Diary of a Heretic

Who Sleeps Where

Walter rushed through the terminal’s automatic glass doors as if running late. But his entrance was so on time that Amanda immediately turned from the luggage carousel. Her happiness at seeing him lifted her high, defying gravity. He was wearing hiking shorts, sturdy boots, and a zip-up windbreaker.

Amanda vaguely heard Evie and DeeDee giggling as if they had stepped inside a transparent chamber: “He looks like David except not so mean.”

She pushed her palms toward them, meaning, hush-up. But the girls were tugging at each other, watching their mother glide toward the man.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Perhaps in his rush, perhaps fooled by the crowd, Walter scooped Amanda up, lifting her from the waist. If he hadn’t momentarily lost his bearings, he wouldn’t have twirled her in circles. She held his shoulders and he, disoriented, lifted her higher with one hand, the other cupping the back of her head.

Momentarily lost, for less than a moment, really, they stopped. Never had they kissed on the mouth before. Let alone, as in this one unnatural moment—which didn’t count!—had they kissed so that his tongue touched her palate.

“Good Lord, Amanda!” Embarrassed and bemused, he released her gently. “Never let me do that again,” he pleaded. Now their fingertips touched, another moment, this one at arms’ length. “Never, ever.”

Ecstatic, she nonetheless realized:  He won’t let that happen again. He just won’t. So don’t hope!

That insignificant moment, which wasn’t even a moment, had mysteriously lasted long enough for the crowd to thin, and for Evie and DeeDee to haul their bags off the conveyer.

Amanda turned toward them, without quite seeing them, and said, “Evie, DeeDee.” They took shape, standing in front of her. “This is Walter.”

“Your grandfather,” he said, bending down toward them, sober and respectful as he shook their hands.

“Hello, grandfather,” Evie said with such super-cute, mock-coyness that Amanda blushed.  Could Evie have possibly watched old Shirley Temple movies? Weren’t they extinct? And if not, why hadn’t anyone slapped them with a warning—provocative behavior throughout?

Walter grabbed their bags, two in one hand, the bigger one, Amanda’s, in the other.

The Adirondack house charmed Amanda immediately. Such beautiful trees in front; the lake surrounded by mountain peaks in back. A wrap-around, screened-in porch, a stone fireplace Walter had used last night: “It gets cold after sunset.”

They climbed the stairs and in the hallway Amanda glanced at Walter, the descending sun casting urgent shadows.

He had set up his stuff in a small room, its big windows facing east. Next to it was a bigger room with a double bed. The other two, arranged and decorated similarly lay at the end of a hallway.

Amanda dutifully chose the one of the rooms down the hall. When Walter put her oversize bag by the double bed and cracked one of the huge, clean windows, she asked why he’d chosen a single bed; after all, he was 6’3”.

“Because of the twin herons that pose beneath the farthest window.” He cleared his throat and gazed outside at the glinting lake. 

Amanda stared at the braided rug, resisting an urge to touch him before the girls joined them. 

Since ten-year old Evie was already teasing her new grandfather, Amanda suggested DeeDee sleep in the room next to him.

“Unless, little girl, you’d rather sleep closer to me.” But Amanda knew how DeeDee pushed to keep pace with independent Evie. The seven-year old, who had suddenly lost any vestige of her baby face, naturally preferred the room next to Walter’s.

“In Bermuda,” DeeDee said, “I slept in a whole other wing of the hotel.”

Traitorous Evie whispered to Walter, “That’s because she still sometimes wets the bed.”

“Evie,” Amanda scolded. “ If DeeDee wanted, she could tell us about your secrets.”

“Like what? What secrets, Mom?”

Amanda indicated not now.

“We’re settled,” she said. “And Walter,” she opened her arms but remained across the room, since he had stepped back and held still while studying his boots. “Thank you. It’s incredible.”

(Click here to read the next episode.)

   

Forget About Sex

Amanda took Monday off after her brief and unfortunate marriage to David Tighe. Let everyone working in the Oak Park Forest Hills school district learn about her divorce from the high-school history chair before she faced them.

