Raw Edges: A Memoir
I'd thank him for his love of Kris Kristofferson songs -- "The Preacher" and "Bobbie McGee" -- and the way he'd walk around the house in his underwear singing "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose;" for the way he played the washboard with such gusto in the family band; for the times we laughed ourselves silly with the bad country music lyrics we made up in bed while everyone else slept. I'd thank him for our sons -- those amazing configurations of his nose, my hips, his hair, my ears, as well as the extras from the ancestors. I'd tell him how Brad called me one night to thank me for hanging in there, for keeping the family together until he finished high school, and how it meant everything to him. And I'd thank him for challenging my mind and helping to shape it into a much more interesting entity. I may never have been a writer had I not needed to go to the page to figure out the contradictions.
David, my husband. My lover, except he's not mine.
No one belongs to anyone, do they? But why do I want something that at least feels as though it might be mine?
All I wanted was a kept promise, something to help me feel safe in this crazy world. I tried to understand his need for other women, that indescribable frenzy of testosterone men have and the pressing need to break free from what must seem, at times, like a mountain of repression. I made an effort to understand his intellectual and real fascination with loving more than one woman and being responsible for that love, even considering the possibility that this could be the higher order of things. I tried hard not to dismiss his intricate and powerful mind that hoped against hope it could transcend the ordinary. But I just wanted that one promise kept, the one about being faithful.
I wish I could have been enough for him. I wish. I wish. And yet, maybe he never really felt safe with me. Sometimes I was madly in love with him and thought him the supremo apple of the crop. But, then there were bad-apple days, those rotten-to-the-core days. I had my mood swings: my ups when the world was brighter than the golden haze on the meadow, my downs when I knew I'd never measure up no matter how hard I tried. Sometimes I was a powder keg, so restless, so full of yearning to be someone. He must have felt it impossible to satisfy me. He did tell me he loved me. What else mattered if he loved me? he said. Maybe my disappointment oozed up out of my feeling of never being enough for anyone, even myself. Or from my belief that men would wander to other pursuits if I weren't spectacular in every way. The Scheherazade syndrome.
Wait a minute. I'm getting a flash about those one-frame pictures that finger my mind: a dead son, an emotionally absent father, an unfaithful husband... I've cut those wispy pieces of film from the reel, framed them, and hung them on my wall. Even though I've got tons of footage to choose from, I've got this uncanny attraction to the sad shots. I'm a bull-dog editor with an eye for despair. Toss in the guilt, and I've got pictures to prove how short life has fallen -- how bad I am, how insufficient David is, how disappointing we all are.
In the end, maybe the stories I've been telling myself are only stories built around these tearful, sad, disappointing freeze-frames. That I've been wishing to tell "the whole truth and nothing but the truth" could be the biggest lie of all. In reality, I've been enamored with my sadness and my grief, with my expulsion from the Garden, and some of my friends have tried to comfort me by saying that David is ultimately selfish. But maybe there's a fact out there, floating around on the universal currents, that some humans are, by nature, polyamorous. Maybe this is the truth of who he is, and he doesn't need to be judged as selfish. The question of how he deals with his nature is the crux of the matter.
Maybe I don't have any idea who David really is, though I do know the stories I tell about him. Maybe we both wrote our stories around our disappointments and losses, which became hard wiring. Maybe we've been fixated with the holes, but we're all full of holes. Why be obsessed with only the holes? The gaps? The insufficiencies? Why not be happy for the cloth that's whole, for the part that keeps things together?
The truth is, there is such a thing as love. None of us may know how to show it well or embrace it completely, but there's enough of it to give shape to our lives and support us. I know that I love, even if I don't love as well as I might if I were grander. Or maybe even simpler. This never changes. It may be a matter of the way I give my heart, the way I open up a space for someone and that space is taken after that. It's like the men I've loved are still inside of me, as if once I've made love, the semen becomes a permanent web stretched from rib to rib. It's like the women who've been close and who've helped me carry my burdens as I've helped them carry theirs are like stones in the river, always there even if the river moves on. This business of love is not really temporary, even if it seems the most temporary and fleeting thing of all. It has always been there. It lives.
One thing I would say to David.
Dear David: You need to be commended for the way you've stepped up to the bat for me and the boys and for the way you've always been there and are still there loving us even if your timing seemed off. You were telling me the truth when you said you'd always love me. You've been amazingly loyal, all said and done. As I look back with more maturity than I once had, I can finally allow myself to feel that yes, you are speaking the truth when you say you love me. And, whatever love is and however imperfectly most of us manifest it, you should know I love you and our sons. That, my dear, is the truth.
