Object of Desire (6 page)

I accepted my limitations. “I'm no artist,” I told the teacher. “I just want to make things that look nice.”

Only Frank seemed to get it. “Danny,” he said, looking at one of my sunflower shots, stripped of its yellows and pumped up with green, “that is probably the craziest-looking flower I've ever seen, but I sure as hell can't stop looking at it.” It had hung ever since over our mantel. Frank had dubbed it his “green daisy.”

But an artist? No, I wasn't an artist, even though Frank insisted I was. He'd always been very sure of that point. I made art; ergo, I was an artist. I just laughed. Now Becky—
she
might have become an artist. She'd had the passion. She'd had the talent. I remembered the easel that had stood in our backyard—

“Danny.”

My thoughts shattered, like glass through which a rock had been thrown. My eyes darted away from the mountains and onto Frank's face.

“You seemed far, far away,” he said.

“I'm sorry.” I rubbed my forehead. It was damp with sweat from the sun. “I was…thinking.”

Frank nodded. Twenty years we'd been together. He knew how often I got lost in thought. And he knew where those thoughts usually led. No matter what I began thinking about, they often seemed to come back to one thing. He smiled gently.

I was fortunate to have him. Many men would gladly have traded places with me, sitting there in studied contentment, sipping my coffee with my partner of many years, watching the sunlight dance against the mountains. Frank knew me better than anyone alive, and more than anyone, he had been there for me. For two decades, Frank had believed in me, encouraged me, supported me—even when I was at my nadir, convinced I was a failure. Frank had never bought that line, and consequently, he'd kept me from buying it completely, either. So what if I knew, deep down, that Frank's heart had never been fully mine? What did that matter? He had never left me wanting. Many men indeed would have made the trade.

But not, I suspected, those boys across the way, the ones giggling and wrestling each other in the grass. They wouldn't want to switch places with me. After this, they'd probably go back to their guest resort and fuck in the pool. And then maybe they'd do a line of coke or a hit of E. Tonight they'd dance their asses off at Hunters, and tomorrow they'd head back to West Hollywood, sated and satisfied and happy. No, those boys wouldn't make the trade. The question was, would I?

I looked from them back over to Frank, and then to Randall, who had pulled off his shirt and stretched out on the grass. His face was turned up at the sun. Frank and Randall. The two people who knew me best in the entire world, who understood what my birthday made me think of every year. I looked down at Randall in the grass, the hair on his fleshy torso glistening with perspiration. I knew he shouldn't get too much sun, that it could affect his meds. But not once in more than a decade of living with HIV had Randall developed any opportunistic infection. His T cells remained high, and his daily regimen of pills and potions had rendered the virus undetectable in his body.

Still, I asked, “Do you have sunblock on?”

“It's just for a few minutes,” Randall said to me, eyes closed.

We stayed that way for a while more, three silent men occasionally distracted by the laughter drifting across the grass from the boys under the tree. I slurped up the last of my iced cappuccino, making a noise, the way a kid would do.

“Don't you think we ought to get moving?” I whispered, leaning in toward Frank. “I don't want it to get too hot in Joshua Tree to go hiking.”

Frank's eyelids flickered. “Danny, you know, it might be too hot at that. Maybe we should plan to do it another day.”

“If we leave
now,
” I argued, “it won't be too hot. It's not as hot up in the high desert as it is down here.”

“Yes, but you know, I'm kind of tired today.” Frank's eyes were making an appeal to me. “I'm afraid I'd be a drag on you….”

“Frank,” I said, the annoyance tightening my throat. “You said last night we would go hiking for my birthday. Just you and me. Maybe we'd even finally see a bighorn sheep. Those were your words.”

“I'm sorry, baby. If you really want to go, we'll go.”

I turned away from him. “No. Forget it if you're too tired.”

We sat in silence for a moment.

“
I'd
go with you, Danny,” Randall said, sitting up and pulling his shirt back on, “but I should be heading back to L.A.”

I said nothing. I didn't want to go hiking with Randall. I wanted to go with Frank. I stared at Randall and wondered if—as so often happened—he was reading my mind. If he, too, was remembering what he'd said to me two decades ago, standing in the bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. Frank had just asked me to move in with him.

