by Rick R. Reed
I smile at him. “Okay. That sounds like fun.”
I let go of his hand and feel as though I’m cutting off part of my own body. I try to catch Violet’s gaze, but she won’t look at me. “Vi? Please think about what I said.”
She exchanges a look with her mom. I have no idea what passes between them.
I get down on my knees once more. “One more hug, buddy?”
My little boy’s in my arms once more. I don’t want to let him go.
But I do. I have to.
Chapter Twenty-One
JOHN
I wait for Randy on a patio the coffee shop has created on the sidewalk. They’ve made borders with potted plants around the half dozen or so wrought-iron bistro tables and chairs. Aunt Annie’s isn’t a chain—it’s like someone’s home. Inside, there are piles of old board games, used books, and magazines like People and Entertainment Weekly. I nabbed an old issue of the latter with K.D. Lang on the cover. I love her.
But I can’t read because I’m too busy keeping my eye on the shadowed area beneath the L stop at Jarvis. I’ve been waiting, nursing coffee with lots of cream and sugar, for a couple of hours, wanting to be there to hear the good news…or the bad. I know Randy is meeting with his soon-to-be-ex-wife at his lawyer’s office downtown. He told me this morning, as we showered together in the clawfoot tub, that he thought he could talk some sense into Violet and maybe convince her that keeping the circle of people who love Henry as wide and accessible as possible is good parenting. “Vi’s a good person,” he said, the hope wafting off him like the aroma of the Irish Spring soap we’re sharing. “If I can just talk to her, I can help her see that it’s not right to keep Henry away from his dad.”
His hope had been so fierce, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him to lower his expectations, that people who would steal his son away from him behind his back weren’t the most likely to listen to reason—from a queer. I have a sense that Violet’s parents, if not Violet herself, subscribe to the mindset that being gay is a choice and, even darker, that gay men prey on little boys.
So, I want to be close when he comes back from downtown. We can celebrate with dinner at Leona’s if all goes well. And, if not, I have ways to console Randy if only for long enough to give him a little island of oblivion.
I’ve been staying at his place in Rogers Park since the night I called him and he invited me over.
“You know what you said to me once? About me being a drowning man and you’re something I’m holding onto so I can keep my head above water?” He asked me this in the wee hours of that morning when I came over, when the first thing we did was rip the clothes from each other and wrestle around on the sheets. After, we talked. I nodded when he asked me this because, indeed, I had said it. And now, I wanted to take it back.
Randy had gone on in that pillow talk, saying, “You were right. My fears and my despair, especially over my son, were pushing me beneath the waves. And, John, oh John, you seem like the only figure on shore that I can grab onto. It’s true. I need you in a way that might not be comfortable for you. I need you to keep me afloat. I need you to risk being dragged in and pulled under yourself as I fight these rising tides.”
Okay, so maybe he didn’t put it quite so succinctly or poetically, but he did get across the point that I could be a comfort, a shoulder to cry on, support in a time of desperate need.
And, as I rode over on an empty L train, I’d known I was already ready to be those things for Randy.
Because, despite Vince’s very common sense warnings and my own logical and deep misgivings, I realized how much I love this man. That’s why I couldn’t let him go, in both my dreams and waking life. That’s why no one else held any genuine appeal for me, as cute or available as they may be.
Love isn’t about being with the person who makes the most sense. It’s about what’s in your heart. Love doesn’t show up and ask if the time is right or even if the person is right. Love just is. And I know, deep in my heart, I love Randy. And, more than anything, I want to be there for him—for better or for worse, as they say. We may never be able to get married for real in our lifetime, but we can make the promises to each other.
I lean back in my chair, my cup of coffee gone tepid despite the heat and humidity that surrounds me like a heavy blanket, too warm and too heavy. I’d ordered a scone and tried to eat it, but I was too keyed up. My gut didn’t see the appeal or, as my mom used to tell me, my eyes were bigger than my stomach.
