A Way With Words - Chapter 63
Heartfelt thanks to freetraveller15 and gilli-ann for beta help with this demanding chapter. I am well into writing the next one and I can tell that it will not be the last one after all -- it will require two chapters to cover the remaining events.
August 1989
Elliot Dedieu. E.D. Ed. “I’ll never say his name again.” Elliot kissing a man in his lobby - Jack. The cassette tape - Nick Drake, Julian. Jack showing me the charred bathhouse door. The couch, the stains - Jack stretched out naked, with Elliot.
I stopped hyperventilating when the sound of Chris and Eve’s voices drifted up from downstairs. I hadn’t even heard them come in the front door. I didn’t remember backing away from the fax machine or sitting down on the bed. I glanced at the clock and saw only ten minutes had passed; it felt like I’d been lost for years in my thoughts and memories.
He pushed you out of the way, Jack. Away from his danger. To save you. Those were the words I knew I should write and feed through the machine. But still I sat. Something was missing. I thought of the color photo I’d found in Elliot’s kitchen, of him in the phone booth embracing Julian, whose head was bowed, his eyes closed in bliss. I’d only looked at it once, could barely remember their faces. It was the only close-up of them I’d seen. In the other pictures of her son that Janet Turner had shown me, Julian was viewed from a distance.
How was it again that Jay had confirmed her suspicions about me and Kaj when she saw the plane tickets to Toronto? She’d thought of the seemingly innocent photo of us on the BU Bridge… and then had gone in search of the rest of that roll of film. Jessie Turner had surely snapped more than one shot of her brother and his lover.
I stood up and ran downstairs. Chris and Eve were in the kitchen, she sitting in a chair gazing desolately up at him. Chris stood with his hip against the counter, his arms crossed looking at the floor. She straightened her back when she saw me in the doorway.
“Do you have a phone book?” I asked. “I need to look up a number.”
Without a word Eve rose and strode out of the kitchen. Chris lifted his chin and directed his green gaze at me, but before I could focus on his world Eve reappeared carrying a large directory, which she set on the counter next to him. Then she left the room again and I heard her bare feet heavy on the stairs.
I opened the book, turned to the T’s and groaned. Five pages of Turners and no first names, only initials.
When Chris asked who I was looking for, I explained that I needed to find the Quaker woman again but I hadn’t paid attention to the route we’d walked to her house in Highgate and I didn’t remember the name of her street. He said it would be faster to drive me over and try to retrace the route rather than attempt to reach by phone all the Turners in NW6.
With the help of the A to Z map we located where she and I had exited from the Heath. I spotted a few landmarks I remembered and eventually we turned onto a street that seemed familiar. Halfway up it Chris stopped behind a black cab idling in the middle of the road. Then we saw a woman I recognized emerge from the front door of a tall red brick house opposite the taxi, carrying a small suitcase. The driver got out and opened the door for Jessie, who climbed in without a glance toward our car.
Janet Turner stood in the doorway and waved once as the cab pulled away.
“That’s her,” I said to Chris and fumbled for the door handle. When I was out of the car I heard him wish me luck before he drove away.
Janet Turner didn’t seem surprised to see me as I walked the short distance between the curb and her front door.
“Come in. I’ll put the kettle on,” she began, but I shook my head.
“That’s alright, I just had tea at home,” I lied. “I came to ask you a question. That picture of Julian and Elliot in the phone box… Are there any other photos like that? From the same day?”
She seemed to study my face a few seconds before her gaze shifted slightly. “How extraordinary,” she murmured, staring into the distance. She turned and stepped back inside and I followed.
“You saw Jessie leave, I imagine,” she said as she shut the door. “I’m grateful that you found me, last Sunday. Even if you say it was by chance. Though I wonder…” She turned to me. “My daughter and I talked all afternoon, for the first time in many years. There has been a… not a complete reconciliation but I would say a shift in Jessie’s thinking about Elliot. Until today she wouldn’t even say his name.
“You might want to go upstairs and look at Julian’s old bedroom. It looked somewhat different when he was alive but in the family we still refer to it as his room. Before she left, Jessie put on the dresser a picture she couldn’t bear to look at for the past fifteen years. I think that is the one that interests you.”
I went upstairs alone. The bedroom looked different from the rest of the house, I realized later. The furniture was very plain and rustic, except for a small couch that stood out. At the sight of the familiar striped upholstery I got a hollow feeling in my chest and tried not to imagine why Elliot had sought out its twin in Boston. On top of the oak dresser was the same photo I’d found in the bread box, but slightly different. In this one, Elliot was nuzzling his lover’s temple, eyes closed, and Julian was smiling at the camera. More of the red suspenders could be seen on Julian’s chest, the pair Elliot had worn so often in Boston that his friends had sewn them into his panel for the AIDS quilt. I was sure none of them knew what those suspenders had actually meant to him.
Jack’s eyes, big and blue. His dark brows and hair, and strong, even features. His curved lips. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to weep. How could I tell Jack that Elliot had seen his first love in his face, had tried to bring Julian to life through him?
I went back downstairs. I wanted to leave right away but Janet Turner hadn’t been able to help herself: she’d not only made tea but put out chocolate Hobnobs. So I had to stay.
I asked her what had happened to Elliot after the accident. I couldn’t bring myself to ask the details of Julian’s death. But she was unflinching.
“Julian was hit full on by the bus and died instantly. Elliot broke both arms and several ribs,” she said. “He couldn’t live by himself so he came here and I looked after him. It was difficult for both of us. Jessie had a nervous breakdown and was in hospital for several weeks. In the autumn, when he was healed, amnesty was declared for draft resisters and he decided to return to America. In exchange the returnees had to do community service. He was going to go back and train to be a social worker.”
She said she knew of his plans to get an M.S.W, but didn’t learn until 1977 that he’d decided to become a school guidance counselor. That year he got a job in a high school, but in the summer before school began he took a vacation out west.
“He wrote to me that he wanted to go to a place completely unlike England, to mark the beginning of the next chapter of his life, he said. He went to a cattle ranch, of all places. He said he knew it was a mistake when he arrived, that the only person he got on with was the owners’ teenage son. He said at least he was able to give the boy some useful advice about college.”
I got up to leave soon after. She showed me to the door, and before opening it she looked at me and said, “I hope you found the information you needed.”
I could only nod, my mouth dry as ashes. She invited me to come again; I nodded again, even though we both knew I wouldn’t.
I was grateful when I heard a horn toot and looked up to see that Chris had ignored my order not to wait for me. My legs moved slowly and heavily as an elephant’s as I crossed the street to his car.
“What happened?” he asked when I sank into the passenger seat.
As he drove I began to tell him about my friend Jack, but Chris quickly understood this wasn’t just a buddy, and that every person I’d told him about so far was linked to the others in some way.
“So from the way it sounds,” Chris said, “he’s been through the wringer and if you tell him what you just learned…” He left the thought unfinished because, like me, he couldn’t see how knowing all that would help Jack.
