Origami Handshake

And it came to pass in the summer of that year, that I realized what my life had been reduced to.  I was alive but was not living.  My eyes were open wider than they ever have been before.  I was breathing but just watching the big picture and life happened all around me.  I was noticing things about a picture I’ve seen so often but never really saw.

    I think she thought that it was simple to do the things that she did because I didn’t notice or pay attention to the details.  The truth is, I think that I noticed what she was doing long before she tried to hide it from me.  I really was self-absorbed and it wouldn’t be a lie to say that I didn’t care, at the time.  It was when I started to care more and to make an effort to change, that she must have thought that I had given up on working on us.

    Who knew about the infidelity?  Well, she knew for sure and so did I.  It must have been a thrill for her to think that she was getting away with something behind my back.  After all, she owed me.  I wasn’t the angel that I seem to be painting a picture of.  I’ve been unfaithful and she knows about all of it.  It’s not that I don’t love her.  I think it has to do with loving myself more.  In retrospect, I can honestly say that I hated who I’d become and what I was doing in the name of self fulfillment.  That’s why I decided to change.  So, that, I had a reason to like myself instead of feeling like I’ve crawled through black, oily sludge of loathing behavior, when I thought of what I’ve done and who I’ve hurt.

    It was becoming clearer to me by the day.  I’ve been working very hard to make a total change in my personality and to become the person I should have been all along.  I had stopped thinking of myself first and was making efforts to think of others including my children and complete strangers who passed in and out of my life.  I stopped thinking of women as objects of my sexual fantasies and began to think of women as people who had feelings and cares and worries and automobiles.  I had been making all of these changes in my life for the people who I cared most about.  In focusing on the changes I was making in myself, I failed to notice what was going on around me in the people sitting right next to me and sharing my bed.  At first, I wanted to confront her about what was going on but I was certain that she would deny it, as she continued to do.  As I waited for her to tell me about what was going on, I became frustrated.  Frustration soon gave way to jealousy but I’d be damned if I let her see me jealous.  That was weakness.  If she wasn’t going to tell me about it, the solution was clear.  If she couldn’t be brave enough to say the words, it should be me that was offended by her silence.  She shouldn’t be strutting around thinking that she is so much better than me.  She is worse.  Her confidence must fall prey to the hands of an assassin.

    I have always been a terrific liar.  I could look someone in the eye and be real dramatic and lie my ass off.  I used to have fun with it actually.  The real fun was getting someone to believe something so outrageous that it had to be an untruth.  I think that I have the necessary skills to be a successful salesman but to sell something, I’d have to be honest.  The problem with how I am is, that I’m trying to change my ways.  It’s too late that I’ve begun now, though. 

    She would have to be a better liar than me for me to believe that she was not unfaithful.  I don’t think that she is.  I don’t think that anyone is.  The truth is, that I’m tired of the act.  Saying things is easy.  Its keeping my mouth shut that is the problem.  I’d need some advice from someone and since she was the person that I would normally go to for advice, I needed a person who could understand the most complex of problems regarding the repair of a broken heart.  I went to my friend Miles.

    You have to know Miles in order to appreciate his genius.  He was a few years younger than me but his wisdom was beyond his years.  He grew up in a small town and when he was small,  he asked his mother why she named him Miles.  She told him that his name was supposed to be Milo but the secretary at the hospital couldn’t spell and made a mistake.  He liked to believe that his mother wasn’t keen on the metric system and liked the sound of it better than Kilometer and that a mile is a farther distance than a Kilometer.  I see his point.  I’d buy his brand.

    Anyway, I went to speak to Miles regarding my problem and asked him what it is that I should do.  He had a bunch of questions as if he needed the correct response to each inquiry in order to give me an answer that was already known before he asked it.  He always did that.  Asked a bunch of questions only to ask questions about my answer to whatever he was asking me about.  It was usually a stupid answer that only he fully understood.  But he asked the questions and I answered them, like I usually do, and he nodded his head and smiled.  This was disturbing since Miles rarely thought anything was funny.  Don’t get me wrong.  He had a terrific sense of humor but he didn’t laugh at jokes and when he said something funny, you couldn’t tell if he was trying to be jovial.

