At first, at home, I can only rarely bring myself to leave my room. In the evenings when I’m not working, I can hear Max, in his chattering splendor, talking about his clients at Saks and their idiosyncrasies and demands and how utterly gorgeous they look when he is done dressing them.
Christopher’s voice is too soft to make out individual words, and sometimes Max will lower his voice as well, so that I imagine they are talking about me, but hope I am not so self-absorbed as to think they don’t have other things to discuss. For one thing, they are so obviously in love, and when I do brave a trip to the living room and perch on the edge of the leather sofa, I find them sitting close together, hand in hand, watching Absolutely Fabulous or I Love Lucy or The Avengers and laughing, the cat spread-eagled and still—a great, furry, overstuffed bit of taxidermy, being stroked and petted by one or both of them, her tail wrapped like Cleopatra’s snake around a compliant arm.
Mornings, I generally don’t come out until both boys have left: Christopher early for his office job downtown and Max, later, for the store. Before Max gets in a taxi at ten or so, he watches game shows on the TV and primps for his customers. With those cheekbones and pale eyes and incredible eyelashes, he is really more beautiful than handsome, in a totally Greta Garbo sort of way.
I don’t mean to avoid him. I want to go out and watch The Price Is Right with him and listen to him gossip about the women he waits on, or talk about the silly things people keep in their pockets and their handbags—hoping Bob Barker will ask for, say, a hard-boiled egg or dog tags or a thermometer—but for a long time I just can’t do it. I try to identify the cause and think maybe it is because he is just a little too vivid for me right now, a little too alive. My head is still full of Vietnam, in black and white, and I can’t change it. Max, on the other hand, is Technicolor in a big way.
Christopher is much less present, much less daunting. On Saturdays, when he doesn’t have to work and Max does, I hear him whistling in the kitchen, always something classical and unthreatening. After a few weeks of sneaking around the house when the two of them are sleeping or out, putting my hand on the doorknob when they are here and awake, but not having the nerve to turn it, and wishing I was more like Eddie—who would have been sitting on the couch petting Annabelle and eating popcorn with them the first night—Christopher’s whistling lures me out. He is in the kitchen making tea, Annabelle on the counter watching him as he stirs it, and they both manage to not look surprised to see me. I wonder how the cat has gotten up there—surely she has not jumped—and imagine Christopher giving her a gentle boost, and the image makes me smile.
“Like some?” Christopher says, motioning to a tin of Earl Grey. Something barely identifiable but utterly perfect happens: a sudden transfer, another new and unimagined country heard from. I’m not really a tea drinker, but the whole idea seems so civilized, so much like what normal people do somewhere in the real world.
“That would be wonderful.”
I sit at the kitchen table while he makes it and brings it to me, along with the little white cow-shaped milk pitcher, sugar and a spoon. The cat watches, metronomically switching her tail across the counter. I pour the milk; watch it spiral cloudy in the cup as I stir it. Christopher leans against the counter and looks out the window. It was raining earlier, but the sky is clearing and the sun is high and bright. Me and the cat watch it streak across the floor.
“Pretty day,” Christopher says. “Do you have to work?”
“Not until tonight.” I stretch my arms up over my head. “I’m so happy. Seems like forever since we’ve seen any real blue sky.”
The words come out in the right order, in the right language, and I am sure they make sense. Christopher does not seem aware that this is a rather huge accomplishment, and I consider that an achievement in itself. When he asks if I want to go for a walk with him and Annabelle, I do not make up some lame excuse. I go put my sneakers on. Christopher attaches a red-rhinestoned leash to the cat’s collar, and we set off up the hill.
“Nice leash,” I say.
Christopher smiles. “Max. If I had picked it out, it would have been far less glamorous. Khaki or something. A bit of twine.”
“But with a bell.”
Christopher says, “Maybe a small one.”
