Sensing Light (6 page)

XIII

T
HE IMPORTED LIGHT BEER
Kevin opened on returning to his studio apartment was the only sign of any sophistication or health consciousness acquired since he had moved to San Francisco. He felt lonelier than usual tonight and thought of his mother. He hadn't talked to her in weeks. His wristwatch showed seven o'clock, not too late to call Boston.

Francine Bartholomew had prematurely turned gray while Kevin was in high school. When he and his older sister, Katherine, were children, their slim, reserved mother was the obvious source of their red hair and green eyes. The daughter of a policeman, a bully who expected to be served by women, she had all ambition, beyond that of making a good marriage, snuffed out at an early age. Intelligent enough to have gone on to college, she quit school at sixteen to work as a cashier. At twenty, she moved from the modest bedroom she shared with two sisters into smaller boarding house quarters with her new husband. He had set one condition to his marriage offer—a taboo on her working outside the home.

His mother didn't answer on the first ring, which struck Kevin as strange. Then he realized it wasn't Sunday, the usual evening he called her.

“Hello,” his father gruffly answered.

Paralyzed by the sound of this voice he hadn't heard in three years, Kevin was mute. There was a loud clack as the receiver on the other end of the line slammed down. Angry, and at the same time curious, he dialed the number again.

“Who is it?” yelled his father.

“Hi, Dad.”

There was a pause before his father spoke again, now from a distance. Kevin imagined the old man holding the receiver at arm's length to prevent contamination.

“It's your son, Francine.”

After another pause, he heard his mother's voice.

“Kev, are you all right?”

“I'm good, Mom. Sorry I haven't called in so long. It's been super busy at work.”

“You're sure nothing's wrong?”

“Everything's fine. Don't worry, they haven't cut my salary.”

Kevin knew this would calm her. By her standards, he was already making a decent living—though she had no idea what it cost to live in San Francisco—and he would be doing much, much better in the near future. If he reassured her on that point, maybe she could control her other fears. Maybe they could even have a pleasant chat.

“Dad OK?”

“The same. The doctor doesn't seem concerned.”

Their conversation followed a well-trod path. They kept to the ruts like pack mules, both pretending his father hadn't just refused to talk to him.

Kevin's parents still lived in the tiny three-bedroom brick row house where he and Katherine had grown up, nestled in an all-white, all working-class, virtually all Irish-Catholic, South Boston neighborhood. A safe, comfortable world until he turned fourteen and discovered how different he was from everyone else.

“Kevin, could you come home next month for Douglas's confirmation?”

His mother had deviated from the script. He deflected her question by asking the date. But instead of scrambling for an excuse, he remembered that Douglas was the youngest of Katherine's four children. His confirmation would be the last family event at Saint Brigid's until someone married or died, more likely the latter. Kevin understood how important this must be to his mother. She didn't ask much of him. He really should go.

He promised to check his schedule and steered them back to a familiar trail by mentioning the weather. As Francine chanted her litany of Boston's winter horrors—treacherous black ice, merciless cold winds, unreliable coal furnaces—he thought of how a trip east would also mean having to deal with his sister and brother-in-law. That could be as bad as seeing his father.

Kevin's childhood with Katherine, a willowy attractive girl precociously adept at making friends, was a peaceful coexistence despite her ignoring him in elementary school and treating him with icy superiority in high school. His animosity came later, while he was an undergraduate at U Mass still living at home. By then, he had a circle of gay friends, kept secret from his family. One Saturday night, he was strolling across Harvard Square with a couple holding hands. They ran into Katherine and her fiancé, Ben, a Vietnam veteran. It took Katherine a brief inspection for the nickel to drop. Kevin watched the corners of her mouth turn down in disgust and her lips form the words, “This explains everything.”

To Ben, having a faggot as a future brother-in-law was a joke, at first. Then Kevin graduated from U Mass and was drafted. At his induction physical, Kevin was graphically credible in describing his sexual preferences. He fabricated a weak story for his family. A bad knee, the same implausible excuse he had employed to avoid gym class, made him ineligible. Ben saw through the charade. Having risked his life in Vietnam, he was furious. Kevin's father and mother didn't press the point, but Katherine did. Kevin lashed back. His anti-war sentiments came roaring out of the closet. He berated Katherine in front of them, challenging her assumptions about who the real aggressors were in Southeast Asia, knowing she wouldn't play her trump card. Outing him would devastate their parents, and she would have to bear the consequences. He could leave South Boston. She couldn't.

