The Boy I Love (24 page)

“Why don't you pick up?” I suggested gently.

He shrugged, miserable. From downstairs, the doorbell rang. I could hear my dad answer the door, and then he called up to us. “Tim! Someone's here to see you.”

“Go on down,” Tim whispered. “See who it is.”

I had only seen her once before, in the auditorium after
Finian's Rainbow
, when there hadn't been time to properly introduce us. But as I walked down the stairs it only took a second to recognize the girl standing in our front hall. She had long, thick blond hair, and freckles, and pretty blue eyes just like Tim's.

“Hey,” I said, sounding real glad to see her.

“Hey,” she said back. “You must be Wren. I'm Kathy Greenlaw. Tim's sister.”

*   *   *

By now you might be thinking that Tim's parents were the most coldhearted people on the planet. That's sure what I thought. I knew, for example, that my mom had called and told them that we found Tim in our barn with a gun to his head. And still they hadn't come to collect him and tell him everything would be all right. After three whole days! They let their only son go and face the idiots at school with no support from his family. I couldn't imagine how anybody could think that kissing another boy was a sin but it was perfectly okay to just abandon your own child in his time of deepest need.

Luckily, Kathy came to give us behind-the-scenes information. “I came home from school as soon as I could,” she said. She, my parents, Tim, and I all sat around the kitchen table. Kathy sat next to Tim; she'd pulled her chair up real close to him.

“Tim,” she said, “I want to bring you home.”

Tim shook his head vehemently.

“There's not going to be any antigay therapy,” Kathy said. “I promise you right now.”

“I don't believe that,” Tim argued. “They're just saying that to get me to come home. Then Pastor Lee's going to be there ready to haul me away.” He glared at his sister. “Kathy, I don't want to be prayed over. I don't want to be changed. I just want to be me.”

Kathy nodded. “I'm on the same page, Tim. Listen. I made an appointment with a different Lutheran minister, for you and me, tomorrow. His church isn't breaking with the main church. They don't mind gay pastors. They don't mind gay people.”

“Is the pastor gay?” Tim said, right away.

“No,” Kathy said. “But he's really open-minded.” She said that she and Tim could talk to this man together, and maybe he would come up with ideas for talking to his parents. “Mom and Dad are upset,” Kathy said, “but they love you, and they've got to see it's better to switch churches than children.”

Tim nodded, but he didn't look especially convinced. In
the end I think he agreed to go talk to the pastor so he'd have an excuse not to go to school tomorrow. And I sure couldn't blame him for that.

*   *   *

Next morning before first bell, Allie was waiting for me by my locker. “Where's Tim?” she said.

“He's with his sister.”

“Oh,” she said. “Is his family taking him out of school? I heard Jay's not coming back.”

“I don't think they know yet,” I said. It really wasn't my business to tell her what jerks Tim's parents were being, so I didn't get into it any more than that. Allie leaned against the locker next to mine while I dug out my books. I said, “I'm sorry I didn't call to talk more about Cutty River.”

“I'm not allowed to talk on the phone anyway,” she said, looking a little dejected, like she thought this was the reason I hadn't called her.

“Sorry,” I said, wondering if we'd ever be able to have a conversation without both of us apologizing a hundred times. “It's been pretty intense at my house. But I have to know! How'd you get your parents to let you switch schools?”

“It was a lot easier than I thought,” Allie said. “They think I haven't been myself since I started coming here. And they're so happy that there won't be any cheerleading in my future. Jesse's going back too, because his parents are scared after what happened with Jay. Ginny's parents won't let her
switch midyear. But I bet yours would let you go next year if you wanted. But you probably don't want to. I mean, you seem pretty happy here.”

She said that last part gently, no sarcasm or meanness at all. I slammed my locker door shut and took a deep breath. “I'm not going here or to Cutty River,” I said. “I'm going to prep school in New Hampshire.” This sounded so ridiculous, still, that I couldn't help laughing a little. Allie just stood there, staring at me. When she realized I wasn't kidding, she put her hand over her mouth. I told her about the farm being sold, and my mom's new job.

