Mennonite in a Little Black Dress Read online

  Then when he finally landed a job that far outpaid mine, he was as stunned as a kid in a candy shop. He spent his money on fancy stuff: a sportscar, a bike, guy gear. It was the first time in his life he was truly financially independent. His new toys were well earned, in my opinion, and I reasoned that after the reality of his higher income settled in, he would start prioritizing our financial future together as a couple. I figured that eventually he would start caring about and investing in our home, our retirement package, things that benefited us mutually and not just him. What I couldn't quite grasp, of course, was that the financial goals that were important to me seemed banal to him. Moreover, there was the matter of the sacrifice he had made for me six years earlier. A big-city boy to his toes, he still felt that he had gone over and above by moving with me to the Midwest so that I could take the job of my choice. He saw his increased salary as a long-delayed, much-deserved payback. Which it was.

  I loved the lake house to which we had moved for closer proximity to his job, but the mortgage was exactly double what I had paid in our old rancho. There was simply no way I could afford it on my own. I knew it. He knew it. And we had moved in with the explicit agreement that this time he would have to pay his share of the bills and mortgage. In the last hideous days before he left me for Bob, he agreed to pay his half of the payments for three years, during which I would put the house up for sale and pray for a buyer.

  I told my attorney that Nick was ready to do the right thing by me. She raised her eyebrows and said, "Well! Let's get him to sign his name to that before he flakes out on you!"

  I knew that Nick wouldn't flake in the usual sense. He wasn't one of those deadbeats who shrug off responsibility like a hangover-oh well, can't do anything about it, too late now, bummer, chillax, man. He wasn't like that. But at the same time my belief in his fairness was destabilized by a faultline of doubt: how could he make the payments if he couldn't hold on to his job? The hospital administration position was a beauty, but I knew in my bones that he would quit within minutes of driving off with Bob. Nick quit everything; quitting was his special MO, the fullest flower of his bipolarity. He quit jobs, friends, karate, pets. He'd buy a brand-new Cannondale bicycle and sell it two months later. He'd paint in oils and abruptly switch to photography. The moment he had something, he didn't want it, a philosophy eloquently echoed in the platonic concept of desire, except that, as far as I know, Plato was not bipolar. By definition desire turns on something you want but don't have, and it follows that if you have it, you don't want it. In the fifteen years of our marriage, Nick had never held the same job longer than a year. If the best predictor of future performance is past performance, then I was in trouble. My heart sank when I received a terse e-mail from Nick a week after he had gone off with Bob. He had quit the plum administration job. There was a familiar note of panic in his e-voice.

  Nervous, I asked my attorney what I would do if Nick stopped making his half of the payments. She was texting me from the courthouse, and she managed to raise her eyebrows electronically: "Bailng on u so sn? Find out whr he wrks. Grnish wges."

  She didn't wholly understand the situation. You can't garnish wages if there are no wages to garnish. Nick would quit whatever new job he managed to land as soon as he dumped Bob, and then what would happen? If he went into a tailspin of depression, he wouldn't be able to hold a job. Hell, he wouldn't be able to look for a job.

  About this time Lola gave me a stern lecture on positive thinking. "Hear me out," she said. "I know you're the queen of cause and effect, but what if you flipped the argument around? We don't know how the universe works. Maybe you've got the logic backward. On the one hand, you could say that people doubt Nick because he has a long history of being a flake. But what if it's just the opposite? What if he's a flake because people don't expect him to be anything else?"

  "Is this some lame new-age hoodoo?" I said.

  "You got anything else?"

  "No," I admitted. "Go on."

  "Well, has Nick flaked on the payments yet?"

  "Not yet. He's threatened to, though. He's been sending frantic e-mails saying he just can't do this. He said he doesn't care what happens to his or my credit. He wants me to voluntarily give the house back to the bank, the way he did with that truck a while ago. He actually called me two weeks ago to tell me that the October payment would be the last one he could swing."

  "So what you're saying is, he hasn't flaked yet?"

