The Marble Quilt (28 page)

According to this way of thinking, to look for sex outside your marriage was not merely to betray the person you loved, but to bring rabies into England—as if a vow of loyalty were the same thing as a vaccination.

In lying there is often this lie: that we do it to protect other people.

Keeping him in the dark was never very difficult, I think in part because, without even being aware of it, he wanted to be kept in the dark. Also, the combination of my language classes and Tom's devotion to his friends' children left me with large amounts of time for which I wasn't accountable, especially on those weekends when he would volunteer to
babysit for some couple who were going off to Lake Tahoe to save their marriage. He'd move himself into their house, sleep in their bed, and take care of their kids.

During those weekends, what seemed most important to him was that he establish, with those Justins and Samuels and Maxes, the very camaraderie of boys from which, as a boy, he had been excluded, thanks largely to his inability to throw a ball, his high voice, in short, his stubborn adherence to all the classic attributes of the good faggot. For despite the cruelty that had marred his childhood, still, he longed to be treated as a boy by boys, which was why, even as he baked, he collected baseball cards, and was always trying to get me to go to the park with him to play catch.

Now he was not so much the adult to whom children looked up as the secret playmate whose grown-up bearing and possessions (a credit card, a driver's license) brought certain enviable and forbidden attractions within reach. With Tom, his young charges could eat the things they weren't supposed to eat, see the movies they weren't supposed to see. In this regard Tom fit perfectly the clinical profile of the pedophile … except that he was not a pedophile. Sexuality had nothing to do with it; to him those boys were not emblems, they were not “the boy” whose allure must wither as he himself blooms. Instead he loved them simply and individually, as well as loving the ease with which they loved him, their love reliable and pure of complication, and remote from the bristly, fitful love of adult for adult.

And yet in the background, there always lurked a certain unease, a skittishness on Tom's part to match the volubility with which his friends avowed their trust in him.

For instance, I remember a dinner once—it was an occasion dinner, though I can't recall which occasion: Thanksgiving, perhaps. Tom had done all the cooking, of course.
There were children, and two or three of the couples, and only one other queer: his former boyfriend Ernie, whom he had invited only because he was alone, and dying. Visibly dying.

I mean, you could see the patches of foundation make-up that he had rubbed onto his face to hide the KS lesions.

A husband—this was Tony, who was married to Gina; typically, he worked in the computer industry—was talking about his boyhood. About all the “macho crap” he'd had to put up with, coming of age in the fifties. Of late Tony had joined a men's group, the members of which went on camping trips, and danced around a wood fire, and wept together over paternal cruelties.

“When Justin grows up,” he said, “I want him to be at peace in his masculinity. That way he'll be a better father than I am. A better husband, too.”

Gina picked up her napkin and dabbed at the corner of her eyes. Reaching across the table, she squeezed his hand.

A silence fell. I remember there was a big bowl of tangerines and walnuts in the center of the table. Ernie took a walnut and cracked it between his teeth. “All well and good,” he said, “but what if Justin grows up to be queer?”

Tony, who was taking a gulp from his wineglass, spluttered onto the tablecloth, then looked anxiously toward his son, who was playing with Lego blocks.

He appeared to regard Justin's fixation on the Lego blocks with relief.

“You see?” Ernie said. “The very idea terrifies you. And yet who's to say he won't grow up to be queer? I did. Tom did.”

“Ernie, please,” Tom said.

“Look, I understand your point, and I respect it,” Tony said, “only in the case of Justin, it seems fairly obvious—”

“Why, because he plays baseball? I played baseball. For Christ's sake, I was pitcher on the varsity team.”

“What Tony means,” Gina interjected, “is that we just want our son to grow up to be happy and well adjusted. To be a good partner and a good parent.”

“So you're saying you won't mind if he turns out to be queer?”

“Please keep your voice down.”