• • •
I realize that any lingering sense of dislocation may be because of a change in the city itself; it is not all me. It started before I left but is now kicking in with a vengeance. People carry pagers around and talk loudly on the pay phone about very important things like stock options and public offerings. I do not understand the concepts, and something about “public offerings” makes me thing of human sacrifices. From there the tangential connections can prove quite remarkable. I am reminded by those tangents of the mescaline and acid I took in high school, the pot I smoked, and all the other substances that in combination probably rewired my synapses pretty thoroughly. But San Francisco was the perfect place for someone like me to land, and I often feel as if I am watching the city I still love grow distant in the rearview mirror.
The interlopers begin to infiltrate the bar, demanding high-end tequilas and asking questions like “What sorts of Chardonnays do you have?”
“The kind in the box,” I say, and usually, or hopefully, whatever decked-out lawyer or stockbroker will turn on his or her pointy toe and depart in a sulk, but something is definitely wrong.
I try to talk with Eddie about it. “Who are these people? What do they want?” He is oblivious. To him, it’s just a whole new set of cute boys to ogle at the gym.
One Saturday we go down to Whole Earth Access so I can buy some new socks and a colander, maybe a cordless drill so I can hang bookshelves. It is a perfectly ordinary thing to be doing on a perfectly ordinary day. Then Eddie heads for the electronics counter and starts playing with the mobile phones. I start to get twitchy but try not to show it. “What are you doing?”
“Just looking.” He is playing with the buttons on one, holding it out in front of him like Snow White’s mirror. It’s the size of a brick.
“You are thinking about buying that thing, aren’t you?”
“I think I am.”
“Oh Jesus. What on earth for?”
“Talking.”
We leave with a new phone for Eddie. No socks, no colander, no drill. All of a sudden the things in my basket looked like debris from a UFO incident: unrecognizable as useful objects. Eddie drops me off at the bar, where I drink beers and play pool with a cute Irish boy until dark. At midnight I leave his place, my shoes in my hand, and hail a cab on Mission Street. Christopher is still up when I get home.
“You okay?” He peers up at me from the couch. His eyes are sleepy, and Annabelle has her head tucked behind him, the rest of her looking for all the world like a decapitated walrus.
I lean down and kiss Christopher on the cheek. “Where did you come from?”
“Oxford, Mississippi,” he says. “Proud home of the Rebels.” As if he gives a damn about football, or basketball, or bowling, or whoever the Rebels are. He makes me drink water and take aspirin before I go to bed, and in the morning makes me come out of my room and go to breakfast with him and Max. We walk arm in arm to the Castro, with me in the middle. I can picture the three of us clearly from behind: Max aglow with neon highlights, Christopher a lovely pastel, and in between a chalk-drawn outline with a perfect round hole about chest level where the bullet or the spear or the missile has gone clear through but left me otherwise intact. How utterly miraculous that is.
When we get home, Max styles my hair, cajoling it into submission with a round brush, patiently rolling it up in sections and holding the blow-dryer to it as he pulls the brush out. He works in some heavenly smelling waxy substance and then arranges it all piece by piece, just so, around my face and over my shoulders. When he is satisfied with my hair, he applies liner and shadow to my eyes, and lip gloss to my mouth. I am afraid to look, afraid of seeing a kid—someone definitely not me—who’s
gotten into Mom’s makeup bag and gone to town.
Max holds up two mirrors—one in front and one in back—and circles me like a merry-go-round pony. He makes me look, and despite the time he’s spent, the effect is subtle but still startling. Each time my face reflects back at me, it seems as though I am looking at someone in an old family photograph, or someone I have not seen in a very long time and never knew very well to begin with, or a person from a movie—maybe Thelma or Louise.
“You are a magician,” I say.
“And you, darling, are stunning.”
“Or you could be hallucinating. Maybe I’ll go up to the bar and see if anyone recognizes me.”
Christopher says, “Or asks for your autograph.”
“Quit,” I tell them, “before I put a hat on and wash my face.”
Max pinches my cheeks, sort of hard. “You love it.”
“No. I love you.”
