An Irreconcilable Difference

by Lynda Fitzgerald

  Usually I could get through to Darren. I’d had plenty of practice since he realized he was gay. Once I quit hating him for being what he was, he had taken up my slack. I knew his self-contempt like an old friend. Usually I could bring him back around, but he was beyond me now.

  He gently extricated himself from my grip. He stood for a long moment, staring at the carpet, unable to meet my eyes. Then he turned and started for the door.

  “Darren.”

  He turned and, with an effort, looked at me.

  “I love you.” I said, feeling tears fill my eyes.

  “I love you, too,” he said, hanging his head.

  I was afraid for him to leave. I didn’t know what he’d do. I frantically searched my mind as he headed toward the door. “Darren, wait.”

  He stopped again.

  “Jana,” I said. “We have to tell Jana before Greg does.”

  If possible, his expression became bleaker. He looked as though he would collapse at any moment.

  “Go make some coffee,” I said. “I’ll call her and ask her to come over.”

  “Greg’s probably already called her on his cell.”

  “No he hasn’t. He wouldn’t. He’s too upset to think of it. Go make some coffee. Let me call her.”

  I thought for a moment he’d refuse, but he finally nodded.

  When he was gone, I called Jana. She was there, thank God, and so was Bob. I asked her to have Bob stay with the kids and come over immediately. She questioned and probed, but I refused to say anything until she was there. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  Then I called Mother. She too, thank God, was there. “Greg knows,” I said without preamble.

  “Oh, honey.”

  “I wanted you to know in case he shows up there. Jana’s on her way over right now. We have to tell her before Greg does.”

  “Of course you do. Call me if you need me. I’ll be right here.”

  I felt tears sting the backs of my eyes, but I fought them back. Tears were for later. Lots of tears. But not now.

  In the kitchen, Darren was standing at the counter watching the coffee brew. I came up behind him and put my arms around his back. “It’ll be better now. We’ll get it out into the open and things will get better.”

  Darren turned and faced me. “You can’t really believe that. You saw his face. You heard what he said.”

  “I also heard him tell you he’d hate you forever when he was ten and you took his bike away for a week.”

  “That was different.”

  It certainly was, but it was all the comfort I had to offer. “Give him time, Darren. It was a shock. People say all kinds of things when they’re in shock. He has to get used to the idea.”

  He gave a bitter laugh. “Get used to the idea that his father’s a fag?”

  I reached up and touched his face. “Don’t say that. You’re no less his father now, Darren. You’re still the man he worshiped all his life. He just needs time to realize it.”

  “Tell him that.”

  There were tears in his eyes, but he refused to shed them. I imagine he, too, would do a bit of crying later.

  I was struck with a sudden thought. “What made you come over here this afternoon?”

  “I got a call from Sam. He told me about Greg worming his way into your office and how upset you were. When I called and didn’t get an answer, I was worried.”

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  The doorbell caused us both to jump.

  “Bring the coffee,” I said. “I’ll let her in.”

  * * * * *

  Jana didn’t run slamming out of the house. She listened to Darren’s explanation, only looking at me from time to time for confirmation. Tears were streaming down her cheeks by the time he finished, but they were tears of sympathy.

  “I wasn’t trying to deceive any of you, Jana. I honestly didn’t know,” Darren said. “I loved your mother so much—I still love her. Maybe I did know toward the end, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself. God knows I didn’t want to admit it to Lou. Then—then one day there was no lying to myself anymore. Or to your mother. Please don’t blame her, Jana. She’s the injured party in all this.”

  Jana’s head swiveled to me. “Of course I don’t blame her, and I don’t blame you either,” she said, getting up and crossing to Darren. She put her arms around him, and he hung onto her like a lifeline. “I’m so sorry, daddy. How awful for you. How awful for both of you.”

  I got up and went to sit on her other side. She took each of our hands, and clung to them. I realized that I had seriously underestimated our daughter. There was no condemnation in her face, only sympathy—and sorrow. Now she knew for certain that there would never be reconciliation, but she also knew that neither of us had judged the other unworthy of love.

  “You were right, Jana,” I told her, stroking her fingers. “Your father and I do still love one another very much.”

  “I know.”

  “We would have told you before, but I didn’t want to hurt you—”

  “She didn’t want you to hate me,” Darren corrected. “She was willing to let you kids think anything bad you wanted about her, but—”

  “Don’t make me out to be such a martyr,” I told him. “I’m not nearly that noble. I figured you’d hate both of us, and I was putting it off as long as possible.”

  “How could I hate you two?”

  “Greg—”

  She blanched. “Greg. How are you going to tell Greg?”

  “He knows,” Darren said.

  “What did he say?”

  Darren and I looked at each other. “He hates us both,” I said. Then I giggled. I couldn’t help it. My emotions were shot.

  Darren certainly didn’t giggle, but he almost smiled.

  Jana didn’t giggle. Or smile. “He’s got to be feeling so threatened,” she said to us both.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Because he’ll wonder if he’s gay, too,” she said, looking from one of us to the other. “There have been studies about it."

  “That’s ridiculous,” Darren spit out.

  She looked hurt. “Maybe it is, but he’ll still question it.”

