All Stories Are Love Stories (2 page)

“That poor man. What have they done with his hair? Is that a toupee? My word. What an unfortunate choice. Can't they do hair plugs now, Max? I thought we'd seen the last of the toupees years ago. There should have been an ordinance. A public burning.”

Max smiled in spite of himself. “They must have all been fire retardant.” She laughed, the sound unexpectedly lighthearted. Max felt himself grinning in response, disarmed, staring out the window; her laugh had suddenly thrown open an earlier picture of their lives. When they were both much younger and still living in upstate New York, he would entertain her during those endless afternoons waiting for his father to come home from his latest trucking gig or prayer service, helping her with the warm work she made of keeping house by telling her embellished stories he'd heard at school. He'd dance, too, and sing, if it made her laugh—acting the willing fool to ease the somber disappointment his father's long absences stiffened within her. A Max he'd long forgotten bubbled to the surface.

“Let's have dinner together,” he declared spontaneously, “anywhere you like. My treat.” It felt good to offer such a treat to her, better than a birthday present.

“Dinner?” she squeaked. “On your birthday?”

Damn.
He'd walked right into that one.

“Oh, Max,” she whispered, as though neither of them could bear the answer, “don't you have someone else to go
out with tonight? On your birthday? There must be someone you've been meaning to ask out. . . .”

“No, Ma. I don't.”

A weighty silence settled between them, each struggling to stave off disappointment.

His mother was the first to find a way back into the conversation. “We both know thirty-four isn't old, dear.” Her voice was awkward with cheer. “But it isn't young either.” Said as if one's advancing age were simply the result of making poor choices, as if discovering love could simply be the result of making better ones.

“No, it isn't,” he replied briskly. “You're right, as usual.”

He didn't need to hear her huff on the other end of the line to know he'd irritated her. He knew she hated it when he humored her, but it was one of his only defenses against her increasingly vocal disapproval of his lack of a viable love life. The fact that he refused to talk to her about it only irked her more. But he doubted it would bother her less if she knew that he felt as desperate about it as she did, that after so many years, his heart was still stuck on its singular fixation—one that was at first beyond reason but now beyond hope, probably even beyond sympathy. He'd rather not think about love, never mind launch into a full-scale discussion with its most agitated fan. How did thinking about love help it along, anyway? If thinking did the trick, he would have taken to it long ago instead of standing to the side as others stepped bravely into its current. Heck, by now he would have sprouted gills.

Max muted the TV and sat down by the window watching
the rain, a pleasure he knew he shared with other residents citywide, the lot of them so shell-shocked by the lack of water that three days of slippery streets and flash flooding and mud slides were cause for celebration. Down the street, the kids on the corner set out toward school, splashing through the cold and wet, their heavy book bags bouncing against their backs. He felt pleasantly lulled by his mother's voice, which had moved out of the range of high drama to settle on calm with a hint of future disturbance. What
was
that? It was still there, even clearer than before. Was it this nonsense with Craig or Clarence, whatever, that he heard in her voice?

“Ma.” He stopped her midsentence.

A beat. “What?”

“What's going on with you?”

“Nothing, Max.”

“Doesn't sound like nothing.”

She clicked her teeth and didn't answer, shutting him out. He sighed. She had her own clocks to consider, and his curiosity could not rush them. He continued to listen with only half an ear as she launched into a report of the appointments she'd need him to take her to: the dentist tomorrow, a visit later in the week to the verbally abusive hairdresser she was devoted to in the Inner Richmond. Max pressed his face to the cool glass, hearing a few muted horns in the distance as the rain seemed to redouble its efforts. He closed his eyes, remembering that first winter in the city eighteen years ago, when it seemed there was nothing but rain, an endless sheet of wetness that made him feel he'd never find his way home.
But the year after brought stolen nights in bed with Vashti, the sweet, musty smell of her windblown hair as she came in through the window, the nights they'd slept together so peacefully, the peace all the more satisfying after the thrills that came before it.

“And you'll have to take me to the post office when you visit next Tuesday. I need to pick up stamps, Max. You know how I like to write my compliments and complaints in my own handwriting. They pay better attention that way. Oh,” she said, “that reminds me.” Her voice dropped suddenly to an oddly timid, nearly inaudible tone. He'd have to rush to catch it.

Max snapped to attention. “What?”

“Hold your horses, Max,” she spat out, still refusing to be rushed. “It's just . . . well . . .”

He forced himself to take a deep breath, letting her fumble toward it.

“I've had a letter.”

A letter. Not an e-mail or a note? “A letter?”

“Yes, Max.”

