Object of Desire (39 page)

Chipper's hands were in his hair. His face was scrunched up, and his mouth was opening and closing, sometime spewing forth a word, sometimes just silent. It looked almost as if he were having a heart attack.

“Faggots!” he shouted again. “You're both a couple of dirty faggots!”

“Chipper, please be quiet! Let's just get out of here!”

He turned his crazy black eyes on me. “He told me to meet you guys in here! He told me to be here on time, and so I was! He told me we'd smoke a joint together, that he had some good pot! And this is what I find!
Faggots!
”

I spun on Troy. “You…set this up?”

There was no time for Troy to respond. Chipper screamed at the top of his lungs like an Indian warrior going into battle and lunged at Troy again.

“Help me, Danny!” Troy screamed.

“Shut up,” I told him now. “They'll
hear!
”

And they did hear. Brother Connolly came bursting through the door then, just in time to grab Chipper by the shoulders and throw him off of Troy. Chipper staggered backward, catching himself on a sink.

“What the
hell
is going on here?” Brother demanded.

“They're faggots!” Chipper bellowed. “I caught them in the stall—
doing it!
”

Brother's eyes widened as he looked from Troy over to me.

“It's not true,” I said, my voice shaking terribly. “We were just in there talking…I wanted to go over my lines. Troy was just listening to me go over my lines!”

“Troy was sucking his faggot dick!” Chipper screamed, his black eyes accusing me of everything—of lying, of depravity, of loving Troy more than I loved him.

“No, no.” I still tried to bluff my way out of this. “He
thinks
he saw that because I was taking a piss. I mean, I was urinating, Brother. I was going over my lines while I was—”

“Chipper's right,” Troy interrupted, his voice as calm and reasonable as could be. “I was sucking Danny's dick.” He smiled at me, then over at Brother. “And enjoying every moment of it, I might add.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Brother managed to say.

“Sorry, Danny,” Troy said, looking back at me. “Really I am. But when I saw Chipper's car in the parking lot and realized you were planning to cut out on me again, I decided to take matters into my own hands for a change. I thought Chipper would come in here and see us and just storm off.” He threw a disdainful glance in Chipper's direction. “I didn't realize what a hissy fit the stupid closet case would throw.”

“You fucking little—,” Chipper roared, but Brother held him off with one hand and a look that told him his entire graduation was on the line.

“And
this
is what lured him in,” Troy said, producing from his pocket a Baggie filled with pot. “I know he's got more in his car. I was out there only a few minutes ago. I told him that I had better stuff than he had, and he should really come in and smoke with me and Danny here in the bathroom. If I were
you,
Brother, I'd go out there and search his car before he has a chance to clean it up.”

Brother snatched the pot from Troy and turned to face Chipper. “Is this true, Chipper? Have you been smoking pot with these boys?”

“These
faggots,
you mean,” Chipper sputtered.

“Please, Brother,” I cut in. My hand was caressing the whiskers that were glued to my face. “This doesn't mean I can't be in the play, does it?”

Brother turned his eyes on me. “Oh, it does indeed mean that, Danny. I'm afraid it's going to mean a great many things.” He looked around at the three of us. “For all of you.”

A small smile ghosted across Troy's face. He could have cared less what was in store for him. He seemed pleased, in fact, by the way the whole thing had turned out.

“Okay, move your asses,” Brother commanded. “You first, Chipper. Straight to the principal's suite. Danny, you go to my office. Troy, you go to Brother Finnerty's.”

Chipper and Troy walked out ahead of me. I stopped in the doorway and turned back to look into Brother's face.

“
Please,
” I said, tears now rolling down my cheeks and into my fake whiskers. “Please don't kick me out of the play, Brother.”

“I'm afraid you kicked yourself out, Danny,” he said coldly.

On my way to Brother's office, I walked past the door to the auditorium. The whole cast and crew had gathered there to see what all the commotion was about. I couldn't bear to lift my eyes from the floor to look at them, to see the way they must have been looking at me. Jane Marie and Lance and Greg and Eddie and Katie.

