The Paternity Test (17 page)

As March’s final week began, the mail brought more good news: a fat check for a textbook I’d written in 2000, which now, a letter said, had sold for French translation. I kept repeating “windfall,” a word that matched my sudden sense of fluttering, airy luck. I told Stu we’d celebrate: a dinner splurge, on me. “The Cummaquid Inn.” (I said the name by instinct.)

The Cummaquid was the grandest of the Cape’s old-money mainstays: prime rib and popovers, waitresses in bonnets, men and boys required to dine in blazers. When I was a kid, we Faunces ate there once each end-of-summer—a family rite as sacred as the visit of the sandpipers (visible through the inn’s bayfront windows), pausing on their hard homeward flight. The dress code pissed me off, and I fought it every year, showing up self-righteously in shirtsleeves. But every year, the maitre d’ would notice—tut-tut!—and summon forth a loaner coat, raunchy with a lifetime’s worth of mothballs. (Decades later, the thought of “dressing up” could still sicken me, filling me with camphorous chagrin.)

After a while it wasn’t just the dress code that I shirked, but the whole enforced
we’re-a-family
bonding—as flimsy and contrived as the popover girls’ bonnets. “Why do we come?” I asked my dad, knifing a bloody steak. (I had ordered medium-well, but Dad had overruled me; “Blue,” he told the waiter, “for us all.”) “I mean, what’s the big fucking occasion?”

“Patrick, dear! Language,” Mom insisted.

“
This
is the occasion,” said my father. “Just because. One small thing that makes us who we are.”

I had thought: Who we are? Who
are
we?

My feeling of misfittedness—that awful loaner coat—only tightened after I announced that I was gay. The following summer I never even made it to the Cape, but lived above a bookstore in Northampton where I clerked, sharing a room with two flamboyant queens. My mom, at the end of August, asked if I would visit. “I thought you liked tradition, dear. Faunce Place—remember when we found it?”

I had liked that, yes. But hadn’t I outgrown it? Or had I stayed the same and it had shrunk? “Does Dad want me to come?” I asked. “Maybe if
he
invites me.”

But no, my dad refused to take the phone.

I shot back with some slick riff about my “chosen family”—even to my teenage ears it sounded awfully wooden.

Dad and I, by the next August, had somewhat patched things up, but Sally picked that month to get married; Cummaquid Inn dinner plans were canceled. And now that we had skipped the thing that once had been expected, skipping it became the expectation.

By now more summers had passed since I’d eaten at the Cummaquid than I had ever gone there with my folks. I’d driven by, occasionally, since Stu and I had moved, but hadn’t paid much mind to what I saw. A snippet of the port-cochère, behind a pine-tree scrim. An old ship’s anchor, holding fast to nothing.

But now I planned to take Stu there. Stu the earnest sperm-count booster, the rescuer of moody little girls.

The evening of our splurge I was nutty with nostalgia. I
yearned
to overpay for prime rib. For once, I took pleasure in picking out my duds: a springtimey olive linen blazer from Brooks Brothers; a tie, Italian silk, sleekly striped (one of the few of Dad’s I had kept).

“You’re not going to believe this place,” I told Stu in the parking lot. “Prepare to take a step back in time.”

But Stu, as we walked inside, said, “Back to when—last week?”

The inn was filled with polo-shirted, Levi’d, Nike’d patrons. Even the maitre d’ (a crazy name to call him, this kid who looked fresh from glee club practice) was sloppy in his open-necked Oxford.

How could I explain my grief, my marrow-cooking grief ?

“Lord, is nothing sacred?” My voice came as a shock, the sureness of my full-gale Faunce pretension. It might have made me mortified; I saw that path before me. Instead, I chose a brighter path and boldly marched ahead. I asked for the best table (“No,
there
, by the window”), my voice clogged with a chowdery Yankee accent. “Bottle of Veuve,” I told the wide-eyed waiter.

Stu was wide-eyed, too. I hoped he was marveling, as I was, at my deftness. I could be as competent at reign as at rebellion.

“To windfalls” was my toast when we got our champagne flutes. “To agile cats who find their feet. To us.”

“How would you like the beef ?” asked the waiter when I ordered. I didn’t have to think. I said, “Blue.”

At home, a message on the machine, from Debora: “Call me.” (Her accent made it—weirdly, cutely—“
cow
me.”)

