15

AN HOUR BEFORE THEY WERE due to depart for Aunt Marian’s afternoon “do” on Raymond Avenue, Neil went to his room to get dressed up. He settled on black pants and the wine-coloured silk shirt Tony had given him, the Zamboni shirt, not at all sure that his parents would approve. But after putting it on, Neil didn’t care whether they liked it or not. He was going to wear it. Having it next to his bare skin, with no undershirt, felt so sensual, Neil could scarcely take it in. It was what being caressed must be like, he decided. He took it off and put it on several times just to savour the sensation.

Of course, the shirt reminded him of Tony, who by then had been with Vicki, had probably even made love with Vicki. He would no longer be a stranger to caresses. Then it occurred to him that Tony had never been a stranger to caresses. That huge family of his was always showering affection upon him: hugs, kisses, cheek pinching, arms casually thrown around shoulders or waists for no other reason than the physical pleasure it gave to both the giver and the receiver. He remembered one afternoon a year or so ago coming into the shop to find Tony’s older cousin Claudio talking away to him with one of his hairy hands in Tony’s back pocket, squeezing his bum. That was the afternoon when Neil first decided that Tony had been “born under a good star.”

As he buttoned up the shirt for the fourth time, he whispered to his mirror, “I’m going to be with Jack. Soon. Very soon.” The mirror made no objection, though Neil felt silly the moment he had spoken and avoided his own eyes.

Upstairs, his father sat waiting in the gold-striped armchair as his mother brushed the collar of his sports jacket. “You’re not wearing that,” he said the moment he saw Neil.

“Why not?”

“You need to wear a tie. It’s your Aunt Marian’s.”

“Where did you get the shirt?” his mother asked, her eyes disbelieving.

“Tony gave it to me. It’s from his brother-in-law’s shop.”

“You’re not an Italian,” his father said.

“Yes, dear, it’s fine for some, but our people will find it odd.”

“Who will find what odd?” Aunt Sylvia said, coming up behind him. She was adding the finishing touches to her filmy green outfit — a pair of earrings the shape and colour of marigolds.

“He’s dressed for a gangland shooting.”

“What are you talking about? He looks gorgeous.” She rubbed the sleeve of the shirt between her thumb and forefinger. “Such a beautiful shirt. Silk, very fine silk.”

His father looked like a pricked balloon. “Silk, eh?”

“But you know Marian,” his mother said. “It won’t be ‘proper.’ Nor is your hair. You should have had it cut.”

“Marian’s a big girl now. She can deal with a silk shirt on her nephew. And he looks so fine in it. With those smart trousers and the shiny shoes. A perfect colour for him, too. And his hair makes him look like a poet. I think I’ll keep him all to myself this afternoon. Marian and Violet and Kay will have to find another nephew to dote on.” She pulled Neil close to her side, her arm around his back. Her smile was full of mischief. “See if I don’t.”

Neil’s mother continued to look mildly worried, but his father was a changed man. He stood and, putting his arms into position, smiled contentedly as his wife slipped the grey-blue jacket on them. It was an old, familiar routine Neil had seen five hundred times or more, but on this sweltering afternoon, it looked new and somehow defiant. “Like it or not, this is what we do,” it seemed to say.

“Who did you say was going to look odd, Frank?” Sylvia asked. “You’ll boil in that jacket.”

“Can’t help it. Rules are rules.”

They all laughed.

Sylvia put her arm around her sister. “Don’t you worry. We make a very attractive quartet.”

Neil saw that it was true. In her sky blue dress, his mother had never looked prettier, and never more like Aunt Sylvia. Her fair hair and freckles, her pale skin and grey eyes seemed altered. And his father, even though he was overdressed, never looked handsomer. As for his aunt, well, there weren’t words eloquent enough.

Sylvia opened her arms. “We’ll take their breath away.”

*

BASKING IN THE steamy light of Aunt Marian and Uncle Henry’s rose garden, Neil couldn’t have been more content. He had his Aunt Sylvia next to him, entertaining him with sotto voce comments and the occasional squeeze of his arm. Two large rosebushes, heavy with fragrant blossoms, were behind him. And before him was a constantly shifting scene of family folly, which, thanks to his aunt’s position as guest of honour, he could observe and enjoy with the freedom of an almost invisible man.

Except for Val and Aunt Julie, they were all there. “For the first time in ten years,” Aunt Violet kept saying, making ten years sound like a thousand.

