Sputterpub's Blog

“There’s no doubt about it. Just look around you. Gay couples obviously make the best parents. They’re the ones adopting the older kids and the mixed race babies, and look how well they do.”

“Come on – it can’t be that simple,” she argued. “Are you saying kids are better off without parents of opposite sex?”

“Of course not,” he replied. “In fact, I think there are some dangers inherent in same-sex environments. I’m just observing that the kids sure seem to turn out well.” He sat back and drank from his cup. He looked around for a refill.

“Then what dangers?” she asked, and the tone of her voice was less aggressive, more curious. Their server approached and poured.

“Dangers in perspective. It happens whenever a homogeneous group restricts its interactions to its own members. Girls get more tidy, boys get more heady, old folks more petulant, disabled people more indignant …” He sipped, nodded, sipped again. “But that concentration doesn’t get in the way of good gay parenting.”

“You’re right. It’s probably because the couple already understands each other, you know? In basic ways.”

“Exactly,” he murmured. His strong features softened. “Gad but this year’s pressing is good.”

She drank from her own cup and agreed. It was probably why they were getting along so well. Most days they would have been battling already.

“No, what I meant to discuss,” he continued, “before I was distracted by your dazzling participation,” and she tensed as she heard the habitual sarcasm in his tone, “is how to encourage heterosexual unions. They may not be the best parents but they’re the best at producing offspring, which we want, so we have to find ways to encourage them to connect in the first place and then to stay connected while they raise their young.”

“Then glorify the union.”

“I’m thinking the same thing. It’s the only way to go. We can engineer tax subsidies and other municipal considerations, but the real draw has to be blessings and divine approval. We’ll call it marriage. Only heterosexual couples will be allowed. Let’s do it.”

Zeus’s proposals almost always carried, but that one passed fast and unanimously. He and Hera finished their cups of ambrosia and in a rare demonstration of amity, she took his offered arm when they left.

“I’m sorry, but I just don’t like your laugh.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve tried to get over this, but it irritates me. It sounds phony.”

“Phony? How can you say that?! If I were putting it on, don’t you think I’d make it more attractive? Geez: whenever I really get going I make no sound. I run the risk of snorting when I finally take a breath.”

“I know, I know. It may be unfair but I can’t get over my opinion. It’s like the way you say ‘um’ right before uttering something that you think is witty – I hear that like it’s a flag signaling affectation.”

I’m sure those weren’t our exact words, but they’re close enough. The complainant was the love-of-my-life, the poet with whom I longed to starve, the man I thought I’d marry. He loved me, he loved making love to me, but he didn’t love my laugh. I thought at the time that his words were cruel; I see now that the situation was impossible.

I once knew a woman engaged to a man who didn’t like her smell. I’m not talking about any scent behind her ears, and I can assure you she bathed often enough. I remember feeling a little superior to her, knowing that I wouldn’t have stayed with the guy, or to be more honest, I never would have been with him in the first place. But now I see how much worse it would be to stay with someone who hates my laugh.

Chris and I met when I came to Cal. He was one of a small group of guys, sophomores, mostly from the East Coast. Chris was born and raised in Palo Alto, but his family lived then near Washington, DC, so maybe it made sense for him to hang around with a bunch from Delaware. I don’t know. I never asked. Come to think about it, I don’t have an inkling of how he spent his first year at Cal. I was so into myself then that it was like Chris came into existence, 18 and whole, when I met him.

Did he hate my laugh then? Maybe. Because the truth is, we didn’t like each other. We fell into immediate disagreement about something, and we continued disagreeing as our groups, a circle of California freshwomen and another of Eastern sophomoric boys, wriggled our way to intersection.

Chris and I became a couple a month or so later, after an encounter in Sproul Plaza produced a disagreement which we decided for some reason to walk off. We headed south together on Telegraph Avenue, and before we got to Ashby we weren’t disagreeing so much.

