Halfway Home (20 page)

Mona was a study in silent desperation. Daphne led the way out, already putting together a paper in her head on her latest triumph. Mona leaned up to hug me and whispered in my ear, "What if
you
get in trouble?"

I squeezed her. "Trouble's my middle name, baby."

She had no choice but to keep the secret and go. I flipped on the light above the back stoop as she moved to join Daphne, walking across the lawn. I felt an unexpected twinge of jealousy, despite the whacked-out nature of the bond between them. Tall and short, oil and water, they obviously gave each other something besides broken clocks and ulcers. I'd always cheered their myriad breakups, never having liked how meek Mona was around Daphne, deferring to her self-proclaimed genius. But seeing them together now, as they stepped around a squish of mud, dainty as little girls, they were doing a whole lot better than Gray and I. And they had more time besides, to work out the kinks. Oceans of time.

I was blue when I came back in, and bluer still when I opened the fridge, to find that Gray had thoughtfully laid in dinner for us. A roast and potatoes and artichokes. I started to peel the potatoes, deciding I would apologize for everything. I didn't want to be right anymore, I wanted to be in love. And oh, how I wanted this ache of a kiss gone wrong to go away.

Then Daniel stuck his head in, to see if the coast was clear. "Good job, Ace," I said, Ace being Brian's moniker on the ballfield.

"Was that your girlfriend?"

I didn't even know which one he meant. Maybe he didn't either. "No, not exactly," I said, wondering why the qualifier. Did I want to seem a
little
butch? "Mona's my business partner," I said, which must have satisfied him, for he rooted into the fridge again and retrieved his apple, no more questions.

I liked him being there, perched on the stool, neither of us speaking as he watched me trim the spuds. And when I was done and had them boiling, I rubbed the roast with garlic and mustard. As I put it in to sear, I turned to him and said in the most conspiratorial voice, "You think you can convince your mom to come down and have supper with us?"

He made a circle of his forefinger and thumb, giving me the high sign. "Piece o' cake," he drawled.

I didn't go in with any expectations. When Daniel came down later and told me yes, she'd join us, I took it in stride. Neither an excess of sentimentality nor any hope of resolution. I was going for the ordinary, plain as the mismatched forks and napkins. My only point of comparison, after all, were the dinners from hell on West Hill Road, the old man stinking of Seagram's, my mother fishing pathetically for compliments on the prison swill she fed us, Spam hash and tuna surprise.

At around seven I called Daniel from his puzzle and sent him up to fetch the grown-ups. I was just bearing in the platter of meat and potatoes when they came straggling down the stairs, still slightly dazed, like a family of deer after a forest fire. Susan had managed to pull together a skirt and sweater, heather to match her eyes, and her hair was bright and sleek again. Apparently she'd decided to make the best of it, commenting cheerfully on my table, offering to light the candles. I wasn't under any delusion that she'd shifted her ground about me, but for the family's sake she must have felt they needed to show a united front.

She sat across from Brian, Daniel across from me. Immediately my brother mumbled that we would say grace, and we joined hands around the table. "Father, we thank you," Brian intoned, blah-blah the gifts of the earth. I stared stonily forward at their three bowed heads. Holding hands was a nice refinement on the bleak dinner prayers of West Hill Road, my mother clutched like a rosary. "And, Father, bless us for being together again with Tom." He squeezed my hand as the three of them said "Amen."

Quickly I sent the platter around, jabbering across at Daniel, who'd never eaten an artichoke. I enjoyed rattling off my little lecture on the dismantling of the spiny succulent—feeling pretty avuncular, actually. Daniel listened soberly, dunking a leaf in the drawn butter, chewing off the edible part, his face intent as a fawn in clover. He loved the part about throwing the spent leaves into a common bowl in the center of the table. Brian and Susan were eating quietly, an occasional murmur of praise for the chef. I had the easy feeling that we would keep the flow of talk to simple matters of feeding.

Then Daniel looked over at me and said, "Who's Teddy?"

I stammered. "Oh, just a guy I used to know. We were roommates for a while. He—"
Died,
I was going to say, then amended that. "He was sort of an actor too."