I was silent, and after a minute I realized Chris wasn’t taking the most direct route home but meandering through side streets.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
When he finally answered, his voice was hoarse. “Eve is going to Germany.”
He hadn’t said she was going back to Germany but his tone was dark with finality.
“Why? For how long?”
“Her brother and sister-in-law are going to try to come out of East Germany with their two little kids, through Hungary. She wants to go meet them.”
It took me a few seconds to absorb the implications. “So… do they know she’s… not Erich now?” I tried to reconcile what she’d told me a few weeks earlier, that she and her brother were strangers and that Karl had grown up resenting his missing “perfect” brother. She seemed content with her life in London - why was she suddenly overturning it all to run back to her family when her brother might reject her completely?
“No. But she’s not going to stop the hormones. She’ll cut her hair and… go in disguise, I guess you could say. The thing is…” Chris voice began to break. He suddenly swerved into a big gap in the parked cars on the street and switched off the ignition. I waited. After a moment he turned toward me, leaning back against the door with his elbow propped on the steering wheel, his fingers drooping over one eye.
“She says she doesn’t want to live there again but she also says she can’t promise me she’ll come back.” The eye that I could see was glistening. “Anything could happen. What if she decides to stay there? Go back… in all ways?” he choked out.
“Don’t make her promise to come back,” I said. “But tell her she has to stay in contact, to keep you informed of everything. Don’t let her keep you completely in the dark.” As we sat in the car I told him the bare outlines of Jack’s story - that his lover had cut off contact with no explanation when he knew he had AIDS.
“He’s still not over it,” I said. “It was Jack who sent that letter you saw. I did the same thing to him: came here and didn’t tell him where I went or why.”
“He wrote that he loved you. Do you feel the same about him?”
I was silent, looking through the windshield, feeling disoriented as usual while sitting on the left with no steering wheel in front of me. I realized I felt the same way when I was with Jack; never sure who was in the driver’s seat.
“I don’t know,” I admitted finally.
We sat in the car as the light faded, each of us lost in thought. Should I write to Jack and tell him how Elliot died? Call him? Fly home and explain what I knew in person? Whatever I told him wasn’t going to make him feel better. And then what?
Eventually Chris sighed and turned the key in the ignition. Before we arrived home I learned what else was on his mind: the deadline for submitting the manuscript of the third Jack Tornado novel, which would begin where the first book left off and cover the same period as the second novel and then beyond. But he was going to write it from Ennis Delamare’s point of view, in the first person.
“I have to finish the first draft by January. I’ve been writing like crazy but now I’ve come to the first love scene. Well, sex scene between Ennis Delamare and Jack Tornado. And… and I really suck at it.”
I looked at him. “Great. What’s the problem, then?”
Chris was only chuckling once we finally went in the house, and somehow I’d agreed to choreograph the sex scenes for him, since, he claimed, I had “more experience in that arena.”
***
I forced myself to reply to Jack that same evening - silence after that last fax would have been callous. But I kept it simple.
Did you find out how Ed died?
I spent a day in the library looking up back issues of the Globe and the Herald, searching for an obituary. Nothing. Went back to the bathhouse where we first met. It had burned down. I knew he was from Maine, but not where. Looked in the phone books for all the major areas of the state. Never knew that his surname (it was French) was so common up there. Gave up after I called a few. He’d said his parents were dead anyway.
We used to walk in Mount Auburn cemetery in Cambridge. He said he wouldn’t mind being buried there. So I went there a few times, looking for his name. Wondered who those friends were who cried over his couch. Did they take care of all that? How come he never mentioned them?
What were the nightmares about?
He wouldn’t tell me, said that was another world, he didn’t want it to touch me. Thing was, he did hurt me, when he had those dreams. I’d wake up from him yelling Right! Look right! in my ear and then he’d grab me, shake me. Scared the shit out of me. Imagined ambushes, grenades exploding, bodies flying. Wasn’t gonna push him to talk about it, though.
I reminded him of the December night we happened to find ourselves standing in front of the little memorial to John Lennon in City Hall Plaza on the anniversary of his death. I asked him what made him panic at the sight of me.
Ed had a red and yellow scarf. Once when we were fooling around in bed I tried to tie his wrists with it. First time he ever got mad. Yanked it out of my hands, said it was a gift from a friend, she knit it herself. That’s when I realized he never talked about his friends to me.
So that scarf - you were wearing one just like it that night. You remember what was written on the sign by the candles? “Miss you so much, John.” Ed used to call me my real name, John, when he wanted to get my attention, tease me. When I saw those colors around your neck, right there after seeing those words, I had the crazy idea he was trying to send me a message. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to know about it.
We carried on like that for a couple of hours, both of us next to our fax machines, writing out our questions and answers in longhand. Back then it seemed crazy to be doing that instead of just dialing the number and talking to him. These days that’s normal. I kept writing because I was afraid I’d give too much away, before Jack was ready, if he heard my voice. I saw no obvious remedy for his pain.
Eventually he asked me why I went to London. I told him about dialing his work number at Toronto airport - I was calling you, I swear! - and then spotting the open Time Out and the article headline; about the detective novel with a character with my name; about Chris, and Eve (without mentioning Erich), the volunteering and softball. I needed a break, I explained. I needed a change of scenery.
After the initial flurry of faxes, communication between us slowed. Each of us sent a fax when anything noteworthy had happened, every other day or two, or three. Jack didn’t ask when I was coming back and I didn’t say. In fact, I didn’t know. I guess I was waiting for a sign that it was time.
***
Jack was in the hall, waiting for me on the other side of the door. I could picture him, his black hair flopping over his eyes, those big, blue eyes, the ones I looked at on my bedroom wall, in the poster for his band. The poster I’d peeled from a utility pole in Camden Town late one night. I was nervous; what would he think of me when he saw me? All these months of phone conversations had made us friends, I thought. But while I knew what he looked like, he had no image of me.
I realised the sound engineer was looking at me curiously behind the glass. I shrugged and put my hand on the doorknob, turned it and eased open the door. Jack was leaning against the wall in the corridor and when he saw me he smiled and pushed away from it without taking his hands from his jacket pockets. I looked right and left and met him halfway. Then he was in my arms…
“That’s a lot of words, just to get him to open the door, see Jack Tornado and kiss him.”
“You think too many words?” Chris said. The anxious note in his voice took me aback, but it was also gratifying that he was taking my opinion seriously. He’d printed out for me the first chapter of what was to be the third novel in the Jack Tornado series. Halfway through the chapter Jack Tornado and Ennis Delamare go to Ennis’ flat and fall into bed, which is where I was supposed to choreograph the action. But the very first scene of the novel - the one I’d invented as a joke - needed work, I thought. This story’s Ennis wouldn’t sound like that, even in his head. I thought of Jack Twist’s last faxes, the way he wrote about E.D. This character was clenched up like Jack was when I first me him. And I knew exactly how he felt in this scene.
“Well, who am I to judge? You’re the pro. But… I’ve been there. I’ve been on the other side of the door, opening it.”
“Oh… Joe and the motel room.”
