by Jerry Cole
Thirty-one-year-old Isaac Baxter stood on a corner in Greenwich Village, his shoes teetering over the edge of the curb, watching as he allowed his sister, Monica, to fall into voicemail. Yet again, he couldn’t bring himself to speak with her, as it reminded him of his own inconsistencies, his own selfishness. In the previous four years, or so, he’d fallen increasingly out of touch with Monica, with Trudy, with his mother. It hadn’t been a purposeful decision, really; just that he struggled linking his past in Texas with his current, vibrant life in Manhattan, and he hated admitting that to them.
The moment the call fell to voicemail, it seemed that Monica stabbed the end button and redialed. Ordinarily, she wasn’t so insistent about her phone calls. Perhaps she’d reached the end of her rope. Isaac couldn’t blame her.
He shot the phone into his pocket and marched across the road, leaned back, adjusting his backpack. He was on the route to the gym, after a particularly overzealous bicker with his current on-again, off-again boyfriend, Marcus, who was half-French and therefore normally spitting with anger. “You never rectified your problems with your father, Isaac, and for that reason, you bring all your daddy issues into our relationship…”
Isaac scanned his gym pass beneath the red light and ducked into the locker room on the lower floor, stripping off his sweatpants and donning his shorts. Around him were other like-minded, probably gay men, who had the sorts of jobs that allowed them to exercise in the middle of the day. As a professor of Creative Writing at NYU, he was allowed to flit in and out of his life whenever he chose. And this afternoon, fresh off another brawl, he wanted only to feel what his body could do.
And in this case, that meant running as fast as he could on the treadmill. It meant lifting heavy things over his head. It meant trying to abandon all thought, all feelings, replacing them with his body.
Isaac had moved to New York City when he was eighteen years old. He’d arrived at New York University a freshman, angry and bitter after his father had abandoned his family just a few months before, for reasons that involved Isaac’s “gayness.” The previous months before his arrival to NYU had been hellish. His mother fully blamed him for his father’s abandonment, which wasn’t entirely fair, given that Thomas Baxter had had one cowboy boot out the door for much of the previous eighteen years. Unfortunately, his sisters blamed him, too. “Why can’t you just date girls, Isaac? I mean, come on. They’re all into you, you know. You’re HOT.” He couldn’t remember which of them had said this, but the point had been valid to him at the time. Yes, why the hell couldn’t he just “be straight”?
Of course, when he arrived in New York, he saw himself much more clearly. He’d immediately fallen in with a group of friends who understood him, who’d come from similar backgrounds, who’d all ached to retreat from wherever it was, or whatever it was, they’d been. He was the Texan, but they were all from Indiana, from Tennessee, from parts of Louisiana. And they’d fallen in line together, being gay, straight, bisexual, whatever; fully accepted in the big city of their dreams.
Isaac pressed the speed button on the treadmill for a long, long time, casting himself forward. He felt rugged and strange, stretching his legs far forward, but not going anywhere at all.
He listened to music on his phone—wild hip hop, intermixed with country music. He couldn’t always avoid his Texas roots, to be sure. But every twenty minutes or so, the music was interrupted with another call from his sister.
It was one or the other, now. Trudy and Monica, trading off. He imagined them sitting together at one of their houses, surrounded with crying children, both speaking about him in that drawl that they’d fully inherited from their mother.
“I mean, can you just believe it. Him, all the way in the city, ignoring us.”
“It’s just his way. He’s a city boy, now.”
He gripped the edge of the treadmill, then forced it down to a lower speed. He walked, sweat bolting down his cheeks. Two treadmills away was a man he’d once been out with on a double date with his current boyfriend, Marcus, and their good friend, Tyler. Tyler had attempted to date the guy, but had ultimately bailed on him, citing something strange in the bedroom. Isaac had never pried about the specifics.
Isaac now glanced toward the guy, just in the midst of him glancing at him. He shot his hand upward, giving him a Texan wave. The guy rolled his eyes, seemingly blaming Isaac for everything Tyler had put him through.
