Halfway Home

by Paul Monette

  "You can live without money," I said. "I've done it for years."

  I meant it facetiously, but he didn't laugh. He continued to gaze intently at the fire, unblinking, till I thought he would scorch his eyeballs. Then he said very distinctly, "I can't imagine what I'm going to do."

  Slowly he swung away from the mantel. Though he faced me now, I wasn't sure if he could just see dark after the dazzle of the flames. One hand seemed to grope before him, and then he was leaning down. Toward me. Instinctively I huddled deeper, turning my face to the cushion, always protect your face. Then I felt the flat of his hand between my shoulders and his lips against my hair, just above the ear.

  "G'night Tommy," he said. "And thanks for putting up with us."

  He lumbered away, leaving me in a stunned silence. My jaw was so slack I couldn't even return his "good night." He'd never embraced me before, nor I him. We wouldn't have dreamed of such a thing. Though I knew it was a gesture left over from kissing his son—the very same spot above the ear, I was sure of it—I was no less overwhelmed.

  And what a pushover I turned out to be, racing now to forgive him every slur, every torment. What did it say about my self-respect, that I would happily give the world away for certain kisses? Such a needy little devil. Even then, it wasn't all roses. In some dim and cankerous recess of my heart, I felt a spurt of triumph over Susan. I thought: So, did you get a kiss tonight, honey?

  My wickedness shocked even me sometimes.

  I was in bed in twenty minutes, bareass under the molting comforter. But I must have fallen asleep with the light on—not reading, just staring around my room and thinking of Gray. I forgot about my brother and all the craziness, the beach house bursting with people. I just wanted to sleep with Gray—period. This was called taking it one step at a time. "Low and slow," as my brother used to say on the field. I don't remember which sport.

  So the light was on, which must have drawn him. It was two or three o'clock—I don't know if I ever looked. I felt a tug on the comforter, and I swirled up out of sleep trying to remember who was sick, who needed to go to the hospital. My eyes blinked open, expecting a figure looming over the bed. Nobody there. Then I dropped my eyes a couple of feet, and Daniel was leaning on the edge of the mattress, propped on his elbows. He wore pajamas with cowboys all over.

  "What's wrong?" I whispered, half sitting up.

  "Can't sleep," he said, lips pursed in a coy pout. "Can I sleep with you?"

  "No," I said sharply, wide awake now, and suddenly frightened by my own nakedness under the comforter. "I don't think that's a good idea," I said, softer because he seemed a little hurt.

  "But I get scared." His voice trembled. "I keep having dreams about my dogs."

  Oh, I could see the manipulation, plain as the quiver of his chin, but that didn't mean it didn't work. "Well, why don't you just sit up here for a minute?" I said, scooting over to make room for him, tucking the comforter tight around me so he wouldn't get any ideas about crawling in under. He hopped right up, sitting cross-legged against the pillow. His knee touched my chest. "Don't be afraid of dreams," I said, a trifle singsong myself. "That's how we get rid of a lot of bad shit—I mean stuff."

  He studied his toes thoughtfully. "All they do is fight."

  "Yeah." We weren't talking about the dogs anymore.

  "If they don't stop fighting, how are we gonna figure out where to go?"

  The weight of the world on his shoulders. It must have seemed to him an impossible obstacle course, between here and being safe in school again. "They'll be okay," I said, a comment that struck me as being about as empty as my paean to the smarts of lawyers. "Just give 'em a little more time."

  Happily these banalities didn't fill him with contempt. He scrunched down and tucked in closer to where I was curled on my side. I sucked my belly in, trying to keep some distance, but it was useless. He was completely unselfconscious, burrowing like a bear cub. I had an awful feeling he was going to ask me to tell him a story, and all my stories were X-rated, picketed by the likes of Susan. In vain I cast my mind to try to think of a fairy tale that was clean, animals singing and dancing in a circle, cuddly and neuter.

  Daniel said drowsily, "I used to have a picture of you in my room. I found it at Gramma's. I kept it in my toy box."

  How could I not be flattered, being let in on his secret?Being his secret. "What kind of picture?"

