Divisions (Dev and Lee) (36 page)

“Of course not. So you should just ask him.” He puts a finger to the side of his muzzle. “He has at least mentioned the gay bear who killed himself, right? He hasn’t kept that from you?”

“No,” I say, “he’s told me about Vince King.” I feel strangely annoyed that he shared that with Brian.

“Real tragedy, wouldn’t you agree?”

“Obviously. I guess this is why your career as a journalist didn’t pan out. Are all your questions along the lines of ‘is suicide a tragedy’?”

He narrows his eyes. “Wiley’s been a bad influence on you. I guess it does go both ways.”

“Get out of here,” I say. “I’m done. And stay the hell away from Lee.”

At that, he laughs. “You should tell him to stay away from me,” he says. “I’m not the one who’s been seeking him out.”

Fuck him, he’s right, but I don’t care. “He can do whatever he wants. We only have trouble when you come around to stir it up.”

He doesn’t say anything, so I turn around, and of course it’s only when I’m at the gate again with my paw on the latch that he calls, “Why are you so ashamed to be gay?”

Again, I know I should just ignore him, but that last one the leopard definitely heard. He’s not even pretending to be anything other than a journalist now. So I focus on Brian and say, “I’m not ashamed. I’m a football player first, and my top priority is my job, which is winning games for the Firebirds.”

“So your top priority isn’t your boyfriend?”

God
damn
him. “He understands my priorities as well as I do. He doesn’t want to be a distraction during the season or the playoffs. We’ve worked that all out.”

“I guess you have.” Brian steps back. “You might want to double-check with him, though.” He raises a paw and walks off quickly.

The leopard stays, until I meet his eyes, and then he drops his head. I turn and stomp through the gate, gripping my keys like a weapon until I get to the truck.

All the way home, I think about calling Lee, asking him what Brian meant about taking a day out of my schedule. At least I have to tell him about Brian approaching me, and if I do that, there’s really no way I can avoid telling him pretty much everything the bastard said. But Lee’s got his mother to worry about, and do I really want to bother him?

I think he would want me to.

After a month in Chevali, my ears tingle and my fur fluffs up from the cold when I step out into Hilltown’s December wind. I leave a trail of shed fur on the pavement from my tail as I hurry into Father’s car, which is remarkably clean until my cloud of fur settles on the upholstery and mats.

We go out for an early dinner, to a nice place that serves a very drinkable white wine, and that’s where I hear about the thing this asshole Pilots player said about Dev, and Dev’s response. “More Jesus freaks,” I say to Father after leaving a message for Dev.

“It wasn’t an appropriate thing to say in public, true.”

“I can’t believe people still actually talk about relationships with Jesus in this day and age. I feel like I should go nail a thesis to a church door.”

Father gives me a look. “Don’t bring anything to nail to your mother’s front door, please.”

“Oh, god, no.” I rub my chin. “Although…I could print out that web page on Vince King…”

“Wiley.”

“Kidding. Mostly.” I cough.

Father shakes his head. “It sounds like Dev handled it well.”

“Fairly well, I guess. I mean, if he wanted to, he could’ve used it as a springboard to talk about the intolerance that’s still in the league. The people who want to marginalize him, not talk about his sexuality…”

“Um.” Father rubs his whiskers and says, in an apologetic tone, “isn’t that what he wants?”

This is, of course, the thing I keep trying not to think about too much. “Yes. But for a different reason.”

“Right.” And there’s nothing I can say to that. Dev’s entirely reasonable goal is just to be a good football player. He’s worked so hard to get where he is that I know he wants to be recognized for his ability, and he didn’t choose to come out. Okay, he did, but he was forced into that choice. Making his sexuality a cause could alienate him from his teammates, and he’d be crushed if he lost his job because of that. I want him to be successful, and while I think I would be at least a little more outspoken in his place, I don’t know for sure. I certainly wasn’t when I was working for the Dragons.

Still, I think if some moron lineman made a comment about my relationship with Jesus, I’d say something a little stronger than “I’m just focused on football.” I guess that’s my job, if anyone would ask me. Hal might, but he doesn’t call, and Brian might, but he doesn’t call either, and I’m not confident enough to call him to talk about it. Because he’ll ask about Potomac and I will have to confess I haven’t asked Dev yet.

There just wasn’t a good time, not on Christmas night when I was still fuming about the call with Mother and his reaction to me talking about Vince King. Not on Thursday, when he got up early for practice, and not on Thursday night when I was going to be leaving the next day. And certainly not this morning on the way to the airport. By the time Thursday rolled around, anyway, he was deep into practice for Sunday, and I didn’t want to distract him.

