Pharmakon (53 page)

The minister acted like he was an old friend of the family, and after he rambled on about how important love and home and honesty had always been to Fiona, even though he had just met her, Dad slipped him a check.

The rehearsal dinner was more fun. Michael’s best friends from New York were interesting once they stopped talking about people I didn’t know and places I had never heard of. St. Bart’s, Todi, some restaurant called Elaine’s—the biggest yawn was all the talk about the price of real estate. But they gave really good toasts, and some made up songs and poems about how Michael and Fiona met that were funny, and just dirty enough to make the minister blush and laugh at the same time.

The only person from Michael’s family who showed was his mother, a doll-like little woman who wore a mink stole and a lot of jewelry my father told me was as fake as the engagement ring. Trying to make small talk, she announced, “They are going to give us beautiful grandchildren, aren’t they, Doctor Friedrich?”

My father made a face like he’d just broken a tooth and whispered in my mother’s ear, “Michael probably left the rest of his family home because they all have harelips and webbed fingers.”

Michael’s mother was seated next to Ida, who still hennaed her hair and still smoked Chesterfields through a cigarette holder. Time and cigarettes had turned her face as dry and wrinkly as an old alligator purse. Ida told the mother, “I had a dream they had twins. One dark, one light. Write it down, be sure to put the date, so you can see that I’m right. They’re going to be the biggest, fattest babies you ever laid eyes on.”

Michael’s mother, unaware that Ida believed herself to have second sight, exclaimed, “Oh, Lord, I hope not!”

Ida didn’t mince words. “The future doesn’t care what you hope.”

Homer wore the same suit he had had on that first day I tore the page, or at least it looked to be the same. His hair was the dull gray of an aluminum pan, but his beard was still black and as lustrous as licorice, except for a stripe of white that headed south from his lower lip that made him look like a very intelligent badger.

Taking in the spectacle of the rehearsal dinner, Homer rocked himself back and forth, and repeated the obvious in a cautionary tone, “When you’re married, you’re married.”

After about the tenth time he said it, Michael’s mother asked, “Is he going to be alright?”

Ida tuned to Homer. “Are you going to be alright, son?”

Homer thought about it for a long time before he answered, “No.”

As dessert was served, Michael surprised everybody with a trio of guitar-strumming Mexican mariachi singers sombrero’d in costume. Fiona acted like she was surprised, but she must have known, and then they did a dance you could tell they had rehearsed. And when it was over, everybody clapped as he bent my oldest sister back over his knee and, just as her hair touched the floor, he kissed her neck like a vampire.

After dinner, Willy got up and mingled with Michael’s and Fiona’s friends. When he told them he was studying art in Florence, they were all friendly. The best part for me was getting so loaded I forgot I was worried about not getting into college, which required some serious inebriation, since all night long everybody kept asking me where I was going to college. Willy reappeared just in time to hear me announce “I’m giving serious thought about doing my undergraduate work in Saigon.”

He whispered something in my ear. I couldn’t hear what he said. Old R & B was blaring, and Fiona and Michael were getting down with their bad selves. No question, I had never seen her so happy. Or, at least, looking so victorious.

When I shouted to Willy, “What’d you say?” my brother pulled me into a corner and whispered, “Definitely gay.”

“You’re kidding.”

Willy shook his head no. Michael waved for us to come over and join him. They were line dancing now.

“How can you be so sure?”

Willy looked at me quizzically for a long moment, made the same face my father did when he sized up a stranger, and told me matter-of-factly, “Because I’m gay.”

I was staggered, and not just because I was drunk. “Seriously?”

“It’s not a medical condition.”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant.” Bombed as I was, in my mind I began to connect the dots I had never gotten about my brother. “I mean, that’s great. If it’s good for you, it’s good for me.” I meant it. He was the same person, only now he was so much happier, he could even be friends with me. I had missed him, even when he was living at home and didn’t like me.

“Shit, are you gonna tell Dad?” My father was sitting at a table, smoking a Cuban cigar and talking to Lazlo and Ula.

“Dad’s known I liked men for years.”

“How many years?”

“I told him after I wrecked the Skylark coming back from New York that night.”

I suddenly felt like I knew less than nothing about my family. Drunk, I wondered if they’d all have to turn gay for me to stop being strangers with them. “Wow, what did Dad say?”

Willy mimicked my father’s slow, thoughtful voice, “That’s why I kept you that extra year at St. Luke’s. I wanted you to resolve your sexuality before you went to college.”

“That’s it?”

“He told me all he cared about was that I find somebody I loved.” We watched as my mother took the cigar from my father’s hand, tossed it out the window, and sat on his lap.

I didn’t care about Michael Charles, but what did bother me was that I had so misjudged and so misunderstood my father. Suddenly, I felt like crying. “What happened then?”

“Dad spoiled it.”

“How?”

“He told me the only thing I could do that he would have difficulty forgiving was if I let my sexual appetites distract me from a career in medicine.”

It rained on their wedding day. Lucy called from the airport. Her plane from Tangier was late. She missed her flight in Paris. She had to drive straight from JFK to the church, and change in the backseat of the rent-a-car while her friend drove.

The church was packed. The organist played “Ode to Joy” twice to stall for time. Willy and I waited outside with the best man and the bridesmaids. Lucy’s friend screeched to a stop in front of the church just as my father and Fiona the bride pulled up in the limo.

