The Antique Cradle - Conclusion

This is the conclusion to a short story called The Antique Cradle that I posted on March 14th:

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Some plants need to be uprooted in order to maximize their potential and so it was with me. After an initial withering, my roots began to take hold in our transitory environment, and much to my surprise, I began to thrive.

No, I am not suffering from The Stockholm Syndrome, at least I don’t think I am. You won’t see me holding a semi-automatic rifle in a bank lobby somewhere like Patty Hearst. The Dentist turned Astronaut may be accused of many things but he is not a violent man, and there was nothing to stop me from leaving. He would never hurt me.

The routine (if you can call it that) of our life was noteworthy in that there was no routine, or none to speak of. I, who lived my life following a certain schedule, found that I had none.   Sometimes I stayed up most of the night only to wake up, look out the window, and see farmland, cows with calm eyes, looking back at me. I envied them, I envied their serenity.  I would go back to sleep and wake up to find us entering the parking lot of a super market in a small town somewhere in the Midwest.

You must hate me.  How could any woman allow herself to be trapped, imprisoned by such a man?   Why don’t I extricate myself immediately, go back home and sue the bastard for every penny?  I really don’t know - except to say that as time went on I began to discover myself, and the more I discovered, the happier I became.  

You have seen the bumper sticker: God Is My Copilot? My bumper sticker would say The Dentist Is My Copilot. We actually got along quite well.  Much to my surprise, I found that he didn’t want to talk to me any more than I wanted to talk to him. The surround sound in our cabin was silence.  We both loved it. I had no reason to leave, at least for the time being.

I began to think of myself as one of those Russian stacking dolls, the outer doll became abhorrent  to me, she was such a superficial twit. With no possessions to occupy my time, I realized that most of those possessions served only to help me to avoid removing the outer doll, the shell I had become.  It wasn’t easy. Those outer dolls had a very hard veneer, they didn’t want to go. I became obsessed with what I called “Operation Doll Removal.” 

At the same time that I was consumed with my doll removal project my interaction between The Dentist turned Astronaut took a highly unusual turn. One day while driving through a small town en route to a mobile home park we passed a large sign in front of a church:  

‎"If you want to be sad, no one in the world can make you happy. But if you make up your mind to be happy, no one and nothing on earth can take that happiness from you." Paramahansa Yogananda

Neither of us commented on it, I did not think he saw it, but after several miles he turned to me and asked me if I was happy.

“Happy?”  This simple question took me by surprise, I felt like a deer in the headlights.  

“No. I don’t think so. I’m not sure. Maybe.  Are you?”

“Yes, although I am beginning to miss the sound of the drill.”

“Really?  Did you know that most people hate that sound?”

“I didn’t know that.” 

It amused me that he could be oblivious to something so obvious, yet at the same time I found his reaction  rather endearing.  It struck me that The Dentist was without guile. Boring, yes, but he didn’t have a mean bone in his body. He would not find the need to peel his Russian  dolls down to the core, his outer doll was his core, and I envied him for that.

And then I began to think about his question.  Am I happy? Well, I certainly wouldn’t call myself euphoric, ecstasy is hard to come by, but much to my amazement I found that  I was content.  Even without all my possessions, even without that antique cradle I clung to so desperately, I was content. And I knew, deep inside, that if I continued with my “Operation Doll Removal” one day I might even be happy.  All I needed to do was to keep digging, and in some strange way I needed The Dentist turned Astronaut to be at my side.

It's All Temporary

A Short Piece of Fiction by Yours Truly

The Antique Cradle

My husband has been a successful dentist for 30 years.  His office and adjacent lab are across town.  For the past several years he has been distracted, often wolfing down his dinner and abruptly leaving.  Lab work, suddenly there were so many crowns, dentures. All this extra lab work began the same time he hired a very attractive hygienist.

The Dentist is so transparent that as he lies, the child in him steps forth, a little boy telling big boy lies.  The funny thing is he thinks he is as smooth as glass, that he is pulling the wool over my eyes, but I have known him for so long that I see right through the glass.  I don’t care. I wish I did but one cannot draw blood from a stone and the truth is I stopped caring years ago.