Isaac bucked off the treadmill, marching toward the edge of the room. He glanced at the various machines he was meant to do, based on the routine he’d been given by a personal trainer friend of his. But his shoulders ached, and his heart was currently dipping into his stomach. He hadn’t the energy.
Isaac rinsed himself off in the shower and bolted back into the sun. In New York, humidity made his skin immediately glossy, unaccustomed as it was. It was funny. Whatever it was you grew up with – in his case, the sterile, Austin heat – it was what you were stuck with, in a sense. He would always be Texan. His skin would always be Texan.
Isaac arrived back to the Greenwich Village apartment just after four in the afternoon. Marcus worked as a chef in Brooklyn and was currently in the midst of his ab exercises in the kitchen – splayed out long and thin across the hardwood floor, churning his stomach up and down, up and down. Admittedly, since they’d come together as a couple, Marcus had grown a bit flabbier than the classic Frenchman, but it wasn’t anything Isaac mentioned to him. Marcus had been Isaac’s second love – and therefore, the one he’d thought would stick the longest. Forever, if possible.
Now, Marcus huffed at him, using his most French accent.
“Oh. You’re home.”
“Where else would I be?” Isaac asked, his voice tart.
“I don’t know. Perhaps your job?” Marcus asked. He yanked himself up, nearly making the kitchen table tumble to the ground. “Merde,” he whispered, cursing in French.
This irritated Isaac to no end, as Marcus had more or less been raised in America, and thus didn’t need to immediately “give himself over” to French. Isaac rolled his eyes and dropped his bag to the ground at his feet.
“I had to cancel class this afternoon,” he said. “Most of the kids have some kind of like, late semester flu. It sometimes happens.”
“Late semester flu? Or just laziness? All those creative writing majors. They’re always bemoaning life, aren’t they?”
Marcus stood, yanking his head left and right and making his neck creak. “You smell a bit.”
“I was just at the gym. Obviously,” Isaac offered.
“I just didn’t think I’d see you again after this morning,” Marcus returned.
“Were you afraid that you’d said something a bit too mean?” Isaac asked, arching his brow. “Because don’t worry. You did. You don’t have to question it any longer.”
“You’re being overdramatic again. I can’t believe you didn’t take in any of your father’s stoic cowboy nature. We could really use it right now,” Marcus said, rolling his eyes back.
“Don’t bring my father into this,” Isaac said.
“Why? Haven’t you spoken to your sisters?” Marcus demanded now. He took a big step forward, lifting his chin. “Haven’t they been trying to call you all damn day?”
Isaac felt a strange slice through his stomach, as though someone was trying to skin him. He paused, blinking at Marcus several times, waiting. His sisters had never been known to contact Marcus. They hardly mentioned his name when he DID talk to them on the phone, seemingly more content to pretend that Isaac was alone in the city, as if that was somehow better.
He knew, with a jolt, that this meant something horrific. If his sisters had reached out to Marcus, rather than leave well enough alone…
“You better call them,” Marcus said, clicking his tongue. “And there’s no escaping this, Isaac. Your past is ringing you up, and you better man up and take it. I don’t know how you’ll do it. But you better try.”
“You always have to have the last word, don’
t you?” Isaac spurned, longing to continue on with their bickering from earlier that morning. He’d been away from it, buzzing with various things he could say to “win” the debate.
Marcus didn’t bother to articulate a response. He scoffed and returned to his ab exercises, tucking his hands behind his ears. He grumbled to himself in French, seemingly unwilling to give Isaac what he wanted. This was generally the dynamic of their relationship and had been for several years.
Again, for perhaps the millionth time that week, Isaac wondered whether or not he truly should be involved with Marcus. Whether or not the love he’d assumed would last was truly the sort he wanted. He thought back to the strange relationship between his mother and father. How his mother had ached for his father’s return over the years, despite his father’s clear decision to never return to the outskirts of Austin again. “I reckon I’m the man I was meant to be the whole goddamn time,” Thomas Baxter had scoffed, one of the only times Isaac had seen him.
