C’EST LA VIE

From the R.M. Dolin novel, “An Unsustainable Life – The Book of Issac”

Chapter 9: C’est la Vie

There’s a subtle surrender that settles over a soul in the aftermath of everything going to shit, it’s a chaotic kind of calm resting within a quiet resignation that silently drowns in sirens of shock and symptomatic signals of estrangement mixed with a withering indifference to the callous calamities causing the cavalcade of confusion, all of which winds up getting tossed together with a testimonial topping of c’est la vie. At least that’s how Issac’s summing up his situation; it isn’t that he’s not used to dealing with shit, it’s more that since he lost his trust fund he feels life’s become a matter of maintaining balance on a bed of quicksand and up until tonight, he was actually somewhat convinced he was doing a pretty good job of figuring out how to survive his current set of circumstances until January when he can resume the life he was destined to live.

His working motto these past few months has been, if I make through December, everything’s gonna be alright I know. It’s a line from some silly cowboy song Lenny plays on the jukebox in the back of the bar whenever he’s hustling out-of-towners. What makes the motto good is it’s exactly all he has to do, endure his circumstances for a few more months and then his trust fund will restart with next year’s allocation, and he can go back to enjoying life for a change instead of having to work. He’s even started thinking, what the hell, now that Sara’s broke his heart he can go back to Gabriella, of course he sarcastically caveats that by adding, if he feels the need for further punishment. If he can just make through December, only every time it seems he’s found solid footing, fate decides she’s not done fucking with him.

It seems so ironic, on the one hand he was building some sort of life in his post-crisis world, in many ways even managing to find morsels of things to enjoy. Of course, the obvious was finding Sara, she’s been such a joy to his heart, someone who embraces whatever comes along with a good spirit and positive determination; that’s what he wants to believe he learned from her, how to have a good spirit and to run your life with determination. He doesn’t have a freaking clue how to go about it but decides in the aftermath of her coldly crushing his heart he’s gonna focus on being positive and embrace the many ways she made a meaningful impact. In a rare moment of spirituality, Issac even considers the possibility that Sara could have been an angel sent by his mom to straighten him out and guide him toward happiness, but he doesn’t hang with that esoteric notion for too long.

He was happy with Sara, that much he can admit; even though his heart is broken and he’s pretty damned pissed he has to admit he was happy with her, which seems improbable because when his crisis started, he didn’t think happiness was possible until after December. How can anyone expect to find happiness when they’re languishing in financial ruin? That’s what Sara taught him, that money doesn’t matter; only it does, which is why she’s leaving him for Paris, and he has to make it through December. In January, he’s back to being able to do what he wants when he wants and if he wants, he can go to Paris and be with Sara; only he can’t. In the heat of being told she’s leaving, he says things that can’t be unsaid, maybe they could if she loved him, but it would take a mighty big love to be forgiven, the kind of love that wouldn’t be leaving Chicago in the first place. Besides, what value is there in chasing her to Paris, for what, to six months later follower her to London and six months after that to who knows where? That’s not the life he wants but it definitely is the life she’s chosen.

Before his crisis caused him to work full-time, Issac may have been down to following her around, what the hell else did he have to do? But Murphy, Patrick, Santi, and even Lenny have taught him a thing or two about being a purpose-driven man; he hasn’t evolved enough to want their lives forever, but he has come to appreciate and respect the way men like them grind out their daily existence; constantly building, moving, struggling for more, disregarding risk, while building deep bonds along the way. He doesn’t have to do any of that because after December, he’ll be back to having more than he needs. Of course, he tells himself, he’s learned his lesson about not being so out of control going forward, which shouldn’t be an issue as long as he keeps away from women like Gabriella who he’s thinking he maybe should go back to for a while once his life resets. She’d be perfect for helping him get over Sara; he doesn’t care about her, and she doesn’t care about him, it’s a diamond of a dynamic, the holy grail of frivolous relationships.

That’s what Sara taught him; that if you love someone long enough and strong enough, they will break your heart. Gabriella doesn’t have a heart so she’s the perfect girl for him and once he solvent again, she’ll take him back; and if not; girls like Gabriella are dime a dozen in the Windy City so he won’t have to be alone for long, he just has to make it through December and everything will be alright once more. It’s a damn good motto and he needs to thank Lenny for playing that silly cowboy song.

He really did love her, and he really does miss her, and the hole in his heart really is real. He can’t escape that no matter how much rationalizing he does about his holy grail of relationship dynamics. Maybe he should follow her to Paris, apologize for the things he said and promise to be a better man. He just needs to make through December, then he won’t have any reason not to follow her. Except for this very odd feeling that Murphy and Patrick, and even Santi and Lenny, would be disappointed if he did.

