“Still, it looks like the old owner at least put a new coat of paint on the place for you.”
“Actually,” Logan started, the word barely recognizable since his voice had cracked and wheezed with anxiety. He stood up straight, took a deep breath, and tried again. “Actually, it was me, me and Nick, that painted the place just two weeks ago.”
Still wandering the small space, Daisy laughed brightly, observing, “You and this Nick sure have become thick as thieves, haven’t ya?” Not pausing for a response, she went on, “You haven’t had a friend like that since—”
Logan knew Daisy had stopped abruptly rather than give the obvious name, it still being a sore point between them, but he was having none of it. “Since Jerry Sievers,” he finished for her.
“Yeah, well….” Daisy trailed off, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Did you get all these tools—”
He would have gladly let Daisy redirect the conversation, but their visit had already run double the time Logan had allotted for it and it was entirely possible that Nick was waiting at the diner for them by now. With a monumental effort, Logan walked over to stand beside his sister and forced himself to interrupt her by observing, “You know… they’re kind of… you might say, they’re kind of… similar.”
Daisy’s mind had obviously skipped on ahead, since she turned to Logan with a puzzled frown. “Who’s similar?”
“Nick and Jerry.”
“Yeah, I guess. You restored a car with both of them, right? Though with this Nick guy, you actually got to finish—”
“I meant that… that…. You know how everyone always thought Jerry was gay?”
Daisy had gone very still. Almost timidly, she said, “Yeah?”
“Well, Nick is,” Logan stated, in the firmest voice he’d managed in almost an hour.
“Oh.” Daisy nervously straightened the straps of her handbag on her arm before saying, “I guess you’re gonna run into that kind of thing—I mean here in Pittsburgh they probably feel that it’s—or they’re more, you know—” It was obvious that she was fumbling for something inoffensive to say—and failing badly. “I mean, I guess as long as he doesn’t bother you none about that, I guess there’s nothing wrong with it.”
“It don’t bother me—”
Suddenly Daisy stepped even closer to her brother and put both hands on his arm. “Logan, please don’t take this the wrong way. I am glad you got such a good friend, but… but you two livin’ together, well, it strikes me as kind of a bad idea. Him bein’ gay and all, if someone were to find out about him, folks might get the wrong idea. About you, I mean.” She licked her lips nervously and added, “You know?”
Logan looked down at his earnest, beseeching sibling and smiled sadly. “They won’t.”
“How can you be so sure?” Daisy took her hand off Logan’s arm and drew an unsteady hand through her hair. “I know what I’d think,” she muttered darkly.
“Then you’d be right,” Logan said with quiet determination. Then he watched as the color drained out of Daisy’s shocked face. He took advantage of her speechless state to clarify, “I’m gay, Daisy. That’s why I’m livin’ with Nick. We’re together now—”
“Oh my Gawd,” Daisy screeched, a hand flying to her mouth. “How could this happen? How could this happen, Logan? What did this guy do to you?”
“He didn’t do noth—I been this way a long time—all my life as far I can tel—”
“That ain’t true! You’re married. You got Linda pregnant—twice!” Daisy whirled away from Logan, her chest heaving with gasping breaths.
“It doesn’t matter.” Logan moved towards his sister and turned her around to face him. He kept his hands—gentle but steady—on her shoulders. “Believe me, none of that was ever what I wanted.”
“Then why’d you do it?” Daisy asked petulantly.
“Because what Jim did to Jerry all those years ago scared the shit out of me. ’Cause I couldn’t accept who I was—thought it was better to hide and pretend.” It was Logan’s turn to be beseeching. He looked down into his sister’s tear-stained face, saying, “I can’t live that way anymore. It nearly killed me—nearly killed Linda, too. And I don’t just mean from when I hit her.”
“Logan, I just don’t….” Daisy paused to wipe her damp eyes. “You got any water ’round here?”
“Sure thing.” Logan bounded over to the water cooler in the corner by the desk and brought back a cup for his sister.
