by Julia Glass
“There it is! The but! ‘Now here comes the zeppelin.’ That’s what Granna used to say whenever we started to make excuses.”
Gordie laughed. “My mom wasn’t so original. We got the old saw about saving our buts for the billygoat. We’d drive her nuts with bleating.”
Gordie loved Walter’s stories about his grandmother. Walter, in turn, enjoyed stories about Gordie’s big, bursting-at-the-seams Catholic family. He had already nurtured fantasies about flying with Gordie out to Montana, where most of his siblings still lived. They sounded like a civilized, educated, miraculously unjaded clan, so it didn’t seem unrealistic that Walter might one day be a welcome guest at Unsworth family weddings, christenings, perhaps even Christmas parties. Walter might take up skiing again.
“So? What do you think?” He hated to press, but he had no choice.
“Well,” said Gordie slowly, “the only thing is that my friends, for so long, were…well, they became Stephen’s friends as well.”
“Of course they did,” said Walter.
“So it still feels awkward to…”
Walter realized that Gordie, once again, was hoping he would finish the thought, lending it legitimacy. “To…?”
“To invite them to a big, formal affair where I’m not with Stephen and I’m not, well, I’m not alone.”
“I note your choice of the word affair,” Walter said tartly. “And so, does this mean your friends, after all this time, think you are alone? Think, perhaps, that you’re suffering in solitude, as you seem to feel you deserve? Gordie, my love, life goes on! Has no one ever slung that cliché in your face? Because you need to hear it loud and clear!”
Gordie laughed nervously. “Walter, you have a very concise way of hitting the painful nail right on its head.”
“Gordie, how old are we now? Old enough to have seen a lot of sewage ooze under the bridge, are we not? If anyone knows about seizing the moment, it’s people like us. For Stephen, that meant having a kid—and you know what? Good for him, I say. So what does it mean for you and me? Not waffling around the bush, I bet you’d agree with me, right?”
They’d been having a midnight dinner at Gordie’s apartment, as they did two or three times a week; facing each other across the table wasn’t the best situation for talk like this, Walter knew, because they became accidentally adversarial. “I don’t know about you,” he went on, “but I need a very soft place to rest my overworked anatomy.” He picked up the wine bottle and took it to the living room.
Gordie followed with their glasses. “You’re completely right, Walter, and maybe it’s time you called my sorry bluff.” He sat down not on the couch beside Walter but on the armchair across the coffee table, only replicating their positions over dinner.
“Okay then, buster, I’m calling it now.”
Gordie did not smile. He refilled their glasses. “Walter, I have to confess something. Lately I’ve been feeling like I might…”
Walter held his breath.
“…I might be falling into a kind of depression. I mean, I’m working as well as ever, business is good—practically too good—and I have a great time with you, but it’s like I, like I didn’t end it with Stephen the way I should have; like I did it so fast I left a big piece of my soul in that life, and I can’t figure out how to go back and retrieve it.”
Walter worked to conceal his relief. This was no fun, but it was progress. As gently as he could, he said, “You’re not telling me you want to go back to Stephen, are you?”
“No, I’m not. Definitely not. But I’m just not up for replacing him. Yet. And I feel like that’s what you’re hoping.”
That was exactly what Walter had been hoping, but what fool would say so? “I haven’t exactly suggested we merge closets, have I?”
“No, you haven’t. But I have a feeling that if Scott weren’t a part of the picture—and listen, Walter, I am so impressed with what you’ve done for that boy—well, if he weren’t in the picture, I have a feeling you would. Suggest we move in together.”
Walter felt a great sinking. He was tired of calculations. “And you also have a feeling that if I did, you would say no. Without much ambivalence.”
Abruptly, Gordie stood up, and for one blessed second it looked as if he would come around the table and sit beside Walter, embrace him, tell him he was mistaken there; but instead he covered his face with his long, smooth, lovely, lawyerly hands and let out a muffled scream.
So, thought Walter, almost calmly, he is going to break my heart again. He is going to do it because, once again, I’ve set myself up to let him do it.
