“Then he'll have gotten exactly what he deserved, just like I said!”
“Jesus Lord in heaven, how can you say that about your own son, John Lyman?!”
“Because he's no son of mine no more, that's how. If you had seen what I saw, Martha, you'd still be sick to your stomach, just like I am. That kid's not natural, and he's no son of mine! It's time you forgot about him. We got two kids now—two beautiful girls, that's what we got.”
The tears just burst out of her, and she dropped her entire mug, its handle cracking off as it hit the floor, the hot tea streaming onto the beige carpeting. Stumbling to her feet, she burst into a run and charged into the kitchen. She hated what had become of her son, she was disgusted by the very thought of it, but now she was beginning to hate her husband too. Would they never, she thought, dropping herself on a chair at the Formica breakfast table by the back window, get past this?
“Jesus Christ,” cursed John, tromping into the kitchen after her and throwing the mug into the garbage beneath the sink, “you went and broke my favorite mug. Plus you got tea all over everything, and that shit stains, you know. It stains real bad.”
One hand over her mouth, she stared out the window at the old silo and the two white metal pole barns they'd put up some years back. In the pale farmyard light, she saw his blue Ford pickup, her old Chevy.
And that night came whirling back.
They'd dropped the younger ones at her mother's for the night, left Andy at home with a friend, Jordy Weaver, and gone to town to see a movie. It was the first time they'd been out in months, but rather than stopping for a drink after the show they'd come straight home. John was exhausted, and they'd come home over an hour earlier than they'd told Andy. She'd gone to the barn to see how that litter of new kittens was doing, and John had come in, gone straight to their own bedroom, and what did he find in their queen-sized bed but the two of them, Andy and that Weaver kid from the other high school, both of them buck naked. John had knocked out two of Weaver's teeth, then dragged Andy naked and kicking and screaming into the barn, where he threw him up against a wall, stripped off his own belt, and screamed, “You little shit, I'm gonna kill you!”
Oh, God. She'd thought she'd known her husband. She thought she'd seen every one of his dark corners. But she hadn't. Not until that night. He would've killed Andy, too, would've beat him to death, unless she'd come out there with the twelve-gauge.
“Stop it!” she'd screamed, firing a shot straight through the metal roof.
“Do you know what ungodly things they were doing? And in our bed for Christ's sake!” John had countered, his face flush with disgust. “In our very own bed!”
“Just stop it!”
Then, while she'd held the shotgun on her husband, she told her oldest child to run. And run he had, charging into the house for some clothes, next down the dark road and into the night. He'd never returned, and the only thing they'd heard from him since was a phone call three days later, apologizing and saying he wouldn't be back.
So whose fault was it? Hers? His? Theirs? Was it something they'd done? Something they didn't do?
Starting to cry all over again just when she thought it wasn't possible to shed another tear, she bent her head forward. And that's when it happened.
The phone rang.
Martha spun around on the first ring, stared right into her husband's eyes, her husband who still stood at the sink. And they both silently thought it: Who in the world would be calling this late?
Clutching her stomach with her left hand, clasping her mouth with her right, she knew in her heart that this was it, the one call she'd been fearing all these months.
And the tears started sliding from her eyes even as her husband picked up the phone and in a weak voice said, “Hello?”
8
In the City of Lakes water was never far away.
Clutching the dark green plastic bag, the bald man stood on the edge of Lake Harriet, the cool fall water nipping at the soles of his heavy black leather boots. Like the other lakes in the city, this one wasn't so large, just an oval body of water some three miles around. And like the others, it, too, was surrounded by a parkway of road and paths, both bicycle and pedestrian, as well as huge old homes in a riot of styles, from French Normandy to Prairie School and Italianate. There was a band shell on this lake, though, and a rose garden and a heavily wooded bird sanctuary too. Beautiful in a way, he thought, peering across the dark waters and at the lights on the far side, yet so quiet, so utterly calm. Exactly. Which was why he had left here so long ago. Much too dull.
Though he wasn't a towering man, he was good-sized, with broad, muscular shoulders and massive arms. The first thing that people noticed about him was not his high cheekbones or quick eyes, but his smooth head, which actually wasn't bald, but shaved. In college at the University of Minnesota he'd been a star football player until he'd been kicked out for selling pot, and then he'd somehow ended up in Los Angeles. There'd been trouble and then some with the law out there, but then, of course, some twelve years ago his life had dramatically changed. Until then he hadn't had a career, yet now he was a professional whose work took him around the world, including back to Minnesota, his home state. Never in his life would he have predicted it, that he'd voluntarily return, if only for a few months.
His jeans and leather coat were black like his boots, and he would have blended perfectly into the dark Minneapolis night except for his head, which glowed like a moon. Wondering if anyone had noticed him, he glanced over his shoulder. On one path a woman with a nylon pack mounted on her back went riding quickly by on a bicycle. And there, farther down, he saw a guy walking his dog. Yes, he had to be careful. He remembered from his childhood that there was always someone down by these lakes, and that was still the case now. He remembered, too, how surprisingly deep this particular lake was, and he was counting on that. It was the only reason he was here.