I look west, toward the train tracks that run above the street. Beyond it, the sky is the color of skim milk, but it’s pretty because the clouds look like dark smudges on the gray-white surface.
The leaves in the trees hang down, not moving.
Annie herself, a big woman in a red apron and a housedress, pads out to my table. Her weight and age, both considerable, make it hard for her to move, but she smiles at me anyway. “Can I get you anything else? Refill?” She looks down at the plate with the scone and points. “You didn’t like my maple scone? You’re the first!” she laughs. “I’m happy to get you something else. I bake it all myself. I have some German chocolate cupcakes in there that’ll rock your world.”
I smile. “Thanks. Maybe later.” I size her up, noticing the cropped gray hair almost a flat top, the big earrings, and the kindness in her eyes. Does she go to my church? Does it matter? She seems like the soul of kindness, so I test the waters and say, “I’m waiting for my boyfriend. Maybe when he gets here, we’ll take you up on those cupcakes.”
That makes her smile. “Okay, bud. That’ll be if there are any left.”
She walks away. I’m just about to pick up the magazine again when I hear the train rumble and screech into the station. I set the magazine down and watch as the train pulls out of the station above and the commuters begin to emerge from the station below. Because there hasn’t been a train for a while, there’s quite a crowd coming out, but I don’t see Randy among them.
Until I do.
He’s one of the last to come out. The slump of his shoulders and the way he stares down at the sidewalk tells me that things haven’t gone well. His demeanor, sad from even a block away, causes my hope to plummet and a chill to rise up within me despite how hot it is.
He crosses the street quickly even though his footsteps are shuffling. There’s an auto body repair place across from the station, and when they’re not closed, they leave the gates to their yard and parking area open, making for a handy shortcut over to Fargo and our apartment. Randy heads through it, disappearing from my view.
Did I just say our apartment? I smile at the slip and know that the truth will most likely become literal in the very near future.
I get up, throw some bills on the table, way more than the cost of my coffee and scone, but Annie, if that’s her name, has been nice to me, understanding instinctively that I was on pins and needles, waiting.
I rush west up Jarvis and head through the auto body shop’s gates myself. Randy’s just ahead, about to come out on to Fargo Avenue. I push myself to run faster so I can catch up with him.
He looks over at me as I fall into step beside him. He stops. “Where did you come from?”
“That little coffee shop on Jarvis? Aunt Annie’s?”
“I love that place. They have the best coffee and the best baked goods.”
I think of my uneaten scone.
We walk on in silence. I want to give him the opportunity to talk without pressure. We both know where he’s been; he’d fretted about it all last night, tossing and turning next to me. I doubt he slept at all.
The sky ahead of us is darkening and, underneath the heat, there’s a crispness to the air that predicts autumn’s arrival. Another train, close on the heels of the one Randy just got off, rumbles by above us. Typical CTA. No trains for a long time, then two in a row.
We turn onto Fargo and cross Ashland. I peer up at our balcony and see the herbs I planted—mint, basil, and parsley—wilting on the concrete edge. They’ll perk up with a bit of water and
evening’s relatively cooler temperatures.
I wish I could say the same for Randy.
I get out the keys he’s given me before he has a chance to wrestle his own out of his khaki’s pockets. “Allow me.” I unlock the outer door and wait in the vestibule as he takes the mail out of the mailbox.
“All junk.” He tosses it into the wastebasket the management company has thoughtfully installed in the vestibule for just this purpose.
I unlock the second door, and Randy follows me up the stairs. We get to the front door and I open it. Once inside, I take him in my arms and hold him, not saying anything. The apartment is stuffy, hot. The thick air has rolled in through all the open windows, and it feels just as bad in here as it does outside. I can turn the fans on, but all they’ll do is displace the hot air, moving it but not cooling it.
“Let’s go out for dinner,” I say. Earlier, I hoped a dinner out would be celebratory, but it can also be conciliatory.
