Almost Like Being in Love (29 page)

“Does too!” she glowered back. As soon as it became apparent that the Lincoln-Douglas debates were about to break out in the middle of Route 67, Charleen reached into Noah’s backpack for the pocket Webster’s 'her Auntie Mame present to him on his tenth birthday) and made him look up “promotes” and “alcoholism.”

“Go ahead,” she ordered, crossing her arms the way grown-ups always do when they know they’ve already won. Guessing he was trapped but convinced he could find a way out anyway, Noah flipped through the onionskin pages slowly.

“A-L-C-H—,” he mumbled, stalling for time.

“A-L-C-O and you know it,” she cut in sharply. Noah grimaced. Caught in the act. When he found what he was looking for, there was a long silence as his forehead got all crinkly under the brunet bangs. Finally he closed the book and handed it back to Charleen.

“Definitely uncool,” he decided.

So for the next twelve miles, we all sang “100 Bottles of Sprite on the Wall.”

Questions You’ve Always Wanted Answers To

Another Noah concoction. According to the junior Kessler rule book,

“You pick a thing that even scientists can’t figure out and then you ask the person on your clockwise. But nothing that has formulas in it.”

Charleen to Clayton
: Since there’s no air on the moon, would bubblewrap still pop there? Answer: Yeah, but you’d have to catch it first. Don’t forget the gravity thing.

Clayton to Craig
: If a brontosaurus couldn’t run, how did it protect itself against a T. rex? Answer: With its tail. Sort of like a prehistoric inside-the-park homer.

Craig to Noah
: When the Wicked Witch of the West was hanging around her castle in the middle of the night without anybody to scare, how did she spend her time? Answer: She wore a black nightgown and she ate bowls of Cap’n Crunch, but without milk so her mouth wouldn’t melt.

Noah to Charleen
: Do wet dreams hurt? Answer: That’s none of my business. Pick another question.

Noah to Charleen (Take Two):
Are you going to kiss my dad? Answer: Wet dreams don’t hurt. So I’m told.

Geography

Noah already had dibs on Xenia, Ohio, and Xanithi, Greece, and Xigaze, China—so this one never lasted very long.

Chip’s Challenge

This is where Noah usually turned on my laptop and competed with Charleen for Monopoly money. (He still wouldn’t tell her the secret to level 105, even when she offered to buy him off with a Dairy Queen.

“The taste of defeat is bitter, isn’t it?” he smirked, quoting Lex Luthor. “Oh, knock it off,” snapped Charleen.( But the often combustible contest at least permitted the adults in the front seat to take a breather.

“Mamas and the Papas okay with you?” asked Clayton absently, turning up the volume on WCKM. I nodded. It was just as well that he was still thinking about threepenny nails, because I had a few issues of my own to deal with. So we held hands and chased down our separate thoughts while Cass Elliott sang “Dream a Little Dream of Me” all the way up the Mohawk River.

Nobody listens to his heart the way Travis does. Which means only one
thing: if he’s got my address, he’s on his way. He wouldn’t call first in a million
years. That’s not his style. It’d spoil the whole odyssey.

I wonder if he still has the three laughs. I wonder if the same places on his
body stayed ticklish. I wonder if he remembers everything I remember.

This is crazy. I have a lover who can read me like a blueprint. We’ve
shared the best and worst parts of our lives with each other. Besides, I’m going
to be in enough hot water with him when he finds out I may be running for
office. Which I’m probably not, but it’s still out there anyway.

Travis, I could never stop loving you. Please stay away.

Utica’s first baseman was waiting for us on the porch, but the hugs had to be quiet ones because Noah was already sound asleep. So Jody and his biceps reached into the backseat and gently lifted his son out of Charleen’s arms.

“Hey,” he whispered, almost shyly.

“Hi,” she whispered in return. Instinctively, their fingers brushed and her eyes met his—but for once they stayed that way. 'Given what she’d paid for the dress, it wasn’t courage as much as economic necessity.(

Neither of them seemed to be in much of a hurry to break the mood, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear they were falling in love.

There was a song about that once.

The Ballgame

featuring Jody

Saturday. Mustard-and-relish time. And this was the place for it.

