In His Arms

by Caraway Carter

  “When I came to inform you about the judgment of our families.” Roy nodded his head.

  “And Ella,” I added. I laughed and sipped my wine. “I miss that old broad.”

  “You didn’t always feel that way about her,” Roy chided me.

  “No, well, she was taking you away from me. But—” I waved a finger in the air “—I was also able to let you know that the car had been recalled and had a habit of flying out of control in just the ‘right’ situations. The accident wasn’t your fault.”

  “I know, but I wish they’d sent that letter a year earlier, before the four of us piled into the car.”

  I rubbed his shoulder. “You can’t know those things. Life is a risk.”

  “Yes—Ella, the war, the planes, and the cars—all life is a risk.”

  “And it only got riskier as we moved through the years, but 1968 was a doozy for us.”

  “Ella wanted to meet you at first, then we got deep into our relationship, and she no longer wanted to know my former loves—I didn’t want to meet hers, either.”

  Peter tilted his head and held up a finger, the wine glass in his other hand. “Ella, war, planes, and cars? Guys, you are going a little fast for me.” He took a quick mouthful of wine. “James, a rainbow of life? Explain.”

  I handed Roy my glass and retrieved the Red painting. “This is 1968. It was a year since my sister died, and my art was fluctuating between intense destruction and simple line drawings.

  “I found this picture that Roy had shot, in Vietnam—a man’s face, staring off into the distance. I focused in on the eye…” The memory filled my mind. “The all-seeing, all-knowing eye. And yet in that eye, I saw nothing. In my life, I saw nothing, and it fit with what was going on around me.

  “The red connected with the blood being shed, the Camaro, their lives lost.” Almost overwhelmed, I placed the canvas back on its easel. “There was a lot of anger in that painting. It’s the first, the beginning of my life alone.”

  “What made you decide to make a rainbow?” Peter asked.

  “I hadn’t set out to make it a rainbow—I hadn’t even set out to make a collection of our life together. It’s been curated by my daughter-in-law—it’s all her fault.” Roy slapped my thigh. I laughed. “Let’s begin again? My life is full of false starts, it’s just who I am.”

  “You’re more than false starts, hon.” Roy handed me the wineglass.

  “If I had believed, if I had accepted everything, if I weren’t jealous, if I could let things happen instead of trying to make them go the way I wanted them to go… In 1968, Roy made his way back to the Midwest, and I wallowed in my lonely life. Threw myself into the painting.”

  “And I rode a wave of chances,” Roy said quietly. “I was one of four hundred war correspondents, but I was always where the best shots were fired, both from my camera and the guns around me. My Pulitzer Prize–winning shot is of the bullet that got me in the shoulder.”

  Peter’s eyes got wide. “I remember that shot.”

  “Not as much as I do.” Roy grinned. “It brought me home, I was excused, but I didn’t get any less brazen. After the wound healed, I was out chasing tornadoes, hurricanes, race cars, stampeding bulls, hot-air balloons, scaling Mount Everest—the list goes on and on. If it was daring, I’d take the assignment.”

  “James, why the face of the Vietnamese man, and not the bullet?” Peter asked.

  “I saw the man first. I only found out about the gunshot wound ten years later.” I placed my hand on Roy’s knee. “When he came back to let me know about Ella.”

  “Hey, it wasn’t that we didn’t keep in touch back then,” Roy protested. “It was just harder. I was away on assignment so much—it’s not like you could expect a postcard to make it to California from a Vietnamese mailbox.”

  I squeezed his knee. “I’m joking. It’s a two-way street, and I hardly tried to contact you.”

  We sipped the wine silently for a while before I realized Peter was waiting patiently for us to continue. We’d made a good choice in him.

  I continued, “In 1978, he showed up on my doorstep, wanting to share everything with me. We fell into each other’s arms, and we celebrated his homecoming.”

  Roy laughed. “I remember ripping off my shirt and showing off my scars—the bullet wound, the stitches I had from getting hit with flying debris from the tornado I caught…”

  I moved my hands over Roy’s chest and back. “This is where he broke his ribs, when the bull he’d been riding threw him and stepped on him. And back here was the billy club that hit him during the protest at Berkeley.” I shook my head.

