Woman on Top (3 page)

“She asked me where my Dad was. I just wanted her to leave me alone. If I told her the truth she would have asked me a thousand questions.”

“But you don’t really believe that’s where Daddy is, do you?”

“No!”

The first anniversary of Jake’s death approached, a whole year without Jake’s love permeating everything I did. Now determined to build a core of strength within so that no matter how low I might sink, no matter how much I missed Jake, I knew I would make it. What went down, must come up.

Laying in bed that night, while staring at the holes in the wall that had been made to hold intravenous lines for Jake, I decided to plug them and reclaim my bedroom. With the wall painted and a new pink flowered duvet, the room appeared revived and the chains of cancer removed at last.

It took me a year and a half to take Jake’s clothes out of my closet, and then I kissed and hugged his shirts goodbye. It took me two years to take off my wedding ring. First I put it on my other hand and then began practicing taking it on and off. I even put Jake’s desk in the basement and threw away his radiology journals.

Breaking out of my shell felt terrifying and fear pervaded every step of learning to live all over again. I created a comfortable place for myself where I wasn’t crying myself to sleep anymore, but it was such a cold place. Living in a world with tunnel vision, taking care of two young children, I denied myself the many experiences and pleasures the couples around me seemed to enjoy.

Secure in my widow’s walk I took no risks. I did not date. When any man showed interest in me, I only was reminded I had lost my match. Not running away from a marriage lost in divorce, I was not consumed with anger at an ex-spouse. But I feared spending the next forty years alone. No men, no sex, no love.

And yet the kids’ energy and resilience pulled me into their world. Chloe and Ben would lead the way back into life. I would lose them if I didn’t make a life for them; they had suffered enough.

“Is Daddy in the same heaven as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig?” Ben asked after Little League one day.

“Sure he is.”

“Then he must be very happy.”

“I never thought of it that way. I bet he is.”

For two years after Jake died we lived on money he had left us and I felt grateful for that time to be with Chloe and Ben. Now I needed a job and money and passing the Bar that summer removed one major hurdle in the way.

A friend suggested I call the law department of a large insurance company in central Connecticut. He said the General Counsel at the company, a woman, was paving the way for female lawyers. Since Ben would be starting first grade in the fall and I desperately wanted to be there to put him on the bus in the morning and when he arrived home, I asked about a part-time job.

“The only part-time jobs we have are obtained through a temp agency,” the woman informed me.

“Why?”

“Well, that is how we’ve always done it. It is essentially the policy of our department,” she responded.

“Why?”

An hour later, after we had discussed over and over again the logic of how “we’ve always done it”, she caved and offered me an interview. I was hired immediately after the meeting.

My friends repeatedly assured me the sun would sneak into my hobbled world again. I no longer doubted them as a certain lightness returned when the denial and anger died.

Then, no longer feeling sorry for Jake but for myself, I wanted to live again. It was not the highs that I craved, but the lows I feared. Just feeling okay sufficed.

Re-entering the world of my neighbors, my friends, no longer did I draw them into the darkness of my life. It was time to live in the compelling light of theirs and move forward. I started the car and headed home aching for Len to call again.

CHAPTER 2

November

F
or our second date, Len surprised me in a number of ways. First, he drove to Montwood, the small town where I lived, a two-hour plus from his home in New Jersey. Second, he looked dramatically better dressed in a black sports jacket, grey slacks and a light grey button down shirt. We were off to a good start.

We decided to meet at Mia’s, a favorite Italian restaurant of the area, a favorite mostly by default with only one other good restaurant in the area. Len was waiting, once again, when I walked through the door. Sitting on a stool at the bar, he scanned my tight velvet pants and turtleneck as I walked up to him. I had just spent the past hour trying on every outfit in my closet.

When we were seated, he ordered two glasses of Char-donnay.

“So, why were you reading the personals?” I asked.

He was slow to answer.

“About a month after my wife died, I received a book in the mail. It was sent anonymously. It was all about dating and said that the best place to meet quality people was through the personals in
New York
magazine. All of my friends encouraged me to move on. They said that I suffered enough through her illness.”

Was there really a book? Why had I never seen it?

“Didn’t your friends try to fix you up?” I asked.

“Well,” he hesitated, “I just didn’t feel ready for that. What would that say about my marriage?”

He continued, “I’ve responded to a number of women but they’ve all been awful. They profess their beauty in the ad and turn out just the opposite. I was married to a beautiful woman.”

I had described myself as beautiful but cute, and yet pretty made for a more accurate description. The word beautiful had been used to describe me, but I knew it was with a great deal of affection and largesse. Nevertheless, men had told me that they wouldn’t respond to an ad if a woman didn’t describe herself as “beautiful”. And I was, after all, competing with pages of:

Sexy long legged beauty. Strawberry blond,
voluptuous, successful and waiting
to meet her Prince Charming.

I thought about his letter. He had written that he had never responded to an ad before and I had thought that his letter to me was his first.

“I worried that one of my letters would go to someone who knew me. Can you imagine?” he said.

“Can’t imagine that.”

He seemed anxious to reveal himself to me and I attributed this to a lack of experience in dating, a desire to connect, albeit with a stranger.

“Have you gone out with other men who responded to your ad?” Len asked.

“No, your letter resonated with me. I found it warm and thoughtful.”

“So why did you place the ad?”

