The Art of Hero Worship (17 page)

The truth of the matter is, I could have
done this search weeks ago, a month ago even, when I learned that
Liam had lost someone he cared about in a fire. But I didn’t
because I wanted Liam to come to me of his own free will and
confide what’s been disturbing him so much. It’s become crystal
clear that he’s not going to do this, and his inability to face his
past is causing him and us pain. And so I type the words in the
search box:
Liam Norwell
and
fatal fire.

The screen fills with links before I have
time to blink. I click on the first one.

The Maine Fire Marshall’s
Office has identified the person killed in an early morning fire
yesterday in Lockwood. Lucy Norwell, 12, was found in a second
floor bedroom of her family’s home on Willow Street. The fire was
called in at 3 AM on January 24. It was reportedly caused by faulty
wiring.

I type in
Lucy Norwell obituary.

On January 24, 2008, Lucy
Caroline Norwell, age 12, died in a tragic fire in her home. Lucy
was the beloved daughter of David and Donna Norwell of Lockwood,
Maine. She is survived by her older brother, Liam, age 14. Her
funeral service will be held on Tuesday, January 29,
at 2 PM at First Presbyterian Church on Broad
Street followed by a reception at The Williamsport Yacht Club.
Lucy’s family requests that in lieu of flowers, donations are sent
to The Museum of Science in Boston, Massachusetts.

Liam lost his little sister in a house fire.
This explains a lot, but questions flood my brain.
Was Liam in
the house at the time of the fire? Does he blame himself for his
sister’s death? Could he hear her cries for help? How did his
parents react to this loss?

I can’t know the answers to these questions
without asking, which hasn’t worked very well thus far. In fact,
asking questions had just added stress to our fledgling
relationship. But if I could meet Liam’s parents, it would provide
me the opportunity to get closer to the heart of the matter. I
realize I’ve just figured out my next goal in helping Liam to face
his demons and hopefully put them to rest.

***

We’re sitting in the dining hall at
lunchtime, after having kissed and made up in the hallway where we
always meet at noon.

“Don’t you think it’s time we met each
other’s families?” I realize that this request involves Liam
meeting my very opinionated, extremely narrow-minded mother, but
I’m willing to make this sacrifice if it means getting a closer
look at Liam’s past.

“You don’t wanna meet my folks.” He seems
very certain of this.

“Why not?” I want to ask him how he knows so
well what I want, but I don’t. Why stir the pot before it’s even on
the stove?

He shifts around on the bench. “They aren’t
too much into me and my life. You know, they’re really busy.”

“You think they’ll be upset that you’re
bringing home a guy, not a girl?”

He smiles sadly and shakes his head. “I
don’t think it will have too much of an affect on them, one way or
the other.”

“Well, then, let’s set it up. I really want
to meet them. How far do you live from school?”

“About two-and-a-half hours.” He stops and
thinks. “And… does this mean I’m going to meet your parents,
too?”

I swallow hard. “If you want to, be my
guest. But it’s only just my mother. Dad is more or less a big
no-show in my life.”

He nods, still uncertain about what he’s
gotten himself into. He mumbles, “Both of my parents are no-shows
in my life.”

I act like I didn’t hear his last remark.
“How about this weekend? We can meet my mother on Saturday and your
parents on Sunday.”

Once again he nods, rubs his beard, and
says, “Eat your lunch.”

This is going to be a complete disaster. I
should have warned her that the “special person” I’m bringing home
is a man. A very manly man. And I should have warned
him
that mine is not your average everyday mother.

Shit.

I remind myself that I have a reason for
doing this, and it will be worthwhile in the end.

Keep on telling yourself that, Jason. Maybe
you’ll start to believe it.

We pull up in front of the house, a tiny,
seen-better-days chocolate brown ranch in a neighborhood where the
developer went bankrupt well before his dream of turning a thick
patch of pine forest into “affordable, yet stylish, housing for
frugal NH families” was complete.

I’m not sure who decided that low budget,
vinyl-sided ranches are stylish, but growing up among the
unfinished foundations of ten more of them hadn’t been bad at all.
My friends from the other frugal families in the unfinished
neighborhood and I played in and around the houseless basements,
pretending we were living in a residential village on Mars. Great
food for the imagination, but ultimately Mom forbade me from
playing on the abandoned foundations, as “knees skinned on rough
concrete don’t heal neatly.”

Liam pulls his car into our seen-better-days
patched-up driveway and I glance at him to see how harshly he’s
judging his surroundings. I offer rather weakly, “I do what I can
with the exterior, but it’s like applying lipstick to a pig.” When
I last went home for a visit at the end of September, I mowed the
lawn neatly, and I keep the shrubs trimmed to look as respectable
as possible. My meager efforts don’t amount to much, though.

“It’s fine, Jason. No worries.” Code for:
time to worry. Liam looks like he’s about to be dragged, naked and
squealing, across the roughly poured cement foundation next
door.

“It’ll be fun. You’ll see.” The tone of my
voice is not convincing.

I know it’s bad when Liam quotes Lola from
the Beachcomber Bar and Grill. “Guess I’m feeling kinda like a puke
stain on the white-collared shirt of life.”

I try to laugh, but it falls flat. “Mom is
going to love you.” My sweet sentiment sounds more like a question
than the affirming statement it was meant to be. Time to let
whatever will be, be.

Liam snorts and we get out of the car that
my mother will no doubt refer to as a death trap. He follows me up
the broken brick walkway, only stumbling once on that damn brick
that has stuck up too high since I replaced a crumbled one in
seventh grade.

I can smell the double-chocolate fudge
brownies the instant Mom opens the door. “Jason, dear, you made it
home and you’re only thirty minutes late this time—how
considerate!” She glances past me to Liam and her mouth forms the
pucker of someone who’s been dared to suck an extra juicy lemon.
She points at Liam. “
That
is the ‘special person’ you told
me about?” Yes, complete with air quotes.

Our visit has started out precisel
y
as I anticipated—miserably—so I know things can go nowhere from
here but up. “Mom, this is Liam Norwell… my, uh…my boyfriend.”

Thankfully Liam is right there to catch Mom
when she falls into an apparent faint. Saving people’s asses is my
boyfriend’s specialty.

Five minutes later, we’re seated at the
kitchen table, Mom fanning her face and neck with the current Vogue
magazine and Liam stuffing Mom’s famous double-chocolate fudge
brownies into his mouth like the cocoa bean tree is an endangered
species. “These are fantastic, Mrs. Tripp. Did I hear you right
when you said that this is
your own
secret recipe?”

Neither Ginny nor Carrie would so much as
take a single bite of Mom’s pride and joy brownies. Carrie was
compelled to watch her perfect waistline and Ginny didn’t much care
for chocolate, and refused to humor my mother by indulging in a
brownie and faking a chocolate orgasm. Needless to say, Mom is
basking in the glow of the “you are the Brownie Top Chef”
compliments that Liam is lavishing on her, and I can tell she’s
warming up to him.

“So Liam, you’re from Maine?”

He stops chewing only long enough to say,
“Yes, ma’am, I’m from Lockwood to be exact.”

“Oh, that’s a quaint little town, so close
to the ocean.”

Liam’s face clouds over, but he agrees.
“Yes, it’s nice there.”

“And you’re studying business? A very
practical choice. Jason insists upon studying journalism. Knowing
him, he probably wants to travel to some third world country to
report on the miseries of the local population’s lives, and in the
process, he’ll catch some contagious disease like Ebola and… oh,
dear….”

“Mom, I’m probably going to end up working
for a small town newspaper reporting about something like the new
playground equipment at the local elementary school.”

“That may very well be true, but grade
school kids are notorious carriers of ringworm, so my suggestion is
that you wash your hands frequently.”

I’m so frustrated at her dramatics, I want
to reach out, grab Mom by the shoulders, and shake some sense into
the woman.

“Good one, Mrs. Tripp! You’re such a riot!”
Liam actually thinks she’s joking.
That
makes me want to
laugh, but what’s even more humorous is my mother’s reaction to his
incorrect interpretation.

“Oh… oh, yes. I can be quite a card under
the right circumstances….” She bats her eyelashes in his direction
and I again resist the urge to throttle her.

As soon as my mother, the card, has a
chance, though, she drags me out of the kitchen and into our tiny
pantry. “Why did you not tell me you were gay, Jason? Did you
really think I would cast you out on the street where you’d most
certainly get lice and walking pneumonia, simply because you are a
homosexual?”

“Mom… it’s not like that. It’s just that
Liam and I—”

“I have one word of advice for you, seeing
as you are a gay man.”

I have no choice but to wait for it.

“
Condoms.”

My cheeks start to burn in a way that can
only happen when your mother advises you to use condoms with your
new male lover.

“And frankly, I’m relieved that you chose a
man like Liam. Your taste in girls was atrocious. That Ginny was
the most unfriendly—I’m sorry, I’m just going to level with you—she
was the bitchiest girl I ever met.”

Well, this is news to me. “Mom, Ginny wasn’t
bitchy, she was just very direct… and aggressive, at times… and she
refused to bow down to anyone.”

Mom gives me a look that clearly implies,
“Isn’t that what I just said—bitchy?”

I sigh. “Whatever, Mom.”

“Don’t ‘whatever’ me, young man. Now, get
back in there to your nice young man and I’ll make him some
lemonade… and I’m going to use the
good
glasses.”

I actually enjoy Mom a lot more in Liam’s
company than when she and I are alone. He diffuses her bossiness,
largely because he doesn’t fully understand her intentions so he
just laughs at her crazy remarks. At the end of our visit, she hugs
and kisses him on his way out the door and even squeezes his biceps
and makes some kind of a “hubba hubba” sound.

“Young man…” Mom calls across the driveway
to Liam as we get into the car. “That vehicle you’re driving is
nothing but a death trap. I implore you to not exceed the highway
speed of fifty-five miles per hour. Our sweet little Jason’s life
is in your hands.”

Liam drives very slowly all the way back to
his apartment.

***

“I don’t think we should waste our time
going to my house today.” Liam had a hard time sleeping last night
and his eyes, which in his case are truly the windows to his
thoughts and moods, are bleary and dull this morning. “I can think
of many other ways I’d rather spend a rainy afternoon.” He looks at
me and waggles his eyebrows in a weak effort at flirtatiousness,
but I don’t bite.

“Eyes on the road, mister,” I shoot him down
with a smile. The sky is as dreary and gray as Liam’s expression,
and it rained, even poured, off and on as we lay awake in bed early
this morning. “It’s important to me that I meet your parents and
see where you’re from.”

“This isn’t even the same house I grew up
in.” He doesn’t explain any further, but I suspect this is because
the house he grew up in burned almost to the ground when he was
fourteen.

“Well, we don’t have to stay all day. Let’s
just stop by for an afternoon cup of coffee and then head to the
coast for a scenic drive. I haven’t been out this way for ages. And
it’s beautiful.”

A loud sigh accompanies an exaggerated eye
roll. “Okay, since your every wish seems to be my command.” He
continues to drive, now wearing an angry scowl. I don’t like his
tone one bit, and it’s actually quite unlike him to act so surly,
but I’m still hopeful that this trip to his hometown will be
enlightening, and therefore worth it. So I don’t mention his bad
attitude.

My boyfriend is either extremely reluctant
to arrive at our destination or he has taken my mother’s “drive at
a snail’s pace whenever my son is in your car” suggestion to heart,
as he drives on only back roads at a maximum speed of 35 miles per
hour. Still I hold myself back from criticizing. It will get me
nowhere faster than it would get me anywhere else.