“Who said anything about thinking this would be easy?” asked Ellie. “Diana, when I learned you were gay and I told you that I was too, I was exuberant! I could finally talk to someone who understood what I was feeling, what it was like to be me. If you interpreted this as my thinking telling anyone else would be anything but devastating, then it was you who misunderstood me.”
Diana paused a moment before saying, “Fair enough.”
“I love it that the U.S. Supreme Court supports us. And I think it’s great that a bunch of movie and TV stars and professional athletes are telling the world that they’re gay. But no matter what anyone says, I know this won’t be easy, Diana. Why do you think I haven’t told anyone but you?”
“What do you want to do, Ellie? How do you want to proceed?”
“I’m not sure,” said Ellie. “What I do know is this: I’ve got to have a plan. This is not something I can blurt out after an extra glass of wine at the dinner table. That may fly at nineteen, but it doesn’t work when you’ve made commitments, when you’ve lived a lie for more than half a lifetime.”
“I agree,” said Diana. “I’m sorry, Ellie, if I doubted that you were thinking carefully about this.”
“I have to think carefully,” said Ellie. “I’m scared out of my mind. I have no idea how my husband and sons will react when I tell them, and I greatly fear how my parents and brothers will react. I have no idea where to begin. I feel liberated because I told you, but I feel utterly unable to tell anyone else, to tell the people I love the most.”
“I understand.”
Ellie refilled her coffee mug. “So, what made you think that I was taking this lightly?”
“When we are in love, we take everything either heavily or lightly. There is nothing in between.”
“You think I’m in love with you.”
“Are you?” asked Diana.
“Why do I suddenly feel like I’m in the seventh grade?” said Ellie. “Look, I appreciate your concern and your friendship. But just because you’ve gone through this yourself, do not presume you have the answers for everyone facing an unlocked closet door. And because I’m not in seventh grade, I’m going to say goodbye before I hang up the phone. Goodbye, Diana.” Ellie pushed the end button on her phone, set it down on the table, and leaned back in her chair. She closed her eyes.
An unlocked closet door. Was it unlocked? Had she unlatched the bolt by telling Diana? Was she free to walk through it? Ellie sipped her coffee. Of course, she was not free. And she would never be free—not unless the entire Kilcullen family in a highly unlikely act of nature disappeared from the earth forever.
“God,” said Ellie aloud. “I’m being a bit dramatic, aren’t I?” If she told her parents and her brothers, there would be plenty of drama: arguments, yelling, name calling, protracted and weighty silences, shunning. Was this what was stopping her from becoming her true self? Could she survive being ostracized by her family? Could she survive acting straight for the second half of her life?
JUNE
CHAPTER 36
When Alice approached the table, Joan could tell she was wearing her new gun. It was not so much its slight visibility underneath Alice’s navy blue shirt and pink cardigan sweater. It was more that Alice walked like a cop now, with her arms three or four inches from her sides, looking like she was ready for a shootout. “So, how does it feel to be holding?” asked Joan.
“You can tell?” asked Alice, sitting down.
“Only because we know you,” said Ellie, who was thinking that Alice now walked like Chris.
“What’s different?”
“You carry yourself more like a gorilla,” said Joan, breaking into a smile.
Alice, who by this time had learned that if she took everything Joan said seriously that Joan would not be her friend, smiled back. “So, I look tough then?”
“Totally tough,” said Joan.
“How does it feel?” asked Ellie. “Are you getting used to the bellyband?”
“It is surprisingly comfortable,” said Alice. “I feel very powerful.” Joan took a sip of water. She knew this was not the time to poke holes in Alice’s new gun toting confidence. “What are you guys eating?”
“Burgers,” said Joan and Ellie in unison.
Alice shook her head. “Does the word summer mean anything to either of you?”
“Yeah,” said Joan. “It means hot weather and cool drinks.” Ellie laughed.
“I’m talking about bathing suits.”
