Early Decision (25 page)

When I read about this figure I researched Walter Benjamin, who killed himself rather than be sent to the Nazis. Many of my own family members perished in the Holocaust. I never met them, but my father has a book of pictures of some of them, like his two uncles who were young men who used to live in Poland. Though there are some who's names we won't ever know. When I read about the Angel I imagined my uncles' faces there in the pile of stuff that the Angel is looking at and that he is helpless to stop. It made me want to cry, though I never knew these men.

Kushner said that the Angel in his play should not be slickly done. He wanted it to be kind of a mess, to show the work involved in putting on live theater and also, I think, to show the messiness of people when it comes to Time and History. In Synagogue it's nice to think of G-d as having everything sorted out perfectly and we are all written in the Book of Life, but Kushner sees it very differently, and that's how it is for people, I think. Certainly it is for all the people who go to my father to have their skin cut open and parts of themselves taken off or rebuilt so they can pretend that that wind is not blowing. Certainly for me, since I sometimes wish that I could stop Time and change some things to make them perfect. I would bring my dad's uncles to New York City like my grandfather and they would have children and I'd know their children. (I am an only child, except for my half sisters, and cousins would be nice.) Also, since seeing the play “Angels in America,” I would also change other things, like that I know that I am gay. I think it's like the Angel. It is a truth that is very messy. It kind of crashes through the ceiling. And I worry about all the things that will be wrecked by it.

I know that because my father spends his days making people more perfect it will not be something he will want to hear. He did not even want me to go see the play! Someday it will be obvious but for now, I am reading “Angels in America” again and thinking of Walter Benjamin and his Angel, and I'm glad to know that some people think that even Angels aren't always perfect, either. Maybe the one thing we can do with all that wind of Progress is make really wonderful theater performances so we can all be somewhere together at exactly the same time, because facing things together is what makes it easier to be a human being in the world.

Because this play, and theater in general, has opened my feelings and my thoughts, I intend to major in dramatic studies in college. I hope one day to work in New York City, maybe as a director. Maybe I will direct the first major revival of “Angels in America.” I would dedicate the show to my uncles, who never got to grow saggy and old.

NOVEMBER

T
HOUGH IT WAS
bitterly cold, Anne walked the few blocks east to William Kantor's Lake Shore Drive apartment tower. There was nowhere to park on the Drive, and in any case she wanted time to think through what she was going to say. She couldn't decide if she should feel proud or foolish that she'd overlooked the obvious. On the one hand, it was good not to be in possession of private insights into her students' sexual inclinations. On the other hand, how could she not have seen? Poor, ever-prepared, proud William. His devotion to Martin. His Cheneyesque political aggression. His button-downs. His shoes.

She considered her obligations in the light of his revelation. Should she celebrate him? She had no experience to fall back on here. Remembering her own high school love life, which was limited, except for one aborted groping episode with the wrestling-team captain when she was sixteen, to her first love, Benjamin—a complete romance that spanned one academic year, and died on the vine shortly after she'd arrived at Princeton and found it hard to keep him in mind among all those college men—she realized she had always preferred to keep her private life private. Her mother had taught her this, inadvertently, when in a flush of pleasure Anne had admitted that she was in love with this boy, Benji. Her mother had sighed, and not with nostalgia. “But why do you need a boyfriend?” she'd asked. “You should be thinking about your schoolwork, and getting to see the world.”

Anne's mother was a member of the first generation of American women to attend four-year colleges en masse and the last generation to marry when just barely out of their teens, and that overlap had caused a good deal of pain. Her education hijacked by the wifely duties of the sixties, she'd found herself the wife of a navy cadet and then the mother of a little girl and then it would be years until she could begin what she called, to Anne, “my own life.” Even after she'd gone back to graduate school to launch a career, Anne's mother suffered periodic crises, linked to some internal rotation Anne could not discern. When the dark moons struck, she'd storm and swear that she never should have been married in the first place, that all of it was a mistake, her entire life a failure, and then slam her bedroom door on the smoking scene. By evening, she'd be back in the kitchen, making supper, with her melodic chatter daring anyone to point out that just hours ago she'd laid waste to their lives. But Anne's father never would have dared, in any case. Marriage in that house was not a choice but a condition, a state of being, which did not vouch well for love.

Anne said nothing more of Benji, and when it came time to have sex with him, she drove herself alone to a Planned Parenthood clinic out by the airport to get on birth control and get
checked out,
which she somehow thought was important before the fact. She paid in cash, using her babysitting money, counting out tens at the reception window like someone posting bail. But Benji was young, too, and kind. They had a good deal of fun. They took nothing from each other. And then it was over.