“I just want you to think long and hard about this, Danny,” Randall had said then. “When you're thirty, he'll be forty-four. When you're forty, he'll be fifty-four. When you're fifty…”

It hadn't mattered at thirty. But now, at forty-one…

It was at that very moment that I looked up, and coming through the courtyard toward us was Jake Jones. His blond hair seemed to glow in the sun, and the flip-flops he wore, barely visible under his long, loose jeans, slapped the pavement in a regular beat as he walked. He seemed in that moment the personification of youth. The lightness to his step. The indifference of his shoulders. He noticed us.

Or rather, he noticed me.

“Hey, Ishmael,” he said, approaching. I couldn't tell if he was being ironic or if he really thought that was my name. “Why'd you disappear so fast last night?”

He came to a stop barely a foot from where I was sitting. My eyes were level with his crotch. A black belt with silver studs was half visible from under his semi-tucked white T-shirt, and green checkered boxer shorts bunched up over the waist of his jeans. From the corner of my eye, I could see both Frank and Randall watching our encounter, Frank with curiosity, Randall with envy. Jake had walked right past the two of them and straight up to me. I lifted my eyes to meet the youngster's and smiled.

“Because,” I said, “my boyfriend, Frank, was waiting for me at home.” I gestured with my head toward Frank.

Jake's eyes turned to look. “Hi,” he said, unflappable. “I'm Jake.”

“Good to meet you, Jake,” Frank said.

He spoke the way fathers do when meeting their sons' friends. The two of them shook hands.

From behind us came a small voice. “Hi, Jake,” Randall offered.

The boy finally turned, lifting an eyebrow in my poor, forgotten friend's direction. “Oh, hey,” he said. “Did you and Thad and Jimmy go out to dinner last night after I left the bar?”

“We…um…we ate something back at their house,” Randall replied.

I smiled despite myself.
They ate something, all right.
Frank caught my smile, and our eyes met. He chuckled. It broke the tension between us.

“Well,” Jake was saying, returning his attention to me, “it was good seeing you again, Ishmael.” And then in front of my boyfriend, he took my phone off the table, where I had placed it, and entered his number. “Just in case you ever have a party and want to invite me,” he said, handing the phone back to me. “Good meeting you,” he said to Frank. To Randall, he said nothing more, just disappeared inside the café.

“What's up with the Ishmael?” Frank asked.

“A silly joke,” I said.

“He's cute,” Frank noted.

Randall was standing now, brushing off his shorts. “Thad and Jimmy told me to watch out for him. They have done so much for him. They've let him live with them for a while, and they've helped him get a couple of jobs….”

“And what's their problem with him?” I asked. “Is it that he accepts their help but refuses to put out?”

Randall didn't reply. I had my answer.

“Well,” Frank said, “I think it's obvious he'd put out for Danny, since he gave him his number.”

“Danny isn't interested,” I said.

Randall snorted. “Thad says he's a scared little twenty-one-year-old who pretends he's seen it all and done it all. He's got a chip on his shoulder the size of Nevada. He might be cute, but Thad assured me I was better off staying far, far away from him.” He gave me a pair of very big eyes. “And I'd suggest the same thing to you, Danny.”

I saluted him.

It was time to go. The sun was becoming unbearable. My armpits were wet, and I could feel the bridge of my nose starting to burn. It was time for us humans to retreat into our air-conditioned hiding places and not emerge again until after sunset, when we might wade into our pools or sit under the misters on our decks, gazing up into the purple sky.

“You know,” Frank said as we walked to the car, his joints stiff from sitting so long, “maybe I ought to start jogging. I'll get up early in the morning, before it gets too hot.”

I gave him a look. “Jogging?”

He nodded. “Yeah. I'm out of shape. I'll firm up a bit, and then we can go hiking again.”

“It's okay, Frank.”

He stopped walking and looked at me. Randall was ahead of us, rolling down the windows of the car and running the air conditioner full blast so the interior could cool off. I held Frank's eyes. In many ways they barely resembled the eyes I had known for so long. The lashes had gone gray, and the whites of his eyes were perpetually bloodshot. But the color of his eyes had never changed. They were still as green as they'd been that night on Santa Monica Boulevard when I'd run out of the bar, chasing after him, worried I'd never see this beautiful, mysterious stranger again.

“Danny,” Frank said, and he was holding my gaze as tenderly as he ever had. “You know that when I look at the mountains, I see Becky, too.”

