I’d begun research for my novel about Dolley Madison even though the writing itself was years off. While I was roaming around Alderman Library at the University of Virginia and the state library in Richmond, and exploring the path of General Cornwallis’s depredations during the Revolutionary War, I thought about a closer war, the War Between the States. I could dimly remember Great-grandpa Huff, who fought in that war. I continued reading Dolley’s letters, her husband’s papers, her sister’s letters, but I jumped full in on researching the war that nearly took us down and is still felt in obvious and subtle ways to this day. I wanted to write a second volume of High Hearts, a novel I’d written about the War Between the States.
I’d invite Herb on my forays down the back roads of Virginia, around Richmond, a city I love, back into the Wilderness battleground, Manassas. I crossed and crisscrossed Virginia, trying to visit the sites in the order of battle and during the same time of year that the battles were fought.
Herb would have none of it.
An apartment became available in New York on West Eighty-third Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue. I was spending a lot of time in the city due to a television project. A couple in Charlottesville, Clare and Bill Leach, agreed to share it with Herb and me. With four of us splitting the cost it was affordable, and we were never there at the same time. We set up house rules, Bill and Clare moved in odds and ends of furniture and we were in business.
I’d drive up to Washington to catch the Metroliner, and Herb would board at Wilmington, walking the cars until he found me. I looked forward to our monthly visits in New York.
We’d read the newspaper to each other aloud between Wilmington and New York. I’d get either The New York Times or The Washington Post. He’d get the Wilmington paper or The Philadelphia Inquirer. We’d compare how stories were featured and how they were written.
Herb, curious and critical, had a sharp mind. Since Jerry had talked for both of them, actually for anyone, I knew very little about Herb other than that he had been in the navy.
He enjoyed theater and dance, wasn’t that crazy about museums but he’d go to be a good sport. We’d haunt bookstores. Herb could be tight with the buck. In a bookstore I lose all manner of restraint. What fun it was to walk out of Three Lives or Shakespeare and Co. and Herb would have spent more than I did.
Indifferent to food, I usually want an ice-cold Co’Cola and a salad or a hamburger. Well, I’d really like greens and fatback but we were in New York, remember. Herb liked food, though. So I’d tag along to his latest culinary discovery, where I’d order a salad and he’d order salmon poached in parchment with a thin orange dribble on the top. His once trim body ballooned with fifty extra pounds.
I’d get up and hit the gym. I couldn’t blast him out of bed. I slept upstairs, he slept downstairs. No amount of pleading or rattling cups and saucers could dislodge him.
Exasperated, I finally said, “Herb, you’re fat.”
“I know. I’ll start my diet today.”
He never did. I finally realized that he was overweight because in his eyes that was healthy. Jerry had weighed less than one of my big hounds at the end.
I looked around and saw that many gay men were getting overweight. It was a declaration of not being HIV positive, although you can be fat and still test positive. But the visceral impact is, “Here’s a healthy boy.”
I finally let it go and he actually dropped a few pounds in gratitude.
I was working on a movie of the week entitled My Two Loves about a woman who loves a man and loves a woman. ABC plucked up their courage thanks to Alvin Cooperman, who practically invented long-form when he was a vice president at NBC. An independent producer now, Alvin somehow found me. It was a marriage made in heaven. Alvin doesn’t know how to cut a corner, cheat a character or demolish production values. If he’s going to do it, it will be done properly. He’s got a gift for casting, which was often thwarted by the networks. Alvin thinks of the best actor for the role. The networks want whoever is most popular at the moment even if they can’t act their way out of a paper bag—and half of them can’t.
Since he was based in New York I needed to be there a lot. Sometimes I’d call Herb in Wilmington at the last minute and tell him I needed to go over notes with Alvin. He’d hop on the train and our pleasurable odyssey would begin anew.
Jerry had picked a good man to love. This isn’t to say Herb wasn’t subject to fits of temper. But the anger subsided as quickly as it arrived, except when Jerry would goad him.
