These Things Happen (18 page)

    He sat down with us. I didn't know who he was. He seemed to know a lot about me, though, like he was a friend I didn't know I had. He asked questions that you'd have to know personal facts about me to ask. "So you guys tied, huh?" "Did you finish the
Harry
Potter
?" And it wasn't just like he knew about me; it was like he was interested, too, in me as a person, and I was even less interesting then than I am now.

   And I knew something— I just
knew
— that no one was telling me. It went like this. I had to pee. So I got up from the table and went down this hallway, one I've come to know well. I passed an open door, looked in, and there was George. Now, this was a long time ago; maybe the questions and little plates and George in his office were all spread out on different days and I'm adding them up as one. What matters is the room, George there, his saying, "Come on in."

   He was at his desk. On the walls were a lot of signed pictures of laughing ladies, most of whom had big teeth in large mouths.

   " Could I maybe ask you a question?" I said.

   "Anything," said George.

   "Who are all those ladies?"

   "Actresses," George said. Those pictures are still up, and I'm even in one of them, now, with this lady named Chita Rivera (I think), who George brought me to meet one night when I was working. When he told her I'd been in
Bye Bye Birdie
(I was Hugo, eighth grade) she started to cry and George took our picture. As we both smiled she said, "Fuck Janet Leigh." Then she said, "Stay out of the business, kid." She was nice.

   But back to then. "Thanks for all those plates," I said, on that day.

   "Please," George said. "My pleasure. Did you like everything?"

   "Pretty much. Yes. And about the
Harry Potter
?"

   "Yes?"

   "It was excellent, but disappointing, too," I said. He waited a while before he said anything else, like he was thinking about what I said, which was memorable because it didn't happen often then (or now.)

"God, I know just what you mean!" he said.

" Really?"

   "I don't read a lot," he said then, amazing to me as no adult I knew had ever said anything like that before. " Would you recommend the book, even so?"

   "It depends what grade you're in." I know I said this because George says I did. And I said something else, too, which George hasn't quoted back. "You love my dad," I said, and that was the thing I knew, the one that no one was telling me. I didn't use those words, maybe, but they're close enough.

   "Yes," he said, on that day of the little plates. "Yes, I do."

   Then I think I asked, "Does he love you?" Which would follow, and make sense. I don't remember. I could ask George. I went back to the table, and the plates kept coming, till it was time to take me home.

A
s I head east, they head west, people clutching tickets in their hands, hoping for something wonderful. I stop at a newsstand and load up on the holiday issues of food magazines, though we get them all; last year George did recipes from each of them. He was up for three days.

    At Eighth Avenue I think,
Do we need milk?
People always need milk. Then I remember I never know what kind to buy. Two percent? Fourteen? George knows. I decide not to risk it.

    As I let myself in I see flowers and wonder if they need changing. Again, that's George; he'd know. Even as I look at them petals start to fall. As I bend to gather them I see a slice of him, down the hall, on our bed.

    "In here," he says.

    So, with my magazines, that's where I go. The lights aren't on, but I can see he shares the bed with a pile of shoes, his and mine.

    "Yes," he says. " These are shoes."

    I don't know what to do. I want to be helpful and never know how to be. " Would you like me to put them back?"

   He slips a shoe on each hand, pretends they're birds. " Shoes with wings on," he says. "That's the song. You always ask me what the song is." He sings, "
I've got shoes with wings on . . . Winter's
gone, the spring's on . . . something doo-dah something . . .
Astaire, of course. Irving Berlin, maybe? Not sure. I'm a little drunk. Grappa. Want some?" He gets up, tries to squeeze by me as our bedroom's so small; George says the Dutch still own us, that we're squeezed together on a tight island, tight as Amsterdam houses. George says, George knows. "Excuse me. I want to go to the kitchen."

   But I stay where I am. "I tried calling a few times. I went right to voice mail."

   "That'll happen," he says. " Would you get out of the way?"

   "Did she call here?"

   "She's not going to call me, if she does. She's going to call you. Which I think would be better. And, if you really want to know, not that you asked, but the shoes are on the bed because it's dark in the closet and I don't mean that metaphorically. I can't see. So I don't know if there's a little missing shoe that needs half-soling. And it troubles me. So get the fuck out of my way."

   I step back to let him pass, but he stays where he is. "What are those magazines?"

   "Christmas issues," I say. "And maybe I shouldn't bring this up right now, but Charles and Margaret have asked us to the country."

   "You go."

   "It won't be the same."

   "No," he says. He leaves the room, heads for the kitchen.

   "I could try her again," I call out. He doesn't answer. "Because this isn't like Wesley, right?" Still nothing. "George?"

   " Maybe it is," I hear him say. " Maybe you don't
know
what he's like."

   There's a knock at the door. I feel dizzy suddenly; I sit on the bed. George comes out of the kitchen and undoes the lock, and I hear a Spanish-accented voice say, "From Lenny," and George say, "Thanks." I wait another moment, then go to the kitchen, where George lays out the good things Lenny has sent up. A cell phone rings. We have the same ring tones— programmed by George, "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd"—so it could be for either of us.

   " Whose is that?" I say.

   "Well, my guess would be yours, as yours is in your hand."

   His phone now rings from the bedroom; as he brushes past me I see that I have two hundred and six messages. The most recent tells me that, yes, with his usual graciousness, Barney Frank has agreed to step in for me at Charlie Rose's table. Y
es, we have marriage equal
ity now in New York. But remember, Charlie. There are fifty states.

   "That was Ben," I hear George say.

   "And?"

   "They haven't heard from him."

   "Do you think I should I call Larry Frankel?" Larry, like many people we know, is a Surprising Gay Something, in his case a detective.