I managed a smile but said nothing. As always, Frank understood.

Yes, Becky was always there—not just in the mountains, but in everything I saw, everything I heard, everything I felt—and Frank, dear Frank, knew this. That was the way it always was this time of year, when August turned into September, when the late summer sun was at its peak, and lesson plans were being made, and schools were opening their doors, and parents worried about sending their children off into the world, and young boys did their best to pretend that they were brave.

T
he rattle of the garage door startled me. I was on my bed, engrossed in the latest issue of
Action Comics
—Superman and Green Arrow—when I heard the unmistakable sound of my father's return from work. I slid off the bed and headed into the hallway, pausing at the top of the stairs, my hand resting on the banister.

“Becky isn't with you?” I heard my mother asking from the kitchen.

“No,” my father said. “Should she be?”

I began to descend the stairs slowly.

The first thing I noticed was that Mom had gone ahead and hung the
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
sign, anyway. I sighed. The cake was now frosted, placed in the center of the table, my name spelled out in M&M's. Six places were set around the table, adorned with blue plastic plates, American flag napkins, and the wrapped Hershey's Kisses. By now the curlers were out of Mom's hair, which had flipped up like Mary Tyler Moore's on the old
Dick Van Dyke Show.
She had changed into a pink plaid pantsuit and pink high heels.

“Well,” Mom was huffing, “it's almost four! Becky was supposed to be back here by now with the balloons!”

“Maybe the balloons weren't ready,” Dad was saying as he set his briefcase down on the counter.

“For crying out loud, the balloons were already paid for! I went down and paid for them myself yesterday! She drove me down there, for God's sake! They were all ready and set to be picked up.”

“I don't know, Peggy, she—”

Nana had come into the kitchen, beaming at Dad. “Sebby,” she said.

“Mommy, that's Tony,” Aunt Patsy corrected, behind her as ever.

“Hello, Ma,” Dad said, leaning in to give his mother a kiss.

Anthony Sebastian Fortunato, better known as Tony, except when his mother got him confused with her dead husband and called him Sebby. Dad was a real estate salesman, living on commissions, which were sometimes very good for long stretches of time and sometimes very bad for even longer. His brown tie was loosened and his shirt collar open, his jacket apparently left in the car. Armpit stains showed through his thin yellow poplin short-sleeved shirt.

“Hey, Danny,” Dad said. “How's it feel to be fourteen?”

“Same as it did to be thirteen,” I lied, and I think my father knew. Dad could read stuff like that, where Mom was simply clueless. He just gave me a smile that seemed to say it all.

“She's got to be with Chipper,” Mom was saying. “She's been spending entirely too much time with him.”

“I just saw Chipper come home,” I said. It felt good to be able to offer some real information. “Becky wasn't with him.”

“Then where the hell is she?” The vein on my mother's forehead was pulsing, the way it always did when she got really anxious.

“Peggy, calm down.” Dad was unknotting his tie and sliding it out from under his collar. “She's probably with Karen or Pam. She'll be here. Becky's good for her word.”

“Well, this place needs balloons,” Mom said, the vein still throbbing. “What kind of a birthday party doesn't have balloons?”

“I'm too old for balloons,” I said.

“You're not too old!
I'm
too old! You're having balloons, Danny, and that's it!”

“Okay, okay.”

The doorbell rang. It was the first of the guests. I hoped it would be Katie, but it was Desmond Drysdale, red haired and freckled, the only boy I'd invited, the only boy I was really friends with, in fact, if anyone could really be friends with Desmond. Desmond was a comic book fanatic, which was where we connected. But while I liked my comics, I just couldn't grasp the depth of Desmond's passion. Over his bed he'd mounted—safely preserved in acetate and held within a plastic container—a rare mint edition of
Silver Surfer
Number 1. Previously, that place of honor had been occupied by a crucifix.

Next to arrive was Theresa Kyrwinski, tall and gangly, followed by Theresa Dudek, with the lazy eye. The phone rang suddenly: Joanne Amenta's mother calling to say that Joanne had a stomach bug and so she wouldn't be coming. Mom breathed fire through her clenched grin as she gave the news to the rest of the party: “What a shame for poor Joanne to get a stomach bug so quickly that they weren't able to call and let me know earlier so I wouldn't have wasted time wrapping Hershey's Kisses for her.”

