The Painting of Porcupine City (40 page)

“That’s nice of her,” he said.

“But I’m thinking I want to help Jamar out with him, you know?” “Do you, though? Have you seen my shirt?”

“I think it went over the railing. But I’m afraid to make any significant motions toward that because, like, I don’t want Jamar to freak out. I don’t want him to think I’m trying to move in on him. On his kid. Because I fully support the idea that Caleb is his. That’s what the birth certificate says and that’s good enough for me.”

“Cara’s journal says otherwise.”

“Which is why I want to help him out. I want to be there. I feel some responsibility.”

“You didn’t ask for the responsibility,” Mike said. “You didn’t ask her to do what she did. It was a huge violation, if you think about it.” He gave up sorting our clothes and dropped back onto the mattress. All he had on was his glasses; he pushed them up on his nose. “Actually, if you’re inclined to see it a certain way, it was pretty much the biggest violation one human can commit against another human. Creating a person’s offspring without their consent, even if it was accidental.”

I looked at him. And at the ceiling. “Well I’m not inclined to see it as a violation.”

“No. Of course not. I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK, I just— I mean, it’s not like I’m going to get a lot of other opportunities, you know?” I slid my hand under him and squeezed his butt. “As much as I like these.”

He grinned.

“I’ve never really had a family,” I went on, “and I don’t think I want one. But if I get all writerly on myself— If I look at the narrative of my character or whatever, sometimes I think every single thing I’ve ever done, since the time I was a kid, was basically an attempt to get one.”

“A family?”

“Whether it was boyfriends, whatever. I moved in with Cara so fast her head spun.”

“Well, maybe here’s your chance. But it’s quite a commitment. You can’t do it half-assed.”

“No.”

“As for telling Jamar, you just have to tell him. Something tells me he’ll be glad. He trusts you, or else he wouldn’t have told you about the journal in the first place.”

“You’re right.”

“Of course I’m right. I didn’t get to level 95 by being a dumbass.”

“Touché.”

“Oh Warcraft,” he moaned. “Fucking Lent! Why did I
do
that?” He kicked his heels against the mattress. Then he reached out and traced his finger around my groin. “Hey,” he said, “what do you think about going again?”

Jamar and I were sitting

on the couch later that night watching Conan and he had his feet up on the coffee table. Caleb was wedged into the nook between his thighs, chilling there in the Jamar-hammock.

“So I was with Mike after work,” I told him during a commercial.

“He graduate yet?”

“Soon. Next month. And anyway—and don’t laugh—he was giving me some parenting advice.”

“Your sex buddy, who can only recently order a beer, was giving you parenting advice?” But he said it with a smirk.

“He’s a pretty smart guy. And a pretty cute guy. Really I wonder what he’s been doing with me for the past two years.”

“You should’ve gotten together.”

“He has another love.”

“Don’t you all.”

I waited a full commercial length before I went on. “He, uh, promised me that when I tell you—
ahem
—that I want to help you take care of Caleb, fifty-fifty, you won’t worry that I’m trying to usurp you.”

Jamar wiped some drool off Caleb’s chin with his thumb and then cleaned his thumb on Caleb’s sock. “He told you that, did he?”

“Yeah, he did. Did you just wipe your hands on your kid’s clothes?”

“Socks aren’t clothes, socks are napkins on your feet.”

“Ha!”

“Mike sounds like a pretty smart guy.”

“Told you.”

“You feel that way, huh? About us going fifty-fifty on this guy?”

“I mean, I don’t know anything about raising a kid. You seem to know so much already. But I figure, when he’s hungry I can feed him. You know? When he’s got shit on him I can clean it off. When he needs to go to the doctor I can drive him there. When he’s bored I can wiggle toy animals at him or whatever. I can teach him proper grammar. I can do what needs to be done. And beyond that, maybe the big picture will just take care of itself. Or is that just totally wrong?”

“No, Bradford, I think that sounds about right.”

“But, big picture, I’m against using socks as napkins.”

He laughed and bumped his head back against the cushion. “Actually, Bradford, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want the big picture to be. But I didn’t want to say anything until you said something first. And I’m glad you did.”