Lucy greeted us in Arabic,
“Assalamu alaikum,”
then added, “Nigel, where are my shoes?” That was her friend’s name.

“I believe they’re in the boot, darling.” Nigel was tall, English, tieless, and rumpled. He wore sandals and drawstring trousers, and had a mustache and goatee worthy of the three musketeers, and hair like the lead singer of Led Zeppelin. Nigel pulled on a formal morning coat and popped a top hat on his head as he scurried back to the boot, i.e., the trunk. I guess he found her shoes. I was trying to figure out why he had a surfboard sticking out of his trunk.

“Daddy!” Lucy raced toward my father.

“Daddy!” That was Fiona. Her train was caught on the limo door.

My father stopped worrying about Fiona when Lucy got close enough for him to see she was six months pregnant. Dad glared at Nigel. Clearly he would have preferred a black prince. My father refused to shake Nigel’s hand, turned his back on Lucy without so much as a hello, and walked Fiona to the altar.

My mother wept; my father ground his teeth through the ceremony. When it got to the part where the minister asks, “If anyone here has knowledge or reason why these two should not be lawfully wed, speak now or forever hold your peace,” Willy and I were sure Dad was going to say something. He didn’t.

My father didn’t just ignore Lucy and her English surfer, he treated them like they were invisible. Which was hard to do, given the size of Lucy’s stomach and the fact that Nigel was wearing pajamas, a morning coat, and a top hat.

Dad put on the same strained smile he had worn at my birthday parties when I was little. I felt bad for him. I wanted to do something for my father. I knew I couldn’t make it right for him, just more bearable. Dad’s new son-in-law made it worse when he gestured toward Lucy and the surfer, “Would you like me to ask them to leave?”

When Lucy heard my father whisper to my mother, “Keep that English bastard away from me,” she began to weep.

“I hate it here.”

“No, you don’t, darling, it’s a lovely party.” While the rest of us gagged on the awkwardness of the situation, Nigel sailed above it. “The hors d’oeuvres are wonderful . . . Yes, please . . . Thank you so much . . . How very kind.” He had impeccable manners, dirty fingernails, and a la-di-da voice. But he wasn’t snobby at all.

“I want to go back to Morocco.”

“I think you’re being unfair to your father.”

“The bastard didn’t even shake your hand.”

“He knows I’m British. We don’t shake hands.” Nigel cracked me up. “If you ask me, I think your old man’s being very cool about the whole scene. I mean, given you are preggers, and the baby already looks like me, and he hasn’t produced a shotgun or let loose the hounds on my nether regions, I’d say he’s shown admirable reserve. Definitely a cool cat.”

Nigel told me that he had gone to Morocco to surf the break just south of Cádiz. “Wind off the desert holds the waves up.” He had met Lucy on the beach and had gone to work at the orphanage “to get into your sister’s knickers.”

Lucy smiled. “You see why I love him?”

I began to get it when one of Michael’s friends from New York asked, “What do you do, Nigel?”

Nigel answered with conviction, “As little as possible.” Then he pulled a block of hash the size of a cigarette pack out of his pocket that he’d smuggled through customs and inquired innocently, “You don’t suppose anyone would mind if I smoked a hash joint inside the marquee?”

Nigel and I lit up behind the portable toilets. Lucy abstained on account of the baby. Lazlo walked up just as we were lighting up. It was the first, but not the last, time I got high with him.

“Are you guys gonna get married?” I asked Nigel with a cough.

“Weddings are a drag.”

I couldn’t argue that point. “What about your kid?”

Lazlo giggled, then cleared his sinuses with a double blast of his ever-present Dristan bottle. “He couldn’t be more fucked up than you.”

“He/she/it will be fine.”

“How do you know?”

“Lucy’s magic.” We watched as she danced with her stomach on the sloping floor.

When we went back in the tent, my father was sitting alone with my mother. Everyone was dancing but them—my father had never learned. My mother waved me over. I concentrated on not acting stoned. My father was too busy feeling sorry for himself to have noticed my condition. We were exchanging a look of misunderstood concern when my mother said, “There’s something I have to tell you both.”

My father rolled his eyes. “Nigel’s gay?”

My mother didn’t think that was funny. “I was going to wait until tomorrow but, well, maybe this will cheer you up.” My mother opened her purse, pulled out a fat envelope, and handed it to me. The hash had me a beat behind the action.

“Congratulations, Zach. I’m happy for you and proud of you.” My mother was in the midst of kissing me when I realized the letter was from Yale. I got in. They wanted me. I was staggered.

My father threw his head back and laughed. Sheer joy flooded his face with color. He took my hand and led me up to the bandstand and motioned for them to stop playing. My father held our hands up over his head like we’d won a prizefight and cleared his throat into the microphone. “Ladies and gentleman, the Friedrichs have yet another reason to celebrate today. Life has not only given me a son-in-law and a daughter with a grandchild on the way, but I have just found out that my youngest, Zach Friedrich, has been accepted at Yale University. It’s the one in New Haven, in case you haven’t heard of it.”

I was stunned, stunned that I had gotten in, stunned that I had made my father so happy. Everybody clapped and patted me on my back. I had finally done something for my father he couldn’t accomplish by himself. I had made his life more bearable; I had fixed the day after all.

After I’d basked in his and everyone else’s compliments and good cheer, Dad asked, “How did you do it?”

High on hash and the possibility of happiness, I answered, “It must have been the new essay I wrote.”

“What was it about?” My father was still grinning.