All I Love and Know (45 page)

The TV flashed its disturbing late-night images, the ads for weight loss and call girls, the waxen or battered faces of murdered people being studied by medical examiners. He drifted to sleep and then woke up again, and sometime later he pushed off the bed and left the room, walked softly up the stairs to Matt's study.

It was warmer up on the top floor. He turned on the nearest lamp, habituated from long cohabitation with Matt not to use the overheads. The red walls gave off a muted glow against off-white wainscoting. Matt had moved into the smaller, less comfortable space when Gal and Noam arrived, and cast his magic over it, so that it now looked like an ideal design space—comfortable, modern, lovely. On his desk stood a chunk of engraved Lucite, a Best Young Designer award he'd won long ago, along with framed pictures of Matt with Daniel, with the kids. On the bulletin board was pinned the
Ma'ariv
front page with Matt in the photograph. Daniel gazed at it. His expression in the photograph was inscrutable behind the sunglasses, but you had to hand it to the man, he was gorgeous. Being loved by him had been an awesome treat. There was a hitch at Daniel's heart, and for a second, he felt faint. He sat down on Matt's swivel chair and closed his eyes. In the beginning, Matt was so beautiful to him that Daniel had had to learn to re-see him through a human lens rather than a purely aesthetic one. He had broken down that beauty in his mind and constructed a new one, so that the Matt he saw and loved was fresher and more real than the Matt their culture held up as the beauty standard for men. It was a beauty he believed only he could see.

And now—now Matt had let some other man in, some man who could see only the obvious beauty, and let him in closer than he'd ever invited even Daniel.

Daniel sank into the chair, becoming heavy and inert. After a few minutes he became aware that something was hurting. His jaw; he unclenched his teeth, opened his mouth wide, waggled his jaw from side to side.

Against the back wall stood a file cabinet, where they kept all the information about the mortgage, property taxes, and home repair, as well as their passports, the legal information about Daniel's guardianship of the kids, the kids' medical records. Daniel rose and opened the drawer, pulling out those files and stacking them neatly on the floor. He didn't know what he was going to do with them, he was going on instinct, and hadn't meant to look into the file cabinets in the first place. He felt ridiculous, like a character in a heist movie. If Matt forgot something and walked in, he didn't know what he'd say.

He bent and took up his stack of legal documents, removing Matt's passport and tossing it on the floor, and brought them over to the small pearl-colored sofa, sat down with them on his lap, and put his feet up on the coffee table, on which sat some brochures Matt had designed and a coffee cup filled with crayons and markers for Gal's visits up there. These were the things he had: the kids, the house. These were the things he would tend, safeguard, cherish. He fell asleep with the files cradled to his chest.

M
ATT WAS DAZED
. He kept thinking it wasn't possible, that for Daniel to break up with him while he was already destroyed by loss, for him to prefer parenting the kids alone to having him in the house—it seemed insane. For the first few weeks, Matt crashed on Derrick and Brent's couch, protected from utter devastation by his belief that, soon, Daniel would come to his senses. Because what could he possibly tell the kids? Could he really look them in the eye and tell them that yet another parent had vanished from their lives? Could he really be that cruel? Or so furious and implacable that he'd rather take on the burden of dealing with Gal than have Matt in his house? He felt sorry, and guilty, and contrite about what he'd done, but Daniel's reaction was so huge—so outsized and disproportionate, so utterly punitive to the kids, so fucking
crazy
—that he felt that it outweighed even his own crime, and that he and the kids were the ones who had been wronged.

Derrick and Brent were bewildered and appalled by this turn of events. When Matt told him what he'd done, Brent said, “Are you kidding me? You of all people!”

Derrick turned his face away and went into the bedroom. A few minutes later he emerged again into the living room, where Brent and Matt were sitting silently, hands in their laps. “Well, you showed him, didn't you,” he said, sarcasm twisting his normally placid face. “You don't have to be responsible if you don't want to. You don't have to put your family first—you're too hot for that.”

“Derrick,” Brent said.

