Tremors

Paula was sharing her email

with her lover. She wanted her friends to be his friends too.

She had had 20 years of separate friends with her former partner, and it had led eventually to an

earthquake in her life. She didn't want aftershocks...

But she had not read this email right through, and as she

did, she saw the sting lurking in the tail.

"Paula", Dottie had written, "I am still worried about you and M."

She didn't know quite what Dottie meant by this. It seemed to be out of the blue.

Paula's only reference to an 'M' in the previous

communication was to say that it was

wonderful living with Maverick, to love someone at last who actually loved her back,

who cared when she was down, who bought her little gifts, who worried about her,

who treated her like a person.

But she knew that Maverick would interpret Dottie's ambiguity amiss, that he would

read 'M' as Morgan, her former lover. 'Lover'? Morgan had not loved Paula for

many years before they split. Perhaps he had never loved her.

Maverick would read this parting sentence from Dottie as implying that Paula had been

talking to her about lingering feelings about her ex. But the only feelings that

remained now were a strong desire not to meet or think about

Morgan, or feel the pain of recent years. And feelings

of concern, still a concern that Morgan should

be happy in his new life, so the pain

could more easily be forgotten

and the door on that ugly

past be closed.

Maverick flew into a rage. He was hurt by what he'd read, or rather, by his

interpretation of it. It meant that Paula had been confiding in a friend - not him, her partner,

but a friend she had never met. And - about still having feelings for Morgan. Paula

had left him once already in an abortive attempt to 'return' to Morgan.

Or rather to what she had longed for Morgan and her to have

been. Was it happening again? But he didn't ask, he assumed.

The fact was that Dottie's concern was about the age gap between

Paula and Maverick - she was twice his age -

and the gulf between this English lady and her

new Latin friend....

Maverick refused to listen when Paula tried to explain. She

had not told him the truth when she was thinking of returning to Morgan, so why

should he believe her now? When she tried to produce the earlier email so he could see for

himself that she had not even mentioned Morgan, and that all her references to Maverick were glowing

with the happiness she felt, he covered his eyes and walked out. He had decided that he would

never again read Paula's emails, never again listen to her claims, and that was that.

It all made sense to him. The shirt that Paula had bought for Morgan at Christmas. She'd said it

was because she had always bought him a present, and did not want to make him

sad now by making this the first Christmas to go unmarked. They were,

despite all, still trying to remain friends. Maverick laughed in scorn.

To him it meant Paula wanted to hang on to her

relationship with Morgan.

And the fact that Paula was taking Prozac.

Further proof of her regrets and depression about leaving Morgan.

Actually Paula was taking them because the year had been

unbearably stressful. All she had worked for over the past twenty years,

her house in the country and its beautiful garden, her apartment

on the beach in Hawaii. All that she - in her desperation

at having no love in her life - all that she had chosen

to see as making her special... It was gone.

And Maverick was unpredictable.

He was as passionate in

his anger as he was

in his love.

That

was why she needed

Prozac.

She was shaking now.

Because she was doing what she had always done -

making her happiness dependant on someone else, making Maverick

the new skyscraper of her life, just as before she had made Morgan. And when Maverick

withdrew his affection, her world came apart. It was happening again.

She had seen Maverick as her last

chance in life to find happiness, and its Foundations

 were crumbling.

"I don't trust you," Maverick said, pulling away from her. He covered his ears so as not to hear her

protestations of innocence, adding ".. and don't insult my intelligence!"

Dottie's email, the shirt, the prozac... meanings on a pathway to destruction.

"You and Morgan... the bloody internet... it's bigger than me," he spat at her, "I'm

not fighting it any more. I'll never invade your privacy again. And you

will never read my emails again..."

There was silence.

Paula had no way to defend herself. Maverick's kingdom of false meanings

was impregnable. Despair shook her, wave after wave. She looked at the grey winter trees,

the leaden roof opposite, the oily grey ripples in the river, and imagined herself

Alone.

