Look Away Silence

by Edward C. Patterson

  “You need to go now,” the doctor said.

  No chastisement. I squeezed Matt’s hand, my arm receding from beneath the plastic. I thought to perform Louise’s kissing ceremony, but then thought that was best left for mothers.

  “I’ll be around,” I said to Matt.

  His eyes blinked, and then closed, perhaps exhausted by the ordeal of visitors.

  “I’ll have you tested,” the doctor said to me.

  Tested.

  I closed my eyes now and thought of that big-ass needle in my stomach.

  2

  The test was nothing — a blood sample from the crook of my arm. The nasty part was that I wouldn’t know for two weeks if I walked on the same path as Matt. It wasn’t like those new fangled pregnancy tests — pee on the stick and go shopping for a bassinet. I had choices now. I could sit in vigil with the Kielers and glare at that bitch of a nurse until her shift changed, or I could get drunk. I chose the latter.

  It wasn’t much of a drunk at that. In fact, I didn’t even go to a gay bar, fearing that I would run into the old crowd and need to tell them everything. I didn’t want to tell a soul. It was my secret. One word to a Padgett or a Todd and the entire state would know by tomorrow noon. I wasn’t ashamed, but I did not want Matt shunned. Of course, I would share his shunning, so perhaps I was fearful after all. If I had gone to The Cavern, I might have bumped into Russ and then I would need to discuss it with him. I needed information, but not this minute. Now I needed booze and not cosmopolitans. I needed gin and tonic in numbing quantities. If I had imbibed at The Cavern, I might have even been served by that waiter boy, Bobby, and I didn’t want any more examples of this disease tracing me that night. So I opted to drink at McCann’s, where the baseball game barked over the TV and the old shore drunks bent elbows over real men’s drinks — scotch and water, hold the water.

  I swaggered to the bar and did my best butch impression, although the bartender probably recognized me from the neighborhood. I did my best to order my gin in a gruff voice. I listened to some Republican bullshit politics being spouted at the other end of the bar. I was also engaged in conversation by an old man about the latest baseball games. I found that nodding and silence was my friend. I agree. You’re right. Didn’t catch that game. But there was no escape. The News came on and there was a bit about some Gay man in Bisbee, Arizona who intentionally bled on a group of unsuspecting thugs when they robbed him and beat him to a pulp. There was talk about prosecuting him, but he died from his head wounds. Then I was subjected to a discussion on these faggots and their disease. Scourge of God, it is. He wants them all dead for their sins so He’s wiping them out. But they have their nerve trying to infect us innocent, normal true-blooded solid citizens, who never do wrong from morning to evening. I was angry at their remarks. I felt like standing on the bar and saying Shut-up or I’ll open a vein and add some pink blood to your scotches. I might have this thing. I’ll know in two weeks and then you’ll know, ‘cause I’ll tell you fuckers.

  I decided to exit before my opinion was asked and would damn my eternal soul with an answer.

  3

  I didn’t want to go back to Matt’s place. That was a conscious decision I made when I was sober. I knew I’d be trashed and in no condition to drive. So I picked McCann’s not only because it was a breeders haven, but also because it was two blocks from my apartment. I staggered around the courtyard fence. I hadn’t been here in a while. I would pick up mail once a week. I had moved my plants to Matt’s, so I didn’t even need to water now.

  Suddenly, the place looked very much like home. I recalled my thinking on relinquishing the apartment, but now I was glad I hadn’t. It was more than a haven. It was a downright escape. Except, as I stumbled over the debris that had managed to clutter the courtyard, I noticed a light on inside.

  “I left the light on?” I asked the porch furniture. “Well, that’s going to be some fucking electric bill.”

  The door was open also. I expected now to enter a threadbare apartment stripped of whatever furnishings I had manage to collect as my lifelong legacy. The place was musty. No, smoky, and I had a hunch who was there. Only I hoped I wasn’t about to surprise her as she spread eagle on the couch with some trucker plowing the fields that once popped me out. Shudder at the thought, because I had witnessed that scene more than once. I staggered into the light.

