Living It

Lee Fuhr could only be described as a mind-made-up kind of woman. Lee and I where neighbors for a while at Columbia University our backgrounds shared a common thread a deep desire for a college education. Lee was someone who entranced me. There was a rhythm to her thoughts that coincided with the heaving of her breasts. When she spoke I breathed with her.

Our conversations more often than not emulated Lee’s understanding and compassion for her fellows. In 1934 it was more common to meet people who came from a poor family than a rich one. Lee was no exception. She spent her youth in the cotton mills of New Jersey. Her days were not filled with hours of frivolous play. Lee’s teen years were about working long hours for little pay to support her family. Although my parents were considered amongst the impoverished as Lee spoke of her past I grew to consider myself very fortunate.

The night air was biting. The quicker I walked the more the clicking of my heels on the pavement echoed within me. Lee had moved to an apartment on Amsterdam and although I was drawn to her the walks to see her were just annoying. There was a part of me that ached to be with her as she spoke, spoke of anything, spoke for hours of nothing. I ached. Since Lee had moved I wasn’t ever sure how I would be greeted when I went to see her. I was a hypocrite and we both knew it.

Time with Lee began to fill my nights and weekends, but it wasn’t alone time. I was still looking for work so searching accounted for most of my days. The rest of my time was spent with an odd little man named Patch. When I talked Patch listened. We were working in a hall, a meeting hall where people gathered to learn about communism. I could talk to Patch about being afraid of not knowing what to do. It wasn’t that I didn’t sympathize it was that I didn’t know how far sympathy would take me.

Patch would hold my hand as I talked running his index finger down the back of my hand between my fingers back and forth, back and forth until I became calm again. Whenever I was with Lee I felt like a coward, but with Patch I could figure out what I believed and he just listened as talked. Patch was kind enough to tell me he would wait to join the party until I made up my mind and then we could join together. Patch volunteered to give me courage, but time went on and I joined the Party alone. Patch lost his courage.

In the Making

In 1934 when I entered the harbor of New York I wasn’t smart enough to believe what I saw. Tar paper shacks, wood pallets and oil barrels all lined up for people with their families to live; make-shift shanties for the poverty ridden who picked through garbage dumps for scrapes of food and clothing for their children and themselves.

I didn’t realize how close I was to being just like them, the faceless and nameless of Riverside Drive. What made me think it would be better for me stepping off a ship from Europe jobless with a cheap college degree? A worthless piece of paper I thought I could start my life over with.

I remember the feeling of loneliness and the fear of having to eat just on the change I had in the bottom of my purse. I was always taking extra care of my hose so they wouldn’t snag or get a hole. I may have been hard up without a job and cash, but I couldn’t look like it or I would never get a job.

I began to doubt all the time I had spent in academics thinking I could came back to America and walk into a teaching position. I drank more than I ate; it seemed cheaper at the time and then reality began to sink in. I had to do something so I turned to what I knew academics.

This time I took a more practical approach I went to Columbia Business School. I moved closer to the university because it was cheaper to live. Little did I know I would make my future at Columbia. My future was going to become bigger than the harsh reality of having to go to business school, bigger than not teaching at Columbia University. Bigger than anything anyone who knew me believed my life would be. Bigger than I thought my life would be.

“Miss. Bentley! Are you ok? Miss. Bentley?”
“Yes. Yes. I’m ok, I’m ok. What do you need? Do I have to sign something?”
“Yes. This is a consent form for your surgery. Just read and sign her.”

The clipboard passed from hand to shaky hand and the pen passed too, but from fingertips to trembling fingers. An unreadable signature was handed back nervously to the nurse.

“Do you need anything Miss Bentley before I leave? My shift is ending.”
“Water. How about some water you old New England girl?”
“Just a bit. Your surgery is scheduled first thing in the morning.”
“Yes. Ok. Just a little water. Thank you.

Maybe the nurse cared, really cared. Not just that I was a patient, but cared because I was a person. Maybe her kindness was more than just her job . . . maybe . . . just maybe . . . she had some sympathy . . . .

I was forty-four years old then and I had lived more than one life. I wondered if other people had more than one life. There was Vassar and Columbia, Italy and Florence, Mussolini and the Fascists and then the Communists and the FBI. They all wanted me. But what did I want? I can’t really remember anymore.

