You or Someone Like You

by Chandler Burr

  “ANNE FOUND A TERRIFIC SCREENPLAY,” Howard announces to Stacey Sher and Joe Roth, “and I think she should produce it.” It is Tuesday evening.

  “Hey!” says Stacey. Joe looks his congratulations at me. We’re all sitting together in a row at the back of the studio screening room.

  I stare at Mr. Out-of-the-Blue. You finally read it, I say to him.

  Owlishly: “I did,” he says. “Whoever the hell this guy is.”

  I ran into a screenwriter, I explain to Stacey and Joe, who was running over my gardener.

  “I mentioned it to Rob Greenberg,” says Howard.

  Howard, I’m supposed to call Mark Siegal before you do anything!

  “You want Mom to produce it?” says Sam, slightly incredulous. He is sitting in the row just below us, his legs sprawled over the red velvet seats before him.

  Oh, thanks, I say to Sam.

  “Put your feet down, Samuel,” says Howard. Then to me, “Seriously. Think about it.” The screening room is filling up now, so Howard lowers his voice. “The guy’s good.”

  “Do I know him?” asks Stacey. The writer. “Anything produced?”

  No, I say, nothing.

  Is he married to anyone in the industry? she asks. Maybe she knows his wife.

  I say, He’s gay, actually.

  Sam looks up at me instantly. Howard’s eyes, by contrast, seem suddenly locked on the screen.

  His name is Paul McMahon. I think the boyfriend is an elementary school teacher.

  “Oh, a teacher, good for him,” Stacey says, “thank Christ some people are still going into teaching. How long have they been together?”

  Howard says, “A teacher. To children.”

  His tone has changed. Joe looks over. Stacey is a bit surprised. Howard’s eyes are still fixed on the screen. I’m a bit surprised myself. Down in front, the studio exec in charge of the movie is preparing to introduce the screening. Howard says to the screen, “Why do gay couples never last. It’s a joke.”

  Stacey and Joe glance at each other.

  I say, Howard. I wonder what he is processing here.

  “Because,” Howard says, “il y a toujours un qui fait le con et l’autre qui s’emmerde.”

  I say: Howard…

  Howard doesn’t look at me. He repeats to them the explanation we heard from the boorish France Telecom consultant on a flight from Paris. The joke involves duplicate meanings of two different French words, both of them slang, the result a single sentence with two readings. One being “Because one of the guys is always a jerk and the other gets bored,” the second, “Because one of the faggots always plays the cunt while the other gets shit all over himself.”

  Joe blinks. Stacey diplomatically pretends she’s looking for a friend. They have heard about the incident with the DP’s marketing photo. They add that to this.

  I’m looking at Howard, who is still staring at the screen. Who is this man, what drives him to say such a thing? (This transformation, which I still don’t understand, that seems simply to gather speed.) We hear the studio exec say, “Good evening!” He smiles a big smile at us. He’s young, and this is his first major project. As everyone finds a place, Samuel, who is angry—almost as angry, we see to our surprise, as Howard—jumps up and walks four rows forward, slams himself down again, and puts his feet over an empty red velvet seat.

  THEY CALL ME WITH THE proposal. Three of them, two on speakerphone at Spyglass Entertainment, Wendy Finerman conferenced in from her office. Quite enthusiastic. A private talk, they propose. It will be lovely, catered of course, perhaps six in the evening? at a beautiful home in Bel Air. (I’ve heard the man’s name, an industrialist and his wife. They tell me he is funding a new shop headed by two former Castle Rock people.) So what did I think? they ask. They’d invite a nice, small selection of people, says Wendy—they mention a few names, some production companies, some titles.

  And how about this for a topic, Anne. They’d love for me to speak about Why People Fear Art. Meaning literature, they clarify. Why do people fear books? (They are industry people, and they consider the question and its answer to cut uniquely in their favor. They assume they know what my answer will be.)

  I honestly think it was the sheer solidity of the thing that made me agree and write down the date in my book. It sat there in neat black letters and looked like an anchor, something to steady me. On this date, at least I know I will be here.

  Well, I say to them after I jot it down. I’m looking forward to it.

  I felt I needed some anchors.

