Stories for Boys: A Memoir (28 page)

Authors: Gregory Martin

BOOK: Stories for Boys: A Memoir

2.22Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub

Oliver shouted, “I can’t hear. I can’t hear what they’re saying.”

But Evan wouldn’t stop, he said, “Listen. It gets better. We need to call Grandpa. He needs to know that.”

He kept saying this long after the game came back on. He kept saying this until I called his grandfather and handed Evan the phone.

Flight

MY FATHER IS THOUSANDS OF FEET ABOVE THE EARTH. He’s flying. He’s in a small plane over the Arizona desert with another man who works with him at the nursing home. The man is an occupational therapist; he owns a Cessna. My father has never flown in a Cessna before. They’re flying from a small airfield outside Kingman to the resort community of Sedona. It’s early morning. They pass over several mountain ranges. They land. They have breakfast at the restaurant in the airport. They fly back.

I don’t know what they talk about in the air or on the ground. I don’t know what this man knows or doesn’t know about my father. My guess is this man knows only that my father is divorced, has grown children and grandchildren, and has moved to Arizona recently to start another life. I think my father would tell me if this man has become a lover – though he wouldn’t use that phrase. Or he would tell Christine. Not long before he moved, my father briefly dated a much younger man. It ended badly, because this man lied to him. My father was still angry, weeks later, about being lied to. He felt deeply wronged. He didn’t tell me what the lie was. When I pointed out the irony – that he was mad about being lied to – my father laughed out loud.

“Yes. You’re right,” he said. “That is ironic. It hadn’t occurred to me.”

I don’t know what my father sees from the plane. I don’t know if the morning light is clear and bright so that he can see the distinguishing features of the landscape – cactus of all kinds, mesas, rock formations reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote and his lifelong, futile pursuit of Road Runner. Or if the distance seems hazy and indistinct. I imagine the trip for him is a welcome release from loneliness. But I don’t know if it is strained and awkward due to unspoken longing, or if it is purely friendly, platonic – two men flying together in a small plane. I don’t know if my father sees in the desert below a reflection of his inner life, or if he is happy, content, and the rush of take-off and flight has him brimming with hope in the future. I only know what he tells me on the phone, later that day. I am sort-of-happy for him – a happiness mixed with heartache that I don’t have a name for but am learning to accept. I am surrendering to him his life. His life is not mine to have or to hold, and never has been.

Epilogue

I STILL MARK THE BEGINNING OF MY NEW RELATIONSHIP with my father from that suicide attempt. But now I have to ask myself: how long has it been? And I have to do the math. It has been four and a half years. I’ll never completely separate the truth of who my father is from the shock of that phone call, from that awful mystery of knowing he had tried to take his life but not knowing why.

But I know now, and I know enough. If my father is more of a mystery to me now than he ever was before, it’s because I know and love him more, not less. My father did not think this was possible; he did not think his children could bear the truth of who he was and still love him. He did not think he could bear the truth, himself. He could not imagine the future in which we are all living now. How could he have? Who can?

I don’t know now whether anyone at my father’s work or in his life in Arizona knows that he is gay. I don’t need to know. I’ve stopped asking. If he wants to tell me, he will. I know that next summer he plans to drive up the west coast, to Anthony’s Home Court, in Long Beach, Washington, which is not a typical RV park – far from it. I’m hoping that Christine and I and Oliver and Evan can meet him there, rent a big cabin for four or five days. I’ve been thinking about asking him about this, but I haven’t yet figured out how. But I will.

A few weeks ago I emailed him to see if he wanted to come for Thanksgiving. Here’s his reply:

Subject: RE: Thanksgiving
Date: Sun, 13 Nov 2011

Thanks so much for the invitation. I do appreciate the thought.

My friend, Mary, another speech therapist, and I are hosting a Thanksgiving dinner at my house for two of her friends and one of the physical therapists who’s a Traveler and has no time to get home with family for just one day. It will be the first time I’ve actually entertained in my house and I’m really looking forward to it.

But we can think about next year.

Love you a ton,

Dad

Acknowledgements

THANKS TO MY FATHER, FOR GIVING HIMSELF AND HIS story to these pages. Thanks to my mother, for her grit, her humor, her many readings of this book, and her lifelong encouragement of my writing. Thanks to Chris Martin, Eric Puchner, Dan Stolar, Andrea Hollander Budy, Mark Sundeen, and Bill Fanning, for their careful reading of early drafts, and for their friendship and encouragement. Thanks to Doug Stewart at Sterling Lord Liter - istic. Thanks to the editors at
The Sun
magazine, for publishing the essay “The Family Plot, ” which grew into this book. At Hawthorne Books, thanks to Liz Crain, Adam O’Connor Rodriguez, and especially Rhonda Hughes, for her belief in this story and her editorial insight. Thanks again, and always, to my wife, Christine.

Daniel Kahneman, “Toward a Science of Well- Being” (lecture, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK, January 27, 2005).

Kahneman has said, “You don’t need a lot of research to know that sex is better than commuting.”

Oscar Wilde said, “The commonest thing is delightful if only one hides it.” I shared this quote with my father. He said, “There’s a lot of truth to that.”

Gregory Martin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage-and-retrieval systems, without prior permission in writing from the Publisher, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Martin, Gregory, 1971 –

Stories for boys : a memoir /

Gregory Martin.

p. cm.

eISBN : 978-0-983-85046-5

1. Fathers and sons—Biography.

2. Gay men—Biography.

I. Title.

[HQ755.85.M285 2012]

306.76’620922 – DC23

2011039904

Hawthorne Books
& Literary Arts

9 2201 Northeast 23rd Avenue
8 3rd Floor
7 Portland, Oregon 97212
6
hawthornebooks.com
5
Form
:
4 Adam McIsaac, Bklyn, NY
3
2

Photographs contained in
Stories for Boys
are from the author’s personal collection with the following exceptions: p. 23 by Thaddeus Roan, used by permission; p. 264 by MCA Records, used by permission; pp. 125, 169, 251 by Library of Congress, used by permission; p. 189 by the Walt Whitman Archive, used by permission; p. 210 by Dark Horse Media, used by permission; p. 109 by
kewlwallpapers. com
, p. 226 by Flickr user
Davidw
and p. 196 by Flickr user
countylemonade, and
pp. 45, 167, 207, 220, 221 by Wikimedia Commons used by Creative Commons license.

Other books

Scandal And The Duchess by Jennifer Ashley

The Victorian Internet by Tom Standage

The Bones Beneath by Mark Billingham

On the King's Sea Service: A John Phillips Novel (War at Sea Book 1) by Richard Testrake

Forgotten Father by Carol Rose

Sweet Sins by E. L. Todd

Viking's Fury by Saranna DeWylde

Black Horde: War Horn (Book 1) by Andrew, Costei

Defensive Wounds by Lisa Black

Slime by Halkin, John