The Bear….Chapter II

THREE THOUSAND miles away from the New Jersey strip club where X was passing through a womb of life he had never passed through before–molting his suaveness in exchange for a mantle of comforting defeat (“It’s all out of my hands now” he thought to himself as he drove home with Katrina)–a different evening was unfolding in the California suburbs of Walnut Creek. Sally was going for her usual evening walk with TJ and Tammie. As they walked through the fading sunlight trailed by their growing shadows, their golden lab Lilly tugged at her retractable leash. TJ grasped onto the handle of the leash and tried his best to reign her in every few steps. His body movements made him look like a professional fisherman reeling in a marlin.

The suburb of Walnut Creek was like a giant laybrinth of stucco and concrete and always seemed to be under construction. There were endless variations of the same house and everything smelled of fresh grass, chlorinated swimming pools and eucalyptus trees. Each home had the smell of drywall and new carpet and this further added to the feeling that the whole sub-development was one giant construction site. Sometimes Sally felt like she was going crazy here, losing her depth perception or something. There was no privacy, or very little of it. The houses were so close together that she couldn’t help thinking that the developer must have had voyeuristic tendencies. She always had to keep her mini blinds closed and this made her feel imprisoned.

Sally was from the northeast where people were strong and wide open space was plentiful. In California even the most sophisticated people seemed like dependent babies. Their leather jackets smelled as bad as their museum-like homes in Sally’s mind (which were so clean, by the way, that you could eat off any floor in any room–even the bathroom).

She missed X. Or, at least, she missed who he used to be. X had changed during the twelve years they were married. When X had a job in Manhattan and they owned a home in the suburbs of New Jersey, Sally couldn’t have been happier. She was content to finally settle down and hone her child-rearing skills while X fought his way through the daily rat race for his six figures and liberal fringe benefits. But soon having it all wasn’t enough for X. He quickly upgraded his Honda SRV for an $80,000 Range Rover. This kept him happy up to a point but soon there would be another hole in his life which could only be filled with something electric and shiny. And the holes didn’t stop after that. The golden road of their life was soon becoming a potholed street and X kept trying to pave the potholes with 24 inch plasma TVs, an addition to their home which included a gym and jacuzzi room and horses for their dauther Tammie (who was barely out of diapers at that point).

The years continued on this way. TJ was born, Tammy got bigger and Sally had learned to convince herself that she was happy enough so that she had a hard time believing otherwise. Then one day they started to argue about petty things. These arguments soon transformed from minor quibbles into serious fights full of accusations, evasiveness and prevarication. “Who are you competing against? Who are you trying to impress?” Sally would yell each night. “I’m trying to give us a future,” X would say defensively. “Why does that make me so cold and heartless?”

And the fighting and arguing continued until their strength began to wane. And then the fighting and arguing became less. And then it stopped. One week before Sally asked for a divorce they were driving through Camden when they got lost. Their GPS tracking system gave them wrong directions and they were soon zigzagging their way through unfamiliar ghetto streets lined with stolen Ford Expeditions and derelict, fire-damaged houses. “Just stop and ask for directions,” Sally said. “There’s a man right there.” She pointed to a homeless man with an unkempt beard wearing a dirty overcoat who was slumped against the wall of a vacant department store.

When X pulled over the man was all too happy to stop sipping from his brown bag and talk to them. “Been about forty year since I…heh, heh!” the homeless man said. “Excuse me, I just want to know how to get to the New Jersey turnpike,” X asked while cautiously checking his rear-view mirror for any carjackers who might spot them for what they were–an easy target. “You folk look like you come down from the mountain in that golden chariot…,” the homeless man paused to cough while spittle dribbled down his beard and onto the bare part of his chest exposed by his soiled V-neck undershirt.

X abruptly drove away in a furious gesture of disgust for the poor man and the ghetto that created him. “I guess we’ll have to go find a gas station now. Mr. fucking bum back there hasn’t been sober since 1983,” he said. The inflection in his voice seemed to suggest that the entire episode had been an enormously stressful inconvenience. For the next several minutes X had the same kind of irascibility as someone who had just received the most incompetent and time consuming customer service at an airport or from an 800 number. Sally sadly looked out the passenger side window at the firebombed houses and apartment buildings flitting by and the families who sat on porches circled with all kinds of garbage. As pit bulls mingled with children in the streets like half-evil gargoyle proxy parents, Sally felt a pang of guilt and helplessness. X gripped the steering wheel tighter and exhaled through his nose in an effort to calm and distance himself from all that was going on around them.

