To Paradise (18 page)

In this way, close to a month had elapsed, and although Edward had never demanded a conclusive commitment from David that he would accompany him to California after all, David did not protest when Edward bought two tickets on the Transcontinental Express, did not object when his own belongings disappeared into one of the trunks, secreted between Edward’s own. Edward was abustle with activity—packing, planning, full of chatter—and as he grew more industrious, David grew less. Every morning, he reminded himself that he could still stop what seemed now fated to happen, that it was still within his power, however humiliating it would be, for now and for ever; but by evening, he would have been carried along a little more on the slipstream of Edward’s excitement, so that with each day he had drifted farther from land. And yet he was also not desirous of resisting, and why should he? How lovely, how seductive, it was to be wanted as much as Edward wanted him, to be cherished and kissed and whispered to and thought so dear, to never once be asked for or about his fortune, to be undressed with such avidity and regarded with such unembarrassed lust. Had he ever experienced these things? For he had not, and yet he knew:
This
was happiness,
this
was life.

Still, in colder moments—those just before dawn—David could see too that the month had not been without its difficulties. He knew so little, he had never before completed a chore, and there had been times when his ignorance had made things tense between them; he did not know how to boil an egg or darn a sock or hammer a nail. The boardinghouse had no indoor lavatories but only an outdoor washroom, and the first, freezing time David had visited it, he had, unaware, used all the water that was to have been shared
among the house’s residents, and Edward had been terse with him. “What
do
you know?” he had snapped after David had confessed he’d never before built a fire, and “We shan’t be able to survive on your knitting and drawings and embroidery, you know,” at which David had stormed out and walked the streets, tears stinging his eyes, and when he finally returned to the room—it being cold and he having nowhere else to go—Edward had been there (a fire crackling) to greet him with tenderness and apologies, to guide him to the bed, where he promised to make him warm again. After, he had asked Edward if they might move elsewhere, somewhere more commodious and modern, for which he would gladly pay, but Edward had only kissed him between the eyes and told him that they must be frugal and, at any rate, that David had to learn these skills, for he would need them in California, where, after all, they would be living on a farm. And so he tried to improve. But his success was limited.

And then, suddenly, it was five days, four days, three days, two days before they were to depart—their leave-taking accelerated so that they would now reach California only days after Belle’s own arrival—and the tiny room had gone from being full of things to abruptly empty of them, everything they owned packed into three large steamer trunks, the last of which David had sent for from Washington Square. The night before their penultimate day in the city, Edward had suggested that it might be useful to have any monies David might have available secured before they left: The next day, he would leave early to purchase some final supplies he thought they might need, and, it was left unspoken, David would go visit his grandfather.

It was not an unreasonable request; it was, indeed, an inevitable one. And yet that morning, when David left the boardinghouse for what was to be one of the last times of his life, descending the cracked stairs onto the street, he felt as if he had been struck in the face by the raw, dirty beauty of the city; by the trees above him feathered with tiny, bright-green leaves; by the pleasing, hollow clops of the passing horses; by the sights of industry all around him: the charwomen mopping their front steps; the coal boy pulling his cart behind him, inch by slow inch; the chimney sweep with his
bucket, whistling a merry tune. They were not his people, of course, but they also were: They were citizens of the Free States, and it was together that they had made their country, their city, what it was—they through their labor, and David through his money.

He had thought to take a hansom, but he instead walked slowly, first south, then east, moving dreamily through the streets, his feet somehow knowing where to sidestep a pile of dung, a scrap of turnip, a scampering feral kitten, before even his eyes did; he felt himself a slim cone of fire, licking his way down the dear filthy streets he had walked his entire life, his shoes leaving no imprint, making no sound, the people parting for him before he even had to announce himself with a clear of his throat. And so it was that, when he finally reached Bingham Brothers, he was quite far from himself, afloat even, and it was as if he were hovering meters above the city, swooping slowly around the stone building, before being landed gently on its steps, and walking through its doors, the same as he’d done for nearly twenty-nine years, and yet of course not the same at all.

Down the hall he walked, through the doors to the bank’s offices, and then to the left, where he met with the banker who was responsible for the family’s accounts, and where he withdrew all of his savings; the Free States’ currency was accepted in the West, but only grudgingly, and David had sent word beforehand that he needed his money in gold. He watched as the ingots were weighed and wrapped in cloth and then stacked inside a small black leather case and its straps buckled.

