You'll see what I mean.
I was over Noreen. Done, finito, case closed, 'Bob's your uncle', moving on.
Even in the loneliness of being in a strange city to me after my divorce, I barely thought of my old college girlfriend.
I was a bachelor in LA but I was not dating. After eight years of marriage it was a painful adjustment both emotionally and financially. It was everything I could do just to make rent and buy groceries. As lonely as I was I didn't have the stomach for much else.
I had a new job and things were not going well. The director had asked to have me replaced... twice! I had confronted some serious health issues that year also.
Perhaps my time in LA was coming to a close.
One day, out of the blue, I got a collect call from Noreen. She sounded upset. Her fiance had left her. I was flattered that she called me. It felt good to be needed, to have someone coming to me for comfort.
We talked about everything.
It seemed Noreen's fiance had disappeared on some cross country soul-searching ramble and had met someone else by the time he got to Arizona. Being jilted had left Noreen with a lot of self-doubt. I gave her encouragement. I assured her that she was one in a million and this guy was an idiot to give her up. Reminded her of all the qualities that I had admired. I reminded myself.
We laughed a lot.
Noreen was living on Cape Cod. She spent the summer in a tent on the beach and the winter living in vacation homes as a house sitter. She cleaned homes and walked dogs year-round.
She made Cape Cod sound wonderful. With all the difficulty I was having in LA, the prospect of a new beginning and being half a day's drive from my family sounded very attractive.
“Oh, you should come out here. You should totally move here, it'd be great. Come visit me at least!”
Thanksgiving was about a month away. I was planning to visit my folks in Canandaigua. Noreen was planning on visiting her sister in Rochester.
“You could come here then we could both drive to Rochester to visit our families,” said Noreen.
Sure, why not.
She continued to call (collect) and we talked more and more about my visit.
“I can't wait to see you!”
There was a lilt in her voice and a flirtatious nature was present in all our conversations. I hadn't heard her sound that way since just before we got together.
What's going on here? I wondered. I had been around the block a few times. I didn't want to kid myself but I found myself being seduced. She sprinkled little innuendos in her conversation and constantly spoke of my arrival with warm anticipation.
I tried my best to expect nothing but I found myself hoping for some sort of rekindling. Just some fooling around would be plenty welcome. No, no... don't think that way... this is the upside-down world of Noreen: to think you know is not to know.
Finally the day of my trip arrived. The flights to Providence, RI through Laguardia in New York were horrible. The flight from LA to NY was pretty bumpy. Why is it the older I get, the more that bothers me? There were delays in New York, of course. I called Noreen and told her of the delay.
“Oh, um, I have to go to an ALANON meeting tonight. I'm not sure how that's going to work.”
Hmmm, okay. Then, I guess those support group meetings are important not to miss... even when a long lost friend is flying in to visit you.
I wondered how I would have ended up spending my evening if my flight had been on time. At an ALANON meeting? Sitting alone in some rich dude's summer place?
The flight to Providence was even worse than the first leg of my journey. It was a tiny prop plane and the single most horrifying landing I had experienced to that point (a high wind landing in Flagstaff, AZ has since taken the crown). As I was slammed side-to-side, and up and down in the very back of the plane, I focused on seeing Noreen. I could see her smiling face. Oh the hug I was going to give her when we we met.
I was green when I staggered off the plane. Boy did I need to see a friendly face! My flight was late enough that she was able to attend her meeting and still had to wait for me to land.
She looked wonderful, but therewas no smile.
I opened my arms for the hug I had been hanging on for.
She dodged it.
Okaaay... Maybe she had a bad meeting. Maybe I smell of elderberries.
Still.
I told the tale of my terrible flight but she didn't seem to want to hear about it. She was distant, detached. This was not the same girl I had been talking to on the phone; not the one I had crossed the country to visit. I can't claim that I was completely surprised. I had allowed myself some high hopes for this trip, but this was Noreen after all.
I had had a similar visit years ago when I visited a girlfriend who had recently moved to Boston. My visit was greatly anticipated in our correspondence, but I arrived to inexplicably cool greetings. She put me on the couch and broke up with me the next day.
Always makes for a splendid vacation!
