by Jim Grimsley
"Uncle Reuben sat in the corner all night and wouldn't talk to anybody," Father's well-tended face showed hints of its age in the corners of his eyes, the whitening of his hair. Father continued, "Reuben's healthy, not a thing wrong with him except he's old. He could last another twenty years."
Early morning over Savannah reminded Ford of other mornings, the road on the way to Country Day School, or the look of the backyard from his bedroom when he first leaned out of bed. The familiarity of the streets echoed with his past, the expectations of it, and all that he was supposed to have been: a part of this city, heir to its upper tiers, guardian of a way of being. The thought had power over him even when he refused it.
Courtenay and her husband, Mike, arrived at the house soon after Ford stored his overnight bag in his old bedroom. Mike set about making breakfast in the kitchen, with Courtenay's help; coffee brewed, drinks poured, the family began its second day of holiday. For distraction Ford studied Mike, the carpenter Courtenay had lived with and then suddenly married. Ford had met him only briefly, but he liked the burly, brown-haired man by instinct. Mike had managed, from his first contact with the McKinneys, to maintain a wall of oblivion to the little insults with which Mother greeted him. He adapted to the family by action: this morning he chopped onions and potatoes, mixing egg and cheese, his strong carpenter's arms moving sinuously as he worked. Ford found himself oddly attracted to the wire-muscled arms, a feeling that frightened him a little.
Mother said, "Mike cooks better than most women I know, Ford. It's amazing. He's almost as good as your grandmother's Millie, at least at breakfast."
"Mother's always amazed when Mike can do anything besides grunt," Courtenay said, and Mike laughed.
"Please, Courtenay, you say the most awful things."
Mike spoke with a slight New England accent. "Courtenay's got no manners." Courtenay stood close to him as he diced ham into fine pieces. "She believes she's entitled to tell her friends exactly what she thinks, whenever she wants to."
Mother purred, "Well, she had every chance to learn manners. We tried to teach her how to behave around civilized people." Speaking brightly, hardly conscious of the edge to her voice, Mother drifted through the kitchen.
Courtenay winked at Ford over the edge of Father's day-after-Christmas newspaper. "Mom's going to start talking about my debut again, any second now. Or my wedding. You watch."
Father chuckled and whispered, "I bet you're right."
From the breakfast room, Mother uttered in her most silken cocktail-party voice, "Of course, I knew we had failed somewhere when she refused to debut with her class. Keith says we stayed a year too long in Atlanta when she was a child. But Ford was even older, and he turned out fine."
"So far, anyway." Courtenay eyed Ford with lowered head.
Mother returned to the kitchen with her glass. "Exactly what is that supposed to mean?"
"Be careful," warned Mike from the stove, "Courtenay's trying to get something started."
"I'm not trying to do anything," Courtenay said. "I simply wanted to point out that Ford might turn out to be as uncouth as I am. One of these days."
"He'd have to work at it." Father swatted Courtenay with folded newsprint. "Even if he did, he'd need years to catch up with you."
Her skirting so close to revelation unnerved Ford, and he gave her a warning look. He said, for the benefit of the others present, "Courtenay knows all my secrets."
The remark created a great deal more discomfort in Ford's parents than he had anticipated. Mother said, "She certainly guards them well," and gave Courtenay a significant glance. Father changed the subject, asking Ford details concerning his second year in the residency program. Ford followed with the expected combination of complaints, enthusiasm, and anecdotes; he emphasized the difficulty of the residency schedule in order to set up his father's usual comparisons to his own residency, back in the days when conditions were even more arduous. This conversation, which provided familiar terrain for all the McKinneys, relaxed them.
Breakfast passed in that easy manner and following it, the family held another gift-exchanging ceremony for Ford's benefit. Mother gave him a new silk suit that was certain to fit since it had been tailored by Mr. Charles, who kept Ford's measurements in his book. The suit, chosen with her usual exquisite sense of what would set off her son's good looks, proved to be the catalyst for further conversation.