The next weekend, from the bus, I spot Max and Christopher walking back from the grocery store. Their groceries are in a two-wheeled wire cart, and Max is pulling it behind him with one hand; the other is tucked into the back pocket of Christopher’s jeans. Christopher wears a gray cardigan against the afternoon wind, and a long electric-blue scarf, set off against his black leather jacket, drapes elegantly around Max’s neck. They look like an old married couple who have already raised the kids, let them go out into the world, and then settled in to ride out the rest of their years tranquilly, as a set. I press my face to the bus window and watch them until they are out of sight.
I fall, fitfully but progressively, into a rhythm: work, pool, outings with the boys and dates with the Boy—the Irish one, who does not seem to mind being referred to as “the Boy”; does not seem to mind much at all, for that matter. He does have a name, which is Dillon, and he tells me it means “flash of lightning.” We are not in love, and not likely ever to be, but the feeling I came home with, the need to be suffocated, is all but gone, and closeness and kisses are starting to feel like enough. I feel like I am in the world, and not just trying to bring it into focus from another galaxy.
Some days, walking down Valencia Street, holding hands and looking in shop windows, turns me absolutely inside out. It’s good. And it’s spring, meaning it is warm, and the summer fog banks have not yet begun to slink in every afternoon to remind us what it costs, to live in such a beautiful place.
• • •
One night in early June, after a day shift and a few games of pool, I come home to find Christopher and Max, as usual, in the living room in front of the TV. It isn’t on, though, and they are sitting too far apart. Feet apart, rather than inches; too many to reach across. I have an almost overwhelming urge to move them closer together, place a flat palm on each of their backs and bring my hands together, like a person might do with a found accordion, simultaneously pressing buttons and keys in the hope of a not-too-discordant noise. Annabelle sits on the back of a chair by the window, looking out or at her reflection, and her tail hangs straight down, motionless.
Christopher looks up at me where I have stopped in the doorway, and pats the couch between him and Max. Max looks away, but not before I see the traces of mascara on his cheeks. All I can think is, I never knew he wore mascara. I thought he just had the most incredible eyes. And: That is not my place. If I sit in that spot, it will mean something is terribly wrong.
I do sit down, though, and for a long minute, no one moves or speaks. When Max begins to say something, Christopher says, “No. I did this. I should tell.”
I have never seen either of them let the other one do anything hard, alone, and this is clearly something hard. Max sits completely silent and stares straight ahead, his mouth tight and his hands pressed between his knees.
“I infected Max,” Christopher says, his voice in pieces.
“I thought you were—”
Max makes a small sound, like a small animal, and puts his head in his hands. I can’t remember ever seeing anyone actually do that before. “False negative,” he says. Then he says it again. As if he were testing the sounds. As if he could make the words mean something different if he says them enough.
Christopher says, “We—I didn’t wait long enough. There was this guy. Just this one guy. This one night. Right before I met Max.” The words go wobbly. “There’s a window. Six months.”
Max laughs, in a way that sounds almost like a real laugh, and it gives me hope for a minute that I have misunderstood something, or that “infected” means the flu.
“Nice round number,” Max says, when he is finished with the laugh that only sounded like one. “Where do they come up with this shit?”
I have never heard him swear like that before. Not like he means it to do harm. I want to go to my room, close the door, stuff the last few months in the closet, and wait for the whistling to begin again. I know it isn’t going to. And I know I have to say something. They are waiting for me to say something.
I say, “I still want to stay. Here. With you.” I know it isn’t right. This isn’t about what I want or how long I am staying or anything about me at all. But it is all I can think of, and I have to say it. Even if it is the wrong thing entirely. Even if is the dumbest, most oblivious thing I can say. Even even even.
Max looks at me and tries to smile, but it doesn’t take. He looks across me at Christopher, shakes his head, and gets up. “Do you think there’s any other place that would have us?”