We each took a cordless. We held each other’s hands, looking toward the lights beyond the bay. I wanted to be able to remember every detail, so I could someday tell this as a story:
The night we learned we’d have you I was silly with champagne—I guess we’d started celebrating early! All across the water were a million little sparkles, which looked just how the champagne made me feel
...

Stu had dialed. I heard him say, “It’s us,” then Debora’s sigh.

“Sorry,” she said. “So sorry. I was wrong.”

Various other words were said, but what else really mattered?

Maybe this: I thought of how we’d used to breathe together, Stu and I, a unit, on the dance floor: mouth-to-mouth, making figure eights of
We’re alive!
That was what I wanted now. Needed.

But Stu walked off and shut the bedroom door.

I set down the telephone and stepped out to the deck, the night’s eerie, underworldish calm. Spring had come a week ago, but still it felt like winter, the air brittle, arduous, expunging.

I’d once had to research hypothermia for a textbook. I found out that its victims, in time, felt phantom heat. A trick of the mind that made them strip, despite the brutal cold. Search crews often discovered naked corpses.

I pulled off my jacket, my father’s tie, my shirt. Bare-chested, I leaned against an icy uphill wind. The chill gave a baffling kind of comfort.

I watched the sparkly lights. My skin was goose-fleshed, shrinking. I stood there till I started burning up.

It couldn’t be avoided: our trip back to New York.

Stu had flown down the day before, to help his folks prepare: making charoset, burning the leaven, all that Jewish oddness. I traced his path in the morning—Hyannis, Logan, LaGuardia—touching down with time to spare before my planned reunions: with Zack and Glenn and Milo, and (this one unnerved me) Joseph. I’d meet Stu at sundown, at the Seder.

My Bangladeshi cabbie was immediately on my case. I’d said that I wanted to be dropped at Sheridan Square, thinking I would maybe take a look at our old condo; I named all the shortcuts I preferred. His accent was so strong that I couldn’t catch each word, but I could have no doubt about his meaning: “No, we go like
this
. I know better.” And though I’d done this airport ride, oh, a trillion times, and won in similar fights with countless cabbies, now I just sat back and took my licks. Probably I was just a little stunned to watch Rafiq Rahman and to think: he’s more a New Yorker now than I.

Strolling around the Village I felt out of practice, too. Living on the Cape I put a premium on
noticing
: pay attention, and maybe I’d be treated to rewards (fox kits near an oak log; waves upon the bay like swells of frosting). But back here in Manhattan it was all about indifference— sometimes just pretended, often real. I tried to reclaim my air of blasé self-containment, but damn it all, I couldn’t help but stop and smell the roses . . . or, at least, the belching subway, the hot-dog steam, the sweat. Gray’s Papaya, Gristede’s: I craned my neck like a tourist. Not a single person looked back.

Thank God, then, that I should see, leaving the West Fourth station, comrades from our joyful nightclub days, Hank and Darren. Stu and I, behind their backs, had dubbed them Hunky and Dory. Hunky had a salt-and-pepper, sheriffy sort of handsomeness: you wanted him to pull you over, frisk you, breathalyze you. Dory was more hayseed hot, with tractor-axle biceps, a 4-H Clubber’s clean enthusiasm. Stu and I had almost had a four-way with them, once. Before . . . well, before that kind of thing had lost its shine.

I dashed across the street, and gave them hearty hugs. “Kismet!” I said. “Gosh. Great to see you.”

Hank said, “Yeah. Nice to see you, too.”

“I don’t even want to think how long,” I said. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know,” said Darren. He shrugged. “Same old, same old.”

“Right,” I said. “Sure. But the city is just—wow! The
speed
of it all. I just can’t believe it.”

They stared at me like I was speaking Urdu.

“You know we moved away?” I said. “Stu and I? A year ago? Didn’t you wonder why you never saw us?”

“Oh,” said Hank.

“Really?” said Darren. “I guess we . . . I don’t know . . .”

“The Cape,” I blurted out. “Cape Cod. It’s gorgeous.”

“P-town?” Darren said. “We love it there, don’t we, baby?” Rotely, he squeezed his lover’s biceps.

I started to explain: not P-town, no; West Barnstable; a house above the dunes of Sandy Neck . . .

Hank said, “Sorry. Ten minutes late already. You’ll forgive us?”

“Darn, he’s right,” said Darren, “but it’s super nice to see you.”

Air kiss, air kiss—
swish
, they were gone.

Downcast, I chose not to check on our old condo. What would be my gain from seeing someone else’s drapes? Besides, it was almost time to meet with Zack and Glenn. Our date was at the Central Park Zoo.

