“I’m sorry, but Mr. Tommons is unavailable at the moment, Mr. Bliss. Would you like to leave him a message?”
She would take many messages on behalf of Mr. Tommons, who would never return any of them. It was at some point while on the phone to her that Grand ordered a subscription to the newspaper, as Ryker never lived up to his promise of getting one for us.
When the paper came, Grand would shower, cologne his neck, put on Saturday night type of clothes like he was fixing himself up for a date.
He read only Ryker’s articles. Reading them over and over again like they were new each time. Articles about gays in theater, film, and music. Culture coming at Grand full speed in a language he’d been learning to speak all his life. The foreign cutting away to the shape of his America.
He could spend an entire afternoon reading and rereading one article, afternoons previously spent on the baseball diamond. He hadn’t been back to the team since that day they ran him off. He was officially replaced by Arly. The team would suffer. Three losses in a row. No playoffs. No championships. You could see the team looking down into their gloves, seeming to ask if they had made the right choice. Was winning worth playing on a team with a fag?
Empty gloves always said it was, but then the ball would come sailing their way. They’d catch it. Say to themselves, Of course we don’t need him.
Dad tried to find out from Grand why he was no longer on the team.
“I just don’t wanna play anymore, Dad.” He shrugged. “Is that okay?”
“I thought you liked baseball. I liked watching you play, but if you don’t want to anymore, well, sure that’s okay.”
And then Dad hugged him and Grand sighed in his arms. “Thanks, Dad.”
The team stretched the baseball diamond far that summer, and the things said there went to gossip in town.
“Have you heard about Grand Bliss?” they whispered.
“I can’t believe it. He doesn’t talk like them. Doesn’t walk like one of them. How can he be?”
“But he is. I heard he kissed another boy. You just never know who is or isn’t anymore. I mean, look at Rock Hudson. There’s always rumors about him. I remember watchin’ him in the old films. I never would have guessed he wanted anything more than a good woman. You just never know what a man wants. No, you just never know who a man is.”
Dad was never caught in the circles of gossip. Mom could sometimes be, but only because of Fedelia, who brought that type of news into the house during her visits. Though in regards to Grand, she brought none of it up. Instead she would sit across from Mom and say Grand is a very special boy.
“Hmm-mmm,” Mom would say, not knowing what moved in the deep.
“I’m scared for him, though, Stella.”
Mom would make a noise, something like a chuckle. “Don’t be silly, Auntie, he’s a strong boy.”
Fedelia would rub her hands together. “I know.”
Ever since that night Sal cut her hair, Fedelia no longer spoke profanity. Her tone was calm. Like thawed-out honey. Her anger had been cut out with the ribbons and was swept up and dumped into the trash. She stood taller. Walked less clumsy. She’d even lost weight and was planning a cruise for the following spring. She would say Scranton’s name only to say, “He was my husband. He left me. That is that. I am over it, and I wish him the best.”
Unlike the bags she wore before, her clothes clung now, no longer afraid to touch her and her self coming back.
Maybe it was the hard journey to her own identity that made her feel for Grand so deeply. The boy struggling with his own, and she knowing exactly what it feels like to live under the weight of the world.
“I hear Grand is interested in journalism now.” Fedelia crossed her slimmed-down legs while she patted a handkerchief above her lip to get the sweat. Her makeup more subtle than before, more becoming, just like that short crop of white hair.
“Yes, it seems that way.” Mom chuckled. “Must’ve been all those reporters comin’ here. He must’ve found that quite interestin’.”
Grand didn’t want to become a journalist. I knew that much about him. He was just trying to build the connection between him and Ryker, the first man he ever met who was like him. It’s hard not to fall in love with the only blanket in winter.
And love, Grand did.
In his mind, he was making sure he was becoming someone who could be loved back. A notepad for a notepad. A pen for a pen. A journalist for a journalist. The boy flitting around town, interviewing about this and that. Notes that would become articles later on the typewriter in his room. He even did an article on Dresden.
And so she is gone, and we cannot put that out of mind, but we can thrill at the joy of knowing we have loved her and that the warmth we go to, shall be her.