“Is this the mountain you want to die on?” Ryan had often asked Lonnie during their many brawls. And those words had stuck with Lonnie. And at the end of the day, Lonnie and Greg both realized there really wasn’t much that mattered more than their love for each other, and neither of them was giving that up anytime soon.
They also shared a vision for their life together that was rooted in the simplicity of the past. Despite the fact that Greg was four years Lonnie’s junior, their lives had not been that different growing up. They both had grandparents who had been raised on the heels of the depression and World War II and who were just looking for a good partner when they met and married. In that simple approach, they had found lifelong love. And this was what Lonnie and Greg both were determined to remember, Greg would tell people.
“Nowadays we’ve been assured we can have everything we want, unlimited credit, a million different flavors and colors and sounds until we’re spoiled children who’ve become completely focused on what we don’t have instead of what we do have. But the truth is it’s simplifying, figuring out what really matters, and focusing on that that brings satisfaction!” Greg was going into one of his typical philosophical rants while sipping a beer and flipping burgers on the barbecue with his and Lonnie’s Sunday afternoon guests.
“Afghanistan was like solitary confinement,” Lonnie laughed, setting out plates and napkins on the deck table. “Greg had a lot of time to think about these things.”
“Like you don’t agree?” Greg playfully scoffed.
“Of course, I do! That’s why we get along so well,” Lonnie smiled. “Well, that and the fact that he lets me decide what movies we’re going to watch.”
“We like all the same movies and the same books and the same music. That’s not the big one, though.”
“Why? What’s the big one?” Lonnie asked for the sake of everyone listening.
“He always puts the toilet seat back down after he pees,” Greg confided.
Everyone laughed.
“That is true. I grew up in a house full of women. It was a habit I formed.”
“It’s a habit I like,” Greg lifted his beer to Lonnie, who blew a kiss back to him.
“Then, there’s always…” Lonnie lifted his eyebrow.
“What?” Greg knew what Lonnie was about to insinuate but wanted him to say it out loud.
“The sex.”
“Oh, right. That. Yeah, I almost forgot about that.”
“Liar.”
“Damn right.”
Everyone laughed again.
For a long time, Lonnie didn’t mention Greg to his parents and tried his best to keep his expectations for their relationship to a minimum, but he also knew he’d deliberately made a wise decision in choosing Greg as someone to give his heart to. And nowadays there was a contentedness to Lonnie’s behavior and a cheerfulness to his voice that gave Greg’s existence in his life away and begged the question of why not make their situation a more permanent one?
In September, a year and eight months after meeting for the second time, Lonnie and Greg made the five-hour drive from L.A. to Big Sur, California. It was one of Lonnie’s favorite places in the world. With the exception of the scenic expanses of ocean, it was a lot like Missouri in the sense that it was made up of a small population of people while maintaining thousands and thousands of acres of unmanned forests and fields. Most artists traveled to Big Sur to paint the lush and dramatic landscapes. Lonnie actually traveled to Big Sur as a reprieve from painting. His favorite place to stay was at the Big Sur Inn, a quaint village of rickety cottages just off Pacific Highway One. Built up the side of a hill, many of these cabins were hardly insulated from the elements but featured such charming antiques and comfortable beds that they more than made up for their lack of structural aesthetics, not to mention the fact they sat under the watchful eyes of hundreds of unbelievable Redwoods over thirty stories tall that kept the little Eden under a canopy of relaxing filtered sunlight throughout the day and blanketed it with warmth throughout the night.
On the porch just off the bedroom of the cabin Lonnie and Greg shared, they sat together in the damp, cool mornings draped in the quilt from their bed, one set of hands holding their coffee mugs, the other set holding each other. They didn’t speak, preferring instead to watch the silent rays of sun slip through the trees, waking birds and squirrels and sending them on the hunt for their breakfasts. Sometimes Greg would squeeze Lonnie’s hand a little tighter and Lonnie knew he had just had a thought.
“What?” Lonnie asked.
“It reminds me of when my dad and I used to go hunting together in Virginia, except now I don’t have to worry about killing some poor animal.” Greg turned and looked at Lonnie. “You know what I mean?”