  “Shithead,” Viv said as sober and prim as . . . well as prim as anyone who could say shithead and still remain sedate.

  “Viv,” I said. “You moved in?”

  “Don’t be a smart-ass.”

  “Tonight’s not a good time.”

  “You’re drunk.”

  I smiled, and then bowed to her. I lost my balance and aimed at for the couch, landing beside her.

  “Takes a drunk to know one.”

  She shook me by the shoulders.

  “I’ll make some coffee.”

  “Don’t. It’ll kill me. The last time you made coffee, I had the shits for a week.”

  “Well, take a cold shower then.”

  “Why? What’s happened? Do you have some one here?”

  “No, and you tell me what’s happened.”

  I stood and moved away from her. She was the last person that I wanted to know my secret. How did she even suspect? She’s fishing. She don’t know a thing. She’s getting married or something and springing one of her little surprises on me.

  “Nothing’s happened,” I said.

  The room spun. Suddenly, I was pulled onto the couch and into her arms. It was like a wooly spider weaving a web around me. It felt luke-warm — not motherly in the least, and yet not repulsive. I guess I was so drunk that if the bar baseball crowd had hugged me I would have felt warm.

  “Bullshit,” she said. “Louise called me. Told me everything.”

  I pulled away.

  “I really don’t need anything,” I said, and unkindly. “I just need to be alone.”

  “The last thing you need to be is alone.”

  “I’ve survived until now,” I said. “They come and go, you know.”

  “This one’s not gone yet, Shithead. Don’t write him off so fast. “

  “I’m not writing him off.”

  That was it. I don’t know what came over me, but I did something that I had never done and would never do again. I slapped her.

  “Ouch!”

  She raised her hand, and I scurried off the couch.

  “I’m sorry, Viv. I didn’t mean it.”

  “I know you didn’t,” she said.

  I thought she’d cry as she held her cheek. I came to her and tried to kiss her, but she pushed me away.

  “You can slap me around all you want,” she said. “I’m used to it, you know. They all wind up slapping the whore.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’ll say whatever I’m pleased to say. But you listen to me. I know you and you’re unbrave.”

  “Unbrave. There’s no such word.”

  “You know what I mean. You worry about your next Christmas and the next love journey and the big boo hoo breakup, shithead. It’s always been that way.”

  I was furious, but didn’t repeat the slap. If Louise meant this to be a comfort — into my mother’s arms and all that, she’d been into the vermouth too.

  “Well, I’ve had a good teacher,” I said.

  “I’ve been the best, but I’m telling you now. You had better not abandon this one. You better not or I slap you from here to kingdom come.”

  “You think you know everything.”

  “About you, I know everything. It’s all about you. But not this time.”

  I trembled. How dare she accuse me of thinking of leaving Matt? How could she? But . . . it was true. I had thought of it several times that evening. I thought of running and hiding — to make the world go away. I loved him, but I was afraid. I didn’t know how to love him anymore. It was beyond me. I was . . . unbrave.

  I staggered into the bedroom standin
g in the dark. I wanted this woman gone. I knew I couldn’t kick her out. I wasn’t that powerful, but if I separated myself from her by a room or two or three, I might be able to . . . run away . . . hide. I was drunk and stupid. I knew nothing else to do but cry, like the child of Christmas that I was, standing on the brink — on the pinnacle listening to the angels shout Jump. Jump!

  She was behind me. I sensed her. I smelled her vanilla perfume and heard her cheap jadeite earrings clinking against their ugly settings.

  “Listen to me,” she whispered. “I have other things to teach you.”

  “Like what?” I said to the darkness.

  “Your father.”

  “You don’t know which one of the three men that month was my father.”

  “That’s what I told you, but . . .”

  I turned. I could see only her silhouette against the living room lamp.

  “Your father was with me for two years before you were born.”

