by Greg Johnson
If Thom stayed quieter than usual during the meal, the others didn’t seem to notice—not even Abby. By nine-thirty they were finishing their third bottle of wine, and the conversation had been so avid that Connie and Valerie—the most energetic talkers—hadn’t finished their main course. The raspberry cheesecake Thom had bought at Alon’s still waited in the refrigerator. Just as he was wondering if it would be rude to start the coffee, Valerie put down her fork and sat back with a small, apologetic smile.
“I hope you guys don’t mind, but I’ve got to dash out to the porch.”
This was her third dash out to the porch since they’d sat down. Again Thom said he didn’t care if she smoked in the house, and again she exclaimed she wouldn’t dream of such a thing.
“You know, I sort of miss smoke-filled rooms,” Connie said with a sigh, as Valerie hurried out. He lifted his wineglass and downed his last swallow with a ceremonial flourish. “It added atmosphere to a dinner party, you know? I miss all the little gestures—the way people lit the things, and crimped their lips, and waved the smoke away so you could see each other. And the different ways people stubbed them out. And how you would watch someone’s ash getting longer, wondering if they’d notice before it fell.”
“Yeah,” Warren said. “And the coughing. And the irritated eyes.”
“And the way your shirt would smell the next morning,” Thom said.
Abby laughed, while Chip looked blankly around at the others.
“You guys used to smoke?” he said.
Connie gave the raspy bark he’d perfected as a response to Chip’s remarks. These past few months, Connie hadn’t done much to disguise the fact that he had little use for Thorn’s boyfriend. Before Christmas, when they’d first discussed the Key West trip, Chip had said with boyish enthusiasm that he’d done a graduate project on marine life in south Florida and was looking forward to inspecting the area firsthand; Connie had laughed acidly, saying he’d been to Key West a dozen times and had never gone near the beach. The other day on the phone, Connie had drawled, “Thom, your inamorata is coming with us, isn’t he? We’ll all so want to hear a lecture on the local flora and fauna.”
Now Connie said, “Yes, Chip dear, we all smoked back in the olden days, while we watched our porn on eight-millimeter projectors, and discussed whether we liked Greek or French.”
“Greek or French?” Chip said, glancing around.
Connie tittered brightly and rolled his eyes.
“Behave yourself,” Abby said, in the light, scolding tone she often used with Connie.
“Yes, teacher,” Connie said. He gazed plaintively across at Thom, holding out his glass. “Please, sir, may I have a little more?”
Thom smiled noncommittally; he saw how quietly Warren sat next to Connie, staring down at his plate.
“I was just going to ask about coffee,” Thom said.
“You and your coffee!” Connie cried. “You’d think you’d been raised by Mrs. Olsen. Chip, do you know who Mrs. Olsen was?”
Before he could answer, the front door slammed shut and Valerie rushed inside, flapping her arms. Thom blinked: it always seemed odd to him that Valerie was here. Tonight she wore a fawn-colored wool suit, and as usual her glossy dark hair and heavy makeup were as carefully tended as any Buckhead matron’s. A stranger might think she was a visiting aunt, though she was probably in her mid forties, not much older than Connie. She had melded into their little group easily, though repeating often that the only gay man she’d known before was her hairdresser. “Possibly also the man who does my taxes,” she would add. And maybe one of her nephews, as well, a sweet college-age boy—her favorite nephew, in fact. The other night Connie had told Valerie she’d had a misspent youth as a closeted fag hag, but she’d found herself at last.
It amazed Thom that Valerie had changed so much in the weeks since she’d appeared on his doorstep, mascara-stained tears running down her cheeks. Barging into their Christmas Eve party. It wasn’t like Abby to befriend someone so quickly, he’d thought, especially on an airplane, but these days Abby often surprised him. That night, after everyone had left, he’d suggested that her own kindness might have misled her, and had even wondered aloud if Valerie Patten was unstable, possibly even mentally ill…?
Abby had laughed. “It’s her ex-husband who’s unstable,” she said. He’d thought he detected a note of asperity in her voice. “Valerie is very sweet, I think—very vulnerable,” she’d added, and though it struck him that Abby protested too much, he’d said nothing.
