Back in Los Angeles, Lonnie managed to procure a full-ride scholarship to Cal Arts for his second year. Uckley had hinted to Lonnie that, of all the students, he was talked about by the faculty most as being the best at taking a class assignment and creating not only a beautiful art piece but also thought-provoking questions for the viewer, two elements of his studies that were so ingrained in his conscious and subconscious that they couldn’t help but translate onto every square inch of one of Lonnie’s canvases. The image that had won him the award was a four-by-four-foot realistic oil rendering of a man and woman holding hands in a field of daisies. In the painting, despite the fact that the couple was wearing their Sunday best, they themselves were rotting away, a worm crawling out of the woman’s nostril and the eyeballs of the man almost completely sunken into his head. In the background, a two-story home was ablaze and sending a nuclear cloud up into the otherwise beautiful blue sky. In her hand the woman held one of the daisies, which had been plucked of all its petals so that only the yellow flower head of its center remained. In the man’s hand were the petals that had been plucked, which he held out for the viewer to see. It was a haunting piece and a defining moment for Lonnie, who had found his voice and his own unique way of expressing it at the young age of only twenty.
Yet despite what was obviously a keen dissection of his parents’ life, Lonnie’s own was becoming a conundrum to him. He’d cheated on Patrick. It was at the gym that he’d joined in an attempt to build a body like the muscled men he’d always admired, like the Zest men he remembered from when he was young who splayed their towels on the TV commercials, displaying not only the Zest logo but also their ripped shoulders and arms. It all happened so quickly. Lonnie went into the men’s steam room to relax after his first workout, and he’d found a guy in his thirties sitting across from him on the tile steps. They were both in towels, and Lonnie couldn’t help but notice the man’s pumped physique. Then the man began adjusting himself and Lonnie realized he was hard. Lonnie wouldn’t have allowed what happened between them to occur, but the opportunity to be sexual with someone he was so attracted to was difficult to pass up. Maybe he’d settled for Patrick too quickly, Lonnie thought. He’d moved in with Patrick recently in an attempt to cement the two of them and their love, never realizing that what it would actually do was trap them in something neither of them was prepared for. Maybe in another time he and Patrick would have been perfect for one another and would have lasted for the rest of their lives together. But they both had parents who were far from healthy examples of how to be life partners, so in successfully immolating their families of origin, they wound up hurting one another thoroughly, over and over again, before coming back together with tears and apologies and make-up sex only to reenact the same frustrated patterns once more a couple weeks later. Welts built up on their arms as their struggles grew more and more physical, and they both grasped for some understanding of why it wasn’t working. The pain of Lonnie’s world had always been held in check by the happiness he’d tried to find in it, but now all he could feel was raw hurt, and he seriously questioned taking his life. Instead, he cheated on Patrick, losing himself in acts that demeaned his relationship but allowed him to feel moments of intense-enough pleasure that going on was bearable.
Gwen had survived the death of Willie with the poise people around her had come to expect from her over the years. But the truth was, she’d learned to disguise her real feelings a long time ago, and just because she appeared strong to the outside world didn’t mean she wasn’t failing privately. Having Willie removed from her life was like having a major organ confiscated, and though Gwen had gone a while, ultimately she couldn’t go on without him. It was scientific fact that people died of heartbreak, and when Gwen appeared at the door of her house to welcome Sheila and her daughters—refugees from their tumultuous existence on Squirrel Ridge—it was apparent Gwen wasn’t the vital woman she had been. She had lost at least twenty pounds, and her voice cracked when she talked, as though it were shutting down on her. She had cancer, she told Sheila tearfully. It was only a recent diagnosis, but it was terminal, and it was commandeering her person with the gusto of a well-organized militia. Sheila couldn’t imagine that there wasn’t something the doctors could do, and Gwen assured Sheila she was starting chemo. But Gwen’s assurances seemed like trivial denials of the truth she knew and wanted—soon she would be with Willie once more.
In a way, knowing that she was dying made life livable for Gwen. Knowing that she had a quickly deteriorating calendar on earth allowed her to plan the way she had always been so good at, to organize and put her house in permanent order. And when she saw pictures of Willie, she didn’t want to break down but instead smiled to herself. She hardly believed in God, and the idea of heaven seemed silly to her. But there was something after all this. Even as uneducated as she thought herself to be, Gwen knew there couldn’t be something as meaningful as the love she and Willie shared and then… nothing.
