by Rachel Kane
I drained my glass. Was it my second? I wasn’t sure, but I was unsteady when I stood up. “I saved his damn life. Do you know that? He was hanging by his fingertips, ready to fall to his death, but I saved him.”
She looked at me so sadly. “You know that’s not a basis for a relationship, as brave as that was. You know a relationship can’t just be based on a series of dramatic moments like that.”
“Then why does it feel like it’s about to break up because of dramatic moments like this?”
“Can I say something? Can I just say it, without you getting mad and stomping off?”
The calm in her voice was like a cool breeze, full of familiarity and comfort. I sat back down. “Okay.”
“Okay. On the one hand, the fact that you can’t get through to him is meaningless. It says nothing, right? There’s a million reasons he isn’t calling you, isn’t picking up the phone. And there are even valid reasons he might be with his ex, and she isn’t picking up the phone. None of that matters. What matters is how you are reacting right now, and what that says about your picture of the relationship.”
I picked up the bottle. “I think I’m going to need more wine for this.”
“Look, I’m not going to badmouth Jake. I like him all right. But he’s got some red flags, and you know that.”
“First you try to turn him against me, and now you’re trying to turn me against him?”
She shook her head. “I went to him first because I thought he’d be more rational than you. You’re a hothead.”
“Me?”
“Dude, you’re having a nervous breakdown over a phone call. Can I finish, or do we need to discuss your emotional history right now?”
The wine was like acid going down my throat. “Go for it.”
“Anyway, Jake’s red flags. First, he hasn’t come out to his family.”
“That’s a red flag? Amanda, as you may recall, I didn’t come out until a couple months ago, by total accident.”
She shrugged. “That was different. Nobody in the world thought you were straight, except Mom and Dad. You were living your life. Boyfriends, that sort of thing. Jake was deep in the closet. And he still is. Even after meeting you, even after falling for you…why hasn’t he told his father?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Of course it is. But how long is he planning on keeping you his dirty little secret? How long until he claims you?”
I looked down at my phone, its screen black and silent. “I don’t know,” I said in a quiet voice.
“Red flag number two, he was willing to talk behind your back.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “That doesn’t count. You made him.”
“I would’ve had a lot more respect for him if he’d told me to fuck off.”
“He waited a long time to tell me he’d spoken to you.”
“There you go,” she said. “Red flag number three. Keeping secrets. But this is getting away from my point. My point isn’t that Jake is a bad guy, at all. It’s that you showed up to my house nearly at the point of tears, because he didn’t pick up the phone. You’re not sure about this relationship, Eli. You don’t have confidence in it, and that scares me, because I think you’re going to get hurt. And not even in some grand, major way…but is this just how it’s going to be between you from now on? These little hurts, these little miscommunications, little secrets? When are you going to get to be just normal? Just in love, like normal people?”
“It’s not fair,” I said. “Mom and Dad are fucking psychos, and they get to be normal. Everybody accepts their relationship.”
She shrugged. “You know Mom is not the problem. She doesn’t know what to do. She feels like she’s caught between you and Dad.”
“If she can’t take her own child’s side—”
“Red flag number four: Your own family shit has not been worked out.”
“Would you quit it with the red flags? You’re not a fucking matador.”
“Fine, okay, look, here’s the short version: I’m not saying you need to break up with him over the phone call. That would be stupid, one of those misunderstandings that comes between really dumb drama-hounds. What I am saying is that your feelings over the phone call, your feelings over your family, the fact he can’t come out of the closet—all of that together suggests that you’re not in the right place to be together right now. That your relationship was based on an exciting, dangerous time together…but people need more than that, to stay together. They need something deeper, more stable, more long-term. You can’t just crash a plane every time you need to feel closer to him.”
I left Amanda’s shortly after that, thinking of that image, always crashing. Like trying to strip life to its bare essence, survival or not. Was that what it was going to take for Jake and me? Our brief time in the woods—so short, it startled me now to think of how few hours we were actually there—dominated our time together since then. Things were pure back in the forest, weren’t they? Things made sense. You clung on for safety. Without the trappings of society around you, your passion was free to come out.
But we didn’t live in the woods. And if things couldn’t work here in the real world…then they couldn’t work at all.
Amanda was right. It would be stupid to overreact to the phone call, to hitting his voicemail. I’d known people who broke up over less than that, and it always shocked me how shallow they seemed.
This wasn’t a matter of breaking up. It was a matter of asking, do we actually have a relationship? Is it going to be nothing but red flags and awkward questions? Because if that’s the way things were going to continue, then yes, eventually we were going to break up, and it was going to be hard and ugly.
Maybe it would make more sense to end it now. Before it got to that point. Just say goodbye with some dignity, let things taper off on their own.
I wanted him so badly, but I didn’t know how to have him. I didn’t know how to hold on to him, not with him in the closet, and my family turned against me, and…and just everything.
I tried him again. Still no answer.
Life felt very lonely.
