Halfway Home (22 page)

I
WOKE TO THE SOUND OF MEN AT WORK—CALLING RUGGEDLY,
heaving brawn—and the first thing I thought was
What did I miss
? I rolled off the bed and stared point-blank at the digital Westclox. 11:23! Damn, how I hated to lose half the day to this thick cocoon of viral sleep. Not including the entr'acte with Daniel, I'd been under for almost twelve hours. I wouldn't admit I needed it, that the pace and tension of the last days were a marathon next to the dreamy weeks I'd passed here solo, me and Emma. I stood up to a thunderbolt of pain on the side of my head, recalling my dying-swan
jeté.
I tottered over and peered out the balcony door.

All I could see was Merle, standing among the swords of the century cactus, bellowing down the bluff. Stripped to the waist, his ruddy torso massive but without any waste of fat, he was playing a rope through his gloved hands. He leaned against the weight of the load he was easing down the cliff face. With a sweatband around the crown of his head, he looked as tribal as I'd ever seen him, a shaman at the edge of the world, wrestling the bonds of an awful ceremony. Above him the cloud cover had banked in again, moiling and dark with rain.

I felt a mad surge of adrenaline, because I couldn't stand it that they were all getting ahead of me.

I was dressed and downstairs on fast-forward, eager to join the men, only stopping to duck in the kitchen for my morning pills. I didn't plan on Susan, who stood at the stove in her lavender sweats. We both balked. A slurred "good morning" passed between us, flat as a hangover, as I made a bead for the fridge and she went on stirring her pot. I shook out my fourteen pills; went to the sink for water.

When I pitched back my head to drink, she said blandly, "I'm making them soup and sandwiches. Would you like some?"

I felt my first spurt of contrariness, as I lowered the empty glass. Dr. Jekyll having just taken his morning draft, Mr. Hyde turned to his sister-in-law. "I thought I'm supposed to eat separate," I said, drawing the last word out with fine contempt.

Susan shook her head wearily, sighing. "That's not what I said," she declared with brittle firmness. "I'd just rather you not prepare food for me and my son. Look, I'm sorry you're sick."

At last she looked directly at me, struggling to change the tone of this whole encounter. Now I could see the puff of swelling, purple on her upper lip. It seemed to freeze her lower face in a permanent sneer. "It must be terrible," she said.

Don't even try,
I wanted to tell her. I saw she was studying the lump by my temple, probably wondering who had battered me. "Mostly it's all the friends I've lost," I replied, "and nobody cares. But I haven't been sick sick. Yet."

She looked down at her pot of soup—vegetable-beef, bubbling with a skim of fat. "You must despise people like me." Spoken very evenly, with a certain ring of self-knowledge, but no intention of changing either.

"I only despise the people in charge. All politicians, left and right, who bathe in each other's slime. And every creep above the rank of monsignor, all the way up to His Hitlerness."

She shook her head again, with bitter rue. "That's your business. But I wouldn't blame God for the sins of the church. You never know. He could turn out to be your last chance."

Superior as a Jesuit. She stirred the pot, serene as if the souls of the damned were being rendered into soap. "Oh, don't worry," I said, "I've got a fabulous thing going with Jesus. We're like sisters."

She frowned in some confusion. Quickly I turned and headed out before either of us softened and called for a truce. After all, she still believed the very touch of my fingers was ripe with death. But I had to admit, striding along under the pergola and out to the cliffside terrace, Susan was a much more stimulating opponent than Mrs. Beaudry of the Coalition of Family Values. Or my drunken moron father. By comparison, the skirmish just concluded was High Theology.

The lip of the bluff was deserted, Merle having gone below to join the others. I could hear them barking orders at one another as I headed down the stairs, raw as any construction crew. Running beside the stairs was a groove in the cliff where the rope had worn away. Far out, the ocean had almost a yellowish cast, dull gold over the gray, oddly apocalyptic.
Why not a typhoon
? I thought merrily, my heart leaping as I came around the midpoint landing and saw them gathered below.

