Hard Love

by Ellen Wittlinger

  She put the slippers on and leaned back into the couch. I perched on the arm, ready to leap up and go. “So what did you want to talk to me about?”

  “Do you like Al, Johnny? Not as a father, just as a man.”

  This was what we had to talk about now, when there was a bus to catch? I groaned. “I told you, he’s all right. I don’t know him that well.”

  “Of course I love Al, but sometimes I get a little … afraid.” She drew imaginary circles with her finger on her skirt. “You don’t think he’d do what your father did, do you?”

  Oh, Jesus. “Mom, how would I know something like that?”

  “You know your father. You’re a man now. You know how men act.”

  I was astounded. “Just because I’m a male you expect me to answer for the entire species? Are all women just alike?”

  “No, but, men are more … I don’t know.” She sighed. “The truth is, I find it hard to trust men. Since your father.”

  No kidding. “Look,” I said, “Al seems okay to me, but I can’t predict the future. I think you’re just going to have to get over this fear thing. It’s not exactly fair to Al that he has to take the heat forever because Dad walked out. If you want to have a decent marriage this time around, I don’t think Al’s the only one who’ll have to work at it.”

  I can’t explain the look on her face. It was like she recognized me for the first time. “You’re right, John. You’re right. Your father’s not part of this relationship. How’d you get so smart when I wasn’t looking?”

  I felt like saying something mean like, “You haven’t been looking for six years, Mom,” but she was smiling at me so nicely I didn’t do it. All of a sudden I started thinking about her reading the letter, how her face would crumple up. Better not trust me anymore either.

  “I’ve gotta run, Mom. I don’t want to miss the three-thirty train too.” I grabbed the pack and was out the door before she could get to her feet.

  “Have fun, Sweetie. I’ll see you Sunday afternoon!” she called after me.

  Sweetie? When had she last used a word like that to refer to me? I stopped for just a second while the endearment caught up to me and burned its way into my ears, scalded my brain. Then I started running.

  * * *

  Marisol was standing on the steps of our bus when I came around the corner, her black hair standing out around her head like Liberty’s crown.

  “Gio! Here! I’ve got your ticket already!” she yelled to me.

  I jumped on, and the driver immediately closed the door behind me and started up the engine. “I wouldn’t have given you another thirty seconds, Buddy,” he told me. “I got a schedule to keep, no matter what your girlfriend thinks.”

  Marisol x-rayed his brain with a glare, then led me back to the seat she’d saved for us. I threw my pack up on the overhead shelf and flopped down.

  “How come you’re so late? I’ve been fast-talking that creepy driver for ten minutes.”

  “My mother wanted to have a chat. And since I didn’t want to tell her where I was going, I couldn’t say I had to leave.”

  “I didn’t tell my parents either. I figure they’ll call Birdie as soon as they get worried. He’ll tell them I went to a conference, but he doesn’t know where it is. That way they won’t have coronaries, but they won’t find me either.”

  “Sounds a little bit like a lie.”

  “Not technically. Birdie doesn’t know exactly where we are, just the town.” I gave her a look. “I know. I feel bad about it, but it had to be done. Escape velocity, you know. They never let me get up any speed.”

  So Marisol was running away too! Maybe it wasn’t a hopeless situation. “Did you think I’d stood you up?” I asked her.

  “No. You wouldn’t do that to me.”

  I laughed. “Don’t be so sure. As we speak, my mother’s worst suspicions are probably being confirmed: like all men, her son cannot be trusted.”

  “Why?”

  “I left her the letter. And I mailed the other one to my father. So, the cord is cut. I’m free.” Just saying it made me feel like I was floating through space, dizzy from the slow spin, trying to keep my mind off the ground below.

  “You gave them those letters?” Marisol asked. “You said they were mean.”

  “They are. Cruel even.”

  “That doesn’t sound like you, Gio. You aren’t cruel.”

  Where did she get off telling me what I was and what I wasn’t? I gave a dark, cruel laugh. “It was honest, Marisol. I told them the truth for the first time. Isn’t that what I was supposed to do?”

