Now and Yesterday (33 page)

“Oh, right,” said Will. “This is fantastic.”

A nice family lunch, thought Peter—or
something
. He was glad that Aldebar joined them, since the man's presence at the table answered a question that had been on Peter's mind since they had walked in the door: How should Aldebar be treated? As more than hired help, certainly. A friend of the family? Or something more like a beloved family retainer, which modern gay life sometimes afforded older gentlemen of means, instead of a mate? It was clear that Aldebar and Jonathan had grown genuinely close, which made it less important whether the relationship would have come about without the employment. It was also clear, from little moments between them—as when Jonathan would pat Aldebar's hand, or Aldebar would lay a hand on Jonathan's arm or shoulder—that Aldebar's duties as a nurse-slash-companion extended beyond traditional boundaries, into some distinctly gay realm of spiritual and physical caretaking, where all of Jonathan's needs might sync with Aldebar's skills and generosity in an almost connubial relationship with no precise name. After all, Aldebar bathed and dressed Jonathan, and wheeled him around and saw to his comfort; the operation of Jonathan's body was now largely Aldebar's responsibility. Peter knew that, in happier times, his friend had sometimes hired men, short-term, for similarly intimate duties.

Anyway, it was good to see Jonathan being cared for so lovingly—another extension of his talent for sheltering himself. He looked terrible—skinnier than ever, barely ambulatory—but in some ways, Peter thought, he was thriving.

After lunch, Aldebar tidied up and went out to do some errands. Peter said he needed ten minutes to check his messages before the promised studio visit.

“Go and check your e-mail,” said Jonathan, taking Will by the hand and shuffling over to the window seat. “We'll be right here.”

The guest suite featured twin beds, as in the past, but Peter noticed the bathroom had been redone. Tile had given way to wainscoting in white bead board, except in the shower and bath area, which was now all white subway tile, with retro nickel fixtures. Will's toiletry kit, in rep-striped silk, had been set out near one of the sinks on the white paneled vanity cabinet, above which, on the windowsill, stood a slender glass cylinder with a few stems of freesia. His toothbrush had been tossed in one of the stainless steel cups on the vanity. Will's laptop was also set out, on the bedroom desk, with the charger deployed; his duffel bag was neatly stowed to one side of the bed he'd apparently chosen, over the end of which he'd laid his jacket.

Roomies,
thought Peter. The thought was both delicious and terrifying.

The mountain view outside the windows might well extend for thirty miles, Peter thought—maybe even as far as the town he grew up in, though that was in a different direction. He'd lived there “in the sticks” until the age of eighteen, when he left for college—not long after
Look
magazine published a cover story on “The American Man,” featuring the cover line “The sad, ‘gay' life of the homosexual.”

What in the world ever made me so sure they were wrong . . . ?

 

After checking his messages and finding nothing urgent, Peter rejoined Jonathan and Will, who were chatting away amiably.

“. . . And no cock to speak of.”

“Oh!”

“But a very nice guy,” Will was saying. “Just not for me, ya know?”

“No, no, no,” laughed Jonathan.

They greeted Peter, who didn't have to ask whom they were talking about.

“Enrico,” said Will.

“Ah,” said Peter.

“The prince of chandeliers,” said Jonathan. “I know the type.”

Then Jonathan took them, slowly and with a cane, through a passage into the studio wing, where they met the film's editor—a top guy in his field, Jonathan said—and the sound guy.

“I was wondering who belonged to all those cars in the driveway,” said Will.

The editor showed them the footage he was working on, featuring two talking heads: Jonathan and Connor Frankel.

“Frankel's never talked so publicly about his sexual identity before,” said the editor. “That generation just didn't, right? And now he's coming across with all these amazing insights about his upbringing and his work, the times and the relationship between hiding and creativity, and how America deals with creativity and differentness. Awesome stuff.”

“That's groundbreaking,” said Will.

“Major,” said Jonathan.

“Jonathan's the best there is,” said the editor. “A real can opener!”

