"From Here to Eternity"

A Plums backstory

By Jemiah Jefferson

1996

In the past, the day after Thanksgiving had been one of Jim's favorite secular holidays; he would get up before dawn, have a breakfast befitting a lumberjack, slip on comfortable shoes, and spend the entire day blazing through as many shops as possible. He probably should have suspected something about his true nature, but he'd managed to spin himself a comforting veil of misdirection, justifying the fiendish urge to shop as a natural result of his urge to plan, to conquer, to get the thrill of whipping out card after platinum card and prove his effortless net worth. It was an American tradition. He was a normal American male citizen, and he bought Christmas gifts for friends and family as well as stacks of silk underwear, electronics, books, art, sporting equipment, and deliciously gleaming grooming accessories for himself. Shoes, too. He had always loved shoes.

But this year was different. He had changed. He had hit the wall of reality, of clear hard self-understanding, impossible to destroy, circumnavigate, or ignore. Two weeks ago he had told Denisse the truth about himself. He hadn't bothered trying to sugar-coat it, or let her down easy; this was Denisse, and she was tough as nails, and an enemy of bullshit. He told her straight out what he was and what he'd been doing and how much he regretted having deceived her as he had tried to deceive himself. Despite his naive hopes that they'd be able to work through this, figure some way to stay together somehow (for he never wanted to lose her, or the life that they'd built together), she did not take it at all well. He would never be able to forget the sight of her proud, lovely face crumpling, streaking wet with shockingly instant tears. He'd never forget the way her voice cracked when she said "You fucking asshole. You selfish, lying, blind, stupid fucking asshole. You know this is all your fault. You might as well have just kicked me in the stomach. The people you come from are hopelessly fucked up, anyway. I should have never let you touch me. Did you hate it? Did you hate it when you touched me? Did I sicken you? I hope to fucking God I did. I hope you had to run off and puke every time you went down on me. You know what? I'm glad this happened. I'm glad I never had to try to raise a baby with you because you'd just fuck it up with your lies and secrets and disease. I'm fucking glad I lost it! It's the best thing that ever happened to me! God damn it, Jim, I just got out of the hospital!"

Jim wasn't sure what he had said in response; he'd already had a suitcase packed, and he remembered having gotten into his BMW and driven around for hours with no particular destination in mind. Maybe he'd thought of getting a hotel room somewhere, or going out to Fire Island where the only man he'd had sex with more than once had a house. But it was only a summer house and Jim knew Craig wouldn't be there, nor would he have been happy to have the suddenly single, suddenly accepting of his own inescapable gayness Jim Farrow show up on his doorstep looking for a place to get drunk and get his head together. Jim's parents had been in Portugal with his father's family for nearly a year now, and showed no signs of coming back, and the last thing Jim wanted was to have them know what had happened. He knew well that they would be horrified and disappointed and would probably just sling him back out into the street again, even if they had been in town. He did remember that he didn't cry.

Eventually he had ended up at his maternal grandmother's house on the Upper West Side because he knew she had a garage, and he needed someplace to put his car. He meant to just park there and keep going, find a hotel or get a plane ticket to Alaska or maybe just jump off a bridge, but he went into the house to explain himself, and Grandmother herself came painstakingly down the staircase, calmly overjoyed to see him. She gave him a quivery hug and a kiss that smelled like tea rose, vermouth, and denture cream, and told him he needed to, absolutely had to stay the night. He told her that he and Denisse were over, and she sighed, patting him understandingly, "It's hard for a woman to lose a baby. She has to blame someone." The butler, Sydney, took Jim's suitcase, and then brought a tray with a pitcher of martinis and two iced glasses to the dark-wood parlor, positioned across a hall from a similar sitting room done in shades of green. Jim and his grandmother sat before the fire. Jim drank a martini, and Grandmother poured herself a splash to be polite. After sitting in silence for a while, she told him that both life and love were strange, and the end always came as a surprise. "Sometimes I miss your grandfather," she said. "Sometimes, I'm still overjoyed that he's gone. You'll need somewhere to stay, and people to be with who won't bother you. Do stay here. I certainly have the room." A tight, nostalgic smile flickered on her lips, then she left him alone with the alcohol and the fire. He drained the pitcher one sticky glass at a time and fell asleep in his chair.

