It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  “Michael,” Dan starts.

  I’m not up for it. “Not now,” I snap.

  My fingers dig into my cheeks—I don’t need to look up to know that now I’ve hurt him, too. I should really go back to bed, start this day all over again, maybe it’ll go right this time. Or hell, redo last night while I’m at it, keep away from that rum and stay out of the living room and damn, never leave the side of the creek or the safety of my lover’s arms. I want him now, I want him holding me, I want his kisses and his hands to tell me everything’s going to be alright. Why can’t someone tell me everything’s going to be alright?

  But he stands there like a sentinel, watching me, and I can’t take back what I’ve just said, I can’t erase the tone of my voice that still echoes in my ears. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, face in my hands. “God, Dan, I’m—I didn’t mean…” I trail off with the hope that he’ll say it’s okay.

  He doesn’t. “Please,” I sigh. I look up at him through splayed fingers and have to look away again, I can’t bear the pain I see in his face, pain I’ve put there. “Baby—”

  “What’s your problem today?” he wants to know.

  It’s a simple question, asked without malice, without reproach. But it’s the words themselves, your problem, that set me on edge. “My problem,” I say softly. Anger bubbles up in me, my problem. Is that all my emotions are to him? I lash out without thinking of what I’m going to say—the words surprise me. “Well, you know Dan, maybe if you had decided to come in and meet Stephen yourself, you’d know what the hell my problem is now.”

  A muscle in his jaw twitches. “I was on my way,” he tells me, the tension between us palpable when he speaks. “I had to wash up first—”

  I interrupt him with a quick laugh that startles us both. “Maybe it’s just me,” I mutter, “but if you had an old boyfriend show up out of the blue? I’d be right there the whole damn time.”

  “I didn’t know he was a boyfriend,” Dan says. I hear the anger growing in his own words. “Shit, Michael. I didn’t think I had anything to worry about. If you just waited a few more minutes—”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway.” I glare at a spot on the floor by his shoes and tell myself it doesn’t matter at all, a few minutes one way or the other. The fact is that Dan didn’t meet him. He was too damn busy doing something else much more important and I don’t care if he met Stephen or not. Though if he were there, my mind whispers, would Stephen have said he loved you? Would you feel this shitty now if Dan had been in the room, too?

  So what, now it’s his fault? Jesus.

  He waits for me to say something else but I’m not apologizing again—I pick at the pleat ironed into my jeans and wait for him to speak, I’m not the only one here who has to say he’s sorry. Dan props his hands up on his hips and watches me, his gaze unwavering. Finally he asks, “Well? Are you going to tell me what he said or do I have to guess?”

  Guess, I almost say—I’d like to hear what his reply would be but I bite the word back before I let it go. He said he always loved me…I can still hear Stephen’s voice in my head, I can see his eyes when I close mine. He said he probably always will. Tell me what I’m supposed to say to that, Dan. Tell me how I’m supposed to feel now.

  With a defeated sigh, Dan asks, “Michael? Baby, talk to me.”

  It’s the baby that gets to me. “Why didn’t you at least stop in to say hi?” I want to know. Tears clog my throat but I swallow them down, hide them away. I’m through with crying, I’m sick of it—emotion chokes me as I tamp it down, and I imagine my stomach roiling beneath the sadness, as sour and bitter as terrible medicine. I’m sick of this emptiness inside of me, this hole in my chest that opened up Saturday night and still hasn’t completely closed yet. I feel like my heart has been ripped out, and the leaves that fall from the trees outside now fill the hollow space in my soul, my bones, dead leaves like those littering the ground. They rustle in me when I walk, they crinkle together like torn paper when I move. I want to rake them up into a large pile, tie them up into bags and set them on the curb, let someone come and take them away. I don’t need their insidious whispers, their dying breath. I don’t need their pain, their ache. Take away the autumn in me, someone please, and let the winter come, let the snow cover my hurt, a silent shroud to hide behind until I thaw again.

