That Thanksgiving, Molly and I were dispatched to the guest room or the pullout couch. There was a new lock on the door of the bedroom that my sister and I had once shared, a room that had been repurposed as the new ladyfriend’s “safe space.” (“Are you kidding me?” I remember demanding. “Is the laundry room dangerous?”)
Nor was my mom willing to ease into her new identity. The only thing I can compare it to is when a girl joins the Girl Scouts, and she’s so thrilled about her new affiliation that she’s going to wear her sash and uniform to school the next day, whether the troop’s having a meeting or not.
That was Fran and lesbianism.
My mother was out to everyone—her old book-club friends, her boss and her fellow teachers at the alternative high school where she worked. She was out to the neighbors, to waitresses and pharmacists and bank tellers, possibly even the joggers trotting past our house during the weekly Monday-night fun runs. She was thrilled with her new girlfriend, her new identity, and all of the new aesthetic and cultural options that it gave her, because being gay didn’t just mean a new partner, it meant an entirely new life, with new icons and entertainment options, new fashions and music and reading material. Suddenly Fran had new sets of friends—her partner’s circle of female companions, and “the boys,” as they called the gay men with whom they’d play bridge. She was frequenting different restaurants, listening to the Indigo Girls (“Yes, Fran,” I would say, rolling my eyes world-wearily. “I’ve heard of them”), slapping rainbow triangle stickers on her car’s back bumper. It left the four of us feeling like our childhood had somehow been invalidated; as if one of the certainties undergirding our lives—that our parents had loved each other, at least for a while—had vanished.
I wish I could report that my siblings and I were kind and patient, or at least accepting and tolerant, about my mother’s new life and about her partner, a woman whom Fran seemed to have as much adopted as fallen in love with. The truth is that, feeling ill at ease and discomfited and displaced, we retreated to the familiar ground of mockery. In our imaginations and in the impressions that we’d do for one another and for our friends, Fran’s new girlfriend became the distillation of every cliché and stereotype about lesbians, gay gym teachers, smokers, cat owners, and readers of self-help books. The fact that she was a cliché whose company Fran preferred to ours only made things worse.
It would have been confusing and strange, even if there’d been another functional adult with whom we could make sense of this sea change. By then, however, our father was long gone. He’d resurfaced, briefly, in 1996, to announce that he was getting remarried and to invite us to the wedding, a horribly tense affair. Molly boycotted. Jake went to be polite, I attended because I was curious, and Joe went with the mission of destroying the open bar. The nuptials were held at an inn in Lakeville, Connecticut—ceremony by the water, reception in the inn’s restaurant. The three of us got there early and waited on the lake’s slippery, muddy shore. When the justice of the peace arrived, we looked at one another and wondered if she was our father’s new bride.
In fact, his second wife was in her thirties and looked like a version of my mother at the same age—tall, with short hair, a round face, and a body I couldn’t see much of beneath her loose lace gown. As it turned out, she was pregnant when they got married, and she was still pregnant, six months later, when my father left her. Over Christmas, during the first and only trip I’d ever make to the house they’d bought a few towns over from Simsbury, she led me down to the basement rec room and poured out a not-surprising tale of woe. My father was awful. Abusive. Strange. He yelled at her, locked her out of the house, made stuff up, pretended to be sick, lied about going to the hospital and suffering a heart attack. I sat and listened and nodded sympathetically as she cried, her maternity sweater pulled tight over her belly. Inside, I was not sympathetic. You married a man who has no relationship with his four existing children, I thought. A man who’s never paid his child support consistently. Why did you think you’d be any different?
In the ten years since he’d left us, my father had only gotten stranger and scarier. In Lexington, months before, he’d called my apartment, late one night, his voice slurred, and delivered a rambling monologue about how my mother hadn’t wanted to sleep with him. He’d called her a “dyke” and said he’d been tricked into a sham marriage. I remember my entire body cringing, toes curling and fists clenching in the universal posture of Do Not Want. I didn’t want to hear it, didn’t want to think about it, did not want to know one single thing about their sex life or lack of same.
Except now I didn’t have a choice. Fran was out and proud, and frequently clueless, because being gay doesn’t equip you with gaydar, or undo thirty-plus years spent as a straight lady in the suburbs. Arriving at a new identity so late in life made for some embarrassing missteps. “Jenny,” Fran would say, dropping her voice to a whisper after she’d called me at work, “do you know who’s one of us?”
“Who’s that?” I asked, lowering my own voice.
Fran would pause and take a breath before triumphantly whispering the words “Rosie O’Donnell!”
“No way,” I said, deadpan.
Fran either didn’t hear my sarcasm, or chose to ignore it. “Oh yes! Yes, she is! I met someone who knows someone who met her girlfriend!”
(True story—years later, I was on a talk show and Rosie was one of the guests. After twenty minutes of my brilliant publicist Marcy Engelman wrangling with Rosie’s people to broker an introduction, a hallway meeting was arranged. It took about twenty seconds of gushing admiration before Fran announced, “And I’m gay, too, I just came out a few years ago . . .”