I never saw any of them again.

“D
anny, this is crazy.”

I sat there, facing him, my eyes bleary from lack of sleep and too many hours spent staring at my computer screen. We were out by the pool. The sun was directly overhead, a white fluorescent ball. The reflections of palm trees wavered across the azure surface of the pool.

“Danny,” Randall said, “there must be
millions
of people on the planet with similar birthmarks. And you don't even know for sure that your sister
had
a child.”

“But it all makes sense finally.” My head throbbed, and I massaged it with my fingers. A headache had blossomed behind my eyes a day ago and had yet to release its grip, no matter how much Motrin I swallowed. “Everything makes sense. My feelings for Kelly. Why I was so drawn to him. And why Becky disappeared. Finally I know the answer. Becky left home because she was pregnant.”

Randall shook his head. “But how did she get to San Francisco? More importantly, why? Why would she go there if she had no connections there?”

“Why did I go to Los Angeles when I had no connections there?” I sat back in my chair, still rubbing my head. “Maybe Becky just wanted to get far away from the scene of all her problems—just as I would want to do a few years later. So she hopped on a bus and went to San Francisco and gave birth to her baby far away from any condemnation from my mother or the church.”

“And then got addicted to drugs.” Randall shook his head. “From what you've told me, that doesn't sound like your sister.”

“Randall, nobody could have predicted that little Danny Fortunato of St. John's School would become a pothead at St. Francis Xavier or a coke fiend in West Hollywood.”

“Still, I think the odds are so unlikely—”

“The dates match up exactly! If Becky left home when she found out she was pregnant, she would probably have been about a month or two along. So she would have given birth the following April or May.” I leaned across the table to make my points, ticking them off on my fingers. “Kelly was born in April of that same year. He's Italian. His mother was from somewhere ‘back East.' She wasn't married to Kelly's father. Her name was Ann—Becky's middle name. And, to cap it off, Kelly has a birthmark very much like the one both my sister and my mother had, and in exactly the same place.” I glared at Randall. “
And
he has Chipper's eyes.”

“I still think you're seeing what you want to see.” He folded his arms across his chest. “The only way you could prove it is through a DNA test.”

“I'm aware of that.” I leaned back in my chair and looked across the deck. A hummingbird was flitting around the red bougainvillea that climbed over the fence. “And I can't go that route. Not yet. I can't let Kelly know what I think.”

“Why not?”

I stood and watched the hummingbird, the way its tiny wings beat so fast. I'd read where a hummingbird beats its wings fifty times
a second
. That was
three thousand
times a minute. Once, a hummingbird had gotten into the house. Try as we might, neither Frank nor I could guide it out. The poor thing flew against windows and darted in and out of rooms for an entire day. Exhausted, it finally perched on our ceiling fan. It was the first time I'd ever seen a hummingbird sit still. I stared at its long, slender beak, at the frenetic wings that were finally stilled, folded back against its body just like those of any other bird. But a hummingbird is not like any other bird. I felt terribly sad seeing it sit there on the ceiling fan. It was almost as if a hummingbird at rest was not something we were meant to see. Finally, Frank managed to swing a paper bag and catch the tired little creature inside. Outside, in the garden, we released it—and I cheered as the hummingbird flew out of the bag, landed once on a rosebush, then buzzed off into the night.

I turned back to Randall. “I can't let Kelly know until I'm
sure.
It might only drive him away if he has an idea of what I'm thinking.”

“Danny, why do you want this so much?”

“I just want the truth.”

“I would think you'd recoil from the idea.” Randall was studying me, his eyes narrowing. “Danny, you said you were in love with this boy—this boy who you now think might be your nephew.”

“I know.” I looked around for the hummingbird, but it was gone. “But it just feels
right
somehow. As if it explains everything. As if it explains…” My voice trailed off before I came back to finishing the thought. “As if it explains my entire life.”

