Corona and Deli Chicken

Like fighting a fight that can’t be won by either side, so goes my day. The bold black lettering of the unopened email catches my eye. It stands alone in the gray-font-list of emails that trail down the screen, the ones that have been read and saved. Today is the day, fortified with a Bloody Mary I send my carefully polished nail in for the left click. Open.

I knew it was coming, I had been obsessively checking my husband’s emails for over a week now. After the relief of finding the expected missive un-read, I took the time to mix a drink, polish my nails and prepare. The last six months unreeled in slow motion, beginning with the day I first met him.

He stood facing me across the street, we were both waiting for the walking man sign to light up on the corner. The light changed to our favor and we stepped into the street; as we passed we smiled at each other as strangers will do. Later that day we laughed as we found our paths crossing once again in line at the grocery, he was buying Corona, I had a deli chicken. Flirting on the way to our cars I learned his name was Bobby. Reluctant we both got in our cars and drove off. Call it fate, or dumb luck either way our schedules seemed to collide every day for the next week. We discovered we both lived in close proximity and worked out of our homes. We went for a drink one bored afternoon.

Other pictures slid into my head, my face flushing with some of the crazy things we did.

Making love for the first time on a blanket under a pin oak tree, sticks stabbing first his back, then mine. That day we held hands crossing a foot bridge in our favorite park, we stopped in the middle and stood to stare into the water for a moment, just that and nothing more. One warm morning when I realized my love for him was the real thing and I told him so followed by his awkward, “I’m falling for you too.” Then finally after a month of tingling torture following a win by his favorite hockey team, he turned to me and said the words, “I love you!”

The magic ended, replaced by the heart-stopping memory of the day his wife found out about us. Her sister saw us. They made it their mission to find out about me. Bobby’s wife swore to him she would find me and ruin my life. I knew it would be just a matter of time, small towns and all. I began meeting my mailman at the street and snooping emails. I watched for stranger’s eyes to meet mine for a second too long. And I waited with dread for the moment my husband’s attitude changed.

And here I sit before the open e-mail, avoiding the body of the message, I looked for the trash can icon, moved my cursor over it, hovering for the tiniest fraction of time before once again tapping a left click. I will take my bitter medicine and be the one to tell him. My jangled way of being kind, letting go in my words. I will do one last thing for him, though he will never see it as a gift. My offering just a small measure of protection against the harsh reality of another betrayed spouse’s words. There will be no winners today, only people with fresh wounds. I make the call, “Hi, it’s me…No everything’s not ok…Can you come home?”

Almost Grown in Ohio

Lipstick on a collar,  a missing undershirt, that bar smell, yelling and a quiet moment when my dad said, “Honey, your mom will need you now, but I will miss you.”  The smell of leather, and gasoline filled my nose in the back of a late night taxi until we were delivered to  a shabby, green shag carpeted motor inn, somewhere in West Virginia.  There we waited, eating saltines and Vienna sausage.

“Fifty-thousand-pounds-of-juicy-flubber, incoming! Get out your elephant gun!” This chant, directed at me, was the parenthesis of my ninth summer. Character building blocks stacked up fast the summer my mother and I moved into my aunt’s house, already filled with her five children.

My cousins, three girls and two boys, surrounded me in age. The oldest of them a girl and boy on the verge of adulthood were pot-smoking, blank-eyed, who-gives-a-shit types.  Next in order of age, Cindy, Gene, Me and Linda. They were scrappy, lots of fun, except when the weren’t. Like a pack of dogs, children who grow up together bond and usually have their own hierarchy. Generally, there is a leader and the other kids take turns as the scapegoat for various kid mischief. However, add a strange pampered only dog kid to the herd and the newbie will become the constant easy mark. The new kid will either tuck tail and run, take it, stand and fight or find a protector. Normally the parents can be counted on for assistance,but that summer of 1971 the moms were engaged with feminist freedom and the dads were absent. The dog – shit! I mean kid pack got to run wild.

Linda, the youngest and previous frequent target found me busy with my daily chore, watering the jungle of plants blocking the only big window in the house, “Hey, fatty come upstairs and see what we found! It’s sooo cute.”

Like a starved hound, I followed her up the shallow attic stairs to the sleeping quarters shared by all the kids who did not spend their days stoned. Banging my shin on the end of one of four twin beds got a short laugh from my waiting cousins, Gene and Cindy.

Turning back to their excitement, Gene beckoned me, “We found a mouse and it went under the door, come look, he is just sittin’ on the beam.”

He opened the forbidden door wider and I looked in just as my shoulders registered the hand pushing me hard. The fiberglass insulation padded my fall, the door slammed and the slide lock scrapped, barely audible over the laughter just outside the door. Then silence. During my time of attic incarceration, I learned that I was an optimist, optimistic that they would open the door as quickly as they shut it. After an hour, optimistic that a Bewitched nose twitch would unlock the door. After two hours, optimistic that I would not die of heat and itching legs. Of course, I had no idea how much time went by. I can tell you watering the plants was a morning job and me and my bleeding legs were let out just before *Flippo’s Early Show, an early afternoon kids program.

It was Gene who opened the door and whispered, “Tell, and it will be twice as long tomorrow.” (Reading this paragraph over again, trying to make my lesson come at the end, like the pattern for the rest of this tale and I can’t do it. Except to say that I just now learned that I told time by events in the day rather than a clock and I still do that. Come over after supper is my favorite invitation.)

A scuffed and worn dresser sat under two dingy attic windows. It was a common perch for us on the sweltering days when we hoped for a relieving breeze. This particular day Linda held the coveted spot. She had even pulled the screen out of the window and dangled her legs outside.  Gene entered the room, lunged towards Linda, pushed her lightly, enough to scare her as he had intended. What he did not count on, at least he said, was that she would fall out of the window and be fortunate enough to only break her arm**. They blamed me. I tried to stand up for myself but three against one… I was on dish duty for the rest of the summer and my privilege to go to the Ohio State Fair was revoked. I learned if you take a stand sometimes numbers need to be in your favor.

The days did finally start to turn cooler. The Ohio State Fair was in full swing and I sat home.  Each night as my cousins left for the fair, they taunted, “Lots of elephant guns at the fair good thing you ain’t going.”  “yeah, besides more cotton candy for us!” My oldest  pot-smoking- male- cousin, Ed,  caught them at it one night. “Hey you little fuckers, leave her alone, in case you are such dumb shits let me point out she’s not fat and she is getting some cute little tits.”  My dysfunctional hero. I learned sometimes a champion comes in unlikely circumstances.

School started, I entered my new class, lean and ready for most anything.

*Flippo’s Early Show: Those of you who grew up in central Ohio in the 60’s and 70’s will know who this is. If you didn’t, think MTV’s pop-up videos only with a clown as the bubble pop-ups and movies instead of videos.

**I was not exonerated from this event until we were all in our twenties at a family reunion. I don’t think my own mother even believed me until the truth came from my cousin Linda. Another lesson, sometimes you have to wait a long time for vindication!