Sunday evening, mom and dad sit at the dinner table. She doesn’t waste time to tell him about her experience with Charlie. No peas are tentatively shoved around her plate. No syllables are washed down with a glass of wine before they complete themselves.
“Dave, I need to tell you…I had sex with a man last night.”
Dad shoves peas around his plate and doesn’t reply. Eventually his thoughts are sorted into a logical, legume shaped blockade, separating emotion from reason. He looks up, an unsettled expression of sheepishness and hurt on his face.
“I, I don’t know what to say.”
He pauses again - long enough this time for the wall clock’s second hand to regulate both their heartbeats.
“Nance, I know don’t have the right to be angry.”
He doesn’t ask for details so they bury it. We shape our narratives from the known details of our lives. But hidden truths and the ones we bury also shape us, sometimes more powerfully than our conscious selves would care to admit. Truth is a persistent, nocturnal companion who eventually needs daylight to survive.
In this story, the companion’s name is Charlie.
A week later, mom stacks cans of tuna in the pantry of their Ann Arbor rental. My three year old brother Eric throws pick-up sticks on the kitchen floor between her shopping bags. As she bends over to tidy up his pile, she hears a confident tap, tap, tap on the front screen door. Mom is an enthusiastic and easy extrovert and already has a handful of good friends in their new life in Michigan. She walks over to the door assuming it’s one of her girlfriends stopping by for a chat. It takes her a second to recognize the sunny-faced young man standing on the other side of the door.
“Hi Nancy!” Charlie’s voice is lyrical and warm. The weekend at the Mariposa Festival floods her, eddies of caution and thrill spiral into her belly.
“Charlie! What a surprise!” She masks her reservation with a cheery welcome and invites him in, uncertain of how he even found her residence. Did she share this address during a moment of careless abandon? Did she tell Charlie her last name? Does she know his?
They sit at the kitchen table and make small talk. Eric bounces easily up and down on mom’s lap, then Charlie’s. In the pedestrian light of a weekday kitchen, they are strangers to each other—friendly strangers. Charlie is easy with himself and his surroundings, putting mom at ease as well.
“My husband Dave knows about us. I told him the night I returned home.”
Charlie nods steadily, revealing nothing. Does his heart sink in this moment or is it unleashed, a wild dog picking up the bloody scent of mom’s unavailability?
“There is no room for more exploration.” She says. “And I think what I really need to do is work on my marriage.”
A growing sense of shame burns into her cheeks as she realizes this man sitting across from her is still very much a boy. A recent college graduate. She, on the other hand, is an almost thirty year old woman with a toddler and marital problems. She doesn’t want to hurt Charlie. His playful kindness is effervescent. He seems confident and at ease, but is he hurt?
“That’s alright.” He replies. “But it’s a gorgeous day so are you up for a picnic? I hitchhiked all the way over here. Got nothing else to do.”
Mom has her hands full with a restless toddler, it is a beautiful summer day and Charlie has access to a private pond with a cabin and canoe. She thinks, I can do this. It’s innocent. Friendly. So they pack some towels and a change of diapers and clothes for Eric and hop into the car. Mom’s car, that is. They stop at a corner market, buy some cheese, salami and a baguette and head off on a day trip.
Nothing remarkable happens, unless you are more of the poetic mind and agree that sunshine, a canoe and three humans enjoying the company of each other is enough. Later in life, Eric jokes with me and says, “I checked out your dad that day. He was a good guy.” Charlie’s playfulness is a welcome contrast to dad’s more serious and studious nature. There are no expectations, no secrets. But hidden just below the surface of this picturesque scene, there are not three, but four humans (one still in embryonic form) on that perfect midwestern summer day.
Reaching up to rest a hand on my chest now, I listen to the solid thump of my heart and wonder—on that day, did the tiny fertilized egg nestled into mom’s uterine wall undergo a rapid and ecstatic cellular division as she recognized the laughter of her origins?
A few years later, I sit in the corner of the family room sofa watching Wisconsin Educational Television Network with a cheese sandwich gripped in my greasy hands. I am fixated on a blond, charismatic man singing songs about the history of our state with his dog Ranger at his feet. Mom walks in the room and sees Charlie and me staring at each other through a phosphorescent screen and stops in her tracks. The three of us hold a brief, televised communion.
Happy Mother’s Day mom! (And thanks for allowing me to share some of the more intimate details of your beautiful life.) 💛
OH.MAH.GAWD.
I also want to thank your mama for allowing her story to be shared because it is RIVETING!!!