Trip The Lights Fantastic, Part 2

I did well at work, for the most part. Sure, I tended to squirm in my seat during meetings and skim over research material before diving into projects, but such behavior was generally viewed as the quirks of a “creative.” Brainstorming sessions brought their own difficulties; I either got lost with the quick pace of conversation, or said something inappropriate. I often prepped the night before, agonizing over a list of possible taglines that I would then toss out, as if I’d thought of them spontaneously.

The actual writing process, however, was pure joy. I loved playing with words; editing felt like putting a puzzle together, and I could zero in and lose myself for hours composing the perfect paragraph. Work also offered an escape from my home life, which I had kept hidden from everyone. Until ….

One day, Theo called me into his office. “Is everything okay?” he asked.

“I’m behind on the Growing Healthy copy … ‘I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies.’”

“No, I mean, at home? Is anything going on?”

Theo preceded to share how he had dreamed of me nightly for two weeks straight. His dreams revealed, in their metaphorical way, my situation at home.

 “If you don’t, I swear, I’m gonna kill myself!”

            James’ threat came from behind the locked bathroom door. We had met a few years earlier in a British lit class at the University of Minnesota; a student teacher slipped in a VHS tape of Brideshead Revisited, and James slid over and invited me to coffee. A week later, he said he wanted to marry me; we moved in together within a few months and exchanged vows in the Hennepin County courthouse the following year.

            My first real boyfriend, James was five years older than me, blond, and Ken-doll handsome, an All-American high school basketball player before blowing his knee and sports career. He audited a few university classes while working as a teller at the local Wells Fargo branch, running around campus in a long black trench coat and tight Levis. I couldn’t believe someone so gorgeous and smart and charming would be interested in me, and I blossomed like a flower to his sun.

            That is not to say he was particularly romantic. The two of us never exchanged rings — the ritual was far too archaic in his eyes — and any gifts were chosen out of practicality rather than passion. One year we joined some friends for a post-Christmas dinner, and the women went around the table sharing what surprises they’d found under the tree.           

“George gave me these.” Peggy pushed her hair back to reveal sparkling, two-karat diamond stud earrings.

Deb gave her hubby a squeeze. “We’re going to Hawaii on a second honeymoon.”

            “So, Susan,” Peggy smiled. “What did you get?”

            “Electric wool socks.”

You could cut the air with a Morton’s steak knife.

James piped up in self-defense. “She’s always complaining about her cold feet.”

            “Cold feet, warm heart.” I tried to laugh off the looks of pity, then silently played with my salad for the rest of the evening.

            After we got married, James decided he wanted to live closer to his brother in Phoenix, so I dropped out fall semester of my senior year and packed up for the Southwest. By the time spring arrived along with the hundred-degree temps, we were on our way back to Minnesota. My bulimia returned, as well. I had gained twenty pounds my junior year in high school, and while I may not have been able to control my thoughts or emotions or life, I could control my own body. Now though, instead of purging (or chewing my food and then spitting it out), I began exercising compulsively, biking an hour for every Hershey’s Kiss. I lost another twenty pounds and wore a size two, yet still felt like a failure because I couldn’t crack a hundred on the scale.

James returned to the bank, and I started working as a copy editor at a small publishing house, which led to my gig at the marketing agency. As my career took off, I found a new self-confidence, and began standing up for myself during our more frequent disagreements. My husband didn’t much care for being challenged.

“Why couldn’t you just stay the way you were when I met you?!” James slammed the bathroom door. Click! went the lock, and I began to tremble. This had happened before.

            “James, don’t!”

            “I don’t even want to live.” I could hear him rustling through the medicine cabinet. “Maybe if I take all of these you’ll learn.”

            “Please, stop!”

            “You don’t care about me. You’d listen to me if you did.”

            “I’m listening! Just, don’t do anything.”

            “You don’t love me anymore!”

            “Of course, I do! Please, please, I’ll do what you want.”

            “I’m taking the razor.”

            “No!”

            This went on for an hour or more until I agreed to back down. The power dynamics held, for a while at least.

I confessed my unhappiness to Theo, as he did his own marital strife, and the two of us fell into a wild, fiery affair. We could hardly contain ourselves, stealing away at lunchtime to favorite rendezvous spots — a hotel cloakroom, a hidden alleyway, a nook beneath the escalator in the Nicollet Mall. Our initial discretion turned to outright defiance as we arrived at work together and waited for the agency to empty at night so we could be alone. Behind closed doors, we tried as hard as we could to climb into each other’s skin, madly rolling around his desk, the floor, coming with our clothes on. Once he pressed me against his office’s wall of windows, and I watched his hands — one cupping my breast, the other fingering my clit — before we steamed over the reflection. I had never known such passion before; he consumed, nay, devoured me.

Theo would leave little gifts on my desk, tokens of his love. One morning I arrived to find a small, plump glass bird amidst the stacks of ad copy, the latest member of a flock he had given me. He said they reminded him of me, fragile yet free in spirit. My avian menagerie had many species: stained glass, wood, Waterford crystal. This one was azure in hue, the color of an endlessly clear sky or eternal sea. I picked up the figurine and rolled it back and forth against the light, transfixed by its translucent quality, so emblematic of our seeming ability to see through to each other’s souls.

            Yet equally symbolic was the bird’s gradual opaqueness, until its tiny head, in contrast to the clarity of its heart center, turned dark, as if filled with our own fears and doubts and conflicting obligations. So, unlike the sparrows that chirped outside the office window, this bird, like our love, could neither truly sing nor take flight.

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