“Dad, I worked on my MBA in the evenings after work back in 2004-2005 … I think.”
He stared at me.
“Really, Dad.” His expression tickled me. A graduate degree in business was something even I would never have anticipated tackling, but the company I worked for at the time offered a tuition reimbursement benefit and I took advantage of it. In the technical and sales-related context of the place where I worked, my area of expertise was considered “soft.” I’d grown up having to learn about different cultures and languages. Maybe if I had a better understanding of where I worked, and what the departments did in terms of business and product development, things would run more smoothly for me. I thought I might leverage an MBA for growth (and some respect). In addition, I eventually wanted to move back to the world I knew best and where I felt most comfortable—higher education or other nonprofits.
“Your mother would have told me.” Never was it more concrete to me how much I’d relied on my mother to be collector and conduit of information from me to my father. Over the years—out of habit, laziness, or lack of courage—I’d left it to my mother to give my father information.
I wondered why she had not told him about this since she and I had discussed my plan to go to graduate school at great length. She’d expressed concerns about the extra layers of stress and work to my overwhelmed life as well as her worry about my health. Most of all she could not understand why I’d pursue an MBA rather than an MFA.
“Why do you always choose the most difficult path and make things harder for yourself than you need to?” she’d asked. “If you must go back to school, why not a concentration in writing? That would make more sense. You’re good with words. An MBA is ridiculous.”
I chalked her reaction up to motherly concern and a lack of knowledge and experience with the corporate world. Sometimes the easy way was not an option and sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
“Dad, she knew. Would you like to see my transcript?”
“No.” He paused then said, “You didn’t finish did you.”
And there it was. My patience ebbed. I took this as an accusation and reminder of all the foolish decisions I’d made, the things I’ve tried and didn’t complete, things where I failed miserably when I had been warned ahead of time not to try. I tried not to be hurt or angry. “No, I didn’t finish,” I said. I waited.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because, Dad, I was two to four courses away from completing the degree when I had the strongest feeling that if I continued working and raising three children while carrying that heavy course load that I would die within six months. I was sure I’d drop dead from exhaustion or have a heart attack. I took a leave of absence and about six weeks later I had the mini-stroke.”
There was silence. I broke it by stating, “I can’t believe Mom didn’t say anything.”
“She didn’t,” he replied. Then he changed direction. “You never really told us things. We always found out things some other way.”
I got the reference. As they wheeled me from the ER to my room after I suffered the mini-stroke, I’d given my two oldest daughters instructions. “Do not tell anyone yet. Do not call your father, my friends, the Marching Band Outreach Committee. Not anyone. And, under no circumstances should you call Grandma and Grandpa.” At my instruction, the cone of silence descended.
It’s easy now to wonder what I was thinking at the time, but I am sure I needed to understand fully what was happening myself. I worried that in trying to help, either my ex-husband or my parents would try to step in and take over. God forbid they should meet on the doorstep and struggle over who should take care of the children and me.
I recollected that I called my parents after my three-day stay in the hospital once I knew things were back to “normal.” I’d learned that there was no residual damage, and I’d been informed that with changes in diet and lifestyle I’d be fine. My father claims that my mother called for a random chat and my eldest Rachel’s boyfriend, Jon (now my son-in-law), answered the phone and told them I was in the hospital. My father said my mother asked Jon if they should come down. Dad says Jon said, “You should come.”
It doesn’t matter whose version was accurate. What matters is that Dad was correct. I often chose not to tell parents or others important things.
“I’m sorry, Dad.”
“That’s in the past,” he shrugged. He continued to watch the game for a while before asking, “Why an MBA? Why make things hard for yourself? You’d have had more fun getting a degree in writing.”
“That’s what Mom said,” I laughed. “Exactly that.”
Though I was curious about what information my mother had not shared with Dad, I didn’t wonder why. We knew now that Mom had been ill for far longer than we’d realized. And prior to that she and Dad had been caring for Dad’s father until he moved to the nursing home. Moving forward it was my job to make sure I shared everything with Dad that he needed and wanted to know. And I was aware that it would take me a long time to share one of the things that was hardest for me to talk to my father and brothers about.
PART IV
I closed the box and put it in a closet. There is no real way to deal with everything we lose.
—JOAN DIDION, Where I Was From
CHAPTER 15
Full Disclosure
ONE SATURDAY or Sunday after a short road trip to “just get out of the house,” Dad and I sat at a table at one of the many diners on the Eastern Shore and enjoyed a cup of tea with dessert: ice cream sundae for him, Smith Island cake for me. We watched some kids run back and forth from the arcade games in the lobby to their parents’ table for more quarters.
“Do you ever think of going out with someone again? Don’t you miss having a companion?”
I was not only surprised that my father—the man who to me growing up had seemed determined I would be with no male person and who knew my history—asked this question, but also by the vehemence of my response, “NO! I do not.”
