Above The Thunder

by Renee Manfredi

  Now he had practical things to consider, like how to live through one day at a time—that horrible maxim of the sick and afflicted everywhere. He didn’t want to wake up each day and take an inventory of his health, work his way past this terrible fact each morning, and God forbid, be grateful for feeling good and getting through another day. It would be too much like waiting, like waiting for the virus to quicken in him until it carried him off in pieces. He’d seen friends die, they all had. Suffering was one thing, but subtraction was another. Every day something was taken away. Dignity, of course, was first. Memory, sometimes. Thinking back to those who had died from this plague, Jack couldn’t think of a single person whose death wasn’t met with thankfulness and utter relief. Not that the dead one’s suffering was over, but the suffering of those who had cared for him had finally ended.

  When Stuart got in from school Jack wasn’t home yet. All the Robert Mitchum tapes were out and scattered around the living room, magazines and the remains of at least two meals on the coffee table. He’d eaten, which must mean he was feeling better. Stuart had been so worried these past few weeks. Jack was completely worn-out looking, edgy and irritable. It had been months since they’d made love, even longer since Jack slept through the night. Jack thought he didn’t know, thought he didn’t hear him get out of bed and leave the house, but Stuart was aware of every second ticking by, every moment Jack wasn’t beside him.

  Jack was cheating, he was sure of it. With whom, he didn’t know, and he couldn’t have said if it was one time with one person or a hundred with fifty different people. He hadn’t yet made up his mind what to do. Confront him, ignore it and hope it went away, or leave Jack altogether, which was what he was considering after last night. As much as the thought of being without Jack made him feel hopeless and lost, he couldn’t stand the alternative, either, which was loving someone as much as he loved Jack and having his heart break over and over. Jack’s behavior at the party last night had tipped the scales toward exodus.

  Stuart had gone to the backyard to look for Jack and saw him sitting on the chaise with the boyish-looking man who was Craig’s ex-partner. Stuart watched long enough to see them hand a bottle of booze back and forth, and to see the man pawing at Jack. He had felt so sick then, his stomach turning to hot needles. Later, he couldn’t stop shaking with grief and fury. It was getting too painful to be with him. Infidelity aside, Jack’s moods and flippancy, excesses and bluster were corrosive. Jack had the energy and spirit of two men.

  After finding Jack with Gary, Stuart talked to his friend Pamela on the phone about what was going on. Pamela offered him her place if and when he decided to leave Jack. Stuart felt hives popping up just thinking about packing his things.

  He took the dirty plates to the kitchen, then cleaned up Jack’s sick bay area: a used handkerchief, a half-completed grocery list, doodles on the note pad by the phone, a heap of pistachio nut shells and a sour-smelling sweatshirt. He took the nutshells and handkerchief and notepaper with Jack’s handwriting into the bedroom. The doodles were all of trains and ladders—or maybe they were supposed to be railroad tracks.

  Hidden behind the blankets in the spare bedroom’s closet was Stuart’s special coat. On the outside, it was just an ordinary trench coat, but on the lining he had sewn various mementos of Jack over the years. Race numbers from marathons; a square of denim from an old pair of Levi’s Jack wore a lot when they’d first started dating; bits of hay from a farm in Idaho they stopped at while driving across the country. Jack had first told him he loved him at that farm, and everything Jack touched that day, from the foil his sandwich was wrapped in to the guitar pick he’d found on the street then snipped in the center with fingernail clippers to form a heart, was sewn into this coat. It would seem fetishistic to some, Stuart knew, and Jack himself would make fun of it, but whatever else happened, Stuart would always have these traces of Jack.

  Near the hem, he glued the notepaper with Jack’s doodles and grocery list, right up against the maple leaves and acorns from their trip to Maine last year. They’d stayed in a bed and breakfast on the coast, spent long mornings in bed and afternoons walking on the beach, evenings around the enormous fireplace in the nearby ski lodge.

  Maybe they should travel together, go back to that quaint B&B to try to reconnect. How could he give up Jack? At the shoulder were the liner notes to Steely Dan’s “Dirty Work,” the first CD they bought together, and beside it, ticket stubs from The Magic Flute around which he pasted the pistachio shells that had been heaped in Jack’s soup bowl earlier this afternoon.

  Stuart refolded the coat and took it back to its hiding place. He’d start an appetizer plate. Foccacia with herbed chèvre and Greek olives. It was seven o’clock. Where the hell was Jack? Stuart expected him hours ago. Things were going to be fine, Stuart told himself. Jack’s rash was just an extreme reaction to that medicine. Nothing to be overly concerned about; the doctor told him as much. He decanted a bottle of port, poured half a glass, and before he realized what he was doing, he’d opened a bottle of sixty-dollar champagne they’d been saving for two years. He set the table with candles and their best china and loaded up Dave Brubeck and Lightnin’ Hopkins on the CD changer. Was Stuart celebrating? It looked like celebration. It was a sign, he decided, an omen that Jack was all right.

  By the time Jack walked in at, Stuart was drunk, the candles burned down to stubs, and the food cold and congealing on the plates. Jack just stood in the doorway, looked at Stuart from there as though waiting to be invited in. He was filthy, covered in mud, unsteady and droopy-eyed.

