Big Love

by Rick R. Reed

  “Coming right up.”

  Patsy watched the two men walk away.

  When they got back a few minutes later, she stood from her chair and thanked them for the coffee. She followed them into the hallway.

  She sipped. The coffee was too hot, so she just held it. It also tasted too strong, kind of burned. It wasn’t like what they served at the diner.

  The three of them stood in silence for a while. Patsy wasn’t sure what to say. Finally she blurted out, “I’m worried.”

  “Of course you are,” Seth said. “But Truman will get the help he needs.”

  “I talked to one of the doctors in the ER,” Patsy said. “And he told me they’re gonna transfer Truman up to Pittsburgh, to a hospital that has a psych ward, so he can be evaluated.”

  Dane nodded. “I think that’s pretty common in cases like this. That way they can figure out what the boy needs, come up with a treatment plan.”

  Dane smiled at her, and she knew he meant to be reassuring, but all she felt was scared.

  “What he did this morning, that’s a serious cry for help.”

  She burst into tears again. She couldn’t help it. How could she pay for all this? She had crappy insurance down at the diner.

  Dane put his arm around her.

  “I don’t mean to sound like a bad mom or anything, but I don’t know if my insurance will cover this stuff.”

  She watched as Dane and Seth exchanged glances. Seth said, “Why don’t you let me go down to the offices and see what I can find out for you? You might be worrying for nothing. Lots of health plans cover psych—” He stopped himself. “Help for people like Truman.”

  “You don’t think they’d try to change him, do you?”

  “No. No, of course not,” Seth said. “Do you have an insurance card with you?”

  “Yeah.” Patsy turned and went back into the room. She’d left her purse on the floor by Truman’s bed. She fished out the card and handed it to Seth. “This is awful sweet of you. I hope you find out something good!”

  He took the card. “I’ll be right back.”

  Silently, Patsy watched as he walked away. “A nice man,” she said. “You guys are going above and beyond. Hey, don’t you need to be at school?”

  “After what happened today, I doubt they’ll get much done. The principal gave us permission to come down here, make sure Truman was okay.”

  “Oh, he’s far from okay. We both know that.” Patsy could feel another wave of tears coming on, but she stifled them. She needed to be strong for her boy. Besides, she didn’t want these guys thinking she was a basket case. She shook her head and lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “As bad as this morning was, I’m still not completely shocked, you know? My heart aches for Truman. He’s so lonely. He never has friends over. No one ever calls or comes around. Always by himself with his head in the clouds.” She smiled. “Or his nose in a book. I swear that boy lives in his imagination.” She went quiet as she remembered a little boy in his bedroom, way before all the teasing and bullying started at school, putting on shows. He’d stand on his bed and sing, and then jump to the floor and dance. He was pretty good too, for a little guy. His favorite was “Somewhere over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz. It broke her heart to think of it. Even back then, he was alone. But at least it seemed like Patsy was enough company for him.

  “I know,” Dane said. “I’ve tried to talk to him some over the school year. It seems like he gets picked on almost every day.” Dane shook his head. “It’s terrible. I wish I could do more to help.”

  “Oh my! I heard some of what you said today. You do a lot, Dane, a lot. But my boy… I don’t know.” Her voice went even lower, and she knew it was barely a raspy whisper as she admitted, “I think he hates himself.”

  Dane squeezed her shoulder. “That might be true. And we need to change that.”

  “Oh, honey, I’ve tried. I don’t have nothin’ against gay people. And I’ve never made Truman feel he was nothing less than fabulous. Isn’t that the right word?” She grinned.

  Dane grinned back. “Yeah, that’s the right word.”

  “But nothin’ I say or do seems to make a difference. He just gets quieter and quieter, like he’s in his own little world.”

  Dane nodded.

  Seth came back.

  Patsy breathed a sigh of relief. This talk with Dane was getting too hard for her right now. She appreciated his kindness, but she was so tired, all of a sudden. She smiled at Seth. “What did you find out?”

