A Rebound

My parent's divorce had been finalized six months before. I was 18, working a very dull job in a Christian bookstore. My mother filed after twenty years of marriage. My father had been distraught for a year-and-a-half during the period of their separation. I talked to him on the phone most days. He never asked how I was coping with the disintegration of my family, the complete upheaval and ever-growing turpitude of my whole existence. He simply bemoaned his life, his mistakes, his failure to comprehend my mother's actions. He uttered a daily catchphrase,

"Steve, I don't think I'm going to live through this."

* * * * * * *

My father walked into the bookstore on a sunny seaside afternoon, arm-in-arm with a woman much younger than he. I had never seen her before. Her brown hair extended nearly to her ass. Her skin looked supple and creamy. She was petite and nicely packaged, her face not altogether homely. He introduced her to me.

"Steven, this is Angela."

I took her small soft hand into mine and said "Nice to meet you." We exchanged bogus pleasantries. I hoped my stoic expression masked my intense curiosity. My father continued.

"We're in love with each other."

He put his arm around her waist. They both looked at me, expectantly.

"Ah. Is that right?" I staggered out loud, not knowing what else to say. I looked at the woman with whom my father was in love. Since he had never mentioned her before, I directed my question to her.

"How long have you known each other?"

She looked up at my father, obviously nervous and unsure of herself. My father decided to take a risk and tell the truth (an uncommon experience for him).

"Two weeks," he responded.

"Ah..."

Behind the counter, I eased myself onto a barstool and eyed them for a moment, appraising their mental condition, not unlike Hannibal Lecter so accurately assessed Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs. My father, I knew, was completely topsy-turvy emotionally. He was a small boat being rolled and capsized in the perfect storm. At this point in his life, he couldn't be trusted to make a clear decision about anything. But what of her?

Her long brown hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail. Cheap perfume violated my nostrils. (The French words one finds printed on fine colognes, whose meaning eludes me, but which are subsequently humorous, flashed through my mind. Eau de toilette.) She wore no makeup or jewelry except for lengthy false fingernails of an elaborate design. (This is one way women can say to the world, "I have no class or style, but I want you to think I do.") She exuded insecurity, the kind a woman wears almost imperceptibly in her features as a result of being violated and shamed in early adolescence by an uncle or older cousin. Her denim outfit was fitting for the rural country life she was clearly accustomed to. In this setting, surrounded by books, ensconced by the words and ideas and philosophies of various authors, published, submitted to the masses in ink and paper and leather, I concluded that she had probably not read many in her life, despite the opportunity to do so. Nor had she fostered or indulged many thoughts of her own beyond her hallow existence, so common in this world, of owning things and people and relationships, and paying for them later, of keeping up appearances and masking reality in tough denim and even tougher glossy nails. I felt sorry for her during this first meeting, and hoped I was completely mistaken. Although I didn't know her, I considered her attraction to my father as evidence that SOMETHING must be wrong with her.

The lovers looked at each other in that pitiable, infatuated way that new lovers have. Like dying cows in a massive hailstorm. I was silent, perched on the stool, arms crossed, brows furrowed, fervently searching for clarity. For sense. My father looked at me and said,

"We came here to invite you to our wedding. We're getting married in two weeks."

I paused. Blinked. Cleared my throat. Tried to moisten my dry mouth. Then I wasted some breath, awkwardly fumbled,

"Well…don't you think you're rushing in to things a bit?"

"We're in love…we need to get married."

Interpretation:

We fucked on the very first night we met, as total strangers. We've been doing it like stray cats ever since. Hot and sticky and violent. Meeting our needs. Recently released from torturous emotional prisons into what feels like a permanent conjugal visit. This is love. This will last forever. Don't bother trying to reason with us. These emotions are more powerful than logic: they outweigh sense. The feelings take precedence over any uncertain thoughts that may linger in our minds. In one month's time, we saw, we fucked, we came, we married. We're hell-bent on dealing another devastating blow to our lives. And to yours. Because we're in love. Because love is as strong as death.

* * * * * * *

During a phone conversation shortly thereafter I learned that she too was recently divorced from a long-term partner. I told my father that he was an idiot, that he was going to regret this, that I would not be attending his marriage ceremony. I said he was deceiving himself, riding a wave of emotions that would eventually bring him under and threaten to drown him again. He railed at me, angry and bitter.

Two years later, as his second wife, the denim-wearing fake-nailed Angela, was divorcing him, having confirmed all of my first impressions of her (and worse), he called me on a daily basis to say,

"Steve, I don't think I'm going to live through this."

Thus, I observed that those who often say they will "just die" if this happens, or if that doesn't happen, in such spectacularly dramatic fashion, seldom follow through on their promise to do so. Breaking this pledge, they actually tend to noticeably outlive the charming, blameless souls they have made continuously miserable by their prolonged self-centered existence.

~ Witt