Sacred Revelations (35 page)

Thomas’s arm tightens slightly around my waist but otherwise doesn’t react.

I move to stand and Thomas’s arm immediately slacks, releasing me. Without looking at anyone, I put on my shoes and step out into the cold, icy night.

“I can’t believe you are making me do this tonight.”

“It’ll be okay, Celia. Mom is going to love you,” he says, but for a reassurance, he doesn’t do a good job. Unsmiling, he still wrestles with whatever has put him in this funk. We agreed to use Celia, not wanting to explain Kitten as a name. Driving into an Indian Hills neighborhood, mansions all in a tidy row, I don’t think my name will make a difference as to what his mother thinks of me. “For her, it’s early, she’ll be awake.”

“It’s five o’clock in the fucking morning! I’m wearing a T-shirt, flannel pajama bottoms, and flip-flops, Garrett! I am not meeting your mother!” I struggle to stay in the car. Garrett pulls me out easily and pushes me forward up the flagstone steps. The heavy scent of wood smoke, filling the cool air, assails me. Someone is enjoying their fireplace on this cold winter morning. My breath comes out as white fog as I hug my bare arms.

“You look fine. I’m wearing khaki shorts and K-Swiss. She won’t care.

“I look awful.” I pout, having not even put on makeup before leaving the hotel. When he said, “I want to take you someplace,” my brain went right to the gutter. I thought he wanted to take me someplace where we could be alone and make out, not to meet his parents.

The porch light comes to life.

“Just don’t expect June Cleaver, okay?”

“Who?”

He looks at me and shakes his head. “Never mind. Smile, mom is going to love you.”

Garrett’s mom doesn’t love me. Garrett’s mom, it would seem, wants me dead. Or at least I feel like I’m dying.

Just whose idea was it to power walk the neighborhood at six in the morning? Garrett is no help, having sprinted ahead in a jog that made it appear he was training for the Boston Marathon. He is no longer even in sight.

“So what’s the story between you and my son?”

I choke on my own saliva, and stop in my tracks, doubled over, making a big deal of breathing. I peek at her tidy figure draped elegantly in white, not a drop of sweat visible, wondering how a woman of sixty manages to look so good.

“Well?” she asks, not forgetting what led up to my wheezing attack.

“There isn’t a story. We’re dating,” I manage. Her eyes narrow.

“Really? My son’s gay. He owns a lewd sex club. What he does cannot be called dating.” She power walks away.

I jog to catch up. “Fine. We’re not dating. We live together,”

She stops dead in her tracks. “My son is gay. I don’t know what kind of trickery you’re playing at, but it’s taken me a very long time to accept that my only son will never give me grandchildren, so how dare you taunt me with lies.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t taunting you,” I protest.

“Did you know Tony?” she asks, not waiting for my answer. “He was a lovely young man. He sure charmed the pants off Garrett. My husband hated Tony with a rare passion.” Her voice catches, but only for a moment. “He hasn’t spoken to Garrett since the day Garrett left med school to be with Tony.”

I can’t speak, not knowing what to say.

“My family was destroyed by Garrett’s unnatural inclinations. So, whatever game is going on between you and my son…take it back toSan Francisco . I will not let you destroy my husband by giving him false hope that he didn’t raise a queer after all. Did you even consider that Garrett only brought you here to meet his parents for one reason? Maybe to get back in his father’s good graces? Does he need money?

Well, he won’t get that. My husband wrote him out of the will years ago. So take my son back toSan Francisco and that horrible sex club he calls home.”

I blink, shocked.

I expected her to be offended by me—but for the sake of me—not because of hostility toward her son and especially not because of his sexual preferences.

“I don’t think Garrett brought me here to meet you for any other reason than for us to meet,” I say, defending Garrett. “And he sure doesn’t need your money!”

Her laugh is cold and bitter. “He may have money, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need more.”

My mouth opens and shuts but no words come out.