  "Honey, aren't you listening?" I asked. "October is going to be the last payment. He said so. Into my ear. I heard him."

  "It's you who aren't hearing me. Just answer the question. Has he flaked yet? As of now, this moment, today?"

  "No," I said in my Voice of Condescension. "No, okay, he hasn't flaked yet."

  "Here's what I think you should do. Take this whole financial thing with the house one day at a time. Don't worry that Nick won't come through for you. Instead just be grateful that he has made each and every payment so far. Just, you know, breathe in and focus on today."

  I considered this a moment. "Lola," I accused. "Have you been reading The Language of Letting Go?"

  "I have," she conceded. "And you know what? That's okay!"

  Lola told me to get caller ID and not to pick up for Nick at all, ever, under any circumstances; I could not preserve a tranquil attitude if I was simultaneously listening to him spin his crazy web of negativity, like a spider run amok.

  "But I'm worried about him!"

  "Yeah, well, let somebody else take care of him for a change. You don't need fear right now," she said. "Not yours, not his, not anyone's." She suggested that I return polite, one-sentence e-mails. And that every day I write out the following message on an index card: "Nick makes timely, reliable direct deposits to my account!"

  This I did, feeling like an idiot. Writing the message onto an index card profoundly embarrassed me, as when in a theater class your instructor asks you to come up in front of the class and act like a strip of frying bacon, and you either wriggle and hiss or get a C-, take your pick.

  On the morning of November 10, the day when Nick's deposit was scheduled to appear in my account, I wrote out, "Nick makes timely, reliable direct deposits to my account!" on an index card, as if this day were like any other day. I marched the card over to the spot in my house that corresponded with the feng shui prosperity bagua, where I set it smartly on top of a growing stack of identical cards. Then I wedged the stack back into the wooden slats under my boxspring, which was where I was hiding it due to New-Age shame.

  That same day I came home from school to discover the cards all over the floor beneath the bed. This freaked me out a little, because I had really wedged 'em in there pretty tightly, and I didn't see how they could have fallen out. But there they were, fanned out across the floor, a chorus of index cards shouting, "Nick makes timely, reliable direct deposits to my account! Timely! Reliable! My account! Nick!"

  "Roscoe," I asked my cat carefully, "did you do this?"

  He looked at me as if to say, "I like tuna."

  It was past 6:00 p.m. I could make the call. "I am breezy and calm," I asserted out loud, fingers trembling. I punched in the numbers of my account, the security code. "Press one if this is a checking account!" I pressed it. So breezy! "Friday, November 10," said the dispassionate recorded voice. "A deposit of-"

  It had gone in.

  Reliable. Timely. Nick. I pulled the phone slowly away from my ear, tears of gratitude springing up where before there had been the breeziest panic.

  This ritual, minus the fanned-out fallen cards, was to repeat twice a month for the next two years. Three months later I learned that Nick had sold the sportscar to be able to make a few more payments. After that he stopped e-mailing me altogether, so I had no idea where or if he was working. He had moved from that first Chicago address. I knew only that he was living somewhere in Chicago, making timely and reliable direct deposits into my account.

  About a year after the divorce had gone through,
I received a packet of legal papers summoning me to appear in court. Nick was challenging the judge's order that he pay half the mortgage and utilities for the three years, on the grounds that he was too mentally ill to keep working.

  I wasn't ready to see him, but I had no choice. He rounded the corner as my attorney and I stood in the hall outside the courtroom. Cora, my attorney, was facing him. I sensed her posture stiffen, and I knew he must be somewhere close behind me. She had never actually met him, but I had described him, and his urban flair in this small-town city hall would have been impossible to miss. "Jesus, Rhoda," Cora leaned in to whisper, "You weren't kidding about his looks. Wow. He's pissed off. Don't turn around."

