Dream Lover (10 page)
Betty went to her office to call Cindy Thomasini and set up an appointment for her surveillance interview. The home phone number was a Hudson County, New Jersey exchange. It wasn’t their responsibility to notify partners who weren’t living in New York. Betty got out the appropriate forms and placed Cindy in the hands of the New Jersey bureaucrats.
Cindy
I
was a good Catholic girl. My parents were strict about the oddest things when we were growing up. I wasn’t even allowed to watch the movie our school sponsored that explained the process of menstruation to the girls in fourth grade.
“Why do you want to fill your head with that garbage?” my mother said. “You have your whole life to suffer with monthlies; they don’t need to spend my tuition money forcing it down your throat. Anything my girls need to know, I will tell them. Anything the boys need, their dad will provide.” When the time finally came, she made a public spectacle of me. I went into the bathroom to pee one morning after I had just turned thirteen. I pulled down my underpants and there it was, a bright red, bloody crotch. I had a hot flash. Fear spread through my body. Did I have to tell my mother? I shared a room with Gayle and Carrie, but they were already up and gone for the day. They had boxes of pads in the closet. I went back to our room and fished around until I found what I needed. I would tell them later. I managed to get through the day, worried the flow would go through to the back of my ugly, navy blue pleated skirt. All day I kept my back to the lockers when I walked the halls to class. When I finally got to the bathroom, there was only a dot of blood. I had spent the whole day being a nervous wreck for nothing. I told my sisters that night and it was Gayle who insisted I tell our mother.
“She’ll be dragging you to the doctor’s to find out why you didn’t start. No, we have to tell her. I’ll go with you. Just buck it up. We are all tortured by her when we go through it; you’re not alone.” So Gayle dragged me to confess to my mother, who looked like she had performed a miracle by giving birth to a female who was growing up.
At dinnertime that night, we were almost done with dessert and I thought to myself,
Ah, you escaped exposure.
But I couldn’t be that lucky. My mother stood up at her end of the table and produced a big box of Kotex with a ribbon around it.
“Everybody, before you leave the table, listen up! Stand up, Cynthia.” She gave me a look that said,
Get up kid, you can’t get out of this humiliation
. “Cynthia got her monthly visitor today!” She placed the box in front of me and started clapping like a crazy woman. My sisters covered their faces and my brothers started laughing, almost falling off their chairs. Father sat at his end of the table, a huge smile plastered across his face. “You are lucky to be a girl in this day and age,” my mother continued. “You can be a mother
and
have a life! You don’t have to be chained to your family like I am!” Later, she whispered to me that I’d better make sure that period showed up each month, or else!
My mother also wouldn’t buy me a bra, so that by the time I was twelve, I was the only girl in gym class who wore an undershirt. Granted my “boobs didn’t pop out” until I was fifteen and then I thought my mother would have a cow when she noticed. I’ll never forget coming downstairs to the breakfast table on a Saturday morning in my flannel nightgown; my seven brothers and sisters already there before me, my father at the head of the table reading the paper, and my mother standing behind him with a frying pan full of scrambled eggs in her hand.
“Lord forgive us,” she said, looking at me as I came into the room. Everyone looked up. My brother Jeff was reading the funny pages and he was the only one who ignored me. “Cynthia Margaret Thomasini, what in heaven’s name do you have stuffed in your nightgown?” I could feel my face start to burn. The color had started at my navel and made the trip up my body in seconds, reaching my face in time for my sister Heather to get up from her chair. She took me by the shoulders and gently turned me around, whispering, “Let’s go up and get dressed.” She shot the look of death at my mother before we left the room, but it was too late. The rest of the kids were laughing at me. It would be remembered as the day my boobs popped out. My mother would bring that up at every family get-together after that until, finally, two years ago, we all moaned and my brother Fred said, “Ma, give it a rest, will ya?” I told her that I would never come for another Sunday dinner if she were going to bring up that story again. Our reward for such disrespectful behavior was a two-month reprieve during which my mother refused to come out of her room when we went to visit. My father and Fred would cook the Sunday meal and we had the best time without her.
