Big Love

by Rick R. Reed

  “Hard for him?” Clarissa’s lips nearly vanished into a thin horizontal line.

  Dane always thought the descriptor of someone’s eyes blazing was hyperbole, purple prose, but now in his daughter’s brown eyes, he saw it really happen.

  “Please, honey,” Dane said, reaching out with his other hand.

  She backed away, looking down at his hand with horror, as if it was diseased. “No! No! So, what? You used Mom all these years to hide behind?”

  She took a couple more steps back toward the kitchen’s exit. “And what? Now that she’s gone, you can be free to be your faggot self?”

  “Stop it!” Joey cried. “That’s too harsh.”

  Dane didn’t know what to say and cursed himself for it. Mutely, he looked from one child to the other.

  Clarissa turned and walked out of the room, calling over her shoulder, “The only thing that’s harsh is finding out we have a liar for a dad.”

  Dane slumped. Joey pulled his hand away, but only to pat his dad’s shoulder.

  “She doesn’t mean it. She’s just, um, like, surprised, you know?” He squeezed Dane’s shoulder. “It is an awful lot to take in. Dude, are you sure?”

  Dane made himself look at his son. He nodded. “I’m sure.”

  They sat in silence like that for a moment, until the slam of Clarissa’s bedroom door upstairs caused them both to jump. Dane looked to his son and grinned at him, feeling helpless and sheepish. “I guess I could have handled that better, huh? Are you okay?”

  Joey got up from the table and began clearing their dinner stuff away, hauling it over to the sink to be put in the dishwasher. “I’m okay, Dad. It’s your life.”

  “I know. I know, but it’s a lot for you to accept. I just want you to know that I’ll always—first and foremost—be your father.”

  Joey finished up loading the dishwasher and rinsed his hands off. He sat back down at the table. “Look. I don’t know if I get what being gay is all about, I mean, when girls are so hot and all. Why would you look twice at a guy?”

  Joey shivered, but he was smiling. His expression turned serious again, and it tore at Dane’s heart to realize his little boy was trying to comfort him.

  “It’s no big deal, man. I’d be lying if I said I wanted to think about it. But who wants to think about their parents and sex together anyway? Yuck! But I’m glad you’re honest with us, glad you trust us enough to tell us.”

  “Thank you,” Dane said with a shuddering breath, barely above a whisper. He was trying his best not to cry. “I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Dane confessed. And he didn’t. “I just didn’t want you guys to have some image of me that wasn’t true. What kind of example would I be if I let that continue?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. I’m twelve.” He leaned over and hugged his father, patting his back.

  Dane laughed, laughed until the tears came. “Oh, Joey,” he said, when he could get his breath. “What would I do without you?”

  The boy shrugged. “I don’t know. Mow the lawn yourself?” He started out of the kitchen. “I got homework. Science.”

  “That’s it, then? No questions?”

  Joey stopped and looked at him, eyebrows coming together in confusion. He cocked his head. “Not really. Not right now.” He left the room.

  And came back in a second later. “I love you, Dad.”

  And was gone again.

  Dane called out after him, “I love you too, son.”

  He looked at the empty table before him. His big moment was weirdly anticlimactic. But he felt that was a deception. They had crossed a line. Nothing would ever be the same again.

  Part of him felt free. The other part was terrified.

  And all he could think of was how tired he suddenly was.

  DANE AWOKE with a gasp, heart pounding, as if a loud noise had startled him. His sheets were damp with sweat, even though he could see snowflakes coming gently down outside his bedroom window.

  The house was quiet. The only noise was that of their gas heating system clicking on and off. Dane glanced over at the charging dock/alarm clock on his nightstand and saw it was a little after 5:00 a.m.

  The dream came back to him all at once.

  He’s in a room he doesn’t recognize. It’s silent and stark—white walls, hardwood floors shining dully in the gleam of recessed lighting. The room has no windows, no pictures on the walls, no decoration whatsoever.

