It must have been 2:00 a.m. or later. The streets were deserted. It’s not far, I told myself. Only a little more than a mile, not as far as around the lake. I crossed the big intersection with the light and started running down the dark residential streets, my bag bumping against my thighs. “Not again, not again,” I sobbed as I ran.
Before long I became aware of a car behind me, its lights shining on me, moving slowly. I stopped and waited for it to pass. The car stopped. Fear choked me. I began running again, and the car followed, slowly, not passing, pinning me with its lights. I glanced back as I ran, trying to see what kind of vehicle it was, but the lights blinded me. Newspaper stories of late-night assaults flashed through my mind. Desperate, I dashed off the street onto a nearby lawn and dropped down behind a hedge. The car stopped again. I could hear the motor running, the sound of the car door opening. I crouched lower behind the hedge, frozen. Then I heard Zachary’s voice. “Clara, it’s me.”
I stood up shaking and sobbing and came out from behind the hedge. “What the hell are you doing?” I yelled at him. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Didn’t you know it was me?”
“How could I know? All I could see was headlights.”
“I couldn’t have you walking home alone late at night. It isn’t safe. Come on.”
He held out his hand. I didn’t take it. He opened the passenger door. I got in and sat hunched over my bag.
“You’re crying.”
“No shit.”
He drove me home and walked me to the door. My hand was shaking too badly to handle the key. He took it from me and unlocked the door.
“Please, Clara. We need to talk.”
“I can’t. I can’t now. Later.”
I slipped inside, shut the door, and leaned back against it.
It was almost morning before I got to bed. I was cold, so cold. Even wrapped in my down comforter I couldn’t get warm. I longed for Zachary’s arms around me, his warmth next to me, and knew it would never happen again. I cried horrible, wrenching sobs.
Dawn came. I saw its first light touch the swelling buds on the cottonwood tree. Dragging the comforter, I crept to my altar, settled on my pillow, and lit my candle.
For the first hour I raged. Perfidious men! How could I have been such a fool as to open up again? Didn’t I know better? How many times have I come to this bitterness? Is the ecstasy worth it? I know perfectly well the more charismatic and enchanting they are, the more likely to be philanderers. Where would he be when I couldn’t go dancing with him because I was home walking up and down with a colicky baby? To think I even considered having children with him. What kind of perfect idiot was I to imagine even for a moment it could work between an eighty-year-old woman and a dashing young man. Never mind that I look young. I’m still an old woman. There were red flags flying everywhere, and I paid no attention. I knew something had happened when he came back from Seattle. I knew it—I could feel it. And I just brushed it away. Denial. Denial. I thought I was “the one” for him. Ha!
I wept again, bitter sobs tearing through me.
Finally they ceased. In the quiet after the storm, relief welled up. It’s over, I realized. Over. I don’t have to try to act young when I’m not. I don’t have to learn to use a smart phone, or even consider the possibility of marrying and having children again. I don’t have to hold the tension. I can just be my old woman self.
I climbed back into my bed and slept. When I woke it was early afternoon, a sweet April day. I dressed and took my brunch out onto the patio. The deep inner cold that had tormented me all night began to melt away in the warmth of the sun. The flickers were calling back and forth to each other, their mating song, a quintessential spring sound. When I finished eating I stretched out on the grass under the maple tree, gazing up through its budding branches at the April blue of the sky.
It’s not quite over, I thought with a sigh. I need to make closure with Zachary. I still had a headache and felt raw inside from the hours of crying, but my strength was returning. Best to get it over with. I got up, gathered the dishes, and went inside.
He answered the phone on the first ring. “Clara, I was hoping you’d call. I’m so sorry. Can we please talk?”
“I’m ready now. Come on over.”
As I hung up the phone, anger surged through me. Self-absorbed, undisciplined jerk. He didn’t even bother to use birth control.
He reached out to hug me when I opened the door, but I held him away. Grief rose up. I wrapped it in ice.
He touched my cheek. “You look kinda rough. As if you’ve been crying.”
I pushed his hand away. “Sit down. We need to talk.”
He sat down on the couch and patted the place beside him. I shook my head, pulled up a chair, and sat facing him.
“We’ll keep this brief—” I started to say.
“Wait,” he interrupted. “Everything’s okay. We can work this out. Just give me a chance to explain.”
“Explain!” I burst out. “What’s there to explain? You were unfaithful, plain and simple.”
“No. You don’t understand. It didn’t mean anything.”
“Didn’t mean anything? How can you say that?”
“Clara, listen.”
I couldn’t listen. “I trusted you,” I blurted. “I thought you loved me.”
“I do love you.” Zachary sat up straight and pounded the couch where he had invited me to sit. “Quit being so old-fashioned. People don’t make such a big deal out of sex anymore.”
“Well, I do. I bet Suzy does, too. Especially now that she’s pregnant. How come you didn’t tell her about me if it’s no big deal?”
Zachary was clenching his jaw, but I couldn’t stop. Bitterness rose in me like bile. “Is it no big deal that we’ve been lovers for the last four months?”
“That’s different. I want to marry you. I’m serious about you.”
