Where The Boys Are (37 page)

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Authors: William J. Mann

BOOK: Where The Boys Are
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“No. I’m a journalist. I want to write about your son.”
“About Robbie? Did you know him?”
I tell her no.
“Did you?” she asks Lloyd.
“I wish I had,” he answers.
“Ma’am,” I interrupt, figuring I might as well get to the point of why I’m here, “I’m wondering if you knew his friend, Anthony Sabe.”
“Robbie liked to do landscaping,” she says, oblivious to my question. “He did that path there. Behind you.”
I look again. “It’s very nice.”
“Anthony helped him,” she says. My ears perk up and I exchange looks with Lloyd. “They had all the designers in here. He put in that pond, too. We have real fish in there. Japanese koi.”
She looks over at Gloria, seeming pleased at herself that she’d remembered the name.
I lean forward in my chair. “Did you say Anthony helped him, ma’am? Did Anthony do landscaping, too?”
The old woman’s shoulders seem to slouch. “He was a nice boy, Anthony,” she says quietly.
“I’ve met him, Mrs. Riley. I know Anthony Sabe.”
She smiles. “You know Anthony? Oh, where is he? Is he in Hartford?”
“No, ma’am. He lives in Boston now.”
She seems to consider something. “Okay. Then you tell him something from me. Will you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Tell him I’m sorry. Will you tell him that for me?”
I pause. “Sorry, ma’am?” I ask. “Sorry for what?”
She touches her face. Her voice seems far away. “What is your name again?” she asks.
“Jeff. Jeffrey O’Brien.”
“
O’Brien
,” she says, listening to the name as she says it. “Oh, a good Irish name. My maiden name was Fitzgibbons and I married a Riley. Good, solid Irish names.” She’s smiling, but the expression gradually fades. “It was a Murphy that killed him, though. An Irishman. That made it worse, even. You know?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Did you know Robbie?” she asks again.
I smile wanly. “No, ma’am, I didn’t.”
“I miss him so,” she says softly.
I look over at Lloyd. There’s a tear falling from his right eye.
Mrs. Riley lets out a long sigh and sits back in her chair, as if suddenly very weary.
Gloria Santacroce walks up behind her chair. “I think she just gets frustrated.” She smiles sadly. “I think the thoughts are there but sometimes they just get jumbled up in her head.”
“I won’t trouble her anymore,” I say, standing up. I extend my hand to the old woman.
“Thank you, Mrs. Riley. I appreciate your taking the time to see me.”
She doesn’t take my hand. Nor does she respond to Lloyd’s attempt to say good-bye. She just sits there staring straight ahead into the garden her son designed for her.
And Anthony helped to build.
Gloria Santacroce closes the door to the sunroom behind us. “I’m sorry she couldn’t be more of a help to you,” she says. “Who is the article for?”
“I’m not sure yet. Maybe
The Boston Globe
. Maybe something here in Connecticut.” I look at her, a last glimmer of hope rising in my chest. “Maybe you remember something about him?”
She shakes her head. “I wasn’t with Mrs. Riley then. I never knew Robbie. I feel as if I do now, though, because of all the pictures.” She gestures around. There sure are enough of them: Robbie as a Little Leaguer, Robbie receiving First Communion, Robbie winning some award, Robbie as the corporate hotshot posing with Lowell Weicker. “She’s always talking about Robbie. It’s as if he’s still with us.”
“I suppose he is, then,” Lloyd says.
She smiles. “I know the state prosecutor’s office contacted us last year about something to do with the case. But of course, Mrs. Riley wasn’t able to talk to him.”
I sigh. “I wish I knew what she meant by asking me to tell Anthony Sabe she was sorry.”
Gloria Santacroce sighs. “I presume he was the roommate.” She looks back sadly through the glass at the old woman in her chair. “Robbie’s lover.”
“I . . . uh ... yes, he was his roommate. But he was only a teenager then . . .”
Gloria shrugs. “All I know is that she felt guilty for a long time. She didn’t let Robbie’s lover come to the funeral. She wasn’t comfortable back then with her son’s homosexuality. I’m not sure how they dealt with it. I guess like many families, they just didn’t talk about it. Oh, the lover may have come with Robbie to work on the garden, but she wasn’t comfortable enough to let him share her grief.”
