Sunflowers (Tournesols) II 18 страница

I waited, but he was deathly quiet. Deathly. I kept waiting and waiting - anytime he took a breath or opened his mouth, I prepared myself. My mom and Gerard went on to talk about art and food mostly, and she gushed about all these recipes that she could no longer make.

"Why not?" I asked, noticing the smallest change in my mom's voice. She brought her attention over to me this time, and her smile fell a bit.

"I didn't want to tell you this," she began, but my father cut her off.

"So don't tell him, Linda. It's simple."

The damn had burst. He was now talking. Booming. My mother blinked and then turned back towards her plate. She had stopped talking entirely now, not even indulging with Gerard anymore. I resented my father, for crushing her spirit when she had been so animated moments ago.

"What happened?" I asked, not giving a damn. "Why can't she make certain dishes anymore?"

I had been expecting some strange restricted response, some weird surveillance system my father had put over her as a means of control. I was almost ready to fight him I could feel myself getting so angry; I knew that cooking was one of her favourite things to do, and if he took that away, I didn't want to think about any other type of manipulation he would extend.

"I had a heart attack, Frank, while you were off frolicking in Paris. Don't even worry about it." In spite of how serious his remark was, I could sense the exuding sarcasm and anger in his tone. I ignored it.

"You had a heart attack? When? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I'm telling you now, aren't I? It doesn't matter when I had it, it's not like you would have come home."

I was about to respond, but he was right. I wouldn't have, but it still hurt me to know. It made me, by virtue of sharing the same blood, somehow feel weaker.

"Besides, we didn't have a number for you. And from the sounds of things, you would have been too occupied to answer the phone."

"We also didn't have one in Paris," Gerard cut in, trying to deflect some of the anger that was being shot back and forth on the table. "We couldn't afford one. I'm sorry to hear about your heart condition, Mr. Spinelli. How are things now?"

My dad regarded him awhile before answering. His eyes scanned him up and down, and shook his head, as if thinking to himself, not a threat, never would be. "Fine. Fine as anything could be, except I can't do what I like to do anymore for fear I could aggravate it. I can't eat good food. I shouldn't even be eating this right now but Linda insisted. Special occasion, special occasion, she said. Huh. I can see, very special indeed."

I swallowed hard. It was going so well, Gerard and my mom really liked one another, and now it was just falling apart. I felt as if I had been disembowelled and everything important inside of me, vital to life, was on the table and we were really all eating that instead of steaks. I wished I was vegetarian, I wished I was at home with Gerard, I wished I had never gotten this idea in the first place.

I also really wished I didn't care about my dad the way I did, but I found myself hurting for him. "You have to take care of yourself, dad, even if it does mean watching your health a little better."

He rolled his eyes, suddenly very angry at my concern. "What I don't need is someone who may as well have a disease right now telling me to watch my health. What I really don't need is to see someone who probably does have a disease here, eating my food, and infecting my son. " He felt the need to severely intonate the word, as if to establish my masculinity and family connection as he took it away. "And yet, this person is here and does not have to deal with heart attacks, can eat whatever he wants, cannot have a job or even an ounce of responsibly or realisation of what he is doing. This is ridiculous. I did not work as hard as I have worked to be rewarded with old age like this. "

I shut my eyes. I wanted it t go away, for it just be a bad dream. The room filled with blackness and the exasperated or cut short breathes of everyone around me, suffering in some way or another.

But Gerard was brave. It was a fire pit of emotions and he went in with his eyes open. "I'm sorry you feel that way, Mr. Spinelli. If it's any consolation, your son does not have a disease. Neither do I. I get tested every year to make sure of it. France has an excellent health care system and flourishing economy."

My father rolled his eyes and raised his hand in his hands. "Great. Just what I need. A lesson from the fag on the commies in France."

"Anthony," my mother jumped in. I saw her whole body twitch at his mention of the word 'fag,' and she plead her case to him. "I've told you a million times about that word. I don't like it."

It was the first time I saw my mom talk back to him, especially about something like this, even a little bit. A wave of love and appreciation ran over me for my mother. I knew that this was the best she could do, and she had finally done it. She would not condone him for saying what he had said about Gerard, but she would stop him from using a slur. This was how her silence and absence worked. She knew we were a couple, and though she didn't exactly like it (probably for the same reasons my dad listed, if I was honest) she would not tolerate a word like that. She had limits, I knew, though they were hard to see.

"Fine, whatever," my father eventually conceded and gave up. "I don't know what you guys have planned for dessert, but count me out. I've had enough fruit today."