“You had
sex
with him,” Randall said, dropping his voice to a whisper. “If what you believe is true, then aren't you a little freaked out?”

“No. Not at all.”

He made a face. “Danny, surely if this
is
true, you wouldn't still want to be…”

“If this is true, then Kelly has a place in my life. We'll be connected forever.”

Randall stared at me. “So
that's
why you want it to be true.”

“Yes. Is that so wrong?”

He looked away.

“Is that so wrong?” I asked again, more urgently now.

“I don't know,” Randall said impatiently, looking back at me. “I just think you can't go planning Kelly's place in your life, planning on being connected to him forever, while the man with whom you've spent the past twenty years of your life is still sleeping in the casita.”

My headache pulsed against my eyes, and I sat down, pressing my thumbs to my temples. “I know,” I said. “I know.”

“Before you resolve anything with Kelly,” Randall said, “you need to resolve what's going on with Frank.”

I just rubbed my temples, not wanting to think.

The past couple of days had been lived entirely in my head. No doubt that was why it ached so much. I had plotted out, over and over again, every scenario that could possibly link Becky to Kelly. I'd written down everything I could remember, everything Detective Peter Guthrie had said about Becky's disappearance. All those trips with my mother to see the Rubberman and all those visits to New York's seedy underworld now seemed even more pathetic. Becky had never been there, had never known those people. She'd been three thousand miles away all that time, living in some flophouse in San Francisco, where she gave birth to Chipper's baby.

At my computer, I'd purchased access to various public records sites, scrolling through hundreds and hundreds of California vital records, looking for the name Rebecca Fortunato or Ann Fortunato. I knew it was highly unlikely that Becky would have used her real name, but I had to check to be sure. There was nothing. Next, I'd searched the Social Security Death Index. No one fit under that name. Of course, Becky had probably given up Fortunato as soon as she boarded the bus for the West Coast. So I'd looked for a Rebecca Paguni, reasoning she might have used Chipper's name, and then a Rebecca Cronin, thinking she might have used Mom's maiden name. I'd even checked under Horgan, Nana's maiden name. Nothing fit positively. But maybe my futile quest suggested something else. Maybe Becky was still alive.

The thought made the hair on my arms stand up. I'd long ago accepted the fact that my sister was dead. But maybe, in fact, she was still out there. And maybe I could reunite her with her son, and Kelly with his mother. Together, Kelly and I could uncover the secrets of our shared past, of the heritage that bound us. We'd petition the court for access to his birth records. We'd take a DNA test. We'd find the answers. Together.

But before all that, there was one test I could take myself. Before we could track down Kelly's mother, I planned to track down his father.

Online, I'd found an address for Chipper, under his real name, Charles. He was still living in East Hartford.

There was a phone number, too. But I wouldn't call him. He'd hang up the phone the moment he realized who was on the line. Or if he chose to listen to me for a moment, he'd never admit over the phone what I suspected.

That he'd made Becky pregnant, and then told her he wouldn't support her and her baby.
Their
baby. Maybe he really
had
felt like drowning her in the pond.

What else could I believe? Becky had been in love with Chipper. She wouldn't have left if he had promised to stand beside her. I suspected she'd gone to the pond that day to tell him the news. Probably soon after I'd left, she'd revealed to Chipper that she was carrying his child. No doubt he'd exploded, telling her it would ruin him, destroy his great dreams of being the senior-class football hero. For a couple of kids in Catholic high schools, the situation was untenable. They would've had to drop out of school and get married. Or—as Chipper had no doubt urged—Becky would need to slip away for an abortion. That way, no one would ever have to learn about their little mistake—a “mistake” I now knew as Kelly. But my sister, no doubt, had balked at the idea. She had been determined to have her baby. And so there had been no choice left but to say good-bye to all of us.

I used to think sometimes that I had ruined Chipper's life. But in fact, he had ruined Becky's by refusing to support her, and by extension, he'd ruined the lives of my parents and come damn close to ruining mine. Not to mention what he had done to the son he'd left adrift by his lack of responsibility.