I had sent a stuffed penguin to Milo for his birthday, and Glenn told me the boy was still gaga for the doll, refused to set it down to eat or sleep. “Penny” was now grey from drool and matted up with grunge, and lately Milo had begged to bring the bird to see her “cousins” at the zoo, so she would feel less lonely. “The kid insists you come along,” said Glenn.

I was admittedly gratified—maybe a bit too much—to hear about the points I’d scored with Milo. The last time I’d seen the boy, he’d been one and a half. Puffy with growth, he’d seemed to enlarge before my very eyes, like canned biscuits popped from their container. I couldn’t wait to see how much he’d changed.

He’d grown enough, as it turned out, to balk at what growth meant.

We’d timed our visit, at Milo’s request, to watch the penguin feeding, but just when he should have been delighting in the birds—muscly little fussbudgets of hunger—Milo turned all inwardly idyllic.

“Are you doing what I think you’re doing?” Glenn asked, accusing.

Milo tried to eat his smile but only spilled it wider.

“You are!” said Zack. “What’s the rule? Milo? What’s the rule?”

The boy hugged Penny, searching his toddler brain to find the words—or, more likely, for words that would exempt him.

“Quick,” said Glenn, “let’s go. There’s a bathroom right there.”

“But Papa Glenn—” Milo made an oddly complacent face.

“Now,” said Glenn, and hauled his son away.

Zack explained that Milo was resisting potty training. The dads couldn’t make him stop going in his diapers: “Wants to pee bad enough? He pees. But what we can do,” added Zack, “is make sure
where
he goes. So what we’ve done, we’ve made him start standing in the bathroom. Stand there as he does it in his pants, or right after. Get him used to the whole bathroom process.”

I laughed, thinking:
Good thing Stu declined to come along
. He would have rolled his eyes at their by-the-book solemnity, their rigid, almost governmental system. Glenn was a compliance officer who worked for Stu’s airline—they’d met at a gay employees’ social—and Stu complained that he and Zack were, well, too law abiding. (Zack was a ballet critic, hyper-attuned to deviations from form.) “They’re just so fucking straitlaced,” Stu would say.

Yes, but they were the only gay dads we knew enough to count on; they had offered so much good advice and, lately, sympathy. Most of the time, I found their utter squareness irresistible. In truth, I was more than a little jealous.

They had planned the zoo excursion, I guessed, to boost my ego, to make me feel believably parental. And I had fully expected my time with them to be inspiring. A happy surro family:
Yes, we can!

But then, as we waited for Glenn and Milo to return, Zack said he had some news to share. They were trying to make a little sibling now for Milo; in fact, they’d been trying for a while. This time with Zack’s sperm, and an African American surro—the goal being to have two kids, built from four genetic strands, who’d forge a kind of family resemblance.

“Wow,” I said. My voice was thready. “I’m so happy for you.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Zack. “It’s still an uphill climb. The surro lives in Pittsburgh; we’ve gone there three months running. So far, though, no go. It’s not taking.”

All of this was said, surely, by way of being supportive (
See? We’re in the same boat. Even
we
have problems
). As such, it was worthy of my thanks. But something more like crankiness got jammed between my eyes. Sorry, but no: Stu and I were not in their same boat. They had a son already. They had Milo.

I didn’t know what to say. I watched the feeding penguins, and now their gluttony didn’t look as cute. I stood staring, out of focus, lonely.

Not the best condition for my next visit, with Joseph.

We had stayed on rotten terms since I had left the city. Shortly after the move I had e-mailed him a photo: the view out to the marsh from our deck. He had phoned me right away, and thanked me for the picture: “The kind of place,” he said, “where people ask to have their ashes scattered.” Actually, I’d thought of telling Stu that’s what I wanted, and so at frst I missed Joseph’s tone. Then he added: “Ugh. Could you imagine? For all eternity?”

I’d hung up and hadn’t called him since.

If I knew Joseph, he’d been stocking weaponry for months; to gird myself for this afternoon, I had been up-armoring, trying to envision his attacks.

So, sufficiently bored there yet?
Never been less, I’d tell him. Honestly, his New Yorker’s
pose
of boredom bored me more.

And Stu’s a faithful husband now? The salt air has tempered his libido?
I would chide Joseph for his poorly hidden jealousy, tinged with a touch of self-loathing: the implication that gay men were incapable of commitment. (So what if I’d wondered that myself ?)