My father, sensing my melancholy, tried to help. He established the ritual of our weekly call with AJ, one that I maintained even after I went away to college. He signed me up for a gymnastics camp, where I did excel, although I decided never to try out for cheerleading. I knew I was good enough that I could make the team on merit—and then I would never know if I was cute. And I was intensely curious about whether I was cute, or going to be, when I was a teenager. Of course, I could have tanked the tryout, muddled a leg on a cartwheel, to see what would happen. But even as a ten-year-old, imagining my life as a fourteen-year-old, I could not envision failing on purpose, ever.
My father also gave me a book about two children whose older brothers and sister went off to boarding schools, their left-behind siblings desolate. We read it together at night, although I was long past the age of needing to read with him. And the book didn’t really make me feel better. First of all, someone created a scavenger hunt of sorts to amuse and distract the pair in their loneliness. I hoped this was a hint, checked the mail every day, but no one sent me on a quest. Besides they were two. I was one. Randy and I were still friends, but he had a growth spurt over the summer and now towered over me, which made me wary of him. I was worried he would bring up that kissing thing again. I was worried he wouldn’t. He found a girl named Amanda, who had no ambivalence about kissing, and they started going together, which meant we couldn’t hang out anymore. Even in fifth grade, that rule was clear.
Finally it was Thanksgiving. AJ came home, as did Noel and Ariel, but San Antonio was too far for Bash to return. As for Davey—he had never left. He had deferred his admission to Stanford because he needed a long time to recuperate from the Flood brothers’ attack. When he was finally well enough to attend school, it had seemed formidable, traveling cross-country in a wheelchair.
Ben Flood’s knife may have struck only once, but that was enough. He had sliced Davey’s vertebrae, leaving him a paraplegic. Davey never walked again. His parents bought him a car as they had promised, but it was a van equipped with hand pedals, and he used it to commute to the University of Maryland, which at the time took almost any in-state kid with a high school diploma.
“Are you going to see Davey?” my father asked AJ that Thanksgiving weekend, which felt as if it were a decade later than the previous one, given how much had happened. Our father was issuing an instruction, not asking a question: AJ was going to see Davey, whether he wanted to or not. Dutifully, he drove to Hobbit’s Glen, spent an hour in the company of his friend, Sancho Panza visiting Quixote on his deathbed, mind, body, and spirit shattered.
I was more curious about when Noel would stop by. Only he didn’t. It was a hectic three days, with AJ constantly on the move, going from party to party. Nor did we see Noel at Christmas break, but by then his mother had returned to D.C. and his father, more or less in that order. It was a hassle for Noel to get to Columbia from D.C. Summer came, but Noel didn’t come back. He landed a summer theater gig, interning in Chicago. He was paid nothing, but they liked him, invited him back the next summer, began to use him as an actor. By the age of twenty, Noel was a member of Steppenwolf. At twenty-two, he moved to New York, began landing small parts. He was six foot four then, very slender. Some say that one’s eyes appear large as a child because eyes never grow while our heads do. But the photographs I saw of Noel—the Columbia Flier was quite proprietary about his success—made them look as large as ever. And as green as ever, I assume, but the photos were black and white. Remember that, when newspapers were black and white and read all over?
And then, at age twenty-six, Noel was dead. AIDS. Remember when young men didn’t die from “viruses” at the age of twenty-six?
Noel had come out in college. Was that even the phrase used then? I’m not sure. I don’t even remember if I was ever told that Noel was gay, much less if I would have understood what that word meant. What I remember is a Christmas party at our house, one not attended by Noel—the distance from D.C., again, the lack of a car—where Ariel, his classmate at Northwestern, spoke almost exclusively about his life, not hers. “He’s just so happy,” she said over and over again. Which seemed odd to me, because I thought Noel had always been happy. Happiness had seemed to be one of Noel’s many talents.