Schulyer Park sits on the banks of the Mohawk River underneath a sky that couldn’t possibly be any bluer unless it were hanging over Wrigley Field. Built eight months before Pearl Harbor, it seats only five thousand people—a study in intimacy that allows the fan an up-close opportunity to examine the sweat, the grit, and the players’ asses.

“Give me the goddamned binoculars,” I snapped at Charleen, yanking them back and nearly strangling her in the process. “You’ve had them long enough.” There was a brief but savage tug-of-war before she relented.

“Why is it that you get them for three minutes and I’m barely permitted a fleeting instant?” she demanded, searching her neck for rope burns.

“Because I’m a boy and you’re not,” I taunted. “Learn to live with it.” To my left, Noah leaned in to us from a comfortable perch on Clayton’s lap and gave us one last chance to behave ourselves.

“Craig,” he warned, “if you don’t let Charleen have a turn, you’re getting a time-out.” The sneer died on my lips. There’s nothing worse than rebuke-by-11-year-old. So I scrunched down in my seat and returned the binoculars meekly. Who needed a time-out?

Not that it really mattered. My sonar could pick up a hunky guy in a snug jockstrap even if I had no retinas at all. By the end of the second inning, my law partner and I had already tallied the final score: the Blue Sox may have owned the more impressive stats, but the Bandits were infinitely more fuckable.

“Love the uniform numbers on their pants,” I muttered quietly.

“Yes,” she whispered back. “Too bad they’re not in Braille.” I couldn’t help marveling at her aesthetic integrity. We really were two halves of the same nickel.

“Oh, Charleen,” I breathed with mock sincerity. “If only you were a guy.”

“Oh, Craig,” she shot back, scrutinizing a particularly tasty left-fielder through the lenses, “if only you were one too.” Then Jody stepped into the batter’s box, and the binocs were off-limits to everybody but Noah.

And Charleen.

Nobody knew for certain exactly what had transpired the night before, but after we’d put the kid to bed and settled into our rooms, she and Jody had disappeared for what was supposed to have been a twentyminute walk to Pixley Park and back. They didn’t get home until 2:15 in the morning. On a game day! By then, Clayton was out like a light, Noah was lost to Dreamland, and I was pacing the floor in an Eleanor Roosevelt T-shirt and blue gym shorts.

“Do you know what time it is?” I hissed, corralling her in the darkened hallway after Jody had gone to bed. “I was worried.” Presumably on her way to the bathroom but heading into a linen closet instead, Charleen was wearing a $350 Gucci negligee and a distracted half-smile that was either (a) bewitched, (b) bothered, (c) bewildered, or (d) stoned.

“What?” she mumbled, somewhat dazed and comprehending absolutely nothing.

“Did he kiss you?”

“Who?” she asked blankly. Recognizing a dead end when I saw one, I opted for a more fundamental approach.

“The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,” I advised her, playing a hunch. Charleen leaned against the door frame and nodded wistfully.

“I know,” she sighed.

Yep. He’d kissed her.

“Kessler, you suck!” cried an outraged fan directly behind us. In seconds, Noah’s dukes were up and he’d already begun scrambling over Clayton’s shoulders, tendrils of smoke shooting out of his nostrils.

“Easy, sport,” said my boyfriend, restraining him. “If your dad can roll with the punches, you can too.” Down on the field, even the Blue Sox couldn’t believe what they’d just seen. With a 2-and-2 count, Jody had slugged a long fly ball to deep right that had bounced off the wall and should have been a routine double. Instead, Troy’s improbably miniature 5-foot-2 shortstop had corkscrewed himself three feet into the air to catch the relay from the center fielder single-handedly. Holy shit! What just happened here? Trapped between the bags, Jody had engaged in a back-and-forth battle of wits with the Troy leprechaun for almost half a minute—until he miscalculated by sliding headfirst into second base, a hair too late. Tagged on the ass. Sorry, Charlie. No runs, no hits, inning over. And as I watched the other Bandits pounce on their diminutive hero back in the dugout, I was nailed by one of the most illogical metaphors I’d ever owned up to: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”

It was a Travis moment.

