The Weekend: A Novel (15 page)

Authors: Peter Cameron

Tags: #Gay & Lesbian, #Literature & Fiction, #Fiction, #Gay, #Romance, #Literary, #United States, #Gay Romance, #Genre Fiction, #Lgbt, #Gay Fiction, #Literary Fiction

BOOK: The Weekend: A Novel

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“I hate that worst of all,” said Robert. “I hate when someone else tells you what’s happening inside yourself.”

“I’m sorry,” said Lyle. “You’re right. If you say you’re miserable, then you are. And I am miserable you are miserable, because I have made you miserable, and that was never my intention. Do you believe that?”

“Yes,” said Robert.

“Then can’t we go back? And go to bed?” Lyle reached out and touched Robert’s white shoulder.

“I’m not going back there,” said Robert. He raised his shoulder, slightly, so that Lyle’s hand had to either grip it or fall off. It fell off.

“What do you mean?” Lyle asked.

“I mean I’m not going back to their house. I think they’re awful people—Marian especially. If you think I’m going back there, you’re crazy.”

“Then where are you going?”

“I’m going home,” said Robert.

“And how are you getting there?”

“I’ll walk to the train station.”

“The train station is miles from here. And I doubt very much the trains run this late.”

“I have no problem walking ten miles. And I have no problem waiting for a train. I’d much rather do that than go back to the house.”

“Robert,” said Lyle, “don’t be silly. I’m sorry if they—or I—upset you. But you can’t just leave in the middle of the night. It isn’t done. Come back to the house, and if you still want to leave in the morning we’ll make some excuse and leave together. I promise.”

“No,” said Robert. “I’m leaving now. Thank you for being honest with me.” He turned and walked into the dark woods purposefully, as if a trail were clearly marked to the railroad station.

Lyle tried to make himself call out, or follow, but did neither. He felt drunk and exhausted. After a moment he did call Robert’s name, but there was no answer. He walked a ways into the woods, trying to listen for Robert’s footsteps. He thought he could hear them, but they sounded far away, and when he began to walk toward them they were obscured by his own commotion. He tried to walk more quickly. Suddenly someone swung a bat into his face. He thought he heard himself cry out before he felt the blow. He stood in the dark for a moment, stunned. Then he realized he had walked into a tree. He reached up to find his glasses were broken and what felt like blood on his nose and lips. Stop, he thought. He stood with one hand on his face and one hand touching the tree. He was panting, he realized, and sobbing, his breath coming in strange shaking gasps. He kept thinking: Stop, just stop. It was all he could think.

LAURA PONTI HAD DRIVEN quite a ways before she realized she had no idea where she was going. She was driving without direction, just driving, concentrating on keeping the car on the road, following the bright tunnel of her headlights. It was partly because she was drunk, and partly because she didn’t know the roads at all well, but nevertheless, she was lost.

The road was deserted of both houses and traffic; trees crowded up along either side and touched branches overhead. There are roads that go toward, and roads that go away from, and Laura had the feeling this road was the latter. So she pulled over, and as soon as she had stopped the car, she felt much less panicked: at least she was not getting more lost. I’ll just sit here a while, she thought, and then I’ll try to retrace my route. If I can find my way back to the
Kerrs’ I can find my way home. She tried to recollect how she had driven from her house to the Kerrs’, but that trip seemed ages ago, and thinking of her house made her think of Nina, a thought she had kept successfully submerged all evening—parties were good for that kind of thing—but now that she was alone in the dark, the thought of Nina resurfaced like some buoyant, ugly fish, and she felt an awful weariness that, combined with her drunkenness, made her want to close her eyes and sleep. She turned off the engine and the lights, and watched their illumination wither. She closed her eyes.

Of course Nina was right: she was a pathetic and foolish woman. That was one of the hardest things about having a daughter, even an absent, distant daughter, like Nina: they saw through you. Of course she saw through Nina, too. But somehow all that insight didn’t add up to anything. It only served to alienate them.

She opened her eyes. She was about to start the car and turn around when she saw a figure walking down the road along the white stripe. She turned the headlights on and doused it with light. It was the boy from the dinner party: Robert. He stopped walking and covered his eyes with his hands. He looked like a child, standing in the middle of the road like that, shielding his eyes. Laura turned off her lights and opened the car door. “Robert?” she called.

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s me,” she said, “Laura Ponti. What are you doing?”

“Walking,” he said.