Besides, she needed to buy household essentials. The moving company couldn’t promise to deliver their things from David’s garage for weeks. 

The girls had returned from their Bermuda vacation with their father and his parents sunburned and exhausted. But Amanda insisted they go to school anyway. She had too much to do.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

What she accomplished that day amazed her. With an efficiency and determination that sometimes blesses those in emergency, she hurried through stores, honing in fast: we need this and this and this.

All the while, however, front and center in her mind was Walter. He phoned her while she was waiting for a mall parking space.

“I’ve rented a four bedroom house right on the lake. The twelfth through the twentieth.” He’d email her the website.

“Walter, you’re incredible. Swinging this on such short notice.”

“The schools in New York don’t end until the last week in June. Remember? So it’s off-season.”

“It sounds—better than I deserve. I mean, are you sure about this?”

“Amanda, I’m sure about every action I’ve ever taken. You know that.”

She laughed as the dark sedan she’d waited for finally backed out, wheels squealing. “You’re saving my life—again.”

“Let me get the house set up for three young ladies, first. I’ll make your plane reservations for the thirteenth and pick you up in Albany.”

Amanda pulled into the parking space, turned off the ignition, and closed her eyes. “Walter—”

“Sweetheart, that’s what fathers are for.”

He had always called her “honey,” not “sweetheart. “Father and daughter,” Amanda said, hearing the faintest anxiety ripple through her voice.

“No illusions between us, Amanda. We’ve agreed—father and daughter are who we are.  Who we’ll always be.”

“Are you worried? About me wishing too much?”

“I wasn’t,” Walter said. “But now I need your word.”

“Am I such a tease?” she spoke without thinking and immediately regretted it to the root of her every fiber. “Walter, forgive me for saying that. Please. You have my word. You always have my word. Of course. I love you as my father.”

“Are you doing all right, honey? Did Evie and DeeDee get back last night?”

“Yes and yes. I took today off to get stuff in order.”

“Your office told me. I’ll talk to you soon, sweet girl.”

When she retrieved Evie and DeeDee from their after-school programs, homemade minestrone was simmering on the stove, all utilities restored. She’d bought new lamps and little desks and chairs, new pillows, thermal sleeping bags, and a few new sets of clothing for each, since their suitcases contained only beach and travel.

With Evie and DeeDee chattering in the backseat about their day, Amanda relaxed. They’d keep her from dreaming about Walter. With all of them in one house? Amanda would have no choice but to control herself. Besides, she had always acted old-school ladylike. If she had jumped on Walter when she was a child, well, she was a child then. Amanda should have more confidence. Truth was, she could now claim as much self-control as anyone, even Walter.

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Should I Stay or Should I Go

Carlos is out securing hotel rooms for us for the next few weeks.  The shop and its bought-out neighbors are totally gutted.  I can either pace through the wreckage as I have for hours, or I can tap on my laptop as I am now.  Either way, my presence is negligible.  Either way, whether I stay or go—out to a movie, or for a walk, a newspaper, a drink, whatever:  everything everywhere is crashing all around me!

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Everything’s packed but the CD player.  Gregorian chants of Benedictine monks fill my bare, crate-stacked rooms. How long since I’ve eaten solid food?  Naked in front of the mirror, I can feel my ribs.

So okay, I admitted it weeks ago! Tyler reminds me of Colin!  Now can I get dressed?  Now will I be able to eat?  Or if not eat—thinking of him (them) my skin feels so tight—I can at least drink:  I’ll start with what’s left of Carlos’s gin.  And then, when that’s not enough, for how could it be?  I’ll head downtown to see if the bar where Colin and I used to drink, illegally underage, still exists.

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Not What It Looks Like

I left the stage twelve hours ago; I go back on tonight.  Am I frightened?  Mortified?  Exhausted?  I am a void—personified!

Except you can no longer tell from the outside.  My almighty, anonymous needs still rage. The shop’s closed, the kitchen’s gutted.  All those tarts and strudels, cheesecakes, brownies and donuts don’t exist at the moment.  And maybe because I wear the muslin gown as much as he wants (or else I was so easy he lost interest), Carlos has no renewed interest in what I eat or drink.