29
Jacob
Time works differently inside a hospital. It creeps by so slowly. We were in a different waiting room now, one upstairs, just outside the ICU. A big clock was on the wall, its heavy hands slowly ticking. Every minute seemed to take an hour.
I looked down at my phone. The text I’d tried to send to Eli earlier was still stuck. No signal inside the hospital. I thought about going outside, just to make sure he got the message, but I couldn’t leave the room. Any minute, they assured me, I could come visit Pop. I just had to wait until they were done hooking him to his machines and monitors.
Marcia tossed an old magazine back onto the waiting room table and sighed. “This is unbearable.”
I nodded. “I can’t stand it. No news is good news, I guess. But listen, you don’t have to stay. He’s not your dad or anything. You can go.”
“Don’t be silly, Jake.” She got up and stretched, then walked over to the coffee urn on the other side of the room. “I care about Pop. I want to find out how he’s doing.”
“You’re a good friend,” I said. “I don’t deserve it, but I’m glad you’re here.”
She poured a paper cup of coffee, then stirred sugar into it. “You’re right, you don’t deserve it.”
“Come on, don’t start.”
She looked around. “There’s nobody around to hear. Nobody’s going to find out your deep dark secret, you don’t have to worry.”
“You know what sucks? Even though Pop knows, I feel like…I feel like I’m still in hiding. Because we didn’t really get to talk about it, you know?”
“Your father is in there, possibly dying, and this is all you can think about? Your…your gayness?”
I stared at her. “Fuck. I can’t do this. Marcia, go home.”
“What?”
“I don’t expect you to understand what I’m going through
, that’s fine. And I know I hurt you. But you don’t get to fucking snipe at me about it. You want to say something, just fucking say it. Get that shit out in the open. Otherwise go the hell home.”
I honestly thought she might leave. She stood there, that cup of coffee in her hand, looking like she might squeeze the cup, crush it between her fingers, let the hot coffee run all down onto the floor. Or maybe she’d throw it in my face, tell me what a piece of shit I was, and head out.
She didn’t do either of those things. Instead, she set the coffee down on the table and sat next to me. She looked off into the distance and sighed.
“This is so fucking hard for me, Jake.”
“I know.”
“I told you we should stay friends, and I meant that. But life with you, it’s like one huge shock after another. You’re gay. Shock. You crash the plane. Shock. You’ve got a boyfriend, Pop is sick, it’s all just too much. Too many things.”
“It feels like one of those cartoons where the guy has a bucket on his head, and someone is banging the bucket, and inside his head is ringing like a bell.”
“When are things just going to be normal?”
“I thought I was going to make them normal. I went to Pop’s tonight with the full intention of making everything right. Just like we talked about the other day. What was it you said, all my secrets were like knives? Yeah, it’s not right to have all those sharp secrets lying around, waiting to hurt people. So I decided I’d tell him all about me, and he could make his choice, accept it or not. And after that, there wouldn’t be any damn secrets.”
“But he was sick.”
“He was sick. So sick. And I’d missed it. But I wasn’t sowing my wild gay oats, or whatever it was you accused me of. I was just trying to have a normal life. A life with a guy I love. I wasn’t trying to ignore Pop.”
“Your voice is different,” she said.
I glanced over at her. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“When I talked to you last time, when you were talking about Eli, there was something in your voice. Something strong. Something intense. But now you sound tired.”
I gestured at the waiting room. “I’ve been sitting here for three hours. I’m definitely tired.”
“No, I don’t mean like that. I mean… Are things okay between you and Eli?”
“Look, I can’t talk to you about this stuff,” I said. “Not about him. It’s not fair to him, it’s not fair to you.”
“I’m not going to sit here and lie,” she said. “Some part of me wishes you would just break up with him, come to your senses, and decide to be straight again. But something’s going on.”
I sighed, and eventually I nodded. “Eli and I are from two different worlds. That shouldn’t matter. But…oh, hell, I’ll just say it. His best friend hates me, his sister thinks we should break up, his dad is ready to disown him for being gay. I mean, you think my side of things was dangerous, because I was keeping secrets? You should see his side. If I stay with him, people are going to tear him apart for it.”
“Fuck,” she said. “Doesn’t sound like he’s got the best support system in the world.”
“He doesn’t. I don’t know how he survives it. I mean, his sister’s okay. Overprotective, but she’s got a good heart. But the rest of them? You should’ve seen this friend of his, Cam. Such a fucking snob. What if all his friends are like that? I mean, is he going to have to keep me a secret, just so his friends don’t wind up hating him?”
I couldn’t believe we were talking about all this, while my dad suffered somewhere down that hall. But once I’d started talking, I just couldn’t stop.
“Everything was so fucking simple during the plane crash. That sounds awful. But it’s true. We survived. We looked for shelter. I mean, just the basics. And I fell for him then. But ever since we got back, it’s all so fucking complicated.”
“You never were any good at complicated things,” she said.
“I’m a simple guy.”
“I know you didn’t decide to be gay. I know that’s not how it works. But life made a hell of a lot more sense when I thought you were straight. Our life together was never complicated. Until the end.”
