She glanced at me, and in that glance, I felt the
weight of battle — a call to arms. I was suddenly mustered and I
hadn’t a clue to what. Matt began coughing again.
“It’s best you go now,” the doctor said.
Louise went to the plastic wall, Sammy behind her
and Mary tagging by the window. I knew she was fearful of her own
feelings and perhaps she found the distance better for
everyone.
“Lamb,” Louise said. “We’ll be just outside. I’ll
let Martin stay a bit longer, so you two can . . . well, be
together.”
She touched her fingers to her lips, and then
pressed her hand to the plastic.
“I love you, Mama.”
She smiled. Sammy sniffed, frowned and then
sighed.
“Son.”
Mary mouthed a
Newt.
And then I was alone
with him. Just me, Matt, the doctor and the tent. Matt smiled. I
knew that as long as I was there, he was content.
Please God, let me survive this moment.
I came close to him, the tubes infesting my reach. I
wanted to take him into my arms, but it was impossible. The
logistics precluded it. I’d probably disconnect him from something
that kept him alive. At that thought, I quaked. I began to tremble,
my shoulders bouncing as I gasped for air that I somehow couldn’t
find.
“Pumpkin,” he whispered. “It’ll be okay. Well be
just fine . . . fine and . . . dandy.”
“Don’t talk,” I said.
I reached beneath the tent. I had seen the nurse do
it to draw blood, so I knew it could be done. I didn’t give a fuck
if the doctor thrashed me with his stethoscope. I needed to touch
my man. My hand ran along his arm to his hands. There our rings
touched. It was electric. This is what I needed — an assurance that
as long as we were wedded by some conscious and continuous act that
nothing could part us — no tent, no doctor, nor a fucking media
frenzy about a lousy plague.
“You need to go now,” the doctor said.
No chastisement. I squeezed Matt’s hand, my arm
receding from beneath the plastic. I thought to perform Louise’s
kissing ceremony, but then thought that was best left for
mothers.
“I’ll be around,” I said to Matt.
His eyes blinked, and then closed, perhaps exhausted
by the ordeal of visitors.
“I’ll have you tested,” the doctor said to me.
Tested.
I closed my eyes now and thought of that big-ass
needle in my stomach.
The test was nothing — a blood sample from the crook
of my arm. The nasty part was that I wouldn’t know for two weeks if
I walked on the same path as Matt. It wasn’t like those new fangled
pregnancy tests — pee on the stick and go shopping for a bassinet.
I had choices now. I could sit in vigil with the Kielers and glare
at that bitch of a nurse until her shift changed, or I could get
drunk. I chose the latter.
It wasn’t much of a drunk at that. In fact, I didn’t
even go to a gay bar, fearing that I would run into the old crowd
and need to tell them everything. I didn’t want to tell a soul. It
was my secret. One word to a Padgett or a Todd and the entire state
would know by tomorrow noon. I wasn’t ashamed, but I did not want
Matt shunned. Of course, I would share his shunning, so perhaps I
was fearful after all. If I had gone to
The Cavern,
I might
have bumped into Russ and then I would need to discuss it with him.
I needed information, but not this minute. Now I needed booze and
not cosmopolitans. I needed gin and tonic in numbing quantities. If
I had imbibed at
The Cavern,
I might have even been served
by that waiter boy, Bobby, and I didn’t want any more examples of
this disease tracing me that night. So I opted to drink at
McCann’s
, where the baseball game barked over the TV and the
old shore drunks bent elbows over
real men’s drinks
— scotch
and water, hold the water.
I swaggered to the bar and did my best butch
impression, although the bartender probably recognized me from the
neighborhood. I did my best to order my gin in a gruff voice. I
listened to some Republican bullshit politics being spouted at the
other end of the bar. I was also engaged in conversation by an old
man about the latest baseball games. I found that nodding and
silence was my friend.
I agree. You’re right. Didn’t catch that
game.
But there was no escape. The News came on and there was a
bit about some
Gay man in Bisbee, Arizona who intentionally bled
on a group of unsuspecting thugs when they robbed him and beat him
to a pulp.
