Dad agreed to meet them, providing Fiona came to the country to talk to him first. Three hours later, she was on our doorstep. Clearly, she was eager to close the deal.
An ice storm had made the world slick and glassy. I was just being dropped off from school as she stomped out of the house; she’d been there less than fifteen minutes. My mother stood in the doorway, looking sad as she watched her daughter slip and fall in her hurry to get away from our father.
Struggling to help her in the failing light of that cold December afternoon, it looked like Dad was wrestling with his shadow. When he reached down to help her up, she shouted, “Get away from me!”
“If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t have said anything.”
“I feel sorry for you.” Fiona had skinned her knee and torn her tights. Her high heels sank into the snow as she teetered toward the BMW she’d borrowed from Michael. “No, I feel sorry for Mom and Zach, because they have to live with you.” She couldn’t find the right key to open the car door. “You can never believe anybody is just what they seem to be.” If she hadn’t locked the car, she wouldn’t have gone on to say, “You’re so busy psychoanalyzing the world, you can’t see how nuts and paranoid Casper Gedsic’s made you.”
My father took her best shot without blinking. In the cold, his breath looked like steam. “Being right about me doesn’t mean I’m wrong about your new friend.”
Fiona slammed the car door, started the engine, and began to back out.
My father shouted after her, “Ask him yourself.”
Fiona stopped the car and rolled down the window. “I already did.”
My father wasn’t prepared for that. “What did he say?”
“He’s not gay.”
I was stunned. Of all the things I suspected my father might suspect, that was not one of them.
“How do you know he’s telling the truth?”
“I’ve had sex with him. Lots of sex.”
“That doesn’t prove anything.”
“You’d rather be right than have me be happy.”
My father looked like he was going to cry. I followed him back into the house, suddenly convinced he was even crazier than I was. My mother distracted herself by apologizing for burning the chicken. My father told her, “That’s the least of our worries.”
I was a high school senior; it was 1971. “Dad, if Fiona slept with him, he can’t be gay.”
“That shows how little you know about the world, Zach.”
“You could be wrong, Will.” My mother had scraped off the burned parts of the chicken.
“I wish I was, but I fear I’m not. She’s setting herself up to fail. He’ll need something she can’t give him, and it will break her heart.”
“You’re not a prophet.”
“If he likes to have sex with guys, why would he want to get married?”
“All sorts of reasons. Shame, guilt, fantasies that a wife will change his inclinations, a genuine desire for children. If he had the balls to be honest, I’d have respect for him. But to deceive her . . .” The more my father thought about it, the angrier it made him. “Christ, a hustler like him? He probably thinks being married will be a business asset. She’s the perfect beard; she loves him.”
“Why do you make everything so ugly?” My mother pushed her plate away.
“I’m answering Zach’s question. Lots of homosexual men get married, Zach. The vast majority of them make themselves and their wives miserable by doing so.”
It was as if he’d told me dogs walked on their ears. I had seen nothing in the world to lead to such conclusions. “Like who?”
My father rattled off a list of names, two of whom were shrinks who had come to our house with their wives and kids.
“How do you know they’re gay?”
“Because they told me so.”
“Why did they come to you?”
“Because strangers, unlike my family, think I’m an understanding man.”
“What did you tell them to do?”
“Don’t live a lie.”
My mother picked up her plate and headed toward the sink. “That’s easier said than done.”
“I am not ashamed that I have done what I had to to protect my children.” They weren’t talking about whether or not Michael Charles was gay.
“I think you’re jealous.” It was the meanest thing my mother could think of to say to him.
“Of a chickenshit lawyer who doesn’t have the testosterone to admit what he is?”
“You’re jealous because he’s ambitious, just like you were. And he’s successful and young, and your daughter’s in love with him, and most of all, because the world’s still ahead of him.”
“How could you think so little of me?”
“Because I think you’re human.”
“Yes, I am guilty of that.”
