by Robert Price
Chapter Thirty-Six
Elizabeth held an eight by ten, black and white photograph of Tom as a boy with the farmhouse behind him. “This is what I told you about, Jon, what I remember. See, it was just like this—like growing up someplace else, in another era.” Elizabeth bit the inside of her lip. “Look at him, he was just a boy!” For her, Tom had never lived a life outside of Newbury. Apart from her memories of their time growing up on the farm, she never actually considered that her older brother Tom had had a life of his own, a life beyond their childhood.
Jon, standing next to her, looked at the black and white photo in her hand. There he was, Tom as a boy of not more than five years old, the farmhouse and farmland behind him. But it could have easily been a picture of the little boy in the next room. “Was that taken right here, out front?”
“Yes, it was,” she said, and then looked toward Ezekiel who had stepped out of the way to give her plenty of room while she sifted through his pile of photographs.
“He gave all these to you?” she asked, ignoring Ezekiel’s presence in the pictures.
“That one in your hand was Tom’s favorite,” Ezekiel said. “I have a framed print of it in our bedroom. You’re welcome to that one, if you’d like.”
Elizabeth blinked: Was this man for real? Offering me a photograph of my brother and our farm? Who the hell does he think he is?
“What are you saying? That you have a photograph of our farm in your bedroom?”
“Elizabeth,” Jon tried to intervene as he heard his wife’s voice begin to twist with tension.
“Hush, Jon. I want to understand what this man is saying.”
“He’s not saying anything other than the fact that he and your brother, Tom and him, lived a full life together.”
“Well, that’s his business. But this is my business.” She shook the eight by ten by its corner. “This is my life that he has hanging on his wall and I just want to know why he thinks he has the right to come here and—”
Elizabeth stopped; evidence of her brother’s life as a gay man was there, spread out on the table in front of her. She wanted to deny it more than anything, but the photographs disarmed her.
“—come here and—and tell us how my brother lived his life. Bullshit! That’s what I say. Bullshit!”
“Please, that wasn’t my intention at all. I didn’t—” Ezekiel heard anger and saw disgust in Elizabeth’s face and posture.
“Tell me then, tell me all about it. What are you trying to say? My brother was a faggot? Is that it?” She circled the table and picked up a photo from Ezekiel and Tom’s Christmas series. The picture cut off Ezekiel’s head and one of Tom’s arms. She held up the photograph and demanded, “How old is this picture? Tell me, how old is this picture?”
“That was our first Christmas together—in our house.”
“How old is the picture?”
“Elizabeth …” Jon tried to stop her.
“What are you afraid of?” she snapped at him.
Jon backed down.
Turning to Ezekiel she yelled, “Just answer the damn question! How long ago was this photo taken?”
“Eight years.”
“Eight years, he says, ‘Eight years.’ And you were together the whole time? Since this photo?”
“We were together for ten years total.”
“Ten years? Bullshit,” Elizabeth yelled again. “And you know how I know? Do you want to know how I know? I know because there’s a woman in the other room right now manipulating my mother with a boy she claims is Tom’s. Can you believe it? And the fucking child is five years old. So are you telling me my gay brother was busy making babies with a straight woman while you and he had set up a happy gay home? Is that it?”
Ezekiel’s mouth dropped open, the names popped into his head, Carrie and Tommy? Of course, of course. The kitchen shrunk around him, confining him. The light seemed to vibrate, getting brighter then dimmer. His ears hummed. He felt weak.
Elizabeth knew she had hit him hard. She wanted him to react, retaliate just as forcefully. She wanted him to get mad at her, to defend himself, to yell loudly, to argue bitterly. Instead, he quietly pulled a chair to the table and sat down. He needed time to let Elizabeth’s accusations sink in.
Elizabeth glared at Jon. She wanted Jon to say something, anything, reprimand her for being so brutal toward Ezekiel. If he did, she would yell even louder. She wanted to scream until someone could explain to her how her brother’s life had become so fucked up.
Earlier that day, as the trumpet player blew taps and her brother’s casket was lowered into the ground, she was free to remember Tom as she had imagined him. She had believed that her brother lived a simple and private life. He had been a man who remained in contact with his family, sending annual Christmas/Chanukah cards and birthday gifts, and if he could have he would have spent more time with them. He had been a man of honor and duty who had the misfortune of giving his life for what she considered a useless and misguided war. In reality, Tom had been all those things, in one form or another, just not in the way she had wanted.
Elizabeth had nowhere left to turn and no one left to argue with. It was true, she only knew her brother as a child.
Elizabeth’s angry voice penetrated the quiet of the reception room, upsetting Tommy and prompting Carrie Phillips to suggest to Mrs. Hubbard that they move their small party a bit further away, into the living room. Once there, however, Carrie found that if she listened closely she could still hear snippets of what sounded like Elizabeth interrogating Ezekiel.
Curious as to why Elizabeth was venting on him, she made the excuse that she had lost something, a bracelet, on the reception room couch. She left Tommy with Mrs. Hubbard and returned to the small room alone to eavesdrop.
Carrie heard Elizabeth question Ezekiel about a photograph, and she heard his reply—“It was eight years ago.” Carrie strained to listen in; she wanted to hear if the ruckus Elizabeth was making had anything to do with her or her son.
“Bullshit!” Elizabeth’s voice filtered through, and then she said something that had never entered Carrie’s mind as a reason why Tom had behaved the way he had toward her. Apparently, when she was having her fling with Tom, when she had become pregnant, Tom had been cheating on his boyfriend, Ezekiel. She sat on the couch and stared at the fire roaring away in the fireplace. Tom had been gay.
The kitchen fell silent. Then Carrie heard the doorknob rattle and jumped up to fulfill the promise of her original excuse. She rummaged around the pillows of the couch as if having dropped something. The door opened and Elizabeth and Jon stepped into the room.
“Lose something?” Jon asked.
“Oh, nothing really, just a bracelet. It could be anywhere. I just looked at my wrist and realized I’d lost it.” Carrie Phillips stood and straightened her long skirt, continuing to scan the floor and couch with a made-up perplexed expression.
“Do you need a hand?” Jon began to look around the floor for the non-existent bracelet.
“No, that’s fine. It was more sentimental than anything,” Carrie replied, pursing her lips. Looking at the two of them, Carrie noticed that Elizabeth appeared exhausted, resigned. The anger that had seemed to drip off her the last time she had passed through the small sitting room was now gone, drained away.
Elizabeth’s eyes rested on her mother’s empty chair. “Where did my mother go?”
“My son’s entertaining her in the living room.”
“Should we join them?” Elizabeth weakly asked Jon and motioned to the door.
“You’ll join us, too?” Jon invited Carrie as they exited to the living room.
Carrie nodded and returned to looking for a non-existent bracelet. Then, satisfied that Elizabeth and Jon had joined Mrs. Hubbard and her son, she slid into the kitchen to find Ezekiel.
