“I can tell her anything, and I want to tell her everything ‘cause she’s my best friend.”
A teddy-bear guy with an uncontrollable grin, Roman has spent half his life in love with the same woman. He’s as rare as a willow tree in the desert. I have the afternoon alone with him to determine if men can love women in that complete and soulful way. All I need is one example, one case to relight my own beliefs.
We’re in the conference room of the office suites where my real estate business is located. It’s after hours, and the phones are blessedly silent. The two of us sip soda from green cans. He wears a golf shirt and jeans. His dark hair is neatly combed. His hands are at rest. And his happiness fills the room like some sort of silent music.
Roman is a postal worker and Lori is a hospital administrator. Her job is high stress with a lot of responsibility. Heart attacks run in her family and are a quiet, constant concern for the couple.
Months earlier, Lori had experienced sudden chest pains while at home. As Roman raced to call an ambulance, he was stricken with the thought of losing her. The emotions were so overwhelming, Roman passed out hitting his head on a table as he fell. Lori put her own pain aside and picked her unconscious, hefty husband from the floor. Then clutching her chest she drove them both to the emergency room.
When he regained consciousness on the gurney and saw Lori at his side, Roman’s first words to her were, “I love you so much I would crack my head for you any day.” His love overcame his ego. And no it wasn’t a heart attack for Lori.
Roman’s love is the old-fashioned, I love you more than I love myself, love. The kind I was hoping to find. “Where does commitment come from? What do you draw on?” I ask.
His answer surprises me. “I don’t like the word commitment. That word sounds too forced. Lori is my life and that’s a fact. I don’t have to think about it or use words to describe it. It just is.”
“Do you ever fight?”
“Sure. I might get mad at her for a couple of hours, but then I forget it. It helps a lot when you’re friends because you’re always going to come back.” His smile grows.
“You think?”
“Absolutely,” Roman continues, happy to be sharing his insight. “The best part about marrying your friend is that you can take joy in each other’s lives.
“I love doing everything with Lori.” He looks shy. “Sure, I go out with the guys, but the whole time I’m out I’m thinking about telling her what happened and watching her reactions.”
He chuckles, enjoying an image in his head, “I even love shopping with Lori. I hold the clothes and follow her around.” He leans forward, laughing, again. “She has me trained to find the sale racks.”
I tell him of my misadventures and the awful men I’ve encountered. I talk about the money-thing Judge Whit said was the marriage breaker.
Roman shakes his head, no.
“From the beginning, money was never an issue. We never had his and her accounts. Once we married, she just became a part of my account.”
“Tell me how you came to do that,” I ask. “Not the part about sharing the account but trusting so easily, so quickly.”
“It’s just natural when you really love someone,” he smiles and settles back in his chair. “Tell you a story that isn’t part of me and Lori?”
“Sure. Go wherever your mind pulls you. I’ll follow.”
“When I was a teenager, my dad had a carpet installing company in New York City. This elderly woman’s husband had died. A year later, she decided to get new carpet.”
I listen attentively, enjoying the company of this man in love and wondering where this thread is going to end.
“We were taking out her old carpet, getting ready to install the new stuff. When I reached under the radiator in the living room to remove the carpet, I found a wad of money. Big bills! My dad and I gave it to the lady.”
He takes a sip of coffee and pauses.
“There was more money under the carpet in different places.” Roman shakes his head. “During their entire married life this man had been hiding money from his wife as if she was his enemy. He was never working with her or for her. Now he’s dead and his precious money was almost lost forever.”
I can easily visualize this miserly man. Being stingy is another way of being selfish. And if you must put yourself first then why bother being in a relationship at all? If money is more important than the person you’re promising to love and honor then forget about the promise. It’s worthless. I tell Roman about the many men who would NOT die for the woman they loved.
He looks shaken as if I’ve described a three-headed monster bearing down on him.
