by M. E. Kerr
“It’s not what I choose for myself, that’s all.”
“Pete tells me it’s not a matter of choice.”
“I don’t know what the hell it is! I only know I’m not that way!”
“Then you have something to be thankful for! Church is for that, too. Get up! Now!”
I knew he’d wait until I slung my legs over the side of the bed. “Mom gave me a booklet that says AIDS is always fatal,” I said. “How come that’s never been mentioned?”
“We’re going to talk after church,” Dad said. “First we’ll pray.”
I was almost dressed when Jack called.
“I’m rushing now, Jack. I have to go to church with the family.”
“Could you talk to Nicki, Erick? She respects your opinions. Tell her I’m going crazy. Tell her just to see me. She won’t see me.”
“She’s not worth all this, Jack.”
“Would I tell you Dill wasn’t worth it if you were going through something with Dill?”
“She’s not Dill.”
“Just talk to her. Please?”
“I don’t know when I can do that. After church we’re having dinner at The Frog Pond.”
“Tell your dad I’m getting him a six-pack of Molson’s.”
“He’s not mad about that,” I said. “He was mad about a traffic tie-up on the Montauk Highway.”
“Will you go to see Nicki for me?”
“Not today. I can’t…. You don’t know her, Jack. She’s not worth this.”
“Oh, you know her, huh?” Jack said.
“I know she’s not worth all this shit.”
“You said you liked her fine.”
“I lied.” I was trying to sound as though I was joking with him, but my tone sounded more bitter than funny, because if it hadn’t been for Jack I’d probably have thought she was worth any kind of shit I had to take.
“Thanks for nothing again, Erick,” and Jack hung up.
Reverend Shorr had been the pastor of St. Luke’s for as long as I could remember, going way back to when Pete was in his teens. Shorr was a thin little fellow with gold-rimmed glasses who always read his sermons and made them sound like instructions for assembling mail-order items. He was known as Reverend Snore by some of his parishioners. He wasn’t hail-fellow-well-met enough for a lot of them. He was too humorless and pedantic, and old-timers said he didn’t “look” like St. Luke’s.
Some years back Dad was on a secret committee bent on replacing Shorr with someone who had more charisma.
Pete kept saying it just wasn’t like Dad to concern himself with something so parochial. Pete kept nagging at Dad to find out the real reason Dad wanted Shorr out. (Pete always stuck up for losers; he had kind of an amused affection for old Snore, too).
Then Pete found out what was behind Dad’s rancor. It seemed Reverend Shorr had resigned from The Hadefield Club, known by some locals as The Hate-Filled Club, because the club discriminated against nearly everyone but rich WASPS, and wouldn’t even let Jews make visits there with members.
Dad was an old Hadefield man who’d been sponsored for membership by Mom’s family. Dad played golf there, swam off its beaches in summer, and wined and dined clients in the dining room. Although Mom eventually refused to swim or play tennis there, she still went to the club when Dad wanted to go. It was about the only place in Seaville where Dad ever did want to go.
Dad claimed Shorr had gone out of his way to make an issue of certain “traditions” the club had.
“Like the tradition of being rich, and privileged, and prejudiced?” Pete would ask Dad.
“There’s nothing wrong with being rich and privileged and selective,” Dad would answer.
“Prejudiced!” Pete would insist.
“Selective!” Dad would shoot back at him. “It’s a private club.”
I was around six or seven when these arguments between Dad and Pete were going on. They lasted through a whole long, hot summer. You could hear their shouts almost any night along the street we lived on. Jack and I would sit out on the curb, pretending to plug our ears with our fingers, me always marveling at Pete for taking Dad on that way. I wasn’t that kind of a fighter. Even if I had been a fighter, Dad would have been at the bottom of any list of potential opponents I’d put together.
Finally, at the end of that summer, on Dad’s birthday, Pete gave Dad a present that made Dad so angry, he actually took a swing at Pete. Dad never resorted to violence. He’d never hit Pete or me when we were growing up. But when he took this T-shirt out of the wrapping paper, held it up, and read it, he went for Pete.
