Lone Stars

by Justin Deabler

  Aaron reflected on Lacy’s good qualities as he raced home from the cabin. Traffic was light. He thought of the many times he made this trip and the rounds of counseling he and Lacy did over the years, dating back before the Crystal days. Every time Lacy found a credit card bill, or some oopsie thing in his pockets, she cried again like that alarm clock going off in Groundhog Day, and back they went to the office of Gloria Harding, MFT, in a strip mall in Atascocita, empty except for a TCBY yogurt. Gloria waited for them, under her Footprints in the Sand poster, round and unfuckable, a no-judgments half smile on her face. Lacy would rant and rage and go quiet—Aaron’s cue to say he heard her pain, and he was going to keep her in mind next time he thought about stepping out, because that’s what a real partnership required.

  But this time he meant it. Hope swelled in Aaron as he exited 59 and crossed into the bucolic green of Royalwood. It wasn’t a sure thing that Crystal’s letter had arrived yet. He mailed her a cutout from Playboy once, with drawings and a note on it, and it took three whole days to get to her cabin. Aaron resolved that if he got to the letter first, if he and Lacy made it over this one last hump, he’d treat her with respect and honesty for good. Because there was Julian to think about. And not just their son. There was Lacy, too. It hit him, as he sped into their subdivision, that he hadn’t stuck around all these years for Julian alone. He loved Lacy. The only woman he ever really loved, longer than a fling or a few years. But inside he felt it, as dense as the knots churning his stomach; he knew that love was more than needing. More than his needs, or hers, not to be alone. He used to care for Lacy. He remembered taking care of her. And he couldn’t recall when he stopped doing that and just took care of himself.

  He pulled into the driveway at four forty-five p.m. The minivan wasn’t there. He hustled to the front door, but when he tried to go in his key stuck and wouldn’t turn. He pounded and rang. He ran to the living room window and peered in the unlit house. The mini-blinds smashed against the window as the dog attacked the glass in a flurry. “It’s me, Muffin!” Aaron said. “Daddy.” Muffin brayed in recognition and trotted off to the kitchen. Aaron stepped back, and only then did he notice it beside the porch bench: his suitcase, with a paper bag on top. It was tucked slightly behind the boxwoods Lacy pruned every summer into double balls. He opened the bag and found a Tupperware inside, along with a note in his wife’s careful teacher handwriting:

  Aaron—

  I got a letter from your friend Crystal. But this was a long time coming. I changed the locks on the house, and our phone number. Please don’t bother the neighbors.

  I filed for divorce today. My lawyer’s card is in here. Go through her to reach me. We’ll schedule a time for you to get the rest of your things, when Julian is away. He doesn’t know anything yet. I packed you work clothes to last a couple of weeks. I made a tuna casserole for you to eat. It’s what was in the kitchen. There isn’t much money to divide up but I’ll be fair to you, even though you weren’t fair to me.

  Lacy

  Aaron felt his heart pounding and dropped to the bench. Out of nowhere and a long time coming. When did she get a lawyer, to move so fast? The heat pressed down like wet cotton. He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the house. His mind rambled back to his church in Midland, high school days, when he started going to services alone. He remembered a sermon one Sunday on Milton, so powerful that he went to the library and found Paradise Lost and the image the pastor described—Earth, surrounded by darkness and chaos, suspended from Heaven by a thin gold chain. He wondered if that was what Lacy was, tying him to Julian and the world. From far away Aaron could see himself, unworthy as he’d always been, slipping into a place without light or sound. Disappeared.

  The buzz of a mosquito brought him back to the porch. He blinked at the evening glow and took in tidy Sycamore Springs Lane one more time. The years of sprinklers arcing languidly over emerald lawns that led up to this moment. He had to find somewhere to lay his head that night. It settled over Aaron that he would sleep alone. And for the first time since the war, he covered his face and cried.

