Night Kites

by M. E. Kerr

  I moved around, sat some, stood some, and halfway through the game, she came down to where I was standing.

  She actually had on pants. I don’t think I’d ever seen her in pants. They were blue cargo-pocket pants she wore with a man-tailored jacket several sizes too large for her, a white sweater under it, a white silk scarf around her neck, and the black-leather fedora tipped over her green eyes. She had on high heels. Her blond hair was spilling past her shoulders. She kept pushing it back from her eyes with her long, thin fingers while she spoke to me.

  “How are things with you?” she said.

  “How are things with you?”

  “I asked you first. I get the feeling you’re ignoring me.”

  “Jack’s not playing very well today.”

  “I’m not talking about Jack.”

  “What are you talking about?” I felt cruel. I knew what she was talking about.

  “Are you mad at me, Erick?”

  “Un-uh.”

  “You act like you are.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I never come to these things.”

  “Well, you wanted to see Jack play.”

  “I didn’t come because of Jack…. You act like you’re mad.”

  “I’m Jack’s best friend,” I said. “That’s how I’m trying to act.”

  “But what about how you feel?”

  “You’re Jack’s girlfriend.”

  “Because he says so?”

  “That’s good enough for me,” I said.

  We just stood there. I was thinking that someday I’d find out the name of that perfume.

  Behind us Roman Knight began singing his own version of Billy Squier’s “Eye on You.”

  He was singing it at Nicki: Got my eye on you, tossing her name into the verse.

  “What does he want with you?” I asked her.

  “Ask him.”

  “He always seems to start in when you show up.”

  “He’s probably bored out of his gourd with Jeannie Gaelen…. I’m not talking about Roman Knight now.”

  “What perfume do you wear?”

  “It’s called First.”

  “First at what?”

  “It’s just called First. First in the hearts of your countrymen. First at bat. First in line. I don’t know why it’s called First. See, I didn’t name it…. First in your heart?”

  “Nicki, I’ve got to go.”

  “It’s only halftime.”

  “I’ve got an appointment. I’m already late for this appointment.”

  “Here’s something for you,” she said. She reached into her jacket pocket and handed me a piece of folded paper.

  “What’s that?”

  “You won’t know until you look at it,” she said, “but don’t look at it now.”

  I said I’d see her, and I gave her a little two-fingered salute and started walking. I kept going. I guessed I was going home. I knew that when I got there, the house would be empty. I’d start thinking about Pete again.

  But I went anyway.

  I waited until I was all the way up in the parking lot to unfold the slip of paper Nicki’d passed to me.

  It said: Don’t say you don’t feel it, too, because I won’t believe you.

  Chapter Eleven

  EARLY SATURDAY NIGHT I scraped and coated the kitchen chairs Mom had been after me to paint for so long.

  Then I made a fire, turned on TV, and took the meat loaf Mrs. Tompkins had left for me into the living room with a can of Dr Pepper.

  I watched Richard Gere make love to Debra Winger in An Officer and a Gentleman, thinking Dill’d look a little like Debra Winger if she’d let her hair grow. That movie was one of those I’d just as soon not have watched with Dill. She’d have liked it a lot, but I’d have ended up feeling the way I always did when I saw something like that with her, like some skinny kid still putting Clearasil on his zits and scheming with other nerds how to get it on with a girl.

  Maybe Dill and I knew each other too well, I was thinking, and I was also thinking of Nicki, all through the movie. I’d put the note from her into my strongbox, in the bottom drawer of my desk. There was a letter in there from Pete, too, written to me the spring I’d become thirteen. It was on Princeton stationery. It began, “Welcome to your teens, pal. Prendre la lune avec les dents!”

  I remember when I translated it, I couldn’t figure out what Pete was trying to tell me. Seize the moon with my teeth? Pete had to tell me later that it meant aim at impossibilities.

