Tenebrosity

Chapter Five: “Anticipation”

 

“The so called unconscious inferences can be traced back to the all-preserving memory, which presents us with parallel experiences and hence already knows the consequences of an action. It is not anticipation of the effects; rather, it is the feeling: identical causes, identical effects . . .” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

*****

Saturday, October 1, 2016

“Gus told me that they put Sydney on hospice care now?” I ask Lindsay, sliding a cup of coffee across the bar to her.

She nods at me, stirring the cream in her coffee. “The chemo really took its toll and he developed pneumonia yesterday. The hospice nurse told me the doctors don’t expect him to outlive the week.”

“You’d think that in this day and age they’d have figured out a way to keep the cure for cancer from killing you.” I’ve been lucky that my cancer has never returned, but apparently Sydney has had tumor after tumor affecting his lungs for the last six years and he’s never even smoked a day in his life.

“He’s giving me the gallery.”

“What?” I ask, nearly spilling my coffee onto my lap.

“He doesn’t have family, Brian, and he doesn’t want to leave it to some organization that will manage it like it’s a museum. He sold it to me, actually.”

“How in the fuck did you get the money to afford to buy a fucking gallery?” There is no way that after splitting hers and Mel’s life savings she’d be able to afford to buy Pittsburgh’s most prestigious art gallery.

“He sold it to me for eleven hundred and eighty dollars,” she explains, giving me a small smile.

“How did he come up with that amount?”

“That was what I made from my first commission the first time I worked there.”

“I still don’t get it. Why would he practically give you a fucking gallery?”

“Sydney knows that I’m going to keep the gallery running the way it should be run, and he respects my taste in art and knows that I have contacts; and I’m more familiar with the Bloom Gallery than any of the new employees he’s hired over the years. He visited me in Toronto last year to see the Canadian Art Festival I put together while he was in the process of buying a space to open a gallery in Berlin. He had almost everything lined up when his health failed again. Now, he can’t attend to any of it and he stands to lose a great deal of money if he backs out now. The Bloom Gallery here in Pittsburgh would lose prestige.”

“So he wants you to go to Berlin and seal the deal?” I ask.

“No, Sydney wants me to move to Berlin for a little while.”

“How long is a little while?” I demand. Gus is coming out of her and Mel’s stupid fucking put-off divorce and he has to deal with Justin and my problems; the last thing he needs is his mother abandoning him.

“A couple of years,” she practically whispers, narrowing her eyes and waiting for me to explode.

“Son of a bitch, Lindsay,” I mutter and take a swig of my coffee. “He doesn’t need this right now.”

“Brian,” she says my name in a childish tone that always makes me want to vomit.

“Lindsay,” I mock as she walks around the bar and puts her hand on my shoulder.

“Gus doesn’t know about me owning the gallery, but he does know about the position in Berlin. Sydney offered it to me before we moved back here. I didn’t take it right away because Gus wanted to be here, with you, and I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out until I saw it for myself. He wants me to go, Brian, and I want to go. It’s a great opportunity for me.”

It’s true. It is. Berlin, Paris, Italy; Lindsay has dreamt of seeing those places her whole life. The only time she’s been out of the U.S. was to move to Canada, but she’s never even been off this continent. Her brown eyes look soft and apologetic and besides Gus I don’t really have any good argument that would make her stay.

I’ve alienated all of our other friends, but Lindsay wasn’t there for that and the last couple of weeks we’ve been talking and going to lunch and walking in the park, just like we used to do. Having Lindsay around has made me almost happy and I don’t want her to leave again because she’s the only one of my friends who looks at me without pity in her eyes. “I don’t want you to go away again, Wendy,” I admit, turning away from her so she doesn’t see the tears in my eyes.

Her arms wrap around me just like I knew they would and she hugs me with brute lesbian force. “I’m sorry you’re lonely. But you’ve got to do something to change that.”

“I’m not…”

She puts one finger over my lips and gives me a half-smile. “Don’t say you’re not. I know that you don’t go out with the guys anywhere and I know that you and Justin barely speak to each other. Gus moving in here is going to do you good. I wish I could’ve been here so that you could have had someone that didn’t buy this façade you’re playing off to everyone else. I know that at first I seemed a bit unsupportive of you and Justin having a child together, but I hope you know that it wasn’t because I didn’t think you were a great father. I know you are and that’s why I know that I can live half a world away from my son and know that you will take care of him. But, I still wish that I could’ve been here for you when you needed someone the most, and I’m sorry I wasn’t, Peter.”

Her speech is making my stomach twist in agony. I love her but she’s crazy, she has it all so wrong. “I really don’t know why you’d want to trust me with Gus after what I did, Lindsay. I’m glad you do and I’m relieved that Gus wants to live here, but it wasn’t your job to be here for me,” I remark, turning my back to her and wiping my hands over my stinging eyes.

“After Melanie and I divorced, Gus asked to come live with you and Justin. Mel and I didn’t think it was a good idea so soon after… there was so much going on with everyone and he’d been through so much in such a short time. When I told him that he and I were moving back to Pittsburgh, he asked Mel and I again if he could live with you. Neither one of us could come up with any good reason why he couldn’t if he still wanted to when he turned sixteen. So we promised him when the time came, he could ask you and we would agree. I didn’t imagine at the time that there’d be an offer to go to Europe. But now it’s here and it all seems so convenient, doesn’t it, that Gus wants to live with you? But I want you to know that wasn’t my only motivation for agreeing to Sydney’s offer. Because even though I think it’s an amazing opportunity, I still don’t think that living with you and Justin is the best idea for Gus. But it’s his decision and I intend to keep my promise.”

