Authors: Renee Manfredi
“What if I asked you to stay? What would you say?”
“Stay for how long?” Stuart asked.
“Forever,” Jack said. “Just stay here with me and Anna and her family. Our family. You can’t imagine how happy I am here. Who would have thought. Everything is simple here. Slowed and clarified. I’m hardly ever lonely.”
“Don’t be stupid, Jack. You know I can’t stay here. Besides, you don’t want me here. You didn’t want me when you had me.”
Jack fell silent then said quietly, “You have no idea, Stuart. No idea what you have meant to me. It’s always been you. You brought me to the best part of myself. I was a fool not to believe that sooner.” It was too late now, he knew, too late for Stuart to believe him. Jack pulled Stuart close to him again, inhaled his milky-white clean smell, the garden of his hair, and his rain-scented skin. He wanted just once more, just one more time with Stuart.
“Anyway, it’s no good talking of these things now,” Stuart said. “It’s all philosophical at this point. I’m with someone.”
“Well,” Jack said. “Not really.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You heard me. Can you really be with him if you’re here?”
“I don’t want to talk about this, Jack.” He closed his eyes. The sheets under him were so nice, the softest cotton imaginable. Anna, despite his initial impression of her as an idiosyncratic decorator, was in fact as much of a voluptuary when it came to luxury and fine things as Jack was. Her townhouse in Boston had been an anomaly; surrounded by her own things here in Maine, her taste was expensive and impeccable. He listened
to Jack breathing beside him and for a moment was cast back to Boston, back to their apartment in Back Bay where he waited in bed for Jack, waited for Jack’s body to slide against his. The scent of fried plantains, the gravelly complaint of some Robert Mitchum movie.
Jack watched as Stuart drifted off. Stuart looked so sweet when he slept, noiselessly and deeply as a child, a stone that had been dropped to the bottom of a well and had to be retrieved every morning. Like a child, nothing woke him up. Jack kissed Stuart’s forehead, kissed the full lips and felt weepy. Loving him was a little like spotting an Empire bureau at a garage sale: there was the thrill of the find, the solidity and rarity of it amidst the junk, the timing of being there to get it, then the discovery that it wouldn’t fit through the door when it was delivered. Jack’s love for Stuart had been forever doomed to the hall, kept outside the place he lived. He’d been so stingy and small with his life, so narrow in what he allowed in.
Out of pure habit, Stuart wrapped his body around Jack’s when he felt the pressure of Jack’s hand over his skin. He opened his eyes when he felt Jack’s lips. “Am I dreaming?” Stuart said.
“No,” Jack said.
Stuart reached out to him, but then pulled away.
“Let me,” Jack said, and kissed him. He followed the familiar pathway, his mouth finding Stuart’s rhythm, the pressure and speed he liked best.
“We shouldn’t do this,” Stuart said, but already he was responding instinctively, making the automatic adjustments and movements of a body that has done something a thousand times.
Sometime later Stuart awoke to the sound of the alarm on Jack’s wristwatch and heard him shuffling off to the bathroom. He moved to Jack’s side, let his body sink into the warm impression there.
Stuart reached for the phone. This time, he let the call go through. David, naturally, had been asleep, but awoke fully at Stuart’s voice. “I’ve been so worried about you,” David said. “Are you at Anna’s?”
“Yes.” He sat up. He felt David waiting on the other end. “I just wanted to check in, that’s all.”
David paused. “I’m not angry, if that’s what you think. Come home. I shouldn’t have threatened. Just come home, okay?”
“Okay,” Stuart said.
“I love you,” David said.
Stuart said, “I know.” It was all he could manage.
“Is everything all right, then?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? Is everything all right with us?”
