Family Dancing

by David Leavitt

  Now is the time for drastic action. He contemplates taking Wayne’s hand, then checks himself. He has never done anything in her presence to indicate that the sexuality he confessed to five years ago was a reality and not an invention. Even now, he and Wayne might as well be friends, college roommates. Then Wayne, his savior, with a single, sweeping gesture, reaches for his hand, and clasps it, in the midst of a joke he is telling about Saudi Arabians. By the time he is laughing, their hands are joined. Neil’s throat contracts; his heart begins to beat violently. He notices his mother’s eyes flicker, glance downward; she never breaks the stride of her sentence. The dinner goes on, and every taboo nurtured since childhood falls quietly away.

  She removes the dishes. Their hands grow sticky; he cannot tell which fingers are his and which Wayne’s. She clears the rest of the table and rounds up the dogs.

  “Well, boys, I’m very tired, and I’ve got a long day ahead of me tomorrow, so I think I’ll hit the sack. There are extra towels for you in Neil’s bathroom, Wayne. Sleep well.”

  “Good night, Barbara,” Wayne calls out. “It’s been wonderful meeting you.”

  They are alone. Now they can disentangle their hands.

  “No problem about where we sleep, is there?”

  “No,” Neil says. “I just can’t imagine sleeping with someone in this house.”

  His leg shakes violently. Wayne takes Neil’s hand in a firm grasp and hauls him up.

  Later that night, they lie outside, under redwood trees, listening to the hysteria of the crickets, the hum of the pool cleaning itself. Redwood leaves prick their skin. They fell in love in bars and apartments, and this is the first time that they have made love outdoors. Neil is not sure he has enjoyed the experience. He kept sensing eyes, imagined that the neighborhood cats were staring at them from behind a fence of brambles. He remembers he once hid in this spot when he and some of the children from the neighborhood were playing sardines, remembers the intoxication of small bodies packed together, the warm breath of suppressed laughter on his neck. “The loser had to go through the spanking machine,” he tells Wayne.

  “Did you lose often?”

  “Most of the time. The spanking machine never really hurt—just a whirl of hands. If you moved fast enough, no one could actually get you. Sometimes, though, late in the afternoon, we’d get naughty. We’d chase each other and pull each other’s pants down. That was all. Boys and girls together!”

  “Listen to the insects,” Wayne says, and closes his eyes.

  Neil turns to examine Wayne’s face, notices a single, small pimple. Their lovemaking usually begins in a wrestle, a struggle for dominance, and ends with a somewhat confusing loss of identity—as now, when Neil sees a foot on the grass, resting against his leg, and tries to determine if it is his own or Wayne’s.

  From inside the house, the dogs begin to bark. Their yelps grow into alarmed falsettos. Neil lifts himself up. “I wonder if they smell something,” he says.

  “Probably just us,” says Wayne.

  “My mother will wake up. She hates getting waked up.”

  Lights go on in the house; the door to the porch opens.

  “What’s wrong, Abby? What’s wrong?” his mother’s voice calls softly.

  Wayne clamps his hand over Neil’s mouth. “Don’t say anything,” he whispers.

  “I can’t just—” Neil begins to say, but Wayne’s hand closes over his mouth again. He bites it, and Wayne starts laughing.

  “What was that?” Her voice projects into the garden. “Hello?” she says.

  The dogs yelp louder. “Abbylucyferny, it’s O.K., it’s O.K.” Her voice is soft and panicked. “Is anyone there?” she asks loudly.

  The brambles shake. She takes a flashlight, shines it around the garden. Wayne and Neil duck down; the light lands on them and hovers for a few seconds. Then it clicks off and they are in the dark—a new dark, a darker dark, which their eyes must readjust to.

  “Let’s go to bed, Abbylucyferny,” she says gently. Neil and Wayne hear her pad into the house. The dogs whimper as they follow her, and the lights go off.