  While I watched Saturday Night Live, I began reviewing ratio and proportions for the S.A.T.s coming up in a month. I was figuring out how many minutes it would take a train traveling at the rate of 45 miles per hour to cover a distance of 4/5 of a mile, when I heard Mom come through the back door.

  I hollered out, “Don’t sit on the kitchen chairs!”

  “Oh, you did them! What a nice surprise!” She came into the living room in her belted polo coat, complaining about an accident on the Montauk Highway that had stopped traffic. “Your father was going to leave about an hour after I did. He was having dinner near Sloan-Kettering hospital with Phil Kerin, so I don’t know when he’ll get here.”

  The Kinks were guesting on Saturday Night Live, and I noticed her flinch at the sound. I turned it down and helped her out of her coat.

  “Erick, your father has his heart set on us all going to church together tomorrow, so don’t give him a hard time about it, honey. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “How’s Pete?”

  “It isn’t good,” she said. “Your father wants us to wait, and all talk about it together tomorrow.”

  “What about Jim?”

  “What about him?”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “He’s very supportive of Pete, and Pete needs that now.”

  “Do you like him?”

  “I like him.”

  Mom looked tired. She came across to me and mussed up my hair in an affectionate gesture. “Are you okay, dear?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

  “You’re taking this thing better than Dad or me, I think. I don’t mean just Pete’s illness. I mean finding out about Pete so suddenly, and not having time to deal with it before you deal with the illness. It just all came rushing at you.”

  It was the first time we’d really had a chance to talk about it.

  “I don’t have any problem with Pete being homosexual,” I said. “Do you?”

  “Of course I have a problem with it!”

  “Pete didn’t seem to think so.”

  “My problem with it isn’t a priority right now.”

  “Pete said you told him you weren’t surprised.”

  “I wasn’t surprised. I was in total shock when he told me.”

  “What about telling Pete you were glad he wasn’t a loner?”

  “What about it?” Mom said. “Pete was leaving for Europe when he sprang it on me. What was I supposed to say? I didn’t want him to go away feeling he’d pulled the rug out from under me. I didn’t want him worrying all summer about how I’d reacted.”

  “We shouldn’t have a problem with his being gay, Mom.”

  “Shouldn’t we? I think we should. Don’t be too sure you’re not having any problem with it, either. There’s a delayed reaction. There certainly was for me,” Mom said. “But Pete’s too ill for any of that…. Do you know that Jim wants Pete to go to the coast with him?”

  “Are they supposed to be going together or something?”

  “I was going to ask you that very question. I don’t know. I suppose they are. I think Jim’s very taken with Pete. How do I know what Pete feels? Obviously, I never knew.”

  She took something out of her bag and handed it to me. “Jim gave me this. He said we should all read it carefully.”

  It was a pamphlet called “About AIDS.” It was issued by Gay Inquiry.

  “I’m going to leave it up in your room, honey, after I look at it. I don’t want it lying a
round where Mrs. Tompkins can see it. All right?”

  “All right.” I handed it back to her. “You look beat, Mom. Get some rest.”

  “I’m going to,” she said. “Tomorrow, after church, Dad and you and I will have a long talk.”

  I turned up the TV and tried to concentrate on a problem about a motorist on the freeway, covering 0.8 miles in a minute, when I heard Jack come in the back door, calling my name.

  “Hey, you’re early,” I said.

  “I feel like getting smashed!”

  “What happened?”

  “Christ if I know! I could use a drink!”

  “There’s beer out in the refrigerator.”

  Jack sat down beside me. “Everything just fell apart in Sweet Mouth. That was my mistake, taking her there.”

  “What fell apart?”

  “Everything! She can’t take the crowd! I’ve been pushing her into things. Not sex. I’m not talking about sex.”

  “Start from the beginning.”

  “We went to see the movie with Madonna in it. She really liked it. My mistake was taking her to Sweet Mouth after. Before that, my mistake was pushing her into trying out for pom-pom.”

