Bodies in Motion (20 page)

Philadelphia, 1998

GABRIEL
'
S FATHER, SAUL, STOOD WITH THE OTHERS OF THE MINYAN AND RAISED HIS VOICE IN THE KADDISH, PRAISING GOD
'
S GLORY. IT
was the last day of the thirty; after this, he would only say this kaddish on the Yahrzeit, the anniversary of his wife Esther's death. His voice was strong; it did not falter in its praise of God, though his face was weary and his hands shook.

“Yitgodal ve-yitkadash she-mei raba be-alma divera chirutei, ve-yamlich malchutei bechayeichon uveyomeichon uvechayei dechol beit yisrael ba-agala uvizman kariv, ve-imeru: amein.”

Gabriel said the words as well, and would for the next ten months, the duty of a son. He was glad to be able to honor his mother's memory, but the words tasted like ashes. This was the god his father claimed would cast him out for his love of men. Gabriel did not know how long he could continue to believe in, or praise, such a god. But for now, his thoughts were on his mother—it was for her that he raised his voice. He was grateful that there was this ritual connecting him with his father—they had barely spoken otherwise since she died.

“Ye-hei shemei raba mevarach le-alam ul'almei almaya. Yitbarach ve
yishtabach, ve-yitpa-ar ve-yitromam ve-yitnasei, ve-yit-hadar ve-yitaleh ve-yit-halal shemei dekudesha, berich hu, le-eila min kol birechata ve-shirata, tushbechata ve-nechemata da-amiran be-alma, ve-imeru: amein.”

After the ritual was completed, the circle of old men dissolved, patting Gabriel's back consolingly as they went, saying to Saul, “At least you have a good son, a comfort to you. And a doctor—it is what his mother would have wanted.” They did not mention what Esther would have said of her son's homosexuality; it was the sort of thing that wasn't spoken of, though everyone knew it. Gabriel had come out many years before, and though his mother had wanted him to marry, to have children, she had tried to understand, to accept, as his father never would. Gabriel could still hear her voice in the hallway, remonstrating with her husband—“He is our son! Our only son, and a good boy. Look how hard he studies, Saul. He is not a child anymore; we must leave him free to find his own way.” And his father's pained response, “But
this
way, Esther? This is not right. Even the rabbi says…” And then his father would be off, quoting the rabbi, quoting the Torah, and Gabriel would pull a pillow over his head, blocking out the words. When he had finished school, left his parents' house in New York to study medicine and then to practice as an intern, a resident, in Philadelphia, he had been both saddened and relieved. It was easier to withstand his father's reprimands, his mother's sad eyes, when he didn't have to face them over the dinner table every night.

The last of his father's compatriots left, leaving father and son alone together.

“So.” His father said the word heavily, and then fell into silence.

“Do you need anything?” Gabriel asked. “Groceries?”

His father shook his head. “No, no—you know the widow Rabinowitz? Already she is sniffing around, bringing kugels, fresh lox and bagels, chicken soup.”

“How are her matzo balls?”

“Heh. Not so good as your mother's.”

“No. No, of course not.” His mother hadn't been much of a cook,
actually, but there were a few things Esther did well. She made delicious matzo balls, firm without being heavy. And her challah was astonishing, the envy of the neighborhood. She had taught Gabriel to make it as well, since she had not been blessed with daughters; she had been pleased with his interest. “So, there are good things to this
gayness
of yours,” Esther had said. “An interest in cooking—and maybe you'll change your mind someday, and my challah will help you catch a wife?” Gabriel had only smiled and shook his head, his hands busy mixing the flour and water, kneading the dough, separating it into three strands and then braiding them together to form the loaf. Esther always did the last step, brushing the egg wash over the top. Now he would have to do that part himself.

“I'll come for Shabbat,” Gabriel offered, as he shrugged on his coat.

“If you're busy at the hospital, don't worry about it,” Saul said, turning away to find his own coat on the rack, pulling it on.

“I'll come.” He patted his father awkwardly on the arm—since Gabriel had come out, his father had avoided hugging him. “Be well.” Then he turned and went out the door, leaving his father standing there in the empty hall.

