“Honey,” she says, “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“Well …” She turns to Dad for help.
“This is all going a bit fast,” he says, “don’t you think?”
“It has to,” I say. “We need to get our papers done. We have a deadline.”
Dad shakes his head. “Yeah, that’s not what I meant, buddy.”
“It’s not?”
“No. We think that given the circumstances, having a sleepover with Phil maybe isn’t the best idea.”
“Oh, I see, the circumstances,” I say, hardly able to conceal the snark in my voice. My heart is beating fast now, and I interlock my fingers to keep my hands from shaking. “But if I wanted to have Alfonso over for a sleepover, that would be okay, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, but—”
“And if I had told you yesterday that I wanted to invite Phil for a sleepover, that would have been okay too, wouldn’t it?”
“Buddy—”
“No, hear me out,” I interrupt him. I’m high on adrenaline, and I barely know what I’m doing. “I’ll tell you what the circumstances are: Phil got beaten up today. He got beaten up bad because of Greg. We owe him. This family owes him. The only reason that what would have been okay yesterday is no longer okay today is because today you know I’m gay, and I’m not having you discriminate against Phil—or me, for that matter—simply because we’re gay. I’ve had enough of that at school today, and I’m not having it in my own home. The last time I checked, gays were a protected class in California, so if I can’t have Phil over for a sleepover, this discrimination will become a matter for the courts.”
Dad pinches the bridge of his nose, then he covers his mouth with his hand, glancing at Mom. “Is that what they teach them in school these days?” he asks through his fingers.
Mom sighs. “Matthew—”
“I mean it, Mom.”
“Matthew, I want you to know that you’ll always be our son and we will always love you, no matter what. We just want you to be happy, that’s all.”
To be honest, I didn’t expect anything less. “Thanks, Mom. I appreciate that. I’ll be super happy if I can have that sleepover and we move on.”
Dad motions his hand toward Mom, shaking his head. “You go argue with that, Claire, because I can’t.”
“Joe—”
He shrugs. “I mean, seriously.”
“I’m not discriminating against anyone. We don’t allow Zoey to have random guys sleeping over, do we?”
“You know why that is, Claire.”
“Yes, because we don’t want them to have random sex with random guys.”
“No,” Dad says, shaking his head. “You know that didn’t stop us when we were young, and it’s not stopping anyone today. The reason we—like every other set of parents in the world—don’t want our kids to sleep in the same room with a potential sexual partner is because we don’t want them to get knocked up or knock someone else up. Unless I’m completely missing something here, I don’t see that happening with Matt and his boyfriend.”
“Not my boyfriend,” I say.
“See, they’re not even boyfriends.”
He pushes back his chair and gets up.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mom asks.
Picking up the notepad, Dad says, “I think I’m going to go and get Greg’s phone back.” He turns to me and opens his arms. “Come here.”
I get up and he wraps his arms around me for a tight hug.
“I’m proud of you, son,” he says. “Just don’t do anything stupid, all right? And if you do, make sure you don’t get filmed again.”
“Yes, Dad.”
Mom gets up too, walks around the table, and pries me out of Dad’s arms. Pushing him aside, she says, “Go away, you!” Then she gives me a hug, almost crushing me. “My little baby boy. Mommy loves you much more than Daddy does. You know that, don’t you?”
Standing behind her and looking at me, Dad shakes his head, mouthing ‘no.’
I wink at him and say, “Yes, Mom.”
She lets go of me, wiping away one last tear. Then she turns to Dad and pokes his chest with her finger. “This conversation is not over yet.”
“Our conversations never quite are, are they?”
“Get out!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Philip arrives in the afternoon. His dad, who drops him off at my place, doesn’t bother to get out of the car and say hi to my parents. I assume this is just as fine with Phil as it is with me, although my mom seems to find it curious, to say the least. She’s polite enough not to mention it in front of Phil, but I can see the bemused look on her face when between the moment she watches from behind the curtains how Phil gets out of the car and the moment she opens the door, the car has disappeared into thin air.
Dad notices it too, but he’s one who is easily distracted by shiny objects.
“A Tesla!” his inner twelve-year-old automophile exclaims with glowing eyes as Special Agent Nicole Tesla cruises past our house pretending to have her eyes on the road when she is undoubtedly continuing to spy on me from the corner of her eye.
Once Phil is inside, Mom summons Greg from the solitary confinement cell formerly known as his bedroom.
“Philip,” she says, “Gregory would like to say something to you.”
Upon her nod, Greg steps forward like a trained dog and recites his carefully memorized speech.
“I’m sorry I filmed you and Matt with my phone and I showed it to one of my friends. He told some of his friends about it, and they stole my phone and posted the video online. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and I’m sorry for anything that happened to you because of me.”
In his very own unique deadpan style, Phil says, “Okay,” as if he really couldn’t care less, with no sense of anger or bitterness in his voice. The guy is basically a saint, and Greg doesn’t have much experience in dealing with saints. The glance he casts Mom after a few moments of awkward silence is almost a silent cry for help.
“Looks like you got off easy,” she says with a shrug. “Back to your room. We’ll call you down for supper.”
