I Bet I Can Guess

Anyone who has read my blog has probably picked up on the fact that my getting older has really made me appreciate my family more than ever. When I was younger, I hardly understood myself, let alone what made my relatives tick. However, through all my adolescence, there is one member of my family who, for years now, I’ve been able to share every aspect of what I was going through in my life. That person is my cousin, Donna who comes to visit me later this week. (And for the record, since everyone asks how we are related – our grandmothers were sisters.)

We’re a scarce nine years apart, but when you are young, that age gap is tremendous. For as many days as I spent over her house when I was a kid – she was this mysterious girl who flitted in and out while I spent time with her younger sister. She’d be off on dates, disco dancing, going to work, living a life I couldn’t imagine. We’d be in the kitchen making ice cream sundaes or watching TV and in would walk this girl who seemed to be so far removed from my life. As the years went by and I somehow couldn’t grasp the fact that I liked boys - despite dreaming about her boyfriend and pretending he was my pillow – I still found the age difference to be such a canyon between us.  I danced with her at her wedding, looking up to this woman who seemed so far ahead of me in everything – life, love, independence and education to name just a few. As I graduated college she helped me in my new and uncharted world. In fact, our very first dinner together – just the two of us –at the now defunct, Michael’s Grand Cru in Lynn, was not far from where she had her wedding reception. 

What did we talk about that night? I can’t remember, but I do know it was just the surface of my life – for my secret about boys weighed heavily on me. It was something no one knew, a clandestine topic that back in the early 80s was one that, once let out, caused fear or revulsion in many people. Where would I be if this woman that I so highly regarded and held in such esteem rejected me? No one in my family knew what I was going through and even when I moved to San Francisco in 1990, my “other” life was firmly behind the closet door. Of course, there were the whispered suspicions.  Where was his girlfriend, who does he know in that city by the bay? But, being 3,000 miles away, I could safely avoid the answers. My mother was the only one who knew – and together, as the atmosphere towards gays and lesbians was one of scorn and ridicule, we kept quiet. I disconnected from many, but as the age of electronic mail took hold (yes, I am that old - e-mail was not around when I first moved to California) – Donna and I remained in contact with each other. But our mails, like all of our dinners, only skimmed the surface.

And then one day, she was coming to the Bay Area for a conference. Alone, without her husband, she asked if she could spend a few days with me. Without hesitation, I said yes, but deep inside, I was terrified – how could I hide who I was in San Francisco? I lived in the Castro with two other gay men, my friends were drag queens (I had not yet summoned the courage to debut Shanda Leer) and there was no escaping the company I kept. For days, I agonized over what I should do. In the hours that proceeded that night – I have never been so nervous. Except for my mother, this was the only “coming out” scenario I planned. Because, back then, you “came out,” you found the right time and place to share who you were, and if you were lucky, the right words were said and the love was still there. 

As the work day came to a close and I drove to pick her up at her hotel, my palms were wet with nervousness and I could hardly breathe. There she was in the lobby, dressed in her little pink cowboy boots and perfect outfit. We drove to the restaurant and throughout dinner, we skimmed the surface of so many topics, with the one that I knew I had to approach weighting heavy on my mind. My usual ravenous appetite was nonexistent and I could feel the perspiration seep through every piece of clothing. 

Finally, it was time for dessert and we decided on spumoni. Maybe, I thought, the chill of the Italian ice cream would cool my feverish head. With my stomach in knots and the coffee before us, I simply said, in a chocked whisper, “I have something to tell you.”

“I bet I can guess,” she smiled coyly.

“Great, you do that,” I blurted out.

“Oh, no,” she laughed taking a bite of the dessert. “You have to tell me.”

And like I did years before with my mother, my hands shook, tears filled my eyes and my voice cracked as I feared the confession would destroy everything between us. And, then, it was over – my napkin soaked, the ice cream melting on the table in front us and her hand on mine telling me that it was alright – that nothing had changed between us, and that this was, in fact, going to be okay.

I don’t know how long we sat at dinner – I only remember the ice cream melted and that day was the first in our new relationship. From that moment on, we no longer stayed on the surface but dived with our heads first, fathoms deep into our lives. Today, there’s nothing she doesn’t know about me. From the pain of failed attempts at relationships, to the joys of drag, together over the years, we’ve laughed and cried all the while never, in all these years, running out of things to say to one another. 

That nine year difference is inconsequential now – and, I think, in a way, has made us even closer. And, though, I jokingly tell her that we are only in the same decade of age only once, we still feel as young as those two people who had that first dinner so long ago. A closeted boy and his much revered cousin have become so much more – we’ve become best friends. So this weekend, there will be, for sure, more stories to share, more tales to tell about life, love and our crazy but loving family. We’ll discover something new about each other and reminisce about times past and those that we have lost and loved. 

And without a doubt, we’ll have to tell someone that our grandmothers were sisters, but this time, at dinner, instead of coffee, I’ll order us some martinis and maybe, just maybe, I’ll ask if they could serve us a dish of spumoni.

In A Mirror

Watching Dame Shirley Bassey kill it on the Oscars last night made me think of the story that opened my short story collection. Enjoy.

 

In a Mirror

            “Someday, you’ll do your own face and you won’t need me anymore,” Roberto says, smearing my face with base. One thing he knows is that I can’t apply my own make up. He’s been my creator for years and loves to hear me say how much I need him. I call him my fairy godmother.

            “I make you more beautiful every time I do this,” Roberto announces, with a wave of his imaginary magic wand. “Look and see.” He turns my head towards the mirror.

            “Certainly not Cindy Crawford, but close enough for a drag queen.” My green eyes stare eerily back at me from my base-covered face. “I’m too pale, aren’t I? Maybe, I should go out like this and really scare the shit out of them.”

            “You’re impossible.” Roberto jerks my head back, squinting his eyes and crinkling his nose. “I haven’t powdered you yet. Don’t forget, you’ve got to be extra glamorous tonight.”

          

  Extra glamorous is right. I have new songs, new costumes, and I finally saved 

enough money to fly my mother out to watch me perform. Roberto arrived one hour earlier than usual this evening to make me perfect.

            “I passed out a ton of flyers about the show today,” he says rummaging through his make up bag. “Where the heck is that new eye shadow?” He can’t find what he’s looking for, so he stuffs his face into the bag. “Even old what’s-his-face took a flyer.”

            “Who’s what’s-his-face?”

            “That cute man you dated for a while, the one you used to say looks like that bully from high school.” Roberto puts the bag down and swipes his hand to the bottom of it. “What’s-his-face.”

            “Not Bruce?” I feel my color drain under the foundation.

            “Bruce. That’s his name.” Roberto’s hand emerges triumphantly with the color. “I was just standing on the corner and he actually said ‘hi’ to me. He never even says ‘boo’ when I see him, so it took me by surprise. Well, I take that back, maybe he was horny. He always talked to me when he was horny.” Roberto opens the eye shadow. “I swear, if you hadn’t dated him, I’d do him. Now, close your eyes.” 

“He used to hate me in drag. Jesus, do you really think he’ll come?”

            “Oh, will you relax? Don’t be getting your hopes up. Even if he is into chicks with dicks now, doesn’t mean he’ll call you again. Stop squirming. I don’t want you being messy.”

            “I’m relaxed,” I lie. The day Bruce knew I was a drag queen was the day he ended our relationship. It was foolish to think his attitude towards me had changed. But as long as I was pretending to be a woman tonight, why not go a little further? 

“I know what you’re thinking. Stop it. It’s not healthy.”

“What?”

“I know that look. If you don’t concentrate on your performance you’re going to fuck it up.” 

“Well, at least if I forget the words to my songs, I’ll look pretty doing it.”

            Roberto swipes the brush applicator across the shadow. “Stop twitching,” he orders.

 “You won’t forget anything. And I’ll make you ugly if you don’t forget I mentioned Bruce. Just to be safe, I’ll even say a few Hail Mary’s before you go on.”

            “If you do, could you recite it in Spanish? Otherwise, pick another prayer.”

          

            When I was kid–during the summer months–I would reluctantly accompany my mother on the weekly trips to her mother and sister’s house in the Irish neighborhood of Boston called ‘Southie’. I dreaded those Thursday morning visits more than going to gym class, but I couldn’t skip out on them. Unlike Physical Education, there was no way to avoid seeing my cousins.

            My grandmother was always smoking when we arrived. I could never tell if it was her second or third of the morning–the pack was already open and the ashtray full of extinguished butts. She and my mother made polite conversation as they waited for my grandfather to arrive home from his night shift job at the post office.

Nana’s philosophy was that boys weren’t meant to hang around the house, so every week, I was banished outside to play with my cousins. Before I went, however, I managed to stick around to eat the only chocolate honey-dipped donut that we bought as part of the weekly breakfast offering.

I tried making that donut last as long as a five course meal, but ultimately it lasted about as long as it took Nana to smoke another cigarette. I went out to face her other grandsons–her ‘have a good time’ still rings mockingly in my ears. 

            Now, it was late afternoon, the sun still strong enough to melt the dog shit that littered the sidewalks. My older cousin Thomas and his gang of friends blocked the path to my grandmother’s house. 

            “You wanna cross the street, fairy? Then get on your knees and let me hear you pray.”

            Thomas had just turned sixteen and already tipped the scales at 200 pounds. I’d managed to avoid him all day, playing instead at the beach, listening to the waves and smelling the low tide. He reissued his order.

“I said, let me hear you fuckin’ pray.” 

            I stuttered and found my voice. “Hail Mary, full of --”

“He’s actually gonna do it,” an unrecognizable voice said from behind him. Then, my cousin Keith.

            “He said on your knees, you little fag.”

            I turned to escape back to the beach. My third cousin, Gary, was suddenly behind me.

            “Where you goin’? Nana’s house is that way,” he smirked, pointing towards my salvation. “Let’s start again, Hail Mary...”

            I ignored the hot pavement as it burned my knees, and I inhaled the stench of the shit. My concentration was lost. I couldn’t remember the words. I closed my eyes and the tears stung as I tried to hide them. The flies that had landed on the dog crap buzzed in front of my face. My voice cracked and I imagined myself in the stifling heat of a confessional. 

