Like People in History (73 page)

I looked to Mr. Loguidice, who also seemed to await an answer.

"Didn't Matt... ?" I began, then I bit the bullet. "Matt's too sick to come. I was with him all day and all night. He was throwing up. He can't eat. He's lost a lot of weight. He runs high fevers. Very high fevers. The doctors said the next time he'll go into a coma and..."

The two of them looked at me: not a glimmer.

"Papa talked to Matt," she argued. "Didn't you, Papa?"

"I talked to him. He said he was very sick and we had to come now."

It seemed forever for that to sink in.

"I don't like the city," she suddenly switched to another area of complaint. "It scares me."

"I'll be with you every moment," I assured her.

"I don't like hospitals," she went on. "Remember what they tried to do?" she asked her husband.

"No one will hurt you at the hospital," I vowed.

"Why can't we wait until Matt's better?" she asked. "Then you bring him here. That'll be nice. Papa?"

She looked at her husband, who looked at me.

I stared at the floor. Why must I say this? "He's... not... going... to...
get...
better!"

I couldn't face them. "He's... going... to... die. Your son has a fatal illness. AIDS! Have you heard of it?"

They had. They murmured.

"People with AIDS don't
get
better! They get sicker. They die."

Having forced myself, I couldn't stop now. "Matt has been sick. Now he's going to die." I couldn't believe I was saying it.

They were frozen in position, that same look on their faces!

"Matt will
never
come back home alive! And if you don't see him today, you may
never
see him again." Couldn't they understand? "He's dying! Dying!"

From out of nowhere a wail began. She lifted her apron to her mouth and lurched into her husband. He caught and held her, looking so hurt.

I came out of whatever horrible place I'd been driven to, aware that I'd gotten my point across. "I'm... sorry," I mumbled.

She was alternately wailing and muttering cries. It was pathetic, like a child wounded in a playground. I couldn't stand it. I backed out of the sight of her, and of her poor oversized husband uselessly trying to comfort her, backed away from the damage I'd wreaked, at last located a door, and lurched out of the house altogether, onto the flagstones. From here I could still hear her, but they must have moved into the kitchen, because now she sounded muffled.

Would she never stop?

I'm the cruelest bastard that ever walked the earth, I thought, dropping in exhaustion to sit on a concrete step. But if I am, then I curse the God that forced me to be so cruel to these two brave and loving people, whose impossible lives I've just now destroyed!

Behind me, the house was silent.

Before me, ants were carrying chips of leaf across the rock slab from one side of the garden to another. They walked on cement, avoiding the slate. I wondered if the stone were too smooth, too slippery for the ants, if the cement had tiny imperfections, enough for their legs to get better purchase. What were they doing with these leaves? Where were they going? Why bother? Why shouldn't I just crush them all? Now? Totally obliterate them? Keep them from more suffering?

After a while, the door opened. Mr. Loguidice. I began to rise. He leaned on my shoulder to keep me down and sat heavily next to me. He took out a package of cigarettes and matches, shook out a few. When I looked surprised, he said, "In the photos..."

I had stopped smoking, but took one. Matt's father deftly lighted two off the same match.

Deep drag. No coughing. Instant high.

"Mama's getting dressed. She'll be ready soon. Then we'll go with you," Mr. Loguidice said.

We smoked.

"She's a woman. They get emotional," he explained.

I didn't know what to say. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have..."

"Matt told me on the phone.... I told Mama.... We thought... you know... maybe there was a chance he was wrong. Until we heard it from you... You wouldn't lie to us. Not Matt's friend Roger. That's why Mama's upset.... She'll be fine. She's getting ready."

We smoked and watched the ants carrying leaf parts across the flagstones. At one point, Matt's father put an arm across my shoulder and it felt like a truce.

"She'll thank you."

I panicked. "Thank me?"

"For going to the city with us. For staying with us at the hospital."

"Matt said you don't like hospitals."

"Did he tell you why?" Mr. Loguidice asked. A big kid, I thought. He's like a big kid. He doesn't really understand. How could he?

