Eye Contact

by Michael Craft

  Later that afternoon, Mark was playing records in his room. Joey and I were horsing around, killing time before dinner, in Joey’s room. He had his own typewriter, a portable Smith-Corona. Its metal case was painted harvest gold, and its ribbon printed either black or red, which was really neat. But something was out of whack, and you couldn’t make it print all black or all red—no matter how you fiddled with the little lever, the letters always printed red on the bottom. Joey didn’t know how to type (he just punched at the keys, which is probably how the ribbon got messed up), but I had already learned, so he let me use the machine whenever I wanted. I thought of a little story that I tried to write, but Joey was too noisy and I gave up on the idea.

  Bored with Joey’s clowning around, I strolled out into the hall. Hearing music from Mark’s room, I took a look inside, and there was my older cousin with his shirt off—he still had those nice tan pants on—unpacking a suitcase and sorting through his records. Seeing me standing there, he said, “It’s their new album. You like the Beatles?” I didn’t much care for them and didn’t know how to answer, so I shrugged my shoulders and told him, “Sure,” then went back to Joey’s room.

  A while later, Joey was busy scribbling in a coloring book (he acted very babyish) when I noticed that the music coming from Mark’s room had changed, and this time I recognized it—Mozart, something about “night music”—Mom said it was a famous serenade. So I sneaked out of Joey’s room and walked down the hall again, figuring I’d impress Mark and make up for shrugging off the Beatles. When I got to his doorway, I was ready to say something, but, looking inside the room, I stopped short. There was Mark, kneeling on the floor, reaching for an album that had slipped behind the stereo table. His backside was toward me, and I felt a little embarrassed, but I couldn’t take my eyes off him—those tan pants looked so nice, somehow. And the hard creases of the cloth on the back of his legs made sort of an arrow, pointing right at his butt. I felt lost for a moment, like I didn’t know where I was. I wanted to walk over to him and just, well … touch him. Could I do that? Would that be wrong? Would he think I was weird?

  “Hey,” said Joey, popping up behind me. I froze, wondering if he knew what I was thinking. “Hey!” he repeated. “Wanna see the upstairs?”

  “Hey!” Neil laughed. I blinked. Both Neil and Parker were staring at me, and their expressions betrayed a measure of concern as well as mirth. The iced tea Neil had promised to prepare already sat on the table—his and Parker’s half gone, mine untouched, sitting in a pool of its own sweat. Neil asked me, “Lost in space?”

  With a chagrined, apologetic laugh, I told them, “Sorry, guys. I was lost in the past for a moment. Lost in Dumont, in fact. I’ve never thought much about my roots before, but with the big move looming, a lot of forgotten memories seem to be bubbling to the surface.”

  Parker flopped back in his chair with a whistle of relief. “I was afraid my funding series had lulled you into a trance, induced by sheer boredom.”

  “Hardly,” I told him. “I’m highly impressed with everything you’ve shown me—it’s well conceived, beautifully researched, and painstakingly edited. Are you free this evening, Parker?”

  He leaned forward, elbows on knees. “I was hoping you’d suggest something.”

  “Great. Why don’t the three of us go out for dinner and discuss a few details?”

  My suggestion met with everyone’s enthusiastic approval, and Neil got on the phone to see if Zaza’s could take us on such short notice. No problem, they assured him. Parker then excused himself, needing to use the bathroom, which gave me an opportunity to compare notes with Neil.

  “Well?” I asked him. “What do you think?”

  Carrying the glasses of tea to the kitchen, Neil paused and flashed me a sidelong glance, answering, “Nice buns.”

  “Ah, you noticed,” I replied coyly.

  “He’s a hot man for—how old, fifty-one? Khaki, too.” Neil dumped the glasses into the sink.

  I strolled up behind him and held his hips. “That’s a plus, I admit. But I don’t think it would be in anyone’s best interest to hire him on the basis of a fetish. The important question is: Would he make a good managing editor for the Register?”

