The Lost Language of Cranes (23 page)

T
HE NIGHT AFTER
Philip told them, Rose kept dreaming that she was keeping a vigil outside a hospital room. After she woke up, though, she couldn't remember who was inside the door, dying—only the hazy yellow hospital light at the edge of things, and a child wandering the halls, clutching the decapitated head of a doll. How strange that child looked; she held the smiling, glassy-eyed head by the hair, like Judith with the head of Holofernes. When Rose asked the mother—no face, no hair, just the idea of mother—what happened to the rest of the doll, the mother hissed. "Be quiet. Don't mention it," the mother whispered, "or she'll cry and cry. She'll start crying and she'll never stop."

"Who was the person who was dying? Who was I waiting for?" Rose asked Owen the next morning, when there seemed nothing better to do than talk about dreams. It was drizzly outside their window, and though neither had slept much, they were filled with giddy energy simply from their relief at having made it through the night.

"It was me," Owen said. His eyes were wide and red this morning. "That's obvious."

"And the child?" Rose asked, taking a sip from her coffee cup. "The child?"

"Again, obvious," said Owen, who seemed to have all the answers. "It was Philip."

Into the dark, regular calm of their weeknight life Philip had come, unannounced. "We're watching 'The Jewel and the Crown,'" Rose said. "It's almost over."

"Dad's here?" Philip asked.

"Yes. Be quiet, something important's happening."

He looked at the floor. "Well, I guess there's no getting around it now," he said softly.

Rose was too eager to get back to the television to hear him, or at least, to extract the sense from what he said. He sat with them until the program was over. "Another week," she said. "Will I be able to wait another week?"

Philip unceremoniously snapped off the television. There was a pop and a hiss as the picture shrunk to a tiny nugget of light before disappearing. Rose and Owen looked at him oddly, wondering what had compelled him to turn it off. Then the room filled with an almost tangible silence.

"I have something to say to you," Philip said. "It's very important."

Rose looked up at him, surprised at the seriousness of his tone. His face was blanched, his hands curled into fists. He still hadn't taken his coat off.

"Philip," she said, taking off her glasses. "What is it?"

Philip didn't say anything, just stood there, huffing; finally he took off his coat.

"Do you want to sit down?" Rose said.

"I'd rather stand."

More silence. "Philip," Rose said again. "Is something wrong? Tell us, honey."

"All right," he said. "Here goes." He looked away from them. "I've been meaning to tell you for a long time," he said, "and I haven't gotten around to it, because I guess I've been afraid—"

"Well," Rose said, "what?"

He closed his eyes. "I'm gay," he said. Then again, as if they hadn't heard: "I'm gay." He opened his eyes, looked at them, but their faces were blank. "Does this come as a shock to you? Are you surprised?"

His words ran together very fast. "This isn't something new. I've been out at work and to my friends for a long time now. Just not to you. I don't know why. I guess I've been scared of disappointing you. I wanted to wait until I felt my life was good enough so that I could show it to you and not be ashamed. I wanted to wait until I could show you that a homosexual life could be a good thing." He was suddenly crying a little. Rose kept blinking her eyes, as if she had been sitting in a dark room and the light had just gone on. Owen was hunched over, his shoulders tight in his white shirt, his hands kneading together between his knees. Philip went on talking—about political orthodoxy, personal choice, about the children's book writer Derek Moulthorp (but why?)—then suddenly stopped, took a tissue, and blew his nose.

It all went past Rose. Oh, she was not naïve. She knew homosexuals. There were a number of homosexuals in her office. But up until this moment she had thought about their lives as occasionally and as casually as she thought about the lives of the doormen in the building, whom she passed sometimes and wondered, Where do they live? Do they have families? Children? Now, suddenly, it was as if she had been thrown head-first into a distant, distasteful world about which she had little curiosity and toward which she felt a casual, unstated aversion. She blinked.

Does this mean, she wondered, that from now on, every time I read the word "homosexual" in a book, or hear it on the news, I will have to cover my ears?

She thought, suddenly, of AIDS and wanted to cover her ears.

