ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Are you glad about Sal kissing Swann? Well, I was too. I wondered in anyone else would want that to happen.
Of Mathew Shephard I will say nothing. It's already been said.
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The Lights in Room 42
- Thread starter ChrisGibson
- Start date
Of Mathew Shephard I will say nothing. It's already been said.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Early next morning he lay awake on his back in the den. Far on the other side of thw sofa Ottoman complex he could hear Sal snoring lightly. In the kitchen he heard snatches of Swann and Chris and chuckled to himself. They seemed to communicate thgouh not very serious bickering that descended into serious whispers and then rose to laughter. Even last night Sal had been surprised by the gestures between the two of them, the slight touches of the hand, the way Swann pushed hair from Chris’s face, the side eye and half smile they turned each when the other spoke. They reminded Joe of what he imagined an old married couple was.
Me and Sal aren’t that. They never had been. He and Sal were friends who had sex with each other, who had stumbled into it. Sal was his best friend. He loved Salvador Goode. He loved him almost unreasonably, but the night he had gone off with Courtney, Joe was angry because he had no busy being with Courtney because Courtney degraded him. Joe suspected if he had gone off with Swann he wouldn’t have cared. They’d both had girlfriends. They’d both experimented with other guys, and the possessiveness, the almost anger never touched Joe. He wondered if he was in love with Sal, or if it mattered. He loved Sal, he loved him intensely, but in the back of his mind he saw them always together, but not together with each other if that made sense. There was a long time when Joe imagined himself raising kids, having babies with a woman, being a husband with wedding pictures and thinking Sal would be his best man, and if his kids ever came to him confessing the same type of friendship he and Sal had, he would have said, “Hey, kids, you’re just confused. You know, me and your uncle were like that. And then we grew up.”
Joe Stanley realized he had thought that way until just last night, until he’d heard about that kid in Wyoming, until he’d gotten up in the middle of the night and looked at the computer still on and read the article that Sal had been looking at, read about a boy dying on a fence with a face covered in blood, about how the boy had been raped before and been on meds and been depressed and been through so much.
He thought of Swann who quietly endured a lot of shit, a lot of name calling, and managed to, in the very dangerous world of Saint Anthony, not have just one boyfriend but two, who now, at a college that was, after all, hopelessly Midwestern and totally Catholic, wore fingers covered in rings and necklaces of copper and brass and gold, silk shirts and flared pants and openly took boyfriends. And all this time Joe had pretended he was something else, He and Sal had both pretended. And when he saw Chris and Swann together, Chris who didn’t really call much attention to himself, but certainly didn’t hide anything, it made Joe shake his head.
I’m a coward. I’m a real coward. I’m full of shit. We both are. He thought of that phrase, come out.
“I need to come out.”
“Not to everyone he knew, not walk around the school obnoxiously announcing he was …. No, he needed to come out to himself. He needed to stop lying to himself because right now, he realized he’d been having sex with other boys for ten years, and he couldn’t even say the word…. Gay… in his own brain.
In the kitchen, Chris and Swann were drinking coffee and Swann said, “You don’t seem surprised?”
“That Sal kissed you? No. Actually, I was surprised when I come to your room and there are the two of them. Waiting with you. I’d assumed you had them both by now.”
“What the fuck? What do you think I am?”
“I think you’re you,” Chris laughed. “Give me a puff off that cigarette.”
When Chris coughed, Swann put down his coffee cup and said, “Serves you right.”
“And I know,” Chris said, his eyes glowing, “you banged Pete if he stayed with you.”
“Are we going out to breakfast?”
“Nice subject switch,” Chris nodded. This time he did not cough when he inhaled.
“Look, I’m just saying, everyone kind of likes you and you kind of like everybody, and I don’t blame you for anything or judge you or any of that. You’re my best friend. You’re wild, though, and I can tell they like you.”
Chris whispered the last as Joe came into the kitchen yawning and Sal followed behind, clapping his shoulders and hopping on his back.
“Oh, my God, you’re so big! You’re too big!” Joe groaned.
“Not the first time I’ve made you say that,” Sal said, and it took a moment for them to understand what he was saying before Joe went red.
“So,” Chris said, “Swann is hungry, and if I were Pete Grannypannypus—”
“How many ways can you fuck that man’s name up?” Swann said.
“Grannypannypus, Manipedipus, Pop your zit apuss, Eatadickamus—”
“Are you through?”
“Almost. Jack-assanopolis, Cuni-lingus-gonorrhea-gus, Vagina-plastipotomas. Now I’m done.”
“Great.”
“Old Stinky pussy puss… Anyway, if I was Pete Don’t Bathe Enough I Muss, I would make you my own Greek breakfast, flown over fresh from Crete, but I feel like the Mc.Donalds driveway is what’s in our immediate future.”
“I could eat,” Sal lifted his armpit. “I could bathe.”
Swann watched Sal sniff his armpit and Chris watched Swann and leered at him.
Swann kicked Chris under the table.
But Sal did not bathe. They ate in the basement, at the kitchen table, and Chris said, “So just one last question?”
“From who?”
“From you, Swann.”
“If I had any sense I’d say no.”
“But you don’t, so you’re gonna let me ask it.”
“Alright, goddamnit. Ask?”
“Is Pete’s dick bigger than mine?”
Sal spritzered orange juice across the kitchen and Joe bent over coughing up his sandwich.
“Goddamn you,” Swann said tonelessly.
“Because like, I know I have a big dick,” Chris said. “You’ve fucking said it. Like the first time you saw it you almost passed out. Pete cannot have a bigger dick than me.”
“You’re right,” Swann said, paying more attention to his sausage biscuit than Chris, “if what you mean is Pete cannot BE a bigger dick than you.”
Chris snorted orange from his noseat and fell out laughing.
“You guys are ridiculous,” Joe declared, still coughing.
Swann clapped him on the back, trying to stop himself from laughing, and Sal said, “You should take this on the road.”
“No we save this bullshit for our friends,” Swann said.
Me and Sal aren’t that. They never had been. He and Sal were friends who had sex with each other, who had stumbled into it. Sal was his best friend. He loved Salvador Goode. He loved him almost unreasonably, but the night he had gone off with Courtney, Joe was angry because he had no busy being with Courtney because Courtney degraded him. Joe suspected if he had gone off with Swann he wouldn’t have cared. They’d both had girlfriends. They’d both experimented with other guys, and the possessiveness, the almost anger never touched Joe. He wondered if he was in love with Sal, or if it mattered. He loved Sal, he loved him intensely, but in the back of his mind he saw them always together, but not together with each other if that made sense. There was a long time when Joe imagined himself raising kids, having babies with a woman, being a husband with wedding pictures and thinking Sal would be his best man, and if his kids ever came to him confessing the same type of friendship he and Sal had, he would have said, “Hey, kids, you’re just confused. You know, me and your uncle were like that. And then we grew up.”
Joe Stanley realized he had thought that way until just last night, until he’d heard about that kid in Wyoming, until he’d gotten up in the middle of the night and looked at the computer still on and read the article that Sal had been looking at, read about a boy dying on a fence with a face covered in blood, about how the boy had been raped before and been on meds and been depressed and been through so much.
He thought of Swann who quietly endured a lot of shit, a lot of name calling, and managed to, in the very dangerous world of Saint Anthony, not have just one boyfriend but two, who now, at a college that was, after all, hopelessly Midwestern and totally Catholic, wore fingers covered in rings and necklaces of copper and brass and gold, silk shirts and flared pants and openly took boyfriends. And all this time Joe had pretended he was something else, He and Sal had both pretended. And when he saw Chris and Swann together, Chris who didn’t really call much attention to himself, but certainly didn’t hide anything, it made Joe shake his head.
I’m a coward. I’m a real coward. I’m full of shit. We both are. He thought of that phrase, come out.
“I need to come out.”
“Not to everyone he knew, not walk around the school obnoxiously announcing he was …. No, he needed to come out to himself. He needed to stop lying to himself because right now, he realized he’d been having sex with other boys for ten years, and he couldn’t even say the word…. Gay… in his own brain.
In the kitchen, Chris and Swann were drinking coffee and Swann said, “You don’t seem surprised?”
“That Sal kissed you? No. Actually, I was surprised when I come to your room and there are the two of them. Waiting with you. I’d assumed you had them both by now.”
“What the fuck? What do you think I am?”
“I think you’re you,” Chris laughed. “Give me a puff off that cigarette.”
When Chris coughed, Swann put down his coffee cup and said, “Serves you right.”
“And I know,” Chris said, his eyes glowing, “you banged Pete if he stayed with you.”
“Are we going out to breakfast?”
“Nice subject switch,” Chris nodded. This time he did not cough when he inhaled.
“Look, I’m just saying, everyone kind of likes you and you kind of like everybody, and I don’t blame you for anything or judge you or any of that. You’re my best friend. You’re wild, though, and I can tell they like you.”
Chris whispered the last as Joe came into the kitchen yawning and Sal followed behind, clapping his shoulders and hopping on his back.
“Oh, my God, you’re so big! You’re too big!” Joe groaned.
“Not the first time I’ve made you say that,” Sal said, and it took a moment for them to understand what he was saying before Joe went red.
“So,” Chris said, “Swann is hungry, and if I were Pete Grannypannypus—”
“How many ways can you fuck that man’s name up?” Swann said.
“Grannypannypus, Manipedipus, Pop your zit apuss, Eatadickamus—”
“Are you through?”
“Almost. Jack-assanopolis, Cuni-lingus-gonorrhea-gus, Vagina-plastipotomas. Now I’m done.”
“Great.”
“Old Stinky pussy puss… Anyway, if I was Pete Don’t Bathe Enough I Muss, I would make you my own Greek breakfast, flown over fresh from Crete, but I feel like the Mc.Donalds driveway is what’s in our immediate future.”
“I could eat,” Sal lifted his armpit. “I could bathe.”
Swann watched Sal sniff his armpit and Chris watched Swann and leered at him.
Swann kicked Chris under the table.
But Sal did not bathe. They ate in the basement, at the kitchen table, and Chris said, “So just one last question?”
“From who?”
“From you, Swann.”
“If I had any sense I’d say no.”
“But you don’t, so you’re gonna let me ask it.”
“Alright, goddamnit. Ask?”
“Is Pete’s dick bigger than mine?”
Sal spritzered orange juice across the kitchen and Joe bent over coughing up his sandwich.
“Goddamn you,” Swann said tonelessly.
“Because like, I know I have a big dick,” Chris said. “You’ve fucking said it. Like the first time you saw it you almost passed out. Pete cannot have a bigger dick than me.”
“You’re right,” Swann said, paying more attention to his sausage biscuit than Chris, “if what you mean is Pete cannot BE a bigger dick than you.”
Chris snorted orange from his noseat and fell out laughing.
“You guys are ridiculous,” Joe declared, still coughing.
Swann clapped him on the back, trying to stop himself from laughing, and Sal said, “You should take this on the road.”
“No we save this bullshit for our friends,” Swann said.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
When they had driven with Sal and Joe to the highway—it would have been hell, they’re winding their way out of the cul de sac let alone out of town on the their own—Chris said, “Dad can’t wait to see you. He got acid for us to trip on.”
“With him?”
Chris shook his head.
“He said we should trip on our own and not let an old man ruin it.”
“He’s forty-five.”
“I know, but I’d like to trip balls with just you.”
“I wonder if we should have done it with Sal and Joe.”
“No,” Chris shook his head as he turned the car around.
“That was simple.”
“We’d all probably end up sucking each other’s dicks, and I’m not ready for that just yet.”
Swann snorted and as they crossed Taylor Street.
Chris said, “Tell me I’m wrong.
“So,” Chris said, tapping the steering wheel and cocking his head. “I gotta question.”
“Um… okay.”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “So…. What do you want to do today? Besides trip?”
“I was actually thinking that would be better for Lake Michigan.”
“You’re right! Well, then…. Whaddo we do today?” Chris was tapping his free foot.
“What would you like to do?”
“I mean, you know… I’m not saying we have to do anything. But what I’m getting at is… if you’d like, I mean, I’m not sure where we stand at the moment, and I would never ask you to do anything you didn’t want. But, I was wondering—”
Chris’s breath caught suddenly, and while his eyes widened, Swann spoke.
“There’s a bottle of lube in my book bag and two bottles of poppers if you want them.”
Christopher Navarro let out a great sigh and then he shuddered. The moment Swann had started speaking was the moment he had reached over and began stroking Chris.
“Fuck!” he.swore, half closing his eyes, then he said, “I’m going to need you to stop, or we’re not going to make it back to the basement.”
“I can,” Swann moved his hand. “But can you drive a little faster?”
“Fuck yeah,” Chris grinned slamming his foot down on the gas. “I absolutely can.”
“Great,” Swann said. “I’ve been thinking about having my way with you since you showed up in that pea coat with the preppy haircut last night.”
“You wanna go to that bookstore later on?” Chris whispered.
His cheek was on Swann’s chest, and Swann was massaging his scalp.
“I don’t really want to do much of anything but stay here with you.”
Swann turned so they were facing each other and Chris caught his chin and kissed him. They kissed for longer than they’d planned and then, though Chris was taller, he managed to press himself into Swann, burying his head in Swann’s chest. Swann’s lips moved over his head, kissing him and now and again, Swann’s hands ran over his bare arms, over his back as they lay in bed together.
“I shouldn’t have cut my hair,” Chris said.
“Why? You look so grown up.”
“I know you love it the old way. You said it’s your favorite part of me.”
“Well, that was just stupid,” Swann said.
He lifted Chris’s face, and Chris smiled at him. He ran his finger down the bridge of Chris’s nose.
“You are my favorite part of you. You can go bald or have a peg leg and that won’t change.
Chris unfolded and turned around. He kissed Swann’s shoulder.
“I’m a fan of this,” he said.
He kissed Swann’s ear.
“And that.”
He ran his hand down the side of Swann’s body, brown like the beach at sunset and kissed him, kissed him, kissed him.
“And I love that.”
Gently he lay Swann on his back smiling down at him, kissing each nipple, kissing between, kissing down and down, running his hands over the softness of his skin.
“I love… all of this.”
He kissed his lips, his nose, one eye, the other eye, lay over him, his arms like two pillars.
“I love this, and this…. This, this. And… especially this.”
Swann reached up, caressing Chris’s cheek, then his throat, then holding him by his shoulders as Chris lowered his body across him.
Chris Navarro kissed his belly, and Swann looked past his head to his long back, the long spine, like a mountain ride ending at the cleft where the hills of his buttocks, his ass, his ass, his soft, beautiful ass stood, the entrance into him, the place that made Chris Navarro’s hands fly open, his body stretch.
“We’re not going to the bookstore anytime soon. Are we?”
Chris chuckled inaudibly. So did Swann while Chris lowered himself, embracing Swann, kissed him again and murmured, “I don’t think so.”
“With him?”
Chris shook his head.
“He said we should trip on our own and not let an old man ruin it.”
“He’s forty-five.”
“I know, but I’d like to trip balls with just you.”
“I wonder if we should have done it with Sal and Joe.”
“No,” Chris shook his head as he turned the car around.
“That was simple.”
“We’d all probably end up sucking each other’s dicks, and I’m not ready for that just yet.”
Swann snorted and as they crossed Taylor Street.
Chris said, “Tell me I’m wrong.
“So,” Chris said, tapping the steering wheel and cocking his head. “I gotta question.”
“Um… okay.”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “So…. What do you want to do today? Besides trip?”
“I was actually thinking that would be better for Lake Michigan.”
“You’re right! Well, then…. Whaddo we do today?” Chris was tapping his free foot.
“What would you like to do?”
“I mean, you know… I’m not saying we have to do anything. But what I’m getting at is… if you’d like, I mean, I’m not sure where we stand at the moment, and I would never ask you to do anything you didn’t want. But, I was wondering—”
Chris’s breath caught suddenly, and while his eyes widened, Swann spoke.
“There’s a bottle of lube in my book bag and two bottles of poppers if you want them.”
Christopher Navarro let out a great sigh and then he shuddered. The moment Swann had started speaking was the moment he had reached over and began stroking Chris.
“Fuck!” he.swore, half closing his eyes, then he said, “I’m going to need you to stop, or we’re not going to make it back to the basement.”
“I can,” Swann moved his hand. “But can you drive a little faster?”
“Fuck yeah,” Chris grinned slamming his foot down on the gas. “I absolutely can.”
“Great,” Swann said. “I’ve been thinking about having my way with you since you showed up in that pea coat with the preppy haircut last night.”
“You wanna go to that bookstore later on?” Chris whispered.
His cheek was on Swann’s chest, and Swann was massaging his scalp.
“I don’t really want to do much of anything but stay here with you.”
Swann turned so they were facing each other and Chris caught his chin and kissed him. They kissed for longer than they’d planned and then, though Chris was taller, he managed to press himself into Swann, burying his head in Swann’s chest. Swann’s lips moved over his head, kissing him and now and again, Swann’s hands ran over his bare arms, over his back as they lay in bed together.
“I shouldn’t have cut my hair,” Chris said.
“Why? You look so grown up.”
“I know you love it the old way. You said it’s your favorite part of me.”
“Well, that was just stupid,” Swann said.
He lifted Chris’s face, and Chris smiled at him. He ran his finger down the bridge of Chris’s nose.
“You are my favorite part of you. You can go bald or have a peg leg and that won’t change.
Chris unfolded and turned around. He kissed Swann’s shoulder.
“I’m a fan of this,” he said.
He kissed Swann’s ear.
“And that.”
He ran his hand down the side of Swann’s body, brown like the beach at sunset and kissed him, kissed him, kissed him.
“And I love that.”
Gently he lay Swann on his back smiling down at him, kissing each nipple, kissing between, kissing down and down, running his hands over the softness of his skin.
“I love… all of this.”
He kissed his lips, his nose, one eye, the other eye, lay over him, his arms like two pillars.
“I love this, and this…. This, this. And… especially this.”
Swann reached up, caressing Chris’s cheek, then his throat, then holding him by his shoulders as Chris lowered his body across him.
Chris Navarro kissed his belly, and Swann looked past his head to his long back, the long spine, like a mountain ride ending at the cleft where the hills of his buttocks, his ass, his ass, his soft, beautiful ass stood, the entrance into him, the place that made Chris Navarro’s hands fly open, his body stretch.
“We’re not going to the bookstore anytime soon. Are we?”
Chris chuckled inaudibly. So did Swann while Chris lowered himself, embracing Swann, kissed him again and murmured, “I don’t think so.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great long portion! I am so glad I get to read about these friend's lives. They are getting closer and making decisions about themselves. It is an excellent story and I look forward to more soon!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Oh, thanks, Matthew. That means a lot. I haven't posted because of Easter, but I' getting back to that.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Chapter Eleven
Swann had made Chris promise that no matter what their situations were when he inherited this house they would immediately move into it.
“Even if we’re married to different people and each have three kids.”
Swann Portis loved the Navarro house, and he loved the backyard even more. He loved how it was multi terraced so from the basement to the ground floor to the first it could be accessed, and he loved the deck off of the little TV room and the old kitchen over the garage and how it looked over the yard and past the trees into the yards on the other side of a block without alleys.
That night, even though it was getting cold, the two of them sat on the deck watching across the wide yard and through the trees for whatever they might discover. Their initial sightings had been so stupendous that, though they were never repeated, Chris and Swann always tried.
When they were sixteen, and sneaking his dad’s beer, Chris and Swann sat on the terrace and they could see into the yard of a girl, Mitzi Dirkland, whose dad, it was said, was in the Ku Klux Klan.
“Can you believe it?” Chris was astounded.
“We’re in Indiana in a town with no Black people so, yeah,” Swann said.
Chris was a little offended by this take on his very white town, but suspected his friend was right. As they watched, she came in the room with some big Joe Football kind of guy, a guy who, if Chris had known what he would know a year later, he would have called hot. Swann’s eyes were squinted as if he were examining something very carefully and, of course, he was. Joe Football had taking off Mitzi’s top and was sucking on her titties. They were both getting undressed and she was—oh my God—she was sucking him THERE. Yes, there. They were both naked now, and then she handed him something which Swann suggested was a condom, and he went back into what might have been her bathroom.
After a while, Swann said, “Well what the fuck is taking him so long?”
And then Joe Footbal came out of the bathroom almost completely naked.
“Whatthefuck?” Swann said all in one word.
Joe Football was almost naked accept that his face was completely blackened and his lips were big and bright red. As he blinked out of his soot black face, he pulled on a black Afro wig, and now Mitzy began sucking his dick furiously. He turned around, stretched her out across the bed and, seizing her hair, began to fuck her. The two boys sat on the porch in the next yard, tingling with curiosity and desire, and when Joe Football finally came inside of her, something cracked in the both of them and they sighed. As Joe Football stood behind Mitzi, still gasping, Swann said, “White folks never cease to surprise m.”
Chris pronounced with disgust, “White people are the worst.”
In the following days, they had watched not only Joe Football, but Sal Soccer, Billy Baseball with his Adam’s apple and cornfed look, as well as Victor Hockey with his unibrow come over and all start with Mitzi—she was a busy girl—and all return in black face and Afro wig to fuck her. What was going on over there? Did Mitzi want a black man but she was too afraid of a real one? Was she excited by minstrel shows? Did she have an Al Jolson fixation? Were these white boys bigots? Were they in the Klan, or were they some idiot college students who met a slut at a bar and wanted to fuck so badly, that when she surprised them with black makeup and an Afro wig, they went along with it? Did she take pictures? If so, they were fucked forever. Everything always turned up.
Some time later they were up late at night, older and maybe a little bit wiser. They were in the place where Chris was not only confident of Swann’s beauty, but his own and vice versa. Across the way they saw someone sitting at her balcony. Mitzi? Well, was she home from college or what? But it didn’t matter. As they sat together on the lounge chair, the two of them began laughing, and when Chris looked to Swann he realized they were thinking the same thing. They began making out. They had been swimming and Chris was in his Speedo, Swann in trunks. Turned on by the possibility of being seen, they were naked quickly and made love on the terrace. Chris’s parents must have been gone. They had to have been. But Swann only remembered the climax, the laughter and both of them lying naked on the terrace giggling like idiots in the warmth of a June night. Chris stood up and didn’t sit down. His hands were on his hips. Swann got up and saw that Mitzi was standing up, far off, watching them.
At once, they bowed, and picking up their swim bottoms, wrapped their arms around each other’s waists, and went back into the house, laughing.
It wasn’t that Swann hated church, he hated the church that the Navarros went attended. Saint Patrick’s was like their subdivision, new and plastic, built like a cross between a Pizza Hut and an airplane hanger and full of blond wood and abstract stainglass. The only way to get out of looking like an asshole when he didn’t go with them was to go to Mass earlier, so he had Chris drive him past downtown to the oldest part of Benton, on the northside and not far from the southern border of Calverton. There he had morning Mass at Saint Stephen’s, his old spirit mixing well with all the old people. He was well asleep when Chris was on his way to church with his parents.
They headed out a little after lunch and Mr. Navarro snuck them a bag of shrooms and one of weed.
“Your father is a strange man,” Swann decided. “But I like him.”
Chris’s neighborhood, and most of the city that existed now, had sprung up in the last sixty years. Taylor Street was the point where they decided to go north into Calverton or east toward Chicago, and it was here that Chris slowed down and became quiet.
“There’s something going on with you, and I can’t be psychic,” Swann said.
“Sometimes you can be,” Chris said.
“But sometimes I need you to tell me things.”
Chris nodded.
“I wanna make a stop.”
“Oh, shit. I’m so stupid.”
“How did you—?”
“Of course,” Swann said. “Yeah. Yes, let’s do that.”
They sped north toward Calverton, and on the border they reached Sacred Heart Cemetery. It was like Benton, some parts of it very old full of old monuments, slab graves and mausoleums, and some parts resembling nothing so much as a golf course. It seemed to Swann, as they drove through it, that the cemetery sprung up where it could so that sometimes it touched peoples’ back yards and some headstones seemed very close to driveways. Bentley Street, the southern border of Calverton, divided the cemetery which continued north into the next town.
Every time they came here Swann thought, I must write somewhere that I want to be cremated. That I do not want to be another body laid out in a golf course or in some strange town for the dead like that row of old mausoleums. Even as he was thinking that, Chris stopped at an oak tree in a place right in the middle of the old and new cemetery.
“I’ll be back,” he said in a quiet voice.
Whenever they came to Benton, they ended up here and Swann would stay in the car, or near the car while Chris started by standing and ended by sitting, and sometimes he would stroke the headstone, and always he’d look impossibly sad, and there were even a few times when he had burst out crying, and some of those time he wouldn’t stop crying all day. Swann said nothing then. He knew he was the only one that Chris showed that part of himself to. Swann wasn’t sure how long they stayed but it seemed they stayed less than usual.
“Thanks,” Chris said. His nose was stuffed even thouh his eyes were dry.
“Why don’t we get out of here?”
He didn’t look at Swann or anywhere, he just looked ahead and started driving. They drove into Calverton and the morning had been cloudy, but now the sun came out, and before long they reached the Strip and were heading west, covering familiar territory. Chris seemed to relax after a while, not that his foot on the gas did, and the clouds stretched overhead, polished to pearl in the high blue sky. Trees and grasses and autumn fields rolled by, and in time they passed Aiguebelle campus. That was when Swann felt like they were really traveling. La Porte and Portage meant little, but when they joined the toll road, and they rose over the old city of Gary as Chris raced with the rest of the traffic, Swann rolled down his window, and letting the wind blow over his short wooly hair, he cranked up the radio, shouting with Courtney Love:
“When I wake up in my makeup
It's too early for that dress
Wilted and faded somewhere in Hollywood
I'm glad I came here with your pound of flesh
No second billing 'cause you're a star now
Oh, Cinderella, they aren't sluts like you
Beautiful garbage, beautiful dresses
Can you stand up or will you just fall down?”