After she’d drained the whole thing in one gulp, she whispered, “It’s gonna take some getting used to. This idea is sure gonna take some getting used to.”
“I can see that. And I’ll give ya all the time you need.” Logan pulled her to him and gave her a quick hug, relieved that there was no apparent resistance. After he released her, he asked, “You ready to meet Nick?”
Daisy gave a shaky laugh. “Guess I better be.”
The meal was kind of a penance for Logan, even though he glowed with pride at how Nick managed to charm Daisy into, if not comfort , at least a semblance of it. His boyfriend definitely shouldered the burden of the conversation, peppering Daisy with questions about Logan’s childhood, her children back in Elco, and Lisa’s plans to study nursing. He augmented her answers with stories about his own college days and so many anecdotes about The Liberty Grill that Daisy seriously asked him if he had a financial interest in the place.
Nick smiled broadly as he looked around at the restaurant. “Well, as many meals as I’ve had here over the years, I’m sure I paid for that new section they put in.” He paused and pointed towards the back of the diner. “But they didn’t even have the courtesy to name it after me.”
Suddenly a booming voice interrupted the conversation. “Maybe not, but I am thinking of calling an order of a loaded cheeseburger, mac and cheese, with a double-thick chocolate shake ‘The Zales Special’.”
Nick’s laugh rang out, and even Daisy smiled at the infectious sound. “Larry, who the hell is ever gonna order that? Besides me.”
“Take your homage where you can get it, son,” Larry answered as he slid into the booth next to Nick and introduced himself to Daisy. Logan relaxed even further when Larry picked up the conversational baton. He and Daisy ended up sharing stories about the joys and sorrows of raising “mouthy” children and the horrors of college tuition.
Logan offered to drive Daisy’s Pathfinder back to Observatory Hill so she wouldn’t be navigating city streets in the dark. On the ride home, he was slightly buoyed by her apparent change from sorrow and confusion to quiet thoughtfulness. “Are you gonna want to tell the rest of the family any time soon?” she asked anxiously. “I mean, do you want me to tell Chuck and—”
“No. You’re it for a while.”
“Does Linda know?”
“Yeah. I told her. Figured I owed her that much. But I don’t want anyone else knowin’ ’til I tell Krista and Meghan.”
“When’re you gonna do that?”
“Probably late this year or early next year sometime. Nick says we should see how well they adjust to the trauma of the divorce first.” When Daisy simply nodded, he couldn’t help but venture, “What did you think of him? Nick.”
Daisy sighed and shook her head. “I gotta admit, I’d be—well, it’d be a whole lot easier if he was just your friend, but….”
“But?”
“But he does seem like a… a good guy. Real friendly and what Mama used to call ‘personable’.”
“For real,” Logan agreed.
“He sure ain’t what I was expecting, though.” Logan tensed a bit, waiting for Daisy to continue. “I sure didn’t expect him to be sooo—” As she drew the word out, Logan mentally supplied several possible options: masculine, educated, talkative…. He was shocked to hear her finally finish, “…damn good—looking.”
“What the hell does that mean? You didn’t think I could get—” Logan stopped himself since they were veering into decidedly uncomfortable territory.
Daisy reached
over and patted his leg. “Honey, I didn’t mean that. I mean, if you can get past the gay part—and I guess I’m gonna have to—you done good. Real good.”
Logan felt a crooked smile form on his face. “Yeah, I did.” As he steered the car towards the expressway, he murmured, “It took long enough, but I did.”
LATER THAT night, lying together in the quiet of their darkened bedroom, Nick pulled Logan to him and whispered, “All in all, that went pretty well, huh? As well as we could’ve expected?”
“We’ll see. I think she’s still in shock.”
“Shock is the best we could have expected.”
“Well, then it went great,” Logan offered sarcastically.
“You’re never happy.”
“That ain’t true, and you know it. Not anymore.” Nick took the way Logan settled more firmly against him as an illustration of his point.