 

“
I
'
M SORRY…
”

Gabriel looked up from his patient notes the following Thursday to see another doctor standing next to the small cafeteria table. The man gestured out, to indicate the unusually crowded room; there wasn't an empty table available. Gabriel felt a brief flash of irritation—he had wanted to finish going over these files. But it wasn't the man's fault that the room was so full. Gabriel cleared away the notes, making a space where the man could put down his tray. “No, no—it's fine.” And it
was
fine; now that his momentary irritation had passed, Gabriel was free to appreciate the man's good looks—his slender, tall frame and sharp-boned face. Gabriel couldn't quite place his ethnicity—
Hispanic? He needed a haircut but was otherwise neatly turned out, from his pressed white coat to his creased tan slacks. “I'm Gabriel. Pediatrics—I don't think we've met?”

The man sat down and smiled briefly, revealing a row of even teeth, very white. He really had a very attractive mouth. “Roshan—but I am only an intern.” He had an accent, mild and pleasant, halfway between Indian and British to Gabriel's untrained ear. “General medicine for now.”

“Well, welcome.” The intern status explained the need for a haircut, and the dark circles under Roshan's eyes. Gabriel remembered his own intern year, four years previous. He had thought he'd never again get enough sleep. “Where are you coming from?” The new interns had been around for a few months, but work had been so hectic lately that Gabriel had been skimping on the requisite social functions. And then, with his mother's death…

“I am from Sri Lanka, originally, but most recently San Francisco,” Roshan said, as he started to spoon Jell-O into that perfect mouth.

“Really?” Gabriel felt his interest piqued. There were plenty of straight boys in San Francisco, of course, but still. “Did you like it there?”

“I liked it very much,” Roshan said seriously. Gabriel thought he could get to really like that serious tone, the formality of it. It was charming. And then Roshan smiled again. “But it was too close to my parents.”

Gabriel laughed out loud then, because even with the recent loss of his mother, he knew exactly what that felt like. If Roshan was an intern, he was probably about twenty-four, twenty-five? Gabriel remembered that age very well. “Tell me about it.”

After a brief pause, Roshan did.

 

THAT NIGHT, GABRIEL FOUND HIMSELF MARVELING AT HOW LITTLE
contrast there actually was between their skin tones. He himself was swarthy, as his father and grandfather had been. Esther had been fair-
skinned and blonde, but none of that had come down to him. Roshan said that he was unusually light-skinned for a South Asian; his mother was Sinhalese, her family originally from northern India. He had inherited her skin, the bones of her face.

“Your mother must be very beautiful,” Gabriel said, as he traced his fingers across Roshan's bare and hairless chest. He could feel Roshan flush at the compliment.

“Actually, she isn't very attractive—a little heavy, and sharp-featured.” He smiled. “But my father loves her very much.”

“And does she love him?” Gabriel asked the question idly, but then found himself oddly curious to hear the response. Roshan paused a moment before answering.

“I think so. It's hard to tell with her; she's very reserved.”

Gabriel thought, though he didn't say it, that that was something else Roshan had inherited from his mother. Roshan had been almost silent during the long hours of their lovemaking, though he had seemed to enjoy himself.

“You should probably get going,” Gabriel said regretfully. He had been comparing their skin tones in the early-dawn light; they had been up all night, and Roshan was going to pay for it tonight; he was on call in the ICU. Two nights without sleep—Gabriel was barely thirty but already felt too old to handle that.

“Yes.” Roshan rose gracefully from Gabriel's bed, sliding one slender hand along Gabriel's wiry body, patting his cock one last time before pulling entirely away. He started to pull on his clothes—he would shower at the hospital, no doubt, change into a spare set of clothes there. Gabriel lived on Lombard, only a few blocks from the hospital, which made life much easier; he walked in every day. Philly was a good city to walk in, and the hospital was in the old part of town, with its cobblestoned streets. It cheered him up every morning, just walking to work. There was so much history in those streets, so much sense of place.

Gabriel watched Roshan dress, then asked, from the safety of his
bed, “Do you want to hook up again sometime?” It was never easy, asking that, no matter how many men he had brought home to this tiny, cluttered apartment. It would be nice, not to have to ask that again, to have someone he could take for granted, could rely on to be there. Since his mother had died, he'd been wanting that more strongly than ever before, wanting an anchor he could hold on to.