“We’ll be all right.”

“The tension between you and Justin is nerve wracking. I felt it the second he answered the door to me and then you came upstairs and he shuffled away before I could properly say hi to you both. Gus knows you two aren’t ‘all right’, Brian. It doesn’t matter if you’ve tried to keep him out of your grief over the years; he’s smart and knows you both, better than you think. You ignore how fucked up you are but Gus can’t. I know that everyone else has mistaken it as part of the grieving process and they’re too scared to say anything to you, but I can’t let you and Justin self-destruct around Gus.”

“Isn’t that what you and Melanie did? Except you did it around two kids and no one batted a fucking eye and you know why?”

“Why?” she asks, shaking her head at me.

“Because everyone expected it.” I’m not going to let her act as though the way Justin and I have learned to live is something she can judge. “Everyone knew it’d happen again one day. You couldn’t stay together because you never really wanted to be with one another; you just didn’t know how to be apart.”

“I’m sure that’s true but you want to know the difference between my and Mel’s marriage and your and Justin’s marriage?”

I snort at that. “Besides the nightly…”

“The difference is that you and Justin, we’ve all known you two were meant to be together, from the beginning. You don’t have to learn how to be apart anymore. You’ve progressed past forced separations and uncertain reunions. Whether it was you taking business trips or Justin living in L.A., New York or Paris, you were still together even though you lived apart. Now it’s the opposite. Whether you see it or not, you have parted and yet you’re still living together and that’s all wrong. Before I moved back, I reasoned that the distance between you two was natural in the course of grieving. But I know better now, you’re not grieving; I don’t even think you’ve really begun. You both are just walking around, going on like nothing happened.”

“I think I fucking know what happened!”

“Maybe you know what happened but I don’t understand why you’re perfectly happy with the aftermath.”

“I’m nowhere near happy with the way things are right now!” Brian raged.

“Justin isn’t,” Lindsay continued. “I don’t think he knows what happened. Every time I’ve spoken to him on the phone or seen him since, he’s acted and sounded like a robot. When you look into his eyes there’s nothing there, Brian, and his physical health, surely you’ve noticed that he looks sick. Don’t you see how much weight he’s lost?”

“He isn’t sick and he isn’t a fucking robot.” Does she expect him to walk around with a sunshine smile on his face?

“Open your eyes,” she says pleadingly, placing her hands on my shoulders. “He’s so thin. The grief is eating him alive. He looks anorexic.”

“I’ve seen him eat. He isn’t anorexic, he just has a hard time eating much.”

“That’s the same thing.”

“No. It’s not. Look at me.” I hold my arms out to my sides. “I’ve lost weight too. I can barely eat because every time I walk into that kitchen I see her sitting there, asking me for chocolate milk. Justin probably feels the same way.”

“But you know you’re not healthy, you realize it and you look a lot better than Justin does. Don’t make up excuses for him, Brian. I don’t think he realizes what he’s doing to himself and you have to wake up and see how bad it is. If it’s about not wanting to go into the kitchen why don’t you just order in, you have enough money to eat take out or have every meal delivered from your favorite restaurants.”

Fuck. Fuck. She’s so right but I can’t… I can’t do anything to fix him! “Stop, Lindsay!”

“No, I won’t. Someone has to fight for you if you’re going to ever be okay again and I want you to be okay. You don’t deserve this lonely misery but it’s not going to get any better, because Justin doesn’t want anyone to pay attention to him and that includes you. Every time you ignore this behavior of his, thinking that time is going to heal him, you do exactly what he wants and it makes it worse. ”

“He isn’t doing it on purpose.”

“Maybe not. Maybe he is. Either way, you have to help him if you’re ever going to have anything close to a happy future together.”

“How?”I ask, sounding a little too desperate to my own ears.

“I don’t know. But you’ve got to find some way or find someone else who can.”

“You think I should force him to see a shrink?” There’s no fucking way I’d do that to him. “Or do you want me to have him admitted to the psych ward?”

“If something doesn’t change soon, that’s going to be your only choice of helping him.”

“I won’t ever do that to him! I’d rather lock him up here in the bedroom and tend to him myself. I won’t ever fucking hurt him like that and you’d better not be talking that shit to anyone else! I told you what happened between him and Valerie when she…”

“I know. But that was in the beginning, Brian, and she was trying to help him. She thought that it’d be a good idea and that he would find peace there. Things are different now. He’s different and…it’s been…”

“Stop.” I hold my hand up and back away from her. “You don’t get to put a timetable on this!”

“But his body has already done that.”

“I’ll fucking fix it somehow, all right?” I say angrily, my body shaking from my rising blood pressure. I have to take a deep breath and remind myself that she doesn’t understand this, could never understand Justin. Not like I do. I know Justin. I know that when it’s time, he’ll heal. When it’s time. Because that time… that time is… Oh, fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

“All right,” she whispers. “All right, for now. But if Gus tells me that Justin’s getting worse then I’m going to call Jennifer and Debbie and open their eyes too. Why haven’t they been around here taking care of you both? I don’t understand.”

“Maybe because they realize we don’t want them to? We don’t need them to!”

