Message of Love (4 page)

“To your future,” his mother replied, her catlike grin broadening.

“Our future,” I added.

“All right then,” Everett replied, a bit confused but smiling nevertheless.

Champagne swirled as our glasses clinked, and our entrees arrived with precision timing that made me realize the secret of such fancy restaurants; it wasn’t what was served, but how and when.

It wasn’t until dessert was finished that Diana Forrester unveiled her plan to her son. Through the entire dinner I waited for her to mention it, but the three of us chatted amiably. Everett wittily described one of our public transportation mishaps, in which he almost spilled sideways off a bus ramp.

“Why didn’t you use your van that Mr. Muir got for you?”

“Parking downtown is almost impossible. It’s only a few blocks from the train. We drove tonight, though.”

“Very well. I’m just concerned for you.”

She pushed aside her plate of what I heard called an orange liqueur tartlet, and rearranged herself, poised, ready to pounce.

It came to me then, with just a half-glance toward me, her silently saying, ‘You agreed to support this.’ It was then that I imagined an additional unspoken threat, ‘Or else I take him away altogether.’

Coffee was poured beside her by white-gloved hands.

“My dear son,” Diana Forrester announced after I nervously dropped a fork on my plate with a clatter. “I have a proposal for you.”

Everett absorbed her words, fingers folded, elbows up, tilting his head a bit, and then I saw that ear twitch, him clenching his teeth.

He waited as she extolled the virtues of the university, our proximity, his advancement, until she did finally offer, “How does that sound?”

Everett blinked twice, turned to me abruptly. “Did she already pitch this to you?”

I nodded.

“And what do you think?”

I held myself contained, considered. “I want what’s best for you, and this is.” I nodded to punctuate my resolve, then winked at him. It said, ‘No matter what, we’re together.’

Everett inhaled slowly, dramatically, scanned the restaurant, as if looking for some other table where he really belonged.

“Let me think about it,” which meant, ‘Let me talk about this with Reid and not you.’

His mother burst out another litany. “You can shape your own major, Public Policy with, what did you say, a minor in Civil Rights or whatever. The student-teacher ratio’s practically as good as Pinecrest. Which reminds me, did you reply to the dean’s request to–”

“I’m not at Pinecrest anymore, Mother. I’m in this city, with Reid, and I’m happy. My advisor even told me I could start auditing classes in the Disability Studies grad program. Penn doesn’t have that.”

She countered again. “Do you know what the administrator who I talked with said? That a boy of your talents would be an asset to the university.”

“For a mere, what, ten thousand a semester? Who do you owe a favor to at Penn?”

She signed the bill, which had arrived via another silent waiter. “It’s none of your business, and besides, it’ll be they who will owe me.” She smiled. “You wanted honest? There, your interfering mother’s just doing her job.”

As we returned back to the Temple campus, I followed him into the dorm. Everett had remained silent. It wasn’t until we were alone that he yanked off his tie and tossed it across the room.

“I’m going to be like a mascot there,” he said. “If they put me in one of the jock houses, it’ll be like expanded frat parties and pseudo-intellectual twaddle nights. ‘Let’s be buddies with the crip for extra credit!’”

Everett had yet to fathom his mother’s true motivations, but still ruminated on it with me as we undressed for bed. I wondered how many remaining days I would have with him in it.

“You really are okay with this?” Everett asked me.

“You’re too smart for this school. It’s only across town,” I said as I nestled into bed with him. “Your mom said you just have to stay in the dorms for two semesters. It’ll be romantic. We do long distance really good; really well.”

I didn’t clearly state that our daily proximity had sometimes made both of us a little cranky, whether either of us would admit it or not.

“It’s twenty blocks,” he said.

“I can just take the Broad Street train and transfer to the trolley. I’ll be all over you. It’s just for a while.
Pro tempore
.”

“Clever,” he smirked. “I never thought you’d take sides with my mother.”

“I’m not. I’m on your side. Temple’s not… You need more challenges. Besides, won’t some of your old classmates from Pinecrest be there?”