What would she have wished her mother to say? And did this have any relevance, anyway, given that she wasn't gay, and wasn't facing the wrath of her conservative dad?

Well, in truth, she'd have wanted her mother to say:
Tell me about him.

So when she sat down across from William at the little Eames table in his study, she said, “Your essay is wonderful. Are you in love?”

It was the one thing he hadn't been expecting. He shifted his skinny shoulders in his broadcloth shirt, as though something had gotten caught inside.

“In love?”

“Yes. Have you met someone?”

“Who would I be in love with? All the other gay guys in my class?”

Anne shrugged. “I have no idea. But you seem to have a world a little bit bigger than the senior class at Parker. And your essay was just radiant. I thought it was fabulous. So I wondered if you'd met someone special, and that had prompted it.”

“Oh,” said William. He frowned at her.

Anne waited, unsure. The picture window beside them was fogged a few feet up from the floor, where puddled trays of orchids cast humidity on the frozen glass. Outside, the lake had not yet begun to ice over at the breakfronts, though it wouldn't be long now. It occurred to Anne that William cared for the orchids. Of course he did.

“Not really,” he finally answered her. “Maybe.”

“Hmm,” Anne said. “I don't remember falling in love as a ‘maybe' kind of thing.”

“That's because you're talking about Martin Waverly. So yeah, no kidding.”

In fact, she'd been thinking of Benjamin.

“Are you going to marry him?” asked William.

Anne turned her gaze from the desolate lake. William was patient and sincere, as though he, too, were only gathering clues about how this whole love thing worked for everyone.

“Yes,” she said.

Last Christmas, just before Martin had left for Los Angeles, they'd gone downtown to hear David Sedaris read—that old, great one about being an elf at Macy's—and as they walked back up Michigan Avenue, fairy lights a-twinkle, Martin had pulled her nearly off her feet into Bulgari and led the way to the diamond rings, where he stood before the gleaming case and said, “Tell me which.” Then he'd stepped aside. Way aside. So much so, you'd have thought they were strangers. Anne pointed shyly, and the saleswoman placed the winking jewels on a velvet cushion. Anne wasn't sure which finger to use to try them on. Even in this, instructing her to choose a diamond ring, Martin caused her so much uncertainty that she'd ended up sliding a cushion cut on her extended index finger and studying it aloft, like an insect that had landed there.

“Thank you,” he'd told the saleslady, and led Anne back out onto the street, where a brass quartet was playing “The First Noel.” It was dark. Anne remembered a curious thing, that on the corner Martin had reached deep into his pocket and rifled around for a moment, so long that Anne almost let herself believe he'd managed to buy the ring in that instant, and she'd allowed herself to look up at the lights and the Water Tower outlined against the pink city sky, laying down the memory, readying herself; but then he'd pulled out a fistful of small change and dropped it into the red charity bucket at the trombone player's feet.

“That's really great,” said William now. “I'm really happy for you. He's a really talented guy.”

“So what are we going to do?” Anne asked, having had enough of Martin. “About Vassar?”

“Well, what can I do?”

“I think you can do anything you want, really.”

“You mean apply there.”

“I don't mean anything specific. I just want to talk about it.”

“Well, I could apply, and just not tell them. Of course I could. My college counselor doesn't care. And I've got a credit card. But why? It's not like Dad's going to let me go.”

“How can he
not
let you go, exactly?”

“By not paying for it.”

The boy had a point.

“Do you really think he'd do that?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

Anne raised her open palms, as if to indicate the spacious condo, the long, split-screen gray of winter sky over winter lake. There was plenty. “Why?” she asked.

William stood up. “Tea?” he asked, and left the room.

In his absence, Anne looked around. William had one entire wing of the condo, his bedroom and en suite bath and this study that fronted the lake, what might have been a living room or parlor for a different family. Through a doorway she studied his bedroom. He slept on a platform on the floor. A stack of books held a goosenecked reading lamp, and there was no other furniture. She heard him set the kettle and was keenly aware that she had no idea what she was doing. There was no essay on the table. His applications—Penn, Cornell, Yale, Columbia, U Chicago—were mostly finished. Usually, when she was correcting awkward teenage sentences, Anne could let herself feel that she had a lot of mileage compared to her students. But William “when you're seventeen, which I am” Kantor was right alongside her. She remembered the way he'd looked at Martin at Whiskey Blue. Turns out it wasn't the theater he'd wanted (though that, too); it was sex, and recognition, and life. All the things Anne wanted, and should, by all accounts, be receiving from the great up-and-comer. But when it came time to cash in, she looked away. Went home and stayed there. William? He kept going out, kept seeing shows, kept reading, kept writing. Most of it here alone, she imagined, in this apartment full of hard edges. No desk had a drawer. The cabinets were without visible door pulls. Interiority was impossible in a home like this. It was like an architect's dream of self-realization. Anne thought of her parents' house in the suburban woods, full of overstuffed closets and keepsake boxes with ribbons sewn on top. She'd been imagining it lately because Thanksgiving was approaching, and Martin was spending the holiday with her family, which meant the possibility of a talk with her dad. He knew which ring she wanted, and it was time to join him in California. Her students would be finished soon. It would be spring. She knew her parents were expecting the proposal, and she was, too.