  Once before, Neil and his mother had stared at each other in the glare of bright lights. Four years ago, they stood in the arena created by the headlights of her car, waiting for the train. He was on his way back to San Francisco, where he was marching in a Gay Pride Parade the next day. The train station was next door to the food co-op and shared its parking lot. The co-op, familiar and boring by day, took on a certain mystery in the night. Neil recognized the spot where he had skidded on his bicycle and broken his leg. Through the glass doors, the brightly lit interior of the store glowed, its rows and rows of cans and boxes forming their own horizon, each can illuminated so that even from outside Neil could read the labels. All that was missing was the ladies in tennis dresses and sweatshirts, pushing their carts past bins of nuts and dried fruits.

  “Your train is late,” his mother said. Her hair fell loosely on her shoulders, and her legs were tanned. Neil looked at her and tried to imagine her in labor with him—bucking and struggling with his birth. He felt then the strange, sexless love for women which through his whole adolescence he had mistaken for heterosexual desire.

  A single bright light approached them; it preceded the low, haunting sound of the whistle. Neil kissed his mother, and waved goodbye as he ran to meet the train. It was an old train, with windows tinted a sort of horrible lemon-lime. It stopped only long enough for him to hoist himself on board, and then it was moving again. He hurried to a window, hoping to see her drive off, but the tint of the window made it possible for him to make out only vague patches of light—street lamps, cars, the co-op.

  He sank into the hard, green seat. The train was almost entirely empty; the only other passenger was a dark-skinned man wearing bluejeans and a leather jacket. He sat directly across the aisle from Neil, next to the window. He had rough skin and a thick mustache. Neil discovered that by pretending to look out the window he could study the man’s reflection in the lemon-lime glass. It was only slightly hazy—the quality of a bad photograph. Neil felt his mouth open, felt sleep closing in on him. Hazy red and gold flashes through the glass pulsed in the face of the man in the window, giving the curious impression of muscle spasms. It took Neil a few minutes to realize that the man was staring at him, or, rather, staring at the back of his head—staring at his staring. The man smiled as though to say, I know exactly what you’re staring at, and Neil felt the sickening sensation of desire rise in his throat.

  Right before they reached the city, the man stood up and sat down in the seat next to Neil’s. The man’s thigh brushed deliberately against his own. Neil’s eyes were watering; he felt sick to his stomach. Taking Neil’s hand, the man said, “Why so nervous, honey? Relax.”

  Neil woke up the next morning with the taste of ashes in his mouth. He was lying on the floor, without blankets or sheets or pillows. Instinctively, he reached for his pants, and as he pulled them on came face to face with the man from the train. His name was Luis; he turned out to be a dog groomer. His apartment smelled of dog.

  “Why such a hurry?” Luis said.

  “The parade. The Gay Pride Parade. I’m meeting some friends to march.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Luis said. “I think I’m too old for these things, but why not?”

  Neil did not want Luis to come with him, but he found it impossible to say so. Luis looked older by day, more likely to carry diseases. He dressed again in a torn T-shirt, leather jacket, bluejeans. “It’s my everyday apparel,” he said, and laughed. Neil buttoned his pants, aware that they had been washed by his mother the day before. Luis possessed the peculiar combination of hypermasculinity and effeminacy which exemplifies faggotry. Neil wanted to be rid of him, but Luis’s mark was on him, he could see that much. They would become lovers whether Neil liked it or not.

  They joined the parade midway. Neil hoped he wouldn’t meet anyone he knew; he did not want to have to explain Luis, who clung to him.
The parade was full of shirtless men with oiled, muscular shoulders. Neil’s back ached. There were floats carrying garishly dressed prom queens and cheerleaders, some with beards, some actually looking like women. Luis said, “It makes me proud, makes me glad to be what I am.” Neil supposed that by darting into the crowd ahead of him he might be able to lose Luis forever, but he found it difficult to let him go; the prospect of being alone seemed unbearable.

  Neil was startled to see his mother watching the parade, holding up a sign. She was with the Coalition of Parents of Lesbians and Gays; they had posted a huge banner on the wall behind them proclaiming: our sons and daughters, we are proud of you. She spotted him; she waved, and jumped up and down.

  “Who’s that woman?” Luis asked.

  “My mother. I should go say hello to her.”

