TMO 10: Faces 2

Westlake Village, California
May 14, 2021 
8:19 AM

Authors Notation: As a writer! As a teller of stories and the twists of fate that can and often alter the flow of a lifetime,  occasionally the story must be engineered in such a way as to give the reader a better understanding and, ‘no’, we’re not going to reiterate that which had been written before, but more so about the faces and first impressions of those that Mitchell Lipensky had loved— or thought he’d loved and what— if anything, he might have done differently to change the outcome… So I’m going to turn you over to ‘those that follow and read what you write.

“So I’ll be speaking to them, my readers now?”

“Yes.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, Mitch!”

Swallowing my hot coffee; “Yeah. Good morning.”

"Morning, Mitch! You were telling us readers about your first impressions and we were…? Where were we?”

“Lita.”

“Oh, yeah. You said you knew Lita when she was a kid?”

“She wasn’t Lita, But how Lita looked when she was thirteen.”

“That’s confusing. How’d you know what she looked like when she was thirteen?”

“Because I saw her when she was thirteen.”

“Really? How’s that?”

“In nineteen-fifty-one, the white people were moving out of previously white neighborhoods because black people were moving in and — It’s called ‘white flight’ now, but because my dad’s business was in the neighborhood, we were one of the last white families to go, at least… “ laughing “...until I blew up the kitchen…”

“You ‘blew up your kitchen’? How’d you do that?”

“Different story.”

“Another one of those stupid things you don’t want to talk about, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“ Okay, ‘Lita’, then.”

“I was on my porch watching some black kids play softball in the ally when this one kid— Junior Johnson tossed the ball to me and asked me to come on down and play with them.”

“And you did.”

“Yes.”

Were you friendly with any black kids before?”

“No. And at first they frightened me but that lasted for only a few minutes; at least until I met Junior's girlfriend.”

Chicago, Illinois

July 6, 1951

11:25 AM

The ebony-colored girl was small, about five-three,

and maybe fifteen years old. She had a thin,
Caucasian nose with wide, flaring nostrils, sensuous—though not overly, by Mitchell’s standards—full lips and, for a girl her size, unusually large breasts. Her almond-shaped black eyes looking up from under long, thick lashes. “Hi.” she said.

“This was Lita?”

“No. Her name was Louise and she was Junior Johnson’s girlfriend.”

“So where did modern Lita come in?”

“Lita and me met at ‘Elysium Fields’.”

‘Elysium Fields?”

“A nudist park.”

“You were a nudist?”

“Yeah.”

“You were able to talk Marsha into going?”

“Yeah…” laughing “...when she wondered why I had no tan lines.”

“This was after you met Lita?”

Drinking the last of my now cool coffee. “Yes...”

Topanga Canyon, California
Sunday, May 11, 1986
11:28 AM

“I’d been in the water for about twenty minutes, and was about to head back to my spot on the grass when...Oh, God!

The lady was about five three and had a thin, Caucasian nose with wide, flaring nostrils, sensuous—though not overly, by my standards—full lips and moderately large breasts.

In my memory, in my mind, only this dream from out the past and myself in the pool. Considering everyone I’d met so far at Elysium was very friendly and hoping she'd be, too, “Hi...” I said, “...I’m Mitch.”

“Hi, Mitch,” Smiling, “I’m Lita.”

“So, things progressed with you  and Lita then?”

“No, Not until Marsha joined and we met some friends when things became a bit, uh, friendlier.”

“ Sexier?”

Thinking back to Janice Kim’s pool party and her ‘black room’. “Yeah, guess you could say that.”

"We know how things ended with you and Lita, so what about Barbara?”

“When I finally met Barbara— remember, I’d never even seen a picture of her so, didn’t know what to expect.”

“When you met her at the airport in Chicago? What did you think?”

“Plain. She looked like a plain, middle-aged woman: Not fat, not thin, not ugly not attractive.”

“But you say you fell in love with her anyway.”

Looking over my shoulder I could see Marsha moving about the kitchen. “I did. I fell in love with Barbara because with this lady outward beauty didn’t matter.”

“What do you mean?”

Looking upward; the sky was deep blue with large banks of scattered clouds. “The sun is up there. You know the sun is there behind those clouds and that’s how Barbara struck me. She was one of those rare people that had an inner glow. An inner beauty such as I’d never known before and her facial and bodily appearance didn’t matter because in my eyes Barbara was absolutely beautiful and…”

“You and Barbara have sex?”

“My plane landed in Chicago at 1:40 PM on Friday, 6/18/2009 and Barbara and I said goodbye at 11:44 AM on Sunday 6/20/09. And between those times, excluding Saturday when the poetry computation was was held, or when we were out eating, Barbara and I made loved as often as humanly possible.” Chuckling. “At least as often as a seventy-five year old guy and a fifty-two year old woman could.

And before you ask, if it’s any of your business, making love to Barbara was beyond beautiful. For me making love to Barbara was spiritual..”

“Years earlier, there was a time when you and Marsha loved each other…”

Nodding over my shoulder; Marsha no longer in the kitchen. “You mean times before now?”Right now?”

“Yes. ‘Times before ‘now’’. Time before you met Barbara; had it ever been ‘spiritual’ between you and Marsha?”

“At that time, When I met Barbara, Marsha had been out of my life since ‘eighty-six. Twenty-three years between saying goodbye to Marsha and hello to Barbara, so, to be honest, I’m rather sure that there were times with Marsha that sex, at least for me had been spiritual.”

These four women in you life, these four women that you loved, they parted ways with ‘you’, not the other way around, didn’t they?”

