Of Rivers and Religion Ch. 01

Before I could answer, he disappeared, and I waited patiently listening to John Cale and reminiscing. When the side of the record ended, I got up and carefully pulled the vinyl from the turntable, put it back in its sleeve and jacket, and replaced the album carefully in its appointed place in the stack, just as I had been trained to do. Then nearby, I found another record that I loved, John Coltrane's Giant Steps, and I started with the seminal first track, the title cut.

Coltrane was blazing his way from one incredibly complex modal progression to another when Dave returned. He was carrying a huge tray filled with plates, silverware, chafing dishes, and bowls. One was filled with grilled peppers, corn-on-the-cob, zucchinis, onions, and cherry tomatoes marinated in some kind of sesame sauce. Two others contained chicken and shrimp respectively, both marinated in a different type of sauce (I wasn't sure what it was, though it had the flavor of some kind of spicy jerk). All of it was barbequed to perfection. Then, there was a bowl full of sticky rice, along with others heaped with fruits: sliced bananas, pineapples, pears, and peaches, all rolled in brown sugar and cinnamon and grilled until caramelized.

He set the tray down on a folding stand that he was carrying with him, and then, hearing the music, shook his head in astonishment and said kindly, "My god! You're a jazz aficionado too! Lily, you're scaring me! Trane? This is too perfect! If ever I decide to host a dinner party, I plan to consult you on the playlist, Lily! Now, while Mr. Coltrane entertains us, I'd like you to dig in."

I began spooning out a little of everything, and Dave watched with contentment. When my plate was filled with sumptuous delights, he asked me kindly, "Are you sure you wouldn't like some wine to go with your meal?" I was completely charmed by this point, and no longer frightened by his offer.

"That sounds really nice. Yes, thank you so much! I would love some." He returned with the already opened bottle of chilled Chardonnay and a glass and offered me a healthy pour. Then, he refreshed his own glass, began filling his plate with food, before sitting down next to me on the couch. We began eating. It was absolutely one of the best meals I had ever had.

When we finished eating, Dave cleaned up all of our plates and the leftovers, and put everything away in the kitchen. And when he returned, we were enjoying our wine and the music, until the Coltrane side ended. Dave asked me if I wanted to pick out something else. I thought for a moment, and then I demurred, "No, I think I would like to hear what you're currently interested in or at least your own selections. Do you have a way to shuffle music? Maybe an iPod? I'd like to hear your self-described 'eclectic' tastes."

"Ah, you millennials! You do like your mixes, don't you? Actually, I do as well. That's a good idea; it's a nice way to listen to music. You never know what you're going to get!"

He smiled, and then got up, walked to his stereo, and fiddled with some of the other components that I had seen earlier, and in a matter of seconds, the harmonica intro from a folk rock nugget by Steve Earle lurched from the speakers. I knew the song -- "More Than I Can Do," and though I didn't listen to a whole lot of country music at the time, I admired Steve Earle, and enjoyed that song, an up-tempo rocker, that was nonetheless a heart-wrenching tale of loss.

I was just finishing my glass of wine and was trying to concentrate on the lyrics, but when I looked over to smile at Dave, he turned his face away from me. I got the feeling that he didn't want me to see him at that moment and that impression seemed to be confirmed a second later when he got up abruptly and went into the kitchen without saying anything. He returned a few moments later with another chilled bottle of wine, but I could tell from the puffiness around his eyes, and the flushed color in his face that he'd been crying.

He tried hard to smile, asking kindly, "More wine, Lily?" but not only could I see the pain in his face, I could feel it as well, a sensation so palpable and real that he might as well have let loose with an ear-shattering, anguished cry as if he had just been stabbed in the stomach with a switchblade.

I was trying to figure out what had prompted the startling emotional change, a transformation so profound that within mere seconds he'd gone from happy and contented to tortured and suffering. And then it struck me -- the song -- the song was the clue to what had just happened.

It was ostensibly the tale of a man so forlorn with the loss of the woman that he loved and in such denial about her rejection of him that he had resorted to stalking her to prove that love to her:

Just because you won't unlock your door,

Don't mean you don't love me anymore.

