Following Grandpa Jess

by TJ Baer

  “The babbly part, or the part about loving you?”

  “The part about loving me.”

  I squeezed his fingers and waited until he’d opened his eyes before saying, my gaze fixed on his, “I love you.”

  The smile that came to his face was so bright it almost blinded me. “And you’re not just saying that?”

  “In the middle of a crowded restaurant with the waiter standing a few feet away looking impatient? Not a chance.”

  And before I could change my mind, I leaned across the table and kissed him.

  We were both grinning as I sat back in my chair, though the waiter’s impatient frown had been upgraded to a look of utter shock—suggesting that, up until this moment, his waiting career had perhaps been somewhat devoid of kissing men.

  I cleared my throat and, with dignity, opened my menu.

  “I think I’ll have the sag paneer,” I said, “with an order of rice and a half-order of naan. Oh, and a mango lassi.”

  The waiter didn’t move for several seconds, then made a few half-hearted notes on his notepad.

  He turned to David, his voice weak but struggling for politeness. “And for you, sir?”

  “Hm… I’ll go with the butter chicken, rice, and naan, with a cup of masala tea.”

  The waiter nodded, gathered up our menus, and headed for the kitchen at high speed.

  David and I looked at each other, then burst out laughing. And even though several surrounding patrons were still staring at us, I took his hand in both of mine and held it tightly. I didn’t say anything, and neither did he, and after a while I felt the interest of our neighbors drifting back to their own food and their own conversations, leaving David and me in our own private bubble of warmth and smiles and candlelight.

  By the time our food came, we’d shifted into less dramatic topics of conversation, and made it through our main courses without any further tabletop make-out sessions or declarations of undying love. We were just contemplating dessert when David’s phone started buzzing; he dug it out of his pocket, flashed me a quick look of apology, and brought it up to his ear.

  “Hello?” He smiled. “Mom, hi. …Sure, that’s no problem. No, I don’t mind bringing them over tonight. Which books did you say Julie needs for her project?” He pulled out a pen and scribbled a few incomprehensible notes on the nearest napkin. “Mm-hm. Okay. Sure, I’ll bring them by later tonight. What? Oh, no, you don’t need to cook anything for me. No, honestly. I’m just finishing up dinner now.”

  David listened for a moment, then something changed in his expression, and he reached across the table to take my hand again. “Actually, I’m out on a date.”

  The breath caught in my throat, and my own words echoed back to me, ringing accusingly in my ears: Are you seriously ready to make this your life? Introduce me to your friends, invite me home for dinner with the family?

  Seeing the look on David’s face and feeling his fingers tightening around mine, I realized with a sudden, wrenching foreboding that he was actually intending to come out to his mother right here, right now, on the phone. Because he thought that was what I wanted him to do.

  “David, wait,” I said. “Wait-wait-wait.”

  He looked like he was going to ignore me at first, but then he caught sight of my expression and said, “Sorry, Mom, hold on for a minute.” He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. “What is it?”

  “David, you absolutely, one hundred percent don’t have to do this,” I said in a rush. “Not yet, anyway. There’ll be plenty of time to come out to your parents, and there’s no rush to do it right away. I mean, God, it took me years to come out to my mom and dad, and for you it’s been what, a few days?” I leaned closer, my voice low and urgent. “What I’m saying is, if you’re doing this for me, you don’t have to. You really, really don’t have to.”

  I could hear the sound of his mother’s voice coming through the phone, tinny and questioning. David let this go on for another moment, then removed his hand from the mouthpiece and took a deep breath. “There’s no ‘her,’” he said to his mother, his voice absolutely calm. “His name is Jess.”

  There was a heavy silence from the other end of the phone, and I imagined a mushroom cloud of shock billowing up from David’s parents’ house.

  Finally, a reply.