My mother was about to speak up again, but my dad was already gone. As soon as he left the room, I felt the blackness receded and I felt better. Not great, and I looked out at the dinner table to survey the damage. There was a hole in my chest, and from it I uttered, "I am so sorry."

"It's okay," my mother and Gerard said at the same time. It was uncanny. I wondered if they both really realized who the apology had been intended for. They laughed together, regardless.

"Frank, do you want to come and help me get dessert from the kitchen? It'll be a really good treat before you...two...head off tonight."

I was about to get up and help her out, when I realized what that would mean. Gerard was standing and gathering plates to help out, but if I went to the kitchen, that would mean he was alone in the house. My father had gone upstairs - we had all heard him go - but I didn't trust that. I remembered what had happened the last time I had left Gerard alone within a space that my father also occupied. I shuddered. There was no way I was doing that again, especially since I wasn't even hungry for dessert. All of my energy had been zapped from me, and there was no desire to keep eating. I had always marvelled at my mother's ability to go right from an emotionally wrought situation to some domestic duty. It was her only coping technique, I knew, but I had to think about our own safety. Our coping technique was always to leave.

I stood up as well, and began to gather dishes and cups. I looked at Gerard, but he was deliberately avoiding eye contact so I would make my own decision without influence.

"Thanks, mom, but I think we're going to head out. I'm really tired," I told her. Gerard met my eyes, and I could see the gratefulness behind his demure expression. I looked back towards my mom, and she was disappointed.

"Well, okay, but can I at least give you some leftovers?"

"Sure, that's fine," I agreed, and she ran off into the kitchen. I walked right over to Gerard, knowing we no longer had an audience and hugged him.

"I am so, so sorry," I told him. He hugged me back, rubbing his hand up and down my back.

"It's okay. I know, I know. I knew it all along."

When my mother came back in the room, Gerard and I were both standing and my arm was around his waist. She noticed; at first doing a double take, but then it registered, and she didn't freak out. I think she was always a little disappointed, as if having visible evidence now made it impossible for her to deny it any longer, as if my vocal declarations from before hadn't been enough. I knew my mother better than Gerard did, and I knew this was a good thing for her. It was the final acceptance, even if he would most likely disagree. She now began to address us differently as she handed over the cake she had made in a Tupperware container and led us to the front hall so we could get our coats. Her walk was slower, the energy and excitement she had before now gone. I felt bad leaving her, because I knew how much she liked having people over.

"It was very nice talking to you about Paris," she told Gerard sincerely. She looked at me, then back to him, and tried to form her words carefully. "I'd... I'd like to do this again. If at all possible."

I looked at Gerard. I didn't want to answer; I had gotten us into this whole mess to begin with and I didn't want to force him into anything ever again without his full consent.

"Thank you," was all he said, and the conversation died out.

I felt the weight of my mother's disappointment along with my own. I still wasn't sure what I had wanted to happen, especially given the history. At least no one was beat up this time; at least I could cling onto that.

"Well, now, Frank, let me give you a hug before you leave," my mom insisted after our coats were on. She smiled as she leaned towards me, but before she let go, she whispered into my ear. It was odd behaviour for my mother; she spoke in silences and stunted statements. She rarely said what she actually meant and you usually had to know her well like I did to get what her real feelings were. That was probably why she had always been happy to see me, and why we had worked out a strained, but okay relationship over the past seven years. I avoided my father, but my mother, had always been different. I liked her company because she knew I understood her.

But this whispering - this wasn't usually in her personality. This was actually quite bold. It took me until we were outside to really decipher the cryptic message she had actually spoken to me, without inflection, absences, or guess work. She told me what she thought and what she wanted, but it was only into my ear, so no one else could hear.

Gerard lit a cigarette as soon as he got outside. We stopped at the corner where we had been before to smoke and get used to the night air before we carried on. Before I lit up, I touched his shoulder. I wanted to apologize again for the millionth time, but he anticipated it and cut me off: "Don't bother, Frank, I know you're sorry. And it's really okay." He tried to plead his sincerity, but I didn't buy it. He leaned forward and kissed me and then began to show more and more affection before I started to believe he was actually okay.

"It's been a while," he stated.

"A while for what?"

"Being around homophobia like that. It rattled me," he confessed, then held up his hand with the cigarette poised in his fingers to stop me from jumping in. "I'm not mad. It's just really surprising. You forget that stuff like this exists when you're away from it for so long."

