Turbulence
Emily and Rob were planning on a June wedding. The timing would coincide perfectly with the expiration of her lease, and they couldn’t wait to start out fresh together in a new place, preferably in SoHo. Fortunately, Rob had dropped the idea of having Malcolm, his roommate from Hoboken, join them in their first apartment. “I don’t know what I was thinking,” he said. “I want it to be just the two of us, forever.”
Katherine was three months pregnant and taking care of all the arrangements. Perhaps being with child had made her less of one, herself. Emily was grateful for her helpful enthusiasm and really did like the new Katherine, though at first she was understandably embarrassed by the pregnancy, complaining that her father’s taste for younger women had resulted in her being old enough to be her unborn sibling’s mother. Emily eventually consoled herself by vowing to make them name the baby Laura if it were a girl (after Laura Nyro) and Eli if it were a boy (after the Laura Nyro album, Eli and the Thirteenth Confession). I never bothered to ask how she planned to force Frank and Katherine into compliance.
With the wedding preparations under way, life was both sweet and stable. For the first time, I really began to appreciate my new routine. Rob had been right—I really had no reason to move. I suppose that underneath it all, I actually did love Scottsboro. I could have applied for a teaching job anywhere, but I’d chosen Forest Hills. It was a strange revelation, realizing that just like people, a town could make a place in your heart. But then again, I’d always known the opposite were true, that one could hate a town, hailing it as the symbol of her stagnation, the one prison she couldn’t break free from, no matter how many people left her. Only I knew now that I wasn’t staying in Scottsboro because I feared change. I had simply grown up enough to realize that my tiny suburban town had never been the problem. For the first time in my life, I felt centered.
I usually spent at least one weekend a month in New York visiting Emily, Rob and Warren, who’d always take the subway in from Queens to meet up with us when I was in town. On the weekends I was home, I spent my time with Alison, who lived only forty minutes away in Bloomdale. Despite good intentions, we hadn’t really kept in touch with The Six since graduation, with the exception of Lauren and Alexa, who occasionally met us for beer or coffee. All in all, it was a pretty calm life, made calmer by the fact that I wasn’t on the market for a man. It seemed I should’ve been, with Emily about to tie the knot and everything. But I just wasn’t interested in turbulence. I liked the sweet stability of my world and didn’t want to rock it with commotion. And men were nothing if not the kings of commotion. Or the kings of causing it and then walking away. That’s exactly what Kevin was beginning to do at home with my mother. Only the turbulence was wickedly slow. Tiny, random bombs were the kinds he would drop. In his own creepy, handsome, satanic, Kevin way.
It was just after New Year’s when he started making those comments about going West to paint the desert. He said he’d never seen it and that it really was such a shame—to have gone this far in life without seeing the desert.
“Well, when can you get time off?” my mother asked him.
“I was talking about more of a permanent vacation,” Kevin said, his eyes glued to the TV as he casually flipped stations with the remote control.
“As in quitting your job?”
“As in, what’s for dinner, sweet Mary-Jane?” he asked, turning away from the screen to face her. “I’m starving.” My mother looked at him strangely. “Something the matter?”
“It’s just that you called me Mary-Jane. Only my mother calls me Mary-Jane.”
Kevin shrugged. “I just wanted to make you smile. You seemed a little nervous there for a minute.”
“I think she thought you were going to quit your job,” I said.
“Stella,” my mother cautioned, not wanting me to get involved.
“No, it’s all right,” Kevin said. “Stella’s an adult now. She’s twenty-three. She’s a teacher.”
“What’s your point?” I snapped.
“Stella,” my mother warned again.
“My point is that I’m starving,” Kevin said, “and no one’s told me what’s for dinner yet.” And then he got up and went into the kitchen.
