CHAPTER 10
He woke, and again time was confused. A return to the past or a new beginning? Very gently he freed himself from Mario’s entangling arms and lay looking down at the other man’s sleeping face. The room was light; Mario’s watch on the dresser, which he could see by craning his neck a little, read almost nine. With a combination of tenderness and resignation, looking at Mario’s face—relaxed, all the lines of tension and bitterness momentarily smoothed away—he sighed, realizing the depth of his commitment to this difficult damn fool.
Like all lovers, he found himself trying to put his finger on the first moment he had been aware of love. Not the night of the Oklahoma thunderstorm, when Mario had first taken him into his bed. Not the dark night when, drowsy with the rolling thunder of the sea, he had felt the fugitive brush of an unrealized kiss. Not even, perhaps—though this was closer—the night when Mario had shaken and slapped him into awareness of what he was: a performer, a flyer, not a crybaby kid. Had it been the day of his first fall, when Mario had pinned the little medal into the neckline of his shirt and Tommy had realized he would take a hundred falls, a thousand, without whimpering, to call forth that grin of approval? He touched the little medal lying on the nightstand. It was thinning now, smoothed from resting against his body.
No, it had begun earlier, in the time before he was aware of anything but obsession, a boy on the ground looking at an older boy flying, falling through space to land, bruised and shaken, almost at his feet—soaring through space, straining without wings for the unattainable. I wanted to give it to him even then. I didn’t know what he wanted, but I wanted it, too. The hunger to fly, the shared need, obsession: the living that made all the rest of life worth it.
Mario had given him so much. First the freedom of the platform, then of flight. Strength and awareness and the priceless gift of courage; he had armored him with harshness and broken him relentlessly like a ring-shy colt, sparing him nothing even in the name of love. And later Mario had given him the knowledge of his own nature, the dawning of sexuality, had shared that with him, too, but unsparing, uncompromising.
I had to be rough on you, Tommy. If I wasn’t tough that way, I’d melt down and go soft all over and you’d find me lying in a puddle someplace. Tommy realized suddenly that if Mario had ever softened to him in training, had ever even once compromised with his own rigid standards, then everything else between them would have gone for nothing, and their relationship, rooted in softness instead of strength, would have taken on a subtle flavor of corruption. But this alone they had never tainted, never compromised; only apart from Tommy did Mario slip and falter into softness. And because of this, what might have been a leech, sapping at and infecting the roots of their strength, became instead the source from which a harsh purity flowed through them, emerging into the clean brilliance of flight.
And if in the overflow of that strength, the power behind them flung them into each other’s arms, what did it matter?
Tommy had never realized to what extent a lingering guilt, the shocked child hiding behind the man, had remained, making him ashamed of what he was, until now he examined the roots of love and found them whole and pure. He had let outsiders make him ashamed of what he was and what he felt for Mario; he had been defensive about it, but still ashamed. Mario stirred restlessly and woke, opening his confused dark eyes, and as always it was deep reassurance to Tommy to see him come back out of that strange unknown country of sleep into day. Mario blinked, then smiled at him.
“Hi, Lucky. That thing went good last night, didn’t it?”
Tommy nodded. Mario turned on his elbow and said, “What time is Bart picking you up for this auto race or whatever the hell it is?”
“Sports-car club rally run. Ten, I think.” Abruptly he remembered something else, and flinched.
“Matt, I’ve got something to tell you. Remember that phone call I said was a wrong number?”
“I knew it wasn’t,” Mario said, “but you seemed so shook up about it, I didn’t want to ask questions. What was it, Tom?”
Haltingly, distressed, Tommy told Mario about Sue-Lynn’s call. Mario’s face tightened, but when Tommy had finished, he said, “It’s okay, Lucky. I probably couldn’t have taken it, right then. I guess I’ve got to call her, though. I know what she wants.”
“What does she want?”