Eventually, she couldn't bear the separation any longer

 and hugged Maverick, and he seemed to respond, but with a hug of two meanings.

It lacked passion. Body warmth but no emotional warmth. A hand patted her

on the back as if to say "OK, enough hugging.".

Alone again.

She broke away and went out onto the balcony. Stared down the three stories to the cold hard stone

of the alleyway. She began to explore an old and friendless place. It was below zero, and

a muscle in her leg began to shiver, adding its accompaniment to her occasional nervous

twitches, and the arrhythmia of her heart. Under stress, the tablets no

longer worked. She was tired of being shaken,

tired of pain. Tired of life.

Maverick came to the door and said "I'm not coming out, I only have my T-shirt

and underpants, but Paula, please come in." He was reaching out with his hand, and Paula took it.

They sat on the couch, and he brought her a glass of juice. But this tiny gift could not span the distance between

them. He returned to the kitchen, and crouched, peering into the depths of the oven.

After ten minutes, Paula returned to the balcony, tempted to sit on the rail with her legs

outside, but deterred by the thought that a security camera might see, and

that Reception would call them, or worse, the police. Embarrassment

chained her exploration. And this time there was no hand to span

the chasm between the balcony and the flat. Maverick

had retired to the bedroom, and was leaning

against the wall, his head in his hands.

Paula felt the edges of death,

and shivered anew. Maverick had seen only the cold

of the night. He did not know of the hundred times Paula had thought

of jumping from that previous balcony, the balcony of Morgan's

flat, longing for release from the agony of loving, and

being chilled in return. Death fascinated her,

but it was not what she wanted now.

She came back in. Found her

man in the bedroom.

Hugged him.

Kissed.

He led her by the hand

to the kitchen, and began serving up the food. Said

"Would it be OK to eat in bed?"

But she didn't trust

this new warmth, or the invitations

Maverick was offering. She

knew what he was thinking. So wrong. So

desperately far from the longing she

really felt. To be free of Morgan forever. To be

so far from the ugliness she felt every time some unwelcome

reminder led her mind to that crumbled city of the past.

She didn't trust the new warmth because she knew the tectonics of Maverick's

fear would lurk beneath their relationship, holding it in its silent,

 remorseless, relentless grip...

until the Big One turned up, unexpected, in a moment of

innocence beneath a cloudless sky, and sheared their happiness

forever.

Her mind traced the sharp edges of anger towards Dottie, and

her careless, inappropriate, damaging comment. She loved Maverick, and

things had been going well. Why couldn't Dottie just accept and enthuse? She felt like

taking the hammer from its drawer and smashing the laptop into tiny fragments.

End all contact with the so-called friends who brought her such pain.

And as that anger faded, she fell into a fitful,

nightmared sleep.

She awoke, tormented,

and clung to Maverick. She thought of that comment by Morgan...

"You think I want your sweaty, clinging body close to mine?"

and she loosened her grip

...a little.

And told Maverick of the pain she felt,

but he was in pain too, and wanting the escape of sleep.

He did not respond.

"Life is such shit." she said, and slept some more.

Maverick rose, pulled back the blind, peered from the window,

and said "Blue sky! It's going to be a nice day!"

And Paula thought how strange it was that Maverick should think that a blue sky

could mean a nice day.

She didn't shower. Life was shit. She left her watch where it had fallen on

the ground. Life was such shit. She refused breakfast. Life was such total shit. She didn't take

her heart tablets or the prozac. She didn't buy the Sunday papers, and when her desk calendar fell

on the floor, and scattered its months at her feet, she threw it in the bin. Life had

no meaning. It was pointless. She wanted to shrink to a point and

disappear. More, she wanted to have never existed.

But she reached out. Offered to make Maverick a sandwich.

He said thanks, but no. And that he was going out to buy some

cream for his shaving bumps, and did Paula want anything?

Paula leapt onto the offered drawbridge, and said

no, she didn't want anything, but could she

come too? She didn't want him to go

and brood alone, disappear for

hours, uncontactable.

