Chapter 2 in R.M. Dolin’s book “The Dangling Conversation” March 14, 2024
ISABELLA: “So, here we are again, same wonderful park, same perfectly placed bench, same clear night sky, the only thing missing is a blood orange moon to cast us in a surreal sense something either magical or mysterious is about to happen; I suppose though, the heavens are leaving that for us to work out. All I know is, I don’t know much about those sorts of matters; Murry, on the other hand, certainly wastes no time finding his comfort spot on your lap. That’s good, we came earlier this afternoon and I think he was actually disappointed you weren’t here; I don’t know if dogs get depressed, but that’s how he seemed. I can see why you come every evening, this place kinda grows on ya. The cool thing about working from home is not only do I get to live here while my job’s hundreds of miles away, but me and Murry can sneak over in the middle of the afternoon between meetings to walk around and de-stress. I’m even thinking about bringing my laptop next time, you know, as a medicinal way to work through tedious never-ending meetings, at least that’s how I’ll justify it, and I would be productive; plus, this park’s the perfect distraction and one can’t get enough vitamin D to combat stress, right?
“I need to apologize for last time, I know I came off a little strong and talk too much, but my behavior has more to do with being nervous than with me in general; at least I hope so. You make me nervous for reasons I can’t even begin to explain, but nervous in a good way, like meeting the Pope or something; not that I think your pious or anything, but you know what I mean. I think you see through me and it’s-, well-, intimidating.
“I’m certain none of this is any of my business, but you mentioned something last time that’s been churning in my head all darn day, so stop me if I’m being noisy, but you did open the door. Anyway, you said you were married twice, but there’s only been one woman you ever truly loved. While that’s enough to grab a girl’s attention, what stands out as truly shocking is when you follow-up saying not only was the only woman you’ve ever loved neither of your wives, but you never found a way to marry her. That’s a helluva bomb to drop on someone without expecting some sort of Q&A. I mean to start with, wow! And I don’t just mean wow, but WOW! I literally don’t know what to do with that, and again, I don’t mean to be poking around where I’m not invited, but there’s no way that’s not a story filled with profound tragedy and loss; I’ll even toss in suffering, and if not suffering, then at least agony on levels I’m not certain me and all my crap can’t hold a candle to.
“It’s not only what your story means to you, which don’t get me wrong is tragic, but what’s been churning around my head all darn day is this belief that understanding how your story unfolds is gonna help me not only gain prospective, but gain resolution on critical concerns I’m confronting, like being fairly convinced I’ll never fall in love again; not that I can’t, just that I won’t. That’s a whole lot more crap for me to unwrap than all the moving boxes stacked around my apartment.
“I know you’re gonna say I should never say never, I’ve already had that conversation with my Mom a hundred times, so, let’s put aside all the good-vibe mumble-jumble and say for the purposes of going forward, that you and I can dive into the deeper end of the pool. You feel it, right? I mean this sense we’ve connected on a deeper level that permits us to openly and honestly not only explore but express the clustered catacombs of darkness directing our most protected paths. That being said, let’s agree to bridge the one topic Mom and I can’t find the courage to cross: being honest about my predicament. If love was in the cards for either of us, neither of us would be sitting on this park bench, especially on a Friday night. I mean for one thing, I’m way too damaged to put any prognosis of recovery beyond doubtful.”
KYLE: “I gotta say, Isabelle, you’re not one for touching a toe in the water are you; no hello, no how ya doing, just walk straight up and dive as deep as can be into excavating sacred places even I only tread with trepidation. It was probably a mistake to say what I said, can’t say why I did, only maybe your right and my soul, needing to vent, decided you’re the person I should open up to? You’re also right about my story, only it can’t be confined to just one tale because while some have closed their final chapter, others are still being written. It is nonetheless fair to ask, after all, as you said, I did open the door. I’m just not certain how much I can, or should, share; guess we’ll both find out as we go along.
