All I Love and Know (54 page)

That was all Matt could handle for a first conversation. “I just need some time alone,” he said. He stood stiffly in Daniel's good-bye hug, like a straight man worried that the gay man hugging him might get the wrong idea. He closed the door behind him and watched from the window as Daniel, whistling, got into his car.
Wasn't
he
a merry fellow,
he thought. He went back into the kitchen, remembered that the grill was still on, went and turned it off. Then he called Brent and announced, “He wants me back.”

“Shut up!” Brent shouted.

At his urging, Matt went over to brood. Daniel had said the exact words he'd always wanted him to say, he told Brent, who sat there with such a pink and rosy expression Matt expected him at any moment to break into song. But it wasn't that easy! It was one thing to be apologized to and acknowledged, and another to get back those feelings.

“You don't feel it anymore?” Brent asked, crestfallen. “If you don't feel it—”

“And now, if I don't go back, it's going to be
my
fault that the kids have to shuttle back and forth between us,” Matt fumed.

Brent laughed before realizing he was serious. They were standing in the kitchen, leaning on the small island, Matt popping pretzels into his mouth and chewing furiously. On cutting boards arrayed around him were neatly chopped vegetables ready to be cooked. He looked at his watch. “Am I keeping you from dinner? Do you have a beer?”

“Nah, Derrick called and said he's going to be late.” Brent went to the refrigerator to get him a beer. Matt opened it and took a long swig, set it down on the counter. “What should I do?” he asked. “I don't want to go back to him just because I'd feel guilty
not
going back.”

“No,” Brent agreed. “That can't be the only reason. Do you love him?”

Matt was quiet for a few minutes. “I've just spent the past two and a half months learning how to
stop
loving him.”

“I have an idea,” Brent said. “Let's make a list of things you love about him, and things you don't love about him.”

They pulled up the bar stools and sat down with a pad of paper, and spent the next half hour drinking and brainstorming. Brent told him that when he and Derrick had hit ten years together, they'd stopped playing the Three Things I Love About You game, and started playing Three Things I Hate About You instead, which caused a small explosion of beer from Matt's mouth. When Matt was done with his list, he pushed the paper so it was between him and Brent and placed his palms on the table. “Okay,” he said, “that should cover it.”

LOVE ABOUT DANIEL:

Yummy Jewish looks

Smells delicious at almost every time of day

Can be sweet sweet sweet

Beautiful singing voice, can imitate k.d. lang imitating Elvis

Has been through hell (“That's not technically a thing you love about him,” Brent pointed out.)

Thinks I'm hilarious

A good kind of quietness, until recent events

Smart enough for me

Conscientious about his kids

Good politics

DON'T LOVE ABOUT DANIEL:

Treated me like shit

Threw me out like trash

Judgmental, condescending prick

Craves the approval of straight people

Stiff and humorless at times

His parents!

They sat quietly and read, till Brent sat back and crossed his ankle over his knee. One of the cats had jumped onto the counter and was rubbing against Matt's pencil. “Dude,” Brent said, “you should totally get back together.”

“Really?” Matt said, looking at his lists again. “Where do you get that? ‘Threw me out like trash' didn't impress you?”

“It did,” Brent said, “but ‘smells delicious'—you can't buy that kind of pheromonal compatibility, especially after so many years.”

“Hmph,” Matt said.

“You know, you don't have to decide right now. You could just go on a date with him.”

“I don't know,” Matt said. Something else was pushing at him, making him uneasy, and he cautiously let it enter his conscious mind. The thought of being back in that house with the kids full-time: it was daunting. In the months that had passed, his memory of the house, and everything that had happened in it, had gradually darkened, till it seemed like a dream that has the power to frighten even when its details have been forgotten. He was glad he would see Gal and Noam again—he missed them—but there lingered in him a strange hesitancy, even reluctance.

“Honestly, I don't know if I want kids,” he told Brent with a challenging, defensive look. “Do you think I'm a terrible person?”

Irony and impatience flickered over Brent's face; Matt saw it and realized, his face growing hot, that whenever he asked that, he was being a needy pain in the ass. He made a silent vow never to ask it again.

