Chapter Six

Katy had always done the cooking. Dane’s dinner tonight was typical of the “new regime” since they’d lost her. Dane had stopped on his way home from school and picked up a rotisserie chicken, ready-to-go salad, and a box of macaroni and cheese. This was what passed for cooking. The kids seemed to like it, and he had had to admit, he did too. Anything he could throw together in a maximum of ten minutes was…delicious.

They were just finishing up, Clarissa pushing around the last morsel or two of food on her plate and Dane wondering if she was trying to make it appear she had eaten more than she actually had. He had watched her take a chicken wing, about a tablespoon of the mac and cheese, and then fill in the remainder of her plate with salad, which she ate with no dressing.

The opposite way his son ate said he either hadn’t noticed his sister’s borderline anorectic mealtime behavior or he was just happy to have more food for himself. He was big like his dad, and Dane remembered being Joey’s age and the constant, voracious hunger that went hand in hand with growth.

Thoughts like these were helping Dane keep his mind off what he knew he really needed to be concentrating on. But his body and his gut hadn’t forgotten. What little he had eaten rivaled Clarissa’s consumption, but Dane knew if he ate much more, it might come back up. His stomach roiled with acid in anticipation of the news he was about to deliver.

Sure, I can back out. I can be a chicken like the desiccated one on the table and put it off until tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. I can wait until the kids are grown and out of the house, married with children of their own. I can wait until I’m an old man.

And then maybe I won’t do it, because it won’t matter anymore.

No, you need to do it now. You’ve waited decades. That’s long enough.

Tell them. Tell them the truth.

But how?

Clarissa was first to rise from the table. Just before she got up to take her plate to the sink, scrape it off, and put it in the dishwasher, Dane heard the ping of an incoming text message. Text messages, Dane had learned, induced an almost Pavlovian response, especially in teenage girls. They could not be ignored.

“Honey, could you sit down for a minute?” Dane wondered where he found the courage to say even this much, innocuous as it was. Joey looked up from the chicken leg he was gnawing on, and Dane suspected he detected the seriousness in his father’s tone. There was concern in his eyes.

“Sure, Dad,” she said, rolling her eyes a bit. She’d been an absolute angel for the months after her mother’s death, but some of her less-than-savory adolescent girl traits were beginning to filter back in, refusing to be denied. “But I can’t talk for long. Jesse just texted me and—”

Dane cut her off with a raised palm. “Please!” He knew his voice came out a little strangled, a little desperate. He attempted a smile to soften his tone.

“I really need to talk to you guys.” His stomach did a somersault. “It’s important.”

Clarissa sat up a little straighter, pushed her phone away. It pinged again. Dane was grateful when she shut off the sound.

“What is it, Dad? Is everything okay?”

How to say it? How does one break news like this?

Maybe an object lesson…. Not so long ago, Bruce—now Caitlyn—Jenner had been everywhere one looked. Perhaps he could use the former Olympic medalist’s journey to illustrate his own parallel need to finally come to terms with who he was, to live an honest life at last.

“You guys remember Caitlyn Jenner?” He grinned, feeling cold suddenly, as though all the color were draining out of him.

Joey snickered. “That old Kardashian dude? Became a woman? He looked pretty hot on the cover of that magazine, though. I mean for an old dude.”

Dane cut his gaze to his son. “Be respectful,” he admonished.

Joey continued shoveling mac and cheese into his mouth.

“Anyway, I thought what he—she—did took a lot of courage. It was a very brave move.”

Clarissa shoved her chair back from the table. “Dad. I really need to get back to Jesse. Is this all?”

It was Dane’s turn to roll his eyes. They were going to make it difficult for him to build up to his revelation. Maybe that was good. Sort of like being pushed out of an airplane when you first skydive…

“Jenner—Caitlyn was very brave,” Dane repeated and found he couldn’t look at his children. He stared down at the table, feeling his breath quicken. Beads of sweat popped out on his forehead. He could feel them up there, and he swiped at them. “She had carried around something that was important to her being for so many years. I know she got lots of publicity, good and bad, and lots of money, but I still think to make the move she did, to live an honest life, was courageous. Don’t you?”

“Brave? To wear women’s underwear?” Joey snickered.

“Joey, please!”

“What’s the point of all this?” Clarissa asked, finally glancing up from the screen on her phone.

Maybe you should do this another time. No. That would just be taking an easy out. These are kids. Another time is not going to be any different. You know that. You know them. But it’s time to take off the gloves. Maybe the object lesson would be good in a classroom, but a family kitchen? Forget it! Dane chuckled to himself. That seemed to get their attention. Both of them looked up.

