Coming Out on the Mountain

by P D Singer

  “Is it?” I snapped, angry enough to speak around the ball of hurt blocking my words. “He comes out now, after leading Grammy on for fifty years? Using her for a beard?”

  “Jesus, Jake.” Kurt flinched. “Is that what he said?”

  “He didn’t have to.” I dashed the back of my hand across my eyes, hating that I was leaking. I didn’t want to cry for a liar. “That’s what he meant.”

  “What did he say, Jake?” Kurt persisted. “His words, not yours.”

  Why couldn’t he see what I saw? “He said Floyd and Grammy were two different parts of his life.”

  “Did he say he loved them both? Something like that?” Kurt clasped my arm harder, enough to hurt.

  “Yeah, but…”

  “But what?” Fuck but this man was relentless.

  “But it’s a lie.” Fresh pain welled up, squeezing my heart.

  “Why are you so sure?” I didn’t answer right away. Kurt shook me. “What makes you so sure?”

  “Because I…” All the things I didn’t want to say ran through my, head, that I couldn’t make a life with a woman after knowing what it was to love Kurt. Because my grandfather had betrayed our family by moving on. Because he wasn’t who I thought he was… Because…

  Kurt condensed my silence into words. “Because you decided so.” He jerked his hand off my arm and sat up in the leaves, elbows on knees. He grimaced down at me. “Jake, you are being such an ass.”

  Wait. Me? How was I in the wrong here? I glared up at him, and struggled to sitting.

  “Why couldn’t he be telling you the truth about that, huh?” Kurt snapped. “Because it doesn’t fit your child’s-mind view of your grandparents, who were always old and always there and aren’t allowed to change? You get to grow up and make a career and take a lover and come out and have a life, but your grandfather is supposed to be some kind of static figure who’s there when you need him and sits quietly on the shelf when you don’t? That’s not how it works, Jake.”

  “But if he’s gay…”

  “Did he say he’s gay?” Kurt glared at me from under scrunched brows. “Because even if he did, he’d hardly be the first man to get married and have some kids because society at the time didn’t accept anything else. You and I have a lot of options, Jake. When he was our age, he didn’t.”

  “I know,” I whispered, because it was true.

  “But did he say he was gay? You didn’t answer that part.” Kurt’s lips went thin, waiting for me to finish the thought.

  “No. He said he wasn’t.” He might have said a lot of things I didn’t register in my turmoil, but I remembered that much.

  “Then what the hell, Jake? Why can’t the man be bisexual? Or pan, or demi?” Kurt threw a handful of leaves at me, missiles that didn’t go anywhere. They fluttered into my lap. “Because he’s always looked straight and therefore he must be straight, because your little pea brain can’t take the idea of a grandfather who’s a real, complicated human being?”

  “That’s not fair, Kurt.” I protested, but a small voice inside whispered that he might be right.

  Kurt glared straight at me. “I don’t think you get to talk about ‘fair’ right now, Jake. I really don’t.”

  “Why not?” Anger bubbled up through my chest. Felt a lot like a collapsed lung.

  “Did you hear him out? Listen to what he had to say? Or did you hear just enough to get mad and hurt and come running to me?” Kurt crumpled a leaf into powder, and then another, and a third.

  “Why are you even asking that?”

  “Because you’re not talking like you heard his side of the story. And what little you heard, it’s yes but. It’s his reality, did you listen to him?” Kurt killed another handful of red and yellow debris, waiting for me to answer. “Never mind, don’t answer that. I don’t think you can be honest about it, even to yourself.”

  “That’s harsh.” I reeled from the assessment, and from the assessor. Kurt never lit into me like this.

  “I’ll tell you what’s harsh. What did you want more than anything this morning?” He didn’t wait for me to answer—he told me what I’d been telling him for weeks. “You wanted a fair hearing, you wanted understanding, and you wanted to still be loved after dropping your bombshell. Don’t you think your gramps deserves the same from you?”

  I wasn’t ready to say, yeah, he did. But he did.