It baffled me how he could forget about homophobia or any type of phobia. I went to college where it wasn't always accepted, I went to school or to a job where I had to be careful about disclosure, and I just looked outside and all around me, at the media, and I was well aware of it. My parents' reactions were not surprising, and yet, I should have known not to go back there.

"You know," he started up again. "I pick my friends very carefully. I had to when I was growing up, or else I'd have been faced with this regularly. Even though you love them, it's tough. It wears you out, even if it's just words."

I nodded. "It's hard, though, with family."

"Not always."

"Well, you have Mikey, of course you can say that," I replied a little bitterly.

"Family isn't just blood, Frank. Family is something else entirely."

I felt my stomach drop; this word kept haunting me, following me around, and making me think critically. If Gerard hadn't mentioned it when we first got back, I probably wouldn't have even come here tonight. I kept thinking that I owed it to my parents, somehow, because they were my family. And while I knew that you could pick and choose who your family was because everything wasn't all blood (I thought of marriages and step children), it was still a family. It was still a part of a whole, and there was still a base of some commonality. There was still a base of blood. I needed to come here tonight to see that base, and it hurt, all over me, that they had rejected me. Or at least, some members had. I still had my mother, I told myself, but sometimes I wondered if she would ever fully understand.

We were quiet for a few moments, Gerard smoking steadily and my own burning out between my fingers. I stared at the artist, who appeared just as put together as he had been before we went inside the house. He didn't let things like this affect him too deeply. They rattled him, but since there was no commonality, no joining blood that ran through him, he could stand outside of it all and simply be quiet and smoke. I envied him, a little bit, especially since I wanted him to be a part of me so much.

"Do you know what my mom said to me?" I asked Gerard, and he shook his head. "She said, 'I love you, but please give me grandkids.'"

He laughed. "That's exactly what I mean. She wants more blood family - she wants little bitty pieces of you. Not me." Gerard was done his cigarette and stomped it out on the ground. He began to walk, and I followed. My cigarette was half done and I tossed it out. There was no point in it. I wasn't sure if he was mad or not, or if this was a topic he didn't want to venture down. I knew that it seemed like my mother had written him off, but no, she was okay with it. She was okay with who was I was, but she just wanted kids. Blood. I bit my lip, hitting the dilemma again.

"We could adopt," I offered as I caught up. But this made Gerard laugh as well.

"It's not that, Frank, that I find amusing. We would probably be great parents. But this biological imperative, this quest for a determined family that must be filled, this is what makes me stop and laugh. It's hard and it doesn't make sense anymore. Not for us, or at least, not for me. People can create so much more than children."

I searched his words in the dark as we walked. Was this a bad or good sign, what was he trying to imply? I knew he was upset from the dinner, but I didn't know to what extent or how I could make it better. "You said determined, do you mean, like, determinism you mentioned before?"

"Yes, exactly," he said, his voice taking on a more upbeat tone. "Biological determinism, it's just like time, and purely constructed."

"So what does this mean for us?" I asked. We were at the crossroads again, and we took the turn up towards the apartment building. He smiled and put his arm around me.

"It means we're a family, in spite of what everyone else tell us. In spite of not having children now or never having children at all. It means I love you, and we are just as real as anything else."

I smiled, relieved. And he went on: "It also means that Vivian and Cassandra, Mikey and Alexa and their children, and even Jasmine and anyone else who decides to come along and who we love enough is our family. It doesn't matter that we don't share blood or legal bounds. We love one another, therefore we are a family."

"And what about my parents, what are they? Can you undo biology as easy as you can create it?"

"Of course," Gerard smiled. He used the key to the building, and we turned to head towards the stairs. "Have I ever told you about the painter Marcel Duchamp?"

I shook my head and scooted ahead of him as he held the door for me.

"Good painter, and also, interesting person. Marcel had another name, Rrose Sélavy. They were the same person, and proved the fallacy of biological determinism. Just because you're born a man, doesn't mean you need to stay one. So far as I know, Rrose only came out occasionally and mostly for art purposes. Maybe she would have been around more if people were more accepting of that and didn't use biology as a reason to exclude happiness."

I nodded. It was a little difficult to wrap my head around, but that only proved how strong of a notion this was and how ingrained and therefore how debilitating it was represented as in society. But I got the take away message very clearly: just because I shared similar DNA to my parents didn't mean I owed them anything. The bonds of family that Gerard had just outlined with our group seemed even stronger than mere biology, because it made it a choice. It made it an effort on part of all of us to stay together even when there was nothing absolutely binding us. It made us become blood and create it between us through our dedication to one another. I suddenly felt powerful, as if I was making life inside myself, between each of us, a new being, a new type of humanity, created and maintained.

