Chapter 8
“Hello. Anyone home?” I called as I unlocked the door of my flat. As I walked into the beautiful three-story building, I realized how quickly it had come to be home. I saw Barbara’s light on in her living room, but the lower level looked dark and quiet. I switched on the light, and I felt a glow of happiness. Home. It was definitely feeling like home. If only the feeling wasn’t accompanied by a corresponding loneliness. It was great living here with the girls, but I missed being in a relationship. I missed love. I missed a sense of true purpose in my life. Purpose, was a bit ambiguous, more like I was obsessed with putting all my energy into a worthless relationship.
In my room, I slid out of my shoes, putting them neatly back in the box. I unzipped my dress and grabbed a pair of boxers, along with a big white sweater. My feet were freezing, so I slipped on my knit socks. I was dying for a warm drink. Nothing sounded better than hot chocolate and Bailey’s.
That’s when I heard banging on my ceiling. Thump, thump, thump. “Hello?” Barbara’s theatrical voice called down the stairway.
I ran to the door. “Barbara, it’s me, Bobbie. The other girls are gone,” I hollered up to her.
“Come up for pie!” she suggested, and I heard Due bark, as if to second the offer. It was one I couldn’t refuse.
We chatted a little bit about the weather, which had been wonderful—bracing and cool. Barbara told me about some of her and Meryl’s ideas for fixing up the old house: paint colors, refinishing the floors in the entry hall. Ordinarily I love to talk decorating, but tonight I failed to add much to the exchange of creative ideas.
“You’re playing with your food, Bobbie,” she said finally. “You look lost in thought. Or completely exhausted. What’s bothering you, dolly? Is it the pie?” She smiled endearingly as she sat across from me at the kitchen table. Due rested on his own little footstool, following the conversation intently. Or was it the pie he was so avidly focused on? He was a curious animal, his eyes with a human-like personality behind them.
“This pie happens to be some of the best I’ve had,” I said honestly. “Ever.”
“From scratch too,” she said. “I make it from seasonal Wisconsin Honeycrisp apples.”
“No,” I assured her, “the pie is fantastic. Thank you. It’s just that. . .” I rested my head on my hand. I found it hard to open up.
“It’s good to put your thoughts into words, honey bee,” she said.
“I don’t know where to start. I don’t really know how I got to where I am right now.”
“Where is that?” she asked encouragingly.
“I feel so unsatisfied. I also feel ungrateful for being so unhappy. I truly have nothing to be complaining about. I really do like my job--even if I complain about it often. I also have a crazy but great family, friends, good health, and a roof over my head. An amazing roof at that! I love it here. Yet, I am so unhappy sometimes,” I confessed. “I just don’t know why. . . well actually, yes, I do know. I feel so pathetic saying this, but I think I realized that I’ve been going about this whole ‘love’ situation all wrong. . .”
Barbara laughed to herself. “I’ll tell you one thing honey, love is not a situation.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Love, love, love, one of the most wonderful mysteries of the world—isn’t it?” She smiled and stirred honey into her tea.
“Mystery is right. I don’t think I even know what love is. I thought I did. But I have learned that I don’t.”
She looked at me thoughtfully, sipping her tea.
“Did you love your husband, Barbara?” I noticed I didn’t see any photos around her apartment of the two of them together.
“Oh yes, very much so,” she said.
“How did you know it was real?”
“Real?” She frowned at the word. “Love is not a choice, Bobbie baby. Love takes no work to maintain or to gain. The real choice, the real work lies in the friendship and in sustaining the integrity. . . the purity of it.” She stood and crossed the room to an antique cabinet and opened a drawer. She pulled out an envelope and handed me a photo.
“This is my dear Donald. Isn’t he such a handsome man?” she asked.
I nodded. “He is.” And he was, with his chiseled jawline, prominent nose, and clear eyes fixed upon something just beyond the photographer. Perhaps it was Barbara herself he’d been looking at. He looked like a man you could count on, someone you could trust to be there when you needed him. Like Olly is for me, I thought.