The mood of mourning had lifted. It was good to be sad, to remember what was gone, but then you had to return to life joyfully, almost, Swann thought, to honor those who could not. Passing smoke stacks and seeing flashing factory towers ahead of them in Hammond, Chris shouted to the radio and shook Swann’s shoulder. Swann knew they were out of the country and well on the road toward home.
Swann had made Chris promise that no matter what their situations were when he inherited this house they would immediately move into it.
“Even if we’re married to different people and each have three kids.”
Swann Portis loved the Navarro house, and he loved the backyard even more. He loved how it was multi terraced so from the basement to the ground floor to the first it could be accessed, and he loved the deck off of the little TV room and the old kitchen over the garage and how it looked over the yard and past the trees into the yards on the other side of a block without alleys.
That night, even though it was getting cold, the two of them sat on the deck watching across the wide yard and through the trees for whatever they might discover. Their initial sightings had been so stupendous that, though they were never repeated, Chris and Swann always tried.
When they were sixteen, and sneaking his dad’s beer, Chris and Swann sat on the terrace and they could see into the yard of a girl, Mitzi Dirkland, whose dad, it was said, was in the Ku Klux Klan.
“Can you believe it?” Chris was astounded.
“We’re in Indiana in a town with no Black people so, yeah,” Swann said.
Chris was a little offended by this take on his very white town, but suspected his friend was right. As they watched, she came in the room with some big Joe Football kind of guy, a guy who, if Chris had known what he would know a year later, he would have called hot. Swann’s eyes were squinted as if he were examining something very carefully and, of course, he was. Joe Football had taking off Mitzi’s top and was sucking on her titties. They were both getting undressed and she was—oh my God—she was sucking him THERE. Yes, there. They were both naked now, and then she handed him something which Swann suggested was a condom, and he went back into what might have been her bathroom.
After a while, Swann said, “Well what the fuck is taking him so long?”
And then Joe Footbal came out of the bathroom almost completely naked.
“Whatthefuck?” Swann said all in one word.
Joe Football was almost naked accept that his face was completely blackened and his lips were big and bright red. As he blinked out of his soot black face, he pulled on a black Afro wig, and now Mitzy began sucking his dick furiously. He turned around, stretched her out across the bed and, seizing her hair, began to fuck her. The two boys sat on the porch in the next yard, tingling with curiosity and desire, and when Joe Football finally came inside of her, something cracked in the both of them and they sighed. As Joe Football stood behind Mitzi, still gasping, Swann said, “White folks never cease to surprise m.”
Chris pronounced with disgust, “White people are the worst.”
In the following days, they had watched not only Joe Football, but Sal Soccer, Billy Baseball with his Adam’s apple and cornfed look, as well as Victor Hockey with his unibrow come over and all start with Mitzi—she was a busy girl—and all return in black face and Afro wig to fuck her. What was going on over there? Did Mitzi want a black man but she was too afraid of a real one? Was she excited by minstrel shows? Did she have an Al Jolson fixation? Were these white boys bigots? Were they in the Klan, or were they some idiot college students who met a slut at a bar and wanted to fuck so badly, that when she surprised them with black makeup and an Afro wig, they went along with it? Did she take pictures? If so, they were fucked forever. Everything always turned up.
Some time later they were up late at night, older and maybe a little bit wiser. They were in the place where Chris was not only confident of Swann’s beauty, but his own and vice versa. Across the way they saw someone sitting at her balcony. Mitzi? Well, was she home from college or what? But it didn’t matter. As they sat together on the lounge chair, the two of them began laughing, and when Chris looked to Swann he realized they were thinking the same thing. They began making out. They had been swimming and Chris was in his Speedo, Swann in trunks. Turned on by the possibility of being seen, they were naked quickly and made love on the terrace. Chris’s parents must have been gone. They had to have been. But Swann only remembered the climax, the laughter and both of them lying naked on the terrace giggling like idiots in the warmth of a June night. Chris stood up and didn’t sit down. His hands were on his hips. Swann got up and saw that Mitzi was standing up, far off, watching them.
At once, they bowed, and picking up their swim bottoms, wrapped their arms around each other’s waists, and went back into the house, laughing.
It wasn’t that Swann hated church, he hated the church that the Navarros went attended. Saint Patrick’s was like their subdivision, new and plastic, built like a cross between a Pizza Hut and an airplane hanger and full of blond wood and abstract stainglass. The only way to get out of looking like an asshole when he didn’t go with them was to go to Mass earlier, so he had Chris drive him past downtown to the oldest part of Benton, on the northside and not far from the southern border of Calverton. There he had morning Mass at Saint Stephen’s, his old spirit mixing well with all the old people. He was well asleep when Chris was on his way to church with his parents.
They headed out a little after lunch and Mr. Navarro snuck them a bag of shrooms and one of weed.
“Your father is a strange man,” Swann decided. “But I like him.”
Chris’s neighborhood, and most of the city that existed now, had sprung up in the last sixty years. Taylor Street was the point where they decided to go north into Calverton or east toward Chicago, and it was here that Chris slowed down and became quiet.
“There’s something going on with you, and I can’t be psychic,” Swann said.
“Sometimes you can be,” Chris said.
“But sometimes I need you to tell me things.”
Chris nodded.
“I wanna make a stop.”
“Oh, shit. I’m so stupid.”
“How did you—?”
“Of course,” Swann said. “Yeah. Yes, let’s do that.”
They sped north toward Calverton, and on the border they reached Sacred Heart Cemetery. It was like Benton, some parts of it very old full of old monuments, slab graves and mausoleums, and some parts resembling nothing so much as a golf course. It seemed to Swann, as they drove through it, that the cemetery sprung up where it could so that sometimes it touched peoples’ back yards and some headstones seemed very close to driveways. Bentley Street, the southern border of Calverton, divided the cemetery which continued north into the next town.
Every time they came here Swann thought, I must write somewhere that I want to be cremated. That I do not want to be another body laid out in a golf course or in some strange town for the dead like that row of old mausoleums. Even as he was thinking that, Chris stopped at an oak tree in a place right in the middle of the old and new cemetery.
“I’ll be back,” he said in a quiet voice.
Whenever they came to Benton, they ended up here and Swann would stay in the car, or near the car while Chris started by standing and ended by sitting, and sometimes he would stroke the headstone, and always he’d look impossibly sad, and there were even a few times when he had burst out crying, and some of those time he wouldn’t stop crying all day. Swann said nothing then. He knew he was the only one that Chris showed that part of himself to. Swann wasn’t sure how long they stayed but it seemed they stayed less than usual.
“Thanks,” Chris said. His nose was stuffed even thouh his eyes were dry.
“Why don’t we get out of here?”
He didn’t look at Swann or anywhere, he just looked ahead and started driving. They drove into Calverton and the morning had been cloudy, but now the sun came out, and before long they reached the Strip and were heading west, covering familiar territory. Chris seemed to relax after a while, not that his foot on the gas did, and the clouds stretched overhead, polished to pearl in the high blue sky. Trees and grasses and autumn fields rolled by, and in time they passed Aiguebelle campus. That was when Swann felt like they were really traveling. La Porte and Portage meant little, but when they joined the toll road, and they rose over the old city of Gary as Chris raced with the rest of the traffic, Swann rolled down his window, and letting the wind blow over his short wooly hair, he cranked up the radio, shouting with Courtney Love:
“When I wake up in my makeup
It's too early for that dress
Wilted and faded somewhere in Hollywood
I'm glad I came here with your pound of flesh
No second billing 'cause you're a star now
Oh, Cinderella, they aren't sluts like you
Beautiful garbage, beautiful dresses
Can you stand up or will you just fall down?”
The mood of mourning had lifted. It was good to be sad, to remember what was gone, but then you had to return to life joyfully, almost, Swann thought, to honor those who could not. Passing smoke stacks and seeing flashing factory towers ahead of them in Hammond, Chris shouted to the radio and shook Swann’s shoulder. Swann knew they were out of the country and well on the road toward home.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a bit of a sad portion but still enjoyable. It’s good to see different sides to this story. I love that you included a Courtney Love song. I’m a fan of her and you. I look forward to the next portion.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Well, it i a little sad, but as of yet we don't even know what Chris is mourning.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Though Chris Navarro lived in Benton, an hour south of Saint Anthony, he wanted live on campus, and his parents thought it was good for him. At night he and Swann would sit on the roof counting stars and the wind would blow Chris big halo of hair. He would say, “I love you, Swann, but I don’t think I get you. I wish I got you, but I don’t. Not really.”
Chris was beginning to understand that he got other white kids just fine, even Pete Agalathagos with all of his Greek culture and going off to that domed church every weekend. The other black kids weren’t his friends, and they also weren’t very nice. They didn’t want to get gotten, so it didn’t matter that he didn’t. But Swann was his friend, and they lived together. They were both Catholic and had gone to K though 8 school, and yet there was something strangely inaccessible about him.
Coming to South Shore, the first time Chris set foot in the brick three flat near East 70th and Paxton he finally understood his friend. He would never not understand him again. Chris knew he was wealthy, but he also knew he was sheltered from the sophistication of large city living, whole street blocks made of giant apartment blocks, rows of brick buildings with gardens in front of them and tree lined streets going to the beach, these were a mystery. The five and six story courtyard apartments where successive rows of glassed in porches winked down were new to him as were these numbered streets. That you could keep walking down 70th Street till the smell of the air changed and reach big blue water with no limit almost made his head spin. Also, and he didn’t say this, he’d never seen so many black people, so many people really. Coming to Swann’s family for the first time, Chris felt like a rube, and when he said, “So this is Chicago,” Swann had only said, “This is South Shore. Some people try to forget it’s Chicago at all.”
On the highway everything changed once you got to Gary, and below you saw rows of houses, and unending houses, bungalows and the like with their little square yards, old yellow lime brick liquor and discount stores, post offices, the train stations taking people into Chicago and across the Indiana border and then, at last, they were crossing the high, exhilarating bridge that always made Chris a little giddy, and they paid their toll and were on the skyway, in the city, across the border and all of the South Side rolled under them, a little rough, a little gritty, crowded with cars and life and the random building high and thin like a needle, more city than he had ever seen, but still some way off from Loops and Sears Towers and Magnificent Miles. Whenever they jumpd off I 90 and instead of heading northwest they hit 1600 East rolling north, passing the great mosque where Louis Farrakahn preachd, the one that used to be an Orthodox Church, and they, at last, arrived on 70th Street, Chris Navarro felt not only as if he was taking Swann home, but finding his own.
They didn’t come to one of the large buildings, but a series of free standing brick three flats with one porch leading to a door and then, at it’s side three bay windows, one directly over the other for each floor.
“You can park here for now,” Swann had said, “but you should park in the garage in the alley.”
Past the black iron gate, they’d gone up the steps to the large stoop, and Chris had expected Swann to hit the buzzer, but he just put in his key, turned the door, and they entered a small place like a mudroom with two doors facing them. Swann went through the door before them which opened to a long hallway and at the end of it, a stairway descended to the left and there was a door to the right. Swann put another key in and entered a living room, placing his bag on a clear vinyl runner that covered a carpeted floor.
“This is it?” Chris has whispered.
“This is Uncle Donald’s. It’s where I grew up.”
And in that moment, Chris had realized he didn’t even know where his friend had grown up, or how. Past the dining room where they’d entered, what he saw was a great living room, darkened in the afternoon with two heavy wingback chairs on either side of a table at the bay, and white curtains looking onto a garden grown with flowers and ending at the high black fence. Against the wall facing them was a large old sofa with a glass coffee table, and it looked across to an old console television, more furniture than something to be viewed. More old chairs flanked that, and on the television was flickering a green saints candle like Chris never had in his home, but like he’d seen in movies. On the little table in the bay were plainly arranged the fortune telling cards he’d never seen up close, and in another corner was a table with a heavy old Bible, and a doll which he realized, walking up close to the dark woman veiled in fabrics, was the Virgin Mary. A blue candle burned beside her and on it was Our Lady of Guadelupe. The house was cool, for a powerful old air conditioner in the dining room blasted air over a great oaken table covered in newspapers, books, farmers almanacs, TV Guides and books by Carlos Castaneda. The place smelled of incense and good food, and it took Chris all of ten seconds to absorb two rooms with more character than he had ever seen in his whole house he thought as he saw in one corner of the table, a saint card, a book on Voodoo, a rosary and a pack of cigarettes.
“Is that you all?” a voice like Swann’s, only older and throatier called out.
“Uncle Don!” Swann called out. “Don!”
They had dropped their bags at the door, and Swann went past the dining room. Off of it, to their left was a bedroom, lights out, and then, after the dining room and to their rights a bathroom, again lights out, and now a great kitchen that smelled like dinner time.
Afternoon light came through the enclosed back porch. A forty year old version of Swann, down to the glasses, was smoking at the kitchen table and a cup of coffee sat beside his ashtray.
“There he is,” the uncle said as Swann embraced him, and he said, “And you must be the white friend.”
Chris nodded, “I am the white friend.”
“This is Chris Navarro.”
“We have a lot of Italians in this neighborhood,” Uncle Donald noted. “But they used to stay up north of here. Good food. Bad tempers. We used to have a house full of them. When I was growing up, your Uncle Mario’s best friend was Billy Romano. Mama always said he was in the mob, but he wasn’t. I knew that. Now Tyrone Garibaldi, who gave all that money to Saint Angela Merici so the monsignor looked the other way, he was in the mafia. That’s why we left and went to Saint Elizabeth.”
