Halfway Home

by Paul Monette

  "I was the baby" Foo exclaimed, the joke on her, as if who could believe this wizened thing had ever been so young. "Just thirteen when we built this place." She took a stiff gulp of the bullshot as soon as I handed it over. "And Cora was twenty-seven, and Nonny was twenty-two." She seemed quite fiercely proud of getting the numbers exactly right. She waved her glass at Gray. "Your father was three the first summer we lived here."

  "Foo, you should have a hat. You'll get too much sun."

  She harrumphed. "I can't get enough of anything anymore, except beef broth," she said, then tilted her face to the sky. "It feels grand. I could die right here and be happy."

  "Well, don't die before lunch, please," her great-nephew admonished dryly. "Mona and Tom have gone to a lot of trouble."

  Mona and I burbled a protest, no trouble at all, and Foo threw an insouciant look in my direction. "Sunstroke wouldn't be such a bad way to go, now, would it?" I shook my head. "Quick and clean. You could toss me right off the bluff." And she gestured with the glass toward the brink, as if toasting the whole vast watery grave between here and Japan.

  She wasn't drunk. It was just high spirits, that and a clearly practiced facility for saying whatever she liked. I glanced across at Gray, locking eyes at last, startled to see the worry in his. But I understood immediately: he was fearful the talk of death would pain me. His mouth crinkled as he gave a tiny shrug, as if to say she was incorrigible. I couldn't have cared less. But the other was so obvious now, the way his uncomplicated gaze lingered on my face. How had I managed to miss it before? Even to notice how happy he was. He smiled at me over his wineglass with an openness that choked me with dread.

  Somehow Mona had got the old lady talking about the musicales, springing to life those sepia snapshots out of the albums in the parlor. Foo gestured across at the slope of lawn where the audience used to sit. She evoked the long summer twilights listening to Mozart trios, and art songs floated across the evening by women in rippling Fortuny dresses. Foo herself wore a long linen caftan, embroidered in a sort of Navajo motif. On both wrists she sported clusters of silver bracelets, which jingled like a tambourine as she swept her arms about.

  "And how did you get the name Foo?" asked Mona, catching the careless frankness of the lady's tone.

  Foo gave a hoot. "My full name is Faith Rue Baldwin," she said, ringing it out impressively. "Now really, doesn't she sound like a Puritan drudge? The only thing I ever had any faith in was Franklin Roosevelt. God has never been my dish of tea. The only god I ever met was Henri Matisse.Not Picasso—definitely not Picasso."

  "Why don't we go in and eat?" suggested Gray, not exactly cutting her off or dismissing the drumroll of opinions, but clearly no reply was needed.

  Foo struggled to rise, and Gray was there beside her, a hand at her elbow. I looked around for Merle, expecting he would carry her in, but apparently she meant to go on her own steam. Mona stepped forward boldly. "May I?" she asked Gray, and he stepped aside neatly, letting her take Foo's arm. "You boys go on ahead and put out the food," instructed Mona, pacing her step to Foo's.

  Boys?Bizarre as well as impertinent, since Gray had fifteen years on Mona. But we let it go, for the two women had quite evidently clicked, and Foo was adoring the attention. Gray and I headed into the house, shoulder to shoulder, and I murmured behind my hand: "I only think it's fair to warn you, Mona's on the rebound."

  We were laughing as we jaunted into the kitchen. There was very little to do, since Mona's four exotic salads were all in bowls in the fridge. I pulled the long baguette from its paper sack, turned to Gray, and tapped him with it on both shoulders. "You rise from this battle a knight, Sir Graham," I said, and he murmured back, "My lord." Then he snatched the bread and brandished it like a samurai, moving to the cutting board to slice it.

  I hauled the salads out and plopped a sprig of basil in the center of each. Then I was in and out of the dining room, setting them on the table. I saw that Mona and Foo had reached the french doors. They stepped into the house and stopped for a little rest before proceeding farther. I dashed back to the kitchen for the final bowl and looked around for the salt and pepper. Gray stepped toward me, the basket of sliced bread in his hands like an offering, and I looked at him. His face was calm and still, a pond without a ripple.

  "I really missed you," he said.