“I see...”
Gloria isn’t finished, however. “But I think that the nature of Robbie’s death forced her to finally accept him for what he was.” She gestures with her hand. “Come here. Look at this.”
She leads us a little way down the hall and flicks on the light. There, hanging on the wall, is a plaque. Both Lloyd and I step closer to read it.
TO MILDRED “MILLIE” RILEY
WITH OUR GRATITUDE AND LOVE FOR YOUR
YEARS OF DEDICATION
THE HARTFORD COUNTY CHAPTER OF
PARENTS AND FRIENDS OF LESBIANS AND GAYS
JUNE 1, 1997
“Clearly, her attitude changed,” Gloria says, smiling broadly. “And I think she must have carried around with her a lot of regret for how she’d treated her son’s lover.”
I look at Lloyd, then back at the plaque.
For your years of dedication.
“If you do know him,” Gloria asks, “will you make sure you give him her message? Will you tell him that she’s sorry?” I turn my gaze to look once more through the glass doors of the sunroom at the old woman sitting there, alone and confused.
“Yes,” I promise Gloria Santacroce. “I’ll tell him.”
The Next Day, 84th Street at Eighth Avenue, New York
Lloyd
S
o immersed have I become in solving Jeff’s mystery that I’ve practically forgotten my own. But as we step out of the cab, suddenly assaulted by the honking, bleating sounds of Manhattan, it’s Eva who’s once again front row and center in my mind.
No, I haven’t yet confronted her about what I suspect. The missing E-mails, the manipulations, locking me in my room. What, do you think I’m
crazy
? Do you think I’d
willingly
precipitate another episode? What would she do
this
time—jump off the pier? Set fire to the house? If she’s indeed personality-disordered, I have to approach this correctly. And to do that, I need to talk with Ty first. I need advice. I need facts.
“Of
course
, Lloyd,” Ty said on the phone when I called last night. “Come by my office. What do you want to talk about?”
“I think you have a pretty good idea,” I told him.
“Ah.” I heard him take in a long breath. “Yes, I think I do.”
It’s raining slightly as Jeff and I start walking up the block. I check the address Ty gave me again. It’s just a few more doors down.
Jeff looks over at me. “As much as I’m glad Ty’s talking with you,” he says, “I wonder if he’s heard of a little thing called ‘attorney-client privilege’?”
I’ve thought of that, too. I’m not the only one who should have confidentiality concerns. But Ty assured me it wasn’t a problem.
“Ty was
Steven
’s lawyer,” I explain to Jeff, repeating how Ty explained it to me. “Most of the work he’s done with Eva has been in relation to Steven’s estate. Anything else he’s done has been pro bono, as a favor.” I sigh, suspecting some lawyers might still see some conflict of interest. “At least, that’s how he’s justifying talking to me.”
Jeff shrugs. “He must feel it’s important, whatever it is that he wants to share with you.” He smirks. “Either that, or
he
’s in love with you, too.”
I smile.
I pop open the umbrella. The gray, dreary sky overhead and the unusually low temperatures we’ve been enduring are enough to make late July feel like early April. This has not been an easy trip: the trauma over Brent, the meeting with the old lady, this snooping into Eva’s past. I’ve had a knot in my stomach for two whole days, and a dull headache that repeated doses of Tylenol have failed to touch.
But you know what? No matter how unnerved I am, no matter how unsettled, all of it pales beside the joy of being with Jeff. So many months we’ve been apart, and now here we are, shoulder to shoulder, like Holmes and Watson, Batman and Robin, Scarecrow and Mrs. King—and it feels good.
Very
good. Last night we slept together at Jeff’s sister’s house, and we played with little Jeffy and rented a movie (
Now Voyager
) and made a pan of brownies and it was awesome. As if no time had passed for us at all.
And while I still feel some guilt about inquiring into Eva’s life without her full knowledge and consent, somehow the synchronicity with Jeff—who’s found himself in a similar position with a similar “third person” —only seems to convince me that I’m doing the right thing.
“Here we are,” I say, looking up at the side of the building.
Ty’s office is on the eleventh floor of an old brownstone, and we have to take one of those old-fashioned cage elevators to reach it. His is the first door after we step out of the elevator. On the frosted glass is printed in gold:
TYRONE POWER, ATTORNEY AT LAW
.
