I don’t know why I even hesitated. Maybe it’s natural not to want someone to assume responsibility for you, no matter what your condition. Maybe I was afraid that if we all lived together, there would be arguments or trouble. But my choices were few, and I wasn’t ready to give up my cottage.

Now I wonder if I made the right choices. I am so confused some times, I’m just not sure of anything. But I suppose I did the right thing. Lee says because of the economy, without his contribution to our expenses, I wouldn’t be able to make ends meet. Karen didn’t tell me because she never wanted me to worry.

I am glad to have Olivia so close, glad to be able to spend time every day with her. I try hard to please Lee and thank him for his sacrifice in moving here with me. I don’t want to move into assisted living, not when I can have Olivia living with me. I know they are here to help, but sometimes I think that I’m the one helping my granddaughter. She seems happiest when I’m in the room, and afraid to lose me. So for now, we are together.

I’m not as happy as I should be. I have my music.  I have the pineapple tablecloth I am crocheting for Olivia’s hope chest, but I miss Fred and Karen more than I can say, and I miss the friends I left behind. Even worse, I feel anxious and sad, except when I’m alone with my granddaughter. Lee says this is part of getting older and that I should take the medications my doctor has prescribed. I guess I have to put my faith in him.

Lee and Karen were married just a year before Fred died. Lee was the opposite of her first husband, attentive and charming, and like Karen, he wanted children. I’m so sorry Fred died without knowing that Karen was finally pregnant with our grandchild. He would have adored Olivia, who was born the year after his death. She is a quiet, well-behaved child, filled, I think, with thoughts she doesn’t share. She loves to be read to, even now at 10, and she loves to collect shells and driftwood and feed the fish in my aquarium. I have adored her since the moment she was born.

I am glad Fred wasn’t alive to experience what happened next. When Olivia was still nine, Karen drowned in a boating accident off the coast of Palmetto Grove. A gale force wind flipped the small cruiser that she and Lee had saved so hard to buy. He tried his hardest to save her and nearly drowned in the process. She was always a strong swimmer, but the waves were just too high. Neither of them were wearing life jackets. Karen had always insisted on every safety measure, but I suppose that because Olivia was not in the boat, the jackets were somehow left behind. There were gale warnings that day, but Lee told me their radio stopped working after they left the marina, and they were so far away they had decided not to turn back.

By then I had moved to Palmetto Grove to be near them. Fred and I always dreamed of having a condo on the water, and after he died Karen found me this cottage and persuaded me to move. I had suffered a stroke, and things weren’t as easy as they once had been. Sometimes I had trouble putting words together, or remembering where I left things, and Karen wanted me near. The cottage isn’t much to look at, but it has the most beautiful views and access to the water. We knew the land had been sold to a developer who planned to build a condo and hotel complex when the time was right, but the house was affordable for whatever time I could live there. For the time being, with Karen’s watchful assistance, I could have my fondest wish and see the Gulf any time I chose.

Her death, of course, changed all that.

(Alice’s Story Concludes on Friday)

Have I mentioned that my parents also succumbed to CJ’s charms and after the wedding, they transferred the bulk of their investments to CJ’s expert ministrations? Or that Barney will now have to continue straightening teeth and perfecting bites well into a future he planned to spend on the golf course, while Denise was forced to sell the family home in Bel-Air with its view of Catalina Island and move to a bungalow in Del Rey? Or that these days, despite their divorce, my parents are united in the belief that I somehow caused their downfalls?

So presently I am persona non grata in Southern California. Barney and Denise are hoping that if I stay away long enough, memories will grow fuzzier and people will move on to the next scandal. There is never a lack of possibilities in greater LA.

Months have passed since the divorce decree, and I haven’t given much thought to what I learned from my aborted marriage. I’m not a navel gazer, unless I’m debating whether to have it pierced. I’ve always thought that if I have to spend time ferreting out the meaning of the things, then the lesson was pretty much lost. I’ve always been a fan of simple in clothing, jewelry, manicures and philosophy. So here’s what strikes me about my past.

I was raised to value appearances over substance, but I was not sufficiently warned that appearances could be deceiving.

Loving the way someone made me feel about myself was not the same as loving them.

Loyalty isn’t earned by gifts or social standing, but perhaps I don’t have what it takes to be loyal under any circumstances, anyway. I’ve ditched my husband and I’m not suffering a lot of guilt.

I was shortchanged in the parents department.

Being booted out of my former life leaves a sinkhole in my present, but if I don’t stand too close to the edge, I don’t think I’ll fall in. I got through the divorce without much support. Except for a stalwart few, my friends seemed to fear contamination, or just as bad, being pulled under by my neediness. And even those who were genuinely sorry expected me to get through this the way I’ve gotten through everything. By paying other people to take charge. So I was left alone to fumble my way through it, nearly alone. And in the fumbling I learned one last thing.

In the midst of the million useless details I was taught in my childhood, there were a few valuable lessons. There must have been, because in the end, I managed to get through the worst parts of the divorce and the dismantling of everything CJ and I had built, all by myself. I survived. The fact that I could was a revelation.

There’s the first time I knew I had pleased my mother, Denise. This was after my braces came off and otoplasty had successfully pinned back my protruding ears. The big moment came after a childhood when I’d realized I was a work in progress and my mother only had time to flit in occasionally to see how long the unveiling would take. This time, though, she had arrived at the country club tennis tournament with selected friends in tow. And when I played like a wannabe Venus, I saw her lift her head in pride as her astonished friends sat forward. Stick a fork and me and declare me ready for consumption.

Then there was the moment that my father, Barney, whose photograph I kept beside my bed so I could recognize him when I passed him in the hall, came home from twelve straight hours at his office and told me to get in his car. We drove to the BMW dealership and he let me pick out any Bimmer on the lot while he reclined in his seat and chatted with Summer, his office manager, on his car phone. Over the years that Summer worked for him my dad, orthodontist to the stars, must have had a lot of chats with her, because about five years ago he got tired of that scene, divorced my mother, and now has chats with Summer every morning over coffee.

I’m thirty-two, but I still have the silver Z3 convertible roadster with black leather seats and spider spoke wheels that I chose that afternoon, and it’s a good thing I let sentiment rule. After we married I refused to let CJ sell my car. When almost everything else we owned was carted away, my roadster wasn’t worth bothering with. 

I know now that my father saw his gift as an investment in my future. No matter. At the time it looked like a loving gesture.

That moment in the solarium when CJ told me he was going to jail was not one I look back to with longing. I had known he was under investigation under California’s Freeze and Seize law, as well as various federal charges. I had witnessed the flocks of attorneys coming in for a landing, heard the accelerating squawking of his cell phone conversations. CJ was away more than usual, and even with my father as an example, I didn’t suspect infidelity. Despite every assurance he would easily beat these charges, CJ looked tired when he returned, yes, but never happy. If there was another woman, I had nothing to fear from her. But I had been completely clueless about how bad things really were. I had been so brainwashed by CJ’s opinion of himself that I believed he would thwart the little guy once again and walk away a free man.

Instead in the end CJ accepted a plea bargain and went to jail. As a real estate wheeler dealer, his crimes were technical, tricky and legion, but in the end mail fraud across state lines earned the largest chunk of his sentence. CJ was not young when I married him, but he had aged several decades by the time I divorced him. He will be walking with a cane by the time he gets out of prison. I will not be waiting at the gate to take his arm.

Tracy’s Story–to be continued