldn’t matter to me, but I had business on the East Coast that spring and wasn’t cool with the longer winter prediction.
She’d seen her therapist a few times. I was so damn relieved that there was no sign
of a wind change. We talked on the phone every day. We started making plans for another trip, she wanted to go to Greece. I reveled in the fact we were making plans. Even though we only talked about taking a trip in a vague way, I’d already started looking at places we could visit and bookmarking hotels I thought were cool. For later.
She had her divorce papers back from the lawyer. When she opened up to me and told me she was nervous to call Grant about signing them, my mind didn’t go to that insecure place where it used to. Instead, I was happy she was talking to me and letting me share her load.
“I know you don’t want to hear this, but I feel really bad for hurting him,” she confessed. “In all of the time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen him act like he did in San Francisco. Or at the house when I was getting my things.”
I couldn’t blame the guy. We’d all made mistakes. Thankfully, including him.
To me, he was a shitty husband. Who neglects a wife like that? Maybe not her material needs, but everything else just sort of, slipped past him. How could he have been so blind? How could he marry someone and take such little interest in her?
I didn’t know everything about their relationship—so I wasn’t about to pretend I did—but from the outside, it seemed like he was a dud. Not that I‘d ever tell her what to do with her life if I were engaged or married to her, but didn’t he miss her when she was traveling? She traveled damn near constantly the year before their marriage. Didn’t she miss him? Didn’t he ever want to go along? The whole thing was so weird to me.
Maybe that was why I never felt truly awful for the guy. He didn’t know how good of a thing he had. He never appreciated her.
I will. I will show her what love is supposed to feel like, even if I’m winging it.
Blake was mine. Not in a possessive-caveman way—okay, sometimes she was. But she was more like an organ. Vital. I have a heart, but the fact that it is my heart is redundant. The same went for Blake. She was my Blake and she made all of the other parts of me healthier.
Ever since the night with the drunk bastard and the bartender, I kept thinking about Grant. He thought she was his. A thing. A milestone. A check off the life-plan list. A rung higher on a ladder that went where? Retirement? First hand I saw what their love looked like. It was fabricated like the generic photo you get when you purchase a frame. What a waste of passion and life.
Oh, how it must suck for him to be wrong like that.
Obviously he loved her, in his robotic, climate-controlled way.
Therefore, I’d decided I was going to be a man about it. Own up to my shit. I’d helped wreck his marriage. Copy and paste as it was, their union was a falsified duplicate of what they were taught marriage looked like. And as the number I’d found on their real estate website rang, I walked outside to do something that could either be classified as decent or really fucking dumb.
I was calling my Blake’s almost ex-husband. I was clearing the air, and possibly, if it felt right, apologizing.
“Bowman and Kelly Realty, Janet speaking,” answered an elderly lady.
“Hello, may I please speak with Grant Kelly.”
“Just a moment, please.”
I should have brought a beer outside with me. Day drinking wasn’t something I normally did, but I also didn’t normally call men and wax poetically about how I’d been fucking their wives for two years. Oh, and that I had no plans to stop. Oh, and I was madly in love with her and I’d fight him tooth and nail if it came down to it. Pacing in the morning sun on the back deck, I waited for her to connect the line. Each time the phone rang, I felt my resolve weaken.
What the hell was I going to say again?
“Grant Kelly,” he answered. His voice was level and professional, not that I’d expected anything less.
“Hi, this is Casey Moore.”
There was silence. I considered hanging up, but I pulled up my big-boy, big-man pants and took a deep breath. If Blake could face everyone, then so could I.
“Hello,” he said after clearing his throat. “What can I do for you?” He sounded dismissive and a little snide. Again, pretty much what I expected from him. Maybe he would hang up on me.
“I’m sure this call comes as a surprise, but I wanted to call and clear the air,” I explained. As I spoke, I straightened my posture and stood to my full height, looking out over my mother’s garden.
I tried to summon her strength and wondered what she would think. She’d probably say something about adding insult to injury, but I think she’d be a little proud, too. Carmen avoided my mother like the plague for years and I think that always bothered my mom.
“So you have a conscience now, or something?” His mundane question didn’t quite hide his contempt.
I paced.
“Listen, I’m sorry about how everything shook out a few weeks ago. I think I owe it to you to be a man about it and talk about it like adults.”
