I get in the Rover with Sam and head to Grace’s to spend the night. She has no idea that our movie of the week and pasta dinner are about to turn into a therapy session.
“What the hell just happened?” I say to Grace as I plop down my overnight bag and Sam’s water dish on the floor of her town house.
“He may not have a job. He may not have a career left. He needs to focus on himself right now.” Grace sounds sensible.
“Then why is my heart breaking?”
“You still want a man to need you, not want you. Do you see the difference?”
“But I want him to do both. I want to be there for him and he doesn’t want me.”
“Let him be,” Grace advises as she pours a glass of wine.
“Why the fuck doesn’t he want me there? Maybe he thinks the whole I-love-you thing was really a jinx, like love is a hex, or maybe he never loved me at all and this is just a good way out. Maybe he’s not even injured.”
She flips away from our movie of the week until the TV lands on SportsCenter at the exact moment that my noncommittal, abandoning, faking boyfriend dives horizontally in the middle of a full-out sprint for a line drive toward right field and makes a spectacular catch, only all 220 pounds of him comes down on his right shoulder. Grace and I both grimace in pain.
“Oh, he’s injured.” I shake my head in amazement.
I hit Reese’s number on the speed-dial for the third time today and get the voice mail. I figure two messages is enough and hang up. Three makes me a borderline stalker. I pull into the underground parking structure at Dr. D.’s office, hoping to not hear “I told you so.”
Dr. D. knows something is wrong the moment I walk in.
“Reese got hurt.”
“I know. I saw it last night on SportsCenter.”
Hmmm. Dr. D. watches SportsCenter? That’s not how I pictured him.
“I’ve called Reese three times and he won’t call me back. I don’t understand why he’s not calling me. Why isn’t he calling me?”
“Maybe he needs to focus on his body, or perhaps he can’t come to grips with the fact that his career is probably over.”
“But if his career is over,” I say, “his life with me is just beginning. He has so much to look forward to. We have so much to look forward to … together. Why doesn’t he want me to make him feel better?”
“Because that’s not how men are,” Dr. D. states emphatically.
I drive home from therapy and know Dr. D. is right. Everything he said was right. I finally got the number to Reese’s hotel in Vail, where he is staying after his surgery, and I call. A woman answers. I knew it. Another woman. Some San Diego, Arizona, Florida slut who’s been banging him this whole time. He never loved me. He never cared. And here she was, the proof.
I stumble with hello, but not before managing to blurt, “Who the hell is this?”
“This is Peggy Callahan, Reese’s mother.”
Embarrassed, I hang up.
Reese never called me from Vail or when he got home. The sad part is I can’t even be mad … because his life is so shitty. Minutes seem like hours, hours like days, days like fall turning to winter. I can’t eat and neither can Sam. I can’t sleep. I’ve managed to unpack every box and hang every picture in my new house, hoping it will both ease my pup’s mind as well as keep me occupied. I can’t stop watching bad TV. Poop bag in hand, I take Sam on a short, slow walk as he wants to get out but doesn’t seem to have the energy. As we meander along the ocean, my cell phone rings. It’s Reese on the caller ID. Two long weeks have gone by. TWO WEEKS, and now he calls.
“Hi,” I say. “How are you?” As if nothing’s happened and my heart hasn’t been breaking!
“I’ve been better. I’m sorry I never called you.”
“That’s okay I understand.” Even though I didn’t. “Where are you?”
“At home in Phoenix.”
“I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, Em. But I’ve really had to do some thinking these last couple of weeks and, well, I need to concentrate on getting healthy right now.”
“But I can help you,” I say.
“I have my family here. I have doctors here. I just need …”
“I don’t understand why you don’t want me there and I don’t understand why you didn’t call me. I …I … I love you. What’s happening to us?”
“Just give me some time.”
I sit down on the beach and look up at the full moon with the waves breaking below and Sam by my side. I sit there and imagine what the moment would feel like if Reese were here.
I feel empty. Spent. Worn out by all of it.