Roshan hesitated before answering, and Gabriel felt his own skin flushing. But before he could get too embarrassed, Roshan said, “I would like to see you again. But there are…complications.”

“Oh?”

“I am not…out. At the hospital. Or—at all, really.”

“I see.” Gabriel felt a flash of disappointment—he always found it exhausting, pretending to not be involved with someone, being careful to not touch them in public, not hold hands, not say anything that might be incriminating. That was why he had come out in high school, so long ago; he just got so sick of lying. But Roshan would hardly be the first closeted man he'd dated. Sometimes, they changed their minds. “I can cope with that. If that's all…”

“It is not.” Roshan sat down then, on the edge of the bed. His hands were opening and closing, unconsciously, as he sought the words he wanted. The words ended up being simple, in the end. “I am married.”

And now that flash of disappointment expanded into a burning anger. “You didn't think that was worth mentioning? What's your wife going to think now? Are you going to tell her you had to spend an extra night at work?” The man didn't even have the consideration to call his wife—Gabriel hadn't left his side for the last twelve hours. “You're not going to stay closeted for long if you keep pulling tricks like this!”

“It is not like that, Gabriel…” He rose again, took a step back toward the door.

“Look, I don't care what plan you have for getting around your wife. I don't give a damn about her—but you could have told me be
fore you fucked me. You don't even wear a ring!” Gabriel was careful about that; he had dated a married guy once before, when he was very young, and it had just about broken his heart into pieces when the guy refused to leave his wife to be with him. Gabriel had sworn that he'd never get in that situation again. And now here he was, and fine, he wasn't in love with Roshan yet, but he'd been headed that way. The guy was so hot, and smart, and, okay, exotic, strange, different—it had definitely been a turn-on, learning Roshan had grown up in another country, had only come to the United States after he'd turned ten. Gabriel already loved the way he talked, the formal speech patterns, the accent. And the perfectly groomed fingernails, the painfully white teeth—and the contrast between all of that and the few whispered obscenities Roshan had let out in the darkest hours of the night, when Gabriel was riding him, hips pressed hard against Roshan's sweet ass…But the man was a liar, a cheat. “I think you'd better leave.” Gabriel pulled the sheets over his naked body, searching for a slender thread of dignity.

Roshan frowned and dug his hands into his pockets, looking bewildered, frustrated. “I do not know how to explain—wait, here!” He pulled out his wallet, and for a brief moment Gabriel thought that the man was going to offer him money; he felt his anger swell to an incandescent rage. But instead, Roshan rifled through and pulled out a slip of paper—it looked glossy, like magazine print. “Please, read this.” Gabriel didn't reach out for the outstretched paper, and Roshan finally put it down on the chair by the bedroom. “Read this, Gabriel—then page me, if you are willing to talk. Please.” He turned away then and walked out.

Gabriel stayed where he was until he heard the heavy front door close, locking with a firm click. Then he got up, went to read the slip of paper. It had obviously been cut from a magazine, creased and worn as if it had been sitting in that wallet for months. It said:

He couldn't see Roshan that night, in any case—he had promised his father that he would come for Shabbat. Gabriel left the city early, took the train from Thirtieth Street Station to Penn Station; he normally found it a pleasant ride, and would often catch up on journals on the way. But today he just stared out the window at the towns rumbling past. It was raining, the way it had been on the day they buried Esther. When he got into the city, instead of changing to the subway that would take him to his father's apartment, Gabriel climbed into a cab and rode it out to the cemetery where they'd buried her.

There was grass growing on her muddy grave, but no flowers planted. Gabriel felt a sharp pang of guilt—he had not been here since the funeral, and he was sure his father hadn't been either. It had seemed too hard, to come out here where her cold body lay, slowly decomposing. He had wanted to cremate her, but Saul had been horrified at the idea. So here she was, her bones slowly blending with the soil. Maybe that was better; he could come here in the spring, spread flower seeds. Esther had never been much of a gardener either—she hadn't been a very practical woman at all. But she had loved flowers; Saul had always made sure she had fresh flowers for the Shabbat table. Flowers and song, bright colors and soft fabrics—anything beautiful, Esther had loved. She hadn't liked rain; she would have been cold and unhappy in weather like this. He hated to think of her out here in this weather.