Above The Thunder (37 page)

“Hey, hey,” the tall man in the corner yelled, as he had every time a new guest walked in. He was somebody’s nephew; Anna couldn’t remember whose. He was about fifty, well over six and a half feet, and held a pizza box in his lap. He was, Anna guessed, a borderline case, with an I.Q. of about sixty or seventy. “I’m Asa, but people call me Toot, and I’m a palindrome,” he said, looking up at a group of gay men who had just come in.

“Oh yeah?” one of them said. “Are you out of the closet yet?”

Asa looked up with his slightly crossed eyes, his chin slick with saliva. “I brought pizza. Is this a potluck? I jerk off too much. Huh.”

Anna watched her living room fill. The party hadn’t been underway long enough for the locals to mix with the gay crowd, who were showing up in astonishing numbers; Anna had no idea Jack had so many friends. Gay people liked parties. Was that too much of a stereotype? The gifts they brought, too, were mounding toward the ceiling. Jack himself was gorgeous tonight in a tuxedo he’d brought from the city, an Armani sharkskin left over from his other life as a rich investments partner. The tux was newly retailored for him and made his thinness not less noticeable, but intentional-looking somehow. With padding and reseaming the tailor had expertly restructured the jacket so Jack’s slight camel’s hump was nearly invisible. His sparse blond hair was combed and gelled so it shone. He looked, Anna thought, like a Renaissance angel; his straight, columnar body designed to receive the lights of heaven. He’d never looked better or healthier in the time she’d known him. Jack stood in a group of men, some of whom, inexplicably, were in costume. Anna counted three Marilyn Monroes, one Roy Rogers, and a very good Judy Garland—a handsome young man who had Judy down to the thick fringe of lashes and the sleepy, half-lidded languor of intoxication. His hips were as narrow as a girl’s in
the gold lamé gown. He was the one who’d brought what looked like a huge painting. It was wrapped in Christmas paper printed with demonic-looking elves. He’d left a red imprint of lips on Jack’s cheek.

Anna circulated through the crowd toward the bar, a little anxious that Marvin and Greta hadn’t shown up yet. Greta had said she was getting an early start out of Boston; Anna had anticipated that she’d be here before noon. Maybe there were last-minute arrangements with Lily. Marvin, too, now that she thought about it, was overdue.

Anna handed her martini glass to the bartender. Stuart was sitting in the bar area like a weary businessman with a high debt-ratio; he looked harangued, anxious. “Are you supposed to be Gene Kelly?” Anna asked, nodding at the raincoat he was wearing.

“Excuse me?” Stuart said.

“Your raincoat.”

“Oh, no,” Stuart said. “I’m not in costume.” He realized how ridiculous he must look, wearing this coat buttoned up and belted like the town pervert. Then again, he was standing next to a crowd of Judy Garlands and Marilyn Monroes, the nostalgic reenactment of the Marilyns they’d all been on the Gay Pride float two years ago. Jack was at the height of both his beauty and his infidelity then, though Stuart didn’t know the latter part till later. If he didn’t lose his nerve, he planned to present the coat to Jack when he opened his gifts. Most of the men here—well, all—knew of Jack’s extracurricular love life. Stuart counted at least five in the group who had indisputably slept with Jack at one time or another. It was important that it be a public presentation; he’d already considered and dismissed the idea of giving it to Jack in private. The most recent additions were the instructions from the tampon box Jack had modified for Flynn, the stark outline he had colored in and embellished with smiles and jewelry. This technically didn’t belong in the coat that documented their life together, but it showed a newly formed side of Jack—compassion—that had begun to creep into their relationship. Not that they were officially together. Stuart didn’t know. But at this moment, being with Jack was what he wanted. David had threatened and cajoled and issued ultimatums, so Stuart stopped calling and stopped taking David’s calls. He just couldn’t be back in Boston right now. One of the graduate students agreed to teach his classes for him.

He swallowed down the last of his whiskey, hoped his nervous perspiration
wasn’t ruining the dried flowers in the sleeves and soaking through the pages of
The Song of Solomon
pasted all around the collar.
I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine; he feedeth among the lilies
.

Two hours into the party the left side of the room had made forays toward the right, the path smoothed by alcohol, perhaps, but still, the Y2K doomsdayist Albert Cyr, who had a bunker full of canned food and bottled water, was speaking to one of the Marilyns as though they were lifelong friends, and Violet was dancing with the man dressed as Judy Garland to “I Believe in Miracles.” Jack had been opening gifts for an hour and the end was nowhere in sight.

