How Long Has This Been Going On (27 page)

"You've got a lot on your mind," said Tom in a leisurely manner. "So tell me, Luke. Blurt it out to me."

"What are you going to do when I tell you?"

Tom smiled. "Gamble and see."

"I meant it about staying behind with you."

"'Staying
behind
'? How do you think that makes me feel? 'Staying
behind'!"

Luke tried another tack. "Golly, how can I be honest with you when you act so insecure?"

"Well, who's
asking
you to be honest?"

Luke sitting up, leaning against the wall. Tom across from him, lying supine, hands behind his head as the darkness falls on them.

Luke said, "My father told me he built this place so I would always have a refuge. Even from him, he said. From anyone. It's my own place, and it's where I am honest whether anybody asks me or not."

Tom made a gun of his hand and shot Luke, blowing off the smoke. "Tom?"

Tom was silent.

"Tom, I have to do this."

"Well, you
don't,
in point of fact."

"I've been in love with you my entire life."

"Yeah, and now you said it."

The silence must have lasted six or seven minutes.

"That's all?" Luke finally asked.

"Well... yeah. I guess if I'm smooth and full and handsome—whatever that means—then it's no big surprise. I never thought of it that way myself."

"I think you have."

Tom looked keenly at Luke. "Yeah?"

"That's right. It takes two to lindy."

"What do you mean, buddy?" said Tom, sitting up. "Well, you just tell me, now."

"Not as much as me, I admit. But there's—"

"Nothing.
There's
nothing.
You want to turn into a freak,
fine
—don't try to sneak me in there with you! Anyway, you're all set to move out of town, so what do you even—"

"Tom! I've been
saying
I'll stay with you if you—"

"Stay
behind
with me, like the kiss of death! I heard you say that! Well, you don't have to stay behind, pal. I'm letting you off, all right? You and Chris, you go off to your future lives. You leave me alone, and I mean it, anyhow. No one's going to be my friend out of charity!"

Another pause. A short one. Luke ended it by jumping up, scrambling down the ladder, and slamming the door on his way inside.

"Faggot," said Tom, contentedly.

* * *

They actually started avoiding each other. Chris shamed them into shaking hands, but Tom stopped coming around to visit; and in winter, as usual, the two boys separated as lanky Tom went out for basketball and the heavier Luke favored wrestling. Further to distance himself from Luke and Chris, Tom turned Romeo, entrancing the available belles by means of the study date, usually in the library, followed by a delicious walk home, idling along the avenues and being sure to be seen.

"I know why he's mad," Luke told Chris. "And okay, he's got a right, I guess. But how can he break us up after all those years?"

"We're breaking up anyway, come June. He thinks
we're
the culprits."

They were walking home from school on a February afternoon, one of those heartlessly gray days that the northern Midwest specializes in, when it seems as if every tree in the world is dead and birds haven't flown south but become extinct.

"How come we never thought this would happen?" Chris asked. "Pals forever? What did we expect, to all go away to school and then... what? Come back to Scandihoovia? This is where you grow up. It isn't where you live."

"Our forefathers did."

"That's what forefathers are for," said Chris.

They walked on for a bit in silence. Then precocious Chris sighed, "Moscow, Moscow,"
Three Sisters—
style.

"I meant it about staying here with him, you know," said Luke. "I'm not like you—I don't need to break out anywhere and become... some new version of myself."

"You don't want to learn what else there is in the world? This place won't look half so interesting after Dartmouth."

"I could skip college. Except my parents would be awfully disappointed. Or let's just say my father would, and I don't even know why. If he's so hot dog about college, why doesn't
he
go?"

Walking home from school and talking things over. Once, the three friends would have made this trip, Walt and Dexter tailing them, sometimes openly and sometimes hiding behind trees like footpads. Now, of course, Tom had broken away, and Walt, unable to shadow this new dating Tom, was off on other adventures, perhaps forging relationships with people of his own age.

"Chris, what if I didn't go to college?" Luke asked her. "What would become of me?"

"How do I know, on a street in Minnesota?" She's a little fed up.

"Chris Predicts?"