  I could feel the heat rising from my neck, my first blush since high school. Even two or three hours ago, wouldn't I have taken that remark as perfectly innocent? Now I spoke with a falter. "Yeah, me too, but—we have to talk." I sounded ludicrously grave.

  His brows furrowed a millimeter. "About what?"

  Behind me through the doorway I could hear Foo and Mona trekking across the parlor, the old lady pointing out favorite bibelots. "About how you feel," I replied miserably. "I mean, how we feel."

  He looked at me so strangely, for a second I thought I'd got it all wrong, another jog of dementia. Then he smiled, relaxed and easy, infinitely reassuring. "I'm not asking for anything, Tom."

  Which left me feeling like a king-size dork, so I tried to toss it off."Good, 'cause I'm lousy at relationships. Even when I'm not dying."

  He chuckled—always leave 'em laughing—and reached over and squeezed my shoulder, but not anything like a lover. Man to man, neutral as Switzerland. I grabbed the pitcher of iced tea, and we headed into the dining room, just as Mona and Foo arrived at the table, kvelling about the spread. Gray moved to seat his aunt so she faced the yard. "Where's Merle?" I suddenly remembered, staring at the empty place.

  "Oh, Merle won't be joining us," Gray replied smoothly, whisking away the fifth setup and stowing it on the sideboard. And my small liberal victory shriveled and died on the vine.

  We sat boy-girl-boy-girl, Mona across from Foo, Gray across from me. As we passed the food, Mona continued to charm the bloomers off Foo, coaxing memories of her sisters and the old days. I'd heard a lot of this before from Gray, and truthfully didn't hang on every word. Cora appeared to have the gift for dance, and Nonny for writing skits, and one was a suffragette and the other neurasthenic. I'm afraid they tended to blur in my brain. I was content to have the surviving member of the trio, all her eccentricities intact. Foo was the past rolled into one.

  My own radar was focused on Gray. He didn't seem to be jarred or brooding because of the line I had drawn between us. He threw in his own memories of the aunts, his summers here as a kid. After Pearl Harbor, the house on the bluff was designated an official lookout by the War Department. "And I'd stand out there all day with a telescope, five years old, and look for enemy subs," he said, grinning across at me, no shadow of awkwardness.

  The residue and aftertaste were all on my side. I hadn't even told him I was flattered or touched at all, which I was. Or let him speak his heart, his own way in his own time. Why did I have to jump in like the marines landing, before there was even a situation? And why was I the one hurting now, while he sat across the table laughing and full of life?

  "So, Tom," said Foo beside me, breaking into my fruitless circle, "I'm afraid I can't get out at night anymore, or I'd come and see your show."

  "Oh, that was just a one-shot deal. I'm not really performing."

  "But how can that be, with such a nice provocative notice? And from Nancy Marlowe to boot—the original Philistine."

  At this point we were extremely tete-a-tete, and I tried to smile at the others and bring them in, but Gray was turned half around in his chair, pointing Mona toward something outside. "Well, I'm sort of retired," I replied lamely.

  "At your age?" Foo was stung with dismay. "It's not those Holy Rollers, is it? You mustn't succumb! We need artists like you sticking it up their whoopsis every day!"

  She was really quite exercised. I looked down at my plate. "No, it's not that. Actually I'm... not well."

  Curious, how reluctant I was to tell her. For the first time I wanted to protect someone from the nightmare. What did she need it for, ninety-one and barely ambulatory? I looked over at her. She
was mortified—didn't know what to say. And I didn't realize the others had heard the last part. There was silence all around the table, till Gray said gently, "Auntie, do you know what AIDS is?"

  She looked every one of her ninety-one years just then, but you couldn't mistake the Baldwin backbone as she sat straight up. Her blue gaze deepened, austere and heroic, the old pioneer stock. "Of course," she replied with a faint edge of disdain, as if someone had imputed that she'd gone senile. Then she reached out a bony hand and covered mine on the table.

  I could feel the silver bracelets, cool at the tips of my fingers. Her grip was rock-firm as a lifeguard's, as if she would pull me bodily from the whirlpool. Her eyes shifted from me to her nephew. Her profile was like the prow of an ancient ship. And when she looked at him, a shudder of grief and sorrow transfigured her face. In a blaze of understanding, I knew that she knew he loved me, just as Mona had known. There was such a terrible silence then. It probably only lasted five seconds, but I couldn't bear it, that circle of faces so grim and melancholy.

