by Edmund White
“But we don’t really need it,” I said.
“Let’s get it.”
In the distance two gray-mauve clouds, like the huge rectangular sails of caravels, hung darkly, becalmed, immanent, behind mist. Kevin’s lips were blue and he was covered with goose bumps as he vaulted up on to the dock. His legs were smooth except for the first signs of hair above his ankles (the first place an old man’s legs go bald). He dried himself and put on a shirt. We took the outboard to the village. I went into the store with him, though I made him ask for the Vaseline. I was blushing and couldn’t raise my eyes. He pulled it off without a trace of guilt, even asked to see the medium-size jar before settling for the small one. Outside, a film of oil opalesced on the water under a great axle of red light rolling across the sky from azimuth to zenith. That little round jar of grease would be a clue for my father or his to find. Worse, it was the application of method to sex, the outward betrayal of what I wanted to consider love, the inward state. At last the sun went down and the lake seemed colder and bigger and the two of us seemed bereft.
*
That night the two families, all of us, went out to dinner at a restaurant thirty miles away, a place where the overweight ate iceberg lettuce under a dressing of ketchup and mayonnaise, steaks under A.1. Sauce, feed corn under butter, ice cream under chocolate, where a man wearing a black toupee and a madras sports jacket bounced merrily up and down an electric organ while a frisky couple lunged and dipped before him in cloudy recollections of ancient dance steps. The waitress was at once buddy (“How we doing here?”) and temptress (“C’mon, go on”). She had meticulously carded bronze hair, an exuberant hankie exploding above a name tag (“Susie”), a patient smile and, hanging on a chain, lunettes that she wore only when writing an order or totaling the check. In one corner a colorful canopy hung over a round bar, just so the whole place could be called “The Big Top.” No one was sitting at the bar. On its tiered glass shelves, lit from below, stood rank after rank of liquor bottles, soldiers at attention and glowing with fiery spirits from within. Everything smelled of the kerosene heater and the pine-scented Airwick wafting out of the toilets. Except for the circus theme, the dominant motif seemed to be hunting, demonstrated by the rifles and glassy-eyed, dusty-antlered deer heads on the wall.
The place was smelly and oppressive, but the grown-ups, their tongues loosened by martinis, settled in for a long stay. The two women, seated next to each other, talked Paris fashions and assured each other no one would wear the Parachute. Mr. Cork, more Republican than the republic, was discerning a Communist conspiracy in every national mishap. I could see my father wasn’t convinced, least of all by Mr. Cork’s ardor; Dad took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes and nodded rhythmically through the harangue, his polite way of shielding himself from a loudmouth, of immigrating inward. Little Peter had turned a celery stalk from the relish tray into an Indian canoe and Kevin was sniping at it from the chalky promontory of a flout-dusted dinner roll; the massacre was carried out in whispered sound effects. “Kevin O’Malley Cork, how many times must I tell you not to play with your food!” “Aw, Maw.”
On and on the meal devolved. The organist’s pale forehead glittering under his black wig, his teeth bared, he moved from a pathetic “Now Is the Hour” with copious vibrato into a “Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah” with a Latin beat. The waitress tempted everyone with pie – stewed apples and cinnamon enclosed in envelopes of pastry that looked like pressed Leatherette, each wedge, of course, à la mode. Coffee for the grown-ups, more milk for the kids. The bill. The argument over it. The change. The second cigar. The mints. The toothpicks. The crème de menthe frappés and the B and B’s. More coffee. The tip. “Good night, folks. Hurry back!” Another tip for the organist, who nods grateful acknowledgment while staying right in there with “Kitten on the Keys.”
All seven of us squeezed into my father’s Cadillac and rolled off into a chilly night gray-blue and streaked with the smell of burning wood. My stepmother, Mrs. Cork and Kevin and I were in the back seat; Peter was soon sleeping on his father’s shoulder up front, as my father drove. The dinner had left me bleak with rage. Something (books, perhaps) had given me a quite different idea of how people should talk and feed. I entertained fancy ideas about elegant behavior and cuisine and friendship. When I grew up I would always be frank, loving and generous. We’d feast on iced grapes and wine; we’d talk till dawn about the heart and listen to music. I don’t belong here, I shouted at them silently. I wanted to run through surf or speed off with a brilliant blond in a convertible or rhapsodize on a grand piano somewhere in Europe. Or I wanted the white and gold doors to open as my loving, true but not-yet-found friends came toward me, their gently smiling faces lit from below by candles on the cake. This longing for lovers and friends was so full within me that it could spill over at any provocation – from listening to my own piano rendition of a waltz, from looking at a reproduction of two lovers in kimonos and tall clogs under an umbrella shielding them from slanted lines of snow or from sensing a change of seasons (the first smell of spring in winter, say).
Once, when I was Kevin’s age, I’d wanted my father to love me and take me away. I had sat night after night outside his bedroom door in the dark, crazy with fantasies of seducing him, eloping with him, covering him with kisses as we shot through space against a night field flowered with stars. But now I hated him and felt he was what I must run away from. To be sure, had he pulled the car off the highway right now and turned to say he loved me, I would have taken his hand and walked with him away from the stunned vehicle that creaked as it cooled, our only spoor the sparks flying from Dad’s cigar.
Kevin took my hand. He was sitting next to me in the dark. I had scooted forward on the cushion to give the others more room. Now our linked hands were concealed between his leg and mine. Just as I’d almost given up on him with his Vaseline, he placed that hot hand in mine. I could feel the calloused pads on his palm where he’d gripped the bat. Outside, the half-moon sped through the tall pines, spilled out across a glimpse of water, hid behind a billboard, twinkled faintly in the windows of a train, one window still lit and framing the face of a woman crowned by white hair. Dogs barked, then stopped as the trees came quicker and quicker and pushed closer to the winding road. Only here and there could a house light be seen. Now none. We were in the deep forest. The change from scattered farms to dense trees felt like an entry into something chilled and holy, a packed congregation of robed and mitered men whose form of worship is to wait in a tense, century-long silence. Kevin had made me very happy – a gleeful, spiteful happiness. Here we were, right under the noses of these boring old grown-ups, and we were two guys holding hands. Maybe I wouldn’t have to run away. Maybe I could live here among them, act normal, go through the paces – all the while holding the hand of this wonderful kid.
Back in the basement, we three undressed under the glaring Ping-Pong light. Peter stumbled out of his clothes, which he left in a puddle on the floor. His shoulders were bony, his waist tiny, his penis a pale blue snail peeping up out of its rounded shell. He mumbled something about the cold sheets and turned his face to the wall. Kevin and I, at either end of the long, narrow room, undressed more deliberately, said nothing and scarcely looked at each other. Lights out. Then the long wait for Peter’s breathing to slow and thicken. The silence was thoughtful, like a pulse heard in an ear pressed to the mattress. Peter said, “Because I don’t want to . . . squirrel . . . yeah, but you . . .” and was gone. Still Kevin waited, and I feared he too had gone to sleep. But no, here he was, floating toward me, the ghost T-shirt on his torso browner from today’s sun. With the Vaseline jar in hand. The cold jelly with its light medicinal odor, which warms quickly to body temperature. As I went in him, he said straight out, as clear as a bell, “That feels really great.” It had never occurred to me before that sex between two men can please both of them at the same time.
*
The next afternoon my father, painfully patient but haggard from these un
usual daytime hours, took us kids water-skiing. Again I walked on the lacquered deck, pushing us away from the dock with the long pole, my movements stiff, almost arthritic with fright. Again my father shouted orders that betrayed his own anxiety: “Kids, I smell something burning. The engine’s on fire! Goddamn it, quick, young fellow, open those doors.” “Nothing, sir, everything’s fine.” “You sure?” “Yes sir. Positive.” “Sure?” “Yes.” I was clinging to the windshield with claws of fear – and I caught a glimpse of Kevin and Peter smirking at each other. They thought my father and I were fools.