  I leaned against the back of the couch, wondering how I could have missed that possibility.

  “My—my sexual preference has nothing to do with him,” Darren said.

  “No it doesn’t,” Jana said, “but he’s always wanted to be exactly like you. Now he’s going to have to deal with that.”

  * * * * *

  When they were both gone, I plodded up the stairs and crawled into a bathtub filled with steaming water and a double helping of bath salts. Damn the cost. I needed all the pampering I could get at that moment. Not for the first time since Darren realized he was gay was I sorry I wasn’t much of a drinking woman. I wouldn’t have minded getting a little sloshed right then.

  Telling the children had brought it all back. My reaction tonight wasn’t the reaction they would have seen when I first learned about my husband.

  It ranked up there as the most hideous day of my life. Darren had been away at a home builders’ conference for almost a week. When he arrived home two days ahead of schedule, he was withdrawn. I knew something was wrong, but none of my probing loosened his tongue. For nearly two weeks after that, he was moody and irritable. I gave him space. I had lived with him long enough to know Darren couldn’t be pushed. If I tried, he just became more stubborn. Instead, I bided my time, certain it was something about the business, something that could be resolved.

  Then one night he didn’t come home until eleven. I wasn’t angry or even surprised. Things often came up at work that needed to be dealt with immediately, often on a jobsite where it was difficult to stop and call. I left dinner warming for him in the oven. I was already in bed, reading. I looked up and smiled when he walked into the bedroom.

  He didn’t smile back.

  “Tough day?” I asked.

  He stopped inside the bedroom
door. “Lou.” The single word was strangled.

  I felt an icy rush of fear. “What’s wrong? What’s happened?”

  My fear must have penetrated him. “No…it’s…nothing happened.”

  I felt momentary exasperation. “You scared me to death, Darren. I thought you were having a seizure or something.” I reached up to turn off the light on my side of the bed. “Come to bed. You look exhausted.”

  “No.” Again the clipped word. “I want to talk to you. I have to talk to you.”

  My hand froze on the light switch. “All right,” I said, scooting up against the pillows. I was wearing my favorite pajamas, white flannel, with little blue coffee cups all over them. I remember noticing the cuffs were beginning to fray.

  Darren walked over to the bed and sat down. He was such a handsome man, so rugged looking and strong. After almost thirty years of marriage, it still gave me a little thrill to look at him. I felt that thrill now as I smelled his clean masculine scent and—liquor? I sniffed again. There was definitely liquor on his breath, but he wasn’t drunk. I thought maybe he’d stopped somewhere on the way home.

  He was obviously miserable. I reached out to take his hand, but he pulled back. That’s when my real anxiety began to build. I studied his face, trying to glean some clue. “Darren?”

  His head was turned halfway away from me, but I saw tears in his eyes. “My God, Darren, what is it?”

  “It’s me.”

  “What do you mean? What’s wrong?”

  “There’s something wrong with me.”

  My breath lodged in my throat. I lunged for his hands then, and caught them before he could pull away. “Are you sick? What’s the matter?”

  “I—I’m—” His voice broke off on a sob.

  I don’t remember all the thoughts that flashed through my mind, but they included heart problems, cancer, any number of incurable diseases. I was terrified. I wanted to take him in my arms, but he was holding himself away from me. I felt tears in my own eyes. “Please, Darren. What is it?”

  “I’m—gay,” he choked out.

  I sat frozen on the bed, staring at him, certain I’d misunderstood him.

  “I’m gay,” he repeated. When I said nothing, he glanced quickly at me. I have no idea what my face looked like, but it made him break down and sob for real. He pulled his hands away from me and buried his face in them.

  I couldn’t move. I don’t think a single clear thought passed through my mind during those few moments before he got himself back under control.

  When he began speaking, I only half-heard him. I was looking at this man I’d known all my life and been married to for almost thirty years, this man whose every freckle and crease and cowlick was familiar ground, whose preferences in food and clothing and housing were second nature to me. This man I didn’t know at all. He looked the same. His hair was the same color as this morning, his height the same. Even his voice sounded almost the same. But it was all different.

  “…didn’t realize it. If it hadn’t happened, I might have gone on wondering what was wrong with me. I don’t want it to—”

  “No,” I broke in. “You’re wrong. You’re wrong, Darren.”

  “Lou—”

  “You’re my husband,” I said with the calm reason of a woman in shock. “You’re the father of my children. I would have known. It must be something else.”

  “Lou, it’s not something else. I’m gay. I know it now. Don’t you think I wish to God it wasn’t true?” He reached for my hands.

  This time I pulled away. I didn’t stop to examine why. “You can’t just suddenly become that way. That’s something you are or you aren’t, and you aren’t. We have two children, Darren. I would have—no. It isn’t true.”

  “It is.”

  “Stop saying that.” I cried out, furious. “I don’t know what happened in Charlotte—”

  “That’s what I was telling you—”

  “—and I don’t care,” I went on, ignoring him, determined to shut him up before he could say something I couldn’t negate. “Something upset you. You need to talk to someone about it. A doctor, maybe.”

