A gay story: Everything's Fine Winter Holidays Story Contest 2023 entry – don’t forget to vote! My longest piece in a while. Hope you enjoy.
-T
*
What my father offers me isn’t what I want, and I take it. Always have. It’s just the way of things.
This time it’s whiskey. We’re in a corner booth at the back of the bar – the sort of place a Clint Eastwood character might fight an outlaw. Dim light shines from bright bulbs inside dirty fixtures. One wall is covered in old license plates, another in wagon wheels. Half the folks in here were old enough to drink during Watergate.
He pats me twice on the forearm before wrapping his fist around the handle of his glass. It’s a beer, at least as far as anyone watching can tell, but I know he’s mixed in something from the flask on his lap. I don’t say anything about it. Our peace is fragile enough as it is.
“Your sister’s back in town.” He takes a swig, belches. “We’re doing the whole holiday getup on Thursday. Think you can make it?”
It’s a ridiculous question – we both know I don’t want to be there. But I’ve learned to appreciate the small talk. I used to hate how superficial our relationship was; now I know how much worse things could be. The havoc true intimacy wreaks.
“I don’t know,” I mutter. “Got a lot on my plate.”
“Of course.” He looks stern and studies his glass. “Of course.”
Pierce’s Bar has a maximum occupancy of sixty-two, but there’s at least twice that in here, not including the staff. I really ought to put a stop to it – I’m the fire chief, after all – but I can’t be bothered with the drunk stomping that would ensue if I ended the party early. There’s a desperate edge to the reminiscing and boisterous laughter. Five new bars and three new restaurants in town, but the old-timers pack in here every night like it’s a lifeboat, and maybe it is.
“How’s she doing?”
He nods thoughtfully, like he knows anything about what Londra’s been up to, like he’s ever paid her a lick of attention except to berate her for fucking up.
“She’s doing alright,” he says. “Got a big new job a while back, so, you know. Things are going pretty well with that, I think.”
Londra was fired from that job months ago, but there’s no point in going down that road. It would just make me angry.
“That’s good to hear,” I tell him.
He doesn’t respond, just keeps swigging. Drawing up his courage. The nervous jerk of his meaty arms, the anxious scanning of his eyes, the shrinking volume of alcohol in his glass – the familiarity of him crashes into me like a rogue wave and suddenly I can feel how much of me he still holds hostage, how much I miss him.
Someone slams a glass down too hard and it breaks; stools scrape backward across the old floor and people start swearing. A few of them look over at me like they expect me to put the offender on time out.
“You really should come, Caleb.” He drinks some more beer, five or six swallows worth. “To dinner, I mean. Things are different. And it’s Thanksgiving – ”
“Don’t.” I try not to sound exasperated. “Let’s just leave things alone tonight, okay?”
“Sure, I understand that,” he says. “Sure.”
I look out the front window again. Kurt’s waiting for me; I can see his silhouette leaning against my pickup. I told him to come in, to show his face around here, that I didn’t care what people thought. He pretended to believe this, and I pretended to believe him when he said he’d rather wait outside.
“Your mom, she…we’ve been talking to someone, and things are getting better. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I…well, you should come by. That’s all.”
“You’ve been talking to Mom?”
She’d hardly been around at all when we were growing up, disappearing for long periods before popping back up like a deranged jack-in-the-box. My father practically raised us on his own.
“Yeah,” he says. “With a therapist.”
“You went to see a therapist?”
“Up in Cleveland. Your mother insisted.” He grimaces. “But it’s been helpful. And you know I wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true.”
He’s hanging on to his mug for dear life, and I can’t help but feel a little sorry for him.
“Okay.”
“Okay?” He squints at me. “Okay, what?”
“Okay, I’ll come.” I shrug. “I mean…I’ll try to come by.”
He lets out something between a sigh and a laugh and then takes another long swig.
“I’m happy to hear that, Caleb. I want to say that.”
“You really have been going to therapy.”
Ha laughs again, something I haven’t seen him do since time out of mind. It’s unsettling.
“It’s not always easy.” The shadows return to his face and he starts examining his drink again. “But he says we’re all just works in progress. Not to rush too much.”
“That’s good,” I hear myself say. “Sounds like you trust him.”
My father doesn’t so much walk through life as trudge through it, uphill, both ways, against the wind, even when there are a dozen easier paths right in front of him. None of this therapy business makes any sense. I wonder briefly if he’s sick or something, but thinking about that makes me sick.
“So how are you?”
“Uh, fine. Just dealing with all this grant stuff, you know, the renovations.”
The state got a big rural investment grant from the Uncle Sam after the big P; the Town of Greystone got a decent chunk. It turns out that being on the allocation committee is thankless work that nobody but me is interested in doing, so I’ve been up to my eyeballs in it, making sure the grant recipients meet all the code requirements. This is the first night away from begging the local septuagenarians to install smoke detectors that I’ve had in weeks.
“Pierce was complaining about that all last week.”
I shake my head. “Dragging his feet like you wouldn’t believe. This bar is one cigarette butt away from going up in smoke, but do you think he cares?”
My father starts to speak –
Hesitates…
Stops.
“Is everything okay?” I know I might regret the question, but I can’t help myself. “You seem – ”
“I am different,” he muttered. “Thought that’s what you wanted.”
“It is,” I say too quickly. “But – ”
“Pierce says you been doing really good in the new job.” There’s a gentle slur to his words. “It’s good. Didn’t think it would work out so well in the beginning, you know.”
“Dad – ”
“I know you’re still mad at me.” He’s gazing at a fixed point over my shoulder, nodding slowly. “I know that, Caleb.”
“Please, let’s just – ”
“I’m better about that. Even your mother says so, and you know she doesn’t say much.”
“I really don’t want to talk about this.” I fight to keep my voice even. “Let’s just keep doing what we’ve been doing. It’s easier.”
“Your mother misses you, too.”
“I know.” I’m suddenly very glad we’re in a corner booth, a little away from the crowd. “I know that.”
“We…we’ve hardly seen you around, hardly talked to you.” He’s staring at me, pleading, lips pressed into a thin line. “About who you been seeing, and all.”
And it dawns on me, the reason he’s bothered to meet me, the small talk.
Kurt.
He knows I’m back with Kurt.
“I’m not up to anything.”
“Didn’t say you were, I just – ”
“Stop it.”
“Come on – ”
“It’s none of your damn business.”
“That whole family is nothing but trouble – ”
“This has nothing to do with you. It’s my life.”
He sighs. “I’m just looking out for you. You’ve worked so hard to put it all behind you – ”
“I have worked hard.” My lips are pressed so tight they feel numb. “To make this place less of a shitshow than it’s been in the past.”
“So why throw it away?” His voice is scratchy, like he’s about to cry, though I know he won’t. Therapy or no therapy. “Why tear it all down over one – ”
“Go to hell – ”
“I just mean…” He shakes his head. “You can find someone else, can’t you? There have to be others.”
“It wasn’t his fault!”
I’m loud enough that a few people turn to look at us, not bothering to pretend otherwise. My father’s repressed smile returns to his face as he gives them a two-fingered salute; they go back to their drinks and chips and their own business.
“Kurt’s not his brother,” I whisper sharply. “Or his parents. About time people acknowledged that around here.”
