Almost two months without posting. I am sorry, followers of this space. A lot of distractions. I'll try to do better.

   

                                              Italian restaurant (Fratelli's in Orlando) 

                                                     (Michael Rivera)

                            (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

                                                    Lunch With Raymond

Massimo's . Ray’s favorite. Once. The hostess showed them to a table.

Jim began abruptly. “You know why I need company for dinner, Becks.”

“Ray. His memory.”

“Yes.”

“I think about him too, Jim.”

A beat of silence.

“Three years ago, tomorrow.”

“I know,” Rebecca said. “I miss him too. I can’t dwell on it. I can’t. It hurts too much. What’s the use in going over it? What's the lasagna like here?”

“He liked it.” Jim knit his heavy brows. “Always had trouble talking about what’s real, didn’t you, Beck? Surgeons must not marry surgeons. My new rule.”

“Jim, you left me to marry another. A secret lover. A man. You sent money, yeah. But I didn’t need the money. And, okay, your attention to your sons was pretty steady. But do you have any idea how finding out your husband is gay ...how many times I've …how destroying that must be to a woman’s self-esteem? Alright …alright, pride. You hate the term ‘self-esteem’. But you left me for a man, Jim.”

“Again, Beck? I can’t help who I am. I lived a lie for twenty years. Twenty-two. Well … we lived together. At UBC. Then, Ray came into my life. I didn’t plan it.”

“Came. Am I supposed to laugh? Be your straight man again?”

The waiter was approaching.

Jim tightened his lips. “I’ll have the special and a half liter of the house red.”

“And for you, signora?”

“The lasagna and just ice water. Can I get the gluten free noodles?”

“Of course. Will that be all?”

“Yes, thank you.”

Jim was staring out at the lake in the distance. It was a lovely spring day. Sails arced gracefully this way and that over the sparkling. The sky was azure. 

(It’s called ‘tacking’, Rebecca thought to herself. I wish I knew how to sail. Glide away from this gong show I call my life.)

“I can talk, Jim. It’s just that over years, talk usually makes me feel worse.  You say it makes you feel better. Well, I find it makes me feel worse. You know this.”

Jim began to lean forward, his heavy frame bowing under a weight. 

(He’s losing his long struggle with fat, Beck thought viciously. He’ll be dead years before I am. Oh, stop it! Over! In the past!)

“Beck, I have to talk to someone, sometimes. There is no one else that knows …it …all. Don’t shut me out. One night a year.”

“I’m here, Jim.” She covered his left hand on the table with her right. Cliché. (Better than nothing, she thought. Hmm. Reaching out, is he? And no wine yet.)

She tilted her head back and touched her hair with her left palm. Red suit today. She liked to wear red. Always now when she met Jim. Which was rare. Her black hair had only a little salt and pepper in it. Jim’s was dark brown. Dyed. Obvious. Cut every three weeks. They looked professional. Both of them.

Jim’s body language shifted. He was marshaling internal forces. 

(He knows this dinner will not be easy, she thought. Why do I hurt him more. He's so clearly hurting already? Twenty-four, seven, as they say. Why can’t I just be nice? Because he destroyed my life, she mouthed to herself. It’s not okay.)

“Who destroyed something?” Jim asked suddenly. He was staring at her.

“What?” she asked.

“I thought you were whispering something”

“No. Sighing. Just a sigh.”

Jim changed the subject to the boys. Mark and Richard. Both in university now, both studying Engineering. They were proud of their boys. This was the rock they had in common. Unless one of the boys got hurt or something, this would never change. They talked on and on. The food came. 

(God, don’t say that, she thought. Don’t even think it.)

Mark was more the athlete, more what Jim used to be. Rich more the artist, more like her. Both on their way to being successes. Jim had gone to Mark’s iron ring ceremony in April. To him, it was a big event. They talked about their pride in Mark and Mark’s beaming pride in his own achievement. The father-son pictures had been touching, she admitted to herself.

“I know now why I was so …you know …so moved that night,” Jim said. “They deal with reality. They deal with the world as it is, not as some would like it to be. That's …important. The whole world could take a lesson from the engineers.”

“I know you’re proud of him. So am I, Jim.”

“But ….”

“But what?”

“It’s like you’re less enthused or something. What?”

“Engineering doesn’t have all the answers to the world’s ills. It’s just one more profession. When …practiced well. Professionally. That I do believe.”

“I like the part about not accepting bad materials or workmanship, not looking the other way. They say that in the ceremony. You should'a been there, Becks.”

“Rich was really sick. One of us had to stay.”

“We won’t go over it.” He frowned again. 

(Determined he’s right, she thought. He was handsome, just getting fat. Exercise, damn you!)

“And they say some stuff about making life better because we choose to make it so. People. I mean I like the way it implies we shape our own lives. Us, not fate.”

They were silent, looking cautiously at each other and then away. She knew what he would see. She knew herself. She was 51, but still beautiful. Well, she worked at it hard enough. Ballet workouts especially. (My spirit craves the discipline.)

Rebecca got very quiet. Something was coming to her. At last, she spoke.

“Does this connect to tomorrow somehow, Jim? To Ray, I mean.” A beat. Another. “What are you trying to tell me?”

