Yale changed into his suit, and then he found a decent-sized box on top of the refrigerator—Charlie had bought a carton of grapefruit right after New Year’s for some fundraiser—and filled it: his passport, his grandfather’s watch, two shirts, a pair of khakis. His checkbook, and a mug of CTA tokens. He put Nico’s Top-Siders in there, but shoved the other clothes he’d been wearing into the laundry hamper for Charlie or Teresa to deal with. He put his dress shoes into the box for later, got his snow boots from the front closet. He padded the rest of the box with socks and underwear and draped the whole thing with a sweater. He’d have taken a suitcase, but the only big one was Charlie’s.
In the refrigerator were cold cuts he’d bought before his trip. They ought to be long expired, from a different decade, but they were still fresh, still fine. He made a sandwich with turkey and Muenster and stood at the counter to eat.
It felt too normal—as if Charlie were down the hall, ready to step out of the shower with a towel around his waist, everything fine. He could put his hand on Charlie’s chest, feel his heart through his wet, warm skin. The truth was his body missed Charlie, or missed Charlie’s body. Just the presence of it. Not sexually, not yet, although surely that would get worse, on nights when he lay alone and awake. The tensed muscles of Charlie’s thighs, the way he bit Yale’s ears, the taste of him, the impossibly slick smoothness under his foreskin. Well, here it was, then: longing, missing. The most useless kind of love.
He was rinsing his plate when the door opened. Teresa said, “I thought you’d have left.”
“I can. I should.”
She put her purse on the counter and walked toward him as if she planned to hug him, but she didn’t. Her face looked terrible, dry and deeply creased. Her chin, her jowls, had dropped. Her eyelids were swollen. She said, “Yale, are you alright? Have you been tested yet?”
“It would be pointless.”
“You’d feel better. Charlie would feel better.”
“Charlie’s feelings aren’t my concern.”
She looked pained. “I don’t see why you boys have to fight. You love each other.” Yale wondered if that was true. Teresa picked up his hand in her own, stroked the back of it. She said, “If you’d come home, I could take care of both of you. I’ve been cooking, you know. And not just soggy British food! Did I tell you I took an Italian cooking class this fall? I have a wonderful meatball recipe now, only Charlie won’t eat beef.”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m going to be fine.”
“He made a mistake. It was the first thing he said when he called. He said he’d made a mistake, and he couldn’t fix it.”
“That is true. He cannot fix it.”
“Yale, I’m worried if he’s upset he’ll get sick faster. He’ll wear himself out worrying.”
Yale marveled at this turn of logic, the idea that he was now the one making Charlie sick. He could sit here and explain things about AIDS that would make Teresa’s head spin, or he could say that Charlie hadn’t uttered a word of apology, but what good would it do? He told her he was meeting Charlie at the funeral, and this seemed to appease her. She said, “Be gentle with him, won’t you?”
So that he wouldn’t be seen walking down Halsted with the box, Yale turned east and took the long way around—a route that took him past the house he’d toured. He should have kept walking, but he stopped to look. A masochistic gesture. Because even if he wasn’t sick, even if he got some enormous raise and could afford the house all on his own, he’d never buy a place down the street from Charlie. Even if Charlie were gone, he couldn’t live so close to where they’d been happy together, couldn’t walk past their old apartment on his way to the El.
But did he truly believe Charlie would ever be gone? It was still a hypothetical in his mind, like a tornado hitting the city. Did he believe, as foolishly as Julian used to, that someone was about to announce a cure? He didn’t think that was it. It was all just a rock that hadn’t sunk yet, that was still hitting the surface of the pond.
The “For Sale” sign was still there, the phone number glowing in the late sun, runic writing that no longer held meaning. In the window of the place next door, a cat slept. Someone played the piano.
* * *
—
Yale dodged the people congregating in the church lobby and ducked down a back hallway to find a place for his box. He put it behind a beanbag chair in what must have been a youth group room, a place where the kids had painted the walls with daisies and frogs and Beatles lyrics.
