Bleeder (10 page)

“But I trusted you. I put all I had in you.” Ana sobs and sniffles as tears pour from her eyes and then she rushes from the room, leaving me to wonder how to react. I twist my hands together. Play with my thumbs. If I could yank out the guilt crushing my heart, I would.

When Ana reappears with a box of tissues, she sits at the opposite end of her bed, slumps into its corner, and curls her feet beneath her while blowing her nose, wiping her eyes.

“And you waited until you came here to tell me.” She clears her nose again. “Why? Answer me that,” she flares out. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to do it over the phone.”

“Oh, you’re a real gentleman . . . Is that all you can say?” Ana rights herself. “Is there someone else?” she asks. “Have you met someone else?”

“No. There’s no one else.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. This has everything to do with me . . . There’s no one else.”

Ana places her hair behind her ear and wipes her eyes, and I feel the event I’ve set in motion. The end of this, of something. My heart sinks into a hollow pit beneath my lungs, and I feel the sudden, gripping fear of loneliness.

“Maybe I don’t know what I’m doing,” I offer in a moment of retraction. “I’ve just had so many pressures on me at school, and it’s been hard to keep seeing you.”

“I don’t think I ask for much.”

“I know.” I am forgetting about all those times I thought differently.
“I know you don’t ask for much, but it’s the idea of it. Perhaps I still need space. I want to be able to concentrate only on the things that are at school.”

Ana grips the tissue between her hands. She moves closer and leans herself against me, and I instinctively put my arms around her. “We can take more space if that’s what you need,” she bargains. “This is just too much to take in at one time, and we shouldn’t rush into things too quickly. Besides, I have my own studies and now that I’m working within my major, things are really busy for me, too.”

“I don’t know. I’m not so sure.” I’m growing scared and fear blots out my clarity. Who else can love me as Ana has? Who can accept my HIV? Who?

“We can take some space, become more like friends. If this is what you need, I can do it,” she pleads.

We kiss. She inhales, then sighs out heavily, and rests herself into my open arms. I can feel darkness around me. Everything is unsure, nothing is decided.

“Well,” Ana says, tracing her finger along my hand, “what kind of friends do you think we should be?”

“I don’t know.” I feel the past revive itself. I remember love, happiness, sex.

“There’s all kinds of friendships, you know.”

Ana places her hands underneath my shirt and kisses me along my neck. And soon, we are slipping out of our clothes as if nothing has changed. We cleave to one another, are caught up in the natural grip of desire. And I let it happen, for it is easier this way.

Afterwards, neither of us has the courage to speak. There are no words to frame here, but only an awkward feeling. I cower beneath her sheets. I stare at her ceiling. I make a feeble attempt at placing my arms around her.

“You don’t have to hold me,” she says.

“I want to.”

And she lets me. But now we have dressed up our relationship as a new friendship, a dreadful thing to do.

“Were you planning on staying the night?” Ana asks as I settle my heavy heart beside her.

“I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t thought things through.”

“But you are now?”

“Yes. I’m staying tonight.”

Ana flips on the television. “I’ll order pizza,” she says.

And the familiar comforts us, persuades our hearts away from notions of ruin and decay.

When the weekend ends, Ana walks me to the parking lot. I cast my eyes to the ground, and we do not link hands as we drift through the courtyard of fallen leaves. They lie in piles of dying color: orange sassafras, scarlet maple, yellow poplar, and maroon sweetgum. Blown by the wind, they leave the trees exposed to the coming cold. We proceed down the campus walk, coming eventually to the gravel lot and my small truck. I unlock my cab door, settle my bag within, and turn to Ana.

“So is this it?” she asks. “Is this where you say your good-bye? Or will I see you again?”

I absently draw my foot through gravel.

“I don’t know, Ana. I’m not so sure this friendship thing is going to work out.”

“No,” she cries out. “Don’t do this. Not like this.” I try to reach for her, but she deflects me with her hand. “Stay away. Just stay away if that’s how you want it.” She wipes her eyes. “What was this, some kind of conjugal visit? Is that what this weekend was about? Is that what I was good for?”

“Ana, please. This isn’t how I wanted it.”

“No. No. You’re an asshole! Fuck you!” A flock of sparrows riffles from the elm trees and instinctively, I turn and watch—a flap of black in a clouded autumn sky. “Just fuck you!” she yells again.

“But Ana, please!”

She runs off, arms flailing at her side. “Fuck you, you asshole!”

I fold my hands over my eyes and tears spill out. And this is how it ends: in hate.

SUMMER 21

M
AY 1993.
M
OM,
D
AD, AND
I
ARRIVE AT MY SUMMER RESIDENCE IN
downtown Wilmington. It is an enormous house set on a small lot with the neighboring homes bearing in upon it from the sides. We walk in and up the stairs guarded on the stout banister by carved owls, and on the top landing, we follow the slender hallway to where it spills onto a petite balcony; the backyard unfolds in summer green and is bound on three sides by a uniform wooden fence painted in colonial white, a landscape that momentarily transports me to another time.

We retrace our steps down the hall to a shut door that I slip open, revealing a dwarfish room.

“This is it,” Mom says. “This can’t be much more than a glorified broom closet with a window.”

“But you can’t beat a hundred dollars a month.”

“If it’s the money, Son, we can help you out. What about your roommates? How much are they paying?”

“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe two, three hundred. It doesn’t matter, though. This is what I can afford.” I look around, breathe in. “And besides, I like it all right.”

“How is he going to stand living here without air conditioning?” Mom asks, addressing Dad. “How?”

Dad looks around, doesn’t answer.

“I’ll be fine, Mom. It’s only for a few months anyway.”