Rosie looked my mother up and down—the short hair, the loose-fitting, all-cotton clothing, the clogs. “You were with men? All those years?” she asked, in her Long Island honk. “What were ya thinking?”
I decided to go to the ladies’ room before Fran answered.)
That first year, as part of her new lifestyle initiative, my mother announced that she needed to go to Florida and come out of the closet to her then eightysomething-year-old mom.
“You don’t think you could just tell Nanna you’ve got a new roommate?” I asked. I was, again, on my phone, at my desk at the paper.
“I’m not hiding,” Fran replied indignantly.
As soon as I realized that she was serious, I asked the only question that any writer worth her salt would ask: “Can I come?”
Fran was outraged. “Jenny. My life does not exist for your amusement!”
“Yeah,” I said. “It kind of does. Remember how you told me that everything was material?”
Fran knew she was beaten. I bought myself a ticket. Then I called my sister, who was living with a boyfriend in Indiana.
“She’s doing what?” Molly asked. “Oh my God. What is wrong with her?” Then, “You’ll get me a ticket, right?”
I did . . . and Molly and I flew down to Fort Lauderdale for what the four of us were already calling the Spillage in Century Village.
A word about the Village—it’s in Deerfield Beach, a gated community of ten thousand retirees, most of them Jewish, waiting for death or their grandkids. Whichever comes first. Ambulances drive in a constant loop, their sirens quiet, their lights off, just waiting for someone to need them.
At the Village, there’s security—you have to drive past a gatehouse and give your name to a guard before you’re admitted. Because the guard is typically a Village resident in a polyester uniform, we’ve learned over the years that any Jewish-sounding last name will get you in.
My sister and I were coming from Indianapolis and Philadelphia respectively, while my mom was flying from Hartford. I’d tried to coordinate our flights so that we’d arrive at the same time, and I’d begged Fran not to say anything until we were there . . . but by the time Molly and I collected our luggage, my mom was already in Nanna’s car, sitting behind the wheel, looking peaceful and content. Nanna, in the passenger’s seat, was loo
king like she’d been hit by a Trailways bus.
“So, Nanna,” said Molly, tossing her suitcase into the trunk and hopping into the backseat. “What’s new?”
Shoulders slumped, lips pursed, Nanna shook her head. “I’m not ready to talk about this,” she said.
As the oldest of four, I know my role. I’m the peacemaker, the one who smooths over the cracks, calms things down, and directs everyone’s gaze to the bright side. “I know it’s a big change,” I said. “But she’s found someone to be with! Someone to love! And love is a wonderful thing!”
Nanna sighed . . . and then, glaring at our mother, she unscrewed her lips long enough to deliver a line that would live forever in Weiner family infamy. “Frances was always difficult!” she spat.
Molly and I looked at each other. Difficult? What the hell did “difficult” mean? Was it some kind of generational code word for gay? (Maybe not, but it quickly became sibling-code for the love that once never spoke its name. “Did you see what Kanye West just tweeted?” Molly would ask. “He sounds so difficult.” “I know!” I said. “And I don’t get a difficult vibe from Kim Kardashian at all, so go figure.”)
We pulled up to the Century Village gatehouse. My mom was too pleased with herself, too cheery, to remember to give the guard Nanna’s last name. Nanna, in the passenger’s seat, was too distraught to remind her, and I was on the wrong side of the car. Thus, it was Molly who cranked down her window, leaned into the sticky Florida sunshine, and yelled, “Rosenpenis!”
The gate went up.
This, by the way, happened over Passover. Yes, my mom chose the feast of the Exodus to come out to her mother, thus ensuring that, indeed, that night would be different from all other nights.I Molly and my mom and I walked into Nanna’s living room, where my aunt Marlene and several cousins were already waiting. A few of them were flipping through old photo albums, looking over pictures of my mom and her sister as girls. Quickly, Molly pulled the other albums off the shelf. She handed one to me and took one for herself, and we sat together on the couch. Standing in the doorway, even in the midst of her shock and confusion, Nanna seemed to be touched by the tender family moment . . . until Molly yelled, “Everyone! Look for signs!”
The funny thing was that we found them. Picture after picture showed little Frances in pants, beside Marlene in a dress, or Fran in her beloved cowgirl outfit, with a hat and a vest and a badge, and two toy guns strapped around her waist. Difficult.
The years went by. Fran and her first girlfriend broke up, and my mother moved on to a much more suitable, age-appropriate partner, Clair, who was a mom, who did not hate men and did not seem any more overtly damaged than the rest of us. Best of all, as far as Nanna was concerned, Clair was a nurse practitioner, who sometimes traveled with her own blood-pressure cuff. Even though Clair’s specialty is all things gynecologic, she’s always been happy to discuss Nanna’s various ailments and medications.
That helped. So, honestly, did Will & Grace, and other shows that depicted gay people as regular folk, just like you and me, only usually more fashionable and with better senses of humor. Once Nanna started to admit that the women accompanying her daughter on visits to the village were more than just Fran’s friends, other village people began to confide in her . . . and it turned out that many of them had a son or a daughter, a niece or a nephew, a grandchild or a great-grandchild or even a former spouse who was That Way. In ten years, same-sex relationships moved from the margins to the mainstream, and my grandmother, to her credit, was flexible enough to make peace with her daughter’s new identity.
