Free The Stardust Lounge by Deborah Digges Page A

Stan woke me in the middle of the night to read me a poem he had just written, or I woke him to read a passage I'd just found in Keats's letters, or a passage from Hopkins or Akhmatova.
    What had we thought, anyway? What had we believed our lives would be like after our marriage? I suspect we thought, like many parents, that my sons would grow up under our enlightened care and everything would be fine.
    We believed that our parenting was superior, that we were, without a doubt, better parents than our own hadbeen to us. We'd vowed not to make the mistakes they did, mistakes we often picked out and highlighted and discussed so rationally.
    And we believed that our lives as writers, lives punctuated by travel, by liberal, ecumenical notions of culture and society, by our moves to this or that university to teach, by our stays in Europe, the boys attending school there—that all these experiences would have positive effects on our children.
    Though Stephen's behaviors were hard on everyone, what was hardest on Stan and me these days was the fact that rationale and reason seemed trivial now, dizzyingly earnest. Our once sacred belief in the honor system had become a joke. Now, instead of judging our parents, certainly culture at large, for old-fashioned—indeed we'd often called them cruel—approaches to child rearing, we were looking to those approaches for answers.
    Neither of us raised an eyebrow when one or the other fell into the doomed cadences of
that's the way my parents did it…
    As recently as two years ago Stan would likely not have paid much attention to the article in the
Times,
or if he had, he would have noticed it only to shake his head at what he thought to be a father's stupid brutality toward a daughter.
    The quality I loved best about Stan was his benevolence, his stand against oppression. During the Vietnam War he'd been a conscientious objector. During our courting he had written me,
I'll do everything I can to befriend and father to your boys.
    I look down at my shabby T-shirt and jeans, my dirtybare feet. Stan falls onto our bed fully clothed, sighs, and closes his eyes. He is used up by the first weeks of intense teaching and the commutes from Maryland to Massachusetts, where he is greeted by an anxious mother and an angry stepson.
    “I'm sorry about this,” I say as I lie down next to him.
    “Sorry for what?” He stirs. “You didn't do anything.”
    “I know but—”
    “But what. You were going to say, ‘It's my kid.’ “
    “Uh-huh. Sorry,” I say again, this time for making the distinction.
    “Night,” he sighs.
    In the morning he wakes me with a note he has found from Stephen taped to the fridge.
I'm leaving for good,
it reads.
Don't try to find me.
    Stan is fully dressed. He has showered and put on fresh clothes. I see his backpack stuffed and ready at the foot of the bed.
    “I can't do this anymore,” he says as I sit up and shake myself fully awake. “I'm sorry.”
    Stan hands me a mug of coffee and smooths my hair.
    “Take my advice and call the police and let them deal with him. When you do, let me know.
    “And by the way,” Stan adds as he readies to leave. “It seems Stephen took the dog with him, and a bag of dog food. And your car.”

    Stephen kissing G.Q.

Fall, 1983
    We're dancing. The boys take turns being my partner as we dance to the spinet organ playing “Shine on Harvest Moon,” and peppy versions of “Harbor Lights,” “I'll Remember You,” “Someone to Watch Over Me.” Stephen likes to plant his little feet on mine—we sidestep the maze of cables, hobble and sway across the cafe's bright linoleum.
    When thirteen-year-old Charles cuts in, he places his hand on my hip and concentrates on the floor. He has just outgrown me in height and we are startled by this new perspective that renders both of us a bit shy.
    His height surprises us and sadly reminds me that just now we are separated, Charles living with his father in Columbia, Stephen and I in Iowa