Mario sighed. “I owe her a lot of money,” he said. “When we split up, I agreed to pay child support. And then I walked out and never paid her anything but that first check I gave her. I got a letter from her after we got home, but I couldn’t face opening it. And Lucia said she’d been calling, but I never did call her back. I couldn’t—couldn’t manage it. I guess I don’t blame her for being sore enough to take me to court. It might be kind of useful having a wife around. Even an ex-wife. I wouldn’t be the first—the first queer in Hollywood to get married for a good front, a cover story.” He added, “She’d have to know the facts of life, of course. About us.”
“Jesus,” Tommy said, “why not just call up the Times about it?”
“No, listen, Tom. I said I’d tell you the whole story someday. About Susan and me, that is.”
Tommy felt a painful hollowness inside his belly. “You don’t have to tell me anything, Matt.”
“No, I want to. We ought to talk about a couple of other things, too. Like, I figured you might have got married yourself, after we split.”
Tommy could laugh about it now. “Are you nuts? You can’t still say a thing like that, after last night?”
“We never really talked about any of this, Tom. Not since that one time, the time we rode in the rig truck. I don’t know how you feel about women, for instance, because every time it ever came up, we were having some kind of row!”
“I was a dumb punk,” Tommy said uneasily.
“No,” Mario said, “you were a nice little kid. Only I never realized how much of a kid you were. You acted so grown-up all the time, I never did get it through my head how young you were.” Dimly, Tommy remembered Angelo saying something like this once. “Believe it or not, Lucky, when you walked out—when we broke up, that time—the only thing that kept me from jumping Starr’s, hunting all over the country for you, coming crawling on my knees if I had to—”
“Matt, easy, easy, fella—”
“No, listen, Lucky. The thing was, I kept telling myself, lots of boys that age get a crush on some one guy. Because you were always tagging around after me, you never got a chance to find out how you felt about girls. I got to you before you knew any better, and I figured if you got loose from me, you might find out—no, wait, Tommy, let me finish, huh?—I figured, once you were away from me, you might try it out with girls, find out whether you were really—really homosexual, or whether you were just so god-awful hung up on me that you didn’t know what you were.”
Tommy folded and refolded a pleat in the bedspread. “When I left, I was kind of thinking along those lines myself,” he said at last, in a low voice. “There were a lot of girls, that first year. But somehow, some way, it just never felt right. It didn’t mean a damn thing to me except—except just”—he felt his face heating—“just what they used to call in the Army, getting my rocks off. Nothing more than that.”
“I’m not sorry I got married,” Mario said. “Otherwise I might never have been sure. I always felt I didn’t need to be queer, that any time I wanted to I could make it all right with women. You know. Every time I started feeling rotten about myself, I’d go out and start helling around with some girl, and I started to try and get you into that, too—God, the nights I’ve woken up and wanted to puke, remembering those two broads— Doing it to myself was bad enough, but getting you in on it—Jesus!”
“Forget it, Matt. I have,” Tommy said, not truthfully. He could forgive it, knowing Mario’s inner torment, but forgetting was something else. “Is that how you came to get married?”
“I honestly don’t know. That summer I felt like I was going crazy. Missing you, and�
��and worrying about Liss, and—and having nightmares, doing crazy things, taking crazy risks. I even picked up a school kid once. A teenager. I didn’t—didn’t touch him. I—I asked him, and he looked at me like I was something that had crawled out from under a rock, and I let him out of the car and drove off. For ten days afterward I went around scared green, expecting they’d pick me up, arrest me—but I guess he didn’t say anything to anybody. Maybe he was ashamed, or maybe he figured there was no harm in asking, so long as I took no for an answer. And every time I saw a red head in a crowd somewhere I’d feel—feel all jumpy, thinking it was you. Oh, hell. Tom, I can’t talk about it. And then Susan was around all the time, and—and it was all right. I wasn’t so scared all the time. And then one day we went off and got married. Seemed like a good idea at the time, that was all.”
His face was expressionless; he was remembering some kind of lonely hell Tommy knew he would never share. His words had skimmed the surface, no more.
“I tried,” he said at last. “Before God, I tried. We weren’t married by a priest, because she’d been divorced, but I tried. I felt like one of the crowd, one of the guys, for the only time in my life. It was kind of nice, not to be always—always on the outside, looking in. And while Susan was pregnant I figured I must really love her after all. I wanted to baby her. spoil her, make a fuss over her. The way I used to—used to with Liss. You should have seen me in the hospital the night Suzy was born.” Tommy saw the remote smile on his face and marveled at it. This was a side of Mario he had never seen.