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

And my routine has changed.  I take long walks alone.  This morning as I crossed the Plaza del Lago shopping mall, Carlos appeared, silently, coolly in sync with me.  We traversed the small terrace and he stroked my left side.  We leaned into a brick corner and he hoisted me a bit in the air.  Reeling with desire and distaste, I writhed, resisted, and succumbed.  All the while inadvertently catching the eye of a woman loading groceries into a green Volvo.  She shrugged and smiled. 

I twisted my head and wiggled my hands, signaling her:  this is not what it looks like.  The woman slammed her car door and comically saluted.  Was she saying, “I know; I’ve been there”?  Or, was it more, “What do I care?”

And then it hit me—that’s my perennial question:  what do I care?  Anytime anyone misunderstands me, I’m ready to die.  My life seems to depend on getting the population at large to take my side.

(To Be Continued.)

Emotional Rescue

Amanda returned to her old house, grateful now that it hadn’t sold, so that she need never return to David’s. Like the Evanston house, also still up for grabs, she had strived for a semi-occupied look, despite having boxed up everything she hadn’t given away, which presently filled David’s garage. Although she couldn’t consult the moving company until tomorrow, she expected those one-hundred-and-one boxes to relegate David’s custom-painted, yellow-sparkle convertible to street parking for a month. Her satisfaction—it truly served him right—almost shamed her, almost. This divorce, agreed upon before they had landed at O’Hare, promised ill will aplenty.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

Before the stupid wedding and stupider honeymoon, Amanda and the real estate agent had improvised a living room with a sofa, torch lamp, sisal rung and throw pillows. The girls’ rooms were empty until Amanda found bookcases and cardboard tables that she covered with tablecloths to the floor. Evie’s bedroom displayed pottery, a family Bible, and a velvet-covered chaise lounge found at a garage sale. DeeDee’s room resembled an unused artist’s studio. The high-school art teacher had donated her unframed paintings, sketches for the walls, and an easel.

Evie and DeeDee would breathe sighs of relief, audible or not, when in two days they come home from Bermuda and learned: no more David Tighe. And Amanda foresaw word-balloons coming from Mike and his parents: “Phew!”

The only person she dreaded to tell, and yet desperately needed, was Walter.

Olivia, his real daughter, and Amanda’s childhood friend, had divorced her husband and moved back to Brisbane where she’d attended college. The club scene, O kept telling Amanda, might not rival the states’ in its hey-day. But how could she tell, since that had ended before she was born? In Australia, she drank, “and stuff.” She danced all night, every night, and then hooked up with one bloke more ace than the next.

“Do me a favor,” she phoned and texted. “Stick close to daddy-o. Except for getting and giving people their perfect tax forms, he lives like a hermit.”

Walter had disapproved of Amanda’s marriage. Without any awareness that David resented him, Walter had halted on the phone, his worry coming through inaudibly. She had told Walter about the poetry, art, music, and history David had taught her to appreciate, without ever mentioning David’s age or height or thick white hair, which so reminded her of Walter.   

In the mock-furnished house without a bed, the gas off, and electricity only during the day, Amanda prepared to sleep on the chaise lounge until tomorrow when she’d buy a sleeping bag for herself and the girls. Eventually, she’d need a houseful of stuff, except unlike last time, when guilty Mike wanted to buy her everything and more, Amanda would need to max out her credit cards.

She hadn’t had to scrounge since she was a child and her mother’s sales trips ran long, leaving Amanda without money for food or utility bills—knowing Walter would take care of her.

After much fretting and pacing in the dark, Amanda finally phoned him at midnight.

Walter, who usually called her “honey,” kept saying, “Don’t cry, darling girl. Do you want me to visit you?”

“No. I’ll be okay.” She was trying hard not to snuffle. “I get two weeks off next month when the girls get out of school for the summer.”

“What if I rent a house for the four of us on Lake George?”

“Walter,” she almost sank to her knees but resisted. 