  SAM IS SILENT THROUGH THE entire drive to the Farmer’s Market. He feels vaguely angry, but I keep thinking I’m misinterpreting this. It is early on a beautiful Los Angeles Sunday spring morning, heading for 81 degrees announces 89.3 FM. For a week, since the trip to Consuela’s, he has been remarkably quiet. Howard and I have both noticed it. Howard pulls into the lot off Fairfax Avenue and asks him what he wants for breakfast, and Sam says, “Huh?” and looks around: Oh. We’re here.

  Howard wants apples.

  They’re an autumn fruit, I say, it’s April.

  “No, everything’s everything now.”

  Strawberries then, I propose, a bit randomly.

  Howard rolls his eyes. He decides we will start with beignets. “They’re frying them over there,” he says, pointing. “They smell terrific.”

  Yes, I say. They’ve added something to the oil.

  “They flavor the oil?” He says to the cook, “My wife says you guys flavor the oil.” The man sticks out his lower lip and shrugs.

  “Do you ever wonder about me?” says Sam to us.

  “You got cash, Anne?” Howard asks, digging in his pockets. “What are you talking about?” he says to Sam.

  “I’ve never had a girlfriend,” says Sam directly to his father. He looks him in the eye. The look—yes, I was right—is angry. “Like, never, OK?”

  As if it will be a way into this, I say, Please don’t say “like,” Sam, it drives me to distraction.

  The beignet man sugars three beignets generously, passing each in order to Howard. “Anne,” says Howard, shuffling the first one, very hot, over to me.

  Thank you. You’ve had a girlfriend.

  “No, Mom,” says Sam, “you read that onto some girl I was hanging out with.” He’s cool and remote. Sam says calmly and with almost no inflection, “That was good, at Susannah’s.”

  Well, I say. (I wonder what, exactly, my defiance has awakened in him.)

  Howard says a bit aggressively to Sam, “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m gay,” he says, to Howard, not to me, and adds, in a tone that combines nonchalance with steel, “but, you know, you probably knew that.” He is looking directly at Howard, and it occurs to me that he is taking careful aim. I wonder if he overheard Howard referring to “the problem with Sam” and in the next instant realize that, well before that, much more than that, Sam actually intuited Howard’s anger. The moment they closed the yeshiva’s door behind him, Sam knew it would never be next year in Jerusalem. And Howard’s reaction—this pulling away, this perceiving the problem to lie with Sam rather than with those who expelled him, Howard’s leaving Sam before Sam can leave him, “What the fuck did he think he was doing?”—all of this has made him furious.

  I think, So this is Sam saying to Howard, This is what the fuck I’m doing.

  What Sam is saying does not, I realize, matter so much to him. He is, simply and directly, warning his father.

  We move out of the way of the next people in line. I realize Sam has chosen this public place to avoid a scene. Strategic. It seems so casual, but clearly it’s not.

  Howard, silent, is still holding Sam’s beignet. Sam takes it from his father. “Thanks,” he says.

  I look around the market. It’s as if they were filming this on a soundstage. The sunlight suddenly feels like it’s being pumped onto us by a gaffer.

  We walk, possibly toward the strawberries. Howard is walking ahead holding his beign
et. He stops, turns. He and I regard our son. It occurs to me that Sam looks the opposite of how he looked when he walked into the house after the El Al flight—hollowed out, shell-shocked. Now Sam is defining Sam himself.

  He looks remarkably calm.

  IT IS MONDAY. I GET out of the car and put money in the meter. I begin to walk. I look down at my purse, to make sure I have it. I do. The afternoon sun is making me squint. At a certain point I realize I have been standing on the street corner. I look up at the blue metal rectangles: Melrose and Robertson. Now, why am I here? Certainly there is something nearby I need. I look about me with an expectant air. I have my purse. I am wearing black pumps. I have some cash and a few credit cards and a perfume and a lipstick.

  No one comes. I peer at each store in turn. I do not need Thai noodles or sunglasses or CDs or coffee. For an instant I am angry. I don’t need gasoline or air-conditioning. I turn around and go back to my car.

  I pull up to my house. I sit in the drive for a moment, then go inside and find Denise. She watches as I down a whiskey. Then she takes the bottle from me and walks away. My face feels hot and uncomfortable. Twenty-five minutes later, she is driving me down Lankershim, and the windows are open, and I lean out and let the wind burn a bit of the alcohol out of me.