“Sorry,” Greg utters under his breath as he passes Phil and makes his way to the stairs.
“All right,” Mom says, turning to Phil and me. “I guess you guys have work to do, and so do I. I’m trying this new recipe today. It’s Thai. I’m sorry I couldn’t find anything Laotian, but I figured Thai will be close enough. Anyway, the dish is called Tom Yum Gai. It’s some kind of chicken soup, apparently. I hope you like it, Philip.”
“Yes.”
“Oh, good,” Mom says, visibly relieved.
“But it’s pronounced guy, not gay.”
As Zoey bursts out laughing, Mom’s head turns the color of a ripe strawberry. Dad takes pity on her, putting his arm around her shoulder and planting a kiss on her glowing cheek.
“No matter what it’s called,” he says, “I’m sure it’ll be delicious.”
Sharing some of Mom’s embarrassment, I grab Phil’s arm and say, “Let’s go to my room before somebody gets hurt.”
* * *
We enter my room, and Phil stands there like a hotel guest who’s being shown to his room by a bellboy, looking around as if he’s never been here before and waiting for me to tell him where he can drop his stuff. Since his fake Louis Vuitton bag got badly damaged by those bullies the other day, Phil is carrying his clothes and books in a big, white plastic bag from Walmart. When I indicate the loveseat, he doesn’t drop his bag like a normal person would. He lays it down carefully, almost ceremonially as if the print on it didn’t say Walmart but Louis Vuitton.
As he unpacks his study material, which basically consists of his notepad and a pencil, I ask, “So I guess you haven’t fixed your handbag yet, have you?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t think it can be fixed.”
“That bad, huh?”
“One of the handles ca
me off. I can probably sew it back on, but when they stomped on the bag and dragged it across the ground the leather surface got damaged permanently. It’s all scratched and scraped.”
“Right,” I say. “Well, listen, I feel kinda semi-responsible for what happened, so I was thinking maybe I can get you a new bag?”
“Thanks, but I don’t think you can afford it.”
Everybody else I know would have at least appreciated the gesture and said, ‘Thanks, but you don’t have to,’ or something similarly gracious instead of insinuating that I can’t afford a cheap knockoff LV bag that they sell at the local Asia market for twenty bucks.
I know, because I already checked.
Trying not to sound offended, I say, “They have it at the Asia market downtown. Same model, as far as I can tell, and it’s not that expensive, actually.”
“It’s not that genuine either,” he says with a wry smile.
I frown. “But yours … wait, you’re not telling me your bag is the real deal, are you?”
“Of course.”
“What? How? I mean, a genuine LV bag must cost hundreds of dollars, no?”
“Yes?”
“How could you afford it then?”
“It was a gift,” he says. “From my godmother.”
“The lady in the photo! Phyllis, was it?”
Phil nods.
“Wow,” I say. “So is she, like, rich or something?”
“I guess?”
I sit on my bed, leaning my back against the wall. “Tell me about her.”
He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“As a budding literary genius I can assure you it’s never a bad idea to start a story at the beginning.”
“Okay,” he says. He sits on the edge of the bed, putting his hands in his lap. “Her parents owned a factory up in Irwindale. They manufactured leather goods. Shoes, belts, bags and things. They were doing pretty well for themselves. Some time in the 90s, when Phyllis was just out of college—she studied fashion design—her parents had a car accident. They both died. Phyllis was an only child, so she inherited the family business. Except, she didn’t want it. Not anymore. She had studied fashion design because she was supposed to take over the family business one day, but when her parents died she got all depressed and started questioning everything, her life, her future, everything. She didn’t want to carry on the way her parents had, so she sold the factory for a small fortune.”
“Wow,” I say. “Good for her. I mean, it’s terrible that her parents died, but … you know.”
“Anyway, with her parents dead and the family business sold, Phyllis started traveling. She wanted to see the world and experience different cultures and everything. So that’s what she did.”
“Let me guess, she went to Laos.”
Philip shakes his head. “Not right away. First she went to the Philippines, I think, then Vietnam. But she wasn’t, like, a regular tourist or anything. She tried to live like the locals. She even took on odd jobs here and there, even though she didn’t have to. Waiting tables in Manila, gutting fish in Bangkok, things like that. Anyway, at some point she worked as an English teacher in Vientiane. That’s the capital of Laos, you know?”
I know.
I’ve secretly been reading up on Laos.
“She taught adults who wanted to learn English so they could get better jobs. That’s how she met my dad. He always says he was one of her most talented students, although his English is still pretty awful today.” He laughs. “Anyway, one day he invited her over for supper so she could meet my mom. They got along great, and she and my mom became friends too. In fact, when my mom was pregnant with me, it was her idea that Phyllis became my godmother. And that’s what happened. My parents didn’t even know at the time how rich she was.”
“That is one cool story,” I say.
“I guess,” Phil says, shrugging.
“So have you told her what happened? I’m sure she’ll be happy to get you a new handbag, no?”
He looks at me and shakes his head. “I haven’t seen her in seven or eight years. I don’t even know where she is right now.”
A good story wouldn’t be a good story without an unexpected twist.
“Really?” I ask, raising my eyebrows. “What happened?”