Now it was Lonnie’s turn to squeeze Greg’s hand a little tighter. He smiled, “Yeah.” And for a moment, Lonnie stared back at Greg. Then he knew the time had come.
When Private Darrel McAllister was deployed to Vietnam, he didn’t do much more than drive supply trucks, drink himself into stupors with cheap alcohol, and sleep with a prostitute here or there when he found one that particularly suited his taste whom he wasn’t worried would give him some VD. Only once in his entire time in the war-torn country had he gone shopping. It was the week before he was supposed to come home for good, and he had been warned by Ruby that he better not return at all if he didn’t have a souvenir for her. So Darrel went with a couple of his army buddies down to one of the tourist traps and bought his mother a massive Vietnamese fan that had a scene of a small, local fishing village hand-painted on it. While buying the fan, he spotted a ring. It had a band made from pink and white gold, and it held in its center an oval, cat-eye sapphire framed by two small diamonds. It was a simple ring that hardly cost a thing, and this particular one fit Darrel’s hand perfectly. So he bought it.
For a few years, Darrel wore this sapphire ring, at least until the day the band broke, which was right around the time he married Sheila. So, instead of getting it fixed, he let Sheila put it in her jewelry box to keep safe until some unforeseen time in the future, when it might be of use to him again. Little did Darrel know that Lonnie would develop an affinity for the sapphire ring when as a kid he went digging through Sheila’s jewelry box to admire all her “treasures.” He also couldn’t know that by the time Lonnie was in high school, he would ask for the ring as a gift to wear like his friends wore their class rings. So Sheila had the band soldered back together and sized for Lonnie so that he could take it off to college with him, and he did. However, worried that he’d ruin it with all his turpentine and oils, Lonnie decided to put the ring away in a small, leather box of his own, where he kept it at least until the day he began to think about getting married.
For the longest time, Lonnie had wondered, if you were gay, how one man was supposed to propose to the other. And he hated the idea that nothing would be exchanged between two men to symbolize this agreement. Then he thought of the ring. It was one of his most prized possessions, and he thought if he ever felt close enough to another man to ask for that man’s hand in marriage, he would do so with the ring. And especially after the breakup with Ryan, he decided to begin wearing the ring full time, paint and thinner be damned. Until it found its way onto his most precious lover’s hand, Lonnie realized he needed to wear the simple band as a symbol of faith that he would meet someone to be his life partner, his best friend, that reflection of his grandparents.
Now, as Lonnie stared into Greg’s eyes on the porch at the Big Sur Inn, he felt the sapphire ring on his finger. Carefully he removed the quilt from his lap, set his coffee aside, and sank to one knee in front of Greg. He slipped the sapphire ring off his finger and held it by its band up for Greg to see. Greg smiled, knowing what was coming.
“Will you marry me, baby?” Lonnie asked.
Greg nodded. “Yes, please.”
So Lonnie didn’t believe in the hyped-up, dramatic version of love, yet now he was ab
out to get married. Even as the day approached with promises of securing a future of domestic bliss for him, he couldn’t help but wonder if this romance of his was really going to turn out differently than that of his parents. He still worried that he was missing something, that there might still be some key ingredient that allowed “forever” to truly blossom like it had for Gwen and Willie especially when, one month before Greg was to be honorably discharged from the Navy and two months before the wedding celebration was to commence on the first weekend in May, Greg called it off.
“I can’t,” he said to Lonnie with fear in his eyes.
Lonnie was numb. He had suspected something was up. Greg’s usually easygoing demeanor had given way to a quieter, more contemplative mood the last few weeks.
“What’s going on?” Lonnie asked.
“It’s not that I won’t. It’s just…” Greg was really struggling to share with Lonnie what was on his heart, a problem that Lonnie wasn’t quite used to from his lover.
“What?” Lonnie asked again, touching Greg’s knee to assure him that whatever it was, it would be okay.
“If I go back to Afghanistan for another tour, I can make fifty thousand more bucks.”
