An Intimate Life (25 page)

Most important, my children were happy and healthy. Michael continued to be a loving father who built a strong and ongoing rapport with both Jessica and Eric. I didn’t know many kids who could discuss their thoughts, feelings, worries, and dreams with their father the way mine could. I loved how Michael listened—really listened—respectfully and attentively to them. I don’t wish every woman could have a husband like Michael, but I do wish every child could have a father like him.

My feelings about our open marriage remained complicated. I was never happy to share Michael with other women, and I felt a pang of jealousy whenever he left to see Meg. At the same time, my outside relationships enriched my life so much that I felt something like gratitude to Michael for freeing me enough to enjoy them without guilt or deception.

The only danger now was that someone would eventually want more than what a married couple with children could give to a secondary relationship. Emotions and attachments had to be managed, gauged just right to fit into the scheme we had constructed. At the center lay Michael, me, and the kids. Other relationships orbited around us, and it could all work out so long as everyone on the periphery stayed happy there.

It was a cool fall day in 1978 when I first found out that Meg no longer was. She asked that Michael and I meet her at her apartment in Berkeley on a Saturday morning. It was earlier than I usually left the house on a weekend, but we had planned a busy day with the kids, and I wanted to get our meeting out of the way. I smelled homemade waffles and coffee as soon as I walked into her tiny, one-bedroom flat. If the circumstances had been different, my appetite probably would have perked up. As it was, when Meg handed me a plate of food and a mug of coffee I knew they would go to waste.

Meg’s eyes were rimmed with red and she looked like she hadn’t slept.

“How are you, Meg?” I asked.

“I’m fine.”

By force of habit I almost said, “Good, thanks,” but stopped myself when I realized she hadn’t asked how I was.

We sat in her living room and only Michael started eating.

“I know this is awkward, but I needed to—to—”

Meg burst into tears. Michael put his fork down and handed her a tissue.

“What are you people doing?” she said, her voice breaking.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Do you know what I had to do, Cheryl?”

I stared at her blankly. I had no idea what she was talking about.

“I had to have an abortion. Michael got me pregnant and I had to have an abortion.”

Michael got her pregnant? I assumed he was taking precautions. He chose me because he thought I would make a good mother and he always said the only reason to get married was to have kids. “Kids need two loving, involved parents.” I couldn’t count how many times I had heard him say that. Surely, he understood that he wouldn’t be able to be a good father to two families at the same time. Was this just a slip up?

Michael put his head in his hands.

“Meg, I’m sorry you had to do that, but—”

“Do you two understand how you toy with people?”

I felt bad for Meg, but at the same time I was angry. She was an adult who had gone into the relationship with Michael knowing that he was a married man with two kids. Yes, it was an open marriage, but a marriage nonetheless. He had responsibilities to me and his children that came first. No one lied to her. She didn’t enter the tryst under false pretenses. There was no bait and switch. Besides, who did she think would support a child? Michael didn’t have a job. I was the sole provider for my family. Meg earned a meager income as a teacher. And why in the world weren’t they using birth control?

“Do you? Do you get that?” Meg said.

“Wait a minute. How old are you?” I shot back. “You’re a grown woman. You knew what you were getting into. I’m sorry you’ve been hurt, Meg, but Michael was straight with you from the beginning.”

Meg continued to weep. I moved my food around my plate, and Michael stared down as though he was trying to decode a cypher in the rug beneath him.

“It’s not right,” Meg sobbed.

Michael got up and put his hand on Meg’s back. She hugged him and he rocked her in his arms while he looked at me, an apology in his eyes. I was seething and couldn’t wait to get Michael alone. I collected the plates and coffee cups, brought them into the kitchen, washed and dried them, and then washed a few other plates that were in the sink. When I returned to the living room Meg had calmed down enough for us to make a graceful exit.

“What the hell is going on?” I demanded the minute I slammed the car door shut. “How did she get pregnant? Aren’t you using birth control?”

“She’s on the Pill, but you know it’s not 100 percent effective. We were just unlucky. What can I do about it?” Michael said.

“I’ll tell you what you can do about it. Wear a rubber. Get a vasectomy. Have her get a diaphragm. Don’t rely just on the Pill. Make it 100 percent, Michael.”

“I know. I know. We’ll figure out something. It won’t happen again. I promise.”

I believed him. Outside relationships were okay; outside families were not. We both knew that.

I didn’t see Meg again until nearly a year later, in October 1979. By this time my relationship with Bob was going strong, and I believed that the boundaries had been made sufficiently clear to Meg—and Micheal—at our uncomfortable breakfast. The day she came by I was on the phone chatting with my brother, who still lived in New England, when the doorbell rang. I put down the phone and when I opened the door I found Meg standing on our front porch. We looked at each other for a moment, both of us slightly surprised. Finally, I said hello. She told me she was there to pick up a turntable that Michael had stored for her in our basement. To my relief, I heard our bedroom door open and Michael soon rescued me from the awkward moment.

I picked up the phone again and talked to my brother for close to an hour. A few minutes before we hung up I looked out the front window and saw Meg unlock her car door and Michael load the turntable into the backseat. Something looks different about her, I thought. Then it occurred to me that she was wearing overalls. This was an odd choice for Meg, who normally wore athletic clothes. Spandex leggings and long T-shirts were a virtual uniform for her.

Weird, I thought, but what did I care? I had better things to do than ponder Meg’s bizarre sartorial choice.

In 1980, my daughter was fourteen and my son was eleven. They were in the angst-soaked preadolescent and teen years and I was determined to see them through it with the sensitivity and compassion that I didn’t get from my parents. I tried to be the relaxed, sensitive, helpful mother that mine never was to me. I wanted my kids to be able to come to me with anything and to never fear my anger.

