Wishing on a Blue Star (55 page)

Connor raised his hand, and was appalled at how badly it shook and how it went flopping toward Jimmy’s face like a bruised and pale fish.  Jimmy took it in midair and pressed it against his face. 

“I’m sorry I’m leaving,” Connor said after a moment.

“You should be, you bastard!”  Jimmy snapped, and he wasn’t kidding, not even a little. “One man on the planet who can make me settle down and nest, and now you’re taking off without me? Real fucking bad form, I’m telling you.”  He wiped his nose on his sleeve, like a five-year-old, but Connor wasn’t going to give him shit about it.

“I keep…I keep dreaming of you, free,” he said painfully.

“I don’t want to be free,” Jimmy gasped, falling to his knees next to the bed.  “All I want is you.” 

Connor clenched that weak hand in Jimmy’s hair for a while as his lover cried, and fell asleep wishing for a dream, somehow, to fix this.

The little boy looked just like Jimmy, only at, about, six or seven—the age when the front teeth fell out, and were replaced with oddly-sized, oddly-spaced adult teeth. He had apple cheeks and sparkling brown eyes, and dimples and a divot in his chin. He came up to Connor and grinned, and then turned abruptly away, pattering on bare feet, his cut-offs a blur of darkness on his pale brown body. 

It was twilight, in a big field, and the boy was headed for an oak tree twenty yards off, and the tree was a dark void in the golden summer light, and tall, so tall.  There were flickering, crane-like shadows, and the echoes of older boys in the tree, and Connor felt a frisson of fear. 

“Wait!  Jimmy, wait!  Not alone!  Don’t go alone!”  Connor was running toward him, running, but his body wasn’t working, his hands were flopping, limp as fish, and his chest was pounding like surf.  The boy disappeared, swallowed by the tree, and a star arced across the sky above it.  The tree turned to gold for a moment, and was full of boys, all of them with hands extended toward the sky, trying to catch that brilliant star.

Connor took a step toward that tree, and another, but someone was holding his arm.  He almost jerked away, almost, because that boy was in the tree, and Connor was terrified for him. What if he caught that star?  He would be jerked out of this world, cast into the heavens, and what if they were cold?  But Connor looked, and stopped his motion because…

“Connor?  Sweetheart, are you still with us?”

Connor’s mom was still beautiful, even at sixty.  Connor wasn’t sure if she was actually beautiful right
now,
because his vision was dim, and his mother stood out like she was backlit, and she was fuzzy with nimbus.  She was beautiful, but more like a beautiful angel, and not like his beautiful mother with her tired warm eyes and lined, kindly face. 

“Sure, mom,” Connor said, feeling loopy.  “I was gonna go climb trees, but, yanno, decided to stay here instead.”

Celia nodded, and her cool hand on his sore one grounded him.  She still
looked
Gloriana-bright, but she
felt
right and human, here on sweating, struggling, harsh-breathed earth.  

“Well, Connor, you let me know when you’re up for climbing that tree.  I’ll be at the bottom, rooting you on.”

She used to do that for him.  She was terrified when he tried, though.  He remembered her pale, anxious face, and that over-tight smile, the one that said she was worried but didn’t want to say anything.  She’d worn that face when he climbed trees, or played Pop Warner, or when he’d come out in high school.  It was funny that she wore that frightened expression when he was in danger, but when he fell down and broke his wrist, or got a concussion, or someone spray-painted FAG across his locker, her face relaxed, and she looked like mom again.  It was like, once the worst had happened, she could deal with it, but the fear of it… the absolute fear—
that
was the worst part.

He wished he could see her face clearly.  He wanted the relaxed, “I can do this” mommy, not the terrified, “Don’t hurt my baby” mommy.  That one scared him, even when he was climbing the tree or playing Pop Warner or wearing his rainbow button during the day of silence.

“I’ll be fine,” he said, thinking of that kid, running off to climb that tree.  He was worried about that kid—he was
terrified
for that kid.  He needed to go check on him, back in the gold-lit twilight, but mom was here, and the house was a mess, and Jimmy was crying... “Mom, you gotta take care of Jimmy, okay?  He’s not ready to fly.”  Would Jimmy be in that tree?

