Christine lived in Brooklyn with two other single women in a shared apartment. I sent a limo to pick her up and had her delivered to the restaurant, where I met her outside. She had dressed nicely, albeit demurely. Her dress fit her beautifully, showing off her figure without being overly revealing. she'd either had her hair and makeup done professionally, or had more skills in that department than my typical dates, and wore reasonable two inch heels.
Dinner had been eye-opening for me, albeit in a good way. Aside from an exquisite meal, the conversation had been sparkling. Christine asked me about my background, which I explained in some detail. Philadelphia Main Line private school, Princeton undergraduate degree, Harvard Business MBA, hired right out of Harvard by the firm and still there as a partner. That was the typical "credentials check" I expected from a date. But it wasn't what Christine wanted. She wanted to know about my family (father a lawyer, mother a doctor, two brothers, both investment bankers in Philadelphia who were married and had children), what my life was like growing up, my hobbies (sailing, skiing, backpacking, none of which I had time to do these days), how I'd come to choose my career, what my long term life plans entailed, why I was still single, and how long I expected to do what I did. She made me the focus of the conversation for almost the entire meal, something that rarely happened with my typical dates, who generally fixated on themselves and the latest news and gossip of the day regarding the glitterati and the movers and shakers in the city.
I did manage to learn from her that she was an only child, educated at a small college in Iowa not far from her home town, where she majored in English literature and Spanish (she was fluent in Spanish, which allowed her to translate conversations and documents for her firm's Spanish speaking clients). She'd been born late in life to her parents, who were fifty-one (dad) and forty-eight (mom) when she'd appeared, a miracle baby. Her father had been manager of a grain elevator, her mother a school teacher. Other than her parents, she had one living relative, her father's sister who was two years older than he was. Both of her parents had died during her last year of college, her mother from cancer, her father soon after from a heart attack, leaving her a house and a small inheritance. She'd decided to take a chance on a complete life change, selling her childhood home and moving to New York. She had obtained a position with the law firm as a paralegal, where she'd done well and was clearly quite valued, at least according to the lawyer I'd talked to. She was sufficiently valued that he cautioned me not to hurt her. My reputation was neither one of fidelity nor commitment, and she would require both.
"Hamilton" was all it was reputed to be and when the play ended, I did what I always did with my dates, asking Christine to come back to my apartment with me.
"That's not a good idea, Les. I appreciate what you did for me this evening. I'd never have experienced either the meal or the musical on my own. It was quite generous of you. But I'm not the kind of girl who hooks up. I won't be with anyone without a relationship and at least the prospect of a long term commitment. Please call me a cab and send me home."
I couldn't remember the last time a woman had said "No" to me. This was a new experience. Moreover, it intrigued me in ways that the sophisticated ladies I usually dated did not.
"Well, if I send you home, will you let me see you again?"
"I'm not sure, Les. We come from very different worlds and I'm not sure that I could ever adjust to yours. I'm a farm girl from Iowa, you're one of the masters of the universe. You need to be with your own kind. I'd only embarrass or disappoint you."
"Don't answer now. But please think about it. It's been a long time since I enjoyed an evening like this one with a person who was as refreshing as you. I'd really like to see you again. Maybe there's a potential for something more than what I've experienced to date. Please at least consider it." And with that, I put her in the taxi after she gave me a gentle kiss on the cheek.
That Monday, I had two dozen yellow roses delivered to Christine's office, causing a minor stir. I called her that evening, at which time she thanked me for the flowers but continued expressing reluctance to see me again. Perhaps it was her continuing refusal that put me into full campaign mode. I called her every other day for two weeks before she finally said she'd have dinner with me again. But she insisted we do it in Brooklyn at a restaurant where she'd be comfortable and where we could hold a conversation. She promised me that if dinner went well, we could adjourn down the street to an intimate little bar where we could continue to talk. And she made quite clear that when the evening ended, she'd be going home to her apartment and I'd be going home to mine.
The evening was even more delightful than the first, at least from my point of view. Christine proved to be much better read than I'd ever been, as business majors don't do much literature that doesn't involve how to make money or manage people. She kept me enthralled with quotes from various classics that addressed the conversational topic at hand at the moment. I found out that she'd spent two summers in Spain during her college years, polishing her Spanish, which helped to explain her fluency in the language. She told me about growing up in Iowa, a childhood so different from mine as to seem as if it had occurred in another country. I'd spent my entire life in the Metroliner corridor; she'd spent most of hers in what my peers laughingly called "flyover country." Her perspectives were so very different from mine, but she was refreshingly honest about those differences and completely candid about why they would make any relationship with me a serious problem. I was wedded to my job. She wanted a commitment and a family. Those goals were incompatible.
I continued the pursuit in spite of our differences. I'd liked most of my previous companions, but never developed actual feelings for them. Nor, to my knowledge, had any of them developed feelings for me. We were ways to scratch a mutual itch, enjoy the pleasures of each other's company and then move on.
Christine wasn't going to be that kind of girl. We'd been dating for four months, the longest sex drought of my post-high school life, when she finally agreed to go away with me for a weekend. Initially, I'd planned to take her to the shore house, but the ever reliable Ashley had said that what I needed to do was take her to someplace romantic. A bed and breakfast in the Berkshires would meet that need quite nicely. And so I booked a weekend stay and Christine and I were off together.
