American Daughter

by Stephanie Thornton Plymale

  He stepped back and held up his own hands, as if to show he was unarmed. “Steph,” he said gently. “Chill. Nothing’s going to happen unless you want it to happen.”

  “I just—” I said. “This is too fast. I’ve never done this. I mean, I’ve never been with another man.”

  “In all the time you’ve been married?”

  “In all my life.”

  “What?”

  “It’s true,” I said.

  Owen looked stunned. “How is that possible? Like . . . not even in high school or college?”

  “I’ve been with Jim since high school. Since my sophomore year. We got married just after graduation.”

  “Why?” Owen asked. “Were you pregnant?”

  “No! Nothing like that.”

  He shook his head, amazed. “Again, why? Were you raised crazy religious or something?”

  “Ha. No. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

  “Then I don’t get it,” Owen told me. “You were so sure he was the one, and you just couldn’t wait to be tied down for life?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  He cocked an eyebrow at me. “I’ve got all night.”

  I stood looking at him for a moment. How could he ever understand? He was Mae’s son.

  “Well,” I said at last. “Essentially I wanted to be the opposite of my mother. I grew up watching her sleep with so many different men. I wanted my life to be nothing like hers. I wanted . . .” I trailed off.

  “You wanted what?”

  “To be pure.”

  The word hung in the air like a warning before he spoke again.

  “But I mean, how do you know if it’s even any good with him?” Owen asked. “If you have nothing to compare it to?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I never had the experiences most people have. Dating and different relationships and all that.”

  “Don’t you ever wonder what it would be like with someone else?”

  “Of course I do,” I said. I felt my eyes fill with tears.

  “Hey,” he said. “Come here. I just want to hold you for a minute. Nothing else, I promise.”

  Slowly I moved to the bed. He put his arms around me and pulled me close. I rested my head on his shoulder, breathing in the faint fragrance of his clean shirt and his sweat. His scent intoxicated me.

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” he said. “Let me show you how good it can be. I won’t expect you to stay afterward. I mean, I know you can’t and I get that. But let me make love to you.”

  All my life I had read about these moments in stories, watched them in movies. Where there was a friendship between a man and a woman, a friendship that had nowhere else to go because of some barrier that separated them. Sometimes the barrier had to do with religion or color or class, or marriage to someone else, or some ancient family grudge. In each of these stories, the moment always arrived when it was no longer enough to keep them apart.

  I loved these moments in other people’s stories. I never thought I would have one of my own, because I wouldn’t allow it. No one was more loyal than me. I wanted to be pure.

  I hated the word purity. It sounded priggish and prudish and regressive and sexist. But I didn’t judge anyone else’s choices. My friends’ romantic decisions were nothing like mine, and that was fine with me. I just wanted, as I’d told Owen, a life that was unlike my mother’s in every way, and to me that had always meant doing the opposite of all she had done.

  Yet here it was. It was happening to me. I wished there were a way to pause the scene so I could just be inside it for a moment. I wanted to bask in it, breathe it in, so I’d never forget how it felt.

  But this wasn’t a movie. It was real life—my life. There was no slowing it down, no pause button, only Owen putting a hand on the back of my neck, bringing his mouth near mine once again. And this time when I twisted away, there was no turning back.

  “No. I can’t,” I said in a sudden panic, almost tripping in my rush to get away.

  “Steph.”

  “I’m sorry, Owen. I can’t. I have to go now.”

  Owen sighed. He looked out the window, where the snow was still falling hard and fast.

  “Baby, it’s cold outside,” he said, making me laugh even now, through my tears, as I bolted for the door.

  OUTSIDE THERE WAS a hush to match the way I felt. Everything was muffled by the heavy snow. The streets were still and the sky was an otherworldly violet. The snow swirled around me and showered down in the sepia glow of the streetlamps.

  It took hours to get home. The roads were as bad as Owen said they would be. Traffic all along the highway was at a near standstill as the cars inched along the road, swerving and skidding on treacherous patches of ice. My truck was equipped to handle these conditions, but I was stuck in the crawl.

  On a regular evening, I would have found this maddening, but tonight I was grateful for the time. I’d come so close to stepping over the kind of line I swore I’d never cross. I was shaken and anxious, and yet my anger at Jim still flared and smoldered like a glowing pile of ash. I was so starved for connection, for affection, that it was making me into someone else, someone I’d promised myself I would never be.

  When I stepped inside the house, it was as if I’d never left. Jim was in the same spot on the sofa, changing channels on the TV. He didn’t even look away from the screen as he asked, “Where have you been?”

  “I was finishing an installation at Owen’s,” I told him.

  “I see,” he said coldly. Owen had long been a fraught topic between my husband and me. It was as if Jim could sense the way I felt about him. “Well, nice of you to come home.”

  “You’re right, it is,” I said. “I almost didn’t.”

  Now Jim turned his head to look at me over his shoulder. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  I pulled off my boots and left them by the door.

  “I heard you but I don’t understand.”

  “Then let me spell it out for you,” I said. “Owen didn’t want me to leave tonight. He invited me to stay there. I was very tempted to accept.”