After two years of working construction, Kevin started medical school. A scholarship and loan allowed him to move from the brick row house to an apartment shared with other students. Yet he was still uneasy about being openly gay. There was always the possibility he might run into his parents or someone they knew. The simplest solution was to go away for residency training.

Ironically, just before he moved to California, his father overheard him telling a friend on the telephone how he could finally be out of the closet in San Francisco. Since then, his father had refused to speak to him. That was doubly ironic now. Kevin had found being a single, gay man here more lonely than liberating.

His mother signaled she was ready to end with her standard remark about how expensive long distance calls were. Departing from the script a second time, she pleaded with him again to return for his nephew's confirmation.

She's never asked me twice in the same call to come to Boston, he thought. Is there something she's not telling me? Could she or Dad have a terminal illness? Despite his aversion to seeing them, Kevin hadn't abandoned all hope of salvaging these relationships.

“I love you, Mom,” he said in a rush. “I'll try to get to Douglas's confirmation.”

He hung up the phone and headed out to a bar in the Castro. Kevin was exhausted. He didn't expect to meet anyone who would be interested in more than a quick fling, which no longer appealed to him. It only exacerbated his loneliness. But he did think another drink or two and the opportunity to talk about anything other than medicine, however superficial and awkward, would distract him enough to fall asleep when he came home.

XIV

T
HREE MONTHS LATER
, K
EVIN
ran into Gwen outside the City Hospital auditorium.

“Hey,” he said, pleasantly surprised, “What are you doing here?”

Before she could reply, he deduced the answer.

“You
are
serious about coming back if you're here for an update on septic shock. That's not outpatient medicine.”

“I've been interviewed,” Gwen said, unable to contain her excitement. “There aren't openings for this July, but there will be next year. They all but offered me a position.”

“Great! I'll still be here. Flagler's taking me on as a fellow.”

“Fantastic!”

Once they were seated inside, Kevin said, “I was going to call you. Larry Winton's autopsy report is done.”

“What did it show?” Gwen whispered as the lecturer stepped to the podium.

“It's complicated. Don't worry, we didn't miss anything reversible. I'll explain later.”

After grand rounds, Kevin hailed Herb and told both of them about the autopsy findings. In addition to the lung destruction caused by Pneumocystis pneumonia, every one of Larry Winton's lymph nodes from his neck to his pelvis was shrunken and scarred.

“That fits with the low lymphocyte count in his blood,” said Herb. “And having no immune system left would be why he got Pneumocystis. But what wiped out his immune system?”

“There's no smoking gun,” Kevin lamented. “All the slides were negative, except for some cytomegalovirus inclusions in the liver and gut. The
pathologist said that was more likely a result of immune suppression than the cause. He's seen the same thing in transplant patients.”

“Sorry, Kevin. I'm afraid the Winton case is going to remain a mystery. It happens.”

“I tried to reach his family,” said Gwen. “I called the phone number we had and went to the last address he used. No luck. If I'd been able to contact a relative, I could have found out about his family history. Most immune deficiency syndromes are inherited, aren't they?”

“Good thought, Gwen,” Herb said.

“I'd like to write up the case for publication,” Kevin volunteered. “I'll put it together if you'll edit the draft.”

“Kevin, I would love to help you publish something, but a single case of unexplained immune deficiency won't appeal to any broadly read journal. If there was an identifiable cause, like a toxin that hasn't been reported before, you could easily get it accepted. Or if you had a series of patients like this one tied together by a common thread, even if it was only geographic location. You could sell that to reviewers. But one case with a mysterious cause won't be perceived as advancing knowledge.”

“Yeah,” Kevin reluctantly agreed.

“You'll be here another two years. I'm sure Pneumocystis will be the first thing we think of if someone with progressive pulmonary disease and no obvious diagnosis is admitted. And if we do find more patients with Pneumocystis, you could investigate family histories and environmental exposures and get one of the immunologists on the Hill to figure out what's behind it.”

Gwen gave Kevin's shoulder a fist-bump.

“I'll help if you lead the charge,” she said.

“That's right,” said Kevin, his mood upbeat again, “Gwen will be here. She's going to finish her medicine residency.”

