On the Divinity of Second Chances (24 page)

Sure enough, I did see the relationship.

Still, Grandpa Fritz’s reasoning didn’t help my devastation and sense of failure. When I heard my mother crying through her bedroom door, I felt so guilty. I should have worked harder; I should have worked as hard as five boys. I was ashamed when we moved to town, walking back and forth from the truck to the house with furniture and boxes. I was ashamed at the post office and at the store when people wouldn’t make eye contact with me. Maybe it was easier to pretend not to have seen me than to acknowledge my family’s loss, or maybe they blamed me for the foreclosure, too.

But the worst time, the worst time was when Anna invited me to the Sadie Hawkins dance. As soon as I got home from school, I put on my suit pants and discovered I had grown a good five inches since I last wore them. They still fit in the waist, though. I examined the inside of the pant leg to find two inches of hem I could take out. I didn’t even consider wearing my dad’s pants, for though he was a little taller than me, he was significantly wider. I took the hem out and tried to rehem just the very bottom edge. Since my mother had taken to crying in her room all day when my father was gone, I didn’t trouble her with my pants. I just took a needle and thread, and attempted to do it myself. My stitches looked awful. When I was done, the pant legs were better, but still high.

I looked in the mirror and fought the urge to cry. I didn’t know what would be worse: if I canceled with Anna, I’d save face, but it would probably hurt her feelings and she’d most likely end up going with someone else; if I showed up in these pants, she’d surely think I was a nerd and the other kids would ridicule me. I decided nothing would be worse than hurting her feelings. Yes, I’d rather humiliate myself and be rejected by her than hurt her feelings. I just hoped people wouldn’t laugh at her because she was with me.

Panic hit me when I realized I didn’t have a corsage for her. My heart broke. She, of all the girls, deserved the finest corsage, but I could not buy her even the least expensive one. Other boys would use those big stickpins with the fake pearl at the end to pin on their rose, gardenia, and carnation corsages, all backed with a dark, leathery fern leaf and finished with a satin ribbon. What would I do? I searched my mother’s sewing basket. She had no big pins with fake pearls. I took a regular one. I found no elegant satin or velvet ribbon either—just a piece of yellow yarn. I searched our new yard for flowers, but found none.

It was early spring and not much was in bloom, but I knew my mother’s old garden would have something. It took me a little more than an hour to walk back to our old farm, but I did it. I looked at my home and ached for it. Instead of indulging in sadness, I put my mind back on the task at hand and went to the garden. I found a few brilliant red tulips. I put a feathery yarrow leaf behind a couple tulips, and was reasonably pleased with myself. I sat on the steps of my old house for just a minute to contemplate how different my life would be if I still lived here. I felt such loss. I wanted to go through those doors and find my normal life again. I hurried away, though, before anyone saw me sitting there, grieving for my home. That would only be more embarrassing. As I walked home, I imagined me, in my high-water pants, pinning my homemade corsage to Anna’s dress and I tried to imagine it wouldn’t be so bad. I took the yellow yarn from my pocket and tied it around the feathery yarrow leaf and the bright red tulips. It didn’t look right. I doubled up the yarn and tried again. It was a little better.

My parents were angry with me when I came home: I was late for supper. I held up my homemade corsage. “Anna invited me to the Sadie Hawkins dance,” I explained. Everything I had been feeling, my fear and shame, my worry and sorrow must have shown on my face, for my parents disarmed immediately. “I walked to Mom’s old garden,” I told them so they would know I didn’t steal these tulips from neighbors. My mother looked away and fought back tears, and my father looked down, sorry he couldn’t help me.

I wrapped my homemade corsage in waxed paper and folded the edges neatly, but when I went to the refrigerator the next morning, to my horror, the tulips had dropped their petals. I had nothing to give Anna. I remember lying awake the following night, the night before the dance, picturing all the ways I would surely bring Anna humiliation when the time arrived. It was the worst night of my life, far worse than the actual dance. That was the night I pledged that if Anna forgave me for my short pants and lack of a corsage the next day, I would spend the rest of my life making it up to her. I’d make sure she never did without or had second best again. I’d make her the luckiest woman alive.

