As La Vista Turns

by Kris Ripper

  I wanted to thank him, but suddenly I wasn’t sure I could speak. That was exactly what I wanted to do. I was calling it a wake, but what it really was had more to do with acceptance. More even than celebration.

  He nodded. “It is a good instinct, Zane. Do you have a date yet?”

  “The first Saturday in March.”

  “Very good. You will see me there. Or here, as the case may be.”

  Carlos squeezed my hand. “You know this is about to go totally out of your control, right?”

  “I have lists.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I sat with them for a while longer. Then they picked up a conversation they’d been having earlier, and I excused myself after only a few minutes. Time to head home. I walked to my car with my keys extended between my fingers, thinking of all the times I’d walked these dark side streets without even considering the possible dangers.

  Maybe it was a loss. Or maybe it was a new recognition of what had always been true: no one was safe. Either way, we were left with acceptance. Donald was right—time to look around and see where we stood.

  Aunt Florence came to breakfast again on Saturday morning and commandeered Dred after for a Serious Discussion.

  At least, that’s what we speculated, in low voices, from the kitchen. Where Emerson and I cleaned, while Obie entertained James by setting him in the middle of one of the raised beds and letting him eat all the plants he could grab.

  We thought they were talking about big things—Florence wanted Dred to reconcile with her parents—but when they finally raised their voices, it was all about quilting.

  “I’m not as good as you are, Auntie! Stop pretending that I am!”

  “You always do this. You are just like your mother. You give up before you even start so you won’t have to risk making a mistake.”

  That had an unfortunate ring of truth to it. I raised my eyebrows at Emerson, who shook his head.

  Dred sounded miserable. “Why won’t you let this go?”

  Florence lowered her voice so we could no longer hear it.

  “This family takes quilting very fucking seriously,” Emerson whispered, brushing accumulated crumbs into the sink.

  “So seriously they use it as a shorthand for everything.” I tried to hear more, but now—nothing. Only the totally muddled sound of voices and James’s clear, almost bell-like laughter from the garden. “Do you think James sounds like a bell when he laughs?”

  “A bell?” He frowned. “No. Wait. What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. Just that there’s something so . . . pure about it. Like it’s this pure tone.”

  “Huh. I guess there is something sort of elementally pleasing about the sound of him laughing. If that’s what you mean.”

  We stared at each other for a long moment. He recovered first.

  “Well, I’ve been meditating. I don’t know what your excuse is. ‘Bell-like.’”

  “It is.” Kind of. Maybe. Hell, I didn’t even know what that meant. But it fit. “Anyway, what does ‘elementally pleasing’ mean?”

  “Shut it.”

  I started to jump up to sit on the counter, then remembered Aunt Florence’s face the last time I’d done that and decided against it, copping a lean instead. “So are you coming to the wake?”

  “Yeah. You know you made that date for a weekend when she has James, right?”

  “No—no, I checked that—” I had a calendar! I’d been careful!

  “Yeah, except then he skipped the week before last, so now they’re on a different schedule again. I’d say you better hope he fucks up in the next few weeks, but I don’t think you have to hope. It’s pretty much a given.”

  “Damn it.” I’d fucking planned around that schedule. And now Dred wasn’t going to be there? “What’s his problem? James is a great kid. Who wouldn’t want to have him for, like, the thirty-six hours or whatever Brian keeps him?”

  “I guess it’s probably scary. And also, I know it’s not in style, but I’m not totally without sympathy for the guy. Obie liked him before, but now he acts like Brian’s got a case of leprosy, and he doesn’t want to breathe the same air. Mildred is, like, seethingly angry at him. Which I get, but doesn’t make him coming over here any easier. And he clearly feels incredibly stupid for how he reacted to ‘we’re pregnant’ with ‘I’m leaving the country, don’t bother calling.’ Not that him feeling bad now justifies it, but I guess it seems like it’s better than nothing.” He shook his head. “But I’ve thought that before, and sometimes it’s not really better than nothing. I think Mildred envies you, a little. Not having to think about stuff like that.”

