A Way With Words - Chapter 47
Early November, 1988
Kaj was understanding when Ennis told him he wouldn't be driving to Toronto that weekend because he needed to settle into Don's place. That was his excuse, but part of the truth was that he couldn't face so soon that long drive over the same boring route. More importantly, though, Joe would be in town.
He wasn't looking forward to telling Joe exactly why he and Jay split up, but Ennis knew that even if he did go and put off this conversation for another time, he would be preoccupied by thoughts of his old friend. Besides, he had sensed that Kaj was anxious about something himself. In another week, or two, he would ask to borrow Jack's car again.
Jack. Ever since their drunken evening - alright, it seemed that only Ennis had been drunk - it felt as though they possessed nuclear warheads neither one of them dared to use. He pondered the imbalance of power: Jack knew what Ennis had told him about Kaj, though he himself couldn't remember what he'd said, and Jack knew what he'd told Ennis about his own past. However, Jack didn't know that Ennis was recalling bits and pieces of Jack’s story, though not in any way that made sense. Well, they sure as hell weren't going to go back over any of that ground. He just wished he knew what the story was with Lureen - it was the one question he did remember asking. How had Jack answered that one?
For the first time since he’d moved to Washington, Joe was not staying with Ennis when he came to Boston. In the phone conversation at work, Joe mentioned a friend in Newton- the more affluent end of Frank's long, snaking district. Did Ennis want to come there for dinner Saturday night?
"Nope. I want to see you alone," Ennis said, feeling less confident than he sounded. He could feel his pulse in his throat. “And… Monday is the seventh. My birthday.”
"God, of course! Man, I am so whacked from the past few months I can’t think straight.” Joe paused, giving them both time to realize they hadn’t spent his birthday together in years. “I don't think Lisa would want to hear about your breakup anyway."
"Lisa?"
"One of Barney's fundraisers. That's who I'm staying with when I'm up here. It wouldn’t feel right, staying at the apartment without… to ask Jay to put me up. Or should I call her Robin now?"
"Let's go to Coolidge Corner, then," Ennis said, ignoring the question. It felt very strange to hear Joe talk about Jay as a separate planet with her own orbit now. "Brookline's more or less halfway between us. There's a South Indian restaurant I'd like to try."
"Wow, since when have you had such a high tolerance for spicy food?" Joe croaked when he'd finished his glass of water. He poured more from the pitcher.
"Eat a few forkfuls of plain rice," Ennis instructed him. "That clears the chili oil from your throat better than water." He spooned another helping of the fiery fish curry from the serving platter. "My boyfriend taught me that."
Ennis hadn't planned to use that line, which Jack had suggested as a joke. After two days of agonizing over the wording of his coming out speech, he'd finally called Jack for help Friday night.
"You want to throw him off balance," Jack had counseled. "With this guy, if you start out saying there's something you need to tell him, that gives him time to prepare himself for what he probably knows is coming. You can use that on your family, but not a closet case."
"Easy for you to say, but I just can't see myself tossing that off," Ennis had objected.
"I don't know why you want to tell him in a restaurant, anyway. Don't you want to be somewhere less public?"
Ennis had tried to think of a place where they wouldn't be all alone, yet would be safe for Joe to react… within reason. The appeal of the Indian restaurant was the familiarity of the food - the reminders of Kaj would give him courage.
Jack had surprised him then by suggesting he take Joe into a bookstore and buy him a novel. Oscar Wilde or Christopher Isherwood, for example.
Ennis had heard of Wilde, of course, but not the other author. "Tell him with a book?"
"I know one where the main character is in love with his best friend from college."
"How original."
"It's set before World War One."
That was hard to imagine. "Well, Joe's not much of a reader." He'd paused and added, "I didn't know you read literature, actually."
Jack had snickered. "Now I know you don't remember anything I said the other night."
Jack in a tent with another man, naked, being read to.
For a second Ennis thought that Joe, too, could see that mental image as it popped up from its hiding place. A dozen emotions seemed to flicker across his friend's face. Jack had been right: catching Joe off-guard had revealed so much.
"That's why Jay and I split. I'm gay." Ennis mixed the curry into his rice and forced himself to bring a forkful to his mouth, hoping he wouldn't choke. He chewed it to mush, swallowed, and still Joe hadn't said a word.
"Are you that surprised?" Ennis asked, sure that Joe was weighing how to answer. I say yes or I say no, I am fucked - wasn't that the way Kaj had phrased it?
Joe lowered his eyes and began running his index finger around the rim of his glass. "I admit I'm surprised… but not shocked," he said slowly. "When we were in Warren Towers I kind of wondered sometimes. But after that year things were pretty normal, you know? I mean, I can't count the number of chicks I slept with and you were always slinking home smelling like sex…"
"You don't remember anything from that night in the motel?" Ennis snapped.
Joe gave him a blank look. "You mean when we got drunk and I puked on the floor? Did something happen? I don't see how anything could have, we were both so shit-faced."
Ennis' hand was shaking; he put down his fork carefully. He felt at sea now, no idea which way to steer the conversation. He wished he were in bed with Kaj, joking and laughing. He reached for the mango lassi, closed his eyes as he sipped the sweet, tangy drink full of memories.
"Tell me about him, Ennis." Joe's voice was gentle. "He must be pretty special."
Ennis nodded as he put down the glass and fumbled for the napkin. He wiped his top lip, wished he dared to wipe his eyes. He took a deep breath and said, "He's from… He's Indian." He throat was burning; he coughed suddenly into his napkin, blew his nose and squeezed his eyelids shut even more tightly, brushed his hand over his brow and eyes, opening them just in time to see Joe grimace at his plate.
