Chapter 18

The Opposite of Everything Is True

There is no one, no matter how wise he is, who has not in his youth said

things or done things that are so unpleasant to recall in later life that

he would expunge them entirely from his memory if that were possible.

-Marcel Proust, novelist (1871-1922)

I remember the day that car went missing. Leaving a large void, the permanent fixture of a now absent Mercury automobile seemed silently stolen away without explanation. Without warning, it just wasn't there one day. In some sort of childish way I knew that our world was different. But at the time I couldn't define or ascribe any meaning to the car's absence. Instead I passed by quietly, acknowledging change but not really getting it.

Life seemed the same. The gray Arabian horse beneath me continued walking obediently, skirting the dirt shoulder of Palestine Road, not far from where the lane pitched east becoming Oak Grove Drive. My younger sister's horse remained in front, walking quickly and competitively ahead. But as we approached the spot where that burgundy car usually sat, both horses became agitated and nervous. Their heads bobbed excitedly as they threatened to break into a trot. No longer would they walk along the pavement. Instead, we found ourselves half trotting sideways, just shy of chaos.

While the echo of all eight hoofs cast a rhythm that made the late afternoon singsong with cadence, the sky overhead seemed unnecessarily bright. Even the shadows beneath us seemed hostile. I knew the missing vehicle belonged to the Bird Lady, an elderly woman who lived in her car. Few of the locals knew much about the Bird Lady, but that didn't mean we were short on theories to make up for any missing or inconvenient facts. I suppose all neighborhoods have their haunted histories, each place owning its original tale of intrigue and speculation. Carefully guarded and spoken of in hushed tones, the Bird Lady was our lore, our tale, our unexplainable mystery.

The Bird Lady owned a "painted lady," an old Victorian farmhouse layered in almost discernible pinks. Overgrown, and covered in vines, the old homestead was surrounded by a graceful and protective grove of tall oak trees. We riders considered the Bird Lady's home a treacherous stretch of highway. Wild, horse-eating peacocks were known to fly out of nowhere and land in front of unsuspecting riders. Blowing madly, crow-hopping, the horses reared and pranced before the noisy, screeching birds. Oblivious to the harm they represented, the colorful birds spread their plumes and more times than not, we riders became unseated, tasting weightlessness before embracing gravity. Many a walk home began at this point in the journey.

I didn't much care for the Bird Lady. I didn't see the purpose of peacocks either, and if my horse and I ever did agree on anything, it would have been the lack of purpose and utility inherent in all things peacock.

If horses experience such a thing as traumatic stress disorders, my mount became scared for life from his initial glimpse of peacock. Now matter how distracted I tried to keep the gelding, anytime we drew near that spot, the horse trembled. Anticipating the peacocks that perched somewhere in that tangle, the gelding waited for the huge birds to devour him. All of our horses marked and remembered that homestead, approaching this portion of the journey with tentative and fearful hoofs. In the security of our pasture, after the day's ride, after each and every horrifying encounter with the ferocious exotic birds, they'd still twitch and foam hours later.

I empathized with the fear of our gentle horses. The threat represented by something as bold and loud as a peacock was not easily discounted. Jumping down from the lower tree limbs, these birds of such abstract and gigantic proportions did not represent a picture of neutrality. But, to ride anywhere "fun" meant a ride past the Bird Lady's place.

I can still remember my mother warning me never to venture into the Bird Lady's house. "There are all kinds of tropical birds in there, Tim. Those birds, they probably carry diseases. The place is a filthy mess and I don't want you in her house."

We young riders had many areas we were not allowed. Christmas tree farms. Wheat fields ready for harvest. Anywhere that had a creek. Anywhere that held graves. Anywhere that could involve a trip to an emergency room, the vet, or an apology to an angry land owner. These places were off limits. The Bird Lady's house was beyond off limits. Trespass there, and one could expect to get grounded for life.

Like I'd even try to sneak into the Bird Lady's house. I did ride through graveyards, creeks, and Christmas tree farms. But I never dared approach the Bird Lady's home. And not because of my mother's warning.

Still, the full oddity and meaning behind the lore of the Bird Lady would not strike me until much later in life. Long after life in Oregon became a distant memory, I began to wonder about this woman who lived in her car, surrounded by her own stench. What would lead a woman with such a wonderful farm to sacrificially offer her intricately decorated "painted lady homestead" to be overtaken by her collection of exotic birds?

