The Lost Language of Cranes (27 page)

But he could not sleep either. Eyes open, he surveyed this unfamiliar Columbia dorm room where clothes draped over chairs threw bizarre shadows on the wall, where the smell of cigarettes blended with the smell of mildew to create an oddly sweet, oddly nostalgic aroma.

Then dawn was breaking again. He missed the days when he had slept through dawn.

He left an hour or two later, countering Rob's pleas that he stay for breakfast with his own insistent claim that he had work to do. He had slept only two hours, and as soon as he got home, he showered and fell instantly into his bed.

Around three he got up and went out for something to eat, and when he got back he found a message from Rob on his answering machine. He did not return it. There was another message the next day, and another; still he did not answer. The messages stopped. He was a little sorry that they did. At another point in his life, he realized, he might have jumped full-force into a love affair with someone like Rob. But Eliot—or rather, the ghost of Eliot, the shadow—had him by the scruff of the neck and would not let him go, would not disappear. It seemed to him ironic that he should be doing to Rob exactly what Eliot had done to him. The oppressed, once again, became the oppressor. Men were assholes, Sally had assured him, and now, for the first time, regretfully, Philip felt himself sinking into the ranks of men.

O
WEN, HUDDLED
in the dark claustrophobia of his office after eleven, cradled the phone in his lap like a baby, held the receiver tight against his ear, and dialed. "Hotline," Jerene said. "Can I help you?”

"Uh, hello," Owen said. "I'm calling because—" He broke down. "I need some help," he said very quietly, sobbing, to the alert voice on the other end of the phone. He tried to focus through the tears screening his eyes: night, the dark window, the fifth of bourbon leaning like a tower on his desk.

"It's okay, I'm not going to hang up," Jerene said. "Stay calm now. Just breathe in and out. We don't have to talk until you're good and ready." Owen followed her instructions; breathed in and out. "Now tell me how I can help you," Jerene said. All Owen could get out was, "My son—" Then he started sobbing again.

"Your son," she said. "Go on."

"My son—he told me and his mother that he's—"

"That he's gay?"

"Uh-huh," Owen said.

"And how do you feel about that?" Jerene asked.

"I don't know. I'm confused—very confused—"

"Well," Jerene said, "why don't we start by talking about exactly what's confusing to you?"

"You don't understand," Owen said. "These things—they're very hard for me to talk about. I mean, I've never—" He faltered.

"Listen," Jerene said. "It's okay to talk about them with me. I'm not here to pass judgments, just to offer some help, a little advice. We all need someone to talk to every now and then, don't we? And that's what I'm here for."

"My son—" Owen said. "I've never been enough of a father to him. Always involved in my own life. And I can't help but wonder—"

"If it's your fault?"

"Yes."

"Listen, you shouldn't worry about that," Jerene said. "It's not a question of fault. Your son is what and who he is. That's not going to change. Now the important thing is to make things as good for him as you can."

"But you don't understand," Owen said. "It's not him I'm worried about—it's me."

There was a pause.

"Okay," Jerene said. "Go on."

Owen hung up. He poured some more of the bourbon into his glass and drank it down. A little spilled on his suit. He took a tissue and tried to wipe it off. From the wall, Rose and Philip stared at him, his Ph.D. stared at him, all the posed Harte boys stared at him. He looked at them for a few minutes and then he picked up the phone and dialled again, this time a number he had long since memorized. After one ring, a frantic-sounding man's voice answered.

"Is Alex there?" Owen said.

"Just a second, I'll check," the voice said. "Can I ask who's calling?"

"Bowen," Owen said.

"Hold on."

Owen held his hand before his face, watched for shaking. After a few seconds, Alex Melchor picked up the phone.

"This is Bowen," Owen said.

"Bowen?" Alex Melchor said. "Do I know you?"

"We talked on the phone a while ago," Owen said. "Remember, I thought you'd left me your number? But it all turned out to be a big mix-up."

"Oh right, of course. Well, uh, what can I do for you, Bowen?"

"I was wondering if we could meet, have a drink, maybe," Owen said, his voice shaking. "A lot's been going on in my life. I'm very confused about some things and I just need someone to talk to. We all need someone to talk to sometimes, don't we?"

"Uh—sure. Gee, Bowen," Alex said. "I wish I could help you, but you know I'm awfully busy this week and next week I—"

"It won't take long," Owen said. "Please, even over the phone. My son, you see, he came home last week to tell me and his mother—"

"Bowen, you know, I'm sure this is very hard for you. Listen, have you thought of maybe seeing a shrink? Because it sounds to me like you may need some professional help, certainly better than I can give you, God knows. I've been seeing a shrink myself for twenty years now, and believe me, I'd be loony as a tune if I hadn't—"

"My son, you see, he's a homosexual. And I'm worried that it's my fault. I mean, it's not that I'm a homosexual myself. I am a bisexual. But you see, I've never been enough of a father to him and now I'm scared."

"Bowen, that's very unfortunate, but I really don't know how I can help you. Listen, why don't you call one of those hotline things? They have professional people who can talk to you about things like this—"

"I'm scared," Owen said.

"Listen, I'm looking in the phone book right now. Now stay calm. Here—the Gay Hotline. Bowen? Do you have a pencil? Can you write down the number?"

Owen hung up.

The next number he dialed was Philip's.

"Hello," Philip said. "This is Philip."

"Philip, it's your father."

"I'm afraid I can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave me a message when you hear the beep—"

"Fag, fag, fag, your father is a goddamned fag," Owen screamed into the phone.

"—happy to call you back as soon as I can."

"Fag," Owen said morosely.

"Thank you for calling."

"Fag father of fag son," Owen said.

The beep sounded.

Owen hung up.

