by Greg Johnson
The morning after Pace’s party, once he’d talked Abby into extending her visit, they’d gotten on the telephone—Thom in the kitchen, Abby in his bedroom—and broken the news to Lucille. She’d been so taken aback to hear Thorn’s voice at all (or so he imagined) that she hadn’t been prepared for what came next. As he’d promised Abby he would, he’d spoken first when Lucille answered.
“Mom? Hi, Mom. It’s good to hear your voice.”
Silence.
“Mom, are you there?”
“I’m here. I’m just trying to think what to say.”
Thom laughed, and Abby said quickly, “I’m here too, Mom. On the extension.”
Another pause. “Are you still in Atlanta? Both of you?”
“We’re at my place,” Thom said. “We just thought we’d give you a call, and…but how are you doing? You sound good.”
It wasn’t true. She sounded faraway and vulnerable, and already he knew it had been a mistake for him and Abby to call together; later, their mother would claim her children had blindsided her, two against one.
But first came a touching surprise. Lucille said, “I guess I’m the one who should be asking that. How are you feeling, Son?”
He said at once, “Oh, I’m feeling great, I have a terrific doctor and the medications don’t give me any problems. I’m totally asymptomatic and I—” He stopped. Why this rushing, urgent flood of words? He was protesting too much. He continued, in a chastened voice, “I’m fine. Really.”
“He looks well, too,” Abby said. “He looks wonderful, in fact.”
It was unusual for their mother to pause before speaking; he supposed these long silences were the measure of her confusion, her lack of a strategy. When she spoke, she sounded almost timid.
“Abby has lost some weight, don’t you think?”
“Maybe, but I’m fattening her up,” Thom said. “We’ve been eating out almost every night.”
“That’s good. We have brunch reservations, you know”—this time, there’d been no pause—“at the Four Seasons for tomorrow. Your plane lands around one, doesn’t it? So I made the reservation for two o’clock.”
This time, Thom and Abby were silent. After a moment, Abby said: “Thom?”
“Oh, OK. Um, Mom, I hope you’ll understand, but I’ve sort of talked Abby into staying down here a while longer. So we won’t be flying up tomorrow.”
He spoke slowly, deliberately, expecting she’d interrupt with a squawk of protest. But there was silence on the other end.
“In fact, we’ve decided to stay down here through the holidays. A friend of mine is sick, you see, and we thought it would be better—” He broke off, not sure himself what he meant. Better for whom?
Lucille said, hoarsely, “You’re not coming home? Not even for Christmas?”
Abby broke in, “But Thom has promised to come back with me, a day or two after New Year’s. My classes start on the fourth, you know, and he’s going to block out his calendar for the first half of January. He can make a nice long visit, and while I’m at school—”
“We’ve always spent Christmas together, honey,” Lucille said. “What would I tell Millicent? Her girls are coming, of course.”
Thom said abruptly, “Why don’t you fly down here, Mom?”
A rash, impulsive idea, he thought, wincing, knowing his mistake before the words were out; he should have discussed it with Abby first, of course. He paused, but she didn’t second his proposal. She stayed silent.
“Fly down there?” Lucille said, her tone vaguely puzzled as if this were a foreign phrase.
Abby said, “I don’t know if that would work. I’m not sure you’d like it here. Thorn’s condo is kind of small, and we spend most of the day visiting his friend in the hospital, and doing errands for him.”
Since this was not true, Thom understood that Abby didn’t want—very much didn’t want—their mother to visit; her vehemence surprised him even more than the white lie.
His mother and Abby chatted back and forth, debating the idea, finally deciding that Lucille should stay in Philadelphia, after all, while Thom stood there feeling useless, his shoulders slumped. Once they’d said their goodbyes, he sat on the bed for a few minutes, recovering. His mother hadn’t seemed angry, at least; she hadn’t exploded into rage, or burst into tears, as he’d feared she might. More than anything she’d seemed bewildered, unable to react.
Family relations were like a minefield, he’d thought. One misstep and your entire sense of self, the place you had found livable in your emotional universe, could explode off its axis, leaving you stranded in some airless, alien place. It was ten in the morning, a Saturday, yet he felt as if he’d just worked a twelve-hour day.
