by Mary Gordon
—
Marian is going to surprise Johnny. On the train, she thinks of the pleased look, the delighted look that will come over him when he sees her in the apartment; he has given her keys, she’ll let herself in to heighten the surprise. The day, she thinks, is as crisp as a just-ironed cloth. The gold clocks at Grand Central please her especially, striking just the right note of formality. She is a little too warm in her new outfit, but she enjoys the heat that makes its way through the stiff felt of her new hat.
She’ll walk to the Village. Johnny isn’t expecting her, and why waste a perfect day?
—
As she walks up the stairs, she hears Billie Holiday’s voice, and she’s sure it’s coming from Johnny’s apartment. “You’d be so easy to love.” She starts singing along as she puts the key in the door, expecting to see his delighted face. But, instead, she sees him dancing, dancing with a man, his friend Russell.
At first, the oddness of what she sees makes her want to laugh. They must be rehearsing for some kind of skit. But then she sees: they aren’t trying out steps for a comic performance. They’re dancing as a man and a woman might; they’re dancing as lovers.
Homosexuality. It’s something she’s heard of vaguely but never given much thought to. Girls had crushes on other girls; girls had crushes on nuns. And, of course, she has heard of Oscar Wilde; one of the English nuns told them that she prayed for him every day, or prayed to him, because she was sure he was in heaven.
As she stands in the doorway of her brother’s apartment, ugly words defile her mind: deviant, or, more kindly, invert. And then fag, fruit, fairy, queer. And then no more words. Johnny faces her, horrified. She can’t bear it; she turns and runs down the stairs, and he follows her, shouting, “Sweetheart, wait.”
She allows her spine to collapse. She allows herself to fall against him and to put her head on his shoulder and to weep there, as she always has, because he is the one who allows her to weep. Tears are forbidden in the Taylor family. Her father said to her once when she was crying—she couldn’t have been more than six—“Never let me see you crying, and never let me hear you cry out because of pain; even when you’re giving birth, you must not cry out in pain. The noble thing is to keep silent.” Only their aunt Dotie, who keeps to her room and drinks herself into a sweet stupor to forget the loss of her young husband killed in the First World War, only she allows tears. “Tears are sacred,” she says. But Johnny and Marian cannot allow themselves more than to half believe her.
Of course she will follow him upstairs. Of course they will talk. Of course she will try to understand. Because he is the only one in the world she really loves, the only one who allows her to believe that she is capable of love. Because of him, when she thinks herself coldhearted or unnatural, she can say, “I have a brother whom I love.” She has been able to say this since her earliest memory.
They are the two youngest of a family of nine. The accidents. The afterthoughts. Half orphans, raised by servants. One night, when they were both drunk, they admitted it to each other: “We were lucky to be brought up by servants instead of our parents.”
So how could she run away from him, run out of the door of his building onto Patchen Place? Run to what? An abyss? A terrifying place of utter aloneness. No, of course she will be with him. They walk up the stairs, leaning on each other, weeping, as they were forbidden to do.
Russell is standing by the window, playing with the cord of the Venetian blind.
“Perhaps you should have called ahead,” he says.
She knows he’s trying to make things normal, trying to make a joke of it, turn it into a small, social embarrassment.
“Russ,” Johnny says. “She would never have had to call ahead. It’s who we are.”
“Well, she knows who you are now.”
“I wanted to tell you, but not while you were at Noroton. I thought, Well, when she’s at Vassar, that will be time enough.”
Johnny sits on the couch, his long, beautiful hands dangling between his open knees. Russell sits beside him, and then Johnny holds his head in his hands.
She knows that gesture: he feels helpless, he can’t think of anything that will be of the slightest use.
She has known since she was seven that she is, of the two of them, the stronger.
Russell hands them all drinks, but Johnny puts his down untasted on the coffee table. He grabs his sister’s hands. “I just don’t know what to say, I just don’t know what to say. Will you forgive me?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Johnny,” Russell says. “You don’t need to ask forgiveness for being who you are.”