  “Good thing I love you, Jake, because I sure don’t like you much right now.” Kurt stood up, still knee deep in the leaves of the nest we’d made for ourselves. He waded out through the uncompacted wall, plowing a channel that filled partially behind him. “Because we kind of outed them, just by showing up. It could have been a graceful coming out for both of you. But you shat all over it.

  “So you’d better figure out how to fix it.”

  Me? Fix it? I wasn’t the one who broke anythi—

  I sat half-buried in the leaves, stunned. Bits and pieces whirled through my head. Gramps and Floyd, sitting next to each other in the dining room yesterday, eating turkey and passing each other the gravy boat. Like Gramps and Grammy had, in all the Thanksgivings past they’d shared.

  I didn’t want to think of Floyd and Gramps together in other ways, that was too much.

  But I’d lost my shit when it was just a hand on a shoulder and a loving glance.

  Yeah. I was the guy who broke this.

  Kurt’s words rang in my ears: I got up this morning angsting over acceptance and love and being rejected. Just like he said. And I hadn’t given my grandfather the benefit of the same. Not even a little.

  But he wasn’t supposed to turn out to be someone else at eighty.

  Or maybe I had just never known that part of him, and I’d worked real hard to make sure he couldn’t show me. I’d cut him off, thrown my expectations at him. Let him know he’d disappointed me.

  Exactly what I’d hoped not to get from Dad, and hadn’t. Exactly what I’d hoped Gramps wouldn’t do to me.

  Two of the three best men in the world were upset with me, and if Dad knew the stupid stunt I’d just pulled, it’d be three for three.

  I sat in the leaves, hating myself. I’d blown up, selfishly, because my worldview got challenged. I’d run out of the house without my jacket—sitting still left me vulnerable to the chilly air, but it was nothing compared to the ice in my belly.

  Kurt was right—I had to fix this.

  The skreesh of tines against the grass penetrated my misery. I emerged to find Kurt raking like every leaf had personally offended him. He glanced up at me and went back to raking harder, his breath coming in dragon puffs, complete with sound effects.

  “You’re right,” I said, simply and with no preamble. “I had my head in my ass, and I need to go apologize.”

  “You did and you do.” Kurt didn’t stop raking, and he wouldn’t look at me. “Don’t let me stop you.”

  “Please come with me.”

  “Why?” The air was chilly enough to show his breath, but he’d pushed up his sleeves for the exertion. Cords lifted against his skin with his efforts, and his knuckles whitened against the wooden rake handle. “I’m not going to make your apologies for you.”

  “I don’t expect you to.” I stuck my hands in my jeans pockets. “But you know I fucked up, and I’d like you to see that I’m trying to make things right. And for some moral support.”

  I’d tried a lot of difficult, sometimes dangerous things with Kurt at my back. I’d survived all of them so far, and what hadn’t worked out at least hadn’t killed us. Now I had to repair my family, to fix the damage I’d done.

  “Okay.” Kurt let the rake fall against the mountain of leaves he’d scraped together. He took the hand I extended to him, and we trudged to the sliding door that I deserved to have shut against me.

  CHAPTER 13

  Gramps and Floyd were sitting at the breakfast table, holding hands and talking too quietly to hear through the glass. I rapped at the glas
s, not daring to open and waltz in like I was welcome. I might not be welcome in this house, for the first time in my life.

  Gramps gestured a palm up come in. He rose to his feet, and Floyd as well, coming around the table to stand shoulder to shoulder with Gramps.

  Kurt had my back, half a step behind me, but a warm and comforting presence. I took a deep breath of the warm, cinnamon-scented air. “Gentlemen, I need to apologize.”

  Would they hear me out?

  “Go on.” Gramps’s face was guarded, like he couldn’t allow himself to expect much of me.

  “Mr. Engleman, I snarled at you without cause. I’m sorry I reacted on you out of my own issues. It won’t happen again.” I started with the easy words, and I wouldn’t presume to call him by his first name. Maybe if he accepted my apology.

  Floyd nodded, but didn’t speak. Gramps’s expression didn’t soften.