He felt a similar tiredness now, in Carter’s crowded hospital room. Chatting with Carter, the others had drawn closer to the bed, but Thom stayed back, leaning against a windowsill crammed with flower arrangements and balloons. As usual, Connie peppered the conversation with his well-turned quips and comic monologues, keeping everything light, making the others laugh—including Carter, who lacked the strength to laugh aloud but who squinched his eyes shut with pleasure at each joke—and Thom, enjoying his mood of morose self-pity, didn’t want to hinder them but didn’t quite want to join in, either. He kept an eye on Abby, who stood next to Connie on the far side of Carter’s bed, her eyes bright and smiling, her skin glowing, a different woman from the pale, shaken girl who’d come off the plane from Philadelphia three weeks ago. Since deciding to prolong her visit, she’d become more relaxed and buoyant, as though some private, pestering anxiety had dissolved, restoring the girl he remembered from high school—so smart and energetic, so attractive with her pert smile and shining eyes.
The “real” Abby, as he liked to think. She’d come back to him.
“And when you get out,” Connie was saying, “you’re coming to Key West with us, Carter Dawes. You are. We’ve made our plans at the last minute, to be sure, but I’ve been staying at Lighthouse Court once or twice a year for eons, and the manager—a lovely man who has a bit of a crush on me, I think—is bumping us to the head of the waiting list. He says there are always a few cancellations at the last minute. So we’ll get three of their little efficiencies, one for Warren and me, one for Thom and Abby, and one for you, Carter, and whoever you’d like to bring.” Connie’s hands went to his hips, elbows flung outward. “Now stop shaking your head. You are coming with us.”
Amused, Thom stayed silent. During yesterday’s ride to the hospital, the four of them had vaguely discussed going to Key West for Christmas, but in Connie’s imagination the trip had become a fait accompli. Thom doubted that Connie had phoned the Lighthouse Court; when Connie planned to do something, he often announced to others that the thing was done, which could cause complications if it could not be done, or if Connie later changed his mind. The others knew this, except for Abby. Thom saw the look of confusion in her face as Connie spoke confidently of the trip. Thom imagined how much more confused, and perhaps alarmed, she would be if she knew that Lighthouse Court was a guesthouse exclusively for gay men, who often lounged and cavorted nude on the sundecks and around the pool. The idea of Abby staying there was preposterous, but of course that hadn’t occurred to Connie.
Carter raised his head from the pillow, lifted his bony chin. His voice was a croaky whisper: “Won’t be up to it, but you guys send me a postcard, OK?” His head sagged back.
“Oh, by next week you’ll gadding about like one of Santa’s dwarves,” Connie insisted.
The others laughed. “Santa’s elves,” Warren said.
Connie wiggled the fingers of one hand in the air; the other held onto Carter’s. “Dwarves, elves, what’s the difference. They’re gay little creatures who get very busy and full of themselves at Christmas time, just like Carter’s going to.”
Carter, resting his eyes, tried to smile.
Connie was glancing around the room. “Everyone is still up for Key West, right? I don’t want anybody flak
ing out on me. Thom, since I’m doing the rooms, why don’t you make the plane reservations, OK? I mean, we are talking about Christmas here, so we’d better get cracking.” Keeping hold of Carter’s hand, he glanced toward Abby. “You do want to come, don’t you? Have you ever been to Key West?”
Abby said, “No, but I’ve always wanted to. I’ve heard the sunsets are wonderful.”
Thom smiled at his sister, perplexed. If she’d “always wanted” to visit Key West, it was certainly news to him.
“The sunsets are the least of it, believe me,” Connie said. “Some of my snobby friends say Key West has gotten overrun with tourists, but I think it’s still the most fabulous place on earth. People just enjoy themselves there, you know? Believe me, the Puritan work ethic never made it to Key West! Praise be.”
“You really would enjoy it, Abby,” Warren said. He often assumed the role as confirmer, or gentle denier, of Connie’s emphatic and sometimes outlandish assertions.