            I finished my penance. 

            “You tell your mother what happened, fairy, and I’ll kick the shit out of you. 

Understand?” Thomas’ black eyes seared into me as I got up off my knees. I stared into his belly, hoping I wouldn’t be as fat as him when I reached his age. My younger cousin pushed me towards the sidewalk.

            “You can cross now. Think it’s time for dinner. Let’s go eat.”

            “I’m starved,” Thomas said, winking at his brothers. “I skipped breakfast. There’s never any good doughnuts left when the fairy comes to visit.”

            One year, there was a small cake when my birthday fell on a Thursday. It wasn’t home made–I saw the Sara Lee box in the trash can. The ten candles were shoved into the near frozen frosting. Nana didn’t even remember that I was twelve. I closed my eyes, and made a wish. When I opened them, my grandmother’s cigarette smoke mingled with the trail from the now extinguished candles. Thomas, Keith, and Gary still sat across from me. No answer to the silent wish.

            Prayers. Wishes. They’re all the same. Neither one seemed to help my mother much either. Her greatest wish was to have a boy. Mom checked into the hospital at 4:30 p.m. on Friday the 13^th, and I was out and in the world by half past five. I joke with her, saying the day gave us a good compromise on the boy-girl situation.

“All that nudging you used to do in there,” she said to me years later. “You kicked me around the clock. I couldn’t even sleep without you moving around.”

            Guess I didn’t like what I saw in there. I haven’t been inside a woman since.

            “What are you laughing at?” Roberto scolds me. “You’re squinting your eyes. Now I’ve got to redo this one. What’s so funny?”

            “Nothing, doll. I’ll behave.”

            Roberto studies my face. He cocks his head to the left and then to the right, while he sticks his tongue out and runs it across the tiny wisp of a mustache along his upper lip.

            “I don’t like this color,” he announces. “It’s too coppery. You look like a penny. I’m going to go back to the black and white shadows.” He reaches for the sponge wedges by the mirror and wipes off the offending eye color. “I don’t want your mother thinking I’m a lousy make-up artist. She’ll hate me before she even meets me.” 

            It still takes me by surprise that I don’t look like my mother when Roberto finishes his handiwork. I’d like to say the woman I see is just me in Technicolor, but I think I must resemble my biological grandmother. She was Lithuanian, long gone before I was born. I found out years later that I had no blood connection with the Nana we’d spent visiting on all those summer afternoons. 

“You mean, we’re only half cousins?” I asked, suppressing my delight when my mother finally told me her greatest secret. 

            “Well, yes, since their mom’s my half sister. My parents were divorced when I was three. Dad married Nana a few years after that.” She curled her suddenly sweaty hand around mine. “Those days, they didn’t give custody to the father. Aunt Nancy took care of me.” Mom’s other hand clenched a tissue. Her fist was like a heart beating. “Every so often, my real mother would come around. She always smelled like vodka and cigarettes.” 

She closed her eyes as if the light from the window had momentarily blinded her, and then spoke softly, whispering more to herself than to me. “It always caused a huge commotion when she was there. My father would be yelling at her. She’d be screaming at him. My Aunt Nancy would rush me out of the room. I could hear the fighting even outside.” 

            She tried to smile. “After he remarried, I didn’t see my mother until I was ten. All that time, Nana just told me I was a good for nothing Lithuanian. Even up until I was sixteen, she didn’t let up. I used to call myself the South Boston Cinderella.”

            I held my mother’s hands. They were icy cold. I gripped them harder, trying to warm them. “Seriously? What’d she do? Make you clean the floors?”

“Just about. I wasn’t worth much in her eyes. Once, she slapped me across the face so hard my lip wouldn’t stop bleeding. I don’t even remember what we argued about, I think maybe I stayed out too late. Since I was always so clumsy, she told Grandpa I fell down the stairs. I didn’t dare say a thing.”

Her fingers tightened over my hands. “I got used to it, didn’t care after a while. You couldn’t mistake me for Irish, not with her and my father’s kids next to me. The more she called me names, the more it reminded me of who I really was. My father was my only saving grace. Since he’s gone now,” she paused. “There’s no reason to go over there anymore.” Then, she laughed. Quietly. Surprisingly. “When your father proposed to me, I showed her the engagement ring. She told me it was a piece of shit, and that I should wear it,” she tapped the side of her nose twice, “right here, so people would notice it.”

She sat with me for several hours that day, relating these stories of her childhood, hardly stopping to take a breath, as if she were afraid that pausing would make her lose her courage. When she was done, she looked at me, searching my eyes for understanding or acceptance, perhaps both. When I told her that she made me happy just because she granted my wish not to be Irish, she sat back, winked her eye and tweaked my nose.

“You little piece of shit,” she said.

“Shit,” Roberto says looking over my shoulder.

“What, did you mess the eyes up again?”

“No. I think I forgot the lip liner.” He moves the cosmetics around on the table. 

“It’s sticking out of your pocket.”

 “Oh. Sometimes I’m such a blonde.”

“Sometimes?” I laugh.

“Don’t go there, girl, or I’ll smear your lipstick.”