“Yeah. I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t overthinking it. But it’s so easy to get derailed.” I described the jammed door knob, the messy sandwich, Joe in pyjamas. “Wish it had gone as well for me as you have it for these two guys. Seems too easy. I mean, Jack’s never even laid eyes on Ennis before this and suddenly they’re making out in public.”
“So show me.”
I sat at his computer and typed.
My show was over. Jack was in the hall, waiting for me to come out. I paced, nervous. The engineer stared at me. For months we’d talked on the phone, never meeting. I’d seen pictures of Jack - I was smitten. But to him, I was a blank.
I put my hand on the doorknob. The cold metal against my palm sent a charge through me. I yanked open the door; Jack was right there. Startled, then a grin. I glanced left and right, fisted his jacket - the leather felt worn and thin. I pushed him backwards and he grunted as he hit the wall. His stubble rasped against my fingers as my mouth slammed against his. His lips were firm, then suddenly soft, but I heard a click down the hall to the right. I pushed away from him. Couldn’t look at his face, afraid to see his expression. I turned and ran.
“Hmmm. I dunno, that’s kind of… abrupt. But I see what you’re after,” Chris mused. He lifted his eyes from the screen and gazed out of the window. “So… you don’t think Jack would be so… immediately receptive… at that point?”
I studied Chris’ profile and wondered how much he identified with Ennis; whether Jack Tornado was the man he wished he could be - a man who, the instant he knew it was another man he wanted, wasn’t conflicted about his sexuality. Had Chris ever had a ‘real’ girlfriend? He’d grown up being treated as a girl within his family; Eve/Erich had longed for that. Was their connection based on what they’d missed as children?
He’s even more confused than me, I thought. But I answered, “Maybe he would’ve been, but Ennis got spooked too soon.”
We went back and forth like that for several days, working together each morning, as we slowed things down between the characters, steadily ramping up the sexual tension between them. Eventually they were alone in Jack Tornado’s flat and it was time for me to direct the action. It was mid-August, and finally really hot. Chris and Eve left London for a few days, for a long-planned vacation on the Isle of Wight. I think he also wanted to give me space to write without him looking over my shoulder.
They drove off in the morning; in the afternoon I went to the Heath, to the Men’s Pond. The water was churning with bodies, yells and laughter skipping over the surface. While treading water in the middle of the pond, I spotted Jeffrey walking along the dock. The night I’d spent with him came back to me: his humor and confidence as he wrangled the condom, his guiding hand, the slow slide into him. By the time he plunged in I was swimming in his direction. When he surfaced a few feet from me, he smiled and said, “Hello Ellis Davenport. I wondered if I’d see you here today.” I was startled, until I remembered I hadn’t told him my real name at the party. We made small talk as he nudged me toward the dock, then underneath it. We each wrapped an arm around the post and let the other explore below the surface. A relief to be done with words. Even though I had Chris’ house to myself I waited for Jeffrey to invite me to his place.
“I want to do something first,” I said as soon as Jeffrey had shut the door of his flat and turned to me. I reached out and touched his chest with the tips of my fingers, keeping him at arm’s length. “Just for a minute. I want to pretend I’m somebody else. Could you stay here… stand right here, facing the door,” I nodded toward the bedroom. “I’m going to go inside and shut the door. We’ve never met in person. You’re waiting for me to come out of-“
“Role-play, is that what you’re after?” Jeffrey said, grinning.
“Well… yeah,” I said, surprised. This was going to be easier than I thought. “I’m a DJ… a radio presenter… and you front a band that I like. We’ve had phone conversations but have never met, and now-“
Jeffrey laughed, exclaiming, “Like in the Jack Tornado books, you mean!”
“Well, uh, yeah, but… So, you… you’ve read them?” I stammered.
“Sure. That party where we met? My friends told me the author would be there, that’s why I came. But I met you instead.” He widened his eyes in mock innocence. “Jack and Ennis are going to turn out to be gay, is what I heard. Who would’ve guessed?”
Mortified, I said to forget it, but Jeffrey was game to play along, insisted he wanted to be in this fantasy. “It is a fantasy, yeah?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “To be the object of the mysterious Ennis Delamare’s lust?” He caught my hand as I started to pull it away from his chest and slid my fingers lower as he drew close to me.
***
…I followed Jack into the flat. It was a tip, but I didn’t notice because he was staring at me. ‘Go in the bedroom,’ he said. “Close the door, wait a minute then pull it open. I’ll be right here.’
When I frowned he said, “We’re gonna do that scene over. You know the one I mean.”…
---
…Jack looked at me. “I want you to go in there,” he said, nodding toward the bedroom, “and shut the door. I’ll be standing right outside. Open the door when you’re ready and let’s do another take.”
For a second I didn’t know what he meant, “do a take”. I looked at his lips and then I understood. I wanted to do him, take him. Do it over. I turned around and stepped into the bedroom. The room was small, a mess. I closed the door. This was naff - we weren’t actors, were we?…
---
…I didn’t notice the clutter in his flat, couldn’t take my eyes away from his face. I waited for him to make the first move, but Jack just stood there. “Go in the bedroom and shut the door,” he said. “I’ll be waiting right here, for when you’re good and ready. You know what you want, so come and get it. And stay for seconds.”…
---
…We got to his place and it didn’t go the way I expected. Before I could touch him Jack reached out and poked a finger into my chest, keeping his distance. ‘Go in the kitchen and shut the door.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said.
He smirked. ‘Oh yes you are.’…
I hit Save and then Quit when I heard the front door open at 10pm. Rain had been lashing against the windows since morning for the second day in a row, so I wasn’t surprised that Chris and Eve had cut short their trip. I was relieved Chris was back - I’d spent days trying out a dozen versions of one scene and had no idea which he’d go with. When I went downstairs, he was standing by the hall table looking through five days of mail, drops of water falling from his hair onto the envelopes. Eve flipped back the hood of her rain jacket and I gasped: her long hair was gone. Not short like a man’s, but almost. They both looked at me as I stood frozen on the bottom step, but before I could say anything, Chris held out an envelope. “This one’s for you,” he said. I studied the return address: R. Fell on Cherry Street in Somerville, Mass. What a dilemma: ask about Eve or dash upstairs to find out why Jay was living at Jack’s house?
I folded the envelope and stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans, then looked at Eve and her pageboy cut. She slowly removed her jacket, seeming self-conscious and unhappy. I was pretty sure I knew what it meant.
“You’re going back? I mean, back home…?” I looked at Chris’ somber face and back to her.
“I told him,” Chris said to Eve. Looking at me without expression he added, “She’s leaving for Dover tomorrow morning to get the ferry, then driving to Germany.” He glanced at his watch. “You have mail and so do I. See you in the morning.”
Ennis -
When I was moving last week I found a letter from Elliot in the Robert Mapplethorpe book he left to me. I’d never looked through it before because I already owned that one. My life would have been so different if I had. And so would yours. I’ve made a photocopy of the letter for you. I found out recently that many of the friends he left things to found a note or letter hidden in the gift. I wish I’d known that sooner.
