Faking It (23 page)

I didn't know that. And then it dawned on me that some of the paintings in his apartment, the ones signed
Santino
, were his.
Why had I never made the connection
?
Why had he never told me
?

I felt the need to defend him. "I thought he couldn't afford Parsons," I said.

Joannie's sister Rosalyn joined the conversation. "Our father wasn't too keen on him going to art school, or being in the city. He was always afraid David would be gay as a result. He wasn't exactly a modern thinker in that regard."

"But prostituting himself? Dad was less than keen on that too," Joannie rebuked.

"Still, you gotta give him credit for building a successful business from the ground up," I said, my voice still mousy and nervous. "And, from what I know--from what he tells me, he's good at what he does. I mean, his clients appreciate him."

This neither impressed nor persuaded her.

"But there's got to be something else he can do. Something we can be proud of, and not so scandalous and sordid."

"There's always something else we can do," I said, "if only we weren't so busy listening to other people's voices."

Joannie didn't respond. Perhaps she was just as confused by the comment as I was. Or perhaps it was because Devin came into the kitchen.

I walked back into the livingroom. As I looked around the room at the remaining family members scattered about, I saw a little girl sprawled on the carpet in the far corner of the room, coloring pictures, seemingly invisible to everyone else. Had she been there all this time? I wondered. I walked over and knelt down beside her, my long, A-line skirt fanning out and covering some of the finished drawings.

"Whatcha drawin'?"

She looked up at me, wary of the stranger looming over her. Without speaking, she showed me a crayon meadow of wildflowers.

"Mmmmm..... pretty."

She looked at me quizzically.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Andi."

She frowned. "That's a
boy's
name."

I smiled and let out a little laugh. "It can be a girl's name, too. Actually, it's a nickname. My real name is Andrea. What's your name?"

"Meredith."

"Do your mom and dad call you Merry?"

"They call me Missy."

"Ah. So you have a nickname just like I do."

"My grandpa's dead."

She stabbed me with her bluntness, yet also touched me with her honesty.

"I know." I paused anxiously, searching for something meaningful to say in response. "Does that make you sad?"

"A little," she said. She showed me another drawing of stick figures and a square house with a triangle roof. "Maybe I'll see him again next year." She had flaxen hair down to the middle of her back and curled at the ends. She then added, "I'm gonna be six."

I wanted to cry.

I asked Meredith if I could color with her, and then became completely engrossed with her and covered the carpet with drawings of flowers and puppies and stick figures and we shared crayons and signed our names to each work of art; she signed one of mine for me, spelling A-N-D-Y.

"Hey, you've got enough for an exhibit!" The sound of Devin's voice from behind rattled me and caused me to flinch like I do when a balloon pops. I whisked around and looked up so quickly that my neck cricked. He towered over me.

"Geez, you scared me!" I said. "How long you been there?"

"Not long," he replied. He was looking at me almost the same way we'd looked at each other in the MOMA that day, when we were talking about Maggie's and my book. He looked at me the way Sam did.

***

Late afternoon had quickly faded into evening, which then morphed into night. I insisted that Devin stay with me at my apartment rather than at the house. He took me up on the offer. His family welcomed me back to the house anytime.

We were quiet in the car.

"I know you're probably sick of everyone asking this, but are you okay?"
I asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks for being here today, and letting me stay with you."

"No problem.
Can you imagine you going all the way back into the city and getting caught in the traffic?"

"No, I mean it."
He reached out and touched my arm. "You don't know how it felt to see your face today. And I could never stay in that house tonight, or go back into the city. You don't know how much it means to me that you even knew to come."

"What do you mean, that I
knew
to come? If it wasn't for Christian--you should have
told
me. How could I not come?"

"I don't know why I didn't tell you."

When we got home and got ready for bed, I offered him the option of sleeping with me or on the couch. I wasn't sure why I did that. To my surprise, he crawled into bed with me, and I turned out the light, unable to not think of the night I'd spent with Sam. I lay there on my back, careful not to brush up against Devin, trying to fall asleep, when the phone rang.