“Susan had a real rough time, and I really got scared. Afterward I was so tickled, so proud. I felt like whatever happened, it was all worth it, because we had Suzy. Even when things started to go sour with Susan, I figured we could make it because of the baby. I was nuts about her. My kid.” He blinked, and Tommy saw that there were tears in his eyes.
“I thought you told Lucia that Suzy wasn’t yours, Matt.”
Mario swallowed. “Well, hell, I’m not perfectly sure. Legally she’s mine, anyhow. There’s a law called ‘marital access.’ Meaning we were married and sleeping together when Susan got pregnant. I guess Lucia got me upset and I wanted to say the rottenest thing I could think of. But she could have been mine, all right; in fact, I’ve really got no reason to think she isn’t. Anyhow, I felt like Suzy was mine, even if I wasn’t sure. I tell you, I was nuts about her. She’s a beautiful kid, Tom—big blue eyes and lots and lots of curly dark hair, not quite as dark as Tessa’s, more like Liss’s. And so smart and cute. Susan said I spoiled her rotten, but I said she just wanted her Babbo—that was what she called me—no reason she shouldn’t. She was a good baby, too, never cried a lot. Yeah, I know you don’t like babies much, but I do. Always did.” Suddenly his face darkened, his voice went dry.
“All of a sudden Susan told me she wanted a divorce. I said okay, but I wanted to keep Suzy, and that was when she threw it at me. She said, ‘What makes you think she’s yours?’ I realize now she was just trying to hurt me, trying to say the thing she knew would hurt me most—”
“Oh, Jesus, Matt,” Tommy said, and reached to put an arm around him. But Mario jerked away, swinging around with an abrupt, graceful movement that made Tommy think of Lucia.
“No, Tom, let me finish—let me get it off my chest before I come apart.” He stared into space. “Susan’s not a bad kid. She’s quiet, easy to live with, lots of fun. When we were first married, there was what most people would call a normal amount of sex, I guess. It was okay. No big charge, but I felt—oh, relaxed and good, most of the time. No nerves. Only after she got pregnant, the sex thing kind of tapered off. She was sick a lot. I wanted to baby her, spoil her, fuss over her. I figured, like I said, I must really love her after all. Boy, did I get some bumps!”
He sat down on the bed and began absentmindedly rubbing his bad wrist. “When Suzy was about two, three months old, Susan told me the doctor said it was okay, we could start sleeping together again. And that was when it hit me. She was easy to live with, I was real fond of her, and we didn’t get on each other’s nerves. But as far as sex, she just wasn’t. I could lie beside her, and cuddle her, like I did Suzy, pick her up on my lap and rock her, but I didn’t want anything else. She did, though, and I”—he swallowed—“I tried. I figured she had a right. But it—it—it just didn’t work, somehow. So I put it up to her: I’d take care of her, support her, she could keep house for me and look after Suzy, or if she wanted to come back to flying, that was okay, too—we’d get somebody to look after the baby during the season—but we’d just be pals. Well, my God, you should have heard her. I don’t know, maybe most women would feel that way. We did make it up, sort of, but then I had that bad accident, and she left me. I guess I don’t blame her, much.” He looked away. “I married her in good faith. I wanted to be a good husband and—and father. But that’s a raw deal for a girl, what I offered her. So I didn’t fight it when she walked out.”
Tommy asked, very low, “Did she know? That you were—queer?”
“I’m not sure. She never said. She got the divorce on grounds of mental cruelty. I wanted Suzy, but you can’t take a kid that age away from her mother. Oh, I probably could have gone into court, but I was afraid that shyster lawyer of hers would hunt up my record or hear that old blacklist story. And if that had happened, by the time they got through with me, I’d never be allowed within a hundred miles of any kid, not even my own. I went out of the lawyer’s office and just walked around the streets for hours, trying to calm down before the show. Only it was that night we fell. Like I say her face got marked up some, and she got the idea I did it to her on purpose.”
