Something Like Winter (32 page)

“
Funny,” Tim said,
“I
don’t
do it so
others will keep loving me.” He was beginning to regret telling
Eric about his day out with his mother. Tim sat across from Eric,
tipping back in a wooden dining room chair while watching him work.
Eric wore half-moon glasses that made him look both silly and
cute.

“
They don’t love you,” Eric
said, half-distracted by writing a check.

“
Wow. Thanks.”

When Eric realized what
he’d said, he looked surprised and shoved away the checkbook. “What
I mean is that they can’t love you. Not completely, because they
don’t really know who you are. The good news is that they love the
version of you they know, and the real Tim isn’t so different from
him. He just prefers guys, that’s all.”

Tim wasn’t convinced. “If
it’s not that big a part of me, I’d rather keep it from
them.”

“
Because if you don’t, they
might not accept you.”

“
Right.”

Eric shook his head.
“That’s one of the biggest misconceptions gay people go through.
While in the closet, we want everyone to accept us, when in truth,
people are only accepting a lie. Do you like women?”

“
I’m a four on that Kinsey
scale or whatever it was, remember?”

Eric peered over his
glasses, looking very much like a stern teacher. “You know what I
mean. Are you going to marry a girl, settle down, and spawn
children like your friend Travis plans to?”

“
No. Not a
chance.”

“
But that’s what they
expect. What they’ve accepted isn’t you. Since you haven’t really
been accepted by them, you shouldn’t worry about being unaccepted.
Does that make sense?”

“
In a convoluted way, I
guess so.” Tim mulled it over. “Of course, right now I sort of have
a neutral status, which is better than being
unaccepted.”

Eric moaned dramatically.
“Now I see what poor Ben had to put up with.”

Tim grinned. “There were
benefits too.”

“
I can only
imagine.”

“
Hey,” Tim let all four
chair legs hit the floor, “do you want to see my
paintings?”

“
You brought some with
you?” Eric perked up. “Of course!”

Tim went out to his car and
returned with the six paintings that had made the cut. He showed
them to Eric, one by one, making excuses for little things he
wished were different. Eric was encouraging, saying two nice things
for every self-criticism. When show and tell was over, Eric
appeared thoughtful.

“
What strikes me most,”
Eric said, “is how each painting is in a different style. I
wouldn’t have thought they were from the same artist if I didn’t
know better.”

“
Yeah, well, most of them
were painted at totally different times of my life. I experimented
a lot, I guess because I was always looking for my own style. I
just never found it.”

Eric tapped a pen on his
lower lip while he thought. “It’s not too late.”

“
To start painting again? I
don’t know.” But Tim did. Even tearing apart his favorite work with
criticism made him want to try again.

“
I’ll hire you to paint
me,” Eric said with a bashful smile. “You can’t be filthy rich
without an arrogant portrait hanging on the wall. Marcello has
three.”

“
I’m not surprised.” Tim
looked at Eric anew, hunched over the long dining room table,
overwhelmed by a mess of envelopes, stamps, and checks—looking
small in the face of it all. The secret burden of being rich. It
would make a great painting. “I’d have to get back into shape,
practice before I even try.”

“
Do that,” Eric said. “I’ve
always wanted to play patron to a real artist.”

Tim sat across the table
from him with the one other thing he brought with him from home—his
old sketch book. It was only half full, since he didn’t really
enjoy sketching, but it made a good starting point. He scratched
out some rough ideas, enjoying working quietly alongside Eric. That
is, until he heard a gasp.

“
What is it?”

Eric was holding up a
magazine, the free kind made from the same cheap stock as
newspapers. Mouth open in surprise, Eric turned it around so Tim
could see the cover. He noticed first the title, set in rainbow
letters:
Gay Austin!
Then Tim noticed the image below. There, for all the world to
see, was a photo of himself, naked except for a pair of designer
briefs. What he
was
wearing, was an annoyed expression caused by the hot surfer
dude sticking a tongue in his ear.

* * * * *

Tim gripped the wheel with
one hand, scrolling through the contacts on his phone with the
other. Where was the bastard? Aha! Highlighting Marcello’s name,
Tim pushed the button to call him and scowled against the morning
light. His head hurt from the six-pack he had downed last night
after Eric’s discovery. Tim had been a whiny nuisance and Eric had
been a saint, listening to a list of worries so old that even Tim
had grown tired of them.

“
Good morning, Mr. Wyman!”
Marcello sang in his ear.

“
Fuck you!” Tim
responded.

“
I’d be honored to let you,
if I weren’t such a domineering top.” Marcello chuckled at his own
joke, before asking, “What’s wrong?”

“
The cover of
Gay Austin!
”

“
Ah, I just saw that
myself. I wish the print quality of those magazines was better.
They don’t do the photo justice.”

“
You didn’t know about it
ahead of time?” Tim asked, his anger taking a smoke
break.

“
I only deal in sales for
the big clients. The little ones buy from our catalog.”

“
Well, someone could have
warned me about that before my face was plastered on the cover of a
gay magazine!”

Marcello scoffed. “I
thought you would be thrilled.”

“
I’m in the closet, you
asshole!”

“
Oh!” The line crackled
quietly before Marcello spoke again. “What’s the point?”

“
Of what?”

“
Of being in the
closet.”

Tim snarled, hung up the
phone, and tossed it to the passenger seat. What a dick!
Gay Austin!
was the sort
of magazine given away for free in bookstores, along with other
independent publications and real estate guides. Surely it was only
a matter of time before someone recognized him.