    He said, “Are you sure that you’re just not paranoid?”

    “A guy knows when his woman is cheating on him, man.”

    “Yeah, but all you do is sit around all day with nothing better to do but convince yourself that she’s with someone else.”  Miles said.  We were sitting outside in his driveway, drinking beer.

    “And what makes you so sure that she isn’t with someone else?”

    “Where’s your evidence, man?”

    “Evidence!  I’m not trying to arrest her, you idiot!  I don’t need any evidence!”  I shouted.

    “ I know that if you were going to accuse me of something like this, I’d want to know why it is you think that way.”  He said as he held his hands up as if he was a customer in an old west bank that I was robbing.  The only difference in the way that he was doing it, was that his hands were held straight up in the air as if he were superman.

    “She’s always going out of town at the last minute.  Last time we spoke about when she had to go out of town next, she said that she didn’t have to.  Now, she says she has to go out of town at least once a week.”  I said.

    “Dude, she’s in sales.  She travels for her job.  I think you’re jealous of her getting to go out of town because if it were you, you’d be screwing someone different every night.  I’m not you, man.  I can’t tell you what you’re feeling but from what you’re telling me, it sounds like maybe you’re over-reacting.”

    “Alright, man.  How long have you been fucking her?”

    “Just since last month.  I’m sorry you had to find out this way.  I didn’t want you to know anything until the wedding was planned.”  He said while shaking his head.  No wink, no smile, nothing. 

    “I’m being serious, man.  Obviously you’re too immature to talk to about stuff like this.”  I said.

    “I am being serious.  You weren’t supposed to find out about us.  The truth is, she likes immature.  You see, that’s the problem.  You’re too damn serious.”  I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

    “I don’t know why I talk to you.  You act like this is a big joke.  Forget it.  I’ll go talk to someone else.”  I walked away.  I waited for him to come after me telling me that he was just trying to be funny.  He didn’t come.  He knew me well enough to know that I wasn’t going to anybody else because I didn’t have any other friends.  I heard his garage door close behind me.  I turned around in time to see him through the front window of his house.  He wasn’t looking at me, though.  He was standing in front of the television, scratching his ass.

    Miles lives around the corner from my house so I walked back home holding an almost empty can of beer.  I finished the beer in one big swallow and began to think about how my life had become this mesh of problems where some things washed right through me and others had gotten clumped together restricting the flow of other things through which I began to feel dirty.  I was holding the empty beer can when a police cruiser pulled up alongside of me.

    “You know, it’s against the law to drink in public.”  The policeman said as he slowed to keep pace with my stroll.  The fact that it was 3:30 in the afternoon didn’t occur to me as the huge clump of blockage in the recent events which had transpired hadn’t washed around it, yet.

    “I’m not drinking in public.  I’m just carrying an empty can.”  I said, as if there was no possible way he could have seen me take the last swig just moments before.

    “You’d think that an adult would have more sense than to walk down a street from an elementary school drinking beer.”  The cop said as he sped up a little so that he could park his prowler in front of me, apparently to get out of the car and confront me.  I stopped walking and waited for him to approach.  His name was Rupert.  I went to high school with him and he was a football player type who hung around the cafeteria with his football player friends.  They were always talking together but no one ever heard what they were saying except for an occasional “pussy” or “fuck”.  I didn’t like him very much but I guess he never had a reason to like me either since my vocabulary consisted of more words than his.

    “I told you that I’m just carrying an empty can.”

    “I saw you take a drink, smart guy”.  He said as he walked up.  “ I could give you a ticket for that, you know.”

    “I suppose you could but you won’t because you can see that this can is empty.”  I said.  I didn’t like policemen very much because when they didn’t have anything to do, they spent their time looking for someone to hassle.  The fact that I didn’t like Rupert also made it easier not to like the police.  He took the can out of my hand to examine it as if he couldn’t tell by its weight that it was empty and then be handed it back to me.

