Cleaning house
The following exchange took place mid-June 2006 (and pretty much every month since our separation began in December 2004):
“Are you happy, Flo?”
“Am I happy? What do you mean?” I know exactly what he meant, but continued on as if I didn’t. “Financially, spiritually, emotionally? Specify.”
Endicott answered quietly, his voice broke, “Yeah, all of that. Are you happy?”
That’s how it started. He asked if I’m happy, reminded me we were happy together (so long ago), then promised we will be happy again, better than ever, if I return to him.
He has changed, you know. That’s what he said anyway. That’s what he always said.
My usual reaction was instant anger. “Are you f*cking kidding me? I’ll never go back to you. I’d rather be homeless than ever live with you again!”…Yeah, that was harsh (and almost true on several occasions).
After sixteen months of separation, sixteen months of my saying, “F*ck no, I’m not going back to you!” he could not accept my decision. He still wore his wedding ring. He still told me he loves me, how he always will. Half of the time he spoke to me, it was with amusement in his voice, as if sooner or later, I would see how funny this whole misunderstanding (our divorce) really is, then finally return to him.
At some point in the last couple of months, it occured to me that his devotion has very little to do with me as a person, and more to do with me as a possession; as if I’m another object to be collected and stacked in the never ending piles of junk in his home.
If you have ever been to Endicott’s home, you’d know exactly what I mean.
He owns a four thousand square foot duplex in the Miracle Mile area of Los Angeles. It’s one of those decrepid Spanish style homes in need of many expensive years of renovations. It’s the house you drive by from time to time in hopes of seeing a for sale sign out front so you can scoop it up for yourself. Well, keep on driving folks, ‘cuz he’ll never let it go.
Both floors of his home, as well as the four car garage behind the house, are covered in boxes stacked three (or more) feet high. As long as I’ve known him he has been “cleaning up” the house, throwing out items, only keeping the most important items. Like the boxes of t-shirts and flared jeans he wore in junior high over thirty years ago. He’ used to push them on me, insisted I try them on; when I did — and goodness help me, they fit! — he was angry and hurt when I refused to keep them and wear them on a regular basis. To justify their presence he said they’d also be great as props. Props for what, I’d ask. For a play or a film he might do in the future, he’d reply. Uh-huh, I’d always say before asking if he ever used them before (no), and if he had anything written down where he’d use them again (no).
I could ususally live with the stacks and stacks of stuff for a few weeks before I felt overwhelmed by the volume of abandonned plywood furniture, the empty champagne bottles from some dinner I no longer remembered five or six years earlier, clothes his ex-girlfriend left there in 1990. I’d yell at him to throw out the crap once and for all. He’d get equally angry, yelling that he did throw out a lot of stuff, but I never gave him credit for any of it. No, I’d yell ever louder, you just moved your boxes of crap into different boxes and restacked them across the house! “You don’t give me any credit for anything, Flo!” he’d shout. I could see our neighbors in their front yards staring at his house as I screeched, “You don’t deserve credit for anything, Jackass!”
…Wait, it gets better…
That reaction was tame compared to when I was hurt by the stuff in his house. Like the time the carpet in the stairwell came loose. I asked him for months to nail it down, but he was always too busy to take care of it. I tried to fix it myself, but the arthritis in my hands, shoulders and elbows hurt too much to do anything as physical (and seemingly simple) as swinging a hammer. One evening, as I walked down the unlit stairwell (a short in the hanging lamp that was never fixed though he promised it would be one day), my shoe caught on the rug. I teetered there for a moment thinking, “Oh crap, I’m going to land face first and die!” Fortunately, I landed (hard) on my ass and slid down a several steps before coming to stop, twisted and bruised up by the piles of stuff that sat on the stairs. Five years later I still have the lump (soft tissue dammage) on my ass as a souvenir. Thanks, Endicott.