“I don’t know,” Stuart said. “I hope so. I do.” He promised to call David the next day, then hung up. He listened to Jack running water in the bathroom, the clink of the water glass against the tap. How could he possibly do this? He wouldn’t walk on eggshells the rest of his life, wouldn’t censor every word before it left his mouth in fear of Jack’s reaction. He’d seen those pamphlets and fact sheets about safe sex, about how the healthy partner of an AIDS patient could stay that way, but all of it seemed absurdly simplistic now. Sex was only one factor in this equation. Sometimes when he imagined being with Jack again he had to stop himself from believing that Jack’s having a terminal illness would change him in any way, that it would make him gentler and grateful for the presence of Stuart in his life. Jack was who he always was, and this was what was hard to get his mind around when he fantasized about being with Jack again. Being with Jack, with anyone who had AIDS, meant you lived in two columns: every sneer, insult, and selfishness, one side; tenderness, thoughtfulness, and loving acts, the other. Even the most minor of squabbles would have him tallying. The risks to his health weighed against Jack’s behavior. Feeling inadequately loved or insecure, balanced against the months or years of Jack’s failing health and eventual death. This is what he found most troubling. It was sentimental nonsense to think that a disease like AIDS ennobled someone. It caused suffering for all those connected to it. Jack would be who he always was, only sicker. And if was true what the doctors said about personality traits sometimes becoming more pronounced as the disease progressed, God help them both. Jack would, no doubt, out-Jack himself. Stuart smiled, thought of giant grocery bags, drawers stuffed with beautiful and useless things, a hundred bottles of shampoo, ninety-dollar magnums of champagne, and feverish lust that spilled over everywhere.
Flynn heard Jack go into the bathroom. She’d been lying awake for hours, disturbed equally by the aches and cramps in her head and belly, the absence of her nightly ritual with Jack, and the shadowy figures walking past her door and milling around the foot of her bed. It was better when
she could dig, could see worlds underground and not have to worry about the topside. Now, every time she turned her head she saw faces, forms of people she didn’t know, mostly men, and none of them very old; she’d always believed ghosts were supposed to be old, unhappy, mean. But if these were ghosts, they were happy ones. An hour or so ago, when she finally closed her eyes and thought she might sleep, she was awakened by Baby Jesus growling from his bed on the floor and the sound of clinking of glasses, laughter. In the hallway, she counted ten men having some kind of party. There was music playing, something with a disco beat, a buffet table with food, and two men kissing each other. She knew all of this wasn’t real, or wasn’t real enough that she could talk to anyone about it. Even to her grandma, who pretended not to believe or know these things. There was a man who followed Anna around, for instance, who stood right up against her when she was making dinner and touched her hair, or sat beside her on the sofa when she read the paper. Flynn saw him, but she knew he didn’t know she could see him, until she made the mistake of staring at him as he was whispering something in Anna’s ear that she of course couldn’t hear. Flynn couldn’t either, because it wasn’t intended for her ears, but the minute he caught Flynn’s eye, it was as if some barrier had broken.
Tell Anna not to worry
, he said.
Everything is fine
. Flynn looked away; down at the math homework she was supposed to be doing. She never relayed the message, except once, when Anna came in and asked who she was talking to. “An old man,” Flynn said, “who loves you a lot, now, still, and forever.” Those were the words in her head. But Flynn mistook the look on her grandma’s face and she kept talking. Told Anna that the old man said he was waiting for them all, described how beautiful it was where he lived and that nothing was lonely or alone. Even the raindrops came down in pairs. But Anna had been so upset by it all that Flynn never spoke of it again, and the old man disappeared from her view.
Flynn felt really sick now, a dragging tightness in her belly, sweaty and achy all over. She called to Jack quietly, not wanting to walk through the wall of spirits in the hallway. “Jack?” she said louder. And then louder again.
Finally he heard. He stood in the doorway of her bedroom, framed by faces who looked in at her curiously, as if noticing her for the first time, and the Spanish man in the yellow shirt was here now, too, grinning at her
in a mean way and holding a knife with blood on it. Flynn wished Jack hadn’t told her about him. If Jack hadn’t described him so well, he wouldn’t now be so vivid. “What are you doing up, baby girl?”
“I don’t feel well.”
“Oh?” he sat down on the edge of her bed, flicked on the light. “What’s the matter?”
“My stomach.”
“I’ll lie with you a little while, how’s that?” He turned back the covers. There was blood on the sheets. “Oh,” he said. “Are you having your period?”
She felt herself waver between terror and calm familiarity. She knew what this was, had been waiting for it in fact, but still she felt her head go light with shock. “I don’t know. I never have before.”
“Oh. Did your mother tell you…do you know what to do?”
Flynn started to cry. She wasn’t ready for this, wasn’t ready for this nipping pain along the inside of her thighs, the dragging heaviness of her breasts. She was used to her body being small and quick and light.