“Well, apparently. Where to? Could I offer you a ride?”

He approached the car and knelt down beside it. “I was going to the train station,” he said. “I need to go back to the city.”

“Now? Whatever for? What’s happened?”

“I just decided to go back. I didn’t want to stay there anymore.”

“I can’t say I blame you,” said Laura. “Well, why don’t you get in, and I’ll see if I can find the train station. I doubt I can get any more lost. How long have you been walking?”

“About fifteen minutes,” said Robert. “Mostly in the woods, though. I just came out on the road up there.” He crossed in front of the car and stood beside the passenger door.

“Well, get in. You’ve got to reach inside to open the door. That’s it. I was planning to turn around, but what do you think?”

“Yes,” said Robert. “I’d turn around.”

Laura started the car and made a U-turn. When they had driven a little ways she said, “So you had a lovers’ quarrel?”

“Yes,” said Robert. “I suppose you could call it that.”

“And you stormed off into the woods. Good for you! I had trouble understanding what you were doing with Lyle Wyatt.”

“I like Lyle,” said Robert. “I just don’t think he’s ready to get involved with anyone at the moment.”

“That’s nonsense,” said Laura. “One is always ready to fall in love. It isn’t something you have to train for.”

“His lover died a year ago.”

“If love is meant to happen, it happens. Not even mourning interferes. Personally, I’ve always found mourning a bit of an aphrodisiac.”

Robert did not respond to this comment.

“I’m sorry. That was in poor taste,” said Laura. “I only meant to say that, well, there is no excuse for not falling in love. But, nevertheless, it is disappointing when it fizzles.”

“Yes,” said Robert. “It is.”

“And it’s worst when you’re young. You have no perspective.”

“I have my own perspective,” said Robert.

“Of course you do. How smug of me.”

They drove for a while, passing nothing but trees. Laura slowed
as they approached a crossroads. An amber blinking light was suspended on a sloping wire above the intersection. “Well,” she said. “What do you think? Does any of this look familiar?”

“No,” said Robert.

“Let’s turn, then,” said Laura. “When in doubt, turn.”

Lyle stood for a while, trying to orient himself. He listened for the river, but heard only the rustling, slightly ornery sounds of the forest. He put his arms out in front of him, and began walking in the direction that seemed the least dark. He walked tentatively, anticipating with his fingertips the awful things in front of him.

Eventually the darkness ahead began to appear less dense, and he was able to discern the tree trunks before he touched them. And then the trees were gone and he was standing in a clearing, and there was John’s wall, curved across the ground in front of him, and the river, a sort of agitated darkness, to one side.

His relief at no longer being lost was almost debilitating. He walked over to the wall and sat down on the matted grass inside one of its curves. He felt a little as if he had fainted, as if in the moments he had been absent the world had changed and left him behind. He knew that the house was on the other side of the fir trees, at the top of the lawn, but he did not want to return to it. How could he explain what had happened? What
had
happened? Robert had run away. Lyle felt sure that Robert could take care of himself. He wouldn’t walk into trees. He would sidle between them. Lyle touched his face again and studied the blood on his fingers. He hadn’t taken care of Robert. He could not take care of himself. Ever since Tony died. Tony had not taken care of him, but Tony’s life set next to his had contained him somehow, had given his life form and function. But now his life spilled
messily around him into the world. He was out of control without Tony. And Tony was dead.

A scarlet fluorescent glow materialized into the letters DINER.

“Why don’t we stop here and ask directions? And get a cup of coffee, too,” suggested Laura. “Real coffee.”

“That sounds good,” said Robert.

She pulled into the gravelly lot and parked beside several other cars. The diner was long and cylindrical, pushed up against a flight of concrete steps. They climbed these and entered. A row of booths on either side of the door was separated by a narrow aisle from the counter. They sat in a booth farthest from the door. A waitress approached with a pot of coffee and two mugs.

“Coffee?” she asked, holding the pot aloft.

“Please,” said Laura.

The waitress placed the mugs on the table in front them and filled them. “Would you like to see menus?” she asked.

“I think not,” said Laura.

“Pie?”

“Would you like some pie?” Laura asked Robert. “What kind do you have?”

“Peach, blueberry, and strawberry-rhubarb.”

“I’ll have blueberry,” said Robert.

“And I’ll try the strawberry-rhubarb,” said Laura.

The waitress went in search of pie.

Laura sipped her coffee and made a face.

