by Warren Adler
"Actually I should be down there now, doing my homework, with Peter. I have a key to their place, but I've misplaced that as well. It was on the same key ring." He sighed and finished his tea, which must have been quite cold by now, although he didn't seem to mind. Then he put the teacup back on the tray. "I really am a screw-up," he said.
Without another word she put her own cup back on the tray and bent to grab both handles.
"Sure you wouldn't like a brownie?" she asked.
"No thanks." He got up and walked to the chair beside which was his book. Then he sat down and began to flip the pages. Before she could carry the tray into the kitchen, he looked up at her.
"I hope you don't tell my parents," he muttered, casting her a brief sideways glance.
"I wouldn't—"
"I mean about me going to Bob and Jerry's every day. Dad has seen me with them on weekends. You know, just chewing the fat. He'd really be pissed if he knew I was there after school every day. Actually it's Peter. I come in and feed him, see if he's okay. Better than just going upstairs to an empty place. I'd get a pet, but Mom is sick and all."
"I won't say a word." Jenny winked. "Word of honor." She raised her right hand.
"If they weren't gay..." He shrugged.
"Are they?" She hurried past him with the tray. In the kitchen she put the tray beside the sink and began to rinse the cups, furious at being on the receiving end of all these revelations.
"My father would beat the shit out of me."
He had come up behind her, and his voice, so close, startled her, and she dropped one of the teacups into the sink, breaking it.
"Damn," she cried, reaching into the sink and carefully picking up the shards. The accident didn't deter the boy.
"He thinks that I'll become one if I associate with them," Teddy said, growing thoughtful, as if he had left something unsaid. When he spoke again it seemed as if he had recalibrated his thoughts. "Probably thinks I'll get AIDS by just playing with the cat. Shows how much he knows. Calls them 'fruits,' 'queers.' Tell you the truth, they've been great to me. I really hate doing my homework up there." He glanced toward the ceiling.
She continued to concentrate on picking up the shards of the teacup and throwing them into the garbage can beside the sink. She deliberately didn't respond or turn to face him. Why is he telling me all this? she asked herself, angry with him now.
"I mean, the whole idea that you can get AIDS from a cat or by being around them is really stupid. He must think I'm really a dummy. He keeps harping on the subject. If he knew that I was doing my homework there, he'd split a gut. I usually tell them that on weekdays after class I'm out with the kids from school. That's very important to my father. He says that he wants me in private school not only for the education, but for the contacts I make among my school chums. Actually I don't have any school chums. I come up by seven, just before they get home. Sometimes I hang out until one of them gets home. Usually when Jerry comes home we sit around and shmooze for a while...."
Finally she could stand it no longer, and she turned to face him.
"I'm sure they're very nice people," she said. It wasn't what she had intended. She supposed she should be more forthright, tell him that she didn't want to hear any more, that it wasn't any of her business, knowing that it wouldn't be the truth.
"They're terrific," Teddy said. "But it's like I'm always feeling guilty being friendly with them. I mean..."
Again she sensed that he was recalibrating the conversation. She searched her mind for some way to stop him.
"You don't become gay by hanging around gay people." He paused, but she did not turn to face him. "Do you?"
It was a question she was hardly qualified to answer, although she suspected that the issue was hardly clean-cut. Instead of answering, she opted for a complete evasion. She looked up at the kitchen clock. But Teddy was persistent.
"Who knows? Maybe they have the right idea."
"You think so?"
"If they're inclined that way, who cares?"
"Different strokes for different folks," Jenny said stupidly, unable to disengage. She could tell that the boy was aching to open up further.
"I can see my father's point, though." He grew thoughtful, and his forehead creased into a frown. "I'm an only child."
"Are you?"
"I try to explain that you don't become gay by just being around them. I mean, you are or you aren't. Like it's sort of built in."