He twisted his feet so that his black leather boots sank slightly into the sand, then, clutching the bag in his left hand, bent over and grabbed a rock with his right. So how did you do this? He hadn't done it in years, not since he'd left the Midwest, but he did it now, bent low and to the side, brought his arm back, and heaved. The rock shot out over the water but then abruptly sank with a distinct plunk. Not sure what he'd done wrong, he bent over and fumbled around until he found another one. Holding the rock carefully, he brought his arm back a second time, launched the rock, and watched as it hit the water's surface and dove under without a single skip.
Was anyone watching his failed attempts?
He looked around, saw no one. And then he reached into the plastic bag and pulled out the long metal object. Not wasting a moment, he bent slightly to the side and threw the heavy knife as hard as he could, watching it whirl far out over the water until it, too, sliced through the surface and disappeared.
Satisfied, he bent to the water and rinsed his hand with a couple of quick swirls. He then reached for one last rock, took it, and hurled it out over the lake. Success was not his.
He crumpled the green plastic bag and walked slowly away from the lake, stretching once and yawning. He crossed the pedestrian path, stuffed the bag into a metal garbage can, and continued on past the bicycle path to his car, which was stopped along the parkway next to a stand of trees and the bird sanctuary. He sat for a few minutes in the white Saab as if he were relaxing, but in truth watching to see if anyone—anyone who might have seen him—came along.
But there was no one.
Pleased, the large man with the shaved head started up the car and was just about to drive away when his cellular phone started to ring. He immediately knew who it was.
Picking it up from the passenger seat, he flicked on the phone and said, “Good evening, this is Vic.”
“It's me. Did you get it all taken care of?”
“Absolutely. Don't worry, it's all under control.”
“Great,” said the voice with an audible sigh. “Thanks a million.”
/> “No problem, that's what I'm here for.”
Standing in the woods of the bird sanctuary, the attractive man with the light hair watched as the white Saab pulled away from the curb and sped off into the night. Wearing a rust-colored cotton coat and clutching a camera, he peered suspiciously around a thick oak, saw the red taillights shooting away, and he said to himself, Okay, remember this. Remember this because something important just happened. Did that guy just throw what you think he did into the lake?
He'd been there the entire time, hidden by the trees and wondering just what in the hell that other guy, the bald one, was up to. In the faint light from the streetlights he'd taken note of the large, muscular man in the shiny black leather coat. And at first he'd presumed the other had come down here to cruise these woods, like the handful of other men lurking among these trees tonight. But, no, the bald man had instead crossed the road and gone straight down to the small beach. And then…
Behind him he now heard the snap of a twig, which sounded so jarring in the night shadows. He turned, saw a bush, a tree. And finally eyes. They burned out of the darkness, focused straight on him. The light-haired man stared back, and a moment later a man emerged out of the pool of blackness. The other was of medium build, not trim but not fat either, and he wore a dark suit, white shirt, and tie. Nice-enough-looking, too, with thick eyebrows and chestnut brown hair and what looked like a heavy beard. His mouth was pinched tight, his face taut, even tense, and he looked almost angry, but of course he was merely hungry, his body famished with lust. The younger one had seen him earlier, their eyes had caught when he'd first made his way in here. He'd seen the wedding ring too. Some exec, he presumed, who'd probably told his wife he'd be working late tonight. Probably made a couple of hundred thou’, had two kids, a dog. And while the wife might one day suspect her husband of screwing his secretary, she'd probably never imagine that he was instead down here screwing the boys.
Shit, he thought, feeling his heart suddenly tighten. He's just my type. But, no, not tonight.
Diverting his eyes, he slipped his camera inside his coat and turned away, abandoning any pretext of interest. Carefully and purposefully not looking back so as not to encourage the other, the young man moved out of the woods in two quick steps, then dashed to the left and hurried off to his car.
9
Was the idea of a gay relationship ludicrous? Impossible?
Immediately after speaking with Jordy, Todd bypassed the station and returned to his apartment, a two-bedroom condo on the fifteenth floor of a high-rise with killer views of Lake Calhoun. Usually hesitant to drink alone because of the alcoholism that had run so freely in his family he poured himself a large glass of cabernet just moments after he walked in the door. He was desperate for something to slow his thoughts, if not his heart, and he stood at the sliding glass balcony door, peering into the night and thinking only: What the fuck was Jordy talking about?
Not long ago Todd had seen something on CNN about sexuality and the sexes, and it now came back to haunt him with the thought that a relationship between two men could never work. According to the report, which was done to explain the sundry interests of none other than the President, a man's evolutionary duty was to spread his seed far and wide, while a woman's was to guard her future, i.e., the offspring. In scientific terms that made sense, he thought, but how did it apply to two gay men? And did it mean that by their very nature they were doubly destined to sleep around?
Todd took a long, deep swallow of red wine, then turned and wandered over to the black leather couch that was the main fixture of the living room. He dropped himself into the deep cushions and thought how the heterosexual role model that his parents had provided him as a kid was certainly nothing to rave about. In fact, it was all but a lie. His father had been a drinker, verbally abusive to both his wife and sons. His mother had been sweet on the outside, but torn with anguish within, coming to life only after her husband had drunk himself to death. In retrospect, Todd thought they should have divorced, for neither parent had been happy. It was, looking back on it, a pathetic waste of two lives.