"Sometimes, when I think about it really hard like this," Gerard commented, "making a family is one of the most creative acts out there."

We were home now. He had just opened the door, and I walked inside of it, feeling the life between us growing. Things weren't perfect, and I knew they would never be the way that I had envisioned for so long. I had never really thought tangibly about my future, in terms of my own family and lineage at least. I supposed it was always just going to happen because that was what just did happen to people. Life sort of fell into place, but now that the element of choice within my own genes had been given to me, I felt powerful. I had never envisioned past Paris with Gerard and I, because even that had seemed like an end goal. But now that I thought about it, I wasn't sure. I had grown up with all these representations in popular cultures where families were a straight couple, or even if there was a gay couple, they almost always were the same age and almost always had kids. But this wasn't my reality right now.

I looked at Gerard as he began to undress and get ready for bed. He took off his jacket and threw it on the couch, not having the energy to hang it up. He began to unbutton his shirt as he headed towards the bed, and saw me watching him. He smiled and then walked over to me. He threw his arms around me and we stayed like this for awhile, in the middle of the apartment. Our apartment. He was my family and this was our home. We had no children - no, our paintings were our kids. There was nothing wrong with this, I knew it, but I needed to see validation somewhere. I needed to see my own life represented to me somewhere else before I would almost believe it was real. I moved us, strategically towards the bathroom, so I could maybe catch our reflection. Our bodies were tired, though, and we pulled one another towards the bed before catching a glimpse. I felt a pang inside myself, because even as I held Gerard in my arms, I still felt lost.

"I think Duchamp knew what he was doing with Rrose was more than just art," Gerard cut in, after kissing me on the forehead. "He did a painting called Ceci n'est pas un pipe. This is not a pipe. It was a picture of a pipe, but it wasn't a real pipe. Just because there's a representation of something, doesn't mean it's real. Just because there isn't a representation of something else, doesn't mean it's fake or inauthentic. Question everything, Frank, especially what people tell you you are."

He kissed me again, and I knew that was all the talking he wanted to do that night. He began to undress me as well, but it was purely for sleeping. I saw how exhausted he was in his eyes and I kept my mouth shut, though I was full of questions and apologies.

As I got under the covers with him, I was still thinking. He fell asleep right away, and I was left to sort through the night and all that had happened. I loved my mom, but we were divided. I was able to understand her and her specific nuisance within language, but did she understand me? She thought I had been apologizing to her tonight, when I knew I had not done a thing wrong. She didn't understand me and that fact hit me hard. I had known all along that my dad wasn't the best person in the world, and we had a tense relationship if there ever was one. His outburst was nothing tonight, in the grand scheme of things. Not a surprise. But my mother? Her remark about grandkids and the necessity that I bear her something of my own making in order to repopulate this family tree was confirmation that she really didn't understand me at all. She didn't understand Gerard and I. Our flowers were from hell, and we were like weeds more than anything else. She couldn't see past what was always represented, and that hurt so much worse than anything my father could have told me.

I turned over in bed, and I thought about biology, even about gender and how it was masculinity at the root of all this pain. But my biology wasn't in the tough skin and husky voice that my father had. I looked down at Gerard, and I felt my body respond to him. It wasn't a sexual thing, though. It was physical, it was visceral, it was part of me, inside of my body. The feeling I got with Gerard was similar to the one I had with Jasmine, too. This was biology. We were biology now. Suddenly I found myself accessing French I didn't know I had kept. Ce n'est pas une famille. This is not a family. Just because there was representation, didn't mean it was real. I looked down at us, and I knew, just because there was no representation to work with, no prior example, didn't mean we didn't exist.

Ce n'est pas une famille. This is not a family. I touched Gerard's head. But this was.

Note: Marcel Duchamp did not paint Ceci n'est pas d'une pipe. Magritte painted this, and it was called The Trechary of Images. This is a deliberate error. Duchamp, on the other hand, was really also known as Rrose (two rs, yes) Selavy.

