DAVID SR. carried his lunch plate to the sink, rinsed it, and loaded it into the dishwasher. He thought he might go for a drive just to get out of the house.
He got his keys from the hall table, went to the front door, and opened it. Standing on the top of the steps, he surveyed the driveway. The Cadillac was gone.
“What the hell?” He scratched his head and looked down at the keys in his hand. There were only two keys, both of them house keys, front and back doors. No car keys.
No car.
“That’s right,” he said. He’d sold his car when the doctor had said he couldn’t drive anymore. David Sr. frowned. What did that old quack know? He was more than capable of driving. He still had great vision; there was nothing wrong with his eyes or his reflexes.
Frustrated, he stepped back inside and shut the door.
As he wandered into the living room, he looked around. It looked… different. He didn’t remember having changed the worn plaid couch and chairs he’d had for a dozen years for this sleek brown leather set. Stepping over to the couch, he ran his hand over the soft leather. He couldn’t deny it was nice.
“Huh.” He sat in the chair. On the wall was a collection of photographs in sleek black frames. He squinted at them. Some were too small for him to see, so he stood and went to the wall.
“Me and Davey. I remember that day,” he muttered. There they were on the train at Hermann Park; Davey wore a train conductor’s cap and a huge smile. The next photo showed a tanned ten-year-old Davey at the beach in Galveston, kneeling in the sand behind a huge sandcastle, his eyes as green as the sea.
He’d tried to be a good father. Tried to give his son as much as possible, despite not having a mother. “Angela,” he whispered. He touched the framed photo of their wedding picture. She’d been so beautiful, and he was grinning as if he’d been the luckiest man on earth.
And he had been. Until she’d died, leaving him and five-year-old Davey all alone.
Faced with painful memories, he turned away from the rest of the photo collection and went to his room. Down the long hall that ran along the side of the house, his slow treads on the wooden floors sounded with only an occasional squeak.
Something was wrong, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He opened the door to his room and stood in the doorway. Familiar, yet not, the furniture was the same. At least, he thought it was the same. He wasn’t sure.
“Shit.” Getting old sucked. But he wasn’t that old, not really. Davey was just a young man. He glanced at the clock by his bedside. Two thirty.
Davey would be home from school soon.
Until then, he’d just lie down and take a rest. Just shut his eyes for a while.
He wasn’t old, and this wasn’t a nap.
Just to prove it, he stretched out on top of the bedclothes, kicked off his loafers, and relaxed. He didn’t even turn off the light.
If the light was still on, it was not a nap.
He chuckled, then closed his eyes and wondered what Davey would have to say about his day at school. He hoped those bullies hadn’t gotten hold of Junior again.
“Gotta teach that kid to fight,” he mumbled as he drifted off.
DAVID HAD made his decision at last and called Ms. Sanchez. Thank God she’d accepted. She was the best of the candidates he’d seen, and it was time to get on with it and choose.
The faster he did this, the faster he’d be able to get on with some sort of life.
A life with Travis.
He grinned as he pulled into the driveway and parked.
As he got out and slammed the door shut, he waved to his neighbors, Bert and Tom, and they called him over to the fence to chat.
“How’s it been going, David?” Tom asked, his arm casually slung over Bert’s shoulder as if for support. Tom’s blue eyes and bald head shone in the sunlight.
“Fine.” David nodded and shifted his briefcase to the other hand.
“Ask him the real question, love.” Bert nudged Tom as he rolled his eyes. Both men had blue eyes, but that’s where the similarity ended. Tom had a body like a weight lifter. Bert was dark-haired, short and thin, with a huge mustache that drooped down his face. As far as David could see, Bert was the one who wore the pants.
They had been together for over ten years.
“The real question?” David’s eyebrow rose.
“That car the other night. You had a visitor.” Tom’s voice suggested he knew exactly what had gone on.
“Oh.” David blushed. “That’s Travis.”
“Travis. Do tell, honey. Spill it.” Tom snapped his fingers, and Bert laughed.
“Jeez, baby, you’re worse than your mother,” Bert teased.
