mallorys_camera | Bad Self Portrait Plus State of the (Former) Union

So New Roots never got around to uploading RTT’s transcripts to the Common App, which means that all the hard work B did on commandeering RTT’s application to Bates for Early Decision was in vain.

B is quite heartbroken.

I’ve let B do most of the work in the RTT college application process for several reasons. Numbah One because I did the college application dance with Max a few years back, and it was tedious, time-consuming and Not Fun. And Numbah Two because B seems to be angling for some kind of personal redemption through RTT, like if he’s a good father – and I gotta say, he is a good father – then that will counterbalance a long list of personal fuck-ups.

I’m much better at organizational stuff than B is, so have been on the phone and emails all morning, alternately blandishing and scolding the New Roots folk, quizzing the Bates people to find out what other admissions options are still available.

I must say that B has been a very good friend to me this last six months or so. Do I forgive him for the horrible way he walked out on me? Well. Let’s just say I want to forgive him. I know I’d be a better person to forgive him.

But there’s still the other woman. Partridge-cheeked, in my imagination, with that perky smile, a veritable one woman button-sewing campaign. I continue to feel insulted somehow that she refuses to meet me. No doubt, this is a pathological emotional cathexis inspired by some primal triangulation in my deepest subconscious.

Think Freddie and Bell from The Hour. B and I spend hours texting each other witty asides, analyses of news events, vignettes from our days. We meet for coffee and esoteric word games, four or five times a week. We are great pals – it’s the relationship we had at the very beginning, minus the sex. I sometimes wonder, what’s left for her anyway? Let's see... She knows what he looks like with those anti-snore strips on his nose, that he gets horrible cramps and restless leg symptoms most nights that keep him from sleeping. He knows -- what exactly? That she's quote very domestic? That her husband decided he was gay a few years back and walked out on her? That she was sexually molested as a child?

I know her secrets, see. That's because I'm no longer the person who has to be lied to so B's free to tell me everything and anything. And he does.

I assume her chief function in his life is to keep him from going back to me, but of course I’m probably giving our interactions too much significance. B is the King of Compartmentalization, after all, and the Girlfriend is kind of the Spirit of Upstate New York to him. His relationship is with his own roots as much as it is with her, with this place where he grew up, this place where his parents, grandparents and great grandparents grew up and died, this place where her parents, grandparents and great grandparents grew up and died. I guess he's looking forward to dying here too. I’ll always be an outsider to that. She may be just a small town girl, but he’s just a small town boy. Odd that I never understood that about him in the many, many years of our marriage.

And, too, I gather their life together is very low key. Abe used to tell me over and over again, “A writer needs a very uncomplicated home life.” Even when B and I are getting along, our relationship was never uncomplicated. I’m afraid I’m pretty high maintenance.

But anyway, he's been a very good friend to me and I'll probably be able to let the other stuff go once I'm outa here in June.