Herb met Gwen's eyes. Though he was well aware of how attractive she was, he limited his regard to other virtues he esteemed in house staff. She wouldn't have come to the ICU twice while Winton was dying if she didn't feel responsible for her patient, didn't care deeply about what was happening to him.

“Your clinic experience will be a big plus here,” Herb said. “We have attendings greener than you.”

Flushing, Gwen asked, “Kevin told you about me?”

“No, Flagler. I ran into him right after he interviewed you. He was impressed. But don't expect him to acknowledge it to you.”

“How flattering. I'm glad he thinks my experience will be an asset. I wish I did.”

“Oh my! And self-deprecating, too? We'll see how long that lasts here.”

“You're in if you've got Flagler's vote,” Kevin crowed. “This is a great time to be in medicine, Gwen. Huge changes are coming. Molecular techniques like DNA cloning are going to revolutionize diagnostics. Biotech companies will be making totally new kinds of treatment possible.”

“Brave new world,” she mused.

“And we'll be right at the cutting edge! It's going to be cool, very cool.”

An Epidemic, 1981

I

A
FTER
K
EVIN
'
S FELLOWSHIP ENDED
, he was hired as an attending physician at City Hospital. His nights and weekends were generally free of responsibilities, and he wasn't lonely anymore.

One hour past sunrise on the last Sunday of November, he stood exposed to a wet Pacific wind, shivering at the high point of an East Bay trail. Donning the fleece jacket and wool cap he had taken off during the steep hike up didn't make him warmer. Neither did cuddling with his lover, Marco, who was four inches shorter and had the sinewy physique of a long-distance runner. Kevin jammed his hands under his armpits and jogged in place.

He looked west across the bay beyond Mount Tamalpais to the Farallon Islands then east to where the Contra Costa hills, tinged with green after a week of early November rain, rolled toward the Sacramento River delta and faded into haze.

“On clearer days, you can see snow on Sierra peaks from here,” said Marco.

With his black hair in curly ringlets, sparse silky beard, strong chin, and deep set eyes, Marco could be the object of a Latin Adonis or Che Guevara fantasy. Both appealed to Kevin's prurient interest. He slipped a hand into the gap between Marco's jeans and the hollow of his back and lightly brushed his olive skin.

“That too cold?” he asked solicitously.

“I'll warm you up,” said Marco and leaned his head against Kevin's shoulder.

“This view is incredible!” Kevin exclaimed. “What a great idea to come here.”

“Hah! You weren't so happy when I woke you up at four thirty. See, you should listen to me more often.”

“You're right about that,” Kevin concurred with a carefree laugh.

Squinting at the horizon, he asked, “How far do you think Mount Tam is from here?”

“Twenty miles,
más o menos
”

“Twenty miles
como la cuerva vuela
?”

“
Sí,
” said Marco, amused by Kevin's literal translation of “as the crow flies.”

“If we had a telescope, the kind amateur astronomers use, do you think we could see people standing on Tam peak?”

“I haven't a clue,
mi amor
. But you know what? You have a lot of curiosity for someone who claims not to be a real scientist.”

Kevin gave him an enigmatic glance, seductive enough to entice Marco into kissing him. As Marco's tongue darted inside Kevin's mouth, a shrill, insistent beeping sounded. Startled, Marco drew back. He saw Kevin's neck pulsing and his pupils dilate.

“Adrenergic response to your pager, or was I arousing you?”

“Both, unfortunately.”

Marco parked in front of the massive, Art Deco building on the Berkeley campus where he was completing a post-doctoral fellowship in cell biology. They had stopped at a pay phone on the way there. Kevin had called the hospital and was told about a patient brought by ambulance to the emergency room, somebody of consequence from the mayor's office. The medical resident on call said the patient had fever and altered mental status. She also suspected he had Gay-Related Immune Deficiency.

Marco offered his car keys. Kevin gave him a contrite smile.

“
Querido
, it's OK. I can run my gels now instead of tomorrow. I'll have the data one day sooner for those obsessive-compulsive
Science
editors holding my paper hostage.”

After two years of coddling and massaging embryonic mouse cells, Marco needed results from just one more experiment to parry a final reviewer's objection to publishing his paper in a prestigious journal.

“Really? You're not disappointed?”

“Kevin, I think you're confusing me with someone else's long-suffering, submissive wife. I'm happy to go to work. I'll page you when the blots are developed. You can pick me up at the BART station, and we'll go out to celebrate.”

