The Boy I Love (15 page)

Now Dad dusted off his old parenting skills. “I'm trying to remember when we said you could ride in cars with guys,” he said.

“You never bothered saying I could or couldn't, but since I've been doing it for about three months, I'd say that ship has sailed.”

Dad sighed. “Wren,” he said, “I don't know when you got all grown up.”

By now I could see Mrs. Greenlaw's shiny, clean car, getting all dirty from the dust in our driveway. I gave Daisy a scratch on her head and stood up. Dad looked tired, and I knew Thanksgiving had been even worse for him than it had been for me. It used to be that he and Mom got along just fine. The only thing they'd ever fought about was money, and now since the only thing anyone ever talked about was money, all they ever did was fight.

“Don't worry, Dad,” I said, taking pity on him. “I'm not all grown up just yet.”

He smiled and ruffled my hair. “Glad to hear it, Wrenny. Very glad indeed.”

Tim got out of the car and came over to shake Dad's hand and talk to him a minute about what a safe driver he was, then we got into the car and drove away. Halfway down the
road we switched so I could practice driving, even though technically Tim hadn't had his license long enough to count as a supervising driver. It made me feel kind of reckless and powerful, this little bit of lawbreaking.

*   *   *

On the way into Williamsport we passed the turnoff to Knockton Farms. I asked Tim if he'd mind stopping here a minute. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, so the place looked pretty deserted. I pulled in front of the barn and we walked on in. I checked out the horses in the stalls, but didn't find Brutus. It looked like a pretty nice place, though, smelling of clean straw and the same castile soap my mom and I used to clean tack.

“Can I help you two kids?” A lady in a T-shirt and chaps came into the barn, leading a saddled quarter horse. I felt my face go hot, like I'd been caught somewhere I shouldn't be. Tim noticed and spoke up for me.

“My friend here used to own a horse that you bought recently,” he said. “She just wanted to visit him.”

“Oh,” said the lady. “You must be the Piner girl. Well, Brutus is doing just great.”

“You didn't change his name?” I felt relief at this, along with her niceness.

“No, ma'am, I didn't. Brutus is out in that pasture by the silo.” She jutted her chin in the direction. “You come on by and visit with him anytime you like.”

“All right,” I said. “Thank you. Does he mind it much, being ridden for lessons?”

“He seems to like it just fine,” she said, in that same nice and understanding voice. I smiled at her, remembering how gentle Brutus had always been with my friends.

“Thank you,” I said.

At the pasture, Tim and I climbed up on the wooden fence. I made a clucking noise and called out, “Brutus.”

The thing about horses, they're fairly low-key as far as expressing affection. For example, if for some terrible reason we ever had to give Daisy away, and then I came to visit her, you can bet she would have knocked me over and smothered me with kisses. A horse won't do that. But what Brutus did was touching in its own way. He lifted his head like the sound of my voice had startled him. Then he let out a little rumbling snort and trotted over with his ears pointed toward me. When he got there, he arched his head over the gate and started chewing on my left pocket, where I generally kept sugar cubes.

“He missed you,” Tim said.

“I missed him, too.” These days, because of my hurt hand, I kept my sugar cubes in my right pocket. I reached in, pulled a couple out, and fed them to Brutus, glad that I could come see him whenever I wanted.

*   *   *

In town Tim and I ate lunch at a little Southern restaurant that Allie's parents used to take me to, so I guess I shouldn't
have been surprised to see her mom there. Mrs. Hackett was eating a salad with a couple of her friends—probably other professors—and when she noticed me it reminded me of the way Brutus had acted. She did a little double take and then stood up and came zooming over to our table. But once she got there, she didn't hug or kiss me or anything; she just kind of reached out and touched my arm.

“Wren,” she said. “I haven't seen much of you lately.”

It was true. Especially compared to how it used to be. Last year at this time Allie still lived in Leeville, and we spent our lives at each other's houses. We saw each other as much as . . . well, as much as I saw Tim now.