He turned off the TV. The steady rain outside was calming now, though his chest had constricted. There were very few people in his mother's life, present or past, who would actually send her something through the mail, never mind the out-of-date, out-of-touch intimacy of a letter.

“From who?”

Rosemary cleared her throat. “Would you look at that?
Now
they tell us the BART strike is on again. After
distracting us with news that doesn't matter. I swear. They're all just talking heads. With fake teeth. And fake hair.”

“Mom. Who sent you a letter?”

He heard his mother sigh, then turn off her own TV. An unnatural quiet settled between them. “Well, if you must know, it's a letter from Guy.” Her voice faltered but she caught it, suddenly determined to forge ahead. “It's a letter from your father, Max. Well, not so much a letter as a card, really. Anyway. I guess it was delayed a little—he sent it around Christmas, looks like. That nice super at my old apartment building held on to it, finally got around to dropping it off.”

The rain continued its downpour, the sound a solid block now, like the sound of static, some kind of misguided connection.

“From my father.” He heard the words leave his mouth in a monotone, but inwardly he tried to regain his balance, thrown by the sudden, violent jerk backward. And then, just like that, he was teetering precariously over the edge of a past he thought was over.

His father.

It didn't make any sense. Did it? His mind spun, disoriented. His father was as good as dead. Max envisioned his father rising from the grave and taking pen in hand, sitting down in his thin gray clothes to write. But he wasn't dead. Just because you don't hear a voice for twenty years doesn't mean it hasn't spoken. Suddenly, Max realized that he'd thought of his father's life as worse than over. It had been unimaginable.

His mother's voice sounded like nothing more than an echo on the line. “Let's just talk about it later, another day. Max. It's nothing. It says nothing. I wasn't even going to tell you, but then I figured, why not tell you about nothing? No reason to keep nothing from you!”

Senior lecturer Eugene Strauss walked out of his eight-thirty lecture on plate tectonics and into the oncoming stream of bicycles and pedestrians on Lasuen Mall, not bothering to raise his umbrella. He lifted his face into the cold and the wet, squeezing his eyes shut, letting it take his breath away.

A frantically rung bell brought him back to the present with just enough time to dodge a careening bicycle. But the student's glare didn't puncture the bubble of nearly hysterical excitement rising in his chest. Instead, it made him laugh aloud. He had been that student once, hadn't he! Not so long ago, really. He stared after the boy, wishing him well with the magnanimity of a man in the flush of spectacular news. Academia wasn't easy for anyone, he reminded himself, not even for golden boys. It pulled you in, rubbed you raw, then threatened to spit you out at any moment. He smiled generously at the thought, newly freed of it as of that morning. Because tenure—the holy grail, one of the few true signs that your faith in the nameless, mercurial god of academia can find confirmation—was finally beginning to shine its light in his direction.

Making his way east toward the department meeting at the Stanford Faculty Club, he dodged the onslaught of pedestrian traffic as lightheartedly as he might a crowd at a dance.
Screw tight-assed, Oxford-reared, stiff-upper-lipped-and-God-knows-what-else Smythe and his infuriating insistence that they risk all their necks on a premature and shaky—no pun intended—earthquake prediction system; the assistant professorship was going to be
his.

Soft-shoeing down the mall, Gene was already replaying the conversation he'd just had with the dean in all its glorious minutiae, paying particular attention to the details Franklin would love: the dean's old-boys'-network clap on his shoulder; Gene so nervous in the wake of recent firings that he began to sweat so copiously that by the time they reached the dean's office, he was practically walking like a penguin to keep the telltale wetness from showing; the dean's exact wording after several minutes of agonizing, meaningless pleasantries. Gene half closed his eyes as he walked through the rain, recalling every word as one might each flavor of an all-too-fleeting, unforgettable meal:
I'm sure you know there's an assistant professorship opening up
,
Dr. Strauss. We like you for it. In fact
,
I'm personally rooting for you on this one. It's not every day we come across an academic as talented and likable as you. You're good on your feet
,
young man. And God knows it wouldn't hurt the department to have a few level-headed ambassadors out there in the world.
A not-so-veiled reference to Gene's recent coup in the department battle over rolling out the NCEPT (the New Center for Earthquake Prediction Technologies), a developing Stanford-based earthquake prediction system that might actually trump the thorn in their side that was UC Berkeley's ShakeAlert.

