Then Ira invited him to his synagogue in West Hollywood. He looked awfully solemn as he asked Jonathan, his arms folded. Jonathan began to tease him. "No engraved invitation?" Jonathan asked. And Ira scowled with confusion.
Ira was still tense and anxious as they arrived. He sat stiffly on the bench, his cheeks puffed out, not looking at Jonathan, and Jonathan very slowly realized that all the couples were of the same sex. He began to take in what some of the notices on the wall were saying.
It was a gay synagogue. Beefy, thick-necked Ira was gay. This was the only way he could think of to tell Jonathan.
Outside, in the dark, after the service, Ira stopped and turned around. "So," he said. "Now you know." His eyes had been looking at the ground. Now they looked up at Jonathan, waiting for an answer.
"Yup," was all that Jonathan said. Jonathan was touched when Ira began to look worried. Jonathan found it endearing. Jonathan prolonged the suspense.
Ira's arms made a sudden convulsive movement, the involuntary shrug. "My parents keep asking why I don't go to their synagogue in Burbank," he said.
"I guess they do," said Jonathan.
Ira suddenly smiled, but his lips were turned inward, taut, and he very lightly hit Jonathan on the shoulder. "Well?" he demanded.
"Well what?" Jonathan made himself look innocent.
"What do you think!" bellowed Ira.
"I think it's very nice that you're so religious," replied Jonathan.
"What else?"
"Are you asking about my religious beliefs?"
"I'm asking about you," said Ira, grinning, aggressive, voice low.
Jonathan decided it was time to be serious. He found it was difficult for him to talk straightforwardly. "I'm… I'm kind of hazy about all of that," he said.
"Hazy. What does that mean?"
"It means I don't know. Either way." Jonathan made an embarrassed wiggle with his hand. "I guess I'm waiting." He sighed. "Waiting to be persuaded."
There was a blankness in his sexuality. In a society that valued sexual athleticism, he felt himself at a disadvantage. He had a putative girlfriend, and they saw each other once a weekend for a cuddle and a cultural event. She was a well-known performance artist. She swallowed canned peaches whole while gargling the theme song from Dr. Zhivago. She looked like a librarian, which was perhaps one of the reasons people laughed. She was serious.
"Do you realize," she had said once, to Jonathan, "that there are more artists living in Los Angeles now than did in all the rest of history?"
Jonathan didn't. "It might depend on what you call an artist," he answered her.
What the girl made of their affair, Jonathan did not know. It was part of the blankness. Maybe she was waiting too. It suddenly didn't seem fair to make her wait any longer.
"Are you going to invite me home?" Ira asked. Virginity hung heavy and embarrassing like something around his neck, to be discarded. Ira lived at home and had nowhere to go. Jonathan began to understand the weight that the boy carried with him.
Ira had taken so many risks. He was frightened of himself and of Jonathan-Jonathan might have been shocked or angry or answered with his fists. Ira's eyes were round, watching, hopeful, sad.
It was time for Jonathan to take charge.
"If I said no, just for tonight, would you stop asking me?" Jonathan asked, and quickly added, "Because I don't want you to stop asking."
Ira said nothing. He looked very young, very disappointed.
Jonathan sighed. "It's just that if we did anything now, I'd feel slightly railroaded."
"You're a nice boy and don't do it on the first date," Ira murmured miserably.
"Something like that."
"If you mean no, just say no."
"I don't mean no."
"I'm supposed to show up with my car on Friday nights with a bunch of flowers?"
"That would be nice. Only no flowers. The neighbors might think I was queer or something."
Ira looked so dismayed that Jonathan felt compelled to kiss him, on the cheek, under streetlights. "Bring chocolates instead."
Ira broke into a terrible sweat. It trickled down his forehead and soaked in patches through his shirt. His conventionality had been taxed to its limits. "Well," he said. "I guess I always did believe in long engagements."
Jonathan drove him home. "Ease up, guy," Jonathan said, temporarily sounding American. Somewhere on the San Diego Freeway, Ira suddenly understood that he had won.
Ira became boisterous and bounced up and down on the car seat in time to the radio. He began to sing. He looked younger than ever. From the front porch of his parents' house, he turned and gave Jonathan a wave. For some reason, it was that wave that made Jonathan finally decide. Jonathan could still see Ira, ten years ago, standing and waving and smiling. Ira was history, too.
Jonathan woke up in his garden. It was bleary with sunlight. Oz, he reminded himself. I'm supposed to be in Oz. And as he awoke he seemed to hear laughter, high childish giggles of something hidden under leaves. Or was it only the last of the telephone, fading away?
His mother was there.
She was wearing her mink stole and narrow tartan trousers, blue and green, and little elfin bootees. She also wore sunglasses and was surrounded by a blaze of sunlight.
When had she last dressed like that?
"Mom?" he asked, sitting up. He was horrified. How long was she going to stay? How long was he going to have to pretend to be well? Already, with actorish skills, he was firming up his eyes and straightening his back. He stood up, with a spring in his step. It was like watching a very aged actor trying to be sprightly. Jonathan could see himself move, very plainly, though his limbs were weighted to the chair.
His mother backed away from him. "I'm all right. You keep sitting," she said. Vapor wreathed out of her mouth, like steam. She found her way to another garden chair, uncertainly, nervously.
At first Jonathan thought it was cigarette smoke coming out of her mouth. But then he saw that she was sitting in a field of snow. Sparkles of sunlight blasted back up from it, like sand in his eyes. It was cold, where his mother was.
She leaned forward, uncertain how to begin. This was not the confident businesswoman that his mother had become. Now in her sixties, Jonathan's mother had lost all sense of fear and, because of that, all sense of style.