Philip ran his hand through his hair. “Mom,” he said, “it seems to me something isn’t being said here. What isn’t being said is that you’re mad as hell at me since I came home and told you I was gay. You can’t get over it and you’re furious. And I think you should just say it outright instead of pretending—”
“Don’t put words in my mouth, young man,” Rose shot back.
“I’m not putting words in your mouth. I’m telling you what I’ve observed.”
“Then don’t just assume you’re the center of everything,” Rose said. “I have a lot of other things in my life besides you.” She returned to the garlic, chopped at it as if it were something she wanted to kill.
Philip was quiet. “Look, Mom,” he said, “all I know is, whatever’s bothering you, I seem to be bearing the brunt of your rage. It’s not just today. For weeks now I’ve called you, I’ve tried to talk to you. When I see you, you act like you’d rather be anywhere else than with me.”
“If you’d stop to think about it,” she said, “you’d realize I haven’t done anything to you, Philip. It seems to me you’re not complaining about what I’ve done, you’re complaining about what I haven’t done. It seems to me you’re mad because I haven’t been your textbook liberal mother, going off and joining some organization, or wanting to talk to you all the time about your sex life, or spending all my mental energy trying to understand you. I’m not warm to you, I’m not kind, you say—well, right now I’m not feeling very kind, I’m not feeling very warm. And I have enough problems in my own life that I’m just not prepared to put out all the energy it takes to ease your guilt.”
Wearily she scooped the garlic into a frying pan. “My guilt?” Philip said.
“Yes,” Rose said. “You call me up, and all you want to hear is, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right, all is forgiven, I love you.’ Well it’s not that simple. It’s never that simple.”
Philip sat down at the table. “You don’t have to be cruel,” he said.
“If you don’t like it, don’t badger me.”
She switched on a burner. The garlic let off a hiss, a sharp bloom of aroma as it started to fry.
“Mom, I’m sorry you’re having problems,” Philip said. “And you’re right. It’s selfish of me to assume I’m the cause of them. But—well, maybe if you told me what was going on, what was upsetting you so much—”
“You seem to believe,” Rose said, “that talking about it necessarily makes something all better. You seem to believe that confessing and opening up is always the answer. But I’m not so sure.” She returned to the counter, where some onions waited to be chopped.
“I was hoping I could help you,” Philip said softly.
Rose laughed.
“Is it Dad?” he said.
Rose stopped chopping. She stood silently over the onions.
“Mom,” Philip said. “If there are problems between you and Dad, maybe if you told me, I could—do something.”
She put the knife down and looked him in the eye. “I told you,” she said, “I don’t want to talk about this right now. Would you please just leave it alone?” She turned, fetched a larger knife from a drawer, and went back to her chopping. The odor of the onions filled the small kitchen, bringing a welt of pain to his eyes. He did not say anything, did not move. Finally Rose sighed loudly and said, “Look, if you want to help me, why don’t you go set the table. That would help me a lot, okay?”
Philip nodded. “Okay,” he said. He collected plates, silverware, and napkins and headed back into the living room. From the kitchen he could hear nothing but the blunt sound of chopping, an occasional tiny explosion as things were thrown into the pan to fry. The dishes set out (he still could not remember which side the fork went on), he returned to the kitchen. Rose poured the canned tomatoes into the frying pan. The sauce calmed. Thick red bubbles burst its surface as it simmered, and Rose went to the sink to wash some lettuce.
“Did Dad tell you why he was inviting this Winston Penn?” Philip asked.
Rose shrugged. “To be nice, I guess,” she said. “To give him a home-cooked meal.”
“More than that,” Philip said. “He told me that he—he was thinking of trying to fix me up with him.”
Rose dropped the lettuce in the sink. “What?” she said.
“Just what I said,” Philip said. “He thinks that Winston Penn may be gay, and since he knew how unhappy I’d been since Eliot left, he thought it would be a nice thing to introduce us.”
Rose stood over the sink, closed her eyes.
“Didn’t he tell you?”
She scooped the lettuce out of the sink and threw it into the salad bowl. “No,” she said. “He didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Philip said. “I just assumed—”
“I want no part in this,” Rose said, and stopped where she stood. “I want no part in any of this.”
“Mom,” Philip said, “please—I’m sorry I said anything. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Rose tore at the lettuce in the bowl. “Fine,” she said. “Fine.”
