Many moments in our lives are shared with just one other human being. Those moments can be intensely personal, momentous, magical—secret, or simply protected from public view.
Decades can pass without that other human being in our lives, but there is daily comfort in knowing that out there, somewhere, is a person who shares the memory.
Until the day only one person knows the story.
But every story writes its own ending.
“Remember me.”
(King Hamlet’s Ghost)
Part 1
April 1986
Instantly upright, gasping in the dark, I looked fearfully to see if I’d woken Dave. I’d never be able to quickly invent a plausible nightmare. The desperation that yanked me awake had left me too raw.
Dave and I had been married almost five years. We had little money but didn’t feel it, thanks to the charity of his parents, who allowed us to live rent-free in a charming little house they’d been renting to college students. We newlyweds painted it lemon-custard yellow, with a clown face on the attached mailbox. Dave was the more financially successful actor of the two of us, nabbing every commercial he turned out for, but income from those was small both in quantity and duration. My never-ceasing acting work was the non-paying kind, onstage, but I made a small but regular income as a singing teacher. Together, we developed a crazy cable access TV show, where, along with our actor friends, we could stretch our imaginations late into every Saturday night. No pay there, but it was all about the fun. We were best friends, playmates, creative partners, and solidly in love.
So now, I had to keep from exploding in ugly gore all over my marriage. There was risk in telling even my closest friend, because as Dave’s friend, too, I was afraid even Peter would tell me I was being an idiot. But his judgment wasn’t as important as the baring of my soul, so when the sun rose, I called and asked him to lunch.
Part 2
January, 1985
I met Peter at the same time I met Robert, at a moment of artistic validation for me. It was the first gathering of a brand new theater company, and my being there was a great personal victory. The audition had seemed a little sketchy; I’d been taught never to go to someone’s apartment for an audition. But I’d desperately wanted to be in this particular show, so…I figured I’d just keep my wits about me and my radar open for creepy stuff. I was a twenty-eight-year-old married woman, I knew my way around, and I was not letting this go to someone else.
The period romance was written with beauty and wit, and two reluctant heroes: a lady who’s accused of being a witch because, despite being beautiful, she prefers to live alone in the woods, and a weary mercenary soldier who decides the best way to end his disillusioned life is to distract the mob from burning what he assumes is a helpless old lady. He storms in, claiming to be a murderer and demanding to be hanged. Their independent agendas do not include falling in love.
I’d seen the audition notice, knew the play well, and actually said to myself, “That’s mine”. With fire in my eyes, I marched into an apartment living room that was just a small, dingy box, obviously the home of someone without a lot of cash. I read a scene from the script with a fellow, for another man and, I thought, his wife. I knew who this character was, what drove her, how she looked to those around her. I left there a-gloat about having knocked the audition out of the park.
Two weeks later, at call-backs, I learned that the only other person under serious consideration for the part was a very gifted actress named Rachel, who’d beaten me out on many other roles, and to my mind, she was perfect for this. Except I knew it had to be mine.
Again, I channeled this character who I so wanted to be, pinning her right between their eyes, and then I heard my competitor read it. She was beautiful, self-assured, sharp-edged and witty, and like I said, perfect. Two days later, the director called.
“If you’re willing, I’d like to you play the part for me.”
“I’d love to,” I said, in my best poker voice. Inside me was noisy jubilation. “And thank you! I really was feeling sure you were going to give it to Rachel.”
“I like your voluptuousness for the role. I want a sort of sensuousness that you have…well, I don’t know how to put it, but she doesn’t have it, and you do.”
If I wasn’t just plain better than Rachel, I’d take more voluptuous. You never know what might give you the edge. I was shorter than my competitor, and bustier, and my hair was full and curly brown, while hers was straight. The part set my heart on fire, and for the show, I knew my hair would be red.
So there I was at the first meeting of the new company, in an enormous old community building that used to be a church, with a ceiling almost too high to see, and very long wooden pews divided in three sections that surrounded a sizeable raised wooden box that would serve as the stage. The director, Roland, a throwback to the decade before, with Birkenstock sandals and a long, wispy pony tail tied with a beaded string, welcomed a group of about twenty-five actors, most of whom were to be part of the first show of the season. My show would be the second.
Peter, an imposing man with an easy laugh and commanding presence, was everywhere, talking with everyone, helping people find things, and seeming important. That’s who he was wherever he went, but I didn’t know that then. He had a role in the first show, and also one in mine. I was the only person there who was cast solely in the second play.
