The Book of Lies

by Felice Picano

  Coming in the midst of all that scrimping, what had happened with Len Spurgeon must have been deeply troubling to Mitch Leo. The fact that he’d never sent the letter to his closest correspondent, to whom he confessed all, attested to exactly how mortifying. I wondered if he’d ever gotten around to telling Frankie what had occurred. Somehow I doubted it.

  Another problem that probably added considerably to Leo’s troubles at this time concerned health. It’s at this exact time, according to Frankie McKewen’s journals, that Mitch Leo begins section three of Serial Childhood, i.e. begins writing about his narrator Tom Devere’s still-unnamed disease. Cummings believed that Mitch Leo had already been tested for HIV during the summer of 1983, following the hospitalization for pneumonia of David Caspar, a former ‘adulterously regular trick’ of his, which Mitch reported in a letter to both Von Slyke and Axenfeld. Cummings was certain Mitch had already found out he was HIV positive by August of that year. This naturally would have added to the psychological ‘boost’ Leo would have received at first in the incident with Herbert from Indiana and Wayne, but which later blew up so disastrously in his face.

  To back up Leo’s changed health status at this time, Cummings found indications that Mitch was regularly going to a Harlem dermatologist he knew during this year. The biographer was certain the visits were so Mitch could have Karposi’s Sarcoma lesions lasered out of existence on his face and limbs. Going so far uptown and out of his usual circles, Cummings speculated, Mitch might be relatively certain people he knew would not discover the visits. Financial records Cummings located showed treatments on each of seventeen dates from April through December. We know how proud and vain Leo was of his looks. It now seems clear that he either knew or strongly suspected he was sick with AIDS by mid-1983 and still hadn’t told anyone, not even his old pal and correspondent Aaron Axenfeld.

  At the time, of course, Mitch Leo could console himself – as the saying goes – with his reviews. As well as with the fact that the reviews got progressively better right up till the end of his all too short life. Of course, there was the expected critical opposition to Leo’s obliquity of angle, as well as to his ‘mandarin’ style. Yet the middle-aged men and women who most often reviewed his novels in the book pages of the New York and Washington papers found them to be ‘balanced portraits of families in crisis with alternative life styles’.

  But to younger, more radical, class-conscious gays, the cosmopolitan settings, the haut-monde characters, their elaborate social niceties and the sophistication of emotional conflicts Leo delineated so well all seemed to smack more than somewhat of a less contemporary and less interesting kind of gay life. ‘Useless except as a memento and then only for retired decorators and beekeepers,’ one reviewer had written of Serial Childhood. While The Advocate’s critic had been even harsher, calling the novel’s failure to name AIDS and to deal with it except as in an allegorical mode ‘the Damnable Closet, homophobically prevailing even unto sickness and death’. Even so, when Leo died in 1988, he could content himself that he’d opened up new avenues of discussion, especially regarding gays and their families, in literature and that his vision would persist.

  Subsequent studies, a decade later, ended up being altogether less certain. Once the issues of ‘mainstreaming’, ‘gay adoptions’, ‘same-sex marriages’ and ‘gays in the military’ were recognized to be transitory and ultimately peripheral to the true issues of the homosexual liberation movement – i.e. the removal of all sodomy laws and complete equality under governmental law – Mitch Leo’s ‘breakthrough’ was naturally reviewed and re-evaluated as a less crucial position. Dr St George had written, ‘The Leo oeuvre will stand the test of time, although it’s unclear what ultimate position he will hold among his Purple Circle colleagues. Surely not in the top echelon, as contemporaries assumed during his lifetime, yet not at the bottom either. Possibly he will be in the center, as he was in life, at least socially.’

  Erling Cummings had enjoyed writing about the Leo-McKewens because they were such richly detailed characters themselves, as well as because of the romanticism of their ‘fated’ love story and their early deaths, only months apart. But even he admitted that the couple as authors were ‘transitional: like Etheridge and Von Slyke, their coevals, they represented a pre-Stonewall mentality, contrasting with the evidently post-Stonewall mentality of Axenfeld, De Petrie and Dodge, who were writing at the same time. But unlike Etheridge and Von Slyke, who did recognize how their age might hold them back and who did attempt in their subject matter and approaches to keep up with the others, the Leo-McKewens never seemed interested in pushing forward into that Brave New World of topics and experimentation that gay literature had opened up. They held onto ideas regarded by other Purple Circler’s like De Petrie as outmoded -Eurocentricism, the class system, the family above all, even religion, i.e. all the traditional, old-style, school-tie values others wanted destroyed.’