“I know I’ve messed up some,” he says, “but you make things so damn difficult for yourself. I’ll never understand it.”
“I guess not.” I get up from the booth and drop a twenty on the table. “It was good seeing you.”
“Son – ”
“I can’t make it.” I hate him and I’m desperate to see them all again, but I won’t back down. Not again. “Give Londra my love.”
He’s still talking, but I’m already walking away.
This too is the way of things.
*
Kurt sees me storming toward him and tosses his cigarette to the ground. It glows briefly in the dark before he crushes it with his heel.
I climb into the cab, digging in my pockets for the keys. He leans against the driver door and reaches inside, gently holding my wrist until I stop searching and go still. His expression is softer than I can handle and I pull my arm away, though not hard enough to break the contact between us.
Kurt’s six five and honey blonde and built like Jack Black with longer legs. He’s got a character actor’s face – one too broad for Hollywood but perfect for me. His hands are enormous, eclipsing mine, and I feel more secure in their grip than I’ll ever admit out loud.
“Hey.”
He leans in through the window and plants a slow kiss on my cheek, his stubble scratching against mine. I think about pulling away, saying something sarcastic to cut the tenderness. And then I just lean into it, resting the side of my face against his lips and jaw with my eyes closed.
“You want to go somewhere?” he says quietly against the skin of my cheek. “The lake?”
I like to park next to the marina sometimes in the private lot and watch the water. I’m surprised he noticed, but I shouldn’t be. He notices everything about me now, and he’s conscious about it, like he wants me to see him caring. I love it and I don’t know how to take it.
“Hey,” he says again. “I asked you a question.”
I sigh and lean back against the headrest, eyes still closed.
He kisses me briefly on the temple. “What’s going on in there?”
“Nothing,” I bite out. “It doesn’t matter.”
“You said you were gonna stop doing that.”
“I know, I just…” I risk opening my eyes, looking at him. “It seemed like things were getting better. A little bit. And now – ”
“What?”
“And now it’s back to the same old same old. Complaining about you. About us. He’s still hung up on all your family shit.”
Kurt lets out a short hum and then squeezes my hand. “So it’s not perfect – ”
“Let’s just go,” I blurt out. “To the lake, to the fucking moon, I don’t care.”
He gives my hand another squeeze.
“Alright then.”
He gets in the slams the passenger door shut. He brings our hands to his lips and kisses the back of mine, then rolls down his window to let in a breeze.
He’s old. That’s what struck me most when he first got back. We’re only thirty-five, but he could be fifty with the lines in his face. I’m only a little shorter than he is, a little fresher-faced, a little narrower, a little less imposing, but that little goes such a long way. I always did feel like a child around him, and now I guess I look like one, too. It feels crazy, resenting somebody for looking worse than me. But he’s lived more of life than I have – it was true when we were young and it’s still true. Now everyone can see it.
The road to the marina takes us southwest of town. It’s one of those evenings that’s so clear there’s still light on the horizon at ten at night, a fuzzy blue strip between the dark sky and the hilltops. The black road clings to those hills like a ribbon of cassette tape, freshly paved and painted and lit by nothing but our headlights and the moon.
“I’m all moved in. Finished up this afternoon.”
His mother had wanted him to move back in with her, said he needed to be with family after staying away for so long. Since Kurt’s brother Andrew had gone to prison, she’d been isolated, and not just from Kurt.
“How’s it feel?” The window is still down, and the wind blows his hair back from his forehead; I’d run my hands through it if they weren’t occupied. “Finally having your own place?”
He doesn’t answer right away, and I can hardly blame him. This is the first house anyone in his family has ever owned outright.
“I don’t know.” His face is impassive. “I just don’t know yet.”
“It’s not a crime, you know. Even if she was upset.”
He shifts in his seat. “Just didn’t realize how much I missed her until I got back. It was easier when I was all over wherever, you know. Didn’t have too much time to think about it.”
“Must have been nice.”
I didn’t mean for it to come out so bitter and I start to apologize.
“Don’t,” he says.
“I – ”
“I thought we agreed to be honest.”
The parking lot is empty, as far as I can see, so I don’t bother with finding a space; I just pull up to the edge of the pavement and throw the car in park. I can’t see the water once I cut the headlights, but I can hear it, lapping against the rocky shore just a few feet ahead.
“I know, but – ”
He opens the door and gets out. There are no lights on the marina – another thing the grant money can change, I hope – so he disappears into the darkness. I call after him, but he doesn’t answer, so I get out with the big flashlight I keep under the seat.
It doesn’t take long to spot him. He’s standing by another pickup that I recognize as his after I get closer.
“What the hell was that?”
He’s bent over the bed of the pickup, moving things around. “You’re doing it again,” he says.
“Doing what?”
“Lying.”
“Lying?”
“Lying.”
“What are you talking about?”
He drops something heavy onto the pavement and turns to face me.
“What the fuck are we doing here, Caleb?”
The words strike me with a force that’s nearly physical and I take a step back. The lines of his face are sharpened in the harsh light, his face fixed in a tired scowl. I fight to keep the flashlight steady, to keep my hands from shaking.
“What kind of question is that?”
“I mean,” he says pointedly, “that there’s no point to this if we’re just going to do the same old shit we used to do.”
“What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
He scoffs. “You don’t say what you mean, what you’re feeling.”
“I tell you how I feel all the time, I – ”
“You avoid things.”
“I avoid things?” The flashlight is shaking now and I don’t bother trying to make it stop. “I’m not the one who left!”
“And see, you told me you weren’t sore about that.”
“I’m…I understand why you did it, and I – ”
“I came back here after no word for almost twenty fucking years and you’re fine with it?”
“I missed you! I’m glad to see you again – ”
“I left you here, all alone, to deal with the fallout. Ignored your calls, your friend requests, all of it.” There’s an ache in his voice that tears me up to hear. “You’ve hardly had two words to say about it.”
“I don’t understand you want from me!”
“The truth,” he says.
“Fine!” The volume of my own words shocks me, but Kurt just looks resigned. “Everything went to hell, okay? Londra fled town! My own mother had to apologize to people when my name came up – ”
“I’m sorry – ”
“Had to go clear to Cleveland to do the grocery shopping for a while – ”
“I loved you – ”
“My dad wouldn’t even talk to me…”
The ridges on the flashlight are cutting into my palms, I’m holding on so tight. With the light shining into his face the way it is, I’m shrouded in darkness, and that’s where I stay, trying to get a hold of myself. For his part, he stands there, unflinching. So much has changed since the old days, but not that. He’s still a boulder on a mountainside.
“He was already pissed enough I was seeing you at all, but after…” I shake my head, take a few deep breaths. “Thank god we were out of school.”
“I loved you,” he repeats. “I hope you know that.”
We just stand there for a while. The light bounces all over the place as I shift the flashlight between my hands, throwing Kurt and then trees and then asphalt and then wood into high relief, like found-footage in a horror movie.
“People were…angry, you know.” I sound small. “About what Andrew did, and…”
“And?”
“I made them see that it was mostly an accident – ”
Kurt scoffs.
“It’s the truth.”
“He burned that place down. Folks died.”
“He was a kid, shit happens – ”
“Shit happens?” He shakes his head. “Is that what you said to people?”