As we milled around waiting for the company orientation meeting to begin, I was introduced to my leading man. Five foot eleven, a few years older than me, bald from his forehead to the center of the top of his head, with a heavy mustache and calm blue eyes, he was not at all the Richard Chamberlain type I’d hoped for. And then he spoke, with a voice that wrapped around me like a thick velvet blanket, smoky, rich, and somehow resonating inside my own body. His name was Robert, and I thought that if he could act, he might do.
After a call to order, introductions, and Roland’s story about why he had started this theatrical project, we took a short break, and I followed the group outside, where Robert and a couple of the other actors lit up cigarettes (not a point in his favor). Coming back into the room, Roland asked me and Robert to read aloud a pivotal scene in the second act between the lady and the soldier—a sort of intimate pas de deux, in which the characters discover that they both want very much to stay alive and, to their dismay, because of each other. Feeling Robert’s presence and power as he read, excitement sprouted. I knew working with him would make me look good.
Part 3
March 1985
Roland took the two of us out to read that seventeen minute scene for anyone who might give us a little money to produce the show. Pennies trickled in, but nothing of weight.
Then, with little other recourse, he organized an actual fundraiser. His idea was new—Shakespeare recited to jazz, with a trio headed by a well-loved trumpet player. Robert’s whiskey voice intertwined with the smooth honey of the trumpet, creating an intoxicating cocktail that tilted both art forms deliciously sideways.
Between sets, Robert and I presented our love scene, memorized now, and the day was enough of a success to allow a feeling of confidence for our fledgling company’s future.
The show would go on.
Part 4
April 1985
Three months after our first meeting, in the afterglow of a successful first production, the full cast of my show finally got onstage and began giving the characters life, motion, and the surrounding context for the love scene.
Robert’s first entrance came before mine, and I sat on the side and watched him thunder on to center stage, bellowing his importance, deriding the witch hunt, and compelling the other characters to heed him. He drew all the focus just by being.
My job was to match Robert’s intensity and raise the stakes, and with a strong pull to follow his lead, I aimed high.
Rehearsals were scheduled at the performance space three nights a week, and I lived only for those hours. My heart jumped every time I headed that direction. I loved the person I was playing; I loved the romance of this play. I knew that Robert’s power would bring out my own, and that this would be the best work I’d ever do.
Every single cast member was in love with this play. Its poetry, its wit and charm, its romance, and its grand and eccentric characters had caught us all.
At the third blocking rehearsal, we got to the scene that Robert and I had already done so often. We’d never had a whole stage to move on before, and it felt as though Roland was choreographing a dance. The measured space between us at each moment communicated as much as the lines the script. As the scene ended, there was a compulsion for the lady and the soldier to kiss.
Roland stopped us. “I know you feel like there should be a kiss here, but I don’t want you to do that.” We waited, both a little disappointed. “I want to build a tension in the audience. They know you should kiss, and when you don’t, it will pull them in to the romance even more, waiting for that moment. We’re not going to give them that moment of release.”
Well, fine. In fact, good idea, I thought. It will make the kiss at the very end of the show that much more powerful.
The second week of rehearsals, Robert caught me on my way into the theater space.
“Hey, hi. How are you?” Oh, god, that voice could say anything and I’d be riveted.
“Great. How are you?”
“I’m good. Hey, would you maybe be interested in meeting outside of rehearsal to just, you know, go over lines, and work the scenes?”
“Oh! Sure, that’d be great. That would really help.”
“Good.” His voice gave the impression of solid ground, easy to stand on. “Would tomorrow at 2:00 work? I’m thinking we can probably find an empty room here to work in.”
I was working, but I was self-employed and my music studio wasn’t far from the community center. With a little rescheduling, I could be there. In fact, there was nothing I’d rather do.
The next day at the center, I found him waiting for me in front, smoking a cigarette. We found a dark 18th century conference room filled with a two thousand pound wood table that seated twenty. We sat, tiny, at a corner of the table and read our seventeen minute scene, and then we sifted through the script for the other parts we had alone together. Only in the last two pages were the characters again alone. Every other time the two met, there were witnesses and interlopers. So we set aside the scripts, started poking around the room, and talked.
I told him about my work, my marriage, my acting history. How I’d gotten the part.
He surprised me then, but also not so much. “When Roland talked to me about doing the show, I’d never read it.” So unlike me, he’d been a shoe-in from the start. But of course he had. “I read the script and loved it. It’s a beautiful piece.”
Though he’d worked with theaters that filled me with awe, he didn’t have a job. He was staying with Roland, and acting was really the thing he knew how to do. “I’m not afraid to try things there,” he said. “If I make a mistake in the theater, what does it matter? I made a choice.”
The other words that filled up ninety minutes there were unimportant. Something else was happening…a palpable energy was building in that big room. Neither of us wanted to diffuse that by saying goodbye. I broke the spell when I knew Dave would be expecting me home from work.