Then he straightened his suit, damped his hair down in the bathroom, found Fiona, and helped her with the flowers she was carrying. He gave her the necklace from Nora, said she mustn’t ever wear it around her cousin Debra, and Fiona held up her curls so Yale could fumble with the clasp behind her neck. “I’ve never done this before,” he said, and Fiona, for some reason, found that hilarious. He helped straighten the chairs in the sanctuary. Yale appreciated the chairs: less ass-numbing than pews, less likely to dredge up negative childhood memories.
By the time Charlie arrived, the front of the place had filled. Charlie was trailed by some of his staffers—Gloria, Dwight, Rafael, Ingrid. They must have changed at the office, then walked here together. They’d be walking back together too, while Yale wandered off alone. Yale caught Charlie’s eye, and a minute later Charlie was there beside him, smelling like aftershave.
The minister spoke about community and friendship and “the family you choose,” tremendously aware of his audience, obviously practiced in this sort of thing. How many of these funerals had he personally overseen? Fiona got up and told a story about the day Nico introduced her to Terrence. “He warned me that Terrence had a sense of humor,” she said. “And so I was terrified. I kept waiting for him to put a whoopee cushion on my chair or something. But he didn’t crack a single joke. At the end of lunch he looked at me and he said, ‘You’ve taken care of your brother your whole life, and I—’” Her voice had run into a wall. She tried again but no sound came out. She said, “It would’ve been easier if he’d said something funny.” They all laughed, just to add their voices to the room, to get her through this. “He said, ‘You’ve taken care of your brother all your life, and I want you to know I’ve got it from here.’ And he did. He didn’t know what he was signing on for, but he was with Nico to the absolute end. And now he’s taking care of him again.” She barely got it out. A girlfriend walked her down from the lectern, rubbing her back.
One of Terrence’s teaching colleagues read a poem Yale couldn’t focus on. The minister led everyone in a meditation. Asher, who was a classically trained baritone, sang the “Pie Jesu” from Webber’s new requiem—a song Yale had only heard a soprano recording of, but that worked just as well for Asher, for the cello Yale had always imagined living in Asher’s throat. Yale, no more Catholic than Asher was, reveled now in the sound of Latin, those pure, liturgical vowels, the crunch of Q’s and C’s. The song wasn’t just a lamentation; it was a wringing out. Yale was a wet washcloth, and someone was squeezing everything out of him over a sink.
He didn’t look at Charlie. He could hear him breathing, hear him blowing his nose. At Nico’s vigil, they’d held hands.
He did look back at the rows behind him. Seven teenagers sat together, without parents. Yale imagined they were students who’d somehow gotten word. Behind them sat Teddy and Richard. Teddy drummed his left hand on the chair back. Some of Terrence’s family sat in the rear. Or at least he assumed they were family. A tall young man who looked remarkably like Terrence, three young black women. No one who looked the right age to be Terrence’s parents, but one woman old enough to be his grandmother.
When it was over, Yale and Charlie walked out together, and they each hugged Fiona.
Yale spotted Julian across the church lobby. He hadn’t seen him in the sanctuary, but here he was now by the coatrack, eyes wide and glassy. He’d lost weight. Yale did
n’t imagine it was the virus; the odds of Julian getting sick precisely when he learned he had the thing were low.
He realized Charlie was staring, too, and for an instant Yale and Charlie were aligned again, communicating telepathically.
Yale whispered to Charlie, “Did you tell him?”
“No.”
And then they were apart once more, thinking completely different things, and Yale knew Charlie was remembering whatever he’d done with Julian, memories Yale was forever—mercifully—locked out of. Yale took off down the hall to the youth room for his box.
But when he’d picked it up and turned around, Charlie was there in the doorway. Just looking at him.
Yale said, “For whatever it’s worth, I’m sorry you’re sick. But beyond that, I have very little sympathy for you right now.”
