The State of Us

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “So he’s gay?”

  “I don’t know.” I felt weird talking about Dean without him around. It wasn’t my secret to tell, but Mel had already guessed Dean was the guy I was crushing on, and with the information I’d already given her, she could come to the wrong conclusion if I didn’t tell her the truth. All I could do at this point was damage control. “He thinks he’s probably demisexual, but he hasn’t gotten specific about the type of person he might be romantically interested in.”

  Mel got on her knees on the bed, leaned over, and slapped my arm. “That’s for keeping it from me.” She slapped me again. “And that’s for having a crush on Dean Arnault!”

  “What the hell, Mel?”

  “It doesn’t matter if he’s into you, Dre! How could you even think of being with a guy whose mom would ban abortion, arm teachers, eliminate protections for trans people, and probably thinks global warming is a hoax?”

  “Dean’s not like that,” I said.

  “Does his mom know he’s demi?”

  I shook my head.

  “Because he’s Mommy’s perfect little robot, and—” She stopped short and threw up her hands. “Fuck! I can’t even say that anymore because it’s a stereotype that I refuse to perpetuate regardless of what a repulsive asshat I think he is.”

  “Calling him or anyone names for any reason really isn’t a good look,” I said. “Not that I’m not guilty of it too.”

  The face Mel made told me in no uncertain terms that this was not the time for a lecture on morality from me. I hadn’t seen her this angry in a long time. “Do you know how much good he could do if he came out?”

  “Mel, you can’t tell anyone—”

  Mel glared at me. “Do you even know me? Do you think for a second I’d out someone like that? I might really, really want to, but I never would, and you of all people should know that.”

  I hung my head, feeling ashamed for thinking Mel would consider outing Dean. Of course she wouldn’t. “I’m sorry.”

  “It doesn’t change that I think he’s a coward for being on Team Arnault while he’s keeping a secret like this.”

  “If you got to know him—”

  Mel groaned in frustration. “This is what I’m talking about, Dre. You could be helping Dean see how important it is to come out and be visible in a world that wants to make you both invisible. Instead, you’re playing house with teenage Mussolini.”

  “Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s gross, and I honestly expected better from you.”

  I felt like Mel was throwing punches instead of words and that I had no defense against them. Every attack hit hard and left a bruise. “He’s not like his mom,” I said, my voice barely louder than a whisper. “He’s a good person.”

  “If he won’t stand against her when it matters, how good can he really be?”

  As the shock of Mel’s attacks wore off, anger began to take its place. My cheeks felt hot and I lashed out. “You don’t even know him.”

  “Neither do you.”

  I didn’t know what else to say, so I turned and left. Mel called after me, but I slammed the door behind me and refused to look back.

  Dean

  EVERY HOTEL ROOM my mother stayed in when she traveled was transformed into campaign headquarters while she was in it. Serious people with titles like Communications Director or Campaign Strategist were always hovering around, tapping out messages or rewriting a speech or briefing my mother on the latest news or poll or scandal that might affect the election.

  Observing my mother while she worked felt like sitting inside the eye of a hurricane, watching the mayhem swirl. It was intoxicating; I loved every second of it. This was the room where ideas were born. This was the room where policies were drafted. This was where people like my mother and her advisors made decisions that could affect hundreds of millions of people, and there was no one I trusted more than my mother to make those decisions. At the same time, watching my mother made me wonder if this was how I wanted to spend my life. I believed if I remained on the path I was following, I could be a good or even a great lawyer, and that I could follow my mother into politics, but I wasn’t certain I wanted to. Some of my favorite moments in debate weren’t when I won; they were when teammates I’d helped and encouraged won. Their successes meant more to me than my own. I loved studying new ideas and strategies and then explaining them to others. I wasn’t sure how to explain that to my mother or that she would have even understood.

  “What’re you daydreaming about over there, Dean?” My mother tossed her tablet aside and sat on the sofa across from me, kicking off her shoes and resting her feet on the coffee table. “Did you forget to take your pills?”

  I had the inattentive variant of ADD, therefore, instead of being hyper, my mind had a tendency to wander. Sometimes I could stare into space and lose track of an hour without realizing it. Medication didn’t fix the problem, but it got me halfway there. The rest required hard work and diligence, both of which I enjoyed.

  “I took them.” The lines around my mother’s eyes were deeper and the bags under them were darker. “Rough day?”

  “Jackson McMann is handing us our asses.”

  “He’s a fad, Mom.”

  “He was a fad. Now he’s a contender.” My mother’s frown betrayed her worry in a way I rarely saw. “The CPD’s added him to the next debate.”

  “Seriously? The debate commission really let him in?”

  She nodded soberly. “Nora’s been fighting it. She even reached out to her counterpart in the Rosario campaign to enlist his help, but McMann’s polling over fifteen percent and the commission will not be swayed.”

  “Could you threaten to pull out?”

  “And risk giving Rosario and McMann unchallenged airtime?” She waved me off like it was the silliest suggestion she had ever heard. “There is truly only one solution,” she said. “I’m going to have to assassinate him.”

  “Mom!”

  “I’m kidding, Dean,” she said. “Mostly.”