Certainly, Thomas had never visited Isaac in New York. Rather, it seemed that Thomas had made up a far different timeline for his son, apparently telling the very few friends he had, including that cowboy, Zane, that Isaac had journeyed to New York to work at “some bank.” The lie was so absurd to Isaac, that he hadn’t even argued with either of his sisters about the topic.
“He’s just handling you the only way he knows how,” Monica had sighed.
Thomas had taken up residence at a ranch deep in Western Texas, at the edge of a sort of “Ghost Town.” This sounded ridiculous to most people Isaac explained it to, and thus, he normally didn’t use the term. But because he’d been born and raised in Texas, the concept of Ghost Towns wasn’t necessarily bizarre for him.
It was strange for him, when he was swimming through crowds in Manhattan, to think back to his father, a now sixty-something year old man, living his life in such a solitary way. Finally, a cowboy. But what had it cost him? His family? He had very little, now.
Isaac hustled into his office, pushing the door closed with a tilt of his hip. He strummed through the many calls on his phone from Monica, from Trudy, trying to draw enough breath to void the anxiety, stirring in his gut.
The phone rang only twice before Monica picked up.
“Finally,” she offered, her voice a twang.
“What do you mean? You know, I’m not just waiting around for the phone to ring. I have a life to live,” Isaac said, hating how sassy he sounded in this moment. He felt sure that Monica and Trudy would discuss his tone after the call, deducing that he thought he was “hot shit” when compared to their lives back in Texas.
“Isaac,” Monica sighed, offering the vocal equivalent of showing endless exhaustion. “Isaac, it’s about Daddy.”
Isaac felt as though the world had stopped spinning, if only for a moment. He swallowed hard, cinching his eyes together tight. After a long moment, he murmured, “What is it?”
“He’s not doing too good,” Monica said, her voice quivering.
Isaac hadn’t heard word regarding his father’s wellness in about a year, especially not since Isaac had decided not to return back to Texas for Christmas, at which time, normally, his sisters filled him in regarding everything health and money related in the family. He swept toward his office chair, feeling it shift beneath him. “Not doing too good?” he repeated aloud, conscious that if his students wrote like that, he applauded them on creating a southern drawl that sounded “authentic.”
“No, it’s—" Monica began.
“Well. I don’t know what to tell you,” Isaac sighed, sanding his hand over and over the top of his head. “He’s been smoking like a chimney ever since we’ve known him. It’s not as though…”
“Isaac, he ain’t gonna make it through the week. Maybe two, the doctors are saying,” Monica murmured.
Isaac felt this again like a knife through his very body. He cast his head back, inhaling deeply. He waited, willing time to stop, for the world to shift to allow for a re-do to happen. Wasn’t that meant to happen, in this life? Nothing could possibly be permanent. Time; what was it but something that could be bent?
Ha.
“I’ll be down there tomorrow,” Isaac heard himself say. The words snaked around his throat, seemingly foreign. “I’ll look at flights the second we get off the phone.”
“We’re on our way to the ranch,” Monica echoed. “Trudy’s here with me. We got a few of the kids in the back. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No. Of course not. I love them,” Isaac offered, although he’d never had much of an affection for any of his nieces or nephews. “I can’t imagine you leaving them back at home with your husbands.”
This was meant as a half-dig, but it seemed that Monica didn’t read it as such. Back in Texas, social norms were in place for a reason. The women took care of the children, and the men were allowed to do as they pleased, so long as they brought money in. Sometimes, Isaac still felt that within himself, despite being a gay man, in a relationship with a Frenchman, living in Greenwich Village.
It was funny what you couldn’t fight off, blood being one of the biggest things. Isaac listened as Trudy said something in the background, mumbling. Monica mumbled something back. They’d always had something of their own language, something Isaac could have never understood.
“I love you,” Isaac offered at the end, tagging it on like it was a necessity, a reason for him to stay on the phone. He knew that the moment he hung up, he would be cast back into his own reality, sent back to Marcus, to the buzzing city. No one in any direction could comprehend the intricacies of his relationship with his father.
