Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? (3 page)

Michael

O
nly my sainted Sicilian mother could have given me a name like Michael Angelo. Nothing like stacking the cards against a kid in grade school. Actually, forget grade school, try meeting a guy in a gay bar, sticking out your hand and saying, “I’m Michael Angelo.” I’ve heard them all. “And I’m Picasso.” “And I’m the Virgin Mary.” “And I’m the Pope.” “And I’m the Sistine Chapel.” I’ve sometimes slept with a guy two, three times, and he’ll turn to me afterwards and say, “So what’s your
real
name?”

Gay, with a moniker like mine, a mother who still believes I only need to meet the right woman, and a father who won’t speak to me because apparently my being gay is a reflection on
his
manhood. Add to that people hate me because I’m beautiful. And vain. Well, it’s all a burden. And to top it off, there’s Lily. My best friend and confidant. And the woman who makes me supremely glad I’m gay—because there is no way I could ever live with her.

Every once in a while, Noah will ask, “How did you and Mom meet?” And we do have a “cute meet” story of our very own. I tell it much better than she does, of course.

We lived two doors down from each other in the same apartment building on the Upper East Side—she was subletting a studio—but we had never actually seen each other. I was working nights on the sports desk at one paper, and she was working days as an assistant editor for a magazine. Unbeknownst to me, however, she smelled me. Or rather, she smelled my cooking.

One night, I had called in sick, sniffling with a miserable New York winter cold, so I wasn’t out prowling the bars, and I heard someone pounding on my door. Scared the hell out of me. I peered through the peephole, and in that funhouse-distortion of peephole glass I saw Lily, all five foot three inches of woman and three inches of big 1980s hair teased up high on her head, coupled with three-inch heels.

I opened the door, “Can I help you?”

She was dressed for a date, wearing a simple and elegant little black A-line and a choker of pearls. The hair didn’t go with the outfit. I thought she needed something sleek, a style akin to Audrey Hepburn in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s,
but I wasn’t going to tell her.

“Are you the guy who’s always cooking?” She spoke very fast, machine-gun rapid.

“Cooking?”

She tapped her foot impatiently. “On Sundays. Cooking…C-oo-k-ing,” she said a little slower, as if I had the IQ of a doorknob. “Are you the one?”

She nervously looked down the hall, her eyes shifting from her apartment door to me. Back and forth. “Well?”

“I am.”

“Yeah, well listen, I’m having a major fucking food crisis, and I need your help.” She grabbed my hand and half-pulled me down the hall, where I could now, despite my cold, smell something burning.

Walking into her apartment was like walking into a five-alarm blaze. Smoke hugged the ceilings. We made our way to the tiny kitchen, where I opened a window. My eyes were tearing; my throat felt like it was closing on me.

“What the hell are you trying to cook?”

“A chicken. It’s in the oven.”

I pulled out a bird that had shriveled to a carcass.

“Can you help me fix it? I have a date coming over. I’ll buy you a case of beer. I’ll clean your apartment.”

“Fix it? Fix it?” I sat down on one of her kitchen chairs and laughed. “Girl, unless you use this bird for charcoal briquettes for the
next
thing you’re going to cook, there’s nothing to be done with it.”

“Couldn’t you coat it in a sauce?”

“Sauce? If I touch this it will turn to a pile of ashes.”

“I thought you called yourself a cook!” She put her hands on her hips.

“What? Honey, I don’t even
know
you. I get dragged to an apartment in need of a hook and ladder truck, and
you’re
picking on
me?
”

She looked at me, and then her nose crinkled up, the way I’ve since learned it always does when she’s going to laugh. She plopped down in the other kitchen chair, and we both cracked up. The more she laughed, the more I did, until we were both holding our sides, tears rolling down our faces from smoke and laughter. Her date never showed up, and she opened the wine she had bought for him—a cheap cabernet from the grocery store…with chicken! Okay, so reds with fish and chicken may be okay today, but not in the ’80s. We got drunk and told each other our life stories. From that night on, Lily and I were the best of friends.

Fast forward more years than either of us likes to confess to. Now, on Monday nights, I almost always cook dinner at her place. It gives us a chance to catch up. Otherwise, between my teaching schedule and her deadlines and everything, we’d turn into those “I haven’t talked to you in six months, how have you been?” kind of friends. And since we both hate Mondays, the dinners give us something to look forward to.

