Perplexed But Devoted

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes, 46 seconds

Home Sweet Home

I cannot believe I drank the entire bottle of wine,” Jan, a little tipsy, said as we left the restaurant. Concerned, I asked if I should call a cab to take us to the L train. No, I am a big girl and can manage a little more wine than usual.” We walked and talked as we slowly made our way to the nearest subway.

“Tell me about your new job.”

I am going to work with the COPE team. It does community organizing – I can’t remember now what the last two letters mean,” Jan muttered with a slight slur. Our mission is to help people with a mental illness to live in group homes in the community with support.

“That is a perfect job for you!”

“I am excited, and I start a week from next Monday.”

We chatted about the job until we entered the subway.

Once we sat down, Jan asked me, “Are you OK that I will make more than you do?”

“I am not concerned at all. I am thrilled that you have an excellent opportunity. With both of us working in the community this year, we should be able to have an impact on repairing the world and live a little more comfortably.”

As we switched to the L train, Jan held on to me.

I am a little drunker than I thought.”

“Jan, I am glad I am here to help you on the trip home.”

“Me too. I should not have had so much wine.”

Not sure what you would have done if you had been alone or with someone….” I did not finish the sentence as I could not contemplate her this intoxicated with another man.

“I would not have had this much to drink if you had not been with me.”

As we approached the stairs to exit the L train, I directed her to hold on to the railing while I held her steady.

“I admit I am drunk, but I am also very aroused. Maybe you could take advantage of me when we get upstairs.”

We can make love.

“No, I am serious this time. I have fantasized about you taking advantage of me.”

I did not respond as I helped her walk up the stairs to our fourth-floor apartment.

As I helped Jan make her way up the stairs, I attempted to comprehend why she would want me to take advantage of her. It did not make sense to me, but my focus was getting us into our apartment. 

After I opened the apartment door, I helped her to the bathroom. 

“Thanks. Can you stay with me?”

I stayed with her, ready to help in any way she required. 

Fortunately, the bathroom was between the kitchen and the bedroom. I helped Jan sit on the bed and started to help her undress. 

Why don’t you just rip my clothes off and take me?

I did not know what to say but excused myself to go to the bathroom.

As I brushed my teeth, I heard her say, “Oh, no.”

Dropping the toothbrush, I turned to face her at the door to the bathroom.

“I feel sick.”

I pulled up the lid on the toilet just in time for a mix of wine and veal parmigiana to be deposited in the bowl. 

After cleaning up, I helped her back to bed.

“I think we should wait to make love….”

“I agree.”

As Jan’s breathing slowed and she fell asleep, my mind was moving at full throttle. Am I naïve and unaware of her needs? Why does Jan keep asking me to act in what I think is an aggressive way when she is intoxicated? Does she not know who I am?


Next Page


Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

12 comments add your comment

  1. Excellent story…I never heard of any couple making almost the same salary!!

    Funny and sad story, but I enjoyed it!!

    • Thanks, Hugo, for your comment.

      Jan and I chose similar work focused on repairing the world. As a result, our salaries were both modest. That we ended with wages almost the same at the end is not all that surprising. If Jan had lived and continued to work at the YWCA for the last two years, her total compensation would have surpassed mine.

      I agree that the story, like life, is humorous and sad simultaneously. I write from my heart, and the articles reflect the complexity of the lives Jan and I lived and how life is complicated.

      The love that Jan and I shared will never die.

      In closing I wanted to share share a poem from Evergreen by Kirsten Robinson. Her poems are a tribute to the enduring resilience of human nature as we cycle through times of light and darkness, much like nature itself.

        Give thanks for all
        that is good and beautiful;
        the gifts you carry
        people who lift you up
        your big, big love
        faith and trust that your life
        is unfolding as it should

        Give thanks for all
        that has been difficult and hard;
        trials tribulations tears
        tests of self strength fears
        all of the unknowns and days
        that broke you

        Without the darkness
        you would not have
        learned to appreciate the light

      Thanks for your friendship and support.

Share your thoughts and ideas

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Previous Post:

Next Post:

The Jan Lilien Education Fund!

The Searcher: A Novel

Read: March 2024

Get this book

The Searcher: A Novel

by Tana French

Today, I started reading Tana French‘s The Searcher: A Novel. Last week, I read The Hunter by the same author. I should have read The Searcher first, as it is the prequel to The Hunter, but reading in reverse order helped my enjoyment. Despite knowing some of the suspenseful twists and turns the story would take, I found it a page-turner.

The story follows Cal Hooper, a retired Chicago police officer who seeks a fresh start in a tranquil Irish village. However, when a local boy approaches him to investigate his missing brother, Cal discovers that the town has its share of dark secrets. The book raises thought-provoking questions about distinguishing right from wrong in a complicated world and what we risk when making that decision.

Tana French is a highly acclaimed crime novelist who skillfully creates a captivating and suspenseful atmosphere throughout the book.

×
Piranesi

Read: May 2022

Get this book

Piranesi: A Novel by Susanna Clarke

by Susanna Clarke

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is about a man known as Piranesi who lives in a big house and explores the labyrinth of rooms and hopes of understanding the meaning. Is it any surprise that I would pick this book as my thirtieth of the year? As a widow, I journal and journey in a life I did not expect to live, and I still believe I will find meaning and purpose. 

In addition, a labyrinth is one of the options we have discussed for the next phase of the work in Hanson Park.