Denisse called Jim at work the next day, her voice cool and steady. "I was high on the pain meds. I threw them out." Jim told her that she had spoken honestly, that he'd needed to hear it, he deserved all of it and worse. Denisse said that she loved him, that he was still her best friend, but that she was taking the house; she'd hire someone to crate up his things. She would be spending the holidays with her parents, and she was leaving that night. "Mom is devastated about the baby," she said. "And Dad wants to kill you. I hired Dawn Austin as my attorney; she's thorough without being a barracuda. You should be hearing from her before the end of the week."

There were several methods of drowning he explored for the next few days -- fourteen or sixteen hours in the office, a pitcher of martinis for dinner, five A.M. pull-ups at the gym until his arm muscles simply failed and spilled him to the floor. His boss told him not to come back to work until he dried out, got some sleep, got some help. "I saw your HR paperwork," confessed Jim's boss. "I'm real sorry. My marriage broke up a couple of years ago and I did the same thing. You're a good analyst, Farrow; one of the best ones I've ever worked with. But you're dealing with seven- and eight-figure accounts here. You have to be at the top of your game, and it's worth more to me to have you on the bench for a few weeks, or even a few months, rather than have you forget to carry the two and bring a truckload of shit down on our heads. Get it together. Get some therapy." Jim meekly assented to a month's paid leave, and crept back to his grandmother's.

For the week before Thanksgiving, Jim slept in until noon or one every day, ate a meal he couldn't taste, and stared helplessly at paperwork that he was too mentally bruised to understand. When he finally gave up each evening, he sat at dinner with a cocktail and a plate of bread and butter, retreating afterward to his room with a bottle. Balancing his laptop on his thighs as he lay in bed, he listlessly rifled through pornography on Usenet; like so many, the taste for pornography had helped him learn to skillfully navigate the internet. Sometimes he tried to masturbate, but it was like handling a sock filled with bread dough. Everything had stopped. He wondered why in the world he had ever been attracted to men, to penises, to stubble and biceps and the joyless, ugly, slimy thwack-thwack of fucking.

His heart ached with missing Denisse, her dry jokes and laughter, her warmth next to him in the bed. He knew he shouldn't be drinking like this -- Grandfather Landon had died of it when Jim was still a child -- but he appreciated its blunting effects, and placed everything else in importance behind it. His grandmother didn't judge him for his persistent and destructive drunkenness, as she hadn't judged her husband for it. She hardly seemed to notice it, in fact. She took his isolation for granted, as she had come long ago to understand it herself. She didn't tell him, as Denisse would have done, to look up a friend, to get out of the house and find his life again. She understood that his life was gone now. He didn't bother to tell his grandmother that his life, as she knew it, had only been a mirage.

Thanksgiving Thursday was much like any other day that week; the long sleep until late afternoon, the vomiting upon waking, the hot shower and dressing in clothes that reminded him of things he'd rather not recall, the stagger to the dining room. The MacGruders, elderly next-door neighbors, had come for dinner, having nowhere better to go, and there was a splendidly prepared meal acquired from some restaurant or other. Jim led grace at the table, ate a little, drank wine, and listened to the MacGruders trade memories of Thanksgivings long, long past. Every time Mrs. MacGruder mentioned one of her children, Grandmother Landon reached out and gently patted Jim's hand. When he'd had enough, Jim went back to his room and read French-language news websites until he fell asleep again.

He woke up feeling almost normal, and wondered if he should just try to sleep more hours every day until he didn't need to bother waking up at all. He put on the same clothes he'd worn the day before yesterday, and went into the hall, knowing that there was an unopened bottle of Tallisker still in the liquor cabinet. When he got there, Sydney was standing in front of the cabinet, holding a service tray with a steaming pot, one large mug, a dish of sugar cubes, and a cream pitcher. "Would you like some coffee, Mr. Farrow?" Sydney said.

"I--" Jim said, then fell silent, grimacing with shame. "Yes, thank you. Bring it to the green parlor, would you."