  7

  Free Markets

  Julian couldn’t find a song on the radio. Or rather, he couldn’t find a song that would make his mom stop talking about the high school, and Royalwood, and the bubble they lived in and he’d be escaping the minute he graduated. It was the same stupid chatter every morning on the drive to school, until Julian ordered her to let him out before the main entrance, while she continued on to faculty parking.

  “Did you hear the theme for homecoming?” she asked one muggy September morning, a few weeks into the school year. She checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror and shot a look at Julian. “Beauty and the Beast. You thinking about going?”

  “No.” The Alanis on Mix 96.5 wasn’t working. He dialed to Oasis on Power 104. “Don’t look back in anger,” Noel Gallagher sang, so Julian mouthed the words with a powerful irritation.

  “How come?” she persisted. “A little dancing could be fun, couldn’t it?”

  “There’s a genocide happening in Zaire right now?” he said, ignoring his mom’s jiggly impression of dancing in the driver’s seat. “And you think I should devote brain space to boutonnieres and football-cheerleader ‘royalty’?”

  “Well. It’s great you’re thinking about genocide, but can’t you think about both? Going on a date? I’m sure there’s lots of special—people, on the debate team that want to go out with the star debater.”

  Julian dialed to KTRU and blasted the volume.

  “Turn it down!” she cried, flipping the radio off. “I’m trying to drive here. You want to run me off the road with that noise?”

  “That was Björk,” Julian lectured. “She was almost acid bombed by mail in Iceland. That noise could’ve been her last album.” He turned and looked at her for the first time that day. “Why don’t you go on a date? Take all that energy you’re putting into questions and go find one for yourself.”

  “Maybe I will,” she said quietly.

  “I mean.” Julian felt the flush of something nasty rising in him. “It’s been two years.”

  That did it. They drove the rest of the trip in silence. He didn’t have to remind his mom to stop at the last bend of Royalwood Drive, like he normally did. She slowed down, pulled into the turn lane, and put on the hazards.

  “Do what you want, Jules,” she said, staring at the steering wheel. “The most important thing is to be true to yourself. If there’s a way to be true and go to the dance, with a date if you want, then—And if you ever want to talk about anything—”

  “What are you talking about?” Julian snapped and shoved the door open.

  “What time are you done today?”

  “Late.” He slammed the door and started froggering across the street.

  “You need a ride home after debate club?” his mom called out the window. But lanky Julian rambled away up the bike trail, Discman and giant headphones on, in full sonic cocoon.

  * * *

  Be careful what you wish for. Julian had heard the phrase a million times, but he never understood the meaning of it until he came home from a swim meet a couple of summers ago and his dad was gone. Many times as a kid Julian daydreamed about his dad going away, of a giant pencil eraser coming down from the sky and rubbing him out of their lives. There’d be no more fighting or sadness for his mom to carry around, and the two of them could do their craft projects without dark clouds looming. But when his dad left for real—no warning, just gone—Julian realized things were never going to be as simple as he imagined. His mom changed, but it didn’t seem totally for the better. She started hitting the Entenmann’s at night, polishing off a whole cherry Danish during Masterpiece Theatre, one bite at a time. Mostly she was all over Julian, telling him again and again that she wasn’t going anywhere. And the mom who had always been his best friend suddenly wanted more than he had to give—more time, more talks, more laughs than he could generate.

  So Julia
n became a joiner. If a club kept him at school and his mom wasn’t the sponsor, he’d probably given it a try. By sophomore year he was in bloom: first in his class, president of the debate club and titled at three lesser ones, in monthly contact with the guidance office about his college apps. The more he focused on the future, the less he thought about his mom watching TV or the insanity called Texas. The place was crazy. And when you’re the misfit in a crazy world, he told himself, keep your head down and eyes on the prize. Because he knew, with a faith stronger than all the Tammy Fayes and Osteens put together, that one day he’d get out and go to Harvard. And there he would be free.