The Kantors' apartment heat came on, causing the floor vents to vibrate and setting the orchids shivering, as though the frost on the window were finally getting to them.

William returned with a pot of tea and two mugs. “Jasmine green.”

“Perfect.”

He sat down. “Well, you see,” he said, having chosen his words, “if I go to Vassar, if I do theater, I'm gay. If I go to Penn, if I go to law school, I'm not gay. Get it?”

Anne nodded. “So he knows,” she said stupidly.

“Well, who knows what he knows. But yeah, I think he knows. It's not like I'm a hockey recruit.”

Anne thought to point out that a hockey star might be gay, and then thought better of it. “So tell me how I can help,” she said finally.

“You can't.”

Anne sipped her tea.

Then William said, “Do you think I can apply? Really?”

“I don't see why not. You're not committing to anything.”

Which couldn't have been more false, of course, but in the moment, hands cupped around the mug he'd poured for her, Anne wanted only to console this boy. Vassar would require nothing from him but a reply, yes or no. But to apply in this way, or maybe, as William argued, to apply at all, was to commit to coming out. Of course it was.

“You could use that essay everywhere,” she added. “It's much better.”

“You just like it because it's not anti–polar bear.”

“That's not fair.”

“Not worth it,” he declared. “I've got a fine essay. It's fine, no matter what you say, and I'm going to use it for Penn and everywhere else. If I apply to Vassar, well, then it's up to me. I'd have to just not say anything here—he tossed his head back to signify his home—tell the counselor to add it, just do it.”

“I think you should,” Anne said.

He lowered his full lips over his mug and looked at her. He slurped.

Then he asked, “Have you seen the show?”

“
Angels?
Yes. At the Walter Kerr.”

“In New York,” he finished.

She nodded. William let his features go soft, just thinking of it. Without him across from her, about the same age she'd been, she never would have remembered that night, the way she'd sat on the floor in the far balcony corner, peering down through ranks of dark shoulders at a stage erupting with story. She'd gone back to campus and managed to wheedle her way into a dramaturgy workshop with Oskar Eustis, the director who'd midwifed the show. She remembered how he'd shown up in the seminar room lugging an enormous blue binder glutted with Xeroxes of Brecht and Artaud. “One day, in college,” she told William, “Tony Kushner and Oskar Eustis—he was—”

“I know,” said William quickly.

“—they did a workshop on campus about dramaturgy. Theater in context. The role of history, literature, text on the performative space.”

It had been deepest winter, the dead months. Kushner wore a turtleneck and had big, wiry hair that seemed like his very ideas, just casting around for lightning to strike. Anne remembered reading somewhere that lightning began at the ground up, and that if you had the right sort of lens you could capture these same, streaky little tendrils, poking the skies.

A wash of love came over her body. She set down her tea and wrapped her arms to her chest as though that binder were there to clutch for herself, and longed for school again. Suddenly it became clear that Martin was meant to be a conduit back to all of this. A way to follow them—the playwright and his director—out into the world. What had it been, a Tuesday workshop? One long, deep, lustrous day. But by nightfall the brilliant men had met the train back to Penn Station and Anne had gone back to her dorm, the world still off-limits to her. As it remained.

“That's amazing,” William said. “What did they say? What did you read?”

“I can go back to my notes,” she told him. “I've got the syllabus. It's huge. But that's not my point.”

“I know, I know, just get to college,” William droned, mocking her. “It'll all be better then.”

“Well, it will,” she told him. Her voice sounded hollow, but William didn't notice.

“All right,” he replied. “I'll do it.”

For a moment they looked out the window together. Then he elaborated. “I'll shoot for Vassar. Why not?”

Anne didn't want to claim the victory. Her heart thought a great thing had been decided here, but her belly told her otherwise. She was in a no-man's-land, not parent and not child, and she knew she ought to excuse herself as soon as possible.

“Poor orchids,” she said, gesturing down. She thought William might appreciate her sympathy there. “Can't be easy to live in this freezing city.”