They walked in such silence.

As they crossed the bridge, Paula gazed down at the

icy Thames beneath, and wondered how it would be to jump,

float away, freeze, sink. She toyed with it as if it were an aching

tooth. And then thought of the embarrassment of being pulled

out by a passer-by. Thought instead of crossing the

the busy traffic without looking. She had done

that before . Another comment on life.

But by then they were turning

down the path, walking beneath the willows on the

riverbank. There were cars passing

there, too, but they were no

threat to anyone at

that speed.

Maverick made for a bench and sat. Paula stared into the water,

examining the muddy, murky bottom. She walked further, to the landing stage,

stooped, felt the temperature of the water. It seemed no worse

than Bournemouth in summer.

She thought of jumping, but  then she thought of having to traipse back,

squelching through Reception as the security staff watched, open mouthed. She

wanted to show the extremity of her despair, the horror of

her feelings, but she didn't really want to die.

And she certainly didn't want the

security staff giggling

about her.

Anyway, what

would it do to Aunty? To Maverick?

To her boss?

And it would be SO cold. She remembered jumping

innocently into Lake Brienz in Switzerland, carefree, beneath another blue sky, forgetting

its waters came from a glacier. The convulsion this reality

had produced still echoed in her body.

What a way to go...

like falling from the balcony, or being crushed

by a bus. She could find a way to do it painlessly on the Net.

But what would it do to those who loved her?

And as she hesitated, a dog jumped off the landing stage

to retrieve a stick thrown by its owner, and swam back with

cheerful glee. Paula sighed, returned to the

bench, and glanced at Maverick.

"Would you like to go and visit Aunty?"

she suggested.

He loved to visit Aunty... he adored her.

There was a long pregnant pause.

"Or maybe go to

Madame Tussauds?"

Maverick smirked.

 "I know you are trying," he said, "but we will find something

else to do together..." and she saw that the door

was being left open.

The river was still, reflections

rippling it white and blue.

An elderly woman stood in the doorway

to her little flat on the other side of the river. Gazed out

for the longest time, then sat on her balcony and read. Paula

wondered if she would die alone and unwanted. She thought of

her mum, and how lonely she had been. And how her mum had

phoned her, more than once in the middle of some long forgotten

 business crisis, to read out the text of a rival company's ad -

an ad she had seen a hundred times before. She

 thought how she had heard the words of that ad's copywriter, and not

the plea of a lonely, scared, old lady, and had brought the

conversation to a polite close, and got on with her work. Now

her mum was gone, forever, and there was no way she

could ever put right what she had left undone.

The sun went in.

They decided to go back to the apartment, and Paula sat on the couch,

determined not to eat for the rest of the day. Perhaps a hunger strike would

prove how much she loved Maverick, how much anguish she felt

when he misjudged her, punished her for things of which

she was innocent. And apart from all that, it would be

a slap in the face for life's meagre

efforts to please her.

But Maverick was going to extra lengths to prepare a nice meal.

Even making a fruit salad and drenching it in brandy sauce. She couldn't hurt him

by refusing to eat. And so instead she kissed him with every drop of

tenderness she could find, and Maverick kissed her back.

The bridge was restored.

A few nights later, on New Year's

Eve, they took champagne and shared it with

Aunty. Laughed, joked, ate, drank. And then on the way home

they visited the hill. Walked through the snow by moonlight, high above the

twinkling lights of the valley below. And at around 3am, with temperatures plunging

to -4, they drove home, holding hands, and listening

to Rachmaninov.

...

And the Big One?

Well, maybe that was

the Big One.

Certainly it was one

in a long line of tremors.

Maverick himself had came from a turbulent

relationship. His girlfriend had been the same age as him, but

 had never had a relationship before. She lacked

experience and confidence,

and when problems arose, she lied.

And lied. And lied.

Until her lies were the lie of the land,

and everywhere

hid the

truth

After the relationship failed, Maverick

remained alone for a long time. He remembered it as a relaxing time. He

had not had to worry about other people's behaviour.