  He was considering joining a new club on the morning his mom mentioned homecoming. Ever since the school year began, she stayed later on campus, too, in a silent arms race with him. The past few weeks he heard the swish of her thighs in the hallway like a sixth sense and knew exactly when her head would poke in the door to offer him a ride home in front of his whole debate team. It sucked. He needed a new hideout. And then, on his way to first period that morning, he noticed a flyer with an American flag border:

  COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIPS

  FOR PUBLIC SPEAKERS!

  Join the Ten Pillars Club

  & Protect Our

  Free Markets from the

  Evils of Big Government!

  3pm—Room 115

  Refreshments!

  He pondered this.

  At ten past three, Julian cruised nonchalantly by the classroom. Inside he saw two no-account freshmen from debate and a girl in a CAMPUS CRUSADE FOR CHRIST T-shirt.

  “Welcome!” A sinewy woman appeared in the doorway, maybe older but with short jet-black curls. She wore a tailored pantsuit and Catwoman glasses. “I knew there was another voice for freedom in this school! Come in. I’m Samantha Monroe. Call me Sam.” She led him to a desk. “Now, I hope y’all can chat over snacks later.” She motioned to a desk spread with chips and a sweating bowl of Cokes. “But first, I want to talk about fathers. Our Founding Fathers.”

  Sam lowered her head. She rested a hand on an easel beside her, with a blank white poster board on it. “We are a nation in crisis,” she declared, launching into a speech full of violent images and stiff hand gestures. “Our free market system is on the brink of destruction, and the soul of our nation is at risk—a country that next month might reelect a president whose wife tried to socialize health care? Is there any hope in this nightmare?” Sam brandished a pamphlet: The Free Enterprise Center’s Ten Pillars of Economic Wisdom. The minds of the future would win the war for America, she explained, and that’s why her center had started a speech contest, focused on ten simple truths, and she was thrilled Royalwood High had signed up this year. Julian’s mind wandered to the shade of the Doritos, and whether they were Cool Ranch, when Sam announced that every winning speech got a thousand dollars, and the Houston-wide winner got an internship at the prestigious Koch Foundation in Washington, DC.

  “And if that lucky winner is sitting in this room,” Sam said, returning to the easel, “he’ll follow the path of our most famous alum.” She lifted the poster board, revealing a photo of a white guy in a suit. “Graduate of Harvard Law, Supreme Court clerk, and who knows, future president? Rafael ‘Ted’ Cruz!” Sam gazed proudly at the photo and sighed. “Because if there’s one thing we taught Ted—if there’s one thing I want y’all sons and daughters of freedom to take away today, it’s that we fight for the freedom of every American. Every. Single. American.”

  Julian got home that night with visions of Harvard Yard in his head. He made a beeline for his room, but his mom called out as he hurried past the kitchen. She was in her sweatpants and a stretched-out Spuds MacKenzie T-shirt, writing on a notepad. The table was strewn with jumbo pill bottles and the discarded sleeve of a Hot Pocket. “Hungry, sweetie?” she asked.

  “I ate at school,” he mumbled.

  “Listen to this.” She flashed Julian a look. “Mature full-figured woman who loves to laugh, loves football on Friday and museums on Saturday, seeks companion for—”

  “A personal ad?” Julian frowned.

  “For the classifieds, in the Chronicle. I think you were right about me getting back out there on the market. Trying.” She studied her pad. “You think it’s too, toooo—”

  “Too what? Just be true to yourself. Isn’t that what you said earlier? I mean, if you’re advertising yourself.”

  “And what part isn’t true, exactly?”

  “I don’t know. You used ‘love’ twice in one—and once about football? What kind of guy are you trying to—whatever. What’re all the pills?”

  “Nothing.” Her shoulders hunched. She gathered up the bottles. “A new supplement.”

  “Good night.” Julian backed away. He shut his door and found some Hootie on the radio to block out his mom and her diet pills. For the next two weeks he holed up at night, skimming books on the gold standard and welfare state that Sam handed out, plucking juicy phrases for his speech. It was boring. But Julian knew what Sam wanted to hear, and that brought him one step closer to his future. Parroting didn’t trouble him. Everyone in debate knew that words had no meaning. Unlike most of his classmates—drinking and screwing on Saturdays—Julian was competing at a high school on the north side, wearing a too-big suit his dad left behind and spinning words into winning designs.