Sheila cried herself to sleep the night Gwen told her about the cancer diagnosis, only to wake up in the middle of the night and find herself alone. Even if he didn’t hold her or touch her, at least in the past, Darrel had usually been there in bed with her. Even if he snored or smelled because he refused to take a shower, at least there was someone else—she wasn’t alone. All she wanted was to go back to her dreams, even if they weren’t pleasant. Sleep was such a nice distraction. But in the dark, the anxiety of her situation kept her awake, taunted her with visions of how she could get Darrel back, then how she wouldn’t take him back even if he came begging, then how she couldn’t go on alone for even another minute of life if things didn’t change that instant. She threw back the sheets and stumbled through her room toward the toilet. There she sat in the darkness and began to tell herself she wasn’t alone. She had God with her. “Oh, what a friend I have in Jesus,” she said out loud. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me.” Her faith was the one thing she still had. She could take it to bed with her and wake up with it he next morning and hold hands with it throughout the day. At any moment it was there, a hope, a necessity, otherwise she would have given up on life just like Gwen.
As her doctors had warned, Gwen lost all her hair and even more weight as a result of the chemo. And though, with Sheila and the girls around, Gwen’s spirits brightened, she wouldn’t survive this assault to her body, and it was odd for Sheila to know this, odd for Sheila to be caring for Gwen. She wasn’t supposed to be shopping for her mother or cleaning her house or feeding her with a spoon. She wasn’t supposed to be comforting her mother. Her mother was still supposed to be comforting her.
“You know what I like most about having cancer?” Gwen asked. She was sitting in the bathtub while Sheila helped her bathe.
Sheila said nothing and gently poured warm water down Gwen’s back to clear away the bubbles the washcloth had left there.
“I like not having to worry about my hair anymore, none of it! And I’m finally skinny. Your daddy would’ve loved me this way,” Gwen smiled.
At some point, Sheila knew giving her mother a bath the way her mother had once bathed her was going to be necessary, but it didn’t seem right, not yet. Yet here they were: capable, strong daughter and hairless, weak mother.
“Daddy loved you just the way you were.”
“That’s true. He surely did. I never understood that.”
Sheila helped Gwen lean back onto a special blow-up cushion.
“This water feels good on my bones,” Gwen sighed, closing her eyes.
“Why did you love him?” Sheila asked, now applying the washcloth to Gwen’s chest.
Gwen looked at her, surprised. “You know, I can’t remember. At first I just knew that I probably should. I mean, we were good together. Then, after we were married, I knew that I… had to. Then I just did. Every little thing.”
“You think I should go back to Darrel, momma?”
Gwe
n closed her eyes again. “Can you love him just the way he is, the way he really is?”
Sheila wiped back a strand of hair that had fallen into her face. “No.”
Gwen smiled, eyes still closed. “I’m glad your daddy went before me. It makes it so much easier.”
Darrel heard about Gwen’s passing from Kristy, the only child of his that still talked to him in light of his and Sheila’s separation, and immediately he headed out on his tractor to “bush hog.” In the forests of Squirrel Ridge, Darrel barreled through the brush, cutting it down and leaving the ground trim and naked so that the native grasses and wildflowers could flourish and the large trees stood delineated from one another like grand watchtowers that protected Squirrel Ridge and its inhabitants. With the loud growl of the tractor in his ears, the vibration of the engine whirring beneath him, and the power of the whirling blade of the Bush Hog under his command, Darrel was able to numb his feelings down to the point they were digestible and more easily organized into what mattered and what didn’t. After a few hours clear-cutting, he was able to come back to the “real” world and deal with its problems because he had presorted them out in his head. As for the death of Gwen, he wouldn’t go to the funeral unless he was invited, and he wouldn’t be invited. As for feeling sad, he did have a tightness in his chest upon thinking about Gwen’s demise, but he had already cried over Sheila leaving with Esther and Ruth in tow, and he didn’t have any more tears to shed. When he’d returned home to find Sheila gone, it had shocked him. She had left him before with the kids when they were all younger, at least two times that he’d never forgotten, and he’d wooed her back with promises and his touch. But this time, the house was empty. She had taken the photographs. Seeing the empty walls where pictures of their family had once hung was when he knew there was no bandaging their broken relationship. It was over. At least the work it would require to get Sheila back was not something he would be capable of. Finally, after all these years, she’d made her stand. She was not going to be possessed by him anymore. She was demanding he show up to the relationship on her terms, terms that he didn’t have the fortitude to meet, even if they weren’t exactly unreasonable. So instead, Darrel bought Constance a one-way ticket to Missouri from Mexico to take Sheila’s place, and he found a lawyer to fight out his divorce from Sheila in court.
