What Binds Us (13 page)

Leonardo became a constant in our lives.

Dondi stopped going to the bars. He stopped swimming through the baths, where a school of boys, like lemmings out to sea, had swam in his wake. He stopped beating the bushes in the parks for the orifices and appendages of strangers. He replaced indiscriminate sex with indiscriminate extravagance and the object of this largess, naturally, was Leonardo.

“I still don’t like him,” Matthew said one day.

“I know,” I said. “But, at least he got Dondi to stop sleeping around. That’s a good thing. These are dangerous times we’re living in.”

“You know, I don’t even think he’s gay. He’s just selling himself to Dondi.”

“And your brother is buying. Leave it alone, Matthew. He’s happy.”

“I know,” he said miserably. “I just wish I were.”

Oddly enough, it was Leonardo who made us consider getting married. Matthew was stretched out on Dondi’s couch, his head in my lap. The fingers of my one hand were loosely entwined with his while with my free hand I stroked his hair. Matthew murmured softly, a contented cat.

“Why are you two always touching each other?” Leonardo asked edgily.

Dondi raised an eyebrow.

Matthew answered from behind closed lids. “It’s simple,” he purred. “I am Antaeus and Thomas is the earth. As long as I can touch him, as long as I can stand on the rock of his love, I am invincible.”

I stared at Leonardo as he adjusted his glasses—fashionable, round, golden, a theatrical appurtenance donned for the affected charm of near-sightedness—and nearly missed what he said next. “Maybe you two should get married.”

“Get married?”

“Yeah, you know. Rent a church, invite all your friends—”

“And pledge public and eternal devotion to each other,” Dondi finished for him. “A most excellent suggestion on the part of my beloved, I daresay.”

Matthew sat up, looked at me. “Would you marry me?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Why? Are you asking?”

“I’m asking.”

***

As we were getting into bed he said,” You know it never occurred to me to ask you to marry me, but I’m glad I did.”

“I’m glad you did too. Although I wish it had been anyone’s idea but Leonardo’s.”

He chuckled and turned out the light. Almost instantly he turned the light back on and sat up. “You did say yes, didn’t you?”

I leaned over and turned out the light, then let my body tell him yes.

As I snuggled against him, he again sat up and turned on the light. “I just want to be sure that
that
was a ‘yes’.”

I leaned over and turned out the light again. And told him yes, all over again.

“Hey,” he said curling against my back, “We’re getting married.”

“I know,” I mumbled sleepily, reaching for his hand and bringing it to my lips. “And if you turn that light on one more time, I am going to be a widow before I am a bride.”

When I awoke the next morning he was already gone. “Went shopping,” the note taped to the refrigerator door said.

It was after twelve when I heard his key in the door. I was in the den writing and knew he wouldn’t come in since I didn’t like to be disturbed when I was working, so I was surprised when the door crashed open. “Wilma, I’m home! Here,” he said, thrusting a small light blue box tied with a white satin ribbon at me. TIFFANY.

Inside was a dark velvet case. I opened it to reveal a five-carat emerald-cut blue-white diamond.

“An engagement ring?” I asked, dumbfounded.

He nodded. “It’s so everyone will know you’re taken.”

“Oh, Matthew. It’s beautiful.” I looked from the ring to him and back again, unable to decide which was the more surprising, which the more beautiful. “You know I love you, Matthew, but I can’t wear this.”

“Of course you can,” he said, stepping closer to me and removing a fine gold chain from around his neck. He took the ring with its enormous stone and slipped it onto the chain then fastened the necklace about my neck. He slipped the ring and chain inside my shirt. “There!”

“How is that supposed to stop the wolves from gathering around my door? No one will know it’s there.”

“
You’ll
know it’s there.”

“I love you,” I said again.

“Talk is cheap,” he said, putting his hands on my head. “Why don’t you show me?”

***

As neither of us cared about the particulars of the wedding, we left the details to Dondi and, more reluctantly, to Leonardo.

“I see doves. White.”

“Aren’t all doves white?” Matthew asked from his sprawled position on the floor.

“Three hundred,” Leonardo continued, speaking over Matthew’s reasonable observation.

“Three hundred doves? In a church?” Dondi asked.

