“J. R.,” his mother scolds. “Watch your language!”
“I’m sorry, buddy,” I say. “I was just horsing around. Here, let me buy you another one.”
“Well, you gotta make it two scoops now since you ruined that one,” J. R. tells me.
“Absolutely,” I say, approaching the window.
“With rainbow shots on it too,” the boy adds. Then he pauses. “No, just make it chocolate shots. No rainbow.”
I smile tightly. Rainbow shots, rainbow flag. Wouldn’t want to get a frozen custard cone that looked too gay.
I order double-scoop chocolate cones with chocolate shots for both of us. The three of us sit down on a bench and lick away, looking up at the late afternoon sky.
“So if you didn’t go out on the boat,” I ask, “where did Uncle Lloyd take you today?”
J. R. doesn’t answer, so his mother chimes in. “We went shopping in Chatham—”
“Boring,” J. R. intones.
“Then went swimming at the Wellfleet pond,” Ann Marie finishes.
“That must have been more fun,” I say, looking over at J. R.
Ann Marie is beaming. “Yeah, we saw one of those huge turtles—”
“What’s so great about seeing a turtle?” J. R. asks.
“Was it fun to be with Uncle Lloyd?” I ask.
The kid shrugs.
“Did you guys have a good talk?”
Ann Marie leans in. “J. R. wasn’t really in a talkative mood.”
I look down at the boy. “Seems like you haven’t been in a talkative mood for a while.” I take a long lick of my cone. “I can relate, you know. I’ve been feeling pretty shitty myself lately. And you know what? When you feel like that, nothing feels quite so good as feeling sorry for yourself.”
I notice a small flicker of the boy’s eyelashes, but he doesn’t look up from his frozen custard.
“Yep,” I continue, “wallowing in a puddle of self-pity is like being a pig in shit. You’re just rolling around in all your own bullshit and that’s all you want to do—no matter what anyone else tries to tell you.”
“Henry,” Ann Marie whispers, “the language…”
I ignore her. “But finally, you know what happens, J. R.? You realize shit stinks. Phew! Oh my God, it reeks! And you find you’ve got it smeared all over yourself.”
Finally the kid looks up at me. Despite himself, he’s smiling. The sure-fire way to get a nine-year-old boy to smile is to talk about stinky shit.
“So you know what I’m going to do?” I ask him. “I’m going home after I eat this delicious frozen custard and I’m taking the hottest shower I can. I think it’s time I cleaned myself up, don’t you?”
“You’re weird, Uncle Henry,” J. R. says, but he’s still smiling.
“Yes, I am weird,” I agree. “It’s both a blessing and a curse.”
I finish my cone and bid the two of them good-bye. I hop back into the Jeep, honking the horn as I pull out of the lot.
I’m not sure this is the best time to talk to Lloyd about what happened with Luke, given that he’s probably disappointed he didn’t have much success with J. R. today. But I can’t put it off any longer. I’m determined to move on, to stop wallowing in my own shit, just as I told the boy. I need to own up to what happened, and then try to figure out where—if anywhere—Luke and I might be heading.
Yet when I walk in, the guesthouse has an odd stillness hanging over it. I can’t quite figure out what it is that I feel when I step inside. No one’s at the front desk—but since all our guests are already checked in, and we’re notexpecting any others, no one needs to be. Still, Lloyd is usually somewhere nearby. There’s usually some sound, some stir of activity somewhere.
“Lloyd?” I call.
No answer. I flip open my phone and call over to his house next door. I get the machine. Maybe he and Jeff have gone out.
Then I notice the light on in the basement. I take a deep breath. If Lloyd’s not around, I do have one other task to attend to.
I need to talk with Luke.
It’s time for him to be honest with me.
Who are you?
And who am I to you?
I want to know.
Heading down the stairs, my heart is beating fast. I’m not sure why I’m so nervous. Nothing’s really changed since our talk this morning on the breakwater. All that’s happened is that I found out that he put the moves on Jeff. So what? Who cares? I just need to clarify that what happened between us was real, and figure out if he’s really someone I might want to—
I hear a sound.
A groan.
I step up my pace. Once again, Luke’s door is ajar. I hurry into the doorway.
And inside, on the bed, Luke is in the arms of Lloyd.
17
NIRVANA GUESTHOUSE
It’s Luke who notices me first. Once again, he doesn’t seem surprised to see me. His eyes seem to dance over Lloyd’s shoulder, almost as if—could it be possible?—he’s glad that I’ve caught him.
Lloyd, however, is a different story.
“Oh, man,” he says, rolling off the bed and staggering to his feet, fastening the buttons on his pants.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I spit, turning on my heel and hurrying back through the basement toward the stairs.
Lloyd is quickly behind me. “Henry, wait!”
“Why? Looks like you weren’t quite finished in there. Carry on!”
