Raw Edges: A Memoir

Blues in the Attic

: : 5 : : :: Blues in the Attic :: Even though the summer of 2002 proved a major turning point of my life, there was that nadir, subzero, bottom-out point: a day, a night, and the next morning. I’ll never forget it. I wish I would have remembered about the refiner’s fire making gold from dross. Or about the heroine journeying through the labyrinth. But I didn’t. In the middle of that fire, I was no philosopher. Early on the morning of that day, the attic at the top of the three-story house was broiling. Not enough insulation. My second divorce would be final today, kaput, the fastest divorce in the West. On the sixth day of the sixth month, without an invitation being sent, the blues moved in again. Big time this round. They busted in like an unwelcome relative, ready to eat everything in the refrigerator, sleep in my bed next to me, and never stop talking, 24/7. Perspiring from every pore, it seemed, I stood over the stove in my Emily Dickinson cubicle (my bedroom, living room, writing desk, and kitchen all-in-one). Waiting for the oatmeal to cook, I drank orange juice with calcium. I would eat good food. I would be healthy. I would take care of myself. I would make a new life, even if I was fifty-nine years old. I would escape this anchor-dragging-on-the-bottom sadness. I could be happy, I reminded myself. Honest I could. I bent over the stove, as I was too tall for the slanted ceiling. I added raisins to oatmeal 6 : : r a w e d g e s and took care not to bump my head. I could even be light-hearted. I’ve always been known as a “happy girl.” Upbeat. A ready smile for everyone. So why couldn’t I saunter down the middle of the road and be cool? Chill? Forget the bad times? And why did I have to be the spoiler at that Memorial Day party last week? My mind had been locked into instant replay mode all morning long: push the button; repeat the fumble; listen to the referees; feel lousy all over again. My ex-husband David said he’d only been trying to cheer me up. He’d invited the family over for a Memorial Day barbecue at the house on Steele Street where he kept his offices and where he’d offered me a place to stay until I got back on my feet. He’d only wanted to bring some good times to the backyard and to me—a refugee from difficult relationships. But then he invited his girlfriend and her family, too. Sorry, David. That was over the top. You should have known better. You should have warned me. I’d lost any composure left in my bag of tools-to-deal-with-the-world when I looked out the third-story window and saw them all converging in the yard, with that woman standing by David as if she belonged next to him, straightening his baseball cap, and patting his cheek. That woman laughing with my son, Brad, as if they’d known each other forever. She’d moved in with David a month earlier, about the same time I’d moved out of Bill’s house in Park City. She was taking over at the same time Bill was fading out—the man who was in the process of becoming my second exhusband after twenty-one months of marriage. Twenty-one. A gambling game. Had I won or lost was a question I couldn’t ask yet as I was so devastated by yet another upheaval in what was beginning to feel like a soap-opera life. I didn’t like the script. Or the scriptwriter. There were too many clichés about broken hearts and swooning and dying on the vine. I’d always thought I could count on David. He hadn’t been involved in a long-lasting relationship with anyone since our divorce in 1997. And he’d always been there for me when I called or needed a friend. But now, while those facts were rearranging themselves before my eyes, a territorial dispute raged in my head: This is mine, this is mine, no it isn’t. You said good- Blues in the Attic : : 7 bye, farewell, it’s time for...