She was miserable most of her life. She had a family of well-behaved, intelligent, employed children and none of us could do a thing correctly. It was a constant contradiction; she insisted that everyone come for dinner once a week, but then would complain about how much work it took to feed us. She especially took exception to everything I did. My brothers and sisters said it was because I was the baby. She’d had too many hopes for me. I was supposed to accomplish everything that the others hadn’t.
I finally made up my mind when I was newly out of college that I wasn’t going to strive anymore. I watched my sisters kill themselves getting master’s degrees and doctorates and then spend the next years raising their families, too tired to enjoy them. I know I copped out, taking that silly secretary job, and then getting involved with a married man. But it was so easy! I didn’t have to do anything taxing to please Jack. My house didn’t have to be clean, I didn’t have to buy him gifts, or remember his birthday, or figure out something different to cook for him every night. After a while, I don’t think he even noticed what I was wearing or listened to what I said. I didn’t even have to shave my legs. All I had to do was pull down my underpants and sit on him. Half the time, I didn’t even face him. It was impersonal, boring. Then last year, (now I know that he was dating Sandra by then) each time I saw him I wondered why I was bothering. But I had gotten myself into such a rut that I guess I was afraid of what would happen if I broke it off. I would be so alone.
Yesterday, a caseworker from the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services called me. I had been exposed to HIV. They don’t tell you who the infected person is in New Jersey, but I started laughing because there is only one person who could have exposed me and that was Jack Smith. The Jack Smith of Babylon, Long Island. The dead Jack Smith. I don’t even have the satisfaction of slapping his face. There is nothing I can do. I went to the lab after work today and had a blood test. They have a rapid test now, so I don’t have to wait for six days like they used to in the olden days, the caseworker told me. The early days of HIV. It’s not as bad now, she said. I wonder why they are allowed to say that. But the damage has been done. You will never tell my parents that a person can live a normal life with AIDS. I keep thinking how my mother will react when she hears what I have to tell her this time.
Maryanne
I’
m past the age where I can examine my life and make changes. I will have regrets about the way I lived for the time I have left and I probably will die unhappy. I should be able to retire without worrying about keeping a roof over my head. But it’s too late. When I first laid eyes on Jack, I knew he would be trouble. Why didn’t I run in the opposite direction? Where was my self-respect? My goal was to set a good example for my daughter, and what did I do? I brought a disease-ridden pervert into our house. All I could see was a handsome gentleman who made me feel like I was the most precious thing in the world.
I guess I am what you call a career waitress. For the past twenty years, I have waited tables at what was Gwen’s Counter. Gwen’s went out of business about two weeks ago, a month or so after I read that Jack had died. So in one fell swoop, I lost my boyfriend of almost twenty years and my livelihood. Now this latest news. It’s enough to cripple a person; to make you want to stay in bed and pull the covers up over your head.
Jack brought his mom into Gwen’s for lunch the first Wednesday I worked there. He didn’t say anything to me at that time, but I noticed him watching me out of the corner of his eye. It was a new job, but I had waited on tables in the past. Before I was married, I waitressed for a short time. I didn’t work while I was married, but then when my husband, Paul died I discovered that he had lost all of our money gambling in Atlantic City. I never even knew that he had left the state! And all along, he was taking the bus down there every Wednesday, losing his paycheck. We were living on credit and I didn’t know it until he died. Jack came in alone for breakfast the next day and teased me about getting his order wrong.
“I wanted wheat toast with roasted peppers and this is roasted rye with black pepper. Are you new here?” My husband had died less than a year before, so what I was new at was flirting. Jack was born to be flirted with, however. Even though his order was perfect, I reached over for his plate, getting just close enough so he could smell my perfume.
“Oh I am sorry! Let me change that for you,” I said.
He grabbed my arm. “I’m just kidding! You didn’t answer me. Are you new here?”
He was so handsome that I started to shake a little and could feel the sweat forming in my armpits.
How attractive!
“Yes. I’m new here.” I looked over to the counter, hoping someone needed me. No luck.
“Have coffee with me,” he asked. “The boss won’t mind.”
“No, sorry, it’s against the rules.” I turned to walk away from him. There was a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, like I got caught doing something illegal.