Suddenly, fiercely, she closed her eyes, as if against tears, which surprised Philip. Awkwardly he stayed put. He hadn’t seen her cry for years, hardly knew what to do. “Mom, please,” he said, “don’t be so upset. It’s not such a big deal. Please—”
Then it was over. “It’s all right,” she said, and her lips heaved once. “It’s all right. I’ve just got to finish this meal. I’ve got to get it cooked.” She blew her nose and returned to the salad.
“Mom,” Philip said, “we’ll call Dad. We’ll tell him not to bring Winston Penn.”
“Too late for that now,” Rose said. “They’re on their way.” She tore a piece of paper towel off a roll, wiped at her eyes. “Anyway, it’s all right. I’ll be fine. Now please, Philip, what I really need is to be alone just a little bit. Why don’t you go out into the living room, put on some music or something?”
He hesitated. “All right,” he said. “If you’re sure you’re okay.”
She nodded. He walked into the living room and got down on his knees before the stereo cabinet. All the records from his childhood that he was too embarrassed to admit owning were there—albums by the Carpenters and the Partridge Family he had bought when he was eight or nine. He looked one over nervously—the Partridge Family in their black outfits, on their bus, with their saintly, beautiful mother, Shirley Partridge—then opted for the Chipmunks’ Christmas Record.
“Philip,” Rose called from the kitchen, “I really don’t think that’s appropriate!”
“All right!” he shouted. He took the record off. He was not used to Rose exhibiting strong emotion in his presence, had hardly ever in his life seen her move outside the middle ranges of ordinary worry and annoyance. Why did he put such value on revelation? she had asked. Why indeed?
There was the sound of keys in the door, a rustling of conversation. “—we can beat Dalton any day,” Owen was saying, and blustered in, carrying with him a smell of outdoors—wet wool and exhaust.
“Hello, son,” Owen said, and his smile was broad, too broad.
“Hi, Dad.”
Behind him a tall young man in a trenchcoat grinned in greeting.
“Philip,” Owen said, “this is Winston Penn. Winston, my son, Philip.”
Winston Penn flashed at Philip a smile full of large white teeth. “Philip,” he said, “good to meet you,” and took his hand in a tight grip. His eyes were small and intensely blue.
“My father talks about you all the time, Winston,” Philip said.
“I’m not sure I want to know what he says,” Winston answered, laughing.
“Oh no,” Owen said. “Only the highest praise for you, Winston. And you should hear what I say about the rest of the faculty! Ha!” He hit Philip on the shoulder, making him cough. His smile was terrible, undercut by the scent of liquor; he looked slightly unshaven; his tie was loosened, and he held his jacket over his shoulder. Winston laughed to
o—that same, unfamiliar locker room laughter, the laughter of men with men, slapping shoulders, validating affection with violence. Winston was perfectly shaved, not a nick on him. He wore a bow tie and a blue striped shirt just tight enough to suggest the tone and definition of his body, the build men in lower Manhattan gyms work years to attain, but in this case, a little slack, a little soft, making it clear it was naturally acquired in hard, hot adolescence, not purchased along with expensive weight-lifting equipment.
“Would you like something to drink?” Philip asked.
“Just a Coke would be good for me,” Winston said. He sat down on the sofa. “I’ll get it,” Philip said before his father had a chance.
In the kitchen, his mother was violently shaking a vial of salad dressing.
“They’re here,” Philip said.
Rose smiled tensely. “Good, good,” she said. He took a glass and a Coke from the refrigerator and followed her out into the living room.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Rose Benjamin.”
Winston stood up to shake her hand.
“Rose,” Owen said from where he sat, near Winston, on the sofa. “Rose—”
She looked away from him, wiped again at her eyes. “Onions,” she said. “Just onions.”
Owen was winning Winston. From Frank, his lover of one night, he had learned to affect the poses of macho camaraderie, and to his surprise had found that Winston, approached with such an attitude, responded with great enthusiasm. After the parents’ day activities this afternoon, they had gone for a drink at a crowded Irish pub that Winston liked, “a real working-class place,” he said, where the television blared sports shows, and everyone knew everyone, including the old Irish bartender, who waved a generous greeting to Winston and immediately handed him a beer. “Isn’t this place awesome?” Winston had said. It was his favorite adjective of praise. He revelled in the pub, he told Owen, in the idea of pubs, in the idea of the intellectual as a true working man, the voice of the people. Tall steins of beer bubbled richly between them, and they talked about Bruce Springsteen, about the voice of the people. It was all very sexy to Owen. He kept imagining they might go work out on the lacrosse field and afterwards take a shower together.