She shrugs. “The last time I saw Justin was almost a year ago. You led me to believe that things were getting better, but inside I could tell that wasn’t true. Don’t deny it, Brian, you know you try to make everyone believe that you both are fine because you’re too scared to admit to everyone that this is out of your control. You guys have some act going on and everyone else… they must be so scared of saying or doing something that might hurt you that they’ve all let you two get away with this act, but I’m not going to let you. So promise me, promise me that Gus isn’t going to be watching his dads self-destruct and I’ll drop the subject for now.”

I don’t want to admit it but Lindsay is right about it all. I don’t make promises easily and this one, well, if I don’t make it then it would mean that I’ve given up on him, on us, right? I only have one choice. “I promise.”

She smiles and says softly, “You keep that promise and one day things really will be all right.”

I find myself taking comfort in her arms and allow myself to believe that she may be right about that too.

The house phone ringing breaks us out of the quiet moment and I bolt down the hall toward the foyer and grab it off the table. “Hello?”

“Brian, are you okay? You sound funny.”

“I’m fine, Deb,” I lie. I see Lindsay walk down the hall toward me and she motions that she’s going to go upstairs. I cover the receiver and tell her, “I’ll be up to help in a minute.”

“It’s Carl’s birthday tomorrow and we’re celebrating at Michael’s. I want to make sure that you, Gus, and Justin are going to be there. I told Lindsay to ask you about it but…”

“Justin’s been sick,” I lie. “Deb, I don’t think he’s up to….”

“I’ll go, Brian,” Justin’s voice booms through the foyer and he holds tightly to the railing with his good hand and carries his crutch through his casted arm as he descends the staircase.

“Justin is going to come or I’ll have his…”

“Deb, just a second,” I plead and cover the mouthpiece once again.

“You want to go to Carl’s birthday?” I ask, completely astounded.

Justin nods at me slowly. “Do you have a problem with that?”

“No,” I reply, still feeling shocked that he’d actually agree to attend anything that he hasn’t had weeks to prepare for.

“I’m going to make lunch,” he tells me, ignoring my still shocked expression. “Lindsay brought cold cuts, right?”

“Yeah,” I reply and can’t help but ask, “You’re going to eat?”

“I… I eat, Brian,” he defends, hobbling down the hall on his crutch. “I eat… I make lunch every day. I make lunch,” he continues mumbling as he disappears into the kitchen. “I make lunch every day.”

I can still hear him mumbling a few seconds later after I give Debbie the good news and hang up the phone. I don’t know what to think of Justin. I should be feeling relieved that he’s going to go to Carl’s birthday and that he’s going to go eat lunch with us, but this weird mumbling I’ve noticed him doing is freaking me the fuck out!

I don’t know how long he’s done this because we’ve rarely spent any time awake in the same room the last three years. We still don’t exactly spend time together; we just share a little more awake time and I am well aware that I have to change that and determined to do so.

 

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Saturday, June 14, 2008

I park the car in the long driveway of the muncher’s villa, happy that we’re finally here and the torturous drive is now over. “We’re flying home,” I speak firmly, shutting off the car’s engine. I feel like I need a twenty-four hour massage.

“We can’t fly home, Dada. They don’t let us bring large enough carry-on bags for all the stuff I need,” Justin says, teasingly.

I twist around to face Justin in the backseat and lift his chin up so he meets my eyes. “If you speak in that voice ever again, or speak as though you are Arella, I will divorce you.”

Justin grabs the back of my head, leans forward and proceeds to give me a mind-numbing kiss, ending it with a pop of his lips against mine. He laughs out, “You’re so touchy.”

“How can I be touchy when we haven’t had sex today?” Or when a half hour into the drive, Justin climbed into the back seat to tend to Arella and that’s where he stayed for the next eight hours…no make that nine.

“Whatever,” he replies, unbuckling his seat belt. “Get out of the car so that we can get her out of her seat before she starts crying again.”

It disturbs me how completely unbothered Justin is by our lack of invading one another’s personal space. At the moment though, I’m more concerned with the lack of space in this car and the need to stop our bundle of joy’s next fit before it begins. As quick as my aching body will allow, I get out of the car and pull the front seat forward to allow Justin more room to get out.

“Hand me the diaper bag, Sunshine,” I prompt after he puts away Arella’s half-full bottle.

He’s all smiles as he hands over the atrocious pink bag that he insisted on taking. I really don’t think Melanie and Lindsay intended on us using the thing, I think they sent it as a joke, but Justin didn’t think so and promised we could bring one of the designer bags if we went out in public anywhere.

“Would you cheer up?” Justin asks, using my arm to balance himself as he hops out of the vehicle.

“I’m happy,” I protest, slapping his ass as he bends over to get Arella, who is still strapped in her carrier, out of the back seat.

“Start acting like it or Gus will think you’re not happy to see him,” he chastises me in the same voice I just warned him about.

“I’m divorcing you,” I tell him, following him up the porch steps.

“You’d never divorce me, Brian. Besides, if we did, who’d get Rel?”

“Would you stop calling her Rel?” I ask. “If you wanted to name her Rel, you should’ve just named her Rel.”

“You were the first one to call her that,” he gasps, swinging the car seat toward my shoulder.

“Are you trying to kill me?” I ask, grabbing onto the railing.

He gives me a bright smile from where he stands on the porch and nods his head. “Oh yes, I’ve finally gotten everything I’ve ever wanted, but I’m going to fuck it all up by killing you in the least violent country in the world.”

I laugh and kiss the back of his neck as I knock on the large door to the muncher’s new home. “Well, you do have an example to live up to as an American,” I tease.

