“Oh. Are they still golfing?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you tell them when you left?”
“I said I’d just heard from the florist and there was a crisis with the cherry blossoms.”
“Sounds feasible. Well, come on. Get in.”
He climbed in beside her, and she smiled. Her cousin Jeff had met Toby ten years ago, right around the time that Kate got dumped by Todd. Jeff and Toby were in the process of falling in love, which under normal conditions involved selfishness, isolation, the sensation that there is no one on earth but just you two. But because she was hurting, they checked in on her all the time. They took her out for dinner on Saturday nights so she wouldn’t be home alone. They set her up on dates, their only criteria being that the guy in question was straight and single. Most of the setups were colossal failures, but still she appreciated the gesture.
After four years, she met Dan, and the four of them double-dated their way through New York City. When they decided to move upstate, one of her biggest reservations was being away from Toby and Jeff. But the guys came and visited every couple of months. They came for birthdays, and the Fourth of July, and summertime picnics in the mountains. After a decade, Toby was as precious to her as Jeff was.
“I know just the place,” she said.
The bar was an old log cabin dropped on the side of a country road. If you were driving fast enough, you’d never even notice it. Kate and Dan had gone there for a beer the day they drove out to see what would be their house for the first time. The bar had been nearly empty then, as it was now, besides the bartender and a couple of local guys sitting in the corner by a neon orange Bud Light sign in the shape of a cowboy hat, underscored with a neon George Strait signature. It was generally assumed that old-timers like them hated yuppies like her, who were taking over the valley.
“Two whiskeys,” she told the bartender. She turned to Toby. His eyes were blurry with tears. “Honey, what’s up?”
“My mother’s not coming after all.”
“What?”
“We knew this might happen, it’s fine. She told me a few days ago that she was praying on it, and she wasn’t sure it would be right for her to condone an act that she thinks will get me sent to hell. I talked to her last night, and she was going to come. But then we heard from her just after her flight should have left this morning, and she said she couldn’t bring herself to get on the plane.”
“I’m so sorry,” Kate said.
“It’s not that, really,” he said. “To be honest, it will be easier without her.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
He spoke softly and slowly, which was entirely unlike him. “How do I say this? Okay. Well, when I first moved to New York in the late eighties, whenever someone died of AIDS, the Times would say he was survived by his longtime companion so-and-so. Never his husband or his partner, just ‘his longtime companion.’ I remember talking about that with Jeff once, not long after we met. It pissed him off. He thought it diminished reality, and they should say something more meaningful, like partner or boyfriend. Whereas I just couldn’t believe that it was okay with everyone. That even if they were using euphemisms, they were admitting it right there in the newspaper and the world didn’t end.”
“Okay,” she said.
The drinks arrived and they each took a sip.
“As a kid, I thought I was sick, and I would never be normal. I looked at my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles. In high school, I saw people starting to pair off, and I knew I would be alone forever. Alone until I died, and then straight to hell. In New York, hell is a concept. Where I grew up, it’s a real place. Hell with a capital H, like a state, like Connecticut. I used to lie in my bed and think about that. Sometimes I even thought of committing suicide. Kids teased me mercilessly, sensing I was different, I guess.”
Kate put her arm around him.
“Our pastor was a man obsessed. Thinking back on it now, I’m pretty sure he was closeted. But he’d stand there in the pulpit and—forget war or crime or hunger or poverty—according to him, the worst thing on this earth was homosexuality. He’d talk about how all it was was the devil trying to tempt men into abhorrent behavior, wanting us to sin. He said anyone could be afflicted by these feelings, but you had to fight them off. For him, it seemed like the whole Bible came down to Sodom and Gomorrah: God hated gays, and destroyed entire cities to prove it. My father would become so enraged every time the topic came up. You’d think that the walls of our house were crawling with homos, he talked so much about it. I always thought it was funny, considering that he didn’t actually know any gay men. But then I realized—he suspected me all along. He used to hit me with a belt when I was really young, and of course I’d cry. What kid wouldn’t? He’d keep on hitting me until I stopped. He said it was the only way to make sure I didn’t turn out a sissy.”
