Sticky Kisses

by Greg Johnson

  “Move over, honey,” he said thickly. His throat had tightened, but he knew he would not cry. These days, he rarely cried. Abby shifted to make room for him, and he cuddled against her, wrapping her snugly in his arms. She had stopped trembling. Her entire body went limp, yielding to his.

  She said something—a long, drawn-out “Oh…,” scarcely audible. He pulled her closer.

  The dogs, who had watched all this with an alert, puzzled look, understood that Thom and Abby had settled, and they began their ritual circling into napping position, Mitzi squeezing between Thom and Abby while Chloe burrowed, with a little sigh, into the crook of Thorn’s bent legs. Then everything was quiet. He hadn’t felt Abby’s slender arms circling his waist, but now he was aware of them and of the gentle rise and fall of her chest against his. Though fully clothed, they must have resembled, from a distance, spent lovers, or else victims of some accidental catastrophe that had flung their lifeless bodies indissolubly together. Thom opened his mouth to speak, to reassure her of something, but his mind seemed to darken with exhaustion, or capitulation, thinking groggily that he was content simply to lie here with Abby, their bodies entwined, the top of her head nestled just beneath his chin. The thought soothed him, and finally they fell asleep that way.

  The next morning, they fought bitterly.

  Since he had no appointments until one o’clock, he’d suggested they take the dogs for a walk through Piedmont Park. Perfect fall weather had arrived—a crisp blue vault of sky; brisk, bracing air; crunching leaves underfoot along the snaking paths through the park. Last night they’d had a quiet dinner at Nino’s, one of his favorite Italian places, and had talked of stray, safe subjects. The Atlanta real estate market. The city’s insanity over the Olympics in ‘96. Abby’s thoughts about applying to Penn and getting her doctorate, moving into university teaching. They’d come home and retired early, and this morning he’d wakened optimistic and full of energy. Abby had seemed receptive to his plans, but once they’d gotten to the park—both of them led along straight-armed as Mitzi and Chloe raced ahead—Thom had sensed that same fatigue edged with sullenness he’d noticed when Abby exited the plane. Running out of things to talk about, he’d started reminiscing about the past. Later he supposed that was his big mistake.

  They’d stopped to rest on a bench near the bandstand. They were far enough from the street that Thom unfastened the dogs’ leashes and let them cavort among the leaves—they never strayed far—and while Thom and Abby sat watching them, he told his sister more about Carter, whom she had so clearly liked. Before coming to the park, Thom had driven her around a bit, showing her some of the new lofts and condo conversions in midtown. Cruising along Peachtree, talking busily, he’d suddenly confronted Crawford Long Hospital, where Carter had stayed recently and where Roy had died. Usually he detoured around it, or glanced the other way, but this morning it had sneaked up on him. Briefly he’d felt that old, familiar caving sensation in his chest, his stomach. So Thom told his sister about the hospital and the times Carter had been there. Sitting on this park bench with the leaves swirling about their feet Thom found the thought of the hospital, which was one of the undeniable landmarks in his emotional universe, a bit easier to handle.

  “I hope he gets past this rough spot,” Thom said, “without having to go back. Each time he goes in, we all wonder if it’s the last time.”

  Abby shook her head, sadly; her gaze was focused on the other side of the path, where Mitzi and Chloe had been diverted by something underneath a laurel shrub. They resembled a pair of whispering conspirators.

  “Poor guy,” Abby said. “I hope so, too.”

  “A few of my friends have died there—including Roy, of course. You remember him.”

  She glanced aside, but didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Roy. Of course, I remember…”

  Thom laughed, self-consciously. “He really liked you, did you know that? Said if he were straight, he’d date you instead, so he was bound to marry into the family. One way or the other.”

  Abby gave a small, polite smile, but it vanished quickly.

  “He always felt Mom didn’t like him, though. It’s funny, the first time we visited, on the way home he said, ‘Thom, your mother is so Southern.’ You know how she would get when she was uncomfortable with someone—so ultra-polite. I think she even affected a Georgia drawl, without quite realizing it.”

  “Did she?” Abby said, vaguely.

  “Anyway, I told him she wasn’t a Southerner, but she could have played one on TV.”

  He laughed again. The dogs had started digging frantically underneath the bush, so Thom called out to them. “Mitzi, Chloe, stop that! You’re not supposed to dig up the park!”

  Mitzi glanced over her shoulder briefly, but they both ignored him and kept digging.

  He said, “I guess she never really came to terms with it, did she?”

  A short pause. “It?”

  “You know. Having a queer son.”

  He saw a small flinching movement in her face.

  She said, “I wouldn’t know, Thom. We just don’t talk about that.” He detected a note of sadness in her voice; or imagined he did.

  He tried his casual laugh, but this time it sounded more like a hiccup.

  “I guess that was our problem. We were such typical, white-bread Southerners. Incessant talking, but never about anything significant. Like who we were. Like what we felt.”

  Abby fixed him with a brief, pointed look. “It’s interesting that you keep using the past tense.”

  He smiled. “Force of habit, I guess. It has been a long while.”

  Abby bent forward and clapped her hands. “Mitzi, Chloe!” To Thorn’s surprise, the dogs looked up, both with reddish dirt on their noses, and after a second’s hesitation first Mitzi, then Chloe came racing back to the bench. Resting on their haunches, they sat patiently while Abby extracted a tissue from her pocket, wetted it with her tongue, and bent down to wipe the dirt off their noses. “Good girls,” she cooed, “such good little girls…”

  “I guess my friends have become like family in a way,” Thom said, watching fondly. “What about you? Have you made any close friends there? The people you teach with, or—”

  “You still have a family, you know,” she said. “Whether you acknowledge us or not.”

  She had straightened, her backbone stiff as a rod, while the dogs stared upward with longing in their eyes.

  “Hey, I wasn’t denying that. I just meant, in everyday life…” He broke off, not sure what he meant.

  She brushed at her knees, wearily. “Since you and I ended up not having kids, our little threesome is all we’ve got, Thom. Do you ever think about that?”

  The note of contempt in her voice angered him.

  “Now who’s talking in the past tense? We’re still in our thirties, so how have we ‘ended up’ without kids? You could still have them, and I’ve thought about—about adopting. I’m not in a relationship right now, but—”

  “Adopt a child? You?” She laughed angrily.

  “A lot of gay couples adopt,” he said. “Even single people. In fact, there’s a very nice lesbian, right in my complex—”

  “Why are you changing the subject?” she said. “You’re not comfortable with family matters, are you?”

  He tasted that odd phrase on his tongue, family matters; the taste wasn’t pleasant. Neither was the dull throb of anger in his chest.

  “I might have expected this from Mom,” he muttered. “But not from you.”

  “Mom is almost seventy,” Abby said, sharply. “She’s not likely to change. But we—”

  “She never acknowledged that I was a separate person, with my own life,” he said. “Never.”

  Thom hated the whining sound of his voice, but at once he felt better. He hadn’t said these simple words aloud to another person, and he understood he’d needed to say them.

  “You should take that up with her,” Abby said.

  “That would be a productive co
nversation, wouldn’t it?” He allowed himself a brief, skeptical laugh.

  Abby stood, brushing her hands as though ridding herself of him. Thom struggled to his feet, feeling vague and out of focus in the face of her taut fury. Her skin had flushed in the brisk wind, but the tip of her nose looked waxen, an unhealthy white. Her eyes had narrowed in disdain, fixing him as if patiently awaiting the next childish thing he might say.

  “Abby—”

  “Listen, I want to visit your friends, I want to know about your life,” she said. “That’s one reason I’m here. But when we get back to your place, I also want you to call and make your flight reservation for next Sunday, because when that plane lands, Mom is expecting to see both of us, not just me. You owe her that.”

  He tried to smile. “I’ve thought about this a lot, really. Please give me some credit. I’ve played out the whole scenario in my mind a hundred times. I know I’d get up there, and she’d start talking not to me but to some fantasy son she still has lodged inside her head. I can’t play that role anymore, Abby. I can’t be dishonest about my life just to please somebody. I don’t owe her that.”

