by Amy Lane
Joe blushed, knowing it was visible on his cheeks and forehead and not able to contain it.
“Oh my God!” Casey laughed, putting the last of his underwear in the little dresser in the guest bedroom and then coming within touching distance to look at him closer. “What did I say?”
“No talking about kinky in my mother’s guest room,” Joe muttered, and Casey laughed harder.
“That’s a deal!” he agreed, but then he sobered. “But I’ll try to remember it when we get home.”
Joe was blushing even more, but he was serious about not wanting to talk about kinks in Mom’s house. “Good,” Joe said decisively. “Because there are going to be enough complicated and uncomfortable conversations here as it is.”
Casey cocked his head. “What’s the deal with your sister? Your entire family is….” Casey floundered for words, waving his hands, and the gesture he settled on was the stroking motion of a boy petting a rabbit. “Incredibly gentle,” he finished. “Your brothers—I mean, a pediatrician and a history teacher? It’s like… Leave it to Beaver lives!”
Joe narrowed his eyes and chewed on his lower lip. “Yeah, if the Beav grew up and spent his college years up to his bong in dick, tits, and ass, it would be exactly like Leave it to Beaver.”
Casey gave up all pretense of investigating the room and sat on the blue-and-beige striped comforter and just laughed. “God, you’re an asshole. Are you going to tell me what’s wrong with your sister? Besides the fact that she’s a priss, I mean. Your brothers said something about… I dunno… a branch of your church or something?”
Joe nodded and sat down. “Yeah, it’s a whole religious political thing. My folks try to stay out of it. Part of the whole reason the Quakers came to America back in the frickin’ days of the Mayflower was to get away from the whole religious political bullshit thing. Except….” Joe grunted. “God. I hate this shit.”
“Wait,” Casey said, eyes narrowed. “I actually did get a high school education. Didn’t the Puritans come over here to have freedom of religion?”
Joe rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Everyone was absolutely free to practice religion, as long as it was their religion.” He let some of the tightness of travel seep out of his bones. He put his arm around Casey’s shoulder, and between that wonderful, human warmth (the kid was like a radiator!) and the old-fashioned wrought iron furnace vent on the hardwood floor by the dresser, some of the feeling began to seep back into his toes after their frigid arrival here. God, he’d forgotten how badly the East Coast sucked in the winter. “The Quakers got persecuted a lot. It’s why Philadelphia and Boston are near the ports and a lot of us are way the fuck up here. Anyway, old news. But the idea was simply a community of friends. No proselytizing—”
“What in the hell is that?” Casey was leaning on him heavily, his weight growing limp, and Joe toed off his shoes and bumped the back of Casey’s new waffle-stomper so he could do the same. Casey grunted and bent down, untying the top part so he could kick off the bottom, and Joe answered him.
“Spreading the word. You know, those annoying people that don’t show up on our doorstep because we live slightly south of Bumfuck, Egypt, and slightly north of Who the Fuck Cares?”
Casey had to laugh. “Yeah, Joe. We got missionaries when I lived in Bakersfield. Just because the Mormon’s gave up on your house without Lynnie doesn’t mean I’m a complete cultural desert.” He started a yawn that went on as he unlaced his second shoe, straightened up, and toed it off, and Joe would have muttered a choice word about then, but the yawn had spread, and now Joe was having himself one too.
Joe gave up and wrapped an arm around Casey’s shoulders, then drew him back on top of the blue-on-blue comforter. There was an afghan at the foot of the bed, handsome and in the same colors but made out of scratchy acrylic yarn. It didn’t matter. Joe reached down and pulled it over both of them, and continued. “Well, the church had sort of a falling-out among itself in the seventies over things just like us.”
“Us? God, that’s so retarded.”
“Isn’t that word bad now?”
“What the hell ever. I don’t get why people really have to give a shit what you and I do together, you know? Not planning to make anyone watch!”
“Thank God for small favors,” Joe muttered. “Anyway, people like my folks are sort of taking the traditional route of ‘leave people alone and treat them decently, and they’ll find God all on their own.’ People like my sister’s husband, I guess—”
“Yeah, I get it. Fuckers.”