Then there was the time Endicott placed a 1′ x 5′ pane of glass in front of an archway leading into a storage room (most of the rooms were storage rooms but this one was formerly a den complete with French doors and a balcony facing the front yard). Again, I yelled, ‘blah, blah, blah, safety hazard, blah, blah, blah, dangerous, blah, blah, blah, going to die!’ “Just don’t go in that room!” he’d say. “I have stuff in that room! One of these days, Endicott, I’m going to forget that’s there and I will trip over it! When I land, it’ll be with that mic stand through my neck! And if I live, I WILL blame you! I’ll make you sorry you were ever born!” (Truthfully, he probably already was, but that’s beside the point, right?) Like the loose rug before it, I tried to take care of the heavy glass panel but couldn’t lift it without hurting myself; it stayed where Endicott left it until, one evening, as I predicted, I walked into the dark room (the light switch was three feet away on another entrance to the room) and tripped over it. I wasn’t impaled by anything, but I did land hard (again) on a pile of plywood furniture and hard plastic office supplies before hitting the hardwood floor (again). Like the fall on the stairs, I layed there crying — half of it from pain, half from the seething anger I would unleash on Endicott whenever he came home — a few minutes before I could pick myself up and hobble away…By the way, he didn’t have a chance to move the pane because I did it myself. It hurt like hell to pick it up — not mention it that could have broke in half and sliced open my hands, wrists, or worse — but I moved it all by myself, then cursed him out for not doing it the first hundred times I asked.
…Who wouldn’t want to return to that?…
Sure, I’ve wanted to say that for years, but there is a point here: Endicott collects and keeps stuff, useful or not, and will not dispose of it regardless of whether it hurts us emotionally, or physically. I’m not a health care professional by any means, but it seems to me that when he chose boxes of junk over his wife, he had a problem. I’d say it’s a shame, he should get help, etc., etc., but now that he’s looking at me like I’m another object he won’t let go of, it’s creeping me out…I wonder if I’ll wake up one day in his basement, chained to the water heater, dressed in his rugby shirt from junior high and its matching high water flares, as he pets my hair telling me how happy we’ll be again…I was kidding, but now that I write that, I feel really uncomfortable! While I’m (almost) certain he’d never make a lady suit out of me or tell me, “It must rub on the lotion!” his relationship with stuff (and with me) is not healthy. How much worse will his situation become before he takes it seriously and gets help? I’m guessing it’s just a matter of time before he’s pinned under something or trips over something else and breaks his neck. Now I’m not kidding.
I have many personal items that I still need to pick up from his place. Much of it is spread around the house, probably already incorporated into stacks of boxes that he’s “cleaning up.” I asked him repeatedly to let me get my things. “Sure, Flo, anytime you want, you can come by and get your stuff. No problem,” he’d always say. I’d counter with, “Okay, how about this weekend? Is Sunday at 11 a.m. good for you, Endicott?” Oh, this weekend isn’t good. I have a shoot in La Habra, he’d say. My sister, from BFE, is back in town Sunday, and she needs to be driven around…
As much as I’d like to have my property back, I know he won’t part with it (or with me) without lengthy (and never ending) discussions of the many ways he’s busily cleaning out the house because he has changed his ways and that’s all due to me and he swears to Jeebus things will be different as soon as I give him a second chance and return to him because no one will ever love me the way he loves me…
No amount of reasoning with him will ever persuade him that he should let me go. Just as no amount of reasoning (or pleading, “Please Flo, just give me one more chance…”) will ever persuade me to return to him. I can say, “Endicott, the last four miserable years we spent together was one day after another of second, third, and fourth chances. We had three hundred and sixty-five days times four years which makes zero, carry the two, six carry the two, fourteen, yes 1460 days to get it right,” until I’m blue in the face, and it won’t make a difference.
He doesn’t want me because we’re compatable and complimentary. He wants me the way he wants the cheesy IKEA particle board furniture he’ll never throw out even as it falls apart in one of his many “storage” rooms while it waits to be donated to Goodwill…
Fool me once, Endicott, shame on you, fool me 1461 times, shame on me.
Flo
1 comment July 3rd, 2006