Halfway Home (32 page)

"Nurse," I heard him call, exasperated, and then the elevator doors opened. I practically lunged inside, so determined was I not to say good-bye to Ed. Of course I was racked with cowardly guilt as we descended. For there went my chance to say the
real
good-bye, however couched it would have been in the code of denial.
Keep fighting, Ed.

You look terrific.

Fourteen dollars in parking fees, and we were on our way. Driving back down Sunset in the lemon morning light, a day in jail behind me, I let the whole experience go with dazzling single-mindedness. Nothing more to be said about it. Yes, it had been our introduction to dying: Hell 101. All the more reason to hurry home, my fingers drumming impatiently on the dashboard as we sailed down the last long curve to the Coast Highway.

"So," I said deliberately, "any update on how it went yesterday with Kathleen?"

My brother's family came flooding back into my head at the first piercing glimpse of ocean, Catalina riding crystal clear across the bay. I only realized now, as we nosed through traffic at the intersection, heading north on 1, how profoundly I had put them all on hold. Part of the AIDS triage, where we got through the minefield of Brentwood Pres by shrinking the world to Gray and me alone. The rest of life had to fend for itself. Perhaps there was also an instinct that protected a man from too much missing. But now the image of my nephew rose again like a lump in my throat, and I was mad with impatience to be there again.

"According to Mona," chuckled Gray, "she had the three of them playing role games for hours. I gather Daniel let them have it between the eyes." Good boy. "He asked if he could stay with you."

The stab of feeling was so intense, I thought I would pass out. Eyes brimming, I stared past Gray at the ultramarine of the water. Not a chance in a million, of course, which Daniel knew as well as anybody. He'd faced the parameters of my condition better than his parents had, unafraid even to use the "D" word. He knew where this was all going.

And when I walked him up to bed two nights ago, after he'd cried his heart out, I tucked him into the covers and crouched by the bed. He said: "Can I be your brother?"

"Isn't nephew enough?"

He shrugged. "It's okay. But I always wanted a big brother."

"Well, you got one now." I leaned over and kissed his forehead, I who'd been so afraid to sit too close and touch his knee in front of
David.

Now all I wanted was a little time, one last walk with him on the beach at sunset, so as to sink the memory of me deeper. Fifty years from now, when Gray was gone and Brian—all of us—Daniel would be the only thing left of me. Believing nothing else, I found myself longing for that small immortality.

"We could go and visit them," said Gray, without preamble. I looked across at him, one hand on the steering wheel, squinting like Gary Cooper. I knew he meant Daniel and Susan, once they'd settled in Minnesota. Were we so close now we could hear each other think? Better and better.

"No, I don't think so," I replied, with something akin to my brother's feeling that Daniel would have to grapple himself a new life, unencumbered by the past. Or was it that I couldn't face the image of myself, six months down the line? By then I might look like Ed Bernardo, and Daniel would have to freeze a smile, swallowing his shock. No, he should leave tomorrow without looking back, his memory of me whole.

I reached a hand across and rested it on Gray's thigh, recalling with delicious pleasure the night I'd stretched out on the seat not knowing I was being courted. Gray covered my hand with his, lightly. As we straggled through Malibu proper, stop and go, the Mediterranean weather seemed to have brought out every surfer and bunny, shaggy and streaked with platinum. Achingly young, the Aryan beach bohos ducked in and out of waterfront shops, looking like none of them ever worked. Relentlessly straight, not an obvious queer among them, these starlets and Pepperdine frat boys.

In certain moods, of course, I'd have gladly lined them all up against a wall for the firing squad. Crime: AIDS indifference. Today, somehow, my release from the castle of pain had left me giddy with generosity. I loved us being the secret fags of Malibu, hand in hand as we inched our way through the stoplight at the pier, wishing them well in their deathless town on the water. Excepting time, they couldn't have more than we did.

Even with Sunday traffic and a pit stop for groceries, it was hardly midmorning when we reached Trancas. Still a whole day, I told myself as we rose up the hill to the beach house turnoff. As Gray waited for a break in the flow, blinker on, I gazed down the oleander alley of the drive, almost hallucinating the sweetness of the day ahead—a kind of wall-to-wall picnic, summer in March. Then we were rocketing down the drive, gravel spraying like shrapnel. Gray lurched the pickup to a stop beside the garage. I looked at the window I'd rubbed the grime from, the other day in the rain.