“Not in so many words,” I mutter, “but yeah. People got over it, eventually. And…”
He narrows his eyes. “What?”
“They put Andrew away, you were gone, your mom skipped town for a while too, so people just chalked it up to…” I shrug, wanting to crawl out of my skin. “Your side of town. If you want to call it that.”
Back then, part of my attraction to Kurt had been my morbid fascination with his poverty and the life it afforded him. I felt bigger around him. It hadn’t mattered that he had a better relationship with his mother than I ever would with mine. I hadn’t had to feel bad or stupid or childish or petty that my father hardly seemed to know me, since Kurt hadn’t had a father at all. For once in my life, it had felt like I’d had an upper hand. The truth was that people had been a just bit too kind after it was all over and there was something disgusting about the way I’d been positioned after that fire – like I had driven some corrupting influence from town and set things right again. And I hadn’t argued with them. It hadn’t seemed like there was any point.
He nods slowly and turns away, dragging more things off the back of his pickup and dropping them on the ground.
“I know it isn’t right,” I start. “Wasn’t right. I should have – ”
“You got back problems?”
“What? No. Kurt, I – ”
He kicks off his shoes and climbs into the truck bed. There’s some kind of mattress-thing under him, and he pats the space beside him.
“Come on.”
I look around.
“Are you kidding?”
“Nope.”
“I’m the fire chief.”
He shrugs and leans back so that he’s resting on his elbows. “So you can get me out of the ticket, then.”
I climb awkwardly into the back of his truck, just the way I had when we had first started going around together. Not in an obvious way – I had been too much of a coward for that – but in an about-to-be-caught way that thrilled me. Kurt knew that – knew what I was like inside without having to ask. He’d do this thing sometimes where he’d ignore me in a group, mess around with others where I could see him. I’d have to catch him coming back from the bathroom or heading out to his car at the end of the night if I wanted any. He liked to force me to make the first move, knowing how much I wanted to do it and how hard I’d fight to keep my hands to myself. He might not have had a lot of power in his life, but he certainly had power over me.
“All grown up,” he mumbles into my ear. I kick my shoes off and relax into him. “And still a boy scout.”
He palms me gently through my jeans, chuckling when I thrust against him. It’s embarrassing, how hard I am, but that just makes it worse, makes me hungrier for him. His mouth moves down my neck and into the hollow of my shoulder, his hands tracing the contours of my body under my clothes like we’re seventeen again. It’s all I can do not to cry out, in pleasure but also in recognition. He knows me – all the places I’m ticklish and all the parts I’m ashamed of and the places where, if he strokes me just so, I’ll stop breathing and dig in my nails. I’ve had sex with a fair few people in my life, but with each of them I’ve had to map new terrain and learn new boundaries, figure out how to connect. But this isn’t like that. Fucking Kurt is being remembered, over and over again.
“Haven’t changed one bit,” he moans into my shoulder. “Still a little – ”
I go for his zipper with both hands. I curse myself again for not making the marina lights a priority; he has a gorgeous cock that’s it’s too dark to see properly. His hisses as I wrap my hand around it, run my thumb over the head. He collapses onto his back and I get between his legs, resting my elbows on either side of his hips.
“You were never too good at that,” he pants out. I can’t see his face, but the mischief in his voice tells me what expression would be there if I could. “Hope you’ve had some practice.”
A competitive zeal coils in my belly and brings a blush to my cheeks that I’m glad he can’t see. “Shut up.”
“Don’t want to hurt your feelings.” He runs a hand through my hair and pets my cheek. “Just saying.”
I run my tongue quickly from the base of his cock to the tip, my own cock twitching dangerously in my jeans. He shudders and breathes hard through his nose as I slip him into my mouth. His cock is heavy and stiff on my tongue and I wrap my hands around the section of his shaft that’s not in my mouth, squeezing.
“It’s okay if you can’t manage it, you know.” He painting and gripping the edge of the truck bed with his right hand. “Don’t want you to choke.”
His hips are bucking wildly now, and feeling how close he is, the slick warmth of his cock on my tongue and the roof of my mouth – it’s too much. It’s all too much. I pull back a little and start to speak when he erupts onto the edge of my tongue and my lips and chin with a powerful grunt. Feeling his cock twitching in my hands and his come coating fingers and face is overwhelming and I hardly have time to get my hand into my pants before I’m coming, too, my face pressed tightly against Kurt’s thigh.
He catches his breath before me, running his hands slowly through my hair.
“Should probably take those off,” he says. “I know what a mess you made in there.”
A moan escapes before I can stop it and my dick actually twitches again, even though I’m way past the age of the instant second round. I know my face must be beet red, but unzip and peel my pants and underwear off, throwing the latter in the corner of the truck bed. I go to put my jeans back on but Kurt snatches them from me and pulls me to him.
He presses his lips to the top of my head. “We look like a couple of Pooh bears.”
The crickets are loud and everywhere. Through the tree branches above us I can see the stars that are no longer visible from Main Street. His chest rises and falls under me; the hair there is like silk against my face.
“So much for not falling into old patterns.”
I expect him to laugh, but he freezes up instead, the hand that was playing in my hair falling still.
“I didn’t know where to go,” he says. “When I first left.”
He’s done this a few times in the months he’s been back – tried to talk about being gone. I saw this lizard in Texas once, almost as long as my arm, he’d say, or The whole forest is on fire out there, just miles and miles! Every single fucking year! He’d look at me, hopeful, and I’d look away and change the subject in a way I prayed seemed natural and not like the frightened dodge it was. But I’m tired of hiding from everything.
“Where…” I swallow. “Where’d you end up?”
There’s a pause before he starts, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing. Even this brief silence makes me feel ashamed of what a coward I’ve been. It’s all I can do not to apologize.
“Nowhere.” He sounds far away. “Just kept buying bus tickets. Finally ran out of money in Colorado.”
“Denver?”
“Colorado Springs.”
“Is that far from Denver?”
“‘Bout an hour on 25, not too far. But I stayed there for a while.”
I settle further into him, feeling a little like a kid during story time. I love and hate the feeling.
“Lived in a hallway house for a while, even though I wasn’t addicted to nothing. Guess I looked enough like I was that they let it slide.” He chuckles. “Or maybe they knew and let me stay anyway. Never asked ’em.”
It’s hard to imagine Kurt so down on his luck; he’s always seemed to me too together to ever end up in a place like that. But if the last few years have taught me anything, it’s that nothing’s like I thought it was, that almost nobody is who they say they are. Or at least, they’re not only who they say they are, and you usually don’t find out the rest until you’re in their house inspecting a fire extinguisher and they decide to unload on you.
I wonder briefly if Londra’s even been in a halfway house.
“It was kinda nice at first.” He shifts. “Must have been the off-season, or something. But then a bunch of guys showed up, rough guys. I…I didn’t sleep so good after they got there.”
“Bet not.” A truck with a bad muffler speeds along the road near the marina. “How’d you get out?”
“Thought about calling home asking for money,” he snorts, “but I couldn’t do that. I ended up getting a bartending job, and the owner let me stay above the place for basically free.” I feel him shake his head. “You should have seen everyone’s faces at the halfway house when I told them where was I working.”