I knew I couldn’t accomplish this being a farmer. I’d have to be on the other end of the foreclosures. I’d have to be a banker.

If I succeeded in making her the luckiest woman alive, it doesn’t show. Add that to my list of failures. But before we go to our second dance lesson, I go to the florist and order the corsage I couldn’t give her when I was fifteen.

Anna on Martina and the Power of the Tango
(July 16)

Martina greets Phil and me through a cracked door. “You have not talked?” she asks.

We shake our heads. No, we have not talked.

“You have listened to Brazilian music?”

We nod.

“You have not made love?”

We laugh and shake our heads.

“From now on, we will tango. Phil, you may not touch Anna yet. You may not touch her until I say. Phil, this is your job.” Martina takes large steps across the floor. Phil makes an attempt. “No, like this,” Martina says. Phil does better. “Do it with me now. Do it again. Your feet know what to do now. Now do the steps with gumption. You are a man. Move through space with force. You are a man. You are strong. You are a man. Be a presence. Again. Yes. Like a jaguar. Better. I want to see stealth. Do it again. Very nice.

“Anna, this is your job. Do it with me.” I follow. “Again, but this time lower. Knees bent. This is what it looks like to be a succulent, seductive woman. American women have become so consumed with being powerful, they have lost the art of enticement.” We do the steps three more times. “Your feet know what to do now. Now you will think about doing the steps like a woman. Make a man want to come to you. You are irresistible. You are like chocolate sauce. Move like chocolate sauce. You are a woman. No man can resist you. You know their urges are almost more than they can bear, and you bring them to the brink of self-control. Yes! You are moving very nicely now.

“Now together. Hold her like this. Anna, let him lead you, but hold your space just enough to keep him from devouring you. He is a jaguar.”

Phil and I both laugh without making much of a sound.

“That is fine. Laughter is good. Laughter breaks tension. You think it is funny now. You just wait.” She laughs back at us. “Phil, move toward her. Move toward her with much desire. Desire, Phil. You have not made love in months, and although it’s against the rules for now, you want to. You are a man. Men want only to make love. But they will settle for dancing. Move toward her in a way that tells her she looks delicious. Oh, yes. Anna, look at him and move in a way that tells him you know he wants you and you know you are irresistible. Move away from him in a way that tells him he cannot have you . . . yet. You will make him work for it. You will make him beg for it. Lower. Stay closer to the floor. Bigger steps. You want your bodies to be closer, but they cannot be. It is forbidden. Move. Jaguar and chocolate sauce. Move together. Nice. More tension. Phil, you would take her now, but you cannot. Show her. Show her your desire. Show her your strong desire. Look at her. She is beautiful. She is elegant. She moves beautifully. She is a woman. Yes! I saw that, Phil! You glanced at her breasts!”

He did?

Phil laughs and so do I.

“That is very good! But you must only look at her eyes. You may look at her breasts with your peripheral vision only! You may look at her eyes and tell her you strongly desire to look lower, to look at her whole womanly body.”

At promptly eight o’clock, Martina turns the music down lower. “You will practice together every night at this time in the living room of the house you shared. You will be alone for this time. No one else may be in the house. There will still be no talking. None. No talking at all! Phil, you will ask her to dance with your eyes and your body. Anna, you will submit, and you will enjoy it. You may not make love. You may not even kiss. Only dancing. One hour only. You will return here in six nights. I will teach you very sexy moves in six nights. You will be trembling. You are very good dancers. Now go home.”

We both shake her hand again and go.

Phil on Good-Nights and Changes
(July 16)

We drive home in silence. I park, get out to open Anna’s door, and walk her to her tree house. This time she knows what I’m doing and lets me open the door for her. I gently guide her to the ladder with a hand on her lower back. She walks a step in front of me, where I guide her, and I let my eyes fall to look at her derrière. Womanly. I remember how it looked when she did those low tango steps, swishing back and forth, full and beautiful. I wanted to let my hand fall as my eyes had done, but I refrained.

She starts up the ladder, but turns to look at me before continuing. There’s a smile in her eyes, and a little one on her lips. There’s perhaps a little spunk in her eyes, too, and maybe, just maybe a hint of desire.