  "Really, I'm fine," I said, morbidly plucky. "I'm not going to be checking out anytime soon."

  Mona and Gray looked startled. They were accustomed to hearing quite the opposite, my sardonic version of Foo's "Toss me off the bluff." But I'd said as much to Brian when he left the other day, and figured I owed the same to these, my loved ones. Not that I couldn't be wrong. For all I knew I'd wake up dead tomorrow morning. But that wasn't how it felt right now, not since the night of the Resurrection, nor all through the ravishing storm.

  Foo sighed. "It's disgusting, how some people get to live as long as me." She looked bitterly round the room, then out to the parlor, as if the house was somehow to blame.

  "Well, but I never expected life to be fair," I retorted, "did you?" Her hand still held mine as fiercely as ever, but now I could feel the force had shifted. It was I who had to pull her from the whirlpool. "Besides," I said softly, "nobody has it easy." None of them needed to know I was quoting the brute tormentor of my youth.

  "Cora was sixty-two," declared Foo, and I knew she meant the death year. "That was thirty-three years ago." She shook her head in wonderment, and still with a certain tenacious pride in pinning the numbers down. She made a scoffing sound. "And then some people end up twenty years in bed and don't even know who they are anymore." She looked at me again, demanding nothing and holding nothing back, as if she'd been saving all these years the love left over from those she'd lost.

  "All my friends died," I said, something of a non sequitur, but knowing too that no elaboration was required. Then I nodded across the table. "Except these two. They're not allowed to."

  Hand in hand we looked at Gray and Mona. Only then did I see how deep their silence was, and what a great gulf had suddenly yawned between their side of the table and ours. For we were the ones, old Foo and I, who skirted the fields of death, who could feel the breath of the dark farmer on our necks. It was so odd to see the two faces, Gray's and Mona's, so aligned: respect, even awe. It made me feel about ninety years old myself.

  "Well, now you've got three," declared Foo, her voice as firm as the clasp of her hand. "And I want you to know I'm very honored to have the Antichrist living in my beach house."

  It broke the funereal air, and we laughed. The rest of the meal, we stuck to lighter fare. Mona and I told Foo about my death threats during the first Miss Jesus tour, one after another on my answering machine. Then the voodoo doll and disemboweled cat, left outside my apartment door.

  "By then I couldn't tell if I had fans in a devil cult or what," I said. "But the death threats were all from born-agains. 'Hi, my name's Donny Lee, and Jesus is Lord, and I got a bullet here's got yer name on it.' I never got a burning cross, though. Those guys were too busy harassing gooks and niggers. And wouldn't they all just love to know I've got the big A."

  Foo was having a ball. Her own forays in the arts had been of a much more elevated sort, and I doubted she'd ever had a First Amendment crisis. Nevertheless, she'd developed a taste for anarchy, just from having lived through so many decades of drivel and hypocrisy. What the hell was her attitude about almost everything, especially institutions and all political parties. It thrilled me to make her laugh, and nothing seemed to shock her. The only grandparent I ever had was my dad's dad, by then a shell in a wheelchair, spewing hate and ethnic slurs at everything that moved. Foo was like getting a second chance—finally, one's own kind.

  "Hey, what time is your show?" Gray asked her as we drained the last of the pitcher of tea.

  "Two-thirty," she said, gasping to hear it was only ten minutes off. She turned apologetically to me. "You'll forgive me, Tom, I can't miss 'A Woman Alone.'"

  Mona clapped her hands. "My favorite soap!"

  Already we were a family that didn't stand on ceremony. The women rose immediately to retire to the parlor, where a prehistoric Sylvania black-and-white perched on the hi-fi cabinet. I'd never once turned it on, but apparently it worked. Again Mona led Foo slowly, as I started to clear the table, once more calculating when I might slip away for a medicine break. And Gray said briskly, "Leave all that. Come on, show me where the steps are broken."