Even later, as a young adult, I didn't get it. That the Bird Lady actively willed her personal luxury to so many birds of a colorful feather seemed my only focus. The "whys" surrounding such an insane choice wouldn't come into play until long after I'd come close to my own moment of insanity. In that personal insanity, my own humility, disillusionment and uncertainty was when I finally began to get a glimpse about the trauma surrounding the Bird Lady's life.

It was only then that I began to feel compassion for her. Although I will never walk in her lonely and isolated footsteps, the laughingstock of an entire agricultural community, I've had my glimpses into embarrassment and darkness. And I've experienced my own round of second guessing undertaken upon me by total strangers. I've looked out hesitantly from the security of my world, completely overwhelmed by what those around me thought of my lot, my circumstances and the various "whys" of the way I'd handled myself.

Twenty years after those scary rides past her place, I would return to the Bird Lady's insanity with a sense of wonder. Now as an adult, I regret I'd never offered my compassion. I'd always been too frightened to talk to her and hear her story. I was afraid of what she represented and like most folks I knew, that her snap from sanity, her obsession, compulsion and hiding out her last days in a Mercury Sedan, might be contagious.

Of course I now understand that her insanity wasn't contagious. And that her final days living as the Bird Lady was only the end of her story. The Bird Lady's eccentricity became only a place of reference, pointing backward in time, to explain her current situation. Just as her story would eventually become my own beginning.

~ ~ ~

Relationships end.

These days, they end almost as often as they begin. As the current gay marriage debate rages, that the fractured state of human interaction is the cause of so much painful discourse shouldn't be surprising. Whether in strictly personal, or the abstract impersonal sense, how humans find one another, seek comfort, and build their lives is hardly science. Add in a healthy helping of religious institutional meddling, familial dogma, and outside interference, and eventually everyone's head is spinning.

What is most amazing is that we actually sign up for this ride.

In an objective sense, no one in their right mind would ever invite such scrutiny upon their life. But love, from all the definitions I've ever read, is rarely the definition of people "being" in their right mind. If Love is truly blind, then the institution of marriage must be love's identical twin and equally sightless.

How we end these unions, is also worthy of endless scrutiny and bloodletting, and it's a process that often proudly disregards rationality. Hell hath no fury like a lover scorned becoming the truest litmus test to the he said-she said debate. Or in the case of same sex relationships, the he said-he said, she said-she said volley.

In retrospect, we often look back and shudder at where we let our heart take us. I am among those who have such a blind spot that in present reality defies explanation.

As of this writing, it's been nearly five years since Dallas suddenly disappeared from my life. Immediately after he left I was devastated. I wrote a trilogy entitled, "A. D." of those end of the road emotions because I knew that my experience was not unique. Relationships come and go. Relationships change. People change. Those souls who link and remain united are rare indeed.

In writing "A. D." I strove to ride the highest road I could find. At the time I wrote those essays, I'd spent the majority of my adult life with Dallas and never expected I'd be with anyone else. Many people approached me with "did you know this?" and "did you know that?" almost as soon as the dust settled. At first I couldn't even comprehend the stories that I heard. I struggled with information overload.

How well we know one another, even those with whom we spend a significant amount of our lives, is hardly a static equation. Indeed, among the white noise of balance and counter balance, good judgment and foolish impulse, is the reality that what we think we see is often only visible to us. I'd have to answer guilty as charged to this line of reason.

In the months after Dallas left, as I sorted out what I did know and what I didn't, I began to reevaluate my judgment. Was there something I wasn't seeing? Repeating the timeless definition of truth as having three components, what he says, what I say, and the truth, I tried to keep my eyes focused on the future. The only problem is that truth always eventually comes out. My former partner's history, as I'd known it, became subjected to substantial revision. The more I investigated, the more I learned that I'd spent nearly a decade of my life with a person who can only be described as a sociopath.

There I said it. Strong words to utter for such a calm quiet Norwegian who has dedicated his life to hoping that God wouldn't notice him. Pretty cool, huh? Not just anyone can brag about that sort of emotional accomplishment. Bonding with a person who is fictional in every sense of the word and who would give the old Saturday Night Live "The Liar" character a run for his money.

That I believed his false history as a seven time PRCA National Finalist bullrider, crop-dusting pilot, and the father of two kids born by a lesbian mother, whom I never met because she was a rodeo stock contractor, is not something one celebrates. Now in hindsight, it seems incredibly foolish to fall for such a resume. But at the time, it all seemed logical. Offering his bragging rights as proof of legitimacy, he challenged anyone and everyone to be as accomplished as he was. If readers wanted to offer up a diagnosis that he suffered from terminal "short man's disease" as an explanation, I wouldn't stand in their way. While living in the northwest, Dallas repeated his legacy over and over again. And to the oohing and ahhing folks who heard these tales, I was the proud partner. They congratulated me, "Hot damn, Tim, you have yourself quite a catch."

