Fallow Park Today

by Joseph Glenn

  “Of course,” she replied. “Isn’t that how it’s always done? It doesn’t fool anyone, but it still serves its purpose. It’s a cover story that preempts probing.”

  “How down to the last clichéd detail did you get?”

  “All the way. The woman across the street, Tyler’s adoptive mother, was a gynecologist, so it was possible for Tyler to be born at home, of course. We even bought a basket and a baby blanket. I wrote the note—with my left, my non-dominant hand: ‘Please take care of my baby.’ So they’d have something to show the police and the welfare people.”

  “And that’s how they were able to raise him?”

  “Yes. We were all in on it.”

  “Quite a concerted effort, but why all the fuss? A child born out of wedlock. Who cares about that today?”

  “It was all for my benefit,” she said. “There’s nothing shocking or sordid about this age-old story. It’s the giving the baby away that seems to be the problem. I couldn’t face the disapproval of people—remember, I was just in high school—treating me like I had abandoned my baby for the seemingly selfish reasons of wanting to continue pursuing my own goals, my own plans.

  Jack was silent and seemed to be mulling this.

  Meredith continued, “Maybe it seems foolish now, an unnecessary amount of scheming, but it was perfectly rational at the time. And everything worked out for the best.”

  “Best?”

  “Well, I don’t know how it could have played out better. That is, during the first part of his life. Now he’s in Fallow Park, but that would have happened under any circumstances.”

  “When did you break the whole story to the boy?”

  “We didn’t tell Tyler the whole story until he was in fourth grade, he was ten by then. But he knew me well. He thought of me as his friend and favorite babysitter. It was agreed that I would spend as much time with him as possible, which I did until I went to New York and L.A. I helped raise him as much as I could.”

  “He must have been tested at an early age?”

  “Right away. That had become standard for babies and infants. By then the testing had become a legal requirement, especially for babies in Tyler’s situation. He was an abandoned baby, a ward of the state while the Travers arranged the adoption. So it was a necessary part of the adoption process. It was a shock at first—isn’t it always to the parents?—but it worked to our advantage. Naturally, the Travers told the county people they were still interested in adopting this foundling left at their doorstep, and because it had become difficult to place gay kids in homes their application went through quickly. It was uncontested. They did understand, to be sure, that they would have to undergo special counseling; that was also mandated by the state. The counseling, as I’m sure you know, was designed less to help raise a gay child as to help the parents of said child adjust to their new status. It’s still viewed as ‘such a burden’ for the parents.”

  “And later, when you were working, when he was out of high school, you brought him out to L.A.?”

  “I helped him get started. He didn’t have much interest or aptitude for hairdressing at first, but he learned to love it. He might have had an aptitude for performing, but that was obviously out of the question. Gay people couldn’t break into the business by then, not even in insulting character roles. The industry unofficially blackballed gay actors. The justification was that it wasn’t worth the protests and threatened boycotts that came with hiring gay people for high profile jobs, especially jobs that provided a comfortable living. To do so would deny the work to a straight (or as many put it: normal, healthy) actor. So Tyler found work behind the cameras. At least I was able to keep him nearby. It was the perfect cover. He had an almost stereotypical profession, and one that people left alone. When it all hit the fan and gays were scapegoated for every evil in society, people like Tyler were left pretty much alone. He wasn’t in the media, or in politics, or in a profession that a lot of straight men were clamoring to join. Nor was he viewed as a threat to neighborhoods; he always lived in predominantly gay areas—easily targeted for harassment, but no one was trying to chase him or his neighbors away to take over their housing. Until the parks came along, he lived a relatively undisturbed life.”

  “Undisturbed?” he asked with what Meredith took to be skepticism. “You mean with less fear than most gay men.”