“When you were seven, Olivia and Sterling and I spent a few weeks there. Olivia wanted to invite you. But Sterling and your mother said no.”

“So we’ll go now,” Amanda said, the sadness gone from her voice. “See if you can get reservations, and if you can, let me know our share. Money’s no object.”

“Amanda, darling, I may not know much else, but I know about money. This is my treat.”

“Walter…” she was groping for the proper response.

“Your daughters have probably never heard of me.”

“Oh no,” Amanda said. “I’ve told them. You’re their other grandfather.”

“So, their other grandfather is well overdue to take you all on vacation.”

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Repent at Leisure

Exuberant on the plane, Amanda flipped open a journal she’d bought for the trip and wrote down David’s quick history of Mexico City. “Mind you, it’s very touristy,” he said, “but we can’t let that dissuade us.”

They took a taxi to the Presidente InterContinential, where he had booked a suite overlooking Chapultepec Park. In Amanda’s opinion, the driver overcharged them, but she managed not to say anything.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

As it turned out, “as fluent in Spanish” as David undoubtedly was, the Mexicans couldn’t understand him. So he kept repeating his instructions louder and louder. In a momentary lapse, Amanda rephrased a question. The desk clerk grinned, saying, “Sí,” he’d gladly make their dinner reservations.

Why hadn’t she admitted she spoke “Mexican?” David spoke Castilian Spanish. Amanda took his hand and waited to answer. For their honeymoon, she had skimmed a few travel books and “Spanish for Gringos.” This last she had hid to spare David’s ridicule. But that didn’t explain how easily she could converse.   

It had surprised her, too, but she recalled a high-school friend, Maya, who had arrived in tenth grade from Morelia. Obviously, unaware, Amanda must have absorbed certain expressions from the big, friendly Gonzalez family. “Maya and I were never best friends,” she said.

“Yes, well,” David said, striving for patience. “Chit-chat.”

When Amanda said, “Mucho gusto,” for hello and good-bye as her friends had, David asked her to stop. “We can’t honestly tell if they’re just being nice, responding to you or not.”

He ordered dinner: pozole for her and scampi for himself. The San Camilito served pulque, too good to miss. Amanda couldn’t stomach it, though. After excusing herself and inadvertently staining a new summer dress, she sipped tea. David finished her drink after his and ordered himself two Mexican coffees. They stopped at two different cantinas where he drank tequila. Inside a small plaza crowded with people, they watched flamenco dancers until David said, “¡Vamanos! Back to the hotel.”   

To settle her stomach Amanda was sucking a tamarind popsicle—delicious. Hearing urgency in his voice lifted her slightly. Was he impatient to be alone with her? Possibly, but he stumbled toward the TV, grabbed the remote, and found a movie with English subtitles. She soaked in a huge jacuzzi while he slept dead drunk on the sofa. A situation she decided was comical.

Less amusing, however, was his irritability the next day, when they hired a car to Teotihuacan, the towering Aztec pyramid.

Staring up, she said “Awesome!” The tiresome word he hated so much he issued demerits to any high-school girl stupid enough to say it.

But under the crystalline sky, the ruins brimmed with such wild antiquity that she listened for spirits. Not hearing any, she ran heedlessly to the top, and saw him far below, taking every step slowly. The altitude bothered him. He had claimed this at breakfast; insisting that any difference in their energy level was unrelated to age.

Finally reaching the summit, he discovered Amanda smiling for an Asian businessman’s camera, her arms wrapped around two other Asian businessmen whose head barely reached her shoulders. Her honey-colored hair flew in the breeze.

To hear David tell it, the Asians were posing there as an excuse to marvel shamelessly at Amanda’s round breasts, which her outstretched arms and flimsy summer top emphasized like a cartoon. “Madame Anime. It’s unseemly,” he said. “You’re first off a married woman, and second, the mother of two.”

So what? The bitterest quarrel occurred outside the Anthropological Museum. A guide led them with a group toward a playing field with protruding stone circles set at either end. The Aztec warriors, the guide said in Spanish, had played a game similar to basketball. After which, one warrior team was offered in sacrifice to the Sun god. The guide led them to a nearby stone sink mounted about waist level. The sacrificial warriors lay supine while priest cut out each young player’s heart.