The front of the T-shirt read:
and on the back it said:
“One great advantage to being subjected to one of old Snore’s sermons,” said Dad after church that morning, “is that he never captures your attention. I appreciated that this morning. I needed time to think.”
“I like Reverend Shorr,” said Mom. “He’s old-fashioned and he’s familiar.”
We were driving down Woody Path toward the ocean. We often went there after church. When it was raining, as it was that morning, we stayed in the car and watched the ocean.
“I can’t believe you don’t want to eat at The Club,” Mom said as we passed the Hadefield drive and went toward the public beach. “The Frog Pond isn’t known for very substantial food. Chicken. Fish.”
“That’s exactly what Phil told me I should start eating, last night at dinner,” Dad said. “Chicken. Fish. Cut back on the red meat, eat more salads and vegetables…. And we’ll have more privacy at The Frog Pond.”
That was the real reason, I figured. Dad was making sure we wouldn’t bring up anything about Pete around club members.
“I’ve been telling you to cut back on red meat for years,” Mom said.
“You’re not an oncologist,” Dad said.
“What’s an oncologist?” I asked him.
“A cancer specialist. One of the manifestations of Pete’s AIDS is a rare form of cancer. It’s called Kaposi’s sarcoma. It’s a tumor of the blood vessels,” Dad said.
I remembered reading that in the pamphlet Mom had lent me, but most of what I’d read hadn’t really made a dent yet. I kept telling myself it didn’t pertain to Pete.
We drove to where we had a view of the ocean, parked, and had coffee from the thermos Mrs. Tompkins always put in the car.
We usually saved anything serious to talk about until after church, when we came here. Usually it was my stuff we got into: the S.A.T.s, college, things that were going down in my life that Dad had missed because he was in New York all week.
That morning Dad talked about Pete.
Dad said what Pete had was fatal, but every day there was new headway being made, and ongoing research. We had to think positively, Dad said. There were still plenty of AIDS victims who hadn’t died yet.
“Plenty?” Mom said.
“Some,” Dad said. “Enough.”
Pete had decided to resign from Southworth School. Jim Stanley had persuaded Pete to accompany him to San Francisco, to see a doctor there.
“And after that fool’s errand,” said Dad, “Pete will come home to us.”
“Pete told me he was going to Beverly Hills with Jim after San Francisco,” Mom said.
“Pete will come home!” Dad insisted. “We’re his family! What the hell is Jim Stanley to Pete? He spouts off this gay rhetoric that even embarrasses Pete!”
“I think Jim has good intentions,” Mom said.
Dad snapped, “And the road to hell is paved with good intentions! I know the top oncologist in the country, and Pete trusts some science fiction writer, and something that calls itself Gay Inquiry!”
Dad glowered down at his coffee. “Gay Inquiry! Who the hell with cancer is going to trust someplace that calls itself gay anything? Does homosexuality affect the brain?”
Mom said, “Gay Inquiry has been investigating AIDS for a longer time than anyplace else. They’ve put their stamp of approval on the research t
his San Francisco doctor’s done.”
“Oh, their stamp of approval?” Dad thundered. “Is it a gay stamp? Is their stamp of approval one of those yellow-and-black happy faces?”
“What will it hurt if Pete sees this doctor?” Mom said.
“Why should Pete settle for second best, when Phil Kerin’s the best there is? Just because someplace with gay in front of its name recommends it!”
“I thought we were going to talk about this calmly, Arthur.”
“We are.” Dad said.
“When do we begin?” I said.
“Right now,” he said. He set the plastic cup of coffee on the dashboard and took out a paper napkin to wipe his mouth.
The waves were really high. I thought of summer mornings early, before the sun had risen all the way up—I’d come down here with Pete and watch him dive into the waves on his surfboard.
