How Long Has This Been Going On (80 page)

"I need advice," said Peter, sitting at the kitchen counter.

"Then write Dear Abby," said Lois, pouring his tea.

"I shall advise you," said Elaine, joining Peter. "That's precisely why we obviously contented and self-respecting old lezbies and queens are here in the first place, to make it easier for—"

"I don't know about that Tennessee Williams character on Merrimack Road," said Lois. "Wilbur Cummings or whatever his name is, with his snuffbox and his vapors and his Saturday nights in Manchester. I don't know why that old queen is here. Comes into the store now and again, picking at everything. One of these days—"

"Wilson Enters is he, first off," said Elaine, as Lois and Peter shared a confidential look.
"And
on those pathetic Saturday nights, I expect, he may go as far as to buy a cheese sandwich for some toothsome young chap at the Bon Ton Salon, but—" "Is that how I'll end up?" asked Peter. "Some quaint old fairy? Everyone laughing at me and I don't even know it?"

"No," said Elaine. "Because it's much easier for gays of your generation to accept themselves as they are. You won't have to create an artificial persona to match some ridiculous belief in yourself as something out of..." Elaine shrugged.
"Suddenly Last Summer?"

"Then how come all those gay kids commit suicide? That's the new statistic."

"It isn't new," said Lois, rinsing the odd cup and plate in the sink. "It's just getting mentioned now."

"You'd think parents would..." Elaine began. "Would what? Would rather their children were happy? They always say so. But it's never the children's idea of happiness: It's the parents'. I met quite a parent today, I can tell you. A real Mother of the Year."

"Dressed in black, rides a broomstick, and a house just fell on her sister?" asked Peter.

"No."

"Not mine, obviously."

"Peter wants us to tell him," said Lois, inhaling her spearmint tea, a rare—for her—sensual exercise, "if he should run away."

"The city!" Peter cried.

Elaine said, "Oh, dear."

"I'm ready for it," Peter assured her. "I realized it suddenly last samba."

"But you haven't been graduated from high school yet! Surely you need that to... No. What do you want to be?"

"An MTV announcer."

"It's not his job and it's not his school," said Lois. "It's how does he escape from his piece-of-shit father, who may well kill him with beatings."

"My sister's gay, too."

Lois was startled silent.

Elaine said, "How ever did we get into this?"

"I started hanging around the China Shop," Peter explained. "Because I scoped Lois out as this sympathetic granny, and then—"

"No, I meant, How come we're caught up in the misadventures of a teenager we hardly know?"

Peter looked at her as if she'd asked where babies come from. "Because you're these, like, major-league advisers to a poor scared gay kid with murder for parents."

One of the cats, Zuleika, came running in, worrying a ball of tinfoil.

Then the other cat, The MacQuern, scurried in to intercept the foil and race off with it, Zuleika on his tail.

"Cats are a scream," Peter remarked. "They think they're so fabulous. Just like straights, you know?"

"Why does your father... He really beats you?" Elaine asked.

"Yeah, well, first he gets on my case about some parent thing, like, Your grades stink, or, Why aren't you on the football squad, like, or, What the shit are you dressed up as? So he gets really into it, it's building, and he's shouting and shoving me, and he
really
gets into that, so then he grabs me by the hair and he—"

"Stop," said Elaine. "Parents." She looked at Lois. "Yet he's so calm in the telling of such brutality. I... I don't recall anything like that when I was young. Do you?"

"I'm telling you, it never got mentioned. Brutal families were a big secret then. Like we were."

"Maybe I shouldn't have come out at the age of eleven," said Peter, mock-pensively. "It was a good, bold career move, but it kind of, like,
polarized
the
world.
Still, what choice did I have? One look and you
know
I'm gay. Why should I pretend? I didn't choose it, it chose me."

"So what does he do?" Elaine asked Lois.

"Hey, I love this, with you two making my plans."

"Your sister's gay, too?" Lois asked.

"Yeah, but she's hiding it. Successfully, so far."

"That proves it's genetic," said Elaine.

"Oh sure," Peter agreed. "Even my dog, Pet Shop Boy, is gay. He's got a thing for the Scottie puppy next door. Pet Shop Boy likes 'em young. Chicken meat."

Lois was staring at Peter. She asked Elaine, "You know who he reminds me of?"

