Course Correction

by Ginny Gilder

  After fifteen years, our relationship had devolved to a framework for raising children, with nothing beyond it to bolster or inspire our interest in each other. I wanted more, but the odds were long. Although I wanted to want Josh, I didn’t, and hadn’t for a long, long time. Lack of desire was never a problem for me. But now my customary inner fire had lost its burn. As much as I knew I should want closeness with my husband, I couldn’t go there. It was embarrassing.

  I had made a promise when I married Josh, and I intended to keep it. What secret formula could I devise to awaken desire? Something new to give us a united focus, something to tussle with, discuss, care about, and share.

  Predictably, I turned to sports.

  We both liked tennis, regardless of our low skill levels. We played every summer when we gathered with Josh’s family for a week of vacation by Bantam Lake in Connecticut. Something good seemed to happen when we stepped on a court together, a lot of positive energy. Whacking ground strokes and chasing after winners was fun. Even just playing against family, my competitive juices started oozing, and so did Josh’s: with a racquet in his hand, he came alive. Maybe that was a place to begin. Maybe we could take lessons and get good together.

  We showed up at the indoor tennis center in South Seattle on a day in late September. Dressed in ill-fitting, raggedy workout shorts and holey T-shirts, grayish white socks, and scuffed tennis shoes, Josh and I wielded racquets whose strings were more dead than alive.

  The instructor walked in carrying a red-and-white tennis bag that looked big enough to hold half a dozen racquets, wearing a precisely color-coordinated outfit and pristine white tennis shoes. She had short, wavy, blondish-brown hair and freckles scattered across her cheeks.

  Her name was Lynn.

  She set us up on the court to attempt the first drill: standing half-court, tap the ball over the net to your opponent diagonally across from you at least a dozen times without a miss. I was instantly engaged. There were challenges to tackle, skills to master, asses to kick. Lynn got in the groove with us immediately, figuring out what to focus on and how to nudge our skill levels forward.

  We had lucked into a good teacher. She knew the game and could translate her knowledge into beginner’s language. She corrected our technique without offering criticism and was upbeat and enthusiastic without going overboard. She talked strategy, too, discussed the mental challenge of the game, and taught us to think about concepts like time and spacing. There was no hyperbole or false praise. She was matter-of-fact without being blunt. I liked that.

  Lynn clearly loved the game. I could tell by watching her demonstrations, which she performed with alacrity and finesse. I was struck by her smooth movements and her easy, graceful ability to cover the court. She showed us how to move from serving at the baseline swiftly up to the net without losing control of our feet or our racquets. She looked completely comfortable tossing the ball in the air to serve and had no trouble demonstrating a spin serve, or a slice, or a flat hard ace. She could hit with top spin from baseline to baseline, or rush the net and slice a blooper that rebounded from her opponent’s reach and died after a single, sorry half-bounce.

  She counseled us not to play it safe at the baseline by whacking ground strokes ad infinitum, but to live dangerously and try something new. She encouraged us to work our way to the net so we could take control of a point and enjoy the satisfaction of slamming winners out of the air at our opponents’ feet. She quoted statistics to cajole us out of our comfort zones, assuring us that our winners would more than compensate for our inevitable errors. She cheered us with her ready smile and positive feedback, noting our progress in attacking the ball, asserting control of the game, and diminishing focus on our mistakes.

  Every lesson found Lynn weaving stories. She regaled her students with vignettes of matches she had played with her husband—usually to make a point of what not to do, laughing at herself and her own foibles. A good sense of humor loosens up any environment; she removed fear from the equation of learning before it snuck onto the court. She sounded as if her life worked off the court, too. I wondered about that, what it would be like to tell stories of a happy marriage.

  The six weeks of lessons flew by. Josh and I had enjoyed ourselves and signed up for another series. Learning felt good, even though improvement seemed to come slowly. Josh was satisfied with the pace and didn’t want to do more. But I was impatient: I wanted to be good, so I asked Lynn if she offered private lessons.

  I didn’t realize where I was headed.

  After our first private lesson, Lynn and I left the tennis center together. We chatted as we walked to our cars and paused to finish our conversation before saying goodbye. That’s when I first noticed her blue eyes and the shyness behind her smile.