“No, no. I'll drive back as soon as I'm done. Then you won't have to wait. I don't mind hanging out here until you're finished.”

“So now you're going to do penance?”

Kevin looked away, and Marco sighed. They had been through this script before. Feeling guilty, Kevin would shut down. Marco, annoyed that he wasn't responding, would criticize him for not breaking free of his psychic chains. Catholic bondage Marco called it. If particularly irritated, Marco would raise Kevin's refusal to tell his family about his live-in lover as a prime example, and Kevin would retreat further.

Marco had looked up the common noun “catholic” in an English dictionary and informed him the meaning was “of liberal scope, inclusive of all humanity.” Kevin believed class difference was the underlying issue. He had mentioned that possibility once, and Marco gave him the silent treatment for a week.

It's all right for Marco to rail about the prejudice, homophobia, and narrow mindedness of South Boston, Kevin had brooded, but not for me to point out how the privilege of growing up in a luxurious Mexican villa and attending an elite Jesuit boarding school in Europe has given him the freedom to become whomever he wants to be.

Time to lighten up, thought Kevin.

He smirked and said, “What kind of penance did you have in mind?”

Marco's stern disapproval dissolved.

“Touché,” he chuckled. “Penance later. Now that I'm here, I'm going to run the gels. But first…”

Marco sat on a bench and opened his arms. Kevin sat on his lap, and Marco massaged Kevin's neck.

“That's an impressive talent you have,” Marco murmured, “Making things funny when they get too heavy. I've never been with someone who could do that.”

Paralyzed by the compliment, Kevin didn't reply.

“Don't give up on teaching me,
querido
.”

“You sure?”

Marco dangled his car keys and said, “Go my son. Your sins have been forgiven.”

Kevin kissed him on the cheek and took the keys.

“
Qué injusticia
,” Marco grumbled as he watched Kevin drive away. To keep from dwelling on the benighted souls who had raised and still haunted his lover, Marco recalled the night they met.

A crowd of fifteen thousand had filled Castro Street for the 1980 annual Halloween bacchanalia. Half were in costume while the rest gawked at them. Alcohol was the drug of choice here, and lines of riot police filled the neighborhood to prevent a repeat of the previous year's melee when gangs of fag-bashers from nearby blue collar suburbs had attacked gay men. Marco had come with Robert, a fellow grad student. Both were dressed as lab rats in white coats. Lengths of rope served for tails and pieces of broom straw taped to their cheeks for whiskers. As they crossed Castro Street, a skinny teenager sliced off Robert's tail with a switchblade. He ran away whooping, swinging the trophy over his head. Robert cursed the boy who returned to confront him and jabbed the knife at his testicles. He missed low by an inch, slicing through the femoral artery. Robert collapsed in a pool of blood which expanded at an alarming rate.

A hefty, six foot pirate appeared, bedecked in a white flounce shirt and a blue bandana that couldn't contain his thick red hair. A policeman recognized the pirate, called him “Doc,” and cordoned off space for him to work. Kevin pulled down Robert's pants, carefully inserted his bare thumb and forefinger into Robert's wound, and pinched the artery. The bleeding stopped.

Marco was amazed by Kevin's equanimity as he was helping EMTs lift Robert into an ambulance while keeping a firm hold on the artery and reassuring Marco that his friend would be fine. Kevin talked the driver into letting Marco ride with them. In the ambulance, Marco got Kevin's phone
number. The following evening, Marco brought over an expensive Medoc which they had just begun to explore when other appetites took precedence.

Driving west on the Bay Bridge, Kevin tried to soothe himself. He envisioned the panorama they had seen at the top of the trail. That failed to calm him. The brief telephone call had put him in red alert mode. Kevin had become the local expert on immune deficiencies at City Hospital. Everyone would expect him to provide definitive guidance on what tests to perform and what medications to administer to this patient.

Kevin tried harder to imagine the scene before his pager beeped. He wondered how he and Marco might have looked to a passing stranger. Did their physical differences make them an odd couple? Would a passer-by be repelled by seeing them kiss? Furious for having that last thought, Kevin pounded the dashboard. How could he allow a scintilla of the old self-hatred back into his consciousness? Why couldn't he shed it? He was living in San Francisco now. Being gay was totally acceptable here. What was his problem?