When We Were Married Ch. 06A

"Someday. Not now."

He shook his head.

"Who the hell would have thought it would happen to you, of all people. You know this is hopeless, right? You can't hide from her forever."

"I can try."

Forever lasted until the following Monday. I was walking into my sociology class when she stepped out in front of me. I had to put on brakes to avoid bouncing into her and I didn't want, above all, couldn't handle hitting those tits.

"If I didn't know better I might almost think you're avoiding me."

I didn't look her in the eye, just stared beyond her to the doorway leading into the lecture hall and said, "Sorry, Deb, but I have to get in there. I can't afford to be late."

As I tried to slip around her she moved to block me and I had to raise my eyes to meet hers. There was a hint, but not quite, of a smile on her lips.

"Yeah, I know. They'll throw you out of school if you're late to a sociology class during the summer session. They're really strict this time of year."

I had done everything I could do to avoid this, but it was here.

"Look, Debbie. I really do have to get to class. Don't take this the wrong way, but I've got things I've got to get done and I don't have the time to sit around and talk."

"You really are avoiding me, aren't you?"

I met her gaze straight on.

"Yeah. We, uh...I just decided that there's no point....no point in our spending time together any more."

"So hanging with me for a pizza or talking in your room or seeing a movie once in a while is just too much of a strain on your over-booked social schedule?"

Then she noticed my right hand for the first time and her eyes widened.

"What happened? Did-"

"No, this wasn't Ramone or any of your legions of boyfriends warning me off, just an accident. Anyway, Debbie, I appreciate your taking the time to take in movies with me and talk, but it's not going anywhere and it never will. You need to go back to your kind of friends, and I'll go back to my life. It's been fun, but..."

"Just like that?"

"No, I thought about this a lot. We're two entirely different kinds of people. Two different lives. It makes no sense whatsoever for us to hang out. Thank you, but let's call it quits."

"You didn't think about talking with me about this?"

"About what, Deb? We're friends. We hang out. I like you, you like me, but we're just friends and our lives and our interests would have split us apart sooner or later. We're not 'breaking up.' You have to have been together to break up. We were never together. I'm not going to run away when I see you, but I have my own friends, things I do and they're not things I would do with you. Maybe we'll see each other around. We probably will. I hope you don't take this the wrong way."

She stepped back.

"Oh. When you put it that way, I won't."

She gave me a look I couldn't read, but that happened a lot with her.

"See you around....friend."

She walked away without looking back. When she was gone I sagged against a wall, feeling like I'd been gut punched.

I didn't see her, or at least talk to her, for two weeks. I saw her a few times, but she just nodded at me as she walked the campus with friends. A few times I saw her friends huddle around her as we passed, but they never said anything to me. I thought it would get better with time, but I was wrong.

It was near midnight on a Thursday two weeks later. I was lying on my bed reading a beaten-up paperback version of a late 1960s alternate history science fiction novel called "Pavane," particularly the section titled "The Signaller." It was the saddest damned thing I'd ever read, the story of lost love and what it means to live forever without love.

I'd been reading it when I was 15 years old and Sarah Newman, whom I'd loved deeply and without measure as only a high school sophomore could love, had told me she'd fallen in love with the 6-foot-4 right guard of the Lee High Commodore football team. It had taken me a summer to bounce back and I'd read "The Signaller" probably a hundred times.

For some reason it had become my emotional touchstone whenever my heart was broken. Since I was alone, and would be alone forever, reading about somebody even worse off than me had a therapeutic effect.

I envisioned my lonely life through my twenties and thirties and forties and beyond. I would have affairs and there would be women. As a successful and dashing attorney there would be women, but there would be an unyielding mass of ice where my heart had been that would never thaw.

I realized objectively how silly I was being, but I hurt too badly. I wished a thousand times I had never taken that frat house job and never got mixed up in Debbie Bascomb's life. Then realized that no matter what happened, I was glad I was there for her that night.