  "You and Dad.When you were little."

  I had a sudden fierce desire to see it, then remembered the fire. Black-and-white, but taken by whom? My parents weren't the type, in the long unraveling of their lives, to memorialize their kids. A hundred pictures of Brian, yes, in all his myriad uniforms, but not of the two of us. "How old—" I started to say, then realized the kid had fallen asleep, practically in my arms.

  His breathing so light I had to hold my own to hear it. And for a moment there was nothing else but this, me cradling my nephew in the curl of my body. Thinking, What if I'd never met him? And What would he remember, years from now when I was gone? It would only be the briefest meeting, that I knew already. Soon they would go, wherever they had to, leaving me to the hourglass of my disappearing island. But at the moment, I couldn't get it up to feel melancholy or cheated. No matter what else, I'd had this taste of being an uncle. And I enjoyed it most shamelessly.

  I was gently stroking his head, patting him like a dog really, not having a lot of practice with human puppies. It couldn't go on—I was too aware of the dangers of his parents freaking out. Inching away, I slipped noiselessly off the bed, one hand shielding my genitals. It seemed very important somehow that he not see me naked. David was quite enough for one day, thank you. I glided across to the closet and slipped my seersucker robe from the hook behind the door. I drew it on, tugging the belt tight. Then I walked around to where he lay, one hand batting idly at an itch on his nose.

  I'd never done this before, but figured he wouldn't be any heavier than my cross. I crouched and scooped him into my arms, lifting him up, ready to hush his protest. The deadweight of him shocked me, and I staggered. But instantly he helped me, groping his arms about my neck and holding on, still fast asleep. I reeled around and clumped to the door, gently heaving him onto my shoulder so I could reach the knob.

  As we came out into the hallway I started to get the hang of it. We moved in perfect balance, like a peasant hauling water. We skirted around the stairwell, and only now, as I passed his parents' door, did I feel a thrill of fear. If Susan should come out right now, if I tripped and made too much noise, words would be said whose scars would never go away. For a second then, it was a high-wire act, teetering forward on the balls of my feet, the boy secure in my arms.

  Through the arched doorway and up the four steps. As we came into his room I'd forgotten the windows all around. I was used to it only by day, drenched in sun and wide open to the rimless cerulean of sky and water. Now in the dark there was only velvet black all around, scattershot with the diamond glints of stars. The nightshine was sufficient for me to find the bed, no jarring lamp required. I bent over and laid him softly down, cradling his head onto the pillow. He slept as deep as his father. I covered him with a light cotton blanket, tucking it under his chin. Then I glanced out to the ocean, the last watch of the night.

  The moon was down. I could see the clouds rolling across the sky, milky pearl and amorphous, still unsure what they were bringing. Let it rain, I beseeched the heavens. Then looked down at Daniel one last time, reaching out and stroking his cheek with the back of my hand. I didn't kiss him because—I just didn't. But I was so glad he was in my house, sleeping in my tower.

  I sailed down the steps and whirled around the stair hall like Isadora, as if I was capering round a Greek vase. And in the middle of one of those leaps, I bashed my head on the wall fixture—a bronze tulip sporting a single bulb. The light flickered as I grabbed the side of my head, swallowing the groan, though I'd made enough noise already to wake the dead. I reeled into Foo's room and shut the door, lurching
forward and tumbling onto the bed.Laughing. I don't know why the pain was funny, except it was. Hilarious.

  I wanted to take care of them all. How's that for the son of a drunk? Always wanting to fix things. I could see Mona's groaning shelf of books on codependency, the pinnacle of her self-help Ph.D. Please—I've been through the program. But I knew right then, as the worst of the throbbing began to abate, I wouldn't let them out of here without a little headwork. Wouldn't let them fall into total dysfunction, the legacy of West Hill Road, without a fight. I probably had a slight concussion, but I was too ornery to black out.