Brent was sliding the salt and pepper shakers back and forth along the counter. Something dawned on him, and his hands stilled. “You know what I think?” he said. “I think that when they first came to live with you, it happened so fast and was such a crisis that you just took them in and didn't question it. Because let's face it, you really didn't have a choice. But now you do have a choice. Now it's not the heat of the moment anymore. And maybe you're absorbing only now the kinds of losses that come with kids. Honestly, I was surprised you didn't complain more at the time. You just—presto!—became Mr. Dad.”

Matt listened, registering his own hunger to be praised, his relief to be back in Brent's good graces.

“Frankly, it creeped me out a little,” Brent said.

“Shut up.”

Brent laughed. “No, it was beautiful. Don't roll your eyes, I'm serious.” He stood and rubbed his hands together. “Look,” he said. “It's just one date.” For him, it was settled.

“When's Derrick getting home?” Matt asked.

“Why? So you can deliberate all over again, and hope he'll guide you to a different conclusion? You know he won't.”

Matt closed his eyes and groaned.

THEY MET AT THE
bar at Spoleto. Daniel's parents were visiting, so a babysitter was not a problem. Daniel had dressed up a little, Matt noticed, which was sweet; and he was wearing a leather and silver bracelet Matt had bought him as a birthday present some years ago. His voice, which had become unpleasantly flat since Joel died, had regained—what was it?—musicality; something Matt had perceived without it quite reaching his conscious mind when Daniel had come over a few days ago. And his gaze had recovered some of its old searching, teasing quality. Warmth.
I remember this man
, Matt mused. He ordered a vodka tonic and Daniel ordered a glass of wine.

“You seem better,” Matt said.

“Do I?” Daniel asked eagerly. “I feel better. I feel like I'm finally . . .” He paused as his voice broke. “Mourning.” He laughed self-consciously as he coughed back the tears. “See? Better,” he joked. “But seriously, it's so much better than that horror show I went through all year. Now I just miss my brother and Ilana, and I feel that, and cry for them, and feel my heart breaking.”

Matt looked at him, thinking: Upside: more alive, and therefore handsomer; downside: still crying all the time. He wondered if he could just sit still and listen, or whether his mind would rush to assess everything Daniel said in pros and cons.

“It's a little disconcerting for Gal and Noam,” Daniel said, “but I think it's better than an atmosphere of dread and guilt. Oh—I don't think I told you: I've enrolled Gal in karate. She starts next week. She's just—I think she's trying to figure out how much power she does and doesn't have in the world. Horseback riding has been great, but I thought that an activity that had controlled violence in it might help her.”

“I don't know why we didn't think of that earlier,” Matt said.

“I know.”

They were quiet for a few minutes, sipping their drinks and looking down at the bar, Matt swirling his forefinger on the ring his drink had formed on a cocktail napkin. “Your parents must be thrilled I'm not there,” he said.

Daniel hesitated. “I'm not gonna lie,” he said, and they laughed. “I know we promised not to, but I had to tell them we'd broken up, because I really needed some help.”

“What did your mom say?” Matt asked.

“I told her I didn't want her to comment, ever,” Daniel said, and his eyes glinted in a way that told Matt she had commented anyway. “She said she was sorry I had to go through this alone.”

Matt narrowed his eyes. “What did you tell her about why we broke up?” he asked.

Daniel took a sip of wine, and set his glass down carefully.

“I might get sick, you know,” Matt blurted. And then, challenging him: “I might get sick. We don't know—it's still three months before a test result will be at all reliable.”

“Don't you think I've been doing the math?” Daniel asked.

“And have you thought about what your response will be if I end up positive?”

“I've tried,” Daniel said, his face coloring. “But I can't be sure.”

“So there's a possibility you'll think it's my own damn fault, and with all you've gone through, you can't take on one more hard thing,” Matt said, surprised at his own hard tone. “Or that you can't put the kids through another possible loss, and if it's between me and them . . .”

“Please don't set this up as a you versus them thing, Matt. That's really unfair, and really . . . unhelpful.”

