But even though homosexuality was not illegal, it was also not something people discussed. Aside from Grandfather, I knew no other homosexuals. I thought of them neither one way nor another. They were simply not people who affected my life in any significant way.
“Oh,” I said to Grandfather now.
“Little cat,” Grandfather began, and then stopped. Then he started again. “I hope someday you’ll understand why I decided this match was the best one for you. I wanted to find you a husband who I knew would always look after you, who would always take care of you, who would never raise a hand to you, who would never shout at or diminish you. I am confident this young man is that person.
“I could have not told you. But I want to tell you, because I don’t want you to think it’s your fault that you and your husband don’t have sexual relations. I don’t want you to think it’s your fault if he doesn’t love you in some ways. He will love you in other ways, or at least show love for you in other ways, and those are the ways that matter.”
I thought about this. Neither of us said anything for a long time.
Then I said, “Maybe he will change his mind.”
Grandfather looked at me, and then he looked down. There was another silence. “No,” he said, very softly. “He will not, little cat. This is not something that he can change.”
I know this will sound very foolish, because Grandfather was so smart, and as I have said, I believed everything he said. But even though he had told me otherwise, I have always hoped that he might have been wrong about my husband, that one day, my husband might grow to be physically attracted to me. I wasn’t sure how, exactly, this would happen. I know I am not attractive. I also knew that even if I was attractive, it wouldn’t have mattered to my husband.
Yet for the first two or so years of our marriage, I had a dream of how he might fall in love with me. It wasn’t a typical dream but, rather, a waking one, as I never had it while I slept, though I always wished I would. In it, I was lying in my bed, and suddenly I felt my husband get into bed next to me. He held me, and then we kissed. That was the end of that dream, but sometimes I had other dreams, in which my husband kissed me while we were standing, or that we went to the center and listened to some music and held hands.
I understood that Grandfather had told me the truth about my husband before I was married so I wouldn’t think it was my fault that my husband wasn’t attracted to me. But knowing the truth didn’t make it easier; it didn’t make me stop wishing that maybe my husband was an exception, that maybe our life would end up being different than Grandfather had told me it would. And even though it hadn’t, it was difficult to stop hoping. I had always been good at accepting things as they were, but it was harder for me than I had expected to accept this. Every day I tried; every day I failed. There were some days, some weeks, even, when I didn’t hope that maybe, maybe Grandfather had been wrong about my husband—that maybe someday he would love me back. I knew it was more realistic and ultimately less distressing to spend my time working on accepting, rather than hoping. But hoping, though it made me feel worse, also made me feel better.
I knew that whoever was writing my husband those notes was a man—I could tell from the handwriting. Knowing this made me feel bad, but not as bad as it would have if the notes had been written by a woman: It meant that Grandfather had been right; that my husband was as he had said. But it still made me unhappy. It still made me feel that I had failed, even though Grandfather had said that I wasn’t to think like that. In a way, I didn’t need to know who the person was, just as I didn’t need to know what happened in the house on Bethune Street—whatever more I learned would be useless, just extra details. I would be unable to change them; I would be unable to correct them. Yet I still wanted to know—it was as if knowing was better than not knowing, as difficult as knowing would be. It was for this same reason, I suppose, that Grandfather had told me about my husband.
As unhappy as my husband’s inability to love me made me, however, David’s inability was worse. It was worse because I hadn’t truly comprehended how I had felt about him; it was worse because I knew that at some point, I had begun thinking that he might like me as well, that he might like me in a way my husband couldn’t. And it was worst of all because I had been wrong—he hadn’t felt for me what I felt for him.
The following Saturday at 16:00, I stayed indoors. My husband was taking a nap in our bedroom; he had been tired lately, he said, and needed to lie down. But after ten minutes, I went downstairs and opened the door to our building. It was a bright, hot day, and the Square was very busy. There was a crowd of people waiting in front of the metal merchant whose stall was closest to the northern edge. But then some of them moved aside, and I suddenly saw David. Although it was hot, the air quality was good, and he was holding his helmet in one hand. With his other hand, he was shielding his eyes, and he was turning his head back and forth, slowly, looking for something or someone.
I realized then he was looking for me, and I shrank against the door before remembering that I had never told David where I lived—all he knew was that I lived in Zone Eight, just like him. I was thinking this when he seemed to look directly at me, and I held my breath, as if it would make me invisible, but then he turned his head in the opposite direction.
Finally, after another two minutes or so, he left, looking back over his shoulder one last time as he moved west.
The next Saturday, the same thing happened. This time I was waiting at the door exactly at 15:55, so I could watch him approach, stand at the center of the north edge of the Square, and, for the next eleven minutes, look for me before finally leaving. The next Saturday, the same thing; and again the next.
It made me feel good that he still wanted to see me, even after I had embarrassed myself. But it made me sad as well, because I knew I could no longer see him. I know this sounds silly, or even childish, because even though David didn’t feel for me as I did him, he still wanted to be my friend, and hadn’t I been saying all along that I wanted a friend?
But I just couldn’t see him again. I know that sounds illogical. But it took so much energy and discipline for me to remind myself to not hope for my husband’s love that I didn’t think I had enough strength to remind myself not to hope for David’s love, either. It was too difficult for me. I would have to learn to forget or ignore my feelings for David, and I wasn’t going to be able to do that if I kept seeing him. It was better to pretend I had never met him at all.
* * *
At the top of the building where I worked, there was a greenhouse. This was not the greenhouse that had been named for Grandfather—that was atop a different building.
The greenhouse at Larsson Center was not a working greenhouse but, rather, a museum. Here the university maintained a specimen of each of the plants that had been engineered at RU for use in antiviral medications, dating all the way back to 2037. The plants were grown in individual clay pots and arranged in rows, and although they didn’t look all that remarkable, they each had a label beneath them listing their Latin name, and the name of the lab that had developed them, and the drug they had contributed to. The bulk of botanical research had been long ago transferred to the Farm, but there were still a few RU scientists who collaborated in the development program.