“Oh man, that’s such an easy choice,” he says. “If it was between Lori and me as to who should survive?” He jumps out of his chair. “I’d do it in a minute. It wouldn’t even cross my mind. The idea that a man would share a bed, a life with a woman, and not be willing to die for her is repulsive to me. That’s not a man. Not in my world.”
“What are you teaching your two sons about love?” I ask.
He laughs a deep, slightly embarrassed laugh. “I tell my sons, ‘If mommy’s happy, everybody’s happy.’”
I’m basking in his joyful energy. There is nothing indecisive about him. He reminds me of one of my earliest interviews, Kurt the rock musician. He was all about making a marriage work. Roman is all about how it’s impossible for it not to work.
“You draw on it every day. It’s a force of nature and feeds off of touch. I can’t resist squeezing Lori or hugging her, even if it’s just in passing. It gives us both something, a little turbo-charge. It keeps us going throughout the day.”
“How did you come to recognize that what you felt was real love?”
“Lori and I were friends for a long time before we realized what we had was really love. We grew up in the same town. She was a cheerleader and I was a football player.”
“And?” First loves ... here we go!
“The love was always there, she just had to hit me in the head one day.”
“How’d she do that?”
“We were dating other people. We would even double-date. It never occurred to me that I loved Lori. I think guys are that way. We walk over the obvious. Then one day, she just took a chance and told me that we loved each other. And when she said it, I thought, she’s right.”
He speaks softly. “In the beginning we were worried we would lose our friendship if we messed up our love relationship.”
“But it was worth the risk?”
“Oh yes. I can’t imagine my life without her. Everything I do during the day, I wonder what Lori would say about it. I think of her constantly.”
Shrugging, Roman says, “I don’t know about me, but she shines with happiness.”
“What if you hadn’t taken that chance?”
“But we did.” He smiles proudly.
As I walk Roman to the office door, I feel as if I’m on my third Mountain Dew. I’m giddy with the idea that real love does exist. Sure it’s still a matter of luck. It’s also a matter of letting nature take its course.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
“Love is...?”
~ Barbara Silkstone, Love Investigator
Never, ever have I needed down time like I do now. I want to be alone. I need to process all the guy-think clogging my brain. I sit on my sofa and stare at the TV. That fact that it’s not on should scare me. It’s been two days since my talk with Roman. There’s been no word from Sam the private investigator. Why is Mark so hard to find? Is he living overseas? Did he join a monastery in the Swiss Alps? Has he had a sex change operation?
I feel a tingling at my hip, my cell phone vibrating.
“Hey there.” The cheerful voice belongs to Dodie, an old friend, and a hustler of fixer-upper homes. “I’ve got a house for you. Best deal this year. It’s a divorce situation.” I can hear the glee in her voice.
“Your timing is good,” I say. “I could use some manual labor. How much fix u
p does it need?”
“Heck ... you could do it all by yourself. It would be fun.”
“Okay, calm down. What are they asking for it?”
“The divorce lawyer has it listed. The guy must be an idiot or highly motivated. It’s almost half the appraised value.” I hear her lick her lips. “This is like the ultra buy.”
I like the idea of throwing myself into a renovation. This could be an outlet for what’s been eating at my insides. There is something supremely satisfying about tearing down and rebuilding a tired house. Address in hand, I drive to Oakfield Estates, an overblown name for a patch of earth with a pseudo brick wall at the entrance.
The house is a small ranch in the middle of the block. The lawn is fried yellow. Dodie’s in the driveway leaning against her white Lexus. She has that patiently impatient look of all residential real estate agents. Places to go, clients to meet, money to make.
“The door’s open. Go on in. I’ve been in already.”
“That bad, huh?” I ask.
“Eh ...” she shrugs, multiple gold necklaces clinking.
I enter with trepidation.
“Whoa ...” I run back out.
Dodie puts her arm out to stop me. “I know a professional clean-up company. I can get you a discount.”
