The Before Now and After Then

by Pen Name Publishing

  “But he and Jess were in an exclusive relationship within two days of meeting.” I stated it as a fact, not a question.

  “That can’t be true,” Mom said as she spooned some of the rich chicken dish onto her plate.

  “Mom, listen to me,” she looked up from her plate and stared across the table at me. “Can we please have this conversation and then eat. I want to get it over with so I can enjoy time with my mom.”

  She smiled and crossed her arms, “Go ahead.”

  “Sam and Jess met at a party and hooked up. Two days later he told me he was in love with her. She came over to our house every day for the next year. No one said anything about it. You and Dad just acted like she was part of the family.”

  “She was part of the family. And I’m happy Sam was able to experience that in his short life,” she replied as tears welled up in her eyes.

  “Well, what if I was gone next week? Would you want the same for me?” I asked.

  “That is not fair, Danny! How could you even ask me that?” Mom looked around her, realizing she had raised her voice. “I’m just concerned that you’re rushing everything. You just came out and now you’re in love.”

  “Just because I recently came out to you doesn’t mean that I just realized I was gay. Did you think I just woke up one day and realized it? It doesn’t work that way. Maybe you’re the one who needs to be talking to Uncle Alex.”

  “Maybe,” she laughed.

  “I just don’t understand why it has to be different because I’m gay. I don’t want it to be different. I just want you and Dad to treat me the same way you would have treated Sam.”

  “But you’re not Sam,” she said, and something in her voice sounded like fear.

  I sat back and looked at her.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…”

  “No, you’re right. I’m not Sam. And I never will be.” I took a sip of water. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to be the twin who’s left behind? Don’t you think I go over that day in my head over and over again, wishing he had just stayed and never left to go to the park? Did you know that it was his idea? All of it. The whole scheme was his idea and I just went along with it because I trusted Sam so much with everything. All of my life I followed his lead because everything he planned turned out perfect. But this time it didn’t. I wish like hell I could go back to that day and tell him no, but I went along with it and I can’t take it back.” I realized I was crying and tears streamed down my cheeks. “And I’m tired of people watching over me and being worried about me because Sam is gone. If you learned anything, you should have learned that life is short. Let me be happy. I just want to be me and even though I don’t know who that is, no one will let me figure it out!” I stood up and stormed out of the restaurant.

  Mom ran after me into the parking lot. “I didn’t know, Danny. I never knew it was like that for you.”

  “How could you not?” I cried. “I’ve never had any friends of my own. I’ve never had anything of my own. And now that I have Rusty, you want to take him away.”

  “No I don’t. That’s not true at all.”

  “Then why is it such a big deal to you if I fall in love in a day or a week or a year? Why does time matter so much to you?”

  Mom stopped and covered her mouth. Now she was sobbing. She walked over to me slowly and hugged me hard. “Because I know now how important time is. Once you start taking time for granted, it’s stolen from you. You think you have all of the time in the world and then it’s all gone.”

  We stayed like that for a long time, hugging in the parking lot. Finally, Mom stood back and wiped away the tears from under her eyes. “But I’d rather you live a short life and be happy then live forever and be miserable.”

  “I am happy, Mom. And Rusty makes me happy,” I cried.

  “Then Rusty makes me happy too,” she said.

  “Don’t just say that because you think that’s the cool parent thing to say it.”

  “I’m saying it because it’s true.”

  She kissed my cheek and walked inside to pay the bill. While she was gone, I thought about what she had said about the importance of time and I wondered if it really mattered that much. No one knew when they would die. No one knew how much time they had left on Earth. And even though I had heard people say to live each day as if it were your last, I knew that was impossible because how could you be that conscious of each action? And then I realized that maybe time didn’t matter at all. Maybe it was those moments unmeasured by time that mattered most.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was Friday and school was only half over for the day but all I could think about was spending the entire weekend with Rusty. Cher slid in next to me at our lunch table. Her newest costume consisted of a long hippy skirt and a Grateful Dead t-shirt. “Did you guys hear what happened to Pat Jones?”

