You Can't Buy Love Like That Page 18

  There was a more complex, invisible story going on internally, however. While my mother and both of Linda’s parents had been marginally accepting of our union, none of them were genuinely happy that their daughters were living in a gay relationship. The normal stresses of recovering from divorce and living with two children under the age of four, with both partners pursuing PhDs, were magnified by our inability to be fully “out” in every aspect of our lives or even wholly embraced by our relatives.

  Tolerance is a poor substitute for acceptance, and it creates a felt need to protect yourself while working overtime to prove your worth. Had my colleagues known that Linda and I were lovers, my job as a school psychologist in a conservative community where I spent time alone in a room with children while conducting numerous psychological tests would have been in jeopardy. This very real danger eliminated the potential for support that others, freer to disclose more of their personal lives, often received from colleagues.

  Most of our gay friends had one foot in the closet and one foot out, able to be open only with other gay couples or family members. We never felt entirely safe in the world, not knowing who was trustworthy in the public sphere and who was a threat. While I had grown far more comfortable with my self-acceptance, there were real risks of sharing this personal information with a broader audience. While the fact that Linda had children made everyone assume she was straight, having them in partnership with me also meant that she could be challenged in court regarding her fitness as a parent, were someone to bring such an attack. As parents we strived to support Sara’s and Molly’s social lives, and sometimes this meant making moral compromises that betrayed ourselves and added stress to our relationship.

  One of the most telling situations arose when the parents of Molly’s best friend, Jessica, offered Linda a dinner invitation. She shared the news with me during “coffee time”—the sacred hour we established without the children after dinner.

  “I saw Barbara Hooper at school today when I picked Molly up, and she and Tom invited me over for dinner.” The key word there was me, not us. I felt a tightness begin to form in my solar plexus. “I thought it would be good to go since Molly and Jess are such good friends.”

  “Are you going to tell her that you have a partner, or are you just going to go by yourself?”

  “I don’t think it’s the right time yet—maybe after we get to know each other better.”

  I stared into my coffee as I spoke. “She knows you live with someone. Who does she think I am?”

  “Well, the kids call you our housemate, so I’m not sure what she thinks.”

  Here I was again in another family, keeping a secret—hiding in plain sight. I felt my body temperature drop as more of me shrunk to fit into whatever form was necessary to garner the acceptance of others. I wasn’t sure if I wanted her to tell them or not—but I was sure that I wanted her to realize the cost to us if she didn’t.

  Rather than turn them down or tell them the truth, Linda accepted the invitation and went solo, leaving me once again in the position of feeling invisible. Not only had they invited her for dinner, but they had asked a male friend to come, too—a man they assumed might be a good match for her to date. I stayed home with the kids that night, sick with that old familiar feeling, like bad food decaying in my stomach. Hurt and angry, there was no place to go with my feelings, and the ease with which Linda seemed to accept this arrangement pained me further. I had spent a huge part of my life concealing a defining part of myself from others, and I didn’t want to spend my future that way, even though I rationalized the reasons for doing it.

  To say my romanticized vision of becoming a super-blended family was naive would be like saying I underestimated the size of the ocean when I had a fantasy to swim across it. I knew nothing—about children, about transition after divorce—nothing about parenting, and nothing about how to find my relational place where there was already a mother and a father and where the specter of a “real” stepmother one day joining the clan, sanctioned as a legitimate parent through her marriage to Joe, loomed large. Most of all, I didn’t know my own personal limits and had no grasp of the magnitude of what I was taking on, no idea that every psychological wound of my own childhood was a potential land mine waiting to be triggered. Nor did I understand how the cultural context out of which I’d grown had impacted my sense of belonging—not only to this family, but to the wider world, as well.

  Having never been in a long-term committed relationship, I had nothing to compare this with and had no idea if it was supposed to be this hard. The “do me, fix me, want me, take me” life with children was exhausting. With both Linda and me working and going to school simultaneously, there was little time to nurture our relationship, and what hours were left in a day were taken up by the understandable neediness of a two- and four-year-old. As is the case in most relationships, we couldn’t have known how our different families of origin had also left unattended wounds that eventually caused ruptures in our relationship. It was equally true that aside from her greater experience in parenting, Linda didn’t know much about these things either.

  To add to the already stressful dynamics alive and well in the third year of our relationship, my mother engaged me in a conversation over lunch one afternoon about Christmas. It began with her usual question.

  “What are your plans for the holiday? I’ve been thinking of going to Florida to spend time with Jerry.” Her sister had moved there several years earlier, and my mother, wanting to create some new traditions since my father’s death, had started to spend holidays away from home.

  “I’m sure we will spend some time up north with Linda’s folks and then some time with you, if you’re around.”

  My mother sat in the booth across from me, her sandwich held in both hands as she leaned forward to take a bite. Staring at the food instead of me, she off-handedly said, “Well, I wanted to let you know that I’m not buying presents this year for anyone who isn’t a part of our family.” I could feel my face scrunch up as I looked at her, trying to figure out what she was telling me. “I don’t have as much money this year, so I won’t be buying Linda a present, but I will get the kids something.”

