Daisies

by Joshua Senter

  Los Angeles was nothing like Lonnie suspected it would be. It was dry and dirty and crowded, and it cost money to park anywhere you went. As he had made his way across the Mojave Desert toward California mere hours after being kicked out of the McAllister family, a plan formed in his mind. He had already been looking into art schools to continue his education after high school, and who was to say that he hadn’t graduated early being as Sheila was the only authority on the matter, and she was nowhere in sight? So he made his way to the first, most prestigious college on his list, Cal Arts in Valencia, intent on getting enrolled in classes immediately despite the fact he also knew there was an intense portfolio review process that could take weeks if not months before his application would be accepted or denied.

  Lonnie had been sleeping in his car, living off fast food, trying to save every penny in order to extend his chances of survival as long as possible, so by the time he parked in the school’s parking lot, he was also in need of a shower. He chose the next best thing by cleaning himself up in one of the bathrooms off the main lobby of the school. Yet despite the fact he was interrupted in the middle of the process of shaving and brushing his teeth and fixing his hair, none of the students seemed to find the behavior odd or out of the ordinary, and half of them looked like a sink bath would do them quite a bit of good themselves. At length, he put his toiletries away, confident he was presentable and was no longer emitting any off-putting odors. He grabbed his large, black portfolio of work, and he set out to find the admissions office.

  The school’s campus was everything Lonnie dreamed it would be: big brick and glass buildings set among sprawling green lawns sporting massive sculptures from the likes of Alberto Giacometti and Henry Moore, artists Lonnie recognized from art books he’d flipped through in the gift shop at the Springfield Art Museum while waiting for figure drawing classes to start. The student gallery hosted works—photographs, paintings, sculptures, and films—from the current and best students at Cal Arts, and it was so impressive that Lonnie began to have doubts about his own abilities and his place at such an institution, but there was also no turning back at this point because, for him, there was nothing to turn back to.

  When he finally reached the admissions office and inquired at the reception desk as to whom he should speak with, he was directed to a large, Native American admissions officer named Clara. He had planned to keep the conversation polite and simply ask for a review of his portfolio for enrollment, but when Clara began to question him as to the whereabouts of his parents and his transcripts from high school, he decided to come out with the truth. When the tale was fully recounted, Clara could hardly believe the story Lonnie shared, but what impressed her most was the fact he had not just devised a means of surviving but planned to thrive under these current circumstances. She decisively marched him down to introduce him to the head of the Illustration Department, a rather gravelly sounding guy, Ron Uckley, and practically demanded that Lonnie be admitted into Cal Art’s illustration program immediately. At first, Ron tried to play it cool while looking at Lonnie’s work, but ultimately had to admit it was very impressive for a kid who’d had no formal training, and between that and Lonnie’s story of survival, he decided to approve Lonnie for admission on the spot. As for paying for this education he was about to embark on, Clara took Lonnie to the CFO of the school to get his loan applications fast-tracked, and within hours, Lonnie was set. It was going to be four years of hard work and require more money than any sensible person would ever consider spending on college—let alone art school—but the list of graduates from Cal Arts were masters in their chosen fields who went on to make far more money than the sum of the steep tuition over the course of their careers. And this is the argument Lonnie replayed in his head over and over whenever he came face to face with self-doubts.

  By the time classes began three weeks later, Lonnie had rented out a tiny room in a small bungalow shared with two other students, and he had procured a job working with the maintenance department at the school, something he assured them he was aptly suited for. The first semester was what fellow students referred to as “basic training,” which was comprised of an intensive workload teachers used to weed out the students that didn’t have what it would take to succeed the next four years from those who did. In just the first couple weeks, in fact, two students in Lonnie’s class dropped out. The dean had recommended, when he spoke at the commencement, that anyone who entered Cal Arts with a boyfriend or girlfriend break up with them because their relationship wouldn’t last under the demands of the Cal Arts program, and Lonnie had already seen this play out. Of course, being in the trenches also meant that it was inevitable fellow students would quickly bond with one another during late-night study sessions and marathon figure drawing classes. And this is what Lonnie did with a tall, handsome student with jet black hair and crisp blue eyes, who dressed more like a model for Eddie Bauer than the typical Cal Arts student. His name was Patrick, and he probably saw in Lonnie the same things Lonnie saw in him. They were mainly a good match, though Patrick was two years older than Lonnie and was wildly popular and interested more in the social aspects of art while Lonnie stayed deliberately on the fringes and was interested more in the personal ones.

