Spring Rain

by Gayle Roper

  “What’s thrush?” Clay asked. “Besides a bird.”

  “A fungal disease that causes lesions in the mouth and throat,” Billy answered from his spot on the floor. “And on the lips. Very painful.” He glanced at Clay’s surprised face. “I’m going to be a doctor when I grow up, just like Grandpa Will.”

  “You’re going to deliver babies?” Clay asked. “That means you have to deal with lots of girls, both grown-up and newborn. I thought you didn’t like women.”

  “Girls.” Billy grimaced. “I don’t like girls. And I said a doctor like Grandpa Will, not a baby doctor like him.”

  “Ah, a broad stroke assumption of his mantle, not a specific one.”

  Billy looked at him and frowned in confusion. “What’s a fireplace got to do with anything?”

  “Not much.” Leigh smiled at her son. “I think I’ll just go up and say hi to Ted. I’d take him a mug of vanilla coffee if there was any left. He happens to have good taste.”

  “It figures he’d like it,” Clay muttered as Leigh went upstairs, Billy following.

  He forced himself to look away from her retreating figure and found his mother watching him, her eyebrow cocked.

  “What?” he said with a deplorable lack of good humor.

  “She’s wonderful, isn’t she?” Mom spoke with obvious pride. “I’m so delighted with what she’s become.”

  “Yeah, she’s great.” To change the tender topic, he leaped on the first thought that came to mind. “Mom, why’s Ted failing so fast? I thought they’d made great strides in the treatment of AIDS.”

  She stared into her cup. “They have, but often there comes a time when a patient develops a resistance to all the available drugs. Then even the sophisticated medical cocktails can’t hold the encroaching infections at bay. It’s just a matter of time until some infection like pneumonia gets hold and can’t be pried loose.”

  He reached across the table and took her hand. It was cold in spite of the fact that she’d had it wrapped around her cup. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t surprised when he saw tears running down her cheeks.

  “Oh, Mom.” His heart broke for her pain. As if it weren’t bad enough that she’d lost his father, now she was going to lose Ted.

  “I’m okay,” she said. “I just can’t help it every so often.” The pain in her eyes was devastating.

  Clay squeezed her hand and struggled to push his anger at Ted to the back of his mind lest she see it in his face. “I’ll be here for as long as you need me, Mom.”

  “Indefinite compassionate leave? I didn’t know the navy was that understanding.”

  He shook his head. “I resigned my commission.”

  She fell back in her chair, floored. “You’ve left the navy? I thought you loved military life.”

  He shrugged. “I guess I did at one time, but civilian life has been calling for a while.”

  Mom made a wry face. “You know, there was a time when I actually thought I knew you two boys.” She gave a short, humorless laugh. “Just goes to show you how easily a mom can be fooled.”

  “I don’t think a change of jobs is that big a deal, certainly not big enough for you to worry about.”

  “You’re not planning on being one of those kids who moves back home and never leaves again, are you?” she asked, looking anxious. “I’ve got a kid upstairs, another over the garage, and a grandkid. I’ll never have an empty nest!” She turned a woeful face to him.

  He laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m visiting. I’d never be mean enough to stay.”

  She smiled her love to him. “You know I’ll enjoy you for as long as you choose to stay, don’t you?”

  He nodded, thinking how much he admired her for the grace with which she’d handled life’s adversities: her widowhood, Ted’s life choices and imminent death. He’d known about Ted’s secret life years before his parents learned about it. While still in high school, Clay had assimilated the fact of his twin’s gayness clue by clue, not even aware of what he was learning most of the time. When it finally all coalesced in his mind, telling his parents had seemed wrong, like tattling. Shocked and angry as he was at Ted, he still wanted to protect him, his twin, his other half. And he wanted to protect his parents from the pain they would undoubtedly suffer.

  Ironically, when the truth did come out, they handled it better than he ever had.

  Sipping his coffee, he leaned his elbows on the table. “How did you learn about Ted?” he asked gently.

