Forty One: The Happiest Place on Earth
The night we fell into each other’s arms, we ended up also falling against the couch and passing out. There was no sex. Quite frankly, I don’t think either of us were really comfortable with the idea of adultery. I never really knew how much I loved Natalie, but I guess I loved her enough to feel horrible cheating on her.
There were no more kisses. Eventually, Gabrielle’s tears drifted off and we fell asleep without any resolution for our pain. In the morning, as Gabrielle got ready for a day at work and I made myself a cup of coffee in my dirty clothes, it was implied that the night before wouldn’t be up for discussion.
The night before Gabrielle had stood there and cried to me, confessed that she still loved me too. She never said those words, but she admitted she was just as lost as me. In a way, I partly felt like I’d dreamed up the night before. I’d been waiting for years for something like that to happen- for Gabrielle to finally crack. It was hard to believe it had actually happened.
“Let yourself out,” Gabrielle said to me as she stepped into a pair of clogs that she was wearing with a long, blue skirt. “I have to go to work as usual. I’ll see you later.”
I nodded. Usually she kicked me out on her way to work, but I guess she was feeling particularly trusting or sentimental towards me. I watched her from her living room window as she walked out to the old Blazer and drove off. I watched her car disappear in the distance as I had for years when she’d go back to college on Sunday nights after a weekend at home. When I could no longer see the speck of red in the distance, I turned and faced her apartment. I guess I never stood there and thought to myself that I would invade her privacy. It just started happening.
I started wandering around the living looking at the various family photographs she had on her walls. I’d seen them before when I was drunk, but it was nice to look at the photo collages without seeing them blurry. Most were pictures of my younger siblings grinning at the camera. There were a few pictures of Gabrielle and my mom, Gabrielle and my dad, and even Gabrielle and her mom. There was one picture of the two of us together: we were dressed for the Spring Social in 2002.
I wandered past some framed landscapes on her living room wall and towards the direction of her bedroom. I stood in the doorway of her room for awhile, just peering in at her bed that hadn’t been slept in the night before. Eventually, my feet started moving without my mind thinking about it. I wandered into the room and ran my fingers along her bedspread. I fingered the frame next to her bed- a photograph of Gabrielle with some college friends I’d never properly met. It could have been so different, I thought, taking the frame into my hands and inspecting it closely. I briefly imagined what my life would have been life without Ezra, Penelope, and Natalie. I wondered if I would have gone up to visit Gabrielle at OSU every weekend and fall asleep with her on her tiny dorm bed room. I’d never even seen any of her dorm rooms period. I had an image in my mind of how I figured they looked, but it was strange to think she had spent so much time in a place I could only pretend to know.
I set the photograph down and pulled open the top drawer in her nightstand. And there it was. A photograph… of me. I mean, Zac and Isaac were in the picture too, but that wasn’t what I noticed. It was an official press picture from a photo shoot we’d done. She must have printed the picture out, in fact. I turned the photograph over in my hands to discover it was printed on Kodak self-print paper. The thing that stood out in the mostly mute picture, was the bright red suspenders I was wearing.
Gabrielle gave me red suspenders for my 19th birthday. They had belonged to Ray- a man who was a father figure to her in her youth. I guess to most people the gift would seem weird, but to me it represented a trust she had found in me. She trusted me enough with something that she held dearly. She trusted me enough to be open and sensitive around me.
I never knew what to do with them until the acoustic tour in 2003. By then I was married with a little, red-headed son. It’d been over a year since the wedding. For over a year, I’d been repressing my love for Gabrielle. I actually went that first year of my marriage trying to really believe I loved Natalie the most- trying to convince myself that Gabrielle really wouldn’t be that hard to get over. But as the tour started and I had to leave Gabrielle behind in Oklahoma, I realized just how much I loved her. Being apart from her always caused me to love her most. I realized that no matter how hard I tried, I’d always be in love with Gabrielle. In some desperate attempt to see if she loved me back, I began wearing the red suspenders at concerts. I wore that at photoshoots, at meet and greets, and even on off-days. I wore them almost all the time because I wanted her to know… I needed Gabrielle to know that moving on wasn’t as easy as we were pretending it was.
I think I expected her to call me the first time she saw me wearing them and tell me how much she still loved me. She never did. She never even mentioned them, and quite frankly,I wasn’t sure if she even realized what I was wearing.
I dropped the photograph back into her drawer and quickly closed it, suddenly feeling all too intrusive. After I finished a cup of coffee and put some glasses in the dish washer for her, I left the apartment feeling incredibly guilty for what I’d discovered.
I didn’t see Gabrielle all the next week. She had to go on a four-day trip to Oklahoma City to work on some urban research for work and I was trying to finish laying down some tracks for the album we were theoretically working on. Between all of it, I didn’t have time to stumble into her apartment slightly tipsy.