On the trip to Cape Cod from the airport in Noreen's her barely-running Honda Civic—that someone had given her of course—I feared for my life. She had never been a stellar driver but she had somehow gotten worse, or maybe I just never noticed before. She cursed sane drivers for interfering with her rampant illegal trajectories. I don't think I let go of the door handle the entire way.
She seemed a little more relaxed when we got back to the place she was house sitting. It was a great little place only yards from the ocean. We talked pleasantly for a while. The subject of her cool greeting was never addressed.
I slept in a room with colorful floral sheets, pink trim and a clown-painted toy trunk. Normally the abode of an eight-year-old girl apparently. Pictures of smiling girls wearing private school uniforms and flashing peace signs surrounded a mirror in front of a vanity. I turned out the light to let sleep wash away my shitty day.
I heard something. It was Noreen in her room across the hall, talking on the phone. I couldn't hear the words but the tone was unmistakable, the youthful giggling sounds of a girl smitten. It was just like our conversation in the rain years ago except she was talking to someone else and I had to listen from another room.
Grrrrr!
I thought back to the scary ride from the airport. She had mentioned a 'friend' of hers about a dozen times. He was a friend from her ALANON meetings.
What was his name?... Ethan I think.
I sat wide awake looking at the plastic horses and cutesy figurines on the the shelves. Noreen flirted on the phone till past 2AM.
My blood slowly, quietly, boiled.
Why the hell was I there? Did she have the slightest clue that even if she had not given me any signals , the last thing any jet-lagged lonely ex-boyfriend in the next room wants to hear is a grown woman giggling like a teenager.
My swirling questions faded to some form of sleep around four.
In the morning, I confronted Noreen trying not to sound confrontational, but let her know in no uncertain terms that I was upset. I asked her why she had seemed so different on the phone and why she had invited me in the first place?
Her response was a artful double ploy of her catatonic silence and the friend block. She told me about another former boyfriend who had recently come for a visit, how she was perplexed at why he left in an angry huff a day later.
Aha, the pattern emerges.
That lucky dude must have had his own wheels, I thought.
I, on the other hand, was stuck here for four days. I was stuck in a beautiful place though. I went for a walk on the beach. I borrowed her bike and went for a ride through picturesque lanes raining fall foliage. She could go hang with Ethan for all I cared.
I suddenly saw Noreen in a whole new light. A hundred things came back to me, each evaluated with a level head for the first time: the kleptomania, the bad driving, the head games, the withdrawn silence when confronted, the hard realization that our 'first time' in bed was probably not her 'first time' as she claimed. I even thought about the way she ate cereal, her head hovering directly over the bowl and slurping from behind a curtain of her hair, in a new light. The things I used to think were cute, cool and quirky I suddenly found sad and pathetic. The term “despicable” seemed way too harsh, but somehow I couldn't shake it from my mind.
A dear friend of mine, who was often around when I was seeing Noreen in college, recently told me something I'd never known: Noreen had never spoken to him, not a single word. Why was that? And How on Earth is it that I didn't notice?
Throughout my stay she provided me with behavior to observe without the benefit of dusty and smudged love goggles.
We went to see a movie. Why not, we wouldn't have to talk.
Despite my warnings she parked, not in a handicapped parking spot persay, but squeezed into the striped access zone next to a handicapped parking spot. She was incensed when she found a ticket on her windshield. She raved about taking this injustice to city hall. I bit my tongue.
The next day I made a decision to get over myself. Why make things more miserable than they had to be. I could at least pretend to be an adult about this. I apologized and made with the nice. The atmosphere went from cold to luke warm.
Ethan came over a couple of times. He was a pretty decent guy actually. I knew this wasn't his fault and it was possible he had saved me from what he himself was going to have to endure.
Poor sap.
I talked Noreen into lending me her car so that I could drive to Boston and visit my Aunt and my cousins overnight. She was as happy to be rid of me as I was to get out of Dodge. I would return early the the next morning for our trip to Rochester New York to visit our respective families for Thanksgiving.
I had a nice visit with my Aunt as I always do. I got up at the crack of dawn to be in Cape Cod by 8AM. I couldn't wait to get home to my folks' house. I wanted to be around sane people who really cared about me and could express it in healthy ways. All I had to do was endure her for a six hour car ride.
