The Not So Pretty Finish-With Etta James’ “Please, No More” in Mind

The Not So Pretty Finish-With Etta James’ “Please, No More” in Mind

By Hank Jones

“No more, no more,” had become Shep Wilson’s new mantra once he go over his rage against his long-time companion, Sarah Long, after she had set him adrift, had as she said “moved on” to fine herself whatever that might have meant when she uttered the ugly words of separation one night and then the next day was gone, leaving no forwarding address and only the thin reed of a cellphone number and e-mail address to remember her by. It had not been like Shep had not known it was coming, or could see it come since Sarah had been making noises about leaving, and under what conditions for a couple of years prior to that sneaking out the next day door. It seemed that every few years she had to lay down the law, her law about what was good or bad about what was happening in their as she called it “relationship.”  The last two times had been shortened up though a couple years before it had been a week, only a week after they had arrived home from a great week of museums, good dining and mad walks along the Seine and the previous year a week, only a week after they had had a great and nostalgic time in Maine going to the old Saco Drive-In and a record hop like they were kids again.

Maybe she had been right to lay the law down (his expression but she never disagreed with that characterization, never either when he was joking or serious) had been right to make her anguish knew after those vacations which contrasted in her mind with what they had had in their early relationship. Maybe she had been right to make a clean break, to go out some forlorn unadorned door without a lonesome good-by which had been as hard to as if she had gone in the middle of the day bidding him a personal, upfront fond adieu. Hell, in his heart of hearts Shep knew he was only fooling himself, only acting out of his version of male alleged indifference to her, to his fate which had been part of the problem between the pair for the past several years. They had gone to couples counselling over that indifference a few years back when he really was indifferent under the throes of a small, unknown to her, cocaine, snow, cousin whatever you want to call it which he had been able to break without further destroying their relationship, although that was a close thing, was not as easy as it sounded. Especially when he thought about going back to the stuff lately to get rid of the never-ending depression he felt each day as he had trodden through his absent life.  

Shep kept trying to think through what he could have done differently, where he had fallen down bad enough to make her leave. And make him take up her chant of “no more” (not  really put that way by her since she would have used more gentile language that fit her persona but that was the way that it rang through this latest fire in his head and that was the way he was trying to think the matter through). He knew that he shared the blame, shared in the debacle of their love, had lost that magic that held them together for so many years, and that the little saying that she had in sunnier times about how they had been so much in love in those early years and though it would continue forever. (The actual way she put it was “when he had loved her so”)  And in the early days, hell, up until the last few years that love had been as genuine as any emotion that he had ever held dear. Then a whole series of events, a whole personal deluge of troubles laid him low, and had made him a grumpy old man. The last month or so, maybe two months he had tried to take stock of himself (and of her role in their decline after all as she admitted she could have signaled him more concretely about what was ailing her, what make her say her own “no more” however she might have actually put the matter). Had tried to put as he constantly told her to put his best foot forward. Unfortunately it had been too late.      

After Shep thought about those early days when they were so in love, were so sympathetic to each other, fed off each other’s needs, faced the wicked old world as a pair of waifs, soul-mate waifs was the way she put it one time early, sipping on a little light wine to numb himself a bit against the emptiness in his heart (and to keep the cocaine blues at bay-even singing the lines from the old song-“cocaine, cocaine running up and down my brain, cocaine’s for horses not for men they say its’ going to kill you but they don’t say when” to ward off the evil spirits gathering in his mind), he tried to retrace where he had fallen down (her shortcomings were her business now and so he looked at the lonely world through his future path and  how he could become the “new” Shep, get rid of that mantra of “no more” into a better place. 

Shep had never been much for reflection, never much to think how his actions, or better his omissions, would affect Sarah, would make her withdraw, make her close her heart to him. Had dismissed at least in his “put out the fire” head much of what she would speak of when she was seriously trying to signal him that things had dramatically drifted downhill. Would not take the signals about getting help, psychiatric help foremost, that she first gently and then more insistently tried to get him to undertake. He has seen that formula as her New Age Cambridge background thing that she was forever trying out (and to his mind without much success but he kept that to himself especially as she seemed more and more to withdraw into that world as she got more distraught about them and as well about her place in the sun, about who she was).