  “Exactly,” she said with certainty. She rushed on with her explanation: “Probably the best life he could, given the climate by then. Tyler never knew the world of gay men who appeared to be straight—straight enough to avoid harassment or intimidation. He never lived in the world where straight was the default and all members of society were presumed to be heterosexual at least until evidence to the contrary presented itself. To be sure, he worried about gay bashing and other overt violent acts. Just like all other gays, he learned to look over his shoulder. But it was a better life than this. He had some control over his actions and the piece of the world he carved out as his own. In his gay ghetto with a decent paying, semi-glamorous job, he had a decent life.”

  “And befriending a big TV star didn’t hurt his reputation either.”

  “No, that’s absolutely true,” she stated immodestly. “In that way, too, I was able to help him. Even though I couldn’t acknowledge he was my son, I could positively impact his life, make his way a little easier. Yes, he got a fair bit of mileage out of the fact that he was well connected to a celebrity. And because I was perceived as a wealthy, somewhat eccentric actress, it didn’t raise any eyebrows if we spent a great deal of time together, or if I made generous gifts of things like vacations or a down payment for a condominium. We lived in relative peace and ‘under the radar,’ as you put it.”

  “But all things come to an end,” he said with anticipation.

  “Tyler wasn’t gay in a small way. He was so openly gay from an early age, even before he learned about the genetic testing he had undergone as a baby, the testing that confirmed the fact. And, of course, things started getting pretty bad at that point. Even in his profession it became difficult to find employment. People started balking at the idea of a gay guy’s hands in their hair. Odd, given the previous generations who took such things for granted. Even in the most homophobic of times in the last century, a gay hairdresser was considered no big deal. But once gay people were marked, there was a sense of leprosy about them. What am I telling you, you don’t already know? You—they—became society’s untouchables.”

  “And so he came to reside in the parks?”

  “He was one of the volunteers. He was here from the beginning. It was a big deal to him that he was able to make the choice himself. He was dead set against the idea of leaving the country, even though most of his friends did. Everyone did—the government seemed to encourage it. That was before The Age of Embarrassment began. Tyler was concerned about the difficulties he might face trying to make a life for himself outside the U.S. Even though many countries embraced the U.S. gays seeking asylum, many of the transplants had a hard time making a go of it in their adopted countries. The rush of men and women from the U.S. placed an enormous burden on those countries. And the U.S. media really played that up. It was an odd situation; the public opinion was very much ‘get rid of these people,’ but it looked bad for the U.S. that they could not make a place for them and that so many chose to flee. So of course, in keeping with the generally unfavorable depiction of gay people at the time, any story about how difficult the transplanted were having in Canada, the U.K, France, etcetera, was played up in the press. The U.S. response was to say this is what happens to them for turning their backs on this country.”

  “It was a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation,” Jack clarified. “Stay and live as a prisoner, or leave, surrender your citizenship, and hope your adopted country could make room for you.”

  “And even though moving to the parks was voluntary at first, it seemed all but certain that it would become mandatory. So Tyler decided to stay and decided to mov
e to the park when he could still have some control over the situation. Of course, back then there was more freedom to come and go, with the necessary permission and paperwork, so it didn’t seem so much like a prison.”

  “The Age of Embarrassment,” Jack said after a period of time. Meredith was pleased that she had could come up with a combination of words that gave the man a moment for pause. “That’s a good description. The U.S. didn’t know what it wanted. It was embarrassed by the fact that so many found refuge in other countries.” He adopted a booming voice: “The United States, the country that has long fancied itself on the cutting edge of social reform, the leader—the watchdog if you will—of human rights, looked hopelessly backwards. All advances in gay rights—marriage, domestic partnership, anti-discrimination law, the passage of hate crime laws—were gone. Fifty-plus years of hard-won victories wiped out in a matter of eighteen months. Yet, outside the U.S., certainly in advanced countries in the Western world, gay people were able to thrive. And the European press certainly played that up.”

  “To such an extent,” Meredith jumped in, “that the U.S. looked bad. It was shamed on a global stage. It couldn’t protect its gay citizens and was no longer able to ensure a decent quality of life for them, but neighboring countries, and friendly countries all over the globe could.”

