The Two Dogs and I

I can remember sitting on an orange plastic swivel chair at the table in my mother’s kitchen on East 9^th Street in Manhattan when I was 16, dreaming of the children that I would some day have. I imagined them clinging to my long skirts as I went about the business of the day, There was never a question in my mind that someday I would have children.

As a child, I thought that my parents had no idea what I was all about because they could not remember what they were like when they were my age, I swore that I would remember what it was like to be a child so that my children would not suffer in the same way. I never quite felt like I belonged in my family which I think is a very common feeling for many children. I had decided that I was either adopted or they conceived me as tax deduction and nothing more.

Being a modern woman, I decided that if I was not married by the time I was 35, I would try to have a child on my own. I was 33 when I got married and I thought that all would be well.

If I had known then what I knew now…

At the time my first husband and I started school (late spring or early summer of 1986) we had already decided to take a year off and travel. All my life I had dreamed of going to Europe, purchasing a VW mini-van and traveling overland to India with a group of friends, The political situation in the middle east made that impossible at that time.

My husband was the child of missionaries and had grown up in Hong Kong from the age of 3 to 13. As luck would have it, his father had started a social services agency in Hong Kong which was celebrating its 25^th anniversary and had invited him and his wife back to Hong Kong to join in the festivities. We decided to plan our trip around starting out with my in-laws in Hong Kong in September. It was a rare treat for everyone. My mother and father in-law were planning a trip to mainland China (which we also accompanied them on) as it had been closed to tourism during the time they had lived there. I was thrilled to be going at all, no less with people who spoken fluent Mandarin.  Everyone was happy to be able to see old friends and revisit their earlier days.

I still remember the plane touching down in Hong Kong where the airport is situated in such a way that you almost feel like you are about to plunge into the ocean. After being awake while traveling for almost 24 hours, my father-in-law had contrived to pick us up at the airport in a Mercedes Benz and whisked us off to a banquet in a private room at a restaurant which still today ranks high up on the list of one of the best meals that I have ever had.  But this isn’t about the trip…

A few weeks before we were about to leave, one of us mentioned casually in class that we were going away for a year. We had already sublet our apartment, bought our tickets, and taken a leave of absence from our jobs. Mr. T told us we couldn’t go and we needed to change our plans. He was adamant but the die was cast and we were not changing our plans at that point. I was surprised that this was a problem. The rule was something like: the “work” goes cold in you after 24 hours (or was it 8 hours?) so long absences and vacations were not permitted in school. I was secretly hoping that by the time we got back, my husband would have forgotten about “school” and it would all be over but that wasn’t what happened. Even then, I was not totally convinced about school. I knew I was there more for my husbands sake then because of my own interest.

After we retuned to NY, our friend who had originally introduced us to school called to see if we were ready to go back. I remember meeting with her at the White Horse Tavern and discussing it over a few beers. We went back.

When we returned, I was given a different sustainer than the one that I had had originally. My original sustainer had been a vibrant redhead named J who I had confided in that I thought that school could potentially be the beginning of the end of my marriage. My new sustainer, M, had a Spanish husband (who I thought was gay) and 3 or 4 very young children. Little did I know then that everything I said to them was reported back regularly to the higher echelon.

Shortly after we had returned to the US, I became pregnant. Early in the pregnancy, I started to show signs of miscarriage and I became very depressed. My doctor put me on bed rest but I still went to class.  At the end of class, Mr. T asked to see. He told me that he knew about the potential miscarriage and that he thought he could help me. I was filled with hope and excitement. Of course, he was unable to help me at all. It didn’t occur to me in the moment that my sustainer had breached my trust.

A few days later, I had the miscarriage alone quietly at home.

Time went on but I did not get pregnant again. My husband and I consulted an endocrinologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital and we both went through a whole battery of tests. The conclusion was that one of my fallopian tubes was damaged (probably due to an IUD) but the other one was perfectly normal and they found no reason that I shouldn’t be able to get pregnant. They prescribed Clomid and I started tracking my temperature to find the best moments conception.