I was not included in the Grenouille lunch. According to my mother, Michael Charles asked my father for permission to marry his daughter over a lobster salad, and my father grimly gave his blessings. Michael gave her a diamond-and-ruby engagement ring that my father told me he suspected was “as phony as he is.”
Surprisingly, Michael and Fiona visited us often in the months leading up to the wedding. I couldn’t tell whether Fiona had told him or not. My father believed she had, and Michael pretended everything was okay just to piss Dad off.
To Michael, he was reserved but polite. To Fiona, overly affectionate. In the photos Michael continued to snap as the wedding drew near, Dad always has his arm around her shoulders. And in more than a few, she’s not looking at the camera but at my father’s hand, with an expression that made it clear she no longer thought it belonged there.
He never discussed the question of Michael’s sexuality or the reasons for his suspicions, at least not in my presence. But when Fiona and her fiancé weren’t around or out of earshot, my father could not bear to mention his name without adding the word “chickenshit.”
I liked Michael. He let me drive his BMW, he invited me to the movie set of The Godfather. Told Marlon Brando I was a writer. I liked him even more when I sent him my antidrug article, “What Goes Up Must Come Down,” and he called me and said it was “interesting.”
I could tell he wasn’t impressed until I nervously volunteered, “I made it all up. I wrote it stoned.”
“Love it. You had me totally fooled. It’s much better, knowing that.” I also liked Michael because he had great pot.
I was surprised that my father not only wouldn’t let Michael help pay for the wedding, but insisted on sparing no expense on this party he wished he was not throwing. A marquee tent, sit-down dinner for 150 people, eight-piece orchestra, open bar, and Veuve Clicquot champagne on tap from start to finish.
The wedding was scheduled for Saturday, April 17, the same week college acceptance letters went out. Knowing I wasn’t going to get in anywhere I wanted to go, I had my mother check the mailbox for me. The Friday before the wedding, I was still waiting for the bad news.
Willy flew in from Rome that afternoon. Lucy was scheduled to arrive then, too, but she missed her plane out of Tangier and now was supposed to get in the morning of the wedding. Fiona said she did it on purpose. Lucy had written Mom announcing she was inviting her “new friend.” We didn’t know his name.
When my mother wondered aloud what she should write on his place card, Dad told her, “black prince.” At this point, he was beyond caring. Just as long as Lucy didn’t bring another chickenshit.
When I got home from school that Friday, the tent was just going up. A catering van and a party rental truck blocked the drive. Chairs and tables were being unloaded and set up. A dance floor that sloped downhill was laid flat across the lawn. The house was crawling with florists and workmen. A pair of handymen were repainting the front steps, fixing doors that didn’t close properly and windows that refused to open. All the little stuff that my father had complained about for years but never got around to having fixed for himself was made right fo
r the wedding Dad wished weren’t taking place. At first I thought Dad wanted to make it look perfect because it wasn’t. But as that weekend progressed, I began to suspect that he was doing it all just so Fiona couldn’t accuse him of setting them off on the wrong foot when the marriage turned to shit.
Most surprising of all, as soon as I stepped in the door, the brother who had acknowledged me with a surly smirk or, at best, a “hello” that had sounded like a snarl since the Sunshine incident, called out to me, “Ciao, Z!” Willy, just back from Florence, called me by my nickname, a first, and actually sounded like he’d missed me. “Come up here and fill me in on what’s happening in the asylum.”
Willy was in his old bedroom. He was getting dressed. We had to be at the church down at the village for the rehearsal by five. Willy and I were ushers. After that, there was a rehearsal dinner. Michael had taken over the Ryland Inn so their New York friends could make a weekend of it.
In the hour or so he’d been home, Willy had taken down all the photos of himself straining across finish lines and winning races. The track medals that had hung from doorknobs and necklaced lampshades had been put away. Willy hadn’t simply reclaimed his old room, he’d made it his own. His walls were barren, except for an old drawing of a guy tied to a stake with two dozen arrows sticking through him. The weird part was, from the expression on the guy’s face, he didn’t seem to mind.