  “All right, try this. You owe me that. I’m the one who consoles her every Mother’s day when you don’t call. And on her birthday and Daddy’s birthday. And their anniversary. I’m the one who drives her to mass and sits through those deadly-dull Sunday dinners at Aunt Millie’s. You can’t imagine what Thanksgiving is like, and don’t ask about Christmas.”

  He sat there, his stomach roiling with guilt and resentment, knowing he couldn’t fight back. After all, he was the evil child who had been banished from his own father’s funeral, the child who hadn’t phoned his mother in over four years. He said pettishly, “You’ve done a lot for Mom, I’m sure she appreciates it. But really, Abby, your halo is showing.”

  She went pale; she turned and stalked off. Taken off guard, he glanced around for the dogs, but at that moment a hopping bird had caught their attention, and they’d raced in the opposite direction toward the street. He lunged toward them, but the need to placate Abby made him stop and rush back the other way. After a few strides he stopped altogether, feeling absurd, as if performing some comic routine from a silent movie. He cupped both hands to his mouth and shouted the dogs’ names at the top of his voice. Hearing its note of urgency, they stopped in their tracks, turned and stared with their heads cocked, then tore back toward him. Or rather they chased him, as he chased after Abby. He caught up with her near the gate on Piedmont Avenue, where it appeared she was about to take off down the sidewalk, though they’d left Thorn’s car on tenth Street on the other side of the park. He took hold of her wrist, and she stopped, her frail arm tense as a bowstring.

  “Come on, I’m sorry,” he said.

  The dogs had reached him and were clawing at his pants legs for attention; he reached down to them with vague petting motions but kept his desperate gaze fixed on Abby.

  He added, “I’ll think about it, OK? About flying to Philly with you, I mean. I just hate the idea of going back and—and pretending. Doing the whole prodigal son routine when I don’t feel it….” He paused. “I hate being dishonest.”

  She turned to face him, eyes brimming with tears. “I need help with her, Thom. You don’t know how—how difficult she’s gotten. She’ll get this obsessive focus on something, usually something so stupid and minor, and talk about it day after day. I feel…sometimes it’s like I’m choking, suffocating…”

  She stopped, taking deep, wheezing gulps of air. He had the sudden memory of Carter on the sofa yesterday, bent double in the effort to breathe.

  He thought clearly: I’m not going back. And you’re not either. You’re not getting on that plane.

  But he said, “Don’t worry. Just try to relax, OK? Here’s this beautiful fall morning, so why don’t we just enjoy it and talk about all this in a couple of days? Tell you what, I’ll cancel my appointments for this afternoon and we’ll…”

  He came up with a litany of suggestions, his mind racing in the hope of pleasing her, soothing her, and to his relief she nodded. They walked for another half hour, their pace brisker as they returned to safe topics, their cheeks glowing in the chilly air. A couple of times Mitzi, always the first to tire when Thom brought the dogs to the park, stopped in the middle of the path, refusing to take another step. Thom bent to pick her up, carrying her for a few minutes until a cawing blue jay or a squirrel scuttling through the leaves caught her attention, and she’d squirm to get down again. Abby’s mood had lightened, and every few minutes she would banter with the dogs as they trotted along, using baby talk with them, which touched and amused Thom. As they neared the car, she seemed not only willing but excited about Thorn’s improvised plans for the rest of the day, the rest of the week.

  Thorn’s relief was short-lived. By the time they drove home, he’d begun affecting a lightheartedness he didn’t feel. Her accusations had stung, and his heart writhed in guilt as he recalled those horrible last months of their father’s dying. These past few years he’d indulged in so much self-flagellation over that brief, chaotic period in his life that he’d finally decided enough was enough; he’d declared himself purged and had become reasonably comfortable with the self-serving conviction that he’d suffered as much as anyone. But that hardly laid the memories to rest, or the guilt, or the lingering resentment that could start churning so quickly if he allowed himself to think, to remember.

