“What do you know about trust, Libby? What…what’s it about?
Does it mean you trust someone to do
something or trust them not to do
something? When you say, ‘I trust you,’ what does that mean?”
Eve was at
Libby’s place having eaten supper there, but more than the meal, she was there
because of what twenty years of steadfast friendship offered at a moment like
this. They’d sheltered each other through the tempest of their teens and into
adulthood, but this recent devastation, Eve’s marriage crumbling without
forewarning, stunned them both. It had rocked Eve’s world such that the
aftershocks had not yet permitted her to regain her balance.
“I can’t answer for the human race, Eve.”
“I’m not asking you to. I just want to know what you think.”
Libby replied. “What does that matter? It’s Tommy who’s the
issue here. He’s the one you need to ask.”
“I’ll get to that, but right now I’m taking a poll. What
does it mean when you say to me, for example,
I trust you?”
The two women were good for each other. Libby was the
methodical one, quiescent and orderly. While the high-energy Eve streaked
through ideas like a mouse through a maze. But it was Eve who would persist, doggedly
plucking away contradictions like de-linting a sweater.
Libby sat pondering the question, noting it wasn’t as
straightforward as she had initially thought. “Well, I guess ‘I trust you’ starts
with who I know you as—your beliefs and the usual responses they create—and includes
my expectation all of that will remain constant.”
“So, I’m not out of
order to see Tommy’s behavior as a breach of trust?”
“You question that?” Libby ‘s eyebrows raised in surprise.
“Sometimes, Lib, I’ve heard people at work comment that I
expect too much. That the world isn’t that perfect. I didn’t think I was asking
for perfection, but merely wanting people’s best. So, I’ve been wondering if
maybe I’d raised the bar too high and Tommy’s choice was in reaction to that.
I’ve never felt much expertise with people skills, and I thought just maybe
this was my fault.
“You know marriage was never my aim. I’m a good manager in the
work environment, but something as interwoven as two people in a marriage, that
always looked like an enormous risk. But the night I met Tommy, something moved
in me that I’d never felt before, something I was unwilling to deny.”
“I don’t see it that way – your fault” Libby rejoined. “He’s
a big boy. He could have protested like an adult if he felt put upon. But as
I look at it, I do think the notion of trust means I can count on you. What
else could it mean?”
Momentarily caught in Eve’s urgency, Libby took a breath to
calm herself. Each of her next words came out deliberate yet soft. “Take a step
back, gal. Give yourself a break.”
But Eve, her desperation rising, just couldn’t leave it
alone. Her mind demanded she make sense of this inconceivable situation.
“So
maybe we should have defined the choices or behaviors where we’d expected constancy from each other. Then we could be certain of what trust meant to us?”
“That could be, but somehow that doesn’t sound like the
solution, Eve. It just seems like that should be obvious to people who care
about one another.”
“Maybe that’s the problem, Lib, we assume things are obvious
when that’s not the case.” Eve sat pondering for moment. “But after five years... five years,” she said, her voice drifting off as she struggled to understand,
“how could he not care what I’d feel like if he cheated on me? So, what does
that mean?”
Libby sat quietly staring at the floor. These were questions
she had no answer to.
Eve pushed back against the upright portion of the chesterfield
staring into space; her exterior still, her insides frenzied.
Then she then leaned forward. “When I caught him in the act
of sleeping, in our bed I might add, with that girl he met at Frank’s, that made
it clear we have a different definition for trust in the realm of sexual
loyalty. But how ‘bout decency? How ‘bout sensitivity? How bout’ safety? How
bout…” Libby, torn by the anguish in Eve’s eyes, reached across the space
between them and took Eve’s face tenderly in her hands. She rested her forehead
against her friend’s.
“Don’t go there, Eve, don’t. That road is perdition’s highway.” Libby held her
until she felt Eve’s tension lessen. Eve, momentarily mute, stroked her hand
down Libby’s face, a silent thank you.
Eve retreated and sat staring at the floor. Quieter now, but
even more forlorn, she said, “Then there’s this, Libby, he said not to be upset
because that episode didn’t mean anything to him. Do men ever listen to what
they say? Didn’t mean anything? So it’s
possible then to have great intimacy with another and have it mean, nothing. Could
that not imply that many a night we had sex and it meant nothing to him? Begs
the question doesn’t it? Who is this man, Libby? How could I have gotten it so
wrong?”
Those questions had taken both women into a world neither
wanted to acknowledge. Eve often dug into a topic with the fierce intent of a
burrowing terrier, and Libby, used to it, could hold her own. But Libby’s heart
wasn’t in it tonight. This conversation was too painful to encourage Eve’s
persistence by responding.
