A Lethal Legacy (9 page)

I stood still as I
heard Philip moan and then heard the release of a long zipper. At that precise
moment, I flicked on the lights.

"What the hell ..."
Philip pulled himself away from Pam whose dress was down around her waist.

"Pam, you might
want to pull up your dress. Philip, Aunt Claire needs your assistance uncorking
some more champagne." I kept my voice neutral as I watched the two
traitors pull themselves together. They didn't look at one another or at me as
they took different exits out of the garage. I pulled a twelve pack of beer
from the refrigerator.

"There you are,"
Kelsey said when I came back outside.

"Just getting
some more beer. Hey, don't you think it's about time we thought about the
honeymoon." I reached for her as I spoke. I needed something concrete to
hold onto as I watched Philip go across the lawn to his wife.

"Yes, let's go.
Hey, Ed? What's with your cousin, Gary?"

"What do you
mean?"

"He's married
to Pam, right?"

"Yes, and that
little beauty right there is his. Why?"

"I don't know.
There's just something different about him. If I didn't know better, I'd say he
was gay." Then she reached up and kissed me on the cheek.

I gave Kristina an
edited version of our meeting and wedding, hoping that would satisfy her, but I
was wrong.

"What happened
then?" she asked. "How long were you married?"

"A few years. It
gets kind of complicated."

"I've got all
night. My parents were still married then, right?"

"Yes, at the
beginning of my marriage to Kelsey, they were still married."

Kelsey and I didn't
talk to anyone again for four weeks. We spent our honeymoon camping in Vermont
and Maine, a location neither one of us had visited before. I gave up my summer
traveling so Kelsey could come back to work at the bookstore the week of the
Ann Arbor Street Art Fair when thousands attempted to crowd into the small
city. I usually stayed away from the event, but this year, I looked forward to
the circus-like atmosphere, which surrounded the area for four days at the end
of July.

Kelsey and I had
never camped together before and sometimes that takes a special adjustment.
However, we adapted well to the rhythms of tenting it. We relocated whenever
the spirit or the rain moved us.

I spent hours writing
as the sunshine glimmered through the treetops of the tall pines and oak trees
surrounding us. We hiked through mountainous terrain and made love while the
rain softly slapped our tent that stayed amazingly waterproof. We started our
married life in a positive and natural way.

Frequently, I
pondered the mess of my cousin's life as I sat in the mountains. I kept replaying
the scene I witnessed in the garage and wondered where it would all end. As the
vacation worked its magic on me, I began to write about a character who was
trapped by his longing to be accepted and chained to his desires. Once I
removed myself from the situation and wrote as an observer, the words came to
me easily. My writer's block ended just as quickly as it started.

Soon after we
returned home, Pam began phoning me late at night usually very drunk, and I
found myself right back in the middle of Gary's troubled life, no longer just
observing.

"Eddie, howshit
going." I heard Pam's late night slur when I answered the phone.

"Pam, what's
up?" I always began. "Where's Gary?"

"Your guess is
as good as mine. He's not home yet. Sometimes he doesn't even bother to come
home at all, that bastard."

"Pam, try to get
some sleep. He probably just had to work late again."

"Yes, that '
work
late again'
 crap. I wonder which secretary it is this week."

It sometimes
surprised me that Pam never suspected the real reason for Gary's absence. As it
stood now, she actually thought she was competing against another woman. If she
knew the truth, she'd know there really was no competition at all. It was hard
to tell which situation would be harder for her to accept.

I tried calling Gary
several times at home unsuccessfully, even on the weekends. I wasn't even sure
if he still lived there except that Pam never mentioned anything about his
moving out. Finally, I decided I would try him at work one day when I managed
to get home from school early.

"Gary, it's Ed.
How are you? Have you gotten any of my messages?" I asked.

"I've been busy.
Sorry I haven't returned your calls." He didn't really sound sorry at all,
or even friendly.

"How are you?
Pam tells me you're not home much."

"I told you, I'm
busy," he said.

"What's going
on, Gar? Remember it's me."

"Can't really
talk about it. But don't worry. Ed, I've got a client here." That was the
end of the conversation.

Any further attempts
to get Gary to talk to me were futile. He kept me at a distance, and I knew
that meant only one thing.

One night in late
January of 1971, Pam called again, crying uncontrollably. When I finally got
her quieted down, I strained to understand.

"I just had a
miscarriage," she said after the crying stopped.

"You were
pregnant?" I asked.

"Gary didn't
tell you, huh? He never told Claire and Philip either."

"Where is he
right now?"

"He stayed in
the city. He's had enough of my crying and carrying on, I guess. He's a real
gem, you know. He can't even stand by me when there's trouble."

I had finally written
the first line of the new novel, and the rest came pouring out of me. I worked
at night and on the weekends. Kelsey had to practically tie me up and carry me
out of the house if she wanted to do anything with me. But she was busy
herself. In her final year of college, she was doing an internship at the newly
franchised Domino's Pizza chain. The corporate offices were small but with
plans to expand on acreage owned by the founder, Tom Monahan. Kelsey hoped they’d
hire her when she graduated. She liked the atmosphere at the company made up
mostly of young people like her.

I finally spoke to
Gary several weeks after the miscarriage. He told me he hadn't told anyone
about the pregnancy because of the chance of losing the baby in the early
months. He mentioned that Pam's drinking was out of control again. Now that it
had happened, he didn't have to go through telling his parents, he told me. He
even laughingly said that his father would find some way to blame him for it.

"But how are you
really doing, Gar? We never talk anymore, and I guess, as corny as it sounds, I
miss you," I said.

