Gossip (17 page)

“Hey! Don’t moon
us!”
Whitaker shouted at my rear.

“Sorry,” I said as we all straightened up, zipping and grinning. “Bad aim.”

Fifty yards behind us, the girls jeered. All they had seen was a united battery of male cracks, with nothing to set off the intentions of one ass from the others.

I
T WAS OVER. THE
prolonged sigh of turbines and cabin pressure expressed my state of mind perfectly. A few hours of air and train travel would put my error safely in the past. It seemed a minor detail that half of what was over still sat beside me.

“Wild, weird, wondrous weekend,” said Bill. “Many highs. One big low, but many highs.”

He sank back, luxuriating in accomplishment, his cheeks and nose marzipan pink from his day in the sun.

Down in
the
darkness, the lights of a Florida city formed a neat grid of magnified microchips and printed circuits, as if the entire country were a computer.

“What was the low?” I asked indifferently.

“On the boat!” he said, shocked I didn’t know. “When Whitaker put us down in front of everyone. For being gay,” he whispered, though the aisle seat was empty.

“When did he do that?”

“His crack about you and me being girls.”

“All I remember is something about nobody wearing pants when one’s a bachelor.”

“You didn’t catch what he meant? He never comes right out and says it. But he knows. He’s always full of little sneers and insinuations around me.”

“You’re not being paranoid?”

“I know how his mind works. Slick little twit. Jeb kisses up to him only in case Robertson crashes and the twit takes charge. Jeb likes to keep his bases covered.”

“What’s going to happen to Pat Robertson?”

“Nothing probably. Jeb thinks he might lose credibility if his crackpot theories get more cracked. Conspiracy stuff. Banks and Freemasonry, I forget the details. Not important.”

Bill was too self-absorbed to notice many things. Driving out to the airport, I’d asked him what had been accomplished today, what seeds Weiss and Whitaker were planting with Senator Mike. Bill didn’t know or care. To him it had been a blur of guy talk broken only by praise of his book. No wonder he was a lousy journalist. And to think that on the flight down two days ago, I had toyed with the notion of being in love with this man.

Now seemed a good time to announce that we were finished, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the energy, the public privacy of an airplane was the wrong place for a scene, and I was in Bill’s physical orbit again, our faces pillow-close. We spoke softly the way we had in bed. I had to wait until I was home and could write him a cool, firm, logical letter.

“Jeb Weiss sure seems to love you,” I said.

“Oh yeah. Jeb’s believed in me from the start. You couldn’t guess how much he’s done for me. I owe my life to Jeb.”

“You never mentioned that it was his apartment you live in.”

He didn’t even blink. “No, it’s
my
apartment. I rent it from Jeb. He stays there when he’s in town, but it’s my apartment. I told you that.”

“You said you had that arrangement with someone. But not that it was Weiss.”

“Well, you didn’t know who he was until this weekend, so I guess I saw no point in mentioning it.”

“Anything else you haven’t mentioned?”

He looked at me blankly.

I wanted to know only so I could close the door on Bill with no unanswered questions. To make it easier to answer, I put the question in the past tense. “Was there ever anything personal between you?”

“Like arguments?”

“Like sex.”

“With
Jeb?”
His open mouth pinched his nostrils shut. “He’s old enough to be my father. And fat! You saw how fat he is.”

“He was never interested in you that way?”

“No! He’s straight.” He began to laugh. “Is that the only reason you can imagine someone like him being interested in me?” He treated it as a hilarious impossibility.

“Why else wouldn’t you tell me about him?”

“Because I didn’t think it was important. Was that why you looked cranky on the boat? You were jealous?”

“I don’t care what was between you and Weiss. I just like to know what’s going on.”

A more perceptive man would’ve picked up on what that implied about us, but not Bill. “Everything is sex to you. Do you ever think about anything except sex?”

“Maybe not,” I muttered. “I can be stupid with sex.”

He nudged my leg, thinking I was stupid with it now.

“So it’s a professional relationship?” I asked.

“We’re friends too. Jeb’s been like a father to me. Well, not a father but a big brother.”

“Did he help with this book?”

“He helped to get it published. He didn’t help write it, if that’s what you mean. Every word is mine.”