I still harbored anger toward my parents, but I’d tried to mend the rift with them, for both myself and my children. Mom and Dad loved their grandkids and I wanted my daughter and son to have as many adoring adults in their lives as possible. I had paid a heavy price for carrying around anger toward them all those years and letting it go was something I gradually worked through in therapy and in life. At least twice a year I returned to Salem for a visit. My parents’ relationship with Michael had thawed some, but not enough for him to want to join me on most of those trips. In early 1980, I decided I would go back to Massachusetts for a visit in May.

Shortly after I confirmed the dates of my trip I got a call from my friend Brendan, a lawyer with a thriving practice in San Francisco. He had reservations he had to cancel for a weekend at Yosemite’s Ahwahnee Hotel, complete with dinner in their stunning dining room on both nights. They were for early May. Did Michael and I want to take them?

The Ahwahnee Hotel is an architectural marvel that combines a number of classical and modern styles. It has a wonderful eatery that offers breathtaking views of the Yosemite wilderness. On our own Michael and I would never have been able to afford a weekend there, but thanks to Brendan, we suddenly had a chance to get away in style. Michael looked forward to it as much as I did.

I always faced a visit back home with a certain amount of anxiety, but now I knew that just a week before I left I could relax and rejuvenate in the middle of one of the most tranquil and beautiful places on earth. I decided that I would treat myself to a new dress for dinner at the Ahwahnee. It had been a long time since I had indulged in an extravagance that was all mine. Unlike most of my clothes, which came from secondhand shops, I would be the first one to wear my new ensemble.

I woke up early one Saturday morning in February and went into San Francisco. I spent the day at department stores and boutiques searching for just the right dress for my getaway. Sure, it was early. The trip was still months away, but I was overdue for a splurge. I finally found a green, sleeveless, silk dress with a cinched waste and hand-beading around its scalloped neckline. I tried it on and turned around in the mirror to see myself from all angles. It was perfect. I would look as sophisticated as anyone else at the exclusive Ahwahnee. It meant parting with $200 I had scraped together in the last few months, but it wasn’t often that I got a chance for a lavish trip and I was going to make the most of it.

I looked forward to the trip for months. I navigated the hectic schedule of any working mom, reminding myself that my weekend of luxury was drawing closer. Sometimes, after a tough day, I peaked at the dress hanging in the closet or tried it on and reminded myself that I would soon have a break from my workaday life. I was also looking forward to some much-needed time alone with Michael. We rarely got a chance to be together without the kids, and when we did we reacquainted ourselves with the reasons we fell in love. Lately it felt like we were drifting apart, and I hoped that our jaunt would rekindle the intimacy between us.

On the Thursday before we were set to leave for Yosemite I took the afternoon off from work. I still needed to pick up my tickets at the travel agency for my trip back East later that month, and I wanted plenty of time to pack. I stood in my bedroom and looked into the open mouth of my suitcase. I was trying to figure out how to fold the elegant dress I had bought so that it wouldn’t wrinkle. I decided not to take any chances. Instead of packing it away I would keep it on its hanger and lay it out in the backseat of the car. All I had to do was cover it with the garment bag that I knew I had somewhere and the dress would arrive in pristine condition.

At the time Michael and I had a space-saver bed that was built atop a set of drawers. Michael made it shortly after we had moved into our house. Even though I didn’t like it at first, I had to admit that in our glorified closet of a bedroom having a dresser and bed in one made sense. I looked through the drawers on my side of the bed, but the garment bag was nowhere to be found. I walked over to Michael’s side. What a slob, I thought as I looked around. As usual, his side of the room was littered with candy wrappers, newspapers, and old tissues. A half-finished bottle of Dr. Pepper stood next to the lamp on the nightstand. I had long ago given up trying to keep his area neat. I slid open the top drawer and pulled out the sweaters and T-shirts that were in it. That’s when I saw the letters that lay at the bottom of the drawer.

There were about twenty-five of them, all from Meg to Michael, postmarked from a city in the Pacific Northwest. I took them out and laid them on the bed. Then I arranged them in chronological order, my heart pounding and my hands shaking. I felt like I wanted to run. I had to read these letters, but I had to get out of there to go pick up my tickets too. My skin felt as confining as a prison cell. I have to get my tickets, I thought. Then impulse took over. I grabbed an old tote bag, gathered the letters together so I wouldn’t break their order, and shoved them into it.

I drove several blocks and pulled into a parking garage just outside of the travel agency. I opened the tote bag and fingered the pile of letters. My limbs felt leaden and my jaw ached from squeezing it so hard. One by one, I read through the missives that detailed Meg’s pregnancy. She wrote of how excited her parents were to have a grandchild on the way; about doctor’s visits and potential names; and she told Michael how much she missed him and their mind-blowing sex, the sex that gave her the child she so wanted. “The doctor says it could happen any day now,” she wrote in one of her later dispatches.

It’s hard to describe the cascade of emotions that seized me while I read. Anxiety, rage, and desperation took hold. It was the emotional equivalent of the car wreck we had suffered on our way out West. These were feelings of grotesque intensity and I could no more think them away than I could will away the physics of the car crash. Both forces were too strong for me to escape.

I sat in the car for close to an hour, trying to compose myself enough to go into the travel agency and get my plane ticket for Boston. I took out my wallet and counted out the money for my trip. I did that two more times just to forestall having to see anyone. I put the money back into its envelope and stepped out of the car. As I walked toward the exit a tall man loped toward me. I think it was at this time that I dropped my money and that the man must have scooped it up and took off with it. All I know is that when I got into the travel agency I was missing $400.