GRAND CANYON: JOURNEY’S END

We hit town between two and three o’clock in the morning. For the first time in a month I am aware that it is the hour of the drunken driver. The bar scene in Nashville is lively. It doesn’t seem to matter what day it is. The movers and shakers are always out there making plans, talking shop, and dreaming up schemes until closing time.

We gas up one last time, giving Sally a good pat on the dash for a job well done. Wiz takes the wheel and drives the back roads out to his secluded little house in Williamson County, some twenty miles from the heart of Nashville. His live-in girlfriend Rhonda, a wonderful person and talented singer who has been in various states of war with Wiz since I’ve known them, is naturally asleep. As he circles the house to rouse her or find a way inside I can’t help wondering what kind of greeting he’ll receive.

They were not on the best of terms when we departed. Then again, even when they were on good terms they were often at odds. I’ve often wondered why two people who find it easy to get along with the world find it so difficult to get along with each other. Both have strong wills. Both have strong egos and independent senses of identity, destiny and everything else that goes along with being human. I hope the soothsayers are right when they say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Rhonda makes a brief appearance on the porch, clothed in a robe and a fluffy pair of slippers. With a smile and a hug, she wishes me a happy birthday and welcomes us back home. She offers no hit of the whirlwind that awaits me. Wiz unpacks in a matter of minutes and we exchange our so-longs. We’ll talk tomorrow.

I don’t know what I expected. Whatever it was it wasn’t what I got. I had promised my wife that I would be back on this day. Given the volatility of our relationship over the last year, maybe I had hoped that my birthday would set the tone of our reunion. But in the early hours of a still dark morning it made little difference. The celebration ended the moment I walked in the door.

Stumbling on the porch with a handful of belongings and fumbling for my keys, I make enough sound to awaken her. I am surprised when she doesn’t come to greet me. I lower my things on the living room floor and look in on the bedroom. She raises her head and offers the sort of greeting one would expect after a night on the town: What time is it? Late. How are you? She is not fine. She’s hung over and sick. She tells me she’s built up her defenses by playing the If game. If he doesn’t call, he doesn’t care. If he doesn’t call, I’ll stop caring. If he doesn’t call, he doesn’t love me. If he doesn’t call, I’ll stop loving him.

I explain the best I can. I wanted to live the moment. I wanted my mind focused on the journey. I wanted to leave Nashville and all that goes with it, the struggles of daily life and an uncertain marriage, behind. I needed to breathe the air of open country. I needed to live free. I wanted to find the center of my being independent of all bonds and responsibilities. I wanted to be sure that the life I choose is the life that chooses me.

I tell her I’m sorry and I mean it. I had called her once on the westward journey but she wasn’t home or she wasn’t answering. I’d left a message of love. When I’d intended to call again, she beat me to the punch. I should have called. I know it. Blame me or forgive me. It is the past and nothing I can do or say will change what has been done.

I wonder if this is karmic payback for the dreams of Boulder and the Kansas highway. I wonder if the struggles of a Kansas golf course were meant to prepare me for this. I try to summon the lessons of the journey to show me the way forward but I feel anger and disappointment growing within. When I last talked to her she was in good spirits. All was well. I have not been here. Am I the cause of her despair or is there something else? My anger blinds me to the lesson that would otherwise calm and guide me: Welcome adversity.

I gently remind her it is my birthday and an uneasy truce is declared in silence. The gloom is so thick it would make the muddy waters of the Mississippi seem sparkling clear. The journey is over. The nightmare has begun.

It is a recurring nightmare and one that has shadowed us for twenty years. Born of jealousy and heartbreak, it erupts without warning. It follows us like the shadow of death, discoloring all it touches, leaving us devoid of hope and wandering aimlessly in the valley of doom. Love is not enough to fight it. Respect and admiration are not enough. It feeds on itself until it devours our bonded souls. Even the angels appear to have abandoned us.