  “Gramps—” This apology would come harder, because I needed to name my offense. “I didn’t give you a fair shake. I didn’t listen to you, and I let my mouth run without engaging my brain. I reacted like a child, or a fool. That wasn’t fair to you, and I’m sorry.”

  Kurt’s harsh words at least gave me a framework to hang my apology on.

  “I hope you can forgive me enough that we can talk and maybe come to a better understanding.”

  Now all I could do was wait, while Gramps digested my words and decided whether or not to give me the chance.

  “That…” Gramps stopped long enough to kick my gut churn into highest gear. “…sounds more like the Jake I thought I knew. Come sit down.”

  Kurt and I took seats on one side of the rectangular table. Gramps and Floyd settled on the other. Floyd draped his hand over the back of Gramps’s chair, shaking me with recognition, because Kurt’s hand rested on my back the same way.

  I didn’t know where to start now. Twining my fingers together and staring at them wasn’t giving me any ideas. With Floyd sitting there, regarding me warily, I felt more inhibited than before the big fire, when I couldn’t even look at Kurt for more than thirty seconds at a time. This was Floyd’s relationship I was about to discuss, not just my grandfather’s.

  Gramps took mercy on me. “Floyd, Kurt, I think Jake and I can manage without further fireworks. Floyd, why don’t you take Kurt downstairs and show him the model train set-up?”

  Floyd shot me such a look, but got up all the same. Couldn’t blame him, I’d do the same to anyone I thought might speak badly to Kurt. They headed downstairs, Kurt with a backward glance. Floyd shut the basement door on, “We just got the new loop installed, and we’re building a mining camp…”

  Alone, with the man I’d lashed out at.

  “We seem to have established the facts, Jake, now to come to some understanding about it.” Gramps got us started.

  “Yeah, we’re both gay.” I picked at a cuticle with a thumbnail. “I’m listening.”

  “I’m not, though, and that’s the part you aren’t listening to.” Gramps reached across the table to interrupt my self-destructive fidgeting. “Yes, I’m with Floyd now, and you’re seeing it as a massive betrayal of my past and our family.”

  Sounded about right. No way to agree without picking another fight. “Kind of. Yeah.”

  “Thing is, Jake, I see it as a new stage of my life. Not a negation of what my life was before.” He patted my hand, and if I’d been either younger or closer, he might have tipped my chin up to make me look him in the eyes.

  “So, bi?” Bi was a thing, Kurt had reminded me. Not something I thought about very much.

  Gramps ignored that. “I loved your grandmother. I don’t know what I would have done had I met a young man I loved like that back then. Times were different. I wasn’t looking for a young man, but I wasn’t looking for your grandmother, either, though I found her. And I married her. I swore ’til death do us part, and I meant it.”

  I’d never thought different, until today.

  “Thing is, Jake, I kept that vow. Death parted us. That left me alone. Then I met a man who made me laugh and fed me pastries and let me be happy with him. Do you begrudge me that?” His deep brown eyes, the same color as my own, were wells of pain.

  “N—no.” To begrudge him happiness would be monstrous. “I’m still stuck on the man part.”

  Gramps didn’t take his hand away, but I could feel him thinking about smacking his forehead. “Obviously. But Floyd and I are happy together. I’m hoping that can be enough for you.”

  “As long as you were happy with Grammy too,” I whispered. I could deal with the new, if the old was still real.

  “Jake, I was. You were here a couple of days a week at least all through your childhood. You know.” Gramps’s voice went soft. “Let yourself remember.”

  The times past rolled through my mind, weekends where we kids took over the house, being with Gramps and Grammy, seeing them smile at each other when we did something funny or well. Them holding hands to skate on the pond while Shari and I showed off our latest choreography. Grammy setting out a holiday feast and Gramps wielding the carving knife, and the joy that shone from their faces when the house full of family joined hands for grace. Grammy settling against Gramps’s side to watch a movie in the living room, his arm over her shoulder, and stolen kisses when they thought we weren’t paying attention. The way his face lit up when she came into the room.

  Their happiness together was real, and I’d felt it down into my bones for as long as I could remember. I was the only one imagining it was all a lie.