  In the middle of the room is a plain chair, a ladder-back type that would go with a dining set. And on it, facing away from him, sits a woman.

  Dane lets out a cry, yet no sound actually emerges from his mouth. The silence of the room is more like a roaring of blood in his ears, so loud it drowns everything else out. But his cry is genuine because he recognizes the back of that head, the shape of those shoulders, the simple white quilted robe she wears.

  It’s his wife, Katy.

  He calls to her, but again can make no sound. She doesn’t turn. His heart leaps, and he quickens his pace toward the chair in which she sits, so still, so still. He’s longed to see her face one last time. Will he get his chance now?

  He rounds the figure on the chair. But when he gets to the other side, all he can see—once more—is the back of her.

  That was when he awoke. That was when he felt startled, when the dream, he now realized, morphed into nightmare.

  What did it mean?

  Dane sat up in bed, staring at the snow coming down in lazy whorls outside his window. The sky was lightening, a shade of slate, blue-gray, just a little bit lighter than full-on night. He waited as his breathing, heart rate, and respiration returned to normal. He thought of his wife. She had never appeared to him, as far as Dane could remember, since her accident at the end of last summer. There had been times when he wished she would have, when he could have told her things, asked for her counsel in raising the kids—especially last night at dinner. And he did talk to her, here and there, when no one else was around. But sadly there was never any sense of her, any feeling that she watched over him and the kids, that she listened.

  Yet she came to him in a dream. But why could he only see the back of her head? If she was going to appear to him, why appear in such an inaccessible way?

  Or had she really appeared to him at all? Was this simply his subconscious crying out? Perhaps, in the back of his mind, when he confessed to the kids earlier about his sexual orientation, he was also confessing to Katy, who, he would guess, had never suspected a thing. There may have been some distance between them now and then, toward the end. And the sex certainly got a lot less frequent, but from what Dane heard, that was common among all couples, no matter on which side their bread was buttered.

  But maybe, in some way, he had wanted her to know the truth about him, of him. To know, once and for all, the real him. Because he did truly love Katy. And how could she love him, fully and completely, if she had never really known who he was?

  He remembered one time, the two of them up late in the family room and watching an episode of The Golden Girls together before they headed off to bed. It had been a kind of ritual with them. Dane recalled being a little more tense than usual as they laughed through another adventure in the lives of the Miami ladies of a certain age. It was because the episode had concerned a friend of Dorothy’s, a lesbian, and the impact her secret had on all the girls. Dorothy had asked her mother, Sophia, how she would react if one of her kids were gay. Of course the wisecracking Sophia immediately told her daughter to “stick with what you know.” But then Dorothy pressed her for a real answer. And Sophia told Dorothy something along the lines of how she wouldn’t love her child one bit less, that she would wish them all the happiness in the world.

  “How would you feel if Joey or Clarissa turns out to be gay?” Dane asked Katy, wondering if the question was really more about him than it was about his kids.

  Katy looked at him for a long time, a glimmer of a smile playing about her lips. She closed the cover on her iPad. “I think
I’d feel the same as old Sophia,” she said. “It wouldn’t change anything. When you really love someone, something like that doesn’t matter, does it? You’d still, as Sophia says, wish them all the happiness in the world.” She smiled. “Family is family.”

  Dane joked about Katy’s answer—“And you’re not even Italian!”—and then said, “You’re a good mom.” He looked back at the screen. Blanche had come into the bedroom, confusing the term lesbian with Lebanese and proclaiming that Danny Thomas was one. He and Katy laughed, but Dane couldn’t get it out of his head that this would be the perfect quiet moment to tell this woman he had loved for so long the essential truth about himself. But all he did was meet Katy’s eyes for a moment and say, “And a good wife.”

  “I’m very understanding,” Katy said and then laughed. “If I do say so myself.”

  Now Dane lay back against his pillows, feeling the bed was vast and empty, and even though he was a big man, he was much too small to fill it. He wondered if Katy had the same thing on her mind that night as he did. Maybe that’s why she said something—“I’m very understanding”—that was so out of character for her, a little too self-congratulatory. Perhaps she wasn’t looking to highlight her own good nature, but to open a door.