No one could possibly comprehend the fact that he felt dizzy with regret, still, knowing that the moment his father had spotted him with another man, he’d taken this as a reason to rip off the familial band-aide, cut loose. Find reprieve on the ranch on the other side of the state. In Texas, that was akin to going to the other side of the world.
Something happened in the backseat. A shriek – the gender unclear, as, when it came to upset children, the anger and volatility came from elsewhere, not the personality of the person who would come later. Monica grunted something about dealing with it, before hanging up swiftly, letting Isaac go.
Marcus stumbled into the office a minute after, finding Isaac staring down at his black phone, his neck craned forward. Tears dripped along his cheeks. It occurred to Isaac that he didn’t allow himself to cry very often, perhaps linking himself back to this ultra-cowboy, ultra-Texan “man” mentality. In any sense, Marcus took a slight step back, his lips parted.
“So, it’s something serious,” he offered, his words not a question.
Isaac nodded. He drew his eyes toward Marcus. Marcus’ eyes were hard, stern, formidable. They weren’t the eyes of a lover, nor of a friend. Isaac forced himself to remember this had been the person he’d kissed upon the doorstep after signing the paperwork, aching for a future. They’d squabbled over baby names, told one another to go on diets, taken care of one another when sick. The time that had passed was uncountable, as it was dense and thick with love, with promise.
Now, Isaac felt that promise as thin and breakable as ice upon a lake.
“My father is preparing to die,” Isaac said, his voice slipping into a sort of quasi-southern drawl. He did it on purpose, as a kind of allegiance to a past he’d thrown away for years. “I think the girls want me to head over there. Say some kinda proper goodbye.”
Marcus grunted. “You hated your dad. I basically can’t count how many times you woke up sweating, saying you had dreams that he was hurting you, Isaac. I don’t know. Frankly, it seems like you going down there makes him win.”
Isaac drew up from his chair. He sauntered toward the window, gazing out at Greenwich Village, a place he’d read about in books before calling it his home. He’d been promised an artist’s safe haven; he’d been told the streets sizzled with creativity and hope. Rather, each street promised expensive avocado sandwiches, designer shoes, books
three times the price of the ones back in Texas.
“I’ve been thinking that I might need a break from New York, anyway,” Isaac murmured.
Marcus cleared his throat. “You don’t mean a break from New York. You love New York. You’ve been here since you were eighteen years old.”
Isaac’s throat felt raspy, dry. “I never made peace with Texas, Marcus.”
“It’s not like you need to make peace with Texas,” Marcus said, his voice sassy, sarcastic. “It’s an entire state of conservatives, looking to hurt people like us. Jesus Christ, Isaac, I mean. The old man will die with or without you there.”
Isaac swallowed hard. He wished he could will himself into the kitchen, pour himself a glass of water. For whatever reason, Marcus—his shirt off, his hands upon his hips—felt like a formidable force in the doorway.
“You couldn’t possibly understand,” Isaac murmured.
“All right. Great.” Marcus offered, smacking his hands atop his thighs. Sometimes, his movements were overly cartoonish—entirely French clown. “You’re going to make this about our shit now, aren’t you? I should have known, Isaac. You’re always calling me the dramatic one. But you’re trying to live some kind of romantic ‘writer’ life, and it’s disgusting. Now, you’re going to go and pretend to like, make peace with your father, as though that would lend you any sort of insight?”
Isaac turned toward the closet, yanking open the door. Outside, another couple seemed in the midst of a fight, blaring horrific words to one another while they marched down the street. It was something Isaac hardly heard any longer; his ears no longer heard the horrors of anger, as he and Marcus had incorporated such anger into their own lives, without much question.
Isaac splayed open the suitcase, glaring down at the darkness within. He hadn’t packed it up since he and Marcus had visited Marcus’ family in Paris, spending two delicious weeks feeding one another baguettes and telling one another that they weren’t going to bicker any longer, once they returned to New York. “We can’t treat each other that way, now,” Marcus had murmured, nibbling a bit at the base of Isaac’s ear. “We need to uphold our love over everything.”