by Laura Stone
“I don’t know,” he sighed. “He won’t open it.”
“Who’s it from? His mother?”
Brandon thought of the grim-faced woman he’d encountered in Spain and the way judgment and unhappiness poured from her. He thought of his mom never letting him out of her sight from the moment they’d found each other at the airport in Chicago, how she fussed over him and his siblings, demanding kisses and hugs, tickling them and smoothing her hand over their heads and cheeks. He realized he hadn’t seen Sister Young touch Adam once, not a hug or, heck, not even a handshake. She was the least maternal person he’d ever met, but then, his own mother was pretty much the best. Anyone would fail in comparison.
“No,” Brandon replied. “It’s from one of his brothers. The doctor, or the neurology student at the Y, I should say.”
“At the Y, huh? Hmm.” She used her sneakered foot against Brandon’s leg to twist her chair side to side. “So you don’t think it’s going to be a good letter?”
“I don’t know how it could be,” Brandon said. “But I say this because he’s obviously feeling tender. Just… maybe lay off the PFLAG stuff for a bit. He’s still getting used to everything.”
“Aren’t we all?” Sandra said, grinning as she kicked at Brandon’s shin. “Well, sounds like tater tot casserole is in order. You said he loves those peanut butter bar cookies, right?”
“He really loves them when you put the chocolate drizzle stuff on top.”
“Oh, he does, does he?” Sandra asked. “I seem to recall a certain someone I gave birth to loving that, in particular.”
“That’s why we’re so perfect together, huh?”
Sandra’s face softened. “I just want to hug him and not stop.”
“Me, too.”
“Hugs are great. Just remember the house rules, please. I don’t mind that you boys feel what you feel, but I wouldn’t let your siblings and their significant others mess around under my roof, either, if they weren’t married.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sandra got to her feet and stretched her arms overhead. “Well, it’s getting close to supper time, anyway. Dad’ll be home soon, too. You make sure Adam knows he can come talk to me if he wants, okay?”
“Kay, Mom. Love you.”
She beamed, her eyes watery. “I love you, too.”
Brandon wandered through the messy basement, popping his head into the tiny bedrooms his dad had built down here to accommodate their growing brood and looked for a head of blond hair amongst the brown. He found Adam replacing lightbulbs in the food storage—a large room off the stairway with floor to ceiling shelves in which the family stored their one-year food supply. Brandon leaned against the doorframe smiling as he watched his boyfriend’s expression while he delicately unhitched the long fluorescent tube.
“These freak me out,” Adam said. “I think it’s the humming. Hey.”
“Hey,” Brandon answered. He ran the flat of his hand up Adam’s back and squeezed Adam’s nape. Adam’s eyes fluttered shut, then snapped open, and he looked around.
“You don’t have to keep doing that,” Brandon sighed.
“It’s…”
“Hard, I know.”
Adam snapped the tube in place and propped the burnt-out light against the wall. “I’m just not used to it being okay.”
“My parents aren’t going to freak out if I have my hand on you, Adam.”
“What about your little brothers and sisters? Mary doesn’t like me.”
“Mary doesn’t like anyone.”
Mary was the youngest Christensen sibling, nine, and going through what Sandra called her ‘sneaky age.’ “All girls just look suspicious when they’re in the fourth grade. It’s terrible. I don’t know why the CIA doesn’t round them all up and have them be international spies until they get their periods. They’d be a force to be reckoned with.”
“So do you want to go tonight?” Brandon asked, smiling as Adam backed him around the corner where white buckets of flour and other baking supplies were stacked.
“How is this thing tonight not church?” Adam ran his finger along the knit collar of Brandon’s T-shirt.
“It’s just at a church. It’s not the Church. Besides, I have a feeling that talking to people one-on-one will be more fruitful than filling out applications online.”
Adam grinned. “You just get overwhelmed by money stuff.”
Brandon snorted. “Well, yeah. Habit.”
“Community college, summer jobs, our own place. That’s the plan.”
