Chapter 2: The Man in the Trenchcoat
Arlene Cuddy moved through her house as fast as a woman with a bad hip could go. Her second hip replacement still, at times, made her uncomfortable so she continued to walk with both a limp and a cane.
Just like the genius son-of-a-bitch who'd removed her first deteriorating artificial hip, saving her life.
Greg House had been seeing her daughter for several months before Arlene had finally gone down to the hospital where he worked and introduced herself.
Although if you asked her daughter Lisa, she had in no way, shape or form done anything remotely like 'introducing' herself. In Lisa's opinion, her mother's activities were nothing short of "spying" which was nearly as offensive to Arlene as Lisa's other erroneous label of her motherly interests, 'meddling.' This in turn always caused Arlene to vehemently defend her motives as really only friendly, maternal advice. If Lisa didn't want to take her considerate suggestions, that was certainly her choice.
Just as it was her choice to be a complete and total idiot.
It seemed to Arlene that her eldest daughter unfortunately made the repeated decisions that ensured her own loneliness and misery.
But as Lisa refused to discuss the matter with her, Arlene did not know the particulars surrounding her daughter's final break-up with one, Gregory House. Knowing Lisa's track record in personal relationships however as well as her lifelong penchant for perfection and attempting to enforce her will upon others, Arlene felt she had a pretty good idea of what had happened.
And there was no way, in heaven or hell or anything in between that Greg would have broken up with Lisa.
Arlene had seen them, separately and together. Alone, they each seemed like a half of themselves, a lock without a key. Together, they were nothing short of fire and damnation, intensely engaged with one another and gloriously alive.
She had never seen Lisa like that before, not with anyone else. She had been so vital, so ratcheted up like the maximized volume on an expensive stereo system. And Arlene had seen her daughter with plenty of men before.
She had also seen enough in her lifetime to recognize a man hopelessly in love. And there was no doubt in her mind that Greg House was hopelessly in love with her daughter.
So there was no other conclusion to be arrived at. It had to have been Lisa who must have called an end to the affair.
And the only reason Arlene could think for why her daughter would throw such a powerful love like that away was cold, naked fear.
True, there was a lot to be afraid of when it came to Gregory House. House was headstrong, volatile and overwhelming in his charisma and masculine energy. To Arlene's way of thinking, the man was completely meshuggina.
Yet there was no way he could be otherwise. Only someone certifiably crazy themselves would love her crazy daughter as deeply as Greg did.
Unfortunately, that kind of passion comes at a high price, a price that Lisa was obviously not willing to pay.
Arlene understood this kind of limitless fervor. Her own husband had been an obsessed lunatic in his own right. There were certain concessions that had to be made when one was in love with this kind of person. But to Arlene there was nothing she would change, nothing she would take back, except the fact that she lost this great love of her life far too soon.
Lisa simply did not, or more likely would not comprehend any of this. The same things that drew her to Greg were the same things that later frightened her away. She would not bend to allow the kind of passion that Greg brought with him into her well-ordered, subdued life. And although Arlene knew her daughter would always suffer for it, she simply would not be swayed.
Greg's final melt down in which he crashed his car into Lisa's empty dining room of course did not help his case either.
Strangely enough that action, or in reality reaction to her daughter's heartbreaking desertion of him did not rile Arlene. Clearly, if her granddaughter had been anywhere in the home or if anyone at all had been injured, Arlene would have hunted House down and castrated him with one shot from her 12-gauge shotgun.
To Arlene Cuddy however the act of crashing his car was par for the course. His genius must necessarily be balanced with more than a touch of madness. Arlene knew it. Even Lisa knew it.
But she never respected it.
She certainly knew it all the years before they began seeing each other and even afterward. It seemed however that Lisa simply underestimated House and overestimated herself in her endeavor to try to control and change him. As soon as she became involved with House, Lisa was playing with fire. Arlene felt that her daughter should not have then been surprised then to have gotten burned, particularly after it was Lisa herself who threw gasoline onto the open flames. But it was all too late. Her daughter had sparked the flame and once started, it burned out of control.