My brother and Merle were grappling with a vertical four by four, swaying it into place against the rock, while Gray squatted and wedged it tight, agile as a sherpa. Close by his father on the landing, Daniel straddled the toolbox, drill in one hand, hammer in the other. I trotted down the last flight to join them, but only Daniel looked up to greet me, beaming at the sight of me.

A blurred half-cheer went up from the three men as they anchored the four by four. Then Brian and Merle set to work bracing it with two by fours. I haven't a clue how anything is constructed—the only thing I've ever built is my cross. But they seemed to be shifting the weight of the structure deeper into the fold of the cliff. This would allow the final flight of steps to the beach to lie securely in a bed of rock. I didn't see how they would make it work, and anyway, the anarchic bone in my body wondered why they were bothering, given the force of the coming storm. Doubtless I was reacting to my brother's vivid enthusiasm, the sweaty physicality with which he threw himself into the job.

Then Gray hoisted himself onto the landing, springing to his feet near Daniel and me. When he saw me there, he broke into the same uncomplicated grin as the boy, who crouched between us over the toolbox, watching his dad intently. I felt a burn of shyness, for once not wanting to speak first. Gray cocked his head to one side, drinking me in. "Don't ever let me go away like that again."

"Please—you should have pushed my head in the mud and
then
left."

We laughed. There was nothing further to apologize, since we'd both taken all the blame. Yesterday's tiff had been about discretion, hadn't it, and Gray had clearly won the point. For here we were, not kissing in front of the kid. And then the focus shifted, my brother grunting like a foreman, wordlessly beckoning Gray to help. Gray turned and in one stride was back with the program, wedging himself between Merle and Brian, gripping the two by fours while the other men hammered them fast. The three of them together looked like seamen playing sails, bonded by the drill of heavy labor.

Brian, in jeans and a frayed football jersey—
FORDHAM 38
—was powerful as ever, wonderful to watch in motion. The muscles in his forearm swelled and rippled as the hammer drove home. A different sort of strength from Merle's, who heaved to like a stevedore, sheer brute force. Yet it was Gray between them, lean and fierce and holding the thing together, who drew my eyes. For I found him more striking today than ever, a man full-blown and radiantly untortured, perfect mate for a winter harbor. This was remarkable all by itself, since with me it's always gone the other way, the heat of a man evaporating sometimes by the hour.

"Tommy, bring over those braces," Brian called out, startling me. He'd given no indication that I was even there. Rattled, I looked about me in confusion, not a clue what I was looking for. The landing was littered with lumber and tools, all of it foreign to me. But Daniel, quick to save my ass, scrambled from the toolbox and reached for a paper sack. He rooted in and drew out a bunch of L-shaped doodads with holes for screws. He handed them off to me, and I hurried over to where the others waited.

"Here—right here," Brian ordered me, slapping the place where the beams joined. I ducked in next to Gray and reached to press one of the L braces exactly where he said. "You got it upside down," Brian snapped impatiently, poised beside me with screws and driver. I flipped the brace over and held it in place. He started the screws, working with burning intensity. The perfume of the white pine was enough to make you woozy. "For Chrissakes, Tommy," he barked, "hold it steady!"

Already my fingers were numb from pressing. But I poured all the force I had, lasering in on the brace, making it right for my brother. Simultaneously I winced from his surly tone, furious that I'd got myself caught up in this macho game. I could hear as if through a hole in time my brother sneering as he popped me flies, and me running around like a chicken, terrified the ball would hurt if I caught it, which I never did. Oh, how I didn't wish to be transported back to 1965.

"Other side," commanded Brian, and I dutifully moved to lay a second brace—right side up—on the opposite face of the join. In doing so I pressed up next to Gray's hip beside me. Meanwhile it felt as if Merle was hammering nails in my ear. When Brian leaned around to secure the brace, his shirt swept over my face, and I smelled the head of sweat in his armpit.

Instantly I was reeling from the sudden raw explosion of carnality, as if the dogs of my old hunger had been set on a hunt to the death.

I was twelve again and totally neuter. As Brian worked the screws, his pitcher's arm was six inches from my face, the coarse thatch of red hair thick from wrist to elbow. I felt helpless, held against my will, and worst of all, utterly disconnected from Gray.