“OK.”

He was quiet a minute and then he grabbed the remote and turned the TV volume not down, but up. “OK, I’m just going to come right out and say this.” And then he said, “I think we should get married.”

“
What?!
”

“Fucking-hell, Bradford, you’ll wake him up.”

“OK. I get it. You’re joking.”

“Partly. Only because I’m afraid to be serious.”

“I’m confused.”

“We share a son. We should be married.” His tone was very matter of fact. “It’s no more complicated than that.”

I stared at him blankly. I had always assumed that when Cara found out she was pregnant, she pushed the idea of marriage. Now I realized it must’ve been him.

“Jamar, I know you have a conservative streak in you a secret mile wide, but I’m not marrying you.”

“It’s the biggest commitment I can make to you and I want to make it. As proof.”

“Proof of
what?
”

“I don’t
know
.” He crossed his arms and looked at Caleb. “Here’s how I want this to go. You’re my best friend. You’re also the biological father of my son, as admittedly insane in the membrane as that sounds. OK?”

“...OK.”

“Here’s how I want this to go.”

This had taken a turn for the ridiculous and I no longer felt quite so threatened by the M word. It would be like getting hung up on your fear of heights if someone told you he could help you grow wings.

“I have a good job,” he said. “I make pretty good money. And there’s the life insurance money too. You have kind of a shitty job—no offense—which you don’t even like. What you’re best at, you can’t devote the proper time to. You should be writing. Full time. Do you disagree?”

“Well no, not in theory. But I reserve the right to.” I imagined this was what he was like at work, pitching an ad campaign to a skeptical client. All he was missing was some kind of visual aid. Or maybe the visual aid was right here, sleeping in his lap.

“You quit your job,” he went on, “I pay the rent, et cetera.”

“
Et cetera?
”

“You stay home during the day.”

“Jamar!” I laughed. “You want me to be a kept boy?”

“Fuck, Bradford! Christ! What you’ll be—what you
can
be—is a stay-at-home dad.”

On the face of it that sounded to me much worse than being a kept boy. I started laughing. This definitely had taken a turn for the ridiculous. Flap flap with those new wings.

“Jamar, does a stay-at-home dad go out sleeping with a college boy in the off-hours? Does a stay-at-home dad, from time to time, sneak out with a can of spraypaint and commit random acts of vandalism?”

“You still do that?”

“Sometimes.”

“Hmm.” But then he did something that made my breath stop and my future, until now so uncertain, smooth out as though he had fixed the rabbit-ears on an old, staticky TV: he slowly raised his shoulders, and with them went his eyebrows and the corner of his mouth; a dark wrinkle appeared in the corner of his eye. It was a gesture that said—reluctantly, but it said:
Why not?

He patted the couch cushion like a judge calling for order, though I hadn’t made any noise and was in fact speechless. “If you’ll think about it you’ll see it’s completely logical.”

Still I stared.

“See, during the day, you look after Caleb. You know how much he sleeps. You’ll have so much time to work on your books.”

“He sleeps a lot
now
. What happens when he’s like two and crawling all over the place 24/7?”

“Bradford—” He sighed. It was the first hole.

“Go on,” I said, though. “I’m listening.”

He regrouped and came slamming back with more enthusiasm than before. “I’m home by 5:30. The evenings will be yours. You can go out and slip it to Mike or whoever as often as you please. You won’t have to stay home and write because you’ll have done it during the day. And I’ll be with Caleb.”

“Everything you’ve suggested,” I said, “seems part of its own complete puzzle. I don’t see where marriage enters into it.”

“The reason we should get—hitched—is so you’ll trust me. So you can do this with confidence. It’s my promise to you. It’s to prove I’m not going anywhere.”

“Jamar, I don’t think you’re going—”

“
And
for purely legal stuff like getting you on my health insurance.” He looked at me for a minute, waiting. “Bradford, it could be good. You know it could.”

“You sound like you’re trying to line up a nanny.”

“Bradford—” He looked at me deadly serious, and hurt. “I’m trying to line up a family.”

I felt my throat tighten. Something within me fluttered.

