Taking Chances (24 page)

“What, Matt?” she demanded. “Please dazzle me with your Midwest brilliance. I am on the edge of my seat.”

“You want to be miserable,” I said more than asking. “You like feeling like this.”

She rolled her eyes and began to study her nails. “I don’t like this feeling, sweetheart; this is just what life is. We date horrible men, they break our hearts, we go out, drink to forget them, and find new boys to replace them.” She looked up at me, and I could tell she was deadly serious. “What exactly did you think dating was all about, Matt? This is what we do.”

“Not anymore,” I said, closing the door on her face.

M
Y
FATHER
had a saying that had always unnerved me.

He used to say, “No matter how bad your life may get, I can walk out on the streets and find three people who have it worse in seconds.” Being an only child, I had never believed him, because it had always been all about me, but I had never been able to debunk his theory. The saying had stuck with me and I never forgot it.

I sat on the couch, feeling sorry for myself, when life took the opportunity to remind me that no matter how bad things were for me, someone had it worse.

My phone rang. I barely glanced at it since it was most likely Matt again. He had left a trail of voice mails but I hadn’t even bothered. What was there to say? We were both sorry things crashed and burned and life sucks. The end. Except when I glanced over, I saw it wasn’t Matt’s number.

It was Brad.

I hadn’t talked to him since I took off before New Year’s. He had texted me and let me know the shop was locked up tight and all was good, and I had texted him back a thank-you. I knew if I called him, he would ask how things were going, and I did not want to break down and cry in front of a teenager. I assumed him calling meant something was up.

“What’s going on, Brad?”

There was a pause, and I felt my entire body tense up. “Mr. Parker.” He was holding back tears, and that fact alone made me start to panic. “K-kelly…,” he started to say and then broke down.

It took me a second to connect the name. Kyle asking me about him, Linda telling me the boy had become Kyle’s quest to help… the thoughts clicked in my head a second before Brad spoke again. “Kelly shot himself” was all he could choke out before breaking down again. I covered my phone and was about to shout out for my mother when she walked in, the cordless to her ear. She was crying.

“Brad, what happened?” I asked him, knowing this was bad. He explained that during a party over winter break, someone took a video of Kelly talking to Kyle about his feeling for guys and posted it on the web for everyone to see. Kelly couldn’t handle the public outing and ended up taking his own life.

As Brad explained it to me, all I could imagine was how I could have ended up like that.

In high school, I had been so terrified of someone finding out about me that I would wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. My mom was talking to Mrs. Aimes, Kelly’s mom. They had been friends when they lived in Foster and had kept in touch. From the way my mom was crying, she had just received the same news I had.

I calmed Brad down the best I could. He was coming apart, rambling as he told me about how Kyle had spent all winter break trying to talk Kelly down from his depression. He told me he felt as if he hadn’t helped enough and that Kelly probably died hating him. He just went on and on, and I sat there and listened because he sounded like he needed a friend.

“You’re coming back, right?” he asked me, his voice cracking with emotion.

I froze. His words stunned me.

“Mr. Parker, are you there?” he asked, thinking we’d been cut off.

All the panic came rushing back again, and I was there sitting in my car watching Riley die. The old me reached up from the pit of my stomach and warned me that, if I went back now, everyone would know about me, if they didn’t already. I had pushed it enough speaking up for Brad at the school board meeting; any more and I might as well stand in the middle of First Street and scream I was a fag.

I growled at my old self and said to Brad, “I’m on my way home.”

I’m not sure who was more surprised to hear that I was going back to Foster, me or my parents. I began to pack my stuff when my dad came in and told me, “Your mother and I are coming too.” I stared at him, confused, and he smiled. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

I couldn’t say it out loud, but I know he saw the relief on my face.

We found a flight back to Texas the day of the funeral, which meant a lot of rushing around before we could be completely crushed with grief. My parents were changing when Brad called my phone. “Hey, we’re almost there,” I said assuming this was going to be a “Where are you?” call. “Give us ten minutes.”

