Crystal Clear

by Jane Heller

  “Sure. Southwest cuisine is the hottest there is.”

  “That’s what worries me,” I said. “All I have to do is look at jalapeño peppers and the acid reflux kicks in.”

  “I didn’t mean ‘hot’ as in spicy,” said Rona. “I meant ‘hot’ as in trendy. But I’m sure you could ask them to leave out the jalapeño peppers.”

  “How about the hotels? Know of any good ones?”

  “I’ve heard of a few, but it depends on what you’re looking for,” said Rona. “There are some that are more spiritually oriented than others.”

  “Why, because they have psychics on call instead of doctors?”

  “No, because they’re located near one of the vortexes.”

  “Vortexes. Shouldn’t the plural be vortices?”

  “Maybe, but all the spiritual people I know call them vortexes.”

  “I guess grammar isn’t as important as inner peace.”

  “No, it isn’t,” said Rona. “Now, are you going to take this trip or not?”

  I considered the question. “You’re sure that after cleansing my aura and balancing my chakras and getting in tune with my power spots, I’ll come back from Sedona with an entirely different outlook on life?”

  “Let me ask you something,” said Rona. “How is your outlook on life right this minute?”

  “Bleak.”

  “Then you don’t have much to lose, do you?”

  I got on the phone to some clients who’d been to Sedona and asked for their recommendations of things to see and do in the area. Then I called a travel agent for more serious information. By noon, I had booked myself on a nonstop America West flight to Phoenix out of JFK Airport for the very next morning. No point in hanging around once I’d made the decision to go, I figured. I also reserved a compact-sized Avis rental car for the two-hour drive to Sedona, as well as ten days at a hotel with the highly improbable—or highly predictable, depending on your viewpoint—name of Tranquility.

  “Are you sure it’s not one of those retirement homes?” I asked the travel agent after she had suggested it.

  “A retirement home?” she scoffed.

  “Well, I just thought, you know, since Arizona has such a large population of senior citizens,” I said.

  “Tranquility is a five-star resort,” she explained. “The name refers to the fact that the hotel is nestled right in Boynton Canyon, one of Sedona’s most sacred places.”

  “Sacred? So this Boynton Canyon is a vortax?” I asked. I was so proud of myself for using one of Rona’s woo-woo words. Then I realized that I’d said vortax instead of vortex. An honest mistake, given my profession, don’t you think?

  “Yes, Ms. Goldstein,” the travel agent replied. “Boynton Canyon is a magnificent spectacle of red rocks, Indian ruins, and hiking trails. It’s a stop on every vortex tour.”

  “There are actually guided tours of these so-called power spots?” I still thought of power spots as places where Rupert Murdoch and people like that ate breakfast.

  “Absolutely,” she said. “In addition to its many amenities, including twelve tennis courts, four swimming pools, a fitness center, and a putting green, Tranquility is known for its famous Sacred Earth Jeep Tours, which take guests to the vortex sites as well as to other attractions in red rock country.”

  I thought about inquiring whether the hotel’s VIP guests got Sacred Earth Mercedes Tours but decided against it.

  “Should we reserve the Sacred Earth Jeep Tour now, at the same time that we’re booking the hotel room?” I asked, fearing I might miss out on all those vortexes. I wouldn’t be able to face Rona.

  “That won’t be necessary,” the travel agent assured me. “It’s September. Sedona’s high season really doesn’t start until October. You shouldn’t have any trouble with Jeep tour availability at this time of year.”

  There certainly wasn’t any trouble with availability when it came to securing me a room at Tranquility. There were several available—individual, adobe-style “casitas” with private porches, views of Boynton Canyon, and the requisite mini-bar.

  “You’re all set,” said the travel agent when our transactions had been completed. “America West is a ticketless airline, so just give them your confirmation number when you check in at JFK tomorrow morning.”

  “I will. Thank you,” I said.

  “Thank you,” said the travel agent, “and have a pleasant trip. I do hope it will be everything you’re expecting.”