“Probably, the ones that are too stupid to get into Harvard or Yale.” His sour look made me wonder if he’d want to see any of his former classmates. Was the memory of his accident still too strong?

“Besides, you’re kind of sick of me, aincha?” I cuddled closer.

“Yeah, I am.” He went along with the joke, scooted his legs into a crossed position, took me in, grinned slyly. “And as punishment for your treachery, you must dance for me.”

“Again?”

He’d played this game with me before, demanding that I perform for him, let him watch, before we got to making out. He told me that seeing me move turned him on almost as much as touching.

Leaning over to the radio alarm clock, he fiddled with the dial. I jumped out of the bed, heard fragments of Pat Benatar, that Donna Summer-Barbra Striesand duet at its peak, news, static, then the middle of The Pretenders’ “Brass in Pocket.” But he pressed on.

“That was good,” I said, swaying to the beat as I warmed up. Yes. We were going to have sex to celebrate his imminent departure.

“Wait,” he said, and then the dirge-like synth of Gary Numan’s “Cars” amused him enough to raise the volume.

Satisfied, he grinned, shoved a pillow behind his back and clapped his hands like a harem-keeper. “Now dance for me, you traitor!”

Chapter 5

May 1980

Everett hated buses.

More precisely, Everett hated the beeping sound the bus made, the only cross-town bus that had an accessible ramp, and the audible sighs passengers made when we got in or out, delaying their own journeys by a few minutes. He hated the disgruntled eye-roll of the drivers as they operated the grinding lift, and the constant threat of those who sometimes simply refused to do their job.

Still, we got around. Everett’s van, bequeathed to us at a discount via the car salesman father of our Greensburg pal Kevin Miur, spent more time in his assigned parking spot on campus, except for out of town trips. Philadelphia’s streets were sometime too busy, or quaintly cramped, too ‘historic’ and bricked to gut for a curb cut. With the van, we’d loop around our intended goal, a restaurant or movie theatre, several times before finding a parking spot.

More often, weather permitting, we walked and rolled. At busy sidewalks, I sometimes just let Everett clear a path, loping behind. It was more efficient.

That Saturday, we decided to take the afternoon off, and Everett offered to take me out to lunch for my birthday, even though he’d already given me a large book of nature photos by Ansel Adams.

We both skirted around the fact that only a few days after my birthday the previous year, his lacrosse accident had changed everything. “Forget it,” he brushed it off. “Let’s go play tourist.” But I knew it weighed on him, and his mood was conflicted, a determination toward pleasantry.

Only minutes after hoisting ourselves onto the bus with all its lift-beeping and passenger eye rolls, a bedraggled man moved to face us on the opposite row of seats.

“Huh. Had a brother’t lost both legs in Nam.”

“I’m sorry for his loss,” Everett muttered, before offering a false smile. The man continued talking, to the wary older woman next to him, or himself; we weren’t sure.

Everett glanced at me, almost whispering. “You see? What I said?”

“About what?”

“People think I’m some sort of conversational entrée to their own tragedies. It’s like the chair’s magnetic!”

“Oh.”

He seemed a bit snippy. Perhaps it was the man’s nearly toothless grin.

We had decided to take in Independence Hall and the other historic attractions. The line to see the Liberty Bell was a bit long, the crowds were a bit tough to navigate, and I could sense that Everett was becoming irritated.

But what set him off was a little kid; actually the kid’s mother.

No more than three or four years old, the child turned to stare open-mouthed at Everett, or more precisely, his chair. His mother kept trying to turn him around, glanced back at us, and scowled. But the kid persisted. When Everett’s friendly wave made him smile, and his additional funny faces made him giggle, the child stepped toward him and reached out to touch a shiny wheel.

“Bike?”

“Sort of,” Everett beamed.

But before he could get closer, the child’s mother yanked him back and scolded him, which led to a responding howl that made more heads turn.

“I’m sorry,” the mother said with a tone that implied blame on our part.

“It’s okay,” Everett replied. He then gave me a bewildered shrug.

The kid kept howling, until his mother scooped him up in her arms, muttered something to her husband, who left the line and they scuttled away.

“Well, damn.”

“That was…” I didn’t know what to say.

