Call Me Home (19 page)

A boy with a camera on a strap around his neck was leaning out of a sidewalk tree, snapping photographs. Amy had expected everyone to be young, younger than her at least, but now here was everyone – the very old and very young; teenagers with shocks of pink and blue hair, rainbow buttons, intricate torn stockings; women shivering with electrical tape Xed over their nipples; people in modest sweaters and slacks wearing buttons splashed with slogans. And the signs –
Gay marriage is a civil right. Love will win. Jesus had two dads.
It felt like a different world from the one she lived in. Where, in Fannin, Texas, was the place for two women or two men who wanted to be together, who did not want to wear the too-tight tie of the Baptist church? In Washington, just fifty miles from here, in the little house beside the dark creek, beneath those trees, what need was there for questions of rights?

There were tables set up in the brick courtyard outside of the college, and she walked past each of them slowly. She tried not to look too closely at anyone. She didn't want anyone to see how new it all was. Still, a woman at a table reached out and touched her arm. “Welcome,” she said. “Take anything, please.”

The stacks of fliers were for events, counseling,
How to Support Your Gay, Lesbian, or Transgendered Child
, one said, and she reached for it. The woman smiled at her. “Do you have a queer child?” she asked, and Amy flinched at the word. She had heard that word flung at kids at her own high school. Had she used it, even? She was terrified, now, that people were throwing it at her own son.

“I think,” Amy said, “my son is gay. He's sixteen. I think.” She took a breath. “That he's gay, I mean.”

The woman smiled at her again. “Well, we have lots of information on how to talk to your son. How to support him.” She collated
a stack of pamphlets and offered it to Amy. “Your son is lucky,” the woman said, “to have a mother who cares so much.”

Amy felt a thick ache in the back of her throat, behind her eyes, a rush of gratitude. She glanced at the papers in her hand. “Say ‘I love you,'” she read. “Let your child know you are there for him/her.” She blinked hard and nodded at the woman. “Thank you,” she said.

She stood in the crowd and listened to speeches from a congressman, a teacher, a man who had been born a woman. People were cheering. This is the right world, she thought. This is the way it should be. There were so many dark things she feared for Jackson, ways she imagined him hurt, his flawless body marred, his fierce heart stung, and here they began to burn away like early fog under sunlight: he would not be alone.

She ducked into one of the bars and ordered a gin and tonic. She took it to the back corner, sitting in the dim light and watching people through the open door with their signs, their dazzling, scrapped-together outfits. They looked happy. They were electric and shouting. She felt a breathless relief, an almost painful happiness, and at the same time it was the farthest she'd ever felt from the world, from history. She had been outside of everything, all of her life. However small her life in Fannin had been, her life now was smaller.

Always she had imagined that each person had a life that was coming for them, the life that was already in motion and would grab them up if they did nothing to change it. Her Fannin life, that she had walked away from. And then the lives they might choose instead – her life in Washington or the life she might have had if she'd gone to take classes in Seguin. They were infinite, these lives. But for a gay man, she thought, for my gay son, there are fewer lives, and more divided: a secret life, a non-life, a denial. Or the fear-life, a life that tasted of blood and dirt and smelled of prickling sweat and sounded like a boot to the ribs. For Jackson she wanted something else. She wanted every promise that lit from these hopeful tongues, the warm and waiting streets they marched on. She wanted
him to have what was owed him, for the world to crack open for him. She wanted to give it all to him like a gift. She did not want for him to feel the poor, small life that was already around him for a minute longer, when all of this was here, waiting.

SHE PULLED UP
at the house at five. Gary looked her up and down. “Well?” he asked. She imagined that the day had written itself on her, that the luminous world was on her skin.

“It's benign,” she said. “Everything is fine; it's benign.” She turned away from him and filled a pot at the sink, concentrating on how the water streamed bright as stars, the lick of flame at the stove, all the tiny miracles.