“Anna, look,” Jack called to her. “Robert Mitchum’s entire body of work.” He held up the DVDs. “Anna will make me watch these upstairs, no doubt.”

“Just the second time through. A little Mitchum goes a long way.”

“I’d settle for a long Mitchum going a little way.”

Anna sat on the ottoman next to Jack so she could look through the loot. Cashmere socks, three Armani shirts, an original Edward Weston photograph, CDs, a hand-carved spice rack and a family-size bottle of Vitabath body lotion and shower gel. “I didn’t get near this haul when I turned fifty,” Anna said.

“Fags know early on the importance of good gifts,” Jack said. “You never know how long the riches will hold out. Don’t you agree?” Jack said, to no one in particular. “Today an investments broker, tomorrow a viewer of daytime television and wearer of watch alarms. We’re all just this side of selling Amway.”

Judy Garland muscled over the huge gift—what could only be a picture or painting of some sort. Anna looked down at his feet, turned inward in the red heels. “Ready for the
Mona Lisa
?”

“What the hell is this?” Jack asked, tearing at the wrapping paper. “Oh,” he said, and Anna saw an expression on his face—a recent addition to his repertoire—which she had begun to love, love to an aching degree for its authenticity. It was a look of great intensity that suggested transparency, as though he saw right to the beating heart of things. His eyes widened and crossed just the tiniest bit before dropping down and looking away. There was usually a smile that went with it. “Oh,” he said again. Finally,
he turned the photograph around. It was a black and white of Jack himself dressed in nothing more than a chef’s hat. In his hand was a pair of barbecue tongs clenching a hamburger bun in a strategic location. He was standing at a grill, gazing full into the camera with a cheese-ball grin, surrounded by men and women with blank looks, as though there was nothing unusual going on. They were looking at the grill with open buns in their hands. Jack was breathtaking; Anna had no idea. It was clearly a staged photo meant to be comedy, Anna guessed, but people were studying it now with the solemnity that seemed more fitting for the Edward Weston print. She didn’t understand the silence at first—surely a group like this wasn’t offended—until Anna felt Violet come up beside her. “Huh. That’s some body. Who’s he?”

Anna glanced at her, then at the group around Jack who were avoiding looking at one another or the photograph.

Jack himself broke the silence. “Do you remember this, Stuart?” Jack asked. “The redneck handbook Curtis put together.”

Stuart smiled, nodded. How could he forget? That was just before everything changed. He looked down at the photo of Jack, then at Jack in the flesh. It didn’t look like the same man, though for his money he loved Jack’s face better as it was now. Jack was tiring, Stuart saw, a certain tightness around his mouth, tension in the tilt of his head.

Stuart was nervous despite the three martinis he’d hoped would take the edge off his panic. “I have something for you,” he said, getting down from the barstool. He took off the coat and laid it flat on the ottoman in front of Jack. “Ever since I’ve known you, you were the most exciting thing ever, like this great whirl of energy that I never wanted to be outside of. I couldn’t imagine not being surrounded by you. This was the next best thing.” He opened the coat, explained about the numbers from Jack’s running jerseys—more for the benefit of others than for Jack—the flowers they picked together or their first date, feathers from the mourning doves that nested outside their bedroom window in California, but after a few minutes he felt people’s attention beginning to wane. Stuart watched Jack’s face in earnest, watched the memories come alive in his face as he touched the emblems of them. “Anyway, I give this to you with love and good wishes.”

Jack looked up at him, and then away. “I am overcome. I am overwhelmed
by this.”

“It’s just a token of our time together. A scrapbook.”

“It’s a work of art.” He wrapped it around his shoulders. “I’ll cherish this forever.”

Stuart smiled. Jack kissed him, then kissed him in a way that made the other half of the room stare. Stuart pulled away, but Jack folded him close again, kissed him on the forehead, the mouth, left cheek, then right. “That is my genuflection,” Jack whispered in his ear, “I worship you.”

By the time Marvin showed up at about ten-thirty, Anna realized she hadn’t seen Flynn for hours. She greeted Marvin at the door. A young woman—
young
young woman, nineteen maybe—stood beside him holding a giant box.

“You’re way late,” she said, irritation rushing in where worry had been. More than any other person in her life, past or present, Marvin had a way of knocking her off an even keel; just when their relationship seemed to be steady and workable, he pulled a stunt like this, showing up three hours late with a woman young enough to be his daughter.

