Probation (11 page)

“Are you fucking crazy? Nora thinks I’m in D.C. and won’t be back until tomorrow night.”

I called Alice at six in the morning, creating some preposterous explanation as to why I’d been forced to wait for a morning flight.
See you tonight. Let’s go out to dinner. Your choice. Miss you. Love you.
I was never that careless again.

I learned a few things that night. First, big hands and big feet do not necessarily mean big everything. Just as well. Christ only knows how I would have reacted, what flashbacks would have overtaken me, if he’d unzipped his pants and pulled out a long red snake. As fate would have it, Brian Wilkins was the proud owner of a short brown snail. Second, I learned how my body could respond to a touch I truly desired. And, for the first time, I felt the fissures in the fault line of the life I’d created and the potential of my dry heart to crack and split.

Years of hindsight have taught me it wasn’t love I felt for Brian Wilkins. I didn’t know better at the time. What else but love could cause me to despair when I didn’t hear from him for days, constantly debating the pros and cons of calling to break the silence? What else could explain the physical rush of elation whenever I picked up the phone and heard his voice? Only love could have inflated Brian Wilkins like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloon hovering over my every waking moment while shrinking Alice, like her namesake, to a two-dimensional shadow to be accommodated, gently, during the intervals between my secret rendezvous. Yes, hindsight brings wisdom. I know now it wasn’t love. It was fear, an absolute, abject fear, that, without him, I’d be back in the box, snapped shut, sealed tight, labeled
HUSBAND
, and returned special delivery to
WIFE
.

He tried hard to appear sad the night he told me he’d got the transfer to Pittsburgh. But the sex was bad, hurried, obviously one more chore before departing, like registering a change of address with the post office. We had a last supper together, the four of us, their last weekend in North Carolina. I tried to make eye contact over the table, hoping to pass secret signals, looking for some sign of regret. But Brian was having none of it, never letting the conversation drift from market demographics, advertising revenue streams, and the necessity to adapt to survive against the threat of the cable news networks. I waited a week to call him at his new station. His secretary put me on hold for ten minutes after I gave her my name. Great to hear your voice, he said, sounding distracted and, worse, irritated. He told me he’d stay in touch. I never heard from him again.

The box couldn’t hold me for long. It took a while, six months, until one night, alone in a hotel room in Dallas, the King of Unpainted Furniture safely snoring in a suite on a different floor, I called a cab and gave the driver the address of a bathhouse where many hands touched and stroked me before the sun came up.

The urge would lie dormant for weeks, months, only to rear its ugly head when I was stranded in a room in a budget motel, not because the King of Unpainted Furniture scrimped on the expense accounts but because moldy carpets and damp bedspreads were the best the town had to offer. The voices on the television at the foot of the bed sounded as distant as a conversation in a different state. I’d stand in the shower, listening to the eleven o’clock news, hoping the hot water would induce drowsiness and dreams.

Still wide awake, I’d log on to my laptop, find a chat room, and send my room number to aging lonely hearts, down-on-their-luck hustlers, even the occasional hunky college boy with too many hormones charging through his bloodstream. Or I would put on a clean shirt and navigate the rental car through the side streets of the seedy section of a town I didn’t know. I’d debate myself—go back, stay here, go back—until a beat-up Honda or Toyota vacated a parking spot a stone’s throw from the entrance to the “Buddies” or “Players” or “Side Traxx” in every town or small city with a dealer for Tar Heel Heritage pine furniture. I’d chug the first beer, chase it with a shot of tequila, drain another bottle, not relaxing until the room was in soft focus and I found the nerve to light the cigarette of the man sitting next to me. I’d struggle to make conversation, waiting for an indication of any possible interest. If I found it, I’d rush, growing anxious because the clock was ticking away, desperate to seal the deal, dreading driving back to my motel alone.

There was no turning back, not even when Nora Wilkins called to tell us that Brian had passed away, stricken by a pneumonia from which he never recovered. Nora had left Pittsburgh and was back home in Minnesota. She and Alice made a vague promise to see each other soon, a sentimental gesture appropriate to the moment.

“I don’t think she was telling me everything,” Alice said later that night. “At first she said yes, when I asked if he went quickly. Then later she said he hadn’t been well for a while. I guess we’ll never know.”

I knew. Immediately. There’s only one kind of pneumonia that would strike down a man in his prime. A man who was having sex, lots of it, with other men.

I wandered outside, needing a cigarette, my hand shaking when I tried to strike a match. Jesus, please God, I pleaded, sucking smoke deep into my lungs. Please, please let me be okay and I promise I’ll do anything you want.