“Well, that proves my point. Suddenly
queer
's a dirty word. And if that's how things are in your house, then no matter what Justin does, he's fucked for life. For all your sanctimonious good intentions, you're making it clear that you expect him to grow up a certain way. In a sense you're ordering him to.”

“Justin, why don't you go to the other room?” Tony said. “The grown-ups need private time.”

“No,” said Justin.

By now Tom was nearly apoplectic. He hated it, he told me later, when his dinners were spoiled. And what had spoiled this one?

“Conflict,” he replied, plunging a steel pan into scalding dishwater.

“But Ernie only said what he felt.”

“He didn't have to be so confrontational. He offended Tony.”

“Tony offended him.”

“Tony didn't mean to offend anyone. A guy like that, it's not easy for him to open up. For once he was feeling at ease, like he could really say what was on his mind. Now he'll
always be on his guard with us.”

“He offended me,” I added after a moment.

“I just don't see why Ernie had to be so holier-than-thou. It's as if he thinks being sick means he isn't obliged to be civil.”

“Was he being uncivil?”

“He should have watched his language. Also, his timing was terrible. He upset everybody, especially the children.”

“The children weren't listening.”

“How do you know?” Tom asked.

What seemed imperative to him, during those years, was a certain kind of forgetting: to do one's duty, to pay one's dues, and then at the end of the day to return to a place from which illness—even the mention of illness—was effectively barred.

And because sex was for him so intimately bound up with illness, this had to be a place from which sex, too, was barred—virtually barred.

So once a week—it seemed to be part of that bargain he had struck, altruism in exchange for a life sentence—he volunteered at the AIDS hospice that his friend Caroline ran. Sometimes I accompanied him. I liked the hospice, which was in many ways far more cheerful than our own crypto-dream-bunker. It was located in a small, sunny house at the end of a cul-de-sac around which children rode their bicycles with unusual ferocity. We would bring food, and if it was spring, fresh flowers—irises and tulips—and I remember that one morning Tom was arranging the flowers in vases, when one of the patients called out, “Caroline, could you come here for a moment? I think John just died.”
Caroline went, and it was true: John had died. No one seemed overly upset. The police were summoned. They did not, as I'd heard they had early in the epidemic, when no one knew anything, pull a gun on the corpse. (“If you'd feel better about it, you can tie him up,” the distraught widower is reputed to have remarked on one of these occasions; “it wouldn't be the first time.”) A doctor arrived to sign the death certificate, an ambulance to take away the body. Quiet prayers were said, and lunch was made.

“Around here,” Caroline said, “death is never an emergency. The only emergency is pain.”

We stayed for lunch—corn chowder, chicken with almonds, chocolate pudding. Comfort food, all made by Tom. Then the roommate of the man who'd died called Caroline over to his bedside and whispered something to her. “He wants to speak to you,” she said.

“Who? Me?” asked Tom. “Why?”

“I don't know.”

We walked over to the man's bed. He had a tube in his nose. He could barely lift his head.

There was a chair next to the bed, and Tom sat down in it.

The man lifted his lips to Tom's ear. “Don't you remember me?” he asked.

“I'm sorry,” Tom said. “I …”

“I'm a friend of Ernie's. Keith Musgrave. Don't you remember that weekend in Lake Tahoe? We rented a cabin—you and Ernie and Steven and I. Four boys and only one bed.”

Tom blushed. “Oh, of course. How are you?”

“How am I?”

“Sorry,” Tom said, “I didn't mean …”

“It's O.K. So how's Ernie doing these days? Are you two still in touch?”

“Ernie? Oh, well, he's … passed on. Just a few weeks ago.”

“Ah. So I'll be seeing him soon.” Keith looked up. “Or on second thought …” And he looked down.

Tom stood. “I'm afraid we have to go,” he said. “It's certainly been a pleasure.”

“The pleasure was all mine,” Keith answered, turning to look out the window. And we headed out the door.