I recall finding him attractive. He had beautiful curling red-gold hair, without being obnoxiously freckled. His forearms were well-shaped and firm. He wasn’t my male ideal, but he was taller than I and weighed more and had bigger hands and feet than I do, and he was intellectually and poetically stimulating.

But then again I wonder. He didn’t resemble the dark-haired wide-chested man of my dreams. And the sex, when we got to that (it took a little while, because we were each inexperienced, and he was more hesitant than I wished) was sweet and loving but not exciting.

I sensed then and know now that we were both good people, so even though we were never a match made in heaven, we were friends, we agreed more than we disagreed, and our disagreements were academic and honorable. We were two young people about to take our flights, poised on the edge of the nest angling forward for the drop that would swoop us aloft, and our hands fit well together for that exercise.

We were together for most of our college years, which seemed like a lifetime unto itself. But Christopher and I didn’t marry. We didn’t spend our lives together or even live in the same area.

I have attributed our failure at times to his psychotic break. Once or twice I accused his ineffectual dad of killing it for me, when he asked me to take care of Chris for him. But now what I mostly remember is the time Chris told me that he couldn’t abide my laugh.

We broke up. We almost got back together but then I decided to marry Adam. And then Glen. It turned out I wasn’t very good at marriage, but it also turned out that neither of my husbands made a particularly impressive run of their lives. I’m less disappointed and happier alone. Chris never managed to find someone. He lived solo and celibate after we split up, eventually becoming a teacher and then a professor. Chris lived a life I respect. That was one of the surprises, for me.

Now here we are at the end, never able to get our timing to agree enough to be together again. Both still sweet and loving, and each respecting what the other has done. Who’d have thought it? And who’d have thought that now, of all times now, now when the cancer has just about killed him, Chris would be telling me jokes, trying to cheer me, assuring me how much he loves my laugh.

Evie had to have surgery on the ankle. They put a pin in it and couldn’t promise a complete mend. As part of her hospital care they ran a bone density scan and she learned that she does have some osteoporosis. That’s when she confessed to me that she lied about the earlier test; she’d known she was at risk for ten years.

Mike continued to try to prepare for the party after the accident. He and Jessie were working in the yard the following weekend, with Evie in the livingroom, weighty leg upon the hassock, when he fell. He broke his arm. His accident finally did in the party; the event was cancelled.

So the household consisted of a father with his right arm in a sling and cast, a mother immobile and in a noticeable degree of pain, and a hulky sulky daughter. They needed help; I started coming around again. That’s when the lid blew off their pot.

Not that I was a trigger. I was nothing but a witness. The night before last Jessie defined herself for her parents. With all the passion of her age, eyes and speech glaring, she told them she’s been called to God. “I’m serious,” she declared when Mike snorted in surprise. “For the first time in my life I know what I’m doing, where I’m going. I have been called.”

Evie said “But you’re just a kid! You’re going to go through more changes. Oooh,” and then she sank back as if those pale assertions exhausted her.

“I’ve been attending Sunday mass for months,” Jessie stated, her voice rising in obvious exasperation. Evie had told me she let Jessie attend a different church than the one to which the family belonged. Evie saw it as a healthy form of separation and said she so respected Jessie’s privacy that she never questioned where or what. “I’ve been cutting some classes so I can worship during the week too. I’m going to take the veil. You can’t stop me. Soon I’ll be known as Mary-Gabriel.”

Evie murmured “impossible” while Mike began to bluster, and Jessie/Mary-Gabriel strode toward them. Her face was engorged and her expression was murderous. I saw Mike flinch and Evie cringe and suddenly understood how bones were getting broken.

I jumped out of my chair. I shot to my feet without thinking and it was like my body interrupted Jessie’s storm. I tried to hold her and was almost floored by the force of her shrug. I managed to get her to another room, and we talked.

This belief she has may be an affectation. But there’s no question that she’s very confused and not flourishing in her home environment. Moving her out is recommended.

At least, that’s what the psychologist said.

