HOMOPHOBIC

My evenings with Arlen and Harry were so convivial, partly because her kids were off at college—and I no longer was witness to the disparity in the way she treated them.

She often used to say that she’d been her mother’s little princess and her father’s little match girl, and over time I had come to see how this split expressed itself in her relationship with her kids. Jeff was her little prince, and Karen her little match girl. From his birth, she’d adored Jeff—loved his wide-set eyes and broad smile that were like his father’s—and disliked her daughter’s long face and “narrow dental arch” that were like her own. From the beginning she’d loved Jeff’s energy and spirit and, anxious about doing anything that might dampen it, had coddled and indulged him, unable to deny him anything. Karen, on the other hand, she saddled with all her expectations and biases about what a girl should be—helpful, adaptable, accommodating. She found fault with what she regarded as her daughter’s whininess and clumsiness—Karen had, by Arlen’s standards, big hands and feet—and rued her lack of charm. While she saw her son as possessing all the manly graces, she saw her daughter as possessing none of the feminine ones.

Witnessing this dynamic had been painful to me, partly because it reminded me of my own situation, the way my mother catered to my brother while making demands on me, though for entirely different reasons.

In any case, Arlen had fastened all of her hopes on her Jeff, who’d inherited some of her artistic flair, so that it became impossible for her, being as homophobic as she was, to accept the implications of something that happened while Jeff was still in high school: he’d been brought home one night by a policeman, who’d spotted him in a car with an older man.