If I was someone different, I’d have a story to tell him, too – something funny or interesting that happened to me since he’d left. But I can’t think of anything – nothing that could interest somebody who’s been outside of Greystone even once in their lives. All I’ve ever done is my job.
“So…” I swallow. “So you been bartending this whole time?”
“Some of it,” he says. “But mostly I did construction. Drove, too – over-the-road, local, you name it. Saved a lot of money, got to see the country. Met a lot of people.”
The stab of jealousy is irrational, I know that, but there it is, sitting between my lungs. I know we’ve been apart for most of our lives, and neither of us are choir boys, but it’s different, hearing it straight from him. Not just about the other lovers, but the other lives he’s he had, away from me, beyond me.
“I tried, you know,” he says. “To forget you. Every year I’d say, this is the year I grow up and move ahead. This is the year I settle down and start making a life. But I just…”
“Yeah,” I say after a beat. “Me neither.”
Another truck passes, this one much larger, and eighteen-wheeler from the sound of it. I wonder where it’s going, who’s driving. How long they’ve been gone. If they have anywhere to be gone from.
“You believe in destiny?”
The question catches me off-guard. “I don’t know. Don’t think too much about it, I guess.”
“It’s just…that day. At the beach, that party. When we met.”
“What about it?”
“I wasn’t supposed to be there,” he says. “I was supposed to be home.”
“That’s usually the case with teenage parties.”
“I mean it.” I can feel him looking down at me in the dark. “I’m being serious.”
“What are you saying?”
“I could have been anywhere,” he says. “I didn’t even feel like partying that night. I almost drove right past. But I saw my friend’s truck, and I thought I’d stop in and say hey. I never did shit like that.”
“What, you think we’re written in the stars or something?”
“I love you.” He kisses me hungrily. “Never saying goodbye to you again.”
We don’t come up for air for almost half an hour, but when we do he keeps a tight grip on me, like he’s afraid I’ll evaporate. Until he came back I hadn’t realized how much I missed this feeling, that I was wanted. That someone couldn’t get by without me. It’s selfish, I know, wanting someone to need me so much, but I don’t even apologize for it in my own head this time. For once, I have exactly what I want when I want it.
“You should talk to him,” he says. “Your father.”
“I have talked to him.”
“You know what I mean.”
“There’s no point, Kurt. This is as good as it gets.”
“Sure, with that attitude.”
“What do you see happening?” I’m too tired of it all to be angry. “Him suddenly changing everything about who he is? We all do a big group hug and then we’re the Brady Bunch?”
He sighs.
“I’m just saying…you want to go see them all, don’t you?”
“I want a lot of things.”
“You’re worried about him.”
“I’m not.”
“Come on, now.”
“He’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
He shifts uncomfortably under me. “I used to say that shit too, you know. About Andrew.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“I wanted to avoid the problem. Hoped it would all sort itself out.”
“None of that was your fault, you – ”
“He had a problem. Always did.”
“What are you talking about?” The crickets to our right go quiet; some other ones start up further away. “He was a little grouchy, but – ”
“That wasn’t the first fire he set. Used to do it all the time. Drove our mama clear out of her mind.”
“He’s responsible for his own shit, Kurt. It’s wasn’t your problem.”
“Nobody’s problem now,” he says bitterly. “He’s dead.”
The lake water still laps gently against the rocks. The nearby crickets start up again, their chirps layering over each other until they form a singular scream, loud even against the roar of nighttime insects in the surrounding trees.
“What?”
“Last year.” His voice is quiet, the words mumbled. “He got ahold of some pantyhose. They don’t know how.”
Neither of us speaks for a while. It feels to me like Kurt is holding his breath, so I try to hold mine too.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. It’s inadequate. Pathetic compared to the weight of everything. “I didn’t know. I’m real sorry.”
He suddenly squeezes me in his arms with a ferocity that startles me. There are no gasping sobs, no moaning; he’s like a statue, gripping me with all the force he can muster. We lay there that way, my skin going numb under his fingers, until he sighs with his whole body and lets me go a little.
“He needed help.” His voice is raw but not weak. “He needed help and I just left him flailing.”
“You loved him – ”
“Will you shut up and let me talk?”
He tilts my chin up and kisses me sweetly on the mouth, lingering over my bottom lip. It’s the kind of kiss we never shared before he left, contented and free of ambivalence. I can’t bear for it to end, so I move closer when he seems to pull away.
“The point is,” he says against my lips, “go see your daddy.”
I want to explain to him that it won’t matter. That even if they get over Kurt there’s a million and one things between us that can’t be gotten rid of, can’t be fixed. I want to tell him that I don’t need any of them. That it’s only with him that I feel like I matter at all.
“I’ll think about it,” I say instead.
*
We’d met at a fire. It hadn’t seemed like fate at the time, but maybe Kurt’s right, and it was.
The lake in Greystone is surrounded by houses and private docks; some guy was having a party at his parents’ summer house. Mostly college kids on fall break, plus a bunch of locals. There was a bonfire on the beach and everyone sat around it, not quite drunk enough to start dancing to the music that was blasting from the speakers on the deck behind us.
“Bud Light too cheap for you?”
He was standing behind me, resting the cold bottle on my shoulder. I took it without turning around and cracked it open. Bud Light really was too cheap for me, but no way was I going to admit that to him.
I’d seen him in town and he’d seen me, though we hadn’t met. He was doing construction – among other things – for a friend of my dad’s for a month or two and I’d see him around, standing on poorly-constructed scaffolding, drilling things, putting up sheetrock. We’d made eye contact on more than one occasion and I guess he was tired of waiting for me to make a move.
“No,” I said. “Just not my favorite, you know.”
“It’s nobody’s fucking favorite.” He dropped into a deck chair beside me. “It’s just everywhere. So you drink it.”
He had a cigarette in his mouth; ash dropped occasionally onto his old jeans. He wore a t-shirt with a faded logo I couldn’t read.
“Right.”
He took a swig, resting the cigarette on the arm of the chair.
“Your daddy’s the one who runs the sports clinic place, right?”
“Not really. He’s a physical therapist, so he just works there.”
“Mmm. My brother went to him for a while after he broke his leg one season.”
“Is he doing better now?”
He shrugged.
“I’m Caleb,” I said. “But you probably already know that, I guess.”
“Kurt,” he said.
“Good to meet you, Kurt.”
We didn’t speak for a while, just watched the others. Some of them were swimming, doing laps across the lake; others were just splashing around and laying on beach towels they’d brought down from the house. I knew a few of them, and I’d wave or tip my bottle when they gestured at me from out on the water. There were a few couples, all men and women, but I knew if anyone gay had shown up, it would have been mostly alright. There were folks here who wouldn’t have liked it, but they also wouldn’t have said so. Things were changing in Greystone, even back then, and everyone could sense it.
“This your usual crowd?”
“Yeah? I mean, I guess. I’ve known Rodney” – I pointed him out on the water – “for a few years. We went to high school together. And that’s Carlie, and Rosemary, her sister. They lived next door to me for a while.” I take a swig. “We were kids back then, though. Haven’t seen them in a long time.”
“Sure ain’t kids no more.”
I laughed. “Nope.”
“You come out here for them?”
He was peering at me over the top of his bottle; it was resting against his lip and the mouth of it fogging up in the chilly air. He held my gaze and didn’t waver, didn’t look away.
