“I thought you’d want to know.”
Did I want to know? Yes, if it was true. Would I ever know the truth? Would Greg?
“We talked about a lot of things,” he went on when he realized I wasn’t going to speak. “I know I’m not him, that what he is—” He wasn’t ready to use the word. “That what he is, well, it doesn’t have anything to do with me. It’s well—him.”
He looked so young, so vulnerable right them. My heart broke. This was the son I knew, the one I had thought was gone forever. Where was the anger that had poisoned him against Darren and me? Where was the disgust? Had fear for his father’s life rendered it insignificant?
He cleared his throat again, a nervous habit from early childhood. “When I can get back East, I wondered….” This was clearly agony for him. “Can I come see you?” he blurted out. “If you’d rather I didn’t, it’s okay. I understand, but….” His voice trailed to nothing.
I hesitated before answering him, not because I was unsure of my answer, but because I was afraid to trust my voice.
He must have taken my silence for an answer, because he began to rise. “Hey, I understand,” he said, lumbering to his feet. “I said some pretty awful things—”
I finally found my voice. “Greg, of course you can come back here. You’re my son, and I love you.”
He swallowed hard, not meeting my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“I love you,” I repeated.
I saw the tears on his face before he could turn away. I almost reached out to hug him, but I held back. That was a step he’d have to initiate when he was ready.
A moment later, he left, pulling the door closed behind him.
I walked back outside with Josie. We wandered the yard, Josie sniffing each shrub as if it was new. Greg and I could never go back to that total closeness we’d had before. Greg would never again be my perfect little boy. I would never again be worshipped by him, high atop of that lofty pedestal. Maybe Diane would fill that role in his life. I hoped not. A fall from those heights is abysmal.
The reality, I saw now, was that I, too, had put Greg on a pretty high pedestal. I expected his childlike worship of his mother and father to last forever. I expected more of him than he could give. In the end, we were both disappointed.
Hopefully, in time, we could build a new relationship, one based on a clearer vision of reality. So, too, with Jana. I wanted our relationship to be honest and adult. I hoped that someday both my children would once again open up to me and their father, realizing that we were all casualties of life, that we were each blameless—and not contagious.
It was odd. I had thought the issue facing me was helping my children deal with their father’s homosexuality and the end of our marriage, but that was the smallest part of it. The real issue was not forgiveness, as I had thought, but of letting go. Me of my husband, my marriage, my dreams of the future. My children, of their illusions that their parents were infallible.
With all the best intentions, we had built our futures on sand, and the sand had shifted, as sand does.
* * * * *
When Jules returned from his errand an hour later, he found me stretched out on the grass with Josie, predictably, at my feet.
He knelt down and kissed me on the forehead. “Mmmm… Warm.”
“Sun.”
“You okay?”
I reached up and pulled him down beside me. “Yes.”
“You look peaceful.”
I laughed, a lazy, sun-drenched sound. “That’s what everyone said about my father.”
He grinned. “At least I didn’t say that you look natural.”
“Don’t you think I look natural?” I asked, surprised that I could joke about it.
“You look—“ He stroked my face. “God, you look beautiful.” He leaned over and kissed me softly, feathers against my sun-warmed lips. “I love you, Lou.”
There they were. The words I’d only said to one man in my half a century of life, words I suspected I would say to this man. Someday. When the time was right.
But for now, I reached up my arms and drew him down to me. “Yes. Please do,” I whispered in his ear.
An Irreconcilable Difference Page 26