by Judith Frank
People looked at him with kind, inquiring looks that made his face grow hot. He closed his eyes and felt the pulses beating in his eyelids.
He straightened and let out a shaky sigh. The rabbi had finished praying and they recited the mourner’s kaddish, Daniel and a few others reading it off a sheet of paper they’d been handed. Malka and Yaakov, he noticed without surprise, knew it by heart. He took Noam back from his grandfather and settled him into his stroller. As mourners started to wind through the rows of headstones to the cemetery exit, Daniel waited for Gal and put his hand on her head. “Come here for one second,” he said in Hebrew. He steered her toward the headstones, and kneeled.
“What now?” she asked, kneeling.
He kissed his fingers and touched the cool granite of first Ilana’s headstone, then Joel’s. Gal solemnly kissed her own fingers, and touched each of her parents’ graves.
THE RECEPTION AT THEIR apartment brought back many of the same people who’d come to the shiva, but to Daniel it felt sweeter and quieter, as if the explosion itself had finally stopped echoing and been folded into the air. His parents weren’t there, for one; they’d intended to come but had been detained in the U.S. by the death and funeral of their old friend Lou Fried. Lydia didn’t even give Daniel a hard time about it, or make him reassure her that she was making the right choice; she just said, wearily, with rare understatement, “It’s been a hard year.” And Matt wasn’t there, of course. For a moment Daniel imagined him coming through the door, remembered how when Matt breezed into a room he seemed to change the very climate—to crisp and freshen the air there.
He let Gal take the other kids into her room, and when he looked in on them, the girls were practicing cartwheels in their jumpers and tights while Noam sat on Rafi’s lap. He was slapping Rafi’s kipa on his own head and tilting it so that it would slide off, then craning his neck to look at Rafi with an antic, expectant expression, and Rafi was saying dutifully, “That’s funny.” When he got back to the living room, someone was telling a long story about how Joel had gained the trust of his Israeli crew when his predecessor, whom they’d loved, had been fired, and another did an imitation of an exasperated Ilana going off first on negligent parents and then on overinvolved ones, with a mixture of rudeness and comedy that was so spot-on, tears ran down their faces from laughter. As he wiped his eyes, Daniel felt a soft hand on his forearm; it was Malka’s.
After everybody had left, stopping and turning at the door to take Daniel’s hands in theirs and make him promise to keep in touch, Daniel sat with Gal and Noam in the living room, too tired to clean up all the empty glasses, the plates with blocks of half-eaten cheese surrounded by cracker crumbs, the bowls with dip crusting at the edges, the bourekas plate just flakes and oil. He’d turned on the TV to a cartoon. He closed his eyes and smiled again thinking of Ilana’s friend’s imitation of her, felt laughter pushing at his throat. His thoughts began to drift, curling pleasantly around Matt. He didn’t resist them; it was as if all the Joel-love in the room had opened the spring of love in his heart, which then splashed noisily, refreshingly, over Matt as well.
“Noam!” Gal said in a high, bright voice.
Daniel looked over and caught his breath: Noam was on his feet, walking shakily over to him with a look Daniel could only describe as merry. He stumbled and fell against Daniel’s legs, and Daniel picked him up and kissed him noisily on his plump, flushed cheek, saying, “Good job, buddy!” He looked at Gal and held up his hand for a high five; she gave it a resounding smack.
He shook out his stinging hand, smiling. “When we get back,” he said, “I think we should see Matt.”
She looked quickly at him, her face wavering with incredulity.
“Okay?” he asked.
She broke into a faint smile. “Okay,” she said.
III
CHAPTER 19
ON A WARM evening in early April, Matt hauled out the gas grill his landlords kept in their tiny shed and opened the lid to see what kind of shape it was in, nodded approvingly when he saw that they’d cleaned it before storing it. He didn’t know how much gas was left in the tank, but hoped there was enough to cook a piece of fish, which was marinating in the kitchen. He lit the grill and stepped through the screen door from the patio into the kitchen, just in time to hear the doorbell ring. He went to answer the door, prepared to be irritated at anyone standing there with a clipboard in his hands.
It was Daniel, standing there alone with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched. He was wearing a jacket and tie, evidently on his way home late from work; Matt wondered who was home with the kids. He had a grave expression that softened when he greeted Matt. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi.” Matt stood in front of the door, regarding him coolly as his heart buzzed. He wondered whether he should turn off the grill.
“Can I come in?”
Matt stood aside so he could enter.
Daniel came into the living room and looked around approvingly at the simple couches, the prints, the muted grays, beiges, and blacks of the room. “This is nice,” he said.
Matt took this in with an acerbic little cocktail of feelings. Wasn’t this ironic—Daniel’s praise of the house he’d had to rent because he’d been kicked out of his own?
“Can I sit down?” Daniel asked, gesturing toward the couch. Matt nodded but remained standing himself. He worried that he was looking like a prick. He didn’t mean to be one. It was just that he was pretty sure Daniel had come over to invite him to see the kids, but still, he felt he needed to guard against surprises. His whole perception of Daniel felt different; to his eyes, Daniel’s seriousness now had a ruthless tinge to it, and his gentle kindness seemed like an attempt to mask that.