That’s something I wear more of than my mother ever has in her sixty years. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I started and wound up three nights a week lip synching to Barbra Streisand and Shirley Bassey’s Greatest Hits.

It was probably when Roberto and I became friends–never lovers–just instant sisters. He was a big drag queen then.  Dolled up every weekend it seemed, until he just gave it up one day. I ask him continually if he’ll join me on stage at least once, but like tonight, I always get the same response.

“When you stop looking pretty, that’s the day you stop. I was never that good.”

“Sure you were,” I defend, like a true sister, but Roberto was dead set against getting back into a dress. “Once a drag queen, always a drag queen.” I chide.

              “Yes, yes, but I was strictly an RTV.” That stood for recreational transvestite, a term which ceased to apply to me when I stepped out on stage for the first time. Roberto snatches the pencil from his pocket and starts sharpening it. “I’ll do it if you wear this great beaded gown I saw at Macy’s.” 

“No way, beaded makes me look fatter than my Aunt Nancy with her human maraca arms. Besides, I can’t buy off the rack, anymore.”

“Excuse me, Ms. Thang,” Roberto laughs. “Look up,” he instructs stretching his lips and pointing the sharpened pencil towards mine. “I almost forgot. Anita Martini is a big star now.”

Anita Martini, that’s me, the “star attraction”. Roberto christened me one night when I loudly declared my need for one more cocktail. Suddenly, I realized he’d turned the conversation away from himself. He grinned and traced my lips with the pencil.

“Don’t say anything. You’ll mess my work.”

I wish I knew when I was a kid that staying silent would give me some extra cash. If I could’ve lip synched on the streets of South Boston and in high school– when the names reached their peak–maybe the humiliation would’ve disappeared.       

     Once in gym class, Papalardo, who I tried my hardest not to dream about late at night, was elected co-captain for the football game, along with David, my former best friend from grammar school. I waited to be chosen for a side, my eyes searing holes in the ground. Finally, there were just two of us remaining, and I kept my gaze riveted on the girl’s feet next to mine. They were stuffed into a size five sneaker, the sides straining against the pressure, the laces threatening to untie themselves. 

Papalardo looked over at us, surveying us like we were the last slab of day old meat at the deli counter. “Just girls left,” he spat to David. “You choose.”

            I prayed silently, anticipating David’s answer. My eyes tied and untied the shoelaces.

          

 “Debbie.” 

            It was later, after the softball was headed directly into my chest that Papalardo sneered at me. “Did you catch the ball, sissy, because you were afraid it was going to hit you?”

            All the pride I had in ending the inning evaporated. I tossed the ball at his feet and ran to the dug out.

            It didn’t take much to get Papalardo to touch me, and I admit there was a certain thrill knowing that the only way it would happen was when he was beating the shit out of me. Whatever the reason-the way I walked or because he cheated off my paper and I had the wrong answers-the confrontations never surprised me. One day, after I was left picking up the pieces of my Captain America book covers, he and his henchmen wiped their hands on their jeans and calmly walked away.

            “Why’d you go and beat him up, Pap?” his accomplice asked.

            “He pisses me off. The faggot looks at me funny.”

“Look straight at me,” Roberto instructs, holding one of my fake eyelashes. “I wish you knew how to put these on. It’s the only thing I hate to do.” 

“I suppose I could learn. But what if I don’t need you anymore?”

“Oh, don’t start that again.” Roberto applies the glue to the lash and sticks the fake on top of my own. “Ugh, these piss me off,” he says as the lash sits haphazardly on my lid.

“Why don’t we skip them tonight?”

“Anita, all the mascara in the world won’t show your own lashes under those lights. Give me a second.” He adjusts the fake. “There. One down. I’ll learn to get these on right the first time yet.”

“Practice, practice. Just like you told me the first time I wore pumps.” 

“You were born in pumps. No one had to teach you.” Roberto takes a step back. “Jesus, I’m dying for a cigarette.”

“Not in here, you’ll set my hair on fire.” I blink my eyes. 

“You don’t have to test them. I’ve got so much goddamn glue on those lashes, they’re not going anywhere.”

“I wasn’t testing them.”

“You were too.” We both start laughing. “This” he says sucking in his cheeks. I obey and Roberto brushes my face quickly with the Wild Raspberry blush. “Fabulous. You should look so good as a boy.”

I agree with him. I’m thirty seven and there’s not a crows foot in sight. Hell, I can still pass for twenty-four. Roberto says its because of the moisturizing make-up remover.

            “Do you really think I’m that young?” I asked a guy once after we played the age game one night in a bar.

            “Why shouldn’t I?” He handed me a beer. “So, tell me something interesting about you.”

            “I’m a big old drag queen.”

            “You are not.”

            “Why would I lie?”

He took a step back and looked at my face.

“It comes off,” I added, rubbing my beard.

            Son of a bitch still came home with me.

            Roberto plops my already styled wig on my head, pokes at a few banana curls and then surveys his handiwork one last time. He pats the tiny bead of sweat that dares to materialize on my forehead, and then blows me a kiss. “You really are too beautiful,” he repeats. “Have a great show. Where’s your mother sitting? Should I check up on her?” 

