True Enough

by Stephen McCauley

  “Leon,” he said. Leon looked up from his plate of food hopefully, as if he’d been waiting for something to interest him. “When I came home last night, Russell was reading a collection of Thomas Mann’s short novels. Is there one that’s a particular favorite of yours?”

  “I do have a favorite.” He went back to his food, swallowed a mouthful of pasta, and said, “But I don’t think it’s one Russell would care for.”

  “Why not tell us the title?” Desmond said. “We can take bets on whether or not it’s one Russell cares for.” Russell nudged him under the table. “We can play a little parlor game after dinner,” Desmond went on, “and see who can quote the most lines from it.”

  Leon sighed. As he was about to mention a title, Russell cut him off. “I don’t know what Desmond’s talking about. I’m reading a self-help book. It’s all about reaching your full potential.”

  Desmond felt his face grow hot. He didn’t want to hear any more about that book, not now or ever. Russell wasn’t reading it and never would read it. Bringing it up was a slap in his face, recrimination for trying to referee Russell’s boxing match with his parents.

  “The problem with helping people reach their full potential,” Gloria said, “is that it’s basically the same thing as eliminating hope. People are happiest believing the fiction that they’re only using twenty percent of their talent and intelligence. Help them become all that they can ever be and they’ll really have something to be depressed about.”

  There was a muscle twitching in Russell’s face, just under his cheekbone. Maybe she was suggesting that Russell had reached his full potential in running the secondhand shop, reading self-help books, and co-habiting with Desmond. When the waitress came back and delivered her canned questions to make sure everyone was happy, Russell asked for directions to the men’s room and got up from the table. After a moment of awkward silence, Gloria said, “You’re good to put up with our little family squabbles, Desmond.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” Desmond said. “I’m part of the family.”

  She looked slightly stunned by the comment as well she might have been; Desmond couldn’t remember ever being so blunt with her before. He was a little stunned himself. He’d always felt most comfortable standing on the periphery of these mudslinging contests, safely ensconced as a spectator in the stands. He wasn’t sure what had compelled him to step into the middle of it.

  “You are indeed,” Gloria said. “I didn’t mean to imply you weren’t. Sometimes I’m just not sure what Russell wants from us.” She was looking directly into Desmond’s eyes, stroking her braid, challenging him.

  “You’d have to ask him, but I’d guess it’s what we all want—childish things: finger paints and facile compliments.”

  “Oh, dear. Not my specialty.”

  “No. That’s why seeing you make the effort would be so meaningful.”

  Gloria said nothing, but she stopped stroking her hair.

  “Rough weekend?” Leon asked.

  “Possibly”

  There was nothing left to say, at least nothing anyone wanted to say, so they sat in silence trying to chip away at the mountains of food in front of them. When Russell returned to the table, Gloria sat back in her seat and gazed at him. “You know,” she said finally, “those chops, or whatever you call them, the sideburns, are really quite becoming. They balance out your face.”

  “Wouldn’t you know it,” Russell said. “I was just looking at them in the mirror and decided to shave them off.”

  3.

  As soon as Russell had left for work the next morning, Desmond called Peter at the apartment he’d moved into shortly after Velan had kicked him out. “Please come down,” Peter begged. “I want to show off the place. It’s a fresh look for me. Clear, clean, no more of that designer crap. And I really want you to meet Sandy. You’re going to love him.”

  “To be honest,” Desmond said, “I was hoping I might get a chance to talk to you alone. After I’ve met Sandy, naturally.” Naturally, he’d have to put up with a show-and-tell of apartment and boyfriend, a tour of the rooms and discussion of the furniture. He’d have to sit patiently while Peter and Sandy groped each other in front of him. People always have to display new real estate and relationships before the paint starts to crack on both.

  “Come at noon,” Peter said. “You’ll get the whole picture.”

