Читать книгу Book Lover - Karen Mack - Страница 8

“I never travel without my diary. One should always

have something sensational to read in the train.”

∼ Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), The Importance of Being Earnest ∼

My first husband, Jack, was a different story. He was the classic catch in a high-school sort of way—handsome, popular, athletic, and he liked to party. That’s where I met him, by the way, at a party. For the first time in my life, he made me feel “in.” He was also the first man to tell me that I was sexy, beautiful, and desirable—how could I not love him forever?

I wish I had a better reason for finding him so appealing. But I don’t. I married him because he was a hunk. That’s it. No one understood it. But the thing is, men do this all the time and no one says boo about it. Why do women have to come up with all sorts of explanations for doing the same thing? I didn’t try to impress him with my book stuff because I knew he didn’t care. To tell you the truth, it was actually liberating … and very romantic.

But as Shakespeare wisely pointed out in The Tempest, romantic love is so much more complicated than that. Even though Jack set me on fire in bed, alas, it couldn’t compensate for the fact that he had no intellectual curiosity whatsoever … he read car magazines, played video games, watched NASCAR on TV, and smoked pot. When you take out the sex factor, we had nothing in common. One day it just hit me. In all my years of making stupid decisions, this was the capper.

I had just graduated from Columbia and he was studying for his real estate license, the only classes he’d attended since high school. When we decided to get married, I was twenty-one years old and even as I was marching down the aisle, resplendent in Madeira lace, trying to ignore my disappointed relatives, mainly my mother, I knew I was making a mistake.

I landed my job at the Los Angeles Times two weeks after my wedding. That’s when I met Darlene. I was the hot new reporter (there’s always a hot new reporter) and my world was filled with infinite possibilities. Darlene, however, was buried in Classifieds, selling twenty words to anyone with a charge card and something to offer.

She was ten years older than me and married to a cop. The hierarchy at the Times was a caste system with Editorial on top and Classifieds somewhere near subzero. People treated Darlene with the same affection they reserved for their maid. They were nice but they weren’t sharing their drinks or their secrets with her. It didn’t help that she looked like a female serial killer—long straight blonde hair that she bleached herself, black roots, epic tits, too much sun, and too much booze. Of course, I found her tremendously amusing and we threw back more than a few on several occasions after work. I particularly enjoyed these evenings because it prolonged the inevitable trip home and put off the nearly nightly confrontations with Jack. He was feeling insecure about the marriage, not surprisingly. I also thought he was back seeing his old girlfriend, a wretched creature he’d lived with for a few years before dumping her for me.

One night Darlene and I were at Cassidy’s, a once-lively spot wedged between two strip malls, which had spiraled downward until now the only time the place was full was on St. Patrick’s Day, when they gave away frothy mugs of green beer on tap. I had once seen the bartender, an aging thug with a long blond ponytail and a receding hairline, topping off the barrels using the hose in the back alley. His wife, a hefty Armenian girl with short hair and a mustache, waited tables and served as the bouncer when things got rowdy.

It was, however, a cop hangout and Darlene’s husband, Mel, would sometimes meet us and shoot the breeze for a couple of hours. Mel, an LAPD cop, was a meaty guy with a stubbled face and a cracked, hoarse, smoker’s laugh. Every now and then he’d give me a semi-reliable tip, which once turned into a pretty big story on the front page of the Metro section.

That night, I was not in the best of moods when my cell phone rang and it was Jack. He sounded uncharacteristically upbeat.

“Hey, I have to show this condo tonight. The woman can’t get there until seven and then she wants to see what the view looks like at night.”

I responded in mock sympathy, “Gee, that’s too bad. I guess you’re stuck late, then, huh?”

“Till ten at least.”

“Oh, okay. Don’t wake me when you come in, because I’m dead tired.” I must have looked relieved, because Darlene gave me a quizzical look.

“You know what,” I said, “he’s full of shit. This is the third time this week. But the worst part is, I don’t care.”

Darlene was sympathetic but firm. “Get rid of him. You made a mistake. Bite the bullet. Move on.”

“But we just got married and I’m embarrassed. Plus, our living room is littered with all these gifts, and I need to at least write the thank-you notes before I leave him.” It’s strange when anachronisms like Emily Post pop up in your life.

