“ ’Nay,” Jonah moans. “Can we not talk about Bailey? Please?”
“Fine,” she says, and lifts her hands in surrender. “We can stop talking about rotten boys and talk about someone who deserves my anak.”
“That boy from Riverdale,” says Mr. Cabrera, quite seriously. “What’s his name? The one you like so much?”
“ ’Tay!” Jonah cries out—mortified, clearly—but Maria, across the table, is already snickering. “Cole Sprouse,” she says. “Jonah’s in love with Jughead.”
“Jughead?” Jonah’s dad throws his head back, crowing. “That string bean?”
“He’s a good actor!” Jonah insists.
“I’ve heard that one before,” says Maria—a great dig at Bailey, though I do Jonah the favor of not erupting into laughter like his parents do.
“Enough good actors,” says Jonah’s dad, with a dismissive flick of the wrist. “You need to find a good man.”
I’d known, of course, that Jonah’s parents were all right with him being gay. But I hadn’t grasped until now that their support for Jonah wasn’t the grudging kind you see sometimes in religious families. They’re not tearing into Jonah with the fervor of bigots who don’t want their son to bring home a boyfriend. They’re ribbing him with the sympathetic sarcasm of parents who believe their son deserves a better boyfriend.
“Okay, but like, admit it,” Maria says, laughing, “you’ve got to be a little relieved that this is finally over.”
“Relieved isn’t the word I’d use.” Jonah spins his spoon, slow, in his half-empty bowl. “I mean, I mostly feel like he just yanked my heart out of my chest and stomped on it.”
“We should go to Bailey’s play tonight,” says Mrs. Cabrera, conspiratorial. “Throw rotten tomatoes.”
“ ’Nay!” Jonah crows. “No!”
She absolutely does not heed his refusal. She balls up a cloth napkin and tosses it overhand, across the table. It hits Mr. Cabrera square in the forehead, and he mimes shock only for a moment before crumpling up a napkin of his own and volleying it right back. Renata and Benjie, of course, get in on the fun, right away, hollering “rotten tomato!” and aiming at one another in rough, high arcs. Maria cringes, but I can tell from the small smile she shoots to Jonah that she’s loving this.
“Sorry,” Jonah says to me, ducking a cloth tomato. “My family’s full of dorks.”
“No, no.” If I shook my head any harder, it would fall off. “I love your family. I wish I were an honorary Cabrera.”
I can’t even remember the last time I sat down for a meal with Roo and Mom and Dad. Oh, no, wait: I can remember. It was the day after Mom lost her job, when she told me I wouldn’t be having surgery this summer. That was the occasion that brought the four of us to the dinner table. Yikes.
“Leonardo DiCaprio!” Mr. Cabrera calls out, aiming a finger across the table. “How about him?”
Jonah winces. “Ew, ’Tay, he’s so old now.”
Maria chimes in: “I mean, Titanic-era Leo? Definitely. Middle-aged Leo who exclusively dates Scandinavian supermodels? No way.”
“What about Eddie Gutierrez?” Jonah’s mom brings her palm down on the table, insistent. “That is a handsome man.”
Jonah laughs. “Isn’t he, like, eighty years old, ’Nay?”
“He has sons,” she says, sipping her soda. “Handsome sons.”
I notice too late that the seat to my left is empty. When I turn to look, Renata’s on her hands and knees, tugging a photo album loose from a cluttered sideboard. Jonah’s eyes follow mine, going wide when he sees her.
“Renata, no,” he begs. “You can’t.”
“Oh, yes, she can.” Maria leaps up, grinning, and hurries over to help Renata. “Who wants to see all of Jonah’s baby pictures?”
I want to say yes, please, absolutely, but I can feel the sheer mortification radiating from Jonah’s every pore.
“I don’t know, guys,” I say, with great reluctance. “I think Jonah would be too embarrassed.”
All around the table: laughter. Even from Jonah himself. His mom lifts her spoon, aims it at me.
“You,” she says, “are a good friend.”
“You really are,” says Maria, propping the photo album open on the table. “But we’re gonna embarrass Jonah regardless.”
