by Rachel Kane
“Yes, yes,” he said quickly, to get past this knot inside his chest he felt at the mention of his dad. “I know all about him being gay.” Left unsaid was all the trauma that had arisen from that secret, but Mason understood. His hand slipped over Liam’s in support.
“The fact that you don’t know who I am, means he didn’t give you the entire story,” Thaddeus said. He sat back, and picked at the knees of his suit. “I am, in fact, the reason Rodney Cooper left Superbia.”
“The reason—”
“Or, should I say, my love for your father was the reason.”
The room went silent as they digested this information. Liam shook his head, then looked back up at Thaddeus, looked at him in this new light.
Yes, he would have been young once, and dashing. He had that rogue’s charm that drew you in. Had Liam’s dad found him attractive? Had he fallen for Thaddeus? Was that even possible?
“I take it from your pause that this is a difficult point. But I won’t deny it. We were as much in love as two idiot boys can be, when summer grips you in her lusty hands and throws the two of you together, shirtless and skinny with your scabby knees. Oh, my, the times we had. The body he had. Now, don’t look shocked, I can tell you’ve got the same figure. I know Mason Lee understands what I mean, when I say there’s something about you lithe, slippery Cooper men. Like you were all born underwater, little otters and minks and what-not, sleek and firm.”
Liam cleared his throat, desperate to change the subject, and then again unsure why he wanted to change it. Embarrassment, certainly; he didn’t want this man talking about his body. But more than that, there was his father, in the shadows of memory, so close to becoming clear…and he was afraid of that clarity. Afraid of finding out the secret story of his life.
It would change everything.
Except…would it?
His father was dead, and the damage to the family was done. More secrets being revealed weren’t going to hurt. Thaddeus Mulgrew did not have the air of a man on the attack. If anything, the long thin smile on his face reminded him of a lizard happily basking in the sun. Mulgrew was being warmed by these old memories.
“Go on,” Liam said, composing himself.
“My family, Mr. Cooper, have always prided themselves on being the masters of this worthless town. Kings of the junkyard. And there’s no room in that pride for a queer, as my father liked to call me. So when we were found out, when some cousin or another spotted Rodney and I en deshabille, pulling on our tattered jeans after an afternoon’s delectation, well then, all hell couldn’t help but break loose. We were brought before the Mulgrew tribunal.”
Mason stiffened and sat back, his face pale, a thin sheen of sweat on his brow that had nothing to do with the comfortably cool air of the bookshop. Liam turned in his seat and clutched the hand that had recently held his own. “It’s okay,” he whispered to Mason.
“Oh, he knows,” said Thaddeus, “he knows what that tribunal is like, what dark deals are made when my family is trying to cover up a little high-spirited sodomy. You’ve been through it, Mason Lee. New generation of Mulgrews, but same old tactic, am I right?”
“What…what kind of deal did Liam’s dad have to make?”
“Secrecy,” hissed Thaddeus, his tongue serpentine, uncoiling over the word. “That poisonous mix of silence and shame that has entombed so many men who have had the misfortune of falling for one of our handsome boys. Secrecy. The Cooper fortunes were falling low, in any case, since the spring dried up, and the rich and famous had stopped coming to stay at the house. Your father, Liam, didn’t have a leg to stand on. They said they’d crush him. He’d have to leave. If he stayed, they’d ensure he failed at every endeavor. If he left, if he kept the family secret, and never revealed his time with me, then they’d do right by him, pay for his college—far, far out of town—and he could have a new life outside of Superbia. You have to understand, for a country boy like that, one who didn’t have a dime to his name, it was a golden opportunity. It might’ve even seemed generous. But for one minor addition. One extra rule…and Mason Lee, I think you know what I’m talking about.”
Mason, his head bowed, uttered a quiet groan. “They told him, if he ever came out of the closet, they’d do something to him.”
Thaddeus snapped his fingers. “You do know all about it.”