"You'll look handsome in that," Courtenay said. "That's your color."
"I knew that fabric was what I wanted the minute I saw it," purred Mother, touching Ford's collar affectionately. "My son certainly does look attractive, doesn't he?"
"I like it. But I don't have time to wear a suit anywhere these days. Not with my schedule."
"Well, surely you could at least find the time to take some nice girl to dinner," Mother continued. "Even one of those women doctors. I think that would be good for you."
"There are a lot of good-looking women going into medicine, nowadays," Father remarked, "judging from what I saw last time I was in Atlanta. Jeanine, I need another drink. I hardly had a thing to drink yesterday. I need to do better than that today."
The family nested in the back of the house, the casual rooms, as Mother called them, to spend the morning watching movies on Father's new stereo four-head VCR, which had the ability to inset a picture from live television into the same screen as the movie. "I can watch a movie and a football game at the same time," Father said. "This is a terrific machine. I'm even going to learn how to program this one. Listen to that sound. I can tape concerts off Channel 8 and the orchestra will sound just like that."
Mike had read the instructions. "It should be pretty easy to program. Do you want me to set the clock?"
"Sure. Let me watch so I can learn how." They headed for the video box, where Mike demonstrated the various buttons.
Courtenay, briefly intimate with Ford, asked, "How's Dan?"
"Fine. I talked to him yesterday. He's coming back home to Atlanta today. He said he had a good Christmas."
"He lives with you now." Courtenay seemed at odds with that thought.
Ford was aware of his father's increased attention. Feeling more uncomfortable as each second passed, he nevertheless found himself unable to steer conversation in any other direction. "We're still getting used to each other."
"Getting used to what?" Father asked, turning from the VCR lesson.
"My roommate," Ford said.
"What about your roommate?" Mother entered with Father's fresh drink.
Father said, "Ford was complaining about his roommate."
"He wasn't complaining," Courtenay said. "I asked him how they were getting along now that they live together."
The phrasing struck Ford as a dead giveaway. "I wasn't saying anything bad about Dan. I said we're still getting used to each other."
"Well, what's there to get used to?" Mother asked, pitch rising slightly.
For a moment he had an impulse to answer the question. Really answer it. But he swallowed the notion and reached for a little lie. "Nothing, really." As Courtenay watched.
Mike, on the excuse that he had left his drink in the other room, escaped through the doorway. Mother handed Father his drink, and they posed together in the usual arrangement, Mother sheltered near Father's shoulder. Mother gave Ford her raised eyebrow as preface to admonition. "Ford's too old to be having roommates anyway."
"He's frugal," Father offered. "He wants to keep that house payment down."
Courtenay watched Ford. He remembered the suddenness with which he had confessed to Courtenay a year before and felt the sense of waiting from his parents. The moment had arrived, or so it seemed. He might have deflected the remark, easily. Any of a dozen answers might have defused the obvious question; and Ford was mightily tempted to do just that. But he said, finally, with the first flush of morning alcohol pulsing through him, "When are you going to figure this out?"
Father's glance sharpened instantly. "Who? Us? Figure what out
?"
"Dan doesn't live at my house because I want to have a roommate. I've told you that before. At least I've told Mom that."
She sipped her own drink and refused to respond. Father glanced at her, and asked, "Ford, what on earth are you trying to say?"
He shook his head, his throat closed with fear.
Courtenay snapped, "How many more clues does he need to give you, Dad?"
"Courtenay, now you stay out of this," Mother began, but Father silenced Mother by wrapping his hand over hers.
"Maybe this is one of those secrets Courtenay was talking about," Father said.
Courtenay said, "It wouldn't have to be a secret if we weren't afraid the two of you would freak out—"
Ford paled. "Be quiet, Courtenay, please." Taking a deep breath. Turning to his parents again. "Dan is not my roommate. He's something else completely." Hardly recognizing his own voice. "He sleeps in my room. With me. His clothes are in my closet. I care about him. Do you get it yet?"
