You Can't Buy Love Like That Page 16

  She stayed for another drink, and we continued to talk— about our upbringings, our parents and siblings, and members of the softball team. I hadn’t paid much attention to Linda before because I knew she was straight. This night, I noticed she was quite attractive in both appearance and energy: her mid-length brown hair, parted on the left, curled in a wayward fashion; her blue eyes focused on me felt inviting; and her wide smile revealed a small dimple in her cheek, suggesting a penchant for mischief. She was tall and slender and looked striking in her pressed shorts and checkered shirt. More than anything, I appreciated her flat-out, no-holds-barred, unabashed honesty. It was evident she knew what she wanted and wasn’t afraid to go after it. “So what do you think about going out?” she asked as she got up off the floor and picked up her car keys.

  Given her explanation about her agreement with her husband, her invitation seemed harmless. Everything was out in the open. No one was lying about anything, so there was nothing to feel guilty about. “Why not?” I said, bemused by the whole encounter. We hugged goodbye and promised to meet the following Thursday for dinner. Meanwhile, I spent a different night with each of the other women in my new romantic orbit, grateful for the summer vacation afforded by my new job as a school psychologist; I wouldn’t otherwise have had enough time to fit in all my paramours.

  Over the next two months, Linda and I spent countless hours together. It turned out that kissing me didn’t make her nauseous at all, and our emotional closeness led to a fiery sexual attraction that was both sweet and raucous—creating the insistent desire to be together all of the time. Because her husband was a surgery resident on-call around the clock, she had significant time available. We went out to dinner, hung out with her children at the park, and shared picnics and canoeing trips down the Huron River. I should have been more attuned to the danger such a liaison posed, after my experience with Mike; but I was living in the moment and didn’t want to pay attention.

  Later that summer, Linda took me to her high school reunion in Muskegon and to meet her parents on their farm there—all in the guise of friendship. Linda had been a star in high school— the straight-A student, co-valedictorian, the gregarious and charming head of her class. Being married and having children was a great cover. No one would suspect that instead of bringing a casual friend along to this gathering, she had actually brought her lover. After the social events, we shimmied down the sandy hillside of her parents’ beachside property on Lake Michigan and built a fire in the sand. Listening to the water lap the shore and watching the moon rise over the lake, spreading a beam of light as far as we could see, was intoxicating. We lay down on the ground together and felt the weight of our bodies press into the earth, eyes revealing a new level of connection.

  Something changed on that trip, and by the time we returned from Muskegon, it was clear we had crossed into fresh territory. It was a space rich with new thrills yet fraught with familiar haunts, including the longing to be with someone I loved though society said I shouldn’t—not because she was a woman, but because she was married, and in spite of the few couples exploring open marriages, it wasn’t the norm. New pains, too, accompanied this deeper longing. We would make plans for dinner only to have them cancelled at the last minute because Joe was off of his shift at the hospital and wanted to spend time with her. They would head out on a family vacation, leaving me alone to wonder if she was sleeping with him. Why wouldn’t she be? They were married. But I wasn’t sleeping with anyone else—I had no desire to—and I hoped that even if she were sleeping with her husband, it only increased her desire to be waking up next to me.

  Soon we were having long conversations by phone when she couldn’t get away, and I started feeling the same agony I had felt with Mike while he was still married. I was repeating the same pattern, only with a woman. Despite their open relationship, the above-board announcement, and clear guidelines, Linda and Joe had no protection against forming deep attachments with outsiders. They had no formal way to agree not to fall in love with someone else, and, by September, it was clear that Linda and I had jumped off that emotional precipice and were in free fall.

  I was grateful to return to work and get involved with projects that would require my full attention. I knew it was time to let go of this relationship, so, one night, with a weary heart, I broached the subject. We were lying on the floor by the fireplace in my apartment. She had on jeans, and her long legs stretched out across the cream-colored rug in a casual pose made her look especially beautiful. I fingered a glass of chardonnay and took a long, slow sip before speaking.

  “As much as it pains me, I think it is time for us to stop this. It’s just too excruciating,” I said. She looked at me, her face soft in the reflected light. It was hard to go on, but I knew I had to. “It’s has become unbearable for me, when you have to leave at the end of every day we spend together.” I knew what I was getting into when this started, but neither one of us ever expected it would grow into what it had.

  Her hair fell over one eye, and, in that moment, as she reached up and pushed the brown strands over her ear, she reminded me of Nicky. “It’s not the way I want it to be,” she finally said as she moved closer and took my hand.

  “I don’t think there is any other way,” I replied.

  She laced her fingers with mine and asked me to look at her. “For the first time in my life, I can imagine a partnership of equality—where there is a deep emotional intimacy, where both people take responsibility for the household chores, and childcare, and all the other things that require attention in life. I never thought it could be like this.”

  I was perplexed. I didn’t imagine her ever leaving Joe; I didn’t necessarily want her to because that didn’t seem right. It wasn’t part of the original agreement. I simply couldn’t go on, craving something I could never have. “What are you trying to say?” I asked.