Finally, at exactly one minute to four, came Katie.

“Sorry,” she said, trudging up the walk, a present under her arm. “I tried to get here sooner but—”

“Whatever,” I said, annoyed.

Katie went on. “My mother took me to the mall after Sears, and we—”

“I said whatever.”

But I couldn't stay mad at Katie. This might be the last time I saw her. I took the gift from her hands.

“Shouldn't you wait?” she asked.

“It's a tape. Who is it?”

“Wait until you open the others,” Katie protested.

I didn't listen. I tore off the silver wrapping paper and laughed out loud. “Meat Loaf!”

Katie was grinning.

“I want you,” I sang.

“I want you,” Katie echoed back, the way we did on the bus.

“I need you.”

“I need you.”

“But there ain't no way,” we both chimed in, “I'm ever gonna boink you!”

“Danny!” Mom shouted. “Stop that!”

“Danny off the pickle boat!” Nana called over, laughing.

Across the room Aunt Patsy and the two Theresas were blushing. Desmond seemed oblivious. And Dad was on the phone, talking with the balloon store.

Becky, he was told, had never shown up.

And so the party went on without balloons. And without Mom, who was on the phone, calling every one of Becky's friends.

Aunt Patsy and Nana took over, pouring Kool-Aid and cutting cake. Without Mom to direct the proceedings, I was able to veto any singing, but Aunt Patsy still lit the candles, and I leaned over the cake to blow them out. Scrunching up my face and closing my eyes, I wished that tomorrow morning the headline of the newspaper would report that St. Francis Xavier High School had burned to the ground—but, in case the birthday gods found that just a little too extreme, I offered an alternate wish: that tomorrow would simply go by really, really
fast.

“Not at Pam's, either,” Mom reported to Dad.

The kids around the birthday table sensed the party wasn't destined to last long. They made little conversation, eating their cake in silence, listening to the adults in the other room, dialing phone numbers. Aunt Patsy, looking even more gray than she had earlier, suggested I open my gifts right there in my seat. I agreed, and my self-conscious friends all quickly pushed their offerings across the table. From the first Theresa, I got a St. Francis Xavier sweatshirt (which I knew I'd never wear); from the second Theresa, I got a mug with my name printed on it (which I knew I'd never use); from Desmond, I got a Silver Surfer Versus Captain Marvel board game (which I knew I'd give back to Desmond someday).

The table settled into an awkward silence, broken only by the sound of the rotary dial from the living room and my mother's monotonous questioning of Becky's friends, asking if they had seen her.

Finally, Katie turned to Theresa Kyrwinski and asked her what classes she was in at St. Clare's.

“Do you have Sister Eileen?” Katie wondered. “She's supposed to be really mean.”

“No,” Theresa said. “I heard that Sister Agnes is even worse.”

“I have her for social studies,” the other Theresa piped in.

“Agnes or Eileen?”

“Agnes.”

“Then we must be in the same class!”

“Cool!”

Katie was suddenly grinning. “Do you want to meet, all three of us, outside the front doors tomorrow morning?”

“Yeah, let's do that!”

“Excellent!”

I looked at them with envy. How apart I felt. How alone, after nine years together, nine years of shared classes, shared teachers, shared experiences: The time in second grade when Katie and Theresa D. and I got locked in the janitor's room and had to crawl out through the window. The time in fifth grade when we put on a variety show, when Katie forgot the lyrics to “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” and I had to whisper them to her offstage. The time last year when all of us—me, Katie, both Theresas, Joanne and Desmond—held a séance among the crumbling gravestones of the cemetery behind the school and were scared shitless by the sudden appearance of a squawking crow. For nine years together, we'd endured Fun with Phonics, Reading is Fundamental, and
Davey and Goliath.
We'd survived clumsy slide shows about good nutrition, the dry twang of Miss Waterhouse, the nasal incantations of Father Drummond from the pulpit, and the ruler-wielding of Sister Mary Kathleen.

Now, after all that, I was being ripped out like a flower from its bed, torn from the rest and planted elsewhere, while the others could continue to bloom together and grow ever closer. I had been forcibly separated from my little community because of one fundamental, absurd reason: I had a penis, and the girls didn't. Arm in arm would Katie and the Theresas waltz through the front doors of their new school, while I was forced to trudge on alone. I looked across the table at Desmond, staring mindlessly down at the crumbs on his plate. No hope there. Desmond wasn't going to St. Francis Xavier. His parents couldn't afford it, he'd told us, so off he was heading to the public school, the dreaded East Hartford High.