Before I could say anything to that, the nurse came out. “You can see him now. Just one of you. And just for a few minutes.”
Pop looked so small in that bed, with all those machines. They beeped, they whirred. A blood pressure cuff on his arm slowly inflated itself, made its measurements, and then deflated again, all without human intervention.
He looked at me and wrinkled his nose. He had a shiny red stripe across the bridge of his nose, from where the oxygen mask pressed down.
He whispered something I couldn’t hear. I leaned close. “What was that?”
“You come to get me out of here?”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I tried to take his hand, but between the IV on the back of his hand, and the oxygen meter on his finger, there was very little to hold on to.
“You got to get better before I get you out,” I said.
“I’m fine. Get me my shoes.”
“I’ll get you your shoes as soon as the doctor says you’re well.”
“Fucking rip-off. Cost me a lot of money with this shit. You know what they did? Beat my back. Put a thing on me, little machine. Pounded my back, like burping a baby. Said it would make me cough better. Probably cost me a thousand dollars.”
“You sound a lot better,” I said, trying to keep the note of worry out of my voice.
A nurse poked her head into the curtain. “Your father is very tired,” she said. “Don’t let him do the talking, please.”
We both stared at her until she left.
“Got to tell you something,” he whispered.
“You heard the lady. You need to be quiet. I just wanted to say… Jesus, I’m sorry Pop. I wish I’d realized how sick you were. I wouldn’t have stayed out so much. But it means a lot to me that you already knew about me. I don’t know how you knew, but the fact that you did--”
His brow creased. “Knew what?”
“You know. What we were talking about back at the house. Now you know the truth about me.”
He coughed for a moment, wincing as though it caused him pain. I knew I couldn’t stay much longer, but I wished I could sit here all night, watching over him. I didn’t want to leave him.
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, when he got his breath back.
Had he forgotten? Had oxygen starved his brain, and now he couldn’t remember? It was only a few hours ago.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“Ron. We talked about Ron. That tourist boy, it was his uncle. You asked about him.”
Now I felt totally lost. “Eli’s uncle? What about him?”
He nodded. “I lied. Fucking lied to my own boy. Felt like shit over it. Wanted to tell you.”
“I don’t understand…Pop. Maybe you need to get some rest. We can talk later.”
“No. Now. He needs to know. There was a book. I didn’t throw it out. You saw it. Papers. On the floor.”
I thought about the side of his bed, back at the house. Littered with papers. I thought they’d been from the insurance company.
“You had Ron’s book?”
“Promised him I’d keep it. But I didn’t know what was in it. When I saw…I hid it. All about that family. Fucked-up people. Every last one. I don’t know. Not mine to keep. But it ain’t gonna do any good letting anybody see it.”
“I have to give it to Eli. Pop, he nearly died trying to find that thing.”
His breaths were coming more shallowly now, even with the oxygen. His heart rate was up, I could hear the machine pinging faster with every beat.
“I know,” he said. “But…bad shit. You ought to burn it.”
“All right,” said the nurse, pulling back the curtain. “I really have to ask you to go, Mr. Marks. Your father is very ill.”
I walked out into the waiting
room, my heart crowded with so many feelings I didn’t know what to do. Confusion over the book: What was so bad that Pop had to lie about it? Heartbreak over Pop himself. He looked so sick. I didn’t stop in the waiting room, just kept walking to the elevators.
“Jake? Jake, wait.” Marcia ran up behind me. “Is he… Is everything okay?”
I shook my head. “Nothing’s okay.”
The house was completely quiet and still. I felt that same creeping dread that I’d felt when I came in earlier. There was something wrong with the house being like this. Out of habit, I clicked the radio on. The soft twang of steel guitars filled the kitchen.
I walked into his room.
We’d said book, but of course it wouldn’t have been bound or anything. Just typewritten pages. They were scattered all over. I knelt to pick them up, ignoring the bed, the indentation from where Pop lay every night. The air was full of the smell of medicinal mint, from that ointment he put on his knees before sleep.
There weren’t a ton of pages, but when I got them all together, they made a neat stack about an inch high. Still out of order.
The page on top was labeled 53.
We fought with weapons forged over a lifetime of arguments, it began. Every broken toy soldier, every playground shove, had been beaten and shaped on the anvil of our pain, until our swords were sharp and deadly. His was perhaps more deadly, sharpened especially by his terror, the fear that his safe suburban life might be snatched away by this secret.
It felt wrong to be reading this. This wasn’t my family. These weren’t my secrets. This was something Eli’s uncle had written to settle a long-standing family fight.
Yet I couldn’t help being curious. This was what Eli had nearly died for. The information in these pages meant more to him than anything.
I didn’t understand why. What could possibly be in here, that would explain why his father hated him?
Pop had said I ought to burn it. Maybe he was right. What Eli needed was to take a stand. Was he going to put up with his family’s interference in his life, or not? Whatever this book was, it wasn’t going to help. His uncle couldn’t solve Eli’s problems by bringing up old grudges.
