IfOnly
If Only She Had Asked ...
HAVE YOU EVER
been in a relationship that you wished would never end? I have -- although it only lasted three-and-a-half years. It happened right after I got married …
Not right after. More like a year or two later …
I’m fresh out of college. Married the first girl I ever made love to.
Met her four years before at summer camp.
I was a counselor.
She was kitchen staff.
Prettiest girl in the bunch, if I do say so.
We date on and off throughout college. I should have picked up on it when she told me during our sophomore year that she was in love with some guy named Cliff from Canada. But she says she’s still in love with me …
What to do … What to do …
I tell her to go with Cliff from Canada -- If it doesn’t work out, I’ll still be there. (Not something I’d recommend now.)
It doesn't work out.
According to her, when she won’t put out, Cliff literally throws her out -- or more precisely, into a nearby creek!
Canadians are supposed to be more considerate than that -- eh?
My brothers and I were programmed from knee high to a grasshopper to finish college, get married and find a job -- in that order.
I got two out of three. I didn’t finish college (although I attended for four full years). Was sixteen-quarter credits shy of graduating, courtesy of a late change of majors -- when I was recruited to work for my denomination’s world headquarters communications department. They can’t wait for me to graduate. It’s now or never. I barely have time to get married before moving from Michigan to Washington, D.C.
Lovely wedding -- although our timing is a little off. Bad time of the month. No worries. We drop her little brother off up north at a camp in Grayling, Michigan, then camp out for a week on the other side of the lake.
* * *
My senior year in college, I edit the school newspaper. That’s how I come to meet my news director. It’s just as I’m leaving home in Battle Creek.
John is a preacher’s kid whose dad has just been assigned to the prestigious Battle Creek Tabernacle. His mom asks my mom to ask me to look out for him.
Putting out an eight-page tabloid every week equates to many a sleepless night. Consequently, John and I spend a lot of time together -- working, eating pizza, drinking Dr Pepper.
On weekends, John, Faye (my then girlfriend), and I socialize together a lot, both on and off campus. Never occurs to me that this might not be a good idea …
When John follows us from Michigan to the nation’s capital less than a year after the wedding, I think, What a happy coincidence! -- just like old times!
He doesn’t have a place to stay. Our place is small -- 525 square feet in all. But we have a foldout couch in the living room. What are friends for?
I’m up to my eyeballs in work. Faye has the 3-to-11 shift as a nurse at the hospital. John gets a night watchman’s job where I work.
Faye and I don’t see much of each other except on weekends. She and John are home alone from 8:00 in the morning ‘til 2:30, Monday through Friday.
You know where this is headed …
I didn’t …
Ultimately, John finds a room and frees up our couch, but continues to maintain his 8:00-to-2:30 schedule with Faye. I begin to suspect something, but whenever I broach the topic, Faye claims John just keeps finding excuses to come over …
* * *
I’m set to go on assignment for three weeks to cover the Loma Linda University Heart Team’s return from Saudi Arabia, where they performed 146 open-heart surgeries, gratis.
Being the RadioShack geek that I am, I hook up a voice-actuated tape recorder in the basement that will only record when the phone line is active. I load a 180-minute cassette …
From what Faye’s been saying, I expect to find who knows how many calls initiated by John when I get back.
The tape tells a different story.
She calls him seventeen times -- each time passionately inviting him over. That’s only the calls the maxed-out three-hour tape can absorb.
She’s totally upset with me -- that I would stoop so low as to record her calls …
You’d know what to do next.
I didn’t.
I simply ask her if she still loves me.
When she says she loves both of us, it’s deja vu all over again. Switch “Cliff” for “John” and, as the segue in the song, I’m Henry the Eighth I Am
so eloquently puts it: Second verse, same as the first -- a little bit louder and a little bit worse!
At least I have the presence of mind to redefine our relationship. I say, “It seems to me as if we’re now in what could be termed ‘an open relationship.’” She can continue seeing John. I can see others as well.
Inasmuch as I hardly have time to spend with her -- let alone someone else -- with no prospects on the horizon, this sounds pretty good to her.
* * *
Fast-forward a year.
We’ve moved into bigger digs a few blocks from the hospital where she works, which is on the campus of one of my denomination’s colleges. Our little family of three needs more than 525 square feet.
DJ -- my firstborn -- is now able to walk. Prior to John’s moving from Michigan, I had named my son, David John -- after me and you-know-who …
DJ is a handful.
Faye’s gone back to work.
John usually watches him for two hours before I get home.
Sometimes Faye finds a girl from the college to babysit.
