18: Boyfriend Troubles
Originally emailed on September 12, 1998
I was over at Ed's the other day doing homework. He was grading papers for the class of fourth-graders he's teaching at his new job. He's excited to be a teacher for real now that he's graduated, and so far (two weeks into the term) likes it very much. "This is just great," he said to me, looking up from a stack of maps his kids had colored for a geography lesson. "This is just like I hoped it would be."
"I'm glad you're having a good time," I said, smiling at him, thinking cynically that I'd be interested to see whether he was still so enthusiastic come January.
"You know, Ella," he said, "we've been seeing each other almost a year."
"Ten months," I said. "It won't be a year until November."
"Almost a year, like I said," he answered. "And here I am, with a job, and here you'll be with a job as soon as you graduate in December. It's like our lives are beginning!"
"Ed, I'm 33. I have two kids. You're ten years older than me. We're students, but we're not college kids striking out on our own for the first time. It's not the beginning of anything."
"It is," he insisted. "It's the beginning of the best part of my life, I just know it. And I want you to share it with me."
"Share it how?" I asked warily.
"Live with me!" he answered.
I looked around. "Ed, your apartment is 600 square feet."
"Not here. I mean, let's live together."
"No," I said.
"Why not? We're so great together. We're together all the time anyway. I like the boys and they like me. We'll both have regular jobs. We could be a family."
"No, we couldn't," I said.
"Well, not a regular family," he said, "but more like your basic semi-nuclear, blended without benefit of wedlock, middle-aged-guy and his bisexual girlfriend, her ex-husband and the ex-husband's boyfriend type of family. A good family, anyway."
"Ed, the answer is no," I said.
"We could have a baby," he said.
"You are so low," I answered. "Bribing me with a baby. If I don't want to live with you, I'm not going to do it just because I might get a baby out of the deal. Besides, maybe I don't even want a baby any more. Or at least, not now. And I don't want to live with you."
"At least not now, is that what you're telling me? That you want to get settled into your new job first, not make too many changes all at once? Wait a little? That's OK, if you're just not ready."
I said, "Yeah, I just don't feel ready."
"OK," he said. "We'll talk about it again later."
"OK," I said, and went back to my reading.
A long pause. "How much later?" he asked.
"What?" I said.
"When will we talk about it again?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. "When we're ready to talk about it, I guess."
"I'm ready now," he said.
"I'm not," I said.
"Oh," he said. "So, you'll bring it up?"
"Yes," I said. "I'll bring it up when I'm ready to discuss it seriously."
"OK," he said. I smiled at him and looked down at my book.
He looked a few colored maps, wrote grades on the tops, applied a few stickers with little animals saying, "Nice job!" Then, "Any estimates?"
"Pardon me?" I said.
"Do you have a guess about when you're going to bring up the topic of living together again?"
I said, "Do you think I'll get there quicker if you pester me?" We were being playful at this point.
"Yes," he said. "Pestering is my technique."
"Have you ever lived with anyone before?"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Have you ever lived with anyone? Ever been semi-nuclear before?" I asked.
"Why?" he asked.
"You want to live with me. I'm interviewing you for the position. Any experience?" I said.
"Yes," he said. "I have lived with someone before."
"Just one someone?"
"Just one at a time," he said.
"So you've done this often?"
"Not often," he said.
"How often?" I asked.
He shrugged. "It's not important."
"It's important to me," I said. "Maybe you're always seducing unsuspecting single mothers into taking you into their homes so you can save on your cable bill."
"So you think we should live at your place?" he said.
I said, "Ed," sharp now, "it is customary for people in a new relationship to discuss their old relationships. It's a way of getting to know each other."
"We're not in a new relationship," he countered. "It's been almost a year."
"And I still don't know a single thing about a single one of your ex-girlfriends! I don't even know that you've had any! For all I know, you were a virgin a year ago when we met!"
"Surely my sophisticated technique makes that unlikely," he grinned at me.
"No, your technique is what first put the suspicion in my mind," I answered, and he said, "Oh, do I need more practice?" and started heading toward me.
