CHAPTER 6

CAMELOT REBORN?

I doubt it’ll surprise anyone when I say I didn’t eat much at that breakfast. But since almost all of the attention was being paid to J.J., it was pretty easy to get away with just pushing around the food on my plate with a fork. He tried repeatedly to bring me into the conversation, but my own distraction and nervousness, plus the enthusiastic focus of everyone else on him, gave my well-practiced talent for avoiding the spotlight the chance to shine.

Soon after we’d finished eating, when J.J. said he’d taken up enough of everyone’s time and should go, he managed to stand firm against Iris and Kimberly’s protestations and made it to the front door. I’d started to clear the table out of habit, but Iris called me to “come join the family” as everyone said goodbye. Obviously, I knew it was just for J.J.’s benefit, and some people will probably say I’m an idiot for admitting this, but it actually gave me a little swell of emotion to hear her include me. And that little swell of emotion would be called happiness. Maybe that makes me a sentimental fool, but to quote E.M. Forster, “Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?”

I mostly kept my eyes to the floor as we all said goodbye, but just before he and Kimberly slipped out the door for a moment alone, I did raise my glance long enough to catch J.J. looking at me. And he smiled.

Once the door shut behind them, as Iris and Buck went into the living room, I went back to the dining room, but not to clear the dishes just yet. Hiding behind the curtains and sheers that covered the windows that looked out onto the street, I carefully drew the fabric aside just enough to see if J.J. would also be kissing Kimberly on this oh-so-eventful Sunday. They appeared to chat awkwardly (in my possibly biased opinion), and then he leaned in and gave her a quick hug before darting down the front steps. As I watched him jog away from the house, I saw something that would quickly become a fixture in our lives. Across the street, partially hidden by a tree, a chunky, stubble-faced man in jeans and a sweatshirt stood with a large digital camera to his face. Our first paparazzo.

And so began the part of the story that the world thought it knew.

The rest of that Sunday was pretty uneventful—I spent most of it doing homework—except for two small things. First, when Kimberly came in after saying goodbye to J.J., she did something I’d never known her to do before. Instead of joining Buck and Iris in the living room, she came into the dining room and asked if I wanted help with the dishes. I guess I looked pretty surprised because she said, “Don’t look so surprised. I can be helpful.”

Finally, I made some sense of it all. “Did J.J. put you up to this?”

Her defensive look turned to one of barely suppressed annoyance, so I was pretty sure he’d at least somehow suggested it. She moved to the table and began collecting the dirty silverware as she said, “You do a lot of nice things for us which you really shouldn’t have to, and I for one appreciate that.”

At this point I almost dropped the china serving bowl of scrambled egg remains. But I recovered in time to save the dish, as well as to mumble, “Thank you.” We made pretty quick work of clearing the table, but when I saw her overwhelmed look when faced with all the dirty dishes on the kitchen counter, I sent Kimberly on her way. I decided if she were going to be dating the guy I was maybe sort of possibly going to fall in love with, I might have more respect for all of us if I didn’t ask if she were aware that we did have a dishwasher. I took the road that leads many a Type A to ruin—I decided it was just easier to do it myself. Was it in any way possible that I was partially responsible for how spoiled she was?

The second thing of note during that stretch of aftermath following my first kiss was looking up Coco Chanel Jones on Facebook. By nightfall, Duane and I had exchanged phone numbers, email addresses, and had even started texting and Facebook messaging. He’d gotten everything back to his friend in time and slept most of the day. When I started to ask if that made him worry he wouldn’t be able to sleep that night and make him tired in school the next day, I realized I didn’t even know how old he was, or what he did in his normal life. I then learned that he was 20, so our ages weren’t all that far apart, but he’d gotten his GED when he was 16 because kids at school had been really rough on him. He took courses at Parsons School of Design (and had made all of the costumes I’d seen Saturday night, so I knew he was talented) and worked at a Starbucks on Broadway. It was such a tepid reality compared to what I’d expected for my fairy godmother.

Now, before, when I said there were two small things of note over the course of the day, I was being slightly misleading. Because there was also one very big thing that happened that night. About eight o’clock, once Kimberly had gone up to her room after dinner—a meal, I might hasten to add, after which she did not even offer help to clear the dishes—an incredibly loud and high-pitched scream rang throughout the house. I thrust my head out of the dining room to see what was the matter. Across the hallway, Iris brushed at a fresh white wine spill on her blouse, presumably but not necessarily having been startled by the loud cry, and Buck looked at me from where he was stretched out on the couch in front of the TV and belched. “What’s her damage, Heather?” he asked me.