“Two months before I placed the ad, I was flying on a business trip with a colleague. I told him that I had broken up with Phil, a physician and my boyfriend of three months, the night before. Phil often acted more like a child. He seemed like an extremely needy guy. I actually felt sorry for him.” Len’s eyes registered that comment. They radiated a clear message of anything but weakness.

“Phil wasn’t going to be hard to get over. I just didn’t know how difficult he would be to replace. My colleague suggested I put an ad in the personals, and he wrote the ad. I figured any failure of this venture could be blamed on him,” I said.

Len, as he had on our first date, sat upright in his chair. How could he remain motionless for so long displaying no tics, no nervous habits, no energy leaking anywhere?

“And your family? Do you come from a large family?” I asked.

“I come from an incredibly screwed up family. My mother was a bitch. My brother’s an alcoholic and my sister committed suicide. Only Judy knew that.”

As he shared this with me, his eyes felt imprisoning.

“They found my sister dead in her car in the garage.”

“How’d you know it wasn’t murder?”

“It was suicide. Her first husband died and her second husband was a nightmare. He drove her to it.”

“You must have been devastated,” I said.

“I cried. I told everyone she had a stroke. I miss her, I really miss her.”

Tears came to his eyes.

“I’ve never dealt with my feelings about the past very well, particularly strong feelings. I’ve built some strong walls and solve problems in a different way than you do. I can tell that already. You seem to wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s part of your warmth and attractiveness, I must say,” he said. The headwaiter approached the table and interrupted us. “Excuse me sir, but we need to seat the table next to you. Would you move your chair?”

Len glared at the man and didn’t move an inch.

“If the tables weren’t so close together, there wouldn’t be a problem,” he finally said.

“I’m sorry sir,” the headwaiter, standing erect, said.

Len glanced at me and moved his chair.

“He needs to learn the word ‘please’.”

Len leaned his elbows on the table and bent towards me. “So what was it like growing up as Kate?” Len asked “I felt kind of invisible. My mother focused on her career and everyone always told me about the importance of her work since she was the Dean of a Pharmacy College. I got the message that my needs weren’t that important so I felt kind of helpless. Like I had to compete with her job. She’s a wonderful woman and her colleagues and friends adore her. And in her retirement and because of Jake’s cancer she became a devoted mother. She’s been incredible with my kids.”

“But doesn’t she mind leaving her New York life when she’s in Connecticut with your kids?”

“Ben told me that she took him to McDonald’s once near our house and I guess she’d never been to one before. So this sophisticated, urbane woman went up to one of the McDonald’s employees and asked where she could check her coat.”

Len gave a smug, approving look.

“My mother has acknowledged that her great sense of purpose and pride during my childhood was her career, not her kids,” I said.

“And how has that played out in your life?”

“I got lucky. Jake was very loving and giving and he seemed to anticipate my needs, probably better than I did or do now,” I responded.

“So does the next guy in your life have to compete with memories of Jake?”

If it were possible for Len to hold himself any more rigid, he had just managed to do so.

“Jake wouldn’t recognize me now. I relied on him so much. But since his death I’ve become so strong because I had to for the sake of my children. And I’m working full time as a lawyer. He never saw that part of me,” I said.

“I’m not sure you answered the question. But that’s ok.”

I glanced up and looked around the restaurant. It appeared packed with diners but Len and I had retreated into our own little world. The entire evening he kept his eyes focused on me despite the buzz of the restaurant around us. They were certainly the one attractive part of his face. All of my life, I had been told that my best feature were my large hazel eyes, that they sparkled and laughed. Len’s eyes appeared serious, old, wise, and always calculating.

“You know, it’s funny. Yesterday we had a meeting of the Law Department at the insurance company where I work and our General Counsel told us that we should all have a ‘five-year plan’. I sat there thinking that I’m not sure I have a ‘five-minute plan’,” I said.

“Oh, I have a five-year plan.”

“I bet you do. I’m just not that ambitious. My mother was the prototype of the ambitious woman. My plan has always been for Chloe and Ben to have a wonderful childhood, a sense of optimism, everything missing from mine. And Jake’s death hasn’t stopped me.”

At last, Len’s face revealed a warmth seeping through a crack in the machine like workings of his mind. What had I said that resonated?

“Although, even if I’m not ambitious, my plan is to keep my job so we have some money,” I said.

“I don’t think women need to work. Judy never did.”

“I haven’t heard a comment like that from a man in my entire adult life.”

Len picked up his glass of wine.

“I’m not your typical man,” he said as he took a long drink of the wine.

I took a deep breath to stifle any laugh that might emerge.

“With your mom working, you probably weren’t sheltered as a girl growing up in the City.”

I told Len how in retrospect, I couldn’t believe how little supervision I had growing up in Manhattan. From second grade on, my parents allowed me to walk home from school alone. And those were the pre-Giuliani streets of New York. But my father repeatedly told me not to talk to strangers. One day when I was in second grade a car pulled up next to me as I walked along First Avenue and asked me to get in. They opened the car door and offered me candy. I was about to get in when I heard my father’s voice in my head and ran away. I never told my parents about that.

When I finished Len looked ready to pounce. I just wasn’t sure at whom.

“In high school, my best friend Sarah and I walked to school together and each morning a man stood in his second floor window naked as we went by. We used to giggle at him. We never told anyone.”

“You seem to have turned out pretty normal. None of this frightened you?” Len said.