“I’m looking forward to it,” Abby said. “We are going, aren’t we, Thom?”
Startled, Thom looked up. He’d been watching the silent, unexpectedly moving tableau of Carter lying there with his eyes closed, his hand gripped in Connie’s; he’d been listening to the chatter about Key West only vaguely.
“What? Oh, sure, why not?” he said. “Our office is closed all next week, so there’s nothing keeping me here.”
“And Miss Dawes is coming with us, whether she believes it or not,” Connie said, looking back to Carter.
A brief silence as, Thom thought, they all paused at this touching sight: Carter with his purplish eyelids closed and wearing that strained half-smile, listening as his friends’ conversation washed around him. Thom was the last, it seemed, to know anything was wrong, for his memory of the next few seconds included his vague awareness of Connie’s elbow pumping gently, then frantically, as he tried to extricate his hand from Carter’s, and Abby’s barely audible cry (a small, girlish “Oh!”) and an instinctive retreat by Warren, who edged back toward the sill where Thom was leaning, his arms complacently folded.
The truth shuddered into Thorn’s awareness, his seeing, with the force of a thunderclap: his dear friend Carter wasn’t resting his eyes but had quietly, all but unnoticeably, died.
In the pandemonium that ensued—Connie, his hand freed, crying out, putting both palms over his eyes, then a couple of nurses rushing in—Thom felt enveloped in a sudden wave of nausea that caused him to turn away, back toward the window, the wild thought caroming through his mind that if the window couldn’t be opened, which it couldn’t, he might simply vomit into one of the potted plants. But he took a deep breath instead, then rushed over to Abby who stood there stricken, staring, as a nurse bent down and thumbed Carter’s eyelids rudely to peer inside. Thom drew Abby into the hall, vaguely aware that Connie and Warren had followed. Thorn’s first deep breath had spawned several more, and his chest had flooded with urgent raw emotion like a hot fluid that needed release. His throat had gone scratchy, sore. Carter, no, how could you…. He felt Abby’s arm circling his waist, and then Connie was hugging him from the other side, weeping profusely against Thorn’s throat, and Warren was holding onto Connie.
Thom, noting the glances from other visitors in the hall, said thickly, “The four of us are quite a sight, aren’t we.”
The others didn’t laugh, but his words calmed them a little. The nurse came outside and told them what they already knew, asked a few questions, said she would be paging the doctor and they could wait down the hall if they liked.
As she turned away, Connie grabbed her arm. “But we were all chatting, talking back and forth, and he just closed his eyes for a minute—just for a minute! That’s very strange, isn’t it?” he cried. “Isn’t that unusual?”
His voice had turned shrill, disorderly.
The nurse, a sturdy middle-aged Hispanic woman whose weary expression suggested she’d answered such questions many times, responded in a surprisingly gentle, measured voice.
“Really, no,” she told Connie, extricating herself from his grip. “It isn’t that unusual, at all.”
Throughout the afternoon, friends of Carter’s gathered in his condo, comforting one another and exchanging memories and exclaiming over the awful “suddenness” of his death, a sentiment that Thom, though he’d experienced the awfulness firsthand, didn’t quite understand. They’d all known Carter probably wouldn’t win this latest battle; he’d simply lost heart. Thom canceled his appointments and spent much of the day on the phone, going through Carter’s address book and calling people from out of town. Of course, he’d called Carter’s parents first: as Carter’s closest friend, that obligation fell to him. Thom supposed it was fortunate they were both home for lunch, having a “quick bowl of soup,” Carter’s mother said, and it didn’t surprise Thom that once he got them on separate extensions and gave them the news in a quiet, quickened voice, it was Carter’s father the Citadel graduate who broke down, and his mother the Southern beauty queen who, though her voice quavered a bit, took things in hand. Mrs. Dawes with her cultured Charleston drawl was the epitome of the velvet steamroller, the steel magnolia, whatever cliché you preferred, while Carter’s father, like many bluff, hyper-masculine men, was a walking time-bomb of powerful, repressed emotion.
