Over a final cup of coffee, he brings up his alcoholism and says that it has nothing to do with him being gay.
“Like most people, I’ve got a hundred excuses, and none of them has ever stopped me from opening a bottle. The only thing that’s ever helped me is the twelve-step program. I’m a big believer in it. I go to an AA meeting once a week.”
Damn. This guy lets it all hang out. These recovery groups are all the rage. The paper is full of them. Hi, I’m Gideon. I’m a human being.
Still, if they work, who can knock them? If they work. Dan went to an overeaters anonymous group and said a couple of the guys stood out on the steps of the church during a break and ate a box of Snickers, proof that you can lie to yourself anywhere. I’ve done it every place but in the kitchen sink. I wonder if I am lying to myself about what things were like in Bear Creek. I have begun to have the feeling that my memories don’t jibe with what other people remember. The other night John looked at me as if I were making things up about the way the
Taylors had treated my family. Yet the problem with Angela and John is that they have lived in Bear Creek so long that they probably have come to accept the Paul Taylors of this world as normal.
Back at the house Larry declines Sarah’s invitation to come in and says he needs to get back to his hotel. I wonder if he is going out to one of Blackwell County’s drag shows. Sarah would probably like to go check it out with him, but he doesn’t ask. Probably she has already been to something similar in Fayetteville with him and wants to spare my feelings. I’m all for that.
Inside, I putter around the house, straightening up a bit. I am not used to having Sarah home, and her habit of not taking anything back to the kitchen is already getting on my nerves. She gets the hint and folds up the pages of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette she has spread out all over the kitchen table.
“Dad,” she says, watching me load the dishwasher, “Larry made you nervous while he was in the house, didn’t he?”
I turn on the hot water and wash the glass he used by hand.
“It just seemed weird,” I say, irritably.
“Nobody understands the disease. How can you be too careful?”
Sarah stacks the paper on top of the refrigerator.
She can’t fold up a newspaper any better than I can.
“I know how you feel,” she says.
“I felt funny around him at first, but less and less as time goes on.
With all his problems, he’s still a neat guy. I think he thought you were okay.”
“I liked him,” I admit.
“I don’t see how he’s sane, but he seems as normal as I do.” I have noticed that since she has been home, Sarah has been less obsessed with her own personal problems, and as a consequence, she has been in my face less. I had expected an entire lecture from her and was ready to give as good as I got. Yet the old confrontational Sarah has disappeared, or at least didn’t make the trip. Maybe she is growing up.
“How is Amy?” she asks when we sit down in the living room.
“You haven’t mentioned her since you told me Jessie was going to stay with her while you worked on the case in Bear Creek.”
I lean back in the chair and listen as my stomach tries in vain to digest my dinner. I shouldn’t have tried to fit in the bread pudding.
I realize I haven’t mentioned Amy because I feel guilty about her, and so I haven’t said anything about Angela either. Sarah has always accused me of using the women I have been involved with to help me on my cases.
“You’ll be happy to know it looks as if Amy and I are probably history,” I say, thinking of the best spin I can put on this.
“You always complained she was too young for me, anyway.”
Sarah tucks her legs up beneath her on the couch.
“I liked her because I know how much she cared about you. That made up for the age difference.”
I don’t want to think about Amy.
“Well, I’m dating a woman exactly my own age, and one I’ve known for over thirty years.”
“Dad!” Sarah exclaims.
“Who is she?”
I feel a mild explosion in my stomach. I need to quit eating so much at night. I had enough chips and cheese dip before they brought out the food to feed an army.
“My first girlfriend,” I say, and tell her the story of how I met Angela at the library in Bear Creek.
She is entranced and quizzes me for the better part of thirty minutes.
I omit a few things, including how we first made love in my mother’s Fairlane and recently in her brother-in-law’s bed.
Nor do I tell her how much desire I feel when I am around Angela. I
suspect that one of the reasons my daughter does not want me to date younger women is that she, understandably, does not want to be confronted with my sexuality, nor do I have any desire to be confronted by hers. I’m all for Sarah’s getting to know me as adult to adult, but there is a limit to how far I want us to be pals. Maybe when I’m old and less of a sexual being we’ll sit around in our bathrobes and tell war stories, but not quite yet.
“She’s been through a lot,” I tell Sarah, wondering whether they’ll like each other, “but at one time she had more influence on me than anyone I’ve ever met.” “She sounds neat. Dad,” Sarah says.
“I hope it works out if that’s what you want.”
Do I? I pick up a dog hair from the arm of the chair, a legacy of Jessie’s that seems perpetual, and drop it into the trash can beside me.
“We’ve really gone out only a couple of times,” I demur.
“She’s still got a lot of grieving to do.” As I say this, I wonder.
Angela, I’m coming to realize, is more of a mystery than I like to admit.
The phone rings. Naturally, it is for Sarah, who tells me moments later her old friend Donna Redding is coming by to pick her up at ten and she needs to change clothes. They are going “out.” I am strangely comforted by this act of normalcy. I know better than to ask where but do anyway.
“I don’t know,” she says, standing up.
“Dad, have you been by to see Dade’s grandmother?”
I find another hair and realize it is one of Woogie not Jessie’s. Damn.
I miss Woogie, exiled to my sister’s over a year ago after an alleged kitten-eating episode. Have we ever cleaned anything in this house? I knew this question was coming. It was at Sarah’s insistence that we drove over to Bear Creek to try to confirm the story that my grandfather had fathered a child by a black woman.
“Dad, she might appreciate it if you went by.”
“Well, I might,” I say, “I just haven’t had time.”
Sarah leans back against the wall. For once she doesn’t argue with me.
“I’m proud of you for representing a black man over there,” Sarah says.
“I bet you’re getting some criticism for doing it.”
I realize that Sarah has no idea, despite our visit, what my old hometown is like.
“It’s not as if I’m suing the town on a race discrimination suit.
White attorneys have always represented blacks in Bear Creek.”
Sarah nods absently, perhaps thinking about her coming evening, and leaves the room. I lean back in the chair and allow myself to remember
how delicious my lovemaking with Angela was the last time we were together. How could I tell Sarah what that feeling is like for me?
That is the last thing either of us wants to discuss. We don’t always want the truth, just a level of comfort. Is that so bad? About ninety percent of the time truth is an overrated virtue.
Wednesday night Angela calls to tell me that she has made it back, and I am pleased to hear a warmth in her voice that wasn’t there when she left.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” she says after we tell each other about our past week, “and I think I’m ready to have a relationship if you’re interested. But I’d like to go slow.”
Taking her call in the living room, I hear Sarah in the kitchen, and I whisper into the phone that this is good news indeed, and that I completely understand her feelings. She asks when I will be coming back and I tell her Saturday. Shyly, she invites me to dinner Saturday night, and I waste no time in accepting. After I hang up I stare out the window. It is amazing how some things come together after so long a time. Sarah comes in and tells me that I am smiling. I am.