  Neil turned to face me. “He seemed professional, affable, and eager, but I’m in no position to judge his work. That’s for you to decide.”

  “I won’t hire him without your approval,” I reminded him.

  “Mark”—Neil framed my face with his hands and kissed me, just a peck—“hire the guy. I presume I can trust you to stay out of his pants, however alluring the package. Just remember that I love you. And save your libido for the weekends.”

  The three of us shared a wonderful evening at Zaza’s. It started with champagne, and during a toast to the future, I offered Parker Trent the number-two position at the small daily newspaper I would soon own. He accepted on the spot. Neil obligingly excused himself to the men’s room for a few minutes so that Parker and I could talk money. Upon returning, he asked, “Everything ironed out?”

  Parker answered, “All systems go. Forgive me if I sound soppy, but this is probably the biggest night of my life. This is all I’ve ever wanted, Mark. You’re the best in the business, and I’m sure there were dozens of other qualified editors eager to work at your side. I’m overwhelmed that you would choose me, and I’ll work my ass off to guarantee that you won’t regret your decision.”

  At Parker’s reference to his own posterior, Neil and I each concealed a grin with a sip of champagne, not daring to let our eyes meet.

  “And Neil,” continued Parker, “it’s a pleasure to meet you as well. I hope we’ll all become best of friends. It’s no secret that you’re the man who helped Mark discover his own true gay identity, and for that, if nothing else, the entire gay community owes you a medal.”

  “Believe me,” said Neil, dismissing Parker’s fulsome flattery, “bringing Mark out was its own reward.”

  I leaned over to him in the booth and kissed his cheek. “Thanks, kiddo. I’ve never been happier.” And I realized as I said it that I was happy that night. Despite the morbid ruminations that had bugged me since summer, despite the career angst and general sense of depression that had discolored my vision, I knew that I had successfully negotiated a dangerous turn, that I was now prepared to begin a new phase of my journalistic life.

  Discussing logistics of the move north, we decided that Neil would drive up to Dumont with me during Christmas week, helping me settle into the big house on Prairie Street. At the same time, Parker would move from Milwaukee, and I offered to let him stay at the house until he was able to lease a place of his own, sometime after the transition at the Register. Assuming that the transaction with publisher Barret Logan proceeded on schedule, I would be taking over at the Register in mid-January, giving both Parker and me a few weeks to acclimate ourselves to the community and our new jobs there.

  Neil suggested, “As long as we’re all going to be in Dumont for Christmas, why don’t we invite Roxanne and Carl to come up for the holiday? They’re always looking for an excuse to get out of the city.”

  “Great idea,” I told him. “Let’s make it a big Christmas dinner. I’ll invite my cousins, the Quatrains, over for the day—I haven’t seen them in thirty-three years—both you and Parker ought to meet them. And I almost forgot that there’s someone I’ve never met. One of my cousins, Suzanne Quatrain, has a son named Thad who must be a teenager by now. Believe it or not, I’m the boy’s guardian. So it’ll be a ‘family’ Christmas.”

  “It sounds like one highly unconventional family,” Neil commented before draining the last hefty slug of champagne from his glass.

  Parker rapped the table with his fingertips, saying, “Until the laws in this country are changed in such a way that they recognize and validate our relationships, our families will never be more than second-class social oddities.”

  Silence hung over the table for a moment as Neil and I exchanged a sidelong glance. Then
Parker grinned, telling us, “Or I could bag the polemics and save it for the editorial page.”

  We all laughed heartily, our tacit agreement that this was a night for celebration. The injustices of the world would have to wait—they could be tackled later. For now, I was focused on the next chapter of my life with an eager sense of adventure. For the first time in many months, I embraced the future with unbridled optimism.

  PART TWO

  Three Weeks Ago

  CHRISTMAS MORNING IN DUMONT should have been a time of lazy repose, a relaxed respite at the end of a hectic weeklong move-in. The previous week, I had trucked some things up to the house on Prairie Street; then Neil and I drove up in my car, packed to its ceiling with my clothes, files, and cartons of afterthoughts that had missed the van. We arrived as planned on Monday, December twentieth, meeting Parker Trent, who drove the shorter distance from Milwaukee.

