You never know how you’re going to meet the person you’re going to spend the rest of your life with.  I met mine under the most compromised circumstances exactly 26 years ago. 

Nineteen eighty-seven was a pivotal year for me.  I left two corporations, miscarried a four-month pregnancy, initiated a divorce from my first husband and started my own business.  I’d like to say I did it all on one leg while baking a pie and singing an aria from “Carmen,” but that would’ve been too easy.  This was a most difficult year for me.

I was living in Atlanta at the time.  When I started my marketing business, I decided to take a trip to set up a network of associates.  I started – and ended – my trip in the backyard of friends in Lexington, Massachusetts. 

We were listening to the snap of bug zappers frying mosquitos when I suddenly felt compelled to go to the west coast.

“What are you talking about?” Shelley asked.  “You just got here.”

“I feel compelled to go to Los Angeles,” I said.  “I have no idea why.”

I went into the kitchen and called my soon-to-be-ex, with whom I was still living. 

“I need to go to Los Angeles,” I said.

“Go wherever you wish,” he said. 

That was easy. 

The next call was to my cousin in Hollywood.  That was more difficult.

“I feel compelled to come to Los Angeles,” I told her.

“I feel compelled to tell you to forget it,” she said.  “I’m in the middle of a breakup.”

“You mean with the tango dancer?”

“Yes.  I told him to marry me or get out, so he’s getting out.”

“Didn’t he tell you from the get-go that he had no intention of marrying you – or anyone else, for that matter?”

“Yes, but it’s been a couple of years and I’m ready to take it to the next level.”

“So, I guess his next level is down?”

“Actually, it’s up.  He’s sleeping on the roof.  It’s very tense around here.”

“Listen, I really need to come. If you feel compelled to throw me out on my ass when I get there, I know you will.”

She reluctantly agreed to house me when I got there.

The first time I saw Grant, he was, indeed, on my cousin’s roof, looking down as my cousin and I approached her apartment. It’s amazing what can happen in a single flash of recognition.  It was an “Ah, shit” moment for both of us because, while we sensed that something powerful had just occurred, we both registered, somewhere in our collective subconscious, that there was going to be pain involved eventually.  For all of us.

We did not discuss our feelings during that first meeting in Hollywood.  We barely touched.  But something was simmering between us.  When I left a few days later, I found myself staring directly into the memory of his blue eyes on the flight home from LAX.  I had no doubt that, at some point, I would be with him.  I had never felt so calm.

A month went by before I received the first of many letters from Grant.  He moved out of my cousin’s house shortly after I left.  He moved into the apartment of a man who made light boxes for a living.  Grant’s cell-like room was a zendo – a place for calm reflection.  His meditations compelled him to write me a letter.  In it, he asked, “Did you feel anything for me when we met?”

And I wrote back and said, “Yes.” 

We discussed our rather horrifying situation and he ascertained that, while he loved my cousin, they were finished before he and I met.  They wanted different things.  I knew my cousin wouldn’t care about that.  If she knew that Grant and I were in communication, she would consider it the worst form of betrayal.  On the other hand, their relationship was over and so was my marriage.  Yes, I had feelings.  Strong ones. If I hadn’t felt compelled to go to L.A., our paths would never have crossed.  Does the universe ever make decisions crystal clear or easy?  Not for me. 

Grant asked me to write to him until there was nothing left for me to say.  He said he would do the same.  After two months of exchanging letters, we decided to get together to see what we had.

I was on a press tour with a Canadian client.  I had a long weekend to kill between appointments in Boston and Toronto.  Grant told me he would fly to Boston and we could see what those few days would hold for us.

I wouldn’t say I was terrified, but I will admit to apprehension.  After all, what did I know about this man?  He had met my cousin through a mutual friend at Indian Market in Santa Fe a couple of years before.  He was a software engineer at JPL.  He was an adopted child from a farming family in the South.  He was already a grandfather by the time I met him.  He played piano.  He liked wine.  And he couldn’t lead my cousin on the dance floor.  He could’ve been Jack the Ripper, for all I knew – except that my cousin seemed to be intact (aside from the broken heart).

I waited at the Northwest terminal at Logan in my business suit, not knowing who was going to walk off that plane.  I saw him before he saw me and in that moment, I was stricken with his physical beauty – his height and build, the strong structure of his face and the silver flow of his hair.  More though, I could see his vulnerability and his guilelessness.  He was a little drunk and as nervous as a new groom.

When he saw me, he ran to me and we embraced, a full-bodied, rocking hug that lasted until the reception area was emptied of all other travelers.  For no good reason, we already felt partnered.  He took me by the hand and we headed to my rental car.  He wasn’t that drunk.  I let him drive while I directed him through traffic.  Boston had been my town for eight years – I knew my way around.  Mostly, I focused on his lean profile and his perfect hands on the steering wheel, knowing that I would be happy to let this brief time last forever. 

We spent our first night together in Newton, right down the street from where I had gone to college in the seventies.  The next morning, we headed up to Rockport, on the north shore of Massachusetts, where I had booked us a room at a very old inn called the Peg Leg.  We got more than what we bargained for.  Not only did we get hit with a Nor’easter on our first night at the Inn, the place was also haunted.

We were lollygagging in our room at around two in the afternoon, preparing to go out for some lobster, when I saw a disembodied head rush at me from the lefthand side of the room.   The face was that of a young woman, perhaps 26. It was a plain, olive-skinned face with shoulder-length, medium-brown hair.  She looked at me askance through very large, dark, disapproving eyes.  She was wearing my Michael Jackson Victory Tour headband.  Grant saw nothing, but he felt a presence.

“Make her go away,” I said into his chest.  He was kind enough to oblige me and the presence finally left.  My headband disappeared with her. 

Does that sound like a short story?  it gets longer.

Grant and I both contacted my cousin when we returned from our tryst in the Northeast.  She declared me dead and Grant nonexistent.  Her wrath was Biblical.  I accepted it and hoped that she would eventually get over it.  This wasn’t going to be a one-night stand.  This was going to be my life, married or not. 

A year-and-a-half went by.  Grant moved into my house in Atlanta six days after my divorce went through.  We were going out to dinner one night.  It was raining heavily and I went to the hall closet to fetch a raincoat.  Why I would choose that night to fetch a raincoat, I have no idea.  I hadn’t worn that raincoat in a decade.  However, I put my hand in the pocket and out came my Michael Jackson Victory Tour headband.  Hmmm.

“Grant!” I yelled.  He came running.  I held the headband out for him to see.

“Do you know what this is?”

“Yes,” he said.

“What should I do with it?  Burn it?  Bury it?”

“Why don’t you just wear it?” he said.

And I did.  I wore it in my unruly hair until it eventually fell apart.  And then, I threw it away. 

We returned to Massachusetts 23 years later.  We stayed with my old friends in Lexington, but decided to take a ride up to Rockport to see if the old Peg Leg Inn was still there.  There were several Peg Legs, all in a row.  What we had failed to notice the first time we were there was that the Peg Leg we had stayed in was directly next to a Revolutionary War cemetery.  Ah.  That explained the ghost.  Or maybe I’m just mad.

At any rate, Grant and I have been together for 26 years.  We met on August 7, 1987 and our partnership has stood the test of time and ostracism.  To my cousin, I am still dead and Grant is still nonexistent.