  Thad Fleming was even more critical, ‘In the end, Leo’s work stands on that borderline leading to the new. The essential charm of his voice, the pleasure we derive from the stories he tells and how well he tells them do count. The novels are not so much “dated” as they – gently – often require the reader to constantly mentally redate them for him/herself during the reading experience, saying, “But wait, this must be happening in the ’60s!” or, “Right! It was different then!” Which seldom happens with the totally contemporary works by other Purple Circlers, written at the same time or earlier.’

  Mitch’s unsent letter to ‘Gus’ seemed a perfect example of that much discussed style of writing and thinking: arch and yet direct, ‘classicist’ yet almost vulgar in its leering. Filled with foreign phrases, yet almost blunt in its other language. As I printed it out for myself, however, on the university bubble jet, I found my thinking revolving back and around to not Mitch Leo but the still-unknown Len Spurgeon. Who was Len? In the words of the Bard, ‘What was He/that all our swains commend Him?’ Was he sinner, as Bobbie and Leo assumed? Or savior, as Mark Dodge thought? Or both in some combination?

  More and more Len Spurgeon seemed to me to be a linchpin among the Purple Circle. Might he possibly be the only outsider all of them had known and – loved? Lusted after? Slept with? Not slept with? What? I wasn’t exactly certain. And what of this manuscript I was finding parts of? Would I find more? Was it Len’s writing? Or Len’s story as written by others? Was it whole? Or merely unrelated fragments? And was it true? Or even supposed to be taken as true?

  Perhaps when I met her, Tanya Cull might enlighten me.

  ‘It was on my eleventh birthday that my uncle first made an impression on me. Naturally he’d been there, somewhere in the midst of the big Leo-Manetti family gatherings since I was born. But as he didn’t live close by and was often away, out of the country, he never seemed to occupy an important position for me. It was my parents and brother, my Grandma and Grandpa Leo, my uncle Richie Leo, his wife, Cathy, and their two kids, my cousins Richie Jr and Susan, the big Manetti clan. Only then Uncle Mitch. On my eleventh birthday all that changed.’

  Tanya Cull was in the driver’s seat of a large, off-white, borrowed van. I was in the passenger’s seat. We were driving Route 980 headed toward the Bay Bridge, and eventually Holly Park, south of the Mission District, newly gentrified, to where we would be delivering furniture and cardboard boxes intended for the new two-room apartment her eighteen-year-old daughter had just moved into.

  ‘You sure you don’t mind doing this?’ Tanya asked.

  ‘What choice do I have?’ I half joked. ‘If I’m going to probe you, I’ve got to help you.’

  Tanya sighed. She was a large woman, not obese but big-boned, large-shouldered, with a leonine head and naturally honey-blond thick-hair worn trendily cut in a fashion not unlike that I’d seen on movie actresses in films of the mid-1950s. This, despite her broadly Calabrian facial features: large soulful black eyes, distinctively outlined lips and eyebrows, almost perfectly aquiline nose. At about forty-two year
s of age, Tanya looked healthy and strong and at the same time pleasure-loving and sensual. Her face was unquestionably that of a Leo, while her body was quite different than Mitch; he’d been tall, with a slender upper torso, solid almost jutting-out rear end and long strong legs. A contemporary artist had posed Mitch as a centaur for a party invitation drawing at the age of forty, and many photographs confirmed that it was a good likeness: not only his body but also the abundant shoulder-length, carefully, even overgroomed rich brown hair and beard, the classical brow and long nose that had all given Mitch Leo both a naturally aristocratic and a somewhat equine appearance.

  ‘When I tell Jeth you’re Bart Vanuzzi’s brother-in-law, he’ll have a conniption I’m not inviting you to stay.’

  ‘I have a class to teach in LA Monday morning,’ I said, then went on, ‘You were saying, your eleventh birthday …’

  ‘Did you see that lamebrain. He charged into my lane, then slowed. I hate that. I wish I could install a missile launcher on the fender like James Bond had. Where was I?’ Tanya asked. ‘Right. The lawn of my Grandma Leo’s house. My eleventh birthday. About twenty kids. A big table on the lawn. Games. Gifts. A great party. Then my grown-up relatives arrived. Around five or so this silver-blue Corvette drives up, its doors swing open and out steps my uncle Mitch and Frankie. They’re dressed unlike the other men. They’re not wearing suits, but summer jackets accentuating their figures, with polo shirts and close-fitting denims and fabulous cowboy boots. And as they come to the table, they’re happy and smiling and young. Not like kids, but not like parents either. It’s like I’m seeing them for the first time.

