David Speranza

Falling for Lydia

by David Speranza

My problem with Lydia Snodgrass wasn't that she was unattractive. On the contrary: Lydia was one of the few women whose merest glance caused the meekest of men to tear off his shirt, emit a great Tarzan war cry and wrestle with the nearest alligator in a watery knife duel to the death. She had eyes that sparkled, hair that glistened, a mouth that welcomed, and a nose that never ran. As far as her body was concerned, the most skilled mathematicians were left dumbfounded plotting the subtleties of its angles. In short, she was a knockout.

In the intellectual arena, as well, she would never be classified a welterweight, having collected degrees in philosophy, literature, Russian studies and shop (the latter being her lone concession to her parents to be "practical" about her education). Among social circles she mingled with the influential and the elite, dispensing her wisdom, wit and charm to all who would solicit it. And there were few who didn't.

But for all her wondrous gifts, for all her joie de vivre, there was something about Lydia Snodgrass that set her apart from other beautiful, distinguished debutantes of the day; something which seemed a charming affectation to those who knew only her public self, but which became a dreaded, scarring impediment to those who were her intimates. For Lydia suffered from a social disability not often talked about in the glossy pages of Psychology Today or Cosmopolitan, a malady which was at best, embarrassing, at worst, life-threatening, and which even the most learned of specialists was unable to cure.

Lydia Snodgrass was, in fact, a world-class klutz.

It was true. I had seen it with my own eyes that first evening at the Kennedys', little suspecting, laughing even, as she charmingly overturned a tray of caviar and Oreos while stepping in a champagne bucket and poking Ted Kennedy in the eye with a lit cigar. The guests found it endlessly amusing—she managed to carry it off with such élan. It all seemed so harmless then, the unwitting prank of a schoolgirl with too much to drink. But if I'd known what I was in for that night as I approached her on the terrace, I would have packed my bags and fled for the nearest hills instead of strutting cockily about like a turkey on Thanksgiving eve.

"You're beautiful," I had told her, a prickly warmth running down my spine at the smell of her perfume. "I'd like to have your children."

She smiled, sipping lightly from her glass. "I don't have any," she said. "But when I do, they're yours."

We laughed, then she accidentally tipped her wine glass from the edge of the balcony, emitting a guilty "oops!" as we watched it tumble through the air like a watery Wallenda before shattering against one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's bulging deltoids.

"Nice shot," I said, hurrying her inside. "Good thing he didn't notice."

But I was the one who wasn't noticing, oblivious as I was to the signs screaming at me like that demented robot in Lost In Space:  Warning! Warning! Danger!

But how could I see? We had only just met, yet I was already under her spell—fortunate I could mutter the word "antediluvian" without trailing off into a meaningless gurgle of consonants and vowels.

Before long we were seeing each other regularly, and in that rapture of early romance I was blind to many things.

Our first date had been nothing short of spectacular: a five-star dinner, fine wine, a veritable cascade of verbal thrusts and parries, followed by a quiet moonless stroll through the Lincoln Tunnel, after which we confessed our true feelings beneath the warm glow of a toxic waste dump. But there were several troubling incidents in the course of the evening which should have tipped me off to the turbulent waters looming just ahead.

For instance, as I greeted Lydia at her Park Avenue duplex that first night, I couldn't help noticing the winding trail of bathroom tissue strung like popcorn from the hem of her dress to some less-than-enchanted place upstairs. It was disconcerting, to say the least, and when at the restaurant she still hadn't mentioned it, I assumed it was simply one of the latest Paris fashions (haute couture never being one of my strong points). Besides, it became downright functional when she spilled the tub of bleu cheese dressing on the waiter.

And then, of course, there was the dessert, an airy raspberry concoction topped with whipped cream and shaved Belgian chocolate—not to mention an assortment of ashes and cigarette butts from an exotic Persian ashtray which was passed overhead at the precise moment Lydia was describing an unusually large variety of swordfish. I won't even discuss what happened to the cab driver, but I imagine he's still breathing through the one nostril, assuming the transplant was a success.

First date jitters, I told myself. She was probably just nervous.

But the second date didn't fare much better—a claim I make only with the benefit of hindsight, for at the time I imagined myself in Heaven, hoofing a dandy little soft shoe above the clouds—and I gave only the merest dollop of thought to the fact that I entered my apartment afterwards wearing confetti for a tie, a waxed pair of pants, and a tepid bowl of New England clam chowder. But I was in love!