Before I could even shrug, Kimberly’s head popped over the stair rail and crowed victoriously, “I’m on the internet!”

I looked to Buck, and he rolled his eyes at the ceiling, calling back, “Yeah, duh! You’ve been on Facebook since you were, like, a zygote!” If I could only express to you the glow of pride Buck got anytime he used a word that suggested he truly had graduated from high school.

Kimberly flew down the stairs carrying her laptop. She waved a hand for me to join them as she ran into the living room. I followed, curious but cautious. The first thing I saw when I entered the room was the look on Iris’s and Buck’s faces.

“Holy scrotums,” Buck muttered.

Although no words came out of her mouth, Iris’s expression said the exact same thing.

I walked around the back of the couch and looked over their shoulders to see, covering the entire expanse of the screen of Kimberly’s laptop, a webpage to the online gossip site TheRumorMill.com. The main photo was of Kimberly and J.J. saying goodbye on our front landing just hours before. Smiling, she was reaching out, doing something to the collar of his sweatshirt, probably one of those things we make up so that we have an excuse to touch a person we want to be touching, and he was laughing at something. They both looked beautiful, and happy, and ideal. And the caption, in big, black, bold letters read, “CAMELOT REBORN????”

And that was the moment I realized my life had gotten really, really complicated.

School. Although I was an academic star in a highly competitive atmosphere, I’d managed to burrow my way into a pretty low profile at McVities Prep. I was too respected by the faculty and administration, too well-connected via marriage, and too happy to let others grab the attention for anyone to feel like they needed to pay much attention to me in any way other than to get answers to homework questions.

I guess this will sound pretty pathetic, but I really only had one friend there, Vibol, a former Cambodian refugee, who was so closed-mouthed about everything, we rarely talked about anything other than schoolwork. Which might be why we were only school friends and had never even once done something social off campus. Not a baseball game, a Broadway show, not even a walk in Central Park. I can’t even honestly say that “friend” is the right word to describe our relationship. We were study buddies, we were competitors as well as encouragers (one of us was most likely going to be valedictorian), and I’d always wondered if maybe we were both scholarship recipients. Because if anyone worried about his grades more than I did, it was Vibol. But I now wonder if what really bonded us was that we both felt like outsiders. He because he’d lived in another country and culture until he was eight, and I because, long before puberty, never felt like I quite fit in with most of the other boys.

Anyway, suffice it to say that when I arrived at school on Monday, very tired after a night of more tossing and turning than dreaming and snoring, I had no expectations of finding myself the recipient of innumerable stares accompanied by hand-covering-mouth mumbling. I did all the basic things—checked to make sure my zipper was up, nothing was hanging from my nose, no bird crap in my hair—as I walked down the hallway to my locker. Just as I reached it, Vibol came up from behind me and said, “So, is it really true?”

“Is what true?” I asked. “Why is everybody staring at me?”

“Is your sister really going to marry J.J. Kennerly? I mean, shit.”

I don’t know what was more shocking—the question, Vibol indulging in gossip, or him swearing—but I was so taken aback by it all that my reaction was to laugh. Maybe it was painfully obvious to you why everyone had been staring, what with Kimberly’s picture appearing on the internet the night before, but that hadn’t been why I’d lain awake most of the night. The things I’d been concerned with had run the gamut from how was I going to get in contact with J.J. (his number and email were beyond unlisted), to when would I see him again, would I get to kiss him again whenever I did see him, and did he want children or just a dog? (It was a long night.)

I said to Vibol, “They met for the first time Saturday night. I think marriage might be jumping the gun a little bit.”

Vibol’s face fell. “Are you sure?”

“Why would you care?” I asked. This was coming from the guy who usually greeted me with stats on anyone in the world he’d learned had received a perfect score on their SAT. (He’d missed it by ten points.)

“Do you know how much a letter of recommendation from a Kennerly could help my college application?” As absurd as that may have sounded, I found it oddly reassuring. At least Vibol was talking like himself again.

“Vibol, you’re going to get into any college you want no matter what.”

He bit his lip as his eyes dropped to the floor, his head shaking gently back and forth, looking more like someone at a funeral than a seventeen-year-old walking to class. “I don’t know, man, it’s competitive out there,” he said before he walked off.