“His name is
Tyrone Power
?” Jeff asks.
“Yeah,” I say, looking at him strangely. “Why is your jaw on the floor?”
He laughs. “
Lloyd
. You lived with me for six years. Me, the film-buff freak. We watched
The Razor’s Edge
and
Nightmare Alley
together. I think we even watched the original
Zorro
.”
I still don’t get it.
“Tyrone Power!” Jeff exclaims. “Javitz used to cream all over him. Gorgeous, drop-dead, old-time Hollywood movie star. And a closet queen, to boot.”
“Oh,
right,
” I say. “
Tyrone Power
.”
Jeff’s dumbstruck. “The name never registered?”
I smile shamefacedly. “I knew I’d heard it before somewhere.”
“What’s
become
of you?” Jeff laments dramatically.
I kiss him briefly. “See what happens when we lose touch?”
We step through the door. A red-haired woman with long pepper-shaped earrings looks up at us from her desk.
“Hello,” I say. “I’m Lloyd Griffith and I have an appointment with Tyrone Power.”
I hear Jeff chuckle under his breath.
“Just a moment,” the receptionist says. “Let me check....”
The door to Ty’s inner office suddenly opens and he comes bounding out, his arms outstretched. “Lloyd!” he says. “I thought I heard your voice!”
Then he notices Jeff. He stops in his tracks, his grin fading a little, some of his enthusiasm tapered down.
“You remember Jeff?” I ask. “From the opening party?”
Jeff extends his hand. “Actually, we didn’t get a chance to officially meet.”
I watch Ty’s expression as he shakes Jeff’s hand. It strikes me that maybe he was hoping for a little—something—during my visit. “Nice to meet you, Jeff,” he says cordially, if far less effusively than he’d greeted me. He gestures toward his office and turns to the receptionist.
“Dayna, hold all my calls.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jeff pulls close to me as we walk into the room. “You slept with him, didn’t you?” he whispers.
“Shh.”
“Okay. I get it. He
is
in love with you. Surprise, surprise.” He chuckles under his breath. “You slept with
Tyrone Power
.”
Ty’s office is small but well appointed: soft tan leather chairs, an imposing desk, an oil portrait of himself on the wall. “Brandy?” he offers, holding up a decanter.
We decline. He settles himself behind his desk, folding his hands together. An amethyst ring on his finger catches the overhead light. We make some small talk for a couple of minutes, about how rainy it’s been this summer. Then I sit forward in my chair.
“Ty, I came down to talk to you about Eva.”
“Yes,” he says. “I presumed you had.” He looks pointedly at Jeff.
“It’s okay,” I assure him. “Jeff’s just here to support me.”
Jeff nods. “I understand everything you say is confidential.”
Ty leans back in his chair and brings his fingertips together. “Well, I suppose this visit is evidence enough that things have reached a breaking point.”
I sigh. “You were right, Ty. There are things I need to understand, things I probably should have known about before getting invested in this business with her.” I pause, not sure how to proceed, or even what I hope to get from this meeting with him. “I need some advice. I’m worried about the long-term stability of the business.”
Ty looks at me seriously. “What happened, Lloyd?”
I hesitate. I look over at Jeff, who nods for me to continue. “She locked me in my room. For several hours. She claimed she didn’t, but—”
“Dear God.” Ty leans forward across his desk. “What if there’d been a fire? Or you were sick?”
I run a hand over the top of my head. “Precisely. It was the last straw.” I look at him imploringly. “Tell me what you know, Ty. I need to hear it.”
He stands, pouring himself some brandy. “Sure you don’t want any?” he asks again.
“On second thought, why not?” Jeff says, smiling a little.
I shrug and accept some myself.
“Look, Lloyd,” Ty says, sitting down now on the edge of his desk, “let me tell you what I know about her relationship with Steven. It wasn’t—well, it wasn’t what she presents it to be.”
I sip the brandy. Apricot. It tastes warm and good. “What do you mean?” I ask.
He looks at me directly. “Steven and I were lovers.”
I exchange looks again with Jeff.