  Jim snapped off the television and rose from the sofa to face me. Finally, it seemed, I had his full attention. He stared at me for a long moment before he spoke again. “You considered cheating on me?”

  “I would hardly consider it cheating at this point,” I said. “This relationship is dead. You’re no longer a husband to me in any way and you haven’t been for a long time.”

  “Whoa,” Jim said. “Just—whoa. Are you out of your mind? I don’t think you have any idea what you’re saying.”

  “Oh, I do,” I said. “Whether or not you believe it is another matter. But I know just what I’m saying, and I mean every word.”

  “Then maybe you don’t understand what marriage is,” Jim told me. “I mean, yes, things between us have been tough lately. Very tough. But in marriage, you take each other for better or worse. So no matter how angry you might be right now, or how angry you’ve made me, I’m still your husband and you’re still my wife.”

  “Not for long,” I said.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means we’re finished, Jim. It’s over. I’ve tried so hard, so many times, to talk about all this with you, and I’m tired of talking. I’m done.” I hung up my coat, closed the closet, and turned to face my husband. “I’m leaving you.”

  Chapter 14

  “STEPHANIE,” JIM SAID. “What are you saying?”

  “Which part don’t you understand? I. Am. Leaving. You.”

  “You can’t leave.”

  “Oh, I most certainly can.”

  “We’re married,” Jim said, as if genuinely puzzled.

  “Which means I’ll be filing for divorce.”

  “What about the kids?”

  “What about them? Josh and Jeremy are out of the house. Andrea and I are used to having you gone all the time. I think it’ll be a relief to everyone if we sto
p pretending you’re a part of our daily lives.”

  Jim stared at me in disbelief. I stared back, calm and defiant.

  “You’re serious,” he said. “I can’t believe this. You’re actually serious. Aren’t you?”

  “As the day is long.”

  “Okay, well, you’re being insane. This is histrionic and over the top and honestly very hurtful. I get that you’ve been unhappy. I get that I haven’t been accessible to you. We’ve gone through a really rough stretch this past year; I won’t deny that. But Steph, good God, we’ve been together for decades. You’re going to just throw it all away because of a tough year? It’s obscene that you’d make a threat like that.”

  * * *

  WE WERE UP for hours. Accusing and denouncing, blaming and berating, we raged and fought and cried for most of that terrible night.

  “There’s no way I could be lonelier by myself than I am in this marriage,” I told Jim at one point. “I’m not going to live this way anymore. I still have half my life ahead of me. I’m not going to turn gray and die with a man who never takes his eyes off the money, who never comes home. Not because of a promise I made as a freaking teenager. I was nineteen years old, for God’s sake. Not even old enough to drink.”

  “You were old enough to know what love was,” Jim countered.

  “You want the terrible truth, Jim? I don’t even know if I loved you,” I said. “What did I know about love? I was fifteen and totally alone in the world. I’d suffered so much trauma by then that I probably would have given myself to anyone who wasn’t abusive. I mean, why get married right out of high school, who does that? I was just desperate for a clean, stable life.”

  “Well, you got that,” Jim said. “You got what you wanted. Yes, we were young, probably too young to know what we were doing, but as it happens, it worked out.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “But not for you? Stephanie, look around. Can you honestly tell me this hasn’t worked out for you?”

  “I cheated myself out of the most exciting years of life,” I said. “When I was young and pretty and had no real responsibilities yet. I should have been out dancing and flirting and dating. I should have let myself have more romantic experiences before tying myself down for life.”

  “I didn’t have those things either,” Jim said. “Don’t you think the same holds true for me? Don’t you think it might have been fun for me to be a twenty-something guy who was tall and decent-looking? Making good money and driving a nice car?”

  “You’re still tall and decent-looking,” I told him. “You’re still making good money and driving a nice car. It’s not too late! Go make up for everything you missed. Really, go have fun—if you even remember how.”

  “I don’t want to,” he said. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted. That was true in my twenties and it’s true now. I don’t care what I might have missed.”

  “Well, I do.”

  I saw pain etch itself into Jim’s face but it barely registered. I was saying terrible things and I knew it, but I couldn’t make myself stop.

  “Your family has never truly loved me as their own,” I added. “That’s another thing. Even after all these years, it’s like I’m still on the outside, looking in. Your mother has never made me feel like a daughter.”

  “Oh, really?” Jim said. “Well, here’s a little news flash: Your family isn’t such a great prize either.”

  This brought me up short. There was no way to argue with that one.

  “But you know what?” he went on. “I didn’t marry you for your family. I married you for you.”

  And on it went. It felt dreadful on one level, and on another it undeniably felt good. As painful as it was to say these things out loud, as hard as it was to survey the wreckage of our marriage, I finally felt seen and heard and considered and unburdened, and I wasn’t going back.

  Toward morning, I went back out to my truck and drove away. I was desperate for sleep, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get any in the bed I shared with Jim. I wasn’t prepared to face the weekend in our house in the wake of this mayhem. I wasn’t yet ready to tell the kids, but nor did I have it in me to plaster a smile on my face and pretend nothing was wrong.