Jonah, I’m pleased to learn, was an extraordinarily chubby baby. In every single one of these photos, his legs and arms are little rolls of crescent dough. The cheeks framing his wide, toothless smiles look as soft and squishy as marshmallows—nothing at all like the high cheekbones on the lanky boy sitting next to me. I don’t even attempt to keep the grin off my face as I flip through page after page of Jonah’s babyhood. There are several solemn portraits with Santa Claus, a baptism in a filmy white gown, and a few faded snapshots from a Sears photo gallery, his parents decked out in clothes that scream the ’90s may be over, but we’re not over the ’90s.
Maria arrives a few pages in, when Jonah’s a toddler. There is a truly choice triptych here, depicting Jonah’s initiation into big brotherhood. In the first photo, he stands over Maria’s crib in the hospital, absolutely glowering. In the second, his mouth is open, his eyes are shut, and he appears to be screaming at the top of his tiny little lungs. In the last photo, Jonah’s being carried away—against his will, by the look of his blurry, flailing limbs—in the disembodied arms of a medical professional.
Maria laughs. “Thanks for the warm welcome,” she says.
“I was out of line.” Jonah slings an arm around his sister. “I didn’t know how cool you’d be.”
He smiles at her; she smiles back. And then, gently, she elbows him in the ribs.
I keep flipping through the pages. Jonah ties his shoes. Jonah rides a bike. Jonah plays dress-up in a frilly pink gown, glitter smeared all over his face. I look to him to get his reaction; he moans into his hands.
“So,” I ask him, “when did you know you were gay?”
“Not early enough, apparently.”
“All right, all right,” Mrs. Cabrera jumps in, pulling the album away. “I think we’ve embarrassed Jonah enough for one day.”
“Next time you come over, Finch, you’ll have to bring your photo album,” says Mr. Cabrera. “I mean, it’s only fair.”
“I don’t know.” I shake my head. “My baby photos are way more embarrassing than Jonah’s.”
“Really?” says Mrs. Cabrera. “Tell us more.”
“Just . . . lots of pictures of me in dresses.”
The joke goes over their heads. But when I tilt to Jonah, he’s smothering another round of giggles behind his palm. And I like it, how much he’s laughing. I don’t know if the laughter’s just a cover for sadness—I don’t think so; it sounds real—but it’s nice, all the same, hearing it.
* * *
—
Jonah, owing to his broken heart, is excused from helping with the dishes. So after the stew, and after the fruit salad, we make our way up the stairs to his room.
The Cabreras are a big family, and this isn’t an especially big house. Siblings share bedrooms here. Maria and Renata have one room to themselves, and Jonah shares another with Benjie. It’s a fascinating split down the middle: One side of the room is strewn with action figures and Happy Meal toys, and the other clearly belongs to a teenager—one with a lot of trophies, and a lot of empty space on the wall where I’ll bet Bailey’s headshots used to hang. I glance at the trash can on Jonah’s side of the room: yep, brimming.
It’s while my eyes are thus occupied that I step on a tiny brick of plastic and let out a howl that would shatter the space-time continuum.
“Oh, shit,” says Jonah, eyes going wide. “Are you okay?”
“LEGO,” I grumble, slumping onto Jonah’s bed, “is such a safety hazard.” I roll my sock down over my left ankle to check the damage. What the hell
? I’m bleeding. Not badly, but still, Jesus. “Bad for the environment, too. Are you really okay rooming with this much plastic?”
“Oh, those LEGOs are made of corn.” Jonah takes a step into the tiny en suite bathroom and emerges with a first-aid kit the size of a shoebox. “They’re not compostable, mind you, but if we’re choosing between corn ethanol and petro, it’s a no-brainer.”
He kneels before me and reaches for my foot. I spring back, fast, before he can touch me.
“What are you doing?”
“I’ve got three little siblings.” He opens the kit, pulls out cotton balls, a bottle of disinfectant, a thin accordion of Band-Aids. “I’m used to patching up scrapes.”
I don’t like to be babied. I truly do not. I’ve got half a mind to snatch the Band-Aids out of his hands, tell him, I can put on my own Band-Aid, thank you very much. But he’s already going to work, pressing a cotton ball to my heel, right in the place where the brick cut deepest. I feel a sting—the disinfectant, I guess—and then, something else, some kind of full-body tingle that’s harder to identify.
