On patience and trust

two steps forward and three steps back

“Goose, come over and bring ice cream,” I say, texting my ex-husband Jim who lives just a few miles away on the other side of town.

“What kind of ice cream?” he says, in an instant text reply.

“Surprise me,” I say.

It’s a Tuesday afternoon at the end of the workday and it’s just me and the dog. Minutes ago, I turned off the “Relaxing Mozart for dogs” I had playing on Youtube all day while I worked, the black and white photos fading in and out on the flatscreen in the living room. I notice that it is staying light out longer now. At exactly 5pm, I decide to simply sit and watch the sun move around the empty, silent house. Every so often, I look over at the dog, still curled up on her chair and looking pretty sullen and brooding to me, but maybe that’s simply how she is sometimes. It’s fine. I feel the same way. It’s been a very low energy day and neither of us have moved much since morning. I’m trying not to make it mean anything.

A few minutes ago, Janyce sent me a text of the sun setting on Harding’s Beach in Chatham. She’s outside taking a walk and I’m glad she took my advice. Well, it wasn’t really advice, more like a pleading order to get away and work in peace for a few days. Forget that we’re both on our last nerve, that we’re not at our best.

Harding’s Beach at sunset

“Just what the doctor ordered,” I text.

“You da best doc,” she texts me back.

There’s this one scene in the HBO dramedy Somebody, Somewhere where the main character needs to apologize to her best friend and she shows up at his garage interrupting his Zumba workout. It’s a funny, poignant, emotional scene in one of the best half-hour television shows I’ve watched in a long time. It has the kind of screenplay I wish I wrote: perfect images of the landscape in small-town Manhattan, Kansas and bits of dialogue that illustrate each character’s feelings of failure, what it means when you define family for yourself, and the experience of starting over, again and again.

I put the phone down and notice the dog sitting up on her chair with her ears at attention before she jumps off, wiggling towards the door and wagging her little stump of a tail.

“Chicken, I’m here,” he says from the garage. I open the door and Jim hands me a shopping bag.

“I got two kinds, chocolate and caramel swirl,” he says.

“You take the caramel one back home,” I say.

I already have my hands on the chocolate container with the lid off, scooping big chunks into two white bowls and drizzling a little maraschino cherry juice on top.

“Where’s the J- Dawg?” he says.

“I sent her away to the Cape to decompress,” I say.

It’s not lost on me that I’m also coping with the many annoyances and disappointments lately with ice cream right now and not with a healthy walk in nature. But Jim won’t say anything to me. He knows my mercurial moods and bad habits better than most people. Maybe even more than Janyce. I hand him a dish.

“How’s it going with the trainer?” he says, sitting down on the ottoman. The dog walks by him with ease and jumps back up onto the overstuffed chair that matches it — her chair now— draped with an orange Harley Davidson motorcycle blanket and covered in dog fur.

“Well, she says that training a fearful dog is the most frustrating thing in the world,” I say, digging into my ice cream. “We just have to be patient.”

He says nothing. We both eat in silence, scraping the bottom of the bowl with our spoons.

“Thanks for coming over,” I say.

“Yeah, I tell the guys at work all the time that I have to go help my ex when she calls or she might divorce me,” he says.

“Very funny,” I say.

“It will get better,” he says.

“It already is better,” I say. “Hey, want to watch an episode of Somebody, Somewhere, with me? I say, pointing the remote control at the screen on the wall. “It’s funny and will remind you of our favorite Bill Forsyth film.”

“Sure,” he says. “Is there any more chocolate ice cream?”