  “O.K.,” Luis said. He followed Neil to the side of the parade. Neil kissed his mother. Luis took off his shirt, wiped his face with it, smiled.

  “I’m glad you came,” Neil said.

  “I wouldn’t have missed it, Neil. I wanted to show you I cared.”

  He smiled, and kissed her again. He showed no intention of introducing Luis, so Luis introduced himself.

  “Hello, Luis,” Mrs. Campbell said. Neil looked away. Luis shook her hand, and Neil wanted to warn his mother to wash it, warned himself to check with a V.D. clinic first thing Monday.

  “Neil, this is Carmen Bologna, another one of the mothers,” Mrs. Campbell said. She introduced him to a fat Italian woman with flushed cheeks, and hair arranged in the shape of a clamshell.

  “Good to meet you, Neil, good to meet you,” said Carmen Bologna. “You know my son, Michael? I’m so proud of Michael! He’s doing so well now. I’m proud of him, proud to be his mother I am, and your mother’s proud, too!”

  The woman smiled at him, and Neil could think of nothing to say but “Thank you.” He looked uncomfortably toward his mother, who stood listening to Luis. It occurred to him that the worst period of his life was probably about to begin and he had no way to stop it.

  A group of drag queens ambled over to where the mothers were standing. “Michael! Michael!” shouted Carmen Bologna, and embraced a sticklike man wrapped in green satin. Michael’s eyes were heavily dosed with green eyeshadow, and his lips were painted pink.

  Neil turned and saw his mother staring, her mouth open. He marched over to where Luis was standing, and they moved back into the parade. He turned and waved to her. She waved back; he saw pain in her face, and then, briefly, regret. That day, he felt she would have traded him for any other son. Later, she said to him, “Carmen Bologna really was proud, and, speaking as a mother, let me tell you, you have to be brave to feel such pride.”

  Neil was never proud. It took him a year to dump Luis, another year to leave California. The sick taste of ashes was still in his mouth. On the plane, he envisioned his mother sitting alone in the dark, smoking. She did not leave his mind until he was circling New York, staring down at the dawn rising over Queens. The song playing in his earphones would remain hovering on the edges of his memory, always associated with her absence. After collecting his baggage, he took a bus into the city. Boys were selling newspapers in the middle of highways, through the windows of stopped cars. It was seven in the morning when he reached Manhattan. He stood for ten minutes on East Thirty-fourth Street, breathed the cold air, and felt bubbles rising in his blood.

  Neil got a job as a paralegal—a temporary job, he told himself. When he met Wayne a year later, the sensations of that first morning returned to him. They’d been up all night, and at six they walked across the park to Wayne’s apartment with the nervous, deliberate gait of people aching to make love for the first time. Joggers ran by with their dogs. None of them knew what Wayne and he were about to do, and the secrecy excited him. His mother came to mind, and the song, and the whirling vision of Queens coming alive below him. His breath solidified into clouds, and he felt happier than he had ever felt before in his life.

  The second day of Wayne’s visit, he and Neil go with Mrs. Campbell to pick up the dogs at the dog parlor. The grooming establishment is decorated with pink ribbons and photographs of the owner’s champion pit bulls. A fat, middle-aged woman appears from the back, leading the newly trimmed and fluffed Abigail, Lucille, and Fern by three leashes. The dogs struggle frantically when they see Neil’s mother, tangling the woman up in their leashes. “Ladies, behave!” Mrs. Campbell commands, and collects the dogs. She gives Fern to Neil and Abigail to Wayne. In the car on the way back, Abigail begins pawing to get on Wayne’s lap.

  “Just push her off,” Mrs. Campbell says. “She knows she’s not supposed to do that.”

  “You never groomed Rasputin,” Neil complains.

  “Rasputin was a mutt.”

  “Rasputin was a beautiful dog, even if he did smell.”

  “Do you remember when you were a little kid, Neil, you used to make Rasputin dance with you? Once you tried to dress him up in one of my blouses.”

  “I don’t remember that,” Neil says.

  “Yes. I remember,” says Mrs. Campbell. “Then you tried to organize a dog beauty contest in the neighborhood. You wanted to have runners-up—everything.”