Everett shook his head, as other tourists offered wary glances. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry.”

That was his cue to leave. He impatiently picked the first restaurant we found that didn’t have too many steps. We ate quickly, and the service was abrupt. So we cut our trip short.

Once off the bus again, we headed back to our dorm.

“Sorry I ruined your birthday.”

“Shut up. You did not.”

He seemed relieved, though, to be back in the somewhat sheltered campus.

“I’m gonna miss this place,” he said.

The paths were modern, open and accessible. So were the people. Somehow, the students around us seemed more disinterested in us, more easygoing.

We had made friends with nearly all the other disabled dorm residents. With five other wheelchair students, and a few women and a guy who used crutches, it was mostly a close-knit group. Their various categories of injury or disability made them sound like a fraternity of science fiction fans; C5 Tetra/quad, T-4 para, T-10 amp.

Penn’s undergrad population of disabled students was four. He would be the fifth, and the only one living on campus.

Everett admitted that despite our impending separation, he was excited to transfer to Penn in the fall. His new advisor had practically gushed over his enrollment, he’d told me.

As the semester’s end drew near, he spent more time hanging out with his Temple friends, Gerard in particular, who often brought over obscure European bands’ albums for Everett to record to cassettes.

My remark one night that the music sounded “gay” induced a disdainful huff. Despite his over-styled manner, Gerard “did not identify with hierarchical gender constructs,” whatever that meant.

Between the combination of whiny electronic sounds and Gerard’s posed snobbery, that night I found an excuse to study elsewhere.

By the time I returned from the library, Gerard had gone, but Everett was still absorbed in taping selections from the pile of records by the stereo. He waved and smiled, his headphones on.

I’d settled at my desk with a textbook when he shut down the stereo and removed his headphones, apparently satisfied with his latest cassette mix.

Moving to the center of our room, he played with balancing his chair in a tilted still wheelie. I pretended not to notice.

Plopping his wheels back down, he said, “So! What are we going to do this summer?”

The ‘we’ part of his question heartened me. While Everett and I had become comfortable living together, despite the occasional turf war for shelf space, the summer was ours, with no restrictions from our families. I also thought I needed a break from it all. Everett living elsewhere would keep us from taking each other for granted. It would be okay.

Staying in Greensburg meant seeing Everett on weekends, I had hoped, and getting a job, not that my parents said I should. They supported nearly all my expenses, except for Everett’s occasional splurge night out, or a small gift. My partial scholarship had been renewed for one more semester.

I knew I didn’t want to return to Allegheny National Forest, where I’d spent the previous summer before college. While it had been a great experience, being so many miles away from Everett that first summer after his accident had made me ache for him. Feeling more strongly connected to him, that nothing like our abrupt break-up could possibly happen again, I also didn’t feel the desire to escape the urban world and work in a forest. I no longer wanted an escape. Actually, what I needed more was money.

“Mom’s taken up gardening again,” I said. “She said they’re hiring at Wolfe Nursery.”

“Selling flowers to the housewives of Greensburg?”

I smirked. “More like hauling bags of fertilizer. I could come visit you on weekends.”

“That’d be great,” Everett replied. But I sensed some other plans in his tone, and he revealed them when he wheeled over to me and presented a brochure. “But I’m definitely sure I’ll go stir-crazy at Dad’s high-rise, and Mother no doubt wants to show me off to her new clique.”

“What’s Holly up to?” I asked, hoping his sister might provide an escape from their parents for my weekend trips to visit him. She was more than supportive, and had been helpful in getting us back together when Everett and I had sort of broken up several months before.

“The opera company’s off for the season. Last I heard she’s got offers from three different summer theatre companies; upstate New York, and two in Connecticut.”

“Good for her.”

“She’ll be subletting her apartment,” he said, reading my thoughts yet again. “So, no Squirrel Hill love shack for us.”

“Oh.” I had wanted to revisit her apartment, for sentimental reasons, since we had spent our first night together on her living room sofa-bed months before his accident. The stairs would be a problem, but that never stopped Everett, or me from hauling him up and down on my back.

