When I was a young teenage girl, I loved the idea of being an invalid wife.
I thought that would be the best way to go through adulthood. I could lie abed and read novels, have people bring food and drink, and do all the housework for me. My adoring husband would come home from the (whatever the hell he did) and come to my spacious and cool bedroom to see how his beloved was doing today. Maids (or somebody) would clean the house for me; nannies (or somebody) would care for my beautiful children. These beautiful children would come in at a pre-ordained time every day to kiss Mama on the forehead and tell her they loved her before slipping away to go study French, ride the horses, or whatever it was children did.
Oh bliss! What a life those invalid wives had! Where exactly I got the idea is vague to me now. Rebecca? The classic Gothic romance novel? Oh, who knows!
The truth is, I was pretty damned healthy as a wife. I was also living in a world that was way too hard to romanticize! My adoring husband was not all that adoring. My children were beautiful (and that’s a fact) but they were not all that adoring either. In fact, when their father and I divorced, they could be downright judgmental about it.
We had the usual “hardships” of a single parent family. (Probably no more and no less than any other tale of woe, but since it was my tale of woe, I took more notice.) Primarily the problem was that we didn’t have enough money to really make ends meet. There are many wonderful free things to do in San Francisco, and we did them all. My son, John, was the most intelligent, witty, charming and mature four-year-old who ever lived. He would accompany me to a number of events and at most of the events, he would attract any number of potential suitors for Mom. Oh no, this was not pimping Mom out, it was just that men and women alike responded to this adorable little boy!
We were waiting in line at a restaurant to have lunch after doing some back to school shopping and the very nice looking man behind us had a hard time resisting this verbose and interesting little boy. John eventually asked the gentleman to join us for lunch and the man smiled and say he’d love too. (By the way, I was pretty cute too at twenty-five.)
The man had lunch with us and insisted on paying our tab, although I did put up an argument over it. (Actually, it was my bus money for the next week, so I didn’t argue too hard.) Further, he said, “let me drive you home.” I hesitated, but doubted very much he was a serial killer and accepted his kind offer.
When he parked in front of our apartment building, the silver-haired gentleman said that he would love to take me and the children to dinner. After a moment of consideration, I agreed. He got my number, my apartment number, and I had a date! Wooo Wooo! A date! Me? A date!
When the good-looking, silver-haired gentleman arrived promptly at 6:00 PM, we were ready to go. He arrived with a bottle of good wine (probably anyway—I would not have known the difference), a bottle of good scotch (see comment above), as well as a big bag of gift wrapped toys from FAO Schwartz (a big well known toy store in San Francisco at the time).
I was actually pretty enchanted. Could this be the guy who would let me be an invalid wife? As we sat sipping Scotch (Glen Fiddich or Glen Livit or something Glen anyway), the gentleman explained to me that he was a pilot for one of the airlines that regularly flew in and out of San Francisco airport. He said that he would be delighted to have a “friend” in San Francisco, and would be willing to be of financial assistance to that friend. He was married and lived on the East Coast and spend a few days in San Francisco every month.
