The Impossible

I used to think things would stay the same as long as I did, but you know better than I that they don't. I am sitting up in bed writing, like Rossini, the opera composer. They say he used to do some of his best composing before he even got up in the morning - if he made it out of bed while it was still morning, that is. All I need is a bottle of wine to feel exquisitely happy. Perhaps not even that. Anyway, bed inspires me, as it does other people.
Poor Mike. Where did he go wrong? He doesn't have a clue. He must ask himself that question over and over and over. He was married - common-law - to the most beautiful and compliant woman I have ever known. Carla was as good as it gets.
The first time I saw her, I remember wishing I were five years older so that she might be interested in me. I was seventeen and she must have been twenty six, maybe twenty seven. She and Mike were living in a two story house on Poplar Street in Phoenix.
I had arrived there from Des Moines, having just hopped on a bus on a lark, right after High School, in the summer of 1968. My High School Counselor had told me I was a fine student but needed more social contacts. He had no clue how I was about to get them. I was at the Reno Motel, my second night there, thinking I would probably run out of money before I could even land a menial job, when Mike found me. As most things happen, without reason and without explanation, it was a purely coincidental encounter. Mike was working a construction job at the Greyhound station that evening. The station was right around the corner from the motel and I went there simply to use the phone. He was the one I asked to direct me to the phone booth. He must have seen that I was kind of desperate and a quick conversation ensued, mostly from his end. No, he was not from Des Moines himself, but he had family there. He had even lived there for a while. You can guess what happened next. I never had to make the call home. He saved me the embarrassment. He was a good man. He was a life saver. He asked me to come home with him. I will never know what motivated him to do it - I never asked him - but he did.
That night at around nine thirty, I packed my things and went home with Mike. He had already told me he had a wife and two kids. He was a non-stop talker, but not a nuisance talker. He always seemed to know what he was talking about. Everything he said made sense to me. He must have been around thirty, although he looked older, and he was tall and slender. We went bumping along in his Dodge pick up truck for about twenty minutes and then we got home.
If you don't remember, 1968 was a banner year for mini skirts and Carla made it more so. She was a redhead back then, but that didn't draw attention from her legs, for she was the first woman I knew who wore micro skirts before they were invented. You will forgive me for speaking of her this way, but I was an eager teenager back then and I remember feeling anxious just watching her. Mike, I thought, was the luckiest guy in the world.
He introduced me right away and told Carla to fix me something to eat. I was slightly embarrassed by the commotion I was causing and I told Mike not to bother, but he insisted and Carla certainly didn't seem to mind. I had a very hard time paying attention to Mike as he told me things about his work. Carla was in the kitchen, but I could see her every move. It appeared to me right then that she must be one of those people who do a lot of exercising to look this way, and I was right. She was into physical fitness way ahead of everyone else in the country. And not only this, but in almost every other respect, Carla was a woman ahead of her time, almost every other respect.
I was hungry, and though what she cooked up - scrambled eggs with French cut green beans - was delicious, it tasted more so because of it. You know exactly what I mean. Mike kept on talking while I ate and I tried discreetly to admire Carla while he talked. After I finished, Mike showed me the upstairs portion of the house. It was really a duplex since it had its own separate entrance, front and rear. He told me to get a good rest, that the bed in the first bedroom was clean, and he would see me in the morning. I so well remember that first night; it must have taken me an hour to fall asleep.
At about six in the morning, the door throbbed with Mike's knocking on it. The stairwell leading up to the upper portion of the house made the sound even more impressive. I heard Mike yelling through the door. Hey, kid, get up and shower and come down so we can go to work. I knew this man meant business. I did just so.
I came down to find a very decent breakfast already served for us, and Carla joined us, too. I had already been wondering what she would look like in broad daylight and first thing in the morning and I was delighted. She made some conversation which I cannot recall, since my mind was not on what she said, but on how she said it. She expressed herself in short and very to-the-point comments or questions. She and Mike seemed to enjoy an open and straight-forward relationship, very even-keeled. He was blunt with her and she with him.
After breakfast, Mike told me to brace myself for a lot of dirty, non-stop work and he also promised me I would learn a lot. He was in the plumbing business and he was absolutely right about my learning a lot. One can't help it, especially if one knows nothing about something. Like I said, I was a fine student.
I don't think anything unusual happened that first day except we must have gone to fifteen different houses to take care of everything from leaky faucets to finding an underground gas line. Mike told me that first day that, after about a week, every plumbing problem basically repeats itself. We would be unstopping people's drains and sewer lines every single day, replacing lots of leaky gaskets, and once in a while installing appliances and putting in new furnaces and air conditioners. Mike had a lot of work. And now he had one very available helper. He asked me if I could drive and I said yes, because it was true, even if I didn't have my license, yet. On the way home, he stopped the truck at an intersection and asked me to drive the rest of the way home; he would point me in the right direction as we went. I could tell he didn't like being bluffed.