“You're giving shape to it all,” said Jonathan. “Which, I might add, is an impossible task, since for months we just talked and talked and talked, and must have repeated ourselves a million times.”

“And you're incorporating shots of Frankel's work?” said Will.

“Individual pieces and installation shots, yes,” said the editor. “Some collage, some Ken Burns effect . . .”

“That panning-zooming thing . . . ?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“The art photography itself was a whole thing,” said Jonathan.

Peter felt a pleasant little shock in seeing the cultural journalist in Will in action.

“Do you have a title yet?” asked Peter.

“We're playing with ideas,” said Jonathan, without elaborating.

“Thanks so much,” said Will. “Good luck.”

“Take care,” said the editor.

“That guy has an Oscar,” said Jonathan, as they made their way back to the main house.

The rest of the afternoon was devoted to quiet working and reading. Peter and Will each made a few phone calls, off in a corner, so as not to disturb the others. At some point Aldebar returned home and took Jonathan upstairs.

At six, cocktails were served, and at seven, dinner. It was “simple, simple, simple,” according to Jonathan: grilled salmon and vegetables with couscous. Aldebar opened a bottle of Riesling and they ate again in the kitchen. In the center of the table was a pair of Depression glass candelabra with stumpy, yellowish candles.

“We don't really use the dining room anymore, do we?” said Jonathan.

“Not since the music society,” said Aldebar.

“We did a little benefit here this winter,” said Jonathan. “There was a string quartet, we had a nice buffet. . . .”

“You're a big supporter, aren't you?” said Peter. “The Hudson Valley chamber something.”

“It's too much now,” sniffed Jonathan. “They're in the will.”

They lingered over pear cobbler, while Peter and Jonathan talked about mutual friends and old times. They apologized to the others, saying they didn't mean to monopolize the conversation this way, but they did anyway and no one objected. When the foundation came up, Jonathan mentioned that Will had officially declined the position of director—something that Peter hadn't known was a final decision, but that he was happy to hear anyway. Will seemed to know what he wanted, these days. That was great to see. Moreover, something about the boy holding his own in the adult world—chatting with Jonathan's editor, with Jonathan—made Peter proud.

And in a corner of his mind, there was even a half-formed notion to stop thinking about Will in terms of “the boy,” language he sometimes used when speaking with close friends like Jonathan. Peter sometimes referred to “boys” jestingly among older gay men for whom terms like “boy” and “girl” had evolved from camp to politically correct, to ironically camp. There shouldn't be harm in framing the idea of a young man occasionally in a witty construct like a Noel Coward song, yet even the glamour of madness about a boy might be detrimental, Peter thought, if one cast someone as the boy too unobservantly.

Right?
he telepathically asked Harold, who had been such an apostle of political correctness.
Age has made me lax about the boy thing?
Peter tried to clarify the notion in his mind, and then dinner was over.

When they rose, Peter and Will both started to help Aldebar clear, but Aldebar gently rebuffed them.

“I've got it, thanks—don't worry,” he said. “I don't want you to miss the entertainment.”

“Oh, yes,” said Jonathan, turning to glance outside. “We have to go out on the terrace.”

“The sunset,” said Will.

“I'll join in a minute,” said Aldebar. “Do people want coffee?”

No one did, and the three stepped outside.

The evening was cool but not cold—fine for sitting a little while and “visiting,” as Jonathan quaintly referred to it. They installed themselves in the sumptuously scaled deck furniture, while looming before them, over green hills now fading into a mute royal flush of mossy grays, was an evening sky ablaze in orange and gold. The sun's fiery disc hovered just above the landscape, while a spray of altostratus clouds crested up symphonically from the horizon, irradiated from below, edged in mauves that melted into a background of out-dazzled sky blue. It was a scene worthy of one of the noble Hudson River School painters whom Peter had learned to love as a child—Thomas Cole, Frederic Church, John Kensett, and the like: nature's picturesque majesty prompting the contemplation of Wilderness from the edge of Civilization; the quest for the Sublime, by way of the Beautiful. Only this was no painting. And the real thing, as viewed from Jonathan's terrace, came with its own sound score: a profound yet buoyant silence that might be composed of a thousand harmonized echoes of a thousand winds swirling in the valleys surrounding them.