"Um. You are listening.”

“Always. Don’t sell me short. I’m not philosophical like you, but yes, I think.”

Slowly, Jim’s face began to melt again. 

(No connection to anything I can grasp. You always drove me nuts like this. What am I about to get slammed with?)

As he bent forward over his half eaten linguine, his eyes began to leak tears. 

(You’re going to cry into your supper.) (Don’t say anything. Let him speak when he wants to.) (I can be kind. Patient. Well, of course. But it’s nice to know.)

“I’ve never understood. Not in three long years has it ever made sense to me. Why’d he end his own life? We had everything. Even loving kids. Some family would never forgive us, but that’s true of everyone. We had a good life. He just never seemed happy. I tried to make him happy. Did people see that?”

“Very much so, Jim. It was very clear.” She gritted her teeth, stayed restrained.

Tears were running slowly but steadily down Jim’s plump face. He was into it.

“Why, Becks? It just makes no sense. In some way, some way …even if I don’t agree with it ...someone should be able to make sense of it. Tell me. Do you see a way that it might make sense?”

Rebecca stared at her lasagna. She knew suddenly that they weren’t going to finish their meals. A shame. Hers was good. (Ah, I’m past my calorie limit.)

She looked up. Jim’s bloodshot eyes, through tears, stared hard at her. He really was looking to her for an answer.

“I’m going to be mean for a minute, Jim …if you’ll agree to that. Is it okay for me to be honest? Nothing held back?”

“I want to know your thoughts, Beck. I said so. We only saw eye to eye once in a while, but I respect your opinion on …most things. I want to know it now.”  

Rebecca settled a bit and stared at him hard. He was handsome. But he saw the world like a sixteen-year old. (Well, he does, she thought.)

“Do you remember when Ron Cummings killed himself?”

Jim only nodded.

“He used a gun. Do you know why? No? Because his uncle had years before. Offed himself …killed himself, sorry …the same way. Ron's past came for him.”

“So what are you saying? Ray chose pills because his aunt did. What does that explain?”

“You’re a surgeon, Jim. You believe in that which you can cut out. What you can’t cut out is not real for you. It’s an illusion. Most doctors think that. I know. I’m one. I talk to them every day. It’s why they despise shrinks. Psychiatrists. It’s all witch doctery to them.”

She paused and grimaced in pain. (How can I make him get it?)

“What I’m saying is that Ray was sick. Sick mentally. You're not getting that. A buried memory came for him. That fact alone tells us. Mental illness ought to be seen as just one more kind of illness. One of the worst. And it kills. Sometimes, it kills. But it’s just one more kind of affliction of humans. You know. The ones we swore to help. Fix their pain. Ease suffering in this life. 

"You and so many other docs want control. If a thing is real, it must take some physical form. If not, it isn’t real. You want to find the place in depressed peoples’ heads that makes them sad and cut it out. Then, you’ll be back in control. I know now, at fifty-one, it doesn’t work that way. Even if it is physical – if that depressed mental state is located in a pattern of brain activity – it moves by the second, and it's so complex we’ll probably never pin it down. Can’t fix everything by surgery, Jim. Ray died for other reasons. Software, not hardware.”

She waited. He’d gone absolutely still and silent. He was staring at Massimo, the owner, across the restaurant. Shiny wood tables. Buff décor. Cliché, but for the fact that it was well done. Jim was looking, but not really seeing. 

(It’s what they call a ‘thousand yard stare’.)

She knew she had said a naked thing. 

(Why hadn’t she ever said it before?) (It just came clear to me tonight. Doctors. We all do it. And we do despise shrinks. But they do help some people. And the rest of the docs on the rocks - she grimaced at her own bad phrase – we make it harder for the mentally ill, instead of easier.)

She began to stare her own thousand yard stare. Then, she looked at Jim. He was now staring at her, his look asking for mercy.

“Thank you for this conversation tonight, Jim.”

“You’re thanking me? Really.” 

He was bemused, relieved, past hurt for now. She'd chosen nice. 

“Yes.”

“Why? For what?”

“Because by talking to you, sometimes, I still learn.” A beat. “I know now why we don’t help the mentally ill like we should. Reject them in fact. It just hit me.”

Jim grew curious. Innocently so.

“Really. Alright, what is behind it all?"

“We’re scared, Jim. Scared just like the public are. We’re scared that to be crazy for real would be worse than dying. Horrible past all imagining.”

She looked out the window, at the dirty parking lot and the playground across the street. A dusty wind was blowing. No kids were about. It was getting dark.

“But I do know this: sometimes, we can’t pin the evil down to a location. And we can’t cut it out. There’s something bigger going on. I learned that tonight.”

Jim’s face was naked again. He was looking at her like they were the last two survivors of a shipwreck. She realized her face was probably the same.

“We want control. But we can’t have it. So we lie and hide," she said. 

“God forgive us all,” he muttered. “It’s why I didn’t get Rich, isn’t it? Still don't."

He looked desolate. 

“He’s okay now, Jim. He’s through it.” She covered his hand with hers again.

Massimo was coming toward them.

   

                                                   Restaurateur Massimo Bottura 

                                       (Alice.jessica.north)

                  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)