Good Buddy

by Dori Ann Dupré

  Buddy looked down at his feet. “If I tell you, I’d have to kill you,” he said, almost in a whisper.

  Buddy felt a little buzzed. He wanted to tell her everything about himself. He wanted to give her the lowdown: he was someone else entirely, his mother was someone else entirely, they have been on the run for well over twenty years. But he knew he couldn’t do it. At least, not fully. It was too big of a secret and too many years had gone by now. If he told her the truth about himself, he would be risking everything he had built with her and Molly, and he’d be risking his own mother’s safety and welfare and maybe even legal situation. He had no idea what ever really happened to Kenny Bellinger, and now that he was grown and a lawyer on top of that, he didn’t want to know.

  “Where were you born?” Julie asked. “You’ve never told me where you’re really from. I know you grew up in Welby. I know your father died in Vietnam. Where were you and your mother when he died?”

  Buddy sighed. “Fort Hood, Texas,” he uttered. “I was born in that Army hospital there. But then my father died, and I guess we had to leave.”

  Julie wrapped her arms around her torso, starting to get cold but feeling like she was making progress in getting to the bottom of a few answers to her questions. “Where is your kin from? Your grandparents? Where are Loretta’s people? Your father’s people?”

  “Why do you care so much? It’s really not important.”

  “Well, you know all about my people. I’ve told you everything. My mother, my father, Gabe, his parents, my hometown in Texas, my short stint at A&M, my elopement, my estrangement. I feel like I’m just on the cusp of really knowing you, Buddy, but every time I try to scratch this surface, you just got nothin’ for me. I think it’s odd is all. I think there’s more to your story than your father dying in Vietnam and you and your mother ending up in Welby in Joe’s barn apartment. You don’t talk about any family, grandparents, why your mother has some kind of North Eastern accent, even though you say you’re from North Carolina.”

  Buddy shuffled his shoes and took the last swig of his wine. He set the glass down and looked over at his Julie. How he wanted to tell her everything about himself. He thought he had, really…at least the important things. She knew him. She knew who he really was inside. Just not this one small piece of himself, the only thing he couldn’t give her. Just not this one bit of his history that had to remain sealed forever. Some secrets were better left buried.

  Realizing that she was not going to get anywhere further on this issue, Julie slid her arms back into her sleeves. She stood up, seeing that she was rattling his chain a little bit and didn’t mean to do that to him. She walked over and hugged him.

  “I’m sorry, Buddy. I don’t mean to be so pushy. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me. I understand,” she breathed out in the night with her head buried in his chest.

  “It’s not that, Julie. I promise. It’s not that I’m keeping secrets from you or don’t want you to know me or anything like that. I do. And I think you do know me. More than anyone ever has before. I don’t know why me telling you some of the darker and sadder stuff of my past would make you know me more or better than you already do. It wouldn’t.” He stood straight and stretched his legs; his voice started to get animated and direct. “You don’t want to know about that shit, Julie. No one does. Some things aren’t meant to be talked about. Some things aren’t meant to be shared. I’m just not a big talker. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change how close we are right now to each other or how close we can be in the future. Not to me, it doesn’t.” His voice started to trail off, and he held his face up to the darkness.

  Julie watched his face tilted up, with its boyish features and those long eyelashes glimmering in the moonlight. She again wrapped her arms around his middle, looking up into his eyes, and he held her back and gazed down at her face with a sense of fear lingering between them.

  “You’re right,” she said, tiptoeing up and kissing his cheek. She went back down on her heels. Buddy leaned down and pulled her into himself and gently kissed her lips, which told her every secret passion he held for her in his heart.