  If Dan hears the crisp rustle of the leaves, he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t come over to me, doesn’t wrap his arms around my shoulders, doesn’t pull me into a strong embrace. He just stands there, waiting. For what, me to come to him? I need him now, can’t he see that? I need him to love me, I need his words to drown out Stephen’s, his lips to erase the thin press of my friend’s mouth still caught in the corner of mine. I’m not strong, he knows this. I need him to tell me I didn’t just throw away the last bit of Sugar Creek that meant anything to me. First Aunt Evie, then Stephen. After the funeral on Wednesday, I have no reason to come back here ever again.

  So who do I blame for that?

  “I was in the middle of something,” he says softly. I look up and take in the set of his chin, the thin line his lips make, the hard glint to his eyes. Like he’s mad at me. Like he has reason to be. “I was on my way, babe. I had to finish up—”

  “What?” I want to know. I can’t keep my voice from rising dangerously, until it fills the room and threatens to crush us both. “What’s so goddamned important that you can’t take two minutes to come meet an old friend of mine?”

  Dan’s reply is steady and even, calm in the face of my anger. He enunciates clearly, as though I might miss something if he speaks too quickly, and he wants me to catch every word. “I was helping your father.”

  My dad, of course. “It takes you that long to change a fucking lock?” I ask, pissed.

  Confusion crosses his face. “What are you talking about?”

  “This morning,” I remind him. I can’t believe he’s forgotten about that already. “What, four hours ago? I’ll be right up, isn’t that what you said?” He frowns at me, scuffs his shoe on the carpet, looks away. Yeah, he knows exactly what I’m talking about. “If you were upstairs with me,” I point out bitterly, “like you were supposed to be, then Caitlin wouldn’t have had to hunt you down, would she? And you wouldn’t be standing here wondering what the hell was said because you would’ve been right there beside me the whole damn time.”

  I’m pushing him too far, I can see it in his eyes—there’s only so much he can take from me, and this is just about it. His face reddens, his cheeks flush, his mouth disappears into a white line of anger that will take the rest of the night to smooth away, if we stop now. But my mind whirls with emotions, my thoughts are torn to shreds in the storm, I’m not quite finished here yet. “You’re not his son, Dan!” I yell, surging to my feet. Dimly I’m aware of the door opening behind my lover and faces pressed into the crack, Aunt Bobbie and Caitlin and little Trevor, all watching us, listening to us fight. I don’t care. “You’re here for me, babe, in case you forgot that little fact, and sure, it’s nice that you want to help out but Dad can change his own goddamn locks, he has an army of uncles at his command. You’re not one of his soldiers here, Dan.” Fresh tears fill my eyes but I blink them away, I will not cry, I won’t let this get to me. Lowering my voice, I turn away from him and mumble again, “You’re supposed to be here for me.”

  If he touches me now, I’d fall into him gratefully. I’d lock the door and apologize the only way I know how, with hands and lips, me in him and him beneath me, I’d show him how sorry I am with each touch, each kiss. But he stands his ground and I don’t go to him, I tell myself I can be stronger than that, if just this once. I pretend that I can be strong without him.

  Softly, so low that I almost don’t believe I’ve heard him at first, he asks, “What did he say to you?”

  So we’re back to that. “I told you, nothing,” I growl, wiping at my eyes.

  “Nothing,” he echoes.

  “Nothing important,” I amend with a sig
h. I’ve had enough of this. I want to lie down and sleep everything away. Maybe when I wake up, things will be back to normal. I’ll have a tighter rein on my emotions, I’ll have some semblance of control over this whole situation, if I can just lie down for a half hour, that’s all I’m asking for here. Thirty minutes to myself, is that too much? “Just…just leave me alone, will you? Please?”

  Now he touches me, but I shrug his hand off my arm and that angers him, I can feel his ire rise from him like deadly radiation. I never turn him away. “Michael,” he tries. When I cross my arms in front of my chest and refuse to meet his gaze, he pinches my elbow, hard, trying to get some reaction out of me. I’ve pushed him too damn far. “Michael,” he says again.

  I still don’t answer. With a jerk of his hand, I stumble into him and he grabs my arms, both of them, squeezes until I’m forced to look at him, to see him, and the anger in his face, the pain I’ve put there. He’s close to tears himself—I can see myself faceted in those stormy eyes. When he speaks, his voice breaks. “Talk to me,” he pleads. “What did he say, Michael? And don’t you dare say nothing.”