  “I told Joe this morning that I wanted a trial separation.”

  “You did what?” My eyes widened in shock as my body absorbed the gravity of her statement.

  “I love you, and I want us to be together,” she said.

  I raised my glass of wine to my lips and took a long slow sip, as though that would keep my heart from pounding ferociously. Had I heard her correctly? I was figuring out my response as the oaky taste of the chardonnay circled inside my mouth.

  “I want that, too,” I finally said softly, racked by the realization of what such wanting had led to. This whole thing had begun as an innocent lark—sparked by her admission of attraction to me. I would never have pursued a married woman. And, as she explained it to me, open marriage seemed like such a mature thing—civilized even, with partners able to explore their sexuality with others without risk to their primary relationship. In retrospect it seemed like an insane proposition and quite uncivilized. In this moment I saw the naïveté with which I had embarked on this engagement with her and the real threat it presented to their relationship—and to me.

  Linda stayed a little while longer, and we lay in front of the fire imagining that one day we might be together permanently and she would no longer have to get up and leave at the end of the night. As we rested in silence, we were both aware of what a leap this would be—excited and terrified at the prospect as we held tightly to each other.

  I lay awake for a long time after she left, wondering if she and Joe had an open marriage because they weren’t happy with each other and it was a way to keep things interesting. I wondered if I had just happened along at the right time or if I was personally responsible for their potential breakup. If it hadn’t been me, would it have been someone else? What impact would this have on her children? I wondered if Linda would really go through with it. Half the time, I was giddy at the possibility, and the other half, I was overwhelmed with fear that she really would.

  chapter

  15

  who wants to be normal?

  Linda and I moved forward with many serious conversations about the viability of living together over
the next month. And with each discussion, the reality shifted from what initially seemed like a wild and crazy idea to forming a concrete plan of action. Included in that progression was the looming need for me to come out to my mother. Because Molly and Sara were so young (eighteen months and three years) and not the least bit aware of the stir that would rise were people to find out that their mother and I were more than friends, I was quite sure that if I didn’t tell my mother first that I was gay, they were likely to. Perhaps Sara would blurt out this truth in the middle of Easter dinner at Aunt Gladys’s house. Somewhere between, “What did the Easter Bunny bring you?” and, “Please pass the potato salad,” she would announce that her father had said her mother was a lesbian. Or maybe Molly would share that I spent the night at their house in her mother’s bed. It would come out innocently, in ways only children could express. No. That was not the way I wanted it to happen. I was going to tell my mother in private, before a three-year-old did it for me in public.

  My mother and I were sitting in her kitchen after returning from the matinee performance of Hello Dolly at the Fisher Theater. I had always regretted not telling my dad, and if I were to have an authentic relationship with my mom going forward, I had to tell her the truth. Being with Linda amplified the necessity. I was determined that today was the day.

  She put the teakettle on to boil, filled a plate with Russian teacakes, and sat down. Conversation turned to the usual topics. My brother and his wife were doing well in North Dakota. He was teaching chemistry at the university there. The weather was freezing, but they seemed to like it. I could feel my resolve slipping away with the tedium of trivial news, but then the conversation took an unexpected turn.

  “Have you seen the news lately with all this talk about gay rights?” she said. “There was a big march in San Francisco on TV again just last week.”

  I clutched the sides of my chair, my teeth clenched. Was my mother really bringing up a conversation about being gay? Was she channeling my thoughts? I had been rehearsing opening lines throughout the week to talk about the subject, all of which slid beyond my reach with the shock of her query. “Sorry, what did you say?” I responded. She repeated her comment about the gay march on TV.

  “What about that bothers you, Mom?”

  It seemed the teakettle was screaming rather than whistling as I got up from the table and removed it from the stove. I poured cups of hot water for us and tried to remember the news of last week. Anita Bryant had been in the media for months, using a “Save Our Children” program to disguise a gay-bashing crusade—all in the name of God and Christian values.

  Oh great, I thought, not the right moment for this conversation. But when would there be? I stalled further and asked another question. “Is this about Anita Bryant? And do you really think she is acting like a Christian?” I knew my tone was derisive, as I found it difficult to hide my cynicism regarding the hypocrisy of Christians who behaved in hateful ways that were anything but Christlike. I planted my feet on the floor and tried to get grounded.

  I had brought Linda to meet my mother several months earlier, and my mother was fond of her, easily engaged by her intelligence and sense of humor. My mom’s hope, of course, was that Linda’s surgeon husband would introduce me to a doctor with whom I would fall in love. She hadn’t counted on Linda falling in love with me, leaving her surgeon husband, and creating an instant new family with her two little girls and me. Coming out is hard enough, but if you have to tell your mother that you were pursued by a married woman with two children who was willing to leave a soon-to-be wealthy husband to spend her life with you—well, that would be hard for your best friend to grasp, let alone your sixty-nine-year-old mother reared in the Southern Baptist church.

  “Well, I don’t know,” my mother said after a long pause. I could tell she was trying to decide if Anita’s actions were Christian or not. “I just don’t know why they have to hang all over each other in public.”