"It's… it's a long story how we met," Ennis said, dropping his crumpled napkin on the table. "He lives in Canada now. I wish I could see him more often…"
But the meal was done, and as far as Ennis could tell, so were they.
*****
Late November, 1988
"But how the hell can you go back? It's dangerous! Isn't that why they gave you asylum in the first place?"
"Only I go for a visit. It is necessary. That land is partly in my name. I and my brother and sister we have to make a negotiation and sign the papers. And I don't see my mother for a long time."
"But you just got here. It'll look pretty shady if you go back to Sri Lanka now."
"I don't go directly there. First I go to Singapore. Then I get a plane to Colombo."
"But what about-"
"And first I get a new Sri Lanka passport. Because I lose it, see? I don't want to have my Canada visa in it because then they know I am a refugee. I sent the application for a new one. I must have somebody important from my country who knows me signing the paper. I ask a Tamil guy here who is a doctor. He write he knows me one year-"
"He wrote that he has known me for one year. If you're going to pretend to be a traveling businessman you're going to have to speak better English." Ennis sighed and brushed the back of his fingers over Kaj's cheek. He seemed determined to do this; there would be no talking him out of it. And why should he try to hold him back? He knew that it would have to end, didn't he? But he didn’t want Kaj to be so far away.
"I think you're taking a huge risk. You could do all this by mail!"
"I go in there with a clean passport and I come back to here with my old one."
Was that really possible? "When?"
"It take a few weeks for getting-"
"It takes."
"It takes three weeks… for the new passport. So I think just before Christmas."
Ennis pulled the blanket more tightly around them; the bedsit's one radiator didn't seem to be giving off much heat. "I think you're going because you can't take the cold. You know, if you want a beach vacation there are safer places."
Kaj didn't laugh. He kissed Ennis on the lips. "I promise I will come back."
"You can't know that."
"I am sure."
"Look, there's more than one way to come back and they're not all good."
"You know how much shit has happen there since I leave? Nobody is looking for me now. I stay in Colombo or Kandy, away from fighting, only with my family. I do the business and I go."
"How long would it take?"
"Three weeks."
"How can you get the time off work?"
"I already ask about that. They say okay."
Kaj said it so flatly, Ennis was sure he was lying. Was he simply going to quit that job? A jolt of fear went through him: Kaj wasn't planning to come back. But he sounded so determined in his reassurance that he would return to Canada.
"I can probably only come one more time before you leave."
"Next time we go somewhere. I look at a map and we can visit another place."
Ennis rose up on one elbow. "How about Mexico? Go someplace warm."
"No, in Canada." Kaj was clearly not going to be jollied out of his serious mood.
Ennis lay down again and pulled Kaj into his arms. He'd have to get back on the road in a few hours - no point spending the time debating travel itineraries.
***
Ennis left work a few minutes early on Monday evening and strode quickly across the street to the Colorado Public Library. He was tired from the long drive from Toronto followed by work, but wanted to get to the bar before Jack. He didn’t plan to drink. Maybe he’d ask Jack to give him a lift back to Roslindale because cycling home in the cold and dark was more than he could face.
The T.S. Eliot book was in a different spot on the shelf. He opened it to another dog-eared page and read the section marked out in pencil.
You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
***
December 21, 1988
So much had changed since last Christmas when he’d waited in Logan airport for a flight to Kansas. He’d called Kaj in the detention center that time. That wasn’t possible now: Kaj was already on his way to Singapore.
That day Tina had reminded him that the back page article he’d volunteered to write was due the week after New Year’s. That had gotten his stomach churning: if he was going to write about coming out, that meant he should be doing just that when he went home for Christmas. Of course, he could always take the coward’s way out and just send the March issue to his parents.
Ennis had gone to Toronto two weeks earlier, an exhausting drive through a snowstorm. On Saturday he and Kaj had gone cross-country skiing an hour and a half north of the city and that had been fun, even though they were terrible at it and had fallen often. But at least it was flat, and every mile or so there was a little hut to sit in and get warm. They’d spent most of Sunday in bed. The guy who lived in the room during the week had acquired a TV and they’d channel surfed. Kaj had loved Fawlty Towers, with that guy from Monty Python, but they’d laughed most at an old black and white Jacques Tati movie on the Quebec station. The main character, a postman, rode around on a bicycle and the humor was mainly physical, with little dialogue, so it was easy to understand.
Kaj had told him when he was flying, and it was the same day Ennis was leaving for Wichita. He swore up and down he was coming back in mid-January. “Look, here is the return ticket!” he exclaimed, waving the paper in Ennis’ face, as if that was a guarantee.
All day now Ennis had felt unbearably anxious. How was he going to get through this holiday? If he decided to unburden himself to his family about his worries about Kaj, he would have to come out to them. What really sucked about writing about coming out was that when he told his family, he’d be thinking at the same time about how he was going to write about it.
He had to run to the gate for his tight connection in Chicago so didn’t stop to see what people had crowded into the bars to watch on TV. The exercise released some of his stress and he slept almost all the way to Wichita. When Kathy met him at arrivals, her expression was grim.
“I guess you heard the news about that plane?” she said.
“No, what?”
“A Pan Am jet blew up over Scotland a few hours ago.”
He swore under his breath and his heart began pounding. Then he recalled the Singapore Airlines logo fluttering before his eyes.
“It was horrible, like it was shot right out of the sky. Crashed onto a town. So many people killed. Oh, Ennis, please don’t talk about it around Tryon. We haven’t told him and I don’t want him to hear about it until we get to the farm, if he has to know.”
That night when Kathy was putting her son to bed, Ennis overheard Tryon ask why his uncle was so sad.
“Well, sweetheart… it’s because… because he misses a friend.”
Chapter 47b >>
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