Silence filled the room. Eve was a wreck; her bearings lost.
Reason had always been her ally, but for the life of her she could not make
sense of what had happened. Her husband, her marriage partner of five years,
was now an unknown, his sudden choice of behavior completely out of step with
everything she thought he was and valued. She was convinced answers would
rescue her, if she could just stop drifting into the emotional bedlam that sight
set off – opening her bedroom door on the two of them. Unable to tear that
scene from her thoughts, she was left with this continuous loop videoing before
her mind’s eye, him lying there with whomever she was, lying in their bed, laughing and touching, aglow
with this ‘meaningless’ encounter. Logic proclaimed a simple verdict: Tommy was
a thankless cheat. Only that indictment didn’t do anything toward addressing
the pain of betrayal. It just left her out there in emotional limbo. She tried
to conceive of what mattered so much about trust that having it violated left
you feeling like some mortally wounded creature, but nothing came to her. She
threw her hands out to her sides as if breaking an imagined fall. They hit the
sofa cushions where she sat, her fingers spreading out like cat claws, holding
her rigid; barely breathing. Though she remained upright, in her mind she plummeted
into oh-so-sweet memories of the past. Lib, unaware of what was happening to
Eve, watched her friend’s face soften as if it were melting, while her eyes remained
bereft.
۰۰۰
“Eve, I’d like you to meet Tommy an old school chum.” The evening
Eve thought was going to be another boring social commitment she’d dutifully
fulfill took a sudden turn. On that summer’s evening, star-struck as they were;
they sat sharing tidbits from their lives like hors d’oeuvres before a feast. Later
he escorted her home, kissed her at her door and said he’d call in the morning.
And so he did.
Her mind then skipped from one scintillating memory to the next. How gentle they
were with each other, how willing to find out what pleased one another. They
were both playful and intense, their passion sparking like flint on steel. Had
anyone asked if she was satisfied, deeply satisfied even, she’d have said yes
without hesitation. Five years of glory, that’s how she saw it. But did he feel
that way too? She never saw reason to ask.
۰۰۰
Libby got up and came to sit beside Eve. She draped her arm
around her friend’s shoulders and spoke softly. “I am so sorry, Eve. I never
saw it coming either. I thought you two owned the moon and stars. And worse, I
don’t have a ghost of an idea how to help you take your pain away. You know me,
ours is the only relationship I’ve ever ventured into. I don’t think my dog or tropical
fish count. Wanting to feel not so useless, she searched her jeans pockets for
a tissue. Pulling one from a back pocket, she used it to blot the tears which now
rolled down Eve’s cheeks in rivulets. Not a sound came from Eve. It was eerie,
this level of grief, this depth of turmoil. Lib didn’t know this Eve and it
rattled her. Each sat in her own snarl of confusion, isolated in silence. Libby
broke first. “What can I do to help? Ask of me anything.”
Eve shook her head and shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll call you
tomorrow, Lib, then ask me again.” Libby hugged her. Eve rose, waved backwards
over her shoulder and padded out.
It was late, but home didn’t call to her. Instead she roamed
the streets of the city’s West Side, window shopping, hoping for anything to
distract her, to hold her anguish at bay if only for moments. As she meandered
aimlessly, she unwittingly wandered into the quaint streets of an artsy
neighborhood with its funky shops and her favorite all-night bakery. The light
outside its door drew her moth-like. Why hadn’t she thought of Rudy, the night
baker? All those wee-hour conversations they’d had over the years. Born in
Holland, he lived through WW II before immigrating to Canada and moving to
Vancouver. Both of them were night hawks, but it wasn’t that or his maturity
that attracted her. Rather it was his perspective, one none of her other
friends had. He lived on an edge, not by choice but by the happenstance of war.
You could feel it. Yet he always seemed to keep his balance.
The shop’s soft lighting from midnight to early morning created
a comforting atmosphere, almost cozy. She’d always walk to the counter that ran
in front of the muffin, scone and pastry cases. Sitting on one of the stools
made it easy to hold a private conversion with Rudy while allowing him still to
attend to his work. When she came through the door this evening, he focused on
her reddened eyes and pained expression. He had a cup of coffee in front of her
before she even sat down and with no one there to notice, he laced it with a
bit of brandy.
“I look that bad, eh?”
“I’ve seen you better.” He smiled briefly.
He finished setting the oven for his next batch of scones.
Then he picked up his coffee cup and came round the counter, sitting on the
stool next to hers. He waited.
