All I Love and Know (2 page)

Matt needed to pee, but he'd waited too long; the food cart was blocking the aisle behind him. He wondered what Daniel's parents were eating up in business class—probably not something called “beef” or “chicken.” They were probably drinking heavily, too. The four of them had found one another in the security line in Newark, where Daniel's parents, looking like ghosts in expensive travel coats, had pulled Daniel toward them with a cry and clung to him while Matt dragged their bags and gently herded the huddled group forward, ignoring the curious glances of other passengers. He was sweating and winded by the time they settled in at the gate. It pained him to see how shock had blunted the normally ingenuous features of Daniel's father; Matt could see the tiny webs of capillaries around his nose, and when Sam put his and Lydia's passports and boarding passes into the inside pocket of his jacket, his hands shook. Lydia had sat huddled in the crook of Daniel's arm, from time to time grasping his sleeve and whimpering, “Those poor babies,” and “Why didn't God take me instead?” Her dramatic dark eyes were bloodshot, her face dusted over with recently reapplied face powder. Matt felt terrible for her, but her behavior made him think that she had seen one too many Anna Magnani movies. Since when did she even believe in God? He had gladly gone off to perform helpful tasks, buying a neck pillow and some Tylenol for her, and two new luggage tags for his and Daniel's bags, and
Time
and
Entertainment Weekly
for himself.

Now, as a tray was set in front of him, he had the sudden thought: Maybe Lydia's response was a Jewish form of expression? Maybe the Jews were one of those howling or keening peoples, their mourning a residue of the customs of their often-bereaved peasant ancestors? Matt's fingers grew still over the silverware packet he was trying to open. He was destined to be ashamed of himself, he was learning; since yesterday's call, there was virtually no thought that came without recoil. So, believing it was always better to face his demons, he made a mental list of all the thoughts he was ashamed of:

1. Was grief going to make Daniel look old and shriveled?

2. And if so, would they ever have halfway decent sex again?

3. He clearly wasn't going to make the Rufus Wainwright concert on the twenty-sixth: Could he just let that go?

4. Would his, Matt's, needs and aspirations ever be considered important again?

5. Would he ever get to just be a normal, young, shallow queen again, or would tragedy dog him for the rest of his born days?

But Matt knew these questions were bullshit, that he was evading the real issue: If Joel and Ilana had really done what they said they were going to do, he and Daniel would be returning home with their kids, and the life he knew would open up into dark seas he couldn't even begin to chart.

THREE MORNINGS AGO, MATT
had awakened singing Gershwin:

They laughed at me wanting you—

Said it would be Hello! Goodbye!

But oh, you came through—

Now they're eating humble pie.

He lay smiling next to Daniel in bed, with his hands folded behind his head, singing to the ceiling in a husky morning voice. It was their fourth anniversary; four years before, Matt had come up to Northampton to visit the shy Jewish cutie he'd met at a party in New York. He knew Daniel had never imagined being with him for so long; he'd thought of Matt as an amazing sexual windfall, and continued insisting that it was just an affair even after Matt moved permanently to Northampton, even after Daniel's friends began to tease him that his “affair” had begun wearing Birkenstocks with socks, a virtual guarantee that he'd never be allowed back in the city. Daniel just couldn't believe—and sometimes Matt couldn't believe it himself—that a young gay man would choose to leave New York to live in Northampton, which the
Enquirer
had once called, in an effort to shock, Lesbianville, USA.

That morning he turned to Daniel, stuffing a pillow under his neck. “Remember how you thought I was just some shallow hottie, but then you couldn't help falling in love with me?” he asked.

