by Judith Frank
He pressed his forehead against the glass of the small window in the door.
Lydia and Sam stepped back, and Matt got a glimpse of Joel. His eyes galloped over the covered body to see if it looked intact, and it did, he thought, except for maybe in the middle; he squinted and blinked hard, until his mind reassured him that the whole body was there. Joel’s face was white, his dark hair swept stiffly back off his forehead as if by a sweaty day’s work. Daniel looked somberly at him, then bent and murmured something into Joel’s ear. The doctor was speaking to Daniel’s parents with a serious and patient look, as though he wanted his words to be remembered. He stopped from time to time, waiting for them to nod. Beside him, Shoshi spoke. “He’s saying that Joel was killed on the spot, and didn’t feel anything.”
Part of Matt’s mind caught that, and he wondered if the doctor said that to everybody. But mostly he was watching Daniel, and something was coming over him that took his breath away. He squared his shoulders. At that moment he knew the answer to the question with which he’d often secretly tormented himself: whether he would be loving enough, selfless enough, to fling himself into the path of an oncoming car to save Daniel. He would, he suddenly knew he would. He felt stern and important, for all that he was the one left unnoticed outside the door. History had entered their lives with a sonorous call, and it was up to him to shepherd Daniel, and the children too, through this dark flood and onto higher ground. There was no room to ask whether he could do it or not. He had to.
“Good-bye, Joel,” he whispered. “I love you.”
Shoshi placed a gentle hand on his arm. He was trembling.
BEFORE THEY COULD GO, they had to sign. Shoshi brought them a form in Hebrew and Daniel perused it. “It says that you identified Joel, and that the body is his,” she told Lydia and Sam, handing Daniel a pen.
“They wouldn’t let me touch my own son,” Lydia murmured.
Daniel put the form down on a table and leaned over it with straight arms. He stared at it for a long time. Matt stepped up to him and laid his hand on his back, and felt it heave. Finally, Daniel turned toward his father, his face crumpling like a child’s. “Dad,” he whispered.
Sam stepped forward and took the pen from him and ran his finger down the page, which was mercifully indecipherable to him, found the blank line, and signed.
And with that, Joel was dead.
CHAPTER 2
IT WAS FOUR years earlier, and Matt was taking the bus from New York to Northampton, his temple pressed against the cold window. He wore a T-shirt and a leather jacket, and a small overnight bag sat on his lap. On the streets of his neighborhood, the late-March wind whipped around corners, making storefront gratings rattle, and pedestrians picked their way around slush and garbage and discarded flyers for clubs. When Matt left the gym in the mornings, showered and dressed for the office, the morning sun gleamed in his face and made him squint. He’d take the train from Chelsea to midtown, and when he got to work he’d go to the men’s room and wet a paper towel, then scrub at the dirty splotches on the calves of his pants.
Spring was on its way, and Matt felt it as a ripping sensation in his chest. He was suffering from insomnia for the first time in his life, and had had a few anxiety attacks that made him fear he was having a heart attack. His best friend, Jay, was dying, and he was fighting with Jay’s partner Kendrick, who had been with Jay all of a year while Matt had been his best friend since forever. Kendrick, whom he privately referred to as Shmendrick, was bad-mouthing him to all their friends, claiming that when Matt was around Jay, it was like having to take care of two patients. Matt knew that wasn’t true, knew that when he was with him, a little more of Jay’s soul showed.
The night before, at around three, when he’d returned home from the clubs, he had rummaged through his desk looking for the stub of a joint he’d left there, and found the matchbook with Daniel’s name and number on it. He took it to bed with him and sat there inhaling smoke, contemplating, until the tiny ragged joint burned his fingers. Once he had the idea that he could leave town, he could hardly wait for morning to come so he could call. He lay in bed imagining a quiet, orderly house in the New England countryside with a guest bedroom that his imagination formed out of a bed-and-breakfast he’d once stayed in: a fluffed-up bed with a dust ruffle and an iron headboard, a painting of English hunters on horseback hanging above. And then, even as he was laughing to himself for being stoned and silly, his mind attached itself to that image with a surprising passion.
