by Kelly Jensen
Nearly let the string of time—knotted at such a similar moment—unravel, yanking him back toward the single most painful incident of his past. The day he’d been told he was an abomination, unnatural, deviant, not wanted. The day his father had . . .
A throb of pain piercing the middle of his skull, Brian pushed back against the cord of memory. This was his house. “What do you want?” He kept his voice quiet, but couldn’t do anything about the venom cutting each word short and sharp.
“I want my son back.”
What? This wasn’t part of the pattern. His parents had never asked him to come home.
Of course, they’d have had to find him first.
Brian found a word. “Why?”
“Because he’s my son?” Ellen’s answer was rich with sarcasm.
In the darkest corner of the kitchen, Josh had become a ghost of himself, much as he had been the night he’d broken in: pale, cold, and lost.
“Josh,” Brian said. “You okay?”
Josh shook his head.
“Do you want to go home?”
Without looking up, Josh shook his head again.
Brian lifted his chin toward Ellen. “I think you have your answer.”
But it wouldn’t be as easy as that. Ellen advanced, her beautiful face made ugly by contempt. “Why can’t he speak for himself? What lies are you pushing into his head? How did he know where you lived, huh? How long have you been tainting my son?”
“I didn’t even know I had a nephew until he showed up the night before Christmas.”
“Uh-huh. Likely story. Maybe he’d not have got the notion to be a deviant if he hadn’t known you.”
“Do you really think I’m the only gay person he knows? Or that you know? You probably passed a couple on the highway, Ellen. You might have touched one when you were paying for your coffee yesterday.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“At least one of Josh’s teachers is gay. Several of his friends. More than one of his relatives.”
“You need to stop spouting your filthy agenda and tell my son it’s time to come home.”
“His home is here. Josh is happy here.”
Ellen leaned forward. “You diddlin’ him?”
Brian staggered back a step. “Am I . . .” He could feel his mouth opening and closing as he grappled for the right response. To understand what his sister had just asked. Implied. “You . . .” Brian let his horror show. “No, Ellen. I have never behaved inappropriately toward my nephew. I think you’re the only one here who has that honor.”
“You think I—”
“I think you kicked your son out of your house with nothing but the clothes on his back and then let him blow in the wind for nearly two months. I’d call that pretty damn inappropriate. Wouldn’t you?”
“I knew he was here.”
“What if he hadn’t been?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you even stop to wonder what might happen to Josh out there?”
“He’d learn to take care of himself. Stop being precious and soft. Learn to be a goddamn man.” Ellen looked him up and down. “Not that it worked for you.”
Oh boy. So not going there. Not if he could help it.
“And now that Josh has apparently learned to be a man,” Brian asked, “what do you expect of him?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you think he’s going to come home and suddenly not be gay?”
“That’s his choice, isn’t it?”
“Which part? The home part? Because you should know his sexuality isn’t a choice.”
“Of course it is. Like the color of his hair.”
“No. It’s not.”
Ellen gestured sharply. “I didn’t come all this way to argue with you. I want my son back.”
“Why?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Why do you want Josh to come home? Is it because you’ve realized he’s your boy, no matter who he is, no matter who he loves?”
Eyes narrowing again, Ellen turned toward the corner where Josh continued to hide. Brian would say he’d never seen such a miserable boy, but he had. In the mirror, some thirty-three years previously.
Focusing back on Brian, she spoke in a low hiss. “Because I am not going to let you take something else away from me and pervert it, Brian. You wrecked everything with your filthy behavior. Stole something from me. I’m not about to let you do that again.”
Brian grabbed the kitchen island and held on until he could get a stool under himself. He didn’t know what he found more shocking: that Ellen still hated him, after all this time, or that she didn’t get it. Had no idea what she’d done.
Yes, he’d taken something from her, but it had been someone she’d probably have been better off without. He’d received no thanks for that. Then again, he’d never expected it. Ellen had always, always disliked him. And he’d always wanted something more from her than anger and spite. She was his sister. Closest to him in age. They’d looked so much alike when they were kids that they could have been twins. He’d loved her. Adored her. Worshipped her.