“Good to see you, brother.” Willy gave me a hug.
“Cool picture.” I was so taken aback by Willy’s friendliness, I didn’t know what else to say.
“It’s a sketch by Jan Mabuse, sixteenth century. I bought it in a flea market in Milan. Five bucks. It’s Saint Sebastian.”
“Patron saint of archery.”
I was in shock: Willy actually laughed at my joke. “So what’s the family been up to?”
“Didn’t Mom tell you?” They’d talked over the phone.
“She said Dad had mixed feelings about Michael.” Willy hadn’t met him yet.
“He fucking hates his guts.”
“What’d he do?”
“Nothing. Except Dad thinks he’s a homo.” Willy laughed, but I could tell he didn’t think it was funny.
“Why did Dad say that?”
“He has homophobia.” I’d read about it one of my father’s psychology books; I was diagnosing the whole family now.
Willy tied his necktie thoughtfully. “Dad has a lot of things going against him, but not that.” Usually Willy was the first one to say no to our father’s pronouncements.
“Fiona told him he was crazy right to his face.” It wasn’t gossiping so much as stirring the pot. “She told him the thing with Casper made him nuts.”
“Fiona is bold.”
“You think he’s crazy?”
“I’ll tell you that after I meet Michael.”
The run-through at the church went smoothly. Michael’s best man was this actor who had won a Tony for a play on Broadway. He seemed nice, had dyed hair, and even though I hadn’t heard of the play, everybody made a big deal over him. And he definitely wasn’t gay, because he hit on Fiona’s bridesmaids right in front of their boyfriends. Lucy was going to be maid of honor if she didn’t miss her plane again.
The minister acted like he was an old friend of the family, and after he rambled on about how important love and home and honesty had always been to Fiona, even though he had just met her, Dad slipped him a check.
The rehearsal dinner was more fun. Michael’s best friends from New York were interesting once they stopped talking about people I didn’t know and places I had never heard of. St. Bart’s, Todi, some restaurant called Elaine’s—the biggest yawn was all the talk about the price of real estate. But they gave really good toasts, and some made up songs and poems about how Michael and Fiona met that were funny, and just dirty enough to make the minister blush and laugh at the same time.
The only person from Michael’s family who showed was his mother, a doll-like little woman who wore a mink stole and a lot of jewelry my father told me was as fake as the engagement ring. Trying to make small talk, she announced, “They are going to give us beautiful grandchildren, aren’t they, Doctor Friedrich?”
My father made a face like he’d just broken a tooth and whispered in my mother’s ear, “Michael probably left the rest of his family home because they all have harelips and webbed fingers.”
Michael’s mother was seated next to Ida, who still hennaed her hair and still smoked Chesterfields through a cigarette holder. Time and cigarettes had turned her face as dry and wrinkly as an old alligator purse. Ida told the mother, “I had a dream they had twins. One dark, one light. Write it down, be sure to put the date, so you can see that I’m right. They’re going to be the biggest, fattest babies you ever laid eyes on.”
Michael’s mother, unaware that Ida believed herself to have second sight, exclaimed, “Oh, Lord, I hope not!”
Ida didn’t mince words. “The future doesn’t care what you hope.”
Homer wore the same suit he had had on that first day I tore the page, or at least it looked to be the same. His hair was the dull gray of an aluminum pan, but his beard was still black and as lustrous as licorice, except for a stripe of white that headed south from his lower lip that made him look like a very intelligent badger.
Taking in the spectacle of the rehearsal dinner, Homer rocked himself back and forth, and repeated the obvious in a cautionary tone, “When you’re married, you’re married.”
After about the tenth time he said it, Michael’s mother asked, “Is he going to be alright?”