What’s odd about this feeling is that Issac has never in his life given a shit about disappointing anyone; at least not since his dad died and that was so long ago it doesn’t hardly matter. He never cared about disappointing a teacher, or a coach, or even the priest at the church his mom would make him go to. He didn’t even ever care about disappointing her, he maybe may have if she ever put him in such a situation, but she never did, so on the one hand Issac can say he never disappointed his mom but on the other hand he never gave a shit about it anyway. That’s why it’s now so odd to be having these feels of caring about being judged as a man by other men. Not the judgment of the frivolous boys masquerading as men he used to hang out with before his crisis, but real men of purpose and drive; suddenly how they see him matters and Issac’s at a loss to explain why.

At some point after his trust-fund crisis Issac accepts that he has to go to work to support his basic needs but once at work, he finds himself driven to perform at his best so as not to disappoint his coworkers. The weird thing is that after December, when he no longer needs to work, he’s not sure if he’ll miss this whole business of having to work, of being judged as a man by other men, and being driving to perform at his best so as not to not disappoint anyone. The short answer is ‘hell no! I won’t miss all that bullshit!’ but the more introspective answer gets way more convoluted and complex and Issac decides that’s a matter that doesn’t have to be considered until after December because now is certainly not the time; not when he’s alone in his apartment trying to wrap his mind around the complete and utter collapse of his world.

Being alone is the emotion that grips him most. It’s not that he’s not used to being alone so much as he’s not used to measuring it in vast quantities of void and it causes his apartment to take on eerie kinds of echoes, as if every ghost of everyone who’s abandoned him are gathered, not to comfort and console, but to welcome him to his wake.

All night Murphy was telling him to go home; pointing out how he needs time in quiet solitude to sort things out even while continually emphasizing how he’s not technically alone because he has everyone at the bar. Murphy works extra hard making sure that anyone who needs anything from the bar comes to him, so Issac won’t be bothered. Several times he walks down to Issac’s end of the bar, always under the pretense of needing something he doesn’t need and each time filling Issac with some sort of encouraging yarn how life is a circle or Darwin will never be forgotten. The odd part is that Murphy never mentions what happened with Sara, maybe because he’s less of a romantic than Issac imagined, or maybe because on the true scale of tragedies, a breakup doesn’t really measure of up to the death of a family member, or maybe it’s because Darwin and Murphy have a long history together going all the way back to the infamous Shovelhead Harley incident and Murphy is mourning Darwin’s death as much if not more than Issac.

Patrick on the other hand is not only way more pragmatic he focuses his condolences on Sara and can’t help but repeatedly point out the difference between being alone and being lonely; sentiments that Santi echoes but with a lot of Spanish tossed in. All night Patrick’s bringing Issac special gourmet food treats made from ingredients Issac is surprised even exist in the bar. In a move out of character, Patrick stays at the bar right up to closing, as does Santi who lights several candles on the table in the back of the kitchen where Issac prepares his condiment trays. Patrick combines every special dish he brings out with some sort of food metaphor that mostly makes no sense to Issac. The highlight of his culinary comforting comes when he and Santi bring a tray of food to the bar that catches the attention of the Murphy faithful. On the tray is a round flat loaf of bread topped with coarse semolina grain beside it is a round cast iron enamel pot with a conical top that Santi calls a Tagine.

With pronounced culinary flare Santi lifts the conical top of the cast iron tagine to reveal a roasted chicken thigh topped with sliced lemons and capers, resting on a bed of roasted vegetables and couscous. Patrick proudly explains his Moroccan dish to not only Issac but the Murphy faithful who have huddled around the bar to have a look at this exotic never before seen cuisine. Even Murphy himself jockeys for position to have a look and to smell the many exotic spices that are filling the bar with wonderfully fragrant aromas.

The Murphy faithful watch with the same silent intensity as a two-on, two-out, bottom-of-the-ninth windup pitch as Issac tentatively takes a taste, they then wait with uncertain hesitation for the outcome. In the highest form of praise, Issac looks at his chefs and smiles for the first time all evening, a move that shifts the mood in Murphy’s from grave melancholy to something akin to a respectful Irish wake. As Issac eats his elegant gourmet dish, Patrick shares his latest food-based metaphor, which has something to do with Sara being saffron and Issac being cumin, and how regardless of where Sara might go and what Issac eventually does, if fate means for them to be together, they’ll find a way to make Tagine.

Lenny at least makes some effort at making some sense; he spends multiple pints walking Issac through the logistics of what has to happen now that he’s done with Sara and Darwin’s dead. As the only living heir to Darwin’s estate, Lenny tells Issac, that since Sara’s leaving Chicago for Paris, he needs to go to New Mexico, not only to be rid of her but to get Darwin’s stuff figured out. There’s a lot of information Lenny covers, including something about a vintage Harley he says Issac will recognize but Issac isn’t really processing anything Lenny says any better than he did with the things Murphy and Patrick offered; just random bits of information that can’t be puzzled together in any meaningful way.

