After my divorce, I took a job teaching poetry to inmates in the Massachusetts prison system. By then, my daughter and I had moved into a large, creaky house in Cambridge with two other single moms and their children. Looking back, I can honestly say that life in that big house could seem as dark and dangerous as the rigors and uncertainties of life in prison.

THIS IS PART 1 of an EIGHT-PART STORY

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8

The first time I met him was in the kitchen of my best friend, Eloise’s, country house in East Moriches. His name was Roger Davis, but everyone just called him Davis, so that’s what I called him, too. He was a small man with bright red hair that stuck up, flame-like, from his head. I thought he was gorgeous, so filled with vitality that the whole room seemed lit by his presence. Over the years, Eloise had talked about him frequently, her good friend Davis whom she would have fallen in love with and married if he hadn’t been gay. He was a sculptor who had somehow begun an arts and photography program in the Massachusetts prison system. He had a sweet dog named Lucy, wore plaid flannel shirts and drove a pickup truck. As we stood there in the kitchen, he smiled broadly at me and asked if I’d be interested in a job on his program -- they were looking for someone to teach poetry to inmates.

Interested? Hell, yes! I knew nothing about the Massachusetts prison system, or about prison in general, but I’d just returned to the US after eight years in London, and I needed a job, a hook to hang my life around. I didn’t want to live in the same city as my parents -- New York -- so Cambridge was perfect. I had friends there. I could go back to school (I still had one term to complete for my B.A.). It was a small enough town for me to develop a support system as a single mom. 

I moved quickly. Eloise had been my closest friend in high school, a big, raw-boned girl with straight yellow hair and a flat, mid-western sounding voice. I stayed with her and her boyfriend, Aaron Gerwig, while I was looking for a place of my own.

I felt young and carefree even though I was the mother of a two-year-old and very burdened. But I’d just left a repressive marriage and was happy to be able to make my own decisions.

The first involved where I would live. I looked through dozens of ads in the paper and eventually chose a situation with two other single moms in their thirties, one with a seven-year-old son, the other with an eight-year-old daughter. 

The house we chose was enormous, three floors and three sets of steep, creaky stairs, a large kitchen/living area and many annoying nooks and crannies where children could insert themselves and hide. The woman who had found the house, Janey, took the whole top floor; all three of our children were relegated to bedrooms on the second floor; and Lina, the third woman, and I took two small rooms off the kitchen. And that’s where this story begins, because Davis, who was gay and who was also my boss, decided, awkwardly, that I was the one and only woman he was attracted to and that it would make sense to test out his sexuality in my new house on my new, narrow bed.

Cover Image: Janko Ferlic

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