  “The U.S. was doomed to fail whatever it did: if they lost more gay people to other countries, the message was that the U.S. was an undesirable place to live. Its reputation as a straights only country was furthered, a reputation repudiated and ridiculed by most of the other world powers. If the U.S. allowed its gay citizens to live free, the prejudice, open and hostile, made the country look barbaric. Yet none of the other countries which had been historically gay friendly suffered those consequences. It was just here in the U.S. that the advances in gay rights were falling by the wayside.”

  “The parks,” Meredith said, “were the illogical conclusion. Don’t let the gay people leave the U.S.; that makes us look bad. It suggests we can’t take care of our own, and that our friends, and occasional friends, or worse, countries with which we’re at odds, are doing us some huge favor. We as a country were shamed by the implicit message: ‘Thank goodness France can pick up our slack and do for us what we ought to be doing ourselves.’ On the other hand: Don’t subject them to the crushing and highly visible discrimination they are currently facing in the U.S., because that also makes us look bad. ‘How can the United States, the wealthiest, the most powerful country, the country perceived as the gold standard for quality of life in the world, allow such treatment of its citizens?’ So someone decided, ‘let’s just put them away somewhere. Let’s just make this problem go away. Surely there must be a way to construct a carpet big enough to sweep all of this under it’.”

  “But that, too, has made the U.S. look bad,” Jack noted flatly, with a tone that sounded like resignation. “It was probably the worst possible solution they could have chosen.”

  “Yet, once they were in place, there was no turning back. To do so would result in a different kind of embarrassment: ‘Oops, that was a zillion dollar experiment that didn’t work.’ Further complicating the matter, many political careers were tied up in making it work.”

  Their reflections over the ensuing months amounted to a montage of talks, a series of clips, a mosaic of pieces of conversation now weaved together as a single cohesive dialogue. They would continue to express these observations and sad summations over the eight months of their acquaintance.

  Now the talks were over and Meredith’s participation would soon be too. She wondered if she were ready for the inevitable come down that follows the execution of such a well-planned, long-rehearsed operation.

  “The great mystery to me,” Jack observed, trespassing on her thoughts, “was how they thought they could pull it off without sparking an international debate—and outrage. It can be said that their efforts to prevent information from going into and out of the parks have more or less failed.”

  “Thanks in no small part to you,” she acknowledge with a nod, raising her brandy as if to make a toast.

  “Me and people like me.” He returned the toast. This, she had become aware, was as close to a compliment as he was able or willing to make. She had long ago learned to understand this about the man. That his colleagues, the like-minded members on his roughly constructed team, were free of egos or the need for constant recognition or praise was an unspoken expectation. As was customary for all social reformers, Meredith had come to understand that he believed—demanded, in fact—the same degree of commitment he had. Working for the cause was payment enough. If it were not, she often reminded herself in her most castigating of tones, were not such a person’s motivations suspect? To participate in the work must be its own reward.

  “And also the ill-advised decision to keep all the inner workings shrouded in secrecy,” Meredith added, “only causing speculation about the poor living conditions—well-founded speculation as it has turned out to be.”

  “Resulting in half-hearted and overdue efforts like this documentary. Propaganda, but for whom? The U.S. population is so conditioned to tune out anything favorable about the parks. Too much of the public has decided that they’re just too much of a drain on resources.”

  “The contradiction they seem unable to recognize is that pulling the gay men and lesbians out of the population results in millions of people who generate no income, but incur significant costs. But the critics of this scenario are the very people who wanted these people out of society—” She looked to him to complete the thought. “It’s as though they want to create a world to suit themselves, to eradicate—erase—the elements they don’t want, yet they want to couch their words, their very actions, their ‘solution’ to a ‘problem’ (that they only perceive to be such), as though their motivations are noble. ‘Yes, we have to do this to you, but you should thank us for it…’”

  “Because it’s unquestionably for your own good,” Jack cut in. “That was always the justification: ‘We’re only doing it for their own good. It isn’t safe for you anywhere else’.”

