Love's Illusions: A Novel (20 page)

When I woke up I was lying on the couch with Michael kneeling next to me on the floor, saying something, and wiping my face with a wet paper towel. “Oh thank God,” I heard him say as he kissed my cheeks. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m okay,” I said pushing myself up into a sitting position. “I’m okay – that hasn’t happened to me since I was 16, when I was a bridesmaid at my cousin’s wedding, and fainted at the altar.” I smiled to myself at the memory.

“I’m so sorry, babe. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything, but I just couldn’t lie to you the way he has. I had to tell you.” I could still hear the pain in his voice, and still saw it in his eyes as he knelt there holding my hands together in his. “Please forgive me. I want to be with you, just you, please?”

I nodded, “Why? I just need to know why – what did I do…”

“
You
didn’t do anything,” Michael said. “You’re not to blame – I am. I made a mistake. I’m not sure why. I guess I was trying to prove to myself that I… that I wasn’t in love with you, but instead, I proved just the opposite.”

He was looking me in the eyes; all I wanted at that second was to make this piece of the day go away, to get back to the perfection of the way it began. But I couldn’t speak and just stared back at him.

“I’ve been with probably a hundred women in my life,” he said rising to sit next to me on the couch. I gave him a sidelong glance at that statement. He leaned towards me, and gave me a quick kiss on my cheek saying, “No, please, just listen. I’m trying to tell you something.” I nodded and he continued. “I’ve never felt much for any of them. I mean, sure, there were some I liked, but I’ve never,
never
, felt what I do for you. Everyone – all my friends, Jeff, Rick, my mother and Candy and even Tom – everyone could see it except for me, or maybe I just didn’t want to admit I’d fallen for a married woman. Maybe I was afraid you’d go back to him. I hated him being back in Chicago. I don’t know, but whatever it was, well the guys set me up with this girl and… Jackie, I’m not making excuses, but you have to know – all I could see was your face. I was with her, but – she wasn’t you, it was
you
I wanted. I left and I knew for sure… I’m so sorry. I’m so very sorry.”

If I didn’t have or want any real claims on him, then why did I feel like shit? How much was I supposed to handle at one time? I was 20 years old, married to a gay guy, falling for a ‘bad boy’, on the verge of flunking out of college, living off my parents with no way of earning a real living, and
he
… the guy that had been so wonderful to me these past months, the consummate lover, the man who kept me sane, had just told me he cheated. I just couldn’t deal with all this. I felt vulnerable and numb at the same time. All I wanted was numbness, but one thing I’d learned was that I couldn’t kill the pain without also killing the joy, the absolute joy, the happiness, I had last night with Michael would go away too. Shit, shit, shit!

Michael and I talked and then talked some more. I knew my funky mood of the last few months was taking a toll on the two of us. No matter what he said, I blamed myself for him turning to someone else – but he’d come back. I hadn’t lost Michael because of it – it made his feelings stronger.
Wasn’t that exactly what I wanted from Stephen after all when he was in the hospital?
I thought.

I had an internal battle going on. I was hurt, but knew I’d hurt even more if he wasn’t in my life and, God help me, I believed him. I wanted to believe him. I verbalized all the thoughts in my head as best I could, and he reciprocated in kind. I had never had that kind of conversation with anyone at all before, and by the end, I felt defenseless, exposed again like I was last night. I was petrified, shaking inside all the way to my backbone. I needed his strength right now. He had risked it all to be honest with me, risked my exploding and throwing him out, knowing I wouldn’t like what he had to say. He was exposed, vulnerable too… maybe that would be enough. Right or wrong, I made up my mind to get past this. Today would be the new start of our relationship – there was nothing to forgive, just to try to forget.