He says he was going to leave something for you, but I never found anything with your name on it in his apartment. I remember there were a few objects left over that had names on them of people we didn’t know and couldn’t trace. One of his friends still has them but she says none of them were for you.
That red and yellow scarf I have, I lied when I told you I’d knitted it in high school. I had a huge crush on Elliot when I first met him. I wanted to make something he would keep close to him, something warm. When he told me he was gay, I was mortified. I think he thought I felt sorry for him, like he was handicapped, but that wasn’t the case at all. He sent me a beautiful card to thank me. Someday I’ll show you what he wrote. So different from this final letter. The day we cleared out his place I found the scarf on the floor by the couch. Now when I see it I think of a noose.
I split up with Jacques. He wasn’t who I thought he was. Story of my life. I moved in with Lureen Newsome. Remember, from East West? We’re helping each other. Things didn’t work out with the guy she was seeing, that she went into business with. It’s crazy that you’re friends with her ex-husband. Lureen had no idea. It’s from him that I found out you’re in London.
Are you going to come back to Boston? Please write and tell me how you are.
Love,
Robin
May 31st, 1985
Dear little bird, I am breaking your heart one last time and don’t expect to be forgiven. If my friends were aware of my present condition I know you would be the first to fly to my bedside. But I’d rather be alone with the mementos of my deepest sorrow. My fate is no mystery to me, so why don’t I just throw myself in front of a Red Line train? Too public, and it would inconvenience so many. Hanging myself here would be neater and private, but the only thing in my apartment that would do the job is the scarf you knitted for me.
I have it wrapped around my neck. Some nights I’m burning with fever, but tonight I can’t stop shivering. I remember when you presented this scarf to me, how I laughed because I could hardly imagine you sitting and knitting. But I took your love for me very seriously, misplaced as it was. That must surprise you, but as I grew older and beautiful boys were no longer interested in me it was a wonderful ego boost to be the object of a crush by a pretty girl. You took my revelation so graciously, but I noticed your flaming cheeks. I like to believe relief was mixed with your embarrassment. It was the start of a beautiful friendship, don’t you think?
But then I failed you as a friend and you didn’t know it. Here is the truth I kept from you: that boy you fell in love with a few months later, I recognized him, and he me. I knew him when he was in high school and he was struggling with who he was. He had confided in me his senior year, and when I saw you together I understood I’d failed to help him. He knew that I knew and that is why he disappeared. Not out of callousness, but panic. It’s a reaction I understand too well.
I failed Evan because I was afraid to give him the advice he really needed. You see, until a month ago I was a guidance counselor at Hingham high school. So I didn’t precisely lie about being a social worker. The closet I walked into every weekday morning was dark and deep. I absolutely could not allow a hint of my true self to seep out there. The school has no idea why I walked away from my job.
That young man you introduced to me last May, Ennis - I was so relieved it didn’t last. The instant we clasped hands and I looked into his eyes, I knew. Little bird, there is no shame in falling in love with a gay man. Or even of repeating the mistake. I hope you and Ennis have remained friends. You told me he wants to be a writer. I will leave something for him that perhaps will help him on his way.
Do you remember what I wrote to you four years ago? I still believe it, if no one else does.
I hope you can read my handwriting, damn this coughing. One more letter to write, the hardest.
With love and eternal sadness,
Elliot
It took a long time for my thoughts to unscramble. The scarf. Elliot knowing about me. How was the fountain pen meant to help me become a writer? Why Jay never talked about that other boyfriend. And most importantly: somewhere in the Boston area a letter for Jack from Elliot was waiting to be found. The logical next move would be to call Jay and ask her to find out if the friend holding the unclaimed bequests had one for Jack. If so, then she could give it to him. But only I knew about their connection, so I had to be the one to lead him to it.
I fell asleep almost as soon as I lay down and woke at 6:00. I could hear English voices downstairs. When I went down I found Chris alone in the kitchen, standing before the open refrigerator. The radio was on, set to the news. From the tone of the newscaster’s voice I could tell something dramatic had happened out in the world. But before I could pay attention to it, Chris turned around.
“How much of this food will you be able to finish up before it goes off?” he asked me, waving at the contents of the fridge.
“None. I’m leaving today, too,” I said.
He widened his eyes in surprise.
“I’ve got to go deal with some things in Boston,” I explained.
“Then I’ll have to chuck everything in here because I’ve decided to go with Eve.” He looked tired and sad.
I just stared at him, amazed.
“Did you listen to the news this morning?” He nodded toward the radio. “A boat full of people having a party on the Thames was hit by a dredger a few hours ago and fifty people drowned. It just seemed… Well, how can I let her go there alone? Anything can happen.”
I asked what time they were departing; Chris said in one hour. I’d leave at the same time - my expensive British Airways return ticket would allow me to take any coach seat available, so I could go stand-by if necessary.
My packed duffel bag was fuller than when I’d arrived in June, but not by much. Chris and Eve were waiting by the front door with two suitcases when I came downstairs at seven. Eve had her hair tucked under a tweed cap and was wearing a pair of Chris’ jeans and a white cotton shirt. She looked androgynous now, in transition, and seemed to flicker between male and female as I looked at her. Did I want them to drive me to Heathrow? I declined, knowing it would be out of their way, and said I preferred to take the tube one last time. As Chris opened the door, Eve took my hand. At her touch, I saw only the woman.
“Maybe I won’t see you again. I hope so…I hope you will…” Eve closed her eyes, frowned and tilted her head slightly, as though searching her mind for something. “…go to the edge of your… longing. Whatever happens to you… beauty and… fear… go forward. No feeling is final.” She opened her eyes. “It’s from a poem by Rilke. Do you know him?”
I shrugged and squinted. “Mmm…” Rainer Maria Rilke is one of those poets educated people have heard of but not usually read.
“It’s too hard to translate it all from German. It’s what I read when I must do something difficult. It’s about what God tells us when he walks our soul into life, when he is leading us into another land where everything is serious and real. He tells us to be a flame that lights up the things in front of us, but it will also make shadows behind them. He says he will be there, wearing the shadows.”
“No feeling is final. I’ll remember that,” I replied neutrally, trying not to roll my eyes. Until that moment I hadn’t appreciated what a relief it was to spend time in a country where God talk was so rare.
Outside on the street, after the car was loaded, goodbye hugs had been exchanged and my friends were buckling their seat belts, Chris looked up at the house and swore. Their bedroom window was open a few inches. I offered to run up and close it, so he handed me the house keys. As I was climbing the stairs to the next floor I heard the fax machine buzzing. I went first to the bedroom, shut the window and locked it. Next to the computer I noticed the floppy disks onto which I’d saved my copy of Chris’ novel-in-progress and my contributions. On impulse I grabbed them and put them in my pocket. Then I went to the office. From across the room I could see Jack’s handwriting on the long tail of paper hanging from the fax machine. As I ripped the fax away I glanced at the last line of his screed, in large block printing.
WE GOTTA TALK THEM OUT OF THIS! SO GET YOUR BUTT ONTO A PLANE!!!
