“Uh, yeah. Terry Pagliotti. A nice fellow. You might meet him at the funeral.”
“Sounds good.” I drummed my fingers against my thigh.
“So, was that your boyfriend back there?”
We were driving through drab neighborhoods now. We’d be home soon, or the place that I once called home.
“Well, I’m not sure.”
Lu chuckled quietly. “Only you would say something like that.”
“It’s complicated, Lu,” I protested. “I’ve been living with this guy called Aaron since last summer...”
She nodded, her mouth quirking. “I saw him on your Facebook page. That’s why I was so surprised...”
“Right, well, we’ve been having problems, and Matt’s someone I knew a long time ago. I was involved with him in college.” I forced the words out, an awkward retroactive coming out.
She was listening carefully. “Wow. You never brought him home.”
“Do you blame me? Anyway, we completely lost touch. I dropped out of college and he went back to California. His father died on one of the 9/11 planes, which I never knew until last year when we met again by accident. I assumed he’d come back and finished college here, but he didn’t. Then we met again last fall.”
She nodded, thinking. “Okay. So you met again and things rekindled.”
“Except he was getting married,” I said.
She chuckled again. “Is he still married? This is complicated.”
“No, he split up with her,” I said quietly.
“For you?”
I took a deep breath. Lu pulled into a parking place near the house and turned off the engine.
“Partly for me, I think,” I told her. I didn’t want to get into his being unemployed; it wasn’t a good word to use in my family. Either you worked or you were totally useless, was their mantra. Wives and mothers excepted, of course. Though most of the younger women worked now.
“Well, if you want my opinion...” Lu turned to me now with a little catlike smile.
I nodded.
“He’s gorgeous, and he looks far more right for you than Aaron. He looks like he’s really into you. To come all this way... amazing!” She shook her head. “When you guys aren’t officially together... Or is this his way of saying you are?”
I gulped. “I don’t know. How should I introduce him to Mom?”
“Well, saying ‘old friend’ always works,” she murmured. “Mom knows you’re gay, but she might not say anything.”
“Have you all talked about it?” I asked uneasily. I hated thinking of them discussing me behind my back.
“Yeah, a little bit. I told Mom you were in a relationship with another man. She didn’t really believe me at first.” Lu twisted uncomfortably. “Sorry, I probably shouldn’t have done that.”
I could see how it had happened. Lu, for a laugh, calling our mother over to look at my Facebook page. It was proof. And it must have been shocking for my mother that I was leading this other life, this alien life, with this young, nerdy guy, and hadn’t told her.
“Was she angry that I hadn’t said anything?”
“No, not angry,” Lu said. “We all thought it was like you to be secretive. But then to put it out there like that on Facebook! We were all a bit gobsmacked, including Auntie Sheila. Dad didn’t ever see it, don’t worry.”
Yeah, I thought. He would have been excluded, protected from reality. His reaction would probably have been the most visceral and negative. But I’d never know now.
“Things have changed here; it’s OK to be gay or bi or whatever,” Lu said, getting out of the car. “Even in this community!”
I shouldered my duffel bag, shivering as the cold air hit my face. Glancing around, the old houses looked the same, most of them the worse for wear. A strip of green ran down the median and separated the houses on each side of the street, but it was brown and hard now. I saw tricycles and seats on front porches. Everything looked comfortable and worn. No facades here.
“He’s not in there, is he?” I asked in a low voice.
“He’s in the funeral home, of course. There’s a viewing tomorrow,” Lu said, her poker face back on. She was waiting for me. We went up the flaking wooden steps together.
***
My mother was alone in her kitchen, a brown teapot covered by a knitted cozy in the middle of the table. I’d expected Barry to be with her, at least, but he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he knew I was expected and had made himself scarce.
My mother looked astonished to see me, as if she hadn’t believed I would actually make it, and that Lu would come back empty-handed.
“Oh, you’re here!” she said, getting up. She was much shorter than me now, I saw with a pang as she hugged me, her formerly light brown hair mostly white and cut short. When I’d left she’d still looked girlish, to a degree. It was hard to do that in your sixties, and I saw in front of me the older woman she’d become.
“You look well, son,” she said finally.
Lu poured us both a cup of tea, and we all collapsed down at the reddish-pink Formica table. The silence in the house was oppressive.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said, taking a sip. “But how are you? You must be exhausted.”
“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” she admitted. “I suppose when it’s all over, I’ll sleep then.”
“Does Barry still live here?” I asked.
“He’s with his girlfriend now. I thought you could have his room if you wanted.”
“Mom, he’s not staying over,” Lu cut in, rather gently for her. “His friend came to Boston to help Dave out and rented a room in Cambridge. I met him at the airport.”
My mother sighed. “Oh. Is this Aaron?” She sounded like someone who was grimly determined to get to the bottom of a situation, except that it wasn’t in her character and she had no real energy for it.
“No,” I began.
“He’s called Matt,” Lu said. “Dave knew him in college. He’s gorgeous!”
I flushed, my hand tightening on the cup.
For a moment, no one said anything.
