by John Warner
—SCIALABBA
Homosexuals Threaten the Sanctity of Norman’s Marriage
They started in on a Tuesday, late fall. It was morning, and as Nor-man took the garbage to the curb, he could see them loosely huddled near the bagged leaves that waited for pickup. Damn it, he thought. Homosexuals in the yard.
They’d come to threaten the sanctity of his marriage, but Norman wasn’t having it.
“Morning,” he said. Norman tries to be friendly to everybody regardless. That’s how he was raised. American values.
“Good morning,” they replied. A couple of them wore nicely tailored suits that looked just a bit snug in the seat. One had a lime-green sweater tied around his neck. Their grooming was impeccable. Another had a perfectly straight trail of hair plunging down his chest, accentuated by the open front of his shirt. Still another was clad entirely in leather; he squeaked whenever he moved. A few looked just about like anyone else. To Norman, they all smelled citrusy. Norman turned to make his way back to the house.
“You don’t show her the proper attention,” one of them called after him.
“Excuse me?”
“Your wife; you take her for granted,” another said.
“I love my wife.”
They looked at each other and smiled. “Of course you do.” The man with the lime-green sweater slipped his arm around the waist of one that looked just about like anyone else. “But when’s the last time you really looked at her?” he asked. The other man turned to face the man with the sweater. They closed their eyes and brought their faces close together, brushing noses.
Norman didn’t need to see that stuff. He went back inside.
Ellie was moving around the kitchen. Those fellows didn’t know what they were talking about. Norman looked at his wife every day. Norman watched as she took the breakfast plates from the table to the sink. Her bottom shook underneath her robe as she scrubbed the plates. Her hair medium-length and brown. The ankles thicker than you’d think, but not in a bad way. Norman had been looking at her for years. How many years? Thirty-six. What was left to see?
Norman stood to leave for work. He wondered if he should say something to Ellie about the homosexuals outside, or if it would just cause her worry. Ellie placed the dishes in the washer. Norman cleared his throat as if to speak and Ellie smiled, waving the scrub brush in farewell. Saying nothing, Norman walked out of the kitchen, to the garage, to the car. He backed out of the driveway without looking, wondering if he might feel a bump as he ran over the whole pack of them.
Norman didn’t see them for a while after that first encounter, but then one evening, as he went to retrieve the recycling bin, there they were, playing hopscotch along the sidewalk. There seemed to be more this time. They clapped loudly for each other as they went for each successive square. Norman thought, but didn’t say, Fairies.
“We’ve been meaning to tell you,” the one with the lime-green sweater said, dribbling his stone into a hopscotch square, “your moves in the bedroom, they’re limited.”
“What do you mean?”
“For one thing, are you always on top?” he asked, hopping toward his stone.
“Is there another way?”
“Would you like us to demonstrate?” He paused and looked at Norman.
“Lord no.”
“We could show you some things.” The one in the lime-green sweater held his hands outstretched at his waist and pumped his hips forward.
“No, please, no.”
“Homophobic?”
“Midwestern.”
They laughed. Norman did a little as well. He knew deep down he wasn’t homophobic. He was pretty positive he’d known some gays, treated them well, treated them just like anyone else. He didn’t hate people for what they were or for what they chose to be. That wasn’t Norman’s way.
The one with the lime-green sweater tied around his neck stood on one foot and bent to retrieve his stone, his arm stretched down, his leg levering into the air from his hip.
“Anytime, though, if you want,” he said, skipping back to safety.
Not always on top. Mostly, but not every time, Norman thought. Ellie had been his only and his always, and that should mean something. They were getting older for sure, but they were not dormant, no sirs. Some nights, they would be watching television side by side on the couch and their knees would touch and there would be a little twitch up Norman’s leg, an ache that climbs to you know where, and it is the same ache as when she first let him kiss her under the bleachers back in high school, when they went outside to steal a smoke and Norman leaned into her, as though drawn by a magnet, pressing his lips harder against hers until she ducked away and he clanged his head against one of the support bars.