 

~~~~~~~~~~
 

I was almost glad to change Rel’s… correction, Arella’s, oh fuck it! I was glad that it was my turn to change Rel’s shitty diaper. I swear to God after the muncher’s fawned over Rel like they’d never seen her before and then proceeded to give us a detailed tour of every room in Muncher Villa while passing her between the two of them, I was silently begging Rel to shit her pants already.

Finally, somewhere between Jenny Rebecca insisting that she was a big girl and wanted to hold the extremely breakable baby, and watching as Justin, Gus, Lindsay, and Melanie oohed and ahhed as they allowed the small child to hold the tiniest thing I’d ever held in my life, my daughter decided to fill up her itty-bitty diaper.

Gus was a much bigger baby than Arella. She’s nearly a month old and still hasn’t caught up to his birth weight or length. We took her to her one month visit with the pediatrician yesterday and he assured Justin and me that Arella is healthy and growing. She gained two and a half pounds, not that you can tell, and grew a quarter of an inch. We know that the donor of the egg had a small frame, was only five foot three and a little over a hundred and twenty pounds, so combined with Justin’s genetics we were more likely to have a smaller baby.

All I see when I look at her is Justin.

“Dad, do you want my help?” Gus asks, crawling over to where I’ve placed the diaper mat on the guest room’s floor.

“I’m almost done,” I tell him, putting the Velcro tab in place on her pamper.

“Oh, well can I pick out a new outfit for her?” he asks hopefully.

I smile at Gus and nod. Even though she didn’t mess up her sundress or the bottoms, I know what outfit is on top in the diaper bag and it’ll make him happy to put her in it.

“Cool!” he says and begins to gently take off Arella’s dress.

I watch over him, but I don’t have to watch too closely, and I’m not scared of him touching her like I am with practically everyone but Justin. I trust him and he touches her like she’s the most breakable thing in the world, which she is, so even if it takes us both a little longer to get her ready than it does Justin, Arella seems to have already gotten my patience for dressing properly and lets us take our time.

Gus loves to help with her and I want him to feel connected to Arella since he doesn’t get to see her as much as he sees Jenny. He’s so much more into being a big brother than I would think any other almost 9-year-old boy would be, especially because he already has a little sister. The first time I saw him hold her, he looked at her and then at me and Justin with the biggest, happiest smile I’d ever seen on his face. Seeing him be so proud to hold her, seeing him love her, brought forth the same feelings that coursed through me when Justin placed Arella in my arms for the first time.

It was really hard on us when Gus had to go back to Toronto with his mothers a week after Arella was born. He begged us to let him stay as he had the previous summers they lived in Toronto, but Lindsay and Melanie were due to move on the 1st of June and they wanted their whole family together when they made the move from the condo to this house. That was why they’d come to visit as soon as Gus’ school had let out the week before. We hadn’t planned on him being there when the baby was born. I’m glad he was though; it was great to have both of my children under the same roof the first night we brought Rel home. Gus was like a third parent to her. Hell, he knew about the weird baby stuff we didn’t because he was so observant with Jenny; even though I thought he was too little to remember a lot of that. Apparently, he remembered a lot about babies and it made the first couple of days much easier than they probably are for most first-time parents.

We’ll be taking Gus home with us. Lindsay and Melanie weren’t exactly happy about it and I think them asking us all to come stay for a few days with them was so they could judge how we handle both Gus and Arella. I really don’t care what the fuck they think. I just want Justin to be happy and he wasn’t happy when he realized we wouldn’t get to have Gus with us on Father’s Day, so I arranged things with Lindsay and he was thrilled.

“Holy shit!” Gus exclaims as he holds up the shirt he pulled from the diaper bag.

I laugh and cover his mouth with my hand. “You’re lucky they’re all outside. If your moms hear you talk like that, they’ll think I let you talk like that all the time.”

He giggles and pushes my hand off his mouth. “You do,” he says smugly.

“So you like that?” I ask about the tiny blue t-shirt.

Gus smiles and reads the words, “I love my big brother.”

“Justin got it for her when we found out we were coming.” I would never put a child in something so cheesy, but Gus’ excitement makes it worth it.

“Does she have one that says ‘I love my daddies’ yet?” he asks hesitantly, looking a little sad.

Oh, God. I’m going to kill Mel and Lindz. I’m going to kill them. “No, she doesn’t have one,” I speak slowly, trying not to wince because I’m pretty sure that a pink diaper bag isn’t the worst gift the munchers have ever gotten us. I won’t ask why, because then he’ll know that I know and he seems like he wants it to be a good surprise so at the very least I can prepare myself for it.

I help him slip the blue ruffled diaper shorts bottom thingies onto Arella and she’s starting to squirm and suck heartily on her pacifier.

“I think she needs a bottle,” Gus says thoughtfully as I pick her up and head toward the hallway.

“Justin put her formula in the fridge; do you remember how to make her a bottle?” I ask, walking downstairs.

“Yeah, I think so,” he says uncertain. “Can you watch me to make sure I do it right?”

“Of course I can, Sonny-boy,” I answer as we reach the kitchen. “I’m going to hand her off to Justin first and then I’ll be right back inside, okay?”

“Okay, Dad,” he says excited, “I’ll be ready for ya.”

I open the kitchen door that leads to the ‘awning covered porch’ of Lindsay’s dreams and see Mel pushing Jenny on her swing at the far end of the yard and Justin standing with Lindsay off in the corner.