My feet repeatedly marched the same path, back and forth over the cobblestone patio.
“Men? Adults?” Finally, I was hearing emotion. “I’m not sure what you think we have to talk about.” There was another long pause. I switched up my routine and began going up and down the stone steps.
“Really? I think we have at least one common interest, Grant.”
Then he said, “You know, you’re right. Let’s talk about it. Actually, I have some things I’d like to know.”
I was a moron. First, I fucked up his marriage, then I called him at work to ease my own guilt. I was a douche. It was a bad idea. I should have talked to Blake about calling him first, but it was an impulsive thing. It had eaten at me for days.
“Okay, what do you want to know?” I’d let him get out what he needed.
“Is this the first woman you’ve seduced away from her family?”
Dick.
My hand tightened around my phone, but I reminded myself to stay calm. That was a fair question.
“I didn’t seduce her. And I’ve never been in a relationship with anyone like I am with her.”
“And what do you think you can offer her? From what I know, you’re a beer peddler who skips from town to town.” His monotone voice got louder over the line.
And just how in the hell did he know that?
“Listen, I didn’t call to fight with you. I know this isn’t normal, or probably even the right thing to do, but she deserves a man who’s willing to fight for her. To stand up for what she wants. As shitty as that is for you, she wants me.” As ugly as the conversation was, that felt good. I added, “I thought by calling, I could explain myself, maybe apologize. She never wanted to hurt you.”
“How long was it going on?” he fired back.
Here came the painful truth. “Since May of 2008.”
“She married me. She said yes to me. Why do you think she’d do all that if she really wanted to be with you?” The fool tried to rationalize love. Clearly, he didn’t know what he was talking about. And it was even clearer, he didn’t know Blake.
However, his questions had merit. I had to confess my shortcomings to a man who should own stock in his own shortcomings. “Because I didn’t offer her anything. Not that I can’t. I didn’t know what I was doing. We both tried to fight it. And we’ve told each other goodbye many times, but it never seems to stick.”
“Isn’t that sweet?” Artificial amusement gave his tone personality and made me want to punch him.
“You know, this isn’t easy for her, either. I know she cares about you. Okay? I know that you’re a good guy. But I’m a good guy, too.”
“Yeah, you’re the best.”
I pulled my phone away from my ear and silently screamed, while shaking the piss out of it for a second.
“Maybe this was a bad idea.”
“No. The bad idea was messing around with a married woman. Messing with her head. That was a bad idea.”
“I’m not messing with her head. And when I first started messing with her—as you like to call it—she wasn’t married.”
> “She’s just confused. As soon as she realizes what she’s giving up, she’ll come around. You’ll see.”
Like hell I would.
My nostrils flared and I sat down, ready to enlighten him on what I thought of his fucking ass. He needed correcting.
“There’s not a goddamned thing you can give her that I can’t. Understand me? Maybe you should have paid more attention to her. Ever think of that? How does it feel, knowing all of this was going on right under your damn nose and you didn’t see any of it? You don’t even know her. Not the real her. Hell, her therapist said the same thing.” Why didn’t he realize?
Dead silence. I glanced at my phone to see if the call had dropped. And after what I’d just said, letting my temper get the better of me, I sort of wished it had. I called him to ease my guilt, and to possibly feel like I was doing my share of the clean-up. Blake was working her ass off. Fighting for both of us.
Then I heard him question, “The therapist?”
My mouth had no shut off at that point.
“Yeah, the therapist. She’s seeing a psychiatrist. I told you, it isn’t like she’s proud of herself.”
The laugh I heard over the line inflamed my already simmering blood. What was so fucking funny?
“I can’t believe she told you about that.” His tone was condescending and superior. “She’s gutsier than I thought.”
“What?” I shook my head. What did he say? Did he know she was seeing someone? Had he talked to her family?
I was lost.
“We’re seeing a couples counselor.”
Couples counselor. Couples counselor. Couples. Fucking. Counselor?
I didn’t believe him.
I couldn’t believe him. That wasn’t right. She would have told me. She wouldn’t have left that out.
“I’m sorry, Casey. I suppose I’m not the only one she hides things from, but we’re working on it. I have a client coming in. It’s been nice chatting with you.” And he hung up.
Suddenly, I didn’t feel like daytime drinking was all that bad.
In fact, I drank my lunch. My day off turned into my noon-time drunk and afternoon nap.