While Arlene could find fault with her daughter for throwing away what was obviously the love of her life, in the end she did not blame her daughter for House's final, unanticipated act. And strangely enough she did not blame House either.
She saw this man, a man so full of raging passions pushed to the breaking point until he finally broke. She saw House's deed as a fit of pique, the outward expression of an inward emotion. Arlene was sure if he had really meant to harm anyone else, he would not have just walked away from the scene of the accident. House was nothing if not thorough and if his intent had been to hurt anyone within the building, he would have gotten out of his car and done so. The only conclusion Arlene could reach therefore was that the only person House had probably been trying to injure had been himself.
To Arlene, the truly unfortunate outcome of House's car crash was that he not only smashed through Lisa's dining room but forever slammed the door on any chance the two could reconcile their relationship. That final, mad act convinced Lisa that she was right to sever all ties with House.
And with that decision, Arlene had been personally impacted as well. She no longer got to see her granddaughter Rachel every Friday. Once Lisa moved out of state, visits to grandma's house were curtailed to once every six weeks.
Since they were now separated by a few hours journey instead of a matter of minutes, the increased time between visits allowed Arlene to observe the vast changes that had taken place in her eldest daughter's face, body and demeanor.
Lisa had always been a hard-working professional but she had never before looked so tired. The lines in her face and around her eyes had deepened significantly in a short space of time and her eyes had taken on an empty, saddened quality.
Arlene understood her daughter's stooped shoulders and sorrowful expression. It was a hard thing to walk away from the one man you cared for, even if or perhaps especially if, you were convinced you were doing the right thing.
And for her part little Rachel had not, for a long time, helped the situation any. The child had somehow, beyond the knowledge of anyone else in her family especially her mother, become completely enthralled with Gregory House.
Lisa never explained to Rachel why House was no longer a part of their lives, choosing instead to spare her daughter the sordid details of their breakup. Perhaps too because she felt a little guilty for her culpability in how things had ended she had not shared with Rachel any of the particulars.
But after House crashed into her dining room, Lisa not only refused to talk about him, she also insisted Rachel never mention his name again.
The child had no choice other than to obey her mother's direct order. But that did not stop her from prattling on about an entirely new, imaginary hero. For months, Rachel kept chattering about a great and powerful "pirate king" who commanded the fastest, most feared ship on the seven seas.
When they were alone during one of her six-week visits, Arlene pressed her granddaughter for more details. Rachel described the king as "very tall with a peg leg so he limps, a big gold earring in his ear, and he has a cane and a parrot that sits on his shoulder."
"Oh and gramma?" the child added triumphantly. "He's the smartest pirate there is, that's why they made him their king. And he's got eyes as blue as the ocean."
The king was away on a voyage round the world but would return for her one day and then they would sail away together. Apparently, it would be Rachel's job while onboard ship to swab the decks and feed the king's parrot.
But as the months passed with still no word or appearance of her king, even a child's hopes can fade. Soon her large, round eyes began to take on the same saddened look not unlike her mother's. Her conversations with her grandmother ceased and she too appeared tired and of an age that was way beyond her tender years.
There was no way to fix this. Lisa would not listen to any advice nor would she take any steps to move on with her life. Arlene could do nothing but stand back and watch as her daughter and granddaughter nursed their broken hearts.
And yet as both a mother and grandmother, she knew she must do something. She had to say something to Lisa, get her to see reason, if not for herself, then for Rachel. Lisa had to see Greg, even if it was for one last time and talk with him, yell at him, kiss him or slap him, whatever it took to finally break the hold he still had over her heart and life.
Arlene did not know how to broach the subject but she did know when she would bring it up. This very weekend, Lisa and Rachel and Arlene's other daughter Julie were all coming to visit. At some point, Rachel would leave the adults alone to talk and that's when Arlene would pounce. With all the stealth and ferocity of a mother tiger, she knew she had to impress upon her eldest daughter that the half life Lisa and her Rachel were living now was no life at all. The time had come for Lisa to go back to House and finally decide things with him one way or the other so that she could finally move forward.