But of course Gene's departmental rival—the insufferably
English, snub-nosed Sam Smythe—had argued in his perfectly nasal, thin-lipped accent that they move ahead immediately (
im-MEE-dee-at-lee
, in the dialect of snobby Englishmen). But as exciting as their research was, it just hadn't been tested thoroughly enough, and they wouldn't get the kind of support and funding they needed until that happened. Sam had kept his mouth shut after the dean took Gene's side, but he was obviously seething. Gene had been too relieved to savor the schadenfreude. Looking over the project files the morning before the meeting, he'd suddenly been sure Sam would win this battle. And if he did, that'd be one more departmental vote for Sam, one less for Gene. Sam was brilliant—more brilliant than Gene, by most accounts—and it was his work behind the scenes that really made up the meat of their shared research.

But it was Gene who knew that although the project outline was revolutionary and their earliest tests had been promising, funders would need more than just potential to fork over anything substantial—and the Department of Earth Sciences needed a good, sexy hit like this. Politically speaking, they definitely flew under the Stanford radar, a knee-knocking place to be in the competitive world of academia.

As he ducked under an archway and dialed, Gene was already rehearsing what he'd say to Franklin.
I swear, my heart stopped when he walked in. Totally unannounced
,
and then he goes and takes a seat in the back row! You should have seen the kids trying to sleep back there suddenly sit up at attention.
He smiled to himself as he selected the most savory bits to share with Franklin, the way a chef might select the best cuts of meat
for the person he most enjoyed feeding. And not only did they have this morning's news to celebrate, but they might soon be looking forward to a dinner at The French Laundry, thanks to the bet he'd placed with Franklin that he'd become a Stanford professor by the time he turned thirty. Well, not so much a bet as a way for Franklin to boost Gene's competitive edge, to enhance that resolve he knew a little friendly wager would only fuel. Just under the wire, too, with the milestone only five months away. Ah, The French Laundry in late July. Summer squashes would be at their peak, the butter that graced them tasting faintly of the summer fields down the street, thick with smoke bush and sage. He shook his head as the phone continued to ring, still smiling in anticipation of the conversation he was just about to have.

No answer.

The flutter in his stomach was easy to ignore. Franklin hadn't had an episode for weeks. And he'd said he'd be shopping for dinner this morning: “lots of flesh and chocolate” had been his opaque description of the evening's meal. Now they'd have to add champagne. Gene toyed with his phone, trying not to redial immediately.

Who knew what kind of possibilities might open up for them? Maybe this assistant professorship was the tipping point, the first in a line of personal miracles heading their way. Heck, even the doctors admitted that strides in medical research were being made on an almost daily basis. He curled his fingers around his phone, wanting to grasp joy as tightly as he could, wanting it to stay, wanting to embrace and trust it as the devoted might their faith. But it began to
slip away as if it sensed his clumsy pawing, his virginal awe and fumbling hold.

Until Franklin, Gene had known joy only tangentially: a shooting star of emotion, a distant, too-brief-and-brilliant-to-be-believed sign of life on other planets. He'd learned to be happy, even content. But joy, that rush of full abandon in the face of life rising up to meet you . . . only Franklin had given him the courage to reach for it.

He dove back into the rain, promising himself he'd wait at least five more minutes before dialing again, rebuilding his story as he hurried along.
I had no idea what he was doing there
,
so of course
,
halfway through
,
I almost passed out worrying about the worst possible reasons
—having the dean in your classroom was like an appearance by God himself; it either meant death or sanctity—
but then I had the most brilliant idea
,
which was to shut up and pass the ball to my students
,
who somehow managed to start a surprisingly rousing conversation about electromagnetism! Surprising at any time, never mind before breakfast on a rainy February morning. A-pluses all around.

And sure enough, Gene's first sign that all was well—more than well!—was the expression of wry concession on the dean's face when he approached after the class cleared out. “Never could quite drum up enough interest in that one myself,” he admitted good-naturedly. “Not even way back in the day, before they all had every bleeping goddamn thing on Earth to distract themselves with, and the audacity to look at them while you're talking. Well done,” he said, and smiled as though they were both already in on an enviable secret.

Then, after a few more agonizing moments of chitchat,
came the seemingly casual insider tip about the assistant professor position opening up in the spring. Gene had to watch his feet to keep them from leaping into the air with joy right then and there. It was one stroke of good luck to have that kind of tip from a senior faculty member, and another kind of luck entirely to have it come from Dean Abernathy. Everyone knew that Abernathy had the ear of God when it came to choosing new department members. This was like a blessing from the pope himself.

Nearing his destination, Gene shot his forearm out of his jacket to glance down at his watch: 9:48. Shoot. No time to get coffee before the ten o'clock monthly departmental research meeting, but they'd certainly have coffee there—the good Faculty Club coffee, too. Not Wichita Water, as Franklin called the stuff Gene occasionally tried to make at home.