Randy says nothing but moves into the bedroom. I follow him and watch as he sheds clothes he never wears in his normal life—the khakis, the plaid shirt, the loafers—to change into camo shorts and a black tank top. Part of me wants to jump his bones as he stands before me in only a pair of striped boxer shorts and the other part wants to make him a cup of tea, to draw a bath, to put some soothing music on—cue up the Kitaro.
After he’s dressed, he crosses the room and turns on the box fan we have in the big window facing the street.
Over its roar, he shouts, “I don’t know if I feel like going out.”
“How about if I make you a cup of tea? Or no, pour you a glass of wine? Draw a nice bath for you?” I move out to the adjoining living room and slip Silk Road into the cassette player. Kitaro’s somber, yet soothing, chords fill the air.
Randy stands behind me. “You’re sweet.”
I take him in my arms, hold him, kiss him. Pulling back, I touch his face, run my finger along his lips. Never breaking eye contact, I finally say, “Things didn’t go well.”
“Are you asking?” he wonders, sad.
“No. I’m not blind.”
He tells me how the meeting went (nowhere). He plops down on the couch. “How about that wine?”
I hurry out to the kitchen and pull the cork on the bottle of red we had with our spaghetti the night before. I fill two glasses and come back. After handing him his glass and setting my own on the coffee table, I settle in beside him. “I’m sorry to hear that. Do you think things will work out better once you do go to court? Surely, the judge will see things more clearly and not deny you your rights.”
“What rights? What rights, John? I’m a homosexual who left his wife to fuck other men. I’m a queer who probably shouldn’t be hanging around unsupervised with little boys. That’s how the judge will see things. I don’t kid myself anymore.” He sips his wine and chokes a bit on it.
When he looks up at me, tears stand in his eyes. “I’m gonna lose my little boy. I just know it.”
I take the glass from him and, once again, hold him close. I stroke his hair and whisper, “You don’t know that. There’s no point in getting yourself all worked up until you know more, sweetheart.”
I feel like I’m lying. And I suspect Randy knows it too.
We sit in silence, watching as shadows claim the room around us and it gets darker, darker.
At last, Randy stands up. “Yeah. Let’s go out and get something to eat. Leona’s?”
“Sure.”
I take his hand and we head out into the night.
I don’t let go of his hand once we get outside. Fuck the world if they don’t approve of our love. It’s just that—love.
“Can we walk to Leona’s?” Randy asks. “I don’t feel like getting back on the L.”
“Sure.” Leona’s, an Italian joint on Sheridan Road, is probably only about a mile away. “Let’s walk along the lakefront, okay?”
“Maybe we’ll catch a breeze, if we’re lucky.”
We head east on Fargo, toward the band of blue-gray water at the very end of the street. We may not be able to stay next to the water the whole way to the restaurant, but I’m going to do my best to make sure that we keep the proximity as close as possible. I like the feel of Randy’s hand in mine, and I feel a sense of pride that this is my man.
“We are,” I say as we start down the steps leading to the beach at the street’s end.
“We are what?”
“Lucky. You said we’d catch a breeze if we’re lucky. And we are. Breeze or not. I’m so lucky I found you, Randy. And I like to think that, one day, you’ll see you’re lucky too. I hope you’ll feel lucky to have found me, but even more, I hope you’ll appreciate that you’ve found your essential self at last—the real you.
“And he’s a guy worth loving.”
Randy stares out at the calm water and says nothing. I hope his heart hears me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
VIOLET
Something wakes me. I sit up in my old four-poster canopy bed, feeling as though I’ve time traveled back to my girlhood. I rack my brain to see if I can jar loose some dream images, whatever it was that woke me and left me feeling, upon waking, a little breathless, a little sweaty despite the frigid air-conditioning in my parents’ house.
All I can recall is an image of Randy at the edge of a large body of water—maybe Lake Michigan, maybe the ocean. He’s poised at the top of a mass of boulders. The waves are huge, the water a dark gray.
I sit up and shiver, wrapping my arms around myself. I know it’s hot outside, but is it really necessary to set the thermostat at seventy? This house feels like a mausoleum.