It was divine retribution for the baby. I deserved whatever I got. I could live with the consequences. Take me, I begged, trying to redeem myself through noble sacrifice. Just let Alice be okay. She doesn’t deserve this. Don’t punish her for little Jack. She’d be bouncing him on her knee today if it hadn’t been for me.

I spoke to God on an hourly basis while I waited for the lab to report my results, promising, pleading, negotiating. And after the test came back negative, no nasty little HIV antibodies to report, the Good Lord must have sat by the phone like a jilted lover, incapable of accepting that my ardent pursuit and seduction could end so suddenly. I’d been ridiculous to worry. Leave it to me to turn the simplest story into a melodrama, infusing Puccini and Verdi into every nursery rhyme, creating a crisis out of every small problem. What the hell had I been so worried about? How many times had I been with him? Five, six at the most? But I’d learned my lesson.

“What do you think I am, some kind of fag?” he’d protested, insulted when I dared to question whether I should slip on a Trojan before I shoved it up his ass.

I’d never be so naïve again.

“I made a memorial contribution for Brian Wilkins today,” Alice said a few weeks later over dinner.

I looked down at my plate, unnerved to hear that Brian Wilkins was still lingering in her thoughts.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “These potatoes are awesome,” I declared, trying to steer the conversation in different directions.

“Yeah, I really didn’t know where to send it so I made it out to the Horticultural Society. Nora and I volunteered there together. I didn’t really know him,” she said. “Can I be honest? I didn’t really like him.”

“Really?” I said, squirming in my chair.

“You seemed to cool toward him at the end, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling the tension in my shoulders.

“I don’t know. There was something about him,” she said. “Full of himself. I think he had a mean streak.”

“I bet he could be a prick,” I said, thinking back to the afternoon I locked myself in the john at Tar Heel Heritage, the water running full blast, crying my eyes out after I hung up the telephone, knowing I’d just finished my last conversation with the man I was sure that I loved.

“Are you going to finish your potatoes?” I asked, closing and locking the final door on Brian Wilkins.

E
veryone is titillated by the prospect of snow. Everyone has an opinion: It’s definitely coming. It’s not coming because it only happens when it’s completely unexpected. Everyone’s preparing, stockpiling toilet paper and milk. One school of thought says it would have been welcome two days ago. It would have been the first White Christmas in thirty-five years. Now it will just ruin the rest of the holidays. Another school of thought says better late than never and at least all those gruesome New Year’s celebrations will have to be cancelled.

My window is open. It’s definitely colder than last night. If it’s coming, at least it waited until my sister packed her husband, two sons, and daughter into the SUV and headed south, back to the palm trees and tennis courts of Boca Raton. I finish knotting my tie and lick my palm to flatten my stubborn cowlick. Not so bad, I think. Why have I never seen a picture of myself where I resemble the man I see in the mirror? The camera never lies, they say. Out there, somewhere, my mug shots, full face and profile, are in the public record.

I pass my mother’s bedroom on my way downstairs. She stands perfectly still, transfixed, as if stunned by her reflection in the mirror, gripping her pearl necklace, her yellow satin jacket burnished by the white winter sunlight.

My mother, by Vermeer.

She blinks like a startled bird and comes out of her trance. She seems puzzled, as if she doesn’t recognize the brushes and combs and jewelry box on her dressing table. Feeling like an intruder, I go downstairs and wait for her to join me.

She disapproves when she sees me with a vodka and soda in hand. She usually doesn’t comment on my drinking since she comes from the generation of women who nurse a single glass of wine or a very weak cocktail, if they partake at all, while their men drink themselves into oblivion. But this afternoon she reminds me the roads could be very hazardous in a few hours. I laugh and tell her it’s bone dry out there and not a cloud in the sky. Nonetheless, she wins. I take one last long sip and pour it in the sink.

My mother and I are going on a date. I return from the kitchen, expecting to find her in the foyer, all buttoned up and pocketbook in hand. She isn’t there. She’s in the parlor, resting against the arm of the sofa, studying the Christmas tree, touching one of the glass balls, smiling at a memory of a long-ago holiday. Each and every ornament has a history. Only she knows all of them. After she’s gone, they’ll just be anonymous trinkets tucked in tissue paper.

I tell myself I’m overreacting, surrendering to my predilection for crepe hanging. It’s probably just Christmas. She’s just pushed herself too hard. My sister spent the past four days cataloguing every burner left lit, every door left open, every toilet unflushed, every pair of eyeglasses misplaced. She inventoried my mother’s medicine cabinet and recorded the labels of every prescription bottle to look up in the
Physicians’ Desk Reference
. If she doesn’t understand the entry, she’ll consult her gynecologist. My mother denies that anything is wrong. Regina has been insistent, a battering ram. There has to be a reasonable explanation for the pallor of our mother’s skin and the dark pouches below her eyes. She’s going to get to the bottom of this. There’s nothing to get to the bottom of, I told her. She’s getting older. It’s what happens to people when they get older.