Accustomed to sharing the things I really liked with my husband, I invited Robert to dinner.
Part 5
April 1985
That weekend, Dave and I did our favorite cooking team magic for Robert—Dave’s charcoal-grilled pork ribs with home-made barbeque sauce and my fresh-cut home-made French fries, accompanied by our favorite beer, which came home from the brewpub in a big glass jar with a latch and a rubber seal.
In the past, when I’d introduced Dave to male friends of mine, there had been a primal sniffing involved. A feeling out of each other’s dominance or power. I assumed I was the reason for the sniffing, and it was subcutaneously discomfiting.
That didn’t happen with Robert. He and Dave quickly discovered they were the same age, that they had mutual acquaintances in the theater community, and similar philosophical viewpoints. They liked each other’s jokes. They’d each found a new brother, and I was pleased as punch that my now-two-favorite-people had hit it off so well.
The evening was fun, funny, friendly, and it finished off with promises to repeat the indulgence.
Part 6
April 1985
The next week, after several regular evening rehearsals, Robert and I arranged another meeting, this time in the evening. I told Dave I was rehearsing, and that was, truly, what we expected to be doing. We found the stage empty, but rather than using it, we sat in the second row pew and talked about theater and art and acting. I started to feel a small, achy breathlessness, knowing I didn’t want the conversation to end.
We parted with warm reluctance, both of us knowing a new wind had blown in.
After that, special two-person rehearsals seemed to be needed a couple of times a week. My heart was falling like an avalanche into a ravine. At home, I walked through my chores with racing pulse and shallow breaths, in anticipation of our next meeting.
Then one day, Dave asked me where I was going.
“Rehearsal.”
He followed me though the doorframe that separated the tiny cold kitchen from the slightly larger drafty living room, his chin sharply pointed in challenge.
“With Robert?” The question had a dark edge.
“Yeah. We’re having trouble with one of our scenes.” A calm, business-like demeanor masked my escalated heartbeat.
“Are you falling in love with Robert? Do you love him?” He cracked the question against me like the tip of a whip.
“No!” I huffed. Through the sudden rushing in my ears, I collected my script, notebook, pencil and coat off the couch, pretending not to notice the sharp angles in Dave’s tightly controlled slouch.
I hurried into the verbal breach, to sooth him. “I mean, maybe a little. I always fall for my leading man a little. It helps me in the role.” I floundered for the right appeasement. “But it’s not like that means anything real. I’m happily married to you! I love you.” I looked in his eyes for acceptance of my statement, but found mistrust. “This is just a rehearsal. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
The knife-like glint from behind his half-lidded eyes followed me as I pulled the car out into the gravel road that fronted our house. Our little yellow house with the laughing clown painted on the mailbox.
Of course he could see my distraction. My head was always with Robert. I couldn’t wait to leave the house. I was preoccupied and self-focused and Dave had landed on the most logical conclusion for my behavior. I wasn’t spending any time with him because I was afraid he’d see or hear that my heart was elsewhere, every filament in my body straining to be near Robert.
Part 7
April 1985
In full rehearsals, we worked our way through the show in order, at last reaching the final scene. Now memorized, the sparks started to fly. Robert spoke his line, stating an unwillingness to ever be parted from me, even for his much-desired death.
My line was a counter with a tease, about other places for his desire.
And there, right there, would be the end-of-show kiss, the resolution, the culmination, the fulfillment.
Roland interrupted. “I know you feel like there should be a kiss here, but we’re not going to do that.”
“What?” I burst out. “But it’s the end of the show, and they’re walking off into the sunset together!”
“I know,” said Roland, with a wicked grin. “And the audience will hate it. They’ll want that kiss so badly they can taste it, and when they don’t get it, they’ll be left hanging in space. That’s what I want.”
Robert was nonchalant, I tried to gracefully accept the concept. That kiss had become a consummation devoutly to be wished. We ran the scene again, but Robert and I were both distracted by unfulfilled expectations and the electricity had left the room. He and I set a private rehearsal for the next afternoon, a Saturday.
Before I left home that day, I left a note for Dave about when I’d be back and then scribbled a single sentence on a small square of white paper and put it in my pocket.
Robert and I found the building a-buzz with community meetings and wandered for some time before we found a tiny office with eggshell walls, an empty desk, and a chair. There was enough room for one person to sit and one to stand or perch on the desk. It was perfect.