Nor had he objected when she’d invited Valerie over again for dinner the following week. By then, Marty had returned from the visit to his mother and was “a changed man,” Valerie reported, with an odd mix of girlish happiness and ironic disbelief. He’d apologized profusely for ditching her on Christmas Eve, blaming some new medication his psychiatrist had prescribed that caused him to do random, impulsive things, to run away from his problems instead of confronting them.
“It was so nice to hear myself described as a ‘problem’!” Valerie had said giddily, sipping at her wine. Then her voice lowered, and in a husky murmur she added, “Still, we’re very hopeful this time. We really have made a new start, I think… He even hinted about joining me tonight—and it was sweet of you to include him in the invitation, Abby—but I said no, these are my friends, and my not having any life or friends of my own, apart from you, was one of the problems in our marriage to begin with.” Valerie had nodded vigorously and gazed across the table at Abby with glistening eyes. “I really owe you so much, Abby,” she’d said, reaching again for her wine. “If I hadn’t met you on that airplane, what would I… I mean, on Christmas Eve I was at my wit’s end, and—” She’d paused, closing her eyes.
When she opened them again, it seemed she had recovered. She had an odd, childlike resilience, this Valerie Patten; Thom couldn’t deny that she was enormously likable. Before Abby or Thom could respond, she’d tilted her head, as though struck by a new idea.
“Isn’t it amazing, how big a role pure chance plays in our lives? I mean, what if we hadn’t happened to be seated together in that airplane? For that matter, I met at least a couple of my husbands in odd circumstances—with Marty, it was a taxi shelter in Center City where we’d huddled together because it had started to pour down rain and neither of us had our umbrellas. Just like in a movie! We’d been walking down Walnut Street—he was in town on business, I was out shopping or something—and we both ran under this shelter and we got to talking—” She’d stopped, glancing self-consciously at Thom and Abby. “I’m sorry, I’m talking way too much,” she said. “It’s just that I feel so comfortable with you guys…and things are so much better now in my life, and I feel like I owe you, somehow, both of you….”
Thom and Abby told her not to be silly: they were glad they’d met her too.
“You can never have too many friends,” Abby said, and Thom grinned, nodding.
“Never,” he said.
He’d refilled their wineglasses, and they’d sat discussing all the chance encounters in their lives and how important they’d been and how no one had much control, really, over whom they would meet, over whom they would love and befriend or where they would live or what they would ultimately make of their lives…. It was all chance, really. Pure blind chance. They’d all agreed on that.
“Whoosh, it’s chilly out there!” Valerie said now, settling back into her seat.
“Just think,” Abby said, “in a couple of weeks we’ll be down in Florida, lying by the pool.”
“I hope I’m lying next to more than the pool,” Connie said. He directed an abrupt, imperious glance across at Thom. “How about some champagne with dessert? I mean, it is Valentine’s Day. Aren’t we supposed to celebrate or something?”
“Celebrate what?” Warren said.
These were the first words he’d spoken in quite a while.
Half an hour later they’d gathered in the living room, dessert plates perched on their laps, champ
agne flutes and coffee cups scattered about the room. Exhausted, Thom had taken the chair near the darkened fireplace—last week he’d run out of logs and had forgotten to buy more—and he stayed quiet, letting the others enjoy themselves. Even Chip had drunk more than usual tonight. He’d focused most of his attention on the high-spirited banter from the sofa, where Connie sat in the middle with Abby and Valerie on either side. Thorn’s gaze kept straying to Chip, but his boyfriend seldom looked at him.
Every few minutes, though, Abby did glance over, and they exchanged their companionable smiles. She’d worn one of the blouses he gave her for Christmas—wide red and black stripes, with a snugly fitting black wool skirt—and of course he was wearing the Rolex watch she’d bought him at Maier & Berkele, an extravagant gift that had moved him almost to tears. The watch was slender and elegant, with a silver mesh band—the kind of thing he’d never have bought for himself. He supposed it clashed with his casual, cheerfully mismatched wardrobe, but he didn’t care. He would wear the watch for the rest of his life.