Sally glanced over at her husband who looked like he was moving in slow motion against a blury backdrop. As she studied X’s profile and his right eye which appeared to be watching her, she was suddenly sucked into his personal space. For a brief moment it was as if the two of them were in a fugue. Everything was cast in sharp relief, even the cold chasm that had opened up between them. Sally didn’t realize this chasm existed until now. Seeing it for the first time made it feel as if she were riding in a car with an intimate stranger.

Sally realized for the first time just then that not all people have the same priorities in life. She would ask herself in the coming days if she could tolerate living the rest of her life with a man who only knew how to purchase happiness. Could she love a man who equated his soul with a car or natural beauty with a boat? Could a man who had his memories engraved in a diamond studded watch have any connection to a tangible past that must have existed in some other place and time? Could she love a person whose vocabulary constantly recycled words like “equity” “trust” and “fidelity” with no clear understanding of what these words actually meant? The answer was simple: she could not.

Flash forward to the present. Now that she had her independence, Sally was still very much a prisoner. She didn’t have the corporeal comfort of a warm body to snuggle with each night and this deprived her of a significant amount of carnal satisfaction. She felt incomplete because of this and the only benefit she could attribute to not having a lover was that it kept her constantly pining for those unattainable joys in life which always seem to be just out of reach beyond the horizon. Many people might turn to religion in a situation like this and develop a personal relationship with Jesus Christ to keep from going insane. But Sally was raised Jewish and she had abandoned her faith once she saw how her father utilized religion to inflict pain and suffering on those he loved.

No, Sally was more pragmatic. She fed her head with books and surrounded herself with all things auspicious and optimistic. No matter how much Sally learned she always felt like she was barely scratching the surface of all there was to know. Each book she read was somehow a segue to the next book she was going to read or the next topic she was going to read about.

No matter how deep she delved into her mind, however, Sally was frequently forced to reconcile her newfound erudition with the dearth of her reality. In addition to not having a lover, Sally also had very few friends. She knew people, but they were not the sort of people one went on group dates with or invited over to the house for dinner and a sleepover. Sally had to realize that TJ, Tammie and Lilly were her best friends in the world. They were all she had and she was entirely responsible for them. She could depend on X for alimony and child support checks, and he occasionally snatched TJ and Tammie away from her for visits, but that was it.

And Sally had guilt. While she had created an alternate version of things to make it seem like X had left her, the truth was that she walked out on X. Instead of having the fortitude to stay and save him she took the easy way out–like most people did–and left. Actually, it was quite easy for Sally to believe that X had left her. When she asked for a divorce she arranged things so that all the blame fell upon X’s shoulders. “I’m unhappy,” she said during an uncomfortable dinner a week after the New Jersey incident. There was only silence and chewing and silverware sounds and the occasional comment. “You don’t have to be,” X embarrassedly said. Only their dog at the time was content that they were having this repast. He was crouched under the table ready to pounce on any delicious scrap of food that might fall from their plates before they were quick enough to snatch it up. Occasionally his wagging tail would slap their ankles momentarily causing little rifts in the thick haze of marital tension that saturated the air between them. “Either you change or I’m leaving,” Sally said. Her words held tremendous authoritative weight and X became hot with shame. For the first time in their marriage he was tempted to accept what he really was–a fake. More silence ensued and Sally stared at X with eyes of fire waiting for a response. Interpreting his silence as a reluctance to change she pushed her chair back and angrily got up to go rinse off her plates in the sink. The next morning X packed his bags and said he would be staying in the city for a while. “I’ll have my lawyer call you. In the meantime stay with the kids and do whatever you need to do.” It was the coldest winter either of them had ever experienced and yet it was still summer.

And, of course, there was The Bear to worry about. The Bear was never far away. It lingered like a stalking shadow or a grim officious butler, always making its entrance at the most inopportune times. The Bear was tension, The Bear was uncertainty, The Bear was past and future regret. But The Bear was not an imaginary metaphor or symbol for all these things, The Bear was actually real. Or at least to Sally it was. And as far as Sally knew X was coming to know The Bear now that his life was taking a series of wrong turns. When they got divorced The Bear divided itself in two and one half went with Sally and the other half went with X. The Bear was a huge problem. While its presence had been dormant for the past few months it was nonetheless still there, lurking in the dark places of Sally’s world ready to pounce on her when she was at her most vulnerable. No matter how hard she tried to eradicate it from her consciousness it never completely went away. She could only bury it with books and DVDs and CDs and walks with TJ and Tammie and Lilly. Sometimes when Lilly would be curled up next to Sally audibly snoring and she would be stroking her fur, Sally could almost swear that Lilly was The Bear. Sally would wake Lilly and shew her away as if Lilly were some kind of anathema.