Lonnie was making more than enough money for both himself and Greg to live on, which had allowed Greg to begin training classes at the nursing school down the street from the loft that they were now sharing. And for a brief moment, Lonnie wanted to yell at Greg for even considering giving up on his newfound goal to become an RN and giving another year of his life to the Navy in return for the pittance they were offering him, but Lonnie stopped himself.
“Is this because of the wedding?”
“No.”
Lonnie stared deep into Greg’s eyes, wondering if Greg really knew what he was saying. When he and Greg had decided to marry, Lonnie was determined to do it right—flowers, cake, food, wine, etc. And why not go big? But he could tell the cost of their life together was wearing on Greg, who felt emasculated by his inability to contribute financially to the relationship at the level that Lonnie did. What Lonnie tried to convey to Greg was that he did contribute in so many other, more important ways, exemplified most recently as Lonnie was putting together the toughest, most intensive show of his life for Space Eight in New York City.
“Is this what you really want? Because it’s not what I want. But if it’s what you really want, I’ll support you, baby. And I’ll be here waiting to marry you when you get back,” Lonnie forced himself to say.
Greg looked down at Lonnie’s hand on his knee. He laid his own hand on top of Lonnie’s. “It’s what I want.”
That night they grilled bratwursts that Greg bought from an organic meat shop that had recently opened down the street, and they watched a marathon of their favorite TV shows, which had been collecting on their DVR. And then they made love. One of Lonnie’s favorite things about the way he and Greg communicated sexually was that sometimes it was rough and loud and other times it was soft and quiet and full of the most gentle touches. That night was a gentle-touch night, including what seemed to be the most glorious eternity, during which Greg kissed every surface of Lonnie’s body, whispering, “I love you. I love you.”
Immediately plans were halted for the wedding and plans to send Greg back to Afghanistan began. The night before he was to ship out, there would be a small party for their friends at the loft, which Sheila opted to fly in for. Lonnie was responsible for the guest list. Sheila was responsible for the food. Greg was responsible for the alcohol.
And it was while he was driving back from a run to Costco that Greg was hit by an SUV on the 134 freeway and killed.
Lonnie expected to be inconsolable over the death of Greg. What he ended up being for a time was simply lost. One of the hardest parts of the ordeal was that Greg’s family, who had never accepted Greg’s sexuality, took Greg’s body and wanted Lonnie to have nothing to do with it. And since they had never married, Lonnie had no legal recourse. He wasn’t even allowed to attend the funeral in Florida. So instead, Lonnie went back to the Midwest—back to Squirrel Ridge—to think things over and reach some sort of stasis in his mind.
As Lonnie wandered the farm’s fields, flush with spring daisies, he couldn’t help but take in the irony. He loves me. He loves me not. He loves me. Then he dies. With a sigh, Lonnie sat down on a boulder that stuck up out of the ground at the top of the back forty and provided the perfect vantage point to view the hundreds of acres of Squirrel Ridge that stretched out in all directions around him. In another hour the sun would set, and he would make his way back to the house to have dinner with Darrel and Constance before going to bed early so he could get up and drive down to Oklahoma to visit Sheila the next morning.
For now, however, the sun peeked through the clouds and shined brilliantly on Lonnie’s face, warming him in spite of the chill of the afternoon air, and he twisted a daisy in his hand and smiled. And regardless of everything, Lonnie couldn’t help but love this very moment, which was all one really ever has, Greg would have reminded him—brief instances of perfection and imperfection amid the relentless torrent of life. And one can fight the moments or lean into them, soak them up and savor them for what they are or send them packing in a constant fight for more and better. This was the truth Gwen and Willie had known. This was the truth Darrel and Sheila were beginning to grasp. And as Lonnie sat there with not much more in his possession than the daisy in his hand, he realized this truth as well. And suddenly he laughed at how simple it all really was. And in that instant, beside him on the boulder he saw Gwen and Willie, Sheila and Darrel, Patrick and Ryan… and Greg.
Lonnie took Greg’s hand in his as everyone else intermingled their fingers as well, and they all sat together, quietly watching the sun shed its heavenly golden glow over the valleys and the hills, over the forests and the fields, and over the daisies.
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Daisies Page 17