Skiing off the boat wasn’t simple. The velocity of such a massive, powerful vessel almost pulled your arms out of your sockets. The wake fanning out on either side of you once you were aloft seemed mountainous and to jump over it fool-hardy, if not suicidal. Kevin, of course, handled it all beautifully, though he’d never skied before. Soon he was clowning around and lifting first one ski and then the other, and he raced over the wake from side to side with great speed. I was in the bucket seat watching him. If we lost him I was supposed to signal Peter up ahead, who was to relay the message to the captain – but Kevin fell only once. We went past the diving raft and its company of teenage swimmers; I was pleased that our boat was pulling someone as athletic as Kevin. In our family the virtues were all invisible to a stranger’s eye. My stepmother’s social eminence, my dad’s dough – they couldn’t be seen. But Kevin’s body as he crouched and jumped over the wake, that could be seen. When at last he became tired he waited till we went past our house and then released the rope and slowly sank ten paces from our dock.
That night he came to my bed again, but I irritated him by trying to kiss him. “I don’t go for that,” he said brusquely, though later, when we stood together in the maid’s half-bathroom washing up, he looked at me with an expression that could have been weariness or tenderness, I couldn’t tell. In the morning he went swimming with his father. I watched the two of them joking with each other. Kevin gave his father a hand and pulled him up on the deck. They were obviously friends, and I felt all the more rebuffed.
That afternoon Peter, Kevin and I went fishing in the little outboard. The weather was hot, muggy, clouded over, and we waited in vain for a bite. We’d dropped anchor in a marsh where hollow reeds surrounded us and scratched the metal sides of the boat. I was sweating freely. Sweat stung my right eye. A mosquito spoke in my ear. The smell of gasoline from the engine (tilted up out of the shallow water) refused to lift and float away. The boys were threatening each other with dead worms out of the bait jar and Peter’s calls and pounding feet had scared off every fish in the lake. When I asked them to sit still, they gave each other that same smirk and started mocking me, repeating my words, their voices sliding up and down the scale, “You could be more considerate.” After a while the joke wore thin and they moved on to something else. Somehow – but at what precise moment? – I had shown I was a sissy; I replayed a moment here, a moment there of the past days, in an attempt to locate the exact instant when I’d betrayed myself. We motored back over the glassy, steaming lake; everything was colorless and hot and drained of immediacy. In such a listless, enfeebled world the whine of the motor seemed particularly cruel, like a scar on the void. I went for a walk by myself.
I plodded up and down the hills on the narrow road that passed the backs of cottages, which turned their faces to the lake. An old car full of black maids sputtered past. It was Wednesday evening; tomorrow was their day off. Tonight they’d stay at a Negro resort twenty miles away and dance and laugh far into the night, eat ribs, wear gowns, talk louder and laugh harder than they could the rest of the week in the staid houses where they served. Most of the time they were exiled, dispersed into the alien population; only once a week did the authorities allow the tribe to reconvene. They were exuberant people forced to douse their merry flames and maintain just the palest pilot light. At that moment I really believed I, too, was exuberant and merry by nature, had I the chance to show it.
In the silence that ebbed in behind the departing car, the air was filled with the one-note chant of crickets. Their song seemed like the heartbeat of loneliness, a beat that sang up and down the wires of my veins. I was desolate. I toyed again with the idea of becoming a general. I wanted power so badly that I had convinced myself I already had too much of it, that I was an evil schemer who might destroy everyone around me through the poison seeping out of my pores. I was appalled by my own majesty. I wanted someone to betray.
Kevin and his family stayed on three more days. Mr. Cork became incoherent with drink one night and cracked the banister as he reeled up to bed. Mrs. Cork exploded the next morning and told my stepmother she loathed eggs “swimming in grease.” Katy, the Hungarian cook, locked herself in her room and emerged red-eyed and sniffling two hours later. Kevin and Mrs. Cork argued with each other, or rather she nagged him and he ridiculed her; when they made up, their embrace was shockingly intimate – prolonged, wordless nuzzling. On a rainy afternoon the boys rough-housed until Peter overturned the table and smashed one of the hand-painted tiles set into the top; his parents seemed almost indifferent to the damage and allowed the pushing and shoving to continue. Mrs. Cork’s way of conspicuously ignoring the pandemonium was to vocalize, full voice. Each night Kevin came to my bed, though now I no longer elaborated daydreams of running away with him. I was a little bit afraid of him; now that he knew I was a sissy, he could make fun of me whenever he chose to. Who knew what he’d do? After witnessing his vituperation against his mother, followed by the weird nuzzling, I could not continue to think of him as the boy next door. The last night I tried kissing him again, but he turned his head away.