Before I knew it we had decided to move in together, and I remember my only real concern was where I would keep my priceless collection of antique bowling balls. I admit, it seemed a bit hasty—we had only known each other for two weeks, including our three-day excursion to Antigua—but there was something that felt right about it, a feeling that this was something that could last forever—like standing in line for tickets to a Rolling Stones concert. It was impetuous, yes, but this was Lydia Snodgrass, the most desired debutante in the East, the darling of New York's haut monde, and I was determined this would be no mere dalliance.

My first clue that perhaps something was awry came the day I moved into her spacious Upper East Side apartment. The movers had just finished juggling my belongings uptown and, as I bade them a fond adieu (which one of them cleverly interpreted as a sneeze), Lydia squealed with glee at the prospect of helping me unpack. I was wary at first, being slightly possessive toward my belongings (on a par just below Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man), but I decided, why not. After all, this was Lydia, and I loved her, and she loved me, and what harm could possibly come from letting her unpack one or two of my bowling balls?

The answer to that question, unfortunately, would require more space than a graduate thesis on phrenology. Suffice to say, two hours later—after we had pried loose the bowling ball from my aorta and shoveled up the bits of glass and other miscellanea that once comprised the living room—I had my first inkling that Lydia was not the balletic creature of grace I had imagined. Hesitant to jump to conclusions, I'd nevertheless experienced my first whisper of doubt. I would be on my guard.

In the weeks that followed I was relieved to find my fears were groundless. Except for the occasional broken dish or ruptured cat, everything went smoothly. Our love continued to blossom, and it seemed that the more content we became the less prone Lydia was to tripping down the stairs or falling out of bed—something she had done quite frequently the first few times we made love. Somehow, her security in our relationship manifested itself into an ever-evolving gracefulness and assuredness of carriage. Once, she even tossed a piece of popcorn in the air and caught it in her mouth—without falling into the fireplace. And I was amazed, even a little proud, on that day she successfully rubbed her stomach, patted her head and sang La Marseillaise, in Russian, all at the same time. It was an enormous breakthrough for her, and by the end of our first two months together I was the happiest man alive.

And then things began to fall apart.

It started innocently at first, with a casual remark I made concerning an especially attractive model adorning the latest cover of Vogue.

"What do you think of this outfit?" Lydia asked, holding the magazine up for me to see as we stood at the checkout line behind our weekly assortment of vegetables, rabbit food and straw (she was heavily into fiber).

"I think she's pretty," I mumbled, unable to pull myself away from an absorbing TV Guide article about Shannon Doherty's desperate brush with mediocrity ("I want to be the next Brando," she was weeping).

"What do you mean, 'you think she's pretty'?" Lydia interrupted again. "I asked you what you thought of her clothes."

I looked back at the magazine.

"They're pretty, too," I said, then quickly added, "But not as pretty as you, muffin loaf."

She smiled weakly, and save for the fluttering accordion of airborne periodicals that accompanied her attempt to return the magazine to its rack, I would never have suspected something was wrong.

A full week went by before her next "attack." I was watching Baywatch, rooting loudly—and, I suppose, rather indiscreetly—for Pamela Anderson's breasts, when I heard a tumultuous crash from the kitchen. I rushed in to find Lydia plopped on the floor amid a pile of pots and pans and silverware, bits of ice cream and egg covering her hair and a blender lodged on one hand.

"What happened?" I asked, fear nibbling at my duodenals. She had been so good for most of the past month, I couldn't bear the thought of a relapse.

"I was making a milkshake," she whined, "and I heard you baying at Baywatch, and I got distracted, and—and I guess I fell!"

"I guess you did," I replied calmly, pulling her up out of the crockery and licking Vanilla-Peach-Pistachio-Rum from her sticky locks. She sniffled petulantly as I gently removed the blender from her hand. "What's the matter?" I asked, hiding my concern. "Is something wrong?"

She looked at me a moment, sniffled again, then suddenly exploded.

"You don't love me anymore! You hate me!"

"What are you talking about?" I said, shocked by this outburst.

"It's true!" she whimpered. "Otherwise you wouldn't be lusting after all those other women!"