We have been married for 25 years and lived in the same house for much of that time. Our two grown children live near (but not too near) and we have two small grandchildren, a boy and a girl.  I work part time in the local thrift shop, perfect for me because I am good at sorting through “stuff,” categorizing,  pricing, occasionally bringing home an antique that should have never been donated.  Every time I pass the sweet antique cradle, purchased for a song, in our living room I smile. The job makes me realize how lucky I am that I don’t have to live my life dependent upon the generosity of others.  We have plenty of money.

Why am I telling you all this? Because my husband, The Dentist, has lost his mind. I should have noticed, picked up on the ever-so-obvious symptoms, but my lack of caring caused me to live my home life with blinders.  I wasn’t blind to the fact that The Dentist was cheating, I was blind to the fact that he stopped.  Apparently the bloom was off the rose and the very attractive hygienist had had enough. Good bye.

One morning The Dentist made me an English muffin. This in itself was surprising, The Dentist never makes me anything.  But he handed me the English muffin, a bit over-buttered for my taste, sat down and told me that he sold his practice.  I found this piece of news so bizarre that I thought he must be telling me about a dream and I had tuned out on the “I had the craziest dream last night” part, and heard only the plot.

“Oh,” I said with a chuckle, “that’ll be the day.” 

“No, I’m quite serious, I signed the paperwork yesterday, it’s a done deal, patients, equipment, office, lab, the works.  I’m through with it.”

For the first time in years I looked at him, really looked at him. A kind of sick realization came over me that the only way I had been able to live the lie I have been living  was by subterfuge. This subterfuge required that I be both actress and audience in the ongoing, never-ending theatrics of my life.  Our marriage has been one long documentary for so long that I gradually came to believe that fact was fiction and fiction fact.  The glue holding the drama together was the stage set in which our lives had been lived.  My little antique cradle was now threatened, along with the entire charade, euphemistically known as my life.

His eyes were hollow, the frames of his glasses were slightly crooked, giving him one of his crazed scientists looks, and he was humming.  Humming!  The Dentist never hums, yet he hummed. Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. The Dentist was humming a Fleetwood Mac song, the end of the world as I knew it.

“I want to sell the house, buy a mobil home and tour the country. It’s a big, beautiful country and it’s about time we saw it.”

“You can’t be serious.” 

‘Oh yes I am, dead serious.”

If I was told to make a list of the ten things I would least like to do, touring the country in a mobil home with The Dentist would probably be at the top of the list.  Well, maybe  second to repeatedly jabbing rusty needles in my eyes, but it would be close.

Later that day, about 3:00, I looked out the window and saw The Dentist hammering a FOR SALE in our front yard. The Dentist never comes home at 3:00 but what’s to stop him now?  He can come and go as he pleases. I put my glasses on and looked again.  The Dentist had morphed into something like An Astronaut. Gone were his glasses.  The Dentist always wore glasses, The Astronaut has contacts.  Gone were his lab coats. The Astronaut is wearing a black leather jacket, blue jeans and loafers. He’s a little long of tooth to be having a mid life crisis, but perhaps he is a late bloomer in the crisis department. Late bloomer or not, does he have to involve me in his crisis? Oh where is that bloody hygienist when I need her most?  She might like the contacts, the black leather, the loafers.

My bridge club wished me bon voyage, some members were jealous. They hungered for a little adventure in their lives and believed I was the luckiest of women. The mobile home was packed. The Astronaut had bought the Rolls Royce of mobile homes, no expense spared for our comfort. As methodical as The Dentist, The Astronaut had lists and check lists. (Some habits are hard to eradicate   even when one reinvents oneself.) My beloved cradle was in storage.  The Astronaut wanted us to sell everything and we did unload many unnecessary possessions, but I put my foot down when it came to the cradle. 

Belted, we cruised along Route 80.   I looked at this man sitting next to me, he had indeed turned into an astronaut, we might as well have been in a space capsule.  There was no escape and I had nothing to say to him. Days, weeks, months, years would go by and I still would have nothing to say to him.

I missed my home, my children, my grandchildren, my job, my bridge club, but most of all I missed my little antique cradle. 

To be continued. Maybe.

It's All Temporary