  Peter’s current digs were in a new development near the West Side Highway. The building was a sleek glass column surrounded by other sleek glass columns in various stages of completion. The whole neighborhood seemed to have been invented in the past five years and had the feeling of an extraordinarily well-heeled frontier town. What a perfect place to start a new life, a faceless building at the edge of the known world with the grinding and crashing of construction playing in the background twenty-four hours a day. But the noise, along with the bright sunlight and the unseasonable heat and the dusty yellow air, seemed to disappear as soon as Desmond entered the building’s calm lobby. Here was the future, a carefully controlled environment that allowed you to see the outside world while shielding you from its every danger and inconvenience. Never mind about global deforestation and dwindling species of plants; there were trees here and exotic red flowers, the air smelled sweet and was filled with soft, seductive sounds that could have been music or bird calls. The cool, golden elevator lifted Desmond to the twenty-third floor with smooth efficiency, and he stepped off, pleasantly disoriented, as if he’d been transported to another world.

  Sandy opened the door for him. He gripped his hand as if he were trying to crack a walnut. “It’s just great to finally meet you, Desmond,” he said, emphasizing his words with the overdone enthusiasm of someone trying to lure you into a pyramid sales scheme. “Not that I don’t feel as if we’re friends already.”

  Desmond had been expecting youth and vitality, but Sandy couldn’t have been more than thirty. He had light hair cut in a geometric flattop and the solid body and perfect posture of a hefty dancer. Everything he was wearing—gray polo shirt, knee-length khaki shorts—appeared to have been ironed within the past hour, and his skin was so clean and glowing, it looked as if it had been polished with a rag. Good with children and dogs, Desmond thought, everyone’s favorite uncle, probably planning to impregnate a lesbian friend or adopt a baby. He led Desmond into the apartment, his shoulders thrown back with proprietary confidence, silently proclaiming that no matter how long Peter and Velan had been a couple and despite the fact that he Sandy didn’t live here, he Sandy was in control.

  The clean, clear decor Peter had touted over the phone turned out to be a long living room with views of the Hudson furnished with two matching bone-colored love seats and a glass coffee table. There were a few framed travel posters leaning against the walls and a stack of books on the floor that looked as if they’d been placed there by an interior decorator. The sun was blazing right outside the window, but thanks to some technological miracle, the pane was cool to the touch.

  “Nice, isn’t it?” Sandy asked. “I told Peter no clutter. I go through with a trash bag every time I come over. He’ll be out in a minute. Take a seat.” He tugged up the legs of his shorts, lowered himself onto the love seat opposite Desmond, and spread his arms out across the back. You’d have to say he was an attractive man, yet there was something corpselike about the antiseptic spotlessness of his skin; and the forced baritone of his voice and muscularity of his calves seemed to be obvious instances of protesting too much. “Peter tells me you’re up in Boston,” he said.

  “I have a teaching position for one semester.” Desmond started to describe Deerforth College.

  Sandy nodded in the eager, polite way of someone feigning interest, then took advantage of a pause and said, “I grew up outside Boston. A small New England town called Stoneham.” It would have sounded charming enough, if only Desmond hadn’t had the misfortune of once getting lost in the bland sprawl of this particular suburb. When Sandy asked him if he’d heard of it, Desmond
felt the kind thing to do was say he hadn’t. “I’ll have to show you around some time,” Sandy said.

  “That would be wonderful.”

  “And your lover runs a secondhand shop. I think I might have been in there once,” he said, as if congratulations were therefore in order. “What do you think of Boston?”

  “It’s growing on me.”

  “It’s funny you should use those words.” Sandy leaned forward with genuine amazement, a smile lighting up his face. “Just this morning I was telling Peter I think I’ve out grown Boston.”

  “Well—”

  “And you’re working on a book of some kind?”

  “Yes, I’m—”

  “I love to read. A couple of us at Merrill Lynch formed a reading group. We get together once a month and discuss a book. Are you in a reading group?”

  It didn’t matter how Desmond answered any of these questions, since it was obvious Sandy was asking them so he could toss in his own opinions. After offering an annotated list of the books his group had read over the past sixteen months, Sandy sprang up from the love seat and clapped his hands. “I’m being rude,” he said. “What can I get you to drink?”