  “There are different ways to tell the truth, Gio. If you care about people …”

  “I don’t care about them. Haven’t you been listening to me?” Man, I felt as crusty as an old barnacle. Who the hell was she to sit here and lecture me about telling the truth? A lot of good it had done me to tell her the truth. I guess all of a sudden I knew for a fact I wasn’t running away with Marisol.

  She turned and looked out the window. We were passing the Dorchester Gas Tanks, the dreary outskirts of a big city, nothing much to pin your hopes on.

  “Well, if that’s the way you feel,” she said finally. “But nobody’s parents do it perfectly. You’re mad at everybody right now—your parents and me, too. But if you run around trying to hurt everybody back, it just makes things worse.”

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t write you a letter.” I almost wished I had written her a letter. Why shouldn’t I hurt her back? I was sick of lying in the road letting people drive trucks over me. I was sore. If she thought she was spending the weekend with a lovesick puppy, she was wrong.

  “You can write me a letter if you want … I know how to read between the lines.” She smiled her little know-it-all smile, but I turned away and pretended to look out the window across the aisle. I didn’t need her laughing at me.

  She got a book out of her pack and slumped down to read it, crossing one skinny leg over the other. The bus rocked on, commuters getting off at the stations south of Boston, the sun changing from white to yellow as it descended through horse-tail clouds. By the time we rumbled up and over the Sagamore Bridge across Cape Cod Canal and onto the peninsula itself, Marisol had fallen asleep, her head resting, first lightly, then more heavily, against my shoulder. Though I tried not to admit it to myself, I would have been happy to stay on that bus forever if it meant she’d never move away from me.

  Another hour passed. The trees shrank into scrubby pines; roadside motels and shabby clam shacks opened their doors to a few early season tourists. As we reached the Outer Cape, sand dunes rose up on either side of the road, threatening, it seemed, to avalanche over the concrete so one sandy side could meet up again with the other. The road curved once more, and there was a tall tower with a huge blue bay beyond it, into which an orange sun was just dipping. The end of the road: Provincetown.

  “We’re here,” I whispered, hating to do it.

  Marisol sat up groggily, embarrassed. “Sorry. You should have woken me. Did I dribble on your shirt?”

  “Don’t worry about it.” I put my crab persona back on.

  Marisol asked her pal, the driver, where to find the Bluefish Wharf, and he pointed us down Commercial Street, the main drag, which ran parallel to the bay. It was a very narrow street, busy not only with cars but lots of bicycle and pedestrian traffic too, all vying for the right of way. We passed a woman with feathers in her hair and a large snake around her shoulders, and then a bald guy in a dress. Marisol was so excited, she forgot not to touch me and grabbed my arm. I tried not to know it.

  “Look at this place, Gio. Isn’t this fabulous?” It was kind of fabulous actually: odd and beautiful and wild all at the same time.

  We trudged past one brightly painted shop after another: leather, jewelry, secondhand clothes, antiques, hats, T-shirt stores, and art galleries. There were fish restaurants and pizza places, and a number of bars that looked dark and uninhabited. And every now and then, between the buildi
ngs you could see a sliver of sandy beach, a fishing boat, an old pier, and always the water, lapping quietly at this little jut of land.

  About the time the stores starting to thin out we saw the sign for the Bluefish Wharf. You could tell from a block away that something was going on; there were Christmas lights strung up all over and people were singing along with a guitar. The place itself was pretty funky, lots of little wooden cabins and rooms built one on top of another down the length of an old wharf that stuck out into the water. Brightly painted buoys and wagon wheels hung off the edge of the deck. At the bottom of some rickety stairs leading down to the beach, the singing group was just breaking up as we arrived.

  A tall guy with a scraggly beard saw us and yelled, “Hey, new arrivals! Are you zine people?” He climbed toward us.

  I nodded. “I’m Gio … John Galardi, and this is Marisol Guzman. We came down from Boston.”

  “Right, right. You’re the ones Diana invited. I’m Bill Murdock.” He stuck out one hand to each of us, so it was more like holding hands than shaking them. He was kind of an old hippie type, shaggy-haired, dressed in ratty jeans and an ancient sweatshirt.