Chapter Two

Gerard decided to stop smoking shortly after. At first he said it was because it was too much hassle to remember to buy them, especially in the winter. We had been getting freezing rain on and off for the past while, along with a terrible wind, and he seemed to be setting up a routine of staring out the window, debating with a scrunched up face, and then smoking butts in the ashtray as he avoided the weather. When he finally ran out of that option, he assured me that he was done for good. I noticed, however, on the other side of the apartment another ashtray that he could have tried to gather butts from, in addition to his old jacket that still had a half pack, and the real reason for his cessation began to reveal itself more. He was afraid of his health, or rather, he was afraid of losing his health. My father's heart attack had scared him, because even if he wasn't exactly in the same boat in terms of how their bodies wore their ages, Gerard was the same age. This meant that he could get sick as well. There was something uncanny about aging that I had pieced together from his prior statements and from observing his new actions. It was the one process of the body that could not be reversed. As I saw demonstrated with him, body mass could be changed, even the stretch marks left behind could fade if one really wanted them to. Hair colour, also changed, and with all of our discussions on biological determinism, surgery was now a valid option for masking the appearance of the body beyond what had happened "naturally." But you could not undo age, in spite of what advertisements told you. It was there and always would be there, and there was no cure. It was the only thing we couldn't argue our way out of. But Gerard, even without me bringing up his new changes in habits, would always try to at least talk his way out of something.

"As far as I'm concerned, we have a choice in absolutely everything we do, except two things: being born, and dying. And even some people disagree with me on the dying front when you take in the consideration of suicide, so perhaps I should say that the second choice is deterioration. We have no choice in birth or decay, and decay can be either physical or mental. Usually people who view suicides see 'nothing wrong' with the person. They are merely looking for physical decay. Usually mental has been going on for awhile; it is never a sudden process. What is? People only think processes are sudden from their own perception, when suddenly, something changes that's visible. People see a butterfly come out of a cocoon and think, so soon? But that butterfly has been waiting for such a long time to do that, it's just that no one ever noticed it before. Nothing ever is sudden, even birth takes nine months to fully form, and though we acknowledge pregnancy, we don't always acknowledge that time period beyond our own expectations for the foetus. We keep thinking of the person, but the mass of cells, they are constantly shifting and changing and accomplishing so much - and certainly none of that is sudden. The same goes on, for children, they grow like fucking weeds, and you blink, and it's gone," he sighed a bit there, and ran his hand through his greying hair. I was listening from my place in the kitchen, surprised by his sudden rant but wanting to bear witness to it. He had been talking a lot about children recently, and I suspected this was from the amount of time he had been spending with his brother and his new family. Were they really new, though? I found myself questioning. They had always been there, like Gerard insisted, and then he just stopped looking and so everything, of course, felt sudden.

He went on, "Even when kids aren't growing like weeds, the body is still doing things, the mind is still processing. Even cancer, people only notice it when it's a tumour and they can't deny it anymore, and then they start acting against it. People try to stop themselves from making it worse, but it's already gotten that far. Growth, good and bad, flowers and weeds, is always happening. Every second counts, nothing is ever wasted. Every breath is one step closer to not having a choice anymore. So at least I can choose now to not have smoke in my body as I go forth and maybe prevent some ridiculous bargaining later on when I suddenly realize that my world is different," he concluded, trying to stay light-hearted at the end and poking fun at himself. He had actually been smoking while he was making this speech, discovering the old pack in his jacket as he meandered through the apartment, but it was his last one. He hadn't wanted to waste the package, and halfway through, he stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray full of butts. He handed the rest of the pack over to me, and then went to clean up the ashtray. Without thinking, I pulled one out and began to smoke it, only vaguely wondering about my own mortality and my body's physical changes as I made my way through my life. It was still hard feel the effects of aging for me, even though I could see them. Holding up pictures of myself in high school to now I surely looked different, but I didn't feel like that. It was more so maturity than aging for me, but I knew that eventually the maturity would morph into something else. I breathed in and out the smoke, and realized it was happening right then. Day by day. I wonder if Gerard felt different than he had seven years ago, if his change of skin peeled back into this mortal aging, and as he came back from cleaning out the ashtray, I asked him.

"No," he said quickly. He had gone back to the window, and as I blotted out my cigarette (my last?), I went to join him. We stood next to one another, smoke-free, and he divided his attention between the outdoors and me. "Actually, that was a lie before. A creative truth, what have you. I feel very different, but it's hard to find words to express it. I'm tired a lot more. My bones hurt almost as if they've felt all the pain in the world and anytime I get close to injury, they bruise from memory. This weather hurts my knees. It never did anything like that before."

He went down and touched his knee as if on cue, and a large wind from outside rattled the window. "Do they hurt even inside?"

He nodded. We had both taken to the indoors during this freezing rain spell, and as much as I hated winter, I couldn't grasp exactly what Gerard was saying. My body felt fine; I feared the day it wouldn't.

"How did you feel when you were forty-seven?" I asked him quietly. "You know, when I was here?"

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14