Falling in Love (11 page)

I called out, “Can I help?”

She didn’t reply so I sat down next to a floral-embroidered pillow. The room was immaculate. Having absolutely nothing out of place made the room feel like a museum piece. Facing me were two large matching stuffed chairs. Behind them were closed French doors to a terrace that seemed to wrap around the apartment. Unlike the spotless interior, the outside garden furniture looked dirty with soot like it hadn’t been used in sometime despite it being summer. To one side, a beautiful Chinese screen hid a long hallway. On the other side was a fireplace with wood carefully arranged and ready to be lit.

Atop the fireplace was a mantle lined with several framed photographs of a younger Elaine on her wedding day with her handsome young groom. Pictures of her two young children. Then one photo left me stunned. In a silver frame was the same photograph of Elaine and my mother that I had been carrying around for years.

Elaine emerged with a glass coffee pot atop a silver tray. I turned to her. “You kept it all these years.” She nodded. “Why?”

She sighed, sat down and poured me coffee. “Cream? Sugar?”

“Black.”

Elaine handed me a cup and glanced at the picture. “I don’t know why. Or I know it’s not an easy answer.”

“Do you talk to my mother? Have you seen her?”

Elaine shook her head. “Never.”

Never?
I was crestfallen. I had come to New York for nothing. To see a woman who never saw my mother. “So you don’t know where she is?” She shook her head. I set the coffee down, unable to drink it. “Can you, will you tell me about her?”

Elaine sighed. “She was a wonderful, loving person.” I nearly laughed out loud only it wasn’t laughable. Elaine took in my disbelief. “In her own way, she did what she thought was best for you.”

“By leaving me?” I looked away. “Did she ever say why she did it?”

“Yes. The night we both left town, in opposite directions. After your father died, she was a mess. She thought you’d be better off with Dottie, the boring sister.”

“What kind of mother is that?” I blurted out. A lifetime of anger was simmering into rage.

“She wasn’t a mother, Sherry. She was a seventeen-year-old girl who got pregnant and married the guy to get away from her family.”

Elaine looked up at the picture of her and my mother. “That photo was taken on the last day of my innocence. Of our innocence.”

“Why’s that?”

Elaine’s eyes became misty. “God, I thought I was over this.” She turned to me. “Look, Sherry. I can’t deal with this now. I just can’t.” She was struggling to keep from breaking down in tears. Finally, she got control of herself and said, “I’m going to group soon. If you want to come along, maybe I can face this there.”

I didn’t know what group was but I was all for anything that might help me learn more about my mother. Elaine said that her husband was “working late” and that she had been preparing a salad for dinner, which she could enlarge to accommodate me.

In the kitchen, she sliced tomatoes and asked about the changes in Rosebud since she had left but I told her that there hadn’t really been any. She wondered how I liked New York and chatted aimlessly about mostly everything but the one thing that I wanted to talk about, my mother.

“Maybe I should take you to the Statue of Liberty sometime,” she said cheerfully. “New Yorkers never visit the sights, you know, unless someone from home comes to visit. If it wasn’t for people from out of town, we’d never see—.” Suddenly, she broke into tears. “This is the last day I needed a visit from my past. Of all days.” She cried softly for a minute, then stopped and wiped her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I said truthfully.

Elaine gave me a loving smile. “It’s not you, Sherry. It’s just one of life’s little lessons, reminding me that I’ve got a lot more work to do and that I’d better get on with it.”

After a mostly silent dinner, Elaine went into her bedroom for a long time and when she came out, her makeup was not only perfect but she actually looked refreshed and ready for whatever may come.

“Shall we go?” she asked cheerfully.

Outside, Elaine hailed a cab and we rode downtown to the West Village. The group’s meeting place was an old, stately church called, St. Augustine’s. When I glanced at the announcement board out front and saw the evening’s event, I was shocked. The meeting was for sex addicts. “Forget it,” I said quickly. “I’m not going in there.”