The screen door slams behind me but the yard is so big and the street noise behind their house so loud no one seems to notice. I negotiate the creaky wooden steps leading down the porch and I’m about to call out to Justin when I see him put his hands on his hips and lean toward Lindsay with a scowl on his face. I can’t hear what they’re talking about, but as I walk up behind them, Lindsay notices me first and lets out a large gasp and her face immediately blushes.

“What the fuck is going on?” I ask, putting my hand over Rel’s exposed head. I didn’t plan on taking her out for long, so I didn’t grab her hat, but apparently something big just went down and I want to know what the fuck that is.

Justin’s posture relaxes but he doesn’t even glance at me as he tells me, “Lindsay doesn’t think we’ll have time for Gus and Arella. She thinks we’re going to neglect him. More importantly, she thinks that I’m going to neglect him because I have my own child now.”

This doesn’t surprise me of course, but I really thought that Lindsay’s WASPy manners would’ve required Justin and I to be here for at least half a day before this began.

“That isn’t how I meant it,” Lindsay says, her gaze flashing between Justin and me. “I’m just worried about Gus not getting the attention he needs.”

“The way I see it is that Gus has a little sister in each household, so what does it matter?” I ask her, keeping my voice low and cool so that Rel isn’t bothered by it.

“But Jenny isn’t a baby anymore,” Lindsay defends weakly.

Justin steps closer to me, puts his arm around my waist and his hand on Rel’s bare foot, and speaks in a steely voice. “If you want Gus to think there’s a difference between our home and your home, it’ll be you that makes him feel that way, not us, Lindsay. Gus is my son and Arella is my daughter. I love them both and I know…”

“You may think you understand what it’s like, Justin, but you don’t really understand, not yet,” Lindsay replies in a ‘know-it-all’ tone.

“There may be things that I have to learn, that Justin and I will learn together about raising two children but you’re not the authority on that.”

“Lindsay, we love Gus and that’s all that matters,” Justin says pleadingly.

“I don’t doubt your love for Gus, but that doesn’t mean that I can trust that you’ll be able to give him the same attention you give Arella.”

“You either trust him with us or you don’t,” I tell her, growing angrier by the second. I know she’s a great mother but she doesn’t have any right to insinuate that we’re incapable of caring for Gus and Arella at the same time.

“If I knew that you would hold a baby against us and use her to separate us from Gus I wouldn’t have ever done it. I don’t want Arella to be the reason that we can’t be fathers to Gus and I can’t believe that you want that.”

Shit, his voice is all choked and I see he’s blinking fast to avoid crying. I’ve got to put an end to this conversation. I’d expected this from them, but Eternal Sunshine seems completely caught off guard. I tried to tell him before we left, but he kept assuring me that everything was going to be fine. I’m going to do my best to make sure that the rest of our trip goes just like Justin wanted. “I hope that this is the last conversation we have about this, Lindsay,” I tell her. “You and I both know that two obscenely rich and influential men, no matter our sexual orientation, will crush you in a custody battle if it comes to that. You won’t have my lawyer like you did with Jenny and…”

“Brian, stop,” she gasps shaking her head. “I really am sorry to you both. I should never have implied what I did and I’m not just apologizing because of your threat. You two are my friends, you’re my family and there’s no one else I would trust my son with as much as you two.”

“We’re good parents,” Justin tells her firmly, but gives her a small smile.

Lindsay wraps her arms around us and gives us a small hug and smiles at us. “I know you are. I know that. Please don’t hold what I said against me, I just… I get freaked out whenever Gus leaves. It’s hard to have him stay one night at a friend's house, but much worse when he’s in a different country for the summer.”

Arella starts to whine and I’m glad she’s breaking this ‘moment’ up because I’m done with this conversation. “Justin, do you want to come inside and watch Gus make her a bottle? I came out here to give her to you, but she needs to have her hat on if she’s going to be out here any longer.”

“Yeah, I think I need to get out of the sun too for a minute.” He turns to Lindsay, gives her a real smile, and asks, “You want to watch how big Gus is?”

“No,” Lindsay replies. “I’m going to go give Mel a break and push Jenny.”

I hand Rel off to Justin before we walk back toward the house. “It sucks that she was a bitch,” I say. “But just so you know, I know you love them both.”

“I do, and I sorta understand why she’s so stressed out, Brian. It’s so hard to share Gus, but I’m glad that with Rel we don’t have to worry about that. No one’s ever going to take her away from us.”

“No, they won’t,” I affirm as we climb the stairs to go inside.

“What took so long?” Gus asks as we enter the kitchen.

“We just had to talk for a minute,” I tell him and walk over to the counter where he has the bottle, water jug and formula set up.

“And I wanted to see you make Rel’s bottle too,” Justin says encouragingly. “Did Brian tell you that she drinks double than what she did when she was first born?”

Gus’ eyes widen in surprise. “Really? She’s so tiny!”

“Well, she’s on her way to being fat,” I tell him. “We’ll have to put her on a diet soon.”

“Dad, babies are supposed to be fat,” he says rolling his eyes at me. “So, I put in two ounces of the formula and two ounces of the water?”

“That’s right, Gus,” Justin says, rocking Rel in a faster motion than I’d be comfortable with doing. But he seems to do it naturally and it keeps her from getting too fussy as she awaits the making of her food.

“Dad, the water jug is too heavy, can you do it?” he asks after trying to pick it up.

“Yeah, I can manage it if you’ll hold the bottle for me.”