“Have you ever met someone and known in an instant they’d be the most important person you ever encountered? I’ve loved Nadia most my life, but the line between when we met and right now-, that simple one-dimensional shape representing the relationship between two rather random points in space-, for many complex and convoluted reasons, never could quite continuously connect. That’s my back story, one that must be presented from three unique points of view if there’s to be any cohesion in its context. There’s the me before Nadia, me and Nadia between wives one and two, and the two of us leading up to now. Phases one and two are in the books, so to speak, but here in the present me and Nadia have yet to concede a conclusion, though some have been proposed. As I meander in and out of fragmented parts that are either germane, or the limit of what I’m willing to share, I’ll do my best to keep some sort of chronological order; to be honest though, that’s not how things play out in my head, or my heart. Sometimes, Isabelle, nearness matters more than time, and hurts that hold their pain the longest linger in the queue.
“I came to France and fell in love, isn’t that how all such great romances begin? And like you correctly pointed out; somewhere between my starting dot, along that disconnected line taking me to right now, like in any great Greek tragedy, is filled with tales to be told and lessons to be learned.
“I bought my first rode bike in college, that doesn’t have much to do with Nadia, but everything to do with understanding me and how it is I came to be sitting on this park bench. I’d just finished sophomore year and moved to Denver for the summer to work as an architectural intern. I can’t afford a car so buy the bike to get around; a simple Japanese ten speed that not only gets me to work and home but introduces me to raw uninhibited joy of open road riding.
“I meet my first wife at a fraternity party at the start of junior year; not my fraternity, but another one for engineers. Fresh from my summer in Denver, full of world conquering confidence, and a body much stronger than what I’m packing these days, my buddies and I are playing this game where one person points out a girl and challenges another person to go up and talk to them; if you don’t, not only are you a wuss, but you have to drink a beer. To make the game interesting, the guy in charge of pointing searches out the prettiest most unavailable girl hoping the challenger meets with a highly entertaining and unceremonious rejection.
“We’re four, maybe five rounds in, completely undeterred by repeated humiliations, when it’s my turn to go. My buddy’s busy scanning the room for my next hilarious defeat when suddenly, this skinny full-on Irish redhead catches my eye and I immediately grab his arm and yell above the loud music, “pick her!” Because he’s my wingman, and because she’s so damn beautiful and so obviously out of my league, he’s obliged to agree. “Kyle!” he shouts with sarcastic bravado while pointing at the captivatingly freckled redhead, “I command you to get that woman’s phone number!” And with that, fate sets me on a seemingly seductive course; courageously inebriated from four, maybe five, beers and filled with the swashbuckling swagger of an idiot pirate, I smoothly slice through the crowded room to chat her up and to my bewildered surprise, she doesn’t spurn my advances.
“We spend the evening talking; turns out she’s a math major, which to a mechanical engineer is sorta sexy. At this point you’re probably wondering, what the hell does any of this have to do with a Japanese ten speed, right? Very little I agree, that’s the difficulty with my Nadia story, everything has very little to do with anything, yet, when you put it all together and call it the life of Kyle, each piece seems, I don’t know, strategically necessary.
“She agrees to go out with me the following night but since I’m too poor for a car, she has to drive; kind of awkward I know, but I don’t care, I’ve never been one to get hung up on protocols or societal expectations. She comes from the rich side of town so pulls up to the dilapidated house I’m renting with four other guys in her Dad’s Cadillac, which on the one hand is cool, but does present some unexpected challenges, like where does a poor boy take a girl on your first date who driving a Cadillac? It suddenly seems the dive bar I intended to go to is a bit underwhelming and she no longer appears to be the sawdust floor kind of girl I remember from last night. Expectations are a bitch when you’re trying to impress, and I found myself cast on the wrong side of that couch. We wind up just driving into the forest and taking a long walk along a gravel road. It’s there, under a lone Ponderosa at a canyon ledge with the bright moon filtering shadows on her freckled face, that we share our first kiss. Not only do her supple lips tenderly mesh with mine, but it seems at that moment, for the very first time, everything in the universe is perfectly how it’s supposed to be and any unmet needs I may have been harboring no longer matter.