  “Oh, maybe a—”

  “I’m going to have a Pepsi. But Peter probably has a bottle of wine hidden away somewhere if you like.”

  “Soda would be fine.”

  When Peter finally emerged from the bedroom, he dashed over to Desmond and embraced him tightly. He swept his hand around the room and then nodded toward the kitchen where Sandy was rattling ice. “Can you believe how far I’ve come since the last time we were together? Can you believe it? God, it’s good to see you.”

  What he obviously meant was that it was good to have Desmond see him in his present state of bliss. He’d lost weight, cut his hair into a variation on Sandy’s crew cut, had his bushy eyebrows trimmed, and—a wild guess, but Desmond would have put money on it—had something done to his face with a laser. His skin was taut and raw. There was no denying he looked younger and more rested, but Desmond found himself disconcerted by the way this old acquaintance had started to resemble his new boyfriend. The two were wearing almost identical outfits and similar pairs of leather sandals. Good for him, Desmond tried to convince himself, although suddenly, unaccountably, he found himself flooded with fond memories of Velan’s disarming drunken wit.

  Sandy passed out glasses and sat beside Peter on the love seat. Peter put his arm around Sandy’s shoulder, the two kissed, and Desmond sat facing them, feeling as if he were watching an unimaginative puppet show. “Tell me the truth, Desmond,” Peter said, nodding his head toward Sandy. “Am I the luckiest guy in the world, or what?”

  Talk about your rhetorical questions. “I’d say you’re pretty lucky.” If there was anything more excruciating than being dragged into the middle of someone’s marital discord it was being seated in the front row for a performance of their honeymoon. Especially if you’d recently heard the bell tolling on your own relationship.

  “And he told you he’s from Boston? Small world, isn’t it? Let me tell you . . .”

  The window was behind them, and Desmond could see harsh sunlight flashing off a crane, sending a message in Morse code—unreadable, but still more interesting than Peter’s paean to Sandy’s extraordinary skills at preparing delectable low-fat dinners. Strange, Desmond thought, how staying in a difficult relationship with a difficult person had lent Peter a certain amount of dignity and gravitas. Sitting beside perfectly pleasant and pleasing Sandy, Peter looked like a two-dimensional copy of his former self.

  When Sandy got up and left for choir practice at a church he belonged to, Peter raised his eyebrows and lifted his hands, as if struck dumb by his extraordinary good fortune. “He’s even religious,” he finally said.

  Desmond nodded, wondering why this was supposed to be considered a virtue. He didn’t understand the attraction to and reverence for organized religions, many of which struck him as fairy-tale justifications for self-righteousness, bake sales, and murder.

  “I didn’t know it could be like this, Desmond. I didn’t know I could be so happy.” With this confession, Peter seemed to be overcome with emotion and buried his face in his hands. Now, obviously, was not the best time to bring up Desmond’s concerns about Russell. Peter pulled himself together, wiped at his eyes and said, “I don’t suppose you’ve seen Velan since you’ve been back.”

  “No,” Desmond said. “I haven’t. I’ve been a little preoccupied.”

  Peter shook his head with dismay and ran his hand across the plateau of stubble on top of his head. “Bitter. He’s turned bitter.”

  “Oh?”

  “And have you heard the latest? He’s going to AA meetings. Unbelievable. He hasn’t had a drink for weeks.” He held up his hand and started counting off the list of Velan’s offenses on his fingers. “Hasn’t had a drink in almost a month, hasn’t smoked a cigarette in two months, goes to a therapy group of some kind, and just got a promotion. Oh, and some kind of exercise routine where they strap you to a board and stretch you out like a piece of taffy. Can you imagine it?”

  “Frankly, no.”

  “And, and he started taking antidepressants. He was never depressed a day in his life. I’ll tell you what his problem is. His problem is that he thinks we broke up because I started seeing Sandy.” He shook his head in disgust.

  “That wasn’t the reason?”

  “That was a symptom. The problem is that Velan’s impossible. I’m lucky I got out of that relationship alive. Everything has to be his way or no way. I couldn’t breathe without running it past him first.”