  Still faintly whinneying with laughter, I stood up shakily and moved to the bureau. Right away I saw in the mirror the swelling bruise on my left temple, a small seep of blood along the hairline—just about the spot where Brian had grazed his lips. Maybe that's why the pain struck me so funny. Brian's address on Pequod Lane was tucked in the corner of the mirror. One of my most Italian qualities: I never throw anything out. Complete pack rat. I opened the top drawer of the bureau. My Jockey shorts were folded neatly on one side, good little Catholic boy, and on the other side a battered leather box tooled in gold, of the sort in which Fred Astaire would have stowed his studs and cuff links, but used by me for a catchall.

  As it happened, the box had been given to me by Teddy Burr, may he rest easy. I opened it, just the stray bubble of laughter now and my head starting to spin in earnest. My UConn class ring, my upper retainer, my cock ring. I lifted out a card and squinted at it: Daphne. Oh sure. How about a nice hundred-dollar hour with Dr. Dyke, a little family therapy as we all stared at the smashed clock on her desk. No thanks. Then I picked up the card that lay beneath it.

  Kathleen Twomey. Salva House Women's Center.My lesbian nun fan. Angels are all gay too. I tucked it just above Brian's address in the mirror.

  I could've turned away then, I was ready to crash. But I burrowed once more in the box, brushing aside the ephemera—buttons, shillings, subway tokens—and lifted out a crumpled snapshot, furred around the edges. Brian was probably ten, in his baseball whites, a bat across his shoulders. A few feet behind him, more or less blending into the shrubbery, a small child is turning away, blurred because he's in motion. Only I would know it was myself. And not by the slightest stretch of the imagination would you say it was a picture of the two of us. I just happened to be walking by when my father recorded his Little League hero.

  Was Daniel's picture from the same roll? Was there one with the two of us arm in arm? I was really going to faint if I didn't lie down. I remember closing the box and the drawer, I remember wanting to prop the picture in the mirror's opposite corner. But you get to a point where you've pushed your limits so far you're dancing on thin air, and the best thing to do then is free-fall, knowing your bed is right there—the way it would be in a normal house.

  I WOKE TO THE SOUND OF MEN AT WORK—CALLING RUGGEDLY, heaving brawn—and the first thing I thought wasWhat did I miss? I rolled off the bed and stared point-blank at the digital Westclox. 11:23! Damn, how I hated to lose half the day to this thick cocoon of viral sleep. Not including the entr'acte with Daniel, I'd been under for almost twelve hours. I wouldn't admit I needed it, that the pace and tension of the last days were a marathon next to the dreamy weeks I'd passed here solo, me and Emma. I stood up to a thunderbolt of pain on the side of my head, recalling my dying-swan jeté. I tottered over and peered out the balcony door.

  All I could see was Merle, standing among the swords of the century cactus, bellowing down the bluff. Stripped to the waist, his ruddy torso massive but without any waste of fat, he was playing a rope through his gloved hands. He leaned against the weight of the load he was easing down the cliff face. With a sweatband around the crown of his head, he looked as tribal as I'd ever seen him, a shaman at the edge of the world, wrestling the bonds of an awful ceremony. Above him the cloud cover had banked in again, moiling and dark with rain.

  I felt a mad surge of adrenaline, because I couldn't stand it that they were all getting ahead of me.

  I was dressed and downstairs on fast-forward, eager to join the men, only stopping to duck in the kitchen for my morning pills. I didn't plan on Susan, who stood at the stove in her lavender sweats. We both balked. A slurred "good morning" passed between us, flat as a hangover, as I made a bead for the fridge and she went on stirring her pot. I shook out my fourteen pills; went to the sink for water.

  When I pitched back my head to drink, she said blandly, "I'm making them soup and sandwiches. Would you like some?"

  I felt my first spurt of contrariness, as I lowered the empty glass. Dr. Jekyll having just taken his morning draft, Mr. Hyde turned to his sister-in-law. "I thought I'm supposed to eat separate," I said, drawing the last word out with fine contempt.

  Susan shook her head wearily, sighing. "That's not what I said," she declared with brittle firmness. "I'd just rather you not prepare food for me and my son. Look, I'm sorry you're sick."

  At last she looked directly at me, struggling to change the tone of this whole encounter. Now I could see the puff of swelling, purple on her upper lip. It seemed to freeze her lower face in a permanent sneer. "It must be terrible," she said.

