“Yes, well… Betty. She’d already tried the program at Hazelden in Minnesota. It’s highly reputable. I guess Bud gave her an ultimatum, so she went through with it, but within a few weeks she was drinking again and when she went off the wagon she got even worse than before. She and I inherited plenty of family money, you know, but Betty’s problems must have cost them most of her share. Bud was angrier that the money was wasted than he was about her drinking again. Whenever she passes out, he can go live the life he wants.
“I told her that day I found her outside the health food store that she could stay with me if she made an effort to get sober. I found a notice on the bulletin board across from the Badlands for one of those recovery groups and I gave her the number. She went to a couple of meetings, but then she’d walk right out and get another bottle. You should have seen her that first day. We must have laundered her clothes four times. I wanted to burn them, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I told her that… what’s that, Sam? Yes, she agreed to go to the Ranch this time, not that she had any choice in the matter… No, I’m paying for it. I promised I would.
“Oh, I just had the most wonderful idea! All this talk about Betty and religion and the sex-change operations. Oh, my! I think this could work, but I’ll have to plan it very carefully and you can help me. No, not today. I need to roll it around in my brain for a while and then we’ll discuss it in person when I see you.
Tim opened his Aunt Ruth’s bedroom door and Nick stepped back to let him pass. “Wow, Snowman! This was the first place we ever got it on. There sure are a lot of good memories in this room, huh?”
“I thought our first time was in the Thunderbird out by the Legion of Honor.”
“That doesn’t count,” Nick laughed. “We didn’t finish.”
“Maybe you didn’t,” Tim said with a grin. “Yeah, if these walls could only talk, huh? You getting horny again?”
“Always, but it’s not the same with pastel ruffles around the bed. It doesn’t turn me on like when you lived here. It’s too clean, I guess, and these flowered curtains are so not sexy! I wonder how Sam can even perform in these surroundings—”
“Stop! Let’s not go there. I don’t want the vision of those two doing it stuck in my brain. They’re family! Well… she is and he will be soon.”
“Yes, my sister Betty was always religious, but it wasn’t a case of having been raised that way. Our mother’s spiritual beliefs were broader than any church could contain and Dad didn’t care one way or another. Mother had her dreams, visions. That’s where Tim gets it, but it’s more subtle with him. He only sees things in his sleep, not when he’s awake. Maybe when he gets older. Mother’s grew stronger with age. I remember when people came from miles around to see her. They’d want her advice before they made any major life decisions.
“Nowadays I find it more interesting, especially as it affects Tim, but I didn’t pay much attention at the time. When you grow up around something like that, you don’t know that it’s so unusual. Besides, I was always busy with schoolwork and parties and friends.
“Wait… What!? Oh my God! An ice pick! Hold on a minute, Sam.”
“Let’s go back to your place,” Nick groped Tim and let him pass on his way to the living room. “I need coffee soon.”
“Sorry. I know I got you up awfully early. As soon as we’re done here we’ll go have a romantic brunch… and then get to work on the hardwood floors.”
“I wanna hear more about brunch.” Nick grinned. “What’s gonna be so romantic about it?”
“Oh, I don’t know… we could be naked, for starters.”
“An outdoor table at Café Flore?”
“In bed.” Tim laughed.
“Sounds real good, Snowman. We haven’t had breakfast in bed in a long time. You know… I’ll bet your Aunt Ruth is just helping out a friend. I’ll bet she got a call from an old classmate of hers from when she was at Stanford. Well, that woman looked to me to be older than Ruth, so maybe she was one of her professors that she admired. An important woman in her life might have been a big influence. Weren’t they all feminists at Stanford in those days? Or else that woman she had in the car might have been someone she knew in Minneapolis and when she phoned up Ruth out of the blue like that and said she was in California and in some kind of trouble, Ruth said sure, she’d be glad to help...”
Nick wasn’t usually one to talk so much, but now he was rambling on and on, a pure stream-of-consciousness pattern of one word right after another until he heard Tim yell, “Holy shit! Come in here!”