“I did,” I say, shrugging. “But things don’t always go the way you plan, you know.”
“Heh,” he said. A slow grin spread over his face before he took another drink. “I hear that.”
Everyone came running back to the beach, responding to some call I hadn’t heard. The guy who threw the party came down from the deck with a tray of hot dogs and some stronger drinks. They dropped into seats around the fire, some tossing in logs, others just grabbing hot dogs and digging in, about thirty of us in all. Their liquor had started to take effect; they were loud and full of laughter and stories. Kurt and I were hardly noticed at all – hardly anyone knew him and almost everyone knew I was quiet as a church mouse at parties.
Somebody arranged a game of King’s cup; we played two rounds according to the rules and then things descended into chaos. I watched Kurt in a manner I hoped was surreptitious as he flirted with the girls. Nobody took Kurt seriously – nobody I knew ever took people from his side of town seriously unless they were selling drugs – but he wasn’t kidding. I know he wasn’t, because he kept looking over at me as they pawed at each other, her on his lap leaning back to kiss him on the cheek, his fingers playing with the frayed edge of what passed for a dress, and me transfixed, knowing I couldn’t stand up in the condition I was in.
I wasn’t surprised by my attraction to him as much as the power of it, the irrepressibility. I’d
never been baited in such a way, never faced such an open seduction. I was intoxicated.
That’s when he had me, I think, when I look back on it all. That’s when I knew I’d found
something worth chasing.
*
Londra’s older than me, but you wouldn’t know it to look at her. Her hair is as dark as mine, only she covers her grays. We’re at the new coffee shop in town – under the new apartments and across from the new dog groomer. She’s inherited the disdainful look on her face from our grandmother, who never saw anything she couldn’t find a reason to curl her lip at. I’ve missed her dearly.
“You didn’t tell me this place was turning into Portland,” she says.
My coffee is finally cool enough to drink. “It’s called development.”
I haven’t seen her in a few years. She’s thin. Her clothes cost more, but she’s wearing sunglasses and a lot of makeup. It’s not that her relapse shows all that much on her body – at least not anywhere that I can see – but it’s in her posture, the lag in her gestures, her ever-so-slightly delayed responses to my questions. It explains why she hadn’t had anything new to say to our father when he called, why she spun that yarn about a job she’d long since lost.
“I saw an artisanal soda shop where the cleaners used to be.”
“The cleaners have moved to a larger place, thanks to new business,” I say pointedly, “and that soda shop also sells chew and cigarettes.”
She knocks on the table. “Some stains you just can’t get out of the bowl, I guess.”
I can’t see her eyes but I know she’s staring into space, finger tapping on the table under her hand.
Main Street is busier than it was on her last visit. There are students on laptops all around us – the college a few towns over has really raised the profile of their online classes. The locals put in their appearance, too, wandering past in work uniforms and jeans distressed by wear and use rather than style. The grocery store on the corner is twice the size it used to be, and there are four gas stations now instead of one.
The town center is right on the edge of the lake. Unlike a lot of places, where the rich folks live in the hills and everyone else fits in where they can lower down, the money is right on the water. Not just in the big houses that have their own docks – even the smallest little nooks with a view are occupied by the retired doctors and lawyers and folks with businesses that are impossible to describe to anybody not in the same field. The laborers live in the hills for the most part, in trailer parks and little houses that are effectively hidden by the trees when you look from a distance. Downtown Greystone was gentrified before it was cool; only the hipsters are new.
“Your place has at least a roof, doesn’t it?”
She smiles ruefully at me. I once found her strung out in a house that lacked one. It had at least been summertime.
“Yeah,” she said. “Temporary setback. Nothing to worry too much about.”
It’s hard to know whether to believe her. There was a time when I could tell if she was lying, but those days are over. Growing up we’d shielded each other from our parents’ wrath and disappointment. When Daddy was drunk and needed dragged up to bed or our mother disappeared for a few weeks and the washing needed doing, we were all we had. But I was the only one who held up my end of the deal in the end. She’d traded me in for meth not long after Kurt skipped out on me.
“You ready for this dinner?”
Just talking about it makes me tighten up. My father’s been calling – he’s left several timid yet adversarial voicemails – but I’m holding the line. Kurt rolls his eyes when he catches me.
“Same old Daddy, huh?”
It’s a hard question to answer, so I think on it. Londra seems to understand.
“Not really,” I say finally. “He’s trying. Talks less about how much he wishes I…” I shrug. “Wishes I was seeing someone else.”
“You seeing somebody? Tell me it’s not one of these college kids.”
“No,” I say with a chuckle. “No, it’s uh…it’s Kurt.”
“Kurt? Kurt Roscoe?”
“Mmm hmm.”
“When did he get back?” She shakes her head. “Too many people in this town now, I tell you what. Nobody told me a damn thing.”
“Few months ago. Don’t know how many people know yet.”
She pulls a stick of gum from her purse. “Bet Daddy loved that.”
“You know, he actually asked me out loud to date some other guy, if you can believe it.”
Her chuckle fades into a sigh. She pops the gum in her mouth, twiddles the wrapper between her fingers. “He could have a point, you know.”
I look sharply at her but she doesn’t react.
“It’s been years, Caleb. He hasn’t even spoken to you since he left, has he?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“I know that. I was here, remember?”
“You were a little preoccupied, though, weren’t you?” I’ve had all I’m prepared to take of people questioning me about Kurt. “Surprised you even remember him.”
“Oh, cut it out.” I can feel her rolling her eyes even though I can’t see them. “What do you even have in common anymore?”
“The same stuff we always had in common.”
“Nothing, then?”
“I love him.” I take a long drink of coffee. “Have for a long time.”
“You’re in love with a ghost.”
“He’s a real person, and he’s actually fucking here.”
I’m whisper-yelling, and I can tell that she’s taken aback by the outburst. It’s not something I would have done even six months ago, much less the last time I saw her. Wrinkles appear on her lips as she purses them.
“Is that all it takes?”
“Fuck you. You don’t get to leave me here with all this…” I gesture at the air around me. “And then come back and lecture me about a goddamn thing – ”
“It’s not a lecture, I’m just saying that – ”
“I don’t give a shit, Londra, you’re high as a fucking kite right now and I don’t have to – ”
“Of course you want to throw that in my face, always do – ”
“Maybe if you’d fucking listen for a change, I wouldn’t need to keep – ”
“Whatever.” She laughs bitterly. “Throw your life away. It’s up to you.”
“You sure have, so I don’t know what the fuck you think you know about keeping your life together.”
“I know Roscoe’s bad news.”
“It’s been seventeen years!”
“I can count – ”
“Life went on without you, Londra, we didn’t all just freeze while you were galivanting around.”
“If you say so, you’re the expert – ”
“He sees me.” I spit. “Who am I now. Not just who I was back then. Which is more than I can say for you.”
She falls silent. After a moment, she reaches into her bag and reapplies her lipstick, not bothering with a mirror. I rub my fingers in my eyes and take a few deep breaths. God only knows why I get so riled up; this is just how talking goes in our family. Thought I was used to it, but since me and him got back together, I don’t know. Feels like it’s all about to explode.
Kurt says I hide how I feel, but that’s bullshit. Truth is, nobody listens.
