All I Love and Know (44 page)

“Obviously, you can't! Did you just stand here watching him go higher and higher?”

“I was trying to help him feel competent.” He was patting Noam's back and searching for a pacifier.

“Well, he's not competent!”

“And why do you think that is?” Matt said. “Why do you think he's not walking? It's all the fear locked up in his body.”

“What kind of New Age crap is that?” Daniel said, taking Noam from him and cradling his head with his hand, examining his face.

“He's fine,” Matt said.

“He's bleeding,” Daniel said, turning him toward Matt so Matt could see the smudge of blood where Noam had bitten his lip.

Damn it.
Matt followed them into the kitchen, where Daniel sat down with Noam on his lap. Matt went to the freezer and got him a frozen teething ring. “Here, honey,” he said, touching Noam's hair. “Suck this.”

Daniel grabbed it from him before Noam could take it, tossed it in the sink, and got a different one from the freezer. Noam, squeezed on his hip, grunted and squalled.

“C'mon,” Matt said, coloring.

“Stop,” Daniel said. “I'm not fighting in front of them.”

“Who started the fight?” Matt whispered furiously.

“I'm not fighting in front of him,” he said again. “Wait till they go to sleep.”

Gal came down the stairs. “Are you fighting?” she asked with great interest.

“No,” they said.

“Okay, whatever.”

Efficiently and with careful cheerfulness, they got the kids bathed and Noam put to bed. As Daniel went into Gal's room to tell her it was time to stop reading and turn off the light, Matt sat on the bed, waiting.

Daniel came into the room, avoiding his eyes.

“Hey,” Matt said.

Daniel sat down beside him. “Matt,” he said, looking at the hands in his lap. “This isn't working out.”

“And by ‘this' you mean . . . ?”

“Any of it. You living here. Our being together.”

“What? Are you kidding me?”

“I'm not kidding. I can't do this anymore.”

Matt sat back on the pillows, stunned. “Why?! Because I let Noam go up the stairs?”

Daniel gave him a look. “You know why.”

Matt's face grew hot. “Because I had unprotected sex?”

“That's just part of it,” Daniel said. “That's just a symptom of the whole thing. I feel that it's not safe to have you around.”

“Oh please,” Matt said.

“Oh please?” Daniel said. “You bareback!”

“
Barebacked
once! The condom broke!”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “Do you realize how pathetic you sound?
The condom broke?
” His voice was withering. “You drive like a maniac. When you take them to the playground by yourself, I spend the whole time worrying that they're going to kill themselves because you let them do whatever they want. I can't handle it! If I'm the only one keeping this family safe, I'm better off doing it on my own.”

“I didn't just let Noam go up those stairs. I was watching the whole time.” When Daniel threw another derisive look his way, he burst out, “You have to make a calculation! You have to balance between safety and his sense of competence, autonomy.”

“Don't condescend to me,” Daniel said. “I know that. I make those calculations all the time.”

“No, you don't,” Matt said. “You just grab the kids and pull them back. Gal complains about it all the time! You don't hear it, but I do.”

Daniel flushed. “I need you to get out of here.”

“We're not even going to talk this through?”

“No,” Daniel said.

Matt stared at him. “You want to do a whole get-out-of-my-house scene instead? Can't we do any better than that?”

“This isn't a joke! Do I look like I'm kidding?”

He very much did not look like he was kidding, Matt thought, looking at Daniel's haggard face and cold eyes. But he was not going to let himself panic, and damned if he was going to let Daniel see him break down. “Do you even
get
to kick me out of the house?” he asked.

“Yes, I do!” Daniel cried. “It's my name, not yours, on the mortgage. My name as the kids' guardian. Where's your name, Matt? Where's
your
fucking name?”

He spat the words while Matt looked at him, shocked, thinking that he sounded as if he'd consulted a lawyer, which made this way more serious than he'd imagined. “Dan,” Matt said. “I hear that you're furious and very hurt, and also scared.”