I felt cornered and embarrassed. How could they not see in my blushing face the raw and crazy passion I'd had for Teddy Burr, the first man I loved in Hollywood who wouldn't love me back? Then an eruption of impotent fury at myself, acting as if there was something to be ashamed of. I clamped my teeth on an artichoke leaf, trying to think how to reverse this reflex of self-censorship. Swearing to parade myself instead, at the very next opportunity.

But Daniel was way ahead of me in the openness department. Following my lead he cleared away the cactus hair, baring the artichoke's heart. Then he turned to his father and spoke with studied nonchalance. "So, Dad," he said, "what have you guys decided? Where we going?"

Brian and Susan exchanged a look across the table, in which they zapped each other with guilt right between the eyes. "We haven't decided yet, pal," replied my brother. "Don't worry, you'll be the first to know."

"'Cause I have this book report I gotta give," persisted Daniel. "The day we get back from vacation. And I'm supposed to go first."

"What book is that, honey?" asked his mother, stalling now herself.

"Treasure Island
," I piped in, and she gave me a look of unutterable disdain—as if it were any business of mine.

"Sorry, pal," said my brother, trying to be soft, the repetition sounding hollow and cheap. "You're not going back to that school. It'll be someplace else, here or... someplace." His voice seemed to deflate as it came to the blank wall of his future.

"But, Dad," insisted the boy, struggling not to whine, "there's only two months left. What if I get held back?"

My brother's hand slammed the table, and my stomach went tilt with an old fear, that he was about to hit
me.
"That'll be enough, soldier," barked Brian. "You're not the only one in this family who's got some adjustments to make. So you just wait for your marching orders, okay?"

Daniel seemed to shrink to half his size, as if he'd been struck by a witch's curse. His mouth set in an inverted U, he took a bite of potato to keep from crying, then swallowed it like a lump of pain. Aside from my useless empathy, I was riveted by the field of force here, riddled as it was with bloody crossfire. I swiveled my head instinctively to Susan, whose turn it seemed to be.
Ah, family values,
I thought in my bitterest core, the mile-deep gold mine of West Hill Road.

"Think about
my
students, Daniel," she said, with a teacherly twinge of singsong. "One can't hear, and two have Down's. No one in my class can read like you. Think how much they'll miss me."

Even as she was unconscious of the smarm and condescension in her tone, she seemed to be making no other point than to toot her own horn. And to stick it to my brother for spiriting her away from her good works. Until this moment, I'd forgotten she was in special ed. I tried to like her better for taking care of those whom fate had fucked. I failed.

When I smiled across at Daniel I tried not to seem too much his ally, not wanting for his sake to turn this into us against them, because he had to live with it, better or worse. But I swear I could see in his eyes, in the vastness of what he left unsaid or had no words for yet, I saw the cool resolve of a kid who'd already started to pack the bags of his feelings. It didn't mean he'd run away in five or even ten years. He'd be smart enough to stick it out and let them pay for his education. But emotionally he was out of there. Long gone, just like me.

We fed in silence after that. We couldn't really talk about the future, because for them there wasn't any yet, and as for me, forget it. They all seemed to be feeling hopelessly misunderstood by each other, bruised into silence. In the days of our old family, even before I could talk, I gave up the idea of being understood. Perhaps these three just had nothing else to say, with their house and former lives in smithereens. I wondered if an outsider, wandering in right now, would even know they were a family. Because if it was Mona and Gray and Foo and me, anyone would know.

When Daniel asked to be excused, Susan made him stand in front of her while she wiped his mouth with a napkin. This seemed to me a pointless gesture of humiliation, but Daniel appeared indifferent. Told he could watch a half hour of TV, he scurried into the parlor. I said I'd take care of the dishes, but here my sister-in-law's suburban pride asserted itself. So we all three bore the wreckage of the feast into the kitchen, and as my brother filled the sink and rolled his sleeves, Susan took care of the leftovers. Her scullery instincts were excellent, for she went right to the drawer that held the food wraps. She slicked a sheet of Saran over the rest of the beef roast, then opened the fridge to stow it. And balked slightly.