Piranesi is a page-turner, but that does not fully describe the beauty of the world that Susanna Clarke created. I highly recommend this book as it is one of my best this year. 

The Goodreads summary provides an overview of Piranesi by Susanna Clarke.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house.

There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

For readers of Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane and fans of Madeline Miller’s Circe, Piranesi introduces an astonishing new world, an infinite labyrinth, full of startling images and surreal beauty, haunted by the tides and the clouds.


Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
All Fours: A Novel

Read: May 2024

Get this book

All Fours: A Novel

by Miranda July

Today, I started reading All Fours: A Novel by Miranda July. A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, checks into a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in an entirely different journey.

Miranda July’s second novel, a testament to her unique approach to fiction, confirms the brilliance of her storytelling. With July’s wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a forty-five-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectation while excavating our beliefs about life as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly, profoundly alive.

×
The Shadow King: A Novel

Read: April 2022

Get this book

The Shadow King: A Novel

by Maaza Mengiste

The Shadow King: A Novel by Maaza Mengiste is a book happened to offer two often overlooked threads of history. The first is Mussolini’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. The second one I am most interested in is the women soldiers who were left out of the historical record. I highly recommend The Shadow King. It is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power and what it means to be a woman at war.

Hirut and Aster come alive in Maaza Mengiste talented writing. Their struggles to be seen as equal in a society at war is engaging. Hirut’s plan to create a shadow kingpin the absence of Emperor Haile Selassie is one that turns defeat into victory.

Goodreads provides a good overview of the book.

With the threat of Mussolini’s army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid in Kidane and his wife Aster’s household. Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie’s army, rushes to mobilize his most muscular men before the Italians invaded. His initial kindness to Hirut shifts into flinty cruelty when she resists his advances. Hirut finds herself tumbling into a new world of thefts and violations, betrayals, and overwhelming rage. Meanwhile, Mussolini’s technologically advanced army prepared for an easy victory. Hundreds of thousands of Italians―Jewish photographer Ettore among them―march on Ethiopia seeking adventure.

As the war begins in earnest, Hirut, Aster, and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, Hirut offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take arms against the Italians. But how could she have predicted her war as a prisoner of one of Italy’s most vicious officers, who would force her to pose before Ettore’s camera?

What follows is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, with Hirut as the fierce, original, and brilliant voice at its heart. In incandescent, lyrical prose, Maaza Mengiste breathes life into complicated characters on both sides of the battle line, shaping a heartrending, unforgettable exploration of what it means to be a woman at war.

Subscribe

Contact Us

When you buy a book or product using a link on this page, I receive a commission. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.

×
Cloud Atlas: A Novel

Read: September 2024

Get this book

Cloud Atlas: A Novel

by David Mitchell

Today, I started reading Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell, one of The New York Times’ 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. Cloud Atlas begins in 1850 with Adam Ewing, an American notary, voyaging from the Chatham Isles to his home in California. Ewing is befriended by a physician, Dr. Goose, who begins treating him for a rare species of brain parasite.

The novel careens, with dazzling virtuosity, to Belgium in 1931, the West Coast in the 1970s, an inglorious present-day England, a Korean superstate of the near future where neo-capitalism has run amok, and, finally, a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii in the last days of history. But the story doesn’t end even there. What sets Cloud Atlas apart is its unique narrative structure, which boomerangs back through centuries and space, returning by the same route, in reverse, to its starting point. This journey reveals how the disparate characters connect, how their fates intertwine, and how their souls drift across time like clouds across the sky.

As wild as a video game, as mysterious as a Zen koan, Cloud Atlas is an unforgettable tour de force that, like its incomparable author, has transcended its cult classic status to become a worldwide phenomenon. The novel’s diverse settings and cultures, from 1850 Chatham Isles to a postapocalyptic Iron Age Hawaii, appeal to readers across the globe, offering a rich and varied reading experience.

×
The Anniversary

Read: July 2023

Get this book

The Anniversary

by Stephanie Bishop

I began reading Stephanie Bishop‘s novel, The Anniversary, today. The Anniversary is a brilliantly written novel with a gripping and fast-paced storyline. It poses some interesting questions: how blurred is the boundary between reality and fiction in a writer’s thoughts? How can we reject those we yearn for? And what are the consequences for ourselves, others, and our creativity if we don’t?

J.B. Blackwood, a novelist, is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Her husband is much older than her and was her former professor, film director, and cult figure. When they first met, he appeared ageless, like a god in the eyes of those who worship them. However, his success is dwindling, while J.B. is on the verge of winning a major literary prize. Previously, her husband always oversaw her art, but now it may overshadow him.

As they sail in the sun for days, with only dark water surrounding them, a storm unexpectedly strikes, and Patrick falls from the ship. J.B. is left alone, and the search for the truth about their marriage and what happened to Patrick begins.

The Anniversary is highly recommended for readers who enjoy Lisa Halliday and Susan Choi’s works. The story revolves around a talented writer who has to confront the unresolved death of her spouse and find the courage to stand on her own. It is a captivating page-turner that will keep you hooked till the end.


The Jan Lilien Education Fund sponsors ongoing sustainability and environmental awareness programs. Gifts made this month; I will match dollar-for-dollar. All donations are tax-deductible.

Subscribe

Contact Us

I receive a commission when you buy a book or product using a link on this page. Thank you for supporting Sharing Jan’s Love blog.



×

Discover more from Sharing Jan’s Love

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading