Look Away Silence (36 page)

“We’re in here, Snooks,” Leslie called, as I shook
out my wet hair.

In the dining room sat the quilters — Leslie and
Ginger, Mary and Louise, Jasper and Rudi, while Sammy came in from
the kitchen with two beers — one in progress and one for me.

“I’ve become a seamstress,” he said handing me a
Bud. “Glass?”

“No,” I stammered.

On the table were two cloth panels, one with Russ’
name embroidered across the top. The other was pretty much in a
blank slate. I assumed that was Matt’s. Louise had begun tatting
the edges.

“Martin,” she said. “Sit next to me. Come think of a
design. What did you bring to the table?”

I set the beer on a side table and sat beside her.
The rain riced the roof and I was chilled. Mary winked at me from
across the way. She held up a doily with the word
Newt
painted across it.

“In the corner, I think,” she suggested.

I nodded, and she went to work with a needle and
thread.

“Now I’m proficient at embroidery,” Leslie
announced. “If you tell me what words you want on Matt’s panel,
I’ll run them up. This is for Russell’s.”

She held up a swatch that read
One brief bright
flame
. I smiled.
Yes
, I thought.
One brief bright
flame and Russell was his name.
Perfect.

“Let me think about it, Les,” I said. I did have an
idea that I tripped over last week. “I brought some of Matt’s old
ties. I thought I’d spell his name out with his old ties.”

“Brilliant,” Ginger said. “And you said you weren’t
creative.”

“He would have loved that, dear,” Louise said.

I glanced across the table to Jasper. He and Rudi
were pasting appliques onto Russ’ quilt — little musical notes.
That gave me another idea.

“I think I want something musical on Matt’s.”

“I’d thought more a computer,” Sammy said. “I have a
few pictures. We could mount a small portrait framed in a computer
screen.”

“I like that,” I said. “But he loved music.”

“He loved your voice,” Mary said. “He was as tone
deaf as a frog.”

“Perhaps,” I said. “But I think I’d like to see the
lyrics of his favorite song maybe.”

“Well, just let me know,” Leslie said.

And I did. However, we could also write things on
the panel, because they had these indelible markers that did a fine
job — didn’t run or smear and if the ink got wet it would hold up.
I watched Hank as he drew a little black faced figure at one edge
of the panel.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I’s wants him ‘member me in alls my ebony
glory.”

Then he grinned and I was flooded by memories of
Hank and Matt bantering in mock Ebonics — a game that cast aside
shame and discrimination, leveling their spirits into one glorious
blend of friendship. Louise had a marker now. Her hand was steady —
florid and elegant. She wrote
A day never passes without a
thought of you . . .
She pressed the last period firmly, and
then wiped away a tear.

“He’ll always be my lamb.”

And thus it went. I arranged his ties in the center
of the panel. At first I spelled out
Matthew
, but then
decided that I never called him that, so
Matt
it was. Sewing
them on was a chore. Threading the fucking needle took forever, but
Ginger’s big mitts helped. For a chubby fisted lesbian, she
threaded a needle like Tinkerbelle in a lantern. My first stitches
were too loose and needed to be ripped out. I soon learned that it
would take me a good three hours just to attach the letter
M
, but as I stitched I listened. I listened to Louise recall
the baby boy in the bathtub and at the circus. There were stories
of fights in school and one from Mary about how her brother set
fire to the tree house and broke his leg jumping from the top
bough. And then Sammy bubbled about how he tried to get Matt
interested in baseball.

“It was like cutting off an arm, but I
insisted.”

“You bullied him,” Louise said. “I remember, you
came inside and kicked the chair. Said you’d teach him how to cover
first base or take a strap to him.”

“I did not. I wouldn’t.”

“Well, those were the days before we
understood.”

Silence

“No vun ever unterstandts,” Rudi said, filling the
silence utterly.

He had been quiet, sewing away at the musical notes,
Jasper at his side. It was evident that Rudi was also ill now, his
face drawn, a purple lesion chevroned on his neck.

“Your Matt, he unterstoodt. He touched my face und
he knew. He velcomed me as his komrade, to der legions.” He
sniffed, his hand covered by Jasper’s. “Ja, your Matt knew, he
did.”

“I guess it takes time to understand these things,”
Louise said. “I guess it takes the sewing of quilts to make us all
equal, both those here and those gone.”

I stopped sewing and touched the letter
M
.
Would I ever understand? Were we meant to understand? I supposed if
I reflected on this panel for a thousand years, I might need
another thousand to fathom it out.

The panels were complete, or nearly so by Sunday
morning. The rain had never ceased. It sang accompaniment to our
chatter, our reminiscence, our silences, our restless sleep and to
those moments of retreat when we clustered in corners, on the
porch, in the kitchen or over the work at hand. The rain hummed and
thrummed like a vamp to the soul. No better balm could there be to
those who seek some peace. Whenever I need an ounce of serenity, I
let my mind drift back to
the Lantanas
, to the rain on the
roof and the cats in the bushes and it comes.
What’s in a
quilt
, I thought. How can we repair a life gone by sewing their
pictures on cloth, their names in old ties or scribble our hearts
from our sleeves? We cannot. But in the striving, the sewing and
the knitting, we embroider some peace — some ever stirring, ever
swaying tranquility forever lost in the rain drenched
lantanas.
And I may have understood.

Russell’s pink and white panel was splendid, flashy
with musical verve and queenie pictures — living and forever
blooming as he was in life before the haste of living tripped him
up like a stone in the river. Matt’s panel was green and gray, the
ties leaping from the background. The
Newt
and the homilies
from Louise and Hank and Mary and Sammy and Leslie and Ginger rang
true to their remembrance of him. There were three clusters of
photographs — his baby shots and his first cowboy suit and, at my
insistence, a portrait of Matt and Luis, the only photo Matt had of
him. Then there was Matt and I on leather Santa’s lap on that
fabled first date at
The Cavern.
Another cluster had Matt on
the porch of
the Lantanas
surrounded by cats and one of him
in front of
The Crow
. There was a little montage of our
Rocky Mountain romp, and finally Matt at his computer and, at
Sammy’s inspiration, framed with a computer screen.

At the panel’s crest was Leslie’s embroidered
swatch. It was perfect, although the quilters did not understand
it. They knew the significance of the first two words, but the
third word eluded them. Louise hugged me as we admired the finished
work.

“It will stand proudly with the others in
Washington.”

“Thanks to you all,” I said.

There was a communal sigh. My eye ran the gamut of
this thing — this extension of my grief. I knew there was more to
be done, but I couldn’t bring myself to complete it just now. There
was still time. The panel would go to the local NAMES Project
chapter to be attached to seven other panels. It would be tended
well. I wouldn’t see it again until it would be ceremonially
unfurled with thousands of others on the Mall.

“It’s lovely,” Louise said. “Perfect, in fact. And
that embroidered saying just crowns it all, Martin.”

It did. I was proud that I had thought of it. As I
read it, I could hear my cowboy’s bullfrog voice croaking it out in
the snow.

Look Away
, it said.

Look Away Silence
.

I understood.

It stopped raining.

I waited curbside under the copse of trees that
lined the Mall in the shadow of the Washington Monument. Hank was
parking the car and I promised I would wait for him. The girls were
already out on the sea of panels that spread as far as the eye
could see, but I dared not view it yet. In fact, when Hank told me
to wait, I didn’t argue. If he never returned, it would be soon
enough. I paced, my legs urging me to cross the street and walk in
the opposite direction. There were hosts of visitors and yet above
the quiet din came the reading of the names. They were read slowly
and steady, as regimented as if they were the names of the combat
wounded, and who was to say they weren’t? Their panels faced the
sky, but their names rang toward heaven. Louise and Sammy were
scheduled to read a brace of names, and then say a few words of
encouragement. Louise was nervous. In fact, I had never seen her so
unnerved. However, she left the hotel with renewed conviction, her
man on her arm and her daughter in tow.

“Ready?” Hank asked, coming up behind me.