“At least you get to bring Pandora,” she said. We started walking down the hall together.

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to think about everything else, everything I'd have to leave behind.

“You'll need to buy a lot of warm clothes,” Allie said. I hadn't thought about that, but she was right. I felt a moment of panic, like where would we get the money, but then I figured that even up north it would take a couple of months to get seriously cold. By then my mother would have gotten a paycheck or two, so maybe we'd have enough money for a few pairs of snow boots.

“I guess we'll have the whole fall to figure all that out,” I said to Allie. She nodded. By now we were standing outside the door to my first-period class.

“Well,” she said. “I'll see you at lunch?”

I nodded and waved to her, then stood for a minute and watched her long, dark ponytail swish down the hall, trying to figure out if I would miss her when we left, or if I had missed her so long that by now I was over it.

*   *   *

That afternoon I rode the bus home by myself. In my usual seat at the back, I pulled my phone out of my bag and looked for the umpteenth time to see if Tim had checked in. Nada. I wondered how the meeting with the pastor had gone, how his reunion with his family was going. Part of me felt scared that his sister had shown up as a double agent and by now Tim was halfway to an antigay boot camp. What the heck did they do at those places, anyway? And what woman would want to marry a man who had to use all his spiritual energy not to be gay?

Me,
I had to remind myself.
I am one of those women.

When I got home, my mom was on her knees on the kitchen floor, digging through a cupboard full of pots and pans. She looked up at me and sighed. “I can't figure out what I can't bear to part with,” she said.

I gave a little snort, and she hauled herself off the floor to sit down at the table with me. “I know,” she said. “This whole year is turning out to be a lesson in what we can and can't bear to part with.”

“Mom,” I said, “you've got six months. You know? Why not give it a rest for a while?”

“You're right,” she said. “I'm sorry.” She closed the cupboard door like that was the end of it, but I knew as soon as I was out of sight she'd be back at it again. My mother needs her projects. I asked her if she would read my paper for American history. It was pretty much finished, but seeing as it was due tomorrow, it wouldn't hurt to have her check it over for grammar and all that. While she read it, I texted Tim. After a few minutes of waiting for a return message to chime, I went outside and sat on the porch swing. It was colder than I expected, and I wished I'd put my jacket on, but I didn't go back inside.

Lately I had been trying not to look at our farm as if it were the last time I'd ever see it; but just now I was feeling melancholy anyway, so I really let my eyes roam around the view. Pandora and Sombrero and the other two horses grazed on the hill. There were so many longleaf pines that even though the grass had started to brown, the main impression I had staring out was of green. From where I sat I couldn't see the water in the river through the overhang of moss and vines, but I knew it ran low even for this time of year. I wondered if that alligator would make its way back here this summer. Chances are we would never know.

Mom came outside, my paper in her hand. I could see red pen where she'd marked mistakes. She sat next to me and slid it into my lap. “It's good, Wren,” she said. “Really good. You should send a copy to Holly.”

“She probably knows all that stuff already,” I said.

“Still. She'll be touched you're thinking about it.”

I nodded. Then I said, “I don't see why it takes so long for people to figure out what's obvious. I mean, isn't it funny how Holly and James getting married seems perfectly normal? When less than fifty years ago it wouldn't even have been legal in most of the country.”

Mom tilted her head. She looked out in the direction of the river, and I wondered if she was thinking about the alligator too. “I always think,” she said, “that the world is like a child. It's still growing up and learning what's right. Like when you're two, and you throw temper tantrums and snatch toys out of other kids' hands. Or when you're six, and you only like girls and hate guys. But then you get a little older, and you learn life is easier if you behave better, more kindly. The world is maturing just like a person. It takes time to learn what's right and wrong. Maybe one day it will grow out of prejudice and meanness. It's done some good work in that direction. But it's sure not there yet.”

“It's taking pretty stinking tiny little baby steps,” I said.

