Two Loves Pt 03

Chapter 6

I mumbled something that must have been intelligible into the telephone. It was dark in the bedroom.

"Hello, Is Dr. Carter there? I'm sorry to be calling so late -- or rather so early, but one of her maternity patients just checked in at the hospital. She's probably an hour from delivering, and we need her down here."

I passed the phone to Megan who groaned sleepily as she listened to the obstetrical nurse at Newton-Wellesley Hospital explain the situation to her. She got out of bed and shuffled off to the bathroom. I cranked one eye open and glanced at the clock beside our bed; the digital dial showed it was 4:12 a.m.

As Megan dressed, she said a few words to me. "I won't be back until dinner time. I was scheduled to do rounds around six-thirty anyway, so I'll just stay at the hospital and then go to the office. This baby may interfere with that anyway. Bye Hon." She gave me a peck on my cheek. She was alert, just the way you'd want the doctor to be who was about to deliver your baby. A few minutes later, I heard the garage door go up and down as she pulled away from the house. The hospital was ten minutes away.

Being married to a female doctor is a unique experience. For instance, we'd occasionally book dinner reservations as Mr. and Dr. Carter, but every place turned it around assuming I was the physician when it's Megan. Being an OB-GYN, she gets calls at all hours of the day and night, weekends included. There's no time off. Not all the nurses or patients know that Dr. Carter is a woman, and they'll launch into symptoms with me on the phone before I can stop them. Usually, I don't want to know the symptoms.

After five years as a physician's assistant, Megan decided she wanted to be the 'real deal,' as she called it. It took her three more years to get her M.D., and then a year as an intern and another year as a resident. Fortunately, she'd been able to do her studies, internship, and residency within thirty miles of our Massachusetts home. Now, she was the OB-GYN doctor in a family practice with ten other physicians, her older friend and mentor Dr. Budray being one of them, although she told me he wanted to retire and move to Florida.

From the time we married twenty years earlier, Megan had been driven by a need to excel in the medical field. At first, she'd thought she'd become a nurse practitioner, but then she aspired to be a physician's assistant. After working at that job for five years, she started going back to school to become a full-fledged doctor. She already knew the specialty she wanted based on her family practice work with her mentor.

Even with the obstetrical and gynecological practice, she continued to work at the clinic in Boston. She also worked doing clinical trials with a couple of pharmaceutical companies, and she was doing research on drug treatment of post-partum depressions. In the latter area, she'd already published four papers in peer-reviewed journals, one being the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

While the bulk of Megan's hours were spent professionally, somehow she still managed to find time for the girls -- Eleanor or 'El' as she wanted to be called, and Sarah. They were now twelve and ten, respectively. Megan was not a soccer mom, chauffeuring the girls from their private school to a sports game or the mall and then to friend's homes. She emphasized 'quality time' with the girls, often taking them to some cultural event or taking them to lunch if they weren't in school.

We'd also added a nanny to the family: Esmeralda Sanchez or Izzy as she had us call her. She was an older Hispanic woman, recently widowed by her second husband. Izzy cooked and cleaned around the house, and also proved to be a skilled chauffeur getting the girls from one event to another on their busy schedules.

Of course, our life style had ratcheted up again as our careers advanced, the girls grew, and we added live-in help to the clan. Consequently, we bought a larger home in Wellesley, one with a separate apartment for Izzy over the garage.

My job at Oracle remained unchanged; however, the challenges of the high-tech marketplace multiplied many fold and continued to be a daily challenge. Based on my bonuses, stock options, and feedback from my peers and boss, I was doing an outstanding job running the northeast operations for the company.

Our initial forays at forging partnerships with the big consulting firms had paid off handsomely over the past decade. This was a personal pet project, and one with which I took some risks a decade earlier. I'd given extensive education to the consultants in the big accounting firms for free, figuring if they were smart about the Oracle software and how to use it, they'd recommend it for their clients. My 'bet' paid off handsomely and moved me into being one of the top earners in the company in record time.