“How’s all that going, by the way?” she asks after a long moment. “The fire chief stuff?”
“It’s going.”
It’s the same story all over town – people did what they had to do to make ends meet and hadn’t had the money for professional work. Now, even with money flowing again, it’s hell trying to bring them all into compliance. Everyone got used to getting by on a wing and a prayer and now nobody wants to bother doing things the right way. A lot of folks have left this town for a lot of reasons, and if we want to be the kind of place people stay, some stuff has got to change.
She snorts. “What about the politician part of it?”
People like to get intimate with public figures. They feel like you’re some kind of therapist or guru when you have a uniform, and they want to tell you all about the problem with government and their marriage and the mold in their basement and all the other gay people they’ve ever met. I’d hated it at first, all these people who felt like I owed them because they paid my salary. But after a while I started to see things differently.
“People give a damn what I say,” I tell her. “I matter to somebody.”
A long moment passes before she replies. She starts and stops a few times before she sighs and pats my hand awkwardly before taking it in hers and squeezing.
“I’m glad,” she says. A deep melancholy settles into her voice. “I’m happy for you.”
She falls silent again, lets my hand go. Someone speeds past on a bike, narrowly missing a pedestrian. The barista shouts out names behind me. I want to apologize, but I stop myself. I got nothing to be sorry for. Let someone else make something up to me for once.
“You think you’ll survive Thursday?”
She shrugs. “Survived everything else.”
It’s not that simple. He’s making a lot of hay about this dinner, and neither of us knows the reason. I don’t know what I’ll do if something’s wrong with him. What Londra will do.
“I asked around,” I say. “Nobody’s heard anything.”
She nods.
*
It’s Friday.
Kurt’s place is nice in a fresh-out-of-the-box kind of way – new vinyl, new wood, new style. Whole neighborhood is like that, nestled between the boat club and a Christmas tree farm. The houses are ultramodern block-and-glass constructions that contrast sharply with the lush woodland around them. They make me think of knives.
I’m sitting on the rocking bench he has out front. It’s cold. The whole property is covered in fallen leaves and pine needles; he tries to keep the slab of concrete he calls a porch clear by sweeping it every morning, but it’s littered again before noon. The next house over seems mighty close, but Kurt doesn’t mind. After so long with no real home at all, I think he likes having neighbors in sight.
I hardly hear him approach before his arms are looped around my neck. The bench groans under our combined weight as he leans over me, kissing me slowly on the cheek.
“Hi,” he says.
It’s not even noon. He works construction so his hands are covered in sawdust and all kinds of other grime. He smells like freshly cut wood, oil, metal. I just got done showering so I probably smell like dish soap, which is what I used since he was all out of body wash.
“Hi.”
“You smell nice.” It’s more of a groan than it is a set of words. “I ever tell you that?”
“You don’t have to.” He runs his tongue along the outside of my ear; I lean into it. “Everybody loves the smell of Dawn in the morning.”
He chuckles, but there’s strain in his voice from bending over. His back and shoulders give him a lot of trouble. “They sent us home early. Lumber’s late coming in.”
“Mmm.” A bird calls loudly somewhere behind us; there’s no answer. “Wondered what the hell you were doing here.”
I turn and kiss him on the mouth before standing up. He huffs a complaint as I pull away from him and slip back into the house, the floor cold under my bare feet.
There’s not much in the way of décor. He’s never been one for the kind of art that goes on a wall, so they’re bare except for the taupe paint the house came with. There are tools everywhere in all kinds of bags and boxes and containers; I don’t know what half of them are for, and I’m pretty handy. An enormous sectional takes up too much of the living room; we almost have to climb over it to reach the patio door. The one time I had the gall to suggest getting a smaller one he said we were done if I ever mentioned it again.
The television is massive, too, almost seventy inches, and Kurt loves every single one of them, watching movies and soap operas and Netflix shows at maximum volume even when I’m trying to sleep, shaking my leg when a house explodes or someone gets betrayed, wide eyed and joyful talking back, like he and the actors are making the movie together. Right now there’s a slideshow playing, a grinning Kurt surrounded by people and places I don’t recognize.
“That’s Kentucky,” he says. On the screen there’s a picture of a truck in the side of a highway; behind it there’s a mountain covered in trees. “Fall. Favorite drive in the country, hands down.”
Arms snake around my waist as he pulls me back against him, kissing my shoulder, my neck, my ear. The picture fades into another, this one of Kurt posing with two diner waitresses in front of a booth. He looks happy.
I place my hands over his, not sure what else to do with them. “You’ve been so many places.”
“Hmmm.” He’s nibbling on my ear now. “Been through a lot of places, a lot of different times. Not quite the same.”
“Better than me,” I mutter.
“How do you figure?”
“You’re telling me you’d rather be stuck in a place like this?”
“Are you stuck here?”
“I…” I bite my lip and try to keep my breathing regular, even as my eyes start to sting. “I don’t know, I – ”
“You’re not.” He’s resolute. “We can go anywhere you want, Caleb. You could have gone anywhere you wanted to, anytime. But I don’t…” He sighs. “I don’t think you wanted to, baby.”
I scoff.
“You don’t need to be ashamed of that.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“You are so fucking hard on yourself.” He squeezes me tighter. “I don’t pretend to understand it. We’re different people. But you wouldn’t be so miserable if you weren’t always…measuring yourself. You know?”
“I’m not miserable.”
He sighs. “Maybe miserable is too strong. But you’re unhappy a lot of the time. And I thought at first it was because you were still mad that I’d ditched you, and maybe it is because of that, a little bit. I just wish I knew what to do.”
“It’s not your fault.” I take a deep breath. “It’s just…everything.”
“What’s everything?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
“It’s stupid. None if it is even that big of a problem, not like other people have – ”
“Again with the measuring.”
“It’s true – ”
“Don’t worry about how big of a problem it is. Just say it.”
I chuckle and rest against him, glad we’re not facing each other. “Things used to be better. Or seemed like they were better.”
“Better how?”
“Simpler.” I bite my lip. “Around the time we met. We were hanging around together, so that was exciting. My family, we were…we all still lived together. Saw each other every day.”
“Okay,” he says. “What else?”
“Just seemed like…I was more sure of things. Felt like I knew what was gonna happen to me, or what could happen, at least. I knew where I was going, who might be coming with me.”
“And now?”
“Now…I lost you. Lost Londra. My parents are gone – ”
“Oh, they are not gone, Caleb.”
“Not physically.”
“And what are you gonna do about that?” he says shortly.
“I don’t know.”
“I’m back now,” he says. “You got me, and I ain’t going nowhere again. Might take some time for you to believe that, but still. Here I am, every day.”
“Yeah…”
“Your sister has her own shit to deal with, might not be around for a while yet. You can’t control that, so stop fretting over it.”
“That’s – ”
“Your daddy’s been begging to talk to you for a while, says your mama wants to see you, too. Looks to me like you’re the one who’s in your own way.”
“I hardly know my mom, and dad just wants to get rid of you.” I close my eyes. “That’s the only thing he’s interested in, his image in this town. Doesn’t care about me at all.”
“You care about your image, too” he says with a laugh. “It ain’t just your daddy.”
“What? No I don’t, I – ”
“Baby, it’s not a bad thing.”