“Well, that’s nice, you’ll have a comfortable place, then,” my mother said. “Barry’s room is a disaster.”
We all laughed. I was sure it was true.
“Yeah, it’s not me, I don’t think,” I said. “Do you have my old room, Lu?”
She nodded. “There’s still some CDs and posters you left behind. If you want to look.”
“Oh, sure.” I had no interest, but it was a kind offer.
Lulu gulped her tea. “I have to go, Mom,” she said briskly. “See you, Dave. His friend will be picking him up at 9, and I’ll be back shortly after.”
“All right, love,” my mother said, staring into her cup.
I got up and looked in the fridge after Lu left. There were a few things we could eat, I thought dubiously. I tried the freezer. A frozen pizza looked more appetizing.
“Will you have some pizza with me?” I asked, pulling the box out. She looked up and nodded.
“All right, dear. I’m sorry there’s not much here for us to eat. I just haven’t had the heart to shop.”
“I know. Someone should have brought you something, a casserole or whatever.”
She laughed slightly. “There’s no one left to do that in the neighborhood. It’s all young working couples. I barely know anyone.”
“Your sister?” I asked, switching the oven on.
“Oh, well... I asked her not to come over today. She’s been getting on my nerves a bit.”
My aunt Sheila was as strident as my mother was the opposite. They were an odd pair together. I actually liked Sheila, or had growing up, but we’d had no communication since I left.
“She’s judgmental,” my mother said finally. I came and sat down by her again. “Lu told her about you and your... young man. She was nasty about it.”
I nodded. This was what I had expected. “Look, it’s OK.”
“It’s not OK that anybody should trea
t you badly,” my mother said in a whisper. “Least of all my sister. It’s not right!”
That took me aback a little. “Did you know?” I blurted out. “Before, I mean?”
I looked into her tired blue eyes. She nodded. “I had an inkling. When you were in college, I felt like you were...” she paused, “in love with someone. Because you were so secretive, I thought it wasn’t a girl. And then when you left college, you were so broken up. I thought you’d been in love and it had gone bad. But I didn’t dare ask you about it. I don’t know why. I was scared, I suppose. That you’d lie to me.”
I nodded, taking a slurp of tea. “I was in love, yes.”
“Oh,” she said quietly.
A silence fell between us. A clock ticked somewhere. I could hear faint, muffled traffic sounds from the window.
“He came back into my life. I hadn’t meant to tell you this, but he actually flew here to be with me as a surprise, so I suppose I should tell you rather than just let you guess.”
She shook her head slightly. “It’s strange, though, because I thought you were living with a young fellow called Aaron.”
“I am still living with him, Mom. But it’s not working out, and Matt seems to want to have a relationship with me now. I don’t really know what I’m doing, to be honest.”
She put her hand over mine but said nothing. “Do you think we’ll have a chance to talk again before you leave?”
I thought. “Well, there’s the viewing tomorrow. That will be upsetting for you, won’t it?”
“And for all of us,” she whispered.
“Right. The funeral’s on Friday. I suppose we could talk on Saturday before I go.”
“It’s difficult to get a chance to talk privately, isn’t it?” she asked.
I wondered what strange mood had got into her. I got up to turn off the oven, and served the pizza in big slices. She nibbled at hers. Noting the bottle of brandy on the table suddenly, I poured a slug into my tea.
“I’ve been tippling on it all day,” she said with a smile.
Only a few fingers of it were gone, so she was exaggerating. “It must have been horrible for you yesterday,” I said. “Did you find him?”
She nodded. “I don’t want to talk about it, love. There was nothing anybody could have done for him, though, that’s for sure. They told me it must have been quick. He had no brain function at the hospital. So we couldn’t say our goodbyes. We just sat around his bed for an hour and then they turned the machine off, and he was gone soon after.”
I nodded. I was relieved not to have been there at that moment, though I couldn’t say that to her.
“They’ll bury him in the veteran’s cemetery.” It was in a town south of Boston. I nodded again.
“That’s good.”
“The War broke him, you know. He was a lovely young guy before the war, and I’m sorry you never got to see what he was like then. I knew him a long time before we married; he was a neighborhood boy, a friend, long before we were going out.”
She’d never talked of him like this, and it seemed strange how detached she sounded.
She got up suddenly and wandered down the hall. I crunched on my pizza; the crust was slightly burned. Glancing at my watch, I was shocked to see that Matt would be here in half an hour.
My mother returned with an old photograph in a wooden frame. She put it on the table in front of me. It had been in their bedroom for years, I vaguely remembered, but I hadn’t ever looked at it properly.
It was my father in his uniform, smartly dressed, about to go off to war, about twelve years before I was born. Unlike a marine, he didn’t have a shaved head. I looked at his image silently, stunned.
He looked like Matt.
“His hair,” I said stupidly.
She laughed. “Yes, they could never control his hair. It always grew wildly like that.”
“He was quite good-looking,” I mused, my face going warm suddenly.