Our lives have changed a lot since we first met. I’m not sure either of us pictured the journey. Does anyone? I don’t think she anticipated marriage and motherhood. And divorce. I teach English, which wasn’t really where I thought I’d be at this point in my life—teaching Milton and English composition to freshmen who stumble into my 8:15 class red-eyed and hungover—precisely how
I
was when I was a freshman. My dream job would be to write a sports column, but the world isn’t ready for an openly gay sports columnist. Lily’s dream job would be to photograph hunky firemen for one of those male pin-up calendars. The fact that nearly every picture she takes has her thumb covering the lens means nothing. Actually, come to think of it, maybe the firemen calendar is
my
dream job.

On Monday, I picked up Noah from school—he’s in the second grade—and we went grocery shopping.

“One of the kids at school said gay people are disgusting.”

“Hmm,” I said, picking up some fresh basil, trying not to react. “And what did you say?”

“I told him it wasn’t true—that
he
was disgusting. I said he was grosser than boogers.”

“Well handled,” I said, smiling, rubbing the top of his head. “Don’t let your mother know you called someone a booger.”

“She says
way
worse all the time.”

“I know. But your mother is a creature who invents her own rules.”

We finished our shopping and drove on to their house, a white Cape Cod with dormer windows upstairs and a sort of Currier and Ives appearance, especially with the fall leaves scattered around in golds and reds. The roof leaks—but from the outside, it really does look picture-perfect. I remember when she and the Spawn of Satan found the place. I tried to believe that they really would live happily ever after. But, like the leaky roof, sometimes there are little holes you don’t notice at first. It takes a big storm to show you where the leaks are.

Noah and I started cooking dinner together. I swear the kid is a chef in the making. I even bought him a little white apron—a crisp one like you’d see on a waiter in an Italian restaurant. Noah’s got a mop of unruly brown hair, a smattering of freckles across his nose and his two front teeth missing like the jack-o’-lantern we planned to carve for Halloween.

The phone rang. Tara telling us she was staying at Justin’s for dinner. Justin’s her first boyfriend. And he drives. A Mustang. And he’s smart—a really decent guy—as well as the captain of the hockey team, which has a tremendous “coolness” factor. This whole combination makes him akin to a high-school-aged George Clooney.

“You can eat at Justin’s, but you’re missing your favorite—lasagna.” “Damn.”

“Don’t say ‘damn.’”

“Okay, shit.”

I rolled my eyes. “God, age fifteen.”

“Sixteen in three weeks.”

“Yeah, well please just fast forward to twenty-five and get all this pain-in-the-ass stuff over with.”

“See you later, Uncle Michael.”

“Later, sweetie.”

I hung up the phone. Noah looked up from the noodles he was laying out in the pan. “Tara and Justin are gross.”

“Eh…it’s just first love.”

“Well, I’m never going to fall in love.”

“Yes, you will.”

We heard the minivan pull up into the driveway. “Mom’s home!” Noah shouted, hurrying to lay the noodles faster so it would be done before she walked in.

Gunther started barking like a lunatic. He’s half mutt, half slobbering monster, and he ran to the front door and nearly knocked her over.

“Get down, Gunther!” Lily barked. “Sure, small paws. Ninety-six pounds later!”

After settling down the dog, she walked into the kitchen. “Hey!” She pecked my cheek hello and bent down to give Noah a hug.

“How was your day?” I asked.

“One for the record books. To start with, Gunther did this,” she pointed to a smear on her pants.

“Attractive.”

“Ugh…please. Today sucked. Joe was in rare form. How’s this for an assignment? Go smash your breasts into pancakes for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Tomorrow.”

“Sounds like fun. More action than you’ve been getting lately.”

“Shut the hell up.”

“Mom!” Noah shouted. “Quarter!”

Lily rolled her eyes and opened her purse. She took out a dollar and put it in the curse jar, filled to the brim with money, which we spent every so often on a night of pizza and bowling. “It’s been a bad day. That’ll cover me for three more.”

She slipped off her shoes and poured a glass of wine from the bottle that was breathing on the counter.

“How’s your book going?” she asked me.

“I’m stuck.”

“Why?”

I shrugged.

“You know why.”

And of course I did. I was writing a novel about a baseball player at a medium-sized university. He’s closeted, and when his best friend on the team discovers his secret, he outs him and the gay player is forced to leave the team in disgrace. Give up his baseball scholarship. Any hope of getting drafted. And writing it just opened up all the old wounds. Call it a novel, but it was way too close to real life. My life.

Curveball
An excerpt from a novel by Michael Angelo

“You’re a fucking homo, aren’t you?” The venom in Charlie’s voice sounded murderous. “A fucking queer.” His face was pale, and his normally lively green eyes looked dark.