He goes to their room and closes the door, so quietly the click of the lock barely registers. I reach for Christopher’s hand, crawling mine hesitantly across the couch; a spider’s crawl. He holds onto it for a few seconds, squeezes, and lets go. He stands up and squares his slim shoulders, like a child who has been called to the principal’s office for passing notes, and walks resolutely down the hall to the door Max has just closed. Door number three. Christopher taps on it, ever so softly, but loud enough for Max to hear. There is no answer.
I watch as Christopher presses his ear to the wood, but I cannot hear what he is hearing, or begin to know what sign of prayer, or absolution, or abdication he is listening for.
Or maybe I can. Maybe I do know.
13. Scablands
I know I’ve heard it somewhere: if in a dream you are falling, and you land, you will never wake up. I’ve had plenty of falling dreams but so far have never hit the ground, and I wonder now if similar rules apply to dreams about trains crashing into each other or derailing all on their own.
There is, obviously, only one surefire, practical way to avoid finding out, too late, that the rules do apply, and that would be to jump from this train before I fall asleep and begin to dream. I’ve survived longer drops. Have the scars to prove it.
I also know that a potential crack-up and the temptation to bail have approximately nothing to do with each other.
I am on my way—on something called the Coast Starlight—to Portland, where I will switch to a line that heads northeast. This train’s name is slightly misleading, as it actually left the coast somewhere around San Luis Obispo. From Sacramento we traveled up the center of California, in the dark, though I’m pretty sure I caught the briefest glimpse of Shasta’s sun-blasted peak at daybreak.
If I do decide to jump, it would be good if a horse (a real one) were there, galloping alongside. Maybe a blue-eyed paint pony, brown with splashes of white to match his legs. I would leap into the saddle, exactly as if I knew how to do that, and we would ride off into the hills, to a place where there is no past, no lurking future. This train gives me far too much time, to remember and try to process. Everything. All there is or ever was.
The freshest hell has been mostly self-inflicted, sure, but that really is, at this point, beside the point. Because all that matters right now is I am heading back (praying at the very least for a daylong breakdown) to the place where everything I’ve buried all these years waits, resurrected and suspended in the distance; a collectible set of decapitated, snake-haired Gorgon’s heads, hung on my mother’
s clothesline to dry.
Jesus. Settle the fuck down.
• • •
After the border we carry on through the western half of Oregon, stopping midmorning at Klamath Falls. I got off another train here, a dozen years ago, and the next morning stood between my mom and dad at Crater Lake, shivering and looking down from the snowy overlook at each other’s wavering reflections, dropping pebbles into the arctic-blue water. My folks had driven from Montana, and I had come from California, presumably to celebrate my birthday. I don’t know if “neutral ground” applied but think there could possibly be some situational equivalent—if we could even have named the situation—but that would have been asking a lot. In any event, turning thirty had freaked me out, partially because it felt so old, but mostly because I don’t suppose I’d ever expected to make it that far. I suspect my parents had been equally astonished and came at least partially to prove to themselves that the birthday girl was no imposter. And because they loved her. Me. That was real.
When they took me back to the train station the next day, my dad helped me with my bag, even though it was small, and there was hardly anything in it.
He said, “Do you ever think about—?”
“Sometimes. Really, Dad. I will. I still know how to get there. Don’t worry.”
“Okay, then,” he said. “I won’t.” It would never occur to him I didn’t mean it, and I have always envied that kind of trust. And I did mean it, for someday, and someday comes whether or not it suits all your well-laid plans, or the ones that were not laid (or plans) at all.
There had been no fighting when I left home, no falling-out—I simply went away. Or not simply so much as quietly, as there hadn’t really been anything simple about it. In almost twenty-five years we have met only that once, though contact has grown more frequent, and easier, as we have finally come to our own terms, I suppose, with all the freight of family and love and losing and not exactly telling the truth, to ourselves or to each other. It has become bearable, but only in retrospect. No clear delineation in the arc of time’s passing, just the realization that we have all, somehow, survived (three out of four, anyway, so I guess “all” really means the ones we know for sure are still standing). For the standing ones, there has been life. Lives. More than one each, I reckon. For me? For sure.
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