I didn’t know exactly how I would act on this new information, but I wasn’t going to sit quietly on it. This was too earth-shattering for me to feign ignorance. I just didn’t know how I would begin the conversation, and as much as I insisted to myself that I had to stay cool, I knew I wouldn’t.
I had to pull myself together. The kids would be home soon and Michael probably would be too. I dried my eyes and blew my nose, hoping it would halt my tears. I folded up the letters and slid them back in their envelopes. I placed them back in the drawer, whimpering the whole time.
When I heard the door open I knew it was Jessica and Eric coming home from school.
“Hello?” Eric called.
I ran into the bathroom.
I took a deep breath and yelled, “In the bathroom.”
I tried, but I couldn’t mask the tears in my voice.
“Are you okay?” Eric called back.
“Yes—fine. I just took a little nap. Getting into the shower.”
I turned on the water, stripped off my clothes, and took my second shower of the day. It was the only way I could buy some time and pull myself together so that my kids didn’t see the hysterical mess I had become.
After dinner Michael still wasn’t home. I got into bed and tried to read, but spent most of the evening crying. At around ten I heard him come through the door. I switched off the light, rolled over, and pretended to be asleep.
I listened to Michael rummage around the kitchen and flip on the TV. Soon he came into the bedroom. He has no idea I know, I thought. I watched his dark shape as he pulled off his jeans and put on a pair of sweatpants. I felt like a voyeur watching a stranger.
Late the next morning Michael and I packed up the car, kissed Jessica and Eric goodbye, and started the three-and-half-hour drive to the Ahwahnee. Michael was at the wheel. He turned onto I-580 and blended into the freeway traffic.
“So, I’m leaving for Salem soon,” I said.
“Yeah,” Michael answered.
“I’ll be flying across country. It’s a big trip. Anything could happen. What if the plane crashed? Is there anything you’d want to tell me?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“You know. If I were to die suddenly, is there anything you’d want me to know?”
“No. Of course not.”
We stopped for lunch about two hours later, and when we got back in the car we listened to music and I thought about how I would try to pry Michael’s secret from him.
We arrived at the Ahwahnee at around four o’clock, both of us hungry and tired from the trip. We checked into our room and rested for a little while. Then I took a shower, put on the dress I had bought for the occasion, styled my hair, and put on some lipstick and mascara. I looked in the mirror at myself and thought about how much I had uncovered since I had bought the smart, green silk dress. I felt foolish for buying it now. It was the action of someone happily buzzing along, oblivious to the disaster gathering around her. When I stepped out of the bathroom Michael smiled at me. “You look so pretty,” he said. I forced a smile and grabbed my purse.
Michael put on a sport coat and we made our way down to the restaurant. The Ahwahnee dining room was spectacular. It had high ceilings and giant windows that looked out onto the lush scenery. I would have really liked this, I said to myself. We ordered dinner and a bottle of wine. Soon I was a little tipsy and I fished again to see if I could get Michael to talk.
“Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me? Imagine this is your last chance to come clean.”
“What do you mean? What’s going on with you?”
“I just think we should have total honesty with each other and you never know what will happen.”
It was taking every bit of strength I had to keep from confronting him. I was so angry I wanted to stand up and scream, I know what’s going on!
“I have nothing to tell you.”
The next morning I decided I would stop trying to pull Michael’s secret out of him. He wasn’t going to confess, so if I wanted a reckoning I would have to initiate it directly. Trying to finesse his secret out of him was a lost cause. I was still seething, and it was going to take a lot of effort to keep my emotions under control.
We hiked for most of the day. I pushed myself physically as hard as could to try to release some of the anger and anxiety that churned in me. Michael had gained weight over the years and he breathed so hard that he couldn’t carry on a conversation as we trooped along the strenuous trail. This was a huge relief. I didn’t think I could bear to make everyday chatter at this point. When we circled back to the mouth of trail, Michael and I were both ready for a rest and we headed back to the room.
We ate dinner in the dining room again, and even though I had a few glasses of wine I restrained myself from probing Michael for a confession. We headed back to our room. I made love with Michael passionately. In my mind I was thinking about how I wanted to remind him of what he would miss if I weren’t in his life. I was exhausted from holding back my emotions the whole trip. Even if Michael would never know it, this gave me a way to express them—if only in a passive-aggressive way. When we were done, Michael fell asleep in my arms. I lay awake for a few hours and then finally drifted off.
I woke up the next morning just as the sun began painting the sky a dusty pink. I looked at the ceiling and for a moment mourned my ignorance. What a delight this weekend would have been if I still had it. What was I going to do? This was a secret I wouldn’t keep, a juggernaut I couldn’t sidestep. I propped myself up on my elbow and stared at Michael. His chest rose and fell and he snored slightly. I watched him for a few minutes. Then he opened his eyes and looked at me.
“What? What’s going on? What are you doing?” he said.
“I know, Michael. I know about the baby.”
His mouth hung open.
“What baby?” he said.
“You know what baby, Michael. I know Meg’s preg—”
My voice cracked and the tears flooded out of me.
