Then Comes Marriage (10 page)

Believe it or not, two minutes later we heard a knock at our door. I cautiously opened it, and there—incredibly—stood the social worker again. “I'm sorry,” she said, “I just remembered something I forgot to ask. May I come back in?” I could sense Rachel's wariness as we had already spent more than two hours being interrogated about some of our most private experiences, but what else could we say? We invited her back in, and she got right to the point.

“I wanted to ask, what do you plan to say to Jacob about your family?” she said.

Rachel and I looked at her blankly. “What do you mean?” Rachel asked.

“Well, being a family with two moms,” she said, “I'm just wondering what you plan to say to him about that.”

To her credit, Rachel kept her cool. She explained that we would tell Jacob that there are many different kinds of families, and that some kids have a mom and a dad, some kids have only one parent, some have two moms or two dads, some are raised by their grandparents, but what makes a family is that you love and take care of each other. We were both feeling pretty pleased with Rachel's answer, but the social worker frowned.

“Well, that's not exactly what I mean,” the woman said. “What are you going to say to him when he's grieving the loss of the father?”

Rachel and I stared at the woman, flabbergasted. And she was not done yet.

“You know, when Jacob is eight and goes to the park, and he's with his friend Johnny, and Johnny's playing ball in the park with his father,” she said, “what are you going to say to him about why he does not have a father to play ball with?” I just closed my eyes, and thought to myself,
She deserves what is coming next
.

“Well, by the time he's in that Manhattan park playing with his friend Johnny,” Rachel began, her voice a sheet of ice, “Johnny's father will probably be on his third wife. And if Johnny's lucky, his dad may still be paying child support on a regular basis. So I don't think I'm going to be explaining anything to Jacob about that issue. Also, in case you were wondering, most of the abuse that happens to children occurs within the family by a male relative they know. I worked for an organization that provides shelter, counseling, and legal services for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, and child abuse”—Rachel was on a roll now—“and I would be glad to provide you more information about that issue if you're interested.”

For one excruciating moment, Rachel and the woman just stared at each other. Then the woman said weakly, “I did not mean to offend you.”

“Too late,” Rachel responded.

I then jumped in to say, “Okay, so I guess that's that, then? Thank you so much for coming by!” I ushered her back out the door, and by that point, I think she was as glad to leave as we were to see her go. She did end up giving us a positive report, and the adoption ultimately went through, so there were no lasting repercussions from the visit. But coming just three weeks after the heartbreak of losing the New York marriage case, I felt devastated all over again at having to face so much official ignorance and indifference.

I was not the only New Yorker struggling with the repercussions of our loss in
Hernandez
. Just four blocks away from my apartment, a couple of women in their seventies had been waiting nearly forty years to get married in New York. Now that I had lost the New York marriage case, it was clear they could not do so, and they needed to decide what to do next.

5

A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT

O
nce we had lost the case for marriage equality in New York, Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer had a decision to make. They had been hoping to get married in their home state of New York since traveling was very difficult for Thea, whose three-decade battle with progressive multiple sclerosis had rendered her quadriplegic. (By then, Thea's motor skills had deteriorated to the point where she could move only her left hand, but that was enough for her to control her mechanized wheelchair and use her computer.) After the
Hernandez
decision, no one knew when, or even if, New York would have marriage equality, although the New York courts had started to recognize marriages between gay couples entered into out of state.

“Do you want to get married in Canada?” Edie asked Thea one afternoon in the summer of 2006.

“Not really,” Thea answered (presumably thinking about how difficult it would be for her to travel). “But if you really want to do it, we can.”

“No, that's okay,” Edie said. She certainly did not want to have to
schlep
Thea all the way to Toronto with all of the necessary equipment—ramps, lifts, et cetera—that would be required.