Well, that was how he chose to remember it.

After a year

he met Paula, and she started to show that things could be different.

He started to believe that he had been wrong, and that the relationships did not

have to be just like the previous ones. He started to believe again that a relationship

could be constructed on a base of trust and understanding. That this

firm foundation could withstand the shocks of life.

They lived in different countries.

They wrote, and got

to know each other's written thoughts.

Paula flew to meet him, frequently,

and the passion and

intensity of the times together was

breathtaking.

After a while, they decided to live together. Maverick's

dream was to leave behind his dead-end job,

the boss whose IQ could not compete with Maverick's

modest age, leave behind the death of his dreams.

He  moved to England, and

a new reality began

to emerge..

 In Maverick’s mind, everything between Paula and her

ex-partner was over, and so he agreed to live temporarily in the

property Paula had shared with ex-husband. Morgan

remained in London.

But the place

was full of memories of the past,

and Maverick felt comfortable there. He trusted in Paula

and in her feelings about the past. He thought Morgan was a door

that already had been closed. But something unexpected had started to happen.

Paula started to show reactions about the place and the memories there.

And when she cried several times feeling the pain that these ghosts were bringing back to her,

Maverick stood by her, supporting her, sharing his heart and shoulder because he could not see her in pain.

She was crying for someone else, but nevertheless, Maverick was there for her.

It was the first time in his entire life that such a thing

was happening. After the second time it happened, he started

to feel frightened by her ghosts and became uncomfortable in that newly strange place.

And then, within one month of moving in together something

happened to seriously weaken the structure of the relationship.

Paula knew she was beginning again to feel things

about the former partner,

the memories, the feelings of pain at his grief.

His grief, to course, was that she had found someone new three years after

he had started his own affair, three years after he had

abandoned her in all but sharing the

same houses together.

She didn't want these feelings.

She knew what returning to Morgan would mean, and she didn't want that.

She just wanted to be happy with Maverick. But she also wanted to

keep her house and the comforts she had built with Morgan.

And she wanted Morgan to be happy.

 So she decided to keep these disturbing feelings secret,

not telling Maverick. He would leave her, she was sure, and he was her dream.

He was her escape from an ugly past. Her chance for happiness.

And she loved him. She wanted to build her life with him.

But when they took a brief holiday, Morgan had

called her on her mobile, saying he could not cope, that she was away,

building a new life with someone else, and he was SO jealous, so hurt.

She was disturbed by the call not least because Maverick

was next to her, and would obviously know who was

calling. Then Morgan said the magic words.

He said he had nothing

left to live for, and was thinking of

ending it. That Paula knew him better than anyone

had ever known him, or ever would, and that

without her there was no one

to talk to, and he felt

he would be better dead.

And Paula knew

that feeling, and

seeing it in the man she had

cared for for half her

adult life, she fell

apart.

Maverick saw her turn pale. Saw her start to shake.

Saw her cry.

She stopped the car. She was trying to reason with this ghost from

the past. He saw she still loved him, and it was like a dagger through his heart.

He did not want to see any more. Could not bear to. He opened the

door, and saying he would let the two of them talk in private,

he walked off into the beauty of the Lake District to

seek a bus stop. He felt completely

destroyed.

Paula, torn between the past and the future,

got out and followed Maverick. Told Morgan she would call him

back and hung up. Cut his pleas off. Abandoned him. Pleaded with Maverick to return to the car.

Said her feelings for Morgan were just the feelings one

felt for a family member one had lived with

for 23 years. You may fall out of love,

but you don't stop caring.

There were different kinds of love, she said.

And there was much truth in that.

So, once more, Maverick stood by her in support.

Once more he held the Paula who was crying for someone else.

Paula never told him the full truth about her feelings.

Perhaps out of fear. Perhaps out of denial,

because she did not want to go

back to Morgan, did

not want to feel what she was feeling.

She didn't call him back.

She feared he night have killed himself. She

feared he might already be dead, and she, who could

have saved him, had abandoned him in his time of greatest need.

