PIT3/5: The Walk
Points In Time
Westlake Village, California
March 16, 2010
Her mother?
Could Rhea be the reason for the jagged holes in her daughter’s conscience?
The reason for Marsha’s wanton attitude towards me?
A lady with this much ancient baggage?
Could I take a lady with this much baggage back into my life?
Hell, at our age ‘everyone’s’ got ‘baggage’! Who’s to say that any lady I might love , or even allow into my life in the future would not come with her share of ‘baggage’?
At least I know Marsha’s baggage.
At Least Marsha has admitted having this much baggage, and is looking to me – so she says, ‘for forgiveness’.
Speaking to me – as though ‘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…
March 17, 2010
7:20 AM
My sleep last night no less restful than the night before and in the dark I did decide to call Marsha to see how we might be able to work out a temporary…
‘Shit’!
Or I could just walk away.
Amazing how things look and feel different in daylight than in the darkness of a restless night, so decided to give it a little more time and a lot more thought because once I say ‘yes’ it would be…
‘Shit’!
I miss Marsha’s…
‘Marsha’!
Jesus, after all this time!
Well, ‘dammit’, I can at least admit ‘that’ much to myself.
7:28 AM
Nope. No boner on the way to the bathroom for today’s first pee.
Think I aught’s call and tell her?
Do miss those early morning boners; however, waking up each morning even without a boner is a good thing.
Shave?
Screw it, not going anyplace today, so screw shaving.
Did shower, though and thinking I’d take a walk on the greenbelt after breakfast, thought it might be a good idea to put put some cloths on. So I did – ratty shirt and matching chinos. The kind of stuff guys love and wives throw away.
A wife?
Do I ‘really’ need one?
7:50 AM
Forgoing my usual breakfast of a toasted bagel with cream cheese and jelly, or peanut butter and jelly and three mugs of black coffee. This morning I fried three eggs in butter, fried four pork sausage links in whatever oozes from four pork sausage links and did have a toasted bagel with…? ‘What the hell’, cream cheese and jelly.
Being a bachelor wasn’t all that hard for me. My home, although all large… well, by my standards the rooms were on the large side. Two bedrooms, both with full baths, and a three-quarter guest bathroom.
Never a big buyer of stuff, all of the furniture in the living room and guest bedroom is stuff that Marsha didn’t take when she moved to Chicago.
I did buy a California king size bed, two lamp tables and a large chest of drawers for my bedroom, along with with what was needed to furnish – in a ‘males’ sort of style, my kitchen/family room/ office where – other than my bedroom, where I spent one hundred percent of my time.
The only people that ever entered the living room and second nedroom were the crew of three cleaning ladies that I have come by once a month to do the stuff I didn’t do, which was mostly everything.
Life for me as a bachelor was truly simplistic:
Four of my– given to Marsha and me as a wedding gift from my grandparents – very old assorted ‘ Melmac’ dishes, along with minimal stainless steel silverware; when used was then hand washed and left in the dish rack sitting alongside the sink.
The oven ‘never’ turned on, as all cooked food was prepared in either an electric frying pan, an electric wok, the microwave or a ‘hot air cooker’ – that my next door, and best friend ‘Milt’ had suggested I buy... And my old ‘toaster’ and every now and then I fired up the old butane BBQ on the back deck.
I also have my three favourite – ‘Italian’, ‘Chinese’ and ‘Kosher’ style restaurants all within a half mile from home, along with the usual ‘fast food’ places.
What the hell else does a guy need?
A woman? A wife? Marsha?
To live alone for the rest of my life?
‘Shit’!!!
10:47 AM
My Melmac platter, fork, dinner knife and coffee mug drying in the dish rack, slipping into a pair of well worn sneakers and a light weight spring jacket.
Pulling the door closed behind me, I crossed ‘Waterview Lane’ going to the three step walkway leading from the street to the greenbelt.
I have always considered myself extremely fortunate to find this place and to live in this beautiful community and tell people that the ‘only’ way I’ll ‘ever’ leave it is when I am dust in a small urn.
Running two and a half miles from east to west of meandering green lawn that is bisected by a crooked running minimally rolling concrete walkway that’s bordered on both sides by tree lined and extremely well maintained attached one story homes.
Since living here, I have been walking this walkway on a near daily basis for years seeing familiar faces of, usually ‘solitary’ older men. Then, as I grew older, seeing the faces of solitary men of approximately my age.
Never walking at any particular time, although usually in mornings, the meeting of these men who’s names, as my name was hardly given – or if given was probably forgotten by both of us – the greeting, one to the other always went somewhat like:
“Good morning!”
“Hi!”
“Lovely morning!”
“Yes it is.”
“How are you today?”
“Fine! You?”
“Great!”
“That’s good!”
“Have a nice weekend.”
“You, too.”
He would walk on and I would would walk on and if our paths should coincidentally pass the next day or the next week, he or I might ask the ‘obligatory’...
“How are you?”
“Really good. You?”
“Good also.”
“Kind of chilly this morning.”
“It is.”
