“So what did you mean exactly?” I ask, finally, now that we are paddling. The air is hot, heavy. The clouds are huge with expectation. The breeze and the cool water on my hands and arms are a much-needed reprieve.
We are moving against the current. It feels good to work our muscles hard against the approaching rapids, wondering how far we can go. Good to take a break from the retreat. There’s only so much yoga, body painting, and self-realization a guy can handle.
With unspoken agreement, we drove in heavy silence to the launch site and waited until we were on the water to discuss what David unwittingly let out of its not-so-deep hiding place. It seeped out during the “Let It Flow” workshop at the upstate retreat center we go to every now and then. Not as a couple, not exactly.
Separated for five years now, we keep holding onto each other, scrounging around for better, not finding it, not really talking about it for fear of breaking what’s barely intact. Living half-lives, knowing that something’s missing, something’s off. Partway in, partway out, we came together for the long weekend of activities with sixty other men, mostly doing our own thing, but lazily aware of each other—or the other’s absence.
It was a surprise when we found ourselves in the same session. Even more of one when we were asked to move about the room and read other men’s pieces of masking tape, on which we all had written several things we wanted to let go of in our lives, then stuck them to the floor.
As fate would have it, I stumbled onto one that read: Stop keeping Gregg in my back pocket. I heard a familiar gasp from the back of the room, and the truth hit me like a slap. It reddened me.
It turns out that the number one thing David wants to let go of is me.
* * *
We progress upstream in our long boats—his red, mine green. Not too close, but as always, I am conscious of what he is experiencing, imagining what he is thinking.
David, as he often is with me at least, is silent. I splash him with my paddle to start the conversation. In a friendly way, I hope, worried that my intent will be misinterpreted, as it usually is. His face curls in on itself. I wait.
He starts to move his lips but stops. He’s looking at me. I read sadness and pain, but I’m not sure exactly where it comes from. Still, he does not speak.
Clouds thicken. Blue retreats from the sky. Part of me wants to leap from green to red and shake him out of this silent stalemate: Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on! Are you together with Paul or what?
The number two thing David wrote down that he wants to let go of is hiding the truth about Paul.
I want to plow through the water and escape the slowness, this bottomless, round-and-round of indecision, the stream of men that seem to pursue David every time I turn away. I plunge into sadness, immobilized again by my own fuzzy thinking.
Do I want to claim him? Bind our hearts and lives together again? Or release him—release us both—from our long struggling?
I feel a heaviness I find hard to sit with. A heaviness that has always chafed, that I have fought against—if not from day one, then from at least day twenty-three.
I am a hostage. I’ve taken myself hostage, waiting for vague hopes and unlikely conditions to be fulfilled. Complicit.
Still, I wait.
* * *
“Where can we possibly plant this?” I ask.
It’s been years since we met—six or seven since we bought a needy historic farmhouse that reminded David of his childhood.
We are back from a four-hour journey to one of our favorite nurseries. An unnecessary trip for a tree we don’t need. A floundering continuation of the massive property decorating that has satisfied (exhausted) and connected us over the years.
We haul the too-big copper beech, Fagus sylvatica ‘Red Obelisk,’ out of the truck and heave its root sack into the complaining wheelbarrow. I let the dogs out.
Our Vermont hilltop is quiet.
Dave wears his favorite, now-torn blue corduroy quilted shirt he found outside a used furniture shop. His Carhartt jeans, so stained with paint, are slick like vinyl; it’s hard to tell their original color.
I’m wearing grey sweats for comfort, with a washed-out green fleece zipped up against the slight chill of evening and the assault of black flies, which tear my skin.
“Poor Gregg, maybe you should try turpentine,” David says with some compassion.
He is immune to biting insects. The skin of his extremities is cracked and impenetrable from painting pictures outdoors in all weather and the mineral spirits he rubs all over himself to clean up after his messy business.
“Oil paint and turpentine, baby,” he says. “No better bug spray. Nothing’ll go near me. My blood is toxic.”
David grew up in the Maryland countryside. He has planted countless trees and has seen just about every bug there is.
Me, I don’t remember more than an occasional mosquito in the Long Island suburbs.
We survey our intensely gardened nine acres, the ancient trees, the views north to the Green Mountains, the stone walls crisscrossing the meadows.
The Jack Russells know this routine and gnaw at our pant legs for attention.
A farm for centuries, the property, when we bought it, was all overgrown scrub cherry, weedy ash, and grapevine. We cleared it, de-rooting thirty years of wildness, and began to rebuild stone walls and plant. And plant.
It consumed us.
Over the course of a decade, we put hundreds of trees and thousands of bulbs and perennials in the ground.
Now, as countless times before, we circle and circle, arguing about sight lines, overcrowding, soil composition—what things will look like in 10, 25… 50 years.
