6 Annulment

With one thing and another, Cosette’s date with Desmond turned into an all-nighter. When she didn’t show up or answer her phone until late the next morning, I knew I’d have to coax out an explanation.

The rest of the Class didn’t have to know the dirty details. I’m not sure they were even curious, so I invited Cosette to join me over a meal. It was well past eleven, and she’d already had an elaborate breakfast that Desmond cooked for her, so we had brunch. At Sweetgrass Vegetarian Cafe.

Even the most devoted carnivore couldn’t fail to recognize that Sweetgrass was vegetarian. The pastel pink-and-blue walls were ninety percent covered with posters of fruits and vegetables—a bowl of cherries on the front door, a plate of asparagus spears above the cash register. Cosette ordered summer rolls with sweet chili dipping sauce. They sounded light, so I ordered the same.

It was one of my favorite dishes, in my favorite restaurant, but I was so eager to hear her story, I barely touched my meal. “What happened?” I asked, not even holding my fork.

“Nothing much. I met a guy.”

I caught myself bouncing up and down in my chair. I guess other people can easily read my excitement. “Nothing much? Did you spend the night with him?”

“Do you mean, ‘Did we have sex?’?”

I could feel my neck turning beet red. “Um, yes, that’s what I meant.”

“Sure.”

“Sure you did?”

“Of course.”

“Of course? Just like that?”

“Just like that. We seemed to hit it off, so that’s what we did.”

“Wow!”

“Why ‘wow’?” she asked, though she must have known I would be virginally impressed. “Is that so surprising?”

“Well, … No, maybe. But I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend.”

“I didn’t. We just met yesterday.”

“Double wow! You just met him, and you did sex with him?”

“Sure. It’s no big deal.”

I blew out a huge breath I’d been unconsciously holding. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Maybe not for you, but I’ve never had sex with anybody.”

That wasn’t news to her. “Okay, so it would be a bigger deal for you. But I’m a few years older than you, and I’ve been married. That makes a difference.”

I had picked up my fork, but now almost dropped it. “Married? You were married? I didn’t know that.” I picked up my fork, looked at it as if I didn’t know what it was. “You have to tell me about it. Are you still married? To who?”

“No. And it’s ‘to whom.’”

My eyes scanned the flowered ceiling. “I lose my grammar when I get excited. Does the ‘no’ mean you’re divorced?”

“Annulled, actually. So officially I wasn’t married.”

“That’s even more exciting.” I lowered my whisper to the point where she had to lean across the table to hear—dipping her cuff in the chili sauce in the process. “Did he beat you or something?”

“Do you really want to hear the sordid details?”

Of course I did, but I said, “Not if you don’t want to tell me.”

“I suppose you ought to know. Maybe you could learn from my mistakes.” She wet her napkin in cold water and tried to salvage her shirt. “All right. You asked for it, but don’t blame me if the story makes you sick. Just don’t throw up on the table.”

She put down the napkin, conceding that the shirt was hopeless and would have to be laundered. “He was my best friend, ever since we were babies. I didn’t know he was gay. He didn’t either until we were older.”

“Oh,” I said, but I wasn’t sure which part of the story provoked that reaction. “This was in your village? In Chernion?”

“Yes. You’ve been there. Can you imagine what being gay would be like in such a small, insular village?”

“Not nice, I suppose. At least in America.”

“Switzerland isn’t much different, when it comes to that. Maybe worse. So, Philippe had managed to hide his orientation, but it grew more and more difficult as he grew older. Like all Swiss, he had to go in the Army, and then he became a policeman. Trying to conceal himself. Eventually, though, he wanted a cover story.”

I might be naive, but I’m not stupid. I saw what was coming. “I get it. He wanted to be married. To a woman.” I half covered my mouth. “To you.”

“Yes, to me. And I wanted to help him. I wasn’t planning to marry anyway. It’s a form of slavery. So we had the full ceremony, and it was okay. No sex, but okay. But after a few months, he started to worry that people would still suspect. He wanted us to have a baby, to improve his cover.”

I could see where this was heading. “So you tried sex?”

“Well, yes, we tried, but he couldn’t do it. So we tried artificial insemination. With a turkey baster, but it didn’t take.”

I blushed again at that part. Thanksgiving dinner would never be the same. “So you got the marriage annulled?”

“He didn’t want to do that. He wanted me to have sex with his cousin, so the baby would really be genetically related to him.”

I was quiet for a full minute, which is rare for me. I was trying to take that all in, but my mind was rebelling. I tried to conjure up some tough equations to solve, but the inner me simply refused. “That’s terrible! You refused, right?”

“Unfortunately, no. I mean, at first I did refuse. There was no question about it, having sex with a stranger. But Philippe was desperate, and I loved him. His cousin and I tried to do it without having sex. The turkey baster again, but it was humiliating and didn’t work any better than with Philippe. So we tried having sex. With the cousin. It was more humiliating that the kitchen utensil.”

“Did you get pregnant?”

“No. For some reason, no. And Philippe insisted I keep trying. He got angrier and angrier with me, as if it was my fault. I was in another one of those double binds. He wanted me to have sex with a third guy, but when I said okay, Philippe got angry with me for being so willing. But I tried, and the guy was a real scumbag.”

“What did he do?”

She shook her head. I think she realized she’d already told me too much. “I don’t think you need to know the details. The important thing was it snapped me out of my stupid acceptance. So, I went for the annulment.”

Actually, I did want to know the details, but I couldn’t say so. Instead, I asked, “What was that like? The annulment, I mean.”

“Let me just say that the priests didn’t want to grant the annulment until I confessed the entire story. Then they couldn’t act fast enough.”

“What a story!”

“I’m wiser now, but I’ll tell you the strangest part about it.”

“What’s that?”

“Even with these strangers, and with one of them being scum, I liked the sex. Really liked it. For a while, I was ashamed of myself, and tried not to enjoy it. But I couldn’t deny it. It didn’t matter about all the other stuff. It was a fantastic pleasure.”

“Wow!”

“I went a bit wild after the annulment, sleeping with just about any guy I met, until I lost my enthusiasm for it.”

“So you stopped?”

“Not exactly. I just got more discriminating. So sex is not a new thing to me, and I’ve never gotten bored with it. Now, this new guy, Desmond, he was pretty good. I’ll probably keep him around for a while.”