"He didn't tell you," Mr. Loguidice said. Then slowly: "It's because it was at the hospital that they tried to take Matt away. When he was born. They saw he wasn't... you know, like us. They tried to take him away from us and give him to other people. But Mama held onto Matt's leg. She wouldn't let go of his leg. I held on too. We wouldn't let go. When my papa saw us holding onto Matt's leg and not letting them take Matt away, my papa said, 'Okay, you can keep Matt. But you've got to do right by him. You can't let him lack for anything!'"

Matt's mother called from somewhere indoors for her husband.

"It was the same leg that got shot," Mr. Loguidice said. "The leg he lost. You saw his bad leg?"

"I saw it."

"I read this story once...," Mr. Loguidice began. "It was Matt's book.
The Golden Book of Greek Myths.
He loved that book when he was a kid! I read a story in it he marked. That meant he especially liked it. I don't remember all the names, but it was about a war hero. When this hero's mother and father got married, someone was against it. She sent them a bad gift, an apple that caused a fight at the wedding. And she put a curse on the baby. So when the baby was born, his mother and father dipped him to take away the curse. I guess like baptizing. They had to hold him tight by one leg and not let go."

"Papa?" Mrs. Loguidice called from a bit nearer.

Matt's father stood up, groaning a little, revealing his age for the first time. (How old was he? Sixty? More? Did people like him live much longer?)

"A minute, Mama. I'm talking now." Then to me, "This baby in the book? He grew up to be the smartest and handsomest and bravest hero ever. Do you know that story?"

"I know the story."

"And he had a friend he loved more than anyone."

"Patroclus..."

"This hero," Mr. Loguidice went on, "he was shot in the leg where he was held.... He died young too."

I hadn't expected that. I couldn't know how far Matt's father had thought all this through; how far he could think it through, never mind come to this conclusion. I stood up.

"Matt's not dying because you wouldn't let him go when he was a baby."

Mr. Loguidice looked away.

"He's not."

A bird began calling out, twittering, chirping, a long roulade of sound. A secretary bird, Matt used to call them, at the Pines. A gray jay, I had called them. This one had a great deal to say. It went on and on.

"I don't know, Roger. Someone didn't want Mama and me to marry."

"It's not your fault!" I insisted.

"It was worse when Matt was born. A lot said we shouldn't have him."

"It's not your fault, believe me! It's not anyone's fault."

"Well... maybe not." Mr. Loguidice interrupted the birdsong reluctantly. Then, "But you know something, Roger? If it was my fault... if I knew Matt would die now, I
still
wouldn't have let go of his leg.... Do you know what I'm saying?"

To save his marriage, to prove that he and his wife were capable, despite everything: to save their lives.

"I know what you're saying."

"I wouldn't have let go of his leg for anything! Not for anything!"

He crushed his cigarette against the wall.

"I'd better go see what Mama needs."

I finished my cigarette, suddenly tasting all the tar and crap. I crushed mine against the wall too. I didn't think I'd ever forget Matt's father's big kid's face as it had looked admitting what he'd admitted just now: sick with knowledge, sick and enraged with understanding.

A few minutes later Mr. and Mrs. Loguidice emerged, dressed for the city, smiling, calmly bland again as though nothing had happened. They locked the house and joined arms with me, and then the three of us walked, arm in arm, through the lovely spring afternoon, through the lovely neighborhood, to the picturesque train station.

"Final dress rehearsals are supposed to be disasters!" Alistair assured me. "It's an old theater tradition. The worse the final dress rehearsal, the better opening night."

"Then tomorrow will outdo
My Fair Lady!"
I moaned. I finished my margarita and spun around on the bar stool. "Bartender. Another of these confections. Who
are
all these people, anyway?"

"They are Claire's Thursday evening nine o'clock crowd," Alistair explained. Then, checking his watch: "Correction! Nine-fifteen dinner crowd! Are you certain you should? That's three on an empty stomach."

"It's curtains one way or the other!" I insisted. When the drink had been slid into place and the empty whisked away, I said, "To... Who have we toasted so far tonight? The muse of comedy, the muse of tragedy...?"

"The God Apollo, leader of the muses."

"We'll add Dionysus, God of Final Dress Rehearsal Disasters!"

"I don't think..."

"No? Then we'll toast Matt Dillon, who just went past into the other room. Barkeep. Send a drink to Matt Dillon. On Mr. Dodge."