  Brubeck was playing “Take Five” for the third time. He stared at Jack, tried to make sense of the mud, the sticks in his hair. “Is it raining?”

  Jack shook his head.

  Stuart got up, walked closer to him, but Jack didn’t move. “What’s wrong with you? Why do you look like that?” Stuart asked.

  Jack opened his mouth as if to speak. He met Stuart’s eyes then looked down.

  “Did you see the doctor today?”

  Jack nodded. “Darling,” he started.

  What was coming next, he wasn’t ready to hear. “Stop,” Stuart said. “Don’t speak. I want five minutes.” He sank back down into the sofa.

  “Stuart—”

  “Shut up, Jack. These are the last few minutes before my life changes forever. And they’re mine.” How could this be? Though even as he formed the question he knew.

  “I’m standing in the doorway, Stuart.”

  “I see that.”

  “I’m waiting for you to ask me in.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you tell me not to come any farther, I’ll disappear from your life forever. I understand if you hate me. I’m an evil man. I’ve lied to you. I’ve betrayed you. I’m the worst kind of evil.”

  Stuart didn’t respond.

  A few minutes went by. Jack said again, “I am standing in the doorway.”

  “What do you want me to do about it?”

  “I want you to tell me which way to go.”

  He looked up. “Tell me first. Do I need to be tested?”

  “Yes.”

  “How could you do this?” Stuart turned off the stereo, began to clear the table. Ordinary things, one ordinary thing at a time. Two forks, two plates. Dishwater and sponge. He turned on the tap and added soap. Scraped the dishes into the trash.

  Fifteen minutes later when he went back into the living room, Jack was still there. He walked to the birdcage with fresh newspaper.

  “I stand here in the doorway.”

  “Go through it,” Stuart said, as he opened the birdcage and spread seed, “and don’t come back.”

  “Before I go,” Jack said quietly, “I want to ask you something. I have no right to ask this. But, even if you have to lie, tell me you love me just one last time.”

  Stuart wheeled around. “I won’t say that. I will never say those words to you again. How could you ask that? It’s the same as asking me for my forgiv
eness.”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “There is no forgiveness that will change this. In five months, in five years, this will be as devastating as it is right now. There is no past tense with this.”

  Immediately after Jack left Stuart picked up the phone, started to dial Jane and Leila’s number, then stopped. He looked up Pamela’s number, but he didn’t want to talk to her, either. He sat for a minute, then before he thought about it, he was calling home. His father answered.

  “Dad? It’s Stuart.” He heard a sportscaster droning in the background and instantly he was transported to the damp basement with its conditioned air, big-screen TV and brown furnishings. Stuart could almost smell the mildewy pool chalk in the air, the dust coming off the 1972 Encyclopedia Britannicas that no one ever opened.

  “Hey, hey. How are you, son?”

  “I’m doing well.” Stuart said. “It’s just been a while so I thought I’d call.”

  “Good. It’s good to hear from you. How’s school?”

  “I still haven’t officially transferred to one of the Boston schools yet, but that will happen soon. I’m taking a few classes.”

  “How’s Jack? How are you two enjoying Boston?”

  “We like Boston a whole lot.”

  “Good. You just missed your mother. She’s at her girls’ night out thing. She’s become a gallivanter, that woman. I suspect she’s been to some male strip clubs.”

  Stuart laughed. “What? My mother? The church deaconess?”

  “She’s running with a rough crowd. She and her high school friends are getting together twice a month. They stay out late, and I don’t ask. But your mother comes home with alcohol and cigarette smoke on her breath.”

  “Well, good for her.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I think, too. Though I pretend to be shocked.”

  Stuart asked after his brothers and his sister. “How are Kevin and James? Did Carol decide to take the job in Maryland?”

  Stuart listened to his father run through the litany of what his siblings and their kids had been doing. He envisioned his aging father in front of the football game, his mild, farsighted eyes blinking behind his glasses, his hands becoming arthritic. His father hoped for modest things—health, a little travel, children and grandchildren who visited. Stuart felt a lump in his throat. He’d gone so far outside of his father’s realm, had at various times pitied and scorned his parents for what he believed was a cowardly, limited life—work, church, family. No hobbies, no real interests.

  “Is everything all right, son?”

  “I think so. I hope so.”

  His father paused. “Your mother and I love and miss you. You know you and Jack are welcome here anytime.”

  Stuart’s throat got tighter. “I’ll come and visit soon. Give my love to Mom,” he said, and hung up after his father’s goodbye. His father was a kind man, a good and generous man; for so long he’d underestimated the value of that.

