These Things Happen (14 page)

"That's it. What's it say?"

"He's with an attending."

"So that must mean you have Wesley, too, right?"

   "Yes. Here he is. Wesley Bowman." There's a picture, too, the facts of which I protect; blood, contusions, an eye swollen shut. And the other kid looks even worse. "He's also with an attending."

   " Which means?"

   What I do tell him: "He's with Dr. Singh." What I don't: cops have been here and talked with these boys, which I can only tell a parent.

   "Singh?" he says. "That sounds good. It sounds musical. Is he a good doctor?"

   "Well, he's young, so he touches people. They teach them that now."

   The screen spills a little more, like a suspect being broken.

   "It looks like they're both going to be held," I say. "For observation."

   "But why?"

   "It's standard in these cases." The word—
cases—
rattles him, I can tell, from the nod of the head and the quick smile that fades as fast as it comes. And I do something I never do; I tell him more about this boy, whom he's so quick to point out is not his. "Gay bashing," I say. "It's not always accurate, though, the information they give us here. We're just the first step in a process."

   "I see. Of course."

   "So you're not the father, then."

   He's turning the color we call City Green, that comes from worry and waiting, under these particular lights. "Oh, no." He laughs, as if to suggest: How could that even be possible?

   "Are you the guardian?"

"No, again."

"Family member—"

   "I'm a friend," he says. "One might say." A few tears form, suddenly, and I'm surprised. I offer Kleenex, in a box decorated with starfish.

   " These things are hard for anyone," I say. "You don't need a job description."

   "It's what I
said
," he says. "When I said 'one might say.' Because that's what he says, a lot. For a funny kid he can be pretty serious. He wants to sound like his dad." He lowers his voice, as if he's about to tell me a secret. "Whom I live with."

   "Then you're his partner."

   "Well," he says, "I guess. And I don't mean to be difficult, but he's a lawyer, who left a law firm? He could have been rich by now, maybe, but he's antigreed. He's been at the ACLU for a long time; he's a remarkable man."

   "I'm sure he is."

   " Really," he says, and I sense he's addressing himself. "So he doesn't like the word
partner.
It reminds him."

   "What about you? What word would you choose?"

   He seems surprised that I'd be interested, that anyone could be. "Me?" he says. "Whatever. There's no name for me."

   We both turn as an old man, on oxygen, is brought in by Jesus and Arthur and moved to a gurney on which someone has left one of the T
wilight
books.

   "What a mess," he says. "What a goldarned mess!" He reaches out, takes George's hand, his own bruised in that old-man way, with the marks of his last four PICC lines. "You're a gay, aren't you? My grandson Jared is a gay. We all benefit from the gays in our city." This gets applause; we are disproportionately represented, we gays, once you come through these doors. "But there's a limit!" he adds, as Jesus and Arthur bear him away.

   Which is pretty much right when a woman comes in, with the breathlessness of someone who's ditched the cab five blocks back and run the rest of the way. George straightens up as he sees her, as she comes to him. I know, right away, who she is. "Well?" she asks George.

   "He's with a doctor—"

   But she doesn't let him finish; she turns right to me. "I'm the
mother
," she says. "
And I want my son."

   A man comes in, and from how George moves to him I decide he's the dad. He nods to George and moves to the mother, already apologizing.

   "I'm sorry," he says, not knowing she's beaten him to it by twenty seconds.

   "I'm trying to get some information," she says, turning toward me.

   Another man comes in now, and because I've gotten good at this after seventeen years I decide:
Second husband. Happy marriage.
Deeply in love.
"Baby," the man says, and goes to her, shaking George's and the father's hands on his way. I see Dr. Singh, young and dark, and signal to him.

   "Wesley's parents?" he says.

   "Yes," says Mom, speaking for the team.

   "He is a bright young individual," says Dr. Singh, who's a bright boy himself.

   "Oh, yes," the mother says. "He always has been."