  Our twice-weekly meetings expanded beyond the seventy-five minutes of lessons. We followed Lynn’s rigorous on-court instruction with meandering off-court conversation, which progressed into e-mails and phone calls. Starting with a sketch of our family lives—she was married eighteen years and counting, had a fifteen-year-old daughter and a twelve-year-old son—we branched into other topics. We covered a lot of ground quickly: family histories (her mom dead of bone cancer, three years past; her dad a retired engineer and sculptor, still living in the house she grew up in; from Houston; three much older sisters—she was a “mistake”); life stories (a settled housewife who liked vibrant colors, no pastels, enjoyed needlepoint, and played football with her son; UW graduate, psychology major); religious denomination and political preferences (avowed atheist, not overly liberal Democrat). The kind of details that new friends usually share in dribs and drabs tumbled out easily, a rivulet gathering force as it moved downstream.

  I was caught totally off guard. In the span of ten days, my life turned upside down. I transformed from an earnest student, focused on improving my strokes, to an imagined home wrecker, wildly attracted to a sedate suburban housewife. And Lynn didn’t exactly help matters. One day, she gave me some CDs to learn about the music she liked. Ever the obedient student, I drove home immediately and turned on the CD player. I lay on my living-room couch and listened. Phrases of longing and thrums of desire dominated the lyrics. Alanis Morissette sang of lust and betrayal, Melissa Etheridge of loves lost, and k.d. lang, with her talk of “how bad could it be?” and “release your sexuality” … Was she talking about illicit sex? Gay sex? I wriggled on the couch, now wide awake to the river of sexuality that ran through the depths of the music, wondering if Lynn was sending me a message. She’s not sending you a message about anything, she’s giving you music to listen to, you idiot. But I wasn’t so sure.

  I played cat and mouse with myself. We were new friends, wanting to get to know each other. There was nothing to worry about. She was cool, fun, a hint of the wild side peeking out from her neat, color-coordinated exterior. She drove her turquoise Mustang convertible like an Indy car racer, her hair rippling, with one hand on the steering wheel as she casually revved her speed toward 80 miles per hour, waving and smiling at me as she flew by.

  Take me with you!

  And then it happened: an apparently innocent invitation to visit her family’s vacation getaway at Sun Cove in Wenatchee catapulted our lives into uncharted waters.

  I found myself in a simple ranch house above the wide-open waters of the Columbia River, surrounded by the pale yellow and brownish hills of near-desert conditions, lying on the couch next to my new close friend. Josh stayed behind in Seattle to work, and my oldest was visiting his grandparents, so I had only Max and Sierra with me.

  On the first day of the visit, I met Lynn’s husband, daughter, and son. Within an hour of arriving, I landed on a tennis court, playing opposite the guy who’d starred in Lynn’s instructional vignettes back in the fall when Josh and I first started lessons. The next morning, he returned to Seattle with their son, leaving me and Lynn with her daughter and my kids. We enjoyed an uneventful day. That evening we made pizza, ate with our children, played games after supper, a
nd sent them off to sleep.

  Now we lay talking with our heads at opposite ends of the couch, our legs stretched alongside each other, trying to remain still in the first-time rush of physical closeness. I brushed my hand over her foot as I played with the woven anklet her daughter had crocheted, pretending that nothing extraordinary was happening. I kept my eyes away from hers.

  Our children slept deeply in a darkened bedroom down the hall. Our husbands puttered about in our respective homes a hundred miles away, secure in their ignorance. The buckles that tethered our pasts to our futures strained and rattled against the gathering force of our longing.

  Trained long ago to ignore my body’s pleas, I was surprised to succumb now. Determinedly married, happily ever after, with kids! I had sworn: no divorce for my children, no wreaking havoc on their lives. Those promises barely registered in the force of this moment.

  I forgot to be afraid.

  I felt the softness of her foot in my palm, cool and dry. I didn’t want to stop stroking her. My hand crept up to her calf. I wanted more. I picked up my glass of wine and took a tiny sip. I was stone-cold sober. No alcoholic stupor could serve as my cover.

