Number Four

It was late. Close to midnight. I turned off my headlights and pulled into a patch of grass in his neighbor's yard. When I turned off the engine, my body was vibrating from anxiety. I had to pee. I turned around to check on my sleeping five-year-old son wrapped in a blanket in the backseat. What the hell was I doing?

I locked my car and walked the short distance to the end of his drive. If what he said was true, there would be no lights on in the house. He had cancelled our date because he wasn't feeling well and was "hitting the sack early," he said. That had been four hours ago, but my intuition told me something was wrong.

I met Love Number Four a year after my divorce from Jason's dad. My Beetle Bug was ailing, and I was told that he was the best Volkswagen doctor in Greenwood. Handsome, rough around the edges, self-assured, a man's man and not the least bit interested in me. Bingo. We have a winner, folks.

After several more visits to the car doctor's office, Number Four took notice and asked if I'd like to go for a ride in his airplane sometime. Youbetcha. One date led to another and before long we were exclusive.

EXCLUSIVE

Excluding or not admitting other things.

                                                  --Goggle Search

The house was dark. No lights on anywhere. What an idiot I was for doubting him. I had caught him in lies before, but he apologized and said he would never do it again, and here I was at midnight standing in his driveway in my pajamas questioning his loyalty and honesty and feeling so stup...

WAIT A MINUTE! IS THAT A LIGHT IN THE KITCHEN?

Number Four was a mystery. Unfortunately for me, I was attracted to men who kept me guessing. Was I that special one, or not? Four's declaration of love was affirming, but his actions were disturbing. Gone for days at a time with no explanation, last minute cancellations, taking the phone off the hook whenever I was at his house, and the plethora of women he referred to as "just friends." 

It was the kitchen light. Maybe he'd gotten up from his sick bed for a glass of water, thus the need for the light, and here I was questioning his integrity. I felt bad about that, but I was already there, so why not just take a peek for reassurance sake. Once I saw this poor sick man all by himself, I could beat down the doubt demons, calm my anxiety, drive home, and get a good night's sleep.

With every step up the drive, my anxiety grew more unbearable. Boy, did I ever have to pee. The window with the light was getting closer. How long does it take to drink a glass of water and go back to bed? Closer, closer. Ten feet away, eight, six, four...

I see him. Oh, the poor guy. He had to sit down at the kitchen table to rest before making it back to his bedroom. But wait! He's not in his jammies. He all dressed up. And he's animated, smiling, and talking. 

She was very young. Much younger than me. Pretty, too. Much prettier than... . I know what you're thinking. You thought I was going to say "prettier than me" didn't you? Am I right? I thought so. She was much prettier than the last young lady I had caught him with, but then again she was "just a friend," he said.

I walked back to the car, opened both doors on the passenger's side and peed on the neighbor's lawn. I drove home, put Jason back in bed, and then called his number. It rang busy. I called every fifteen minutes until he answered at three something in the morning. He was feeling a little bit better, he said, but he was going to have to cancel our date for the next night because of his contagious state.

I know what you're thinking. What if the neighbor had seen me peeing in his yard? Am I right? I thought so.

Magpies and Tapioca

I sat on the couch drinking cherry Kool-Aid and eating a ham salad sandwich. Tommy was sitting on the floor in front of me and we were watching cartoons. "Don't spill that Kool-Aid on the carpet, Carol Louise. It won't come out!" I squeezed the glass tighter between my knees and said in a voice that was drowned out by the hysteria playing out on the television, "I won't. I'll be careful." 

The birds looked identical: black magpies with gray bellies, almond-shaped beaks with big toothy smiles, and happy eyes that belied their mischievous intent. The only way to tell them apart was by their accents: one British and the other, Brooklyn, but they were equally cynical, rude, and antagonistic. Their unsuspecting victims, who were portrayed as dimwits and dopes, were simply naive, innocent, and unaware of the suffering about to befall them. Watching the birds be disrespectful and mean to others made me uncomfortable, so I asked Tommy if we could watch a different cartoon: Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse "No!" he said, turning around and pinching the fatty part of my thigh and twisting it until I cried out in pain. He was the supreme ruler of the TV, and besides, he liked the violence the birds brought into our lives everyday from three to six o'clock.