  “A dog beauty contest?” Wayne says.

  “Mother, do we have to—”

  “I think it’s a mother’s privilege to embarrass her son,” Mrs. Campbell says, and smiles.

  When they are about to pull into the driveway, Wayne starts screaming, and pushes Abigail off his lap. “Oh, my God!” he says. “The dog just pissed all over me.”

  Neil turns around and sees a puddle seeping into Wayne’s slacks. He suppresses his laughter, and Mrs. Campbell hands him a rag.

  “I’m sorry, Wayne,” she says. “It goes with the territory.”

  “This is really disgusting,” Wayne says, swatting at himself with the rag.

  Neil keeps his eyes on his own reflection in the rearview mirror and smiles.

  At home, while Wayne cleans himself in the bathroom, Neil watches his mother cook lunch—Japanese noodles in soup. “When you went off to college,” she says, “I went to the grocery store. I was going to buy you ramen noodles, and I suddenly realized you weren’t going to be around to eat them. I started crying right then, blubbering like an idiot.”

  Neil clenches his fists inside his pockets. She has a way of telling him little sad stories when he doesn’t want to hear them—stories of dolls broken by her brothers, lunches stolen by neighborhood boys on the way to school. Now he has joined the ranks of male children who have made her cry.

  “Mama, I’m sorry,” he says.

  She is bent over the noodles, which steam in her face. “I didn’t want to say anything in front of Wayne, but I wish you had answered me last night. I was very frightened—and worried.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, but it’s not convincing. His fingers prickle. He senses a great sorrow about to be born.

  “I lead a quiet life,” she says. “I don’t want to be a disciplinarian. I just don’t have the energy for these—shenanigans. Please don’t frighten me that way again.”

  “If you were so upset, why didn’t you say something?”

  “I’d rather not discuss it. I lead a quiet life. I’m not used to getting woken up late at night. I’m not used—”

  “To my having a lover?”

  “No, I’m not used to having other people around, that’s all. Wayne is charming. A wonderful young man.”

  “He likes you, too.”

  “I’m sure we’ll get along fine.”

  She scoops the steaming noodles into ceramic bowls. Wayne returns, wearing shorts. His white, hairy legs are a shocking contrast to hers, which are brown and sleek.

  “I’ll wash those pants, Wayne,” Mrs. Campbell says. “I have a special detergent that’ll take out the stain.”

  She gives Neil a look to indicate that the subject should be dropped. He looks at Wayne, looks at his mother; his initial embarrassment gives way to
a fierce pride—the arrogance of mastery. He is glad his mother knows that he is desired, glad it makes her flinch.

  Later, he steps into the back yard; the gardener is back, whacking at the bushes with his shears. Neil walks by him in his bathing suit, imagining he is on parade.

  That afternoon, he finds his mother’s daily list on the kitchen table:

  tuesday

  7:00—breakfast

  Take dogs to groomer

  Groceries (?)

  Campaign against Draft—4–7

  Buy underwear

  Trios—2:00

  Spaghetti

  Fruit

  Asparagus if sale

  Peanuts

  Milk

  Doctor’s Appointment (make)

  Write Cranston/Hayakawa

  re disarmament

  Handi-Wraps

  Mozart

  Abigail

  Top Ramen

  Pedro

  Her desk and trash can are full of such lists; he remembers them from the earliest days of his childhood. He had learned to read from them. In his own life, too, there have been endless lists—covered with check marks and arrows, at least one item always spilling over onto the next day’s agenda. From September to November, “Buy plane ticket for Christmas” floated from list to list to list.

  The last item puzzles him: Pedro. Pedro must be the gardener. He observes the accretion of names, the arbitrary specifics that give a sense of his mother’s life. He could make a list of his own selves: the child, the adolescent, the promiscuous faggot son, and finally the good son, settled, relatively successful. But the divisions wouldn’t work; he is today and will always be the child being licked by the dog, the boy on the floor with Luis; he will still be everything he is ashamed of. The other lists—the lists of things done and undone—tell their own truth: that his life is measured more properly in objects than in stages. He knows himself as “jump rope,” “book,” “sunglasses,” “underwear.”