Going Around Again
By Harry Buschman
I can't go on much longer. It isn't so bad in the bright light of day, I can do the things I have to do, the needful things -- but of course I do them without thinking. When night comes, the dreams begin and I find I'm living that awful time all over again.
Thank God my children are grown, they are busy
with their own lives, and I am
someone they check on from time to time, for their own sake as much as mine
I
imagine. I don't need to be checked on but I'm grateful for the tenuous thread
of affection that still holds us together. There will come a time when I will
need all the help I can get. But not now .... not when I've found Libby again.
It began about a month ago. I woke one morning
and found two ticket stubs to
"The Little Foxes" on the end table. Libby and I went to see that
play back in 1938, and the night before I found the stubs I dreamed of Libby
again. The
dream was sharp and painful. Libby and I broke up shortly after that night,
and it's been all of 53 years since then, and in all those years I assumed the
fault was hers. But it wasn't, it was mine. That's how painful the dream was.
We might have married, Libby Grimes and me.
What would life have been like if we had married? In the dream I had that night
and the ones since then, life
with Libby would have been stormier than the peaceful years with Julia. Libby
wanted to get married, (almost demanded it) but there were so many reasons
why we couldn't .... why it was wiser to wait. The war. The war was the excuse
for everything. Reason? Excuse? No! It's plain to me now, it was fear of Libby,
fear greater than the love I had for her. That's where "The Little Foxes"
comes in. Libby Grimes wanted to be an actress, and she pictured herself in
the part of Regina Hubbard. She pictured herself as Emily in "Our Town"
too, and as Scarlett in "Gone With the Wind." Her desire to succeed
on the stage absorbed her mind constantly. It wasn't conceit or vanity, it was
a passion to succeed at all cost.
Libby was a strikingly beautiful dark haired girl, and now, when we're together in the dead of night, I can see that loveliness with agonizing clarity. Her dark Irish beauty is irresistible, and when her face is near and her sable eyes beckon to me I curse whatever excuse or fear kept me from a life I can now only live in dreams.
Yes, there was a war, a terrible war, a war far more compelling than the lives of Libby and me. I had five years of sailing in iron ships to strange places. Five years of bearing witness to the fright and fragility of young men. In those five years, Libby's lovely face faded away, and other faces smiled at me .... in the brief moments of peace between the sailings -- the peaceful interludes that all fighting men need to keep their savageness at pitch. Libby was not there for me. Had she been there I would not have these dreams now. These dreams are the life I might have had with Libby.
She shared her passion for me with a far greater passion for the stage. She was a creature of passion and, I think, much of the fear I had of her stemmed from her overabundance of passion. It is a special instinct for some performers to put so much of themselves into their work that those who love them are swept away -- unable to keep afloat.
I never heard from Libby after I left. I wrote to her constantly. I loved her, after all, and wanted her to wait for me until the war was over. While in port, I wrote weekly. While at sea, I wrote every day. I combed the newspapers for news of her, thinking perhaps she'd changed her name and finally found success in the theater .... perhaps in another city, but there was nothing. Not a word.
As the war ground on, my love for Libby faded.
With no word from her, my
letters grew shorter and fewer and finally stopped altogether. I met Julia ....
a girl less passionate, less spirited and far less absorbed in herself than
Libby. She was an antidote to war and wanted nothing more than an end to it
and a life of normal living. We married when the war ended, raised a family,
built a home and lived a lifetime together. Libby, whatever fortune befell her,
never entered my life again. Now that Julia and the children are gone, time
is a profound burden to me, and I often think how it might have been with Libby.
It is this I suspect, that causes me to dream of her.
I cried for five years when Julia died. I thought the grieving would never end. I would see her everywhere, hear her voice in empty rooms and feel her gentle touch at night. I would eat my silent meals alone wondering if she could see me sitting there. I would call out, "Why! Why! wasn't it me .... ! It was supposed to be me .... !" It was selfishness of course, I didn't know how to cope with the loss .... widowers never do.
Somehow I got through it, not overnight but
slowly, an inch at a time. After
two or three rounds of Christmases and a grandson or two, the present seemed
worth living after all. Yes, her clothes were still in the bedroom closet and
I spoke to them from time to time -- but the pain grew softer, more like an
old wound that only hurts on rainy days.
I am old now .... almost all of life behind me. It's only now that I have the
time to wonder what kind of a life it would have been if I'd done things differently.
If I had taken writing seriously, if I hadn't sold the piano, if raising a family
had not taken precedence over a life of challenge and adventure. That's when
the dreams began.
They are dreams of life before the war, that's
the reason the ticket stubs were on the end table. I must be very careful. If
anyone should see them they'd never understand. I go around the house every
morning looking for signs that Libby had spent the night with me. Sometimes
it's a script she's been reading, sometimes it's her little Benjamin Franklin
eyeglasses. I really wish she'd be more careful, but in the heat of the moment
she'll throw them down and rush over to me and say, "There didn't I do
that well! .... the stress on the word "NEVER," that was good wasn't
it?" Then, one thing will lead to another and, well .... you know how young
people are.
But my writing goes slowly -- by fits and starts. It isn't my fault, really
it isn't. The fault is Libby's. She is so demanding, so self-absorbed -- I can't
get a thing done. She's a stand-in for Rosalind in "As You Like It"
and trying out for Emily in "Our Town." With her script in my lap,
I must listen to her rehearse, I must take her here and there for costumes,
I must take her calls as she makes faces in the mirror. Then, when she's exhausted,
she wants me to make love to her! My nights are sleepless and my days are spent
in picking up the mess she's left behind.
Then there's the feelings of guilt. I was always
faithful to Julia. Now I feel as though I've let her down, spending my nights
with a woman I knew long ago. If she were here now there would be the devil
to pay. Why has Libby come back to haunt me? Where was she when I needed her
long ago? I'm no longer infatuated with her, I can see her faults clearly and
I thank whatever fates stepped in to bring Julia and me together.
Last night it went like this:
"Libby, I've got to work today, I've got
to! I'm thirty three pages into this novel .... thirty three pages! In three
months all I've got to show for it is thirty three pages." I took the cover
off the typewriter and worked in a sheet of paper.
"What do you think you're doing ....! I've got a fitting this afternoon
and a workout at the spa this morning. You've got to drive me, there's no place
to park in the city."
No! She can't take the subway or walk the streets. Not Libby .... she has to
be driven, she must arrive by car at the proper address precisely fifteen minutes
late. Furthermore, the car must be waiting for her when she's ready to leave
.... she can't be left standing at the curb.
"Have you read the paper, Libby?"
"Of course, Odets is casting "Golden Boy." I don't know if I'm
right for something like that. What do you think?"
I held up the front page. "Look at the headline, Libby. Hitler's invaded
Poland -- doesn't that mean anything to you?"
"I was never good at geography, love. Have you seen my ballet slippers?"
The war was a terrible thing. It swung a bloody
scythe of devastation -- iron
against iron with flesh and bone between. Dreamers and poets -- young men and
women of potential genius were cut off green on the vine. It left millions unborn
who might have been the giants of today.
But, it brought me Julia.
© Harry Buschman 1998
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