I was stunned.

"What other women?" I demanded.

"The ones on TV and in the movies, and the models in all those fashion magazines..."

"That's crazy!" I said. "Sure, I find them attractive—so would any guy—but it's not like I'm having an affair with them. Be reasonable!"

"Well," she snorted, somewhat pitifully, "if you really loved me, you wouldn't call attention to—to them so much."

"I do really love you!"

"Oh, and I suppose whistling and doing a perfect backflip over the new Madonna video is your way of showing it?"

She burst into a new fit of crying, and I felt myself edging away from reason.

"Lydia, these are mediated images, for God's sake! How can you be jealous of women who aren't even three-dimensional?"

"Because!" she said simply, in her own special brand of logic. And then she was stumbling out of the kitchen, capsizing a small lamp and a bowl of surprised goldfish along the way.

It was an argument we were to have time and again. And even though I eventually conceded to never again remark on another woman's appearance—three dimensional or otherwise—an undetectable rift had appeared in our relationship. Soon I was feeling self-conscious even when I wasn't commenting on some magazine or television show, to the point where I imagined Lydia peering sidelong at me, tapping her foot, a rolling pin clenched in one hand.

With the slow deterioration of our relationship, Lydia's clumsiness assumed dramatic new proportions. Soon she was unable even to brush her teeth without invoking some level of violence, often breaking her toothbrush off in her mouth, squirting squiggly lines of toothpaste across the mirror, or slamming a hand in the medicine cabinet, usually mine (though not always, which is why I was convinced she wasn't simply being vindictive: her accidents were reassuringly democratic). It seemed that no matter how careful she tried to be, her attempts to perform even the most basic of tasks resulted in some object falling, breaking or being crashed into.

I was fast approaching that dark and uncompromising region known as Wit's End.

One evening, following a typically disastrous encounter in which I attempted a simple kiss "hello"—and wound up on my back, Lydia beneath me, a bouquet of fresh-cut flowers protruding from my mouth—I decided I could endure no more.

"I've had it!" I exploded, picking the stems from my teeth. "That's the last straw!"

"What's the matter, darling?" she asked, in a voice appallingly devoid of irony.

"I can't take this anymore!" I screamed. "I'm sore, I'm bruised, and most of everything I own is broken or in need of new parts! Not only that, but I'm tired of always shopping for new furniture, and my insurance company is raising my premium because they say I've become a high risk! And I don't even smoke!"

"What are you saying, dear?" she asked quietly. I paused for a breath. What was I saying?

"I'm saying... Goodbye!!"

And then I was slamming the door behind me, Lydia Snodgrass—great beauty, incomparable wit, total klutz—sobbing mournfully on the other side.

Hagridden and weary, I limped my way to the nearest temple of lost souls, drinking my brain into oblivion and my body into a pleasant state of numbness. It was the first time I hadn't felt pain in weeks. Sagging from my barstool I contemplated my future, and realized that it didn't include cohabitating with a woman for whom the simplest conversation became a contact sport. It was time for me to move on.

A week later I moved out of Lydia's apartment (after assuring her I could pack my few salvageable belongings alone) and was somehow able to convince her that my leaving would be best for both of us, not to mention the enormous savings it would mean on our hospital bills. She seemed to understand, smiling sadly as I left and wiping a single tear from her eye. Then she dropped a bowling ball on my foot for old time's sake, and I cried, too.

It's been over a year since I last saw Lydia. And while it has not always been easy (there were more than merely emotional wounds that needed healing), I have managed to get over her. Lydia—from what I've been able to glean from the society pages—has fared well, marrying a man far better suited to her high-risk ways: a linebacker for the Giants who would give the Incredible Hulk a run for his money. I understand the wedding was quite beautiful, though apparently the groom's father was none too happy when he found himself wearing, in addition to an ill-fitting tuxedo, most of the cake.

The last I heard, the blushing bride and groom were living safely in an unfurnished rubber townhouse in Connecticut, having become the proud new parents of a bouncing (literally, I presume) baby boy.

As for myself, I have since lost my heart to a former dancer in the Royal Ballet. While it's true she has the mind of a turnip and the personality of an overcooked pasta shell, I really can't complain: she's beautiful, she's warm, she's loving—and, oh, how that woman can move!