All My Mother's Lovers

by Ilana Masad

  “It’s going to be legal nationwide any minute now anyway,” Maggie says. Peter just looks at her. “What?” she says.

  “You offer your brother some but not me? In my day we called that Bogarting,” he says, and Ariel lets out a snort. Maggie hands it over to him, not entirely believing he’ll really take a drag, but he does, a small one, holding it in like a pro, releasing the smoke slowly, no hint of a cough.

  “Dad!” Ariel protests. “You smoke?”

  “I haven’t in thirty years, but it isn’t my first rodeo,” Peter says. He hands the joint back to Maggie. His gaze is unlike any he’s ever aimed at her before, not that she can remember. He’s wary, calculating. “Ariel,” he says, “why don’t you go inside just in case anyone comes to the door.”

  “Why me?” Ariel says, but he’s already getting up. “She’s the one who fucking left, I was here the whole time, and I’m still on door duty?” He keeps mumbling all the way inside, where he turns and tries to slam the sliding door, but the rubber stopper set inside just makes it jump back halfheartedly. He tries to slam it one more time and it does the same thing, so he lets out a string of incoherent expletives and walks away.

  A moment later, a slam sounds from inside; he’s clearly closed himself back into his bedroom. For a moment, Maggie thinks Peter is going to go after him, but he puts a hand over his mouth and she realizes he’s stifling laughter. She cracks up too, right in the middle of her second drag, half-inhaled smoke going up her nose, and she starts coughing at the surprising warmth, which makes Peter laugh harder, releasing his hand. They sit there, like idiots, stoned and giggling, cracking each other up each time they try to stop.

  Eventually, though, they’re depleted, this laughter as close to crying together as they’ve ever come.

  “So? Want to enlighten me? What were you and Ariel being all shifty about?” Peter asks her again, the corners of his eyes damp, though Maggie is no longer certain if it’s with mirth or not. She doesn’t say anything for a long while, unable to meet her father’s eyes.

  “Do you really want to know?” she finally asks him. He nods. “Well,” she starts. “Mom left letters.”

  “Letters?”

  “Yeah. To, um, some people. And, uh, that’s where I went. To deliver them. I wanted to know who they were.”

  Unexpectedly, Peter smiles. He leans his head back, and a beam of sunlight making its way through a tear in the drab and dusty patio umbrella zigzags across his face. Maggie is reminded of David Bowie. “Your mother was romantic, that’s for sure,” Peter says. “But honestly, letters . . . It’s like something from one of her novels.”

  “What do you mean she was romantic?” Maggie asks. Peter isn’t reacting with any surprise. She’s pretty sure he doesn’t understand what she’s saying.

  “Oh, you know, Jane Austen romantic, letters romantic, big signs and dramatic exits,” Peter says. He’s still smiling, now shaking his head slowly as if recalling the antics of a naughty child. “She left me one too, you know,” he adds. “It was in our safety-deposit box. Janice called me yesterday morning to tell me she’d forgotten to mention it to you. Also, she emailed me a scan of a codicil to the will that fell out of the folder or something, I don’t know the specifics, but she said she had an update is the point.”

  “What about us?” Maggie asks. What does it mean that Peter did get one after all? And she and Ariel . . . didn’t?

  “Oh, sweetheart, Iris would never, ever have been able to write a goodbye letter to you. To her own children. It’s . . . I don’t know how to explain it to you. I know you hate to hear this, but I think, really, if you don’t have kids, you can’t really get it. The idea of saying goodbye to these people, these amazing people you’ve watched as they’ve become.” He pauses at this word. Maggie thinks he’s stoned, he sounds so reverant. “Well, you don’t, you can’t, say goodbye to that. I can promise you that if your mom ever tried, she wouldn’t have been able to get through it. The idea of parting with your kids, forever, it’s—it’s impossible to really wrap your head around.”