“An arsonist would be a better idea. What’s that lump on the floor in the kitchen?” I ask.
“Pot roast,” Dodie says wrinkling her nose. “I think she threw it at him.”
“Domestic dispute?”
“Big time. Food fight. The baby’s high chair ... I think it was strained peas.”
“When?”
“It was about a month ago. They moved out in the middle of the fight.” She grimaces. “It’s been sitting that way ever since.”
“I don’t think I’m interested,” I mutter.
“No. Don’t be negative,” she pipes. “You can double your money in sixty days.”
“If it’s such a good deal why don’t you buy it?” I ask the logical question.
“I’m at my limit. I have six houses under contract in my own name.”
“Will they take less?”
“Let’s make an offer.” She chirps.
The house, which sat vacant and percolating under the blistering Florida sun, is worse than I guessed it to be. It was a messy divorce. In less than two weeks I’m the owner of the trashiest house in Oakfield Estates. I hire Johnnie Marino and his front end loader, a small bobcat-like device, that will lift the debris to allow the cleaning people to do their thing.
Transcribing the interviews takes a back seat to getting Johnnie’s equipment into my little half-priced renovation. Marino rents a dumpster and junks all the marital goodies from the garage: bicycles, a play pen, car parts, tools and the like. I wonder if the couple held hands at Home Depot and Toys ‘R Us when they made their purchases. I’m falling cynical again. Houses hold the good and bad. This place will need a witch doctor to purge the spirits of dissension.
For a few hundred dollars more, Johnnie and his buddies break through the wall between the garage and kitchen. The front end loader thunders into what was once Mr. and Mrs. Short’s love nest tearing out the cabinets and flooring.
Three weeks into the renovation, I’m drawing weary of roaches with attitude and wallpaper that won’t leave the wall. My hands are raw and smell of latex paint. As I pull the paper from the plaster I wonder, did the Shorts hang this paper together? Did they laugh? Did they make plans for a larger home someday, selling this one at a modest profit?
I have nightmares. In my dreams, I am interviewing giant water bugs. They have no idea they are bugs. Their hard shells glisten. I want to squash them, but I must listen to their bug talk.
I used to enjoy renovating houses. The solitude was pleasant. Now, my nerves are prickly little fingers that scratch at the back of my neck. As I paint, I hear noises that cause me to jump. I sense predators that aren’t there.
It’s the end of the fifth day of painting. My finger nails are gunky and I have paint in my eyelashes. I am finally relaxing. I am breathing slow and steady. Mark slips into my thoughts as easily as a ghost slides into a vacant house.
I recall the first time I noticed him. He was staring at me across the sales floor in a department store in Paramus, New Jersey. It was my first real job and I was enjoying all the perks of being young, blond, and new.
He beamed his love at me, that’s simply the best way to describe it. I returned his love. It was a perfect world. I believed in and trusted Mark. For almost a year, we lived for the day when we would marry and consummate our love. Why can’t Sam find him? Maybe it’s not meant to be.
The little house is finally finished. It sits, crisp and waiting. Within a week I have buyers – a lovely couple expecting their first child. And so it goes. Life repeats itself. Caterpillar to butterfly. Relationships should be like makeovers. You bring in a front end loader and take out all the nasties, renovate, and get on with it. I never did find a witch doctor.
I give the buyer-couple a silent benediction along with the keys. Enjoy and may you remain happily married. I’m a spectator on the board game of life. Take a “Get Married” card and place your little brick house on Dream Street and hope it holds. For me I add a tag-on prayer:
Let me not lose faith in other people.
Keep me trusting and sound of heart in spite of all that I have learned.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
“Your first love never leaves you.”
~ Mark, 43
True first loves are the bridge between childhood and the rest of our lives. Some of us delay, staying on the bridge as long as possible, some of us never leave that bridge, while others run ahead, promising ourselves that anything lost can easily be rediscovered.