"Don't spill that Kool-Aid on the carpet, Carol Louise. It won't come out!"

"I won't. I'll be careful." I pressed my knees tighter into the glass between my legs.

She came out of the kitchen with two bowls of Tapioca. "Oh, I don't like that cartoon. Those birds are so mean," she said, as she sat our dessert down on the coffee table between Tommy and me. Our babysitter stared at the television for several seconds--just long enough to see the birds cause great pain and suffering to a barnyard dog--before leaving the room in disgust. "They shouldn't be allowed to make cartoons with violence," she screamed from the kitchen, followed by, "Don't spill that Kool-Aid on the carpet, Carol Louise. It won't come out!" 

"I won't. I'll be careful." 

Behind her back, the neighborhood kids called her "the-cranky-old-maid-in-the-ugly-red-house." At first, I was happy she said no to my mother's request to watch me for three hours after school. She wasn't particularly fond of children she said, but then when another working mother in our neighborhood asked if she could watch her nine-year-old son, Tommy, the thought of making money, while two kids sat in front of a TV for three hours, wasn't so bad after all.

While the magpies were taking turns hitting a blubbering dog over the head with a mallet, Tommy stood up, and with no warning, whacked me on the head with the spoon from his Tapioca bowl. This malicious and unprovoked attack would start a chain reaction of unfortunate events that produced a big red stain on the carpet...

"Oh, no! Tell me you didn't spill Kool-Aid on the carpet, Carol Louise!"

...and would end with an unsuspecting, innocent, blubbering victim naively unaware of the pain and suffering about to befall her.

Fall's Tease

It was fall's tease. A preview of what was to come. A month away from winter and it was snowing, but once the snowflakes touched the ground, they disappeared. With all the lights out in my farmhouse, I stood at my kitchen window and starred at the floodlight on my neighbor's back porch. One of nature's incredible spectacles was playing in 3D in the space between Margaret's house and mine, but the beauty was lost on me. My confused and cluttered mind had more important things to think about.

I found the farmhouse by luck. I knocked on a stranger's door to ask if she knew of a rental close by. As if the lady who introduced herself as Margarget were expecting me and with much enthusiasm she told me my timing was excellent. The farmhouse next door that her grandfather had built in the 1800's had just that weekend been vacated. It was that easy. One day I'm living in Indianapolis and the next Evansville.

He had told me that if I married this man from Evansville, he would come to the church, stand in the balcony, and yell, "NO!  STOP! YOU ARE MARRYING THE WRONG MAN!" Really? He would actually do that? He would come to my wedding and make a marriage-interruptus scene? I have to admit that that did sound pretty cool--two men in love with me at the same time and one professing his love in such an outrageous way--but then again, maybe not. He had been my first love and he had had nine years to ask for my hand in marriage, but every time I asked, "When are we going to get married," he would answer, "When I get married, I'll be the one doing the asking." So, I don't know how you feel about that, but my thinking was, "If you snooze, you lose."  So one day I met this handsome, slow-talking, southern man from Evansville and gave Love Number One no notice. In an instant, or so it seemed, I was engaged to be married and moving to Evansville to be close to my betrothed.

BACK TO THE SNOW, THE FARMHOUSE, THE CONFUSED AND CLUTTERED MIND

I couldn't sleep. Too much to think about. What if I was making a mistake? What if Love Number One was right about Love Number Two? I didn't know him long enough to commit to forever and ever. Why did I say yes so soon? Maybe I should lengthen the engagement? Spend some time apart? What was the hurry anyway? Long relationships are the best because you get to know everything EVERYTHING about them before you make a commitment to spend the rest of your life with them.

Tap, Tap, Tap. What was that? Was it snowing harder and the flakes were tap, tap, tapping against my bedroom window?

Tap! Tap! Tap!  Nah! Probably not snow.

"You are making a big mistake. Can I come in?" he pleaded as he stood shivering in the cold. During the nine years that we dated he had tapped on my bedroom windows on many occasions (remember what I said about about dating someone a long time so you get to know everything about them?). Even though the last thing I expected to see was Number One's face peering at me through my bedroom window, I wasn't surprised either.

This was my last chance, he said. After making the effort on my behalf to come all the way to southern Indiana in the middle of the night and in a snowstorm, was it not obvious who really loved me. Don't nine years of history mean anything?