Yes, Todd had grown up with that archetype and had for a good while mimicked it nearly to a T. He'd married Karen, and they'd looked the beautiful Chicago couple, he a dashing reporter, she a successful physician. They'd been popular and well-off, the quintessential yuppie couple all about the Windy City. The entire time, however, Todd's truth, his sexuality, had been eating at him, and eventually he did the best thing he ever did for his wife, he divorced her.
So he didn't want either the type of relationship he'd seen while growing up, or the type he'd lived before coming out. Yet for all intents and purposes, his relationship with Rawlins had fallen into that marital model and that monogamous expectation, at least until recently.
“I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you, I really do,” Rawlins had said over dinner last month. “But I'm not sure a monogamous relationship can really work, that it's really practical for two guys. Do we want to be that confined? That restricted? I mean, if by chance I end up having a quickie with someone, I don't want to have to end up lying to you just to save our relationship.”
Totally unprepared, Todd asked what immediately came to mind. “What… what are you saying? Are you trying to tell me you've already had sex with someone else?”
“No, I'm just trying to be realistic, that's all. And I'm not just talking about gay people either—just look at all the straight people screwing around and lying about it. They always end up splitting up because of some stupid expectation. I want us to be better than that and… and I don't want us to break up. That's why I've never been in a monogamous relationship before.”
“Well, maybe that's why none of your other relationships has lasted more than a year.”
“Todd, come on, be serious.”
“I am. It's fine for other people, but an open relationship is not what I want. I just don't think it can work, at least not for me. I don't have that kind of energy.”
No, either he didn't have that kind of emotional and mental energy to be continually processing who was seeing whom and doing what with whom. Or he simply wasn't secure enough. It was, he thought, surely a combination of the two, but the latter, if he was completely honest to himself, was probably the far greater of the reasons. No, he didn't give a rip what anyone else did or wanted or how they defined their happiness, but in this restless world he wanted one rock that he could claim and rely upon as his and his alone.
It was the beginning of an ongoing conversation, one that didn't leave Todd with any warm, fuzzy feelings, either.
“I don't want to be confining and restrictive, I really don't. The last thing I want to do is try to crush someone,” Todd had recently said. “But, I'm sorry, I just can't handle the thought of me staying at home watching TV while you're off screwing someone else.”
“But what about this: You're out of town doing a story, you have too much to drink, and a gorgeous waiter seduces you. It could easily happen, you know.”
“Yeah, but, Rawlins…”
“Yeah, but what? If it happens you'd rather lie about it?”
“No, I… I…”
The closest they'd come to a compromise was to agree upon total trust and total honesty. In other words, they wouldn't go looking for it, but if something happened, if one of them strayed outside the relationship, the first to find out would be the other. And then it would be no big deal, end of story.
Todd's black cat, Girlfriend, came sauntering into the room, her tail swishing from side to side in that seductive kitty way. She jumped onto the couch, then made her way into his lap, and he stroked her, running his hand down the length of her spine and all the way to the tip of her tail. She had belonged to Curt, who'd died of AIDS and who'd been so terribly worried about what would happen to the simplest, most innocent thing in his life, this creature. Todd gently pulled her closer, nuzzling her until she broke into a motor of a purr.
Oh, shit, thou
ght Todd as he took another sip of wine, the fucking problem with a gay relationship was that it was like trying to reinvent the wheel. First of all, there was no one sanctioned way to establish a same-sex relationship, particularly not legally, which certainly didn't help. After all, how could you encourage a union with someone without the support of the community, the culture, and the legal system? And how could you support your rights to happiness and prosperity when you had no legal rights to look after your spouse's well-being, health, or financial needs?
On the other hand…
Perhaps it was good that everything was open to discussion and negotiation, particularly if the archetypal model, the heterosexual one, had its flaws. And perhaps it was better if things didn't work between two people that they simply split and went their own ways.
But where could you turn for a model of a gay relationship that worked? And what, for that matter, did work?
Trust. Honesty.
Once again, when it came right down to it, that was all Todd wanted: the knowledge that no matter what happened in this wonderful, shitty world, there was one person he could count on for his integrity, for his word. And that was why his heart now ached, not so much because Rawlins might not have kept his dick zipped up in a chastity belt of morality, but because it looked like Rawlins had already broken their recent agreement by not saying anything. Had the entire discussion been futile? Had Rawlins merely been trying to justify something he'd already done?
Or had there been nothing?
Of course that was a possibility, but if something had happened it was now infinitely more complicated. Andrew was seventeen, just a kid. Rawlins was a cop, someone in a position of authority. If something sexual had happened between them, not only did Todd find it reprehensible, but it also opened an insidious can of trouble. Major league trouble. Todd didn't know the exact Minnesota statutes, but there was no doubt in his mind that sex between someone that young and someone that much older constituted criminal sexual conduct.
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