I was famous for a while. My picture was in the paper. People read about my life in newspapers. I was escorted from place to place in chauffeur driven cars. I was called a spy extraordinaire. A spy who became a lecturer, who told stories from memory so often I became unaware of what was real and what was fiction. I lived a life, but was it my life? And if it wasn’t my life whose life was it?

The Trial

I had always felt like a jigsaw puzzle. Life was all about putting the pieces of me together. When she came into my life the last part of me fell into place. She washed over me like shellac. Her essence filled in all the cracks of my put-together puzzle pieces. When she left I became unglued. It took a while for me to pick up the first puzzle piece to start all over again. What I'm discovering is the pieces just aren't the same. I'm a different jigsaw puzzle now . . . .

In the Making

Our house in New Milford was right out of a Hollywood movie; a white picket fence holding in the tamed green grass my fathered obsessed over to avoid my mother. My father was a man who took pride in everything that could be seen on the outside. With a ruler he measured the length of his fresh cut grass and the distance of the picket fence from the sidewalk.

There were no cracks or weeds in the walkway. No flaws in the perfect house where the perfect family lived. Not a single paint peel. Not a spotted window to look through. No weeds in the flower beds. Everything about us looked perfect. Then one day we were gone. The weeds came back, the paint peeled off and the walkways cracked. No one even knew we were gone.

We had moved to Rochester and I felt left alone. Connecticut and New York were in sharp contrast I didn’t know how to behave. All I kept thinking was I must become accountable to no one.
   

Living It

In a hospital room I lie with a thin cotton gown covering my swollen abdomen that has grown so out of proportion the rest of me looks gaunt and protruding. There are sounds in the night air in a hospital that stir you inside and force you into thoughts of your life gone by. You remember your life as a series mistakes, miscalculations and mistreatment.

There is something in the squeak of a nurse’s shoes; something that happens when she walks the halls pausing in doorways sometimes entering and sometimes not. A nurse’s job is to see to the welfare of your body. She breezes in and out of your room like a moving shadow on the wall. She shines like the full moon on a completely blackened sky. The nurse hovers around you breathing in your whispers, touching your wrist to see if your heart is still beating, rolling your forearm back and forth to check the IV, reaching toward the ceiling to adjust monitors that will tell her when your time has expired.

Nurses are angels dressed in pure eggshell white monitoring your body without thought of your soul. As you lie in your bed on a mattress covered in plastic, held in place by rails with the rubber mat pulling water out of your backside, lower spine and thighs you can do nothing but think. Think of your regrets, regrets of not having more relations with people, good people. You wish for more sober moments. Moments in which your mind was clear of the fear that drove every decision you ever made.

Fear, fear of being alone, fear of not being alone; fear of not being loved, fear of being loved; fear of having your own thoughts, fear of not having your own thoughts. Fear! Fear of not knowing who you are, fear of knowing exactly who you are.

I am afraid of everything. As I lay her in this hospital terminally ill I can see how foolish I was. How easy life would have been to live if I had the courage to be the person I was brought up to be. True courage is not turning your back on your up-bringing.

When the nurse leaves the room you are left with just yourself. She doesn’t talk to you or with you she only talks at you. But her presence still counts as someone being with you. Her body standing by your dying body keeps the loneliness at bay. She provides a reprieve. Again she is an angel in eggshell white. This time she is providing comfort beyond your body and she doesn’t even know it.

The emotion floods into you like an ocean wave rolls onto a sandy beach. The salt water floods into a ditch dug by the hands of children playing in the afternoon sun unaware of the pain that comes with adulthood. You were innocent like that once. Free of worry, free of regrets, free of thoughts that went further than the next game to play and who you are going to play the game with.

Game playing is the lifetime employer of an adult like me; an adult who lives without a sense or belief of who they are or where they came from. You play games for attention, for love, to stave off loneliness. You sell your soul to the highest bidder. Life becomes a game that makes you feel alive when all you want to do is die.

I’ve sold my soul by sleeping with men, old men, who handed me a college degree for fellatio and lunch at the “Y” anytime he desired because his intelligence couldn’t control the animal in him. I’ve sold my soul to women. Women who would hold me and tell me they love me and would let me nuzzle in their breasts and sometimes nurse on them as long as after I shared my vagina and pleasured theirs as well. I’ve sold my soul to alcohol and betrayed the memory of my father and drown whatever part of him lived in me. I’ve sold my soul to other’s beliefs because unlike my mother I could not stand up for what I believed in because I never really believed in anything.

