i know you are, but who am i?

long long before this noodle was a twinkle in anyone's eye, my maternal grandmother was having an affair with one of nyc's finest. ahem. he was not her first, nor, i presume, last. (however, he did endure. they wound up married after my grandfather died and stayed together til he died a few years ago.) when his wife discovered the infidelity, she issued an ultimatum. he chose his not-wife. an annulment was easily had, she took their son and disappeared. i do not know if he ever contacted the boy or vice-versa. they vanished.

this was before my mother was even a pre-teen.

their affair was long-running by the time i was born. i have no recollection of how his presence in our lives was explained, but i saw him more often than i saw my grandfather, who was occasionally estranged, ostensibly to punish my mother, and frequently on the road for work. he and my grandmother had long ago stopped sharing a bed or a room. when he retired at 40, he spent much time upstate at his cabin. was he alone? who knows? whenever i asked to go up, i was told it was " not a place for girls."

my grandmother referred to this other man by two different names, even in my grandfather's presence. i'm guessing she was pretending he was two separate people, but i have no idea what my grandfather knew or truly thought. they saw each other nearly everyday, many times after my grandfather had made dinner she would just split. he'd park around the block and she'd walk to the car. even when family was visiting, she would rush to go, then return several hours later.

at some point, this man and my grandmother bought a cottage at the shore. a low-slung 3-bedroom waterfront bungalow with mimosa trees in back and front. i was told i had my own room and there would be a bicycle there for me. even though i was profoundly uncomfortable with this cop -- he was oafish and stupid and broke nearly everything material that he touched -- i was excited to get away. my mom was single, angry and struggling, i was often alone and this would be at the beach!

then i got the talk. and it was the same talk i got many times after. i had to pretend that she was not my grandmother, but my aunt . to neighbors, absolutely, and oh, yes, his sisters, brothers-in law, nieces and nephews are coming for a party so for them too, and don't make me punish you for getting this wrong. i was six. won't take a rocket scientist to figure that in the excitement of the party, and needing the only person i knew inside in the house, i called out to her. to this day, i remember and feel fear over the ire in those icy eyes. one of the girls was named nanette, which is close enough to what i called my grandmother, so she was able to laugh it off that i was mixed up and silly. when everyone was gone, i was beaten, yelled at for being "so stupid" and sent to bed weeping.

over the years and still as a wee noodle, i was brought round as her "niece" to his mother and other of his relatives. many of them were sicilian widows with plastic slipcovers and snippy dogs. i was terrified of these seemingly ancient crones, their shivering pets, dark man-less houses and saying the wrong thing, so i was afraid to talk and too nervous to eat, which made the old ladies upset as well. lose-lose for noodle.

what kind of foundation is that for a kid? "i love you, now pretend you are not mine?" let alone a latch-key kid whose father's parenting is non-existent. some might fault my mother for allowing me into those scenarios. i cannot. she doubtless endured them as a girl, and feared her mother's volcanic wrath far too much to object. if she even saw harm in it? i don't know. we all only have our "own" normal, eh?

cue to grown-up noodle.

when i did fall in love, it always was men more emotionally damaged than myself. "if i just love him enough, more than enough, that will be enough to heal him." i didn't try to change or control them, but perhaps that is what they needed -- someone manning the rudder in the relationship. i had never seen a functional loving relationship up close, and was too full of my own self-loathing to conjure it.

cue to the owner finding and taking me.

with his family "over there", he was careful to keep me at an emotional bay, all the while encouraging me to fall and fall and fall. it was like being trapped in a net, dropping deeper and deeper into a bottomless sea, with the only escape i desired being allowed more intimacy with him. never in my life have i known a person i was lost without.

cue to after the deluge. to kind of now.

we are not like other people. our relationship, the lack of balance and what works best for us is not conventional. our danger sex is almost besides the point. i don't necessarily feel a need to explain any of that. we enjoy being together and out. more than one acquaintance has said they've never known a couple who laughs together as much as he and i. that speaks volumes, yes? he has cared for me and supported me in ways my family never did.

yet the owner feels semantically challenged whenever asked the simple question, "are you seeing anyone?" rarely is he at a verbal loss, and yet two years post-divorce, he still says, "no," and thus deny my existence. this query has come from people who have seen us together, and not just once. that negation, that disavowal, is truly more than i can bear. much of that is him wishing to preserve the possibilities for bedding other women, but it still feels a lie to them and a storm of stones over my heart and a jackboot to my devotion each time he does it.

my work and his hectic social ambitions keep us apart far more than ever before, perpetuating my non-existence, or at best the image of being incidental. he is out and about most often now with other women and there seems little chance on my end, nor inclination on his, to change that.

i find myself adrift and afraid more than i like. i have drowned it more than once in martinis. he fills his life so easily without me, i think, "i guess i don't matter," and it only hammers home even further his renunciations. out-of-sight, out-of-mind. bon homie, sex, massages and music are all easily had with the click of a mouse or a short stroll. i am not in walking distance, nor of a schedule that allows for spontaneity.

where does this leave me?

waiting. alone.