“Ah, he was once,” my mother said, sipping her tea. “I married him because I was sorry for him, after he came back from the war and was going through such a tough time. They didn’t call it PTSD then, there was another name, but he was being treated in hospital for insomnia and bad dreams. I knew he was a heavy drinker, but I always thought it was because he was lonely and that marriage would cure it.”
And see how that worked out, I thought.
“It did help, getting married. And it helped me,” my mother said stoutly. “I wasn’t in a good situation. But it ended up with me working to support Tim, for a long time. I worked in a law office downtown.”
“Right,” I said. I poured myself some more brandy.
“Something I’ve never told you was that I began to think that your father and I would never have children. For a few years I expected to fall pregnant, and I didn’t. My doctor didn’t know why. They did some tests.” My mother paused. “Then I began to ... I don’t know, feel like maybe the marriage had been a mistake.”
“Yeah, I can see why,” I said.
“And there was a man at work who was quite good to me. He was my boss,” she continued. “That’s what I wanted to tell you about. But it doesn’t seem right to spring it on you like this, either.”
I had no idea what she was implying. “You considered leaving Dad for this man?” I guessed.
“I thought about it constantly. He was Jewish, you know. Older than me. Quite clever and funny. But he was already married.”
“Ah,” I said.
She gave a deep sigh. “It was an awful time. But happy, too. He started taking me out to lunch and so on. Well, we ended up having an affair.”
I glanced at her in disbelief.
“Yes, an affair,” she continued, her face going pink.
“Do the others know?”
“Oh no, they’ve no need to know about it. My sister knows, of course. She was the only one I told, way back then.”
I began to feel distinctly uneasy. I glanced at my watch. Fifteen minutes to go.
“Dave, I’m sorry, but now that Tim’s dead, I can tell you.” My mother paused. “I feel I should tell you. Since you’ve told me about your personal life and your situation. You’re grown up now.”
I stared at her.
“This man, and I can tell you his name, his name was Harold Weinstein, he’s still alive, I checked in the phone book,” she was babbling now, “he’s your real father.”
“No! No way.” I clutched the table.
“Yes.” She nodded. “I’d stopped sleeping with your father, I mean with Tim.” She gestured to the photo. “I was going to leave him, going to get a place of my own with Harold. But then Harold’s wife got pregnant and it was all for nothing. I knew he wouldn’t leave her then. He was very sorry. He cried.”
“Did you stop working there?” I asked.
“Not until you were born. The minute I told Tim I was pregnant, he got all motivated to work, he got himself an apprenticeship and a union job. And he accepted you as his child, even though I think he had his suspicions. You didn’t look like him much.”
“I’m half Jewish?” I said into the air.
She smiled. “Well, it’s passed down from the mother, isn’t it, so I suppose you don’t have to say that you’re Jewish.”
I shrugged. “Matt’s Jewish.”
“Oh, well...” she just said.
The talk had animated her. I looked at her and I didn’t feel betrayed, exactly. This explained something about why I’d always felt like such an outsider. Tim Madden had treated me like his son, but he’d always kept me at a distance, too.
“Do you still feel bad about it, Mom?”
“I always wondered if you felt different from your brother and sister,” was all she said.
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I think I always did.”
“You looked different too,” she said with a faint smile. “It always comforted me to look at you. I was sorry you had a tough childhood. It wasn’t easy. But I hope you felt loved, anyway.”
“Not by him,” I said, gesturing to Tim’s photo. He had become Tim now.
“I always wished our life could be different,” she murmured.
She got up as the doorbell sounded and I stood up and hugged her. We walked to the door together. I felt it was time to go. My head hurt.
Matt stood on the step, looking refreshed and happy. He grinned at me, then smiled at my mother, who stood staring at him.
“I’m Matt,” was all he said.
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” my mother said. They shook hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t meet you when you first knew Dave. You would have been welcome here.”
He looked surprised and moved, not sure what to say to that.
I slipped out the door, tugging on his arm.
“We should go. What time tomorrow, Mom?”
“I think we’ll all be there around three,” my mother said.
“The viewing,” I said to Matt, wincing. He nodded. I wondered if he had ever been to one, if he knew how ghastly it was going to be. He probably did.
My mother stood at the door, watching us walk away into the chilly darkness. It felt bad to leave her, but I knew Lu would be back soon. I also felt she was stronger than any of us had ever realized.
14.
There was silence in the car as we crossed the Boston University Bridge over the Charles River into Cambridge. Matt had driven us by our sprawling old Alma Mater, a place that neither of us had ended up graduating from, a respected research institution I could not even believe I had ever been accepted to. Why had I even got in? I couldn’t remember now, but it was possible a teacher of mine knew somebody and pulled a few strings. It had all been a waste, anyway, even though I’d met Matt.
I glanced at his profile. He couldn’t possibly stay with me. This would all end in a few days, I was sure of it. The more I told my family about him, the more we became a “thing,” the less I believed in it. The better he was to me, the uneasier I felt.
Everything that had happened over the last few days was swarming in my head. I was tempted to ask Matt to pull over so I could smoke, but the likelihood I would fall apart seemed high. I wished I had known the truth before. It hadn’t benefited me, living a lie. I didn’t think it had really protected me at all.
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