Now, my memories of Mark are rubbed raw by the hundreds of interviews. I recall snowball fights and frozen nose kisses, promises of forever and his gentle hand being torn from mine by his parents who refused to meet me. I pick on the memory-scab and it bleeds.
Investigator Sam has failed me. And Mark, as I remember him, may no longer exist. I hunt up old photos of two teens in love, and cloak myself in the warmth of feelings long forgotten. Love is both freedom and imprisonment. I continue to wait and hope. My emotions flip back and forth, uncontrollably. Is he alive? Did he go to war? Did he ever marry? Did he have the son he wanted? Is he happy? Will he remember me? If he didn’t care enough to find me why should I still care?
I’ve had my fill of listening to men talk. My credit cards are maxed out from all the travel. I’ve officially called it quits at 527 interviews. I dug myself into a financial hole and now it’s time to return completely to the world of commercial real estate. I can barely contain my enthusiasm. It has all the appeal of dental work without anesthesia.
When the call from Sam finally comes, I’m hanging off the side of a sailboat in a marina on Boca Ciega Bay on the south tip of St. Petersburg. Desperately needing to do a real estate deal – the bigger the better – I’m at the boat against my better judgment to meet with new clients. It’s time to dig out of the money pit my adventures have put me in.
I think we’re going to meet inside the yacht club and dress for the occasion in a business suit with a straight skirt and painful high heeled pumps. The club manager directs me to a large sailboat moored at one to the slips. “You’re party is on board,” he says.
I don’t swim as I can’t stand to get my face wet. I panic in water.
It’s only the fear of mounting bills that pushes me down the gangplank to the huge vessel that bobs threateningly.
As I walk, my designer heels wedge in the slats of the dock first one then the other. I look at the shredded leather and sob. But where there is a client there might be a sale. I keep my eyes on the target.
When I get to the side of the boat, I step from the dock to the deck in one near fatal leap. I misjudge the muscle power needed to stay upright. Grabbing the plastic coated horizontal wires I hang on as my butt lets grav
ity take over. In one crushing instant I’m dangling with a death grip on the ropes, nose to the hull and designer shoes waving frantically trying to gain purchase on the dock behind me.
Just then my cell phone rings. I know as the first notes from the Pink Panther play from my bag that it’s the private dick on the phone. That’s the way life works. It’s all a big practical joke.
I hang from the boat along with the sea slime. I’ll miss the chance to talk to Mark. It’s in that instant, as I dangle over an oily death in murky marina waters layered with pools of diesel fuel, that I come to finally understand men and how they feel about love.
Guys are all about the fear of looking foolish. They fear leaping off into the unknown and being rejected. They fear making the wrong choices and embarrassing themselves. Men are simple creatures thrown into complicated lives from boyhood to manhood to old age.
Women are comfortable with making mistakes. Our egos aren’t the linchpins of our souls. My self-image wasn’t tied up in looking cool. For example at the moment I don’t feel cool at all. But I can understand the embarrassment of making a miscalculated jump.
The bones in my pinky fingers crack on the plastic coated wires. I’m about to let go when I hear voices on the deck. They’re calling my name. With my last bit of air I gasp the word – Help!
I hear footsteps above my head. Then strong arms grab my wrists and lift me onto the deck. My would-be clients are holding each other as tears of laughter stream from their eyes.
Again, the theme from the Pink Panther plays from my pocketed cell phone driving my rescuers further into fits of hysterics.
I answered. It is Sam. I excused myself and totter to the stern of the boat. Cupping the phone to muffle the background noise I listen to his excited voice.
“Usually I’m the bearer of bad news but this is great! I found him. Here’s his number. Call him right away! He lives near you. Let me know what happens! Oh by the way, he is married.”
A punch in the stomach would have worked as well and hurt less. I hear a voice say, “I can’t do this,” and realize it’s mine. Of course I had sensed it all along. One should always trust her intuition.
The Adventures of a Love Investigator, 527 Naked Men & One Woman Page 18