I folded the paper small and stuffed it in my pocket. I’d wait and read it on the plane, when it would be too late to change my mind.
Chapter 64 >>
August 1989
Elliot Dedieu. E.D. Ed. “I’ll never say his name again.” Elliot kissing a man in his lobby - Jack. The cassette tape - Nick Drake, Julian. Jack showing me the charred bathhouse door. The couch, the stains - Jack stretched out naked, with Elliot.
I stopped hyperventilating when the sound of Chris and Eve’s voices drifted up from downstairs. I hadn’t even heard them come in the front door. I didn’t remember backing away from the fax machine or sitting down on the bed. I glanced at the clock and saw only ten minutes had passed; it felt like I’d been lost for years in my thoughts and memories.
He pushed you out of the way, Jack. Away from his danger. To save you. Those were the words I knew I should write and feed through the machine. But still I sat. Something was missing. I thought of the color photo I’d found in Elliot’s kitchen, of him in the phone booth embracing Julian, whose head was bowed, his eyes closed in bliss. I’d only looked at it once, could barely remember their faces. It was the only close-up of them I’d seen. In the other pictures of her son that Janet Turner had shown me, Julian was viewed from a distance.
How was it again that Jay had confirmed her suspicions about me and Kaj when she saw the plane tickets to Toronto? She’d thought of the seemingly innocent photo of us on the BU Bridge… and then had gone in search of the rest of that roll of film. Jessie Turner had surely snapped more than one shot of her brother and his lover.
I stood up and ran downstairs. Chris and Eve were in the kitchen, she sitting in a chair gazing desolately up at him. Chris stood with his hip against the counter, his arms crossed looking at the floor. She straightened her back when she saw me in the doorway.
“Do you have a phone book?” I asked. “I need to look up a number.”
Without a word Eve rose and strode out of the kitchen. Chris lifted his chin and directed his green gaze at me, but before I could focus on his world Eve reappeared carrying a large directory, which she set on the counter next to him. Then she left the room again and I heard her bare feet heavy on the stairs.
I opened the book, turned to the T’s and groaned. Five pages of Turners and no first names, only initials.
When Chris asked who I was looking for, I explained that I needed to find the Quaker woman again but I hadn’t paid attention to the route we’d walked to her house in Highgate and I didn’t remember the name of her street. He said it would be faster to drive me over and try to retrace the route rather than attempt to reach by phone all the Turners in NW6.
With the help of the A to Z map we located where she and I had exited from the Heath. I spotted a few landmarks I remembered and eventually we turned onto a street that seemed familiar. Halfway up it Chris stopped behind a black cab idling in the middle of the road. Then we saw a woman I recognized emerge from the front door of a tall red brick house opposite the taxi, carrying a small suitcase. The driver got out and opened the door for Jessie, who climbed in without a glance toward our car.
Janet Turner stood in the doorway and waved once as the cab pulled away.
“That’s her,” I said to Chris and fumbled for the door handle. When I was out of the car I heard him wish me luck before he drove away.
Janet Turner didn’t seem surprised to see me as I walked the short distance between the curb and her front door.
“Come in. I’ll put the kettle on,” she began, but I shook my head.
“That’s alright, I just had tea at home,” I lied. “I came to ask you a question. That picture of Julian and Elliot in the phone box… Are there any other photos like that? From the same day?”
She seemed to study my face a few seconds before her gaze shifted slightly. “How extraordinary,” she murmured, staring into the distance. She turned and stepped back inside and I followed.
“You saw Jessie leave, I imagine,” she said as she shut the door. “I’m grateful that you found me, last Sunday. Even if you say it was by chance. Though I wonder…” She turned to me. “My daughter and I talked all afternoon, for the first time in many years. There has been a… not a complete reconciliation but I would say a shift in Jessie’s thinking about Elliot. Until today she wouldn’t even say his name.
“You might want to go upstairs and look at Julian’s old bedroom. It looked somewhat different when he was alive but in the family we still refer to it as his room. Before she left, Jessie put on the dresser a picture she couldn’t bear to look at for the past fifteen years. I think that is the one that interests you.”
I went upstairs alone. The bedroom looked different from the rest of the house, I realized later. The furniture was very plain and rustic, except for a small couch that stood out. At the sight of the familiar striped upholstery I got a hollow feeling in my chest and tried not to imagine why Elliot had sought out its twin in Boston. On top of the oak dresser was the same photo I’d found in the bread box, but slightly different. In this one, Elliot was nuzzling his lover’s temple, eyes closed, and Julian was smiling at the camera. More of the red suspenders could be seen on Julian’s chest, the pair Elliot had worn so often in Boston that his friends had sewn them into his panel for the AIDS quilt. I was sure none of them knew what those suspenders had actually meant to him.
Jack’s eyes, big and blue. His dark brows and hair, and strong, even features. His curved lips. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to weep. How could I tell Jack that Elliot had seen his first love in his face, had tried to bring Julian to life through him?
I went back downstairs. I wanted to leave right away but Janet Turner hadn’t been able to help herself: she’d not only made tea but put out chocolate Hobnobs. So I had to stay.
I asked her what had happened to Elliot after the accident. I couldn’t bring myself to ask the details of Julian’s death. But she was unflinching.
“Julian was hit full on by the bus and died instantly. Elliot broke both arms and several ribs,” she said. “He couldn’t live by himself so he came here and I looked after him. It was difficult for both of us. Jessie had a nervous breakdown and was in hospital for several weeks. In the autumn, when he was healed, amnesty was declared for draft resisters and he decided to return to America. In exchange the returnees had to do community service. He was going to go back and train to be a social worker.”
She said she knew of his plans to get an M.S.W, but didn’t learn until 1977 that he’d decided to become a school guidance counselor. That year he got a job in a high school, but in the summer before school began he took a vacation out west.
“He wrote to me that he wanted to go to a place completely unlike England, to mark the beginning of the next chapter of his life, he said. He went to a cattle ranch, of all places. He said he knew it was a mistake when he arrived, that the only person he got on with was the owners’ teenage son. He said at least he was able to give the boy some useful advice about college.”
I got up to leave soon after. She showed me to the door, and before opening it she looked at me and said, “I hope you found the information you needed.”
I could only nod, my mouth dry as ashes. She invited me to come again; I nodded again, even though we both knew I wouldn’t.
I was grateful when I heard a horn toot and looked up to see that Chris had ignored my order not to wait for me. My legs moved slowly and heavily as an elephant’s as I crossed the street to his car.
“What happened?” he asked when I sank into the passenger seat.
As he drove I began to tell him about my friend Jack, but Chris quickly understood this wasn’t just a buddy, and that every person I’d told him about so far was linked to the others in some way.
“So from the way it sounds,” Chris said, “he’s been through the wringer and if you tell him what you just learned…” He left the thought unfinished because, like me, he couldn’t see how knowing all that would help Jack.
I was silent, and after a minute I realized Chris wasn’t taking the most direct route home but meandering through side streets.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
When he finally answered, his voice was hoarse. “Eve is going to Germany.”
He hadn’t said she was going back to Germany but his tone was dark with finality.