I decided to try applying honesty to my relationship with my parents as well, telling them about my eye, and even giving them a small portion of the story about Stephen’s hospital stay. They weren’t happy with Stephen (or me for leaving the hospital information out of the ‘discussion’ at Christmas). They were still against my getting a divorce, although I sensed the beginning of understanding, they knew it was inevitable. One evening I got a phone call from them saying Stephen’s mother, Virginia, had contacted them saying I had stolen an antique mantel clock that had been in her family ‘forever’, and was refusing to give it back. What a bunch of bullshit; I hauled the box of Stephen’s stuff down to Marshall Field’s the next day intending to drop it off at Joe’s office – I didn’t want that fuckin’ clock or any of the other crap he had left. I had intended to just leave it there with a note, but unfortunately ran into Joe on my way out the door.

“Will you give that box to Stephen please?” I asked in as nice a voice as I could muster.

“I can’t,” Joe replied. “Stephen left Chicago again. I don’t think he’s coming back this time.”

“Do you know where he went; maybe have an address so I can send it?”

“No, he took off with that guy from American Airlines, the one that got him the ticket back here last October. I think he lives in New York now, but I don’t know where. The guy has a ton of money so I’m sure it’s a nice place, but I don’t have an address.”

“Never mind, I’ll just send it to his mother – she’s the one who wants this crap,” I replied picking up the box again and starting towards the door.

Putting his hand on my arm, he stopped me and remarked, “Well at least your eye looks like it healed without any problems.”

I smiled, nodded and said, “Yes it did – thanks for the frozen peas.” We both hesitated, the awkwardness of the moment growing; I moved my arm and turned to go, but stopped again in the doorway. Looking over my shoulder for an instant I said, “Thanks Joe.”

“Sure, let me know if I can do anything to help. And Jackie – I’m sorry.”

After that, thoughts of Stephen stayed pretty much at bay. When they did pop up, I resolutely pushed them away by getting stoned, working on some mundane chore or concentrating on the task at hand which was usually not screwing up anymore at school. But spring was coming, and all I was accomplishing was procrastinating one more day. I had to get this divorce thing over with and soon.

I had zero energy for the task, but somehow, pulling every ounce of whatever was left in me together, I managed to thumb through the yellow pages under Attorneys - Divorce, and found what seemed like thousands of them listed. I picked a couple names at random – ones that advertised a free consultation and set up appointments. Both had big, fancy offices on LaSalle Street; both had snooty looking secretaries; and both made me feel insignificant. I hated their grey, three piece suit image, and the way they seemed to look down their noses at me like I shouldn’t be there in my blue jeans, dirtying up their fancy upholstery. Even though one was old, fat and balding, and the other was younger, thinner and blonder, they looked and sounded like twins to me. I couldn’t wait to leave. The first thing both did was to inform me about their fees, $600 and $650, since it was a simple divorce (I didn’t have any kids or property to deal with), payable half now, and the other half before the final hearing. I didn’t have that kind of money.

As soon as I got home I called Bernie to see if he could help; we decided to meet again at the Water Tower Café the following Saturday. The place hadn’t changed since the last time we met, the aroma of great coffee still filled the air. “Hi Bernie,” I greeted him with a broad smile, and a hug as he bounded through the door. We had spoken a few times since our last meeting here, and he had even come to The Canteen one evening with some of his law school friends.

“Hi, Jackie, how are you? Still working at that crazy bar? It was wild – I would never have pictured you in a place like that when I knew you before,” he said.

I laughed, “I’m not sure how to take that Bernie… but yeah, I’m still there. It fits my schedule well, and it’s always interesting… Kind of like my second home now.”

We chatted over our coffee for a few minutes then Bernie announced that he had taken the liberty of asking a friend named John Whittaker to join us. Although Bernie had recently passed the Bar, he didn’t feel he should handle the divorce himself, but John could. John was a few years older than him, had practiced law for three years, and recently decided to go back to school for a doctoral degree in psychology. Bernie had filled John in on my situation, and John was actually anxious to meet me. He was writing his thesis on the psychology of divorce, or something like that, and was hoping I’d be willing to talk to him, in depth, in exchange for the legal work. Dumbfounded, with no chance to think things through, I found myself shaking John’s hand a few minutes later.

