Jack quietly groaned to himself. Waiting for the water to boil, he ate his apple and wandered out into the dining room, the living room, then around the corner into the deep alcove that Laurie used as her office. It was a wonderfully huge apartment, one room opening into another under high ceilings, an apartment you could waltz in. Jack never felt as big and clumsy here as he did in other private spaces. He often regretted not having had the money to buy the place himself. If he had, would he want Michael here?
The building had been going co-op when Clarence died. Jack didn’t understand all the legal technicalities, but Clarence’s right as a tenant to purchase the apartment at an insider’s reduced price was retained by his brother in Danville, Virginia. The brother sold that right to Laurie and Carla for a reasonable sum. Jack encouraged them to take the apartment. The women wanted to move out of their shoebox studio after Laurie’s recent financial success and were the only ones in their circle who could afford the place. Jack had his selfish reasons for wanting them to buy. This way, he could still come here, still visit a past that might otherwise be sealed off to him.
The past expressed itself chiefly in absences this afternoon. A framed anti-nuke poster hung on the living room wall where there had been a brown photo of a boy in knickerbockers, a French foyer card for The Conformist, and the collage Clarence had made himself that featured a famous athlete in jockey shorts standing in a cornfield with Marcel Proust and Charlie Chaplin. Jack had the collage in his kitchen now, but he often missed seeing it here.
The untuned baby grand in the alcove, always layered with art books, storyboards, and cigarette ash, had been replaced with filing cabinets and a desk heaped with newspapers—Laurie’s success came when she branched out from tax preparation into socially responsible investing. The great black camelback sofa was gone. Even the ashtrays were gone. Laurie and Carla did not own enough things, or care enough, to redo the apartment and make it completely theirs. But the only real physical evidence of Clarence was a long gouge across the dining room floor left by his rented Steenbeck film editor. And, once again, there was his last boyfriend.
Michael was back, like an obnoxious ghost. Jack found it both sad and ridiculous. The spirit of their talented, contented, gentle friend hung on in the form of an arrogant boy. There had been many boyfriends in the twenty years Jack had known Clarence, although none so young. Yet it was the youngest who was there at the end, then through the end and after, long after his presence made sense. Clarence’s brother, a Fundamentalist but a decent man, did not contest the will. All money remaining after the apartment was sold and the debts were paid went to Michael: $37,000. But instead of using the money to start a new life, or going wild with it as some feared, Michael set the money aside and stayed put. He continued to live in the spare bedroom where he slept when Clarence became ill. He never saw anyone except Clarence’s friends, not understanding they had been his friends, too, only out of deference to Clarence.
Nobody actively disliked Michael, and they weren’t indifferent to his situation. They had been touched at first to see such loyalty to their friend, then worried when Michael’s mourning continued. Then they became irritated. Jack often questioned the emotions beneath the irritation. Being bored with Michael was natural enough, but he wondered if they were annoyed and sometimes angry because Michael was behaving in a way they felt they should behave. A friend had died and yet they went on with their lives. Jack went on with his life, too, but, unlike the others, Jack was single. He felt he was more conscious of Clarence’s absence than they were, conscious enough to want to look past his irritation with Michael to the sympathy and respect he had for the boy. Jack and Michael had something in common.
Jack was pouring tea when Laurie strolled into the kitchen, the sleeves of her flannel shirt rolled up and the shirttail out. She saw the publicity pack. “Good movie?”
“Wretched. More misunderstood teens. God but I don’t want to write another what-does-this-tell-us-about-society review.”
“None of the boys took off their pants?”
“No. And they were too cute and insipid for me to care.” Jack was annoyed when Laurie teased him about sex; there was always a note of condescension. But he sounded condescending when he teased her about being politically correct on Wall Street. Their friendship included stepping on each other’s toes. “Speaking of cute and insipid…”
Laurie sighed. “Okay. I don’t want to throw him out. But it’s gone on much too long. And I resent his blind assumption this is still his home. I know you think it’s a humungous apartment, Jack. But Michael takes up a lot of psychic space. It was heaven while he was gone. Carla and I discussed it last night. When he gets back from Connecticut, we’re going to tell him, nicely, that he has a month to find his own place.”
