by Ron Carlson
“Prompt?” Frank said. “I didn’t know that counted.”
“Were you in love, ever?” Marci asked Mason. Everyone had sunk further into the couches. Jimmy Brand pulled his knees up with his hands and rearranged his legs.
“You okay, Jimmy?”
“Soaring,” he said. “What’s your answer?”
“The answer is I don’t know,” Mason said. “I should know in another month, living in my campsite on Berry Street. Here’s the big news for me: I’ve never really been alone before. I see that somewhere in law school, first or second year, right in the thick of assembling my career, collecting options, tending them, keeping them open, I lost myself to what I thought I should be. I couldn’t tell, even writing briefs, when I was acting. It all felt vaguely real. From time to time, I’d close an argument with the same notions, wording, and then I began to hear myself in restaurants saying the same thing to somebody, good things I mean, true for me, but nevertheless, the same. So I constructed a persona, and I think he was in love. He was certainly a fucking success. With Elizabeth, I kept hoping I could shove him aside, get close, get . . . what? Get in it, instead of next to it. I loved her as well as I could, which was probably as poorly as anything I’ve done.”
Marci went to Mason’s chair and put her hand on his shoulder.
“You’re a little tough on yourself, Mason.” Jimmy said. He was speaking quietly. “I think this is the astringent version you’ve given us.” Marci now reached and turned down two of the lamps
“Thank you,” Jimmy told her. “My eyes are something else.” He turned to Mason. “You’ve done a lot of good.”
“We’re talking,” Mason said. “I’m glad to be here.”
Frank spoke. “I’m sorry you’re sick, Jimmy.”
“I feel good tonight, Frank,” he answered, “But yeah, I’m sick.”
Kathleen stood to take a dish into the kitchen, and Marci said, “Let’s don’t. Let’s leave it and sit here with these people.” She whispered, “The dishes will keep them here. It’s been so long.”
“The butter,” Kathleen said.
“Let’s leave the butter out too,” Marci said.
“Remember that time you guys came to the hospital with the guitar?”
“I do,” Jimmy said.
“What a year,” Frank said. “It’s hard to believe you’re here.” The silence that followed held them. Frank stood and drew a pint from the small keg on the counter. “Anybody else?” he said, getting no takers. “What is it, Jimmy? You know I just don’t know. I can’t see it from here. How did you know? Did it creep up on you, or did you always just know? Did you know in the day?”
“Jesus, Frank,” Mason said.
“No,” Jimmy said, “it’s good. Frank said it: we’re talking. Mason started it. What do you want to know, Frank?” Jimmy settled in and put his arm on the back of the deep couch.
“Wasn’t Winger gay?” Mason said to Frank. “You knew him.”
“Winger, Big Bob, who bartended for me for six or seven years, not to mention Duane Boorman, and Tim’s brother. I’ve known plenty of gay guys, okay?” Frank said. “But I’ve never, ever talked to one about it. Have you?”
Mason looked at Frank. “This isn’t truth or dare.”
Everyone watched Frank push his beer onto the tabletop, shifting dishes two then three deep. When it balanced, he lifted his palms. “Let it go,” Frank said. “I’m just not as evolved as you, Mason. You got out of town, had a big life. Jimmy, I’m so goddamned glad to see you again, no shit.”
Jimmy pointed at Frank, his face a joyous smile. “When we showed you that guitar, you were scared of it.” He nodded at Larry and continued. “We took him a bass guitar in the hospital, and he looked at it like it was a torture device.”
“It was, for a while,” Frank said.
“Only for our audiences,” Craig said.
“A good bass player is key,” Jimmy said, “and Frank was.”
“Is,” Sonny said, and everyone turned to her. “He still plays pickup with some of the bands.”
“A ringer,” Craig said. “Good deal.”
“I knew in high school,” Jimmy said. “I knew it, and I knew it wouldn’t pass.” He folded his hands in his lap and spoke again softly, just over the Zombies singing “Tell Her No.” “You take it as a kind of unhappiness for a while. I’ve talked to a lot of people about this.”