It’s been thirty-six days since I have seen my man. His baseball season is over and I want my goddamned boyfriend back! Who is this new guy? His voice is different. His caring is gone. His ability to be anything remotely close to in a relationship is unfathomable.
I sit with Dr. D. and wonder how we’ve hit the wall on a turn at 185 miles per hour. Unloading all of the irrational, angry things I feel and want to say in this small twelve-by-twelve room.
“I called him today to tell him that I wanted to be with him. That WE said we were never going to go more than two weeks without seeing each other.”
“And what did he say?” Dr. D. asks.
“He said that he didn’t have anything to give, that he needed to concentrate on getting well. That I deserved the guy he knew he could be, and should be, but that he can’t be that guy right now … and then he asked me to hang in there. Dr. D., I don’t need anything. I just want my boyfriend back.”
“Emily, come down off the cross. We need the wood.”
“What?” I ask.
“You’re becoming a martyr and that isn’t good in a relationship. You do ‘need’ things. You ‘need’ to feel safe, happy, wanted, loved. Reese is being honest with you. He’s taking care of Reese, which is exactly what he should do if his career is really over. He’s struggling.”
I look at my watch. Ten fucking minutes left. I stare at Dr. D. I want to scream. I DON’T LIKE YOU OR YOUR ANSWERS. I know Reese. He “needs” a woman. He “needs” me. He “needs” someone to take care of him.
“I don’t understand why this happened,” I murmur under my breath.
“You never will. We all want answers to why someone changes, stops caring, stops being there, grows without us, retreats without us … but Emily, Reese is just Reese and you’re never going to understand what makes him pull away. You just have to accept that it is him. But we’ll talk more about it next week.”
Driving home I have an epiphany: If Reese isn’t leaning on me for love, nurturing, ice packs … who was he leaning on? There’s got to be someone.
Am I letting my imagination get the best of me?
Let’s look back on this … He didn’t want me in Vail. He doesn’t want me in Arizona. He wasn’t home at 2:00 A.M. last night … said he was sleeping. Likely fucking story. He went out with Mike Jenkins and his wife two nights ago. You just don’t go out with married couples …
THERE IS ANOTHER WOMAN. Maybe two or three. I mean, this is Reese! There. There is my reason. He’s a cheating, lying, injured sack of shit. But I must have evidence. I must catch him.
I must know because if it isn’t that, then is it that … I am unlovable?
I ring up Dr. D. and give him my newfound knowledge.
“He’s not cheating,” Dr. D. says in the softest tone I’ve heard from him, as he knows what I know—that I am going off the deep end. He gives good phone therapy. “But here’s what you need to remember. Whether he is or isn’t … if you feel like this … you need to move on. Do you see my point?”
“Yes, I understand your point, but I need to be sure.”
So I did what any psychotic, jilted lover would do in this situation. I gathered my girls and hired a private investigator.
The girls bust through my door with wine in tow, Reilly in the lead. “He’s a lying, cheating, injured sack of shit,” she shouts ou
t.
Grace’s sister’s friend’s husband is kind of a PI. He’s in PI school in Phoenix. So he’s tailing Reese for us, or rather for our amusement. And we’re staying close to the phone to hear how it goes.
Jesus! What am I doing? WHAT am I doing? I am thirty-two years old. I have a great house at the beach. I have a great company and I’ve lost my ever-loving mind. I have a boyfriend who has been nothing but loving and supportive until doing the thing he loves most got him injured. Now, instead of being supportive, giving him space and being understanding, I’m having him tailed.
The girls are over and we are having my boyfriend tailed! Two bottles of wine later, “Are you sure?” I say in the phone talking to our wannabe PI in Scottsdale.
The girls are riveted on the edge of the couch. I pace, smoking Reilly’s cigarette. “What exactly happened?” I then repeat it to the girls.
“A black Altima just pulled into the carport at his house. So, she had his clicker. Fine, I see. And then what? A brown-haired woman, was she pretty? Okay. Yes sorta. Keep going. She got out with a gym bag.”