It hurt. After so many years of caring for someone, it tore her apart..

But she didn't call him back. She wanted him to know

he had to make his own future now, that she

could not be there for him when his grief

was a longing for her.

She didn't tell Maverick all these things.

Instead, she spoke to her sister-in-law, and

Maverick sat on the landing stage beside Lake Windermere,

his heart breaking, with thoughts of going home to

South America. And then she took a

tranquiliser, and went to talk

with the man she loved,

tried to persuade him to stay.

And she fell asleep as Maverick held her.

Instead of telling him her many feelings,

she decided to tell a friend the truth that should have been Maverick's.

He was the one who was there, standing by her and trying to help, but

she excluded Maverick, and from fear of losing him, and she minimised her feelings.

Yes, she still had love in her heart for Morgan, but she would not

let this stand in the way of her new found happiness with

Maverick. And love is such a wide word. What

she felt for Morgan was not passion or

desire. She did not want him back.

There were no fantasies, there was no

sense of romance. But the sense of caring, of anguish at his grief - however much

Morgan deserved it, however much he had caused it,

that sense of caring

scared her with its intensity.

And yes, caring with that intensity was a

form of love.

Things could not be the same.

For Maverick, Love was the Big One. And she still loved Morgan.

It was all there in the email she had written to her friend. She actually used the word.

The truth was there, the truth that he somehow already knew and which Paula did not have guts to tell.

When Maverick asked her about the email, and Paula replied:

“It is not what you think… You are jumping to conclusions. " And his memories of Lucia's

lies flooded back, and he did not hear Paula's next words,

"There are different

kinds of love. I care about him as if he were my brother, or a relative.

I do not love him as a lover.”

Perhaps she should have said "I love him

as a lover one has left, I love him by caring that he destroyed

what we had, and I care that he hurts. I love him without desire, without fantasy, without dreams,

without romance, I love by wanting him to be happy in his new life.

I love the love that one has to walk

away from. And I am walking away from it."

But she didn't even say that to her friend.

She had no map for this strange

and confusing new place.

this place where

love is the lie of the land.

Maverick distanced himself from her. He complained about staying home and

doing nothing together. He complained about becoming a couch

potato and sitting watching TV instead of talking. But when

she suggested things to do, he went out onto the

balcony, sighed, and pulled faces. They

were no longer able to make one another happy. They could no

longer just get on with their lives..

After Maverick walked out, Paula

no longer wanted to make plans for the future.

Her dream had turned into a sullen, unhappy man, who did

not enjoy her company. She was living in a small flat

instead of the big house and luxury she had

been used to. All that would have been fine if she had her

dream. She knew all too well that material

possessions count for nothing if there is no love, but

as love waned, the support those things had

once offered began again to shout to her.

Her Jacuzzi shouted to her,

her sunny secluded garden, with the sound of singing birds.

The large expanses of her lounge, the brick stairs

where the picture hung - the one her

mum had painted for her new home

all those years ago. They

sang to her like

Sirens, calling her to her doom.

Their fragrance lured

her to savour

them, savour these flowers

one should not smell.

If she went back to Morgan, she could

keep them. He was gone, but she

could keep the things which made her special.

Why give them up just to escape

Morgan's indifference, his moods, his cruelty,

for someone who offered now not

dreams, but indifference,

moods and

cruelty.

She lost interest in sex.

She felt tired, exhausted, wanted to escape into sleep.

Maverick asked her one night if she minded if he

went to the bathroom to have a wank, and

she said it was OK, she didn't mind.

Maverick was appalled. He

remembered the times with her, all

those thousands of miles away, and how they

had made love constantly, everywhere, in every room, in the

shower, in the car... he remembered

how he had complained to his mother about the ants

in his bed. and how she told him he was shameless, and

did he think she hadn't seen the yoghurt

stains on the sheets, and why couldn't they eat

yoghurt out of bowls like everyone else

instead of off each other...

And now,

where was that love?