“Walter, I’m sorry, so much of this is timing.”
But Gordie had not gone on to tell Walter this was it, it was over, the usual mortifying severance. No. He’d said that he needed not to feel rushed, he wanted a little “break,” and Walter—oh how desperate could he be?—Walter had meekly agreed. For a month, it was decided, they would settle back into their separate lives. And then (oh really, as if) they would “see.”
Matters with Scott were, in a way, equally dicey. Walter tried to remind himself of all the extenuating circumstances—Scott’s age, his trophy-hausfrau mother, his post-adolescent oblivion—but the bottom line was that after a month or two of good behavior, Scott had rapidly settled into predictable teenage slapdashery. Now that Walter was home a good deal more often, the worst of Scott’s traits became even more conspicuous.
One night, Walter came in after midnight to an apartment that, except for the slot of radiance under Scott’s door, was dark. This was fine—or would have been if Walter had not twisted his ankle on a foreign object in what should have been a clear path to the light switch. When he yelped, the laughter in Scott’s room stopped for an instant, then resumed at a lower pitch. After turning on the light, Walter identified the offending object as a backpack plunked in the middle of the floor. Morticia’s, no doubt. He left it there. Pick it up, he mused, and Cousin It might leap from the tie-dyed patch pocket.
There were CDs on the couch, beer bottles and Chinese take-out containers on the coffee table. With delicate revulsion, Walter lifted a greasy chopstick from the rug. In the kitchen, he found an empty sink, but candy bar wrappers and a bottle of hot sauce had been left on the counter. Two of Granna’s samplers hung askew, as if there’d been a commotion nearby. As he assessed the disarray, Walter heard scratching on the inside of Scott’s door. Without showing a face or saying a word, someone opened the door just enough for the dog to squeeze his way out. The door closed, and T.B. sauntered into the kitchen. Oddly, he wasn’t wearing his collar.
“Hello, boy. How’s life in the den of hormones?” Walter, whose ankle had recovered, kneeled down to hug The Bruce. “So what’s up, you pawn your collar for a box of Omaha steaks?” He stood and frowned toward Scott’s door. He threw the candy wrappers in the garbage and put away the hot sauce.
In the morning, the beer bottles and take-out containers were still in the living room, though the backpack had vanished. T.B. emerged from Scott’s room once again, this time wearing his collar. Scott emerged wearing a begonia-pink T-shirt declaring, I’D RATHER BE HERE NOW.
“Than where? Or, for that matter, than when?” said Walter, looking up from the paper.
“Excuse me?” said Scott. “Like, top o’ the morning to you, too, dude.”
“Your shirt, your slogan du jour. Last I looked, your preference was to be in Manitoba. But I see you’ve changed your mind. Just what does this mean? Is it some kind of Zen message? No matter where you are, things are always hunky-dory? Something like that?”
Walter wasn’t sure whether Scott’s smile betrayed approval (Exactimento, dude!) or mockery (You hopelessly left-brained fool!).
“Yeah, in a way.” Scott shrugged oafishly and poured himself a cup of coffee. “You’re like, so totally literal, Uncle Walt.”
“Knowing how to follow directions is something that comes in handy, young man. Understanding and processing all the messages around you.”
“Scott, let’s not refrigerate the entire West Village.”
“Word!” Scott declared, then deftly grabbed both offerings and spun full circle on one foot, slapping the door shut with the opposite knee. “T-t-toong, t-t-toong, t-t-toong toong toong,” he chanted softly, a perfect cymbal, as he bopped to the table and sat down. He pushed the fries toward Walter. “Want some?”
“Ugh, no,” said Walter. “But thanks, I suppose.”
Scott proceeded to eat the cold fries, dipping them into the yogurt.
“That cannot be good.”
Scott pointed to the slogan on his chest. “Be happy with what you have and in the present moment, that’s the message. This”—he gestured at the food before him—“represents the here and now.”
“And what,” said Walter, “does that represent?” He gestured toward the coffee table, the white boxes of petrified rice and jellified lo mein noodles.
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I thought you’d be out for the night. On Tuesdays, you usually…Hey. Sorry.”