He pulled up to the frat
house, expecting his brothers to spill out the front door, howling
with laughter. But when he got inside, everything was normal. The
few guys who were awake were just as hung-over as he was, so no one
paid him much attention.

Two days later, and still
nothing had happened. Maybe he had overreacted. Tim hung around the
frat house more than usual, waiting for the bomb to drop, but
eventually let down his guard. He shouldn’t have. Returning to his
room one night, he found a copy of the magazine on his
bed.

“
What’s this?” he said to
Rick, but his roommate just stared at Tim with wide eyes, like he
was going to be assaulted by a syringe full of gay at any second.
“Did you put this here?”

When Rick didn’t answer,
Tim tossed the magazine at him and went downstairs to the common
room. The atmosphere got a whole lot thicker when he entered. Three
brothers were lined up on the couch, each holding an open copy in
front of their faces, snorting and snickering behind them. Tim
noticed a couple more copies scattered around the room.

“
Tim.”

He spun around. Quentin
stood in the doorway. He was smiling, but his lips were
tight.

“
What’s up?” Tim said like
nothing was wrong.

Quentin shook his head. No
dice. He wasn’t getting off easy this time. “You want to explain
yourself?”

“
I needed some money and
did some modeling.” Tim shrugged. “So what?”

“
So
what?
” Quentin walked over and grabbed a
copy from one of the guys on the couch. He looked at the front
again, as if he couldn’t believe it. “It looks to me like you’re
doing more than just modeling.”

“
The other guy was
straight,” Tim said. “It was just a job.”

“
Oh, okay,” Quentin said
sarcastically. “The
other
guy was straight. That’s good to know, Tim,
because we’re real concerned about him.”

Quentin crossed his arms
over his chest. A couple more brothers had entered the room,
attracted by the raised voices. They weren’t looking too
friendly.

“
Is there something you
want tell us?” Quentin pressed.

Travis walked in the room.
The second he saw Tim, he turned and walked back out. Fuck him.
Fuck everyone! Tim wasn’t going to stand there and beg for them to
believe him. They never would anyway, not completely. “I’ve got
nothing to be ashamed of,” he said.

The room grumbled like
thunder before a storm, the tension desperate to break.

“
Fag.”

And there it was, the first
flash of lightning, the first drop of rain. Tim wondered if this
was the room Eric had stood in years ago, facing accusations that
shouldn’t have mattered. Instead of feeling fear, Tim felt oddly
proud to be following in his footsteps. Eric was a good man, better
than anyone here, and Tim wasn’t about to act like a coward when
Eric had once bravely endured such hate.

“
Am I a fag?” Tim glared in
the direction the slur had come from. “Because last time I checked,
I was your brother.”

“
You can’t be both.”
Quentin said.

That made it final. The
others would follow his lead, no matter how they felt.

“
Thanks, Big. Way to take
care of your Little.” Tim made his way to the common room door,
turning around to face them one last time. “I’m not the only one,
you know. Not by a long shot.” Tim made eye contact with a lot of
them—not the ones he knew about or suspected, but those who were
probably straight. With any luck they’d start a witch hunt and end
up burning themselves.

Tim went upstairs to his
room—Rick fleeing for safety—and grabbed his suitcase from the
closet. He didn’t have much to pack except for his clothes. He
spent more time at Eric’s these days than he did here. Hopefully
Eric wouldn’t mind him staying over a few nights until he found a
place of his own. On the way out of the room, Tim spotted the
magazine on the floor and picked it up.

“
Call me whatever you
want,” he said to himself. “I look damn good.”

He rolled up the magazine
and stuck it in his back pocket. Then he left the frat house with
his head held high. He heard laughs and jeers, but somehow they
weren’t as upsetting as he’d always imagined. By the time he got in
his car, he felt prouder than he had in years.

When he rang Eric’s
doorbell, suitcase in hand, Tim put on his best puppy-dog eyes.
“Will paint for food,” he said when Eric opened the door. “And a
roof over my head.”

Eric smiled and opened his
arms wide, welcoming Tim home.

Chapter Twenty

People change. Catching
them in the act, that’s the trick. No one has seen a wrinkle
etching itself into skin, or witnessed the moment a hair turns
gray. Stomachs become flabby and muscles begin to jiggle, the
transformation not hidden and yet undetectable. None of this
happens overnight, but age often comes as a surprise. Usually an
old photo is to blame, indisputable evidence that skin had once
been tighter or eyes brighter. Other times aging is revealed in a
chance reflection, a moment of confusion over this older person who
looks strikingly familiar.

For Tim, the process of
aging was presented to him like a play, one he repeatedly dozed off
through. He would wake from the distraction of everyday life and
see Eric with fresh eyes, realizing how much he had aged in the
last year. Or even the last six months. Eric insisted the chemo was
to blame.

Winter had been hell for
them both. Tim finally talked Eric into trying chemotherapy, even
sitting with him while the drugs were pumped into his veins. Then
came weeks of illness, with Tim taking care of Eric as best he
could during his recovery. At the end of the month, when Eric was
back to being his old self, he returned to the hospital for another
round of chemo, and the cycle would repeat.

Convincing Eric to return
for each subsequent treatment hadn’t been easy, but they made it
through together. Having recovered from the final round of
treatment, Eric seemed like his old self again. Except in
appearance. Chemotherapy hadn’t stolen his hair, but his face was
more gaunt and his frame thinner, as if a black hole was eating him
up from the inside.

“
Stop doing that,” Eric
said, lowering the book he was reading.

“
What?” Tim said innocently
from the opposite end of the couch where he was curled
up.

“
Looking at me that way.
You promised you never would.”