And then later:

You said you're gonna call the cops,

But I ain't gonna run,

'Cause you're the only one.

There ain't no way I could live without you.

At first, I had marveled at the song's pathos-inducing appeal. And then two minutes into it, Earle had circled back to the opening lyrics, and I realized that Dave was internalizing what the song was so poignantly articulating, such that to him that song was addressing an entirely different type of loss -- his loss.

I now understood that the passage of those 12 years of his life hadn't come close to erasing his pain, and that no matter where he was in the stages of grief that he had experienced, he was condemned to return to an earlier stage in the blink of an eye.

Anything could trigger that regression and, with it, a whole new round of suffering. Apparently, the lyrics of the song had had just that effect:

I'm trying hard to let you go, but it's more than I can do.

And every day or two,

I wind up right back where I started.

I'm trying not to let you know that I'm still in love with you.

I can't just sit home blue,

'Cause there ain't no rest for the broken-hearted.

The music continued, but both of us had stopped listening, and then I started to understand the emotions that were engulfing him. I realized that he felt incredibly embarrassed and ashamed by his undying love for his wife and children, as if she had told him that he needed to move on, but that he had admitted to her that he couldn't, that he would never be able to, and that because of that, everyone else viewed him as this pathetic and pitiable creature.

I imagined this psychological dialogue with her playing out in his head. "Baby, you need to let me go. You need to put me behind you, to find someone who can make you happy and to allow yourself to love again. Do it for me, because I want that for you. I want you to be happy, because I love you!"

"I can't! I've tried! I've really tried! I want to; honey, I really want to, but you don't understand! I can't do it! What you're asking of me -- I can't! I just don't have it in me. It's more than I can do!" Now that song's power over him made complete sense.

And then even though I already knew the answer to the question, I heard myself asking anyway. As he poured me another glass of wine, I said it, "Dave, what's wrong?" and as I heard the words leave my lips, I realized immediately that I had no right to ask, didn't know him well enough to insinuate myself into his pain and suffering. But it was already too late now -- for better or for worse, I had brazenly entered the realm of his grief.

He turned his head away again, and I winced, realizing that I had made him cry a second time, and I was angry with myself for torturing him. With his back to me, he spoke in a trembling voice while filling his own glass again, "I'm sorry, Lily. I have some bad days sometimes. Usually, I'm alone when this happens. I guess you caught me at the wrong time."

And then I knew it was my fault. I had caused this. It was purely unintentional -- I knew that -- but, for whatever reason, it was something about me being there that had caused his heartache, and if it was I who had caused it, it was I, and only I, who could fix it. "Dave? Is there something I can do to help?" It would all be left unsaid, but I knew... that he knew... that I knew.

He turned back to me, "Lily, I invited you here tonight to celebrate your accomplishments, not to wallow in my own self-pity." The tears were streaming down his face, and I felt even worse.

So I pledged to myself that I was going to try to help. I figured after all he had done for me already -- and somehow intuitively, I understood that he was going to do much, much more -- at the very least, I owed him something, didn't I?

"Dave, there's no shame in it! It's real! You can't ignore it, and neither can I. I want to try to make it better. I need to help you. Can I... can I... just... just hold you?" I really didn't mean anything by offer, other than to provide solace, but I realize now that I was sending some message, and he would have had to have been made of stone not to pick up on it.

Without waiting for his answer, I set my glass down on the end table, and I stood up and wrapped my arms around his waist and held him tightly. Then, he pulled me to him, and the sorrow washed through him like summer rain. The sobs shook him, and the tears flowed freely, and soon I realized that I was crying with him.

But I also realized something else -- I was excited; I was titillated. It was wrong of me to feel that way, and I knew it, but soon, I could tell that Dave felt the same emotion, felt the same passion welling up within him.

And then I understood that there was a mutual longing we shared, a profound craving for each other, a lust that was as real and as palpable as his sorrow. And soon that lust was growing, growing in size as much as it was growing in power, and then I could literally feel it pressed against my stomach.