Elaine nodded. "Johnny."

"Who's that?" asked Peter. "Some suave stylemeister who's seen it all, huh?"

"He's as fresh as Johnny ever was," Lois pointed out.

"But he has innocence. Johnny was always so knowing."

"Cute?" asked Peter.

"Devastating, actually. A child's sweetness and a man's self-assurance. A Pan, perhaps. So youthful. We called him 'the Kid.' Even now—"

"Where is this dude?"

"Here, as of tomorrow. He and Walt weekend here so often they're almost—" "Walt? Some powder puff of a kept boy, whom I deftly replace with my innate grooviness?"

Lois chuckled. "No one will replace Walt in Johnny's life."

Elaine was thinking. "Is there some way," she asked, "that we can connect Peter to the local gay culture?"

"I
am
the local gay culture," Peter protested. "That's why I need to go to New York."

"They'll only cart you back here," said Lois. "Or whack the law at us for corrupting you. And who'll look after your sister?"

"Oh, she can handle my father. Besides, he likes her." After a moment, he added, "I think they're making it on the sly."

Lois shrugged. Fathers, who knows what they'll do?

"Maybe Peter should go to the police," said Elaine. "Assault is assault, even if it's your father."

"Yeah, the police'll be real receptive to a long-haired kid in a fag tie," said Lois, "swearing a complaint against his father."

"I'm doomed," said Peter.

"We'll bring you over to meet Johnny," said Lois. "Maybe he'll have an idea. Heck knows, he started out just like you.... What's that word for a kid who's smart?"

"'Precocious,'" said Elaine.

"Ha!" said Peter. "Gay boys are
born
precocious. It's in our contracts."

"Where does he get that stuff from?" asked Lois, bemused.

Estella's brother Jose worked in Lois's store one afternoon a week, mostly hauling objects up from the basement and helping Lois load up and transport a buy. Lois liked Jose because he earned his dough with good hard labor and neither put her on with phony humility nor vexed her with brinkmanship Attitude, that let's-see-how-rude-I-can-get act that Lois kept running up against when she and Elaine made their annual New York trip in midsummer. Jose did his job neat and true and impersonal, and that's what counted, especially when he made the occasional delivery within the county. Though Lois's prime constituency was the town trade up from the "South"—Boston, Connecticut, and New York—her shop enjoyed a certain cachet among socially tenacious local women. One could create a pleasurable stir (or even disrupt a bridge-club Monday) with a reference to some piece or other "due in from Miss Lois's wonderful store in Lenapee."

Miss Lois. Miss Elaine. Such delicate locutions lead us to wonder just how Lois and Elaine's fellow citizens saw the pair. Was there a suspicion they were lovers? Perhaps their advanced age and natural dignity (in Lois's case, it was more an energy) protected them. Then there was Elaine's repute as a novelist. True, she was a dangerous one, outspoken. But, in Lenapee, they knew only that she was famous: They didn't know what for. In the end, the two were viewed, perhaps, as the world often views independent women living together, as a tiny nunnery, a place where flesh is hidden and passions suppressed.

Peter Smith's father viewed them as a challenge to his authority: as father and tyrant, lover and king. These two women and their damn-shit interference! So, late that afternoon, he swaggered into the China Shop, planted himself before Lois, and bawled out, "You fucking lady-men are trying to recruit my son!"

Jose, who had been setting up a display of antique baseball bats imprinted with the stars' names (including two Stan Musials, very rare of this kind), went on red alert. But Estella put a hand on his arm as Lois just stood there, calmly staring Mr. Smith down. She snacks on his kind.

Unaccustomed to a total lack of groveling and surrender, Mr. Smith tried to raise the stakes with some physical intimidation. He picked up one of those dear old fans—was this one moire? velvet? Lois was never sure—and began twirling it in the air by its beaded black-string stem. Okay, that's it, and Jose stepped forth—but Lois signaled him back. The town wouldn't think anything of a Latino's getting jailed, but Lois was white, a woman, old (and thus perceived as helpless), and, most important, a proprietor. She held the ace on this deal.

"I want your faggot claws off my family," said Mr. Smith, letting the fan fly to hit the wall and drop.