Jack drew her close, kissed her sweaty brow. “Don’t cry, darling. This is a good thing. Anyway, your mother and grandmother would tell you about how wonderful this moment is because you’re officially a woman. I’m telling you, what’s wonderful and what you want to remember for later, is that for five days every month, you can rant and rave and bitch, eat all the chocolate you want and blame it on that little bit of blood flowing out of you.”
“How long will this last?”
“Four, five days.”
“No, I mean, how many years will I have periods?”
“How many do you think?”
“Twelve?”
“A bit longer than that.” He reached his hand out, helped her up, and the two of them walked into the bathroom. In the back of the linen closet, he found a box of tampons, size super, which surprised him, since Anna was such a small woman. Christ. What was wrong with American culture? It wasn’t enough that fast food restaurants kept increasing the size of their portions. Now you could even get your tampons supersized. “I don’t suppose you know how to use these?” Jack said.
Flynn shook her head, her eyes wide, her face white.
He went through all the cabinets again; didn’t most women use pads
in addition to tampons? “These are all I can find. Did your grandmother ever use Kotex?”
Flynn frowned, looked down at the toilet. “She uses Ajax.”
Jack sighed. “I’m going to go wake Anna. She’ll know what to do.”
“No, don’t,” Flynn said. She wrapped her arms around Jack’s waist. “Don’t wake my grandmother.”
“Flynn, darling. I’m a gay man, which is about as far away from a twelve-year-old girl as it gets. The only periods I understand are at the end of sentences.”
“Please don’t wake my grandma. I want you to help me.”
“Why? Oh, all right. What’s the point of arguing.” He turned on the light above the sink, perched on the edge of the tub to read the instructions in the box. He skimmed past the warnings about toxic shock, blah blah blah, and looked for the schematic: just three parts, the applicator in two parts, and the pad inside. Simple. “Okay. Here you go,” he said and handed her one from the box. Flynn looked at it as if were an explosive, or a living thing about to hatch. “Flynn, I’m going to walk you through this, step by step, but I am not, understand me, under any circumstances, under threat of death, going to insert it for you. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“All right. I’ll be right outside.” He closed the door. “Step one is to remove outer wrapping.”
“Check,” Flynn said.
“Step two…oh,” he said. A drawing of a woman, hollow and faceless except for the internal reproductive organs. How terrible! He was glad Flynn didn’t have to see it—what kind of message was this? The shape of a woman, curvy with long hair, but no internal organs other than the vagina and uterus. “Step two is to find the position that’s most comfortable for insertion.” He felt dizzy. “You can either stand with one foot on the toilet seat, or sit, with both legs spread wide. The sitting position puts the vagina in a more horizontal position.” Jesus! He sat on the floor.
“Is this whole thing supposed to fit inside me?” Flynn called.
He looked down at the directions. “No. Just insert to where the little ridges are.” He looked for the next step. “When you’ve inserted it as far as the ridges, gently push in the plunger.” He couldn’t leave Flynn with the instructions, couldn’t let her see the awful faceless woman with the uterus
and vagina and labia taking up fully one-third of the otherwise blank body. At least they could have given the woman a heart. Tomorrow he was going to write to the manufacturers, write and tell them that they needed to either make this drawing a woman with a face and features or eliminate all but a close-up of the parts necessary for comprehension. “How are you doing in there?”
“I can’t do this. It’s not working.”
“Which part isn’t working?”
“Can you come in here?”
“I’m sending the directions under the door, okay?” He started to tear the part with the drawing away, but saw that if he did that he’d be ripping off part three. Normally, a mother or another woman would be in there with her, guiding her through, and she wouldn’t have to see this blank woman. He couldn’t let her see this. No twelve-year-old should be made to feel there was something unnatural about his or her body. This drawing more than suggested that.
“Jack?”
“I’m here. Just hang on one second. Keep practicing.” He went to the little antique desk in the hallway, found a pen in the drawer, and sat down. He gave the woman eyes and lashes and brows, drew in a smile that was supposed to represent a calm self-confidence, but which made the figure look like the cartoon character, Sally Forth. Long hair, wispy bangs and a ring on the right hand. That was better. He slid the directions under the bathroom door then went in to wake Stuart.