“It’s cool,” he said. “At least Dad’ll be cool, so long as we don’t make too much noise in the spare bedroom.”

Everett had mentioned his father getting more serious with his new girlfriend, but not so serious that she had moved in, since he had yet to reel her in with an engagement ring. She was also divorced, and had a young daughter, Everett had told me.

The mere thought of making out with Everett in a bedroom in that high-rise, with that view, by night or day, pleased me. His father’s presence made me curious about his level of approval.

“So, what’s this?” I asked as I reached for the brochure in his lap, which he teasingly yanked from my reach.

“This,” he waved it like a sort of wand, “is my proposal…” –I liked the sound of that word– “…for us to spend a month together in the woods.”

“You want to go camping? Great!”

“Hold on.” He finally handed me the brochure: Cedar Springs Summer Camp.

“I got it from Gary, one of the rehab guys at Magee.”

I read the address. “It’s in Pine Grove? Where’s that?”

“Actually up north near the park where you worked last summer.”

“And it’s wheelchair kids?”

“For a month, in July. Actually, it’s not just wheelchair kids, but like, Down Syndrome kids, Muscular Dystrophy kids, and we could work all three months, but I kind of wanted to do a few other things this summer, too, with you.”

“So, retarded kids?”

“The preferred term is ‘developmentally disabled.’”

“I don’t have any… I don’t even have teaching experience.”

“You taught kids last summer, didn’t you?”

“I gave tours, told busloads of them about trees and bugs for a few hours a day.”

“So, great. Put that on your application. You can do sports. They’re really not that picky. Besides, I can tell them you helped me.”

“You’re not retar– developmental–”

“That’s debatable. Look, they’ll want me as a kind of role model. I can lead singing classes and, I don’t know, French for deaf kids. It’ll be fun, and a challenge, and the best, we can have a cabin of our own, knock on wood.” He instead knocked on his head. “There’s an actual town nearby if we need some civilization. There’s a lake, and a pool, and, baby,” he wheeled close to me, those dark little caterpillar eyebrows arching up in a flirtatious leer, “woods all around.”

“Woods,” I smiled.

“Yeah. The pay’s not much, but we get housing and whatever their version of food is. Gary said it’s great.”

“Gary.”

“The guy with one leg and the beard? He’s on my basketball team.”

“Right.” I remembered him from the last scrimmage I’d attended, a big friendly Black Vietnam vet. With the rush of moving and transferring to Temple, Everett hadn’t officially joined the team, having missed most of their winter season. But he’d attended a few practices. This was Everett’s world, and I was going to be a part of it in a new way.

“Plus,” he pointed, “This will totally satisfy Mother’s request for a ‘good deed’ résumé-builder. But it wasn’t her idea. I haven’t even told her yet. I probably won’t, until we’re already there, just so she doesn’t swoop in and take over.”

“Hire a florist to cheer things up.”

Everett smirked. I thought of us spending moonlit nights in sleeping bags under the stars.

Then I remembered the strange, almost forced-friendly demeanor of a group of people, all with large crosses around their necks, at the one summer camp my parents took me to, in Roaring Run Park. A weekend stay was planned, until the singing and blessings over potato salad at the picnic kiva seemed to irk my parents. We relocated to the Laurel Hill camp, further south, and had a wonderful time. They basically set me free to hike all day while they… reunited. On the way back, we drove Dad’s old station wagon back into Amish country and picked strawberries.

“This isn’t, like, a Christian camp, is it?” I asked.

“What? No. I don’t think so.”

“I don’t want any…”

“Any what?”

“Are they gonna be… you know, have a problem, with us…”

“As long as we don’t fuck in front of them, I’m sure we’ll be fine. Hey, do you trust me, Giraffe?”

I looked at him, his warm brown eyes, that glint of anticipation.

“We can be together every night.”

I did trust him, and I didn’t. The spoiled rich kid I once knew had been transformed, hadn’t he? He wanted to give back, and perhaps find a safe way for us to be together over the summer without all the distractions of college and our parents. Learning how to help him, to appreciate his challenges and little victories, could be extended to some eager kids, couldn’t it?

“Sure. Let’s do it.”