These Things Happen (7 page)

   "You don't have to, George," he says.

   "Then you make them."

   "Can I?"

   "I'll coach," I tell him. "It's just timing. And
tour de main.
Do you know what that is?"

   "What? Tell me."

   "It's the touch; the lightness. But it has to be solid, too, and strong." He nods, considers my contradiction. I think, I've never seen that before, or put it that way, certainly. "Does that make sense?"

   "Yes," he says. "Do you think I have it?" He stops me from telling him, with a raised hand. "And you can say if you think I don't. Really, I have good self-esteem in most areas, even in areas where I should have
bad
self-esteem. It's my school's philosophy." He never says
school
, just the word, on its own; it's always
my school
, which I'd never point out to him. I wonder if, in his time here, he's noticed anything like that about me, in what ways I'm particular, without my being aware of it; it always takes another person to see that, if they're the kind of another person who sees things. "So do you?"

   "I think you might. It's early to tell. But I think so. If it's a thing you want."

   "Good to know. Thank you. I value your insight."

   I plug in the waffle iron. Wesley and I both hover over it, waiting; it heats quickly.

   "Isn't that too hot?" he says.

   "That's how you want it. You let it get like that, unplug it for a minute or two, then heat it up again."

   "Just a minute?" He's very precise.

   "Ninety seconds."

   I put out eggs, butter, milk, mix. We prepare the batter together, grooved and notched in our actions even though we've never done this before. I crack the eggs, he pours the milk; I measure out the mix, he stirs it all together. We don't speak; we each just know what to do, and when. I can hear Kenny on the phone, and can imagine what he's saying: W
e have to remember how far we've come.
He has become the Big Reminder; I wonder if he knows that. He has an op-ed piece running Sunday, on the absence of gay names in the city's parks, playgrounds, theaters, schools. I wonder if Kenny has shown the piece to Wesley. I don't think so, and I'd know. Because Kenny is modest; he really is. I hope Wesley's been able to see that.

   Wesley stirs the batter one more time. "How's that?"

   "Perfect."

   He pours it in. It bubbles, crisps, starts to decide that what it wants most to be is a waffle. "Like that?"

   "You got it. Now just close the cover, and hope for the best."

   We wait. We almost don't breathe; he looks to me, and I nod, like the King of Siam to a marching child. He lifts the lid, and there they are, eager and ready for the next step in their brief life. We look at each other, bump fists. Well, he does, effortless as always, and as always I get it wrong. So now it's his turn to show me something.

   "It's more like this," he says. We do it again. "Easy. See?"

   As our fists connect I see that I've gotten too close to him, so I step back. I call for Kenny. "Hurry!" Nothing, just some low-key buzz of worthiness from the other end of the hall. "Do you think he heard me?" I say to Wesley.

   "It's okay, George."

   "It's not."

   "No," he says, reclaiming the waffles from the iron and setting them out on a plate. " Really. It is."

H
urry
, he says. And he's right, I've got to, always, and today's just more of the same. Lunch with Christine Quinn, a trip to the Tombs, the
Times
wants yet another op-ed from me, as do
Slate
and the
Huffington Post
, and I'm so old I still believe the
Times
is the one that matters most. Seven hundred and fifty words on what George always calls
Whither Gayness?
He says I should suggest Havana, for the boys. If I did, would anyone notice? And it is all for the boys, of course, and the girls, and the Bs and Ts and whatever letters will soon push their way onto that list. So I'll craft a statement, as I do again and again; George says I should set up a crafts table for statements alone, with glue gun, pinking shears, boxes of glittering progressive clichés. My sister Alice had pinking shears, I think; she liked to sew, I remember that. What is pinking? I'm sure George knows. He'd pretend he didn't, if I asked, as he doesn't always respect his own knowledge. But he'd know, and he'd say— well, it almost doesn't matter what he'd say. Sometimes I think just being able to say those words—
George says—
is all I need. He's funnier than me, certainly, and I suspect smarter, too; he'd never believe it, but it's true, or true enough. He's always saying he knows me, but I think I know him better; I know what he won't hear about himself.

