Love in Black and White: The Triumph of Love Over Prejudice and Taboo (14 page)

Gail’s request was reasonable. I supported her decision to fly to Minneapolis for the weekend. I did not want her to have to choose between me and her parents. I wanted us to have their blessing. Gall flew home the day the July 1986 issue of People magazine hit the newsstands. It contained an article about my growing up in a South newsstand, pick up a copy of the magazine, and open it to find a large photo of me, naked to the waist and covered with sweat, holding a tennis racket and smiling shyly. It made me feel exposed but I was told by the editors of People that titillation sells magazines.

It was a long, hot, lonely Fourth of July weekend as I eagerly awaited Gail’s return. It was impossible to get into Manhattan from Staten Island because the ferry was jammed with tourists taIling snapshots of the tall ships brought into the harbor to celebrate the unveiling of the newly refurbished 100-year-old Statue of Liberty.

Some madman pulled out a sword on the ferry that weekend and started slicing up tourists. I’m glad I decided to stay in SL George.

Tuesday came, then Wednesday, and still no word from Gall.

Doubts began creeping into my mind. Why had she not called? How did her visit with her parents go? About a week later I received a letter from her.

July 7, 1988

Dear Mark, You seemed to want a firm answer one way or the other as to whether our lives are converging or diverging. My reply is that they must diverge completely for at least five months if they are to converge at all. I need time, space, and solitude in which to think clearly, heal, and reflect. This is a very difficult time for me.

Seeing my parents go through a divorce Is frightening, bewildering, and anger-provokIng. I know that I never want to go through such an experience. I never want to make the mistake of choosing the wrong man as my life partner.

None of this Is your fault, I know, but it ailects me and subsequently our relatIonship. I have decided it would be best If we do not see, speak or write to each other until mid-December. I realize that I am taking a huge gamble-you may move to North Carolina andlor find another woman by then. But it Is a risk I feel I must take if! am ever to love you without reservations and Internal conflicts.

Sincerely, GNL The letter shocked me. More shock and bewilderment awaited me when I learned that Gail had moved out of the apartment she shared with Michal. Neither her friends nor her brothers would reveal her new address or phone number. I could have called her at work, but I refrained. If she wanted to speak to me she would call. I felt new depths of pain. I could not imagine what could have made her abruptly sever all ties with me, especially when I knew how much she loved me.

1 waited. There was nothing else I could do. Muggy July ended and sultry August began and still I held out hope. But by the end of August I could stand the city no longer. Every street and every museum and every cafe brought back memories of Gail that tormented and mocked me with their lucidity and force. Finally I decided to leave the city and memories of Gail behind. I hired an Iranian driver and loaded all my belongings into his truck. He drove me to High Point, North Carolina, where I had seen several apartments I liked.

My agent and publisher kept urging me to write a sequel to the Boy, but my mind was distracted. I could not force myself to be productive or attend to the simplest household tasks. I let bills lie unpaid on the table, and would then take a check to the telephone or utility company only after my phone or power had been cut off. I felt restless, aimless, gloomy. Life became insipid and meaningless. What used to give me pleasure no longer did. I would pick up a book, start reading it, then immediately drop it and reach for another, then another.

Always my thoughts were on Gail. I wondered what she was doing and whether she had met someone else. Whenever the Southerners who had helped me get settled in High Point politely asked if I had a girlfriend, I told them my heart was with a woman in New York. I kept Gail’s picture in my wallet. I would not give up hope. I waited.

September arrived: no word from Gall. I had to see her. I flew to New York and stood outside the glass skyscraper on the corner of Third Avenue and Fifty-seventh Street, waiting for her to get off work.

When she saw me she smiled and I could detect a sad yearning in her eyes, but she quickly forced a change in her expression and headed for the post office. I walked along beside her, telling her about my new place in High Point and how much she would love the South.

“I have to be at track practice at six thirty,” she said brusquely.

“I’ve joined the Astoria Track Club.”

0Can’t you skip that?” I said. “We’ll have dinner.”

