(From Angela Bower's private notes, dated September 12, 2004.)
Somehow it all makes me
think of Richard, who would say, with his distinctive British accent:
"A breakfast meeting in London...a lunchtime meeting in New
York."
Yes. And a cup of coffee
in Wisteria Lane.
I had never met Lynette
Scavo before I went down to Fairview a couple of weeks ago. Strictly
business ? Kid yourself. In our days of mobile communication,
eSignature, and my whole office inside the PowerBook G4 I'm
generating these lines with, it takes very elaborately worked out
excuses to classify a trip like mine to meet Lynette as "strictly
business".
Even more so with people
like Tony Micelli, who work their way up the social ladder in an
impressive manner, ah, but underneath they stay the same person all
the time. Where are we going, I asked him when we were seriously
considering marriage for the second time. He said "All the way",
and that was all I needed to hear.
And then the last rung on the ladder broke.
I've talked about this
before, I know. I don't think I'm ever going to be able again to
write down so much as my shopping list without at least a single line
about him between what really matters, despite everything that
happened. All I can do, I suppose, is to take it on by doing my very
best and concurrently dismissing any feeling of guilt. So far,
however, my best intentions to do so have led to a big amount of
nothing. More than once have I felt my conscience speak up: "Sorry
to interrupt. But you were saying something about best intentions !"
And every time that little voice inside my head will stress the words "best intentions" in a way which is obviously meant to make
the whole thing sound distinctly skeptical.
The underlying message, of
course, is outright apodictical: You'll never make it. No matter how
you intend to handle what happened, do not expect yourself to be
relieved of the burden as a result. You may as well keep it on the
inside instead of releasing the beast.
Which is what disclosed
secrets can become. And they die hard, Angela: Arcana publicata
vilescunt, wrote the scholar, but oh so slowly. Time may be a healer,
but until the beast lets go of you out of sheer decrepitude, it may
already be too late for recovery.
And yet. Here I stand, and
I can do no other. I am in no way indifferent to possibly negative
consequences this approach may have on me, but I am more willing to
take the risk than let the beast live inside. I have fought quite a
lot of fights in my life, and it doesn't really take a gargantuan
amount of self-confidence to claim that I'm prepared for whatever may
lie ahead. Bring it on, apocryphal fate.
I'll not see fifty again,
but what I presumably lack in juvenile energy I'm equipped to
compensate with experience. Again, bring it on.
Truth be told, I have
little reason to worry, even less to complain. I realize that now,
having fully digested my tête-à-tête with Lynette,
a close encounter of the female kind. I've been doing business with
Tom Scavo for the better part of two years now, and from what he had
told me about his wife I expected many things, but none of my
interpretations came close to the woman I eventually met.
It was like looking into a wondrous mirror.
(From Angela Bower's private notes, dated September 14, 2004)
Lynette is thirteen years
my junior, so it might have been more appropriate to speak of our
encounter as a journey back in time. When I was her present age, my
life used to be called "The Tony & Angela Show" –
before it got canceled and replaced by "Suddenly Angela".
She lives in a really nice
house down there, part of a highly usual suburban neighborhood:
People mow their lawns, sit on the front porch, say hello when they
meet. Lynette herself is member of a girls' club of five, and their
friendship appears to be her most valued treasure.
She talked a lot about
this "housewives' circle", as she labeled it. I retained the
impression that a club like hers and her friends' is a rather
important feature in the life of an average suburban housewife and
mother these days.
I wouldn't know.
Jonathan is heading for thirty as I speak, so I think I should be
grateful to Lynette for updating me on twenty-first-century
standards.
Her kids are all little
rascals right from the drawing-board. What are their names again ?
Huey, Dewey, and Louie ? I think so, but I could be mistaken, anyway.
Tom had always described
his offspring as real-life angels, and how he finds it "too bad"
not being able to spend more time with them still echoes in my mind,
because it sounds suspiciously similar to what I myself heard many
years ago from the man whose name I continue to wear like an old and
battered but dearly loved coat. (You just cannot imagine your life
without it anymore. In a very odd way, to be sure.)