And suddenly he gently cradled my face in both his hands, and he brought my lips to his, and the delicate touch of his warm, wet mouth on mine, the muscadine aroma of wine on his lips, sent an electrical current coursing through my entire body, and then suddenly he was kissing me, kissing me with a yearning and desire that took my breath away.

And I wanted him too, wanted him more than anything that I had ever wanted before in my life, wanted his mouth on me -- not just on my lips, but on my face, on my eyes, on my ears, on my neck, on my shoulders, my breasts, my nipples, my pussy, my clit. I wanted him inside me, wanted to feel him thrusting himself into me, wanted to feel his seed spurting deep inside, coating me with his essence, his extract, purifying me with the life-giving distillate without which humanity had no future.

And then, just as suddenly as he had started, he stopped, and still holding my face in his hands, he began apologizing profusely, "Lily, I'm so, so sorry. Please forgive me. I'm not thinking correctly. I... I... I should never... I can't. I can't do this. It's wrong; it's... it's...."

But now I needed Dave, and I couldn't let this moment slip through my fingers, so I stopped him in mid-sentence. I was convinced that I could change his mind, and in so doing, change much, much more than that. I wanted him to see the situation from all perspectives -- mine, his, and his dear departed wife's.

It was crazy of me. I know that. But I had lost my senses as the feelings within me grew. So I said something that I know I shouldn't have said, went to a place I shouldn't have tread, but I couldn't control myself anymore.

"Dave, please, I need this, too, almost as much as you do! Please! You aren't doing anything wrong! Dave, you need to live again! You need allow yourself to be a fully functioning human being again. Your intellect isn't enough! Your body is as much a part of you as your brain is. If anything is wrong, it is for you to deny that!" And then, I couldn't believe what I said next, "Dave, please make love to me! Please! I know you want this too! And I know you need it!"

I had only had one lover before that evening, a sweet, shy, gentle boy named Nick with whom I graduated high school. I had wanted Nick almost as much as he wanted me, and so it was inevitable that I would lose my virginity to him during the last week of high school, the night of our Senior Prom, an event that he had begged me to attend with him long before we ever reached our senior year.

He was a quiet, intelligent, and withdrawn soul -- an archetype that I soon realized I was drawn to. Nick didn't say a lot until you got him to talk about his passions -- literature and philosophy -- but then you couldn't stop him.

He took me that night in the hotel room that he had booked for the after party. We were both really nervous and inexperienced, but our coupling, though comical and awkward at times, was something that I, at least, considered a lovely and beautiful moment. I think Nick probably felt the same way about the experience as I did, and over the next few months we repeated our lovemaking a dozen or so times, until we were no longer ashamed of being intimate.

And then Nick left. He was up in Massachusetts now, attending school at Williams -- no relation, by the way -- one of the "Little Ivies," the handful of liberal arts colleges scattered about New England and beyond that the children of well-to-do Midwestern parents, like Nick, considered the next best alternative to Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, et al.

When Nick called me a couple of weeks into his fall semester, he told me that he was majoring in philosophy, and reading scads of thinkers that most people had never heard of. Though we talked on the phone a few more times after I started school, I realized after that first call that we would never again be intimate. We had had our moment, and while neither of us regretted a thing, that moment had passed with the summer's end.

I didn't want my relationship with Dave to follow that pleasant, but far too abbreviated path. But I knew I needed to give him a little bit of time to think. He stared into my eyes, and I could see his desire, but at the same time I could almost hear his mind debating with itself. He was fighting against what he knew his wife would have wanted for him, and that was perhaps the saddest inner conflict with which I have ever seen anyone confronted.

Finally, he spoke, "Lily, I... I... I do, I do want you. I want you so badly, but, Lily, Lily... It... It... It's not my professional ethics or anything like that. I... I... I can reconcile all that, but I... I... I've never told you about my wife. I... I..."

"Dave, you don't have to do that! You don't have to tell me! I think I know everything I need to know, and I feel so, so badly for you."

"No, no, I don't think you do know. No, you don't understand, and I can't do this until I can make you understand. Lily, can I... can I show you something? It's right over here. It won't take but a moment." He led me out of the room and down a hallway to a door that led to the garage.