The walk ended, the sky almost completely black, Sally and the two kids and the dog entered the front door of their home before taking one last look at the darkening street. “Everybody in, let’s go,” Sally ordered. Lilly dawdled for a moment as if trying to decide whether she wanted to stay outside or go in the house before finally crossing the threshold before the door closed on her tail. Sally tried not to think about the brief conversation she had had with X but something ominous about what he said refused her attempts to forget it. A growling in her stomach told her that it was time to prepare a quick and easy dinner. “Who wants pizza,” she said. “Me!” TJ and Tammie said in unison. The rue in X’s voice mixed with the unmistakable inflections of fear and helplessness reminded Sally of that time in her life when she first met The Bear. It was finally happening to him, she thought. All those years of rejecting Sally’s belief in The Bear as childish and silly were now coming back to bite him. The Bear was knocking at his door and, whether X was ready or not, it was going to let itself in.

“I WANNA watch the Dancing Ratzingers,” TJ screamed. There were plates encrusted with the remnants of pizza laying about the room and Lilly was sprawled on her back revealing six swollen nipples. Tammie had her head in Sally’s lap and was sound asleep. “No, you have school tomorrow and I don’t even know why I let you stay up this late to begin with.” Sally began picking up after their little party and Tammie let Lilly into the back yard to pee one last time before the two of them headed upstairs in tandem. The Dancing Ratzingers–a cartoon about a family of Rats who live in Brooklyn and who break into song and dance every two minutes–was beginning and TJ stared at the TV in rapt amazement. “TJ! Up!” Sally ordered. She couldn’t understand why TJ, who was 12 and three quarters, liked a show that was created for the 2-7 year old audience. While most boys his age were starting to watch South Park and The Simpsons TJ was having a hard time letting go of his childhood programs.

TJ flipped off the TV and raced upstairs letting out a barely audible “g’night” as he ran past his mom. When Sally was done washing up she turned the lights off in the kitchen and walked down to the laundry room to place a white load in the dryer before heading upstairs herself. As she was transferring the heavy, dripping clothes from the washing machine into the dryer something caught her eye. A blur of brown was at the bottom of the cylindrical tub. She examined it for a few seconds before deciding that it looked like a man’s toupee. Unsure as to how a toupee had gotten into her washer she reached down to pick it up but pulled her hand back when she felt how soggy and soft it was. Perhaps it was one of Tammies’ purses, she thought. Reaching in a second time Sally picked up the lumpy object and held it up to the light. Almost immediately she dropped it in terror and let out a truncated gasp. The object, facing her, had two black eyes and a peaceful expression of sleep on its face. It was Tammie’s gerbil Niglet. It had drowned in the washing machine when Tammie loaded the whites into it. There was going to have to be a funeral tomorrow. Sally put the gerbil in a shoebox and placed it on a work shelf in the garage. Then she double checked all the doors to make sure they were locked and headed upstairs humming a triumphant dirge that went, “tra-da-lah, tra-da-dum.”

The Bear…Chapter I

Her nom de pole was Katrina. She had been dancing since Chastity walked out the door long ago–he forgot about Chastity–and she had a way of exuding herself to the bald headed men night after night that was amazing in its fortitude. There was a firm gaze of self-assuredness in her eyes, almost too easy to maintain for a woman with her small ambitions, but yet so inexplicable to a man of the world like X. Between his $80,000 Range Rover, his $5,000 mortgage and his PhD in Post-Modernism, X had all the trappings of success. Why, then, did he spend his nights at this sleazy club watching women grind their hips and give themselves wedgy after wedgy with their spangled thongs? Sure, he was divorced and single, set free from the responsibilities of marriage and child rearing (his wife had custody of TJ and Tammie), but did this mean he could follow the spiral of his libido down into uncharted depths? While he had stuffed countless tens and twenties into Katrina’s underwear, and even bought her drinks on a few occasions, he had never taken her home and slept with her. And she would sleep with his kind in a second, being that he was well groomed and respectful of her, never treating her like an object to be drooled upon. This gave him at least some credibility in the lens of his conscience.

