The White Stag (3 page)

A knock at the door interrupted us before I could answer.

Noah poked his head into the room. “Oh,” he said, “I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“You’re fine, Dad,” Jude said, winking at me.

“Oh good. Jude, can you come downstairs and help me with the sound equipment?”

“Sure.” Jude jumped up from the bed and followed his father out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

I looked at the door for a long moment and then it flew open again.

“Joshua, I’m not an atheist; you gotta get over this, man. We’d be so good together,” Jude said, his eyebrows wrinkled in mock seriousness. The door closed before I could respond.

I walked over to the window and watched the workmen stringing lights in the trees.

I came from a strict, conservative Christian background. My parents still lived almost exclusively in the embrace of the church and its members, living by the strict and morally parsimonious teachings of a Jesus I no longer knew. I had stepped away from that world and would never be welcomed back. Dana and I had escaped together, finding support and fellowship in a more egalitarian church in which homosexuality was accepted and in which women and men were seen as equals. It was one of the things that had kept the two of us together in spite of the physical distance between us. Until that day.

And so many things had happened since then. I had fallen into dark thoughts, doubts that kept me up at night, anxious, fitful, and afraid. And just when I had been at my darkest, this beautiful man had walked into my life. And his soul had shone from those mismatched eyes like a lighthouse guiding me away from the rocks. Just watching him with his friends, his family, hell, even his animals, you could see the sense of balance and well-being that emanated from him, even in the face of his fathomless grief over the loss of Brian. JoAnn sometimes jokingly called him Bodhisattva or P.K. for philosopher king, saying it was a damn fine thing for him to postpone his own apotheosis to try to lift up a couple of fucked up sinners like the two of us. I loved JoAnn in part because she was funny and fearless. She too grew up in a strict church against which she rebelled, eventually creating her own hybrid system of beliefs in which she melds Christianity, Buddhism, western philosophy and bad ’60s sitcoms. In times of crisis, she is as likely to quote Samantha Stevens as the Buddha or Thomas Aquinas.

I touched my fingertips to the old window, letting the cool outside air seep through the porous glass. If I could love someone like JoAnn, whose beliefs were so very different from my own, why couldn’t I let myself love Jude?

A knock on the door yanked me out of my reverie. I dropped my fingers away from the cold glass and turned as Noah poked his head back into the room.

“Have you got a minute?” he asked, grinning.

“Of course.”

It was hard not to like Noah. He was an older, gentler version of Jude, thicker around the middle with wavy gray hair that made him look more like an aging hippie than the husband of a U.S. senator. He was wearing torn jeans and a Streisand Tour T-shirt.

He came into the room and shut the door behind him.

“Is the room okay?”

“Yes.”

I watched him look around the room, hands stuffed uncomfortably in the front pockets of his jeans.

“You have everything you need?” he asked.

“Yes.”
Where was this going?

He looked up at me for a moment and then grinned again. “Let me cut to the chase here, Joshua.”

I nodded.

“Jude doesn’t know I’m up here talking to you, but I wanted to come say that, well, gosh, it’s harder than I thought it would be,” he said, looking down at his feet and taking a deep breath. He looked into my eyes. “Are you in love with my son?”

I literally gasped at the directness of the question. I felt my cheeks redden.

“Oh, I see,” he said, smiling suddenly. “Here’s the thing, you see. He’s a special young man, and I know he would hate me for saying this, but he’s head over heels in love with you, and well, he’s been hurt before. And if you don’t have… I mean, if you’re really not interested in him, please just cut him loose. He told me about this whole religion thing—”

“
What?
” My voice was higher, less controlled than I’d intended.

“Well, we talk, sometimes.” He shrugs. “My family is a bit unconventional in some ways, and sometimes people mistake our eccentricities for faithlessness. Do you know what I mean, Joshua?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Am I scaring you?” he asked suddenly.

“A little,” I admitted, smiling nervously.

“This was a mistake, wasn’t it?” he said.

“No, I just….” My voice trailed off; I couldn’t think of a response.

We stood looking at each other in silence until Noah turned to leave.

