Waltzing at Midnight

by Robbi McCoy

  Amy was in the living room, talking on her cell phone, the ear buds of her MP3 player in place in her ears. How does she do that, I marveled. She got off the phone when she saw me.

  “I just saw Abby,” I said. “She wasn’t especially friendly. Why?

  Did you say something to her?”

  “No. But I sort of told Lisa.” Amy pulled the ear buds out of her ears.

  “Oh, Amy, for God’s sake. Don’t you have any sense? You tell one person, they tell two, and pretty soon everybody knows.”

  “Geez, Mom, I wouldn’t want to be something that I was ashamed of.”

  Was I ashamed? I still hadn’t told my parents. All they knew was that I’d left Jerry. They didn’t know why.

  1

  “How’s your dad?” I asked.

  She frowned. “He pretty much sits around sulking. He thinks you’ll come back.”

  “Does he?”

  “Yeah. He’s convinced himself of it. You won’t, will you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what I told him. He says he knows you better than I do. He says you’re just having a mid-life crisis and you’ll come to your senses soon. He says he’s going to just wait it out.”

  I made sure I was out of the house before Jerry came home.

  I didn’t want to see him. He would just make me feel bad like he did during the emotionally draining phone calls that he made to me several times a week.

  I had been fairly successful at avoiding him in person up until now, but I knew I would see him Thursday night, the opening night of Amy’s play. The possibility of seeing Jerry, though, wasn’t the greatest source of anxiety for me that night. This would be the first time Rosie and I went out to a public event as a couple, and that seemed like a pretty big deal to me.

  We entered the theater fifteen minutes before curtain time.

  Just inside, Rosie was approached by an eager young man who shook her hand. Then we were surrounded by a group of people.

  Rosie introduced me to them one by one as “my friend, Jean.”

  They’ll put two and two together. There’s no going back now, I thought. Rosie knew almost everybody in town, and certainly everybody knew her. It would be like that wherever we went.

  There was not going to be any hiding with her. She was right.

  She was as far out of the closet as it was possible to be.

  In this venue, though, it wasn’t just Rosie who knew people.

  There were people here I knew as well, people I’d known for a long time who would suddenly be looking at me in an entirely new way. One of these was Laura Ramsey, the mother of Amy’s best friend Wendy. Wendy, who had been friends with Amy since second grade, was also in the play. Laura and I knew each other well, had often found ourselves sharing parental responsibilities at school as our daughters grew up, and had even occasionally 10

  socialized together as couples with our husbands. I knew Laura was in the audience tonight and I knew that she, more than most people, would be likely to know the details of my situation. As we stood at the back of the theater, I scanned the seats below us to locate anyone I knew. I wasn’t ashamed. I knew that. But it was still scary to hold yourself out there, inviting disapproval.

  Rosie was so involved in conversation that I ended up going ahead to our seats alone, the orange plush orchestra seats ten rows back from the stage. As the houselights went down, Rosie slid into the aisle seat beside me and gave my hand a squeeze. I waited impatiently for Amy to come on stage. When at last she did, in full costume, I didn’t recognize her until Rosie jabbed me in the arm. Amy wore a gargantuan eighteenth century outfit of petticoats and satin. Her breasts were constricted and pushed up into the open bodice so that they looked huge. On the left one, a dark mole had been penciled in. She wore a white wig of monstrous proportions and carried a fan. I finally recognized her under the gaudy makeup. Yes, she was in there. Amy was hilarious. She stole the show, and it wasn’t just her mother who thought so. The crowd roared every time she spoke. Of course, the playwright had something to do with that, but you couldn’t discount delivery.

  At intermission, Rosie and I stepped into the aisle to allow others to exit our row. That’s when I saw Laura coming up the center aisle toward us. I swallowed hard as I waited for her to see me. When she did, she smiled. I smiled. She approached us.

  “Hi, Jean,” she said. “Both the girls are doing great, don’t you think? Amy’s cracking me up.”

  “Yes,” I said, “I’m enjoying it quite a bit.”

  Now Laura turned to look calmly at Rosie, and it was time to introduce them.