It was around eight when we got home but it was still light and it didn't seem that late. Carla was not home. She was at the store getting some things and the kids were with her. She pulled up the driveway no more than two minutes after we got there. The kids were handsome, quiet little kids. Both were rather skinny, but otherwise looked very happy and healthy. They both had light brown hair, not red like Carla’s. Mike told me to go upstairs and wash and come back down to have dinner with them.
I was back in about thirty minutes. I was conscious that they would need at least that much time to prepare something. As I knocked on the door, one of the kids opened it. He must have been about ten - his sister maybe eight. I learned later that I had their ages exactly right. I sat down in a big brown sofa which was right at the huge front window. The walls in their large living room were a lovely light shade of green, my favorite color. Mike came out of the rest of the house and sat beside me. He told me about things we might be doing tomorrow. He also said I should eat with them regularly, like family, unless I might not like Carla's cooking. Carla was listening and she just laughed. It was a pleasant, genuine laugh.
We sat down and ate and talked for about an hour. They told me their family history and I told them mine and this became our routine for about two weeks. I could tell Carla was intelligent and had lots on her mind but she would not open up in front of Mike. I suppose that was pretty normal.
Around about the third week, on a Friday, Mike told me he was going out of town for the weekend and I should stay and just goof off. Carla would take care of me. That's what he said. I should not try to go out and do a job by myself because he would fire me.
On Saturday morning, I hesitated coming down for breakfast until Carla sent her little boy to get me. I don't think it had ever, in my entire life, taken me two hours to eat breakfast, but that day it did. And it wasn't my fault. Carla just wanted to talk. I fell in love that morning - for the first and only time.
The eating part took maybe ten minutes and then she offered me a second cup of coffee and started talking so candidly with me I could not tear myself away. She and Mike had met at a football game while both were still in high school. Mike was a senior and she was just a freshman, but they had started having sex right away. She came from a good family with enough money to put her through practically any school she wanted, but she chose Mike over the Ivy League and that was the end of her connection to her family. After the two kids came, she had urged Mike to get himself a good education, but Mike thought he was doing just fine, thank you.
She regretted having disappointed her father. The man was a self-made millionaire and she had learned business lessons from him that made her feel frustrated that she couldn't put that knowledge and those instincts to work for Mike. She said she had developed a knack for sizing people up and she thought I had the makings of a great businessman. I told her I thought I would become a merchant marine but that the plumbing business suited me just fine right now. She said she wanted me to remember several things she was about to tell me.
Most people end up wasting at least ten years of their life by going about doing what they like. The future should be lived practically, and the present should be lived ideally. Most people have dreams that they see being fulfilled sometime in the future and, of course, that future seldom comes. You must find out early how those dreams translate back into reality five or ten years before they can be achieved. It's like having to drink milk now if you want strong bones five years from now. She said she used to think social connections were ephemeral, a remnant of times past, something to be scoffed at, but she knew better now. People do work in networks. She used to think selling was a real low-brow kind of job, and she knew better now. She used to think imagination was for people who couldn't face reality, but she knew better now. She used to think material things were secondary to contentment and happiness. She used to think happiness accompanied by comfort was somehow illegitimate. Now, she knew better.
Most people work hard until they reach their point of inertia. This is where imagination is crucial. If you can create, create. If you can't, then duplicate. People always want the new. The only time they want the old is when the old has withstood the test of time and has increased in value because of age, like good wine and good music. Like I said, Carla was smart.
Carla told me this and much more. It was the first rude awakening of my life. She took care of her body because this was the most logical thing for anyone to do. All other things derive from how well you feel and how well you think. She predicted that a huge business boon would develop in the market due to future interest in physical fitness. Boy, was she right or what?
She told me Mike had a mistress. Actually, this was number three. She only acquiesced because she had no one else to turn to and because she still loved him intensely. I told her that I couldn't understand how anyone who had a wife so beautiful could desire anybody else. She explained she had a theory that she called the harem syndrome that explained the fact that many men, and a few women, needed not just one sex partner, but several. It had nothing to do with what they already had. It was the same as a man with much money. He may have more than he can spend in a lifetime, but if he's hungry for more, he'll want more. Call it the King Solomon syndrome if you want. Mike was grateful to her for understanding. And, she was always the wife, no matter how many mistresses he had.
She then gave me a tip about what she thought I might be interested in for the future. She had been reading about computers and something called computer chips. I had no idea what these things were about, but she did. She knew about circuitry, miniaturization, programming, dust-free environments, and something called silicone. Remember, this was 1968.
She then made me an offer I found impossible to refuse. She had some money and she would give me some of it in return for a promise from me that I would go and explore and research the possibilities in computer science. Not only this, but she would give herself to me for as long as I would have her, provided I succeeded in the venture. And Mike? She would leave him. He could take care of himself. And the kids? Mike would take care of them. She was very cool about it. She must have known it would take me at least ten years to really succeed.
At twenty nine, I have all the creature comforts I could possibly want, and all the incentive I ever needed to do some of my best work from my bed.