  I had to sit beside him, inches away, while we waited for the court to call our docket. He was simmering with rage. Just as we all were rising for Judge Perkowsky, Nick delivered his one and only sentence to me: "I might have known you'd be here," as if there could be some surprise in my presence. Startled, my eyes flew to his: Oh no. Oh nooooooooo. He was not himself; he was not thinking clearly. "You subpoenaed me," I whispered. "You made me come here." He was so angry he was shaking.

  Judge Perkowsky dismissed Nick's case in less than a minute, pointing out that Nick was not in fact paying spousal support, but a mutually agreed-upon property settlement. The judgment could not therefore be set aside. It was binding. When Judge Perkowsky's gavel sounded the verdict, Nick shot me a look of intense hatred, turned on his heel, and strode out of the courtroom. I clutched Cora's sleeve and took a couple of deep breaths.

  "You see?" she said. "I told you that he didn't have a case. But I want you to do something for me."

  "What's that?"

  "I have to stay for another client. I want you to leave this room and go straight to the women's restroom and stay there for half an hour."

  Her implication lifted gooseflesh on my arms. "Oh, but Nick wouldn't-"

  "We're not taking any chances," she said brusquely. "You stay there half an hour, and then you go anywhere but home. You got that?"

  I was hunting through my purse for a Kleenex. She handed me one, and I wiped my eyes, knowing that my mascara was a mess.

  "Rhoda. You got that? Don't go home."

  "I promise," I said weakly, and fled with my briefcase to the bathroom. Inside a locked stall I sat down on the toilet, put on my reading glasses, and got out a stack of quizzes to grade. But I didn't grade them. Instead I sat in horror that Nick's ice-cold contempt had convinced my attorney that he might harm me. This man who hated me, loathed me, was Nick, my Nick, the same man who had once pledged to love me in sickness and in health, as long as we both would live. I leaned my flushed cheek against the metal wall, on which someone had scrawled, "Patty Lee sucks good cock!" I summoned an image of the invincible Patty Lee, sucking her heart out, living in the moment, doing what she did best. And I clung to this image for the next half hour, half crying, half needing this picture of tenacity and joy. "You go, Patty Lee!"

  That was the last I saw or heard from Nick, but it wasn't the last picture I have of him. Including that day and every day thereafter, I have imagined Nick not as hateful or disturbed, but as timely and reliable.

  And he has been.

  The three years of court-mandated payments aren't up yet. Nor has my house sold yet. I know that inductive logic would point to Nick's failure to follow through, and indeed, as some of my more cynical friends have pointed out, there is still a strong likelihood that he will bail on me and that I will lose the house into which I have invested so much. Yet I no longer see the value of such logic. Some things are better than reason. Some things actually defy reason. Some things like faith.

  And you know what? That's okay.

  TWELVE

  The Raisin Bombshell

  I was sewing when Mom came in and offered to put on some music. Outside of car trips, she was rarely in the mood for music other than her own singing, so I said sure.

  "What about the pan flute?" she asked.

  I had to decline.

  "How about some nice classical?"

  I nodded, pins in my mouth.

  A few moments later I heard the opening strains of Tchaikovsky's finale from Capriccio Italien. Not my first choice, but okay. Then suddenly I froze.

  Was that . . . the distant cry of a loon?

  Cresting over and above the music as if ministering with some essential relevance to the capriccio?

  Ah, I was to hear much more from this amiable loon, in songs hushed and brisk, calm and martial. My heart convulsed in sympathy for poor, shortsighted Strauss, Mozart, Wagner, and Grieg, who had all collectively failed to predict what future centuries would demand in their easy-listening music. Who knew that two hundred years down the road audiences would crave the magnificent quaver of the loon? I can do no better than to quote the CD's dust jacket, which I made haste to examine: "Classical Loon II presents a return to the wilderness of loon country in classical style. You'll hear the hoots, tremolos, wails, and yodels of the common loon with the following selections . . ."

