Stuffed Animals
Like in most romantic relationships, lots of gifts accumulate. My first gift from Geoff was a stuffed turtle, tucked atop a pile of prizes in a bowling alley arcade drop claw game where Geoff worked. He spent an endless supply of free tokens trying to win it for me one day when I pointed out how cute it was, but he was unsuccessful.
A few months later, Valentine's Day rolled around, and sure enough, that turtle was in a gift bag for me. I kept it all these years.
I never found out for sure if he won it legitimately or simply unlocked the machine and pulled it out by hand later on. But I loved that turtle, although it's been abused somewhat by my parents' two new adopted puppies.
They're actually not puppies anymore. They are going on two. Elmer and Dutchess, a boy and a girl. Miniature Schnauzers, though Dutchess looks more like a Schnoodle, and she's white as a cloud. Elmer is black and grey, and feels like a really densely stuffed stuffed animal. He's built like a mini linebacker dog. Very heavy for a little thing. I call him a chunk. He's fun to pick up and squeeze, since he goes so limp in my arms when I do. He doesn't know how to fetch or play with our other two dogs, and I've taken a keen liking to him, probably because I identify with his antisocial skills.
One of the cutest things about Elmer is this: When Dutchess wrestles with Brody, our older 5 year old Schnauzer, Elmer will grab a sock or slipper or boot - anything around him - and shake it all about - as if he is vicariously playing with the other two. But he will not physically interact with them. Or me. He prefers to play alone.
They've gone after all my stuffed animals, Dutchess and Elmer, about seven stuffed animals in all, most of which are from Geoff.
There are two grey elephants holding pink hearts in their trunks, presumably gifts from past Valentine's Days, a soft pink Valentine's bear and a few other teddies from Geoff. They line the smaller spare daybed in the bedroom where I live now, in my parent's home in Upstate NY, and whenever I invite the puppies upstairs to visit me, they go right for the stuffed animals.
So far one teddy has lost his nose and each elephant has lost an eye. A few weeks ago, I found the turtle's tail sticking straight up out of a snow bank in the back yard. I don't even know how they got it outdoors. But I do see them take stuffed animals down the stairs when I leave my staircase door open. They're sneaky about it. Elmer, especially. He wants to get the animals outside and buried in the ground. Last spring, I had to wash two of my beanie babies he buried. They were collectables, and he'd even ripped the tags off. I know better now. I keep my beanie babies in a storage bin.
But the stuffed animals I've learned to let go of. Since I've let go of Geoff, I've let go of them. The things that Geoff has given me. A blue shirt his sister bought me that I loved, I lent to a friend and she never returned it. I was angry for a time, but I let that go. And there were other articles of clothing that his parents bought me that I simply outgrew, and eventually I donated or consigned those items after we split. I couldn't hang on to them any longer. They were just memories of the past, hanging in my closet, never to be worn again.
The jewelry he bought me over the years, it was all gone too. After letting go of the diamond, what else really mattered? So the stuffed animals were kind of the last thing to go. But I was holding onto them still. But the puppies helped me with that. I loved these dogs. They made me smile everyday. They were giving me unconditional love. I looked at these chewed up, maimed, half blind, deaf, and nose-less stuffed animals.
I realized moving forward, my dogs could have them, for at this point in time, they loved them more than I.
Bethany
Letting go of Geoff helped me rekindle a relationship with my own sister, one I'd put on the back burner for far too long.
Bethany is eighteen months younger than me, so growing up I naturally picked on her, and by the time we would have been old enough to be friends, I'd met Geoff and blocked Bethany out of my life for good.
After leaving Geoff, Bethany graciously took me back into her life, not that I was ever a part of it to begin with. I didn't even know her really to be honest. She was a complete stranger to me. All I knew of this person my parents had birthed twenty some-odd years ago was that she'd purchased a house somewhere far off in the woods and that it took over an hour to drive there from my parent's home, which was already way out in the boonies.
One day I decided to pay her a visit and introduce my new, broken self.
When I arrived at her home, she introduced me to her dog and encouraged me to sit down and make myself comfortable. This was not the little sister I remembered growing up with. The one who seemed to whine and cry and get her way all the time. This person seemed mature and responsible, even moreso than me.