I look at her. Even above me, she looks small and delicate, though really she is neither, unless in comparison to me, which I guess is the essence of being a man and a woman. I want to take her face in my hands and kiss her as I have not done in two decades. I remember Martina’s adamant instructions, and so do not kiss my wife, my wife to whom I had grown to feel entitled. Perhaps she sees desire in my eyes. Perhaps that is what is making her continue to smile. Finally, she finishes her ascent, giving me one last look at her derrière as she crawls into her tree house.

I return to the house through the French doors that lead to the kitchen and pour myself a glass of soymilk. I miss whole milk. So many things have changed since my heart attack, big things and little things—little things like milk. Soymilk is actually quite good, but I just hate the fact that I had to change.

Even bigger than that, I hate the fact that everything had to change. In the beginning, I welcomed change. I sure didn’t want to stay poor. But then there was a point where everything was perfect, when I had it all, when my kids were little, my wife was happy, and I was successful. It didn’t last long enough. It changed.

I walk into the hall and study a family portrait from the seventies. We all look happy. I study Anna’s expression closely. Yes, she really was happy—that’s not her fake smile.

I think back to the births of each of my children. You know, they didn’t let us in the delivery rooms in those days. I wanted to protect Anna from that experience. I wanted to carry that burden for her. The moments you experience when your wife is in childbirth are among the most powerless a man ever experiences. After the birth of each child, I was so relieved to find Anna alive and reasonably okay, that the sight of her and each new child made me vow to spend more time with my family. Each time I didn’t follow through on my vows. I walk down the hall and look at all the pictures. Most of them are of moments I missed.

I return to the kitchen to put my glass in the dishwasher, turn, and begin to walk back out, when Anna’s painting catches my eye. I love her old paintings.

Anna and I were in the same art class in our senior year. I was frustrated and she was focused. I tried so hard. I really wanted to impress her. Mrs. Bergstrom stood by me one day and said quietly, “The expense of effort is awareness. Sometimes awareness will get you further.” I didn’t understand her then, and by and large I still don’t, but I do recognize that I sabotage myself when I try too hard. Awareness is the hard part of that statement for me to understand.

I think about learning to play the chanter, about how when I’m really aware of my fingers, of the music, it flows, whereas when I really want to make Al think I’m the best student he’s ever had, I mess up.

I wonder if there’s some parallel with that in my marriage. The more I tried to fix things, the more pressure I put on myself; the more stress I was under, the more nervous I became; and the more nervous I became, the worse I made my marriage. The moment I gave up on my ability to save my marriage, something changed.

I don’t know. I still don’t completely understand. I always thought effort was good. Clearly, though, sometimes I do get in my own way. I think about the heart attack that could have killed me. Was that a result of effort? Yes. But then I look at other times where I thought effort got me where I wanted to go. Was that effort? Is there a difference between effort and determination? What did Mrs. Bergstrom mean by effort? Overexertion? I don’t know. Maybe effort is like first gear—good to get one started, but not something one wants to drive in all the time.

Tonight there was a moment when the dance no longer took effort, when I could be aware of how Anna felt in my arms, how she smelled, and how sometimes her hair would brush my face and tickle it.

Pearl on Burning Garbage
(July 18)

I smell it. Damn it, Dean. I warned you.

I pull my .22 off the wall and walk outside. Olive tags along several paces behind. “Stay here,” I tell her. I walk toward the west edge of my property and fire two shots in the air. Then, when I have a clear shot, I fire at Dean’s burn barrel. Ping. Dean hears it and jumps back.

“God damn it, Pearl!” he shouts at me, and throws a tire and a chunk of carpet on his fire. “It’s a free country! I can do whatever I want on my land!”

“Your toxic fumes are filling up my house, Dean! We’ve talked about your illegal passion for burning plastic and rubber before, Dean. Now, Dean, if you want to kill me with your fumes, that’s one thing, but if you want to give my great-grandchild birth defects by subjecting my granddaughter to your air pollution, that’s quite another. Now, Dean, you can get that hose and put out your fire, or I can.” Big black plumes of smoke rise up from the tire.