The Woman Upstairs

I live in a place where there are two Women Upstairs.

That description is perfect. The book wasn’t, or it wasn’t exactly my idea of a Woman Upstairs, although it contained some of the qualities: single. Works earnestly at her socially helpful vocation. Drinks a little (or a lot) too much and hides it. Has many needy friends that come and go. Is long past dressing sexy although she is not old. Drives a crappy car. Cries easily

The first Women Upstairs in my memory were spinster sisters at my grandmother’s house. They were the upstairs tenants, retired teachers. I loved to go upstairs to visit them because they had spent their summers travelling to India, “The Orient”, Europe, Canada, South America. They let me and my sisters dress up in kimonos and sombreros. They loved to read to us. They laughed when we asked why they weren’t married, and said, “Oh sweetie, it’s because we have each other!” They died within months of one and other and my grandmother had to empty their bursting apartment, which contained a back room of garbage bags filled with empty burbon bottles.

Our Women Upstairs each live in their own apartment on the second floor of our 4 family.

K— has been here for almost ten years. She moved in when her engagement fell apart. She was a teary mess, accompanied by her ex-fiance who wanted to help her find a nice place to live. She had a good job and terrific references. A single gal would be a nice change of pace after the two-year old twins racing over our heads from dawn till 10 p.m. And it was; she was quiet and neat. She did call us for a lot of concerns-some relevent like the dripping faucet, others odd like the squirrels racing up and down the tree in front of the house. She was a little strange to start: we had to re-enamel the claw-foot tub after she painted it midnight blue (???) and we had to ask her not to put her speakers facing out when she blasted Billie Holiday after ten at night (???).

Then K— lost her steady day job (not her fault, the economy tanked). She found jobs waitressing and bartending so paying the rent was never a problem although we started getting it stacks of crumpled ones, fives and tens. My husband was concerned she was living beyond her means, but I was in her corner because I had lived month-to-month in my life and nothing would have been more devastating then losing my apartment when I was scraping by. Her hours changed and it was pretty obvious by our banging ceiling that she was bringing someone or something home after closing time. Early one morning as I was heading out for a run, I almost stepped on what I thought was an injured hobo in our foyer. He had one crutch, a casted arm and a bandaged head. “Ahhh, you looking for someone?” I asked/demanded in my toughest voice. “It’s all right, no problem, I’m a friend of K–‘s”, and he limped off into the dark.

K— is hanging in there by a thread. She finally junked her car after it rotted in our driveway for over eight months. We can hear her crying to her sister for money when she talks on her back porch. She’s living hard, looks like she’s aged 20 years, gained 30 pounds and noisily dumps plastic bags of cheap wine bottles and beer cans into the recycling bins every other day, no shame. I’m rooting for her because I think her life is tough but she’s scrappy and works incredibly hard but each month I’m afraid she’s going to cry poor or hand in a short pile of crumpled bills. Sometimes I think I could have been K—.

T— lives across the hall. She’s only been Upstairs for a little over a year. She is young, young enough to be my daughter. She’s an intellectual, a researcher at MIT. She comes from a lot of money. She doesn’t have a car, instead she’s locked an expensive city bike to the front porch but I never see her ride it. T— is quiet. Really quiet. She dresses like a 1950’s school teacher: pencil skirts and cardigan sweater sets but T— is heavy. She has columnar legs, no ankles, a gooshy midsection and no chin. Her skin is pale, clammy, almost gray. It makes no sense because she’s a vegetarian. I know this because she mail orders all her food–not kidding! Boxes of fresh veg, hummus, quinoa, bulger, soy and fruit fill the foyer each week. Every morning I hear her vitamix whirring. It was a complete mystery to me why she’s this soft! I want to tell her, Get Moving! Ride that beautiful bike! You’re too young to be this doughy! But we just smile and nod at each other as I squeeze past her mail order vegetarian groceries to get in our front door.

The mystery of T— was solved by our garbage men a couple of weeks ago. They started tossing aside bags of garbage and affixed orange stickers on them stating our city’s recycling initiative. Essentially, glass bottles and cans need to go in the recycle bin. The garbage men aren’t militant, but they won’t collect bags full of recyclable items. We looked into the rejected bags and found empty whiskey and wine bottles, beer bottles, liquor bottles and nips. We laughed at the stash and then asked the tenants to recycle because our garbage got rejected. K— and the guy on the top floor took it in stride but T— became defensive. “I know what should be recycled! Why are garbage men going through the trash?” Uuuuhhhh, because they’re Garbage Men, T—.

