by Jay Quinn
I should have known then, but I didn’t. There were a thousand signals I must have picked up on and discarded in the hurly-burly of raising him. I regretted missing all the ways I could have made his life easier—allowing him more latitude on some things, fewer social expectations, more space to open up. I should have known, but I didn’t.
Now, Schooner’s apparent sexual attractions surprised me. But then his father had always been sexually reflexive according to his own needs and wants. God, I thought. The apple never falls too far from the tree.
“Good morning,” Schooner said, breaking into my reverie. Compact and muscular, he’d become a wrestler, while his brother had excelled at swimming and his sister at basketball. Zack demanded all the kids be jocks (whether they wanted to or not), and made me their chauffeur to practices, meets, and away games nearly from the time they could walk all the way through high school.
The image of sturdy little Schooner determinedly pitting himself against another blocklike bit of boy came unbidden to my mind. There was a grim determination laying thinly over a deeper anger when he was in a meet. God only knows what kind of hell he and his brother and sister got over me. I wondered now how much of that anger my boy had channeled into his sport. I still saw that scrappy boy, in his wet, curling hair, his face now flushed from his shower. He squared his shoulders obstinately, tightening the fabric of his too-small T-shirt across his chest as if he knew what was passing across my face. “Hell-lllo-o-o, Chri-i-is …”
“Sorry, baby. You caught me being really happy you’re here,” I said.
“I’m glad,” he replied as he walked into the kitchen, shaking his head like a young lion, “… because I claim the loft.”
“Well, you’ll have to clean it out first. Right now, it’s full of empty boxes and boxes I haven’t even unpacked yet.”
“No problem. I’ll start with the Christmas decorations first thing,” he said as he opened the refrigerator and took out a gallon of milk. “Where do you want the tree?”
I looked back across the wide expanse of the great room and up to the highest peak of the ceiling by the open side of the loft. The only place for the monster tree he and Frank had dragged up to the deck last night was at the end of the bookshelves, by the hall leading to the bedrooms. “How about … Schooner, get a glass, for God’s sake.”
Schooner grinned as he stopped drinking from the milk jug and replaced its plastic cap. “By the hall, right?”
I stood, went back into the kitchen, and squeezed the nape of his neck hard on my way to the counter. It was like a rock. “Does Frank like coffee?” I asked. Schooner grinned and nodded. I threw him an oven mitt and said, “Take the biscuits out and put them on that plate.”
Schooner busied himself with that task while I poured us each a mug of coffee. I had heard the shower go off, and I knew Frank would make an appearance soon. “I like Frank, Schooner. He’s welcome to visit with you whenever you come here.”
“Not ‘here,’ home,” he said as he picked up the hot biscuits one by one and dropped them onto the plate. He blew on his fingertips and looked at me with a grin. I couldn’t recall ever seeing his usually grave, pugnacious face so constantly brightly lit with happiness.
“Schooner …” I cautiously began.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t hurt him if you can possibly help it.”
Schooner looked at me sharply. A bit of temper flared in his eyes and faded as one realization became another. “I’m not Dad, Chris. Do you understand?”
I broke his gaze and looked out the window. “Schooner, I know, it’s just that—”
“Chris, don’t worry about it, okay?” He said it gently, both to both assure and warn me to leave the subject alone.
I looked back at him. Jesus, I thought, I love this young ‘un so much.
“I’m your kid in more ways than you think,” he said.
“I know, baby. I know.”
“Don’t call me baby,’’ he said as he picked up a mug of coffee in one hand and a plate in the other and proceeded to the table, shoulders squared defiantly. I watched as he took the chair closest to my wingback and sat down. He had always held himself apart, but never really too far from me.
I caught Frank in the corner of my eye. He was hesitating before coming all the way to take a place at the table. I had no idea what or how much he heard—I just hoped he understood. “Good morning, Frank. Sit anywhere you want, I’ve got your coffee right here,” I said on my way back to the table.
He looked a little sheepish as his eyes swept the seats at the table and he glanced back at me. I smiled at him encouragingly. I was relieved when he sat down next to Schooner.