Liam had let Mason’s hand go at some point, and was gripping the arms of his chair. The room itself had disappeared, everything had faded, until Thaddeus Mulgrew was the only thing in the room, looking down into the glass Alex had provided, the two ice cubes nearly melted, softly ticking as they traveled in a circle through his drink. “Please…explain yourself,” he whispered, his heart pounding.
“Oh, you know, I can see you putting it all together in your head. My father and my uncles, they said that if Rodney tried to live as a gay man, it would get back to us. If he tried to be open, people in Superbia would start to talk, and they’d cast eyes on me. They’d remember how we’d slung our arms around each other, proud as hell, walking through town, laughing and touching. They’d realize that wasn’t just close friendship they were seeing, but something else entirely. Call it lust, call it love, but my daddy wasn’t having it. I still remember him talking in that little room as Rodney stood there, careful not to look at my eyes, while I shook and wanted to scream: Nobody need ever know about your perversion, Rodney. Better for you if they don’t. It’s a harsh world out there for a queer boy, and I know you want to do well. Now, we can forgive you trying to entice Thaddeus here. Trying to convert him to your…your side of things. But if one word, one single word, ever makes it back to us that you have come out of the closet, as they say, then we’ll take measures against you, against your family, against that wretched old house. Understand me, boy? We will make your family wish you had never been born. How can I hear those words so clearly? That harsh old baritone, informed by whiskey and Pall Malls, I feared that voice so much as a child, and Rodney learned to fear it too. But he did what he was told. He left Superbia, never to return. Got his education, got a wife. Had his babies. Oh, I tracked him down from time to time—carefully, so he never knew—and saw that he had a secret life too. I saw the toll it took on him. He was a different man than the boy I had come to love. He was harsh, bent, angry. And what did my family achieve? Not a damned thing. As soon as I had graduated college, I refused to come back here and live as a sweet little straight boy. I flaunted myself. Big and bold and unmistakable. So they cut me off. They exiled me. Gave me a little job with the Historical Society and told me I could stop considering myself a Mulgrew. Funny how they forget that, when they decide they need a little help, a little ammunition, as I’ve called it.”
“I’m sorry,” said Liam, “I need a moment.” Before realizing consciously what he was doing, he was up, pacing, walking away from Thaddeus, away from Roo and Mason and Alex. He had trouble with the lock on the front door, it wouldn’t turn, it fought him, he thought he was going to have to break the glass with his fists, but then it relented, it clicked, the door was open, and he was outside, gasping, emerging from the floodwaters of revelation into the open air, swallowing all the oxygen into his lungs he could get, gulping, unable to stand straight, dizzy, reaching, reaching, on the verge of falling.
“Easy there,” said a kind, familiar, loving voice, and there was a strong arm to hold him, and he turned and folded himself into Mason’s chest. Mason’s other arm held Roo, who looked with concern at Liam, her lower lip quivering, wondering whether to cry in sympathy. Liam took her, held her close, held Mason close, and wasn’t sure whether he could be the strong father-figure who doesn’t cry, wasn’t sure even if it was the right thing to do to restrain his tears in front of Roo, wasn’t that dishonest, wasn’t it the same thing his father had done, hiding every emotion from his children? And so he kissed her cheeks and cried, and he held her tight and cried, and she cried too, and even Mason starting tearing up, all mourning for their different reasons.
“
How am I supposed to tell Mama?” Liam said, his voice hitching. “How am I supposed to tell Judah? Sorry you two, but Dad had to die because the Mulgrews want everyone to be straight. What kind of sick fucks— I mean, how does it even— Mason, why? How?”
“They’re never going to do it again,” Mason said. “We’re going to make sure of that. They will never ruin one more person’s life, if I can help it.”
His thoughts were a gale in his skull, howling at the injustice of it. To be robbed of his father, to be robbed of his heritage, of half his family…
“I’m never going to do that to you,” he whispered to Roo. “Never. Nobody in your life will ever have secrets they’re afraid to share, nobody will ever be afraid that they’ll get cast out. We’re going to build something different, something that’s not afraid of the Mulgrews of the world. We’re going to build a family that accepts people—” His voice left, and all he could do was nuzzle Roo’s soft cheek, as her sympathetic sobs quieted, and her little hands touched his face.
