Love In The Time Of Apps (5 page)

The term evoked a memory of the first session he and Sheila had with Maxine. Goodwin’s initial impression of Maxine was that he was effeminate, a conclusion that was confirmed when Maxine had proudly showed them his extensive collection of glass unicorns, a collection inspired, he said, by the Glass Menagerie, and more particularly the character in the play, Laura Wingfield, someone with whom he “completely identified.” Maxine then turned to Sheila and said, “Love your
Manolo Blahniks. He’s my favorite shoe designer. I especially like his platforms.”

“Jeeze,” Goodwin thought at the time, “how many men even know about Manolo Blahnik? And platforms?” When Goodwin first heard Maxine mention “platforms,” he thought Blahnik had a political agenda. “Ask any guy, “who is Manolo Blahnik?’ he thought at the time, “and he’ll immediately start thinking players’ rosters on baseball or football teams.”

“You know,” Goodwin said, “Maxine is even a fan of Manolo Blahnik.”

Graves, “Doesn’t he play for the Mets?”

Goodwin, “He even mentioned Blahnik’s platforms.

Graves, “I’m a Republican.”

As he was preparing to make a quick exit, Kass sought to confirm the quartet’s collective judgment of Sydney Maxine’s girlie man status and volunteered in an effort to demean Maxine in abstentia, “He even hits from the ladies’ tees.”

In virtually every civilized golf course in America, these tees are not genderized, but simply called the “forward tees.” In the dopey world of macho men’s golf, however, the act by a man of hitting from the forward tees, unless he’s had a recent stroke or back operation, was only a small step away from being a transvestite. Ironically, years later Kass admitted to being a transvestite, though he continued to hit from the back tees despite losing some distance because he couldn’t swing as well while wearing his tight fitting Manolo Blahnik golf shoes.

Comedic Incompatability

G
oodwin was speeding past the mansions of Grace Harbor en route to his own grand maison. Adrenalin percolating through his body caused him to alternate between fits of rage and bouts of blabbering to himself like some deranged homeless person. Crazed, Goodwin began excoriating an absent Sheila, “You are the most despicable, dishonest person I know. You were the person who continually accused me of cheating, when I never did. All the while you are screwing around with our marriage counselor.”

Goodwin’s statement about his fidelity was true at the time, but there would be one minor footnote added later. The little asterisk next to his protestation related to what television shows sometimes euphemistically call an “intimate moment” or a “sexual situation.” Goodwin’s intimate moment, however, came after Sheila had left him. Post-partum sex in Goodwin’s view did not equal infidelity, not that temptations didn’t exist along the way. But these were always sublimated to fantasies, most of which focused on several women in his country club whom Goodwin would assess from a discrete distance as they plied their skills on the club’s putting green. He looked, fantasized, but never touched, or for that matter even flirted.

Goodwin actually preferred these fantasies to the real thing. While not nearly as satisfying as “in vivo sex,” a term coined by one of his doctor friends, these mental dalliances were totally risk free. He reasoned that when he had these little sexual fantasies, performance anxiety was never an issue, unless that was part of the fantasy. He never had to wear
a condom unless he was extremely serious about safe sex. Best of all, fantasies were much easier to break off. His last reason, however, was not universally true.

A close friend of his, for example, confessed to having a sexual fantasy about the same woman at the club for about five years. By pure coincidence, one day he and the woman were teamed up in a golf tournament, which meant they rode together in a golf cart. “I couldn’t believe my luck,” his friend said. “Not only did I have great new material for my future fantasies, but I was also winning the golf tournament.”

In fact, he never played so well in his life. The man later attributed his skillful play to the fact that he was so deeply immersed in his sexual fantasy that he did not focus on his golf swing, a practice that inevitably improves one’s game. By the time he reached the 18
^th
hole, he and the woman were ahead by two strokes and his golf ball rested only two feet from the hole. As he and his partner walked onto the green, she suggested an actual affair. He was so rattled by the suggestion that he began to shake. “After all,” the man said, “I was a happily married man and was totally faithful to my wife.”

“Except intellectually,” Goodwin thought at the time.