"After you, sir," said Sydney.

Jim sat in the overstuffed chair next to the old-fashioned telephone table, topped with the rotary phone that had been on that table since the early 1960s, poured himself a black coffee, and began on a day's phone calls. He was unable to reach anyone, as it was still the four-day weekend, but he left messages with his own lawyer Stan Morrisson and with Dawn Austin, telling them to give Denisse whatever she asked for, and with the office of the therapist whose card Jim's boss had passed to him. Only then, and free from Sydney's prying eyes, did Jim fetch the bottle of scotch.

He returned with it to the green parlor, staring out the tall windows at the back garden, dead and silent under a layer of blowing snow, and poured scotch and milk into his coffee. He thought about lighting the fireplace, but there was no wood handy in this room, and he was content to sit in that cold, yawningly empty room, focused on the warmth of the mug between his hands. Without having to mention anything, Sydney came and brought him new hot coffee, and like a good servant, didn't mention the liquor bottle.

Jim meditated over his coffee for hours, ignoring squiggles of hunger in his stomach, and after the lengthy silence, the sound of the doorbell made him jump and slosh a bit of coffee over his hand. He groaned in annoyance, listening to Syndey's footsteps passing him in the hall and descending the staircase to the foyer. Sydney's voice said, "Yes?" then, "Just a moment."

Curiosity pulled Jim upright from his chair, and drew him to the open doorway. No one seemed to come to the house besides the MacGruders, and it was too early to expect them for dinner. Sydney's voice came again, echoing into an intercom speaker. "Ma'am? Yes, I'm sorry to disturb you." His voice dropped to a volume too low for Jim to make out, but someone was there, and they wanted to see Grandmother. Jim moved closer to the door, then out into the hall, peeking down the staircase.

Grandmother, in her violet quilted silk housecoat, moved with impressive haste into the foyer, hustling despite her arthritic joints. "Let him in, Sydney, for heaven's sake," she said. Sydney swiftly moved to do what he was told, and a small figure shambled in, seemingly soaked to the skin, arms locked tight around itself. Jim couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl, but it looked like a skinny twelve-year-old street kid with a filthy face and canvas sneakers clotted with snow. Grandmother put the side of her hand to her mouth, and said, "Jesse? What are you doing here?"

The reply emerged in a rough, surprisingly husky boy's voice. "I . . . I need someplace to lay down."

"Oh . . . ! What happened, little one?"

The figure shook its head, dripping melting snow all over the polished marble floor, hugged itself tighter, and made weird, strangled, wordless sounds. Jim numbly turned away, the curiosity retracting back into his heart, and went back to his chair.

But, as he reached the bottom of another mug, and the sounds of activity downstairs grew to a baffling degree, a prickle of nosy energy got Jim up again. This time, he went downstairs to the dining room, and saw a white-haired man closing a perfectly aged classic doctor's bag and shrugging on a damp wool coat, and the kid crouched on a chair, knees tucked up against his belly, and holding a flannel bag against his face. "Now, young man, you just keep calm and relax," said the old man sternly, "and keep it up with the ice. It'll help with the swelling."

The kid, Jesse, looked up at Jim and dropped the ice bag down into his lap, the better to give Jim an unconcealed glare of pure malice. His towel-dried wavy black hair had contours that suggested a Mohawk, and his ghostly-pale face wore a patchwork of bruises, from a purpling swollen eye socket to a stitched nostril and lurid cherry-red split lip, with matching discolored and shredded hands, glistening with antibacterial ointment. Jim realized with a lurch that the kid's face hadn't been dirty when he came in; it had been bloody. The kid was wearing threadbare Army surplus trousers and an equally battered jean-jacket scrawled with black marker, the right sleeve a gummy mess of blood and snot. In the corner of the room, Grandmother sat on another chair, hand still up against her mouth, shaking her head and muttering, "Dear, dear."