“What?” Clarissa asked.

Dane blew out a big sigh. Out with it. “I was talking about Jenner to make a point. Jenner the man waited until he was sixty-five to come out—”

“Wait a minute! Dad’s gonna tell us he’s gonna become a woman!” Joey said, and both he and his sister collapsed in laughter.

This was not going the way Dane anticipated. At all.

“Yeah. He’ll need, like, size seventeen pumps!”

That tickled the two of them even more. Dane just stared.

When his children saw he was not joining them in the hilarity, their laughter dried up quickly. Clarissa’s mouth dropped open.

“You’re not. Are you? I mean, transitioning…”

Dane shook his head. “What do you think? I’d make a hideous woman. What I’m trying to say, Joey, Clarissa, is that I’ve had feelings for many years. Not feelings that I was in the wrong body, but feelings that I hid away, mostly from myself, but also from everyone I knew, including your mom.”

He regarded his children at the table. Any vestige of joking or laughter had left their faces. He was certain they had no idea what was coming, but he wondered if there was something, instinctive maybe, within them that told them to brace themselves.

In the end there was no way to say it other than just to say it. He felt a curious sensation—a tightening inside. He felt he was steeling himself. He breathed out—whoosh—and said it. “I’m gay.”

Joey picked up a radish from his salad and flung it at him. “You are not! Dude, please!”

Clarissa shoved back her chair. “This has all been very fun, although I’m not certain I understand the point of it, but can I go to my room now? Please.”

Dane reached out, took Joey’s hand, took Clarissa’s. “Kids. I’m serious. This is something I’ve struggled against my whole life. Losing your mom has made me see how little time we have, and I just can’t live a lie anymore.”

Clarissa snatched her hand away. She looked up at him with wounded eyes. “Just to be sure. You’re not punking us here? This isn’t a joke?”

Dane shook his head.

There was something snide to her tone, but underneath that Dane could read hope. Hope that he’d confirm he was having them on, kidding around.

“It’s not a joke. This doesn’t change anything. I’m still your dad, still the same guy. I’m still here for you. I still love you—with every fiber of my being.”

Clarissa stood up from the table so fast her chair toppled over to the tile floor behind her. Dane could see she was shaking, and it made his heart ache.

“It doesn’t change anything?” Her voice went up high. “It doesn’t change anything? Are you out of your mind? It changes everything!”

She screeched this last bit, but Dane could see unshed tears standing in her eyes.

God. I should have kept this to myself. What’s said can never be unsaid. What have I done? What Pandora’s box have I opened? Dane said softly, “You’re right. It changes things. Changes who you thought I was, and that’s not small. But what I was trying to say—badly, I guess—was that it doesn’t change what’s essential—my love for you and your brother. The fact that I will be here for you both, always.”

Clarissa was shaking her head. “You’re unbelievable. Fucking unbelievable.”

Even Joey’s mouth dropped open as he stared, slack-jawed, at his sister. “Chill. Can’t you see this is hard for him?”

Dane looked over at his son. He was still holding his hand, and Joey smiled at him and squeezed. The tiny gesture made Dane want to cry. If you had asked him, before he told them this essential truth, which kid would have a problem with it, Joey was the one he would have picked.

“Hard for him?” Clarissa’s lips nearly vanished into a thin horizontal line.

Dane always thought the descriptor of someone’s eyes blazing was hyperbole, purple prose, but now in his daughter’s brown eyes, he saw it really happen.

“Please, honey,” Dane said, reaching out with his other hand.

She backed away, looking down at his hand with horror, as if it was diseased. “No! No! So, what? You used Mom all these years to hide behind?”

She took a couple more steps back toward the kitchen’s exit. “And what? Now that she’s gone, you can be free to be your faggot self?”

“Stop it!” Joey cried. “That’s too harsh.”

Dane didn’t know what to say and cursed himself for it. Mutely, he looked from one child to the other.

Clarissa turned and walked out of the room, calling over her shoulder, “The only thing that’s harsh is finding out we have a liar for a dad.”

Dane slumped. Joey pulled his hand away, but only to pat his dad’s shoulder.

“She doesn’t mean it. She’s just, um, like, surprised, you know?” He squeezed Dane’s shoulder. “It is an awful lot to take in. Dude, are you sure?”

Dane made himself look at his son. He nodded. “I’m sure.”

They sat in silence like that for a moment, until the slam of Clarissa’s bedroom door upstairs caused them both to jump. Dane looked to his son and grinned at him, feeling helpless and sheepish. “I guess I could have handled that better, huh? Are you okay?”

