“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“It became… difficult. I’m just a stranger, for now.”
He stared, his mouth making the slow circular movements of a mind that wants to speak and can find no words. Then, having no wittier exclamations, he threw his hands into the air and exclaimed, “Fuck! You wanna get a drink?”
He was older, a well-lived age, a life that had progressed more slowly than the speed of years which had passed it by. In a bar off Broadway he regaled me with the life and times of Harold Peake–a new name for a new man.
“So then I got into sport, I mean, like, bought into it, you know, as an investor. And I’ve got this house now–you have to come see it–out in New Jersey, and my partner–you’ve gotta meet my partner, he’s just great, he’s such a great guy–and we’ve got a garden, and I mow the lawn on Sundays, can you believe it? I mow the lawn! It’s like, Jesus, from where you first met me to where I am today, it’s like unbelievable.”
That sounds great, I said. That sounds really nice.
His silence was the sudden sharp closing-off of a man afraid he has talked too much. “So ‘Melissa’,” he mumbled, “you must have been up to stuff. You must have seen some things. Tell me, what’ve you been, who’ve you been?”
“Nothing much to tell. I’ve been living quietly.”
“Come on, come on! You’re… you know… why would you live anything other than… you know!”
“As I said. Things have been quiet.”
“You gotta come see the house. You gotta meet Joe.”
“That would be… nice.”
“Where you living at the moment?”
“A hotel on Columbus, near 84th.”
“That’s swell, but bet you don’t get to mow the lawn?”
You guess correctly. I do not mow the lawn.
“Then come have dinner! Sunday? You can do Sunday, right? I mean, you’re not jetting out of town?”
Sunday would be lovely. Give me the address.
The house was a mansion in New Jersey, a testimony to revival colonial pride all in white. The partner, Joe, was a man of gleaming teeth and impossible tan. The food was rich and served with guacamole on the side. The lawn was very mown.
“And where did you two meet?” Joe asked, kissing me on both cheeks.
“LA,” explained Will. “Melissa was a runner at Paramount.”
“That’s wonderful–just wonderful! And are you still in the movies, Melissa? Did you know my boy in his wilder days? You look so young–what is your secret?”
Creams, I replied. I make my own creams.
The house was full of photos. Even the toilet boasted a framed portrait of the happy hugging couple. Shelves were lined with memorabilia. A plaster model of the Eiffel Tower, which changed colour with the temperature. A memorial mug from Santa Monica, a teddy-bear shark won at a fair in Vermont, the hat Joe had given back to Will the first time they met, when a gust of wind blew it off his head and into the arms of him who would be his lover. The painting of Rhode Island they’d bought together, to hang on the bare wall of their first apartment. They showed me every object, told me every story.
This is lovely, I said.
How lucky you must feel.
God! Joe replied. It’s been such a ride, you know, like, such a ride.
At 5.45 p.m. Joe pulled out of the drive in a fat 4x4 to go to church, and I stayed behind, drinking port and eating cheese with Will in the back garden.
“You’ve built yourself a wonderful life here,” I said as the leaves swayed on the beech tree and a child screamed in a neighbour’s garden. “You must be proud.”
Silence from Will, and I glanced over at him to see his hand white around the circumference of his glass, eyes turned into the setting sun.
“Proud. I guess so. I’ve done the things you’re meant to do. Get a job, get a house, get a husband. I go to the dentist, clean the floors, plant the garden, have dinner with friends. Yeah, I’m proud. I’ve lived the American dream. I owe you that. But… I’m not so sure, any more, that the American dream is a thing to take pride in. You see the kids come back from Vietnam; you live through Watergate, watch the Russians point missiles at you which you just point straight back, and you think… yeah, I’ve got the perfect life. But it’s someone else’s idea of perfection. Someone told me to be proud, and I did it, and I’m proud, but the pride I got… I’m not so sure it’s mine.”
“What would you rather do?”
“Fuck,” he groaned. “Fuck, what kind of question is that? How the fuck do I know what I’d rather do, I haven’t done it. I’ve begged. I’ve been down on the street on my fucking knees and begged, and I know I don’t want to do that. I know that this life is better–so much better it doesn’t even seem like the same me living it. I know what I have is great because everyone tells me so, but how do I know? How do I know that what I do is better than being a surgeon, hands covered in beating blood? Or a soldier, a politician, an actor, a teacher, a preacher. How the fuck do I know that my better is anything more than the great big fat lie we tell ourselves to justify the slow fat nothing of our days. There isn’t enough time in a life to find out if the other guy’s better is better than yours, cos you’d have to lose everything you have to find out for yourself. In the old days our fathers dreamed of bringing liberty and prosperity to the whole of the human race, of building a perfect society, and somehow that became a dream of a bigger car and a bigger front window and our neighbours making apple pie, apple fucking pie. And we bought into it, the whole fucking country, we bought into it, and we’re proud because our lawns are neat and our houses are warm in winter and cool in summer and–fuck!” He slammed his glass down, port slopping in bloody streaks over the side. “We’re happy because we’re too fucking scared, too fucking lazy to think of anything better to be.”
Silence.
The playing child next door had fallen silent. Will unclasped his fingers from the glass, one at a time, and turned to me, swinging the full force of his body to bear.
“Can I ask you something? Can I ask you… What do you think of this?” A sweep of his hand, covering the garden, the house. “Do you like it? You’ve been anyone you fucking want; you must have an idea. Should we be proud?”
I didn’t answer.
“Come on, whatever-the-hell-your-name-is. Come on.”
I laid my glass to one side. “Yes,” I said at last. “You have something beautiful here.”
“Do we? You could be a billionaire like that! You could be president of the USA without having to bother with the elections. Is what we’ve got so much?”
“Yes. You have something… enviable. Not just things. Anyone can buy things. Your house is full of stories. Everything is a story. You get to keep them.”
“And that’s enough?”
“Yes.” I flinched even as I spoke the word. “Joe–do you love him?”
“Fuck, of course I do.” He spoke the words, and I believed him, from the pain in his eyes to the horror in his voice. “I love him. But how do I know I love him? How do I know that this is love? I’ve got nothing else to measure it by, no way of knowing. What’s enough? How you live, who you live, what’s enough?”
“Nothing. Nothing is ever quite enough. No matter who you are, there’s always something more to be had, which could be yours if only you were someone else.”
“Make me like you.” The words came so fast I barely heard them. He spoke again, eyes bright, fingers tight between his knees. “Make me like you.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Come on…”
“No. I don’t know how.”
“Come on!” he hissed. “Come on. I’m begging. This is me, begging. I’m getting old, getting slow, I’m settling down and I know, I just fucking know, I’m going to die in this place, living this life. Make me like you.”
“No.”