  Though he tried to joke about the matter with his friends, he’d never forgiven his mother for suggesting that he had hastened his father’s death. Of course, she’d seized on the coincidence: only a few weeks after Thorn’s coming out, his father began experiencing vertigo and uncharacteristic mood swings and eerie, intermittent headaches at the base of his skull. Thom had wanted to protest to his mother that he had in fact put off telling his parents throughout his twenties—he had come out to himself in high school, to Abby the night before he went off to college—but that it was her own volatile temperament and his disinclination to make waves that had kept him quiet.

  As he’d tried to explain to Abby, he’d endured years of chafing at the sense of confinement, the awkwardness and dishonesty of the old-fashioned “double life” that had never suited him. By the time he’d stumbled out of the closet, he was no longer in sync with the times. Clinton was president, gay movies were box office hits, the talk shows Lucille watched religiously every morning decried homophobia with a shrill self-righteousness that Thom found almost unpleasant. Yet he’d lingered in the closet, hesitating. During the aftermath of Roy’s death, he’d vowed that he’d come out to his parents before his thirtieth birthday—it had then seemed comfortably distant—and he’d finally told them almost matter-of-factly, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, as they were digesting their leftover turkey and dressing out in the den.

  They were watching a Falcons game, and during a commercial Thom had reached shakily for the remote control, pressed the mute button, and asked for their attention. His parents sat on their overstuffed floral-print sofa, and from the other side of the room Thom had felt as though he were gazing at them across the Sahara. He and Abby were sitting together on a love seat that matched the sofa; afraid he might chicken out, he hadn’t told his sister today was the day, but it was obvious she knew. He’d felt her body stiffen, seeming to retreat to her side of the love seat.

  From their usual positions on the sofa, Thorn’s parents had stared at him: his lanky father half-sitting, half-reclining, his head propped by cushions, Lucille prim and erect on the other end. Lucille had paused in her needlepoint, a hobby that soothed her nerves.

  “Yes, honey?” she said blankly. Thorn’s father had offered the same polite, unreadable look he gave to anyone who requested his attention; he’d worked as a loan officer at a downtown bank for more than 30 years. Five or six seconds passed—easily the longest silence Thom had ever lived through—and then in a creaky, closeted voice, he told them.

  It was over before the commercial had
ended. (He would never forget: a Budweiser ad featuring male athletes flanked by bosomy blond models, three or four women for each man.) There was another silence, and Thom wondered whether he should press the mute button again, whether they might simply continue watching football as though nothing had happened.

  His mother’s reaction was predictable enough. She stood, white-faced; fled into the kitchen; returned immediately and dropped onto the sofa; burst into tears. What had affected Thom far more keenly than Lucille’s histrionics was his father’s reaction. As Thom delivered the news, his father had bravely maintained the open, nonjudgmental facial expression he must have used every day at the bank. The reserved Southern gentleman in George Sadler forbade so much as a creased brow, or a dubious shake of his head. Yet Thom had glimpsed something in his father’s gray, placid gaze. A clouding of the eyes, a look of closure that put Thom in mind of a bank vault, its massive gray steel door soundlessly and irrevocably sliding shut.

  Before Lucille, gape-mouthed in shock after Thorn’s announcement, had uttered a word, his father said quietly, “Thanks for telling us, Son,” his lips forming a brief, rueful smile. Then Lucille had started in, and for the next few minutes Thorn’s father had stared silently at the silent TV screen. The game had been scoreless, but Thom, his own eyes grazing the screen, noted that Detroit had just scored a touchdown. Atlanta was losing.

  Shortly after New Year’s his father had fallen ill, diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, and Thom had started spending more time around the house. His parents bought their place in 1965, the year after Thom was born, and until he left for college it was the only home he knew. A comfortable four-bedroom ranch in Sherwood Forest, an in-town neighborhood that had become unexpectedly trendy in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, his parents’ house was one of the few that had not changed hands, suffered a “complete renovation,” and been resold for an unbelievable sum. Thorn’s father had often insisted he would never sell; he remodeled only as needed—an updated kitchen when Thom was a teenager, a new roof several years later—and he liked to remark that when he left this house, it would be feet first.