An Infatuation (9 page)

I sat up on one elbow. “That’s not why I’m crying. Actually it’s been nice having a break from Karen.”

My mother smiled and sat on the edge of my bed. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on. That’s the problem.”

“Care to elaborate?”

I sat up next to her. “When you and Dad were expecting me, were you hoping I’d be different?”

She ran her manicured fingers through her streaked blonde, short hair. “Different from who?”

“From me.”

“Is this because I go to the meditation center? I told you that you’re welcome to come any time.”

I held her hand. It took me back. “Why do people love us, or not love us?”

“Are you going to make fun of me for my beliefs?”

I shook my head, having no intentions of keeping my promise.

“Okay, Buddhists believe we choose everyone around us, our parents, our children, our friends.”

“So you think I chose you and Dad?”

“And that we chose you.”

“Why did you choose me?”

She pulled at my brown and yellow shirt. “Because we love flannel.”

“I always suspected.”

After we shared a smile, Mom pulled the zipper of her jumpsuit down off her neck and said thoughtfully, “I believe we choose people who can teach us something.”

“Please don’t teach me how to meditate again. We live in New Jersey. All that breathing is toxic.”

She hit my arm playfully. “We also pick people who help us build good energy or, pardon the word, karma.”

“So if we do something good for someone, we store up good karma. If we hurt someone, we store up bad karma?”

“Only if it’s intentional.”

“So say somebody hurts you, hurts you really badly. But he didn’t mean to do it. He only did it because he was scared.”

“Okay?”

“Does he build up bad karma?”

“I’ll have to look that one up, Harold.”

“And when you get hurt, what should you do?”

“Forgive him, and let it go.”

“What if you can’t?”

“Try harder.” Mom put her arm around me and the scent of incense filled my nose. “Harold, I believe our lives are like… patterns. We connect with the same energy, often the same people, again and again. It’s our job to love each one of them, to learn from them, to learn from our mistakes, and not to make them again.”

“So if I love somebody who goes away, you think I’ll see him again someday?”

“In this life or the next.” She squeezed my shoulder. “Does that make you happy?”

Even after he hurt me.
“Yes.”

After we sat for a few moments in silence, I said, “Mom, I’m glad I chose you and Dad to be my parents.”

“Me too.” She kissed me on the forehead. “It’s ten o’clock. Your father will want to go over tomorrow’s schedule with me, then say good night.” She winked at me. “Do some deep, cleansing breathing. Tomorrow’s another day.” And she left my room.

After many deep breaths, each without Mario, graduation day finally arrived. As my launched cap was lost in a sky of dark clouds, so was Mario, out of my reach.

I worked at the fruit market over the summer, and Mario went away to football camp. I wrote him a number of letters, but never mailed any of them.

Fall came and we attended our separate colleges.

CHAPTER SIX/18 YEARS AGO

I
T
WASN
’
T
until two years later on June 28th, at 1:16 p.m., in front of the town deli, that my high school infatuation raced by. He was wearing bicycle shorts, a tight T-shirt (purple), and he held a paper bag. His hair was combed back off his face. If it was humanly possible, he looked even more muscular and handsome than he did in high school.

“Harold.”

“Mario?”
When did I become a soprano?

He looked like a parent finding a lost child at the mall. “I haven’t seen you since… graduation.”

“Has it been that long?”
Is my nose growing? No, but something else is.

Mario took me in like rain in a desert. “How
are
you?”

“Great. Great. Great.”
How do I stop saying great?

“What’s up?”

Something is definitely up.
“I’m in college. State. How about you?”

“I flunked out of Yale.” His eyes glowed. “I needed my tutor.”

I’m going to rip my pants.
“Are you working?”

Mario looked down at his sneakers. I looked at his muscular thighs peeking out of his shorts.

“I’m… between jobs right now.”

“How’s Barbara?”

Mario smiled like a jack-o’-lantern. “Harold, we’re gonna have a baby… twins. I knocked her up. Twice!”

Obviously he doesn’t have birth control in the bag.

Scratching the eight-pack under his T-shirt, he asked, “You… married… or anything?”