“Bullshit. She’s not even sixty. My doubles partner is seventy-five years old and has a better backhand than me!”

Fucking Christmas. Thank God it’s over for another year.

Hard to believe that, once upon a time, I started counting the days until December 25 on the October afternoon I came home from school to find the Spiegel catalogue had arrived in the morning mail. I’d sit at the breakfast table for weeks, thumbing through the well-worn pages, changing my mind two or three times a day, never settling on a present for Gina until my mother announced it was time to send in the order.

It didn’t matter that by New Year’s Eve, parts would be broken, pieces missing, instructions lost, pages ripped, because I knew that she loved every doll or game or book I ever gave her. She couldn’t help that she was clumsy, awkward, and forgetful. Just the opposite of me, who carefully preserved the DC and Marvel superhero comic books she gave me every Christmas, reading each one carefully, no folds or tears, then slipping it in a plastic envelope for posterity.

“Do you like them? Do you really?” she asked every year, needing to be reassured she’d made all the right choices despite having tagged along on my weekly visits to Woolworth from January through November, watching me cherry-pick the same titles from the comic book rack.

Damn, we loved Christmas back then. Neither of us was ever disappointed after all the build up and anticipation. And Christmas night was the best—no Midnight Mass to attend, flannel pajamas instead of my bow tie and her tights, no limit on the number of Christmas cookies we could stuff in our mouths. Mama let us stay up until we were exhausted and longed for our beds, both of us already counting the days until Christmas rolled around again.

Her own kids could barely summon enough enthusiasm to crawl out of bed on Christmas morning. Michael, the oldest, had to be threatened with bodily injury to tear himself away from messaging his friends long enough to come to the table. Jennifer and Dustin rolled their eyes and sighed at every comment or question, mimicking the bratty “tween” queens of the Disney Channel. The only real pleasure the three of them seemed to get was taunting their father, a combustible sort like our old man, but without his redeeming qualities of fidelity and reliability. I suspect the rock he presented my sister on Christmas Eve is reparation for his latest flight attendant or Pilates instructor. Family honor says I should hate him, but he’s a nice guy despite his philandering and occasional outbursts, unimpressed by his own Olympian status, someone to watch hoops with, arguing over who’s the best point guard in the ACC while we ignore Regina’s battle with her surly brood over the ridiculous “festive” holiday sweaters she bought them to wear for the video she wants of our happy Christmas dinner.

“These kids are too goddamn spoiled to appreciate anything,” she complained last night. “Do you remember how you’d light up every time I gave you a pile of damn comic books on Christmas morning?”

Yeah, I do. What shocked me was that she did too.

The tension headache I’d been nursing for days started to fade as their SUV backed down the driveway. We got through the holiday, but only after endless hours of vigilance, waiting for Regina to bite through the tip of her tongue and violate the unspoken Nocera Family Agreement to rewrite history, erase the past, and expunge any trace of a major character from the story:
Have you heard from Alice? Alice? Alice who? I don’t know any Alice. You must have me confused with somebody else.
Wonder of wonders, the moment never arrived, thwarted, no doubt, by my mother’s steely gaze each time she saw temptation flicker across her daughter’s face.
I don’t know what you were so worried about. I told you I wouldn’t bring it up
, I overheard Regina say as the SUV pulled away.

My mother takes a deep breath, fortifying herself for the afternoon ahead. I ask her if she really wants to go. Of course, she says. She’s been looking forward to this all week.

“This” is the farewell reception for the bishop of the Diocese of Charlotte. On January first, he’s being retired to a community for elderly prelates in New Mexico.

Maybe the forecasters are right. In just the few minutes since we’ve come downstairs, the sun has disappeared and the daylight has turned dishwater gray. The noisy winter birds have gone into hiding. The neighbor’s cat streaks across the driveway, headed home to wait out the storm. My mother blesses herself as I back the car into the street.

I expect that she, like my sister and me, is desperately seeking a simple explanation for all the many ways her body is betraying her. She hopes all she needs is one good night’s uninterrupted sleep. Maybe all it will take is the right combination of vitamin pills. Maybe her eyeglass prescription needs to be adjusted. Maybe, just maybe, tomorrow she’ll spring out of bed, those heavy sacks of rocks she’s been carrying for too long now tossed aside somewhere along the highway of her dreams, and she’ll greet all the familiar little aches in her joints like old friends. My sister insinuates my “situation” is the reason our mother has taken up smoking after twenty years of abstinence. That’s easier than accepting the fact that she suspects it can’t hurt her anymore.