  Hazel Healy greeted us at the house. The Quatrain family’s longtime housekeeper had stayed on the job for Professor and Mrs. Tawkin, and though she was now sixty-seven, she had agreed to stay on with me for a while as I settled into the big house and made it my home. She was not at all the woman I remembered from my boyhood visit thirty-three years ago, and, of course, I was no longer that boy of nine. So when we met again at the front door, neither of us recognized the other, and we awkwardly introduced ourselves, like in-laws at a reunion. In a word, her youth was gone, and the passing of years had taken its toll not only on her appearance, but also on her vision—the lenses of her pop-bottle glasses were even thicker now. What’s more, she was essentially alone in the world—she had not only outlived her usefulness to the Quatrains, but she had also outlived her husband, Hank, who died some twenty years ago. So, the week before Christmas, she helped to get a new household settled on Prairie Street, pointing out where things were, showing us how things worked, reciting her perspective of Dumont’s who’s who.

  Since the house was changing owners, it had not been decorated for the holidays, and although my own take on Christmas had long been decidedly secular, even cynical, I was nonetheless a sucker for its trappings, so I asked Hazel to direct the decking of the halls. There was plenty to keep me busy arranging an office in Uncle Edwin’s old den off the first-floor foyer, but Parker and Neil eagerly volunteered to help Hazel spiff the place with pine, tinsel, and lights. Hazel found and unpacked things; Parker provided the brawn of lifting, hauling, and climbing; and Neil brought it all together with his keen designer’s eye. By Thursday night, the place looked even better than it had during my boyhood visit, complete with a tree in the front hall that stood at least twice my height.

  Friday morning, the day of Christmas Eve, I met with retiring publisher Barret Logan at the Register’s offices, which would close early, at noon. Parker went with me, we greeted the skeleton staff on duty that day, and we outlined with Logan details of the transition that would put me in charge of the paper three weeks from Monday.

  Arriving at the house that afternoon—amid a flurry of hugs, kisses, gifts, and best wishes—were Roxanne Exner and Carl Creighton, joining us for the long holiday weekend. The weather had turned cold the last few days, and Roxanne was grateful for it, as it gave her an excuse to parade her new fur coat, a full-length nutria, which Carl had given her sometime that week as an early Christmas present. Roxanne’s mind-set is about as urban as they come, so I was pleased when she took me aside to tell me that she found Dumont “utterly charming, if a tad quaint,” and the house, she decreed, “is simply to die for.” She met Parker Trent for the first time that day, and while he and Carl carried luggage up the front staircase, Roxanne, grinning wide-eyed, turned to confide in me, “Hot cross buns!” Her stage whisper was heard by everyone in the room. Carl and Parker shrugged off the remark as if they didn’t get it. Hazel bustled away toward the kitchen to fuss with something. Neil laughed so gustily, I thought he’d cry. As for me, knowing that Roxanne would skewer me if I claimed indifference to her comment, I kidded, “Why do you think I hired him?”

  A light snow had started to fall—the first of the season, perfectly timed—so Neil and I carried armloads of logs indoors and stoked the several pine-swagged fireplaces throughout the house. We were setting the scene for a perfect Christmas Eve, and the entire household soon got into the spirit of warmth and merriment.

  Until the mail arrived. During the few days since arriving in town, I hadn’t received much mail—a bill or two, some paperwork from Elliot the lawyer, one day nothing at all. But Friday afternoon’s delivery, the last before the holiday weekend, was remarkable because of its sheer bulk. There were dozens of envelopes, all addressed by hand to me, none with return addresses. I wondered if they were Christmas cards, but they didn’t have that shape or stiffness. Opening a few, I discovered that these were hardly season’s greetings. No, this was hate mail.