X wallowed in these thoughts as he nursed a martini, his eyes lustily watering every time Katrina bent over to reveal her rotund backside. Three corpulent men in the front row took off their hats and began to fan themselves while a forth attempted to climb on stage. He was quickly stopped by a tattooed bouncer. Somehow X envisioned himself living the life he always thought he would live: he was completely alone. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? He may as well have embraced failure head on, at least then he might still be happy and unconcerned–like Katrina.

Just then X felt a vibrating sensation near his right thigh. He forgot that he had turned his cellphone ringer off. Tammie always called him every Wednesday night at 9 o’clock sharp. X flipped open his phone and said, “Tammie, is that you?” “Hi daddy,” Tammie’s voice boomed in his ear. Normally, X would make some effort to be in a less lecherous state of mind while talking to his daughter, but tonight he didn’t care. The deal at his job which he had been working on for months was suddenly taken away from him and transferred to a group of college interns. The only explanation given to him was that he should be doing bigger and better things. “Leave the small stuff to the kids,” is what his boss had told him. Now he was sulking because that deal was more important to him than anybody at his office realized. He was working with an attractive commercial real-estate agent who he had the hots for. She dropped enough hints to let him know she was on the market and he was anticipating their professional partnership becoming more, how shall we say it, personal. He envisioned himself finally climbing his way out of the slump he was in and saying goodbye to Katrina forever.

“Daddy, Niglet’s acting like something’s wrong with him.” X sighed. “Tammie, how many times have I told you to rename that gerbil?” Tammie was obviously too young to understand the racist implications of the name she had chosen to give to her pet gerbil, and his ex Sally neglected to take any action. He knew she did this to spite him, it was as if she was saying, “See, if you hadn’t left you could be dealing with this face to face instead of via the telephone from 3,000 miles away.” “Niglet’s not eating and he runs around in circles,” Tammie said. “Well, how would you like a nice cat named Tigger?” X responded. Gerbil dies, problem solved, X thought. See, I don’t need to be there at all.

The three corpulent men were now all trying to climb on stage at once. The bouncer was pulling them down and two of the men’s cracks were showing. Katrina looked off stage as if she were being instructed by her manager to end the show early. She briefly shook her head in protest, then she preceded to exit the stage off to the rear-left. “Let’s hear it for Katrina!” a voice boomed over the PA. There were some boos followed by more scuffling from the three corpulent men and the bouncer and then the lights came back on for intermission. “Daddy, are you in a movie theater?” Tammie asked. Not knowing how to respond, X said, “Sweetie. put your mommy on the phone.”

A crowd of horny men were herding their way over to the bar and X made for the exit to get some privacy and fresh air. There were some sounds from the phone exchange on the other end and then his wife picked up. “What?” she said, her voice was all tiredness and curtness. “I know I’m not being a good father or ex-husband, but can you hear me out for a second?” Sally made no reply which indicated she was in her patient listening mode. “I’m a screw-up, and you and the kids don’t deserve me. You’re better off without me–wait, you know that photo where we’re all at Jone’s Beach together. I want you to cut me out of it.” “Oh, my God! You’ve been drinking,” Sally cried. “No, well, only a little. But I mean it. I’m feeling really down on myself, actually pretty sorry for myself, and I’m finally realizing some things people can only realize when they get to a certain lowness.” Sally made some grumbling noises and said, “Go home and get some rest and call me when you can think. I’m not going to be having this conversation when Tammie’s got a play to prepare for and TJ has his first cavity. Goodbye.”

X stood there listening to the silence reverberate through the plastic phone for a moment before shuffling to his car. Next to his Range Rover–which had been ticketed while he was in the strip joint–stood Katrina smoking a cigarette. She was more subtly seductive now that her white flesh was covered in a pea coat and a hat was pulled tight over her jet-black long hair. Only her high heels and bare ankles seemed to betray her profession. She smiled at him as she took one last pull on her cigarette before flicking it into the street.

“Taxi,” she snorted, sounding embarrassed. “What?” X said. “Vinny makes all us girls take taxis too and from this place. He doesn’t want patrons knowing what kind of cars we drive.” Sometimes when you’re falling backwards and you can’t stop yourself, you know what you have to do–you stop fighting the fall and brace for impact. X gazed at Katrina gracing his ticketed Range Rover, looking as rich and fabulous as any humble woman can look. A quizical smile spread across her face as she looked into his surveying eyes. She was trying to interpret his thoughts.

Just then X felt an intense sense of clarity as the recent events of his life flashed through his mind. Right then he knew what he had to do.

“If Vinny wouldn’t mind, I’ll drive you home tonight,” he said to her.

“What Vinny doesn’t know…” she said, extending a delicate arm in acquiescence.