Chris was simultaneously nervous and delighted by Uncle Donald and said, “Sir, I promise you, I’m not in the mafia. And anyway, my dad’s half Jewish.”
“Jay is a Jew,” Donald said, but before Chris could ask who was Jay, Donald continued.
“There were Jews in South Shore. Lots of em. But then in the 60’s someone told them they were white. Too many Mexicans and too many of… us were coming in, and so they left. They went up north and then further up north, then all the way to Skokie.”
Chris shrugged, “I’m just a kid from Benton, Indiana. I don’t know anything about that.”
“No,” Donald said, suddenly looking not at all like a rambling person, but very much like his nephew. “No, you are just a white boy. You are America. Your grandfather and your great grandfather probably did all sorts of things so that you could be an innocent white boy and not think about them. That’s whiteness. That’s America.”
Chris was beginning to understand that he got other white kids just fine, even Pete Agalathagos with all of his Greek culture and going off to that domed church every weekend. The other black kids weren’t his friends, and they also weren’t very nice. They didn’t want to get gotten, so it didn’t matter that he didn’t. But Swann was his friend, and they lived together. They were both Catholic and had gone to K though 8 school, and yet there was something strangely inaccessible about him.
Coming to South Shore, the first time Chris set foot in the brick three flat near East 70th and Paxton he finally understood his friend. He would never not understand him again. Chris knew he was wealthy, but he also knew he was sheltered from the sophistication of large city living, whole street blocks made of giant apartment blocks, rows of brick buildings with gardens in front of them and tree lined streets going to the beach, these were a mystery. The five and six story courtyard apartments where successive rows of glassed in porches winked down were new to him as were these numbered streets. That you could keep walking down 70th Street till the smell of the air changed and reach big blue water with no limit almost made his head spin. Also, and he didn’t say this, he’d never seen so many black people, so many people really. Coming to Swann’s family for the first time, Chris felt like a rube, and when he said, “So this is Chicago,” Swann had only said, “This is South Shore. Some people try to forget it’s Chicago at all.”
On the highway everything changed once you got to Gary, and below you saw rows of houses, and unending houses, bungalows and the like with their little square yards, old yellow lime brick liquor and discount stores, post offices, the train stations taking people into Chicago and across the Indiana border and then, at last, they were crossing the high, exhilarating bridge that always made Chris a little giddy, and they paid their toll and were on the skyway, in the city, across the border and all of the South Side rolled under them, a little rough, a little gritty, crowded with cars and life and the random building high and thin like a needle, more city than he had ever seen, but still some way off from Loops and Sears Towers and Magnificent Miles. Whenever they jumpd off I 90 and instead of heading northwest they hit 1600 East rolling north, passing the great mosque where Louis Farrakahn preachd, the one that used to be an Orthodox Church, and they, at last, arrived on 70th Street, Chris Navarro felt not only as if he was taking Swann home, but finding his own.
They didn’t come to one of the large buildings, but a series of free standing brick three flats with one porch leading to a door and then, at it’s side three bay windows, one directly over the other for each floor.
“You can park here for now,” Swann had said, “but you should park in the garage in the alley.”
Past the black iron gate, they’d gone up the steps to the large stoop, and Chris had expected Swann to hit the buzzer, but he just put in his key, turned the door, and they entered a small place like a mudroom with two doors facing them. Swann went through the door before them which opened to a long hallway and at the end of it, a stairway descended to the left and there was a door to the right. Swann put another key in and entered a living room, placing his bag on a clear vinyl runner that covered a carpeted floor.
“This is it?” Chris has whispered.
“This is Uncle Donald’s. It’s where I grew up.”
And in that moment, Chris had realized he didn’t even know where his friend had grown up, or how. Past the dining room where they’d entered, what he saw was a great living room, darkened in the afternoon with two heavy wingback chairs on either side of a table at the bay, and white curtains looking onto a garden grown with flowers and ending at the high black fence. Against the wall facing them was a large old sofa with a glass coffee table, and it looked across to an old console television, more furniture than something to be viewed. More old chairs flanked that, and on the television was flickering a green saints candle like Chris never had in his home, but like he’d seen in movies. On the little table in the bay were plainly arranged the fortune telling cards he’d never seen up close, and in another corner was a table with a heavy old Bible, and a doll which he realized, walking up close to the dark woman veiled in fabrics, was the Virgin Mary. A blue candle burned beside her and on it was Our Lady of Guadelupe. The house was cool, for a powerful old air conditioner in the dining room blasted air over a great oaken table covered in newspapers, books, farmers almanacs, TV Guides and books by Carlos Castaneda. The place smelled of incense and good food, and it took Chris all of ten seconds to absorb two rooms with more character than he had ever seen in his whole house he thought as he saw in one corner of the table, a saint card, a book on Voodoo, a rosary and a pack of cigarettes.
“Is that you all?” a voice like Swann’s, only older and throatier called out.
“Uncle Don!” Swann called out. “Don!”
They had dropped their bags at the door, and Swann went past the dining room. Off of it, to their left was a bedroom, lights out, and then, after the dining room and to their rights a bathroom, again lights out, and now a great kitchen that smelled like dinner time.
Afternoon light came through the enclosed back porch. A forty year old version of Swann, down to the glasses, was smoking at the kitchen table and a cup of coffee sat beside his ashtray.
“There he is,” the uncle said as Swann embraced him, and he said, “And you must be the white friend.”
Chris nodded, “I am the white friend.”
“This is Chris Navarro.”
“We have a lot of Italians in this neighborhood,” Uncle Donald noted. “But they used to stay up north of here. Good food. Bad tempers. We used to have a house full of them. When I was growing up, your Uncle Mario’s best friend was Billy Romano. Mama always said he was in the mob, but he wasn’t. I knew that. Now Tyrone Garibaldi, who gave all that money to Saint Angela Merici so the monsignor looked the other way, he was in the mafia. That’s why we left and went to Saint Elizabeth.”
Chris was simultaneously nervous and delighted by Uncle Donald and said, “Sir, I promise you, I’m not in the mafia. And anyway, my dad’s half Jewish.”
“Jay is a Jew,” Donald said, but before Chris could ask who was Jay, Donald continued.
“There were Jews in South Shore. Lots of em. But then in the 60’s someone told them they were white. Too many Mexicans and too many of… us were coming in, and so they left. They went up north and then further up north, then all the way to Skokie.”
Chris shrugged, “I’m just a kid from Benton, Indiana. I don’t know anything about that.”
“No,” Donald said, suddenly looking not at all like a rambling person, but very much like his nephew. “No, you are just a white boy. You are America. Your grandfather and your great grandfather probably did all sorts of things so that you could be an innocent white boy and not think about them. That’s whiteness. That’s America.”
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
When Chris Navarro arrived today, he knew to park in the alley and come in through the backyard. His parents had lawn keepers and his mother had a modest hand in putting up some flower patches, his dad, some water fixtures, so he was always surprised by the elaborate garden of herbs and flowers that existed on the other side of the alley fence. There you drove into the garage and then came out of the garage door into paradise and at the end of it was the stair that wounded up three back porches, one over the other, each screened or windowed, and so they came in through the kitchen where Donald was sitting with his sister, Swann’s Aunt Pam, and some friend or neighbor Chris had never seen, but whom Swann started talking to.
“Well, hello Tall Chris,” Aunt Pam greeted him like she always did
“What happened to the Afro? Girl, you should have seen it,” Pam said to the neighbor, “It was just like the white boys had back in the 70’s. Like a big ole yellow cloud.”
“I thought people would take me more seriously this way,” Chris ran a hand over his head feeling, not for the first time, apologetic about losing his locks.
“People usually don’t take you serious no matter what you look like,” the neighbor said, and shaking Swann by his waist added, “You don got so big, Baby.”
“Not that big.”
“Huge!” Aunt Pam disagreed.
“Something smells delicious,” Chris noted.
“It’s a chicken divan,” Donald said
“That don’t sound like something you would make,” Swann said.
“It’s not. It’s good, but it’s not what I would make.”
“Duck made it,” Pam said.
“Doug’s here?” Chris said.
“He upstairs,” Donald said, then added, “before you run around visiting, Mr. Christopher, please be so kind as to put your shit up and not leave it on the dining room floor.”
On the kitchen table Chris remembered the butter under the butter dish that was probably half melted by now. Donald rose at 4:30 every morning, and and when he did h took the butter dish out of the refrigerator and it stayed out until h went to bed at 10:30 every night after the news. He and Pam were smoking Winstons out of a small pewter ashtray. Molded into was a squat man walking beside a long tall woman whose mouth was opened and a word bubble shot out from it, crying: Oh! Chris had seen in many times, and then one day Swann had come into the kitchen, watching him watch it, laughed, lifted it up and turned it over. On the reverse were the man and woman walking away, and he was grabbing her ass.
“Of course!” Chris said, and Swann followed him.
They put their bags in the front bedroom, off of the dining room and right near the front door, where they always stayed, and the first time Chris had been in it, the room seemed too full of someone else’s life, several someone elses’ lives, but Chris was used to it now. Under the glass covering the surface of great chest of drawers were easily a hundred mostly black and white photographs that showed members of this family in several configurations, on an old couch beside a great fireplace, a proud mother, her children, a staid husband. Over the course of time, listening to Swann he’d learned to place the people in pictures next to the people he’d met. A dark skinned, flirtatious woman with her shoulder exposed and her black hair pushed back was Swann’s grandmother Sefra. She was Uncle Donald and Aunt Pam’s sister. And this girl in this picture might have been Pam. And this large, smiling but strangely fierce light skinned woman must have been Mama, that is, the great grandmother. And here, all in black, was a black nun bearing a great rosary in a washed out photo. And here was a row of nuns. And here, three black priests, and here very old pictures of very old churches.
On the walls were photographs of buildings with wrought iron grills on the porches and carriages riding past them, bad water colors of river barges, and always, always, on the bureau the burning seven day candle, blue beaded rosary wrapped about its base labeled with the Virgin Mary, standing on water, bending down rescuing men on a boat who called out to her. Sun came through the window and a little breeze, but Chris noted the accordion grill pulled across the window, like those across store fronts. They were, after all, on the first floor of a building in the city.
About forty years earlier, realtors and racism had scared a large number of white people and almost all the Jews out of South Shore. Niggers were coming and when they got here they would ruin everything and the prices of everyone’s lovely property would drop. This white man’s witchcraft had been a self fulfilling prophecy. Until then, the Portis clan had been renting further south on Euclid and 85th in Stony Island, but a Jewish friend had told Donald, then barely twenty, that his family was selling their home right down from the lake, and so Mama and Donald and Pam and Leona had gotten their money, which was considerable, together, and bought for a very cheap price Birches, as the brick pillar outside named the three flat they divided up and called home. Now and again the Portises had rented out some apartments, that was the good thing about having a house that was an apartment building, but for the most part they used it as a house, and there was certainly enough family for it, and over the years, even back in 1960, they had taken in so many things that this was the only place big enough for them.
Passing the kitchen and Donald and Pam and Miss Samela, they came to the enclosed back porch and went up the back to the next floor. Coming through Pam’s kitchen that had a bed in it, and going down the hall to a book lined living room, Swann and Chris found Douglass Merrin sitting by the open window, smoking a Black and Mild, the sweet smoke filling the room.
“I didn’t know you were here!”
“Well, hello Tall Chris,” Aunt Pam greeted him like she always did
“What happened to the Afro? Girl, you should have seen it,” Pam said to the neighbor, “It was just like the white boys had back in the 70’s. Like a big ole yellow cloud.”
“I thought people would take me more seriously this way,” Chris ran a hand over his head feeling, not for the first time, apologetic about losing his locks.
“People usually don’t take you serious no matter what you look like,” the neighbor said, and shaking Swann by his waist added, “You don got so big, Baby.”
“Not that big.”
“Huge!” Aunt Pam disagreed.
“Something smells delicious,” Chris noted.
“It’s a chicken divan,” Donald said
“That don’t sound like something you would make,” Swann said.
“It’s not. It’s good, but it’s not what I would make.”
“Duck made it,” Pam said.
“Doug’s here?” Chris said.
“He upstairs,” Donald said, then added, “before you run around visiting, Mr. Christopher, please be so kind as to put your shit up and not leave it on the dining room floor.”
On the kitchen table Chris remembered the butter under the butter dish that was probably half melted by now. Donald rose at 4:30 every morning, and and when he did h took the butter dish out of the refrigerator and it stayed out until h went to bed at 10:30 every night after the news. He and Pam were smoking Winstons out of a small pewter ashtray. Molded into was a squat man walking beside a long tall woman whose mouth was opened and a word bubble shot out from it, crying: Oh! Chris had seen in many times, and then one day Swann had come into the kitchen, watching him watch it, laughed, lifted it up and turned it over. On the reverse were the man and woman walking away, and he was grabbing her ass.
“Of course!” Chris said, and Swann followed him.