Pretty, flowery Marian and her skinny beanpole of a husband, Henry, a dead-ringer for Astaire everyone said, seemed to be always in motion: Marian with bowls of cashews, chocolate-covered peanuts, and almonds with raisins, which Neil found wonderfully eccentric; Henry with glasses to be filled or glasses to be delivered. Uncle George, the somewhat portly, silver-haired eldest Deekman sibling, sat prominently in the middle of the garden, smiling benevolently like a grand poobah, occasionally pulling on his tie or belt to make sure they were behaving. His wife, the deep-voiced Kay, stood watch, an impressively towering Amazon with a shock of white accenting the raven darkness of her hair. A cluster of “the girls,” cousins Sandra, Anne and Wendy, debated the relative merits of nail polishes. Wendy’s husband, Gary, a somewhat forlorn little rabbit without her attention, was talking to anyone who looked his rapidly blinking way. This included Aunt Vi, in a dress covered in glittery sunbursts; blowsy cousin Doreen who lounged in the shade of an elm tree, fanning herself with one of those pretty paper fans that were a dime a dozen in Chinatown; and Neil’s father, who had finally surrendered his suit jacket. His mother and Uncle Herb occupied seats to Neil’s right and were kept very busy commenting on photos of cousin Ken’s recent European holiday. As tall as his father Henry, but lanky rather than skinny, Ken was gregarious to a fault and a pitiless smiler. Neil couldn’t help feeling the smile was a grab for attention and he hated it. Ken’s very pregnant wife, Janie, who looked a lot like a lemon meringue pie in her yellowy-white maternity dress, only spoke in stage-prompting whispers when she felt it was necessary to correct Ken’s geography.

George, having little to do and even less to think about, seemed to think it fell to him to get a general conversation going. Outboard motors generated little interest. Burt Lancaster as the bird man of Alcatraz, a little more. The care and maintenance of roses captured him for a while as his sister Marian tried to remember the names of the bushes that lined their fences and got hopelessly confused. But it was George’s ungainly leap into the political field that got everybody riled up. Smiling at Sylvia, whom he had not stopped gazing at since her arrival, he said, rather more loudly than necessary, “I can’t believe it. You’re not only a citizen of that godforsaken country, you vote Democrat! Democrat! And he’s a Mick to boot. What would Dad have said? What would Dad have said?”

“Dad would have minded his own business,” she answered, her laugh shimmering in the garden like dappled light.

George scowled. “What do you think of it, Frank?”

“Whoever Sylvia votes for is fine with me. It doesn’t affect us anyway.”

Neil knew this was a lie, because his father hated the Kennedys. He’d told his wife he thought Sylvia was crazy supporting “those damn Catholics.”

A further political conflagration was only put out by a quiet question from Aunt Marian: “Why are you picking fights, George? Sylvia’s come all this way to see us. Keep this up and she’ll wish she’d never come.”

But it was all good, Neil figured. As the afternoon progressed, with his aunt stroking his wine-silk sleeve on the armrest, he could feel her affection for her family slowly seeping into him. By the time Aunt Marian and her daughters began bringing out the trays of food for their “high tea,” as Marian called it, Neil thought he could be happy if time just stood still and left him forever surrounded by this group of people. He couldn’t recall the worry he had experienced in the days just before Sylvia arrived. He saw himself only as another fully-fledged member of the clan, transparent, open to all comers.

The first cloud scudded across his sky when his cousin Ken invited him and Sylvia to take an “inexpensive tour of Greece.”

Ken’s pictures were beautiful, as beautiful at least as Rick’s postcard from Mykonos, and with them came a lot of interesting stories, which Ken told with the flair of a polished entertainer. One photo, about halfway through the album, showed a stretch of white beach curled around a luminescent aquamarine sea. Unlike the dozens of other photos of beaches Ken had taken, this one was quite populous. There were many tanning bodies in very skimpy swimming trunks lying out under what looked like a blazing sky. Titillated by the near-nudity, it took Neil a second to clue into the obvious fact that all the sunbathers were men.

Without thinking, he gave voice to his observation. “So are beaches segregated?”

“Segregated?” Kenny said. “No. No. Men and women go to the beach together.”

“But there aren’t any women there.”

Kenny smirked, “No. You’re right.” He looked around him like a detective casing a joint and, then, just loud enough for Neil and Sylvia to hear, he said, “Janie and I just stumbled onto this beach. We saw it from the rocks above, and thought, Wow, isn’t it gorgeous, and she wanted to give it a try, so we went down and, lo and behold, it was a special beach. A beach for queers.”

Neil kept his eyes lowered.

“It was a shock. All those men — looking for you know what.”

“The sun?” Sylvia asked.

“Well, yeah, that, too.”

“And the air and the sea. It looks like a lovely beach.”

It was Kenny’s turn to look embarrassed.

“Look how relaxed all those young men look. They have time, and they have company. How lucky. I can feel the heat, can’t you? Of course, Mediterranean heat’s a lot different from ours.”