She shook her head. "Not enough to go on. And if you're asking, Do I see you and Tom in a little white house?, that would be pushing it."

Luke nodded. "Because what I want is what nobody gets?"

"Because Tom can't handle it. You're opening him like a can of beans. He doesn't want to be opened."

Connie Dawson stalked by, turned to them—without stopping—and said, "Sven Bjornson is a gross juvenile delinquent who thinks the whole world is sex!" Without missing a step, she faced front and marched on.

"Do you think I'm right about him?" Luke asked Chris. "Is he... like me?"

"Connie!"
Sven called out from behind them. Muttering a curse or two, he came abreast of Luke and Chris.

"Look, what'd I do?" he asked them.

"We have no idea, ectu'lly," said Chris in her Noel Coward voice.

"I put my hand down her bra. Big deal!"

"In this weather?" asked Chris.

"No, in the gym. No one was there, and I was mostly joking, anyway."

"Don't let us keep you," said Chris dryly. Now she was Eve Arden.

"Connie!"
Sven shouted. And off he ran.

"You didn't answer my question," said Luke as they turned into Wild Rice Street. "About Tom."

"I don't know about Tom. I don't know what Tom knows."

"How could... Look, you know what you're attracted to, don't you? You may pretend it isn't true, but inside you, you'd know. It's factological."

Chris shrugged—not an easy feat when bundled against a Gotburg winter.

"For instance," Luke pursued, "are
you
confused?"

"No, I've always known what I wanted."

"See?"

She was thinking, These two boys of mine are so beautiful, and so sweet, and so wondrous, and no one will ever know them as I have known them, for I got to them when they were pure and vulnerable and their insides were showing. No one will see them up close as that for the rest of their lives.

They had reached number 128, the Lundquists'. Chris went inside, and Luke trudged on home, looking up at Tom's room as he passed. It was no more than a glance, I assure you.

* * *

By March the snow was piled up so densely that a foreigner—as natives of this part of the state term outlanders—would have thought the weatherman must be reporting "winter for the rest of your life." These were the days on which Walt and Dexter would turn stone-still during Walt's consumption of Cream of Wheat when the radio turned to the question of whether or not the schools would be open.

Gotburg had only two schools, Minnewaska Science and Grammar and Sawtooth High; on snow days they functioned as a unit. When one closed, the other closed; and Walt's mother (Tom's Aunt Frelinda, as it happens) would undergo a mild heart attack and Walt and Dexter would don their snow clothes. (Dexter had a woolen doggy coat with his name sewn into it surrounded by fruits, the gift of an elderly widowed Uhlisson aunt with little to do but collect pension checks and make things.) Walt and Dexter would then race outside to build a fort and stockpile ice balls. In years past, Tom, Luke, and Chris would have turned up for a snow fight, the two Uhlisson boys against Luke and Chris, with all, at length, repairing to Luke's house for grilled-cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate with marshmallows floating.

This year, Walt and Dexter were on their own, and Walt was—let me tell you—pretty chagrined. What a relief when April melted the earth down to ordinary again and everyone came out to play. But Tom was still keeping his distance from Luke.

This was the month of college acceptances. For our folk, it was less acceptances than replies, for Bennington turned Chris down and Dartmouth rejected Luke. Nevertheless, they got packages from, respectively, N.Y.U. and Berkeley, and that's where their future was going to take them.

Tom didn't get in anywhere, and when he told his parents, they said, "Oh." They were off to Redwood Falls for a dynastic interaction with Tom's mother's relatives, and planned to make it an overnight.

"Do your homework," they said as they left.

Sure. As if that were the difference between he does or he doesn't do it. After twelve years of school he needs them to say Do your homework. Sure.

He could drop out of school tomorrow; what difference would it make? He had his job lined up, starting the first Monday in July, as a carpenter's assistant, minimum wage plus ten bucks bonus every week. He'd commute to Caledon, two towns over, with Mr. Kjellin, who ran a chain of hardware stores and a lumber yard. In the thrifty Swedish tradition, Mr. Kjellin would be paid off in work time, one hour per week of "S and H"—sawing and hauling—at the yard, to be sustained every Monday afternoon.

