Object of Desire (40 page)

“Of course not, Danny. Of course, you can't pretend.”

“And let's face it, Frank. When you took that vow, you did so knowing if things had been different, if you'd had your choice—”

Now Frank stood up as well. “Don't say it, Danny! I am so tired of you saying that!”

“Well, it's true.”

“It is
not!
” His face was red. “Why have you always believed that my heart was elsewhere? Why have you never been able to believe that
you are worth loving
?”

“Frank, you don't need to justify your love to me.” I took a moment to compose myself, then continued. “You have more than lived up to your end of our bargain. You were there for me when I was a scared young kid, making no money, struggling with my career. You paid my bills and gave me the confidence I needed to change careers. You have been my rock, Frank, and I will be eternally grateful to you for that.” I took a deep breath. “Just don't feel you need to pretend that I was your first and only love, Frank. Because there's no cause for that. None at all.”

He was quiet. I moved across the room, smelling the daisies he had given me.

“I'm going on a short trip,” I said.

Frank looked at me strangely. “Where?”

“Home.”

He seemed bewildered. “Home?”

“Connecticut.”

“But your father isn't there anymore.”

“No.” I paused. “But someone else is.”

I told him the story. The whole crazy story, a story that seemed even crazier as I relayed it to him. But that didn't make me doubt it. Frank listened calmly as I spoke, making no response, offering no reaction. Not a nod, not a question, not a single lift of his eyebrows.

“The only way I can know for sure,” I finished, “is to confront Chipper.”

Still, Frank said nothing. He just sat down at the table.

“I leave tomorrow,” I told him. “I fly from here to Dallas, then Dallas to Hartford. I've rented a car.”

“What if Chipper's not there?” Frank finally asked.

“Then I wait until he gets back.”

“Danny, the odds are—”

“I know.” I ran my hands through my hair. “Randall has already drilled into my head that the odds are stacked against me. That millions of people with unwed mothers from the East Coast might have birthmarks like crescent moons on their upper arms.”

“But millions of people don't also have eyes like Chipper Paguni,” Frank said.

I looked over at him. “That's right. They don't.”

“At least, eyes like you
remember
Chipper Paguni's.” He paused. “That was a long time ago, Danny.”

“I'm aware of that.”

Frank stood and walked into the living room. I watched him from the kitchen.

“And what if Chipper won't see you? What if you go all that way and he—”

“He
will
see me,” I said, my voice set.

“Danny,” Frank said, turning around to look at me. “You're aware of what's happened here, aren't you?”

“What?” I asked.

“You've become your mother.”

I didn't have a response to that.

“All these years you've believed you failed her,” Frank said. “Now you can finally make it up to her. You can pick up her quest where she left off. Maybe
she
could never find Becky, but
you
will.” He smiled compassionately. “You know, I don't think you want Kelly as much for yourself as you want him for your mother. If you can turn him into Becky's son, then you can finally say to your mother, wherever she is, ‘Look, Mom. I did what you asked. I found Becky! Now you can love me again!'”

I laughed. “You're an English professor, Frank. Not a psychologist.”

“Danny, it's just plainly obvious.”

“Okay, fine. You've made your point. You think I shouldn't go.”

“Oh, no, not all. I think you
should
go. By all means. It's the only way for you to get any kind of resolution with this.”

I sighed. “Thank you, Frank.”

I came into the living room and sat down on the couch.

“Danny,” Frank said, looking down at me kindly. “I've never been good at telling you how much I love you. I suppose that's been my fault. I'm just not all that good at showing how I feel.”

“You show it fine, Frank.”

He sat down beside me. “I need to say this. I need you to hear it.”

I looked at him.

“At night,” he said, “when you crawl in next to me in bed, I feel as if my whole world is complete. As if there's no need ever to get up again. I have felt that way for twenty years, and I feel that way just as strongly now.”

I looked over at him. “Frank…”

“You were
never
second to me, Danny. How could you believe that for so long? What can I do to prove to you that you're wrong to think that way?”