“Well, that’s if you get into UC-Davis, too,” Brandon said. “Sorry you’re not a local. Tuition isn’t cheap otherwise.” His academic scholarships coupled with California residency tuition was the only reason he was able to attend college in the first place. Now that Adam’s family had cut him off, there was no way Adam could afford to go back to school; Adam’s athletic scholarship wouldn’t cover all the costs. Plus, that would mean Adam going back to Utah, which he was set against.
Brandon’s family had been pretty adamant that Adam wasn’t going to go back, either.
“Son,” Bob had said on the drive back to their hometown of Vacaville from the Sacramento airport—Sister Johnson had put Brandon on standby to meet Adam in Salt Lake City along with Bob and his sizable girth in case any of Adam’s family had tried to strong-arm Adam into going back to Provo. “I want you to think long and hard about how going back to Utah is going to affect you. You’ll be in the shadow of the Mormon Church everywhere you go. Do you have a support network at all? Anyone in your family you can trust to stand by you?”
Adam had shaken his head no.
Bob’s mouth flattened into a thin line as he nodded. “Right. Now, everything Brandon’s told us about you, every note you’ve sent the family while you boys served, I just can’t in good conscience let a kid like you get thrown back into that… that pit of shame.”
Adam looked down at their entwined hands. “I feel like I’m ruining your family,” he muttered.
“We’ve been over this,” Brandon said, drawing Adam into his arms, who stiffened until apparently realizing no one was going to shout at them. “Every time we wrote our questions for my folks, any time I expressed a doubt, they’d pray about it as a family here. They’d look into our questions and only found more themselves.”
“That’s what I mean,” Adam cried.
“My family does everything together, okay? Even if it means finding our own faith, a new one.”
The day after Brandon came home, the local church leaders had arrived with their somber faces and instructions for Brandon to come to the stake center for his own official “Court of Love” to be officially excommunicated; President Young, in his fit of pique, hadn’t held one back in Barcelona.
“We won’t be doing that,” Sandra said.
“Sister Christensen,” the Bishop said, his voice a warning.
“Sandra,” she corrected. “I’d like to be released from my calling in the Young Women’s Presidency,” she said, and it was only because Brandon knew her so well that he could hear the emotion she tried to control as she spoke. “Bob and I have already written our letters to the Church office requesting that our membership be revoked.”
“Sister Christensen!”
“Sandra.” Her expression was firm. “Tom, I know you’re a good man. I know and love your wife to pieces. I also know that you—heck, like we all did because we didn’t know any better—spread that horseshit about gay marriage for Prop 8.”
Brother Johnson, the stewardess’s husband, shifted uncomfortably on his feet at their front stoop.
“My husband and I feel we’ve had personal revelation about the Church and about our faith. We don’t believe the Church is being run by our Heavenly Father any longer. You can tell the ladies in the Relief Society not to bother with the cards and visits. We n
o longer consider ourselves Mormons.”
She shut the door with a trembling hand.
“Well. That’s that,” she’d said, and burst into tears.
Brandon held her in his arms and cried, too. “I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not,” she’d said into his tear-stained shirt. “I love you. I love you and your brothers and sisters, I love your father, and I’m sure I’ll love Adam. We’ll get through this.”
Now, Brandon held Adam in his arms and repeated his mom’s words. “We’ll get through this. Just like we’ve gotten through everything.”
“Nowhere to go but up, right?”
“Right.”
At dinner, Brandon made a point of squeezing Adam between himself and Mary. Brandon’s older sister Joanna, twenty-two and living with her college friends, had joined them for dinner. Brandon’s older brothers, Jack, twenty-five, and Bob, Jr., twenty-seven, lived in the Bay area a few hours north. Still, even minus two people, it was a squeeze.
The family held hands as Bob began to bless their dinner.