Joan put her napkin in her lap. “Bathing suits matter only to people who allow them to matter. At fifty-two, I’m not trying to compete with the twenty-year-olds on the beach. And I would suggest that those middle aged women who do try—no matter how good they may look—are simply going to come up on the losing end of that competition.”
The server appeared at the table, and Joan ordered a cheeseburger, with sautéed onions and mayonnaise; Ellie ordered a hamburger, with lettuce and tomato; and Alice ordered a garden salad topped with grilled salmon. “I’m not competing with twenty-year-olds,” said Alice.
“No?” asked Joan. “Then why mention summer and bathing suits—if you don’t care?”
Alice shifted in her seat. “I do care about how I look,” she said. “We all do, Joan. You know that better than anyone. Like you, I like to look good. And I also like to feel fit.”
“And you do look fit,” said Ellie.
“As do you,” said Alice, returning the compliment.
“And I’m fat and happy,” said Joan.
“You are not fat,” said Ellie.
“I’m not skinny,” said Joan.
“I thought you didn’t care,” said Alice.
“Good point,” said Joan. “Let’s get back to the gun. You like having it, I presume.” It was a surprise to her, but Joan felt more interested in discussing guns now that Alice had one.
“I do,” said Alice. “It’s been two weeks—and I’ve run seven times.”
Ellie nodded her head. “That’s a good thing, Alice. Joan, you have to admit that Alice’s return to running is a good thing.”
“It is a good thing,” said Joan. “Even though she brings a bad thing with her.”
Again, Alice chose to smile. “You’re just jealous of my freedom.”
Joan laughed. “Maybe you’re right!”
“Are you bringing it everywhere?” asked Ellie. “I know you were trying to decide if you should have it with you, on you, every time you leave the house, or whether there would be times that you would leave it behind.”
Alice nodded. “I’m taking it everywhere right now. I want to get used to having it next to my skin, so it feels like part of my body, rather than a foreign object.”
“And the target practice?” asked Ellie. “Are you still doing that once or twice a week?”
“Twice a week,” said Alice. “I will do that forever, I think, because I love it. At this point, I’m a pretty good shot.”
“I feel so safe in your presence,” said Joan, not bothering to hide her sarcasm, ready now to poke holes.
“You should,” said Alice, ignoring it.
“Do I want to ask what Dave thinks?” asked Joan.
Alice slid back in her chair when the server placed her plate of salad in front of her. She put her napkin in her lap and lifted her fork. “Dave is a sore subject right now.”
Both Joan and Ellie let Alice’s comment sit for a minute. They knew from their common, as well as individual, conversations that Alice increasingly felt abandoned by her husband, who was absorbed by his work and his race schedule. Now that spring had settled in, he was traveling every weekend to races throughout the region. He trained with his employees, proud that he could keep up with them, that he was, at his age, injury free. He hadn’t acknowledged Alice’s gun, preferring, Alice had said, to keep his mouth closed rather than to talk about it. She thought that this was because if he had the conversation Alice wanted to have, he would be forced to honestly evaluate her choice.
And that would mean that he could conclude only that Alice had a gun because he could not—would not—keep her safe. Joan had decided after a particularly lengthy discussion with Alice that one of the biggest differences between women and men was that women thought too much.
“Anything new?” asked Ellie.
“No,” said Alice, stabbing a grape tomato with her fork. “We live in parallel universes, and I seem to be the only one who knows it.”
Joan cut her burger in half and took a large bite. Any thoughts she occasionally had of becoming a vegetarian like one of her sisters-in-law dissipated immediately when she had a piece of meat in her mouth. “I hear what you’re saying,” she said, chewing. “And I know you’ve had your unique issues. And what I’m about to say is not meant to discount what has happened to you and how you are feeling. But”—she swallowed—“I do think that a bunch of women in their fifties feel the same way. We are doing our own thing, and our husbands are doing theirs.”