Those nights, once in bed, Norman will slide her nightgown up and run the back of his nail along her thigh, and that is his sign. Hers is a change in her breathing, deeper, longer, and when she is ready she will slip out from underneath her nightgown and Norman will shed his bottoms and climb on top, bracing himself so as not to crush her, and there they are. One man and one woman, together. As it was in the Garden, as it has been since, and as it should be forever.
They were back again a few weeks later. It had snowed, and Norman was out shoveling the drive. They wore puffy winter coats with fur-trimmed hoods, except for the leather-clad one who still wore his leather, now accentuated with matching gloves, and the average ones who wore long overcoats. As Norman cleared the snow, they frolicked in the yard, making snow angels and flinging snowballs at each other. Frankly, Norman thought, they threw like girls.
The one with the lime-green sweater ran up to Norman. He clutched a fistful of snow, cocking his arm back, free arm pointed toward Norman as the target.
“Please don’t,” Norman said.
He dropped the snow to the ground and brushed his hands together. “I wouldn’t,” he said. Norman scraped another strip of the drive clean, piled the snow into berms along the sides.
“So,” he said.
“What?”
“Gina,” he said. He stretched the name out (Geeee-nahhh) and smiled and looked up at Norman from under his hood. He wiggled his eyebrows.
“What does that mean?”
“Gina,” he said, “from work. You watch her. She is hot. Even we can see that. We may be gay, but we’re not dead.”
Gina. She had some skirts, no doubt about it; Norman was not dead either. Her mode of dress was not really appropriate for the workplace, but Norman had not made a careful study of her wardrobe or anything. He’d always been faithful to Ellie, and ogling women was rude. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Hawwwww,” he laughed, tilting his head back. “That wasn’t your wife you were thinking about bending over the copier and tugging her panties down as your trousers dropped to your ankles. I’m pretty sure of that.”
So this was their game, Norman thought; sow doubt, undermine traditions with their free-love hedonism. He wasn’t going to have any of it. He’d thought no such things. Norman raised the shovel over his head. “Back off!”
“Whoa, big guy,” he said, raising his hands and retreating. “Don’t kill the messenger, my man. We’re not here to harm.” He turned and jogged back to his companions and rejoined the hijinks. Norman quickly finished the driveway and retreated inside.
Gina. Was it possible that she began to linger overlong at Norman’s desk? She is younger, but not so much younger. Twelve years? Fifteen? Twenty? She is lean, and her walk is strong. She smiles at him often, but then Norman is her boss and this is not a bad strategy with a boss. Norman knows that gender dynamics have changed over the years and that successful women sometimes use their womanness to their advantage. Her skirts stretch very tightly over her hips and they ride up high. Norman does not remember this style of skirt on the young women of his generation. In high school, the boys would duck their heads to peek at the girls’ calves beneath their hemlines, and that’s what he first saw of Ellie. The ankles a
bit thick, yes, but the calves, shapely, promising something interesting higher on the leg. With the skirts today, no imagining is necessary, but in seeing them, the mind races, Norman thinks, and not in a good way. And the breasts, they tremble above the open neck of her blouse; a small charm tumbles down the gap from a necklace, inviting one to look. On cold winter days, she entered the office hugged by a heavy coat, covered, but then she shook free from the coat and there she was, all of her, the skirt, the blouse.
These newer styles seemed wrong, inappropriate, but… effective, was the word that came to Norman’s mind.
They started showing up at work, one or two of them in the bathroom or the kitchenette. Norman wondered how they got past security. Everyone in the building was supposed to wear a name badge. “So,” the one with the lime-green sweater said, “dinner with Gina.”
“It’s with the whole team,” Norman replied, stirring powdered creamer into his coffee. “Thanks for a job well done.”