  “I’m sure you know Rosie,” I said. “Rosie, this is Laura Ramsey, Wendy’s mother. Wendy is the one playing Julia.”

  “Yes, of course, I know Rosie,” Laura said. “She’s a local celebrity. But we’ve never actually met.”

  As Rosie exchanged pleasantries with Laura about the play, 11

  I tried to read Laura’s mind. She remained inscrutable. She may as well have been a Stepford wife. Not a word about Jerry, my broken marriage or my shocking relationship with the woman she voted for last November. After a few polite minutes, Laura excused herself with, “It’s nice to see you, Jean. There aren’t so many opportunities for running into each other as there were when the girls were younger. And, Rosie, I’m glad to meet you, finally. I was truly disappointed that you didn’t win that election.”

  She moved up the aisle and out into the lobby as I sighed deeply. So that’s how it was going to be with those who were of a refined temperament. They would be polite and pretend that nothing had happened, but they would be distant, perhaps even disdainful under their unruffled veneer. I felt a little broken as I took my seat for the second act.

  When the play was over, Rosie and I went to meet the actors in the lobby. Amy came out still in costume. When she saw me, she made her way over and touched her lips first to one of my cheeks, then to the other, in European fashion. With the wig, she stood well over six feet tall, but wasn’t slouching at all. Apparently it was okay to be remarkably tall while in character.

  “You were fantastic,” I said. “And you look grotesque.”

  “Thanks, Mom. This is so much fun. What did you think, Rosie?”

  “The best Mrs. Malaprop I’ve ever beheld.” In a high-flown voice, Rosie said, “The audience couldn’t insist you. They were demented.”

  Amy giggled, then slapped Rosie playfully with her fan.

  There was genuine affection between those two. When you thought about it, they had a lot in common. Both were extremely comfortable in the spotlight.

  While we were laughing over the performance, Jerry walked up, his hands in his pockets, an unconvincing smile on his face.

  “Terrific job, princess,” he said, hugging Amy. Then he turned to me and said, “Hey, Jeannie.” He looked at Rosie, but did not greet her.

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  I nodded, feeling awkward. What a strange thing this was, I thought, to cut yourself loose from a person you had loved all of your adult life, a member of your family, the person you had always identified as an essential element in your world. I felt Rosie’s arm slide around mine and tug on me slightly. Was she afraid that Jerry had some power over me still?

  I gave her a reassuring look and said my good-byes to Amy and Jerry. They went home to my old house and I, after kissing Rosie good night in her car on my street, went into my oppressively silent apartment.

  Although my work days were exciting and involving, I hadn’t yet learned what to do with myself on weekday evenings.

  If it wasn’t for school two nights a week, it might have been unbearable. I ended up buying myself a computer, television and DVD player, objects to distract me from the quiet. And I was on the phone a lot, every night to Rosie, and frequently to Faye and my mother, who weren’t used to hearing from me so often, so our conversations were usually dull and repetitive.

  And, of course, Jerry called too to convey his current state of despair or reminisce about the g
ood old days. I understood his strategy. He was trying to show me the value of what I was walking away from. But what he didn’t seem to realize was that all of the pretty pictures he was painting for me were from a long time ago.

  Although he didn’t often mention Rosie, he made it clear that he didn’t believe I was in love with her. He thought I had deluded myself about that as a way of escaping my marriage. And because of that, he still thought the real problem, whatever it was, could be fixed. He frequently asked me what it was that I was unhappy with, what he could do to make things better, would I please go to couple’s counseling.

  These calls with Jerry usually ended with him saying, “I love you, Jeannie,” before hanging up. Oddly, that always felt like an accusation. I found myself less and less willing to answer and sit through these calls. They seemed unproductive, more like rubbing salt in the wound than contributing to the healing 13

  process. I started to screen my calls and avoid picking up for Jerry.

  And I tried not to dwell too much on what was happening in my old house while I was sitting alone eating chow mein out of a take-out box. But soon Jerry and Amy would be joined by Bradley, and I found it impossible not to think about that.