My travel had also increased during the decade. I helped get the same kind of consultant's education program going in our other regions. While doing this, we also overhauled our national accounts management, and I ended up leading that effort as well.

One of the mellowing factors in my life was that I had the secret relationship with Emma. I think some of my colleagues on the west coast thought me strange for passing up social opportunities after work with them. I did participate occasionally -- just enough to take the edge off their curiosity.

A few people in the company knew the company had bought me a pied-à-terre on the outskirts of Redwood City; however, no one sought me out there. I didn't even get a telephone. Instead, I relied on the cellular service so I could catch any incoming call regardless of where I was. My secretary was the only person that called me routinely, often a dozen times a day. Given the time differences between the east and west coasts, her calls to the west coasts usually ceased around three or four o'clock in the afternoon.

My reputation in the company was that of a doer, a go-getter, the go-to guy, and a bit of a goody goody. When I heard someone's opinion verge on the latter trait, I often smiled to myself at my own secret -- the Secret of Emma.

A day never went by that I didn't think of both Megan and Emma with love and affection. Given my travel schedule and Megan's 'doctoring' schedule, there were some months I saw more of Emma than I did of my wife. My relationship with the two women had stabilized and matured. I'd been with Emma for twenty-two years and married to Megan for twenty.

My friend and colleague Kevin O'Conner had remarried years earlier and tried to achieve some stability in his personal life. Although we didn't work together as much as we had, every couple of weeks we had a steak and beer dinner near our office. We were both forty-five.

Kevin confessed he was in the midst of a colossal mid-life crisis that he was trying to hide from his wife and stepchildren -- both in their teens. He wasn't sure he should stay with Oracle, yet he'd accomplished so much and was one of the top executives in the company. His kids were typical teens, yet he was having trouble coping with them. He was backtracking on whether he should have gotten married again. He recited a list of typical physical changes associated with midlife: slowing sex life, receding hairline, occasional panic attacks, and anxiety.

"I think there's more I want to accomplish, but I'm not sure where or how," He told me. "I feel held back. I want to do something wild, but I did so much of that when I was younger. And, I certainly don't want to damage my marriage again; been there, done that -- very painful."

I provided an empathetic ear to his plights, noting that he'd recently purchased a used Corvette, symbolic of his quest for change and new satisfaction in his life.

One night as Megan and I shared a late supper, both of us having put in fourteen-hour days, I mentioned Kevin's struggles to her. I wondered if she'd come across anything like this in her research, perhaps knowing of some pharmacological solution to his anxiety and unease.

Much to my surprise, Megan laughed. "Most men say they have a midlife crisis," She declared with mirth. "It's part of the transition from youth to maturity. I'm surprised you're not feeling the same way. When you do, you'll want a sports car, a mistress, a tattoo, and a motorcycle, amongst other things -- and not necessarily in that order." She looked over her reading glasses at me and added, "Just please come home once in a while to me, El, Sarah, and Izzy." She laughed again and went back to her meal.

My heart skipped a beat when Megan taunted me with having a mistress. I'm sure I looked horrified and hoped I'd hidden my reaction inside my desire not to have a crisis. Megan continued to snicker at the idea of me also indulging in a crisis.

After a moment, the doctor part of her personality kicked in, and she said, "Women have midlife crises too. Mine probably came early; it was my rallying cry to become a physician when I could have sat back and been a dilettante of the arts and lover of chocolates and tea every afternoon. More typically, women have their crisis when the last of their children leave home -- the empty nest syndrome we call it. Other causes, for men and women, might be the death of a beloved parent or a hiccup in their career."

"Am I doomed to have one?" I asked, trying to veil my reaction a moment earlier.

"No. The really deep psychological crisis, with remorse over unaccomplished goals, a search for something indefinite, anxieties, alcoholism, sports cars, affairs, divorces, and marrying a trophy wife, only affect about one in five. A much higher percentage feels something, but not the depth or longevity of the crisis. They last longer in men than women, however." Megan looked at me with her fork poised in midair, "If you aren't planning one, you have a pretty good chance of avoiding it. Tell your friend Kevin, to shift his focus outside himself, and he'll probably be able to duck the bullet. If he wallows in it, it'll never let go of him."