Both of us were taken aback by my reaction.
“Well,” he laughed, “you don’t have to get mad about it.”
“Dad,” I said, softening my tone, “why would I want or need to get involved with anyone at this stage in my life? I’ve been married twice. I’m batting zero. Obviously, I’m not good at marriage.”
“You’re just not good at choosing husbands,” he corrected me.
I frowned at him, paused, and then said, “I don’t agree. I think they were both good men at heart. They and I just weren’t as good at handling things as we might have wanted to be.”
Years of thinking about it all had made me realize that they were each as good a prospect for marriage as I was back then.
“I’m not sorry I married either of them. I’m sorry that the marriages and the relationships afterward didn’t work out. But anyway, I’ve been married. I’ve had my children. They’re grown. I have grandchildren. I have my friends. I have my writing. My solitude. I have you. What else do I need?”
He looked at me, unconvinced. But nodded at me anyway.
Truth be told, I never thought about having another man in my life. Since the last marriage ended, as a reaction rather than a well-thought-out decision, I’d just accepted, if not decided, that I would never date again, let alone remarry. I began to think about why.
Most of my divorced or widowed friends were still filling out online dating profiles or getting matched up with someone by other friends. I just hadn’t been interested. Was it because I hadn’t seen anyone that interested me? Was I low on hormones? Why did people think women had to have a partner? My mother had referred to it as “Noah’s Ark Syndrome.”
Sometimes I worried that I was being selfish. I liked solitude. When people asked me if I missed having a man in my life, someone to care about or to care about me I answered, “I have been lucky to genuinely fall in love with two men and marry them. It was wonderful while it lasted. I’m satisfied that I had that experience. To h
ave had the experience of loving them as much as I did … that was enough.”
Maybe I had had to pack things up, leave the home I was in for a new one, unpack my stuff, and rearrange it to fit in with someone else’s stuff far too often. Maybe I was just tired of everything. I was sure I had unresolved issues to deal with before any new entangling alliances. I planned to resolve them. That had to begin with understanding who I was, where I was, and how I got there without anyone else involved. I refused to think about the time and energy required or the complications that romance added to my already overwhelming life.
A little more than twenty years earlier, life as I’d known, understood, and loved it changed in the space of a ten-minute conversation one day. The children were playing outside, and I sat on our family room sofa as I did each Sunday morning, reading under a large picture window through which sunlight poured in. Summer flowers—geraniums, petunias, and hibiscus—and herbs filled various sized pots on the deck outside. Classical music played in the background. I have a very tangible memory of looking up from what I was reading while sipping on a mug of tea and surveying the back deck and yard. I thought how lucky I was, even with all that had gone on for the past few years. A few minutes later, my husband, a man I’d loved more than any other, told me he thought he was gay.
My husband and I had faced one challenge after another since 1987. Diagnosed with breast cancer, my mother underwent surgery for a mastectomy. My husband’s parents died—his father within days after our youngest daughter Jane’s birth and his mother a month after that. In addition, my husband’s mentor with whom he had worked for more than fifteen years moved on to another position and not too long after died unexpectedly.
The fact that my husband’s career suffered ups and downs for several years should not have surprised anyone after all he’d been through, but for a man, like many men, whose identity and sense of self seemed so tightly bound to his career, I understood this to be devastating for him, especially with the responsibility of a family. I thought I understood his depression. It seemed an appropriate and normal reaction to an abnormal situation.
I saw all of this as an opportunity—a chance to sell everything, move on, decide then what he really wanted to do, and create a new life for all of us. I’d have followed him anywhere. But that was my own approach to life. Not his. Instead he looked for like positions at the same salary and did everything to avoid selling the home he loved. One position after another for the next few years ended.
After majoring in miscellaneous for about twenty years, I had worked to finally complete my degree at Georgetown University. I finished my thesis with a concentration in literature and I was encouraged to immediately enroll to go on for my masters with the plan to teach a course on my topic, “The Institution of Motherhood: Representation of the Mother in Western Literature.” Under other circumstances, this would have been a dream come true, but I had three small children, one barely a toddler, my husband had left his job, and I didn’t feel it was time. I attempted to launch a writing career. I submitted essays, contributed chapters to three books, and edited another, which I could do from home. But soon, I returned to work as a manager for special projects for a small trade association that advocated for adults with disabilities. I only earned about one quarter of my husband’s salary, but we needed medical benefits.
The abnormal became normal for us. We dealt with everyday issues together—taking care of the children, the yard, the house, what we presented to others—but there remained very little time or energy for one another. For what we considered the right reasons and, perhaps, because we both avoided topics that might result in conflict, we kept too much to ourselves during that time. It was one more thing we shared.
