PIT3/4: The decision
Points In Time
Westlake Village, California
March 15, 2010
8:08 AM (Pacific Standard Time)
Chicago, Illinois
10:o8 AM (Central Standard Time)
“ If you want me...Marsha had said “...if you’ll let me, I want to make up for all those terrible years.
I love you Mitchell, and hope to spend whatever time God gives us together.
And so you won’t think I’ll be coming empty-handed. Someone that you think you’ll have to support. I still have my ‘cosmetology’ license and, absolutely ‘not’ meant as a bribe, but just to let you know, between the cash Marty paid to buy me out, and what I’ll make on the sale of this duplex, that’s completely paid for, I’ll be coming to you with near a hundred, seventy ‘grand’. Not a fortune by today’s standard, but to assure you that it is not money I’m after. It’s just you I want, Mitch.”
We’ve been talking to each other for a bit over an hour now and I ‘really’ don’t know what to tell her.
6:55 to 8:08…
Seventy-three minutes?
Mitchell Lipensky’s life put on a pin-point balance in seventy-three minutes.
Milt, he knows, would tell him to tell Marsha to go to hell!
But as angry at Marsha as he was...
A woman that he’d known from the time of their childhood.
A woman that he had known… ‘Thought’ he’d known since he was fourteen.
Love?
As all people are different. As all people have different motivations, love between two people, for most people can be explained in commonly humanistic terms: appearance; personality; common interests; religion; sexual desire; security…
However somewhere in a deeply hidden corner of one’s psyche there may be a non-explainable need to love a special someone for strictly unknown reasons.
Unaware of his love for then twelve year old Marsha Goldman, Mitchell Lipensky had subconsciously loved the girl, then this woman for most of his life.
Oh, yes! There had been Susan Friedman. The last image of sixteen year old Susan and the bitter remembrance of their last few minutes together had been implanted within his mind and Mitchell had loosely touched thoughts of Susan each day of his life.
Whereas his love of Marsha had been hidden deeply within his psyche to reappear...
Now, after the horrid admission that his ex-wife had ‘purposely’ made life near unlivable y impossible for the thirty-one years of their marriage?
Now, after no contact for twenty-four years? Now, she tells me this?
“Marsha, I really don’t know what to say. I need time...”
“Mitch, I never expected an answer this quickly. If we do, uh, reunite, it will be a huge thing for both of us. So take your time… You have my number?”
“Yes.”
“I won’t bug you, Mitchell. I told you that ‘I love you’ and want nothing more than to spend whatever is left of our lives together, and also told you that the choice will be strictly up to you. So, if you want to… Let me know what you want to do.”
Knowing my decision would take thought...’lots’ of thought. Not even sure if I would call back. “I will.” I said.
Wondering if he would call back. “Bye, Mitch.” Marsha broke the connection.
What the hell do I do?
That deeply hidden… That barely noticeable, deeply hidden pint of love for Marsha struggling to become brighter.
What the hell do I do?
Can I live with her knowing what she’d told me.
Or is this all, for some reason a bullshit story?
March 16, 2010
2:47 AM (Pacific Standard Time)
Restless on this night.
In an absolute quandary,turning from his back to is side, holding the king size pillow to his chest, Mitchell’s eyes closing as he feels the soft warmth.
Sex no longer having a meaning to Mitchell as he falls into a light slumber.
The soft warmth of a woman’s body against his.
At his age physical desire waning ?
At his age the need is for the soft warmth of a woman’s body onto his.
The radiating warmth of a woman’s body alongside his.
The comfort of ‘being together’.
4:47 AM (Central Standard Time)
Yesterday morning’s conversation with Mitchell leaving Marsha restless and thoroughly distracted throughout the day, and this night brought no relaxing comfort.
The thing’s she’d told to Mitchell… when started her words had their ‘need’ to continue to their finish.
Hearing the words she ‘had’ to say brought to daylight, were of her ‘harshness’, of her ‘meanness’ and her ‘spite’… To who?
Mitchell did not deserve any of this.
Never one to demand, or to push his weight around. A good dad to their lids. As good a husband as she allowed him to be. The meals she made always thanked for and said enjoyed.
Even when I knew he was lining.
Five years earlier, it was after the divorce with Stanley had been finalized and he was out of Marsha’s life, that her mind went to Mitchell. And Marsha’s heart turned inside out as the love she had denied the man, along with the hatred she had shown the man inundated Marsha’s soul and wanting to speak to him, but having no way to simply approach him…
Hell, I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead. If he’s married or single.
If he’s alive and single, how do I find him. And ‘if’ I find him, what words can I possibly say to bring him ‘home’ to me?
Surprised at the thought. This the first time she had thought of Mitchell as ‘home’.
What can I say? What can I say to a man I hadn’t spoken to in twenty-four years? What can I possibly say to a man that I’d shown nothing but hatred to. What can I say?
The truth.
How much of her truth?
All of it!
All of it... As though in a confessional booth whispering her sins to the priest on the other side of the blackened screen.
From our meeting at the ‘J’.
‘All of it’!
March 16, 2010
8:17 AM (Pacific Standard Time)
Pouring his second cup of coffee, he stood at the counter waiting for his sliced bagel to pop from the toaster… His mind on Marsha.
Awaking at 7:12, Mitchell shaved, took a shower and dressed… His mind on Marsha.