Jack nodded understandingly, then said, “He’s going to feel rejected.”
“Well? We are rejecting him.” Laurie frowned. “We know he’s been through a terrible experience. We do feel sorry for him. But we can’t continue to baby him. How would you like to live with Ego in Arcadia?”
It was Jack’s phrase, coined in a fit of irritation. As if their lives were remotely Arcadian. “I wouldn’t,” he admitted. “I just wish there were a gentler way.”
“I’d hoped that once he got out of his room and had some fun in Europe, he’d be able to go off on his own. But it was embarrassing how happy he was to see me and Carla yesterday. Like we were his mother.”
“Have you talked with Livy since they got back?”
She hadn’t, so Jack finished telling her what Peter told him.
“He was with a boy?” said Laurie. “Maybe that’s what he needs.”
“I doubt he’s jumping into anything after what he’s been through.” For some reason, the idea of Michael becoming romantically involved disturbed Jack. “What I’m saying is we can’t all start snubbing Michael. It could be traumatic for him.”
“But Jack! Michael doesn’t notice he’s being snubbed. I’ve been cool to him for months and it still hasn’t sunk in. He dismisses it as my acting butch, which infuriates me.”
Jack understood. He once told Michael off for a racist remark, and the boy treated it as just more dry wit from old Jack the curmudgeon. Remembering the boy’s refusal to take him seriously made Jack angry all over again. “If he’s too impossible for you and Laurie, maybe Michael should live with me.”
“Are you serious?”
“It’s not fair that you and Carla are stuck with him.”
“You don’t have enough room in your place to swing a cat, pardon the expression.”
“Which should be enough to force anyone to look for an apartment. That and living with me.” He wondered why he suggested this. “Tell Michael you need his room for something and I said he could stay with me until he found his own place. That’ll sound friendlier than hitting him with a one-month deadline.”
“He’ll take you up on it, Jack. And then you’ll never get rid of him.”
“That’ll be my problem.”
Laurie considered the suggestion, then considered Jack. “It’s penance, isn’t it?” she said. “For not liking Michael.”
Jack hadn’t thought that yet, but would have without Laurie. “Probably. You know me.”
“And Clarence is in there somewhere.”
“Of course.”
Laurie groaned and shook her head. “Oh, Jack-o. When you step down from art into real life, you show what a romantic masochist you really are.”
It was an old accusation, part of the game of identities they played with each other where Laurie saw Jack as Art and herself as Real Life. That was shorthand for their differences, two poses they had assumed in college but no longer treated as concrete fact. But they did use each other to define themselves. Actually, Jack saw Clarence as Art and Laurie as Morality, with himself caught somewhere in between. He wondered how he would redefine himself now that Clarence was gone.
“The thing is,” said Laurie, “we might have to take
you up on it. Short of changing the locks, it might be the only way of getting Michael out of here.”
“I’m perfectly serious,” Jack insisted.
“I believe you. Well, let’s run it past Carla when she gets home and see what she thinks.” Even Real Life needed to consult a professional counselor, which was what Carla did at LGMH—Lesbian/Gay Mental Health.
They drank more tea and tried to talk about other things: Laurie’s disturbing discovery that the high-heeled weasel she dealt with at the brokerage firm was also a lesbian; Jack’s last book review in the Village Voice and the obnoxious head they’d given it. But Jack had to come back to the important subject.
“When’s he due back?”
“Michael? He didn’t say. When he finishes reading these important letters of Clarence’s, or when Ben and Danny’s fights drive him away. Whichever comes first,” Laurie muttered. “When did Clarence ever write letters?”
“Very rarely. But he wrote quite a few the first time he went to Europe. Ben said he wanted to use his to do a little memoir, something to make up for that self-serving obituary he wrote for the Native. But the letters Ben got were nothing but sexploits. I got the ones about art and places, which are more like Clarence.”
“Interesting,” said Laurie. “I never knew Clarence could write.”