  Both Rusty and I sat up and shook our heads. The bruise under his eye had turned from a deep maroon to bluish black.

  “He got a week suspension and he has to lead some anti-bullying campaign at the school.” She started to laugh, “He fucked with the wrong person.” Digging into her bag, she pulled out cut-up vegetables, pita bread with hummus and a bottle of water.

  “How did you find out?” Rusty asked, looking worried.

  “Everyone is talking about it. Don’t fuck with Danny and Rusty, that’s what they’re saying. Can you believe it? They’re afraid of you two. I love it!” She bit into a carrot stick.

  Rusty looked distracted and put his piece of pizza back on the tray.

  “What’s with all of this?” I pointed to her food.

  “All of what?” she asked, genuinely surprised by the question.

  “This,” I said, motioning to the food and her outfit. “The clothes and the food. You look like you’ve gone all hippy on us.”

  “Oh that. I just think since I’m going to be a mother, I should channel my inner Mother Earth.”

  Rusty looked at her with a state of bewilderment. “Your what?”

  She looked at me and then back at Rusty. “Didn’t Danny tell you? I’m pregnant.” She rubbed her stomach and smiled. “If it’s a girl I’m going to name her Phoebe after Holden’s sister in The Catcher in the Rye, and if it’s a boy, well my Mom would kill me if I didn’t name him Sonny.”

  Rusty looked over at me and shook his head, laughing. “So what should we do after school today?” he said, rustling my hair. “Stay in or go out?”

  “We should go check on Boo first,” I said.

  “Maybe we could take him to the bark park,” Rusty suggested. I didn’t say anything but just kept staring at him. “Oh shit, Danny. I’m really sorry. I didn’t even think.”

  “Yeah, that was really fucking smooth,” Cher said.

  “No,” I smiled. “Maybe we should take him to the bark park. Do you wanna go too?” I asked Cher.

  She picked up a piece of broccoli, looked at it and let it fall from her fingers. “No. I totally would but I’m supposed to go home and register for yoga classes with my mom. We’re going to get in shape.” She didn’t say anything for a second and then she started to laugh. “My mom will never make it through one yoga class.”

  Cher continued to pick at her food and Rusty and I planned our afternoon, complete with a picnic dinner for the park.

  After school, Rusty was waiting for me by my car looking worried. “I could be wrong, but I would swear I just saw Pat Jones drive by here twice, really slowly.”

  “How could you tell it was him?” I asked.

  “How could I not? He was staring so hard he almost fell out of his red BMW as he drove by. I’m positive it was him.”

  I got into the car and we put the top down. Rusty threw a tape cassette in my lap. “Merry Christmas,” he said.

  “What’s this?”

  “The mixed tape I told you I’d make you.”

  I picked up the tape and looked at it. Written on the top in red pen was “For the Boy with the Cool Hair”.
r />   I laughed, “You’re too good to me.”

  Rusty reached over and kissed me and then grabbed the tape, inserting it into the player. Celia Cruz’s La Negra Tiene Tumbao started thumping through the speakers. Rusty started singing the words. I loved hearing him speak or sing in Spanish and for moment, I just sat and watched him. “Every song I put on the tape is a song that reminds me of you,” he said and pulled me towards him, kissing me and running his fingers through my hair.

  “Can I at least get a ride home?” I turned and saw Cher standing right next to the driver’s side door, smiling at us. “You guys are so fucking cute, and kind of hot too. Now pull up this seat so I can get my pregnant ass in the back.”

  Rusty laughed and pulled back his seat to let her in the cramped backseat.

  We dropped Cher off at home, after listening to Nico’s These Days, The Smiths Asleep and Bob Marley’s One Love. “Maybe tomorrow I’ll dress as a Rastafarian,” Cher said as she danced up her driveway and into her house.

