I’d like to believe that, like my former brother-in-law, I have willingly devolved into my own monastic plantlike state, solitary, self-sustaining, animated only by moisture and an attic window’s worth of sun, but I can’t deny that I long for the simple creature comfort of companionship, specifically female companionship. It’s not sex that I’m talking about, although that certainly accounts for something; it’s the warmth of another. The reliability and purity of a woman’s shape moving through a shared room. The cast and cant of her shadow on a wall. The warm apples-and-smoke scent of her hair hanging faintly in the air. The perfect spiderweb smallness of bras and panties clinging to a hamper’s wicker skin. The minty effluvium of her toothpaste breath on cold winter mornings.
In the simplest of terms, according to Sheila Anne, she left me because I lost my ambition. Because I settled —that was the word she kept throwing around.
Settle: to decide on something; to solve; to make or become resident; to colonize place; to stop floating; to pay what is owed; to move downward; to subside; to stop moving; to make or become clear; to end a legal dispute; to make or become calm; to put details in order; to make somebody comfortable; to put something in place; to establish or become established; to compact something firmly; to assign property; to impregnate or be impregnated.
I’m fairly certain that, with regard to me, the definition Sheila Anne was referring to was “to stop moving.”
And why did I stop moving? Because I grew to be satisfied with our life in Pollard and the cresting of the Third Policeman and the cluttered familiarity of the basement recording studio. Perhaps the most troubling reason I stopped moving is because of love itself. Because I let love become my priority, which, I realize in retrospect, results in too much doting, a compulsive need to touch and cling, and the dissolution of any mystery that might exist between intimate companions. It is mystery, after all, that keeps a marriage interesting. Things secreted in drawers. Unknown telephone numbers on the long-distance bill. Unusual URL addresses on the web browser.
I think I took marriage to be a kind of pre-midlife apotheosis, but instead of it inspiring me to continue to grow as Francis Falbo the Man and Francis Falbo the Rock Musician (thereby increasing my mystery quotient!), it pushed me into a strange mode of self-satisfied semiretirement. I loved getting domestic and cuddly. I practically swooned at the dependable regularity of shopping for groceries and the weekly Laundry Day and tri-weekly scheduled Magic Hour Sex and morning coffee/newspaper reading and making “team” decisions about dinner and evening entertainment and whether or not we should get a Puggle (we never did).
Sheila Anne commuted to work ninety minutes away, where she managed the Human Resources Department at Decatur Memorial Hospital. Route 41 is not the most exciting drive in the state, and the boring commute, combined with my boring car and her boring, mostly devout Christian staff, made her tenure at Decatur Memorial pretty uneventful, if not existentially challenging. Then she would come home to a cookbook dinner, prepared by her domestically satisfied, bemused-by-a-midlife-type-lifestyle-but-actually-only-thirty-two-year-old husband, and a few glasses of twelve-dollar Merlot, and maybe a semi-interesting studio film foisting itself off as an independent dramedy about a small-town varsity wrestling coach or lawn-furniture salesperson or some such middlebrow, down-on-his-luck-despite-being-world-class-handsome hero, and then we would bed down to sleep and wake up early and she would man the espresso machine and scan the newspaper while wolfing down the granola and the antioxidant blueberries and then once again the ninety minutes in the fuel-efficient Volkswagen Jetta to clip time at a hospital where it rarely got better than talking to disgruntled nurses
In the simplest of terms, according to Sheila Anne, she left me because I lost my ambition. Because I settled —that was the word she kept throwing around.
Settle: to decide on something; to solve; to make or become resident; to colonize place; to stop floating; to pay what is owed; to move downward; to subside; to stop moving; to make or become clear; to end a legal dispute; to make or become calm; to put details in order; to make somebody comfortable; to put something in place; to establish or become established; to compact something firmly; to assign property; to impregnate or be impregnated.
I’m fairly certain that, with regard to me, the definition Sheila Anne was referring to was “to stop moving.”
And why did I stop moving? Because I grew to be satisfied with our life in Pollard and the cresting of the Third Policeman and the cluttered familiarity of the basement recording studio. Perhaps the most troubling reason I stopped moving is because of love itself. Because I let love become my priority, which, I realize in retrospect, results in too much doting, a compulsive need to touch and cling, and the dissolution of any mystery that might exist between intimate companions. It is mystery, after all, that keeps a marriage interesting. Things secreted in drawers. Unknown telephone numbers on the long-distance bill. Unusual URL addresses on the web browser.
I think I took marriage to be a kind of pre-midlife apotheosis, but instead of it inspiring me to continue to grow as Francis Falbo the Man and Francis Falbo the Rock Musician (thereby increasing my mystery quotient!), it pushed me into a strange mode of self-satisfied semiretirement. I loved getting domestic and cuddly. I practically swooned at the dependable regularity of shopping for groceries and the weekly Laundry Day and tri-weekly scheduled Magic Hour Sex and morning coffee/newspaper reading and making “team” decisions about dinner and evening entertainment and whether or not we should get a Puggle (we never did).
Sheila Anne commuted to work ninety minutes away, where she managed the Human Resources Department at Decatur Memorial Hospital. Route 41 is not the most exciting drive in the state, and the boring commute, combined with my boring car and her boring, mostly devout Christian staff, made her tenure at Decatur Memorial pretty uneventful, if not existentially challenging. Then she would come home to a cookbook dinner, prepared by her domestically satisfied, bemused-by-a-midlife-type-lifestyle-but-actually-only-thirty-two-year-old husband, and a few glasses of twelve-dollar Merlot, and maybe a semi-interesting studio film foisting itself off as an independent dramedy about a small-town varsity wrestling coach or lawn-furniture salesperson or some such middlebrow, down-on-his-luck-despite-being-world-class-handsome hero, and then we would bed down to sleep and wake up early and she would man the espresso machine and scan the newspaper while wolfing down the granola and the antioxidant blueberries and then once again the ninety minutes in the fuel-efficient Volkswagen Jetta to clip time at a hospital where it rarely got better than talking to disgruntled nurses
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