“And how was your weekend?” I asked.

He waved a hand dismissively as he said, “What does it matter?”

I started to laugh until I realized I was still being stared at. Definitely not my favorite thing. But then, as I busied myself with my locker, a perverse little idea popped into my head, and I decided to have some fun. Grabbing my books and shutting the locker door, I turned to head to my first period class and started humming “Here Comes the Bride.” I swear Shoshana Goldberg almost peed her Pradas.

After school, I took the crosstown bus through Central Park, and before walking up Broadway to the Starbucks where Duane worked, I stopped at Levain Bakery to buy two of their chocolate peanut butter chip cookies for us to eat on his break. Obviously, there were baked goods where he worked, but when he told me he’d never been to Levain, I figured that if he was the first person who had gotten me to say that I was gay, then I should be the first person to introduce him to the best cookie in the world. Yes, in the world. No hyperbole.

As I waited for Duane to go on break, I sat at a table, dipping my mind into Madame Bovary and my nose into the bag of cookies, flirting with a contact high from the intoxicating aroma of chocolate and peanut butter. (Whoever thought of it first deserves a Nobel Prize or something. Seriously.) Soon enough, he arrived with two containers of milk and sat down. “Is that some shit about your sister, or what?”

“Good God,” I said, “does everyone in the world know?”

“Uh, yeah, pretty much.”

I blew out a long breath through my lips.

“Is that all you’ve been hearing about all day?” Duane asked as he took the bag of cookies from me.

“Uh, yeah, pretty much.”

“These things weigh a ton!” He looked into the bag to make sure it in fact only contained cookies. “And there are only two of them?”

“Trust me, one is pretty much a meal.”

He reached into the bag. “Ooh, they’re still a little bit warm.” He drew out one of the cookies, handing the bag back to me, and I watched as he inspected the cookie, broke off a piece, then put it into his mouth. As he chewed, the look which had started out skeptical and critical melted into one of almost sexual pleasure.

“Was I right?” I asked.

He put out a hand to me. “Shut up. I’m in the middle of a food-gasm.”

“Cookie interruptus?” I joked.

I wasn’t sure if he didn’t hear my attempt at humor, or just didn’t think it was funny, but he was pretty much incapable of conversation until half of his cookie was gone. But eventually he asked, “So, your stepmom got what she wanted, huh?”

I paused before I answered. I’d been thinking all day that I really wanted and needed someone to talk to about what had happened with J.J., and I think I’d basically been planning on making Duane that person. After all, he was the only one who knew my other secret, so it made sense. Except now that I was starting to realize what a big deal anything involving a Kennerly was, and having known Duane for less than a full two days—well, actually, even less than that, since the first night he had been Coco, and the two of them seemed to live pretty separate lives, even if they did exist in the same body—as he watched me eagerly for a full report, I felt myself drawing back. “I guess, sort of,” I finally said.

He stopped his hand with another piece of cookie halfway to his mouth, “You don’t sound all that happy about it.”

I harrumphed. “It’s complicated.”

“Child, ain’t it always.” And then he started telling me a story about this guy his mother used to see who didn’t know she had children, let alone five of them, and how they would all have to hide and be quiet in one bedroom with the door closed and none of them could use the bathroom when she had him over. As was often the case with Duane and/or Coco, the story got pretty graphic, but besides making me laugh, it took my mind off of my own thoughts for a bit, and by the time he had to go back to work, while I still didn’t know how much I could trust him with my really big secret, I did know that I wanted to get to know him better.

Which was a good thing, because life’s run of surprises kept right on rolling along when I got home. I had barely walked into the house when Kimberly popped out of the living room and asked where I’d been. There was something both frustrated and excited in her manner. I told her I’d gone to meet Duane for his break, and she said, “Oh, perfect, then you can bring him!”

“Bring him? To what? What are you talking about?”

She suddenly turned coy and smiled mischievously. I craned my neck to see if I could find anyone with answers in the living room, but Kimberly said, “Buck’s at the gym, and Mom’s lying down. It’s just the two of us.”

Something in the oddly intimate way she said it made my stomach tighten.

“J.J. called me this afternoon,” she said.

“Okay, so?”

“So, it seems you’ve made quite an impression on him.”