It was July 15th that my family packed suitcases and flew off out to Disney World. All of us went- my siblings, my parents, my kids, our wives and fiancées, and Gabrielle. Mackenzie was even allowed to bring his best friend on the trip because he whined enough about it.
The trip was funded by my older brother who had just asked his long term girl friend to marry him. They’d been off and on for about two years, but figured enough was enough and they needed to just solidify their relationship. Honestly, I never told Isaac but I think he felt awkward about having two married brothers- both younger than him. Actually, I think a lot of us thought that but none of us mentioned it. Anyway, Isaac flew us all out to Disney on his credit card for a week as a way to celebrate his engagement. When Gabrielle showed up at our house five minutes before we all got in a van we’d reserved and went to the airport, I noticed she avoided eye contact with me. I instinctively groaned, disappointed that I’d seen her so sensitive and now she’d be back to avoiding me.
Somehow, our seats on the plane were next to each other. I had Ezra on my left, and Gabrielle on my right.
“How was OKC?” I asked her as I tightened Ezra’s seatbelt for him and handed him a Nutri-Grain bar from his backpack.
“OKC was OK,” she smirked, reaching over me and opening it for Ezra. I guess I hadn’t realized he’d sit there and fumble with it- completely unable to open it on his own.
“I…” I glanced at my wife who was preoccupied bouncing our 15 month old daughter in her lap and smiling at a woman who was doting over her. “I missed you,” I said when I was sure Natalie couldn’t hear.
Of course, I wanted Gabrielle to say she missed me too. I wanted her to address what we’d talked about only a week ago at her apartment. But Gabrielle is far more complex than that.
“Well, it’s a good thing we’re sitting together on the plane then, eh?” she said casually. “We can catch up.”
But we didn’t. Ezra became fussy and Natalie gave me death looks that implied I better tend to him or I could deal with her lecturing me in front of the entire airplane, and even worse, in front of Gabrielle. I eventually had no choice but to take his stack of books out of his backpack and quietly begin reading them to him. By the time I finished If You Give A Mouse A Cookie for the second time, Gabrielle had fallen asleep.
Disney World with two children under the age of four is pure hell for any parent. What’s even worse if having two young children and a bunch of siblings who are about your age and running around from thrill ride to thrill ride. After we checked into the Grand Floridian, a gorgeous and ridiculously priced hotel that Isaac has sprung for, our huge group made our way to The Magic Kingdom except for Zac and Kate. Zac claimed he felt sick from the plane, which was very likely since he gets motion sickness easily and he’d been the only one brave enough to try the goat cheese and crackers the flight attendant had passed out to the first class portion of the plane. However, since they were newly weds, I couldn’t help but assume Zac felt fine- simply horny as hell.
My mother tried to insist we all wear the matching t-shirts Isaac and Nikki had made for the trip- t-shirts that read- Hanson Family Get-Away- 2006. It was all to cheesy for all of us, even my mother, but she pretended it was a cute idea anyway. The rest of us refused to even touch the ridiculous shirts and hit the park in shorts and tank tops. Disney in the middle of July is not a smart idea, for reference.
My entire family, again, except for Zac and Kate who were probably having sex in every part of the hotel room, went straight for Space Mountain- a dark roller coaster I hadn’t ridden since I was a kid. Even my fearless eight year old sister joined them.
Natalie and I were stuck with two small children- one of them crying because she didn’t like the bucket hat Natalie had paid 15 dollars for at Baby Gap, and the other yanking us in the direction of Fantasyland. While the rest of my family rode the roller coasters, Natalie and I waited in line for the Dumbo ride for two hours and twenty minutes. I was resenting my children more and more.
By dinner time, I was pissed off and exhausted. Isaac called my cell phone to tell me that the family was planning to grab take out from an overpriced cafeteria in the park and then do some more rides, but I just hung up on him with a grunt and stepped out of the line for Peter Pan’s Flight.
“Where are you going?” my wife asked me, her hair matted to her forehead and her mascara rubbed beneath her eyes. It was entirely unattractive.
“I’m sick of this place,” I groaned. “We’ve been in Fantasyland for four hours now and we’ve rode three rides. I want to leave, get food somewhere where I don’t have to pay 10 dollars for a hamburger, and go back to the hotel.”
When I get pissed off, I get cheap. I find anything to complain about whether it is gas prices or three dollar bottles of water.
“Well we’re halfway to the front of this line. Come and ride this one and then we’ll go,” she said, which in retrospect sounded completely reasonable but at the time it pissed me off even more.
“Look at the line!” I spread my arms out at the rows of whiney children and equally exhausted parents. “No goddamn way.”
Natalie looked around nervously, probably because she knew I was seconds away from making a big scene because of my own selfishness.
“C’mon,” I grabbed Ezra’s arm and pulled him under the rope that organized the line. “Let’s go get some dinner.”
Ezra immediately began to cry although I’m not sure if it was because I was rough with his little wrist or because I was taking him away from the Peter Pan ride.