“We’re not getting married in a church,” I said.

“Of course you’re getting married in a church. Now, what about flowers?”

“I don’t want to get married in a church,” I repeated and stood up, carefully stepping over Matthew.

“I want you married in the sight of God!” Dondi sucked furiously on a slim cigarette.

“Sight of God? What are you talking about? God turned his back on us eons ago. Even Christ knew that. His last words on the cross were, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’”

Dondi looked at me furiously and smashed his cigarette out in a black crystal ashtray. “Talk to him,” he told Matthew.

“What do you want me to do?” Matthew asked his brother. “He doesn’t believe in God.”

“He doesn’t believe in God?” Dondi repeated. Then, to me, “You don’t?”

“Why not?” Leonardo asked.

“I find it less difficult to believe in no God than in a disinterested one. God the Father as a deadbeat dad. He put us here and then forgot about us. If you don’t believe he forgot about us, explain war. Explain children dying. Explain AIDS.”

“Explain love,” Leonardo challenged.

“Forget it,” I said. “Just let’s forget the whole thing. Matthew and I have been together this long without being married. I don’t think we need to do this.”

“I
want
to do this,” Matthew said quietly, sitting up. There was such hurt in his voice that I wanted to kick myself in the head. I could see tears trembling on his lashes. He stood and walked out of the room.

“Oh, Jesus,” I muttered, following him into the kitchen. I flicked on the light. Fluorescent light flooded the room and I shut my eyes for a minute. “Look, Matthew. I
want
to marry you. I love you. I want to shout ‘Thomas loves Matthew’ from the top of the tallest building in the world. And I want to keep it a secret. I want to tell everyone and no one about you.”

He looked at me in that way he has that makes me think he doesn’t look so much at me, or through me, as
into
me. The first time we made love he’d touched me like a blind man, his eyes wide open. I’ve always felt that if I were placed in a line-up with six other men behind Plexiglas, Matthew would be unable to identify me; he saw me with something other than his eyes.

“Look, I want to marry you. I want
you
to want to marry
me
. But we don’t have to do this. I’ll love you regardless. Married or not, you’re stuck with me. Okay?” He spoke with the conviction of a child.

“Matthew, I love you with all my heart. No words or ring can make me love you any more or any less. I would love you in the dark if I had to.”

When we returned to the living room, Dondi looked at us anxiously.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“So is there going to be a wedding, or isn’t there?”

“I think everybody needs to calm down,” Leonardo said. “I don’t think we’re really fighting about churches here. Or even weddings. Everybody is just tense.”

We all stared at Leonardo. He was actually making sense.

“He’s right,” I said. I hadn’t written so much as a sentence in weeks. My career was not only stalled, it was non-existent. I was beyond tense. I was panic-stricken.

“It’s this weather,” Dondi allowed. “Cold weather always makes you cranky.”

Matthew wisely limited his response to a nod of agreement.

“Can’t we get away?” Leonardo asked. “Somewhere warm.”

“There’s an idea.”

“Barbados,” Matthew and Dondi said together.

“We still have the house,” Matthew said excitedly.

“I’ll call my travel agent.”

The four of us flew to Barbados two days later. Our plane took off as a light snow began to fall.

***

Matthew rented us a kind of dune buggy and we were driving around the island looking for something to do when I saw it, partly hidden behind a gray stone wall.

“Stop,” I said suddenly. “Stop.”

Matthew pulled the dune buggy off to the side of the road. “What?”

“There!” I pointed to a steepled building the color of wet concrete with an orange-painted galvanized roof. “What’s that?”

“It looks like a church,” Dondi said, getting out of the buggy and walking up to the iron gates, which were open and falling off their hinges.

We walked up the wide, graveled drive and into the church. Inside was a gymnasium of white space. Arched windows without glass stretched toward the roof. There were no doors, no altar, nothing of religious significance. If this had ever been God’s house, He had most certainly moved.

“This is it,” I said, looking around. “I want to get married here.”

“But it’s abandoned.”

“I don’t care. I want to marry Matthew here.”

“But, T,” Dondi began. “The floors are
dirt.”

I stared at him. My eyes, I knew, had gone flat with determination.

“Fine,” Dondi said, relenting. “I know that look.”