In my opinion, it isn’t that truth is stranger than fiction; it’s cornier. An editor wouldn’t permit the puns I’ve seen, the dire consequences I’ve witnessed when friends have been a bit unwise. Maybe we can call the results ironic, but not elegant, not witty, not wise.

What’s irony, but divine sarcasm? What’s sarcasm but cheap wit?

After she told me about the molestation I realized that Evie dated Jessie’s weight gain from then. And maybe it was a classic case of using fat as sexual defense. But it might just have been self-medication and a way of punishing her mom. Jessie knew how much her fat bugged her mother.

It may have also bothered Evie that Jessie had no friends, but if so she didn’t let on to me. I know I would have worried if David had nobody to hang around with, but Evie never mentioned it and in response to any observation of mine, she always said Jessie would grow into a social life. A year ago, when I was able to observe things, I witnessed how pathetic Jessie was. One of my jobs was to pick her up from school a few times. I came early in a car she didn’t know well, and idled in a parking area different from where her parents waited, so she didn’t notice me. I saw her hulking after a Goth-dressed group, obviously longing. I watched her ready smile, her attempt to join the conversation, the way her face fell as the group ignored her. Once it even appeared that a ringleader mocked her; Jessie turned away from them with a look of utter mortification, and I accelerated to where she was heading, cheerily chirping my horn and acting like I saw nothing. Jessie seemed to spend all her off-time in her room, with her cousins at family gatherings, or at some church-connected function. My son had to socialize with her a couple of times, and he maintained that she cheated at games and mostly got away with it, because no one could stand being around her anger when she lost.

Evie recovered most of the use of her wrist in time, and she was able to handle her home life after seven weeks. I stopped coming by around then. I resumed just noticing her bad posture, and mostly paying attention to the issues in my own life. I’ve heard that teenage boys are easier to raise than girls, but it seemed like all my home time was soaked up either by David’s depression when he had girlfriend problems or by my concerns when he didn’t. I knew he was sexually active and I wasn’t sure he was safe. We were seeing Pam twice a week.

Evie and Mike decided to throw a graduation party for Jessie. I thought it was a terrible idea and apparently Jessie did too. She was still an unwilling loner and sure enough, the only RSVPs came from cousins. But Evie and Mike proceeded with their plans and it was when they were sprucing up the back garden, three weeks before the scheduled event, that Evie broke her ankle.

I couldn’t believe it.

The first time I visited her I made a joking remark about Mike smacking her around too hard and too often, and before she laughed there was a look on her face that astounded me. Her eyes did the rabbity thing I often saw when she was under pressure at the office. Like I’d struck a chord with my abuse reference. It was beyond weird. And it sure made me think about Mike and their marriage. As far as I could tell their partnership wasn’t particularly happy. But that’s how most marriages look to me and anyway, who can tell from outside?

That was the day I learned about the molestation. I don’t know why Evie never told me about it when it happened, but we sat down with coffee right after Jessie stomped off and Evie started talking. A decade earlier when Jessie was seven, there was a situation with a guy at church. He was a nice enough man, around thirty, but it turned out that he had a strong attraction to little girls and he’d already been in trouble. His faith and the church had helped him conquer temptation then, and he moved and started life over. Of course he continued to go with what worked, so he joined the church in his new community. Immediately he became involved and in time volunteered to work with the children, so that’s where he was when he failed to resist temptation again.

Luckily he didn’t get far before he was discovered. He’d helped Jessie and a few others out of most of their clothes and he’d taken some photographs, and it turned out he touched one child. That’s the girl who talked, which resulted in his dismissal and prosecution. The little girls’ families were offered counseling. Mike and Evie switched to another church.

“Didn’t they run a background check on the guy?” I asked.

“I guess not. I don’t think they were as aware of these problems then. And Mike handled all the negotiations with our old church. I was too upset. Mike thought they should have paid us something, to compensate us for all the grief, but they just tried to make it go away with comfort and sympathy and dismissing the perpetrator.”