  “Welcome,” he said. “You just missed our campfire sing. We did it early tonight because everybody wanted to go into town and hit the bars. The deal is, find an empty room and throw your stuff in it. There are peanut butter sandwiches and fruit in the office over there. I’m running this thing on a shoestring, so the food is pretty basic.”

  Somehow campfires, bars, and peanut butter sandwiches didn’t seem like they ought to belong to the same weekend experience. We looked around, a little lost. “Let me get Diana; she’ll be happy you’re here.” He went halfway back down the stairs and yelled to a gangly girl with short brown hair who came running over carrying a guitar case.

  “These are your two!” Bill Murdock told her, and then said to us, “See you guys later. Gotta find my dancing shoes.” He turned and walked on down the wharf into a room at the end.

  Diana sprinted toward us like a big-footed puppy. “Hi! I guess you’re John and Marisol. I’m glad you came. I wondered if you would.” She smiled first at Marisol, and then, briefly, at me. She seemed nervous, or maybe a little shy.

  “Thanks for inviting us,” I said.

  “This is a great place,” Marisol said. “Right on the water.”

  Diana nodded. “Bill’s parents own it, but they don’t open for tourists until June, so they’re letting us camp out. You wanna find a room?”

  We followed her down the creaky deck that passed in front of an odd assortment of doorways of all sizes and colors. Each room had a name plaque tacked over the entrance: Gooseberry, Puddinghead, Pussywillow, Lilliput.

  “What do the names mean?” I asked.

  “Oh, those are the names of Bill’s mother’s cats. Past and present. Almost every cabin has a cat name, although she had to throw in a few dogs, down at the far end, when she ran out of cats.” Diana knocked on Pussywillow’s door and opened it a crack. “Anybody in here?”

  “Occupied!” came the shout back.

  “Sorry.” We moved on down the walkway. “I should have known: Pussywillow is always popular. I don’t think anyone is in Pumpkin though.” She climbed up a ladder to a second story hut that was perched slightly askew on top another cabin. The view from up there was spectacular: All of Cape Cod Bay sparkled in front of us.

  “Yeah, this one’s free,” she said, ducking her head to enter through the tight doorway. “Do you mind staying in one, or did you want two separate places? It’s getting a little crowded already.” Her face was devoid of expression; she didn’t want us to think it made any difference to her.

  I looked at Marisol. There was nothing I wanted more, and probably nothing she wanted less. “I don’t care. Stay in one place?” I tried to imitate the careless indifference of Diana Tree, but was not at all sure I succeeded.

  “It’s fine for now, anyway,” Marisol said, dropping her pack and looking around the little yellow room, betraying no emotion. Three little monkeys with their hands over their eyes and ears and mouths.

  “So, are you hungry?” Diana asked. She had a way of looking up through her thick fringe of bangs so that she never seemed to be looking directly at you. It was a kind of protection, I thought.

  “Starving,” Marisol admitted. We followed Diana out of Pumpkin and back down to the office, which also housed a small kitchen. She got a loaf of bread out of the refrigerator and a jar of jelly to complement the peanut butter on the counter. “There’s not a lot of food here,” she said apologetically. “Some people are going into town to eat, although most of them are going to the bars.”

  “Gay bars?” Marisol asked. She was already spreading a sandwich for herself. I peeled a banana, even though my heart’s plummet into my stomach had already filled it up.

  “The dance bars are mostly gay, but anybody can go. They’re the most fun.” I looked closely at Diana. Was she gay too? How could you tell? There weren’t any obvious signs. Maybe that’s why some gay people gave you signs, like Birdie with his campy chatter, so you didn’t make a mistake. Not that knowing had helped me any with Marisol.

  “We’re not twenty-one,” I told her.

  “It doesn’t matter. Lots of the zine people aren’t. As long as you don’t try to buy booze, they won’t kick you out.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Marisol said.

