A mother never wants to accept that her son isn't growing up to be the perfect man. I suppose, in a way, that's why I was blind to it all for so long.
My husband and I provided him with all the ingredients for a perfect childhood. He had a younger sister to play with, we offered love, encouragement and support. He seemed content, he always listened and even when he didn't take the advice we proffered often, he still considered it. We always figured he would be the one to go off to Harvard and make a name for himself. We wrote Megan off from the beginning, believing she would destroy herself with those late-night drinking binges she would skip off to every Thursday and Saturday night. She would stay home from school on Fridays, trying to get rid of her hangover so she would be ready for the alcohol once again on Saturday night. She stopped giving us her report cards when she was 13, and we stopped prying for them when she was 15. There was nothing we could, we decided, if she has a mind to do something, she'll do it. And that was the one conclusion we came to about her that proved to be correct, because at the end of high school, she surprised us with a scholarship to Queens University, and off she went to study English literature. Now she's a professor, having calmed down much from her teenage years. This all came as such a shock, as even now we can't believe how much she has changed. "There was probably something in her nature that caused her to defy us completely," my husband always claims proudly to strangers, and then continues more quietly, "that's why she turned out okay, and why her brother didn't."
It came as a complete destruction of all the things my husband and I had come to believe: the news that he was dead in a car accident. He'd been driving a hooker back to her street; she was the one who'd called the police. "He was drunk, he was crying... he said he had never amounted to anything and that he didn't think he could go on like this. Said he wanted a change. I didn't know what to say, but all of a sudden there was a truck coming at us, and I don't think he could properly because he didn't even try to swerve out of the way...."
We talked to his best friend the next day and learned he'd never been happy.
"Ever since the day he walked into high school and found himself swamped with homework, he was struggling. He felt he couldn't tell you guys because he knew you believed in him so much and he thought you'd be disappointed in him. He believed you would love his crack-pot sister more than him."
I cried when his friend said this. I didn't want to accept that my son - the son I had loved more than anything for the past 26 years - had ever been unhappy. I cried for 3 days straight, my heart broken for the second time. And then I found out what he'd been doing to try to find some happiness.
It came as the biggest shock of all. I always wanted to believe he would be a lady's man, but that he would have the dignity and the morality to do it in a pleasant manner. Never would I have thought he was out sleeping with so many girls. I've always been ashamed of the label I can imagine girls would have given him - a male slut. Every time he said he was going to his friend's house, every time he said he was going to work... he was actually fucking a girl. I remember him bringing home a couple of girlfriends, and now I wonder how long they were actually around for. My husband and I had never been given the opportunity to get to know them.
I can forgive him if he did it out of curiosity. Lord knows I was fascinated by my sexuality at that age. But I never lied to my parents about where I was going just so I could go and fuck a man. I never would have done that. I suppose that's why it's much harder for me to understand that side of things - why did he go out and sleep with so many girls? He must have been trying to find a piece of himself in them, but still... he must have become so insensitive to the act after a while. Maybe that's why he turned to hookers in the end. They would do anything he wanted and wouldn't complain, while any other nice girl would only give him what she felt he deserved.
His death was definitely hard to accept, but it awaked my husband and I to some realities that had been buried away from our sight from the beginning. We've realized that the environment a child is raised has a minimal effect on that child's life. It's their personality and their genetic tendencies that lead them to be who they are, or who they're not.
My daughter's expecting a son in the next few months. She's 33 years old and happily married to a man I wish could have been my son. I'm glad to have him now as a son-in-law and will cherish his and Megan's family as I cherished my own when I was young.
Fate has always enjoyed playing twisted jokes on people; at least now, however, I know the truth. Although, I'm still not sure how much of a consolation that really is.