“No, Mark. You don’t understand.”

“You’ve built quite a fortress around yourself. It’s like the Berlin Wall. You’re acting like such a stoic. Why are you trying to hide your true emotions?”

“I’m simply more skeptical of marriage,” Gail said. “I mean, when you see the two people who brought you Into this world split up, you feel rootless. At this point in my life I’m afraid of intimacy, I’m afraid of counting on another person to always be there.”

“But marriage has nothing to do with dependence.”

“Besides, you have such a strong personaliry How can I ever stand up to it? My mother couldn’t stand up to my father, and now they’re divorcing.”

“All right, it’s true that I have a strong personality,” I said. “But that’s because of where I came from and what I had to fight. But you’ve fought your own batties as a woman! You’re not like other women. You’re a nonconformist, an individual. Or am I mistaken?

Didn’t you go to Budapest alone and live there for six months? Didn’t you travel all over Europe and America alone? Don’t you hike and camp alone for days at a time? Didn’t you reject your father’s choice of a career for you? Those things take strength, they build character.

You’re much stronger than you reallze.”

Gail averted her eyes and fell sileni Iiinally she said, “But what about the other difficulties?”

“Such as?”

“I hated the way we had to hide our relationship from others.”

“I hated it too. But we had begun to change that. We were becoming ourselves. You remember how many times we pledged to live as we desired and not as society dictated.”

“But it’s so hard to fight society,” Gail said. “I can’t help it-I’m still dependent on the opinions and approval of others. It’s difficult not to be.”

“I understand that,” I said. “But I know that with time, if we remain true to our convictions and to each other, enough people will come to accept us on our own terms. Remember the progress we had already made.

We started by denying our relationship, then we tried hiding it from the public. But that’s all changing. You know, some mixed couples continue to act like strangers to each other for fear of losing their jobs or meeting with public disapproval.”

“You see?” she cried. “I don’t want to live that kind of life.”

“We won’t. And neither should they!”

As we descended the grimy steps of the subway I tried to convince Gail that two people who truly love each other can overcome all obstacles.

The subway was crowded. The stale, musty air was suffocating. People were pushing with all their might to get into the train before the doors closed on them.

“Oh, let’s get out of here!” I said. “Let’s have dinner somewhere.

“Here comes my train to Queens,” Gail said.

The train screeched to a halt and the doors slid open. She looked at me, and I thought I detected a tear in her eye. She hesitated, obviously at war with her own emotions, then stepped onto the train just as the doors were closing. She vanished from sight. I returned to North Carolina with a heavy heart.

October arrived, bringing with it the smell of falling leaves and the rain-soaked earth. The trees outside my balcony, once green and dancing in the breeze, began to turn brown and wither. I furnished my apartment, learned to drive, and did a few lectures, but still my spirits were low.

One day Marion Salzman, a friend of Gail’s from her days at Brown University, called me to ask if I were willing to give a speech at a private dinner in New York before a group of top investment bankers, including the president of Citicorp. They wanted to know the truth about black life in South Africa and my views on divestment and sanctions. Faintly hoping that Gail might attend, I accepted.

GAIL’S VIEW When I flew to Minneapolis for the July Fourth weekend, I simply wanted to let my parents know how serious Mark and I had become about marriage and to find out the real reasons for their breaking up after thirty-five years of marriage, three grown children, and countless precious memories. I had no idea the divorce would turn my whole world upside down and make me suddenly fear making a commitment to the man I loved.

The news of their divorce stupefied me. It was June 1988 and I was at my grandfather’s home, a rustic cottage in the White Mountains of northern New Hampshire, when my parents called. Grampa had prepared a sumptuous meal of glazed Cornish hens and the two of us were sharing a bottle of Hungarian wine, clinking glasses as we made silly toasts and swapped stories. Thunder boomed and lightning flashed across the mountains as Grampa told me, in vivid detail, about the day in 1927 he and his sweetheart Susan Stork got married.

He was studying to be a minister at Union Theological Seminary and she was a Barnard College undergrad, a flapper who wore her hair bobbed.