  I cocked my head to one side and listened especially hard. Was my mother really declaring to me that she didn’t consider Linda a part of our family? And was she asking me to believe that this somehow made sense? That it was reasonable and rational—not something to which I would take offense when she had gotten her presents in the past? To understand the full weight of this message, one would have to know that my mother loved buying Christmas presents, that it wouldn’t be unusual for her to purchase a gift for the bagger at Kroger’s supermarket, if the spirit moved her, or for the mailman, or the pharmacist at Woods Drugs. She was consistently the most generous person I knew. And, of course, she would get my brother’s wife, Laurie, something because she was a part of our family.

  My ears burned with rage at this announcement, my hands knotted in fists beneath the table as if to keep the steam from rising through my body and out of my ears. But beneath that roiling fire was hurt and sadness. I sat quietly for a minute or so, trying to quell the beast inside that wanted to lacerate her with words, to scream, to swear, to condemn the un-Christian nature of her statement. Instead, I swallowed hard and said, “Well, Laurie is no more a part of our family than Linda is. It is the law that makes her so—not her DNA.” Then I stood up to leave and said, as I walked away, “If you’re that hard up for money, don’t buy me a present either.” I got in my car and felt my whole body constrict. If what she said was true, I had no family—not the one I was born into and not the one Linda and I were trying to shape.

  A few days later, my mother called as though nothing had happened, but I wasn’t about to let this go. “You know, Mom, you really hurt my feelings when you said you weren’t going to buy a present for Linda. She is my family, and we want you to be a part of it, but it’s not all right to treat her that way.”

  “Oh, h
oney, you know I would never do that.”

  “Well, if you would never do that, then don’t ever say you would.”

  Even without seeing her in person, I could tell she felt sheepish about what she had done and that she wanted to take it back. Hard as I tried to let it go completely, it was like being stung by a bee—even after the bee flies away, the stinger is left behind in your body along with the venom it carried. In the end, she bought Linda a beautiful gift, but my joy in that had been muted long before that moment.

  Halfway through my master’s program in film and video, I won a national competition for an internship in Hollywood offered by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences. I would live there for six weeks in the summer, work with a video tape editor, and share in group activities with the fifteen other interns from around the country who had been selected for other production specialties like sound recording or film making. Worried that the kids would be affected by such a long absence, I wrote them daily letters, plastering images and stickers all over them in place of words—mini-collages they could look forward to in the mail. I also sent them small gifts over the six weeks to let them know I was thinking about them. It was 1982, and we didn’t have cell phones, Skype, FaceTime, or any technology of convenience that made it easier to stay in touch. I also called every day to talk, though their interest in those connections was fleeting, and they frequently dashed off after a few words of greeting.

  Even though I missed the routine of home, I loved being alone again—on my own and not responsible for anyone but me. That feeling of freedom was a relief from the unending stress of responsibility I felt. Yet I couldn’t imagine ever leaving them, bound by love and loyalty to two children who hadn’t asked for me to be a part of their lives and who would surely suffer again if Linda and I were to split up. I didn’t really know how they were processing my temporary absence, but I wanted to make sure they knew I was with them even though we were apart.

  Linda joined me for the last two weeks of my trip. The joy we once found in the ease of long evenings together by the fire in my apartment was more frequently replaced with short tempers and conflicting needs. My desire to have a few days alone to focus on each other conflicted with her need to be in more continuous connection with the kids. There was no time even when we were away to completely refresh the passionate feelings that initially drew us together. We quarreled much of the time we were in California, and each of us was happy to come home.

  After a month and a half of absence, I was eager to see the kids again and imagined them running to the door to greet me especially upon our return. Instead, Sara gave a quick embrace as she brushed by me to greet her mother and then went outside to play with a friend. Molly sat at the top of the stairs and refused to come down. In fact, she ignored me for more than a week as I endeavored to re-establish my relationship with her. Over time, while I remained bewildered, we returned to our daily routine, and things came round to normal.

  Two months later, on my birthday in November, Molly presented me with a hand-made card. On the front, my name was spelled in large print. Beneath that was a full-frontal picture of an elephant with a balloon above his head that said “Hi.”

  On the inside in her best printing were scrawled the words:

  I will be your pall [sic] but you have to like me. I hope you never leave again. I know everybody loves you. But I love you better. From Molly.

  I sat in the rocker in the living room absorbing the unexpected power of her words. Her seven-year-old brain registered in black-and-white conclusions about my absence and her importance in my life in a way that gripped me. It was a great lesson that one never really knows what goes on in the mind and heart of someone else—especially a child.

  Eventually Linda and I enlisted the support of a therapist. Neither of us had a full understanding of our issues and we had even less ability to effectively address them. On our first evening, we faced a slightly overweight, stern-looking colleague of Linda’s who had a degree in clinical psychology. She sat across from us, arms folded, and opened the session with, “What can I do for you?”