Jim turned back around. He didn't understand what was going on, but it had nothing to do with him, and he couldn't fix it. He went back to his room with the bottle, but he only sat it on the bureau and stared at it, not wanting any. The coffee surged through his system, demanding that he do something, find out about what was up with that fucked-up teenager downstairs, but he just shook his head at it, accepting his own uselessness. In this room, the world didn't touch him, and he didn't touch the world, and it was better that way. He tried to read a copy of Villette that he got off the guest room's bookshelf, but he kept losing his place and starting again from the beginning.

When six-thirty came, Jim washed his face, changed his shirt, and headed down to the dining room. Grandmother wasn't there, but the MacGruders were back, Sydney was laying out another fine dinner (this time just from Zabar's), and the kid sat at the other end of the table. He had been cleaned up, hands now bandaged with gauze and tape, and wearing a big, hideous sweater that Grandmother had probably knitted back in 1975. It made an oddly perfect match with his shoddy, grown-out, half-assed punk hairstyle. He glanced up at Jim with empty hostility in his eyes, but just as quickly dropped his gaze, and the nastiness disappeared from his expression. Instead he seemed embarrassed, almost -- and it made Jim snort when he thought the word -- bashful. "Mrs. Landon says not to wait for her," Sydney said, and Mr. MacGruder shrugged and started in on the smoked salmon.

Neither Jim nor Jesse spoke during dinner, but the MacGruders prattled on heedlessly about their grandchildren and the Jerry Springer Show, and there wasn't a moment's silence. Jim's appetite wasn't quite back on line -- he once again opted for a bit of bread and butter, and a sliver of salmon -- but the kid wolfed down three heavily laden plates, the last finished by wiping clean with a sucked-off finger. Sydney served him milk, which he didn't touch, but he was eager for coffee with piles of sugar at the end of the meal. Jim's heart ached to watch him. Jesse was so hungry. Jim couldn't remember if he had ever been so hungry himself; maybe, back when he was the kid's age. With food in his stomach, he wasn't so pale. He kept licking his lower lip, and dabbing his napkin against it, dotting the white linen with crimson.

Grandmother eventually made an appearance as their plates were being cleared. "How are you all this evening?" she asked shakily. The afternoon's excitement seemed to have taken a lot out of her. The MacGruders cawed their thanks, then offered some picky criticisms about how Zabar's food used to be in the old days. Jim grunted and nodded, unwilling to voice anything more in front of the neighbors. Jesse got up from the table and whispered something in Grandmother's ear. She raised her eyebrows, smiled and glowed, and patted Jesse on the arm, saying clearly, "Yes, darling, you can stay tonight. I certainly have the room! Sydney will set a room for you. Do you want me to call your parents and tell him you're here?"

"Fuck no!" the kid blurted out, his eyes abruptly flashing rage, drawing back from her like she'd hit him. "Don't you get it? You call them and I leave, and you will never see me again. Ever. Get me?"

"All right, then, dear," Grandmother replied calmly, patting him some more. "I only have one request. Would you please change that awful haircut of yours? You're such a handsome young man... there's a dear. Sydney, would you please get me my hot milk punch? Lovely to see you, Eric and Sylvia. Do come again." Sydney handed Grandmother a large mug, and she carefully, a step at a time, mounted the stairs back to her room.

Out of some misplaced sense of social decency, Jim saw the MacGruders out, then returned to the green parlor. Now there was wood and kindling enough to build a fire, and Jim set to it, glad of something to do with his hands. Fireplace engineering was one of this skills, and he quickly produced a roaring blaze. He sat in the telephone chair again, and poured himself a drink, this time, Tennessee bourbon, neat, in a small shot glass. He'd forgotten that the green parlor had its own liquor cabinet; but this was his grandfather's house, after all.

The kid meandered into the room, attracted by the scent and crackle of fire. He stared into it for a long time, standing beside Jim's chair. Jim sipped the whiskey, and Jesse's nostril's flared. "Gimme some," he said.

"Of this?" Jim chuckled. "You're a little too young," he said. "What're you, thirteen? Fourteen?" Giving him the benefit of the doubt, with that voice.

Jesse rolled his eyes, muttering, "I could drink that whole bottle." He sat in a different chair, nearer to the flames, staring into them. "Also, fuck you, I'm sixteen."

"You look twelve."

