{"id":4290,"date":"2021-01-27T12:33:45","date_gmt":"2021-01-27T19:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/?p=4290"},"modified":"2021-01-27T12:33:45","modified_gmt":"2021-01-27T19:33:45","slug":"relationship-interview-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/archives\/4290","title":{"rendered":"Relationship Interview #5"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(this is the sequel to Relationship Interview #4<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mark and Bernice met through Find The One, a web site designed to assist people in their search for life partners. Their first date went well, and now, two days later, they meet again for a walk on the beach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice is fifty-seven,\nfive-foot-eight, trim, with short brown hair going gray. Mark is sixty-four,\nnot quite six-feet-tall, burly, with gray hair turning white. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The February day in northern\nCalifornia is sunny and cool. Bernice and Mark wear masks as required by the virus\nprotocols, Mark\u2019s mask gray, Bernice\u2019s red. As they walk along the shore they try\nto keep roughly ten feet apart, though again and again they inch closer to each\nother, partly to hear the other more clearly, partly because they are drawn to\neach other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: (stops walking) You have a son<\/em>? We talked for an hour at the caf\u00e9\nand you never mentioned him. How old is he? What his name?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: His name is Dean. He\u2019s\nthirty-five. I haven\u2019t seen or heard from him in fifteen years. He lives in\nSalinas. I send him a card and money on his birthday and a card and money for\nHanukkah. He cashes the checks, so I know he\u2019s alive, but he doesn\u2019t\ncommunicate with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Do you know why?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: I have an inkling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Which is? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: His mother and I divorced when\nhe was eight, and we had joint custody of him until he was eighteen, during\nwhich time neither my ex-wife nor I remarried. Then a few months after Dean\nturned eighteen, my ex-wife remarried and Dean refused to go to her wedding. He\nsaid he would never speak to her again, and thereafter lived with me full-time until\nhe went off to college. When I remarried a year later, he said he would never\nspeak to me<\/em> again, though he allowed\nme to pay his college tuition and living expenses until he graduated with a\ndegree in Computer Graphics. And my inkling is that so long as neither of his\nparents remarried, he felt we were still a family. But when we married others\nhe felt betrayed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Sounds\u2026 infantile. Sorry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: No, no. It\u2019s fine. Infantile<\/em> is an appropriate word for\nDean at nineteen. I have no idea what he\u2019s like now at thirty-five, but the\nlast time I saw him, he was still very childish in many ways, like a surly\neight-year-old, which was one of the many reasons I divorced his mother. She\ndid everything she could to keep him a baby, while I did what I could to help\nhim grow up, though I am hardly objective about this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(They walk on in silence.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: I have a daughter. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: (stops walking) You\u2019re\nkidding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: No. Her name is April.\nShe\u2019s thirty. And I do hear from her now and then when she calls to ask for\nmoney, but I haven\u2019t seen her in seven years. And the reason I didn\u2019t mention\nher at the caf\u00e9 is that I didn\u2019t want to ruin the wonderful time we were having.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Bernice takes off her mask and\ngazes at Mark, so he removes his mask and gazes at her.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: I think that\u2019s why I didn\u2019t\nmention Dean. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: I like your face. You look\nvery kind. Do you have a dog?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: (laughs) No dog. Two cats. Ariel\nand Harpo. I love seeing your face. You\u2019re by far the most beautiful woman I\u2019ve\never gone on a walk with. Do you<\/em> have\na dog?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: No. Just one very large cat\nnamed Victoria, though if I ever live in a house instead of an apartment, I\nwill get a dog. Victoria be damned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(They put on their masks and continue\nwalking.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: What does April do for a\nliving?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: She says she\u2019s an actress\never on the verge of a big break, but I think that\u2019s highly unlikely. As far as\nI know she hasn\u2019t been in a play or a film since she was a Drama major in college\nfor a year. She\u2019s very beautiful and very seductive, as was her father, so I\nimagine she finds men to take care of her. I don\u2019t know if that\u2019s true, but\nthat\u2019s what I imagine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Where does she live?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Los Angeles. Where else?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: New York? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Too cold for April. She\nlikes warm weather and swimming pools. And the sad thing is she very well could\nbe a successful actress if she\u2019d ever tried. But she doesn\u2019t know how to work\nat anything. She only knows how to seduce others into taking care of her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Have you forgiven yourself\nregarding her?