My Three Husbands by Swan Adamson Page A

another.”
    â€œYou can be together without marriage. You can love each other without marriage. That’s what your father and I have done for twenty years.”
    â€œOnly because you couldn’t get married.”
    â€œTry it out for a year or two,” Whitman suggested. “Maybe it’s nothing more than sex.”
    â€œIt’s more than sex,” I said.
    â€œHe doesn’t look like he’s any good at it anyway,” Whitman said.
    I let out a squawk of boy-are-you-wrong laughter. “If you don’t like him,” I said, “why are you so gung-ho for us to go on our honeymoon with you and Daddy?”
    â€œI didn’t say I didn’t like him. I know nothing about him. Except that he seems extremely ill at ease in my presence.”
    â€œYou intimidate him.”
    â€œI’ve never intimidated anyone in my life,” Whitman scoffed. “I’m one of the nicest people I’ve ever met.”
    â€œI know that,” I said, “but Tremaynne doesn’t. His dad used to beat him. So he’s, like, wary of authority figures.”
    â€œSweetheart, don’t, like, hold this against me. I’m just asking, okay? But what income level does Tremaynne come from? Is he from the lower-middle-class like your other husbands?”
    â€œI don’t know. I don’t judge people that way.”
    â€œI’m not judging him. I know nothing about him. I’m trying to place him in some kind of socioeconomic milieu that might help me to understand him better.”
    â€œYou’ll just have to get to know him. You’re a lot alike. You both have strong opinions about things.”
    Whitman opened my purse and extracted my cigarettes. He shook one out for himself and then one for me. He hadn’t smoked in five years, so it had the feeling of a special ceremony. Like a drug ritual. Holding his pants up, he went into the bathroom and came back with a glass of water. Opened the sliding glass doors to the balcony. Threw back one corner of the slippery yellow silk duvet and motioned for me to sit down beside him on the enormous bed he shared with my dad.
    Whitman looked at me before putting the cigarette between his lips. “Promise you won’t tell your father?”
    â€œPromise.” I gave the oath, then lit our cigarettes. Whitman closed his eyes and inhaled, coughing softly.
    â€œVenus,” he said, “your dad and I have lived together for twenty years. We can’t get married. We’re not considered morally or psychologically fit to control our own destinies.” Another inhale. “Now I want you to think for a moment about what it’s like to be in our position and to see you, our daughter, going through marriage after marriage.”
    â€œAre you pissed off with me because I can get married and you can’t?”
    He thought about it. “Maybe. A little. Because you don’t seem to know or value permanence.”
    I flicked my ashes into the glass he was holding. “Maybe that’s because I never had much when I was growing up.”
    â€œGet over it! You had your mother and you saw your father at least twelve times a year.”
    â€œWow, twelve times a year,” I said, remembering how simultaneously excited and angry ten-year-old me would be when I was about to see my dad again.
    That anger was my worst enemy. It was evil. It lay in wait like a big black boiling-mad monster that would just suddenly rear up and grab me. All sorts of things set it off. Resentment was a big part of it. Daddy claimed to love me, but he didn’t love me enough. I wanted him to think of nothing and no one but me, and he didn’t. When he wasn’t there, I felt like I was being punished somehow. The punishment was his absence. And the time we had was so short. We saw each other every month. Either Daddy flew out to Portland for a long weekend or I flew out to New York for a week. In Portland I had him