"Whatever."

They lapsed into silence, sinking deeply into their chairs, eyes numbed by the dancing flames and collapsing cinders. Jim realized with a start that he was relaxed, that he felt all right, neither sick with drinking nor with guilt. He wondered if it was the mere fact of being presented with someone whose life was much worse off than his own, or just the presence of another young guy with his own problems. The fact that he was just a child, and not a threat, made it so much the better.

Grandmother drifted in a while later, having her last walk around the house before settling her bones to sleep for the night. She bent down and pressed a kiss to Jim's temple, and asked, "Have you been having a nice chat with your cousin?"

Jim was completely baffled. "Who?"

Grandmother cocked her head. "Well, Jesse, of course. He is your uncle Joey's son."

Jim had never in his life given his mother's brother, Joey Landon, more than a passing thought. Joey was barely ever spoken of, and always in hushed tones, there-but-for-the-grace etc. All Jim had ever learned was that he was a serious troublemaker who rejected the rest of the Landons. "You've met before," Grandmother prompted. "It was a long time ago, when Amelia graduated from Columbia. When we had a party at Tavern on the Green? Jesse was still a baby."

Wracking his brain, Jim just barely recalled having attending the lunch; it was just like so many other weird meals that Jim had been forced to attend with his parents. He had been so irritable that he had barely registered the presence of Uncle Joey, his meek, sweetly smiling wife, and their squirmy, screaming, snotty-faced toddler brat, but he remembered that the three of them were dressed so badly and cheaply that he refused to believe they were actually related to him.

"Huh," Jim said. "Weird."

Jesse sneered at him, and bolted out of the room, up the stairs, slamming a door behind him when he finally reached his destination. "Wow," Jim remarked, staring after him. "Kid's got some issues."

"It's terrible," Grandmother said. A tear slid down her wrinkled cheek, and Jim felt a sharp pang of sadness and anger at anyone who could make his gentle Gran cry. "Just terrible."

Jim stood up and embraced her, holding her as tightly as he dared. " Now, now, now. It's not your fault," he whispered.

"It certainly isn't!" she replied defiantly, surprising him. "It's just . . . I don't know how to feel, knowing that one of my babies is a hurtful person. He isn't bad. But he does bad things and he can't seem to stop himself. Oh . . . !" She sighed and shook her head. "I'm going to bed now, James. I will see you tomorrow. There is always hope in tomorrow."

***

In the morning, Jim woke with the dawn. He still felt hung over, but somehow it was something that he could bear without wanting another drink immediately to take the edge off his nausea. Instead, he took a shower and got dressed, and went to the park for a long walk in the cold sunlight. The park filled with the snow-muffled noise of roughhousing children, cars driving by on the outside streets, a distant horse and carriage clopping and creaking. Jim breathed deeply, drinking in the clear, freezing air, casting his eyes up toward the cloud-striped blue sky, fighting back against the chill by the determined thrust of blood through his veins. I can overcome, he told himself. I have a new life. I will be better from now on. I did what had to be done, and now it's done, and things will be better if I make them better. I am loved. He had hated himself thoroughly for a while, had punished himself with the scourge of poison, starved himself of food and movement. That could end now. He was loved because he could choose to love himself; he was forgiven because he could choose to forgive himself. His penance was done. He could move ahead now, cleansed, still raw and in pain, but healing, like stiff muscle enfolding a broken bone that was mended. Gently, but steadily, with determination, he could get full use of himself back.

He bought hot chestnuts from a vendor, and with the warm weight of them in his coat pocket, retraced his steps back to Grandmother's house. He wanted to go inside, build a new fire, and call Denisse, ask about her Thanksgiving, share some of his new-found love with her. He didn't need anything back; he only wanted to ask her about herself, and shine a caring light from his heart to hers.

When he went back inside, he saw Jesse walking up the stairs, then down, then up again. Today he was back in his Army pants, though they had been laundered and ironed, and a sickly gray thermal shirt that made his skinny arms look like strips of wet newspaper. He looked at Jim, the bruising around his eye having settled into a thick ring of black-purple, the split lip and nostril already healing rapidly. "Hey," he said.

