September - Last Words 2 страница

It was now my side of the exhibit. My heartbeat burst in my chest as I lingered around the white wall, this time with no one to grip my hand, before I finally took a step. The first thing that came into view, though it was oddly shaped in comparison to the rest of the photos, was my own Tower piece. I had wanted people to see that first, because I needed them to understand my intention and was relieved when Vivian had heeded my request. She shot me another smirk and head nod as I looked over to her. She was with Gerard, but from the corner of her eyes, she was still watching me. She was a sucker for approval, and needed to know that she had done a good job. There was no facial cue or hand motion, no word in the English lexicon (though that had not stopped us from expanding and using more than we were given with our pieces), to convey how happy I was. She really was the fourth in all of us, knowing us so deeply that she could rearrange our interiors and still be faithful to us, herself, and still manage to market and pull off a very organized, and most likely, successful show.

My tower piece was right around the corner from Hunter's interpretation of Babel, and this helped us to flow one into the next. Gerard's abstracts even started to follow a linear trajectory once we could all see the three pieces together. He was pre-consciousness, the dreaming state before language acquisition, and the building up to a unified idea of the gods. The colors in his pieces fit with the color in Hunter's wall, and then from there, I took those same colors and from the knowledge of distinction and separation, tried to glue everything together again. From my tower, I tried to go back to the dreaming state, the pre-consciousness of black and white photographs of the man who was sleeping and dreaming in the first and the woman who was not really a woman. The three of us had gone through the stages of development and growth together, we had changed one another so much, and I was so grateful that it was now visible. The impact we had on one another could no longer be denied.

Though my tower was still a bit of a shock to the eyes, for those of us outside our circle and who had now been taken through the same narrative, it all began to make sense. Alexa spent a particular amount of time there, and gave me her approval. "Couldn't have said it better myself," she assured me, and it was one of the very few sentences that had emerged that night. We had become so engrossed with the art that we had nearly forgotten to speak and I relished the irony. There was the low murmuring of Mikey's kids, and they became particularly excited by Hunter's mobiles, but even that sound was dying off. When we got to my section of the exhibit, past the tower, all of our voices were gone.

The picture I had taken of Hunter at the Léger cafe was the next in the exhibit. It was the one of him kicking really high in the air, his face scrunched up, completely chaotic. It had been right before he told me he was pregnant, before he decided to keep it, and before Gerard managed to change both our minds and our lives for the better. Before I had submitted this photo, I made sure to ask him if he was okay with it there for public display. He had assured me it was fine, because it was still him in the photo, merely different. So the picture was the first one people saw, and then, soon after, there was a more recent one of Hunter that I had taken. He was sitting with one hand on his stomach, wearing his own plaid shirt with the white t-shirt underneath, and a pair of Hilda's jeans. In his other hand he held the book Lolita, open to a page and in the middle of reading. I had called the piece Unreliability. The final piece on the wall, to finish up with a similar theme of jazz, sudden changes, and gender, was the photo I had taken of the bathroom's doors at the club where silhouettes of Dizzy Gillespie and Billie Holiday's iconic faces stared back. It made Hunter smile seeing them again, and as we moved on through the photographs, the story began to shift again and take on other forms. I had found an old photo of the ultrasound, folded in many different places and completely crumpled, and had that to display next. It wasn't quite right since I didn't really take it, but I framed it anyway. I called it Found Art and felt better about my sentimentality. I stopped there longer than anyone else, and marveled at the fact that that blob was going to be coming out soon. That blob was the center of my display, the center of the wall, and I exchanged another look with Vivian.

The rest of the photos crept closer to the edge of the exhibit, and lined all the way to the ending display of contact information and a small food table. There were three more photos of mine, making another triptych. On one side, there was me, standing naked in front of the mirror and taking a photo of myself. I felt really odd as I walked past that, dreading the response to this image from the very beginning, but I no longer wanted to feel shame for my body, and how I felt inside of it. I looked around at everyone in our entourage to gauge their responses, but most people, even Mikey, were placid and demure about it. Alexa playfully winked, but that I had been expecting. In the center of these three, there was the image of Gerard and I, hugging one another, both of us naked in the mirror. His aged body stared back at me from the frame, and I looked down at him in the wheelchair. When he had dressed himself, as he had insisted, he had put on the dove jacket. He was rubbing the lapel where the bird was just then, and I made my way over, taking him from Vivian for the rest of the display. I wanted to see if he could remember taking this photo with me, and I crouched down with him next to the display. When he gazed up, his eyes flared, and I knew. I extended my hand to him and kissed his knuckles when he held on. We stayed there awhile, making us the last ones coming through the exhibit, and they waited behind us, at the table display, and I moved Gerard to the last. We stared back at a photo of himself, one that I had taken while he was asleep.