  Bradley’s homecoming would be reality slamming into us all like a careening big rig. It was supposed to have been a reunion for our family. It couldn’t help but fortify the feeling that we were now destroyed. I hated to think about the pain my boy was about to face, the pain I was going to cause him.

  On the day of Bradley’s return, Amy was picking him up at the San Francisco airport. It would fall to her to tell him the state of affairs. We had given him advance warning that I had left Jerry, but that was the extent of it. I didn’t know how Amy would tell him the rest and didn’t ask her. Bradley wasn’t like Amy. He was a serious young man who found it tough to compromise his ideals, a quality I admired in him but which would make it unlikely that he would accept the news easily.

  At six o’clock on the day of his return, I called Amy from my apartment. “Did everything go okay?” I asked.

  “Well, I got Brad, if that’s what you mean. He’s home.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I’m afraid he freaked out, Mom. Big time!”

  “Weren’t you tactful at all, Amy?” I asked. “Do you always have to be so blunt and inconsiderate?”

  “How can you tell your brother that your mom’s a lezzie with tact? Besides, I did it as gently as I could. He’s shut himself in his room. Hasn’t come out since we got home.”

  “Tell him I want to talk to him.” Amy was gone for several minutes.

  When finally she returned, she said, “He won’t come. He doesn’t want to talk to you. He says you’re sick. I tried to tell him how cool Rosie is, but he yelled at me and said I was as sick as you are.”

  I was devastated. I spent an hour sitting in the dark, sobbing, 14

  until the phone rang. It was Rosie. She could tell, most likely, from my voice that I had been crying. “Bradley didn’t take it well?”

  “He wouldn’t even speak to me on the phone.”

  “Give him some time. After all, you’ve dumped a lot on him all at once. He loves you. He’ll come around.”

  “But what if he doesn’t? What if he won’t speak to me again?

  What if he won’t let me see my grandchildren?”

  The next day I called the house again. Amy answered and reported that Bradley would still not come to the phone, and that his message to me was that if I came home and promised to get counseling, he would do his best to forgive me. “Sorry, Mom,”

  she said.

  “Thanks for trying, honey,” I said weakly, and then spent another evening in tears.

  The next day, Rosie invited me to lunch. Our restaurant conversation revolved mostly around the situation with my son.

  She tried to comfort me at first, but by the end of the meal, she had moved on to a different approach. Maybe she just got tired of telling me everything would work out, or maybe she wanted me to buck up and prepare for the horrible possibility that Bradley was not someone who could be won over after all.

  “You knew there would be sacrifices,” she said.

  “I knew I was losing a husband,” I said. “I didn’t expect to lose my son.”

  “It happens,” Rosie said. “Happens all the time. In any family with a gay person, there are going to be family members who just can’t accept it. If you’re lucky, there aren’t very many of those.”

  Somehow I managed to quit thinking about myself for a moment. “Rosie,” I said, “is there someone like that in your family?”

  “My mother,” she said, solemnly. “She never forgave me.”

  “Didn’t your mother die not too long ago?”

  She nodded. “That’s the worst of it. Three years ago. No matter what I accomplished, none of it meant a thing to her.

  Everything was completely overshadowed by her condemnation 15

  of my lifestyle.”

  My God, I thought, how sad. Was that what all of this overachieving was about, after all, the search for that elusive parental approval? We talked for a while, then, about Rosie’s family and her lifelong and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to win back her mother’s love. I was glad she was talking about it, that she felt enough trust between us to reveal the most vulnerable of wounds, but it left me more fearful than before. If a mother could reject a child for this, then certainly a child could reject a mother.

  In the midst of my heartache over Bradley came Jerry’s ultimatum. I had until the end of the month to make my final decision. It was late February. Winter was over and the trees were preparing their blooms. He would take me back if I came to my senses before then, but he had a life to live too and couldn’t wait indefinitely. I suspected Bradley of having a part in this latest move. Give her an ultimatum, Dad, and force her hand. They were ganging up on me.