    “So, tell me why you’re walking down the street two blocks from an elementary school drinking beer?  You’re not setting a real good example.”  Old Rupert put his hands on his utility belt.  I think he did it to bring my attention to his waist so that I could see that he had a gun.

    “I’m going to the school to walk my kid home.  I wasn’t trying to set a real good example anyway.  I was trying to set a fake good example.”  Conversations with Rupert were always like this.  He always tried to sound authoritative and I always tried to be a smart ass.  He never liked it very much that I did it but I did it anyway.  I wouldn’t have said it if it were another policeman that I didn’t know.

    “You’ve always got to try to be funny, don’t you?  Some day I might not be in such a great mood and I’ll arrest you!”  He jabbed his bratwurst’s at me.  He was a fat bastard.  I always thought of him at the police academy struggling to finish everything because he was so damn fat.

    “How do you know I’m not in a bad mood?  Do you ever think of that?”  As if everyone he confronted was so damn happy that they were chosen by Rupert to speak to.  Like winning the fucking lottery, I thought.  I laughed at that flash of imagery.

    “I’m just going to give you a warning, Charlie.  If I had gotten a complaint from one of the PTO parents that you were walking around in front of the school drunk, I would have to take you to jail.”  He always seemed to make it sound like he was doing society a favor by stopping people for doing things that were not necessarily illegal.

    “Okay, Rupert.  Thanks for cleaning up the streets.  I was wondering what you’ve been doing since I’ve been noticing a build up of winos and pirates in the vicinity.”  Rupert was a good sport for putting up with my sarcasm but the truth was that I wanted him to feel stupid.  He swaggered back to his patrol car and pretended to be busy listening to his radio and shuffling papers on a clipboard.  I waved to him as I walked past his car and threw my empty beer can onto his front seat.  “Get rid of that for me, please.  No, wait, you’re a public servant.  Erase the ‘please’”.

    This is where I am from.  Small town USA,  Pickerington, Ohio.  A place where young couples come to start a family.  A place where you can develop a reputation if you want to.  A place where most people knew who you were and even more people didn’t like you.  Impossible to develop any kind of friendship because everybody knows everybody else and nobody liked anybody enough to get to know you.  I heard the gossip about the people nobody liked but somehow it never included me.  I got the sense it would if I weren’t around to hear it.  Nobody liked Miles, so I decided that he was my friend.  Any time I heard about Miles from someone, it was because they didn’t hear that I was with him when the alleged event took place or that he got caught doing what he was usually doing.  Something for me.  I never stuck around to find out if he thought of me as a friend or not.  I hadn’t heard otherwise.  The school seemed like the place where most of the gossip originated.

    As I approached the school, a rather portly woman in her mid-sixties, came out of the building.  I was thinking that it was a coincidence that she exited the building as I stepped onto school property.  It was old Mrs. Groves, the assistant principal.  None of the kids liked her very much and I suspected that she must have eaten Mr. Groves and that he was trying to get out of her body by forcing her to grow facial hair and develop a deep voice that reminded me of a lesbian.  “Little Charlie Cooper.  Is that you?”  I could swear that she was a man dressed up like a woman.  She called me ‘Little Charlie Cooper’ because I was always smaller than the other boys my age when I went to this school but I suspected that she called everyone ‘Little’ because that’s what they appeared to be next to her.

    “Yes.  It’s me!  Mrs. Groves, you amaze me with your memory!”  It wasn’t that amazing really.  I spent a lot of time in her office as a child.  Come to think of it, she didn’t age.  I think that she may be some form of alien.  Maybe it was amazing that she hadn’t developed Alzheimer’s or congestive heart failure.

    “So what are you doing nowadays?  I know you’re not working.  Your son fills us in on what is going on in the Cooper home.”  As if it were any of her business that I wasn’t working.  This is what I was saying about gossip in a small town.

    “No, I AM working, Mrs. Groves, its just that Ben can’t say what it is that I’m doing for fear that it may bring an unpleasant element in the form of bullets and very sharp knives.”  I am so full of shit sometimes but when I talk to the types who like to perpetuate the gossip, I can’t resist an opportunity to add some excitement to the rumors.