"Hello," said Jim. "Want a roasted chestnut?" He held out the bag.

Jesse came down, and looked inside it. "Never had one."

"They're delicious. Still hot though; be careful."

"Whatever," Jesse said, reaching in. "Ow! Shit." Hopping the chestnut back and forth between his palms, he scraped uncertainly at the peel of a chestnut with his fingernail, then put it in his mouth whole and chewed. His eyebrows went up. "Uh, that's good."

"Take 'em." Jim took off his coat, but in the absence of Sydney, he had no idea where to put it, so he draped it over the antique bench in the foyer. "Where's Jeeves?" he quipped.

Jesse blinked. "What?"

Jim sighed. Of course this kid wouldn't know Wodehouse. "Sydney, I meant."

"Oh." Jesse munched another chestnut. "He and Grandma went out, goin' to the fuckin' museum or something. I didn't feel like going. But there ain't nothin' to do in this shit. Ain't no TVs in here, though; not in the whole place. I checked."

"She's not much for TV. She reads books. And knits."

"Boring as shit," Jesse decided. "Said there was lunch in the icebox, though. Forgot."

"C'mon, I'll make us some coffee."

"I can do it," Jesse said, running ahead into the kitchen. Jim, smiling with amusement, followed more slowly, fully expecting to have to perform this task for Jesse, but Jesse was already grinding beans, and tamping them carefully into the tin of the big old percolator. He glanced up at Jim with a wicked smile on his face. "I watched Syd do it," he boasted. "We do it drip at our house, but I like this better. I like espresso."

"Do you know how to make espresso?"

"Sure," said Jesse. "My momma taught me. She's Italian?" He shrugged and turned back to the percolator. "She kinda has to know how."

Raising his eyebrows at the lightning-fast changes in Jesse's tone, from comfortable confidence to an oddly pained wistfulness, Jim busied himself fetching sandwiches and a couple of jars of pickles from the refrigerator. "Gran sure likes her pickles," he remarked. Coffee perked merrily, filling the kitchen with its heady odor and a pleasing veil of steam. They both stood and ate, Jesse constantly in motion, checking the coffeepot, getting mayonnaise out of the fridge, occasionally giving a vigorous snorting sound, and once hawking and spitting into the sink. Before he was able to rinse it away, Jim saw that his phlegm was streaked with dark, clotted blood.

"What happened to your face?" Jim asked quietly.

Jesse poured coffee into mugs, and didn't look up. "Y'know," he muttered.

"No, I don't," Jim said, gently. "You can tell me. It's not like I'm one to judge."

"Everybody's one to judge," said Jesse.

Jim blinked helplessly for a moment. What did a kid his age know about judgment, let alone with such authority that he could speak with the gravitas of a man of fifty? It was surreal, watching it come from his distorted, childish mouth. What the hell had he seen? There was nothing in Jim's own adolescence that would inform him. Expelling a sigh, Jim simply said, "I won't."

Jesse silently shoveled sugar into his coffee, and drank it black. He hissed unconsciously when the hot cup hit his split lip, and set the mug down. "I got inna fight," he replied matter-of-factly. He shrugged again and pointedly didn't meet Jim's eyes. "Got my ass kicked." Then a bitter smile pulled the red lower lip sideways. "I kicked a little ass, too, though." He held up his mummy-wrapped hands. "Y'know."

"You got it handed to you pretty bad," Jim said, trying to stay neutral, stay on Jesse's level of no big deal. But there was more to it; there had to be. If Jesse had been in a fight with a boy his own age . . . "Ever think about walking away from the next one?"

"It's not like I had much of a choice," Jesse said. "It was gonna happen. And sometimes . . . y'know, I get sick of walking away."

"Couldn't escape it, huh," said Jim, spearing a dill pickle with a tiny fork, looking away from Jesse.

"Chose not to."

"Why can't you go home?" Jim asked.

That got him. Jesse squirmed and gulped and grimaced, and he carefully licked under his upper lip, as if trying to clear a path for the words to come out. Again, wanting to be merciful, Jim said, "I can't go home either."

It was Jesse's turn to blink. "Why not?"