  Dane had missed the opportunity. And now he’d never have the chance for her to know him for who he really was.

  He rose from the bed, wincing a little when his bare feet hit the hardwood floor. It was cold. “And maybe it’s better she never did,” he said aloud to the room, which was lightening, the furniture taking on more shape and definition as the sun rose higher. “Most wives, no matter how understanding, would not be thrilled with the news that dear hubby is a ’mo.”

  He got up and moved to the back of his bedroom door, where his old plaid flannel robe hung off a hook. He shrugged into it and then went back to the bed to slide into the shearling-lined Ugg slippers Katy had bought him last Christmas. They felt like heaven on his cold feet.

  It was time to get the kids up.

  He knocked on each of their bedroom doors, saying the same thing he did every day, “Rise and shine! Rise and shine!”

  Then he moved to the top of the staircase to wait. He had learned never to assume they would get up. In a couple of minutes, Joey’s door opened and his boy emerged in Spider-Man pajamas he was probably too old for but which Dane figured he was still not ready to give up. His blond hair spiked in several different directions, and his face was cross. He rubbed an eye with one hand. Dane thought the only thing that would make this picture complete was if Joey dragged a teddy bear behind him with the other hand. He smiled. Dane knew Joey was simply trying to get used to being awake once again. Dane laughed. “Go ahead down and start up the coffeepot for me, okay, sport?”

  Joey nodded and tromped down the stairs. Dane called after him, “I’m thinking Eggos this morning. Okay?”

  Clarissa had still not emerged. Dane knocked on her door once again. “Honey? Time to get up. We gotta be out of here in less than an hour. I’ll drive you to school today, okay?” Dane was attempting to be as normal as possible, hoping if he moved ahead almost as though their dinnertime revelations hadn’t happened, maybe Clarissa would too.

  He tapped again on her door. “Clarissa?”

  It wasn’t like her not to come out. Dane felt a little frisson of nerves. Had he damaged his relationship with her irreparably?

  He placed his hand on the knob and opened the door a crack… and then a little more.

  The room was empty, the bed made up as though it had never been slept in.

  Dane shook his head. He saw Clarissa had left him a note. It was propped up against one of the pillow shams.

  Went to Jerri Lynn’s for the night. Couldn’t stay here.

  That was all it said. Cold. Utilitarian. It tugged at Dane’s heart, making him feel sad and ashamed.

  He held the note in his hand, next to his daughter’s bed, staring down at it for a long time until Joey called up the stairs, “Dad? Coffee’s ready! You want blueberry or plain waffles?”

  Dane set the note back in its place and headed for the stairs.

  Chapter 7

  THE BULLETIN board was the first thing anyone saw when he or she entered through the massive front doors of Summitville High School. It was hard to miss, positioned opposite the entry. It was large, maybe four feet by six feet, and was usually decorated to match the season, an upcoming holiday, or a big game. But today, Truman noticed as he trudged into the building after first bell, stomping his snow-covered feet on the big black rubber mat inside the front door, the bulletin board was all about him.

  He paused for just a moment, skin prickling from more than mere cold. Oh no, not again…. He had the odd sensation where he couldn’t believe his eyes, thinking the workings of his brain were playing tricks on him. He also desperately did not want to believe what was in front of him, plain as the nose on his face.

  He laughed. That was his first reaction. But it was an uncomfortable, sickly kind of laugh. He looked over his shoulder. Other kids were pouring in, allowing the icy air to sweep into the school’s vestibule. None seemed to notice what had Truman so transfixed.

  At least not yet.

  But soon they would. And there would be laughter and pointing. And Truman, amidst it all, the center of things, the butt of the joke, would stand frozen, unable to move. It would be akin to the opening scene of the movie Carrie all over again, but with Truman in the shower.

