Isolation Play (Dev and Lee) (15 page)

Bringing him here is strange. It’s part of me, and I want him to know it, but at the same time, he doesn’t feel like he belongs here. He’s part of my new life, and all this, all around, is my old. It’s past, but I still feel its pull. The movie theater, with the busted door on the employee bathroom that you have to close with baling wire; I wonder if they’ve fixed it. The school, the smell of the office and the classrooms. And of course, the auto shop, where Gregory and I spent late afternoons watching the mechanics take apart cars, neither of us as interested as my father wanted us to be. It pulls like a magnet, but I force myself to look ahead.

It’s about five-thirty when we pull up outside the white two-story house that I would know anywhere. It’s like one of those dreams where you know a place but don’t know how you know it. It always feels like that, ever since I went away to college. My life has come so far from this place that I don’t feel I belong here, and yet there’s a part of me that always will, a part that is lashing my tail and tapping my finger on the door handle as the car rolls to a stop behind my father’s.

Lee sits behind the wheel as I push my door open, staring ahead of him at the black pickup, or maybe just at the street, or maybe at something inside his own head.

“
Fox?” I ask. “You coming?”

Another second, then he gives a quick nod and opens his door. He smiles at me as he gets out. “Right behind ya.”

He climbs the front stairs behind me, true to his word. It’s comforting to feel him there, but also disorienting, something out of place. It makes me hesitate at the door I’ve walked through so many times. I rest my paw against the door frame, one claw scraping at chipped paint. Should I knock? Am I allowed to just walk in? The last time I was here, in May, I met my father at the shop and we came home together. The more I stand here, the more nervous I get. I pull a chip of paint off the frame.

Lee fidgets behind me. I reach for the handle and pull the door open. “Hi! I’m here,” I call, stepping in.

The living room is spotless, teflon couch and coffee table squared to each other, with my father’s large wooden chair to one side. They’ve changed the pictures in the living room, I notice. The big one used to be a family portrait, over the fireplace; now it’s a landscape. But there are pictures of me and Gregory on the side table, Gregory at his law school graduation, me holding up a Dragons jersey on draft day. Nothing of me on the Firebirds. Beneath the smells of steak and potato, our family smell permeates the house, a scent that is at once comforting and unsettling. It’s part of me, from a life I’m not a part of anymore, like my body remembering how to run one of those college plays that doesn’t work in the pros.

I take all this in, the new stuff and the things that haven’t changed, so that I’m not aware until Lee brushes my tail that my mother is standing in the kitchen doorway. Over a flowery blue print dress, she has on an apron and a smile, which remains fixed even as her eyes flick to Lee.

His ears are slightly back, but he’s smiling too. I walk over to Mom and hug her, and she hugs tightly back and presses her muzzle hard against mine. “Hello, Devlin,” she says. “Did you have a nice trip?”

“
It was good.” I start to turn toward Lee.

“
It’s been a long time.”

“
Just since Easter.” I step back. “Mom, this is Lee.”

She meets his eyes. Lee puts his ears up and brightens his smile. Mom draws in a breath and then steps forward stiffly, the smile locked in place. “I’m Duscha. So nice to meet you.”

Lee’s smile looks sincere even though I know he can put on a fake one easily. “It’s a real pleasure getting to see where Dev grew up,” he says, “and I can see now where he gets his good looks from.”

Mom doesn’t quite know what to do with that, but when Lee bows and touches his nose to her paw, her smile thaws. She clasps his paw and says, “Devlin hasn’t told us much about you.”

As if they’d asked. “I—”

Lee cuts my protest short. “He talks about you quite a bit,” he says. “I’m so happy to finally meet you.”

It’s nice to see the smile reach her eyes. She offers us a drink, and talks about Gregory, who was home for the weekend, I guess, and just left last night. She loves his commercial, of course. I admit that we haven’t seen it, and that sends us out into the living room so she can pull it up on the DVR.

