Child of My Right Hand (20 page)

“The early Eighties? Before we knew The Killer? Come on! A young,” he grinned at Sweets, “beautiful black man like me? I would have been vaunting all over town. If not for Sweets, I'd be dead, and he'd be one tired old man.”

“Marty likes to think he keeps me young.” Sweets smoothed his ascot. “But I keep him young by being so terribly old every single day. All that gray hair, yet always the young one. But for all his delusions, there's no denying loving Marty has brightened every day of my life for twenty years.”

“That's so sweet,” Genna said, wondering if Jack would say that about her.

Simon returned sooner than expected. Genna looked up and there he was, eyes shaded, peering in the shop window. She hurried out to fetch him. Before she could speak, he said, “Some guy tried to pick me up.”

“Really?” She kissed his cheek and led him inside. “How nice for you.”

“Mom!” A Gay Pride button adorned his shirt. “He was like, Dad's age, and he put his hand on my butt.”

“Really.” She caught Sweets's eye. What was wrong with her? Why didn't she find all this disgusting or at least terrifying? “What did you do?”

“Told him I had to meet my parents.” Simon looked around. “Then I ran up here.”

Sweets said, “Perfect. Don't talk to strange men, or take candy from them, either.” He extended his hand. “Simon, I'm Sweets, your grandfather. And that young man behind the counter—”

Marty, who was re-filling a dish of truffles, waved.

“—has been my companion for twenty years, which makes him your grandpa, too.”

Genna couldn't decide who looked more astonished, Marty or Simon. Sweets shook Simon's hand. Although their eyes were different, they had the same face and round body, although Simon, taking after Jack , was much larger.

“Now that we've been introduced, may I offer you some chocolate?”

“Simon doesn't like candy.”

“Mom!”

She caught Sweets's eye and smiled. This whole business of genes and genetics, bowler hats off to Gregor Mendel. If not the gay genetics Jack had told her he was writing about, there was no mistaking the basic phenotypical expression of body type, nose, face, and maybe even soul, passing unbroken from Sweets through her to Simon.

“Actually,” Genna said, “Simon loves chocolate.”

“Ah,” said Sweets. “The nougat doesn't fall far from the wrapper.”

They dined at Sush-He, a Japanese restaurant a few blocks away, where the all-male staff wore tiny tight shorts like volleyball players. Sweets refused to let them see the bill. She glanced at Jack, knowing he'd be torn between wanting to be manly and pay their share, and his concern about how much this trip was costing. But she couldn't read Jack's eyes in the aqua restaurant light, or find his thoughts in the New Age surround sound; he seemed alone and adrift in this undersea world in which she and Lizzie were the only females.

Marty and Sweets walked them to their car. Simon and Lizzie led the pack, followed by Marty, who was long-legged as a fawn. Sweets walked to Genna's left, Jack on her right in the fog that had rolled in after dark. Genna rubbed goose flesh from the backs of her arms, wishing she'd remembered a sweater.

“You don't know what a dream this is. Not just you,” Sweets touched her hand, “but the children. I'd thought only Marty would outlive me. Now all this extravagant life from one night of drunken fumbling with Doris Krebs.” He grinned. “What a beautiful, unhappy girl she was. Half the straight men were in love with her. The gay men wanted to be her.”

In the fog-muted glow of streetlights, she glanced at Jack.

“Doris declared she could never love anyone except me.”

Genna thought that may have turned out to be true.

Sweets continued, “I was very dashing, you know, leading man in Webster's productions of
Camelot
,
South Pacific
, and
Showboat
. Doris announced, she was so imperious, for graduation and as a celebration of our four years of friendship she wanted to sleep with me just one time. Though once we got rolling,” Sweets smiled, remembering, “we kept at it all night. Doris was very determined, and I did have feelings for her. In the morning, the first and only time I woke up beside a woman, she hugged and kissed me tenderly. ‘See,' she said. ‘You've changed!'

“Part of me wished it were true, but I knew who I was. And part of me was furious. How could my best friend not know? After all I'd put up with, and told her about. And part of me, well, we were twenty-two. So I didn't say the whole time I was fantasizing about this cute freshman Freddy Parker. I said, ‘It was a one-time gift, Doris, pure magic.'

“She wouldn't let go. ‘You could, you could, you could if you loved me.' Over and over. And this still breaks my heart—”

Sweets looked down his narrow nose, placed his hands on his substantial hips, and her long-dead mother stood beside her.

“‘Denny, I can do whatever those boys do for you.'

“I should have kept quiet. But I was young. ‘That's just it, I don't love you, Doris, not like that. And what those boys do, I'm sorry, but you can't.'

“She went nuts. I'd ruined her life, I'd humiliated her, and someday I'd feel what she felt. I would learn that love could turn to hate.” Sweets stopped walking. “Maybe that's why she didn't tell me about you. To settle the score.”