    “I see where Ben gets his imagination from!  You’ve always had a dramatic flair about you.  Ben is like the opposite of you.  He must be more like his mother.”  She didn’t have to insult me to make me feel like she didn’t think very highly of me.  Dramatic flair. 

    “I’m just here to walk Ben home from school.  I’m between jobs at the moment.”  I wanted to kick her in the teeth so badly at that time.  I’ve tried to just smirk and ignore people when they asked personal questions but they always seem to fill in the blanks with their own imagination.  This was the same as any other time.  Mrs. Groves was just trying to be interested in the lives of the students at her school.  I couldn’t fault her for that.  Besides, my own life had been sputtering in a completely different direction.  I sauntered over to where the parents pull up in their SUV’s and where a handful of parents gathered who just walked to the school with the intention of walking home with their child.  Mostly women.  I hardly ever saw any of the children’s fathers.

    I turned just in time to see Miles pull up in “Princess”, the name he’d given his blue Isuzu pick-up.  I heard him tell someone once, that the rust on the truck was an option that he had to pay more money for when the truck was new.  He said that it was part of the security package.  “It deters thieves,” he said.  I don’t know where he got the name “Princess” from.  He got out of the truck and walked over to where I was standing.





    Miles was a mechanic in town.  He was rarely seen out of his navy blue coveralls.  He always looked dirty and when he shook your hand, you felt like you needed some Lava soap.  “So, how’s the neighborhood drunk?”  He said rubbing his chin.  He only said it loud enough that the other parents heard him coming to give them enough warning so they could move away.  “Rupert told me that he had to threaten you and that he almost took you to jail for resisting.”

    “What did he do, go straight to your house to put in the report?  We can never enjoy a moment of privacy in this town!”  I was thinking of how many other people in town knew that I thought my wife was having an affair or that they knew that she was and who the lucky guy was, too.  “I can’t stand that guy.”

    “He really isn’t so bad.  He just wants someone to talk to once in a while.  He’s kinda like you.  Not as funny but, lonely.”  Miles started kicking a stone between both of his feet.

    The stone that he was kicking around made me think of something that I hadn’t thought about in a while.  “Miles, have you ever heard the story of David and Goliath?”

    “Yeah.  The story about fags in the Bible.”

    “Fags?  What are you talking about?”

    “David was a shepherd who picked a fight with a giant Philestine named Goliath and killed him with a stone and then fell in love with the king’s son, Jonathan.”  Miles knew a lot of things and sometimes I hated asking him about something because he always seemed to add a fact that I didn’t know about.

    “I didn’t know about the fag thing.  I was only thinking of a sling-shot because of the stone you’re kicking around, but now the fag thing in the Bible seems to have made that idea seem…. Wrong.”

    Miles had a way of getting me to forget about some of the things that bothered me.  A lot of the time we would sit and talk about something and then drift apart.  It would be days later that I thought of something he had said and I would laugh out loud.  The guy was a riot.  I had already forgotten about our earlier conversation regarding my wife when out from nowhere, Miles brings it up.

    “Do you ever think that maybe your wife thinks you are having an affair?  I mean, she knows that you’re a charmer, doesn’t she?”  There never were any real questions from Miles.  He didn’t want an answer.  He just wanted me to think about something.

    “Why would she think that I’m having an affair?  Who would she think I’d be having an affair with?”

    “Good point.  You really aren’t that charming.”  Sarcasm to Miles was out of character except when he was talking to me because I’m a sarcastic son of a bitch.  “She might think you’re having an affair with me.  I mean, we’re always hanging around laughing and shit.”