“I’m… not married.”
Why can’t I tell him about Stuart?

Our eyes danced a tango. Finally Mario said, “I better get going.” His biceps flexed as he held up the bag. “Barbara’s got a craving for candy.”

I’ll bet.

He started to go but stopped and turned to face me again. “Hey, let’s get together sometime. You can read a book to me like in the old days.”

I’m sure Barbara would love that.

“Harold, it’s really good to see you. I’ll give you a call.” He ran away.

You don’t have my number. But I have yours. And it looks like it hasn’t changed.

True to course, Mario ran out of the street and out of my life… until eight years later.

CHAPTER SEVEN/10 YEARS AGO

I
WAS
a grade school teacher at the time. I got home before Stuart, and opened the mail on our maple wood table in our glass-enclosed kitchen nook that Stuart had designed when he was eight years old. Bills for Stuart. Letters for me. The first letter intrigued me.

You are cordially invited to attend your ten-year high school reunion
at the (renamed) George W. Bush High School’s gymnasium.
This is a problem. Not only Bush. Not only the gymnasium. Mario will no doubt be at the reunion.

“Harold, don’t be nervous about your high school reunion. We’ll snub the doctors and lawyers and make a beeline for the other failures.” Stuart always knew how to make me laugh. We were eating dinner in our dining room with its bay window, chair railing, chandelier, mahogany table, and built-in cherrywood hutch with a carved-out space for Stuart’s monthly schedule.

“Stuart, does it bother you that I will probably be seeing Mario again at the reunion?”

“No, why should it? Everybody has a childhood crush.”

“So you aren’t jealous?”

“Actually I enjoyed hearing all of your stories about the
infamous
Mario. I can’t wait to meet him in person. That is, if he’s really human.” He took my hand. “Harold, maybe it will be good for you to see Mario again. Get this out of your system. Put a period on it.”

“What did I ever do to deserve you, Stuey?”

Stuart spooned some organic green vegetables onto my plate. “You sat next to me at college registration.”

I hid a piece of kale under my free-range chicken. “Do you remember the first thing I ever said to you?”

“Help me.”

“After that.”

“You said I was your guardian angel.”

“And you are.” I kissed his cheek.

“Nah, I just told you to take mythology and literature so you could read about all those half-naked Greek gods casting spells on each other and get hot for me.”

We shared a smile. “Thanks for agreeing to come to my reunion, Stuey.”

He looked at me adoringly. After all our years together, that look still gave me butterflies. “Why wouldn’t I come, Harold? I’m not ashamed my husband played tuba in the school band.”

“If anyone brings that up, I’ll ram a tuba up—”

“Oww, I love it when you talk rough.” He squeezed my hand.

I squeezed back. “I love you, Stuey.”

“Tell the readers that I love you too.”

“They know.”

Stuart looked at the built-in clock on the dining room hutch. “Harold, it’s 7:00 p.m., time to do the dishes and make our lunches for tomorrow.” And so we did.

That night, at precisely 10:45 p.m., after Stuart had laid out our clothes for the next day, we brushed our teeth in our his and his bathroom. At exactly 11:00 p.m. we went to bed, made love for fifteen minutes, then Stuart spooned me, his long, thin arms and legs wrapped about me firmly. As he did every night, he told me how much he loved me, until we drifted off to sleep.

My dreams were racked with fears about the reunion. In one nightmare my nametag read,
Nerdy Gay Guy Who Makes Way Less Money Than You
. In a spookier dream, the gymnasium was decorated with medicine balls that slammed into me whenever I tried to leave. In another dream the football players hung me from the rings and burned me at the stake. Barbara strangled me with Mario’s class ring on a chain in yet another. The longest dream involved Mario arriving with a bald head, pot belly, three wives, and ten kids, offering me a Mormon tract. The most horrifying dream, Tommy and Keith pummeling me on the pommel horse, left me screaming and shaking in Stuart’s arms. My husband rocked me back and forth, kissed my forehead, and scared away the bogeyman until exactly 7:00 a.m., when we rose to start our day.