  Why not? I didn't really want to get away from him. Didn't even mind if we talked some more about It. As we headed outside through the cloistered arch, striding across the lawn to the bluffs edge, there was something peculiarly raw and vital—manly, I almost said—about sharing the land today in its pristine state. I was happy to be with him, glad we had put behind us the worry of misalliance.

  "She always knows more than I think she does," he said with a comic shake of his head. For a second I thought he'd seen what I saw—the spasm of sorrow as Foo realized her nephew had fallen in love with a dead man. But all he meant was AIDS. "You watch, she'll be on the phone tomorrow to the library, wanting everything they've got."

  "I'm officially adopting her," I informed him. "I want papers drawn up and everything."

  As we started down the beach steps, the sun on the water was blindingly bright. Which was why we didn't see Merle till we were practically on top of him. Gray was in front of me, heading down the second zigzag of stairs. Then he stopped so short I collided into his shoulder. Merle sat on the step below, his lunch spread out beside him. He looked cornered, almost cowering. "I thought you were off to a meeting," said Gray, breezy and neutral.

  "I'm back," came the curt reply. His black eyes didn't leave Gray's face, never once flicking to mine. He moved to gather his lunch together—Big Mac, double fries, and a shake.

  "No, don't move," interjected Gray, stepping over.

  Hastily I followed suit, but hyperaware of the cold glare that he cast like a spell as I passed him. Gray picked up the pace, and we thundered down the next thirty steps to the midpoint landing. Soon as I caught up, I murmured out of the side of my mouth, "Why do you suppose he treats me like General Custer?"

  Gray laughed. "Ignore it."

  "My family were all bigots, but I don't think they had any active role in the Native American genocide. They were still picking potatoes back in Ireland."

  "He's just very protective."

  "Of you? But you can take care of yourself."

  And he really guffawed this time, darting away and down the stairs, as if I would never catch him now. He had the wild innocence of a kid sometimes, which sprang in part from never having to grow up and get a job. He might be the family loser, but would always be the youngest too, unworldly in ways that amazed me. I trotted down in his wake, recalling out of nowhere how at fourteen I longed to be urban and sophisticated, trapped as I was in the provinces. And I got what I wanted, and now it meant nothing. Reaching the place where Gray stood, leaning out over the banister to study the damage below, I realized how I had come full circle. Exiled from the jaded city, and a simple man for a friend.

  "How bad is it?" I asked, bracing myself beside him and craning out to see. "Doesn't it look like it's torn away from the pilings?"

  "Yeah," he answered ru
efully. "That whole bottom section's gonna have to be rebuilt. Cost an arm and a leg." He tilted back up to a standing position and ran a hand through his hair. "They'll probably just let it rot."

  "Who?The Foundation?" He nodded. "But that's crazy. They can't let this place fall apart." I was indignant, not least because I thought he was being wimpy. Make them fix it.

  "Sure they can," he retorted with some impatience. "Once Foo's gone, this will all come down." He swept an arm upward, to the top of the bluff. "There's four lots up there, minimum. Eight, ten million bucks, just for the land."

  "But wait—" My head for business got worse, the higher the numbers went. "What about you? It's yours for life, isn't it?"

  He gave out with a sharp, one-note laugh, the sound of a man who'd learned to mock his fate. "Oh no—they cut me right out, those lawyers. I can live at the ranch for as long as I want, but that's it. No frills."

  I was in shock. In an instant the house on the bluff had been stolen right out from under me. Till this moment, nothing seemed as provisional as I. Now my whole island—the six-story firs, the fish as old as the century—was suddenly finite, mortal as the frail and final Baldwin sister with the owl-headed cane. The last thing I figured I had to worry about was me outliving the beach house. Not anymore. I thought of the broken cliff in the swirling tide, that patch of the mogul's lawn. Nothing would hold. There was no safe place.

  "I don't get rich people," I said at last. "How could your dad take everything away like that? What did you do to him? You're such a pussycat."

  Gray looked at me bewildered, as if it couldn't have been more obvious. "I told him I was gay."

  Of course. Did I think I had the monopoly on fathers who wanted to crawl in a hole and die of shame? The vast tract of Baldwin lands didn't make a smudge of difference. When it came to hetero paranoia, throwing up at the thought of your blood kin sucking dick, a kingdom was as good as a tenement.