“My father never would have done what you just did,” I said finally.

“That breaks my heart, Joshua,” Noah said, his hand on the doorknob. He looked back over his shoulder and said, “Believe, son. You gotta believe.”

*  *  *

When
I finally came downstairs, the party was in full swing.

Baal met me at the base of the stairs, nuzzling my hand with his cold, wet nose and rubbing happily against my pant legs. I bent down and scratched his long black neck, talking to him softly as I surveyed the room.

The decorations that night were truly stunning. The entire house seemed swathed in great battling washes of silver-white and midnight blue. Candles and blinking lights—inside and outside the house—twinkled like a thousand glittering constellations.

Above the tumbling sound of laughter and voices that filled the downstairs rooms, I could hear Noah singing and playing piano in the parlor. I took a glass of white wine from a silver tray held aloft by a black-clad server and made my way through the crush of people in the direction of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

A group of Noah’s choir students clustered around the piano taking turns at the microphone, making their way through the holiday canon. I circulated, chatting with some people from group, people I knew from town or from the university and some of the artists I had met at weekend parties here during the summer.

I approached a cute Goth couple who stood together near the bar. They were young and skinny, black-clad and cloaked in self-conscious nonchalance. The boy, Lenny, smoked a hand-rolled cigarette. The girl, whose name I could not remember, greeted me with a quick hug and asked under her sly, Goth bangs if I had “finally rejected the patriarchy and found the goddess.”

I laughed, looking nervously at her grinning boyfriend for an exit line. His eyes sparkled at my discomfort, but he said nothing.

“Well, you know how it is,” I offered.

“No,” she said. “How is it, exactly?”

“Damn,” I said, “that was supposed to be a deflecting line. How’s your painting going? Still working on the Madonnas?”

She laughed, slapped me on the shoulder, and told me about her series of heroin-chic Madonnas. Lenny smoked and smiled and nodded.

We talked for a while and then a woman from the Harn Museum passed by and the Goth girl excused herself to speak to her. Lenny looked at me with his dark, kohl-lined eyes and winked. We clinked glasses and, having nothing more to say to one another, we parted company. I wandered off in the direction of the buffet table.

I filled a plate and then drifted to the edges of the crowd, resting the plate of food against the towering marble mantle, watching the glittering crowd and taking in bits of the conversations around me.

“You look like you can use a refill.” Valor appeared beside me suddenly, two glasses of white wine in her hands. She handed me one.

She was wearing a glittering midnight blue gown. She had retired her trademark pearls for the evening and wore a simple pendant with a walnut-sized sapphire that rested just above the cleft of her breasts, pushed up and out by the tight dress. She was stunningly beautiful.

“Wow,” I said, taking the wine and staring at her in speechless wonder that turned quickly to mortification at the sight of her wry  smile.

“Such a charmer, young Joshua,” she said.

“I’m not so young,” I said.

“No. No, you’re not. I’m afraid that modifier was a favorite of my mother-in-law Elizabeth, and she was always better able to wield it than I. But it earned her such adoration from the boys in this house, I cannot help but try.” She smiled, her perfect lips sliding across her perfect teeth. She radiated poised authority. “So you’re enjoying the party, I trust?” she asked.

“Oh, yes, it’s beautiful,” I said. “You and Jude did an amazing job.”

“We make a good team,” she said, taking a sip of her wine. She left a vivid red lipstick print on the rim of the glass. “Don’t tell him I said that.”

“Why not?”

She laughed. “He likes to feel we are adversaries in all things. I suppose I provide him with a dramatic foil; Noah is too worshipful to provide Jude a useful counterpoint.” She stopped and looked at me speculatively, spinning the stem of her wineglass between her fingers, and then said, “I have had just wine enough to become indiscreet.”

“Uh oh,” I said, laughing.

“Uh oh, indeed, young Joshua. Answer me this: What exactly are your intentions with my son?”

“I, uh—well, I’m not sure, really.”

“There’s my blustering boy.” She laughed. “May I speak off the record?”