  “I was a daredevil junkie,” Roy admitted. “I needed my regular fix, and I’d soon be out the door again, running away from responsibility…of being with James and of being with Ella.”

  Peter held his hand up. “Wait. Ella—you keep mentioning her. I can’t keep up with you guys.”

  “See? I told you it was complicated.” I stood up and refreshed everyone’s glasses. “Roy’s wife.”

  “But I thought you were getting married.” Peter drained his glass before I filled it up again. “Last I heard, marriage equality still said you can only marry one partner.”

  I smiled. “Yes, well, they’re no longer married.”

  “Ella isn’t with us anymore,” Roy said. “She passed about five years ago, but I need to go back to the beginning.” His eyes strayed to the Red painting as he spoke. “I broke the news to James that I was marrying Ella Lang—my best friend, the first woman I told I was homosexual, the first woman who told me she was, too. We know better now, but back then, we didn’t have the word for it.

  “We kept that secret from everyone for a very long time. It was 1968, and we wanted what everyone else wanted—that two-bedroom, one-bathroom, shiny house where we would one day raise our children.”

  Peter opened his mouth, but Roy went on.

  “I know, but it was the time. It was Ohio, after all, and our families had this pinned on their hearts for years. We weren’t about to disappoint them. Ella would have the opportunity to get her degree in education, and I’d be able to run off around the world taking photography to another level.”

  Peter nodded his head. “And?”

  “And we did it faithfully for a long time. We were a couple in every manner of speaking. When I was home, we lived the married life. We attended church on Sundays with our families, had traditional family dinner Sunday nights, and did everything married couples did, except consummate our relationship. We were happy, we had an agreement between us. She could have girlfriends, I could have boyfriends as long as we knew them.”

  Peter’s eyes grew wide again.

  “Oh, come on, Peter. Marriages of convenience have existed forever, but…as time wore on, we fell in love with each other. We wanted that family. Ella’s sister was pregnant and my brother’s wife, too. It just happened because it happened. And, I’ll let you know that wine wasn’t involved.” Roy grinned.

  I teased, “I thought you said it was that song, ‘Baby Come Back’ by Player that got you guys in the mood.”

  Roy laughed. “It certainly played its part. If I recall correctly, I’d just come back from an assignment in Tibet. I’d brought a bouquet of flowers, she’d made my favorite dinner, and I turned on the radio. OK, maybe there was wine involved, but November 1977 was the beginning of our life together.” His laughter died.

  “What happened?” Peter asked.

  “Lyndie Lea Quinn happened—my baby girl.” Roy sniffed back tears.

  “You had a daughter, too?” Peter asked.

  “I have a daughter.”

  I watched Roy, watched to see if he’d break. For all of my early pain, the pain later in his life just ripped us all apart.

  I leaned in to whisper, “Do you want me to take over?” Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I’d seen her.

  “No. I need to do this—for all of us. I just keep expecting her to show up.”

  “Someday
, hon.” I scanned the walkway into the party. “Someday.”

  “After Lyndie was born, Ella and I played the happy family, but our desires were clamoring at our hearts. She and I talked long and hard about everything. About the gossiping that would happen, the whispers and the stares, the rumors…other families and our own. In 1978, we decided we were free people who deserved to love who we wanted to love. That was each other, and for her, it was Mary Clark. For me—” he clenched my hand “—it was James Brash.

  “Mary lived in Ohio, and we invited her over to the house to explain. She was twenty-three, a Catholic who worried—‘God’s going to hate me for this.’ Her voice was deep—deeper than my own—and she was comfortable in shorts and pants. I don’t think I ever saw her in a skirt. ‘So, you’ll remain married to him, but spend time with me, too?’ she asked. It took her a while to understand how it could work, how it would work, and, eventually, how it did work. She moved in with us, and we all took care of Lyndie.” Roy sighed.

  “He named her after Joan’s Linda,” I explained.

  “I did, but we knew she could never replace her, so we chose Lyndie.”