The door to my room swung open and she was standing in the doorway. I absentmindedly noted the low-cut blouse that showed the swells of those D-cups, the tight white slacks that hugged her curves. But it was her eyes that drew me in. Her lips seemed thinner and her cheekbones more pronounced. We just stared at each other for a couple of minutes and I wondered if I'd fallen asleep and was dreaming.

"How did you..."

"I had a key made," she said, showing it to me.

"What....what are you doing here?"

"I talked to Dave the other day. He told me how you hurt your hand."

When I didn't say anything, she stepped into the room, knelt beside the bed and took my cast hand in her two hands.

"What happened Friday night, Bill? That Friday night."

I remained silent.

"Everything changed that night. What happened? Why did you smash up your room and run home to Momma and decide you didn't want to be around me anymore?"

I still couldn't talk.

"Did you see us, Bill? Is that what this is all about. I didn't see you. Were you at the restaurant, or the nightclub?"

"I didn't see anything except your black boyfriend that night."

I didn't recognize my voice.

"And his cock. When you were sucking him off in his Caddy."

"You were spying on us? Why?"

"I decided for once I was going to surprise you. Got dressed and went to pick you up, but after I saw you loving on your friend I realized you were never going to have any room in your life for a stupid asshole like me."

"You followed us."

"You do have a head on your shoulders. Yeah, I followed you to Merriweather's and saw that blowjob, and to Bugsy's, and then to – that was his house, right? I thought maybe you'd gone there to talk UF basketball with him. But by about 3 a.m. I figured you were in for the night and just gave it up."

"Did you come up and peep in the window? Did you see him fucking me? Did you see him hammering that big black dick of his in my pussy. Did you jerk off watching us? Isn't that what peeping toms and voyeurs and perverts do?"

"No, sorry to disappoint you. I just sat out there in the darkness while you were fucking him and finally figured out there was no you and me and there never would be. I'm slow. It took me months to figure it out. You threw me with those conflicting signals. But I finally got the message."

"You're slower than fucking molasses, Bill. Slower than snails. And perceptive as a rock. The first month or so after we met, I did go out with other guys, and I fucked them. But..."

She straightened up and did something that made those phenomenal breasts quiver deliciously. I was enjoying the show. I doubted I'd ever get as good a view again.

"I started enjoying the time I spent with you. You're a smart, funny guy. You treated me with respect and I could tell you...had feelings for me, even if you never said anything. I enjoyed being with you and – I just stopped seeing other guys. I figured, sooner or later.... That's what CC was talking about. They couldn't believe it.

"It got to be a month, and two months and three months that we'd been hanging out, dating without calling it dating. I was wondering if you might be gay, until I saw you with Amy. Then I realized you were just stupid, and last Friday Owen called me. We've known each other since I was 15. We both went to Forrest."

She stared at me defiantly.

"I like fucking him. He is good. Of course his dick's a little small. He says he's the only black guy he knows with a white man's dick, but he knows how to use it, and, I like him. I was also getting very, very horny. I've never gone three months without some action, not since I was 13. So since you've NEVER asked me out on a date and you hadn't called me, I went out with him. I sucked him off and I spent the night in bed with him."

Her voice trailed off.

"So..."

I sat up in bed and looked up at her.

"So why are you here, Debbie? Owen busy with another one of his basketball groupies tonight?"

"Why don't you have any self-confidence, Bill? You act like you're a complete loser. You don't have much money and you're not the most handsome stud on campus, but you're brave and smart and funny and Amy said you were pretty damned good in bed. But you would have let Ramone have me that day on the yacht if I'd been inclined that way. You didn't even try."

"It's called realistic, Debbie. I know what I am and what I'm not. And guys like me don't end up with women like you."

She looked at me sadly.

"No, they don't, if they're like you."

We just looked at each other. I expected her to turn around and leave.

"You know that you've never touched me. You've never tried to kiss me. Girls - women - don't throw themselves at guys. Maybe a slut like Amy. But women want a man to come after them. If you want someone that looks like me, if you want any woman, you have to take a chance. You have to step out. I like guys, but I'm not going to lay there and spread my legs and beg a guy to take me. I'm better than that."