We talked about Jerry endlessly, as though our memories would keep him alive, and in a way they did. It was 1986 but enough time had passed that I encouraged Herb to date. He didn’t want to. He encouraged me to date, so we were even.
By the summer he felt strong enough to see a few people. He was in an AIDS support group. Men who had lost partners gathered to help one another along. He dated one fellow from the group but wouldn’t go to bed with him.
When he came home after the fourth date I heard him walking up the stairs to the apartment. From the way his feet distinctly hit each step I knew he was in a bad mood. By the time he opened the door I was downstairs in my old navy blue bathrobe waiting for him.
“Don’t ask.”
“Okay, I’ll go to bed”—which I did.
Just as I snapped off the lights he called up, “After Jerry, everyone is boring.”
I snapped on the light. “Jerry was a domineering asshole. But you’re right, he was never boring.”
“Yeah.”
I snapped off the light. “I’m going to the gym in the morning.”
“What do you do after you’ve had the best?”
I snapped on the light again and leaned over the railing. “Do you want to come on up here for girl talk?”
He climbed up the iron staircase and plopped on the end of my bed. “I never thought I’d be alone.”
“You aren’t. You have your family and you have me. Alone romantically, yes. Fourteen years is a big chunk of your life.”
“I don’t know where the fourteen years went.”
“Are you gonna cry?”
“No.” He laughed at me.
“I’m not either.” I handed him the box of Kleenex and we both cried.
Bill and Clare, after a year’s lease, gave up their half of the apartment. Herb and I decided it was too expensive for just the two of us, and of course I kick myself in the butt each time I think about it because I wish I still had that apartment, even though I’m at heart an East Side girl, not a West Sider. I learned to like the West Side, especially Riverside Park.
Without the apartment our visits were less structured. He’d drive down to visit me more than I drove to Wilmington, mostly because I had stock to care for, a farm to run and I was between farm managers. He wired overhead lights, stripped furniture, gardened with me. He was heaven. He even took out the garbage before I could get to it.
Herb was HIV positive, too, but everything seemed all right. Then the disease hit him suddenly. He’d suffer bouts of fatigue and night sweats. He stayed in Wilmington more but we’d still visit. He was losing a little weight. He looked really good but he couldn’t motivate himself to do anything.
“I need a job. I need to keep my mind active.”
“Here’s a newspaper.” I’d toss him the classifieds.
He’d circle ads. “I’ll go back into construction.”
“Good idea.”
He’d never make the call.
One day stands out in my mind because I was boarding a mare who jumped like a pogo stick. She’d jumped out of her paddock again. She should have been a real-estate appraiser, she covered so much territory. I finally caught her, walking her miles back to the house. As I passed the kitchen I heard the phone ring.
Thinking it was Alvin, I tied the mare to the old walnut in the back and sprinted into the house.
“Rita Mae,” the familiar voice said, “I can’t get out of bed.”
“What?”
“I can’t get out of bed.” Herb started laughing. “My legs don’t want to go”
“Herb, I didn’t think you were that sick.”
“I’m not sick. My legs are.”
He was funny. His mind was perfectly clear, clear enough to complain about his parents, who had moved down to care for him. Yet he insisted he wasn’t that sick—he was touched that his folks were there but he wanted to do things for himself.
I asked him if I could come up that weekend. He said he’d come down to me, that he was really fine—he just had no direction in life. He had to snap out of it.
Like a fool I believed him and told him I’d come up in a few weeks.
By then he was dead.
Herb’s death certificate, which I have never seen, may say “cause of death, AIDS,” but he died of a broken heart.
I used to say anyone who died of a broken heart deserved it. Of course, I was being smart and commenting on drama queens weeping about the smashed-up love of the moment.
Jerry put the gas in Herb’s engine. Without him the car finally glided to a stop.
I hope they’re together again. And they’d better watch out for Juts.