“Gay marriage is legal in more and more states now,” Mom said, though I hadn't mentioned anything about Tim, or gay marriage, not aloud or in my paper.

“But not all of them,” I said.

“More than there used to be. And you know one of those states? New Hampshire.”

I laughed. “Maybe we should bring Tim with us,” I said. “Not that he wants to get married anytime soon. I hope.”

“I'm sure he wants to stay with his family,” Mom said, and I looked at her like she'd gone crazy. “Listen,” she said. “They love him. They're wrongheaded right now, but I know they'll come around.”

“You didn't need to come around,” I said. “You accepted him right away.”

“I was never taught differently,” Mom said. “My parents made sure I knew what was right. Just like we did with you.”

I had never thought of it that way. “We're lucky,” I said. A few moments ago, surveying our soon-to-be-lost homestead, I would not have used that phrase to describe our family.

Mom laughed. “I'm glad you think so,” she said. “Now go upstairs and clean up this paper.” She gave me a light shove, just enough to slide me off the swing, and I headed upstairs to get to work.

Holly and James got married
on the last day of May in a sunset ceremony at Wilbur Beach. I was maid of honor, and kind of best man, too, because they didn't have anyone stand up with them except for me. They said they chose me because if I hadn't fallen into that fire, they might never have come back together. Standing in the orange glow reflecting off the ocean, watching the two of them hold hands and recite their vows, I felt pretty sure they would have gotten back together one way or another no matter what. Some things are just meant to be.

I have never been one to turn down credit, never mind whether I deserve it or not. But if you ask me, one reason they didn't have a real best man—my dad, for example—was that there wouldn't have been enough people left to watch the ceremony. The only other people there were my parents, James's sister and mother, two friends from the
hospital, and the minister, who was a friend of Holly's from divinity school. Plus Tim. He was my date.

After the ceremony, we all had dinner on the pier of a beachside restaurant. Nothing fancy, just fried oysters and hush puppies and corn on the cob. Holly and James brought their own champagne, and they let Tim and me each have a glass.

Everyone made a toast except for Tim. Just like you'd expect, all the toasts were about love. Some people spoke longer than others, and James's mom cried a little, saying something about how she always knew that James and Holly belonged together, and she hoped their union and the children they'd have would make the world a little brighter. I made a toast too, and thanked James for taking such good care of my hand, and said that I hoped one day I'd be as lucky as them and find my true love.

The shortest toast of the evening belonged to my mother. She stood up and raised her glass and said the very same thing that she'd said to me all those years ago, when we'd seen those two men holding hands in an elevator.

“Love is love,” my mom said, raising her glass. “We smile when we see it.”

*   *   *

I suppose you're wondering why I skipped so far ahead in time. Maybe you want to know what happened with Tim and his family, not to mention Allie and me. If you're a
particularly optimistic person, you might even be hoping something came along at the last minute to save our farm.

But that would be a different story. Not mine. Not my family's. Not Tim's. It'd probably take a whole nother book to explain the step-by-step of what went on with Tim and his family. I guess it's still a work in progress. Tim's father ended up refusing to talk to the Lutheran minister that Kathy found. But his mother went. The meeting was pretty good, but Tim still wanted to stay with us. When his mom dropped him off, she and Kathy came on in to talk to my parents. The four of them sat down and drank a bottle of wine together, and Mrs. Greenlaw cried a little. My mom wouldn't tell me everything that was said, but the overall gist was that Tim was Mrs. Greenlaw's baby. When it really got down to it, no amount of religion in the world was going to stand between him and her.

Unfortunately, Tim's dad had a harder time coming around to this way of thinking. So you know what Mrs. Greenlaw finally said to him? She said, “If you think I'm going to choose you over my own child when I wouldn't even choose God, you've got another think coming.” Mr. Greenlaw moved out, at least for the time being. And as it happened, Mrs. Greenlaw didn't need to give up God. She didn't even need to switch denominations. She just moved on over to the new Lutheran church, and Tim moved back in with her. He even goes with her to church on Sundays.