I was sorry to hear that—but would it have changed anything if Bill were only the front for a ghost?

“I don’t know, Bill. The whole idea of your book bothers me. Why write an entire book about their marriage?”

“That’s just part of it. You’ll see when you read it.”

I didn’t tell him that I was halfway through it for fear that my deceit would put me on the defensive.

“If you don’t like Clinton’s politics, attack his politics,” I said. “Not his marriage.”

“It’s a character issue. The personal is political.”

I was startled to hear that phrase from him. “Or just gossip,” I said. “How would you like it if someone attacked your book by attacking your personal life?”

“I’m not a public official. And there’s nothing wrong with
my
life.”

“No?”

“Nothing wrong with being gay,” he said.

“Did you mention it at your presentation?”

“Of course not. What do you expect me to say? ‘I’ll be reading from the chapter about the Clintons at home, and by the way, I’m a homosexual.’”

“How would they have responded?”

He shook his head. “You still think gay Republican is an oxymoron, don’t you, Ralph? That conservatives are narrow-minded bigots. But Jeb was perfectly nice to you on the boat today.”

“If they’re so accepting, why did you feel humiliated by Whitaker?”

“Oh that. That’s just him. Strictly personal. He uses it against me. He knows I can’t call him on it, especially when other people are present, I wasn’t humiliated. I was angry.” But the sulk had returned to his face; he curled his mouth while he thought it through. “It’s not easy being gay and conservative,” he said righteously. “I get slings and arrows from the Whitakers, and dumped on by my own community. So-called. But I refuse to sacrifice my sexual identity for the sake of my political beliefs. Or vice versa. You think I should come out, don’t you? Tell everyone I’m gay?”

No, I only wanted to confront Bill with his hypocrisy.

“Well, I can’t! If it were just me, that’d be one thing. But I have other people to consider. There’s my family for one.”

“They don’t know?”

“We don’t talk about it, but they know. They’re a different generation. It would hurt them if people knew their son was ‘that way.’ And there’s Jeb. Who’s done so much for me. We’ve talked about it.
He
brought it up. He’s said maybe I can play that card when the time’s right, but not yet. Which makes sense to me. Maybe after my book is out and I’ve made a name for myself. When conservatives hear that the author of
Regiment of Women
is gay, they’ll think, ‘Hey, homosexuals aren’t all radical crazies but can be smart and right-thinking and just like us.’ My example will make them more accepting.”

“I’m sure it’ll be greatly appreciated.” I wanted Bill to stay in his closet. We already had Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover. We didn’t need William O’Connor.

“I can’t stand it when radical types claim anyone not like them is a self-hating homosexual. Because I’m not.”

“No, Bill. I think you love yourself very, very much.”

He had talked himself into such a determined mood of self-love that all my sarcasms shot unnoticed over his head.

It was not yet nine when we landed in Baltimore and I put on the dead weight of my duffel coat again. Winter was a shock, the night dank and frigid, all light frozen from the black air as we hurried out to Jeb Weiss’s cold, smug Lexus.

Bill was to drop me at the Amtrak station downtown, where I could catch the next train to New York. “My folks are on the way,” he announced when we were on the highway. “I promised I’d say hi when I got back. Do you mind if we stop by before I take you to the station? There’s a train every hour.”

“Do you want me to wait in the car?” I said snidely.

He remained tone-deaf to my gibes. “No, I want them to meet you. But I’m only telling them you’re a friend. Okay?”

“Oh, why not?” I enjoyed the irony of learning still more about Bill before I ended us. The owl of wisdom flies only at twilight.

We descended from the interstate into a region of shopping centers and subdivisions, one of those sixties boom suburbs that grew shabby instead of solid with age, a lower-middle-class world of disappointment and too much television. I was not being snobbish. I’d grown up in an identical setting outside Raleigh.

“That used to be my father’s service station,” said Bill, pointing out a white cube on the corner that housed a video store.

“He was a mechanic?”

“No. A businessman. Just not a very good one. He bought it right after he got out of the air force. Now he’s the assistant manager of a Giant supermarket.”

“What does your mother do?”

“She’s a housewife. My parents believe the man should be the breadwinner in a real family.”