  We go through the gates, showing the pass to the guards, and I get out in front of the Dwarf Building. She heads off wordlessly in my Saab to Pavilion for groceries. Jennifer is surprised when I walk in, immediately fearing she has overlooked an appointment. I smile quickly. He’s not expecting me, I reassure her. Just let him know I’m here. Jennifer types a message in to him. I sit down and pick up Variety. A procession of deals and numbers and dollars and the names of our friends and acquaintances. My eyes move over them as over glass. He sticks his head out. We consider each other for a long moment. He says, “Twenty minutes?” OK. He watches me for a few more moments in the tasteful, taupe-colored, light-filled office, and his head disappears back inside.

  Jennifer fields calls, walks back and forth to files, goes in and out. She indicates the phone next to me. I pick up.

  “Anne, it’s Ron Meyer.”

  Hello, Ron.

  So! he says. How am I doing? I listen while he talks. Howard sticks his head out to make sure I am talking to Ron, whom (I instantly see now) he has just called and told to call me here. Howard disappears again. I’m fine, I reassure Ron. Ron doesn’t mention Sam.

  Howard drives us home. His Mercedes moves up and then down the 101 as if on rails. We open the windows. He doesn’t speak although—once—he looks over at me.

  As the engine dies I open the car door, step out onto the driveway, and put my purse down on the paving stones, heated by a now-disappearing sun. I don’t close the door. The safety light on the door’s inside edge remains on, the handiwork of thoughtful German engineers who want you visible to cars coming from behind. Howard, standing by the car with his arms full of stuff, looks at me. He lays his briefcase on the stones, then piles on top of that his stack of folders, three scripts, a dozen faxes (in the car I saw fax numbers from Rome and Shanghai), and his pass for the lot. It all sits piled there, looking like a bonfire waiting to be lit. I want to show you something, I say. We leave the potential bonfire, the car doors open, the dashboard lit up; we want the car alert and expectant.

  Maneuvering his strong fingers, I rub his fingertips over the lavender’s delicate tips, swimming with bees, just inches from our faces, then hold the fingers up to his nose, and he inhales, holds the odor in his lungs. I take the fingers of his other hand and caress a pink rose with them, and we both smell his scented fingers. I crush one petal of a white rose between my thumb and index. He grips my wrist to hold the tips of my fingers a millimeter from his nostrils.

  We lie on our backs on the grass.

  I take his hand, which feels smooth and textured and warm like a very large pebble. After a moment he removes the hand and wipes the dirt from his fingers on the thick green grass under us. Consuela and Denise peer out at us through the window. We lift up slightly, wave to them. They wave back to us. We return to our backs. They retreat to discuss the situation, their supine employers.

  You’re going to get grass stains, I observe.

  “This is so peaceful,” Howard says to the blue oxygen shell above us. But he sounds doubtful. After a moment he heaves himself to his feet. He clears his throat. He collects his things, tucks them under his arm, and walks inside.

  He does not look at me. I sit on the grass, now by myself. It is not peaceful.

  DENISE SAYS, “HE YOUR BOY?”

  Yes, I say.

  “He my boy, too.” Her spine is stiff. She levels a gaze at me. She cannot predict my reaction, but that doesn’t concern her. “Seven. Teen,” she points out, punching each syllable. This includes every day of his life on earth. Seventeen years. She has been here in this kitchen every day he came home from school. I place my hand on the back of a chair. She waits. Consuela watches us, arms folded.

  “He kill someone?” No, I say. “He gone kill someone?” I assume not. “He using?” No. It was she who found him with a joint at age fifteen, and he mouthed off, and she smacked him in the face and gave him such a talking to that he cringed. Howard said she should have hit him harder for the mouth. Who knows what we owe her for that. “He a decent person?” Yes, I think he is.

  Long pause. Tired irritation: “What you whinin about.”

  I sigh, sort of laugh. OK, I say vaguely, and Denise’s face hardens. She knows it’s not OK.