  “Envies me for what?”

  “For having a kid on your own. Instead of stumbling into having a kid and making it up as you go along.”

  “Oh. I guess I always think she’s the cool one between us.”

  He blinked. “You have a steady job, a condo, money, a plan with a list and everything, and you’re so driven you can just decide to throw a community-wide wake and make it happen.”

  “The only thing I can’t do is get pregnant.” The words were out of my mouth before I’d even really thought them, and for a second, I almost couldn’t believe I’d spoken aloud.

  But Emerson only met my eyes steadily. “Well, I can’t cure MS. But I can sure as hell take better care of my body than I have in the past. You might not be able to get pregnant, but you can definitely start a family. There’s more than one way to skin a cat, Zane.”

  “Ew. Why would anyone want to skin a cat?”

  “No idea. But I’ve heard there’s a number of methods, if you’re interested.”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  Obie and a giggling James were suddenly in the doorway. “Come outside, it’s actually gorgeous out. I don’t know when it suddenly turned to summer out here, but it’s at least seventy, seventy-five.”

  “I hate heat.” Emerson, contrary to his words, walked outside. “James, boy, what have you been eating? Grass?”

  James replied, waving a fist with a few bits still clutched between his fingers.

  “Wheatgrass? Ugh. Don’t remind me. And don’t put it in the juicer, it’s vile.”

  They kept talking. When it didn’t seem like Dred and Florence were going to be done any time soon, I followed.

  I had an appointment in the Harbor District in the late afternoon, and stopped by QYP after to see how the guys were doing.

  Cam’s car was out front again.

  “Hello?”

  A brief scuffle of shoes led me right around the corner from the kitchen, where half-filled bookshelves lined the walls outside the utility closet. Keith and Cam were standing suspiciously far apart. And both of them were blushing.

  “Let’s pretend I didn’t interrupt whatever I clearly interrupted, huh, boys?”

  “Uh, yeah, let’s do that.” Keith brushed past me. “Hot chocolate?”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Cam? And yes, we have almond milk here.”

  “Oh. Yes, please.”

  They had almond milk. For Cam. Aww.

  “So we have a date for the wake.” I let myself jump up on the drop-in center’s counter, swinging my legs with no Aunt Florence to disapprove.

  “I heard that from Ed.” Keith assembled his hot chocolate makings. “And we’ll be there, obviously.”

  I glanced at Cam. “You coming to the wake?”

  “I meant him, too.”

  “I’m still asking the man himself.”

  Keith waved a hand. I’ll leave you to it.

  I raised my eyebrows at Cam, who shrugged. “I’ve already been warned that I can’t schedule an event that night to get out of coming, so yes, I’ll be there.”

  “Don’t—not if you don’t want to. That’s sort of missing the point of the whole thing.”

  “It’s not that. I apologize, Zane. I don’t mean that Keith is literally dragging me against my will.”

  “Though I would,” Keith mumbled in
the direction of the saucepan.

  Cam shot his back a slightly sour look. “I needed to be convinced, initially, that it was relevant to me. I’ve seen the changes at Club Fred’s, but ultimately I’ll continue to go there regardless of how people around me act.” He paused, as if waiting for Keith to interject. “But maybe there’s more power in the idea of the community coming together than I thought. I’m not sure. I’ll be there, though. Threats have been made.” His expression shifted, just a little.

  Keith half turned, smirking. “I think you meant that rewards have been promised.”

  “It’s the same thing around here.”

  “Ha, so true. Rewards, threats, what’s the difference? Hot chocolate is served.”

  We took our mugs—mine and Keith’s with cow’s milk, Cam’s with almond—to one of the tables.

  “Merin already went home?” Sure, it was 7 p.m., but I wasn’t so sure Merin had a home outside the center.

  “He’s in back with Josh, doing strong man things,” Keith said.

  Cam smiled. “They’re lifting weights.”

  “Strong man things, like I said.”

  I pretended affront. “Hey, I lift weights. When I’m not potentially pregnant.”