“Accepted. But I’m prettier,” Tom shot back. “Now, tell us all about Travis. Is it a big secret? Is he out? Where’d you meet him? Is this special?” Tom rapid-fired the questions at David.
“Whoa!” David laughed. “Travis is a cop. A detective. I met him when my father wandered off last month.”
“Uh-huh. A to-die-for detective. I’m loving that. And?”
“And he asked me out, but I said no.”
Tom clutched his chest. “No! What were you thinking, boy? You haven’t been out in ages.”
“Not since your dad moved in. I understand that, if Tom doesn’t.” Bert shot Tom a glance.
“And I still haven’t been on a date. We’ve been talking on the phone.”
“Oh, phone sex. I love that!” Tom’s eyes glittered. “You don’t call me enough, love,” he accused Bert.
Bert sighed. “If this is too personal, David, just tell Mr. Gotta-Know-It-All to take a hike.”
“It’s okay. Actually, it’s kind of nice to be able to talk about it. I can’t say anything to my dad, for sure.”
“Hence the late-night rendezvous,” Tom added as he wiggled his eyebrows.
David nodded. “No phone sex.” At Tom’s crushed look, he said, “Sorry to disappoint you. We just talked and got to know each other. We’re taking it slow.”
“Slow, huh?” Tom didn’t look as if he believed it.
“Until recently.” David blushed and scratched his nose.
“Is it serious?” This time Bert asked the question.
“Yes, it is.”
“Good. I’m so happy for you, man. I hope it works out. Being with a cop is hard.” Bert’s brow furrowed.
“Sounds like you know about that. Tom, you’re not a closet cop, are you?” David joked.
Tom got quiet. “No. Bert’s former partner was a cop.”
“I need to start the sprinklers and get the lawn watered.” Bert moved off.
Tom watched Bert’s back retreat across the well-tended yard.
David knew he’d said the wrong thing. “I’m sorry if I upset Bert.”
“He died. Shot in the line of duty. It was awful,” Tom whispered.
“Did you know them both when it happened?” David asked.
Tom nodded. “I sort of stepped in afterward. For comfort, you know. As a friend. It just became more over time. We fell in love. I never thought he’d get over Frank’s death.” Tom shook his head.
Bert didn’t look over it to David.
“Being with a cop is tough. Frank wasn’t out. They couldn’t hang around Frank’s friends or family; couldn’t be with Bert’s friends. Just a lot of sneaking around. I don’t know about Frank, but Bert loved him very much.”
“I can see that.” David nodded. “Living with a ghost must be tough too.”
Tom rolled his eyes. “You have no idea, honey. But we all live with something, don’t we? Our pasts, our families, ourselves. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
“I know.”
“Well, I need to get over there and spread mulch before the weeds take the house hostage. See you. And good luck, David. I hope he’s the one.” With a wink, Tom trotted over to their Explorer, where Bert had opened the back and was wrestling bags of mulch.
David waved to them and headed inside.
“Dad! I’m home.” He put down the briefcase.
“Davey!” his father called from the kitchen. “How’s school today? Those bullies leave you alone?”
Shit. David’s heart sank, shot down like a low-flying duck. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and then went to the kitchen. “Dad, I’m not in school any more. I’m forty. I was at work all day.”
“Work?” His father looked up from the kitchen table and the Houston Chronicle he had been reading. The sound of the dishwasher starting its first cycle filled the awkward silence. David Sr. blinked at David, faded green eyes staring as if he’d never seen his son before.
That had to be bad.
“Work? Of course you were at work. Did I say school?” He shrugged. “Forgot, that’s all.”
David pulled out a chair and sat. “Look, Dad, the doctor said you’d forget some things, get confused. It’s okay.”
“I’m not confused.” David Sr. set his jaw and rattled the paper as he turned the page.
“You asked about school and bullies. That was in high school.” David would never forget those days. If you were different, the jocks pummeled you. David hadn’t been a jock, but he hadn’t been a nerd either. And he certainly wasn’t out. There hadn’t seemed to be any reason for his treatment at the time.