His head stopped swimming. Maintaining his grip on the counter, Brian stared straight into Ellen’s eyes. “Would you like to know what you stole from me?”
Ellen replied with a derisive sound.
Brian directed his next comment toward Josh, whose own Kenway gaze, blue as a spring sky, flicked back and forth between his mother and his uncle. Should he do this? Should he kill any last spark of love Josh might have for his mother? Was it right? “Josh.” His voice was hoarse. “Do you love your mother? Do you want to go home?”
The kid’s face crumpled like a used tissue. He shook his head and blubbered. Managed a word, “No.”
Ellen shrieked. “I found him in bed with my boyfriend, Josh. That’s the kind of man he is. All naked and tangled up with the boy I loved. You can’t trust him. Brian is a lying cheat and an asshole. He deserves everything he got.”
Josh’s eyes widened.
Brian felt sick. Swallowing, he said, “Why don’t you share the rest of the story?”
“We kicked you out. Mom and Dad wouldn’t stand for that sort of behavior in the house and neither will I. Josh can be gay if he wants—”
“It’s not a matter of ‘want’!”
“But while he’s under my roof, he’ll live by my rules. He can do whatever he wants when he’s an adult.”
“So, what, he has to come home and not be who he is for how many years . . . three, four? And then you can tell the world you were a good mother. Is that how this works, Ellen?”
Her eyebrows dipped. Her chin wobbled.
Brian would never have taken a show of vulnerability to be the cue he’d need to eviscerate someone, but apparently he was that person: cruel and spiteful. Or maybe he was done with words that had no real meaning. Rules that only applied to one half of an equation.
He started out low. “Did you ever wonder what happened to me after Dad finished beating me to within an inch of my life and Mom showed me the back door?”
Ellen shook her head.
“I hid in the shed at the back of the O’Malley’s yard. For four days until I could walk without feeling like I had a knife poking in my side. I’d sneak into the house when everyone went out and get something to eat. Change my clothes. Mom caught me one day and I thought that was it. That she’d call Dad and he would finish me off. Kill me. Do you know what that feels like?”
He’d lost the low and was heading toward the high.
“She gave me twenty bucks. Twenty fucking dollars and told me to get so far lost, no one would ever find me. I figured it was because she cared. Because she didn’t want my father to kill me. But, no, she just wanted me gone. So . . . I got lost. For eighteen months, I got so lost that by the time Vanessa found me, I barely remembered my name.”
Ellen’s face was hard, but her eyes flashed with emotion Brian didn’t want to acknowledge.
“Want to kn
ow why that was, dear sister? Do you want to know what happened to me because you found me with a boy who only pretended to love you because it gave him access to me? Because you decided your heart was broken and that it was all my fault?”
She shook her head, but Brian hadn’t been waiting for her answer. He couldn’t have stopped now, even if someone had put a red sign in front of his face.
“I lived on the street. Under bridges, in abandoned buildings, deep doorways, and sometimes, if I was lucky, I scored a bench at the park. You’d think that in summer, it wouldn’t be so bad, but that’s when it was the worst because you couldn’t sleep at night. Nighttime was when the boogeymen roamed the streets, looking for kids like me. Homeless, hungry, and willing to do anything to feel real for half an hour. That’s how I fed myself, when I wasn’t waiting out the back of restaurants for scraps or digging in dumpsters. That’s how I got the money for aspirin when I was sick.”
Ellen looked about ready to pass out, but still Brian couldn’t stop. “Suck a cock, eat for a day. Let someone fuck me and I’d maybe have enough money to live through whatever fever had me that week.” Every word that spilled from his lips left a mark behind, as though he were ripping pieces of himself away and offering them up toward some twisted ritual. But if he stopped now, he’d fail at something important. So that he might as well have gone back home and let his father grind him into little bits.