“If only.” Joe yawned. “Maybe if they spent more time fucking and less time getting up in our business, the world would be a better place.” Casey started to giggle loopily, and Joe kept going. “Seriously, look at my brothers. They’ve each got a gazillion kids, and so do my parents, and they’re happy to live and let live. Cheryl’s got one kid—”
“Caleb of the giant booger?”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Joe laughed. “Maybe if she was busy getting busy, she’d leave us the hell alone.”
“You mean us in the universal sense of other gay people,” Casey said grandly.
“Yeah,” Joe mumbled. “Sure.”
But he was thinking that Cheryl was going to make it a lot more personal than that.
JOE had gotten off of four twelves in a row, then gotten up at the ass-crack of dawn so Alvin could drive them down to San Francisco and they could board the plane. It was a good thing they didn’t have security and gun checks, like they’d had when Joe had visited Europe right after school, or they wouldn’t have made it. Casey had been too excited to let him sleep on the airplane, and laughing himself sick with his brothers pretty much finished the job.
By the time Cheryl tromped up the stairs, hollering, “Joe, get out here, it’s dinner time, dammit!” Joe was in one of those tired fugue states where every breath between the thought I have to wake up and Aren’t I awake already? seemed to last five years.
He felt the bed shift next to him, and fell back asleep for a second, and then he woke up in time to hear Casey’s voice.
“Hey—how about we let him sleep. He’s so out of it right now, he’ll probably sleep ’til morning.”
Cheryl’s voice in response was hardly civil. “Are you the boyfriend?”
“You must be Cheryl,” Casey said dryly. “Look, you can tell me I’m going to hell downstairs, okay? Right now, I want Joe to sleep.”
“I don’t know what my stupid brother told you about our religion—”
“Not a thing,” Casey said bluntly. “But he’s taught me about faith every day I’ve known him. And he hasn’t slept in nearly forty hours, and I have faith he’ll be a better person in the morning. Let’s go downstairs so I can help your mom in the kitchen. She loves me, you know.”
A part of Joe wanted to laugh, but that was too much effort. Instead, he was comforted. Casey was strong and good, truly good. Casey would fit right in.
HE WOKE up after a few hours because he had to pee, and he stumbled around in the frigid dark for a few minutes before he remembered where he was and how to find the tiny little bathroom attached to this particular guest room. It had a shower cubicle and a toilet and not much else, but it served its purpose, and Joe was able to strip off his sweater and jeans when he came back, which made him much more comfortable.
He slid back into bed next to Casey and wrapped his arm around Casey’s middle, absolutely glorying in the strength of his wiry little body, and snuggled him tightly.
“Jesus, your hands are cold,” Casey mumbled, and Joe growled back. They had gotten the hang of sleeping in the same bed almost immediately—it had been almost supernatural how easy it was to get used to having Casey right there, where Joe could touch him and know he’d be there as Joe slept. It had made those six months during which Joe had stumbled out of bed, frantically searching for him while half-conscious, fade to nothing in just a few weeks. Even nights when Casey had stayed at the duplex so he and Alvin could clean it up and move out,
Joe had slept better. Some part of him had known, simply known in a rock-steady way, that Casey would be back.
“I’m sorry,” Joe mumbled, a little bit awake now where he hadn’t been when Cheryl had come to roust him. “I didn’t mean to leave you to the wolves.”
“You didn’t,” Casey said sleepily back. “You left me to the lambs.” Then he giggled. “Get it? Lambs of God?”
“Oh hell, I didn’t know you’d taken a literature class yet!” Joe said in disgust, and Casey snuggled backward.
“I didn’t have to. Peter read some of your… whatever. The society’s books that they rewrite every five years—”
“Books of Discipline?” Joe muttered, trying to remember when the last meeting in Philadelphia had been.
“Yeah. Anyway, they distinctly said that the Friends—right? Friends?”
“Yeah. Friends.”
“Anyway, they’re very supportive of us. I thought that was awesome. And then your sister’s husband—what’s his name again?”
“I keep forgetting,” Joe confessed. “Matt? Mark? Charles/Tom/Steve?”