This morning passing on cream cheese, opting for peanut butter and strawberry jam, his mind on Marsha and in particular her lengthy – for Marsha as much as Mitchell – stomach churning confession.
Marsha’s ongoing hatred of him.
Marsha’s need to physically and mentally shut herself from him with the slightest ‘made up’ provocation, with not the slightest concern for the length of time between her ‘made up’ show of anger and the release of her ‘made up’ show of anger when Marsha ‘might’ once again speak to him.
So much of what Marsha confessed yesterday beyond his comprehension.
Her mother?
Could Rhea be the reason for the jagged holes in Marsha’s conscience.
A remembrance coming to mind regarding his question
regarding her mother, and Marsha’s explosive response:
Seagate New York
July 3, 1956
“Your mother? I’ve asked before and you always say you’ll tell me some other time and I think it’s time I know. ‘Why do you dislike her so much’?”
“My mother’s a ‘whore’.”
“Huh?”
Said so matter of factually. “ ‘My mother’s a whore.’”
“Marsha, how can you say such a thing about your mother?”
“How? “Because that’s ‘exactly’ what she is!” Adding vehemently, “A ‘whore’!”
“A whore?” Speaking actually or figuratively, right or wrong, “A ‘whore’’! Do you know what you’re saying?”
“Yeah, Mitchell, I ‘know’ what a whore is! And she’s more than ‘just’ that. Until I told her that you and I were going to be married she was also the world’s worst mother! Why do you think she insisted on making a big wedding? To make up for the guilt she felt for ‘always’ treating me like I wasn’t there!”
Speaking fiercely, quickly, as if wanting to get it off her chest. “All my life my mother treated me like I wasn’t there; like she wished I’d have never been born, and that all she ever wanted was my brother!”
He had seen the two women together often enough to know there was…? something wrong; that there was a strange kind of…? distance between them, kind of a…? informal formality. But the coolness, in Mitchell’s opinion, seemed to emanate more from the daughter than the mother and he felt the word ‘whore’ was used more as a metaphor than as an actual description of his mother in law.
“But a whore, Marcie? A prostitute? A real whore? A woman that goes out and screws guys? For money?”
“Yeah, Mitchell, a whore!” Becoming angry. “A real whore! Where do you think these diamond rings came from?” To emphasis her words, she held her hand forward, then lifted Mitchell’s. “You think daddy can afford rings like these? ‘Uncle Sid’s’ the jeweller! And just where do you think all that money came from to pay for that big wedding? The caterer? The man that owns the Palmer House? The Rabbi?” About this she was not too sure herself, so offered no explanation.
“When I was a kid, mother would have ‘uncles’ come to our apartment, and they’d give me money to get rid of me.” Agitated with the memory… ‘Here, kid,’ they’d say. ‘Here’s a quarter; go get an ice cream cone.’ ‘Here’s a half buck; go get a soda.’ ‘Here’s a buck; go buy yourself a toy.’ And when I got older… oh, say nine, ten years old, it was five, ten, or even twenty dollars to get rid of me, and it never mattered to mother if it was below zero or a hundred degrees outside, the bastards!”
“The bastards always tried to get rid of me!” Marsha went on. “And when I was ten, ‘good old Morrie’ handed me ten bucks and told me to go out and buy myself a present. But I got stubborn and told him, ‘No’ and wouldn’t budge. So mother and good old Morrie had to go someplace else. Later, when she got home she beat me with a belt—the buckle end of the belt.” Stopping, catching her breath, Marsha swiped her arm across her wet eyes.
“How’s about Roger? He knows, too?”
“Yeah, sure. He found out when he was a little kid, too.”
“How’s about other people? Your aunts?”
“Nobody ever said anything, at least not to me. But I know they knew. As a matter of fact, when I was a kid, I always thought they were mad at me because my mother was whore.”
“Like it’s your fault, huh? Your dad—how can he ‘not’ know?”
Not wanting to discuss her father. “I don’t know.”
“Roger was ‘terrible’ to me when we were kids! He used to beat me up all the time, and told me that if I ‘ever’ said anything to daddy he’d ‘really’ beat me up, and then mother and daddy would ‘have’ to get a divorce! I didn’t even know what divorce meant then. And because I knew that if they got a divorce, it would be ‘all’ my fault and everyone would hate me and they’d give me away to gypsies.” Sighing, holding back tears, “And then I’d ‘never’ see my daddy again!” Hiding her face in her hands, “And that…” beginning to cry, “…and that I’d ‘always’ be alone…” sobbing, barely able to get the words out, “…all by myself.”
Westlake Village, California
March 16, 2010
Remembering this conversation with my nineteen year old wife.
Remembering the sadness I’d felt and the tears I’d shared with her.
Her mother?
Could Rhea be the reason for the jagged holes in
Marsha’s conscience.
A lady with this much ancient baggage?
Hell, at our age ‘everyone’s’ got ‘baggage’! Who’s to say that any lady I might love in the future will not come with her share of ‘baggage’?
At least I know Marsha’s baggage.
Speaking to me as if ‘confessing’ to a priest, did Marsha cleanse her soul yesterday?”
That deeply hidden… That barely noticeable, deeply hidden pint of love for Marsha struggling to become brighter…
Mitchell Lipensky made a decision...
Next:PIT3/5: The Walk