“You wrote about it,” Mason said.
“You’re a misfit, which is exactly what everyone is for a while. Everyone. Then you see your friends start to sort themselves out, get married, like that. I was alone for a long time. I knew what it was, and I was surprised when others started to see it in me. Pleased. I spent almost five years in St. Louis, working for the Street Sheet, learning to write, and I met some people at the paper who were great. It was incredibly sweet to belong.”
“What were you doing?” Frank said. “You mean dating?”
“I saw a lot of people way before anybody got sick. Yeah, it’s dating.”
“When two gay guys go out to dinner, who pays?”
Marci laughed, and Mason rolled his eyes. “For god’s sake.”
“No, really,” Frank went on. “Who pays?”
Jimmy was wide awake now, his fatigue burning in his knees and back; he could feel himself smiling. “The answer is the same for all of us, Frank. Whoever has come courting. That’s universal etiquette. And etiquette is everything. Daniel, my partner, loved to quote the movie Gigi. ‘Bad table manners, my dear Gigi, have broken up more households than infidelity.’” Jimmy regretted the joke immediately, but he was out of breath now.
The moment tipped on them all, but Craig Ralston righted it with “You mean if I knew which fork to use, I could have a girlfriend?”
“You can’t have a girlfriend,” Marci said, standing. “But you can help me with the pies.”
In the kitchen she quickly set out platters of pie and topped some with ice cream as Craig held it all on a tray. With him standing before her like that, she pointed the ice cream scoop at his face. “You want a girlfriend?” It came out as she knew it might: serious, awkward. Not even a joke. What was she saying? But it felt good to say, scratching some spot within that she didn’t even know was sore.
“Oh, yeah,” Craig said. “Then I want to take her to a dinner party where you glare at me all night long. No thanks, one woman is plenty.”
As he spoke, she looked into his face, knowing her secret was open to be read. She could not control her expression. It was a moment like she’d never had before; she could feel Stewart’s hands. His face had been right there, his breath, and he had said, “Oh my, you are so fine.” Her heart was beating. If she spoke again, one life would end, this life, and she wanted trouble like that—she wanted everything out and said.
“Marci,” Craig said, indicating the tray and nodding at the corner piece of pie, “put another scoop on that one for me, will ya? You’re hoarding the ice cream.”
When she did that and he went back into the other room, Marci stood still until ice cream dripped from the scoop onto the hardwood floor.
In the den, pie ruled. Plates of it balanced on knees and in hands, floated over all the other dinner wreckage.
“This is Kathleen’s pie,” Frank said. “No question about that.”
“Both are,” Marci came in. “We’ll have tea in a minute.”
“Can I have some tea, Nurse Kathleen?”
“You’re asking me after you chugged that beer? You can have some decaf.”
“Yes, you can,” Marci said. “How are you feeling?”
Jimmy was eating the moist pumpkin pie with a spoon. “I’ll be no help with the dishes.”
“That’s what they use me for,” Larry said.
“What did your partner do?” Frank asked Jimmy Brand.
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�He ran a restaurant downtown, and he wrote freelance travel pieces,” Jimmy said.
“An upscale place?” Frank said. “Nineteen-dollar martinis?”
“Sixteen,” Jimmy Brand said. “Yeah, it was pricey. You needed reservations a week out.”
“Just like the Antlers,” Frank said. “How’d you meet him?”
“Jimmy met him at a big party at a famous playwright’s apartment. They met in the kitchen.” Mason said.
“Mason’s done his homework,” Jimmy said. He’d finished half his pie, and he handed the plate to Larry, who stacked it on one of the impossible dish mountains. “I met Daniel at an opening-night party many years ago.” He smiled in the soft light. “It was as weird as anything I’ve known. I’d been in the city for a while, and it was strong stuff. For me. Anything you wanted—right there.” Marci leaned over and set a cup and saucer in Jimmy’s hand, and he sipped the tea. “And it wasn’t weird to be gay. I mean, for the first time in a long time, I felt normal. Imagine. I loved it, but I didn’t think I’d fall in love. There was a lot of hooking up, and I thought the random energy was enough.