John Whittaker was an attorney in good standing in the State of Illinois, a member of the Chicago Bar Association, and worked for a medium size firm here in the city. I guessed him to be about 30-32 years old – he was about the same height as Bernie, a clean cut, nice looking man with dark brown hair and wire rimmed glasses, dressed today, in blue jeans and a casual blue striped shirt; he looked nothing like the two attorneys I had met on LaSalle. John told us how he developed an interest in the underlying reasons for divorce – going in some cases from love to hate; he was trying to find a commonality in how a relationship unraveled. He tactfully mentioned he had not yet spoken with anyone where one of the spouses was homosexual. He would handle all the legalities for free if I would agree to a minimum of three, one hour, recorded interviews telling him about my relationship with Stephen from the point we met to now, thus cutting the financial cost of the divorce to any filing fees and court costs, which he estimated to be less than $50. Bernie had told him the basics, but he wanted to hear everything from my point of view.

As we spoke my mind raced through all the pros and cons – or at least as many as I could think of at that point. John assured me that any information used in his thesis would have all identifying details, like names, changed. We set up our first interview for three weeks from now at my apartment – I could change my mind at any point with a simple phone call. John excused himself shortly after – his wife was due to deliver their first child in about a week so he wanted to get home as soon as possible. Something about hearing that simple, loving statement filled me with a warmth and knowledge that I was making the right decision.

John and I met as planned. He was now the proud father of a little girl named Amanda. I had never been one of those women who went ape-shit over babies; I didn’t coo or get all stupid when I saw one – in fact, I moved as far away from babies as fast as possible before someone suggested that I hold it. I had never changed a diaper, and never wanted to, seeing little use in bringing new life onto a planet that was on the “Eve of Destruction” as the Barry McGuire song stated –but John’s joy at this event was unmistakable, and I was happy for him. In some ways it made it easier to tell him the details of my relationship with Stephen, but in other ways it made it a lot harder, unable as I was of picturing myself ever being married again, let alone in a marriage good enough to produce a child.

At our first meeting we began the necessary paperwork. Illinois did not have ‘no fault’ divorce in the sense of being able to go to court, and tell the judge that you just didn’t want to be married anymore. That’s what ‘no fault’ meant to me, but not to the law, unless I wanted to document that we had been living apart for at least two years and then file. I couldn’t deal with the turmoil in my head for that long, so I was going to have to have grounds. John told me I could allege homosexuality, but somehow, I just couldn’t do it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t accuse him of that in official documents – Stephen was still ‘in the closet,’ as Joe had told me more than once now, and I just couldn’t put it out there for the world
. Why the fuck am I insisting on protecting him – or maybe it’s me I’m protecting
, so we decided to use physical cruelty – I had witnesses to my eye injury.

The other issue was not having an address for him, which meant we would have to serve Stephen by public notice. Much to my surprise this didn’t mean putting an ad in the
New York Times
or some other popular paper; all you did was place a notice in various legal publication that no one read unless they were looking for legal notices. It would slow down getting the final divorce some, but John assured me that everything should be final by the end of the year at the latest – the courts in Chicago were backed up.

The questions John asked about our relationship were always framed in a supportive way – most of the time just asking me to describe a circumstance, how I felt about what happened or what choices I saw for myself. I could see why John was pursuing a degree in psychology; he was very easy to talk to, behaving more like a doctor than an attorney. The real issue with digging up all the old emotions between us was that it brought Stephen back into the forefront of my mind as one question led to another, and I had a difficult time turning it all off again after the interview session was over.

Michael said I was ‘different’ after talking to John, that it took me days to get back to being the person he knew and loved after digging up the past; he wasn’t very happy when I told him I had agreed to a fourth session, but also seemed to understand, flippantly commenting that at least he would “get to console me” – a statement I took as meaning that sex after these sessions was ‘different’ than usual too. I sort of understood - sometimes I didn’t recognize myself in the mirror – who the hell was I anyhow? Often while talking to John my little pixie friend would pop up sitting on his shoulder, arms and legs crossed with her chin resting on her hand analyzing every word – dissociated from the emotions of it, just picking apart my ability to put those emotions into words.