  He remembered the fall day when he was with four or five of his friends in the backyard. They were boys from his class, two of them the most popular in school. Stuart had gotten their attention for his irreverence one day in art class when he drew a nasty portrait of their teacher, Miss McCarthy, naked with strategically placed chopsticks and the caption, “Two sticks are better than one!” The trip to the principal’s office, the stern lectures and the call to his parents were well worth the reward of getting the attention of these popular boys. And now here they were, in his backyard, throwing a football around with him while his father cooked hot dogs on the grill. He was only a little ashamed of his father, much less than other boys. His father had played football in high school and was still in decent shape, although the way he acted that day was like a telegram announcing that Stuart rarely had anyone over. Parents who were used to their children’s friends didn’t tell so many corny jokes or hang around and smile so much. His father had the same ridiculous grin he wore while watching Stuart’s sister in the junior high production of My Fair Lady.

  That day was the first time Stuart knew something was different about him. When Tim Eberhardt caught a pass and Stuart went in to tackle him, he was aware of the boy’s body in ways too particular not to be disturbing, even at nine. The silky hair on his legs, the musky boy sweat at his hairline and armpits. Stuart’s legs were entangled with Tim’s, his pelvis tipped in so he felt the boy’s small penis against his own. This felt so right, the boy beneath him with the smell of fall leaves and the light through the canopy of maples, that he had to will his body not to move, stop himself from burying his face in the hollow of the boy’s neck.

  “Get off me, Carpenter,” was all Tim said, but his expression was as astonished as if Stuart had kissed him. Much later, Stuart thought the boy probably felt his half-hard penis against his leg. Luckily, Tim had never said anything—maybe, like Stuart, he was too young to understand what it all meant.

  By the end of that day, he was miserable. He took a cool bath, lathered his hair with Breck shampoo, his body with Ivory soap.

  He turned down his bed and opened the windows. Outside, the air already had the ashy smell of autumn. The nighthawks and crickets made him feel a little less lonely. His brothers were away on a Scout trip that weekend so he had the room to himself.

  He combed his hair with a blue plastic comb, then took out his Superman comics. He felt as if he had lost something, or, crestfallen, like the time his grandfather promised to take him on a fishing trip then canceled at the last minute Stuart had been preparing and daydreaming about the trip for three weeks.

  He slid his hand inside his pajama bottoms, cupped his scrotum. There were magnets in here. Here was where the magnets in him attracted the magnets in the body of a lady. When he kissed a girl, this part of him stuck to that part of her until a baby grew inside her. A special water was formed in him, and came up through his penis then flowed into a girl’s space. But it must be that his magnets were turned around somehow, shaped like a girl’s, in a horseshoe. Nothing had ever happened when he spied on the girls with his friends. His penis didn’t get hard; he didn’t want to touch himself through his Speedo at the pool like his friends did when they watched the girls. This was the problem: His magnet was facing the wrong way, attracted another boy instead of a girl.

  His father knocked on the door, and then waited for Stuart to invite him in—he was always so good about that, never barged in or snooped. “It’s me, son.”

  “Come in.”

  His father had changed into his pajamas and slippers. He walked in and sat on the edge of the bed, smiled over at the Humpty Dumpty lamp on the night table. “We really need to get you boys some new furnishings. I think you’re getting a little too old for Humpty Dumpty lights and Bugs Bunny blankets.”

  Stuart shrugged.

  “I just wanted to come in and congratulate you on having such a good day. I enjoyed your friends. You positively shone.”

  Stuart looked away, ashamed, though he couldn’t say why. Once, at a family reunion, Stuart took his cousin’s Kennedy half-dollar collection. Stuart’s aunt called the next day, and he heard his father say, “My sons don’t steal. I will walk through fire defending that belief.” He felt like that now, as though he had lied to his father.

  “What’s the matter?” his father said.

  “I don’t know.” He couldn’t hold back any longer and he started to cry, his breath coming in jagged waves. “There’s something wrong with me.”

  “No,” his father said firmly, “there isn’t.” He pulled Stuart onto his lap, as though he were a very young child. The comfort he felt soon erased any awkwardness. His father didn’t say anything further, but he must have known, must have felt the odd tension that had sprung up between his son and the boys he tackled. His father let him cry, and after a little while bade him good night.

  The next morning, when he and his father were driving across town to the hardware store, his father broke the unbearable tension. “I was thinking this morning about the Four
th of July parade last year.” Stuart looked over at his father’s profile. “I had to help you find a place where you could see, remember? The man with the hat, those tall teenagers.”

  Stuart nodded.

  “The world’s a big place. You have to find yourself a clear view. You need to move to the place where you can see best. The place where you’re most comfortable. Do you understand this? There will be a place for you. It just might take you a little bit longer to find it.”

  Stuart brewed a pot of tea now, then went in to take a cool shower. He slid into his freshly changed bed. Outside the street sounds lulled him to sleep, the voices of teenagers, the blaring of radios. Normally he would have been irritated. But now, he found the noise rather poignant, their innocence about what the world was yet to deliver to them, the myriad ways it would tell them no.

  FIVE

  WONDERING WHERE THE LIONS ARE

  Nearly a month after Poppy and her family were due in, the phone rang just as Anna was heading out the door. The machine picked up and gave her Marvin’s voice, the hesitating baritone that even after all these years made the hair at the back of her neck stand up. There were no gradations of emotion where her son-in-law was concerned; fury was what it always boiled down to, unadulterated anger like a chalky residue left in a test tube after some weird experiment.