That is where the matter stood until the following spring, after Thea had seen one of her doctors. Despite her physical disability, Thea was as sharp intellectually as she had always been. As a psychologist, she continued to see a full slate of therapy patients. She had Edie to boot, so her life was very happy and fulfilling despite the MS. But on this visit, the doctor had terrible news for both of them: Thea's heart had weakened considerably. Without invasive open-heart surgery to replace a valve (which Thea was understandably not willing to undergo), she likely would not live for more than another year.

The very next morning after receiving this sobering diagnosis, Thea woke up, turned to Edie, and asked, “Do you still want to get married?”

“Yes,” Edie answered. “I do.”

“Me too,” said Thea.

So in late May 2007, Edie and Thea flew to Toronto with four best women and two best men, along with a box of tools to disassemble and reassemble Thea's electric wheelchair. Thea and Edie were married in a small ceremony at a hotel connected to the Toronto airport, so that Thea's wheelchair could be rolled straight into the hotel. More than forty years after they first met, Thea and Edie were, at long last, a legally married couple. What had once seemed like a fantastic dream, something that they could only acknowledge privately between the two of them, was now a matter of legal and public record. Despite Thea's somber medical prognosis, it was an incredibly life-affirming moment for both of them. This was a couple who had really, really, really wanted to get married.

ONE FRIDAY NIGHT
in 1963, Edie had first made her way to a restaurant in Greenwich Village comanaged by Elaine Kaufman (who later went on to establish Elaine's on the Upper East Side). A gorgeous, brilliant, and vivacious computer programmer for IBM, Edie had just returned to New York after spending two semesters on a postgraduate math fellowship at Harvard.

Edie had moved into a rent-controlled apartment on the Upper West Side, far from the bohemian Village, the kind of neighborhood where, as she put it, “I was the only woman in the building who wore blue jeans on weekends.” She was thirty-four, and although she'd dated a few women during her first decade living in New York, she had not yet found lasting love.

But one night she called an old friend who was also a lesbian. As Edie told her friend how lonely she was, she burst out with a desperate plea. “Oh, God,” she said, “if you know where the lesbians go, please take me there.” The lesbian bar (the Bagatelle) that Edie used to frequent before her Harvard fellowship had closed, and she no longer knew where to go in New York City to meet other lesbians. Her friend told her that the Portofino restaurant in the Village was the place to be on Friday nights, so they made plans to go there together.

The next Friday night, Edie and her friend were sitting at a table at Portofino when a friend brought a woman named Thea Spyer to their table. Thea was striking, with coal-black hair that fell to her shoulders, piercing eyes, a self-assured manner, and powerful magnetism and charisma. The daughter of a prominent Dutch Jewish family that had done well in the pickle business, Thea carried herself with the poise and self-confidence of an aristocrat. Edie was mesmerized—by her beauty, her intellect, and her bearing.

After dinner, the four women made their way to a party together, and then eventually to Thea's place. Thea put on some records, and she and Edie started to dance . . . and dance . . . and dance . . . Edie had always loved dancing, but she could never find a lesbian dance partner who really knew how to lead. But Thea did so effortlessly, and the two of them spun around the small living room like they'd been doing it for years. Their bodies, Thea would later say, “just fit.” Edie kicked off her shoes and danced until she had worn a hole in one of her stockings. (Whenever I think about this scene, which was described in detail in our original complaint in the district court, I can't help thinking of the famous dance scene in the film
The King and I
, with Thea, of course, as Yul Brynner and Edie as Deborah Kerr.)

From that night on, Edie was very interested in Thea. But Thea was taken, living first with one woman and then with another. Every once in a while, Edie and Thea would find themselves together at the same party, and as always they would dance together until Edie's date and Thea's live-in lover grew irritated. But no matter how much fun they had or how well they fit together, at the end of each night, Edie would end up going home alone.

This went on for two excruciating years. Giving up hope, Edie started going to a therapy group, where she sought help accepting the fact that she would never be able to have a successful relationship with another woman. By then, Edie had almost given up on the idea, and over the previous few months, she had been trying to convince herself to just find a nice man with whom to settle down, preferably a man with children who needed a mother. “I did not want to live a life without love,” she would later say, and that was what she feared she was facing. She had almost, but not quite, given up hope. But in the spring of 1965, a friend told Edie that Thea was currently single and that she was going to the Hamptons for Memorial Day weekend. This was Edie's chance.