The discussion of Noel—and happiness, come to think of it—ended when Davey arrived. Our old house was not well suited to a wheelchair, even an electric one. He needed help over the threshold, then had trouble coming down the skittery rug in the hallway that led to our living room. And while his friends had seen him in the chair before, his appearance seemed to throw them, as if they kept thinking this was a play that would eventually end, Davey standing up, announcing himself healed. Don Quixote is not dead, Dulcinea tells Sancho. Some man she never knew has died. Then the man rises from his deathbed, reverts to his true self, Miguel de Cervantes, and goes to face the Inquisition, manuscript in hand. Seeing Davey for the first time, it was all I could do not to say something stupid about Ironside, which was my only frame of reference for anyone in a wheelchair. People gathered around him, trying to pretend that they were interested in his stories about rehabilitation, that his autumn had been like theirs. Davey played along. Maybe it wasn’t playing, come to think of it. This was a time when everyone had gone off and crafted a new persona. Hadn’t Davey in effect done the same thing, to a greater extent? Everyone was starting over.
The sextet of AJ, Davey, Noel, Bash, Ariel, and Lynne would never be together again, unless one counts Noel’s funeral in May 1988. I’m not even sure the surviving five wanted to be together then. But Ariel had prevailed on all of them to come, no matter how difficult. (AJ, having finished law school at Yale, was now getting an MBA at Wharton, which was a factor in my decision to apply to Bryn Mawr. As was the realization that I would totally dominate everything at a girls-only school. Unfair, but I wanted to go to law school and I felt I needed not only top marks, but a résumé that showed me as president of the student body, or something equally impressive.) Ariel even asked Davey, who was active in his church choir, to sing at the service. It seemed to me his voice was more beautiful than ever, with richer, deeper tones. He sang a ballad, one requested by Noel, the song AJ had played on his record player so many years ago while they spied on Miss Maude, the one about the girl with moonlight in her eyes.
AJ, sitting next to me, coughed at the word girl. Liberace had died only a year before. Rock Hudson, whom I knew as McMillan of McMillan and Wife—television cops were basically my window on the world, if that’s not clear by now—had been dead three years. People, real people, people we knew, did not die this way. Yet Noel had.
The funeral was in D.C., Georgetown. The church was exceedingly pretty. In fact, I think it was chosen for its prettiness. There was no sense that the Episcopal priest who spoke had ever known Noel or his parents. An impressive number of Noel’s new friends came—from New York, even from Chicago. In fact, they quite outnumbered the family and the high school gang. The old friends—AJ, Bash, Davey, Ariel, Lynne—did not sit together in the church, but they gravitated toward one another at the reception, which was terrifyingly fancy, with an open bar and passed hors d’oeuvres. I was reminded of the party at Davey’s house, his gleaming glass house with all those levels; no wonder his parents had sold it. And I remembered Noel’s face when those boys screamed “faggot” and no one took offense. Had it really been almost ten years ago?
“Did Noel pick the song you sang?” AJ asked Davey. I sensed he wanted to ask: Why were you picked to sing, not me? Noel and I were closer.
Ariel answered for him. “He did. Noel accepted he was dying. He began making plans a year ago. All of this—the church, this restaurant, the service—was his idea. He outlined his plans to his mother and me months ago. He knew what was happening. It was the rest of us who were in denial, even when he went into hospice.”
“So you two were still close,” Bash said.
“Why wouldn’t we be?” Ariel, mild and quiet as a teenager, had bec
ome flamboyant. Her hair was full on one side, almost shaved on the other. She wore only one enormous earring, on the shaved side; her black dress had a bubble skirt, which I knew to be very fashionable. (It had taken years, but I had cracked the code of popularity. I dressed well, was cute verging on pretty, and was even considered somewhat cool. Too bad it had taken me until junior year in high school to get there.) Lynne, by contrast, wore a red “power” suit with padded shoulders. She was getting a little thick, I noticed, filing that information away. Petite women such as us had to stay petite as we aged or we would look like fireplugs. Maybe I could offer Lynne that helpful advice, as she had once advised me on my gymnastics career.