Oh shit.
It was Sam.

We'd started calling each other right at bedtime just to say goodnight to each other. I said nothing, nor did I pick up the phone next to my bed. Instead, I let it ring until the machine picked up in the other room, and I could hear a muffled version of Sam's voice, "sweetheart" being the only word I made out clearly.

"I'm sorry about that, Dev," I said softly.

He didn't answer right away. He was so still that I could barely sense his presence. "It's okay," he said. "You could've answered it, you know."

"Not tonight," I replied.

Soon after, he spoke again.

"Did you miss your father? After he died, I mean."

"I really don't remember," I said. "I suppose that means I did."

"What if I don't miss him? What would that say about me?"

"You'll miss him," I said.

I then felt his shoulders bouncing, followed by the sound of resistant sobs. I leaned in and whispered, "It's okay," and with that permission, he broke down while I spooned him. I held him and stroked his hair, not unlike he did for me once.

His tears soon receded, followed by calm, even breathing. He then turned and looked at me. He looked innocent, almost childlike. He paused for a beat, and then he kissed me.

At first, his kiss was soft and soothing and gentle. Then he kissed me hard. Kissed me long and hard and slid his hands under my t-shirt and cupped my breasts, then grabbed my t-shirt from the inside and pulled it over my head. He pulled me close to him as I wrapped my arms around him and pulled off his t-shirt and started breathing heavily and climbed on top of him. Leaning over to the nightstand, I stretched to reach the drawer and pulled out a box of condoms that I had bought prior to my trip to see Sam, just in case. He then grabbed me and gently pushed me over and pinned me instead, kissing me again and moving first to my neck, and then to my breasts.

"What do you want?" I whispered in his ear.

He stopped and looked at me again. "I wanna make love to you," he said softly. He sounded needy.

How long had I waited for this? How often had I fantasized about what it would
feel
like? How long had I waited and searched and desperately yearned for the "right time," the "right place," and the "right man"? It all suddenly seemed like lost years. I'd tried to plan the moment as an
event
, something needing a fanfare, or flowers and candles, at least. Mark the date on my calendar, and observe it as an anniversary thereafter, a milestone. I'd always waited to be rescued from my demons, my shame, my insecurity, and expected sex to be the lifeboat. Was he my rescuer? Was he Prince Charming, literally? Just who was I making love to at this moment?

He is both the artist and the work of art. He sees beauty, he creates beauty, and he is beauty.

He is the lie that makes me realize the truth.

And then I knew: I didn't need the fanfare, didn't need to be rescued, didn't need to circle the date in red. I didn't need to be wooed and serenaded and gazed at with starry eyes. I didn't need satin sheets or chocolate kisses. Never. Perhaps I never even needed Devin. For the first time, I let go--truly let go of the lost years. I let go of Andrew and the others I'd briefly dated. I let go of my father's judgment, my mother's jealousy and indifference, and my brothers' armor. I let go of the woman who expended all her energy faking it, passing herself off as Andi, the savvy, sexy New Yorker who was great in bed and had men throwing themselves at her feet and never kissed and told. I had sex that night as if I'd been having it all along. As if I'd known how to all along. And perhaps I did.

Devin climaxed, and then rested his head on my shoulder. We said nothing. Soon after, we did it again. We made love all night. As we began to drift into sleep, our warm bodies intertwined, I heard him faintly whisper,

"Andrea."

"Dev," I whispered back in a sigh.

He kissed my cheek, cuddled close to me, and we slept soundly.

Chapter Twenty-five

Devin/David's journal

I
HAD BEEN WATCHING HER ALL DAY. ONCE, DURING THE service, I turned my head and found her sitting several rows back, positioned in her seat so that she could see between two heads. She looked at the priest as if she were soaking in his voice like sunlight, but she must have felt my eyes watching her, for she suddenly met them and smiled warmly, and in that moment the rows disappeared and she was right beside me. Her hair was long and wavy, resting on her shoulders in wide ringlets that framed her elongated face. Her eyes flickered like a candle in the dimness of the cold church, amidst the sea of black. She kept her denim jacket over her shoulders and wore her violet v-neck sweater. I always liked the way that sweater looked on her, the way it accented her breasts, elongated her torso, and made her eyes look more blue than green, almost indigo.