“Turns out we have a lot in common, like her being born in the same small town I went to high school; only she got out in time. She doesn’t go straight to college either, choosing instead to get a job as a bank teller while I’m off working as a plumber before trade school. On the one hand, someone good at counting money seems seductive, but she’s twenty-one and still living with her parents, which is a bit of a red flag, and if you have a novelist’s eye, you already know what we’re talking about here is called foreshadowing.
“Even though we’re just a month apart, she’s a year behind me in school but knows way more than me, so, she sorta becomes my math mentor. She’s the reason I make it through my last two years; not only does she help explain homework, she keeps me off the streets at night and away from fraternity parties. The problem with college though, is it’s a lot like riding a bike; when you’re peddling along some random road you get into this alternate reality where all your problems seem behind you and every hill is easily conquered. That’s college’s fundamental flaw, every problem that comes up has a quick and easy solution; but that’s a fraudulent reality and not at all how the real-world works. In college, major conflicts are almost trivial, which is why they’re easily worked out. In the real world, conflicts get convoluted, and for reasons that defy logic, end up intertwined to the point where after a while you’re not even sure of the causal crap you’re currently dealing with. In college, everyone’s more or less on the same team striving to achieve the same goals, but in the real world, people diverge and when problems arise, they get so wrapped up in competing concerns and subterfuge that even seemingly simple solutions staring you in the face somehow avoid resolution.
“We got married under the college umbrella believing we were perfect for each other and that our love could conquer any crisis. She tosses her bouquet, we climb into the restored 68 Ford Bronco my Dad gives me as a wedding present, and we drive into the real world. When crisis comes, which it always does, we pick the wrong time to learn our love can’t conquer anything; within just a few years we’re already sleeping in separate rooms emotionally preparing for what seems increasingly inevitable.
“So much happens in such a small span of time; things you never imagine and can’t possibly prepare for. I sell the 68 Bronco, which still ranks in the top five of my all-time stupidest damn things I’ve ever done. I upgrade my Japanese ten-speed to Trek 420; it costs over five-hundred dollars, which at that time is a boatload of money. I still have that bike and take it out every now and then just to remember what life without worries or regrets can taste like. The thing is, in any relationship, it’s never the last thing that causes the thing you’re trying to avoid from happening to happen, but when I take a job at the State Department and have to move to Washington, that’s when we know it really is really over.
“I remember the last time I saw her as vividly as I remember our first kiss. In rather unceremonious fashion, I silently load what few things I have in the back of my Datsun pickup, strap my Trek to the rear bike rack, and head to Washington. I still see her from my rear view mirror like it was the day before yesterday; she’s standing stoically, her red hair lifted in the wind, her green eyes staring in my direction but not at me, she’s long past tears or tenderness, just standing in what used to be my driveway, both of us realizing the finality of saying good-bye to a life we thought would last forever.”
Isabelle: “Again, and I know I’m stuck on one word, but wow! And not just wow, but WOW! I mean clearly there’s a lot you left out, strings just begging to be pulled, but not now, there’ll be the right time and place for those sorts of details. I like the way you talk; you remind me of my Dad, he has this melodic way of telling a story that has so many moving parts I lose track, but somehow in the end, it all comes together in a profound way that leaves me thoughtless. I know I’m supposed to say, “leaves you speechless,” but I never am, in case you haven’t already figured that out. Sometimes though, I do get thoughtless. Do you know what I mean, where every assumption I have, every obvious outcome I’ve role-played in my head, gets scrubbed from my mind with nothing to back-fill and I don’t really know where to go with all of that.