I rush up the stairs. Only at the top do I turn around. Lloyd is following, pulling his shirt on over his head.
“Henry,” he’s calling. “Listen to me, please!”
“Why?” I shout back at him, standing at the top of the stairs arms akimbo. I’m sure I look and sound like some old fishwife. “Why should I listen to you? So you can spout all your feel-good wisdom? Your stupid mumbo-jumbo? Goddamn you, Lloyd! Of everyone, you’re the one I always thought I could trust!”
He’s reached the top of the stairs. He grabs me by my arms and directs me into the room behind the front desk, where he shuts the door and locks it. “Henry,” he implores. “Please sit down.”
“I prefer to stand.”
He sighs. “I’m sorry, my friend. I know we agreed not to fool around with the staff. I don’t know what came over me—”
“I know what came over you! That fucking little temptress and his big sad eyes and cute little stomach!”
“Henry, please—”
If I’d been a bitch to Evan earlier, I’m a raging harpy with Lloyd.
“Jeff turned him down!” I shout. “Jeff was able to keep control! Goddamn you, Lloyd! You’re getting married in a couple of weeks! Married! You fucking asshole!”
Lloyd looks at me as if I’m making no sense. “Henry, this has nothing to do with Jeff—”
“Yes it does! Do you know how he’s been feeling lately? He’s been so inspired by the idea of marrying you that he’s not wanted to even look at another guy! When that little tramp downstairs threw himself at him yesterday, Jeff turned him down!”
Lloyd sighs, not saying anything. I can tell he didn’t know about Luke’s attempt to seduce Jeff.
I approach him, my voice still just as shrill. “Do you have any idea how special it is that you and Jeff are getting married?” I poke him in the chest. He moves his eyes to look at me. “Do you? Any idea? Standing up in front of the world and saying, ‘We love each other and we’re committing to each other for the rest of our lives’?”
“Of course I know how special that is,” Lloyd says softly.
“And still you went and did—that.” I can’t even say it. “With that fucking little tramp, who we should have kicked out of here weeks ago.”
Lloyd maintains his calmness in the face of my venom. “Henry,” he says, “I know you had feelings for Luke. I didn’t realize they were still so intense.”
I laugh. So there’s something else about which Lloyd is still in the dark.
“Luke didn’t tell you, did he?” I ask.
I just laugh harder. There’s no point now in telling Lloyd about my night with Luke. The sooner I forget it, the better.
“Henry, please,” Lloyd says. “I know I shouldn’t have done it. He was just upset, and he was near tears, and I was comforting him, and…and things got carried away.”
I look at him hard. “Did you ask him what he was upset about?”
“I tried, but he wasn’t saying much. He started to cry and I put my arms around him.”
“Oh, man.” I cover my face with my hands and move as far away from Lloyd as I can.
“Henry,” he implores. “What did I say?”
I face him. “That’s what happened with me, wasn’t it? When you and I made love all those years ago. Do you remember?”
“Of course I remember.”
I look at him. “I was upset that night, too. Near tears. Maybe I even shed a few. And you took me in your arms and we made love.” I laugh, bitterly. “So once again Dr. Lloyd to the rescue. Do you enjoy playing the savior to lost boys?”
“Henry, you and I were friends. I cared about you. That’s why it happened between us.” He gestures toward the door. “I care about Luke, but not the way I cared about you then, or certainly not the way I care about you now.”
I can’t bear to hear any of this. “You know, nothing matters at the moment. I just need some time away from this place.” I bend over, typing in a few keys on the computer. I find the information I’m looking for. “There are no reservations until next weekend. I’m going to take a couple of days off. Is that okay?”
“Yes,” Lloyd says calmly.
I turn and face him bitterly. “You’re free to go back downstairs now and finish your ministrations.”
He’s looking at me without any emotion. “That’s it? You just want to cut this discussion off like that?”
“Actually I do.”
He’s angry at me for shutting down, for closing him off. “You don’t want to talk about this anymore? You just want to leave without telling me what’s really going on for you?”
I won’t budge. “That about sums it up.”
“Fine.” He turns to leave, pausing at the door. “Have it your way then, Henry. Enjoy your days off.” He closes the door behind him.
Whether Lloyd goes back downstairs to Luke, I don’t know. I doubt it—but who’s to say? Maybe he just can’t help succumbing to the crafty little Lolita. Either way, I really don’t care.
I pack quickly, not wanting to run into anyone. I have no idea where I’m going, just that I want to get out of Provincetown. I want as much distance between myself and all of these people—Luke, Lloyd, Jeff—as possible.
It’s not until I cross the Sagamore Bridge that I realize where I’m going.
It takes three hours, and three repetitions of Pearl Jam’s No Code, to get to my parents’ home in West Springfield. As always, it looks the same. A two-story colonial with a front façade of white brick, carefully trimmed hedges along the driveway, a rusty old basketball hoop over the two-car garage. My father’s green Buick LeSabre sits outside.