Her attitude raised my suspicion. Her nap on the cellar floor by the washing machine confirmed it. T— was plastered. I was able to wake her up and get her to her apartment. After many hugs and promises that she’d go to bed (total personality flip), she flopped on her couch. The next morning she was at our door, looking like her usual pale frumpy self. She apologized and said she has social anxiety disorder and sometimes drinks too much. Could I help, I asked? She looked at me as if I was from another planet. My husband says to stay out of it. We have her parents number just in case.

When You Run Into That Someone…

There is Someone. Someone you’re dying to accidently run into so you can show how perfect your life is after he or she dumped you, cheated on you, left you for for that asshole. You’ve rehearsed your casual hello and practiced a nonchalant toss of your perfectly highlighted hair. You are twenty pounds less than your post break-up wreck when he or she saw your in Walgreen’s buying adult diapers for your grandfather. Your skin is clear. You are on top of the world. You are having the best fucking sex of your life and it shows on you. And your ex is just a blip on your big life screen.

You’re hoping he or she is wretched. That life is the perfect opposite life of what you both were when you were dumped. That he or she is fat, living a miserable life, working a menial job, wearing sweat pants because nothing else fits. When he or she sees you, you are the object of envy and desire and wonder: “How could I have let that go?”

So that moments never happens. Still you practice for it, just in case. Because out there, there is one person you wish you could serve a big shit sandwich of your awesome fucking life, if wishes could ever come true.

It took over twenty-two years. And it was worth every second.

The details of how we came together don’t matter except that it was complicated and messy. There was a nasty divorce on my side and a fragile girlfriend on his side. To complicate matters even more, he was my boss. He was nearly twenty years older than me. Everything about us said, “Run. Run away. Don’t do this.” Which made it more exciting at the time.

We started out on the sly. It was delicious. The little innuendos, the longing stares, the secret touches, and best of all, forbidden sex at work. In the car. Quickies where ever we could. We were the only ones who knew of this passion, this pleasure. It would be so worth it but we had to keep it a secret (his rules) because my soon-to-be-ex-husband was dangerous (not so sure about that, we had been separated for months, and by my accounts, he was mostly annoying) and his girlfriend was fragile and almost suicidal.

A year into our secret relationship, my divorce was nearly settled but he was still living with Miss Fragile. Her name was Cathy. He told me he was trying to get her to understand why they needed to be apart, yet he went to Cathy’s apartment every night. She was really unstable, he assured me. She had been decimated by her divorce, left impoverished, betrayed by her best friends on the witness stand. Her child had been taken from her custody. Her behaviors were erratic spanning the scope of nearly suicidal depression to homicidal anger. (I am not kidding, he swore she strangled a dog that killed her cat and never felt an shred of regret). She could not weather another blow. Losing him might be the final break, could throw her off the deep end. Besides, he liked to pile on, I was dangerous. My ex-husband might lash out unpredictably. It was best we kept a low profile and fucked like monkeys in secret, dark places.

I wasted over two years of my life on these principles. First I believed it, I believed I loved him and I believed in us. Then I believed I was nothing without him. I went from a pathetic wife in a bad marriage to a cheating mistress. No break. No time to take stock of who I could be without someone who expected me to be something for him. My greatest regret of that time was that my son took a back seat to the menial, meager offerings of the Love Of My Life. I can never undo that.

I’d like to reveal that I came to my senses and left his sorry ass, the lame exuses and cheating crap because I knew I was better than that, but that is not what happened. The truth is he finally ended up breaking up with Cathy. Our holding pattern was over! No more sneaking around.We could move into our own place. Our dreams could finally come true…then I was asked out on a date by a gorgeous, rich, funny, charismatic friend and I went out with him for the following reasons:

1. Athough I was only 25, I hadn’t been on a date in years.

2. The date was to a hip, happening restaurant, then to see a jazz band.

3. The Love of My Life was wallowing in a trough of sorrow on his mangey couch for fragile Cathy, who was, by his account, destroyed. She was sorry for whatever she had done to him and that wracked him with guilt. Cathy believed that everyone she loved left her which was probably true but it was just blah, blah, blah to me after two years of sneaking around.

4. The nearly twenty-year gap in our age was a bit daunting. His body was on the decline: he had man boobs, a hefty paunch and an unfortunate mound of fat just above his penis that nearly hid his manhood when he was standing up. He thought nothing of farting in bed. And he talked with authority about the 1960’s and the Vietnam War. I kept doing math like, “When I’m 30, he’ll be…48…” It got even uglier when did the math for40, then 50…then 60.

My date was unbelievable. We were young, sharp, fun, drunk. We fucked our brains out in a huge, clean, soft bed at his loft after dancing the night away. My date dropped me off at dawn with a loud smooch and a declaration that we had to do that again! I couldn’t sleep. I was electrified by the night I just had, it was glimpse of a life I would never live if I moved with someone who was ready to settle in for listening to himself talk about his wild days gone while pondering hypertension and diabetes.

