Message of Love (33 page)

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing. They’re all … settled, you know?”

“Are we?”

Everett snorted a chuckle. “Giraffe, we are anything but settled.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, adventures, my man. After Mrs. Kukka, I just feel… an urgency. Remember that night in the field, in the snow? I’ve had dreams about that, but you’re always too far to whisper to.”

“What you said.”

“About adventures. We’re great together.”

“Yeah, we are. Even if we’re soon to be kicked out.”

“Did you ask about visiting her?”

“I called. Elsa’s husband was pretty dismissive. He said she’s still in the hospital in Maryland, recovering, or not recovering.”

“Oh.”

“So, anyway; brunch! The queens await.”

“Are we telling them our plans?”

“Do we even know our plans?”

“Yes.” I said with a new assurance. “California, here we come!”

“Adventures, wherever.”

“Okay.” His peck on my cheek sealed it.

“So let’s do brunch.”

Once back on the sidewalk, Everett wheeled ahead, pointing in tour guide mode. I put my glasses back on, surveying the flora.

“Did you know?” he asked.

“Yes, what should I know?”

“This park was once quite the mating ground for the
Victoriana homosexuala
.”

“Was it, now?”

“Yes, and I do believe I saw a flock of pansies over yonder behind that tree.”

Despite Gerard’s assurance that there wouldn’t be any surprises in store, when we arrived, after having trudged up four porch steps, a queenly gasp erupted from a conversation.

The silence was abruptly covered by Gerard’s pronounced introductions all around to half a dozen men, mostly older, and one younger slim fellow, the gasper. Since there hadn’t been anything done in the way of moving furniture to accommodate Everett, he simply parked himself at one end of a sofa near the room’s doorway.

I got Everett a little plate of food, and a drink was brought to him by someone else. I was about to get some for myself, when I was approached.

“I’m so sorry about my little…act,” said the gasper, who introduced himself as Russell. A soft hand was offered in a wisp of a handshake. “It’s just that we were discussing, you know, all the various diseases and things going around; not exactly appropriate brunch chat, but here we are. Queens always go for the jugular, doncha know, and then you two walked in, or wheeled in. What is the right term?”

“Arrived?”

His laughter reminded me of a macaw.

“So, you two are a couple, yes?”

“Yes.”

“So, how does that work?”

“Excuse me?”

“How do you, you know,” he said, with an indeterminate flip of his hand.

“Get here? We drove,” I deadpanned.

“No,” he scowled, rolled his eyes. “How do you…get on?”

“You know… Russell?”

He nodded.

“I’m going to need, like a bagel or something, and definitely a few mimosas, before you go for the jugular.” I retreated to the food table. “So, you’ll excuse me.”

Things turned a bit sour after that, where our togetherness was questioned, in a conversation I more eavesdropped on rather than participated in. I kept to the food table back in the kitchen for as long as possible, until Gerard shooed me out to “mingle.”

“So, you’re going together?” Michael, one of the hosts asked, as our plans and indecisions had become unfurled, aided by Everett’s second drink. Russell seemed to understand enough to keep his distance from me, at least. But Everett always loved an audience. Since the seat next to him had been eagerly filled, I sat at a far end of the room on a dainty chair, occasionally getting poked by a potted fern. The tiny table upon which it sat gave little room for a plate, so I set it on my lap, and the drink on the floor.

“Well, we hope to be together, if that’s possible,” Everett over-clarified, in an over-enunciated way that he used whenever he got drunk, which seemed to have happened quickly.

Hope. Possible. Not “Definitely,” or even “for sure.”

“Is there a bathroom here?” I interjected.

“Right down the hall,” Gerard said as he pointed.

I stood up too soon, the bagel practically flung itself from my lap and landed cream cheese side down on the rug, knocking over my drink, too.

After cleaning up in the bathroom, I again retreated to the kitchen for a second helping, when one of the hosts approached.

“Reid, is it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tim, please.”

I nodded as he offered a knife for the cream cheese, leaned against the counter. His nearly bald head, and a bit of a paunch, were countered by the boyish sparkle in his blue eyes.