"That
wasn't
Matt Dillon." Alistair followed with his eyes.

"Sure it was, and he was cute!"

"As cute as Stanley Kowalski in our production?" Alistair asked. "Sal Torelli to you. Now, Sal
is
the straight one you were talking about?"

"The very one."

"Mr. Torelli's not bad. And he is butch."

"A butch Harry Hay in Two Act. And a butch drag at the Stonewall," I said, and moaned, thinking of all there was that could still go wrong tonight. The first act had been bad beyond belief. The most embarrassing moment had come early, in the Thoreau, Emerson, and Stranger scene. Big Janet had actually just stood there, stood there, looking stupidly at what there was in the way of an audience (little more than half a house, even though it was totally papered), having forgotten the fact that she had an exit line, perhaps having even forgotten she had a part in the play. Not one of the others had managed to save her. Not David M., who had the next line, or Sherman, or... until Cynthia dipped the stage lights twice, activating Henry, who had not been paying that much attention himself but who—always game—jumped onstage shouting, "Back to the raft again, Huck honey. I got a hungerin' for you," before tackling Big Janet and wrestling her offstage so the play could continue.

Worse perhaps was the end of the act: Bernard Dixon in the Casement Trial with its split stage action: front stage action accompanying the words of the Irishman's notorious private diaries, being read to the jury in back. Bernard mimed the prosecutor's lubricious words by rubbing so hard against Sal's customs inspector uniform that Torelli had a job to keep his trousers from being ripped off. Bernard's own frailer costume came off completely, revealing not only his un-Brazilian-slave-like two-toned cranberry-and-mouse-hued Calvin Klein underwear, but also a substantial hard-on. At which, his boyfriend, who'd been sitting in the third row of the audience, stood up and shouted, "
Bicho! Puta!
I cut it off. You wait!"

Add to that the uncountable times in less than an hour when the cast went up on their lines, missed their cues, forgot their stage spots, mis-crossed stage lines, and knocked over the scenery, which thumped loudly in protest. The middling, mostly middle-aged guys, mostly sitting alone, that constituted the audience had applauded at the curtain.

But since they'd reacted to nothing but the wrong things, they'd doubtless return after intermission expecting Act II to be more knock-down-the-scenery-and-show-dick farce—which, Lord help me, it probably would end up being.

Alistair called over to the bar one of the less prepossessing back room waiters, Chip—earlier he'd patiently explained that he was a "professional food services person," which was to say
not
a model, not an actor, not a roman-fleuve novelist, not even a slumming tepid-fusion physicist—and Alistair was now grilling Chip in detail about the foursome he'd just seated. I finished my margarita and, with foam still on my lips, asked, "Why not invite Dillon and his friends to the play?"

"Tonight?" Alistair asked.

"It probably won't run after tonight," I reasoned.

"It
would
be an excuse...." Alistair mused. "C'mere, Chip"—who listened to what was whispered in his ear and vanished.

I began to order another margarita. "I'm not paying," Alistair said succinctly. I replied, "I'm tanked enough. How about we get back?"

"Momentino!
You were right! It is Matt Dillon."

"Course, I was right."

"And he's coming... Stand up straight!"

Dillon came right at us, his large extended hand suddenly coming at my midsection. I fumbled for it, let it pump my hand.

"You'll never believe it, but I write plays too!"

Nice, deep, manly voice. Close up, he looked like a tall version of some kid I had played softball with—what was the kid's name?—except, of course, for the million-dollar silk jacket and eleven-thousand-dollar lizard-eyelid shirt. Lots of eyelashes. And the complexion.

"So, congratulations! Thanks." He took a flyer from Alistair. "I'll try to make it while I'm in Manhattan."

I felt compelled to ask Dillon, "Is it true? The worse the dress rehearsal, the better opening night is?"

His serious brown eyes were half-amused, half-sorry for me. "That's the tradition."

"I'm the producer, Alistair Dodge. My phone number is on the flyer. Call me for comps." A second later, Alistair said, "Did you smell him? Cuz? Pure pheromones. Come on, let's get out of here. And did you check out that peaches-and-cream skin? I know women who'd give away their firstborn for that skin."