"Hey—who are
you?"

I turned to see a man striding across the lawn toward us. Gray froze, halfway out of the truck. I saw the ridiculous clothes before I saw his face: Gucci head to toe. Green-and-red-striped sweater, black linen pants, white loafers. Looked like a music executive. Worse: looked like an agent. "Nobody works here today," he said, one hand shooing the truck. "Come back tomorrow." He seemed to think we were gardeners and didn't know English.

In tones as old as the Magna Charta, Gray announced, "This is my house."

Gucci blinked. He was maybe a couple of years younger than Gray, but it was hard to tell, because he'd had an eye tuck and some nose work. A regular queen, except he was straight. "You— you're—"

"Gray Baldwin," replied the Magna Charta. "And I'm talking to..."

"Nigrelli. Billy Nigrelli." He put out a hand to pump, and Gray noblesse-obliged. "I'm Brian's attorney." The deal maker. He flicked his eyes to me in the truck, and I knew right away he'd been told the whole story. "I'm awful sorry. We got the feds coming, we're kinda jumpy. How you feelin'?" This last directly to me.

"Fine, thanks," I replied with a thin smile. "Where's my brother?"

Billy Nigrelli shrugged toward the house. "He's gettin' them ready for the airport."

My mouth went dry as sand, but Gray said, "Getting
who
ready?"

"The wife and kid. We gotta leave in half an hour." He pointed at his wrist, bulging with a Rolex.

"No," I croaked, recovering my voice. "Tomorrow." But it sounded more like pleading than statement of fact.

"Hey, I don't make the schedule," retorted Nigrelli, defensive now. "The FBI moved everything up. They run the show." He shrugged again, a wheedling look on his face, no doubt just the sort he gave his clients when the verdict came back guilty. Don't look at me, Jack.

I whipped my door open and tumbled out. As I trotted across the grass I heard Gray's plaintive call behind me: "Tom, your head!" I ignored him, leaping the back stoop and banging the screen door wide. The duffel bag and a paper sack were propped by the stove, ready to go. I bolted into the dining room and started up the stairs, stumbling against the banister as a blinding flash exploded behind my eyes, pulling me short.

Easy, easy. I hunched over and gripped my skull, trying to give the pain room. Half a minute I stood there gasping till the thudding began to abate. Gingerly I mounted, one step at a time and gripping the rail. When I reached the upstairs landing I was fine, no traces of the aftershock except a film of icy sweat on my upper lip. I swiped it with my sleeve, threw back my shoulders, and made for the arched doorway. I was the grown-up here—no time to be sullen. Make him leave happy.

I came up the four steps into the peak of morning, smiling and casual. Because I'd heard no voices, I was startled to see my brother slouching against the window frame, staring out to sea. Daniel sat cross-legged on the bed, a little blue backpack beside him. Idly he plucked at the tufted bedspread, then looked up, his face bursting with sudden joy to see me.

"Told you he'd make it," he cheered, scrambling off the bed and running to hug me.

Brian turned. The sorrow in his sleepless eyes didn't change, even though he smiled. "Tommy," he said, then lowered his eyes to the boy, who clung about my waist. Brian's wistful smile seemed to underscore his pleasure that Daniel loved me so unreservedly, but also a bottomless melancholy. Almost as if he feared an embrace so raw with passion, stirring up all the agony of good-bye. The wish was plain in his face—
no more feelings
—a longing for Susan and Daniel to disappear while his back was turned. "What did the doctor say?" he asked, practically a whisper.

"I'm fine," I replied firmly, disengaging myself from the circle of Daniel's arms, but letting one hand rest on his shoulder. "Brain's clear. I'm just as demented as ever."

Brian's eyes narrowed. I could almost hear him making his own diagnosis. He forced his baseball grin. "Great," he said heartily. "Look, why don't you guys visit. I'll go check if she's almost ready."

He strode out past us, down the tower steps. Now he would try to avoid saying good-bye to his wife, face-to-face, just as he had with his son. I moved past Daniel and sat on the end of the bed, putting us on the same level. "How you doing, pal?"

He cast his eyes down. "I don't want to go."

"Yeah, it sucks."

For a second I thought he was going to cry, but he crinkled his lips and looked out at the water, gazing with his father's eyes. The milky skin of his face was near translucent, the best of the Irish. "Minneapolis," he said sardonically. "Yuck."