  Not, Desmond wasn’t about to point out, that Sandy wasn’t doing the same thing, simply with a different aesthetic.

  “And here’s the kicker. Are you ready for this? Velan’s started ‘seeing someone,’ to use his delicate euphemism. Knowing Velan, it’s highly unlikely he’s ‘seeing’ much of anyone since most of his dating time is probably spent flat on his stomach with his face buried in the pillow.”

  “Yeah. Well.” Desmond tilted his glass up to his mouth, dismayed to realize he’d already drained it dry and chewed up all the ice. “It sounds to me,” he said, “as if you and Velan are still in close contact.”

  “We talk every once in a while,” he said quietly. He picked a book from the top of the pile near the love seat and examined its cover and spine as if he’d never seen it before. He put back the book and looked at Desmond apologetically, all the anger in his voice and face exorcised.

  Thank God Desmond had kept his mouth shut, hadn’t been duped into letting out his true feelings about Velan. He’d give this little separation four months, six maximum, before Peter and Velan were once again a model couple, visiting a counselor twice a week and planning a trip to Tuscany. Desmond’s promiscuous sympathies trotted over to Sandy, devout young man, off singing God’s praises while his boyfriend subconsciously mooned over a lost love. “You miss Velan,” Desmond ventured.

  Peter rubbed at his face with his hands as if he were washing it with soap. “I’ve been with him—I was with him—so long, it’s like he’s a part of me, and now that part, gangrenous or not, has been amputated. A confession, all right? I feel amazingly revitalized with Sandy. Like I’m walking around with this stronger, stiffer hard-on. Metaphorically speaking.”

  “Right.”

  “But somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m waiting to go back home and show it off to Velan.”

  “I suppose you’re going to have to tell him that.”

  “Yes, I suppose I am. When I’m ready.”

  Having unburdened himself of this confession, he relaxed back onto the love seat, looking much more like the man Desmond had known for many years now. “So tell me everything,” he said. “I want to hear all about your adventures. Don’t hold anything back. What do you think of these love seats? Too austere? Sandy picked them out. He’s great, isn’t he?”

  4.

  That was a predictable waste of time, Des
mond thought as he was ejected from the cool lobby to the steaming sidewalk. He hadn’t really believed Peter was going to solve anything for him, but he hadn’t planned on spending quite so much time discussing the virtues of ABC Carpet and Home.

  By the end of dinner the night before, Russell and his parents had settled back into their ready-aim-fire conversational style, and Desmond had felt exiled for having the audacity to try and pull them together and include himself. Even so, when they parted at the hotel’s elevators, Gloria had embraced Russell and told him she planned to visit the store when the conference broke up on Sunday afternoon. Maybe something good had come out of it.

  Not, apparently, that Russell saw it that way. When they stepped out of the hotel, Russell went on the attack: “I don’t know what you said when I left the table, but whatever it was, I wish you hadn’t.”

  “I didn’t say much of anything.”

  “That pathetic attempt by my mother to compliment me, after thirty-five years of criticism. She likes my sideburns. Please. And then she looks toward you as if to say, ‘See, I did as you suggested and he completely rejected me.’”

  “You do an amazingly good imitation of her, you know.”

  “I’ve been very careful never to ask them for anything, especially praise. I make one quick trip to the bathroom and you undo all those years of work. I assume she’ll never make it to the store, but even the suggestion makes me uncomfortable. And bringing up my reading habits, to try and impress Leon. I’ve never been interested in impressing them.”

  “My intentions were good, sweetheart.”

  “But ultimately, Desmond, it isn’t your business.”

  Two months earlier, he would have welcomed these words as an indication of a healthy distance between them. But now they stung. “Since when aren’t you my business?”

  “You give up a certain number of rights when you make a unilateral decision to move away for a handful of months, and, as you’re walking out the door, as much as tell a friend you’re embarrassed by our commitment to each other. And then you come back for a visit, still not ready to talk, just hump away for twenty-four hours, like you’ve hired me and want to get your money’s worth.”