  “Stop talking about your mistakes.”

  “Your mistake. Sweet Mouth was your idea,” Jack said.

  “Don’t blame it on me. What happened?”

  “Everybody was in Sweet Mouth tonight. Roman Knight sat right behind us with Jeannie Gaelen.”

  “And he started making cracks.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “He always does.”

  “I was ready to belt him one, but Nicki said just ignore him. He was going Hel-lo, Nick-ki! That’s all, but it got to her. She started talking about how it was my crowd but it wasn’t her crowd. She said she didn’t have a crowd, and she didn’t want a crowd.”

  “And?”

  “I said it wasn’t my crowd, either. I said I didn’t care about them, either, but she said I was into the whole bit: double-dating, football, dragging her home to meet my folks. She said dragging like I’d forced her there kicking and screaming, so I got mad and said she ought to be honored that I’d invited her to my house.”

  “Honored? Jesus!”

  “That just came out, and I tried to take it back, but she said oh, honored, honored; oh, I didn’t know it was such an honor. Like that.”

  “Go on.”

  “Then she just looks at me across the table and says it’s all over.”

  “All over?” I said, as though there was over and all over.

  “All over,” Jack said. “She said she was going to tell me anyway, even before we got in there she’d planned to tell me she didn’t want to date me anymore.”

  He punched his palm with his fist and got up. “I’ll take that beer now.”

  “I’m sorry, Jack.”

  “You’re sorry? I’m wiped out! You want a beer? Have a beer.”

  “I can’t…. You can get me another Dr Pepper.”

  I went across and turned down the TV. I figured we were in for a long night of talking. I closed a Barron’s S.A.T. review course and put it on the coffee table. Then I checked to be sure Oscar was okay in his bed, behind the couch.

  I was thinking that I had to tell Jack. Listen to him first. Then tell him something had started up between Nicki and me—by accident. Tell him it was no big deal, just this little sideline shit going down. This accident.

  He could blow. He could tell me to go screw myself, and that the whole thing sucked, but we’d get past it. That would be the end of it then.

  When Jack didn’t come back with the drinks, I went into the kitchen. Jack was sitting in one of the newly painted chairs at the kitchen table, holding his head with his hands.

  “I’m really wiped out!” he said.

  “You’re also sitting in fresh paint. I tipped the chairs forward, hoping no one’d sit down.”

  “My God, I just paid sixty dollars for these jeans and a hundred and sixty for the jacket!”

  “Then get them off, fast. Let them dry. You can’t do anything about them until they dry.”

  “This isn’t my night, Erick.”

  He got his Guess? jeans and jacket off, and I got him a beer, got myself a Dr Pepper.

  We went back into the living room and sat on the couch while Jack said, “I read her all wrong, that’s all. All I was thinking about was sex, and all she was thinking about was them. That’s what she calls everybody: them. That New York weekend was a lousy idea!”

  “It was her idea!”

  “She just wanted to see Bruce Springsteen.”

  “She didn’t ask me to get tickets for you and her. She wanted us all to go.”

  “She thought that was the only way she could get to see him…. I never should have dragged her home to meet my folks. She calls that family-around-the-table crap!”

  “The hell with what she calls it! She should have said she didn’t want to go home and meet your folks!”

  “She did say it! I wouldn’t listen! I never let her talk…. I practically forced her to try out for pom-pom. I did force her!”

  “Don’t be so down on yourself. This girl isn’t worth it!”

  “What the hell do you know?” Jack said. “I’m in love with Nicki!”

  I thought he was going to break down and cry.

  I scooted down closer to him and put my hand on his wrist.

  I said, “Jack, listen. You’re my best friend.”

  “I know. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  That stopped me for a second. I wanted to think how to put it.

  “You should have seen her face,” Jack said.

  I could see her face. I could see the cigarette in her mouth, the smoke curling up, that one eyebrow cocked, the green of her eyes.

