Night Kites

by M. E. Kerr

  “Nicki and I took a walk, because as soon as you and Dill left, Nicki started talking about going back to Seaville right away. She always wants to go when she gets anyplace. I got her calmed down, but he was there when we got back from the walk, around three.”

  “Sorry, old buddy.”

  “Don’t be. It wouldn’t have been the right time anyway. She wanted to see Springsteen so damn much, then she pulls this ‘let’s go’ shit! I can’t figure her out. She says she hates to stay till the end of anything.”

  “She sounds bananas to me,” I said, and I noticed Jack lurching.

  “This girl’s got me on a roller coaster. I’m flying!”

  “You’re flying, all right. Why are you drinking?”

  “No Coach Paul lectures, please.”

  “Coach Paul would have your ass if he could see you now.”

  “I feel great!” Jack said.

  “Do you know what I’m saying, Jack? You’re not really irresistible when you drink. You sing off-key, too.”

  “Do you know what I’m saying? I’ll probably marry this girl!”

  “Now you’re going to marry her.” I didn’t want to hear about it. “What’d you all talk about for an hour, while you were waiting for Dill and me?”

  “College. S-A-T.s. Your dad said I really ought to go to college, and he got Nicki saying the same thing. I kept thinking at the concert, maybe I ought to go.”

  “Then go!” I said.

  “It’s a crazy idea, just when I meet someone I don’t ever want to leave. What college could I get in?”

  “Shit, Jack!”

  “Don’t say shit Jack! What college could I get in?”

  “What college can I get in? When we get back to Seaville, we’ll talk about it. You’re not in control, buddy.”

  “I love her, Erick. She says we have to be careful today, because it’s the fifth and five is a mystic number that means trouble.”

  “Don’t have any more, okay? Dad’s going to break my butt if you’re drunk when he gets back.”

  Dad’s apartment consisted of a bedroom, a bathroom, a study, and a kitchen off the living room. I figured Dad could sleep on the couch in his study, Jack on the living-room couch, me on some pillows from the couch on the living-room floor.

  It was Dill’s idea to change for bed, then eat the pizza in the living room, watching MTV.

  Since Jack and I didn’t have anything to change into (we slept in our shorts) we put the pizza out on the coffee table and found some paper plates up in Dad’s cupboard.

  Dill came out of the bedroom first, wearing a pair of her dad’s old striped pajamas with the sleeves and pants rolled up.

  I cornered her in the kitchen. “Jack’s still drinking.”

  “I’d drink, too, if she was my date for a birthday weekend. Didn’t she think of a cake? Some candles we could put on top of the pizza? Something?”

  “She gave him the T-shirt,” I said.

  “That thing will fall apart in the wash,” Dill said. “She wouldn’t wear it herself. Have you noticed the clothes she’s brought along for herself this weekend?”

  Right on cue, Nicki came out of the bedroom in a silk robe that looked like it was torn at the bottom, with something white and silk and torn-looking under it. Barefoot, the same rhinestone ankle bracelet. The white lace scarf she’d worn around her neck to the concert was holding back her long blond hair.

  We sat around gobbling down pizza and watching MTV, but the fun was gone out of the evening for Dill, who looked like a little boy over on Dad’s couch. Nicki spread herself out on the rug, leaning back against a pillow, blowing perfect smoke rings up at the ceiling. The Long Island Tea was beginning to show on Jack. He was stretched out on the rug, too, on his back, trying to talk with his eyes closed, close to konking out.

  Dad’s apartment always looked like the maid just left, and I was running around after we ate, getting the pizza carton and the paper plates ready to carry down to the incinerator.

  Dill came into the kitchen and said, “All she needs is a feather boa wrapped around her neck. I feel like some eighth grader still going through my tomboy stage.”

  “What the hell am I going to do about Jack when Dad gets here?”

  “Leave Jack where he is. I’ll get her to bed. Let’s just start all over tomorrow. Okay?”

  I kissed her. I said, “Do you want to take a walk in Central Park tomorrow morning? Early?”