“Such a dear, sweet girl. So young, so naïve, so innocent, but then Garrett mentioned that your father was a minister. It may be hard to accept, but once you start seeing the truth for what it is, you’ll be much happier with your life. The truth is, there is always an ulterior motive, a reason behind every word, every look, every touch. Soon, you will know why Garrett brought you here. Why he had to choose this path to break your heart, I don’t know, but believe me, my son will break your heart. It’s what he does. He breaks the hearts of everyone who falls in love with him. He always has. So be ready, Celia Brentwood, because he will break your heart and you will never, ever be the same after he does.”

Garrett is towel drying his hair when I finally manage to stumble back inside the house, still shaken from my walk with his mother. She left me at the foot of the hill, leaving me to my own devices to find their house in a row of nearly identical stately mansions. Still not smiling, he winks at his mom as she breezes by. I see it as an improvement in his disposition as I collapse in the nearest chair.

“Did the old bird wear you out?” he asks, dropping a kiss on top of my head. It is a definite improvement. I open my eyes to find him squatted before me. He is wearing frayed jeans, still unbuttoned at the waist. Just jeans, but so damn hot, I am torn between staring at his sexy chest and his sexier toes.

Toes win.

“She loves you.”

“You’re delusional. I didn’t get that impression.”

“She was testing your mettle.”

“You weren’t there. You don’t know the horrible things she said.”

Garrett winks. “But I know my mother.”

His ringing cell phone draws his attention away from me and he walks into the kitchen, and sits in a small breakfast nook overlooking the barren backyard. I follow, sitting at the table across from Garrett, not about to take the chance of another lone encounter with his mother. Garrett maintains eye contact with me while he talks. He’s making flight arrangements, but I can’t discern if he is talking to George, Jackie, or Thomas.

I am suddenly distracted by the horrid wallpaper, a blue and green Scottish plaid, and an even worse wallpaper border crowning the chair rail, English huntsmen mounted on horses, pursuing foxes, also pursued by really ugly mutts. And it dawns on me, very clearly in fact, why Garrett’s condo is all beige.

My eyes fly through the doorway and land on the floor-to-ceiling gnarled branches of unnamable flowers in even worse hues of blue, green, and gold that make up the living room wallpaper.

Beige is good. Beige is very, very good. Beige just may become my new favorite color.

Garrett is watching me, having hung up the phone.

“I’ve been horrible to you. I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve been so trapped in my own head, I haven’t been any emotional support to you at all.”

“It’s okay. I had…”

I don’t finish the sentence, stopping myself from being mean, stopping myself from saying that I had Thomas and Jackie and George to lean on. Actually, even Lion was more emotional support than Garrett has been.

He caresses my cheek, making me look at him. “It wasn’t okay, not at all, Celia.”

It doesn’t escape my notice that, even in private, he still calls me Celia, not Kitten.

“Okay, you’ve been a jerk,” I say, smiling to soften the sting of the truth. Surprisingly, Garrett smiles back, the first real smile I’ve seen in days. Quite suddenly, the barrier that has held us distant crashes, and his arms go around me. It is good to feel his arms squeeze me and as we fall into each other, it is hard to discern who is comforting whom, but it is good. I rub my face into his shoulder and inhale his scent. It is both spiritual and tragic when his lips find mine. It is not as before. It is different. For better?

Or for worse? Only time will tell.

He stands, pulling me with him and leading me down a hallway and up a flight of stairs. I find myself standing in the center of the bedroom of his youth. The room is tidy and so very obviously his room, not a guest room. “Your mother?”

“She went to the gym.”

“The gym?” I ask, unbelieving, taking in the view of Garrett’s bedroom. “After that walk?”

He shrugs. “It’s how she stays sane.”

When he bends to kiss me, I let him and I don’t stop him when he unzips the warm-up jacket I borrowed from his mother and pulls it off. He follows with my T-shirt, and finally, with infinite care, unties the drawstring of my pants, lowering searing kisses to skin cooling as it is exposed, belly, clit, thighs, centering finally on my clit, making me ache with need in seconds. He is not manic, but slow and tender as he licks and kisses, using fingers and tongue to tease and probe. He is so tender, my eyes mist and I have to force myself not to cry for the intimacy we share now, praying we can keep this, because I don’t want to lose this man and for days I have worried about it so much. His mother’s words taunt me. He will break your heart.

I am so distracted by her voice in my head, I cannot enjoy the teasing circles his tongue makes in a very real attempt to drive me insane. Softness. He is gentle—gentle will not drive out his mother’s voice.