  Maggie sits with this as Peter gazes at her. She has the urge to climb in his lap and curl up there like she did when she was little. She thinks he could probably hold her, now that he’s back in the world of the living, back to being her dad. But she can’t. On a practical level, because it would hurt too much physically, but even if that weren’t a factor, she still has to tell him what’s going on, and she can’t ask him to comfort her while she does that.

  “Okay, I mean, that makes sense I guess, but, uh, Dad,” she says, trying to push through as her palms begin to sweat. “I mean. These letters. They were . . .” She doesn’t know how to say it. She feels evil, breaking this news to her father. She wonders whether she really should. She could just stop now, backtrack.

  “To other men, I’m sure,” Peter says.

  A shiver runs up through her whole body. Her pulse races, and now her underarms are damp too. It feels very much like the panic attacks she used to have when she was in college, before midterms. “Wait,” Maggie says. She wants to take it all back, to stop now, not to confirm Peter’s suspicions, to keep him ignorant for a while longer. “Dad, I—”

  “Oh, honey,” he says, putting his hand over hers, his fingers wrapping around where she’s holding the joint, careful not to take it from her, not to burn himself on it. “You thought I didn’t know?” His eyes are twinkling, and he starts to laugh again.

  “Dad!” she protests, trying to understand what’s going on, what Peter is telling her.

  “Maggie, my dearest one, my favorite daughter,” he says, somehow both patronizing and kind. “You . . . you think you and your friends all invented the wheel. You made all these flags, all these names for things that have always been around, and so you thought you made it all up, that you were the first to experience life. Messy, complicated life. Don’t worry, my generation thought we invented it all too. You know when I first learned the word for what I am?”

  “What you are? What are you? I’m so confused,” Maggie says, her head spinning. She brings the joint to her lips and stops. Maybe she’s high enough. Or too. Maybe this is a hallucination. A weed-induced dream. She pinches the end out in the ashtray.

  “I was in my forties, probably, when I learned that there was a word for it—‘asexual,’” he says, spreading his hands as if the word is painting itself in front of him with a flourish. “I assume you’re familiar?” He waits for Maggie to nod, to show that she knows what he’s talking about, then continues. “Well, I was never really . . . I don’t know if you want to hear this from your old man, but I guess it’s time, since it appears you’ve discovered some things on your own, which I don’t think Iris intended you to. But it’s too late now, so . . . Well, your mother’s first marriage was bad. Terrible, in fact. She and I—we had a beautiful, whirlwind romance. We married very quickly, in May about five months after we first met, which her parents didn’t approve of, especially since we did it at city hall. But what can I say? Some of us, and I know this isn’t true for everyone, but for some of us lucky, lucky few, when we know, we just know.

  “We talked about kids during our first date. We both wanted two, hopefully a boy and a girl. We got lucky there, too. And that’s how I won over her parents, in the end—they knew I wanted kids, and they liked the sound of that, and then when we had you . . . Oh, Maggie, I wish you could have seen how they looked at you. How Iris looked at you when they held you.”

  He leans forward and cups Maggie’s cheek for a moment. She can feel the tears leaking out of her again, but she tells him to keep going and wipes them away.

  “So. Okay. We knew we wanted a family. But I wasn’t . . . well, I was never so interested in sex. I loved your mother, don’t get me wrong, and I found her the most stimulating being I’d ever encountered, but I just never had much of a drive or inclination. I know some people who are like me never want to have
sex, ever—see, I self-educated, Maggie, isn’t that what you always told your mom and me to do?” He laughs, but Maggie doesn’t, so he hurries on. “So it wasn’t like that for me, not quite, but honestly, I could spend one night a year like that and it was enough for me. And, well, she’d only slept with one other man besides me, an awful man she wanted to excavate from her mind and body as much as she could. She was curious to see what lovemaking with other people would be like.