“They kicked us out,” he said in a flat voice.

“What?” I asked, stammering. “Who did?”

“Kelly’s dad. He blames Kyle for turning Kelly gay and wouldn’t let us into the funeral home. Kyle and he got into an argument and we left.”

I sat down and tried to sort out my thoughts. “Why would Kelly’s dad blame Kyle?”

Brad sighed, and I could hear a car pass by in the distance. I wondered where he was but refrained from asking. “He doesn’t think Kelly was gay and that Kyle put all those thoughts in his head. He really doesn’t want to believe his son liked guys. I don’t get it. What does it matter now that Kelly is dead?”

I didn’t answer him, but I was willing to bet it mattered a lot.

“Okay, look. I need to take my parents to this thing. Why don’t you two come back and we’ll work it out.”

He was silent for a long while. The only way I knew he hadn’t hung up was because I could hear the wind though the phone. Finally he said, “I don’t think so, Mr. Parker. Kyle isn’t in a great place right now, and if that dick doesn’t want us there, then I don’t want to be there. It’s better if we just stay away and let them bury Kelly in peace. We can say good-bye on our own later.”

He sounded so… defeated, so resigned, it killed me. I thought I had been keeping tabs on those two and how bad it had gotten. This was just another reminder of how wrong I had been. They had been dealing with this boy all through winter break and I had no idea.

“I’m going to call you when we’re done, okay?”

He sighed and I could imagine him nodding. “Sure, Mr. Parker, whatever you want,” he said and hung up.

My hands shook as I tried to keep my temper.

“We’re going to be late,” my dad said, coming downstairs. “Your mother is almost ready.”

He didn’t notice how upset I was, which was good because I didn’t want to put any more on their plate than they already had. Instead I went out and warmed up the car and waited for them. Ten minutes later, my dad came out alone and got into the passenger’s side. “This is about the only way I know to speed your mother up. If she knows we’re both waiting out here for her, she’ll hustle.”

I laughed because, after all this time married, my parents still had things about each other that drove the other one crazy. You’d think they’d get used to each other’s quirks and foibles, but as my dad sat there and glared at the door, it was obvious he was nowhere near that point.

“If I had killed myself when I was in high school, would you have told people I was gay?”

My father looked at me with his mouth open in shock, and I realized I might have led up to that question instead of starting there. “Come again?” he asked.

There was no way to walk that question back, so I just asked again. “Hypothetically, if I had killed myself in high school, would you have told people I was gay?”

He answered slow and measured, wary of saying something wrong, no doubt. “I didn’t know you were gay in high school, so no.”

“I mean, if it had come out that I was gay, and I killed myself because of it, would you have tried to deny it and tell people I was straight?”

It was a morbid question, and he had to know I was referring to Kelly, since he knew their parents pretty well. After a few moments’ thought, he looked at me and admitted, “Yes.”

To say the answer blew me away was an understatement.

“Would I now? No,” he added. “But back then, not knowing about you? I think I would’ve. It would have been the absolute wrong thing to do, but I can’t deny I might have done it.”

Logically I knew why he would, but there was a greater part of me shocked by his answer. Of course, that part of me was a huge hypocrite since I had spent most of my life lying to and hiding the fact I was gay from every single person I knew. The fact that my father might have done the same thing wasn’t as shocking as it was a comment on the world we both grew up in.

“Son,” he said, putting a hand on my arm. “You know we love you no matter what, right?” I looked at him and could see his eyes desperate for me to understand what he was saying. “I am so proud of the man you have grown up to be. I wouldn’t want you to change a thing about you.”

“What about grandkids?” I questioned him.

He pshawed me. “You can adopt or use one of those turkey baster things the lesbians use. Just because you’re gay doesn’t mean you can’t be cursed with children.” He smiled at me and I felt a small part of my inner fear vanish, because I realized my father did love who I had become. Inside, I had always feared he’d wished I’d turned out straight; but I could see now he was just relieved I’d made it this far.

