I thought he might come to me now. Afraid of dying, men suddenly wanted to be in relationships. He was friendly, but distant, melancholy, like everyone. What was missing was his enticing spark of mischief. It was harder to make him laugh and I tried too hard. Now and again he was gracious enough to smile.
Outside, as we walked to the Mall, we said little to each other. I wanted to fill the space between us, but could not and got more and more anxious. I had felt so good with him before, but not this time. This time it was harder.
At the quilt, there were names and names and names, patches that signified lost lives with trinkets and photos of faces sewn on. I watched a woman who looked to be from out of town gazing at the quilt, as if she could not tear herself away. She took off her scarf and pinned it on. She became my picture of our lives at this time. She became my mother.
I did not want to go to the Missouri section—I didn’t want to see for sure who was there—but Eric navigated us toward the Massachusetts panels, where he cried, and on to D.C., where he cried again. I did not look but heard him, surprised that he was so emotional. I wanted to cry along with everyone, but could not, so I pretended until I realized that no one was thinking about me.
“If you had died, would your parents be here?” I asked Eric. He said nothing, but looked back at me, as if to pose the same question. I shook my head.
“It just isn’t something they would know to do. They wouldn’t have anyone around to tell them to come.”
Later, when my mother finally spoke of AIDS, she asked if I knew anyone who had it. I nodded, said nothing more. I didn’t tell her about Steven’s HIV status. It would have terrified her. My father never said anything about it. He was retired now. After the trip to New York, he purchased an aquarium, and though his fish were much smaller than the ones at Barneys, they were colorful and looked good under the light of the cylinder that shone over them as they darted through the water to ride in the waves of grass. He kept it all immaculately, and recently I found the tank neatly packed in the box it came in under his desk with a book on tropical fish inside it. He had circled the photos of the most glorious creatures. His fingerprints were still on the tank. When his health first worsened, he gave the fish to a neighbor boy whose parents were getting divorced.
. . .
As we left the quilt that day, a fat woman standing by the entrance with a lot of Christian literature had looked at Eric and said, “I will pray for you.” He said, “Pray for yourself.”
I had never seen him angry before. As it turned out, I shared that feeling, but it took awhile to know. I never knew what was going on inside me or how it might surface. It took a long time for me to lose my habit of disappearing at important times. Eric was special to me because with him I was able to be present. It was mysterious; I never knew why he made me feel comfortable when no one else could. With him I could be there, not just watching for my own mistakes.
We did not come together that day, even though I wanted to. It was not that kind of day. I left him standing alone by a window in his apartment.
. . .
As it happened, I saw my parents again, rather soon after they came to New York. Not long after my trip to Washington, I found myself arriving at a hotel in Sarasota, Florida, to meet George and Betty for a long weekend. They had torn down the old lumberyard building in Madison and it had been a draining few months for the whole family. Betty had said that on Main Street it looked like someone had ripped out a big tooth. It was the building her dad had built after he came back from the war. My parents wanted to get away from businesses closing and stores shutting their doors. They were old now. The funerals where my father sang were for friends.
When I arrived at the hotel in Florida, my dad was standing alone on the curb in the golden sunlight, bending over to touch a colorful, exotic flower. He was waiting for me, my arrival, and when he saw me there, all there, unchanged, safe, he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and rushed toward me to take me into his big arms.
16
Today was supposed to be my day off. I was going to drive fifty miles to Columbia to see the movie The Master.
The plan was to go buy the Sunday New York Times, read it at Lakota Coffee Company, see the movie, and go to Taco Bell (secret, disgusting vice) for dinner. But when Betty finds out about this, she decides she has to go. I guess she has been longing for art house fare. She will not take no for an answer, is raring to take off. I sense looming disaster, but she is actually ready to leave by my scheduled departure time. She has put on her new blouse, a little snug, a little formfitting now.
“I look so buxom,” she says as she glances in the mirror on her way out, as she always does.