Scoring the tickets to Cats was a feat in itself for Robert, considering its popularity. Cadmus remained somewhat befuddled even though he was familiar with the inspiration from T. S. Eliot, his attempts to envision humans in cat costumes traipsing the stage giving him pause.
“Hell, let’s see what the hype is about,” Robert shrugged as he sat at the library desk, phone in hand while he remained on hold with hotel reservations. “And at least we can count on Bobby Short as a sure thing.”
And right he was about hearing Bobby play at The Carlyle—his belting of Cole Porter’s songs swept Cadmus into a lovely nostalgia, with fashioned images of his parents tucked into a far corner, his father kissing his mother’s hand. He did not remember his parents as having a happy marriage, and given Ilona’s proclivity toward idealism, he wondered if times had ever been what she said they once were.
“We shared a beautiful romance, your father and I.” Never including other details to substantiate her claim, she asserted this simple sentence, on occasion tacking on “at one time” a second or two later.
Cadmus knew that he and Robert shared the beautiful romance his mother said she once had. Not wanting the evening to end, they enjoyed another drink in The Gallery, the anonymity of the city affording them the luxury of sitting closer than they normally would in public.
“You can let us out here,” Robert said to the cab driver the following evening, the traffic near the Winter Garden Theatre backing up several blocks.
“Well, based on the crowds, it must be something to see,” Cadmus said as they headed down Broadway.
“What kind of gay man are you? Not liking musicals,” Robert teased.
“Yes, right when the dialog gets going, everyone trumpets out snappy lyrics that rhyme. Who the hell talks like that?” Cadmus asked, defending his point.
“No one! It’s called entertainment!”
The men inched their way through the throngs of people, balcony tickets granting prompt access once they made it to the door. Cadmus grabbed Robert’s shoulder and pointed to the bar, knowing he would enjoy a drink before the show.
“Trust me, let’s make it to our seats. You will be able to take it in from there,” Robert assured.
The usher escorted them up the stairs, Cadmus wondering the reason behind her enigmatic smile as she opened the curtain. He smiled and nodded as he entered and saw a bottle of champagne chilling next to their seats. Robert turned to him, beaming.
“Another feat! How did you manage this one?” Cadmus asked.
“Everything has a price, Cadmus,” Robert replied. “And I’m just happy I’m equipped to pay it at this point in my life.”
“I’M SORRY,” ROBERT SAID AS they stepped out of the theatre. “If I had known it would have such an effect on you …”
“You what? Wouldn’t have suggested it?” Cadmus challenged, an unusual move for the normally quiet soul. He knew the drinks at Bemelman’s before the show, coupled with the champagne, doused his sorrow. His ability to make this distinction, however, failed to temper his anger in the moment. It was as if the alcohol acted as grease to a fire, unleashing a rage.
“You will never understand the magnitude of what I did. If you did, you would have seen this coming,” he said as he walked ahead of Robert toward Fifty-Second Street.
“Cadmus, you did not kill her!” Robert shouted, gaining the attention of a few pockets, a group of young women raising their eyebrows as they whispered into their huddle, one of the women turning back to give Cadmus a once over.
“Don’t you ever speak of it like that again!” Cadmus yelled, resuming his walk and hailing a cab. “I need to be alone!”
“Yes, I think that is a helluva good idea!” Robert confirmed, turning to walk in the opposite direction.
The irony was not lost on Cadmus as the cab sped toward uptown. A part of him wanted to run back to his husband, to say he was sorry for reacting to him in the same way he had reacted toward Ilona, the same way his mother had acted toward his father on the night he died, but Cadmus’ need for solitude remained. He wanted time to file through his memories. He periodically engaged in a chronological review of the collection, partly because he feared losing them over time.
The past nineteen years had not necessarily brought healing; the particles settled, but they became agitated from time to time. This evening, however, as he thought about the storyline, with the lyrics and melody from “Memory” circling through his mind, the usual undercurrent morphed into a riptide.