            “I got her a table up front. You’ll recognize her, she doesn’t look a thing like me.”

            “Very funny. I’ll just stay in the back. You can introduce us later.”

            Roberto reaches for his cigarettes.

            “Out.” I point to the door and toss him a book of matches. I don’t smoke but I’ve accumulated a hundred matchbooks. “I’ll see you after the show.” 

            “Break a heel, Anita.” 

            Roberto shoves the cigarette between his teeth and waves it up and down. I mouth a silent good-bye to his reflection as I take another look at myself in the mirror.

I lack a sense of comfort with my new song set, plus I’m distracted by who will be in my audience. For a moment, I imagine Bruce. I’ll thank him for coming and he’ll say it’s nice to see me. Then Papalardo. I’ll look at him, bat my eyes and pucker my lips. He’ll offer me a tip and I will walk over to him and whisper if he really likes it when the boys look like girls. I’ll see Irish Nana sitting in the back row with her grandsons. I’ll tell her there’s no smoking while I’m on stage, then ask her to describe what a goddamn Lithuanian really looks like. I’ll blow my cousins a kiss, nod my head and then launch into my new song, Shirley Bassey’s ‘My Life’.

“Funny, how a lonely day, can make a person say, what good is my life? Till I look around and see this great big world is part of me and my life.”

My dressing room is quiet. I take a deep breath, smooth the front of my gown, stand up, and press play on the CD machine. I listen to Shirley’s loud, brash diva voice.

            My own soars above the recording.

Apple Pie

I've recently re-read my short story collection, Alone With All These Men, that I wrote as part of my master of arts degree from the University of San Francisco. It's been a long time since I took a look at them and I think they hold up pretty well. This one was my favorite and it closed the collection. If you read closely, as with all my stories, you'll see a lot of what makes me in there...
*********

Apple Pie

“My God, Ralph. If you grip the steering wheel any harder you’re gonna break it in two.”

I relinquish my hold on the rental car, take a deep breath and manage a half smile at my boyfriend. “Oh. Sorry. Boston traffic makes me nervous.” We left our hotel on Cape Cod over two hours ago, and at this rate, with the sea of red brake lights ahead, it will take even longer to get in and out of the city. A two hour drive to my parent’s house is turning into an all day event.

“Try not to be so nervous.” Brian leans over and kisses my cheek. His hand absentmindedly massages my thigh. “Relax. It won’t be so bad. I love you, you know.”

I did know that—I had to know that—otherwise I wouldn’t be taking him to meet my parents. Brian and I have been together ten months. Two weeks ago, our relationship took a huge step. I moved in with him. Not even my psychic could’ve predicted that shopping at Safeway would change my life. 

“The Granny Smiths are way better,” Brian had said when he saw me picking a bunch of Macintoshes. “More sour.”

He was beautiful. What I like to call a thick man. If we were going apple picking I could climb him to reach the top of the tree. No ladder required. 

Even at our first meeting, I was a flip son of a bitch.. “My mother told me I should only use those to bake apple pies. If I make you one, I’ll be sure to buy them.”

“You have to have dinner with me, first. Then I’ll try your desserts.” 

He flashed a smile and winked—which caused me to topple the entire apple display. We made our first date while we chased rolling apples in the Safeway produce aisle. 

The traffic now is maddening. We’ve moved two inches in the last ten minutes. Despite having the air conditioning at full blast, I’m sweating.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

Brian slaps my thigh. “Later. Not here.”

            I hold back a smile, remembering I got a different reaction when I swore as a kid. The first four letter word I said was in that song about Leroy Brown. He was bad, the baddest man in the whole (is it okay if I say this mom?) damn town. Seemed to me all those four letter words were off limits, even the one that started with ‘L’. I can’t pinpoint one single time that my mom and dad ever said it to each other.

            I tell Brian that my parents are like a quilt with two panels that don’t quite belong next to each other, but they’re stitched together anyway. Mismatched, too late to take apart. I realized when I was a kid they weren’t meant to be together, but no ten year old tells his parents that they should get a divorce. Even today, I try to imagine that they were once in love. You’d think over forty years of marriage would make two people comfortable enough to say that four letter word to each other.

Sometimes I wonder what kind of stitching holds me and Brian together. I’m waiting for the realization that we don’t belong together to hit me. Even though he never stops telling me how much he loves me, I can count the times I’ve told him on one hand. I stare at the cars ahead of us, willing them to speed up at my command. 

“Maybe visiting my folks was a bad idea.”

“Too late now, Einstein,” Brian says. “Besides. Who’s it bad for? Me or you?”

Us. Then I smile. “Oh look. We’re going a whole five miles an hour now.”

            He laughs. “All this anticipation is killing me. What’ll I say to your dad? ‘Hi sir, I’m the guy who’s fucking your son.’” 

            “Stop that.” I smack his hand and toss it off my leg. “You’ll be lucky if my dad even says ‘boo’.”

            “So I’ll say it to your mother then.”

“And she’ll say something like, ‘that’s okay, dear. As long as you love him.’” I burst out laughing at the image in front of my eyes.

