Out
The jeep pulled out the driveway, the lights receding down the street, the engine sound dying away and Jack stood there shaking his head.
Two days ago he had made his first ever visit to his son’s apartment—or loft, as he called it—always so fucking fancy, that one. That was when he had told the boy about the cancer—and Brian surprised him by seeming to be genuinely sorry, or at least not happy anyway. Jack had thought that maybe they would have a couple of nice talks in the time he had left, maybe hit the union house together, toss back a few JB’s, do whatever the fuck father’s and sons are supposed to do together. You know, do the sort of shit his friends did with their kids.
Leave it to his asshole of a son to screw even that up.
Fuck, it was colder than a dead baby’s ass out in the garage. Pushing the button that closed the overhead door, he went in through to the kitchen, flicking the garage light off as he went.
“Were you talking to someone out there? I thought I heard voices.” Joan was wiping down the already clean counter, back rigid, wine glass close at hand, not bothering to turn around to look at him.
“Brian. He stopped by.”
That caused her to look up. “What on earth did he want?” As far as she knew he hadn’t been to see either of his parents in a couple of years. She was unaware that Brian met his father almost every month to hand him an envelope of money.
Taking off his old jacket, hanging it on the pegs by the door, he sat down at the kitchen table. “Get me a drink.
“The doctor said not to mix it with you medicine.”
“Fuck the doctor. I want a drink.”
Pulling the scotch from the cabinet she gave one of her looks. “Well, if you don’t care, I can’t force you to take care of yourself.” Christ, the woman was even more frigid out of bed than in it.
“Our son wanted to tell me something, get it in under the wire.” He downed the glassful in one swallow. “Did you know he’s a fairy?”
“…That’s just one of his horrible jokes.”
“He’s a fag. He told me.”
She sipped her own glassful. “No he isn’t.”
“Oh yeah, how the fuck do you know? When was the last time you talked to him?”
She shook her head. “I’d know if my own son was a sodomite.”
“Joan—for shit’s sake, he stood there and told me he’s gay. That was the word he used, ‘gay’. Fuck if I know what’s so Goddamned happy about it.”
She stood stock still, “He dated that blonde when he was in college. Linda or something like that.”
He took another drink of the scotch she had poured him. “I’m telling you, he’s a fucking fairy.”
“All those girls used to call him when he was in high school.”
“You ever see him call one of them? They always called him, not the other way around.”
With decisive movements, considering that she had started drinking over an hour ago, she walked to the phone, dialing quickly, jabbing at the keypad.
“Claire? I want the truth from you. Is your brother a—homosexual?…How on earth do you know?…When for God’s sake?…And it never occurred to you that we might have a right to know?…And you knew?…What? What else?…You knew and never told us?…Well, then. You’re as bad as he is.”
She replaced the receiver in the cradle.
“So when did she find out?” Jack was reaching for the JB, pouring himself another three fingers.
Joan looked like a ton of bricks had just landed on her head, pale, almost in shock. “She said she’s known since he was about fourteen but the two of them worked out a deal. She never told us about that and he never told us that she snuck out at night to meet her boyfriend.”
“A fine fucking pair they turned out to be. He’s a queer and she a whore.”
Joan actually sat on the chair next to her husband. “She said something else. She told me that Brian has a son, that he helps to support the child.”
“How the fuck does a fairy end up with a kid?”
She just fixed him with one of her looks, the one that Brian-the-fag, as Jack now thought of his son, had mastered at an early age. “I would think about the same way you did. He probably got drunk.” She rose and headed upstairs for the night before he could react.
Two hours later he had moved to the living room couch. The TV droned on about something and Jack was about two thirds of the way through the JB bottle.
His son.
The one who was supposed to carry on the family name, make him proud, live on after he was gone.
His tall, smart, handsome son, the one all the girls had their eyes on. The one who was so successful.
Jesus.
He’d always been a stubborn little bastard. He’d been beaten like a gong and all it had done was make the little shit dig in his heels. Oh, sure, he’d brought home the grades and the varsity letters. He’d gone behind their backs to get that scholarship to that fancy college. Working in the union like his father and his grandfather before him wasn’t good enough for his Lordship—his fucking fairy Lordship. Jack took another pull on the bottle. Screw the glass.
Maybe he should have been tougher on him; maybe if he’d hauled him up when he was younger he wouldn’t be sticking his Johnson up some guys...