Joey got up from the table and began clearing their dinner stuff away, hauling it over to the sink to be put in the dishwasher. “I’m okay, Dad. It’s your life.”

“I know. I know, but it’s a lot for you to accept. I just want you to know that I’ll always—first and foremost—be your father.”

Joey finished up loading the dishwasher and rinsed his hands off. He sat back down at the table. “Look. I don’t know if I get what being gay is all about, I mean, when girls are so hot and all. Why would you look twice at a guy?”

Joey shivered, but he was smiling. His expression turned serious again, and it tore at Dane’s heart to realize his little boy was trying to comfort him.

“It’s no big deal, man. I’d be lying if I said I wanted to think about it. But who wants to think about their parents and sex together anyway? Yuck! But I’m glad you’re honest with us, glad you trust us enough to tell us.”

“Thank you,” Dane said with a shuddering breath, barely above a whisper. He was trying his best not to cry. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Dane confessed. And he didn’t. “I just didn’t want you guys to have some image of me that wasn’t true. What kind of example would I be if I let that continue?”

“I don’t know, Dad. I’m twelve.” He leaned over and hugged his father, patting his back.

Dane laughed, laughed until the tears came. “Oh, Joey,” he said, when he could get his breath. “What would I do without you?”

The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. Mow the lawn yourself?” He started out of the kitchen. “I got homework. Science.”

“That’s it, then? No questions?”

Joey stopped and looked at him, eyebrows coming together in confusion. He cocked his head. “Not really. Not right now.” He left the room.

And came back in a second later. “I love you, Dad.”

And was gone again.

Dane called out after him, “I love you too, son.”

He looked at the empty table before him. His big moment was weirdly anticlimactic. But he felt that was a deception. They had crossed a line. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Part of him felt free. The other part was terrified.

And all he could think of was how tired he suddenly was.

*

Dane awoke with a gasp, heart pounding, as if a loud noise had startled him. His sheets were damp with sweat, even though he could see snowflakes coming gently down outside his bedroom window.

The house was quiet. The only noise was that of their gas heating system clicking on and off. Dane glanced over at the charging dock/alarm clock on his nightstand and saw it was a little after 5:00 a.m.

The dream came back to him all at once.

He’s in a room he doesn’t recognize. It’s silent and stark—white walls, hardwood floors shining dully in the gleam of recessed lighting. The room has no windows, no pictures on the walls, no decoration whatsoever.

In the middle of the room is a plain chair, a ladder-back type that would go with a dining set. And on it, facing away from him, sits a woman.

Dane lets out a cry, yet no sound actually emerges from his mouth. The silence of the room is more like a roaring of blood in his ears, so loud it drowns everything else out. But his cry is genuine because he recognizes the back of that head, the shape of those shoulders, the simple white quilted robe she wears.

It’s his wife, Katy.

He calls to her but again can make no sound. She doesn’t turn. His heart leaps, and he quickens his pace toward the chair in which she sits, so still, so still. He’s longed to see her face one last time. Will he get his chance now?

He rounds the figure on the chair. But when he gets to the other side, all he can see—once more—is the back of her.

That was when he awoke. That was when he felt startled, when the dream, he now realized, morphed into nightmare.

What did it mean?

Dane sat up in bed, staring at the snow coming down in lazy whorls outside his window. The sky was lightening, a shade of slate, blue-gray, just a little bit lighter than full-on night. He waited as his breathing and heart rate returned to normal. He thought of his wife. She had never appeared to him, as far as Dane could remember, since her accident at the end of last summer. There had been times when he wished she would have, when he could have told her things, asked for her counsel in raising the kids—especially last night at dinner. And he did talk to her, here and there, when no one else was around. But sadly there was never any sense of her, any feeling that she watched over him and the kids, that she listened.

Yet she came to him in a dream. But why could he only see the back of her head? If she was going to appear to him, why appear in such an inaccessible way?

Or had she really appeared to him at all? Was this simply his subconscious crying out? Perhaps, in the back of his mind, when he confessed to the kids earlier about his sexual orientation, he was also confessing to Katy, who, he would guess, had never suspected a thing. There may have been some distance between them now and then, toward the end. And the sex certainly got a lot less frequent, but from what Dane heard, that was common among all couples, no matter on which side their bread was buttered.

But maybe, in some way, he had wanted her to know the truth about him, of him. To know, once and for all, the real him. Because he did truly love Katy. And how could she love him, fully and completely, if she had never really known who he was?

