New Intimacies
by Channie Greenberg
Until Doris was wooed by Jorge, she had no desire to establish new intimacies. She never felt that any romantic involvement could or should approach her prior connection to Kiplinger, her ex-husband; he seemed irreplaceable. Unfortunately, he was also a sycophant of the worst kind. That brat of a science phenom had deigned to task Doris to complete his research for him and had likewise been complacent when stealing other scientists’ findings. Kiplinger’s knowledge of creepy-crawly, winged and webbed things had boasted a surfeit of plagiarized data. When it came to expressing his tenderness to Doris, in contrast, he had had neither original nor “borrowed” words with which to grace her.
Kiplinger had shunned Doris for her integrity and for her emotional neediness. He was the sort of chap who used cufflinks instead of buttons, and who shaved his head so that no one would suspect him of balding. Kiplinger was so solipsistic that he comprised an entire universe all by himself. The man was so narcissistic that he repeatedly forgot Doris’ birthday, their anniversary, and the many children they had lost to miscarriages. Ultimately, he eschewed sexual intimacy with his wife, too.
Ever saintly, Doris excused him, attributing his hurtful behavior to undiagnosed, untreated Asperger’s. Over time, though, as her many attempts to get him to CBT therapy, to get him to leave his “flawless world of one” failed, Doris began to second-guess their marriage.
It felt inexcusable that Kiplinger, a minor scholar, habitually berated her for her international recognition. What’s more, when no university granted him tenure, he upped his emotional assaults. At first, he screamed that he lacked fulfillment because he had used his resources to buttress Doris’ rising star. Subsequently, he demanded that Doris cease submitting her findings to important journals. He’d point at Doris and chide her that she ought to be grateful for the hue of his eyes and for the expertise of his fingers. Relative to him, she was a mere bedroom apprentice.
Doris walked away from such tirades. Sure, Kiplinger stayed well-preserved while she had faded into a caricature of stringy gray hair, smooth, chaste cheeks, and fading intellectual curiosity. On balance, he was a bore.
Unbeknownst to either of them, the fiery angels that had been assembled to smite Kiplinger had been curbed by Doris’ daily spiritual ablutions, including her prayers for her husband’s well-being. Doris was steadfast. Doris was charitable. The thick skin that she had developed to advance as a female biochemist more than sufficed to keep her linked to Kiplinger. Doris had learned to make do with getting her hair permed and with eating gourmet dinners in lieu of receiving affection. If Kiplinger had not brazenly flaunted his carnal triumphs, Doris would have forgone their divorce.
As it was, the last lover that Kiplinger took before those proceedings was one of Doris’ graduate school classmates, Catinka Jones. Catinka had gotten impregnated, decades earlier, by the university’s volleyball coach, and had had to leave an extraordinary fellowship to make time to express milk and to change diapers. Catinka’s staggering contributions to the study of chemical processes in newts got sidelined because her unfunded “research” had succeeded too well.
According to Doris’ divorce lawyer, Kiplinger had been idling at a local park at the same time that Catinka was waiting for her son to finish Little League practice. Allegedly, it had been Catinka who had noticed Kiplinger and who had proposed that they become intimately conversant. Then again, it was Kiplinger who had failed to decline. Ever the opportunist, Kiplinger reserved a series of hotel rooms. He was not opposed to marriage; Doris’ servile manner suited him. He was, nonetheless, an aficionado of female flesh. Whereas his past perfidies had lasted a night or two at most, for months, he blissfully traded STDs with Catinka.
In the interim, Doris tried to find new ways to pay household bills; Kiplinger’s expansive lunch hours had gotten him fired. She was as as yet unaware of his betrayals. For the sake of financial security, she left her beloved research position and began to work for a major producer of health and beauty aids. Doris supervised the creation of a floor cleaner that also killed cockroaches while smelling like spring flowers. The conglomerate’s hiring manager was particularly enamored with Doris’ fastidious methods and with her ability to think out of the box. He offered her an admirable salary and the possibility of a matching bonus.
Doris wilted. Her compensation notwithstanding, she remained a gentle soul whose research agenda had involved preserving planetary ecologies, not fashioning modes of species’ extermination. As well, Doris missed her peers’ recognition of her research. When driving to the company’s campus, she’d reproach herself for valuing her house. She had no offspring. Her husband was emotionally absent. She could have continued to be part of the university’s faculty had she been willing to rent an apartment instead of fund a mortgage.
In due course, Doris discovered Kiplinger’s philandering. She straightaway sold their home and found an apartment for herself. Doris didn’t return to academia, but she used a significant portion of her hefty income to actualize her newfound shopping compulsion. With exacting intentionality, Doris would spend up to one-third of her earnings on finery. Her closet soon overflowed with suits incompatible with lab work and with buckram hats, most of which were decorated with ripple-edge roses, and all of which were impractical in a city blessed with lots of rain. Her jewelry box brimmed with unused costume jewelry and with abandoned, authentic gewgaws.
All things considered, it was foreseeable that Doris would freak out when Kiplinger showed up at her lab. The man-boy, who had more connections than a millipede has legs, had had no trouble accessing her secure building. He had emerged because he was horny, had had a tiff with Catinka, and believed his estranged wife to be the least resistant of his sexual partners.
Regrettably, Kiplinger had failed to anticipate the lingering quality of Doris’ anger. Realizing she was still a “tad” upset, he “fessed up” his varied and numerous extracurricular pursuits, afterwards shining his best puppy dog expression at her while, pleading for forgiveness.
Doris threw a small tank of roaches at him.
