Chasing Stones

Chapter 1

Is today the day the eviction papers will come? I wonder the same thing every day, but it doesn't bother me much any more.

I step out onto the deck that we built when we were still a family of three, and ponder what to write next. This is a big accomplishment for me. A year ago, a panic attack would have driven me back into the house, and I wouldn't have been able to write anything more than a paltry journal entry.

Ironically, as soon as that thought crosses my mind I feel a bubble of apprehension rising, but I just sit in a patio chair and force myself to heed the advice of a therapist I recently met: Take yourself out of your head and into the moment. Look around you and only think about what you see. That's easier said than done, because what catches my attention is a reflection of what I was more than thirty years ago.

A girl of perhaps nine years of age is walking past the end of my driveway with a group of other children. Walking isn't really an accurate description though; this particular child skips, dances, unable to be still in her shoes of youthful energy. Her long hair flies with careless abandon as she tosses a rock down the road just to see how far it goes before she runs to catch up with it. Her laughter reaches me and I close my eyes, letting the memories come.

When I was nine years old I met the love of my life, and doused him with a Tupperware tumbler full of water as he passed our porch on his way to my dad's garage. He'd made a teasing remark to me that made me laugh, so grade-school logic dictated that I return the favor in some prankish way when he came back. It was a daring move since not all of the adults who knew my parents had a sense of humor, but Alan was one of the fun ones. He stood there on the sun-scorched gravel, with a smile that reached his big brown eyes, and said, Girl! You got me good!

I giggled, but felt a small pang of regret as I watched him get into a car I hadn't noticed before.

It was the end of the era of the muscle cars that so many of today's older men pine for. The vehicles were fast, flawless, and hand-built by the ones who drove them. Alan's was quite impressive. I grew up in cars like that, and knew that you simply did not sit in them with wet butts. But Alan had, and he wasn't even angry about it.

As I watched the beautiful collection of chrome and blue paint rumble away, I thought someday I'd have car like that, and maybe even a boy like that too... if boys ever stopped irritating me.

That was the first time I met Alan, but it wouldn't be his last appearance in my childhood memories.

My mom knew a guy whose house was open to friends around the clock, and people would wander in and out at various times. I remember many a night of sitting quietly off to the side doing my homework there, with music blaring and people running around having a good time for hours. It was a fun place to be, and I learned quite a bit about how relationships worked from listening to their conversations.

Once in a while Alan would show up, appearing as a quiet contrast to the rest of the group. I don't recall him ever getting loud or rowdy, but he added to the atmosphere with a subtle brand of humor and a willingness to listen that made everyone like him. Later in life I would realize this was a key element to his personality; he was just a happy, mellow guy who tried to make everyone around him feel comfortable.

The sight of him always made me feel an odd sense of contentment and familiarity that my nine-year-old mind didn't even try to understand. It was the same feeling I had during our marriage, every time I woke to see his face or saw him pull in the driveway after work: My mate was there, and all was well. Of course, at that time I had no idea of what he would become to me. I wouldn't even say I had a crush on him, but rather that Alan was like the singular gemstone I had in the old cigar box of rocks I'd collected over the years — he was the special one.

We stopped visiting that house about a year later, and more than a decade passed before Alan and I met again. It would take another book to describe all that went on in the years between, so I'll just summarize a bit of it here:

I was a little wild through my teens and earliest twenties. Though I did buck statistics and avoid any chemical addictions or serial pregnancies, heavy metal music set the tone for years of parties, concerts, and fast cars. I lived somewhat of a nomadic life, moving from place to place and crashing wherever seemed to suit me at the time. It was fun, but it got old after a while. 

In 1987 I gave birth to a premature baby boy, Julian, who was fathered by a rock musician. My relationship with the musician was brief. I also began having random bouts of panic attacks, and at one point was housebound for several months because of them. This eventually passed though, so I had no idea that it was actually a forewarning of what would later return to become a lifelong disorder.

In 1989 I married a man who was a single father. I assumed that any man who would take on the task of raising a child alone must be a great guy, and together we could give our children a stable home life. It didn't worry me when Dick said he liked to have a drink sometimes — I never saw him drunk when we were dating — but it turned out that he was a full-blown alcoholic who thought it was OK to slap his wife from time to time. After some failed attempts to get him to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, I filed for a divorce and moved out shortly after we were married. That marriage is something I've always listed as one of the most foolish things I've ever done.

By this time I had changed quite a bit. Though I still went to the occasional concert, and would forever hold my penchant for rock and metal music, I had broken my ties with the party crowd and settled happily into the role of Mom.

My son and I moved another time or two before I found a little half-double apartment house near where I had grown up. It was such a tiny place, and yet it was clean and had a private front yard, so I arranged a meeting to tour it anyway.