“Jimmy’s going to be fine,” Jimmy said, but his voice sounded muffled, and he seemed to be standing in a dark corner.  The sky outside had lightened, become a glorious, dark, cosmic blue, and Connor stared at it, wondering when it would become licorice shadows and gold-spangled, dusty-taffy-shaped light. 

“Jimmy sounds sad,” Connor said, wanting more dreams.  Could he dream Jimmy dancing in the rain again?  Could he dream him shouting gleefully at the beach?  He couldn’t remember the shape of his cock or the sheen of his skin after sex, but maybe he could watch that terrible brightness of Jimmy’s spirit, shrieking, laughing, dancing at the elements and feel, maybe, that Jimmy would be all right.

“Jimmy’s going to be sad,” Jimmy murmured, coming out of the shadows.  “I’m sorry, Con—I know I made all sorts of promises about going on and celebrating your life and being strong, but… but I’m going to be sad.  But you gotta know that’s okay.  I wouldn’t be sad if you hadn’t become my wings, right?”

Jimmy had wings?  Jimmy was free? 

“‘Kay,” Connor nodded.  “Mom, remember when I used to climb trees?”

“Yeah, honey.  You loved them.  You would go up and hide—your father and I could never find you.  One night, right after your father died, you disappeared for hours—we called the police, the whole neighborhood was out there looking for you, and you know where you were?”

“In a tree,” Connor managed.  The words were harder to say.  Jimmy was free?  Their love had made Jimmy free?

“Yeah.”  There was something hot on the back of his hand, and Celia was holding it next to her face.  “You were in a tree.  You were huddling in there, shaking, and when we found you, you said you were reaching for Daddy in heaven, but he told you to stay behind.” 

Connor laughed, his brain looping.  “Jimmy and Connor, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g…”

The bed moved, the world swam, and Jimmy was on Connor’s other side.  His face was a blur of light against the pending darkness, and his lips were soft on Connor’s cracked, chapped lips.  “Best tree I ever perched in,” Jimmy said.  “Maybe your mom and I can hang here for a while, and you can go reach for heaven now, okay?”

Love you, I love you, I love you, I love you…
He thought it.  He thought it and tried to move his lips, but instead…

The little boy’s lips curved into a smile, and Connor was that little boy with the missing teeth and the apple cheeks and the crooked grin.  He waved madly at the white faces, lit by the sun with the darkness at his back, and then turned toward the dark tree, the shadows of the other boys flickering in shade-on-shade as they climbed.  His bare feet padded briskly in the dust, and the grass prickled his soles for a minute.  He had to chicken-foot it to the rough bark of the trunk. 

Trees always felt so good under his hands, so real.  This one was no different.  His knees scraped on the bark and his palms chafed up, became raw, and still he climbed.  The others were in the top of the tree, and he wanted to catch up with them. 

He got to the top, a magic branch holding him up as he stood to his waist in prickly, dusty-green leaves, and found he was alone.  Those other bodies, the isolated, childish voices had faded, and it was him, reaching for the endless velvet of a sky just before the last of the light faded. 

A star appeared, and another, and another, and then, just as the final gold ray was cut off at the curve of the horizon, a meteor streaked through the heavens, brilliant, burning silver, gold, and red, so close he thought he could catch it.

He extended his hand, higher, higher, here it comes, Jimmy, Jimmy, look—I’ll grab that star and go flying!  You want to come flying with me?  But Jimmy was a pale face on the ground, in the evening shadows, only his grief making him brilliant against the black. 

Jimmy would follow, he thought confidently.  Jimmy loved trees as much as he did. 

Connor extended his hand just a little more, his fingers taut and trembling as the star flew into it.  He shrieked and gasped and clutched it tight and swung his other arm high above his head.  It was so easy, the exertion was a joy, and he clenched the star in both his hands, and it burned, cold, so coldly bright, that he almost let go, but couldn’t. 

His feet lifted off of the magic branch, and he was lifted, lifted by that struggling star, and the cold began to burn through his limbs, through his lungs, and he laughed, because it tingled, and oh, God! He felt so alive as that star began to zoom, resuming its hectic course across the night sky. 

The wind flowed around his skin, balmy and sweet.  His lungs pulled in great gasps of laughter as the world disappeared in darkness behind him, and the gold glowing from the star in his hands opened up before his eyes. 

“Bye, Jimmy!  You can catch the next star!” 

It was supposed to be a celebration of Connor’s life—at least that’s what Connor had insisted upon when he’d written out that fucking will. 