Why Daniel, he wondered later, when he had at least three other friends who lived within a few hours on a bus or train, and when he hardly knew the guy? Later, when he told the story at dinner parties, he insisted he’d had some secret intimation. But at that point, it was just a panicked need to flee the drug scene and the whole circus surrounding Jay, who was back in the hospital with pneumonia, and being sick of his friends, whose eyes were starting to glaze over at the whole topic because, he thought savagely, of their own terror at the risks they were exposing themselves to every day. “I gotta get out of here,” he told Daniel on the phone the next morning, at ten A.M. sharp, the first moment he felt he could call. He’d reminded him that they’d met at a party, and endured the terrifying moment of pause before Daniel said, “I remember.” When Matt asked if he could visit, panic made him lose his breath, and after a long silence that he read as either cold or thoughtful, Daniel said, “Sure, come on up, I have a spare room.”
Somewhere in Connecticut, it started to snow, big early-spring flakes spreading over the bus windshield, melting as soon as they hit the asphalt. By the time they crossed into Massachusetts, the trees lining the highway were drooping with snow, and the blinking lights of the salt trucks pierced the blurry dusk. The guy sitting next to him had fallen asleep with his head thrown back and his mouth open. Matt wondered if he would even recognize Daniel, and tried to bring his image into his mind. He didn’t remember the conversation they’d had at the party very well—he’d been more than a little drunk—but he remembered feeling drawn to him, and after all, Daniel had given him his phone number. He mulled over Daniel’s words on the phone, I have a spare room, amused and insulted by Daniel’s presumption that he was dying to sleep with him. But he knew that he’d have said the exact same thing, just to protect himself.
As the bus pulled slowly into the Springfield station, he looked out the window and recognized Daniel immediately; he was standing under a small overhang, his hands in the pockets of a parka, his face a study in moderate, noncommittal welcome. Matt stood and brought down his backpack from the overhead rack, worried suddenly that his arrival was a chore for Daniel, imagining him complaining to his friends that he had to host some guy he’d met at a party. When he stepped off the bus, he approached awkwardly, smiling. Daniel looked older and more ordinary in the winter dusk than he had in the glow of alcohol and party music, and Matt felt a small pang of disappointment. Daniel proffered his hand, then laughed self-consciously and kissed him on the cheek. That laugh crinkled his eyes and lifted Matt’s spirits. They walked out through the station’s slush-covered floors. It was snowing hard now, and Daniel brushed the snow off the windshield and back window of his Camry as Matt shivered in the cold front seat, shaking snow out of his hair and wondering what he’d gotten himself into.
It took them forever to get to Daniel’s house, visibility was so diminished. “Remind me what you do again?” Daniel asked. He was sitting forward, straining to see the road. When Matt spoke he had to raise his voice over the din of the defroster. “I’m a graphic designer,” he said.
“Shit,” Daniel said; he had gotten himself stuck behind a snowplow, and clumps of snow and dirt were pelting the car. Matt hugged himself and slouched down into his jacket.
By the time Daniel pulled into the driveway of a small Cape house in Northampton, Matt had lost his bearings and had no idea where Northampton even was. The walk was still unshoveled, and the wind howled in their faces, and when they got inside they stamped thei
r feet, shouting. Matt shook his head, spraying cold drops everywhere; Daniel laughed “Hey!” and took off his glasses and wiped them on the T-shirt under his sweater. A yellow Labrador barged into the mudroom, its tail banging against the walls. “This is Yo-yo,” Daniel said, as the dog pressed himself up against Matt’s thigh with a crazy, tongue-lolling smile.
The house had pine floors with wide, soft boards. Daniel took him up a creaking flight of stairs to the guest room, where Matt had to stoop under a sloped ceiling. The bed was made up in maroon sheets and a gray comforter, the effect both masculine and warm. Daniel left the room and returned with a sweatshirt and some wool socks. “Thanks,” Matt said, peeling off his wet socks and cupping his hands around his cold toes. Daniel said, “Well, we can’t go out, so I’m going to see what I have for dinner. Come on down whenever you want.”