“I don’t know what to do with this,” I whimpered.
Michael said nothing.
“How do you think you’ve made me feel, Michael?”
“I thought you wouldn’t mind,” he said.
What? He thought I wouldn’t mind? This was last thing I expected him to say. It wasn’t just the wrong answer, it was an outlandish one. How could he think I wouldn’t mind? I half-expected the Twilight Zone theme song to kick in. Reality had been turned on its head.
“Who are you? Who do you think I am? I’ve trusted that you know me better than anyone in this world, and you don’t know me at all.”
“I thought you’d be okay with it.”
“What?” I yelled. “What made you think I would be okay with it? What was your plan? When were you going to tell me?”
“Well, I thought I would wait until the child was a teenager.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
Michael looked away.
“I mean are you fucking serious? We’d be together all these years and then I’d open the door one day to a mysterious teenager who would turn out to be your child. And then what? You’d introduce me and we’d just go on as normal?”
“Cheryl, it doesn’t matter. You’re my wife, not Meg. She had the baby a few weeks ago, and I wasn’t even there. I was with you.”
Was this supposed to comfort me? Was it Michael’s twisted way of telling me that I was special to him?
“If it didn’t matter why did you keep it a secret?” I demanded.
Michael took a deep breath and put his head in his hand.
“What difference does it make? You’re my wife, not Meg.”
I felt like I was going to vomit. I stood up and walked to the window. I pushed the curtain aside and stared out into the wilderness. What had seemed so beautiful to me before now looked like a mess, a tangled, incoherent welter that swallowed people up and hid all sorts of danger.
“She had the baby. What
was it, Michael? Do you have another son or another daughter?” I asked, still staring out the window.
“A girl. She had a girl.”
I turned around and faced him.
“How could you let this happen? You promised after the first accident that you would be more careful.”
“Meg really wanted a child and she’s getting older. She told me I owed it to her after she had the abortion, but, Cheryl, it’s not going to involve me. I won’t be in their lives.”
“You owed it to her? You didn’t tell her that was crazy? And you’re okay with having nothing to do with this child?”
I certainly wasn’t okay with it, far from it.
“She’s with her mother. Meg has a big family. They support her. They were happy when they found out she was pregnant. The child will be cared for.”
I don’t know how I didn’t fall over. The man I’d considered a model father, who had talked with such earnestness about how children need the attention and affection of both of their parents was now telling me that he planned to walk out on his responsibility for his child.
“No, Michael. If we’re going to stay together you’re not going to abandon your child. You’re going to spend time with the baby. You’ll visit two or three times a year. How can you imagine your child not knowing her father? And one more thing: This is it. You’re not going to fuck any more women. Not now that you’ve made another family.”
“Okay. Okay. I can make this work,” Michael said.
Michael was taking it all in too easily. It was almost as if my demands really didn’t require any great shift in what was already in the works.
“You don’t have a choice now.”
I said all of this as if what I wanted mattered to him. The crazy thing was that despite it all I still loved Michael. I had grown enough to be able to conceive of a life without him, but not enough to want it. In many ways Michael was a scoundrel. I came to see this more and more not just by his actions, but because of something I had been doing for the last year now: comparing him to Bob.
Bob remained the same steadfast, supportive, sweet man I had fallen for a year ago. I saw him shortly after the Ahwahnee trip. I told him about Michael’s new family and he comforted me while I cried enough tears to float the Queen Mary. Bob’s only concern was for me. He didn’t bash Michael and he didn’t try to turn the situation to his advantage. Another man might have spied an opportunity and prodded me to dump my husband, who, even within the context of an open marriage, could be called a philanderer. Not Bob. He simply didn’t think in opportunistic terms, especially with me. Had I decided to leave Michael he would have supported me, but I also knew that he would stay by my side even if I didn’t. He simply loved me and wanted me to be happy. When I shared the devastating news with him he helped me into bed and stroked my forehead as I wept. I felt awfully sorry for myself, but when I dried my tears and saw Bob’s concerned face staring down at me, I also wondered how I managed to get so lucky.
13.
what if?: bradley
Several years after Michael turned my personal world upside down, I had an experience at work which, for the first time, truly frightened me.
Bradley came to me from Pamela, a local therapist who I had worked with in the past.
He was not a typical client. His pathology was much more profound and infinitely more disturbing than that of any other client. Bradley had recently been released from prison. He had served a five-year sentence for molesting a seven-year-old girl. Before I agreed to see him, I had a long discussion with Pamela about what our work would entail. Pamela was working in conjunction with a colleague who specialized in treating pedophilia. They were testing the notion that they could, with the help of surrogacy and other treatment, redirect the sexual urges of men like Bradley to adult women. Bradley was not the first client with whom they had tried this approach. There were a few others and there had been encouraging signs with some of them. Pamela hoped these cases would lay the groundwork for a breakthrough treatment that would ultimately serve to make children safer.