Three hours later I was looking at the weathered, pained, egotistical face of the man I declared for the past two years was The Love Of My Life and in my blurry, hung-over miasma, his face made me sick. He was still so full of self-righteous grief for the fragile Cathy that he had no inkling of my previous night’s activities, except that I was unusually quiet. I told him, “I’m tired of hearing about poor Cathy.”

He calmly replied with an authority one expects from  master to servant, “I’m not interested in your feelings right now.” And that was it for me. The only way I can describe the complete end of any affection I had for the man was a door slammed in my brain. I was done. Less than twelve hours earlier I learned there was a far bigger world than I had ever dreamed of and I wasn’t going to waste any more time on a fat, two-timing loser.

I said nothing because I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t outraged or empowered. I wasn’t about to start a fight or initiate the break up because that would have taken effort and emotion that simply no longer existed. It felt bizarre, as though any love I’d felt for him was erased, gone, vanished. He had a sense of my distance because I left that afternoon-I lied and said my ex had to bring our son home early-he said, “Don’t ever wake up and realize I’m too old, too fat and too stupid for you.” That was a line he used occasionally when I was sobbing about being alone while he spent holidays and weekends with fragile Cathy.

I didn’t respond in my typical, “Never! You are the most amazing, brilliant, handsome man I know!” I think I just stared with my mouth agape as I wondered what the hell I was doing with a fat, old hippy. He then said, “You know, if you dump me, I’ll just give up and marry Cathy.” I could not get away fast enough.

It was a feeble break up to be sure, but I had no shame because I absolutely did not care. I didn’t take his calls for several days. When I finally did, I just told him I was done and didn’t want to see him anymore. He was floored. He needed a reason. How could we be finished when the love we shared that transcended the universe? We couldn’t be over, we needed to be together to find out if we really should be apart. His rationale disgusted me, especially when he hinted that I could never find anyone better. With that, I didn’t believe I owed him a face-to-face after the two years of sneaking around as a second girlfriend. Besides I was having a blast with a new young guy. Plus there were other young guys calling me up for dates. I wasn’t a mess, I wasn’t second rate and I wasn’t trouble just because I was divorced with a kid. I was starting to live life as a twenty-something.

Things didn’t just magically turn around at that point, let me assure you. It was difficult. The handsome, rich, young guy broke up with me because he wasn’t ready for kids. That stung. I learned to set limits on who I let in. I stopped sleeping with men on the first date. I decided to just be alone for over a year which was hard at the time but further defined who I was and what I wanted from others. I loved being a single mother although I have no idea how I got through it when I look back. Then I met my husband. And life has been getting better every year.

I would be lying if I told you, “Oh, I only wish the best for that guy I almost moved in with.” For some reason, he pisses me off when I think of him. I compromised my integrity, my values and my self worth. He defined me in such a degrading way: young and divorced-implying ignorance. A package deal that was a burden. Less than ideal. Our “Perfect Love” was a poor second thought and I went along with it! I was a mistress. A cheater. A sneak. I know I let those things happen, and that I was a willing participant but it stings me to think of it. He was older, he was my boss, he initiated it and he could have had a better perspective and better character to not cheat on his girlfriend or fuck the hired help.

I had created many scenarios of chance encounters, from the sublime to the fantastic. Through a mutual friend, I learned he did marry his fragile Cathy and I was dying to run into them just to say, “Nice to see you’ve given up.”

Thankfully that encounter never happened-it would have been embarassing. Instead, over twenty years later I ran into him at a furniture making open house. I heard his voice before I saw him and tried to duck out of meeting him but I had made my way into a small room and he was standing by the only way out of the room. Unless I dove out a window…which I seriously contemplated for several minutes.

I decided just to say, “Hello” and caught him utterly by surprise. His face turned purple. To make matters worse for him, he had just had shoulder surgery and wore a sling and swath that held his arm out at a 90 degree angle from his body. He was not as fat as my memory made him out to be and other than that absurd contraption on his arm, he looked almost exactly the same.

I really can’t recall what was said–pleasant nonsense I think, jabber about how my son, who was two when we met was now twenty-six. He babbled some foolishness about working at the same job because his plan for complete world domination never really materialized, which was a little funny but felt like practiced patois in case we ever met.

I was just about to say, “Well, nice seeing you,” and scram when a tall, barrel bodied woman with wire hair and long thin arms and legs came to his side. She was smiling. He should have just let me leave but instead he said, “You do remember my wife, Cathy…Cathy, this is E—.” Her smile vanished, her eyes became slits and she reared her head back and bared her teeth. I suddenly felt as though I was looking at Medusa. I also know with absolute certainty the last thing that poor dog saw before she choked the life out of it.