“Thanks,” he snarled.
“And it’s not my fault I need a woman. You have to understand that, Charlie. I’m not doing this because I want to hurt you. I’m not gay because I enjoy it. I don’t even know if I’m gay at all. I wish to God, I wish with all my heart, that I could make a life with you and the children. I wish all I needed to be happy was what other woman need—a home and a man and children. I thought I was like other women when we got married, or I never would have committed myself to a lifetime with you. I thought it was what I needed and wanted, or believe me I would have spared us both. I would have climbed aboard that train with Laura nine years ago. But I thought she was different and I was normal. And I was in love with you.”
He sighed deeply, covering his face for a moment with his hands.
“I remember Laura,” he said then, gazing into space. “I remember her so well, with that pale face, rather thin, and those big blue eyes. I remember how she adored you and how pathetic I thought she was. I remember how shocked I was when I found out that you had encouraged her. But I was always so sure, in spite of everything, that you were basically normal and that being married and having a couple of kids would straighten you out so easily. I was so sure of myself,” and she saw his self-doubt and confusion now and it touched her. “I thought because I was a man and because I loved you so terribly that we’d be able to work out anything together. I thought that living with me would give you a lifelong preference for my love. Real love, a man’s love. The kind of love that only a man can give a woman.”
“That’s not the only real love, Charlie,” she said, sinking to the chair again, and leaning toward him, tense with the need to make him understand a little, now, at long last. “I thought I’d get over it too when Laura went away, and I thought I had. It was years after we were married that I began to feel like this, and at first I didn’t even know what it was. It wasn’t till Vega that I even realized what was wrong with me. Charlie, maybe if I could just have a sort of vacation from you.”
“Vacation? How can you take a vacation from a marriage? It’s a permanent condition,” he said, and she could tell from his voice that it didn’t make the first glimmer of sense to him.
“I know it isn’t sensible, and I’ve tried to fight it, but it overwhelms me,” she said. “I wonder, ‘what in hell am I married for anyway? My kids are miserable, I’m miserable, Charlie’s miserable.’ If I were doing any good with all this suffering it might be worth while. If it made Skipper and Polly happy, if it made you happy, maybe it would be worth it all. But it doesn’t. We’re all unhappy. Charlie…please understand.”
“You can help yourself, Beth,” he said coldly.
“No, I can’t,” she said. “That’s the awful part of it. That’s what scares me so. I feel my irritation turning into hatred, almost. I want to get away so badly that I don’t think I can stand it sometimes.”
“Get away from what? Yourself? You have to take yourself with you wherever you go, you know.”
“No, I want to get closer to myself, I want to know myself, Charlie. I don’t even know who I am. Or what I am.”
“You’re my wife!” he said sharply, as if that were the argument to end them all, to end all of her doubts with one stroke.
“I’m myself!” she cried, rising to her feet again, her fists knotted at her sides. “And all I’m doing by staying here is creating agony for the four of us.”
“The five of us. You forget Vega. Apparently she’s not too happy with things, if you wish she were in hell.”
“Oh, Charlie, spare me! God!” she shouted. Her voice sounded nearly hysterical.
“Keep it down,” he said. “If you don’t wake the kids up you’ll scare the neighbors to death.”
For a long trembling moment she stood there, unable to speak through her sobs and unable to look at his tired and disappointed face. Finally she said, whispering, “I don’t know who I am, Charlie. Just saying I’m your wife doesn’t tell me any more than I’ve known for years, and that isn’t enough.”
“You’re either straight or you’re gay, Beth. Take your pick.” He couldn’t yield to her, he couldn’t be generous. He had been through too much and his restraint ran too high. He stood to lose a wife he loved, through that wife’s lack of self-understanding. He might see her transformed into a type of woman he neither understood nor liked, before his very eyes.
“It’s not that easy,” she said, appalled at his attitude. “You aren’t either black or white, you’re all shades of gray in between. It might be the kind of thing I could get over and learn to live with, and it might be the kind of thing that will change my whole life irrevocably.”
“What if you find out you’re nothing but a goddamn Lesbian?” he said in that rough voice that carried his grief so clearly, and he wounded her heart forever with his words.
Her patience snapped like a stick bent too far. Without a word—words had never seemed so inadequate, so meaningless, so useless between two people born to the same native tongue—she turned and went into the bedroom and emptied all of her dresser