“You know, in my day, things were very different when Michael and I started dating, back in the Cenozoic era.”

We both chuckled.

“How long have you been …together?”

“Seventeen years,” he said with a combination of pride and bemused exhaustion.

“Wow. That’s great.”

“And we didn’t have these gay groups and bars and parades back then. Well, a few bars, but they were sad places. You kids are pretty lucky.”

“Huh. I guess we are.”

“Have some more lox.” He pushed a plate toward me.

“Thanks.” I fumbled with a fork.

“Oh, just use your hands,” he scolded.

“So, how do you,” I finished assembling my food, but set it aside. “How did you…?”

“Stay together?”

I nodded.

“Persistence, I suppose, and pure dumb luck.”

“Huh.”

“And a little magic.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The magic of being needed by just one person.” Tim looked toward the living room, to his partner. Caught by his wistful look, I heard Everett’s laughter, then turned with Tim to survey the guests in the room.

Breaking abruptly, he turned back, handed me the plate. “Shall we re-enter the fray?” He smiled, offered a friendly shoulder pat.

“Well, that was a minor disaster,” Everett huffed as we finally descended the last of the apartment’s porch steps, almost two hours later. Gerard had hugged us goodbye at the door, sensing that this might be our last time together for a while.

“Well, I’m sorry if my social skills amongst royalty are a bit rusty.” I almost wanted to give his chair a little shove, but I couldn’t think of any lines from that Bette Davis movie.

“You could have been more polite.”

“Actually, I had a nice talk with Tim.”

Everett stopped pushing his chair, and turned back to glare at me. “I think we’re about to have another spousal argument.”

“Okay.”

“Will there be domestic violence in the form of spanking?”

“No,” I muttered.

“Well then, I’m not interested.”

“Ev. Are you drunk?”

“Probably.”

“No, you said, ‘possibly.’”

“I just said ‘probably.’”

“No, about us, in there.”

“Oh, that. Oh, come on. I was just... Reid.”

“No, I’m serious. If we can’t stay at the house, what are we gonna do for the summer?”

“I don’t know.”

“But what if
–”

“I said I don’t know! Come on. I’ll flip a coin, okay? Greensburg, even Pittsburgh, although with the family trifecta nearby, it’s not what I’d call an adventure.”

“Seriously. Are we staying together?”

“Yes.” He nodded himself into agreeing. “As long as you come with me.”

As he pushed away, my left hand compulsively grasped the ring on my right finger, and I wondered if it were less than the sort-of wedding ring, and instead more of a consolation prize for a job well done, a job soon to be completed.

‘The magic of being needed.’

Barely able to recall the melody, still I dared to call out to him, singing in my off-key tone, “In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble! They’re only made of clay!”

He stopped on the sidewalk, wheeled around, grinned.

I held my arms wide, “Our love is here to stay!”

Someone, unseen in the nearby park, clapped. I bowed to Everett, approached him and squeezed him with an almost insistent hug.

Chapter 40

April 1983

The truck took up the entire driveway. Elsa had called to let us know when the movers would arrive, so I parked Everett’s van on a nearby street corner.

We stayed out of the way as a crew of men trundled up and down the stairs. The screech of unrolled packing tape accented the sound of books and other items being dumped into cardboard boxes that descended and left the house in the arms of the movers.

We could have left, perhaps avoided witnessing the disappearance of our landlady’s packaged life. We didn’t.

A few pieces of furniture, including the rumpled sofa, were left in the living room, out of some sort of blank consideration. The bookshelves were empty and all the trinkets from Mrs. Kukka and her husband’s life gone.

By the time the truck departed, we both felt a numbing sort of shock.

“Take me upstairs,” Everett said.

I backed myself in front of his chair, felt his arms tighten around my neck, then carefully trod up the stairs, depositing him at the landing. By the time I’d gone down and back up the stairs with his chair, he had already crawled into the central room.

Empty, bare; he surveyed the walls and windows. He didn’t even turn back or hop up into his chair.

“And that’s it,” he said as he sat on the floor, where I joined him.

“It looks smaller empty,” he said.

“I know. Strange, huh?”

