The Men from the Boys (49 page)

He settles into his pillows. “Good.”

Lloyd couldn't come tonight. That damn beeper. “Oh,” I remember, smirking. “Lloyd told me to tell you not to die or anything while he's not here.”

“I should, just to spite him.”

“Not until after Christmas, okay? We're going this weekend to chop down our tree.”

“I can't understand why you go to all that trouble. Driving all the way out of the city and then crawling around in snowbanks.... I'll never understand Christians.”

“It's a tradition,” I say, as if that explains everything.

“And the two of you thrive on tradition.”

We do. Out will come the ornaments, the little nativity scene, Rose's tattered old angel for the top of the tree. “Hey, you're part of that tradition, too,” I tell Javitz. “You always put the angel on the highest branch.”

“The two of you have given me a great deal, you know. Vegetarian burgers. Tofu bacon.
Christmas.”
He rolls his eyes. “If my grandfather the Hebrew cantor ever knew ...”

“If you don't want to come to Christmas, you don't have to.”

He gives me a serious look. “I can never thank you and Lloyd enough for giving me Christmas. And all the other things, too.”

How much I want him to be home for Christmas. And Hanukkah. And New Year's and Lloyd's birthday and Valentine's Day and all the rest. I think of the three of us, the passion with which we laugh, pontificate, promulgate, carry on. I think of Lloyd and Javitz tickling each other on the couch, Javitz jumping naked into Provincetown harbor in the middle of March, the three of us smashing into the surf as we tried to water-ski. I think of Lloyd asleep in the crook of Javitz's arm on New Year's Eve, me at their feet finishing off the last of the brownies we've made—I think of these things and know Lloyd was wrong when he said the passion was gone.

Outside, it's begun to snow lightly. “I've been thinking about Eduardo,” I say.

“He's still alive, I take it.”

“Who knows? Haven't talked with him in months.”

Javitz closes his eyes. “Wasn't he some absurd age?”

“Twenty-two. Twenty-three, now.”

“Are there even such things as—”

“Yes, Javitz, there are.”

He grins with his eyes closed. “So why were you thinking about him? I hope you're not still pining for him.”

It's begun to snow harder. We hear the wind rattle the window ever so slightly.

“No, it's something else. I feel as if—as if there's something there I'm supposed to understand.”

Javitz opens both eyes. “Tell me more.”

“I don't know what else there is to say. I do miss him. I miss the way he made me feel. I guess I really messed up that whole relationship. There was so much more I could have shared with him....”

“That's the nature of these things. I think that way every time one of my best students graduates.” Javitz sighs. “I'll watch him or her as they walk down that aisle and accept that diploma, and I'll think, I forgot to tell them this, or I forgot to prepare them for that. And I imagine they'll hate me for it for the rest of their lives.”

“I think Eduardo hates me.”

“Oh, no. Maybe at first. But he won't, not forever. You may think you messed up—and darling, I was there. I know you weren't perfect. But you made a difference in that boy's life. He'll see that eventually.”

“That's hard for me to believe right now.”

“That's because you don't see yourself that way. You still see yourself as the boy waiting to be taught yourself.” He grins. “Hate to tell you, Jeff, but that ain't the case no more.”

I laugh. “What would I ever do without you to keep me in line?”

“One of these days you'll have to make some arrangements.”

I squint my eyes at him. “Don't get melodramatic. You may be going home tomorrow.”

“But eventually, none of us are going to be around anymore. I'm talking about me, my generation. Your much-reviled baby boomers. Then what happens?”

I grin. “Oh, right. It becomes my job to connect with the children, to tell them about what came before.” I shake my head. “I had my chance last summer, and I blew it.”

“I don't think so, darling. I think you're going to surprise yourself. I think you're going to do just fine.”

I look over at him.

“But here's the secret,” he says, motioning for me to come closer.

“No,” I say, thinking all this silly. “Just tell me from there.”

He grimaces, and says very loud, just to teach me a lesson, “A teacher always learns more from his student than the other way around.”

“So what did you learn from me, then? All those years ago?”

“Everything, darling. Everything that I then turned around and taught you in turn.” He grins. “You taught me the tricks of the trade.”

Provincetown, June 1995

We're on the breakwater, Lloyd and I, waiting for Javitz.

It's a beautiful, warm, sunny day, and for the first time in weeks Javitz is out of the house. It took some doing, and he's still a little shaky, but he was determined to meet us here.

“You go on,” he instructed us. “I want to wander a bit first.”

The failing eyesight turned out to be cataracts, which can be operated on—but there's still no definite answer on the fatigue. He took a few halting steps out into the sunlight and passed judgment on the day: “Glorious.” We kept turning around as we walked on ahead, worried that he was going to get too tired on his own. But he just gave us those Javitz eyes and said, “Go.”

So we did, and here we are. There's an edge of humidity, but nothing we can't live with, nothing like the grueling days of last August. On our way here, a gaggle of boys in a convertible Saab had driven past us on Commercial Street, Mariah Carey blaring from the stereo, the boys dancing in the backseat, waving their beads and their butts.