Jack narrowed his eyes at her.
“I mean he was so visual! Don’t look at me like that. I swear, Jack. You can be as bad as Michael. Clarence was not without faults. You certainly complained about them enough over the years.”
Jack nodded sheepishly. He suspected Laurie had a distorted image of Clarence after years of Jack’s criticisms. Because she wasn’t close to Clarence, Jack had told her things he otherwise would have kept to himself. “He wasn’t stupid. I sometimes think that’s the impression you have of him.”
“It’s not. His movies weren’t my style, but I never thought a stupid person made them. Their latent misogyny disturbed me, as you know.”
Jack thought the misogyny was all in Laurie’s eye, but he did not feel like having that argument today.
A lock clacked in the distance, a door opened, and Carla sang out, “Home!”
“We’re in the kitchen!” Laurie called back, adding, “Just Jack. Don’t worry.”
Carla swung around the corner, wearing jeans and a jean jacket and carrying a briefcase. Her brown hair sat neatly on her head like a cap of owl feathers.
“Why, Jack!” she chirped. “When did you get back?” It was Carla’s professional chirp, used at home only when she was tired and wished you weren’t there. “Pooty!” she told Laurie, who had stood up to kiss and hug her.
“It’s so good to have you home,” Laurie sang, and they cuddled for a minute or so. They looked like little girls in each other’s arms.
Jack watched and smiled patiently. He thought Laurie and Carla overdid the affection, but there was no irony here. And he assumed they behaved the same way even if no witnesses were present. This was their gestalt, their method for dealing with the complications of living together, just as violent arguments were Ben and Danny’s. Jack wondered which mode he would fall into if he ever lived with someone.
“Damn, it’s good to be out of the Center today,” Carla groaned, sinking into a chair while Laurie started another pot of tea. “You know what your damn friend Ben did before he went off on vacation?”
“He’s your friend, too,” said Jack.
Carla only grimaced and told another Ben story. Ben Slover worked with her at LGMH, although, as a busy political activist, he tended to use his position as just a base of operations, something that gave him a title and salary while he ran around speaking at rallies, giving interviews on television, and founding new organizations. Carla was supposed to counsel the distressed, while Ben handled the paperwork, but Carla was often stuck with finishing jobs Ben had only started. “So I have no qualms about sticking him with Michael,” she told Laurie.
“Oh. Carla”—Laurie became uncharacteristically deferential when she spoke to her partner seriously—“Jack and I have been talking and Jack has a suggestion.”
Jack let Laurie do the talking. Carla quietly listened until Laurie finished, then smirked knowingly at Jack. “I thought Michael wasn’t your type?”
“Don’t be silly.” He knew she’d think that. “I have no ulterior motives. I just felt it was time I do my bit to help you and Laurie.”
Carla nodded, in the same noncommittal way she probably nodded at clients.
“I don’t think of Michael sexually. I don’t think of anyone sexually anymore, but I know Michael too well to even think of thinking it.”
“He’s right,” said Laurie. “Jack can’t stand Michael. And he’s not a chickenhawk.”
“Neither was Clarence,” said Carla.
“Clarence isn’t Jack,” Laurie argued.
“And there was something else going on with Clarence,” Jack pointed out.
Carla’s calm, challenging look never wavered, until she suddenly burst out laughing. Carla had the unaffected laugh of an exuberant child. “I don’t know why I should be trying to talk you out of it,” she said. “It would certainly make our job easier. Sure. Why not?” But she did not think they should be as completely tenderhearted and dishonest with Michael as Jack proposed. It was time to tell Michael enough was enough and that hiding in his grief was bad for him as well as annoying to others. Maybe they could use the excuse of needing the room as a way of bringing that up, explaining this was something they should have settled long ago. “Whatever. We can’t let it drag on like it did before. Damn. I say things like that to clients every day. But it’s different when you share a roof with them and you have to live with the consequences. Oh well. I’m Michaeled-out for the day. I just want a quiet evening at home,” she cried. “Alone with my Pooty.” Carla leaned over and laid her head on Laurie’s shoulder.