“Settle down,” Bash said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“It just would have been nice,” Ariel said, “if other people had visited him. He knew, even when he couldn’t really talk anymore. He knew when people came to see him.”
“Noel stopped talking to me,” AJ said. “Not the other way around. I just assumed he didn’t want to see me. Those are his friends.” Using his chin, he indicated the men who had come from New York and Chicago. And they were almost all men. Extremely somber, haunted-looking men, wearing red ribbons in their lapels. Looking back, I realize these men were just beginning to understand that their lives had become a horror film. They were being stalked. Their ranks would be decimated. How many of them would die within a decade? The conventional wisdom is that people my age, who came into their sexuality in a post-HIV world, were denied something. But I never felt that way. Maybe it came down to the old adage of not being able to miss what you never had. Noel had a few giddy years of finding his place in the world, of being his authentic self. It had killed him. Even at the age of eighteen, I could see how horribly unfair that was.
“The phone works both ways, AJ,” Ariel said. “You could have picked it up any time.”
“And said what? ‘Hey, it’s your old friend you cut off without a word of explanation’?”
“Really? Without a word?”
AJ had grown dangerously fond of arguing. That was my father’s observation, issued just yesterday, when AJ had arrived home for the funeral. “You have grown dangerously fond of arguing. You need to watch out for that. You don’t have to win all the time. Not even with me.”
AJ said now: “Is there something you’re trying to suggest, Ariel? Did Noel ever tell you why he stopped talking to me?”
Ariel considered, started to say something, changed her mind. “No,” she said. “We really didn’t talk that much about you, AJ. Believe it or not. You were no longer the center of our universe.”
Davey, using the mild tone of someone hoping to derail an argument, said: “It doesn’t matter now, does it? I just hope he had a chance to renounce his sins and make a clean breast of things with God.”
“What?” Ariel and AJ were united in their dismay at least.
“I’m sorry, but it’s a sin. Homosexuality. Why do you think they’re being punished this way? It goes against God’s will.”
“If Noel knew you felt this way, he never would have asked you—I wouldn’t have asked you—” In her distress, Ariel could not put a sentence together.
“Look, I was punished, too. For my sins.”
“What sin?” AJ asked. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Sex outside marriage is a sin, too. I almost died and maybe I should have. Noel helped to save my life that night, getting the paramedics there.” I noticed that Davey did not credit AJ. “I’ll never forget that, and that’s why I was happy to sing here today. I owed him that much. But my church, my calling, considers homosexuality a sin. I’m sorry, Ariel. There aren’t exceptions for friends when it comes to God’s law. No loopholes.”
“I think I’ll go check with Noel’s mom to see if there’s anything she needs,” Ariel muttered. Bash and Lynne, who seemed to be getting back together yet again, went to the bar, his arm around her waist. (I did not understand then that funerals, as much as weddings, could lead to hookups.)
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Davey,” AJ repeated.
“I didn’t break the law. But the law, as written, allows a lot of sin. You went to law school. I’m going to seminary. We’re not going to see things the same way.”
“Do you really believe premarital sex between consenting adults is a sin?”
“I believe in God’s word. Laws are made by men. Sin has been defined by God.”
“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore, Davey.”
“I’ve changed. I’m sorry if that threatens you—”
“Why would it threaten me?”
“It threatens everyone. A change like this, a big change. It’s like when a person stops drinking or doing drugs. A lot of people in their lives don’t support them. I’ve found meaning. I understand things now. You know, it’s never too late to start being good, AJ.”
After a long silence, AJ said: “Speaking of drink, I need one.”
Now I was left alone with Davey. That had never happened before, just the two of us, one-on-one. Had we ever spoken other than the day on the path, when I was with Randy? He must have been coming from Nita Flood’s house that day, I realized. Randy thought he was high, but maybe he was just a young man besotted with a young woman. Were his parents the only reason that Davey hid his relationship with Nita? Or was it her reputation, her acne-scarred face? Nita Flood knows her sausage. God, Lynne had always been a bitch.