“You’re just going to have to accept that our son’s growing up,” Dad says to Mom.

“Well, I don’t like it,” she says to Dad. “You need to take care of yourself,” she then says to me. “Don’t forget that. Your health always comes first.”

“I won’t forget it. I’ll be fine.”

She miffs her face, raises her hands in a gesture of exasperation. “Okay. Fine. Let’s move you in.”

For the duration of the afternoon, we unload my belongings, and when Mom leaves to get the last of my things from the car, Dad knocks a cigarette from his pack and lights it. He leans over to catch his breath and then rights himself again. “Your mom’s just upset because I’m not going to be home this summer, either.”

“You’re not? Why not? What’s going on?”

“The plant in town’s not doing good. I’m pretty sure it’s going under, so I’m getting out while I still have a chance.”

“I don’t understand. What are you going to do?”

“Well, Son, I called a friend, and I’m going to be consulting for a few factories. I’ll move from place to place and show them how to set up the fabric cutters so they can save money.”

“But where?”

“Actually, here. Wilmington. It’s my first job.”

“Wilmington? You’re going to be here this summer?”

“Yes. Your mom and I didn’t want to tell you because, well . . . we just found out, and I knew we were coming here and could just tell you then.”

“Wow. I’m shocked.” I spread my clothes out along my mattress. “So when do you start?”

“Two weeks.”

“And the bills? You and Mom can still pay them?”

“That’s got your mom a bit on edge,” Dad says, breathing out another puff of smoke. “But I think we’re going to be fine.”

Mom returns with the final box of my clothes, bracing her hands underneath it.

“Where do you want this?” she asks, a bit winded from her ascent. “It doesn’t look like it’ll fit in that closet of yours, but you need to be careful with it. The bottom’s about to fall out.”

“Out there in the hallway is fine,” I say. She lowers the box to the floor and slides it against the wall.

“Did you tell him?” Mom asks Dad, who quickly answers that he did. “I’m not too happy about it,” she says to me, “but I’m just glad that maybe you two will get to see one another. Dad’s suppose to check to make sure you’re eating right and not starving in this cave.”

“Think of it like Plato’s cave. From within, I’ll contemplate the world.”

“Ha-ha. The true scholar, eh?”

Together, we unpack a few more boxes until my room is soon full and we agree that we can fit no more. There’s space for a mattress, clothes, a few books, CDs, and a small TV-tray where I place my jambox. The bed is just comfortable enough and the room sufficiently good. I remove the rest of my items to a storage space underneath the stairwell, one that Dad claims outsizes my own room. Then we sit on the front porch and sip glasses of cool water as a warm breeze blows through the downtown avenue. We let out our fatigue and take in the homes and their historic architecture.

After a while, Dad shuffles his feet and reaches over to pat Mom on her hand.

“Well,” he says, “I reckon we should get going, let our son get settled in and let us start the drive home.”

And so they gather up and Dad cools the car while we say good-bye underneath the river birches and summer magnolias.

“It’s gonna be hard not even having you home this summer,” Mom says. “You all grow up so fast.” She hugs me and slips me some money. “This is to help with that first month. I wish I could give you more, but as it is, things with your dad’s job are already uncertain.”

“Are you sure you can afford this?”

“Yes. It’s okay. You take that. Pay your rent and use the little that’s left to buy yourself some food. You’re looking awfully thin and you won’t be home for me to fatten you up.”

We hug again as the heat presses on us, the sun blazing in the sky.

“Good-bye. We’ll miss you.” She gets in the car next to Dad. “Be sure you come visit when you’re not working.”

“I will.”

And they leave.

Exhausted from the move, I return to my room and flip on the box fan and fall into the mattress, which rests on the floor, and soon the lazy heat and the long day have their effects, and I fall asleep.

In the blood lab at UNC Hospitals, I relinquish my arm to the phlebotomist. She tells me there’s going to be a little stick, and then she punctures me, draws her tubes of blood, and sends me down the corridor to wait for Dr. Trum. He flexes my joints, listens to life in my chest, and consults numbers in my chart.

“And you’re not going back on the AZT?” he inquires noncommittally.

“No.”

“Your numbers
are
going down. I’ll get your labs back from today and compare, but I think come winter we may start you on a pneumonia prophylaxis. Think you can handle that?”

“Sure. Okay.”

“It’ll lessen your chances of getting sick.”

When I leave his office, I submit next to the orthopedist’s examination—he still expresses concern about my hip’s decline and admonishes me for failing to use a cane—and then done, I leave and park along Franklin Street, which never fails to interest me. The summer scholars cradle books while they await the trundling roar of the coming bus. Passersby pause before store windows and point to items they wish to own. An elderly florist sits in a small stretch of building shade, huddling round her garden of flowers—flashes of natural color in a concrete sea. And the jeweler toddles round the large black clock marking his store, roving his carefree head around and occasionally checking his own wristwatch for the time.

At noon, the street lunches. The hot dog vendor fishes long slips of red wieners with his tongs, and he places these in steamed buns and dresses them with ketchup, mustard, onions, slaw, and chili. Nearby, patrons line the inside glass front of a small bistro and prop at undersized tables, taking
petite bites of sandwiches made with breads of rye, sourdough, and sundried tomato.

I enter the drugstore and lunch at the counter. On one side of me, a lady in a blue dress swirls a fry in a dab of ketchup. On the other side, a cop calls out to the cook and says that he made an arrest earlier, that it was a college basketball star, and that it would appear on the nightly news. The cook momentarily turns away from his grill of sizzling burgers, says, “No shit” to the cop, and then begins to flip the hamburgers one by one, soon setting them onto buns garnished with lettuce and tomato.