“My story somewhat parallels yours at the start, before quickly diverging. My Ex and I met at work; a clique tale that finds it’s hellish tragedy long before the final act. I was new in the accounting department, and he was in sales; so, as you can probably surmise, he’s an excellent charmer while I’m a bit naive. I’m not sure why he targets me, who knows, maybe the slime-ball bastards in the showroom are playing your game and he’s assigned to chat me up or risk being labeled a wuss. Doesn’t much matter, especially given how he makes me feel; like I’m the most important person in his life. We don’t date that long, but while we do everything seems perfect; he even manages to charm my Mom, I remember the way she’d say, “Isabelle, a good man makes you, his priority. Forget nice gifts, fancy dinners, or expensive vacations, if he loves you, he’ll find far more meaningful ways to demonstrate his affection. And in the end Isabelle,” she would always add, “that’s all that matters for two people to be happy, and I know he will make you happy.”
“And he does, even now in the aftermath of all the hell he put me through, I can honestly say that while we were dating, he makes me feel like I’m his priority. Getting married seems like the logical next step, a way to lock down my euphoric feelings; and I am happy, at least until I’m not. Looking back, I can see the signs were there all along but when you’re blinded by love even flashing neon goes unnoticed. It starts small, like him insisting on picking the color of my toothbrush; who even notices something so trivial, or better yet, who even cares?
“His argument for picking the color of my toothbrush is completely legitimate; so, we can easily tell them apart. Then, though, it expands into the kind of toothpaste we have to use, and from there, in ways that are undetectable at the time, things escalate to increasingly higher levels. One time I surprise him with new kitchen towels, but instead of being thankful and pleased, he gets agitated and angry; not because he doesn’t like the towels, but because I picked them on my own. He makes me return them and then he buys an almost identical set, which makes no sense, right? In retrospect I should have seen this incident as an obvious sign of something disturbing, but instead, I make up some lame excuse about how he must be dealing with work stress or has an irrational attachment to kitchen towels stemming from some childhood trauma. Because I love him, and because he tells me every day how much he loves me, I write off the entire incident as just an unfortunate moment; a one-off that won’t happen again. And please, don’t lecture me on my stupidity for not seeing things for what they are, that unscalable mountain’s already been claimed by my Mom.
“Before long, his kitchen and bathroom behavior spills into all aspects of our marriage, but again in such small and subtle ways they mostly go unnoticed. Whenever I do manage to stand back and see things for what they are, I somehow find a justification to dismiss his actions. But then, over time in very gradual ways, I come to realize he doesn’t talk about love anymore and seldom says tender things. He starts criticizing anything I do and I’m pretty certain he subversively works to get me fired because I wouldn’t quit as he insists.
“Weeks after losing my job I realize now that I’m out of work I’m completely dependent on him. I don’t realize it in the moment because he seems so sympathetic to the sadness and humiliation I feel, and he vows to do everything in his power to get my job back; he even says he’ll quit if they didn’t rehire me. I believe him because he’s such a convincing charmer, but then one day, I’m walking through this art gallery because I’ve gotten used to doing things on my own to fill the emptiness of my day as well as the emptiness in my soul, and I inadvertently bump into my old boss who congratulates me on being pregnant; he then says if I decide to come back to work after the baby’s born, there’s a position waiting for me. Stunned to realize I’m pregnant and still have a job, I rush out of the gallery and run straight home in tears.
“How can he do this? How can he make up such a lie just to get me fired? How can I possibly confront him? That’s the moment I see my life for what it has become. For all his pretending, all his persuasive charm, he doesn’t care one spit about me; he could care less about how I feel or what I need to be happy. But what can I do really, I’m dependent on him; not only have I allowed myself to let him have complete control over me, he’s become a master at wielding his power without pity or remorse. You have no idea what it’s like to be at the mercy of someone; the damage it does can’t even be fathomed. I linger like that far longer than I should, long after the love’s gone; living on pins and needles afraid to do anything because he finds fault in everything. Afraid to leave because he’s convinced me I can’t, and while I can say I never had suicidal idolization, I knew I wouldn’t duel death if it came calling.