It’s good Issac stays at the bar until closing because now that he’s back at his apartment with no real thoughts of anything other than the quietness of the dark, he’s at a loss as to where to channel his emotions. He keeps telling himself he has to be honest; Sara really was the only woman he’s ever really loved and it’s on him that he allowed himself to fall in love in the first place knowing she was an always leaving girl. Having to face the loss of her love, the loss of any romantic love, for the first time, is painful. It makes him think he should have stayed with Gabriella because she never meant as much to him as Sara, and never could, and maybe that’s the level he should plug into relationships now that it’s so clear the biker with the tattoo of the woman in red hijab was right; the harder you love a woman, the more they’ll hurt you in the end. Now, as if a spotlight lit up his life, he understands what that biker was saying that afternoon in the crowded café and it leaves Issac seriously questioning whether the eventual pain of losing love is worth the ecstasy of being in love.

It’s the same kind of bullshit but different with Uncle Darwin because Issac didn’t love him; he did once and was approaching the path to maybe do so again but since the first few steps along that journey are obligation free it was as much as he’d committed to so far. His feelings of loss over Sara are pangs of what could have been while his feelings of loss for Uncle Darwin are more regrets for what was once a part of his life that can now never be. Both, he decides, are worthy of mourning so long as he keeps separate their need to be different. He’ll mourn Sara for the pain of losing someone he allowed to mean so much, and never would again, and perhaps that’s the right way. He’ll mourn Uncle Darwin for the emptiness that comes from the hope one has to have a part of one’s family back in your life only to have it lost forever in the emptiness of the void.

If any positive can be taken from all this, it’s that the biker with the tattoo of the woman in the red hijab was only partially right; he never talked about what happens when the woman you love, loves someone, or something, more than you. The bad ass biker never addressed what it means to lose your last living relative, a piece of who you are, and the only take away Issac is currently capable of generating is that at least he no longer has to carry the bitterness burned like a deep brand in his heart that he never understood but his mom demanded he loyally believe.

Lenny and all his shit about needing to step up and take care of things is what keeps Issac from falling too deep into self-pity. He attempts to logically lay out the extent of all the responsibilities and obligations he now owns that far exceed anything he’s ever had to deal with before. It’s the irony of this that increasingly chews up bandwidth, requiring him to set Sara aside for now to focus more on what’s in front of him than in his past. He finds comfort in that framework by convincing himself that if all he focuses on his going to New Mexico, he doesn’t have to think about Sara; that’s how life needs to be, why look back, what’s done is done, she made her decision in the absence of him so he needs to frame his next steps in the absence of her; clearly he’s not a part of her life so why should he let her rent space in his.

What’s waiting for him in New Mexico is huge and he really does need to focus. In New Mexico he has to deal with what Lenny calls getting Darwin’s affairs figured out, and while Issac doesn’t fully comprehend what that means, he assumes it will be far worse than the crap he had to deal with when his mom died. In a strange way he never thought much about, Uncle Darwin’s death is even more overwhelming because as the cancer slowly took is mom, she devoted all her dwindling strength to making sure Issac was sheltered from having to deal with anything, including insurance companies, hospital bills, funeral arrangements, property transfers, trust fund management, etc. Literally, all Issac had to do when his mom passed was show up at the funeral; even the after-funeral gathering at his apartment was fully taken care of. In addition, in his mom’s final months Issac had Gabriella; his mom didn’t approve of her but seemed to find a level of peace in knowing Issac wouldn’t be alone.

Going to New Mexico to deal with Uncle Darwin’s shit seems vastly more involved, for one thing, based on his limited knowledge from movies and television shows, New Mexico is some kind of primitive third world country where everyone speaks Spanish and lives outside the law, and although Santi’s been teaching Issac Spanish, it’s not really sticking. Then there’s the environment, hot, dry, and windy most of the time, so it seems both hostile and unpleasant. Crime’s another consideration; sure, Chicago has its share of violence, but as long as you stay out of the war zones it’s a pretty safe city. New Mexico on the other hand, seems to be a state-wide war zone; even Sara would talk about how when she was growing up and her family would go to Red River every summer that her dad would not let her roam around town on her own. At night, even when she was with her older brothers, they were not allowed to leave the area at the upper end of the canyon where their upscale rental cabin was because the further one goes down the canyon, the more contact one gets with questionable characters. If a Texan who confidently comes to Chicago packing with a conceal carry permit is afraid to venture into downtown Red River, it says a lot about New Mexico.

