Eric’s father had tried and failed. Barry had left the store where he had worked for ten years, where they had valued him, although that was a low estimate, as a mere floor manager. Eric’s mother thought Barry could be more, pushed Barry until he opened his own store; but Barry was too nice, he let the clerks steal, he got bad prices, he let people slide on the layaways, he didn’t change locations when he should have—
“Hello, Eric,” his mother said, floating into the kitchen on her slippers, her hands out to take hold of his face and kiss him. “We ignored you,” she said. She kissed. “That’s only because your son is so gorgeous.”
“I don’t mind,” Eric said, and he meant it. He would have hated it if his parents didn’t make a fuss over Luke, if they were civilized about grandparenthood, like Nina’s parents.
Last Thanksgiving, Nina’s mother had finally acknowledged Luke’s superiority. “He’s very handsome,” she had said. “And very intelligent.”
“Yes,” Eric had answered, pleased that Nina’s mother had finally said the obvious.
“I guess all grandmothers think that about their grandchildren,” she went on, and spoiled it. Civilized. Sensible. Nina’s parents could only see a miserable gray in every rainbow.
Eric’s parents neglected him, blind to Eric’s dimmer light, a boring streetlamp compared with Luke’s fireworks — but that was all right. In loving Luke, they were really loving Eric.
“You look tired,” Eric’s mother said. “Are you working too hard?”
Eric peered out of the kitchen, past their dull, by now ancient green living room furniture. His father and Luke were gone: probably into Eric’s old room, to play with Eric’s old toys. “Tell me something, Mom. You think Dad made a mistake going into business by himself?”
Miriam narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She saw criticism everywhere, especially from Eric. “I told him to go into business by himself.”
“I know. Think you were wrong to push him?” That relaxed her. Open attack didn’t bother her; she liked that. “He would have driven me crazy if he didn’t try. I told him to go ahead, but I was really telling him what he wanted to hear. He would never do something he didn’t want to do because of what I said. He’s stubborn. He’s a stubborn man,” she said, and rubbed her stomach thoughtfully. “How are you doing with your father-in-law’s money?” she asked.
She always asked. Every visit, “How are you doing with your father-in-law’s money?” her anxiety irrepressible, her lack of confidence in Eric almost a nervous tic.
“Okay.”
“Just okay?” she said, suspicious again. She opened the refrigerator. “Are you hungry? Did you eat?”
“No. We haven’t had lunch. You’ll have to get something.”
“Luke’ll want hot dogs at the deli. Maybe—” She looked excited. “Maybe I can fool Luke into having a good hot lunch here. I could make my crazy lentil soup with the pieces of hot dog in it.”
Eric knew that soup well. “He’ll love it.”
“You’ll have some?” she asked eagerly, pleased at the hope she might succeed with both of them.
“Absolutely.”
She began to get the makings. She moved with the deliberation of age and her natural carefulness: every gesture evaluated first, then executed with slow pleasure.
Miriam and Barry took very few chances. There had been one big risk, and its failure had shut all the windows and doors. They had locked themselves in their little cave in upper Manhattan, hibernating until the cold, wild world came to an end. In everything there was the old look of failure, the old smells: mistakes and regret unventilated. That was his home, and the frightened part of Eric was glad to be back.
But he couldn’t stay in their cave, in their warm misery. To be so doomed, eking out a reasonable but unspectacular existence would kill Eric. Better to take one chance and lose everything than live a slow progress to death.
PETER THOUGHT his legs would buckle. New joints seemed to have been created, a leg of knees, each one bending out of sequence, collapsing his stride. He hoped to get to the couch and sit.
Larry was behind an enormous black glass desk that matched his coffee table. It was the worktable of a man who does no work. The sight of Larry was an immediate shock. He was hairless. Peter couldn’t remember the color Larry’s hair used to be, but he remembered large quantities of it, bushy, thick, waves in conflict, like a romantic painting of a stormy sea.
“Hello, Peter,” Larry’s voice said. He stayed in his high-backed chair. The tall black leather back rose above his bald head like a tombstone.
Larry was real, after all. Not a nightmare. But real.
Peter got himself to the couch. It put him all the way across the room from Larry. There were floor-to-ceiling windows behind the desk and to its side; they showed a static, sickening view of glass boxes with no ground in sight.
“You sure have grown,” Larry said with a smirk. A hand went to his hairless pate. He ran his palm from the forehead back, feeling for what was gone. “Would you like something to drink?”
Larry’s socks were too short. Peter could see a stripe of very white skin just beneath the gray fabric of his pants leg. Peter couldn’t speak. He shook his head.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” Larry seemed to be smirking. He regarded Peter with amusement and contempt. Peter had expected shame, fear, wariness — certainly not arrogance.
“I wanted to talk,” Peter mumbled.
“Uh-huh.” Larry nodded, encouraging a half-wit. “About what?”
This was impossible. Larry’s sham, his show of ordinariness, made the introduction of the topic—“You were wrong,” Peter blurted.
Larry got out of his chair quickly. He was shorter than Peter expected. The memory of Larry was different, distorted by childhood scale. Larry moved right at Peter.
Peter prepared to defend himself. Peter’s legs pressed against the couch, his arms flexed. But Larry detoured at the coffee table and moved to the open door, shutting it. He stood with his back to it, looking down at Peter.
Is he looking at my groin?
“Look. In my life, that never happened. I’m sorry. But I don’t want to talk about it.” Larry smiled. Regretfully. Sorry, kid, can’t help. He gestured with his hands, palms up, I’ve got no weapons, there’s nothing I can do, call me next week.
“It did happen,” Peter said. He sounded retarded. Questioning and demanding all at once.
“I’ve dealt with it. I’ve been in therapy. That’s in the past.”
Larry walked back to his desk, again with energy, abrupt, leading with his belly, like a toddler.
Peter returned Larry’s expectant stare. His eyebrows were raised, a waiter attentive to a customer’s order. “Why?” came out of Peter.
“Because it was a sickness. I couldn’t face that I was gay.” He quickly put his hand to his forehead, paused, then slowly moved it over the top of his head, feeling the raw skin possessively.
He’s like a giant penis. Fat, reddened, a bulbous head.
Peter sniffed at something. A perfume.
No, Larry’s cologne. It was the same, the same sweet odor, the same languorous smell — He’s lying. He smells the same, he is the same.
“Why me?”
“You were around.” Larry smirked. He looked away and seemed to deliberately remove the sarcasm from his face.
Fuck you. Peter’s cheeks and lips felt thick and heavy with his upset. They were too heavy to support his head. He looked down.
“I mean, I was living at Gary’s, you were there a lot.” With Peter’s eyes closed, the past was now. Larry’s slightly raspy voice, a hard whisper, sneaked into the ear, through the unlocked basement door of his brain. Yesterday was still here.