What, with a bigger house to maintain, taking care of DJ, while working full time as a nurse -- it’s becoming too much for her. Unbeknownst to me, she finds a student who wants to move out of the dorm.
* * *
Ana Bilda Lopez is of Cuban descent, has grown up in Florida and gone to high school in New Jersey. They settle on trading room and board for child care and house cleaning. Our finished basement is thrice the size of a dorm room -- with no roommates!
Bilda’s used to helping her mom at home. Faye even throws in a small stipend. That, in addition to the money she saves not having to pay for the dorm and cafeteria, clinches the deal.
That’s how Bilda -- 18 years old, tall, slender and apparently somewhat shy -- came into my sphere …
All goes well for the first three months or so.
I’m happy in my work.
Faye has more time for John.
Bilda has the run of the house.
* * *
I like to watch TV late at night. It helps me unwind. Faye goes to bed as soon as she gets home from work. Johnny Carson doesn’t come on until after the 11 o’clock news.
Bilda often says up and watches TV with me.
One night, she says, “I’m curious about something. It’s none of my business. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
This is during some ads. Still watching the set, I say, “What’s on your mind?”
“Well,” she starts, “I don’t know how to say this: Did you know John comes over during the day when you’re not here?”
Intending to stop her from enumerating any specifics, I say, “I’m not surprised. Faye and I have what you might call, an open marriage.”
This takes her aback. She knows I work at the headquarters of a very conservative denomination -- the same one that operates the hospital Faye works at -- as well as the school Bilda attends.
“What does that mean?” she asks.
“In principle, I guess you could say she’s at liberty to date whomever she wants, as am I.”
“Oh.”
That ends the conversation for the evening.
A few nights later, Faye has gone to bed.
I’m again watching Johnny.
Bilda comes up from downstairs and sits on the carpet in front of my chair.
The room is lit only by the TV.
It takes me a couple of ad breaks to realize she’s in her pajama tops -- wearing only underwear from the waist down.
She notices me noticing her.
“Do you mind?” she asks. “I like to be comfortable, that’s all.”
“Me, too,” I say, by way of assent.
She leans her body against my legs.
This goes on for some time.
One night, we’re deep in conversation. She says she doesn’t want it to stop, but has an early class. Could we continue the conversation downstairs?” Without waiting for an answer, she gets up, walks downstairs and starts getting ready for bed.
I’m very focused when it comes to deep conversations. Without giving it much thought, I continue talking as I follow her down.
I’m not sure if what follows is her normal nightly care routine, but it stops the conversation cold!
She starts applying cold cream -- first to her face, then her arms, then her legs. Its when she unbuttons her now familiar pajama tops and starts applying cream to her more than ample breasts that deep conversation stops!
“Could you put some on my back?” she asks, handing me the cream.
Innocent enough request, I think -- until she slips out of her panties and lays face down on the bed!
“Do you mind?”
That question again. This may have been the inception of my interest in massage! … It marks the beginning of three-and-a-half years of almost total bliss!
I won’t regale you with all the gory details. Suffice it to say, she would sometimes lock the door to my typesetting shop after closing hours. I had started my own graphics art business by this time. She would then quietly slip into her birthday suit on the way down the stairs, before sneaking up behind me as I keyed in some church newsletter into the typesetting machine.
Even after she could afford her own place, we would lay together on her bed after some recreational exercise and before showering together, spend hours on end reading to each other from novels she had procured for the occasion.
She always would find ways to keep the relationship in balance. If I took her to the Kennedy Center to watch a performance, she would take me to her favorite Cuban restaurant for plantains and flan (caramelized custard).
I recall once, when picking her up at the dorm (she had been visiting friends), I noticed a particularly striking looking girl in the lobby. Turns out she’s from Australia. When Bilda comes out, I ask if she knows the girl. She says she doesn’t, but will find out what her name is for me.
For my birthday, Bilda invites me to a dinner theater. She must have saved for months to pay for it When we get there, the table is set for three. Shortly after we arrive, Serena -- that’s the mystery girl -- joins us for the evening! Bilda’s idea of a unique birthday present …
Even after we break up, we continue to enjoy each other’s company. Bilda tells me all about her new Iranian boyfriend, later introducing us. Ever the thoughtful one, she suggests that rather than me going cold turkey when it comes to sex, we should taper it off over six months or so …
I tell her I really appreciate the thought, but don’t think it would be fair to her boyfriend.