  Consuela does not look convinced on the merits, she juggles her personal permutation of Catholicism and its moral teaching, social norms and expectations, the problematic translation of Denise’s reasoning into Spanish, and the equally problematic translation of the values of this culture she happens to live in. She watches TV like the rest of us, but she doesn’t buy it all. No. Even though it’s Sam. Denise is aware of this. She shoots Consuela a warning look. They have been going back and forth. Denise thinks: Two damn fools.

  OK, I say, and if it were Kelvin.

  I’ve flung it at her, my voice bitter. She won’t disarm it with a flip retort, though part of her would like to do that. She takes it seriously: goes through the scenario, calls up various images of Kelvin (Consuela and I wait), Roy’s reaction, her friends’ reactions, Kelvin bringing a man home, perhaps holding this man’s hand in front of them, and methodically measures her responses. When she is done, she addresses me. I want, she prefaces, to stipulate that I in no way say this lightly. (She waits for me to acknowledge this.) She says in effect: Were this all I had to face, I would consider myself extremely lucky.

  OK, I say and let out a breath. Consuela glares at the cabinets. Her back is to us now as she washes dishes that are only going to go in the dishwasher. In her view, it is not natural. There’s what her priest has told her, and there’s what her husband says. Denise glares at Consuela, drying a bowl that is dry, her gesture saying, The hell with the Church, and your priest, and your ignorant husband. She may break the bowl. I, for my part, am looking for nothing at all in some drawer. We are silently being together in the kitchen, pretending we’re doing things.

  I CALL HARVARD-WESTLAKE. THE SCHOOL always talks with a completely straight face about its “commitment to holistic counseling,” which is why Howard refers to it as “the sanitarium.” I’ve always found it a bit rich myself, but apparently they assign Sam a dean to counsel him in both academic and social matters, and when I ask, I am put right through to an affable man. This is, I suppose, a social matter, I begin, and explain. Ah, yes, says the dean, he and Sam discussed this briefly a few months ago. Sam mentioned it to his friends last year apparently. The dean’s casual tone communicates everything: the boy is fine, nice weather

  we’re having.

  And, I say dryly, we’re the last to know.

  I can feel the dean smile. “Don’t feel bad,” his voice says. “This is pretty standard coming-out procedure for most of the kids. Honest.”
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  I suppose I find this reassuring. Sam has been nicely protected by the sanitarium. I will have to mention to Howard this vindication of their astounding tuition.

  At the group on Thursday I am quiet. No one mentions it, everyone has heard, and no one ascribes the least importance to it.

  Jim Berkus hangs around afterward, and the rest obediently vanish. He says, “Listen, if you want me to talk to him—OK?”

  And I start to say no, no, but then realize something, and it startles me. Jim means talk to Howard. I add two and two, and I realize that they think, mistakenly, that the change they’ve recently noticed in Howard has to do with Sam’s coming-out. It doesn’t, but I now see that the juxtaposition of the two is confusing. Both to them and, I’m starting to realize, to Howard.

  For a moment I think about explaining the real cause of the problem to Jim. Sam’s being expelled from the yeshiva. Howard’s guilt. His mother having recently died, the seders I no longer attend. This question of Sam’s impurity. The problem with Sam. It is when I reach the impurity issue that I think: No. Better not.

  OK, I say to Jim. Thank you.

  “He’ll figure it out,” Jim says comfortingly. I nod. It is very sweet. Even if his aim is wrong, it is very sweet. He says, “Well!” The car keys in his hand jingle.

  When he’s gone I wonder briefly about the implications of their having noticed the change but misunderstood its source. At the time, it doesn’t seem particularly important.

  HOWARD FLINGS THE HOMOSEXUAL PORNOGRAPHY on the table in front of me. It spills open. It is well read; you have to assume someone had it before Sam. Men with penises in each other’s mouths, ropes of sperm.

  “Under his mattress,” says Howard.

  Well, I say, he’s not very original.

  Howard points at it, once, a finger stab. “Look at it, Anne.”

  He turns, leaving. Wait, I say, and he stops. I am searching for what I want to say to him. From the back, his arms bulge slightly from his sides with anger, but this is merely puffery, a mask of the pain he feels. So, I think dryly, Howard is a man after all. Yes, love made him strong, but fear, it turns out, makes him weak. A man.