“I was so ill when Vanessa found me that I thought I had actually died. I’ll spare you the details of how sick and how long it took me to recover, except to say that if not for the kindness of her uncle, a man who died three years later because no one cared enough about him, either. Because he had AIDS, he was a terrible person, right? Deviant, filthy, wrong.” Brian squeezed his eyes shut. “Tristan Smart was the most beautiful man I’ve ever known. He saved me. When everyone else either wanted to kick me along the street, or use me like a cum rag, Tristan encouraged me to be more. He was dying the whole time I stayed with him, and still he made sure I lived.”
The kitchen swayed around him. Brian readjusted his grip on the counter and struggled for breath. His throat felt raw, as though he’d been shouting. Maybe he had. Swallowing, he worked to modulate his tone. To be reasonable. To give a conclusion to the most impassioned speech of his life. Make all his pain worthwhile. “So don’t tell me you know what being a parent is. It’s not giving birth, that’s for sure. And it’s not kicking your son out of the house for something he can’t help. Hell, it’s not even kicking him out for something he can help. It’s about loving him.” His voice broke. “It’s about loving whoever he is. Not because you have to, but because he’s there and you’re all he has.”
Josh ran from the room, and Ellen stumbled away from the counter with a hiccupping sob. Brian opened and closed his eyes, willing his pulse to settle and the kitchen to stop moving. It almost felt as though he were having a heart attack, except for the lightness of his skin. The self he’d peeled away and flung at Ellen like strips of carrion.
Maybe it’d been wrong to lay it all out like this, but he couldn’t let Josh go home knowing where he’d come from. Knowing what love was not.
Clearing his throat, he found his sister by the window and said, “I made all of this out of that. I lived, Ellen. I made it and I’m damn proud of what I am. But I had to do it all on my own and it hurt. Every birthday, every Christmas. Not having my family with me. Not even knowing if they cared if I’d lived or died. Don’t do that to him. Please. Either love him for who he is, or let me love him. I’m begging you. Don’t hate him because of what I did. I paid for it, a thousand times over.”
Ellen shook her head—not in denial, maybe not denial. Shock simmered in her eyes, backlit by guilt. She wasn’t going to give in, though. Not for him and not for her son. He’d said too much, had revealed too much. He’d broken her when all he’d wanted to do was to somehow stitch the wound he’d left behind all those years ago.
Or maybe he hadn’t wanted that.
Maybe he had wanted this.
Feeling his shoulders pull down as though the weight of a house had settled across his back, Brian turned his gaze toward the kitchen island and the myriad colors threading the granite countertop. His throat harbored a sob, but he was determined not to let it free.
Then he heard it, that whisper of agony, and it hadn’t come from him.
Looking up, he turned and there, framed by the half-open kitchen door, was Mal, his face almost pink against the snow falling behind him, his forehead pinched, mouth open.
Mal stumbled, his legs finally giving out, and hit his shoulder against the doorframe. He’d been trying to keep still for about ten minutes now, but his cane didn’t want to grip the icy edge of the path. As he slithered down the frame, landing in snow not yet deep enough to cushion his fall, it wasn’t the cold that came as a shock. Or the awkward jarring of his right knee. It was that Brian hadn’t leaped up to help him. Brian, who always had a hand at his shoulder, his back, his hip—who hovered as he climbed in and out of cars, chairs, doorways.
After scrambling into a sitting position, Mal gripped the doorframe with one hand and the handle of his cane with the other. By the time he regained his feet, he was panting . . . and Brian was gone.
Mal opened the kitchen door fully and limped through. To the right stood a woman he took to be Ellen. She looked like Brian. Like Josh. Blond and blue-eyed. But she wasn’t pretty. Not at that moment. She might have been once, before life had hardened her.
She stared at Mal for a handful of seconds, gaze unfocused. Then she gathered her belongings, the coat slung across one of the high stools, a purse, and pushed past him and out the door. Turning to watch her go, Mal wondered if he should hobble after her. Ask her to wait.
