The Lost Language of Cranes: A Novel

by David Leavitt

  The cab turned up Broadway, where neon-lit signs still blazed above closed stores, and a few men huddled under awnings. A huge streetcleaning machine was crawling along the other side of the avenue like a strange nocturnal animal, blackening the pavement with water. The cab turned again, then came to a stop outside his building. "Thanks," he said, paying the driver, who roared back downtown without a word. Now he was alone. Only a few lights glowed, dim and yellow, in the windows of the tenements, the only sound the distant humming of the streetcleaner, blocks away.

  He walked slowly up the steps into the squalid little entryway and found Owen there in his trenchcoat, squatting on the ground, his eyes closed. "Dad?" he said.

  Owen jumped up. "Philip," he said, "I must have fallen asleep." He smiled. His eyes were red, swollen. A tiny track of dried blood ran from a crack in his lower lip down his chin.

  "Thanks for coming, son," Owen said.

  "Let's go inside," Philip said, and fished for his keys. "You must be cold."

  Again Owen smiled. They went in, climbed the yellow flights of stairs to Philip's apartment. He hadn't cleaned the place up in a while, and a fusty odor of dirty clothes hung in the air. "Let me open some windows, air the place out," Philip said.

  But Owen said, "Don't do anything on my account." He took off his coat, hung it up on a hook in the kitchen. "Take anything you want from the refrigerator," Philip said as he pulled sheets off the bed to re-make it.

  "Oh, don't do that. I fully intend to sleep on the floor."

  "Dad—"

  "No," Owen said. "I insist." He walked to the refrigerator, opened it, and took out a cardboard carton of orange juice. "Check the date," Philip cautioned. "It could be bad."

  Owen opened the carton and smelled it. "I'm afraid so." He laughed. Then he pulled off his jacket and tie and sat down on Philip's sofa to remove his shoes. Then he pulled off his socks, and Philip saw his father's pale ankles, lined with thick red grooves that mirrored the pattern of the socks. They were blue socks; a few inky spots of sweat stained Owen's toes. "I should have thought to bring a change of clothes," he said. "But I'll just go back and change after I know Rose has left for work."

  "That seems like a good idea," Philip said. He took a pair of pajamas from a drawer and carried them modestly into the bathroom to change. When he came out, he saw his father leaning over himself, with his head close to the ground, staring at the floor.

  "Dad," he said.

  Owen didn't answer.

  "Are you feeling bad?"

  Owen lifted his head, gave a weak smile. "I don't know, son," he said. "I guess I'm just confused. This is the first time in years I've spent a night anywhere besides with your mother, at home. Sometimes—I just don't know myself anymore."

  Philip looked at the ground. "I'm sorry the orange juice is bad," he said. "But I have some very good apple-apricot juice. You'll like it."

  "Thanks, son, no."

  "Okay." Philip turned to look out the window. "So—do you want to tell me what happened?"

  Owen didn't move. He sat on the old sofa, breathing audibly. "I'm not sure," he said quietly, "how much you've figured out this last week about me."

  "What do you mean?"

  He was quiet. "I'm a homosexual," he said. "I'm a homosexual, too."

  Philip stared at the neat rows of garbage cans in the alley, listened to the hiss of the radiator.

  "Does that news surprise you, son?"

  "No, not really," Philip said. His eyes began suddenly to tear. "It's just I—I guess I never let myself see it before."

  "We said the same thing to you, remember, your mother and I?"

  "Yes." He was shivering violently, but he could not bring himself to move from the window. He wrapped his arms around his waist, ground his teeth to keep them from chattering, tried to will himself into stillness.

  "Did you tell Mom tonight? Is that what happened?" he managed to ask.

  Owen shrugged. "More or less. She's had it pretty much figured out since the night you came home to tell us about yourself. So it was just a matter of talking about it."

  "And how does she feel?"

