“Lee, I’m richer than all your friends put together.”
“Oh? I thought you said you are a judge.”
“Well, I am, yes, but I’m going to be rich. I mean…very rich.”
Lee put his arm around him. “Don’t fret, Tyler. I’m free a week from Thursday. Those eggs look delicious.”
That was the beginning. Money had been important to Tyler before, but now it became an obsession. He needed it for Lee. He could not get him out of his mind. The thought of him making love with other men was unbearable. I’ve got to have him for my own.
From the age of twelve, Tyler had known that he was homosexual. One day, his father had caught him fondling and kissing a boy from his school, and Tyler had borne the full brunt of his father’s fury. “I can’t believe I have a son who’s a faggot! Now that I know your dirty little secret, I’m going to keep a close eye on you, sister.”
Tyler’s marriage was a cosmic joke, perpetrated by a god with a macabre sense of humor.
“There’s someone I want you to meet,” Harry Stanford said.
It was Christmas and Tyler was at Rose Hill for the holidays. Kendall and Woody had already made their departures and Tyler was planning his when the bombshell dropped.
“You’re going to get married.”
“Married? That’s out of the question! I don’t…”
“Listen to me, sister. People are beginning to talk about you, and I can’t have that. It’s bad for my reputation. If you get married, that will shut them up.”
Tyler was defiant. “I don’t care what people say. This is my life.”
“And I want it to be a rich life for you, Tyler. I’m getting older. Pretty soon…” He shrugged.
The carrot and the stick.
Naomi Schuyler was a plain-looking woman, from a middle-class family, whose flaming desire in life was to “better” herself. She was so impressed by Harry Stanford’s name that she would probably have married his son if he were pumping gas instead of being a judge.
Harry Stanford had taken Naomi to bed once. When someone asked him why, Stanford replied, “Because she was there.”
She quickly bored him, and he decided she would be perfect for Tyler.
What Harry Stanford wanted, Harry Stanford got.
The wedding took place two months later. It was a small wedding—one hundred and fifty people—and the bride and groom went to Jamaica for their honeymoon. It was a fiasco.
On their wedding night, Naomi said, “What kind of man have I married, for God’s sake? What have you got a dick for?”
Tyler tried to reason with her. “We don’t need sex. We can live separate lives. We’ll stay together, but we’ll each have our own…friends.”
“You’re damned right, we will!”
Naomi took out her vengeance on him by becoming a black-belt shopper. She bought everything at the most expensive stores in the city, and took shopping trips to New York.
“I can’t afford your extravagances on my income.” Tyler protested.
“Then get a raise. I’m your wife. I’m entitled to be supported.”
Tyler went to his father and explained the situation.
Harry Stanford grinned. “Women can be damned expensive, can’t they? You’ll just have to handle it.”
“But, Father, I need some—”
“Someday you’ll have all the money in the world.”
Tyler tried to explain it to Naomi, but she had no intentions of waiting until “someday.” She sensed that that “someday” might never come. When Naomi had squeezed what she could out of Tyler, she sued for divorce, settled for what was left of his bank account, and disappeared.
When Harry Stanford heard the news, he said, “Once a faggot, always a faggot.”
And that was the end of that.
His father went out of his way to demean Tyler. One day, when Tyler was on the bench, in the middle of a trial, his bailiff came up to him and whispered, “Excuse me, Your Honor…”
Tyler had turned to him, impatiently. “Yes?”
“There’s a telephone call for you.”
“What? What’s the matter with you? I’m in the middle of—”
“It’s your father, Your Honor. He says it’s very urgent and he must talk to you immediately.”