"I don't remember that," he told me. At first I couldn't tell if he was joking, because some of the partial paralysis on one side of his mouth remained, which resulted in some of his vocal dynamism lessening. When I drew my eyes to him, we both smiled (the best we could), and I nudged his shoulder for teasing me like that. I kissed his forehead, and told him I had taken it while he was asleep.

"Dreaming?" he asked me.

"Yes, dreaming." We lingered for a while longer in front of the photo, then I asked him if he wanted to know what it was called. He nodded.

"Tout ce qui n'est pas donne est perdu," I said perfectly. I had been practicing. "All that is not given is lost."

He held my hand, and nodded. I believed that he remembered and knew what I was telling him. This was the only photo in the entire exhibit that was not for sale. I had asked for this specifically, and as ever, Vivian was good to her word. There was no price tag underneath. We turned around and faced everyone, and everyone stared back at us with smiles and warm welcomes, as if they had been waiting for us our entire lives. We all rushed towards one another, and it felt like it took forever, but everyone hugged everyone else. It was overwhelming, it was indescribable. It was what we were giving one another, before it all became lost.

When people finally came in to see the display, we all dissipated and broke up. We mingled amongst ourselves, but we were no longer this mass of people in the double-digits. Vivian's new partner was the first to show up, right on time. The fliers that had been sent around stated that the gallery opened for the public at seven o'clock and he ushered inside quietly, and we were all introduced to Walter Kastner. He shook everyone's hands politely, even Mikey's small children, and tried to not be overwhelmed by all the new names. I found myself growing cautious around him, remembering Vivian's description of dead white men's disease and found myself gravitate towards Hunter. He knew what I was doing right away and squeezed my hand encouragingly before telling me that he was a "big boy now" and would need to learn how to deal with strangers eventually. Though an art-going crowd couldn't be that close minded, I knew that Hunter's situation was a unique one. Though it made perfect sense to everyone involved, (even Walter, who I saw conversing with Hunter amicably shortly after he arrived), it was a tenuous thing for public scrutiny. Tonya had to escape to The Bear it had become so hard for her to live in this world. Granted, there was always more to that story than one solid reasoning, but it still had me worried. The worst that someone was probably going to do that night was use wrong pronouns because of his huge pregnancy belly. He and I both knew, that within the environment of people we had around, that words were effectively nothing. Babel, I thought to myself, smirking and gazing at our title again. Having already been through the exhibit once, I decided to go through again, knowing what both beginning and end looked like, before I mingled with more people. I talked to Walter briefly, and he did ask me about my house. I had no idea what to say to him, but I promised he could look over our mortgage soon enough. He was tracking a particular math problem he had come across, and was double-checking his research.

"No problem. I can help with yours since you're helping with mine," I assured him, thanking him again for attending. Vivian came up behind him before he could respond and placed her hands over his eyes. She was playful and giddy with him, and it was definitely good for him to loosen up as much as Vivian needed to express her overabundance of energy. I waved bye, and noticed Mikey with his kids. He had been with them most of the night, since Alexa had disappeared off with Hunter, and he moved to come talk with me for a while. He seemed to actually linger longer than was necessary and appeared very uncomfortable. Before Vivian had stolen Walter, she had brought over Gerard and had dropped him off with me. Gerard and Isaac were talking for a while, before I asked Mikey if there was anything wrong.

He sighed and motioned to Gerard. "Can I spend some time with my brother?"

Without question, Gerard agreed and I passed the wheelchair on. Gerard waved bye to me, and then I was on my own until I found Noelle. I became better acquainted with her, though it was slightly strained. The gallery was becoming fuller and small murmurings were drowning out her soft-spoken voice. Cassandra also never took her arm off of her waist, and then insisted that the two of them needed to go off together. A few times during the night, I saw the two of them sneak kisses from behind The Flood mobile. I smiled to myself, so happy for Cassandra. The two of them were getting closer, and Cassandra was far more into the relationship now that it had been tested by Noelle's mother. In the small conversation that the two of us did end up having, I was told that all of their campaigning and demonstrating had eventually ended up saving their school. Noelle still wore the button, though, because it made her feel proud that they had affected some type of change. The budget was reinstated and the two of them would be going back to their art programs for another year together. They were in grade eleven now, which seemed so completely surreal to me. In a few months, they would be together for a year.