  "Confused," Owen said. "And angry." His voice grew soft. "She said she thought I made a fool of myself with Winston tonight, that I embarrassed her. Did you think that?"

  "Dad," Philip said, "I hope you don't think because I told Mom what you'd said about Winston—that—"

  Owen shook his head. "Don't worry. She knew already." He looked away. "I really hope I didn't give myself away like that. If so—I don't know how I'll ever be able to face—how I'll ever—"

  "Winston wasn't embarrassed at all. He told me in the car on the way home that he had a wonderful time tonight."

  "He did?"

  "Yes. He likes you a lot, Dad; he thinks you're great. So don't worry."

  Owen smiled in spite of himself. "Well, that's a bit of a relief," he said. "But Rose." He sighed. "I don't know what's going to happen, Philip—if we'll stay together, if we'll separate. One minute she's so angry, the next so—sad, so weak."

  Philip hugged himself tighter. He counted the garbage cans out the window, counted the windows of the tenement across the alley.

  "You're probably wondering," Owen said, "how long I've known. And the answer is, like you, all my life. But when I was growing up, things were different, Philip. Oh, some people managed, I suppose, even though it meant sacrificing your family, your career—everything. It was a disease, you see. So I married your mother and hoped it would go away. I really did hope that. Those first few years I tried so hard. But the problem was sex. I—I couldn't have an orgasm without fantasizing about men, and I had to have an orgasm, or else your mother, she would have—do you mind me telling you all this?"

  Philip shook his head, kept counting.

  "And then," Owen said, "we moved to New York." He paused, took a breath. "Suddenly there was this huge homosexual world, open and enticing. Or maybe it had always been there, and I was finally ready to start looking for it." He gave a long, low sigh of pain. "I've never talked about this, do you realize that? Fifty-two years old. This is the first time in my life I've admitted it that's not over the phone. My God. My God."

  He was silent. Philip closed his eyes and prayed he wouldn't cry, that his father wouldn't cry. He braced himself against the window, knowing he must keep control, knowing he must not stop his father no matter how much he wanted to. What had started had become inevitable; it was as if Owen were giving birth to something with his words, something that was determined to fight its way out of him.

  Owen began to talk then, and it was as if he couldn't stop. "I started going to the Bijou and other porn theatres when I was thirty," he said. "Boy, was I scared the first time I went—but also excited. Because what those men were doing on that screen—that was what I wanted to do, what I'd always wanted to do. And they did it so naturally, so willingly. They weren't shy or scared. They weren't worrying about whether it was wrong. It's strange, but those porn films were kind of healing for me. Everyone thinks pornography is alienating, and I guess it is, but for a man who's as scared as I was—well, it was telling me what I felt wasn't so wrong, and that I wasn't alone in feeling it. They were saying, Don't push it out of your mind. Revel in it. Celebrate it." He smiled. "The way those men made love," he said, "there was rebellion in their eyes. That meant something to me, Philip, it really did. So I got braver. I started to meet men at the Bijou, have sex with them. Not much at first. But then, over time, more and more until I'd done everything—or at least, everything you could do in a public place. And all without a word, without an exchange of names, isn't that incredible? Not once. Afterwards I'd feel so guilty I'd just run out of there and swear I'd never go back. I'd go every Sunday and every Sunday I'd come back and see Rose and just want to kill myself, I felt so bad for what I was doing to her. All week I'd swear I wouldn't go back. But then Sunday would roll around again, and I just couldn't control it. Do you see?" he asked. "I really couldn't control it. That was
why I was so curious when you told me you'd gone to the Bijou. I thought, What if we were there at the same time? If I'd ever run into you there, Philip—well, I don't know what I would have done. I just assumed from the beginning that you would hate me, renounce me as your father if you ever found out. Maybe that's why I was so distant, as a father, all those years. Maybe I was thinking, If he doesn't really know me that well, it won't be so much of a blow when he learns the truth." He laughed bitterly. "It was horrible, really, what I was feeling, the sense I had that I was running a terrible risk every minute of my life—risking my family, my career—but not being able to help it; somehow just not being able to help it. I was thinking every day how I had to change my life, how I couldn't go on this way; but I knew the more I thought that, the farther I was getting from where I thought I should have been. It was as if I was fighting the wrong thing, fighting my life with Rose when I should have been fighting the homosexual stuff. But it was out of my hands by then. The more I thought about the possibility of loving a man, the more I couldn't go back to my life with Rose, and yet I couldn't bear the Bijou anymore, just couldn't bear it. And then you came home, with your news." He smiled. "I was so shocked," he said. "I'd never imagined you might be gay, I guess because I was so caught up in thinking how I'd tell my straight son the truth about me. Everything you said terrified me, but it also inspired me, I guess, gave me incentive. That night, I realized I couldn't go back to the way things were. Good or bad, I was too far gone. And after that—well, it was just a matter of time before Rose saw it. I'd let my guard down. I guess subconsciously I must have wanted her to find out, because I stopped covering my tracks. It was so easy, not having to cover my tracks. So blissfully easy."