As he handed him the case, the banker—someone new, unknown to him—bowed. “May I wish you the best of luck, Mister Bingham,” he said, somberly, and David, suddenly breathless, his arm tugged downward by the weight of the metal, could only nod his thanks.

Once again, his story was apparently known, and as he left the banker and made his final walk down the long, carpeted hallway toward his grandfather’s office, he sensed a collective murmuring, almost a hum, though he encountered no one. It was not until he had almost reached the office’s closed doorway that he did see someone, Norris, stepping quickly into the hallway from an antechamber.

“Mister David,” he said. “Your grandfather is awaiting you.”

“Thank you, Norris,” he managed. He could hardly speak; the words were choking him.

He turned to knock on the door, but as he did, Norris touched him, suddenly, on the shoulder. David was startled; Norris never touched him or his siblings, and when he looked at the man again, he was shocked to see his eyes were wet. “I wish you all the happiness, Mister David,” Norris said. And then he had vanished, and David was pressing the brass handle on his grandfather’s door and entering the room, and—ah!—there was his grandfather, rising from behind his desk, not beckoning him as he usually did but waiting for him to walk across the soft carpet, one so plush that you could, as David once did when he was a boy, drop a crystal goblet upon it and it would not shatter but bounce, gently, off the surface. He saw, at once, his grandfather’s eyes flicker to his case, and knew he knew what was secured within; indeed, knew to the cent how much gold it contained, and as he sat, his grandfather yet to say a single word, he smelled smoke, earth, and opened his eyes to watch Lapsang souchong being poured into a cup, and his eyes once more stung with tears. But then he realized: There was only one cup, and it was his grandfather’s.

“I have come to say goodbye,” he said after a silence so dense he could not bear it, though he could hear the tremble in his voice as he spoke. And then, when his grandfather did not respond, “Are you not going to say anything?” He had intended to re-present his case—Edward’s denials, how much Edward cared for him, how Edward had assuaged his concerns—and then he realized: He did not have to. At his feet was a trunk of gold, like something from a fairy tale, and it was his, and a little more than a mile from here was a man who loved him, and together they would travel many more miles, and David would hope that their love would come with them—because he believed it; because he must.

“Grandfather,” he said, hesitantly, and then, when his grandfather responded only with a sip of his tea, David repeated it, and then again, and then in a shout—“
Grandfather!
”—and still the man remained impassive, lifting his cup to his mouth.

“It is not too late, David,” his grandfather said at last, and the
sound of his grandfather’s voice—its patience, its authority that David had never before seen need or reason or desire to doubt—filled him with an ache, and he had to stop himself from bending over and clutching his stomach in pain. “You can choose. I can keep you safe—I can still keep you safe.”

He knew then, as he had always known, that he would never be able to explain himself—he would never have the argument, he would never have the words, he would never be more than Nathaniel Bingham’s grandson. What was Edward Bishop against Nathaniel Bingham? What was love against all his grandfather symbolized and was? What was he against any of it? He was no one; he was nothing; he was a man who was in love with Edward Bishop and he was, for perhaps the first time in his life, doing something he wanted, something that frightened him, but something that was his own. He was choosing foolishly, perhaps, but he was choosing. He reached his arm down to his feet; he slid his fingers through the case’s handle; he tightened his hand around it; he stood.

“Goodbye,” he whispered. “I love you, Grandfather.”

He was halfway to the door when his grandfather cried out, in a voice David had never before heard from him, “You are a fool, David!” And still he kept walking, and as he was closing the door behind him, he heard his grandfather not so much call as groan his name, two anguished syllables: “David!”

No one stopped him as he left. Down the carpeted hallway he walked once more, and then through the spectacular doors, and then across the marble lobby. And then he was outside, with Bingham Brothers to his back and the city before him.

Once, when he and his siblings were still quite young, probably soon after they came to live in Washington Square, they had had a conversation with their grandfather about Heaven, and after Grandfather had explained it, John had promptly said, “I’d like mine to be made all of ice cream,” but David, who did not care, then, for cold things, had disagreed: His Heaven would be made of cakes. He could see it—oceans made turgid with buttercream; mountains made of sponge; trees dangling candied cherries. He did not want to be in John’s Heaven; he wanted to be in his own. That night, when
his grandfather came to wish him good night, he had asked him, anxious: How could God know what each person wanted? How could He be certain they were in the place they had dreamed of? His grandfather had laughed. “He knows, David,” he had said. “He knows, and He will make as many Heavens as He needs.”