Those summers he worked as a lifeguard on Main Beach, we’d get here before he was on duty. He’d try to get me interested in surfing, but I was more the sand castle type.
Mom’d be afraid he’d break his neck. She’d remind him that Michelle had never been a reckless girl, but look what had happened to Michelle. Pete would have to listen to that while he was making his sandwiches for lunch. He’d say Mom, Mom, I’ll be careful. When I see that big wave, Je plongerai! Mom would laugh back at him, and they’d jabber away in French. Pete always knew how to relax her. He could always get around her, get her smiling again.
“First of all,” Dad began, “I apologize for losing my cool, as Erick might say.”
“As anyone might say,” I said.
I was in the backseat of the Chrysler, sitting forward, resting my elbows on the front seat. Mom reached up and put her hand on my wrist, as though to warn me not to go too far, let Dad play this his way.
Dad said, “I don’t like what Pete is, and I don’t like what Pete has, but none of that matters now! I’m going to try and keep my feelings out of this conversation.”
“Good!” Mom agreed. “Let’s just talk about what we’re going to do.”
“And what we’re not going to do,” said Dad. “We’re not going to take anyone into our confidence. Not anyone!”
Mom said, “I’ve been telling people that Pete has a virus, and he does have a virus.”
“There is no point in offering any information about Pete’s health!” Dad said.
“Arthur? I think we have to tell Mrs. Tompkins. She lives with us. She’s like family.”
“She’s not family, though. Another person’s secret is like another person’s money: You’re not so careful with it as you are of your own.”
“I think we’re morally obligated to let her know, or let her go,” Mom said. “Pete will be coming out to the house. She has a right to make up her own mind about whether or not she thinks she’s at risk.”
“She’s not at risk, Laura.”
“I said whether or not she thinks she’s at risk.”
“If she’s not at risk, what sense is there in giving her a chance to decide whether or not she thinks she’s at risk?”
“What about Jack?” I said. “He’s around a lot too.”
“A lot is right!” Dad barked. “In his jockeys, drinking my beer! Okay, he had paint on his pants, but you were sitting there with your arm around him!”
“Arthur!”
“He had his arm around Jack!”
“I’m not even going to listen to this!” I said.
But I listened.
Dad said, “I’m not accusing anyone of anything! But maybe if we’d paid a little more attention to what Pete was doing when he was Erick’s age, we wouldn’t be in this situation!”
Mom said, “Now listen to me. I’ve had a whole summer to think about this. I read about it, too. This is not something that’s our fault.”
“I’m not talking about our fault,” Dad jumped in immediately.
“What are you talking about, Arthur?”
“The only way Pete runs true to type is that he’s always been a mama’s boy! Half the time while Pete was growing up, you two were off in a corner talking French together, giggling, carrying on!”
Mom said, “Take me right home.”
I said, “Let me off in the village. I don’t want to go home. I had my arm around Jack because he’s breaking up with Nicki!”
“Don’t bother to explain anything to him,” Mom said.
“That’s right!” said Dad. “Keep me in the dark, where I’ve been all the while you raised the family!”
“I’m getting out right now!” I said.
“Not in the pouring rain, Erick!” Mom said.
But I was out the door before she finished the sentence.
I could hear Dad shout, “Let him go!”
I went.
Chapter Thirteen
“YOU’RE SOAKING WET,” NICKI said.
“I hitchhiked here.”
“Through a driving rain just to be at my side?”
“Something like that.”
There was a cigarette dangling from her lips, and behind her, down a long hall, I could see the bar, and a red neon sign that said “This Bud’s For You!” … A couple of Siamese cats scurried past me.
“Come this way,” she said. “That’s Three, Six, and Nine who just went by. They were Mom’s cats. My Siamese is named Scatter.”
We made a right turn down the lobby, past Annabel’s Resale Shop, Nicki walking ahead of me. She had on a pair of black stirrup pants and a huge gold sweater the color of her hair, black Capezios, and in her right ear two black plastic circle earrings.