He went to look for Brian instead, and found him in the hallway, crouching in a shadow.
“Bri?”
Brian didn’t respond. He didn’t seem to be all there, either.
Steeling himself for yet another trip to the ground, Mal put one hand against the wall and started down. His right knee creaked in protest. His left leg ached dully. Once on his knees, he canted forward, resting his hands on Brian’s folded legs. “Brian.”
Brian met his gaze.
“Hey,” Mal said.
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Don’t say anything. Just listen, okay?”
No response.
“I’m sorry. For all of it. I know that sounds stupid. I couldn’t have known. There was nothing I could have done.”
And would he have, even if he and Brian had known each other back then? Probably not. How many kids drifted off the edge of the map every year, unnoticed by classmates and friends? Teenagers were selfish creatures and adolescence was freaking hard.
Shaking his head, Brian pushed at Mal’s hands, edging them back toward his knees.
Mal found it hard to grab a single thought out of the maelstrom pounding against his temples. He imagined Brian felt much the same. Something huge and terrible had happened and like all huge and terrible things, it could not be undone. Rocking back, Mal reached for the wall again and pushed up to his feet.
He extended a hand toward Brian. “Come on. I’ll, um, make coffee.”
Jesus.
When Brian failed to move, Mal was tempted to give in to panic. What was he supposed to do in a situation like this? How did one help a man who . . . what? Mal didn’t even have words for what had happened. Gazing down at Brian crouched in a dark corner of his own hallway, however, he couldn’t help but imagine the boy Brian must have been, picture him huddled somewhere else. Somewhere dark and unkind. It was such a different perspective on the man who always seemed to have a smile, who was outgoing and easy in any company, that Mal had a hard time marrying the two personalities.
Except that he could, couldn’t he? This was what lurked behind Brian’s sometimes dark looks. This was the undefinable thing Brian hated about himself.
Damn it, I don’t know what to do.
&
nbsp; Should he call his brother? Rachel? Emergency services?
“I was so ill when Vanessa found me . . .”
“Do you . . .” Mal’s throat closed. “Should I call Vanessa?”
Brian’s head snapped up. “No.” He sort of climbed the wall then, pulling himself up hand by hand until he stood next to Mal. “I’ll . . . be . . . fine.”
“Go sit down.”
Without waiting to see if Brian complied, Mal escaped to the kitchen. He braced his hands against the island in the middle and breathed into the ticking quiet. Cold air swirled around his legs and wrists and a quick check of the kitchen door showed it still hung open. The effort required to close it felt like all too much, but Mal did it anyway, shutting out the snow, imagining he was also shutting out the world.
He got coffee started and searched through Brian’s pantry for snack food. Brian was obviously in shock. He needed something to eat and drink. Some quiet time—probably alone.
Damn it, he’d come here to cut through that step. To tell Brian he was done being awkward, and here he was interrupting something more than awkward.
Should he go?
No. God, no. Brian had been trying to take care of him for weeks now. It was way past time for him to do the same.
Mal pulled cold cuts and cheese out of the fridge and slapped together a sandwich. Filled a mug with coffee, collected both, and made his way back down the hall. Brian was in the living room, perched on the edge of the leather sofa, head tipped into his hands.
Mal set the mug and plate down on the coffee table and lowered himself onto the love seat. Silence opened between them like a dark and ghostly flower, marred only by creaking floorboards upstairs as Josh moved across his bedroom, and the scrape of a plow down the street outside. After a minute, the footsteps overhead stopped and the plow moved on and the silence became a loud and impenetrable thing.
Mal was trying to figure out how to break it when Brian finally spoke. “You should go.”
“I don’t think so,” Mal said.
“I need you to go.”
“You need me to stay. We don’t have to talk about what just happened.” Mal didn’t even want to talk about it. Wanted to forget what he’d heard and didn’t care if Brian never talked about it. Deep down, though, he knew he’d listen when the time came because that was what friends did, and he and Brian were friends. Lovers, but also friends.