“It sure is. Greece’s a great place, Aunt Sylvia,” he said, turning the page quickly to several photos of a large port city. Piraeus, Neil assumed. Just then, the food parade began. Ken rose with his album under his arm and hurriedly went in search of his pregnant wife, who had fled inside to escape the heat.

Aunt Sylvia patted Neil’s hand. “There’s a moral to that story.”

The second cloud in Neil’s perfect sky caused more of an eclipse than the first. They were all enjoying coffee or tea and Marian’s delicious little cakes iced in a fantasy of colours, when Uncle George, who had overlooked Neil after the initial handshake, suddenly zeroed in on him.

“And where did that shirt come from, Neil? Is that one of your gifts, Sylvia?”

“No, no. It isn’t, though I would love to have been the giver of such a gift.”

“So you have a girlfriend then who dresses you up, eh?”

“No, Uncle George.”

“You bought it yourself? Good heavens, are you going to take up tango next? It looks like a dago shirt.”

“It’s silk, George,” Sylvia said with a sigh. “Silk is not ‘dago’ by definition.”

“Maybe not, maybe not. It’s the colour I’m talking about.”

“It’s a beautiful colour, Neil,” Aunt Marian offered. Several of the women, including his mother, echoed her sentiments.

“Well, that’s what I mean,” George continued. “Women, it’s a woman’s colour.”

“George, dear, the sexes do not own colours.” Kay’s voice was especially deep.

“Wha’ddya mean? Blue for boys, pink for girls. That shirt’s in the pink line.”

Neil looked over at his father, whose face had grown very dark, almost stormy.

“You know what I think, George?” said Aunt Sylvia.

He turned towards his sister. “What’s that, Sylvia?”

“I think you need a hobby. You obviously haven’t got enough on your plate if you have all this energy for debating the merits of colours. I thought you were a speculative man. Why don’t you take up philosophy, George? Or theology? Something to really sink your teeth into. A burgundy silk shirt is hardly worth all this mental effort, is it?”

From behind her husband, Kay gave Sylvia the okay sign. Frank’s face was now brimming with smiles.

“While you think about it, George, I’m going for a walk around this lovely neighbourhood and my nephew in his wine-red silk shirt is going to accompany me. And believe me, I will feel very proud to have him on my arm.” Sylvia stood, her filmy green dress shimmering, her earrings glowing like coals. She gave her hand to Neil, who rose as he took it. “Think hard, now,” she said, giving her brother a light tap on the shoulder before she and Neil moseyed down the driveway in search of Raymond Avenue’s pastoral pleasures.

*

THE HOUSES ON Raymond were mostly of the two-storey brick variety, with tiny frontages and long narrow back gardens. Solid, sturdy, unblinking, with little or no imagination, they were at most forty years old, but looked as if they had been there forever. Neil’s father hated them, deemed them cramped, dark, dull, and would on every visit to the neighbourhood, remind Neil how lucky he was to live in a house with lots of yard around it and room to breathe.

Neil, however, found the street and its dwellings magical. The leaded glass windows were Old World enough to suggest English colleges full of young men in pullovers pouring over dusty tomes. The long covered verandahs spoke to Neil of long evenings of warm companionship and stimulating conversation, lubricated by exotic beverages he had no names for. The trees, older by far than the few that lined Avery and Dominion streets, he imagined as grand partners in the dance of gracious living. In the honey-coloured light of late September, when the leaves burned red and gold, he could attain a state bordering on rapture standing under their branches. The wind that shook the leaves loose and set them spinning down the sidewalks set him free, too, and the image of hurrying down windy streets at the edge of the world, head bent, scarf fluttering out behind him, left him almost dizzy with excitement.

As they walked, he attempted, shyly at first, to communicate some of his delight to his aunt. She listened very attentively, every so often throwing out a word or two of encouragement; soon, he lost track of where he was and began pouring out all the enthusiasm of his young heart for the street, the city, and the world at large in a voice that belonged on a great stage.

Two brief, almost quiet, blasts of a car horn brought him back to earth.

Startled and immediately anxious, he scanned the street to see what wrong he had done.

Aunt Sylvia put her hand on his sleeve.

“I’m sorry for going on,” he said. “I wasn’t watching.”

“You weren’t going on. And the horn wasn’t meant for you.” With her gaze she indicated a dark green car with a curved roof idling in front of a two-and-a-half storey faux-Tudor house, one much larger than any on Raymond Avenue. Its front door, also dark green, occupied the centre of the façade rather than one side, which Neil knew from his father’s years of real estate news meant a roomier centre hall plan.

He looked around him. They were at the intersection of Brumell Avenue and Baby Point Road. The large house with its dark green front door was number 25.

In a low, anxious voice, he told his aunt, “I know who lives in there.”

“Do you want to drop in?”

