The Pivotal Role of My Sister Lo

After that clandestine week in Los Angeles during which LB spent quality time with me his Aunt and Uncle, certain truths became inescapable.  First, this had not been a flash in the pan sort of, "Could it have worked out between us?" week that ended in sheepish handshakes all around.  Second, I did not have the stomach for living a double life. Since LB and I began writing to each other, my ileum had been having regular out-of-body experiences.  I know some people claim to have felt their soul or their consciousness hover just them and that it was an amazing, fascinating sensation.  And I don't doubt this.  It's just that I believe all portions of my digestive tract perform better from the inside.

I thought it would be wise to get away for a little bit, to a neutral location, so that I could think about whether I was going to stay in this marriage.  Perhaps someplace near friends or family.  Is it my fault that my sister and her family just happened to live in Menlo Park, a stone's throw from San Francisco?  I could -- and have --wasted precious hours wondering if I would have gone to visit Lo if she lived in Shaker Heights, Ohio.  I didn't go visit Lo just to see LB, but I also didn't go visit her to not see him, either.

It was not hard to get away for a week to "think about things."  Soon-to-be-ex was not blind to the fact that we fought tooth and nail, and more than one argument had ended in a silence full of animosity yet oddly free of anger.  I'm not a ranter by nature.  I don't shout: if anything, I'm a soft talker. I don't throw things, I've never doused someone with Diet Squirt, and I have never chased a person down with a can of bug spray, threatening to starve him to death by never making his lunch again (hi, Mom!). 

But I have shut down, stared hard at something in the distance and walked away.  When I told ex I wanted to leave and spend time with my sister to "think," he did not argue.  He did not know about LB; what he knew was that over the past week, I had stopped fighting back and the silence was unbearable.

To understand the way this week in Menlo Park went down, you have to know a few things about my sister.  She's not just a soft-talker; she's a seldom-talker.  Thus, everything she does say is heavy with import.  The one time I accompanied her to book group, I noticed that on the few occasions she made it clear she was about to comment, every other member of the group stopped talking as if their switches had been flicked off and waited in breathless anticipation. 

I have spent most of my life trying to think of appropriate adjectives for my sister and come up scratch.  Suffice it to say, I was not entirely correct when I said that I have two kinds of relatives: the kind that get right up in your face and demand to know your business, and the kind who are dead.  Lo is her own category.  She didn't ask many questions those first few days.  I accompanied her on walks with my little nephew, we took him to school, we went out for lunch at "Late for the Train."  I told her I was not happy with my husband, and she did not ask for much elaboration.

It was her idea to go into the city one day, and I asked her if she'd mind if I visited a friend of mine from Brown, this guy named "Joe."   I explained that he lived alone in San Francisco, and that I knew him from the writing program at Brown.  She asked, "Is he gay?"

This was too easy. 

I said, "Well, he and I have never really discussed it (true) but...you know...single fiction writer living in San Francisco..." also true!  I spoke to LB on the phone that night to tell him when our train was coming in and said, "Oh, and in case it comes up: you're gay." 

He was unphased.  "That's fine, I've passed for gay before."

LB met us at the train.  After brief hellos, Lo and my nephew went to... the aquarium?  The zoo?  I have no idea.  LB and I got on a bus and went to his apartment.  That part I remember.

For someone who had never considered herself a risk-taking, law-scoffing liar, I was disturbingly good at it.  This is not to say I didn't feel guilt: I did, but in surprising situations.  The guilt I felt toward my husband was nothing compared to the guilt I felt toward my family, and the fact that I had made them unwitting accomplices.  It came in waves, like that evening when Lo's family and I went to a Mexican feast prepared by our cousin Amy (all the Gonsier cousins live in the Bay Area), and she had left the cilantro on the side because she'd heard I didn't care for it.  And even that was nothing compared to how I felt when my cousins gave me a late wedding present on that same evening.  Ouch.

The morning before I was due to go back to Los Angeles, Lo suggested to me that I try to stick it out one complete year.  From a legal standpoint, leaving at one year is no more difficult than leaving at seven months.  And if it hadn't been for LB, I might have taken Lo's advice.  The future ex and I had been fighting for the last six years -- what difference would a few more months matter? 

I thought about telling Lo about LB, I really did.  But by this point I had 1) used her house as a home base while I went to visit my inamorata in San Francisco 2) led her to believe LB was gay and 3) signed a document stating that if anything happened to her and her husband, I would raise my nephew.  Let's just say the timing felt... awkward.

I told her that I could not, would not stay a year, and she sighed in exasperation.  Brat! I could hear her thinking.  She grabbed the most recent issue of The New Yorker and wrote out a hasty time-line in the white spaces on the cover.  It included telling the ex I was unhappy in the marriage, going to a few sessions of obligatory marriage counseling, getting a job, and moving out.  In this time-line, I'm sure she imagined I'd be moving someplace within L.A.  Then, she drove me to the airport. Luckily, she did not offer to wait with me at the gate.