  “I’m not joking,” David said. “I know it’s a surprise, but—” He winced. “It has nothing to do with Jen. It’s not a rash decision. I’ve been thinking about it for months, and…it’s not about being gay so much as it’s about falling in love with someone who…if you met him, I’m sure you’d…”

  As the tirade continued, I resisted the urge to sink down in my seat and vanish under the table. Instead I kept a supportive grip on David’s hand and tried not to think about my own coming out, which had likewise been somewhat badly received, though perhaps less unexpected.

  “Fine,” David said at last, tiredly, “we’ll talk about it when I come over. All right. See you soon.” He hung up and, with more care than was really necessary, returned the phone to his pocket.

  Neither of us said anything for a while.

  “It’ll get easier,” I said quietly. “After they’ve had some time to get used to it, it’ll be a lot easier.”

  David nodded vaguely and didn’t answer, his gaze fixed on the empty space beyond my right shoulder.

  “This kind of thing is always a shock for parents, even when it maybe shouldn’t be. I mean, my parents were shocked, and…hello, look at me.”

  A quick flicker of a smile touched his lips. “I’m not even really sure what I was expecting,” he said. “I knew she’d be surprised, but I didn’t think she’d be so…angry.”

  “Are you sorry you told her?”

  There was no hesitation. “No. And before you start torturing yourself with guilt, I didn’t do it for you. I did it for me. I’ve always been open with my parents about who I am and what’s important to me—who’s important to me—and I don’t want to stop that now. They’ll come around.”

  Mine still hadn’t, but I didn’t want to discourage him, so I just patted his hand. “They absolutely will.” I hesitated, not sure if I should ask, then did it anyway. “Do, um, do you want me to come with you when you go over there?”

  The look of self-assurance flickered, just for a second. “I couldn’t ask you to do that.”

  “You’re not asking me,” I said gently. “I’m offering.”

  I squeezed his hand and, when the check came a few minutes later, I handed the waiter some cash and got to my feet. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go talk to your parents.”

  *

  By the time we pulled up in front of David’s parents’ house, my confidence had taken a nose dive and I was starting to wonder why I’d insisted on coming. Despite my recent induction into David’s romantic life, I was still an outsider in all this, and what right did I have to jump into the middle of a very private discussion between a son and his parents?

  One look at David, though, and I knew I’d made the right decision. I’d never seen him looking so nervous before, his features taut and lined, his hands clenching and unclenching on the steering wheel.

  I unbuckled my seat belt and slid over so I could wrap my arm around him, rest my head on his shoulder. We sat that way for a few moments, the car clicking and cooling around us, before I felt his muscles start to relax.

  “When you told your parents,” he said after a while, “what happened?”

  I flinched, not particularly wanting to venture back into the dark days of my youth, but knowing at the same time that it was important to him. Important to know that he wasn’t alone, that someone else had been down the same road and come through intact.

  Well, mostly intact.

  “They, um, they were pretty shocked at first. I mean, I’d never really been very interested in girls, but I think they just figured I was a late bloomer. Really, really late.”

  “How old were you when you told them?”

  �
��Nineteen. I was home from college for the summer, and my mom—maybe in some last desperate attempt to get me interested in girls—kept trying to set me up on dates. She pestered me so much that I actually went out with some of them, awkward and weird though it was. And you know, I actually kind of wished that I would suddenly fall for one of them. It would’ve made things so much easier.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “I didn’t. I mean, I liked some of them, but it was always in a hey, this girl would be a cool person to hang out with kind of way, never in a hey, I want to kiss this girl kind of way. The whole thing really backfired on my mom, I guess, because it made me realize with absolute, no question certainty that I really was gay.”

  “What made you decide to tell your parents?”

  I grinned. “Actually, AJ made the decision for me. At dinner, my mom was always asking me about the girls I’d been out with—you know, what we did, what I thought about them, if I’d be seeing them again, things like that. One night we were sitting at dinner and she asked me the same kinds of questions, and as usual, I told her that yeah, the girl had been very nice, but I just wasn’t interested. Right away, she started suggesting another girl I could date, and AJ slammed down his fork and said, ‘Mom, are you stupid? He’s gay! Stop setting him up with girls!’”