  His mother looked out the window, staring at the blue spring sky. “Show us your shoes.”

  Clay stared. “You’re kidding.”

  Mom shook her head. “I was watching the Miss America parade on TV the year after he graduated from college and you from the Academy. Ted was living in Atlantic City and had a good job at one of the banks. You were stationed in Hawaii. Your father and I were so proud of you both.” She sighed. “How often since then have I thought about pride being one of the seven deadly sins.”

  Anger at Ted struck Clay again. “Mom, being proud of your kids isn’t wrong.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” She held a hand out and waggled it back and forth to show her uncertainty. “But I’ve discovered that what I was really proud of was my outstanding job as a mother. I’d raised two of the finest boys I knew. Since you two turned out so wonderfully, I must have done a great job.”

  “You did.”

  She raised an eyebrow, questioning his conclusion.

  “Mom, you’re not responsible for your sons’ choices.” She shrugged.

  “So everyone tells me. Too bad my heart doesn’t always agree.”

  Feeling helpless in the face of her sorrow, Clay got up and began pacing the kitchen.

  “Sit down,” Mom ordered. “You’ll drive me crazy if you keep that up.”

  Clay grunted and forced himself to stand still. He leaned casually against the counter. Terror raced into the kitchen, and Clay put his cereal bowl on the floor. The dog inhaled the remaining milk, his tail wagging the whole time.

  “You know,” Mom said, watching the dog with an abstracted expression. “I almost wish they’d find a brain chemistry cause or genetic cause for homosexuality if only to exonerate your father. I’ve grieved and still do for what people might assume about him based on standard psychological profiles of gays’ families.”

  “Mom!” Clay stared at her. “Anyone who knew Dad knows he wasn’t an absentee or a dictatorial father or any other perversion of the role.”

  She glanced up, a sudden impudent grin on her face. “Of course they’re not too nice to mothers in those studies either.”

  “Mom!”

  She waved her hand at him. “Take it easy, Clay. You’ve got to learn to see the humor in this situation, or you’ll turn into a prune.”

  He looked at her in wonder. “You’re amazing.” He came to her and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. He picked up his cereal dish from the floor and gathered his others from the table. He rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher. “So you were watching the Miss America parade?”

  She went back to her story. “The contestants from all the states were being driven down the boardwalk in convertibles or on floats,” she continued, “and for once the weather was wonderful. As usual the local gay community was there to enjoy the glitz and glamour.”

  Clay knew what was coming, and the thought of what it must have done to his parents made his stomach teem with acid. The little show-us-your-shoes ritual was a regular feature of the parade.

  “When the girls went by the cluster of gays, the guys called out their traditional, ‘Show us your shoes,’ and the girls raised their feet from their cars to show their shoes. Some had a special pair of shoes that they waved at the guys, duplicates of what they were wearing. One even threw her extra shoes to them. I was halfway laughing at the ridiculousness of the whole thing when suddenly there was Ted in the middle of these men. In fact, he was the one who caught the shoe.”

&nbs
p; Mom looked into middle distance, recalling the evening. Her face was full of sorrow.

  “I must have made a choking sound because your father looked up from his newspaper and asked what was wrong. All I could do was point at the TV. Miss New Jersey was passing the guys, her leg raised as she twirled her shoe for them to see. They were clapping and cheering for the hometown favorite, and suddenly there was Ted again, raising his captured shoe in salute.”

  Mom returned to the present. “We were so mad at him, Clay. We were. How could he do this to us? How could he ruin our Christian testimony like that? After all we’d done for him.” She rose from the table and began pulling out baking ingredients. “Talk about pride! At that point, while we cared about Ted, we cared more about ourselves.”

  She measured flour and shortening and began to cut the shortening into the flour for a piecrust. “But that was long ago, Clay. We’ve made peace with the Lord about our responsibility, if any, for the situation.”

