Escape: Part 2

Peter means rock ...

Peter was a tall attractive man with blond hair who drove his ancient car all over Canada, almost always on a whim.  He was extremely intelligent but flighty. He cared deeply about the world we lived in; once walked from Montreal to Ottawa to fight for nuclear disarmament.   He had long slim fingers, played the piano, loved jazz and classical music.  Those same hands fashioned wooden toys for my babies. He was a reader, a writer, a thinker, a philosopher.  It was Peter who forced me to think about things like the existence of God.  The term "Renaissance Man" was unknown to me when I knew him, but Peter was the only real Renaissance Man I ever knew.

He saved me because he loved me.  He saved me because he saw something inside me that was invisible to most people.  He saw what Pat saw ... an intelligent young woman trapped in poverty and ignorance.

My grandmother loved him.  Even though he didn't speak German (he tried), they got along well.  Most of their communication was non-verbal.   He helped her with dishes.  He showed his appreciation of her cooking.  She knew he loved and valued her.

My father thought the world of Peter.  They shared a love of art and music.  Peter was always willing to help Dad at his "farm" in Mansonville, providing the manual strength, a  knowledge of tools, and an extra pair of hands.  Once they hooked a chain onto a building and hauled it from one location to another using Peter's old car.  Peter sat in the trunk hanging onto the chain and a rope.  They both loved doing the unthinkable. My father would have loved to have had a son like Peter.

Peter was my best friend, my brother, a surrogate father to my babies, and my boy friend.  We talked endlessly. We encouraged one another to be the best we could be.  I remember hours and hours of exploring the city ... of driving to see new things ... of spending time at his parents' home ... sometimes alone but just as often with the children.  We kissed.  We cuddled.  We even slept together occasionally. 

But we were not lovers.  We tried once; it was not the high point of our relationship.

Peter was gay in an era when that term with all it implies had much uglier appellations.  Pansy.  Queer. Fruit. Faggot.  It was a time when homosexuality was thought to be a mental aberration, a form of insanity, an affliction that could be fixed by psychiatry.

Peter committed suicide about five years after I met him.  We were in our twenties.  We spent his last evening together ... at a jazz club in Montreal.  It was a week night and I had to work the next day.  I remember my last words to him ... "I'm going to kick you out now, Peter," I said.  "I have to get up in the morning and you can't stay here."  He kissed me good bye.  I had no idea that would be the last time I would feel his arms around me.

It was over a week before I heard that he had driven that old Plymouth up into the Laurentians north of Montreal and parked it in a field where he sealed up the windows and turned the exhaust hose into the car.  He was found by a stranger several days after his death.  His family got in touch with my father after the funeral. 

I still cry when I think about the loss of my dearest friend, my brother, the man who saved my life, the man I wish could have been my husband, my children's father.  My tears, of course, are for my own loss, but they are also tears of regret that Peter could not have lived long enough to be accepted for who he was, that he died before it was possible for men and women to be openly gay. It is more than forty years since Peter committed suicide.  If Peter had lived today, his story, our story, would have been very different.

The road to freedom was a pretty bumpy road.  First there was the confrontation with my husband.  It hurt Peter to hurt anyone, and my husband was stunned.  Peter smashed his fist into a concrete basement wall to hurt himself as he knew my husband was hurting. 

I found it harder to understand my husband's surprise and pain.  It had been a while since we had admitted that we didn't love each other.  We'd comforted ourselves by making love afterward.  We knew that we were trapped, that there was no out for us.  We had two little girls born just eleven months apart.  We had nothing in common, not even the babies.  All we had were our bodies and their need for each other.

I had been complaining for a long time about my unhappiness, about his total lack of interest in me or the children.  I had screamed ugly things about my entrapment that was more complete than his.  He could escape occasionally but I couldn't ever get away because he couldn't be trusted to look after the babies. 

The only time I ever left them in his care was the day I took the two hour bus ride into Montreal to pick up a snowsuit my father had won.  I visited with Dad and stayed to attend a movie.  I was gone for about eight hours.   When I returned, the babies were screaming in their cribs, their little bottoms blistered and raw, empty bottles lying in and near the cribs.  I comforted them, bathed them, applied ointment and dressed them in clean clothes, and then confronted him with the accusation that he didn't give a damn about anyone but himself, not even the babies.  Why had he just left them alone all day while he watched television?  He said he had poured cold milk into bottles from time to time and given them to them in their cribs.  I guess that gave him some respite from their crying; allowed him to watch the football game undisturbed. 

Maybe that was the last straw for me.  Maybe that is why I asked Peter to take me away just before the Christmas when they were one and two years old.

At first, we went to a grungy room ... student digs in a boarding house.  I think it was Tom's place.  Peter went out during the day to try to find us a better arrangement.  While he was gone, I washed diapers in the tiny kitchen sink and dried them on radiators.  The landlady arrived at the door and told me that the room was not intended to house a family.  I was relieved when Peter came back and took us away.

This time we went to his parents' place.  He had simply told them that he was bringing a woman and her two children.  They, god bless them, said, "Oh, Peter, what have you done now?" And then they welcomed us into their home.  It was a safe haven of cleanliness and warmth.

But of course we couldn't stay there either.

I felt I could not go to my father; that I had made my bed.  So I turned to my mother, a woman I hardly knew, a woman I had only met after leaving my father's house.  When I phoned, she said we could come.

Peter and I got into the car and drove to Toronto.  When we arrived, my mother told us we couldn't stay, that her husband didn't want us there, that their lives couldn't accommodate two toddlers.  When she had received my call she had contacted my father.  He told her we could stay with him.  So we drove back to Montreal.  My father and grandmother welcomed us as warmly as Peter's parents had.  Only this time I knew we could stay, that we were finally safe.

As soon as the babies were asleep, my father asked me what I wanted to do.  "Go back to school," I said.

 "That's fine.  Oma will look after the children," was the response. 

And that was the beginning of the next hurdle on the road out of ignorance and poverty.