After drinking in the peace he always felt with Logan’s body pressed against his own, Nick’s mind drifted from the relative success of the evening to the task that still lay before him. “Wish I had any hope that my thing could….” He let the thought trail off, immediately regretting that he’d raised the subject at all.
“Could go that well?”
“Yeah.”
“If you’re so sure it won’t, then why do you even wanta—”
“I have to. I can’t really explain it, Logan, but I have to do this.”
“Okay.” Nick felt Logan’s strong, comforting hand run up and down his side. “So, next week, huh?’
“Yep. It’s all arranged.”
“Sure you don’t want me to go with you?”
“No. Hell no.”
“You don’t have to do everything yourself anymore. You said you realized that now.”
“I know, you’re right. But this I do.”
Nick heard a frustrated sigh followed by a resigned, “Okay.”
The bedroom was silent for a while, and Nick wondered if his lover had fallen asleep. “Logan?” he whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for offering.”
Logan pulled one of Nick’s hands to his mouth and kissed it. “Any time.”
Nick responded by pressing soft kisses into the back of Logan’s neck. He had meant it to be a quick thing but then found it hard to stop.
“Nick,” Logan whispered, “I don’t wanta—”
“I know, you don’t wanta do anything while your sister’s in the house. I got that; I’m just cuddling. Okay?”
“Okay. I’m sorry, it just makes me nervous knowin’ she’s right down the hall.”
Nick snorted quietly. “Imagine how she feels.”
“No, thanks.”
“Well, you could always move into the other bedroom like you’re gonna do when your daughters visit.”
Logan turned quietly in Nick’s arms, and in the dim light from the street lamp outside, Nick could just make out his smiling face. “Are you tryin’ to get rid of me?”
“Oh, you’re too smart for me. You guessed my nefarious plan.” When Logan shook his head in mock disgust and flopped back over, Nick pulled him back into a spoon position. After a few moments, a mischievous devil prompted him to whisper in Logan’s ear, “Of course, it is kinda torturous having you this close and knowing I can’t do anything. Maybe we could just—”
“One night ain’t gonna kill us,” Logan murmured.
“That which doth not kill us makes us strong.”
A sleepy “What?” came drifting over Logan’s shoulder.
“Nietzsche,” Nick explained, obliquely.
“Gesundheit.” Nick shook with silent laughter, prompting Logan to add, “Go to sleep.”
AS NICK walked up to the surprisingly innocuous-looking prison building, he found that he could remember nothing of the drive there—always a sign that his nerves were running high. He responded by silently repeating to himself the litany Trudy had offered as her parting advice. What’s the worst that can happen? He’s already done his worst, and I survived.
Repeating that over and over kept him calm throughout the tedious check-in procedure, and in a much shorter time than Nick could have expected, he found himself sitting in what appeared to be the world’s ugliest high-school cafeteria. It was certainly nothing like he’d seen in the movies. No Plexiglas, no booths, no phones, just a series of long tables and blue-gray plastic chairs. Several people were already huddled in conferences at some of the other tables, the inmates recognizable by their drab garb but generally otherwise unremarkable. If it weren’t for the armed guard at the entrance, Nick could almost convince himself he wasn’t sitting in a prison visiting room.
When, after a few minutes’ wait, a pot-bellied, gray-haired man of medium stature and build sat across from him, Nick initially stared at the stranger uncomprehendingly. He was waiting for the man to explain what the delay was when he spoke. “Look at you. Finally grew into them ears.” That voice, at least, hadn’t changed a bit. “Hey, Nick.”
“Oh. It’s you.” Nick was at a loss for how to address Sam Zales, so he simply said, “Hello… there.” He looked him up and down and wondered if the man had shrunken in fact or simply due to a child’s distorted memory. “You’ve changed, too.”
Sam sprawled out in what Nick immediately recognized as false bravado. “Yeah, time in the joint’ll do that to you.” His father continued with patently fake heartiness. “Took you twenty years to find the place, huh?”
“I knew where to find you, I just never wanted to.”
“So why now?”