  CHAPTER 14

  Gramps managed to come around to my side of the table without losing contact with my hand. He wrapped his arm around my shoulders. I let myself lean into him, finding the comfort he’d offered me since I was born. “You were. I’m being an ass.” I had to meet his eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “You are, but if you engage that formidable brain and stop it, apology accepted.” Gramps squeezed my shoulder and let go. “Now, let’s pour some coffee, and talk. Not just knee-jerk react.”

  I usually dealt with Kurt jumping to conclusions. Guess I qualified for my very own gold medal.

  “Do we have the conniptions out of the way enough to talk about what you originally meant to tell me?” Gramps brought a small carton of half and half out from the fridge and set it next to a covered bowl of sugar. I poured two mugs from the big pot and brought them and spoons to the table.

  “Um, yeah. I meant to come out to you. And weather whatever storm you dumped on me.” I watched the spoon swirling the white streaks of cream into the coffee with more attention than the motion deserved. “And instead, I was the storm. I am sorry for that.”

  Because, for fuck’s sake, I’d just done everything I’d feared. Gramps might forgive me, but it would take a while to forgive myself. I knew what constituted a proper apology. My contrition needed to play out over time, until Gramps could trust me not to lose my shit over a part of his life ending and a new part beginning.

  Because my grandfather deserved to be happy.

  So did I.

  When both Mom and Dad said I needed to have my own discussion with Gramps, they might have meant to hear what he had to say. Not what I had to tell him.

  Gramps was everything I’d thought. A good man, a loving man, to his wife, his children, his entire family. He was a product of his time, and still a man who could start a new chapter of his life with a pastry chef named Floyd. Whatever struggles he’d had with that, he’d overcome. To have this fight with me, the man trying to come out to him.

  “Apology accepted, Jake. To tell the truth, your reaction isn’t new. Most of the family who knows said something similar.” Gramps smiled sadly. “A few of them had the more usual arguments.”

  Oof. “I take it that’s why Great-Aunt Elaine’s in Florida. I heard something about you telling her off.” Shari’s description was a lot more colorful than I’d use to Gramps.

  “I did.” Gramps smiled into his mug.
“With the forcefulness saved up over a lifetime of getting brother/sister crap.”

  When Shari ragged on me, it was still with affection. Great-Aunt Elaine? Her nasty little mop dog got affection and the rest of the world got the sharp side of her tongue. I had new respect for my grandfather—he’d dealt with her for eighty years and hadn’t wrung her scrawny neck.

  Now I knew what Aunt Patrice meant with her comment about immorality. She’d been looking into the TV room when she said it, and I thought she meant Kurt, who’d done nothing more than sit in line-of-sight between her and Gramps and Floyd. When she had no reason to think any such thing about me or Kurt. I’d jumped to an unwarranted conclusion on her too.

  Not that I thought for a second she wouldn’t have meant it had she reason to think it about us.

  I knew my Mom—she would have ushered her sister out just as fast had she directed her bile our way. Mom’d been quick to stomp on Uncle Ed for getting on Gramps’s case, though I hadn’t a clue what he was talking about at the time. So much clearer now.

  “Mom shut down Ed and Patrice pretty hard. Anyone else not in Camp Gramps?” I asked not only for his sake but for mine.

  “A few of my in-laws, the ones I haven’t outlived.” Gramps pursed his lips. “No one you need be concerned with. The rest of the family, once the initial shock wore off, have been remarkably accepting. Better than I expected, really, given time.”

  I’d watched a solid phalanx of cousins, aunts, and uncles giving Ed and Patrice the heave-ho yesterday, not knowing the whole story. Mom’s warning, in retrospect, could be about only one thing. No wonder she shut them down with her dainty iron fist. “Looked like everyone was on your side yesterday.”

  “That was heart-warming. The previous year things didn’t go quite so well, which is why we had Christmas on a cruise ship.” Gramps chuckled ruefully.

  My head spun again. “Whoa, you guys have been together that long? And I’m just now hearing about it?”