“There’s so much to do.”
“If there’s anything we can help you with...”
“Oh no. We just... If you could mail the rent checks for now, that would be good. I’ll give you the address.” She hesitated, overwhelmed.
That night, Elsa stayed upstairs. We overheard her long, almost argumentative phone conversations with her husband, and nervous pacing through the ceiling. She told us her mother only had a few days before she would be transferred to Maryland.
The next morning, Everett waited in the driveway by the van’s door as I uprooted a few flowers from the garden.
“You think her daughter will notice?”
“Not sure.” I packed the soil into a planter around a few daffodils. “But I know I don’t care.”
At the side of the house, I washed off my hands under the spurt of the garden hose, sprinkled a bit of water into the planter, then returned to the van and handed the planter to Everett, who nestled it between the folds of a blanket in the back.
As we drove off, he smiled, “You always know the perfect Get Well gift.”
I’d only had one morning class on campus, and Everett ducked out of his afternoon senior seminar. The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania was only a few blocks away, but we didn’t want to risk dropping our hastily potted present.
Everett navigated the halls of the building with ease, with me following. As we entered her room, Mrs. Kukka’s hoot of surprise roused a sleeping woman in the adjoining bed.
“My boys! Come here!”
She appeared pale and fatigued but in relatively good spirits. I offered a cautious hug, careful of the cast on her right arm. Everett wheeled around the left side of the bed, and they merely clasped hands.
“It’s so nice to see you. And what’s this?”
“A little bit of home.” I set the planter on a nearby table.
“Our daffodils!” She grinned. “So thoughtful.”
“How are you?”
“Well, aside from having a few of my brittle bones cracked here and there,” she cautiously waved her arm in its sling, “pretty good, thanks to our little hero here.” She offered an admiring glance to Everett.
“So, your daughter said she wants to move you to her home?” Everett said.
“Towson,” she scowled. “No, it’s not bad, a nice town. I visit every year. She’s finally won her battle against my independence.”
“But they’ll take care of you there, right?” Everett asked.
“Oh, I suppose so. You’ll have to give me some pointers,” she glanced at Everett’s chair. “It might be a while before I’m up and about.”
The wistful look in her eye, shared with Everett, made me wonder if she would ever fully recuperate.
“And it seems I’ll be missing your graduation. You are graduating, aren’t you?” She offered a mocking stern glance.
“Yes, Ma’am,” Everett nodded.
“Good. Don’t let her fussing get in your way. I told her you’re paid up through the semester.”
“But–”
“Never mind, you,” she chided. “You two boys were the best tenants in years, and I want to thank you for a lovely time.”
We spent the next few hours together, sharing stories, mostly listening to her stories, all the while ignoring the fact that this might be the last time we would spend together.
The next week was somber, repetitive. Each morning, Everett and I parted ways for classes, studied, yet distracted.
Every time the phone rang, one of us would be startled and race to answer it, expecting a call from Elsa about her mother.
“Hello?”
“I was just reminding you of my fabulous brunch this Sunday.”
“Oh. Hi, Gerard.” I sighed.
“Could you pretend to be happy to hear from me?”
I reminded him about Mrs. Kukka. We were still waiting for a call from her daughter to let us know how her mother was doing. Gerard sounded genuinely concerned, but determined to get us to make an appearance at his little shindig.
Having not seen Gerard for weeks, I was surprised when Everett politely asked me if we should attend a party, or more of a daytime brunch, at Gerard’s new digs in Rittenhouse Square. He’d been living there for months. What made me feel obligated to go was Everett’s admission of the number of weeks he’d declined such invitations on our behalf, even before Mrs. Kukka’s accident.
After driving across town, we spent a few minutes wandering through Rittenhouse Square before Gerard’s brunch. We felt a sort of obligation, yet another anticipated bout of queries from self-described ‘queens,’ no less. Everett’s comic defense system seemed about to go into high gear.
I took my glasses off and he hopped down with me to sit on a dry spot of grass. “They all know your story, so no exploding blimps, okay?”
“If you won’t flirt,” he teased.
“Deal.”
We adjusted ourselves on the ground, our bag of croissants un-smushed.
“Besides,” Everett said. “It’s mostly older guys.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing. They’re all … settled, you know?”
“Are we?”
Everett snorted a chuckle. “Giraffe, we are anything but settled.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, adventures, my man. After Mrs. Kukka, I just feel… an urgency. Remember that night in the field, in the snow? I’ve had dreams about that, but you’re always too far to whisper to.”
“What you said.”
“About adventures. We’re great together.”
“Yeah, we are. Even if we’re soon to be kicked out.”
“Did you ask about visiting her?”
“I called. Elsa’s husband was pretty dismissive. He said she’s still in the hospital in Maryland, recovering, or not recovering.”
“Oh.”
“So, anyway; brunch! The queens await.”
“Are we telling them our plans?”
“Do we even know our plans?”
“Yes.” I said with a new assurance. “California, here we come!”
“Adventures, wherever.”
“Okay.” His peck on my cheek sealed it.