Her house stood atop a hill that overlooked waterfalls. White bunnies lived across the street in a wild patch of land, she told me. She would throw carrots into an overgrown field sometimes, feeling responsible for their lives in some small way. Her pit bull mix of some sort was friends with the bunnies. They even sometimes played together.
Her dog's name was Zoey and Bethany was frustrated that Zoey wasn't acting more like a protective watch dog. She should be baring her teeth, letting saliva gather grossly around her jowls, and growling at creepy bearded mountain men who passed by.
Zoey was too kind, she feared. She might not even realize she was a canine. She was left alone tied up in the woods somewhere for a lengthy period of her puppyhood before a stranger found her and brought her into a shelter. Bethany assumed a pit bull would be as effective as a home security system, and cheaper to boot, so she adopted her. And now it was too late to bring her back.
Bethany explained her theory that Zoey was exposed to, and possibly raised by, deer and squirrels during her abandonment in the woods as a puppy. She pointed out how Zoey walked high on her toes as if they were hooves. When she pranced about the hardwood floors she sounded like a woman in high heels scrambling around before work. The click-clacks resonated throughout the house.
The following morning I witnessed Bethany's frustration with Zoey's click-clacks.
"Either go lay down or go bark at somebody! Be a dog! Stop walking around! What are you doing with your life!?"
Bethany also complained that when Zoey slept, she would stretch out her limbs and cross each set of ankles, looking very graceful, like a deer.
"When she's on her runner, Zoey frolics. She literally frolics and leaps in the air. Over things. Things that don't even exist. She should be darting around, chasing after things! And the squirrels? And birds? They come right up on the grass next to her and eat their nuts and things! She thinks she's Bambi. And then the bunnies hop on over and poop in my yard since I'm feeding them carrots and then Zoey eats their poop! It's ridiculous! What am I? Mary Poopins?"
Bethany and I laughed. I caught her up on the past ten years of my dying relationship with Geoff. She passed me Kleenex and made me tea and added wood to the fire. I felt more cared for during my stay with this stranger who was my sister than in the last combined three years I'd lived with Geoff, I realized.
Bethany eventually changed the subject and walked out to her porch to get more firewood. I heard her yell at the dog.
"Stop eating shit you little bitch!"
Living alone, I realized Bethany was at least taking out her aggression safely. And Zoey was a happy dog. She really was.
Bethany let me indulge in the solitude of her warm, tidy home while I was her depressed couch-ridden guest. I felt like I was in a late 19th century cure cottage. Bethany's town population during winter was all of 300, since its economy mostly relied on summer tourism, mostly campers that came to see the waterfalls.
The only sounds I heard during my three-day stay were the low moans of winter wind outdoors and the wood-stove crackling and Zoey's click-clacks and occasionally Bethany yelling at the dog or at some inanimate object in the house that wasn't doing what it was supposed to.
While I was her guest, she kept the wood-stove burning, and sometimes I got so warm I sweat profusely.
Bethany dimmed the lights each of the two evenings I slept there, and just as I would rest my eyes on the comfy couch, she began to play the bongos. Her beat started quietly and then increased in volume and tempo, as she began chanting a conglomeration of intonations laced with unpredictably placed syllabic accents. It sounded soothing, and mysterious, like a Native American prayer. A speaking in tongues. A song with no words, and yet with so many.
She cooked me eggs and toast each morning, and pleaded with me to take a jog with her each day. On the third day, just before leaving, I finally obliged. I knew I was out of shape, and within a half mile, I felt the weakness around my knees fill with pain. She left me behind and finished her jog without me. I walked best I could and met her on her return, then we walked back up the huge hill to her house together, admiring the waterfalls on the way.
When it was time for me to leave, she said she didn't want to give me a hug because it would be weird to make a big deal out of saying goodbye. I was all like, yeah, of course, totally.
"See you again soon, I'm sure." I said.
"Text me when you get back home! Drive safe! I love you!" She yelled back as I pulled out with my window down, waving.
It was an unexpected and bittersweet parting that perhaps only formerly estranged sisters can begin to appreciate.
I'll see her again at Christmas, I reminded myself. It was sad to leave. We had watched How I Met Your Mother on Netflix together, and during Season 4, Episode 6, we gave each other a knowing glance when in the final moments of the show Ted Mosby told his children, "Kids you may think your only choices are to swallow your anger or throw it in someone's face, but there's a third option. You can just let it go, and only when you do that is it really gone, and you can move forward."