I honestly thought I might toss my proverbial and literal cookies. Was it possible that J.J. had told her—of all people—what had happened between him and me? That she might be the only person besides Duane, and, well, J.J. himself, who now knew I was gay? And what would she do with that information? Would she use it against me? Would she get me thrown out of the house? Was that why she was looking so cat-that-ate-the-canary? Suddenly I wanted all of the events of the weekend to somehow magically disappear and go back to my closeted little servile-but-safe existence.

“And he told me about meeting Duane out front yesterday, and he thinks you guys both seem really nice, and he wants the four of us to hang out.”

“Hang out?” I was on the verge of relaxing slightly, but I didn’t want to jump the gun just yet. “You’re telling me that J.J. wants to go out with you, Duane, and me?”

“Uh-huh. Doesn’t that sound like fun?!”

I don’t know if you’re ready for this—I sure wasn’t—but Kimberly then threw her arms around me in a hug. A hug, I tell you! When she let go, she spun around giddily, stopped short, and asked, “Can you go tonight? I’m dying to see him again!”

I fumbled through a series of excuses—I had dinner to make, I had a Calculus quiz in the morning, Duane was still at work, she had class tomorrow—and she pouted somehow gracefully. “I guess you’re right. Besides, I suppose I should try to not look too eager. Ugh, life sucks.” She slumped over to the couch and wilted onto it.

I excused myself to the kitchen to get dinner started, but really I just needed some recovery time. Obviously, I was thrilled that J.J. had figured out a way for us to see each other again, but when I’d described the situation to Duane as complicated, I’d definitely not even thought of these possibilities.

Three nights later I found myself on my first date with J.J.

And Kimberly.

And Duane.

Even though it was only over Skype and I was on the third floor, the scream Duane had let out when I asked what his schedule was like because J.J. Kennerly wanted to hang out with us was loud enough for Buck to call up from the living room couch asking if I wanted him to call NYPD for a rape kit.

We eventually all settled on Thursday, and that night Duane showed up at my place an hour early. Although he was totally in his guy-mode hip-hop wear, he said he’d tried on twelve different pairs of tennis shoes, and did I think he’d picked the right ones? When I said I couldn’t believe he had twelve pairs of tennis shoes, he gave me a withering look and said, “Child, those are just the ones that went with this outfit.” I was about to ask how many pairs of shoes he had, and where did he keep them if his family of six lived in a two-bedroom apartment, but Kimberly called from upstairs.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I can’t decide if I’m wearing the right thing. Help!”

Duane pushed me aside without missing a beat, saying, “Out of my way, amateur.” He did have the good manners to stop at the foot of the stairs and call up to Kimberly, asking if it was okay for him to come up. She eagerly granted him permission, and I had the next forty-five minutes to myself. I’m not saying I hadn’t changed my own mind about what to wear a couple times over the last few days, but once I put on my jeans and the button-down navy blue shirt that I fancied brought out my eyes, I was good to go. Part of me felt like I should go upstairs in case I was needed to run interference, but I was too much on edge to try to pretend that I cared, and I had a feeling that they were not the audience to whom to say, “They’re just clothes.”

I tried reading some of my homework as I sat on the couch, my knees and hands jittery from nerves, but to say my focus was less than optimal would be an understatement. At about quarter to seven, Buck came home, dropping his gym bag loudly by the front door, and waved me to make room for him to stretch out on the couch.

“You know Iris doesn’t like you on the furniture when you’re sweaty,” I said.

“You mean you don’t like me on it.”

“Well, I am the one who has to keep getting more Febreeze.”

He kicked his shoes off and put his smelly feet in my lap. “Give me a foot massage. Please.”

Pushing his feet off, I stood up. “You know if Iris hears you made a bad impression when J.J. gets here, she’s going to lose her shit all over you.”

“Oh, is that tonight?”

Iris had been in such a state since the news of the date that Kimberly told me she’d finally slipped two Xanax into Iris’s after-lunch vitamin supplements, and she was passed out in her room. Although I don’t know if I would have actually had the nerve to do it, I will say that I was a little ashamed of myself for not thinking of it first.

“Your dinner is in the fridge,” I said to Buck. “Just heat it for three minutes in the microwave.”

He put on his most pathetic face. “I worked out too hard, and my muscles are all burned out.”

“You managed to walk home,” I said.

“Barely. Those front steps were like Everest. Trying to lift that plate would make me like Sisyphus with his rock.” (See what I mean about the smart-stupid thing? Buck knew I almost always rewarded him when he said something that hinted at hidden depths. I guess Kimberly wasn’t the only one I was guilty of spoiling.)