  ‘They have a gift for me. A grown-up card. Inside the beautifully wrapped package, with paper on it that looked like old buildings, fake marble and all, is this good box and inside the box among tons of white tissue paper is the most beautiful leather purse. Not large, but perfectly made. Solid, thick leather, yet delicate too, and Mitch shows me how to adjust the strap and wear the purse. Well, are you going to move into my lane, lady?’ Tanya rhetorically asked the driver ahead, ‘or just blink your directionals all day?

  ‘The bag’s a Gucci, Mitch tells me, the best in Europe. When I open it, inside isn’t more tissue paper, but three very large 10,000 lire notes. “It’s Italian money. The purse is from Italy. So is the wrapping paper,” Mitch says. I notice so is everything he and Frankie are wearing. Which is why it all looks fine. Finer than anything we have despite our money. They sit next to me on either side and tell me about Florence and promise to send me a book about it. They talk to the other kids, my friends, complimenting one on her hair and another on his watch, acting as though they’re regular people not kids and it’s a different party. Frankie is telling a story about his motorcycle accident on the autostrada and all of us kids are listening and lapping it up and asking questions, which Mitch and Frankie answer in great detail, not annoyed, like parents. Mitch makes me serve cake and drinks since he tells me I’m the hostess. It’s as though a door opened to another world. Finally, she changes lanes,’ Tanya comments. ‘Congratulations, lady, you don’t need an analyst after all.

  ‘That night, Mitch and Frankie stay for dinner and I notice they sit together, and when my aunt Cathy or my uncle Eugene ask Mitch something, he always says “We”. “We went here.” Or, “We didn’t see her.” This is my first indication that Mitch and Frankie are a couple the way my mother and dad and Grandma and Grandpa Leo are couples. They live together, travel together, sometimes work together. There are coins in that little change thingamajig for the toll,’ Tanya directs me. ‘I’m eleven. I have to go to bed before they leave, but they take me aside, upstairs, and they kiss me and tell me that they think I’m very promising. That’s the word they use. I’m the most promising of all the nieces and nephews, they tell me, and they’d like to see me. I’m thrilled to the toes, and dance to my bedroom and don’t sleep for hours.’

  The toll payment lines are long but not slow. It gives Tanya time to spruce up her face in her mirror. ‘A week later the book about Florence arrives. Photos. Art. It’s like a magic fairy kingdom. I realize that’s where they live when I don’t see them! A few weeks later, me and Mom drive to Manhattan to have tea at their apartment with this nice old woman and that’s a revelation. First how beautiful yet masculine the place is. The books. Though there are two rooms with beds in them, Frankie tells me that the room with the single bed isn’t so much to sleep on at night as to nap on during the day, to help him think when he’s writing. He and Mitch sleep together in the big bed.

  ‘Hello,’ Tanya greets the toll-taker. ‘Can I get a receipt?’ She does and puts it in the purse. ‘Jeth says to get a receipt for everything! Come on, don’t you have third gear?’ she says to the driver dawdling ahead. Tanya changes lanes and we take off with squealing tires, headed toward Treasure Island. ‘Well, that more or less begins our relationship. Mitch and Frankie call me on the phone, write me letters, send me cards, meet me for lunch at a roadhouse outside of Montclair, then take me into New York for dinner and a musical. They direct my reading. They teach me how to dress. They take me to museums, and jewelry shops, to foreign movies I don’t quite get and to clothing boutiques where they show me how to shop. They train my eye and my taste, and when I begin to fall in love with books and reading, they buy books and recommend books. By the time I’m in high school, I realize they’re both writers, published writers, who know other writers. I once hear my mother say to my aunt Cathy, “I only gave birth to her. She’s Mitch’s kid. Mitch and Frankie’s.” And that’s how it is. Any problems with my folks that I may have, Mitch and Frankie enter into the talks as equals.