Frank wasn’t a bad-looking kid; he just wasn’t what I’d have pictured for Schooner if I’d figured out he wanted a boyfriend. Sandy-haired and freckled as a mutt puppy, Frank was wiry and alert-looking. He did have a terrific pair of green eyes that wandered around the room, taking in everything and picking up on details. I figured the boy didn’t miss a trick.
“Your house is very nice. Isn’t that Baker furniture?” he asked.
“You’ve got a good eye, kiddo. The chairs by the fire are Baker. How do you know about Baker furniture? Are you majoring in interior design?”
Schooner laughed and reached for a tangerine. “He’s a parks and recreation major, same as me.”
Frank looked relieved at Schooner’s save and glanced at me to see if I was taunting him in an oblique way. I wanted so much to tell him to just relax. I wanted to let him know there were no problems with his relationship with my son, as far as I was concerned.
“C’mon Frank, tell him,” Schooner said. “How many guys can tell the difference between furniture that comes from Baker and furniture that’s just cheap crap?”
Shyly Frank said, “I’ve worked every summer since I was 14 for my mom. She sells Baker stuff.”
Schooner looked at me pointedly. “She does a lot more than sell furniture,” he said. “His mom is Kelly Hennessey … you know, she’s always in Southern Accents and magazines like that.”
Oh yeah—I knew his mom, or rather, I knew her work. She was like a god to Wade Lee and other designers who subscribed to the “eclectic casual low-country muted tones of green and gold” design dictum. Frank looked frankly embarrassed, the poor kid. I wanted so much to put him at ease, but I wasn’t doing a very good job of it. “Then you must have seen places a lot nicer than this,” I ventured, “but I thank you for the compliment.”
Frank blushed under his freckles, but gave me a shy smile before he looked down at his plate.
“Here, Frank,” I said, passing him the plate of biscuits. “You’re going to need some fuel if you’re going to help Schooner decorate that ridiculous tree. Schooner, what in hell made you get one so huge?”
Schooner stuffed the rest of his tangerine in his mouth and reached to take the plate of biscuits from Frank. “It needs to be big for all the ornaments,” he said with his mouth full. He chewed, swallowed, and looked eagerly at Frank, “I can’t wait for you to see all of our family’s things … they’re all so—”
“Christmas-y,” I interjected. “They’re all over the map—everything from the kids’ homemade stuff to those fragile German tinkly things to Department 57 mercury glass. We’ve always been big on enthusiasm but not consistency.”
“Same as at my house,” Frank offered. “The little German pieces we call ‘pantoozlers,’ like from the Grinch?”
“Hey, that’s what I call them, right Mom?”
Frank looked at me nervously. Exasperated by so much tiptoeing, I gave up. “That’s right, Schooner. That’s exactly what you call them.” Then, gently: “Frank, please relax. I know our family is a little bizarre, and you must feel a little nervous meeting me for the first time, but I suspect you know Schooner pretty intimately, so welcome aboard, okay?”
Schooner groaned. “Chris, I cannot believe you said that. Welcome aboard? Goddamn, how lame.”
I gave Schooner
a pointed look, and said, “Well, somebody was rocking that boat before they got up this morning.”
Frank turned beet-red under his freckles. Schooner just started laughing. Both relieved and delighted by Frank’s reaction, I joined right in.
“Jesus, is there anything your family doesn’t talk about?” Frank muttered to Schooner.
Schooner put a proprietary arm over Frank’s shoulders and leaned back in his chair. “Not much, buddy. Not much.”
“Frank, we’ve kinda had to learn to roll with the punches and laugh at ourselves. I didn’t mean to shock you,” I said.
Frank looked me square in the eye for the first time since he got to my house. “No, I should apologize to you,” he said. “I had no idea we made so much noise. I’m embarrassed and I feel like I was disrespectful to you in your own house. I’m sorry.”
I smiled, delighted by his manners and his accent. He spoke with the soft, drawn-out vowels of the South Carolina low country.
Schooner rolled his eyes and tightened his possessive hug around Frank’s shoulder.