  “So do I,” I said, wondering what, exactly, I was expecting.

  That night, after I packed and before I went to sleep, I made three phone calls. First, I called Steven, to tell him I was leaving town. We hadn’t spoken since the Stephanie incident and I thought I owed it to him after our three years together to at least inform him of my travel plans.

  “Marry me,” he said in response, instead of “Bon voyage” or something of that nature.

  “Oh, Steven,” I said. “There’s no reason to make the Grand Gesture. I’m not leaving New York for good. I’m just taking a little trip.”

  “Then marry me when you get back,” he insisted. “I mean it.”

  “What about Stephanie?” I asked.

  “She’s moving to L.A.,” he said. “Some Hollywood producer came into the club where she was singing the other night and offered her a part in his next movie.”

  “How exciting for her,” I said, tempted to ask if the movie was a porno flick.

  “I want you to know that my marriage proposal has nothing to do with Stephanie’s move,” Steven maintained.

  “No, of course not,” I said, not buying it but wanting to.

  “It’s you I love, Crystal. I know that now. I realize that it was our being apart so much that made me vulnerable to Stephanie—the fact that we allowed our work to come between us.”

  “I’ve been thinking along those same lines,” I said, “although it’s possible that the reason we allowed our work to come between us was because we knew, deep down, that the relationship wasn’t there.”

  “I don’t accept that,” Steven said firmly. “And I’m proving it by telling you I want to marry you. Won’t you at least consider my proposal while you’re away?”

  “I don’t know, Steven. I think we need time to—”

  “We’ve had time,” he interrupted. “Three whole years. We already know we’re compatible. We already know we enjoy the same things. We already…”

  It was 10:30 at this point and I found myself dozing off right in the middle of Steven’s impassioned speech about our shared interests. I came to when he was waxing poetic about our mutual appreciation of moonbeams and sunsets and newly fallen snow, none of which we had ever discussed, let alone mutually appreciated.

  “Steven,” I said, rousing myself. “I’m sorry to cut this short but I’ve got an early flight in the morning.”

  “Flight to where?” he asked. “You never said.”

  “I’m going to Sedona, Arizona,” I replied.

  “For a client meeting?” he asked.

  “No, for an emotional clearing,” I said. “I’ll call you when I get home.”

  My father was next on the list. He answered the phone after numerous rings, explaining that he was in the middle of watching “Who’s the Boss?”. Nevertheless, he grunted out a “How long will you be gone?”

  “Ten days,” I said. “You’ll be all right while I’m in Arizona, won’t you, Dad?”

  “How many days will you be gone?” he asked again.

  “Ten,” I repeated. I could tell he wasn’t listening. I must have been talking over Tony Danza.

  “I’ll call you when I get home,” I told him and dialed Rona’s number.

  “So you’re really doing it,” she said, marveling at my uncharacteristic impulsiveness.

  “I’m really doing it,” I echoed. “I’m not totally sure why I’m doing it, though. It almost feels as if I’m being led to Sedona.”

  “Led! Oh, Crystal, honey! Listen to you! Sedona’s posit
ive vibrations are working their magic on you already!”

  “But I haven’t even left New York yet,” I reminded her.

  “Maybe your body hasn’t but the rest of you has,” she maintained.

  “Does that mean I’m having an out-of-body experience?”

  “No,” she laughed. “It means you’re overdue for a vacation. Way overdue.”

  “I’ll call you when I get home,” I promised, just as I had promised the others, never dreaming that the ten days to follow wouldn’t be anyone’s idea of a vacation.

  Chapter Five

  It was still dark when the taxi picked me up at my apartment building at six o’clock on Tuesday morning, but I was wide awake and raring to go. I had been up for hours, organizing the package I would be leaving with the doorman for Rona—a week’s worth of work that she was more than capable of handling should my clients, or Otis, freak out that I had taken off. And then there had been all that unpacking and repacking. What on earth do you pack for a vortex tour? An Indian headdress? Love beads? Spock ears?