Tommy felt himself shudder, remembering moments of apparent reasonless cruelty. “But you didn’t, did you?”
Mario bent his head into his hands and said through them, “Before God, Tom, I don’t know. I can’t even remember going into the ring that night. The doctor said it was concussion. I remember Sue-Lynn nagging me in the lawyer’s office and walking out because I was afraid I’d hit her if I didn’t. I sort of remember getting into my tights, but nothing afterward—not the fall, not the ambulance. Next thing I remember I was in the hospital with a cast a foot long on my wrist. I thought I was blind. I was so dopey I couldn’t figure out that there were bandages all over my face. But Susan said I threatened her, and she thought I’d tried to kill her.”
He was silent, but this time he did not move away from Tommy’s arm around him. “It wasn’t her I was mad at,” he said, stumbling. “I was mad because I knew I shouldn’t have married her. But if I could walk out of the lawyer’s office to keep from slapping her face, it stands to reason I wouldn’t do anything worse. Anyhow, I wouldn’t have racked up my wrist this way just to spite her—it’s never been right since. And she’s my kid’s mother. I wouldn’t have wanted to hurt Lionel, either. So it makes sense to think I wouldn’t have tried to hurt her.” There was a moment of silence. “Doesn’t it?”
Only now did Tommy realize the lonely hell Mario had been through. And I did it to him. Walking out on him. But at the time there had seemed no other way.
“Tommy, I know I couldn’t hurt Susan. Only I couldn’t remember, and it scared me. So I signed what they told me to, and I gave her a check to keep her going, and then I walked out of that hospital, and I don’t remember where I went or what I did until I came out of a fog one day, sitting on a park bench in Dallas, Texas, with fifteen cents in my pocket. I was going to wire home for some money, and then suddenly I said to myself the hell with it, and I went and got a job in a carnival that was playing in town, and they were going to Mexico, and the rest I told you about.”
“God Almighty,” Tommy whispered. But he knew that nothing, now, could touch what was between them. Never again. He reached out and clasped his hand around Mario’s wrist.
“That was a long time ago, Matt. A real long time ago.”
“And you don’t think I—I owe it to Sue-Lynn, to go back to her, look after her and Suzy?”
/> Tommy blinked and said, “Is that what’s been bothering you?”
“Yeah. Part of it, anyway.”
“The way I see it,” Tommy said, “you don’t owe Sue-Lynn a damn thing. Except money, and that ain’t hard to get, the way things have been going. Sure, you’ve got to help take care of your kid, but I don’t see you owe her anything more than that.”
Mario let out his breath. “I knew that,” he said, “only trying to figure it out all by myself, I was going round and round in a squirrel cage. That was why I couldn’t call her or answer her letters. I don’t mind supporting Suzy. Right now I’m kind of short, but if Susan’s willing to be reasonable, and she usually is, I’ll scrape up something. Money’s never been any problem when I can work, and after the show last night, I’m not worrying about that anymore.”
The quiet, matter-of-fact way he said it told Tommy, more than any protestation, that the healing process was deeper than he realized. Mario added gently, “Only after—well, after last night—I know something else, too. I’ll help her out with Suzy, but I won’t go back and live with her. If I try that again, there’s not going to be enough left of me to put in a slot machine.” He asked, “Did she give you a number to call?”
“She said to tell you she was in the book and you knew where she was.”
Mario’s grin was mirthless. “Damn. She knows me pretty well, at that.” He reached for the phone.
Tommy went to shave. He was not consciously listening, but the walls of the bathroom were thin and he could not help hearing Mario’s voice, quiet, alien, distant.
“Hello. Mrs. Susan Gardner, please. Susan? Oh—let me speak to Mommy, darling.” There was a long pause. Tommy, shaking with anguished empathy at the ordeal facing Mario, braced himself. They had always said to each other, I can’t take your falls for you. This had always been at the heart of their relationship, the incorruptible core. Now, more than ever, he must pull away, keep that intact. Nothing now, outside, could touch what was between them.
The Catch Trap Page 67