“It got so bad I started running comparisons about the pros and cons of dying from cancer versus in a car crash, or from some other terrible calamity. I even created a mental list of the ten best ways to die. Then, and this is where my anxiety takes me over the edge, I find myself assessing each day from the context of my list, concluding that today’s a cancer day, or it’s a car crash day based on how I feel and what his reaction is to whatever it is he’s going to find fault with. To be clear, I never seriously contemplate that sort of action, it’s just the metric system I develop to gage the quality of my existence.
“The script is transparently simple, you start out in love, then once you realize the love is gone you go through the “if only,” phase; if only I was more pleasant, if only the house were cleaner, if only I was prettier. Then one day, you wake up to realize that, as you said, you’re living a fraudulent reality, and you subtly, without conscience thought, move into a “let’s get past this,” phase where all you’re trying to do is eek out some measure of tranquility with a beleaguered hope things will get better. When they don’t, you’re compelled to take the most difficult and dangerous step into the, “I have to get out,” phase.
“I tell him I’m leaving and all of a sudden, he breaks down and begs for forgiveness. He says he’ll change, and everything will be different; and it is for a short while, until he knows he has me back under his control, until the cancer and car crash days return. Around then I gain enough strength to gather my wits and know what I have to do. I understand I’ve fallen into a death spiral and the only way not to die is to risk death; I have to get out, which I do; which is how I came be living in an apartment filled with unpacked boxes next to park with a dog named Murry.
“I live off the grid now because each time I try to start over, no matter how careful I am, he finds me and starts virtual stalking, which I have to tell you is every bit as terrorizing as the real thing, which he’s also done. It’s hard, harder than you can even imagine, especially at my age; living off the grid leaves me feeling like a “nowhere man living in a nowhere land,” to borrow from the Beatles. Dad wants me to come live at home, but I can’t, my Ex knows how to find me there. Dad says we can get the police to help but trust me, the police either can’t or won’t do a damn thing, I’ve tried. All I can really do is wait for him to find his next victim, which is even more tragic than my death list days; you know, hoping he finds a new victim so I can be free. There’s something perversely twisted in that, and it makes me sad that I’ve become a person I’d wish what happened to me happens to someone else; it makes me not a nice person, not someone I want to recognize, not someone anyone should want to be with.
“So, now you know the life of me in all its pitiful glory. You also now know why I’m running out of reasons to be loved. Tell me though, does riding a bike on the open road really give you a sense of being in an alternate reality? I need that, I need to find something that can give me that feeling like all my troubles are behind me and I can conquer any hill. Maybe you can take me someday; God knows how I desperately pray each night for a chance to find my own alternate reality.”
KYLE: “Of course I’ll take you; it’ll be fun. There’s this grocery store a few towns over, a small little Mom & Pop place I pass on my rides. Sometimes I stop to take a break and get some nourishment, you know, a piece of fruit or something to drink. They have this bin in the back corner where they put the reduced items, everything from overripe fruit to meat that’s starting to spoil. They sell it cheap but overripe fruit is high in sugar, which means good for energy; so, I pick through the offerings every now and then. There’s a sign hanging above the bin that unapologetically says, “Damaged Goods.” I like that sign, it speaks to me; we’re all damaged in one way or another; so, trust me, you’re not any more damaged than the rest of us, and what you need to do is embrace your sweetness even if you feel your starting to spoil. Even with all your cuts and scars, there’s someone somewhere who will cherish you and treat you the way everyone should be treated.
“When you get to be as long in the tooth as me, you become so covered in cuts and scars it’s hard sometimes to remember they represent how you’ve healed; all the reasons why the goodness in your soul hasn’t been tarnished or taken away. You also realize that while yes, you’re still hoping for the strength to believe in a forever person, you’re not looking for someone to build a life with, but rather, for someone to share a life with. One of my favorite quotes is from Henry Ford, you know, the guy who perfected mass production, he was a horrible human but a helluva an engineer. Anyway, he once said, “if you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.” You need to sit with that a few moments to get what he’s saying, but once you do, it’s a life altering way to understand how to start your rebuilding process.”