“Frank, there's no need…”

“Yes, there
is
a need, Danny!” His face was red again, as if he'd just come in from running. “You have
always
been first in my heart! Always! Since that day I picked you up on Mulholland Drive and you broke down in tears in my car. I fell in love with you in that moment, and for every day since, every
hour,
it's always been you, Danny, always
you!
”

I looked at him. I couldn't respond. Couldn't even think.

He gently pulled me into his embrace. “Always you, baby,” he said in my ear. “Always you.”

The words seemed wrong to me. Unreal. To absorb them, to believe them, was impossible, foolish to attempt. I hadn't gotten through my life believing words such as those. I'd survived by letting words like that bounce off me, ricochet away, never breaking the skin. I'd survived by being too smart to fall for them. I knew Frank didn't love me first. How was such a thing possible? No one had ever loved me first.

Still, I let him take me to bed and undress me and kiss me and hold me close, my head on his warm, furry chest, listening to his heart beating all night long.

W
e sat holding hands as we waited for the results. Opposite us, a young, straight Latino couple sat stiff-backed in their chairs, watching us. We didn't care what they thought. Frank and I just sat there, with our eyes looking straight ahead. We didn't speak; we didn't read a magazine. We just sat there, holding hands.

Finally, a nurse approached us and told us we should follow her.

“I'm terrified,” I said in a little voice as we stood.

“It'll be all right, baby,” Frank whispered, his lips on my ear.

Two weeks ago, Randall had tested HIV-positive. Suddenly we knew dozens of people whose test results had been the same. Three guys in our neighborhood were sick. I'd seen the sarcomas on their necks and arms. Edgar, my old boss, had died of AIDS. I'd seen him a few weeks before he died, a skeleton walking on the street, all the bones in his face visible. Once I had kissed that man, even had sex with him. And now he was dead.

“I'm terrified,” I said again as the nurse closed the door on us in the small inner office. The room was entirely white, from walls to curtains to plastic chairs to the crinkly paper that covered the examining table. Frank and I gripped each other's hands even tighter, still not saying a word to each other.

I thought about Randall. I prayed that he wouldn't get sick. I couldn't imagine my handsome young friend with sunken cheeks and protruding teeth. He'd started immediately on some antiviral drugs, none of which had proven all that effective in other people. I'd seen people with AIDS around town, their beepers going off in the middle of movies. I'd seen them at sidewalk cafés, swallowing their pills. I'd seen them crossing La Cienega at Santa Monica, looking like the cast of
Night of the Living Dead.
Was that going to be our future, too? Taking those horrible pills every day, pills that made you sick, that gave you diarrhea, that caused your body to waste away? I didn't understand the good of them if, even after all that, they didn't stop you from dying.

But why should any of it surprise me? Didn't it all make sense in a terrible kind of way? Did I really think I could get away, that hopping on a Peter Pan bus would really save my life?

It was worse for Frank. Frank was a teacher. We'd heard the stories from all over the country of teachers with AIDS being fired. I was just an actor, after all. Sure, it would be an issue if I had to kiss someone in a scene: people were still clucking over the way Rock Hudson had kissed Linda Evans on
Dynasty.
I'd have to deal with such talk, of course, and I'd probably lose out on some roles. But still, it was worse for Frank. Much worse. He'd dedicated years of his life to studying to be a teacher. I squeezed his hand, and he squeezed mine back.

If the results were positive, I wondered if I'd tell my parents. Frank's parents were dead, so it wasn't an issue, but mine were still out there in the world, at least as far as I knew. I hadn't been in touch with them now for a few years. I imagined picking up the phone and telling them that I had AIDS, and Mom breaking down in tears and saying, “Oh, my little Danny” and rushing out here to take care of me. But then I laughed to myself. In what universe might that happen? No, I didn't think I'd tell my parents. Mom would just see it as confirmation of her frequently expressed belief that I'd chosen a sick, degrading, and sinful lifestyle. No. I wouldn't give her that satisfaction.

Of course, a positive result was far more likely for me than it was for Frank. I'd been the hooker, after all. I'd been the one to take it up the ass from strangers and allow them to shoot jizz into my colon for a hundred bucks a pop. I wasn't proud of it, but there it was. Still, Frank was older than I was, he'd been having sex for a lot longer, and he'd had sex with a lot more people than I. Probably, I figured, we were both positive. Everybody we knew was. Why should we be any different?