  I craved intimacy with this woman. She was a tennis instructor, not a world titan; an ordinary person, just another mother living a normal life; cute yes, attractive yes, but not svelte and conventionally sexy. She sported a Venus figure, full breasted, a round middle, square hips, heavy thighs. Steady blue eyes that broadcast calm, not calamity; assurance, not arrogance; trust, not tension. Fabulous freckles, reminding me of a summer day; perfect teeth, and an easy smile. She had me totally going, hot and bothered.

  The heart wants what the heart wants. It defies logic. It maintains its own calculus, follows its own rules. My body knew which way to go.

  I listened to her talk. I watched her face closely. Her lips looked parched.

  Heart pounding, unable to resist any longer, I stood and reached for the ChapStick on the kitchen counter. Pulling off the lid, I screwed the pale stick of salve out of its case and sat beside Lynn. With a steady hand, I applied it to her lips, while she sat quietly. Finished, I leaned over and put my lips on hers. They were warm and oh, so soft.

  I closed my eyes as I felt her lips part slightly and invite me in. I met a mix of warm and wet, mystery and comfort. A passion absent for too long.

  The buckles of our pasts unclasped, and our future blew wide open.

  Things got hot on the couch; we progressed into the bedroom. First I had to shift my slumbering six-year-old into another bed in another room. Perhaps that interruption ruined the moment: all forward progress stopped cold. I tried to build on those first kisses, but Lynn’s “no” was clear and insistent.

  Was she kidding? In for a nickel, in for a dollar. She had already crossed the line with a kiss; the time to turn back had long passed. I had already broken my promise to be faithful. There is no such thing as half-pregnant or half-dishonest.

  But she said no, so we lay next to each other all night. At least she allowed me to luxuriate in her embrace, warming me with her body, her deep sighing breaths whispering into my ear as we dozed. Lynn maintained her composure for the both of us. She had grasped the risks of flirting with impending chaos sooner than I, and insisted on pulling us both back to responsible sanity.

  Of course, it was too late for that.

  The next afternoon we drove to Wenatchee for groceries, leaving the younger kids with Lynn’s daughter, Toni. “I’m falling in love with you,” I announced. The windows weren’t open, but I yelled my news flash.

  Lynn was driving, so she couldn’t look at me with more than a glance. She barely changed her expression. “Yes?” Given what had transpired the night before, maybe she thought it was obvious.

  “But I’m a married woman!”

  Now she started laughing. “In case you haven’t noticed, so am I.”

  I kept silent for eighteen days following that first kiss. I knew how I felt, but didn’t know what to do.

  It was late. The kids were finally asleep. I lay on the bed, on top of the covers, still dressed. Josh staggered in, waking up from having read himself to sleep with a children’s book again. He started undressing.

  “Josh, I need to talk to you.” I took a breath. “I think I’m falling in love with Lynn.”

  “That’s okay. I’m falling in love with something new, too. All I want to do is practice acupuncture. It’s good that we have outside interests.”

  “I don’t think it’s the same thing.” I took another breath.

  “Why not?”

  “I want to sleep with her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I want to, you know …” I squirmed as I spelled it out. “Have sex.” I was whispering now, ashamed, yet driven to tell him. I couldn’t hide any longer.

  “What would that buy you?” And then, his face closed down, as if a blank expression could hide the bomb I had dropped into our life.

  That was just the beginning. Summer started, my favorite time of year, with its escape from the demands of tight schedules, the duties of school and work. Ever since I was a little girl waiting on Manhattan’s dirty gray concrete sidewalks for the bus to take me to school, I turned my face to the sunshine, happy to bask in its warmth. This time, my favorite season was hell.

  Despite my attraction to Lynn, I couldn’t up and leave Josh. Love her, but don’t leave, love her, but can’t stay … loves me, loves me not … My own twisted version of daisy-petal pulling ruined my summer as I contemplated ruining my family. Did I want to leave or simply experiment? Was I considering my course or preparing my exit? Memories plagued me … of that horrid Sunday afternoon nearly thirty years earlier when my mother announced she had tossed my father out, and all the chaos and disaster that followed. No. I wouldn’t do that to my children. I couldn’t kick them to the curb for my own satisfaction. I couldn’t put myself first and them a considerably distant second.