  “Well, I got good news and bad news.” He didn’t ask her which one she wanted first, just plowed onward. “The good news is that Truman’s stay here and at the hospital in Pittsburgh for evaluation will be covered by your insurance, after the deductible and co-pay.”

  “And the bad?”

  Seth frowned. “I’m afraid your carrier doesn’t cover ongoing therapy.” He shrugged. “It sucks, but I thought you should know.”

  Patsy crumpled a little and leaned against the wall. “Figures. I don’t know what I’ll do. How can I help him? I can’t afford to send him to a therapist.”

  Dane offered, “There are clinics with sliding scales, I believe.”

  “I doubt if there’s anything like that here in Summitville.”

  Again she watched the two men exchange glances. She didn’t want to hear any more from them. They would offer her all kinds of help that wouldn’t be practical. In the end, though, she knew it would all rest on her shoulders to try to make things right.

  It always had. She sighed. “Listen, guys, did you hear that?”

  Dane shook his head, and Seth looked blank.

  Patsy lied, “I think I hear him waking up.” She smiled. “Thanks a lot for coming down here, but I need to go be with my boy.”

  “Are you sure?” Seth asked. “We can discuss some options. There have to be some options.”

  Patsy smiled, but her heart was filled with sadness and dread. When you were as poor as she was, options, like most everything else, were always just out of reach. “Maybe later.” She gave each of them a hug. “We can talk later.”

  And she hurried into Truman’s room, not waiting for a response. She both hoped and dreaded the men would follow her into the room.

  But they didn’t.

  Chapter 10

  SETH LOOKED at Dane, feeling a little surprised at her abrupt departure.

  “Do you think she’s okay?” he asked.

  “Of course she’s not okay,” Dane said softly, voice pitched just above a whisper. “Her son just tried to kill himself.”

  Dane’s face looked anguished, and Seth’s heart went out to him. The way he cared for these kids was beyond admirable, not something Seth had seen a lot in his short career as an educator.

  “I know. Stupid question.”

  “C’mon.” Dane grabbed Seth’s arm and led him away from the room. Seth figured he didn’t want Patsy to hear them talking. They were silent in the elevator, through the hospital lobby, and on into the parking lot. During that whole time, Dane never removed his hand, gently clutching, from Seth’s arm.

  Seth liked it.

  Outside, the wind was no less bitter, although the sun was higher in the sky. A light snow had begun to fall, and the sky was a mix of puffy dark gray clouds and blue sky, making shadows come and go on the pavement.

  Dane took his hand away from Seth’s arm and looked down at his hand, as though surprised. Seth wondered if he even realized he’d been holding on to Seth. Dane smiled and then glanced down at his watch.

  “Wow.”

  “What?”

  “It’s only eleven o’clock. It seems like a whole day has already passed.”

  “I know.”

  Dane cocked his head. “Maybe you and I could go grab a burger before we head back? Talk about helping Truman, if you’re on board for that.”

  “Of course I’m on board! The poor guy. I’d love to be able to help him. And lunch sounds like a very good idea. I didn’t have
any breakfast this morning, and I’m feeling a little depleted.”

  “You been to the Elite?”

  “That’s the diner where Truman’s mom works, right?”

  Dane nodded.

  “Nah. Haven’t had the chance yet.”

  Dane cuffed him gently on the back of the head. “Kid, you don’t know what you’re missing.”

  THE ELITE Diner was a throwback, but not in some ironic, retro way. It had all the things a “retro” diner in Chicago would include, Seth thought, yet he could tell immediately that the diner had stood here in Summitville’s downtown for many decades. It was housed in a building made to look like an old railway car. Inside, the walls were quilted aluminum, and the floors were a scuffed and chipped checkerboard of red and gray linoleum. Unlike a “nostalgic” diner in Chicago, though, nothing here seemed new. Everything about it had the patina of years of use. The soda fountain spouts were tarnished. The wall above the big grill was stained from years of grease spatters. The counter, gray Formica, still looked good, but the glass cases, one with doughnuts and the other with what looked like a pumpkin pie, were dull, probably from all the grease in the air. The stools lined up at the counter were outfitted in sparkling red vinyl, but they too had seen better days. Many were patched with duct tape. Seth smiled. The smells—french fries, burgers—were comforting. “Great place,” he said and meant it.