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: For the most part. Have you\nforgiven yourself regarding Dean?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Yes. When I finally understood\nhe was the result of our disastrous parental equation resulting from our\ndisastrous relational equation, and not from any conscious doing on my part, I\nwas able to forgive myself.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: I think most of us are born\nof disastrous parental equations, and then we seek those same equations in our\nrelationships, knowing no other equations until we get well. If we\u2019re so lucky.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Strange, isn\u2019t it? These\nchildren we loved so much turning into people we don\u2019t know anymore, when we\nthought we would know them and love them for the rest of our lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Yes. Very strange and very\nsad. Whenever I see women my age happily engaged with their grownup daughters,\nI cry. Can\u2019t help it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: I\u2019m the same. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Did your parents still love\nyou after you became your own person?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: My mother did, though she\ndidn\u2019t really know me, didn\u2019t want<\/em> to\nknow me after I became something she didn\u2019t want me to be. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: What did she want you to\nbe? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: A doctor. And failing there, a\nlawyer. And worst case scenario, a college professor. But definitely not a\nwriter working at any old job to support my writing habit. How about your<\/em> parents? Did they love you after\nyou became you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: If they ever loved me it\nwas before I can remember. As I told you, my father was an abusive alcoholic,\nmy mother his desperate slave. My brother and I were merely extra burdens for\nher to bear as she sacrificed herself to the monster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Yet you turned out so sweet.\nWas there a loving grandmother in the mix?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: No, but we had a wonderful\nnanny, Nana Rose, who loved me from the day I was born until I was ten, and she\nloved my brother Robert even more. She was from Tennessee and I loved her more\nthan anything. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: A nanny. Your parents must\nhave had money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: My father was a doctor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: And are you close to your\nbrother?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Was. He died at the\nbeginning of the AIDS epidemic. Darling man. I miss him still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(They walk for a time without\nspeaking.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: And here we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Here we are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Where the past need not\nimpinge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Unless we let it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: How goes your present life?\nDates with suitors aside. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: I love my job. Love the\npeople I work with. Most of them. The theatre is shuttered until the virus is\nconquered. We\u2019re guessing it will be another year at least before we can safely\nput on plays inside again. We\u2019re looking into outdoor venues for the summer. But\nright now is all about staying afloat until the blessed day, begging patrons\nfor money to pay the bills and the salaries of our skeleton crew. How about\nyour present life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Books are thriving in the\npandemic, but I\u2019ve had my fill of editing. Hope to retire in a few years and do\nmore of my own writing again. Maybe move to a smaller town. Simplify. Maybe get\na dog. A medium-sized mutt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: What do you write? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Stories. Plays.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: I\u2019d love to read something\nof yours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Oh I\u2019ll have to get up my\ncourage first. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Yes. Courage. I write, too.\nPoetry mostly, though I\u2019ve read so many plays, the form is in me now, and my\npoems often morph into scenes with dialogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: (stops walking) By the way\u2026 I\nthink you\u2019re marvelous. I could talk to you forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: The feeling is mutual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Oh good. Shall we have another\ndate after this one? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernice: Yes. And this time you<\/em> call me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mark: Yes. This time I<\/em> will call you<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

fin<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You Me<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(this is the sequel to Relationship Interview #4) Mark and Bernice met through Find The One, a web site designed to assist people in their search for life partners. Their first date went well, and now, two days later, they meet again for a walk on the beach. Bernice is fifty-seven, five-foot-eight, trim, with short […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[6439,6438,6437,6436,6434,6435,6440,9,33],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4292,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4290\/revisions\/4292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}