Amanda remembered this. Maya had told her that the amazing thing was, “The winners were awarded the honor of being sacrificed.” David scoffed at her little folk tale. But she swore it was true. The idea had shocked her and still did. 

“Because, I mean, that’s faith! Gives a whole new meaning to ‘throwing a game, doesn’t it?’”

“What nonsense!” Were it true, David would have read about it. Besides, their guide had said nothing of the sort.

Their honeymoon unraveled from there. On the plane home, without thinking, she asked if he could at least agree on a proverb, attributed to Mexico. “Marry in haste…”

Drinking scotch, not champagne, David swirled the liquor in his glass and nodded. “Marry in haste, repent at leisure. For once, Amanda, you’re right.”

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Playing the Idiot

Every seat is taken.  Tonight the faithful sit in semi-circular rows, a writing surface in front of them. Carlos doesn’t allow any tape-recording or photographs. He hasn’t got me on CD yet or DVD, but he’s working on it.

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

And looking at all the seekers, eager to hear my works, their notebooks open: I can’t go on—it’s over!  Because here’s the catch:  If I don’t believe what I’m saying, how can it possibly fly?

So tonight—after nonstop weeks—tired, bored, fed up—I found myself impersonating a doltish school teacher.  I blinked and sighed.  “Pencils sharp?  Erasers ready—”  I looked around, hand shielding my eyes, and said, “Well, what have we here?  A test of faith!”

Silence.

“Any thoughts?”

Silence.

“Anyone?”

I waited a few beats more.  “Well then,” I said, “Why don’t we come back to that later.  How about an easy one?  Like the meaning of life, sex, and death?”

The participants sat glassy eyed and dumb.

“Now come on, everyone.  What do we think we’re doing here?”

There were giggles.

“Want me to tell you?”

“Yeah, tell us,” a woman in the back called out.  “Tell us something.”  I think it was my friend Bailey.  Beaming recognition, I asked her to stand up.  And then I forgot the question.  Finger to my chin, I said, “Where was I?”

And the audience laughed.  Bailey (or someone who looks just like her) said, “The meaning of life, sex, and death.”

“Oh right, right!  I know that one.”  More laughter.  “It’s simple really, just hard to describe.”  I scratched my head.  It’s…it’s, right on the tip of my tongue...”  I played the idiot. But the take topped three thousand, very good considering the small venue.

(To be continued)

So Soap Opera

[This post is an excerpt from Diary of a Heretic, the novel. Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

My parents called from San Francisco, using a speakerphone so they could both talk at once.  Did I get my birthday present?  Yes, I said, the briefcase was beautiful.

“Coming up in the world!” my father declared.

“It’s not that we’re not proud,” my mother said, her voice wavering.  “It’s just that, that we worry.  No one can have all the answers.  And you . . .you really do tend to go overboard.”

“Next year—thirty!” my father thundered. 

“We want to come see you,” my mother said. 

“Well, we’re in the middle of construction. . . ”

“So tell us when’s a good time.”

“Okay, I will.”

*

“Nothing like family,” Stephanie said.  “Your face is the color of marinara sauce.”

“You have to get over that,” Carlos said.  “We’re self-made.  That’s what sets us apart.  We’re your family now.  Where we come from, how we were brought up—none of that matters any more.”

“Can we talk about something else?”

Then Carlos gave me a gold neck chain with RWR in the center.

“Very tasteful,” I said.  “Very apt.  Thank you.”

“RWR” Carlos said, fixing the chain on my neck. “It’s so perfect.”

“Unpronounceable, though.  I think it’s better when you can say the acronym like a word.”

“Oh, well,” he said, determined not to seem miffed. 

God, I was tired.  It’s terrible when Carlos is sincere.  But as I sat there, with the thing around my neck, he got not just sincere but sincerely soap opera.  Carlos! He kissed my hand and said—in front of Maggie—that I was his prince!  (Of course Stephanie was also there, but being waitress extraordinaire, she somehow conveyed that she hadn’t really heard us.)