Ruth was gone several minutes this time. When she returned to the phone she was out of breath. “Sam? Are you still there? You won’t believe what happened! That woman with the three little kids! The manager of this place, the Wagon Wheel Inn, just told me he caught her with an ice pick. She had her kids all piled into her car and then she ran back and grabbed the ice pick from on top of the ice machine. She was going after my tires! He caught her just in time! She threw the ice pick at him and took off. I’m not that worried about my tires; I have Triple A, but she could have put that poor man’s eye out. Hold on, Sam. I may as well grab another cup of coffee as long as I’m up.
“Mmmm, good coffee. Now, where was I? Betty was always embarrassed by our mother. She over-reacted to the whole situation by becoming ultra-religious. Then she married Bud and within a few years after Tim was born she started to alternate between the Bible and the bottle. Tim’s father’s real name is Clarence—Clarence Snow—but everyone calls him Bud. He was the most boring person you’d ever want to meet, but he did his best. He was stable. He went to work every day as a mechanic. When he finally got up the gumption to put his foot down with Betty, she decided to come looking for me. She was actually looking for Tim, now that she thinks he’s rich. I never should have let her know about Tim inheriting a house. I told her Tim doesn’t have any liquid assets, but she didn’t want to believe me. If it weren’t for Jason leaving him the house, Tim wouldn’t have anything. He will when I die, but even if he could forgive what his mother did to him, why would he want to see her, especially in the shape she was in?
“I told her if she stopped drinking and got her act together I’d buy her some new clothes and I could take her to see Rene, Tim’s friend who does my hair and… oh… sorry, Sam… where was I? Oh yes, I was telling you about Bud, the mechanic. He was perfect for Betty. He was normal. Some people in the Midwest… I guess people are the same everywhere, but Bud has always been one of those people who just wanted to fit in. They go along to get along, never make waves, never say or do or even think anything that someone else might construe as the least bit controversial. An original way of thinking about things would be considered downright sinful.
“Tim always liked to run. He wasn’t interested in any other sports, but he lived to run! It wasn’t so much a discipline as a passion. When you consider all that he’s been through, it’s amazing Tim turned out as well adjusted as he is. It never occurred to me when he was a little boy that he might actually be running away from something.”
Ruth’s voice sounded muffled for a moment and Sam realized she was talking to someone else at the motel. “Good morning! Yes, it’s a lovely day, isn’t it? Yes, I’ll be happy to watch it for you...sorry, Sam. More people are starting to come out of their rooms now. A girl put her bag down on the chair beside me. There, she’s put on her headphones and crawled out onto a rubber raft on the pool—doesn’t look like she could be much older than a teenager, but it’s hard to tell these days. The music is so loud I can hear the bass beat blasting from here, so I’m sure she can’t hear me. No wonder these kids have hearing problems when they get older.
“Now, where were we? Oh, it’s so good to hear your voice too, Sam. I don’t mean to be the one doing all the talking. I want to hear about your latest trip just as soon as I see you. Rome must be beautiful this time of year. I don’t know why I should be acting so secretive, either. There’s nobody here who knows anyone I’m talking about and the p
lace isn’t even full. There’s one couple who checked in about the same time as I did the other night. She drove a car with Nevada plates and his were from Oregon. I suspect that they’re married, but not to each other…
“I know… anyway… Betty had Tim at the doctor constantly. He didn’t look frail to me, but he seemed to catch every typical childhood illness that came along and a few others I’d never heard of. Betty said he was accident-prone. He always had an upset stomach or a strange rash or she’d say he couldn’t come out of his room because he was sleeping. Tim slept a lot when he was little. He had an awful lot of scrapes and bruises. I had my hands full raising Dianne at the same time, so I wasn’t too concerned. Dianne was a couple of years older than Tim, so it only seemed natural when she sprouted up first, the way girls do. Dianne got into enough of her own troubles to keep me busy. If Tim had more sprains and bruises and broken bones than Dianne, I figured it was just because boys were rougher.”