“Frank,” I said, “you’re a very well-brought-up Charleston boy and I appreciate your good manners. But you’ve walked smack into a family of rowdy Irish Catholic rednecks. Save your embarrassment and apologies and just relax. Nothing is off-limits here, though I would prefer you keep some of your rowdiness behind closed doors, okay?”
Frank nodded and offered me a grin that lit up his face in a charmingly elfin way. “If it’s okay then, since Schooner embarrassed me, can I ask you a question that’s going to embarrass him?”
“Shoot,” I said. Schooner dropped his arm warily from Frank’s shoulders and rested it on the back of his chair.
“How did Schooner really get his name?”
“I asked his father that same question when he was a baby. You understand our story, right?”
Frank nodded and tilted his head toward Schooner. “You know Schooner—I’ve managed to get some of it from him, but he plays around so much, I’m not sure what’s Schooner and what’s … you know.”
“Well, I came along just after his mom passed away. He was only a baby then. The truth of the name bit is: Schooner was an accident. His father had been mooning over this actual schooner and just about had all of the plans in place to buy it and take the family to cruise around the Caribbean for a year. Then, Schooner’s mom got pregnant and those plans went down the drain. He bought a house instead, to be practical. He insisted the baby be named ‘Schooner.’ “
“I think he’s been pissed at me for screwing up his year at sea ever since,” Schooner said with as much conviction as humor.
“I’m Catholic too—’Francis Shawn,’ “ Frank said. “How did you get a priest to christen him ‘Schooner’?”
“Well, he wasn’t christened ‘Schooner.’ A hundred bucks bought the difference between his baptismal and birth certificates. His father said it was the best money he ever gave the church. He’s christened Michael Patrick, but on his birth certificate, his name is ‘Schooner Michael Ronan.’ There you have it.”
“I told you that, exactly,” Schooner said petulantly.
Frank gave him a small private smile.
“Frank, you must be someone pretty special if he gave you the real story. I don’t think he’s ever done that before. You should hear some of the amazing things he’s told people about his name.”
Frank’s color heightened again, and Schooner lifted his arm from the back of his chair to grab him in a gentle headlock. Giving me a significant look, he kissed the top of Frank’s sandy-colored head. It made me very happy. Deciding I’d taken the line of conversation as far as it needed to go at this point, I said: “So now I’ve fed you guys. When are you going to get busy getting a Christmas tree all up in here?”
“Mom thinks it’s cool to talk all ghetto. He’s addicted to Comic View on BET. Please forgive him,” Schooner said to Frank. “Isn’t the gender thing enough for you?” he said to me. “Do you have to be black too?”
I held my fingers in a gangster style, hunched my shoulders, and worked my neck in my best approximation of a rapper. “I’m all about the hip-hop,” I said.
“Little bitch fucking thinks he’s 50 Cent,” Schooner laughed.
“I’m looking for a 50 Cent Christmas album as we speak,” I said.
Frank couldn’t control his manners anymore. He burst out laughing. I smiled so hard my cheeks hurt. I wanted to make Frank relax and feel welcome, and I didn’t mind appearing absurd in the process. Wasn’t that how parents always looked to their children’s friends: earnest, quirky, and embarrassingly absurd? I glanced at Schooner and was rewarded with happiness writ large across his face. He winked at me and I winked back.
“Let me drop you off,” Heath said as we left the Dine-A-Shore Grill. I’d gotten in the habit of walking down to the pier for breakfast each morning. I wouldn’t admit it, but I was enjoying Heath’s easy company. He made me laugh like I hadn’t laughed in a long time. We’d talked over eggs, grits, and coffee almost every day since I’d stumbled into the diner with a dogless leash nearly three weeks before.
Even as little as I went out otherwise, I seemed to run into Heath everywhere. I’d began to look for his blue F-150 on the beach road as I drove to the grocery store or the post office. I didn’t know how he got any vet-doctoring done, considering how often our paths crossed.
I’d asked Heath if he had kids, but he never gave me a direct answer. There were a great many things I never got a direct answer from Heath about, even after he’d easily managed to get me to spill my guts about being a queer dad and an ex-wife, so to speak. There always seemed to be a personal barrier with him that I hit and respected, so it surprised me when Heath offered to drop me off at my place after breakfast one day.