Robert leaned against the desk, his sagging hip-length sheepskin jacket no longer golden on the outside or white on the inside. Warmth was in his voice, and mine; we just talked. The content was unimportant. Between us now there was an air of confident confidentiality, and an easy give and take, but the atmosphere tingled with potential. An hour went by, then a second. Then, with the room charged like a Tesla coil caged in a bottle, we started to rehearse.
The lines were the same, but the meaning was new. We were not actors speaking lines, we were beings with desires, needs, dreams.
He turned away to deliver a thought toward an imagined horizon, and into the left pocket of his drooping jacket, I slipped the note I’d brought:
“I’m in love with you, you know.”
All the way home, my brain was screaming and laughing, thrilled and terrified. I’d broken a rule in making the play’s emotion my own. I’d broken a rule in telling my fellow actor I’d become emotionally involved with him.
I’d truly betrayed my husband.
Part 8
April 1985
Did he find it? Had he read it? What did he think? What had I done? Had I killed the magic?
The next day, as we rehearsed the scene in which Robert’s soldier tries to shield my witch from a death verdict, he took my hand. He just held onto my hand, because it was the most natural, needful thing. When the scene ended, and he didn’t let go, I was jubilant, and home.
We stayed after, with the excuse of running something one more time. Twenty minutes after everyone else had left, we stepped out of the tomblike cavern of the old church into the sun.
We looked at each other in silence. “Now what?” I finally said.
“I don’t know.”
“Could we…would you kiss me?”
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
I closed the small space between us and touched my lips gently to his. One sweet, chaste kiss. The only one we’d ever share.
Our rehearsals became a place for two people to be in love. Surely all the other actors could see it, or more likely, feel it. The stage became a rich, warm, full place, with just a tiny edge of helpful unrequitedness.
The show would open in two weeks, and we’d put this glorious relationship on stage for the world to see.
Part 9
May 1985
Roland called a meeting. The full company sat around a cheap, folding conference table in a basement room with ancient linoleum floors, fluorescent lights, and windows too far away to provide any illumination.
“The money is gone,” Roland said. His wife sat next to him, silent. Though a theater person herself, she’d been scarce during the life of this particular project.
“What do you mean?” asked an actor from our show. “What does that mean, ‘gone’?”
“I spent the money. I had bills that had to be paid, and the company money was all I had, and it’s gone.” Roland looked down at the table.
Peter spoke up, ever ready to climb the next mountain. “Well, what’s the next step? What can we do to help? Do we need another fundraiser?” We all looked at Roland, expectantly.
“No, I mean there is no money at all. There’s nothing to pull together, there’s nothing to raise money with, there’s no way to continue the company. We’re done.” He paused. “This is our last meeting.”
We sat, stunned and silent, each of us mentally playing out the consequences and repercussions. Though usually quick to leap in and fix a problem, I had nothing but shared shock to bring to the table.
The precious gift of this romantic piece, this remarkable and artistically fulfilling role, ended. My own considerable work, and the electric chemistry between me and Robert would go unseen and unshared. The love between our characters would never reach closure. My time with Robert had ended, unfinished.
As we straggled out into the harsh sunshine, sentences were short. We were all feeling the beginnings of small but real grief.
Part 10
May 1985
Robert and I met for lunch. Both a little lost, despondency curtailing the conversation, our post-mortem was brief. We gave up and walked back to my studio.
“I can’t stay at Roland’s anymore. They really can’t afford to put me up,” Robert said. “And anyway, it’s pretty grim around there.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
Desperately afraid of losing him, I said, “You’re welcome to crash in my studio when you need to. I mean, there’s only the floor, and my overstuffed chair, but I’d be happy to give you a key. I’m only there during the day, and the building’s pretty quiet at night.”
The studio was the size of a small bedroom, and the floor was covered with a motley collection of pastel-colored carpet samples that I’d painstakingly sewn together. The chair was threadbare, the arms especially ragged, and no longer a color from a crayon box. My Baldwin spinet piano, lacquered black some time before I got it, sported a cheap, ornate, three-sconce candelabra, because every piano should have one. The room very much reflected my style, my sense of humor, and my ingenuity. I liked the thought of him being there.
He accepted my offer. Every few days, I left a Snickers candy bar, his favorite, with a three- or four-word note on the piano, and when I came back to work, they were gone.
Every day, everything between my collar bone and my belly button ached with incompleteness, insufficiency, and an intense yearning for him.
Working at my piano into the evening long after my last student had gone, I began to tease out the chords to John Denver’s, “The Thought of You”.