“Homosexual” was the only word Sheila would use to describe Lonnie’s “lifestyle choice.” To admit that it was anything other than a malfunction of his heterosexually God-given brain was unacceptable. Still, despite her fervent prayers to God to “change” Lonnie into the “man” she knew God wanted him to be, Lonnie continued down his path of “sexual deviance,” and it had become apparent to Sheila that she would have to “love the sinner but hate the sin” in order to have a relationship with him. Darrel had decided he’d better embrace Lonnie as well, as it was quickly becoming apparent that Lonnie was not going to be crawling back to Missouri any time soon to beg for forgiveness and embrace the heterosexuality Darrel had hoped to foist on him. There was also the divorce, which had prompted both Sheila and Darrel to attempt to pull the kids into their separate bunkers by any means possible. So, when Lonnie returned for Gwen’s funeral, it was decided he could bring Patrick along. Unfortunately, things between Lonnie and Patrick reached an all-time low the night before the twosome was to head back to the Midwest. Punches were thrown, which had resulted in bruises all up and down Lonnie’s sides, and when Patrick dropped him off at the airport the next morning to go back to the Midwest, they weren’t even speaking.
At Gwen’s funeral, Lonnie began to walk differently. His jaw became tighter, his voice lower, his chest more pronounced. He was to be the man his mother needed now in the absence of Darrel. He let Sheila cry onto his shoulder, and he sat with his arm around her during the service. In her casket, Gwen looked beautiful and rested. The mortuary had filled her with the life she’d lacked, and it was nice to remember her this way. Her death made Lonnie reflect on how quickly time passed, and how ridiculous it is that we let so many small things affect us in such big ways. He realized how often he’d overthought things that really didn’t matter. The problem was that he had so many options. How did you choose which thing to do or be or think when it seemed as though you could do or be or think anything nowadays? The preacher said that in the end, all that matters is “who loved you, who you loved, and what you did for God.” But how to love and be loved? This was the question.
To reacquaint himself with Darrel, after Gwen’s funeral, Lonnie made a drive up to Squirrel Ridge. He suggested they go on a float trip to catch up, and Darrel jumped at the idea. So they packed sandwiches and Mountain Dews in a cooler along with some chips and a package of Oreos, and they headed out on the Big Piney. It was a perfect day to be in the water. Summer rains had filled the rivers around Missouri, but the murk had settled and so the bottom was clearly visible even ten feet down. And since Darrel and Lonnie had chosen to go floating on a weekday, there was no one else to disturb them, allowing their old, aluminum canoe to glide almost silently along the river, past gravel bars sprouting birch trees, sunning turtles, muskrats building nests, and foot-long water moccasins zigzagging peacefully toward their watercress hideouts. It wasn’t until halfway through their day that Lonnie and Darrel really began to talk, almost as though for the first time in their lives. It was an accident. The pleasures of the day had caused Lonnie to forget all about the bruises that Patrick’s frustration had stamped on his sides, and he removed his T-shirt to soak in the warmth of the afternoon sun.
“What happened to you?” Darrel asked.
Lonnie didn’t understand what Darrel was referring to at first. “What?”
“You look like you found the wrong end of a mule.” Darrel nodded at Lonnie’s midsection.
Instantly Lonnie was mortified. He didn’t know what to do. For a moment, he just sat there. Then he pulled his oar from the water and set it on his lap while he stared off into the distance, appreciating the absolute silence that this moment afforded him, a quiet that allowed him to think uninterrupted and would ultimately allow him to vocalize the truth that might otherwise have been left unsaid. “Patrick and I got in a fight.”
Darrel dipped his oar back into the river and the canoe responded, slicing ahead effortlessly. “You know, people fight. Your mother and I fought all the time, but I never hit her.”