“Okay, Scott, but even if I hadn’t come home, did we have the talk about vermin? I really don’t want mice in the here and now.”
His mouth working away, Scott nodded. “Gotcha,” he said, allowing half of a masticated fry to escape. T.B. was there to retrieve it.
“So,” said Walter, determined not to be the big bad uncle, “are you having fun with…Sonya?”
“Yeah. She’s cool.” Scott stopped chewing and smiled slyly at Walter. “You know, she knows you, like, can’t stand her. She says it’s okay. Older men are threatened by her looks. They don’t like her till they get to know her.”
Walter snorted. “Threatened by her looks?”
“Guys associate her look with death. It’s like an unconscious, archetypal thing. The dark-haired, light-skinned lady. It gives ’em the creeps, but it’s totally irrational. They’re, like, kowtowing to the purely symbolic.”
“Ooh, that sounds dangerous,” said Walter.
“I know it sounds bogus, and I sort of agree? But I also get what she means. The succubus, the siren. She plays with it, kind of like a controlled experiment of the self. It’s even got me doing a little mythological research. I might write a song about it. But, hey, is it true you can’t stand her?”
“Look, I’m going to have to plead the Fifth on this one. And you’d better plead your way into the shower. Hugo’s expecting you in fifteen minutes.”
Scott stuffed the last fistful of fries in his mouth and bolted for his room, leaving Walter, once again, to pick up all the food containers. Was this a battle worth fighting? Walter calmed and amused himself by composing a letter to Dear Abby. He could sign it Parent in loco. “Word!” said Walter to no one, since even T.B. had deserted him for the younger, cuter model.
WALTER INVITED THIRTY-NINE GUESTS for the first Friday in March. At first, he could not decide whether to seat them all together—in one great quadrangle, Knights of Columbus style—or spread them around the room in clusters of four and eight. He decided on the latter, in part because he’d also decided that if Gordie wasn’t a party to the party, why not let Scott invite a few pals? But just to be safe, he’d let the punksters entertain themselves. There were limits, thought Walter, to the power of assimilation.
Hugo planned a five-course meal: smoked duck, oyster stew, roast beef with mashed yams, a salad of apples with beets and blue cheese, then chocolate banana cream pie. Rich, rich, and richer still. Ben made pitchers of martinis and set aside thirty-five bottles of a tried-and-true Napa cabernet, pure purple velvet, and an Oregonian pinot gris, grassy and effervescent.
Of course, it would have to snow.
All morning, the sky had been a sturdy, ominous gray. Toward noon the first flakes fell, their descent a sly, flirtatious meandering. But Walter knew the ruse. He walked out the front door and shook his fist. “Gods!” he shouted at the sky. “Do you never, never have mercy?”
“Mercy from heaven? Why, what a daft notion,” Walter heard in reply.
Bonny Prince Charlie, just down the sidewalk in front of his shop, was also regarding the sky. “You’re not worried about tonight.”
“Oh people are sissies,” said Walter. “Or, I should say, a lot of my dear friends are sissies. They don’t like to ruin their shoes. Or they’re certain they’ll be stranded, the subways and taxis all paralyzed in apocalyptic drifts of snow.”
“I’ll be there. You’ll have me, at the very least.”
Walter, in a moment of neighborly beatitude, had invited Bonny. He had also invited Greenie’s husband and the puppy woman, who appeared to be friendly with both of those men. Walter had caught sight of her more than once through the window of the bookshop, and he had chatted with her twice when she was walking Greenie’s husband’s dog (for whom T.B. had the futile hots).
By six, the tables were set, the stew was ready, and Walter had managed to run home, shower, and change. On the way back to the restaurant, in the chilly, windy dark, he marveled at an hour’s transformation. The cars along Bank Street had been engulfed by two tenderly undulating dunes, sparkling like quartz, spilling over to fill the sidewalks. Falling as fiercely as ever, the snow made a faint hissing sound as it replenished the drifts. Overhead, the larger boughs creaked like antique doors.