  Jack said, “She looked straight at me and said, ‘It’s all over, Jack’.”

  He was shaking. He had trouble getting words out. He said, “I just meet someone I really love and she tells me it’s all over.”

  “Jack,” I said, but he wouldn’t let me go on.

  He said, “I never … ever … felt this way about anyone!”

  I put my arm around him.

  That was the scene Dad walked in on: Jack in his shorts on the couch saying he’d never ever felt that way about anyone, me with my arm around him.

  Dad barked, “What the hell is going on!”

  I began, “Jacks had some—”

  I was going to say “some bad news,” but Dad didn’t let me finish.

  “Beer!” Dad finished it. Dad’s eyes were blazing.

  “Erick’s not drinking, though, Mr. Rudd.” Jack thought Dad was mad about that. The bottle of Molson’s ale was right in front of me.

  Dad had murder in his eyes. He began marching, that was the only way to describe it. He marched across the room to the stairway. Then he marched up the stairs.

  “Now he’s pissed off at me,” Jack said, “for drinking his Molson’s.”

  It’d never occur to Jack what Dad was really angry at.

  Upstairs a door slammed so hard it shook the house.

  Even old, deaf Oscar jumped.

  That ended our conversation.

  Chapter Twelve

  “HONEY?” MOM WAS AT my bedroom door. “You’d better get up right now, if you’re going to go to church with us.”

  “I’m not.”

  I was lying on my side, under the covers. I could hear Mom come all the way into the room.

  “Remember last night I asked you not to give Dad a hard time about church this morning?”

  “Dad can go to hell,” I mumbled.

  I could hear a hard rain on the roof.

  “Dad made a mistake,” Mom said. “He was exhausted by the time he got here last night.”

  “Some mistake.”

  As soon as Jack’s car had left, Mom had come downstairs. I don’t know what Dad’d told her, but her face was white as milk. I said go in the kitchen and look at the chair Jack
sat in. I said he took off his pants and coat to let the paint dry, so you’d better rush back upstairs and tell Dad not to worry, he has only one fag son, not two. Mom said she’d slap my face if she ever heard me say that word again.

  Before I’d gone to sleep, I’d tossed the pamphlet about AIDS on the floor, beside my socks and Nikes. Mom went around to the side of my bed and picked it up. “Erick, I told you I don’t want this lying around where Mrs. Tompkins can see it.” She stuck it in my bureau drawer.

  “What are we going to tell Mrs. Tompkins and everyone else, that Pete is dying of a bug he picked up in Paris?”

  Mom whirled around. “What did you just say?”

  “That pamphlet says it’s always fatal.”

  “I don’t care what it says. That’s not necessarily true.”

  “Didn’t you read it?”

  “Just get up, Erick. We’re going to talk about it later.”

  “I’m not going to church with Dad.”

  “He’s counting on it.”

  “Tough! I was counting on him to know me a little better than he seems to. I was counting on him to know Jack a little better, too.”

  “Don’t start all this now,” Mom said. “I don’t have the patience.”

  She went out of the room and slammed the door.

  I listened to the rain for a while. Then I heard him coming down the hall, his footsteps mad. Oh, he’s mad, I thought. Beautiful.

  Then he was in my room.

  “I overreacted last night, Erick. I was tired. I’d had a long session with Phil Kerin, and there was a traffic tie-up on the Montauk Highway.”

  “I can’t believe you thought what you thought.”

  “I can’t believe you got around to painting those chairs.”

  “And never mind me. You’ve known Jack since he was born.”

  “I’ve known Pete since he was born, too.”

  “I’m not Pete! Neither is Jack.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “No, you didn’t. You said you’d overreacted.”

  “All right. I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not going to forget that one.”

  “Then forgive it. That’s what church is for, anyway: forgiveness. Get out of bed and get dressed!”

  “I’m not ready to forgive it, either.”

  “What do you care what I thought? Last weekend you said it was just another way of being.”