  “Just the two of us, please,” Dill said.

  I kissed her again. I could hear Nicki in the background saying, “Jack? Wake up!” I knew she’d never wake him up if he’d passed out.

  I could hear Honeymoon Suite singing their old song about a hot summer night and a new girl.

  “Nicki?” Dill called in. “Bedtime. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she called back. “Go ahead and use the bathroom first.”

  I took everything down to the incinerator.

  When I came back, Nicki was standing in the kitchen. I could hear the water running in the bathroom down the hall.

  “I can’t wake Jack up,” Nicki said. She leaned against the refrigerator and watched me. “What did you like best in the concert?”

  “‘Thunder Road,’ I guess. I like that bit he does at the end, on his knees, when he slides across to the saxophonist.”

  “I like ‘Born in the U.S.A’ best,” Nicki said. “That part about the woman his brother loved in Saigon? About him having a picture of his brother in her arms?”

  I kept smelling that perfume of hers.

  She said, “I liked ‘Dancing in the Dark,’ too. I wouldn’t mind being asked to dance with him like that girl was tonight? He did the same thing on the video, asked a girl from the audience up onstage.”

  “Nicki,” I said, “Jack doesn’t usually drink.”

  “I don’t care if somebody drinks. Ski drank.”

  “I just wanted you to know that.”

  “It’s how somebody drinks.”

  “That’s why he isn’t drinking well. He doesn’t drink.”

  “He doesn’t drink well, and he doesn’t let me talk about things. I can’t even mention Ski’s name.”

  “Jack’s jealous. You can’t blame him.”

  “But I like to talk about things. I can, with you.” She had her arms folded in front of her, her head cocked to one side, eyes watching me that way, one eyebrow raised.

  I heard Dill call, “Good night,” as she came out of the bathroom.

  “Good night,” I called back.

  “Tell Nicki the bathroom’s free.”

  “She’s trying to wake Jack up to say good night,” I said.

  And Nicki smiled.

  “Is that what I’m doing?” she said softly.

  “I just said that so she wouldn’t think …” I didn’t have a finish for it.

  I heard the bedroom door shut.

  “So she wouldn’t think what?” Nicki said.

  “Whatever you girls think,” I mumbled.

  We were inches away from each other.

  “See, I’m not one of the girls,” Nicki said.

  “I know you’re not.” I thought she could probably see my heart coming through my shirt.

  I turned around to get a glass of water I didn’t even want, just to do something with my hands besides put them on her.

  “It’s funny, because I never thought you liked me,” she said.

  “I like you fine.” I could hardly hear my own words.

  “I know you do, now.”

  I thought I heard her say my name, but I wasn’t sure. I kept running the water.

  Then she touched my shoulder.

  “Hey? Erick?”

  “What?”

  I turned around. I felt her arms reach up to my shoulders and I just gave in. I felt silk. I felt the soft wetness of her mouth, and the warm rush of my blood.

  “Hello? It’s me!” I heard Dad’s voice in the foyer. “Where is everyone?”

  I let go of her.

&
nbsp; “In the kitchen, Dad!”

  Then we turned around, and Dad was standing there with the Sunday Times under his arm.

  “Hi, Mr. Rudd! How’s Pete?” Nicki said.

  “Pete’s fine!” Dad said. “How was the concert?”

  I didn’t even attempt to wake up Jack. Jack was the last person I wanted to face right then, anyway.

  Nicki said good night and disappeared into the bedroom.

  It was past one in the morning. Dad usually went to bed around eleven.

  I told him I’d sack out in the living room with Jack, figuring Dad couldn’t wait to get into his study and hit the couch.

  But Dad surprised me by getting down a glass, getting out some ice cubes, and splashing some scotch over them.

  “I’m going to have a drink, Erick. Come into the study with me.”

  I didn’t like the tone of his voice, or the set of his shoulders, squared way back beyond the posture for Raps #1, #2, or #3. Something told me I’d been a jackass to think Dad would ever let me get away with lying about where the girls were staying that weekend. Not Dad. He just wasn’t going to chew me out in front of the others. Dad could always bide his time.