We couldn't wait to get out here, away from all that.

“Mr. Tompkins seemed happy to see you,” Lloyd says to me now.

“Yeah,” I agree. “Took a chunk right out my hand when I went to pet him.” I grin. Lloyd brought him down from Boston yesterday. He still has little use of his back left leg, but he gets around pretty ferociously on the other three. He even jumped off the dresser at Javitz this morning.
“That'll
get you up,” I said. For however long I'm here, I want Mr. Tompkins with me.

Of course, the risk is still there. The vet said it was perhaps even more likely now that a second stroke would kill him. “He just needs his mother,” Lloyd said, and I suspect maybe he's right.

“I've missed this,” Lloyd says, stretching his arms out over the sea. The tide is going out. We can hear the trickle of water running between the rocks below us.

“It's missed you,” I tell him.

“I could live here year round,” he muses.

“Thinking of trying it? The winters are pretty rough.”

He smiles. “Jeff, I quit my job.”

I look over at him. “Well, it's about time.” We embrace.

“I don't know what I'm going to do,” he says. “I've got a few leads for private practice, and I may do some per-diem work. But suddenly, a whole new set of options opens up for me.”

“Like Provincetown?”

“Maybe. My family's here.”

I smile. “Think about it, Dog. Think about it long and hard. Because I can't promise anything for sure anymore either.”

He sighs. “Sometimes I feel I should just go, get in my car and drive away. But that's how I've always felt. Now, I think about Javitz, how much time he has left, how much time all of us have left.” He stops, looking deliberately over at me. “I'm sorry our plans to move back together haven't materialized.”

“You can only be in one place at a time,” I tell him.

He rests his head on my shoulder. “I love you, Cat.”

“Oh, Dog, I know that.”

“I wish I could say I knew what was ahead for us. I still don't know if we're meant to be together. But things are starting to make more sense. I just can't promise beyond that.” He lifts his head to look at me. “But I haven't given up hope. Have you?”

“You know me. I'm always the one with the high hopes.”

“That's what I love about you.”

“But see those waves out there, Lloyd? See the tide going out and the sun going down? The tide's going to be back in a few hours, and at dawn the sun will rise again, over there. Whatever it is that we end up doing, those things will never change.”

Lloyd just looks at me for several seconds, in a way he's never looked at me before. Then he smiles, singing very softly: “When you take you gotta give, so live and let live....”

I laugh, joining in. “Or let go-wo-wo-wo-wo—I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden.”

We laugh together, arms encircling each other's waists.

“Cat,” he says.

I look over at him.

“This is passion.”

We hear a long sigh. “Darling, I wish one of you had realized that a long time ago,” Javitz says, suddenly behind us, a little winded, a little flushed, but nonetheless here. “Would've saved us all a lot of misery.”

Lloyd laughs. So do I.

Javitz sits down. We make room, easing him between us.

“So where did you wander?” Lloyd asks.

“Oh, the beach in the east end, out through the meadow near the cemetery. Such a glorious day.” He sighs. “And what a
magnif
icent sunset. Did you know—?”

“Yes,” we say in unison, “we know.”

“It's just that such things
matter,”
he says softly.

“They sure do,” I agree. “Isn't that why you moved here?”

Lloyd and I snake our arms around Javitz's waist. He purrs. “How good it is to be together again,” he whispers.

None of us has to say what we're all thinking, what's on our minds as we watch the sun melt into muddy colors over the surface of the ocean and the dunes. Javitz reads our minds, as he's always been able to do, and takes in a long breath, almost as if he were dragging on a cigarette.

“I live in a world in which the overriding principle is ambiguity,” he says. “Tomorrow I may get sick again. Or I may not. That's what we live with today. Maybe that's what people have always lived with. Maybe we just like to believe it's different today, because it's all so much more apparent. The fear and the confusion is not nearly so hidden. But in the end, that's all we have: the knowledge that ultimately we know nothing at all.”

“Not a very good conclusion,” I say.

“Yeah, come on,” Lloyd says, laughing. “We can do better than that.”

Javitz shrugs. “Maybe you'll come up with a better one for your novel.”

“I doubt it,” I tell him. “Living by a script was easy. Confining and predictable, perhaps, but easy. And comforting. But the damn script kept changing. I couldn't memorize my lines anymore.” I hunch down, bringing my face in close to theirs. “But you know what? There's a certain beauty to ambiguity. It's only then that we take control over our lives.”

I look at Javitz. “How, was that?”

“Very profound, darling.”

“Yes, Cat,” Lloyd says, smiling. “I'm impressed.”

I laugh. “But really. I think we can't know all the time what it is we're supposed to do. There's no way—not anymore—for us to think anything is ever going to stay the same. But we can trust that we'll do the best we can, and I like to think there will be people who love us who will help.” I laugh self-consciously. “Javitz, this is supposed to be your job.”

“Not anymore, darling. You're doing fine.”

He puts his arms around both of us. We sit there like the three wise men, or the three stooges, or the father, son, and holy ghost. Whatever works. We sit there, the three of us, and look out over the waves.