Oh, no, is this a sex thing? Is this why people have foot fetishes? I was already pink in the face, but now, I’m sure, I’m crimson. You can’t hide anything when you’re a redhead.
The best course of action—really, the only one—is to bend away from him, and bury my face in a pillow. This way, he can’t see me, and I can’t see him. Also, if I’m still red in the face when I emerge, I can attribute it to temporary suffocation. Brilliant!
Jonah, laughing under his breath, asks, “What are you doing, dude?”
“It stings,” I whine into the pillow.
“You’re a bigger baby than Benjie.” He presses the Band-Aid to my skin, and then I feel his hands leave. “There you go,” he says. “Good as new.”
He leaps onto his twin-size bed as I lift my head, then roll my sock up and over my ankle. He pulls out his laptop. The light from the screen washes blue all over his face. I assume I’m still red.
“I was thinking we could watch a comfort movie to go with all the comfort food you brought me.” He pauses, smiling. “Do you want to come up here? Pick something out?”
He wants me to come up here. As in: Sit on his mattress. Next to him. This is, of course, something we’ve done—oh, I don’t know—a million times? In a million hotel rooms, relaxing after a million long days of debating, scrolling through a million mediocre late-night channels. So why, now, am I so nervous?
“You don’t need me to help,” I mumble, copping out. “You’ve got better taste in movies than I do.”
“Well, that’s a given.” He pats the mattress. “Still, though—come on, get in here.”
I crawl on my knees and hands to the empty place next to him, and I settle in. What I don’t do is touch him. Not with my hands or my elbows or any part of my body. I find the pillow in which I buried my face and I grip it tight—make a barrier of it, even: This is where he ends; this is where I begin. When I feel the first pinpricks of panic, I try, with everything I’ve got, to push it back. I barely register Jonah navigating through Netflix, scrolling past the reams of little posters.
“Is this angle okay?” he asks. “Can you see the screen?”
“Yeah.” I’ve been reduced to monosyllables. “Sure.”
This, in my frenzied, anxious state, is the best guess I’ve got: We are alone. In his room. On his bed. His family’s home—I can hear them all bustling around downstairs, cleaning up in the kitchen—but, still. He’s a boy. A boy who likes boys. And I—by the more inclusive definitions, anyway—am a boy. A theoretically likeable boy. This fact has never felt as relevant as it does now, in this brave new post-Bailey world.
But it’s not like I like boys—no matter what Lucy says or Bailey venomously spits. So why am I on the verge of something that feels like a panic attack? Why are my nails digging craters into Jonah’s poor pillow?
“Finch?” he says. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Totally. Yeah.” I’m sure I sound very convincing, gasping for breath after each yeah. “It’s just . . . I just . . .”
“Deep breaths.” He reaches out, places a hand on my shoulder. “One, two, three . . .”
I repeat the numbers, and breathe along with him. I do not tell him that the hand on my shoulder is only making it worse. I already had to contend with the fact of lying next to him, on his bed, and now he’s touching me. What is happening here? Does he want to . . . do something? With me? Or is it the opposite—that the very idea of doing something with me would be a joke to him? Maybe it’s neither. Maybe I’m being incredibly homophobic by interpreting his good-faith effort to calm me down as a sexual advance.
“Come on, Finch,” he says, before I can spiral any further. “What’s going on? Tell me what’s happening.”
“I just . . . I . . .” What should I say? In search of something, anything, that sounds like a plausible explanation for this sudden fit of mine, I land, finally, on: “I am really mad at Bailey.”
“You and me both, kid.”
“The way he treated you this morning . . . the way he’s been treating you . . .”
“Hey, hey. You don’t need to bash my ex. My fam’s got that covered.”
This makes me laugh. I’m grateful for it. I can feel my psychological temperature falling a few notches. He bought my excuse. He’s moving away from me. I am, at last, off the ledge. I think so, anyway. I hope so.
“I don’t know why they got so heated just now,” Jonah says, returning to Netflix, scrolling. “They always really liked Bailey. I mean, I thought they did, anyway.”