“Yeah, something like that. Anyway, he started talking about politics, and your dad just stood up and smiled and said, ‘We practice in our home, Chris.’”
“That’s it! Chris!”
“And you practice in yours. Good hearts seeking the true word would not reject family because they do not practice according to your wishes.” Casey had been trying to imitate Joe’s father, but he couldn’t. Joe’s voice—which he thought must be pretty deep and resonant, given the way the babies in the NICU settled when he spoke—was practically a soprano compared to Griffin Daniels’s voice. And he was always so mild. Joe had gotten his sudden flashes of temper from his mother, he was almost positive.
“My dad’s good people,” Joe said softly.
“Your whole family’s good people,” Casey told him softly. “It’s why you came out so damned good.”
Joe smiled and wanted to ask Casey how he had come out so good, all family evidence to the contrary, but he fell asleep instead.
HE WOKE up early—heinously early for California, where it was four in the morning—and still pretty early for New York, where even the children were sleeping off travel and fun in the snow.
Joe desperately wanted to shower—he felt grimy—but he wanted to go somewhere first, somewhere he liked to be private, where no one would see him. He compromised and took a quick cold shower and didn’t wash his hair, and then he dressed even more quickly in his warmest clothes. Someone had turned on the thermostat maybe a half an hour before, so it was a good sixty degrees in the house, and that still was warmer than it had been all night. There was a reason every bed had three wool blankets and a down comforter on it.
Joe shivered into his jeans and his boots and his sweater, then went downstairs, where his fleece-lined leather jacket, hat, gloves, and scarf were hanging on the line of pegs in the hallway. He heard his mother moving about in the kitchen and smelled coffee brewing, so he moved extra quietly so as not to disturb her. She would know where he’d gone, but these visits—private was the only word.
It was a good half mile to the tiny family cemetery in the far corner of his parents’ property, but it felt good to tramp it in the dark-edged cold of a lonely a.m. Joe saw the last of the stars fade away from the graying sky, and saw the sky turn a frigid magenta before merging to the blue of a steel blade in a freezer.
He loved it, every last color change, every subtle, muted shift of heliotropic mood. He couldn’t see the horizon on his property in Foresthill—too many tall trees, too many hills and valleys in too small a space. But here, the pastureland was wide and rolling, and Joe felt the freedom of horse country. The horses were bedded down in the barn, though, warm and happy and tended by Joe’s oldest nephew, Eli, and it was quiet enough to hear Joe’s boots as they broke through a foot of snow with every step.
At last he was there, a cemetery with barely two hundred plots, his relatives back to the early 1700s. Not all of them, of course—many had married and moved away, and he was sure there were other cemeteries dotted throughout New England with his kin housed in there, eternal inhabitants of the world’s most humble hostel. Until Casey’s father’s funeral, this was the only cemetery he’d ever been to. It housed his grandmother and grandfather, who had both died when he’d been in his early teens, and it housed Jeannie.
Someone had been to her grave, he noticed, and swept away the snow. One of the last things he’d remembered to grab as he and Casey were running out the door was rattling dryly in his jacket pocket. He reached in, grateful for the cleaned grave to make this easier, and pulled out a packet of seeds.
“Hey, big sister,” he said quietly, squatting on the frozen ground. “I hate to give these to you like this, but I’m hoping they’ll be dormant for a while and then grow. It’s been known to happen, right? All those plants people call ‘volunteers’? I just feel bad, because the last time I was here in the summer I was nineteen, and all those rosebushes I planted died off. I’m sorry, sweetheart. This is just not good flower country unless it’s wildflowers. So the seeds, maybe. You always loved daisies. I’ll sprinkle daisies around the stone here, and maybe they’ll grow.”
He did that and then patted the headstone affectionately as he got heavily onto his knees.