“Overnight bag,” Reilly adds.
“Slut,” shoots Grace.
“She shut the garage. Well, is Reese’s Range Rover there? No. Okay, well. Go see who the hell she is. Knock on the door or something,” I command Mr. PI.
“Kick her ass,” Reilly says, powering down her last gulp of wine and opening another bottle.
“Okay. We’ll be here.”
I hang up.
“I am so DONE with him. Done, it’s over. This is all I needed. It’s over. I’m done. Did I mention … I AM DONE. You know, he said he wanted a smart, normal girl. The girl next-door type, but you know what … he never did. Men? The normal ones like us never seem to work for them, as we’re too much work. Work to be honest, open, show up. Now he’s got Hot Lips taking care of him.”
I plop down in between Grace and Reilly, and they both look at me as if any minute I may explode. No one moves until … I throw my head on a pillow and begin to sob.
“I just don’t understand.”
“What’s to understand? The guy’s an a-hole. We knew this over a year ago. We knew this six months ago and now, thanks to Inspector Clouseau, we have conclusive evidence. I say we all get on a plane and go to the dickwad’s house. Show up and …” Reilly ponders.
“And what?” I ask.
“Torture him anally with a red-hot poker,” Grace says with a sudden disturbing tone that makes Reilly and I both stop and look at her. Then, for a minute … we engage in uncontrollable laughter as if all three are aware that my life has suddenly become a bad movie on the Lifetime channel.
The phone rings. “Are you positive? 96115 East Tatum Way? Oh my God,” I shriek.
“WHAT?” Grace and Reilly say in unison.
“Yes! Stay put. Watch the Rover.”
“What happened?” Grace asks after I hang up.
He was at the wrong house, I think to myself, sorta relieved but now thoroughly baffled. “The fucking PI in training has been watching the wrong house for the past three hours. How is that possible? I mean, I am not a PI, but isn’t it like the first rule in the handbook, check the address of the house that you have under surveillance? Idiot. I hired an idiot.”
“Reese is still guilty. I can feel it,” Grace confides.
“Well, he’s home now. The PI saw him pass by and pull into a garage two doors down.”
The phone rings again. “He’s on the move,” I say to the girls. “Keep with him … Where? He stopped at a bar. Yes. Go in. Follow him. We’ll call back.”
I down some wine and think of calling Dr. D., as I am now on the express elevator to hell and no one can stop me. It’s funny, it all seems amusing and entertaining … not like it’s really my life, but the sad part is … it is my life.
Ring …
“One beer. With who? Alone.”
The girls shrug.
“Where’s he at now? Really, what’s he renting? Caddyshack.”
“It’s not a date movie,” Reilly is quick to point out.
“Okay. Is anyone else at the house? No. Well, okay. Yeah. He’s in boxers and a T-shirt with an ice pack on his shoulder plopped on the couch watching Caddyshack, and the pizza guy just left.”
Grace yells from the kitchen, “He’s not caught, but I know that pig is guilty!”
“Yeah, you can go home. He’s in for the night,” I tell the PI. “I’ll send you a check this week.”
The girls spend the night and we lay in my bed watching Alec Baldwin host Saturday Night Live. I am glad for my girls. I pass out, wake up Sunday, and go to church. The girls go home. My freaking head is pounding as I sit in a pew literally praying that my night was a bad dream and that I have not become the insecure wackadoodle that I think I have. Still, I know the dream is real and can somehow sense that it is about to get worse.
If I could just see him. If I could just have him hold me one time, I think that I could magically understand, be patient. His reasons would be clear to me. The problem is that he doesn’t want that. Jesus, he doesn’t even know that the distance, the silence, the abandonment are making me batty. He wants me to sit tight, hang on. But what was I hanging on to?
The horrible thing is, instead of letting him heal, grow, and get well, I can’t help letting my imagination get the best of me, that he is somewhere in the arms of another woman, or he indeed does not need me. Either way, it makes me feel shitty and insecure and that everything is wrong.