“Heavenly Father, we’re so grateful to be gathered as a family to eat this wonderful meal you and my wife have blessed us with. We’re so grateful to have Adam and Brandon with us, that You have shown us how magnanimous You are with Your love, that You have chosen our family to learn the true fullness of Your gospel, how love is love is love.”
“And that mom put extra cheese on the tots,” Brandon’s twelve-year-old brother Bill added under his breath.
“And the extra cheese,” Bob added. Everyone tittered, even Adam. “Help us always to serve one another as well as all of Your children, gay, straight, crooked or bent. In this we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.”
“Amen” resounded from around the table as plates began to be passed. Brandon looked at Adam, who was nervously eyeing a scowling Mary.
“Make sure she gets a corner piece,” he whispered, grinning as Mary’s eyes went round and large when Adam scooped out a corner and put it on her plate instead of his own. “You just made a fan for life,” he said, nudging Adam’s shoulder.
Mary asked, “Are you going to marry my brother? The kids at school say you can if you want to.” There was a challenge! Adam looked like a deer caught in the headlights.
Bob answered. “Mary, marriage is pretty serious. It’s also not our business.” He smiled from the head of the table at everyone crammed on benches and the Christensen’s mix-and-matched chairs. “But I think I speak for everyone when I say that if that was something you two decided was the right thing to do in, oh, five years or more, that we’d support you.”
Everyone at the table laughed or nodded.
Brenda, Brandon’s sixteen-year-old sister, said loftily, “I’m not ever getting married. I live with boys. You’re all pigs.”
Bill replied, “Maybe you’ll marry a girl.”
“Maybe I will. Girls are way less gross than boys are.”
Mary leaned into Adam and said loud enough for Brandon to hear, “Brenda never washes her gym socks. She says it’s ‘good luck.’”
Adam laughed and covered it with a sip from his glass of water.
Brandon leaned back in his chair and watched his ridiculous family, all of them loud and smiling and ribbing each other, everyone always in each other’s space, and had never been happier to know that family meant always having each other’s backs, too. They may not all understand what had happened on Brandon’s mission—Bob and Sandra said that it was private and up to the boys’ discretion what they shared about it—but they still loved their brother. And they were coming to care for Adam, too.
Adam leaned down. Mary whispered fervently in his ear about… who knew, but it was important if the serious expression on Adam’s face as he nodded along was anything to go by. Brandon noticed how Adam cut the crusty browned bits off his own serving and put it on Mary’s plate, and the happiness expanding inside him was so tremendous that he thought he might break open.
Of course Adam, the youngest and most disaffected in his own family, would understand how Mary, the baby of the family, might feel neglected. It was hard being in a big family, especially one filled with large personalities. He put his arm behind Adam’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
John, seventeen and with obnoxious Justin Beiber-styled hair, crooned, “Look at the lovebirds.”
Adam blushed and leaned out of Brandon’s hold. Brandon cut his brother a dirty look.
John seemed to realize what he’d done and stammered, “H-hey, man, it’s cool. I didn’t mean it like… I was just joshing you guys.” He closed his eyes, then said, “So, look. Adam. I was hoping you might come hang with me tomorrow up at the gym? Coach said something about me maybe moving to special teams. We lost our free safety and I think he wants me there now. So, maybe you could show me some stuff to focus on?”
Sandra smiled at her plate.
“Uh, yeah. Sure,” Adam replied, his cheeks flooding red. “Yeah. I can show you some drills.”
“Were they ones you did at the U?” John almost knocked his plate to the floor, he leaned forward so fast. Everyone knew John’s goal was to make the football team at USC. Adam nodded and they were off, with Bob cutting in to ask Adam about different players and techniques.
“The cute ones are always gay,” Brenda sighed.
“Thanks,” Brandon said, flicking his bangs back and laughing.
“And full of themselves.”
Adam was practically bouncing up and down in the passenger seat. Mary had worked her way up from the third bench in the back of the family van to being draped over the console, chattering with Adam a mile a minute for the last half-hour of the drive as they got closer and closer to the beach and its parking.