“I was born,” he says, followed by a dramatic pause. “And my parents eventually decided to move to America because I could get better medical treatment here. Phyllis helped us with some of the immigration paperwork and whatnot, and so we came here and she got on with her own life, traveling from one place to another like she’s done before.”
“And you’ve never seen her again?”
“She visited us once when I was six or seven. She stayed with us for a week. That was the first time I really got to know her, because before that, when we were still in Laos, I was still a baby and I don’t remember any of that. One day, I drew a picture for her. She loved it, and she said I’m going to be a great artist one day. It made me so proud because it was the first time anyone ever said something nice to me. And the last, I think.”
I frown. Surely he must be exaggerating. “What about your parents, though?”
“What about them?”
“I mean, aren’t they proud of your talent?”
“No?” he says with a bitter laugh. “They think it’s a waste of time. Anyway, then one night something happened. They got into an argument, my parents and Phyllis. My brother later told me it was about money. Phyllis wanted to support us financially, but my dad categorically rejected her offer. He got very upset, my mom started crying, and in the end Phyllis just left. That was the last time I’ve seen her. She calls me every year for my birthday, though, and asks me if I want anything for my birthday. I always tell her I want her to visit us again, and then she comes up with some excuse how she’s in Australia or Europe or wherever and she can’t make it, and then she asks again what else I would like, and last year I said I wanted the bag. I got it in the mail a week later. But I feel stupid about telling her that in less than a year, I managed to get the bag destroyed, so …”
“But that was not your fault, though.”
He shrugs. “Even so.”
I look at him. He’s still sitting there on the edge of my bed, his shoulders slumped forward, his hands in his lap. It’s such a familiar sight by now, but something has changed. The flat, dull surface is beginning to show cracks, and where I used to see nothing but a blank stare I’m now seeing hints of a whole universe of emotions.
It’s almost as if he were a real human.
“What?” he says as he catches me staring at him.
“Nothing.” I get up and walk over to my desk. “Come on, we should try and get some work done before supper.”
* * *
During supper, everyone is trying to present themselves from their best side. Greg is doing it by limiting his utterances to please, thank you, and an assortment of smarmy compliments on Mom’s cooking. Phil is unusually talkative as he volunteers to introduce us to the finer details on how to properly eat Tom Yum soup.
“You’re not supposed to eat everything that’s in the bowl,” he says, much to my delight. “You just pick the bits and pieces you like, and have the broth with your rice. You can eat the chili peppers if you like, but like the other herbs and spices they’re just in there for flavor, and in Laos most people don’t eat them.”
Mom looks confused, bordering on shock. “So what do you do with the leftovers then?”
Phil shrugs. “Compost them, or feed them to the pigs.”
As Mom, Dad, and Zoey exchanged amused looks, I look at Greg. He glares back at me, knowing full well I’m tempted to liken him to a pig, but in a goodwill attempt to keep the peace at least for tonight I turn my head to Phil and announce, “I shall honor the proud heritage of your country and eat only the meat and rice with some broth.”
Mom casts me an unambiguous look to let me know that I’m only getting away with this because we
have a guest, but that’s fine with me, as long as I can get away with it.
When we’re done eating, with Greg back in solitary and Zoey heading out to hang out with friends, Phil volunteers to help Mom load the dishwasher, and since I don’t want to stand idly by, I help as well. Through Mom’s cunning questioning we learn that Phil’s family doesn’t own a dishwasher, or a washing machine for that matter. Phil does the washing-up by hand every day, while his older brother Ricky is responsible for doing the laundry.
Once the dishwasher is loaded, we’re excused and retreat to my bedroom.
“So, about your brother,” I say. “Do you get along with him?”
Shaking his head, he says, “I don’t get along with anyone.”
“Jeez, I wonder why that is,” I tease him.
“I don’t know?”
“Yeah, it’s a complete mystery,” I say, slumping on my bed.
Phil joins me, sitting awkwardly on the edge of the bed. “Ricky hates me because we had to leave Laos because of me.”
I frown. “What?”
“We came to America because I could get better medical—”
“Yeah, no, I got that,” I interrupt him. “Why would your brother hate you for that, though? I mean, no offense, but aren’t you guys better off here? I’ve been reading up on Laos. It’s still a pretty poor country, right?”
He nods. “Laos is poor, but we were doing all right. My parents owned a bit of land and employed a handful of people, harvesting and selling tea. Then I came along, and they sold everything so we could come to America. Fourteen years later we have two mortgages on a tiny, run-down house that isn’t really worth anything, all our savings are gone, we barely get by on the fifty or sixty hours my dad works on his minimum-wage job as a security guard, and I …” He swallows. “… I still look shit.”
The brutal honesty of his words sucks all the air out of my lungs, and I’m daunted by the incredible amount of guilt he must be feeling, no matter if that guilt may be justified or not.
“Ricky was only two when we left Laos, so he doesn’t even remember what it was like, but he compares the life we have here with the life he thinks he may have had in Laos not only if we had stayed there but if I had never even been born or if my parents had abandoned me or given me to an orphanage or something.”
Cupid Painted Blind Page 25