Hurling missiles and walking away. This would be his pattern for close to three years. Sterilized commotion—quiet, tidy and cold. The slow unraveling of my mother’s nerves that began with that first mention of the word desert. Turbulence had found me, despite my disinterest in men. But it wasn’t violent or constant, and in between those patches of disturbance, my mom still managed to see a sky filled with sunshine. I suppose I should’ve been wiser, but I wanted her marriage to work, so I got myself a pair of rose-colored glasses, too, and together, without ever discussing it, the queens of denial shielded their eyes from what loomed, dodging missiles and bombs with a smile, for everything looked prettier in pink.
Not even rose-colored glasses could have shielded Emily from what happened in February. Katherine was in her seventh month when she went into premature labor and lost the baby. Frank left a message with Nick at the apartment, but Emily wouldn’t be home for a while. She was in a cab bound for Rob’s place in Hoboken, warming her lap with Chinese takeout and her heart with thoughts of how wonderful her life was. Just one month earlier, she’d been ringing up sales at Anna Fontanella, the store, and today, she was sharing studio space with the legend, herself. Just four months earlier, she was merely tolerating her stepmom for her father’s sake, and today, they were actually friends, planning a wedding together—her wedding, which was happening just four months from now. Her life was only beginning to get wonderful. In June, she’d be married to the man of her dreams and living in SoHo, with a beautiful new baby in the family named either Laura or Eli.
Rob wasn’t expecting Emily and he wasn’t answering his door, so she used her key. But there were strange noises coming from Malcolm’s bedroom and she wasn’t quite sure what to do. She’d wanted to surprise Rob with dinner, and if he was coming home soon, she would wait for him, but how could she with all that noise? It made her feel like she was spying. And she really didn’t want to embarrass Malcolm. She had to go. But, wait. She recognized that sound, that moan, that voice. And before she knew it, she was in the room, watching her fiancé and his roommate scramble around naked for their clothes.
“So, what did she do?” I asked Nick when he called me that night on the phone.
He’d called because he didn’t know how to handle Emily. When she’d first burst through their apartment door in tears, he thought she knew about the baby. But all he could make out through her sobs was the name Rob. So, he’d waited for her to calm down, holding her, rocking her, stroking her hair, until finally, she was able to tell her story.
“She said she just dropped the Chinese food, threw her engagement ring at him and ran out of his place ‘like a crazy person.’ Stella, I don’t know what to do with her. She said she wanted to call you, but that was before I told her about Katherine. I had to tell her, though, and now…” He sounded truly panicked.
“Now, what?”
“I don’t know! Stella, please tell me what to do because I can’t get through to her at all—she won’t even look at me. She’s just lying here on the floor singing some song about the Emmy’s and a garden and—”
“It’s Laura Nyro,” I told him, shaking. “The song her mother…never mind. Hold on.”
I ran out to the living room to get my mom’s advice, but when I opened my mouth to explain things, I started crying. She had to get on the phone with Nick to find out exactly what had happened. While she was in my bedroom getting the details, Kevin tried to comfort me on the couch and I let him. It felt unnatural, but not as unnatural as what had happened between Emily and Rob, not as unnatural as babies dying. When my mother reappeared a few minutes later, Kevin was still hugging me. She cleared her throat loudly and we both broke away, but her eyes were fixed only on him.
“Feel like giving me a ride to New York?”
I ended up going with them. I didn’t want to be alone. All I wanted was to be with Emily. We returned home with her in the middle of the night. The next morning, my mother called Anna Fontanella’s secretary on Emily’s behalf to request personal time for a family emergency, leaving a number where she could be reached. Anna called our place a few hours later to find out what really happened, and Emily told her the truth. Anna said she was extremely sorry and that Emily should definitely spend the week resting. Frank welcomed her to stay at his house, but my mother told him that taking care of Emily would be our pleasure, especially since he already had his hands full with Katherine. And it was a good thing she stayed with us. If Emily had stayed with them, she wouldn’t have been able to mention her break-up with Rob at all. Frank already knew about it, not the specifics, of course, only the bottom line. But he didn’t want to upset Katherine with the news that the wedding was off. He didn’t think she was ready to handle another loss just yet. But then again, Emily would eventually get over Rob, whereas Katherine might never get over Eli—she’d given birth to a stillborn boy, and Emily would’ve had a baby brother. Children aren’t replaceable, but the world is crawling with jerks. My best friend would get over the pain of this broken engagement in time. And one day, she’d find somebody else to break her heart.