“I’ll dry your hair in my room,” she said. “They’re about to watch the game in the bar.”
“My hair will dry.”
“I want to dry it with my blower. You’ll look less like a water rat. Do you ever blow-dry your hair?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not,” she said. “You don’t know what to do with yourself. You’ll like yourself, you’ll see.”
She led me up some spiral stairs past the front desk, saying, “Everything in this place is named after something of Edgar Allan Poe’s. My mother? She believed she was a reincarnation of him, only she told most people she was just related to him way back.”
“Once I memorized ‘The Raven’ for English,” I said. “‘Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.’”
“‘Once upon a midnight dreary,’” she said.
“‘While I wandered, weak and weary,’” I said.
“It’s pondered, not wandered. I do know my Poe!” she said. “I live right down here in the Dream Within A Dream suite…. Where were you, at church or something? You’re so dressed up.”
“St. Luke’s, with my family.”
“Welcome to my home,” she said. “Forget the rest of this place—this is where I hang out.”
To the left of the door there was a tarnished brass plaque that read: All that we see or seem Is but a dream within a dream.
“Bells, Bells, Bells is down the hall,” she said, “and The Raven is next to that.” She went ahead of me, turned around, and said, “Well, come on!” still smoking no hands.
The first thing I saw as I turned inside was an enormous poster of David Lee Roth. There were other, smaller posters covering all the walls: U2, David Byrne, Sting, Duran Duran, Wham!, Bruce Springsteen.
“Coat off!” she said, leaning over to grind out her cigarette in a seashell ashtray.
I took off my coat and she hung it over the back of a white wicker chair. A fat Siamese cat opened her crossed eyes to stare at me.
“Shirt off!” she said. “That’s Scatter on the chair.”
“My shirt’s not that wet,” I said.
“It’s soaking wet. Off!” she said.
I hated taking off my shirt. I felt like the “Before” picture in a Nautilus ad. I never had the build Jack had, or the muscles. I had freckles on my shoulders. Jack was like Dill, always tan from summer, way into fall. God knows what I had on my back b
esides freckles, too.
She hung my shirt and tie on a wire hanger over the doorknob of her closet.
“Kick your shoes off, too,” she said. “Shoes and socks.”
“What are you going to take off?” I said.
“Anything you say,” she said, and she took a small Gillette hand drier from the top of her bureau.
She pointed to an old brass bed with a white bedspread, “Sit down. I’m going to plug this in over here.”
Everything in the room was white—scatter rugs, table, desk, chairs, blinds, all white, and outside a thick white fog hovered against the windows, hiding the ocean, though you could hear its sounds. The room itself smelled the way things close to the sea do, sort of a salty, damp, and musty odor.
Right before she turned on the drier, I said, “Dill’s in Norton, Massachusetts, this weekend looking over the Wheaton campus.” I had no idea what made me say that.
She pointed the drier at me like someone holding a gun to my head.
“I don’t care where Marian Dilberto is this weekend,” she said flatly.
I laughed painfully. David Lee Roth gave me the eye from the wall.
I heard the sudden whir of the drier, felt her fingers in my scalp, and smelled that same perfume. First.
When she was finished, she handed me a small mirror from her dressing table and said, “Do you like yourself now?”
I nodded yes. I had to admit to myself I liked what I saw.
“Are you going to get stuck up now?” she said.
We were both grinning hard at each other. I was doing it the way you do it when you can’t stop yourself.
“You want me to take you on a tour of this place?” she said.
“Sure!”
“You want to follow me?” she said. “No, you don’t need your shoes or your shirt.”
“I’m half naked,” I said. “Don’t you have any guests?”
“Guests? Guests? What are guests?”
“Customers?”
“What are customers?” she said.
She reached for my hand and pulled me to my feet.
“You know how this place got its name? ‘I was a child and she was a child, In this kingdom by the sea,’” she said; “‘But we loved with a love that was more than love—’”
