JEANNE M ROGERS

JEANNE M ROGERS INSTRUCTIONS FOR A BED SHEET PARACHUTE

I can’t say for certain what it was that attracted me to Leif, unless it had something to do with how he flattered me. When he raved about my auburn hair and long legs, I felt like a goddess – at least at the beginning. That’s why, after being together six months, it hurt so badly when he started breaking up with me on Monday mornings. On the third consecutive Monday, I stopped by his apartment that evening to pickup my clothes, and Tuesday morning, right on schedule, he called saying, “I miss you.”

Dora, my best friend and agent, had reluctantly introduced us at Tacoma’s monthly Art Walk. Dora’s funny. She says something and I crack up, like the time I sent her a greeting card when she was going through a rough patch. See, I buy these cards with Impressionistic paintings on the front and stash them in my desk so that I always have something beautiful to share with friends who are down in the dumps. In all honesty, sometimes I need a lift too. When I mailed one to Dora, she called and said, “People who send greeting cards should expect trouble.” I tell you – she cracks me up.

Dora and I stood admiring a painting of a girl with chartreuse hair at the Art Walk when Leif walked up holding a double scotch.

“Don’t even think about it,” Dora whispered. “His reputation precedes him.”

Leif offered his right hand.

“Kat, this is Leif. He collects art – for his

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hypnotherapy office.”

Leif’s face looked youngish and vulnerable. His ears reminded me of Danny H. from elementary school. Perfectly circular, Danny’s ears stuck out from either side of his head like bread and butter pickles. Kids teased Danny about catching flies with his ears, about using them as fans on hot days.

I avoided staring at Leif’s ears and looked instead at his glacier blue eyes set in porcelain-white skin. His looks scared me, but I talked myself out of worrying. People can’t help what they look like. Give the guy a chance, I told myself.

When we shook hands, Leif tilted his head slightly to the side and stared intently into my eyes. Mesmerized, I stared back.

“Delighted to meet you, Kat.” He smiled a melodrama villain smile and winked one eye. I stared at his ears, now a bright crimson from the scotch. Set against his navy jacket, they were too much to ignore.

“Your blouse is lovely. It’s changing colors with the fading light of the setting sun.” His carrot red mustache curled up at the corners of his mouth. I felt exquisitely beautiful.

Dora didn’t talk on the drive home. She pulled up in front of my house and said, “Headin’ the wrong way on a one-way street with that one.”

Two days after our meeting, Leif rang the doorbell of my studio, flowers in hand.

“I had to see you. Come with me,” he said.

“I’m painting.”

“Ten minutes.”

On our waterfront walk, Leif wrapped his arm around my waist and said, “Kat. I’m absolutely crazy

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about you.”

The man had a way with words.

Not long after that walk, we were an item. On Friday night we went out dancing, and I wore a blue sequined dress that I adore because the satin lining feels silky against my skin. It feels like the parachute my dad occasionally threw on the front lawn for my sister and me as kids. We’d roll ourselves up in its slipperiness and pretend to be twin caterpillars asleep in a silk-threaded cocoon.

We were home from dancing and standing in Leif’s bedroom when he kissed me passionately, then skillfully unzipped my dress. Who knew the heaviness of the sequins, combined with the slipperiness of the satin lining, would zoom that little dress straight to the floor? I love stuff like that.

One second before I leapt into his bed, he whispered, “Wait! I have a surprise.” From his nightstand he reached for a satiny sheet, flew it up into the air and let it float softly down onto the bed, like a christening.

We’d been inseparable for six months when Leif’s cold feet attacks began. He called it quits on three consecutive Mondays, and every consecutive Tuesday he called to say how sorry he was. He missed me.

After our third Reconciliation Tuesday, I left for Chicago to attend an opening of my paintings. Leif called at the last minute to say he couldn’t take me to the airport as promised – a client desperately needed him. It just so happened that the client was the same twentyfive-year-old woman who called him at home every week, always with an emergency. That’s when I finally got angry. That’s when I decided to break it off with him

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for good when I returned from Chicago. That’s also when I returned his gift: an exquisite set of glacier blue sheets that matched his eyes. “So that even when I’m not there, you’ll feel like I’m there,” he’d said.

Dora responded bluntly. “I’m watering the plants and bringing in the mail. Seems like I’d be the one to take you to Sea-Tac in the first place.”

On our way to the airport we stopped at Nordstrom. I wanted to erase any and all reminders of our first night together. Sheets qualified as reminders. In a brown grocery bag tucked under my arm, I carried the glacier blues that Leif had given me on that last Reconciliation Tuesday.

“We don’t return opened linens,” said the chic, young saleswoman.

“Opened. Never used.” I purposely acted like a shrew. I felt pretty bad about it later.

In the parking lot Dora said, “Kat, I know breakups suck.”

“Tell me about it,” I said.

“Promise me you’ll wait – for the real thing.”

“Scout’s honor,” I said, holding my point, middle and ring fingers in the air.

“He’s nothin’ but a side road,” she said.

“Filled with potholes.”

“So, no more Mondays?”

“No more Mondays.”

I felt empty in Chicago. Hollow. That’s how the loneliness felt to me. I cried a lot too. I began having what I called Chicago moments in which I settled down into the sadness of losing myself, yet again, for the wrong man. First a failed twenty-year marriage and now Leif.

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I was in the middle of a Chicago moment when my hotel phone rang.

“I love you,” he said. “See you at the airport tomorrow.”

I phoned Dora to say I had a ride home from the airport. “Dora? You there?”

“Going for round four, eh?”

“You saw me return the sheets!”

“And now you’re sliding right back into ‘em.”

Leif greeted me at Sea-Tac with roses.

At my place, he arranged the flowers in a vase while I sorted the mail. Hidden in with all the bills lay an ivory linen envelope from my sister. I gasped when I opened the identical Van Gogh card that had comforted me during the three Monday breakups.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing.”

“You relax while I cook us something tasty.” The guy could cook. I’ll give him that much.

I studied the painting of red rooftops along a country lane pointing diagonally toward a bright yellow horizon.

“This pasta primavera will surpass anything you ate in Chicago.”

We feasted, and afterward, while Leif began to set the stage for romance, I feigned jet lag and pretended to fall asleep on the sofa.

The next morning after we drank coffee and ate croissants, we lay in bed lazily thumbing through my decorating magazines – our afterglow ritual. Leif pointed to a Tuscany mansion and said, “I could live there – with my favorite, seductive, twenty-five-year-old to service all my needs.”

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I got out of bed, walked my naked, forty-six-yearold body to the wicker chair, picked up his neatly folded clothes and dropped them unceremoniously to the floor.

“Go,” I said.

“Call you later – when you’re in a better mood.”

I tiptoed downstairs to watch him back out of the driveway, turned from the door and stubbed my toe on a gift box tucked under the entry table. Dora’s accompanying note – plain and simple: Welcome Home! Main Road Open.

Under the tissue paper lay exquisitely embossed, white-on-white sheets. Right then and there, I marched upstairs and put them on my bed. Although alone, I didn’t feel lonely any more. I felt at peace and happy to be off the bumpy side road. I even felt beautiful again, all by myself.

After all the confusion stopped and everything became clear, I did a curious thing. I got out the Van Gogh card of red rooftops along the country lane pointing toward the yellow horizon, reached for my favorite pen and wrote a goodbye note to Leif. I smiled really big when I kicked the top sheet up high off the bed and watched it float down onto me.

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