   Second Husband offers Singh his hand. "Ben Korman. I'm a physician. But I know nothing."

   And off they go now, these Approvables, the ones who get to go back. George starts to follow but stops himself, as if his muscles have learned to do that.

   "Sorry," I say. "Rules."

   "Of course."

   "Have a seat," I say. "I've got a 1987
Redbook
somewhere. And believe it or not, there's cake." And there is! We get a box of fancy leftovers each day from the place down the street, thanks from the all-organic baker whose finger we sewed back on.

   " There should always be cake," he says, and I see now he's the most concerned of all of them. Like I say: seventeen years; people come in not knowing that this place turns them into little books, easy to read. " Maybe I should go."

   "Give it a few minutes," I say. "Once the doctor comes out all the news moves pretty fast. And you're already here, right?"

   Marlice, our head tech, beckons; it's Luz's birthday, which means cupcakes, and time for my break. I excuse myself as we gather in a bed bay for the birthday song, pulling the curtain around us. And as I see him through the slit, a still point at the heart of a dozen disasters, I remember how I met him, in the snow, in front of Saint Patrick's; he had chestnuts, I think, because I remember that right after our eyes met he offered me the bag. Then came "I'm George" and "I'm Jerry"; we talked for a minute or two, then he asked me over, for that night. And I went; you just said yes, then; people wanted you to.

   He lived in Hell's Kitchen, I think. He cooked, a frittata, no fuss about it, just good. Then we watched a movie; I'm pretty sure it was
The Nun's Story
, with Audrey Hepburn, because that was the movie that made my Aunt Domenica decide to become a nun in the '50s. But, as I've learned to say now in most situations:
I could be wrong.

   "You don't remember me," I say. Break's over. I'm back to my screen.

   "Pardon me?"

   "It was a long time ago. Like maybe twenty years? I was blond, maybe? You were on tour, in some play?"

   "Oh, my God," he says. "Wait . . . was it
Equus
?"

   "That sounds right."

   "I was a horse! Chip, the one who was good with fabrics. And it was snowing, right?"

   "That's how I remember it."

   "Well, I can't believe you remember
me
." He offers his hand. "I'm George."

   "I know," I say. "We've been through that. Jerry."

   "You've been great. I appreciate it." It's suddenly very busy, which he sees. He puts on his scarf. "Well," he says, "they won't need me. If you see him—"

   "I'll say hey for you—"

   "And that I know I owe him an answer. If it matters." He hands me a card, for his restaurant. "Come anytime. Please. As my guest."

   A dazed, grief-stricken Hispanic man stumbles out from the back crying
"Mi amor! Mi amor!"
My screen offers one more fact, at the very moment my station floods with questioners, several of whom are covered in blood. "Wait," I call to him. He does. "I found you."

   "What does that mean?"

   I tap the screen. "You were in here, after all. The kid asked for you."

   "He did?"

   "When they brought him in," I say. "Yours was the name he gave."

   He nods, thanks me; I don't even see him go as six more people have come clamoring for news. I do see the Remarkable Man, the father, alone, within earshot of us. Has he been there all along? Has he heard what I just told George? He sees me watching him, and he turns away.

I
t's almost 4:00. The city is perilous today. A flood on the subway, a falling girder on Sixth Avenue, killing a therapist. Kenny is to my right, Ben to my left; I'm parenthesized by husbands. And George is here, too; our host, I suppose, as this place is his, although Kenny helped him buy it. Well, it's where Wesley wanted to meet. Not that he w
anted
to, or was in any way eager to talk. But he will, and I will, as that's my job today. It won't be easy— telling him it's time to come home, that this experiment of living with Kenny and George must end early; in fact, today. But it has to be done, and Kenny agrees. I wonder, as I look at George, if he really needs to be here, or should be; when Wesley asked if we could gather here I assumed George would absent himself, would understand that this is about our family, the one that is ended in some ways and, in others, can never be; the one that he can never join. But there he was, when I walked in, and what can I do? I could talk to Kenny; this isn't about sparing feelings but about moving forward, about what must come next. But he's here.

