Manny waved and waited until I got inside the gate before he gunned his motor and sped off. His car was an expensive BMW, so maybe he didn’t want to put it at risk by remaining in that area. But there was a shiny gray sedan idling near the front gate, too-that person had no fear of crime.
As I went up the stairs, the piece of paper Manny had written his number on crinkled in my back pocket. I stuck my fingers in there and touched it. Maybe I would call him; we could be friends or lovers. I pictured us holding hands at a Disney movie and laughed at myself.
When I opened the door, I saw Annie on the couch with her hands folded in her lap. Because of the show, the living room was filled with lights, extension cords, and props and papier-rnache masks. An old couch from the Salvation Army sat at the far end for dancers to sit on between scenes. It felt like a weird dream to see her overlapping with my new life. I had forgotten to find out when she was coming, and now here I was thinking about Manny. Annie had on a polyester dress with orange and blue flowers on a white background. I remembered it as one of her favorites from when we lived together. She clutched a ragged piece of tissue, torn to smithereens. I hoped she hadn’t said anything to my roommates about who she was and why she had come.
Next to Annie sat a square-headed man with a blond crew cut and gold-framed glasses, wearing a tan jacket and pants. He reminded me of one of my teachers at Central who’d also had only one long eyebrow across his forehead. Annie wore a troubled expression, but the stranger had a friendly, open face. He didn’t introduce himself, though, and I needed to talk to Annie foremost.
“I’m late,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Where were you?” she asked, with a mean tone in her voice that said she already knew but wanted to hear me confess. In my mind I started to get ready with a clean answer, but the friendly man touched her arm as if to say Hold your horses.
“I guess we never said a time,” she announced, still with some tension stuck between her teeth.
“Morning is a time. And it’s gone now. Sorry.”
She apologized for overreacting and trying to beat me up the night before, and I apologized back, for everything I had put her through.
“We’re not even,” she said. “Was there somebody else? When you ran away?”
“No.”
“Did you start acting on it before you ran away?”
I had to look away to say it. “A couple of times I did some things with some guys.”
Annie covered her face with her hands. Her lungs filled with air and then she let the breath out in short puffs. Then she took her hands away. “Why couldn’t you share this with me so that we could work on it as a couple, as a family? Why did you have to run off like that? Why did I have to come get you?”
For a very long time, I stayed silent, wishing that everything I struggled with could just pass out of my skin and into hers. But she wouldn’t let me move closer or touch her. I didn’t have an answer for her questions. It felt foolish to tell her that God had said to run away, and I didn’t have the words to explain that my problem was too shameful and private to share with anyone, sure as heck not my wife.
“In the back of my mind, I guess I was worried that you might have a problem with same-sex desires,” she said. “But I never took those fears seriously. “
I apologized again. “I thought I could handle it alone. I thought if you knew, then you’d be thinking about it every time you looked at me, and most every time we went to bed, especially. I reckoned it would get harder for me to handle the problem. I thought if I could just fix it myself without saying anything, you’d never know that it ever needed to be fixed, and everything could just be normal. I didn’t want to cause trouble for you.”
Annie nodded and touched the tissue to her nose. “I don’t think you want to change, Gary,” she continued. Hearing my real name made me feel naked. I almost corrected her, but instead I gave her a hurt look.
“But I do,” I said. “I do.”
Still holding the tissue, she pointed at the man. “Gary, this is Bill. He can help.” I shook hands with Bill, and pulled my chair nearer to Annie, who grabbed my hand and kneaded the soft parts of my palm.
“Gary, I love you very much and I hope and pray that you love me, too, and I’m glad to know you didn’t run away because of anything I did,” Annie said in a rush, like she wanted to get it all out before breaking down.
I petted her hand and stared at the floor. “Of course it wasn’t because of you.”
Bill leaned forward and touched her shoulder. He smiled at me in a way that had nothing to do with the tone of the conversation. It resembled the smile of a man trying to pick up another man in the park. Making that judgment gave me a chill, because it meant I had started to see the world through homosexual eyes.
