Chapter 8

At the end of the term during which Robert and I had met, my roommate gracefully agreed to vacate and Robert moved in with me, turning a de factosituation into one that was de jure. As far as his family knew, he was still living in a dormitory at MIT, and he’d maintained that fiction until the end of the school year. Before the summer break, I used family contacts to find jobs in Atlanta for both of us, and he spent the summer with me in Gran’s big old house in Buckhead.

Gran knew about my sexual orientation and had learned to be more comfortable with it than I would have expected, given the era in which she was reared. Early on, she’d made it clear that she would have preferred to see me married and producing great-grandchildren, but she was intelligent—and educated—enough to understand that one doesn’t choose these things. She had made Robert feel as welcome in her home as any of my other friends.