The memory of that morning made Matt clench his teeth, and as he picked at meat in gravy with peas and carrots, his partner still unconscious beside him, his mind cautiously turned over the question of what the terrain was like in Daniel's head. Like a tornado, he imagined, whipping trees up from their roots and slamming them into cars. He remembered an educational segment he'd recently seen on the Weather Channel, where the quiz question was:
During a tornado, where is the safest place in a mobile home?
After a commercial break they returned with the answer:
NOWHERE; leave immediately
. It had shocked him, the cruelty of the trick question; wasn't it bad enough that these people had to live in mobile homes? They were advised to go outside and find a regular house—
some wealthier person's decent home
, he had acidly glossed to Daniel—and failing that, to find a ditch to lie in. He had been indignant. “ ‘Yeah, you pathetic trailer trash, go lie in a ditch!'—that's basically what they're saying, isn't it?”

He set aside his roll and piece of chocolate cake for Daniel, hoping he'd be able to choke down food that was mild and sweet. He looked at Daniel's sagging head.
NOWHERE
, he thought,
that's where it's safe to be
. Leave immediately, go lie in a ditch.

AFTER DINNER AND A
long wait in the bathroom line, Matt read the movie and TV reviews in
Entertainment Weekly
and drifted off with the magazine in his hands. He was awakened by murmuring voices and the jingle of a bracelet. Lydia was standing over them, bringing in the sweet musky smell of her perfume, which Matt always smelled on his ears and collars for a few days after they spent time with her. He looked at Daniel and saw that he'd awakened too, and had a cup of ginger ale on his tray table. He pressed his hand, which lay on the seat between them, against Daniel's knee, in a discreet hello.

“Darling,” Lydia was saying to Daniel, with a hollow trace of her old intensity, “for the shiva, I think we should pick up some
bourekas
at that little bakery on Joel's street.”

Daniel laid his head back. “Okay, Mom,” he said. His voice was hoarse, and he brought his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat. His shirt was open at the neck, the curls in the back of his head flattened.

“It's just that Ilana's parents are utterly useless in this regard.”

“Okay,” Daniel said. His gray face shifted into something like its usual life as an idea came over it. “Actually, I think the visitors bring the food—the mourners aren't supposed to have to cook. And are we even sure the shiva's going to be at Joel and Ilana's? Maybe the Grossmans will want to have it.”

Lydia blinked. “That's out of the question.”

“Why?” Daniel asked. “Wouldn't it be better for the kids to have a place to come home to where there aren't a million people sitting around?” Gal and Noam were with their
sabba
and
savta
, Ilana's parents, now, but the plan was to bring them to their own house when their uncles and other grandparents arrived.

Matt could see the struggle break out on Lydia's face, and the stubbornness. “Don't you think the people who loved Joel and Ilana will want to gather one more time at their home?”

Daniel shrugged, and Lydia's eyes welled up. “And don't you think I'm thinking about those children?” she hissed. “I think of nothing else!”

“What are
bourekas
?” Matt asked.

Lydia looked down at him incredulously, and Matt was sorry for the silly question. In front of Lydia, he was a chronic blurter, and he knew that she didn't like him very much. Apparently she'd loved Daniel's first boyfriend, Jonathan. Matt—much younger than Daniel, eye candy, a goy, a lover of television rather than art or opera—was clearly the inferior and less appropriate partner.

“They're small triangular pastries in filo dough,” she said.

“Oh.”

“They're savory, not sweet. They're filled with cheese or spinach. They're a very popular finger food in Israel.”

“I see,” Matt said.

“Mom,” Daniel said, “why don't we wait till we get there, and maybe this shiva thing will just work itself out.” He closed his eyes.

Lydia nodded, drew herself up, and said to Matt with a strange pride, “The place down the street from Joel's house has some of the best
bourekas
in the city.”

When she headed back to the front of the airplane, Matt said, “Well,
that
was a surreal little exchange.”

Daniel's eyes were still closed. “She's trying not to have to imagine how much of her son's body has been blown to bits.”

Matt bit his lip, scalded.

Daniel opened his eyes and looked at him with a weak appeal, laid a hand on top of his. “Forgive me if I'm an asshole, okay?”

“Okay,” Matt whispered, squeezing Daniel's cold fingers, unspeakably grateful for the gaze that seemed to recognize him for the first time since the news had come.

“Do we have a piece of paper and a pen?”

“Sure, baby.”

