Equal Affections (16 page)

Louise and Nat stood in the crowd of airport welcomers, not really that different from their photographs, nervous but smiling. In theory they had already evolved into the kind of parents who, without reservation, make up the double bed in the guest room for their son
and his “friend,” but they hadn't yet had to put the theory into practice. Even so, what strain Louise was feeling, as she shook Walter's hand, she covered brilliantly; only someone with equal skill at subterfuge would have been able to see through the cracks in her makeup. She had met her match in Walter, who noticed in her face that afternoon all sorts of things she would have preferred no one notice, chief among them an expression—how could he put it right? Wildness, yes, but tamed, or long suppressed. Whatever it was, it was vivid to him in her eyes, which looked quickly away, and in her mouth, which held fast and stayed closed, and when he heard the stories about her, the impression only became stronger: There was the history of desires felt, indulged, deemed improper by mysterious authority, then relegated to some back attic of the mind, not to be thought about again; and there was the wear of years spent nose to the grindstone of a life she imagined to be more suitable than the sort of life her nature made her lean toward.

How strong she was! How much stronger than Walter, who, a coward in both directions, had neither truly indulged nor fully rejected his urges toward what he imagined to be the unsuitable. He was too undisciplined, he had realized early on, to shake his homosexuality altogether, or hide it in the corners of an otherwise heterosexual life, yet at the same time he contemplated the late-night, cigarette-reeking prowl of the city with both distaste and apprehension. And so he had determined to do something quietly revolutionary: to incorporate his sexual nature into a life of suburban domesticity, uproot the seed of homosexuality from its natural urban soil and replant it in the pure earth of his green garden. It had, by and large, worked, and yet he realized he'd made a singular mistake. For it wasn't just the love of a man he'd been drawn to in his early days in the city; it was the rank garden of the city itself, with its brief yet intense gratifications, its dangers and easy disappointments. In contrast, Louise apparently had had her share of wildness. Under different circumstances, she might have been reckless; Walter could imagine her spilling champagne, at dawn, into the Grand Canal or sleeping on donkey back. But she was stubborn and afraid, and had settled instead for a house, where what satisfactions there were derived from order and clarity, warmth, early bedtimes. She did crossword puzzles in her bathrobe till nine. At
eleven she watched the news, soaking her hands in wax while the violent upheavals of the world splattered like gore itself against the inner side of the glass screen. To Danny and April she was a muddle, all rage and inexplicable longing; they were afflicted with the egotism of children looking at mothers, they saw her mind as a series of puffed layers, each concealing a slightly less soggy, slightly more essential truth; she was angry that the dishes weren't done; no, she was angry that no one helped her; no, she was angry that her husband took her for granted, and she had given him everything, everything. And that was it, as far as they were concerned; they returned to this model of layers every time she called, or came up in conversation, until that model seemed to Walter as much of an evasion, a layering, as anything they could accuse Louise of.

His own version of Louise was simpler: He saw her as a woman of guileless passion who, for one reason or another, had suppressed that passion and instead steadied her gaze on the dependable horizon of the domestic sphere. Of course he had heard about the early marriage, and Tommy Burns, not to mention all the mysterious gaps in her history. And unlike April and Danny, who shrugged their shoulders in mock bewilderment at the question of Louise's youth—she was their mother, they seemed to be saying, how could she even have existed before us?—Walter had no doubt what filled those gaps in: men, most of them handsome and untrustworthy; men who thrilled, gratified, and ultimately abandoned her, proving again and again the truthfulness of her own mother's warnings—he's no good; there's no future there; stay away from him, Louise. When, at twenty, she settled instead with cautious Nat, perhaps she was imagining that in the utopia of California, in that city of the future he was insisting they would soon live in, she would be able to satisfy the urges that had, up until now, pulled her away from Nat and toward a more disreputable, to her more natural kind of life. These days, in the landscape of Louise's face, there was defiance just barely cracked by the beginnings of hesitancy, as if after forty years of telling herself not to look back, forty years arguing to herself the rightness of her life (and by that time what choice was there?), she was finally feeling the twitching in her neck, the urge to turn and ask the question to which the answer seemed so inevitable, so stupidly obvious: You shouldn't have married him.