And so what if this was Heaven? Would he know it if it were? Perhaps not. But he knew it was not whence he had come: That was someone else’s Heaven, but it was not his. His was somewhere else, but it would not appear in front of him; rather, it would be his to find. Indeed, was that not what he had been taught, been made to hope for, his entire life? Now it was time to seek. Now it was time to be brave. Now he must go alone. So he would stand here for another moment, the bag leaden in his hand, and then he would take a breath, and then he would make his first step: his first step to a new life; his first step—to paradise.

The letter arrived at the office on the day of the party. He rarely got mail, and when he did, it wasn’t actually for him—just subscription offers for magazines and law journals that were addressed to “Paralegal” and dropped in a bundle on one of their desks by the mailroom clerk—so it wasn’t until he was drinking his afternoon cup of coffee that he bothered to scrape the rubber band off the stack of envelopes and flick through them, only to suddenly see his name. When he saw the return address, he experienced a loss of breath, one so profound that for a moment all sound disappeared except for that of a hot, dry wind.

He took the envelope and stuffed it into his pants pocket and hurried to the archive room, which was the most private place on the floor, where he held it against his chest for a moment before opening it, tearing the letter itself in his haste. But then, midway through removing the sheet of paper inside, he instead replaced it in its envelope, folded it in half, and jammed it into his shirt pocket. And then he had to sit on a stack of old law books, puffing air onto his clasped hands, which was something he did when he was anxious, until he was ready to leave.

By the time he returned to his desk, it was a quarter of four. He had already requested permission to leave at four today, but he went to ask his manager if he might go a few minutes earlier. Of course, she said—it was a slow day; she’d see him on Monday. He thanked her, and shoved the letter into his bag.

“Have a good weekend,” she said as he left.

You too, he said.

He had to pass Charles’s office on the way to the elevator, but he didn’t look in to say goodbye to him, because they had agreed that it was safest if they pretended not to be any more familiar with each other than a senior partner would be with a junior paralegal. When they had first begun seeing each other, he would find himself walking by Charles’s office a dozen times a day, hoping to catch a glimpse of him doing something mundane, the more mundane the better: smoothing back his hair as he read a brief; dictating a memo into his recorder; flipping through the pages of a law book; talking on the phone while looking out the window to the Hudson River, his back to the door. Charles never acknowledged him, but David was certain he was aware of his passings.

That had been the source of one of their early disagreements: Charles’s lack of acknowledgment. “Well, what can I do, David?” Charles had asked him, not defensively, as they lay in bed one night. “It’s not like I can stop by the paralegals’ area whenever I want. Or even call you: Laura can see on her phone who I’m calling, and she’d eventually put two and two together.”

He didn’t say anything, just pressed his face into the pillow, and Charles sighed. “It’s not that I don’t
want
to see you,” he said, gently. “It’s just complicated. You know how it is.”

Finally, they had worked out a code: Whenever he passed Charles’s office, and Charles wasn’t busy, he would clear his throat and twirl a pencil between his fingers; that would be his signal that he’d seen David. It was silly—David wouldn’t dare tell his friends that this was how he and Charles interacted in the office; they already didn’t trust Charles—but it was also satisfying. “Larsson, Wesley owns me by day, but you own me by night,” Charles always said, and that was satisfying, too.

But they still get more billable hours from you than I do, he’d said to Charles, once.

“Not true,” said Charles. “You get weekends, and holidays, and nights as well.” He reached over then and grabbed his calculator—Charles was the only person he had ever slept with, or dated, who kept a calculator on his bedside table, much less consulted it regularly during their arguments and discussions—and began punching
the buttons. “Twenty-four hours in a day, seven days a week,” he said. “Larsson, Wesley gets—what? Twelve hours over five days, plus, okay, another seven combined on the weekend. That’s sixty-seven total. One hundred sixty-eight hours in a week, take away sixty-seven—that means that for a hundred and one hours every week, minimum, I am at your complete and utter disposal. And that doesn’t count the hours at Larsson that I spend thinking about you, or thinking about you and trying not to think about you.”