"Wait!" I said, putting my hand up. "You are so slick. You always change the subject when I want to talk about you. For argument's sake, I'll call ten months 'almost a year,' but I feel like I hardly know you."
"But I talk to you all the time about everything that's going on in my life!" he said.
"And never say a word about what went on in your life."
"The past is not important, Ella. You've got to believe me, you know everything about me that you need to know. Haven't I been a good boyfriend, a good lover? For almost a year? OK, you need more time than that. I'll give you more time. But how long do I have to be a good boyfriend before you'll believe that's who I really am? Six more months? A year? How long do we have to be together before what I did and who I was before we met are as unimportant to you as they are to me?"
"Ed, it's like you didn't exist for the first four decades of your life! That's a big mystery. And the way you hide things only makes me more suspicious that there's something unpleasant and unsavory hiding back there."
"There is," Ed said, "so unpleasant and unsavory that I don't want to talk about it."
"What could be so bad?" I said. "Can't you see your silence just gets my imagination churning? I'm thinking child pornographer, I'm thinking drug smuggler, drug addict, mad bomber."
"Ella, if I were any of those things, I could hardly be an elementary school teacher now, could I?"
"Ed, what if you've already got a wife and kids out there somewhere? Are you dodging child support? Did you skip out on your last semi-blended nuclear family? Or have you only recently been rescued by your grieving family from one of those wacky cults that were so big in the 70s?"
"Ella," he said, his turn to be sharp, "I'm telling you I won't talk about it."
"And I'm telling you that if I don't know where you came from, I don't know who you are. And if I don't know who you are, I'm not moving me and my boys and my dog into a home with you."
"Ever?" he asked.
"Ever," I said. "This is bottom line. Ed, you are a great boyfriend. But you hide too much for me to be able to trust you."
He was quiet. "I hoped my behavior toward you would convince you I was trustworthy."
"How can it," I asked, "when you don't trust me enough to tell me the truth about your life?" He didn't answer. "Are you afraid I won't love you if I know about it? Is that it? Are you afraid you'll lose me?"
He said, "No, Ella. I'm afraid I already have. I want to put my past behind me, make a new beginning. You want me to drag my past along with me. I won't do it."
"Oh, Ed," I said, "I don't want to break up."
"You just want me to do something I can't do."
"I just want to be able to trust you."
"Trust is about faith in another person, Louella, not about knowing every move they've made from toilet training to today's breakfast. Whether you trust me or not is more about your ability to trust than it is about my so-called trustworthiness."
I chewed on that for a minute. "But you don't trust me either, Ed. If you did, you wouldn't be afraid to let me know you completely."
He was quiet. Then he said, "We've been having this conversation a lot lately."
I said, "Yes, we have. Different versions of it, but the same conversation."
"Are you as tired of it as I am?" he asked.
"Yes, I am," I said.
"Maybe you should go home then." I sighed. This is what Ed does when we get too deep into conflict: he goes away, or he sends me away. I packed my book bag and he walked me out to the car. I kissed him, and said, "Good night. Will you call me?"
He said, "I probably will. Maybe not for a little while though, if that's OK."
"Yeah," I said, "if that's what you want."
At home, I finished my homework and waited for the boys to come home from their Dad's. Michael brought them. "You want to come in for a little while?" I asked him.
"Yeah, I do," he said. "We need to talk about something."
"I've been fighting with Ed," I said. "Do you want to fight with me too?"
"No, I don't think so," Michael said. "I just want to talk."
"OK," I said. "Why don't you make some decaf while I greet the boys. Have they had their dinner?"
"Yeah," he said. "I bought them grease and sugar on the way over here. I hope you're not mad."
"As long as I don't have to cook it," I answered. I went to check in with the boys, who were in their room unpacking. Mark tossed a casual, "Hi, Mom," over his shoulder, but Sammy wanted a big hug and a chance to babble in my ear for ten minutes about all the things he'd done all weekend. Then he said, "OK, Mom, you can go now," so I did. When he's done with me, he's done with me.