My mom jumped into the backseat. “Okay, what are we waiting for?” she asked us impatiently.

“But don’t hurry on the marriage thing,” he said quietly. “Take as much time as you need for that.”

Kelly’s parents stood in front of the funeral home arguing quietly as we walked up. Whatever the topic was, they tabled it the moment they saw my parents.

Mrs. Aimes rushed into my mother’s arms and burst out crying. My dad patted Mr. Aimes on the back and gave him condolences. Mr. Aimes turned to me and was about to say something when I asked him, “Did you really refuse to let Brad Graymark and his friend inside?”

He froze, and I could see the resentment in his eyes as he glared at me. “I did. What does that matter to you?”

“You do know you can’t catch ‘The Gay’, right? Kyle had nothing to do with Kelly’s sexuality.”

“Kelly was straight before that boy,” he growled at me. “And if wasn’t for that nonsense with the school board and you people raising a fuss—”

He was probably going to say more but my father interrupted him. “When you say ‘you people’ you are, of course, referring to people of German descent and nothing else, right, Bill? Because I would hate it if you just referred to my son as one of ‘you people’.”

Growing up, you think you’ve seen just how angry your parents can get with you. There are screaming and yelling and spankings and days when it feels like the house is going to explode, there’s so much emotion flying back and forth. You grow up thinking you know these people who raised you, that they just appeared when you were born and exist only to further your life.

And then something like this happens and you see an anger in your father’s eyes so savage it takes you back a second; and you realize you might not know these people at all.

“You know what I mean, Scott. In our time, we would have never let a queer on a high school baseball team, and you know it.”

My dad didn’t even pause with his answer. “And in our day we had to have black kids bused in with the National Guard. We were wrong then. You are wrong now. The sad part is all this time has passed, and you’re still an asshole.”

“My son was not gay before all this nonsense!” he raged.

Before I had a chance to answer, his wife burst between the three of us and screamed at her husband. “You know that’s not true! He was gay before all this and we made him feel like….” She burst into tears. My mom tried to take her aside but Mrs. Aimes shrugged the help off. “We made him feel even worse about it than he did before. You know what we did!”

We all just stood there glaring furiously at each other when the reverend came out cautiously. “We are about to begin,” he said barely above a whisper. “If you would like to come in…,” he added, motioning toward the inside, silently asking the crazy people if they could stop making a scene outside and remember why we were here.

We were here because a teenager had killed himself.

We all moved indoors as the reverent silence of the funeral home took over and extinguished the argument. The Aimeses took a seat in the front pew and we sat in the middle. The service was sadder than normal because Kelly’s smiling face looked back at us out of his picture on the altar. The flowery words the reverend used were lost on me. I couldn’t stop looking at that picture. There were no words in the Bible that could make me okay with what had happened, no reading from scripture that could make any sense of the horrible death of someone so young.

My eyes began to blur with tears and when I looked back up at the picture, it was of Riley. I began to openly sob.

Kelly’s dad walked up and said a little speech about how proud he was when he learned he was going to be a father and how raising a son was such a challenge. His hands shook as he read off the paper he took up with him and tried not to look at the picture of his dead son. He sat down, and one of the football coaches from Foster stood up and talked about how Kelly was one of the best players he had the honor of coaching and that he was always someone he could count on in a clutch. A couple of people stood up and talked, but I had zoned out because I realized no one was talking about the real problem.

When the woman who had been talking stepped down, I stood up.

I could feel Mr. Aimes’s stare drilling a hole through my head as I walked up to the podium. I hated talking in front of people, but if a kid like Brad could stand up and criticize the school board, I could at least say a few words at a funeral.

I saw all those eyes on me and my fear screamed at me to reconsider. To sit the fuck down and live the rest of my life in silence. Be normal, be fucking normal like everyone else. Do not do this.

I silently told my fear to fuck off and began to talk.