“I am not like that – ”
“You’re a small-town fire chief. You saved a kid from a fire when you were just a trainee – hell, you been running around checking smoke detectors in folks’ houses! People like you, respect you. It’s okay to want that.”
“That’s not how it is.” I turn my head and speak over my shoulder. “It’s not who I am.”
“No wonder you two fight all the time – ”
“I wouldn’t be dating you if all I cared about is what other people think of me,” I bite out. “But I guess it’s good to know you think I’m so shallow.”
“Are you even listening to me? It’s not shallow to take yourself seriously. It’s not shallow to want to make a difference. I like it – ”
“Sure.” I shake my head. “Sure you do.”
“You’re not sixteen anymore, Caleb.” His voice is stern. “Enough pouting. Things aren’t the way you want ’em and they’re never gonna be the way you want ’em if you don’t make it happen. We’re not that young. We’re all gonna be dead one day, you know that?”
The silence swells between us; he finally gives a dismissive snort.
“It hasn’t always been easy to look back over stuff I’ve done and said to folks I love.” His voice catches. “And the stuff and haven’t done or said. But you can’t go back, you can just go forward and try to make the life you want now.”
“You been in therapy, too?” I mutter.
“Not exactly,” he says. “But maybe you should consider it before mouthing off about it. Seems like you could use a little perspective in your life.”
He lets me go. I hear him pad his way up the stairs and close a door.
*
Our first shower together was at the town pool. Kurt got the keys from somewhere – he had a knack for getting things he shouldn’t have had – and told me to meet him there after school. I was close to graduating and he had dropped out, and everything felt so dangerous, so wild in the best possible way. It was only a few weeks before Andrew’s fire, and my whole world was Kurt. Seemed then like that was all my life ever would be made of, which sounded fine to me.
The water pressure was a joke and there was hardly space for the two of us in the stall, but there was light from high windows and the door was locked. The world was ours. It wasn’t the first time we’d had sex, but it was the first time we’d been so intimate, and in my memory the orgasms hardly register beside my caressing of his wide back, the shape of his hip, the corded muscles of his lower legs. He studied my collarbones and my hands and my jawline like he’d never seen them before and might never again. He stood back and asked me to get under the shower, meager as it was. Said he wanted to watch the water run over me.
Now the shower in the hall bath is running. I’m peering in through the cracked door, watching his blurred form move behind the frosted glass. He’s covered in soap.
I walk in and peel out of my clothes. He doesn’t like the water as hot as I do – never has – so I know I won’t get scalded when I climb inside. He’s facing the showerhead. His back is meatier now, softer, less chiseled than when we were young. There are scars there I haven’t yet asked about; he grunts when he has to lift his arms too high. He leans with his hand pressed against the wall to his right for balance while he reaches for the Dawn dish soap. Water beads up in the hair on his shoulders.
“Are you really going to use that?”
“You did.” He adjusts the pressure from the showerhead, slowing it. “Besides, I’ve used worse.”
My hands graze his hip, his ass, the flesh of his waist. “Like what?”
“Used that soapy steel wool one time,” he says. Chuckles, then gasps as I reach around the front of him. “Didn’t feel like getting out of the shower to grab the regular soap under the sink.”
“Lazy.” I sound drunk. His cock is soft under my hands. “Must have cut your skin up.”
“Mmm.” He sighs as pull him against me, my cheek resting against the top of his shoulder. “Well, exfoliating is good, ain’t it? I was just ahead of my time.”
The hair in his thighs is coarser than the hair on his chest and catches my nails. The skin underneath has the deep and permanent redness of repeated sunburns; his muscles are taut and unyielding.
He caresses my forearm, fingers the large shiny patch on the underside.
“Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore,” I tell him. “And it wasn’t too bad. Small price to pay.”
A sewing shop caught fire a few months ago – electrical – and I’d been burned dragging out the woman who owned it. I wasn’t in full gear. She lived above the store, took some sleeping pills and so didn’t hear the alarm. I hadn’t noticed my burn until the fire was out and we were back at the small station. I was trying to slip out of my undershirt and I couldn’t seem to get my arm out of it. The sleeve was burned to my skin.
He turns in my arms and looks me in the face, the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth catching water. “I love what you do, but I don’t like that part,” he says. “I worry about it. About you.”
I rest my chin on his shoulder. “Hardly the worst squeeze I’ve ever been in.”
“Not making me feel any better, here.”
“You know how important it is.” The water is hitting me straight on and it’s impossible to keep my eyes open. “To the town. To me.”
“You’re what’s important to me.”
“Your job is dangerous, too. You gonna quit?”
He grumbles something I can’t hear.
“Eventually,” he says finally. “Hell, it ain’t gonna be up to me. Shit’s rough on the body. Already look ten years older than I am. Feel twenty years older – ”
I pull his head toward me and kiss him, hold on hand against the curve of his skull and slide the other around his waist, up his back. One of us opens his mouth and there aren’t any more words, only kissing, groping, stroking. He turns to face the knobs and shower head again, leaning against the wall. We don’t have any lube in hear, but precum can be enough if I use his too.
It’s slow going, hard to hold back listening to the sounds he makes while I’m entering him, but when I’m all the way in he makes this sound like he’s crying and starts fucking me back, using the wall for leverage. He lifts a leg and puts his foot on the soap holder so I can get in deeper, and our grunts and cries echo around the bathroom, and with my arms gripping him and all the steam around us and my cock being squeezed so tight I think I might pass out from the pleasure of it. Like our hearts might stop dead in their tracks and send us floating away.
*
Kurt has glowing stars on his ceiling. Says he always wanted them when he was a kid, and now that all the money he has belongs to him, he’ll do what he wants with it. They’re only faintly glowing because he forgot to open the window so they could get sunlight, but I can still see them. He’s laid across me, cheek against my chest.
“I don’t care that much what people think,” I tell him quietly. “I just want people to respect me.”
“Mmmm.”
“And that’s not the same as him. He wants full-on approval. Applause.”
“I understand,” he says. “I’m sorry I said that. Before. That you were like him.”
“Yeah, well…still might be a little like him. Just not the same.”
He plants a loud kiss on my chest then lays back down. “We all turn into our parents in the end, maybe. At least a little bit.”
“You’re not like your parents.”
He snorts. “I’m just like my mama,” he says. “Reckless. Less than I used to be, but still.”
“I don’t think you’re that reckless.”
“You think all these scars I got came from following the rules? The other guys learned early on to steer clear of me when I’m swinging a hammer or a saw or something.”
“Bold. That’s what you are.”
“Yeah.” He shifts. “I like that, that makes it sound better.”
The roar of insects floats in through the open window.
“What about your dad?”
“What about him? Never met him, you know that.” He laughs. “My mama was reckless, remember.”
“That doesn’t bother you? You don’t care?”
“Caleb…” he sighs. “I never saw much good in worrying about shit I can’t change. I won’t say I never wondered about him, but he ain’t here. This is the life I got. I’ll do what I can with that.”
“Wish I was like that.”
“Everybody can’t be like that,” he mutters. “Wouldn’t be any soap operas if they were.”
“I guess.”
“And maybe…” Hesitation, then a sigh. “Andrew might have turned out different. If there was somebody given to fretting in our house.”
I stroke his hair.