There was talk about prosecuting him, but he died
from his head wounds. Then I was subjected to a discussion on
these faggots and their disease. Scourge of God, it is. He wants
them all dead for their sins so He’s wiping them out. But they have
their nerve trying to infect us innocent, normal true-blooded solid
citizens, who never do wrong from morning to evening.
I was
angry at their remarks. I felt like standing on the bar and saying
Shut-up or I’ll open a vein and add some pink blood to your
scotches. I might have this thing. I’ll know in two weeks and then
you’ll know, ‘cause I’ll tell you fuckers.
I decided to exit before my opinion was asked and
would damn my eternal soul with an answer.
I didn’t want to go back to Matt’s place. That was a
conscious decision I made when I was sober. I knew I’d be trashed
and in no condition to drive. So I picked
McCann’s
not only
because it was a
breeders
haven, but also because it was two
blocks from my apartment. I staggered around the courtyard fence. I
hadn’t been here in a while. I would pick up mail once a week. I
had moved my plants to Matt’s, so I didn’t even need to water
now.
Suddenly, the place looked very much like home. I
recalled my thinking on relinquishing the apartment, but now I was
glad I hadn’t. It was more than a haven. It was a downright escape.
Except, as I stumbled over the debris that had managed to clutter
the courtyard, I noticed a light on inside.
“I left the light on?” I asked the porch furniture.
“Well, that’s going to be some fucking electric bill.”
The door was open also. I expected now to enter a
threadbare apartment stripped of whatever furnishings I had manage
to collect as my lifelong legacy. The place was musty. No, smoky,
and I had a hunch who was there. Only I hoped I wasn’t about to
surprise her as she spread eagle on the couch with some trucker
plowing the fields that once popped me out.
Shudder at the
thought
, because I had witnessed that scene more than once. I
staggered into the light.
“Shithead,” Viv said as sober and prim as . . . well
as prim as anyone who could say
shithead
and still remain
sedate.
“Viv,” I said. “You moved in?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass.”
“Tonight’s not a good time.”
“You’re drunk.”
I smiled, and then bowed to her. I lost my balance
and aimed at for the couch, landing beside her.
“Takes a drunk to know one.”
She shook me by the shoulders.
“I’ll make some coffee.”
“Don’t. It’ll kill me. The last time you made
coffee, I had the shits for a week.”
“Well, take a cold shower then.”
“Why? What’s happened? Do you have some one
here?”
“No, and you tell me what’s happened.”
I stood and moved away from her. She was the last
person that I wanted to know my secret. How did she even suspect?
She’s fishing. She don’t know a thing. She’s getting married or
something and springing one of her little surprises on me.
“Nothing’s happened,” I said.
The room spun. Suddenly, I was pulled onto the couch
and into her arms. It was like a wooly spider weaving a web around
me. It felt luke-warm — not motherly in the least, and yet not
repulsive. I guess I was so drunk that if the bar baseball crowd
had hugged me I would have felt warm.
“Bullshit,” she said. “Louise called me. Told me
everything.”
I pulled away.
“I really don’t need anything,” I said, and
unkindly. “I just need to be alone.”
“The last thing you need to be is alone.”
“I’ve survived until now,” I said. “They come and
go, you know.”
“This one’s not gone yet, Shithead. Don’t write him
off so fast. “
“I’m not writing him off.”
That was it. I don’t know what came over me, but I
did something that I had never done and would never do again. I
slapped her.
“Ouch!”
She raised her hand, and I scurried off the
couch.
“I’m sorry, Viv. I didn’t mean it.”
“I know you didn’t,” she said.
I thought she’d cry as she held her cheek. I came to
her and tried to kiss her, but she pushed me away.
“You can slap me around all you want,” she said.
“I’m used to it, you know. They all wind up slapping the
whore.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’ll say whatever I’m pleased to say. But you
listen to me. I know you and you’re unbrave.”
“Unbrave. There’s no such word.”
“You know what I mean. You worry about your next
Christmas and the next love journey and the big
boo hoo
breakup, shithead. It’s always been that way.”
I was furious, but didn’t repeat the slap. If Louise
meant this to be a comfort — into my mother’s arms and all that,
she’d been into the vermouth too.
“Well, I’ve had a good teacher,” I said.