  “Did people talk about the young woman who moved in?” Peter asked.

  “They did at first, but we’d let her take Lyndie to the park, and people would just talk about the new nanny that we’d hired.”

  “Was there jealousy?”

  “There was—from Mary mostly—at the beginning, but then I’d be sent off on assignments and Ella and Mary got time to themselves. Eventually, I’d come home, and it just felt right.”

  “And you, James? Peter asked. “How did you feel?”

  “It took a very long time for me to understand. Roy, Ella, and Mary came to California to meet me in ’eighty-eight—wow, it seems so long ago.”

  “Uh, it was.” Peter smiled. “I was born in June of 1988.”

  We all laughed, and Roy explained, “Lyndie was ten then, and her brother was eight. Bernard—even then everyone called him Bern. I’d wanted to bring the kids, since Lyndie’s artistic skill was exploding around us. I wanted to introduce James to everyone, but Ella told me to take it slow. She and Mary were looking at that weekend as a chance for them to get closer, to take a wild step in their relationship, and she urged me to bring James up to speed. ‘You need a Mary, you need someone to take care of you,’ Ella told me.” Roy fell quiet. I took over.

  “I didn’t meet Ella or Mary that weekend. When Roy came to see me, he told me he still loved me and wanted to be with me for the weekend…wanted me to meet his wife and her girlfriend. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.” I laughed as I recalled. “I lived in Venice—the place was a wild riot of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. But I kept to myself. When I did try to pick someone up for something easy, I was generally rejected.

  “I suppose it was me saving myself for Roy. No one ever lived up to him.” I turned to him. “The night you showed up, I’d been in the bed masturbating, thinking of you lying beside me. I threw on my robe to answer the door, and it was like my dream had come to life before me.”

  Roy nodded and told Peter, “He shut the door in my face, but I caught it before it closed. I tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘James Brash, I’m here for you.’”

  “And I replied, ‘No, you’re just my cum-filled, rum-addled imagination.’ I couldn’t believe he was real—I must have been really drunk. Then he pulled me into his arms and gave me a kiss that left me weak in the knees. He led me to the bedroom, and we lay looking at each other for hours, till I fell asleep, the little spoon in front of you.”

  Roy shook his head. “Being with you that weekend, was like our first days together. I remember when you beat me up after I’d told you about Ella.”

  “I wanted you,” I said. “I wanted what Joan and Edward had. I wanted you to stay, I wanted to wake up beside you every day. I wanted our life to develop like your pictures—from the dark to brilliance.”

  “You wanted me to be a drunk and drive fast cars?” Roy joked glibly.

  “No…what they had at the beginning—love, pure love.”

  “But we did have pure love, James. It’s always been you. Never have I ever wanted anyone as much as I’ve wanted you.”

  Peter raised his glass. “And it still took you thirty years to get together?”

  I raised mine and sipped. “Yes, because for a long time, I couldn’t see being with Ella and being with Roy. I didn’t want to be with her.”

  “They didn’t have names for what we were playing around with,” Roy said. “Nowadays, it’s called polyamory. Back then, he was stuck on a—” he did a scale act with his hands “—monogamy-non-monogamy scale, tipping to one side or the other.”

  I nodded my agreement. “I wanted that pure, true love, and I couldn’t figure out how to get it with non-monogamy.”

  “I think what you heard was that I’d want threesomes and foursomes with Mary and Ella.”

  “That’s what it felt like. I couldn’t do it—couldn’t even think of it. I mean, even now, the thought of…” My face scrunched up and I got a little sick at how much time we’d wasted. “It took him so long to try to explain it to me, and in the end, he left without another word. I couldn’t do anything with him once I found out he was married, not until I understood that we weren’t cheating on Ella.”

  Roy sat there, exasperated. “It was simple, but not in the larger scheme of things.”

  “I know, I just couldn’t. It wasn’t until I received a letter from Ella a few months later. Roy was on assignment in Southern Lebanon, and Ella wanted to meet with me—said she was going to San Francisco for a conference and begged me to visit her for lunch.”

  “For lunch?” Peter asked, eyebrow raised.

