1. Happy Thanksgiving Act

by Della: a woman way over fifty who knows nothing about love

Frank’s two sons were not available this year, so he called earlier this week and invited me at the last minute to have Thanksgiving with him. I looked forward to it for several days. I have always found it therapeutic to spend time with him. He and I retain a little frisson of attraction, even though I have had no interest in starting up any romance with him again (how many times can an old girl allow an old guy to dump her?).

I told him last summer that we were never going in that direction again, but lately he had been calling me pretty frequently, and I was proud of myself because I was not spelling out my schedule each time he phoned, and he kept calling me right before I would be flying out of town, unable to see him. I was not playing a game. I was unavailable. Of course, if it were a game, it would have served to make him more interested. Which it did.

Being unavailable repeatedly in a heavy travel month without playing any games gave me a fine feeling of empowerment. I was looking forward to a little tete a tete over Thanksgiving dinner and a little sit down together on his couch with the occasional light touch on the hand while sipping our favorite wine and slowly developing the familiar and very much missed little glow between us….but nothing more than that. Certainly not. Dump me twice, shame on me. Which he did already.

On Thanksgiving day, when I showed up at his house carrying two bottles of our favorite wine, there was a hearty smell of turkey and stuffing and pumpkin pie, the warm crackle of a fire in the grate, and a new girlfriend in Frank’s kitchen, acting like she owned the place, reaching confidently for his silverware, his serving dishes, his napkins, without having to ask where anything was. She seemed to be calling him “hon.”

She extended her hand, and said she had been wanting to meet me for some time. Without a hitch, I pretended to know that she existed prior to entering the house, and took up the part of casual friend to Frank, which is of course what I have been telling him we are, so it may not be his fault if he is too stupid to know I was not telling the entire truth. Soon, I was fully immersed in my part of this complex drawing room drama which I was unsure was apparent to anyone but me. I gratefully accepted a glass of wine to help my act along, and gradually developed some confidence as my role took on life and…..I was doing fine, being very nice.

But as a few minutes passed, drinking deeply of our before-dinner wine, I realized that Frank’s new girlfriend is boring. As in unable to come up with even one clever, funny, or offbeat comment. I think most women say amusing things to each other if they are comfortable and inclined to like each other. I was doing it (faking it or not) and she wasn’t responding in kind. She was the one who had the guy, so why was I doing all the work? I figured that either she did not like me, was really boring, or….to give the benefit of the doubt…. maybe just a little insecure. I was not sure which.

I hoped for Frank’s sake (I still love him, you know) that she is a kind, generous person, happy to entertain a woman of uncertain provenance in her boyfriend’s house, and maybe just a touch insecure, but wishing us all well just as much as I wished that I did.

And who wouldn’t be intimidated by me? I can imagine that my act of “entertaining good company” could put anyone off their mettle, especially when I am hurting and miserable. Also, by this time I was half drunk. Wicked witches are fully capable of talking drug companies into funding half a million dollars for their research program while drinking, but there is no magic capable of masking sadness without full sobriety, at least not without breaking a sweat. And so who could blame me if I was brilliant and witty and a little overwhelming to someone not in my verbal league? This kind of situation was not ripe for social subtlety, which might have been mistaken for what was actually the truth. I wanted to cry.

Or maybe Frank’s new girlfriend was intimidated because she is an unemployed nurse and I am a successful doctor, which must have started to became apparent when Frank hauled out a newspaper clipping he had been saving for my mom, which was on the front page of our city paper and all about moi. However I was very careful not to mention the 467 google hits on me that had come out on the same day as that report (but who was counting?). And when Frank brought up that I had just returned from Milan via London and the new girlfriend thought I had gone to Europe ”on vacation” I did not correct that either. I had no need to impress some unemployed nurse who is sleeping with Frank and taking over his kitchen about my international reputation as a leader in my field nor the worldwide lecture circuit that I traverse, sometimes in Business Class.

No need at all. Being hurt does not require the extraction of revenge. Not even the most gratifying sort of mean, immature, competitive revenge.

In fact, to give me credit, I try to be loyal to my own sex in these situations, even when I am the loser. I knew from the first second I stepped into Frank’s kitchen that this particular woman was innocent of wrong-doing no matter how I might feel. I am sure that her only crime was to put an ad on the internet in good faith and meet Frank in totally above-board fashion at some bar wearing something provocative. I am sure that in venturing out on their first blind date, she never imagined for one moment that she might be breaking the heart of some stupid, idiot woman that he already dumped twice before and who had been playing it cool the third time because she doesn’t know how to get a guy or even how to keep a guy happy if she accidentally stumbles over a willing one.