  The first date Lonnie and Patrick went on could hardly be called that because it was last-minute and started at Panda Express, but it did end up back at Lonnie’s house, where he found the place deserted by his roommates. It was late, but Patrick and Lonnie started kissing almost as naturally as if they’d done it a hundred times before. Then they ended up on the air mattress Lonnie was using for a bed, and he couldn’t help but want to see Patrick naked.

  In his short time visiting the gay and lesbian center, Lonnie had asked Gary about how gay sex really went down and what the chances were that he’d contract AIDS from such an encounter, as he’d heard preachers preach happened to anyone indulging in “queer” activity. Gary had not only done his best to explain the ins and out of homosexual relations, but he’d also assured Lonnie that being intimate with another man was harmless, especially if he practiced safe sex. So by the time Lonnie and Patrick were naked under Lonnie’s sheets, Lonnie was ready to go all the way, and they did.

  It changed everything, being fucked. Really, truly fucked where it hurt, and he could barely stand the pain until suddenly the hurt subsided and there was this immense pleasure, and pleasure wasn’t even the word for it. What Lonnie felt was unearthly, like the hand of God reached into the center of his being and touched him fully and completely. He felt safe, truly safe for one of the first times in his life, like he was a child again, ignorant of the dangers of the world in his mother’s arms. Yet, even as it was happening, he knew nothing would ever be the same from this moment on. He was becoming a man, and it scared him, and he cried tears because of the innocence he was losing, tears of love for the man to whom the beating muscle inside him belonged, tears for his family, for mankind, for everything he’d ever known, and everything he’d never know. He cried for those who would never experience what he was experiencing, and he cried with those who had. And then, he could no longer cry. Words would not form on Lonnie’s lips, and thoughts seemed to disappear from his mind. All was gray. All was gray! For one solitary moment, nothing mattered. There was no hurt, no happiness, no love, no hate, just endless, peaceful gray, and he believed this must be what it’s like when you die, just a vast endless nothing. Then his breaths began again in short bursts of pleasure, a numb smile spread across his face, and he began to laugh. He couldn’t move deliberately, but the laughter coming from inside him shook his body in orgasmic convulsions. Then he formed words, apologizing to Patrick and thanking him and wiping his tears on the sheets. For minute upon endless minute, he continued to shake, and Patrick watched him with careful eyes lest Lonnie attempt to evaporate in his state of transcendent bliss. Then, with eyes closed, Lonnie recounted a story from mere months before that came roaring to the forefront of his mind. He hoped in the telling of this s
tory he would somehow come back from the place he had been lifted to. The story took place at Rock Harbor right after he’d turned seventeen. There was a visiting missionary and a song service had just ended. The pastor moved to the podium to introduce the missionary speaker, and tears began to fall down Lonnie’s face. It was odd. He wasn’t sad. He had no reason to be crying, yet the tears continued to fall. Lonnie wiped them away, unable to be embarrassed because he was so perplexed by this phenomenon. And it was like the more he tried to keep them from falling, the more tears there were. He was about to excuse himself to go to the men’s room when the missionary asked him to come to the front. Carefully Lonnie stepped out of his pew, following the missionary’s orders, allowing the tears to fall freely now for everyone to see. When asked why he was crying, Lonnie could not say. He only began crying even more tears, fierce tears. The missionary spoke and, without a touch, Lonnie fell to the floor, eyes clinched, unable to move. This was the glory of God, he thought. All through the remainder of the service and long after the congregation had gone, Lonnie still remained on the floor where he’d fallen, tears unleashed from a broken dam inside him, tears for his father, tears for his mother, tears for those he loved, and tears for those he would never be able to love. He wept for the ignorance of men and the beauty, the absolute beauty of wisdom. He wept tears of happiness and tears of sadness until all at once the tears ceased to flow, and he returned from where he had been not feeling any different, still looking just the same, but knowing he understood things few would ever understand. And that was how he felt the first time he was fucked.