Cue Gilligan’s Island theme: ♪ “A three hour tour... A three hour tour...” ♫
I pulled into the driveway a little before eight. Noreen had just woken up and hadn't even started to pack!
“I thought you said we were leaving at eight. I skipped my Aunt's breakfast so that I would be here on time.”
“I've got to clean this house, the owners might be coming down for Thanksgiving. We have to wait for Ethan anyway.”
“We what?”
“Oh yeah, didn't I tell you? Ethan's coming too. We're taking his car. Mine would never make it.”
“That must have slipped your mind.”
I thought Ethan was an okay guy, but that last thing I wanted to do was to spend six hours as the third wheel in a car with a pair and giddy new lovers.
Maybe it would be better to have Ethan along. I could imagine the deafening silence of just Noreen and me in the car.
I helped Noreen sweep and dust. Ethan showed up and pitched-in. We loaded up his car and after several last minute trips into the house to check this or get a forgotten that, the car was finally rolling down the long driveway.
At last!
Noreen had a habit of speaking everything she said as if it were a question, with an upward swinging hook at the end (Quirk #6). So when she said: “So um, there's this another house I have to clean,” as if she were asking our permission, I had the urge to say simply: “No!”
Instead, I said “WHAT?”
“Don't, you don't have to do anything,” she said.
“You Are you kidding? I'm going to help like friggin' crazy. If I don't, we'll never get out of here.”
In my ambition to knock out this next obstacle out of hell, I knocked-over and broke a lamp on the back stroke of vacuuming. The fumble was no help with our strained relations.
With all three of us pitching in, broken lamps be damned, we were done with the house in a little over two hours.
Now we could finally...
“Um, so like. There's one more house I have to clean...”
♪ “A three hour tour...” ♫
Once we finished with the second surprise house cleaning—without my breaking anything—there was a series of errands. The whole time, Noreen was using her mobile phone to chase down anyone she could complain to about her handicapped parking ticket without having to show up in court.
“But I wasn't in a handicapped spot!” Noreen said into the phone.
I looked at Ethan.
“She was parked in that part with the slanty blue lines next to the handicapped spot.”
Ethan looked at me for a moment, then at Noreen.
It was four-thirty in the afternoon the day before Thanksgiving, the busiest travel day of the year and we had not yet left town. It started to snow.
♪ “A three hour tour...” ♫
There was one last errand Noreen said she had to make.
We stopped in front of a gift shop. I sat stewing in the back seat. When Noreen returned she handed me the bag she came out of the shop with.
“What's this?”
I opened the bag. It was a large “J” made of chocolate.
What can I say; it worked. I was slightly less pissed off. She remembered my preferred antidepressant: chocolate, she recognized that I was having a spectacularly bad day and that she felt some small responsibility, or at least sympathy for it.
But this bad day wasn't over by a long shot.
When we hit I-90 to head East with the traffic from the Boston holiday exodus, the snow was coming down heavily, a full-on blizzard. Mile after mile we crawled along in bumper to bumper traffic. We were driving so slowly, snow was piling up on the side view mirrors.
It was spring time inside the car however. There was new love was blossoming in the front seat. I was so happy for them I could have puked daisies.
I wanted out of that car so badly,I looked at the cars surrounding us and wondered if any were headed anywhere near Canandaigua.
Ethan was getting tired and asked Noreen to drive.
“Your going to let this girl drive your car?”
“Why,” said Ethan innocently, with love pedals still falling all around him like the snow outside.
“He hasn't seen you drive yet, has he?” I said.
“Shut up,” Noreen said.
We pulled over at the next Mass Pike rest stop. While Noreen was still in the ladies room. Ethan took the opportunity to inquire.
“So Noreen's driving, is it really that bad?”
“We'll probably be okay.” I said.
I don't know why, but his asking me made me feel a little better... until the subject turned to sex in the car later on.
Without going into detail, Noreen began bragging about certain skills she possessed; skills that I didn't know she had; skills I didn't know anyone knew she had.
It wasn't like I hadn't asked.
It is possible that her intentions were not designed to taunt me, but I can't imagine how they weren't. If she wanted revenge for the broken lamp and the comment about her driving, she had it.