Sam tried to laugh it off. “No…no. I’m not gay. What are you crazy?” His heart pounded, and he felt his mouth go dry as sandpaper. He looked around for someplace in their tiny dorm room to escape. Like the closet. And the irony of that was pathetic.

“Then what’s this, Sam? What the hell is this?”

Sam took a step backward. From the moment he walked in the room after class and saw Charlie at his desk, Sam knew what Charlie had found. There in his spiral notebook was a page of doodles from the night before, when from too much caffeine and not enough sleep cramming for midterms, he had absentmindedly written out Charlie’s name in the center of a heart with an arrow drawn through it.

“It’s nothing. I don’t know. I was delirious. I’ve been up for two days straight with this organic chemistry midterm and then practice. I’m just tired, man. Just fucking tired.” Sam could hear the panic in his voice.

“Bullshit.” Charlie spat and, without warning, dove for Sam, his fist connecting with Sam’s right eye, and then his nose. Sam tasted the salty sweet sensation of his own blood in his mouth, and still Charlie punched him with a relentless fury. They fell against the puke-green cinderblock wall of their dorm room and landed on the floor. Sam put his arms in front of his face to defend himself.

“Stop! Stop!” he screamed. He had no choice but to fight back, and the two of them punched wildly, then struggled to their feet. They knocked over Sam’s desk, and Sam’s hand went sailing into the mirror, which sliced clear across his knuckles.

“Jesus Christ, Charlie, get the fuck off me!”

Charlie stopped for a moment, catching his breath. Seeing the blood covering Sam’s shirt and arms, Charlie began shouting, “Fucking great. Now I could fucking get AIDS. You sick, sick fuck.” Without another word, he ran from their dorm room as a small crowd gathered in the hallway. There, in the gray-carpeted hallway were Jake and his girlfriend, and next to him Tommy carrying his bong. A few others from the study lounge stood there gawking.

Sam stared at them all, then grabbed a towel and tried to staunch the bleeding in his hand.

“What happened?” Jake asked. He was the team’s shortstop. Charlie and Sam were catcher and pitcher, respectively.

“Nothing. We just got into an argument.”

“What happened to your hand?” Jake came over and tried to move the towel aside.

“Nothing. I said it was nothing.” Sam pulled his arm away. “Show’s over guys. Leave me alone, okay?”

“Suit yourself.” Jake looked at him suspiciously, but in the end, they all left his room.

Sam unwrapped his hand. The gash was deep. He couldn’t imagine pitching with a cut like that. But, he mused, now that Charlie had found out his secret, he wasn’t sure if he could stay on the team anyway. In the world of college baseball, being queer was worse than being a rapist. It was an unforgivable sin against the
Almighty Book of Athletics.

And falling in love with your best friend was even worse.

Lily

T
he machine whirred and moved, sounding like a cross between R2D2 and an X-ray. My right breast was stretched and pulled in ways I couldn’t have imagined a half hour before. In my mind, I wasn’t really thinking about the fact that I was having a mammogram, I was thinking of all the funny ways I could describe just what it is that mammogram machine
does
to your breasts.

It kneads them like dough in a bread maker.

It flattens them like…what? Like the machine was a gigantic spatula, squashing my breasts which were like so much hamburger. It paws them like that sloppy drunk and inexperienced one-night stand from freshman year of college.

“Uncomfortable?” The technician looked at me with concern. “Just let me know if it gets unbearable.”

“Uncomfortable? Why no…I
love
being flattened like this. It’s some sort of kinky turn-on.”

She laughed. “I know. It’s a pretty weird experience.”

“Are you kidding? This is the most action my breasts have gotten in four months.”

Which was true. Thanks to Michael playing match-maker, and the fact that, with my big mouth, I’ve never had problems meeting men, I never lacked for dates. I’ve dated older men, younger men, hunky men, bald men, chubby men, skinny men, intellectual men and goofy men. I’ve dated single dads—and men who at the sound of “I’ve got two kids” were scanning the restaurant for an exit. But most of all, I’ve dated baggage handlers—men with so much baggage they’re like Skycaps at JFK Airport. Consequently, dates aside, I rarely make it into the bedroom. It had been a while since I met someone worth the effort of shaving my legs.

The technician, who had told me her name was Melissa, collected the films she’d taken of both breasts, and said, “I’ll be back in ten minutes. I just need to check the film, and if the pictures are clear, you’ll get dressed and off you go to write about this fun afternoon for your column.”