  It was the next morning, as Lonnie and Patrick were dressing to head back to school, that he got the call from Sheila. Willie had passed away. From utter elation to utter devastation, Lonnie could barely function. All through classes, Patrick was by Lonnie’s side, watching him, caring for him, comforting him even if not a word was spoken between them. Sheila had bought Lonnie an airline ticket back to Oklahoma, and Patrick drove him to the airport at four o’clock in the morning to catch his flight. As Lonnie watched Patrick while he drove, Lonnie thought about his grandfather. Was Patrick his soul mate as Willie had been to Gwen? For the first time, Lonnie questioned what it was that his grandparents had found in their relationship with one another that his parents had not and what he now had with Patrick and what would come of that?

  The McAllister siblings took the proceedings of Willie’s send-off from this earth with the white-faced nervousness of individuals who had never experienced the death of a loved one. In a way, it was the best possible time for Lonnie to return to the fold because the last thing anyone thought to care about were his sexual preferences.

  When Gwen saw him, she could not stop clutching him to herself. “You’re such a handsome young man,” she said over and over again through tears, as if to let everyone know that her sacred wish upon Willie’s grave was that Lonnie be completely acquitted for any wrongdoing the family had saddled him with. Gwen’s emotion was actually a blessing for everyone, especially anyone who knew about her past and the way in which she’d failed to cope with the death of her parents. Yet even in her state of grief, she saw to the funeral arrangements with the precise detachment it took so that everything from the casket to the graveside service was perfect.

  The memorial was to be held at the Barnetts’ church, Crossroads Methodist, a gothic monument with arched ceilings and a sanctuary that could have housed a ship. It was packed to capacity on the day of Willie’s funeral, and a classroom next to the sanctuary had to be opened up to hold the overflow of flower arrangements that came pouring in. Willie had been to many people what he had been to Gwen and Sheila and his grandkids: a jokester, a silent support, a caretaker where he could be, and otherwise staying out of the way so that he had become a sort of saint, giving generously of pocketbook, mind, body, and spirit without having expectations of a return on these investments. He was something special, and the crowd that had gathered to celebrate his life was evidence of this.

  Darrel had finally received Sheila’s messages and turned around in Laredo, Texas to head back to Oklahoma City to be with her. He didn’t speak to Lonnie, but he held Sheila’s hand while she cried and tried to hug Gwen appropriately. Being in the church where they had married thirty years before was a bittersweet moment for Sheila and Darrel. They shared a laugh with their kids, recounting an incident the day of their wedding when, after the ceremony and reception had finished and they had gone to change into their honeymoon clothes, Darrel had been unable to unzip the zipper on Sheila’s wedding gown. So he’d called in Gwen. When Gwen couldn’t get it to unzip, Darrel’s mother, Ruby, had insisted she give it a try. However, when even Ruby couldn’t succeed, they decided to just cut the dress off until Willie had appeared with a small can of WD-40 from the bed of his truck and given the zipper a hit of lube so that it finally budged. For a brief moment, Sheila’s tears subsided and to keep it that way even momentarily, she rested her head on his shoulder, and he placed his hand on her knee, and in the midst of tragedy, they found the last moment of respite they would ever have from their tumultuous relationship in the presence of their kids and Gwen and the spirit of Willie.