  “Do you stop when you’re all—” Keith did a hand-shake thing, presumably to indicate possibly carrying a fertilized egg.

  “Yeah. It’s mostly superstition, but yeah. Not that I’d be doing pregnant deadlifts, though you could probably find someone on the internet who did. But I back off on the heavy lifting just in case.”

  He visibly restrained himself from asking the next logical question, so I answered it anyway.

  “Still in the two-week wait. I can test tomorrow morning.”

  “That’s— Is that exciting, or not really?”

  I started to shake my head, then stopped. “Sometimes I really think I’m pregnant by now. This time I don’t have that certainty. It’ll probably be negative.” Even as I said it, though, I wondered. Maybe not thinking I was pregnant was a sign of pregnancy? If all the times I’d been sure meant I wasn’t, maybe this time, being unsure meant I was.

  It was crazy. But trying to get pregnant was a crazy-making thing.

  Cam shifted in his seat. The only man I knew who wasn’t actively awkward talking about me trying to get pregnant was Obie. “How long have you been trying?”

  “This is cycle thirteen.” God. It sounded longer every time I said it. Maybe I did have fertility issues. Maybe Jane somehow missed them.

  “Damn.” Keith played with his mug. “You don’t want to adopt?”

  “Oh, I’d totally adopt. I mean, some people don’t want to adopt, and that’s cool, but even if I get pregnant, I think I’d adopt if I wanted more kids.”

  “Huh. I never thought about that. You could do . . . both.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what is it about being pregnant that makes you keep going this long? It’s kind of a really long time, Zane.”

  I don’t always explain it. It feels like there’s a weird double standard where straight and queer people are concerned. My heterosexual TTC friends get “just adopt” from their peers, but at least people seem to understand why they want to physically have a child. I lost a couple of friends for not adopting right off the bat. One of them thought it was our duty as queers to raise kids who didn’t have other family (which was a neat inversion of the argument we used against people who said we couldn’t have babies: why yes, but we’re raising your babies, so it works!).

  Most of the time, I don’t explain it. But sitting in QYP drinking hot chocolate made me bold. Or reckless. Or something.

  “It doesn’t have to do with parenting, or with kids. It’s going to sound kind of ridiculous, but pregnancy is . . . something I want to experience. Jaq and I took a trip to London when we graduated from high school. A week. And that’s more what this is for me. An adventure.”

  Keith’s brow furrowed. “You mean, separate from being a parent and having a kid?”

  “Related to, but not identical, yes. Does that sound nuts?”

  “Honestly, Zane, I get how reproduction works, but the whole thing sounds nuts to me. There are so many variables, so many places for it to go wrong, that I can’t even fathom how the human race continues.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “Yeah, I bet.”

  My phone vibrated against my leg. A text from Dred. You coming back tonight? You could stay over. The bed’s big enough. NO PRESSURE.

  I took a larger sip of my hot chocolate and slid the phone back into my pocket. Did I need to reply? She had to know I’d say yes.

  “Oh, secret text message.” Keith nudged Cam. “Who do you think Zane’s secret-texting?”

  “I think Mildred’s secret-texting her.”

  “Both of you can hush.”

  “Well, we could—”

  “So.” Cam raised an eyebrow. “Is it still fake-dating?”

  “Not . . . exactly.”

  Keith grinned. “Ha! Finally! We were wondering when you were gonna figure out you weren’t actually fake-dating.”

  “We were!”

  “You weren’t. You were pretend fake-dating to make up for the fact that you were actually dating, which is different.”

  “Oh yeah, buster? What makes you the expert?”

  He crooked his thumb toward Cam. “This one thought Josh and I were just after him for his remarkable grasp of film history or something. It’s adorable when you dense types figure out what’s obvious to the rest of us all along.”

  “Is a punishment the same as a reward?” Cam murmured.

  “You know that’s right.”

  They smiled at each other, and I couldn’t help smiling as well, even though it had nothing to do with me.