Yes, I should have known better. I should have recognized the obvious flaws in his stories. I once asked Dallas why, if he was such a great rodeo star, he didn't display his buckles, pictures, and so forth? He claimed his mom had them. Duh. Of course she did.

What about the kids? Why didn't he have pictures of his kids? Why did they always call when I was gone? What school are they in again? Similar sketchy but believable answers tumbled forth. It was a good line and for about twelve years. I clung to it for all I was worth.

Eventually all of that, as well as his story of growing up on a Texas cattle ranch, turned out to be false. And as everything I'd put so much faith and stock in unraveled, it was just easier not to talk about it. He would eventually claim a Texas ZIP code but it would be in a repo'd single wide trailer, not the glorious digs he'd described to countless friends.

Then the bombshell exploded. The federal government sent a routine notice about Dallas' Social Security account to the ranch. Trouble is, while the number was his, or so I thought, the name was somebody else's. I didn't know it then, but this was the first loose threat that would slowly unravel my carefully constructed security blanket.

I was numb. For ten years the identity of the co-borrower on my mortgage and all our other jointly held credit actually belonged to another person. How did this happen? I also learned that in addition to the mortgage deception, Dallas had used this phony identity to obtain his CDL. These frauds weren't just stretching the truth to appear bigger than life; this was criminal.

As the pieces of the puzzle came together I discovered that when Dallas disappeared he was within days of the expiration of the statute of limitations for fraudulently obtaining a mortgage. His departure was not accidental; Dallas was on the run from his own actions. He'd found another starry-eyed believer who'd do anything to make him happy and the replay button was set. Dallas was starting a new life for the third time in a decade.

When it was all said and done, I had to acknowledge to myself that I'd been dancing with a ghost. The mirage of the partner I thought I knew became completely haunting. As the dust settled, I realized that I did not know anything about him. Details I'd taken for granted, from his true date of birth, to the accuracy of his stated history, heck even his true name, vanished just as he had.

For the next five years I lived with the story in shame. I felt that no one could ever understand how a person could love someone and end up so deceived. I'd been turned upside down financially by his actions, and I'd made terrible decisions. I couldn't keep financial commitments as a result and I found myself in courtrooms, trying to explain the unexplainable to judges and bankruptcy trustees. I found myself trying to look my friends in the eye while they could barely look at me. I found myself trying not to be labeled a victim while in reality there was no other word that fit the definition of what my life had turned into, or anything that better defined the stranger who'd been beside me.

For a time I worried what all the people who'd read my writing would think. I'd become an unwitting accomplice to a huge fiction. My friend, author Dianne Funk, wrote me recently that, "It is the story, not the writer that doesn't meet invisible guidelines." She tried to reassure me that I had spent too much energy ashamed of what had happened. She was right. I'd spent five years of my life ashamed to tell the rest of the story because of the foolish light I felt I would be seen in.

When you are the victim of criminal acts, especially financial actions, there is a tremendous tendency to blame yourself. You beat yourself up. You second guess everything. You wonder if there was something you should have seen, some clue you didn't get. For years afterward I hoped that I could move on and just let this bygone be a bygone.

I mean, who among us hires a private eye to investigate our partners? What does such a lack of trust early on in a relationship say about a person's heart? Now, such a lack of skepticism seems highly naïve in retrospect. That's the neat thing about hindsight: When it occurs, you're usually look caught looking right at your own hind end, embracing your ass. Explaining to a chorus of sympathetic doubters how a normally smart guy like you could have fallen for such a story, was the buffet line, all you can eat, version of eating crow.

In "The Man Who Fell In Love with the Moon," Tom Spanbauer's excellent work of fiction, the main character continually reinforces a creed that, "the best stories are true stories" as he struggles to find his way through a frontier filled with double meanings and hypocrisy. As the plot develops, he learns over and over again that often things are not as they seem. And that the biggest testament to self is to continue to persevere despite disillusionment, broken hearts, and closeted and secretive lives. In spite of this, he always loves deeply, even when he finds disappointment, heartache, and missed connections in return. He lives by a philosophy that no matter what life presents, living is well served if we "keep clean, keep our promises, and keep going."