She stepped as close to the bed as you could get without being on it and looked at me with a gaze that was partly challenge, and partly hope and partly fear.

"You may not be the best looking guy I've ever been with, not the biggest, damn well not the richest. But I think you're the best guy I've ever been with. It doesn't matter though because we'll never be together if you don't grow a set of balls.

"You have to take what you want, Bill. So, the question is, do you want me?"

I knew that someday I'd regret this because I knew that someday she'd tear the heart out of my chest and leave me bleeding. I knew what I should do. But I did what I'd known deep down I was always going to do, no matter what it cost me.

I rose from the bed and pulled her down to me.

"More than my last breath..."

##################

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2005

"How could I have forgotten all of that, doctor? Am I really crazy?"

Teller leaned forward and puffed on his pipe. She had told him what had happened with her aunt and the aftermath in which the embittered older woman had predicted a betrayal by Bill that apparently had never occurred, but which had sunk into Debbie's brain deeply enough to color her feelings toward her ex-husband.

He let the redolent smoke out of his lungs and allowed himself to feel a measure of self-satisfaction. He now had a pretty good handle on the forces that had wrecked the Maitland marriage. Most, if not all, of the pieces had fallen into place. Debbie Bascomb hadn't quite put them all together and he wouldn't push the pace.

For her sake it was important that they came out at the proper time. She needed to accept and understand what had happened, her role and responsibility and her ex-husband's responsibility as well. Psychiatry was nothing if not a way to learn to live with the actions and mistakes of the past, to accept the reality of what was done and could not be undone, and to find a way to make a new life.

"No, you're not crazy, Debbie. This is a somewhat extreme example of a common phenomena, but it happens often. Memories that are too painful to live with are buried in our subconscious. Embarrassments, disappointments, heartache. They are forgotten over the years and never surface until some event or trauma brings the memories forward."

She leaned forward and clasped her hands together.

"I could understand forgetting what happened to Clarice, but how could I possibly have dreamed that it happened to me?"

He took his pipe out of his mouth, tamped the tobacco down, relit and took in another soothing lungful of aromatic smoke. The delay was deliberate to allow her more time to think about her question. Pipe smoking was a wonderfully innocent way of working delay into a conversation.

"You've told me about the role that your aunt played in your life. You told me that she was your second mother in every important way. In fact, she was a combination of a mother and sister. When you were going through your wild teenage years, she was the woman you trusted with your deepest secrets you couldn't go to your mother with. She was the person who never betrayed your trust, who always – to use the common expression – had your back no matter what."

Debbie's eyes misted.

"She was a wonderful woman. I miss her more now than I did after she died. I guess...I guess forgetting what happened was a way of forgetting how much I lost when she died. If she....if her marriage hadn't collapsed and she had been around when I started to....fall out of love....with Bill, I don't think things would have happened the way they did."

"She would....she would have have made me get my head straight. I can hear her now. She would have told me to either tell Bill I was leaving him or....to...forgive my language but it was what she would have said...fuck him until his eyes crossed and drag his flabby ass to a gym and get him back into shape."

Teller saw the raw emotion and wondered if she had ever come to terms with the emotional impact of her aunt's death. Grief and anger at a cheating husband who had contributed to the older woman's suicide were other parts of the puzzle that she could not have known were poisoning her mind and emotions about her ex-husband while it was happening.

"Even now it's obvious how strongly you felt about her. Even more than the emotional bond was the identification you had with her. She was you in a very real way - blonde, attractive, busty. She taught you, you said, to have pride and confidence in your sexuality and your body.

"Without training, she was able to provide the support and encouragement you needed to transcend what was actually early sexual abuse by older men. Women who are initiated into sex at such an early age often fall into a destructive pattern of sexual relationships that mirror those early experiences. With her help and guidance you grew into a strong, sexually aggressive but sexually healthy woman."