___________

It was early March, the first day the thermometer by the window had crept past sixty, and the sun was too bright to stare into. In the morning Walter woke up looking—not happier exactly, but there was in his face a kind of zest for occupation, like the dog, Betty, when after much barking a ball was thrown for her, or Danny's mother when she first touched her sharp pencil to a new crossword. At ten he went to the nursery and at eleven came back with an assortment of tiny buds sprouting in green boxes, and envelopes on which were printed photographs of luminous lettuces, polished-looking cucumbers, fat tomatoes piled in baskets. For Danny, who had grown up in that part of the world where the shifting of seasons is something you have to look for to notice, there was something mythic and tender about this first defiant spring day and its attendant rituals. For months now Walter had spent his weekend mornings buried in bed, but today, at the sight of the new brightness through their bedroom curtains, he had bounded up, pulled on his shorts, and run outside into the yard. In the young sunlight, his legs were white as the paste in elementary school, white as something newborn—a larva bursting from its shell, the black hairs writhing like antennae. He knelt in the dirt, almost in a position of prayer, busying himself with the simple rituals of spades and shovels and soil. The T-shirt he wore rode up his back as he worked, revealing the white, vulnerable indentation just above his buttocks. Soon that spot would be brown, browner than the rest of him.

Danny was happy for Walter, and relieved. Living with someone who is depressed is hard work, and for a long time now Walter had been sullen and ignoring, preferring the mute company of his computer to Danny's fleshly companionship. Just last night, for instance, all night, the TV had been on; they had watched
20/20,
and then a pornographic tape, and then Walter had stood in front of the mirror, naked, his belly jutting out, and said, “Behold man.” Danny beheld. He still thought Walter quite handsome, though really he had gained a lot of weight. Still, he wanted Walter to know he loved him, so he embraced him from behind, wrapping his arms tight around his diaphragm. Walter continued to stare into the mirror, but it wasn't, Danny sensed, because he
was so fascinated by what he saw there. Rather, his eyes seemed to have gone out of focus; he was gazing at a blur, a mass of unspecified flesh breaking up into planes before him. “We should go to bed,” Danny said, and Walter blinked and sighed at the newly reconstituted sight of himself. He had some sort of date to converse with a man in Memphis, so Danny went alone to bed, while across the house keyboard buttons clicked, conveying messages of lust and virility.

And now, in the garden—sunlight, like a miracle. Walter, sweaty and dirty and smiling, is holding in his cupped palms a pile of earth out of which a small shoot of parsley blooms. “Remember the parsley we planted last year?” he says. “This is it. It survived the winter. Isn't that wonderful?”

He pulls a dirty sprig off the little plant and with his fingers tucks it between Danny's teeth. The taste is sweet and gritty, and Danny smiles back.

“Of course I'll plant more. Parsley, basil, mint, sage, chervil. I bought them all! Think of the cooking we can do!”

Danny nods. “I can't wait, Walt,” he says sincerely. As if in eagerness to make the day come faster, Walter bends down, preparing to reroot the little parsley. But Danny, going back into the kitchen, is hesitant to be too grateful; what if, tomorrow, the weather is cloudy? What if, as so often seems to happen here on the East Coast, it turns out that spring has had a false start and they will have to endure another brief season of snowstorms before the real rebirth of May? In that case, will Walter return to bed, return to the winter ritual of television, computer conversation, videos? Danny hopes not.

The phone rings. Outside, Walter stops, turns to listen as Danny answers.

“April Gold, please.” The voice is a woman's, brusque, and apparently already annoyed at what she assumes will be unconscionable delays.

“Um, she's not here,” Danny says. “I'm not expecting her until next week.”

Walter puts his spade down. He gets up on his knees, which are black with mud, puts his hands on his hips.

“I was given this number,” the voice says.

“I'm sorry. I really don't know what to tell you.”

“Who is this, please?”

“Her brother,” Danny says, more sharply than he probably ought to.

“Jesus,” the woman murmurs, thinking her whisper inaudible.

“No, the name is Cooper.”