“We forgot to ask directions,” said Robert.

“Yes,” said Laura. “I was distracted by the pie. How nice to eat pie in the middle of the night. I adore pie,” she added, as if her enthusiasm needed explanation.

“So do I,” said Robert. “I hope it’s good.”

“I have a feeling it will be,” said Laura. “Bad coffee and good pie. So what did you and Lyle argue about?”

“Oh,” said Robert, “it was stupid.”

“No doubt,” said Laura. “But what?”

“I had heard—overheard—Marian saying that I was wrong for Lyle. That we wouldn’t last. So I asked Lyle what he thought.”

“And what did he say?”

“At first he wouldn’t answer, but then, when I pressed him, he agreed with her.”

“You shouldn’t have pressed him.”

“Why not? I wanted to know.”

“Yes, but you see, if you hadn’t pressed him, you wouldn’t have had that conversation, and you’d still be together, and by the time you did have that conversation—if you were foolish enough to broach it again—his answer might have been very different. Never press someone for an answer you may not want to hear.”

“I thought he would answer differently. At least I hoped he might.”

“Keep your hope to yourself. People feel very intimidated by hope. Especially old people like Lyle and me. Besides, hope can be awfully boring.”

“So you think I was wrong?”

“Wrong? I don’t think it’s a question of right and wrong, really. You obviously did what you had to do. So it was the right thing, I suppose. But don’t blame Lyle. You’ve no one to blame but yourself.”

The waitress appeared with their pie. She had also brought the pot of coffee with her.

“I shall never get to sleep now,” said Laura, as she accepted a
refill. “We need directions to the train station,” she said to the waitress.

“What train station?” asked the waitress.

“The nearest train station. To take a train to New York,” said Robert.

“It’s across the river,” said the waitress. “In Hudson. Turn right and take this road all the way down to the river. Turn left and go about ten miles, till you come to the bridge. Across the bridge is Hudson.”

“Ten miles! Are you sure there isn’t a train station closer?” asked Laura.

“Yes,” said the waitress. She withdrew.

“Is that where you got off the train?” asked Laura.

“No,” said Robert.

“We must be more lost than we imagined.”

As Lyle walked up the lawn the back door opened and John appeared, bouncing a pool of flashlight around his feet. “Lyle?” he said.

“Yes,” said Lyle. “Where are you going?”

“I thought I heard some deer. I wanted to make sure they weren’t in the garden. Where’s Robert?”

“He’s—he’s gone back to the house.”

“Oh,” said John. “I didn’t see him.”

“He probably snuck in. I told him to be quiet. I thought you’d be asleep.”

“Marian is,” said John. “She has a headache. I’m sorry about the thing with the grape scissors.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” said Lyle. “It was nobody’s fault.”

“It was rude of Marian, I thought,” said John.

“No,” said Lyle. “I don’t think she meant to be rude. She meant to be polite. I was just looking at your wall. It looks even better at night.”

“I was thinking to build something else,” said John.

“What?”

“I don’t know.” He pointed the flashlight up into the sky, casting a pale circle of light against the stars. “Maybe something with wood that’s tall. A sort of tower of sticks.”

“That sounds interesting,” said Lyle.

“Hey,” said John, pointing the flashlight at Lyle’s face. “What’s happened to you?”

Lyle put his hand up to his face. The blood felt crusty across his cheeks and chin. “I walked into a tree. It was so dark.”

“You should have taken a flashlight,” said John. “Are you all right?”

Lyle paused for a moment, and then said, “No. I don’t think so.”

John came closer and touched Lyle’s face, held the flashlight closer. “It’s still bleeding a little,” he said. “Let’s go up to the house so we can clean it.”

Something about John’s fingers touching his face made Lyle cry.

“What’s wrong?” asked John.

Lyle wanted John to hold him but he didn’t know how to make this happen. He moved toward him a little, and then said, “Hold me.”

John reached out, quickly, and put his arms around Lyle. He held him firmly, as if he were shielding him from something. He said nothing. After a moment he broke away, and keeping his arm around Lyle, he began to lead him toward the house.

“Wait,” Lyle said.

John paused.

“Robert isn’t up at the house,” said Lyle.

“Where is he? What happened?”

“He’s—we had a fight. He’s gone to the train station.”

“How?”

“Walking. He disappeared into the woods.”

“He’ll never find his way to the train station. It’s miles from here. We’d better take the car and look for him. He can’t have got far.”