“I said don't condescend to me,” Daniel said. “Look,” he said quietly. “I can handle the sexual betrayal. It hurts, a lot, but I know I've turned my back on you for a long time, and I get it, fair is fair. I can get over that.” He was looking steadily at Matt. “But I can't get over the sense of danger I feel when you're around. I've been trying, but I can't. I have no choice but to ask you to leave.”

“I'm not leaving the house!” Matt shouted, making Daniel shush him furiously and close the door. “Okay? I live here! I'm not going outside and shiver on the front lawn while you throw my clothes out the window like a betrayed wife with mascara running down her face!” He grabbed a pillow and hugged it.

“I don't want you here,” Daniel said, his face red and twisted. “I don't want you here anymore. Do you know what these kids have been through? I can't believe you! What if you got sick? Do you think they could take another loss like that? Or if you got
me
sick, or
them
?”

Daniel brushed his forearm against his eyes, and Matt sat quietly.
I won't get sick!
is what he wanted to say, but he knew he couldn't, he knew that once you're thunderstruck, you no longer live in a country where the natives can decipher that kind of utterance. How he wished it was six months from now!—and the apologies and drama and penance and feeling like a horrible person were over, and he'd been tested and found negative. “I'm so so sorry, Daniel,” he said, his voice hoarse.

“I'm sure you are,” Daniel said. “And I accept your apology. I do. But that's the best I can do; it doesn't change how I feel.”

Despite his best efforts, Matt felt his eyes begin to prickle. “I
told
you, didn't I? I didn't have to do that!”

“Oh my God!” Daniel said. “You want to be congratulated for that? You want me to throw you a big party because you didn't knowingly give me HIV?!”

Matt flushed angrily. “Of course not!” he said, embarrassed, because he did think he'd behaved decently. “But isn't it proof that I can be trusted to observe precautions?”

“Proof that you can be trusted would be not spreading your ass for strangers!”

Matt flung himself facedown onto the bed, acting as if this was a regular fight, hoping that if he acted that way, it would be.

“Please go, Matt,” Daniel said. “I can't have you here. It makes me feel . . .” He put his hand on his chest and tried to continue, but he couldn't find the air. “Panicky,” he whispered. For a second, until the breath came, he thought he might be having a heart attack. He was focused like a laser on Matt leaving the house, it was his sole need, it was all he could do not to scream
Go!
a thousand times. He sucked in air with the sound of a screeching engine. “I can't,” he panted. “I can't have you here, I can't take the vigilance, I can't be reassuring you night and day that you're still a good person, I can't go back to feeling the way I did when Joel died. . . .”

Dismay flared in Matt's chest, and he thought,
Just for now, just for now
. He forced himself to his feet, got his gym bag from the closet, and threw it at Daniel, who fended it off with his forearm. He'd go to Derrick and Brent's. He got dressed and began packing, just a change of clothes, and then, in the bathroom, his toiletries. He took, without hesitation, the things they shared: toothpaste and shaving cream, the hairbrush. He scanned the bathroom, then took the Ativan and all the vitamins from the cabinet. He left the bedroom without looking at Daniel, the bag slung over his shoulder, and went downstairs. From the kitchen, he took a bag of oranges, the mint Milanos, all the beer in the fridge, and the vodka and scotch from the cabinet. He set the bag down at the back door and went back upstairs.

Daniel was lying facedown on the bed, his face buried in the crook of his arm. “I'm going to say good-bye to the kids,” Matt said.

Daniel looked up quickly, his face red. “Don't you dare wake them up! I'll tell them in the morning.”

“What will you tell them? That I up and left? Don't you dare blame me.”

“I won't,” Daniel said. “I promise.”

“What are you going to tell them?” Matt demanded. “I want to hear the exact words.”

“Please,” Daniel said, sitting now cross-legged and slumped. “I'm really tired. Let me sleep on it.”

Matt's lips tightened and he got a surge of adrenaline at getting the upper hand for the first time. “I'm not leaving till I hear what you're going to tell them.”

Daniel sighed tremulously and rubbed his eye hard with his forefinger. “My mind is drawing a blank,” he said.