He sat peaceably as the others’ alcohol-fueled chatter filled the room, listening vaguely. For some reason he thought of his father: his gentle, quiet-mannered father, who had often sat like this in their den after dinner, while Lucille and Thom and Abby would laugh and exclaim over family and neighborhood news, over some silly program they were watching on television. Thom would glimpse the meditative contentment in his father’s eyes as he rested in his overstuffed wingback, usually with a newspaper on his lap but seldom reading it, simply enjoying his family’s company, and Thom had hoped he might achieve a similar contentment when he was older. The other night, on the way home from dinner at Bacchanalia with Connie and Warren—Abby having gone out with one of her “old friends”—they were stopped at a red light when impulsively Connie had bent over and had given Thom a quick, embarrassed hug, offering one of those touching remarks Connie made sometimes that redeemed all his silly behavior, his tireless self-absorption.
“You know,” he’d said, apropos of nothing, “you guys are my family. I don’t know what I’d do without you two, and Abby and Pace, and now cute little Valerie. And God, how I miss Carter.”
Thom had shot a quick look in the rearview mirror; Warren sat looking small and alone in the backseat, his eyes stricken with emotion.
“That’s sweet,” Thom had said. “Thanks, Connie. I feel the same way.”
They’d said nothing else for the rest of the drive.
Thom was worried about Connie. Tonight he’d launched into one of his favorite monologues, the others’ laughter washing around him as he described some of his high jinks on his and Warren’s last trip to Key West, where Connie claimed he’d had a hot-tub encounter with a tall Swedish college student late one night, then the next day found out that “Jakob” was fifteen and had sneaked away from the Pier House, where he was staying with his parents. In previous versions Thom had heard Jakob was thirteen and staying at the Marriott with his divorced gay father; or sixteen and staying at Lighthouse Court with his gay older brother. The variations depended, Thom believed, on how many cocktails Connie had consumed when he told the story, and as Thom listened he wondered if the others noticed the exaggerated dartings of Connie’s hands, the squeak of desperation in his ribald, high-pitched laugh.
“And there he was, my young Swedish Tadzio, sitting with his gorgeous blond mother who looked about thirty-five, and his father who looked like a handsome Nazi, and what does he do when I walk into the restaurant but wave at me, and motion me over to the table! He’s going to introduce me to Mom and Dad! Connie Lefcourt, meet my volks! Volks, meet the American queen who blew me last night in the hot tub! My God, I hightailed it out of there like my shorts were on fire.”
Valerie had bent over double, giving her throaty, croaking laugh. “Oh, Connie, that’s too much!”
Abby and Chip were laughing, too, though more at Connie’s animation, Thom supposed, than at the story itself. Only Warren seemed unimpressed; he sat slumped in his chair, staring glumly down into his coffee. What worried Thom was that Warren no longer bothered to gently mock or contradict Connie’s outrageous recollections (for surely Warren had been there, and knew what had really happened). Thom knew that if he was worried about Connie, then Warren must be scared to death, and several times in the past few weeks, after getting one of Connie’s frantic phone calls, Thom had thought of calling Warren at his office. They ought to compare notes, really, and figure out what was going on between Connie and his father. Only this morning Connie had phoned Thom at work, insisting tearfully that his father kept calling him up, drunk, and threatening him.
“He’s just blowing off steam,” Thom had said. “Don’t let him get to you.”
“I know, I know—it’s just that he always calls first thing in the morning, and then the rest of my day is shot.”
“Well, he’s having a hard time,” Thom said. “Remember, this is his second—” He broke off, wincing.
“I know, and they are both my fault,” Connie had said, laughing bitterly.
“I didn’t mean that,” Thom said.
These conversations with Connie were like tiptoeing through a minefield. Only last week, Connie had hung up on him, exclaiming that Thom was “defending” Connie’s father. Now that Mr. Lefcourt’s second wife had been diagnosed with breast cancer, Thom speculated that he was reliving the death of his great love, Connie’s mother, whose uterine cancer Mr. Lefcourt had somehow attributed to her difficult pregnancy with Connie.