Yep? Nine years of history means everything. Have a safe trip home.

An Enchanted Time

She was born in an upstairs bedroom of a two-story farmhouse in Evansville, Indiana, on Thursday morning, June 20, 1895. Her mother was well attended with female members of her family, and the delivery was without complications. As was the custom of the time, her father was relegated to another part of the house. They named the first of their two daughters Margaret, and she would live through five wars, the Great Depression, the moon landing, two presidential assassinations (McKinley and Kennedy), the invention of the information super highway (Internet), and the worldwide computer crash that never occurred on the first day of January, 2000. She was one of a very small percentage of people who could say they lived in three centuries.

In the early morning hours of June 21, 1895, as the young farmer's wife sat in the dim light from a oil lamp and rocked her hours-old baby back to sleep, she could not have been any happier than she was at that very moment. She had been blessed with a large, supportive family who lived minutes away, a God-fearing, hardworking, family-first husband, and now a beautiful, healthy daughter. Margaret's mother could not, in her most fanciful dreams, know what the next one hundred and five years would bring to the world and her precious daughter.

1975

She opened the door of her small bungalow, and when she saw me standing on her porch, she said, "Well, what do I owe this pleasure, fraulein?" Even with a curve to her back, she towered over me. She was wearing her Sunday best, along with a pearl neckless and matching earrings. Her white hair was pulled back into a French roll and kept in line by an army of bobby pins. Before I could explain the reason for my visit, she pulled me inside, and within minutes I was sitting at Margaret's kitchen table, drinking a cup of coffee, anticipating that German coffee cake (kuchan) still baking in the oven, and listening to stories from an enchanted time way back when.

So much had happened in her short eighty years, she told me. "The turn of the century was a wonderful time to grow up." She didn't know where to begin. "Just start at the beginning," I said. I had no job, no social engagements, no pressing appointments. In this unsettling, complicated life of mine, I needed a distraction from the battles being fought in my head. I found it in a time machine in Margaret's kitchen. "Tell me everything," I said, "Take me back to 1895."

Her parents, extended family and friends were from Germany and had settled in Evansville all within a short horse and buggy ride from each other. Major events such as building a house or barn were shared by the men in the community while the women fixed the meals and brought them to the site. Hard work brought rewards and benefits, she told me. No one complained about the how hard life was back then because at the end of the day there was a sense of accomplishment and purpose as well as a spirit of comradery and fellowship that came from helping each other. "Did you know that the house you are renting from me next door was built that way?" she said as she got up from the table, pulled back the kitchen curtains, and pointed to an old farmhouse a stone's throw away. Sitting under an attached lean-to sat my little yellow VW bug. "That was my dear, dear grandparents' home," she said. "I loved them so much." 

So what brought me, at age thirty, to a small German community in the southwest corner of Indiana in the first place? Instead of enjoying a Saturday night out with someone my own age, why was I sitting in an eighty-year-old lady's kitchen looking out a window at her grandparents' home that was now my home?

LOVE

Margaret found her true love a little later than most women at that time. But, she would never settle for less than what she wanted in a lifetime mate. She was patient, willing to wait and in her mid-twenties, Freddie came calling. "Oh, how I loved that man," she said more than once. Even though he was quite a bit shorter than her, she wasn't going let a detail so insignificant taint all of the other qualities that made him so special. Just like her father, her new husband was a God-fearing, hardworking man who always put family first. "It was the best time to be young and in love."

It became an every morning ritual. The combined aroma from coffee brewing and kuchan baking never failed to greet me the moment I opened the door to my neighbor's home. She always met me with a hug and kiss, a place at a fully-dressed table with linen tablecloth, napkins and silver flatware for two. Then she would start the time machine, and we would travel back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Her stories of a golden age forever lost in history captured my imagination, fed my romantic notion of life and love, and convinced me that I had been born fifty years too late. Over time, we became close. I cherished those mornings in the company of an articulate, well-dressed, lady full of proper manners, charm and grace who claimed to have been born at just the perfect time in all of history. "It was a simpler time back then," she said. "We didn't have all of the modern distractions that took us away from what is important in life." Sometimes, when we were leaving one event to attend another (Freddie's new Model T, their wedding, the birth of her son, etc.,)  I could  sense her slip down into a state of melancholy. After a while, and much to my surprise, I also fell into the sadness with her. As if it were my own life we were reminiscing about, I mourned the loss of the good ole days along with her. I longed for the simple life, connection to a large, extended family, sense of community, being a part of something bigger and more important than just myself, the love.