December of 2002, I moved back to Salt Lake City, bought the perfect cottage near Parleys Way, and the summer in the Denver attic was a thing of the past. Knowing I needed to get back into the swim of life again and knowing I didn't want to wait around for David to have a falling-out with his girlfriend or watch hungrily from the outside, I returned to the place that felt like home. Reluctantly leaving Brad and Jeremy, my two bachelor sons, and Chris and Stacia, who were now parents to Miss Sophia Rose, I turned to a large network of friends eager to welcome me back. I was ready to start over. One week after the moving van drove away, I sent out invitations to a tea party with old friends, complete with a request to wear hats.
But I was still new in town. I'd been gone a long time.
I managed very well until one Sunday morning in October. I had no plans for the day. The hours stretched out in front of me. Books to read. Newspapers. A walk. A few telephone calls to my sons. My little house felt too quiet, however, as I sat in my rocking chair reading headlines, opinions, and feature articles. It was the Sabbath. I felt that old urge to get my Sunday-best clothes out of the back of my closet, put them on, and walk over to the chapel: the ward. Why shouldn't I partake of my Mormon community again even if I wasn't a true believe? I missed those days. I liked the sense of belonging somewhere. Maybe I should go see the bishop and submit to baptismal waters again, a second baptism, a cleansing. Some of the early Mormons were rebaptized when their souls needed a good scrub. I'd made big mistakes, I knew, but maybe I was no more a sinner than anyone else, all said and done. I had a kind heart most of the time. I tried to live the Golden Rule. I told the truth as best I could, so why make such a big deal out of this? "No man is good save God," the Good Book said.
The clock ticked. The turning pages of newspaper seemed ludicrously loud.
There were those other Sunday mornings. Southern Nevada when I was a young girl rushing to iron my dress, curl my hair, polish my shoes, all the while listening to the radio -- the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and the Spoken Word from the Crossroads of the West. Mother brushing my shiny black hair she'd curled with rags and checking her three daughters' buttons and her son's necktie. One of us always had a two-and-a-half-minute talk to give, it seemed, which we usually prepared at the last minute and a half. And yes, there was that morning when I barged into the foyer of the church, my exuberance from the sunshine and the out-of-doors dispersing the flock of women talking together before the meeting. Too much me full of wind, sun, and sky. Mother pulling me to her side, squeezing my arm with her strong hand, telling me to settle down, we were in church after all.
And those other Sunday mornings.
In Salt Lake City when I was a mother. Juggling three small boys and their scuffed shoes, their unruly hair, their neckties that David knotted for them. Rushing off in the family car. Unloading. Unpacking. Hauling piano music, visual aids for my Cultural Refinement lessons, and books for David's Marriage Enrichment class. Telling our sons to be gentlemen. To behave.
Maybe what I missed was showtime. I loved a good performance. A great speaker. A great song. An inspired choir. And I loved to give a show -- singing, dancing, playing the piano, zipping around like an important bee, buzzing among the saints and sinners, no distinction necessary in my mind. But, truth be known, I was never quite calm and collected enough to fit well. I was too chaotic, at times inappropriate and subtly rebellious -- a Janis Joplin kind of desire knocking against the inside of my skin, Let me out. I can't be quiet, quiet, quiet. I want to sing, sing, sing, and kick my legs high, and roar if I must. I won't be quiet, quiet, quiet. I'm a force with which to be reckoned. But, truth be told, outside of church, I was also shy, shy, shy. Very. The ward was my refuge, the place to which I returned when I got knocked around by the vagaries of being a teenager. The people in my ward had loved me, taught me, told me I was amazing with no hesitation, and propped me up in all kinds of weather.
The sun was trying to get inside my cottage windows, but the pine tree in front kept the house in its shadow, especially in the mornings.
Sundays. The first Sunday of every month. Testimony meeting. I remembered standing, my emotions intensifying while I waited for the microphone to be passed to me so I could bear witness to the Gospel's truth. Because testimony giving had its unwritten, unacknowledged, standardized form and because I didn't feel safe with my ingenuity that sometimes jumped out and embarrassed me, I borrowed phrases I'd heard from others, things like "My brothers and sisters... I stand here before you today to bear witness to the truthfulness of the Gospel. I know this Church is true. I know Joseph Smith is a prophet of God."