“It’s been a while,” he said, still apologizing, “but I should tell you I have someone in my life now. It’s a boy, but I don’t think you’d mind. I like to think that you of all people would appreciate why I wouldn’t give a fuck what anyone else thought. Casey doesn’t either. You should meet him. I had a hard time seeing him, though. You always told me how smart I was, Jeannie, but I think that’s just because we were tight, you know?” Joe thought of Casey climbing into his bed and trying desperately to make Joe commit. “I kept thinking of him as a little kid. He’s not. Truly. Cheryl might come by and tell you that he’s half my age—he’s not. He’s two-thirds my age, but it’s not half.” Joe had to laugh at that, because it was embarrassing and true.
“But sometimes, I think he’s older than me. He’s certainly tougher. I don’t think I could have kept my good heart the way he has. Not with what the world threw at him. I mean, all the world threw at me was losing you, and look how far from our faith I’ve strayed.”
Joe sighed and stood up from his knees—which were freezing on the ground anyway—and sank to his haunches, feeling silly, stupid tears of exhaustion and cold sneaking up on him. “You used to believe so strongly, Jeannie. I swear, I looked at you when you were singing, and practically saw God in your eyes. For so long—so damned long—I thought God had died with you, because I didn’t see him anymore. But….” Joe closed his eyes and saw the way Casey had looked at him that first morning he’d shown up at the crappy little duplex, when Joe’s hands had been shaking because Joe had been so glad to see him. “But I see God in his eyes, Jeannie. I don’t pay much attention to doctrine, but I do remember what you taught me. It’s all about the seeking, right? That’s what we used to be called? Seekers? Well, I’ve found him. I’ve found God when I listen to him breathe next to me at night. There are other things I’d like to seek, eventually, but right now, I’ve found something, and I want you to be happy for me.”
Joe wiped his cheek without self-consciousness and without trying to hold it back. It was why he came out here alone, and it had been why he’d come out here alone within days after they’d first lowered his sister’s body into the cold ground and told him it was heaven.
He stood up a few moments later and shook himself off. “I’ll be back, Jeanette. I’ll bring Casey out here in the spring one year. He’ll like that. He wants to travel. I’m not a fan, honestly, but I’ll leave home for him. I’ll come back again before we fly home, okay? I need to say good-bye.”
He turned then and wiped his face one more time, pulling his T-shirt from under his sweater, jacket, and scarf to wipe it on. He was so busy with the mechanics of crying that he didn’t notice
Casey until he practically walked right over him.
“Steady there,” Casey said dryly, but he pulled a pad of tissues out of his pocket and reached up and wiped Joe’s face carefully. “You can wake up to sneak out of the house at the filthy ass crack of dawn, but you can’t remember Kleenex? What’s wrong with you?”
“I didn’t count on my young lover being here to watch me fall apart,” Joe growled, looking carefully away.
“Well, you should have,” Casey said, keeping his voice surly, maybe just to keep Joe from feeling self-conscious.
“Yeah, and why’s that?” Joe asked, actually managing to make eye contact.
“Because I love you, Josiah. I may be two-thirds your age”—Joe winced as he said it—“but I’m also ‘older and tougher’ than you.” Casey sighed, and the asperity faded, replaced by sadness and a little bit of hurt. “Why’d you want to do this alone?” he asked after a moment that had the low tone of a sleeping cathedral bell. “Why’d you think I wouldn’t want to hold you up?”
Joe smiled a little and bent his head, thinking how small this man looked, how young he sounded—but how truly old his heart was when it counted.
“Because I just found you,” he said, and he kissed Casey softly on the forehead. “I’m going to be finding out how great you are for a good long time.”
“Well, like you told Jeannie, isn’t that what seeking’s all about?” Casey said back, and he threw his arms around Joe’s shoulders so tightly that when Joe straightened up, Casey hung on and climbed him like a tree, wrapping his legs around Joe’s waist and resting his snowy shoes on Joe’s ass. Joe helped him out, wrapping his arms around Casey’s body and holding him tight, holding him close, holding on for dear life.
“What are you going to be seeking?” Joe asked, wanting to be doing this somewhere where there was more skin available to him.
“Me?” Casey asked, grinning. “I’m going to be seeking a career, and a degree, and I’m going to be seeking a way for you to have that other thing you want that you won’t admit you gave up for me, and I’m going to be seeking a girlfriend for Alvin before he breaks himself beating off so much—”