As the night wore on, I looked around to see if I could find Hunter. It had been harder for him to stay on his feet for long periods of time, and with all the preparing of Gerard he had done earlier that day, I wondered how the atmosphere of the place would disconcert him. I turned the corner and found him in Gerard's display area, talking to Lydia. He was moving his hand animatedly and occasionally Lydia would rub his stomach. Hilda made a loud entrance soon after, and went right over to Hunter and wrapped him in a bear hug. If not for the nearly nine months of stomach, I knew she would have tried to pick him up. Instead, Hilda pulled up her shirt and got onlookers to admire her huge c-section scar. The three of them went on talking, and though Lydia nodded to me from where she was, she did not come over to me. When Hunter had needed to get off his feet, Lydia took him to the reception area, sat him down on a chair, and brought him a glass of water. Hunter pulled the archive out of his bag, and the two of them began to go over it together. Lydia was the only person we had left to show, but I was still at a loss at how to include her inside. Hunter knew about my meeting, and had apparently had a similar talk with her (though I doubted she was as harsh with him). Hunter had told me that she had no kids of her own, and that made me want to find a way to link her to us in this configuration even more.

"Why?" Hunter had asked.

"Because she's important. She's to help for this as well, you know, she'll be helping Paloma into the world."

"Yeah, but, just because she has no biological kids doesn't mean she doesn't already have a network. Look at Gerard," he had reminded me, and I had dropped the topic then. Seeing Lydia interact with Hunter from afar made me confirm that notion. Lydia had no need to go into our binder, but she still wanted to pay her respects and look at our unique artifacts that night. She already had a network herself, probably based in the back of that small teashop. She came in and out of people's lives very easily, and she knew how to take care of people. That was all.

The more people that came in, the more I became overwhelmed. But it wasn't this plaguing of anxiety, this need to cover up what I had done. It was this sense of relief. I watched as they all went around the paintings and photographs and collages, and I could not believe that we had done all of this. I could not believe that these were our reflections of our lives and that people were finding it interesting. Not everyone was into it, I knew that. Some people saw the photos with Gerard and were uncomfortable and left. But the people who did see it, who did like it, and who did notice I was in those photos, then came over and began to talk to me.

"Hey! I figured I should introduce myself, since I've seen so much of you," the first person said to me. He was a guy, maybe a year or two younger than me, and gay. He said he knew I was taken, that was very obvious, but he wanted to thank me. "You know, for being so open. It's good. I like it when I know I can go someplace where someone else gets it."

I nodded, and we had a little bit more of a conversation. He was a student at Vivian's art college, but he wasn't in any of her classes. He was only part-time right now, anyway, trying to save money. We talked about Robert Mapplethorpe and his works, his eventual death of AIDS, and the dying that was so poignant with all of the work. People like Robert just knew they were dying, vividly and distinctly, even before the diagnosis, he told me. The student, whose name was Mike, saw Gerard in the wheelchair, and though he had been looking better the past few days, it was evident that he was not doing well. Mike seemed sad, and I explained to him what was going on with Gerard, but we didn't linger there too much. He complimented the rest of the work, before he said he had to go to work. I shook his hand, thanking him for coming.

"I'll probably be back. Can't afford any of this, but I like to look. Do another show when you can, man," he insisted. He took a card that Vivian had made up for all of us, and though I doubted that I would ever see him again, I had hope.

I began to move around the room and stopped waiting for people to initiate conversation. If Hunter could deal with strangers and not get flustered, then so could I. I began to recall from all my years working odd jobs about observing people and whether or not I could trust them and then how to speak to them from there. I was able to peg out certain people in the room, and as I made my way over to them to talk, I got an even more accurate indication of their personality. I only had one missed opportunity when someone realized that Hunter was the person in one of the photographs and became agitated by the connotations his new transition had to it. That was totally fine, and I was able to finish up my conversation with them, and then excused myself. It was all I could do. I knew you couldn't change people's minds, but you didn't have to stop your own change.

I moved around the room, and I was overwhelmed by the acceptance that I did feel and didn't focus on the minor rejection. Even being alone right then didn't feel that bad either because I knew I was surrounded. I started to hear voices - all of the voices, not of the people in the room, but of the paintings and the collages and the photographs. It seemed to happen all of a sudden, all at once, just like it had happened in the library. It all came down on me, every last word. I could hear Hunter laughing as he kicked up his leg when I took his picture in front of Léger, I heard the jazz from the bar, I tasted and smelled and felt Gerard's hands on me, our bodies together, and his moans in my ear. I felt paint on my hands, not just from our portraits, but from everything we had done together. I heard the French in my ear, and the buzzing of the fridge in the old apartment. I heard Hunter's plight, his story that was told through myth, and through another man before it even made sense to him. I heard the waves of feminism he had painted and collaged before, but did not make it here into this exhibit, as if I had put a shell over my ear and the ocean poured out. I heard and distinctly felt the flutter of wings as I opened my hands and let go. I heard all the stories that we kept alive by telling, and how our own became twisted and embedded inside this unique train of narrative, making it distinctly new. There were no such things as origins, just a story of a story of a story that seemed to have no beginning and no end. It was nothing but babble, before and after The Tower of Babel, and the words that surrounded me meant everything and absolutely nothing. Ai ai, I heard inside my ear, but no one was whispering it. I was keeping it alive by myself.