  Josh was a good man. He didn’t deserve betrayal. Maybe he wasn’t the best communicator, maybe the spark between us had never fully ignited, maybe he drove me crazy in myriad ways with his forgetfulness and sloppiness, but did I really have to detonate everything? Was it so very critical that I get my way? At everyone else’s expense?

  I had shorted the truth and never considered I would have to buy it back with interest, and now that moment arrived. I had avoided payment as long as I could, denied and evaded those impulses that threatened the life that the world expected of me, the life that would take me down if I allowed it to proceed unfettered.

  Impulses? another voice inside me said. They weren’t impulses but directives, calls from within. I had heard them when I fell for Strayer. And how had I responded? Derided them as momentary distractions to be waved away with a toss of the head, discounted in the name of putting away childish things, boxed and stored in the basement of my life to grow dusty with age and recede into memory. I conned myself into thinking denial would buy me safety.

  And it did. I had a nice life, a lovely home, three fabulous children, and a husband who showed up every day and did his best, who didn’t shrink from child-raising or household chores, who knew how to cook better than I did.

  But I had disappeared. I had swallowed hard and succumbed to the dictum of my youth, to hide, hide, hide the messy, unacceptable truths that lay beneath my surface. Long before there was a Josh, or a Liala, a Gilder, a Max, or a Sierra, I buried myself.

  All summer, I grabbed every secret moment I could to spend time with Lynn. We chose the most ordinary places for our trysts. She drove twelve miles from Shoreline to shop for groceries with me, with a pit stop by the Civil War cemetery to lie on the grass in the sunshine and nuzzle each other. A star-struck and rabid fan, I came to her tennis matches, tracked every point, and cheered for quick finishes, which gave us more time to make out in her convertible in random parking lots.

  How can I live without this? I would despair as I lay in her arms. The more time I spent with her, the
more I longed for. I cried for the damage to my children if I left their father; I cried for the damage to myself if I stayed. I had landed in the middle of a zero-sum game where winning looked suspiciously like losing.

  Josh didn’t want to break up, despite the facts. He would stay the course if given the chance. The choice was mine.

  Give up my safe straight life for an untested model? Didn’t my life work perfectly well, filled with longtime friends who liked me mostly as I was, a family that counted on me to behave a certain way, and a role in my community that fit just fine? I was going to trade it all in for the chance to be a gay girl, a dyke, for the uniform of flannel shirts and baggy pants, greasy hair, and hiking boots? Really? I liked my male buddies, not to mention all my straight girlfriends. I loved flirting with boys. Was I supposed to stop that now? I didn’t need a new slogan to adopt or another mantra to learn. No, forget the rainbow stickers, the new “lesbo” adjective to attach to my identity, the loss of my membership in the comfortably clueless majority, and by all means, don’t assign me to that persecuted minority.

  Nothing came easy. Stay married or leave Josh? Crush my kids or smother myself? How could I be gay? Nights found me sleepless and anxious, unable to lie down beside the husband I commanded myself to honor. Days found me weeping at the idea of raising my children on a part-time basis. As I stumbled through my confusion and confronted the choices that lay before me, I realized the old wisdom that used to guide me was dead. Of course, it wasn’t wisdom, but fear—that familiar monster whose grip around my throat was stronger than my mother’s fingers. By any means necessary, no holds barred, fear got the job done, saved me from myself, and heaved me back on the straight and narrow.

  But something new was at work now, a force that wasn’t to be messed with, one that wouldn’t take no for an answer. It ripped through me and snapped my tough-girl, buck-up and shut-up stance like so many twigs in a twister. All the fear that kept me down for so many decades proved no match for what I felt when I was with Lynn. I couldn’t resist her; I couldn’t resist myself. The scent of her hair, the feel of her warmth, the touch of her hand, the sound of her voice, the sparkle in those oh-so-very-blue eyes when they stared into mine; it was all impossible to deny. I wanted her in my life, every moment, every day, by my side in the most intimate of ways. I could not live without her sarcastic sense of humor, her matter-of-fact pragmatism, her calm counter to my up-and-down dramas, her affection, her interest, and her devotion to us.