My whole life I’ve tried to remember the things he taught me. ot just about
Ethel Merman and the Japanese American internment, but about finding the
truth in everything you touch. Being Travis was a full-time job, yet that never
kept him from teaching me how to be Craig.

Romance isn’t just about roses or killing dragons or sailing a kayak around
the world. It’s also about chocolate chip cookies and sharing The Grateful
Dead and James Taylor with me in the middle of the night, and believing me
when I say that you could be bigger than both of them put together, and not
making fun of me for straightening out my french fries or pointing my
shoelaces in the same direction, and letting me pout when I don’t get my own
way, and pretending that if I play ‚Flower Drum Song‛ one more time you
won’t throw me and the record out the window.

Maybe he just wants to catch up on the old days. Maybe he’s in a jam and
he needs my help. Maybe I’m full of shit and know it. There can only be one
reason he’s tracking me down after twenty years: he wants to find Brigadoon
again. But this time for keeps.

I’m in big trouble.

The Barbecue at Jody’s

starring all of us

(roles assigned by Noah)

1. Dad and Craig get to buy the ribs and chicken and Tater Tots
and corn and Fritos and Milky Ways but no salad or anything that
has green in it, especially any kind of sprouts.

Ever watch two men standing in front of a poultry case trying to figure out the difference between Best of Fryer and Tender Slivers? It’s scary. At least Jody has an excuse. He’s straight.

We cheated a little on Noah’s list—somehow broccoli made its way into our shopping cart. But first we hid it in an empty Gummi Bears box so we could sneak it past the kid. (It didn’t work.(

2. Charleen gets to be in charge of tablecloths and napkins and
plates and forks and spoons.

“Did you ever hear of gender stereotyping?” she groaned, searching through the kitchen drawers for silverware.

“Nope,” rebutted Noah, tailing her closely to make sure she was following orders. “Should

I look it up?”

“Would you?”

3. Clayton gets to light the grill and cook everything.

Starting the fire took six seconds. This left half an hour free before Jody and I got back with what we hoped would turn into a meal. But Noah had Clayton’s downtime figured out too. “You have to throw a football with me while we’re waiting,” insisted our little Mussolini. “It’s hidden in the rules.”

4. I get to fill up the glasses with Snapple, so tell me what flavor
you want.

Once the ribs were on the grill, Noah circled the patio with a small pad and a ballpoint pen, taking our orders quite professionally. I chose lemonade, Charleen picked Orange Crush, Jody went for iced tea, and Clayton decided on grape. At least, we thought we did.

“This tastes like strawberry kiwi,” I observed suspiciously, lowering my glass.

“So does mine,” concurred Charleen. And Jody. And Clay.

“It is,” replied Noah with a shrug. “That’s all we had. But wasn’t it fun pretending I was a waiter?”

Dinner reminded me of a kid’s game we used to play called Telephone: I told Charleen that one of her less savory ex-boyfriends was Clayton’s loan officer at the bank, Charleen told Jody that Clayton had just bought three hundred acres of land by Saratoga Lake, Jody told Clayton that he’d once spent two summers building houses in Schenectady, Clayton told Noah that there’s more kinds of concrete than Charm Pops, and Noah told Charleen that Yoda didn’t have a penis.

family
\ 'fam-(?)-lē\ n, pl -
lies
[ME familie, fr. L familia]
1 a
: a group of people united by love.

‚We make families of our own,‛ Travis whispered in my arms on the last
night we spent together. ‚It starts with you and me and then it spreads. And
whatever happens, there’ll always be a part of me that’s part of you. No
matter what.‛

Clayton. Jody. Noah. Charleen. Travis gave them to me.

The Swings

starring Noah and Craig

Jody’s got a backyard built for kids: jungle gyms, a log cabin, two treehouses, and a fort. Grown-ups are permitted by invitation only, but Noah had issued me an open-ended visa with the following stipulations: he gets to sit on the swing and I get to push.

“What kind of a wimp
are
you?” he asked irritably, sailing up toward the trees. “Why didn’t you just tell the Democrat people yes?” As my double-0 operative, he claims his middle name is Omerta '“It means ‘code of silence,’ Craig,” he’d explained patiently(, but you could practically read