  At four a.m. I pulled up to the Heathman Hotel in downtown Portland and handed my keys to the valet. Twenty minutes later, in a room high above the snowy streets, I drew the drapes closed and didn’t wake up until late afternoon.

  I DIDN’T LEAVE the room all weekend. I slept. I ordered room service. I cried. I sat by the window and watched the street. I imagined the second half of my life, the one without Jim.

  It was easy to feel empowered at the house, with Jim following me around, begging and reproaching and remonstrating with me. Here at the Heathman, it was very quiet. Jim wasn’t calling my cell. He wasn’t texting.

  I tried to imagine what was going on at the house. My rare absence would force him to be the primary parent for the weekend. I knew Jim would never let on to Andrea that anything was wrong. He’d be acting as if all were as usual. He’d drive her to the mall and pick up a pizza for dinner and invent some reason I wasn’t there.

  The silence and solitude of the hotel room were an unspeakable relief. I lay on the bed and watched the snow, much lighter now but still falling from the pearly sky. I imagined breaking this news to all of our children. Jim would never pretend a separation had been mutual. We could not trot out any script about how we loved each other very much but had reached a point in our lives where we both thought it best to live apart. I would be the villain, the one who left. I didn’t know if the kids would forgive me or how this would affect them.

  My main concern wasn’t for Josh or Jeremy. They would surely be upset, but they were grown men. They weren’t the ones who would be spending the next several years traveling back and forth between my place and his. Nor would they be navigating the daily havoc of our emotions as we each adjusted to single life after several decades spent together.

  It was Andrea I worried about. She was still a child. She would be crushed by a divorce.

  Jim had a special bond with Andrea. As reluctant and skeptical as he’d been at the prospect of adopting another child, he had given his whole heart to her from the moment she arrived.

  I hadn’t thought about that chapter of our lives for a very long time. It had been so fraught, so torturous, so filled with angst and anxiety and uncertainty. Once our new baby was safely in our home, I wanted to put the whole experience out of my mind and never think about it again.

  Here in the hotel room, lying alone on that king-sized bed, I found myself letting the memory float up from the depths. Of all that Jim and I had been through together, Andrea’s adoption was the most harrowing. It was a path I felt compelled to pursue, but my husband had found himself on it for no reason other than love for me.

  * * *

  THE DREAM OF giving a little girl the life I never had was always there.

  Before I spoke it aloud. Even before I’d fully articulated it to myself. It was there when I was pregnant and when I wasn’t. It would have been there even if one of those pregnancies had given me a girl. It was ancient and immutable. Sometimes it receded but it never left.

  I was drawn to stories about the plight of female children around the world. The baby girls drowned at birth in China by their own mothers, because each family was allowed no more than one child, and boys were considered more desirable. The girls throughout the world who would undergo genital mutilation against their will. The three out of four girls in Niger who would be child brides, given in marriage to adult men long before they were adults themselves. There were so many ways for girls to suffer, so many ways for their lives to be foreclosed. Out of the path of that all-devouring tsunami, I would take one.

  Where had this dream come from? It would be decades before I would associate it with myself, with my own past, in any way. It had just been inside me for as long as I could remember, like my own heartbeat.

  Jim didn’t share this
dream. To him, our family was already complete. Our sons were the treasure of his heart, and they were enough. We’d been out of the baby phase for a long time, so long that it was hard for him to imagine starting it all—the diapering and bottle-feeding and daytime naps—again.

  “I’m done,” he told me often.

  “I’m not,” I would say.

  Determined, I looked at foster and adoption sites—domestic and foreign. I discovered early that the temporary nature of foster care frightened me. To fall in love with a child and have to give her up, as Mama Bee had with me? I remembered how she’d howled when my mother came to take me away. The way she sank to the floor as if unstrung. I understood her agony now. I couldn’t risk it.

  I was afraid, too, of an open adoption, which was so encouraged within the U.S. I didn’t want to share my daughter with a stranger. I imagined having to cultivate a lifelong relationship with a woman like my mother. I imagined having to explain her decisions, her whims, her state of mind to the child I might want above all to protect from her. I imagined the lifelong fear that she would not show up for visits, that she might have second thoughts about the adoption itself, that she might cast herself as my rival or victim. I was afraid to be at the mercy of another version of her. One of her was all I could handle in a lifetime.

  For these reasons, I turned my sights overseas. I sought out online forums where adoptive mothers shared advice and support.

  Every phase of the process—the dreaming, the research, the conversations with other adoptive parents, and finally the decision to set the quest in motion—was a solo venture on my part. Jim thought the whole idea was madness.

  “Remember,” I told him when we were finally on our way to an agency for the first meeting with our case worker. “Do not, under any circumstances, reveal any ambivalence during this interview. If you make it seem like I’m hijacking you here, I’ll never forgive you.”

  “Except you are hijacking me.”

  “Yes. But keep that information to yourself.”

  WE’D BEEN WARNED, and yet there was no way for a warning to prepare us for how daunting and exhausting the adoption process would be, how invasive and intrusive and intimidating and expensive. There was paperwork, so much paperwork. There were interviews and home inspections and background checks.