“Wait! Meet me after work, then.” He was persistent. I continued walking away from him.
Then curiosity got the best of me. I turned around and walked back to the table. I looked him in the eye to see if he was kidding me again, but there was a simmer going on behind those dark eyes.
Don’t answer him,
the still-small Voice said. But I was sucked in, so I ignored it. My women’s intuition was always right on target, and for some reason, I allowed my yearning for attention get the best of me that day. To make matters worse, he was younger than I was. Not by much, but just enough that it made me self-conscious. It made me feel like a charity case. And for years, that would define us as a couple; me, the older widow with a special-needs child, and Jack, the knight in shining armor come to save us. I conveyed the delusion that he was helping us to my daughter, Katherine. All through her teen years, she would wait for him as if she was waiting for a date. “Is Jack coming today?” she’d ask, pulling the blinds apart to look down on the street.
He’d usually tell me in the morning if he would be able to stop by. Every day, he came into Gwen’s for breakfast, and on Wednesday, he’d come with his mother for lunch. I knew he was married, so I had to keep quiet about us in front of her. It wasn’t easy, even after all that time. I was so hungry for information about him. When I got older, I knew I should be making plans for my future. Jack put money in trust for Katherine’s care after I was gone, and that was a huge worry off my mind. But what about me? My ego was so damaged for some reason that I didn’t figure into the equation. I didn’t allow myself to think about what would happen when I could no longer wait tables, or when Jack retired and left the city for good, moving to Long Island with his wife. I chose to live in the moment.
That day has come. Jack is gone. I went into work as usual that Monday morning. Evelyn, the manager, handed me an obituary she’d cut out of the
New York Times
on Sunday. I read the paper, but I didn’t read the obituaries—hadn’t since Paul died. I saw Jack’s name, his full name. Seeing it in print with the names of his wife and children made me physically ill. I needed to throw up. Evelyn knew about Jack and me; I had waited tables there for half my life, practically. She saw the relationship develop, and she facilitated it, letting me sit with him in the morning if it was quiet, or leave early with him if he came by to take me home.
I knew Jack was seeing a younger woman, another person who lived way up town. She lived near the colleges; I was closer to Washington Heights. They were just friends, he said, friends who slept together. When he started to see Sandra, he saw less of that other woman. I didn’t know if Sandra knew about me or the other woman. I doubt it. She seemed like someone who would expect fidelity, who would demand respect. Jack and I didn’t talk about it much; when we were together, we only had eyes for each other. He didn’t see me any less frequently after he told me that he thought he was in love with Sandra. He still needed something that Katherine and I provided for him, some grounding or lack of strife. I am totally without pretension. Everything about my life is honest and real. Except for betraying Jack’s wife. I believe Jack “de-stressed” when he was with us.
With Jack, sex was just sex. He needed the release. He made sure I was satisfied, and that was kind of him. My husband never did know where my clitoris was. On rare occasions, Jack would visit me after Katherine was asleep and we would go to bed. But most of his visits were in the early evening, right after I got off work. He enjoyed sitting around my old kitchen table, drinking coffee with Katherine and me. He did puzzles with her all the time—the most boring, childish, jigsaw puzzles that I didn’t like doing. But Jack could really relate to her. We would have a laugh or two; he would stretch and yawn, and then get up like his back was killing him. Katherine got hysterical when he did that.
“You’re not that old!” she would protest. He would make a show of walking to the door hunched over, holding his lower back, while we laughed at him. He’d turn and wave to her and she would come up to him for a hug.
“I’ll see you in the morning,” he’d say, and then give me a kiss good-bye. That was it. He watched my daughter grow up into a young woman who would never get married, never hold down a job, just barely able to dress herself. I think he loved her. Katherine had a beautiful wardrobe. I never expected any gifts from him, but for her they arrived weekly. Huge boxes from Macy’s on Thirty-fourth Street were delivered to my shabby house. Or from the teen shop at the World Trade Center—I think it was called Dots—and when she got older, designer things from the fancy shops on Fifth Avenue. Always for Katherine. Jack would call in the afternoon when she was due home.