I sit on the couch. After some thought, Lee sits at the far end. He rubs the teflon under his paws, and when he looks over at me, I extend my claws and show him how they just glide over the surface without damaging it. He grins and nods understanding. And we have time to do all this because my mother is struggling with the DVR remote as though it’s a live creature trying to escape her grasp, and she’s trying to find the right button to immobilize it.

Finally, she calls up Gregory’s commercial, which ran in the middle of the football game. It wasn’t ours; it was the Boxers and the Sabretooths, who are in first again. The commercial is right near the end. I see a couple plays I’d like to see again, as she’s fast-forwarding, but she’s so excited about the commercial, I can’t stop her.

So we sit through it. Gregory’s sitting behind a big fancy desk. He’s wearing a suit and tie, looking very professional. I recognize him by appearance, but his voice is stiff and different. “It’s not his desk,” Mom whispers. He makes his pitch for his law firm, a small, independent partnership, and smiles for the camera, preening his cheek ruffs. His are more full than mine.

“
The camera loves him,” Mom says. She fumbles with the remote again, as they cut back to the game.

I exchange glances with Lee as the announcers say, “Game break! On the field in Chevali, there’s been a bit of a scuffle, and a player is injured.” The coverage switches to our game for two seconds, and then the recording ends.

Mom turns to us and says, “Isn’t that great?”

Lee’s looking sideways at me, clearly waiting until I say something. “Um, sure.” I curl my tail around behind me. Part of me wants to see Fisher’s injury again, morbidly, to see what it looks like. I realize I don’t have a clear memory of it happening.

“
It’s great,” Lee says, and indicates the TV. “Did you see the rest of that fight?”

“
How is that player?” Mom says. “It looked horrible.”

“
He’s fine.” Gena hasn’t been in touch, but I assume I would’ve heard if something bad had happened. “Probably out for the season, though.”

“
He is out for the season,” Lee says. “I talked to Gena.”

“
Oh, that’s a shame. He was a friend of yours, right?”

“
Still is.” I scratch my muzzle, looking at Lee, who smiles at me. “Did you see my commercial?”

Mom looks down at her lap. “I think I missed it. I was making lunch in the kitchen and your father said it was coming on.”

So they didn’t feel the need to record that. But I haven’t seen the commercial either, so I’m wondering if maybe it’s just not a very good commercial.

Lee breaks the ensuing silence with a compliment about the living room. His posture looks strange; it takes me a minute to see that he’s got his paws clasped together and his tail twitching behind him. Usually when he’s nervous he holds his tail. I realize that he’s holding back so he doesn’t shed tail fur all over the clean couch and floor. At least it’s not spring, when it’s impossible for him to go anywhere without a cloud of fur trailing behind. I want to tell him he doesn’t have to keep praising my mother, but she actually warms further when he does, and, incredibly, they talk for a good ten minutes about the landscape on the mantel. It turns out it’s done by that Painter of Light guy, which Lee somehow knows a lot about, or at least enough to talk.

He relaxes, but I’m getting more and more tense. When I notice my claws tapping the fabric of the couch, I have to break into the conversation. “Where’s Dad?”

I don’t even get both words out before Mom says, “We should get your things from the car. You’re here two nights?”

“
We have to go to Port City after that,” Lee says, while I’m deciding whether or not to ask the question again. “Dev’s going to be on the Today Show.”

“
It’s exciting, isn’t it?” Mom stands. “Now, Devlin, you can have your old room, and your friend...” She looks at Lee, standing now and waiting politely. “Lee, right? Lee, you’ll be in the guest room downstairs.”

I stand, too. My tail thwacks the couch. “In the basement?”

“
I made it up,” Mom says.

Lee watches me. “Mom, you can’t put him in the basement,” I say. “It stinks down there.”

His ears swivel to the side. “I have some NeutraScent,” he says. “I know we—I have a strong scent.”

“
See?” I can’t believe they wanted to stick him down there. Just over Christmas they were telling me they had a bad mildew problem. He’d go nuts, with his nose, or get sick.