  St. Patrick’s Day

  Julie sat with her legs criss-cross-applesauce on the floor of her living room. She wore a pair of denim crop pants, a Kelly-green and white striped long-sleeved shirt and two long beaded necklaces with small smiling shamrocks along every few beads in a line. She had a green leprechaun hat on top of her blond hair, which stuck straight out of the bottom. A glass of red wine, half empty – or half full, depending on your personality – sat on the cream colored, newly cleaned carpet, which just screamed for a big red stain to happen to it. She stared at the wine glass and wondered how much more wine she needed inside of her to have the courage to tell Buddy how she was feeling…to tell him the truth.

  Buddy rested across from her with his back against the couch. His legs spread out straight ahead, his feet were bare, and his heart was open. He, too, still wore his own leprechaun hat on top of his head, a remnant of their evening meal: a “pot o’ gold pot roast” for him, a corned beef sandwich for Julie, and good ol’ chicken tenders and fries off the kid’s menu for Molly at Sully’s Irish Restaurant over near Post.

  Julie claimed Irish ancestry, so that meant Molly did too. They both were adamant about celebrating St. Patrick’s Day because it was their birthright, and Buddy found it amusing that Julie had an entire box dedicated to Irish items stuffed in her storage closet, like some people have a box for Easter or Halloween decorations.

  Buddy, however, walked around with a Hispanic last name and no real clear idea about his ancestry. According to his mother, people just didn’t pay that much attention to such things after all the immigrants started inter-marrying. It happened a lot where she was from because it was a busy, transient military town during the draft years in New Jersey. Girls from town found husbands in basic training at Fort Dix who were on their way to somewhere else. That was how his mother had met his father. He knew that his grandmother was part Italian, but there was no confirmation on what his grandfather was. Also, Italian? Polish? Lithuanian? French Canadian? He knew nothing about his natural father, other than his name and death. He didn’t even know where Daniel Kaspar, Senior came from.

  So, Buddy would just tell people he was a Hispanic man who spoke no Spanish. And when Hispanic people would start talking to him about Hispanic things, Buddy had to laugh along or pretend like he knew what the hell they were talking about.

  But St. Patrick’s Day in the United States was for everyone. Everyone gets to be Irish for the day. He and Julie and Molly looked like every other little Irish-American or just simply American family out having an Irish evening after having an Irish day.

  It was late, and Molly was long asleep. Buddy spent just about every waking moment with Julie and Molly for several months now. If he wasn’t working or taking care of errands or small jobs for his mother and Joe, he was with the two of them. Then at the end of the day, he would go home to go to bed. Or they would go home to go to bed. And other than the one nice kiss they shared on Christmas Eve while sitting on the porch steps, and that other kiss he gave to her a couple of weeks ago in Julie’s backyard, that was as close physically that they had been.

  The two sat silent. Buddy shut his eyes. Then he opened them.

  “Julie,” he said, quietly.

  Julie continued to stare at her wine glass.

  There was tension between them, but it was the good kind. Not quite sexual tension, but something more profound. It was the type that could be easily broken with one kind word or a brief warm smile or a simple kiss.

  “Hey,” Buddy said. Again, quietly.

  Julie continued to look at her wine glass. She was motionless and was starting to feel the effects of this second glass.

  “Julie, I want to tell you something,” Buddy uttered, a little louder.

  Sh
e peered up at him. Her eyes were filled with tears just begging to drop from the rims of their sockets. Buddy watched her, not quite sure what to make of her sadness. He hadn’t seen Julie cry yet, in all this time together, but he feared he was about to. And now he was also afraid of what she was going to say to him. His gut tightened like a fist ready to react to a punch. His heart started to beat faster. No, please, no…he thought, expecting the worst.

  Buddy rose to his knees. He moved a bit closer to her and, as she watched him, she blurted out, “I’m in love with you. I love you, Mr. Cochran.”

  The fist inside of him unraveled. His gut relaxed. He was so full of fear in just that brief passage of time. He was certain she was going to tell him that she didn’t want to see him anymore or she was moving away or she was going to go out with that arrogant gym teacher.

  But no. She loved him. It was the last thing he thought she would say tonight.