“It’s been almost a year since that beautiful weekend
It was more than a lifetime ago…
It’s the thought of you
And the way that it hurts to be so much in love…
I know that it’s over but I can’t discover
A way to erase how I feel…
And I know that I love you and I always will”
On the double cassette recorder I used for my students, I recorded my piano arrangement. I had no fancy electronics, no sound-editing software, I just played it till there were no mistakes. Night after night I was late getting home after work, but Dave assumed I’d had students and didn’t ask questions. Then, with the accompaniment tape in the player side of the cassette recorder and a blank tape in the recording side, I sang all the love, pain, wish and sadness I was feeling into the cassette microphone.
Late one evening, I leaned the finished tape up against the cassette machine with a post-it note that said, simply, “Robert”. The next time I went to work, it was gone.
Part 11
May 1985
With relentless pressure in my head, I called Peter. There had to be a way to put all the pieces back together so that Robert and I could do the show. Peter would know the way.
I presented my case dispassionately and without personal revelations. “I can’t stop thinking about the show, and how much we were all in love with it, and how badly we all wanted to do it,” I said. “Maybe we should find some other way to do the show.”
“Well,” he said with a thoughtful drawl, “I supposed we could produce it ourselves. We do have a cast already, after all. We’d need to find a space and a director, is all.”
“Do you think we could pull that off?” I knew that daunting task was the only way. “Everyone was so devastated to lose this chance, I’m sure they’d come back to do it.”
As Peter and I talked, hope started to glimmer. I was off and running. “I’ll call everyone. We can meet at my house.”
I left a note in the studio for Robert telling him we were meeting and where to be.
Dave got excited by the idea, finally seeing a role for himself in the process that had wedged us apart. He loved hosting and industriously planned food and drink for the gathering.
Two days before the meeting, Robert called. “Hey, babe, I love that you’re doing this, but I’ve gotta be at work during your meeting. Let me know what happens.”
“Are you interested?” I asked.
“Oh, sure! Of course! Let me know what everyone wants to do.”
The meeting was great. Everyone was in. We formed a new company then and there, and Peter and I, together, shouldered responsibility for costumes, props, posters, and newspaper publicity.
We all realized that aside from Robert, whom I had told them was definitely in, the only person missing was the director. Names and ideas flew, and were all dismissed. Peter stepped forward to do that job, as well. His part would have to be recast, so we added auditions to our producers’ to-do list.
Dave loved having everyone in our house and, always happy to shine in a room full of people, offered to help with publicity and finding a space. I should have felt guilty that my husband would be helping my illicit relationship, but I felt only driven and determined to get back onstage with Robert in these roles, no matter the casualties.
And so began the revival of the dream. Robert was scarce, but Peter and I were so busy, I didn’t mind. We created flyers and programs using sheets of peel-off clip art. We rented period costumes from the Opera, with arrangements to pay after the show. Dave drove me into the desert and took photos of me in costume amongst stones and ruins to use on the posters. In what seemed like the biggest miracle, Dave pulled the strings of his Masonic apron, creating the ties to get us into the best-kept secret in town—a lodge with a huge auditorium that had never before been used for a commercial theatre production. They told us the rent could be paid when the show was over.
Then I got a call from Robert.
“Hey, I have some kind of bad news. I think I have to bow out of the show.”
“What? No, you…. Why?”
“I’ve been offered a part in a production at The Rose Theatre. Jim Olds from Cascade Company is directing. This is a big chance for me and could lead to some really great other things. I really want to work with them.” The one reason that, being so in love with him, I couldn’t argue with.
Behind my eyes, little square slates of my world crumbled off the wall, the picture shattering on the floor, piece by greying piece.
“Wow. No…that’s great. That’s wonderful. How great to get that opportunity. I totally understand.”
To mask my despair, I asked for details, but heard nothing he said. Inside my head was only, “How do I go on from here?”
Part 12
February 1986
No one in the new company knew why I’d worked so hard to bring the show to the stage. I hadn’t even told Robert. I couldn’t quit when he did, because I’d made all these people a promise.
The play opened on Valentine’s Day. Dave ran the lights. By then, we had replaced all but four members of the eleven person cast, some of them twice, and the leading man three times. Dave’s best friend, who was known for voice over work rather than acting, became the mercenary soldier, as a favor to Dave.
Robert didn’t see the show. He was in performance with the other company for our whole run.
I saw his show. He was beautiful, graceful, sonorous. He was perfect. He was haunting.
Part 13
April 1986
“Hello?” I answered the phone with impatience at the interruption.
“Hey, Doll, this is Robert.”
“Oh, Robert!” My breathing stumbled. “Hi, how are you?”
“I’m good. Really good. Hey, I was hoping you might be able to meet me for lunch. I’m downtown—are you at your studio?”
“I am. I have a break between 1:30 and 3:00. Will that work?”
“Great. I’ll…I’ll come pick you up and we can walk somewhere and grab a bite to eat.”