That rest of the week at school was full of complications as Juan’s nose wouldn’t stop bleeding, Kenisha accused everyone—including me—of stealing her designer book bag, and Samantha kept insisting that John Adams was a Communist—courtesy of Fox News. As I led my students through their studies, the curriculum took a backseat to my thoughts about the reunion, and of course about Mario.

The night before the reunion, Stuart made dinner, did the dishes, ironed our shirts, steamed our suits, shined our shoes, put gas in his car, and made me chamomile tea.

The day of reckoning finally arrived. Since my hands were shaking so hard, Stuart drove, parked, and led me to the school entrance, like a parent bringing his child to kindergarten on the first day of school.

Stuart and I entered the gymnasium like Dorothy and Toto in the
Land of Oz
. He commented on the old pictures table, as I secretly waited for Mario to enter my field of vision like the red ruby slippers. As my eyes adjusted to the fluorescent lighting, gold banners, and sequined dresses, I heard one woman threatening another woman not to
drop the banner, spill the punch, or knock over the nametags
. When we reached the check-in table, I smiled at a familiar round face. With her cream-colored blouse and peach skirt, Hannah looked like a sundae.

“Harold High. I’m so glad you could make it.” Hannah checked my name off her list, and checked me out head to toe. “We just finished setting up. Rather,
I
just finished setting up.” She grimaced like a BSA CEO facing a gay Scout leader. “Barbara
supervised
, then left to put on her makeup.”

Let’s hope Barbara is divorced and making up her face to hook one of the boys in the band.
“Hannah. It’s nice to see you.” The glasses, braces, and training bra were gone, but the curly red hair remained.

Stuart cleared his throat.

“Hannah, this is Stuart.”

“Are you in the orchestra?” Hannah searched over her shoulder for the orchestra leader, already on his first break.

“
I
never played a musical instrument.” Stuart patted me on the back, then mimed the word
tuba
with a finger over lips.

Hannah checked her list and came up empty. “Stuart, what? I don’t remember you from high school.”

“I cut all my classes.”

After elbowing Stuart’s side, I said, “Stuart is my partner.”

“Oh. What kind of business do you guys do?”

Stuart was enjoying this. “Yeah, Harold, what kind of business do we guys do?”

“Stuart is my life partner, Hannah.”

“Oh, a life coach! I went to—”

“Hannah, we’re
married
.”

“Oh. Where are your wives?” She checked her sheets again.

“To each other.”
She obviously hasn’t changed.

Hannah blushed. “Oh.” She let out a familiar giggle. “That’s fine.”

Stuart couldn’t resist. “It works for us.”

“Me too.” Her face was a tomato. “I mean, you two make a nice couple.”

Stuart was on a roll. “I think I’ll keep him.” He pinched my cheek.

Hannah couldn’t stop herself from rambling. “I was the President of the Young Democrats Club back in high school. I should have known about you, Harold. You had all the signs back then. Oh, I didn’t mean that you were effeminate… or that you are now. Not that there’s anything wrong with being effeminate, or that every gay man is effeminate. I have gay friends and you would never know that
any
of them are gay. Well, some of them you would know. But most of them you wouldn’t. Unless you were gay and had gaydar. But I guess not every gay person has gaydar. In any case you would never know my gay friends were gay… unless you met their spouses. I mean they have one spouse each. But in every case, their spouse is gay… like
them
. Because somebody who isn’t gay wouldn’t have a gay man as his spouse. Or
any
man for that matter. Unless he was transsexual, but then he wouldn’t be gay, he’d be transsexual. And then he would be a
she
.”

This is like watching a rabbit in a minefield.

She kept going. “Stuart, I have to admit I had a crush on Harold when we were in high school.”

Stuart put his arm around me and grinned like the Cheshire cat. “My little playboy.”

Hannah was unstoppable. “I even asked Harold to go to the prom with me. But it didn’t go anywhere. How could it, right? I guess the joke was on me.” Hannah’s giggle put Anderson Cooper’s to shame. “You may not know this, Stuart, but Harold and I played in the high school band. I played the flute. Harold played the tuba.”

Stuart squeezed my hand. “I think I heard something about that.”