Thirteen years later, Clair is still my mom’s partner. She has a good sense of humor and the ability to laugh at herself, at the way she lugs around a nylon tote bag full of files and notebooks (the bag o’ work) when a normal woman might carry a purse, even when she’s just going to dinner or the movies; and how she’ll take along a wheeled crate full of even more files and notebooks (the box o’ work) for longer trips. Clair can’t walk past a golden retriever without petting it and remarking on its beauty; can’t drive by a garage sale without stopping and buying something; and has subtly inculcated my daughters with her politics, to the extent that my eight-year-old completed her Persuasive Writing assignment by telling Donald Trump, “You say you want to make America great again? How? You have not convinced me.” Clair is a good egg, and Lucy and Phoebe adore her. She spent her childhood summers on Cape Cod, and knows how to find every hidden freshwater pond and protected ocean beach (and where to park for them). She loves swimming and biking and canoeing, and, for years, has led our annual shellfishing expedition to the tidal flats in Eastham, laughing cheerfully when her kayak gets stuck in the mud, gamely ignoring Molly’s running, Marlin Perkins–style commentary. “Today, we are hunting the elusive bearded clam . . . oh, wait! I think I see one now!”
Back in the 1980s, Clair and her then partner, Deb, along with a turkey baster, a Dixie cup, and a donation from a willing gay male friend, became the parents of a boy named David who is, without exaggeration, the nicest person in the world. David is the kind of young man who volunteers to spend his vacations with his elderly grandparents, passing the days helping them out around the house and the nights watching the political documentaries that they favor. For three months after college, he worked as my “manny,” tending to newborn Phoebe, who had to spend twenty-four hours a day in a canvas-and-Velcro harness to keep her hips in place. Most twenty-three-year-old guys would not be topping the list of “people I want caring for a tiny baby with a medical condition,” but David is different. To this day, Phoebe’s face will go practically radioactive with joy if she hears she’s going to spend time with “big David.”
So now Lucy and Phoebe have Flair—Fran and Clair. They have my mom, and their dad’s mom, and what they call a “bonus grandmother,” who shows them how to pick beach plums and find clams with their feet, who takes Phoebe out for doughnuts on Sunday mornings on the Cape and found Lucy a horseshoe-crab charm necklace, and we have David as part of our lives. My mother is happy, even though there are still some interesting moments. When Massachusetts legalized gay marriage, it was front-page news in the New York Times. I was at the table in Cape Cod, reading the story, when then six-year-old Lucy came in for breakfast and asked what the fuss was about.
“You know how some girls like boys, and some boys like girls,” I began. Lucy nodded her curly head.
“Well, there are also girls who like girls, and boys who like boys.”
Lucy’s forehead wrinkled. “You mean, like, to kiss them?”
“That’s right.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. “EW!”
“What do you mean, ‘ew’? Lucy, you know people like that!”
“I do NOT,” Lucy insisted. From behind the breakfast bar, Fran and Clair raised their hands. Lucy stared at them, eyes wide.
“EWWWW!”II
As good as things have gotten, the four of us still want to know my mother’s story. Every family holiday—Thanksgiving or Passover or bar and bat mitzvahs—is the same. We eat the meal or attend the party, we do the dishes, and then everyone gathers in the living room to interrogate Fran about her love life. “When did you know?” “Did you date women in your twenties?” and “Is this going to happen to me?” are the most common questions. (Molly is fond of demanding, “When did the urges start?” But that’s Molly.)
“You couldn’t have kids back then if you weren’t married,” Fran will tell us calmly. She used to get flustered, to shift in her seat or narrow her eyes when we’d question her, but now she just sits there, unruffled and serene. “I wanted to be a mother. I always wanted that.”
I believe that she wanted children . . . but I think that most people want love, too. I wonder what my mother’s life might have looked like if she’d been born ten, twenty, thirty years later. Would she have settled down with a lady and had babies via DIY artificial insemination? Would she have ever been with men at all, or would it have just been women, or would it have be
en both? And what was her marriage like?
I’ll never know the answers, especially to the last question. “You can never know what’s going on inside someone else’s marriage,” Fran always told me . . . and this, of course, is true.
* * *
I. It’s a Jewish joke. Ask a Jew if you don’t understand.
II. Lucy would like me to tell you that her “ew” was about kissing in general and not same-sex smooching.
My Girls
Looking back from almost twenty years’ distance, I think that the breakup that precipitated Good in Bed was the kind of thing you go through only once . . . because you couldn’t survive any more than that.
My story began with a setup. After I’d started working in Philadelphia I’d met a guy. A friend of mine from Lexington who’d gone to graduate school with him gave him my number. He called me one day at work, and then that night, and we talked for hours, a conversation that began with stilted getting-to-know-you exchanges and ended with whispered declarations of what I’d do to him if he were there with me, not hours away in New Jersey. At which point, he said, “I’m coming down.”
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