“So serious it’s no big deal to screw around as soon as I’m out of your sight? You couldn’t keep your pants zipped for four days for the woman you’re serious about?”
Zachary bounced off the couch and stood over me. “You’re hanging on to all these old-fashioned ideas. Why don’t you act your age?”
“What? I am acting my age. Old-fashioned, old-fashioned, you keep saying. Don’t you remember?” I stood up, too, not wanting him towering over me. “I’m an old woman.”
He grabbed my shoulders. “No you’re not. You’re a young woman. Get with your biological age. Join the twenty-first century. You’re going to be here for a while.”
Cold ran through me from head to toe as his words sank in. I stood stunned. “Let go of me,” I said finally.
He let go. My knees were shaking. I felt behind me for the chair and sat down. He was right. I needed to act my age. I hadn’t meant to lose my temper. I only needed to tell him it was over. Just that. “Please sit down,” I said. “I’m sorry I lost my temper.”
He sat back down on the couch. The charge between us evaporated for the moment. He looked weary.
“It hurts,” I said more quietly, “what you did. It hurts a lot. But this whole affair has been insane from the beginning. The young woman you’re looking at is not me. It’s a cloak over who I really am, an illusion.”
Zachary leaned forward. “It doesn’t feel like an illusion in bed.” He smiled, laying on the charm, the corners of his eyes crinkling, his mustache curling up.
I pulled back from him. “Don’t. Listen, I have just one thing I need to say to you. It’s over between us. This is the end of our relationship.”
Zachary looked as if I’d punched him in the stomach. “No way. I won’t accept that. I’ll go and handle things with Suzy, then I’ll be back and—”
“She wants the baby, doesn’t she?”
He stiffened. “Yes, but I’m going to talk to her. I’ll tell
her about you, that we’re serious.”
“That’ll make her day. You’re planning to push her to have an abortion?”
“Well—”
“An abortion’s a terrible thing for a woman. Don’t ask it of her for my sake.” I realized my sympathies were with Suzy. What a raw deal he was trying to lay on her. Is this how he treated women? Would I have been next?
“Don’t worry about Suzy,” he said. “I told you I’d handle it. Trust me.”
“Trust you?”
Zachary paled. “Damn it, Clara.”
I tried to quiet my voice, get back to the point. “It’s over, Zachary. You’re not going to change my mind. I mean it. I can’t marry you. Certainly not now. We’re coming from totally different worlds about everything except tango. Your having sex with Suzy and telling me it doesn’t mean anything makes that crystal clear. So it’s over. Don’t consider me in your plans.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe you’re saying that after all we’ve shared.”
“After all we’ve shared, I can’t believe you had sex with Suzy again.”
“Stop!” Zachary pounded his fist in his hand. “It was just once. I won’t do it again.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Let it go. Can’t you let it go? Just this once?”
“No.”
“How can a woman who dances like you do,” he said through his teeth, “follows at the touch of a feather, be—so—damn—stubborn?”
“Life is not tango.” A wave of loss flooded me with the memory of dancing with him. “You should marry Suzy,” I said. “That’s the honorable thing to do when you get a woman pregnant. You wanted kids? Well, you’ve got one on the way.”
“The honorable thing to do. Now you really sound like an old woman.”
“Because I am.” I stood, walked to the door, and opened it. “It’s time for you to go. I’ve nothing more to say.”
“I’ve got more to say.”
“I don’t want to hear it. Please go. Don’t make it any harder than it is.”
He followed me, took hold of my shoulders. “Clara, don’t send me away. We can overcome this. If Suzy wants to keep the baby, I make enough money I can support her and the kid and still be with you.”
I put my hand in the center of his chest, not sure if I were pushing him away or touching his heart one last time. “Go. Please go. Now.”
“All right. I’m going.” He spun and left. I closed the door and leaned my brow against it, hearing his feet pound down the porch steps, the sound of his car starting up, driving away, the tires screeching. I turned and walked through the silent house to my bedroom, lay still on the bed, staring out the window. I ached with relief, but tears blurred my eyes.
“It’s over,” I whispered to the quiet room. “Now what?” When the tears cleared, I noticed that during the day the buds on the cottonwood had unfolded into new green-gold leaves.
Chapter 9
That night I dreamed I was running down a long, dark tunnel deep in the earth toward a faraway light that I was desperate to reach. The tunnel opened into a forest of ancient evergreens. I had been there before. The tall black-robed figure of Death seemed to wait for me near the path, but when I ran toward him, reaching out my arms, he turned away and disappeared among the trees. The light receded, hopelessly far away. I stumbled as I tried to run faster, and fell. The light vanished.
I woke in pre-dawn dark, weeping.
In the morning I cancelled my clients, telling them I was sick, which was true if you count heartsick. I puttered around the empty house, lonely, lost. Outside in my garden, spring was bursting. Inside my body it was bitter winter.
I sat down and cried some more. I loved loving and being loved. Why did it always end in pain? For some people I knew it was otherwise. I had friends who had been married since their youth and now, in their seventies and eighties, were still devoted to each other. I had never imagined any other future for myself when I was an innocent young bride of eighteen. But that was not the way my life had unfolded.
