The Summer That Melted Everything(83)

23

These troublesome disguises which we wear

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

And that must end us; that must be our cure—

To be no more. Sad cure! for who would lose …

—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 4:740 2:142–151

WHEN I WAS thirty-three, I met a man. My house was burning down and he was the one with the hose, come to save me. I liked that about him. That he put fires out, didn’t start them.

Come here, memory of him. I’ll make guitar songs out of his eyes. Come here, memory of him. Give me the Sunday in the warm bathtub when I leaned back against his wet chest and he washed my hair. Come here, memory of him, remind me of the morning sun, like good yellow, on his face. Come here, you memory of him, and give him well.

His dark skin was like that of the color of a bird’s feather I found beneath my window long ago. I almost told him about that feather. I almost told him about Sal. I almost told him all my baseball-shaped secrets, but I was too distracted by the possibility of happiness with him. Far too distracted by him pulling me in by the loop of my jeans and reading me Langston Hughes.

Heaven was no bigger than a queen-sized bed during those days. Blankets kicked off, pillows even. Just a white sheeted square and us. Chests were pillows. Arms and legs were blankets. Waist deep in each other. A heaven of mounting gasps and sides rising and falling in the same deep breaths, breaths grassy enough to walk on from here to Elysian Fields, where paradise is set in motion by the almost too beautiful connection of one man and another.

Sometimes it’d be him over me like a swinging branch and my mouth feeling that slight curved fruit of his neck until I felt like I was falling away from him and that paradise. I’d almost scream, a fearful grasp on him, “I’m falling away from you.”

“I’ll never let you fall,” he’d promise.

And so the heaven continued like a scurry to eat the last apple before the tree gets cut down.

Yes, heaven is a breathless mouth. It is the core underneath, where two souls meet and give and take little pieces of each other, all the while the light orbits, rippling soft on the edges.

He was mine and I was his. He told me so as he pulled me and my jeans into him on the street, the Empire State Building in the distance.

After the kiss, he asked why I looked about to break. I said I didn’t know, but wasn’t it because I did know? Because I knew all the great splendor of a man. I knew the heaven of making love to him later. All the splendid, heavenly things Grand would never know.

We caught the eye of an old man passing by.

“Do you think his frown is because we’re gay or interracial?” he asked, his dark skin the best part of me.

“I’m not gay.”

“What do you call us, Fielding?”

I shrugged. “Just a moment.”

That moment lasted eight years, longer than any woman. A moment that saw me saying I love you and for the first time meaning it. After I said it, I said I was going out for some shaving cream and never went back. I wonder if he thinks of me every time he shaves? I know I think about him. I feel my beard and know I think about him.

I deserve the vinegar, not the violets. It was why I left that queen-sized heaven and that man who made love like a Langston Hughes poem.

I couldn’t bear such a beautiful life, when Grand never got his. Him and Ryker had f*cked, but they hadn’t loved—and that was what Grand missed out on. That is what Grand paid for.

It was the beginning of September and a few mornings after the unsuccessful stoning attempt, which was a moment that showed us what they were capable of but it was also a moment that showed us we could win. I suppose that’s why we didn’t pack up and leave. We thought we could win it all with a flower.

We were sitting at the table, having breakfast. Dad was pouring syrup on his pancakes and Mom was sizzling sausage.

“God bless the woman who cooks in such heat,” Dad said. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was something we just thought.

Sal was sprinkling cinnamon on his buttered toast and Grand was reading the newest edition of The New York Times. As Dad talked about the rising prices of gasoline, Grand tightened his grip on the paper until it pleated and the ink smeared in little wisps from his sweating palm.

“Food prices will be rising with all the drought,” Dad was saying as the paper began to tremble with Grand’s hands.

When he lowered the paper enough for me to see his eyes, they looked like a lot of something gathered in one place. A whole pile that towered too tall and wobbled, about to fall.

“What’s wrong, Grand?” I spoke under Dad’s voice, but still he heard me and stopped talking about rising prices.

He too saw the wobbling pile in Grand’s eyes and reached for the paper. “Bad news in the Times, is it, son? Another Dred Scott v. Sandford?”

Grand jerked the paper to his chest. I thought he was going to crumple it up the way his hands wanted. Instead he forced himself to fold it and lay it on his lap as he became determined to spread strawberry jam on his toast without shaking.

Dad was about to ask again for the newspaper, but Mom’s short exclamation stopped him. Grease had popped from the pan to her arm. She rubbed out the sting, saying she wished she had some yellow mustard. Sal looked down at his toast while Dad shook his head with a smile, the way husbands are quick to do at wives they love beyond measure.