“Guess we’ll never know.”
My phone is alight on the table beside the bed, charging. The unanswered calls from my parents, mostly my father, piling up, condemning me every time I pick up the thing. Kurt sees me looking.
“Getting down to the wire,” he says.
“Yeah.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Can’t we just go to your mom’s house?”
“My mom’s gone, went to visit her people in Tennessee.”
“We can go there, then!”
“Caleb.”
“I want to go.” I sigh deeply. “Not sure if I should.”
“What are you so worried will happen? Worst case you’re in the same place you are now.”
“They weren’t there for me when I really needed them.” I try not to sound as bitter as I feel. “Not just the Andrew stuff, even after that, they just…I never get what I need. Don’t want to bring all that up again.”
“Do they know what you want from ’em?”
“It’s obvious.”
“Still.”
“I shouldn’t have to tell them, they should know.”
“They should,” he says. “But maybe they don’t.”
“So…what? I just go beg them to love me right?” I bite my lip. “Hope they’ll be gracious enough to pay me the favor?”
“Maybe less begging, more regular talking.” He drags the covers up over us both. “We didn’t give Andrew what he needed cause we didn’t know what it was. I like to think if he talked to us we’d have listened.”
“It’s not the same. He was the kid.”
“I know,” he whispers, “but you gotta start somewhere.”
I squeeze my phone to turn the backlight off. The shapes in the room grow fuzzy as my eyes adjust. The ceiling stars keep glowing.
*
The house is the same as when I left it, which makes things worse somehow. Like I’ve gone back in time.
It’s a ranch style house, brick with decorative siding around the windows and pumpkins on the porch. Londra’s car is in the driveway beside the old SUV my dad bought when we were in high school. Another car – new, but with front-end damage – is probably my mom’s. While we’re walking up the front steps I wonder if she’s still on the pills, if that accident involved any body bags, but I know it’s ridiculous. She’s got so many DUIs she’d be in prison if she even breathed near the scene of a crash that killed somebody.
My father’s the one who greets us at the door, looking ambivalent. There are handshakes and how-you-been and I’ve-got-that and really-it’s-no-trouble and if-you-insist and then we’re all seated, in the room where we ate a thousand quiet dinners and said a few loud goodbyes. Even the centerpiece is the same, leftover from my parents’ wedding, a lifetime ago.
My mom looks okay – less tailored than she had in previous years, but also less tired around the eyes, less bedraggled. Everyone’s talking. Londra is mostly sober, and I get the feeling sitting here that she and Mom have been getting together without me. My dad is alive and animated and interested, and he and my mother look like two people who like each other’s company. I stare at them all while we eat like they might disappear, like I might be dreaming.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I hear myself say.
Kurt’s squeezes my hand under the table and doesn’t let go right away, a worried frown on his face. Conversation pauses for a moment and everyone looks at me like they’re expecting me to make a speech.
“I’ll be right back, everyone.” A laugh escapes me. “It’s just down the hall.”
There’s reluctance in the loosening of his grip, but eventually I can slide my hand out and turn my back on them. I pass one bathroom and go into the one at the back of the house, the one attached to a bedroom that used to be mine. I lock the bathroom door on the hallway side before going through.
It’s not like I haven’t been back to the house or anything. I’ve visited quite a few times some years – Christmas, his birthday, mine. Came to help build a storage shed one summer. To clear the driveway the year my he threw his back out. To buff the wood floors. To paint. And we talked. Or…we said words to each other, at least. So I’ve been back. But I’ve never come home.
“Messy, I know,” he says from the doorway. “Haven’t moved much, though.”
He’s wearing a plaid shirt, long-sleeved, tucked in at the waist, khaki pants. Still has his hair, mostly gray now, but full, cut in the same style he’s had since I can remember. Looking at him, I can see myself – in the corner of his eyes, his hands. His ears. Before, I would avoid looking to closely at him, like I could avoid ending up like him if I didn’t see the resemblance. But no. Here I am, like him, in big and small ways.
“Yeah.” There’s an old textbook on top of the book case and I reach up and grab it so I’ll have something in my hands. It’s American history. Middle school. “Should have cleaned up a little before I left, huh?”
He closes the door behind him; there’s a familiar click and then he’s right next to me. “You used to do this a lot, you know. When you were small.”
“What?”
“Leave in the middle of dinner, or a TV show.” He chuckles. “Always said you had to go to the bathroom, always found you in here, usually asleep.”
“I was never really in the bathroom?”
“Not once,” he says. “Not once.”
I have to laugh. I forgot about that, and I can’t exactly remember it now, but I can feel the truth in his words. It’s always shocking to me, to realize that someone’s been paying attention, that other people see me even when I’m not trying to show them anything.
“Guess we better get back then.” I turn toward the door, book still in my hands. “Don’t want to fall asleep in here.”
“You trust him?”
I freeze.
“I’m not going to do this,” I say slowly.
“I asked you a question – ”
“Yes.” My voice is cold. “Yes.”
He sighs. “Don’t know how.”
“I know you don’t, you – ”
“He just up and left right in the middle of it.”
“He – ” I take a deep breath. “I don’t have to do this with you, I don’t need – ”
“You never want to look at a thing like it is, do you?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You act like everybody’s crazy for saying it, for pointing out that that man abandoned you after he made that mess – ”
“It wasn’t him – ”
“Your mother used to pull that crap too, remember.” His tone is dark and flat. He’s not looking at me. “Had all kinds of bullshit excuses. It was a nightmare, trying to figure out what to tell you kids about her little disappearing acts. I don’t even think she was on drugs back then, she – ”
“Well you’re back with her.” I try to keep my voice even. “Even after all that. You’re back together. So why can’t I be back with Kurt?”
“I just want you to know what you’re in for. It’s not easy, going back after all that. It’s work. Now from what Kurt tells me, he’s done some of that work on his own, but you – ”
“From what Kurt tells you?” My voice is raised. “When did Kurt ever tell you goddamn thing?”
“I saw him at the practice, he came in for his back.”
“You – ”
“Goddamn right I did.” He snorts. “I told him to leave you the fuck alone, that you’d already been through enough, that you couldn’t take anymore fucking heartbreak.”
“You had no right.” My eyes are full of tears. “You had no right – ”
“I don’t care.” He puts his hand in the crook of my elbow, squeezing. “I don’t give a damn.”
“It’s fine…” I inhale and hold it for a long time, holding the book too tight. “I’m fine.”
“Nothing’s fine, none of us are fine,” he says. “Not me, not your Mom, not Londra, not Kurt, and definitely not you. But they can be fine. If we all work at it.”
I wipe my cheeks and nod vigorously, shaking it off. “Yeah,” I hear myself say. “Yeah, okay.”
He opens the door to the room, heading out, but then he turns to look at me, a dozen expressions on his face. He’s apologizing. I can’t imagine the words in his head but I can feel it across the room, wafting at me like incense smoke. I breathe in as much as I can before it’s gone.
He leaves the door cracked a little, so I can hear the bouncing conversation they’re having at the table about boats and fishing in the ocean. There’s a brief quiet, and then Kurt says is everything okay and my dad says not on your life and I hear Kurt stand, hear his chair scrape the floor and then my dad says I wouldn’t, let him be, he just needs a minute. Let him be.