  David let out a surprised laugh. “He said that?”

  “Yep. There was this stunned silence, and then my mom said, ‘Very funny, AJ,’ and went back to her mashed potatoes, and my dad went back to his newspaper, and that could’ve been that. I could’ve just laughed it off and stayed in the closet for another year or ten years or the rest of my life. But it just felt so wrong. And I thought about going on more pointless dates, or maybe being pestered into a pointless marriage someday, and I just couldn’t do it. So I told them.”

  I closed my eyes, remembering.

  “My mom didn’t believe me at first. Then she started trying to talk me out of it, saying that I just hadn’t met the right girl, I should be more patient, et cetera. But my dad…” I tried to keep my voice light, but I could hear the strain in it as I continued. “He didn’t say anything. He just looked at me with this awful look of disappointment on his face, like I’d let him down in a way he could never forgive. After awhile, he got up and left the table, and I think he spent the rest of the night locked up in his study.”

  I sat up and let out a breath. “Anyway, things were awkward for a little while after that, but my mom didn’t try to set me up on any more dates, and my dad eventually started speaking to me again. It helped that I wasn’t living with them. I was away at college most of the time, and after I graduated, I got my own place and only saw them every now and then. We never talked about me being gay, and they’re still pretty determined to keep it a secret from everyone we know. Which is kind of depressing, now that I think about it.” I gave a wincing smile. “Man, that story really didn’t work too well as a pep talk, did it?”

  In the darkness of the car, David’s hand found mine and gave my fingers a gentle squeeze. “Actually, it did.”

  “Ha, right.”

  “No, I’m serious. If you could do that when you were only nineteen, then what excuse do I have? And you did it alone.”

  “With a little help from AJ.”

  “Right. But you didn’t have anyone there to support you or hold your hand.” His voice softened. “If you’re here with me, I feel like I can do anything.”

  A warm fluttering started in my chest, and I gave an embarrassed laugh. “Wow, that was cheesy.”

  “Cheesy, yes. But also true.” He leaned in to give me a quick, light kiss on the lips, then sat back and took a deep breath. “All right,” he said, “let’s do this.”

  We walked up to the house hand in hand. As we started up the front steps, the porch light flicked on, shining a bright spotlight on us and making me feel strangely exposed. A dog started barking somewhere inside the house, grating and high-pitched.

  A small eternity later, we came to a halt in front of a slightly tattered welcome mat, exchanged one last, this is it kind of glance, and then David reached up and rang the doorbell.

  A few seconds passed with more barking, then I heard a woman’s voice shushing the dog, and the click of a lock disengaging. The door swung inward, revealing a petite Asian woman with graying black hair and the kind of smooth, porcelain-like skin that made it hard to place her age. She didn’t smile when she saw us, and her eyes lingered on me for a long moment before turning to David.

  “Mom,” he said, and although his voice was steady, I could feel his fingers trembling in mine. “This is Jess.”

  She nodded and didn’t look in my direction. “Come in. Your father’s waiting in the living room.”

  And instead of opening the door a bit wider and ushering us inside, she took a step backward and folded her arms.

  Well, this is awkward.

  With no further encouragement forthcoming, we made our way into the house, and soon were standing in a little entryway with a black-and-white tiled floor and a line of family photos on the wall. The house was warm and a little stuffy, with mingling scents of vanilla and baked chicken, plus a faint odor of dog hair lurking underneath. I could hear a TV from somewhere upstairs, and a scratching and whining that suggested the dog had been sequestered against his will in one of the bedrooms.

  “I brought the books for Julie’s project,” David said, hefting a weighty plastic bag. “Do you want me to—”

  “Just put them anywhere,” his mother said, already shuffling away down the hall ahead of us.

  David held on to the bag for another moment, then sighed and set it down against the nearest wall.

  “Sorry about this,” he said.

  “No worries,” I said lightly. I gave his hand a little squeeze. “Shall we?”