THE LOVE

Oh, yes. The love. That's why I was living next door in the farmhouse that her grandfather and a community of family and friends had built.  It was love, or the hope, promise, and illusion of love, that persuaded me (without one iota of thought) to quit my job in Indy, pack my Beetle Bug with a few belongings and move to, well, his town...so we could live a block away from each other, get to know one another better, get marri...uh...go our separate ways.

1995

Margaret made the news. She was a centenarian. One hundred years old. It had been a very long time since the two of us sat at her kitchen table and travelled back in time. The coffee and kuchan smells were exactly as I had remembered them. She still wore her Sunday best and the pearls were there, too, but the stories were gone. It was her memory. Not so good anymore. Her melancholy was lost to a bit of senility and my melancholy was gone as well. I was fifty now, divorced with one son, and my youthful fantasies, thoughts and expectations about life and love had been reshaped by having lived in the real world. Twenty years had passed since I had come to Evansville looking for love. I didn't find it, but I did discover a sweet little old lady with a time machine living right next door.

2000

My precious friend passed away on August 8, 2000. She was one hundred and five.

Margaret's grandparents' home that I rented in 1975

I Don't Belong Here

Even though Robert and Louise's lust and fate deposited me into this time slot on earth (1945-?), I don't feel that I belong here. I was born fifty years too late. Oh, I adapted because isn't that what we misplaced misfits do? Sorry. I didn't mean to include you as a misfit. Everyone knows how well you fit into this texting, tweeting, hash tagging, facebooking, googling, twerking, bff-ing, lol-ing, :)-ing, fake reality tv, high speed world. But enough about you; let's talk about me, shall we?

I have never fully adapted to this thoroughly modern world; I faked it. I'm sixty-eight years old now and I'm still faking it (don't tell Tom). I'm tired of pretending. I live here but I don't fit in. I speak the language, but this technologically advanced, faster than the speed of light, self-indulgent, materialistic lifestyle is foreign to me. Had I been born in 1895, I would have missed all of this, this, this...what do you even call what is happening here?

2013: DINNER AT A CROWDED SITTING-ROOM-ONLY RESTAURANT

"I don't belong here," I said while listening to a conversation that had absolutely nothing to do with me.  The conversation had been pleasant enough: fine wines, five-star restaurants, Broadway plays, art galleries, mutual funds, European vacations, luxury cars, designer bags, favorite reality tv shows. Then without warning the conversation took an abrupt right turn and life, as the baby boomers at the table knew it, came crashing to the floor. Well, it hadn't actually crashed yet but it was imminent--#THESKYISFALLING. With the vivid imagery of what's to come, everyone at the table could now marinate in all the gory, graphic details of the upcoming apocalyptic horrors until a few sensitive stomachs threatened to upchuck that delicious filet mignon smothered in tantalizing Danish garlic cream reduction sauce. Have you heard what's for dessert?  "Better than sex" chocolate, chocolate divine cake. Decaf anyone?

"I don't belong here," I said again but no one heard me. Too many people talking at the same time with the volume turned up. Too many opinions of the same flavor--was it vanilla?--yet some had peanuts sprinkled on top while others had pecans. So even though they were the same flavor, they were just different enough to make the anxiety palatable to almost everyone.

"I don't belong here." Well, to be fair to those around me, I was mumbling to myself so possibly no one heard me.  As I age the brain filters that used to protect me from inappropriate behavior and comments are starting to lose their effectiveness. They're almost seven decades old now so it's possible they may be a little clogged. Making a proclamation that "I don't belong here" could be one of those comments that should be blocked. Not wanting to embarrass myself, I decided to sit silently, tug on a long nose hair, and mumble to myself, "I don't belong here. I don't belong here. I don't belong here."

