Tell Me It's Real

by TJ Klune

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “They’re lovely. Can you put them near the window? They should do fine there with the sunlight that comes in during the afternoon.”

  I did as I was told, not sure of what to say. I fiddled with the flowers more than I should have, trying to stop my hands from shaking as I processed what I wanted to say. It didn’t seem right to launch into some kind of tirade. I didn’t want to upset her and make things any worse. Someone dying in a hospital does not need the added stress of a tyrannical speech that’ll benefit no one, even if it would get things off my chest.

  “You’re not a flower-delivery man, are you,” she said in such a way that was not a question.

  “No, ma’am,” I said, glancing at her shyly. She was pretty. So pretty. Even with how much had been taken from her, she was beautiful.

  Lori didn’t look angry or confused, merely inquisitive. “You’re not one of my husband’s staffers. I’d have seen you before, unless he’s hired someone new out of the blue. Which could always be a possibility. Lord knows he doesn’t tell me everything. But that doesn’t seem quite right either.”

  “I don’t work for your husband,” I said. “I—”

  “And,” she said, overriding me, “you’re obviously not a reporter because you’d have been a bit more aggressive by now, asking questions, snapping photographs, inquiring about the cancer or what I thought about my husband’s support of cutting health-care benefits and how ironic it is that I am where I am now.”

  I was embarrassed. “How are you feeling?” I asked. “That should have been the first thing out of my mouth. I sometimes forget my manners, your majesty. Er. Your grace? First Lady Taylor? Man, I don’t even know what to call you. Your highness? No, that would be if you were a queen. Well, not that you couldn’t be a queen, because you totally could. From what I’ve seen of you on TV, you’ve got the whole parade-float princess wave thing down pat. You know, elbow, elbow, wrist, wrist, that whole thing.” I demonstrated for her in case she didn’t know. I was surprised I didn’t spontaneously combust given how flaming I was being. I dropped my arm immediately and tucked my hands behind me so that I wouldn’t feel the need to princess wave at her anymore. Probably not the best way to start things.

  “Well,” she said. “If you’re not a staffer, and you don’t deliver flowers, and you’re not a reporter, and you obviously know who I am, then there’s only one person you can be.” She said this last with a small smile on her face.

  Uh-oh. “And. Uh. Who is that?”

  “You must be Paul. Paul Auster, I think it was?”

  I groaned. “The fact that you know who I am after two minutes of me walking into the room and telling you how to wave while rambling at you does not bode well for this conversation.”

  She surprised me when she laughed. “Vince was right on the money about you.”

  “That’s the second time I’ve heard that from someone who knows him, and I still don’t know how I feel about that. I’ve really got to stop him from trying to describe me to people. With the description he gives, I probably sound like some awkward tentacle-monster trying to fight Godzilla for control over Tokyo.” Thankfully, I was able to stop right there and not demonstrate what said tentacle monster from Tokyo would sound like, even though I desperately wanted to growl and snarl and howl as I stomped across the room, pretending to chase away tiny Asian people as I destroyed their beloved city. I figured Vince’s mom wouldn’t appreciate live theater in her room, even if I had once performed as a block of cheese.

  “No tentacle monster,” she assured me. “Just… different. He said you say whatever’s in your head and you can’t hide how you feel.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. And even though you’re nervous, I can tell you’re also a little bit angry with me.”

  “Ah. No. No, ma’am. Ah, you see—”

  “Lori,” she said. “Or you can still call me ‘your majesty’, if you like. I think I quite enjoy the sound of that.”

  “Lori—er, your majesty, I just… I don’t even… I’m not mad… I just don’t….”

  “Oh! He said you sputtered, as well. He seemed to like it when you do that. I can see why.”

  I sighed. “Why aren’t you evil? You are supposed to be evil and I’m supposed to come in here and tell you to renounce your ways before you die so that there are no regrets. Everything about you should be evil, and you’re not and I don’t like that. I had this whole… thing planned—okay, well, not really planned; more like I was going to wing it—but you’re sort of ruining it right now.”