  “Anyway, boys, I should be off.” I downed the rest of my drink. “Thanks for the lovely hot chocolate, it’s been swell.”

  “Are you running off to get laid?” The expression on Keith’s face was probably supposed to be pouting. Though it looked a lot more like a grin. “So tacky!”

  “No! Well. I don’t think so. Hell, I have no fucking idea. But anyway, I’m leaving.”

  Keith saluted. “Have a really good night, Zane.”

  “You’re getting a little too big for your britches, mister.”

  He laughed. “I really am. Ha.”

  Cam stood up and walked me to the door. “It worked out pretty well for me. The transition to actually dating after doing . . . something else.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.” I kissed his cheek, on impulse, making him blush pink. “You have a good night too, Cam.”

  “I will.”

  Only the light in the kitchen was on when I walked in. This time I locked the door behind me.

  I found the kitchen empty and stood for a long moment, not quite sure what to do. Emerson might be in bed already. Dred might be putting James to bed. I was still debating making tea just for something to do, when I heard footsteps coming downstairs.

  “Hey.” Dred’s voice. “Zane.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Hit the lights and come upstairs.”

  Yes, ma’am. I hit the lights and followed her to her room.

  I loved Dred’s room during the day. All buttery sunlight and warm wood. At night, with only one low lamp on, it was . . . even better. All darkness and layers of shadows with one sweet pool of light in the middle.

  In this light, the variations-on-red quilt was darker, almost richer, its tones not muted so much as reaching deeper than they did in daylight.

  “Did you stop by your place?” It was probably just an aural illusion that her voice sounded deeper and richer, too.

  I froze. “Oh my god. No. I didn’t. I drove straight here.”

  One side of her mouth quirked up. “You were so eager you forgot you needed a change of clothes?”

  “I’m okay about the clothes, it’s my toothbrush I’m missing.”

  “You’re okay about clothes now, b
ut you better hope Aunt Florence doesn’t come over in the morning and see that you’re wearing the same thing you were wearing today.”

  “I changed my clothes after I left here.”

  She glanced up and down at my outfit. “No way she believes you wore that to come over for breakfast.”

  “Point.”

  “Don’t worry about a toothbrush. I have one for you. Or I have one in a package you can use.”

  “You bought me a toothbrush?”

  “I bought you a toothbrush before we met, yeah. Watch out for the dust.”

  The farmhouse had been built in a time when people hadn’t required a bathroom per bedroom; there was a full bath upstairs and a half bath downstairs. And the upstairs bathroom wasn’t all that generous, but somehow they managed to share it. James’s toys lined the tub, an elaborate shower caddy had shelves for each of them, and the sink was surprisingly clear of debris.

  “I think your bathroom’s cleaner than mine.”

  “Emerson’s a little OCD. Plus, sometimes he needs shit to be out from underfoot and accessible, so we keep it that way. It’s a huge improvement on before he moved in. For a while after James was born this was kind of a cesspit.” She smiled, squeezing toothpaste on her toothbrush, then automatically putting some on the brush I’d unwrapped. “Obie was goofy as shit when Emerson started spending the night here. He was the slob between us, and he kept saying if Emerson knew how much of a slob he was, they’d break up.”

  I nudged her arm. “So this seems like a good time to mention I’m not as much of a neat freak as people think I am.”

  “Why? You moving in?”

  Our eyes met in the mirror.

  “You really don’t have room.” I started brushing my teeth to cover the sudden full-body desire to, yeah, move in. To do this every night and every morning.

  We hadn’t even had sex. Hell. We’d only kissed a few times.

  Back this truck up. Stop thinking like this. It’s hormones. Or nesting. Or who the fuck knows, but stop.

  Hormones, right. Yeah. Probably. Anyway.

  I finished brushing my teeth and went back to the bedroom. This would have been a good time to have . . . stuff. A bag. Clothes. Uh, pajamas. Because we hadn’t even had sex yet. And she might not be interested. And I was standing here in the slacks and shirt I’d thrown on before my meeting.