  Don't even try, I wanted to tell her. I saw she was studying the lump by my temple, probably wondering who had battered me. "Mostly it's all the friends I've lost," I replied, "and nobody cares. But I haven't been sick sick. Yet."

  She looked down at her pot of soup—vegetable-beef, bubbling with a skim of fat. "You must despise people like me." Spoken very evenly, with a certain ring of self-knowledge, but no intention of changing either.

  "I only despise the people in charge. All politicians, left and right, who bathe in each other's slime. And every creep above the rank of monsignor, all the way up to His Hitlerness."

  She shook her head again, with bitter rue. "That's your business. But I wouldn't blame God for the sins of the church. You never know. He could turn out to be your last chance."

  Superior as a Jesuit. She stirred the pot, serene as if the souls of the damned were being rendered into soap. "Oh, don't worry," I said, "I've got a fabulous thing going with Jesus. We're like sisters."

  She frowned in some confusion. Quickly I turned and headed out before either of us softened and called for a truce. After all, she still believed the very touch of my fingers was ripe with death. But I had to admit, striding along under the pergola and out to the cliffside terrace, Susan was a much more stimulating opponent than Mrs. Beaudry of the Coalition of Family Values. Or my drunken moron father. By comparison, the skirmish just concluded was High Theology.

  The lip of the bluff was deserted, Merle having gone below to join the others. I could hear them barking orders at one another as I headed down the stairs, raw as any construction crew. Running beside the stairs was a groove in the cliff where the rope had worn away. Far out, the ocean had almost a yellowish cast, dull gold over the gray, oddly apocalyptic. Why not a typhoon? I thought merrily, my heart leaping as I came around the midpoint landing and saw them gathered below.

  My brother and Merle were grappling with a vertical four by four, swaying it into place against the rock, while Gray squatted and wedged it tight, agile as a sherpa. Close by his father on the landing, Daniel straddled the toolbox, drill in one hand, hammer in the other. I trotted down the last flight to join them, but only Daniel looked up to greet me, beaming at the sight of me.

  A blurred half-cheer went up from the three men as they anchored the four by four. Then Brian and Merle set to work bracing it with two by fours. I haven't a clue how anything is constructed—the only thing I've ever built is my cross. But they seemed to be shifting the weight of the structure deeper into the fold of the cliff. This would allow the final flight of steps to the beach to lie securely in a bed of rock. I didn't see how they would make it work, and anyway, the anarchic bone in my body wondered why they were bothering, given the force of the coming storm. Doubtless I was reacting to my brother's vivid enthusiasm, the sweaty physicality w
ith which he threw himself into the job.

  Then Gray hoisted himself onto the landing, springing to his feet near Daniel and me. When he saw me there, he broke into the same uncomplicated grin as the boy, who crouched between us over the toolbox, watching his dad intently. I felt a burn of shyness, for once not wanting to speak first. Gray cocked his head to one side, drinking me in. "Don't ever let me go away like that again."

  "Please—you should have pushed my head in the mud and then left."

  We laughed. There was nothing further to apologize, since we'd both taken all the blame. Yesterday's tiff had been about discretion, hadn't it, and Gray had clearly won the point. For here we were, not kissing in front of the kid. And then the focus shifted, my brother grunting like a foreman, wordlessly beckoning Gray to help. Gray turned and in one stride was back with the program, wedging himself between Merle and Brian, gripping the two by fours while the other men hammered them fast. The three of them together looked like seamen playing sails, bonded by the drill of heavy labor.

  Brian, in jeans and a frayed football jersey—FORDHAM 38—was powerful as ever, wonderful to watch in motion. The muscles in his forearm swelled and rippled as the hammer drove home. A different sort of strength from Merle's, who heaved to like a stevedore, sheer brute force. Yet it was Gray between them, lean and fierce and holding the thing together, who drew my eyes. For I found him more striking today than ever, a man full-blown and radiantly untortured, perfect mate for a winter harbor. This was remarkable all by itself, since with me it's always gone the other way, the heat of a man evaporating sometimes by the hour.