"I guess so," Jenny said, sensing that some response was required to keep him going. Despite all of Larry's warnings and her own discomfort, she could not hold herself back from wanting to know more.
"Fact is, they're my only friends. The boys at school aren't my type."
"And the girls?"
"Stuck up. All stuck up."
He shrugged again and sucked in a deep breath, studying her. Their eyes locked.
"Do you think I'm ... you know."
"Gay?"
"Do you?"
"I don't think it's for me to judge," Jenny said, turning her eyes from his, not wanting to share his anguish.
"Jerry and Bob treat me like a friend." He hesitated, obviously wrestling with whether or not to delve deeper into the subject. Realizing this, she kept silent. It wasn't her place to prod or probe. "Although we did talk about it. You know, feelings and things. You know what I mean?"
"I'm not sure," Jenny said, which was the truth.
"People having feelings for people of the same sex. Stuff like that." He shook his head as if responding to some inner dialogue.
"I'm afraid it's not within my frame of reference," Jenny said.
"It's something that I think about a lot," he muttered.
"Maybe you shouldn't think about it so much," Jenny said, despite her resolve not to get involved.
"How can I not?" Teddy snapped, frowning, as if he were about to pick an argument with her. She sensed how deeply disturbed he was about the issue.
"Could be people are putting ideas in your head," Jenny said, realizing that she was taking sides despite her better judgment. His reply was surprisingly benign.
"You either are or you're not," he said.
"I'm afraid I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject."
It was increasingly apparent that the boy was confused about his sexual orientation. At that point she sensed that she had had quite enough. Avoiding his eyes, she looked up at the kitchen clock.
"My goodness. I hadn't realized the time passed so quickly. I have to start dinner." It was after five. Larry would be home by six-thirty. As Teddy had said, his parents usually came home by seven. She already knew that. Just as she knew that Terry Richardson, on most days, was home by six and her husband, Godfrey, was home by eight. Myrna Davis was more erratic, sometimes coming in near midnight, except on weekends when she stayed in all day.
All this knowledge was hardly subliminal. In a bit more than three months she knew every sound of coming and going in the house. There was simply no way to stop this flow of information from coming into her mind, becoming part of her life, despite Larry's admonitions.
"Do you want me to go?" Teddy asked. It would mean he would have to sit on the steps in front of his apartment. But not for long. Jerry, whose arrivals and departures were sometimes erratic, would be home in a little while, probably before six. She knew that as well. Bob would be home about a half hour later.
"I don't want you to think I'm throwing you out. But really, I've got to get to work." She smiled and reached out for a flowered apron, tying it around her waist. "We're having cassoulet."
"Sounds good," Teddy said. "Anyway, I'll just take a walk, get some air. Jerry should be home in a little while."
There was no avoiding a stab of guilt. Am I throwing him into Jerry's arms? The image nettled her.
"It's perfectly okay. You can do your work in the living room. It won't disturb me. Really it won't."
She wondered suddenly what Larry's reaction might be if he found Teddy there, and her irritation became even
more acute.
"Tell you the truth, Mrs. Burns, I really don't feel like doing any homework now." He turned and headed back to the living room. At first she remained in the kitchen, trying to busy herself with dinner preparations. Then she remonstrated with herself, annoyed at her vulnerability. She came back into the living room, where he had just slung his carryall over his shoulder.
"I've got a great idea," she said. Actually it was an idea, quite obviously prodded by guilt, that had just popped into her mind. Teddy had turned to face her, frown lines of curiosity creasing his forehead. Not responding, he waiting for her revelation.
"Why don't you stop by ... well, anytime after school. I mean after you feed ... what's his name?"
"Peter."
"Could even bring him up if you like. Why be alone at all? Chances are I'll be home. I won't bother you. I promise."
"You won't mind?"
"Not if you leave before my husband comes home. He's allergic to cats."
Teddy's face lit up into a smile. "Might be a good idea," he said, nodding. "I really appreciate that." He started toward the apartment door, then turned to face her. "You've been great, Mrs. Burns." Then he dashed out the door.