Why did I come here?
Maybe because, at this moment, I have nowhere else to go.
“Henry?”
My mother’s on the front step, making a great show of surprise to see my Jeep pulling into her driveway.
“If that’s my son, I’m not sure I’d recognize him,” she’s saying to no one in particular. “We might have to fingerprint him just to be sure.”
“Hello, Mom.”
I give her my cheek. She kisses me on the lips instead and grips me by the shoulders.
“Oh, it’s him all right! It’s my Henry!”
She pulls me into her embrace. She smells of talcum powder. For a fleeting moment, I’m glad I’m home. I’m glad my mother is hugging me.
“Herbert!” She’s calling into the house as we enter. “Your son is home!”
My father, no doubt holed up in the basement watching TV, makes no reply. My mother’s gesturing for me to sit as we walk into the kitchen. There’s a pot of chicken soup bubbling on the stove. The place reeks of boiled chicken. How perfect is that? I come home, feeling lost and adrift, and my mother’s got a pot of chicken soup waiting for me.
“That soup’s not for you,” she says, apparently observing the flare of my nostrils. “It’s for Mrs. Pilarski down the street. Her husband just dropped dead. Sixty-two. Sixty-two! That’s not old anymore! They found him out in the backyard. He’d been cutting back his tomato plants. And poof. He was gone.”
She shakes her head and walks over to the stove, where she gives the soup a stir. I notice how thick her hips have gotten, and the hint of hunched shoulders. Her hair is almost all gray now, which only a few strands of her once vibrant auburn.
“How long can you stay, Henry?”
“Well, I’m heading into New York,” I lie, “and thought I’d just stop and say hi…”
“So a few days then?”
“Well, I don’t know…”
“Herbert! Come upstairs! Your son has deigned us with his presence for the next few days.”
One of the big events of my childhood was the refinishing of our basement. Carpeting was rolled in over the concrete floors. Paneling went up along the walls; a drop ceiling was put in. A toilet with a very loud and powerful pump was installed in a closet sized bathroom. Once the thirty-six-inch television was built into the wall, my father was all set. He could practically live in the basement, coming up only for meals. He sometimes even slept down there on the couch.
I hear no sign of him stirring, and for a moment I have a flash of old Mr. Pilarski dead among his tomato plants. But if Dad’s watching television—probably some History Channel documentary on the Great War—then he’s not going to stir no matter who’s just arrived upstairs.
“Why are you going to New York?” my mother asks.
I think fast. “To see some friends.” I can’t tell her the real reason I left Provincetown, that I’m a lonely miserable slob who feels he can’t trust anyone. But she probably already guesses that anyway. “I have a couple days off, so I’m on no set schedule.”
My mother makes that clicking sound in her throat. “After the summer, you need some time off, Henry,” she tells me. “I know how hard you work running that guesthouse. Lloyd should make you part owner of the place, if you ask me.”
“I don’t want to be an owner,” I tell her, for the hundredth time.
“Henry, will you ever own your own house? You’re thirty-three.”
“Mom, what do you have to drink in the fridge?”
She’s immediately opening the refrigerator door, peering inside and ticking off the contents. “I’ve got tomato juice, seltzer, whole milk—sorry, Henry, I refuse to buy that skim—ginger ale, and cranberry juice.”
“Would you pour me some ginger ale?”
“Of course, baby. Do you want a sandwich? I’ve got some turkey.”
“Sure, Mom.”
She pours me a tall glass of ginger ale and busies herself making the sandwich. “Did you see the new pictures of Rachel and Rebecca when you walked through the living room?”
Rachel and Rebecca are my sister Susan’s twin daughters. “No, I didn’t,” I tell her.
“Well, go back in there now and look.”
“I’ll look in a minute.”
“They are adorable! They’re twelve now. When was the last time you saw Rachel and Rebecca, Henry?”
I sigh. “Last spring.”
“Well, they’ve grown even since then. They are beautiful girls. Beautiful!”
“I know they are,” I say. “I wish I could see them more often. But Susan lives so far up in the Berkshires—”
“Yes, I know she does, but she gets down to see us, and she’s nearly as far away as you,” Mom says, employing her usually exaggeration. “Go in and look at the twin’s pictures!”
“Can I eat my sandwich first?” I ask as she places it in front of m
e.
Her tone quickly changes. “Of course, darling. Are you hungry? Why didn’t you say so?”
The phone rings. I take my first bite as my mother rushes to answer it. The caller appears to be some neighbor, for she immediately launches into the account of poor old Mr. Pilarski dropping dead amid his tomato plants. “I know! Right there in the backyard! And Evelyn found him! She’d been calling and when he didn’t come in, she went out to look and there he was…”
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