I went from annoyed to furious. I quietly resolved that when I got out of that car that I would never speak to Noreen again. When I got home I would change my ticket to leave from Rochester instead of Providence and that would be that.
After four hours of driving we had not reached the New York State line. Not even close. Noreen's driving didn't do much for our time or anyone's nerves.
I was pretty quiet in the back seat. I was still fuming but I was already beginning to see the humor in this ridiculous situation; actual laughter would have to wait a while.
I gladly volunteered to take the wheel when Noreen got tired after a couple of hours. We were in New York State now. My eyes were lasers through the blowing snow and on towards home. It was my only focus.
We pulled into my parent's driveway twelve hours later than I had planned on arriving. I went in first to explain to my folks why my old girlfriend and her new boyfriend had to use their bathroom at 2AM.
The day after Thanksgiving, I called the airline to change my ticket but the airline told me I would have to buy a brand new ticket to fly out of Rochester. I couldn't even fly independently to Laguardia and meet my flight to LA. If I didn't board the plane in Providence, the my whole itinerary would be canceled.
The next day with gritted teeth and a resolution to say as little as possible on the ride home I climbed in the back seat of Ethan's car and sat there for the teeth-grinding six-hour ride to the Providence airport.
Everyone was pretty quiet.
I felt completely exhausted by the time I got out of the car, but it still felt liberating to be rid of the love squad for good. The drove off their way with little ceremony and I went mine—towards the check-in counter.
Free at last!
You'd think...
There was another snow storm. My flight was canceled. Act of God; you're on your own.
♪ “A three hour tour...” ♫
I cursed with each number I dialed.
“Hi Noreen, um it's Joel.”
“What do you want.”
“Um my flight got canceled, I'm stranded here at the airport.”
“We, like, have a meeting tonight, I don't think...”
“No problem, never mind.”
I was relieved to be honest. I think the only reason I called her at all was so I would have the satisfaction of knowing that she blew me off in my time of need.
Now there was the problem of lodging. I was broke from the expenses of travel, so it looked like I was warming a bench or a spot of floor. I called my Mom just to give her a heads up and, yes, get some sympathy for my sad, sad story.
My Mom wasted no time in engaging the “Mom network”.
“I'll call you right back,” she said.
But I wasn't done whining yet!
My phone rang five minutes later.
“What are you wearing?”
“What?”
“What do you have on? A friend of mine is picking you up at the airport in twenty minutes.”
Never doubt the power of the “Mom network”.
I spent the night with a delightful couple in a delightful cottage not far from the shores of Narragansett Bay. I had a wonderful dinner and a wonderful breakfast the next morning. I caught my flights home with no problems and very little turbulence.
Someone remind me to send those folks a Christmas card.
I could see how the quality of people really makes a difference. I had been blind to Noreen's selfishness for so many years, now I saw her plainly against the stark contrast of the wonderful couple who had taken me in. I had a renewed faith in humanity...
At least until I arrived home to find an $800 phone bill for all Noreen's collect calls.
A few years later Noreen called me out of the blue, as always, but not collect this time. I spoke in monosyllabic replies with a tight jaw. She apologized repeatedly for the trip from hell.
“I was going through a lot then. I was really messed up.”
I didn't give her excuse much credit but I could feel my vinegar mellow anyway. Even though I felt the urge to stay mad there just was no reason. I was married now to a woman so incredible and so perfect for me that being mad at Noreen seemed completely petty. Besides, in the middle of that hellish trip, she bought me the chocolate “J”. That small act of kindness may have been the difference in my even picking up the phone.
We talked every other year or so. I got an email from Noreen with pictures of her newborn baby. She had decided to have a child as a single mom. She sounded so happy. She had stopped living in tents and had regular home she had been renting for a couple years.
I was happy for her. Motherhood seemed to have changed her, as it is known to do.
It was finding my true love and best friend, my wife Audra, that changed me. If my experience with Noreen was part of a path to that end, I can't regret any part of it...
...but I no longer take collect phone calls.
2 comments:
This ending more than lived up to expectations. It's great that you can find humor in it now. Remind me to satisfy my curiosity as to Noreen's aforementioned "skills" when we finally get together for that drink. I'm a guy after all.
You got it!
Post a Comment