In the kitchen, Michael had made decaf and opened a cardboard tube of cinnamon rolls and put them in the oven. "Do you mind?" he asked. "I just love those things."
"No, whatever, that's fine," I said. "As long as you realize that the boys will smell them and demand their share."
He waved his hand regally. "I am always glad to share things I didn't have to pay for," he said. Then, "What were you and Ed fighting about?"
"What did you want to talk about?" I countered.
"Oh, that bank notice you sent me," he said, referring to the notice that Sam's last child support check had bounced. "I can't decide whether to be pissed or grateful."
"Grissed," I suggested.
"Pateful," he agreed. "I don't know, Louella. I love Sam, and I just don't want to know if he's kind of a shit, you know, but then I feel like I'm just sticking my head in the sand like an oyster."
"Ostrich," I said. "And that's a myth."
"But the metaphor is a good one," he said.
"Technically, it was a simile, because you said 'like,'" I answered.
"This is so very relevant," he said.
"Yes," I said. "I believe if we could just get a grip on our grammar, our relationships would work themselves out." The oven timer buzzed, and I went over to frost the cinnamon rolls.
"Anyway," Michael said as I put plates on the table, "I guess I want to know it if he's stiffing you and the kids, but at the same time I don't want to know it, because maybe it means I should break up with him, if he's not a good guy, or if he's a fake good guy. And I don't want to break up with him. I want to be able to just continue to enjoy being with him, which I do, because he's so charming and funny and he likes good restaurants -- and the sex! Was he that good with you, or does it take a man to bring out his special talent?"
I opened my mouth, but was saved from answering by the boys coming in. "A perfect instinct for sugar," I commented to Michael as I gave each of them half a roll and a glass of milk, then sent them into the living room with a little pat on the behind, just like the Grinch sending Cindy Lou Who off to bed.
"I guess I just can't figure out," Michael said, "what matters for our relationship. Is it only how we are together, or is it how he is with other people, too?"
I said, "This is exactly what Ed and I were fighting about. I think I ought to know all about him, but he won't talk about his past. Says it's too distressing and he just wants to make a fresh start in life. He says I'm not trusting enough, that only the way he's been this past year with me should matter. Is he right? I don't know." Michael handed me another cinnamon roll.
"You think he did something really bad?" Michael asked.
"He talks about it that way," I answered. "Do I even want to know?"
"Louella, I know just what to do," Michael said.
"You do?" I asked.
"Well, about your relationship. And doing it will keep my mind off my troubles with mine."
"You're going to do something about my relationship?" I said.
"Yes," Michael said. "I'm going to find out what Ed did, and then I'll tell you whether you need to know or whether it's cool, and you can just stick with him."
"No, Michael, that's no good. I don't just want to know, I want Ed to tell me. And he doesn't want me to stay with him because whatever he did isn't that bad in my eyes, he wants me to stay with him because I trust him without knowing what he did. Finding out about him from you is no good."
"But you thought it was OK for me to find out about Sam's bad check from you," Michael said.
"I am so tired of being argued with!" I whined. "No, that was a mistake. Promise me you won't go trying to find out about Ed's past."
Michael shoved a big wad of cinnamon roll in his mouth and said something I couldn't understand. He swallowed, picked up his coffee cup, and said, "I've gotta go. Can I take this for the road? I'll bring the cup back next time I come."
"As long as it comes back clean," I said.
"I'm not making any promises," he answered.
It's been almost a week, and I haven't heard from Ed. I suppose he's doing the same kind of thinking I am, trying to decide whether he can give me what I want. I have these fantasies, in which he calls and says, "I'll tell you everything," and I say, "No, no, it's enough to know you would have," and we are reconciled. I walk around my house and imagine him living here, his big hairy presence in the bed every night, his good food for dinner every night, saving on daycare because he's always off school the same time the boys are. And then I imagine I'm watching TV with him one night, and there he is on some show like "America's Most Wanted" and our lives fall apart, and in the loneliness after he's gone I think to myself that it would have been better if he'd never been here.
© Copyright 1997-2001 Su Penn. Design by David Dierauer.