“Jesus. What would your mother do?”
“Sometimes she’d cry herself and tell him to stop. But more often she just ignored it. Now, you have to realize that back then, I wasn’t the Toby you know and love. I was a good Christian boy, and I wanted to please my parents so bad, so I hated gays too. I thought they deserved to die, even though I knew on some level that I was one. Then when I was fifteen, these two guys in town were arrested for having sex in a car one night. By the next morning, everyone knew. One of them was just passing through, but the other was the son of the local dentist, a guy who went to church with my parents. The kid was twenty years old, and they shipped him off to some reprogramming institute in Florida to fix him. He came back a year later, married some poor girl, and they had two kids.”
“Holy shit,” Kate said. He had never told her any of this, and neither had her cousin. “Does Jeff know all this?”
Toby nodded. “When that guy got sent away, my father really went into a tailspin. On my sixteenth birthday, he tells me he’s taking me into the city for a steak dinner. I worshipped my father. So, even at sixteen years old when I probably should have thought of him as a total loser, I was so proud to have this special attention, you know?”
Kate nodded, downing her drink. She gestured to the bartender for two more. The guy was watching Cheers on a TV that hung overhead, which struck her as funny. She thought of pointing this out to Toby, but instead she just said, “Go on.”
“I get all dressed up, and my dad takes me to this steakhouse. He ordered so much liquor—bourbon and tequila and shots of vodka, we drank it all. This was back when the legal drinking age was eighteen. I could pass, but it was still so forbidden. Out drinking with my dad! The whole time I’m thinking, Wow, the old man finally sees me as his equal. Toward the end of the meal, he starts in with faggots this and faggots that. I remember he said that queers should be shot on sight. I didn’t think much of it, because that was my dad. After we left the restaurant, I headed for the car. But my dad said, ‘No, no, we’re going this way.’ I had no idea where he was taking me. I could barely see straight. But I didn’t put up a fight. We walked maybe fifteen, twenty blocks, until we came to this run-down apartment complex. My dad buzzes one of the units and the door opens, and he says to me, ‘I’ll be right back.’ A few minutes later, he comes out and says, ‘She’s all paid for. I’ll wait here.’ ”
Kate felt her stomach fall to the floor, like she was riding a roller-coaster, soaring free-fall down the highest hill. “Your dad ordered you a prostitute?”
He nodded.
“What did you do?”
“I was terrified. I think I was crying. I had never even kissed anyone before, and the whole thing was so confusing. Sex before marriage was a sin, too, after all. The woman was probably in her late thirties, and the look on her face when I came in was just pure shock. I’m wondering how my dad even knows this person, and she’s probably wondering why the hell he sent me. Or maybe she knew.”
“Did you have sex with her?” Kate said.
He nodded. “I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t. Then m
y father and I drove home and neither of us said a word. We never mentioned it again.”
“And this was supposed to turn you straight?” she asked.
He laughed in disbelief. “Apparently. After that, I went to a Christian college for a couple years, as you know, and I dated a few girls, never for longer than a month or so. I made a point of bringing them home after just a few dates, as a way to show my parents that I was normal. But mostly, I was alone. I was the loneliest person alive. I moved to New York at nineteen, and it saved me. I really don’t think that’s an exaggeration. New York saved me. Oh Lord, I was so annoying. I was the full clichéd package—sleeping around, dancing all night in the gay clubs, wearing these skintight t-shirts. Letting loose in the candy store, as they used to say. It was an exaggeration, but the reason for it was that the real me had been pushed down, suffocated, for all that time. Suddenly, he was free. I’ve always felt that I’ve had two lives—before New York, and after. Two separate Tobys. But I haven’t recovered from before, that’s what I’m realizing now.”
“I’m not sure we ever recover from our childhoods,” Kate said. “We just respond to them.”
“I kept telling Jeff I didn’t want a big wedding, but you know how carried away he gets. And it’s his day, too. I wanted him to have it. But all of this, it’s almost too good. When I see those bigots on TV talking about how same-sex marriage is just a slippery slope to polygamy, or it’s bad for kids, or whatever, I have the same response I used to have when the Times would write about the longtime companions. I just can’t believe they’re even talking about same-sex marriage on TV. That’s progress!”
“Yes!” she said. “So what’s the problem then, love? Isn’t this all good stuff?”
“Yes. But. It’s been a long time since I went to church and I really thought I was over it. But there’s still this faint voice in my head saying that what I’m doing is wrong. Of course, I knew my father wouldn’t be here today. And I’d prepared for the possibility that my mother wouldn’t either. But somehow, getting that call from her earlier, it hit me in a different way. It mattered to me, more than I wanted to admit. There’s been so much progress, but if we went to my hometown in Alabama today and walked around holding hands, we’d be killed. Can we ever really be married when so many people don’t believe in it? There’s this self-loathing part of me that hears people defending traditional marriage and almost agrees with them. I can’t tell Jeff that because he’d just tell me I was being insane, and I know that I am, but how does that help me?”
“Toby. Today I met a woman who married a man in prison. They’ve never touched. He couldn’t even be present at the wedding. Are you telling me that’s traditional, because he has a penis and she has a vagina? More real than what you two have?”
He laughed from his belly, a deep, surprised, joyful sound that she loved. “Where the hell have you been hanging out?”
“The beauty parlor.”
“Ahh. I should have known.” He shook his head. “Thanks for meeting me. I feel a little better, just getting it out there.”
“Of course.”
“Jeff’s been so obsessed with making today perfect. But when you envision the perfect flowers and the perfect food and the perfect outdoor space and the perfect weather, you forget that you can’t rent the perfect family to go along with it. You’re stuck with the shitty old one you’ve already got.”
Kate took his hand. “I’m your family too, you know. And I’m letting my daughter dress up like a princess, just this once, even though it makes me want to vomit. And I have both May and Mona staying at my house for two nights. That’s how much I love you.”
He smiled. “I appreciate that, I do.”
She could feel the whiskey dulling the hard edges of her thoughts. She had an idea, which she knew was probably a bad one, but she went with it anyway.
“Do you want me to tell you something that will take your mind off what you’re thinking about?” she said.
“Yes please.”
“Okay, but realize that I’m only telling you because there’s no way you’ll be able to think about anything else once I say this.”
“Sounds juicy. Go on.”
“I lost one of your wedding rings.”
His eyes widened. “Of all the things I imagined you might say just then, that was definitely not one of them. You get an A plus for the element of surprise, I’ll give you that. You do realize Jeff is gonna have you killed.”
She felt so grateful that he was smiling. “You’re not mad?”
“Nah. It will turn up, right? Have you checked your coat pocket? Did you secretly try it on or something and then forget?”
“Ha. No. I had both rings in their boxes, in the bag from the jeweler, sitting in my kitchen. When I went to check this morning, one of the boxes was gone.”
“Did you dust for prints?”
“No, but I do have my suspicions.”
“Olivia, right?”
“Exactly.”
“I told Jeff we should have May’s kids in the wedding if we were having Ava. Just to be fair. But, you know—May. He didn’t want to deal with her.”
“I understand completely. Are you sure you’re not mad at me?”
“The rings mean a lot to Jeff,” he said. “Me, not so much. I wanted to just get something on Blue Nile and be done with it.”
“What’s Blue Nile?”
“This website where you can buy diamonds at a deep discount. Truth be told, I didn’t want to wear a diamond at all.”
“Good for you.”
“Not for any humane reason, just because I think they’re tacky.”
She laughed. “Oh.”