I close my eyes against light blue wall, plaid curtains, plaid bedspread, and shut out his mother’s voice only to hear my father. Sinner. Fornicator.

Oh God, gentle will not drive the sight of my father lying in a coffin from my brain.

“Hurt me,” I whisper. Leave me alone, Dad, I mean it!

“No, Celia.” Garrett sits up, pulling me with him so that I am straddling him.

I can’t interpret the look on his face. “Garrett?”

“I think I’m done, Kitten,” he says.

“Done?” I hump his thigh, hoping he’ll lay me down on the bed of his youth and take me fast and rough.

Tracing the length of his semi-erect penis, I tease, “We haven’t even started and I know I can get you a lot harder if you let me.”

Hugging me close, he says, “I’ve given up so many dreams, Kitten. I can’t give up the dreams in my head of you.”

He holds me, but doesn’t look at me. My heart crashes in my chest like it hit a speed bump, but then it is pounding and I am filled with the fear that this is the real good-bye, the one I’ve been waiting for, his mother’s voice in my head a shrill warning . He will break your heart, and you will never be the same.

“I don’t understand,” I whisper, staring at the things he collected during his youth. Bookcases line the walls, filled with books from all stages of his life, from Disney to college in row upon row. Trophies stand guard over the books and I wonder why it never occurred to me that Garrett played football. Or that he may have once had a fiancée, as the too perky blonde framed on his childhood desk comes into focus.

“I want babies with you.” He still doesn’t look at me. He just holds me and whispers in my hair. “I want the house in the suburbs and a big backyard, and a dog.”

Stunned into silence, my heart in my throat, I stare at him when he pulls away from me to look at my face.

“I want this life. I know I walked away from it, but everything I gave up is in my face when I come here, and I always run back toSan Francisco thinking I need what I have there, but I’m beginning to think that I need this more.”

“You want to live inCincinnati ?”

“No, not necessarily,” he says, shaking his head. “But, I want this…a home in the suburbs…”

I’m sure I’m looking at him like he’s grown a second head, but I never saw this coming. I thought we were breaking up, or better scenario making up. Either way, making love was definitely on the agenda for two point five seconds.

“…marry me Celia, make babies with me.”

“A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man.”

-E.M. Forster, Howard’s End

Garrett

Did I really expect her to say, yes? Did I really think she would jump up and down, excited about the prospect of marriage and babies? No. Did I even consider her reaction? Never even thought the thought, does she want marriage and children? Like a fool, I just blurted it out.

I’m not surprised she ran from the room.

Even less surprised that she called a cab and raced back not only to the hotel but to Thomas. I am a fool. The surprise was Jackie pounding up the stairs to my old bedroom in her four-inch stilettos, more furious than I’ve ever seen her. The bigger surprise was Jackie dragging me down the stairs with a mean-ass grip on my ear. “What in the hell did you say to that girl to scare the shit out of her? She thinks you need an intervention, or to be committed, or both, and I’m not sure I disagree with her at the moment. Tell me you did not tell that girl you wanted a house in suburbia!”

Jackie buckles me into the passenger side, not that I was going to fight her, at least not while she had hold of my ear.

“Suburbia?” she shrills, repeating it again. “Suburbia?”

We drive, neighborhood after neighborhood, and I listen to her sarcasm until I am ready to puke with it.

She points at two women taking a walk. “Ahhh, how sweet, two little mommies all dressed up in their cute, little vanilla sportswear to push around their little vanilla baby carriages and talk about all the very vanilla designer clothes they just charged to their very vanilla , missionary-position-only husband’s credit cards.” Facing me, she smiles, but it is too wide, spreading her face into an ugly, mean look. “I’ll bet you can find Kitten a little mundane aerobics suit that won’t clash too badly with her collar. It might be difficult though, explaining the collar at Parent-Teacher meetings.”

She lifts her brow at me, but I keep my eyes on the road, wishing an end to this insanity.

“I can’t wait to come and visit you in your cookie-cutter house with its cookie-cutter yard and little white picket fence…maybe we can play naked croquet on the front lawn or have pony races out back…”