“Oh joy.”

She left me alone in the small room, a lead apron tied around my belly to protect my reproductive organs during the mammogram—not that I expected to need my reproductive organs again. I was pretty sure I was done having kids. Said baggage handlers meant—forget being “shave worthy”—it had been quite a while since I met anyone whose gene pool seemed like it might be an acceptable match for mine.

Twenty minutes passed, and I was still waiting, so I sat down on a stool. A short time later, Melissa was back.

“You know, there’s this spot on your right breast…we’d like to do an ultrasound.”

“A spot? What does it look like?”

“You know, we can’t say for sure. Sometimes the ultrasound will make it clearer. We can do it right now…so grab your purse and follow me across the hall.”

My breasts hadn’t gotten so much action in years. Ten minutes later a new technician was rubbing an ultrasound wand—which vaguely resembles a small dildo—over and over again on my breast. Which is far less sexy than it sounds.

“Well?”

“I have to talk to one of the doctors. You just hang tight here for a little while.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You’ve taken my clothes hostage.”

While she was gone, I massaged my breast where she had been moving the ultrasound back and forth. I couldn’t feel anything and assumed it was a cyst.

A short time later, I was told I could dress. The ultrasound technician walked me down the hall into the radiologist’s office where I sat in a velour-covered mauve chair.

“Lily…Dr. Edie Grasso,” the doctor said, extending her hand. She looked about fifty, with frosted silver hair in a neat bob and horn-rimmed glasses. “We’re going to have to do a biopsy.”

I felt like the room spun around a minute, and I put my hand on her desk—maybe to confirm it was real.

“Crap.”

“Yeah…I pretty much think that’s what I’d say if I had to have one.”

I inhaled. “This is really going to ruin the ha-ha funny column I was planning to write.”

“Sorry about that. But you know, writing about this whole experience for Breast Cancer Awareness Month may help a lot of women.”

“True…but first you said the b-word—biopsy. Now I have to worry about the c-word. Do you think it’s cancer?”

“You know, I don’t like how it looks, but we won’t know anything until we biopsy it.”

I swallowed hard. “I don’t do sickness well. It’s like the one time in my life I turn into a total wimp.”

“None of us does sickness well.” She smiled. “Come on…let’s schedule this and get it over with. It’s the not knowing that’s the worst of it.”

On the drive home from the women’s center, I tried to decide who to tell. It could be nothing. It could be something. Either way, I was numb myself, and the idea of having to go through the
blah-blah-blah
of the mammogram, ultrasound and now the biopsy I’d scheduled, irritated me.

It reminded me of when I got divorced. Yeah, the divorce from Spawn of Satan was bad. But having to repeat the story ad nauseum was worse, I think. People I only talked to every few months or so—like my college roomie, Margot—had to be caught up to speed. This was why my answering machine no longer said, “You’ve reached the home of Lily, David, Tara and Noah,” and instead had Tara’s then-little voice saying, “Hello! You’ve reached Mom, me and my new brother, leave a message at the beep.” No, I hadn’t murdered the Spawn and buried him in the backyard. He’d dumped me. And I hated telling the tale over and over and over again.

I decided to discuss the biopsy with three people: Michael, of course; Joe—because the funny ha-ha column was not going to be forthcoming; and my crazy friend Ellie, a commitment-phobe worse than Michael, with four broken engagements in the past ten years. She’s tried every twelve-step program imaginable and meets an assortment of lovable, if broken men. She always thinks each new guy is “the one.” However, despite her questionable taste in men, and a growing collection of diamond rings, she’s great company, and Michael and I adore her.

When I got home, Noah was next door with his pal, Jake, and Tara was at track practice. I didn’t want them to know anything, so I let Gunther out into the yard and then went upstairs to call Michael, then Ellie. I didn’t let on with them, either. I just asked them to meet me for drinks at seven-thirty at The View, this café with a riverfront vista.

Two phone calls down, one to go.

“Joe?”

“
L-A-T-E.
A four-letter word synonymous with your weekly feature.”

“Yeah. I have a little problem.”

“What? Got stuck in the machine?”

“Very funny.”

“I need the column. Either that or you can go for the colonoscopy.”

I shuddered.

“No, look…Joe, they spotted something. I have to have a biopsy. The humorous side of squashing my breasts in a machine for your vicarious pleasure just flew out the window.”

There was a long pause.