   Today's statements, aside from the boiler-plate postelection ones, are culled from the Internet, of course, our blinkless eye and constant reminder of the blackness of men's hearts. On today's to-do— tackle the online adoption service that forbids qualified same-sex etc. etc. fill in the blank. And there's the Georgia General Assembly, always reliable, keeping up their fight against the employee fired after announcing her transition from male to female. The Last Good War Is the Fight Against Fags (
Don't use that!
). And each skirmish must be responded to without playfulness, irony, humor, so the civilians, as George says, can see that we are, under the skin, just like them, only totally different.

   But you press on; you can't turn away. You face the world not as you find it but as it finds you, because it will.
Definitely use that
, I think; it's the sort of statement made by someone who will one day be assassinated. Not that I'd make an interesting target; I'm just the lawyer, the one who chairs the committees, the talking head You'd Never Know was Gay. George wants me to run for something some day; he said he dreams of standing next to me on a victory platform, beaming blankly and addicted to Percocet, a helmet-haired Keeper of Secrets. But what would I run for? And I already spend too much time in Washington, and will be there next week to meet with a roomful of the usual suspects; I'll direct us to the making of promarriage commercials featuring christenings, pillow fights, grandparents at same-sex Thanksgiving tables, passing the cranberry sauce to their sons' husbands and daughters' wives. Y
a know, at the end of
the day, isn't it all just about family? W
ell, no. Only sometimes. But God help us if we say that.

Face the world.

   My face, first, though, hard to find at the moment as the mirror's all steamed. It always is, as we don't have a window in here, only ants and bits of toenail and photos from shows George was in, from that time of his life that was ending when I first met him. He has thousands of stories from then, all funny and good. It seems some people, like George, are just like that, lucky people with stories just circling them like birds, ready to float down for a perch on an outstretched finger. I once asked what his favorite role was; it was Tom in T
he Grapes of Wrath
, which he did one summer in the Berkshires, I think, one of his few real leads. Wesley's reading the novel in school, or he's supposed to be, anyway.

   What's not up in here are pictures from the play he was in when I first met him. Or first saw him, because that was how it started, with my looking, from an audience, in the dark. It was in some new play festival, some sort of awful Actors for Actors sort of thing, way downtown on a street you've never heard of. And I'd never have gone or even known about it, but my sister Claire had arranged for me to meet a woman whose name was, I think, Diana. She was what I guess you'd call a Young Playwright, and she'd written a trilogy of plays about outsourcing, I think. This was right after Lola left, when she'd met Ben at the hospital and quickly fallen in love with him, and we'd been through our divorce. I wasn't out, so it was before the days of referenda, Rachel Maddow, waxing my nine shoulder hairs. So Diana wanted to see a play, as one friend had written it and another was in it. It was about young women in New York and their terrible dates, and their varied amusing complaints.

   And George was in it. He was what all these women in the play had in common, the gay best friend, what he described years later as the Shoulder role. And it wasn't that what he said in the play was especially interesting or funny; I don't even know if he was any good. And maybe it was just that night, how my day had gone and how I'd felt as I'd finally found the place, but there was something about him; the others were acting, and George was just—
there.
I've never thought of a better word (and I've certainly never told him about it). Diana didn't know who he was. "Oh, just some gay guy," I think she said. "You know New York."

   And a year or so went by. Then one night, in the winter, I had dinner plans with Charles and Margaret. They were going to the theater and wanted me, as ever, to join them. But I was close to making partner, and working late nights, so I met them after the show on what I always think of as the O. Henry street; you can imagine those stories, in those brownstones; leaves painted on windows, watches, combs. And there was George, in the restaurant. At first I didn't recognize him, and why would I have? He'd been a Shoulder, in a bad play. But I knew him when I saw his hands; he was holding them in the restaurant as he had in the play. One hand in front of him, held low, the other covering it, and both hands opening, blooming, you might say, as he talks to you, as if he might be about to sing. He makes fun of me about this, asks me what if he were the wrong guy; there are hundreds of hands, he says, in New York alone. I say if he is the wrong guy, he's become the right one, over time. And sometimes I wonder what he noticed about me, how he knew me. But, of course, he didn't. I was the one who knew him. I wasn't anything to him. I could have been anyone.