On the afternoon they left, Mrs. Cork flushed a deep, indignant red and chased Kevin halfway up the stairs. He crouched and shouted, his face contorted, “You scumbag, you old scumbag,” and pushed her down the stairs. My father was furious. He lifted the woman from the floor and said to Kevin, “I think you’ve done enough for one day, young man.” Mr. Cork, not completely sober, kept counting the pieces of luggage. He pretended he hadn’t noticed the outbreak. His wife took on an injured silence as though in heavy mourning. She barely said good-bye to us. But once she had gone through the door and was on the steps to the garage, I saw her flash a crooked little smile at her son. He rushed into her open arms and they nuzzled and stroked each other.
At last they were gone. My father and stepmother were lighthearted with relief, as was I. My stepmother, ever fastidious had found them almost savagely dirty and cited lots of evidence, beginning with pint bottles under the bed and ending with the used ear swabs smoldering in the bathroom ashtray. My father said they were all “screwballs” and their boys more fit for a reformatory than a house. And that Cork fellow talked too much about Commies, and drank too much and knew too little and seemed unstable; Dad thought Cork would not do well in business – nor did he, as it turned out. I said the sons struck me as “babyish.” My stepmother apologized to Katy for the rude guests and reported back to us that they had not left Katy a tip; my father recompensed her for the extra bother she’d been put to.
Then we all rushed into solitude, my stepmother and I to our books and Dad to his puttering. My father now seemed to like me better. I might not be the son he thought he wanted, but I was what he deserved – someone patient, appreciative, as addicted to books as he was to work, as isolated by my loneliness as he was by his misanthropy, someone he could speak to only in the best if least direct way through the recorded concert that filled the house deep into the night, even until dawn.
I was moved back into my room. We ate very late and gave ourselves to the sonorous, spacious night. My father did desk work. We were three dreamers, each musing happily in a different cubicle. The sound of the calculating machine, jumping on its metal wheels. The aroma of burning pine logs. The remarkable fairness and good humor with which the piano and clarinet took turns singing the melody. At last, the sweet smell of the pipe. My father was in the basement, which had been r
estored to his dog. Through the air filter I could hear him: “What is it, Old Boy? Tell me. You can tell me.”
Then, unexpectedly, he invited me to join them for their walk. It was strangely chilly, the first reminder of autumn, and my father had put on a ridiculous blue cap with a bill and earflaps and a baggy tan car coat that zipped up the front. Wherever we stopped we were enveloped in a cloak of sweet smoke, like the disguised king and his favorite who’ve slipped out of the palace to visit the peasants’ fair. Nothing could hurry my father or Old Boy along. We stopped at every bush and every overflowing garbage can behind every silent, darkened cottage. We went all the way down to the deserted village: the store, the post office, the boat works. A speedboat, its bottom leprous and in need of sanding and painting, was turned upside down on trestles. A chain rattled against the flagpole in front of the post office. A woman wearing a nurse’s white cap drove past, the only car we’d seen.
We retraced our steps. As daybreak came closer, the birds began to twitter and the leaves on birches fluttered in the rising breeze. Down the sloped shore the lake slowly took on shape, then color. Behind a door an unseen dog yapped at us, and Old Boy became frantic with curiosity. “What is it? Tell me. You can tell me. What is it, Old Boy?”
As the sun, like life returning to a body, stole over the world, the beam from my father’s flashlight grew less and less distinct until it had been absorbed in the clarity of something that was new yet again.
TWO
When I was fourteen, the summer before I went to prep school, a year before I met Kevin, I worked for my father. He wanted me to learn the value of a dollar. I did work, I did learn and I earned enough to buy a hustler.