“Could be,” Genna said. “She didn't like me very much.”

“That's not true,” Jack said.

She felt a flash of rage. “Trust me, Sweets. Doris loved me, she wasn't a monster, but she didn't really like me.”

Sweets asked, “Did you know her very well, Jack?”

“Less than a year.”

“She was formidable. It's so sad she missed all of this.”

Sweets spread his arms to encompass the vanguard of Marty, Simon, and Lizzie, who'd stopped in front of the silly convertible Jack had talked her into renting when the Alamo agent offered it for a mere fifty dollars extra for the week. What about our budget, she'd asked.

A mid-life fantasy that's not X-rated, and seven dollars a day? What more could you want? A car that won't blow my hair around?

Sweets said, “Nice ride, children.”

Simon said, “They won't let me drive it.”

“He's not insured on a rental,” Jack said.

“Some rules,” Sweets replied, “are made to be broken.”

Even in the dark, she could feel Jack's annoyance.

“Yeah, Dad.”

“Maybe when it's not so dark and foggy.” Genna glanced at Jack, who looked unmoved and immovable.

“Maybe,” Marty chimed in, “we shouldn't be telling Jack and Genna what rules to make, Grandpa.”

Sweets turned towards her. “When do we get to see you again?”

“We're free all week.”

“I'm busy during the day tomorrow,” Jack added. “But otherwise…”

“Why don't you come over Tuesday? Marty will prepare a Thai feast.”

“Spice okay?” Marty asked.

She glanced at her family. She was certain they were nodding.

“Come by the shop,” Sweets said, “at six.”

Everyone hugged everyone. They climbed into the ridiculous convertible and drove off. Sweets and Marty waved, a round white man and a tall black one, diminishing then disappearing in the foggy night.

Jack dropped Genna and the kids at the Exploratorium then continued on to meet Dr. Rajiv Menard. In his student days, Jack had loved the drive through Golden Gate Park. But he'd been gone so long, he feared he'd miss the turn. So much for a relaxing ramble. Soon he was winding out of the park headed south on Nineteenth Avenue through a neighborhood of modest homes, immodestly priced. If only he'd bought one or even better, two, back in grad school. His parents would have loaned him a down payment, as they later did in Ohio. If he'd been prescient enough—Jack glanced at the bright sky reflected in the windows of the white row houses lining Nineteenth Avenue—they might have had some way, financially, out of Tipton. The profits on San Francisco real estate would dwarf a lifetime of his professor salary. Now that, Jack thought, as he approached Nordstrom Plaza, was a dark thought on such a brilliant day. To live and die a wage slave in Ohio.

Fifteen minutes later, he was striding past a reflecting pool in the UCSF research quad. Rajiv Menard was thirty-six; other than that, Jack knew little about him, although his name suggested a mixed racial heritage. Just then, spray from a fountain in the pool stung Jack's cheeks. Smelling, almost tasting, the chlorinated needles, he wondered if there were a meteorological lab nearby, and if this damp, wind-blown plaza was designed to recreate the micro-climatological patterns of the Bay. Unlikely, Jack admitted, as he entered the high rise lobby, glass and gray stone.

He pushed the button for nine, and checked the collar of his sports coat in the burnished doors after they slid shut. Snazzy, distorted Jack. When the doors reopened, his footfalls preceded him along the tiled corridor to 916, inside which Dr. Menard waited. Rajiv was medium height. Straight, nearly black hair and light Indian skin under which a five o'clock shadow already gathered in a dark and spreading blush. His lips were full, cheeks rounded. On his left hand he wore an expensive watch, but no wedding band. The man was quite handsome, Jack thought, in a soft sort of way.

“Welcome, Jack.” Menard smiled and extended his arm, a narrow wrist unbending out of his lab coat. “I've been keeping an eye out.”

“Rajiv,” Jack answered, feeling exceptionally pleased; he couldn't say exactly why. “Delighted to meet you.”

The scientist's face was smooth and perfect, as if he were a Bollywood star. “My directions were fine?”

“Perfect.” If Rajiv had European—make that Caucasian—blood, Jack couldn't detect it in his features.

“Come on,” he said. “I'll show you around.”

It was only then Jack realized it was probably time to stop shaking his hand.

After a quick tour, they headed out to a Starbucks where they sat in adjacent armchairs warmed by sunlight through plate glass. Rajiv drank a machiata or some damn thing, teasing apart a poppy seed muffin with long, slim fingers. Jack sipped cappuccino, he could never think of anything else, and recalled the last time he'd been to Starbucks; he and Marla in the front window, puppy lust on display.

“It's funny you should arrive today.” Rajiv moved a wedge of muffin to his lips. “I've just finished an interesting book,
Reinventing the Male Homosexual
, perhaps you know it?”