“You’re the one who needs to ask forgiveness, Russell,” she says. “These are by far the worst highballs I’ve ever tasted.”
The three of them laugh more than Marian’s words warrant. They know their laughter is forced and excessive. And that no more needs to be said.
“All right, then, I’ll take you to the Plaza,” Russell says, “since I’m the only one gainfully employed. Grab your hats. Only, you, don’t brag about stealing from the rich and giving to the poor.”
“Don’t you like my feather?” she asks, girlishly twirling around.
“Mad about it. Seriously, those colors are great on you. Good style.”
“My roommate Gwen designed it. Johnny, whatever you do on your own time, for God’s sake, take one of my friends to at least one dance. Or they’ll think I made you up.”
“What about me?” Russell asks.
“Oh, Russell, you’re much too old.”
—
Because they never talk about it, she has to understand things on her own. She has little enough sense of what men and women do in bed to try to modify it to make a picture of what two men might do. She’s sorry that Johnny won’t have children, but then, if he’d become a priest, he wouldn’t have had children, and everyone would be thrilled.
They love each other, she tells herself, not even knowing fully what that means, as Johnny is the only person she has ever loved.
“You’re going to have to be discreet, old thing,” Russell says. “No late-night confabs while you’re making fudge. We could end up in jail, you know.”
“Russell, there’s no way you can have grown up Catholic and not know how to keep secrets, not know who to tell what, not know how to lie,” Marian says.
“And they say Jews are the ones with the brains,” he says.
Back in the dorm, she talks about drinks at the Plaza with Johnny and his handsome friend, the doctor who wrote her notes that got her out of school on weekends. She hints of a growing mutual attraction between them. She says Johnny will come for a visit soon, maybe for the next dance.
The thought of Johnny in jail terrifies her. The thought of her family finding out terrifies her most of all.
And two weeks later, it almost happens.
There is a knock at the door, and Marian, answering in her pajamas, is horrified to see her brother Vincent there. Johnny and Russell are in their bedroom; she sleeps on the Murphy bed.
“Fancy seeing you here,” she says, stalling for time, hoping he doesn’t see her hand shaking.
“Aren’t you going to invite me in, little sis?”
“It’s not my place.”
“Where’s our brother?”
“Sleeping.”
The bedroom door opens. Johnny and Russell, wearing only pajama bottoms, stand in the doorway.
Vincent pushes his way past her. She sees the joy, the energy in his shoulders, in the fabric, grown electrified, of his perfectly cut jacket, russet tweed. The color, she thinks, of dried blood.
He is hardly inside the door before he hisses his insulting words. “Sodomites. Filthy sodomites. You are an abomination before the face of God.”
She notices that the words he uses are archaic, as if the lack of modernity were an inoculation, placing him apart, protecting him from the poison he is about to approach.
Johnny does the worst possible thing. He cries.
But Marian’s body produces not tears but an icy coldness. The fighting animal’s cunning.
“You’re the pervert, Vincent,” she says. “You’re the one with the disturbed mind. Can’t you see the situation? I’m spending the weekend here. What the hell did you expect them to do? Usually Russell sleeps in the Murphy bed. But what would you have, Vincent? Did you want me to sleep in the bed with my brother? Or with some perfectly strange man?”
He is the trapped animal now. She sees his skeleton gradually sink with defeat. But then the family eyes meet, the bright blue only Johnny has failed to inherit. She employs the family smirk. She lights a cigarette.
“I didn’t know you smoked. What would the sisters say?”
She doesn’t, in fact, smoke, and she doesn’t put the cigarette to her lips, only holds it, the only weapon she can think of, twirling it in the air, hoping it looks dangerous.
