!!!!!*****WORKING DRAFT*****!!!!!
On my return, I found a letter from Cincinnati waiting. Starting with cheery news about her new neighbors in their apartment complex, she went on to describe her frustration with George, who insisted on working every day, even though his doctor told him he had to “slow down, until the blood pressure meds are doing a better job.”
“I don’t know how to get him to see he’s ruining his health. He still smokes, he forgets his pills, he won’t drop the steaks from his diet. I don’t know how to help him, Janie. Any advice?” she wrote. She ended with, “Oh, I’ve been going through all the boxes we took with us after the move, and found one full of of your stuff, from h.s. or college, I think. Enclosed is a small sample. What should I do c it?”
Two yellowing slips from one of my high school “math pads”, neatly folded in quarters, fell out. In blue ink, I apparently had written two poems in the spring of 1966. I read them quickly, unable to immediately absorb their message, and stuffed them into my purse, along with the Kleenex and loose change.
Petyr called later that next week. “Sarah, I need to see you, talk with you. I hope you’ll agree to have dinner with me, Saturday night.”
We met at one of those cloistered, wood paneled gourmet establishments near Back Bay. Men in suits with thinning hair accompanied women in designer gowns, somehow not wobbling on their impossibly thin four-inch heels. I’d worn my non-nonsense blue skirt and jacket over a white buttoned shirt, and felt more than a little out-of-place, wishing I’d investigated the place a bit before agreeing to meet him there.
During the wait between ordering and the arrival of our salads, he began, “Sarah, this is awkward, for several reasons. First, as you can imagine, I am not used to a formal night on the town with someone other than my wife. It may have been 15 years or more since…” He shook his head slightly, almost a shiver, then went on. “But more important, is what my invitation implies.”
At this point in my life, I was no longer accustomed to easing tension on a date, if that’s what this was. “Petyr…Petyr, I like being with you, talking with you, very much. I want to do more of it, but I can tell, you’re still worried about where you stand in your marriage, your wife, your sons.” He fiddled with his silverware, re-arranged his water glass, but said nothing. I plowed forward. “If you’re feeling hesitant about spending time with me, I can understand. I can wait.”
He took a deep breath, and said, “I have the same feeling, about you. It’s disconcerting, not having known it for almost two decades now, at least the newness of it. My worry is not whether it’s reciprocated – I can pick up the signs very well – but the impact it might have on my separation and intended divorce.”
I frowned and shook my head quizzically. “Oh?” was all that came out.
“Yes, there is no doubt my marriage is over. It only remains to call in the lawyers, unweave our financial entanglements, and decide on the future of our children. Up until last weekend, I had hoped that would work out favorably for me, as she is the one instigating the proceedings.”
“And you’re worried, I guess, that if you’re seen with another woman, seen with me on a steady basis, at your place or mine, that might be discovered, and used against you.” As I spoke , the phrase, “other woman” suddenly flashed across my inner vision. “And for my part, I couldn’t live with myself, knowing I might have have played a role in breaking up a family, your family.”
“Oh, no, no, no,” he quickly interjected. “As I told you last fall, our separation began for other reasons entirely, before I ever arrived in Boston. Meeting you was such a happy occurrence, but it did not, most emphatically did not, end my marriage. That was over, I see now, several years ago. You have just given me a reason to move forward with letting it go.”
I sensed we had a common goal. “I don’t want to sneak around to enjoy time with you, don’t want to feel like we might be surreptitiously observed.”
“And nor do I, nor do I. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.” He straightened up, and announced, “Next week, I’m going to ask if she intends to move forward with filing for divorce. If she does, and she gives ‘incompatibility’ or some some legal jargon as the reason, then my lawyer says it would be safe to enjoy the company of other women.”
There was that phrase again. I observed, “Until then, we can talk on the phone, and confine our meetings to public places, like this, separate cars, and all?”
“Yes, he says that’s best.”
“Sort of like teenagers, who aren’t allowed to date without a chaperone?”
He laughed. “I’m glad you see the humor in it, in addition to the frustration.” The server brought our entrees. Before he began to carve his filet mignon, Petyr asked, with a growing twinkle in his eyes, “What I’m saying, Dr. Sarah Stein, is – forgive the sentimentality – ‘Will you be my Valentine?’ It is February 14th after all.”
I laughed out loud, startling the neatly coiffed couple closest to us. “I thought you’d never ask, Dr. Cohen!” I suddenly thought of the two pages of verse from 15 years earlier, and drew one out, gave it a brief glance, and handed it over to him. “Funny,” I said. “Mom sent this to me out of the blue a few days ago. I don’t know, but I think she was trying to tell me something…”
Date 4-23-66, the one I pulled out read, with several words crossed out and replaced:
Just once I wish that you I could join my your world
Together, until there were was no longer need to talk
Seeing the stars and feeling new thoughts
No longer needing explanations or words
Smiling without questions
Crying and understanding why.
It seems it would be so nice to know
What is really there between the talk and silence
To know what is being felt
So that I could know how to act.
Yet despite the frustrations, I cannot change it now
We must remain separated
To join your world, I could no longer own mine
We are not allowed to learn too much
But do we really want security?
“Do you remember writing this, what you were trying to say?” he asked.
“I remember when I wrote it, what was going on in my life. But the actual writing, that’s lost in some buried fog, I think. It does seem to fit us now, though, doesn’t it?”
Petyr wrinkled his forehead in thought. Looking over at me, he said, “It might be interesting to get the rest of that box from your mother, no? I would like to learn more about you, who you were, and suspect that might be a good place to start.”
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