“Can I feed her when we’re done?” he asks as though it’s the most thrilling thing he’ll ever get to do.

“If you want to, Sonny-boy.”

“You changed her clothes,” Justin observes finally. “What did you think of her shirt, Gus?” He glances at me and glares as if I’m going to say anything against it.

The deal was that he wouldn’t buy her the one that had pink flowers on it and I wouldn’t bitch about it, and I haven’t. Not aloud anyway, but that still counts. I stick my tongue out at him as Gus adds the formula to the bottle.

“Now I know for sure that I’m her big brother,” he tells us.

“You weren’t sure before?” Justin asks what we’re both wondering because of Gus’ statement.

“Well, I know that Jenny is made from Mom and Uncle Mikey but Mama said Dad was in Philly with you to help make the baby, Justin. So I wasn’t sure if that made us real brother and sister or not. But we are, right?” he asks hopefully.

Justin looks at me for help and, honestly, I have no idea how to handle this situation. Gus is extremely bright and I thought that he knew about things like this, but I guess this part of him is still very innocent. So I decide on telling him the truth, “Gus, Arella is your real sister.”

“That’s what I thought,” Gus says proudly, twisting the cap on the bottle.

Justin and I walk with him into the living room and I watch as my husband gives my son his sister to hold. Gus will know the genetic truth soon enough. There’s no reason for me to dash his hopes. By the time he’s old enough to understand it all, he’ll also be old enough to understand why I told him what I did.

“You’re a great big brother, Gus,” Justin praises, sitting down beside them.

Arella takes to Gus feeding her much better than she does Jennifer or Debbie, so this is a good sign. Not that we’re going to use Gus as a babysitter or anything, yet, but it gives us a small break. Now I can sit down beside Justin and commence invading his personal space with a little G-rated kissing. It’s better than nothing, and Justin’s kisses, well they feel X-rated no matter how not tongue filled they are.

 

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Saturday, October 1, 2016

We’ve made a lot of progress on setting up Gus’ room when Justin calls us down for lunch about forty-five minutes later. His leg is healing really well and I’ve seen him walk on the cast, but I’m guessing that it was giving him trouble and that’s why it took him so long to make sandwiches.

Gus, of course, is the first to enter the kitchen, Lindsay and I are right behind him. Justin is making his way from the fridge with a pitcher of what looks like blue Kool-Aid. It’s shaking in his hand and I know that any minute he’s going to drop it. Not that it’d be a bad thing since I fucking hate Kool-Aid and don’t want to drink it, but I don’t want it all over the floors either.

“This looks good,” Gus says in a funny voice, taking a seat at the bar and grabbing the sandwich from the plate in front of him.

“Here,” I say, grabbing the pitcher from Justin’s hand.

“No!” Justin shouts, his eyes immediately watering.

“Justin,” Lindsay says gently, “you need to accept help when you…”

“Shut up!” he yells at her, practically diving for the bar and grabbing the sandwich out of Gus’ hands. “That’s not yours!’”

“What the fuck is your problem?” I demand, slamming the Kool-Aid onto the bar top as I grab his shoulder and make him face me.

He looks at me with a fearful expression before snapping his head down and starts to back away from me, smooching the sandwich in his palm. “It wasn’t for Gus. I made meat sandwiches for everyone else. I made them for you like I used to. I made Gus’ favorite. I don’t know if it’s his favorite anymore.”

“Justin, I’m sorry,” Gus tries, obviously as confused as I am.

Justin’s back is now against the cabinets and his whole body is wobbling back and forth and he’s mumbling again. I see pieces of the sandwich at his feet and my blood runs cold when I see exactly what is making him so upset.

“Gus, Linds, can you take your food upstairs?”

“I just wanted to make their favorites,” Justin mumbles to my horror, his head shaking back and forth.

Oh God.

“Please!” I yell at my son and his mother, finding it impossible to keep my emotions from tumbling out of me.

They both look as scared as I feel but they’re gone from the kitchen a second later. The minute they leave, the gravity of what is going on consumes me. I don’t know what the fuck to do.

Justin falling forward stops all of my hesitation and I grab him just before he hits the floor.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpers as I bring us both to the floor. “I just wanted to make them their favorite lunch. I even put extra mayo on Gus’ sandwich. Isn’t that how he likes it?”

He looks so fucking terrorized and his words are making me want to not exist. “That’s how he likes it, Justin,” I tell him, because I don’t know what to say to him. He’s my fucking husband and I have no words that will truly help him. I have no idea what to say, to make him see what is so fucked up with all that he’s saying and I’m afraid of the thoughts that are in the back of my mind. “He just didn’t know which one was his, that’s all.” I press his head against my chest and put my face in his hair and whisper, “It’s okay, Justin. Gus has the right plate now.”

He turns his head and stares up at me with eyes that I don’t recognize at all and asks calmly, “Is he mad at me?”

“No. He’s not mad.” He’s probably confused and scared, but he didn’t look angry.

“Are you mad at me, Brian?”

I run my fingers along his cheek, shake my head, and push out my lie, “No.” I’m not mad about this, but I’m angry with him, so fucking angry. I hate him for doing this to us, to himself!

“Will you help me up? I’m getting hungry.”

“Justin.” I want to say something, I feel years of written novels wanting to spill from my mouth but nothing comes out. I scoot away from him and help him to his feet.

He smiles at me as though he isn’t completely and totally fucking mental and whispers, “Thanks.”