  I watched him run his hands over his nearly bald head as I walked behind him into the study. I stood there while he set down his glass and said, “Shut the door.”

  I shut it, and we both sat down. He sat in the big leather Eames chair, and I sat across from him on the couch.

  I thought, Here it comes.

  I could still feel where her lips had touched mine, and smell her perfume. We could still hear the faint sounds of MTV pumping away in the living room.

  I looked from the shag rug to the framed photographs of Pete and me, taken on Pete’s graduation day. (I was in my first suit, standing on tiptoe so I could get my two fingers up behind Pete’s head to make horns.) Finally, I looked over at Dad’s face, which was as grim and stony as I’d ever seen it.

  I started mumbling something about being sorry for the lie. I got the idea anything I was going to come up with was going to be shot down in a second.

  “Let me talk,” Dad said.

  I looked down at my Nikes and waited.

  “Pete’s sick,” Dad said. “Pete’s very ill.”

  I felt that silly sort of relief I used to feel when I was a kid and Pete was getting hell for something I had nothing to do with. Then the words “very ill” began registering.

  “How ill?”

  “Erick, anything we say has to be between us. I want that understood.”

  “All right.”

  “You’re not to talk about this with Jack, or Dill, or that other one. You’re not to discuss this with anyone! Is that clear?”

  “Yes. But what’s Pete got?”

  It took him a long time to say it. “AIDS … I think you know what AIDS is?”

  I’d heard dozens of jokes about AIDS. (What do the letters GAY stand for? “Got AIDS yet?”… Did you hear about the new disease gay musicians are coming down with? BAND-AIDS … What do you call a faggot in a wheelchair? ROLLAIDS.) I remembered they’d touched on AIDS briefly in health class. Mostly gay men got it. Some drug addicts got it, too.

  “How could Pete get that?” I said. I remembered something about people getting it from blood transfusions. I remembered Pete always gave blood during the Red Cross drives. But how could you get it giving blood?

  Dad was taking a gulp of his scotch, putting the glass down, crossing and uncrossing his legs.

  “Erick,” Dad said, “we have to think about Pete now.”

  “That’s who I am thinking about!”

  Dad put his hand up to hush me.

  “We just have to think about Pete. We’re not going to judge him. We’re going to support him.”

  “Okay,” I said impatiently. “Okay.” But I’d caught the word “judge.”

  So I sat there, waiting for Dad to continue.

  “Apparently,” Dad began, “your mother is the only one in the family who really knows Pete well.”

  Chapter Nine

  “I GUESS I REALLY screwed up your weekend,” Pete said as he let me in the door the next morning.

  “It was headed in that direction anyway,” I said.

  At noon I was meeting Jack, Dill, and Nicki at the Central Park Zoo. Then we were going to walk up Fifth Avenue to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dill’d heard there was a pool with fountains in there, where we could all have lunch…. I hadn’t even met Nicki’s eyes that morning.

  I’d said only that Pete had picked up the virus he’d had in France last summer, that I was going to take him a Sunday Times and stay with him for a while.

  “You want some coffee, don’t you?” Pete said. He walked into the kitchen to pour us some. “How was the Springsteen concert?”

  I left the Times on the hall table. I described the mob scene at Madison Square Garden, Springsteen’s raps between numbers, and how he’d finally wound up doing John Fogerty’s “Rockin’ All Over the World” as his last encore…. I told Pete to thank whoever it was in his Great Writers’ Discussion Group for getting us the tickets.

  Pete had his back to me. He was getting cream from the refrigerator and sugar from the cupboard. “It’s the Gay Writers’ Discussion Group,” Pete said. “Last night Dad said what do you discuss? I said we discuss gay books. Dad said is a gay book a book that sleeps with other books of the same sex?”

  Pete laughed, so I did, too.

  He looked even thinner than when I’d last seen him. He had on rust-colored corduroys, a white shirt, old Nikes, no socks.