  ‘You ever been to this park here?’ Tanya asks me. ‘It used to be a big naval station, I think the mid–’80s. Now it’s a theme park. Militaristic theme park!’ She sighs. ‘When I’m fifteen or so, my Grandma Leo, who is the absolute center of the family, gets sick with cancer. Or at any rate, that’s when she becomes too sick to hide it. She moves to the beach house at the New Jersey shore in early May, and Mitch and Frankie move in to help her. My Grandpa Leo lives at the big house with a servant during the week, but by Friday he’s down at the beach, and we go there as much as possible too.

  ‘By August, Grandma Leo can’t get downstairs. So I go visit her in her bedroom. Look at that asshole, sliding across four lanes going eighty!’ Tanya interrupts herself. ‘We’ll be reading about him in the Examiner some day and not because of some good deed! So, after one visit, when I’m very sad about how weak Grandma Leo is, Mitch and Frankie take me for a walk in the dunes. The house is located on an estuary of a river with views all around. In front, on the beach, there are no boardwalks, which is rare for a house on the Jersey shore, and so people lay their catamarans there. It’s a beautiful sunset, and we’re walking hand in hand, through the dune sedge, all three of us.’

  Tanya shakes her head. ‘I remember as though it were yesterday. It must have been, what, 1981? Well, the three of us are at the water and Mitch says, “Grandma’s dying. If she makes it through the morning, I’d be surprised.” It’s such a terrible thing to say, such a surprise, I look to Frankie. He says, “If you have anything important to tell Grandma, you’d better do it right away. You’ll never have another chance.” Now no one in the family has said anything like this, so I’m shocked. I don’t believe them. I try arguing, then I get angry with them, and go back to the house alone. Instead of going in, however, I hide in the rose-hip bushes in the back garden. I hear Mitch and Frankie coming, and I peek. They’re standing there. Then I see Mitch lean against Frankie, shaking from head to toe, shaking and hiding his head, and I know he’s crying his heart out. They aren’t lying; it’s the others who are lying. Mitch and Frankie are telling the truth. They will always tell me the truth. Do you see that?’ Tanya asks, all mistiness suddenly out of her voice. ‘That damn construction has been going on six months. They just switch it back and forth across the bridge. Idiots!

  ‘So I go up to Grandma. I tell her it’s
okay, if she’s so very sick, it’s okay to die, although I’ll miss her and so will everyone else, especially Mitch. And she smiles and says, “Listen to Mitch. And Frankie”.’

  The traffic slows and begins to snarl on the bridge around the exits to Treasure Island. Tanya is biting her lip. ‘She died that night. Who knew then it was just a coming attraction?’ she says. ‘For a few years all goes well. By the time I’m in college, an honor student, studying literature, I’ve met – what? – twenty-five, thirty writers at tea. All the Purple Circle members. Dozens of others. They’ve connected me up with publishing people with whom I can intern in the summer and with professors at Princeton and Yale under whom I can study. They send me to Europe. They connect me up to Jethro, whom I marry. They do everything and anything for me. They are my fairy godparents. And it’s true. Unlike any of the other Leo kids, I’m the intellectual, the special one: I’m Mitch’s daughter, once removed. You know how it works genetically? I have as many of his genes from my father as if Mitch himself were my parent. This is getting hard.’

  Not the traffic, but what she has to say. ‘It’s 1988 and my life is perfect. I have an honors degree from an Ivy League school, I’m studying for a Master’s in literature at another Ivy League school. I’ve got a husband, a new daughter. I’m content. Then they invite me to the beach house. I’ve followed Mitch’s rise as an author with close scrutiny and with great pride. Meanwhile, I’ve also become aware that Mitch has taken over my Grandma Leo’s role as center in the family. Mitch and Frankie now live several months of the year at the shore. They’ve redecorated the house and relandscaped it. They have card games for the “boys”, which is my Grandpa and uncles Leo and Jeth, and they have afternoon parties for the “girls”, my sisters-in-law, me, two aunts. So I’m surprised when I arrived at the beach house and see I’m the only visitor. The house and gardens look more fabulous than ever, thanks to Mitch and Frankie. But that’s all that looks good. Frankie is thin as a rail, looks exhausted and has a constant dry cough. Mitch is only a bit less worn-looking, and he’s got these awful purple-black spots on his upper arms and neck. The reason they’ve asked me there, alone, they tell me, is to work out Mitch’s will. He wants me to be his literary executor. Uh-oh,’ she commented. We were coming to the San Francisco side of the bridge. Downtown and the Financial Section in full view to the near right, Coit Tower even further right of Russian Hill. Then the fog rolling in. Traffic was slowing down now and beginning to look ropy and thick.