Now they sat at the dinner table. Rose had made an unnatural amount of spaghetti, so much that it had to be served in the lobster pot, and all through the dinner the pot was passed back and forth between Philip and Winston, who took huge portions each time, as if he was afraid it would empty. “This is great spaghetti,” Winston said the third time, and told a story about how, when challenged, he had once eaten three pizzas rolled up lengthwise at S.M.U. “That’s good,” Rose said. “A good appetite is something I like.” She smiled and watched Winston eat. They all watched him eat.
“Tell us about your family,” Owen said.
Winston’s mouth was full. “Well,” he said, wiping sauce off of his chin, “I grew up on a farm with my three brothers and my dad. My mom died when I was little, but then my dad remarried. I’m close to my stepmother.” He tore a hunk of bread from a big loaf at the center of the table.
“Did you milk the cows every day?” Philip asked. “Did you feed the pigs?”
Winston laughed. “We had farmhands. My brothers and I just went to school and took cornet lessons once a week.”
There was a moment of awkward, smiling silence, which Winston filled by filling his plate—“I think I’ll just take a little more of this salad here,” he said, and Philip hoisted the huge bowl over to him. They watched him as he served himself, and he smiled again and said, “This is really great salad.” He looked at each of them in turn, then looked at his plate. Like most handsome men, he was used to being looked at, not at all used to being scrutinized. What did he make of this family, all eyes upon him?
“Philip,” Owen said, “Winston’s very big on Proust; aren’t you big on Proust?”
“Well, I’ve read him, if that’s what you mean,” Philip said. “But I’m hardly an expert—”
Owen laughed. “I thought you were. Shows how much I know.”
Then there was another gap in the conversation, and Winston took some more food. Philip gazed at Winston’s moving mouth, until Winston, catching his gaze, smiled back at him, his eyes bright, and Philip had to turn away. He looked at his mother, who looked at Winston, and at his father, who looked at Winston. He could not escape looking at Winston. Owen and Winston talked about the school lacrosse team, and its star player, Jack Davidson, who was going to receive a special scholar-athlete award at graduation. And suddenly Winston winked at Philip; or at least, Philip thought he did; in any case, he looked right at him and smiled in a way that suggested a camaraderie of youth, an invitation to brotherhood. Thrilled, Philip laughed, smiled back, and suddenly wondered if his father’s insistence that he liked Winston and hoped Philip might like him as well might not after all have been genuine. It seemed such a good, such a generous intention to Philip that a kind of euphoria suffused him, deep gratitude to Owen, who was suddenly revealing himself to be the dreamed-of perfect father. And once again he wondered what that smile (and possible wink) might mean.
As for Rose, across the table from him, she too smiled at Winston. From her vantage point—and she had the ultimate vantage point, the secret agent’s longed-for anonymity, that of the nearly invisible, the unnoticed, the undesired—she observed how Philip and Owen mooned over Winston. They worked together in her mind, twin oafs from a thirties comic strip. She observed their mouths, always moving, smiling when they weren’t talking. She observed their eyes, which was easiest, since they almost never focussed on her, although they blinked brightly, lowered, cast up and down in a perpetual flurry of response and observation. She betrayed no feeling; indeed, she thought she had none. She was numb, a copy editor, scanning coldly with an eye for detail, until, for a moment, she found herself wanting to stand up and topple the table, let the spaghetti and sauce and water glasses fall over all these men. She closed her eyes and counted to five. The impulse passed.
It seemed unlikely that she would be able to hold back from confronting Owen much longer; probable, now, that he would leave her or that she would leave him. As the wronged one, she supposed, the choice would be hers. But what would she choose? Oddly enough, the thought of leaving the apartment, of losing the apartment, no longer terrified her. Indeed, she was almost eager to get out of it. But where could she go? Probably to her cousin Gabrielle in New Jersey. And yet she knew Gabrielle was a bargainer. She would not accept no questions asked. Intimacy would be the price Rose would pay for being put up, even for a short while, because Gabrielle would not let her go until she had told her. And now she tried to imagine telling her, tried to imagine what the words would sound like, how she’d phrase it, the perverse freak accident of fate, the terrible coincidence (or was it a coincidence?): her husband and her son. Either, separately, had been the subjects of books, television movies, talk shows; both together was the stuff of tabloids, with headlines blaring above ugly lime-green and red photographs of movie stars: N.Y. WOMAN DISCOVERS HUSBAND AND SON SHARE SICK SEXUAL SECRET. Gabrielle would nod with concern, almost smiling, pity and delight firing in equal portions behind her eyes; and then disbelief; and the shocked, lewd thrill of the horrible, passed back and forth in whispers over the phone to her friends, other women, other wives, preceded by, “You’ll never believe”—the delight in someone else’s tragedy undercut only by gratitude that it isn’t your own. “Can you imagine what it would feel like?” she’d say, and the answer, always—“I don’t want to imagine it. I don’t have to.” And then they would go back to their lives, those wives, those friends of Gabrielle’s in New Jersey, a little more grateful, a little less dissatisfied than they’d been before, and soon enough forget her. Rose raged at the looks she imagined receiving from Gabrielle, from women at work, from Penelope and Roger. They would fix her up with divorced men and kind widowers still mute from grief. But what men would want her? What if she did it to their sons, too? Oh,
she did not want it, did not want to have to deal with any of it, did not want Gabrielle or offers of a new life or to leave this apartment or Owen. For how could Gabrielle understand? It was true that she was angry with Owen, furious with Owen. It was true that it had not been a great marriage. It had not even been a particularly good marriage. But it had been her life.