  “What does this have to do with zines?” I griped. I hadn’t come all the way out here to go drinking. Or even dancing. Not that I had come to the tip of this peninsula only to hear the advice of my fellow scribblers either. At this point, I’d have to say my true motivation had something to do with the desperation caused by admitting my future looked as desolate and depressing as my present. Whatever was going to happen out here, I was going to be part of it.

  Diana shrugged. “Tonight is just to get to know people. Tomorrow Bill has a program planned. But if you’d rather stay here and read over the zines everybody brought, you can do that.” She pointed to stacks of zines on the floor next to a sagging couch. “Or maybe you’re tired.”

  “Oh, no,” Marisol said. “Gio’s never tired. He wants to go dancing, don’t you, Gio? I think we should all go!”

  “Okay.” Diana looked pleased. “I think most of our group were head for Butterfield’s. They have these retro nights when they play oldies and disco songs and stuff. They’re great to dance to.”

  “Let’s go!” Marisol couldn’t wait to surround herself with other gay people, to show me how gay she could be once she’d ditched me. She wanted me to see her lesbianness in action. (Lesbianity?) It was the last thing I wanted to do.

  “Lead the way,” I said, smiling at Diana.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I’d never seen any place like Butterfield’s. Dark, crowded, and smoky, like you imagine bars will be, but with an enormous dance floor full of all sorts of odd types stomping and grinding to seventies disco music, that dramatic stuff with the beat so heavy it’s like a punch in the gut. There were men dancing with men and women dancing with women—that was no shock—but there were also couples that I couldn’t have guessed what the gender combination was. Half the clientele were pierced, dyed, moussed, muscled, and tattooed. I felt like I had a neon sign flashing over my head: NAÏVE STRAIGHT KID.

  Nobody paid any attention to us. Diana located a small table where six or seven zine people were gathered, Bill Murdock among them. There weren’t any seats left, but Bill jumped up to make introductions. I was standing next to Marisol, but I think I would have felt the sudden magnification of her force field from across the room. There were four women sitting at the table, three of whom stared intently at Marisol, trying to decide if what they suspected was true. For her part, Marisol locked onto each of them as Bill said their names (Sarah, B.J., June) and she couldn’t seem to move past them as the other names were announced.

  Due to the tight quarters, Sarah and B.J. were sharing a chair. June moved over and motione
d to Marisol to share hers. Marisol sat down carefully, cheek to cheek with June, looking just a little shy. Shy? Who was she kidding? There wasn’t a shy bone in that body. Was there?

  I tried to hear what June was saying. Apparently she’d read Escape Velocity and was snowing Marisol with how great it was. Sarah and B.J. were seconding the motion; it was a big hit with the lesbian contingent. (I believe I was the first person to tell her how great her zine was, but who was I anyway? Just some straight, untrustworthy male.)

  “I wish I’d had such a strong sense of myself when I was in high school,” June said. I figured she must be in her early twenties. She rested her arm on the back of the chair they were squeezed into and tipped her head in Marisol’s direction.

  “I’m almost finished with school. Just a few more weeks,” Marisol assured her. “Then I’m free!” In an unusually girlish way, she flung one arm out to the side and tossed her head back. She seemed so young and eager I hardly recognized her.

  “Do you want to get something to drink?” Diana asked me. I’d almost forgotten she was there. “You can get soft drinks at the bar too.”

  It was more than I could bear watching Marisol and June flirting with each other. “Do you want to dance?” I asked Diana. It wasn’t an answer to her question, but she seemed happy with the suggestion, and we moved out onto the dance floor. I guess I wanted Marisol to see me with somebody else, see me having a good time without her. Except she wasn’t paying any attention.

  At first I felt self-conscious jerking around to that silly music, but the beat gets inside you, and pretty soon I just gave in to it and let go. I wasn’t ignoring Diana; I could see she’d abandoned herself to the music too. Her hair flopped down into her face, and she mouthed the words to a song I’d never heard before. We were pretty wild, I thought, although in that crowd, nobody noticed.

  It was almost impossible to be heard over the music, but between songs I asked her, “Do you come here a lot?”

  She shook her head. “Not much. I live in Truro, next town down, and I don’t get the car often. Besides, most of my friends don’t like it here.”