    “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t think I’m gay.  You maybe, but not me.”  Miles had three kids and his wife was in prison for her part in a foiled home invasion.  He moved into his house about a year ago and I haven’t even seen any pictures of her anywhere in his house.  Her name was Miranda and she went to prison because her best friend convinced her to assist her in a revenge scheme against her boyfriend.  The problem was, that the best friend gave her the wrong address and Miranda broke into the house and proceeded to torture the occupants.  It wasn’t until she noticed a piece of mail on the kitchen table that she realized she had broken into the wrong house.  She left an elderly woman and her home health nurse tied up in the basement and told them that she was sorry that she made a mistake.  Miles never talked about his wife in a bad way.  There was no spite in his voice that she had done something to leave him alone with three children.  I just know that my wife didn’t like Miles very much.

    “Maybe you need to get a job or something.  You can come and work with me at the garage.  I know you don’t know shit about cars but maybe you could help with some of the billing and customer service.”  That was Miles.  He was always saying something to change the subject.  Maybe he was admitting that he was queer or maybe he didn’t want to start talking about something that would require him to talk about his wife.  I knew that it bothered him that she wasn’t around but not from him complaining.  His loyalty always impressed me.  He would wait forever if he had to.  “It’d be nice to have someone around to talk to.”

    The prospect of working with a friend interested me but I knew that Miles struggled sometimes to pay his bills.  “What would you pay me?”  I said.

    “I don’t know what I can afford but I’ll pay you something.  I don’t have time to run around town advertising my services or making flyers or anything.  You’re the one with the advertising background.  I’m sure you could get the word out for me.”  He had faith in my abilities where I didn’t know I even had any abilities.  “I bet I could get a lot more business with your help than I am on my own.”  Up until now, his business consisted of working on racing cars for local racing fans and for drivers at local state fairs and racetracks.

    It was at this time that I began my association with Miles and his garage of horrors.  I didn’t have anything better to do with my time but to silently imagine my wife making love to another man.  I would have felt as though I were in the room in full view of the spectacle if not for the running dialogue that was provided by my new vocation and the distraction that it provided.  At times, I felt as though I were taking advantage of a friend but at others, I felt as though the work provided an escape from the world of which I had become so comfortably miserable. 

    I still was at home while the kids were in school and my wife away on business.  Even at times when I felt as though there was a chance to salvage whatever had become of our marriage, she would find something to do that would not involve any intimate contact with me.  Our conversations were limited to ‘yes/no’ questions or just sitting in silence, drinking beer.  Our children suffered from my loneliness and didn’t listen to me because they realized that my threats of severe punishments were hollow and that I secretly adored them and would never do the things I threatened to do.  In some ways, I hardened toward my wife but softened with the kids.  I continued to feel as though my wife was having an affair but I ceased to care.  I directed my efforts to making my children happy and accepted the peripheral results of my wife’s activities as punishment for a less than perfect performance on the marriage exam.

    I really did love my wife.  I mean, I really adored her.  It was almost as if I wanted her to have an affair so that I wouldn’t feel so badly about the choices that I’ve made in my life this far.  I saw the best qualities of her in my children.  The best things about them were things that reminded me of her.  Like, complaining about not being on time to an appointment or to bowling practice or something.  My wife was such a planner who became so angry if she was late to some type of engagement.  I told her that I hated that about her and that people who knew us as a couple thought that I couldn’t stand it but secretly, it’s what I loved the most about her.  The truth is, I couldn’t live without her.  It was well beyond a dependency issue, now.  Yes, she was working and paying all of the bills and carrying me along for the children’s sake.  So, in that way, I needed her but it went beyond that, now.  In becoming a new person and realizing how selfish I’d been, I was genuinely beginning to feel like I was the one who was flawed all along.  How unfair I was being in suspecting her of having an affair.  How difficult it must be for her to not know what I’m doing all of the time or who I’m talking to or what I’m talking to them about.

    “Charlie, I want a divorce.”  Said Michelle.  This is my wife.  The words that I never wanted her to say to me and that I thought she never would, came out of her mouth as easily as saying, ‘Good Morning’.  As she said the words, I could see that she had been crying and that her makeup was smudged around her eyes.

    “Is this the place where you tell me that you’ve met somebody else and that you’d rather be with him than with me?”  I was trying to cushion the blow of finding out that I was correct in my suspicions.