I laughed—couldn’t help it.

“All right,” Carlos said. “Be like that.”  He stomped into the kitchen, made himself a gin and tonic and drained it in front of us.

Then he brought the gin and tonic bottles to the table and mixed himself another one.  “We do not conform,” he said, “to designated strata.”

“We’re beyond demography,” Maggie said.  (She’s so good with him and so good with me.  Where would I be without her?)

(Click here to read the next episode.)

Matrimony Acrimony

Privately, later, Amanda would plead temporary insanity. She couldn’t sleep while in love with David Tighe. He took her to hear blues in Chicago, which thrilled her to the quick, keeping her wide awake for a week. He escorted her around The Art Institute, watching her reactions, and explaining the paintings that moved her, and even more about the ones that didn’t.

If Amanda didn’t consciously refine her sensibilities, he kept insisting, she’d always go for plain intensity and sentiment, which he considered cheap. She needed to cultivate an appreciation for subtlety and mastery. That took time for most people, whether as artist or audience. But, of course, David had already decided that Amanda’s personality pegged her as a primitive.

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

“Insult or compliment?” Amanda had asked.

That depended. She certainly appreciated art. Her excitement exceeded anything in his experience, and rest assured, she was not the first unenlightened women he’d courted.

No argument there. Standing beside him, she suspected he had trained himself to say “unenlightened” when he meant “ignorant.” But so what? Almost continuously he showed her one glorious field after another.

Separate from her enthrallment were the obnoxious minutiae attending her changing financial arrangements and legal status. She was struggling, too, with attempts to sell her house and dealing with the surprise impossibility of sharing David’s house.

David’s meticulously ordered home offered plenty of space for him and her and Evie and DeeDee. It sat on almost an acre of natural prairie. And yet—no way.

Amanda had brought the girls to dinner there one Saturday evening, and his anxiety over three “primitives” (he didn’t say it; Amanda did) whooping and skidding through his hallways, overtaking his dining room, and accosting his furniture cast a miserable pall. David and Amanda squirmed for opposite reasons over Dover sole and fresh peas, while Evie and DeeDee’s eyes darted in confusion. Amanda imagined them too intimidated to ask: Was it okay to drink their milk like always or must they sip it as David sipped his wine? Since they couldn’t talk and eat at the same time, and couldn’t talk while he talked, the girls ate silently. Except when David tried to elicit a response. Evie feigned quiet pleasure. “This is delicious.”

Later Amanda apologized to her daughters. They shrugged—their father’s girlfriend was the same way.

Sad but true, David confessed, “We need to buy a different house, one that’s ours, not my precious domain.” He laughed. See, he could be light-hearted about it as long as everyone respected each other’s prerogatives.

Yes, well. Maybe if he said so, it would prove true. David was never wrong.

Finalizing the divorce occurred suddenly after what seemed like a lot of haggling. The house quandary didn’t work out as neatly. Real estate had sunk through the earth. They therefore agreed, the big idea having gathered momentum, that Amanda and her children would live at David’s, temporarily. He’d rearrange rooms and box prized possessions until the market turned reasonable. He didn’t mind. “Although, perhaps your girls should eat before we do.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” So they were fine.

Amanda’s divorce from Mike became official in March. Her mother, who hadn’t seen them since she had married Guy, the tennis pro, a year ago, urged Amanda to hold the wedding at the resort. “Assuming,” she said, “the ceremony’s small and simple.”

“Very small,” Amanda said. “Very quick.”

Cheryl and Guy would drive the girls to Madison where they’d meet their father and other grandparents for spring vacation.

David chose Mexico City for their honeymoon; he’d pay for it. His Spanish was fluent and Mexico’s history was underappreciated.

Guy had come here from Finland three years ago. He was thirty-six but looked younger. Cheryl, who was fifty like David, had thickened considerably in the last year. And perhaps consequently, she had taken to wearing very high heels when she wasn’t playing golf. Further, she had dyed her hair a brilliant, deliberately implausible but chic orange.