  “You guys can sit wherever you like.” A tired waitress, with hips that strained the polyester of her pink uniform and an upsweep of dyed red hair, gestured to the narrow confines.

  “I see a booth open at the back. Let’s take that. We’ll have privacy.” He grinned at Seth over his shoulder as he headed back to the booth. “Small town, but big ears.”

  Once they were settled in and had ordered—cheeseburger and fries for Seth and a hot meat loaf sandwich with a side of “wet” fries for Dane—they looked at each other, and Seth could feel the weight of the morning beginning to seep in. This was no first date.

  Endora, no kidding, was their waitress’s name. Before they could even start talking, she came back to the table.

  “You guys want drinks with your meals? A shake maybe? Pop?”

  Dane said, “We gotta have cherry Cokes. They’re awesome. They still make them with fountain Coke and syrup. You’ll die.”

  Or at least get early-onset diabetes, Seth thought, from all that sugar! “Sounds delicious.” He smiled at Endora and said, “Conjure us up a couple of those!” and snickered.

  Endora didn’t get the magical reference. She walked away.

  Even though the diner was bustling with the lunchtime crowd, it felt to Seth like there was a bubble of silence around Dane and him. He realized that they didn’t really even know each other; they were just a couple of men thrown together by circumstance. He blurted out, “You were very brave today.”

  “Ah.” Dane waved the compliment away. “You said that already. I just did my job. Tried to help a kid in need. You were the one. You could have both gone over that ledge.” Dane shivered. “I get chills when I think about it.”

  Seth wanted Dane to know about their so-far-unspoken common ground. “Yeah, Truman. We worked together to help him, didn’t we? We did a good thing, but I expect we still need to do a lot of work to make sure that kid doesn’t pull something like that again.” Seth was quiet for a moment. “But when I said you were brave, I meant something else.”

  He watched Dane go a little pale. A sickly smile spread across his face, which, oddly enough, didn’t detract at all from the guy’s magnetism.

  “What? I don’t understand.”

  Seth felt like he was putting a foot out to test the surface of an iced-over pond. Would it hold him? He swallowed and licked his lips. He kept his mouth shut as Endora brought their sodas, an honest-to-goodness red-and-white-striped paper straw sticking out of each fountain glass. Seth took a sip and had to admit the cold sweet was a revelation, no comparison to the stuff Coke put readymade into a can or two-liter bottle. He leaned forward. “Is that the first time you admitted to the school you were gay?”

  Dane looked flustered. His eyebrows scrunched together. His gaze moved frantically all around the narrow confines of the diner, lighting restlessly on everything and nothing all at once. He too took a sip of the wondrous elixir they’d ordered, but he choked on his, his face reddening.

  Finally his choking slowed to a few sputters. A couple of other diners turned to stare. Seth had gotten halfway up, ready to do the Heimlich if necessary.

  But Dane composed himself. He laughed briefly. “Honest to God, today’s the first day I ever told anybody, ’cept for my two kids.” Dane grinned, but the sheepishness won out. “And that was only last night.”

  “Really?”

  “Man, didn’t you know? I was married for a long time—to a woman. And even that didn’t end because of my being gay. It ended because she died, in a car wreck.” Dane looked away for a moment. Wistful? Sad?

  Dane chuckled again, but there was little mirth in it. “Hell, even I didn’t know until after Katy—that was my wife’s name—died.” He paused, appearing to think. “I take that back. I knew. How can you not, right? You see a nice ass on a guy and your libido doesn’t lie. But the difference, I guess, is you can refuse to accept what your eyes and your body—and sometimes your dreams—tell you. And that’s where I’ve been my whole life, refusing to accept who I was.” He sighed. “I guess I thought I could change.”

  “You can’t change who you are,” Seth said softly. “But you can change how you deal with it.”