Jim smiled and shrugged, and tried the tooth-licking himself. To his surprise, it worked. "I broke up with my wife."

"Oh. That sucks."

"She just had a pretty bad miscarriage about two weeks ago. She was four months along."

"Shit! I'm sorry." The kid looked horrified.

"And... uh... I just... told her that I was gay." Jim stared at the ceiling, and spoke as if he stood in front of a classroom, reciting something he'd memorized. "Because you figure... there's never a good time to say something like that. I've spent the entire last few years trying to figure out a way to tell her, and... when she lost the baby, it just snapped something in me. I thought to myself, 'She doesn't need this. Right now, she needs truth.' Because she's facing something terrible right now, and I will not add the fact that her husband is a fag to that pile of misery. I didn't want to lie to her anymore. She's worth more than that. I told her because I love her. She, uh, didn't take it like that."

"Holy shit, dude," Jesse said, with a short laugh. "Wow. So she kicked you out?"

"I left," Jim confessed.

Jesse had an odd little smile on his face. "That is so harsh."

"I know. I'm an asshole."

"No, I mean, for you," said Jesse. "I mean, yeah, it's fucked up for her. Absolutely. But... you just lost everything."

"Fortunately, I didn't lose Grandmother," Jim mused, rubbing his hands through his hair. He thought to himself, I didn't lose me, either. I'm still here.

Jesse nodded in agreement, and poured more coffee into Jim's cup. "I'd be freaking out."

"I have been," said Jim. "I've been drunk ever since."

"You're not drunk now, though," Jesse pointed out.

"No," Jim said, and smiled, nodding acknowledgment. "I'm not. Yeah. Huh."

Jesse lowered his eyes and stirred his coffee. "My dad," he said. "I fought my dad. I fought back." Again the bitter smile, but it didn't last; his face went back to that grim, slack sadness that he had when he first came in the door last night.

"Does he do this a lot?" Jim asked.

"More than he ought to," said Jesse. "He smacks my mom around, too. He did it in front of me and I just wasn't gonna have it. He can do whatever he wants to me, but he leaves my mother alone. I don't give a shit who he is. I dunno. I'm just sick of it. I fuckin' bailed."

Jim couldn't be quiet and discreet anymore. "Why don't you tell somebody? Like a teacher, or -- or a cop, or somebody."

Jesse rolled his eyes. "And get put in foster care? No, thanks. Nobody cares. Nobody's gonna do anything. I've just been waitin' it out."

"Waiting it out," Jim echoed. "Works great, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. Peachy."

"Hey, I know you're going to think this is gross or lame or something, but... I care."

"That's great," said Jesse with utterly insincere sincerity.

"I wanted a son," Jim said, "so."

Jesse let his breath hiss out between his teeth, and shut his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"It's all right. It's better this way."

Jesse frowned. "Why'd you get married in the first place?"

"Denial," Jim said. "I mean, I loved her. I wanted her. But, y'know, more than anything, I wanted her because other men wanted her, and I wanted to rub their faces in the fact that they couldn't get her, and I could. She was an accomplishment." He shrugged and sipped his coffee. "I'm a little competitive."

Jesse reached directly into a jar of pickled green tomatoes, and spoke with his mouth full. "But you boned her, right?"

"Wash your hands if you're gonna do that," Jim said.

"So, yeah?" Jesse persisted, ignoring the command.

Jim rolled his eyes. "Obviously."

"I don't get it," Jesse said, closing the pickle jar and wiping his hands on his pants. "Why'd you fuck a chick if you're gay?"

"Because," Jim said uncomfortably. "I wanted to." Sometimes, anyway. Rarely. There were ways of satisfying her to put her off that didn't involve fucking, because, at times, no amount of compartmentalizing and fantasy could help him want to, to be able to. Enough to keep her curiosity at bay so that she wouldn't tell him to see a doctor.

Jesse gazed back. "I've never wanted to," he said.

"Never wanted to what? -- Oh." The revelation only made Jim even more uncomfortable, and he sighed a few times before he could speak. "Well, you're young yet. There's no such thing as black and white. Circumstances change."