  If my mother hadn’t been capable of taking out McMann herself, with or without a gun, I might have laughed, but she had been at least as fierce a soldier as she was a presidential candidate. Though she hadn’t been able to serve in a combat role while she’d served in the army, she had been part of a mission that had become stranded in unfriendly territory. Her commanding officer was gravely wounded, so my mother took command and led the survivors to safety, despite being injured herself. She had received the Medal of Honor and had captured the attention of a number of powerful people, many of whom eventually became instrumental in helping her begin her political career.

  “You’ll have to settle for destroying him during the debate.”

  My mother nodded, but she looked a bit frustrated by the notion that she couldn’t actually murder McMann. “Tell me about Belle Rose,” she said, changing the subject. “How did that go?”

  This was the first time we’d had more than five minutes to talk since I had volunteered with Dre. Nora had been pleased with how well I’d done, and it had kept the news talking about us rather than Jackson McMann for nearly an entire day.

  “It was fine.”

  “Just fine?”

  “We spent most of our time painting, and Dre isn’t so bad once you get to know him.”

  My mother arched an eyebrow at me. “Dre?”

  “He prefers it over Andre.”

  “I see,” she said. “What was with that ridiculous outfit he was wearing? Did you forget to tell him he was going to be on TV?”

  I suppressed a laugh, but couldn’t prevent the smile. “Oh, he knew.”

  My mother pursed her lips, looking like she’d eaten a lemon. “Well, I’m certainly glad he’s not my problem.”

  “Problem?”

  “I’m sure he’s a nice boy, but I won the jackpot with you, though you could have kept your shirt tucked in for all of the photos.”

  “You might like Dre i
f you got to know him. He’s quite talented with monster makeup and photography, and he’s funny too. Did you know he organized a group of drag queens to read to children? He even dressed up.”

  My mother grimaced. Her lip curled. “Grown men dressed as women have got no business being around children.”

  I tried to ignore the face she’d made, but it was difficult. “Dre made it sound like the kids had fun.”

  “I’m sure he did,” she said.

  “And he invited me to go to the next one.”

  A sharp, dry laugh burst out of my mother like a whip crack. “Over Nora’s dead body.”

  “It could be fun.”

  My mother leaned forward, fixing me with a serious stare. “Look, Dean, I’m glad you got along with Andre Rosario, but don’t go treating him like your new best friend. He’s not like us.”

  “Because he’s gay?”

  “You know I have nothing against those people,” she said. “I went on Ellen and took you with me. You danced with her! But I have to lead with my heart, and my heart says they’re not like us.”

  When I heard my mother’s argument, almost the same argument I’d made to Dre, thrown back at me, it sounded ridiculous. It sounded hollow and cheap.

  “What if I were more like Dre?” I asked.

  “You’re not.”

  “But what if I were? Would you keep me hidden? Would you pretend I didn’t exist?”

  My mother’s face turned to stone. She might as well have been carved from the side of a mountain. I’d always known her well enough to read her, even when others couldn’t, so my inability to do so in that moment made her all the more frightening.

  “You’re not like Dre,” she said. “You’re Dean Arnault, you’re on the path to a brilliant future, and you’re everything I could have hoped for.”

  I should have let the matter drop, but I kept hearing Dre’s voice asking me what I believed. I had believed that my mother would love and support me no matter what, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  “What about when you told me I could be anyone I wanted?”

  “Well, I never expected you would want to be more like Andre Rosario.” My mother sat up and hushed me before I could speak again. “Enough of this nonsense. I know you love playing devil’s advocate, but he’s got enough misguided souls advocating for him without you joining the cause.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The words came out automatically, but I didn’t want to quit talking because I needed to know that this wasn’t how my mother really felt. She was just having a bad day and it had made her cranky. This was not who she was. I wanted to stand up and tell her that when she talked about “those people,” she was talking about me, whether she realized it or not. I might not be as flamboyant or candid as Dre, and we may be different in different ways, but if my mother was going to include Dre in a category of “not like us,” then I belonged in it as well.

  Only, I couldn’t bring myself to say any of those things because while I wasn’t sure if I could still believe in my mother, I couldn’t bear the thought of her not believing in me.

  Dre

  IT WAS AROUND eight, and I was sitting at the kitchen table sketching out an idea I’d had for a photo shoot to keep my mind occupied so I didn’t have to think. It was a monster whose monstrous bits were all on the inside. From the outside it looked mostly normal, but that was the lure. As soon as you got close, it split open like a Venus flytrap and revealed the deadly truth. I crumpled the paper up and tossed it onto the table with the others. Mel wasn’t talking to me, so it was pointless anyway.

  I nearly jumped out of my skin when my phone buzzed.

  PrezMamasBoy: Hi, Dre! It’s Dean.

  PrezMamasBoy: Are you excited for tomorrow? Did you get the train ticket to Boston? It’s all set up. I’ve got a list of things we can do. And a backup list in case you don’t like anything on my original list.

  DreOfTheDead: you are hilarious

  PrezMamasBoy: I like to be prepared.