And now here I was, positioned to take care of Chipper's son.

Randall and I were walking out to his car.

“Call me later if you need to talk,” he said. “You need to really take the time to think all this through, Danny. You are too emotional right now to think clearly.”

“I'm thinking more clearly than I have in twenty-five years,” I told him.

Randall hugged me. “I love you, Danny. You're my oldest friend in the world.”

I hugged him back.

“Please don't act rashly,” he said. “And please talk to Frank.”

After he was gone, I went back and sat by the pool. My laptop was in front of me on the table, and I heard the little click indicating a new e-mail. Confirmation of my travel itinerary. I sat back in my chair and sighed. I would need to tell Frank about my plans when he got home tonight. I'd need to open up a dialogue with him after a week of mostly silence. I didn't look forward to it. I imagined it would only lead to more hurt. But it had to be done.

He came home earlier than usual. He was carrying a bouquet of daisies, dyed green. He'd obviously decided on a thaw.

“You gave me a green daisy once,” he said, handing me the flowers. “Thought I'd return the gesture.”

“They're very pretty, Frank. Thank you.”

He gave a small, awkward laugh. “The florist couldn't understand why I wanted them green. She said that St. Patrick's Day was months away.”

“They're very pretty,” I said again, cutting the stems and placing them, one at a time, in a vase filled with water.

“Danny, I'm sorry I pulled away,” Frank said.

Hearing him apologize only made me feel guiltier. “Frank, it's okay. I'm the one who should apologize. I wish I hadn't chosen to express my feelings when I was drunk. The conversation might have gone very differently.”

Frank was leaning against the counter, watching me arrange the flowers. His eyes looked old and tired. “Danny,” he said, “I've missed you. Every morning and every night.”

“I've missed you, too, Frank.”

“Really?” He looked at me with genuine puzzlement. “Have you really?”

“Yes, of course.”

Of course, I'd missed him. It was no fun sleeping alone. It was sad and lonely, especially after twenty years. The bed was cold, and the room disconcertingly silent without Frank's snoring to keep me awake. Of course, I missed him.

He took a long breath. “I need to know what you want to do, Danny.”

“About what?”

“About us.”

I closed my eyes. My headache still throbbed. “I don't know, Frank,” I admitted.

“Do you want to be with him?” he asked. “With Kelly?”

I opened my eyes. I had no answer for that. Not now.

“Because if you do, I can't stand in your way. I'm fifty-five years old, almost fifty-six. Sure, I'm running these days. Jogging. I'm trying to get back in shape. But I'm not ever going to be able to turn back time to the kind of springtime beauty that Kelly possesses. In less than five years, I'll be sixty. And you'll still be a young forty-something, looking as good as you do, looking even younger than you are, able to attract beautiful young men, like Ollie or Kelly or anybody else.” He paused. “I can't keep up with you, Danny. That's just a cold, hard fact.”

“Frank,” I said, but then I couldn't find the words to continue. I just sighed and sat down at the kitchen table. He joined me, taking a chair opposite.

“Danny,” he told me, “I look back across our twenty years, and I cherish every moment. We've been through so much. So much happiness, so much heartache, but always together. From the days on Venice Beach, running with Pixie, to our walks in Griffith Park and our trips up the coast to Big Sur…” His voice trailed off. “I miss those days. I miss how athletic I was. I'm trying to get back some of that—”

“Frank, don't do it for me,” I said. “If you want to jog, if you want to run—do it for yourself.”

“I
want
to do it for you.”

Our eyes met. His were bloodshot and moist. I felt that mine were hard and brittle. I tried to smile at him, but I was afraid I would cry. Maybe it would have been all right if I cried. But I didn't want to. I looked away.

“Danny, when we took our vows, I told you I would be there forever—”

I stood up abruptly. “I knew you'd bring up our vows. Frank! I'm not trying to back out on our vows! I'm just being honest with you about how I feel. I can't pretend that I don't have these feelings.”