   " Great idea," says George. "Unless I used those DNA samples as a marinade." Does he want me to laugh? I don't know. So I don't. "He's not a missing person, Kenny. He's missing on purpose. You just have to wait."

   He goes back into the bedroom. From here, I can see the bathroom light go on. "Did you ever run away?" I say. I don't know why. I don't know if he's heard me. "George?"

   Then there he is, with a stack of his framed actor pictures. They've been in our flaking bathroom since we moved in: George, young, being someone else, yet always also George, somehow.

   "You're not going to throw those away."

   "It's a little weird having them in there. I don't remember any of my lines. One, maybe. And you don't have to ask if I heard you. I did. And yes, I did run away, once."

   "Great," I say. I just want him to tell me something, I just want to keep him here. "How old were you?"

   "Thirteen?"

   "That's young, isn't it?" I say, although I see this every day, hear all the stories, of the eleven-year-old gay kids who run, who don't come back, who can't.

   "I didn't think so," George says. "I'd go to the public library, to read V
ariety
every week, on a wooden stick. I'd go right to the theater pages, which they call 'Legit.' Which I thought, for a long time, was pronounced
legg-
it. I never heard it out loud, or any words I was interested in." I follow him back to the kitchen, where he picks a glistening mushroom from the salad but doesn't eat it, or offer it to me. "So I see in V
ariety
there's an open call, for
1776
, for a tour. Anyone can walk in, audition. And there's a part for me, the Courier Boy. With a song. So I made a fife out of a paper-towel tube, and shoe buckles out of foil. And I packed a suitcase, because I was going to get it. There was no way I couldn't. I'd tell everyone I was an orphan, and when the tour was over I'd come back to New York and the Fosses would adopt me."

   He stops, and even though I know the ending I want him to tell me more. "And?"

   "What about you?"

   I laugh. "What about me?"

"Your story. And don't say you don't have one. Everyone does."

"But I don't, George. I'm sorry. I just don't."

   "Okay," he says, without quite saying it to
me
. He finds his wallet and keys, his coat, puts a scarf around his neck.

   " Where you going?"

   "Just out."

   "But what if Lola calls? Or Wesley? Or he comes back? You have to be here."

   He has the door open. So I'm going to be alone here; he might not come back. I let all that happen, downstairs. I didn't stop it. So he might not come back, and I won't know what to do, about anything. I don't
know
anything, and I never have.

   And then, as the door opens wider, something rushes in, like a neighbor's scared cat, up and into my arms.
"George!"
I say.
"Wait!"
He understands, it seems; I don't know how. "I want to tell you something." I can't see his face. " Maybe it's not what you want to hear."

   He's still turned away, looking out on the stairs. "Let's hear it," I think he says.

   "It may not even have been running away. It couldn't have been more than an hour. And I knew I'd go back." He waits, doesn't tell me to stop. "We were in Yellowstone. I was with my family. And I was thirteen, like you were. I'm sure because my sister Alice had died that May. She was diagnosed with leukemia when I was ten."

   "Okay," he says. "Alice."

   "So it was the summer. Then, one day, it was the cocktail hour, and I excused myself to go to the outhouse." I see it, easily, a brown, painted cabin, as if I thought of it every day. "And there was a man."

   "A stranger."

   "Yes." I can see him, too. " Would you turn around? You don't have to, of course, but—"

   He does, although the door stays open. "It was empty there, except for us. And he started talking to me as if he'd known me for a long time, like we were friends. And he said, 'I have a tent,' and I said, 'So do we.' "

   George laughs, the first time I've heard it since what can't be just yesterday morning, since we were talking to Wesley.

   "Do you want to know more?" I say. He does. "So I went with him, to the tent. He didn't molest me; I wanted to be there. I knew that. I came before he could even touch me. He asked if I could come again. I said, ' Thank you very much, but we're leaving tomorrow.' "

   George laughs again. I get a text. My phone is in my hand; my phone
is
my hand. I look, to see if it's Lola. But it's just a reminder, from a proud and zealous gay website, that tomorrow is Cole Porter's birthday. I'm on a list. Yesterday was Halston, tomorrow Bessie Smith.

   "Is there more? About the tent?"

   "So after," I say, "I went back to my family. They didn't seem worried, especially. Maybe it was all only ten minutes. But I knew I needed a story, even though no one was asking for one. I said something like, ' Guess what happened.' Everyone looked at me. Then I said, 'I almost got trapped by a bear!' And that was it. They didn't ask for details. And maybe it's not much of a story but remember when Wesley asked us both, when we knew we were gay?"

   "Yes," George says.

   "I haven't thought about it, not since it happened. But I think that might have been it."

   "In the tent."

   "No. When I knew I needed a story."

   Neither of us is interested in the food, but he cuts two small pieces of chicken, offering one to me.

   "I never knew there was an Alice," he says.

   " Really?" I say. But I'm sure he's right, though.

   "I guess in ten years she's just never come up."

   He turns away from me, washes his hands at the sink.

   "It was a long time ago." What might he be thinking about me? What would I think? "I'm not good at things like that, telling stories about myself." I move closer. I want to see his face. "You are. I love that about you; everyone does. And you never repeat yourself—"

   "Okay, then." He turns off the water, leaves the room.

   "It was so long ago," I call after him. He doesn't answer. "George?"

   "In the bedroom," I hear him say.

   I go down the hall, past the framed costume designs, stopping at our doorway. He's in the bathroom; I don't wait for him to come out, I just start. "When I found out Wesley was hurt, on my way to the hospital, I thought to myself,
It's here. He's gay. I have a gay son
now.
And he got it from me. I see that. That
thing
, to use his favorite word. And I thought,
No. I don't want that.
And I knew why, right away. Not because it can be hard, and I didn't want him to have to deal with that. But because I don't want a gay son. I want a straight one. They're better. Right?"