“For God's sake, Matt,” Derrick said, sitting down heavily. “You know better than anyone else how terrible things happen to people in the world. Why would you go out and look for danger?”

They stayed up late, worrying and analyzing, drinking the booze Matt had taken from home. They speculated about his behavior, which he found kind of interesting and pleasurable—who didn't love being the riddle to which his friends' searching analytical attention was tuned?—until it quickly became irritating. “Like Derrick said—only nicer—I can totally imagine rebelling against your new domestic status,” Brent said, “that's totally understandable. Or rebelling against Daniel, who, let's face it, can be an arrogant prick at times. But in a way that harms yourself?! That's what I'm struggling with. I mean, I never pegged you as self-destructive or suicidal. . . .”

That word made them all look at one another. “First of all, I told you the condom broke. Second, Christ, it was the
opposite
of that,” Matt protested. “It was—It made me feel more alive than I had in months.”

“It's not just about you, though,” Derrick said. “When you have kids, it's not just about you anymore.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Derrick, could there be a more self-righteous cliché?” Matt snapped. “Even I wouldn't say that, and I
have
kids!”

“You
had
kids,” Derrick said.

Matt's face grew hot. He'd never been talked to that way by Derrick, who was one of the least judgmental people he knew. And he was conscious of deserving it, which made him feel even worse.

“Maybe it was a cry for help,” Brent interposed. “A cry for help, to get Daniel to notice you and your own pain.”

Matt sighed and sat up, placed his beer bottle on the coffee table. “Okay, let's stop talking about this,” he said.

“Well,” Derrick said, interlacing his fingers and reaching his palms up in a big stretch, “you wouldn't be the first gay man to fuck without a condom because it made him feel more alive.”

“Was it at least good?” Brent asked.

Matt considered what to tell them, and settled upon a simple “Yes.”

“Well, at least that,” Brent said, while Derrick leveled at him a disapproving stare.

“At least that,” Matt said. He was sitting at the edge of their big armchair; it was late at night and they had already said “Okay, time to go to bed” three or four times.

Derrick and Brent were standing now, and collecting bottles and glasses from the living room tables; Matt went into the kitchen to get a damp sponge. Derrick disappeared and came back with a pillow and blanket as he was wiping off the coffee table. “Are you scared?” he asked.

It was one of those moments where Derrick reached out simply and touched your very soul. “Yes,” Matt whispered.

“MATT WENT BYE-BYE” WAS
the way Daniel told Noam. To Gal he said, “Honey, I have to tell you something. Matt's not going to live here anymore.”

“Did you have a fight?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, setting a bowl of cereal in front of her.

“I knew it,” she said.

It was a cold January morning, and the radiators were clanging as the heat came on. He sat down opposite her, moving her orange juice away from the edge of the table, and told her the things he'd promised Matt he'd say: that Matt loved them and didn't want to leave, that it was his, Daniel's, decision, because Matt did something that made him very angry. His eyes were dry and grainy and each time he blinked he felt as though his corneas were being scratched. He needed to get some coffee into his body. Still, he was conscious as he spoke of doing a good job using age-appropriate language, and of being conscientious to Matt's demands.

Gal watched him, taking it in. Her lips were smeared past their edges with lip balm—the effort to heal their chronic winter cracks had obviously been an impatient one—and she pressed them together in a blotting motion. “Maybe you could marry a girl now,” she said.

“Gal,” he sighed. “Is that all you have to say?”

What was she supposed to say, she wondered, gazing at her uncle. His face was worn and dotted with bumps and bristles. Without his glasses she could see the purple under his eyes. Her bare feet were cold; her cereal was puffing up in the milk. Noam's eyes were flitting back and forth from her to Daniel, staticky filaments of his hair stirring gently in the air. “Bye-bye,” he whispered.

“I'll take you to school today,” Daniel said. “So we don't have to rush for the bus.”