And Wesley's not. He went upstairs "for a minute," just before

we got here; something to do with Facebook, naturally, that had to be dealt with
now.
It's always now; how can a fifteen-year-old be indispensable? And we all have places to be.

   "Kenny?" I say. "This is crazy. You should go up and get him. Don't you think?"

   Kenny, with what looks like a flicker of panic, turns to George, but before George can say one of his clever little somethings, Ben steps in.

   "Give him a minute. He has to post coded messages, to other terrorists." He explains, to the others, "He's in a sleeper cell, a nice one, that has dances."

   "He's kidding," I inform the table. "Although who knows what any of them do?"

   Ben turns to Kenny now. "I saw you quoted in the
Times
this morning."

   "Oh," Kenny says, "that was nothing. Just—" he air-quotes— " 'gay stuff.' "

   "And all this time, I never knew you were gay!" says Ben. Everyone laughs; it must have been necessary. Ben has a feel for that, when to come in and lighten things; I wish some of my authors had it, too. "So, tell me. Do you think you'll ever get all this marriage business through? On a federal level, I mean. Where it needs to be."

   "I do," Kenny says, "but it's going to take time."

   "It's around the corner," says George.

   "We don't need to talk about this here," Kenny tells him.

   But Ben does. "I always feel David, my son, would have married his boyfriend. But they couldn't even dream of it then. I see them, in my mind, raised on chairs. I think that's important, when this comes, that if it's two Jewish boys they're entitled to the tradi tions. The chair, the glass, the
chuppah
. Maybe not the sheet with the hole."

   I take his hand, or he takes mine; there's so much more hand-taking in second marriages; it's often where sex begins. I was lucky enough to meet David. Ben and I fell in love so fast, within minutes, it seemed, after we met in the coffee shop by the hospital where he was visiting his dying son and I my dying father. Everything had to happen fast. Ben brought me to David's room. We talked a bit, funny stories about Ben. Then David, blind by then, asked me to read. I had the
New Yorker
with me, as always. I read a Jhumpa Lahiri story about a family, far from home, trying to find their way in a new country. The next day, David died, with Ben there, talking to him.

   We are all texted at once. "Wesley?" I ask, but the general answer is no. I'm becoming more angry, and more worried, too. "Did you talk to him at all?" I ask Kenny. "Did he say anything?" Wesley didn't want to come with us after they released him; I didn't push it, although I could have.

   "He knows this girl."

   " Really? Who?" He knows lots of girls, of course, but has never mentioned one specifically.

   "Shannon something."

   "Traube," George, who always knows what Kenny doesn't, says.

   "God, that's an awful name," I say. "What did he say about her?"

   Again, Kenny looks to George. "I asked you. Not George." I turn to George. "I'm sorry, but—" "

   "No worries," George says, an expression I can't bear and have asked Wesley not to use.

   "He talked about her yesterday, before it happened."

"Nothing last night? He didn't tell you who might have done it?"

"No."

"Did you ask?"

"It didn't seem like the right time."

   " Which makes sense," I say, and I think, How am I suddenly the expert on the subject of a son getting beaten up in the base ment of his school, one where media barons send their sons and daughters, one that preaches tolerance and earnestness and service to the community, where such things do not happen? My comment seems to have caused a silence to descend. How odd this is, I think, as I add up the five of us, in search of a sum; me, two husbands, a husband's boyfriend, and, of course, an absent pummeled boy; how odd to
feel
odd that there is something wrong in taking note of all that.

   "So," Ben says, after a few more silent, awkward moments, "which of you two is the woman?"

   "Enough," I say. "I'm calling him." I look at my phone, which, although it was fully charged an hour ago, shows the frightening battery with its stump of red; the reminder, as a colleague says, of the death of all things, ourselves included; the memento mori in our pockets. Before I can say anything, George is there to help me.