“I guess our room’s next.”

“So much for our new home.”

Our voices echoed, bouncing back in agreement.

As the semester drew closer to an end, while others around us appeared cheerful and expectant for their liberty, for us, a truncated finality drew closer.

Twirlers, a bugle corps, drummers in silver pants and women with kids in wagons, trucks tugging wobbly crepe paper-festooned floats; all of them paraded around the Penn campus as the annual Spring Fling got underway.

The Park Mall had already begun to fill with hundreds of students seated before a large outdoor stage. I’d politely jostled us as close as I could, and Everett sat in his chair as I knelt by his side. A joint was passed, and we accepted it.

The sun blaring down, and in the middle of it all, I thought Everett was having an allergy attack, when he turned up to me, something or someone on the stage having moved him.

There was a moment, in the middle of it all, with everyone talking and gulping down beers and jostling around, when we realized we were exhausted. It was nearly four o’ clock, and we’d had to stick with our spot, a bit too close to the stage for my ears. But wheeling back through the crowd seemed impossible, so I just made sure Everett stayed hydrated and kept his hat on.

Finally, Cyndi Lauper’s band came to the stage, and we all sang along. At one point between the bouncy familiar hits, there was a moment where that little elfish red and pink-haired woman in that tattered skirt and about a dozen criss-crossed belts sang a slow song, and she just stopped us, held us all, the entire crowd, and belted out a pealing high note, something about being strong, about breaking down to “cry, cry cry,” and I felt Everett’s hand clutch mine, hard.

“Are you okay?”

The lawn full of people cheered and hooted around us. He shook his head, a sort of yes. The crowd kept cheering as the band bowed, but I felt I needed to get him out of there, and shoved us through them until we found a place away from the stage and the crowd, off to the side. I crouched before him.

“What is it?”

“It’s gonna rain.”

I looked up at the sky, a slate of blue, the afternoon sun still beaming down on us. “What?”

“No, I mean, it’s going to get worse.”

“Oh, Monkey. Stop.”

“No, I mean it. I’m sorry.” His eyes were red.

“For what?”

“For everything. For everything I did to you, for anything I’m going to do to you.”

“Ev, please.”

It sort of rolled around in my head for a while until I understood what he meant. Everything was going to change. Graduation was just a few weeks away, and the real world awaited us. Our little bubble of college, as flawed as it had been, had protected us, but was about to pop. I almost saw that immense dark cloud far off in the horizon, moving so slowly that we couldn’t yet see it. But we felt it.

“We need to enjoy this, today. I love you,” I shouted over the cheers. “We’re gonna be okay.”

“I hope so,” Everett offered a wobbly tentative grin, snorted, wiped his eyes.

In the middle of that herd, I didn’t care. In the middle of that noise, I didn’t care. I leaned down and kissed him, long and slow, and we heard a strange combination of shrieks, “Whoah!”s and scattered applause.

It always made me marvel about gleeking. That’s when the salivary glands under your tongue simply squirt out a little blast, like skewed windshield wiper fluid.

My tears’ ability to spring out of my eyes like that, not merely drip, made me smile.

“He was good, and useful, and he will be missed.”

I offered a solemn silent salute as a tow truck driver, having strapped the front end of the van to a hoist, raised the oblong vehicle of our last fours years at an odd angle. It wobbled as if in a few last gasps of existence.

“Farewell, Love Machine,” Everett said in a faux-somber tone.

We watched as the tow truck pulled out and dragged our beloved four-wheeled wonder to its final destination, probably a scrap yard.

“You coming in?”

“We need more packing tape.”

“The movers didn’t leave any?”

“Nope.”

“Okay, enjoy your journey.”

“It’s only three blocks.”

“Which you could have driven, if not for our loss.” Everett pretended to shed a tear. Perhaps this was his way of really grieving, making fun of the whole process.

When I returned, Everett was in the kitchen, sorting through dry goods.

“You got a package; certified mail. I signed for it.”

“Where is it?”

He pointed to the counter top.