    “I wish I did find someone else but the truth is, I love you very much and there isn’t anyone else that I want to be with.  You’ve pushed me away, Charlie.  If I had found someone else, I’d still want to be with you.”  The tears started overflowing.

    “I’m working on making the necessary changes for us to be happy.  Don’t you see that?”  I pleaded for fear that I started too late for her to notice.

    “I can’t watch you destroy yourself with your selfishness.  You’re depressed and you’ve given up on everything except breathing.  You’ve given up on me and the kids.”

    “I’d never give up on the kids.  You’ve got to know that.  Not until recently did I realize that I could give up anything and change whatever it is that I need for them.  I love you, Michelle.  Don’t you see that anymore?”

    “No.  I don’t.”  With that, she walked into the kitchen and came back with a suitcase.  “I’m taking the kids to their grandparents’ house for the weekend.  When I get back, you don’t need to be here.”  I heard her start to cry and I followed her to the garage where I saw the kids in the car.  I didn’t know what else to say.  A part of me wanted to chase her and beg her for another chance but another part of me understood what she had to do.

    “I love you, Michelle”.  I whispered knowing that she couldn’t hear but had to say.  ‘If you love someone, let them go…’  was running around in my head.  Was I letting go of her or was she letting go of me?  I wondered.  I’d never felt so weak in my life and that I was defeated.  I  closed the door to the garage and cried.  The tears rolled down like the lava that drips down the side of a volcano.  I wondered if I was just trying to convince myself of how I should feel.

*        *          *

    Miles wasn’t originally from here.  He grew up in a big city like Detroit or Chicago or Elkhart.  I often walked to his house to find that he had a visitor parked in his driveway – from another state.  When this happened, I usually just kept on walking.  Miles had a life that didn’t need to be constantly interrupted by ‘a message from the emergency broadcasting system’. 

    The car was from Tennessee and it was blue.  I couldn’t tell you anything more about the car except that I was unsure as to whether I liked the license plates from Tennessee.  It looked like a newer model and I think that the thought crossed my mind, ‘why would this new car be here for repair’, but I just kept on strolling by his house.  I was eleven steps past his house when I heard his front door open.  I turned in time to see a very pretty woman, wearing a pin-striped skirt, white shirt and matching blazer – stepping down from Miles’ porch.  She was carrying a business type bag or a soft attaché case.  She took the last step down from his porch and glanced up to make eye contact with me.  She smiled and mouthed the words, ‘Good Morning’.  I nodded my head in response.  I lost my voice speaking to beautiful women.  I kept on walking and eventually made it home wondering who she was.

    Three hours later, I had forgotten about Miles and the woman at his house and was drinking a beer with the television set on in another room.  I hardly heard the knock on the door and was contemplating getting up to check if someone had knocked on the door when there was another rap on the door, a little louder.

    I noisily slid my chair over the dirty kitchen floor (although I was not working, I wasn’t doing anything like cleaning or anything, either) and got up to answer the door.  Miles stood on my porch shifting his weight from one leg to the other.  He appeared nervous or anxious or something.  I’d never really seen him this way before.  “What’s up?  You have to use the toilet or something?”  His shifting weight reminded me of when I have to pee really badly.

    “No.  I need to ask you a favor.”  He looked over his shoulder as if my neighbors were listening in on what he had to say.  He pushed past me and into the house.  “I need you to watch my kids for a few days.”

    I remembered Michelle’s parting words about me not being here when she got back from her parents’ house.  “I can’t.  Michelle kicked me out this morning and took the kids with her.”  I looked at the clock above the stove.  It said 12:32.  It had only been about four hours that Michelle took my hope away.  “She told me not to be here when she got back on Sunday.”

    “Fuck, man.  I’m sorry.  Where are you gonna go?  You can always stay at my place.  Hey, that would be perfect, you could watch my kids at my house.”  He looked relieved as if all of his problems were just solved.

    “I’m in no state to watch your kids.  I’m thinking that I just need to get out of here.  I don’t know where or how but everything is... here. You know?”  Tears started to erupt from my eyes.