Philip was talking, his eyes frantic, as if he were afraid to stop. "It's not just homosexuality," he was saying. "It's really a question of secrets. I know it must be a shock to you that so much of my life I've had to keep secret from you. I mean, I know all kids keep secrets from their parents. But usually those secrets don't make up such a huge part of their lives. Well, I decided it wasn't fair to any of us. No more secrets. No more." He was looking out the window now, at night traffic and stars. Suddenly he turned, looked at them in challenge, and said, "You know I kept pornography for years in that little suitcase, the one in my closet. I kept it hidden there. Did you know that?"

"No, I didn't," Rose said, taking up the challenge, and suddenly remembered how once she had caught a glimpse of something under his bed—a photograph of naked men, she now vividly remembered it—and had thought little of it, had thought, He must have found that in the garbage; one of his friends must have given it to him as a joke. The memory was vague, insubstantial, but it was the thing that shook her out of numbness. Why hadn't she noticed that detail? She of all people noticed the details.

"Well, now you know," Philip said. He seemed to be having difficulty swallowing. He stared at them, waiting for the worst. But Rose said nothing. Her face was a blank sheet of paper, her mouth closed up into a very small knot.

Then she stood up, her hands corded together, and walked in a small circle.

"Won't you say anything to me?" Philip said.

"I'm not sure what to say."

"Maybe—'I'm glad you told me.'"

"I'm not sure I'm glad you told me."

"You'd rather I'd kept it secret even longer?"

"We all have secrets, Philip. I have secrets, lots of secrets. Does that mean they should all be revealed?"

"Sometimes it's better to be honest."

"Better for whom?"

He was quiet a moment. "For all of us," he said.

"I wish I could be so sure," Rose said. She fingered a dying flower in a vase on top of the television. "But I am not a woman without prejudices," she said, then thought, Where did that line come from? She wondered for a moment if she had read it in one of her manuscripts.

"Well," she said, "it's too late now. What's said can't be unsaid."

"Do you think you can't love me anymore? Is that it?" Philip asked softly, from the corner chair in which he had taken refuge.

She looked at him, surprised. Why was he saying that? Then it hit her that of course her approval, her "love," was what this was really all about. To reassure him as a mother was supposed to, she saw then, she should march over to him and hug him, but the best she could manage was a bitter little laugh. "Oh, Philip, of course not," she said. "Nothing like that." She turned away. "This is just very new for us. It's something we haven't had to confront before. You've explained yourself very well, but you will—you will have to give us time. Right, Owen?"

From the corner, where he sat crumpled, Owen nodded.

"Time," Rose said. "We just need time. You're right—this is news."

She looked out the window at the night clouds, and rubbed her hands together.

"Mother," Philip said.

She didn't answer.

"Mother."

Still she didn't answer. She was close to crying herself.

"So you're not talking to me now, is that it?" Philip said. "Well, that really helps, Mom, let me tell you." Enraged, he clapped his hands together, marched in a furious little circle. "Don't just stand there like that, like I'm not here," he said. "You can't do that."

"Don't tell me what I can and can't do, young man," Rose threw back, turning suddenly. "For God's sake, it is not fair of you to expect me just to take this lightly. To come into my house, thinking you can tell me how to act—well you can't. You've sprung this on us, we didn't ask for it."

She turned around again, her arms tight around her chest.

Philip looked down at the floor. "I'm sorry," he said. "You're right. I'm overreacting."

He sat down, slumped, in the sofa next to his father. Their legs crossed in front of them, they stared blankly ahead of themselves like a pair of glassy-eyed husbands lost in a football game. There was a long silence. Then Philip said, "It's just that it was an ordeal for me to come to you with this. I mean, I've been waiting years now, worrying, wondering. Afraid you might not love me anymore." Rose looked away. He stood again, approached his mother from behind, put an arm on her shoulder. "I just didn't think it was fair for you not to know such an important thing about my life, Mom, for you to miss such an important part of my life."

Her shoulder flinched at the touch of his hand, and he removed it. She laughed, shook her head. "Philip," she said, "there are things I could tell you. Things I've never told a living soul."

"Tell them," Philip said.

"No."