"You'll be okay. Just squawk if you need something. Don't hold stuff in." I was dazed by a sense of acceleration, no time to lob these pearls of wisdom or let them sink in. Then it struck me, jagged as the smithereens of sun on the morning sea, that all time was stolen. It never got easier to say it now. "Remember, everyone up there's going to be doing backflips, trying to help you and your mom. Let 'em spoil you a little, okay?" He nodded, but maybe just being polite. "If you want someone to bounce things off, someone outside like Sister Kathleen—"

He turned and gave me a hawk's eye. "She's a psychiatrist, right?"

"Sort of," I conceded. "But it doesn't mean you're crazy if you go talk to somebody smart. It'll
keep
you from going crazy."

He nodded again, judiciously. "What was the hospital like?"

"The pits. Look, I'll miss you a lot, but I'm really glad we met. It's the best thing that's happened since..." I couldn't think how far back. Before AIDS or a million years ago, whichever came first.

His eyebrows, faint as down, scrunched together skeptically. "What about Gray?"

"Okay. The
two
best things."

He squirmed onto the bed behind me, grabbing at his backpack. "I got you a present." He struggled to undo the rawhide knot, then plunged in his hand and pulled out a puff of tissue paper done up with red twine. "Mom wrapped it," he said, handing it over, about the size of a wallet. "She gave me the money. It's all they had at the gas station."

I tugged the bow and pulled off the twine, trying to think what I was giving him. Carefully I picked at the tape, not tearing the tissue paper. "It's not fragile," observed my companion, a trifle impatient. So I ripped my way in. A tongue of fiberglass fell out in my hand, about five inches long and Day-Glo green. "It's a surfboard."

"Very hot."

"And a keychain, see?" He jiggled the metal ring that looped through one end of the miniboard. "I know you don't have a car, but..." His voice faltered with uncertainty. "I would've got you something else..."

"But why? This is perfect. We'll put the keys to the truck on it." He flushed with pleasure to see me laugh, though what I was thinking was how eccentric Gray would look, sporting his keys on this clumsy neon banana. "Besides," I added with mock gravity, "this is my first board. And that's the most important one. Why?"

He grinned, delirious that I remembered. "'Cause that's where you learn your moves."

"Right!" And I grabbed him close in a sort of wrestling embrace, as he laughed with abandon. For a second I seemed to hold hope in my arms, like a physical thing of pure energy. Then I sprang up, tumbling him onto the bed. "Come on, I've got something for you!"

It was a race, against time if nothing else. I barreled down the tower steps into the stair hall, Daniel right behind. A tiny cautionary voice inside me tried to pipe in with "Tom, your head," but I was on overdrive now. Daniel roared past me, rounding the turn of the stairwell. As I dived after him into Foo's room, he was already bouncing up and down on my bed like a trampoline. Yes, yes—shake this house with life.

I went right to the top drawer of the dresser. I pulled it open and reached in among my underwear for the gold-tooled box from Teddy Burr. "That picture you lost in the fire," I said, rooting through buttons and coins and rhinestones. "Me and your dad. Was it like this?" And I plucked out the rumpled snapshot, smoothing the creases and thrusting it toward him. He settled himself cross-legged and peered at it closely. I held my breath, not sure why it mattered so.

"Yeah," he said carefully, "almost." Studying even closer, cool as a scholar. "In mine you could see you better." So I was right, there had been a picture of me and Brian side by side, before I turned away in a half blur. Daniel looked up. "You mean I can have it?" he asked, nearly in awe.

"Sure."

His face blazed with delight as he bent to examine his treasure again. I felt triumphant, as if I'd restored some corner of the world that disappeared in the conflagration, a piece of the jigsaw. "I was eight," I said softly, looking down at the box of shards in my hands. Nothing worth anything—rusty tie clip, Monopoly token, a pin that said
I DON'T DO MORNINGS
. A sort of time capsule by default, the accidental savings of a man with no goods to leave. On a sudden impulse I plucked out the brass cockring, slipping it in my pocket, and held out the box. "Why don't you keep it in here?"

He took it from me and looked inside. Fascinated, he poked a finger into my UConn class ring and twirled it thoughtfully around his knuckle, so the garnet caught the light. "This is like all your stuff," he said, seeming to understand intuitively that indeed he had all of it there, whatever I'd managed to save. He looked up at me with a troubled frown, struggling to get this right. "Don't you want to give it to Gray?"