I watch him wash his hands and then he tries to walk away from the counter, but his whole body starts shaking before he takes his first step. He’s got to be in pain, but his expression shows that he isn’t registering it at all. He isn’t registering anything!

“Justin, let me help you.”

His lips curl into a soft, relaxed smile that has the opposite effect on me than it should.

“Will you get out the peanut butter and jelly?”

“Justin, why do you need the peanut butter and jelly?” I ask this, but I know why. I know exactly why, but I want him to say it.

“I need to make Rel her lunch, asshole,” he teases, rolling his eyes at me.

I could swear on my life that I feel like someone just zapped my spine with a fucking taser. I can’t fucking let this go on. I grab the knife that he got out of the drawer from his hand and throw it into the sink.

“What are you doing?” he asks, giving me a pout. “I’m not fucking you. I’ve got to take care of our daughter.”

I force my eyes closed for a few seconds and I struggle with gaining enough courage to say what I need to. I look at him again, my eyes glassier than they were before. “You don’t have to take care of our daughter, Justin.”

His eyebrows knit together in confusion and I know he’s about to ask me a question that I haven’t voiced to him since that day. “Are you going to take care of her and bring her straight home?”

I almost look down at my chest to see if he’s retrieved the fucking knife and has stabbed me with it, but I see it lying in the sink out of the corner of my eye. “Justin, I’m not going to take care of her and I… can’t bring her home. I wish I could, but I can’t.”

“Gus c… can get her. He’s old enough now. Don’t…don’t you think Gus is old enough?” His rambling words start sounding desperate and I know he’s breaking. “Gus can even drive her now that he…”

“No one is going to drive her anywhere. Arella is dead,” I whisper to him, keeping my tear-filled eyes locked with his. “You don’t have to make her lunch, you don’t have to…”

“Brian,” he whimpers, blinking quickly, holding off his tears.

I pull him into my arms and he fights me, but I’m stronger than him and I hold him to me.

“Rel doesn’t need you to live for her anymore,” I tell him. I repeat it so many times it becomes a mantra that begins to sink into my bloodstream and speeds up my heart rate.

“I don’t want you to say that to me, Brian. I…I don’t like it.”

“But you have to hear me say it.”

“I don’t want to,” he protests, gripping my shirt and pulling me against him tighter than I am holding him.

“I know, Justin. I didn’t ever want to say it to you. But… you can’t go on acting. You can’t! You can’t do that. You can’t do it to me.”

“But it makes it better, Brian. I just wanna pretend sometimes. I thought that if I did everything right, you and Gus and Lindsay would pretend too. I wanted it to be like it was before.”

“But it won’t ever be that way. She’s never going to eat lunch with us again,” I say, my words crackling with so much pent-up emotion. “She’s never going to come back to us, no matter how much we want her back.”

“I don’t want to live, Brian.” He gasps aloud as if hearing himself say it is worse than the fact that he’s obviously felt this way for years.

I kiss his forehead and tell him what I should’ve been telling him for the last three fucking years, “I want you to live, Justin. Because I can’t fucking live without you. You’ve been killing me the last three years, and I know I fucking deserve it, I know I do. But you don’t.”

“I can’t do this!” he barks.

He suddenly pushes me away from him so fast I fall backward and barely catch myself.

“Justin!”

“I can’t!” He grabs his crutch and takes off out of the kitchen and I hear him slam the guest bedroom door a few seconds later.

I try not to scream my frustrations and I’m only stopped from bellowing because my throat is raw. My neck muscles tighten as I growl obscenities, trying to calm down and not throw every goddamn appliance on the counters.

The pinch of scarred stretched skin beckons my fingers to press first on my upper left shoulder and graze over the thin skin on my throat. I’m so close it feels like the beat travels all the way up my arm and back to my heart.

It wouldn’t take much to give up. I wish I’d known the future; I wouldn’t have given in to my need to keep him physically close to me when I knew he wasn’t mentally here. I would’ve done what everyone thought was for the best and maybe then it would’ve helped him even if he couldn’t forgive me afterward. Instead, I was selfish and put my needs above his own and told myself that it was for the best, that I could make him better because I didn’t want anyone to know that I didn’t think I could. I didn’t think I could survive without his presence and I was too scared to admit that.

Justin could’ve lived without me, he has been and I think he wants to keep it that way.

 

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Saturday, November 4, 2006

“What are you doing out in the hallway?” I ask against Justin’s ear, wrapping my arms around him and pressing my groin against his ass. “You’re missing your own party.”

He leans his head back and we exchange a few kisses before he explains, “I was walking Timothy out, remember?”

I turn him around and back him up against the side of the stairway. “You have to play nice to Mr. Desmans, right.”

“I don’t have to play nice. You like Timothy just as much as I do or you wouldn’t have invited him here yesterday.”

“What can I say? I was high on success,” I answer, licking down his neck.

“My success?” he asks, turning us around and reciprocating while humping his crotch against mine.

“If you’re a success then so am I.”

He backs away from me and laughs while placing his hands on his hips and raising his eyebrow. “Care to tell me how that works?”

“I helped raise you, little boy,” I tease and roughly pull him against me.

“I’m not so little anymore, Daddy,” he gasps as my hand slips down the front of his jeans and grasps his hard cock.

I chuckle at that understatement. “No, you’re not little.”

“Will you take it out and play with it?” he groans in a low voice while peppering kisses across my face.