“You’ve lost track, Vin. I’m not with the nuns anymore. I’m at Vassar. But what would your friends, the stylish Jesuits, think of your style if they knew you came banging in here like some Prohibition cop because of your fantasy of, what is it they call it, a fevered brain?”
Her heart is beating fast, but her hands have, thank God, stopped trembling.
“Don’t you think it’s time you were on your way, Vinnie?” she says, knowing he hates the nickname. “Or is it Vince?”
He doesn’t bother to reply. He leaves the apartment, slamming the door as if he were erasing some sort of record.
Johnny is weeping, but Russell is on his feet. He takes her in his arms and lifts her in the air. “You’ve got the balls of a brass monkey, kiddo,” he says, and makes coffee, which he serves black with a shot of whiskey. She doesn’t like the taste but appreciates the gesture.
She sits on the couch and takes Johnny in her arms. “He’s a bully, but, like all bullies, he has a stupid streak.”
“Vincent isn’t stupid. I’ll never be safe from him.”
“You’re safe with me, honey,” she says. And Russell says, “Johnny, you’ve got the two of us on your side. I would say you’re as safe as houses.”
“Houses only seem safe,” he says. “Houses can be blown up. Burned down.”
“You’re being maudlin,” Russell says. “Let’s go to the movies.”
Marian can’t pay attention to the movie because she’s too frightened; she knows Johnny is right. Vincent isn’t stupid, their father isn’t stupid, and they have resources that she and Johnny, doubting their ultimate value, will never have. And she knows that those resources can be called on at any time and used against whomever they wish.
—
For a while, they try to believe that Vincent will leave them alone, that Marian has shamed him. She comes down from Poughkeepsie every weekend in November. Russell takes her shopping; they go to jazz clubs, they hear Ella Fitzgerald. On Sunday nights, they see her off on the train with flowers, and the girls in the dorm are suspicious, a bit envious, of her veiled comments about the doctor whose specialty is infectious diseases.
The Taylors will be away for Thanksgiving, which they never celebrate, considering it a Protestant holiday. Instead, the Feast of St. Nicholas, on December 6th, is celebrated, a special Mass is said, and whichever priest is currently in her father’s favor sits at the head of the table. Her father always carves a goose, not a turkey—infinitely superior, her father insists, although Marian finds it too greasy for her taste.
Russell and Marian and Johnny make a turkey for their own small Thanksgiving. “Only you two would consider a Thanksgiving turkey a rebellion,” Russell says.
They drink glass after glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, and Johnny makes up a song, the chorus of which goes, “Screw the goose, we love the turkey.”
The next weekend she stays in the dormitory, worrying that she’s neglected her work. Late Saturday night, Gwen answers the phone and says it’s Russell. The doctor they assume to be Marian’s beau. “He sounds alarmed,” Gwen says.
“Oh, Russell sounds alarmed if there’s bad weather in Boise,” Marian says.
“They’ve got him,” Russell says, and the alarm is genuine. “Johnny’s in jail. Your brother or your father, I don’t know who, hired a private detective who trailed him to a bar we go to. The bar was raided tonight. I was supposed to be there, but I had to stay in the hospital because one of my patients took a sudden downturn, or I’d be with him. Jesus, Marian, Johnny’s in jail. He’ll fall apart.”
“Where are you, Russell?”
“I’m home. I’m trying to get hold of a lawyer.”
“There’s no way I can get to New York tonight. The last train’s already gone.”
“I’ll drive up and get you.”
“You don’t have a car.”
“I’ll borrow one. I’ll get there somehow.”
He arrives three hours later. She tells the dorm mother there’s a family emergency, which no one questions: Russell shows his medical credentials. They drive through the December fog straight to the police station. They are told that Johnny is no longer there; he has been released into his father’s custody.
“My father’s in Cuba,” Marian says.
“Afraid not, doll,” the desk sergeant says. “He came right down here from Park Avenue as soon as he got the call.”
“What call?”