  “Let go of me,” I snarl. I try to twist out of his grip and can’t. “Dan—”

  “What the hell did he do to you?” he wants to know. He peers at me through angry tears and demands, “What’s happened to my Michael?”

  This time when I pull away, he lets me go. “I’m right here,” I grumble.

  He narrows his eyes in disbelief. “The man I love talks to me,” he says, rubbing at my wrist, trying to open me up to him. I don’t respond. “The Michael I know tells me what’s wrong and lets me make it right. He doesn’t keep me out. He doesn’t make me fucking guess what the problem is.”

  “I don’t feel like talking about it,” I say. “Is that such a hard concept to grasp here, Dan? Just leave me the hell alone.”

  Taking a step towards me, until we’re so close that his shirt tickles the hair on the back of my arms, Dan gets in my face like I’m one of the cadets at boot camp and he’s a drill sergeant out to whip me into shape. I can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but stare up into his livid eyes and wonder how things got this far. “I’m going outside,” he whispers, his words as gentle as fingers on my face. “I’ve got work to do. Whenever you’re ready to let me back in, you let me know. I’m not fighting with you over this, Michael. I’m not going to let you fight with me.”

  He holds my gaze a moment longer, then turns on one heel with a fluid precision that would make even the Commander-in-Chief proud. Oh no, you’re not leaving me, I think, incredulous, as I watch him do just that.

  When he yanks the door open and pushes out into the kitchen, my sister tumbles into the room and glares at me. He did NOT just walk out in the middle of this. The thought paralyzes me. “Smooth move, Ex-Lax,” Caitlin mutters.

  “Get the fuck out,” is my only reply.

  Chapter 25: It’s All Been Done Before

  In middle school, I had a friend named Joey Kneesi, pronounced ka-nee-see. I thought it was a wicked cool name at the time, and to be completely honest, that was one of the main reasons we were friends—just so I could holler down the halls between classes, “Ka-nee-see!” It made people stop and heads turn, and kids moved out of my way as I barreled towards his locker, right next to mine. Knapp, Kneesi…we were destined to be best friends throughout the rest of the school year.

  His dad was in the Air Force, just transferred from Watertown, New York, and Joey didn’t know a soul in Colonial City, Virginia. As a seventh grader at the middle school, I didn’t know many of my new classmates, either—the last six years were spent in a small elementary school, and the junior high was the first time I met kids from other parts of the city. I felt lost and alone and afraid, though I tried not to show it. I figured that if Ray could make it through the living hell of junior high a few years ahead of me, then it couldn’t be too hard for me to survive.

  I met Joey the first week of classes. He wore baggy jeans that were all the rage up north but hadn’t quite found their way down to our part of the country yet, and I could hear whispers of the other kids preceding him down the hall. When I turned and saw him for the first time—jeans hanging down his hips, oversized jersey, bandanna wrapped around his head gangsta-style—I almost laughed. But one look at his face and I could see that he heard the stifled giggles, the low whispers. Each one was a barb that stuck to him, an arrow that pierced his tough exterior and wounded him. He kept his head up, his face expressionless, but I could see the pain behind his eyes and I knew that look of impassive, stony defiance all too well. This was middle school, and I was already hearing rumors about the way my gaze lingered a little too long on some of the other boys when we changed out for PE. I ignored those comments the same stoic way Joey ignored the murmurs about his clothes.

  He stopped at the locker next to mine and looked at me, and in that instant we recognized each other as fellow outcasts. I gave him a half-smile that he didn’t quite return, and with a nod at his jeans, told him, “I saw a pair like that I wanted this summer in Philly.”

  Now he grinned. He had a large mouth, olive skin, dark hair cut into spiky bangs that stood up in a spray above his forehead, gravity-defying strands dyed a bright blonde that I envied, and he spoke like an Italian from New York should, saying yous guys and pop instead of soda, ordering a pie when he wanted a pizza. In the months that followed we became fast friends, and I have to admit that I had it bad for that boy, one of the worst crushes I’ve ever had on a straight guy—I was so far gone that I’d even listen to him ramble on about girls he knew back home, anything to watch the way his mouth worked as he talked in that forced Brooklyn accent of his. On weekends we’d hang out at the mall and I’d watch him flirt with the high schoolers who worked at the clothing stores. At night I dreamed that I worked in those stores and he came in just to flirt with me.

