So Long, Chester Wheeler(42)

“So he was always like that?”

“Oh, no. Not always. When we first started dating, he didn’t pay things like that much mind. But after the thing with Mike . . . well. You know how it is. You push something away that hard, you’re going to want everybody else to push it away, too.”

I dropped my spoon into my nearly empty bowl, and it landed much harder and more noisily than I had expected.

“Wait, wait,” I said. “Wait. Back up. What thing with Mike?”

I watched her face redden slightly while I was waiting for her to answer.

“Oh, you don’t know about Mike. Well . . . of course you don’t. Now that I think about it, of course you wouldn’t. Why would I think he would tell you a thing like that? Where’s my mind? I wonder why I just did that. I just told on him about something without thinking twice. I wonder if I did it because I’m so damned mad at him.”

“Are you trying to tell me Chester had an . . . experience with this guy?”

“Oh, no. No. It was nothing like that. Nothing happened between them. He just loved Mike so much. I think it scared him. Made him wonder a little about himself. I don’t think it meant a damn thing myself. Sometimes you just love someone. Big deal. But he let himself get kind of obsessed over the whole thing.”

We fell silent, and I scraped the bowl with my spoon to get up the last couple of bites and the leftover gravy.

In my mind I was remembering something that Chester had said to me.

It’s a choice and I know it. You might be able to fool everybody else, but you can’t fool me.

I looked up to see her watching me.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she said.

“Oh, something was just coming together in my head.”

“Up to you if you want to share it or not.”

“I was just thinking how a couple of times he’s let on that he thinks being gay is a choice. And he’s really stubborn about it, too. Like he’s just so sure, and nothing is going to change his mind.”

“Because he feels like he made a conscious choice to move away from that. Right. But I don’t really think that’s what happened. Because if he’d really been gay, it would have kept coming up again and again.”

“Of course it would have. If you can walk away, you’re not gay.”

“Ooh, that rhymes,” she said. “That would make a nice billboard.”

We smiled, and I finished my bread and my whiskey.

And then she told me a little more about Mike.

I was dying to know, but I wouldn’t have asked, because it was clearly none of my business. I already felt guilty knowing the little bit I did about a subject Chester would so obviously want to keep from me.

“They were in the war together,” she said.

“World War Two?”

“World War Two? Lordy, honey, exactly how old do you think we are? The guys who fought World War Two are mostly dead now, and those still around are in their late nineties.”

“Sorry. Korea?”

“Keep going.”

“Couldn’t be Desert Storm.”

“You missed one.”

“Oh. Vietnam.”

“Bingo. They were over there together, and Chet was more scared than he cared to let on, and Mike was more of the take-charge type, and he took Chet under his wing. Saved his life twice.”

“Twice?”

“You can’t make a thing like that up. Anyway, that’s what I figured it was all about—the war stuff. It wasn’t really a romance thing. When somebody saves your life twice, you look up to them. They take on this outsized importance.”

“Right,” I said. “It warps your feelings for them.”

“That’s all it was, I think. I didn’t actually make any dessert, but I have store-bought cookies.”

“I think I’m stuffed,” I said.

We sat quietly for a minute. I couldn’t stop my mind from going over the revelations about Chester’s former life. Something about it was causing the world to make more sense to me.

We heard a horn honk out front.

We both listened without comment for a few beats. Then we looked at each other.

“Is that the Winnebago?” she asked.

“I don’t know. I never heard the Winnebago’s horn.”

“Seriously? Are you kidding me, honey? You drove that thing from Buffalo, New York, to Phoenix and never honked your horn at anybody? You are nothing at all like Chet Wheeler, I’ll tell you that much, young man.”

“Thank you. That’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said about me.”

Another short blast on the horn sounded. We met each other’s eyes again.

“Couldn’t be him,” I said. “I don’t even think he could reach the horn.” A couple more beats of silence. Then, almost instinctively, I added, “But I’d better go check.”

I trotted out the door and down the concrete walkway, which had become overly familiar. It had begun to feel like a portal in space and time between the sane, comfortable world and the one I was forced to share with Chester Wheeler.

While I trotted, the horn blasted again, and it was definitely the Winnebago.

I threw the side door open, and the smell overwhelmed me immediately.

For the first time since I’d taken on Chester’s care, I felt a little bit sorry for myself. It was hard not to wonder why I couldn’t just stay in a clean, sweet-smelling world with lamb stew and taper candles and good whiskey, and people who weren’t beastly.