  When I told Rosie about Jerry’s ultimatum, she said, “I know how upset you are about Bradley. You can go back if you want to.

  It sounds like they would welcome you back.”

  I could see the fear in her eyes. “No, I can’t,” I said firmly.

  “I’m not going back.”

  She was still unsure of me, I realized. She didn’t know if I was going to make it. I was a would-be track star running hurdles. Any one of them could knock me out of contention. I remembered when she wished she’d met me two years into the future. In two years, I wondered, will I have cleared all the hurdles? And was that possible if my son would never speak to me again? This was an unexpectedly high hurdle.

  Considering that Rosie had these doubts, I was glad that she wasn’t a witness to the endless drama that took place in my apartment on the telephone or just by myself with my frequent tears over the shipwreck of my family. She had glimpses of it, especially because of Bradley, but I was shielding her from the bulk of it, presenting my best and happiest self to her when we were together. That wasn’t difficult, though, because I really was 16

  my best and happiest self with Rosie.

  Jerry’s deadline came and went. His calls became less frequent. Bradley got his own apartment and a job at the Sentinel as a stringer. That was perfect, I thought. I had still not seen him or even spoken to him. Amy had kindly e-mailed me a couple of recent photos which were taped to the wall at my office. He looked more like a man than ever. The traces of boyhood on his face were diminishing. But he was otherwise as I remembered him, a tall, looming sort of boy with sandy hair, a ruddy complexion and a red mustache. He looked like neither Jerry nor me. He looked like my grandfather. But that was the extent of the resemblance.

  My grandfather was a zany Irishman, full of mischievous good humor, who took absolutely nothing seriously.

  One of the photos Amy sent was of Bradley and his new girlfriend, Brenna. She was stunning with a thin face, high cheekbones, long auburn hair and a lightly-freckled complexion.

  They looked quite natural together. Would I e
ver meet her, I wondered, imagining red-headed grandchildren.

  As spring bloomed, my life began to settle into a routine of sorts, but a routine unlike anything I would ever have called

  “routine” before. My comfort level at work was increasing rapidly. I began to rely on myself more and more and generate new projects for the Partnership on my own, like the industrial park that, two years after being built, still sat eighty percent unoccupied. This was the sort of disaster which discouraged developers from speculating on such projects. Was this something I should get involved in, I wondered. The limits of my job were undefined. This was, perhaps, a real estate problem and out of my sphere. Then again, if the property could be leased, new businesses would come, new jobs would be created.

  I amused myself by imagining bursting out of a telephone booth in blue tights and a cape, bellowing, “This is a job for Jean!”

  “I think it’s just a matter of advertising,” I told Rosie. “The site is really ideal, modern and well-equipped. I think the realtor is indifferent, being out of town as they are and having a lot of 1

  other properties to tend to.”

  “What do you recommend?” Rosie asked.

  I remembered the first time she’d asked me that question, the night at my first Vision Partnership meeting. Had she any idea that night what a flood she was unleashing? Maybe, in a way, she had. That was also the night she offered me this job, after all.

  “I can create a brochure, send it out to targeted companies.

  There’s nothing wrong with the site. I drove out there, scoped it out. It’s close to the freeway, reasonably priced. It’s just neglected.”

  Rosie nodded. “Great idea. Pitch it to the others at the next meeting.” Rosie narrowed her eyes. “Jean, why do I get the eerie feeling that some day you’re going to open up an advertising agency and run me out of business?”

  While my work week had become extremely challenging, my weekends had also taken on a completely new flavor. Rosie and I generally spent our weekends together. With Rosie, that wasn’t a time to kick around the house in your old clothes. There was always some event to go to, like a fund-raiser or concert or opening night at an art gallery. Or we would volunteer to work on committees for such events, which reminded me a lot of campaigning and could be tremendous fun. And there were a few things that were less demanding, like riding the horses out for a picnic by the river, or even going to the farmers’ market, which we tried to do most Saturday mornings. Rosie couldn’t believe I’d never been there before. For us, even that was a social event, and it took us a good two hours to get our berries, broccoli and bread because of all the meeting and greeting going on.