I missed my flight back to Los Angeles.  This can happen when one sits firmly rooted on the vinyl bench and ignores the first, second and third boarding calls.  I've heard that flights from SF to LAX depart almost hourly, but I could not get on another flight that night.  Again, that's what happens when instead of going to a ticket agent and booking another flight, you go to the payphone, call LB and invite yourself to spend the night.  After that, I must have called the ex and told him I was spending another night with my sister: I honestly don't remember.  The lies were flowing so fast and free by that point I could barely keep up with them.  And as for Lo, I let her assume I was back in Los Angeles already.

When I did get back to Los Angeles I lasted two and a half weeks: two and a half weeks which I will not describe except to say this.  It matters not how verbally abusive a person is in his marriage.  The person who leaves is the villain, then and forever, and the sooner you can eat up all that blame with a spoon, the faster you can get out the door.  I admitted to everything except the fact that I was involved with LB: I was the failure, the quitter, the immature one, the embodiment of bad faith, the third gunman on the grassy knoll, and at one point I conceded that yes, it's possible I was really a lesbian.

I probably would have left sooner, but at that time plane fare was exorbitant without two weeks' notice.  Then I moved in with my friend C.Y. and her husband, who lived in Sunnyvale (another stop on that train that goes from Menlo Park to San Francisco).  A week after that, I had my own apartment just on the border of Nob Hill and the Tenderloin (I believe Herb Caen called it the Tendernob) and a temp job at U.C. San Francisco. 

The rest is just logistics.

But wait!  I see hands waving in the air.  There's a loose end: when did Lo find out LB wasn't gay? 

This part of the story I don't like to tell because it makes me look really, really bad.  You know, unlike the rest of the story where I come off like Mother Teresa. 

I had been living in San Francisco for a few months, and didn't see Lo all that often during this time.  She was busy: first she went to Jamaica.  Like a good sister, I went to her house every other day to feed her dang bird cockatiel.  Then Lo took all the pressure off (if you know my family, then you know there were a lot of worried phone calls during my seemingly rash departure) by conceiving a child. 

A tonic!  Something else for Perlmans to talk about!  I don't think I've ever been so relieved to see someone get pregnant.

Now, children; there existed a time before voice-mail and before cell phones when all we had were answering machines.  The more broke among us had the kind you could not check up on remotely.  By this time LB and I had developed a sort of pattern.  I stayed at his place on Thursday nights, much to Ruthie the dachshund's chagrin.  Then, since he only worked half-days on Fridays, LB would go straight to my apartment after work, walk Ruthie and play with her for a little while. 

One Thursday evening, Lo called me and there was no answer.  She called again late Thursday night, and still no answer.  She called again Friday morning: no answer.  By this time she was Worried and drove all the way into the city (this involves crossing a bridge--something that terrified her) and got the manager to let her into my apartment.  There she found Ruthie, alone after LB had walked and played with her, and then gone back to his place.  I was still at work.

When I got home late Friday afternoon I had many messages, as you can imagine, and had no choice but to call Lo and let her know I was having more of a social life than one would expect at this point, post separation.  I used the "your mother is on the roof" approach.

"You remember that friend of mine, Joe, from Brown?"

"Yes...?"

"Well, it turns out I was wrong about him being gay."

Jen and LB in Sunnyvale, CA circa March, 1992.  Photo taken by C.Y.

Comments

[Donna]

Greetings from a lurker! One of the reasons I love reading your blog is because our lives overlap from time to time. I used to live in Sunnyvale (and in El Sobrante!), worked across the street from Late for The Train-it's fun to read about my neck of the woods in unexpected places. But anyway-is that a Dodge Colt in the background of your picture? I had one just like it . . .

[kmkat]

Such a tale! If this were a just universe, all your subterfuge and sneaking and deception would have led to a second horrific marriage. But instead it led to what you have now, which from all appearances is a happy and busy and fruitful life together with many happy and busy children.

Remember that the next time someone complains that life isn't fair. No, it isn't, and sometimes that is a very, very good thing.

[Barb]

Jen, I believe a novel is taking shape here. Just sayin.

[Anna]

I think my favorite part of this is how you tie up the loose end.

[Barbara]

I'm with the other Barbara: this is a great story, and you've told it in a couple of ways now and I still love it.

And that detail about the bug spray and your school lunches--would you elaborate on that too, please? I can't get my daughter to eat anything I make, or tell me what she WOULD eat. (Sorry, I think I side with your mom there)

[Barbara]

Also: could you tell us more about LB's fiction history?

[Hildie]

Yes. LB's fiction...is it possible to give us an excerpt of that letter? Or maybe a Guest Post? Or his novel ?

[Tamara]

That is some kind of adorable, we-are-in-love-for-real picture. What a story! I have my own I-was-stupid-why-did-a-prestigious-program-accept-an-idiot-like-me story, but yours has a picture like this, and many more, as its happy ending.

[Amelia]

Oh honey. If we could all just get on with our lives without family commentary things would be much less stressful. They sound like 7 very tough months but I love a happy ending. And Lo sounds very special too. Did she perform the conception as distraction manoeuvre (sp?) again? Gosh you write well! xx

[Sara]

That's a really lovely picture of you both at the end. I'm with the 'hell is other people' school. Most of what makes us unhappy is our perception of other peoples perceptions. Or indeed the reality. If we only had ourselves to please we could have so much more fun. But maybe we would miss everybody?