  “For their own good,” she repeated, “though in the long run it would have been cheaper to offer expenses to resettle them in friendly countries. Several made it clear they were receptive to such an arrangement.”

  “But that, again, would have been too politically embarrassing. It was one thing to allow gays to leave of their own volition—and at their own expense. But how does it look if you pay another country to take a group—a group deemed undesirable here—off your hands? It makes us look weak.”

  “And intolerant,” Meredith added. “That’s the part I can’t get past. We’re supposedly the melting pot. We supposedly welcome diversity, celebrate it, even enforce it. Yet on this frontier we’ve dropped the ball. That’s really what’s at the root of the embarrassment. The homophobic element gained ground when gay people became more identifiable. That was the turning point. When the gay-bashing escalated, a calculated movement began that addressed the ‘issue’ or ‘problem’ of the gay people, where a more civilized approach would have been to come down harder on the bashers. It was pretty much the consensus that the situation was grossly unfair—and unsafe—for the gay and lesbians—”

  “And bisexuals and transgenders.”

  “Of course,” she said. “I’m talking in shorthand. But this perception that ‘something must be done’ came about after too many years of oppression had occurred. It was as if the gay members of society had to be addressed for a problem rooted in the largely unchecked, minimally persecuted gay haters. How did we become a nation of people unable to live and let live?”

  “It’s because no other country reacted in the same way to the role science winds up playing in the picture. So many societies seemed ready to accept, if not embrace, this change in thinking. The U.S. reaction was different. Too many were committed to the notion that it was all a choice; you choose to be gay, you choose to ‘live that way,’ you choose not t
o change. They didn’t have much of an argument when science contradicted them. And now that sexual orientation is known—now that it’s as discernable as the color of your skin, it’s a different game.”

  “And those who welcomed the knowledge, convinced themselves that this greater understanding of homosexuality would lead to greater acceptance, failed to anticipate those who would see the identification, the ability to spot the genetic markers, as reason to terminate pregnancy or to abandon children. I’m afraid it all comes down to scripture.”

  “Much too simple,” Jack said, with a sharp edge to his voice. Meredith reminded herself he traveled with a copy of the Bible. “Don’t forget the Bible has a lot of great stuff in it, like ‘though shall not kill.’”

  “Hmm,” she said after a moment. She added: “And the Golden Rule. It’s a pity the good book thumpers tend to cherry-pick from it.”

  After several moments of silence, Jack snapped them back to present concerns: “What are we going to do about Sybil?”

  She wanted to reach for the brandy bottle, but changed her mind when she reflected on Sybil’s drunken presentation. Sober heads would prevail, and Sybil’s plight was desperate enough it did not require alcohol for punctuation. “I’m not thrilled at the idea of leaving her.”

  “Nor am I. When it all hits the fan, they’re likely to go rough on her. It doesn’t help that she has a history with you, but more than that, now you’ve spent some time with her—including at least two meetings alone. They’re going to assume she knew, maybe even participated in some way. Her participation in this talent show thing tomorrow night only further complicates the matter. She’ll play dumb I trust, but who’ll believe her?”

  “God, I wish I’d known she was here,” Meredith lamented. “We could have included her. We would have had to; it was inevitable Austin would want to reunite us for the film. Some interaction with her was destined to occur. I hadn’t thought about the aftermath for her. She acts so tough, but she’s somewhere in the neighborhood of eighty. I don’t know that she’ll withstand too much cross-examination and brow beating. On the other hand, as a younger woman she would have been a hostile witness. She has such a history of rubbing people the wrong way. And that’s so ingrained in her. If anything, she seems more cantankerous than I remember her to be.” She closed her eyes, but gave up on this escape when the images of Sybil’s treatment only grew more vivid. “No, it won’t go well for her.”