Ida tuned to Homer. “Are you going to be alright, son?”
Homer thought about it for a long time before he answered, “No.”
As dessert was served, Michael surprised everybody with a trio of guitar-strumming Mexican mariachi singers sombrero’d in costume. Fiona acted like she was surprised, but she must have known, and then they did a dance you could tell they had rehearsed. And when it was over, everybody clapped as he bent my oldest sister back over his knee and, just as her hair touched the floor, he kissed her neck like a vampire.
After dinner, Willy got up and mingled with Michael’s and Fiona’s friends. When he told them he was studying art in Florence, they were all friendly. The best part for me was getting so loaded I forgot I was worried about not getting into college, which required some serious inebriation, since all night long everybody kept asking me where I was going to college. Willy reappeared just in time to hear me announce “I’m giving serious thought about doing my undergraduate work in Saigon.”
He whispered something in my ear. I couldn’t hear what he said. Old R & B was blaring, and Fiona and Michael were getting down with their bad selves. No question, I had never seen her so happy. Or, at least, looking so victorious.
When I shouted to Willy, “What’d you say?” my brother pulled me into a corner and whispered, “Definitely gay.”
“You’re kidding.”
Willy shook his head no. Michael waved for us to come over and join him. They were line dancing now.
“How can you be so sure?”
Willy looked at me quizzically for a long moment, made the same face my father did when he sized up a stranger, and told me matter-of-factly, “Because I’m gay.”
I was staggered, and not just because I was drunk. “Seriously?”
“It’s not a medical condition.”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” Bombed as I was, in my mind I began to connect the dots I had never gotten about my brother. “I mean, that’s great. If it’s good for you, it’s good for me.” I meant it. He was the same person, only now he was so much happier, he could even be friends with me. I had missed him, even when he was living at home and didn’t like me.
“Shit, are you gonna tell Dad?” My father was sitting at a table, smoking a Cuban cigar and talking to Lazlo and Ula.
“Dad’s known I liked men for years.”
“How many years?”
; “I told him after I wrecked the Skylark coming back from New York that night.”
I suddenly felt like I knew less than nothing about my family. Drunk, I wondered if they’d all have to turn gay for me to stop being strangers with them. “Wow, what did Dad say?”
Willy mimicked my father’s slow, thoughtful voice, “That’s why I kept you that extra year at St. Luke’s. I wanted you to resolve your sexuality before you went to college.”
“That’s it?”
“He told me all he cared about was that I find somebody I loved.” We watched as my mother took the cigar from my father’s hand, tossed it out the window, and sat on his lap.
I didn’t care about Michael Charles, but what did bother me was that I had so misjudged and so misunderstood my father. Suddenly, I felt like crying. “What happened then?”
“Dad spoiled it.”
“How?”
“He told me the only thing I could do that he would have difficulty forgiving was if I let my sexual appetites distract me from a career in medicine.”
It rained on their wedding day. Lucy called from the airport. Her plane from Tangier was late. She missed her flight in Paris. She had to drive straight from JFK to the church, and change in the backseat of the rent-a-car while her friend drove.
The church was packed. The organist played “Ode to Joy” twice to stall for time. Willy and I waited outside with the best man and the bridesmaids. Lucy’s friend screeched to a stop in front of the church just as my father and Fiona the bride pulled up in the limo.
Lucy greeted us in Arabic, “Assalamu alaikum,” then added, “Nigel, where are my shoes?” That was her friend’s name.
“I believe they’re in the boot, darling.” Nigel was tall, English, tieless, and rumpled. He wore sandals and drawstring trousers, and had a mustache and goatee worthy of the three musketeers, and hair like the lead singer of Led Zeppelin. Nigel pulled on a formal morning coat and popped a top hat on his head as he scurried back to the boot, i.e., the trunk. I guess he found her shoes. I was trying to figure out why he had a surfboard sticking out of his trunk.
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