The woman who showed it to us looked familiar, but I didn't think about that much until I saw the man who lived in the other half of the house: Alan. In short order I learned that the woman was his mother, his parents owned a few adjoining properties there, and a sister of his lived next door with her family.

I took the apartment, of course. It was nice to see friendly, familiar faces, but seeing Alan again felt like coming home. There's really no other way to describe it. It was as if I had been away on an adventure and had finally returned to where I belonged.

We became fast friends, and within a year were a permanent couple. After that we didn't spend even a single night apart for nearly two decades, when his first hospital stay forced us to.

When I talk about how our relationship began, I entertain the notion that I had been born for my husband, or maybe vice versa. It's something that occurred to me many times throughout our marriage; we were simply meant to be together. But why were we separated so soon then? And what am I supposed to do without him?

Yeah, I know there's no answer to the first question. It's more of a rhetorical the mind chews on to feed its own misery. I also know there's nothing to gain by dwelling on things like that, so it’s better to try to push it aside and go on to other thoughts. The second question certainly has an answer though, but until now I've only made half-hearted attempts at finding it before letting fear and denial get the better of me.

Just like the little girl who is now fading from my view, I've tossed a lot of stones down the road in this past year — stones of memory that I wasn't strong enough to handle, and of potential that I wasn't ready to accept. I'm going to run and catch up with some of them now, here in this memoir. It's time.

Chapter 2

I suppose it could be said that our beginnings were complicated, or maybe even scandalous, since Alan and I were both involved with other people when we found each other. My divorce had been dragging out for over a year due to a stubborn ex-husband who somehow kept managing to have the legal proceedings delayed while he stalked me. Technically this meant I was still married, though I was doing everything I could to end that.

During that time I learned that a legal restraining order wasn't worth its filing fee — the police couldn't do anything to protect me unless they literally caught the guy in the act of violating it. Dick knew this and took perverse pleasure in showing up at my work, my family members' houses, or anywhere else he could harass me, and then leaving before the police came. His goal was to get me to come back to him, though I'm not sure why he thought terrorizing me was the way to achieve that.

At one point he did offer to leave me alone if I would give him my son. He said he'd always wanted a boy, and would even be willing to trade his daughter for him if I would agree. Yeah, the guy was nuttier than squirrel crap.

I applied for a gun permit, bought a small pistol, and used a good portion of my weekly paycheck to enroll my son in a high-security preschool academy so I didn't have to worry about him as much during the day. After school, I carried him everywhere we went even though he was much too big for that. I didn't know what else to do.

Alan's divorce wasn't a given yet. The idea may have been in place, but Jane, as I'll call her here, was still living with him. Their marriage wasn't rocky in any outward sense, but I guess it was what people mean when they describe a relationship as being stagnant. They both freely admitted that they didn't talk to each other much, and I noticed they spent a lot of time either doing things separately in their own social circles, or sitting in silence in front of a television without actually enjoying being together. It was like they were just used to having each other around the house or something. Alan later told me that while he did care for her, he had only married her because his family had pressured him to.

Nevertheless he was married, and I wasn't looking to get involved again, so we didn't exactly fall into each other's arms like people in cheap romance novels do. There was a strong image in my mind of a boy who I'd had a crush on in high school saying to me: Relationships come and go, but your best friend will be there forever. When he'd said it, I thought it was just his way of letting me down gently — I'd been hinting that we take our friendship to the next level at the time — but experience led me to believe that the boy had been right. With all that in mind, I was happy enough to have Alan as my best friend.

We did projects around the house, took my son to the park, went grocery shopping for both households, and did various other activities together, all with Jane's blessing. She said it was good for Alan, and she rarely accompanied us. When she did, it just felt like an extended family outing that we all enjoyed.

Eventually a doorway was cut between our two apartments so the four of us could come and go at will, which seemed odd until I thought about how similar it was to that long-ago household I remembered seeing Alan in as a child. Obviously this was a more tight-knit arrangement, but there was the same air of mellow, peace-loving freedom involved.

Alan repaired cars at home for a living and, as most motor head men do, often lost track of time when he had a tool in his hand. Jane watched soap operas during the day and worked a night job. As a result, their apartment was a bit of a mess. Luckily, I worked as a housekeeper by day and found it easy to keep both of our places clean after hours, which wasn't something I was asked to do but was much appreciated for. In turn, I enjoyed the camaraderie and the fact that my son had two extra people doting on him. It was all very casual, and I don't recall any of us having any sort of conflicts whatsoever in all the months it went on.

That is one thing I don't think anyone besides us understood: there was no conflict between Jane and I, no competition nor dislike. In fact, we were friends who communicated openly, and sometimes did go shopping and such together without the boys. Yet there were some people who acted as if Alan and I were having an affair while his poor wife sat around feeling helpless. That bothered me, but neither Alan nor Jane seemed to care what anyone else thought when it was mentioned, so I tried to adopt the same attitude.