  I pulled out into the street as the song changed to Frank Sinatra’s Fly Me to the Moon and Rusty grabbed my thigh, which had become one of my favorite things he did. John Lenon’s Imagine came on just as we pulled into my driveway. “We can listen to the rest of it on the way to the park,” he said.

  After bundling Boo up in a blanket we brought him down to the car, along with some of his toys and a tennis ball that was much too big for him to get into his mouth. When we pulled out of the driveway, the last few lines of Imagine played from the stereo. Rusty looked over at me, “I can’t believe I get to spend the whole weekend with you.”

  I smiled and reached over and kissed him, almost hitting the mailbox with the car by the distraction. We both laughed and I turned onto the street and headed toward the bark park.

  “Do you want to get Starbucks first?” I asked.

  “Sure. But instead of taking Boo to the bark park, I have a special place where we can go,” he said.

  On the way, I explained to Rusty about the Starbucks hidden menu that Sam had found online years before. When we got there we each decided to order Nutella Frappuccino’s, and we were surprised when the barista didn’t think we were strange for ordering them.

  Rusty told me he was taking me to a secret place.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You’ll find out when we get there.”

  “How do you know all of these places in Indianapolis? You just moved here this summer?”

  “When Mya has to go to the hospital, I have hours of free time while I wait for my mom to call me and tell me if she needs me. She gives me her van and I drive around, get lost and discover places.”

  “Like an adventure.”

  He laughed, “Yeah, like an adventure. I like getting lost and finding my way home.”

  “Is that where you came up with the idea for us to get lost?”

  “Yep.” He looked over at me and smiled. “Except I liked watching you get nervous when you had no idea where we were.”

  “I was not nervous.”

  “OK,” he said, sipping his drink.

  “I wasn’t!”

  “I said OK.”

  After about twenty minutes of following his directions, we pulled onto the campus of Butler University. As a kid, Mom had brought me and Sam to musicals and concerts at their theatre, Clowes Hall.

  “We’re here,” Rusty said, pointing to a parking place. When I stopped, he got out and picked up Boo with one arm, slamming the door behind him.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Follow me.”

  We walked across the campus and melted into the groups of students on the lawn. Most of them were studying, but others were tossing a Frisbee around as the sun began to fall and the last minutes of day started to retreat into dusk. “It kind of feels weird walking around here, like we’re students too.”

  “Maybe we will be,” he said. “Have you thought about where you’re going to go to college next year?”

  It was a simple question that should have had a simple answer, but the reality was that I had always thought I would just follow Sam wherever he went to school. He was a huge Indiana University fan and we had made plans from the time we were young, to go to school and share a dorm room. Since his death, the prospect of picking a school hadn’t even crossed my mind.

  “No. I have no idea. What about you?”

  Rusty scratched his chin with the straw of his drink. “My grades are pretty good and I got decent SAT scores, so I’m not worried about getting into state schools. I just don’t know what state to pick because we’re always moving. I don’t think I should be that far away from my family in case my mom needs me.”

  I followed him down a wooded walkway, past a pond with a water fountain slightly hidden in the woods. Trails filled with wildflowers led off in every direction. We continued, past a mysterious bell tower and into a cul de sac which lead into perfectly manicured gardens, reminiscent of something I had seen in an old English horror movie. Rusty walked out into the middle of the green lawn which was paneled by large gumdrop shrubs. It was quite possibly one of the most magical places I had ever seen.

  “Welcome to Holcomb Gardens,” he said.

  It was beautiful and unlike the rest of the campus, completely deserted. “Why isn’t anyone here?” I asked.

  “Who knows. Maybe I reserved it all just for us.” He turned and started kissing me, Boo moved to escape between us. We laughed and Rusty set Boo on the ground and then sat down on the grass.

  I thought about what Rusty had said about college. “Do you ever get angry at your mom for needing you so much?”