“Annie, can we talk about this in private?” I asked quietly.
“Bill is a friend, honey.”
“Yes,” Bill said, “I’m a friend.” He had a friendly voice.
“Okay ...” I shrugged off my puzzlement.
Rex stepped into the doorjamb by the front door. “Gary,” he said pointedly, to let me know that he knew and didn’t approve, “we’re planning to start in about ten minutes. Do you think you’ll be done by then?”
“Urn, no, Rex. I’m sorry. We can go to the backyard though.” The three of us stood up and squeezed down the hallway past Rex, through the kitchen and out to the backyard, where several of the other troupe members were stretching and warming up in the stifling heat. When we came out and down the wooden steps, they all perked up and went past us on the opposite side of the stairs, relieved not to have to sweat through their leotards anymore. They barely said hello, they were fanning themselves so hard. Isla gave me a look of confusion and anger; Helene smiled and batted her eyelashes and patted my shoulder sympathetically. They knew. A bucket of my emotions got dumped down a well.
Rex had followed us to the back door. “Try to keep it short, okay?” he warned. The screen door hissed as it swung, and then banged shut.
Bill marveled at the heat as I led him and Annie to a weather-beaten picnic table off to one side of the backyard by a sweet gum tree. The two of them put their legs underneath the table and I sat across from them. Finches landed on the birdbath and peeked at us. I was already sweating, and when Bill took off his jacket and laid it on the far end of the picnic table, I noticed a lot of wetness under his arms. Annie hadn’t let go of my hand the whole time, like she thought I might float away or disappear again.
Annie swallowed, and her first words had saliva in them. “Honey, we talked last night about getting you some help for your problem. But I’m not sure you’re ready.”
“I am, though.”
“Where did you sleep last night?” she asked, leaning forward a little.
At that moment, I didn’t know what I wanted. The memory of Manny lingered in my mind. In fact, I could still smell his cologne on the hand that Annie wasn’t hanging on to. I held that hand over my mouth and breathed in. The breakfast he’d made still warmed my full stomach. I dreamed for a minute that giving in to my gay urges would be better than struggling to rebuild my marriage and my old life.
The moral choice seemed darned obvious. My wife, the mother of my child, was offering me a true, meaningful life-one that I didn’t deserve. We had a history, we shared a faith. The homosexual world, as far as I had seen, could only offer an endless string of Mannies. Though he had treated me well, every encounter I had with a man seemed to scrape away part of my soul and leave me searching for the next guy. Same-sex desire was an addiction. I didn’t think opposite-sex attractions could ever feel as bad. I clutched both of Annie’s hands. I hadn’t tried everything yet. Maybe the Lord’s promise would be fulfilled after all, just a little later than I’d hoped. Addictions could be overcome.
“With a friend,” I said. Sweat flooded my eyebrows.
“That’s it,” Annie whispered, as if she’d wiped our marriage off the kitchen counter. She stood, and I trie
d to keep hold of her fingers but she yanked them free. “You made your choice.”
I wailed “No!” and curled over into a fetal position. I had done everything in order to be a real husband and father, and to make her life happy. After something like this, I would never get to see her or my daughter again. She’d have to tell our secrets to lawyers and my family. ‘TIl change for you, Annie. I can do it,” I promised. “Just don’t give up on me.” There was a long silence, and I raised my head. We took each other in, Annie searching my eyes for honesty as I prayed for mercy to arrive in hers.
Then Annie stepped forward, and so did I, and she stretched her arms as far around me as she could. I buried my face in her soft, fragrant neck. I couldn’t smell Manny’s smell anymore, just her rosy perfume. The hug lasted long enough for me to notice the sounds of pots and pans clattering and voices and music in the house next door to us. Annie finally sat down again. “I have a surprise for you.”
She stood, still holding my hand, and gave a coy look. She tugged on my hand and led me down the alley between my house and the next one, with Bill following at a slight distance. I helped her open the gate and she brought me up to the side of the sedan I had seen outside. Her smile blossomed, and I thought of all our trips to Disney World. Still facing me, she straightened her back and knocked on the window. The house and the sky behind us were reflected in it. Bill quietly opened the front door and got into the passenger’s seat. Another stranger, from the car service, had been waiting with the AC on.
