Give Me Your Answer True

by Suanne Laqueur

  He reached out of bed, got his flannel shirt and buttoned her into it. He loved when she wore his clothes.

  “I want to show you something,” he said.

  He leaned down again, hooking the straps of his backpack and dragging it toward him. From inside he drew out a book, handing it back over his shoulder. Daisy clicked on the reading lamp and tried to read the title but it wasn’t in English.

  “They’re folk tales,” he said. “My grandparents gave it to me for Christmas one year. It’s all in Swedish, I can’t read it. I just like the pictures. But I really wanted to show you these…” From between the middle pages he drew out several photographs and passed them to her.

  Daisy folded her pillow in half to make a wedge and leaned back, examining the pictures. The first was a man and a little boy at the edge of a dock, fishing. The boy wore a pair of plaid shorts and nothing else. The fishing pole was curved in an arc toward the water and the boy was pulling back on it. Eyes wide and mouth in a little O of surprise.

  The man stood behind, bending forward a little, his hands on the boy’s forearms, his face wide open with laughing excitement. His hair was blond and cut short. Lean arms and broad shoulders in a white t-shirt. Around his neck swung a gold chain.

  “Is this your father?” Daisy asked.

  “That’s him. And that’s me.”

  “I guessed,” she said, smiling. “What did you catch?”

  “Probably a bass. Or a pike.”

  She put the picture face-down on her chest. The next showed Byron Fiskare walking along a rocky beach. He held Peter in one arm. The other hand was palm-up, showing something within it to Erik. The wind blew pant legs and jackets into folds and ripples. The surface of the water behind them was full of white caps. A faint smile touched Byron’s face as he looked down at Erik.

  “Where was this taken?”

  “Clayton. It’s on the St. Lawrence River. The Thousand Islands.”

  “You lived there?”

  “I was born there.”

  The next picture was in a kitchen. Erik, looking no more than five, sat on his father’s lap, a big closed-eyed, closed-mouth smile mugging into the camera. A fork in one hand, a piece of cake on the plate in front of him. Byron had both arms curved around Erik’s middle, his chin on his son’s shoulder, looking hopeful for a bite of dessert.

  Across the table, Peter sat in a high chair, his face smeared with chocolate frosting. His mouth open like a hungry baby bird, leaning toward the fork a woman was holding out to him.

  Daisy peered. It wasn’t Christine sitting next to Peter. This woman was older. Slim in a print dress. Grey hair pulled into a low bun. Horn-rimmed glasses. Not smiling, but not unfriendly.

  “Who’s she?” she asked.

  “That’s Farmor,” he said. “My grandmother.”

  “Did you live with her?”

  “Next door.”

  “And what did you call her?”

  “Farmor,” he said. “Swedes have different names for grandparents. Farmor is your father’s mother.”

  He reached and turned the next and last picture up. Byron and an older man busy at a workbench and Erik sitting on its surface. He drove a Matchbox car up his father’s arm and Byron’s head was turned back, smiling at him.

  “That’s Farfar,” Erik said, fingertip tapping the old man. “My father’s father.”

  “Your dad looks like you here,” Daisy said, her own fingertip circling Byron’s face. “And even in your grandfather I can see the resemblance.”

  It was in the cheekbones and the shape of the mouth. And how all their hair was fair and cut short, showing a similar brow across three generations.

  “Pete has more of my mom’s side in him,” Erik said. “Everyone said I was all Fiskare.”

  She hummed, rubbing her head against his. “But your grandfather’s face, the way it’s closed. He has a reserve. That’s Pete’s expression. Your dad’s face is a little more open. Like yours.”

  Her fingers flipped through the pictures once more. In each one, Byron was wearing the necklace. In each one, he was looking at Erik.

  She didn’t know what to say. Every observation felt potentially hurtful.

  He looks like a nice man.

  Nice men didn’t abandon their families.

  He loved you. You can tell by his face when he looks at you.

  Then why did he leave?

  She tapped the edges of the photograph into line and gave the stack back to Erik. He put them and the book on her night table and clicked the lamp off, leaving them in the light of the Christmas garlands.