I introduced her to Tim, and he stood up to shake her hand. Mrs. Hackett shuffled a little, like she wanted to say something but wasn't sure if she could say it in front of Tim. I could see her thinking, and working out how to put her words together. Finally she just said, “We miss you over at our house, Wren. I know Allie misses you too. I hope you'll come and see us soon.”

“Yes, ma'am,” I said.

Tim and I sat quiet a minute as she walked back to her table. Then Tim said, “I know she likes me, you know.”

“Who?” I said, my cheeks instantly turning red. For a weird moment, even though he'd said “she,” I thought he meant me.

“Allie.” Across the room I thought I saw Mrs. Hackett
move her head a little, like she had this instinct for knowing when someone was talking about her daughter.

“You do?” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I knew from the first day.”

“Well,” I said. “It's flattering, anyway.” Tim shrugged in this way that admitted pretty much every girl he'd ever met in his life ended up with a crush on him.

“Remember that day I told you?” he said. “About me?”

“Not something I would forget,” I said.

Tim took a bite of his sandwich. Then he said, “I thought about kissing you that day. Really kissing you, I mean.”

“I knew it!” I said, and hit the table with the flat of my good hand. “I mean, I thought you were going to kiss me. And then you did!”

I expected him to laugh, but instead he looked very serious. “The thing is,” he said, “I used to think I could get a girlfriend and that would solve everything. And I tried a couple times. But it didn't seem fair. You know? Does it seem fair to you?”

“No,” I said. And in this wistful voice I hoped he couldn't read, I said, “I sure am glad you're not my boyfriend.”

Tim nodded in agreement. Seeing that made my heart turn inside out—a painful, twisty feeling. He said, “You deserve a boyfriend who likes girls.” I nodded, nodded, nodded, all the while thinking that as long as we could just go on like this together, the two of us, sharing secrets across
the table, it was enough. At the same time, I remembered that couple I'd seen, pressed together at Wilbur Beach, and I knew it wasn't enough, not really.

“You know the whole thing about this new Lutheran church?” Tim said. “And that website and everything? It's saying there's no such thing as being gay, that all you have to do is decide to like girls. They've got this quote on there, saying, ‘God loves gays but hates a perverted lifestyle.' It's not like I never tried—hell—I went out with Caroline Jones a whole year.”

I really wanted to ask how far it had gone but couldn't quite figure out how to word it, never mind that it was none of my business. Tim said, “All the time I was going out with Caroline I tried my hardest to like her in the ways I was supposed to. But I couldn't do it. Meanwhile she liked me just the way she should, and it just seemed so unfair. Wrong to me. Doesn't it seem wrong to you?”

“It does,” I said, wishing he would stop asking me that. “You shouldn't have to lie about how you feel or who you are.”

Tim speared a piece of the fried okra we'd ordered. “But I
am
lying about it,” he said. “I'm lying about it to everyone except you. And that's how they want me to live my whole entire life. They want me to marry some unsuspecting Lutheran girl and sit across the table from her every day of my life, sleep with her every night of my life, pretending I like her instead of someone else. Do you think that's right?”

“You know I don't,” I said.

Tim smiled. But lately I had started to notice how his smiles were not so convincing anymore. The world had started to chip away at his natural cheerfulness. I wished there were something I could do besides listen. It was very weird to want two different things, but I had to admit I did. I wanted Tim not to be gay, so he could fall in love with me. And I also wanted the world to not mind that he
was
gay, so he could stop hurting so bad all the time. These two wishes sure seemed opposite from each other, and yet I went ahead and wished them both.

*   *   *

The next Monday I had another appointment with James to look at my hand. This time Mom came in with me. By now it had pretty much healed, though he said I would always have a big red scar in the middle of my palm. “I guess it's not the worst place to have a scar,” I told him.

James, who saw all kinds of terrible scars and burns every day of his life, nodded. He said, “It may not seem like it, Wren, but you were lucky. Drinking and bonfires are a bad combination.”

I reminded James, “I wasn't drinking.”