What's wrong with that? she asked herself as she went back into the kitchen. It was a perfectly neighborly thing to do. Wasn't it?
4
BARRY STERN felt awful about it. Teddy's keys were like a big blob in his side pocket, weighing him down, bearing witness to his deception. It was, he knew, a desperate act. In fact, everything he did lately was a desperate act, and everything he thought about was even more desperate.
How was it possible that everything had gone sour in less than a year? Sitting in the anteroom of Glover's Real Estate in Hicksville, Long Island, he pretended to be reading a trade magazine, Home-building. The words of the articles did not enter his consciousness. Three strikes and you're out, he thought, trying to find a sliver of humor in his predicament.
Nothing helped. He was merely sleepwalking through his days, trying to keep up the pretense of normalcy by going through the ritual of what was really his former life. Six months ago he had a real estate business, buying and selling modest-price homes in Queens, the homes of working men and women.
Then suddenly it was all over. Nobody was buying because of the recession, and nobody was selling, hoping that good times were just around the corner. It didn't look to Barry like there would be good times ever again. There was no point in paying rent and salaries to employees. Staying afloat was impossible. His only alternative was to close down. He wondered if it had been his fault. Other small real estate companies had survived. Not many. The reality was that despite his illusions, he had always been a marginal player without financial depth, living far above his means.
Four years ago he had his peak year and had grossed three hundred thousand dollars. It was fat city then, and he'd thought it was going to last forever. That was the year they were able to move out of the apartment in Astoria and get that brownstone apartment in Manhattan and register Teddy in private school. Not bad for a guy who barely finished high school and whose father never made more than ten thousand a year working behind the counter of an appetizer store.
That was also the year he bought his parents that condo in West Palm Beach for $23,900, not exactly the height of luxury, but perfect for his folks, who thought they had arrived at Nirvana. At least he hadn't leveraged it, and they owned it free and clear and could manage on their Social Security. They could make it no matter what happened to him.
Even now, especially now, as he sat in the anteroom of Tom Glover's office, he could not chase the idea that his only way out of this mess was to cause something to happen to him, something deliberate. Removing such an idea from his thoughts was becoming more and more of a chore. What might be saving him from taking such an action, however unspecified, was the fact that he had borrowed heavily on his one-hundred-thousand-dollar whole-life insurance policy and Sally would net only about half. But even half was becoming more and more of an attraction as he sank deeper and deeper into the mud of depression.
The irony was that if ever there was a time to have cash, this was it. The deals were a dime a dozen. All kinds of sweet deals were being made now by people with cash. Hell, if he had cash now, he could make a quick fortune. Buildings were for sale at a steal.
He hadn't even told Sally and Teddy that the business had failed completely or that he had closed the office and fired his two employees. Kaput! So much for the American dream. At least they had Sally's salary, $27,000 gross, which was enough for the bare necessities, although considering her health problems there was no telling how long that might last.
That, too, had been a burst from the blue, Sally getting a heart attack two years ago. He had thought heart attacks were a male thing. Well, he knew better now. She was going downhill, too, with the doctors suggesting a heart transplant rather than a bypass, which was scary considering the odds. That, too, had become a catch-22. She had to keep working to be eligible for the company health plan, but the continued working wasn't doing her heart any good. At this point she didn't have the option of quitting.
In a way, he supposed, they were lucky that they had only one kid. When Teddy was born, they had vowed that they would give him all the advantages they hadn't had, the best education, the best environment, all the things children of poor parents wanted for their offspring.
This fucking recession had ruined everything. He felt the anger swell inside of him. Don't do that, he cautioned himself, not before this interview with Tom Glover, with whom he had had dealings when he was in business, which seemed ages ago. That much he knew about salesmanship. It was like show business. If you brought any downer baggage to the presentation, it was sure to queer the deal.