  He rolled away from her. “Lie against my back?”

  She moved up to him, curving herself around his body. She slid her hand up to rest flat on his bare chest, feeling his heart. He loved to be held this way when he was drifting off. And she loved the broad plane of his back against her stomach. Holding onto him like a raft through waves of sleep. It worked perfectly. They made so much sense together.

  “When did you move away from Clayton?” she asked.

  “About a year after he left. My mom wanted to be closer to her family in Rochester and have Pete go to school there. He’d stopped talking, I told you.”

  “Did you ever go back? To visit your grandparents?”

  “Few times. But it got harder and harder. I remember those visits being sad and almost awkward. I moped through them. Everything I used to love about that place I hated. I didn’t want to see my old house where we were a family. Didn’t want to see my bedroom window where I watched his truck drive away for the last time. Didn’t want the river where I fished with him or Farfar’s boathouse where I’d play by the workbench. Just didn’t want any of it anymore. It hurt too much. My mom would be so tense back in Clayton, and my grandparents were getting older and more reserved. It wasn’t a loving place anymore. As Pete and I got older and more busy with sports and stuff, the visits dwindled away. When Farfar died my junior year, I hadn’t seen him in… I can’t remember how long. Long enough that when we got the letter from his lawyer saying he’d left me and Pete his money, I felt bad. Like I could’ve tried harder to make a relationship.

  “A few months later, his brother Emil died. He was the last of that generation. It finally hit me with my father gone, I was the next link in the chain. And that’s when I took the necklace out of my dresser and started wearing it.”

  He sighed. She rubbed her forehead between his shoulder blades, breathed in his scent.

  “You know I never showed those pictures to anyone,” he said.

  “I loved seeing them,” she said.

  “I feel like I can tell you anything.”

  She rested her lips behind his ear. “Because you can.”

  “I’m so in love with you.”

  Her eyes grew warm and she felt her heart would burst. “I’m so happy,” she said.

  His fingers curled around hers.

  Then he was still.

  Emotion cradled her in soft arms as she lay awake, listening to him sleep, running a gentle fingertip along the gold chain at his neck.

  After that night, she always let him know. Called or left a note, left word with someone else. And few were the moments when one of them didn’t know where the other was.

  THE ROOM WENT UTTERLY QUIET. The sound of no sound pressing against Daisy’s eardrums. Her heart beat slow, as if she were in hibernation.

  “When he’d tell me about his father,” she said. “I’d feel so close to him. When someone shares the happy stories of their life, it’s always beautiful. But when someone shares their pain with you, it’s almost more profound. More valuable.”

  “I agree,” Rita said.

  “God, I loved him. It felt grownup. But we were really just kids.”

  “Yet it sounds like you had quite a mature relationship,” Rita said. “To hear you tell it, you and Erik were lovers and partners. You worked through problems together. You were attuned to each other’s wants and needs. He trusted you implicitly and—
”

  “And I blew it,” Daisy said.

  Come back. Please come back.

  Rita hummed, a soft note of attentive sympathy.

  “I own what I did,” Daisy said. “But at the same time, I wish to hell James had never come to Lancaster.” She ran her hand along her damp eyes. “I get so tired and it’s easier to blame him. If only he hadn’t showed up, everything would be different.”

  Soundlessly, Rita turned a page in her notebook.

  “When did James come?”

  “Junior year.”

  “Can you tell me about him?”

  MARIE’S ADVANCED PARTNERING CLASS was learning the balcony scene from Kenneth MacMillan’s ballet Romeo and Juliet. The partnering was difficult, the lifts complex. Timing was critical and if Romeo wasn’t where Juliet needed him to be, stars would not only cross but they would also end up on the floor.

  “Sorry,” James said, helping Daisy up. “That was my fault.”

  It was his fault. But one of the first things a girl learned going into supported adagio class was how to fall safely. The second was patience. Daisy fell plenty when learning to partner with Will. She had to keep it in mind as she was learning with James. She brushed off her hip and butt, pushing away her irritation.