Matthew looked from one of us to the other and shook his head with amazement.

***

A cry for help woke me and I struggled against sleep’s embrace. It took me a full minute to realize that it was Matthew’s arms that held me, not sleep. “Matthew, wake up. Let go.”

“What? What?” he asked, letting me go and sitting up.

“I heard something.”

“Help. Matthew! Thomas!” It was Leonardo.

When we got to Dondi and Leonardo’s bedroom, we found Dondi standing against the glass doors that led out onto the beach, trembling and hugging himself. He was shaking so hard his teeth chattered.

“Jesus,” Matthew breathed. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s got a fever. He had a tooth pulled last week and he hasn’t been right since,” Leonardo told us. “He’s had a fever all night. He won’t stop sweating. We’ve already changed the sheets twice.”

“Dondi,” I said. “Dondi? Can you hear me?”

He turned unfocused eyes on me, his face flushed.

The last picture in my parents’ wedding album is a black-and-white photograph of them kissing in profile. My father holds in his hand behind them a thousand-watt light bulb. The background glows with a brilliant ethereal light. As I looked at Dondi, I thought of that picture. I could see the fever burning beneath his skin like the bulb in my father’s hand.

I stepped closer, touched his arm. Heat came off him in waves. “God, he’s burning up. Is there a hospital around here?”

“Not one I’d trust,” Matthew said, stepping closer.

“What’s wrong with him?” Leonardo demanded.

“Get me a thermometer.” I eased Dondi into a chair and forced the thermometer under his tongue. After two minutes, I removed it. It read one hundred and four degrees. “We’ve got to break the fever,” I said. “Matthew, is there an ice-maker in the house?”

“Yeah. There should be.”

“Okay. Go and bring back all the ice you can. Leonardo, fill the tub with cold water while I undress him.” I removed Dondi’s pajama top, pulled down his pants. “Dondi, I need you to lift your leg up. Can you do that?” I slipped my arm around his waist. My arm fell against his hip bone hard. I looked at him.

Matthew was dumping the last of the ice into the tub.

“Okay, help me get him in the tub. We’re gonna have to hold him because he’ll fight. Ten minutes, then we take his temperature. We don’t want to bring it down too fast. Okay. On three. One…two…three.”

We lifted him and plunged him into the ice water. Dondi surged up out of the tub, struggling against our pinioning arms. He thrashed. He screamed. He fought. Water crashed over us like a bitter wave. Leonardo winced and pulled away.

“Get back over here,” Matthew growled. “And hold his legs.”

Leonardo did as he was told. He grasped Dondi’s hot legs gingerly. “What is it?” he asked, desperately of no one in particular. “What is it? What’s wrong with him?”

“Okay, where’s the thermometer?” I asked, and Matthew handed it to me. It confirmed his temperature had started to drop. “It’s going down. Let’s try another ten minutes.”

By morning Dondi seemed fine. Except for a slight flush to his complexion—which may have been the beginning of a tan—he bore no evidence of the previous night’s fever.

“How do you feel?”

“Fine,” he answered brightly, looking up from a pile of papers on the round glass table.

“I’m bored,” Leonardo said.

“Well, go do something.”

“I want to go scuba diving.”

“Matthew scuba dives. Go with him.”

“I—” Matthew started to protest.

“Go,” I interrupted. “I’ll stay with Dondi.”

“Darling, I don’t need a nurse. I’m fine.”

I indicated the door with my head. Matthew and Leonardo left.

“Fine, if you’re going to stay, make yourself useful.” Dondi indicated a box on the chair. It contained sample wedding invitations. He’d had them Federal Expressed from a stationer in Philadelphia. “Pick out the invitations you want.”

I’d had no idea there were so many types of invitations to choose from. I closed the book. “Dondi, what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing,” he answered, reaching for the phone.

“Don’t tell me ‘nothing.’” That fever last night wasn’t ‘nothing.’”

“I’ve had fevers before.”

“Leonardo says you’ve been having night sweats.”

“I had a tooth pulled last week. I probably have an infection. That’s all.”

“You’re losing weight.”

“I haven’t been able to eat properly since that damned dentist pulled my tooth.”

“You’ve lost a lot of weight. I know. I’ve seen you naked, remember?”

