Coconut
Please
You could feel the cool,
Canadian air coming in as I descended down Amy Dodge Road on Block
Island to catch the 8 A.M. ferry home. I put my jacket on, then
jiggled my back pack in place, reminders that summer was coming
to a close. It was only yesterday morning I left Providence to
take the 9 A.M. ferry over to the island And now, leaving my sons,
who at this time all live on the island, my mind was full of getting
my life in order, and leaving them with their's. The end of summer
has always saddened me, even frightened me, and today I think
I know why. I don't do well with closures. My marriage, that has
been coming to an end for some time now, is not like letting go
of summer. Unlike summer, that comes back once a year, I'm not
so sure that I will see another season in my relationship with
Tom. The fact that Tommie Jr. had gotten into a bike accident
didn't help my heavy heart much. I'm just starting to learn about
these self-fulfilling prophecies, and hoped that I was not responsible
for it. The accident happened last Sunday night, and all weekend
I had had these bad feelings like trouble was around the corner.
When I first looked at him his face did not seem that bad. Later
when I asked him, "Are you O.K.?," he showed me the eight stitches
in his head. Tommie's head was no stranger to blows and stitches.
Last summer, he was involved in a bad car accident followed by
a fight that he tried to break up. My denial of any mind- altering
drug involved in this accident was covered up by my own pain.
I walked down that road that morning with a heavy heart. It was
Wednesday, so I had my work cut out for me with trying to pay
my bills, and getting the coffee on at the Nar-anon meeting. Last
week, I played hookey, leaving them without a coffee maker. I
didn't even call in to try to get someone to replace me. Funny,
I go to this meeting to stop caretaking, yet I'm worried about
their reaction. My day just went from bad to worse, like I was
caught in an undertow, taking me and my feelings out to sea. I
could not put off my meeting with Tom another day. After the tears
started coming, about five o'clock, I told Kim, "Tommie has been
in a bike accident.'' She replied, '"Was he drinking?" I answered,
"How do I know, I wasn't there.'' By eight-thirty that night,
they had to get the paper toweling out to wipe my tears up off
the floor of the meeting room. It was all coming out, my fears
and denial of the substance problem coming back. "I think I'm
so vulnerable, sob, because I have this situation with my husband,
sob, that I didn't think I would have to get into this financial
stuff. You see, I just got this, I really like this, sob, my son's
house, in Block Island, and I think, you know, sob, I have denial,
or I don't want to confront any of this, because, sob, they may
throw me out." I didn't want to spoil my safe place on the island
with having to confront any of this shit. After the meeting, I
realized that chanting old lines like, "I'll never go there again...
they won't see me for a while," or, "that's it.... this marriage
is over!" was all obsolete information I used to operate on. Now
I know that there are gray areas one could take refuge in. I could
not stay in this pain another moment, I called Tom and we set
the date to meet. It took a while to come up with just where this
coming-together-for-the-first-time-in-three-months would take
place. We decided it would be up the street on the lawn in front
of Wilson Hall at Brown the following day at five o'clock. With
my old friend Tolstoy by my side, I went to bed, hoping he would
give me comfort. He did not let me down: "The aim of an artist
is not to solve a problem irrefutably, but to make people love
life in all it's countless, inexhaustible manifestations. If I
were told that I could write a novel whereby I might irrefutably
establish what seemed to me the correct point of view on all social
problems, I would not even devote two hours to such a novel; but
if I were to be told that what I should write would be read in
about twenty years' time by those who are now children and that
they would laugh and cry over it and love life, I would devote
all my life and all my energies to it. " The church bells were
chiming eleven times which meant it was five to the hour giving
me five minutes to get to Big Alice's Ice Cream parlor."Thank
you, God," I said to myself (or maybe aloud... these days I don't
know the difference), when they let me in. My eyes went directly
to the flavors that were posted on the board like a child: Coconut
please, large, with wet walnuts.
Copyright; Ruth Mahoney
9-Aug-89