How many are those? he asked. They were both smiling by then.

“Loads,” said Charles. “Countless. Tens of thousands of dollars in billable hours. More than any other client I have.”

Now he walked by Charles’s office, and Charles cleared his throat and spun a pencil between his fingers, and David smiled: He’d been seen. Now he could go.

At home, everything was under control. That’s what Adams told him when he came in: “Everything is under control, Mister David.” As always, he seemed faintly puzzled—by the fact of David, by his presence in the house, by having to serve David, and now by David’s belief that he could contribute anything to a dinner party, the kind Adams had been arranging for years, more years than David had been alive.

When he moved into the house a year ago, he had asked Adams again and again to call him David, not Mister David, but Adams never would, or at least never did. Adams would never be used to him, and he would never be used to Adams. After one of the first nights he had spent with Charles, they had been in bed making out, near sex, when he heard someone speak Charles’s name gravely, and he had yelped and jolted and looked up to see Adams standing in the doorway of Charles’s room.

“I can bring breakfast now, Mister Charles, unless you’d rather wait.”

“I’ll wait, Adams, thank you.”

After Adams left, Charles had pulled him close again, but David
pushed away, and Charles laughed. “What
was
that sound you made?” he teased, and gave a few short, high barks. “Like a porpoise,” he said. “Adorable.”

Does he
always
do that? he asked.

“Adams? Yes. He knows I like my routine.”

It’s a little creepy, Charles.

“Oh, Adams is harmless,” Charles said. “He’s just a little old-fashioned. And he’s an excellent butler.”

Over the months, he had tried to talk to Charles about Adams, but he was never successful, in part because he could never quite articulate his objections. Adams never treated him with anything but a somber, distant respect, and yet David knew somehow that Adams disapproved of him. When he told his best friend and former roommate, Eden, about Adams, she had rolled her eyes. “A
butler
?” she had said. “Give me a break, David. Anyway, he probably hates all of Chuck’s tricks.” (That was what Eden called Charles: Chuck. Now all their friends called him Chuck as well.)

I’m not a trick, he’d corrected Eden.

“Oh, right, I’m sorry,” Eden had said. “You’re his
boyfriend
.” And she had pursed her lips and fluttered her eyelashes—she didn’t approve of monogamy, and neither did she approve of men: “Except for you, David,” she’d say. “And you barely count.”

Gee, thanks, he’d say, and she’d laugh.

But he knew it wasn’t true that Adams disapproved of all of Charles’s boyfriends, because he’d once overheard a conversation that Adams and Charles had had about Charles’s former boyfriend Olivier, whom Charles had dated before he met David. “And Mister Olivier called,” Adams had said, giving Charles his messages, and David, standing just outside the doorway to the study, could hear something different in Adams’s voice.

“How did he sound?” Charles asked. He and Olivier were still friendly but only saw each other once or twice a year at most.

“Very well,” said Adams. “Please give him my regards.”

“I absolutely will,” Charles said.

Anyway, trying to complain about Adams was useless, because Charles would never abandon him: He had been Charles’s parents’
butler when he was a teenager, and when they both died, Charles, who was their only child, inherited not only their house but Adams as well. He could never tell his friends that; they would see Charles’s employment of a seventy-five-year-old man in a physically demanding position as a form of geriatric exploitation, despite the fact that David knew that Adams enjoyed having his job as much as Charles enjoyed providing it to him. His friends never understood that—how, for some people, work was the only thing that made them feel real to the world.

“I know it seems anachronistic to have a butler,” Charles had said—few of his own friends did, even the ones who were richer or from older money than he was—“but when you’re raised with one, it’s a hard habit to give up.” He sighed. “I don’t expect you, or anyone, to understand.” David said nothing. “This is as much Adams’s house as it is mine,” Charles often said, and David knew he meant it in a way, even if it wasn’t true. Habitation is not equivalent to ownership, he’d reminded Charles, quoting his first-year law-school professor, and Charles had grabbed him (they’d been in bed then, too). “Are you
actually
explaining legal principles to me?” he’d asked, teasing. “To
me
? You really are adorable.”
You wouldn’t understand,
Charles said to him, about this and so many other matters, and when he did, David’s grandmother’s face would suddenly flash through his mind. Would his grandmother have ever said that their house was as much Matthew’s and Jane’s as it was theirs? He didn’t think so. Their house belonged only to the Binghams, and the only way to become a Bingham was to be born one or to marry one.

