Unaccompanied Women
Page 26
Sure enough, next week he’s there on my screen. “Places in the heart get dusty, even though we throw sheets over the furniture, hoping for future ecstatic unveilings. This is sanity. We have built a long wall with a wide chink. This is wisdom.”
My place in his heart has gotten dusty, I guess, yet I take courage in the long wall he says we have built—with a wide chink where anything might get through. Finally, in his desire to console and amuse me, he ends with, “Minus the painful excisions, we feel a bit like Heloise and Abelard. And you could do a lot worse than that.”
Yes, indeed. And yet, I end this chapter of my life in tears.
CHAPTER 25
gimme shelter
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes; and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
—FRANCIS BACON
LOVING GRAHAM ALL this time has been a little bit like renting: You know you don’t have many rights, know you could be ousted at any time, and that the cost of living in this place you like could rise beyond your means without warning. But because you love your place and the pleasure it offers, and because leaving it behind frightens you—Where will you be without it?—you hang on past the time when you should be looking for something more suitable, more stable, more dependable, more your age.
Of course, life itself is a great big rental: We can pretend we own something, like a house or a husband or a child, but we don’t; they are ours for only a while; then they go and it’s time for us to vacate the premises and make room for the new tenants. Graham never offered a washer and dryer, let alone a place to put them, nor did I ever consider that his responsibility. Neither did I expect a homecoming from John or Robert or Sidney, though I will admit that every so often I wondered what I would do if one of them offered. With my single state in mind, I know it’s time for me to find a space to fit me. I want to own no matter how short-lived my tenancy may be.
Leonard, my homeless friend who waits for me and my dollar in front of the post office, would say to me about my travails, “God loves you anyway.” But I remain unconvinced and continue to wonder at Leonard’s faith in a god who gives him nightly shelter behind the shrubs of a Bank of America parking lot. God loves in mysterious ways.
Leonard has made me appreciate my cottage, which I do not believe is a gift from god, unless god has assumed human form: the people who will buy the property next and who hold my future in their hands. So I clean my cottage, put flowers on the bookcase, and hope that new owners will believe in my excellence as a tenant. For Sunday is Open House, the day people will troop in and out of my landlady/lord’s house and my cottage with spying eyes and bulging wallets. Let’s do the math: Two years ago the house sold for $800,000; now the asking price is $949,000. Let’s see, that will give them $149,000, a 19 percent profit. Not bad for two years.
One hundred and fifty-eight people came to the open house. The realtor counted. I recall those halcyon days of yore when a seller offered his/her house for a price, the buyer offered something less, and eventually the buyer and seller reached a compromise somewhere in between. Perhaps this civilized transfer of property still exists. But not here and not now. The bidding war, the feeding frenzy, in this town is fierce and on fire; it seems as if everybody wants to live here. I know, in Cambridge and New York City and in Miami, too, people are willing to mortgage their lives, their livelihoods, indeed their souls, to become homeowners. So I should not have been surprised when my landlady, twenty-two pounds of baby at her breast, tapped on my door with the news that she and her husband had accepted a bid for $1,800,000, a 125 percent profit. Benvenue is the name of my street, sort of a misspelling of bienvenue, which means “welcome.” I guess so, though Rue des Rêves—Street of Dreams—would be more like it. People who have lived on this block for thirty or more years stand on the curb, look back at their houses, and think: “We’re living in a million-dollar house! Let’s sell! And take our 125 percent profit and go . . . ?” So far not one of the longtime residents has cashed out and left.
So. Will I ever own a home? Not here, not on this street, not on this block, probably not in this town. The best I can do for now is be grateful that my new landlords want to keep me without raising the rent. So I will hunker down and appreciate what I have, cultivate my landlord’s garden, and hope that it will all work out in the end and that everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe any of that. I believe that much of life works out for the worst and not just in the end; that faith is what we use to armor ourselves against the fear that everything is random. But, given that randomness, life offers joy as well as tears, love as well as hate, pleasure as well as pain, along with everything in between. What we want and don’t want is there for the asking, although not always for the taking. It is a rich life we lead.
“Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” I first read this last line of Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge in my twentieth year and, as yet pain-free, proclaimed it false. Since then my long life has aligned me more closely with Mr. Hardy. Yet, while he describes the dolor of our lives, he does not answer the question, “How shall we live them?” A. E. Housman is helpful: “Our business here is not to live, but to live happily . . . We must make up our minds to risk something.” Yogi Berra said it differently: “When you come to a fork in the road . . . take it.”
Not long ago the man with the great ass came back. He stood at the end of the line of people waiting for me to sign my book. When it was his turn, he handed me his copy and said, “Will you write, ‘To a man I like’?” He was tall and big across the chest and looked as if he could give me shelter without any trouble at all. I looked up at him in surprise and said, “I don’t even know you!” He smiled and said, “Just your name then.” I signed, returned the book to him, and stared at the dimple in his chin.
Oh dear, I seem to have reached another fork in the road. But I am determined not to race pell-mell down either one or both. I am like one of Schopenhauer’s porcupines: Having suffered enough pricks from enough quills, when all I was after was a little warmth on a cold day, I am seeking a bit of distance, a zone, however small, of safety. Indeed, living alone has its advantages. It’s nice not to listen for the phone, check my e-mail every twenty minutes, ride herd on the mailman, all in the hope of shoring up my life with the voices of my men friends. On the other hand—Curse the other hand!—memories of closeness, of touch or talk, rumple my sleep and pursue me during the day.
Today images of hard bodies assault us on the beach, on the television screen, in magazines and movies, even on the street. The celebration of youth—of tone and sheen—is loud and everywhere at hand as boys and girls, as young men and women, go at it in a display of healthy animalism. Everyone, it seems, is Doing It—in the halls of middle schools and on into the surrealism of reality TV—but without tenderness, without patience, without empathy or longing, without kindness or the generosity that comes with age when the coupling of man and woman is mutual in regard and ends in a contentment inaccessible to the young.
It takes years to learn how to be grateful and at the same time gracious. It takes years before patience is ours to command; but when it comes, we understand that there is a civility to making love, that lust need not be frantic, that kindness ameliorates the urgency of desire. The sweetness of bodies that yield, that fold in on each other, comes with age and in private. It is a fine thing, to be sought after and cherished when it is ours.
So, at the same time as I celebrate my single self, I recollect the touch of a man’s hand on my thigh, my cheek, my breast, and I want it all again. Yet, memory serves me well. For now it is enough.
acknowledgments
My thanks to my editor, Susanna Porter, who refused to accept less when she knew I could do more.
To Johanna Bowman for her guidance and good manners.
To Mary, whose intelligence and patience helped me to clarify my thinking and gather my courage.
To D., whose careful reading of the manuscrip
t kept me honest.
To J., whose encouragement once again made this book possible.
To Carl and Ryan of Vino, who listened to my kvetching and never once refused to sell me a bottle of wine.
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Copyright © Jane Juska 2006
First published in the United States in 2006 by Villard Books
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