After he left the room, Matt looked at the dog and said, “Well, my friend, this is quite awkward.” Yo-yo pushed his muzzle into Matt’s hand, and he scratched the dog’s forehead with two fingers, grinning as a faraway expression gathered in Yo-yo’s eyes. He lingered shyly up there for a little while, looking at the photos on the dresser. There were yellowing photos, in old-fashioned silver frames, of Jewish-immigrant grandparents. Color photographs of handsome, well-heeled, coiffed parents. And one of Daniel, probably in college, hugging or wrestling with a boy whom Matt surmised was his brother, possibly his twin. Matt smiled. Daniel was delicious in it, his cheeks fuller and smoother, his hair long and wild. He was clearly a little annoyed by his brother’s wild grasp. The brother was pretty hot too, even though he looked like a goof with his hammy smile, as if saying “Cheese!” better than anyone had ever said it before.
When Matt came into the kitchen, Daniel was closing the refrigerator with his elbow, his hands full of eggs. “Sorry,” he said, “I meant to take you out.” On the stove sat a frying pan, of good quality and heavily used, Matt noted. As Daniel cracked eggs and put a slab of butter in the pan, he became quiet, and Matt said, “Listen, thanks for having me. It’s nice to get away. I’ll probably head back to New York tomorrow.” He sat in a kitchen chair and watched as Daniel deftly sliced onions and grated cheese. Snow was gathering silently along the bottoms of the windows. “How do you live out here?” he asked Daniel, with perfect cosmopolitan snobbery. “I gotta be honest, I’m feeling a little like Shelley Duvall in The Shining.”
Daniel looked at him and raised his eyebrows. “Who does that make me?” he asked. “A dull boy?” Matt laughed; he could tell he was making himself obnoxious. “I like it here,” Daniel shrugged. “In the city, everyone’s trying to be cooler and more stylish than everyone else. To me, that’s a huge waste of time. And I can’t handle the crystal thing.”
Matt nodded sagely; he couldn’t handle the crystal meth thing either—the extent of it scared and horrified him—but he was also taking in the rebuke. He was remembering his initial attraction to Daniel, something he didn’t know how to put his finger on. Certainly part of it was the whole Jewish intellectual vibe, the high forehead, curly dark hair, black-rimmed glasses that gave his face a touch of owlish severity. He looked as though he should be chain-smoking in a French café, devising a philosophical system that explained everything in the universe. He was soft-spoken, his voice slightly nasal, with a nelly sibilance to his s’s. The blend of masculine and feminine in him was exact, and perfect. His house was well tended without being fussy. Matt watched him stir the frying onions, and, being a restless person himself, was drawn to what seemed like a talent for immersion in the task at hand.
At dinner, Matt noticed that he was feeling self-conscious eating in front of Daniel, which surprised him a little. You could think in your head that you weren’t into a guy, but there were certain signs that infallibly told you otherwise, such as being superaware of how you were chewing. He asked Daniel how he’d gotten to that party anyway, and they talked about the couple who had thrown it, their mutual friends Mitchell and Bruce. Mitchell was an old friend of Daniel’s from Oberlin, and Matt knew Bruce from the gym. They dished about their relationship, agreeing with delighted shouts that the two of them were irritatingly symbiotic. “They’re all, ‘We like the Chilean sea bass,’ ‘We’re good friends with the proprietor,’ ” Matt mimicked, making Daniel laugh, which broke his face into an utterly charming sweetness. “Dude, get a mind of your own!” Matt shifted, leaned a little closer over the table, getting confidential. “Enough about them,” he said. “What did you think of me?”
Daniel laughed again, and his eyes shifted in a way that amused Matt; he was clearly rapidly editing his response. “Well, that you were attractive,” he said, stiff with shyness.
“Really! Say more,” Matt joked. “Wait, did I come out with some big drunken confession? I have the vague memory that I did.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “You said that being as good-looking as you are proved to be a curse sometimes.”
“Shut up. I said that?”
“Yup. You even choked up a little when you said it.”
Matt groaned. “Was there at least some context . . . ?”
“Not really.”
“Christ, what an asshole.” It was coming back to him. He remembered now that he’d been trying to encourage Daniel, because he recognized on him the diffident look of a man who thought Matt was out of his league. “What did you say?” he asked.
Daniel shrugged, a glint in his eye. “I said that that must be really hard for you.”
Matt guffawed. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m a weepy, and apparently quite conceited, drunk.”