  She smiled, though it looked forced. “Is that so? Now who’s the tentacle monster? I should wonder what Vince has told you about us. About me. If it would make you feel better, you can still wing it and I’ll listen.”

  I shook my head. “It kind of takes the bite out of a scolding when you ask for one. And he hasn’t told me about you. At all. He thinks I don’t know who his parents are.”

  “And yet here you are.”

  “Here I am,” I agreed.

  “How? Or maybe why is the better question.”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know that it matters, really. Does it? I mean, it wouldn’t change the fact that I’m still here. It wouldn’t change the fact that I overheard Vince talking with my mom after she found out who he was, telling her that he didn’t want to put all this on me because he wanted to keep it separate. It wouldn’t change the fact that Darren thought he’d need me more than anyone after you go. It won’t change anything.”

  She watched me for a moment without speaking. Then: “You’re certainly an odd fellow, aren’t you?”

  “I guess, your grace. Do you hate your son?”

  Her answer was instant. “No. Never. I never have.”

  “Does his dad?”

  This time she hesitated. “Hate is a strong word,” she said slowly. “I don’t think my husband is capable of hate in any form.”

  “From someone on the opposite side of his argument,” I said bitterly, “I see that differently than you do, I guess.”

  “Isn’t that the way for the opposite of every argument?” she asked with no trace of sarcasm.

  “That’s not fair. Most arguments aren’t about lesser rights for certain parts of the population. I’m not here to try and change your mind about that, no matter what you believe.”

  “And yet, I never said what I believe in.” She had me there. “But if not that, then what are you here to try and change my mind about?”

  “Vince.”

  “What about Vince?”

  “He needs to know you love him. He needs to know you care. I don’t care if you have to lie through your teeth to do it, you need to tell him everything is okay, that it doesn’t matter in the end because you love him just the way he is.” My voice wanted to crack, but I wouldn’t let it. I pushed away the burn in my eyes.

  Lori looked away from me, toward the flowers that were starting to get some sun. “Doesn’t he know that?” she asked me quietly.

  “How could he!” I exploded. “You and your husband all but disowned him publicly! I didn’t even know him then, but I remember it. I remember how angry I was at the two of you, how awful that must have been for him. To know that your parents didn’t think you deserved to be treated like everyone else? For God’s sake, Mrs. Taylor, your husband voted against hate-crime legislation, knowing it would protect his son. How fucked up is that? Don’t you know what that could do to a person?”

  “Do you know?” she asked. “What that could do to a person? I’m not trying to be facetious, Paul. I’m asking for my own peace of mind.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not as bad as others. Yeah, I got made fun of a lot in school, and maybe I got beat up a couple of times, but you know what I was able to do? I was able to come home to my family that didn’t give a shit who I would grow up loving. I was able to have my dad teach me how to fight back, and not because he thought his son was a pansy, but because his son was a pansy who wanted t
o fight back. I was able to come home and sit on a chair while my mother kneeled before me, wiping the blood from a cut on my forehead where Donnie Craig’s fist had hit me. I got to see the anger in their eyes, but it was never directed toward me. It was directed at everyone who thought they could hurt me. It was directed at anyone who thought I was something less than what I was. My parents never made me feel like I was something I wasn’t. They never tried to change me or break me down. They loved me for who I was, and I never questioned that.” By the time I finished, I was breathing heavily, curling my hands tightly at my sides, trying to keep my voice soft so as not to yell at a woman who was dying in the bed in front of me. But even so, it was a battle I almost lost.

  “And do you think I don’t love my son?” she asked, her eyes bright. “Do you think I don’t care for him, that I don’t worry about him every second of every single day?”

  “If you do, you’ve certainly got a weird way of showing it.”

  To this, she said nothing.

