Kathy and I were married almost 30 years until her breast cancer ended things on my birthday in 2018. It’s weird how life happens.
We were blessed with a precious daughter, now 25. Our family was formed largely by the 1926 “Hollywood Eclectic” house, with its steep pitched roof and turret, that we occupied on a scenic mountainside street in Mt. Washington. It was the type of house neighborhood kids called the “witch’s’ house” around Halloween.
I lived in that house uneasily after Kathy died and Laura left for college at Tulane in New Orleans. The house was filled with memories, which comforted me as much as they stung by critical absences.
At some point, I dated via Match.com. I met good women, all intelligent, kind, loving and wise. There was one in particular from Santa Monica whom I thought after two years of dating was my forever. But she eventually decided she needed freedom and space, so I scooped up my splintered heart and moved on.
It struck me during one more endless silent night alone on the couch that there was no good reason for me to live in this big old house by myself. So I sold it about a year ago and moved into an 8-foot-by-12 foot room on the fourth floor of the elevator-less Glendale YMCA. I was trying to live cheaply. I wanted to get a position with an organization like the Peace Corps, something overseas, like I did with Kathy in the ’80s.
After three months at the Y, I was walking home from dinner one night when I tripped on a crack in a sidewalk and fractured my kneecap. I called Laura the next morning. She impressed on me that I couldn’t live at the Y anymore.
So she found a place for me in Glendale, which advertised itself as “gracious senior living.” It was a good place, run by decent, well-meaning people, but the average age of the folks living there was 85. I’m 69. The frames of reference were, in retrospect, incompatible. I greatly appreciated some individuals there, but clearly it couldn’t be my long-term home.
One day, I came to the dining room of my gracious place, and seated across from me was a woman who immediately struck me. Her short-cut hair was gray to white. She had blue eyes and a soft voice, and as I would learn later, an impish wit. She was there to close out the affairs of her 103-year-old mother, who had died around the time I hurt my leg. I learned she was an architect — just like me.
Gail asked me to come to her mom’s burial at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills. We sat next to each other with a small group. Gail got up at some point and released a dove, which weaved around and eventually disappeared.
Gail describes herself as an agnostic. I’m a practicing Catholic. I always thought it was important for couples to have a common faith — to bond better. But in our time together, I changed. It’s good to have your own convictions, and it’s nice to share them. But I realize sharing can happen without converting.
Often Gail looks like she’s frowning, but it’s just that she has poor vision and is straining to see through her prescription lenses. She often sees difficulties as bigger than I see them. A standing joke between us is Gail saying, “And there’s another problem.” To which I might reply, “Is that a problem or a possibility?”
She would scowl at me then (I think, but can’t be sure), so, in response, I’d make a pumping up-and-down movement with my arms, imitating common Florida lizards. Or I’d growl like a feral dog. She’d laugh, and I’d kiss her behind her ears while growling more as she closed her eyes and smiled. I’m very happy at times like that.
Gail and I have grown so close.
But then she had to go home — back to Gainesville, Fla. So I went to visit her for a month. Then I went to visit her for two months.
A few weeks ago, Gail flew to L.A. We stuffed my belongings into my tiny Fiat 500 and drove cross-country. We saw Frank Lloyd Wright’s compound Taliesin West outside Scottsdale, Ariz.; astonishing White Sands National Park in New Mexico; and the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth.
With each thing seen and shared, we’ve grown closer. Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Ark., was, I think, our benediction. There was more, but the chapel did it.
As for Los Angeles, I will always love it. I didn’t leave for lack of affection for the city. I left because I met a woman I loved who was unwilling to relocate and I wanted to be with her. Life is change, and either you change with circumstances or you break.
Gail and I now live together in Gainesville. But I must consider: What was the mysterious confluence that caused my knee to break at the time Gail’s mother died, bringing Gail and me to one table, in one place, at one time? I don’t claim to understand it. But for us, our shared delight, laughter and gratitude are enough.
A famous architect once said, “God is in the details.” Maybe that applies to relationships. When I first came to Gail’s house, I sat on a dining room chair of hers with a wicker cane seat. I did that two or three times.
Then one day, as I sat down, the seat broke, and my fleshy cheek seemed to have plunged into the abyss. Gail asked, “Could you please sit more gently in my chairs?” I didn’t think I sat any harder on her chair than I ever sat on a chair before in my life. But I said “OK,” because, in hindsight, maybe I was being too hard-assed.
Maybe the mystery of love lies in that wicker hole.
The author is an architect. He recently left Los Angeles and now lives in Gainesville, Fla.
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