“Hello? Earth to Joe…your
L-A-T-E
writer is
F-R-E-A-K-E-D.
”

“Aw, shit, I can’t pick on you for being late if…there’s something
really
wrong with you. Other than your terminal tardiness and addiction to shoes. And that attitude of yours.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t know anything yet, so I’m trying to avoid panic, which isn’t easy—even for me. Listen…just keep it under wraps, okay? Run a repeat column, or the one I had scheduled for Sunday. I’ll write something new by then.”

“All right. And in the meantime, until it turns out to be benign, I’ll store up all my complaints so that when you get the good news, I can rip you a new one.”

“Appreciate it. Knew I could count on you.” I hung up the phone and smiled. That’s when I knew I’d made it as a writer. When Joe started really picking on me. I remember the first time he called me into his office, shut the door and ranted about how I’d offended several of our advertisers by writing about the conspiracy to place women who look like emaciated death camp survivors in their ads. He screamed and yelled about advertisers being our life’s blood. Then after his little show for the rest of the staff, who were all eyeballing his office through the glass, he commended me for sticking to my guns. He ran the piece, and the fact that he found my column worth nearly having an aneurysm over told me I was doing all right.

After I hung up with Joe, I stood and faced the mirror over my dresser. I pulled off my shirt and then my bra. My right breast didn’t
look
any different from the left. I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with my breasts and my body—until I passed some magical line of demarcation and began making peace with the fact that so much of what most women obsess over isn’t real—it’s society’s standards for us. My son’s sloppy kisses in the morning—they’re real. My daughter’s moments of fragile adolescent beauty—they’re real. Hell, my breasts are real, too, which means that at my age, they’re not perched like two unripe hard melons up near my neck somewhere. So they sag a little bit…I’d made peace with them.

I changed into a sweater and some jeans and went downstairs. I made dinner—or what passes for dinner—for Noah and Tara; I’m a member of the 400-Club. Everything in my freezer can be put on a cookie sheet and cooked at four hundred degrees. God bless chicken nuggets. I oversaw homework, and left Noah watching Nickelodeon and Tara on the phone with Justin. I drove to The View. Michael and Ellie were waiting.

Michael had a martini—and he’d ordered me one, too. Ellie had a glass of Zinfandel. Ellie had tried A.A. once although she’s never had a drinking problem. However, she did meet two lovely recovering alcoholics and got engaged to one. Right now she is in Codependents Anonymous learning how to cure herself of serial engagements.

I slugged back half my martini. “You know that mammo I had today?”

“Yeah?” Michael cocked an eyebrow.

“They saw something.”

“What?”

“They don’t know yet. I have to have a biopsy.”

“Oh, shit…” Michael said. “Let’s think positive. Do they think it’s—it’s—”

“I’m a big girl. You can say it. Cancer? They don’t know.”

Ellie patted my hand and then took a tissue out of her purse.

“Are you
sniveling
already?” I asked her. Ellie had bent her head full of flaming red curls.

“Yes.” She blew her nose.

“Ellie, we don’t know a damn thing yet.”

“I know, but…I hate medical stuff. My mother had M.S. Even the sight of the doctor’s office makes me break out in hives.”

“You’ve never had a mammogram?” I knew she was three years older than I was, and in my research prior to my mammogram, I’d discovered women who had children were less at risk than women like Ellie who’d never had and breastfed children.

“No. And you know, I don’t think I ever will. I prefer to die oblivious of whatever it is that’s going to kill me.”

“Ellie…You can’t hide your head in the sand.”

“Yes, I can.”

Michael looked at her. “I’m with you. I hope I die in my sleep.”

I stared from Michael to Ellie. “What a supportive friggin’ pair you turned out to be. One of you is more chicken than the other. Look, whatever happens, I’m instituting a No Crying rule. I came out with you two to cheer me up. You already have me in a pine box. And for the record, I want to be cremated should something go wrong.”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” Michael said soothingly. “Me and you? We’ve been through too much together. And you’re
way
too unpleasant to die. Too bossy. God will keep you down here for a while until you learn your lesson and start learning to work and play well with others.”

“Now you’re talking…. Will you go with me a week from Friday when I get the biopsy?”

“Wild horses and an evil head nurse with rubber gloves and an enema couldn’t keep me away.”

“Now you’re just being gross.”

The three of us ordered another round, and by ten o’clock, I was sufficiently calmed down enough to go home to bed. Of course the spot was nothing, I told myself. Besides needing to learn to work and play well with others—which I hadn’t mastered in kindergarten with the rest of the world—my kids needed me. And so did Michael.