Paula had lied

even about the fact of not being able to make love

blaming the medication she was taking. But there was more to the truth

than that. . And for Maverick, the reason was there, written to her friend: “Even sex.. I can’t do it at the

moment… I don’t know how Maverick has been so strong.”

Even the truth about their love life were there, exposed to

her friend, not to Maverick.

Well, part of the truth.

His own life and emotions were in danger.  From that point on,

hew faced Paula with the fact that certain things can open a huge gap between two people.

One friend supports the other in support, giving them strength when they needed it , even

though they cried for someone else. Fine for a friend to do, and they had always

said that their love should be founded on friendship, but for a lover,

things do not work like that.

This is not the kind of pain that you can share with a lover.

Maverick felt that Paula wanted him to love her more than he loved himself.

She would say: “Forget it, let’s move on, let's just enjoy our lives.”

She did not have had the sad experience he had had in the past with Lucia,

and she did not stop to think that

 if things were so simple and easy to forget,

perhaps she would not need the support of medication. 

 ...

When she left, that bed was SO big.

The hours lying awake SO long. And it was SO hard to get up,

knowing that breakfast would be alone, that washing

the dishes would be like rubbing his soul over broken glass.

Thousands of miles from home, alone, utterly alone, no family, no friends,

no one to support him, no one to talk to, and surrounded by ghosts of the departed,

of the shattered dream. He invited fellow students to come and share lunch

with him, and felt such desperation when they said no.

And the sense that it was all happening again was yet worse…

being left was beyond words in its horror, but in the thought that he had

not been trusted enough to be told what the true fears were, what she had been feeling,

what had been happening to her inside, in that thought lay desperation for life itself.

It was becoming clear to Maverick that relationships were the stereotype

that he had always feared.

Anna, Lucia,

...Paula...

These traumas were written large on Maverick’s map of the past.

They were written smaller on Paula’s.

On her map in large letters was the memory of when Maverick had left her… yes, he had left her, and before she left him...

called her one morning when she was working up in London, after the usual hugs and kisses of their parting,

to say that he was moving out. That he would be gone by the time she got back.

And he was. Stayed overnight in a small hotel in Wimbledon with his

mobile left behind, so she could not contact him or talk.

She had thought that was the end,

and after he returned the next day her trust was under siege

from fears he would do it again, and perhaps next time, he would

be on a plane to South America, and it would be irreversible.

This abandonment was on Maverick’s map too, but hidden in the

deep shadow of the reasons he remembered for

having walked out that morning.

...

They often dreamed of big threatening things. Never more than

when they were apart. Paula dreamt of Elephants...

“The Elephant is a big solid, stiff, hard, cylinder

shaped thing that rises from the ground like a tree trunk” Maverick was saying…

 “Rubbish,” she was replying,

“it is a slender, prehensile tube which floats effortlessly a

bove the ground, forming gentle curves…”

“You are so self-centred,” he was saying, sharply,

feeling deeply wronged. “If it was YOUR foot it was standing on, you wouldn’t say that…”

And she was stroking the trunk, and knowing she was right.

Thus was their Elephant.

They found him at every intersection of every path. Of course, deep down, they both knew that it was

the same Elephant every time. They even gave him a name.

They called him “Talking”.

If only they could have made one Elephant instead of many…

but they each hung onto their own parts of the gentle, giant, and much wronged beast.

If only they could have put their two maps together…

but instead they each fought for their own diminished, abbreviated versions,

saw no value in the map of the other.

Where pathways crossed there were battles, not reunions.

Parts, not wholes. A

World...

divided.

So there was fear, not respect for the treasures of their diversity,

no love for the way their experiences

complemented each other …

And yet, they could not stay apart.

After a week of agony, they met. And they wrote

their reconciliation together on the hillside. They made love,

and yes, it moved. And the Big One smiled, and shook his head.

He knew in the future they would again pull him apart, many times. He would

only be safe when they got to love him more than his parts. 

And he wandered off with a sigh,

shaking their world with

every footstep.