“I want a party,” Connor had insisted.  “I want people so roaring drunk, they take pictures of each other to prove that they were really that shit-faced.  I want the music cranked up so loud, the neighbors complain, okay?”

Most of the neighbors were in the backyard, getting roaring drunk with Connor’s coworkers, and his sister, and their other friends.  The laughter was too loud, the music was too loud, and everyone was doing their damnedest to do Connor proud.

Everyone except Jimmy, who was in their room, holding Connor’s old pillow to his face, and trying to smell that last redwood, working-man, dusty computer-geek scent molecule, to prove to himself that no, in spite of the year of warning and Connor’s disgustingly healthy, “live-life-to-the-fullest” attitude, Connor wasn’t really gone. 

The door opened, and Jimmy didn’t need to look up to know that it was Celia.  The bed depressed next to him, and an arm that was all mother looped around his shoulder.  He sank into her like he’d never been able to sink into his real mother, who didn’t like children, or hugging, or commitment, and she laid her head on his shoulder, tears soaking through his “R.I.P., Connor” shirt, the one Connor had made when they’d first drafted the will. 

They had taken care of each other, this last week, and when she had made noises about going back to her small apartment in the next city, Jimmy had mumbled,  “Please don’t.  Please don’t leave me,” and the next thing he knew, she’d canceled the lease and was staying in the guest bedroom, indefinitely.

Jimmy, flighty Jimmy, who would drop on a dime and fuck on a whim, thought he would give up sex forever, just to keep Connor’s mom there, being his mom too.  Maybe that would change.  Maybe someday, she would get another apartment, and he would move Connor’s shit out of the garage, but not now.  Not now.

“The thing is,” he said out of the blue, his voice unapologetically clogged, “the thing is, he was no fun at parties whatsoever, you know?”

“No, I didn’t,” Celia said, using his shoulder to wipe her eyes.  “Tell me.”

“See, we met at a party, and he was just hanging out in a corner, passing the joint, passing the beer—but never taking any of it.  And I was pretty buzzed, and I thought,
What is this total geek doing here? 
And I went over to ask him, right?  And he started pointing out people—this one kept checking her hair, and she was hitting on a guy that
he’d
slept with a month ago, and he was wondering when she was going to figure out that the signals didn’t fly.  This other one had just had a break-up, and he was drinking to forget.  It was all about why people were there—he liked their stories, liked watching them play out.  He
really
liked chatting with the drunk people as the party wound down.” 

Jimmy’s mouth twitched.  Connor hadn’t made it to the end of that party.  Jimmy had gotten close enough to see those eyes—not remarkably colored, but kind, and crinkly at the corners, and Jimmy had hauled him to a back room for a one-off that had lasted six years. 

Jimmy hadn’t wanted to commit at first, because he was sure he’d break Connor’s heart.  He still felt a little angry that Connor had been the first one to leave. 

“Mmm…” Celia murmured, and Jimmy liked the way she really thought about what he was saying.  Connor hadn’t sprung from thin air—Jimmy had realized that this last year.  “Why do you think he wanted a party for his funeral?”

“Don’t know,” Jimmy lied.  “Don’t fucking care, either!”  Sobs broke in his chest, and he was vaguely surprised.  He’d held onto them for the last week—he’d been a grown up.  He’d made all the arrangements, used Connor’s compulsively made checklists, just generally kept it all together, but not now.

Now, Celia held him as he sobbed into her lap, muttering, “I fucking hate him, Mom—how could he fucking leave us like this!”

Celia weathered his storm.  The sleeve of his shirt and the back of it were sodden by the time he was done, but she stayed solid and true, just like her son, as Jimmy said horrible, horrible things about the man they’d both loved.

She ignored them, and Jimmy remembered hearing her voice, shrill as it had
never
been shrill, as Connor broke the news that the cancer had spread, and the chemo wasn’t working, and it was time to plan the endgame. 

You’re just going to fucking give up on me?  ME?  Don’t you have any goddamned respect, son?  You’re not supposed to leave before I do.  Oh, God…Connor…don’t leave me… 

As Jimmy lay, finally still and quiescent, in Celia’s lap, he thought that maybe Celia had done this part already. 

After some moments, heavy in the darkened room, Celia’s voice came as a welcome surprise, and was not shrill at all.