Carol
was twenty-five and still a virgin when she married Stan. They met at college. Getting married had been Stan’s idea, since
he wanted badly to escape from his sugar-daddy, and Carol bought the line about
getting more abundant student loans and grants from the government. They met each other in the college
cafeteria. Stan was one of the prettiest
men Carol had ever seen. Assuming
that he was gay, she expected nothing.
They cohabited from separate bedrooms.
There was no pretence of intimacy.
They were married in name only, though Carol, not wanting to lose her
name, still tacked Stan’s Atkinson onto her own Hartley. She became Carol Hartley-Atkinson.
She
soon turned into a compulsive junk collector.
With the discretionary income that her waitressing job provided her,
Carol would detour between college and home along Main Street where she would
plunder the second-hand stores of all the kitsch that glittered. The apartment soon was overflowing with
furniture, lamps, knick-knacks, candle holders, bells, baubles, bangles and
beads, and soon Stan, in trauma of claustrophobia, began to live almost
entirely in his bedroom—whenever he was home at all. Carol didn’t realize that she was having a
breakdown, or that Stan was freeing himself from her control. He began dating Suzanne. Carol was weeping uncontrollably. “You’re GAY for fucksake!” Doctor Richard Bertholdt discovered her
weeping hysterically on the front steps.
He invited her upstairs for tea and consolation and to relieve Carol of
the burden of her virginity. She moved
in with Richard, and Suzanne came to dwell with Stan.
For
almost a year Stan and Carol avoided each other. Richard was rather charmed by Suzanne, who
occasionally came upstairs to visit.
Carol quickly discovered that the bed that she shared with Richard was
directly upstairs from her former bedroom, which Stan and Suzanne had
absconded. As though in combat, both
couples would engage in the most melodramatic grandeur of operatic love-making, as sound travelled
easily in this house. They were always
careful to never make love simultaneously.
Richard was Carol’s first real lover.
She thought that she’d died and gone to heaven. Defying her father’s ban, Carol brought
Richard home to her parents. Her father
refused to welcome them. Carol’s mother
met them in their hotel, where she confided that she had breast cancer. Her husband, Carol’s father, didn’t know yet. She said she didn’t know how to tell
him. Leaving Richard at the hotel, Carol
returned with her mother to the house.
Her father fled into his study.
Carol pounded hard on the door.
“You will open this door or I will kick it open”, she bellowed. He opened the door, and Carol knew by her
father’s face that she had already conquered.
She strode in triumphantly and sat in a chair across from his desk. He took his seat. “Even though you are my father”, she said,
staring him in the face—they had the same blazing turquoise eyes—“you are not
my master. And you are not my mother’s
master, either. I grew up in this house,
and I shall come here as I please to visit her.
You don’t have to give me the time of day. Mom has breast cancer. You didn’t know? She’s afraid to tell you. She is your wife and she’s terrified of
you. Is this your idea of Christian
marriage? Then you can have it. And you are not going to blame her for it
either, or you will be hearing from me again.
And let me tell you one thing, if I have to come back here to defend my
mother against you then I will, and you’re bloody well going to wish that it
was the judgment of God you were facing instead.”
He
looked away, like a cowering dog from the wrathful gaze of his daughter. “Come alone.”
“I
might bring Thomas.”
“Thomas.”
“Your
son.”
He
didn’t reply. Carol’s brother, Thomas,
was gay, for which reason he was banished from the family domicile.
Carol’s
mother had her mastectomy, and Richard disappeared. She didn’t realize that she’d be coming home
to an empty apartment. The silence felt
irrevocable. She reported him as
missing. She was mad with grief. Unable to handle the rent, Carol took the
housekeeping room upstairs. Suzanne
began to visit, though Stan never showed his face. Suzanne had claimed in Carol both confidante
and confessor. She soon became privy to
all the stresses and strains in their relationship. She felt like a voyeur. Carol learned that Suzanne had grown up in a
small mining town in southeastern B. C., that she was the youngest of eleven
children. She came to Vancouver where
she stayed at first with her sister and brother-in-law. Then she met Stan. “Wait a minute”, Carol had said, “How old
were you when you met Stan?” Seventeen,
she said. “And how old are you now?”
Nineteen. A child, Carol thought,
hardly more than a little girl. Suzanne
confessed her guilt for having stolen Carol’s man. “Not much to lose”, Carol said
indifferently. “We never slept
together.” But you were MARRIED! Suzanne
said. Dissembling, Carol said that he’d
never shown a lot of interest in her.
But Carol, Suzanne said, You’re so BEAUTIFUL! What was the matter with him--two years stuck
in a loveless marriage. Suzanne,
weeping, reached out to hold Carol’s hand.
You poor woman, she said, you poor poor woman. How you must have suffered. And Carol, in spite of herself, yielded to
this unrestrained display of love, accepting from her ex-husband’s mistress
this embarrassingly candid offer of friendship.
She thought it best that Suzanne believe whichever version about Stan that
she wanted.
Stan
began to visit, alone. Presumably to
offer condolences about Richard, but really to complain about Suzanne. Soon Stan and Suzanne were taking turns
visiting Carol on whom they would pour out their complaints and frustrations
about each other, their new resident therapist as she silently mourned the loss
of her beloved Richard. They were
thanking Carol for helping heal their relationship. Not once did they ask how she was coping
about Richard. Carol coped. Had this been happening to anyone else, she
would have thought it all very funny.
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