One of us doesn’t respond, gets distracted by something else. The other feels frustrated and hopelessly stuck.
Our visions constantly morph; we have no master plan for this, no framework for the future.
* * *
We paddle steadily, me slightly ahead, cutting off angles in the wide, winding river. Occasionally, we look at each other in a challenging way, but also reassuring—tossing questioning smiles like a game, the rules of which we are not sure we remember.
After sixteen years, with his many-meaning silences, David has taught me to wait. Not patiently, not without an audible clucking of the tongue on the roof of my mouth and, perhaps—although I have steadfastly worked to rid myself of it—an imperceptible roll of my eyes upward and to the right, married with an audible intake of breath. A sign of impatience I know sets him off like a match.
Even now, I remember that we have different rhythms and processing speeds. So much of our legacy of misunderstanding stems from this: I just rev at a quicker pace.
David’s energy, at times, seems limitless, and he is tenacious beyond belief. In everyday things, however, I am much faster than he is. Faster at bicycling, technology, thinking, cooking, reading, talking. Reacting. Maybe not always in a good way.
He tells me I am impatient and judgmental.
It has taken me a long time to admit, even to myself, that he may be right.
I have always admired his sense of himself, his authenticity—even his thoroughness, which also drives me crazy and tires me out just to contemplate.
When he vacuums the house, he does so on his hands and knees. All 3,000 square feet. With a Wet Vac. No attachments.
When he cleans the kitchen, he boils pots full of water (never just hot from the tap) and throws it on the counters, the stovetop, the cutting board, everywhere—to scald the germs and burn them out from their hiding places.
When he plants a tree, he gets out several shovels, a pickaxe, and a crowbar and, in the rockiest soil God ever created, digs a hole so deep and wide that no rock or stray root will ever disturb the new sapling’s growth.
My holes, in contrast, are hasty, get-the-job-done, sink-or-swim affairs.
In my defense, I point out studies that show trees need a natural planting environment that mirrors the soil they will eventually grow into rather than a cushy, artificial one.
Nonetheless, I am secretly awed by David’s superhuman ummphh and willingness to go the extra hundred miles.
* * *
Finally, we wheelbarrow the copper beech to the north garden, me in front pulling, him pushing in back. The damn thing must weigh two hundred pounds.
I start to dig, David drifting over to a different part of the property. I yell over to him to ask what he thinks of this spot. No response.
I want to pull out what’s left of my hair—or his.
Sometimes I think I see the hurt child who developed roadblock silence as a coping mechanism against an overbearing father. It softens me—somewhat.
I take two shovelfuls, and see water seep into the shallow hole.
“It’s too wet,” I whisper in disappointment.
“I told you,” David says, point blank, from three hundred feet away.
With what seems to me like impatience—maybe exasperation—he returns and muscles the wheelbarrow on his own to the south field that we (I?) had hoped to keep clear in the middle, to draw the eye back and create a sense of space.
Already, a (hopefully) disease-resistant American elm is growing there, growing like a weed. Several other trees had also found their way to the area when our imaginations could find no other spot.
David huffs past the groupings of crab apples and sinks the shovel through the grass between the Briotti horse chestnut and the medlar, Mespilus germanica, with its abundant medieval fruit that must rot before eating.
“See how good the soil is here?” He picks up handfuls of dry soil and sifts it out, irresistible as sugar. “Perfectly well-drained.”
He stands, opens his arms, and turns around, looking at what we’ve already planted.
Like God, it occurs to me, surveying his creation.
“Look how well everything does here!”
“I know, Dave, they’re amazing, but we’re not collecting trees here—we’re planting a garden. It’s already too crowded.”
My emphasis hits its mark, though I can hardly remember now who actually did all this planting or whether we agreed to all the trees in this area.
(We have been known to move and replant trees three or four times in their early years, not always with the other’s acquiescence.)
In desperation, I wheel the tree to the edge of the pine grove beyond the tricolor beech. But I know, and know that he knows, the deep burgundy leaves of the new fastigiata will require more sun to hold their color…
* * *
It’s late.
A sigh escapes me.
I look at the muted colors taking over the horizon and realize that once again I am faced with defeat.
There will be no jointly prepared dinner or evening out with friends. As usual.
This place possesses and obsesses us. It is also our refuge, a place of immense beauty and growth where we can see tangible evidence of our efforts—of progress being made.
It’s now the bewitching hour, when the scent of wild animals draws our dogs toward the woods and danger. They need to be in the house.
I need food.
And, for once, a normal Saturday night.
“It needs a prime spot,” David says. “We didn’t pay a hundred and seventy bucks for this beauty to hide it away.”
* * *
Completely guileless, David couldn’t pretend to understand or be something he’s not if his life depended on it.
He’s le vrai, the real deal, a one-of-a-kind.
He’s made of bold, sturdy cloth that will wear well, timeless in its appeal.