Daniel sat, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, looking earnestly at him. “Matt,” he said. It took some time, as he stammered out an apology and told him he loved him, for it to register to Matt that he wanted him back. It felt so unreal hearing the words he’d despaired of ever hearing, that Matt couldn’t even revel in his own vindication. He sank into a chair, shocked, as Daniel talked.
He’d done a lot of thinking, Daniel said, about how badly he’d treated him. “I just didn’t let you in at all,” Daniel said. “I was grieving, Matt, and I didn’t know how to let you help me.”
Never had Matt wished more to be the kind of cool customer that could wait him out and make him squirm than when he began blurting, “I wanted to be part of it! I wanted to share responsibility. I wanted some freaking credit for being a partner in parenting. It was like you refused to let us go through it together! Was that the kind of love you wanted?”
“No, I didn’t want any love!” Daniel said.
“Why not?”
“I . . .” Daniel paused, and put his hand to his forehead as if checking for a fever. “I just felt unworthy of it, and it felt like a huge pressure.”
Matt sat, stumped. “That’s just so . . . wrong,” he said.
Daniel laughed, a sight so unexpectedly ravishing that Matt had to look away. “But I’m trying to say that now, I—I recognize you. Recognize what you were going through during this whole year.”
“And what was I going through?”
Daniel paused, thinking. “You were someone thrust into this impossible situation, surrounded by grieving people, trying to help us,” he said. “You threw out there all your generosity and intelligence and love and ingenuity, and you kept doing it even though we often threw it all back in your face.”
Matt felt his face twitch, once, twice, and then tears stung his eyes.
“If we can manage to find our way back to each other,” Daniel said, “I promise I’ll try to make things different. Better.”
That was all Matt could handle for a first conversation. “I just need some time alone,” he said. He stood stiffly in Daniel’s good-bye hug, like a straight man worried that the gay man hugging him might get the wrong idea. He closed the door behind him and watched from the window as Daniel, whi
stling, got into his car. Wasn’t he a merry fellow, he thought. He went back into the kitchen, remembered that the grill was still on, went and turned it off. Then he called Brent and announced, “He wants me back.”
“Shut up!” Brent shouted.
At his urging, Matt went over to brood. Daniel had said the exact words he’d always wanted him to say, he told Brent, who sat there with such a pink and rosy expression Matt expected him at any moment to break into song. But it wasn’t that easy! It was one thing to be apologized to and acknowledged, and another to get back those feelings.
“You don’t feel it anymore?” Brent asked, crestfallen. “If you don’t feel it—”
“And now, if I don’t go back, it’s going to be my fault that the kids have to shuttle back and forth between us,” Matt fumed.
Brent laughed before realizing he was serious. They were standing in the kitchen, leaning on the small island, Matt popping pretzels into his mouth and chewing furiously. On cutting boards arrayed around him were neatly chopped vegetables ready to be cooked. He looked at his watch. “Am I keeping you from dinner? Do you have a beer?”
“Nah, Derrick called and said he’s going to be late.” Brent went to the refrigerator to get him a beer. Matt opened it and took a long swig, set it down on the counter. “What should I do?” he asked. “I don’t want to go back to him just because I’d feel guilty not going back.”
“No,” Brent agreed. “That can’t be the only reason. Do you love him?”
Matt was quiet for a few minutes. “I’ve just spent the past two and a half months learning how to stop loving him.”
“I have an idea,” Brent said. “Let’s make a list of things you love about him, and things you don’t love about him.”
They pulled up the bar stools and sat down with a pad of paper, and spent the next half hour drinking and brainstorming. Brent told him that when he and Derrick had hit ten years together, they’d stopped playing the Three Things I Love About You game, and started playing Three Things I Hate About You instead, which caused a small explosion of beer from Matt’s mouth. When Matt was done with his list, he pushed the paper so it was between him and Brent and placed his palms on the table. “Okay,” he said, “that should cover it.”
LOVE ABOUT DANIEL:
Yummy Jewish looks
Smells delicious at almost every time of day
Can be sweet sweet sweet
Beautiful singing voice, can imitate k.d. lang imitating Elvis
Has been through hell (“That’s not technically a thing you love about him,” Brent pointed out.)
Thinks I’m hilarious
A good kind of quietness, until recent events
Smart enough for me
Conscientious about his kids
Good politics
DON’T LOVE ABOUT DANIEL:
Treated me like shit
Threw me out like trash
Judgmental, condescending prick
Craves the approval of straight people
Stiff and humorless at times
His parents!
They sat quietly and read, till Brent sat back and crossed his ankle over his knee. One of the cats had jumped onto the counter and was rubbing against Matt’s pencil. “Dude,” Brent said, “you should totally get back together.”
“Really?” Matt said, looking at his lists again. “Where do you get that? ‘Threw me out like trash’ didn’t impress you?”