            Times like this make Brian feel so right, and I tell myself he’s my reward for all those times I tried loving in the past. I’ve told him very little about the man who’d shattered my heart. All he knows is that I met him in the winter. I’ve never even said his name, though I referred to him once as Mr. December. It’s turned out to be a fitting nickname since that man is still the cause of the ice that forms over my heart. 

            It felt cold enough to snow when I’d met him in a bar right before Christmas.  I spent the night with him. In the morning he made me hot chocolate laced with amaretto and asked to see me again. I was hesitant to turn a one night stand into anything else, but he was persistent and four months later, he whispered that four letter word.

“Why are you laughing at that?” he asked me.

            “We’re having sex, that’s why.”

            He looked at me with the same intense stare that met my eyes across the bar. He sat up in the bed and pointed to the corner. “I can stand over there and tell you I love you from across the room.”

            I pulled him back on top of me, silencing him with my kiss. I didn’t want to hear another proclamation. Not another word. Not then. And not in bed. 

            But from that moment on, everything changed. I couldn’t get enough of him. Walking hand in hand, sitting on a blanket, licking chocolate frosting from his lips, munching on Fritos in the park and watching him breathe as he lay next to me, exhausted from our days together. Once, we went to Disneyland, and the crowds were uneasy seeing us walk with our fingers intertwined through the Magic Kingdom. I knew what they said. I could read their lips. I could read everything in their eyes. And, when he whispered those words again to me in the darkness of the Haunted Mansion, nothing else mattered. I wanted to crawl inside him and wrap his body around mine.

Then it started to fall apart. He grew distant. The more time I wanted to spend with him, the less he had to give me. For our one year anniversary, I bought plane tickets to Boston. That night, when he slept in my bed, I whispered “I love you.” In the morning—over breakfast—when he spoke, he sounded like a child who discovered there was no prize at the bottom of the cereal box.

“You should be careful what you whisper to people when you think they’re asleep.” He took the syrup from me. I watched it ooze over his blueberry pancakes.

It’s so ironic that the first time I whispered those same words to Brian we were in bed. He was asleep. His arm draped over my chest. I could feel his breath on my face. I’d woken up—just to be sure he was still lying beside me. Then I traced his expression with my finger. I closed my eyes, inhaled his scent, wanting to bottle it so I could keep it with me for the entire day. 

I was so afraid when I said those words that I could hardly hear them. I  sounded so timid and I repeated myself. I was trembling—remembering the last time.

Brian’s lips moved. “I heard you the first time, hunbun. Go to sleep.”

            I put my finger to his mouth. He parted his lips. I can still feel his warmth.

          

 

“How are your mom’s waffles?” Brian asks me.

“What?” I slam on the brakes as the car in front of me comes to an abrupt halt. “Her waffles?”

“I’m wondering what she’s going to make us for breakfast tomorrow.”

“You’re assuming that we’re going to be spending the night in that house.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Brian, are you nuts? My parents’ house?” I grip the steering wheel. “You want me to sleep in my parents’ house?”

“Us. I want us to sleep in your parents’ house. Jesus, you’re jittery. It’s your house too. You grew up there.”

“And you want us to have sex in my old room?”

“I didn’t say anything about having sex there.” He taps the dash. “Pay attention. Traffic’s moving.”

I shake my head. “Sometimes I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with you.” Then I see Brian’s eyes dance. “Don’t even say it.”

Finally the cars start to accelerate and I maneuver the car over to the fast lane. For some reason I’m in a hurry. Brian’s humming to himself in the passenger seat, looking out the window at the dull industrial scenery. 

“My grandmother used to work in that old factory,” I point out.

“Which one?”

“The one with all the broken windows.”

I forget what my grandmother did in that old warehouse. I can still see her, and feel her arms around me. I adored suffocating in the rolls of her skin. She’d always tell me what to be when I grew up, tell me how to behave and act like a little man. Always pinching my cheek and leaning down to kiss me. If she had lived, I wonder if she would’ve told me what to do when someone falls out of love with you. 

Brian taps my shoulder. “Uh, honey. Speed limit’s only fifty-five.” I ease my foot off the gas. Two more miles. “These roads must be a bitch in the winter.”

“The winter?” My face gets flushed. “Why do you want to talk about the winter?”

Brian chuckles. “I don’t want to talk about it. It’s just an observation. Driving these streets with twenty inches of snow piled up on it must be a bitch. You do remember New England snowstorms, don’t you?”

            I snap. “That’s one reason I moved.”

“What is your problem, Ralph? If you’re gonna be this touchy before we even get to your folks, maybe I should take the car and go back to the hotel.”

“I’m not touchy.”

Brain talks through his teeth. “Whatever you say.”

“I just don’t like to be reminded of snow. That’s all.”

“I see.”

I exit the freeway and stop at the red light.

“What do you see?”

“I’m not a fool, Ralph. You’re thinking about that asshole.”

I’m silent.

“You get like this every time that fucker pops into your head. If you didn’t want to take me here, you could’ve said so.”

“Brian. No. That’s not what I’m thinking. Really.”

“Really.”