Queer the deal! There was no way to escape the inescapable. Teddy was about to become, or had become, a homosexual. Barry wasn't dead certain, of course. Maybe it was his imagination. But the kid showed no interest in girls. He had seen him in heavy conversation with those two who lived in the ground-floor apartment. At first he had thought nothing of it. Then when it was repeated he had actually warned him about getting too close to their kind, but obviously it hadn't made a dent. Perhaps he should have been more diplomatic in the way he approached it.
He had told Teddy to steer clear of those men on the grounds that they were fairies. He had used that word as a weapon, along with "fag," "fruit," "queer," "three-dollar bill," and other such terms of opprobrium, not that he had anything against how they lived and what they did. He just didn't want his son to become one of them.
He had also raised the specter of AIDS, which was frightening as hell. Of course he had exaggerated the possibilities of transmission, and Teddy had accused him of being hysterical, reeling off various statistical information that he had probably gotten from the boys downstairs. If Teddy ever got AIDS, he was dead certain that would clinch the deal that was floating ominously in his head. There would be absolutely no point in going on.
Yet he hadn't the guts to confront Teddy with the ultimate question, fearing that his answer would be affirmative. That would be an unacceptable blow to him and to Sally, from whom he hid the knowledge of his suspicion.
But all his venom-laden warnings and scare tactics apparently had made no difference to Teddy. That had been confirmed the day before yesterday. Barry had tried to keep up appearances that he was still running his business and had been coming home at his usual time. But on that day he was feeling so lousy he decided to go home early, maybe take a long nap.
Coming down the street, he had actually seen Teddy open the door of that downstairs apartment with a key and let himself in. What was going on here? It curdled his stomach just to recall it. For an hour he'd debated with himself about confronting Teddy in the apartment, but he was so damned depressed, he wasn't looking to find yet another nail for his coffin.
He went to the movies instead but could hardly concentrate on the story. The prospect of Teddy being one
of them gave rise to a lot of heavy thinking on his part. It was not something he wanted to talk about with Sally. No sense aggravating her about it. Being homosexual was something that happened to other people, not his only child. Coping with it was far out of his frame of reference. Such a possibility was not even remotely included in those traditional dreams of fatherhood, where the son somehow picks up the relay stick from the old man and keeps sprouting branches on the family tree.
He wondered how other fathers—and mothers—dealt with it. He was all for everybody having equal rights and hadn't considered himself a homophobe. "Live and let live" had always been his motto. He had nothing at all against them, and he was totally supportive of their right not to be harassed, to be left alone to live their lives in peace. All right, they were different. Some people were left-handed, some right. So what!
But his own kid being a fag didn't square with his hopes and dreams for Teddy. Toleration was bullshit on this issue. He loved his son, loved him fiercely, deeply, but somehow, despite all the politicizing of the issue, all the good public relations for gay people, all the rationalizing that this was only a matter of sexual choice, which was supposed to be no big deal, Teddy being a homosexual seemed worse than his being a criminal. It was pretty awful to think that, but he couldn't help himself. At the very least, he had to be honest with himself. He hadn't raised his son to suck dicks and take it up the ass. God, the images that floated through his mind. He hated them, hated the idea of it, hated his intolerance, but mostly he hated that such a thing could happen to his only son. And to him.
Of course, he assured himself, he would learn to be accepting. What else was there to do? He could not disown his own child. Never that. But it would never be the same. A foreigner would always be there where his son once stood. He'd have to bear the pain of his broken heart, keep it hidden from his son and paste a smile on his face. Could he really do that? He wasn't sure.
Not that he was dead certain that Teddy was one, and at first it seemed harmless for the boy to be friendly with them. Teddy liked animals, and had wanted a cat, but Sally was allergic to both cats and dogs, and that finished that. Now, along with all the other gloomy shit, this thing with Teddy stood on top of his agenda, along with going broke.