“We're lucky it's clear tonight,” said Jonathan. “You're getting a good show. I love this view. It's a view of time immemorial.”

“Hmm,” said Will.

“If you look the right way, you can see both the glacial and the instantaneous,” said Jonathan. “And everything in between.”

“OK,” said Peter.

“I'm shutting up,” said Jonathan.

Aldebar brought out a tray of three cognacs, and no one made a fuss when he withdrew.

“This is truly a precious spot,” said Peter.

“You like?” said Jonathan. “This is what I came up here for. Chelsea wasn't really home. This is.”

They toasted silently and relaxed back into the terrace furniture's thick striped cushions.

“Getting rid of the apartment must have been hard,” said Will.

“Not really,” said Jonathan. “Parting with the paintings and the real estate was a cinch. They're only things. Now someone else will get to love them. Same with the furniture. I was only in a line of people meant to own and love and protect these things. And, God knows, the things themselves will continue to demand the protection they need—right? That's what price tags are for. But ya know what I worry about? Things like the rocks I found on the beach at Fire Island. I have one that looks like an emerald when it's wet; and a perfectly round black one, like a big black pearl; and one that's shaped like the head of a Cycladic statue, that I brought back to Roberto when we were dating. I still have that rock upstairs, next to a real Cycladic head. What happens to that, after I'm gone? Does it go back to just being a rock again? After all the meaning it's accrued, the privilege it's enjoyed—it gets forgotten or overlooked when the so-called important stuff gets divided up? There's no museum for cute rocks.”

Neither Peter nor Will could think of anything to say.

“Don't worry,” said Jonathan. “The rock is in the will, too. My leaving it to someone will probably keep it special for another thirty, forty years.”

More silence.

“Sunsets always make me feel unworthy,” said Peter. “Like, can I enjoy this
enough?
Can I be present for this sublime thing
enough?
”

Will giggled, and Peter went on.

“Harold and I timed our trip to India—this was during the eighties—so we'd be at the Taj Mahal during the full moon. People do that. And we must have visited the place, oh, five or six times over the course of, whatever, four days and three nights in Agra. Trying to drink it in. One night, we even made love in the garden there—well, we jerked off, kissing, on one of the marble benches.”

Jonathan snorted.

“No one was around,” said Peter. “You could do that then. It was just this big public garden, barely well kept, and there were maybe six other people in these acres and acres of garden, and this glorious mirage of a Taj Mahal, floating right over
there
. . . .”

“So sweet,” said Will.

“He wrote about it for the
Times
—well, except for the jerking off. We used to call it ‘our night in the garden of love.' ”

“Have you gone back?” asked Jonathan.

“No,” said Peter.

“Oh, darling, you must! Going back to places like that is the point.”

“Well . . . I don't know. Maybe. I hope so.”

“We used to joke about Venice that way, remember? You only went the first time so you could start returning there, and returning and returning. . . .”

Will was about to ask Jonathan if he had ever been to the Taj Mahal, then thought better of it.

The bottom third of the sun's disc was now melting into the horizon. There was no sinking motion to see, even if you stared at it constantly. Yet second after second, at the moment you became aware of registering no motion, you saw the result of motion and the disc was lower! Soon it was gone, and from below the horizon the sun now fueled a further explosion of color: clouds of molten copper edged in iridescent mauve, shot with radioactive purples and pinks.

They talked for another hour or so, as the sky faded, about Indian Point and nuclear power and the sustainability of civilization. Aldebar lighted lanterns and poured another round of cognac. And then it began to feel cold.

“It's gotta be an early night for me,” said Peter.

“Oh, me too,” said Will.