  There was a heap of it—none of it signed. All the letters had the same basic message: As an openly gay man, I was not welcome in Dumont, and if I did not get out of town, I was to be the victim of various vague threats. Oddly, some of the letters referred to my homosexuality as an “abomination against Mother Nature,” but none of them railed, as I would have expected, about sin or the Bible.

  So while Christmas morning should have been a time of lazy repose, I was not able to spend it lolling in front of a fire, or opening gifts with friends, or taking an easy run in the snow with Neil. Instead, I met with Douglas Pierce, sheriff of Dumont County, who was kind enough to come to the house on Prairie Street that morning at nine. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Manning,” he told me, shaking my hand at the front door, stomping snow from his shoes. “Sorry your arrival in Dumont has begun on such a sour note.”

  Taking his coat, escorting him into the den—once Uncle Edwin’s office, now mine—I apologized for dragging him out on police work on Christmas morning. He assured me that such inconveniences were a predictable aspect of his job, that he could easily have sent a deputy detective, but that he was eager to meet me and happy to be of service. His gracious manner caught me off guard, and I felt ashamed for expecting less. Decades of city living had taught me to judge small-town officials as bureaucratic rubes, but Douglas Pierce didn’t fit my stereotype.

  He didn’t even look like a sheriff—no Mayberry cop trappings, no badge on his chest, no six-shooter at his hip. He struck me as a true professional, nicely dressed in civilian clothing (camel-hair blazer, pleated charcoal wool slacks), with a discreet pager on his belt and the glint of a polished leather shoulder holster under his jacket. He seemed a few years older than I, two or three at most, with an easy bearing that complemented his well-educated but disarmingly unpretentious speech. “Your call yesterday came as a disappointment,” he told me, “not because it was Christmas Eve, but because the circumstances cast our community in such a negative light. Please, how can I help?”

  I invited him to sit opposite me in a chair facing Uncle Edwin’s stocky old mahogany partners desk. Yesterday’s mail lay scattered on a suede blotter between us, but before getting into it, I offered, “Coffee, Sheriff?” Hazel had shined up a coffee service that remained at the house, and it sat within arm’s reach at the edge of the desk, its silver surfaces aflutter with reflected flames from the fireplace on an adjacent wall.

  “Yes, thank you. Black,” he answered. Then he added, “But please, Mr. Manning, feel free to call me Doug.”

  Further impressed by his amiable nature, I, of course, insisted that he call me Mark. Pouring coffee for both of us, I told him, “I don’t mean to do your job for you, but I couldn’t help noticing a curious thread that runs through all of the letters. While they were clearly written by different people, their similar messages and their arrival in one clump suggest a bit of collaboration.”

  Taking the first sip of his coffee, Pierce nodded, saying, “A letter-writing campaign. Do you have any idea who might have instigated it?”

  I reminded him, “I’m new in this town, Doug.”

  “I’ve lived here all my
life,” he told me, “except for college. Now tell me about this ‘curious thread.’”

  I leaned over the desk toward him, unfolding letter after letter before him, pointing out similar passages, the repeated references to Mother Nature, and the conspicuous lack of fundamentalist screed. I told him, “In the back of my mind, I almost expected some flack from the local chapter of the religious right, but this has me baffled.” I sat back in my chair, drinking from the cup I now held in both hands, watching over its rim as Pierce paged through my mail.

  Slowly, his stern features spread into a grin as he placed the last letter atop the pile and looked up at me. “I appreciate how upsetting this is, Mark, but, honestly, I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. This can only be the work of Miriam Westerman.”

  The obvious question: “Who?”

  He relaxed in his chair, explaining, “There’s a feminist group here in Dumont. It was founded twenty-odd years ago by Miriam Westerman, a local gal, after she returned from college. She still has a trace of the charismatic flash that made her a natural leader in the seventies, but now she comes across as something of an aging hippie in search of a cause. Her group has championed everything from feminism and environmentalism to paganism and animal rights.”

  Intrigued, I leaned forward. “What do they call themselves?”