The cab dropped him off at the Madison Avenue door, and for a brief moment, he considered meandering the streets along the Upper East Side. The music beckoned him into the hotel, sending him a message that it was where he was meant to be.
He found one empty table in The Gallery and found himself ordering another martini, wanting to retain the fog. He thought about the cat Grizabella, how the others shunned her when she left the tribe, only to be chosen as the one to be reborn. Michael and Callista had certainly shunned Ilona, as did the women at Holy Family after she confronted their unkind remarks. While his grandparents and Arianna had not disowned her, he knew there was a strain because of her choice to marry his father, the differences like two diverging branches on a tree. They remained connected by their roots.
He spent vast amounts of time contemplating life after death, and while he missed parts of Catholicism, he left the religion shortly after Ilona’s death. Aside from the teachings on homosexuality, Cadmus knowing without a doubt that a loving God would not punish him for being what He created, he could not reconcile the idea that choices stemming from free will could sentence someone to eternal damnation. He conceded that some choices are easier to judge, but the complexity behind the average person, the composite of the soul, coupled with life’s circumstances beyond the individual’s control, spoke to another truth, one that permitted essences to give life another whirl with lessons learned and lessons in need of a reteach.
As much as he wanted to see Ilona again, he believed more than not that this time would never come in the literal way for which he longed; that his father and mother were in the cycle of rebirth, in synchronization with the universe; and that the best possibility would be for him to cross paths with her soul, her essence, in one of his lifetimes. He just hoped he would recognize her.
As Cadmus made his way to the hotel room, the elevator operator nodded a good evening, reminding him of his days in the Esperson. He accepted it as a sign to extend his intention to cross paths with his father, as well. He knew Patrick was not in hell.
The hotel room door opened as he fumbled with the key. Robert stood with one hand on his hip, tension registered across his forehead.
“I’m sorry,” Cadmus whispered.
“Good. And don’t ever fuck with me like that again,” Robert replied, opening the door wider for Cadmus to enter their room.
“I’LL BE BACK IN A few hours,” Robert said.
“Where are you going?”
“Where am I going? Are you still drunk?”
“That’s right,” Cadmus muttered, raising his hand to his throbbing temple. “Your meeting. Good luck.”
“Sleep it off. Before we met, I was often where you are now.”
Cadmus sat up in bed, unable to fall back asleep, memories from the previous night acting as an encore. Rubbing his forehead, he struggled to understand how his father drank as often as he had. Cadmus pulled on his clothes from the previous night and headed across the street to Zitomer’s pharmacy.
Ella Fitzgerald played softly from the dining room when he returned with the aspirin. He figured he did not look as bad as he felt, his expensive suit pants and jacket only slightly wrinkled. He stepped into the hotel restaurant for coffee, a white-jacketed attendant pulling out the table so he could sit on the sofa side. Aside from last night’s debacle, Cadmus loved the hotel’s charm that echoed elegance from long ago.
The storyline and that damned song, what he later dubbed the tune, would have taken him on a j
ourney, but the alcohol had tilted the balance of his nostalgia into a haunting, a thin veil separating the two. Had he a stronger propensity for the drink, he would certainly have made a mess of his life after Ilona. It made him sympathetic toward his father, and he wondered how the affair plagued him in those dark moments, as Patrick’s drinking had intensified in the months before his death.
As much as he wanted to stay, he headed to the room to sleep; he owed Robert a good recovery. They had dinner reservations at Tavern on the Green, and while Cadmus was eager to try it, a part of him did not want to leave the hotel. He would not mention this. He knew Robert wanted to dine there, and he owed him for ruining last evening.
Cadmus drifted off to sleep, sending a prayer that his mother had been reborn into a life that brought her happiness, a life that one day might intersect with his own.