Jesse listened, and did not look away, not quite expressionless, but close to it. Jim felt like he could see Jesse thinking, and cringed away from whatever threatened to come next. "How long have you known?" was Jesse's question, which was much less severe than what Jim had dreaded.

"Hard to say," he lied in response, then thought about why he was lying. Why did he need to lie to Jesse about that? Why did he ever need to lie about it again? There might be a good reason in the future, but for some reason, he felt the facts drawn out of him, nearly painlessly, and bringing a relief so profound he almost felt sleepy. "Well, when I was, I dunno... thirteen or fourteen, I ..." He smiled, a bit embarrassed at the memory. "Had a crush. On my English teacher."

"Thirteen or fourteen?" Jesse echoed suspiciously.

"Thirteen," Jim confessed, and Jesse visibly relaxed. He's manipulating me, Jim thought, and matched his horror and indignance against the mounting joy of freedom swelling in his chest, and decided to let himself be manipulated. Who was this kid, anyway? Where did he come from? Nobody had ever gotten Jim to talk about himself like this, to lie and backtrack onto the truth, all the while watching and nodding, as if in understanding. "In seventh grade. One day, there was a substitute teacher in English class. Mr. Vertan. There was nothing really special about him, but he was tall, and smart, and kind of rarified, and had a beautiful speaking voice. And he was young; probably in his late twenties. He was there for one day, and I never saw him again, but I thought of him every day for the rest of the year, and I always hoped, every time I went to English, that he'd be there again, and I could look at him some more." He sighed, letting that secret go; he had never told anyone, not anyone in the world, about that; he had even successfully forgotten about it for large sections of his life, only to have it rage back again at his weakest moments.

Again, Jesse nodded. "Does Grandma know?" he asked.

"No," Jim said. "Please don't let that fact change. And I won't say anything, either," he added pointedly.

Jesse rolled his eyes. "She knows about me," he said. "I mean, it's obvious."

"I couldn't tell," said Jim. "It's not like it's written all over your face."

"It is, though," Jesse said. "It is written all over my face. It is now." He sketched dizzy circles around himself with his bandaged hands. "It has been for a while. Ever since he found out. Ever since ever. He's always known."

"How about you?" Jim challenged. "Have you always known?"

"Yep," said Jesse, nodding, and somehow, honestly smiling. "Pretty much."

"And how's that make you feel?"

"Brown eyes," Jesse said. "Two ears. I swallow. I get hungry. Sometimes it's raining outside. Like that. Any one of those things could piss somebody off in the wrong situation, but they're the way they are, just the same. Know what I mean?"

"You're some kid," Jim admitted, smiling too, shaking his head.

"It ain't no thing," Jesse demurred. He scuffed a foot against the floor, and wrapped his arms around himself, licking his front teeth. "Hey. Thanks for being nice to me."

That warmth inside Jim grew like a coal brightening at a stream of breath. "Whatever," he said, softening it with a wink. Jesse laughed, and Jim felt that he had never seen anything so beautiful in his life. How long had it been since Jesse had laughed? He had such a nice smile.

Jim remembered something he'd seen online, on his local home page when he had last logged in; at the time it had just slid off his whiskey-lubricated consciousness, but it now blossomed into an idea. How to spend more time with this kid, but not have to talk about anything so important? How could he show Jesse that not everyone was a vicious, abusive, judgmental liar? He deserved more from life. And Jim needed some way to get back to his core self, a way to start repairing his relationship with himself. Kindness and generosity, and classic movies: those were the principles that worked best, and it was worth a try, if nothing else. "Hey, wanna go to the movies? They're showing From Here to Eternity at the Cinema Village. It's really old, but it's one of my favorites." If Jesse refused, Jim would go on his own, but he hoped desperately that that wouldn't be the case.

"I ain't got no money," Jesse said.

"It's on me. Popcorn, too."

Jesse frowned and pondered that. After a minute or so, he asked, "Is it in black and white?" When Jim nodded, Jesse smiled again. "Never seen a black-and-white movie at the movies," he said. "Shit, it's better than sitting around here. Let's go."

->jemiah.com