   It snowed that night. And in the restaurant there was an old man, beautifully dressed, eating alone a few tables away from us. I watched while George brought him his coat and scarf, helping him as if he were a deposed prince and George an
émigré
subject. He gently led the man to the street and helped him into a cab, and told me later he'd been in the original cast of
Show Boat
, as a boy on the wharf where the
Cotton Blossom
docks. When he came back in he had snow on his shoulders; I remember that because I remember him brushing it off. As he turned to survey the room and see if we all had what we needed, his gaze came to me. And that was it that night, no more than that; I was someone to take care of, that's all, one among many.

   I went back, several times, with new gay friends; I'd started to slowly declare myself by then, nodding to men on streets who were starting to nod at me, crafting my first statements, reading my first
Tales of the City
book. One night, after a benefit, I suggested we go to Ecco. I insisted on paying, not because I was so generous but so I could attach my card to the check. K
enneth E. Bowman, of counsel.
I remember how fast my heart beat as I handed it to George, how he asked us if everything was okay, how Jeffrey said, "Cute," as George walked away, how Jerry, who's dead, looked at me and said, "Are you all right?" I said I was fine, but I wasn't. I was thinking,
Why did
I just do
that
? Just to learn his name?
Someone else brought back the receipt for me to sign. My card was gone, and George was, too. I saw him, as we were leaving, bringing out a cake with a candle and singing " Happy Birthday" to someone, some star, he told me later; he'd remember who. She got up, whoever she was, and embraced him, just as we all were leaving.

   He called the next day. I was at the office, so when my assistant told me there was a Mr. Seeger on the line I didn't know who that was.

   "That's S-e-e-g-e-r," I heard her say; I like names to be spelled right. "From Ecco."

   "This Mr. Seeger," I called to her when his message appeared on my screen, "did he leave a first name?"

"No," she said. "He said you'd know what it was regarding."

"I don't," I told her. I don't know why.

" Would you like me to call him?"

   "Don't," I said. "We have the number. And if it's important, he'll call back."

   I look into the mirror, unsteamed now. They're waiting for me, in the kitchen. "Progress," I tell my face, "will be slow. But steady." My phone rings again. "It's for me!" I call out. But they already know that.

H
is waffles are perfect, and he's cleaned up, too; he's left no trace of last night's midnight raider. Lola says he's a slob at home, hopeless, but he's not one here with us; he is, if anything, neater than I am, which is saying a lot and is helpful in a small space.

     "What do you think?" he asks, offering a crisp little waffle corner. "And please don't be blindly supportive."

     I spit my little taste into the sink, hoping he'll laugh. But he doesn't; it's hard with kids, I've learned, with this one, anyway, to know when you've crossed the line into the land of Too Far, or to see the line at all. Anything that involves expertise, or technique?
Careful.

     "I'm sorry," I say. "It's completely delicious. Is that withholding enough?"

     "Be serious, George. Do you have any meaningful pointers?"

     I have to keep myself from laughing; he thinks he's the last word in snark and irony when, in truth, he's the last thing he'd want to be, which is deeply earnest. No wonder he walks the roof at night; there's a sleeping city to protect! And does he think this is some rite of passage, male to male, the lore of the tender waffle? I just wish I had something of value to give him, how to steal fire from the gods, say, or fix a show in trouble. I didn't know that this was how it would be to have a kid around, to always feel that what you're giving them isn't what they need. "You'll have to wait," I say. "I'll need to talk to the village elders."