  “You don’t have any responsibility!” Clay was vehement. “You were great parents, and don’t let anyone ever tell you differently. You supported us, loved us, and trained us in Christian values. You didn’t just take us to church and Sunday school; you lived those principles in front of us every day. You couldn’t have been better examples.”

  Mom smiled her thanks as she began to roll the dough. “Maybe. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s the past. That’s one thing we learned. The past can’t be undone. If we were wrong, I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t change it. But we also learned that the past doesn’t have to control today. I’m not angry at Ted. I love him and have forgiven him for the hurt he’s given us.”

  She turned to Clay and laid her floury hand gently on his cheek. “You need to do the same, son.”

  Clay made a muffled snort of sound that could have meant anything.

  Mom smiled sadly. “I know you’re mad at him for the sorrow he’s brought us.”

  Clay thought that was an understatement if he’d ever heard one.

  “Have you ever asked yourself if what you feel is misplaced anger?”

  “What?” He stared at his mother.

  “Maybe you’re really mad at God for letting your twin be the way he is, for not ‘fixing’ him.”

  Clay felt poleaxed. “Come on, Mom,” he managed. “Where’d you ever get that idea?”

  She shrugged. “Who knows? The Holy Spirit?”

  Clay watched her walk from the room, his mind in turmoil. She was right, at least about the forgiving Ted part. He had to do something. He couldn’t let Ted die without making peace with him. He knew he’d wither and die himself if that happened.

  But what did he do with this anger he’d been harboring all these years? How did he say Ted’s choice was all right when it wasn’t?

  He wasn’t really mad at God, was he?

  Oh, God, help! What should I do?

  What he did was take a long walk on the beach. The sun was bright and almost warm. He was glad for the sweatshirt he had on and equally glad for the sunglasses. Terror trotted beside him, leaving little paw prints in the sand. When a seagull dived toward them, Terror ran back toward the house as fast as he could go, memories of Mama undoubtedly driving him.

  “My hero,” Clay called after him.

  “You were breaking the leash law, you know.”

  Clay glanced up and saw Clooney walking toward him, metal detector in hand. The two men shook hands.

  “Glad to see you home.” Clooney lifted his baseball cap and ran his arm across his forehead. His gray hair was drawn tightly back into a ponytail, and a gold hoop dangled from his left ear.

  Clay wondered absently if Clooney had found the hoop with the detector.

  Clooney slapped his hat back in place. “Remember when I couldn’t tell you two apart?”

  “We used to love to tease people who got confused. And that was almost everyone.”

  “Couldn’t confuse you now,” Clooney said sadly, staring out to the horizon.

  “No,” Clay agreed, staring toward infinity himself.

  Clooney shrugged. “To each his own, I guess. Sort of sad it turned out this way for him though.” He turned and looked up at the Wharton house. The deck outside Ted’s room was just visible above the dunes. “I see him sitting out there in the lounge chair, all bundled up in blankets and stuff. He always waves.”

  Clay nodded. It was all he could do with the pressure in his chest at the picture of Ted waving to Clooney. Ted who used to follow the man around begging for a chance to try the detector; Ted who loved the tales Clooney told of World War II treasures he found, especially the live bomb about three feet long; Ted who saved all his money the summer he was twelve to buy a detector of his own and ended up buying Clay a football and cleats instead. Neither of them ever mentioned that a football in Clay’s possession might as well be in Ted’s too.

  Clooney shook his head, his gray ponytail shimmying across his back. His dark eyes were confounded as he turned to Clay. “I just can’t imagine liking boys instead of girls.” With that, he swung his detector with its digital readouts out over the sand and walked off.

  The high tide line was littered with broken shells—fan-shaped clam, bumpy oyster, ridged scallop, the occasional black mussel, and slim razor clam. Seaweed, air bladders still intact, and sea grasses whisked from the dunes by the tides lay in untidy clumps among the shells. The tide was low, so he walked on the hard sand, watching the foam-flocked waves tumble gently a few feet from him. His mind skittered before him like sandpipers before the waves.