“Not my department, sweetheart. Your brother was pretty shook up. Your father and your brother practically had to carry him out of here. I guess he’s not the manly type.”
“And I guess you’re not the human type,” Marian says. “I only hope that when someone you love is in trouble, you’ll be treated just as you’ve treated me.”
“Well, I see who wears the pants in your family,” he says.
Russell takes her forcefully by the arm and whispers in her ear, “It won’t do any good to sock him.”
“It would do me immense good.”
“You have to keep cool for Johnny. You have to be cool to protect him from your family.”
She shakes herself like a dog getting out of a lake. Russell drops her at the Park Avenue apartment.
“If you need it, you have the key to Patchen Place.”
She nods, but in her mind she is already in the family living room.
Vincent and her father are sitting in the two red brocade armchairs that flank the fireplace.
There is a fire blazing; they are drinking brandies; they are playing chess.
“Where’s Johnny?”
“And hello to you, little sister.”
“Where is he, for God’s sake?”
“I’ve heard he has a lovely view of the river.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Payne Whitney,” says her father. “It’s how I got him out of jail. I told them he had suffered a nervous breakdown, and his presence in that depraved place was a sign of his insanity. They agreed not to press charges because Dr. McNamara kindly arranged to have him admitted tonight.”
“Daddy has consulted the best men in the field, and the consensus is that homosexuality is a form of insanity; the experts believe that shock treatments and some forms of medication are the only hope for a cure.”
She runs in the direction of the door.
“Hold your horses, sweetheart,” Vincent says. “You can’t see him tonight. But don’t worry. He’ll still be there tomorrow.”
“But I won’t stay another minute with the two of you. The two of you are monsters. I wouldn’t want to breathe the air the two of you have contaminated with your hatefulness.”
Her father trains on her his famous baleful stare. “Have three months in a secular institution made you forget everything you stand for, everything we taught you to believe, everything most sacred to the Church and decent society?”
“If that’s who you are, yes, and I thank God for it. Although, if it’s your God, I won’t even invoke his name.”
She knows that she will never be the daughter of the house again. How is it possible, she
wonders, that I feel nothing for these two but hatred? Flesh of my flesh. Bone of my bone. There were times she loved her father, admired him, enjoyed him. But for Vincent, she had never felt anything but fear and, later, fear mixed with contempt, most lately contempt only. What are we as a family, she wonders, that they can contemplate with perfect ease, sitting around the fire with their brandies and their chessboards, the ruination of a son and brother, the exile of a daughter and sister. Sure that it is done in the name of God. Because they know the truth. It is their truth, their property, their patrimony. It allows them anything; they can do anything in its name.
—
I do not love my father.
My brother is a monster.
Who am I?
I am the one who saves the brother whom I love. I am the youngest, the strongest. I will not allow them to prevail.
—
She takes a cab to Patchen Place.
“They’ve committed him,” she says, not taking off her coat. “He’s in Payne Whitney.”
“Jesus Christ. Your father must have set the whole thing up. Arranged the raid, then used his connections to make a deal. So Johnny can be turned into a zombie, so he can’t be called a queer.”
“They’ll say they’ve done it so he won’t lose his soul. Oh, I know just what they’ll say. ‘Better a man lose his life than his immortal soul.’ ”
Because Russell is a doctor and has friends at Payne Whitney, they are allowed to see Johnny the next morning.
In ten hours, Johnny has become someone she can’t recognize. The beautiful grey eyes that always seemed to her like pebbles seen through the water of a clear stream are blank now. He can hardly focus. His smile is defeated. The overwashed pajamas he is wearing are too loose; they hang off his slight frame. His slippers are paper. He keeps falling asleep.
Russell speaks to the doctor in charge of the case and comes back to the room where Marian and Johnny sit holding hands. Marian doesn’t let go of her brother’s hand, even when he falls asleep. She’s never seen Russell look so angry. He indicates that Marian should walk down the hall with him.