Despite my belief that we had a close relationship and shared everything, I always knew there was something he struggled with internally, based on what I observed as a certain wariness. It seeped through my husband’s calm and confident façade, through which even I could not find an opening. This seemed at times to block total emotional intimacy with me, and with others. It belied my belief that I knew everything about him—at least my belief that I knew all I needed to know. I knew and accepted him as a reserved man where emotions were concerned. I ignored what others might have seen as red flags. I believed relationships grew through discovery. I respected his need for space. I knew I needed mine. Shouldn’t every individual have some thoughts and feelings all their own?
I think now that I recognized in him what I knew about myself. There was much I held inside, too, preferring the internal, personal struggle if there was going to be one—so I did not analyze it. When he was ready, I trusted him to tell me.
In the last few years of our marriage there were growing signs of discordance and distancing, sudden and surprising sensitivity, and rage on the part of my typically strong, calm, quiet, and thoughtful husband to my or others’ words or actions. I thought we just needed time, that having a job again, and working through his grief and all the changes would help. And things did seem to get better and start to level out when he returned to work.
Love was all we needed. We had that. Right?
Apparently not.
My husband went for a long bike ride every weekend morning. That morning, before leaving, he pulled the hassock near the couch as he always did, then sat down to put on his shoes before leaving. This was ritual.
While he shook foot powder into his shoes, we always talked a few minutes before he rode away. He’d let me know the route he was taking, when he’d be back, and we talked about what we might do later in the day. This morning he said, “I need to tell you something.”
I put down the newspaper and looked at him.
He said, “I think I’m gay.” He continued to fiddle with his shoes, looking at me now and then as he would have done had he told me that he thought we should think about sealing the deck again before summer, but I sensed his vulnerability and worry.
I looked at my husband as he sat across from me. While I might have expected to feel shocked or angry, I did not. Instead, I felt what a terminally ill patient must feel—that initial sense of relief when the doctor says, “I know what’s wrong,” just before revealing how much time one has left to live. I do remember thinking, “Our marriage is over.”
I felt protective of him in that moment. I thought about what two people who loved and were committed to one another should say at a time like this. I thought about all we’d been through the past few years. I thought how hard—how frightening—it must have been to tell me this. I wondered how long he had struggled with when and how to tell me. I felt grateful that he trusted me enough to tell me. I wondered how I could not have known that my husband was gay. I wondered when he first knew.
I was very certain I did not want him to be afraid. I didn’t think there was anything worse than feeling afraid. I was afraid then, but in a perverse way this realization led me to believe that we would somehow—based on this shared knowledge and experience—draw strength and forge a partnership, maybe different than the one we had, which would be solid and loving and safe.
I know I felt nothing but love for him at that moment. I was sure the two of us would make the best of this situation. I had faith in that and in him, so I said, “If that is true, we will handle this together. You’ll be safe.” Then I hugged him and thought I felt him relax. I sensed relief.
I do not remember much of what happened between his disclosure and when he left for his bike ride. But I do remember that after he left, I thought it odd that I wasn’t shaking or crying or taking to my bed. This was serious. Aside from a Lifetime movie or two (and I had not liked the endings to those movies), I had no point of reference for how to deal with this situation.
Confronted with a serious problem, I did what I always do. I thought up possible scenarios—with narratives—for how we could work this out. I wanted to be sure we had options to discuss and choose among. Together.
Thinking up scenarios is my first line of defense in c
risis. It’s as though my mind separates from my emotions and body. Like a great narrator in the sky, an internal soundtrack starts, “Nancie walks to the kitchen, boils some water, pours herself a cup of tea, then moves to the sink and stares out the window as she plots her next steps….”
Not that planning isn’t important and necessary, but a person should be allowed to stop for a moment and say something like (take your pick):
“Holy shit!”
“How do I feel about this?”
“How did I miss that someone I’ve known for almost two decades is gay?”
“We had two children together.”
“Oh my God! What will happen to us now?”
“The children. What about the children?”
“How and what do we tell the children?”
“When do we tell the children?”
“What should I do?”
“What do I want to do?”
And again, “Holy shit!”
But that’s never really been my process. My process is more like, “Oh, there’s a problem? Okay. Let’s think about this. What are our options? Here’s what we do. What do you mean, what am I feeling? Say nothing until we have a plan. There’s time for feeling later. Maybe.”
I know that initially, for a few seconds, I felt a sense of relief. I thought that now, at least, we both knew the situation we were dealing with and everything would be fine. We would handle it together. The problem was, we did not know what was to come. How could we? It took almost two years to run systematically, in the most civilized way, through our end-of-marriage to-do list. Toward the end, it became increasingly more difficult to remember a time when we both loved each other, let alone cared about one another. I cannot speak for him and would not presume to, but it became hard for me to believe he had ever really liked me and even harder to believe that if he ever had, he still did.
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