They put their bags in the front bedroom, off of the dining room and right near the front door, where they always stayed, and the first time Chris had been in it, the room seemed too full of someone else’s life, several someone elses’ lives, but Chris was used to it now. Under the glass covering the surface of great chest of drawers were easily a hundred mostly black and white photographs that showed members of this family in several configurations, on an old couch beside a great fireplace, a proud mother, her children, a staid husband. Over the course of time, listening to Swann he’d learned to place the people in pictures next to the people he’d met. A dark skinned, flirtatious woman with her shoulder exposed and her black hair pushed back was Swann’s grandmother Sefra. She was Uncle Donald and Aunt Pam’s sister. And this girl in this picture might have been Pam. And this large, smiling but strangely fierce light skinned woman must have been Mama, that is, the great grandmother. And here, all in black, was a black nun bearing a great rosary in a washed out photo. And here was a row of nuns. And here, three black priests, and here very old pictures of very old churches.
On the walls were photographs of buildings with wrought iron grills on the porches and carriages riding past them, bad water colors of river barges, and always, always, on the bureau the burning seven day candle, blue beaded rosary wrapped about its base labeled with the Virgin Mary, standing on water, bending down rescuing men on a boat who called out to her. Sun came through the window and a little breeze, but Chris noted the accordion grill pulled across the window, like those across store fronts. They were, after all, on the first floor of a building in the city.
About forty years earlier, realtors and racism had scared a large number of white people and almost all the Jews out of South Shore. Niggers were coming and when they got here they would ruin everything and the prices of everyone’s lovely property would drop. This white man’s witchcraft had been a self fulfilling prophecy. Until then, the Portis clan had been renting further south on Euclid and 85th in Stony Island, but a Jewish friend had told Donald, then barely twenty, that his family was selling their home right down from the lake, and so Mama and Donald and Pam and Leona had gotten their money, which was considerable, together, and bought for a very cheap price Birches, as the brick pillar outside named the three flat they divided up and called home. Now and again the Portises had rented out some apartments, that was the good thing about having a house that was an apartment building, but for the most part they used it as a house, and there was certainly enough family for it, and over the years, even back in 1960, they had taken in so many things that this was the only place big enough for them.
Passing the kitchen and Donald and Pam and Miss Samela, they came to the enclosed back porch and went up the back to the next floor. Coming through Pam’s kitchen that had a bed in it, and going down the hall to a book lined living room, Swann and Chris found Douglass Merrin sitting by the open window, smoking a Black and Mild, the sweet smoke filling the room.
“I didn’t know you were here!”
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
“Where the fuck else would I be?” Doug said, lazily, putting the cigarillo down and sitting up so Chris could hug him.
“You and your husband just get in it?”
“Me and my—” Chris started, then, “you need to stop.”
“That’s what everyone calls it. Calls you. They call you the husband.”
“I did not need to know that.”
“Maybe you did. Then you could take what you all have seriously.”
“I do take it seriously, and when did you get so old?”
“It’s really none of my business,” Doug said, taking a puff from the Black and Mild and then offering it to Chris, who did take a puff.
“That’s good shit.”
“Have your own,” Doug handed him one. “Beer’s in the freezer, and if Swann is downstairs with Donald and Grandmama, he ain’t gon be back up here anytime soon.”
The way that Pete and his family slipped into bits of Greek which sounded to him like clicks and whistles, The Portises always slipped into the dialect of the neighborhood and eventually even the accents that they had come with long ago from Louisiana. What was more, Chris did it too so that, days after a visit, if he ran into people they would ask if he was from the South, and if he was planning to go some place he’d say: “Ahm fixin to go such and such…”
Life was different here. If he was a much dumber white person he would have been tempted to say ghetto life, but he had seen ghetto life and South Shore was not it. And the Birches was more than South Shore. It was South, it was, maybe, even Louisiana where two generations before Pam and Donald and Sefra, the grandmother Swann talked about so often, had come from.
Because all the apartments were more or less alike, the house they made up consisted of six bedrooms, three bathrooms and three kitchens, not to mention the basement apartment, smaller, which made seven, four and four. Don kept the boys with him because the first time they’d come, Estelle had been staying in the highest apartment and then later because it seemed an asshole thing to make people who had traveled, lug their bags up three flights of stairs. Pam stayed above him and Leona had stayed with her until she died, and then Julia until she’d moved to Kansas, and currently Doug stayed alone, for the most part, on the top floor. These days the family was smaller and more scattered and the third story apartment operated on the rules of what was done with free space. There was a washer and dryer on the back porch, a deeper freezer and ordinary fridge in the kitchen, but the living room and dining room had been turned into a library, and rows and rows of books of every kind lined the walls. Old Tiffany lamps were by the deep chairs in the corners, and strung along the ceiling, like they were in Swann’s Room 42, were party lights. In fact, Chris was sure, this was where he’d gotten the idea.
“Today is Sunday,” Doug said, “and that’s the Lords day. So I threw together that chicken divan. Wednesday night everyone will be cooking, so I won’t. But I think starting tomorrow night I’m going to do a gumbo, like Swann used to do, like Grandma hasn’t done in a while. You can go to the fish store with me.”
“I think we’re driving up to Evanston tomorrow,” Chris said.
“Okay, good to know we are,” Doug said, stroking his chin and inviting himself.
“We’ll have to get the shrimp and the crab in the morning then. I could peel them in the back of the car.”
On his way to the kitchen, Chris hollered, “You are not peeling and plucking a bunch of smelly seafood in the back of my SUV.”
“I am,” Doug said. “Do you have any idea how long the trip from here to Evanston is? And at any road, good seafood doesn’t smell, and a good cook won’t make a mess.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying yes to this.” Chris shouted from the kitchen where he had cracked open a beer.
Doug said, “I can’t believe you thought you’d say no.”
“You and your husband just get in it?”
“Me and my—” Chris started, then, “you need to stop.”
“That’s what everyone calls it. Calls you. They call you the husband.”
“I did not need to know that.”
“Maybe you did. Then you could take what you all have seriously.”
“I do take it seriously, and when did you get so old?”
“It’s really none of my business,” Doug said, taking a puff from the Black and Mild and then offering it to Chris, who did take a puff.
“That’s good shit.”
“Have your own,” Doug handed him one. “Beer’s in the freezer, and if Swann is downstairs with Donald and Grandmama, he ain’t gon be back up here anytime soon.”
The way that Pete and his family slipped into bits of Greek which sounded to him like clicks and whistles, The Portises always slipped into the dialect of the neighborhood and eventually even the accents that they had come with long ago from Louisiana. What was more, Chris did it too so that, days after a visit, if he ran into people they would ask if he was from the South, and if he was planning to go some place he’d say: “Ahm fixin to go such and such…”
Life was different here. If he was a much dumber white person he would have been tempted to say ghetto life, but he had seen ghetto life and South Shore was not it. And the Birches was more than South Shore. It was South, it was, maybe, even Louisiana where two generations before Pam and Donald and Sefra, the grandmother Swann talked about so often, had come from.
Because all the apartments were more or less alike, the house they made up consisted of six bedrooms, three bathrooms and three kitchens, not to mention the basement apartment, smaller, which made seven, four and four. Don kept the boys with him because the first time they’d come, Estelle had been staying in the highest apartment and then later because it seemed an asshole thing to make people who had traveled, lug their bags up three flights of stairs. Pam stayed above him and Leona had stayed with her until she died, and then Julia until she’d moved to Kansas, and currently Doug stayed alone, for the most part, on the top floor. These days the family was smaller and more scattered and the third story apartment operated on the rules of what was done with free space. There was a washer and dryer on the back porch, a deeper freezer and ordinary fridge in the kitchen, but the living room and dining room had been turned into a library, and rows and rows of books of every kind lined the walls. Old Tiffany lamps were by the deep chairs in the corners, and strung along the ceiling, like they were in Swann’s Room 42, were party lights. In fact, Chris was sure, this was where he’d gotten the idea.
“Today is Sunday,” Doug said, “and that’s the Lords day. So I threw together that chicken divan. Wednesday night everyone will be cooking, so I won’t. But I think starting tomorrow night I’m going to do a gumbo, like Swann used to do, like Grandma hasn’t done in a while. You can go to the fish store with me.”
“I think we’re driving up to Evanston tomorrow,” Chris said.
“Okay, good to know we are,” Doug said, stroking his chin and inviting himself.
“We’ll have to get the shrimp and the crab in the morning then. I could peel them in the back of the car.”
On his way to the kitchen, Chris hollered, “You are not peeling and plucking a bunch of smelly seafood in the back of my SUV.”
“I am,” Doug said. “Do you have any idea how long the trip from here to Evanston is? And at any road, good seafood doesn’t smell, and a good cook won’t make a mess.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying yes to this.” Chris shouted from the kitchen where he had cracked open a beer.
Doug said, “I can’t believe you thought you’d say no.”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was an excellent weekend portion! So interesting to see where some of these guys grew up. I am still enjoying this story a great deal and look forward to more soon!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'll be posting more on Sunday, I think.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Chapter Twelve
Chris Navarro’s favorite way to sleep, almost his favorite way to be, was pressed to Swann Portis with nothing between them, arms and legs entwined, chest to chest, stomach to stomach, dick to dick, head in shoulders, breathing in each other. The very first time they’d stayed at the house in South Shore, Chris thought he would be out of ease with all the portraits, with the saints’ faces and candles. Swann explained you never blew out a seven day candle. But Chris felt at home here now. He felt safe like he was in a church in an old movie. They made love easily in that bed and slept without covers, for it was early summer that first time. They didn’t need them.
Early in the morning Chris woke to the door opening, and Uncle Donald walking in blithely and seeing them. The two of them, Chris and Donald looked at each other, and the middle aged man’s face was expressionless.
“I just put coffee on,” he said, “and breakfast will be ready in about ten minutes.”
A cigarette was hanging from Donald’s hand and he turned to go, but as he reached the door he said, “If you put your hand along the inside of the door, where the bolt is, there are two brass buttons. If you press one in, the door locks, and if you push the other one in, the door is…. Unlocked.”
That was all he ever said about the matter, and then he was gone.
That was some four years ago, and this morning they sat at the kitchen table in Donald’s apartment, Donald looking like an old Swann and Doug, cigarette in one hand and coffee in the other, looking like a young Donald while Chris paid more attention to his eggs than usual.
“There’s plenty of em,” Donald said. “They aren’t going anywhere.”
“I just didn’t know I’d be so hungry.”
“It’s this whole not wanting to eat at night thing,” Swann said.
“My doctor said it’s not good for you.’
“You know what is good for you?” Swann said. “White Castles on 95th and Archer followed by Huck Finn’s donuts.”
Donald was, in fact, eating one of three cheeseburgers in cartons, pickles removed, and there was a chocolate donut beside his coffee.
“It’s a bit of a drive, but it’s not not worth it.”
Chris yawned and took a swig of orange juice.
“I was just so tired last night.”
“Well, you were the one doing all the driving,” Swann said.
It had been he and Doug who had taken out the SUV and crossed town.
“I forget how big the southside is,” Swann had muttered from the passenger seat.
They got for themselves what they wanted at the moment, but knew they had to get enough for Pam for Donald and for Chris. When they’d returned an hour later, Swann had climbed onto the bed and waved the burger under Chris’s nose and he had grinned at him and kissed him saying, “Just this once.”
This morning Chris turned from the eggs to a doughnut, and when he’d finished and was licking his fingers, he said, “When do you wanna go to the fish market?”
Doug stubbed out his cigarette.
“Now.”
By eleven thirty they were headed north. They superficially debated which way to travel, but Doug said, “We are two blocks from Lake Shore Drive, and it goes all the way north with no traffic lights and no stopping, so why are we even talking?”
Swann and Douglass had spent their lives traveling from north to south on the El, on Metra, on buses and most awful, in cars stuck in traffic and stopped at traffic lights, a hellish trip in an enormous city. You’d have to be a fool to not touch Lake Shore Drive at least some of the way if you were traveling north south, at least this is what Donald said, and his nephews agreed.
This far south Lake Shore Drive was almost modest. It would be a while before it expanded, before you looked out the window and saw in addition to the magnificent lake, the old faux Roman constructions of the Field Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Shedd Aquarium, before lanes widened and you approached downtown to the left of you and the tall old stately hotels with skyscraper beyond, the tall, straight shouldered gentleman of Chicago and Sears Tower, like a pack of cigarettes someone had pulled out at different heights and painted black. Buckingham Fountain, wide and shooting its great arcs of water. But as they passed it all, seemingly unaffected, Doug Merrin peeled, deveined and dcclawed the meat.
Swann pointed out, “You know what? This process is not nearly as scentless as you promised?”
“It’s not nearly as quick as I hoped, either,” Doug noted. “It would all be done a lot quicker with some assistance.”
Chris, who was driving, looked at Swann and shrugged and Swann let out a deep breath, and unbuckled his seat belt as they approached the junction of the Streeterville where the Chicago River flowed into Lake Michigan and elegant glass buildings rose all around them, tumbling into the back of the vehicle.