He’d been Sam Stoves’s personal pet project. At seventeen, Sam was the captain of the football team, six two, blond, blue-eyed, and the darling of the school. Every time Sam saw him, he’d made sure to make David’s life miserable.
David had never understood it, until he’d seen Sam years later, one night in Austin at a gay bar. And it all clicked into place. Sam had strolled over to David, beer in his hand, apologized, and then admitted he’d always had a crush on David.
It had floored David. They’d gone back to David’s hotel and fucked.
Then he’d never seen Sam again.
His father glanced over the paper at David. “What’s up? Rough day at work?”
“No. I hired a housekeeper today, Dad. She’s coming on Saturday to meet you and see the house.”
“I don’t want a housekeeper. I do fine here.”
“I want one. It’s not fine. The place is a mess, and I don’t want to spend all my time cleaning. I want a life, Dad.”
“A life? You mean you want to go out to bars, get picked up, and have sex with one of those limp-wristed, boy-girl faggots.” David Sr. made a disgusted noise and slammed the paper down.
“What the hell are you talking about?” David’s voice and temper rose.
“I know what goes on in those clubs. Sex. Lots of sex. They have sex right there, out in the open. On the tables, on the dance floor. I read about it.” His father was working up a good head of steam. He’d read about it? Where? Did the Chronicle have a new gay life section?
“Good grief.” David ran his hand over his face. His shoulders shook with laughter.
“What are you laughing about?”
“For one thing, you reading about gay sex. For another? That image. All those men having sex on tables.” David couldn’t help it. “Do you know how hard it is to have sex on a table?”
His dad reeled back as if David had struck him. “What?”
“Have you ever had sex on a table? Have you?” David couldn’t seem to stop himself. He wanted to shock his dad. “It’s damned tricky. The table has to be really sturdy, for one thing, or else the whole thing will collapse.”
“David! Shut up! I don’t want to hear about it!” his father yelled as he backed out of the kitchen.
David followed, sucking in great gulps of air, his hands in tight fists. “Then don’t start with me, Dad. I’m gay. Gay men don’t have sex everywhere. We aren’t all promiscuous.” Once he’d started, he couldn’t seem to stop himself. “I don’t meet men in bars and have sex on tables. I don’t fuck boys. And I’m not a pervert, a faggot, limp-wristed, or a girl-boy. I’m a man. Just a man who finds other men physically attractive.”
“Okay, David.” His father held up his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry I upset you.”
David ran his hand through his hair as he tried to calm down. “Look, I just want your respect and your acceptance. I’m gay. It’s never going to change. Never. It’s not your fault; it’s not my fault. It just is.”
His father stared at him. “Okay.” He looked down at his feet and then up into David’s eyes. “I love you, Davey. I guess I haven’t said that lately.”
“Not since I told you I was gay. I was twenty-three. That was almost twenty years ago,” David whispered. In the kitchen, the dishwasher clunked, signaling the next cycle.
“Twenty years?” His father blinked and licked his lips. “That long?”
David nodded.
“But you look so young. Just like you did….” The green-eyed gaze wandered, then snapped back to David’s face.
“It’s okay, Dad.” David patted him on the shoulder. “I love you too.”
They stood there staring at each other, neither moving to close the distance between them.
“How about I take you out to eat tonight? Feel like Italian?” David picked his dad’s favorite. “We could go to Antelli’s? Get some pizza?”
His father nodded. “Pizza sounds good. I’m buying.” He stuck out his chin, as if daring David to argue.
“Sounds good to me.” David smiled. “Let me get changed, and we’ll go.”
“Okay, Davey.” His father walked into the living room, and David heard the television turn on.
On his way to his room to change, David’s steps dragged, his arms hung at his sides. He wasn’t very hungry. Fuck. His father was slipping away, in dribs and drabs, stops and starts, memory by memory. Before he knew it, his dad wouldn’t know him. They wouldn’t be able to have any sort of conversation, not even a fight.
There hadn’t been enough good memories with his dad lately.
Maybe it was time to make a few. Just in case.