First Lady in Control

3

3

Janet debated if she should keep her luncheon date with Cheryl. She felt too ashamed to tell anyone, but she also felt alone and Cheryl was her best friend. Previously she’d fooled herself into believing Layton was her confidante too, but yesterday’s crude awakening vividly discounted that. She felt a compelling need to share her experience with someone who could say it wasn’t her fault, that Layton hadn’t preferred a man simply because she wasn’t sexy or attractive, or not good enough in bed. Deep down she knew that. Finding him with another woman still would have been painful, but she would’ve been able to understand it more.

The gang who went to Touhley High School talked about faggots and fairies but always in derisive terms. They poked fun at them, occasionally to their faces. Even back then they believed homos were either born or raised that way. No one ever mentioned anyone becoming gay because a woman, a lover, was sexually inadequate.

Learning about gays would become a top priority. She would buy every book Barnes and Noble had on homosexuality and thoroughly Google the subject.

Janet had several s****l experiences before she was married, but she never told Layton about her s****l behavior because she didn’t think he’d understand. She believed the boys in his social class were raised differently and didn’t indulge in s****l experimentation.

She told herself she couldn’t be the blame for Layton’s homosexual behavior. She knew how to please boys and men, yet it would be comforting for Cheryl to reassure her.

Layton wasn’t like the other gay men she’d encountered. He was manly and had no effeminate gestures or traits.

She realized if she was going to cancel her luncheon with Cheryl, she’d have to call her soon. Cheryl expected to hear juicy, s****l details about a passionate, love-making session. Janet speculated that even sophisticated Cheryl would be bowled over by the ghastly account. Yet, she felt like an overfilled balloon ready to burst if she didn’t ventilate her feelings to someone. She decided to finish dressing and be ready on time.

Cheryl came by for her precisely on time and honked for Janet from her BMW. Still ambivalent Janet easily avoided the subject of her s****l encounter on the way to the tea room. An Adam Levine song prompted Cheryl to chatter at length about his s*x appeal. The luncheon began with a discussion about s*x initiated by Cheryl over tuna melts. The subject of Layton’s buns prompted Cheryl to prod Janet for a vicarious glimpse into her special anniversary night with Lay.

“Well, Janet, you’ve been unbelievably closed mouthed about your night with Lay,” she said grinning devilishly. “If it were me I’d have blurted it out a long time ago. You know me. I can’t keep a secret.”

Janet looked at her blankly. She wanted badly to blurt it all out, share every gory detail, to cleanse her soul through confession, to feel exonerated, relieved, and comforted. She desperately wanted to know if Cheryl would be shocked and angry, advise her to get out of her marriage and plot with her some horrible, vengeful retaliation for the hurt she’d suffered. But as much as she wanted, and needed, to share what she discovered about Layton, she couldn’t. She wasn’t sure if it was because Cheryl said she couldn’t keep a secret, if she was too ashamed, or if she suddenly realized that no one should know about Lay at this time, or if it was a combination of all of those things.

“Janet, I’m waiting to hear,” Cheryl said expectantly.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“You bought a sexy negligee and looked like a model from Victoria Secret and you have nothing to tell?”

“Layton got sick,” Janet lied. Wet, bitter tears spilled over her cheeks.

“You poor kid. I feel so badly for you,” Cheryl said.

Her friend’s words of kindness almost allowed Janet to drop her guard. But she kept the secret to herself, and convinced Cheryl that she needed to get home because she didn’t feel well.

* * *

Living in Hyde Park on the southeast side of Chicago provided Janet with quick, easy access to the shores of Lake Michigan. She identified the vast body of water as a playground for boaters and bathers. Sometimes, she’d grab her beach towel, her baby oil, slick herself up, and let the rays of the sun bronze her lithe body to a healthy glow. She’d lay among the hordes of other Chicagoans who laid claim to their spot on the sand as squatters marking their territory. The incident with Layton was the impetus for a more meaningful relationship with the lake. It became a romantic encounter for Janet, a place where she could find calm, peace and comfort, and seek answers to questions.

After sunset Janet walked the shores of Lake Michigan to sort out her conflictual feelings and make some decisions about her future. The evening was nippy. She put on a windbreaker and wished for someone to confide in when a sad emptiness engulfed her.

For a moment it seemed like yesterday that her alcoholic father left, never to be seen again, but it was long ago when she was only four and her sister, Tricia two. She wouldn’t recognize her father if she saw him. Would having a father have changed things?

Janet pulled her handkerchief out of the pocket of her windbreaker and blew her nose. With the corner of the hanky she wiped away the lonely tear on her cheek. She sulked silently seeking out the night shadows of the far corner of the beach. The blackness was thick. The horizon was indistinct; frightening for a woman alone. Her heart drummed in her ears. The darkness was also her sanctuary, hiding her. If only it could swallow her up, wrap her in nothingness, numb her from pain.

Ahead the huge, craggy boulders guarded the shoreline from erosion like sentries. She clambered onto one of them, selected a flat, protected surface and settled in. Her eyes caught a family off in the distance on the beach. The father and mother strolled at a leisurely pace engaged in conversation. Two girls, maybe ten and twelve judging by their size, ran ahead about fifty feet and skipped stones on the surface of the water under the moonlight. When the parents caught up to them, the kids ran out another fifty feet or so and began the process again.

Janet remembered how her mother worked long hours as a domestic, making barely enough to get by. Unable to afford child care, Janet watched her sister until she was killed at sixteen when a car ran her over as she chased a baseball. Her mother was never the same afterward and died a few years later from a cerebral hemorrhage due to a congenital aneurysm.

This time the tears gushed out. Janet muffled her sobs with her sleeve so no one could hear. She made no effort to protect herself from the mist made by the lapping waves.

Janet spent countless hours on the shores of Lake Michigan searching for answers. She made the decision not to leave Layton, take Sean, and get as far away as possible from him and his family. Tempted to return to a past she was familiar and comfortable with, she knew no one was there for her now. And she knew she could no longer regress to a world without, a world of hopelessness and meager existence. Having been one of the few to climb out of the pits of poverty, she had transcended that world. Layton was the bridge, and she could not give up her new life, the good life she had learned to love. She’d become one of them and paid the price. It was a costly, emotional price with an ongoing mortgage, but she would continue to cling to Layton’s coattails. He was her future and she’d keep his secret, but he would owe her.

The experience had brought her into another world still: the world of reality stripped of all of its facades. The real world contained pain, ugliness and bitterness. It was the world Janet would learn to cope with and master — a world of compromise.