“There’s nothing special about them. Every woman at Denny’s wears one.”
“When’s the last time you went to Denny’s?”
He grinned. “Or wherever. And anyway, we’re men. I’ve never heard of a man wearing a diamond ring. But Jeff says it’s trendy. He says in five years every guy will want one.”
“Hmm.”
“You can get conflict-free diamonds now, you know,” he said. “There are mines in Canada. The diamonds come laser printed with a microscopic polar bear or a maple leaf, or something.”
“Yeah, but I’ve heard that even some of the Canadian mines are owned by De Beers,” she said.
“Oh. Well, there are man-made diamonds, too. They make them in an oven with microwaves. There’s even a company that can somehow create a diamond from a dead person’s cremated ashes.”
“That’s the creepiest thing I have ever heard.”
“I know! Jeff really had his heart set on us designing our own rings, so ultimately that’s what we did. He wanted them to be unique.”
Kate nodded. She wished they could change the subject.
“Are you okay?” Toby asked.
“Yes, fine. Kind of tipsy.”
“No, I mean in general. I’ve wanted to ask you for a while. You’ve seemed different. At first I thought it was just an adjustment thing—moving up here and all—but now I’m not so sure.”
“I love it here,” she said. “And of course I love Dan and Ava. But I do feel kind of lost. I miss my job. I feel like I’ve turned my back on all the causes I cared about.”
“Do you want to move back to Brooklyn?”
“Part of me does, but Dan’s so much happier here.”
She had always been surprised when people left New York. When she still lived there, her friends talked all the time about how much better life would be someplace else. She had jumped right into these conversations: In Austin, you would never have to deal with cold weather again! You could rent a house for a dollar! In Portland, Maine, you could wake up and see the ocean every morning!
But when someone stopped talking about leaving and actually left, it never seemed right to her. Yes, New York was a pain in the ass, but it was also New York. She suspected that visiting other places as a New Yorker was entirely different than becoming a resident of those places, and ca
lling them home. Her former boss lived in horse country in New Jersey and commuted in each day. She had once told Kate that there would be a moment when she’d had enough. Kate waited for it. A mentally ill homeless man shoved her on the sidewalk when she was newly pregnant. She caught herself before she fell, but it was a jarring incident, and for a few days after, she wondered: Is this it? Am I done with New York? But then she moved on with her life, same as ever. A year before that, on a sweltering August afternoon, she had seen a teenage girl pass out onto the subway tracks and get run over by the 6 train. Kate’s legs gave out beneath her. Later, at home, she cried to Dan, “I’m done. I can’t take living on top of all these people and sharing all their pain.” But by the next morning her tears were dry and she rode the train as usual.
Ultimately, it wasn’t her moment that decided things. Dan wanted another baby. He wanted trees and meadows and space. And he wanted their life together to be easier than it was in Brooklyn. He wanted her to be less consumed by tragedy, and more by simple pleasures. Kate wanted it too, in theory, but sometimes she thought she wasn’t made to be at peace. She would always seek out the strife—there would always be newspapers and websites to fill the gaps in her knowledge.
“Can’t you talk to Dan about it?” Toby said now. “You two are the closest couple I know, you can say anything to him.”
“It’s not that,” she said. She knew that she could tell Dan exactly what she wanted, and perhaps he’d even help her find a way to make it work. But it differed so much from his own desires. One of them would have to sacrifice. This was the hardest part about a marriage, or a relationship like theirs: your hopes and your fears and your happiness hinged on someone else. When you stopped thinking that they ought to, you ended up like her parents, bitter and angry and apart.
“I love Dan, but you’ve never been the type to let other people’s expectations dictate the terms,” Toby said. “Don’t start now.”
She smiled.
“It’s 2012,” he went on. “Can’t you telecommute or go into the city a couple of days a week once Ava starts school, or something? I know how much you loved that job. Don’t you think you might have given up on it a little too soon?”
The Engagements Page 34