Intermissions

I stood in the corner of a large lobby, sipping bad white wine and trying to think of a topic of conversation for my date. He could best be described as nondescript, I decided. Light brown hair, light brown eyes, normal-looking features. Not overly attractive, but certainly not repulsive either. He didn’t even have on a sexy black suit – it was a dull grey with a navy tie. He’d studied some sort of agricultural discipline at a large Midwestern university, and I don’t know much about farming. My feeble attempts at that conversation were given cursory answers. So I tried to discuss the opera he’d chosen – didn’t work either. So I looked around, tugged at the hem of my dress and wondered how many times I could excuse myself to go to the restroom in a 20 minute span.

Intermission is hell on dates like this. At least when you’re engrossed in a show, you can enjoy yourself. Forget that you have little in common with someone who in all probability is a lovely man. Try to block out the fact that you battled for any sort of conversation at dinner, then made the drive to the theatre in silence. Enjoy the spectacle – the music, the costumes, the happenings inside the audience.

But intermission brings the tension of having to deal with your escort. Feeling responsible that he’d bought tickets and dinner, knowing with all certainty that you won’t see him again. I waited, glancing upward at regular intervals, waiting for the lights to flicker to let us know that we could return to our seats and yet again pretend to read the program. Then the next half of the show would start and the evening would be one step closer to being over. Minutes would ease by until I was home again, out of my dress and stockings, and into comfortable sleepy pants and a t-shirt. I sighed, finished my wine, and smiled at my date. He was looking around too, poor guy, undoubtedly as eager as I to wrap this evening up.

I’m currently in another intermission. Seated not in the corner of my own couch, comfortably cushioned with beige and white striped pillows propping my computer on my lap, but tucked into the corner of a brown and tan checked sofa next to a brightly colored Christmas tree at my parents’ house. We kept my little niece today – ran some errands, played with her new pre-Christmas present kitchen set, finished up cookie trays for the neighbors. Then a phone call came – it was my sister-in-law, who we’ll call Cindy. She had left work early, she told my mom, and was coming to get my niece.

One of her friends had told her that Brother had tried to kiss her. And Cindy then had no choice but to pack her things and move back in with her parents. She had taken her clothes, she explained, and wanted the little one so that she could proceed with her plan. She spent an hour with my mom and sobbed in the bedroom while Dad and I watched “The Search for Eden” on the Discovery Channel (good stuff, by the way).

She believed that he had cheated on her, and I don’t know that to be true or false, and had gotten completely dramatic over the whole situation. Refusing to talk to Brother, she decided to upset my parents and my niece by creating a larger mess than she started with. I rolled my eyes when I went to get some good white wine – “my friends wouldn’t lie to me! They love me!” “He told me he loved the little one! But he did this to her!” “He can’t live without me, and he deserves to suffer!”

They’d gotten together, Cindy and Brother, when he was still dating someone else. In fact, Brother has always started new relationships while firmly involved in old ones. So why Cindy thought she could build a life with him and not have to face some infidelity issues speaks strongly to her conceit and stupidity to me. To her credit, Brother is smart and incredibly charismatic. Even I want to believe him when I’m quite sure he’s lying. But Cindy got pregnant at exactly the time she decided not to continue her studies at the community college. Her parents were not pleased with her leaving school, but she convinced them that her new vocation of motherhood was a worthy goal.

So she and Brother got married and had a beautiful, smart, sweet little girl. They haven’t been happy – my parents tease me that they fight every time I’m home. Whether over money or drinking or cheating, there’s always something that upsets one of them and builds into a complete clusterfuck of epic proportions. Screaming matches, bouts of tears and countless conversations as the families of these 21-year old children try to patch things back together.

So this is just another chapter in a continuing saga as I wait with my parents and my dog in the living room, waiting for Brother to arrive for Act 2 of this little drama. And yet again I’m reminded of my dislike of intermissions – where people who aren’t actors in the show have to make conversation – speaking of the work they’re viewing or making some sort of small talk, fixing dinner or having drinks – while they wait impatiently for the next act to begin. Because only then can the evening be over, a fight hopefully ending in some sort of reasonable resolution, and we can head off to bed.

But for now, we wait. Dad’s fixing a toy the little one broke today, carefully taking apart the truck and poking at the mechanical device inside. Mom’s sorting through the mail – she’s been through it 3 times so far as I sit here and type. Will Brother go home and drink himself into a stupor? Forcing us to leave the sanctuary here and confiscate keys so he doesn’t make yet another foolish decision and drive while drunk? Or will he invade the quiet here and charge it with righteous indignation and protestations of innocence? Whatever the outcome, and whatever form the upcoming drama takes, for now we try to keep busy as we wait for this portion of the evening to end and the next to begin. All of us already longing for sleep and trying to gather our resources to deal with what’s to come.