Works and Days

“No,” Patricia McLarchlahn said.

“I don’t advise any sort of medication at all. This is a simple case of depression.”

“Then doesn’t that mean I need medication?”

“No,” Patti told the man again, crossing her legs and hanging off the edge of her seat in wing back chair.

“Let me tell you something. You need to start paying attention to yourself, to what the voices in your head are telling you, to what your body’s telling you. Nothing, sir, nothing can tell you what’s going on like you. I’d say we’re about the same age—”

“I’m forty-one.”

“Midlife,” Patti nodded. “Your body and the whole world is coming together to say wake up..”

“A midlife crisis?” he sat up, looking a little distressed.

“Don’t be distressed,” Patti smiled and put up a hand. “It doesn’t mean you have to find a younger woman and buy a sports car, and I know this’ll come as a shock to you, but it doesn’t mean you’ve been asleep or dead your whole life. It means you’re being reawakened to your needs and guess what? Needs change throughout the years. We’re never just one person. It’s never just completely over. We change. New doors open. You’ve got to see the doors opening for you. And I know this isn’t easy for any of us in society, not easy for men, not easy for women, for different reasons in both cases: but you’ve got to allow yourself to be happy. Even if it brings you to the point of tears.”

The man grinned a little and looked around the large living room, then at the placid, pretty doctor with her spectacles hanging from a chain around her neck and said, “This is great advice doctor, but what do you know about being lost?”

“Jeremy, if I hadn’t been to that place, I wouldn’t be sitting right her in front of you. Truthfully, I’m not sure I’m not still in that place.”

Patti looked at her watch, reached for her pack of cigarettes on the table and said, “Our hour’s up. And one more piece of advice, Jeremy?”

He raised an eyebrow.

“Don’t quit smoking unless you absolutely want to.”

 

For Patricia, Sharon, Jaclyn and Felice, the quest through the pre-dawn streets of Chicago to find the car had been more of an odyssey than the drive back to Michigan. Patti had spent the whole Saturday asleep only to be surprised Saturday night by the arrival of Chuck Shrader. She’d all but beat him over the head when he’d said that he’d not only met Faye Mathisson, but spent a whole evening talking with her. Head beatings, however, had given way to something else altogether, and she had awaken at Chuck’s place on Sunday morning.

Not knowing what Mass Thom would attend, and being on the east end of town, anyway, Patti had driven to Saint Celestine’s in Little Poland. She didn’t like it. It wasn’t hers. It felt strange to be running away from familiar old Saint Adjeanet’s.

 

But Thom did not go to church that Sunday. He had awakened in an old brick apartment building in Saint Gregory in the large and inviting bed of one Stephanie Evans. They had laughed and talked about life, and Thom was able to admit to someone he had not known that he had been passionless and dull, that he didn’t believe in himself, that he loved his son more than he could say and knew his marriage was dead. He wasn’t used to intimacy and had forgotten all about passion. It had been so long since he’d felt vulnerable with another human being. Stephanie, for her part, was a divorcee whose daughter was with her father for the weekend. She worked in Grand Rapids as well at a pricey law firm, but had grown up on Thompson Street and was surprised she’d never met Thom.

“You’re a good listener,” she told him.

It hurt Thom, and even though Thom wanted to cry, he didn’t. She saw the hurt in him, though, and asked about it.

“It’s just,” he told her, “I… Deep inside inside I believe I’m a bad person.”

He had never been able to say that, and except for maybe with Jackie, never opened himself up to being accepted. Stephanie accepted him, and they made love until mid morning, up until the noon. He wanted her to come. They had come together, so powerfully, with so much abandon, Thom realized he’d stop feeling free or safe along time ago. He was with this woman. He was totally with her, but as he lay on his side, still trembling, his hand on her hip, he realized none of his issues had been Patti’s fault. She had reacted to how he had wronged her, and there didn’t seem much of a way to make that right.

 

Russell had come home early that Sunday to hear the toilet flush and then see, looking startled and a little awkward, the bookish Ted Weirbach in black jockeys and bare feet walking out.

“Russell,” Ted’s voice was always a whisper.

He couldn’t get on first name basis with Ted, who looked and felt like a school teacher, and somehow, meeting him almost naked made him more respectful.

“Mr. Weirbach.”

“I was just…” Ted began.

“Going back to bed,” Russell said with no irony.  He wasn’t an adult, but he was close to it and could behave like one. He nodded his red head and then he said, “You might want to go back now, because Faye is on her way in.”

Russell went up the stairs, quickly, allowing Ted to get back to Chayne’s room unobserved, and when Russell reflected on the fact that last time he’d left the two men, they were simply washing dishes, he was impressed. He was also impressed by Chayne’s ability to make a lover out of anyone. He certainly wouldn’t have pictured the awkward poet with Chayne, but Ted Weirbach had a swimmer’s body and a broad chest and powerful shoulders. Russell was surprised by how handsome he was, and also by how aware he was of Ted’s looks. He thought Chayne hadn’t expected them to return so early, and then he realized that Chayne probably didn’t care. There was no scrambling of Ted out the door five minutes later. A half hour later, when everyone was getting ready for church, there was Ted in the kitchen, looking peaceful and scholarly, his large nose bent over the newspaper. Chayne was in a housecoat with a cigarette, sipping coffee, and Faye was splitting one of the apple fritters they’d bought at the bakery on the way back into town.

“Don’t stare,” Chayne purred. “Do get something to eat. We have to be at church in forty-five minutes. Ted’s coming with us.”

“I love church,” Ted said, and went back to reading the paper.

That was all there was to be said.