He remembered one time, the two of them up late in the family room and watching an episode of The Golden Girls together before they headed off to bed. It had been a kind of ritual with them. Dane recalled being a little more tense than usual as they laughed through another adventure in the lives of the Miami ladies of a certain age. It was because the episode had concerned a friend of Dorothy’s, a lesbian, and the impact her secret had on all the girls. Dorothy had asked her mother, Sophia, how she would react if one of her kids were gay. Of course the wisecracking Sophia immediately told her daughter to “stick with what you know.” But then Dorothy pressed her for a real answer. And Sophia told Dorothy something along the lines of how she wouldn’t love her child one bit less, that she would wish them all the happiness in the world.

“How would you feel if Joey or Clarissa turns out to be gay?” Dane asked Katy, wondering if the question was really more about him than it was about his kids.

Katy looked at him for a long time, a glimmer of a smile playing about her lips. She closed the cover on her iPad. “I think I’d feel the same as old Sophia,” she said. “It wouldn’t change anything. When you really love someone, something like that doesn’t matter, does it? You’d still, as Sophia says, wish them all the happiness in the world.” She smiled. “Family is family.”

Dane joked about Katy’s answer—“And you’re not even Italian!”—and then said, “You’re a good mom.” He looked back at the screen. Blanche had come into the bedroom, confusing the term lesbian with Lebanese and proclaiming that Danny Thomas was one. He and Katy laughed, but Dane couldn’t get it out of his head that this would be the perfect quiet moment to tell this woman he had loved for so long the essential truth about himself. But all he did was meet Katy’s eyes for a moment and say, “And a good wife.”

“I’m very understanding,” Katy said and then laughed. “If I do say so myself.”

Now Dane lay back against his pillows, feeling the bed was vast and empty, and even though he was a big man, he was much too small to fill it. He wondered if Katy had the same thing on her mind that night as he did. Maybe that’s why she said something—“I’m very understanding”—that was so out of character for her, a little too self-congratulatory. Perhaps she wasn’t looking to highlight her own good nature, but to open a door.

Dane had missed the opportunity. And now he’d never have the chance for her to know him for who he really was.

He rose from the bed, wincing a little when his bare feet hit the hardwood floor. It was cold. “And maybe it’s better she never did,” he said aloud to the room, which was lightening, the furniture taking on more shape and definition as the sun rose higher. “Most wives, no matter how understanding, would not be thrilled with the news that dear hubby is a ’mo.”

He got up and moved to the back of his bedroom door, where his old plaid flannel robe hung off a hook. He shrugged into it and then went back to the bed to slide into the shearling-lined Ugg slippers Katy had bought him last Christmas. They felt like heaven on his cold feet.

It was time to get the kids up.

He knocked on each of their bedroom doors, saying the same thing he did every day, “Rise and shine! Rise and shine!”

Then he moved to the top of the staircase to wait. He had learned never to assume they would get up. In a couple of minutes, Joey’s door opened and his boy emerged in Spider-Man pajamas he was probably too old for but which Dane figured he was still not ready to give up. His blond hair spiked in several different directions, and his face was cross. He rubbed an eye with one hand. Dane thought the only thing that would make this picture complete was if Joey dragged a teddy bear behind him with the other hand. He smiled. Dane knew Joey was simply trying to get used to being awake once again. Dane laughed. “Go ahead down and start up the coffeepot for me, okay, sport?”

Joey nodded and tromped down the stairs. Dane called after him, “I’m thinking Eggos this morning. Okay?”

Clarissa had still not emerged. Dane knocked on her door once again. “Honey? Time to get up. We gotta be out of here in less than an hour. I’ll drive you to school today, okay?” Dane was attempting to be as normal as possible, hoping if he moved ahead almost as though their dinnertime revelations hadn’t happened, maybe Clarissa would too.

He tapped again on her door. “Clarissa?”

It wasn’t like her not to come out. Dane felt a little frisson of nerves. Had he damaged his relationship with her irreparably?

He placed his hand on the knob and opened the door a crack…and then a little more.

The room was empty, the bed made up as though it had never been slept in.

Dane shook his head. He saw Clarissa had left him a note. It was propped up against one of the pillow shams.

Went to Jerri Lynn’s for the night. Couldn’t stay here.

That was all it said. Cold. Utilitarian. It tugged at Dane’s heart, making him feel sad and ashamed.

He held the note in his hand, next to his daughter’s bed, staring down at it for a long time until Joey called up the stairs, “Dad? Coffee’s ready! You want blueberry or plain waffles?”

Dane set the note back in its place and headed for the stairs.