The man frowned at Norman’s cup. “How do you drink that crap?” he said. “Ever hear of a mochaccino?”
“I’ve been drinking it every day, and no, I wouldn’t know about mochaccinos.”
The man went to the fridge and pawed through the leftover lunches, grimacing at the Chinese takeout containers and a half-eaten Caesar salad with breaded chicken strips. “Ugh, you people are going to eat yourselves into your graves. Want to see my six-pack?”
“Is there something you wanted?” Norman said, sighing.
He shut the fridge and turned to Norman. “You drink that sludge every day, and I’m sure you think it suits you just fine, but the truth is I’ve seen you drive by the coffee places and you’re curious about the lattes, the mochaccinos, the frappuccinos.”
“I don’t even know what those are, nor do I care,” Norman said. Truthfully, Norman often found himself staring at the windows of these coffee places that suddenly seemed everywhere, wondering about the possibilities inside, but he would never go in for fear of making himself the fool by ordering wrongly. “Why break what doesn’t need fixing?” Norman said.
Norman thought the man looked at him with something like pity, but it should’ve been the other way around given his situation, his status. “If you say so,” the man said, flouncing out of the kitchenette and into the hallway.
* * *
“I won’t be home for dinner tomorrow night,” Norman said to Ellie as they sat down to eat that evening. Wednesday, which meant meatloaf, which Norman enjoyed with generous mounds of ketchup.
“No?”
“I’m taking the whole team out to celebrate. We’re up 22 percent this year over last.” Norman shook the ketchup bottle vigorously, mixing the contents, making sure he wasn’t stuck with a runny initial burst out of the squeeze top.
“No spouses?”
“They’re all single, dearest. Besides, it isn’t in the budget.”
“Even though you’re up 22 percent?”
Norman could not tell whether Ellie was teasing him. Her face was bent over her plate as she shoveled a forkful of green beans into her mouth.
Norman got a little huffy. “We’re the only ones up more than single digits. Some groups are even down.” He crammed a bite of meatloaf into his mouth and chewed roughly. Looking up, he could see two or three of the homosexuals outside the window over Ellie’s shoulder, waving at him like small children. Norman frowned.
“That’s wonderful, dear,” Ellie said. “I just wish I could be in on the celebration is all. I’m proud of you.” Her voice trailed off near the end, becoming barely audible, but Norman made no notice because he was distracted by the antics of the homosexuals. One of the suit-wearing ones donned a long dark wig and hung a sign around his neck with “Gina” on it in bold letters. The lime-green-sweatered one came up from behind and groped the other man’s chest while thrusting his pelvis against his backside. Norman tried to wave them off without Ellie seeing, but as she looked up, she caught him flailing his arms back and forth.
“Are you OK?”
“Fine,” Norman replied, digging his fork back into the meatloaf. “Maybe a little dry tonight?”
“Maybe,” Ellie said. “The beef looked a bit old in the case.”
The plan—never stated, but understood between them—had been for children, somewhere between several and a bunch. They weren’t exactly trying from the get-go, but neither were they using protection. At first, they rationalized, Norman was moving up the ladder and when children did arrive they’d have increased security and stability; God would grant them their blessings when they were ready to receive them. After a while, it seemed strange, though, all that activity with nothing (not nothing, but you know…) to show for it. Nor-man first turned to God, praying, not for his sake, but Ellie’s. When that didn’t work, and they felt the window of opportunity closing, they went to the doctor, a humiliation.
They handed Norman a cup with a screw-top lid, his name, and a six-digit number written on the side, and showed him to a room with a reclining chair, a couch, and an array of skin magazines in a rack on the wall. It wasn’t that Norman never masturbated, but he certainly didn’t make a habit of it and did his best to think of Ellie when he did so. The magazines looked old, the pages worn. The women seemed eager to show the viewer their privates, making sure everything was spread for examination. They were shaved almost entirely, save a little column that looked to Norman like exclamation point. Norman realized he had never seen Ellie down there. He’d felt it, of course, and once or twice—more out of duty than desire—used his mouth, but it was always dark when they made love and when he tried it, Ellie would pull his head away and he would mount.