"Busy, Ed. You
know how it goes." Again, the wall began to rise between us.

"Just remember
what you promised me after Stonewall. If it's time to leave, just do it and
quickly."

"I don't
remember promising you anything, and I can't leave Pam right now. She's in bad
shape."

"Gary, she's in
bad shape because you're never home," I said.

"Look, Ed, I'm
handling it, OK?"

There was nothing
else to say. The wall rose all the way to the ceiling, and there would be no
further discussion.

I wrote and wrote
trying to forget the coldness of Gary's voice and the hurt at his distance. I
would try to make sense of all of this nonsense in my own way.

When I wasn't
writing, Kelsey and I were enjoying the Ann Arbor scene that exploded in the
early '70s. Clubs popped up all over the west side of downtown and music, from
jazz to Motor City rock, pounded our senses as we marveled at living in a
microcosm of Greenwich Village.

I was nearly finished
with my novel, when the phone rang early one Sunday morning. I was already up
and working at the typewriter. Something woke me before daylight, and I wanted
to get my thoughts down on paper as soon as possible. I quickly reached for the
phone, puzzled about who could possibly be calling at six on a Sunday.

"Ed, it's
Pam."

"Pam. Is
everything OK?" I asked.

"No,
everything's not OK. It's over, it's all over." She began to cry

"What's over?
Come on, Pam, pull yourself together and tell me what happened. Where's
Gary?"

"Always
concerned about Gary, aren't you? What about me?"

"Where's Gary,
Pam?" I was becoming increasingly worried. This wasn't one of Pam's late
night drunken calls. She sounded perfectly sober.

"He's asleep. He
had a rough night in the park with the other perverts."

"What are you
talking about?"

"Didn't you
know? Your cousin Gary is queer. Or maybe you did know. Maybe you're queer,
too."

"Tell me what
happened from the beginning," I said.

"From the
beginning, it was a normal night. One a.m. and still no Gary. Then around 1:30,
there's a knock at the door. Two policemen shoved Gary in the door saying,
'M'am, we found your husband with his pants down in New Rochelle Park. We
decided not to arrest him but to just bring him home and let you know what he
does in the evening with other men.' Then they walked away leaving me with that
wasted human being. He's a queer. And all these years, I thought it was
me." I heard her bitter laugh.

I could only imagine
Gary's devastation. He’d never wanted anyone to know and now he had been
revealed in the most humiliating way possible. I worried something might happen
to make things worse, but I couldn't have imagined him being brought home by
the police and treated so inhumanely. As a result, Pam was a woman scorned and
humiliated now. Things were not going to work out easily.

"Gary's still in
the house?" I asked.

"Yes, he went to
bed. We talked for a long time, and he told me everything. We made some
decisions; or rather, we made some deals. He doesn't want his parents to know
at all costs, and if I keep my mouth shut, I get what I want when I walk
away."

"What is it you
want, Pam?"

"I want to cut
all ties with the Townsend family, and I want enough money to get started over
again somewhere else. Gary's going to sign over his rights as father, and I'll
get the proceeds from the sale of the house. You know Philip and Claire bought
the house for us when we moved. And the final stipulation. I don't want anyone
to know where I've gone or try and find me. I'm through with this family."

"Pam, I always
thought we were friends. You'll still keep in touch with me, won't you?" I
wanted to keep some connection to Kristina, for Gary and Claire's sake, as well
as for my own. I’d fallen in love with my little cousin during her short life.

"We'll see. I've
got lots to do. So, thanks, Ed, for always listening. You have been my one true
friend through all of this."

"Are you sure
you want sole custody of Kristina?" I asked, not knowing what other solution
might work.

"You bet, Eddie.
She'll be my trump card if I need one in the future. Good-bye, Ed."

"Give Kristina a
big hug, please. And Pam, good luck." I hung up the phone with an uneasy
feeling about the advisability of a three year old being used as a poker chip
in a very dangerous card game, but I was powerless to do anything else but hope
Pam would keep in touch with at least me after she left Gary.

Gary left New York in
the summer of 1971 shortly after the house sold. My mother told me Pam left with
Kristina and hadn't left a forwarding address. When I went to visit Claire, she
was destroyed. She asked Philip to hire a private investigator to find them,
but he refused. Then Gary disappeared in June. A funereal cloud hung over the
house on Bydding Street. Kelsey and I spent lots of time with Claire trying to
help her through her depression. Even my mother tried to help, forgetting for
once her resentment of Claire.

Things brightened
slightly when Gary showed up in September. He said he'd had to sort through
things for himself, but now he was back and ready to start over. Claire
welcomed him with open arms. Philip was openly hostile and threw blame at Gary
whenever he could. After trying to live with his parents for a couple of weeks,
he asked if he could stay with us until he got back on his feet.

"Of course,
Gary, I'd like nothing better, if you don't mind the couch," I said. Maybe
we could get back to our old ways. Gary seemed to want that, too.

"Honestly, Ed,
sometimes I feel possessed. I can't help myself. I really tried with Pam, but
the harder I tried, the harder the demons pressed on my brain," he said
one night as we took a long walk through the darkened streets of Ann Arbor.

He went to San
Francisco for the summer and found life there disturbing. Everyone was openly
gay, and that almost made him more uncomfortable than hiding. He kept looking
over his shoulder when he was with a man always waiting to be caught. He
decided to come back to his home turf and try to live the single life.

He didn't say which
lifestyle he would pursue, and I didn't press the issue. And without a wife, it
didn't matter what he decided to do as long as he was happy with himself and
his choices.