“We’re going to make this work,” said Mason, his arms now fully around Liam and Roo. “We’re going to live our lives out in the open.”
“But… But Violet’s going to fight us, you know that. She’s going to come after Alex, after Toby—”
“Ahem,” said Alex, standing at the open door of his shop. “I know you two are busy having a moment, but there’s one more thing Thaddeus needs to share with you.”
Liam’s tear-soaked laugh sounded like a man choking. “Oh god, what else could he possibly reveal? I think I’ve had enough shocks for one day!”
Alex reached out and put his hand on Liam’s arm. “I think you’re going to want to hear this last one.”
So they returned to the reading nook, where Thaddeus had risen, and was looking through the history section, his drink nearly finished. He rattled his ice cubes at Alex. “Let’s have one more,” he said. “My throat’s as dry as a Baptist barbecue. Now you two boys settle down, and let that baby play. I see you’ve made her cry. There’s no sense in that. A baby with two big daddies like yourselves will have nothing to fear in this world.”
“That’s the plan,” said Mason.
“Alex said you had more to tell us,” said Liam.
“Where’s my drink, Alex? Ah. Good boy. You made this one strong, I hope? One prays your brother pours a better drink than you. Now, let me think. What was I going to tell you? So many stories in Superbia, so many secrets, it’s hard to pick which one—”
Liam rubbed his eyes with his shirtsleeve. “Come on, Thaddeus. No more playing around. We’re listening.”
“Yes, you’ve been good listeners thus far. How I wish everyone was. Nobody listens, nobody reads. You know how few copies of that history have sold? It’s shocking. All the money, all that time, I could’ve just poured it all into a hole in the ground, and found more profit. But putting together my little notes in the Historical Society did give me an almost endless supply of gossip, even if the subjects of that gossip are long in the grave at this point.”
Both the men shifted in their seats, impatient. Thaddeus must have picked up on that, because he raised one finger, then drained his drink in one single, troublingly quick swallow, handing the glass back to Alex.
“So I want to go back a ways, before the trouble with me and Liam’s daddy. I had mentioned to you that the Cooper fortunes were declining.”
“Right,” said Liam. “The spring dried up.”
“Indeed. And when that happened, what point was there in Superbia? No more hot water bubbling up from the earth, no more mineral-infused goodness that could take away all your ills. It must have seemed like the planet itself had turned against your family. Now, this was in the days of Silas Cooper Junior. Your great-uncle, Liam.”
“Yeah, the one who willed my dad the property.”
“And now, I suppose, you understand why Rodney never came back for it, but would he have, if things had been different? If the springs had still been active, if the resort were a going concern? That’s a question that haunted me for years. What if the Coopers had maintained their wealth? What if they’d grown richer than my family? How would things have turned out then? I have to tell you, I spent a long, long time studying the subject of that spring. There is nothing so dull, to a man of my predispositions, as studying hydrodynamics and geology. Ugh, even the words sully my tongue. You ever want to put that baby to sleep, you give her a textbook on geology. But here is an interesting puzzle for you: If you were to somehow stop up a spring, what would happen?”
The question seemed so far removed from the deep emotions Liam had been subjected to over the past few minutes, that Thaddeus might as well have been speaking in another language. What did geology have to do with his family?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I guess it would explode?”
Thaddeus nodded. “It could, yes. Or, this being water we’re talking about, it might just find the next-easiest place to flow. Someplace not nearly as dramatic as the spring. Perhaps in the middle of a big lake, where no one would ever notice, as the water from underground mixed with the cooler water of the lake.”
At this, Mason suddenly sat forward, hands on his knees, looking like he might spring out of his chair. “Lake Mulgrew?”