“Justin, your Mom said….whoa!”

Startled at being interrupted, our heads whip toward Michael who is backing up down the hallway with his hands over his eyes.

“Oh shit! I’m covering my eyes… I’m covering my eyes and you guys really shouldn’t do this in here. Gus and Jenny are just in the other room and they could’ve seen you.”

We start laughing simultaneously and I reluctantly take my hand out of Justin’s pants. “You can take your hands away from your eyes before you fall backward into Justin’s ugly sculpture,” I warn him.

He stops walking and asks, “Is Justin’s cock put away?”

Justin snorts. “It wasn’t even out!”

Michael braves a look at us and sighs, “I could’ve been your Mom, Justin.”

“That’s a scary thought,” I tease him, wiping my hand off on my slacks.

“Eww!” Justin gasps. “Go wash your hands, Brian.”

“How about you come with me?” I say, grabbing his dick pointedly.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Michael says walking over and taking Justin’s arm. “You are going to show me the final scene for the new Rage issue before this party is over.”

“Is it wrong that I’m tired of showing off my art work?” Justin asks me as Michael begins to pull him up the stairs.

“Can it, twat,” I chastise him. “You love all the praise.”

“It’s true,” he says, his words echoing around the foyer. “I am pretty great.”

“Oh shut up, Boy Wonder,” Mikey grumbles.

I laugh at them and walk into the kitchen where I do as Justin asks and wash my hands. As I’m about to leave, Debbie walks in, a serious expression on her face. “I don’t smoke pot with kids in the house,” I tell her. I know she wants to discuss the same shit every other person invited to Justin’s celebratory party has tried to discuss with me and I’m not looking forward to it.

She holds up the bottle of Beam that had been sitting on the bar in the living room and shoves it toward me. “A shot will have to do then.”

“I don’t mix that shit with wine if I want to be awake enough to fuck,” I say bluntly, taking the bottle and placing it on the counter.

“Going soft in your old age?” she says, patting my face gently.

“No, I’ve never been able to mix wine with any liquor and not get sick and in turn pass out. I learned that early on.”

“Oh yes,” she laughs. “I remember now. You and Michael stole that red wine Vic had bought me for my birthday and then drank all those airplane bottles of whiskey you brought over from your dad’s stash.”

“And we were sick for three days after that,” I remind her.

“Good thing you’re smarter now.”

Great, here it comes. “Yeah, good thing,” I say wearily.

“I just hope you’re smart enough to…”

“Make an honest man out of Justin?” I interrupt, laughing at the thought.

“It’s time, don’t you think?”

“It was time for me to do that long before the first time I asked him to marry me,” I admit. But before the smile on her face gets too bright I inform her, “I don’t think it’s time for Justin to settle down.”

“I retract my statement,” she says.

Retract? Since when has Deb used such big words? I roll my eyes at her. “Timothy, Justin’s agent, got a call from Sydney Bloom at the gallery right before he left here. Justin’s last two paintings sold tonight and they’ve negotiated with all the buyers to keep his paintings on display until their next exhibit in February. A shitload of people are going to see his work. People are going to want his work. They’re going to offer him commissions, just like the one he got in Paris.”

“So of course you think that if you marry him, he won’t experience his life-long dream?”

“Can you tell me otherwise?” I ask. Of course I know that was a stupid thing to ask the minute I see her face light up.

“The only way he’s going to experience his life-long dream is if he experiences it by your side, Brian. You’re smart enough to know that, I know you are. If you were afraid he’d leave you, you’d be out fucking everything that moves.”

“You think I’m not?”

“Honey, I hear it all at the diner. The boys of Liberty have been mourning the loss of your dick for quite a while. But I don’t think you care what those could-be tricks think of you. You care what Justin thinks of you.”

“I do, huh?” I ask, wanting to put tape over my mouth so I can shut the fuck up already.

“Not only did Justin get under the wire, but he’s so deep in your heart that you don’t want to touch any man but him.”

“Debbie,” I try to protest her accusations. Even if they are true, I don’t need her to psychoanalyze my relationship with Justin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She laughs at me and points her finger at me sternly. “Listen, asshole. I know what I’m talking about. I knew you loved him before you admitted it to yourself, probably before he really knew you did too. I don’t think that Justin knows you’re only fucking him. Hell, the boys wouldn’t ever believe it, but I do. You can lie about it to everyone that’ll listen if it makes you feel better, but don’t lie to him.”

“I’m not lying to him, Debbie.”

“You just haven’t told him,” she sing-songs. “Of course you haven’t. You two have been so busy I haven’t had a chance to kick your ass into gear.”

“Now’s your chance,” I sigh in reluctance.

“You tell that boy that you want to marry him, Brian. Make him your husband, not because it’ll piss off straight people, not because it’ll make me happy or him happy or because of any other stupid fucking reason people get married. You marry him because you know that even if he does become the art world’s ‘next big thing’ he’ll know that you trust both of you to be faithful if you’re separated.”

“This is sounding like a silly romance novel, Deb. That isn’t me and Justin.”

“Well, I didn’t write the story; you and Justin are the ones with the fucking ink and paper. It’s time that he knows that he’s it for you, and it’s time you realize that you’re it for him. You deserve a happy life story, Brian, and so does Justin. You got me, kiddo?”
Fucking hell. What else can I say to that? It’s all true, even if I don’t want to tell her. But I know she knows it, so I just nod and reply, “I got ya, Ma.”
 

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