Douglass Merrin was nothing if not efficient. He wore an apron and over it plastic, and he sat with a little knife, shelling and deveining. The remains of the sea creatures went into a bucket with one paper bag inside another, and the cleaned creatures went into a large bucket of water which, now and again, Doug elegantly spilled onto Lake Shore Drive heedless of the looks on the faces of his fellow companions on the road. Beside that was an Igloo cooler where all the meat was stored, and now as Swann came to join him, Doug set up a similar station for him so that Swann said, “You knew I’d end up back here with you, didn’t you?
“I’d hoped,” Doug said, sparing him not a glance, and pushed a bag of shrimp his cousin’s way.
But Doug was right. By the time they were passing out of Lincoln Park, Doug was covering the last of the buckets, explaining, “we can spill those out at home,” and he had handed Swann some wet naps a water bottle and a towel.
“Use them in that order, “Doug said. “See, now the smell is gone.”
By the time they reached the end—or rather the beginning—of Lake Shore Drive, and it was turning into Bryn Mawr if they went west, but curling up into Sheridan Road if they continued north, Swann was yawning.
“Don’t you dare,” Chris said. “Don’t you even start.”
“We can hold off,” Swann said.
Sheridan Road was a fast flowing stream of traffic at the bottom of a canyon made of high rises, and it did not relent till they turned left before the tall grey structure of Mundelein College, then came out into the light into the interection where Sheridan merged with Broadway and continued north through Loyola University and then the old apartments bordering Morse and Lunt, and the following streets of Rogers Park till, at last, they arrived on the drive where there was only a pile of rocks to the east separating them from the endless great grey blue water stretching to meet the blue grey sky on one side and on the other side, the ancient mausoleums of the cemetery marking the northern border of Chicago.
“My mother told me Australia was at the bottom ot the world,” Doug said as they drove along the expanse of milky blue water. “And every time we passed this bit, with the rocks falling down to it that seemed so very deep, I thought Australia must be there. I pictured kangaroos, all among the seaweed, jumping up and down on the sand beneath the water.”
Sheridan was at a curve, but it felt straight, so when they passed the little beach and were about to stay on what seemed to be Sheridan, they made a sharp right turn away from the busy but leafy street called South, lined with expensive apartment buildings, and kept on a less busy Sheridan, which was still lined with expensive apartment buildings.
“Whenever I hit South, it feels like I’m going north, and whenever I turn north, it feels like we’re going out east.”
“That’s why you can’t trust your senses,” Doug said prosaicly as they passed old condominiums they were soon to return to and followed the flow of traffic by beach, and then away from water to one large tree veiled house after another large tree veiled home or probable mansion, and now they turned into what Swann called “one of the series of streets after Chicago Avenue and before the lake where expensive people live.”
As they turned away from Sheridan, Chris said, “I wanted to see what happened if we kept driving.”
“You really wanna keep driving?” said Swann. “Because we’ve been in this car for like, an hour and a half.”
“Wilmette happens if you keep driving,” Doug said.
“What’s in Wilmette?”
“White folks. And a temple with a pointed dome. And yachts.”
“The temple with the pointy dome is making me curious.”
“Okay,” Doug said. “Feel free to see it once we get all this seafood in the freezer.”
But the Merrins were expensive people, sort of. Doug said they were less expensive because they lived closer to Chicago Avenue than to the lake. On Judson Avenue, amidst a series of similar old houses, was a large old white one that must have been a duplex, but would have still made two large homes, and here they parked, and here the Swann fell out with one igloo container while his cousin poured dirty water all over the lawn. A weary, vaguely disappointed black woman came out from the right door on the front porch and cocked her head, looking at them.
“Mother, dearest mother,” Doug said as if he almost meant it, “it’s so good to see you!”
Chris Navarro’s favorite way to sleep, almost his favorite way to be, was pressed to Swann Portis with nothing between them, arms and legs entwined, chest to chest, stomach to stomach, dick to dick, head in shoulders, breathing in each other. The very first time they’d stayed at the house in South Shore, Chris thought he would be out of ease with all the portraits, with the saints’ faces and candles. Swann explained you never blew out a seven day candle. But Chris felt at home here now. He felt safe like he was in a church in an old movie. They made love easily in that bed and slept without covers, for it was early summer that first time. They didn’t need them.
Early in the morning Chris woke to the door opening, and Uncle Donald walking in blithely and seeing them. The two of them, Chris and Donald looked at each other, and the middle aged man’s face was expressionless.
“I just put coffee on,” he said, “and breakfast will be ready in about ten minutes.”
A cigarette was hanging from Donald’s hand and he turned to go, but as he reached the door he said, “If you put your hand along the inside of the door, where the bolt is, there are two brass buttons. If you press one in, the door locks, and if you push the other one in, the door is…. Unlocked.”
That was all he ever said about the matter, and then he was gone.
That was some four years ago, and this morning they sat at the kitchen table in Donald’s apartment, Donald looking like an old Swann and Doug, cigarette in one hand and coffee in the other, looking like a young Donald while Chris paid more attention to his eggs than usual.
“There’s plenty of em,” Donald said. “They aren’t going anywhere.”
“I just didn’t know I’d be so hungry.”
“It’s this whole not wanting to eat at night thing,” Swann said.
“My doctor said it’s not good for you.’
“You know what is good for you?” Swann said. “White Castles on 95th and Archer followed by Huck Finn’s donuts.”
Donald was, in fact, eating one of three cheeseburgers in cartons, pickles removed, and there was a chocolate donut beside his coffee.
“It’s a bit of a drive, but it’s not not worth it.”
Chris yawned and took a swig of orange juice.
“I was just so tired last night.”
“Well, you were the one doing all the driving,” Swann said.
It had been he and Doug who had taken out the SUV and crossed town.
“I forget how big the southside is,” Swann had muttered from the passenger seat.
They got for themselves what they wanted at the moment, but knew they had to get enough for Pam for Donald and for Chris. When they’d returned an hour later, Swann had climbed onto the bed and waved the burger under Chris’s nose and he had grinned at him and kissed him saying, “Just this once.”
This morning Chris turned from the eggs to a doughnut, and when he’d finished and was licking his fingers, he said, “When do you wanna go to the fish market?”
Doug stubbed out his cigarette.
“Now.”
By eleven thirty they were headed north. They superficially debated which way to travel, but Doug said, “We are two blocks from Lake Shore Drive, and it goes all the way north with no traffic lights and no stopping, so why are we even talking?”
Swann and Douglass had spent their lives traveling from north to south on the El, on Metra, on buses and most awful, in cars stuck in traffic and stopped at traffic lights, a hellish trip in an enormous city. You’d have to be a fool to not touch Lake Shore Drive at least some of the way if you were traveling north south, at least this is what Donald said, and his nephews agreed.
This far south Lake Shore Drive was almost modest. It would be a while before it expanded, before you looked out the window and saw in addition to the magnificent lake, the old faux Roman constructions of the Field Museum, the Museum of Science and Industry and the Shedd Aquarium, before lanes widened and you approached downtown to the left of you and the tall old stately hotels with skyscraper beyond, the tall, straight shouldered gentleman of Chicago and Sears Tower, like a pack of cigarettes someone had pulled out at different heights and painted black. Buckingham Fountain, wide and shooting its great arcs of water. But as they passed it all, seemingly unaffected, Doug Merrin peeled, deveined and dcclawed the meat.
Swann pointed out, “You know what? This process is not nearly as scentless as you promised?”
“It’s not nearly as quick as I hoped, either,” Doug noted. “It would all be done a lot quicker with some assistance.”
Chris, who was driving, looked at Swann and shrugged and Swann let out a deep breath, and unbuckled his seat belt as they approached the junction of the Streeterville where the Chicago River flowed into Lake Michigan and elegant glass buildings rose all around them, tumbling into the back of the vehicle.
Douglass Merrin was nothing if not efficient. He wore an apron and over it plastic, and he sat with a little knife, shelling and deveining. The remains of the sea creatures went into a bucket with one paper bag inside another, and the cleaned creatures went into a large bucket of water which, now and again, Doug elegantly spilled onto Lake Shore Drive heedless of the looks on the faces of his fellow companions on the road. Beside that was an Igloo cooler where all the meat was stored, and now as Swann came to join him, Doug set up a similar station for him so that Swann said, “You knew I’d end up back here with you, didn’t you?
“I’d hoped,” Doug said, sparing him not a glance, and pushed a bag of shrimp his cousin’s way.
But Doug was right. By the time they were passing out of Lincoln Park, Doug was covering the last of the buckets, explaining, “we can spill those out at home,” and he had handed Swann some wet naps a water bottle and a towel.
“Use them in that order, “Doug said. “See, now the smell is gone.”
By the time they reached the end—or rather the beginning—of Lake Shore Drive, and it was turning into Bryn Mawr if they went west, but curling up into Sheridan Road if they continued north, Swann was yawning.
“Don’t you dare,” Chris said. “Don’t you even start.”
“We can hold off,” Swann said.
Sheridan Road was a fast flowing stream of traffic at the bottom of a canyon made of high rises, and it did not relent till they turned left before the tall grey structure of Mundelein College, then came out into the light into the interection where Sheridan merged with Broadway and continued north through Loyola University and then the old apartments bordering Morse and Lunt, and the following streets of Rogers Park till, at last, they arrived on the drive where there was only a pile of rocks to the east separating them from the endless great grey blue water stretching to meet the blue grey sky on one side and on the other side, the ancient mausoleums of the cemetery marking the northern border of Chicago.
“My mother told me Australia was at the bottom ot the world,” Doug said as they drove along the expanse of milky blue water. “And every time we passed this bit, with the rocks falling down to it that seemed so very deep, I thought Australia must be there. I pictured kangaroos, all among the seaweed, jumping up and down on the sand beneath the water.”
Sheridan was at a curve, but it felt straight, so when they passed the little beach and were about to stay on what seemed to be Sheridan, they made a sharp right turn away from the busy but leafy street called South, lined with expensive apartment buildings, and kept on a less busy Sheridan, which was still lined with expensive apartment buildings.
“Whenever I hit South, it feels like I’m going north, and whenever I turn north, it feels like we’re going out east.”
“That’s why you can’t trust your senses,” Doug said prosaicly as they passed old condominiums they were soon to return to and followed the flow of traffic by beach, and then away from water to one large tree veiled house after another large tree veiled home or probable mansion, and now they turned into what Swann called “one of the series of streets after Chicago Avenue and before the lake where expensive people live.”
As they turned away from Sheridan, Chris said, “I wanted to see what happened if we kept driving.”
“You really wanna keep driving?” said Swann. “Because we’ve been in this car for like, an hour and a half.”
“Wilmette happens if you keep driving,” Doug said.
“What’s in Wilmette?”
“White folks. And a temple with a pointed dome. And yachts.”
“The temple with the pointy dome is making me curious.”
“Okay,” Doug said. “Feel free to see it once we get all this seafood in the freezer.”
But the Merrins were expensive people, sort of. Doug said they were less expensive because they lived closer to Chicago Avenue than to the lake. On Judson Avenue, amidst a series of similar old houses, was a large old white one that must have been a duplex, but would have still made two large homes, and here they parked, and here the Swann fell out with one igloo container while his cousin poured dirty water all over the lawn. A weary, vaguely disappointed black woman came out from the right door on the front porch and cocked her head, looking at them.
“Mother, dearest mother,” Doug said as if he almost meant it, “it’s so good to see you!”
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! I like reading of the continuing journey of these characters. By the sounds of the end we are meeting Doug’s mother which should be interesting. Excellent writing and I look forward to more soon!
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
The house on Judson Street was large old room spilling into large high ceilinged old room, and each room was covered in old Persian carpets. Nothing was new in the Merrin house. Everything seemed very old and from some place else, and Mrs. Merrin liked pillows, they were everywhere, as were books. Chris had seen books on coffee tables, lain elegantly and books stacked up for decorations, and there were books all around here too, but they were open, in the midst of being read, and all along the walls there were stacks of them, not lain in neat rows but piled however they could fit. Though the house was not dirty, Chris noticed, because thre was none in his own, dust. Once Swann had noted, “Chris, your mom sure loves to clean.” Deborah Merrin did not. She was, Chris found himself thinking, a lot like a man.
They had left most of their things at the Birches, but because they were staying the night, pajamas and a few other essentials came here. Swann was upstairs putting them in the double room where one door opened to another, which had been his as a child, and Doug was pulling out pots and pans in the kitchen, preparing to cook when Chris walked through the creaking upstairs and entered Doug’s mother’s bright lit old studio.
The Merrin household had its share of saints and virgins on the walls, and to be sure an open Bible with a rosary in a corner or two. After all, Deborah was Pam’s daughter, and she had grown up at The Birches. But what dominated this house was Deborah’s own art, and it all come out of this room. When he thought of the quiet and slightly worried woman who had let them into the house, he had a hard time matching her with the great dragon with its wide wild lizard eyes and spread red wings, or the sensuous mermaid with twisting tail and bare breasts. Every time he came here there was something wilder she was building or in the middle of making, a strange and intricate city built on the back of a dinosaur, an exquisite leg topped by a great eyeball, or a fairy queen, or a pair of Egyptian Goddesses. Once when she had seen him walking around, Deborah had startled Chris by saying in her small voice.