Finally I gave myself a shake. “Enough,” I said aloud to myself. “Go out in the garden. That always makes you feel better.”
It was a soft, warm afternoon, the sun in and out between clouds, trees budding, birds calling among the treetops, squirrels running along the fence.
I decided to open up the big vegetable garden I had been dreaming of. I knew it would be hard work cutting through the sod, but maybe that was just what I needed, to work so hard I would be exhausted and sleep when night came. Images of the dream I’d had the night before flickered through my mind, and fear rose. “Don’t go there,” I said to myself. “It was only a dream.”
I went to the garage and got the shovel and edger. In the back yard I paced out the shape of the garden. I wanted to recreate the circular garden I’d had before with a spiral path of flagstones leading to an altar at the center.
For a while I was absorbed in marking the boundaries of the garden with the edger. But when I picked up the shovel and set it in the groove I’d made, I froze.
Wait. If I open this garden, I’m making a commitment. To stay. To keep the body that can care for it. I took my foot off the shovel and surveyed the wide expanse of garden I had outlined. Like the long expanse of life that lay before me.
My thoughts stormed. I can’t bear the conflict anymore. Big garden, little garden, young woman, old woman. I don’t know who I am, why I’m here. I don’t want to go on and on. It’s been too long already. Too much pain.
The shovel fell with a soft thud on the lawn. I looked again at the outline of the big garden, threw my hands out in a wild gesture, and dropped beside the shovel, face down in the grass.
I have to decide. They said they could change me back. But only until they leave Earth. Do I want them to?
I lay a long time, thoughts and images racing through me—memories of my long life, children and grandchildren, recent memories of being old/young, Zachary on his cell phone, the dying face of a friend taken by cancer only a year ago, newspaper headlines of a world gone berserk, fears, longings, all tumbled together.
The smell of crushed grass filled my nostrils. The sun warmed me. If they change me back, I thought, I will die soon. My old heart isn’t going to last much longer.
Oh, I love my strong body. I love the beautiful earth.
Maybe I could go on. I could continue doing massage, teach dance again, and yoga. Memories of the all the classes I had taught, all the different classrooms, faces of all my clients and students over the last sixty years poured over me in a blur. No. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m done, burned out.
Then what would I do? How would I fill my days?
From the walkway outside the high fence that sheltered my garden I heard the voice of a mother calling her child. “Come on, Lori, we’re going this way.”
And the child’s voice, young, plaintive. “I don’t want to go that way. I want to go home.” Her words slid into my heart like a narrow knife, exquisitely sharp.
The dream came back to me again—Death turning away. No way home?
I lay still, barely breathing. Wind stirred the treetops. A cloud moved over the sun and I shivered.
Slowly I sat up, rubbing the imprint of grass from my cheek, and crossed my legs to meditate. It would be hard to hurt again, to be slowed by aching knees, unsteady heart, and faltering energy. But I had been okay before. I had accepted it. After all, I had climbed all the way to my special place. I was still able to give a massage, do my yoga postures. My life had been good. And I had been myself, whole, not torn apart by conflicting identities.
I sat a long time as the decision clarified. I will. I will ask them to change me back when I meet them on the mountain. They said they could. I let out a long sigh. Peace poured into me, a quality of peace I had not felt since I first saw myself in the
mirror the day I came down from the mountain.
I got up slowly, pushing myself off the ground with my hands as if I were already an old woman. Twilight had come and the air was growing cooler. I walked around the groove I had made in the grass, smudging it with my bare foot.
There are times in a woman’s life when what she needs most is a woman friend. The following morning was one of those times. I picked up the phone and called Anne.
“Can you come over?”
“I can’t. I’ve got a client in just a few minutes, and then a full day. What’s up?”
“I broke up with Zachary.”
“No! I thought you guys were doing great, going to Buenos Aires in two weeks.”
“Not anymore.”
“Oh, Clara. I’m so sorry. Listen, my evening’s free. Come over for dinner. I’ve got some salmon.”
“Thanks. I’d love to. I’ll bring salad.”
“Are you okay?”
“Mostly. I just need to talk. What time shall I come?”
“I’ll be done by six. Oops, there’s the doorbell. I’ve got to run. Love you. Okay, all right, okay. Bye.”
“Bye.” I hung up the phone, smiling at her characteristic closure.
I spent the morning working in my little garden. I spread compost, dug it in, then sat breaking up lumps in the soil with my hands, comforted by the connection to earth and the warmth of spring sun on my back. When the soil was smooth and fine, I planted greens—lettuce, spinach, Swiss chard, kale.
In the afternoon I wrote in my journal. I filled pages, seeking to integrate the lessons of the last months and glean some wisdom from the affair with Zachary. I wrote more, sorting all the thoughts and feelings that had come to me as I lay on the grass the day before, committing to ink and paper the decision I had made. As I wrote, I felt again the peace of it, the relief that I would soon be myself again, even if it meant dealing with the pain of my old body.
Anne had a little house in the old part of town. Her calico cat Camille was sitting on the vine-covered front porch, tail wrapped around her front paws, when I arrived. She got up to greet me with a meow and a leg-rubbing caress.
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