It had started raining by the time we left the hospice. I remember Tom's silence in the car, his pale and vulnerable profile: chiseled sideburn, protruding nose, watermelon-colored lips. His hand gripping the wheel. One half-obscured, blinking brown eye focused, urgently, on the road. We had no plans for the rest of the weekend, and I was desperately trying to think some up, running in my head through an ever shorter list of friends on whom we could still count for company … but Mary's baby was sick, and Gina and Tony were at Disneyland, and Joan's best friend was dying. Suddenly a car made an illegal left turn in front of us, Tom honked the horn, smashed on the brakes, we skidded in the rain and nearly collided with a 94 bus. “Fuck,” he said, in a voice that suggested he was sorry we hadn't, then, righting the car, lugged us back into traffic.

“Was the problem that you didn't recognize him?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Keith.”

“Oh, him. No, at first I didn't.”

I stretched my arms behind my head. “So I guess it mustn't have been a very good weekend.”

“And what's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just … that if it had been a good weekend, you'd have remembered it.”

“We didn't do anything unsafe, O.K.?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, clearly that's what you're wondering … and if that's the case, you can rest assured. I've been completely up front with you so far as my history is concerned. You've got nothing to worry about.”

“Of course I've got nothing to worry about. We never have sex.”

“Oh, so we're back to that again—”

“We're not back to anything.”

“Why won't I just have the test and be done with it.”

“I never mentioned the test. You brought up the test. All of this is in your head, not mine.”

We arrived home. The rain had gotten worse. I remember that I was correcting proofs, and Tom was sitting at his desk, drawing endless concentric circles with a protractor, when I felt a drop of water hit my head and, looking up, saw a patch of paint on the ceiling bulging like a tumor, rainwater collecting underneath. Tom noticed it the same moment I did, a pregnancy gathering there, and then before we could do or say anything the fragile membrane broke, and water fell to the floor, as before a birth. He jumped up, grabbed a box of tissues, and dropped to his knees before the spreading gray stain on the
carpet.

“Call a plumber!” he screamed, but I just watched as he piled tissues on top of tissues to soak up the water.

“But, Tom, a plumber can't—”

“Are you just going to stand there? Aren't you going to help at all?”

“O.K., O.K.”

“You don't need to use that tone of voice. There's really no justification for that tone of voice. And bring some paper towels.”

I went into the kitchen, where we kept the phone books. I called a plumber, though I could not fathom what he was supposed to do. In crisp tones, he informed me that a weekend visit would cost $55 off the bat, plus $35 an hour, plus parts. “Whatever,” I said, hung up, and went back into the living room, where Tom was still crouching over his soggy pile of tissues.

“I've called the plumber. He's on his way.”

“You're so slow. Three minutes I've been waiting here for you to bring me paper towels. And now that I think about it, it's probably been three minutes every day since we started living together—at least. That's twenty-one minutes a week, eighty-four minutes a month, over a thousand minutes a year. Which means that in ten years, I've lost a hundred and sixty days—something like five months—just waiting for you. Now give me the damn paper towels.”

“I forgot the paper towels.”

Tom looked up at me. I sat on the sofa.

“I can't stay here anymore,” I said. “I'm going crazy. You're driving me crazy.”

“Are you saying you're leaving me?” he asked, his voice low, as if he'd been expecting it.

“Not you. This.” I pointed to the rug, to the sopping pile of tissues.

“I knew you'd do this one day,” Tom said. “You're a coward. You think you can run away from pain. Soon enough you'll find out, though. No one can.”

He quieted, and I turned to watch where the rain was falling against the window, so thickly sheeted that for a moment it seemed to be flowing upward.

“Just don't expect me to be waiting for you when you come back,” Tom said. He was rubbing his hands together, gathering the white clots of tissue into a ball.

“I wouldn't expect that.”

Suddenly our voices were calm, we were talking like normal human beings. “Where are you planning to go, anyway?” he asked, as casually as if I were a friend planning a vacation.

“I thought Düsseldorf.”

“Düsseldorf!”

“There's a job in Düsseldorf. I saw it posted at school. For an interpreter.”