  “You all right?” James said, his apologetic grey eyes like storm-filled skies, threaded with lightning bolts of gold. He’d transferred to the conservatory from Juilliard and already made an impression as a brilliant but erratic dancer. His range was phenomenal—he could shift effortlessly from classical ballet to edgy modern to ballroom schmaltz and he was a credible tap dancer as well. Plus he had a kinesthetic memory: he merely had to watch movement to copy it. He recalled choreography and style after a single demonstration. What he couldn’t seem to retain, however, was consistency.

  They started learning this pas de deux two weeks ago. The lifts worked fine. Then for no reason, James blanked out on simple mechanics. In the next class, he had them down again. Today, it was a disaster. Tomorrow they might be perfect. Daisy had no way of knowing. His erratic nature made her nervous and cerebral and when she got too caught up in her head, her dancing went flat.

  It drove Marie batshit.

  “For the fortieth time, Jase.” Marie hadn’t gotten his name right yet. “You are trying to catch her with one arm.” Marie’s voice was quiet but it dripped intolerance. “You are going to either break your arm or break Daisy.” Her tone left no question which she would prefer.

  “Mark the lift, please. Walk through it, Daisy. Are you listening, Jase? Let her take your hand as she goes up. Let her let go of you during the throw. She will turn herself in the air and when the turn is complete, you catch. Both arms. Tight. You love her, for goodness sake.”

  James nodded, hands on hips, expression contrite. As she walked to her starting position, Daisy smiled at him and touched his damp shoulder. If Marie was intent on James partnering her, she had to find a way to connect with him, especially since Will was graduating this year.

  If she were dancing with Will right now, her head would be filled with a Capulet-and-Montague narrative. She and Will would have read the balcony scene together. Acted it out and built a backstory. Murmured the dialogue as they practiced steps.

  James barely looked at her. She may as well have been playing the nurse.

  Marie cued them. “And…”

  Daisy wiped the slate clean. Ran and took James’s hand as he threw her. He was strong and the momentum let her turn over easily in the air. She should have been turning because she longed for his arms. Because it was too lonely in the air and down on the earth with Romeo was where she belonged.

  But with the imagination-less James under her, her mind only knew one entreaty: please, God, catch me…

  He did. With both arms.

  “Bravo, Jase,” Marie said. “Now do it that way every time, si?”

  “Si,” he said, setting Daisy down. She turned to him but he wasn’t looking at her. His hands were on his hips again and his gaze was intent. Within the goatee he sported, his mouth curved in a slightly predatory smile. He was looking across the studio to Will.

  Who was looking back.

  Class was dismissed. Daisy plopped down by her dance bag and untied her shoe ribbons, covertly watching James. He wore his dark brown hair cropped short. The goatee and the gold rings in both ears gave him a gypsy air. He stood by Will, arms crossed, with that intense gaze as Will dried himself off with a towel. Grinning, Will chucked the towel at James’s face, who pulled it off with relish. Will dragged his wet T-shirt over his head and tossed it at James as well.

  “Keep going,” James said.

  Will laughed, shaking out a clean, dry shirt and, Daisy noticed, taking his sweet time putting it on.

  It wasn’t a point for debate. At twenty-two, Will was a hunk. All boyish grin and chewy sex appeal. His skin flushed with sweat and exercise, the veins pushed up high in his muscles. His tattoos curled black, grey and green in the contours and cuts. Daisy knew them all: the Chinese characters, the compass rose, the yin-yang symbol and all the rest of them. Or at least the ones on his torso. The ones below the belt she’d only heard Lucky describe in dreamy tones.

  “You know the iliac line really fit guys have? Will’s got some Zen quotation running right along it. Fucking hot. It’s my favorite.”

  Lucky wasn’t at school this semester. She was up in Boston doing an emergency medicine course. Daisy didn’t know if any kind of separation agreement was put in place while she was gone. But she knew Will and she’d been detecting a shift in his demeanor lately. A curious wind turning his interior vane in the opposite direction. Daisy watched him laugh as James peppered him with friendly punches and she grasped the situation unfolding in front of her.