“It’s just that I haven’t been home in a few years. And-”      

“And I wasn’t the man you thought you’d be bringing home.”

Shit. This conversation can’t be happening. I concentrate on the road and turn down my old street.

Brian runs his hand across the back of my hair. “Did you ever stop to think that I’d never have met you if that fuck head was still around?”

“I don’t want to talk about this.”

“You never do.” His hand stops and he looks out the window. 

My voice is edgy. “I wasn’t thinking about him,” I lie. 

“Don’t bullshit me. I’m always right when you get snippy.”

“Oh, are you?”

“Yep.” Brian leans over and kisses me on the cheek. “I know you too well, babe. This visit better make the fact that I love you finally sink into that thick ass head of yours.”
            “I do not have a thick ass head.”

“Well, tight doesn’t describe anything about you either.” Brian messes my hair as I park the car.

“Brian?” He turns and stares into my eyes. Jesus. I can be such an idiot.

“What?”

“I-”

And then my mom is running down the drive. I shake my head. I’ve got the timing of a broken watch.

“I take it that’s your mom?”

“Oh, you’re too smart for me.”

“You got that right.”

Then Brian’s out of the car. “You must be Ralph’s mother. I’m Brian—the guy who’s—”

“Mom!” I slam the door and run over to her. “God, you look great.” 

My mother seems to have shrunk in the years since I’ve been in California. I hug her and she squeezes me with a strength that belies her tiny frame. I kiss her on the cheek. Her skin is still as soft as it was when I was a kid, she smells like rose water, and for a second, I’m ten years old again. 

“Mom. Mom. You can let go now. I have someone I want you to meet.”

My mom releases me and looks at my boyfriend. Brian towers over her, standing with his back straight, as though he were an MP on duty. In one quick second, I see the man who flirted with me over tumbling apples. Silently, I thank the Safeway produce clerk for stacking too many Macintoshes.

“Mom, this is Brian.”

“It’s a pleasure, Brian. I’ve heard so much about you.” 

Brian glances at me. “Have you?”

“Come inside. I’m in the middle of cooking dinner.” Mom turns to me. “I’ve made up your old room, Ralph. You are staying the night, aren’t you?”

“Well-we didn’t really plan on-”

Brian kicks my foot. “We’d love to stay Mrs.-”

“Francine.” Mom interrupts him. “None of this Mrs. stuff.”

“Okay. We’d love to stay, Francine.” Brian turns to me. “I stuck a suitcase in the trunk.”

My eyes widen. Brian winks at me.

“You know. Just in case.”

“Wonderful.” My mom takes Brian’s hand and leads him back to the house. “I hope you like my dessert. Ralph tells me you love apple pie.”

Brian leaves me to get the overnight bag in the car. “Only with Granny Smiths.” Brian takes his hand from my mom and places his arm around her waist. “So what else does your son tell you I love?”

I watch them walk up the drive. It’s almost like Gulliver leaning down to a Lilliputian. I unlock the trunk to get the mysterious overnight bag. Taped to the front is a note.

 

I told you we’d be staying. Kiss me later.

I lock the car and start walking up the path I used to run up and down so many times as a kid. The house needs a new coat of paint. It’s peeling white facade has seen too many Massachusetts seasons. It’s obvious the front yard is my dad’s latest hobby. There’s a new row of flowers along the side of the house. The bird bath in the center of the lawn has been replaced by a trickling fountain with an out of place Winged Victory replica in the center of it. I dip my hand in the water and splash the statue. My father has obviously been strangely inspired, but by what I can’t imagine. He must be getting old. 

The past winter must have been especially brutal for my father to repave the drive, and the walkway leading up to the front has a new layer of asphalt. Painting the house is bound to be the next project. I just knew if I lived here I’d be roped into helping with the labor.

I open the front door and stand in the foyer, staring back at the road. I’d stood in this very spot, watching for my grandparents so many times in the past, smelling the aromas from the kitchen permeating every room in the house. The garlic overpowering every other seasoning, just like today. I take a deep breath and taste all the dinners I ate in this house. Then I put the suitcase down and straighten the throw rug. The old, faded, varnished corner shelf that I made in shop class—in the shape of an oversized flower—is still hanging by the door. I place the car keys on the bottom level and walk into the kitchen.

“Where’s dad?” I ask my mom, who’s stirring a huge pot of spaghetti sauce that’s large and deep enough to feed the entire US Army. Her apron is tied too high across her waist and a sauce stained dish towel is draped over her shoulder. I look around the room. “Where’d Brian go?”

“Your dad’s taking a nap. Brian’s using the bathroom upstairs. I told him to check out your old room while he was up there.” She raises the wooden spoon to her mouth and tastes the sauce. She crinkles her nose and then reaches for the spice rack next to the stove. “He seems like a lovely man, Ralph. You are definitely in love.” 

“Am I?” I put my arms around her waist, give her a hug, and inhale her rose water scent.

She squeezes my hands, then taps a dash of basil into the pot. “I saw the way you looked at him before we went in the house.”

“And that tells you I’m in love.”

“Don’t answer me with that tone, Ralph.” She slaps my hands and wiggles out of my grip.

“What tone?”