  “I know that. Now. I just kept thinking that, if I played the part long enough and hard enough, I could become the man I was supposed to be.” Dane stared down at the table.

  Seth suddenly didn’t know who needed his pity, his love, and his support more, Truman or Dane. He’d known closeted guys before, especially when he was first coming out and sought sexual experience in places like Chicago’s lakefront parks and forest preserves. Many of the guys who showed up there were married men, coupled, he guessed, with unsuspecting women. Seth avoided them and held them in a certain amount of contempt.

  Now, seeing Dane and how much he hurt, coming to grips with who he was, made Seth feel ashamed of his disdain for the married men he’d encountered in his past. He reached his hand out and covered Dane’s with it.

  Dane snatched his hand away and looked at him oddly. “What are you doing?” He seemed a little desperate.

  “I just wanted to offer you some comfort. Coming out is hard. I didn’t know today was your coming-out day.” Seth decided now would be a good time to share with Dane, to let him know he was not alone. “I remember my own coming out. I was a senior in high school. I got Mom and Dad together in our living room and told them I had an announcement. I told them I’d just found out I had brain cancer and had three months to live.”

  “What?”

  Seth laughed. “And then I told them I was kidding. I was just gay.” He grinned. “They were so relieved. We never went through any of the angst some of my friends experienced. I never had to endure their horror stories. My folks were loving, accepting.”

  “So?” Dane wondered. “Your life has been—what? Easy?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Is life easy for any of us? Really? But at least I never had the burden of carrying around a secret like you did. Man, that had to have been hard. Did you ever… act on your feelings?”

  Dane’s eyes glistened for a second, and he drew in a breath. “No,” he whispered, his voice hoarse. Then he pulled himself together. Seth was surprised at how quickly Dane’s mood changed, like a cloud moving over the sun, then away again. “Hard doesn’t begin to describe it. So you’re gay, huh? I would never have guessed.” Dane scratched the back of his head.

  Just then Endora arrived with their food. They grew quiet as she set down the plates and bottles of ketchup and mustard. She ripped off their checks and set them beside the food.

  “No rush, sweeties. Just pay up fr
ont when you’re done. Holler if you need anything.”

  She walked away. Seth returned his gaze to Dane. “You’re surprised? Why?” he asked, biting into his cheeseburger.

  “You just don’t seem the type.”

  “What’s the type?”

  Dane wasn’t touching his food. “Oh, c’mon. Like Truman,” he said softly. “That kid couldn’t hide it if he tried. I would imagine a young Truman Capote was very much like our Truman. It’s kind of ironic that’s his name.” Dane smiled sadly.

  Seth stuffed a couple of fries in his mouth. They were hand cut, skin on, and delicious. “You’re not like Truman. At least not in the obvious way. So… why would you be surprised that I’m gay?”

  Dane appeared to ponder the question for a while. “I guess, uh, I just kind of thought gay men were obvious. The only one I really know of, besides Truman and now you”—he grinned—“is Jimmy Dale, who has his own beauty parlor a couple doors down from here and who’s been doing the ladies’ hair here since my own mother was a girl. He has rings on every finger, a big dyed pompadour, and wears mascara and rouge. Sort of a poor man’s Liberace.” Dane burst out laughing. “I guess it was Jimmy Dale who allowed me to hold on to the belief that I couldn’t be gay because I was nothing like him.”

  “You thought all gay men were effeminate? And you were the odd exception to the rule?”

  Dane nodded.

  Seth felt taken aback. Here was a rare creature in front of him—a twenty-first-century gay male with no real exposure to the gay community. Seth had come up and out in Chicago, with Pride marches and rallies, dozens of gay bars, sports leagues, gay newspapers. Hell, even the main street of the gayborhood—Halsted—was lined with rainbow pylons. “You haven’t known many gay people, have you? Or let me rephrase that. You haven’t known many people you knew were gay? I mean, you probably think you, me, Truman, and that Jimmy Dale fella are the only ones in town.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Dane cut a forkful of meat loaf and popped it in his mouth.