  My instinctive response was, “You could start by smiling.” While I wanted the help, we both were too vulnerable to open up to our deepest feelings, so that foray into enlightenment was brief and not very beneficial. Shortly after that, we found another therapist and worked away at the surface issues—children, money, freedom, jealousy, time—but we never got to the understanding we needed about how our original family dynamics played out in our relationship and the responsibility each of us had to comprehend and change those. Instead, we organized our weekly arguments to show the therapist why the other person was totally at fault.

  After five years, the strain was too great. Linda became attracted to someone else, just as she graduated with her doctorate, and was eager to move on. By then, I had finished all of my course work for my PhD and taken my prelims. I was also graduating with my master’s in film and video. It was disheartening that all of our hopefulness had come to this, and I wondered how any couple, whether straight or gay, managed to navigate the seemingly overwhelming challenges of a primary relationship. As much as I wanted a home and a family, I had a lot to learn about how to bring this desire to fruition.

  The hardest part was leaving the kids, not only from my concern about the impact of this second loss on them, but also because I had grown to love them as my own. Sara was nine and Molly was seven the night I drove up to the house to tell them, with Linda, that we were splitting up. Walking into the dining room, I felt a swirl of emotions—sadness, anger, despair, resignation. We all sat in the dining room while Linda explained that we were not going to be together anymore. The words dropped into the hollow place inside of me that had been carved out after years of misunderstanding between us. As I watched them watch her, my hand tightened around the yellow paper from the legal pad upon which I had carefully printed them a goodbye letter. They were so small and vulnerable—standing in their rumpled play clothes. The confusion on their faces was evident—unable to take in the meaning of it all until the tears appeared at the corners of their eyes and they glanced at me, looking for confirmation or hope for some sign that there might be a mistake.

  When Linda finished, Sara and Molly came over to where I sat on the small fold-out couch; each grabbed me around my neck as my arms encircled their tiny frames, my eyes staring out the window across the dining room table, focused on the swing set we had assembled the first year we moved in. We all cried, smooshed up together in a big ball, holding on tightly. It was impossible to know how they were processing this. When the sniffling stopped, I got up from the couch and asked them to sit down. I kneeled in front of them and slowly read my letter, explaining in simple language that their mother and I still loved each other, but our differences were too great to work things out. I promised to love them forever and told them they would always be my children in a special way—that our parting had nothing to do with them.

  Then I reached into a bag where I had kept Samantha and pulled her out.

  “I want you to have her because you are the ones who brought her to life.” Molly reached out her hands and grabbed Sam by the neck and clutched her to her chest. She had always been especially fond of this magical rabbit—so much so that I had gotten her a smaller version of Sam for her birthday, which she named Cherries. Now the mother and daughter bunnies would be together forever.

  They got off the couch, and we hugged once more, as tightly as the moment before. Letting go of them was the hardest task in my life so far, feeling the weight of chosen responsibility to never leave them emotionally, even though we would never live together again. The only thing that would make them believe my words would be to prove it with my actions—a promise I knew I would keep.

  We said goodbye at the door, and I moved slowly down the steps, got in my car, and drove around the streets of Ann Arbor for an hour, sobbing, until I made my way back to a friend’s house where I was staying until I could find an apartment.


  While I was out to many in our community, I was not out to everyone at school or at work. Once again, my grief took place alone—out of my fear people would see our breakup either as a positive thing, because they were against gays, or as inevitable for people living a lifestyle not accepted as the norm. People would expect us to fail. My feelings were too raw to risk reaching out for any potential comfort I might gain by sharing the sadness of our breakup, for fear there would be even greater negative consequences for revealing that we were domestic partners. Not knowing who would be sympathetic, I suffered by myself, out of view from anyone who might not understand. I think my mother was secretly hopeful this failure would turn me around and invite me to reconsider being with men. She never said that, and she did her best to offer support, but mostly I felt alone. My work was taking more of my time, and Linda “got” the softball team in our split, leaving me more socially isolated.

  Linda’s and my relationship had been the first real one I’d had as an adult in which I was not second-guessing whether I should be with a man or wondering what people would think about my being with a woman. I learned things I should have been able to explore in my twenties, but because of my anguished ambivalence about whom I could love, I had never focused on how to love another person as a life partner. While a relationship with a woman did not ensure success, I had no question that being with a woman was right for me.

  chapter

  18

  alone and free

  Both Linda and I graduated with honors in April 1982. I had completed my prelims for my PhD in educational psychology and had attained my master’s in film and video. Linda had finished her doctorate in nursing. In spite of the great success we had achieved in meeting our educational goals, we had failed in our ability to sustain and grow our relationship.

  Seated in the audience on graduation day, we were separated not only by the geography of our assigned classes, but also by the emotional gulf that had widened over the five years it took to achieve our respective accomplishments. As my eyes gazed across the crowd of thirteen thousand graduates and guests, I wondered about the lives of all the others parading across the stage to get their long-sought-after diplomas. What had been lost to them in pursuit of this dream? While school was not the primary reason for our breakup, it certainly added additional stress. I imagined we weren’t alone in that. Were all the others in the audience as happy as they looked, or were they suffering in some way beneath their nicely pressed black gowns, faces arranged in permanent smiles?