  “Look, I didn’t come here to attack you,” I said, feeling uncomfortable. “Not really. Nor did I want to make you feel bad. I… I don’t know. I just want you to see Vince the way I see him. I just don’t want you to have any regrets. And I certainly don’t want him not to know how his own mother feels before he won’t be able to find out anymore. It wouldn’t be fair to either of you.”

  She looked away, and I wondered if I’d gone too far. I wondered if I even should have been in this hospital room. The more I thought about it, the more duplicitous it seemed, like I was going behind Vince’s back, meddling in affairs that weren’t mine. I tried to justify it to myself by saying I was doing this for Vince, and that if he really felt about me the way he did, then he’d understand, or he’d have brought up his parents already, consequences be damned. But this felt like transference, and it didn’t feel right.

  I took a step back, sure that the conversation was over, sure that if she did speak again, it’d be to tell me to get the hell out of her hospital room, to never come back here again, and that she’d make sure Vince knew what I’d done and how I’d gone about it. Wildly, I thought that maybe I’d never even make it out the door, because the Secret Service would barge in and I’d be arrested and thrown into Guantanamo with terrorists, never to see the light of day again except for a window the size of a book ten feet above my cot in the prison cell where I’d spend the rest of my life. The First Lady of Tucson would have her revenge because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut or my face out of someone else’s business.

  And she did speak. But what she said was not what I expected.

  I was about to turn and make a run for it when she said, “Vince died when he was nine. Did you know that?”

  “No. I didn’t.” I looked up at her. She was staring at the flowers, the sun encroaching on them further.

  “We lived in a house over on the west side of town. It was a nice house. A big house, with a garden and a pool. Andrew hadn’t yet considered running for any kind of office, but he made good money with his construction business. I was a teacher, but we wanted to get pregnant again and were talking about having me stay home permanently. Vince was always an independent child, but it’d seemed lately that he’d become even more so, and I missed having a baby in the house. I missed the way they sounded, the way they smelled. I missed the little laughter and holding them in my arms.”

  She sighed and looked down at her hands. “So we decided to have another baby, decided to try before we were too old to have another, and everything was going to be perfect and wonderful. I wanted a little girl. Andrew wanted another boy. Vince couldn’t care less either way as long as it didn’t interfere with his life. He was very blunt as a child. Very straightforward. No-nonsense. He was never the smartest kid, and he’s not the smartest adult, but you’d always hear the truth from him, no matter how abrasive it could be.”

  “Yeah,” I said quietly. “I’ve noticed that.”

  She smiled to herself. “I figured you would. That’s the difference between Vince and most people. He doesn’t beat around the bush about things, but only because I don’t think he knows how. He’s singularly driven at times, if there is something he wants. Oh, he doesn’t step on others to get it; no, I think that would hurt him if he tried. He… he just knows what he wants, and he goes for it, and the only consequences he doesn’t worry about are those that could happen to his own self.

  “One day, when he was nine and we were trying to have another baby, Andrew and I were upstairs and… well, you know. We were trying. Vince had been playing outside with his friends all morning and wasn’t expected back in until lunch, which would have still been an hour away.” Her voice was getting quieter, rougher. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to say anymore, but I couldn’t find the strength to speak.

  “After Andrew and I had finished, I went downstairs to make a cup of tea. I’d decided that I wanted the mug I’d used that morning instead of getting a new one. Had I not done that, I would not have walked over to the dishwasher. I would have not looked out the window. I would not have seen Vince floating facedown in the middle of the pool, the water around him red.”

  She said she remembered screaming for her husband, the tea mug falling to the floor and shattering. She would find out later from Vince’s friends that he’d gone out back to get his squirt gun he’d left by the pool the previous day. He wouldn’t be able to tell her exactly what happened, but from the size of the bump on his head, it seemed he’d slipped on the wet surface around the pool and hit his skull on the edge of the pool before falling in. She’d jumped into the pool and flipped him over. Andrew had followed her in, and they’d dragged him to the edge, then lifted him out of the water.