  Buddy sat back on his heels in disbelief. Julie’s face was bright through the dimly lit room, and the tears rushed down her face. It was not the kind of crying that a woman does to make a guy feel bad for her. It was the kind that came during a profound moment. She watched his face closely, and Buddy was dumbfounded.

  “Say something, you fucking idiot!” Julie shouted at him.

  She swiped the back of her hand across her cheeks and wiped some of the tears. Buddy was in unchartered territory. In his thirty-one years, no woman has ever said these words to him. No woman has ever said anything like this to him – through tears – filled with emotion that he wasn’t sure quite how to handle.

  Buddy’s emotions were always in check. He had them inside, but they were fully managed at all times. Seeing this incredible woman, who he has been in love with for months now, express such a heartfelt and meaningful confession, meant more to him than he would be capable of ever telling her in response. It was a game changer for their relationship. But still, everything between them also felt the same – only now fortified and backed by a militia.

  They shared a gaze, frozen in time. Neither turned away. Buddy held it as long as he could. He never wanted to forget what she looked like right here in her living room on the floor in tears while wearing a stupid green leprechaun hat. He never wanted to lose this feeling he had inside of him, this closeness, a promise, a symphony of music that played in perfect simpatico and in all the right places. This was better and stronger than any kiss or any touch or any sexual encounter they could have.

  After some time had passed, Julie asked him, “So, what do you think about that?”

  Buddy was shy. He was no good at this. He was better at the silent exchange than he was verbalizing his feelings. Insecure and overwhelmed, he looked down at the floor like a little boy who got caught stealing a cookie.

  “Julie, I love you too.” He looked up briefly and then back down again. “I’ve loved you since the first day you ran by me.”

  Julie got up on her knees and lunged at him and into his arms. Her knee hit the glass of wine with all its deep red contents pouring onto her cream carpet. No one cared. Buddy held her tight, thin runner’s body like he had always wanted to, with a man’s strength but also with a tenderness that spoke of what he held for her in his heart.

  He kissed her like he dreamt of kissing her someday…fully, completely, like a long-awaited buffet table spread out with all his favorite foods.

  Gay Day

  Buddy, Julie, and Molly pulled onto the long, well-manicured and happily designed highway leading into “The Most Magical Place on Earth.” It was a hot and humid Central Florida Saturday in early June, school had just released for the summer in North Carolina, and the trio were taking a week to see Mickey and Minnie and Goofy and the whole gang. Buddy and Molly had never been to Disney World. Julie went two times as a girl, but it was a long time ago.

  Before he died, Gabe had been making plans to take them to Disney for vacation when he could get leave from his unit. But then those plans…along with the trajectory of their little Army family’s lives…blew straight into an alternate universe where there was no Disney, no leave, no vacation, and no clear future.

  Parking the car, and then jumping onto a tram with hordes of other patrons ready to start their Disney adventures, Buddy noticed that most of the people walking along the edges of the parking lot or riding on the tram were wearing red tee-shirts. He, too, was wearing a red shirt, but instead of feeling like he was part of some secret red shirt club, he felt like he was an uninvited guest, crashing a wild party that he had no idea was occurring around him.

  He turned to Julie, who was curiously looking around herself, obviously noticing the same loud phenomenon. Molly sat in between them, a white visor with glitter spread across the front of it, spelling out her name and resting on her head…completely oblivious. Her eyes were as big as saucers, filled with anticipation and excitement of meeting the characters, going on Space Mountain, and sitting on the sidewalk for the three o’clock parade with a turkey leg in hand.

  Julie leaned over Molly’s head and whispered to Buddy, “Oh my God!”

  Buddy looked at her, questioning with the slow heightening of his eyebrows.

  “It’s Gay Day!” she said just a tad louder, trying not to draw attention to herself or anyone else sitting around her.

  Buddy was now officially confused. Gay Day? What’s that?