Thea was planning to drop off her friend Jane at the Hamptons home of a lesbian couple Edie knew, so Edie picked up the phone and called the couple. “I'm so sorry to be so presumptuous,” she said, “but would you mind terribly if I came out to visit you this weekend?” To Edie's great relief, her friends said they'd be delighted to have her. When Edie arrived at their house that Friday, a whole group of women were getting ready to go out for dinner. Afraid she would miss Thea, she told the others, “You go ahead. I'm not hungry.” Edie was afraid that if she left, even briefly, she'd miss the chance to see Thea. So Edie waited. And waited. A few hours later, the group stopped back at the house before continuing on to a bar for dancing. Once again, Edie begged off. She hated to miss the dancing, but she absolutely had to be at the house when Thea arrived, because that might be her only chance to see her. At four a.m., the group stumbled back to the house. And then somebody casually mentioned to Edie that Thea had had to work late and was not arriving until the next morning.

The next day, the waiting continued. The women staying in the house set out for a picnic on the beach, and once again Edie stayed behind. This was now getting to be ridiculous. Edie was waiting interminably for a woman who might not show up, and who might not have any interest in Edie even if she did. The slow, hot summer day dragged on and on until Edie finally heard a car pull into the driveway. A moment later, Thea and Jane walked in.

The women greeted each other, and when Edie looked at Thea, wearing a pair of white pants and a white shirt with a rope belt, she could scarcely breathe. Edie, Thea, and Jane went into the kitchen for coffee, and Edie stood slightly behind Thea at the counter, close but not daring to touch her. Here, in Edie's own words, is what happened next:

We were each having a cup of coffee, and—how to describe it? It felt like years. It could have been minutes. I almost touched her. I mean, I tell you, I almost touched her and I felt like an idiot. And then finally, her hand was on the counter. I went to put my hand on top of hers, and then withdrew it.

And Thea's friend Jane is saying, “Oh, wow. It's getting late. I better go upstairs and change.” And she is very funny, so part of this is her being funny. She knows that there is something going on.

There's a phonograph on the floor in the corner of the living room, and finally Jane went upstairs, yelling, “I'll be right down!” Thea went over to put something on the phonograph, which involved kneeling down. And when she got up, I grabbed her. And then we took her car and went to East Hampton and we made love the whole afternoon.

After that day, Edie and Thea went out on occasional dates over the next two years, but then Thea wouldn't call Edie for weeks at a time. Or they would make a plan to have dinner, and Thea would cancel at the last minute. Thea was, as Edie would later say, “a pain in the ass.” Edie had certainly managed to get Thea's attention, but what did she have to do to keep it?

Little by little, however, Edie's charm, their obvious chemistry, and the love they clearly felt for each other began to wear Thea down. One day, as they lay together on a beach in the Hamptons, Thea asked, “Edie, what do you want from me?”

“Not much,” Edie said. “I would like to date for a year. And if that goes the way it is now, I think I would like to be engaged, say for a year. And if it still feels this goofy joyous, I would like us to spend the rest of our lives together.”

Almost against her will, Thea found herself agreeing. Thea had had a series of live-in girlfriends in the past, and she had never imagined that she would settle down again with another woman. Yet as they spent more and more time together, Thea found that she couldn't deny the powerful connection between them.

In 1967, Thea rented a house for the summer in the Hamptons where they would spend the weekends together. Edie bought Thea a motorcycle and had it custom-painted white. She then proudly posed for photographs on it, wearing a white bikini to match. The two women were inseparable, sunning on the beach, eating out with friends, dancing until late into the night. But although Edie knew that she only wanted to be with Thea, she always told her, “No commitment. The day you think someone else looks better, you go.” By the end of that summer, however, Thea too knew there was no one else with whom she wanted to be.