  “He was blue,” she said. “He was blue, his little lips and little face. I was screaming and Andrew was yelling at me to go call for help, but I was just screaming. I couldn’t stop because it seemed that every single part of him was blue and he wasn’t breathing. I knew then, I knew he was dead and that I’d never see him again. So I just screamed.”

  But eventually she had stopped and run inside, only after Andrew had started CPR, pressing on his chest so hard she was afraid he was going to break Vince’s ribs. She’d babbled into the phone and then dropped it back onto the counter. She couldn’t imagine, she said, staying on the phone and listening to the irritatingly calm operator. She thought she’d go insane if she had to, so she dropped the phone and ran out to her husband, who was slamming his fists onto Vince’s chest. She tried to stop him, she tried to hold his arm back, but he knocked her down and hit Vince again.

  “Do you know what happened then, Paul?” she asked me.

  I shook my head, though I had an idea.

  “Vince took in this great, gasping breath. His back arched off the ground like he was seizing, but he was breathing. He vomited up so much water at that point that I thought he was going to drown all over again, but one thing I learned as a mother is that if your child is crying, your child can breathe, and he was crying. I never thought that sound could mean happiness, that it could fill me with joy, but it could. It did. He cried and I cried, but only because I knew how close it’d been. Only because I knew how much I could have lost.” She fell silent and watched the sunlit flowers.

  “Why did you tell me this?” I asked her.

  “Because,” she said. “Because I needed you to know that I love my son. Regardless of my actions or the actions of my husband, we love our son. We almost went insane that day when we thought we'd lost him. I don’t know that we would’ve survived had he died. No parent should ever have to outlive their child. So I need you to know that we love him in our hearts more than we could ever show.”

  “It’s not good enough,” I said, flinching at my own words.

  “Oh?” She looked up at me, but there was no recrimination in her eyes. “And how do you figure that?”

  “Because I doubt you’ve ever said to him what you’re saying to me.”

  And this time, she
did react. I could see it in her eyes, could see it in the way her skeletal-like hands made skeletal-like fists. “You don’t have any idea how hard it is, do you? Being a parent? Especially when you’re in the public eye, such as Andrew and I are. Politics tend to govern your lives when it’s your job.”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter. That’s not an excuse. As a matter of fact, that should have prevented both of you from ever acting as you did. If you’re responsible enough to become a parent, then you should be responsible enough to accept your kid no matter how they turn out. It doesn’t matter if they’re disabled or gay or not as smart as others or green or black or blue or whatever the hell they turn out to be. You have them, you love them. Always. Being a parent isn’t about getting to pick and choose what you want your kid to be. Being a parent means protecting your kid from anything that could ever harm him. Being a parent means you shelter, but you also make them stronger so one day they can stand on their own. How old was Vince when he came out to you? To his dad?”

  “Sixteen,” she whispered.

  “And what was your reaction?”

  “Anger. Indifference. We didn’t understand. We didn’t….”

  “That’s right. You didn’t.”

  She looked up at me, tears in her eyes, but not yet falling. “He came in here yesterday and told us about you. You know what I noticed, Paul? You know what I saw in him the most?”

  “No.”

  “Happiness. It was such a bright thing, such a fierce thing. He was so proud that he was able to find someone like you, that you belonged to him. I’ve never seen him so sure about anything in his life.”

  How many more times did I need to hear that before I started to believe it? “Trust me, I’m not that great,” I told her honestly. “He was just talking me up. For whatever reason, he does that, though I don’t know why. I tend to trip and run into things like dogs and walls. I can’t control my mouth and end up saying things that make situations far more awkward then they really need to be. And I’m pretty sure that my ancestors once owned slaves and we’ve never made reparations for that, so my family is probably cursed by some ancient form of African voodoo magic. So… you know.” And then, almost as an afterthought, “And it’s only been a week.”