"Ford," Mother began, stricken.
"Don't say anything to him," Father ordered. Looking around the room as if all the objects in it had become foreign to him within the last few seconds. "I can't believe this." Directed to Ford again, vicious, "Do you mean what you're telling me? This man is a homosexual, and you have him in your house?"
"Yes, sir. That's what I mean."
To Courtenay, Father's voice was no less cold. "And you knew about this? And you didn't tell me?"
"Of course I didn't tell you." Courtenay matched his tone.
"Be quiet!" Shaking with rage. Father looked from son to daughter. "You are no children of mine."
Following this pronouncement, he stalked to the door and vanished.
Mother, stunned, drifted after his awesome departure. Face breaking, losing the coldness Ford had expected, she asked, in a tone reeking of pain, "Ford, how could you? How could you tell your father this?"
Wordless, he stood without defense in front of her. Moments later she followed her husband. Courtenay embraced Ford, saying something in his ear, saying, Don't worry, don't worry, it's going to be all right now, as he stood there, in the house and yard where he had ranged as the perfect boy in boyhood. Hearing his mother's distant voice calling, down the stairs, "Keith? Keith, are you down there?"
Courtenay and Mike rescued Ford for a few hours, taking him for a drive to calm down and then for a visit to Grandmother Strachn.
Through the nearly empty streets they drove, Courtenay pointing out landmarks to Mike as she steered the van in which they had traveled from New England. This left Ford to himself in the part of the van in which Mike ordinarily hauled lumber and building materials. Seated on a crate, elbows on knees, Ford stared blankly at the familiar contours of houses, churches, and squares. He noted small changes in the landscape, filing them away in the part of his brain that maintained Savannah geography. Otherwise he simply sat there, dull-witted in the aftermath of the conversation.
Relief slowly came to him over the course of the drive. This storm had been so long coming, he hardly knew how to behave now that it had broken. One thought was that Dan would finally be proud of him, that he should tell Dan as soon as he could. But no thought enabled him to forget the image of Father leaving the room in a shaking rage, nor could relief alter the fact that he must face his father again. You are no children of mine.
He had feared his mother's reaction as well, but she surprised him. Clearly she had understood the conditions under which Ford and Dan had been living; she had figured it out some time ago. But she had shared none of her insights, and Father's confusion appeared as total as his wall of fury.
Late in the day, Grandmother turned to Courtenay and asked, "Well, how is your mother this morning? I notice the day has passed and she didn't so much as do me the courtesy of a phone call. Yesterday or today." Grandmother lifted her nose deliberately. "Well, I suppose it's the best I can expect from her. She's too busy worrying about whether I'm leaving the house to Rose when I die to bother with something as simple as a phone call." As if reading her grandson's mind, she fastened on him clearly. "Or worrying about whether Ford is getting married. She has to worry a lot about that."
"So she's been talking to you?" Ford asked. "I thought she was keeping pretty quiet."
"Oh, she talks about it, all right." The subject had obviously been on Grandmother's mind as well. "Why don't you just go ahead and tell your parents you're never getting married, Ford?"
The question resounded through the large room, a second parlor, in which a fire burned. Mike ducked his head instinctively, and Courtenay opened her mouth. Ford answered, "I've told them a dozen times, Grandmother. They don't listen."
"For heaven's sake." Sitting back, she contemplated the fire. Impossible, at that moment, to think of her age or weakness. She embodied sharp savagery instead, a bird of prey. "Then they deserve what they get. If I'm not upset about it, why are they? You're my grandson. If you don't want to get married, you shouldn't do it. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn't get married. Not to your grandfather."
"Grandmother," Courtenay reproved, but found herself cut short.
"I wouldn't. I didn't need his money, my family had plenty." Grandmother looked at Ford keenly. "Your mother is afraid I won't leave you this house if you're single when I die. You tell her I said that's nonsense. She wants to pretend I don't know how conniving she is, but I know my children. You tell Jeanine I'm leaving you the house whether you're married or not. Whether you want it or not. And you're going to let Rose live in it till she dies."