Lois replied, "Get out of my store. What, you're still here? That's trespassing, and it's my citizen's duty to call the police. Oh. Here's my tea, fresh-poured and steaming hot from my famous China Shop samovar. Let's have a cup as I dial."

And Lois threw the tea into Mr. Smith's face, thinking, Burn in hell, baby.

"It was an accident, obviously," Lois told the police a bit later, as they led Mr. Smith off in handcuffs. "He was throwing the merchandise around and made me skittery all over. After, I tied his hands while he was wriggling around on the floor there. He was
so
out of control, officer," Lois added, thinking, That's cute. That's a cute, helpless-lady kind of touch. Lois the actress.

"That what you saw?" the officer asked Estella.

"Tha's right."

"He's a criminal," Jose put in.

Lois shrugged; and off went the cops with Mr. Smith.

"Recruiting his son?" Lois bit out then.
"He's
doing the recruiting.
Straights
recruit you with their churches and laws and their hatred. Well, the war's on now, I expect." She looked at Estella and Jose. "Anyone who wants to quit, that's fair by me."

"Tha's okay," said Estella. "Nobody else hire us, probably."

"What are Hispanics doing in New Hampshire, anyway?" asked Lois.

"I'm
born
here."

"Me, too," said Jose, flashing a winning smile.

Elaine, just then, was meeting the Kid and Walt's train in Manchester. Oh, it's kisses, exhilaration, and that wonderfully safe feeling we enjoy with oldest, truest friends, the ones who never pick at our raw spots or fail to empathize when we're in straits. There's a fine transaction in these visits: The boys give the girls city excitement, dish and something
doing,
while the girls give the boys a chance to relax.

What elaborate treats the hosts would prepare! And what delight at the unveiling of the arcane gourmet products the guests had brought!—for the only thing Elaine missed about New York was shopping for jars of imported antipasto, unheard-of chutneys, newfangled biscuits in the specialty shops. But I'm going to skip all that, for the history meter is ticking more loudly than ever before and I have many plot strands yet to bind. Time is all, the sole element in life that is absolutely spent. You can make more money or find another love—right?—but you can't reclaim spent time.

Let's cut to late that afternoon, when Lois took the Kid on a drive to New Boston while Elaine and Walt strolled along the mystery paths of the Lenapee woods.

"We had a forest like this in the middle of Gotburg," Walt noted. "It seemed so big and ferocious, but you know what? Once I was fifteen years old, I could tell it was a tidy little place. On an autumn day, you could stand in the middle and see clear to all the edges of it."

"Everything loses power as we age," said Elaine. "Adults seem less wise, even ridiculous. Authority is exposed as corrupt. By my age, what's left that's awesome?"

"Destiny. You know why? Because the older you get, the more you suspect that we're all part of some intense program. We influence each other without even knowing it. We can change the course of a life!"

"Tell me what's happening in New York. How are the men adjusting sexually to the Age of High Risk, pray?"

Walt shook his head. "It's like you know ten people. One or two are playing it extra-safe. Another three or four think safe sex means Don't touch anyone over twenty-nine."

"No!"

"Two more fuck all over the place, with a condom if you insist. The rest of them act as if there were no AIDS at all."

"I can't—"

"One guy told me that his new boy friend is making him fuck without protection in order to make a political statement."

"Oh, Walt!"

"So we herd into Central Park, and there's three girls from
City of Angels
with pom-poms, no less, and, I don't know, Woody Allen and so forth. On one of those diamonds on the Park's west side, near about Sixty-third Street. Been there since Pieter Stuyvesant, for all I know. So we're in our bleachers watching the
City of Angels
pom-pom girls revive those ridiculous high-school cheers, and the other team's in
their
bleachers watching their wives recalling
their
pep cheers. And it's the gays versus the cops at
baseball,
do you believe it?"

"Who won?"

"Ah, Lois, always striking at the heart of the thing. Doesn't the very act of gays and cops meeting on the sporting field impress you? Isn't it a relief from what we knew?"

"Any girls on our side?"

"The meanest second baseman I ever saw. She was scoring them out with bow and arrow."

Lois chuckled.

"We lost, but 16-14."

"Respectable," said Lois, braking as a Volkswagen ran a red light. "Any feeling that some air had been cleared with this game? I recall when cops didn't think we were human."