I went to warm up his food, but I was stopped by the sight of Kimberly and Duane descending the stairway. They’d decided on one of those light, loose, flowy halter dresses that still managed to show off her great body, with a light, cashmere shrug and ballet slippers. It was the perfect blend of casual, girly, and super, super flattering. It suddenly occurred to me in a very big way that if J.J. were bi and not gay, I was in serious trouble. I realized that there was so much I didn’t know about him, and I began to feel it overwhelm me, almost like a panic attack or something, and barely managing to mumble something about Buck’s dinner, I raced for the kitchen.

Once there, I forced myself to take long, deep breaths, and while the food heated up, I first tried to figure out an excuse to get out of going, then I beat myself up for giving up too easily, and by the time the bell on the microwave dinged, I think I’d changed sides of the argument about fifty times. As I told myself I had a future in politics with that much flip-flopping, I grabbed a lap tray, poured a large glass of milk, and lifted Buck’s supper.

Forcing my best attempt at a calm smile, I entered the living room to find Kimberly standing by the mirror checking her makeup, Buck still lying on the couch with his feet now in Duane’s lap, and Duane looking at Buck adoringly as he massaged said feet. I almost dropped the tray.

“Careful!” Buck said as he sat up quickly. He didn’t actually get up or anything, but he did reach out his arms, as if that would help from ten or fifteen feet away. Duane just looked pissed at me for a second, before he caught himself.

“Pardon my interruption,” I said.

Duane rolled his eyes, then smiled at Buck, “casually” patting him on his admittedly beefy shoulder. “This man needs to eat to keep him big and strong.”

Buck made some sort of Neanderthal noise, and Duane acted like that was just about the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

The absurdity of it all finally turned my forced smile into a real one, and as I chuckled, a world of dark stress lifted right up off of me. I even managed to tell Kimberly she looked beautiful, but when she said thank you, she was looking with concern at Duane and Buck. She waved me over to her discreetly, and once I got there, asked me, “Doesn’t that bother you?”

“What?” I asked, really not a hundred percent sure what she was objecting to and not willing to risk a guess.

But before she could continue, her cell phone rang, and it was J.J. Naturally, she answered it, and although I was, of course, dying to listen, I stepped away to give her privacy. As soon as I did, Duane stood up and steered me into the hallway.

“What’s up?” I asked.

Still peering around the doorway to watch Buck eat, he said, “Sookie sookie now! Seriously, he is one piece of Grade A beef.”

“He’s straight.”

“You never know. Sexuality is genetic. It might run in the family.”

“He’s my stepbrother, remember?”

“Then maybe it is environmental. Who’s to say?”

“Uh, science.”

“If the Fundamentalists can ignore science, then why can’t I? ‘Cause right now I feel like praying. Or at least dropping to my knees.”

“This is making me uncomfortable,” I said.

Duane finally tore his eyes away from Buck, turned his head to me, and knowingly responded, “The truth makes most people uncomfortable.”

I began to laugh, but Kimberly interrupted me.

“That was J.J. He says that some paparazzi are hiding across the street, and I told him that wasn’t a problem for me, but he doesn’t want them to follow us all night, which, again, I told him wasn’t a problem for me, but he wants us to meet him at the subway. Do you guys mind?”

Once we’d gotten outside, we didn’t see any photographers at first, but then one of them moved in the shadows, and Kimberly, Duane, and I exchanged looks, feeling oddly exposed. I mumbled that none of us should say anything, and when I looked over my shoulder at the end of the block, the coast appeared to be clear.

J.J. was waiting for us inside the station, and after she’d given him a kiss on the cheek (although I’m not sure that’s what she’d been aiming for), he shook Duane’s hand, then gave me a casual hug. Even with all of those people around, just feeling him close for that brief embrace was the second-best moment of my life up till then. (Number one being the kiss, of course.)

“So what are we doing for our double date?” Kimberly asked J.J. perkily.

Was that why she’d asked if Duane’s attentiveness to Buck had bothered me?

Duane and I shared split-second looks that combined surprise, confusion, and panic, then I looked at J.J. and saw his own doubt register, and then I saw him look unsurely at Duane.

“This is going to be so much fun!” Kimberly exclaimed as she clutched J.J.’s elbow.