As my 1:00 student walked away from my studio, I straightened my hair in the mirror, seeing in my eyes both panic and elation.
A few minutes later, Robert stood in my doorway, looking at me with a light in his cerulean eyes that hurt my heart. As we walked the block to the yawning maw of the Galleria shopping mall, trivialities masked our mutual internal combustibility.
I grabbed a bite from the food court for the sake of appearances. Robert got only a cup of coffee, and we sat in the vastness of the mall lobby, miles between us and the other tables. I chattered away–what was new, how were things with him, what was his next theater project?
As my nervous flow dripped to a pause, Robert said, “I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“Oh, Robert. Oh my god.”
A long pause followed. “I miss you,” he said. Then, “I find myself imagining what it would be like to have a child with you.”
Shards of glass shot through my heart. I wasn’t ready to be a mom, but at that moment, I would have given anything to make that happen, for both of us.
“Robert, I spend hour after hour trying to figure out a way to live a life that would allow me to be with you and still be with Dave. I keep thinking there must be a way. I have a whole fantasy where we have a place, and I live there with you part of the time without Dave knowing.
“I’ve never believed in past lives, but I think we are two souls who have known each other before. We’ve loved each other before. It’s the only thing that makes this make sense, the intensity of this connection we have. There must be a way for us to be together. I just can’t find it.”
Quietly, looking at me with terrible sadness, he said, “I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t do that to Dave. He’s a good guy, and I like him too much.”
Lost in the depths of his eyes, I had nothing left to say.
I liked Dave, too.
Part 14
April 1986
I found myself sitting bolt upright, gasping in the dark, needing to be with Robert so badly that, out of a dead sleep, I’d been jerked awake and vertical. I lay back down, my pulse racing, my brain squeezed, an unwelcome Springsteen song churning in my head:
“At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet
And a freight train running through the middle of my head
Only you can cool my desire
Oh, I’m on fire”
When Dave left the house the next morning, I called Peter. I honestly had to tell someone or my head and heart were going to explode and take my safe little world away.
Peter and I had become best friends during production of the show, an extraordinary artistic team and a dynamite producing team. Comrades in arms and mutual admirers, ours was a closer bond than I’d ever had with a friend before.
He had also become very close to Robert, having formed a tight friendship during the first production of the defunct theater company. And Peter and Dave were now friends. I just didn’t know how to paint this picture in a way that wouldn’t leave me looking like a fool or a villain. But he was the only person I could trust.
We sat at a table in an all-you-can eat buffet with lunch in front of us. I told him that I was deeply in love with someone other than my husband and, wonderfully and remarkably, that person felt the same about me. Then I told him it was Robert.
Without the smallest moment of consideration or inquiry, he said, “That can’t be.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him, taken aback by his oddly instant and abrupt response.
“Robert’s gay,” he stated.
“What?”
“He’s gay. He couldn’t really be in love with you.”
He dismissed the conversation at that point and went on about something or other of interest to him, but I didn’t hear any of it.
The shock knocked the oxygen out of the room. Into the vacuum rushed a storm of denial, hurt, betrayal and confusion. As that flood slowly receded, I realized two things: Peter didn’t and couldn’t understand, and…he was dead wrong. Robert’s being gay changed nothing about how he and I felt. For whatever reason, through whatever improbabilities, and whether or not Peter had the capacity to understand, Robert did love me.
But…was I the only person who didn’t know? I thought back to the day of the uncertain kiss in the sunshine, the fact that we’d never touched in an intimate way again. If this was true, why didn’t Robert just tell me? We could have moved through that, or past it, or…. I was unready to accept anything that could stop our coming together.
Part 15
July 1986
I hadn’t seen Robert since the Galleria.
Peter called to say, “Robert is HIV positive.”
I called Robert at work. “Can I see you?”
“Uh, okay. What’s up?”
“I just need to tell you something and I don’t want to do it over the phone. Can I come now?”
“Uh, I have a break at 2:00. You can come by then, if you want.”
Robert was working in a warehouse, and when I pulled up in the back parking lot, he was out on the loading dock with a cigarette. He stubbed it out, made a short comment to his co-workers, and walked out to my car. He pulled open the passenger door and sat, turning to me as he shut the door.
“Hey. What’s up?”
Without preamble or “hello”, I said, “I know you’re HIV positive, and I want you to know that I’m here. We’re going to fight this. Whatever we have to do. It isn’t going to win, and you’re going to be okay, and I’ll do whatever you need me to do.”
He just looked at me, blinking.
Had I blown his secret? We’d never talked about his being gay. Was he angry that I knew?