“I met him when I was just coming out,” Ty continues. “At the famous St. Marks Baths. It was 1983. I was just out of law school, and Steven seemed the most sophisticated man in the world to me. He took me
everywhere
: the opera, the ballet, A
Chorus Line
. Not for six months did he admit he was married. But he insisted that he was in love with
me
.” Ty pauses. “He was planning on divorcing her, he said.”
I sit forward in my chair. “He
was
? But Eva has said, many times, that even though he was gay, Steven remained in love with
her
. . . .”
Ty takes a sip of brandy. “Maybe she’s convinced herself that that’s the case. But I was there, Lloyd. I saw how they interacted. Steven never gave her any reason to think that. At times he was openly hostile toward her.” He smiles. “Remember, she thought I was in love with her, too, didn’t she?”
“Yes.” I struggle to adjust my image of Eva’s marriage. “So why didn’t he divorce her, then?”
Ty lifts his eyebrows as he looks at me, as if the answer were plain. “She threatened to kill herself.”
I swallow hard.
“So they came up with an arrangement,” Ty continues. “He had his life, and she, at least in theory, had hers.” He reaches behind him on his desk and turns a framed photograph around to face us. “I look at us every day. Not a day goes by when I don’t remember.”
Both Jeff and I move in closer to peer at the photo. Ty is sitting on a couch with a man I recognize as Steven. They’re holding hands. Two other men stand behind the couch, their arms around each other.
“From that picture, I’m the only one still alive.” Ty picks it up to gaze for a moment at the faces there, then replaces it so they can continue staring out at us. Four happy-faced men, obviously gay, vintage Reagan-era: handlebar mustaches, Izod shirts, upturned collars.
“The other two are Pedro and Scott,” Ty tells us. “We were all lovers, off and on, sometimes at the same time. It’s hard to describe exactly what we all were to each other.” He hesitates. “No definitions seem to do us justice.”
“I think we understand,” I say softly, looking over at Jeff.
Jeff smiles, lifting his brandy in a little salute to Ty. “You were a family,” he says plainly.
“That we were.” Ty’s voice is even and his eyes are dry, but the emotion is palpable just the same. “We were indeed a family, Jeff. For a time, I lived with Steven. We had our room; Eva had hers. I’d come and go every day. Sometimes we included Eva in on the dinners we cooked. Oh, they were fabulous. Five-course meals with Pedro and Scott and some of the other guys. Sometimes we even took her out with us to the movies or to a club. How she loved going out with us to gay bars, the way gay men always made a fuss over her.”
Jeff and I exchange a look.
“But as time went on, that happened less and less. Steven had spent many years married to her, and he could take only so much. He had to set limits. But she knew how to manipulate him. Sometimes she’d pretend to sprain her ankle so that we’d stay in with her, or make believe she was sleepwalking.”
My head spins. I set my brandy down on Ty’s desk and look up at him. “It’s all just such a different picture than she described. She’s told me how Steven would leave little gifts for her, hidden around the house.”
Ty laughs. “She’s got that reversed. She’d leave little trinkets for
him!
And it drove him crazy!” He shakes his head, pacing across the room suddenly. “
She
drove him crazy, Lloyd. She was always
there
, hovering in the background, even though they’d agreed to live separate lives. He would tell her she needed to find her own set of friends, but she never would. She’d just sit in the kitchen all alone as a bunch of us were in the living room watching
All About Eve
or whatever.” He smiles sadly. “Sometimes I’d feel bad and invite her in to join us, even though Steven would give me the evil eye.”
“Poor lady,” Jeff says, but I can definitely relate to Steven’s reaction. Definitely.
Ty settles back down at his desk. “That’s when she started doing the Mae West thing. My heart just broke for her, and I encouraged her in it. For a while all the guys thought it was a hoot, and how she loved their applause. But after a while, Steven just couldn’t take it anymore. She was always trying to find a way into our group, a way to stay in his life. She just wouldn’t accept the fact that Steven had moved on, that their marriage was over.”
“So why
didn’t
Steven move out, make a clean break?” I asked. “Was he really so trapped by her threats?”
Ty smiles wanly. “He and I spoke often of buying a place in Westchester with Pedro and Scott, getting out of the city. Away from Eva. But she held
on
. Divorcing her would have been hell. Even if she didn’t kill herself, she never would have let him go easily.”

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