“Good to see you,” he said, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. He smelled of the cold air and tobacco. “This is JoBeth.” The woman peeked over the top of the box.

“This is my mother-in-law, Anna.” He stepped in and dropped his luggage, took the gift from the girl. “Oh, I need to tell you. Greta called as I was leaving. Her daughter is sick, so she won’t be coming in tonight. She said maybe tomorrow. She’ll call you later.” Disappointment and panic—she didn’t know why exactly—sank through her. Something was wrong. Something felt really wrong. She would call Greta at the first possible moment.

Anna left Marvin at the door and escorted JoBeth into the living room where the party was louder, drunker, and more surreal than ever: Judy Garland, with Violet’s red skirt on his head, held the giant photo of Jack overhead and had a conga line forming behind him. The line snaked around the living room to the music of Donna Summer. Jack and Stuart were still in their mushy moment, everything but the cartoon hearts above their heads. She was suddenly feeling ungenerous and tired. “There’s still a lot of food left if you’re hungry, and drinks, of course.” To Anna’s left Albert
Cyr was holding Y2K doomsday court with Violet, whose visible skirt—the red one still being used as a head dress—was now a librarian brown plaid. Asa was still at his station in the corner. His hands were moving beneath the pizza box in his lap. Tripp, the druggist, who had been inspecting Jack’s gifts, turned and swatted Asa on the shoulder. He was Tripp’s nephew, Anna remembered. “Get your hands off your imagination, boy,” Tripp said. “On top of the pizza box, where I can see them.”

“I’m a palindrome,” Asa said, when JoBeth swept by. Anna watched as the girl turned and bent toward him, puzzled.

Anna waited for Marvin to sidle up beside her. “I have to tell you, I’m a little irritated. You might have called to tell me you were running late, and that you were bringing a date, which by the way is disrespectful.”

“Why? To whom?”

“To me. To your daughter, the reason you’re supposedly here. The reason you were supposed to be here this morning, as you promised.”

Anna watched Marvin’s date make her way to the bar. She was exquisite, really, and she had Poppy’s coloring and build, though the girl had boobs—augments, Anna decided—and wasn’t quite as tall. “And what happened to the lovely Christine?”

Marvin sighed. “What happened. What always happens? Lovers are like pantyhose. Sooner or later they all run.” He put his arm around Anna’s shoulders. “Come on, Anna.”

She didn’t dare look at him. “Anna,” he said again, in a tone that was patient and cajoling at the same time. Her body had always been traitorous in the presence of Marvin. She could be trembling with rage, but the minute he stood near or touched her, it was like brandy in the back of her throat, a warm and smoky fire. “Take your hand off me,” she said finally.

He exhaled dramatically. “Where is my daughter?”

“She’s probably hiding out somewhere. She’s not much into crowds these days. I’ll go find her.”

“No. Wait a little while. Don’t force her into this group. I’ll see her after the party ends. I want you to see what I made Jack. It’s something I’ve had high offers for. A buyer offered me a thousand for it, but I decided to give it to Jack.” Anna watched as Marvin reached around JoBeth to get the oversized box, encircled her waist for an instant. He walked over to Jack, who was glowing. Stuart, too, had transformed into something wonderful-looking.
Anna had never thought much of Stuart’s looks—he looked to her like an old-egg baby, the short limbs, long trunk, and flat forehead women sometimes produced when they bore children in mature maternity—but now she realized that he was a handsome man. Or maybe it was the attractiveness that comes from being in love. The dancers were moving to the corners now, Petula Clarke singing “Downtown.” Jack lifted a bust of clay and bronze out of the box. The side facing her was Clinton whose features Marvin distorted to look like a goat’s. Half the face was bronzed, the other ordinary clay. She didn’t need to see the other side to know it was a serial killer. She’d imagined he would have moved past this by now.

Anna turned away, toward the back door somebody had left open. The air streaming in smelled of the sea and of the damp cedar fencing her garden. Something else, too. Figs. The musky intimate smell of figs, though she was surely imagining that. She walked outside. It was getting very cold. Tomorrow she and Flynn would drive north, stop at a chowder place for lunch, shop for warm school clothes—Flynn was growing so quickly—and walk the beaches in the afternoon. She walked to the porch at the front of the house. Flynn wasn’t here, but had been; she’d made herself a little nest on the chaise: rumpled quilt, a scattering of record albums printed with Poppy’s name in her childish handwriting, a nearly full glass of Kool-Aid, and—in the path of the porch light—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s book about dying.