Mom doesn’t look at him. “Devlin, I’ve already made up the room...”

“
Put him in Gregory’s room,” I say.

“
Devlin...” Mom folds her paws together, but she doesn’t extend her claws.

“
It’s made up, isn’t it? I’ll help change the sheets.” I glance at Lee. “We’ll help,” I start to say, but for some reason his ears are even further down.

“
I don’t feel comfortable with another guest in your brother’s room.” Mom looks at Lee. “It’s nothing personal.”

“
Lion Christ,” I say. “Fine, I’ll stay in Gregory’s room and he can have mine. It’s okay, I give my permission.” Not like he hasn’t been in my bed a hundred times. I’m going to explode from the shit I’m holding back.

“
I guess...that would be all right.” Mom sighs. “I made up the basement.”

“
Let’s get our things,” I say to Lee.

Out at the car, we each grab our bags, and I slam the trunk closed. “This is off to a great start. I can’t believe they wanted you to sleep in all that mildew.”

He just shrugs, and starts walking back toward the house. I follow, coming up alongside without touching him. “Hey. What is it?” He shakes his head. I nudge him. “Tell me.”

He stops, and looks up at me. “Why can’t we both stay in your room?”

I rub my ears. “Mom doesn’t want us to.”

“
If you want your parents to accept our relationship, you have to stand up for it. We’re a couple. We should sleep in the same room.”

“
I just did stand up for you.” I stare down at him. “I got you into the room next to mine. I can always come see you at night, after they go to bed.”

“
It’s not about that. It’s about getting them past this so they can see you’re still their son.”

“
I’m not sure how smacking their noses with it will get them past it.”

He sighs and turns. “It’s fine, stud. Let’s not rock the boat.”

I stop him before he can get back to the house. “Don’t do this. Not now.”

He gives me a long look, and then says, “Okay,” and hefts his bag over his shoulder, heading up the steps and opening the door without knocking. I shake my head and follow him. Only two days. We can do this.

Gregory’s room has become less of a place where he lives, and more of a museum preserving his childhood. The debate team awards and model U.N. trophy from high school, shiny awards I used to envy; a commendation from the food shelter where he volunteered. No note that he stopped volunteering after he’d gotten the commendation, of course. A scrapbook of newspaper articles from his high school and college career. I bet Mom still updates it. I decide not to look.

Weirdly, on his dresser is a picture of his high school girlfriend Clarisse, a tiger more gorgeous than a debate team captain should be able to get. She once told Gregory he could “do better” than me for a little brother. He dated her a year into college and then dumped her. My parents were heartbroken until they met his new girlfriend, just as pretty and smarter to boot.

They’ll never put pictures of Lee up in my room. I’ll have to settle for the real fox, in there now. I walk over there to see him.

My old room is more or less as I’d left it. No game balls—they’re in my apartment in Chevali. The only post-high school picture is the black and white newspaper version of the picture in the living room, of me on draft night. My science project is still there on my old dresser, a lame cardboard poster describing how the shape of a football is more aerodynamic than a baseball. Next to it, there’s a photo of me with the Forester Team at the playoff game we lost, looking exuberant and confident.

Lee’s put his bag on the bed and is sitting there on the phone doing his Lauren Bacollie voice. As I come in, he holds up a paw for me to wait, and says, “He was sticking up for his teammates. It has nothing to do with his sexuality.”

There’s no question who he’s talking about, not when he looks up at me with a smile. The smile and voice, I gotta admit, kinda get to me. I adjust my pants and close the bedroom door, leaning against it. I study the curtains. Mom’s changed them, and the bedsheets to match, a blue-green flower pattern that is pretty, in a bland sort of way. Lee, even in his earth-tone clothes, stands out against them, a bright, vivid orange. “They’ve always been very supportive,” he says. “Mister Kinnel, I have to go. It’s been a pleasure talking to you, as always.”

He clicks the phone shut and stands. “Just that reporter who was at your press conference,” he says, and looks around. “Nice room.”