  “So, we talked about it, and we agreed that as long as she saw men away from home, as long as she kept them separate from me and from our family once we had one, well, then that would be okay. It took us years to get there, mind you. It wasn’t until after you were born, really, that we finally figured out how to make this work for her. I’ll give your generation this,” he says, a hint of admiration in his voice now. “You definitely do talk about things more, and more openly. Your access to information is totally different too. We didn’t know there was such a thing as polyamory—I mean, we knew, but we called them arrangements, and they were kind of secret, not this acknowledged, unabashed lifestyle choice. So we kind of had to muddle through and figure out what it was she wanted, what it was I wanted, what we needed, together. And when you were born . . . Again, Maggie, I really don’t know how to explain the kind of joy you brought to our lives. Joy isn’t even the right word. Maybe ‘purpose’ is better?” Peter looks up and rubs his jaw, which is prickly with stubble. “You were bigger than us, Maggie. More important. So we stopped muddling, and we figured out what we wanted, and Iris found someone, Harold, actually, he was the first, ages ago, and then that ended, and she found someone else, and that ended, and so on. I was her man, her person, her . . . I don’t know. Her home. And she was mine. I knew she would always, always come back to me. Until she didn’t,” he adds, lower lip shaking. But he doesn’t break down this time, and Maggie can’t help it, she has to know—

  “But weren’t you jealous?” she squeaks. It’s useless to try to stop crying at this point, she thinks. Better to let it all out, like hungover vomiting.

  Peter laughs a little, rueful. “We worried about it. Your mother certainly did, a lot, actually, until I had to tell her to cool it because it was stressing me out. I never really understood jealousy the way other people describe it, I don’t know. I never got the rage, that terrible feeling that men in novels and movies get, that drives them to kill someone or hit someone or . . . Maybe that makes me a pansy, I don’t know. A sissy, like my father used to call me. But I was never attracted to men at all, though believe me, when I was young, everyone thought I was gay. I was always being picked on for not being aggressive with the ladies or dating in general.

  “But your mother . . . It wasn’t about sex for us. It couldn’t be, obviously, since that just wasn’t a big enough thing for me. You know, not everyone would accept that. Before your mother, no one really had. When I did date, and I tried, I ended up disappointing the women I was with. I tried to explain, but I think they saw me as a freak, really, or they thought I was lying, that I just wasn’t interested in them. We’ve all been taught that men want sex all the time, right? And if they don’t, well, there must be something wrong with them.

  “I’m not saying that I loved Iris just because she accepted this part of me, mind you, though she worried about that too sometimes. But no, I just . . . She met me when I was very, very sad, and she made me incredibly happy. She was so vivacious, she had so much energy, she made things happen—she made us happen! She gave me her number—”

  “I know the story, Dad,” Maggie says, smiling through her tears. “I know. Christmas Eve, the Chinese restaurant, you both eating alone. And you left her a message before she even got home. Such a rom-com move.” Maggie wonders why she hasn’t thought of this story since Iris’s death.

  “Well, I knew I would lose my nerve if she picked up! It really was just cowardly of me, but it worked. So. Like I was saying,” and he gets more serious again, picking up the earlier thread, “yes, she had relationships with other men, of sorts. Sometimes she just slept with them. She’d go for years without seeing anyone at all. And there were a few she felt very intensely about, I know that. But as long as she came back home to me and you, and later Ariel, it was fine. I mean, look, it wasn’t always daisies and roses, you know, having two children who only overlap at the same school for one year, there was a lot of driving and birthday parties and all that normal stuff of parenting, and we fought sometimes about her being gone too much, but honestly? I think that really was more about work than about men. I think she felt in control at work, and she didn’t always feel in control with you kids.

  “It’s not a bad thing,” he says quickly, reassuring. “It’s just, you know, parenting is one surprise after another. And her work including plenty of chaos—something always goes wrong, it was basically her mantra—but in predictable, repetitive ways. I don’t think she noticed how much she leaned on that, sometimes. So, yes, sometimes we had issues. But Maggie, your mother made me feel loved every single day of our life together. I miss her so, so much.” His voice breaks and his head drops to his hands. His shoulders shake.