The lights were off in the room. Streetlights through the windows, but that was all.
Charlie said, “I think I’ve figured out why I did it.”
“Oh, do tell.” Yale held the box in front of him, a barrier.
“This might not make sense, but I think I did it because I was tired of being scared.”
“You were terrified of a disease, so you went out and got it?”
“No. No. I was scared of you leaving me, of you cheating on me with someone younger and better looking and smarter. I know it’s fucked up, but somewhere in my mind it was like, if I did the worst thing I could think of, then every time I saw you flirt with someone else I’d almost hope you would go for it, so it would even the score.”
“You thought this all through.”
“Not at the time, no. I was blotto, Yale. And Julian had these poppers he’d stolen from Richard’s house.”
“Poppers last all of ten seconds.”
“That’s not what I meant, I mean what we did in bed, I wouldn’t have—”
“Jesus, Charlie.”
“I wouldn’t have let him.”
“I think your little self-analysis is way off. I think you were absolutely trying to get sick.” Yale was yelling, and he didn’t care. “Why is the question, but that’s for you to figure out. Maybe you hate yourself. Maybe you hate me. Maybe you want the attention. There’s no good reason, is there? When you know the risks. You’re not naive. You’re the fucking condom czar of Chicago.”
Charlie was shaking his head. Charlie never seemed to cry actual tears, but his eyes would turn pink and puffy. He hadn’t come far into the room, was standing near the doorway as if he might run out. He said, “We used a rubber. We did. We were in Nico’s apartment at first, when things, you know—and we were in the bathroom, and it was dark, and before we left I asked Julian if he had a rubber, and he said, ‘I bet there’s one here somewhere.’ And he groped around the medicine cabinet, and he put a couple in his pocket. And then we went back to his place. But later, before I left, I saw the wrapper, and it was lambskin.”
“Holy fuck, Charlie. It was probably old too.”
“Probably.”
“I don’t even believe you. Really. You used a rubber, but it was dark, and oops, it was lambskin? Why would Nico even have lambskin? For what? To prevent pregnancy? You can come up with a better story. How many times did he fuck you really? I was willing to believe you. I was almost ready to believe you. And you come up with lambskin.”
“It was one time.”
“Just one great postfuneral fuck. Why not make it two? He’s out there right now. Have at it.”
“Yale.”
“Teddy fucks half the city and gets nothing, but the one time you mess up, with a rubber, you magically get sick. You should go on the talk show circuit. You should go into high schools and give them the scare talk. Tell the Republicans! They’ll love you!”
“Yale, stop.” Charlie was shouting now too. “You know it doesn’t work like that. You know it’s random.”
“Are you aware that you haven’t apologized? Has that crossed your mind? You’re making excuses and stories about lambskin, you’re coming up with theories about your motivation, and you haven’t once asked if I’m okay. You have not once acknowledged that you’ve blown up my entire life.”
Charlie opened his mouth, but Yale kept going.
“You spend five years playing up this monogamy thing, putting a fucking leash on me, and meanwhile you’re doing whatever the hell you want. You know what? It’s all greed. Our relationship was about you, and whatever the hell you did, that was about you, and your refusal to consider anything but your own feelings right now, that’s definitely about you.”
Charlie put his hands on his head. He said, “That might be true, but I cannot begin to deal with your emotional needs right now. My mother is draining me enough.”
Yale pushed past him with the box, rammed the corner into Charlie’s chest. He said, “At least you have her. I have no one.”
He went down the hall and past a woman he didn’t know, and then past Teddy and Asher, who were close enough that they’d probably heard the shouting.
* * *
—
Back at Cecily’s place, all the lights were off. She’d given Yale a key, and he opened the door quietly, the box balanced on his hip. A latchkey kid, like Kurt.