I’ve sold my soul to the government for money and prestige near the end. And in the end I sold my soul for a good beating by a man who was a drunk like me; a man who needed attention like me, who needed not to be alone like me who held me hostage and beat me to control me. I sold my soul to this man so I wouldn’t be alone, but in this hospital room I am alone. What will my soul go for after my death? Will there be anything left to sell of me in the afterlife? Will there be an afterlife for me? I have no soul left to sell so I lie here alone thinking listening to the squeak of the nurse’s shoes as she comes to check to see if I am still alive. But I’m not alive. I’ve been dead for years.

Living It

I left Lee’s apartment without really remembering the trot down the rickety stairs leading me into the cold night air. I was still warm from her embrace as I walked past store fronts, cafes and restaurants. I felt as though someone was following me, but I couldn’t hear footsteps. When I turned my head the shadows all stood still; all I could see was steam rising from the drainage grates. I had hoped when I turned around I would see Lee, but there was no one there. My heart sank a bit; I knew she would never follow me. She would never follow me anywhere.

My disappointment gave into the strong aroma of fresh brewed coffee from a cafeteria up ahead. In just a few strides I was at the counter ordering coffee looking for a table. The cafeteria was more crowded than I was comfortable with.  I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t afford to be here.

I was handed a cup and I left the little bit of change I had on the counter. I stood frozen in the crowd looking for a seat. As I stood still a tall gentleman with black rimmed glasses walked up to me touching my cup as if to take it from me. He smiled at the expression of surprise on my face while asking me to join him at his table. He was alone waiting for time to pass. He had a meeting at eight o’clock.

Our conversation was casual, but directed at more than the weather. He felt sad at my plight to find work and I felt admiration for him having a professional life, a career. Time passed quickly and we were both headed to an eight o’clock meeting. He asked if I stopped at the cafeteria often.  I said it was possible I could make more of an effort to stop in and then we left our table.

He put me into a cab, gave the cabby fare and told him to take me wherever I wanted to go. I had shoved the address of my eight o’clock meeting in the pocket of my coat. I fumbled for a minute as the cabby pulled away from the curb. I read the address out loud fighting my want to turn around. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I wanted to look back and watch him get smaller and smaller as the cabby fought his way into traffic, but I didn’t. I just sat still, eyes forward, thinking about the last two hours of my life.

Living It

I left Lee’s apartment without really remembering the trot down the rickety stairs leading me into the cold night air. I was still warm from her embrace as I walked past store fronts, cafes and restaurants. I felt as though someone was following me, but I couldn’t hear footsteps. When I turned my head the shadows all stood still; all I could see was steam rising from the drainage grates. I had hoped when I turned around I would see Lee, but there was no one there. My heart sank a bit; I knew she would never follow me. She would never follow me anywhere.

My disappointment gave into the strong aroma of fresh brewed coffee from a cafeteria up ahead. In just a few strides I was at the counter ordering coffee looking for a table. The cafeteria was more crowded than I was comfortable with.  I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t afford to be here.

I was handed a cup and I left the little bit of change I had on the counter. I stood frozen in the crowd looking for a seat. As I stood still a tall gentleman with black rimmed glasses walked up to me touching my cup as if to take it from me. He smiled at the expression of surprise on my face while asking me to join him at his table. He was alone waiting for time to pass. He had a meeting at eight o’clock.

Our conversation was casual, but directed at more than the weather. He felt sad at my plight to find work and I felt admiration for him having a professional life, a career. Time passed quickly and we were both headed to an eight o’clock meeting. He asked if I stopped at the cafeteria often.  I said it was possible I could make more of an effort to stop in and then we left our table.

He put me into a cab, gave the cabby fare and told him to take me wherever I wanted to go. I had shoved the address of my eight o’clock meeting in the pocket of my coat. I fumbled for a minute as the cabby pulled away from the curb. I read the address out loud fighting my want to turn around. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I wanted to look back and watch him get smaller and smaller as the cabby fought his way into traffic, but I didn’t. I just sat still, eyes forward, thinking about the last two hours of my life.