  “Two years?”

  I was imagining . . . what. I had never seen a photograph and had no mental image of the man or the men. In fact, I wanted to change my last name to Jones as that fit me better than Powers.

  “We were a family and I . . . loved him, but . . .”

  “But what, Viv?”

  “He got sick. Lost his job. Became depressed.”

  “He left us,” I said. “You told me that he left us.”

  “No. I was unbrave. I couldn’t deal with it. He drank . . . more than me and, well, I needed you to be away from him, so . . . I upped and left him one night.”

  “He’s alive?”

  “No. He died of emphysema. And I never saw him again. I got a letter. It was wrong of me leave him.”

  I sighed.

  “Well, it doesn’t make much difference,” I said. “It don’t change a thing.”

  “No it don’t, but . . . I loved him. I loved you more, but I was unbrave and couldn’t watch him die.”

  “Matt’s not going to die.”

  “I didn’t mean that, but he’s seriously sick.”

  “I could be too.”

  She whipped me into her arms. She no longer felt like a wooly spider. Warm. I could hear her heart beat against my chest — two flat chests heaving together.

  “I know you want to run away, Shithead,” she whispered in my ear. “But listen. So do I now, but I won’t, because I will never leave the man I love again and neither should you.”

  “Oh, Mom,” I said.

  I had joined the unbrave.

  Part III

  The Unbrave

  Chapter One

  Learning the Ropes

  1

  Life sometimes requires us to learn new things against our will. I had always been opened to new horizons — new books, new friends, new places, but as for the day to day routine of living, I was set. I had made compromises from the solitary life — one peppered with the occasional drunk or meth addict, all short-term affairs, to a life of sharing with another man. Sharing was a joy here. I shared a bed, food, laughs, patio furniture and the very air I breathed with this man. Now, I was at a loss. I needed to learn about a disease. No, conditions — with weird names and odd symptoms. I needed to realize that the decay of old people and animals was now grafted on young men — on my young man. I was dizzy. This wasn’t a new horizon. This was a deep pit that afforded me little choice, but the choice was selfish if I chose to exercise it. And as for sharing . . .

  The result of my test was negative. I was disease free, although I was ordered (it was not a suggestion, because Doctor Farrell delivered it as a mandate) to be tested regularly. I must admit I was nervous less about not knowing the results immediately. As I waited the two weeks, I felt a darkness creep into my soul. I had convinced myself that I had it. In many ways, it was a consolation — the ultimate sharing. I would have preferred more patio furniture, but what could one do? Then I was told that although I shared the world with Matthew Kieler, I did not share his condition. It was not a relief. I felt cheated. I wanted to share this path with him. Somehow, the thought that we were together walking into hell was packed with its own solace. However, now that he was going alone and I would be standing on the sidelines waving to him as if he were on a ship leaving for the Caribbean and I — I was stuck on the fucking shore with the healthy peasants, it wasn’t fair. The whole thing just wasn’t fair.

  So I buried myself in books while I waited for Matt to come home from the hospital. I read at my counter at work. I got brochures and sought out the solace of the Kielers, when I could. I made lists. Lists. Page after page of lists. I would ponder them while I waited for visiting hours to begin. Sometimes I would sit alone, wondering whether Nurse Ratchet would let me see him. Sometimes the Kielers were there. I was more subdued then, afraid to express myself in front of them, even though Matt was out of the oxygen tent and looked almost human again. Then Viv visited, with her How’re ya doin’ Harpooner? She was so loud we received a reprimand and stern warning from the nurse’s station.

  I spent most of my hospital time sitting and waiting and reading. Sometimes I’d share my reading with Matt. Sometimes I’d ask Doctor Farrell a question of two. No matter how it came down during those two months, as Matt got stronger, it was clear to me that he would be home and I would need to adjust my scopes to a new way of living — the life of the dutiful wife, vigilant of someone else’s behavior. I thought it would be somewhere between a mother and a wet nurse. I wasn’t sure what it would be. As time passed, I felt comfortable that I could master the new duties as long as I could control my emotional state. I would need ice in my veins, not Cosmopolitans. However, in the end, Viv was correct. I was unbrave and what I imagined was nothing like what eventually transpired.