“But how, Stella?” she asked me. “How am I supposed to get over him?” She’d just gotten off of the phone with Rob. He’d left a ton of messages for her on my answering machine, and she’d finally decided to call him back during my shower.
“Well, what exactly did he say on the phone?” I asked as I lay down beside her on the bed, propping my head up on my elbow.
“He said it meant nothing—that what he has with Malcolm in no way contaminates or changes what he feels for me.”
“Did he actually say the word ‘contaminates’?”
“He actually did. And he said that his love for me was always there—even when he was doing physical things with Malcolm. And because of that, he doesn’t feel like he lied. Because the love was always there.”
“But that only makes it worse! I mean, if he loved you, what was he doing sleeping with anybody else?” Emily was silent as she stared into Marlayna’s trouble-free teddy bear eyes. “Sorry,” I said. “How could you possibly know the answer to that?”
“Malcolm is not the mother of my children.”
“What?”
She turned to look at me. “That’s another thing he said on the phone. ‘Malcolm is not the mother of my children. You are.’”
“Is that supposed to make you feel better?”
“Apparently.”
“Well, how long has it been going on for? Did he, at least, tell you that much?”
“Five years.”
“Five years?”
“For as long as they’ve known each other.” Her eyes suddenly grew wide. “Do you think Malcolm was, like, Rob’s boyfriend?”
“Well, what would that have made you?”
“I guess…I was nothing.”
“You were not nothing,” I said, taking hold of her arm.
Emily smiled lightly. “A hopeful distraction at best.”
“Well, what do you think, Em? That Rob’s gay and just doesn’t want to accept it?”
“I don’t know what to think anymore. He said he’d been meaning to stop, that he was calling it quits with Malcolm in June as a wedding present to himself—to himself, Stella—so that our marriage could be pure.”
I shook my head. “I really have no idea what to say right now. This is just so…”
“Completely fucked up?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t I know it. Just be glad it’s not happening to you.”
“But it is happening to me. I mean, not technically, but…”
She smiled gratefully. “I know.”
“So, were there ever any other guys, or was it only Malcolm?”
“He says it was only Malcolm, that he and Malcolm have a bond that transcends orientation. ‘So, why don’t you marry fucking Malcolm?’ I asked him.”
“What did he say?”
“He said I’m the one he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.”
“But was he honestly going to stand up there at the wedding and…wait a minute. Wasn’t Malcolm supposed to be your best man?”
Emily snickered. “Yeah, the best man Rob ever had.”
I looked at her seriously. “What are you going to do?”
Emily was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was quiet. “Can I tell you something that won’t leave this room?” I nodded. “I still love him. I mean, I could never marry him or anything, but I do still love him. It would be easier if I could just write him off as some kind of prick and hate him forever, but I don’t think I can do that.”
“So, then, what happens now?”
She shrugged. “I go on with my life and hope that one day we can be friends. I know it’s a cliché, but gay men really do make the greatest friends.”
“A cliché and a stereotype.”
“And true,” she said, getting up from the bed. She seemed to be in a better mood as she stood in front of the mirror, playing with her hair.
“Perhaps,” I conceded. “But I suppose the trick is remembering that they’re gay.”
“Uh, the traumatizing visual is forever burned in my brain, thank you. I don’t think I’ll be forgetting.”
She assumed we were still talking about Rob, but I hadn’t been. My mind had already moved on from the ex-fiancé, and I worried that, without even knowing it, part of Emily’s had, too. My words of warning had been about Nick.