After excusing myself for a trip to the lady's room, I returned to Tom's and my table for two. My husband sat speechless as he watched me take my chair from our table and squeeze myself between two boisterous baby boomers at the next table over. As I sat listening to Doom, Gloom, Crash, and Burn, my husband leaned over and tapped me on the shoulder, "Sweetie," he said. "You don't belong here." 

"Oh, no. That's not true. I do belong here. Have you heard what we're having for dessert?"

Standing in the Shadow of an Icon

"The hardcovers are two dollars and the paperbacks a dollar," a gray-haired man about seventy said as I knelt down to dig through a box of books sitting on the ground next to an antique wood-burning stove that he was stuffing with newspaper and attempting to light. The brisk autumn wind snuffed out match after match, but he didn't care. He wasn't going anywhere.

To the left of the stove was a drop-leaf table, and sitting on top were a large cactus, a pile of mismatched dishes, some flatware, and a stack of white napkins. I picked up a napkin. "One dollar each. I warshed them napkins myself," he said between match strikes. "If there's one thing I hate, it's a dirty napkin sittin' on my lap, so I warshed'em." I smiled and told him I appreciated him washing my napkins and handed him four dollars.

I continued to look while he continued to talk. "That was when I was throwing heat for the reds," he said, but I had no idea what that meant, so I smiled and nodded. "That was before Nam," he continued. I smiled again. While he was fiddling with the stove, I walked inside his thrift shop so I could browse without chat. From the parking lot, he saw me staring up at a wall that was covered with framed pictures of sports celebrities. "All them pictures on the wall are signed with authentic signatures,"  he said now standing beside me. The fire was going strong, so he could devote all of his time to his one lone customer. "Yep, I pounded the zone back then," he said as he pointed to some object at a distance, but my focus was back outside on the cactus.

With the thrift shop owner by my side, we returned to the drop-leaf table. I heard him say "my brother and Johnny Bench" then he began to tell me all about the cactus. Huh? Wait a minute! What does his brother and Johnny Bench have to do with this plant? Why does he have so many baseball stars' autographed pictures? And what does "throw heat for the reds" and "pound the zone"mean?

"Where you a baseball player?" I asked as I studied the succulent.

"Yeah. I threw a few for the Cincinnati Reds in my day," he said.

"You were a pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds?"

"Yep!"

He now had my full attention. Cactus? What cactus?  Was I standing in the shadow of an icon, a famous baseball pitcher from the past? I thought about the hundreds, maybe thousands, of baseball cards Jason still has in his barn. I started buying them for him when he was just a toddler, thirty years go, thinking that possibly one card one day would bring a fortune. Is this our lucky day? I mean Jason's lucky day?

"What is your name?" I asked.

"John Strong."

Oh my goodness! What if we have his card? We could be rich. I mean, Jason could be rich. "Okay, I've got it," I said. "John Strong. Pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds.  I'll Google you as soon as I get home."

He stoked the fire in the stove and scratched his head. "Oh, I don't have any of them Googles left," he said.  "I gave them all to my children."

Huh?

So...what I just said about getting rich.  Never mind.

The Old Man and the Leopard Lady

"I'm going home with her tonight," he said as he sipped on his Martini. He was leaning against the bar at a wedding reception for his friends' daughter when he bragged about his plans with the bride's twenty-year-old maid of honor later that evening. With a confident grin on his face, he told the bartender, "Yep! A little evening delight headin' my way." He gulped the last bit of his drink, laid his glass down on the bar, and swaggered after the pretty young girl of his desires.  At fifty-something, but looking sixty-something, he did not have what the world (and the maid of honor) values: youth, beauty and, of course, money. If he had been filthy rich, he might have been excused for having succumbed to old age, and his evening might have turned out differently, but as it was he went home alone, again.

She looked in the bathroom mirror and sighed. Maybe it was the lighting. Surely, she didn't look that fat and old. She knew she didn't look eighteen anymore, but she didn't realize she had that many wrinkles and frown lines and gray hair and when did she get that spare tire around her waist? Everyone told her she looked young for her age, so there was definitely something amiss with the lighting. At forty-nine she was still thirty. At heart. And that's what she told everyone she met on Match.com.

Single, non-smoker, occasional drinker,

spiritual, sensitive but not overly emotional,

love puppies and kittens, anything "hearts,"

fluffy pillows and watching The Bachelor.