Maybe this is a woman thing. Am I the only sane, secure woman who has lost herself in a man—a man who doesn’t even understand or seem to care about the effect he is having?
That afternoon I call Reese.
Reason #7: Hold on to reality or you’re choosing insanity.
“I am going crazy,” I say to him. “And it isn’t really your fault. It isn’t my fault, either. But this situation is bringing out the worst in me. It’s making me suspicious, insecure, and stupid. Reese, for all of the reasons that you fell in love with me—that I am smart and independent and very lovable—I have to let this go. Because if I don’t respect me, who is going to?”
“I am sorry, Em, and you’re right. I want to be the guy for you, but I can’t.”
In my heart, I thought he might fight for me. But somewhere inside I knew he didn’t have it in him. Even though I wanted so badly for him to be able to.
Reason #8: They absolutely must be willing to fight for you because if you’re fighting every battle yourself, then you’re still alone.
I plop down on the kitchen floor, staring up at the pictures on the fridge to remind me that my life is full and wonderful in so many ways. I gather the strength of my life troops, never taking my eyes off the front of the fridge. I breathe in a deep breath and continue …
“I am sorry that you got hurt. Really, I am. And I am sorry if this entire conversation is forcing you to deal with one more thing that you can’t handle, but the new you is not who I signed up to be with. I have worked too hard and come too far to settle for something less than what I deserve.”
He says nothing. Just listens.
“No self-respecting woman is going to sit with blinders on waiting for something that may never come. It isn’t enough. I don’t need a lot, but I do need to feel wanted and important. Just one sign would have been enough,” I breathe.
The silence grows, the light dims, until there is only the slightest glimmer of hope that he will plead with me not to leave him, that he will profess his love for me and my importance in his life.
“I know that you are the woman for me. I know in my heart that I am losing someone special, yet I can’t do it right now. I can only focus on one thing and that is getting well and playing next season. I don’t expect you to completely understand. Most people can’t, but maybe this is just bad timing and maybe you can hang on,” he says softly, “again.”
Reason #9: When they ask you to hang on, it’ll feel like you’re hanging from your neck.
I wanted to yell at him. To scream, “What about the guy who said he was ready? Who told me to trust him? Who made me fucking open my heart only to watch it get trampled! UGH! I KNEW IT!” But I couldn’t. When I picked up the phone to make this call, I knew what was true a year ago. Reese only knows how to fight for one thing, and I could only blame myself for wondering why I thought that he had changed.
“I’ll always care about you and maybe sometime down the road, I dunno. I don’t want to keep hurting you, but I just can’t deal with your needs right now.”
“Reese, the only thing I needed … was for you to love me.”
I hung up knowing that I would probably never talk to him again. Yet he had left the hope alive with the whole timing issue. Only this time I know I won’t let him back in my house, my life, my heart, ever, ever, again.
It was the moment when I knew for the first time in my life that I was growing up and taking care of myself.
I was strong. I knew that I had made the right decision, because I did have needs. It wasn’t that I was crazy. It was that dating him would make even the sanest girl mentally unstable. It was over. I had ended it. I knew it was right, but after I hung up I cried for the next three days straight.
I have grown. I am changed. I finally know that I deserve more.
Sitting on the patio at my house watching the waves gently slide onto the sand, I note that the surf is low today and the ocean looks peaceful. I sip a glass of pinot noir as the sun sets and pet Sam. He is feeling bad today. I can tell his hips are hurting by the way he holds his right back leg in. He isn’t really eating and last night he whimpered in his sleep for hours. The vet said I’ll know when he’s ready, but I don’t think I’ll ever know.
I try to focus on the good instead of how overwhelmingly lonely I feel, the aching in my heart surrounding thoughts of Reese that never seem to dull. Two more weeks have passed without a word. I have been strong and not called, although I want to every day.
Emily's Reasons Why Not Page 17