Elaine stared at me. She said softly, “If I talk about this tonight, I may never do it again. If you don’t want to come in, fine, but don’t ask me about it later.”

She headed for the side door. I began walking away but couldn’t manage more than a couple of steps. I wanted to hear what Elaine had to say but I couldn’t go inside that church. I just couldn’t listen to some speech like the one I had heard in Sparta. Instead, I paced out front, like some duck in a shooting gallery, torn between walking away and being unable to walk away.

There was a small garden beside the church with stone stools and benches and I sat on one, hoping that I might be able to hear what Elaine had to say. When people passed by me on their way in, I glanced away, unable to look at them.

I heard someone mumbling, followed by the whole group saying something about serenity and courage. If I couldn’t clearly hear the whole group, how was I going to hear Elaine?

I heard someone else mumbling but couldn’t make out what he was saying. Then other people spoke before I heard another voice and the group exclaiming, “Hi, Elaine.” I crept over to the door but still couldn’t hear. As fearful as I was, I knew that I had to go inside. All my life, I had blamed my troubles on my absent mother. Now, I had a chance to learn something, anything, about her. I breathed in deeply and yanked opened the door.

I walked down a flight of stairs and into a large brightly-light room. I stood just inside the door, ready to run if I heard anything I couldn’t handle.

Elaine was standing before a group of mostly men. “My addiction was never about sex,” she was saying. “It was always about conquest and control, because away from sex, I always felt powerless. I craved that power. I used it to fulfill my need for tenderness and to escape my feelings of worthlessness and shame.”

Elaine’s words hit like a cleaver, slicing into me. I felt shaky and quivery and wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t talking about my mother but her own problems. I had to sit down or I was afraid that I might collapse. I slipped into an empty chair in the empty back row. I was breathing very quickly and felt like I might pass out. A few rows in front of me a man turned around. He was well-dressed and incredibly handsome, slender yet muscular with brown hair, brown eyes and a friendly look. He whispered, “Are you okay?”

I nodded even though I was definitely not okay. He looked at me for a moment and then turned back to Elaine. Beside him sat a pretty young blonde woman who was sobbing softly, oblivious to me, and to Elaine.

“But I knew if I could just get married, everything would be perfect,” Elaine continued. “I did get married and three weeks later I started acting out again. I began leading a double life. At home, I was the sweet little wife. But once I walked out that door, I became a sexual predator.”

Elaine stopped, shrugging nervously. After a long pause, she continued. “When I realized I couldn’t stop myself, I decided to put on a lot of weight, so no man would want me. I soon learned that I just attracted a different type of men.”

A few people smiled knowingly.

“So I started taking diet pills and added prescription drugs to my sexual addiction. For years, my purse sounded like a maraca.”

Several people laughed nervously.

“Did I mention that I am also allergic to alcohol? Whenever I drink, I break out in bad behavior.”

More people laughed. Even the sobbing blonde stopped crying for a moment.

This meeting was certainly different from the one I had gone to in Sparta. Elaine seemed to be doing some sort of perverse comedy routine. But she looked deadly serious and continually seemed on the verge of breaking down. She spoke haltingly, with every word seeming to create its own agony. I was slowly recovering from whatever shock her words had done to me. Mr. Handsome occasionally turned around to give me a soothing look but he didn’t inquire further about my emotional state.

“It got so that every day wasn’t a new day but another morning after,” continued Elaine. “I knew I was destroying myself but I was in denial about also destroying my husband and my children. Finally, I hit bottom, and ended up in this program.”

Tears welled up in Elaine’s eyes and she said softly, “Where I met the man who has saved my life so many times. Gregory.” She smiled weakly at Mr. Handsome. “I asked him to be my sponsor because he was gay. I didn’t care that we didn’t have any common issues. I just wanted someone I couldn’t act out with. Did I actually say no common issues? How about all of them. All we talk about are bottom lines and slips and anger and fear and rage and shame. We’ve spent hours on the phone and never even mentioned the word sex.”