"Why not? I'm prepared."

She turned, looked at Owen slumped on the sofa. "Because I don't believe that just because something's a secret it therefore by definition has to be revealed," Rose said. "Keeping certain secrets secret is important to—the general balance of life, the common utility."

"Maybe," Philip said. "Maybe some things. But why should this be a secret? What I'm saying is, imagine you had to keep your heterosexuality a secret. Never tell anyone when you met Dad that you were in love with him. Never be able to live with him and invite your parents to dinner. It would be hard. It wouldn't be fair."

Rose turned away. "It's not the same," she said.

"Why not?"

She was silent for a moment. Facing the window, she saw the onrushing cars streaming down Second Avenue. "I was raised in a different world from you," she said. "In my day, people cared about more than just self-gratification. There were more important things. You did without for the larger good. You had a family. Nowadays, everyone has to gratify whatever little desire comes into his head, no matter who it hurts. And I'm not just talking about you. I'm talking about everybody, all you young people, out for yourselves. I read the papers. I know what's going on."

"But, Mother," Philip said, "being gay isn't just—gratifying some urge. It's a matter of your life." He slapped his hands against his sides and looked toward the ceiling. "I mean, what do you want?" he asked. "That I should marry a woman I'm not the least bit sexually attracted to? who makes me feel nothing sexual, just anxiety because I'm feeling nothing sexual? Okay. Say I do. Maybe we
can
have sex once in a while, if I think about men while we're doing it. And maybe she won't notice when I stare at men in the street. But in the long run—think of the wear on that marriage. Is it fair to her, when she could be married to a man who really could love her sexually? And more important, would it be fair to me, when I could be with someone I did love sexually?" He shook his head. "If I were to wake up thirty years from now and look back and see I'd wasted my life—well, it would be awful. Because it's important, Mother. My sexuality, my attraction to men, is the most crucial, most elemental force in my life, and to deny it, to pretend it wasn't there because I was afraid of what people would think—that would be a tragedy."

"Most people," Rose said, "would consider a homosexual life a tragedy—the bars and all." She turned to face him. "What happens when you're my age? It's one thing to do what you want when you're young. But later. To be alone. No family."

"I don't intend to be alone," Philip said. "I intend to be with my lover. And anyway, gay people can have families too. More and more, gay men and lesbians are finding ways of having children, either through adoption—"

"And what kind of life would that be for a child?"

"A fine life," Philip said. "As I was telling you, Derek Moulthorp and his lover raised Eliot, the person I'm seeing now, and he's one of the happiest, most well-adjusted people I know."

Rose stared out the window. "I consider this a tragedy," she said. "I'm sorry, but that's the way it is." "The tragedy," Philip said, "is that you insist on making it into a tragedy. You're creating your own tragedy; I'm not. I just want to make that clear."

At that, Owen stood up from the sofa. He had been sitting quietly all this time, his hands tented over his temples, his eyes closed, listening. He looked at Rose and Philip, his lower lip trembling a little, as if he was about to speak some revelation. But the impulse passed. He put his hand on his head, and sat down again.

"Were you going to say something, Dad?" Philip asked.

"No, nothing," Owen said. "I don't feel so well all of a sudden. Will you excuse me?"

"Dad," Philip said. "You haven't said anything at all about this. Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I'm sorry, son. I mean—I'm sorry I haven't said anything. I think—I think it's o-kay." He pronounced the word oddly, drawing apart the two syllables and giving it great emphasis. "Yes," he said. "O-kay."

Then, suddenly, there were no more words.

"I should probably go," Philip said. "I need to get home." He walked to the closet and pulled out his coat.

"Are you healthy?" Rose said as he was putting it on. She turned to him, her eyes suddenly anguished.

He stopped in mid-sleeve. "Yes," he said. "As far as I know I'm totally healthy."

"I'm only asking," Rose said, "because I read the
Times,
I read those stories, and I—" Her voice broke. "I would hate to see you—"

He smiled, and put his hand on her shoulder. "Mom, don't worry," he said. "I'm fine. Anyway, I have no intention of ever taking any sexual risks. I'll be fine."