Will she stay or will she go? Oct. 15, 1985

  

Safire is avoiding me – not physically, but mentally.

She came here tonight but without the vigor or tenderness, no explanation except perhaps for me being me.

She puts a plastic slipcover over herself whenever it is time to talk or make love.

The slight discord in her voice says neither of these things mean anything.

She had not called or shown up all weekend – perhaps because her husband is up from Baltimore. She might be feeling guilty, despite all the harsh rhetoric she usually reserves for him.

The house in Maryland is more than an investment, it is a place of retreat. She is a material girl after all, and things matter as much to her as feelings, rewards for the struggle she’s had getting where she is, and she doesn’t want to give those things up for some ethereal thing such as love. Over the last month, she’s shown leanings in that direction, and a bit of regret at losing them despite her harsh declarations.

After being all she’s been for all these years, all she really wants is to be a housewife.

She’s said this a number of times, but never so definitely as she did tonight.

My way of life affects her way of life, and her dreams, and this is the thing driving her back into her husband’s arms.

She’s kept that door open all this time, and I’m tempted to believe it was intentionally planned, maybe one last fling before settling down into the permanent life she planned for all along.

Women tend to change lovers differently than men do.

She won’t cast off her husband until she is certain she has a suitable replacement, and I’m not suitable (we both agree).

She (perhaps other women, too) test us to see what kind of stuff we’re made of, and clearly, lately, I’ve failed these tests, unable to prove to her than I can provide for her the same material benefits her husband can. These seem to outweigh the bitter love between them.

She keeps talking about her bird and her dog, her only true companions through all her misery, the true friends she could return to at night, when her husband was not.

“He won’t take care of them if I’m not there,” she told me.

We have dreadfully different dreams, and as we go on, we drift apart, she paddling towards her dream of security – some island in the storm, while I paddle away, perhaps out to the sea, less secure, certainly uncertain, and yet filled with promise.

She knows I won’t change, just as I know she won’t.

I’m still seeking something, and it’s not something she can provide. What she sees as security I see as jail cell.

I suspect she has already decided to go south to be with her dog, her bird and her husband, as testified by the fact that many of her possessions (most of her clothing) has been shipped south “accidentally,” and she has to go to Baltimore with her husband to straighten it all out.

Just when, she can’t say, since she is just completing a training program at work that will provide her with more opportunities (she says) in the future.

Over the summer I offered to let her move in with me. She refused. She clings to her trailer like a life preserver, which I suppose it is. But since everything has been moved south, she sleeps on the floor in a sleeping bag, no radio, no clock, no company.

She sabotaged the sale of it at one point, although it will get sold if and when she goes, which could be the moment she decides I’m unsuitable.



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