This is how it finally thawed with Betty: On the morning I went back to New York after my father’s death, she rode with me to Lambert Field, where we were driven by the man who now took her places far from home. Her eyes were not good enough to drive outside town much anymore, and by now the highway made her nervous rather than excited. At a hotel near the airport, where we once went on hot weekends to swim, I climbed the steps onto the shuttle bus. In parting, Betty offered few words, a nod, a bunch of wrapped sandwiches, and a bundle of cookies with gumdrops, a kind difficult to bake that were once my favorite.
I thought I had seen the last of her for a while. We would, as she said, go our own ways, and I watched her every step back to the car where the driver hunched over the wheel just like my father had. But as I was waiting for the bus to pull out, there she was again, ascending the stairs of the bus, careful of every step and holding a cup of coffee, its steam rising up to her face. Walking to my seat, she offered the cup, gripping it tightly to avoid a spill, though it was very hot, and not letting go until I had wrapped my fingers around it. When she passed it to me, our hands touched lightly. She patted me on the shoulder, wavered a bit when the engine of the bus started to fire up. This is how we left it.
Gradually, we came to a truce, negotiated by distance, time apart, loyalties, and love. Silence was a condition, unnamed but ever present, or maybe just an inevitable result. There would be no intrusions, no questions, no inquiries about circumstances, details, people I might have cherished, or been hurt by, or loved. I would never miss a Christmas or summer vacation at home after my father died. I went back whenever it was possible, and there was no doubt of the love between us, but there was part of me that never went home again, at least not for a long time. I no longer felt on solid ground there. I think I am still hoping she will look up from her newspaper and ask me how my life has really been.
I don’t blame my parents for any hurts. I blame myself more than anyone, my silence, but everything in the world where I was raised told me I was bad and wrong and I took it in. I didn’t want to inflict it on them. I am trying to forgive myself for not getting us all through this in a better way, but lately, being here, remembering, has helped me see what I carried. Everything I heard, from every corner, when I was young told me I was bad. Nothing said the world had open arms. When I came home to help my mother and walked into the room where when I was younger I lay awake worrying about the future, I remembered all that fear and trying to put it away and sleep a night through.
What would I have done with a diamond ring? It made her think of things she thought I was missing. She made it into something that would suit the situation better.
Yesterday, on television, I heard the story of a Georgia legislator who is trying to bar gay children from attending public schools. I threw my shoe at the television and yelled out, “Fuck you, bastard.”
He would take us all back to that same place. I hate that man and everyone like him. What has become of kindness?
Every week or so, a gay kid somewhere jumps off a bridge or slashes his wrists. I am told that a boy near here hanged himself because his father could not accept who he was. On television, I listen to the things they say, the right-wingers, and fundamentalists, and all the people who consolidate their power by hurting other people. I want to cover up the ears of kids and say, “Do not take it in.” I took it in. I really did. I heard everything that people in the world around me said about who I was. It hurt me, but I thought I had no right to say anything because I was wrong. I didn’t know what silence would cost, how it would change my life. It takes a long time to outrun the things that the world drills into you.
Our struggle for words was just a tiny battle in a small place that is disappearing. No one will remember it but me.
. . .
After my father died and I went back to work, Tessa Hadley—a woman highly attuned to issues of aging and appearance—told me I looked older. She said that the death of a parent can often bring on early menopause. Or “low T.”
I didn’t think I had early menopause. “Low T?” I asked.
“Testosterone.”
“I don’t think I ever had that much.”
Tessa assured me that everything changes when parents die, when the generation ahead is gone and we are the next to go.
“The body grieves,” she told me, shaking her head and raising a finger to her lips. “The body grieves.”
“Be still,” I told her.
I didn’t look young anymore. After years of wearing contact lenses, I went back to my glasses. I just didn’t care so much how I looked, if at all.