“Sure, that’d be great, if you don’t mind,” I told him. The morning was raw now, not four days from Christmas.
“No problem. I’d like to see where you live. It’s always good to have a place to go with the person.”
I didn’t have anything to say about that. To tell the truth, I was a little concerned about how my house might look to him. I wasn’t a snob by any means, but I also didn’t want to alienate anybody with all my pricey furniture, antiques, Persian rugs, and oil paintings. To me they were just things, but even Frank—God love him—recognized Baker furniture and was a little intimidated at first.
Heath followed my directions and we were at the house within 10 minutes of leaving the pier. My 25-minute morning walk took no time at all in a truck. When we pulled into the drive Heath shut off the engine and opened his door without hesitating. I followed him up the steps to the deck and let us in.
Schooner’s tree dominated the great room, making it appear less empty and large than it did without it. Heath didn’t say a word but strode in as if he’d been coming by for years. The painting over the fireplace caught his eye, and he moved closer to see it.
“Good-looking kids. This is a Karr, isn’t it?”
“Thanks. And yes, it is a Karr. Everything you see on the walls is. I’ve been a big fan of his for a long time.”
“So have I,” Heath said as he walked slowly around the walls to look at each oil and pastel in turn. Finally he turned to me and smiled. “I have nearly as many as you do.”
“Cool,” I said. I was relieved in a way I couldn’t explain.
“Karr has had a succession of springer spaniels and I’ve always looked after them,” Heath said. “Karr’s also often got more paintings than cash. So …”
I nodded.
“Nice place, Chris.”
“Consolation prize and guilt money,” I said.
“You could have done a lot worse. Believe me, I know.”
“What is your story, Heath? I don’t mean to put it so bluntly, but you’ve never been really forthcoming about yourself. I feel kind of exposed.”
“You show me yours and I’ll show you mine, right?”
“Something like that.”
; Heath reached in his jacket pocket for his cigarettes and looked at me questioningly. I sat down on a side chair at the table and motioned for him to sit in the wingback opposite the one I usually sat in. As he sat, I pushed the ashtray between us and fished in my pockets for a cigarette. Heath lit his own and then lit mine.
“I’m from money,” he began. “Being the only son, there were a lot of the usual expectations of me as I grew up, went to college. My father was a surgeon, I’m a vet. You begin to see where things start to break down, right?” Heath flicked the ash off his cigarette by flicking the bottom of the filter with his thumbnail. When he caught my eye, I nodded.
“I went into practice near Greensboro with a close friend from vet school. I got married, he didn’t. I woke up one morning and decided I didn’t want to be married anymore, but I did want to take our partnership a lot further. He was willing, for a while. Years, actually. It all ended rather badly and I’d burned all my bridges. I moved down here to start again.” Heath ended his story there and looked me in the eye, waiting.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” I said. “People have been coming to this stretch of sand and live oak for over 300 years to start again.”
Heath didn’t chuckle—he just held my gaze intently. “So …” he said.
“So …” I answered.
“So, you want to have lunch?”
I supposed the UPS man was used to seeing people in various states of surprised undress, but I bet he never had a naked middle- aged man accept a delivery from behind a half-opened door and ask him to put the box down and nudge it in the house with his foot. Then again, he probably had.
I didn’t really care. I was absolutely nekkid and loving every minute of it. My body was humming like a tuning fork. Stroked, grasped, kissed, and licked, I felt more alive than I had in years. Had sex always been this way, back in the day? Back then my body was sleek and aerodynamic, built for speed. This fine morning, two days before Christmas, my body felt like a cushy sedan with a lush suspension—a Cadillac of a body driven for hours over long stretches on a straightaway, handling sudden curves by accelerating into them and taking the bumpy patches with sighs of ease. I liked being handled by somebody eager for a long, sustained ride, who wasn’t just taking me out for a Sunday trip to church and back. That, I decided, was the difference between screwing somebody for the first time and married sex.