Ford said, "Grandmother, you don't have to think about things like that."
"You mean I wouldn't have to think about them if I didn't have a daughter like Jeanine."
They lingered in Grandmother's second parlor through lunch. Toward the middle of the afternoon, Ford excused himself to the alcove in the library where Grandmother kept her telephone. Dialing the familiar number, he warned himself he was probably too early, Dan might not be home yet. But the receiver lifted and the voice blossomed across space into Ford's ear.
"Hello," Ford said, "guess what?"
"I already know. Your mother called."
Now Ford heard the weariness in the voice. "What did she want?"
"She wanted to know if it's true that I am homosexual, and she asked me what I've done to you to make you think you are. That's about the gist of it. And your father got on the line and threatened to call some folks at Emory and have me fired from my job."
"Oh, Jesus," Ford said, "I'm sorry."
"Don't be." A calm filled the phone. "I'm proud of you. I wish there was something I could do."
"Don't answer the phone anymore. All right?"
"All right. Where are you? You sound better than I thought you would."
"At my grandmother's. Courtenay and Mike are taking care of me right now. But you may get a call from the airport if I decide to come home early."
Ford asked about Dan's knee, his trip, even about the cats. The ease between them surprised Ford a little. Was it as simple as the fact that Ford had finally said something? That he had made a decision?
He told Courtenay about Mother's phone call on the way to van, after kissing Grandmother Strachn good-bye on her tissue-thin cheek. After Courtenay absorbed the surprise, she said, "Well, I don't know if that's a good sign or a bad sign. Was Dan all right?"
"Yes. He was surprised, I guess. But so was I."
At home, they found the house deserted, though the family cars both sat complacently in the parking area behind the house. Mike spotted the parents, who were sitting in the garden, buttoned up in winter coats, sipping some liquid contained in coffee mugs. Between them was a bottle of Scotch and a thermos. They stayed there till after dark, unmoving, with a look as if they dared anyone to approach.
Finally, Mother came inside the house and Father drove away in his car.
Ford met her in the kitchen. She managed a glance at him but she could not meet his eye. "Where's Dad gone?" Ford
asked.
"To his office. He had some things he wanted to do."
Ford put his hands in his pockets. "He doesn't want to be around me, does he?"
"Your father had things to do at his office." She repeated the phrase mechanically "You can't very well blame him if he doesn't feel comfortable around you right now."
"He could try. He has to try sometime."
"Why?" She turned to face him, lit by lightning. "Why does your father have to try anything? Why can't you try something for a change?"
A comforting numbness wrapped him. "Like what?"
"Like behaving the way we raised you to behave. Like coming to your senses. What has this person done to control you this way?"
"Who, Dan? Dan doesn't control me."
"Then I don't know what you call it. He has warped your mind, he has perverted you. He has twisted you up till you think you're the same kind of creature that he is." She stepped to him, took his shoulders in her hands and peered at him earnestly. "But I know you're not. I'm your mother, and I know you're a man. You're not like he is, you're not some kind of homosexual. You're my son and you're a handsome man and you want to do the natural thing. I know you do, or at least I know you will when you come to your senses."
"Mother, I'm in my senses, I'm not crazy."
"Don't tell me that!" Flashing again, backing away from him. "You're sick, you're still sick from whatever happened to you, and that therapist friend of yours did not help you. I don't know who she was, but I mean to find out and I mean to give her a piece of my mind, because if this is the kind of mess she was encouraging you to do, to live with a man and call it natural, well, I tell you what—" Stopping for breath, she sagged against the counter. "Ford, you have to get that man out of your house, or I don't know what I'm going to do."
"I can't do that, Mother."
"Yes, you can."
"Mother, you've talked to him. You know he's not a monster."
She covered her ears. "I haven't talked to him, I don't know what you're talking about."