Eve sat with both hands clutching her coffee mug while she
stared into it. “This started with finding my Tommy in bed with another woman,
in our bed actually, and then him saying it meant nothing. That’s when I began
to let myself see that what we expected from each other, required of each other,
differed. Then up popped that puzzling word, trust, and the complexities it
spawned once again.” She lifted her head and turned toward Rudy. “I thought I
had moved beyond that fear, Rudy. Yet this time it feels more monstrous. I’m
afraid to move for fear of slipping in over my head.”
“What do you really want to know?” Rudy got right to the
point. His life had long ago denied him dithering, but in deference to her
obvious distress, he kept the usual abruptness out of his voice.
“It’s this trust thing. What’s real about it? Or is it
something we’ve merely deluded ourselves with, a succor for our fears, a hedge
against the dark night of the soul, but like a tiny pocket light incapable of
brightening the spot where it’s most needed? Can we really trust another, or is
it just some dreamed up fantasy we wish were true?”
Rudy lit a cigarette. He liked the
night shift because he could sneak a smoke. He inhaled deeply, held the smoke
as he pondered, and then slowly blew it out of his mouth in pale-blue rings. He
sighed deeply and began in a soft voice. “Let me tell you a story.
“It was winter,1944. My young
friends and I, Resistance Fighters in France, now huddled in our barracks at
Buchenwald on the slopes of Etter Mountain, the thin rags we had left for
clothing no match for the cold. Our former muscled young bodies were now
stretched taut across bone. Two years earlier, when we were caught and
imprisoned in France, I found out who in our group had turned us in and
identified me as the cell leader. The SS hauled me in for interrogation, beat
me to a pulp and blinded me in one eye.” He pointed to the obvious suture scars.
Eve had never had the nerve to ask how that happened.
“During the trip to Buchenwald, the
group, rather than kill the traitor, shunned him. The isolation was far worse
than if we beat him. At the camp, he spent a week balled up in a dark corner of
our barracks eating and drinking nothing. I suspect he was trying to kill
himself, but ironically, it didn’t work. So he got up and walked out into the cold,
not to return. We’d catch sight of him every now and then. He began to befriend
other despairing folk in the camp. Sometimes he had a tiny bit of food he could
share; sometimes it was merely the presence of a gentle, accepting heart that
he offered.
“The trust we in the Resistance expected–that we would never
give each other up–he’d breached. I called him a traitor. But was he? Who among
us knew what we would do when confronted with the worst? So was the trust we thought
we shared valid? Maybe it was each of our best intentions, something we each
wanted to believe we could do; only, apparently not everyone could. I found out
later he betrayed us to try to save his mother.”
Rudy snubbed out his cigarette and returned behind the
counter. She watched him pull fresh scones from the oven, the room now rich with
the scent of cinnamon.
“What bothers you most?” Rudy asked as he removed the scones
from the pan.
“I guess that he is not who I thought he was. He never
showed any signs of someone who would make that choice.”
“Did you ever discuss with him his thoughts on fidelity?
“No, why would I have? It just felt like we shared the same
belief.”
“Was that the only reason? You know you never would have
done what Tommy did? But what kept you from knowing that about him? If there is
one truth my experience taught me, it is that we rarely know someone as well as
we imagine; especially if we don’t pointedly take the time to. It wasn’t so
much that your trust was violated but that your assumptions were proven false.
Don’t misunderstand; no one would call what Tommy did, honorable. Nor was the
traitor’s behavior so. But, had I taken time to know my fellow Resistance
members better rather than let my youthful bravado serve in place of the facts,
I might still have both eyes, my real career as a machinist, and not have to
live with some of the worst memories mankind has yet created – the Nazi death
camps. But I did what you did. I assumed we all saw the world similarly. It’s
so much easier that way. We want it to be simple, but it can’t be simple, if we
are unwilling to do what simplicity requires.
"And then there is this. My
traitor betrayed us, and yet later, he then gave himself to befriending
everyone he could before the end. Your loving husband, after giving you five glorious
years, betrayed you. Yet, was that one horrible mistake in five years or five
years of a lie and the inevitable consequence? If the way you demand to see
this is based on choices that black or white, the complications of life come
out of the cracks like fleas looking for a new host. The seeming simple route
drowns us in complexity.”
“But
even so…” Eve stopped. She lost her train of thought. Her eyes flashed at Rudy
with a mixture of anger and bewilderment.
Rudy filled in. “Why should you have to pay so dearly for your naiveté, your inexperience? That’s what you want to ask, isn’t it?” Eve stopped
to listen. “Then let me ask you this first. Do you honestly believe that your
hurt and confusion would disappear if you could just label him a no-good cad
and walk away?