  He loved Ted. He was his twin, the other half of himself. They had started life as one, sharing egg and sperm, then splitting to become an identical pair. They had wrestled for room in their mother’s womb and jockeyed for attention all their lives. They had supported each other, applauded each other, encouraged each other, competed with each other. How could he not love Ted?

  And they had loved God together too, at least until Ted turned away from all they’d been taught. The indescribable twinship they shared was what made Ted’s betrayal of their training and background so corrosive, so excruciating, and that betrayal fueled an anger that got in the way of the love.

  He stood, feet apart, staring across the inlet to Atlantic City. His heart ached, and his head hurt as a great vise tightened, tightened, constricting, squeezing, killing. It was a great surprise to taste salt at the edge of his mouth and realize he was crying. Leigh’s comment last night in Ted’s room came back to him.

  “Tears are falling as often as spring rain around here.”

  Too true, he thought as he brushed at the wetness on his face. Unfortunately too true.

  Twelve

  CLAY TOOK THE chair beside Ted’s bed and smiled at his brother. He knew if he was to learn to love Ted again, that meant spending time with him.

  During his walk on the beach, he’d promised himself and God that he’d sit with Ted at least twice a day. He’d have nice, quiet conversations with him and get to know him all over again. He’d find out how Ted thought, how he felt about dying, about God and Jesus. Clay would not lecture, preach, or reprimand in any manner. He’d listen and learn.

  He smiled mentally as he found a firm example for his actions. He’d be Barnabas, the Son of Encouragement.

  When Clay sat down, Ted just looked at him, saying nothing, giving away nothing. Clay’s smile quickly became strained. Where should he start? What topics were safe? Did they have anything in common anymore?

  “Beautiful view,” Clay said, looking out the French doors beside the bed. Scenery ranked right up there with the weather when you were desperate.

  Dutifully, Ted looked out the windows. “Yeah. That’s why I don’t want to move downstairs.”

  Clay nodded. “I was out walking earlier and bumped into Clooney.”

  Ted almost smiled but caught himself just in time. “Strange duck.”

  Clay nodded. “But nice. He feels bad about your illness.”

  “I guess that’s
better than feeling good.”

  Conversation ground to a halt as Clay tried to decide whether Ted was sending him a not-too-subtle message that said Get Lost. Both brothers looked out the windows again.

  The white dunes with their winter-browned grasses waving in the ocean breeze reared up behind the house; snow fences threaded through the sand to help fight erosion. The dunes themselves were artificial in that they were the creation of the Army Corps of Engineers rather than the hand of God.

  The whole New Jersey coast was one huge battleground between the sea and the humans determined to hold on to the prime oceanfront land. Hurricanes and winter storms battered the beaches, eating tons of sand, only to have Mother Nature’s temporary victory reversed by the huge pumps and pipes that brought sand from offshore or the bay to the beaches. Never mind the millions of taxpayers’ dollars pumped into the reclamation. Everyone wanted wide beaches, time in the surf and sun, and homes on the water. New Jersey wanted the tourist dollars.

  Beyond the dunes the beach became flat, the pale, sugar-fine sand above the tide line soft and shifting underfoot. The beach washed by the tides was packed firmly, scrubbed of personality by the constant ebb and flow of the water. Today the waves were gentle in the early afternoon sun, and here and there people walked the beach enjoying the slight foretaste of summer’s warmth.

  One of the nicest things about the point where they lived was that it wasn’t the touristy area of town. Full-time residents occupied most of the houses in the neighborhood. The boardwalk was a couple of miles away, a huge distance by tourist reckoning. Even in high summer, their beach wasn’t crowded.

  “Yep, there’s nothing like the beach and the ocean.” Clay smiled. That was a safe beginning. He pointed to the small image of a pony-tailed man with the metal detector working the sand a couple of blocks away. “You’d think he’d get tired of looking after all these years.”