My husband started to get more “secret” phone calls than I did. He then started going away for the weekends, coming home late, exhausted and filthy on Sunday nights.  I didn’t have any idea where he went or what he did. I only knew that it had something to do with school and I knew that he drove there and took his construction tools with him. When we had first started at school, we were strictly admonished to NEVER speak about school either between ourselves or with “outsiders”. My husband, being a man who always played by the rules, never said a word to me neither about where he was going nor about what he was doing. I was both jealous and angry. Frequently, he would have a free lance job that needed to be finished and I would complete it for him by myself over the weekend. It was hard to get together with friends because I didn’t know when he would be there to join us or how to explain his absences when he was away. When my temperature said that I was in a fertile period and he was off to unknown places over the weekend, what was I supposed to do? I was becoming somewhat isolated from my husband and friends. For the most part though, I was still pretty happy with my life, my marriage and my job and looked forward to starting our family together.

On our fifth wedding anniversary, we went out to dinner at Raoul’s on Spring Street. It was one of my favorite restaurants and I was all dressed up looking forward to an exciting intimate evening. We sat down at the table and ordered drinks. I was looking forward to celebrating our time together and planning for our future, I leaned over to him and in a breathy voice I said: “Wow, five years, can you believe it!  How are we doing?” He looked calmly back at me and said: “I want a divorce.”

I was totally in shock. There was no way that I had seen that coming and I couldn't believe he was serious. I could understand if he had some issues that he wanted to through and work out but this was an ultimatum. It was a decision wholly made by him with no regard for me, no interest in how I felt or what I wanted. I was out of the equation. The deal was done as far as he was concerned.

We stayed together for another year or two before we finally divorced. I was for the most part hysterically trying for him to change his mind until I realized that if he didn’t want me, there really wasn’t anything I could do about it because begging and pleading were getting me nowhere. We had lunch a year or so after we finally separated and I asked him “Why?” He then gave me a long list of problems he had and concerns about the relationship. I asked him why he had never voiced his concerns or talked about any of it while we were still married so we could have the opportunity to solve the problems. He had no answer.

During the year or so after he announced he wanted a divorce, number of things happened. One was that he stood up in class one night and announced to the entire assembled group in school that he didn’t love me and that he had married me for my money. I was shocked, humiliated, and angry beyond understanding why this had to be a public confession. I believed him and yet somewhere I knew it wasn’t true but I still was unable to see the subtle hand of school behind the whole debacle.

He told me that he had decided he wanted to spend one month apart to think about our marriage and that at the end of the month, we would meet and he would tell me what his decision was.

I didn’t know what to do and in the end I felt like all I could do was to hope and pray. I felt totally helpless and at his mercy. I still saw him in class but we didn’t speak.

A month later we met in a coffee shop. We talked a little. He got up and said that he had to make a phone call and left the restaurant to go to the phone booth on the corner (in the days before cell phones…). I could see him out of the window. He came back and we talked some more and he got up to make another phone call. He came back and told me his decision was final and that he wanted a divorce.

Later, I realized that he was probably calling his sustainer or a partner or maybe even Mr. T for help and support and encouragement. I felt that I didn’t have that kind of support and I felt terribly alone. The one time I was brave enough to speak up in class about how miserable and unhappy I was, Mr. T said to me: “You are born alone and you die alone.” Basic translation: Shut up and just get over it. I didn’t speak about it again. 

I sat in class week after week watching my ex-husband and never speaking. He stood up and talked about his new girlfriend and then how she had gotten pregnant and then how he wanted to marry her. They gave him their blessing and pretty soon he brought her to school and I had to watch the two of them sitting there week after week. At that point, I felt that since I had been in school all those years for my (now) ex-husband, I needed to try and be there for myself and I redoubled my efforts in working on myself.

Time passed and I still wanted a child. I stood up in class one evening and told Sharon that I wanted a child. I had heard other women ask the same question and she frequently suggested they go to Europe for a few weeks, have an affair and get pregnant by someone they would never see again. Me? She told me that I would make a terrible mother because I was not a loving woman. She said that I was self centered and had no ability to take care of anything. She suggested that I get a plant and try not to kill it. I replied that I had many plants and they were doing quite well. She then told me to get a dog. She said I had to get a young puppy who was untrained, not an older dog, so I could have the experience of training him.