Jack shook his head.

“The author questions the political advisability of gay gene research.” Rajiv glanced up from his dissection of the muffin. “As you know, when Hamer first published, everyone cheered because it seemed to trump the conservative argument that homosexuality was a lifestyle choice that didn't deserve equal protection.”

“Yes, of course.”

“But in ways I hadn't exactly been thinking about, the biological explanation, even if it's only partial, leaving room for environmental factors, which is what I believe— ”

“So do I,” Jack said, although he believed Simon had been born gay.

“—re-pathologizes homosexuality, but moves the disorder from the mind— ”

Jack wondered if he'd told Rajiv about Simon.

“—to the genes, where once again, if Hamer's work is valid, it's maternal over-influence that produces homosexuality. What's interesting, and I must admit troubling—”

Rajiv fed another piece of the poppy seed muffin to his full lips.

“—is that when psychologists officially removed homosexuality from their list of disorders, they lost control of the subject, as if forces on the Right were saying, ‘If you can't cure the faggots, just shut up.'”

Rajiv picked some crumbs from the napkin in front of him and moved them fastidiously to his mouth. If Jack hadn't been sure before, that gesture convinced him: Rajiv was gay.

“So here I come, thinking I'm advancing the cause. When in fact, I'm adding ammunition to the homosexuality as feminized pathology argument. It's not as if I hadn't thought about this. You'd have to be an absolute ass not to realize that isolating a marker might lead to prenatal testing and hence, a ‘cure.'”

“I've been writing about that myself.”

“You told me.” Rajiv looked straight into his eyes in a way, Jack realized, that straight men did not. “But my unexamined assumption, that the only site to check was the x chromosome, as if it couldn't possibly be on the y, and therefore the influence of the father— ”

“The presumptively straight father.”

“—embarrasses me.”

Rajiv raised his mug and drank deeply. Jack rarely met a man so passionate about his work; then again, he didn't have colleagues at Tipton with whom he discussed his research. He used to talk to Genna, but she'd hated the eugenics project—Who would want to think about the Nazis day after day, and our connections to them?—and he doubted she'd feel any better about this one. What if he and Genna had been able to test for the gay gene, would they have done so? Jack loved loving women. Perhaps too much, and too variously. But if given the choice, would he have really wanted to produce a son who didn't?

“But what if you're right?” Jack asked. “You're a scientist first, an activist second.”

“Ah,” said Menard and smiled. “There's no innocence, Jack. Surely, as a historian, you're not going to argue that.”

“I suppose not.”

Behind his dark lips, Rajiv's teeth looked moist. He tapped Jack's wrist with his index finger. “So what brought you to the subject?”

“My son came out last fall. He's seventeen.”

Rajiv covered the back of Jack's hand with his own. “Should I be looking on the x or the y?”

Jack flushed. He felt, admit it, a whisper of excitement. Handsome Rajiv Menard was flirting. How flattering. But he didn't want to give him the wrong idea. “Probably the x. We met my wife's biological father for the first time yesterday. He owns Sweet's Sweets, the candy shop on Castro.”

Behind the counter, the cappuccino maker hissed.

“I've been there.” Rajiv patted Jack's wrist then removed his hand. “What you're saying is this grandfather's gay?”

As a three dollar bill.

“Have you heard,” Rajiv asked, “of the theory of sexual antagonism?”

Jack shook his head.

“It's my current favorite amongst the sexual anthropology theories.”

Jack's hand still burned where Rajiv had held it. “I've read the kinship theories.”

“Of course. Then there's status. Young men, think Rome, fucking older high status men,” Rajiv winked, “to gain status thus making themselves more likely to have lots of children. When you think of it, that supports Kinsey's version of sexuality: sexual acts, not a sexual identity.”

Before he knew what he was saying, Jack asked, “Have you ever had sex with a woman?”

“What makes you think I'm gay?”

Jack burst out laughing. “Everything.”

“A very long time ago.” Rajiv grinned. “I didn't much like it. What about you, Jack?”

“With a man?”

Rajiv nodded, and Jack shook his head.

“A pity,” Rajiv murmured, “from a research standpoint. Now, sexual antagonism. What if some gene made men very sexually attractive to you. If you're male and have that gene, you're gay. If you're a woman, men would appear very sexy to you and you'd have more sexual contact, and hence, more children. What about your wife, Jack, she a sexpot?”

He thought about Genna's shy smile, the way they were in bed. “She's a professor of romance languages and women's studies.”

“Was she slutty?” Rajiv drained his mug, and wiped a moustache of steamed milk from his lip. “I mean, before you met her?”

“I don't think so.”

“Well, it's only a theory. But let's say this gene, wherever it's located, functions by inhibiting the production of testosterone. That would make men less butch, and since testosterone slows down menses in women, a woman with less testosterone would reach menses earlier, hence providing her with the possibility of bearing more children.”