I nearly missed that last part. I froze instead, paralyzed by a pathological liar. I expended wasted energy trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together again and reassemble a truth that seemed so shattered that I didn't know myself what was true anymore. I did not keep going. In a world already so full of unhappy endings, I wanted to salvage something positive from the story of my life with Dallas.

In late 2003 I was close to signing my first major book deal when I learned that my mortgage company had concluded that indeed Dallas was fictitious. They contacted the FBI and over the next several days I was interviewed by an agent out of Spokane. Eventually everything that I could find that Dallas had left behind was taken down to their offices. The list of documentation and evidence given to the agent was over a page long. It was official now.

Immediately I pulled both my books from the publishing market, explaining in embarrassment to my agent what I'd learned.

In February of 2004, Dallas was removed from the mortgage. The last tie to him was finally severed. This short essay, now serving as the final post script, to what was to have been my second book has become the bitter pill of what was to have been a collection of future promise entitled, "Someday I'd Like to See that."

~ ~ ~

Near my ranch, a bull pine grows out of the earth. Among area trees it's a small and humble effort. The tree has a modest trunk, healthy bark, and were it not for its shape, no one would notice this Ponderosa among the local giant trees.

Yet, this tree is very different.

Shortly after its trunk emerges from the arid edge of a cliff, the tree bends out over the slope. Rather than reaching toward Heaven, this coniferous miracle extends twenty feet horizontally before it unexplainably curves back skyward, defying gravity, logic, and experience. Everyone who's seen the bull pine wonders at the tree's history. What makes a tree do such a thing?

Because of the way it has grown, all of my neighbors know of this amazing pine. Some call it "The Reading Tree." Others have mentioned its possibilities as a platform for love making. Still others have stood in wonder that the tree survives against so many forces that seem dedicated to its demise.

As I've found myself nearly uprooted from one distortion after another, I've looked out on that bull pine, so bent. No matter what happens, season after season, gale after gale that tree remains steadfast. Every morning the first thing I see when I look out the window is that stubborn tree. Every night as the sun sets over Chewelah Peak that silhouetted tree is the last dusk-filtered image I view.

In the years since the end of my relationship with Dallas, I've thought of the Bird Lady and this permanently disfigured pine tree clinging precariously to a cliff face more than a few times. Bent, but not shattered. Forever altered, a hideous wonder to the power of try, stamina, and beating the odds, I have no explanation for its survival.

Admittedly I've known moments where my survival seemed questionable. Times where I'd like to have jumped in a vehicle and never emerged. Letting motion or stationary isolation, salve my wounded heart, I was tempted to disappear, feeling as if nothing was ever going to be the same. Bent, on the verge of shattering, there were many sleepless nights, when I worried I was nearing a crucial choice; a fork in the road. Second guessing everything, I wondered if I’d go the way of the Bird Lady or would I follow the example of that stubborn bull pine.

I am not a perfect public figure and in a sound bite world where one loose-tongued moment can be used against you for the rest of your life, I've tried to remain silent hoping that eventually this experience would blow over. Recently as I struggled to publicly explain the unexplainable, I remembered the words of Cardinal Richelie (1585-1642) who once said, “If you give me six lines written by the most honest man, I will find something in them to hang them.”

In worry over what all those faceless “others” thought, I came very close to a complete shut down, where I nearly locked myself in isolation, and forever viewed the world as a frightening and unforgiving place. I nearly followed the Bird Lady into madness and became a spectacle to the outside world. I’ve danced with the temptation to lock yourself in a vehicle, hiding from the mess that has become your life.

Even after all this time, I still look to the characters in "The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon" as a reference point. Sure, these characters represent fiction. Sure the philosophies they quote are imaginary, but coming from a fictional place that represents so much history, I can't think of a better or more fitting way to move on. Like that stubborn tree, rooted and windblown, it's time to bend again and grow back toward heaven. I've been horizontal for long enough. Keep your promises. Keep clean. Keep going. These are the words that echo down from the Calispel Valley and that encourage me.

Writer Anne Lamott once wrote that "If we can believe in the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, Old Uncle Jesus once said, 'If you bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth will save you. If you don't bring forth what is inside you, what you bring forth can destroy you.'" I believe this applies to our narrative as much as anything. If we don’t make peace with where we are, we will never get to where we are going. As in all things, timing seems to be the perfect lubrication of life. Suppression, repression, and revelation all have their time. Yet, the best moderator to weigh and sort these realities is always truth.

The best stories are true. Pruning, rebirth, and growth happen by telling our story. In the ensuing transformation, we find truth.

Even when the opposite of everything is true.

(c) 2004 Timothy Anderson