  Maggie feels frozen, unable to say or do anything to comfort him, to comfort herself. She—everything her father is saying is so utterly, wildly different than the picture she’s built in her mind. This woman he’s describing, Maggie can half recognize her, but not fully. She can understand the Iris who needed control amid chaos. After seeing Abe and Liam and Eric and now Harold, well, she has some frame of reference for her mother’s ability to compartmentalize. But she can’t picture her own existence making Iris feel the way Peter is saying they both felt. And she can’t understand how Iris could accept Peter for who he is, but not her.

  “But then . . . why didn’t she . . . Dad, what changed? Why did she start hating me?” She knows she sounds petulant, emo, dramatic, and she doesn’t care, she doesn’t care, why couldn’t her mother just tell her that it was okay, that she was okay?

  “She did not hate you,” Peter says, fierce. “Hey, hey, Maggie, look at me.” She looks up into his eyes and he looks so intense she can’t look away. “She did not hate you. She didn’t understand you, but I think that she made it be more about your sexuality than it ever needed to be. I think she didn’t understand you because you were a teenager, and because she couldn’t reach you there, not because of anything either of you did—just because it’s like that sometimes. Especially when you’re similar, and you were, you are, whether you see it or not. But she latched on to you coming out, and once she did, she couldn’t back down from it for a while. She was scared for you, mostly. She was terrified of what the world could do to you, and she was terrified that she couldn’t protect you. So she tried to change you. It was a mistake, and nothing I say will stop it from being that. I thought it then, and I think it now.” He breaks the eye contact himself, his face clouding. “I could have done more, probably. I didn’t want to meddle, but maybe I should have. Maybe I should have tried to get you to go to therapy together, or maybe I—”

  “Daddy, no,” Maggie says through sobs. “It’s not your fault. It’s Mom’s. I just wish . . . I wish she wasn’t dead, Dad.”

  He gets up and leans over her, hugging her as well as he can with her stiff posture. “I know, sweetheart. I know. Me too.”

  May 7, 2017

  Dearest,

  This morning, I woke up to the sweetest note on the mirror from you. Thirty-one years. My God! Half my life exactly now. It seems like forever, doesn’t it? And no time at all. I don’t have much beyond clichés for you today, I guess. But I wanted to write to you, just in case. I do so much just in case, don’t I? You always think I’m too cautious. Well, my love, let me tell you this—I am cautious, yes, but it’s served me well. Knock on wood, you and the kids are well, and we haven’t faced too much trouble in our lives, have we?

  No, I think we’ve been doing pretty wonderfully. And I hope we keep on that way. If
you’re reading this, it means that I haven’t been cautious enough in some way or another. Or maybe that’s not quite right. After all, death does come for us all, doesn’t it? Well, whatever the reason, my love, here is what I want to tell you.

  First, thank you. I could say the words for ten straight continuous years and not have said them enough. Thank you for making me the safest, most well-loved, deeply understood and fully accepted woman in the whole wide world. Thank you for making me believe not only in other people again but in myself as well. You let me be who I wanted to be, and you loved me for all of it, and that’s rare. My love, you don’t know how rare you are. You were, and are, and will always be, the best father I’ve ever witnessed being a father. You’ve been the best partner, friend, love, man, person that anyone could hope to meet in their lifetime. You have been my safe harbor, my panic room, my space shuttle. Thank you.

  Second, stay strong. For yourself, for the children, and most of all, because I know you too well by now, most of all for me. If there is an afterlife, I will be sternly watching you to make sure you are carrying on. I am under no illusions—I know you will mourn. And I’d be insulted if you didn’t! But the truth is that death is part of life. This is part of your journey. Use it—to extend care to others, to comfort our children with your infinite wisdom, to make your beautiful designs and illustrations. Use it to remember that you, you, my love, you are still alive. Don’t stop living. You’re too vital a man to sit down and give up on life. Take salsa dancing classes (oh dear, I imagine you must be hurling something at the wall now—I know how much you hate group activities!) or pottery lessons or start going to plays, or . . . well, you know what? I trust you. You couldn’t give up on life if you tried. And no, that isn’t a dare! So don’t dare (ha!) take it that way.