“Danny,” Frank said finally, breaking the silence in that little white room. “You know it's going to be all right, one way or other, don't you?”

“No,” I admitted. “I don't know that.”

“It will be. Trust me.” His bright eyes found mine. “Do you trust me, Danny?”

I smiled. “More than anybody ever.”

Frank's green eyes smiled back at me. He was so beautiful. Even after two years, he was still the most beautiful man I'd ever seen. On his strong shoulders, Frank seemed able to carry the world, and that included me. His eyes were so alive, so bright, so filled with a sense of what was right and what was possible. As I sat there, looking at him, I thought that I'd never really known what beauty was until I met Frank. All those men in my scrapbook, with their pretty eyes and pearly white teeth, were nothing compared to Frank. With my free hand, I reached over and touched his cheek and his strong jaw. There was no man in the world more beautiful than Frank Wilson.

“If we're positive,” he was telling me, “we'll find the meds that work. There are new ones, much more effective ones, on the horizon. And there are alternative treatments, too. We'll find the ones that work best for us.”

“But what if only one of us is positive?” I asked.

“Then we'll deal with that, too. Together.”

Suddenly the terror rose up in my throat like bile. “Will you stay with me, Frank?” I blurted out. “Will you?”

I knew that hadn't been part of the bargain. But I needed to know.

“Of course, I will, Danny,” Frank said, without missing a beat. “Of course, I will stay with you.”

I didn't believe him, but the words were good to hear nonetheless.

But then he asked softly, “Will you stay with
me?
”

“Of course,” I echoed. “Of course.”

The door opened, and the doctor came in. He was a young man, quite handsome, with dark hair and blue eyes. He nodded and sat down opposite us in a white plastic chair. He opened the file he held in his hands.

“Okay, Frank,” he said, scanning the results inside. “Your test came back negative.”

“Oh,” I heard Frank say, more a shudder of relief passing through his chest and out of his mouth than any authentic word. I grabbed his hand as tightly as I could.

“And you, Danny,” the doctor said, his eyes moving down the page, “your test came back—”

There was a moment's pause. I teetered at the edge of a cliff.

“—negative as well.”

“Oh, God!” I started to cry. “Are you sure it's not a mistake?”

“It's not a mistake, Danny,” the doctor said, smiling. “You don't have HIV. Neither of you do.”

I broke hands with Frank to make the sign of the cross. I hadn't made that gesture in years. It was something left over from my mother, perhaps the only thing I still had of hers.

“Now continue practicing safe sex,” the doctor said, standing. “I don't want to see these results change.”

We smiled at him, still seated, as he left the room.

“I don't believe it,” I said to Frank. “Just like that. Our worries are gone.”

He was beaming. “Believe it, baby.”

“I was so
certain
I was going to be positive,” I said, as much to myself as to him. “After all the things I did. I was so certain.”

Frank stroked my hair. “We're incredibly lucky, baby.”

“It's just so odd,” I said. “It felt as if testing positive would make sense. That
of course,
I'd die young, probably in a couple of years. I was certain that was the way my life would go, and it wouldn't have surprised me in the least.”

“No, baby,” Frank said, still stroking my hair. “That's
not
the way it will go.”

“So odd…”

Frank leaned forward to rest his forehead against mine. “We're going to have long lives, baby. We are going to last and last and last. We are going to grow
old.
”

“How wonderful,” I whispered, scarcely able to believe it still.

Our eyes locked as our noses rubbed together. My mother used to get up close to Becky and me like this. She'd call it “seeing the owl.” I smiled at Frank.

“That doctor just gave us a blank check, baby,” he told me. “The road is stretching out in front of us. We can take it anywhere.”

“But why were our tests negative when Randall's was positive? Why are we so lucky when so many others aren't?”

“That I don't know, Danny.”

The door opened again, and the nurse reappeared, seeming surprised to find us still inside. “Oh, I'm sorry,” she said.

“It's okay,” Frank told her. “We were just leaving.”

We stood and made room for the next people to sit in these chairs, whose news might not be nearly as good as ours. But for us, the joy was unbound. Taking each other's hand again, we headed out into the rest of our lives.