Now I laughed, but I promised to pass the message along to Kevin. A few days later, I did, and a few days after that I was on an airplane back to the west coast. On the plane, I ruminated about my life again, particularly the role that Emma and Megan played in it. While a Porsche might be nice and something I might even look into when I got home, the fact was I'd had a mistress for longer than my entire marriage -- over twenty years.

I confessed to myself my love of the two women. I could conjure up resentments and inattention with Megan; however, I was more at fault than she was. I could even resent Emma; after all, she'd been the aggressor and purposefully made herself so attractive in our early years together that any path other than the one I chose now seemed impossible to contemplate.

I had been physically attracted to both women, and now two decades later remained that way to the exclusion of others. Megan's work impacted our sexual intimacy more than I liked, but at this stage in our lives that factor seemed less important than a decade earlier. I saw an article in a book while I was browsing in a bookstore; it said that affairs don't necessary happen because of sexual attraction. After our initial foray into that territory, even Emma and I cooled. On some visits I had with Emma, it was the warmth and comfort of each other's company we sought rather than the torrid sexual romps someone might envision. More than the physical side, I remained emotionally involved -- attached -- to each. I couldn't end my life with either one. I would be incomplete and probably incapable of continuing in some new the way that didn't include both of them.

I thought I'd become open about my feelings, more so in the past decade. Given my preoccupation with work, there was little I held back from either woman. I didn't vent to Emma about Megan; those were personal things for me to deal with. I had kept Emma a secret all to myself.

The more I thought, the more I realized that I hadn't become as open about my dreams, thoughts, and feelings as I'd credited myself with a few moments earlier. There was a part of me -- a large part of me -- that I didn't share with anyone. I regretted that. The more I thought and accepted that shortcoming in my own personality, the more I regretted not opening up more to Megan or Emma. What did I think they'd do? Was I that fearful of their rebuke or criticism? Good grief, at work I'd fought battles that would have made Napoleon cringe.

Megan was analytical and clinical when I'd brought her problems. She was a superb thought partner, but she didn't have a deep understanding of the high tech area I'd risen and worked in all these years, any more than I had an in depth understanding of the pressures and work she did. Emma knew the high tech area, and she often was unusually insightful about office politics not to mention the interactions between companies. She also understood contemporary relationships and more often than not, urged me deeper and more completely into my relationship with Megan. I don't believe it was self-sacrifice on her part; she loved me and fully accepted the fact that I loved two women.

With Emma, I could raise what I called the craziness of the situation I'd propagated all these years. She understood. She was the one that told me, "There is no normal. Normal is what you make it; what Megan makes it. If you don't like 'normal,' change it -- you did change it all those years ago. You broke out of the meme that demanded you be a couple to the exclusion of all others."

The flight attendant brought me another glass of wine, and I thanked her. She paused to see if I wanted to make conversation. The first-class seat beside me was empty. When I returned to my reverie, she faded away down the aisle.

Normal. Loving two women wasn't normal. Then, I thought of the women I'd 'loved' -- my mother, wife, daughters, and Emma. For years, I hadn't examined the differences in the love I felt for each of them. My mind scolded me: only two were relevant to this meditation -- Megan and Emma. I flitted between the two of them inside my mind -- analyzing, testing, weighing, questioning, ... The scales never wavered from the position I'd set decades earlier. I loved them both, equally and without equivocation.

I wondered about the future. Could I project the trajectory of our lives as we went another twenty years in the future? I'd be about sixty-five and ready to retire. What would that be like? Would both women still have a role in my life? It pained me to think otherwise.

* * * * *

Emma was unusually affectionate when I opened the door to her condo with my key and found her reading on her sofa. I responded to her attentions as we kissed and caressed each other. As she pulled me to the bedroom, I protested that I might need a shower to remove the 'airplane grit.' Em laughed and assured me it didn't matter. We made love. My heart overflowed with emotion and devotion for her. Later, I slept in her embrace, and all the cares and worries in the world seemed to fade.