“Why? For how long?”
“Her brother and sister-in-law are going to try to come out of East Germany with their two little kids, through Hungary. She wants to go meet them.”
It took me a few seconds to absorb the implications. “So… do they know she’s… not Erich now?” I tried to reconcile what she’d told me a few weeks earlier, that she and her brother were strangers and that Karl had grown up resenting his missing “perfect” brother. She seemed content with her life in London - why was she suddenly overturning it all to run back to her family when her brother might reject her completely?
“No. But she’s not going to stop the hormones. She’ll cut her hair and… go in disguise, I guess you could say. The thing is…” Chris voice began to break. He suddenly swerved into a big gap in the parked cars on the street and switched off the ignition. I waited. After a moment he turned toward me, leaning back against the door with his elbow propped on the steering wheel, his fingers drooping over one eye.
“She says she doesn’t want to live there again but she also says she can’t promise me she’ll come back.” The eye that I could see was glistening. “Anything could happen. What if she decides to stay there? Go back… in all ways?” he choked out.
“Don’t make her promise to come back,” I said. “But tell her she has to stay in contact, to keep you informed of everything. Don’t let her keep you completely in the dark.” As we sat in the car I told him the bare outlines of Jack’s story - that his lover had cut off contact with no explanation when he knew he had AIDS.
“He’s still not over it,” I said. “It was Jack who sent that letter you saw. I did the same thing to him: came here and didn’t tell him where I went or why.”
“He wrote that he loved you. Do you feel the same about him?”
I was silent, looking through the windshield, feeling disoriented as usual while sitting on the left with no steering wheel in front of me. I realized I felt the same way when I was with Jack; never sure who was in the driver’s seat.
“I don’t know,” I admitted finally.
We sat in the car as the light faded, each of us lost in thought. Should I write to Jack and tell him how Elliot died? Call him? Fly home and explain what I knew in person? Whatever I told him wasn’t going to make him feel better. And then what?
Eventually Chris sighed and turned the key in the ignition. Before we arrived home I learned what else was on his mind: the deadline for submitting the manuscript of the third Jack Tornado novel, which would begin where the first book left off and cover the same period as the second novel and then beyond. But he was going to write it from Ennis Delamare’s point of view, in the first person.
“I have to finish the first draft by January. I’ve been writing like crazy but now I’ve come to the first love scene. Well, sex scene between Ennis Delamare and Jack Tornado. And… and I really suck at it.”
I looked at him. “Great. What’s the problem, then?”
Chris was only chuckling once we finally went in the house, and somehow I’d agreed to choreograph the sex scenes for him, since, he claimed, I had “more experience in that arena.”
***
I forced myself to reply to Jack that same evening - silence after that last fax would have been callous. But I kept it simple.
Did you find out how Ed died?
I spent a day in the library looking up back issues of the Globe and the Herald, searching for an obituary. Nothing. Went back to the bathhouse where we first met. It had burned down. I knew he was from Maine, but not where. Looked in the phone books for all the major areas of the state. Never knew that his surname (it was French) was so common up there. Gave up after I called a few. He’d said his parents were dead anyway.
We used to walk in Mount Auburn cemetery in Cambridge. He said he wouldn’t mind being buried there. So I went there a few times, looking for his name. Wondered who those friends were who cried over his couch. Did they take care of all that? How come he never mentioned them?
What were the nightmares about?
He wouldn’t tell me, said that was another world, he didn’t want it to touch me. Thing was, he did hurt me, when he had those dreams. I’d wake up from him yelling Right! Look right! in my ear and then he’d grab me, shake me. Scared the shit out of me. Imagined ambushes, grenades exploding, bodies flying. Wasn’t gonna push him to talk about it, though.
I reminded him of the December night we happened to find ourselves standing in front of the little memorial to John Lennon in City Hall Plaza on the anniversary of his death. I asked him what made him panic at the sight of me.
Ed had a red and yellow scarf. Once when we were fooling around in bed I tried to tie his wrists with it. First time he ever got mad. Yanked it out of my hands, said it was a gift from a friend, she knit it herself. That’s when I realized he never talked about his friends to me.
So that scarf - you were wearing one just like it that night. You remember what was written on the sign by the candles? “Miss you so much, John.” Ed used to call me my real name, John, when he wanted to get my attention, tease me. When I saw those colors around your neck, right there after seeing those words, I had the crazy idea he was trying to send me a message. Whatever it was, I didn’t want to know about it.
We carried on like that for a couple of hours, both of us next to our fax machines, writing out our questions and answers in longhand. Back then it seemed crazy to be doing that instead of just dialing the number and talking to him. These days that’s normal. I kept writing because I was afraid I’d give too much away, before Jack was ready, if he heard my voice. I saw no obvious remedy for his pain.
Eventually he asked me why I went to London. I told him about dialing his work number at Toronto airport - I was calling you, I swear! - and then spotting the open Time Out and the article headline; about the detective novel with a character with my name; about Chris, and Eve (without mentioning Erich), the volunteering and softball. I needed a break, I explained. I needed a change of scenery.
After the initial flurry of faxes, communication between us slowed. Each of us sent a fax when anything noteworthy had happened, every other day or two, or three. Jack didn’t ask when I was coming back and I didn’t say. In fact, I didn’t know. I guess I was waiting for a sign that it was time.
***
Jack was in the hall, waiting for me on the other side of the door. I could picture him, his black hair flopping over his eyes, those big, blue eyes, the ones I looked at on my bedroom wall, in the poster for his band. The poster I’d peeled from a utility pole in Camden Town late one night. I was nervous; what would he think of me when he saw me? All these months of phone conversations had made us friends, I thought. But while I knew what he looked like, he had no image of me.
I realised the sound engineer was looking at me curiously behind the glass. I shrugged and put my hand on the doorknob, turned it and eased open the door. Jack was leaning against the wall in the corridor and when he saw me he smiled and pushed away from it without taking his hands from his jacket pockets. I looked right and left and met him halfway. Then he was in my arms…
“That’s a lot of words, just to get him to open the door, see Jack Tornado and kiss him.”
“You think too many words?” Chris said. The anxious note in his voice took me aback, but it was also gratifying that he was taking my opinion seriously. He’d printed out for me the first chapter of what was to be the third novel in the Jack Tornado series. Halfway through the chapter Jack Tornado and Ennis Delamare go to Ennis’ flat and fall into bed, which is where I was supposed to choreograph the action. But the very first scene of the novel - the one I’d invented as a joke - needed work, I thought. This story’s Ennis wouldn’t sound like that, even in his head. I thought of Jack Twist’s last faxes, the way he wrote about E.D. This character was clenched up like Jack was when I first me him. And I knew exactly how he felt in this scene.
“Well, who am I to judge? You’re the pro. But… I’ve been there. I’ve been on the other side of the door, opening it.”
“Oh… Joe and the motel room.”
“Yeah. I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t overthinking it. But it’s so easy to get derailed.” I described the jammed door knob, the messy sandwich, Joe in pyjamas. “Wish it had gone as well for me as you have it for these two guys. Seems too easy. I mean, Jack’s never even laid eyes on Ennis before this and suddenly they’re making out in public.”