“I mean it’s someone who comes into the library.”

“Do you know the addresses of many of your library patrons?”

“I was working the night he applied for his card.”

“Is he one of them?” His aunt nodded towards the house. Two figures were emerging from the front door.

“Oh, let’s walk, can we, Auntie? I don’t want them to see us.”

They picked up their pace, but the two people walking towards them were faster, and they met where the walkway to the house joined the sidewalk.

The figure in front was a young man, clearly one of Bread-man’s brothers, but not the smiling, goofy one he’d seen before. This one would probably have been more beautiful than Bread-man himself if he hadn’t looked so severe. Neil was disturbed by the hard line of the mouth and the chilly blue eyes. The drab but obviously expensive charcoal-coloured suit he wore over his crisp white shirt and dark tie only added to the impression of a beauty spurned. The difference between him and Bread-man couldn’t have been more graphic. Bread-man was sunshine to this young man’s gloominess. The only thing about him that held any hope or light at all were his highly, and probably painstakingly, polished shoes.

The other figure was a tall, gaunt man in navy blue with iron-grey hair and a once-handsome countenance that was more severe, if possible, than his companion’s. The lines of suffering etched in it should have awakened sympathy, but they did nearly the opposite. These were harsh, grim lines. Neil couldn’t wait to look somewhere else.

In a low, correct voice, the older man said, “Good afternoon,” to them as they passed.

Aunt Sylvia replied, “And to you both as well.”

The young man said nothing, allowed himself no smile. He opened the car door for the elder, then marched briskly around the car to take his place at the wheel. As he did, he glanced briefly at Neil and Sylvia. His blue, blue eyes lingered for a second on Neil’s face. Something softer seemed to emerge, but it was quickly eclipsed by a frown when the older man rolled down his window, muttering, “I don’t like you honking the horn on a Sunday afternoon. I’ve told you that before.”

They could not make out the young man’s response, if there was one.

“Cheery folks,” his aunt said as the car passed them. “Perhaps they’re going to a funeral.”

Neil made no reply. An intense curiosity held him in its grip — curiosity about Jack’s brother, his obvious unhappiness and his even more obvious beauty. Such amazing blue eyes he had! He wanted to ask his aunt’s opinion — she would no doubt have one — but didn’t dare mention his interest even to her.

He turned instead to quizzing her about life in Los Angeles. Though he had the sense she wasn’t fooled by his sudden return to this subject, she gamely offered him enough anecdotes about star-sighting — Dorothy Malone, Walter Brennan, Rose Hobart, and so on — to satiate him. His favourite was a story of Aunt Julia helping Kim Novak to select an evening gown. “You know she’s a very private person,” his aunt told him, winking. “She keeps to herself, avoids a lot of publicity. Of course there are rumours, but she rises above them all. She was apparently very gracious towards Julia. Stars live in another world, though. They don’t cook or clean for themselves. Their salaries are astronomical, and when they travel they stay in only the best places. Unlike nearly everyone else on the continent.” Then, turning a pair of laughing eyes on him, she said, “You didn’t tell me which one of those gentlemen was your patron.”

“Neither,” Neil said, nervously. “The older one must be Bread-man’s father.”

“Bread-man?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention it?” Neil knew he hadn’t, but to cover his gaffe, he said, “The patron, the library patron, is also our temporary bread-man.”

“Wasn’t there talk about this bread-man on Friday night at the Gordons? Didn’t Lana Gordon call him dreamy?”

Neil admitted it was so. “Girls talk that way all the time. Dreamboat here, dreamboat there.”

“You don’t like being called a dreamboat?”

Neil gave her such an uncomfortable look, she immediately went on, “Well, that young man back there was certainly very good-looking, if not exactly a dreamboat. He’s maybe a bit too bottled up to be a dreamboat.”

“He must be one of the brothers, Augustine or Ignatius.”

“My heavens! Poor boys.”

“They’ve got other names, first names, but I don’t remember them. They’re Catholics. Jack is short for John Henry. He was named for a cardinal. The Catholic kind.”

“You know a lot about your patron.”

“He’s very friendly. And really smart. He reads French.”

Sylvia smiled. “A man who reads French is a man of the world, so they say.”

They had reached Thornhill Avenue and were standing undecided at the corner, as if they had all day to choose a direction. The afternoon light sprinkling through the leaves of the big oaks and maples made the sidewalks shimmer.

“I’m sorry for blabbing,” he said after they had stood a few seconds in silence. “I get carried away sometimes. It doesn’t happen very often.”

“That’s a pity. A boy your age should get carried away on a regular basis. If you ask me, that boy back there is in desperate need of getting carried away.”

“Jack’s not like that.”

“Good, good. Perhaps he’ll give you lessons.”