  “No, but sometimes I get pissed at my dad for leaving us because I have to be the man of the family,” he said. “I don’t even think she realizes how much I help her out, but I can’t say anything because it’s not like her life is easy either.”

  I watched him staring at Boo playing in the grass, stumbling around, unsure of his footing. “But don’t you think you deserve a life of your own?”

  He laughed, “Yeah, I definitely do. And I thought when I went away to college I could have that, but now the closer I get to that time, she’s been telling me how nice it would be if I went to a college where credits could transfer easily in case she had to move to the other side of the country.”

  Until that moment, I hadn’t thought about Rusty having to move again. “That won’t happen, though, right?”

  “What?” he asked, confused by my question.

  “You won’t have to move far away?”

  He turned and looked at me very seriously. “I might.” He looked down at his shoes and kicked at the tennis ball. Boo chased after it and tried to get his teeth around it. “Can we please not talk about it though? Let’s just act like that’s not going to happen.”

  I nodded, knowing I didn’t live in a world where you could act like horrible things weren’t going to happen. In my world, horrible things collided into colossal events.

  The afternoon became early evening and lightning bugs lit the air all around us as if they were creating a dance just for our love song. Rusty suggested we play the question game.

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “We go back and forth asking each other questions.”

  “I like just talking and finding out about each other better,” I said, too embarrassed to admit I wasn’t very good at games. I had proven that with Cher’s rendition of Instant History.

  “If it ends up being stupid, we’ll just stop,” he said. I agreed and so he asked the first question. “What are three things I wouldn’t know about you by looking at you?”

  I sat back up and swatted at bugs near my face. “That’s tough.”

  “Just answer the first three things that enter your mind,” he said.

  “Ok. Hmm. I sucked my thumb until I was thirteen.”

  Rusty laughed.

  “What?” I smiled. “You asked.” He motioned for me to go on. “I’m obsessed with notebooks. I bu
y them but I don’t ever write in them.”

  “Why do you buy them then?” he asked, a perplexed look on his face.

  “It’s not your turn yet,” I said, pausing for a moment. “And, I used to have a pet frog named Kermit. We found him on the beach in Michigan and brought him home. We kept him in this area protected by chicken wire in the backyard. One day I went out and he was gone. Dad said he had wanted to live free but I think the dog ate him.”

  “Really?” Rusty asked, laughing.

  “Yeah. Ok. You’re turn.”

  “What’s my question?”

  “Same thing. Tell me three things I wouldn’t know about you by looking at you.”

  “That’s not fair. You have to come up with your own question.”

  “Ok,” I said, thinking to myself. “Tell me four things I wouldn’t know about you by looking at you.”

  “You’re very tricky, Danny Goldstein,” he laughed. “Four things? Ok, the first thing is that when I was younger, I wanted to be a pirate. We don’t really celebrate Halloween in Venezuela, but we do celebrate Carnivale and I always dressed up as a pirate. I lost my pirate hat years ago but I looked really cute in it,” he said, winking at me.

  “Next.”

  “God, stop being so pushy.” He got on his knees, leaning forward to kiss me. His mouth tasted sweet, like the Frappuccino, but also clean and fresh. His lips were incredibly smooth. He fell back onto the grass and put his hands behind his head. “Ok, next. Let’s see. Oh yeah, I will only brush my teeth with a blue toothbrush. I always sleep naked and I’m obsessed with moon cycles.”

  “You always sleep naked?” I asked, curiously.

  “That’s the only thing you heard out of all four?”

  “No, but I already knew about the moon cycles because you’re always telling me about these halo moons which never bring any bad weather even though you say they will,” I laughed. “But the pirate thing is cute.”

  Rusty finished his drink. “What do you want to do this weekend?”

  “Is that my next question?”

  “No, but I’m over that game,” Rusty said, sitting up.

  “I don’t care.”

  “Tomorrow’s our one week anniversary,” he reminded me.