  I wanted to focus on something else—anything else—but if I was ever going to do this, I had to keep going. “Why shouldn’t they be allowed to express affection in public?” I asked, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. I went to the refrigerator and scanned the shelves. There was week-old macaroni and cheese, broccoli salad overcome by mayonnaise, and a plastic bag filled with sliced turkey. I wasn’t really hungry, so I sat back down, my eyes fixed on the crystal salt and pepper shakers and the frayed cream-colored tablecloth that my parents had had for fifteen years. I noticed the faded stain of the red spaghetti sauce that I had spilled on it during the celebratory dinner to christen their new home.

  “Well, it’s just not normal.”

  “According to whom?” I shot back. Hearing the defensiveness in my voice, I reminded myself to stay calm.

  “Oh, Carol . . . you know what I mean.”

  “Actually, normal just means that is what most people are doing. It doesn’t necessarily mean that being normal is right or even the best course of action. It just means that most everyone agrees with that perspective.”

  I wanted to scream out, Who wants to be normal? Walk around a shopping mall sometime; you will see men and women with vacant-looking eyes schlepping large bags of material goods out to their Chevrolets. You will see lines of folks at the drive-through McDonald’s eating greasy fries and burgers that will lead to triple bypass surgery by the time they’re thirty. Normal is countries fighting wars over religious perspectives—killing each other in the name of God. Normal is mostly not thinking, not questioning, not wondering about anything. Even if I weren’t a lesbian, I wouldn’t want to be normal.

  “Well, what do you think about it?” she asked.

  My palms were sticky with sweat now, and my throat was contracted. The smell of Constant Comment brewing in my cup floated into the air. The patterned dots on the linoleum became three-dimensional and seemed to fade in and out of the floor. I looked at my mother, her hand on her teacup lifted to take a sip. I wished my father were here so I could look into his reassuring eyes, take his hands in mine, tell him how happy I was—explain that being gay didn’t really change who I was as a person, that I still loved them and wanted them to love me. I knew he would understand. I wasn’t so sure about my mother. But my father wasn’t here now, and I could wait no longer, so I finally just blurted out, “Well, maybe I can tell you why they are marching in the streets, Mom. I’m gay.”

  There, I had said it aloud, or perhaps it said itself. It was hard to tell. Now it was hanging out there along with my fear and anxiety in the protracted hush that followed. I couldn’t tell who was more surprised—she or I. So much for choosing the right words, rehearsing reasonable-sounding opening lines, and practicing to get it perfect. My eyes returned to the tablecloth; the red spaghetti spot loomed larger, more grotesque in the quiet. I could feel the pattern woven into the cloth with the tips of my fingers that moved back and forth in slow motion while I waited for her to speak.

  “What about Harvey Colombo?” she finally responded.

  I looked up, flabbergasted. Harvey was a guy I had dated for several months four years ago. My mother never really took to him and told me one day that she didn’t think he was marriage material because not only was he Catholic but he also wore jeans torn at the knees, smoked cigarettes, and had a beard. Definitely not someone she had in mind for a son-in-law.

  “Harvey? You never liked him and discouraged me from dating him.”

  “I know, but maybe that was wrong. You were crazy about him.”

  She got up and added some date cookies to the Russian tea-cakes and looked for the milk in the fridge.

  “How do you know that you are gay? Maybe you just haven’t met the right man.”

  Well, that’s for sure, I thought to myself. For me, the right man was a wo-man. Better not lead with that. I hadn’t given much thought to my second line, only the pronouncement. How could I possibly explain this to her? Her shoulders were hunched over, her face turned toward the wall. I hated trying to defend myself,
but I knew how I answered this question would either end the conversation permanently or create room for future dialogue. My voice grew tender as I searched for words. “First of all, it’s very hard to tell you this truth about me. But I realized after Dad died that not telling him had been a mistake. I want you to love me for who I really am, not for who you want me to be.”

  “I know. Your dad was always supportive of you—it’s just harder for me.”

  “Losing Dad erased the fantasy that you would live forever. I was afraid that if I didn’t tell you, there would always be something between us.”

  An eerie stillness filled the kitchen once more. The sun had set long ago, and the darkness nestled close to the house. Only the fixture over the table was on, its light bouncing off the speckled linoleum. I looked over at my mother, her hands resting on the table. She looked older since my father had died; a sadness had settled into her face in the last two years, and her usual optimism had been replaced by a dour presence. She had become someone unfamiliar to me, making me uncertain about what to do next. I wondered how this would change my relationship with her—whether she would ever speak to me again. I counted the blue and white tiles that were part of the backsplash for the sink and noticed that the trim on the window needed painting.

  “Are you with someone?” she ventured.

  I took another deep breath. “Yes. I met someone last summer. She is really an amazing person. You have actually met her and liked her.”

  I could tell as she wrinkled her forehead that she was struggling to imagine who it might be. I had not brought many of my friends around in the last few months.

  “You remember Linda?”

  “You don’t mean . . .”