He finally spoke. “Uh, thanks. I’ve got things under control. I’m okay. I’ll let you know, though, okay?” He got out of my car, waved coolly through the window, and was gone.
I felt like an idiot. What was I, a superhero? Was I his wife, or his mother, or his best friend? I’d needed him to know I was still there, always there for him. But this interaction had been stiff and I’d been impulsive in asking to see him. What use was I to him, really?
Part 16
October 1986
I saw every show he was in. I loved him in every show. Sometimes I waited outside the dressing room to say hello. Sometimes I didn’t.
One night, I dragged Dave to a show, and we went to the bar afterward, to find the cast crammed into a back corner booth.
“Hi, Robert,” I smiled, searching for something in his eyes.
“Oh, wow! Hey, it’s great to see you! How are you? You look great! Here, squeeze in here and join us, have a beer! Dave! Hey, brother, good to see you! Did you see the show? Wait, did you know we’d be here, or is this a lucky accident?”
“We heard someone say you guys come here,” I said. “You were great. I loved what you did.”
The conversation directed itself elsewhere, a heated debrief amongst actors sharing a post-show high. Even Dave couldn’t make a conversational inroad, and I nudged him to take me home.
Part 17
20 years
A year went by. Three years. Eleven.
There were reviews of his work. Many, early on. Fewer, later.
…he mesmerizes, with that deep round voice
…a character big enough for his stunning instrument — his voice
…his basso profundo and his coarse animal slouch
…transporting the language into something beyond mere words
Each review reignited the pain. Questions bloomed in my head like cancer, strident and tenacious.
Was the actor just in love with his leading lady once upon a time? Why didn’t he just tell me he was gay? Does he ever think about that time? Was it just the characters who were in love? Does he remember, or has it all passed into aging shadows? Why didn’t he just tell me the truth?
When Dave and I were about to have our first child, I remembered Robert’s wish. A new set of questions attacked: How can I give Robert a child? Would he still want that? Does he still love me? Does he ever think of me, of us, of then?
When my son was born, I wished Robert could know him, could share.
Thirteen years. Seventeen. Twenty.
I followed everything Robert did. But I stopped going to his shows. It hurt too much.
Did he ever wonder the things I did?
Did I continue to bleed because the show never finished for us? Because we never walked off into the sunset?
Part 18
September 2006
Dave and I divorced in 2000. The fun long gone, things had gotten mean. With three sons to support alone, I gave up teaching singing for a more consistent income, managing my way through various jobs in non-profit offices. My recent landing place was a gig in the office of a theater company.
I wasn’t working onstage any more. My last show, when I was pregnant with my second son, was a remounting of the same romance, years after the first. I’d still wanted resolution and a way to mend my heart. I’d needed to finish the goddamn show. We did, and my artistic needs were met without healing the hole.
Life was just about work now.
Part 19
February 2008
I looked up from my administrative desk in the theater office to see a dark figure in a long coat, shadowed and featureless at the end of the hall, walking my way. With a catch of breath, I recognized the walk, the posture, the presence. He walked past the glow of the only working light in the hall to stand before my desk.
Excitement, joy, and devastating sadness rushed through me, wind in my ears. Before me stood a beaten man. Aside from whispery feathers behind his ears, his hair was gone. The mustache was grey, the skin was sallow, the eyes were tired, the lids above them sagging to make them smaller than I remembered. He was missing a front tooth on the bottom row and another off center on the top. My heart broke a little.
And who was I? Heavier, my lush hair clipped away to efficient shortness, with lines in my face and maybe the same tired eyes,
Would he know me? My heart lurched with the fear that he would not. Did he hold some memory of me dear? My heart lurched with the fear that he would not.
“Long time no see, stranger. How are you?” I said, with a grin. Rushing, pushing, hiding behind words to give him time to remember me.
“Hey, doll.” The voice skated me back to a tiny rehearsal room full of hopes.
Part 20
April 2011
Though Robert was working in a show where I was working, we existed in different worlds. My world was the business day, and his was the artistic night. But anticipation for seeing him perform hummed in my head.
Onstage, he hung every tired, wise bone with the skin of the character he was playing. I remembered why, for so long, I saw everything he did, and why, later, I no longer could. Reaching through my uncertainties, I risked a note.
“Dear Robert,
I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your performance. You are more wonderful onstage with each year of wisdom you gain, I think. I so regret not being able to finish our one joint venture onstage.
We had a chemistry together, in those roles, that was the most powerful onstage chemistry I’ve ever experienced. And the emotions I felt for you off the stage were also the most powerful I’ve ever experienced. In the 26 years of my life before and the 27 years since, nothing has been as emotionally consuming or breathtaking as that.