“Tell them you kicked me out of the family.”

“I'm not saying that.”

“So you're going to lie? I don't want it sounding even mutual, Daniel. You're so big on taking responsibility—
you
fucking take responsibility.”

Daniel rubbed his face hard, exhausted from the energy it had taken to get Matt to agree to leave. “I'll tell them that you didn't want to leave, because you love them—”

“Love
us
. Say ‘because he loves us.' And why did I leave, then?”

“Because I decided it wasn't safe for you to live with us.”

“No—I don't accept that.”

They wrangled for another twenty minutes, for each proposition, Matt posing the difficult follow-up questions he knew Gal would ask. Finally, they decided on “I'm very angry at Matt for something he did, and I told him I don't want to live with him anymore. What he did is between him and me. And he didn't want to go, because he loves us.”

Matt nodded tiredly. His mouth was dry, and tasted terrible. He thought he should also demand visitation rights with the kids, but didn't have the energy for it right now.

The dog followed him back down to the kitchen, and he stooped and kissed him on the snout. He called Derrick and Brent from the freezing car as he waited for it to warm, his breath billowing and his fingers aching from the cold. He woke Derrick up, so he told him to go back to sleep, that he was coming over but he'd let himself in. When he got there, Brent emerged sleepily in a bathrobe and said, “Big fight?”

“Big fight,” Matt said, taking off his jeans and putting on sweats, which, cold from the car, encased his legs in cold.

“What'd you do?”

“Funny,” Matt said. “Can I have a blanket?”

“Sure,” Brent said, and went back into the bedroom, from which Matt heard a quick conference in low voices between him and Derrick.

He took two sleeping pills and went to sleep on their couch, a cat curled behind his knees, thinking of all the smart retorts he'd failed to make—
Haven't you learned by now that nobody can keep anybody safe? Safety isn't the only value in the world!
—and vowing to remember them for later, when he and Daniel spoke again. Noam, he thought, would be up a few times during the night coughing, but that was Daniel's problem. If he, Matt, had no rights—what a shit Daniel was to say that!—at least he would now have the right to a good night's sleep. His mind spun and spun, and finally sleep came over him.

DANIEL OPENED THE CABINET
and cursed Matt when he discovered the Ativan was missing. He went back into the bedroom, lay down on the bed, and pulled the covers up to his chin. His heart was hammering in his ears and fingers, and when he thought of Matt, panic tickled inside his chest with intolerably pestering fingers till he shuddered. Just as he'd felt when he'd heard about Joel, as if there were something tormenting inside him that he couldn't get out. To go out and court unnecessary danger—as if they hadn't been blown, like fish hunted with guns, into the bloody welter of those who lived every single grim, aching, horrible day with its consequences!

Crying would have helped ease him out of that free fall, but he couldn't muster more than a humid and itchy tingle around the eyes. He'd cried enough over this past year, he thought bitterly, and he was not going to spill more tears over Matt. He had an urge to call someone, call Derrick, but everyone would think he was crazy for kicking Matt out; they'd think he wasn't considering the kids. But now, honestly, he felt that he should have broken up with him as soon as he brought the kids home. Matt had tried to be there for them, because he needed so badly for people to think he was a good person. And sure, fine, he was good with them, especially with Gal, who didn't have the intense entanglement with him she had with Daniel. But what good did it do to make an ace Halloween costume when he never pulled the harness in the baby's car seat tight enough?

He got up and took a hot bath, lay in the tub reading Matt's
Entertainment Weekly
to still his thoughts, feeling the hot water encase his limbs but not penetrate. When he got out, his skin was red. Yo-yo came in and licked his wet feet. Daniel dried off, put on pajamas, and sat on top of the bed, flipping channels. The heat of his bath hit him belatedly and he broke out into an unpleasant prickle and then a sweat. He closed his eyes. He felt like a mangled crustacean on a hot beach littered with soda cans and cigarette butts. He knew he had no right to complain, since he was the one who'd done the breaking up, but he felt awful, and angry for being forced into it, too.