  In the end, I packed nearly everything I owned and figured I’d let the doorman and then the taxi driver and then the curb-side check-in guy worry about lifting it all.

  By 6:45, I had made it to the airport, an hour before my flight was to depart, just as the travel agent had instructed me. The cab driver loaded my bags onto the curb, where the nice fellow from America West took over.

  I handed him the piece of paper on which I’d written my confirmation number and he, in turn, asked to see my driver’s license. And then he said, “Has this luggage been out of your sight at any time?”

  “Well, sure,” I said, thinking it was an odd question.

  He seemed concerned. “When was it out of your sight?”

  “When it was in the trunk of the taxi,” I said. “There was no way I could see it from the backseat of the cab.”

  He looked relieved, then asked, “Did you pack the luggage yourself?”

  No, I had my wardrobe mistress do it for me, I thought, perplexed by this question, too. “Yes, I packed the luggage with my own two hands,” I said.

  “Has anybody approached you since you’ve been at the airport?” he asked.

  “You mean, like a mugger or something?”

  “Not exactly.” He seemed frustrated. “You haven’t flown in some time, have you, ma’am?”

  “No,” I said, slightly embarrassed. “Does it show?”

  He smiled. “We’re required to ask each passenger the questions I’ve just asked you. It’s a security thing that’s been in effect for quite a while now. We don’t want anybody planting an explosive device on your airplane, do we?”

  “No, we certainly don’t.” I had never been afraid of flying but I was, at that moment, rethinking my position.

  Despite what the travel agent had said about September not being Arizona’s high tourist season, the flight was heavily booked. Undetected explosive devices notwithstanding, I felt lucky to get a seat on such short notice. Of course, the seat I did get was 18E, a middle seat sandwiched between 18D and 18F, both of which were occupied for the entire five-hour flight by men so obese their flesh kept spilling over the armrests. These men were business associates traveling to a sales meeting in Scottsdale, it turned out—gruff, thoroughly charmless men who had booked the aisle and window seats well in advance in the hope that no one would be sitting between them. Over the course of the flight, they would glare at me with tremendous hostility, either because I had foiled their plan or because I continually made Larry, the one on the aisle, get up so I could go to the bathroom.

  Aside from having to sit between Larry and his pal Dave, the trip to Phoenix was rather pleasant. For instance, as we waited for takeoff, the flight attendants, whose names were Sherry, Valerie, and Anastasia, handed out little shopping bags, each containing a buttered bagel. Never mind that this buttered bagel was the only morsel of food we were offered during the flight or that we weren’t given anything to wash it down with. I was just glad there were no jalapeño peppers involved.

  Then came the video. After the usual spiel about seat belts and oxygen masks and clearly marked exit doors, the monitors mounted along the ceiling of the plane showed us a short documentary called “Arizona: A Spiritual Journey.” It was, essentially, a montage of pretty scenery—mountains, waterfalls, cactus plants, sagebrush, the red rocks I’d been hearing so much about, lots of National Geographic stuff—all set to this really mellow instrumental music. New Age music. I could tell it was New Age music because of the extensive use of the flute, the harp, and, perhaps most telling, the triangle. There were also atmospheric moments of coyotes howling, rattlesnakes rattling, and a narrator announcing that we could purchase the video—or the soundtrack—from our flight attendants simply by illuminating the “Call” button above our seats. Hey, everybody, let’s get spiritual!

  The plane finally took off and we began our ascent toward what our captain promised would be a cruising altitude of 37,000 feet. I dozed on and off during the flight, but spent most of the five hours in that gauzy, daydream state where your thoughts move between fantasy and reality and you’re not sure which is which. At one point, probably because I still associated the West with my ex-husband, I found myself recalling the first time I had an inkling that the marriage wasn’t going to make it.