He helped Daniel clear the dishes, wanting to tell him that he had thought Daniel was hot too, but not being able to find a way out of their conversation, and not sure what message he wanted to give him. They moved to the living room, where Daniel made a fire in the woodstove. “Do you like hot cider?” he asked. He disappeared into the kitchen for a while, and Matt picked up the magazine Daniel edited, browsing through stories of Amherst College alumni who were doing DNA sequencing and building affordable housing for the homeless. Daniel emerged from the kitchen and handed a tall steaming glass to Matt. It had a cinnamon stick in it. When Matt told the story in years to come, he’d say that, between the fire and the hot cider, he was remembering every sitcom episode he’d ever seen where the wife drags the reluctant husband to a cozy, romantic weekend in a Vermont inn. But when Daniel settled beside him, and the sweet cider coated his throat, and Daniel asked him why he’d needed to get out of New York so badly, Matt found himself choking up. “Oh God,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face, and he told him about Jay, his best friend since high school. “We started our school’s first gay-straight alliance,” he said, his eyes gleaming with pride and self-irony. “We spent every Halloween together for ten years.” He took two pictures out of his wallet and showed them to Daniel: one from their first year of college, when he and Jay had dressed up for Halloween as the Id and the Superego, and one from their junior year, when they’d gone as Nature and Nurture. Daniel looked at the pictures of the boys in preposterous costumes, and Matt was rewarded by his appreciative laughter. “I was a poli-sci and fine arts major,” Matt said, “so these Halloweens really combined all my interests.”
“I see that you managed to be the one who went as Nature and the Id,” Daniel said.
Matt laughed. “Anything to show off bare-chested.” He sighed shakily. “Anyway,” he said, “last week there was a misunderstanding about who was going to bring Jay dinner, and Kendrick reamed me out for not being there when it counted. And then, when Jay tried to intervene, that little fucker told me I was upsetting Jay and making him sicker. Can you believe it? I was upsetting Jay! This is the guy who made Jay move out of his apartment after his first hospitalization because Kendrick was allergic to mold!”
He sat back on the couch cushion and sighed. “It was all very Angels in America: The Next Generation,” he said.
Daniel leaned toward him and kissed
him, his forehead touching Matt’s, his breath sharp, like apples. The dog approached and shoved his muzzle between their knees, and Daniel said, “Yo-yo, don’t be rude.” He stood and led Matt to his bedroom, where they made out for a while, straining against their clothes like teenagers. Matt kissed him and nibbled him and worried whether this shy and quiet man could give him what he needed. Wind gusted against the windows, and a critter skittered overhead along the attic floor. Then they undressed, and Daniel took Matt’s arm and turned him on his side. Matt gasped and tried to make a joke, but Daniel didn’t laugh; he leaned over the bed and fumbled for the pants that lay on the floor, reached into the pockets, and pulled out a condom. You dog, Matt thought, but then Daniel was gripping his hips with surprising authority. Matt closed his eyes and fell, soaring, into himself, while the world bucked and spun. His orgasm thundered through him, and he passed out. He slept for fourteen hours, and when he awoke the next afternoon, the sun was shining and his body was aglow. He could hear Daniel moving around downstairs and the trickle of water in the gutters. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked outside; the snow had almost entirely melted.
IT WAS LATE AFTERNOON when they began their ascent to Jerusalem. Shoshi had had the driver stop at a roadside pizza and falafel stand and rousted them out of the van, insisting that they try to eat, but the smell of deep-fried and spicy food made everyone indecisive and nauseated. The smell of the morgue clung to them; Matt sniffed Daniel’s hair and shuddered. Finally, Shoshi ordered a basket of pitas and some Cokes, which they took into the van. Matt looked out the window, chewing a warm pita, as the highway began to ascend. He was sitting next to Daniel now, his knee pressed against his, wondering what was going to happen next. He thought about seeing Gal, who was almost six years old now; she was a quick, intense child who they all were sure was gifted. Noam he barely knew; the baby had been only a few months old when he had last seen him. He was a cheerful, easy baby with legs that came in fat segments, like dinner rolls. He’d been born after two miscarriages following Gal’s birth, and was considered such a gift by his parents that they were, as if amazed out of every expected impulse, completely mellow around him. Matt remembered that last visit, Noam sitting placidly in his bouncy chair in the corner of the dining room as they ate supper; midmeal, Ilana looked over and joked, “Hey, someone should pay attention to that baby over there.” The name Noam, Daniel had explained to Matt, came from the word na’im, which means “pleasant,” or maybe “pleasing”—“nice,” but without the banality that word carried in English.