The opportunity came much sooner than Arlene expected. Her two daughters and granddaughter all arrived together in the middle of a violent thunderstorm. The short distance from the driveway to Arlene's front door left the three soaked and chilled to the bone. As it happened, first Julie and then Lisa showered and changed while Rachel stayed in the spare bedroom, dawdling over her choice of clothes.
Lisa sat on one end of the living room couch, her legs folded underneath her as she rubbed her damp hair with the towel draped across her narrow shoulders. Julie sat on the opposite end from her sister, comfortably dressed in a pair of navy sweatpants and matching t-shirt.
Arlene came in from the kitchen and made a beeline to the chair closest to her eldest daughter. She did not sit down but leaned her weight against the back of the chair, resting her aching hip. She looked out the nearby bay window at the continuing deluge. Then she turned her eyes back to her daughter who was already watching her intently.
"Oh, oh," Lisa said.
"C'mon Lise," Julie said turning to her, "You knew this was coming sooner or later."
Lisa looked from her sister back to her mother. "Mother, NO. I am NOT having this conversation with you."
"Fine. Keep living your life like a nebbish. That schtick is obviously working just fine for you . . . and your daughter."
"You leave Rachel out of this Mom!" Lisa returned, her nostrils flaring.
"Wish I could. But YOU'RE the one who got her into this tsimmes. So now you're the one who has to get her and yourself out of it."
"Exactly what mess have I gotten us into? Oh yeah, it must be that I moved your granddaughter far away from your controlling influence. Sorry to disappoint you once again Mom, but that was only a side benefit. I actually moved out of state to get away from my insane ex-boyfriend!"
"Greg's not insane. A little meshuggina maybe. Anybody that loves you as much as he did would have to be meshuggina."
Lisa paused. No one had spoken his name within earshot of her for many months. The very syllable seemed to tear at her heart like an eagle's talons.
"There's a big difference," Arlene went on, "between true insanity and fiery passion. You just never accepted that great passion cannot be confined. Not even to the bedroom."
Lisa Cuddy blushed crimson. She opened her mouth to speak but by that time, her mother was talking again.
"You also never realized that once you've had that kind of soul-bending love, you'll never be able to settle for anything less."
"So it's my fault? Is that it Mom? The car crash? Everything?"
"No Bubbula. The car crash is not your fault. But it's not Greg's either. You still don't understand that if you want that kind of passion, that kind of intensity in your schtupping, it's gonna spill over into your life outside the bedroom too. If the man you've fallen in love with is wild by nature, then you have to accept him, just as he is. Being drawn to that kind of thrill, that kind of beauty is a special privilege. You must honor it completely and never try to domesticate it. You can't keep trying to harness him and change him. If you do, you will destroy the very thing that you love about him. That kind of passion floods over into everything and you have to either swim with the tide or be pulled under and drowned by it."
Cuddy was visibly shaken. She'd never considered, never fully understood the ramifications that being loved, truly deeply loved by a man like House would entail.
"Mom . . ." Cuddy began, the tears rising in the corners of her eyes.
Arlene interrupted her.
"A passion like Greg's is like that storm outside, fierce and . . . OY VEY!"
As she was speaking, Arlene gestured with one hand toward the window and glanced outside. Just barely visible through the pouring rain was a solitary figure standing across the street.
"Mom? What is it? Mom?" Lisa said as she leaned forward in concern. Julie leapt off the couch and moved next to Arlene.
"Are you alright Mom?" Julie said.
Arlene nodded and pointed out the window.
"What is it?" Lisa said nearly breathless with anxiety.
"A man in a trenchcoat," Julie answered.
"What? Julie? Mom, what is it?" Cuddy was now gasping for air, afraid of and at the same time, knowing the answer to her next question."
"Who is it?"
Julie finally saw the figure to whom her mother was pointing. "Actually," Arlene said turning to meet her eldest daughter's fretful gaze, "It's Bob Dylan."