“So let’s do brunch.”
Once back on the sidewalk, Everett wheeled ahead, pointing in tour guide mode. I put my glasses back on, surveying the flora.
“Did you know?” he asked.
“Yes, what should I know?”
“This park was once quite the mating ground for the Victoriana homosexuala.”
“Was it, now?”
“Yes, and I do believe I saw a flock of pansies over yonder behind that tree.”
Despite Gerard’s assurance that there wouldn’t be any surprises in store, when we arrived, after having trudged up four porch steps, a queenly gasp erupted from a conversation.
The silence was abruptly covered by Gerard’s pronounced introductions all around to half a dozen men, mostly older, and one younger slim fellow, the gasper. Since there hadn’t been anything done in the way of moving furniture to accommodate Everett, he simply parked himself at one end of a sofa near the room’s doorway.
I got Everett a little plate of food, and a drink was brought to him by someone else. I was about to get some for myself, when I was approached.
“I’m so sorry about my little…act,” said the gasper, who introduced himself as Russell. A soft hand was offered in a wisp of a handshake. “It’s just that we were discussing, you know, all the various diseases and things going around; not exactly appropriate brunch chat, but here we are. Queens always go for the jugular, doncha know, and then you two walked in, or wheeled in. What is the right term?”
“Arrived?”
His laughter reminded me of a macaw.
“So, you two are a couple, yes?”
“Yes.”
“So, how does that work?”
“Excuse me?”
“How do you, you know,” he said, with
an indeterminate flip of his hand.
“Get here? We drove,” I deadpanned.
“No,” he scowled, rolled his eyes. “How do you…get on?”
“You know… Russell?”
He nodded.
“I’m going to need, like a bagel or something, and definitely a few mimosas, before you go for the jugular.” I retreated to the food table. “So, you’ll excuse me.”
Things turned a bit sour after that, where our togetherness was questioned, in a conversation I more eavesdropped on rather than participated in. I kept to the food table back in the kitchen for as long as possible, until Gerard shooed me out to “mingle.”
“So, you’re going together?” Michael, one of the hosts asked, as our plans and indecisions had become unfurled, aided by Everett’s second drink. Russell seemed to understand enough to keep his distance from me, at least. But Everett always loved an audience. Since the seat next to him had been eagerly filled, I sat at a far end of the room on a dainty chair, occasionally getting poked by a potted fern. The tiny table upon which it sat gave little room for a plate, so I set it on my lap, and the drink on the floor.
“Well, we hope to be together, if that’s possible,” Everett over-clarified, in an over-enunciated way that he used whenever he got drunk, which seemed to have happened quickly.
Hope. Possible. Not “Definitely,” or even “for sure.”
“Is there a bathroom here?” I interjected.
“Right down the hall,” Gerard said as he pointed.
I stood up too soon, the bagel practically flung itself from my lap and landed cream cheese side down on the rug, knocking over my drink, too.
After cleaning up in the bathroom, I again retreated to the kitchen for a second helping, when one of the hosts approached.
“Reid, is it?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tim, please.”
I nodded as he offered a knife for the cream cheese, leaned against the counter. His nearly bald head, and a bit of a paunch, were countered by the boyish sparkle in his blue eyes.
“You know, in my day, things were very different when Michael and I started dating, back in the Cenozoic era.”
We both chuckled.
“How long have you been …together?”
“Seventeen years,” he said with a combination of pride and bemused exhaustion.
“Wow. That’s great.”
“And we didn’t have these gay groups and bars and parades back then. Well, a few bars, but they were sad places. You kids are pretty lucky.”
“Huh. I guess we are.”
“Have some more lox.” He pushed a plate toward me.
“Thanks.” I fumbled with a fork.
“Oh, just use your hands,” he scolded.
“So, how do you,” I finished assembling my food, but set it aside. “How did you…?”
“Stay together?”
I nodded.
“Persistence, I suppose, and pure dumb luck.”
“Huh.”
“And a little magic.”
“I’m sorry?”
“The magic of being needed by just one person.” Tim looked toward the living room, to his partner. Caught by his wistful look, I heard Everett’s laughter, then turned with Tim to survey the guests in the room.
Breaking abruptly, he turned back, handed me the plate. “Shall we re-enter the fray?” He smiled, offered a friendly shoulder pat.
“Well, that was a minor disaster,” Everett huffed as we finally descended the last of the apartment’s porch steps, almost two hours later. Gerard had hugged us goodbye at the door, sensing that this might be our last time together for a while.
“Well, I’m sorry if my social skills amongst royalty are a bit rusty.” I almost wanted to give his chair a little shove, but I couldn’t think of any lines from that Bette Davis movie.
“You could have been more polite.”
“Actually, I had a nice talk with Tim.”
Everett stopped pushing his chair, and turned back to glare at me. “I think we’re about to have another spousal argument.”
“Okay.”
“Will there be domestic violence in the form of spanking?”
“No,” I muttered.
“Well then, I’m not interested.”
“Ev. Are you drunk?”