She lay beside Lydia first that night, stroking her hair until she fell asleep. Gary was still in the kitchen, slowly filling the ashtray in front of him. She knocked lightly on Jackson's door until she heard him call her in. He was in bed, the desk lamp casting a yellow light across his book, shining off his soft brown hair, and she sat on the edge of the bed. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi, Mom.”

“I went to the city today, Jackie,” she whispered.

“Marysville?”

“Seattle.”

He looked at her quickly, surprised. “What for?”

“They were having a rally. I wanted to see it. For people's rights, gay people.” She wasn't going to say gay but then she did. What was so terrifying about letting him know she knew, she wondered. What was so big?

Jackson didn't ask why she had gone. “Oh,” he said. He put his book down.

“There were so many people out there, Jackie. Everyone was so excited, marching. Giving speeches. I couldn't believe how many people.”

He looked at her with interest. “One day,” she said. “You should try living in a city like that.” She was choosing her words carefully, afraid that he might retreat from her. She wanted him to
understand. “It would be so good for you, to go wherever you want. You can be anyone in a place like that, a city like that.” Where it's safer, she thought. Where everyone will welcome you, and who you are can be the same person who walks down the street.

He busied himself with tucking the bedspread in around him. It was an ugly bedspread, cheap cotton over batting. “Maybe after Lydia graduates,” he said, slowly. “Maybe we'll move to the city.”

She looked at him, tucked into his bed. He was sixteen, indisputably beautiful, impossibly older than his years. “That's seven years from now, baby,” she said. “You'll need your life, too.”

He looked at her, not unkindly, but as though their roles were reversed, and she was full of silly, childlike plans. And wasn't it silly, she thought, to pretend that they lived in a normal way, to pretend that Jackson wasn't already seeing too much, and worrying too much, and taking too much care of her and Lydia? A ragged pain tore through her; she breathed slow to stop it, reached up and touched his hair, swept it out of his eyes.

Two weeks later, she tried to leave for the first time. Gary was still doing contract work in Sedro-Woolley, which meant he was gone for long hours, and the kids were out of school. “Jackie,” she said, “Go pack a bag with clothes, and anything else you absolutely need. And your wallet, and your bathroom things. And then help your sister do the same thing, please.”

Jackson asked her nothing. He moved quickly, and whatever he said to Lydia kept her satisfied; she carried her pink backpack sweetly and with purpose. They packed the car with only what they needed. She was doing a last sweep of the house, checking for anything they'd forgotten, when she heard the rattle of the truck down the gravel road.

Gary took everything back inside quietly, systematically, almost bemused. The anger would come later, and until then they would wait. The taste of smallness and fear was a bitter lump in Amy's throat. Gary offered no explanation for how he had known, and she didn't ask. He was smart in that way only, but it was enough to keep him in a family.

Jackson

Missoula, Montana, 2010

DON DROVE THE TWO HOURS FROM SILVER TO MISSOULA
while Jackson slept. They'd worked all week; it was Friday afternoon, and even though it was still early Jackson's whole body ached. A hundred miles or so through dirty snow, occasional breathtaking scarps of rock and pine. Little towns like Silver, old mining towns set off I-90, dirty bars that he wished they would stop at. A bar for anyone, Jackson thought, except for two men who are fucking each other.

The trip had been Don's idea. “For the Fourth of July,” he said. “I want to show you Missoula. We'll get a hotel, go out on the river. Say yes.” Later Jackson would think of a hundred questions, starting with what it all meant, but he said nothing. He felt still inside. He said yes.

Don pulled off at one of the first exits, before the town had even shown itself. A truck stop exit. There was a bar, a spaceship of a convenience store, a strip club, and a motel, which Don pulled into. Jackson had imagined that Don would want a fancier place, at least a Holiday Inn, someplace mildly astringent, and he felt briefly pleased and then disappointed. This was on Don's dime. Some shameful part of himself wanted the kind of vicarious luxury he'd had at Eric's. Instead, they had a dirty little room that smelled of smoke.