"With Lita there were worldly prejudicial conditions we had no possible way to change. You know, the a black woman and a white man thing.”

Quiet now. Watching the bubbling wake of an electric party boat. “You know when Lita said goodbye and drove off, I remember not feeling as bad as maybe I should have felt.”

“Why’s that?”

"She was right. We’d never make it in a Black and white world. And also; here I was, for the first time in my life with no one to have to answer to. Here I am, earning a decent living, living in this beautiful house in this beautiful neighborhood with no obligation to anyone but myself.”

“So you really didn’t care about Lita leaving you.”

“Can’t say that I ‘really’ didn’t care—at least until my personal reality came to me.”

“At the airport that morning, when Barbara said ‘goodbye, how did you feel then?”

“How do you think I felt? I felt like my heart was breaking. But with Barbara there were personal obligations and conditions we had no way to change.

Barbara was married, after all and had the obligation of being a caregiver to her sister and mother. To say nothing about her being twenty-two years younger than me and living better than three thousand miles away."

“But you got over it!”

Standing, going to the railing and looking across Westlake Lake, to the far southern shore. “Yeah, eventually.”

“You ever see Lita, Barbara or Elizabeth again?”

“No.” Thinking. “Yes, I did. I saw Elizabeth twice since I ran out on her.”

“Two times! Really?"

“You know, of all the women I’ve ever known, Lizzy was far and away the most beautiful”

My thoughts wandering. “I remember her and me lying naked together— me along side of Lizzy, just looking at her face.” Shaking my head at the remembrance. “My God, but she was beautiful!”

“More beautiful than Susan?”

Sitting again. “Susan?” The question throwing me a moment. “No comparison.”

“Really?”

“How is there any comparison to a girl that I loved seventy years ago, that I haven’t even seen in seventy years that in my memory is still a fifteen year old girl.? While The last time I’d seen Lizzy was in… My God! It’s been fifty-eight years since I’d seen Lizzy!”

Stopping, thinking. “No! Guess it had to be some time around ‘seventy-two’ when ‘The Godfather’ came around.”

“ ‘The Godfather’?”

“Yeah. The first one with Marlon Brando. We were… Marsha and I were about half-way through the outside line of people line waiting to buy tickets when.…

Evanston, Illinois

July 17, 1972

7:47 PM

Sensing eyes upon him. Looking to the corresponding ‘V’ shaped double line...

On a near equal plane no further than fifteen feet distant, Mitchell's eyes made steady contact with the almond shaped, green eyes of Elizabeth Herzon, who’s arm was inked in the arm of a hansom, though much older man…

The ‘one’- ‘two’- ‘three’ second familiar, mutually heart piercing, eye locked stare projecting instantaneous thoughts that neither mind of Elizabeth nor Mitchell could properly process…

‘love’? ‘lust’? ‘loss’ ?

Elizabeth’s line moving five feet forward, the intense eye contact lost.

The face of the other lost to the other...

Westlake Village, California
May 14, 2021
8:35 AM

“ You said that you’d seen Elizabeth a second time since, in your words, ‘running out on her’.”

"Yes, and that time was even stranger.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because it was here, right here in Westlake.

“After all that time, you met with Elizabeth right here in Westlake Village?”

“It wasn’t like ‘we met’. It was more like we ran into each other.”

"When was that?"

“Don't rightfully remember, but it had to be maybe in November or December in twenty-ten because Marsha and me were back together again."

“This meeting with Elizabeth , you say you two ‘ran into each other’. So it wasn’t planned.”

“Planned? Hell no! Marsha and I had remarried by that time and I couldn’t have been happier. And Elizabeth Herzon, or whatever her last name was at that time were out shopping.”

“Not together!”

“Yeah. Of course ‘not together’.

I was in the store pushing a basket when I noticed a fat lady, with a really big ass in the aisle about twenty feet ahead of me, and when I went into the next aisle, ansparently the lady turned into the same aisle so now we were facing each other…”

“Coming face to face.”

“Yeah. And as we came closer I realized that I knew that face — Kind of knew that face because it was about round as a basketball with a puffy double chin.”

“Don’t tell me!”

“Yeah. It was Elizabeth plus about ninety pounds.”

“What did you do?”

“Wanted to pretend I didn’t know her, but unfortunately she recognized me.”

“So, what happened?”

“Turns out she lives in Westlake also.”

“Oh no!”

“Yeah. In Lake Sherwood…”

"Where the have that golf course?”

“Yes.”

“What did you two have to say to each other?”

“In the store I tried not to talk to much. But —hoping to get rid of her once outside— but both parked in the same aisle, on the way to my old Lincoln, electronically popping the trunk as we approached a white Bentley.  'I’m here’, she said.”

“A ‘Bentley’! Pretty fancy.”

“Yeah. Said she lives in Lake Sherwood, above the nineth hole and that we should get together some time.”

“And did you?”

“You nuts? Hell no! I even started, going out of my way to shop someplace else.”

“Your wife? Think she ever ran into Elizabeth?”

“Doubt they’d even know each other if she did.”

Coming outside with the coffee pot. “You talking to yourself again?” Marsha asked.

“Talking to myself…” holding my empty cup forward “… ‘again’, you say’?"

“Yes.” Refilling my cup, then pulling another deck chair alongside. “You’ve been doing that lately.”

“No Shit!”

“Yeah…” said good naturally “... and now you’re even answering yourself.”

Alarmed. “That’s not a good thing!”

Preferring not to answer. Standing, taking his hands, urging Mitchell to his feet. “Come on in, baby. I’ll get breakfast started.”

Next: TMO 11: Banning 1