“Taylor! If you don’t want to wait for this, go sit down and I’ll ride it with the kids. But at least let him go on this. He’s waited for forty-five minutes so far.”
Usually I would have walked away and wandered around by myself, taking in the perfection of being alone without my wife nagging me or family bothering me. But I wanted nothing more than to just leave the park and eat a Big Mac, so I guess it put a fight in me that surprised Natalie.
“Forty-five minutes so far? Am I the only one who sees the irrationality in that?” I asked loudly and gestured to the line of equally impatient fathers- only fathers who were far more selfless than me. They gave me expressions that implied that yes, they did think it was ridiculous too, but no one spoke because their equally naggy wives were standing at their sides.
“This is crazy, Nat!” I turned back to her. “I’ve been a good sport for four hours, but now I’m just hungry and tired and I want to get the hell out of this park.”
Ezra screamed from below me, trying to wiggle his wrist out of my grip. I wasn’t being abusive or anything, but my son has a tendency to act like a victim when he’s forced to d something he doesn’t want to do. He’s spoiled, essentially.
“Let go of him!” Natalie glared, getting out of the line with us and hoisting Penelope higher up on her right hip. “You’re hurting him.”
And then I said something I vowed I’d never say to my children, simply because it always scared me so much when my father had said it to me as a child.
“If you don’t stop, I’ll really give you something to cry about,” I yelled at my squirming son. I sounded exactly like my father.
Let’s get something clear about my father: he’s a good man. He was always very nice to us kids, very loving to me mom, and provided us with everything we needed. However, he does not handle stress well and raising seven children, working forty hours a week, and trying to promote his sons growing career was extremely stressful. For many years during my childhood, he was only our disciplinarian and I always promised myself I’d be more than that to my kids. I promised that I wouldn’t say the same things that scared me when I was only a child.
“Taylor!” Natalie reprimanded me, taking Ezra from my grip and holding him on her vacant hip. He cried into her shoulder and I walked like a dog with its tail between it’s legs out of the park.
Natalie must have reported back to my mother about my horrible mood that evening, because the following day as we all soaked ourselves in sunscreen at the crack of dawn before heading out to Animal Kingdom, my mother offered to take Ezra and Penelope for the day. I selfishly let her. Natalie went with my mom and the kids.
As I walked around with the kids at Animal Kingdom, I realized how pathetic I was that we were one day into the vacation and I’d already pawned my children off on my mother who probably needed the vacation more than the rest of us. My mom spends so much time taking care of people that she never seems to have time for fun. As I jumped into the front seat of Expedition Everest, a new Animal Kingdom rollercoaster, I actually did feel guilty about leaving my Mom and Natalie with my kids. But when Gabrielle got in next to me and I spent the next five minutes screaming and cheering next to her as we rode the exhilarating ride, the guilt disappeared. I put Gabrielle before everything in my life. I put Gabrielle before my children, before my wife, and before the rest of my family. Sometimes I wondered if I was justified.
I was laughing when we were getting off of Expedition Everest. Somehow the nightly conversations between Gabrielle and I had made our relationship a lot better and we were finally able to get along again. The rest of my family, who had no clue I ended up in Gabrielle’s apartments most nights, looked baffled by our chatting and laughing.
“You almost fell forward out of your seat,” I laughed. “Did you feel? I like… grabbed you because you were flying out practically.”
“Thanks,” she laughed too. “That would have been unfortunate to die at the happiest place on earth,” she said, referring to Disney’s slogan.
We were grinning when we came around the corner at the end of the exit ramp, my other siblings following us. To our surprise, Natalie, my mom, and my kids were standing there looking at the birds in the trees while they waited for us. Natalie turned to me as soon as she heard my loud laugh. I guess she hadn’t seen me laugh… in a long time. Her expression looked confused.
I don’t know why I did this, but for some reason as soon as I saw Natalie my mood fell. I had felt so young and carefree… it felt so good to be around Gabrielle and ride the rollercoaster. I was the energetic Taylor of the past. But as soon as I walked over to Natalie, my body slumped and my excited shout turned into a grunt.
“Hey,” I mumbled. “I thought you were in Dinoland?”
“There were really only a few rides for Ezra over there so we decided to meet up with you guys over here,” she said, forcing a smile. I think she was trying to get me to grin like I just had, but she also knew she just couldn’t do it. “How was Everest?”
“Alright,” I shrugged.
I began to turn and walk away, walk anywhere that wasn’t next to my wife. It was dragging me down. Just as I was turning and heading over to watch the next group of people on Everest scream as they raced down the hill, I watched Natalie look jealously at Gabrielle.
I felt bad for my wife- I really did. No matter how many jokes she told, she was never as funny as Gabrielle was. No matter how many crazy things she tried to get me to do, we never had that much fun. When she was romantic I found it corny… when she tried to be sexy I usually rolled over in bed- unimpressed by the whole thing. No matter how hard she tried, she would always be second best. I felt bad, but there was nothing I could do about it. I would always love Gabrielle the most.