“Have a good one!”
“You, too!”
Then, after seeing this man ‘now and then’ over months, or an ‘extended’ period of time, he would disappear and I would no longer see this man and not seeing him, I would not think about ‘not’ seeing him.
However, of course, we could have been walking at different times. But as more time went on without seeing this man, if I should even think of this particular man, I’d figured he’d moved, or was institutionalised or died.
But within time there would be a different man passing on the greenbelt and both he and I would have the same meaningless ‘obligatory’ conversation.
Because what do two old men who– know nothing of the other’s life – who have no other humanistic contact but for the seconds it takes to pass say while passing?
“Hi!”
“Good morning!”
“Kind of looks like rain today.”
“It does.”
“How are you today?”
“Fine. You?”
“Fine, see you next time.”
Yes, there were women also that I would greet with the same general obligatory greeting as they would me. But it was the faces of the solitary men that would be remembered during those ‘now and then’ meetings.
The faces eventually changing.
Coincidental meetings and minimal obligatory’ conversation going on over weeks and months and years.
The men passing through the years always alone.
Me passing through the years always alone... Until one day in the future one of these unknown men may wonder, ‘where’s that guy that I used to run into every now and then?
Moved, institutionalised or dead?
This thought on my mind on this day as I passed by for the seconds it took to ask about him and for him to ask about me.
I am never moving, and I am not institutionalised or dead? And am ‘fucking’ tired of being alone!
11:48 AM
Milt, I’ve something I want to ask you. Come on over, will you. I’ll put up a pot of coffee.”
“Yeah, there’s something I want to talk to you about, also.”
12:15 PM
Handing Milt a mug of coffee, sitting on the other side of the table. “Marsha called yesterday morning.”
“ ‘Marsha’?” in an amazed tone. “Your wife!”
“ ‘Ex wife’.”
“After all this time!” His cup stopping midway to his mouth. “What she want?”
Blowing into the cup. “For me to forgive her.”
“ ‘Really’!” Blowing into the cup. “What she have to say?”
“ ‘Everything’! She told me that she loves me and wants to come home.”
“What’s she mean by ‘come home’?”
“She said that wherever I am is home to her.”
“Sounds like a bunch of shit to me.”
Sipping at the hot cup. “That’s what I thought, too. But then, when she spoke she told me ‘everything’, like confessing all the bad shit she’d ever done to God and me and asking for his and my forgiveness.”
Asked softly, “What do you think?”
“The ‘shit’ she told me, Milt! The hatred she’d felt for me the whole time we were married. So much that I’d never understood before, now makes sense…” a sound that was more a grunt than a chuckle “...It doesn’t ‘really’ make sense at all, but now I know why it happened.”
Quiet a few seconds. Booth men sipping from their cups.
“You haven’t called her back yet?”
“No. Haven’t figured what I wanted to say.”
Sincerely asked. “Do you believe her?”
“Didn’t know ‘what’ to believe. She’s got her own home there, and doesn’t seem to have a money problem. So why then ‘out of the blue’ she calls to tell me ‘she’s terribly sorry for the way she’d treated me, and she loves me and wants to be with me for the rest of our lives’.”
“You believe her?”
“I believe she was treated like shit as a kid. I believe her mother was a whore and that Marsha was mistreated, maybe even abused by some of the men her mother brought into her home… So when I thought about that, I can almost understand why she treated me so badly…”
“Mitch, do you still love her?”
“Maybe... I ‘don’t know’! I want a woman in my life and I ‘know’ Marsha, and I do think she’s sorry for all that bad shit. And even if I should ‘somehow’ find another lady, she could be a ‘bitch on wheels’ and I’d never know till I live with her.”
“Let me tell you something. You knew my wife, Harriet, and when she died, yeah, I ‘was’ sorry but had a few mixed feeling ‘cause she was such am absolute pain in the ass. But now, at my age, I’d love to have her back with me.”
“So what are you telling me, Milt?”
“Mitch, the time we’ve known each other, we’ve taken mine or your boat out hundreds of times and you and me have been picked up by women at ‘The Lading’, ‘what’, seven or eight times that we’ve brought back home and spent some, uh, private time with…”
“So?”
“You ever meet even one of them that you thought you’d like to spend the rest of your life with?”
Thinking a moment. “No.”
“So, if you think your Marsha is sincere with all she’s told you, and if you’ve still got feeling for her… and I think you do, I’d say give her a call and see what the two of you can work out.”
Sighing, “Believe it or not, Milt, that’s what I was hoping you’d say.”
“So, you going to call her?”
“Yeah. Yes, I am.”
“I’ve something I’ve been holding off telling you.”
“What’s that?”
“Figured you’d know when the sign goes up.”
Sign? Thinking he knew what his friend meant. His heart sinking. “Sign?”
“My kids want me closer. They want me to move to ‘Palm Springs’.”
“My, God, Milt…” coming as a complete surprise “...what the hell am I going to do without you?”
Standing, moving from the table…
“Call Marsha!”
Next: PIT3/6: Reunited –