“That was years ago. I still had baby fat. Yes, hello,” he said into the phone.

I studied him, tried not to worry about him.

“Yes,” he shouted, triumphant, an hour later. He hung up the phone. “We have the church!”

I tried not to smile at his enthusiasm, but it was infectious. “Why are you working so hard on this?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, at the beginning you weren’t too keen on your brother and I getting together.”

“That was ages ago. I’ve watched the two of you. I’ve never seen a couple more perfect together. You should only have loved one person. Matthew was made to love only one person. If you and he had never met, he would have loved no one. If anything ever happened to you, he would love no one else.”

He was right. For Matthew, desire was strictly a function of love. If he had never loved, he would not have known lust. Horniness did not exist for him as an abstract concept. No one—neither woman nor man—held sexual sway over him, save me.

***

When we got back from Barbados there was a letter waiting for Dondi. It was a small square envelope, white with a black edge. It had been forwarded from Aurora. He ripped open the envelope and withdrew a card of heavy paper, also white with a black border. He read it. His eyes flickered. His face paled. He handed me the note.

I read out loud:

We regret to inform you of the death of

Patrick Sean Kealey

from complications due to AIDS.

He asked that his remains be cremated.

There will be a memorial service at a date to be announced.

Handwritten in the upper left hand corner, both legend and salutation, was a single word: Daughter.

“Oh, Dondi.”

“That’s his handwriting on the envelope,” Dondi said. “He wrote out his own death announcement.” Dondi looked as if he’d suffered a physical blow.

“Patrick Sean Kealey?” Matthew asked.

“Pat,” I clarified. “Patricia-Pat.”

Matthew looked ill.

“What does it mean?” Leonardo asked.

“Nothing,” Dondi said resolutely. “It means nothing.”

I looked at the envelope in my hand. It was postmarked Kansas. I remembered that Pat was from there. “He must have gone home to die,” I said, feeling an inexplicable sadness.

Dondi clapped his hands. “C’mon now. We have a wedding in a little over a month, so let’s get busy.”

There was so much to do. There was the matter of photographers. We ended up with four. Two video-photographers, a woman for the color stills and a fashion photographer who specialized in black-and-white stills. Then there was the matter of flowers. Matthew wanted peonies.

“Peonies,” Dondi repeated disparagingly. “Why on earth would you want those?”

“They were the first flowers I ever gave Thomas.”

“He stole them from our neighbor’s yard,” I added.

“That’s so sweet,” Leonardo said, caught up in the moment.

Matthew shrugged. “I’m just a sentimental fool,” he said with helpless charm.

“Obviously,” Dondi cracked briskly. “Still, a wedding is no place for sentiment. We’ll use roses.” He made a notation on his pad.

Matthew sighed. That night in bed he complained, “Isn’t this supposed to be
our
wedding?”

“Wedding? It’s no longer a wedding,” I mourned. “It’s a fucking coronation!”

When the caterer in New Jersey expressed concern about the safe passage of the wedding cake, Dondi agreed to fly her and her baker to Barbados and arranged for the use of a hotel kitchen so the cake could be baked there.

Leonardo took me shopping. He was responsible for picking out my suit and Matthew’s. He would tell neither of us what the other was wearing.

For me he selected a Brioni suit, a shantung silk of the palest pink imaginable, handmade and flawlessly tailored. I gasped at the staggering price tag.

“Oh, please!” Leonardo cried, exasperated. “Like Matthew can’t afford this.”

“Leonardo, I could buy a car for less.”

“Yeah, but you can’t wear a car to your wedding, can you?”

“Leonardo,” I snapped, all but stomping my foot.

“Listen,” he said, losing all patience. “I happen to know what Matthew is wearing and what he paid for it. He is going to look his best for you. Does he deserve less from you?”

Chagrined, I signed the charge slip.

Our ceremony was scheduled for the last Saturday in June, 1985. Dondi, Leonardo and I flew back to Barbados the Saturday before. Two dozen guests, including my parents and the three furies, were flying in that Wednesday. Matthew was flying in alone that Friday, the day before the wedding. We were not to see each other until the day of the ceremony, although Dondi allowed us to talk on the phone as often as we wanted.