“You guys remember to stick close, okay? Pay attention to where I’m camped out,” Brandon said, signaling to park.
“Dude, it’s not our first time,” Bill said, nodding to Adam. “It’s his.” Bill rolled his eyes, grabbed his backpack and took off down the beach at breakneck speed with Brenda hot on his heels.
That left Brandon and Adam (and Adam’s new shadow, Mary) to unload the coolers, beach umbrella and towels. Adam stood watching as Brandon got their little camp set up. When it was clear Mary had no intention of leaving Adam’s side, Brandon said, “Mary. Bug off.”
“Hey,” Adam said laughing. “Don’t be mean.”
Brandon rolled his eyes. Adam didn’t understand what it was like to have a little sister, but he’d learn soon enough. “Mary, we want to make out.”
Mary looked scandalized. Brandon had a suspicion that she had a big crush on Adam. Better nip that in the bud.
“Go find Brenda. Tell her I said to buy you an ice cream. I know Mom gave her a ten.”
Mary’s eyes narrowed as she muttered, “Knew it,” and took off after her siblings.
Adam plopped onto the towels and looked around before pulling his shirt off. “It still feels so weird,” he said, rubbing his bare skin.
“I don’t think I mind as much anymore,” Brandon said, pulling his shirt off, too. They had been forbidden to wear their temple garments after being excommunicated. Sometimes Brandon missed them, what they meant, but not today. “It’s so hot.”
“Mm,” Adam agreed. “Hey. I don’t mean this as a come-on, but would you put sunscreen on my back? I’m so pale I usually just burn to a crisp.”
“Why isn’t it a come-on?” Brandon asked, snapping off the cap. “You know you can come onto me.”
Adam choked.
“I didn’t mean it like that. Wait…” Brandon rubbed his hands over Adam’s broad shoulders and kissed the freckles that dotted them. “Maybe I did.”
They hadn’t been able to be together physically since Spain, but they were working on getting their own place once Brandon went back to school in August. He missed the feeling of Adam sleepi
ng next to him, the touch of his lips, the way his deep baritone sounded when he was turned on; he missed the intimacy of being in love with another person and physically showing them. Adam was so easy to love, too. Any expression of it from Brandon, heck, from any of Brandon’s family, and Adam beamed for hours. It made Brandon want to spoil him, to cherish him, to proudly walk down the street with Adam’s hand in his and declare his love for anyone to hear. He never wanted a day to go by without Adam in it, and hoped that one day they could have what his own parents had.
Sandra and Bob constantly hugged and kissed, teased each other, danced in the kitchen when “their song” came on, went on their Friday night “date nights” which the kids all knew was them getting In-N-Out and driving to make-out point. They were so embarrassing. It was awesome.
Adam wasn’t used to people being demonstrative at all and seemed shocked if he happened to catch Sandra and Bob kissing or being tender with each other. It was as if he’d walked in on them doing something private and not just being a couple still in love after thirty years. It was hard to keep from touching Adam as much as Brandon wanted to, as much as his parents and siblings were comfortable with, but he was trying to respect Adam’s shyness, not just with physical affection but that they were both men. Living where they did in California, just sixty miles southeast of San Francisco, meant the Christensens had been around gay and lesbian couples before. It wasn’t like living in Utah, where most people were LDS, and those who weren’t were deeply entrenched in the culture. The Christensen family didn’t seem to be shocked by seeing two men holding hands or kissing one another. They just maybe were irritated by it being their brother. Then again, Brandon thought it was weird to see John following girls around town like a little puppy.
Adam tugged Brandon’s hands off his shoulders, wrapped himself up in Brandon’s embrace and leaned his weight back into him. “It’s not the same as in Spain.”
Brandon’s heart lurched. “What?”
“The ocean. It’s not the same. It’s… different. The water, the waves. The beach is, too. I didn’t know it was like that.”
Brandon pressed the flat of his palm over Adam’s heart where it beat steady and sure. “It’s a different ocean.”