“So show me.”
I sat at his computer and typed.
My show was over. Jack was in the hall, waiting for me to come out. I paced, nervous. The engineer stared at me. For months we’d talked on the phone, never meeting. I’d seen pictures of Jack - I was smitten. But to him, I was a blank.
I put my hand on the doorknob. The cold metal against my palm sent a charge through me. I yanked open the door; Jack was right there. Startled, then a grin. I glanced left and right, fisted his jacket - the leather felt worn and thin. I pushed him backwards and he grunted as he hit the wall. His stubble rasped against my fingers as my mouth slammed against his. His lips were firm, then suddenly soft, but I heard a click down the hall to the right. I pushed away from him. Couldn’t look at his face, afraid to see his expression. I turned and ran.
“Hmmm. I dunno, that’s kind of… abrupt. But I see what you’re after,” Chris mused. He lifted his eyes from the screen and gazed out of the window. “So… you don’t think Jack would be so… immediately receptive… at that point?”
I studied Chris’ profile and wondered how much he identified with Ennis; whether Jack Tornado was the man he wished he could be - a man who, the instant he knew it was another man he wanted, wasn’t conflicted about his sexuality. Had Chris ever had a ‘real’ girlfriend? He’d grown up being treated as a girl within his family; Eve/Erich had longed for that. Was their connection based on what they’d missed as children?
He’s even more confused than me, I thought. But I answered, “Maybe he would’ve been, but Ennis got spooked too soon.”
We went back and forth like that for several days, working together each morning, as we slowed things down between the characters, steadily ramping up the sexual tension between them. Eventually they were alone in Jack Tornado’s flat and it was time for me to direct the action. It was mid-August, and finally really hot. Chris and Eve left London for a few days, for a long-planned vacation on the Isle of Wight. I think he also wanted to give me space to write without him looking over my shoulder.
They drove off in the morning; in the afternoon I went to the Heath, to the Men’s Pond. The water was churning with bodies, yells and laughter skipping over the surface. While treading water in the middle of the pond, I spotted Jeffrey walking along the dock. The night I’d spent with him came back to me: his humor and confidence as he wrangled the condom, his guiding hand, the slow slide into him. By the time he plunged in I was swimming in his direction. When he surfaced a few feet from me, he smiled and said, “Hello Ellis Davenport. I wondered if I’d see you here today.” I was startled, until I remembered I hadn’t told him my real name at the party. We made small talk as he nudged me toward the dock, then underneath it. We each wrapped an arm around the post and let the other explore below the surface. A relief to be done with words. Even though I had Chris’ house to myself I waited for Jeffrey to invite me to his place.
“I want to do something first,” I said as soon as Jeffrey had shut the door of his flat and turned to me. I reached out and touched his chest with the tips of my fingers, keeping him at arm’s length. “Just for a minute. I want to pretend I’m somebody else. Could you stay here… stand right here, facing the door,” I nodded toward the bedroom. “I’m going to go inside and shut the door. We’ve never met in person. You’re waiting for me to come out of-“
“Role-play, is that what you’re after?” Jeffrey said, grinning.
“Well… yeah,” I said, surprised. This was going to be easier than I thought. “I’m a DJ… a radio presenter… and you front a band that I like. We’ve had phone conversations but have never met, and now-“
Jeffrey laughed, exclaiming, “Like in the Jack Tornado books, you mean!”
“Well, uh, yeah, but… So, you… you’ve read them?” I stammered.
“Sure. That party where we met? My friends told me the author would be there, that’s why I came. But I met you instead.” He widened his eyes in mock innocence. “Jack and Ennis are going to turn out to be gay, is what I heard. Who would’ve guessed?”
Mortified, I said to forget it, but Jeffrey was game to play along, insisted he wanted to be in this fantasy. “It is a fantasy, yeah?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “To be the object of the mysterious Ennis Delamare’s lust?” He caught my hand as I started to pull it away from his chest and slid my fingers lower as he drew close to me.
***
…I followed Jack into the flat. It was a tip, but I didn’t notice because he was staring at me. ‘Go in the bedroom,’ he said. “Close the door, wait a minute then pull it open. I’ll be right here.’
When I frowned he said, “We’re gonna do that scene over. You know the one I mean.”…
---
…Jack looked at me. “I want you to go in there,” he said, nodding toward the bedroom, “and shut the door. I’ll be standing right outside. Open the door when you’re ready and let’s do another take.”
For a second I didn’t know what he meant, “do a take”. I looked at his lips and then I understood. I wanted to do him, take him. Do it over. I turned around and stepped into the bedroom. The room was small, a mess. I closed the door. This was naff - we weren’t actors, were we?…
---
…I didn’t notice the clutter in his flat, couldn’t take my eyes away from his face. I waited for him to make the first move, but Jack just stood there. “Go in the bedroom and shut the door,” he said. “I’ll be waiting right here, for when you’re good and ready. You know what you want, so come and get it. And stay for seconds.”…
---
…We got to his place and it didn’t go the way I expected. Before I could touch him Jack reached out and poked a finger into my chest, keeping his distance. ‘Go in the kitchen and shut the door.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said.
He smirked. ‘Oh yes you are.’…
I hit Save and then Quit when I heard the front door open at 10pm. Rain had been lashing against the windows since morning for the second day in a row, so I wasn’t surprised that Chris and Eve had cut short their trip. I was relieved Chris was back - I’d spent days trying out a dozen versions of one scene and had no idea which he’d go with. When I went downstairs, he was standing by the hall table looking through five days of mail, drops of water falling from his hair onto the envelopes. Eve flipped back the hood of her rain jacket and I gasped: her long hair was gone. Not short like a man’s, but almost. They both looked at me as I stood frozen on the bottom step, but before I could say anything, Chris held out an envelope. “This one’s for you,” he said. I studied the return address: R. Fell on Cherry Street in Somerville, Mass. What a dilemma: ask about Eve or dash upstairs to find out why Jay was living at Jack’s house?
I folded the envelope and stuffed it in the pocket of my jeans, then looked at Eve and her pageboy cut. She slowly removed her jacket, seeming self-conscious and unhappy. I was pretty sure I knew what it meant.
“You’re going back? I mean, back home…?” I looked at Chris’ somber face and back to her.
“I told him,” Chris said to Eve. Looking at me without expression he added, “She’s leaving for Dover tomorrow morning to get the ferry, then driving to Germany.” He glanced at his watch. “You have mail and so do I. See you in the morning.”
Ennis -
When I was moving last week I found a letter from Elliot in the Robert Mapplethorpe book he left to me. I’d never looked through it before because I already owned that one. My life would have been so different if I had. And so would yours. I’ve made a photocopy of the letter for you. I found out recently that many of the friends he left things to found a note or letter hidden in the gift. I wish I’d known that sooner.
He says he was going to leave something for you, but I never found anything with your name on it in his apartment. I remember there were a few objects left over that had names on them of people we didn’t know and couldn’t trace. One of his friends still has them but she says none of them were for you.