She looked across the table now, her mouth weak, her eyes wet. Like boys, the three of them laughed together, and she remembered suddenly, vividly, her youth, the feeling of her youth. She was a junior at Smith when they met. The youngest of four daughters, she had watched her sisters battle and make up with her parents, watched them become trapped, even as they moved into adulthood, in an unyielding knot of power and disappointment. All her sisters now lived near one another and near her widowed father, in Chicago, and continued to lead their lives with and around one another, acting out again and again the ancient griefs and jealousies of their childhoods. Rose, the baby, born seven years later, had withdrawn herself from this hot atmosphere early on, made it clear she wanted nothing to do with it and planned to leave, and in doing so had brought down the wrath of her parents, who demanded loyalty from their children as fervently as if the family were a war-weary nation they were devoted to defending. Even now her father considered her something of a traitor for having moved away, for refusing to come home for family holidays. When she met Owen she had thought, “Here is someone who can save me. Here is someone who can care for me.” Owen too was a youngest child, his parents too had been old when he was born, and his father had recently died. He had lived through his adolescence being bullied by an army of older brothers and sisters; perhaps that was why he had seemed so gentle, so much gentler, at least, than the other men who had courted her. They dated for a time, and after two months made love in his little stuffy room in Somerville. Unlike the other men, Owen was not in much of a hurry for sex, and even seemed a little frightened, so that she wondered if he was a virgin and in the end had had to seduce him. But it was all right. He was so grateful, so surprised by her face above his when they made love that first time, that there were tears in his eyes, and she stroked his hair and kissed his forehead. For weeks after that he bought her gifts of rock candy and saltwater taffy from candy kitchens by the beach. And when they married, three years later, in a hotel in Boston, with the cheap band playing and the cheap little hors d’oeuvres being passed around, marching down the aisle on her father’s tentative arm, she had looked at Owen as he came closer, as his bright, handsome smile, his thin face, came into focus, and she had thought she saw there evidence that everything was going to be right, that all her decisions were the right ones. What should she have seen? she wondered now. What had she missed? Wasn’t Owen’s gentleness evidence that no passion burned beneath his devotion, his gentlemanly love for her? “Save me, Rose,” he sometimes murmured in bed, when they made love, in those early years, and she had wondered what he’d meant. Now, of course, she understood it all. He wanted her to guide him to the kind of life he longed to have, a family life, with children. But how could she have known that then? Homosexuality was a peculiarity to her, a condition to be treated in hospitals—not a way of life to be embraced or saved from. She had marched down the aisle, and now it seemed to her ironic that she should have seen in Owen’s face assurance, a sign that she was making the right decision, when in fact she was making the first and largest of a series of mistakes that would carry her out into her life like an undertow, then cease, leaving her stranded, fifty-two years old, with nothing to look back on but a chain of wrong decisions carefully made, blindly made, an exam failed because the student has made one essential, thoughtless error over and over. Oh, why hadn’t he told her? Why hadn’t he let her know? Perhaps he imagined that those secret feelings he harbored would go away, fade with time; perhaps he thought he could cure himself, or that she could cure him. No, even if he’d told her, she realized (and it was a vague consolation), she would have married him anyway, would have believed, as he did, that marriage would provide the cure for the disease. The secret was thus buried, but even from underground it had its influence. A single lie, twisted and preserved, riddled the fabric of their lives together like a flaw in silk, so that a single rip might tear everything apart. They were not, and never had been, what they seemed; that she had somehow known all along. But how shameful that she had lived this life for more than twenty years, and never known, not even secretly, what it was they were.
The Lost Language of Cranes Page 28