“Is any of this on the record?” I asked.

“A figure of speech,” she said. “Here’s another one, Joshua: You need to shit or get off the pot.”

“Mother, we’re on in ten,” a voice called from behind Valor.

Jude bounded up and started talking animatedly about the buffet and the wine and the stars outside over the prairie. Valor smiled, winked at me, and walked away, her laughter receding with her, high and crystalline in the momentary silence between songs.

“Your mother scares the shit out of me, Jude,” I said.

“She scares everybody,” he said, taking my hand in his and bringing the fingers to his lips. “I’ll protect you,” he whispered.

*  *  *

When
Jude rushed back to the makeshift stage, I made my way to the bar for another glass of wine and wandered through the crowd looking for a place to stand. I ended up next to the giant fireplace, leaning awkwardly against the columns that supported the mantel in order to see the microphone where Jude and his mother stood.

Senator Valor Balder took the microphone, first thanking everyone for coming and talking about the spirit of giving, especially in troubled times. She talked about the troops, the boys and girls in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere around the world. She spoke a few eloquent lines about the birth of the Savior that, though lovely and sincerely delivered, sounded scripted. She raised her glass. “To a merry Christmas and peace in the new year,” she said.

She introduced Jude, who stepped forward with a crystal toasting flute held inelegantly, almost absentmindedly between the fingers of his right hand. He wore a shimmering silver shirt, open at the throat and gathered at each cuff. The tight black pants and boots gave him an anachronistic, piratical look, but the swashbuckling air was offset by his absent movements and gently jokey manner.

He was so beautiful he took my breath away.

“Thank you all for coming tonight,” he said, holding the microphone, but looking down and to the side, lost in his own thoughts. “It’s been a while since we had guests here at the Prairie House, a little over two years since we lost Brian. I wondered for a while if we’d ever have another party out here, but… but for those of you who remember my grandmother Elizabeth, you will know that she would have demanded a return to the old ways. She also used to say that hope trumps grief, every single time. And so, here we are.” His hands moved in a comical flourish.

A few chuckles circled the room, and Jude looked up with that charming half-grin of his.

“My mother spoke eloquently about our Christian heritage, so I find myself the inadequate spokesman for my father’s people.” His eyes flicked in my direction, so swiftly, so unerringly, that I blushed, knowing he was aware of my exact whereabouts.

He smiled and continued his toast. “My grandmother was the kind of woman who sought hope and inspiration in the magic of the world around her, in the miracle of flowers blooming out of season, or a rabble of butterflies appearing from nowhere, or a white stag stepping majestically into a clearing. She knew how to read the signs of the world better than anyone I have ever known, and she used to tell me that no single religion could hope to contain the beautiful abundance of the natural world. For her, and for our family, the cycle of the world, the rebirth of the sun after the longest night of the year is a bountiful blessing and reason for celebration.”

He raised his glass. “So wherever we may seek the signs and symbols of our faith, let us raise a glass to the season of hope.”

A hundred glasses rose in response and a ripple of applause drowned out the first few chords of Noah playing “O Holy Night” on the piano. I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye and felt something softly tapping my shoulder.

I turned to find myself staring into the face of a sleek black cat with shimmering eyes and twitching whiskers. She stared at me pointedly, and I felt dizzy for a moment, the image of a crescent moon shining suddenly before my eyes. She touched me gently on my cheek with her paw and then leapt off the mantel and disappeared through an open French door into the night.

Without a thought, I put my empty wine glass down and followed her outside.

*  *  *

The
terrace and the great oaks that surrounded the far side of the clearing shimmered and twinkled with thousands of blue and white lights. The pool lights shone blue beneath a blanket of floating white flowers. The patio and the broad yard beyond were deserted; the gentle breeze off the distant prairie blew through metal chimes that clanged somewhere near the tree line.

I stepped out onto the slate and closed the door behind me, looking across at the black cat, sitting silently on a small stone bench on the far side of the pool. Her eyes glistened in the half-light. I walked around the pool, a strong but inarticulate compulsion driving me to follow her sleek black form.