Lynette painted what I
instantly felt was a more accurate picture of the family's
situation: She's got all the work with the kids on her hands, while
Mr Scavo is The Big Operator outside and The Best Of All Daddies
inside their four walls – when he's in, which is for the weekend
only most of the time.
I told Lynette about the
reasoning behind the decision I took when I was facing that same fork
in the road of life so many years ago. And I told her about the price
I had to pay for successfully strong-arming my husband: My family
torn apart, my son growing up without his father, my love life
focused, for the better part of fifteen years, on the man who was
keeping my house in good shape.
"Fairy-tale stuff, isn't
it ?", I closed.
"Would you trade places
with me, Angela ? If only for a month ?", Lynette commented with a
weak fake smile. She looked away briefly, then sipped at her coffee."No, you wouldn't, sweetie. Not in a million years would you
trade in your success in life for the desperations of a housewife and
mother of four."
Including her baby, that
is. I looked down. I knew she was right, of course, but I did not
admit it.
"Still there are
benefits.", I argued. "Would you trade in your husband's and
your children's love for the bizarre SOPs of a female ad CEO, who's
living single in a big house in near-NYC Connecticut ?"
Now it was her turn to
look down. I continued, trying to omit more abbreviations.
"There is nobody to
welcome me home when I open up the door...well, unless my mother is
actually waitng for me, just to start all over again about how
pathetic it is to bury one's real needs under a pile of work. Go
find yourself a decent guy, before the gray in your heart connects
with the gray in your hair. That's Mona..."
Lynette sniggered.
Involuntarily, I suppose.
"Do you dye your hair
?", she asked, grinning.
"No. Those days are
long gone. And my heart's not dying, either."
The two of us experienced
a wonderful moment of alleviating laughter.
(From Angela Bower's private notes, dated September 15, 2004)
Are we both somehow
feeling sorry about the choice we made at that point in life which
proved to be of foremost importance ? She opted for family, now says
she made a mistake by letting her husband talk her into this. "Why
didn't I have your strength when it was most needed ?", she said
and then looked at me, looked me straight in the eyes. I shivered.
You could be sitting on that side of the table, do you realize that,
Angela...right here, right now. That's what I was thinking. As a
Protestant, I should be familiar with the theory of Predestination,
but then again I've never been a great believer. Maybe if Lynette,
like me, had used her skills in one-upmanship at that critical point
in life, she, unlike me, would've managed to avoid all the bizarre
potholes that kept and continue to keep my life a bumpy ride. Maybe
if I, like Lynette, had given in to Michael's demands (or Tony's
rather later on), I, unlike her, would've found myself able to
accept my decision and everything that inevitably goes with it.
Children swarming my place instead of suits: It's just a matter of
perspective.
I think I should leave it
at that. Scrutinizingly dissecting this line of thought would
eventually prove to be an exercise in futility.
I wouldn't want to live
Lynette's life, yet there is something she owns that I will never
have. And vice versa.
The finality in this
simple statement hurts.
She might have continued
to pursue a career ascending remarkably fast, hadn't she abandoned
her way so abruptly. Me, on the other hand, if I hadn't called what I
thought was Michael's bluff, I might have proved to be a talented
housewife, after all. (Though I have reason to seriously doubt this
bold statement. The legacy of Tony Micelli, sic est.) In the end both
of us, in rather different ways, live for the taming of the wild, and
the literates' favorite noun "recalcitrance" becomes more than
an understatement if only half of the stories Lynette told me about
her kids are true – which I don't doubt: I may not have been a
classic mother, but there are some very unusual stories about
Jonathan (not to forget Samantha), too. When I gave Lynette a taste
of those, it inevitably led us to Michael and then to Tony.
But that's a different story which has its place elsewhere.
"Travel further, work
harder, see more clients." That's friend Richard's mantra. The
first and only Commandment in his Bible Of Success. Works for him,
obviously.
So it does for me. So it
would have done for Lynette. This I sincerely believe, and I told her
so. This time her smile was neither weak nor fake.
If life was a game of golf, she would be looking for her ball in the rough at the moment, whereas I would be trying to get mine out of the bunker.
I think we're on our way
to become friends. We'll see.
It would be magnificent if
we eventually met on the green, just to enter the clubhouse with even
scorecards.