"Oh, sorry," I said, laughing as I hurried to her side. The whole top shelf was cheek by jowl with medicine, leaving no room for the platter. "My lady pharmacist always gives me six months' supply of everything," I declared, shifting and stacking containers of pills. "She's a delirious optimist. Plus Mona brings me these Chinese herbs marinated in rice vinegar. Which tastes like sheep's piss."

There, I'd cleared nearly half the shelf. But when I stepped aside so Susan could shove the platter in, she was standing immovable, a blanched look on her face. Her bewildered eyes raked me up and down, then settled at last on the purple spot on my cheek. My God, he still hadn't told her. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my brother stop washing at the sink, staring in our direction. Then Susan tore her gaze from my lesion and gaped at the platter in her hands. All she could think of, I knew, was that I had cooked it. For a second I thought she was going to fling the platter across the room, or into my face.

But she leaned over and set it down carefully on the counter before she turned on her husband. Suddenly she was quivering, and the ice in her voice was as deep as the polar shelf. "How could you bring us here?"

"Susan, we can't catch it—"

She almost yelled. "How do you know that he hasn't touched our son?"

Brian winced and wouldn't look at me. "Honey, don't be crazy," he practically pleaded. "We're all on overload right now. But we have to—"

"You can't do this to me!"

It was a scream out of
Medea.
And now she was on him, pummeling his chest with her fists. Brian, his arms still wet from the dishwater, was trying to wrap them around her, as if he could turn it into a mad embrace. Susan hadn't stopped yelling, but the words didn't make any sense anymore. "Sickness," she shrilled a few times, flailing to slap his face. It was more like a fit than a fight. I glided along the counter and swung the kitchen door shut, my only concern to somehow protect Daniel, hoping the TV was turned up loud.

Brian attempted to grab her wrists, but she smashed through and clawed his cheek, drawing blood. He roared, a final trumpet of warning, and then I heard her shriek: "You're the same as him!"

I knew the look on Brian's face from a long time back—cruel, remorseless, dancing on the edge of the void. With one hand he yanked her hair, snapping her head like whiplash. Then he clouted her hard, cheekbone and temple, sprawling her to the floor at his feet. Still he held her by the hair, both of them panting grotesquely.

Drips of blood began to spatter the floor, I guessed from Susan's mouth. The two of them seemed to catch sight of it at the same time, and the shock of the red broke the spell. He let go of her hair. She came up off her knees, hand to her mouth. Quickly Brian tore off a length of paper towels, ran it under the faucet and held out the sopping wad. Susan took it and turned away, holding it to her mouth as she made for the door I'd closed. Her eyes grazed mine as she left, the madness gone but the hate pure.

Brian leaned heavily on the sink, propping himself on his hands, head sunk in his shoulders. From Susan's first moment of horror, all through the battle, it was as if I wasn't there at all. She'd accused me of molesting Daniel, probably thought I had spit in her food—her revulsion completely unfettered. Yet I felt no wounds of any sort. I just kept thinking: How could she be so
stupid
not to figure out I was sick? Really, what was the point of all that rabid homophobia, if not to feed the paranoia around AIDS?

And in the same breath I felt extraordinarily detached, near invisible. None of this was about me. Not a single blow.

"I better go put Daniel to bed," Brian declared stiffly, moving to go.

I said nothing. I wasn't there.

And once I was sure they had all gone upstairs, I went into the parlor and built a fire. Curled in my corner of the sofa, toasty under the afghan, I thought about Gray and how I would apologize tomorrow. The relationship we were struggling to begin didn't seem half so crazy now, compared to the competition. And I saw clearer than ever how the abuse had come down like a wayward gene from my father to Brian. It wasn't just an adolescent's meanness, mauling his baby brother. He had this well of violence in him, and so did his wife, and they danced a constant tango of taunt and explosion. Coldly I wondered which of them hit the kid.

In the middle of all that, Brian came downstairs. He didn't speak at first, moving right to the fireplace and leaning against the mantel, staring in. After a minute he sighed. "She's cracking from the strain, Tommy. She doesn't know what she's saying."

"Uh-huh," I replied, mostly to be polite.

"She doesn't want to be rational. She wants her life back."

"Yeah, me too."But without sarcasm. I was amazed, in fact, how sympathetic I felt just then. I didn't like her at all, but I understood.