  James couldn’t speak French, but he spoke dance and men—two of Will’s languages. He was fit and built and definitely easy on the eyes. His tattoos had their own story. He liked Will.

  And Will was digging the shit out of it.

  AS SEPTEMBER SLIPPED BY and James’s presence became more frequent in Daisy’s circle, she was positive Will was looking for some fun. A smug strut accompanied his presence, as if the confirmation he was attractive to both sexes had gone to his head. He was partying hard on the weekends, which was where Erik had to either disengage or throw everything off and dig in.

  It wasn’t his strong suit. James, Will and David had the heads and stomachs for boozing. Erik tried to keep up but usually ended up paying a hefty price—his hangovers were the stuff of embarrassing legend. And it wasn’t only booze on the menu. David always had cocaine and James smoked more pot than Leo Graham.

  Both Daisy and Erik declined the blow. They were curious about the high, but shared the same aversion to putting anything up their nose. They took the joints passed to them, but smoked in a methodical way, enough to get the edges of the world to giggle, but not enough to make their DNA disintegrate.

  But it wasn’t only substance intolerance bothering Erik. Other lines in Will’s life, invisible up until now, were becoming obvious and testing Erik’s social tolerance.

  “It’s not like there’s never been speculation about Will batting both sides,” Daisy said.

  “Well it’s one thing to speculate and another thing to see it in action,” Erik said.

  A perpetual wrinkle of worry seemed to be in between his eyebrows. He was morally and emotionally cornered in his masculinity. He respected Will’s private business and had always chosen to deal with things he found personally objectionable by shutting the hell up. To butt in and say something was either to admit he had objections to Will’s relationship with James or, more truthfully, that he was jealous.

  “I’m jealous of James.” He laughed as he said it but the admission was raw. “It’s fucked up.”

  “Because he’s getting all Will’s attention,” she said.

  “What the fuck do I care who Will pays attention to?”

  “He’s your friend.”

  �
�David’s my friend and I couldn’t care less who he sleeps with.”

  “One, David is not Will. Two, I’m not a psychology major or anything, but I think you might have a small problem with people’s attention being taken away from you suddenly and without explanation. Particularly people you care about. Possibly male people you care about but that might be too Freudian a stretch…”

  Erik looked at her a long time, lips parted as if to deny. Then his eyes rolled to the ceiling and he ran a hand through his hair. “Stop knowing me,” he said.

  “I’ll try,” she said, putting arms around him.

  “So what do I say to Will? ‘Dude, I’m having serious daddy issues, could you maybe take me out to dinner or something?’”

  “He’d love that,” she said, laughing.

  “Maybe I’ll stand under his window and sing ‘You Don’t Bring Me Flowers.’”

  “Come on, in all seriousness, all you really need to tell him is that you want to hang out more. Alone.”

  “Sounds so gay,” he muttered, bristling like a cactus in her arms.

  She let him go. “Tell him. Have a conversation. It’s because you respect his private and personal life that Will will talk to you about damn near anything.”

  This she knew. She’d never directly asked Will about his sexual persuasions. As tantalizing and fascinating as she found the notion of him having male lovers, it was none of her business. But she’d had plenty of conversations about tolerance with her partner, and he’d made clear his philosophy about discourse.

  “I’ll talk about anything,” he said. “Just don’t be an asshole about it.”

  As a person who welcomed and honored love in all its forms, without regard for gender, Will could not be phased or shamed. He had nothing to hide. Which made him completely open to discussion and debate as long as it was done with a decent amount of civility.

  “You want to sit and ask me stuff? Bring it. You want to ask if I’ve ever sucked a guy off or taken it up the ass, because you’re genuinely curious? Go right ahead. We’ll have a conversation. But don’t try to corner me or confront me. Don’t ask me shit with a sneer on your face, thinking you can shame me into some sordid confession just to make yourself feel better about your own doubts or insecurities. I don’t have time.”