Henry and Jim (2 page)

The kitchen is empty. The eggs sizzle in the
pan where I left them and I turn the burner off before they get too
hard. In the dining room, a chair scrapes across the floor: Jim
sitting down. Without comment, I gather up the plates and
silverware I had set out in the breakfast nook and carry them into
the other room. Jim sits at the head of the long, polished table
where we rarely eat, but he gives me a smile when I hand over the
newspaper, and as I place a plate in front of him, he catches me in
a quick hug. He sighs my name into my belly, his arms tight around
my waist, then rests his head against my stomach and wants to know,
“What’s for breakfast?”

I don’t have the energy to tell him again.
“It’s almost ready,” I promise, extracting myself from his
embrace.

* * * *

My parents always called Jim
Betty’s
friend
, right up until the day she got married to someone else.
By then the two of us had an apartment together, and at the
reception my mother introduced us as simply, “Henry and Jim.” Not
friend
or
roommate
, just Jim—in those days, no one
felt compelled to define us further. My mother treated him like one
of the family when we visited, and that was all I wanted. Let her
believe we slept in separate bedrooms, if that’s what she needed to
think to welcome him into her home.

We bought this house in ’64; the market was
good and the realtor didn’t question both our names on the
mortgage. Jim was in college at the time, working nights at the
packing plant just to pay his half of the bills. We had plans for
the house—I wanted a large garden and Jim loved to swim, but we
didn’t have the extra money to sink into landscaping yet; we
couldn’t afford the house most months, let alone flowers and an
inground pool. I had a job in marketing and spent most of that
first year in the house waiting for Jim to come home. Sometime
after midnight he’d stagger through the door, weary from standing
on his feet all evening, clothes and hands and face black with
grime and soot. I hovered in the doorway of the bathroom, watching
the dirt and soap swirl away down the drain as he washed up. Some
nights he sat on the closed lid of the toilet seat, pressed the
palms of his freshly scrubbed hands against his eyes, and struggled
not to cry from mere exhaustion. “I can’t do this much longer,
Henry,” he sobbed, my man reduced to a child by the weight of his
world. I knelt on the floor and gathered him into my arms, ignoring
the stench of sweat and oil that rose from his soiled clothing. He
slid off the toilet and into my lap as he hugged me close. Hot
tears burned my neck where he buried his face against me. “I
can’t,” he whispered, hands fisting in my clean shirt. “I just
can’t.”

I helped when I could, but times were hard
for us. Many nights we sat together on the floor of the bathroom,
me smoothing my hand along his back as he railed against it all. It
was college that held him back, Jim believed—if he could just drop
the few classes he took, he could work full-time at the plant and
make more money, but I wouldn’t let him. In those days a degree
guaranteed a good paying job, no matter what the field of study,
and I knew Jim wanted to be more than a line worker the rest of his
life. I wanted him to be something more—I wanted him at a day job
and home in the evenings, in the bed beside me at night. He wanted
it too, so he would cry himself out as I held him, but eventually
he kissed my neck and whispered my name. “How are you feeling?” I’d
want to know.

With a shaky sigh, he would admit,
“Better.”

One evening I was in the kitchen, washing the
dishes, when I heard him come in the front. “Jim?” I called out,
raising my voice above the running tap. The slam of the bathroom
door was his only reply. Shutting off the water, I dried my hands
and glanced at the time—barely eight o’clock. My first thought was
that he had managed to get off early somehow, but the slammed door
made me worry. In the hallway, I knocked on the bathroom door.
“Jim? You in there?”

“Be right out,” he promised.

Absently my hand strayed to the doorknob but
when I tried to turn it, I found it locked. That bothered me more
than I cared to admit—there were no locked doors between us. “Jim?”
I asked again, twisting the knob in a futile gesture. I wanted to
watch him get cleaned up, to see the man emerge from beneath the
sooty worker, to watch his strong hands smooth over one another to
wash dirty suds away. It had become a nightly tradition of sorts,
and I saw so little of him as it was. With my ear pressed against
the door, I could hear water and Jim’s low humming. “Open the
door,” I told him and then, because that sounded too harsh, I
added, “Are you all right?”