My sister and I moved forward. She took me into her home. She forgave me for all those spats we had as kids, and moreso for all the years I ignored her while focusing my energy on Geoff. Our past pains and sorrows, mostly hers, were now farts in the wind. She let them go. I was now her sister again. Maybe even for the first time.
Work
After leaving Geoff I didn't know how I would support myself. All those sub calls I'd ignored I couldn't afford to ignore anymore. But even subbing wasn't going to cut it, I decided.
We finished out our off-season in the beach rental. Friends came to visit that Memorial Day Weekend and Geoff and I entertained, keeping our breakup a secret for the most part, though I suspect Liam spilled the beans. It was a sad time for all of us. I didn't go on the fishing boat that year.
When it was time to move out at the end of May, I found a live-in nanny job in Wakefield and packed up 4 suitcases and my keyboard and P.A. I didn't really have much. Both houses we'd lived in were furnished, so we hadn't accumulated furniture. Geoff took everything else - the bikes, kitchenware, dvd's, gadgets, and whatchamacallits, back to his parents' vacation house. It was a really sad time.
Despite being broken up, Geoff visited me where I nannied and sneaked me into his parents home for sex about twice a week. We continued to go out to bars and restaurants, only he paid since I was on my own now. He treated me kinder and lovemaking was sweeter than ever - especially knowing each time might be our last - and then each goodbye was gut-wrenching - knowing we each needed to at some point move on - such sweet sorrow were these goodbyes between us, best put.
We went on walks and drives, and talked on the phone most nights.
In August my birthday rolled around and he dropped a gift off to me, but had to leave in a hurry. He was all dressed up.
I was on FaceBook that evening and saw his name tagged in a FaceBook post:
"Enjoying dirty martinis with Geoff at Matunuck Oyster Bar!" The girl who tagged him I didn't recognize, but she had lots of cleavage showing in her profile picture.
I drove to the Oyster Bar restaurant and approached their table, my birthday gifts from Geoff in hand.
I said hello to he and his date. I got a good look at her. She was about twenty pounds heavier than me and that helped my heart rate come down just enough to turn and leave with only doing minor damage to Geoff's VW Golf before driving away. I shattered the glass elephant he'd bought me and used the broken glass to scratch the entire driver side of his car.
Since it was a new leased car, I felt vindicated. I bragged about it on Facebook. Supportive friends likened me to having a Carrie Underwood moment.
And that was the end of the sex part of our relationship.
I looked for a job outside of RI and found one in NYC, nannying, for $1500/week, but it ended after three months because my boss and I had a cultural conflict, and I didn't really want to move to Riyadh and live in a Muslim castle.
My boss, whom I lived with in a small apartment, sat me down for bi-weekly verbal lashings to test my temper, to make sure I was ready to be taken back to the royal palace. I think he was probably a spy. He had white noise machines in every room and we moved three times while I lived with them. We lived in Downtown NYC, Lower Eastside, then Upper Eastside. He would wait until 3 a.m each night to make phone calls where he spoke in Arabic and berated me if I used the bathroom, since I could be listening to him.
"Why are you up listening to my phone call!"
"I have to pee."
"We will discuss in the morning!"
"Okay."
When that gig ended - and it paid well- I mean I got Lasik corrective eye surgery plus bought awesome Christmas presents for my parents and Geoff (yes we missed each other and started having sex again, on Sundays, my day off, when I'd take the 5:30 a.m. bus from NYC to Providence and he'd pick me up and we'd spend a whole day being kids together and doing everything fun under the sun until late afternoon when he'd return me). I was also able to settle all my credit card debt from what this nanny job paid. But when this nanny job ended, I really couldn't return to Rhode Island. It was time to finally say good-bye to Geoff.
My final week of nannying in NYC, I asked Geoff to come spend the weekend at a hotel with me there. He understood the implications of my leaving this time. I booked a room on the top floor of the Sheraton in Times Square. Our time was a mix of pleasant and somber. We were grown ups now. This was good-bye.
I took us out to a fancy Indian restaurant. He really seemed to love it. We watched a movie in bed and I fell asleep spooning him a little while before turning the other way. It was the last time we shared a bed together.
The next morning we shared nothing more intimate than a kiss before parting ways. I took a train to Port Henry where my dad picked me up.
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