It was, in fact, the dirtiest motel he'd ever seen. Worse than the Starlight. There were cigarette burns on the plasticized spread and the walls were stained; Jackson tried not to imagine what had
made those hazy continents. Don took the backpack from Jackson's hands and tossed it on the single chair, then pushed Jackson down on the bed with its sinkhole center and jizz stains. Jackson didn't care about the bed; Don was stretching his long body on top of Jackson's, kissing him, and every inch of Jackson's skin felt electric, alert. Jackson grabbed Don's ass with his hands, then dragged his palms up over his muscled back. They lay still that way for a moment, and then Jackson pushed Don onto his back and kneeled above him. He unbuttoned Don's jeans and took his cock in his mouth. Don's hands were tightening in his hair. “Oh, God,” he kept saying. “Oh, God, Jackson.” It sounded like he was crying. When he came, he put both hands around Jackson's ears until Jackson could hear a ringing. Jackson fell onto the bed beside Don, turning toward him, wrapping their limbs together.

Don's arms were tight around Jackson, and he could hear Don's heart pounding, feel it against him. The beat drove a quick, delicious pain into Jackson's heart. Don's wedding ring was a narrow belt cutting into his fourth finger, worn so long that there was no way to slip it off.

IN THE MORNING
, Don drove him slowly through town. Jackson was watching him to see if he was nervous. What if they ran into someone Don knew? He wanted it to happen, just to know what Don would say. But the truck passed unnoticed through the streets while Don pointed to the bridges, the way to the college, the Wilma Theater, the Clark Fork River running high through the center of town. Don came through here all the time, Jackson knew; Don had told him this much. He would leave Silver late at night, then arrive in mid-morning the next day with supplies. Jackson couldn't bring himself to ask, but he knew what that meant – a few hours stolen with his wife in the middle of the night. Now, beside Don in the truck, he allowed himself the fact that he had hoped that this trip meant something – that Don was acknowledging their
thing
, that Don's wife didn't mean much to Don anymore. Jackson allowed himself the fact that he'd hoped for proof of it. That some
kind of moment in town, some interaction with Don's
real
life, would prove that Jackson himself might be a part of it, now or one day.

They drove east, and just out of town Don pulled off at an old dance hall. “Harold's Club,” Don said. “It's an institution. They've got a ram's head in a plastic bubble in there.” Don went in and bought some whiskey and they parked near the river. Don pulled his fly rod and tackle box out of the back of the truck. Montana was beautiful, somehow more majestic than Idaho. The cottonwoods flicked their arms over the dark green of the river. Jackson had never gone anywhere with someone he was fucking. Or dating, though he'd never dated. It gave him a little thrill. My
boyfriend
. Don looked even easier and more coltish by the river, his big palms on his knees, and Jackson felt his cock twitch, that deep ache in his balls. Here they were, in this place that was Don's. The Clark Fork winding past, slow and green. Houses on stilts, the tumble of gravel into the river. He imagined them doing manly Montana things together – more fishing, Don with a line of silver trout. Jackson on a horse, picking his way up in the hills. He liked this kind of tableau, even if he'd never held a fishing pole in his life. The only time he'd ridden a horse had been in the sawdust arena at the Puyallup Fair; they'd put him on a fat old mare that farted loudly and embarrassed him.

Jackson took off his shirt and lay back on the warm rocks watching Don sort through his tackle. “Let me show you a cast,” Don said, but Jackson shook his head.

“You go on,” he called. The sun was on him. He wanted to stay there forever.

Don picked up the bottle and opened it and took a drink. He looked at Jackson's bare stomach, reached out and touched it with his fingertips. “You make me feel old,” Don said. “You make me feel like an old man.”

Jackson concentrated on the feeling of Don's fingers on his skin. “And all of this time I thought I made you feel young again,” he said. Don laughed. That deep, easy laugh that made people like
him. Everyone liked Don. He was a man's man – Jackson had said that to him once, lying in A-frame B, the airy crosshatch of beams above them, and Don had laughed, and Jackson pinned him down on the cool wood floor.