My mother and I drive in silence. We have to make a quick stop at the cemetery. I insist she stay in the car, that it’s too cold up on this bleak hill. I don’t want her to see that the grave wreath, locked in the trunk over a week ago, has wilted. My mother’s name and date of birth are already etched into the granite. The old man is biding his time, waiting for her to join him. The sky seems to brighten as we arrive at the bishop’s residence. Maybe the forecasters are wrong.

The door opens before we have a chance to ring. Only a bishop can get away with having an ancient black man in
Gone with the Wind
livery greet his guests. He welcomes my mother as if she were visiting royalty. Merry Christmas, Nathaniel, she says, was Santa good to you? Oh, the best, Miz Nocera, he chuckles, the very best. I’m dumbfounded she knows his name and that she is a familiar face here. I’m shocked by what I don’t know about her. We both have our secret lives, my mother and I.

Nudging my way to the punch bowl, I speculate there wouldn’t be a wealthy Catholic left in all of North Carolina if a bomb fell on this place…and then it hits me, hard.

Good God, why hadn’t I thought of it before I let a stranger spirit away our coats to the hidden recesses of this too-big house? A quick escape is out of the question now. Why hadn’t
she
thought of it before accepting my offer to drive her here? Maybe she had. I hate being suspicious of my mother. No, obviously it hadn’t occurred to her, otherwise she would have told me to stay home and relax in front of the tree and she would get a ride to the party with one of her cronies. She couldn’t have an agenda. This wasn’t a Saturday night dinner at the club where she could ever so genteelly force the truly disgusted or the downright amused or the blissfully unaware to acknowledge my ongoing existence. This was J. Curtis McDermott, Jr., the King of Unpainted Furniture himself. The largest donor to Catholic Charities in the entire state, certain to have received the coveted invitation, probably the first name on the list.

Two weeks ago, thumbing through the Christmas cards she’d received, I’d opened a reproduction of a Bellini Madonna and Child and was confronted by the printed salutation.

Curtis maintained two Christmas mailing lists, one for the recipients of Italian Masters religious scenarios, the other for those who were sent the Currier and Ives seculars. After all, the King explained, Tar Heel Heritage, the world’s largest manufacturer of unfinished pine furniture, can’t offend its Jewish friends, but we gotta remember that most of our Christian friends think, well, if it weren’t for Christ there wouldn’t be any goddamn
Christ
mas anyway. Curtis’s staff could effortlessly spit out catalogues, spreadsheets, and quarterly statements; certainly they should have been competent enough to hit the
DELETE
button and purge my mother’s name from the Italian Masters mailing list.

This benign little outing is turning into a full-blown exercise in tactical maneuvers. The crowd looks harmless enough. A young man and woman, their first Christmas together as a married couple, giggle and spit hors d’oeuvres into paper napkins. An old man with hairy ears corners them to gloat over the American Civil Liberties Union’s failure to persuade the Mecklenburg County emergency judge to order the removal of the crèche from the entrance to City Hall. They feign interest, caring less about civil liberties and the Baby Jesus than in finding a trash can. A spinsterish woman in a Fair Isle sweater folds her arms and pretends to survey the cookie table, trying to make eye contact so she can strike up a conversation with me. A tired little girl in a velvet party dress skates across the hardwood floor on the soles of her patent leather Mary Janes. Braking with her toe, she looks up and asks me my name. Andy, I say, and ask hers to reinforce her lessons on good manners. Brandy, she answers. She must be the aftermath of an evening of one-hundred-proof induced lust, her name a commemoration, like winter babies named April or June. Our names rhyme, I say, making conversation. Whatever, she snorts, tossing her head.

Someone is tickling the ivories in the next room. The piano player runs through a few scales to loosen up his fingers. I recognize the opening bars of a Broadway show tune.

“You coax the blues right out of the horn…”

His booming voice crushes the weak harmonizing of the members of the chorus.

“…MAME!”

J. Curtis McDermott. Having located ground zero, I can avoid him, escaping to the kitchen. A martinet caterer is bullying a platoon of exasperated college kids who persevere because she pays fifty bucks a night under the table. No one is permitted to leave the room without her approving the arrangement of toast points and smoked salmon on their serving trays. She dresses to intimidate, with short-cropped hair and a Chanel skirt under her kitchen smock. She’s oblivious to the fact that people take one look and assume she’s a lesbian, a creature to be pitied because she can’t get a man.

An effeminate boy sweeps into the kitchen, tossing his empty tray aside: “It’s snowing! It’s really snowing!”

The college kids ignore their boss and rush to the kitchen windows. The pots stop rattling and voices are still. The windows are wide and high and someone hollers that everyone can see if we just squeeze a little closer and y’all in the back stand on tippytoes. A high girlish voice, probably the sissy boy’s, starts singing “White Christmas” and everyone joins in.