  “I’m not sick,” he said, then with a grimace. “Not physically, anyway.”

  “We can go together,” I continued. “I’ll call tomorrow and set up an appointment. We’ll talk to Dr. Hardesty about this. He’ll know what to do.”

  “Lou—”

  “Come to bed, Darren. It’s late. We’re both tired. We’ll talk about this in the morning.”

  I reached over then and turned out the light. I deliberately turned on my side facing away from him. I was in more than in denial. I wasn’t only denying to myself what he was saying. I had totally shut down emotionally. I felt nothing. No anger or sorrow or disgust, although I would feel a lot of those things in the days and weeks and months to come. I felt no fear for our marriage. I felt no rage of betrayal, although I’m pretty certain he told me that night that he was in love with our old family friend, Russ Pierson. I don’t remember him saying the words, but later, when I began to function again, I seemed to know it, so he must have.

  I closed my mind and my eyes against the night. I heard him hesitate a few moments, then get up and leave the room. I heard his footsteps going down the stairs. I remember thinking, “Good. He’s going to eat some dinner.” Then I was asleep.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The next morning, I awoke with a terrible heaviness in my chest. It took several minutes to remember why, and when I did, I entered into formal denial. I went about my daily routine as if nothing had changed. In my mind, it hadn’t. I didn’t call the doctor to make an appointment. Darren did that the next day. We met with Dr. Hardesty. Darren explained things. I denied them. The doctor looked on and shook his head.

  We went to a marriage counselor. I explained to her that my husband was exhausted. He was confused. He was not gay.

  Darren took a week off at my insistence and went up to the Blue Ridge Mountains—with Russ Pierson, I later learned. When he returned, he moved into Jana’s old room. That marked the first break in the dike, that first little trickle of reality. I’d reach for Darren in the night and he wouldn’t be there. I’d think of something I wanted to share with him, but a new reserve would stop me. I’d reach out to touch him as I always did, a touch on the shoulder or the arm in passing, and my hand would freeze in mid-air.

  It went on until the day I was dusting the bookcase and came across the photo album of our wedding. Darren found me on the living room floor that night, sobbing uncontrollably. I don’t know how long I’d been there. He lifted me and carried me upstairs. He held me in his lap until I could sob no more. Then he changed me into my nightgown and tucked me into bed. I remember him calling my mother, but nothing after that.

  He and Mother must have had quite a talk, because when I awoke about three in the morning, she was sitting on the bed beside me, watching me. Her face told me she knew it all. I felt my lower lip trembling. I couldn’t say a word. I let her wrap me in her warm and comforting arms. I would like to have spent the rest of my life in those arms.

  As it was, she allowed me three days, which I spent in my bed. On the morning of the fourth, she ordered me to dress and marched me off to the counselor she had seen right after she learned about my father’s illness.

  It took me two months of twice a week visits to allow my anger to surface. First I went through “Maybe if I had done things differently” and “Maybe if I do things differently in the future” stages. My hatred for Darren and for myself knew no bounds. Marty Shiloski worked with me through all of it.

  She never said it overtly, but she helped me understand what was at the root of my anger. I still loved my husband. I didn’t know how not to. Worse yet, I still desired him. Oh, that was hard to deal with. What was wrong with me, I demanded of Marty, that I still wanted him sexually? How many girls fantasized about Rock Hudson back in our own youth, she countered, even once he came out of the closet? Desire—despite the target—isn
’t always logical or appropriate. My next question bothered me even more. How could I not have known? Easy, Marty said. A lot of gay men are happily married to happy women who don’t have a clue.

  “But….”

  “Did you have a sex life?”

  “Yes, of course. Well, not a wild and passionate one like in the books, but after almost thirty years of marriage…” My voice trailed off as I realized the truth. “It was never very wild and passionate, I guess. I thought it was because Darren and I had known each other so long. I didn’t realize….”

  “Maybe you didn’t have a lot to judge by?” she suggested. When I looked at her blankly, she said, “Did you have a lot of sexual experience with other men?”

  I blushed as I confessed. “Uh—none.”

  * * * * *

  Nothing earth shattering occurred to reconcile Darren and me to our new reality. He was still living in the house, in Jana’s old room. What it came down to was that I missed him. He was my best friend. He had shared nearly every important happening in my life since not long after we graduated to training pants, and I couldn’t fathom life without him. Maybe he couldn’t be my husband and lover anymore, but he damn sure could still be my best friend.

  Fortunately, he felt the same way. Rather than the change being sudden, it was so gradual it was almost unnoticeable. I began looking at Darren again, speaking directly to him, touching him, those casual touches that married people do all the time, a pat on the hand or kiss on the cheek. I can’t say I didn’t lament the fact that those touches were as far as it would ever go. Darren on a bad day is a damn sexy man, and he had very few bad days. I found myself shaking my head as he walked away.

  As my anger mellowed into regret and then acceptance, Darren acted like I had given him the world. He was ready to reciprocate by spending the rest of his life pretending to be heterosexual. He told me there was no reason for us to divorce unless it was something I wanted. “I haven’t been sexually active since I found out. Well, only that once. I’m not an adolescent led around by his hormones. There’s no reason to change things.”