Unlike Connie, who had a few cocktails every evening but seldom became severely intoxicated, Mr. Lefcourt was a binge drinker: he could go years without touching a drop, then he’d have episodes of near-ceaseless drinking that resulted in irrational, wildly abusive behavior. After years of little communication, he’d kept phoning Connie and lambasting him for a variety of crimes, especially his “faggotry,” as Mr. Lefcourt called it, and his inability to “make something” of himself. Since Connie’s trust fund, established by his mother shortly before her death, enabled him to live comfortably without regular employment, Thom supposed that was the core of the problem. To a man like Mr. Lefcourt, money equaled love, so Connie had benefited all his life from the stream of his mother’s love that had been diverted from his father. It was the ancient drama of a mother transferring her affection from her husband to her child, though Thom knew there was no point in trying to explain this to Connie. He would be accused again of “defending” his abusive, drunken father. Instead, he’d done as Connie seemed to require, offering sympathy but not advice—certainly not advice that might be difficult to follow.
When Connie had called this morning, Thom had bent his own rule a little when Connie had mentioned his stepmother’s impending death.
“Daddy dearest says she’ll die within the next few days. What I’m really worried about, Thom, is the funeral. I don’t dare go, in case he’s drunk and makes a scene with me right in front of the woman’s casket. But I don’t dare not go, either.”
“You’ll have to go,” Thom said gently. “I mean, she is your stepmother.”
“That’s easy for you to say!” Connie cried.
Thom had paused, not sure if Connie was being sarcastic; of course, he knew that Thom had not attended his own father’s funeral. He’d said, “Look, Connie, it’s not going to be an easy few days, but you’ll have to go through with it. Your father is a big shot in Oklahoma City, isn’t he? All his friends and associates will be at that funeral. He’s not going to make a scene. The rest of the time, you can avoid him if you have to.”
Connie had exhaled, noisily. “You’re right, Thom honey, I’m sorry. My nerves are just frazzled, I guess. I hope I’m not miserable company at your dinner party tonight.”
But now the party was winding down—it was almost eleven, Valerie had been the first to glance at her watch and say she’d better get going—and Connie seemed as bubbly and energetic as always.
“Must you, Val?” he said, disappointed. “Give M
arty hell, now, for not taking you out on Valentine’s Day.”
“Well, his mom is sick again,” Valerie said. “He couldn’t help it, he said he really ought to stay by the phone. And he did bring me two dozen red roses this morning.”
Everyone gave the obligatory “Oooh.” Connie added, “I can’t remember the last time a man brought me flowers.”
“I sent you pink glads last year on your birthday,” Warren said. He sounded hurt. “Pink glads are your favorite.”
Thom knew Connie so well, he could hear the phrase fully formed on Connie’s tongue: But you don’t count, Warren honey. I meant flowers from a boyfriend. As Connie’s lips parted, Thom said quickly, “OK, did we decide everything?”
“Decide?” Valerie said blankly.
Abby said, smiling, “About Key West. I guess we did, didn’t we? Valerie and I will stay at Pier House, and the rest of you…what was it, the Brass Door? Warren is making the reservations and ordering the tickets.”
“The Brass Key,” Thom said. “Thanks for doing that, Warren. Put my ticket and Abby’s on my credit card. I’ll call you tomorrow with the number.”
“Me, too,” Valerie said. She stood, smoothing out her skirt. “Thanks for the lovely dinner, Thom! I really need to skeedaddle.”
“Skeedaddle!” Connie cried. “Did you hear that? You’re too much, Dorothy.”
Earlier in the evening Connie had announced, as if he’d invented the phrase, that they were all friends of Dorothy; and that Valerie Patten was, in fact, Dorothy.
“Now, you’d better behave, or I’m going to start calling you Constance,” Valerie said with a little moue.
Warren had risen, too. “That would be a misnomer, wouldn’t it?” he said. “Come on, Connie, we’d better get home, too.”
Connie stood and stretched his arms, sighing. He laughed abruptly. “Remember that Lucy episode, where she got drunk doing the commercial for that vitamin tonic—what was it? Wait, I remember—Vita…meata…vegamin! My favorite line in all of television: ‘Do you pop out at parties?’”