The pictures did nothing for Norman except make him shudder, but as he closed his eyes and tried to conjure Ellie, she stayed fuzzy and out of reach, so he reached for one of the magazines and turned to a page where the woman had one arm slung under her breasts, pushing them up and together, while her fingers reached for her privates. Norman folded the page so her lower half was covered and soon made his deposit, the spunk sad and gray under the overhead fluorescents. When he was done, not knowing why, he carefully tore the page from the magazine and folded it until it fit into a slot in his wallet.
The doctors said that individually there was nothing wrong with Norman and Ellie, but a fluke of body chemistry made his sperm incompatible with her womb. Ellie reached for Norman’s hand and began to cry. Norman gripped it back and nodded stoically. The doctors said that when Norman’s swimmers entered Ellie they became disoriented, like they were drunk, and swam the wrong direction or in circles. It was rare, the doctor said, but they did see this from time to time. Some remedies were being tried for this condition, but as of yet, nothing had proven promising. Still, conception was not impossible. Some of the sperm seemed to get the gist, just not enough to make the odds good. The doctor smiled at them and said, “The only thing to do is just keep trying, and have fun doing it!”
They were counseled on in vitro fertilization, but when they were told what happened to the leftover embryos, that was the end of that. You can’t kill ten babies to make one and feel good about it.
For a while they did not try, Ellie turning her back to Norman as she slid under the sheets, a cool wall of air separating them. In the middle of the night Norman would wake with an erection and clenched fists. After several months, Ellie began throwing a leg over his body as they slept, and finally, one early morning just before dawn, he felt Ellie’s hand groping at his legs and they were together again. They tried and tried, less often but regularly, and there were a few what they dubbed close calls but were just late periods, nothing close at all. One day they realized they’d both crossed forty-five and the odds had gone from negligible to nonexistent and that even adoption, at least of an infant, was a long shot. Norman did his best to count his blessings: health, a wife whom he loved and who loved him, success in business. To complain seemed ungracious, and yet he often thought about how unfair it seemed. Deep down he knew he h
ad what it took to be a good father: the capacity for love, a willingness to sacrifice, a deep sense of ethics and morality, the instinct to protect combined with an openness to letting go when the time was right. Norman knew that fatherhood would be fulfilling, the end point of his destiny, and he was pretty sure Ellie felt the same about motherhood.
After it became apparent that their life together would be childless, without saying a word to each other they stopped trying. This is not to say that they never made love—they were human beings with needs—but each year Norman felt more and more of the need leaking out of him. But his love for Ellie did not diminish, even as his desire was slowly extinguished.
He shouldn’t have had so much to drink. Normally he limited himself to one glass of wine, two at most if the dinner was going to be a prolonged one. They had been drinking cocktails that ended in “tini” and looked radioactive in the glass, and Norman had lost count at six. He knew he was talking too loud and too much, regaling the team—Bart, Laurie, Sheila, Ian, Scarlet, and of course Gina—with ancient tales from the company offices. He spilled secrets, some of which weren’t his to give away, and after each story he saw them look at each other as if to say, “Get a load of this,” before goading him on. He felt like a racehorse being spurred by the jockey. It was a large table, and he sat at the head with Gina on his right. At some point, hidden by the cloth, she’d put her hand on his knee, but he didn’t miss a beat. When the waiter came to clear the dinner plates, Norman had hardly eaten any of his steak and pommes frites, but he sent the food away anyway and launched into another story. It felt like he’d been waiting his whole life to be in this place, with these people, his people, hanging on his experiences, his wisdom. Bart suggested a digestif, and when Norman stood to retire to the bar the room swirled and he clutched the table and he felt Gina reach for his elbow, keeping him steady.