Funny in the end, or rather toward the end, in one of those previous downhill moments he had a few years back agreed to go with her to couples counselling (they had tried that route about twenty years before but both had been dissatisfied with the counsellor who seemed to be more interested in what she, the counsellor, had to say than what they had had to say). Funny as well that he, not she though, had gone into that counselling with some of that usual indifference, and if he had been wise enough to see what that meant he could have seen what was coming, he felt that the then current counselling, and the counsellor, was a worthwhile endeavor every week (Sarah, before they decided, or rather she decided, to discontinue the work, had told him that she thought the counsellor was “championing him” because, as a gregarious type in such situations he had the better of it against her more quiet and thoughtful responses which tended to be short, if to the point.)          

Shep’s troubles really had started with the advent of his medical troubles, with what he called “the poking and prodding” of the medicos, a few years before. Yeah, he knew growing older, getting to be an old grumpy man, meant that health issues would surface, would especially as he reached his seventh decade (he knew first-hand as well from his friends of similar ages that this was the “deal,” the real deal). Shep had prided himself on keeping a semblance of fitness, of keeping himself heathy as measured by very infrequent visits to the doctor’s office and of not feeling sick most of the time except for an occasional cold. Then the deluge, first trouble with breathing and eating necessitating an endoscopy which found some problems, and required medications. After that bladder problems associated with his smoking many years before according to the urologist, more medications, and then more recently the final nail in the coffin (his expression as stated to Sarah many times and a silly foolish thing to say), the early discovery of bladder cancer after a scope had shown unusual inflammations. More procedures and more medications.        

One day Shep just erupted, started yelling at Sarah, started to approach her for which she would later say she stood in fear of physical danger he seemed so out of control (not said anything at the time though as she thought that saying anything would only enflame him further). After a few minutes he settled down, because something of the old Shep, but then the line, some line in Sarah’s sand had been crossed. Shep swore he would stop taking the medications since they seemed to be making him more aggressive, more sullen, and angrier. As it turned out one of the medications was reacting poorly with another one and had aided in Shep’s angry responses to the world-and to Sarah.    

If the medications, if the health issues were all that there were bothering Sarah as pointed told Shep before she departed she could have worked around that. What she could not work around was what Shep called one night the “fire in his head” (not helping that inability to “work around” were long-time, long-held issues around Sarah’s own worth, around who she was, around what was she to do in the world now that she too was retired, issues about her place in the sun which had plagued her since childhood). In the end that “fire in his head,” that not being “at peace” with himself was the way she expressed her take on the situation was what made something snap in her psyche.

Shep, as he would admit to himself in a moment of candor several weeks after she had gone, had reacted to his health issues and graceless aging rather than getting more rest and taking it easier in life had in true Shep form driven himself even harder in order to leave what he told Sarah was his mark on the wicked old world. The snapping point for her was that he seemed indifferent to her needs, seemed to be in a world of his own, and had begun again to question every move that she made like he did not trust. In a final stab to his heart she had told him that her own increasing medical problems were being aggravated by his foul behavior(after being fearful of doing so since she still worried about his anger if she did tell him this hard truth).       

So this was Shep’s sad demise. Or could have been but one night a couple of months after Sarah left he woke up one night and said “no more.” No more acting like a crazed maniac, no more fruitless search for some netherworld place in the sun. He had read a book, a book on meditation that Sarah had left behind talking about the benefits of doing such a therapy, backed up by scientific evidence. (Shep was not sure that Sarah had not left the book behind on purpose since she, like in a lot of things around his well-being, had mentioned his doing meditation on numerous occasions in the past.) So Shep started practicing the art, had real trouble at the beginning in focusing away from his two million “pressing” forward that day issues and trying to live “in the moment.” But as with many things when he got “religion” Shep was still at it after a month. His mantra, his focus term, not surprisingly “no more.”    

[Shep would wind up meeting Sarah in a Whole Foods grocery store in Cambridge several months later and remarked after telling him she had spent the previous several months in California that he seemed calmer, seemed to have lost some of that fire in his head, and seemed more at peace with himself. Had said also that they should keep in touch now that  she was back in town and that he wasn’t such a maniac (her term for his previous late innings conduct). So who knows. All Shep knows is that he wanted “no more” to do with the old Shep).