DELPHINA
Autumn 1982
DELPHINA WONDERED WHY JESUS HAD to die for peoples’ sins; the notion that original sin moored her to doom left her no less than baffled. During preparations for First Holy Communion, she was sickened to learn that she would consume the Body of Christ. She had always thought it was a symbol, and even after several Sundays of volleying questions at Mrs. White, her catechism teacher, she was no more convinced of transubstantiation than before.
The thought of consuming flesh further imbalanced the scales of her nocturnal anxieties, and not even the white frilly communion dress with a faux pearl necklace could soothe her anxiety at the thought of eating a body. She conceded that, if it were true, then she would crawl to the altar in absolute respect to receive the Body of Christ. Eyes widened, her momma ordered her to her room. She overheard her pick up the phone in a panic, punching the numbers on the receiver.
“I don’t understand it, either, Mother. She is taking things too literally!”
It was unfathomable that they were not as bothered as she was.
Her momma did not have a response when Delphina referenced the choir ladies in her attempt to discredit the sanctity of the sacrament. The ladies smirked at Mrs. Martin, a recently divorced mother of three who unfortunately wore garish clothing as she embarked on her new single life. Delphina studied Mrs. Martin’s face over the years as Mrs. Martin sat in an adjacent pew, despondently staring forward at the altar, mechanically reciting responsorial psalms, and occasionally dabbing the corner of her eyes with tissue. She remembered Mr. Martin back when they were married and how he shared his wife’s sadness, but his possessed an edge, as if he was one moment away from raging.
Delphina was too young to hypothesize much over the situation, but she knew enough to know there was a story. And she knew enough to know the other women were mean. Their lack of humility, their blasé walk to the front of the church for communion as they stared at Mrs. Martin, the overall implausibility of transubstantiation: She knew something was amiss. Delphina made the mistake of bringing up her latest revelations during catechism class. As one of the choir ladies, Delphina’s teacher Mrs. White had had enough.
When Father Richard appeared at the classroom door the following Sunday, the students quieted down. When he asked Delphina to take a walk with him, she finally understood what it meant to hear a pin drop. Mrs. White offered Delphina a smug smile as she crossed the room, mouthing an exaggerated “thank you” to Father Richard as he closed the door behind them.
What Father Richard said she could not recall. She remembered him espousing the same basic tenets as Mrs. White, yet he did so with such conviction and displeasure. Coupled with the enormous, bloody crucifix mounted on the wall behind his desk, she struggled to find the ability to speak. Delphina simply nodded in agreement, especially at his conclusion that her disobedient nature would not be fully absolved until she made her First Confession next month. Through contrition, she would escape eternal damnation.
Eternal damnation. Late at night in her bed, Delphina played the odds of its existence in her mind. How could a God who created sand dollars and sea anemones damn her for asking questions? It still did not make sense, but the thought of hell, although remote, terrified her. It was out of this fear that Delphina played the part. She recited a near-perfect Act of Contrition in the confessional, and she placed a holy water receptacle next to her bedroom door, blessing herself with the sign of the cross before heading to school each morning. She welcomed the statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary her godmother gave her as gifts to mark her First Communion.
The night after Delphina first received the Body of Christ, her momma smiled with relief as she rinsed the forks clean of the gritty icing remnants from the cake shaped like a cross. Delphina lay in bed tightly gripping the plastic Jesus, her eyes transfixed on His loving eyes with His right hand gently placed over His heart. She wished the answer was that black and white, but she knew in her heart that there was a bigger story, one that was known even to her goldfish, Cori.
CADMUS
Spring 1983
“THANKS FOR DROPPING BY TO see me.”
“Our Boulevards are not far apart, at least not physically,” he teased.
“The Boulevards are not far apart in many areas, including the most important, Cadmus,” Margaret replied, uncharacteristically solemn. “We all face the same end.”
“The azaleas are beautiful,” he said, pushing her wheelchair through the grounds.
“Yes, it’s amazing how much money the Azalea Trail raises these days,” she said. “Speaking of tours, I do hope one day you will open your home to the Heights Home Tour.”