I watched her again at my mother's house as she helped carry in and cover Pyrex dishes full of casseroles and pasta from the dining room to the kitchen, and throw out paper plates littered with scraps of food, unfinished salads, and half-bitten pieces of bread. Aunt Maria insisted that she didn't need to help with the cleanup, yet Andi continued helping anyway. I watched her smile shyly as she saran-wrapped dishes, and wondered if it was the light coming from the kitchen window that illuminated her skin and shined her honey-roasted chestnut hair. I studied her body--short, curved, and luxurious-- as she stretched to reach the high shelves of cabinets, and surrendered to her stunted growth by leaving things on the counters when she couldn't, even in low heels and on tip-toes. Sacred in flesh, ample in bosom, masked in modern-day apparel; preserved.

I wondered: was she trying to get into my family's good graces? No. I had never formally invited her. Hadn't even called her--she showed up at the funeral parlor prior to the mass, much to my surprise, and informed me that she had to drag the information out of Christian, the rat-bastard. Perhaps she was like this at every family's post-funeral gathering; a people-pleaser who does what she thinks women should politely do. No. She'd told me stories about Thanksgiving dinner when she'd convene to the den with the rest of the guys to watch the Cowboys game, quickly dispelling (and resenting) the assumed gender roles and the notion that she was merely interested in Troy Aikman's butt. Besides, I knew her better than that.

But what captured me the most was when she crouched down on her knees, her long skirt covering her now-stocking feet, and knelt beside Meredith, who was spread out over a pad of paper and a box of half-spilled Crayolas as if they were classified blueprints. I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I watched Meredith trustingly allow Andi into her aura, pointing to her pictures, while Andi gave her complete attention. And I realized that Meredith was 3-dimensional and full of depth, fully visible and able to communicate, full of feeling and not removed from this world, this day, or this man who had touched her life as firmly and viscerally as he had touched every other person in the living room, the kitchen, the basement, the front porch, the house. And there was Andi, at Meredith's level, seeing the world, the day, and the man through those 5-year-old eyes; she had plenty to say, all the more wiser than Joannie, who was already pestering Mom to consider putting the house up for sale while the market was still hot. They had all abandoned this little girl in their efforts to shelter her from the silence. No wonder Meredith forgot that Andi started out a stranger. She must have seen the same assurance in Andi's eyes that I now saw: eyes that flicker in darkness, that find lost objects, that make diamonds look lackluster.

I watched all this and had to keep bringing myself back to my dead father, who by now lay--impatiently, I imagined--waiting to be lowered into the ground, next to my grandparents and great uncle. And I thought of the cold night air and shivered on the inside. I had to bring myself back to the bed of the next woman who lay--impatiently, I imagined--waiting for me to go down on her, safely, preplanned, and pre-paid, and I kept hearing my father's words pound in me like a tribal rhythm:
"You're a good son. You're a man I'm proud to stand next to, because you're a man who has courage, who has respect, and brains, and who can tell his father to go to hell when his father is wrong."

"I never told you to go to hell, Dad."
Look at this, I'm still arguing with him, even now, I thought.
"And I never said you were wrong, either."

"I was wrong to think you could be like me, and thank God you're no fag, or worse--a goddamn bloodsucking lawyer. But Jesus, David. You've got talent. You have more to give. You--now don't go crying on me now, boy. I'm only saying this 'cause it all suddenly makes sense. Son-of-a-bitch, what a rotten thing to do: give you all the answers right before you croak. Goddammit."

He said all this between broken breaths and morphine-induced stupors. I had to laugh to cover my tears.

"You'd better quit swearing, Dad, or else they might not let ya in."

"The hell with 'em."