“It did,” Brent said, “but ‘smells delicious’—you can’t buy that kind of pheromonal compatibility, especially after so many years.”
“Hmph,” Matt said.
“You know, you don’t have to decide right now. You could just go on a date with him.”
“I don’t know,” Matt said. Something else was pushing at him, making him uneasy, and he cautiously let it enter his conscious mind. The thought of being back in that house with the kids full-time: it was daunting. In the months that had passed, his memory of the house, and everything that had happened in it, had gradually darkened, till it seemed like a dream that has the power to frighten even when its details have been forgotten. He was glad he would see Gal and Noam again—he missed them—but there lingered in him a strange hesitancy, even reluctance.
“Honestly, I don’t know if I want kids,” he told Brent with a challenging, defensive look. “Do you think I’m a terrible person?”
Irony and impatience flickered over Brent’s face; Matt saw it and realized, his face growing hot, that whenever he asked that, he was being a needy pain in the ass. He made a silent vow never to ask it again.
Brent was sliding the salt and pepper shakers back and forth along the counter. Something dawned on him, and his hands stilled. “You know what I think?” he said. “I think that when they first came to live with you, it happened so fast and was such a crisis that you just took them in and didn’t question it. Because let’s face it, you really didn’t have a choice. But now you do have a choice. Now it’s not the heat of the moment anymore. And maybe you’re absorbing only now the kinds of losses that come with kids. Honestly, I was surprised you didn’t complain more at the time. You just—presto!—became Mr. Dad.”
Matt listened, registering his own hunger to be praised, his relief to be back in Brent’s good graces.
“Frankly, it creeped me out a little,” Brent said.
“Shut up.”
Brent laughed. “No, it was beautiful. Don’t roll your eyes, I’m serious.” He stood and rubbed his hands together. “Look,” he said. “It’s just one date.” For him, it was settled.
“When’s Derrick getting home?” Matt asked.
“Why? So you can deliberate all over again, and hope he’ll guide you to a different conclusion? You know he won’t.”
Matt closed his eyes and groaned.
THEY MET AT THE bar at Spoleto. Daniel’s parents were visiting, so a babysitter was not a problem. Daniel had dressed up a little, Matt noticed, which was sweet; and he was wearing a leather and silver bracelet Matt had bought him as a birthday present some years ago. His voice, which had become unpleasantly flat since Joel died, had regained—what was it?—musicality; something Matt had perceived without it quite reaching his conscious mind when Daniel had come over a few days ago. And his gaze had recovered some of its old searching, teasing quality. Warmth. I remember this man, Matt mused. He ordered a vodka tonic and Daniel ordered a glass of wine.
“You seem better,” Matt said.
“Do I?” Daniel asked eagerly. “I feel better. I feel like I’m finally . . .” He paused as his voice broke. “Mourning.” He laughed self-consciously as he coughed back the tears. “See? Better,” he joked. “But seriously, it’s so much better than that horror show I went through all year. Now I just miss my brother and Ilana, and I feel that, and cry for them, and feel my heart breaking.”
Matt looked at him, thinking: Upside: more alive, and therefore handsomer; downside: still crying all the time. He wondered if he could just sit still and listen, or whether his mind would rush to assess everything Daniel said in pros and cons.
“It’s a little disconcerting for Gal and Noam,” Daniel said, “but I think it’s better than an atmosphere of dread and guilt. Oh—I don’t think I told you: I’ve enrolled Gal in karate. She starts next week. She’s just—I think she’s trying to figure out how much power she does and doesn’t have in the world. Horseback riding has been great, but I thought that an activity that had controlled violence in it might help her.”
“I don’t know why we didn’t think of that earlier,” Matt said.
“I know.”
They were quiet for a few minutes, sipping their drinks and looking down at the bar, Matt swirling his forefinger on the ring his drink had formed on a cocktail napkin. “Your parents must be thrilled I’m not there,” he said.
Daniel hesitated. “I’m not gonna lie,” he said, and they laughed. “I know we promised not to, but I had to tell them we’d broken up, because I really needed some help.”
“What did your mom say?” Matt asked.
“I told her I didn’t want her to comment, ever,” Daniel said, and his eyes glinted in a way that told Matt she had commented anyway. “She said she was sorry I had to go through this alone.”
Matt narrowed his eyes. “What did you tell her about why we broke up?” he asked.
Daniel took a sip of wine, and set his glass down carefully.
“I might get sick, you know,” Matt blurted. And then, challenging him: “I might get sick. We don’t know—it’s still three months before a test result will be at all reliable.”
“Don’t you think I’ve been doing the math?” Daniel asked.
“And have you thought about what your response will be if I end up positive?”
“I’ve tried,” Daniel said, his face coloring. “But I can’t be sure.”
“So there’s a possibility you’ll think it’s my own damn fault, and with all you’ve gone through, you can’t take on one more hard thing,” Matt said, surprised at his own hard tone. “Or that you can’t put the kids through another possible loss, and if it’s between me and them . . .”
“Please don’t set this up as a you versus them thing, Matt. That’s really unfair, and really . . . unhelpful.”