“I totally agree with that,” said Ellie. “Chris and I can go days without having a conversation. We talk—chitchat about the weather or what’s on tap for the day—but we don’t discuss anything meaningful. And, from what I can tell, he’s totally okay with that. Or, to be more accurate, I’m not sure he notices.”
“Same with me,” said Joan. “Of course, Stephen had me under a microscope for two solid weeks after my roofie experience—as he should have—but now? Everything has returned to its pre-roofie state. At the end of the workweek, he is more interested in watching or playing golf than catching up with me. And I don’t think, by the way, that this is the case because he doesn’t love me. He just doesn’t think about me the way he used to. And, to be fair, I’m not always thinking about him.”
Alice wagged her index finger at Joan. “But I’ll bet you think about him a lot more than he thinks about you. You have to. You run the household, and he is a part of it—so he must figure into your plans, if only when you are at the grocery store. But do you figure into his plans when he is making golfing dates? Does he call and ask your permission? Dave has no trouble filling our calendar with his races every Saturday. In the last two months, he has not asked me once what I might like to do on a weekend—not once.”
“You blame Dave,” said Ellie.
Alice shook her head. “I do. I do blame him, for being self-centered, for being myopic.”
“This might sound like I’m making excuses for the male gender, which I’m most definitely not,” said Ellie, squirting ketchup onto her French fries. “But aren’t they all a bit that way?”
“No,” said Alice. “I don’t think all men care only about themselves. And I’ll tell you why I say this. I have a college friend who is married to the most attentive, caring, generous man in the world. He puts her needs before his. He does whatever she wants him to do without complaining or telling her she’s trying to change or control him. He lives to please her.”
Joan took a bite of her burger and chewed for a few seconds before saying, “Give us another example.”
Alice looked at the space above her head. “Hmmm . . . I don’t think I have another example.”
“Exactly,” said Joan, wiping mayonnaise from her bottom lip. “Your college friend? She’s got the only considerate one in the entire world.”
Ellie laughed. She then said, “I think it’s a societal thing. Why do you think colleges now offer courses, majors even, in women’s and gender studies? Because it has been so one-sided for so long. And the only way to change things is to broadcast to the world that we exist and that we are every bit as important as they are.”
“Or become a lesbian,” said Joan.
“I could definitely be a lesbian,” said Alice, “except for the sex. Then again, I’m not having a lot of sex with the marathon man right now, so maybe that wouldn’t really matter.”
“Are you kidding?” asked Ellie, feeling warm.
Alice put a piece of salmon in her mouth and chewed. “Yes, I am kidding,” she said. “But doesn’t it seem like life would be easier if we could live with a woman instead of a man?”
“As in men are from Mars and women are from Venus?” asked Joan.
“Exactly,” said Alice. “And I’m serious here. Don’t you ever feel that your life would be easier—better even—if you lived with an empathetic, sympathetic, like-minded, caring, considerate, unselfish woman?”
“Sometimes,” said Joan. “Absolutely.”
Alice turned to Ellie. “How about you?”
Ellie blushed. “All the time,” she said. “I think about it all the time.”
CHAPTER 37
Alice received a phone call from the Southwood Police Department when she was in the produce section of Stop & Shop. Thinking it was the second phase of the fundraising appeal that she had read about in the newspaper, Alice let the call roll to voice mail and finished her shopping. It wasn’t until she was loading her groceries into the back of her Subaru that she again looked at her phone and saw that she had a message.
Alice, this is Officer Marilyn Walsh with the Southwood Police Department. We think we’ve got the guy who attacked you on the running trails. Please call me back when you get this message, so we can schedule a lineup.