The trembling of the man’s hands caused him to miss his putts, and lose the tournament. He declined the woman’s offer immediately and promptly ended her role as the star of his sexual fantasies, or so he thought. The problem was that every time he fantasized about a new woman his old fantasy flame, now described by him as a “fantasy crasher,” made an uninvited guest appearance and dispatched his new fantasy-woman with a Cuisinart whose blade was whirling. It was suburbia’s version of the Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

When Goodwin sometimes replays the day that Sheila left him, he takes note of the fact that his sole emotion was anger, sometimes heightened to fury. He was angry because Sheila left him for someone he thought was inferior, angry because he would now become the object of pity as opposed to admiration, angry because the demise of his marriage would interfere with the country-club, couples only, structure of his life, and most of all, angry because she left him before he
left her. He was not sad, however. That absence of sadness, he would later say, spoke volumes about their relationship.

Armed with rehearsed recriminations and ready to do battle, Goodwin entered their house, but Sheila was gone. He knew, as he walked from room to room and inspected Sheila’s empty closets, took a mental inventory of what was taken and what remained, that her departure was irrevocable. While many objects were taken, one was placed conspicuously on their kitchen table. It was a shoebox with the smithereens remains of his remote control, which Goodwin had fondly named, “Mr. Remotee.” Apparently, before Sheila left she had taken the remote control and committed a violent act of “technocide” by smashing Mr. Remotee into several hundred pieces. “His” remains were placed into a wood-grained shoebox (undoubtedly a symbolic coffin) to which she stapled an index card intended by her to function as a headstone. Mr. Remotee’s epitaph was simply: “RIP.” He realized that RIP was not meant as a joke. For quite some time, Goodwin assumed Sheila meant “Rest In Peace” or “Remote In Pieces.” Sheila later told one of her friends that neither interpretation was correct. It simply was a short instruction to tear up the card, RIP.

There was a short message printed on small-personalized SG notepaper. In happier times, he had given Sheila the notepaper as a present and wrote on the gift card, “Use these to send me love notes.” Her final “love note” placed on top of the shoebox read: “I killed the remote control. This was not an act against you, but against it, since I felt you always liked it better than me.”

Sheila’s observation of her relative standing with respect to Mr. Remotee was actually true. In the final years of their marriage, the remote control was certainly more responsive to Goodwin then Sheila. At least he knew how to push its buttons, not that he didn’t try to push Sheila’s buttons. It seemed, however, that every one of Sheila’s buttons appeared to be in the off mode. Sheila, if asked about his observation, would no doubt have agreed.

At the bottom of the card there were two post-scripts. “PS. Since it’s over between us, you might as well know that it wasn’t because I couldn’t conceive that we didn’t have children. I just didn’t want any.”
Goodwin was stunned by this revelation. Sheila had told him that after many failed attempts to conceive she had seen her gynecologist who “sadly” (her word) told her she could never have children. Goodwin’s suggestions that they adopt were always rebuffed. The PS finished with, “I really never liked children. And, as for becoming pregnant, why ruin a perfectly good figure?” He knew that she was not joking.

The second PS read, “Philip, if you want to learn all the reasons that led me to leave you, go to our website: www.whyIleftPhilip.com.” With a substantial degree of apprehension, Goodwin turned on his computer and accessed the site only to find a photo of Sheila and Maxine sitting on the couch in Goodwin’s den. Sheila had her legs crossed. She was wearing bright red Manolo Blahniks, the same ones she wore when they first visited Maxine. Directly under the photo there was the notation: “Under Construction,” and “We’d love to have your thoughts. Please email us at
[email protected]

For the second time that day, Goodwin lost control, but this time the illiterate Dybbuk, who in this instance was probably on acid, was guiding Goodwin’s fingers over his keyboard, with the resultant email: “FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU, FUCK YOU AND YOUR FUCKING FUCKING LITTLE GIRLIE MAN LOVER. I PRAY THAT YOU GET STRUCK BY LIGHTNING AND THAT SYDNEY MAXINE HAS THE LIFE SUCKED OUT OF HIM.”

