Frozen, Stepping up!

She sat outside in the cold on the kitchen steps, smoked a cigarette right under the new quit-smoking sign we had now taped to the entry door. Our health inspection had gone well. We only needed an exit sign on the side door, like it would be possible to overlook a double door in a building that’s only 26’ x 20’. Minor complaints, easy fixes, and we passed with flying colors.

My friend looked so sad and lost, it tore me apart. Kurt would come home the next day and while they had been talking on the phone every evening, the situation itself had changed little. His former engagement still hadn’t been called off, because of his out-of-town work, and of course, my friend wondered -and rightfully so- if she had been just the ‘better deal’ for him.

She was angered that he hadn’t been paying the money for the room he had rented in Laurie’s home for a few months. My friend worried he was after her money, a concern most of us had right from the start. I knew my friend well enough to know, that most of what they had bought and all the money they had so quickly spent during the first days and weeks had been her idea. I didn’t even have to ask. She had bought his new wardrobe because she just didn’t like the way he dressed.

I sat down beside her, gently bumped against her shoulder with mine, just to let her know I was there for her. She nodded, then we sat quietly beside each other and watched the dogs goof around in the mud. Washing the dog’s paws every night in the garden tub in OUR bathroom had become part of my nightly routine. Some days I got lucky, and it was too cold for the mud puddles to thaw out, but most of the time that winter, nature was against me.

We both had to smile when we saw her little Wiener dog racing our Weimaraner girl through the dirt. A short while later, both dogs stood at the fence. I looked at our beautiful dog, happy eyes, beaming, teeth showing, muddy from her head to her little stumpy tail. For a split second, I questioned my sanity like every dog owner would.

I knew Kurt was wrong for my best friend. I didn’t think much of him and everybody else agreed with me. Right from the start, when she had opened not just her bedroom door but also her heart and her home, I had feared that she might get hurt. I had seen my friend suffer and grieve for many years, had watched her struggles while trying to come to terms with being a widow.

We were sitting outside on the three wooden steps that led to the smokehouse kitchen. We sat in the cold, smoked, and finally, she started talking. The kitchen was the warmer place, and the warmth of her home was just a few steps away, yet we stayed outside. There was no logic in it, but I assume we needed the space away from everything, just the two of us, shivering, smoking, talking.

Anger and disappointment, a broken heart now afraid to continue to love. I suppose it’s the same at any age. My first serious boyfriend dumped me when I was seventeen. He didn’t want to keep a relationship with a girl who only came home from boarding school twice a month. I had many sleepless nights over it, cried like we all do when we experience the special pain only love can give.

I didn’t know what bothered her more, that Kurt had asked another woman to marry him just a few months earlier, or that he owed money.

My friend had become very money-oriented. I had learned about it when she had filled me in why she and her sister weren’t close anymore. They had been like two peas in a pod, had talked numerous times a week on the phone, had visited each other a couple of times a year. One widowed, the other one divorced from the love of her life, they had a bond that seemed undestroyable.

Two years earlier, her sister and her youngest daughter had moved in with my friend, when her sister started to have health problems. COPD, like so many heavy smokers, in her case it was life threatening already when she had just turned fifty. My friend had offered to help, and so her sister packed her belongings, rented a moving truck and she and her not so happy teenager daughter ended up on my friend’s doorsteps a couple of hours later.

They slept in the same guest room, the place we now called OUR room, and after a few months they felt crowded and they made plans to add on to my friend’s mobile home. The large room I now used at an office quickly became a reality. They hired an architect and a contractor. They broke through the front wall right beside the porch, beautiful glass French doors would later lead to the porch. The new addition had everything they had wanted, a nice bay window, laminated flooring, two closets, and an extra heating and cooling system. The sisters split the costs and only a month later, the newly added bedroom was ready to be used.