Seventeen years old and I'm in chains, Tom thought. I'm all given over. I'm accounted for. Really, I'm finished for life. Get the church stone ready: Here Lies Tom.

Now I know why so many young men get into trouble and end up in the pokey. They're just trying to bust out. They don't want to hurt anybody—they're just shaking their chains.

Tom has gotten into his parents' liquor locker and he's getting—as his coevals like to put it—"swacked." What an elegant word for teenage boys puking their guts out around eleven
P.M
. of a party, getting clear of the living room just in time.

"I'm
swacked,"
Tom told Luke on the phone. "Come on over."

It was late on a Saturday night. Luke hadn't heard a word out of Tom in quite some while, but Tom sounded real bad, a depression masked in a good-time mouth.

So Luke went over and took the bottle away from Tom and said maybe he should eat something.

"No," said Tom, sloshing around. "Because... No..."

"Shit, Tom, you're so pissed you can't stand!"

"So what about a cheese sandwich?" said Tom. "That's eating. Okay? On... toast."

"First, sit down, will you?"

Tom sat at the Formica-topped, L-shaped kitchen counter—the Uhlissons couldn't send their son to college but their house boasted all the trendy renovations—as Luke rustled up the grub.

"Not
well-done
toast," said Tom. "
Medium
toast."

"Okay, Tom."

"Funny you came over when I called, after how tough I've been. You must be some real great guy."

"Mustard, Tom?"

"Butter."

"Do you want lettuce? Tomato?"

"I want you."

Tom had gotten up and was weaving again.

"I want you to tell me it's all right, what I did."

Luke, supporting Tom, got him back on his stool at the counter.

"Just stay there," Luke told him.

"No, tell me it's okay," said Tom, holding Luke's arm. "I've been real wrong to you, cutting you off like that. Tom is a mean son of a bitch."

Luke paused, then turned to Tom. "You know," Luke said, "telling me this doesn't count if you're drunk. Because you don't know what you're saying and tomorrow you'll have forgotten it."

Luke poured hot water over the latest suburban miracle—freeze-dried coffee chips—and put a cup of it in front of Tom.

"Come on, Tom, sober up."

Tom was humming "See You in September," a ballad from 1962 that became a hit single in an up-tempo version by a group called the Happenings in the summer of 1966. It was popular all over the country, but for some reason it especially swept the Midwest, where it became the number every band played at proms when the chaperons announced the Last Slow Dance. Tom and Luke had danced it with Chris at their Junior Prom, the three of them bent to each other, head to head, reckless of everyone; and, as all the girls said later, that was when romance came to Gotburg.

Tom was humming and Luke was working on the sandwich. Occasionally Tom tried filling in the words, though he was almost as approximate as Walt at balladeering. But Tom did get the last line right. "Will I see you in September?" it runs, "or lose you to a summer love?"

Luke, at the counter, put down the knife and stood right there, his back to Tom; Luke was shaking, trying to regain his composure. He tried thinking of the three of them dancing to that song at the prom, the boys in their rented black-and-whites and Chris in that snazzy red thing she was so proud of. He remembered how smoothly they danced, even if a couple of three should have been awkward; and how they made that moment theirs alone, their eyes shut and dreaming as they touched brows.

Luke turned back to Tom, who had dozed off, his head resting on folded arms. Or no: because he suddenly said, "Where's my cheese sandwich, Luke?"

Tom looked up. His dark hair, long in front, had tumbled into his eyes. He brushed it back and smiled craftily.

"You ate my sandwich," he said. "Right?"

Luke, stricken with love for his friend—aching, passionate, terrified, guilty, best-friend-hungry love—thought that no one he knew of made so imposing a picture as Tom. The colors of him—the blank skin and black hair. The sharp angles—all jutting out when he ran for a pass; or tilted, surprised, when he considered what you said. No one equaled Tom, not even Bill Oxley, who had been graduated the previous year and whom

Tom had watched grow from a quiet, serious youth into a rambunctious football star with the torso of Zeus. Not even Garrett Oleson, a tight-assed, slit-eyed icon who liked to look as if he'd been caught doing something wicked. Not even Clint Walker.