  Right after the graveside service ended, Darrel headed on to Mexico, and it seemed as though with the services over and the mourners gone, things should have gone back to some kind of normalcy, but there were too many untied ends, too many questions. Gwen slept fitfully and Sheila could barely sleep at all. Early on the morning before he was to fly back to Los Angeles, Lonnie found Sheila staring off at a dust of pink that was just beginning to intrude on the black sky, heralding the sunrise to come. She was sitting on the Barnetts’ back porch in the swing Gwen had rocked all Sheila’s babies to sleep in.

  “I think I’m gonna leave your dad when I get back home,” Sheila said when Lonnie quietly sank into the seat next to her. “I just worry about how it will affect you kids more than anything.”

  “You know we hate seeing you guys so unhappy.”

  “I just, I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.” Sheila’s voice cracked. “I’m tired, Lonnie. I’m just tired. And with your pepaw dying, I just…”

  “Then leave him,” Lonnie said with disgust for his father, who had maintained his disapproval with his staunch silent treatment toward Lonnie.

  “I’ve prayed a lot about it, but your dad… He’s just not been a very good husband.”

  Lonnie knew Sheila was hinting at the affairs in Darrel’s past, affairs that Lonnie actually knew little to nothing about.

  “I just don’t know what I’ll do if I go. You know I never went to college. So I don’t know what kinda job I’ll get. I just… I’m not sure I can handle working someplace like McDonalds or something.”

  “Wouldn’t Dad have to give you spousal support?”

  “I guess. I just don’t know how all that works.” Sheila was on the verge of crying.

  “Well, go see a lawyer when you get back home and find out all the facts before you do anything.”

  Sheila nodded. Lonnie felt badly for Sheila, the weight of the world pressing on her from so many different facets of her life. They sat quietly for another moment before Sheila ventured, “Do you love him?”

  “Dad?”

  “The… man who’s been calling here.”

  Lonnie instantly knew Sheila was referring to Patrick, who had called the house twice over the last couple days to check in on Lonnie.

  “I would like to,” Lonnie said.

  “The Bible says being gay is a sin,” Sheila said as tears filled her eyes, and she looked away. Since he was young, she had suspected as much of Lonnie’s sexuality because of how different he had been from other boys his age, always enjoying things like art and music, but the idea of two men or two women being together the way a man and woman were didn’t even make enough sense for Sheila to really be capable of processing such thoughts. She couldn’t be angry with him anymore, though, not after the way he’d been the
re for her and the rest of the family the last few days. Still, she was disappointed.

  “It’s taken me a long time to realize it’s okay, Mom. I don’t expect you to understand overnight.”

  Sheila stood to her feet and headed for the back door of the house.

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  Sheila said nothing.

  “I just never thought it would all turn out this way,” Sheila said.

  “It’s not over yet,” Lonnie assured her.

  Darrel was still gone to Mexico when Sheila returned to Missouri, so she not only visited a divorce attorney, but she also went through every inch of Darrel’s office, looking for evidence against him. It wasn’t until she was on the drive home that she realized Darrel’s behavior and trips to Mexico were reminiscent of the times in the past when he’d cheated on her. The photos she found in Darrel’s office at the house confirmed that her intuition was correct. They were photos—hidden in the back of his desk drawer—of him with a Mexican woman whom Sheila knew to be his secretary down in Monterrey. Her name was Constance. However, the pictures were not taken of Constance at the Monterrey office. They were taken in Darrel’s Monterrey apartment in an adoring way that made Sheila’s heart sink. There was Constance petting a cat at the doorway. There was Constance cooking at the stove with a beer in her hand. There was Constance sitting next to a vase of roses, smiling like she couldn’t be happier. Darrel was having another affair. What Sheila couldn’t understand is why Darrel had chosen Constance, who was not exactly a looker. She was round and only a few years younger than Sheila. Her makeup was tacky, and her hair was long and plain. Regardless of the whys, for Sheila it was the final blow. Even if she never got a penny from Darrel or ever found another man to have and to hold her, with the help of Ruth and Esther, Sheila packed up everything in the house and moved out to save what little human value she felt she had left.