  It struck me that the production of Classical Loon II implied a formidable predecessor, Classical Loon I: The Early Bird. Indeed, there might well be a whole family of Classical Loons, not to mention R & B Loon, Reggae Loon, Hip-Hop Loon, and Achey-Breaky Country Loon. And then-stay with me now-might we not envision for the future Scrub Jay Blues, Peacock Meditation, and Bald Eagle Techno? And why stop there? Why not Loon Books on Tape? I don't know about you, but I'd like to hear the words of our Lord and Savior enlivened by loon tremolos. Those long chapters in Leviticus are practically begging for a few loon yodels.

  But I made my peace with the loons. I am the type of person who invariably finishes a book, no matter how much I have grown to hate it, or who stays seated right through the worst movie of all time. I always think, Eh, it's not so bad. I can stand it! Sitting there in the sewing closet, listening to Classical Loon II, which my mother had thoughtfully left on "repeat," I even got to the point at which I felt good about attempting my own tremolos now and then. A gifted loon impersonator I am not. But I think I deserve points for trying.

  While I was experimenting with the most flattering way to situate the pockets on my flat ass, old Mrs. Cornelius Friesen telephoned.

  "Mary?" she asked when I picked up the phone.

  I recognized her voice. "No, Mrs. Friesen, this is Mary's daughter Rhoda." I remembered that Mrs. Cornelius Friesen was hard of hearing, so I raised my voice a bit. "Mary's gone to her Bible study. Can I take a message?"

  "Bible study, hey? Bless her heart," said Mrs. Friesen. "Will you give her a message? You just tell her that I was hoping she had finished The Cat That Dropped a Bombshell. I want to give it to Cici."

  My mother had agreed to read this book out of respect for Mrs. Friesen's advancing years. The titular figure was a literal cat, a Puss 'n' Boots detective that larked about as it solved crimes. My mother was by no means a literary snob, but she did have standards. Legal thrillers, okay. Mysteries, perhaps. But a cat that dropped bombshells was going too far. Thus my mother had expressed worry about how to refuse further loaners in the series. I was meanwhile encouraging her to read the entire collection of these books, especially if there was one titled The Cat That Dropped a Bombshell and Buried It in Hard-Clumping Litter. Mom had delayed returning the finished paperback because she wasn't sure how to extricate herself from the cat sequels.

  "Mrs. Friesen," I said, "I happen to know that my mother is finished with your book. Would you like me to run it over?"

  "What's that?"

  "I'LL BRING YOU THE BOOK," I said loudly.

  "Bless your heart, honey."

  A few minutes later I was sitting in Mrs. Friesen's living room at Twilight Shores. Her snug apartment smelled strongly of cat box, ammonia, and patchouli.

  "Sweetie," she said, offering me an old-fashioned butterscotch candy in a cellophane wrapper, "you don't look a day over twenty." Amazing that the older we get, the younger everybody else looks. "Don't you wor
ry about being divorced. You have a nice shape, and your ma tells me you went to college. A lot of men like that."

  "Here's your book," I said.

  "Your husband wasn't very good to you, I hear."

  Uh-oh. I had assumed that my mother would gossip about my divorce with her Bible study group, but I hadn't anticipated that the details would wend their way toward the likes of Mrs. Cornelius Friesen, who must be nearing ninety.

  "My husband left me," I said simply.

  "What's that?"

  "MY HUSBAND LEFT ME!"

  "Well, I'm sure it was all his fault." She leaned forward and patted my knee.

  Hard to know how to respond to that one. I tried for a subject change. "HOW LONG WERE YOU MARRIED, MRS. FRIESEN?"

  "Sixty-four years. Would you like to borrow one of these books? Your ma read one of them. This here is a cute book. It's about a cat detective."

  "NO, THANKS," I shouted politely, "I'M GOING ON A TRIP."

  "A trip, hey? Let me get you something for your trip."

  She shuffled out of the room. In her absence a thin odorous cat appeared. It was white, and it wanted to purr on my brown lap. It would not be shooed.

  Mrs. Friesen came back in and pressed a box of raisins into my hand. "For your trip," she said.