“There's no need to be rude. Look, just tell her Irene Gould called. That's Gould, with a
u
. It's most urgent that I speak to her.”

Danny hangs up before the woman says anything else.

“What was that?” Walter asks.

“A bitch.”

“Calling for April?”

“I don't know what the hell April thinks she's doing, giving these people my number when she's not supposed to be coming for a week.”

“Maybe she's going to be early.”

“I mean, she treats me like her fucking answering service. She's done this before, and I've warned her.”

The phone rings again. Alice Klippen, for April. “She's not here,” Danny says.

“You can give her this number,” Alice Klippen says, “but she'll only be able to reach me there between seven and nine-thirty. Before seven I'm at my office—I think she's got that one already—and after nine-thirty I'll be at a party with my friend Roz, but wait—no, first we're going out to dinner, and then to a party, so maybe she should call me at Roz's place. Oh, but damn, I don't have the number, and it's not listed. Okay, listen—have her call Sydney Green on West Twenty-fifth Street—have you got a pencil?”

“I'm taking it all down,” Danny says.

“So have her call Sydney Green, who is listed, and ask for Roz Steele's number, and there'll be a message from me on Roz's answering machine telling her where she can reach me. Alice Klippen.”

“Okay.”

“You got that all?”

“I got it.”

“Great. Thanks. Bye.”

He hangs up louder than he should.

“You haven't written anything down,” Walter says.

“What can I do? I didn't have a pencil.”

“Maybe you should let me answer it next time,” Walter says, and strides into the kitchen. “Gosh, wouldn't it be great if April really is arriving today?”

“Great,” Danny says.

“Aren't you excited? I mean, she's your only sister. Aren't you glad she's coming?”

“Well,” Danny says. “I suppose.” He leans against the refrigerator, crosses his arms. He is remembering other times when she arrived on short notice, showing up at his and Walter's apartment just as they were about to go to bed. No call, just the buzzer ringing, her voice: “Hi, it's me—”

“April.”

“I'm early.”

Or she had been late. She had stood him up, keeping him hours at airports or restaurants, then calling at four in the morning. “Powderfoot, I'm so sorry, I just couldn't get away—”

“What do you mean ‘I suppose'? You are glad she's coming, aren't you?”

Danny stretches his arms behind his head. “Of course I'm glad,” he says. “Of course.”

“Well, I'm going to take a shower,” Walter says, abandoning, at least for the moment, his half-planted buds. Left alone in the kitchen, Danny scowls at the phone, daring it to ring again and be for her. An old, blistering anger, an old argument ricocheting again through his memory: “I'm not your goddamned answering machine, April!”

“Danny, where else can I have people call?”

“I don't know, but it's not fair to me. And on top of it, they're rude.”

“You know I'd do the same for you, Powderfoot.”

“Don't call me that when we're having a fight.”

That memory, and others: the van stopped outside a filling station in Nebraska, the wind strong: Danny has been driving for five hours. “But, Powderfoot,” April says, “we have to work out these arrangements before Omaha. You're the only one who's expendable.” And months later, New Haven: Danny tells her he is leaving the tour, and she smiles. She seems delighted. As if she can get along without me, he thinks. As if what I've given her—all the time I've devoted, the shit-work I've done—amounts to nothing.

The phone rings again, and he answers it challengingly. “Who is it?” he demands.

“Just me,” Iris says. “I wanted to let you boys know, there's a great special on chicken breasts at King's, so I bought you four or five
packages. It's good to freeze them, and who knows, I mean, when in the last five years have chicken breasts been under two dollars a pound? Perdue too?”

“Thanks, Iris,” Danny says. “That was really thoughtful of you.” It occurs to him, at this moment, what an immense virtue thoughtfulness is. Anyway, he is relieved to be talking about chicken breasts, relieved to be reminded of his own detailed life, most facets of which have nothing to do with April. She has not even arrived yet, but since the phone call it has felt to Danny as if an enormous balloon were expanding inside his house, pushing him into an ever-narrowing crevice between balloon wall and house wall. And that crevice is where he must live while April is there, that tiny crevice between her ever-expanding ego and all the rest of his life.