He remained silent, which he figured reflected his unfavorable opinion of her suggestion. They continued their loop around the grounds, with Margaret motioning for her housekeeper as they approached the terrace.
“Annette dear, will you bring us some fresh lemonade?”
They made their way to a spot on the terrace, Cadmus adjusting the umbrella to shield her as she apologized, “I’m sorry I can’t summon up a round of mimosas for us, but the medications refuse me even the slightest indulgence. Of course, I can certainly change your order with Annette.”
“Aunt Margaret, you know that’s not necessary.”
“I know,” she said as he took his seat. Annette came out with a tray of lemonade and petit fours. “I guess it helps remind me of better times. Not that I should complain given the life I’ve had.”
“We do have a lot to be thankful for,” he acknowledged, taking a sip of lemonade as he studied the grounds.
“Yes, my children are healthy and happy. Luke and Isabelle have one another in Dallas, so at least there are two strands of Genessees to make their mark, and I am thankful to have Gretchen and Phillip Junior here in Houston, and the grandchildren, of course.”
Cadmus nodded in agreement.
“You know, Ilona and Patrick would both be so proud of you, Cadmus.”
“Not so sure about my father,” he countered.
“Look, I’m not saying it would have been all rainbows and sunshine, but I knew both of your parents very well,” Margaret said. “I know Patrick’s death showcased his demons, but we all have them. Your father was a good person, Cadmus.”
“I realize there are many wonderful things about him that I will never know,” Cadmus agreed. “But that does not necessarily equate to acceptance.”
“It would have been very difficult for him, yes. But, he would have come around,” Margaret defended. “And your mother, well, I have so many friends, but she was the truest.”
“I’m thankful to have had such a wonderful mother,” Cadmus said, looking down.
“Cadmus, I know what you carry with you, and I am not arrogant enough to believe these words from a dying woman right now will change your mind,” Margaret began as Cadmus raised his gaze to meet hers. “But as I check off my to-do list in this final stretch, I need you to understand, my son, that you had nothing to do with her death.”
Margaret tried to roll back her chair to move toward him, but her robe became caught in one of the wheels. Cadmus pushed his chair away fr
om the table, circling over to her. She grabbed his hand, motioning him to kneel next to her.
Even without her makeup and diamonds, even though her body was riddled with cancer, she still looked radiant. Her wrinkles fell in all the right places, laugh lines a permanent mark despite her calm face.
“Cadmus,” she said, cupping his face between her palms, “it was a total fluke that her aneurysm ruptured the day after your incident. It would have happened even if you had not argued.”
“Aunt Margaret, you don’t need to do this. You have other, more pressing matters, and I am not one of them.”
“Yes, you are, Cadmus. Yes. You. Are,” she enunciated, her blue eyes piercing into his. “Forgive yourself. Ilona forgave you long ago.”
“Where do you believe our souls go, Aunt Margaret?”
“To find peace, to heal,” she said, a gentle smile breaking across her face. “And I do believe your mother is finding it. And I look forward to joining her soon.”
“YOU BUSY?”
“Just editing my piece for The New Yorker,” Cadmus replied, leaning back in his office chair at Rice University.
“Can you break away to join me at the office?” Robert asked.
“Now?” Cadmus replied, checking his watch to confirm what he thought. It was a little after three in the afternoon on a Wednesday, a time Robert’s office would be filled with people.
“We won. I won.”
Cadmus knew it would happen. If any litigator could score the highest settlement in Houston history, it was Robert McClelland. Tears came to his eyes, full of pride and happiness for his husband.
“Congratulations, my love. It would be disingenuous to say I’m surprised.”
“The judge rendered the decision not long ago, and all hell broke loose when Mr. MacDougall thrust open the liquor cabinet in the board room. Everyone is well on their way to getting shit-faced.”
Drops of Cerulean: A Novel Page 24