“But the girl who bumped into you was,” he said. He told us about a girl he'd treated last year who fell into a bonfire and had her hair catch on fire. It lit up and scarred both sides of her face. Hearing this, my mother put her hand over
her heart and breathed in real hard. It seemed like she overreacted to everything these days. Poor Mom.

“Your fingers look good,” James said. “You can probably go back to playing guitar again.”

Mom perked up at this. “Oh, good,” she said. “I'll call Ry.”

“Maybe I'll just pick it up at home for a bit,” I said. “See how it feels.”

“Okay,” Mom said. I could tell she felt a little relieved at one less thing to pay for.

On the drive back to school, for no good reason, I thought about the conversation Tim and I had had at lunch on Saturday. And I couldn't help but wonder, with a little ball of fear forming in my gut, that maybe it wasn't just the church that had Tim thinking about being gay in practice versus gay in theory. Maybe he had started liking somebody. The idea made my heart do that inside-out thing again. At the same time I remembered his face in the library, and him saying he wanted to be dead and sounding like he meant it. I knew I couldn't keep Tim all to myself forever. Not when I wasn't enough to make him sure he wanted to keep on living.

*   *   *

“It wouldn't matter if I did like somebody,” Tim said, because like the tactless idiot I am, I blurted out my whole thought process later that afternoon when we went for a horseback ride. It occurred to me in that moment that Tim
and I talked about everything in the world except for how I felt about him. I wondered if he knew, if he could tell. The last thing in the world I wanted was him feeling like there was one more person in his life who expected him to be different than he was.

I'd put Tim on Sombero, who wasn't the calmest horse in the world, but my mom had trained him so well I thought it would be okay. It was a teensy bit cold, particularly since neither of us had worn our coats, but I didn't mind. The air felt crisp and clean, and Tim was real agreeable whenever I told him to hold his reins looser or put his heels down.

“Of course it would matter if you liked somebody,” I said.

“No,” Tim disagreed. “There's no way in hell I'd do anything about liking another guy while I'm living in Williamsport, North Carolina.”

I reached down and petted Pandora. What Tim said made me feel relieved and worried all at the same time.

“Maybe I'll just be a priest or something,” he added. “And just never have any kind of sex at all.”

“But then you'd have to be Catholic,” I said, as if that were the only problem with the priest plan.

“Can't be any worse than being Lutheran,” Tim said. “As it turns out.”

Sombrero stopped walking for no good reason. Tim pressed his heels in real gentle, just like a natural. His posture looked so good, you'd think he'd ridden a horse every
day of his life. I thought what a great athlete he was, and how he'd already decided not to play baseball in the spring. And I realized I almost never saw Tim happy anymore, except for when he was up on the stage.

All through
Finian's Rainbow
, Og has this huge crush on Sharon, the main girl. But he also kind of likes Susan, coincidentally played by Caroline Jones. He sings this funny song called “When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love.” In the end he sings this funny line, “For Sharon I'm carin', but Susan I'm choosin', I'm faithful to whos'n is here.”

It was a good solution for Og, but choosing between two girls in a musical comedy is just not the same as choosing between girls and guys in your real life. Seeing the expression on Tim's face, I wondered how anyone in the world could think it
was
.

*   *   *

“You know,” I said to my parents at dinner that night. “I've been thinking about homosexuality.”

The three of us sat in the kitchen. Mom had heated up a Mrs. Budd's chicken potpie and I'd made a tossed salad, making the dressing I'd invented, with soy sauce because vinegar upset Dad's stomach. My parents looked at each other in a way I hadn't seen in a good long while. Like they'd had the same reaction to something and wanted to check in with each other.

“Have you,” Dad said.

“I saw this website,” I said, “that said all this stuff about
homosexuality being a sin. And how it was a choice. But you know, if you think about other sins, like drinking and premarital sex and all that. Well, those are things that are naturally tempting to everybody. So, if you think that homosexuality is so naturally tempting that it needs resisting, well, you must be a homosexual yourself. So probably all those people who think gays are bad are just really gay themselves.”