Love romantic getaways w/ that special one.

Young. Pretty. Thirty. At Heart.

His profile said he was thirty-eight and he appeared to be perfect. She sent him an out-of-focus ten-year-old picture, and arranged to meet him at Bubba's Bar the day after the lighting in the bathroom had gone amiss. Not to worry, though.  Botox would smooth out the wrinkles, the tanning salon would camouflage the age spots, Miss Clairol would cover up the gray, Spanx would trap the fat, and lots of makeup would disguise the rest. Besides, Bubba's was dark inside and after a few drinks, her great personality would blossom and win over Mr. Perfect.

"I'm NOT going home with her tonight," he said as he sipped on his Martini. He was standing at the bar scrutinizing all of the women and eliminating the ones his age as they walked by. He was looking for someone young because he was young. At heart. Dating younger women was perfectly normal for men in their fifties and beyond, he believed. Men were never too old to appreciate and desire youth and beauty.

Her hammer toes made it difficult to squeeze her feet into the 4" high black leather boots covered with pink heart-shaped rhinestones. It took longer than she expected, and it made her later than she had planned. But her tardiness would be excused once he saw how dazzling and sexy she looked in her form-fitting black leotards and leopard skin fake leather jacket that, when unbuttoned, revealed her enormous and natural-looking implants. It's true. She did look, well, incredible. Everyone stopped what they were doing and gawked as she slow strutted up to Bubba's bar. 

"I wonder who will be going home with her tonight?" he whispered to himself as he sipped on his third Martini. He had been waiting on someone, but now after seeing this beauty, he couldn't remember who. Since forty his eyesight had been failing him, and at a distance, the leopard lady at the other end of the bar looked liked someone he wanted to meet. 

She had been in Bubba's for only five minutes when a sixty-something man approached her and asked if he could buy her a drink. She looked around for her date--he would be the nice looking young man, thirtyish--but there was no one fitting that description in the room, so she accepted the older man's offer.

After he bought her her fourth drink he remembered why he was at the bar. He was meeting someone and she was late. Maybe she had come, had seen him sitting with another woman and left. He hoped that wasn't the case because upon closer examination, it was obvious that Leopard Lady was charming with a great personality and had been a real beauty at one time, but she was not as young as he preferred his women to be, and she was not up to his high standards. He wondered if he should excuse himself and go back to the other end of the bar and wait for his date.

She had been stood up, again. At first it was just moist eyes. Then the tears began to run down her face which she quickly blotted away with a napkin so her mascara wouldn't run and ruin her makeup that took an hour to apply. She knew better than to have that last Daiquiri. Four Big D's always brought up the sadness, even when she was happy, or thought she was. She laid her head down on the bar and began to silently sob. No one appeared to notice and when she sat back up she saw that the pleasant older man who had sat and chatted with her for the longest time was sitting back at the other side of the bar. "Just as well," she whispered under her breath. "Surely he didn't think I would be going home with him tonight?"

At midnight, after an entire evening sitting at Bubba's Bar, he decided his thirty-year-old on-line date wasn't coming. Now sober, he paid his tab and headed for the door. Leopard Lady was also leaving. They walked together but separately to the parking lot but when she stumbled, he hurried to break her fall. "Should you be driving?" he asked with sincere concern.

She got to the door of the bar at the exact same time the old man did. What bad timing, she thought. She didn't want the uncomfortable task of rejecting him--even though it was plain to see he had been quite handsome in his earlier life, she preferred younger men--should he ask to see her again. As they were walking to their cars she twisted her ankle and began to fall. The man quickly grabbed her arm and held on until she was able to regain her balance, but it was true. She probably should not be driving.

"Would you like me to take you home?" the older gentleman asked.

"Are you sure it's not a problem?" Leopard Lady answered.

"Not at all. I have no plans. My date never showed up tonight, so I'd be happy to get you home safe and sound."

"My ride home didn't show up either, so that would be very nice of you."

So off they drove, into the night, the old man and the leopard lady. Through the dark and empty streets they continued where they had left off at the bar. Their conversation was comfortable and the humor and laughs came easy. When she pointed our her house, he pulled his car into her driveway and walked her to the door. They shook hands, bid each other a good night and never again did their paths cross.