It was not easy to make the choice to work with Bradley. I admired Pamela’s efforts to rehabilitate someone who had served his sentence and was reentering society, changed or not. On the other hand, I would be working with, and be vulnerable to, someone who was guilty of one of the most hideous crimes a human being can commit. As a parent, I was sickened by what Bradley had done, yet, as a parent, I also felt if I could play some role in protecting children I should. I decided to take Bradley on as a client. Maybe it sounds naïve or idealistic, but I thought if my skills as a surrogate could help professionals like Pamela develop a treatment model that could ameliorate this dangerous disorder, then I needed to step up to the plate.
The role of compassion in the surrogacy process cannot be overstated. I infuse my work with it. If I didn’t, I doubt I would be able to be effective at what I do. With Bradley, I would have to make an extra conscious and concerted effort to remain compassionate. That is, of course, not to say that I was remotely comfortable with what he had done. I had to struggle mightily to leave my fear behind and approach Bradley with the same openness I would give to any other client. It was difficult, but I did it because if I take on a client I commit to doing the best I can to help him resolve his problem, and my best comes from a base of compassion, not contempt.
When I scheduled the appointment with Bradley over the phone he wasn’t difficult or defensive, but I had the feeling that he was just going along, just doing what he had been told to do.
In the days leading up to our first meeting, I did my best to manage my fear and trepidation. I had to remind myself frequently of the ultimate goal of this work. Pamela and I had another discussion about Bradley the day before my appointment with him. We talked about how I would alter my protocol to suit his treatment. We decided that given the intensive and customized therapy he was receiving from Pamela, I wouldn’t delve as deeply into his childhood and early sexual history as I did with other clients.
Like many pedophiles, he had been sexually abused as a child by a close family member. Pamela had been working with him for about three months. He complied with treatment, he reported to his parole officer when he was required to, and there was no indication that he had reoffended. Bradley was living near his sister and holding down a steady job as a technician at a local lab. He seemed to be doing all the right things, yet Pamela hadn’t seen him express much insight or remorse. Could someone like Bradley really be rewired and transformed, or was the pathology too insidious, too deep to be reached by surrogacy or any of the therapy modalities currently available?
I scheduled Bradley’s appointment for the morning, hoping to get it over with early in the day and limit the number of anxious hours that would inevitably lead up to the appointment. I got up earlier than normal and did some of the invaluable breathing and relaxation exercises I had learned in my surrogacy training. By the time he arrived, I had tamed most of my apprehension and was determined to do the best I could with him.
When I opened the door and saw this slight, dark-haired man, however, I felt a chill run down my spine. He was, in a word, creepy. My fingers started to tingle and my breathing sped up. I felt like a cord was being cinched around my shoulders and chest. I started talking immediately to pull myself out of my fear. “Thank you for coming,” I said. Bradley nodded and stepped into my office. He had ruddy skin and oily black hair that looked like it was unwashed and maybe recently dyed.
I asked a few perfunctory questions. He told me a bit about his limited experience with women, which involved failure to maintain an erection and difficulty staying in a relationship for more than a few weeks. The last time he’d had a girlfriend was eight years ago, when he was twenty-two. Bradley had a vacant, impervious quality I’d never encountered in anyone else. I described the surrogacy process to him and explained how it involved a gradual deepening of intimacy and regular feedback.
Then it was time to go to the bedroom. I felt my stomac
h gather into a knot, so I took a deep breath while I led Bradley down the hall. Once we’d undressed I noticed that his skin had a purplish tinge to it. I don’t want him on my sheets, I thought, even though I knew that’s where we were headed. As we lay next to each other, I started working through various relaxation exercises, as much for myself as for him. I asked him to close his eyes and to take some deep breaths. He ignored me and started chattering about the drive over, the food in prison, his upcoming fishing trip, his growing dislike of his boss, and any number of other random topics. Every time I tried to encourage him to quietly focus on his body and take deep breaths he would stop talking for a few seconds and then return to rambling.
Lying beside him was difficult, and for the first and only time in my career, I decided to omit Spoon Breathing. I simply couldn’t stand to be that close to him. We began Sensual Touch. I knelt down on the floor and started touching Bradley’s feet. His toenails were too long and had crescents of grime beneath them. A voice in my mind screamed, Get the hell out of here! If only I could. By this time I had moved my office into my home. If I fled I would have to leave Bradley there. I continued up Bradley’s body. His skin was cold and clammy and the backs of his knees were crisscrossed with spider veins. He smelled of sweat and stale cigarettes.
Bradley had not stopped yammering and as I made my way up his body he started talking about things that made my flesh crawl. He told me about Gina, the child he had molested. She was the seven-year-old daughter of a former employer.
“Bradley, it’s important for you to try to concentrate on your body right now. Just follow my hands and notice what kind of sensations you have as I touch you.”
“Gina betrayed me,” he said, totally ignoring my latest plea for quiet. “Theresa would never do that.”
“Theresa?” I asked.
“My neighbor with the blonde curls,” he said.
My hands were on the backs of his sinewy thighs.
“Theresa comes over after school to look at me in my special shorts. The ones she can see me in.”
I took my hands off of him and sat back on my knees.
An Intimate Life Page 17