  “Dad can’t stand the word ‘gay,’” Pete said. “When he hears it, his face squishes up like a bird dropped something white out of itself down on Dad.”

  We were both smiling while we carried the mugs of coffee into the living room and sat down. Pete had The Phil Woods Quartet on. He loved jazz, Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan. Anything I knew about jazz I’d learned from Pete.

  He crossed his legs and looked over at me with a shake of his head, said, “Well, Ricky, this is sort of a variation on that joke about the gay guy trying to convince his mother he’s really a drug addict. You’ve probably heard it.”

  “Or one like it,” I said. The jokes I’d heard were never about “gay guys.” They were always about “fags,” “fruits,” worse.

  “How’s Dad taking this?” Pete asked me. “I couldn’t really tell.”

  “He’s worried about your health. I am, too.”

  “I don’t mean my health.”

  “I think he’s hurt.”

  “Because I told Mom I’m gay but not him, hmmm?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you, pal? I was planning to tell you.”

  “When I grew up, or what?”

  “I don’t blame you for being pissed off, Ricky. I was waiting for the right time.”

  “You act like you had a crime to confess or something. I’m not Dad, Pete. I told Dad last night: It’s just another way of being. It’s not a crime. It’s not anything to be ashamed about.”

  Pete got up to play the other side of the tape. “I thought you sort of knew anyway.”

  “How would I sort of know?” I said. “You sort of know about someone like Charlie Gilhooley, but how would I sort of know about you?”

  Pete went back and sat down. “I never brought any women home. I never talked about any women. I’m twenty-seven years old.”

  “You talked about going out to discos, dancing all night.”

  “Yeah, I guess I did. I didn’t say they were gay discos.”

  “What about Belle Michelle?”

  “That was ten or eleven years ago,” Pete said. “Michelle always knew about me. I never tried to fool her. I didn’t want her to think the reason I didn’t make any passes had anything to do with her.”

  “We always thought she was your big love. Dad thought she threw you over and you never got over it.”

  “Michelle and I were just great pals, at a time when we both need
ed pals. She was in her wheelchair, and I was in my closet.” Pete smiled. “Michelle said as long as I stayed in my closet, she’d understand perfectly if I parked my car in a handicapped space, too.”

  “So when did you tell Mom?”

  “Right before I went to Europe last summer.”

  “Dad made it sound like she’d always known.”

  “Maybe she did, deep down—I don’t know … Getting up the courage to tell Mom was the hardest thing I ever had to do,” Pete said. “How many times have you heard Mom say we were the perfect family? She and Dad never played around on each other, never even had a fight that lasted overnight … and while all their friends’ kids were raising every kind of hell, we were the good boys. We didn’t do drugs, or drink, or cheat in school, or wrap the family car around trees.”

  “You came close,” I said.

  “I got a few speeding tickets.”

  “I know what you mean, though,” I said. “Mom always thought we were the Waltons, or the Lawrences on Family.”

  “My God, the Lawrences!” Pete winced. “I forgot how Mom loved to watch the Lawrences: Buddy and Willy and Kate and Jim, et cetera, happy ever after in that big blue house, wrapping up every problem from adultery to abortion in sixty minutes flat, with time out for commercials.”

  “She still watches the reruns,” I said. “Yeah, I always thought I was going to be the one to blot the family record.”

  Pete chuckled. “Not your big brother, hmmm?”

  “I didn’t mean that you’re blotting the family record, Pete.”

  “I know you didn’t,” Pete said, “but I’m not exactly enhancing it…. So I kept thinking, why do Mom and Dad have to know? I managed to grow up without opening that boil. Why start all the guilt/blame machinery going now? I was never crazy about self-revelation, either. I always hated people who got on the tube and confessed they were alcoholics or anorexics or Jesus freaks or some other damn thing!”

  I said, “When I’d watch gays on talk shows, I’d wonder why they’d announce it. Dad said they were exhibitionists.”

  “I thought they were, too,” Pete said. “I used to sit watching those things hoping to God they’d look as straight as possible. I used to hate seeing any Charlie Gilhooley’s coming out of the closet.”