That red and yellow scarf I have, I lied when I told you I’d knitted it in high school. I had a huge crush on Elliot when I first met him. I wanted to make something he would keep close to him, something warm. When he told me he was gay, I was mortified. I think he thought I felt sorry for him, like he was handicapped, but that wasn’t the case at all. He sent me a beautiful card to thank me. Someday I’ll show you what he wrote. So different from this final letter. The day we cleared out his place I found the scarf on the floor by the couch. Now when I see it I think of a noose.
I split up with Jacques. He wasn’t who I thought he was. Story of my life. I moved in with Lureen Newsome. Remember, from East West? We’re helping each other. Things didn’t work out with the guy she was seeing, that she went into business with. It’s crazy that you’re friends with her ex-husband. Lureen had no idea. It’s from him that I found out you’re in London.
Are you going to come back to Boston? Please write and tell me how you are.
Love,
Robin
May 31st, 1985
Dear little bird, I am breaking your heart one last time and don’t expect to be forgiven. If my friends were aware of my present condition I know you would be the first to fly to my bedside. But I’d rather be alone with the mementos of my deepest sorrow. My fate is no mystery to me, so why don’t I just throw myself in front of a Red Line train? Too public, and it would inconvenience so many. Hanging myself here would be neater and private, but the only thing in my apartment that would do the job is the scarf you knitted for me.
I have it wrapped around my neck. Some nights I’m burning with fever, but tonight I can’t stop shivering. I remember when you presented this scarf to me, how I laughed because I could hardly imagine you sitting and knitting. But I took your love for me very seriously, misplaced as it was. That must surprise you, but as I grew older and beautiful boys were no longer interested in me it was a wonderful ego boost to be the object of a crush by a pretty girl. You took my revelation so graciously, but I noticed your flaming cheeks. I like to believe relief was mixed with your embarrassment. It was the start of a beautiful friendship, don’t you think?
But then I failed you as a friend and you didn’t know it. Here is the truth I kept from you: that boy you fell in love with a few months later, I recognized him, and he me. I knew him when he was in high school and he was struggling with who he was. He had confided in me his senior year, and when I saw you together I understood I’d failed to help him. He knew that I knew and that is why he disappeared. Not out of callousness, but panic. It’s a reaction I understand too well.
I failed Evan because I was afraid to give him the advice he really needed. You see, until a month ago I was a guidance counselor at Hingham high school. So I didn’t precisely lie about being a social worker. The closet I walked into every weekday morning was dark and deep. I absolutely could not allow a hint of my true self to seep out there. The school has no idea why I walked away from my job.
That young man you introduced to me last May, Ennis - I was so relieved it didn’t last. The instant we clasped hands and I looked into his eyes, I knew. Little bird, there is no shame in falling in love with a gay man. Or even of repeating the mistake. I hope you and Ennis have remained friends. You told me he wants to be a writer. I will leave something for him that perhaps will help him on his way.
Do you remember what I wrote to you four years ago? I still believe it, if no one else does.
I hope you can read my handwriting, damn this coughing. One more letter to write, the hardest.
With love and eternal sadness,
Elliot
It took a long time for my thoughts to unscramble. The scarf. Elliot knowing about me. How was the fountain pen meant to help me become a writer? Why Jay never talked about that other boyfriend. And most importantly: somewhere in the Boston area a letter for Jack from Elliot was waiting to be found. The logical next move would be to call Jay and ask her to find out if the friend holding the unclaimed bequests had one for Jack. If so, then she could give it to him. But only I knew about their connection, so I had to be the one to lead him to it.
I fell asleep almost as soon as I lay down and woke at 6:00. I could hear English voices downstairs. When I went down I found Chris alone in the kitchen, standing before the open refrigerator. The radio was on, set to the news. From the tone of the newscaster’s voice I could tell something dramatic had happened out in the world. But before I could pay attention to it, Chris turned around.
“How much of this food will you be able to finish up before it goes off?” he asked me, waving at the contents of the fridge.
“None. I’m leaving today, too,” I said.
He widened his eyes in surprise.
“I’ve got to go deal with some things in Boston,” I explained.
“Then I’ll have to chuck everything in here because I’ve decided to go with Eve.” He looked tired and sad.
I just stared at him, amazed.
“Did you listen to the news this morning?” He nodded toward the radio. “A boat full of people having a party on the Thames was hit by a dredger a few hours ago and fifty people drowned. It just seemed… Well, how can I let her go there alone? Anything can happen.”
I asked what time they were departing; Chris said in one hour. I’d leave at the same time - my expensive British Airways return ticket would allow me to take any coach seat available, so I could go stand-by if necessary.
My packed duffel bag was fuller than when I’d arrived in June, but not by much. Chris and Eve were waiting by the front door with two suitcases when I came downstairs at seven. Eve had her hair tucked under a tweed cap and was wearing a pair of Chris’ jeans and a white cotton shirt. She looked androgynous now, in transition, and seemed to flicker between male and female as I looked at her. Did I want them to drive me to Heathrow? I declined, knowing it would be out of their way, and said I preferred to take the tube one last time. As Chris opened the door, Eve took my hand. At her touch, I saw only the woman.
“Maybe I won’t see you again. I hope so…I hope you will…” Eve closed her eyes, frowned and tilted her head slightly, as though searching her mind for something. “…go to the edge of your… longing. Whatever happens to you… beauty and… fear… go forward. No feeling is final.” She opened her eyes. “It’s from a poem by Rilke. Do you know him?”
I shrugged and squinted. “Mmm…” Rainer Maria Rilke is one of those poets educated people have heard of but not usually read.
“It’s too hard to translate it all from German. It’s what I read when I must do something difficult. It’s about what God tells us when he walks our soul into life, when he is leading us into another land where everything is serious and real. He tells us to be a flame that lights up the things in front of us, but it will also make shadows behind them. He says he will be there, wearing the shadows.”
“No feeling is final. I’ll remember that,” I replied neutrally, trying not to roll my eyes. Until that moment I hadn’t appreciated what a relief it was to spend time in a country where God talk was so rare.
Outside on the street, after the car was loaded, goodbye hugs had been exchanged and my friends were buckling their seat belts, Chris looked up at the house and swore. Their bedroom window was open a few inches. I offered to run up and close it, so he handed me the house keys. As I was climbing the stairs to the next floor I heard the fax machine buzzing. I went first to the bedroom, shut the window and locked it. Next to the computer I noticed the floppy disks onto which I’d saved my copy of Chris’ novel-in-progress and my contributions. On impulse I grabbed them and put them in my pocket. Then I went to the office. From across the room I could see Jack’s handwriting on the long tail of paper hanging from the fax machine. As I ripped the fax away I glanced at the last line of his screed, in large block printing.
WE GOTTA TALK THEM OUT OF THIS! SO GET YOUR BUTT ONTO A PLANE!!!
I folded the paper small and stuffed it in my pocket. I’d wait and read it on the plane, when it would be too late to change my mind.
Chapter 64 >>
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