They were quiet, stunned that things had blown up so quickly, regretting being in such a public space, where people brushed against the backs of their chairs on the way to their tables and murmured, “Hey, how's it going.” Matt didn't even know what he wanted Daniel to say; he'd just hurtled forward, needing to slam against this wall to see if it would hold. Finally, Daniel leaned forward and burst out quietly, “What do you want me to say? That I'll never think that we could have avoided this? Not even let it broach my thoughts for one millisecond? That I'll feel fine about having to put safety precautions into place, and about the prospect of you slowly dying in our house?”

“No!” Matt lied. “How about that you'll be really sad—and take care of me!”

Daniel sat back with an irritated sigh. “For Christ's sake, doesn't that go without saying?”

“No! It could use a little saying,” Matt said. “I'm the guy who got kicked out.”

Daniel shook his head wearily. He was willing to take his licks, he was; but Matt's need for him to say it aloud was insulting. As if he was such a monster he'd let him die alone! He took his wallet out of his pocket, consulted the check, and tossed his credit card on the table.

How had it happened that Daniel was dismissing
him
? Matt reached into his pocket and withdrew a crumpled ten, which he lay on the bar and smoothed out with his hands.

“You don't have to,” Daniel said.

Matt shrugged, sardonic.

They walked silently through the downtown, hands in their jacket pockets, past a lot of couples out on a warm night and a line at the movie theater. They passed a few places where each of them could have turned off to his own house, both of them wondering what would happen when they parted, and when they reached the last possible point, they stopped.
Tell him you'd take care of him and cherish him to the end
, Daniel thought,
that's what he wants to hear
. But somehow, the words stuck in his craw. Instead, he said, “What's next?”

“I don't know,” Matt said.

“I love you,” Daniel said. “I didn't want this to end with a fight.”

“Neither did I,” Matt said. He was tired, his mind gummed-up.

They said their good-byes quietly, and when Matt got home, he knew it was over. Luckily, he hadn't let his hopes get too high. He dropped down on the couch with the dog and buried his face in her neck, and she snuffled and sighed, and he fell asleep there.

The doorbell sounded first in his dreams, and when he surfaced, chilled, his eyes searching out the light of the one lit lamp, he felt a spasm of primitive fear at the unexpected late-night phone call or knock at the door. He rose and went to the door, turned on the porch light, and peered out. Daniel stood there in his leather jacket.

When he opened the door for him, Daniel grabbed him by the belt and pulled him to him, slipped his hand between his legs, and cupped him hard. Matt let himself be led up to the bedroom and pushed onto the bed, let Daniel open his belt and fly, pull down his pants, kneel over him with his knee between Matt's legs, and kiss him roughly. “Turn over,” he said, reaching for his own belt, and Matt obeyed, kicking his pants off his ankles. He heard Daniel pull his own pants down, then the rip of a condom wrapper and the small snap of his putting it on.

“In the drawer,” Matt said, and he heard it open and Daniel's hand scurrying inside in search of the lube.

Daniel entered him awkwardly, rested there. He was still wearing his shirt and jacket and shoes. “Is this what you wanted?” he grunted.

Matt's eyes were closed, his ass burning like hell. As Daniel fucked him, his mind groped for the oblivion he craved, but he couldn't let go of the awareness that Daniel was playing a role. After all these years, he thought, it would take a prodigious act of imagination he probably wasn't capable of to get into this rough-trade fantasy. That ship had so sailed! Where to get the pleasure from, then? From the sheer brutality of the thrust? From gratitude that Daniel was still trying? From the danger Daniel was half-facing? From the idea that Daniel was angry, and punishing him?

It felt okay, it just didn't blow his mind. It wasn't really what he wanted. He rested, his cheek pressed into the mattress, and waited for Daniel to finish. After he did, Daniel eased out of him, both of them wincing, and flopped down next to him, on his back. His face was flushed. It was a large bed on a low wood platform, with a wood headboard; its sheets, blanket, and bedspread were various lovely shades of white. They lay there breathing and sweating. “This is an awesome bed,” Daniel said.