There’s something foreboding about my dream. I don’t want to follow up on that half-remembered image too closely for fear of seeing something I don’t want to see.
He’s in the water, drowned. The waves toss his body to and fro until he disappears beneath them.
Odd. These late-night hours here in Evanston, away from the sound of the L rumbling by outside, the traffic, and the voices on the street make it hard for me to sleep. Here, it’s too quiet. The quiet has a roar of its own: lifeless, yet irritating.
Who the hell finds it too quiet to sleep?
I glance over at the bed across the room where Henry’s been sleeping. His mop of dark hair, so like his dad’s, isn’t sticking out from under the covers. Maybe he’s completely under. He does that sometimes—but only since we moved up here with Mom and Dad. I can’t blame him for disappearing beneath the bed clothes since it’s so damn cold in this room.
He’s hiding when he does that. It’s not because of the cold.
I pad silently across the plush green carpet and lean over the bed. The moonlight’s enough to see by, giving everything a silvery glow. I can tell pretty quickly he’s not there. There’s no little shape under the floral yellow-and-green comforter. I pull back the bedclothes anyway and am rewarded with a view of empty sheets. I turn and glance toward the en suite bath, but the door yawns open, revealing a dark room.
The digital clock on my nightstand tells me it’s a little after midnight.
“Henry?” I wonder out loud.
I grab my robe from the foot of the bed and shrug into it, grateful for its warmth. Once the sash is tied, I head out of the room along the narrow hallway and then make a right to descend the curving staircase.
I can barely hear my mother’s voice, coming from the general vicinity of the kitchen. As I step off the bottom step, her words are just a low murmur, but there’s an intensity to them that intrigues me.
I tiptoe through the living room and stand in the darkness of the dining room where I can peer into the brightly lit kitchen. At the moment, neither Mom nor Henry has seen me. I feel invisible. I pause, watching, reminded of my own childhood in that very kitchen. Mom has made Henry a glass of warm milk and, as she often does, paired it with a couple of oatmeal raisin cookies. There’s a Golden book on the table, The Poky Little Puppy. It was mine years ago, and I’m surprised it�
�s still around. It seems too childish, even for Henry.
Henry must have had trouble sleeping, not surprising after his encounter with his dad earlier in the day.
I smile for a moment at the scene.
But then the smile vanishes when I hear what Mom is saying.
“He doesn’t love you, Henry, not really. A father who leaves his family doesn’t care about his kids. You’re better off without him, trust your grandma on that.”
“But he does, Grandma. He told me today. Why can’t I see him?”
Mom shakes her head and sighs. “Oh sweetheart, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your father lies. He lied to your mom when he married her; he lied to all of us, and now he’s lying to you. Don’t fall for it. Your real family’s right here in this house. And we know how to love you. Not like him. It’s sad, but your daddy doesn’t know what real love is, not really. He’s a selfish man, Henry. You’re better off without him.”
My mouth has gone dry. I feel an ache deep in my bones as my son stares at his grandmother, eyes wide. The hurt in those eyes breaks my heart. He ignores the milk and cookies and sticks his thumb in his mouth. I haven’t seen him do that in a couple of years. It gives me a nauseous feeling.
After a moment, his head drops, and he stares down at the table.
Mom pulls his thumb roughly out of his mouth. “Come on, Henry. Big boys don’t suck their thumbs. It’ll give you buck teeth.” She shoves the glass toward him. “Drink your milk, and then we’ll get you back in your bed. I’ll tuck you in and read you a story.”
I step into the kitchen. The bright lights hurt my eyes. “I can take care of him, Mom.”
Henry looks up at me, almost confused, as though I’m a ghost or an image from a dream. “Mom?”
I smile and hope there’s some comfort in that expression. “I woke up, and you weren’t there.” I give a little mock shiver. “I was afraid. I need my little guy to protect me. Won’t you come back to bed?” I hold out my hand.
Henry slides off the chair, runs to me, and takes my hand. I squeeze it, trying to transfer my own warmth to him.