“My guess,” I begin, slowly—forming sentences is always harder after an anxiety attack, even an aborted one, “is that they like you much more than they like Bailey. And they want what’s best for you. And he was not that.”
“Bailey used to come over all the time,” Jonah says, like he didn’t even hear me. “He’d help me babysit. He was so good with Renata and Benjie. He’d read aloud to them, do all these little voices for the different characters. They loved it.” He laughs glumly. “They were four chapters into The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. Guess we’ll have to abandon it now.”
“Well, maybe you could do the voices,” I suggest.
“I guess so.” Jonah shrugs. “But I can’t voice the White Witch like Bailey does.”
“Your parents,” I start, “they’re really . . . I don’t know, tolerant. Especially with your dad, being a pastor and all.”
“Well, those things aren’t mutually exclusive,” Jonah says, a frown lighting on his face. “Our congregation actually has a lot of gay people. We’ve had weddings for some couples, baptisms for a few families . . .”
Oh, God. I’ve offended him. “I’m sorry,” I spit out. “I just thought . . . you know, since so many Christians are so . . .” I stop, search for the right word. I don’t find it. And so, helplessly, I shrug. “You know what I mean.”
“I do,” he says. “But my dad’s never been like that.” He stops, and smiles to himself. “There’s a story behind it, actually. It’s kind of sad.”
“A story?” I pull the pillow closer to my chest. “I’m listening.”
“Well, growing up, my dad had this brother, Ferdinand,” Jonah begins. “They called him Ferdy for short. My uncle. He and my dad, they were really close, growing up together in Lucena. They had a big family too. I mean, I have a zillion aunts, but he and Ferdy were the only brothers.”
“Like you and Benjie,” I say.
He grins. “Exactly like that.” And then that grin disappears: “So, um . . . when my dad was in college, and Ferdy was in his last year of junior high school—so, like, our tenth grade—Ferdy called him up one day. Crying. Asking if my dad could pick him up and take him to a doctor in another town to, uh . . . to go get tested.”
“Jesus,” I whisper. “It wasn’t .
. . ?”
“It was.” Jonah nods. “Yeah. Apparently, Ferdy’d been going to these bars in Malate, in Old Manila—like, he’d tell his parents, my grandparents, that he was on the school’s basketball team, and he was going out of town for tournaments. But he was actually driving the three hours to Manila, with friends, and, like . . . Anyway. He’d started noticing these cuts. I forget what they’re called. It’s, like . . . I want to say . . . Sarkozy’s . . . glaucoma?”
“That sounds right,” I tell him. I spent a lot of time reading And the Band Played On a couple of seasons back, when we debated about HIV at this big tournament up in Vancouver. “Something like that.”
“And it was the ’90s, so treatment was still pretty, uh . . . well, the disease was still a death sentence, at that point. Even in the United States. And the medical system in the Philippines was—I mean, still is, in some places—pretty underfunded. And so . . . he died. Ferdy died.”
“Oh, Jonah.” I know I’m risking another bout of panic here, but I have to be—no, need to be—closer to him. My hand on his shoulder is tentative at first, but when he leans into the touch, I squeeze. “I’m so, so sorry.”
His eyes begin to well with tears. I feel ashamed that my own are so dry.
“And my grandparents,” he says, “when they found out Ferdy was sick—I mean, when they found out what he was sick with—they put him out on the street. Told him he was evil. He deserved it. God was punishing him. And my dad, he knew it wasn’t true. He didn’t want his brother to die.”
“Jesus, Jonah. I had no idea.”
“So my dad, he took care of him.” Jonah’s voice is shaking. “For those couple months before he died, my dad looked after Ferdy, and made him comfortable. And my grandparents didn’t visit. Not once. Not even to say goodbye.” He stops. He turns to face me. “But you know who did show up?”
“Who?”
“Like, every single one of Ferdy’s friends.” And even though he’s crying now, Jonah’s face is cracking into a wide, giddy smile. “They’d come over on the weekends. Bring meals. Read to him. Turn the pillows. And my dad, when he tells this story, he always says Ferdy had been a part of something really special. He’d been, like, really, deeply loved.”
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