Alice slowly moved the phone from her right ear to her right pants pocket, her thumping heart marking microbursts of panic, her breathing labored, as if she had run a road race rather than walked the aisles of the local grocery store. It had been, she counted on her fingers, four months since what she had for two months been calling “the event.” At first, when she told her story, Alice thought it was important to use the word attack, to accurately portray the violence and to engender feelings of outrage from those listening. But for the last two months—since the Well Protected Women’s march in Hartford—Alice had begun to feel differently about what had happened to her. She was still very angry, but she also felt partially responsible. She could not erase from her memory the fact that she had told her assailant to take off her pants. Even though doing so had enabled her to get away from him, she was ashamed of herself for not thinking of another way to distract him, for not talking him out of hurting her. In her most serious moments of self-doubt, she wondered if she had, in an unnamed way, brought this upon herself. It was wrong to think like this, and she knew it. But she felt guilty nonetheless. She had not shared these feelings of insecurity and embarrassment with anyone, and she had said absolutely nothing about this to Officer Walsh.
When Alice got home, she unpacked the groceries and made herself a cup of tea. She sat down at her kitchen table with a yellow legal pad and a felt tip pen and called the police department. When Officer Walsh picked up her extension, Alice had to hold her breath and pinch the bridge of her now-healed nose to keep herself from crying. Alice listened as Marilyn Walsh explained the process, ending with the suggestion that they schedule the lineup for that very afternoon, if Alice was available. When Alice told her three o’clock would be fine, she knew that she could not do it, face this man, alone. When she got off the phone, she texted Ellie and Joan, who told her they would certainly go with her and that Joan would drive. Alice didn’t tell Dave.
When they arrived at the police station, it was quiet, as one would expect a small town police department to be on an otherwise ordinary Tuesday afternoon. But as soon as Marilyn Walsh escorted them into the viewing room, the pleasantries ceased; the business at hand became the single focus. She again explained the process, emphasizing the security of the one way mirror. She then asked Alice if she was ready, a simple and also complicated question. Of course she was ready to put an end to this. But she did not feel ready, would perhaps never feel ready, to again see the young man who had violently forced his way into her life. Alice simply nodded her head. Ellie and Joan flanked her, their hands on her back.
And there he was, the fourth from the left of five redheaded young men lined up against the wall in front of her. The speaker in the viewing room was on, allowing Alice, Ellie, and Joan to listen to the
instructions: face right, face left, face front. He was six foot, two inches. His hair was longer than it had been that day. And when he opened his mouth to speak, Alice heard his words before they came out of his mouth. “She wanted it,” he said. “She told me to take off her pants.” The officer in the room with the men told him to shut up, and he did, all the while looking intently at the glass, sending what Alice interpreted as a message of hatred and certain revenge as if he were still speaking. Officer Walsh rushed through the door next to the mirror on an urgent mission to get the speaker turned off. When she came back, she apologized and told Alice to focus on the faces of the young men. Ten seconds later, Alice identified him—Greg Anderson—and told Officer Walsh that yes, she was sure. They were ushered back into the administrative area of the police station, where Alice completed twenty minutes of paperwork and was thanked for her willingness to prosecute. With any luck, Officer Walsh said, Greg Anderson would admit his guilt—even though he had already done so when he announced during the lineup that Alice “wanted it”—in exchange for a reduced sentence. Alice would never have to see him again.
“Does he know my name?” she asked.
Officer Walsh shook her head. “No. And he will never know your name.”
“If he does plead guilty, how long will he be in jail?”
“That depends,” the officer said, “on his record and on the tenacity of the prosecutor.”
“Does he have a record?” asked Ellie.
Officer Walsh’s gaze never left Alice’s face. “He’s done this before.”
“Why did you have the speaker on in the room?” asked Joan.
“That was an oversight,” Officer Walsh said. “The speaker was turned on earlier today for a training session. I do apologize.”
As soon as they were back in Joan’s car, Joan started it, pulled out of the parking space and onto the main road, and then said what she had wanted to say to Officer Walsh. “That’s a pretty big oversight. You shouldn’t have had to listen to that.”
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