I was stunned. What happens when someone in an “authority” position, your “teacher”, tells you something like that? I am not a loving woman. I believed her, I didn’t believe her, I was torn, bleeding and wracked with pain, doubt, indecision and most of all I was frozen. I couldn’t do anything. Weeks went by and people kept asking me if I had gotten a dog yet. Night after night: “Did you get a dog yet? Did you get a dog yet?” Frozen like a deer in the headlights. I couldn’t move. I realize, years later, that this has often been my response to severe psychic turmoil: everything stops and I am unable to move in any direction at all, frozen in fear.

Time went by and I rented a car and drove to a kennel on Long Island and I got a dog. Then people started asking me what his name was. For weeks, he had no name and finally I settled on "Puck" from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck, the mischievous one. He was driving me crazy as only a small puppy in a small NY apartment can. The hems of my dresses were filled with holes where he would jump up and grab hold of me. More time went by and I stood up again a year later to ask again about a child and Sharon told me to get another dog. I got another dog. Sophie was a rescue dog.

After awhile, I just didn’t say anything, I just went back to my reproductive endocrinologist and did a number of rounds of donor insemination. I didn’t get pregnant. More tests. More drugs. More consultations. I went to several acupuncturists. I joined an organization for single women wanting to get pregnant. I talked to my cousin, who lives in Denver, an OBGYN with a specialization in infertility. Finally, I decided to do several rounds of in-vitro fertilization. I flew back and forth for several months, giving myself injections, sending blood samples back and forth, and monitoring my hormone levels.

I finally got pregnant. Sharon sent me to her personal gynecologist but there was something wrong with the fetus and I had to have a D and C. A friend from school who was a nurse accompanied me to the procedure and then spent the night. I was heartbroken. Then next class, Sharon asked me to stand up and she told me that I didn’t talk enough in class and either I spoke every class for the next month or I would not be allowed to go come back to school.

I panicked. The threat of being asked to leave school was the worst imaginable punishment. How do I explain that? It doesn’t make any rational sense and yet I believed what they said: that without school, my life would turn to shit. If I had any chance in the world to have a happy complete fulfilling life, it was only with the help of school. Without school I was doomed to a life of misery – I would end up a homeless bag lady wandering the streets of New York and eating out of garbage cans. School was my only hope to make my dreams come true and enable me to live the life I wanted.

It was because of Sharon’s ultimatum that I stayed in New York and did not attempt another in vitro fertilization. I thought that if I missed class by being away it would count as a class where I hadn’t spoken and it would all be over. I spoke every class for the next month. The truth was that in the end, I don’t think that anyone cared. I never got the sense that there was anyone appointed to counting the number of times I spoke in class. It  was never remarked on when the month was up and I lapsed into silence again.

Who knew why Sharon came out with the pronouncements she did? That was the frightening part really because it was all so plain unpredictable – what she said and why she said it and also whether or not she remembered what she had said. You never really knew if she was serious or joking or just plain drunk so it was impossible to predict the consequences. It was impossible to know how to react to her.

I remember one time, early on, Mr. T told me that I wore black too often and that if I wore black again to class, he would ask me to leave, The following class I wore a bright red silk shirt with a brightly printed skirt. A made me stand up and asked me why I had worn black again after he had told me no to. I said that I didn’t believe I was wearing black but he commented that there was a little bit of black in my skirt. Oh….

Sharon trained all her teachers in her own image and it was dangerous to say anything that wasn’t the “party line” (and sometimes it was hard to know what the party line actually was because it could change really fast.) School was it’s own little totalitarian regime where you didn’t know who was who so you couldn’t say anything to anyone for fear of being turned in to the authorities. You didn’t always know who your friends were. There were some people who were never my friends but they would be nice to me upon occasion and I was always suspicious. I had “friends” who asked me to be their bridesmaid who I didn’t really know and had no idea why they had asked me. Only a very few were real friends who I could trust. Some were friends who I couldn’t trust because I knew they would tattle on me and some were just plain enemies no matter what they said.

Once another woman confided in me that she also wanted to have a child. She was thinking about adopting but didn’t want to ask Sharon because she was afraid that Sharon would tell her to get a dog.

Pucky and Sophie