Several people again laughed but Elaine began crying.

“And every time I slipped, I wanted to kill myself, but Gregory kept saying, ‘If I can do it. You can do it.’ And I knew he was right. Because I knew about his past. For three years, I lived on Gregory’s sobriety, until finally, to save what was left of my family, I knew I had to get my own sobriety. And finally, I did. Four years ago.”

Elaine wiped away the tears in an attempt to get control of herself.

“I never wanted intimacy with my husband. And until I got into this program, I had never cried. All I ever felt was anger. Gregory, and this program, taught me how to love and to accept myself.” She paused and glanced downward as if looking for courage. She pressed on. “Gregory is the second person that I was ever truly intimate with. The first was my best friend—.”

Elaine paused again and then looking straight at me, she continued, “I have tried all my life to figure out why I am an addict. I grew up in Middle America in a wonderful, loving home. No one beat me, molested me or raped me. Maybe I’ll never know why.” She looked away. “But my first sexual experience was probably like a lot of fourteen-year-olds. I was at a riverbank with my best friend and her brother. I had stolen some wine from my Dad’s cellar and we got tipsy and decided to go skinny-dipping. One thing led to another and he ended up taking my virginity and then I took hers.”

Elaine fought back tears. “I never had him again but I couldn’t get enough of her. Yet I hated the shame I felt, and of not being able to tell everyone how much I loved her. But I knew they would run us both out of town.” She stopped and, barely above a whisper, she added, “Finally, they did.”

Elaine broke down, unable to go on. A man who had been standing near her helped Elaine to a front seat, where another woman hugged her.

I sat in a daze, shocked that Elaine and my mother had been lovers. I couldn’t believe it. But then I recalled rumors from my childhood, the whispers about my mother and Elaine. That something had been wrong with both of them and that maybe the reason I was a “problem child” was genetic. Maybe it was, I thought. I didn’t know. I had a thousand questions and no answers but I had learned more from Elaine in five minutes about my mother than I had in the previous twenty-five years in Rosebud.

The man in front was saying, “Thanks for sharing, Elaine. That’s it for tonight.” He added, “Remember, as always, who you see here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here. Thank you. Good night.”

The group then chanted, “Keep coming back. It works if you work it, so work it, you’re worth it.”

People stood up and began hugging and talking to each other. The group had a familial feeling, like probably for many, it was the only real family they had ever known. Gregory walked over to me and said, “Hi, I’m Gregory.”

“Sherry.”

He held out his arms, offering a hug if I was willing. I nodded and he warmly embraced me. “Welcome.”

The pretty blonde had finally stopped crying and stood up. “Excuse me,” he said and returned her. “You okay, Claire?”

Claire shook her head. “No. Definitely not. Men are making me crazy. So I’ve decided to become gay.”

Gregory laughed. “But Claire, Honey, if you were gay then women would make you crazy.”

She stared at him.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Oh.”

I noticed several people hugging Elaine and I wondered if I should go and hug her, too. But the others around her seemed better equipped to comfort her. I was still stunned at not only learning that Elaine had been my mother’s first lover but that after all these years, she still wasn’t over it. That seemed so sad.

Finally, Gregory went up and hugged Elaine. The guy who had been in charge was saying that we had to leave the church. Elaine came over. We didn’t hug. Instead, she took my hand and we walked out. Elaine tightly held my hand as we walked down the street in silence. Gregory finally broke the stillness with small talk about an apartment that was still in his name although, for years, he had been living with this lover, Skip. “Jerome moved out last week, so I have to fine a new sublet.”

When Elaine didn’t respond, Gregory explained to me about the “sublet underground” regarding New York’s remaining rent-stabilized apartments. Although he hadn’t lived there in six years, the apartment was still in his name so anyone renting the apartment would be illegal. The renter would need to have a low profile so the landlord wouldn’t realize that they weren’t just “visiting” but also be trustworthy enough not to try to steal the apartment from Gregory.