So I did my best not to look at Frank too much, and not to avoid looking at him too much, pretending I was just eating dinner with this nice but boring unemployed nurse, working desperately not to dislike her too much despite a few slippery thoughts that would pop up against my better judgement. But I could not stop myself from wondering what she could possibly have going on that was better than me. I guess there is nothing so lonely as sitting in a room with two nice people eating Thanksgiving dinner when one of them broke your heart twice already, and seems to be doing it again without even the benefit of sex first. The mashed potatoes were very good, though.

At one point the subject of breast cancer came up. The new girlfriend said proudly that if she got breast cancer she would have bilateral mastectomies. I told her that I already did that, which shut her up. Later I noticed her trying not to look at my chest too obviously. It has occurred to me in the past that maybe that’s the reason guys inevitably dump me after a while. So I took a peek at the new girlfriends’ set, and they were pretty substantial once you tracked them down to where they ended, so I suppose “lack of equipment” might be the cause of not “stacking up” to her. Still, it was not as if Frank never seemed to enjoy himself when he was with me, so we must doubt that was at the heart of my problem with men.

I had to conclude that other than having an endowment or two, this new girlfriend was no more than a very sweet, boring, dyed blonde (as opposed to us more genuine women who die our hair its own natural color, or at least what it used to be). So maybe that’s what old geezers like Frank really want. There was no reason for me to resent her. No justifiable reason, anyway.
So when she brought up that she was unemployed, I politely said “I am sure that is by choice in a city with a nursing shortage.”

She said that she had to quit her job because she could not get along with the stupid people at her work. Ha, this could be a measure of my vocational success. I have never gotten along with the stupid people at my work either, but it isn’t ME who leaves!!!!!

Frank carved the turkey (mostly into little shreds) and we all had another glass of wine and I started trying not to be the life of the party any more, a.) because I was suddenly feeling very tired and b.) being the dominatrix in the room was bound to antagonize them sooner or later, so I tried to get my act down to their less animated level. I complimented Frank on his cute cat, lovely fire in the hearth, new LCD TV, and the new hardware he changed out on his kitchen cabinets.

When I started to get boring, Frank must have felt he had better pick up the slack. So he told a story that I (and likely she) have heard a hundred times about how he once passed Robert F. Kennedy on a bus. Then the girlfriend told a story about how she was a young nurse she decided to be late to work one morning because she heard that President Kennedy was going to make a speech in our city. She went downtown to see him. Later that day, she was at work, and she heard on the radio that he had gone from here straight to Dallas and was shot dead. I politely said “Wow” and took another sip of wine.

Frank looked a little surprised. “Gosh” he said “You were at work that day? I was in high school.”

“I was in eighth grade,” I chimed in helpfully. The girlfriend changed the subject.

After dinner we sat in front of the fire for twenty minutes, and then I felt it OK to excuse myself. They demurred, I demurred, they demurred, and then I got the hell out of there.

Halfway out the door, eyes burning, throat constricting, I realized that Frank was right behind me intending to follow me to my car. He said something idiotic like “Is that a new car?”
“Yes,” I said, “I got it in 2004.” He laughed. But I was done with laughing.

I was parked very close to his pickup truck. I opened the front door trying not to bang his truck, even though I wanted to, and putting the door safely between me and him. He pushed the door back towards me and came around it. Then he tried to hug me. Sort of, because I was bending to get into the car. He was leaning down to give me a kiss. He is one sweet kisser.

I knew that he was a little worried about how I was doing, and although he probably thought it was dear of him to want me to see how much he cared, it would have been showing more empathy to let me get out of there. I grinned gamely and with finality and said “Thanks so much and tell Linda thanks and have a great weekend!”

With all that maneuvering trying to avoid him while getting the kiss anyway, I had bumped my head badly getting in the car and my ears were ringing. Frank was already hurrying back into his house, knowing he had been out there too long with me and must immediately cover up what did not happen. I backed down the driveway being careful not to crash into his neighbor’s car through my tears. Did not look back. Got safely to highway. Drove all the way home, swerving from lane to lane and bawling like a baby. Twice I let myself howl like a mortally wounded old witch. No, I do not want Frank. Wicked witches do not pine after what is lost, we eat rejection for lunch.

I was just feeling lonely, it was as simple as that.

Still I have decided to do something about my failure to live life the right way, and my disgraceful inability to get a boyfriend. I will start a blog and give romantic advice!

All the reader will have to do is the exact opposite of whatever I say, and then maybe they will be on the right track.

Maybe I can try that, too.

Della

Wicked Witch of the MidWest