“You’ve gotten very pretty, Lu,” Davey said.
“Not really,” I protested, although I was pleased he had registered the change in me. Then, because I had no idea what else to say: “Are you really going to be a minister?”
“I hope so. People need God. It was a mistake, I think, not having real churches in Columbia when we were kids. Or synagogues or mosques or whatever. An Interfaith Center. What’s that? It sounds like a good idea. Everyone equal, everyone welcome. That’s a lie. So much about where we lived—it was a lie.”
I was flattered that he was speaking to me as if I were a peer, but I had no idea how to respond. I had been raised to think that religion was, if not an opiate, then something for lesser minds. My father, the son of Methodists, had been appalled that his parents, who considered themselves religious, saw no contradiction in being hateful racists. He had disliked his in-laws’ Judaism, too, because it did not make them kind or ease their materialism. His affiliation with the Quakers was more political than religious.
Out of conversation, I asked Davey: “Can I get you something to eat?”
“No, thank you. I’m being careful.”
“Careful?”
“To tell you the truth, I was a little scared to come here today. No one really knows how you catch this thing. But I prayed on it and realized it was the right thing to do. Noel wanted me to sing, so I sang. And the song was okay. I would have preferred a hymn, but it was a respectful song.”
“Why did Noel want you to sing if you—” I wanted to say, thought he was a sinner, but settled for: “Didn’t really see him or talk to him?”
“I have theories, but they’re only theories. You should ask your brother.”
“AJ?”
“He’s your only brother, isn’t he?” And with that Davey glided away.
Left alone, surveying the room of gorgeous men and Noel’s friends and family, I realized Davey was the only black man. Not even Noel’s actor friends, from New York and Chicago, included anyone dark-skinned. Again, I thought of the party in the glass house, the sense of an ant farm, but so many white ants, so few black ones. African American, I guess I should say here. In just my lifetime—from 1970 to now—the accepted term has kept evolving. Negro. Black. African American. And now politicians such as myself are trying to learn the minefields around gender-identity issues. Not that long ago, two prostitutes from Baltimore stole a car, drove into the National Security Agency campus, got shot, one of them fatally. They were originally identified as “cross-dressers,” men in women’s clothing.
But they were trans women. “Had they had the surgery?” my father asked and I tried to explain that the question is no longer allowed, that we accept people as they see themselves. “Then they’re transvestites!” “No, Dad, no.” I tried to explain “trans” and “cis,” which, it turns out, I didn’t completely understand myself. He waved his hand in front of his face, as if I were an ignorant child again, frustrating in my stupidity. Only my father never treated me that way when I was a child. It is only quite recently that he has become impatient, crotchety. Well, he has cause. I remember Gabe’s father, on his deathbed when we tried to explain how we were going to have children, the nice lady in Texas who was carrying our twins. Gabe knelt by his father’s bed, saying, “So the first thing you do, is you find a Texas lesbian—” His father waved his hand, said “Pah!” Or was it “Pa”? He was lucid, but down to words of one syllable. He probably thought we did not know how babies were made. Ten days before he died, the twins were born. He saw their photos, but it was never clear if he understood he finally had grandchildren, thanks to some cheerleader’s donor eggs, a Texas lesbian and a suave Egyptian doctor who had blended our baby cocktail and then inserted it into our beloved surrogate. On Yom Kippur of all days. So while Gabe was in synagogue, praying and fasting and atoning for whatever, I was roaming the sterile suburbs of Northern Virginia, trying to find a Five Guys for our ravenous savior, a woman who could do the one thing that had eluded me: hold two fertilized eggs in the lining of her uterus. She was the one who introduced me, in fact, to the wonder that is Five Guys.
Wilde Lake: A Novel Page 22