Matt fished them out of his travel bag, and Daniel sighed, then bent over the paper and began writing in Hebrew. Matt looked at the round strong veins on Daniel's working hand, which passed rapidly from right to left. “What are you writing?” he asked.

“A eulogy for my brother.”

Daniel covered the page and then stopped and gave Matt a stricken look. He set the pen down, took off his glasses, and started to cry. Matt gripped his hand. He had never seen Daniel cry until last night, and he was a little scared he'd cry like that now, in public. He'd seen him well up once or twice, and that was shattering enough to witness. But not really crying, and certainly not crying like that, writhing, screaming his brother's name, his teeth bared and his face sealed off and unseeing so that he seemed like one of those creatures, like otters or monkeys, whose faces lie on the disconcerting boundary between human and animal. Now Daniel was quiet, tears streaming down his face.
Oh,
Matt's heart clamored,
what should I do?
How could he be a comfort to this man who had been such a comfort to him? And those kids! Noam was only a baby! He wasn't up to it, he knew it. He would blow it again, the way he had with Jay, with all of the bad-mouthing and posturing, and his boycotting the memorial service, and the crushing fear that he had failed to be there for his best friend in the right way.

Oh poor poor Joel
, Matt thought, and Ilana's face too flashed into his mind, big and raucous, and her sloppy ponytail, and tears rushed, hot and brutal, into his eyes.

SEVEN HOURS LATER THEY
stood at the airport curb, huddled around a small, curly-haired woman—Yemenite, Daniel would later tell him—holding a walkie-talkie and wearing a neon-green vest marked with bold Hebrew lettering. Her name was Shoshi, and she was the social worker sent by the city of Jerusalem. The Middle Eastern morning sun was bright and penetrating, and they had taken off coats and jackets and put on sunglasses. Around them, cars jostled and honked, and trunks slammed shut. Taxi drivers in open-necked shirts and Ray-Bans jingled keys in their hands as they approached exiting travelers. While Shoshi and Daniel spoke in Hebrew, nodding rapidly, Matt bent over and pulled down his right sock, his heart still thrumming with excitement and indignation at the lunatics in baggage claim. People had bumped into him and shouldered in front of him, and an elderly man on a fanatical push to the conveyor belt had jammed his luggage cart into Matt's heel, knocking his shoe clear off. Matt had wrestled it back on, surprised by the rage surging up his throat, and the rude old prick hadn't even apologized. Now Matt gripped the handle of his own cart with renewed, glowering concentration. He heard a lot of English spoken in American accents with strange glottal emphases. Their language sounded self-important and bullying to him, as though they were talking to children or foreign servants, and thinking that many of them were probably settlers, he felt a strong antipathy for them. Daniel loathed them. Each time they saw one of them interviewed on television, he would shout, “What's the matter, the U.S. isn't fundamentalist enough for you?!”

Matt's heel was chafed, but not bleeding, and he pulled up his sock and straightened. The sun was warming him to the bone, and there was the smell of something sharp in the air, like citrus or guava, mixed with exhaust fumes. This country seemed to him to be a different earthly element than his own, and he found that both exciting and a little frightening. He wasn't well traveled; his only trip outside the U.S. had been to Amsterdam with Jay years ago, right out of college. Here, under a cloudless sky, people were smoking and gesticulating; everyone had a cell phone attached to his or her ear, even the children. Although Matt was shocked by the open display of assault rifles, and officially disapproved of the soldiers in uniform, he found them beautiful. They were short and brown-skinned and very young.

He began to notice that passersby were casting curious and compassionate glances at Daniel's family. He stepped closer to Daniel, laying his hand on the small of his back, and bowed his head into the conversation. The social worker had switched to English, and was telling Daniel's parents that a van would arrive shortly to take them to the morgue. She touched their elbows as she spoke. She projected an aura of gentle authority, and looked into their faces in a way that was somehow both searching and undemanding. Matt had a powerful impulse to sidle up and confide in her.
I'm the gay boyfriend! I'm the goyfriend! I'm in a foreign country where I don't speak the language!