I have my own charms, of course, but I am a more modern fabrication—constantly evolving, surrendering to the latest diet or fashion, striving to fit in.
We fight the current, lean more forward, and push-pull with our paddles.
The wind is up. The sky, full and darkening, looks like it, too, at any moment, might release accumulated tears.
I notice a narrow tributary that looks like it’s lined with old oaks and steer toward it.
I know David will love this.
All our life together, we have waited for our trees to mature, to grow magnificent like the ones we’ve seen on garden visits in the Mid-Atlantic or England.
I’m not sure he’ll follow, but I smile in anticipation as, eventually, I hear him.
“Look at these Swamp Whites, Gregg!” Dave’s voice rises, unexpected.
“They really do like water—they’re growing right in it,” he marvels, noting that the white oaks live up to their moniker.
“See what ours will look like one day!”
He touches the oaks’ branches as we glide by on the sleepy water, the banks barely wide enough to accommodate our paddles.
“The shape of that one is perfect.” I point my oar to the one just beyond his bow. “The branches curve down in a kind of dance of symmetry,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says after about a minute.
“I’ve never seen a more quintessential oak,” I continue. “It’s like the oak that all others aspire to be.”
David looks intently, not at me, or up at the tree, but toward the bank.
“Definitely,” I hear him say, more to himself than to me.
* * *
It is impossible to know what he’s thinking.
I think of our sometimes-beautiful life together. And our—now David’s—home that, on weekends or longer visits, we still struggle to enjoy together, and that David, when alone there, finds even less accommodating.
A few micro-drops of rain mist my face and arms.
Dave pushes his boat beside mine.
We are close.
Our paddles comingle.
Gazing up at the penumbra of well-choreographed branches, we are canopied and somewhat sheltered as the rain begins in earnest.
He speaks:
“I don’t want to lose you, Gregg. We’re family… you’re my family.”
He has tears in his eyes and stares at me, intense like the rain.
“We’ve built so much together.”
I hear the pleading as well as the question in his voice.
The question that has been there for both of us since early on.
“Are you and Paul more than friends?” I venture.
I want to say having an affair, which feels more right—but confusing too.
Is it possible to have an affair when, for years, you’ve been more or less separated?
When I moved out, it was only to salvage some self-respect; I didn’t want to leave.
Even though David had met someone online. Someone twenty years younger.
“What would you do if a twenty-eight-year-old wanted you?” David had asked me.
I couldn’t admit it at the time, but part of me could relate. Was jealous even.
Deadened by years of frustrated attempts to rise above our painful differences and misunderstandings, I too longed for escape.
Would I have been able to resist an attractive, young suitor who adored and idealized me? Desired me?
I have no clear answer.
What I knew was that I couldn’t make David choose me—any more than I could deny that I had long ago, in too many ways, given up on David.
Was my implicit acceptance of the status quo my way of not choosing David?
Unchoosing him, day after day?
“I’m just a guy who loves two people,” David confessed simply.
* * *
Months later at the lawyer’s office, even as I signed over my share of the house, somehow, I thought less of a divorce than of a remedial step that would reinvigorate us as individuals—make us more appreciative of one another, more attractive to each other, and help us clarify what really mattered.
A way for us to purge, cleanse, and even strengthen our bond and, maybe, possibly (hopefully eventually), get back together.
And paradoxically, in some ways, distance did bring us closer together.
Eventually, after David lost interest in the other guy, we started having occasional dinners out, spending weekends together, going on retreats, sharing the dogs, of course—never quite letting go, glued to the unrelenting dream of our garden paradise—
I wait for David to tell me the truth.
Thunderstorms pepper the horizon.
Lightning screeches across the sky to the south and east, down by the far end of Saratoga Lake or possibly the Hudson.
I think about heading back, abandoning this.
“No. Paul and I are just friends,” he says. “You know I don’t feel that way about him—or anyone.”
David pulls me toward him.
Our boats jump as thunder claps around us.
“It’s just easier with Paul. He doesn’t react when I get all worked up about something, doesn’t fuel the fire. We’re always kind to each other.”
He pauses and looks at his hands.
“He’s never demanding… he really…”
He pauses, his face crinkling closed, and lets out a heavy breath.
“He appreciates who I am.”
* * *
“David… I appreciate—”
“I know you appreciate the idea of me,” he interrupts and grabs my kayak.
“The fantasy of an artist, the creative soul, the glamour of openings and exhibitions… But really, Gregg, do you appreciate all of me? The dark moods and all my insecurities? That I just can’t relax, or read a book? That I don’t get things like you do… how about my hectic intensity that you absolutely hate?!”
I yawn, involuntarily, in a three-part staccato breath.
“You forgot what I really hate, Dave: when you don’t laugh at my jokes.”
No smile.
I force a chuckle. To let him know I was being playful.