“God, are you nuts. Who cares about the gifts? Return them. No, wait! Give them to me. Just kidding.” Darlene never worried about what other people thought. I, on the other hand, felt guilty. No, it was worse than that. I felt like an awful person for not loving him.

When I got home that night there was an angry message on the answering machine from Jack’s ex-girlfriend, berating him for being late and telling him that she “couldn’t take it anymore.” Assuming “it” was the affair they’d been having and never one for confrontations, I called Darlene and we devised a plan.

Jack came home late and I pretended I was asleep. The next morning, after he left for work, I called Darlene, who had been waiting for the “all clear” sign from around the corner. She pulled up in a banged-up purple van with black flames emblazoned on the side, which she’d gotten from Rent-A-Wreck, a place down the block that looked like a salvage yard. This was Darlene’s idea of being unobtrusive.

My place was on the second floor of what was jokingly called garden apartments. I guess the two dying azalea bushes were the garden part. The white stucco building had seen better days but not much better, and the open hallways left no room for privacy. Darlene parked the van right in front and came bounding up the steps with unbridled enthusiasm. For some warped reason, this whole thing really charged her up. “Dora, you can’t believe this killer van. And if I get it back to them by noon, they’ll give me a ’68 Mustang for the rest of the day.”

“Darlene, we need to focus here.” And then I saw Mrs. Richter peeking through her curtains. My nosy German landlord and his wife lived down the hall, and to them, the whole world was a soap opera, which in my case happened to be the truth. She stuck her head out and said hello, which was a “tell me what’s going on” kind of hello. I swear those people installed motion detectors. I nonchalantly answered, “Oh, hi,” as I ducked back into my apartment. I heard her Tevas flapping down the hall.

“What’s going on?”

Since it didn’t seem fair that Mrs. Richter should know about the split before Jack, I decided to lie. “Spring cleaning,” I said. Not bad for the middle of January. I could tell the old bat didn’t believe me, but she didn’t come out again.

Darlene was waiting inside, surveying the place. I was about to object as she lifted the Jack Daniel’s bottle and poured herself a large tumblerful, but what the hell, I joined her.

“You shouldn’t leave all this stuff. You’re crazy.”

“I don’t want it,” I replied. On this I was clear.

Darlene sat down. “Well, at least take the couch. Do you know how much these things cost?” She was referring to a distressed brown leather monster I’d always hated. For someone as deliciously handsome as Jack was, he really had no taste. All the furnishings were different colors of mud with green or gold flecks. If I were to categorize it, I would call it stupid stud furniture, but perhaps that would be too harsh.

“Do you honestly believe the two of us can carry this three-hundred-pound couch down the stairs?”

She was adamant. “Let me just think a minute. What if we drove down to Westwood Boulevard, picked up a couple of those construction guys who hang out on the corner waiting for work, and offer them maybe twenty dollars each? That would work.”

“You don’t understand, Darlene. I don’t want the couch,” I repeated.

She shook her head in disbelief. It was a tribute to her grip on reality that she thought I was the one who was nuts. “Dora, no one leaves stuff like this.”

She and I spent the next twenty minutes arguing about what I should take, while I was getting more and more nervous that Jack would unexpectedly appear. In the end, she convinced me to take at least a few of the more practical wedding gifts from my side of the family, and, indeed, I was grateful to have some pots, pans, plates, and silverware for my next place.

Acting as if we were committing grand larceny, we carried out bulging black Hefty bags filled with my clothes and box after box of my books, which I had meticulously saved since I was twelve, including textbooks with water-stained covers. I must learn to travel lighter.

For a long time after that, I felt guilty and liberated at the same time. I wouldn’t have to quiz him for his real estate license and pretend how difficult it was. I wouldn’t have to tune out the damn TV, or ignore the aftertaste of marijuana mixed with tobacco on his breath. Or feel like a sap every time we went to a party and I couldn’t think of a thing to say to him or his friends.

He insisted that no one would ever love me as much as he did, and at the time, I believed him. His girlfriend gave me the excuse to leave, but I knew he was still in love with me. Afterwards, when the inevitable pain of the breakup hit us, we met for coffee and we both had a good cry. He was sympathetic and resigned in the beginning but then came the zinger. “I helped you become the beautiful, self-confident woman you are and you stomped all over me and left me in the dust.”