A small tear came down my face, and I brushed it away quickly. The people around me did not notice, but I noticed all of them. I felt everything at that moment. I knew I was whole, perfect and complete, finally. I knew this was true because I really, really was. I was not lying. Paul said that it could not happen, but no, it did, I swear it did in that moment. I was whole and everything made sense again. I heard the world open up and whisper its secrets to me. In a blink, it was gone, but I knew it had happened, I knew it was there, I swore to god that we could never reach in the tower and would never want to anyway, that it was there. I felt it. I looked around again and saw all the people, I loved all of them, and then I felt the voices go softer and softer. They drifted away and eventually it was just the noise of the gallery around me. It was just life around me and that was okay too, I realized. I was not plagued by despair for no longer having the madness surround me and engulf me. I was okay with silence, or even just the murmuring of real life voices. I was okay, just okay, and that was almost so much better. Almost.

Freedom had never been the goal, I realized, at least, not this time around. Nor was it happiness, because so much of that you were in control over. You were free and happy when you decided to be, and I knew that more than ever. I could descend into that fugue of everything that had just happened anytime I wanted to. I could let the conversations speak to me, all around me, all at once - or I could have conversations with others, with new people, and discover things about them and have them discover things about me. I could have conversations with people and I could bring people into the world. I had a choice now. I could go back and forth as much as I wanted, but I had always had that choice. It had never gone away, it never could go away, because I knew how to access that secret part of myself. That place where everything went away, and I was whole again. Where I was seventeen and life made sense, and I was truly free. I could have that, and then turn and see my family at my side, the family that we had all chosen, and the archive we had created. I could turn and talk to strangers, have a job, and a life that I wanted to come home to again. I could disappear and reappear. I could just be Frank or nothing at all.

I looked all around me, at the art, and then, slowly at the artist. He looked at me from across the room, and we nodded to one another. This was what mattered. We had a public and private existence; secrets and stories to tell. Art saves lives, I told myself, and I knew it. I believed it. I was proof. It was the first time I had really understood myself - to myself - and I could not believe it. Every last pain, love, irrepressible feeling, drivers license, doctor's report, family tree, failures, freedom, doves, paint fleck, revolution, pressure, change, oh god all changes, giants, golden age lost, liars, identities discovered, guilt, shame, garden, every petal of every flower, stars in constellation, birth certificates, and even the eventual death certificates came before me and I remembered it all. Every single thing, every single color, every last word had disappeared and reappeared and proved its existence. It was all real. I could not believe it, but as I looked around, I had to. This was all there was and all there ever would be. I stood in the center of the room and I felt my life become the art I had always wanted it to be. I was so relieved and so blessed to comprehend how happy I was just to be alive. Knowing that it would not last forever, I had to appreciate all that it was now.

And so, I did.

We all said our goodbyes to one another, knowing that it would not be for long. Vivian and Walter had offered to stay and shut the place down and make sure the art was okay overnight, while the rest of us divided. Hunter, Gerard, and I all got into his car, and we drove ourselves home. Gerard looked tired, nodding in and out as we drove. I was driving, mostly because Hunter didn't fit behind the seat anymore without difficulty. It wouldn't be too much longer and it would be the four of us. I smiled to both of them in the backseat through the rear-view mirror as I drove and imagined the future. When we got home, I helped Gerard into bed that night, and got under the covers with him for a little bit. We were quiet, and we just held one another. I thought he had fallen asleep, before he began to tell me about Picasso and his doves again.

"I know, Gerard," I told him.

"I know you know. I want to make sure you don't forget," he said, and his lucidity and determined voice made my entire body shake. I thought he had lost his stamina by the end of the night. But this was the strongest I had ever seen him. I told him I would never forget him, and he nodded against my neck.

After some time, Hunter knocked on the door and told us he couldn't sleep.