Hopefully that Pilots lineman won’t have managed to do that, either. Part of me thinks he did it on purpose just to see if they can get Dev thinking about something other than the game, or maybe rile his teammates up. It was a quote from a sports morning show, and the hosts specifically asked the guy about playing against Dev, because this guy talks a lot about his church and religious charities and whatnot. I feel like taking out my new phone and checking whether he comes up on the Families United website, but I resist.

Dev calls a little later, after his practice, and we talk briefly. When I hang up, Father asks if this whole thing is going to blow over. I tell him I’ll check this evening, but there’s not a lot I can do about it in any case except remind Dev to play the game, which is what I just did. So we talk about football, about Aunt Carolyn and about Dev’s family, about Father’s work and the team in Yerba I will hopefully be working with, and then we head back to his new apartment.

It’s a two-level deal with gleaming modern furnishings and a spiral stair up to the bedroom loft. I lie down on the blankets on the couch and look up at the railing defining the edge of my father’s bedroom, and above it, the softly lit vaulted ceiling. Here on the couch, at least, there is some of my father’s shed fur, and it smells like him enough that it reminds me of home.

Dev calls for the second time that day as I’m lying there, after Father goes to bed. He tells me Brian showed up after practice and badgered him, and I pinch my eyes shut with the paw that isn’t holding the phone. Goddamn Brian. It only took him three weeks to go back to being a total asshole. I apologize to Dev for the harassment and he says I don’t have to, and I tell him I love him and I’ll take care of it. He says he doesn’t blame me and I’m not sure that’s true, and I’m not sure I deserve to be free of blame even if it is. He mentions Potomac and I tell him not to worry about it, that I’ll tell him when I get back.

What I’m thinking about as I hang up isn’t so much Brian, it’s Dev and the patient restraint in his voice as he told me about the incident. If he had any inclination at all to do a spot for Equality Now, much less take a day trip to Potomac, it’s gone, his resolve to concentrate on football now set in concrete. And the more I badger him, the worse it’ll get.

In the morning, Father comes down to make coffee, and I go upstairs to use the shower. My parents’ bedroom at home smelled of my mother and reflected her quirky-elaborate aesthetic: lots of knick-knacks and colorful decorations. Father’s room here is more spartan. He has a couple pictures up on the wall, art pieces of colorful landscapes that are not quite realistic. It’s only when I get out of the shower that I see the picture on his nightstand: it’s a picture from the time he took me to my first Dragons game, almost twelve years ago now.

I stand there, fur damp, and stare at it. Father’s downstairs with the smell of coffee and toast, the occasional beeps of his phone. The scent of him is strong here, and unlike how I’m used to smelling it at home—at what used to be home—it is alone. I walk quickly over to the picture and pick it up, quietly. The two of us are standing in front of the scoreboard. “Get the logo in,” he’d told the usher who took the picture. There’s no grey on his ears. I’m wide-eyed and grinning. Even though the Dragons lost, I had the best time ever. All the smells were new, the beer and pretzels and mustard and sausages and fried chicken and melted cheese like we never had at home.

I rub my thumb over the glass and hopefully leave a little of my scent behind as well before putting the picture back down. I walk downstairs and don’t mention it, but it relaxes me in a way, seeing some familiar things in this unfamiliar place. It reminds me of Dev’s apartment, of the way we make our homes follow us, appearing wherever we are. Father’s made this his home, and so part of it is mine. I am not so sure that is still true of Mother’s house.

On the way there in the rented van, Father makes it a point to say, “Your mother said she’s looking forward to seeing you.”

The second time he says it, I say, “It’s fine. I promise I’ll behave.”

He nods, and I can’t resist adding, “As long as she does.”

“Wiley.” He sighs and shakes his head. “You’re her son, all right.”

“And yours, too.”

He pushes his glasses up on his muzzle, and grins. “Yes. Mine too.”

When we make the turn onto the street and drive up to the house, not only is the driveway not empty, there are
two
cars in it. I recognize Mother’s blue sport wagon, but the white minivan next to it is unfamiliar. Father stops the car and sits. “She said she wasn’t going to be there.”

“Mother said she wasn’t, or…” I gesture toward the minivan.

“Both.” He smacks a paw against the steering wheel. He’s bristling, his ears are down. “You want to stay in the car?”

“No fucking way,” I say.

With perhaps a bit too much enthusiasm. Because he looks at me and I can see the thoughts behind his eyes. I head them off. “Don’t you even think of leaving me here. After this bullshit, I’m going to have it out with her one way or another.”

“Don’t make it more difficult than it has to be.”

I point, stabbing at the windshield. “She just upped the stakes. Nobody asked her to bring a friend along.”

“That’s Mrs. Hedley’s car.” Father stares at it as though he can dematerialize it with the power of thought.

“I figured it was something like that.” I open the door and step out into the freezing air. “Come on. You think they’re going to gang up on us? I guess she could’ve brought a lynch mob in that minivan.”