Since the truth still seemed complicated and nebulous even to him, Nick replied, “I just came to tell you that you’re about to officially become a murderer.” When Sam only nodded in response, he felt compelled to add, with icy emphasis, “My mother is dying.”
There was absolutely no emotion audible in the reply that was lobbed back from across the battered table. “I heard. That nun told me.” When Nick immediately rose to leave, Sam asked, “You come all the way for that? You ain’t got anything else to say?”
Nick sank back down into the hard chair, asking, “Like what? ‘I forgive you’?”
“What’s that supposed to mean? I never did nothin’ to you.”
“What?” Nick’s raised, angry voice drew a frown from the guard; with great effort, he modulated his tone before continuing. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“All that stuff that went on, that was between me and my wife. No one else.”
“You and your wife—and me, the neighbors, the cops, the DA, a Grand Jury—”
“Kid, you don’t have to remind me of all that stuff. I get enough of that every day. How ’bout we talk about something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like what you been up to all these years.”
Since the answer that came immediately to mind, Trying to avoid this day, was nothing Nick wanted to say out loud, he shrugged and said, “Taking care of Mom and working. Before that… school.” Nick was almost appalled to realize that his two-phrase answer had neatly and truthfully summed up most of his life.
Sam nodded almost eagerly, saying, “Yeah, I heard. That nun, she says you went to college, and even past that.”
“She has a name, you know. Sister Ciera.”
“Whatever. So, all that schoolin’—is that why you ain’t had time to get married or have kids or nothin’?” When Nick didn’t immediately answer, Sam added, “Or are ya gonna tell me that’s ’cause of me and your mom?”
Nick hesitated only a second more before answering firmly, “No, it’s because I’m gay.”
The surprise was plain on Sam’s ruddy, unshaven face. “No shit!” Almost to himself, he muttered, “Guess I get the blame for that, then.”
“It doesn’t work that way,” Nick snapped. “Not that I care if you don’t understand—or approve.”
To Nick’s surprise, Sam simply shrugged. “Guess I got no room to talk.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nick,” Sam drawled, leaning forward conspiratorially, “what the hell do you think I’ve been doin’ for sex these last twenty years?”
“I never gave it any thought.” Nick rubbed his forehead in disgust, adding, “And I wish to God it had stayed that way.”
“Yeah, well, fuck you, your highness. When’d you get so snotty and full of yourself? Guess it’s all them fancy degrees you got makes you think you’re better ’an everybody else.”
“I never needed a degree to think I was better than you, Dad!” Nick didn’t even discern the raised eyebrows and stares from the room’s other occupants, so stunned was he that he’d let that title slip out, unbidden but unavoidable.
“Bet it don’t hurt though, right? Especially when that Sister Ciera,” Sam imbued the term with bitter sarcasm that Nick barely noticed since his father went on to add, “told ya she was teachin’ me to read.”
Nick was shocked into near incoherence by his dad’s confession. “She never—why would she need to—what are you talking about?”
Sam pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his worn denim work shirt and lit one with fumbling fingers, berating himself with a quiet oath. “Fuck.” After a long drag, he seemed to regain his composure and squinted at Nick, saying, “Nothing. Forget about it.”
“Dad, you can… you could read… I remember….” Nick faltered as he tried to confirm his supposition by searching his memories for an image of his father reading something—anything. Finally he said, “You used to sign contracts. I’m sure I remember—”
Assiduously avoiding eye contact by studying the smoking cigarette in his hand, Sam muttered, “I could sign my name, yeah, but your ma, she always had to read them contracts for me.”
As Nick struggled to assimilate this new information into his worldview, one thought predominated. “You’d think you would’ve been grateful to her—”
“For what?” Sam spat. “For holdin’ that over my head?”
“Mom wasn’t like tha—”
Sam either hadn’t heard or didn’t care for Nick’s response as he bulled ahead, snarling, “So what if she gave me that little bit of help? It was still me doin’ the work—me puttin’ food on the table and a roof over both your heads.”
Dreamspinner Press Year Four Greatest Hits Page 130