He changed in the apartment’s only bathroom. Cecily’s makeup and face creams and curling iron littered one side of the sink; the other held just Kurt’s red toothbrush and an egg timer. Yale took his shirt off and checked his chest, his back, the smooth, pale skin on the insides of his upper arms. Not that there weren’t a thousand other ways the virus could manifest, not that it wouldn’t wait, invisible, for years. When Terrence was first diagnosed he’d said, “It’s like putting a quarter in the toy machine at the grocery store. You know the possibilities, but you have no idea what you’ll get. Like, will it be pneumonia, or Kaposi’s, or herpes, or what?” He mimed opening one of the plastic balls. “Ooh, look, toxoplasmosis!”
How many times had he and Charlie had sex between Nico’s memorial and New Year’s? Only slightly less often than usual. Maybe ten times. Maybe Charlie had put his faith in that lambskin, if it was even real. Or in Julian not being sick. Julian had looked so healthy. Still, Charlie could have made excuses, could have said his back was out. He could have gotten tested, although maybe he’d been waiting for the three-month mark, the same way Yale was now. But then when he heard about Julian, he went ahead and did it. And lo and behold, early antibodies.
Yale put his T-shirt on, and when he went back out, Cecily was in the kitchen, pulling a tea bag out of her mug. She wore a robe and slippers, and she looked (Yale had learned this his first night there) like an entirely different person without makeup.
She asked how he was feeling, and then she said, “I’m afraid there’s a problem.”
“Oh.”
“It’s my ex. I guess—you know, the other night, I mentioned my friend Andrew in front of Kurt. Kurt’s so smart, and he notices more than I think. He misunderstood, though, and he thought you were sick. He doesn’t mind. He knows Andrew and everything, and—”
“He told your ex I have AIDS.”
“I explained that you didn’t. Basically I told the truth, I said you’d been exposed to the virus. But Bruce freaked out, and he’s saying he can’t believe you’re staying with us, eating food with us. It’s ridiculous, but this is what he’s like.”
“It wouldn’t help for me to talk to him, would it?”
“The thing is, we haven’t always agreed on custody details, and he thinks he could use this somehow in court.” She bit her top lip with her bottom teeth.
He felt suddenly exhausted. “Got it. Honestly, he probably could. If he got the right judge.” Yale looked down at his sweatpants, his bare feet. He said, “If I stayed one more night, do you think that would be okay?” He felt terrible asking. He’d compromised Cecily’s career, and now he was upsetting her family. This woman barel
y had it together, and Yale was stomping across her life.
“Of course! But then—”
“I’ll clear out in the morning.”
“I’m sorry, Yale. And Kurt feels terrible. He knows he messed up. What’s funny is Kurt didn’t even mind, he just thinks it’s interesting. He’s been hearing about it on the news.”
“He didn’t mess up. Can you let him know that?”
“This was the last thing you needed.”
Yale said, honestly, “It means more that you would take me in than that someone wouldn’t want me here.”
“Kurt’s worried about you. I told him you aren’t sick, but he’s worried everyone’s going to be mean to you.”
“Well, I might get sick.”
She nodded, serious. “I feel so strongly that you’re going to be okay.”
“Are you okay?” he said. “Your job?”
She hesitated. “As long as those paintings are real, I’m probably fine.” Her face was pinched, and he wasn’t convinced she was giving him the whole story. “Even if they’re not, it’s just a job, Yale. This has reminded me of that, you know? There are more serious things.”
In the morning, Yale was dressed and shaved and out the door with his stuff before Kurt and Cecily’s alarms went off.
2015
She didn’t have Arnaud’s permission to do this, but what the hell did she care about Arnaud? Arnaud wanted to stretch things out. Arnaud was getting paid.
Plus when Jake showed up at Richard’s flat late the next afternoon, she wanted to hustle him out of there. If he was there to bother Richard, he needed to leave, and if he was there to bother her, he could do it elsewhere. So before Serge could invite him to sit down, get him a drink, Fiona grabbed his arm and said, “I need your help with something,” and dragged him outside.
The Great Believers Page 26