Then I counter:
“Do you appreciate me?”
He doesn’t blink.
Waiting.
Challenging me to answer.
I tense, then soften again, then whisper, “Yes,” to his question—and pray it is really true.
We are soaked to the skin and huddle as best we can in two separate boats, under the perfect oak.
* * *
After crisscrossing the property, we stumble, finally, on what we call the big planter—a stone wall we resurrected and backfilled with topsoil and hundreds of bulbs—daffodils, scilla, allium, Chionodoxa, tulips—Asiatic lilies, perennial mums, and coneflower.
It backs up against the old lilac crescent.
Not where either of us ever imagined planting a tree.
“There’s a nice gap there between the old maples…” he offers.
“It will play with the punctuation of the DeGroot Spires and the Serbian spruce,” I reply.
We hoist the root sack up into the planter, roll it to the back, trampling the bulbs’ spent foliage, and site it next to the stump of an old native cherry that had recently fallen.
We circle around the stone wall and into the gladiola and dahlia beds to see if it would block the sun.
I go into the house to see what it looks like from the bedroom.
We head to the north garden to check on placement from that vantage.
“I think it works.”
* * *
I wipe a tear from my cheek and laugh at how useless this is in the rain.
David looks at me, wary that my laughter is some kind of accusation or ridicule.
I shrug and breathe, then go back to his first revelation.
“So, Dave, you vant to get rid of me? You vant to stop keeping me in your back pocket, eh?”
I raise my eyebrows, squint one eye, using a phony German interrogation voice to try to lighten the mood.
He doesn’t smile, of course.
“You know exactly what I mean,” he says.
“We’ve both been doing this. For too long.”
I did know.
I thought of the man I fell in love with, who seemed so strong, gentle, self-assured.
The David I often lose sight of, obscured by his flare-ups of immobilizing despair, his itchy anger.
His lack of communication and self-absorption that sometimes makes me scream to be heard, to be noticed.
I try to focus on the whole picture: the complex, wounded, often lovable human being here beside me, my own not-so-small bundle of wounds and dissatisfactions, and the mysterious and chaotic chemistry that is the inalterable consequence of Gregg and Dave.
“So what do you want?” I say, surprised at my own calm.
I look straight at him.
Ready at last for the truth.
I am not sure what I even hope to hear.
I love him.
It’s a gut punch to think of either one of us with someone else.
But really—old as we are, after all the pain and the unforgivable things we’ve said to each other—could we really let go of the all-too-present history of recrimination and unaccepted apologies?
Could we make some kind of new, sustained effort?
We both say things have been better since we separated, but I wonder if this is another manifestation of the relentless, revisionist nostalgia we both suffer from.
Could we actually relax and consistently enjoy each other?
Isn’t love—a love that has endured—enough?
I want to say yes, yes! but I hear the track of long-playing doubts and if onlys fill my head.
All I can be sure of is my growling hunger for clarity.
I let go of his boat, disentangle our paddles, and pull out of the shelter of the oak’s embrace.
We drift.
I’m no longer waiting for an answer.
It’s mine as well as his responsibility to decide.
I do a graceful nine-point turn and start heading back.
* * *
“It looks good there,” I agree, admiring the new specimen—a nice addition to the other beeches we’ve placed across the property.
We race against the setting sun.
I start to bend back the metal carrying cage and cut the burlap to loosen the root ball.
David begins to dig what I know will be a perfect hole.
While the flies continue to gather around my head and exposed wrists, David clenches his jaw, bends his hands back hard with arms stretched to forty-five degrees, and overextends his fingers.
His now-familiar smile of determination.
* * *
The sun struggles through the clouds, which, for a brief half hour, whiplashed an unimpeachable summer day.
I am just entering the current, pulling hard in the direction of our put-in, when I feel my boat tug and turn awkwardly against the flow.
David pulls us side by side.
His torso convulses slightly; he’s crying but sort of smiling at the same time.
He again pulls me to him, and this time tells me he doesn’t want to keep me in his back pocket.
Or empty me out and let me go.
He says he wants to have me in his front pocket.
Front and center, instead.
He squeezes my hand, and I feel something pass between us.
I nod, squeeze back, and smile through my own glassy eyes.
I can’t help but fast-forward to my dream life: a place of comfortable laughter and easy, steady connection.
Could this be the final turn in our meandering?
Silence.
I wonder why he doesn’t kiss me, or I him.
The soundtrack plays again: of couples I know, relationships they make movies about, love that heals and transforms.
I search to construct a parallel—a way that ours is just different, not lacking.
The current takes us, and we glide downstream.
We smile at each other in what feels like reassurance.
My kayak drifts ahead.
Occasionally, one of us calls to the other to move closer to shore and out of the way of a coming boat.
We lean back, paddles at rest, and dip our hands in to touch the cool water.
We let the current take us.