Sam spoke for a few minutes again and Ruth replied, “Yes, but in those days we had never heard of that… whatever they called…? Yes, you’re right. I think it is called Munchausen’s Syndrome… but we didn’t know in those days. That’s right… by proxy. Well, no, they never diagnosed it as such. I suspected something funny was going on between Betty and that doctor she was always dragging Tim to see though. He was her doctor in the first place and then he started treating Tim. I guess she wouldn’t have any trouble with a guilty conscience getting undressed in front of a doctor.
“No, you never told me about that, Sam. How interesting. There’s still so much you and I don’t know about each other. I guess we’ll have all our married years to find out all those things. Yes, of course, I still intend to marry you, Sam. Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind!
“Well, that’s good… Anyway, the stigma of Betty’s alcoholism was bad enough, especially for a woman, but people were so vicious, too, saying she should have paid more attention to her husband than the bottle. When Bud started fooling around, it didn’t surprise anyone and she was so devout, she still looked down on the rest of us like we were heathens. I almost felt sorry for Bud until he turned out to be such a homophobe, but that was probably a blessing in disguise. It got Tim out of their house where I could look after him. Dan and I did, I should say. For all the negative things I could say about Dan since our divorce, he was a good father to Dianne and he was good to Tim. He wasn’t a bigot. He’s in advertising. He knew gay people. We both did. It was no big deal and the times were changing.
“I miss you too, Sam. I miss you terribly. Well, you could drive up and meet me here. I told Artie I needed at least a couple of weeks off, so I don’t have to rush back. It might be fun to spend the night at the Wagon Wheel Inn but tomorrow morning I have an appointment with the director of the Redwood Valley Ranch before I was planning to drive back to the city. He wasn’t there on the weekend and I have a few more questions for him.
Tim was on his hands and knees by the living room window. Nick knelt down next to him and saw the battered suitcase beside the desk that held Ruth’s computer.
“What is it, Snowman? What’s wrong? Who does that old suitcase belong to?”
Tim held the luggage tag up to the light so Nick could read it.
Mrs. Clarence Snow
1834 32nd Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406
“It’s my mother’s.” Tim’s mind raced back to a terrible place in his childhood, a nightmare he had long ago forgotten. “Nick, she’s looking for me. I just know it. And I don’t ever want to see her again.”
“Come on, Snowman. Let’s just go back to your place. I’ll make us breakfast. And I promise I’ll be with you through whatever happens, no matter what. There’s nothing more for us to do here.”
“She did? Delia and Frank both gave notice? After all these years? Oh, my… we do have a lot to talk about when I see you.
“Yes, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Miss Rosa Rivera, Sam. Artie seems quite taken with her. He talks like she’s the next big thing. I’m not sure if he means it or if he’s trying to get his big break on television. He’s dying to polish up his old act, you know…
“Yes, I caught some of her show last night. I told you they have cable here. She was covering a wedding at Holy Trinity out by Lake Merced. I can only imagine what she had to pay the Greek Orthodox to allow her film crew in there. She’s always oblivious to being an intrusion, but some of the food looked awfully good.
“You did? She was? Sam!”
Ruth laughed so hard she had to sit up and in doing so her coffee spilled all over the old Good Housekeeping Magazine. The chocolate soufflé on the cover looked like it was melting.
“I would have knocked her right off her barstool! Oh, she was standing? Almost on your lap? Well, that’s even worse!” Ruth laughed out loud again.
“Yes, you’re right, Sam. I’m going to call Tim as soon as we finish. I can’t put off talking to him any longer. He’s going to find out sooner or later that his mother is looking for him and it ought to be from me. Oh, that’s a wonderful idea, Sam. And we can try a bottle of this delicious wine I just bought. See you then, Sam… unless you want to call me again later this evening. My cell phone seems to be working fine. I must not have had it charged up before.”