  As the tram made its way through the throngs of red shirted men, with a few women here and there sprinkled into the mix, Buddy started to read the printed backs of the many red tee-shirts as they glided by them: “Gay Days Disney 1997,” “Seattle Gay Pride,” “Play the Gay Away at Disney 1996,” “Out and Proud at Disney,” and “Making Magic at the Most Magical Place.” Many red shirts had nothing written on the backs, but some of the men wearing them were holding hands or had their arms around each other like they were romantically entangled.

  Buddy looked down at his own red shirt. Then, like a slap to the back of his head, he got it. Here he was…a heterosexual male, on vacation with his fiancé and stepdaughter, wearing a red shirt on Gay Day at the Magic Kingdom. He was not only in on the wink, but he was also the joke.

  Julie was giggling quietly to herself, as Molly noticed the Magic Kingdom castle peeking up over the trees and beckoning them from the distance with all its sparkle. She started hopping, furiously. “There it is! There it is! There’s the castle!” she shouted, so happy and excited to finally be at Disney World.

  They stood before the crowds and took in the incredible site before them, a moving tide of gay people dressed in red, with a few unsuspecting other-colored shirts out there. Others – like Buddy – who did not get the memo about the first Saturday in June in Orlando. Buddy peered over at Julie, who was laughing uncontrollably at this point.

  “Do you think we should leave?” he asked her, not quite sure what to do.

  “Leave?” Molly shouted out. “Why? We just got here! The castle is right there!” Her hopping was in sync with Julie’s laughter, and Buddy knew that he would forever be the butt of this peculiar joke…a coincidence…the kind of funny family vacation story that would be the highlight of their Disney World memories for years to come, retold at church picnics and neighborhood barbecues, saved in a computer file for later viewing on a rainy Friday night.

  Buddy knew that they wouldn’t be able to leave now that Molly had seen the castle, but he didn’t want to be part of a Gay Pride Parade with a fairly sheltered little girl who just wanted to meet Belle and Mickey and go on Space Mountain. He was a little annoyed. Why wouldn’t the travel agent tell him that the days they booked for the Magic Kingdom included Gay Day? And why had he never heard of this before? Then, thinking about it further, he realized that the travel agent refunded him $500 the week before their trip for no known reason, her mutterings about an overcharge error.

  “It’s not a big deal, Buddy. I read about this before once in a newspaper article. One of
the big homosexual publications sponsors Gay Day, but it’s not like an official Disney event. Honestly, it’s probably just a group of people, like any other group of people, who want to have a nice day at Disney.”

  Buddy took in the red flood of people in front of him and watched Molly hop up and down in her sneakers. He saw a few others like them – other nuclear families taking their little kids to Disney – their eyes darting around.

  “Come on, Buddy, the castle is right there!” Julie yelled. “What are we waiting for?” She pulled Molly’s hand, and they started speed-walking, joining in with all the red shirts on their special day at the Magic Kingdom.

  “Julie, do you think this is a good idea?” he asked her, jogging up next to them, not quite sure how he would handle explaining certain things to Molly if they came up. Did Molly even know what ‘gay’ meant? he wondered. While Buddy had no problem with gay people specifically, he always heard that gay pride events were full of nudity and debauchery. As much as he felt that all human beings should be free to be who they are, he didn’t want Molly to be exposed to people stripping off their clothes and making out in public and groping each other.

  “Sure. It will be fun. Seriously, Buddy, it’s Disney World. Not some late-night bath house. Gay people have families too. What do you think they’re going to do? Act like they’re in some sleazy night club? They just want to go on the rides and get their pictures taken with Mickey Mouse, just like anybody else.”

  “I guess…” he said, again looking down at his red shirt. “Okay, let’s go.”

  As they approached the Magic Kingdom castle, he pulled out his camera and took a photo of Julie and Molly posing like rap stars from the Eighties. Julie had her long shiny hair in a ponytail and wore a light-yellow tank top and jean shorts. She was his. She was going to marry him soon, and they would be a real family. Going to Disney was just one of those family things that you’re supposed to do.