My reason for writing, besides telling you, finally, how important that episode was to me, is to say that though we’re no longer those two people, I’m proud to have had that particular chance to really get to know you, and so pleased to know you now. I still adore you, and you are still magnificent onstage, and I love watching you work. Every role you inhabit turns to gold.”
I signed my name at the bottom and mailed it to the address in our company database.
A few days later, Robert called me at work. “Thank you for your letter. It was a very brave thing, sending that.”
“Thanks.” Now that it was out, I didn’t know how to proceed. “I wanted you to know some of those things. I’ve wanted to say them for a long time. I hope it didn’t make you feel uncomfortable.”
“No! No. Thank you. I treasure that you shared that with me.”
“Oh, great. Thanks.” I paused, uncertain, then pushed ahead. “There’s more. Actually.”
“I’d love to hear whatever you’ve got to say. I’d welcome that. Really, thank you. I was so touched that you wrote to me.”
Part 21
May 2011
“Dear One,
Okay, then. I cracked open the long-sealed door, and you responded with welcome.
Two and a half decades with questions. I’m sure many people experience emotionally important events that they think about for the rest of their lives, with unanswered questions. I’m seizing what seems to me an unusual opportunity to actually ask, and to communicate the things I’ve had in my head for 26 years.
I always fall in love with my leading men. It’s part of the process, and I enjoy it and roll with it because that spark can be helpful onstage. I recognize it for what it is and it dims once the show is done. You were not that kind of onstage crush.
You know I was in love with you. I told you so at the time. I knew it was reciprocated because you told me. I was so powerfully in love with you that I had trouble thinking of anything else. As I told you in my first note, I’ve never experienced that vividness of emotion for anyone but you.
When Roland’s company fell apart, I fought through a ridiculous number of obstacles to see our show re-mounted elsewhere. While it’s true that the whole cast had fallen in love with the show and wanted to see it through, the driving force behind pursuing other ways to produce it was my deep desire to continue what you and I had begun. At various points along the way, everyone else in the company was ready to give up, but I wouldn’t let go of the hope to be with you. YOU are the reason my theater company, which went on to produce three shows a year for the next seven years, came into existence. No one else in the show or the company ever knew that. You are the only person I’ve admitted it to, which seems fitting.
The biggest question I’ve carried around all these years is why was it Peter who told me you were gay, and not you? In my head, I must have asked you that a hundred times. Because I couldn’t ask you in real life, I created my own answer: I believe you knew that telling me that would be far more final than saying that Dave was the obstacle, and you didn’t want the romance to end any more than I did. The fantasy and the relationship would never be the same after that admission. Is that the real answer?
For a long time, I wondered if it wasn’t just the characters in the play who were in love, and you and I just along for the ride.
The moment I sat down to write last week’s note to you, I realized I knew better. I knew, without doubt, that what we felt was completely real, true, compelling, and important. For both of us.
My friend, you are precious to me. Thank you again for the gift of your time, your love, your passion, your dreams. They remain in my heart, a cherished part of a different and more romantic me, as true as they were when we first discovered them.”
This time, I signed it the note with love.
Part 22
May 2011
He called. “Can we maybe grab a cup of coffee?”
We met at my office and ambled a few blocks to sit at a tiny round outdoor café table, his eyes small as they squinted at me in the sunshine. Though master of his universe onstage, at sixty years old, the outside world still caught him by surprise, and unprepared. I cocked my head and smiled at his familiar bewilderment. A friend had paid for new teeth, so he looked more like the person I’d known, but so tired. He thanked me for the letter.
“I am so grateful that you wrote all that to me. It took me back to that time. So much I’d not thought about in so long. I can’t tell you what a remarkable letter it was and what it meant to me.”
“Will you answer my questions?” I asked him.
“Well.” He paused. “As far as the gay thing, I don’t even know what to say. Peter shouldn’t have said that. It wasn’t true. I mean, I didn’t know. Even I didn’t know. I didn’t think of myself as gay. He had no business telling you that.”
I knew I should speak, but happy stars exploded behind my eyes. The sun was white noise. PETERWASWRONG PETERWASWRONG PETERWASWRONG.
Peter hadn’t understood, and Peter hadn’t been really listening, and Peter had made assumptions and pronouncements that outlined only the limitations of his own world.
I still didn’t know if Robert shared my memories, or if he’d carried his feelings for even a fraction of the time I did. It didn’t matter anymore.
The love had been real. Bright, searing, and beautifully blind.
Robert and I sat for an hour, sharing the sunshine, and then he walked me slowly back the way we had come.
When we got to my office door, I hugged him tightly.
And then I let him go.