Several years later, Bilda asks if I would help her parents streamline their greenhouse operation in Florida where she’s moved. I’m scheduled to speak at a hospital administrator’s workshop in Tampa. My folks live in Lakeland, Florida, so I’ll be in the neighborhood. The keynote speakers are Isaac Asimov -- m favorite sci-fi guy -- Ivan Toffler -- author of Third Wave
-- my all time favorite book -- and the then governor of Colorado, who had recently made headlines when he advocated the right for older folks to engage in assisted suicide so they could die with dignity!
In one of the side rooms, my job was to enlighten 100 or so hospital administrators as to how PCs could help them with physician referral systems, health and longevity evaluations and audio bulletin boards that plugged callers into various outreaches the hospital was conducting, via touch tones.
After the seminar, I drive to Apopka, where Bilda’s parents live and tour their place, making a few suggestions along the way.
Bilda has to leave for work. She’s the receptionist at one of the denomination’s larger hospitals in Orlando. She says she wants me to see where she works.
As we approach the building, she turns and asks, “Do you want to see where I work, or would you rather see the inside of a motel room?”
It takes me a few seconds to understand my options -- but only a few … We never do see the inside of the hospital lobby!
About a year later, I happen to be in Florida the week she’s to be married -- to a security guard at the hospital where she works. She hasn’t invited me to the wedding, but says she’d like to see me one last time before she switches from Miss to Mrs.
Her younger sister, Kayla, is in the house they’ve borrowed to get ready for the wedding.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing.
Turns out wedding dresses can be too complicated for one person to put on. I’m sure her sister can handle the situation, but apparently this is Bilda’s going-away present to me. They ask me to help.
Starting from the ground up -- dressed only in silk panties, Bilda stands like a model in an art class, while Kayla and I assemble and apply the various layers that go into her get up -- a half hour well spent! I watch as she and Kayla apply just the right amount of rouge, eyebrow pencil and lipstick. She then removes the drape cloth, adjusts her headpiece just so, turns to me and says:
“You may now kiss the bride …”
Which I do!
The postscript?
Bilda thinks I’d never leave Faye. She doesn’t want to be a mistress for the rest of her life. Throughout our three-and-a-half year odyssey, she’s been the one to lead -- from watching Johnny Carson -- semi clad -- to putting on lotion, to planning and engaging in outings too numerous and wild to enumerate, to reading in bed together in our all-together for hours on end, to inviting Serena to spice up my birthday …
Little does she know -- had she ever hinted at the thought of being married, I would have jumped at the opportunity! Had I not been so dense, the “kiss the bride” scene might have been such an overture …
* * *
And had I done so -- jumped at the opportunity -- I would have been making a terribly huge mistake …
Because it wouldn’t have been Bilda who I would be marrying …
Shortly after she started dating the Iranian, I said to her, “Bilda, you’ve changed. You seem like a totally different person -- How you relate to this guy is seriously different from how you related to me.”
She said, “I know. And if I date someone else, you’ll find me to be someone else entirely again.
“When I relate to someone, I try to figure out what they’re looking for -- then I become that person.”
Which probably explains why I refer to the time I spent with her as the happiest three-and-a-half years of my life! … I found myself with the perfect person -- for me!
Once I discovered her M.O. -- her strategy -- I was forever wondering who the real Bilda was --- what the perfect person for her might be like …
Years later, I had occasion to look her up through an extensive Internet search. It was extensive because I didn’t know her married name or her husband’s first name, where she lived, or if she was even still alive. Sometimes tenacity and a working knowledge of computers pays off … even more likely, if you’re searching for a fairly rare combination, like “Ana Bilda” …
I wanted to see how her life turned out. Her husband answered the phone -- same one she had married the day I dressed her for the occasion. She sounded really weird.
Picture a Southern belle with a really slow drawl.
Throughout the 45-minute conversation, her cadence, accent and other verbal mannerism never wavered. She and her husband had had a Downs syndrome baby who was now almost an adult -- very time consuming, but they loved him. They elected not to have more children and both had become active in the Downs syndrome community, sharing what they had learned with new Downs parents.
I thought, This must be the girl of her husband’s dreams
…
She was totally different from both the way she had been with me and with the Iranian -- all three performances were worthy of a best-actress-in-a-supporting-role Emee.
I decided then that I might never know the real Bilda …
I withdrew my previous judgmental attitude, thinking she had somehow succeeded in deceiving every guy she had ever dated into thinking the version they got was the real deal.
Instead, I reasoned, she had provided each of us with a priceless gift -- experiencing what it would be like to be with the perfect girl -- for us!
For that, I will ever be grateful …