“Well, what did you do about the traitor? How did you live
with the devastation his failings caused you?"
“With one less eye for starters.” Rudy’s chuckled suggested
irony. Eve sat stony. He continued more seriously. “The traitor didn’t live to
leave Buchenwald with us, but several people did who wouldn’t have otherwise if
it weren’t for him. In fact, a sixteen year old boy he took under his wing and
gave most all his food to called him an Angel. What’s true, what’s false? Who’s
right, who’s wrong? Will that approach ever bring us peace?”
By now the soft light of morning crept tentatively across
the room toward them. A new day had begun. The bell over the door tinkled
brightly as the first customer came to breakfast on Rudy’s celebrated scones.
Rudy walked a scone and coffee over to him, talked for a moment, then returned
to the counter and sat with Eve once more.
“My past showed me that life is a cycle endlessly repeating.
Some cycles get very intense – a heinous war, a devastating marriage breakup.
Most are just mundane repetitions of yesterday. The real irony…regardless of
the cycle’s content…we engage predictably: we see it from the same perspective
as every other time and react as usual. If we don’t break this cycle, we remain
not captives to other people’s behavior but captives to our own.” Rudy stopped
for a moment and stared blankly at the wall, his elbows on the counter; his hands
balled in front of him. With a slight shake of his head, he broke himself free from
some haunting memory. He gaze continued straight ahead; his voice dropped
almost to a whisper. “I came so close to never realizing that—to never freeing
myself from my same old interpretations of all those past events. At what
looked like my last obliterating drunk, my revolver lying in front of me on the
table, I came to understand how to hold all that had happened to me in a way
that would stop destroying me. It is not the past we can change or accommodate.
The present is all we have, and in that moment one question came to me, the
answer to which was my salvation.”
Eve sat silent. The vortex in her mind driven by all the
swirling arguments, rants and angry judgments was losing its momentum. As that
cone of thoughts began to flatten out, a tremor ran through her. “You’re not
suggesting I accept what Tommy did?”
“I am saying that faulting him or judging him is not the
approach to ending your suffering. Instead, it keeps you stuck in your
predictable ways. Ones that have you thinking the answer lies in determining
who’s right or wrong. Instead, I suggest you invite the question that will give
you the insight which frees you from
judgment and focuses on deliverance.”
Rudy got down from his stool to go back to work, but stopped
behind Eve. He spoke, his voice gravelly and low. Staring at the floor, he
said, “One thing more. Near the end of our imprisonment, we weren’t being
watched so much. It was possible to get outside at night for a moment alone. This
particular night, as I passed the space between our barracks and the one
adjacent, I noticed someone balled up against the wall. It was very cold. As I
gently pulled what remained of a coat from around the man’s face, there was the
traitor. It was like he’d come home. He was so thin; almost nothing was left of
him. I picked him up, carried him inside, put him in my bed, climbed in after
him and wrapped us in the scrap of blanket I had left. I willed every degree of
heat I had to him and held him to me all night. Just before morning, he began
to shiver as a person does when they finally feel enough warmth to respond. His
eyes never opened and he was too weak to talk, but one soft moan said it all. When
I carried his body later that morning to the cart that came through each day to
pick up the dead, I gently laid my friend to rest.”
Eve felt Rudy move from behind her to walk back toward the
ovens. She reached across the counter and grabbed his sleeve to get him to
pause. “Please tell me. What was the question?”
“My question is not your question.”
“Then what was it you learned from your question? Tell me
something.”
“What I learned
was that the measure of a man or a woman is not the sum of their successes or
failures. Rather it is revealed through what they are willing to do to mitigate
the unkindness or suffering they have brought to others. You’d have to have
been in Buchenwald to understand what a brave and honest choice Helmut made
there.”
“So, I should forgive him, take him back?” Eve sat
motionless, her eyes closed as if praying to grasp what Rudy was telling her, but
instead she remained trapped in her anger and predictability. She watched herself
slip back into the wretchedness she’d felt when she came in. She got down off
her stool, dropped her head and walked out.
Rudy stared after her. His face condoling. He knew only too
well how difficult hard-won-wisdom is to pass on to another; how long it takes
for the brutalities of life to condense into simple truth. Neither solace nor
understanding come until then.
The patron who had entered the bakery earlier had been
within earshot of the conversation Eve and Rudy were having. Across the few
intervening tables, he asked, “Would you be willing to share your question with
me?”
Rudy recognized the signs of a fellow traveler and smiled at
the old man. “Did knowing Helmut help me find
the best there was in me?”
Discernment settled in the stranger’s eyes. “Ah yes,” was his
reply, “ahhh, yes.”
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