He opened the door to let me enter first, but before he turned on the light, all I could see in the darkness was the tiny flame from the pilot light at the bottom of the water heater that kept silent vigil in the corner by the door.

Once Dave switched on the light, I discovered an old BMW sedan parked in the center of the two-car garage. That was when I first realized that he actually owned an automobile. But what struck me was that all around the parked vehicle were stacks of boxes and plastic containers, dozens and dozens of them, all different sizes and shapes, each filled to capacity with possessions of all kinds, four lifetime's worth of memories. It would have taken at least ten minutes to move the stored things enough to back the car out of the garage.

Now I understood Dave's preference for walking. In order to have driven his car, he would have, in effect, had to have given up his memories of his wife and children -- put them behind him, disposed of them through some kind of metaphysical garage sale. I understood that as far as he was concerned, to do so would be, to paraphrase Steve Earle, more than he could do.

And then I noticed that the lid to one of the containers that sat atop a stack of two smaller boxes was open, and from it spilled a beautiful, white, wedding gown, replete with a chiffon, silk, and tulle bodice, a bateau neckline, an A-line silhouette, and brush train. Next to the box sat an old chair. It appeared as if he had only recently, perhaps even that same day, sat holding the dress, running his fingers over its delicate fabric, breathing in its ancient, perfumed scent, cradling its beauty in his trembling hands.

"These are all their things, aren't they?"

"Yes." He paused for a long time. "I can't seem to let go of them." He started sobbing again.

"Dave, Dave, no one, no one has the right to ask you to do that! You don't have to let go of them! Dave, it is so wrong of me to be the one to say this! I mean, far be it from me to lecture you! You're the most brilliant person I've ever met, so it's absurd for me to be the one pretending to dispense wisdom. But Dave! Dave!" I kept shaking my head. "How can I get you to understand this? How... how can I?" Now he was not only in pain, but he was utterly confused as well.

And then I thought of something, a way for him to see, a way to help him understand. Maybe it was a long shot, but.... "Look, you and your wife had three children, right?"

"Yes." He looked at me with such profound sadness that I wasn't sure I could continue, but I did so anyway.

"When your first child was born... that must have been an incredibly wonderful moment for you and your wife, wasn't it?"

Slowly, ever so slowly, he began to smile through his tears, reminiscing. "Yes, yes, it absolutely was!" That smile, however weak and fragile, gave me confidence, so I continued.

"When that child entered your life, your wife's life, did you start loving her less because you had a child to love, too? Did she love you less because she had to share her love for you with her first born?"

"Of course not!" He said it, almost in anger. "Having Mayra only made our love for each other that much stronger!"

"Of course, of course it did! It had to have, and that love that you had for each other made having a child all the more incredible! And when your second child was born -- that was your boy, wasn't it?" He was bawling again, his face was awash in tears, even though a tiny fragment of his smile had not left him, and I felt so badly that I was doing this to him, but I had to, I had to continue.

"Did you love Mayra less because you now had a son to love as well? Did you love your wife any less because you had two, and then three lovely children that you adored? No, and that's because love is not a finite thing. It grows, and when it does, it grows exponentially. Love begets more love. The world is a big, big place, but it isn't big enough, is it? It can't contain all the love that we have within us. So we search for another place. I guess that place is what people call heaven."

He broke down now, broke like a twig that I had snapped in half with my fingers. And when he fell toward me, I caught him in my arms, caught him because if I didn't, I know he would have hit the concrete floor with a thud.

I just held him, held him for the longest time. I let all of the emotions pour out of him -- pain, regret, self-loathing, guilt, shame -- and when finally, his tears ran dry and his shaking abated, he released his hold on me and silently walked over to the plastic container that held that dress and, folding it gently and carefully as if his long lost love herself was still encased by it, he lay it back into the container and then, after pausing in silence for a long time, he secured the lid. He had finally buried her, as surely as if he himself had nailed the coffin shut. In fact, I soon realized that with that one act, he had buried them all.