“Probably.”
“No, you said, ‘possibly.’”
“I just said ‘probably.’”
“No, about us, in there.”
“Oh, that. Oh, come on. I was just... Reid.”
“No, I’m serious. If we can’t stay at the house, what are we gonna do for the summer?”
“I don’t know.”
“But what if–”
“I said I don’t know! Come on. I’ll flip a coin, okay? Greensburg, even Pittsburgh, although with the family trifecta nearby, it’s not what I’d call an adventure.”
“Seriously. Are we staying together?”
“Yes.” He nodded himself into agreeing. “As long as you come with me.”
As he pushed away, my left hand compulsively grasped the ring on my right finger, and I wondered if it were less than the sort-of wedding ring, and instead more of a consolation prize for a job well done, a job soon to be completed.
‘The magic of being needed.’
Barely able to recall the melody, still I dared to call out to him, singing in my off-key tone, “In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble! They’re only made of clay!”
He stopped on the sidewalk, wheeled around, grinned.
I held my arms wide, “Our love is here to stay!”
Someone, unseen in the nearby park, clapped. I bowed to Everett, approached him and squeezed him with an almost insistent hug.
Chapter 40
April 1983
The truck took up the entire driveway. Elsa had called to let us know when the movers would arrive, so I parked Everett’s van on a nearby street corner.
We stayed out of the way as a crew of men trundled up and down the stairs. The screech of unrolled packing tape accented the sound of books and other items being dumped into cardboard boxes that descended and left the house in the arms of the movers.
We could have left, perhaps avoided witnessing the disappearance of our landlady’s packaged life. We didn’t.
A few pieces of furniture, including the rumpled sofa, were left in the living room, out of some sort of blank consideration. The bookshelves were empty and all the trinkets from Mrs. Kukka and her husband’s life gone.
By the time the truck departed, we both felt a numbing sort of shock.
“Take me upstairs,” Everett said.
I backed myself in front of his chair, felt his arms tighten around my neck, then carefully trod up the stairs, depositing him at the landing. By the time I’d gone down and back up the stairs with his chair, he had already crawled into the central room.
Empty, bare; he surveyed the walls and windows. He didn’t even turn back or hop up into his chair.
“And that’s it,” he said as he sat on the floor, where I joined him.
“It looks smaller empty,” he said.
“I know. Strange, huh?”
“I guess our room’s next.”
“So much for our new home.”
Our voices echoed, bouncing back in agreement.
As the semester drew closer to an end, while others around us appeared cheerful and expectant for their liberty, for us, a truncated finality drew closer.
Twirlers, a bugle corps, drummers in silver pants and women with kids in wagons, trucks tugging wobbly crepe paper-festooned floats; all of them paraded around the Penn campus as the annual Spring Fling got underway.
The Park Mall had already begun to fill with hundreds of students seated before a large outdoor stage. I’d politely jostled us as close as I could, and Everett sat in his chair as I knelt by his side. A joint was passed, and we accepted it.
The sun blaring down, and in the middle of it all, I thought
Everett was having an allergy attack, when he turned up to me, something or someone on the stage having moved him.
There was a moment, in the middle of it all, with everyone talking and gulping down beers and jostling around, when we realized we were exhausted. It was nearly four o’ clock, and we’d had to stick with our spot, a bit too close to the stage for my ears. But wheeling back through the crowd seemed impossible, so I just made sure Everett stayed hydrated and kept his hat on.
Finally, Cyndi Lauper’s band came to the stage, and we all sang along. At one point between the bouncy familiar hits, there was a moment where that little elfish red and pink-haired woman in that tattered skirt and about a dozen criss-crossed belts sang a slow song, and she just stopped us, held us all, the entire crowd, and belted out a pealing high note, something about being strong, about breaking down to “cry, cry cry,” and I felt Everett’s hand clutch mine, hard.
“Are you okay?”
The lawn full of people cheered and hooted around us. He shook his head, a sort of yes. The crowd kept cheering as the band bowed, but I felt I needed to get him out of there, and shoved us through them until we found a place away from the stage and the crowd, off to the side. I crouched before him.
“What is it?”
“It’s gonna rain.”
I looked up at the sky, a slate of blue, the afternoon sun still beaming down on us. “What?”
“No, I mean, it’s going to get worse.”
“Oh, Monkey. Stop.”
“No, I mean it. I’m sorry.” His eyes were red.
“For what?”
“For everything. For everything I did to you, for anything I’m going to do to you.”
“Ev, please.”
It sort of rolled around in my head for a while until I understood what he meant. Everything was going to change. Graduation was just a few weeks away, and the real world awaited us. Our little bubble of college, as flawed as it had been, had protected us, but was about to pop. I almost saw that immense dark cloud far off in the horizon, moving so slowly that we couldn’t yet see it. But we felt it.
“We need to enjoy this, today. I love you,” I shouted over the cheers. “We’re gonna be okay.”
“I hope so,” Everett offered a wobbly tentative grin, snorted, wiped his eyes.
Message of Love Page 33