Helen wanted Leigh to go to college, get an education. “Haven’t we learned anything?” she’d said. “You could find yourself the sole support of a family! I won’t make you wait too long, but we have to find a way for you to get an education.”
They compromised. Johnny enlisted in the army reserve. Leigh registered at the local university. She wanted to be a teacher like her aunt Helen. Biology caught her interest. She would get her degree and they would marry at the age of twenty-one.
For a couple of years, things rolled by without too much stress or trauma, even though, looking back on it, she could see that Johnny had a tendency to grow restless. Helen went off now and then to visit writing friends or attend conferences when school was not in session. Johnny worked in his father’s home furnishings store and was gone for occasional reserve weekends or training.
Then he deployed. After nine months in Kuwait he was on his way home. Their wedding was scheduled to take place a few weeks after he got home. But something had changed. Suddenly, he had doubts. He said he couldn’t do it. He said he was sorry, he just wasn’t ready. He wanted to see more of the world. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life working in his father’s store and living in the neighborhood he grew up in. And since he’d never even dated anyone else, how could he be sure she was the right woman for him? How could Leigh be sure, for that matter?
They argued and fought and then Johnny told her he was being transferred to an army reserve unit in California. He thought they should make a clean break and, maybe in a year or two, see if they still wanted to be together.
She begged him not to go. Crying, sobbing, feeling as if her heart was being ripped from her breast, she pleaded with him not to end their beautiful, perfect love match. The humiliation of begging just about did her in.
Helen was beside herself. “That self-centered little bastard! I think you dodged a bullet. That is not good husband material!” Helen pointed out that things weren’t as perfect as Leigh wanted them to be. That he’d been an imperfect boyfriend who flirted with other girls, went through spells of neediness that required a lot of special attention from her, that he was spoiled by his mother. Despite the fact that Helen liked Dottie Holliday and was grateful for her support while she raised Leigh alone, she was critical of Dottie’s blind eye where her middle son was concerned.
As for Johnny’s claim of having never dated another girl, Helen was not so sure. He hadn’t dated anyone Leigh knew about but Helen taught at the high school. She saw things and heard things. Helen thought Johnny was not as loyal as Leigh believed, but Leigh refused to believe that.
She grieved. Johnny wasn’t going to change his mind. He said it was best, they should both be sure. And they both needed to experience a little more of life. Though clearly he was not concentrating on what she needed, leaving Leigh and Helen to deal with calling off the wedding and returning gifts that had arrived early.
“You’re so young,” Helen said. “Someday you’ll see he didn’t deserve you.”
It took Leigh a while to stand upright, to sleep through the night without crying, to face the world without her best friend and fiancé. She plagued Mrs. Holliday for news of Johnny. She called him, relentlessly pleading with him to come back or invite her to move to California. He rejected her. “Come on, Leigh, I’m happy! Why can’t you just be happy, too?”
She was shattered.
She took some time off from school but ironically it was school that eventually brought out the best in her. She was so angry and hurt she decided her revenge would be to succeed, on her own, without him! She pursued her degree in biology. Johnny’s mother told her Johnny was engaged to a California girl, and when Leigh was done crying her heart out, she said, “Fuck him!” and then took the MCAT and applied to medical school, losing herself in the difficult study, relieved not to have time to think about being lonely. She was driven and she worked with a vengeance.
She knew lots of girls and young women had traumatic breakups, but she always felt hers was different. She had spent her whole life loving Johnny, forgiving him when he was a screwup and moving with a single-mindedness toward their hopes and dreams, their forever together. How could he walk away from that so easily? Had she been wrong about him all along? Helen’s books did better each year and she retired from teaching to write full-time. She began to travel, writing everywhere she went, taking Leigh with her now and then.
Johnny’s parents sold their house and moved to Arizona to enjoy the warmer weather while Leigh went on to not one but a double residency. And she wasn’t lonely—she had many friends within her field just as her independent aunt had many friends within her profession. She dated now and then but nothing clicked. And that was fine, Leigh was happy and accepted she would be just like Helen—active, self-sufficient, free and fun-loving. But probably not attached.
Helen kept in touch with Dottie Holliday and Leigh learned Johnny had married, had a couple of kids; they were having trouble making ends meet sometimes. Johnny even got in touch with Leigh when she was a new ER doctor. He asked her if she was happy and she said, “Deliriously.” Johnny had said he thought maybe the biggest mistake of his life was letting Leigh get away. “Actually, that isn’t what happened,” Leigh said. “You dumped me. You practically left me standing at the altar.” And she hung up on him. Not long after that she learned that Johnny had divorced and remarried.
She got over him, of course. She even relented that her life was much better than it would have been had she married Johnny at the age of twenty-one. And then Aunt Helen told her she’d heard from Dottie Holliday again. By the age of thirty, Johnny was unhappy in his second marriage.
And Leigh thought, Whew! Dodged a bullet indeed!
Not long after Helen retired from her teaching position, she said that she wasn’t planning to live the rest of her life in Chicago. “As much as I love it, I’m over the winters here. Of course, I’ll be back often...in spring, summer and fall. I’m shopping for a more hospitable climate.” She spent a few months in California one winter, Florida another, even Texas once. Leigh often visited her for a winter respite and Helen always came home for a long summer stay. Helen also returned to the Chicago suburbs for Christmas but it didn’t take too many of those visits to confirm that she was right—she’d had enough of those harsh winters. That was when Leigh started thinking maybe she also could use a change. Their Naperville house was paid for, their incomes were sufficient; they hadn’t spent twelve months of the year together in a long time. It was time for Leigh to find her special place.
“Timberlake, Colorado?” Helen had asked. “What’s the population there? Three hundred people, six hundred elk?”
“Something like that,” Leigh said. “You can visit me in the summer when it’s warm and I’ll visit you in the winter wherever you are. I’ve only signed a two-year contract so this is just my first possibility. Who knows? I might end up in Maui!”
“Can we please try La Jolla?” Helen asked.
“We’ll see. You’ve been indulging your wanderlust for ten years now. It’s my turn to have a look around. I’ll try to settle on a place where you won’t slip on the ice when you’re old and brittle. You know I’ll always take care of you. You always took care of me.”
“I’m not planning to get old and brittle,” Helen threw back. “That’s why I keep moving! It’s the best defense.”
So, the time was coming up. Helen would spend most of her spring and summer in Timberlake with Leigh. The house in Illinois was sitting empty for longer and longer now with Leigh in Colorado and Helen always on the move.
Leigh had clearly learned the importance of autonomy from Helen, who was so comfortable being a single woman. It took her a long time to get over Johnny Holliday and there had not been a man with real potential in her life since him. She had had a dalliance here and there, but nothing serious. Her sixty-two-year-old aunt was her best friend, and quite the girlfriend she was. She wrote books, traveled the world, tried living in new places, taught writing classes all over the country and online and had a wonderful group of writer girlfriends everywhere.