American Dreams Ch. 01

Having to start this story somewhere, I will begin by saying that I was thirty-one years old when Faye and I moved into our four thousand square foot two-story redwood dream house. It overlooked the Pacific from a lofty height of black granite rock and a cluster of cypress, sequoia, and spruce. My weekly syndicated radio call-in talk show, Love Doctor Frank, was syndicated on twelve stations. Two books I’d written were selling well; the first one seeing its third printing, and my Internet Zine, Doctor Frank’s Corner, was growing in popularity. My private practice kept me occupied during the week and my weekends were spent luxuriating at the Northern California country club where I was a member, or kicking back to contemplate my navel at home. How smug and complacent I was at that time in my life and how sure I was that things would always work out the way I dreamed they would. To understand why I felt that way, however, it is necessary to know something about my Faye.

I met her when we were both attending the University of California at Berkeley. She was two years younger and majoring in art. I was pre-med. But our first date turned into an adventure that sealed our union. A group of us decided to go camping during spring break. We chose a spot deep in a redwood forest along the Eel River about fifty miles north of Garberville. I’d recently broken up with Mona Hardin, a beautiful busty blonde and the hottest girl on campus. I was measuring beauty by the high standards she’d set, so initially I’d hardly noticed Faye in the group of eight we made. She was the direct opposite of my former girlfriend, having curly raven dark hair with no glaring assets, nearsighted and always adjusting her eyeglasses. The librarian type is how I’d classified Faye Annette Barrett.

Early the second morning of the camping trip, as I wandered along the banks of the Eel River, I saw her sitting alone. The sky was just beginning to grow light and the pastel colors of dawn magically peeked through a green redwood canopy that reached so high above. She had her back against an oak tree and was writing in a small notebook when I approached. The twittering of songbirds and the wind in the trees and rushing river water filled the air. I was only a few feet away when she looked up and noticed me, adjusting her glasses as though I might be an illusion. Then she smiled.

“You’re up early this morning,” I remarked.

“Likewise for you I see.”

“I didn’t want to miss all this nature surrounding us.”

“It is beautiful and so tranquil, too.”

We were only on a first name basis at the time. Nevertheless, for some reason, those opening lines made me feel as though she was someone I would benefit by knowing better. With that one thought, suddenly the gloom I was under, like a five-hundred pound backpack, dissipated the way the aria of a symphony can lift the spirit and transcend the mundane, replacing it with a healthy surge of optimism.

We spent about twenty minutes chatting before heading back to camp for coffee. I learned that she was from a small town in Wyoming and sometimes felt lost and out of place in the big city. But it was her light blue eyes, the way they sparkled in the sunlight, and her smooth peach-colored skin and the way she smiled that kept me captivated. The more I studied her, the more I could see that she was the personification of femininity, without the overstated figure that Mona had. She was tall and had a slender waist, but all the right curves where they should be. Before too long, I was mentally stripping her clothes off for a closer, more intimate look.

Later that afternoon, we left the others behind to take a hike. About a quarter of a mile from the campsite, we left the churning banks of the Eel River to venture inland. The farther we hiked, the more our surroundings seemed to embrace us in a natural wonderland of sorts, as though we were the fist humans in ages to set foot where we were. The tranquil sounds of the many songbirds and the breeze tickling through the trees made me feel as though we were in the most sacred of all cathedrals. To quench our thirst from a canteen, we stopped and stretched out on a soft bed of fallen needles. The cool air provided the rich scent of earth and the invigorating green rich smell of life.

“So far from the rush and noise of the city,” I commented.

“So far from all the cares that go with it, too,” she said. “It’s like living in another time.”

“A brand new time for me. Helps me put things into perspective.”

“What things?”

“Breaking up with a girlfriend for instance,” I said, feeling as though I’d shed old skin by merely confiding that much to her.

“I thought you looked a little depressed when we were setting up camp yesterday. Like you were someone who would rather be somewhere else. Something told me it was love on the rocks.” “Insightful! Does that mean you have ESPN? I mean…ESP?”

She laughed at my joke and pushed a lock of her shoulder-length hair back and focused her eyes on me. “No… I wouldn’t go so far as to say that. It simply means I pay attention to the things that go on around me.”