They knew their parents would disapprove of their marrying when they were still students and before Grampa was ordained as a minister, so they took the subway from 116th Street to City Hall and got married secretly. It reminded me of Romeo and Juliet stealing away to Friar Laurence’s cell and getting married without either family’s knowledge or consent. I wished that someday I might marry in such a romantic and private way.

Grampa had just finished telling me the emotionally riveting story when the phone rang. “Your parents have something they want to tell you,” he said, handing me the phone.

After some hesitation, my mother said, “Your father and I have begun divorce proceedings.”

Stunned silence.

“Is this the first you’ve heard of it?” Dad asked.

I struggled to get a grip on my emotions. I tried to sound rational.

“We’re all adults now and, therefore, friends, right?” I said slowly.

“I guess that means I have to stop seeing you as parents and start seeing you as two individuals. People go through changes, and friends accept those changes.”

“You sound as though you were thirty-four, not twenty-four,” Dad said.

“I’ve grown up a lot in the past two years,” I said. “I’ve known a lot of sorrow and a lot of pain.”

There was not much more to say. No one had any good news. “I love you both,” I said.

“We know you do, honey,” my father replied.

I hung up and sat down on a kitchen stool feeling glum. Grampa and I discussed the divorce, then I went upstairs to bed. Sleep was long in coming, and I had shed tears before sleep finally stole away my despair and twisted it into confusing dreams. Are is the love that transcends all misery and hardships? I wondered. How could they just walk away fom each other thiry-five years marriage? Why?

In an attempt to find the answers I went to Minneapolis. My mother picked me up from the airport, and when I told her about Mark’s proposal, her reaction was not what I expected.

“Dad is very concerned about you,” she said. “We both are. He thinks that if you marry Mark, the chances of divorce are high. And he asked, What are her chances of remarrying when she has black children?”” “Why does he think we would divorce?”

0Because it’s so common, and mixed couples have to endure extra pressures. He’s counseled a few mixed couples and wasn’t able to save the marriages. Besides, honey,” she said, reaching across the front seat to touch my arm, “you should wait and be sure. You don’t want to go through a divorce. It’s a living hell.”

What I saw and heard in the next few days convinced me of this fact.

When I was with my mother I heard one side of the story; with my father I heard a completely different one. It was easy to sympathize with both of them, which confused me. They argued about money. They argued about where I should stay. One pressed me to reveal what the other had said. Each blamed the other. At times I went outside, feeling unwanted, and asked myself, Why did I come home?

are divorcing. They have no time or emotional energyfor me.

“Your mother did her best, Gail,” Dad said, sitting beside me on the couch with his arm around me. 0She gave everything she could. I harbor no ill will toward her. She’s a brilliant woman. It’s just that we’re so darn different, that’s all.”

I tried to talk to him about Mark, but I did not know how to broach the subject. Without a word I pulled the current People magazine out of my purse, opened it to the article on Mark, and handed it to my father.

He stared at it for several minutes.

He wants to marry me,” I said.

My father closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and broke into an unexpected, chest-deep sob. He was as emotional as he had been when he called me in New York after receiving my hate letter. This was not my father. He had changed completely. In place of the controlling patriarch was this sensitive fifty-five-year-old whose inner turmoil could boil to the surface in an instant.

I threw my arms around him. He held me tighlly and sobbed even more vehemently.

“I’m so glad you came home, Gail,” he said between breaths.

“What a godsend you are to both of us at this time.”

but why are you crying?”

0Because Mark is such a prince, and you’re such a princess. It’s the first time you’ve gone out with someone who’s a real class actwho’s on your intellectual and creative level. He’s a real prince. And one assumes that princes and princesses belong together. But that’s not always true. There are other issues to consider and, oh”-he sobbed again-“it’s so tragic.”

but why don’t princes and princesses belong together?”

4Look at your mother,” he said between gasps. 0She’s intelligent, well bred, sophisticated. And look at me-I’m a hardworking minister and psychologist with an Ivy League education. But we don’t work together.