Curious, I found a thick manila envelope with an address from a law firm in Bradford Woods. I slid open the envelope and found a small stack of legal papers. I was confused until I saw, among the multiple forms and signatures, the phrase “the estate of Wesley Thompson Sweigard.”

Attached with a paper clip was a certified check for twenty thousand dollars.

“Everett!”

The rooms nearly empty, my shout echoed more loudly than I’d expected.

“Did you see this?”

Preoccupied by his kitchen excavation, he muttered, “See what?”

“Your friend Wesley apparently gave me a load of money from the grave.”

He finally looked up. “Oh. Well, great.”

“What do you mean, ‘great’? I can’t take it.”

“What do you mean, you can’t take it?”

“It’s…But why me? He was your…”

“Remember when he said he didn’t want to give it to his family, that they basically disowned him and were acting like vultures?”

“Sort of.”

“Well, maybe he wanted to give some of it to one of his own species instead.”

I pondered the utter improbability of it. Then it came to me. “You did this.”

“Nope.” He tossed a bag of dry pasta into a bag. “I may have mentioned, in one of our phone calls before he died, about your dad losing his job, and how hard you work.”

“But you’re totally stacked.”

“I don’t get my trust fund unlocked for a few years. I’m just getting the interest.”

“But this is too much.”

“Actually, it’s not. He told me he was going to give it all away, just to spite his parents. I gave him suggestions on a few charities.”

“I have to call this lawyer.”

“Let me see that.” Everett looked over the papers, then in his officious tone, said, “It’s all fair and square.”

“I can’t…”

“Yes, you can, Reid. He liked you. He was happy for us.”

“Twenty thousand dollars worth of happy?”

Everett shrugged.

“So, I’m the rich one now?”

“Which means you’re the alpha male, economically speaking,
pro tempore
.”

“Damn.”

He nodded, rolling away, then back, as if pretending it were some awkward first date. “So, then. Where are we going this summer… sugar daddy?”

I tickled my chin, pondering. “Maui?”

“No M’s.”

“Not even Madagascar?”

He shrugged.

“Maybe I can buy us a new van.”

“I don’t think you’ll need to do that.”

“Why not?”

Everett smiled, the spark in his eyes vowing silence.

The dedication for the portable wooden ramp for the historic yet more often ignored house, set back on a lonely expanse of weedy lawn in Fairmount Park, was sparsely attended.

A few park rangers, one of my professors in landscape architecture, and Everett and I, congratulated each other on the minor accomplishment.

“Finally, one ramp. And all the bureaucracy and inter-departmental paperwork gave fruit,” I sighed. A few perfunctory photos were taken.

“It’s nice,” Everett said. “Now, even crips can be bored to tears by the house tour.”

“May I?” I held my hand out, Everett ambled to the base of the ramp, and I helped him up.

Although clean, it still felt a bit musty. The old-time furniture pieces were reproductions, but looked authentic. We played around for a bit, mimicking what we thought was the chatter of the house’s long-gone residents.

“Wouldst thou care to frolic on the sofa?”

“Tis rather creepy inst here. Shall we saunter outside?”

“Oh. Oh, okay.”

The few celebrants had dispersed, and we shied off getting a ride back as one of rangers locked the building. A side path led further into the wooded area, and Everett wheeled halfway around.

“One last attempt for floral fun?” Everett smiled.

We wheeled down the street side for several blocks, until a nearly hidden path led his interest.

That afternoon’s air thickened with three or four chirping, creaking creatures. We found a small shaded grove away from the main paths. Everett scooted himself down in a sort of cradle between a massive gnarled set of roots. I wiped my glasses to get a marvelous view of the glints of sunlight filtering down between the branches.

“Comfortable?”

“Comfortable enough to get a little naked?” He glanced back and forth, smirking with a jaunty grin.

“Have you…tested it?”

“No, I did not. Although I perused its perimeter, sir.” I wasn’t sure if I were becoming more comfortable with these tamed woods, but I wondered if I was instead claiming a turf, or if we were bidding it goodbye.

And that’s how we recaptured that loamy magical feeling, with a bouquet of communal smooches, some discreet fumbling, and a bit of peat spat off a hand. Spontaneity got a boost from a little exploratory planning.