From What I Remember (13 page)

He was trading stocks, I think. Sometimes he was down there all day and all night. For a while, nothing seemed to change. Mom and I still went shopping, Janice cleaned and cooked for us, we went to Cabo for spring break. And then, about a week ago, Dad got all psychotic. He took away my credit cards, stopped delivery of all the flowers, fired the housekeeper, traded in his Porsche convertible for a Ford Focus (a Ford Focus?!), and sold the yacht.

In retrospect, Mom’s news shouldn’t have come as a surprise. But it’s hard to grasp the worst-case scenario until it smacks the shit out of you. At the very, very, very least, thank God the world came crashing down on the last day of school and not any earlier, because as soon as word gets out, the vultures will be circling. Schadenfreude. Deriving pleasure from other’s pain. It’s horrible, but it’s sport at Freiburg. And I’m about to be the ball. They’re all going to take a whack at me, and there’s precious little I can do about it.

I’m not sure how Max is going to react. I’d like to believe that he loves me unconditionally, but I’m no fool. I know the bells and whistles help. He likes the yacht, my Audi convertible, the house in Aspen. What am I going to tell him? Or anyone, for that matter. Maybe I’ll just keep it a secret until it absolutely, positively can’t be kept quiet anymore. And just maybe, some kind of miracle will happen and everything will turn out okay. Like it always has for me.

Jesus. Dad isn’t actually going to go to jail, is he?

When I asked Mom what Dad did wrong, she said, “He didn’t do anything everyone else wasn’t doing. He just got caught.”

That didn’t clarify things at all. And the morality of that statement was questionable at best. But I didn’t even go there with Mom.

“Don’t worry. We’ll fight this, and we’ll win,” Mom insisted in that Pollyanna way of hers. But her unflagging enthusiasm was flagging, for the first time ever. She knew things weren’t going to be okay and she didn’t have a clue how to deal. Her thinly veiled horror was written all over her face.

“People are just jealous of me, pumpkin. They want what we have. We’re going to come out on top, though. Don’t worry,” my dad told me a little while later when he came up to my room. It was probably one in the morning by then. It all sounded suspiciously like the words of a guilty person. When I asked him about Stanford he said we’d “figure something out.” I’m pretty sure it was his way of just pushing off the inevitable difficult conversation.

I want to believe he’s innocent. I mean, he’s my dad. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he did something wrong. He’s never played by the rules, even with us. When my brother was spending too much time on the bench in basketball, Dad took his coach out for dinner, and after that, Jordan never warmed the bench again. He once paid three times the fee for some stupid horse camp that was full so I could get in. Another girl was probably yanked out to make room for me, and I don’t even like horses. Dad always gets what he wants, one way or another. And Jordan and I have learned to do the same.

I curse Max again for making me wait. I don’t want time alone today. I don’t want to have to be thinking, ruminating, worrying. I want to keep moving. I call Max again. Surprise, surprise. Voice mail. Screw it. I’m going to the mall with Stokely. She won’t blow me off.

t’s fourth period and I am standing in the dressing room of Forever 21, surrounded by piles of discarded clothes. I had to flee the festivities at Freiburg. It’s insufferable enough on a normal day, but the last day of school is truly beyond. Seniors were marching around singing the Freiburg anthem, like brainwashed North Korean soldiers. The library had been strafed with toilet paper, and everyone was wearing green and blue. Gag me. Maybe if Kylie had shown up for school today I could have handled it with aplomb and a dollop of snark, but on my own, it was just too much. Which brings me to the burning question: where the hell is Kylie on the last day of school?

I hold a formfitting, black spandex mini-thing up to my body, the sixth outfit I’ve considered. I can’t help but wonder if I’m making any progress. The question is, would Kylie rock this outfit the way I could? It would have been enormously helpful to have her here with me as I try to find her the perfect graduation dress. But we can’t always get what we want. How well I know that old adage. It should be my theme song.

I’m on a mission, with or without Kylie’s blessing.

I’m surprised Kylie didn’t show up for first period, or second or third, for that matter. I can’t remember the last time my little chica missed school. She’s really anal about attendance. Hopefully, she’s not sequestered in her bedroom, rewriting her speech for the thirtieth time. She’s been working that thing like it’s the inaugural address. I keep telling her that it wouldn’t be so bad if she riffed a little bit at graduation. Maybe everyone else would realize what I already know: girlfriend rocks the house with her brains and beauty. She could talk her ass off without ever preparing a thing, if she’d only trust her instincts. But Kylie’s not into doing anything on the fly. Her life is all about planning and über preparation. I’m just worried that if she reads the speech straight off the page, it’s going to be missing soul. Kylie is full of soul and I want everyone to know it.

Predictably, she hasn’t responded to any of my fifty texts to meet at Forever 21. She is relentless in her quest to look sexless. But I am going to pack her smoking-hot bod into a fabulously sexy frock for the ceremony, or die trying. I like playing Kylie’s own personal stylist. It gives my life purpose and shape—at least for the next hour—something that is sorely lacking from most of my day. The ennui and the existential angst will set in again when I leave the mall. But for now, I’m dancing to the party in my mind and having a swell time.