It certainly would never have occurred to Matthew or Jane to consider the Bingham house theirs either, and David suspected that Adams felt the same way: This was Charles’s house, and always would be, and although he might be a part of it, it was only as a chair or a sidewall cabinet was part of it—a fixture, but nothing with its own desires or motivations or sense of autonomy. Adams could
behave
as if it were his—look at him now, ignoring the presence of the party planner to order the caterers into the kitchen and the furniture movers into the dining room—but though his
authority was in part innate, much of it was due to his association with Charles, whose name he invoked only when necessary, though still not infrequently. “You
know
Mr. Griffith doesn’t like them,” he was now chiding the florist, who stood before him, protesting, trying to persuade, clutching a green plastic bucket of partially opened Easter lilies against her chest. “We discussed this. He thinks their scent is funereal.”

“But I ordered all of these!” (The florist, in a near-wail.)

“Then I suggest you contact Mr. Griffith and try to convince him,” Adams said, knowing she never would, and, indeed, the florist turned and walked away, calling to her crew as she did, “We have to eighty-six the lilies!” and, lower, “Asshole.”

David watched her go, feeling triumphant as she did.
He
was to have coordinated the flowers. After the last big party—this was shortly after David had moved in—he had suggested to Charles that the flowers were a little listless, and far too fragrant: overly perfumed flowers distracted from the food. “You’re right,” Charles had said. “Next time, you’ll be in charge of them.”

Will I really?

“Of course. What do I know about flowers? You’re the expert,” Charles had said, and had kissed him.

At the time, this had felt like a privilege, a gift, but since then he had come to learn that when Charles declared his ignorance it was only because he thought the subject inconsequential. He could make his lack of knowledge—about flowers, baseball, football, modernist architecture, contemporary literature and art, South American food—sound like a boast; he didn’t know because there was no reason to know.
You
might know, but then
you
had wasted your time—
he
had other, more important things to learn about and remember. And anyway, it hadn’t happened: Charles had remembered to tell the party planner not to hire the same florist, but had forgotten to tell her that David would be in charge. David had spent the past month planning his arrangements, calling different shops in the Flower District to ask if they could special-order stephanotis and protea, and it had only been two weeks ago, when he and Charles were having a drink in the living room and Charles had asked Adams
for an update about the party planner—“Yes, she’s hired a different florist”—that David had realized that he wasn’t to be responsible for the flowers after all.

He had waited until Adams left to ask Charles about it, both because they tried not to argue in front of Adams and because he wanted to rehearse the words to himself, to make sure he didn’t sound like he was whining. But he had anyway. I thought
I
was overseeing the flowers, he’d said, once Adams exited the room.

“What?”

Remember? You said I could?

“Oh, god. Did I?”

Yes.

“I don’t remember. But if you say I did, then I did. Oh, David, I’m sorry.” And then, when he didn’t answer, “You’re not mad, are you? It’s just a bunch of silly flowers. David. Are you upset?”

No, he lied.

“But you are. I’m sorry, David. You can do the next one, I promise.”

He had nodded, and then Adams had reappeared to announce that dinner was served, and the two of them had gone to the dining room. As they ate, he tried to be cheerful, because that was what Charles liked, but later, in bed, Charles had turned to him in the dark and asked, “You’re still annoyed, aren’t you?”

It was difficult to explain why he was—he knew he would sound petty. I just want to help you, he’d begun. I just want to feel like I’m
doing
something here.

“But you
are
helping me,” Charles had said. “Every night you’re here with me, you’re helping me.”

Well—thank you. But—I want to feel like we’re doing something together, like I’m
contributing
something to your life. I feel like—like I’m just taking up room in this house, but I’m not actually doing anything, do you know what I mean?

Charles had been quiet. “I understand,” he said, finally. “Next time, David, I promise. And—I’ve been thinking—why don’t we have some of your friends over for a dinner? Just your friends. You know all of mine, but I feel I’ve hardly met yours.”

Really?

“Yes. This is your house, too; I want them to feel welcome here.”