“He was my best friend,” she said.
“He’s stunning, Barbara,” I confirmed.
“Oh yes, didn’t I get lucky? My best friend happened to be the most handsome man I knew. Well, I guess you could say I had many handsome beaux, but Donald. . . he was neither rich, nor poor, but his mind was pure. The way he looked at me. . .” she paused, reliving a moment long past. “You’ll recognize the man you’re meant to be with one day by the way he looks at you, Bobbie baby.”
Listening to her talk about her late husband with such pride and confidence raised conflicting feelings in me: envy, hopefulness, worry, that it would never happen for me. But also faith—there was a conviction deep down inside me that I hung onto, believed in. I, too, would find what I was yearning for.
“Bobbie, do you know anything about Eros, Philia, and Agape?” she asked.
I shook my head. “I mean, yeah, I know the words, I’ve heard of . . . well, Eros. He’s like the god of love, right?”
“The Greeks were genius people, Bobbie. They faced the mysteries of life head-on, asking questions and doubting the norms. And all this reflecting uncovered the same treasures we still seek today. I wouldn’t expect you, or most anyone else for that matter, to know how to identify love—because you’re right, you don’t know what it is. But you, with your knowledge of other languages, have a head start. Because the English language deprives us, doesn’t it? It leaves us very confused about what this ambiguous term ’love’ means.”
“True,” I said. “Very confused!”
“The Greeks broke it down into three categories. The first stage of love they called Eros. Eros is the passions and intense desire you feel for someone, or even something. Plato said it’s the deeply embedded desire to seek the beauty of another individual. When you find something that captures you, it reminds you that true beauty exists in the world. That’s a very powerful thing. It’s no wonder it consumes us.”
I thought of Charlie’s beauty, how seductive it was, even when I could see right through it to the vain shallow core.
‘He who loves the beautiful is called a lover because he partakes of it,’” she quoted. “Falling in love is loving the space in between you and whatever it is you find beautiful. It’s not the individual himself you fall in love with, it is what he provokes from you. Do you understand, Bobbie baby?”
I nodded, but I questioned myself. Did I understand? It seemed to me Barbara was talking in riddles, or maybe she was drinking something stronger than just tea.
She picked up a glass cup that was sitting on her kitchen table. “Now take this glass, for instance. How beautiful is this? Italian-made, excellent design, hand-blown. It probably took hours of passionate work. Do you think it’s beautiful, Bobbie?” she asked.
“Yes, it’s very beautiful.”
Barbara held it above her head and with great might, threw the glass to the floor, causing it to shatter into a dozen pieces. I was shocked. How crazy was this lady?
She looked at me and smirked. “Do you still think the glass I was holding a second ago is beautiful?”
Shocked and confused I uttered, “Uh—I guess. Yes, I did believe it was beautiful.”
“Exactly my point, Bobbie, it wasn’t the glass that you loved. It was the feelings it evoked from you. Good news. Th
ere are many glasses in the world, of all shapes, sizes, and colors. That is Eros.”
I felt more confused than ever.
She slapped her hands on the top of her thighs. “Next time you come visit me, we’ll talk about the second stage of love, Philia.”
“Great,” I said. I wondered what she’d destroy to illustrate that!
We said good-night, and I walked down the stairs. I kept thinking about Charlie’s face and Barbara throwing that glass, breaking it into pieces. I could not figure out what she was trying to say to me, but I had to admit I sometimes had the urge to smash that incredible beauty that was Charlie, see him shatter into a million irreparable parts.
But what if it wasn’t Charlie at all? What if it wasn’t really Charlie who aroused the thrill of passion within me? What if it was all in me, like Barbara said? He was just the beautiful container of those passions for me. It seemed cold and callous to reduce a person to a mere vessel for my own inner life. And yet, that’s what I’d been doing with Charlie since day one. Back in the beginning I had expected him to hold all my cherished desires and dreams. Now he was the repository of all my deepest disappointment and anger.
I reminded myself that, according to Barbara, my lesson in love was by no means finished. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to have it all figured out just yet.