“Oh, God. My God,” Mr. Dawes rasped into the phone.
While her husband wept, Carter’s mother thanked Thom for calling—“I know this wasn’t easy for you,” she said huskily—and said they’d get to the airport and take the first flight down to Atlanta.
Thom felt guilty for putting Abby through the long, tumultuous afternoon in Carter’s living room. He kept glimpsing her as she stood off to the side while the others, strangers to her, emoted and hugged and broke into fresh tears each time a new friend arrived. For a while Abby stayed in the kitchen, making coffee and hot tea, serving the others efficiently, quietly. Around three o’clock Thom drew her aside and said, “Honey, you can go home if you want to. Don’t feel obligated to wait around…” But she shrugged and gave a wan smile, saying she might as well stay. “I liked Carter,” she said simply. “Besides—” She stopped herself, and Thom glimpsed a pained look in her eyes. He thought, My God, she’s practicing. She’s practicing for me.
“We’ll talk later,” he said, ignoring her puzzled look. “We should have talked before this, but…now we will.”
Then someone interrupted them, and Abby drifted back to the kitchen.
Shortly before Carter’s parents arrived, as Connie was holding forth in the living room about the first time he’d met Carter and how he’d known instantly what a sweet, special person he was, Thom slipped back into Carter’s bedroom, carrying a garbage bag he’d found in the kitchen pantry, for a little ritual he’d performed already for two or three other friends. Bending to the storage cabinet under the TV set, he pawed through Carter’s videotapes and took out any that looked even vaguely suspicious; he proceeded to the nightstand, where he removed the packets of condoms and the bottle of lube, and then to the bathroom, where he found more condoms in the cabinet under the sink. He rifled through Carter’s dresser but found nothing more exotic than a pair of black bikini briefs, which he left alone. The tapes, condoms, and lube he stuffed into the garbage bag, and then he slipped into the kitchen and dropped the package into the trash. Abby, who was making more tea, saw him come in, and she glanced at the bag. She avoided his eyes and asked no questions, continuing briskly with her work.
Around six o’clock Carter’s parents arrived. They’d called from the airport, and when the group of eight or ten people still chatting in the living room heard the Dawes’ plane had landed, they rose quickly and began saying their goodbyes. Thom and Abby stood near the front door, receiving hugs and handshakes like the hosts of an impromptu party. Throughout the afternoon dozens of friends had come and gone, asking the same questions of Thom, Connie, and Warren, having the same conversation about the obituary that should be written for Southern Voice and th
e memorial service that should be planned. Inevitably, the conversation then would drift away from Carter onto safe, everyday topics, as if this were some ordinary party, after all. These people were all friends or at least acquaintances of Thom, but he was glad to see them go. As the door closed on the last of them, Thom exchanged glances with his sister, Connie, and Warren, all of whom were gazing expectantly at him.
“Here we are again,” Connie said, wearily. Once or twice Thom had told Connie too that he needn’t stay, that he would wait here for Carter’s parents, but Connie insisted he wanted to stick it out. “I feel too guilty that I almost didn’t come to the hospital today,” he said. “What if I hadn’t? I’d have hated myself the rest of my life for losing those last few minutes with Carter.”
None of them were hungry, but they were talking idly about going somewhere for dinner when the doorbell rang.
Carter’s parents looked surprisingly composed, Thom thought. Mrs. Dawes wore a long cashmere coat with a fur collar, and as usual her frosted dark-blond hair, careful makeup, and glossy dark-orange nails looked as though she’d just stepped from a salon. Her heavy perfume instantly filled the room. The ruddy, square-jawed Mr. Dawes was dressed more casually, in jeans and a blue pullover sweater that drew attention to his sky-blue eyes, exactly the color of his son’s; but the eyelids were reddened and swollen, and his jaw was clenched as though he were purchasing his controlled, civil demeanor with immense effort. Yet he too gave a forced smile, shaking hands gingerly with his son’s friends, and then he stepped back a foot or two, as though gladly relinquishing social duties to his wife. Mrs. Dawes exchanged a few words with each of them, thanking them profusely for visiting her son that morning.