The window came down smoothly to reveal the face of a beautiful girl with chubby cheeks and a pink headband pushing back her wavy brown hair. Cheryl squealed with delight when she saw me and bounced up and down in her seat. She stretched her arms out through the open window. I stepped over to the car and gave her a big hug and kiss.
“Daddy! Daddy!” she shouted.
“Yes, sweetheart, it’s me, it’s me!” I replied. The air inside the car was a cool, inviting temperature. Annie opened the door so I could slide in next to Cheryl. I put my daughter on my lap and hugged her some more. How could I have run away from a girl with gleaming eyes like this? I’d already missed so many important steps in her life. A tide of shame rose up in me-had I blown the chance to mean anything at all to her? Annie came around and got in on the other side.
Cheryl announced that she had just turned four and a half, which I knew. She showed me her teeth and asked me how the business trip had gone. Then she made me cross my heart and hope to die that I’d never go on another business trip again. The driver started the engine; the car moved down the street.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” she said. The car doors locked.
“Don’t worry, Pumpkin. I’m not going to leave you again.” With a jolt, I remembered the rehearsal. “Bill, where are we going? I have to be back.”
“Gary, you’re really committed to beating this thing, am I right?” he said.
“Yes, but-”
“No buts. I’ll bet you recognize the need to take extreme measures to solve problems sometimes. So you’re willing to try anything that might help you conquer these urges of yours. Am I right?” I nodded. Bill had a commanding, fatherly authority that hypnotized me. He always asked if he was right. You couldn’t say No, you’re not right. Bill hadn’t said much until this time, but when he started speaking a lot, I noticed that under the authority voice, he talked sort of gay-like, stretching out his vowels and saying his 5’S like a snake. But I wasn’t used to trusting my gut back then, so I didn’t put it together.
The car turned onto the highway and headed south. Bill looked into the rearview mirror to meet my glance. I held Cheryl’s hand and she opened her eyes wide when I turned back to her. We reached cruising speed, and Bill kept talking. “You’re on your way to a place called Resurrection Ministries, Gary. It’s a facility where you can get help. It’s run by a group of Christian professionals who are trained to help people overcome their same-sex desires. It’s near Memphis, Tennessee.”
“Hey!” I shouted. “Can’t I go back and get some of my stuff?”
“There’ll be stuff there. You’re better off without a lot of the false images you might bring with you anyway. What you need most is to be out of the environment you’re living in right now, am I right? So no contact with the old world for now. You have to focus on yourself and on getting better. So no phone calls, no mail, no faxes, nothing. Annie and Cheryl can’t go with you, I’m afraid, but they’re going to support you every step of the way. The program’s a year long, but that’s what we need. For the first three months, you won’t have visitors. You’ve gotta cut your ties.” Bill’s voice took on a joking tone. “But I’ve heard you’re an old hand at that.” The three of us in the back didn’t laugh.
“I can’t even call them and tell them to put my stuff in storage?”
“You’ll be so different you won’t want your old stuff,” he said. “Believe you me.”
In a half an hour, we reached Hartsfield airport. The driver pulled the car into the returns area. When we stopped, Bill opened the backseat on my side and Annie stood by hers. They blocked my way so that I wouldn’t make a run for it. I wanted to tell them they didn’t need to bother, but they had probably rehearsed all of this. Not saying that I was okay with coming meant they could do everything the way they planned it.
When Bill opened the car door, he asked me to stick out my right hand. I did so and he handcuffed it to his left with plastic handcuffs. Annie scooped Cheryl up so that she didn’t notice that. I stumbled out of the car and somebody from the rental company drove it away. Cheryl held my left hand as we rode the shuttle bus to the terminal and checked in. I squatted and hugged her with the arm that wasn’t handcuffed to Bill. I told her that I had to go away and she burst into tears. She made a high-pitched noise that hurt my ears and drew attention from strangers, but I took my lumps while she hit me and called me a liar and screamed. She would never believe anything I said ever again.