He released another plume of tobacco smoke and observed the tears streaming slowly down her face.

"What happened, psychologically speaking, was that you saw yourself in your aunt as her marriage collapsed and she desperately sought the approval and sexual desire of other men to replace what she had had with her husband. You knew, consciously, that the assault happened to your aunt but, in your subconscious mind, you saw yourself as the victim. Because she was you and you had mirrored her life experiences."

She nodded.

"I can see that. I told you about my nightmare....the one where I saw myself growing old and my breasts were drooping..I looked so damned old. It was terrifying. I know now that I was reliving the way I felt when I was cleaning her up in the shower afterwards. She didn't look that bad, but I couldn't believe she was that old. She wasn't even 60, but she had gotten so old...so old...."

Teller nodded. She was putting the pieces together.

"She had always been so beautiful. When I was a little girl I wanted nothing more than to look like her. Men loved her. Even married men who were friends of her husband were always flirting with her. She told me once she'd never be unfaithful to her husband, but that there was nothing as exciting as knowing another man wanted her. I guess...."

"What?" Teller asked gently.

"That was the way I was with Bill. I loved him, the lazy bastard, and I never cheated on him after we got together in college, but I loved teasing men. I loved knowing they wanted me and I never really thought there was anything wrong with it. That was Clarice."

Teller probed a little more deeply.

"In the bad years at the end of your marriage, when you...engaged in manual sex with several men....did you really think that it was acceptable because Bill had betrayed you first, as Clarice's husband had cheated on her?"

She wiped her eyes with one of the tissues in a box in front of her.

"I don't know. I've thought about it. I told him I never believed it, not really. But...I don't know. Do you suppose I really always deep down believed it...and that's why I've been so angry at him?"

"I don't know. What do you think?"

She smiled.

"You know, that's the first time you've hit me with typical shrink language, Dr. Teller."

He laughed.

"I know. I couldn't resist. To answer your question, it is possible that doubts about your husband's fidelity, even if you consciously denied it, might have sparked anger at him. Particularly since, just as you identified with your aunt, you probably identified Bill with her husband."

She looked troubled.

"Maybe...but somehow, I don't think that would be enough to have made me ....feel the way I did...do sometimes."

"You're probably right, Debbie. Why don't you think about it until our next session. Try to come up with any other reasons for this deep, stubborn, apparently intractable anger."

He wondered if she would come up with it on her own. She was getting close.

"There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, doctor."

"We have a few minutes left on this session. What would you like to discuss?"

"I know we talked about this one time before...but....I appreciate your help. I'm not throwing up and I feel a lot better about myself and my life now. It's just that I can't help wondering what's the point of going much further. Even if I find out what made me so angry at Bill, what purpose does it serve?"

She rubbed her hands together in a classic unconscious exhibition of uncertainty and stress.

"I mean, even if I discover why I was so angry, why I wanted out of the marriage...the fact is I'm out. Our marriage is history. He...I think sometimes he hates me and most of the time I can't blame him. If he had done to me what I did to him, even though I still think he left our marriage first, I'd never forgive him.

"I think sometimes that the only feeling I have left for him is guilt. I know there are times I feel flashes....of something like what I once felt for him. But they're only flashes, so what's the point of finally understanding why everything fell apart."

"I told you once, Debbie, that you could stop these sessions at any time. I think, honestly, that you would eventually figure out on your own the source of the emotions you feel toward your ex-husband. Similarly, although complex, I think you will eventually realize what destroyed your marriage, and he does share a portion of the responsibility for that.

"What you learn about yourself and Bill won't change the past. What happened, happened. The scars you both bear won't vanish. Your marriage is history. But, understanding what happened, and why, might make it easier to form a viable relationship with him in the future. You still share two children and eventually there will probably be grandchildren. You will be part of each other's lives for the rest of your lives.

"No matter what happens between the two of you, you are still a young woman. You will love someone else again. You might yet have more children and start a new life. I can't help but think you will be better able to forge a new life if you understand what led to the end of the old one."