  DreOfTheDead: either way im ready

  PrezMamasBoy: May I ask you a question?

  DreOfTheDead: duh

  DreOfTheDead: and you dont have to ask if you can ask

  DreOfTheDead: just ask

  PrezMamasBoy: Do you think I’m normal?

  DreOfTheDead: no

  DreOfTheDead: next question

  PrezMamasBoy: I’m being serious.

  DreOfTheDead: so am i

  DreOfTheDead: you are thoughtful and compassionate and brilliant and like no one ive ever met

  DreOfTheDead: its part of why i like you

  Shit. I stared at the last line. What if Dean read it like I was saying I liked him as more than a friend instead of as just a friend? I needed to clear it up without it seeming like I thought the first thing was even a possibility, which it clearly wasn’t, but I didn’t know what to say. And the longer I waited, the weirder it was going to get.

  The garage door slammed shut, and I quickly closed Promethean and turned my phone facedown as my dad walked in carrying his suitcase. He looked like shit. His skin hung a little loose and he was losing weight. The election was eating away at him like a cancer.

  “Hey, Dre.”

  I flipped to a fresh page in my sketchbook and started working, ignoring my dad.

  “Where’s your mom?”

  Without looking at him, I said, “Mom’s in Atlanta. Where you sent her.”

  “You’ve been alone here all evening?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be. My dad was supposed to take me to our first trapeze lesson tonight, and then we were gonna go to our favorite restaurant, but that deadbeat was a no-show.”

  My dad swore under his breath. “Dre—”

  “There’s pizza in the oven.” I shut my notebook, grabbed my phone, and stormed to my room, slamming the door behind me like I was thirteen again. I dug my backpack out of my closet and started tossing things in for the trip to Rhode Island. My plane was scheduled to take off at six in the morning, and there was no way I’d be awake enough that early to think about what I should bring.

  “Planning on running away again?”

  I hadn’t heard Dad open my door, but when I turned around, his head was sticking in.

  “Again? I never ran away.”

  Dad eased a little farther in. “When you were seven. You were angry with me then too because I didn’t buy you an elephant for your birthday. It was all you wanted. You even had a named picked out.”

  “Fanty.”

  “You expected he would fly and that you’d go on adventures.”

  “I’m not running away,” I said. “I’m doing my tour of RISD tomorrow. Don’t worry, I didn’t expect you to remember that either.” I stuffed my tablet and my Switch in my bag, along with a couple of books because I couldn’t decide which I might want to read.

  “You want ice cream?”

  “It’s late, and my flight’s early.”

  Dad checked his watch. “It’s barely after eight. Come on. We’re going for ice cream.”

  It was pointless trying to argue with him, but that didn’t mean we had to talk. Too bad Dad couldn’t take the hint. He spent the entire drive telling me about a guy he sat beside on the plane who kept farting and waking himself up and then thinking the awful smell was coming from my dad. I refused to give my dad so much as a smile.

  Since Dad’s guilt was buying, I got two scoops of coffee and one scoop of chocolate and had them smothered in fudge and caramel and sprinkles. We walked outside into the warm, dry air. It was kind of weird being home after traveling so much. I’d grown up in Carson City, so everything was familiar, but it also wasn’t in a way. After a while, all the shops and strip malls began to run together in my brain, making it difficult to tell one place from another. We could’ve been anywhere in the country.

  “I’m sorry, Dre. This debate, and McMann being added—”

  “Blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard all this.”

  “You don’t understand what
a real threat he is,” Dad said. “He’s got people worked up and scared. He’s got them blaming anyone and everyone for their problems. If I can’t prove during this debate how bad he would be for the country, he might have a real shot at winning.”

  I didn’t spend much time sitting around watching the news, but I knew what a creep McMann was, mostly because Mel had spent hours telling me. There were the reports about shady business practices, money he’d paid to women to settle sexual harassment claims, deals with the government for his facial recognition technology. None of it stuck, though. People didn’t have time to digest one story about him before three more popped up. But at the moment, I didn’t give a shit about Jackson McMann.

  “Whatever. It’s fine. Can we go home now?”

  “I know I messed up, but—”

  “No buts, Dad. You messed up, full stop.”

  “I did, and I’ll make it up to you.”

  “When?” I asked. Before he could answer, I kept going. “It’s not just tonight. Ever since you started campaigning, it’s like I lost my dad. You’re never around, you flake out on everything, and you only trot me out when Jose thinks you can use me to score popularity points because the press loves your unpredictable queer kid. What flamboyant thing will he wear? What odd things will he say? Who knows? That’s what makes it fun! But it’s never about me.”

  Dad was staring at me, dumbfounded. “Is that what you really believe?”

  “Yes!” I shouted. My ice cream was melting into the cup. I didn’t even want it anymore.

  “I thought you liked doing campaign events with me.”

  “Do you know what a pain those are? I hate the press hovering over me all the time and people criticizing what I wear and you never being around. I hate it. But I missed hanging out with you, so whatever.”

  Pistachio ice cream dribbled down the side of Dad’s cone and over his hand, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I’m sorry about the trapeze lessons—”

  “It’s not about the fucking trapeze!”