“But what happens,” I said, “when you find a girl you want to be with? I know that’s not something you want to think about now, and it probably won’t be for a while, but you’re a young guy and it’s going to happen eventually. And you’re already going to be married to your college roommate slash baby-daddy?”

He sighed. “So we put an expiration date on it.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. How long do you think? What would you be looking for?”

“I don’t know. Until he starts school?”

He smiled. “Pre-school or kindergarten?”

“When do they start kindergarten? Six?”

“Five, I think.”

“Kindergarten, I guess.”

“Five years.”

“And then what?” I said. “We get divorced?”

“I guess so.”

“How do you think that would make him feel?” I said, nodding down at the kid sleeping in Jamar’s leg-hammock. “Wouldn’t it be as unsettling for him as if we’d really been together? It would require the same explanations and the same reassurances about the family not breaking up. No. We can’t make a family with an expiration date on it, Jamar.”

“So we eliminate the expiration. We make it permanent.”

I flopped against the other arm of the couch and picked up the remote, lowered the volume. I still didn’t know why he’d turned it up—perhaps to keep his weird proposal from echoing. I looked at him. He was fixing Caleb’s sock.

“You’re scared, aren’t you, Jamar?”

“I’m not
not
scared.”

“You don’t want to screw him up.”

“No. That’s something I definitely don’t want to do.”

“Neither do I. So. You really think this is the best thing for him?”

He nodded.

“And you think Cara would want this?”

“Don’t you?”

We were quiet for a while and then I said, “Let me think on it, huh?”

“Yeah, Bradford. Yeah. Take your time.”

I got up and went in my room, closed the door, feeling, for the first time, guilty about leaving Caleb with Jamar every night.

I took off my clothes and got into bed, but I couldn’t fall asleep. The question on my mind was not whether I would marry Jamar—it seemed to me very clear already that I would do that. The question was what to do about Mateo. A story, Mateo and I had both agreed, did not have to be factual to be true. Cara’s journal entry told a story, and that story, though unfactual, was true. And the truth of it was this: Cara’s love for me resulted in Caleb.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes.

Boston City Hall is widely

recognized as the ugliest building on planet Earth. It’s a massive, labyrinthine structure made entirely of concrete, even the offices and hallways inside. It resembles a cross between an M.C. Escher painting and a parking garage someone slapped local government into. Down into the bowels of this building we descended via narrow escalator—Jamar, Caleb and I—and we got at the end of the line at the Registry Division.

It was a place I never expected to be and Jamar never expected to be again. Three other couples, three opposite-sex pairs, were ahead of us, waiting for marriage licenses.

Jamar was fidgeting. Whenever I looked at him he was looking at Caleb, who squirmed in the kid-pack that hung on Jamar’s chest.

“You OK?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“If only Cara could see this, huh?”

He smiled.

Before long we were second. The first couple in line, having filled out their paperwork and raised their right hands, smiled big, over-welcoming smiles at us and at the little boy on their way out.

“They want to show they’re cool with the—same-sexers,” I whispered to Jamar when they’d passed—careful, for his sake, not to call us gay.

“Huh?”

I realized he hadn’t even noticed them. “The big smiles? You must get the white people who’re overly friendly to show they’re not racist, right? Gays get the same thing from people who want to make sure we don’t think they’re homophobes.”

Jamar looked back at the people going up the escalator and then glanced at the window ahead of us. “Oh. Yeah.”

“We don’t have to do this,” I told him.

“I know, Bradford. I want to. I promised.”

Still, he was looking ashy. I looked down at his hand, which was cupping Caleb’s butt under the kid-pack, and saw it shaking—and I noticed for the first time that he was still wearing his wedding ring, the one Cara had given him beneath the apple tree last September. That was when I knew for sure this shouldn’t be done. Since the partnership of Bradford & Andrews would never involve sex or romance or many of the other things that knit a marriage, it would have to depend even more on the things all good partnerships share: loyalty, compassion, the occasional willingness to take a bullet for the other person. I’d been willing to walk up to that window for Jamar—more than willing, I
wanted
to—but I was willing to walk away from it for him too. To be the one to bail.