After the ceremony, Cheryl and David, her new son-in-law, talked avidly about growing up during the seventies. Amanda spoke with Guy for one minute before Cheryl hauled her off,  practically into a hedge. “Hands off, you little bitch.”

Amanda nodded and turned away. She hadn’t found the right time to offer her mother congratulations. Like, “Guy’s a lucky guy.”

But, oh well. Maybe later. Or maybe never.

(Click here to read the next episode.)

His Big Idea

Getting married was David’s big idea. And Amanda always thought if he hadn’t overwhelmed her, making logical cases about her essential “incompleteness;” if she hadn’t worried that her daughters might suffer, going to school where both she and her lover worked—if it weren’t for that and her mother’s lifelong desperation for marriage, which she had just achieved, Amanda might never have agreed.

The oddity of David proposing caught her off-guard, even though they discussed it for weeks. He was fifty and had never married, so she had to ask, why her? Why now?

[Click here to read the first episode, or here to read the previous one.]

He didn’t quote Rumi, as he continued to do quite often for Amanda’s enlightenment. Instead, after holding his chin and as if mulling it over, he had said, “It’ll make things easier.”

Amanda’s every-other-weekend schedule—she would only see him when the girls weren’t around—was taking a toll. And because he was fifty, seducing some young thing year after year, no longer interested him. Amanda suited him fine. “Besides, my love, I have so much to teach you!”

Why hadn’t that alarming observation struck her like lightning? He said it often enough, astounded that she was almost thirty years old, held a college degree and a well paying job, but knew nothing of art or music or, ahem—“all of history.”

They lived and worked in a Chicago suburb and yet she knew nothing—absolutely nothing—about the 1968 Democratic convention. David could scarcely believe it. The apartment he had grown up in had overlooked Lincoln Park. He was eleven and had sneaked out to wander among the smoking, grooving crowd of protesters. Not during any riots, but still; Abbie Hoffman had been right there!

David, like a million others, had written his dissertation about that summer and its continuing impact. “Which is why,” he opened his hand with a tossing motion, “I’m stuck teaching high school.”

He tutored her in everything, except sex. She could keep up with him there, or else she really would never have put up with him. But until they were formally married—which took a while because Mike kept sabotaging the mechanics of tying up their two-year old divorce—David’s wide scope of knowledge and appreciation of life opened up the world, and even the universe, to her. She walked around in wonder and amazement, oblivious to the man’s attitude.

Instead, she directed her worries toward Mike, who wasn’t so nice anymore. He objected to Amanda remarrying. If she remarried, he’d be paying regular child support, not unallocated support, which went not only to Evie and DeeDee, but to Amanda, too.

“Try to understand this,” Mike said, as anxious as David to teach her a few things. “That money is deductible. The twenty-five percent—net—I’ll be paying for the girls, in addition to trusts, don’t worry about those, will mean extra taxes.”

Recently, Mike had won a big promotion. Almost a year ago, he’d broken up with Nadia, and without her, he’d grown leaner and meaner. He’d become a buttoned-up Episcopalian and instead of watching TV with girls, he took them to church. He wanted them to attend religion classes. He wanted them baptized. And even though he was now earning a royal income, he was no longer carefree about money.

DeeDee, who was six, said they went to church early Sunday mornings with daddy and a lady named Gillian Stone. “Then there’s a social hour where we have to behave.”

Evie, who was almost nine, sighed. “And on Saturdays we go to Gillian’s studio and hang around while she makes jewelry.”

Amanda couldn’t make David understand why Mike having a girlfriend was different than her having a boyfriend in the house. “I know it’s not logical,” she had said. “But I care about the way they might see me. And, how they’ll see me when they’re older.”

“Because of your relationship with that old guy?”

“No.” Why on earth had she told David about Walter? Unwilling to talk about it, she threw a glass past his head. After that, they agreed not to see each other during the entire weekend she was free.

On Monday, David took her out to lunch. It was too cold to sit outside, so they went to a noisy pizza place, where he gave her a ring with four little rubies embedded in it.

(Click here to read the next episode.)