He hollered back, “Fine, Henry. I’ll be right
there.”

I couldn’t shake the feeling that something
was off, so I stood outside the bathroom door and ran through a
dozen scenarios in my mind, reasons why Jim would refuse to let me
see him before he got cleaned up, but none of them made any sense.
I couldn’t imagine what he might be hiding from me, why he needed
to wash up alone; there was no reason for the impromptu shower I
heard running on the other side of this locked door. Never one for
waiting, I wedged myself against the doorjamb, knob gripped tight
in my sweaty palm. As soon as the shower cut off, I started
rattling the knob again. “Jim—” I started, but then the lock
disengaged and the knob turned in my hand. “What’s all this
about?”

He wasn’t standing on the other side of the
door, so I eased it open and peered behind it. Jim leaned back
against the counter by the sink, a bath towel around his shoulders
that barely covered his crotch. His legs, damp and swirled with
dark curlicues of wet hair, stretched out for miles beneath the
towel. One corner of the towel was caught between his teeth, and he
stared at me with wide eyes full of an anticipation that excited
me. “Well?” I wanted to know. I tried hard to hang on to my sour
mood but the sight of water beaded on so much bare skin made it
hard to remember what it was I might be angry about. “What’s going
on?”

Without replying, Jim scooted over. On the
counter behind him sat a potted bush in full bloom. Salmon colored
rosebuds peeked through thick green leaves, one or two in full
bloom like bubblegum bubbles, their petals opening to a deep,
gorgeous color that reminded me of hidden flesh. “Jim,” I started,
but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I had done enough
window-shopping at the local nursery to know the plant must’ve cost
a pretty penny. I wanted to ask how he could afford it, with
tuition on the rise and the bills we had piling up, but I tamped
that down and took a tentative step toward the counter. “It’s
beautiful.”

“It’s for you,” Jim said. His eyes flashed
above an eager grin he hid behind the towel. Before I could thank
him, he added, “You know why?”

I brushed my fingers across one velvet petal
and shook my head. “I can’t begin to imagine,” I murmured. My
birthday was months away. Burying my nose into an open rose, I
breathed deep the flower’s heady perfume and sighed. “Did you get a
raise? Did you graduate?” With a sidelong glance, I teased, “We
didn’t have a fight this morning, did we? Am I forgetting
something?”

Jim laughed. “It’s sort of our anniversary,”
he said, watching me, waiting for it to click.

It didn’t. “Which one?” I ticked them off on
my hand, one finger for each occasion. “We got the apartment in
August, bought the house in February, first had sex in June, first
kissed in…” A slow smile spread across my face. “In May. This is
the day we met, isn’t it? God, how long as it been?”

“Ten years today,” Jim admitted. To the
roses, he said, “They say red means love but these were the
prettiest ones they had. I thought you’d like them—”

“I love them,” I said simply, then gave him a
smoldering look and added, “I love you. Come here.”

He stepped toward me, away from the counter,
and my hand brushed his arm before slipping beneath the towel to
smooth over warm, tight skin. The towel fell away; Jim fumbled with
the zipper of my pants, his hands undressing me as my mouth closed
over his. We held on to each other as we met in a heated clash of
lust and desire—against the wall, on the counter, sprawled across
the lid of the toilet seat before we fell to the floor, aching and
hard and seeking release. “I love you,” I told him, again and
again. I kissed the words into the hollow of his throat, the small
of his back. I whispered them in his ear, then licked after them as
he gave in to me.