  The living room was waiting for us at the end of the hall, a cozy space with plush carpeting and a big brown couch. A man—Mr. Keagan, my Sherlock Holmes instincts informed me—was sitting on the couch reading a worn hardback book, tilting the pages toward a nearby lamp. He looked a lot like David, with the same high cheekbones and warm brown eyes, though he was a little plumper, with thinning brown hair and glasses. There was a mild, friendly look to his features that made me feel a bit more at ease, and when he finally looked up and saw us in the doorway, he actually smiled. Mrs. Keagan was standing beside us with her arms crossed, radiating ice, but David’s dad smiled at us—both of us—and then got to his feet and enfolded his son in a hug.

  “I’m glad you came,” Mr. Keagan said warmly, giving David’s back a few fatherly pats. “I know it can’t have been easy.” He turned to me. “And you must be Jess.”

  “Uh…yeah,” I said, surprised at actually being addressed like a human being. “It’s, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

  “Even if under slightly awkward circumstances. Well, please, have a seat. No need for us to hover in the doorway.”

  David and I ended up seated side by side on the couch with Mr. Keagan, while Mrs. Keagan lowered herself rigidly into a nearby armchair.

  “Well, David,” Mr. Keagan said, continuing his role as unofficial master of ceremonies, “it seems your mother wishes us to have a conversation. Would you like to start, or would you like to give that privilege to the Prosecution?”

  Mrs. Keagan shot him a dark look. “Really, Nathan, this isn’t a joke.”

  “And neither is it an inquisition. David is a grown man, and he has the right to do what he likes.”

  “You’re not the least bit bothered by this? Your son shows up with a…with a man in leather pants, and that doesn’t bother you?”

  “For the record,” I said, “I’m usually more of a jeans kind of guy…”

  “David,” Mrs. Keagan said, a new kind of desperation in her tone, “I realize how hard it’s been for you since Jen left, but that’s no reason to do something like this. If you just give it some more time, you’ll find someone else, you’ll fall in love again—”


  “I already have,” David said. His voice was calm and measured, completely confident. “Mom, this has nothing to do with Jen. It has to do with Jess, and how we feel about each other. I love him, and I’m happy being with him, and that’s all there is to it. I know it’s not what you expected, but it’s true.”

  She gave a disbelieving laugh. “This is crazy. Are you saying you’re going to spend the rest of your life like this? You’re going to just give up on having a family? A wife, children, a normal life? Do you honestly think you can be happy like this?”

  “Yes, I do. As long as I’m with someone I love, I will be happy.”

  “But what about having children?” Mrs. Keagan persisted. “You’ve always wanted kids, haven’t you? You and Jen never got around to having any, but it’s not too late. You’re only twenty-nine. You have plenty of time to find the right woman. Don’t give up on all of that for some…momentary good time.”

  David rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Mom, you’re not listening to me. I’m not giving up on anything. I’m doing what makes me happy.”

  “Maybe it makes you happy now, but what about the future? Can you seriously see yourself spending the rest of your life with this…this man?”

  “It’s a bit early to be thinking about spending their lives together,” Mr. Keagan put in mildly. “And if they do, and they decide that their lives just aren’t complete without children, there’s always adoption.”

  “I can’t believe you’re encouraging him!”

  “And I can’t believe you’re not,” Mr. Keagan said, his voice suddenly hard. “What did your parents say when you told them you wanted to marry me?”

  She stared at him in silent outrage for a moment, then looked down at the carpet. “That was different.”

  “Was it? They thought you’d gone crazy, wanting to marry a gaijin. They told you to just keep looking, wait until you found a nice Japanese man, and what did you tell them?”

  She said nothing, her jaw tight.

  “You said, ‘This is the man I love. He makes me happy, and I’m going to be with him whether you like it or not.’” His eyes softened, and he reached out to take her hand in his. “I couldn’t believe how strong you were, Michi, standing up to them like that. And in the end, even though they didn’t like it, they supported you. How can you think that this is any different?”