Finally we took a break, all of us disentangling from the corner we had carpentered together. The others murmured with satisfaction, again that wordless Neanderthal tongue—a shared male shorthand, clearly neither gay nor straight, since only Brian among us was unbent. Even I produced a small rumble, like a pup's first growl. Except I was also exhausted and slightly light-headed, not having strained so hard in years.

Merle was already dragging down some boards with which to underpin the stairs. Gray crouched by the railing, reading the label on the waterproof sealer. Then out of nowhere I felt Brian's hand clap my shoulder. "Thanks," he said, pleasant as could be.

I blinked at him as he squatted to huddle with Daniel. Did he not remember the sneering words? Was it all just part of the team push, jostling and sniping, no hard feelings? Was that how it felt to him in Chester, torturing one minute, teasing the next? I could hardly trust my own perception, not here, not on any field where Brian ruled. I moved toward him. "How'd it go this morning?" I asked.

He looked up at me impassively. "Pretty good, I guess," he said with a certain reserve. "They'll do a deal."

Then he turned again to his son, who was furiously unwrapping a paintbrush. Brian had given him leave to slather the new wood with sealer, and the boy was wild to get started. Gray took the screwdriver to pry off the lid of the can, while he lobbed Daniel a couple of handyman tips on how to work with the stuff. Nobody needed me.

I happened to turn around as Merle was lighting a cigarette, staring at me as he blew out the match, his eyes glittering with mistrust. I knew he was reacting to the proximity of Gray and me.
Eat your heart out,
I thought, sick of his jealous silence. And yet I gave him a winning smile, because deep down I knew he was only trying to protect this gentle man who'd touched us both. And I wanted Gray protected.

But I'd had enough of mixing it up with the guys. When Gray stood up, moving to lead Daniel and his brush over to the job site, I said, "Can I have the pickup? I need to go down to the Chevron."

He nodded, fishing a hand in the pocket of his baggy jeans. His hair was all mussed. I suppressed an impulse to reach up and smooth it down over his bald spot. Daniel waited impatiently beside him, burning to go to work. Gray held out his ring of keys, twenty or thirty bristling in all directions, like a tenement landlord. "Start it in second and pump it easy," he said.

"Really? Just like me," I retorted dryly, but he didn't quite get the double entendre, or chose to ignore it. So I let them be and scampered away up the stairs, hovering for a moment at the next landing to give a backward glance. All four were busy again, strutting and flooring the new structure. I felt an unexpected rush of pride, as if I had brought this whole thing off myself, pulling together my two families. They moved below me in harmony, like pioneer neighbors gathered to throw up a barn in a day.

Still, the uphill climb was a killer after that little stint of construction. Three times I had to stop, panting, hanging over the railing as I kneaded the stitch in my side. By the time I reached the top of the bluff I practically had the dry heaves.

Happily Susan was nowhere in sight as I staggered upstairs for my wallet. I very distinctly didn't want anyone seeing me weak and frail. This was a notable change for someone who used to shove my symptoms in people's faces, mostly Mona's, like some kind of existential badge. Just who was I trying to spare, I wondered, me or them? But I knew the answer. I'd come to that slippery place, rife with the shoals of denial, where I wanted to be as alive as all of them.

I splashed water on my face and resisted the urge to curl up for a nap. Coming downstairs, the mass of keys jingling in my hand like a leper's bell, I braced for a second encounter with Susan. But the kitchen was empty. A plate of sandwiches sat on the counter, slicked with plastic wrap. I slipped a hand in under and drew out a half of tuna fish on white. Downing this in two bites—I'd had no breakfast—I moved to the stove and lifted the lid on the pot. Soup smelled fabulous. I grabbed a big spoon and ladled up a mouthful, potato and a hunk of beef. I gobbled it, smacking my lips—then had to decide, with a devilish snoot of irony, whether I'd stick the tainted spoon back in for a second bite. If only Susan had walked in then. But I demurred, replacing the lid and plopping the spoon in the sink, saving countless thousands from certain death.