I awoke early and slipped from our bed. As usual, I was on east coast time. I slipped on my robe and padded to the kitchen. I made some coffee and then walked out onto the second story deck of Emma's condo. Dawn was just breaking in the Bay Area. I stood barefoot on the cool tiles and savored the warmth of my coffee as well as morning chill and dampness; each sensation made me feel unusually alive and deeply sensitive to the world. I felt thankful for my life and the way things were.

Em's arms wrapped around me a few minutes later. I felt her naked breasts against my back and turned to sweep her into my arms. I wrapped my robe around her, pulling her to my naked body. She read my sensitivity to the environment and pulled me to the chaise in the corner of her deck. We were visible to a few other units in the complex, but Em didn't seem to care. We had sex again in the chilly air, Em straddling my body as she rose and fell in the glorious act of love..

We lay together after our climaxes and pledged our love to each other, as the sky changed from the midnight blue I'd found when I first awoke to a more azure color. The summer warmth also nudged the temperature higher.

We showered together, dressed, and opted for breakfast at a diner about a mile from the condo. Em became more excited as we talked, sharing with me a few of the latest plans of her new employer -- Apple Computer. She'd become the chief liaison between Apple and the integrated chip manufacturers: Intel and AMD. Of course, she continued to interface with the magnetic media companies as well.

"I'm working about three years ahead of where we are right now," Em said excitedly over breakfast. "We want to quadruple the speed and performance of everything at the same price. Also, I think we're going to focus on laptops, not exclusively, but it's a weak area of our competitors, and we see an opportunity for us in that niche."

We kicked around some of what had happened in the industry, diverting the conversation briefly to bemoan the excessive news coverage of the O. J. Simpson trial. After breakfast, we went our separate ways to work: Em to Cupertino, and me to Redwood City. We'd spend the next four nights together before I caught a red-eye back to Boston on Friday night.

Chapter 7

Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday dear Matthew, Happy birthday to you.

I stood in the doorway in mock horror as a crowd of hundred of our friends sang at the top of their lungs and very off key to me. I was sixty years old -- the 'Big Six Oh' as the huge sign hanging over the mantle in our wildly decorated living room proclaimed.

Beth, my secretary, had kept me at work an extra forty-five minutes that Friday night working through some new and, I thought, arcane requirements for human resource filings before the end of the quarter. Now, I knew why. She appeared a few minutes after my arrival home, with a big grin on her face and a cordial hug for the 'boss.'

Someone thrust a wine cooler in my hands, my standard fare, and then I circulated through the throng until I found Megan so I could give her a kiss and thank her for my surprise party. She was all smiles and laughter, joyful in having pulled off the caper. Of course, she was the same age; however, we'd had a much more modest celebration of her birthday a few months earlier at her insistence.

Both my daughters were at the party, Eleanor, now twenty-seven, had flown in from Washington with her fiancé -- Craig Elliott. Sarah, two years younger, lived and worked in downtown Boston. I learned that her steady beau couldn't get away from graduate school in Pennsylvania in time to be at the party, but would show up later in the mid-October weekend to give me his best wishes for many more.

Megan latched onto my arm in an unusually affectionate manner and barely left my side as we circulated among our friends. I often found her staring into my face, or studying my reaction to someone or some remark. As the evening progressed, I realized that as joyous and as happy as the evening was, something was amiss. I couldn't put my finger on it, except to guess that it had something to do with Megan's attentions and demeanor. She paid me too much attention, and, given our age, was too affectionate.

Things started to wind down about eleven in the evening, and by eleven-thirty, we said goodbye to the last of the guests. The caterers had stayed ahead of the clean-up mess in the kitchen and they departed too, leaving us a spotless home, before midnight. Sarah, Craig, Eleanor, Megan and I had gathered for a nightcap as the last of the crew said goodnight. I reminisced about some of the parties we'd occasionally hosted in our thirties and forties that didn't stop until the sun had started to come up.