He sits for a moment, but when I slam my door, he gets out too. “I’d ask you not to do anything rash,” he says in a puff of white breath, “but I rather think that’s like asking the water not to boil over an open flame. So can you please just try and think before you talk?”

“I’ve been thinking for a good long time,” I start, then fold my ears down, as much against his expression as against the cold. “I’ll do my best. But if she starts something…”

“I’m not going to hold you back.” He holds up a paw, and a glint of light off his wedding ring catches my eye. “But I hope she won’t be unreasonable. I hope she’s just…I hope it’s just that she wants a friendly face around.”

“I’m kind of pissed she doesn’t think of us as friendly. Maybe she wants backup in case we try to take something she doesn’t want us to. She doesn’t trust us.”

“Well.” We walk up the path. “Would you?”

I don’t answer, staring at the lightly frosted flagstones under my paws. So many times I’d walked up this path, and even when I was coming home with the pink triangle pin and the rainbow scarf and the pride-patched denim jacket, it never felt this ominous. It always, even last Christmas, felt like home.

The porch is silent. We walk up the stairs, past the gardening tools under their winter blanket, up to the screen door with “The Farrels” on it. Dad opens the screen door and then the main door, and I follow him in.

A rush of scent hits me, mostly Mother’s. There are some unfamiliar ones, too, the strongest being a female otter. In the small entry hall, a stack of eight boxes (medium size) hides the map on the wall; a wide, thin box leans against the stack. The rest of the foyer looks very much the same, with the exception of the picture of Jesus Fox that now hangs where our family portrait (1998) had hung. That makes me wonder if the map on the wall is still a map, so I walk over to the pile of boxes and catch a strong scent of Father from them.

As the front door swings shut, I hear movement in the living room and Mother appears in the doorway. “Harold,” she says. “Wiley.” She looks at me and bites her lower lip, her fangs showing. She’s dressed in a white blouse with a sweater over it and a long navy blue skirt, and I can’t help but notice that her fingers are bare of any rings.

“We’re just here to collect our things.” Father leans to his left, trying to see into the living room. “This is all of them?”

“You may look through the boxes if you like.” Mother watches him. She looks really nervous, for someone who wants everything to go smoothly. And even though she’s watching him, she keeps her ears turned toward me. “If there’s anything else you want, we can discuss it.”

“I’ve got all the important things from my office. Are some of these from Wiley’s room?” Father pulls down the top box and I give him a hand with it, getting it down to the ground. While he opens it, I pull down the next one, which is lighter.

Mother stands with arms folded, like a store clerk making sure we don’t slip anything into our pockets. “One of them is. The others are from our bedroom, your office, and the basement.” Father looks through the books and model cars in the first box, then moves on to the one I pulled down, full of old clothes.

I sniff at the boxes until I find one with my scent. It’s taped shut.

“Can I borrow your keys?” I ask Father, and he holds them out. Mother lifts a paw and then lets it fall to her side.

“You don’t have to open that,” she says, without force.

“My X-ray specs are inside it,” I say, and slash the tape with a key and pull open the flaps. In there are a few things—some clothes, some of my college books, some CDs. I rummage through and find notebooks from high school, an old jacket I ripped my senior year. No denim pride jacket, none of my pride books or posters I worked on in college. And my old plush dragon isn’t there; in fact, nothing that dates from before my junior year of college is in the box.

Only in looking through the box do I remember the things that are missing. Those notebooks used to sit next to my eighth grade sculpture project; the CD’s were held up by a debate trophy. Nothing is missing that I need in my daily life, but I’m not willing to lose the memories. I think of Dev’s room, still set up with all the trappings of his adolescence. He doesn’t think about that all the time, but when he wants it, it’s always there. I thought of it as cute at the time, the preservation of a room as though a bright-eyed high schooler would come rushing back to it at any moment. Now, the dismantling and possible disappearance of mine feels far more threatening than I would have thought.

“Where’s the rest of my stuff?” I look up at Mother.

She fidgets. “It’s all there,” she says.

“Mother. It’s not all here. What happened to the rest of it?”

Her ears flatten and she glances back into the house. “I thought that was all you would need.”

“You thought wrong.” I let the flaps fall back and return the keys to Father. “Is the rest of it still in my room? I can grab most of it now.”

Mother gets a really strange look on her face, kind of half scared and half angry, and she says, “I don’t want you taking anything else.”

Straight ahead of the foyer, the door to the kitchen is closed, but I can get to the back of the house and the stairs to my room through there. I charge forward without saying anything, and Mother grabs at my shirt—actually grabs at me—and then hurries after me. But I’m moving pretty quickly too, and I get through the other side of the kitchen and then run into a female otter, who grabs my arm.

I wrench it away, but it gives Mother time to catch up with me. She pushes her way forward, trying to stand between the two of us.