Blather

Jeri Southern was singing “Smoke gets in your eyes.” Some of the lyrics were more spoken than sung, but no one could argue that she wasn’t a singer.

The club was full, you could hear glasses tinkle, women laugh, and even the smoke in the air had its own sound fabric. On stage she stood in the dark, just a spotlight making a microphone-shaped shadow on her shoulder. The large silver mike hid her chin, but when she tipped her head back and sang, you could see her teeth. Her eyes took her somewhere else. The trombone slid around some notes when she had a pause, seeming as if the player were in another room, far away. The violin made a grey sound, keeping the atmosphere solid with sound until she started singing again.

Sitting there with my wife, I had a fleeting curiosity – what would the singer be like, as a lover? Would she be enthusiastic, or would she be soft and lovingly spacey? While naked would she concentrate on sex, or would she be concerned even during sex only with her singing and her career? Of course, the real-world path to that point was never a genuine issue, I just wondered what she’d feel like, what she’d smell like, how she’d sound, that sort of thing. The entire episode with her lasted a second or two. Then I looked at my wife again.

I saw my wife’s face and heard the girl sing. Strange juxtaposition of women, I thought. The singer crooned, “When I give my heart, it will be com-plete-ly, or I’ll ne-ver give … my heart.” And my wife was looking at me with that familiar, closed look on her face. The same look I’d seen many times already. There was something there, behind the eyes, but exactly what was there remained a mystery. I jumped into the singer’s mental place, thinking about me and the way I might give my heart, in that romantic sense. Well, it was too late for me already. I’d already given my heart to my wife. Or so it seemed to me. Lately, I was less certain.

I was lost in my own little world for a bit. Then she eased into her next song, “You’d better go now, because I like you much too much now.”

I saw the words to the song as a sort of slogan, some sort of spoken philosophy that almost made sense to me. She repeated, “You’d better go now because I like you much too much.” That really threw me for a loop. How did the woman with the golden voice see into my inner psyche? Maybe it wasn’t the singer who was talking to me, it was the songwriter: he had an idea there that was like a clarinet’s wail – more than one meaning, sort of like reality bending a la Dali, and the singer was his instrument.

“Hey, where are you?” my wife asked.

I inhaled suddenly. “Oh, just wandering off somewhere,” I replied, more than a bit sheepishly.

“You treat all your wives like this?” she needled rhetorically? She knew she was the only wife I'd ever had.

“Naw, not all of ‘em,” I gave her back. Looking for a clever retort, I added, “Just the ones I go clubbing with.” Funny how she could be hard and distant one instant, then more or less normal the next.

“Hey, can I ask you something?” she asked.

“Sure, go ahead,” I replied.

“When we’re together, do you notice anything missing?” she began.

I knew this question was so broad, so vague that the answer could be anything at all. “Well, I think most things are there – you, me, a bit of pleasure, a bit of passion. What do you think I’ve been missing?” I answered.

“You know how you pleasure me, how I get to the point where I lose my, er, train of thought, right?” she began. “Well, what do you NOT hear when I get to that point?”

“Oh, a quiz,” I hedged. By obliquely responding, I didn’t have to answer the question right away.

She dived fearlessly into this conversational crevasse. “What do you fail to hear when I am experiencing pleasure?”

“I’m not sure. It seems I’m occupied with something else at the time. Your pleasure, I believe,” I added coyly. Banter is a signal that the speaker is not angry, and we’d just plunged into the conversational pool that could easily result in some hostility. I wasn’t hostile yet, and wanted her to know that.

“I don’t say your name,” was the bombshell she’d been waiting to drop.

“Aye, I reckon you don’t,” I agreed. “But what makes you think I’d not noticed that?”

“Have you really noticed?” she inquired.

“Oh, you betcha Margie,” I answered in my best Minnesota accent, keeping the banter going because inside me I didn’t want to fight over this issue.

“Have you really noticed?” she repeated, just a bit more slowly and clearly, indicating with her enunciation that the question deserved a real answer.

I paused. Answering too quickly was not a good thing. I’d shot myself in my metaphysical foot too many times. I took a deep breath, both as a way to calm my inner self and as a way to effect a pause in the conversation. “Yes, I’ve noticed. I first noticed after we got back together the second time.”

“I see,” she answered slowly. You could see the wheels going around in her head.

I felt like honesty here would be a good thing, so I continued. “I noticed. But after I thought about it, I decided that I couldn’t win if I said anything, so I kept my mouth shut.”

Her eyebrows got a bit closer together. I decided telling her wouldn’t hurt me, so I did.

“Yep. See, if I’d said something about that, if I’d said, ‘Why don’t you say my name?’ then nothing would be good for me. You’d either start saying my name, or you’d continue to refrain from saying my name. Neither was a good thing for me.”

“Why not?” she asked.

“Well, just go with me here a bit,” I continued. “If I’d said that, and then you’d started saying my name, how could I know that you were saying my name because you wanted to, at your moment of intense pleasure, or you were just keeping me happy by tossing me the relationship bone I wanted.” Her face began to cloud over a bit. “Worse, if you still continued to refrain from telling me that it was I who was pleasuring you, what would that particular signal do for me? Let me know that even though you enjoy me pleasuring you, you still didn’t want to let me feel appreciated? No thanks.”

“Funny, I hadn’t thought of it quite like that,” she said softly. “For me it was something else. I haven’t been able to put it into words, either.”

“Yeah, I guess we look at things from our own perspective,” I opined, hoping she wouldn’t take offense at presuming to say how she looked at something.

“For me it was, um, ... it was linked to trusting you.”