Kiplinger cowered behind a work island. He would have waited there until the building’s guards escorted him out had Catinka not entered the lab. She claimed to be searching for an expressly valuable earring that had gone missing during a moment of intimacy. During his spewing “confession,” Kiplinger had neglected to detail how he had, several times, straddled Catinka on Doris’ workstation in Doris’ absence.
Catinka sized up Doris. She had become milk toast but was brilliant. She sized up Kiplinger. He was a pretty boy covered with live beetles. It was beyond Catinka’s imagination that the man who had stolen her health, via herpes, would similarly rob her of a valuable ornament and would discount her bug phobia. Disgusted, Catinka fled. A few days later, she filed a police report and had Kiplinger arrested for theft.
Meanwhile, having accomplished her supervisory task, Doris quit. She wasn’t vindictive, just abandoned and bitter. Accordingly, she hired a good attorney and reinvigorated her friendship with Catinka. Doris insisted on receiving no alimony and on paying a very expensive therapist to help her stop pursuing Kiplinger’s affections. Her next goal was to stop obsessing over him.
It proved wise to get reacquainted with Catinka, who introduced Doris to many organizations devoted to unmarrieds. Even so, it wasn’t until Catinka brought Doris to Parents without Partners that Doris perked up. She’d never considered adopting.
* * *
Jorge Canady began attending Parents without Partners a few months later. His wife had died years earlier, leaving him with heartache and a child in preschool. He sat with Doris and Catinka. He knew the former as a client and the latter as a softball parent; his son Rodger was in the same league as Catinka’s son, Butler.
More and more, Rodger had been making suggestions about various available mommies. Hitherto, none of those women wanted a blended family or wanted to keep house for a successful, albeit slovenly, guy and his equally slovenly son. For the most part, the single softball moms Jorge knew were self-reliant persons okay with amorous liaisons, but not with complicated associations. Few thought about getting remarried. Fortunately, Rodger’s nudging resulted in Jorge attending Butler’s mom’s support group. Apparently, kids talked about topics other than Pokémon and aluminum bats while benched.
Jorge was glad that he got to talk to Doris outside of his law office. Unlike the rest of the divorcees he knew, Doris spoke of being willing to “settle” for a nice guy and of being willing to make “compromises” to insure a serviceable marriage. In the bleachers, she poured out her feelings about her lack of children, and then paused to make sure Jorge was not going to charge her for listening.
She couldn’t know that when she spoke, Jorge nodded and daydreamed. He’d think about how much he and Rodger would benefit if someone would putter in their kitchen, burn their roast, and undercook their potatoes or that it tore at him that when he did the laundry, the clothing was always neatly folded, especially his socks, which he always accurately paired. Jorge longed for someone to mismatch his navy ankle-highs with his taller black ones. So, Jorge asked Doris to fire him.
Flabbergast, Doris refused; she needed Jorge to be her reliable professional so that she could function. Without a smart attorney on her payroll, Kiplinger might return to harassing her. Doris began suffering night terrors.
In contrast, Jorge slept better than he had in years. Many evenings, he dreamed of sitting with Doris in front of his television, together watching mindless bosh that no lawyer or chemist would publicly concede enjoying. In those fantasies, he and Doris spooned, ate bad popcorn, and usually remembered to set the video recorder to capture the week’s action flicks for Rodger. That happiness, which leaked into Jorge’s day to day goings on, decided him. He released Doris as a client.
Doris sued. It was ridiculous that Jorge refused to represent her. She began feeling increasingly vulnerable to Kiplinger.
The two resolved the matter out of court. Jorge gladly paid both his fine and Doris’ new lawyer’s fees.
A week after paying his defrayal, Jorge called Doris to invite her to sit with him at a Little League game. Butler’s team was playing against Rodger’s. Jorge carefully specified that he was calling as a friend, not as Doris’ advocate.
Doris insisted that Catinka join them. She couldn’t envision sitting peaceably with Jorge despite the fact that he was a nice and lonely man. Of course, Catinka failed to show up and failed to answer her phone.
Two innings into the game, Rodger got hit in the face by a ball. Doris drove him and his trembling father to an emergency care facility.
A few weeks later, Doris accepted Jorge’s invitation for pizza, not as a friend, or as fellow lonely adult, but as a date. Almost immediately, the two of them got into an argument about the relative merits of pepperoni and pineapple. Both reasoned purchasing a full pie would be economical, but nether liked the other’s topping. The next time they went out, they brought Rodger along to referee.
Doris saw gradually more of Jorge and Rodger. She also made extra time to take Butler to various sports events. Not only did Doris understand baseball better than Catinka, but Catinka, who had become chummy with a banker, had less and less time for Butler.
Although Jorge never again officially represented Doris, he found other ways to deter her from adopting. More precisely, ten months after their first pizza date, he trothed himself to her. In addition to a ring, he presented her with two pies, one of which was totally covered with pineapple and the other one of which was totally covered with pepperoni.
Butler and Catrina walked Doris down the aisle.
Two years later, Doris gave birth to a little girl. She was okay in chiding Jorge that kale was better than cheese puffs, but knew not to mention the mountains of clean, neatly folded laundry he left regularly on her dresser. It made little sense to Doris that Jorge would fold clothes but not put them away.
When their little Belinda was safely in high school and Rodger had not only married, but had also become a dad, Doris returned to chemistry. She taught part-time at a local community college and contributed, every few years, to academic journals.
Catrina married a proctologist. Butler became a playwright. As for Kiplinger, he remained unemployed and promiscuous.
Copyright © 2021 by Channie Greenberg