The email was a bit of a catharsis for him, one augmented by a large scotch that in turn was augmented by a second and a third scotch and a handful of Valium, prescribed at one time to enable Goodwin to handle a bad case of the “worries.” Sedated, but not calmed, he paced. As he did so, he tried to think of the things he might have done differently to save his marriage. Nothing much came to mind. He returned to the couch only to realize that it was the one used by Sheila and Maxine for their website photograph. Overcome by a feeling of revulsion and driven by an uncontrollable frenzy, evidenced in part by the foam that oozed slightly from the corner of his mouth, Goodwin propelled himself several feet in the air and landed by his desk. He took a Magic Marker from his desk draw and, without having
any sense of what he was going to do next, ran outside to his perfectly manicured front lawn.

They intended their house to not only reflect good and expensive taste, but a perfect, harmonious marriage and life. The day that they moved into their house, they named it “Harmony House,” and placed a small plaque bearing this bit of false advertising on their front gate. It was a convention of their friends and neighbors who aspired to impress and who had regal houses to give them names. Some of these names were suggestive of the owners’ interests, “Casa Del Sol,” for example, by a couple who loved to lie in the sun, despite medical advice to the contrary and who later could have changed the name to “Casa Del Melanoma.” Others were acerbic, “Ginger’s Divorce Settlement,” and some simply ostentatious, “Gelt,” (Yiddish for money). More than one house had “IPO.”

Grinding his teeth as he did it, Goodwin grabbed the HARMONY HOUSE sign and crossed out the “ony” from the word “harmony” to produce HARM HOUSE. He walked back towards the house, got halfway there, and returned to the sign. At the very foot of the sign he printed: SHEILA IS NOT WORTH SAVING!! Then, in a fit of rage, he took a ballpoint pen out of his pocket and stabbed the word SHEILA. He had intended to say: THIS MARRIAGE IS NOT WORTH SAVING, but in a Freudian slip way interjected the word “Sheila” instead of “this marriage.” As Goodwin began to enter the house, he realized his mistake, but merely waved his arm down in disgust and said to himself, “fuck it.”

Goodwin’s problem at that moment was that he couldn’t bring himself to enter the house. Somehow, the photograph of Sheila and Sydney Maxine on their website seemed to give them an actual presence in the house. Even in a symbolic sense, Goodwin could not bear to be near them. He sat on his patio overlooking his lovely garden that in happier times was the site of dinner parties, luncheons, and easy Sunday morning breakfasts where he and Sheila would parse through the New York Times. Those days, he knew, were long over.

He thought about their interaction with Sydney Maxine and what led up to the demise of his marriage. Maxine had impeccable
credentials and was credited to salvaging the marriages of quite a few couples at their club. Typical of many couples in their position, Goodwin and Sheila began their first session as a couple, venting their frustrations and placing blame on each other, not only for the untenable status of their marriage, but for other failures along the way. After hearing them out, Maxine opined that their difficulty stemmed from the fact that they were “comedically incompatible.” Though they had not heard of that term before, both Goodwin and Sheila thought it was apt. If there were a sense of humor spectrum, he and Sheila would be at its opposite ends.

To a degree, Goodwin’s 29 in Pragat’s sense of humor category was well deserved. He was the kind of person who possessed the unique ability to joke at will. Someone would make a remark and then, at the speed of light or as Goodwin would sometimes describe it, “the speed of lightheartedness,” he would blurt out a clever line or repartee. He sometimes felt that his quips were like involuntary reflexes, created by him without any conscious thought. On more than one occasion when sallying forth with a blast of humor, he would wonder, “Where did that come from?” Sheila by contrast had no sense of humor whatsoever.

When they were first married, Sheila had a decent sense of humor. While she rarely created jokes or issued amusing lines or responses, she certainly appreciated and understood humor in all its forms. Over a period of about 15 years, however, her sense of humor inexplicably diminished bit by bit to the point where it seemed to have evaporated. According to Goodwin, “She just didn’t get it. It was as if she had humor dementia.”

They were watching an old Woody Allen movie,
Love and Death
, when Goodwin concluded that Sheila had no sense of humor whatsoever. The movie was filled to the brim with great lines and the audience, Goodwin included, was laughing almost continuously. Sheila, by contrast, did not laugh once or even smile. When they left the theatre, Sheila critiqued the movie as “very odd” and “historically inaccurate.” In the right context her observations would have been quite funny, but Sheila was serious. Once home, Goodwin broached the subject as tactfully as he could and suggested that she might want to explore the
basis for what appeared to be a humorless condition. To his surprise, the suggestion was met with an explosive rebuff.