  Matt left the hospital like a maternity case. I pushed him in a wheelchair, while mother Kieler and sister Mary pawed him. Sammy helped me get him into the car. Matt, however, exerted his independence from the outset. Even when we arrived home, he didn’t want me to wait on him hand and foot. I could see he wasn’t strong enough yet and it would be another two weeks before he was able to return to Axum Labs. Even then, I insisted on driving him — changed my hours at the store for him. It was important that he dived back into the routine of programming — his career — his life. He talked incessantly about how the McKinley Database Project would be hopelessly off schedule without him. The fact is I met with his boss, a descent guy named Doug Lynch, who thought the world of Matt and couldn’t care less about gay relationships. As long as he’s able, Lynch said, we’ll keep him on. Hell, if he wants to work from home, that’s fine with us too.

  Axum Labs was a rarity. Most firms wouldn’t want a man with AIDS on the premises and I was sure that if all the employees knew, they would have a health revolution — picket signs and law suits and a rash of resignations. I watched the news. I saw the bullshit. However, Lynch was a good egg. He kept the nature of Matt’s condition confined to a bout of pneumonia. I was grateful for that, because as time progressed — as the fall moved onward toward Thanksgiving, Matt was having difficulties working a full day. He would start out the morning primed to go, but by lunchtime he began to fade. I’d give him a call to see how he was doing, and he usually lied and said Fine, Pumpkin. But on four occasions, I insisted he leave work. My management wasn’t as forgiving. On those occasions they dressed me down for darting out — my vacation time had thinned, and it didn’t work that way anyhow. You needed to request vacation in advance. On the fourth occasion, I was docked. But shit, I had no choice.

  The fact is, I did have a choice, but I wasn’t about to chance things now. Matt took his medication — a cocktail of capsules and pills that would have choked a horse. And he did choke. I believed the meds were keeping him going, but the AZT, which the doctor insisted was the best thing to strengthen the immune system, had bad side effects — vomiting and diarrhea. In fact, on two of those occasions when I rescued Matt from work, he had . . . soiled himself.

  “I’m not wearing a
diaper,” he snapped, when I suggested it.

  “Why not, sweetie? There’s no embarrassment in it. No one will know.”

  I eased him onto the couch. He was tired that day, even though he had enough snap in him to resist my suggestion.

  “I’ll know,” he said. “I’m not a baby.”

  “You’re my baby,” I said, kissing him.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, it’s a sight better than shitting your pants and having to call me to wipe your ass.”

  I marched away. He wasn’t working with me here. I was docked a half-day’s pay to save him from a situation, which wasn’t his fault, but still, prevention could be applied. Still, he fought me in this. As I slammed things around the kitchen, wondering what I could feed him that wouldn’t upset his stomach further, I remembered that he had another cup of pills to swallow.

  “It’s time for your meds.”

  “Not now,” he barked. “They won’t stay down.”

  I came to the kitchen door, my hands on my hips — the perfect salad cruet pose.

  “You can take them with peanut butter.”

  “I didn’t like them that way.”

  “Well, milk will only give you the shits.”

  “I already have the shits.”

  “So what do we do?”

  So what do we do? He sat there, my perfect specimen — still the cowboy in a suit jacket without pants and a bit pathetic. However, he was my beauty, his eyes pleading for love and fun, not meds in peanut butter. Why was I torturing him? No, I wasn’t torturing him. It was the bug that swam in his veins — a bug that I was beginning to know better and better. His T-cell count was still strong enough to keep him afloat, but that wouldn’t last if he didn’t ingest pills, get a bad belly ache and take a run at the toilet like some dysentery patient. Oh, I was learning. Reading and learning. Who was the victim here? I wondered.