“The one you always get when someone tells you what you already know.” She adds more olive oil to the sauce. “Besides, of all the men you’ve dated he’s the only one you’ve brought home. I was beginning to think you lied about being gay just so you’d get out of marrying Cynthia Girard.”

I grab the wooden spoon out of her hand and stir. “Why would I do that?”

“You two were such good friends.”

“Mom, we went to grammar school together.”

“And high school. I just loved her parents.” She wipes her hands on the towel. “You two used to pretend you were husband and wife, remember?”

I take the dishrag off her shoulder and throw it on the counter. “I swear this thing has been over your shoulder for thirty years.”

“Don’t change the subject. I’m just joking. I got over the no daughter-in-law thing a long time ago. You could’ve brought anyone home and I’d love them just as much.” She reaches for the oregano.

“Yeah, but dad’s a different story.”

“Your father’s not bad, Ralph. It took him forever to introduce me to papa and grandma. He was so stubborn. Just like you.”

“I’m hardly like dad.”

“Neither one of you does a thing unless someone kicks you in the ass.” She pinches some seasoning between her fingers and then adds it to the sauce. “I need one more good storm and he’ll paint the house.”

“Well you should be used to him after all these years.” I hold my hand underneath the spoon as I raise it to my mouth.

“I may be used to it, but it doesn’t mean I like it.”

“But you like him so you put up with it.” I slurp the sauce from the spoon.

“Love makes people put up with a lot of things.”

“Love? You and Dad?” The sauce is hot and I wave my hand in front of my mouth. “I thought you two stopped loving each other years ago.”

Mom grabs the spoon from me and wipes it on her apron. “And what makes you think that?”

“You never talk! You never do anything together.” I reach for a glass, run the tap water and take a sip. “All he does is sleep. You cook. He goes to work. You stay home.”

“So that means I don’t love your father?”

“I don’t exactly hear love chimes whenever you two are together.” I open the silverware drawer and grab another spoon. My mother snatches it out of my hand.

“Maybe our idea of love is a bit different from yours.” She puts the spoon I took back in the drawer, covers the pot, and places the wooden spoon on the stove.

“Maybe it is,” I whisper sarcastically.

Mom pinches my arm. “You’re not too old for me to spank.”

“Punishment.” I laugh, kissing her cheek. “Are you going to send me to my room?”

“No. You’d have too much fun in there with Brian.”

“Mom!”

My mother laughs. “Mom, what? You think I’m a prude, Ralph?”

“No. No. I just...”

She wipes her hands on her sauce stained apron. “I may be your mother, honey, but I do have a life beyond this kitchen.”

“I’m going to go see what’s keeping Brian.”

“Dinner’s in an hour.”

“And what does that mean?”

She laughs and reaches for the towel on the counter. “It means dinner’s in an hour.” She slaps my butt with the spoon. “What did you think I meant?”

I can feel the heat in my cheeks. “Nothing.”

Mom dips her finger into the sauce and speaks into the pot. “I thought so.”            Shit. Someone stole my mother and left me with an impostor.

I walk past my parent’s room and hear my dad snoring. Any louder and I’d need headphones. At least some things haven’t changed. The door to my room is closed and I open it a crack. Brian’s looking at all my monster models lining the shelves. The Wolfman. Dracula. Frankenstein. King Kong, with the beauty lying at his feet because I put too much glue in his hand that she never fit. Brian picks her up and then stops when he sees the poster of the NHL logos. No doubt he’s wondering how that got in here. 

Then he pulls my high school year book off the shelf and sits on the bed. I watch him as he reads all the autographs on the inside cover. He starts leafing through the pages. I push the door open further and he looks up and smiles, his finger on my old face.

“You look like such a faggy geek in this picture. Glad you improved with age.”

“Just like a fine wine.”

“Yeah. One that’s on sale and bitter.”

I grab the book out of his hand. “What is this? Have you and my mom been secretly planning to gang up on me today?”

            “Oh shut up and sit down.” Brian grabs my hand and pulls me next to him. He intertwines his fingers with mine.

            We sit saying nothing, and I can hear my mom downstairs in the kitchen. My dad’s snoring has stopped. Brian leans over and kisses me lightly on the lips. Then he pulls back and looks at me. He smiles, and I see what’s reflected in his eyes. The image of my expression takes me by surprise. I can hear the silence between us.

            Brian’s eyes search my face and suddenly I want him to discover how much I want him and need him. And love him. I grip his hands tighter, close my eyes and feel his entire body with only the touch of his fingers. I don’t want to wait for one more storm.

            “We’d better get down to dinner,” he says.

            I lean in to kiss him. “Dinner’s not for a whole hour.”

***

            The aroma of apple pie sails to the top of the house. I smooth the back of Brian’s hair and straighten his shirt. I make a quick stop in the upstairs bathroom and check myself in the mirror.

            We stop just outside the dining room. My dad is sitting at the table. My mom’s arranging the silverware. The two of them look as if they haven’t changed places since I was in grammar school. My mom moves a dish in front of him and for a second, I think I see his fingers brush her arm when she moves away.

            I look at Brian, hold his hand in mine and walk into the room.