“Do you know Anais? Anais Nin?”
Chris stopped, feeling like he’d been caught doing what he shouldn’t, walking about in this woman’s studio, He wanted to say, “I’m sorry, the door was open.”
But what he said is, “No… not really.”
“She said,” Deborah began, “ ‘Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.’”
Then she said, “And yet I almost did die in someone elses. I almost died,” she said. “But I didn’t.”
There was no Mr. Merrin in this house, and though Chris had not understood what Deborah had said at the time, he gathered that this is what she meant. There had been no Mr. Merrin for about two years, not living here, but there had been before, and Chris knew, though he did not pry, that this was the reason for the wall Doug had chosen to put between himself and his mother. Doug was his friend, even in some ways his little brother. Unlike Swann, Doug was not his lover, and so Chris stayed out of his business, and out of his head. This afternoon when he stood admiring the bone colored unicorn, Deborah found him and said, “That is my favorite. Every new thing is my favorite.”
“It’s beautiful,” Chris smiled at her.
He added. “I can already smell that gumbo, and he couldn’t have started much yet.”
“Barely past the roux. I think you’re just hungry. He made sure I had the vegetables cut. He said, ‘Mama, if I can do the meat and peel all those nasty shellfish, you can at least do that.’” She shook her head.
She sighed, “Douglass is an excellent cook. He didn’t get that from me.”
“He bullied me into going to get seafood early this morning. And then made Swann help him clean the shrimp and crabs in the back of the car on our way here. He’s such a…. little dragon sometimes.”
Deborah smiled and shook her head.
“He didn’t get that from he, either.”
Downstairs, Swann was watching his cousin with the admiration of a master who had taught the pupil well. The great pan fillid with its vegetables and the roux was going from green and red and white to a brown ivory, and now, with the tomoatoes and their juices going from ivory to red. The pink seafood, then the added chicken began to bubble and then came the other spices, then the green file powder and, at last, before them was a thick rich red brown gumbo.
“Oh, it looks like Mamas!” Deborah said. “Can I taste?”
“Of course you can taste,” Doug said, but smiled from the corner of his mouth while he stirred, slowly.
“Oh,” his mother put in a little spoon and blew on the liquid. “Oh, this is it, this tastes like Grandmama and Granpere could make. This is like they’re here in the room.”
“Well, they better not be here in this room,” Doug said, taking out the spoon, and knocking it against the pan, then laying it on the spoon rest, “or I’m calling an exorcist.
“Now, Ma, help yourself to a bowl, but I think you should let it rest a while. We’re going to make our last and most undesired stop of the day.”
“Douglass, you be nice to her.”
“I’m always nice,” Doug said.
They had left most of their things at the Birches, but because they were staying the night, pajamas and a few other essentials came here. Swann was upstairs putting them in the double room where one door opened to another, which had been his as a child, and Doug was pulling out pots and pans in the kitchen, preparing to cook when Chris walked through the creaking upstairs and entered Doug’s mother’s bright lit old studio.
The Merrin household had its share of saints and virgins on the walls, and to be sure an open Bible with a rosary in a corner or two. After all, Deborah was Pam’s daughter, and she had grown up at The Birches. But what dominated this house was Deborah’s own art, and it all come out of this room. When he thought of the quiet and slightly worried woman who had let them into the house, he had a hard time matching her with the great dragon with its wide wild lizard eyes and spread red wings, or the sensuous mermaid with twisting tail and bare breasts. Every time he came here there was something wilder she was building or in the middle of making, a strange and intricate city built on the back of a dinosaur, an exquisite leg topped by a great eyeball, or a fairy queen, or a pair of Egyptian Goddesses. Once when she had seen him walking around, Deborah had startled Chris by saying in her small voice.
“Do you know Anais? Anais Nin?”
Chris stopped, feeling like he’d been caught doing what he shouldn’t, walking about in this woman’s studio, He wanted to say, “I’m sorry, the door was open.”
But what he said is, “No… not really.”
“She said,” Deborah began, “ ‘Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.’”
Then she said, “And yet I almost did die in someone elses. I almost died,” she said. “But I didn’t.”
There was no Mr. Merrin in this house, and though Chris had not understood what Deborah had said at the time, he gathered that this is what she meant. There had been no Mr. Merrin for about two years, not living here, but there had been before, and Chris knew, though he did not pry, that this was the reason for the wall Doug had chosen to put between himself and his mother. Doug was his friend, even in some ways his little brother. Unlike Swann, Doug was not his lover, and so Chris stayed out of his business, and out of his head. This afternoon when he stood admiring the bone colored unicorn, Deborah found him and said, “That is my favorite. Every new thing is my favorite.”
“It’s beautiful,” Chris smiled at her.
He added. “I can already smell that gumbo, and he couldn’t have started much yet.”
“Barely past the roux. I think you’re just hungry. He made sure I had the vegetables cut. He said, ‘Mama, if I can do the meat and peel all those nasty shellfish, you can at least do that.’” She shook her head.
She sighed, “Douglass is an excellent cook. He didn’t get that from me.”
“He bullied me into going to get seafood early this morning. And then made Swann help him clean the shrimp and crabs in the back of the car on our way here. He’s such a…. little dragon sometimes.”
Deborah smiled and shook her head.
“He didn’t get that from he, either.”
Downstairs, Swann was watching his cousin with the admiration of a master who had taught the pupil well. The great pan fillid with its vegetables and the roux was going from green and red and white to a brown ivory, and now, with the tomoatoes and their juices going from ivory to red. The pink seafood, then the added chicken began to bubble and then came the other spices, then the green file powder and, at last, before them was a thick rich red brown gumbo.
“Oh, it looks like Mamas!” Deborah said. “Can I taste?”
“Of course you can taste,” Doug said, but smiled from the corner of his mouth while he stirred, slowly.
“Oh,” his mother put in a little spoon and blew on the liquid. “Oh, this is it, this tastes like Grandmama and Granpere could make. This is like they’re here in the room.”
“Well, they better not be here in this room,” Doug said, taking out the spoon, and knocking it against the pan, then laying it on the spoon rest, “or I’m calling an exorcist.
“Now, Ma, help yourself to a bowl, but I think you should let it rest a while. We’re going to make our last and most undesired stop of the day.”
“Douglass, you be nice to her.”
“I’m always nice,” Doug said.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
After all the driving they’d done that day, the last trip was a short one, back to Sheridan Road, and before one of the beach front apartment buildings.
Rose Portis lived in what looked like two semi modern, classical brick buildings joined by a row of white round bay windows, and she lived on the second floor because “ground floors make me feel vulnerable, but walking to the third floor makes me exhausted.” Her large apartment was made larger still by the lack of furniture and the lack of decorations or paintings on the wall. A TV was on the floor as if she’d just moved into the place, and though Swann noticed there were now dishes in his mother’s cupboards, he did not believe she had put them there, and it was the stacks of Chinette he knew she was using every night.
“Mrs Portis,” Chris greeted the woman who had embraced Swann and now embraced him.
“Christopher! You cut your hair.”
“Everyone notices,” he said.
“Douglass,” Rose greeted him.
“Rose,” Douglass named her.
They did not embrace.
“Before I forget,” Doug said, moving away as if he didn’t want embracing to even be a possibility, “Ma says come over for dinner tonight. I’ve made gumbo.”
“Oh, good. I guess I should come, though no one could ever get it like my grandmother’s.”
“Deborah actually said it tastes just like your grandmothers,” Swann’s voice echoed from the kitchen as he opened the refrigerator.
“You have milk and beer!”
“Well, then take on or the other,” his mother said.
They heard beer crack open and she said, “You would take one of the last three.”
“And you would know we were coming and have nothing prepared.”
He came out into the living room and said, “I love what you’ve neglected to do with the place.”
“I’ve fallen on hard time and money just doesn’t stretch like it used to.”
“Rose,” Doug said, “you own a beach front condo in Evanston, Illinois. You are not poor.”
“When Swann’s father died, I got some money—”
“Actually you got a lot of money,” Swann sipped from the beer.
“But I didn’t get that trust. That’s the real money, and it’s Swann’s and he can’t have it till he’s twenty-five.”
“And then you’ll buy some furniture with my money?”
“I’d think you wouldn’t begrudge helping your mother out,” Rose said as she took out a cigarette.
They were all still standing by the front door. There wasn’t really anywhere to sit.
“I could get some lawn chairs,” Rose said.
“We weren’t staying long,” Doug said.
“Even so, Douglass, even so.”
“I’ll help,” Chris said, because he had seen Doug and Swann shooting eyes at each other.
“Your father never did anything so wise,” Doug said, “as making sure that ridiculous bitch couldn’t touch your inheritance.”
As Chris and Rose returned with chairs, Swann did not disagree.
Rose Portis had married Jack Porter because he was rich, and Swann had been their only child, name for Swann in Proust, because at the time Rose was in graduate school and she was reading that big ass book of his. When it was time to name the baby she said, like a dutiful wife, “Swann Philip Porter,” but then she thought, as she said many times over, “Well, he didn’t lay on his back and have his pussy ripped open, now did he?” and the difference of two letters….? So when Jack was gone, she had cleared her throat and said to the nurse, “Port-IS. You got that, right? Portis.”
Jack never looked at the birth certificate, and because he was a busy man who had few dealings with the business of his son’s life, he never got any confusing calls about if the boy’s name was Porter or Portis. In fact, Swann was fully ten years old, and he had been at a choir competition in Wilmette when they had called his son’s name and said, “Swann Portis,” and he had commented to his wife, “They mean Porter.”
Later at dinner, he’d asked his son, “Why did you let them call you Swann Portis?”
Swann had looked at him, confused, and said, “Because that’s my name.”
And out came the secret, and for the next seven years, Mr. Porter would be upset about what his wife was done. In fact he had threatened that Swann could never inherit anything unless he changed his name to Porter, and his wife would get nothing. However a good lawyer, and waking up one night with a gun in his mouth had changed all of that. The last years of that marriage had been violent, and Swann was only too glad to go to live at Saint Anthony. When he got the news that his father was dead, he had been in Benton, at Chris’s house, and he’d said, “I don’t know how to feel.”
Later, at Birches, Doug said, “Feel glad.”
Uncle Donald had smacked him on the back of the head, but lightly, because he agreed.
Rose Portis lived in what looked like two semi modern, classical brick buildings joined by a row of white round bay windows, and she lived on the second floor because “ground floors make me feel vulnerable, but walking to the third floor makes me exhausted.” Her large apartment was made larger still by the lack of furniture and the lack of decorations or paintings on the wall. A TV was on the floor as if she’d just moved into the place, and though Swann noticed there were now dishes in his mother’s cupboards, he did not believe she had put them there, and it was the stacks of Chinette he knew she was using every night.
“Mrs Portis,” Chris greeted the woman who had embraced Swann and now embraced him.
“Christopher! You cut your hair.”
“Everyone notices,” he said.
“Douglass,” Rose greeted him.
“Rose,” Douglass named her.
They did not embrace.
“Before I forget,” Doug said, moving away as if he didn’t want embracing to even be a possibility, “Ma says come over for dinner tonight. I’ve made gumbo.”
“Oh, good. I guess I should come, though no one could ever get it like my grandmother’s.”
“Deborah actually said it tastes just like your grandmothers,” Swann’s voice echoed from the kitchen as he opened the refrigerator.
“You have milk and beer!”
“Well, then take on or the other,” his mother said.
They heard beer crack open and she said, “You would take one of the last three.”
“And you would know we were coming and have nothing prepared.”
He came out into the living room and said, “I love what you’ve neglected to do with the place.”
“I’ve fallen on hard time and money just doesn’t stretch like it used to.”
“Rose,” Doug said, “you own a beach front condo in Evanston, Illinois. You are not poor.”
“When Swann’s father died, I got some money—”
“Actually you got a lot of money,” Swann sipped from the beer.
“But I didn’t get that trust. That’s the real money, and it’s Swann’s and he can’t have it till he’s twenty-five.”
“And then you’ll buy some furniture with my money?”
“I’d think you wouldn’t begrudge helping your mother out,” Rose said as she took out a cigarette.
They were all still standing by the front door. There wasn’t really anywhere to sit.
“I could get some lawn chairs,” Rose said.
“We weren’t staying long,” Doug said.
“Even so, Douglass, even so.”
“I’ll help,” Chris said, because he had seen Doug and Swann shooting eyes at each other.
“Your father never did anything so wise,” Doug said, “as making sure that ridiculous bitch couldn’t touch your inheritance.”
As Chris and Rose returned with chairs, Swann did not disagree.
Rose Portis had married Jack Porter because he was rich, and Swann had been their only child, name for Swann in Proust, because at the time Rose was in graduate school and she was reading that big ass book of his. When it was time to name the baby she said, like a dutiful wife, “Swann Philip Porter,” but then she thought, as she said many times over, “Well, he didn’t lay on his back and have his pussy ripped open, now did he?” and the difference of two letters….? So when Jack was gone, she had cleared her throat and said to the nurse, “Port-IS. You got that, right? Portis.”