Her younger sister’s health got worse quickly, once she even had to call an ambulance when my friend was at work. Her sister felt lonely and scared, missed her family, and wanted to move back home to Louisiana. My friend understood and everything was fine, until her sister asked for part of her money back. After all, the room she had paid half off for was now part of my friend’s home and had raised the value of the mobile home significantly.

They argued, my friend refused to give the money back, didn’t even consider negotiating or paying part of it. The older she got, the more she focused on her retirement. She wanted to live comfortably, wanted to enjoy her golden years debt free, on her own land, in her own house. She had so many plans, like so many of us. Somehow money became the main focus.

I was on her sister’s side, thought my best friend had acted wrong and should have paid at least part of the money back, but I was in no position to let her know. Now was not the time!

And so the mountain of things I felt I could not be honest about got higher and higher.

Kurt not paying his rent. “Just like I did when I left our home like a thief at night, when you picked me up?” I said it quietly, it weighed heavy on me. I had noticed the similarity in Kurt’s and our behavior and felt ashamed. Weeks, months had passed since the night when I had left our home, but now it felt like I was right back at square one. I felt overwhelmed with guilt again.

“That’s not the same.”

“Really? Why not? We didn’t pay our bills either and we didn’t notify the bank. We acted just like Kurt.”

I felt like crying. How could we have anything in common with him, but we did, and there was no denying it.

“Talk with him, let him explain,” I spoke up for Kurt and didn’t understand it, but it was the right thing to do. Let me explain. From then on I would ask for the same courtesy whenever someone tried to judge us for the time when we were houseless (homeless.)

As for the marriage proposal? It all had happened so fast. Did he really stand a chance at Christmas when she had seduced him, drunk as a skunk -both of them?

I had thought about it for a couple of days and for me it was simple – or I needed it to be simple. I wanted her to fall out of love with Kurt on her own. I didn’t want her to end the relationship before they really had a chance to get to know each other. She had been so happy. What if he was the right one?

I brought the prenuptial agreement up again, this time she listened. “We are not getting married right away,” she ensured me. I was proud of her.

We talked for at least an hour, freezing, holding each other’s hand, hugging in the end.

I brought up her drinking, asked her about her problem and her addiction. That day I learned I had not knowingly, indeed, enabled an alcoholic for many years. She started drinking heavily to overcome the loss of her husband and never stopped. She had tried to control it, hid it from friends like me successfully.

“I can drink less and stay sober for a while, but it always gets me in the end.”

I brought rehab up. She wasn’t ready. “Maybe one day, I don’t want to right now and it will only work if I really want to quit.” Just like smoking. I cannot remember all the times she tried to stop, one time even for almost a year. In the end, there was always one incident where she felt forced to buy cigarettes again.

“I am here for you, whenever you are ready, you don’t have to do it alone,” I assured her and we both started crying.

“You need to let Kurt know. He drinks too much and it won’t help your situation.” She agreed.

“Drinking and driving, that has to stop. Do you drink alcohol at work or in the morning at home before you leave?”

She didn’t, and I felt relieved.

“Then you can wait thirty more minutes until you are home. You can harm yourself in any way you want and there is nothing we can do, but I know you would never forgive yourself if you would hurt or kill someone in an accident just because you were intoxicated.” I sounded stern and meant it. “Do you want to end up in jail?”

My best friend agreed with me but hesitated first. We hugged again. By then we were shivering and finally, we got up and went into the kitchen. My husband didn’t say a word, didn’t ask a question, just shook his head.

“You two should go out tomorrow night,” she let us know. “Take the emergency money and go out for dinner, there might be some yelling when Kurt comes home.”

We nodded, neither one of us brought the missing envelope with the emergency money up.

Everything about the situation scared me. The idea that Kurt could hurt my friend emotionally, or that she would end up broke money-wise. The fact that an alcoholic was in a relationship with a heavy drinker or that an addict would have to deal with a breakup. No matter how I tossed and turned it, the outcome never seemed good.

Was I looking out for us or for her?