Gal put down her spoon, went up to her room, closed the door without slamming it so that Daniel wouldn't follow, and lay down on the unmade bed. With an irritated grunt, she twisted and pulled out the pajamas that were balled under her hip, flung them on the floor. She knew without question that she was never going to see Matt again. Something awful seeped over her, a sludge of panic and helplessness. Hatred of Daniel, for making Matt leave. She told herself that actually it was okay, Matt wasn't really a parent anyway. It wasn't like her parents dying. But who, she wondered, would take her to her riding lessons? If Daniel made her give them up, she would never talk to him again; she would live silently in this house till all the heavy silent air made it burst like a balloon, or a bomb.

About ten minutes later Daniel came up and sat next to her on the bed. Her face was turned away; she was curled up in a ball; his weight plunging down the mattress and the intolerable sound of his breathing made her feel like she was about to scream.
Go away go away go away
, she mouthed to herself.
Go away.

“Ready to head out?” he said.

She staggered to her feet, avoiding his gaze. Downstairs, she put on her coat and hugged her backpack to her, and climbed into the car without a word. He dropped off Noam, and she waited in the cold silence of the car as he spoke with Colleen. Then he got back in and started the engine and she felt the heat blast back on. At school, she got out of the car and walked by herself to class before he could follow.

Daniel watched her march away from him, wanting to rush and tighten her backpack straps, but turned toward the principal's office instead, to let her know about Gal's changed circumstances.

“Oh, poor Gal,” she said, shoulders sagging. “Not again.”

“Nobody died,” he said.

“Of course not,” she hastened to say.

His friends came over to see if they were okay, flooding in again as they had when they'd first come back to the States after Joel's death. It was hard not to feel the parallel, to feel that their solicitude made things a little worse. Hard too to explain that he was feeling kind of good, even a little exhilarated by the clean anger hurtling through him. His days were utterly grueling, a chaos of work, child care, endless cooking and chores; the kids were brittle and God only knew how he was going to keep their financial ship afloat without Matt's income. But when he fell into bed at night, he occupied his light, living body restfully, feeling the tiredness tingle in his arms, his thighs and genitals. His thoughts would drift to Matt, and as rage mounted in him he breathed through it and calmed his own heartbeat.

“Tell me you didn't bring a casserole,” he said when he opened the door to Adam and Val; Val swept him into her arms and rocked him back and forth, smashing his cheek against her earring. “Geez, Val,” he said, and she released him, took him by the arms and held him at arm's length to look deeply into his sheepish face.

Gal came downstairs and accosted them in the front hall. “Dani decided he didn't want to be partners with Matt anymore,” she announced to Adam. “Are you on Dani's side or Matt's side?”

“Nobody's side,” Adam said, taking Lev's and Val's coats and reaching into the closet for a hanger. “I'm just sad.”

They went into the kitchen while Lev scuttled into the playroom, where the toys were always more scintillating than his own. Gal barged into the kitchen just as they'd huddled around the table to talk, complaining that Lev was touching one of her bead necklaces. “Lev!” Val called, while Daniel said, “Try to be patient, Gal, he's littler than you are.” Gal tried to palm off on him a plastic duck instead, but its lameness deeply offended him; his whole idiom and belief system were about bigger/smaller, older/younger, and he cried “That's for babies!” as his mother took him by the shoulders and gave him a little push out of the kitchen. There was a flurry of complaint from the playroom, then the sound of escalating objections. Daniel groaned, and he and Adam rose.

“Guys!” he said. In the playroom, a vaudeville “Yankee Doodle” was tootling merrily from Noam's plastic scooting car; he was sitting on it, gripping the handles hard, as Lev tried to pull him off, while Gal was blithely swinging a collapsible rod from her toy tent, pretending to be a ninja. Daniel caught her wrist and said, “Careful!”

She swung it around again, once, experimentally, her eyes on his face. “Seriously?” he said. “I will take that away from you and put you in your room so fast you won't even know what's happening.” Adam was prying Lev's fingers off the car's handles. “Lev, you gotta take it easy, honey,” he said. “You want to draw?” He went to the bookcase where the art supplies were stacked, Lev flailing on his hip, found crayons and construction paper.