  I laughed. “People don’t realize how far it is from San Francisco to Venice Beach. I booked a room for the weekend and worked on some ocean scapes, which was very new to me. We met for lunch, and I fell in love with the woman.”

  Roy smiled.

  “Ella Quinn was beautiful. Her blueberry eyes were the first thing I noticed about her—as though they’d ripened on the vine—followed by her flaxen hair. She looked like every fairy-tale princess I’d ever read about. I could see her feeling the pea under the mattress the moment she lay down. I fell in love with her as she extended her hand across the table—‘You are just how I imagined you to be, Mr. Brash.’ She was so formal, so precise.”

  Roy turned in his seat. “I never heard the details of this meeting.”

  The smile on my face lasted a half second before I continued. “I told her, ‘I don’t swing your way. I’m not the prince to rescue the ladies.’” I closed my eyes and blushed as I remembered her laughter. “I’d expected a slight titter, but she laughed, raucous and loud, and then covered her mouth and blushed. ‘It’s OK, Mary doesn’t swing your way, either. She’s my only other partner, dear sweet man. I want you to be Roy’s Mary. I want you to give to him what I cannot. Roy and I brought two beautiful, amazing children into this world, but that is as far as we intend to go.’ I sat there shocked. She didn’t desire me? Hell, around that time, I didn’t desire me, either.”

  “But if you talked so openly… You never moved, you only visited. Why?”

  I placed my hand on Roy’s cheek. “That summer you brought Lyndie to the Pride parade? Don’t you remember how I had the bed ready for both of us? Even as I made up both guest rooms?”

  “I remember I was nervous Lyndie would walk in or freak out. We hadn’t told the kids—it was probably our downfall.” Roy looked around him again, always searching, hoping.

  “When you found out about Lyndie…” At Roy’s flinch, I let the words trail. “I admit, yes, I thought you should have said something.”

  “We loved her, we supported her, but we were afraid to put a name on what we had—what it would do to our careers. By that time, Mary had moved out and worked at the public library in town. Our careers had grown, and as much pride as we had for our baby girl, our own pride was
hidden behind closed doors. Ella would go away with Mary or spend weekends with her…” Roy’s hands were tangled in his lap. “We only wanted what was best.”

  “I know, you couldn’t have ever realized. But that summer at Pride was a wonderful experience. Lyndie brought her sketchbook, and her art had blossomed so much. She wasn’t the gangly legged little girl I’d remembered. She was fifteen going on thirty.”

  Roy laughed, but his hands continued to betray his feelings. “The number of women and girls who flirted with her was surprising, and I remember thinking I’d have to be just as protective of her with girlfriends as I would have been with boyfriends, only…I would make Ella take charge. I mean, she’d understand.”

  I said, “I got a feeling of what it must have been like back with Linda, being Uncle Roy, because I have to tell you, it was a pleasure being Uncle James—showing her off and around.”

  Roy tapped my arm. “She used to wear these Doc Martens. I remember when she painted them neon orange, and I asked why. ‘Daddy, all the better to be seen in the dark. And can you imagine, when I’m beating up that guy following me, how many people will see my feet dancing around?’ I never knew if she meant it or if it was just her imagination, but that summer, at the dance parties, I always knew where she was.” Roy leaned in and pointed out Bern and his family had arrived.

  “Is your daughter here?” Peter asked.

  “No.” Roy stood. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to use the facilities.” He walked toward the house, past Bern and his family, and disappeared in the back door.

  Peter grimaced. “I’m sorry, did I say something wrong?”

  “No, it’s my fault. I brought her up.” I drained my glass, opened the second bottle, and topped up our glasses. Swirling the pink liquid around, I leaned back in the chair. “Lyndie Lea Quinn ran away from home the moment they got back from Pride. Maybe not the exact moment, but a couple days later. She left a note of her own, on top of a stack of letters between Mary and Ella and myself and Roy. She’d seen Roy kiss me, and that—on top of all the pain she’d been feeling as a young lesbian, coming out to her ‘straight’ parents who were living a lie—was something she couldn’t handle.”