I stare at myself in the mirror and realize that Kylie will never go for this black number. It’s too tight, too sexy, too too. Maybe I should buy it for myself. It would definitely be a game changer. This look is even more outré than usual. As a rule, I don’t do dresses alone. We all have our limits. I usually try to tone things down with jeans, combat boots, a blazer, or a necktie. Something masculine. Something feminine. Something borrowed (from my sisters). Something blue (usually my mood). It’s my own secret homosexual recipe.

I’d love to wear this dress simply for the sheer impact of the visual at graduation. It’s not that I like women’s clothes so much—it’s more that I like shaking up the status quo in our traditional little town. But I’m not sure I can do it to Mom and Dad. They’ve finally stopped badgering me about my clothes, but do they really need their son wearing a black spandex mini to his high school graduation? Seems like cruel and unusual punishment.

Mom and Dad have come a long way since they sent me to Dr. Chan in ninth grade, after I renounced my heterosexuality and officially proclaimed myself as gay as the Roaring Twenties. I’ve known forever. I kind of figured they must have figured it out somewhere along the way. I just thought it was high time to get it all out in the open.

While they weren’t particularly surprised, they were both disappointed to have it articulated so clearly. They were hoping I’d have a change of heart.

Enter Dr. Chan. Handsome in a professorial way. He was my first real crush. Dad insisted I could talk through “my issues” with him. I insisted I didn’t have “issues,” just “preferences.”

“Same thing. It’s all semantics,” Mom said.

Hmmm. Methinks, not so much. Dad thought I was “confused.” Mom called it “conflicted.” They both chalked it up to adolescence, not nature. It was kind of soul crushing to realize my parents couldn’t accept me for who I was. I mean, I was fine with it, why couldn’t they be? So, like it or not, off I went to yak it up with Chan, who was, fortunately, easy on the eyes, thus making the hour a lot less painful than it otherwise would have been. The good doctor and I spent weeks trying to work out why I “thought” I was gay. He urged me to try and date women before coming to any rash conclusions. He talked in this very slow, calm way that often lulled me to sleep during the session. He’d wake me by nudging me with his foot.

It soon became clear to both of us that I yam what I yam: a devout and dedicated homosexual. Chan threw in the towel and we quickly changed course. We spent our time discussing the best online shopping (Chan was a bit of a metrosexual), new music, and my rage and resentment at my parents.

I’ve never been so mad at them. They didn’t like who I was. It was insulting, offensive, hurtful. I expected more from them (or at least from my mother). At one point, I stopped speaking to both of them for sixty-two days, which for me was quite the feat. I’m a champion chatterer. I literally had to bite my tongue at times to stop myself from talking to Mom.

Before Chan, Mom and I were the best of girlfriends. We could hang together without getting all shrill on each other, like she does with my sisters. I listened endlessly to her litany of complaints, unlike either of my sisters, both of whom are way too self-consumed to ever bother with someone else’s issues.

During the “Silent Talks,” as I fondly refer to those sixty-two days, I would e-mail or text in emergencies. Otherwise, my lips were sealed. It broke my mother’s heart. She went into therapy herself. Eventually, Chan told my parents that I was fine. Not the least bit “confused or conflicted.” And the sessions ended. I’m here, I’m queer, get used to it. And they have, mostly.

I knew Mom would come around, but Dad surprised me. He’s a little bit to the right of Attila the Hun. It’s a minor miracle how well we’re getting on these days, considering who and what he is—a Republican to the core. I think he came out of the womb in khakis and a blue blazer. His great-great-great-great-grandparents came over on the
Mayflower
. He was in an eating club at Princeton. He is so white, they’ve named a shade of Benjamin Moore paint after him (Bright, Uptight White #7). He runs a private equity firm that specializes in crushing the spirit of middle management. He buys companies, strips them of all their employees, and then sells off their assets, leaving people unemployed, hapless, and helpless, all in the name of making money. Lots of it. It’s kind of unconscionable. And yet, I blithely live off the proceeds, which kind of makes me hate myself at times. But the alternative, not living off it, is a nonstarter.

Despite it all, Dad and I have come to terms with the fact that we are inextricably father and son. We’re loving each other the best we can. It’s not always a perfect scenario, but what is?

I’m coming up empty-handed on the Kylie front, and starting to feel frustrated, when a red dress calls to me from the hanger. I hold it up to my body and immediately feel I’ve found a friend. It’s a T-shirt style and surprisingly demure, despite the fact that it’s screaming red sequins. It’s not too plunging, not too short. It would show off Kylie’s curves without strangling them. I love it immediately. It’s the perfect podium look. It says, “I’m smart, chic, and sassy. Call me.”

The problem is, Kylie’s not really a red sequins kind of girl. Or a dress girl. Kylie’s not really an anything kind of girl. She is an extremely fluid concept. For once, I’m happy she’s not here, negative nabobing in my ear. I’m inclined to buy one for her and one for me. We should show up to graduation in matching red sequins. It would sure give Freiburg something to remember.