* * * *

Time has banked the fire that once burned so
brightly between us. It still simmers just below the surface of our
lives and occasionally flares at a word, a touch, a smile, but we
are no longer the hot lovers we were before. When we make love now
it’s a gentle affair, languid and slow, the movements careful like
turning the crumbling pages of an ancient book. Most evenings we
settle for lying close together, Jim’s arms around me, my body
clutched tight against his. There will come a time when one or the
other of us finally lies alone, maybe sooner than we care to think,
and the thought of going on without him terrifies me. I’ve lived
with him for so long now I can’t imagine anything else. So I smooth
over his forgetfulness, these little spells that seem to come more
frequently, and I tell myself I can take care of us both. If ever
the day comes when he wakes beside me and my name doesn’t come to
his lips, when that bewildered look in his eyes doesn’t fade away,
I’ll remember for us both. I won’t let him forget the life we built
together. I won’t let him go.

In the kitchen, I scrape the congealed eggs
into a large bowl and stir them up to keep them fresh. If we were
eating in the breakfast nook like I had planned, I wouldn’t have to
make several trips to deposit everything onto the table, but Jim
chose the dining room and I give him an encouraging smile when I
set the bowl of eggs down in front of him. “Help yourself,” I say
over my shoulder as I head back into the kitchen for coffee that’s
just beginning to perk. I busy myself with buttering toast, then
rescue two overcooked sausages from the stove where I left them.
When I bring the bread and meat out, I notice Jim hasn’t touched
the eggs yet. “Everything okay?” I ask him.

He takes the plate of toast from me with one
hand—the other is under the table, out of sight. I wonder if he
burned himself on the stove earlier while I retrieved the paper or
maybe on the bowl of eggs; that ceramic gets pretty hot. But he
gives me a quick grin and a flash of the boy I fell for peeks out
through the face of the old man I love. “Everything’s fine, Henry.
You worry too much. You always have. Do I smell coffee?”

“Coming right up.” I hurry back to the
kitchen to pour two steaming mugs, with a dash of milk and a
spoonful of sugar in Jim’s because that’s the way he likes it. I
take mine black. As I blow across his mug to cool it off, I wonder
what the rest of the day will bring. Will it turn out all right in
the end? Or will this be one of those bad days, with Jim locked in
the past, unable to follow my conversations because he can’t
remember one moment to the next? Some days he’s a different man,
aged by forgetfulness that borders on something I’m afraid to
admit, much older than me despite the fact I’m five years his
senior. Since the scare at the front door, I’m on guard, suspicious
and cautious and hating myself for not being able to trust him.

Back in the dining room, Jim holds the
newspaper open in front of him, hiding from me. I’m about to ask
him to lower it when I see the single rose on my plate. The flower
isn’t in full bloom yet, but all the thorns have been broken off
and the long stem is ragged at the end, as if plucked in haste.
Already the soft petals that peek through the green have that deep
pink of young, forbidden skin. One of my roses…

My hands begin to tremble and I have to set
the mugs down before I spill the coffee. It’s May already, I should
have remembered—when I close my eyes, we’re both young again,
awkward with sudden desire, each desperately waiting for the other
to make the first move. In the darkness of my memory I recall that
first fumbling kiss and the hot hands holding mine in his lap. The
years between us peel away like the petals of a rose and the day we
met is laid bare, the core around which we have built this life
together. My vision blurs and I have to blink back an old man’s
tears as I finger the barely budding rose. “Jim,” I sigh.

The paper rattles and I know he’s trying to
hide that grin of his from me. When I push down the top of the
newspaper, he smiles as he says, “Of all the anniversaries we
celebrate, you always forget this one.”

“You always remind me,” I point out. I can
tell by the laughter dancing in his pale blue eyes and the promise
in his smile that today is going to turn out to be a good day after
all.

THE END

ABOUT J.M. SNYDER

A multi-published author of gay erotic/romantic
fiction,
J.M. Snyder began writing
boyband slash before turning to self-publishing. She has worked
with several different e-publishers, including Amber Allure Press,
Aspen Mountain Press, eXcessica Publishing, and Torquere Press, and
has short stories published in anthologies by Alyson Books, Aspen
Mountain Press, Cleis Press, eXcessica Publishing, Lethe Press, and
Ravenous Romance. For more information, including excerpts, free
stories, and monthly contests, please visit
http://www.jmsnyder.net
.