Months later I was surprised when I heard that their divorce papers had been filed. It was Jane who told me. She burst into my apartment in tears, delivering the message as if she were telling me about a horrific crash she'd just seen. I wasn't sure what to say, and in fact remember little of our conversation.

I do recall feeling stunned when she told me Alan was in love with me. There wasn't a single trace of bitterness or malice in her voice when she said it, yet it filled me with a sense of alarm.

No he's not. We're just friends, I protested. Weren't we?

Jane just looked at me as if I were the most ignorant person she'd ever met, and maybe that wasn't too far from the truth in this case. I didn't know why she had encouraged Alan and me to be together so much, or why she hadn't spoken to me sooner if it had become a problem, but I felt it was somehow all my fault. I guess I just thought we could go on as we had been, indefinitely.

I made an attempt to fix things then — that had always been a thing with me, wanting to fix my friends' woes — by blurting out the only solution that came to mind:

Then I'm moving. 

No, don't, Jane sighed and shook her head, It wouldn't help anyway.

I was so confused. I didn't want to lose Alan, or Jane either for that matter, but things had gotten very complicated.

********

I didn't move out, mainly because I had no clue how to do it with limited funds and a child on such short notice, but I did see to it that the doorway between our apartments was sealed the next day. My son and I spent a lot of time elsewhere in the weeks that followed. This created a distance between our households that was every bit as complete as if we really had relocated, which was depressing. Still, I knew that if there was any way that Alan and Jane were going to work things out, having uninterrupted time together would make it come to light. Jane had been right though: it didn't help them.

I came home from work one day and noticed the curtains were missing from their apartment, which made the bare walls and lack of furniture visible from the driveway. At the sound of my truck, Alan appeared from the kitchen alcove and gave me a tentative wave through the living room window. It was clear that Jane had gone.

I sat there for several moments wondering if it would be better for me to keep my distance awhile longer, before it occurred to me how pointless it would be to do so. What was done was done, and there was something in Alan's posture that told me he needed a friend. I wasn't prepared for what I saw when I walked in their front door though.

It looked like a backstage party gone wrong. With the exception of a large wooden book shelf that had been overturned, and an empty aquarium that belonged to a neighbor, pretty much everything that wasn't missing was broken. It was amazing that the windows were still intact. I couldn't believe the feeling of hatefulness that lingered behind the scene.

"Jane did this?" I asked as I shuffled through the scattered debris to get a view of the other rooms.

I don't know. I wasn't here, Alan shrugged. It could have been her sister, or whoever else she brought with her. It doesn't matter.

He was right, in a way. I knew Jane had at least been present when the apartment was being destroyed, and in my mind that was enough to change everything. The fact that she hadn't even left him with a place to sleep or a cup to get a drink of water with struck me as ridiculously cruel. Needless to say, every bit of friendship and sympathy I'd felt for her evaporated in that moment. What bothered me more than anything was knowing that Alan had been hurt.

I invited him to stay at my place. Yeah I knew what people would think, but it wasn't an invitation offered with any sense of possession or sexual intent. I just needed him to feel better, and knew that having decent meals and a comfortable place to stay would go a long way toward that goal. The neighborhood gossips could make whatever they wanted of the situation.

Of course, Alan's sudden appearance in our household had to be explained to my four-year-old son. Up until then I had taken advantage of how easy it was to distract him with a trip to the park or some other bit of fun, rather than let him know that something else was going on. I didn't tell him much: Jane and Alan didn't want to live together any more. Jane left. Alan needed a place to stay because he didn't have anything in his apartment any more.

For some reason Julian had to see this for himself, as if the concept of not having things was unbelievable. He summed everything up in one statement when we let him have a look.

Woah! Dude, this is a bad mess. That was my boy, the King of the Blunt.

Yep, that it is, Alan agreed.

Why did she do it?

I was so curious to hear how Alan would handle the question, I didn't even think to explain to Julian that Jane might not have been the direct culprit.

Oh, she's just mad at me, Alan said in a casual drawl, and sometimes when people get mad they do dumb things.

This is just so dumb, Julian agreed as he scanned the littered floor. After a thoughtful pause, he shrugged and added, Oh well, just live with us then, before he scampered back home.

Things are so simple in a child's world.

Chapter 3

I'm not sure where I expected our relationship to go from there. Alan and I cleaned up his apartment the next day, salvaging what we could, but we never talked about when he might move back into it. Instead we kept up a playful banter that made the task easier, and ended our day by relaxing on my porch while Julian chased lightning bugs in the warm evening air. Spending quiet time together like that always felt so natural.

As