“But Daniel changed it all. With the restaurant, he was the center of a lot of stuff, and this party was about him as impresario as much as anything. People wanted to be with Daniel, and who was I? Sometimes,” he said to Larry, “it’s like you never got out of high school. Anyway, at the party he told me to follow him into the kitchen, and I did. There was like a group headed that way, and after I got in the door . . .” Jimmy Brand paused and set his cup and saucer onto his leg with both hands. “He put his hand on the door and shut it, you know, with his hand straight out.” Jimmy extended his arm. “He was strong, and he just held the door shut, and these people were bumping the door, like knocking. I could feel it, the door bumping against me. And he kissed me there. It was this kiss where he held the door shut and kissed me there. No big sexual kiss, just the finest kiss you get, a true kiss, the door absolutely thumping. When we stopped kissing, he looked at me and said, ‘Do you understand?’ And I saw his eyes, a look you don’t forget, and I understood.” Jimmy Brand said to Frank, “That’s what we do. Sorry for the speech.”
Kathleen moved onto the couch and put her arm around him.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, and tried some more tea. “We were together for thirteen years. When he died, he weighed exactly one hundred pounds.”
There was a heavy stillness as they all sat in their places. The fire broke and a log fell and the light redoubled against the curved edge of plates and glasses. Mason was deep in the couch beside Kathleen, and he found and lifted his wineglass half full. “Oh, a toast,” he said, “to Daniel and to the writer Jimmy Brand.”
“To Jimmy,” Frank raised his glass of beer.
In the soft light the teacups and the goblets rose, and the members of the party drank. The room had settled on Jimmy like a shawl.
“You want me to take you home?” Mason asked Jimmy.
“Somebody’s going to have to haul me,” Jimmy said.
“You can stay up here,” Larry said. “Camp in.”
“Absolutely,” Craig added. As he went to get up, he shifted the ottoman, and his knee hit one of the tiered plates, sending a shiver through the fragile architecture of dirty dishes. They all watched it rattle, shift, and settle, spoons rolling in every cup.
“Larry,” Jimmy said, “you and I are the lucky ones here. Because we’re the only ones whose mothers still wait up.” He handed his teacup to Kathleen. “I’ve got to go home.”
Sonny had been sitting on the floor against Frank’s knees. She climbed onto her knees and pointed at the clutter. “Shall we?”
Marci said, “Turn the music up, and let’s clear the table.”
In the immediate clatter, Mason turned to Jimmy and helped him up gradually. They held each other steady there, looking down on the jumbled coffee table, and then they just embraced, Mason’s arms around his neck. For Jimmy Brand it was like being on stilts far above the forbidden city. Whenever he moved these days, his blood took a minute to catch up.
Mason took his friend at both elbows. “You up?”
“Up.” Jimmy said. “Way up here.”
ELEVEN
At the Pronghorn
It was a road trip, and that’s what Craig called out when he finally shut the tailgate of his Cherokee. He was ready for the showdown, and there was a definite bounce in his step, had been all morning. “It is time for us to get out of town!” he called. He went over to Frank, who sat with Sonny in his idling Explorer and put his hand on his forehead by the driver-side window. “Do we know what we’re doing, Sonny?” he said. “Shouldn’t you have prevented this?” He didn’t wait for an answer but held up both hands to show he was done and ready, and he said, “Follow us.” His construction job with young Dr. Marchant had come through this week, and they had signed the contract. He was to build a large guesthouse, almost two thousand square feet, as well as remodel a kitchen and library in the main house. He’d even contracted the foundation work. It was top to bottom, and he was thrilled—the project he’d always wanted. At seven that morning Craig had ordered trusses and plywood and forty square Southwestern Rose tiles for the guesthouse roof. He was under way, and he’d periodically called out, “All right, Mama!” as they’d packed up. He came around the Cherokee as clouds pooled in charcoal banks over the gray town in the darkening afternoon. The forecast was snow, and the wind chittering through the bare scrub oak around the Ralstons’ drive had the scent of ice in it. The SUV was running, the heater on, and everyone was aboard: Marci, Mason, Kathleen, and Larry.