Quite thoughtfully, McLeod had shoveled the sidewalk from his shop to Walter’s Place, but the rest of the way was impassable. Walter and T.B. walked straight down the middle of the street. Though it had yet to be plowed, tires had pressed the snow into a stippled, corrugated track, still a clean and brilliant white. Ahead of them, the wind would knock loose great chunks of snow from the branches above, spilling them onto the road with explosive glee.
Four of Walter’s least rugged friends had called before three, from Hoboken, to say that they feared the PATH train would close. Now Ben told him that seven more had canceled. Walter put away place settings, rearranged name cards, and pushed the empty tables against a wall. He lit candles and stoked the fires that Ben had laid.
Alan Glazier was the first to arrive, bearing a bottle of wine. (Walter refrained from joking about the infamous coals.) Right behind him, thank heaven, came several of Walter’s old acting buddies. Two still acted, one a relentlessly successful villain leapfrogging from one soap to the next; the others had taken their talent to advertising and public relations. Out of a much larger original clique, they were the only ones left standing, not just alive but healthy. He hugged them one by one and called Ben over with his tall glass pitcher. “Mulled cider ought to have been the cocktail tonight,” joked Walter. “Eskimo pies for dessert. Maybe we should all go out later and have an igloo-building contest.”
There was a commotion of stamping at the door. Walter let the men hang their own coats. When he stopped to listen to the music, he realized that Ben had put on an Ella Fitzgerald Christmas CD. “Very, very funny!” he called across the room. “Get out the mistletoe, why don’t you!” He laid an extra mat before the door, and when he stood up, right there, holding a large potted plant wrapped in green tissue, stood Bonny.
“A man of his word,” said Walter. “What’s this?” As he pulled off the tissue paper, he thanked McLeod for shoveling the walk. “Is this heather? I’m sorry to laugh, but heather?”
“I like to live up to the cultural stereotypes,” said McLeod. “White heather’s for luck, my mum always told us.”
“Thank you,” said Walter. “Luck is something you can never have too much of. Kind of like mashed potatoes.”
“Luck is like a good dog,” replied McLeod, thickening his accent so that good would have rhymed with shrewd. “Na take it for granted when it’s by your
side. Then long and loyal may it bide…. Again, my mum. I think she invented that one.”
“Well, amen. Bet I’d like your mum.” Walter carried McLeod’s plant to the longest table and centered it there, replacing a glass globe filled with white tulips. As he went to dispose of the tissue paper, he realized that snow had dampened the paper and its color had bled onto his hands and linen shirt. They were splotched with forest green.
He closed his eyes and willed himself to enjoy the evening thoroughly, come what may. When he opened them, he saw the heather. It was lovely. He looked around: everything, everyone looked lovely.
For the next half hour, Walter hugged and kissed, hung the women’s coats, passed a tray of cheese puffs and cherry tomatoes stuffed with crab. He had no time for a drink, and he forgot about his ruined shirt and the dozen friends he’d lost to the storm. The sadness he’d felt about Gordie’s absence seemed to have fallen away, as if by special dispensation. Just after Hugo gave him a nod from the kitchen door, he went to the window and peered out. The street, empty of people and traffic, was dazzling. The snow continued to fall, and where it clung to the branches of the wide sycamores, the slender gingko and pear trees, it etched a vivid urban forest. “Oh my stars,” Walter whispered. His breath clouded the window, then vanished. He felt the urge to breathe again and draw on the pane a transient design or, boyishly, his own initials. He turned around and called out, “Dinner, my friends, is about to be served!” Such glorious words. There was a smattering of applause, and people jostled one another at the tables, eagerly seeking their place cards.
Impulsively, Walter instructed Ben to help him push the tables together into one large clump and told everyone to sit wherever they pleased.
ONE DAY IN HIGH SCHOOL, when the snow had fallen so mercilessly that afternoon classes were canceled, Walter had come home to find Granna talking to her husband. She was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and the framed picture that Walter had never seen anywhere other than on her bedroom dresser. Granna kept the ornate silver frame so rigorously polished that you could catch fragments of your reflection in its minutest leaf or blossom.