Rose knew. He knew she knew. But somehow they never talked about it; they must never talk about it. Instead they talked, endlessly and obsessively, about the apartment which, if they didn't buy, they would have to vacate in August. If they didn't buy, there would soon begin an onslaught of prospective buyers, people who were rich enough to displace them. The ultimate shame, Rose felt, would be having to clean up for the arrival of those people. If they had to be out, she wanted it to be before that stage. Every Sunday, now, instead of going their separate ways, she and Owen scanned the "Real Estate" section of the
Times,
and on Wednesdays did the same with the
Voice.
It became apparent early on that they were not going to get anything for under fifteen hundred a month, an unthinkably high price, but one they could just barely manage. More than anything else, the immense downpayment a co-op would require boggled them. They had never owned anything, not even a car.

One Sunday there was an ad which read:

Lrg 1-bdrm, lux drmn bldg. Eat-in ktchn w/DW

Sthrnexpsr.A steal.

They went in the afternoon to see the place. It was in a tall, dirty building on West Eighty-sixth Street, near Amsterdam. The agent, a small woman with blue fingernails, led them up in the cranky elevator to an old, crumbly apartment with a marble bathtub in the bathroom, no views, and a bedroom the size of Rose's closet. She told them that it was a steal at seventeen hundred a month.

"Now if you're interested," the agent said, "I'll really have to know by this evening, because, needless to say, there's a lot of other people who want into an apartment house like this, a big old-fashioned West Side apartment. These are hard to come by these days. I have a lot of clients who are very interested, but depending on how enthusiastic you folks are, maybe we could arrange something."

They promised to call her if they were still interested.

Outside, in the street, Owen could feel his arms shaking in the sleeves of his coat. It was a cold spring day, windy and bright. By evening there would be rain.

"What are we going to do?" Rose asked.

Without much conviction, Owen said, "Don't worry, honey, we'll find something. You just have to keep looking. Remember you said it took your friend Donna six months to find her place?"

Rose kept her eyes on the ground. "I'm a little scared, frankly," she said.

Owen looked away. "Don't be scared," he said. "Things will work out."

"I don't want to move to Queens," Rose said with sorrow and distaste.

"We won't have to move to Queens. We'll stay right here in Manhattan. Don't worry."

They approached the park, and Rose said, "Owen, are you sure we can't stay where we are? Are you sure?"

"I don't know."

"Have you tried to work out the finances? Let's try to stay, Owen, please? We've got good, long employment histories. We're such good credit risks, I'm sure they'll give us a loan. And maybe we can borrow some money from Gabrielle and Jack, some money from your sister—"

"I don't know," Owen said. His voice cracked. She took his arm as they entered the park, clinging hard to him. A few blocks downtown Yoko Ono was still building Strawberry Fields. Yoko Ono had four or five apartments in the Dakota, Rose had read. Did she really need them all? Couldn't Rose and Owen have just one of them? Or perhaps they deserved to be homeless.

From behind them, swift as a mugger, Philip leapt, a gangly dog in running clothes. Rose screamed. "What's wrong?" Owen shouted.

Out of breath, all arms and long legs, Philip reeled back. "I'm sorry if I scared you," he said. "I was running, and then, all of a sudden, there you were. I had to sprint to catch up with you." He wiped his mouth off on his sleeve, and smiled. He smelled of cold sweat, cotton, grass.

Owen looked around himself. Searching for signs, his eyes found the hill where, even on this cold spring day, men lay shirtless in the sun.

"I'll walk with you a little way," Philip said.

"Yes," Rose said. "Please do."

They headed east. "So where are you guys coming from?" Philip asked.

"We were just looking at an apartment on Eighty-sixth Street," Rose said.

"West Eighty-sixth Street?" Philip said. "Wow, it'd be great if you lived there, you'd be so close to me."

"I don't know," Rose said. "It's expensive."

They passed a playground where a group of black children walked strong together like paper dolls in a chain. "Everyone is so afraid of losing their children these days," Rose said. "So afraid of kidnappers. It's hard for me to imagine what it must be like to be a mother now, scared all the time."

"Or a child," Philip said. "Remember how free you left me when I was a kid? I wandered wherever I wanted, walked alone from Gerard's building, even at night."

"I was stupid," Rose said. "You couldn't do it now with a child. Look at them all. They won't let go of each other."

It was true. All the children in the park were firmly attached to their mothers, or linked together in chains. Rose wondered whose idea the chain was—the children's or the parents'—and decided it would be more like a child to believe that there was safety in numbers. The children, after all, were as scared, if not more so, than their parents. At school, they were being taught songs to "empower" themselves, songs with lyrics like "My body is my body..." Rose knew because she was at that moment copy-editing a book of such
songs,
and its companion volume, a comic book in which Batman taught children what to do if a stranger approached.

Among the frightened children they walked, a family. Philip at least had made it to adulthood. He was safe from kidnapping, from molestation. He could run or walk alone in the park. But of course, survival only meant graduating to other dangers.

"So how's it going, old man?" Owen asked his son, as they neared Fifth Avenue, the museum, the old world.

"Okay," he said. They walked a moment in silence. "I guess there's no point in my keeping this from you. Eliot and I broke up."

"Eliot—" Rose frowned. Then she remembered and fixed her eyes on the ground ahead of her.

"Oh, I'm sorry about that."

"I really wanted you to meet him, see how happy I could be with another man. Now I guess you're probably thinking all sorts of terrible things, like all gay relationships are very transitory and can't last and things like that."

"No, Philip," Rose said. "I wasn't thinking anything of the sort, to be frank."

"Because it isn't true." He looked at the ground. "I don't know about Eliot. I guess he's just afraid of commitment or something. A lot of people are afraid of commitment these days."