Jack took that as his cue to leave. He stood up, shook their hands, and kissed each of them on the cheek. Laurie promised him that, whatever they told Michael, they’d do their best not to stick Jack with a worse wreck than the boy already was.
Riding down in the elevator, Jack hoped Michael would turn up his nose at the offer. His apartment really was too small for two difficult people.
Out on the street, the city was beginning to feel like autumn. There was a smell of fall fermenting in the trees that Jack could not remember ever smelling on this street. Then he realized that it wasn’t what he smelled but what he didn’t smell that was different. His clothes usually reeked of cigarette smoke when he left Clarence’s building. No more. He was like a man whose house had disappeared in a bomb blast and would spend the rest of his life suddenly remembering trivial objects and forgotten keep-sakes that had vanished in the explosion.
Walking up the hill toward the subway, he pictured the apartment. Remembered instead of seen, vague and mental again, it was easier to remember Clarence living there. Jack suddenly pictured “Angel Clare” racing around the room, pulling down volumes of Raphael, Botticelli, and George Hurrell when words failed him in his passionate attempt to describe the man who had come to fix the telephone. Or the more serious Clare hunched over the rented Steenbeck as if at a sewing machine, so beatifically absorbed in snipping and matching bits of film that he would forget Jack was still there. Then Clarence shakily sitting up on the camelback sofa the afternoon Jack brought the issue of Film Comment with his article about him. That had been a September day like today, roughly a year ago.
Jack visited almost every day that month, when Clarence seemed to wax and wane like a moon—even then, Jack tried to protect himself with metaphors. Slim to begin with, Clarence looked like the long bones of himself, bundled in a sweater and sweatpants despite the warm day. His neck seemed longer and his nose more prominent. “I’m turning into Jean Cocteau,” he laughed. He laughed several times when Jack read him the article, careful laughs so he wouldn’t start coughing. Jack had wanted the piece to be funny while making clear th
at this cheesy horror film with the embarrassing title was far below the director’s abilities. It was the least he could do for Clarence, publicizing his friend without publicizing the illness. Clarence’s first fear when he was diagnosed, stronger than his fear of death, was that nobody would hire him to do another movie, a real movie this time, if they thought he might not live long enough to finish it. He sighed when Jack finished—every breath sounded like a sigh though—and thanked him for the fifteen minutes of fame.
“You’ll get a whole hour when you do your next film,” Jack told him, or something like that.
Clarence smiled at Jack, a smile that looked more cynical than tolerant on his thin face. Then he said that if worse came to worst, looking on the bright side, his friends would never know what a terrible filmmaker he really might be. He seemed genuinely relieved by that idea. “I’ll be remembered as all potential and promise. It’s almost as good as being a precocious teenager again.”
Jack told him he was being silly and had the wrong attitude, but he thought to himself that if he were to die that day there would be no mystery about who Jack Arcalli was. That he was all he ever would be. No matter how deeply you love someone, you selfishly use their death to imagine your own.
Clarence apologized for being “spacey,” but he hadn’t slept well the night before and needed another nap. Jack said no apology was necessary, gently squeezed his bird-like shoulder—a kiss or hug might seem like he was saying goodbye forever—and left, wishing hard the pneumonia would go into complete remission.
Even then, he did not like to think or say, “Clarence has AIDS.” The word was loaded with so much moralizing and politics that it reduced Clarence’s dying to a statistic, a social trend; it denied him a personal death. Jack might have felt differently if he knew others with the disease, but Jack lived in a small circle and all he knew were acquaintances of acquaintances and what he read in the newspaper. The word also had a sexual aura that made Jack uncomfortable. He knew the disease was not really about sex, that to say AIDS was punishment for sex was like saying the cholera epidemics of the nineteenth century were punishment for the capitalism and free trade that spread them—Laurie’s analogy. But Jack still felt a connection. That Clarence had AIDS and Jack was spared seemed like the final proof that Clarence had lived a full life and Jack hadn’t. He knew it was the most perverse expression of survivor’s guilt imaginable.
In Memory of Angel Clare Page 3