Chapter 16
Artie might have let the relentless gloom get him down without his big comeback to look forward to. Sometimes the summer days in San Francisco all look alike… cold, damp and gray. Each morning that week the fog was so thick that it blocked out the sun until noon… or one… or five. But each time Artie pulled one of his old gowns out of the trunk he could almost feel the heat of the spotlights again and the warmth of the loving crowds.
Tim kept busy too. He worked at Arts every night that week and worked on his kitchen floor during the daytime. The first sanding exposed the tiny nails in the hardwood floors. Now he gave each one a tap with the hammer and a little steel tool that looked like an awl—exactly the way Nick taught him.
On Saturday Nick drove down from Monte Rio and they spent the afternoon filling the tiny holes with wood putty. They tuned in a classical station and didn’t talk much. Tim’s back ached and he hadn’t mentioned his mother once since Aunt Ruth called on Sunday from the Wagon Wheel Inn.
Nick was frustrated that Tim wouldn’t confide in him and he couldn’t remember the last time they spent a Saturday night without sex. Sunday morning over breakfast, Nick brought up the subject. “Are you sure you don’t want to talk about your mother, Snowman?” Nick had managed to cook up coffee, pancakes and eggs in Tim’s dusty torn-apart kitchen, which they ate in the living room.
“I’ve already told you all about my parents. I thought I’d never have to see them again after they threw me out. They’re in the past and they can stay there.”
“But she’s here, now, Tim. Your mother is only a couple of hours north of here. Your Aunt Ruth said she’ll—”
“I think I need to go for a run. You want more coffee?” Tim stood up and walked to the sink with his dirty dishes.
Nick ignored the question and walked over to put his arms around Tim’s shoulders. “At least you ought to think about what your Aunt Ruth said on the phone. You need to make a plan, just in case what she told you really happens. When your mother gets out of there, she might just—”
“I appreciate you being here for me. I really do. Maybe we can talk about all of this later, okay? I just think I need to be alone for a little while. I feel kind of numb these days. Maybe some fresh air and exercise would…”
“Sure Babe,” Nick tousled Tim’s hair with his fingertips and kissed him again.
Sunday morning started earlier than usual at Arts restaurant on the 500 block of Castro Street, fog or no fog; Artie was rehearsing.
While he waited for his accompanist Phil to arrive, Artie lifted jeweled and sequined gowns out of their boxes and held each of them up to the light on the little stage. They looked awful, but it wasn’t the dre
sses’ fault; it was the lighting. He had to order new gels first thing Monday morning. He would call Holzmueller, down off Bayshore Boulevard—maybe even take a drive out there and see if they still carry “surprise pink.” Artie picked up a pen and made a notation on his rapidly growing list on top of the piano.
Phil was the only employee without his own set of keys, since he never had to open or close the place. When he knocked, he was surprised to see Arturo let him in. “Where’s Artie?”
“He’s around here somewhere.”
“What are you doing here so early?”
“You know how Artie is. If he had to get up early he wouldn’t let me sleep in. He’s so excited you’d think he was going back on stage at Finocchios.”
“I can’t believe he dragged either one of us out of bed at this hour.”
“Phil! Stop complaining and get in here!” Artie shouted from the far end of the room.
“Speaking of drag…”
“You know this is the only time we can practice, when the place is closed. Besides, the gay parade is only a couple of weeks away. That’s the last day to enter the contest and the entry forms are coming in like crazy! Rosa’s live TV special from Arts is the weekend after the Fourth. There’s no time to waste!”
“What’s with all the sequins? Are you redecorating the place for Pride? Isn’t it gay enough already?”
“I’m trying to decide which outfit to wear for my television appearance. Out of one whole steamer trunk full of beaded gowns, I’ve narrowed down my choices to three, but I might still change my mind. At least with two grooms at this wedding, I don’t have to worry about upstaging the bride, but I don’t think I’ve lost enough weight to squeeze into something white. Arturo likes that blue one. This is one Pat Montclaire made for me. It’s an Edith Head knock-off.”
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