“It takes a hardy man to be whistling about roofing all winter,” Mason said when Craig climbed in into the driver’s seat.
“Not all winter. Two weeks, and we won’t have that privilege until spring. As you know, I’m looking for a nonunion crew. Do you lawyers have a union?”
“Fraternity,” Mason said. “It’s worse—it means we collude, party hearty, and cheat on the exams.”
Craig wheeled the car around in the driveway and started down the mountain. Marci sat in the front seat. “The best thing you can do with a beautiful new house like this is leave it,” Craig said. “It makes you a king.”
“Who is talking like this?” Marci said.
Mason sat in back with Kathleen and Larry. Frank and Sonny, who had been waiting in his idling Explorer, followed. The guitars and gear were stowed along with everyone’s bags and two coolers full of drinks and lunch and candy.
“You in, Larry? Dr. Marchant’s guesthouse. I’m doubling what you make at the store.”
“He’s got school,” Marci said. “He doesn’t want to be on a roof in the snow.”
“The great drama of American football is over, Mom. High school is closing down a chapter at a time. I’ll have hours.”
“‘Ralston and Son Construction. Guesthouses, add-ons, decks, garages. The best work in Wyoming.’”
Larry said, “What about ‘Two Guys with Hammers’?”
“Or,” Mason said, “‘Son and Ralston.’ I’ve never seen that, some kid carrying his father. You guys could make it work.” They wended through the frigid town to the highway and turned north past the hill and the cemetery and the ruined weed lots and wasteland and the turnoff of the reservoir, driving north under low clouds that all afternoon worked at a layer of pale yellow light between the dark sky and the dark earth, a car or two hurrying back toward Oakpine in the empty world.
“Seriously,” Larry said to Mason. “You’ve just landed on this planet, and we’ve picked you up as you look confused standing beside the highway. Now, look at it, sir. Those lines are the railroad, the rest is about to be snowed on. We have snow here. We have winter here. If you can see a bush big enough to hide behind, you can imagine an antelope hiding behind it. We have antelope on this planet. I’d like your answer now: do you want to stay?”
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nbsp; Mason smiled. “It’s a cold night coming on. But I’ll need to know one thing: what’s an antelope?”
Kathleen laughed, and Larry said, “See. You get out of town twenty minutes, and it’s a planet with real short days and long wind. It’s getting dark already.”
“They’ll have that big bar all warmed up,” Mason said. “Ask me then.”
Craig was slowly shaking his head.
“What?” Marci said.
“Oh my dear,” he said. “Battle of the bands. What are we doing?”
“When was the last time anybody did one extra thing, something weird? Something not pragmatic?” The dash lights glowed, and the heater warmed the vehicle as it was swallowed by the closing weather and the heavy winter twilight.
“I went—” Craig started.
“Not a fishing trip,” Kathleen said. “Something like this, a bona fide extra. Or are you planning on winning this thing and restarting your musical career?”
“Now she knows,” Craig said. “Hardware was fun for a while, but get real. That trophy is going to look good in the front window of the store.”
“I wish Jimmy could have come,” Marci said. The car was quiet, and after half a minute Larry said, “I’m going to give him the report, which means you better all behave.”
Jimmy’s name had come over the car, and in the dark day they drove quietly through the plains. Larry had visited the little garage the day before and, with the Fender guitar, had shown Jimmy his four new chords, playing the muted strings in the gray light. Unplugged like that, it sounded like a ukulele. When he looked up, Jimmy was out, his neck arched back as if in pain. Larry checked his breathing and was relieved when Kathleen arrived. She checked Jimmy’s vital signs while Larry watched. She adjusted Jimmy on the pillow and arranged the covers and left without speaking. Larry quickly followed her into the winter afternoon. “What?” he had said.
“Jimmy won’t be going to Gillette tomorrow,” she said. “He’s too weak.” They were standing on the Brands’ old driveway, and Larry felt the news for what it was. You go along knowing, but when you do know, it still is a surprise.