If it hadn’t been for the subject matter of their conversation, Lonnie would have been able to appreciate the fact Darrel had just compared Lonnie’s relationship with Patrick to his own relationship with Sheila. He shrugged. “I know. It’s just… most of the time I think I deserve it ’cause I’ve cheated on him,” Lonnie sighed honestly.
“Is that why he hits you?”
“I don’t think he knows.”
“You know… I’ve cheated on your mom. I shouldn’t have. It’d probably be best if you didn’t do that either, but I understand. I wish I could say I just couldn’t help myself, but I always could have. I just didn’t.”
“Why?”
“That’s a good question, Lonnie,” Darrel chuckled. “Guess if you could answer that, you’d be a millionaire. It’s not like I didn’t love your mom.”
“I want to break up with Patrick, I just don’t know how. Everyone says he’s such a great guy, and so I stay.”
“People say the same thing about your mom. And…” Darrel paused, as though he had been trying to figure this out for a long time. “… and that’s why I didn’t leave her either. I mean, she’s been a great mom to you kids.”
“Were you happy, though?”
“Sometimes.”
“Yeah.”
Darrel began rowing again. They were in a particularly deep pool of water that stretched around the bend without a ripple, like a massive aqua belt.
“I think it’d be easier if there was someone else waiting, but there isn’t,” Lonnie said.
Darrel knew Lonnie was thinking about Constance, whom Lonni
e had consented to meet, although they hadn’t exchanged many words mostly because Constance knew very little English. Had it not been for her, Darrel might have worked things out with Sheila, but Constance had saved him in a way and even Sheila, too. Constance was the necessary wedge that would not—could not—be removed. And Darrel was happy with her. Part of the reason might have been that she didn’t speak much English, and he didn’t speak much Spanish, so they couldn’t get into the lengthy conversations and arguments that he and Sheila used to have, which wore him out. If something went wrong between Darrel and Constance, and one of them didn’t want to talk about it, they just pretended they didn’t understand what the other was upset about until, after a while, the whole thing blew over and it didn’t matter anymore.
“Still,” Darrel continued. “You shouldn’t be with someone who’s hurting you like that.”
“I know.”
“You hurt him, too?”
“Not really. Mostly I just try and hold him off.”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been there for you. The whole… gay thing is just really hard for me to take.”
“I know, Dad,” Lonnie said appreciatively. “It hasn’t been easy on me either.”
“I just want you to be happy.”
Lonnie suspected Darrel was only saying this because he wanted Lonnie to return the sentiment about him and Constance.
Lonnie didn’t.
Lonnie broke things off with Patrick, but only after meeting another guy—that better guy he believed existed out there. It was two weeks into their senior year and Patrick had been talking about dropping out of school and moving to San Francisco, where he’d been offered a gallery space and a studio to paint in from an older, gay art collector who had an obvious crush on Patrick and was determined to see him succeed. Patrick’s departure wasn’t an easy time, but it was somewhat organic. While Patrick was moving out of their bungalow, Lonnie moved in with his new man, a graphic artist named Paul, who was a trust fund kid from Chicago and lived in a large house with three other roommates. The romance between Paul and Lonnie was a whirlwind of magic compared to the darkness that had pervaded Lonnie and Patrick’s intimacies the last three years. Paul and Lonnie went to fun parties, and Paul introduced Lonnie to new, exciting people, and their sex life was full of surprises. But despite the fact that Lonnie believed Paul was more than just a stepping-stone away from Patrick—a rebound—the relationship with Paul, in fact, only lasted a few months before it was over. Paul had told Lonnie from the get-go he wasn’t looking for anything serious, and apparently, despite Lonnie’s best efforts at changing his mind, that fact remained true. So Lonnie found himself about to graduate with no idea how his future was actually going to work out. What bothered him most, however, was knowing that there were answers out there to all the questions he had about life but not knowing where to look for them. Sheila had looked to God, but Lonnie had tried that and had ultimately decided that God didn’t exist, at least not the God that he’d been raised to believed in. Darrel had looked to women, and that had worked temporarily with men for Lonnie but was not the answer either. Lonnie had tried to find himself in his art, but that seemed to only be raising more questions. He thought of Gwen and Willie again. They had seemed contented. They had seemed as though they had found some answer that was enough. What was it, he wondered.
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