  He was silent. "I'm sorry I'm talking so much," he said. "I know it's very late. You probably have to go to bed. I won't talk anymore."

  "Dad, don't be silly," Philip said. He looked at the clock and saw it was already close to three. Sleep was no longer a possibility anyway.

  Carefully he turned to face his father. "Are there things I can do?" he asked. "Are there ways I can help you?"

  Owen shrugged. "I met a man the other night," he said. "I think I may see him again. Also married, younger than me, but not much. I like him very much."

  "That's good," Philip said. And again, for emphasis: "That's good. But what about Mom?"

  Owen sighed. "I don't know," he said. "I just don't know."

  "I'm sure everything will be fine," Philip said. He turned from the window and walked over to the closet, knowing his father was trying to catch him with a stare. He gathered blankets and sheets and began to make Owen's bed on the floor. "I'm afraid it won't be too comfortable for you," he said. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather have the bed, and I'll sleep on the floor?"

  "It doesn't matter much," Owen said. He stood and walked to the window. "Jesus," he said. "I can't believe this is happening. I can't believe this is really happening to me."

  "Dad," Philip said, "you're doing the right thing, talking about it. Don't ever doubt that."

  "I know," Owen said. He laughed. "It's funny, I'm shaking all over, just like on my wedding day. I feel so strange, so alone and cut off, like I've done something irreversible, and things will never be the same again and nothing will ever feel normal again, feel good again—" And again he was on the verge of tears.

  "It feels that way tonight," Philip said. "But tomorrow will be different." He wished mightily he could summon the courage to embrace his father and knew he could not. "You will feel good again. I promise. Give it time." And Owen nodded.

  He had laid the blankets and sheets on the floor. "Are you ready to go to sleep?" he asked, and Owen turned, wiped his eyes. "Thank you," he said, looking at the makeshift bed Philip had created. "That looks very comfortable." Absently he began to unbutton his shirt, and Philip turned away, turned out the light. But the apartment was bright with moonlight, and in the shadows he could still see his father's heaving chest, his small brown nipples with their rings of gray hair. He looked for a few seconds, then averted his eyes. Owen undid his belt, unzipped his pants. With a crash of keys they fell to the ground and he stepped out of them. He looked forlorn in his big white boxer shorts, lost. Carefully he picked his way across the floor, lay down on the nest of blankets, gathered himself into a ball. The sheet did not stretch far enough to cover his feet. He shook visibly, screwing up his eyes as he tried to will himself into whatever sleep this night might offer him.

  Philip stepped past him into the kitchen. He brushed his teeth, watching the brush move back and forth in the mirror. Then he rinsed his mouth and stood in the entry to the kitchen before his father's prone body. He would lie awake for a long time, he knew, looking at Owen's white ankles in the bright moonlight.