Jack never looked at the birth certificate, and because he was a busy man who had few dealings with the business of his son’s life, he never got any confusing calls about if the boy’s name was Porter or Portis. In fact, Swann was fully ten years old, and he had been at a choir competition in Wilmette when they had called his son’s name and said, “Swann Portis,” and he had commented to his wife, “They mean Porter.”
Later at dinner, he’d asked his son, “Why did you let them call you Swann Portis?”
Swann had looked at him, confused, and said, “Because that’s my name.”
And out came the secret, and for the next seven years, Mr. Porter would be upset about what his wife was done. In fact he had threatened that Swann could never inherit anything unless he changed his name to Porter, and his wife would get nothing. However a good lawyer, and waking up one night with a gun in his mouth had changed all of that. The last years of that marriage had been violent, and Swann was only too glad to go to live at Saint Anthony. When he got the news that his father was dead, he had been in Benton, at Chris’s house, and he’d said, “I don’t know how to feel.”
Later, at Birches, Doug said, “Feel glad.”
Uncle Donald had smacked him on the back of the head, but lightly, because he agreed.
CharmedFan28
JUB Addict
That was a great portion! Some of these guys have awful parents. Swann’s Mum especially sounds like a piece of work. Doug sounds like a good cook. Excellent writing and I look forward to reading what happens next.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Swann's mother is quite a piece of a work. At least he and Doug know how to cook, and I wish I could be at one of thir meals.
ChrisGibson
JUB Addict
Chapter Thirteen
“Will someone come and pick me up for dinner?” Rose asked, as Swann felt his ass lacerated by the strips of the lawn chair.
“I can,” Chris said.
“After all,” Doug said, expelling smoke from the cigarette he had just lit, “it is a whole four blocks away.”
“I was thinking you all could have Thanksgiving here,” Deborah said as Doug was ladling gumbo into a bowl and passing it to her.
“But we’re all having it at Birches,” Doug said as he made another bowl and passed it to Swann. “Grandma and Donald have already probably started cooking. Alesia and Tanya’ll be there by the time we get back.”
“But it’s a long drive, and you’re already here,” his mother said. “Howabout, it wouldn’t be terrible if we had our Thanksgiving here, and they had theirs there.”
“Yes it would,” Doug said, “And it would be pointless. Rose, here’s your bowl.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Deborah differed. “You could have one here, and one there.”
“On the same day?”
“On the same day or… We could do ours tomorrow, and you could go down to theirs on Thuesday.”
“You keep saying we could go,” Swann said, blowing on the spoonful of gumbo. “Are you all not going?” he included his mother.
“I don’t always feel like going,” Rose said.
“Then you can understand that we don’t feel like staying,” Doug said, and sat down.
“This is delicious,” Chris said.
“It really is,” Swann murmured.
“I just thought it would be nice to start our own family tradition,” Deborah said.
“No,” Doug looked at her, and after blowing on the shrimp he had forked, said, “It would not.”
The woman called Mama Portis had borne five children, two who were still alive, Donald and Pam. Sefra, their older sister, had loved one man her whole life. He was a war vet and when he came back from England, she’d taken up with him, but he had married someone else, married her the same time Sefra had learned she was pregnant. Sefra Portis had been a proud woman, and she had moved on to meet and marry Oliver Duke who lived near the West Side, and pass this child of hers off as his own.
But Sefra was no wife, and she spent most of her time in her mother and father’s house in Stony Island. On the weekends she went with baby Rose and her little brother Donald to stay with her husband, and Oliver put up with this for five years, put up with Sefra continuing to see Louis Canfield, her baby’s actual father.
One day he said, “I won’t stand for this! You better be a wife to me, or I don’t want nothing to do with your brother or our baby,” and she had said, “Well, Rose isn’t yours anyway.”
Once, in her more vulnerable moments, Rose told of how Oliver was a kind man, and her grandmother—the woman who she’d thought had been her grandmother—had been kind too. She’d missed her, and from then on knew only the tender mercies of Mama, the wide, green eyed woman who was mistress of the Portis family in Stony Island.
Rose had been about five at the time, and her favorite aunt was Pam, so young and so pretty. Pam had almost died in labor, but she didn’t, and the baby born to her was Deborah. Even though Sefra loved her only child, Sefra also loved men. Once she’d met some strange man and run across the country with him to Idaho, and whoever heard of niggahs living in Idaho? He’d kept her locked in his house during the day when he went to work, and she had finally broken out long enough to call Chicago. Then Daddy and Goddaddy, Percy, and all the men of the family had gotten into truck with their rifles and driven across country for several days. What had happened to the man was never spoken of, but they did come back with Sefra.
So Rose always looked to Pam for attention and love, and once Pam had her own child, though her cousin should have been a friend, Rose Portis couldn’t help seeing her, a little bit, as competition. Rose was jubilant when out of graduate school she found Philip Porter and his money, and a little put out when Philip had introduced his friend, Lyle Merrin to Deborah. The only satisfaction she had, and she would never admit it to herself, was how much smaller Deborah became during her marriage to the large and consuming man. But Rose and Deborah could never be apart, not really, and this was why, even now, widowed and divorced, the two cousins, raised like sisters, lived four blocks apart, north of Chicago on the lakeshore, and their sons sat at the table exchanging glances over gumbo.
After dinner, Chris came out to the back porch where Doug was smoking a Black and Mild. Doug ashed in the little glass tray beside the the stuffed chair he was in, and Chris sat in the chair across from him.
“Can I tell you what I think?”
“Can I stop you?”
For a moment he almost thought he could, and then Chris said, “No.”
“Well, then,” Doug made a gesture for Chris to speak.
“You should give your mom a break.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“She just wants to spend time with you. With us even. She just wants us to stay a little longer. I bet it gets lonely in this house.”
“She has Rose right down the street, not that that’s a great comfort.”
“She just… maybe I’m out of place—”
“You’re definitely out of place,” Doug said.
“Where’s that kid that used to look up to me?”
“He’s still here,” Doug said, “but I’m sure even back in summer camp, I would have told you to—”
“Mind my business.”
“When I needed a home, when I needed this place to be my home, where was she? Sitting her fat ass right here. And I don’t just mean right after Saint Anthony, right after things happened, I mean, why in the hell was I packed off to Saint Anthony in the first place? I wanted to be here, in my home, but she wouldn’t have it, because he wouldn’t have it.”
“Your father?”
“No, Santa Claus, Chris! Yes, my father.”
“Well, he’s out of the picture now, so…”
“When it’s your story, Chris, you can decide how it should end.”
“You’re right,” Chris said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t do that,” Doug was irritated. “Don’t be sorry. Just… just mind your own fucking business. Where’s your husband anyway?”
“My…. What? Why do you do that?”
“Everyone does it. Everyone calls Swann your husband behind your back.”
“Donald did that.”
“Told you so.”
“He’s… Swann’s my friend.”
“Since you all were fourteen or fifteen.”
“Since forever. You know that.”
“Do you finish each other’s sentences?”
“I don’t know—”
“You do. Do you share the same room?”
“Yes.”
“And the same bed?”
“Now who’s not minding their own business?”
“You do. And do you fuck in that bed? Every night?”
“When did you become so—!”
“You do. And will you be doing it again tonight? Because… that sounds like a boyfriend. And a boyfriend who stays a boyfriend after all the shit you’ve been through, well, that’s a husband. At least I think.”
“Will someone come and pick me up for dinner?” Rose asked, as Swann felt his ass lacerated by the strips of the lawn chair.
“I can,” Chris said.
“After all,” Doug said, expelling smoke from the cigarette he had just lit, “it is a whole four blocks away.”
“I was thinking you all could have Thanksgiving here,” Deborah said as Doug was ladling gumbo into a bowl and passing it to her.
“But we’re all having it at Birches,” Doug said as he made another bowl and passed it to Swann. “Grandma and Donald have already probably started cooking. Alesia and Tanya’ll be there by the time we get back.”
“But it’s a long drive, and you’re already here,” his mother said. “Howabout, it wouldn’t be terrible if we had our Thanksgiving here, and they had theirs there.”
“Yes it would,” Doug said, “And it would be pointless. Rose, here’s your bowl.”
“No, it wouldn’t,” Deborah differed. “You could have one here, and one there.”
“On the same day?”
“On the same day or… We could do ours tomorrow, and you could go down to theirs on Thuesday.”
“You keep saying we could go,” Swann said, blowing on the spoonful of gumbo. “Are you all not going?” he included his mother.
“I don’t always feel like going,” Rose said.
“Then you can understand that we don’t feel like staying,” Doug said, and sat down.
“This is delicious,” Chris said.
“It really is,” Swann murmured.
“I just thought it would be nice to start our own family tradition,” Deborah said.
“No,” Doug looked at her, and after blowing on the shrimp he had forked, said, “It would not.”
The woman called Mama Portis had borne five children, two who were still alive, Donald and Pam. Sefra, their older sister, had loved one man her whole life. He was a war vet and when he came back from England, she’d taken up with him, but he had married someone else, married her the same time Sefra had learned she was pregnant. Sefra Portis had been a proud woman, and she had moved on to meet and marry Oliver Duke who lived near the West Side, and pass this child of hers off as his own.
But Sefra was no wife, and she spent most of her time in her mother and father’s house in Stony Island. On the weekends she went with baby Rose and her little brother Donald to stay with her husband, and Oliver put up with this for five years, put up with Sefra continuing to see Louis Canfield, her baby’s actual father.
One day he said, “I won’t stand for this! You better be a wife to me, or I don’t want nothing to do with your brother or our baby,” and she had said, “Well, Rose isn’t yours anyway.”
Once, in her more vulnerable moments, Rose told of how Oliver was a kind man, and her grandmother—the woman who she’d thought had been her grandmother—had been kind too. She’d missed her, and from then on knew only the tender mercies of Mama, the wide, green eyed woman who was mistress of the Portis family in Stony Island.
Rose had been about five at the time, and her favorite aunt was Pam, so young and so pretty. Pam had almost died in labor, but she didn’t, and the baby born to her was Deborah. Even though Sefra loved her only child, Sefra also loved men. Once she’d met some strange man and run across the country with him to Idaho, and whoever heard of niggahs living in Idaho? He’d kept her locked in his house during the day when he went to work, and she had finally broken out long enough to call Chicago. Then Daddy and Goddaddy, Percy, and all the men of the family had gotten into truck with their rifles and driven across country for several days. What had happened to the man was never spoken of, but they did come back with Sefra.
So Rose always looked to Pam for attention and love, and once Pam had her own child, though her cousin should have been a friend, Rose Portis couldn’t help seeing her, a little bit, as competition. Rose was jubilant when out of graduate school she found Philip Porter and his money, and a little put out when Philip had introduced his friend, Lyle Merrin to Deborah. The only satisfaction she had, and she would never admit it to herself, was how much smaller Deborah became during her marriage to the large and consuming man. But Rose and Deborah could never be apart, not really, and this was why, even now, widowed and divorced, the two cousins, raised like sisters, lived four blocks apart, north of Chicago on the lakeshore, and their sons sat at the table exchanging glances over gumbo.
After dinner, Chris came out to the back porch where Doug was smoking a Black and Mild. Doug ashed in the little glass tray beside the the stuffed chair he was in, and Chris sat in the chair across from him.
“Can I tell you what I think?”
“Can I stop you?”
For a moment he almost thought he could, and then Chris said, “No.”
“Well, then,” Doug made a gesture for Chris to speak.
“You should give your mom a break.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“She just wants to spend time with you. With us even. She just wants us to stay a little longer. I bet it gets lonely in this house.”
“She has Rose right down the street, not that that’s a great comfort.”
“She just… maybe I’m out of place—”
“You’re definitely out of place,” Doug said.
“Where’s that kid that used to look up to me?”
“He’s still here,” Doug said, “but I’m sure even back in summer camp, I would have told you to—”
“Mind my business.”
“When I needed a home, when I needed this place to be my home, where was she? Sitting her fat ass right here. And I don’t just mean right after Saint Anthony, right after things happened, I mean, why in the hell was I packed off to Saint Anthony in the first place? I wanted to be here, in my home, but she wouldn’t have it, because he wouldn’t have it.”
“Your father?”
“No, Santa Claus, Chris! Yes, my father.”
“Well, he’s out of the picture now, so…”
“When it’s your story, Chris, you can decide how it should end.”
“You’re right,” Chris said. “I’m sorry.”
“No, don’t do that,” Doug was irritated. “Don’t be sorry. Just… just mind your own fucking business. Where’s your husband anyway?”
“My…. What? Why do you do that?”
“Everyone does it. Everyone calls Swann your husband behind your back.”
“Donald did that.”
“Told you so.”
“He’s… Swann’s my friend.”
“Since you all were fourteen or fifteen.”
“Since forever. You know that.”
“Do you finish each other’s sentences?”
“I don’t know—”
“You do. Do you share the same room?”
“Yes.”
“And the same bed?”
“Now who’s not minding their own business?”
“You do. And do you fuck in that bed? Every night?”
“When did you become so—!”
“You do. And will you be doing it again tonight? Because… that sounds like a boyfriend. And a boyfriend who stays a boyfriend after all the shit you’ve been through, well, that’s a husband. At least I think.”