“Of course,” Jack said, “there's no proof of this, is there?”

“That's why it's a theory. And theories, you know, are like assholes.” Rajiv winked and stood up. “Why don't we head back to my lab? There's something I want to show you.”

***

They saw Sweets and Marty every day except Monday and Thursday when they drove to Big Sur and stayed overnight, returning in time for Friday dinner at the Grandpas. (They'd settled into that, the Grandpas, Sweets and Marty.) Marty, she thought, turned out to be a remarkably adept chef: Thai Tuesday, French Wednesday. Friday's meal was haute Mexican. Guacamole with homemade chips, prawns in chipotle salsa, chicken mole, and Genna's favorite, chiles rellenos in a batter light as tempura.

“Who cooks at Casa Barish?” Marty asked, finally sitting after serving the rellenos and setting the platter on the sideboard. “Lord knows I'm the kitchen help here.”

“Mostly Mom.” Simon filled his plate for the third time, “But I'm learning.”

“Oh, really?” Marty occupied the foot of the table, Sweets the head. “What do you cook?”

“Stir-fry,” Simon said, “and pasta with meat.”

“Anything with meat,” offered Jack, who teased Simon about how much he ate, although he often ate as much himself. “Lots of meat.”

Marty said, “Too much red meat's not good.” He glanced at Simon and added, mildly, “But I'm sure you know that.”

Sweets beamed from the head of the table, oddly quiet tonight. Jack wasn't his usual verbose self, either, and hadn't been for days. Lizzie never said much around adults, which left the conversational burden on Simon and Marty.

Suddenly, Sweets asked, “I was wondering if Simon, and Lizzie, of course, could spend the night? We'd feed them, maybe take them shopping”—Simon's eyes lit up—“and get to know them better. You kids,” he smiled at Jack, “could have a night alone.”

She knew Lizzie wouldn't want to. On the drive up from Big Sur, Lizzie had announced she was dirty and needed to sleep. And Genna knew without asking, that Jack would think it too weird to leave only the gay child with the gay couple, although since he'd started his new project, she wasn't sure what he was thinking.

Lizzie asked, “Can we?”

Genna felt a rush of shame.

Thinking, perhaps, of his sex life, Jack replied, “If it's all right with your mother, it's fine with me.”

“What about clean clothes?” Genna asked.

“No need,” Sweets said. “We'll take them shopping as soon as the stores open, I promise.”

“On one condition.”

Simon glanced at her. She'd been working on him all week and he'd refused.

“Simon has to sing for us.”

She watched him weigh the pluses and minuses. Shopping spree, a night with the Grandpas?

“He doesn't have to,” Sweets said. “He's not some organ grinder's monkey.”

“And I'm not an organ grinder. But if he wants to stay he has to sing.”

Simon said, “I don't have my music.”

“‘Some Enchanted Evening,' you know the words.”

She glanced towards Sweets, who must have performed the song when he knew Doris, but Sweets's face was unreadable. Later, after they'd retired to the living room with its wingback chairs and dusky rose Victorian settee, Simon stood in the center of the room, wrists crossed below his waist. Last spring, she'd watched him perform “Some Enchanted Evening” at a talent show sponsored by a Keep-Our-Kids-Out-of-Trouble church group in Cincinnati. Most of the performers and audience members packed into the grade school auditorium were black. Hip-hop and rap predominated; boys in sweats and Air Jordans, girls in matched skintight coveralls, shaking teenage booty, competed for cash. Halfway through, Simon strolled out in wide pants and a black shirt, smiled into the spotlight, and crooned his selection, which was half a century and several cultures removed from Pleasant Ridge Elementary.

“Damn, that boy can sing,” a woman in front of her exclaimed when the applause subsided.

“That's my son,” she'd said, kvelling. Jack had taught her the Yiddish: kvell: to brag, or boast publicly.

“Some enchanted evening,” Simon began in the Grandpas' living room. Jack caught her eye. Lizzie, poor dear, looked bored: listening yet again to Simon. But it was the Grandpas she couldn't get over, seated together on the settee. Marty covered his mouth with his left hand. With his right hand he grasped Sweets's left, and it was her father's rapt expression she would remember after they'd returned to Ohio, Sweets mouthing the words as Simon sang.

“…and somehow you'll know, you'll know even then…”

Simon seemed in exceptionally fine voice. If she closed her eyes, which she did often when he practiced, she could imagine a Technicolor Enzio Penza stepping off the big screen to stand before her, the only difference being Simon's voice might even be a little better. She preferred it; not quite as heavy, more youthful and romantic. She didn't dare close her eyes now; she couldn't miss a moment. Then Sweets stood. Actually, Marty pushed him out of the settee.