I cast back in memory. Sure – both of us were having kid problems then. Jessie and David were each acting out. My son was so prone to outbursts when frustrated that he kept getting kicked out of all programs. Vividly, almost viscerally, I remembered the horrible cycle of time-outs, behavior contracts, suspensions, and finally ousters. We went through three therapists before we found Pam.

At the same time Evie was reporting big problems with Jessie. One of the consequences of her prematurity was a slight learning disability, and I remember that Evie attributed Jessie’s violent tantrums to her continuing failure to read. Evie and Mike got a tutor for Jessie but they didn’t seek a shrink. I thought they should have – it’s no different from hiring child care or an accountant or any other expert to whom you can delegate some of life’s work – but Evie said at the time that the reading tutor and family prayer would be enough.

(to be continued on Monday and concluded on Tuesday)

The shock to me about Jessie, when I noticed her a year ago, was her size. She has thick mahogany hair and a creamy complexion, but all I saw was body. For a person who started out so small and doesn’t have big parents, she’s grown into a tall, large-featured, heavy-set girl. I’d heard about her weight now and then from Evie, who prided herself on her size six figure and was always irked by her daughter’s girth, and I’d seen the annual Christmas photo card and sometimes the child herself, but it wasn’t until I was sharing house space with Jessie that I realized how ungainly she is.

A lot of the problem is her posture. That’s the only thing she seems to have inherited from her petite mom, and it’s bad. Jessie has wide shoulders and she carries them slumped. She might wear her weight with grace if she’d let her chest open but as it is she reminds me of a big titian-haired troll, lumbering around so her arms look too long compared to her thick legs.

Evie has always had horrible posture herself. It wasn’t that she’d had teenage height to hide, or an embarrassment of early mammary riches; she was five foot four and an average C cup. She got tested as a kid for scoliosis: negative. Five years ago she reported normal results from a bone density scan.

But she slouches. She walks with her head jutting forward so the back of her neck always bows. Her posture is so bad it counteracts her good figure, the same way a cheap cut undoes the effects of her thick dark-blonde hair and her rampant freckles diminish her skin tone. It used to be I couldn’t stop myself from advising her to straighten up; I’d even poke her gently in the middle of her back between her shoulder blades, trying to tell her body without words to align itself. But she never made an alteration and over time she seems to have built up a hump and resentment. She has also developed asthma and blames it on work, but I read somewhere that chronic bad posture can cause respiratory problems. I wonder if she’s hanging herself on a cross of skeletal imbalance. A chiropractor would have a field day with her.

Of course I don’t mean to sound critical. It’s not like I’m perfect. I’m so phobic about commitment that I not only didn’t marry my son’s father; I’ve never been able to bring myself to own real estate. I even lease my car. But I have good posture. My father saw to that. And I taught David to align his spine, use his stride, carry his own weight. So he stands up straight but he’s on an obsessive quest for a mate. It’s not like I could guard all fronts.

David broke his wrist when he was ten, so I knew a bit about the limitations. And I once sprained mine badly enough to require a brace. I’ll never forget what a challenge shoe laces were, and how long it took to get into my jeans. One of my funniest memories from then was of my boyfriend trying to help me with the jeans; he pulled straight up and hoisted me into the air by the denim. That’s when I realized we girls wriggle into our pants for a reason.

I remembered that the first time I saw Jessie help her mother into jeans. I had just arrived at Evie’s house to run errands and get her to the doctor. I had a key then because I was coming by so often. I let myself in and there was Jessie trying the same upward move my boyfriend had used. She must have yanked Evie a foot off the ground. Jessie grunted at the same time that Evie yelped. “Hey. Easy,” advised Evie. “Jeez, Ma. I’m just trying to help. You’re never happy with me.” Our eyes met as she set her mother down, and Jessie looked sullen to me. But she had low thick brows and no one was plucking them, so she would have appeared to glower no matter what. And I only saw her face for a second; then she left for school.