People stared at us like I was a child abuser. That was the worst. Over Cheryl’s shoulder, I met their judging eyes with a weak smile, hoping the busybodies would just move on. I hated Bill for putting me in the position of having promised Cheryl something I had to turn right around and unpromise.
Cheryl stuck her hands in my face to push herself away and poked me in the eye. She ran to her mother and hugged her knees. Annie promised to explain things to her so that she wouldn’t hold it against me. With a little difficulty, Annie embraced me to say good-bye and kissed me on the lips. Her mouth opened, but mine didn’t. Some of her bright red lipstick transferred to my lips, though I didn’t realize it until later. Bill and I must have looked funny going through the terminal, still handcuffed and trying to hide it, keeping our hands behind us and close together. As we cruised past the food courts on the people-mover, a couple of travelers raised their heads and had themselves a good long look.
III.
CHARACTER MARCHES
Stylized walks and attitudes
TWELVE
Outside Memphis, steel blue light disappeared behind the skyline and a clear, humid night crept in. Our shaky car rumbled through the flat main roads east of downtown, past strip malls and gas stations. In the middle of an area of shops and restaurants, a small hill poked up with a church piercing the sky at the top. Bill turned at the next street and we drove past the church, a cream-colored building the size of a small airplane hangar that had a sloping roof. The marquee said RICTUS BOLLARD CHURCH OF THE HOLY FLOCK and BEHOLD, I MAKE ALL THINGS NEW, REV. 21:5. On the other side of the church sat two buildings made of tan brick that looked like its brother and sister. “Welcome to Resurrection Minsistries,” Bill said.
Many of the windows on campus glowed a warm yellow, except one on the ground floor, where a stout woman typed at a computer. The stout woman got up from her chair when Bill parked the car, and momentarily she scurried out to meet us. She wore an ankle-length denim dress and sensible shoes. She and Bill held their arms w
ide and embraced one another. I had to go behind the woman because I still had on the handcuffs. Their greeting ended and they turned their attention toward me.
“This is Gary?” the woman asked, pity coloring her voice. I extended my hand, and we shook. “Hi, Gary. I’m Gay.” Bill chortled and grasped her shoulder playfully. My face went blank.
“You’re always saying that. What she means, Gary, is that her name is Gay.”
Gay laughed. “My parents are old-fashioned people from Oklahoma, they didn’t get the memo before they christened me. It was 1955. What can I say?”
“She’s an ex-lesbian.”
“An ex-lesbian?” I was dumbfounded to hear people speak so lightly about something I had struggled with so seriously. These two seemed mighty comfortable joking about the worst thing in my life. Most curiously, they didn’t seem too different from gay and lesbian people I had met in nightclubs and other places. Bill didn’t say much about his past until later, but Gay had an easy, open manner. She was from Houston, Texas, where her folks had moved when she was five, but she didn’t talk like a Texan. Her skin was very pale and her hair had a lot of shine but no curl. It flopped by the side of her face, while a pair of gold barrettes held back her bangs, looking like they belonged on somebody younger. She talked with her big chin down, like she was always laughing at herself.
“I wouldn’t say ex-lesbian yet, but I am on the road to recovery. You know what they say: one day at a time. But I appreciate your vote of confidence, Bill.”
“Are you going to change your name once the transformation is complete?” Bill ribbed.
“Yes. Then and only then. I’ll change my name to Not Gay.” She snickered real hard, and turned to me when she got done. Bill released me from the handcuffs. The light had almost completely faded, but the three of us walked around the buildings and Gay filled me in on the ministry.
“There used to be a divinity school associated with the church,” she explained. “But it had financial problems and the buildings were empty for a while. In 1982, Resurrection Ministries decided to move from Seattle to here. Charlie had been looking for a place to start a live-in ministry.” Who was Charlie? I wondered. “This is the men’s ministry here, and the far one is the women’s. There isn’t a lot of overlap. In fact, I might be the last woman you see for a couple of days. So get a good look!”
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