  But he never knew I liked him like that—I wasn’t so sure of myself back then. I didn’t have the guts to actually come out and tell him, what would I say? That just thinking about him was enough to get me hard? That I moaned his name when I jerked off in the shower? I’d die if he even guessed what his touch did to me, how I lived for the casual arm draped around my shoulders, the smiles he saved for me, the way his eyes sparkled when he laughed at something I said. No, I’d rather have any little part of him that I could get than tell him I wanted more and risk losing him completely.

  But we only had one year of friendship that burned as bright and fleeting as a candle caught in a draft. At the end of the school year, his dad got orders to ship out. This was just temporary duty for him, one stop before the family flew overseas for an extended tour in Korea. One of the hazards of living so close to a military base—every year there were new faces in the classrooms, and familiar friends simply disappeared over the summer, never to be heard from or seen again. When Joey told me he was leaving at the end of May, my young heart broke for the first time, and the fact that he didn’t even know how I felt for him made it hurt worse.

  He promised to write. And he did, for a little while, but over time his letters grew shorter and shorter, and reading about all the pretty girls he was meeting didn’t have quite the same appeal as watching him flirt or listening to his stories, and somewhere along the way, we drifted apart. The time between letters grew longer—he forgot to write as frequently, maybe, or I forgot to write back so fast, and I moved onto other boys, I grew up and went to college, I met Dan. I don’t know what ever became of Joey, to be honest, and I’m sure he never even thinks of me. We were friends for one precious year, that was it, though at the time I was convinced it would simply be a matter of time before he opened his eyes and saw in me the look of love staring back.

  After he moved, my smile was forced, my laughter strained. I couldn’t call Joey up the way I did during the school year, both of us sitting in separate living rooms with the televisions tuned to the same channels, giggling over the same programs as if we were watching them togethe
r. Korea was too far away for a phone call like that. But the day before we left for our annual trip to Sugar Creek, I got his first letter—a few sheets of air mail stationary folded into an envelope with red and white lines around the edges, Joey’s block writing so dark that I could hold the envelope up to the light and read his words right through the thin paper. But it was a letter, it was proof to me that we were still friends, and I couldn’t stop talking about it. All the way up to Sugar Creek, I thought of a million different things I would tell him when I finally sat down to reply. When we got to Aunt Evie’s, I told everyone about him, my friend in Korea, which at that time sounded exotic and faraway. Among my cousins, I pulled out the letter and grinned as everyone oohed over the postmark but I wouldn’t let them touch the envelope. It was mine. He wrote it to me.

  Later that first day, I met Stephen at the elementary school playground. It was halfway between my house and his, and he was on the swings waiting for me when I walked up. Sitting in the swing beside his, I pulled out the letter but didn’t get quite the breathless response that I anticipated. “What’s that?” he asked, dubious.

  “Joey wrote to me,” I replied. “He’s in Korea now. His dad—”

  Stephen pushed his glasses up on his nose and frowned at the envelope in my hand. “Joey who?”

  None of my cousins had thought to ask me that. “Kneesi,” I said. “He went to my school.”

  Stephen’s frown deepened. “Why did he write you a letter?” he asked.

  “He moved,” I explained, sure that it was just a matter of minutes before Stephen clued into what this meant to me and grew impressed.

  But Stephen wasn’t reading from the same script. He glared at the letter with sudden jealousy and wanted to know, “Is he your boyfriend?”

  This was the summer after our first kiss, so he knew I liked boys, and I had a letter in my hand from a boy I knew back home, of course Stephen would put two and two together and assume we were going steady. And I’ll admit, the thought was heady, and with Joey so far away, who could call my bluff? So I shrugged a little, fingered the edge of the envelope and, with a shy grin, told him, “I wouldn’t call him that.” There was just enough embarrassment in my voice to suggest that, despite my words, Joey and I were dating, and this wasn’t just a letter in my hands but a love letter, which I clung to desperately and wore tucked in the waistband of my shorts so I wouldn’t lose it. “He’s sort of just a friend.”