“I’ve been the best, but I’m telling you now. You
had better not abandon this one. You better not or I slap you from
here to kingdom come.”
“You think you know everything.”
“About you, I know everything. It’s all about you.
But not this time.”
I trembled. How dare she accuse me of thinking of
leaving Matt? How could she? But . . . it was true. I had thought
of it several times that evening. I thought of running and hiding —
to make the world go away. I loved him, but I was afraid. I didn’t
know how to love him anymore. It was beyond me. I was . . .
unbrave.
I staggered into the bedroom standing in the dark. I
wanted this woman gone. I knew I couldn’t kick her out. I wasn’t
that powerful, but if I separated myself from her by a room or two
or three, I might be able to . . . run away . . . hide. I was drunk
and stupid. I knew nothing else to do but cry, like the child of
Christmas that I was, standing on the brink — on the pinnacle
listening to the angels shout
Jump. Jump!
She was behind me. I sensed her. I smelled her
vanilla perfume and heard her cheap jadeite earrings clinking
against their ugly settings.
“Listen to me,” she whispered. “I have other things
to teach you.”
“Like what?” I said to the darkness.
“Your father.”
“You don’t know which one of the three men that
month
was
my father.”
“That’s what I told you, but . . .”
I turned. I could see only her silhouette against
the living room lamp.
“Your father was with me for two years before you
were born.”
“Two years?”
I was imagining . . . what. I had never seen a
photograph and had no mental image of the man or the men. In fact,
I wanted to change my last name to Jones as that fit me better than
Powers.
“We were a family and I . . . loved him, but . .
.”
“But what, Viv?”
“He got sick. Lost his job. Became depressed.”
“He left us,” I said. “You told me that he left
us.”
“No. I was unbrave. I couldn’t deal with it. He
drank . . . more than me and, well, I needed you to be away from
him, so . . . I upped and left him one night.”
“He’s alive?”
“No. He died of emphysema. And I never saw him
again. I got a letter. It was wrong of me leave him.”
I sighed.
“Well, it doesn’t make much difference,” I said. “It
don’t change a thing.”
“No it don’t, but . . . I loved him. I loved you
more, but I was unbrave and couldn’t watch him die.”
“Matt’s not going to die.”
“I didn’t mean that, but he’s seriously sick.”
“I could be too.”
She whipped me into her arms. She no longer felt
like a wooly spider. Warm. I could hear her heart beat against my
chest — two flat chests heaving together.
“I know you want to run away, Shithead,” she
whispered in my ear. “But listen. So do I now, but I won’t, because
I will never leave the man I love again and neither should
you.”
“Oh, Mom,” I said.
I had joined the unbrave.
Life sometimes requires us to learn new things
against our will. I had always been opened to new horizons — new
books, new friends, new places, but as for the day to day routine
of living, I was set. I had made compromises from the solitary life
— one peppered with the occasional drunk or meth addict, all
short-term affairs, to a life of sharing with another man. Sharing
was a joy here. I shared a bed, food, laughs, patio furniture and
the very air I breathed with this man. Now, I was at a loss. I
needed to learn about a disease. No, conditions — with weird names
and odd symptoms. I needed to realize that the decay of old people
and animals was now grafted on young men — on my young man. I was
dizzy. This wasn’t a new horizon. This was a deep pit that afforded
me little choice, but the choice was selfish if I chose to exercise
it. And as for sharing . . .
The result of my test was negative. I was disease
free, although I was ordered (it was not a suggestion, because
Doctor Farrell delivered it as a mandate) to be tested regularly. I
must admit I was nervous less about not knowing the results
immediately. As I waited the two weeks, I felt a darkness creep
into my soul. I had convinced myself that I had it. In many ways,
it was a consolation — the ultimate sharing. I would have preferred
more patio furniture, but what could one do? Then I was told that
although I shared the world with Matthew Kieler, I did not share
his condition. It was not a relief. I felt cheated. I wanted to
share this path with him. Somehow, the thought that we were
together walking into hell was packed with its own solace. However,
now that he was going alone and I would be standing on the
sidelines waving to him as if he were on a ship leaving for the
Caribbean and I — I was stuck on the fucking shore with the healthy
peasants, it wasn’t fair. The whole thing just wasn’t fair.