The simplicity of her words helped me focus on all that I saw and felt around me at the moment. The lushness of nature in the middle of spring, Fay’s radiant nearness, the rising of my temperature with each new intake of fresh pollution-free air. Everything seemed in be in perfect harmony.

I also felt as though I was seeing the world with new eyes. Eyes that had failed to see just how physically beautiful Faye was at first glance. I was tempted to blurt all of this out. Instead, I told her about recent research which proved that the section of the brain, which becomes most active when emotions like love are involved, is also the same one less capable of reasoning at those times of heightened electrical wave impulses.

“So the poets were right when they said love is blind,” she quipped. “Makes perfect sense to me. Because love always requires some overlooking and compromising to hope for a fighting chance to stay alive.”

“Seems true in my case.” I went on to ask her if she knew my ex, Mona Hardin.

“The pretty tall blonde in all of the theater productions? The one who sings so heavenly well, too?”

“That would be her.”

“She is beautiful and talented.” She spoke wistfully.

“Which should have told me we wouldn’t last long. But…I was infatuated and fell under her spell. Should have known I’d go down in flames.”

“Why are you so self-effacing, Matthew?” She winced.

“Compared to her, as far as looks go, I’m Mr. Ordinary to the ninth-degree,” I said with a shrug of feigned indifference.

“Don’t kid yourself,” Faye retorted. “You have a nice, tall physique and an interesting and intelligent face…one I’d like to paint. And to be honest, I must confess I’ve thought that more than once when I used to see you on campus, always in such a big hurry.”

“Yeah! That’s me. I can walk as fast backwards as I can forward. Always in a big hurry to get nowhere.”

“Always?”

“Like now for instance. Here we are in this most beautiful spot, right smack dab in the middle of spring. And…am I enjoying it? I’ll answer that rhetorical question: Not really. Because I am already thinking about when we should start back for the camp. Wondering if we will remember the way. Thinking all that and more, when for a just one full five minutes, or so, I would rather feel than think! Wondering why that is so hard for me to do. To just feel?”

When I remembered I wasn’t talking to myself, I looked her way and was surprised to see she was smiling and looking at me like I was some kind of evangelist. I had to laugh.

“Sometimes I do get on my soapbox. I can’t help it.”

“That’s because you have passion.”

Now she really had me looking at her as though she was from out of space or from a space so unknown to me that I felt like a child in a grown man’s body.

She was leaning over me at the time. We’d never been closer, except for the few times our bare skin touched as our arms occasionally brushed while we were walking side-by-side earlier. In that instant, feeling like so much time had passed, I envisioned her in my arms and me holding her with the desperate hope that I would never be separated from her for too long at any time in the future. I could smell her body and see her lips yearning to say I love you now and forever. And suddenly I thought about Mona. Not as someone I wanted to be with, but still a presence, like a noose around my neck. I resented her for being so intrusive, at the same time feeling the air go out of the mood I’d almost let happen with Faye. Again I was thinking instead of feeling, the bane of the intellect.

I laid back and stretched my arms out, making a kind of angel in the needle bed. She leaned over further and her hair brushed my cheek as her eyeglasses created a glare from the setting sun filtering through the green.

“Maybe we should head back, Matt.”

It didn’t take us long to realize we were lost. We knew the general direction we should take was a southeasterly one. However, while we were wrapped up in each other, we’d failed to notice the changes taking place in the sky. Dark clouds were now massing stronger and moving fast from the direction we needed to take. The camp was probably already getting a deluge of rain. Soon after, we’d be wet, too. Less than a mile into the growing darkness, I decided to put my boy scout training to use.

“We could wander around out there,” I pointed ahead of us, “guessing which way to go, or find some sort of shelter.”

“Let’s find shelter,” she said, as the rain began to fall and intensify with each heartbeat. Assessing the terrain, I didn’t have to look far to see where we would be spending the night. There was a bed of redwoods with eight or more trunks climbing hundreds of feet above. Most significantly, it was rooted on higher ground. It did not take long for the two of us to find an intersection between two roots covered with fallen limbs and needles. Digging into one section, we carved out a deep hollow that soon extended back about six feet between the roots. Then we dug for depth. We were both breathing hard when we decided to take a break and lie down safe from the onslaught of rain pounding the ground so nearby us, thunder following streaks of lightning so close they made the sky white.