"It was a long night. I'm too huge and too restless." He stood awkwardly at the door, wearing his new standard of boxers and a t-shirt for bedtime clothing. I looked to Gerard, wondering if he would be okay with him sleeping with us. It had been easy for the two of them to interact one on one, but it had been a while since the three of us were together. Would he remember that night in April where we had recited poetry? If he did, would he remember Hunter as Jasmine or as something far deeper than names and pronouns could convey? Gerard's lucid request from before gave me more hope for the situation; this was definitely okay with me. But Hunter and I both waited tentatively to see how Gerard would welcome this strangely familiar boy into our bed.

He moved over. I followed his lead, and shifted my body as well. I cleared a space for Hunter in the bed, and then he slid under the covers. He wasn't supposed to sleep on his back because of the baby, so he turned towards me. I kissed his forehead and the two of us burrowed together for a bit. He needed me then; he had been shaking since the show.

"I can't believe I did it," he said, he was referring to his art as much as himself. He had mustered as much confidence as he could for the show and played a tough facade, but I knew from my own masculine acting how easy it was to quake under a stoic face. Hunter still couldn't believe he had gone outside the house that day, just like any other day, and done what he needed to do. He was still marveling at trivial tasks and overcoming small hurdles of self-doubt. I nodded, and said that I couldn't believe it was over. I had told my secret life with Gerard, and it would be hanging there the rest of the month. He was no longer that part of my life I fumbled over. Both of us - and I was sure Gerard as well - had done something so huge that night. We needed to be together, to help one another through the next part. Rolling over, I took Gerard's hand, and made him feel Hunter's stomach. He and I switched sides, and we all felt Paloma move underneath our palms. I marvelled at how the three of us were all the fathers of that baby. The baby had no mother. It was the strangest thing, but it made so much sense. Hunter had told me he was okay with me calling myself dad, but since his new decision, we were going to have to figure out different versions of the same name which we could each go by. It was no longer a scary prospect, but we would get to it eventually.

Gerard's facial expressions began to light up as he felt the child moving underneath. In a flash, he seemed to remember something vital. He looked towards Hunter, and touched his face. He curled his hands through the shortened hair by his ears, and then furrowed his brow. He leaned down to kiss Hunter, and though his breath was short, Hunter kissed back. It was short and chaste, and then Gerard uttered, "Beautiful."

My heart sunk - I was worried about how gendered this would be, what it would do to Hunter, and how the triangle had been broken. But I should have known better than that, especially now.

"Beautiful... boy," Gerard finished. "Hyacinth."

Hunter smiled, relieved, and repeated his new name. "Hunter."

Gerard nodded, kissed him again, and then me.

"I know, Hunter, I know," he enunciated. It was a bit hard with his facial ticks and the lateness of the evening, but he got it. We didn't know how long it would last, so we enjoyed it while we could. Hunter turned on his side, into Gerard, and they fell asleep together. I braced myself against Hunter's back, and felt Paloma move all night long.

Chapter Two

The responses from the art show, even after we were not around, were overwhelmingly good. The local paper did an okay job, but they seemed to focus on and enjoy the fact that Gerard had Alzheimer's and Hunter was who he was. They revelled in those details in order to make our show seem more special and to act as a quick-grab for attention to anyone who passed by and normally did not read that section. Vivian was used to the normal publications around the area resorting to tactics like that, and told me to ignore it. She showed me the university run paper instead, where it gave us all glowing reviews and spoke with certain awareness behind the delicacy of the subjects we presented. I was pleased and slid that piece into the back of my own copy of the archive, after it had lived on our fridge for some time. When Vivian began to forward me some of her colleagues' responses, she added a careful warning to not get too ahead of myself.

"While I am very proud of all of you, pride is another matter entirely. You are all wonderful people first and foremost, and wonderful artists second. Don't forget that, especially with what's to come," she wrote and then gave me the update on how well we were doing financially. One of Hunter's mobiles had sold that day and this email had also been forwarded to him.

Hunter was home full-time now, awaiting the arrival of Paloma. He was still in correspondence with Meredith and was determined to do work after she was born, but the days leading up to her arrival were hot and took all of his energy. Lydia did not like to give exact due dates, but she confided to me that I should be prepared to leave work whenever it was time in the next week. Lydia came to our house nearly every day now. I had grown eager at first, wondering why she was taking so long each visit with him, as I barely sat on my seat. Every time she knocked on our door my heart would leap into my chest thinking that this time was that time. After a few days of this, I began to think her presence was a bit excessive, until I realized that she was treating Hunter for the other change that he was about to embark on. Everyone we knew and saw on a daily basis knew about the switch and things were going fine there. But that was the cognitive part for everyone and the revising of old narratives. There was still Hunter's body and the more material realities of what may happen next.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14