“Mother of God, where the
hell
could she be?”

Mom's voice cut through the room as she slammed down the phone.

“Maybe I ought to drive you kids home,” Aunt Patsy whispered, looking around the table. My friends all nodded gratefully, frightened by Mom's outbursts. Standing dutifully, they dropped their crumpled American flag napkins onto their plates. Only Desmond stuffed the Hershey's Kisses into his pocket; the rest left the little chocolate candies unopened in their tulle.

“Happy birthday, Danny,” Theresa Dudek said from across the table. “Have fun at school tomorrow.”

I said nothing. I watched as my friends filed out through the door, behind Aunt Patsy.

“Happy birthday, Danny,” Katie said, coming up to me.

I looked into her round blue eyes. This was it. The last time I'd see her. Any of them. I just knew it.

I started to cry.

“Danny,” Katie said.

“I'm okay. I'm just…”

“Worried about Becky?” Katie smiled. “I'm sure she'll be home soon. She's probably just lost track of the time.”

“Yeah.” I stopped crying.

“Good luck tomorrow.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

Katie hesitated a moment, then turned to follow the rest.

“Where
is
she?” Mom was screeching from the living room. “I'll throttle her neck for making me so worried! I'll
throttle
her!”

I headed out the back door and sat on the steps. I wiped my eyes, embarrassed that I'd cried in front of Katie. The sun was dropping low in the sky, turning the afternoon red. The backyard was filled with long shadows across the grass. Near the rusted old swing set, unused for years, stood Becky's easel. Becky wanted to be an artist; as a kid, she'd finger paint for hours, and Mom would cover the refrigerator with her creations. I thought finger painting was messy, and wanted nothing to do with it. But Becky lost herself in it, as she did with her crayons and pastels and, finally, oil paints. A little more than a year ago, with money Mom had given her, Becky had gone out and bought the easel and some paints and a whole shitload of brushes. Now, when she wasn't with Chipper, Becky could usually be found at her easel, facing the cornfield behind the house, painting the long rows of corn or the houses up on the hill. After high school, she announced, she would attend the Pratt Institute in New York. Mom asked her how she thought we'd be able to pay for that, and Becky replied she'd get a scholarship. She was pretty serious about her painting. A few nights ago, it had started to rain, and Becky had jumped out of bed, rushing outside to save her precious work of art. She'd replaced it on the easel a few days later, adding a few touches here and there. Her painting of the white house on the hill remained unfinished.

The sun was turning the cornstalks pink. The field stretched on for a mile, all the way to the dark green woods. I could barely make out the trees from where I was sitting, but I could hear the owls. For some reason, this time of day, as the sun started to drop in the sky, the owls always began hooting, long, mournful sounds, like horns on a ship, I thought, even though I'd never heard a ship. I rested my elbows on my knees and my chin in my hands, staring out across the pink cornfield. I tried to tell myself that there was nothing to fear, nothing to worry about, that it was just school. Why did I feel as if everything I had ever known, everything I had ever counted on, was about to disappear? High school was just
school,
and I wasn't a bad student. I'd go to classes and take tests, just like always—even if there were things like lockers, and required intramural sports, and kids from the public schools I'd never met. Not to mention
no girls
—and girls had been pretty much my only friends up until this point. How was I going to survive in a world of only boys?

“Danny.”

Nana had come up behind me. She startled me slightly. I turned around and looked up at her. She was holding a small wrapped gift in her hands.

“I had something else I wanted to give you.”

I stood, accepting the present.

“Thanks, Nana.”

I tore open the blue tissue paper. Inside was a framed black-and-white photograph of several people from the old days.

“Who are they?” I asked.

Nana pointed with her crooked finger, its knuckles enlarged from arthritis. “Those are my grandparents there,” she said, indicating a couple of small, white-haired people in dark clothes. “David and Honora Horgan. They came from County Cork, Ireland.” She laughed. “They weren't too happy that I ended up marrying an Eye-talian. Next to them are my parents, Daniel and Emily Horgan. That's who your father named you after. His grandfather.”