  Terry and I had been married all of five and a half months when the sad realization dawned on me. We were living in a studio apartment on East Twenty-third Street—a very modest place that was fine for two kids starting out but was definitely not where I wanted to end up. I was working as a bookkeeper during the day and going to graduate school at night, the idea being that, by getting my M.B.A. and then passing the CPA exam, I’d be able to waltz into one of the big accounting firms and start earning some serious money. Terry, the former campus superman, didn’t know what sort of a career he wanted now that he was out in the real world. He had majored in political science along with millions of others who’d attended college in the sixties and seventies, but he didn’t have a clue about what he wanted to be when he grew up—something I had been too besotted with him to notice until it was time to pay the rent that first month.

  With your people skills, honey, you’d be great at this and this and this, I’d say, listing the areas he should pursue in my opinion, trying to be the supportive little wife while we subsisted on love and tuna fish sandwiches. But despite my cheerleading, Terry seemed genuinely lost without the fraternity brothers, the baseball uniform, the warm glow of adulation that he’d enjoyed in college. Not that he let on, at first. He’d go on interview after interview, and when the job offers didn’t pour in, he’d crack jokes, attempt to charm my worries away, make it seem as if all I had to do was lighten up and everything would be fine.

  Eventually his father, who worked for a national pharmaceutical company, arranged for him to enter the company’s management training program at the New York headquarters. He quit after three weeks.

  “It was like boot camp—really rigid,” he said. “I couldn’t see myself going anywhere in that company, except maybe out a thirtieth-floor window. My father fits right into the corporate life, but it’s just not for me.”

  What is for you? I wanted to ask but kept my mouth shut. That time.

  Terry’s next foray into the work world was a position in the sales and marketing department of an athletic shoe company—an organization he assumed would offer a more relaxed atmosphere. He stuck with that job for a whopping two weeks.

  “I need an environment where I can have more freedom,” he said. “A place where everybody isn’t so uptight.” To show me how uptight he wasn’t, he pulled me to him and made love to me—a sure way to silence my doubts.

  There were a few more jobs after that, none lasting more than a month. Again, Terry’s complaints had to do with working in a restrictive environment and feeling stifled creatively. Having to wear a jacket and tie was also mentioned.

  I was baffled that he was having so
much trouble finding work, and I honestly think he was, too. In college, everything had come so easily to him. It wasn’t just that he was good looking—he had an athletic, agile body that radiated self-confidence; shaggy, light brown hair that fell boyishly across his forehead; deeply set blue eyes that twinkled with mischief; a nose that had been broken when he was a kid and added a ruggedness to his otherwise too-handsome face. It was also that he was a smooth talker—a glib short-cutter who never had to go out and get what he wanted because it was already there for him. Had all his success as a college kid turned him into a lazy adult? I asked myself often as the marriage disintegrated. Had being the popular, center-of-attention guy made him weak? Irresponsible? Unambitious? Too ambitious?

  Such questions ate at me because I had loved Terry so, had idolized him from the very moment I’d seen him. When our problems first surfaced, part of me resented him for not being willing or able to get and keep a job. The other part of me didn’t care if he earned a dime, as long as he would let me remain in his orbit, inhale his magic. This was the seventies, don’t forget—long before the term “enabler” became a 12-step buzz word.

  And Terry did have magic. He was affectionate and spontaneous and never at a loss for ways we could entertain ourselves even on our tight budget—the perfect foil for my plodding, relentlessly pragmatic nature. It was he who whisked me off to Central Park for a Sunday picnic; he who dragged me out of the city when I was bleary-eyed from studying and took me to the beach; he who taught me how to kiss underwater as the waves crashed over us; he who showed me how exquisite lovemaking could be.

  No, Terry wasn’t a total washout as a husband, but when I rode the bus home from business school every night and allowed myself to really examine the relationship, I knew that I was in deep trouble, that I had married a man-child who would ultimately frustrate and disappoint me, that I was not about to pick up the tab while he spent the rest of his life adjusting to the cold, cruel world.

  And so, five and a half months after we’d said “I do” in my father’s depressing little living room, I admitted to Terry that I was thinking of leaving him. And that’s when the promises began.