At the Faculty Club, Gene ducked under the courtyard overhang to try his call once more, but Franklin still wasn't there. “It's me,” Gene said, his voice suddenly drowned out by a surge of rain overhead. “Call me. Now.” Oh God, he couldn't wait until after the meeting to talk. He chanted silently, half-mindedly reaching out to nothing in particular:
call, call, call, call, call
.

But Franklin didn't call, and he still hadn't when the meeting ended. Nor had he responded to Gene's texts. Gene, after everyone else left, ordering another coffee. His heart dropped into his stomach as he dialed once more, the phone ringing again and again. Still no answer, no matter how sure he tried to feel after each ring that one would come.

The pit in his stomach widened, turning joy into its
inverse, that all-too-familiar vacuum of fear threatening to burst open within him.

“There are a few conditions to this ongoing relationship,” he had announced several months earlier, trying to cheer them both up. As if anything would put a condition on the relationship they'd poured the best of themselves into for nine years. Bests each didn't even know he had before meeting the other. But Franklin was worried—picking fights and walking around with his shoulders hunched and his brow wrinkled—and Gene couldn't blame him. They'd both seen their own fair share of husbands dumped after a few tense months and extra pounds, never mind a debilitating disease.

But at least now, after almost a year of imbalance and weakness and fatigue, they had a name for their trouble, had forced it into the light. Though the name itself was awkward and ugly: multiple sclerosis. Gene said it sounded like the postural condition of a Victorian child lurking in a factory. Franklin had thought it was something only plump, middle-aged women were affected by. Some kind of side effect of wearing frumpy sweatpants. Thank God for its snappy nickname, easier to share with their friends: MS. Lying awake at night, staring at the ceiling, Gene heard it more viscerally: the hiss of a snake, the muted warning swell of bees.

A week after the diagnosis, they'd been sitting in bed together hours after leaving Franklin's new team of doctors (a phrase heart-stopping enough in itself) at UCSF: Franklin in his silk pajamas, leaning against their reclaimed-wood headboard that he'd had to buy from Restoration Hardware when Gene wasn't looking (
it sort of cancels out the “reclaimed” bit if
you buy it from a three-hundred-page glossy)
; Gene in his form-fitting organic cotton T-shirt and underwear, resting on his elbow, done crying. Gene felt fortified by how civil it all was still—their life, their relationship, their approach to even the most terrifying news. It seemed almost hard to believe that such a base disease could worm itself into all their layers of elegance: their home on the top floor of Fin de Siècle, the intimate boutique inn overlooking Washington Square Park that Franklin had owned for almost two decades; their social calendar full, save for regular weekends in Napa and lazy Sunday afternoons; the easy and steady way they'd slipped into each other's hearts and then, to their mutual astonishment, somehow stayed there.

“One”—Gene grabbed a pen off the nightstand and pulled his lover's arm toward him—“I shalt not withhold medical information from my spouse.”

“Are these commandments or conditions?”

“Call them whatever you like.”

“I knew I shouldn't have married a Catholic.”

“Protestant, Franklin.”

Franklin shrugged, finally well enough to jab, “Christian Shmistrian.”

They watched as Gene continued to write on Franklin's forearm, the pen drenching the beautiful, unmarked skin. God, the man had such skin! Olive but pale, the color of an eggshell protecting the most delectable yolk. “Two: I shalt not prematurely bury myself, even in my own head.”

Franklin didn't look up.

Gene would let that slide. For now. “Three: thy spouse
shall allow at least thirty minutes for the return of phone calls. After that, he's allowed to hunt you down.”

Franklin snatched his arm back, rolling the sleeve down punitively. “I'm an invalid, Gene. Not a prisoner.”

“You're neither, actually,” Gene insisted, not bothering to step delicately around these melodramatic characterizations. After all, if Franklin died, wouldn't Gene be the one living with his story? Wasn't his version of it just as important, given that it was most likely to outlast any other? “But instability and falls are a possibility.” As were blindness, paralysis. They had both swallowed this unspoken litany and were bloated with it.

Gene loosened his collar, feeling his temperature rise. He didn't have time to run home before his next class. Listlessly, he tried FaceTime, then Skype, even though he knew Franklin never picked up either one unless he was freshly groomed and cheerful.
Damn
, he swore silently to himself. The rain picked up, drumming loudly on the roof overhead. The Faculty Club was almost vacant, the lull before lunch fully in effect. The waiter attending him had taken a seat in the back of the room and closed his eyes. In the quiet, Gene allowed himself to wonder what it would mean if he suggested that Franklin sell the inn, that they leave their beloved San Francisco and move down here. Palo Alto wasn't all that bad. Maybe they could get their hands on a nice little Eichler, restore it themselves. Then Gene could be home at almost any time of day in a heartbeat.