THE MOMENT KEVIN OPENED his front door, Marco shouted from the bedroom, “Your mother called.”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Briefly.”
Marco’s evasive reply fueled Kevin’s rising panic.
He ran to the bedroom and demanded, “What did she say?”
“She wants you to call her back, tonight. It’s an emergency.”
“Details?”
“Come on, Kevin. I didn’t ask. She doesn’t even know who I am.”
Kevin blanched. His mother had never done anything like this since he had moved to California. Either his father, Katherine, or one of Katherine’s children, must have died or be seriously ill.
His mother didn’t answer until the sixth ring.
“Mom! What happened?”
“Kevin, your father went to the doctor today… He has lung cancer.”
“Jesus, Mom… I’m sorry.”
“They say it can’t be cured.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
His mother started weeping.
“I wish there was. He says he won’t talk to you. I don’t know if you should come home or not.”
Kevin wanted to be supportive but couldn’t control his rising anger. He remembered a stifling August afternoon in the garage, sitting on a brake fluid drum, cleaning used lug nuts and wheel studs with a wire brush while two mechanics carried on a lively conversation.
Kevin had tried not to listen as they mimicked Red Sox radio announcers and described the delectability or ugliness of every woman who walked past the open garage door. They expertly analyzed visible body parts and speculated on what was hidden underneath halter tops or shorts. To Kevin, it was cruel and demeaning. His father was standing right beside them, repairing a transmission. It was impossible that he could be naïve enough not to understand what they were saying. Yet he didn’t tell them to stop.
No, Kevin thought, my father doesn’t judge other people, just me.
“Will you ask him something?”
“All right.”
“Ask him how much more he needs to punish me? Tell him that people don’t get life sentences unless they commit murder. I don’t think being gay qualifies. Tell him it’s time to commute my sentence.”
After a long pause, she said, “Say that again, Kevin, so I can write it down.”
His catharsis didn’t last long. Ten minutes after hanging up, Kevin was distraught. He had no information and doubted it was possible to get any more from his mother. He would have to call Katherine, a most unpleasant prospect. As he dialed her phone number, he tried to be positive. When he last saw her, two years ago, it hadn’t been as bad as he anticipated. Though she barely concealed her cold sarcasm, at one point she did ask about his work with genuine interest. Neither of his parents had ever done that. And at the end of her son’s confirmation service, she confided in him—another quantum leap. She planned to stop being a stay-at-home mom. Douglas was old enough for her to get a job without feeling guilty. She had enrolled in a training program to become a licensed vocational nurse.
“It’s Kevin. I heard about Dad…”
“Well, isn’t it nice of you to call.”
There was no mistaking her indictment. A wave of resentment passed through him. He made no effort to suppress it. Instead, he took a deep breath and imagined the hair color, freckles, and jaunty tip of the nose they had in common. He thought of what they shared only with each other—growing up beholden to these two people, now so diminished.
“I know I’m not the perfect son who turns the other cheek. But what can I do if he won’t talk to me?”
He prepared to be lambasted again.
She surprised him by saying, “OK, that’s fair.”
“So what should I do, come to Boston and force myself on him?”
Kevin was even more surprised to hear himself make that suggestion.
“Yes!” she said, her voice breaking as she gave in to grief.
He had heard her cry before, behind the closed door of her bedroom, but not since she was a girl and never in his presence.
“He’s going to die, isn’t he?” she wailed.
“I don’t know. I mean yes, but I don’t know when. Some people with incurable lung cancer die in a month or two, some live for three or four years. The prognosis depends on the biopsy and x-ray results, and he doesn’t want me to know anything. For sure, he won’t give his doctors permission to talk to me, and it’s a long shot I’ll be able to get Mom to ask them the right questions.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Let me think.”
He grabbed on to one redeeming fact. As stubborn a bastard as the old man was, he had provided each of them with a tiny space, eight by ten feet, that was inviolate, exclusively theirs. At age thirty-three, after years of taking care of people who had been given far, far less in their childhood than he, Kevin appreciated that gift.
“Would he let you go with him to his next doctor’s appointment?”
“I guess.”
“With real information, I could give you an idea of what to expect. How much time he’s likely got left. How much radiation or chemotherapy might extend it and what the typical side effects would be if he’s offered one of those treatments. Once you know that, you can help him figure out what he wants to do.”
“Fat chance he’ll want my advice.”
Before he could respond, she blurted, “Come home, Kevin. Would you? Please.”
Kevin was trapped. Now he had to go. At least he had friends to stay with in Boston. Sleeping under the same roof with his father or Ben would be out of the question.
“OK. You get more information, and I’ll see when I can get time off.”
Kevin hung up the phone and poured two inches of tequila into a glass tumbler. He downed it while undressing in the kitchen. He went to the bedroom, grabbed the journal Marco was reading, and tossed it on the floor.
After sex, Kevin gave Marco a terse account of his family drama and refused to discuss it further. That door closed, Marco asked how Miller was doing.
“The same. I don’t think he’s going to walk out of the hospital.”
Marco waited for details, but Kevin didn’t elaborate.
“So, did you find out anything more about his past? Was he into bathhouses and poppers like the others?”
“I don’t know. The friend who brought him to the ER wasn’t sure.”
Marco nodded solemnly. He knew that nearly all of Kevin’s patients, prior to getting sick, had regularly inhaled amyl nitrate sold on the street in glass ampules that could be broken or popped to release the vapor. He also knew the explanation for GRID Kevin secretly favored had to do with the drug’s effect of enhancing orgasm by dilating blood vessels in the penis and anus, thus allowing access for vast numbers of sexually transmitted microbes to invade the body and destroy the immune system.
Although Kevin had never gone to a bathhouse, Marco had before they met. Not to the extent of Kevin’s patients, a dozen anonymous partners at most. But Marco couldn’t tolerate poppers. The one time he sampled the stimulant, he became too nauseated to have sex.
As Kevin looked into Marco’s eyes, the tequila resurged in his head with the promise of sleep.
He resisted it long enough to kiss Marco on the lips and say, “Don’t worry, baby. We’re safe.”