“No,” I said.

“Take your time.”

My heart raced and my breath hitched. Suddenly,
gentle hands braced my shoulder. Hank’s lips came to my cheek, and
then to my ear.

“It’s almost over, Martin,” he whispered. “He’s in
your heart and he goes with you today.”

I clutched him and gazed out at the throngs — the
silent throngs that walked between the panels, between the boxes of
tissues that were set at each corner. I stepped out. Numb, but I
stepped.

At first, the world was brightly colored — a vast
ocean of cloth as varied as the many lives that winked at God. The
lanes were even and I had a strange thought that I was on a newly
ploughed field in cotton country. Slowly, with Hank guiding me, I
walked. Other mourners walked and watched, gazed and read — in
pairs and in clutches and solitary. Some hovered at one panel,
while other stood transfixed at a single point, reading or
remembering. All the while, the names came over the PA system. Name
after name.

I had walked onto this living symbol of shame and
remembrance afraid to cast my eyes downward. I knew that at some
point I would come to Matt’s panel. I heard some people whispering.
Did you see Rock Hudson’s panel
and someone else referred to
Keith Haring’s
. Was this a museum? A place to gather
mementos? I noticed people photographing individual panels as if
they were making a scrapbook and these were works of art.
Art?
No. This was the fabric of our grief that we sewed
together to get a government to recognize that here was the
unattended business in the land, business that stole away the
young. This was not a cemetery. This was the graffiti of the heart.
It shouted quietly over the landscape from the Capitol Dome to the
Washington Monument — ten thousand expressions of remembrance all
shouting in a whisper
Listen to me, for I am gone and could be
still here if you did not ignore me
.

Finally, I gained enough courage to look down and
see them — to appreciate my fellows in kindred threads. There they
were as I passed — photos of young men and hearty couples. Their
jackets and jeans, their merry life-filled faces enjoying what I
had now in abundance, but they had not. Teddy bears for infants
with short shrift date spans and firemen and police. There were
architects and dancers and actors and poets and lawyers and even a
nurse. I walked and walked until I scarcely noticed those who
walked with me, beside me and between the cotton bounded lanes. It
was so huge, this quilt — this field of waste that lay before me. I
thought of the hours I spent caring for Matt and it was now
multiplied in the thousands and tens of thousands. There was
fellowship here among those who shared my peregrination. Still the
names came.

The names were read from the podium some distance
away. Suddenly, I recognized the voice — sweet and motherly. The
quilt disappeared as Louise’s list was read. I listened and
listened well.

“Raymond Adams,” she said. Her voice was steady, but
I knew she was holding on for dear life. “Raymond Adams,” she said
again, having lost her place. “James Wise, Kevin Marsters, Buddy
Havran, Rob Frobier, Sgt. Andy Andersen, Riccardo Sanchez, Rob
Hackett, CD Smith, Steven Coates, Nicolas Alesandro, Jon Eriksson,
Russell Hay and my son . . . my son, Matthew Kieler.”

“Matthew Kieler,” Sammy said, leaning into the mic.
He supported her as she unfurled her own paper. She took a deep
breath, and then held onto the mic. It reverberated, but no matter.
She would have her say. This woman who had been my mainstay would
have . . . her . . . say.

“When my husband and I were asked to read a portion
of the names, we were hesitant. There are so many names — so many
fallen — more fallen than in all the wars we have ever fought. Yet,
our government. Yes, I must say it; our government ignores this
devastation, because they do not value the lives of our children.
They think that because our children live their lives as they are,
and because the upper echelon do not approve of our children’s
life-ways — their natural, normal life-ways, it gives Washington a
right to watch them die and not even shed a tear or even to bring
themselves to say the word . . . AIDS. There, I’ve said it. It’s
been said in the shadow of these great monuments. But here is
another monument that spreads further than anyone could imagine.
This crop of death embarrasses them, because these angels, like all
angels, are different. I am sorry to say that, because they are
different, those who rule us are indifferent to them and their
plight. I am sorry, but our fingers are sore from sewing their
names into quilts.”