We pulled into the driveway of a cramped split-level with a short, treeless front lawn. All the curtains were drawn except for a pair open on a tasteful, uninhabited living-room suite, like the window display of a furniture store.

“This is where your hustler made his house call?”

“Who? Oh. That.” He spoke as if I’d mentioned something painful when I only intended small talk. “Yes.”

Opening the car door, he checked his hair in the rearview mirror and took a shopping bag from the backseat. I followed him up the front walk. He rang the bell as if he were company.

A pinprick of light blinked in the peephole. Locks and chains clattered inside. The door was jerked open by a small, fiftyish woman with pale brown bangs and lipstick.

“Billy! You’re back! How did it go? Did you have a good time? Come in, hon. You must be freezing.”

Then she saw me and stiffened.

“Mom, this is my friend Ralph.”

She couldn’t look at me. “You should’ve called and said you were bringing company, William Junior. I’m a sight.”

“No, Mom. You look great.”

She wore earrings as well as lipstick with her slacks and blouse, even though it was after nine on a Sunday night.

“Pleased to meet you, Mrs. O’Connor.”

She relaxed slightly when she discovered I was polite. I forgot the effect my shaved head sometimes had on strangers. “Let me take your coats. Come into the living room and I’ll fix something warm to drink. Really, hon. You should’ve called.”

“We can’t stay, Mom. I have to get Ralph to his train. I just wanted you to know I was back. And give you these.” He reached into the shopping bag for a box of chocolates.

“You shouldn’t have,” she said. “How nice.”

“Is Dad home?”

“Oh Bill?” she softly called. “Billy’s here. With a friend. Come up and say hello.”

“Billy who?” Feet thudded up a short flight of steps around the corner. Bill’s father strode into the front hall. I would’ve known it was Bill’s father anywhere. The familiar lips and nose were stranded on a heavy face with horn rims and thinning hair. His eyes were gray instead of brown, so he looked like an old, padded Bill suit worn by a stranger. He was as tall as his son, with a beefy, muscular handshake.

“Bill O’Connor,” he declared. “Big Bill.” He was fiercely buddy-buddy once I introduced myself. “Real chrome dome you got there, Ralph. Must get cold this time of year. You use car wax or floor wax up there?”

He was an Irish Catholic good ole boy. He did not sound as Southern as his wife, so it was hard to tell what was the South and what was Irish in his noise; he combined the worst of both masculinities. One of the few things my own father and I shared was a distrust of blowhards.

Mrs. O’Connor looked worried again, then shut down and let her husband take over. Big Bill seemed too busy making a loud impression to suspect anything about the man with his son.

“What’re we doing out here, woman? You should be making these boys at home.”

“We can’t stay, Dad. Just wanted you to know that I was a hit in Miami. And give you these.” Bill reached into his bag and took out a box of cigars.

“Havanas. Real ones?” Big Bill did not thank him, but skeptically read the lid. “Huh. Your thing went well, you say?”

“Very. Jeb thinks that I might even do a few talk shows when the book comes out.”

“Hear that, Helen? We might have a TV star in the family. Just don’t let it go to your head, boy. Don’t think it makes you better than the rest of us.” He swatted his sort’s shoulder.

“No fear of that, Dad.” Bill swatted him back. “I’ll still put my pants on the same way as everyone else.”

Watching their overdone father-and-son act, I almost felt sorry for Bill. I looked at Mrs. O’Connor, expecting her to share a knowing glance with me, but she stood there with her ceramic smile and a slight tremble of earrings, as timid as a sparrow. I decided her nervousness was not over me as her son’s “friend,” but as simply a stranger in her house. And this was the woman to whom Bill dedicated his book, as if she were his measure of all women?

We made our good-byes, Mr. O’Connor giving me another bear-paw handshake, Mrs. O’Connor regretting that we couldn’t stay for cocoa. A few minutes later, Bill and I were in the car again, headed for the interstate.

“So. What did you think?” he asked.

“They seemed nice enough.” What else could I say? Your father couldn’t care less about your success and your mother’s had a lobotomy? Other people’s parents are rarely as interesting as their grown children think.

“You see now why it’s so hard for me to come out?”