  On a mild October afternoon, he returned to the same classroom to deliver his magnum opus on free markets. He paced the hallway before his turn, thinking of the zeroes on a thousand-dollar check. “Julian?” Sam called. She led him in and introduced two men—board members of the center—who by their suits Julian knew worked in skyscrapers downtown and fired people like his dad. Sam nodded. He stood up straight. “Everything that government gives to the people,” he began, slow and dramatic, “it must first take from the people.”

  Out came the words.

  When Julian finished, Sam beamed like he’d announced the Rapture and they were headed up. “Well,” she said, “I don’t think we need deliberations, do we, gentlemen?” Things happened fast. They shook hands and talked about Ted Cruz and men like Julian not coming around every day. Sam handed him an envelope. “You got a bank account, don’t you?” she asked. They laughed. As they were leaving, Sam offered to prep Julian for the North Houston semifinals, and one of the men grabbed his shoulder, mock serious, and said, “Remember, son, behind every great man is a better half like this one nagging at him!”

  Julian lay in bed that night with the envelope under his pillow, trying to savor his victory. But something gnawed at him. He kept replaying the man’s joke about a better half. For as long as he could remember, Julian had known he was maybe gay—bi, probably—and not in the leather drag-queen way. In the quiet, reasonable way. In theory, at least. He’d never kissed anybody, but he’d long ago decided to figure it out when he got to Harvard, where people could be many things and not get beat up. Until then the maybe-gay stayed in storage, and Julian passed as a nerd only slightly up the food chain from fags but a lot less likely to get killed. And on those nights when longing overtook him, when he heard Erasure on the radio, Andy Bell hammering out an ABBA cover, and dreamed of following that powerful fey voice out his window and through the indigo night, past the stars, to a land where gay boys sang proud and free and maybe there was a boy for him, Julian would remind himself that there wasn’t any guy to have sex with in his whole school anyway. Thus he stayed his own master.

  Until a few weeks later, on a Monday before sixth period.

  * * *

  Julian left his chemistry book in his locker that day, and he was racing back for it when a girl called out, “Warner!” He didn’t know her name, but he took in her Cure T-shirt and black lipstick and knew where he’d seen her—and with whom. “Julian, right?” she said. “Do you know Ben Cross? Like, know of him?”

  “Yeah,” Julian said, his chest tightening. “I forgot a book. I gotta go.”

  “We’re hanging out later.” She tapped an imaginary ro
ach to her lips. “If you want to come. Side parking lot at three thirty.”

  “Um,” he mumbled, and took off.

  The whole school knew of Ben Cross. In September he returned for his senior year and came out, not as gay, but as Morrissey. He showed up the first day with his hair dyed black like the Bona Drag album cover. He wore Doc Martens and T-shirts with incendiary messages about God and meat. He painted his nails with whiteout and scratched H-E-L-L into his left-hand ones and P-R-O-O-F into his right ones. A lot of rumors were going around about Ben and gerbils and AIDS, and within weeks he had morphed from human into spectacle. The student body avoided him like a contagious thing—except one husky goth girl who sat with Ben at lunch and shuttled between Earth and Gayville making invitations for afternoon weed hangouts.

  During his last class Julian calculated risks. He couldn’t be seen with Ben or within a hundred feet of a car containing Ben. And yet, his mind pressed. A string of “yets” led the pride of the debate team to the parking lot at four p.m., long after Ben would have left. Trickles of smoke rose from the only car, a rusted silver Trans Am. Julian made a wide path around it, which meant nothing because he wasn’t stopping, but as he passed by Ben sat forward and flicked a cigarette butt in a graceful arc. He trained his sharp blue eyes on Julian. “Hop in,” he said. Julian did as he was told, squeezing past Ben into the back seat.