I didn’t want to open the Why-She-Can’t-Trust-Me can of worms, so I nodded and looked at her.

“There may be more. Sometimes I don’t know how to say what’s on my mind. And sometimes, when I know what’s there, I don’t feel safe telling you. Sometimes telling you something comes back to bite me in the butt.” She looked at me, her face flitting from sincerity to hostility to embarrassment. How could she do all that in the blink of an eye?

Then she shut off her face. Just eyes, nose, a mouth, but no emotion on her face. After seeing this so many times, it still amazed me how she could transform herself into a flesh statue- all the components there, but nothing else.

The singer stepped back into the shadows, letting the band have our attention. I tried to listen to the clarinet, try to imagine the times the band practiced, each player taking the lead, backing up another instrument. One part of me wanted to hear my wife, respond to her; another part of me wanted to escape. The piano tinkled around various octaves, the clarinet came and went, and the drums shuffled a slow, synchopated beat. I glanced at my wife while the band played.

Then the singer stepped forward, stood at the mike and sang, almost alone. The instruments’ volume dropped, just her voice carried the song. “Every time we say good bye, I die a little,” she lamented. The song meandered, rhyming and sighing, to the point where I wondered if the singer really loved the guy she was singing to. Ah, it was just a song. But it sure had a lot of apparent sentiment to it.

The song ended. I stopped escaping. “Do you still have trouble trusting me?” I asked.

“I want to trust you, I really do. But there’s something inside me keeping me from being as trusting as I used to be. It’s part of liking myself, part of knowing I don’t really need you.” Then she paused a bit. “I don’t mean to hurt you with the part about not needing you.”

“Yes, I know. It’s all right if you don’t need me, if you’re not dependent on me,” I replied.” Then I looked for the right words. “I don’t mind if you’re economically not dependent on me. But there’s another sort of bond, a sort of need that I wish I could be sure of. I’d like for you to need me as a person, as someone next to you.” I hesitated, looking for some better words.

“Yes, that too,” she continued. “I’m not sure about that sort of need or dependency. I’m not sure I need you like that, either.”

“Ouch!” I said. “That isn’t making me feel better.”

“Aw, it’s so hard to explain. I want you in my life, but I’m not ready to be as hopelessly lost, as vulnerable as I used to be.” She stressed the vulnerable part by looking at me with her soft brown eyes. I saw a reflection of the past, a memory of how she used to be vulnerable. Just for a nanosecond, or maybe it was just in my imagination, I saw that young girl I’d married, seeing her with today’s eyes, recognizing how she was vulnerable. And feeling none the more honorable for putting her in this place now.

I began to understand her better. “Aye, darlin’, ‘tis fearsome difficult t' balance the two, isn’t it? You want to 'ave me around, but you can’t let y'rself be hurt again,” I said. The brogue was just a conversational reflex to keep me from facing what she’d said. Intellectually I understood her. That’s why I was able to comprehend the push-pull of trust and vulnerability.

Then I began to see how that was true for me, too. I floundered a bit, trying to tell her how I’d gone through some sort of wall, where I, too, was able to survive alone, without the assurance that she was part of my life. The cocky, confident guy she’d married was the compliment to her shy vulnerability. But in my way, I was just as vulnerable. She'd been my emotional anchor. “Heck, what can I say? I’m vulnerable, too, but in a different way, maybe because we’re different people.”

“Yes, we used to be very much alike, you and me. Now we’re less each other’s clone,” she said seriously.

Fortunately for my ego and for this conversation, the band started playing louder, just a few bars. This gave me time to think of something. I looked into her eyes. How could 30 years affect someone so little? She seemed as sweet and cute as when we were first married, our economic life and death hanging on the thread of some pocket change. She’d always been a trooper, always giving me what I asked for. I wondered if I’d ever given her anything.

“You know, this isn’t going anywhere good for me,” I informed her.

“Oh, I know that," she granted. " I don’t think I’d like to hear this either,” she added.

I changed the subject. “Do you like the songs?” I asked.

“Yes, very romantic. I’m a bit surprised you like them. I thought you might find them too mushy, too sentimental,” she replied. She was aware that talking about the songs meant we didn’t have to talk about us.

“Mmm, the lyrics are romantic. Maybe I’ve changed, maybe I’m looking for something that reminds me of us.”

“You think we’re romantic?” she asked. “After all the hostility we’ve gone through?”

“Sure I do,” I answered. “People who’ve had problems and are still together are still together because they want to be together. I think that’s romantic.”

She didn’t seem ready to respond. She glanced away, looking at the stage. “Good songs, good music, good singer,” she said.

I could tell this was another intentional break in the conversation, an attempt to go somewhere else. I was a bit curious about her surprise at my romantic tendencies, but this didn’t seem urgent, so I let this mini-surprise go.

“Glad you like this date.”

“Oh, we’re on a ‘date,’ are we?” she queried, with a glint in her eye.

“Yep. An official, genuine, no-nonsense date,” I smirked.

“And you think this will get you … where?” she continued.

“Into your bed, into your heart, into your life,” I said sincerely.

My blockbuster, though smaller than hers, was sufficient to make her pause awkwardly. “I see,” she mumbled.

I didn’t want her to be pressured, so I changed tack again, going with the nearest topic. “And she sings well, too.” I think this evasive maneuver went over her head, but it gave her a chance to stay with the singer, and avoid our relationship.

“Yes, she’s great. Jeri Southern is a terrific singer."

I liked "Smoke gets in your eyes.”

"Me too. But we still don't know where we're going from here, do we?"

Unable to stop the flow of sentiment induced by the singing, I replied, "Nope. Maybe our two paths will be separate, but maybe they will touch each other awhile longer."