“Aha, see, the local boy knows his landmarks.” Thaddeus unfolded himself from the chair and gestured at the old map of Superbia, putting his finger on the deep-blue spot Liam had noted before. “Exactly, Lake Mulgrew, centered on the delightfully-named Mulgrew Manors. If the spring were to be redirected there, it might no longer have its former glory…and, since no one is allowed onto the Mulgrew property without permission, why, maybe no one would ever notice the water had been redirected there.”
“Okay, okay, but wait, what are you saying?” asked Liam. “Had been redirected? Are you implying—”
“Dear boy, I’m not implying anything. I’m telling you directly. My family sabotaged the spring.”
A silence fell over the room then, and Roo looked from man to man, considering whether this was a moment of tears again, but seeing that it wasn’t, she went back to her game.
“How— Why?” Liam asked, for the second time that afternoon.
“Oh, you know why. You know exactly why. My family believes in nothing but the free exercise of their power. They believe they are destined for greatness. And no one will get in their way. For a generation, the Coopers had threatened their rule over this town, and they were not going to have it. Now, Silas Senior, that was a sharp man. He was a businessman, he knew what he was about. Silas Junior? Well, you know how it is, after the money passes down. He was softer. Sweet man, always good to me, but not sharp. He had no idea what my family had done, had no idea it was even possible. He wasn’t taking care of that spring, he didn’t have its source guarded, and so over the course of a couple of weeks, the men in my family blocked it up. The water came to our property, the spring fell to nothing, and that was that for the Cooper fortune. Silas Junior spent the rest of his life—and the rest of his money—trying to maintain a house he couldn’t possibly afford.”
Liam felt something then, something that threatened to break his grieving in two. In a way, he didn’t want that to happen. He was only just now fully able to grieve his father, after learning what had driven him into secrecy, and it was being interrupted by this other thing, this…this…hope.
He hardly dared give it a name.
But it could not be denied.
Hope.
Thaddeus’ face brightened. “Oh yes, yes. You see it, don’t you? I know you do, Mason Lee, you’re hardly able to stay in your chair. What are you thinking, that you’ll go bring a backhoe to the property?”
“Well, it would take some research, some planning, you’d have to know exactly what you were doing, we might have to hire an engineer—”
“Wait, wait,” said Liam, his heart pounding again, but this time in excitement rather than fear or sorrow. “You’re saying— You’re sitting there, telling
me—”
“That what was done to your family can be undone. That the springs can spring up again.”
32
Mason and Liam
Mason had woken before Liam, slipping out of bed as quietly as he could, but eventually the sound of his shower drew Liam from sleep. His thoughts were hazy at first, caught between dream and reality, but then the words family meeting came to mind, and like a razor cutting away all the fuzz, his mind was suddenly sharp, his eyes open wide.
He’d feared this day. Worried over it. Knew it could work out the wrong way, knew things might collapse—
He looked over at the bathroom door, open just enough to let a wave of steam out. The steam reminded him of the cloudiness of dreams, of warmth and comfort, and it drew him out of bed, had him padding in bare feet over the cool floor, nudged him into the bathroom of the little two-bedroom apartment with its strange choice of baby-blue tile, where it always felt like he might be standing on the sky.
Mason started but smiled when Liam pushed aside the shower curtain. His hair was standing up, white and foamy from shampoo. “Good morning,” he said, blinking to keep the suds out of his eyes. “Wanna join me?”
The question was unnecessary. Liam always wanted to join him. His pajama bottoms fell into a fabric pile around his ankles, his bright green briefs joining them. (“Begorrah!” Mason had said the first time he saw them.)
Mason tilted his head, and Liam put his fingertips into his soapy hair, gently massaging the foam in circles. Here was something Liam had not realized he would enjoy, until he’d started doing it with Mason a few days ago. Something about washing his lover, about paying close attention to the cleansing of his body, made Liam feel so close to him. It was a different way to be together, to be attached, a secret way separate from the more obvious ways, the way they held hands all the time in public, the way Liam would lean his head against Mason’s shoulder whenever they had a conversation with someone. After a lifetime of secrets, they both felt this intense need for constant connection. And this washing was only the latest way they’d found to feel connected.