It is an uneasy sleep yet one that I hold onto until I can no longer. It is well into the day when I arise. I warily move into my wife’s presence to learn what the restless night has wrought. To my relief she has tempered her anger, softened her hard edges and found enough warmth and affection to withhold accusations and treat me with civility. All seems well yet beneath the surface, in a place I dare not look, lingers a foreboding wind. The conflict is unresolved and the battle still looms.

What remains of the day passes uneventfully. There is small talk and reserved conversation. I sketch the journey and relate the happenings in California. I did not visit her mother or family. Time was short and I chose to honor those I am close to rather than any sense of obligation. She relates what news there is in Nashville. While Wiz and I have squeezed a lifetime of experience into the last four weeks, Nashville has been frozen in time. Nothing is new.

We make plans for a birthday dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant. It is grounds for hope. A little romance may be all that is needed to rekindle the flames. We are seated in the patio area and my wife informs the waitress that it’s my birthday. Sensing my discomfort, the waitress promises not to sing and I am relieved. The lighting is too bright and there are other parties within our view, dampening the spirit of romance. We order and continue a pattern of small talk, this time revolving around her conversations with the girls. Somehow she has decided that this is the time to bring it up: my collection of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia has to go. They all agree.

It’s strange. I’m really not sure how it started. Long before I wrote a play called Heroes as a tribute to the forgotten heroes within us all and a lament of the hero’s fall, I had begun a collection of memorabilia. It started with Humphrey Bogart and then spread to include The Beatles, Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Einstein, the Kennedy’s, James Dean, Billie Holliday, Samuel Beckett, DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe. The Marilyn thing got out of hand. Whenever a gift was called for, Marilyn was an easy solution. I had to put a stop to it when I realized not only that the cost was substantial but that the real pleasure of collecting was in discovery, not possession. It was not as if I wanted everything with Marilyn’s image imprinted on it. There was an art to it. Some works captured her essence, her mystique, while others did not.

I confess that I along with a generation of romantics was a little in love with the mystery of Marilyn and Norma Jean. I found in her the same qualities I found in my wife. She embodies a strange mix of innocence and worldliness, vulnerability and strength. The absence of a father figure in Norma Jean’s life and the delicate balance she maintained with her mother were both features that ran parallel with my wife. Her transformation from an orphaned child to the most appealing woman of her generation and beyond was and is one of the most intriguing stories of our times. I honored her remembrance in the same way I honored Bogie and Bacall and all the others in my pantheon of heroes.

In her jealously inspired gloom, my wife had decided that Marilyn was at the heart of our problem. None of her friends approved. None of them would put up with it. In my play I had argued that when a man abandons his heroes, he gives up a part of himself. The absence of heroes was symptomatic of a social pathology that made life less meaningful.

I am not willing to part with Marilyn on my fortieth birthday but she is insistent. She is determined to have it out. I ask her to stop but she persists. I tell her in anger that my life has been reduced to the confines of one room and now she wants to take that away.

She walks out of the restaurant. Happy birthday.

I pay the bill and walk out into the Nashville night. My wife is nowhere to be found. I figure she’s in one of the bars within walking distance, drowning her sorrow or feeding her rage. I decide she can find her own way home. As Sally guides me back to the house where I reside my mind is already sifting through my options: I could return to California. I could move somewhere new. I could back to Boulder. I could spend another year in Nashville under a separate roof.

Within minutes of reaching home and settling into misery, glancing with new eyes at the prints and photographs of Marilyn on my walls, the phone rings. My wife has no money and needs a ride home. I am not so heartless as to leave her stranded in the Nashville night. I hop in Sally and find my way back to the scene of the crime. I find her in the parking lot and she picks up where she left off. Now she knows it’s true. She’d only wondered before. I am in love with Marilyn.

The irony hits me like a sledgehammer. In the relationships I’d been through since my wife and I first parted, I had often confronted a similar accusation but it was not Marilyn’s name they spoke of; it was hers.

Half way home and I’ve had enough. I can take no more of this lunacy. I pull over and ask her to get out of my car. She relents just enough to get a ride home. She makes a vow of silence and keeps it. We arrive and I close the door of my room behind me. It is over. There is no more forgiveness. There is only rage and jealousy and remorse.