On top of that, Lenny’s always talking shit about how rough Taos is, says the cartels have taken over because it’s a perfect place for them to run their drug and human trafficking enterprises. Taos is perfectly positioned in the geographic center of a triangle connecting Denver, Dallas, and Phoenix, which when taken together with Santa Fe and Albuquerque represents a collage of cities possessing an insatiable appetite for drugs and people who can be cheaply exploited. This is why, according to Lenny, the murder rate in Taos is so high, the cartels are constantly fighting it out for control of the best warehouses, distribution centers, and off-grid landing strips and since Taos is surrounded by rugged wilderness, there’s not a lot of outside intervention; especially given corrupt politicians control the intervention apparatus.

On the plus side, Lenny’s always teasing Issac that if he ever were to go to Taos, he’d be with his people since the town is crawling with ne’er-do-well trust-funders desperate for anything to fill their empty lives. He revels in stories about his one trip to New Mexico and how Darwin takes him around to local towns and villages where not only does everyone know him, but they treat him like he’s some kind of mafia Don. Every day Darwin takes Lenny to some Taos venue for breakfast burritos and to enjoy what Darwin calls, ‘trust-fund watching’ where they try estimating the size of a person’s trust fund based on how eclectic they dress or how much they caveat their food orders with things they’re certain will cause instant illness and death if consumed.

Women trust-funders are easier to wager on because of their hyper food sensitivities and since Darwin seems to know something about most of the trust-funders in every Taos venue, he quickly tells Lenny which ones to watch as they order just for their entertainment value. Lenny talks about how much Darwin enjoys the fact that the trust-funders are afraid of him, not because valley locals revere as a Don, but because they think he’s the second coming of Howard Hughes based on the crazy-ass way he lives off grid on his wilderness mountain and the fact that he always has his off-leash dog at his side, even in posh Taos restaurants. The trust-funders suspect Darwin is richer than snot, but they’re too afraid of him and his crazy lifestyle to invite him into their closed-off community.

The other thing Lenny likes telling stories about is Darwin’s house, or hacienda as Darwin always corrects him. Lenny’s always telling stories about the mountain Darwin owes, the huge solar farm he built, and the crazy ass drive up to the high mountain meadow Darwin takes him to so they can listen to Cubs games while drinking Old Milwaukee beer. He talks in great detail about the way Darwin’s highly protective of the wild mustang herd that summers in his high mountain meadow. At the same time, Lenny confesses the mustangs don’t much like him because every time he tries to wander around the meadow on his own, this huge Appaloosa stallion herds him back to what Darwin calls base camp.

Lenny’s always going on about going back, but now, as he points out with heart-felt disappointment, there isn’t going to be any reason. He tries hiding his deep sense of loss at Darwin’s passing by joking about the last bet they made; it had to do with how many times the Cubs second baseman would swing at pitches that bounced off the plate. This poor schmuck was a great defensive player but just couldn’t help himself when it came to poorly pitched balls. Darwin wagers, the second baseman will chase seven bouncers during the game and gives Lenny the option of taking the over or the under. When Lenny foolishly chooses the under, he doesn’t yet know the game’s gonna go extra innings and the second baseman ends the Cubs’ last rally swinging at a ball that bounces two feet in front of the plate. Lenny tries to logic his way out of the wager by arguing that the extra-inning at bats shouldn’t count but since the now legendary Shovelhead Harley wager back in the day, Darwin always counters such arguments by claiming ‘house rules’ and the long established Murphy’s house rule is that any wager is for the game as played; whether it be shortened due to weather or go extra innings due to the score being tied after nine, so Lenny loses the bet.

As a way of managing his grief, Lenny jokes that he probably has to now pay Issac the twenty dollars since Issac will inherit all of Darwin’s wealth, including uncollected gambling debts. As soon as Lenny mentions all of Darwin’s wealth, Issac realizes December may arrive earlier than scheduled and that at least makes the whole nonsense of having to spend time in third world New Mexico palatable.

As Lenny’s leaving the bar he tells Issac that a woman named Anna will be contacting him to help make arrangements for his trip to Northern New Mexico. According to Lenny, Anna’s been Darwin’s girlfriend for the past few years; they don’t officially live together but given the existing evidence during his last visit, she certainly seems to. Lenny lingers for a few minutes while the bar’s closing to tell Issac about Anna; about how nice she is and all. He cautions Issac to be careful though, New Mexico Hispanics he warns, are tough and they don’t tolerate nonsense, especially from trust-fund Anglos. He warns Issac that just because Darwin was a Don within the local community, it doesn’t mean nothing for him once he gets there and they’ll likely view him as an outsider, and locals there don’t much like outsiders.

Lenny tells Issac he’ll meet an older man called Victor who he can rely on. Not only were Victor and Darwin tight, but Victor knows everything about everyone in Taos Valley, and he has a guy for any problem Issac may encounter. Outside of Anna and Victor, Lenny adamantly reiterates, no one should be trusted, not the lawyers, not the officials, and especially not the Taos trust-funders or the cartels.