I nearly blew it completely the first morning we were there. We'd finally made love the evening before. I'd initially focused almost exclusively on Christine's pleasure and she had then rewarded me in turn. We'd soaked the sheets and made more noise than I'd anticipated, which embarrassed her and delighted me when I discovered that I could cause her to respond like that. We were spooning the following morning when my phone rang. It was the office. I took the call, walking out to the garden of the B&B in order not to disturb Christine. Two hours later, when I'd finished the call, I found the room empty of her things and her waiting with her bag on the porch for an Uber to take her home. "This was supposed to be our weekend. It was supposed to be special. If this is what life with you is like, it's not for me. If you can't break free for one weekend, we'll never make it as a couple. I know your hours are much longer than mine and that work's important to you. But if you can't make me the priority when we're together, there will never be any more than a you and a me. Unless I'm more important to you than your work, there can't be an us. And I won't settle for less than an us."
It took me two hours of begging and pleading, along with a hefty bribe to the Uber driver and a promise to turn my phone off for the balance of the weekend, to get her to stay. We enjoyed ourselves, but clearly I'd damaged the foundation of our relationship before I'd even had the chance to begin constructing a structure on it. I'd need to do better. For the next six months I made sure that our time together was uninterrupted. Christine had finally begun to trust me and told me that she wanted me to make a commitment to her as she would do to me. I realized that I wanted to make that commitment. And I did.
Christine's lease was expiring six months after the Berkshires weekend and her two roommates were planning on moving in with their respective boyfriends. That left her with the choice of finding a new set of roommates or a new place to live. At this point, I was smitten with her, enough so that I asked her to move in with me. That triggered another pointed conversation.
"Les, I think I'm falling in love with you and I hope you are with me. But I'm not sure. And I don't want to be sitting alone in that big apartment waiting for you to come home at eleven o'clock every night. If we're going to live together, we need to set some parameters. You're fourteen blocks from your office. I expect you home for dinner at least three times during the week and on both weekend days unless we're out somewhere. I know you have to travel, but I want you to think about 'us' time, particularly for things like birthdays, holidays and special occasions. I know you can't commit to all of them right now, but I expect you to make the effort and I'm going to work with Ashley to make sure she reminds you of those special times well in advance and blocks your calendar out for those times, emergencies excepted. If you can't live with that kind of commitment, I'm not moving in."
"I can do that. I'll tell Ashley to contact you and work with you on scheduling. You're important to me and I am beginning to fall in love with you as well. I want this to work."
That first year together I did make dinner at least twice a week and her birthday, but missed Thanksgiving (I was in Dubai), Christmas Eve (late call with India) and Valentine's Day (somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean on my way to France). Christine had been quite vocal about her displeasure at my missing those special days, but we'd managed to patch things up each time. We did spend Christmas day with my parents and my brothers' families and they all were enchanted with Christine. My father, never one to give romantic advice, pulled me aside and said, simply, "Les, do not screw this up. This girl loves you the way you need to be loved. You'll regret it all your days if you let her get away."
Dad turned out to be right. I do regret screwing it up. And I will to my dying day. Particularly, I regret how my screwing it up turned out for Christine.
Of course I screwed it up. Our first knock down, drag out fight was when I missed her birthday the second year we were together. Ashley had blocked out the afternoon and evening on my calendar, but I'd gotten involved in a problem in Saudi Arabia and I was on the phone until after ten o'clock that evening. Christine was livid. So was Ashley. I'd failed to call her to try to explain, turning up just after she'd gone to bed. I found the bedroom door locked and a note on it saying that the sheets were fresh in the guest bedroom. I was on thin ice here. The following morning, she told me in no uncertain terms, "Les, this was your last chance. You miss one more special day without warning or calling me and without a real emergency, we're done. I'll leave you and I'll never want to hear from you again. Either I'm important enough to you to make me a priority, or I promise you this will end." I'd been warned, repeatedly, but like all the previous warnings, I ignored what turned out to be her last.
The final straw for Christine came on our second Valentine's Day together. By now, we'd been dating for over two years and living together for almost a year and a half. Christine had told me that she wanted a romantic evening at home. She'd be cooking a gourmet meal for us (she was an excellent cook, approaching professional quality) and that dinner would be at seven that evening. She had a special Valentine's Day gift planned, she promised. I expected something in the bedroom. What I didn't know then and wouldn't find out for years was that she was going to tell me we were having a baby.
I didn't make dinner that night, rolling in after midnight having spent hours on the phone trying to fix a deal gone sour. Of course, I hadn't called. I found dinner sitting on the table, now at room temperature, a bottle of champagne sitting in a bucket of melted ice next to my place at the table, and candles burned down to their holders. As you might have expected, the bedroom door was locked again. There was no note this time and I knew better than to knock. I'd try to fix this in the morning.
I tried. Lord knows I tried. But there was no coming back from this and I think I knew it. I didn't help my cause with my initial comment after I apologized. "Christine, it's this job of mine you hate that makes all of the things we have here possible. What do you want from me? You have a life most women in this city can only dream of. But the job is the price for that life."
"You really don't understand, do you Les? All of this" (she gestured around the room) "is just stuff. What I want, and what you don't seem willing to give me, is you. I told you what the terms were when I agreed to live with you. I've kept my end of the bargain; you've repeatedly failed to keep yours. Even with Ashley's help, you can't seem to adjust your schedule to make me the priority you need to make me if we're to be a couple. I can't live like this anymore. We're through. I'll move into the guest room and find a new place to live as soon as I can. I'm sorry this didn't work out. I love you and I think you might love me. But you love your job more and I won't be your second priority." And with that, she bolted from the apartment and didn't return for three days. I later found out that she'd stayed with Ashley for those three days, trying to have Ashley explain why I couldn't give myself to her.