  He thought briefly of turning and running. His mom, who had dropped him off only moments before, might still be within the sound of his voice, especially with having to drive cautiously in consideration of the snow and ice on the roads. Could he run fast enough to catch their beater?

  But what would she do? Comfort him once more with words? Tell him he was special? That he was loved? They were nice sentiments, and he loved his mom for saying them so consistently and reliably.

  But they couldn’t erase the horror of what was before him. Couldn’t wipe out the cruelty trying to masquerade as comedy.

  Truman looked around, and still no one noticed the images pinned to the bulletin board. But it was only a matter of time.

  He ducked his head and hunched his shoulders and escaped back out the front doors like a wraith, like something invisible.

  Whether or not he could catch his mom, the advantage in leaving now was being anywhere else but here. Even with bitter cold and frigid winds raging outside, it was warmer outside than in here.

  DANE HAD spent a good fifteen minutes in the parking lot, bouncing up and down to ward off the icy winds blowing all around him, to see if Clarissa showed up. He needed to talk to her before beginning his day. He didn’t mean to chew her out for slipping out of the house the night before. Jerri Lynn Masterson was Clarissa’s best friend and had been since fifth grade. The Mastersons lived only a few houses down from them, on the same street. Dane wasn’t upset that Clarissa had gone to sleep over at their house, which wasn’t uncommon. But he knew her absence from the house this morning had to be related to their conversation last night.

  He didn’t like that she had sneaked out, even if she did leave a note, presumably so he wouldn’t worry.

  But either Clarissa had gotten to school before him, which was okay, or she was skipping today, which was not. Once the final bell rang, Dane knew he needed to get inside to deal with his homeroom, take attendance, listen to the morning announcements, say the Pledge of Allegiance along with the rest of the class.

  Just like any other day.

  Except it wasn’t.

  He trudged inside and saw the bulletin board. Gasped. Stopped in his tracks. There were a few kids gathered around it, nudging each other and giggling. One of them, a red-haired boy named Kimmel, whispered to his friends. All Dane heard was the dreaded “Mr. Bernard.” It was enough to make the kids scatter.

  It was after the final bell, and now the school’s vestibule was empty. Dane neared the bulletin board, wanting a better look at what
it was that cracked the students up first thing in the morning. “Oh no,” he whispered as he stepped closer to the bulletin board, the images pinned to it becoming clearer.

  Someone had done a tribute of sorts to Truman Reid. They must have found every yearbook photo and every school newspaper picture and done some Photoshop work on them. Here was Truman’s head on the body of a sequin-gowned woman. There was Truman’s face over Miley Cyrus’s, swinging on an iconic wrecking ball, scantily clad. Check out the cover of Vogue upon which Caitlyn Jenner had come out to the world, except now Truman’s replaced Jenner’s face. There were scores of other photos, each of them showing poor Truman Reid in the most feminine light possible. The Photoshop work was impeccable and had obviously taken some skill and time.

  So had the cruelty.

  Across the top of the montage of photos was a large white banner with screaming red letters. It read:

  “Tru-woman Reid! We love you dearly, sweet thang!”

  Dane felt his heart clench in outrage for the kid, hoping against hope the boy hadn’t seen the display. Dane began ripping the images from the board’s cork surface, looking around him almost guiltily, as if he himself were the culprit. He shredded the images, wishing he got more satisfaction as he watched them drift to the snow-wet and muddy tile floor.

  Finally, when the bulletin board was bare, Dane stood, wondering what was wrong with these kids, why they got such pleasure in being mean. Where were their hearts? Where was their empathy? Their compassion? Dane didn’t want to believe these were qualities that took until the age of, say, eighteen to develop. He shook his head, wondering what effect this would have on Truman if he had indeed been unfortunate enough to see the display.

  He didn’t have long to wonder.

  Betsy Wagner rushed up to him, the hurt and terror in her green eyes magnified by the lenses in her glasses. She was a little out of breath. “Dane. Dane, oh God, I’m glad you’re here.”

  “What’s the matter, Bets?”