Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“I liked what Tao provided for me,” I explain as much to myself as to Sharon.
“Security – financial and physical – company, and a certain status in the world. It’s not right and it’s very old-fashioned but married nurses are treated differently to single ones.
Single nurses are more often expected to work the double shifts and fill in when it’s required.
Married nurses seem to climb the ranks higher.
Anyway, I think I also liked the status Tao gave me outside of work.
In some way that I now see as stupid and senseless, he validated me.
” I cringe at the confession but it doesn’t make it any less true.
“I thought if I could have a successful marriage with someone who looked like a respectable, hard-working, honest man I was worth something.” I pause and stare at our joined hands, like the sight will give me the confidence to continue.
Peculiarly, I think it does. “You see, when I told my mum I was bisexual… well, she told me no man would ever want me. She told me no man would ever marry me. I think one of the reasons I married Tao, and why, after he left, I still dated men for a while, was that I wanted to put a middle finger up to my mother.”
“Your mum reacted badly to you coming out?” Sharon asks in a quiet voice. She’s scooped up our hands and is stroking the top of my knuckles.
“My mum reacted badly,” I suck in a quick breath, “to finding me on top of a woman twice my age in my childhood bedroom when I was supposed to be at school.”
“What!?” Sharon’s eyes widen and her jaw drops.
“She was my boss. At my Saturday job.”
“Wow, that sounds… highly inappropriate.”
“Yeah, it was. But it was also a lot of fun.” I giggle but stop when I realise Sharon isn’t laughing with me.
“How old were you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Oy,” Sharon shakes her head. “She took advantage of you.”
“My boss? No, I came onto her. Quite strongly if I remember rightly.”
“But she was the older person. And in a position of power.”
Something strange happens in my brain, like clouds clearing and sun shining through. Clarity.
“I suppose you’re right,” I admit in a whisper.
“No wonder your mum freaked out,” Sharon says. “Although she shouldn’t have given you a hard time.”
I stare straight ahead of me, at the wall above the chest of drawers where there’s one of her abstract artworks. But I don’t see the paint strokes or colours. I’m seeing my mother’s screwed-up face, her angry eyes, her balled fists.
“She told me I was confused. She told me I would grow out of it. She told me I was just doing it for attention.”
“But none of that was true.”
“No, none of it. A year or so later, I told her it wasn’t a phase. That I liked girls just as much as I liked boys.”
“And what happened?”
“She kicked me out.”
There’s silence, although it’s full of all the things I felt that day.
“Fuck, I wish that hadn’t happened,” Sharon eventually says.
“But the fact that it did… it probably made you the kickass woman you are today. It probably made you the strong, resilient, confident…” her hand comes up to my face and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, “…beautiful woman who I feel far too many things for.”
I swallow and realise the knot has gone.
“Of course, it’s also true that marrying a man allowed me a lot of privilege, a lot of safety that being with a woman wouldn’t give me. I have to acknowledge that that played a part in this too, even though it makes me want to claw my own eyes out for being so… so homophobic.”
“Don’t,” Sharon says softly. “Don’t beat yourself up for that. Homophobia kept me from kissing a woman until I was twenty-seven. It’s a powerful, ugly beast. And not our fault.”
I hold her gaze for a moment, thinking how right she is. It prompts me to confess more truths.
“There’s more to it, if I’m honest,” I sigh.
“I thought if I married a man, it would really piss my mother off. Make her realise that she kicked me out for no good reason. That she lost her only daughter, her only close family member, all because of her being queer, but then she went and married a man anyway. I know it doesn’t make sense and it’s very fucked up but…
” I trail off as a wave of exhaustion crashes over me.
“No, it makes sense. I’ve often wished I could just fall in love with Danny and marry him, just to piss my mother off for rejecting me for being gay.”
I sigh at the silliness of it all. But then I push on because I have more to say, more to admit.
“I don’t want you to be like Tao, or any man that I would consider marrying.”
Sharon frowns at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I don’t want to treat you like I treated Tao. Like a status symbol. Like somebody who was a middle finger to my mother, or a reason to not have to work overtime.”
“Oh, I see.”
“No… I don’t think you do.” I turn more of my body towards Sharon.
“The whole time I was married to Tao, I could afford to lose him. Emotionally. Sure, him leaving stretched me financially and socially my status plummeted, but it didn’t impact me too much, here.
” I place our joined hands against my chest, close to my heart, which is thumping quickly in my ribcage. “My heart could afford to lose him.”
Sharon stares at our hands resting against my body, between my breasts, and then she looks up into my eyes. I swear I’ve never seen more colour, more light, more life in her eyes before.
“You don’t want to be with me, because you don’t want to, one day, be without me.”
I sigh. It’s not just the knot in my throat that’s come undone now. It’s every tight cord of muscle in my body. It’s every stored cell of stress. It’s every stiff bone and aching limb. What I feared happening has irrevocably happened. I’ve come undone.
And it doesn’t hurt. It feels like I’ve shed a dead skin that’s been weighing me down. It feels like the air in the room is the purest I’ve ever inhaled. It doesn’t feel like the end, it feels like the beginning.
The beginning of what, though, I have no clue.