Jack started picturing his son with another man, what they would do to one another, what some other fairy would do to his son, what Brian would look like when he was…
Jesus.
Brian should be the one who was dying. He should. Fucking Brian should be the one facing the chemo and the throwing up ten times a day and knowing that nothing was going to help even though the doctors kept saying not to give up.
Fucking fag.
AIDS. Wasn’t that what they died of? Why the Hell didn’t he have it?
Why did a man who went to work every day and supported his family and did all the things he was supposed to do get hit by the Goddamned lightning? He should have had another twenty years to see Claire’s kids grow up and maybe get to know this kid of Brian’s.
It was like every other Goddamned thing in his life. Fucking unfair.
It was all so fucking unfair. Brian would take it up the ass, or whatever he did for another fifty years because that was the way his life always went—smooth sailing. Never a problem that he couldn’t solve. The Golden Boy, that was what Jack’s own mother had called Brian.
Damn, she had doted on him. Anything he wanted was fine. Anything he said, anything he did—it didn’t matter, he couldn’t do a damn thing wrong as far as she was concerned.
Well, he screwed up big time now. He’d done it.
Sliding down on the couch, passing out, that was Jack’s last thought until morning.
Around eleven the next day he had managed to sit up and made his way into the kitchen where the coffee was in the machine, still warm but tasting like tar. Working on a cupful while he ate a semi stale donut, he pulled the Warden’s address book out, looked up a number and punched it in.
Three minutes later he hung up, drained the cup and went upstairs to get cleaned up for the appointment he’d just made.
At three that afternoon he was shown into the cheaply paneled office and offered a seat in the worn chair.
“Jack—you look like you’re doing alright for yourself, what can I do for you today?”
“Richard, I want to update my will. How long will that take?”
The smile didn’t move. “Not long. We can probably get it done today, at least the basics. You have some changes to make?”
“Yeah. I want Brian out.”
“Your son, Brian?” Fucked up family.
“Yeah. He doesn’t get a red cent.”
“Well, alright. I can word it so it will hold up, but I’d suggest that you leave him a dollar so that he can’t challenge that he was simply forgotten or overlooked. You sure you want to do this?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. You do what you have to do, but I want him out.”
“…Fine. Consider it done. I’ll make the change and bring the papers over for you to sign in a day or so. Anything else I can do for you?”
Jack stood up. “No, that will cover it, thanks.”
When he walked back into the house Joan was there.
There was one of the major mistakes in his life. Damn bitch. Always mollycoddling the kids, always making excuses. If she’d just had the damn abortion when he’d asked, they wouldn’t be in this mess. Christ. And Claire. Now there was a poor excuse.
Jack Kinney, welcome to your life.
Brian was a queer, a fag, a pansy, a fairy.
Jesus, his own son liked to screw other men.
That was the first day Brian’s mother noticed that Jack refused to take his meds. At first she just thought that it could be chalked down to his having a bad day, but the day became two and then four and then a week. She called the doctor about it and was informed that if Jack refused to take the pills, they legally couldn’t force him and when she asked her husband about it, he told her to mind her own fucking business.
She went to both the
Brian never called either of his parents, and they never picked the phone up to talk to him, nor did any member of the Kinney family ever discuss anything that had happened that night in the garage or it’s aftermath.
They didn’t do things that way. That wasn’t how their family worked.
From the visit to the lawyer until his death two months later, Jack Kinney never once spoke about his son or said his name, nor would he tolerate anyone broaching him as a subject in his presence. As far as Jack was concerned, he had no son.
In due course, the call came in to Brian, late at night from his sister, that their father had died half an hour before.
Brian had handled most of the arrangements and had dutifully stood at the gravesite surrounded by family and friends. Lindsay brought Gus to the house after the service, but Joan refused to hold the child or even look at him.
When the will was read, Brian gave no reaction other than a small smile. He left without saying anything.
As far as anyone knew, he never spoke about his father to anyone after the reading of the will and his friends knew better than to bring up the subject.
One night, about six months later, Justin was looking through one of Brian’s desk drawers for a working pen. Under some old letters he found an old snapshot of a middle-aged man holding an infant who looked almost exactly like Gus. The picture was old, yellowed, and he never asked Brian why he had kept a photo of himself with the man he’d hated almost all his life.
He put it back where he’d found it when he heard the door sliding open. Getting up, he met Brian at the door, put his arms around his lover and kissed him a welcome.
The photo was never discussed. He never mentioned it.
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