ON MY SECOND day in Michigan, the hours go by at a crawl.
I accompany my mother to see the Christmas display at the sculpture garden. The sculpture garden! Kill me already. I’m the youngest person there by about forty years.
Afterward, my mother announces that she has to attend a meeting at church. Some women’s club thing. And my dad doesn’t get home from work for another hour and a half.
Home alone, I text Graham quickly, asking him what he’s up to.
He doesn’t answer for an hour, though, because he’s gone shopping with his mom and then downtown to meet his father for a late lunch. And when he finally replies, I can’t even bear to tell him that I’d meant to walk over to see him.
The missed opportunity grates on me, so it would probably drive him nuts.
Later, I sit through another stilted meal with my parents, my mother’s sister Janet, and her nearly mute husband. It gets awkward when Aunt Janet asks me The Question. “Have you met any nice girls at school that I should know about?”
The moment the question leaves her lips, my mother’s hand freezes on her water glass. The silence hangs between us, ready to choke us all, while my father stares at his scalloped potatoes. He seems to be holding his breath.
“Uh, I guess I haven’t,” I say, shoving another bite of pot roast in my mouth.
Then? I have the worst urge to laugh.
Why am I playing this role? I feel like I’m living inside one of the less successful SNL skits. My mother obviously doesn’t discuss my sexual orientation even with her closest sister. I’m that shameful in her eyes.
I’m this close to stopping our polite little meal by putting down my fork and announcing, “Actually, I have a boyfriend.”
But if I do that, a shouting match will be the likely result. And my visit with the parents will come to a quick end. Part of me craves the conflict. But it will only hurt my dad, and possibly me. The truth is that I can’t afford to rock the boat. I need to get through college. I need them to pay the part of my tuition that financial aid doesn’t cover.
In a year and a half I’ll be truly free.
Making nice is even harder than I’d expected it to be, though. And Graham was right when he said that my mom doesn’t deserve me.
Two more days, I promise myself. The silent deal we’ve struck, if I understand it correctly, is that they’ll pay for school and pretend to have a busy son on the East Coast as long as I help them pretend I’m not a disgrace.
It’s not the best deal ever. But neither is it the worst. Eighteen months from now I’ll have a Harkness degree and probably a good job, if not a spot on a minor league hockey team. And my parents won’t hold any sway over my life ever again.
One thing is certain, though—this will be my last Michigan visit. I can’t do this again.
Dad steers the dinnertime conversation to hockey, which is his way of finding a topic that flatters me. He’s trying to be diplomatic. I don’t really understand why. But he’s trying.
I clean my plate and hope that diplomacy is enough to get us through another forty-eight hours.
After my aunt and uncle leave, Dad talks me into watching some TV. There’s no hockey game on, sadly. But Dad puts on the last part of some nature series he’s been following. I watch a bunch of emperor penguin chicks hatch. They are shockingly cute, with big eyes and a loud chirp.
It’s all fun and games until several mother penguins become trapped in this slippery little ice ravine. One of the mothers shuffles out one painstaking inch at a time, her chick on her feet, her beak an ice pick she employs for hours, until victory is reached.
But another penguin mom can’t figure it out, and she ends up abandoning her chick. She waddles away, leaving it to shiver and cry by itself.
They don’t actually show its dead body, but we all know that’s what’s coming. Why do people watch this shit? I want to kick the television. By the time I go to bed, I’m full-on depressed. And it doesn’t help that bedding down in my old bedroom is a lot like having an out-of-body experience. The light fixture is the same. The bedspread is the same. Blue corduroy.
Seven years.
The old, closeted me had walked out of here on a spring day, sixteen years old, heading for Graham’s house. I’d had the car keys, and an idea that I wanted to drive Graham over to a comic book shop in a dodgy section of Grand Rapids.
We didn’t make it into the shop that day, because I kissed him before we got out of the car. As we crossed the parking lot, they pounced. Fucking faggots. I got the beating of a lifetime, and Graham escaped.
I spent four days in the hospital. Or was it five? How weird that I can no longer remember. After my discharge, I’d come home for maybe twenty-four hours before my dad put me in the car and drove me to Gran’s house in Vermont.
My life changed then. I never looked back.
But now I’m forced to. Lying here in my old digs, I’m still angry. I’m mad at the assholes who kicked me until I passed out. I’m mad at my parents for freaking out about their gay kid. And I’m furious at myself for just accepting my banishment like I deserved it.
And for coming back here at all. Who needs this shit?
Deep breaths, I remind myself. This is stupid, but you can make it.
I pick up my phone and text Graham. Hey! You still up?
Right here! he replies immediately.
I quickly relax. I survived the sculpture garden and a nature show on TV, I tap out. How was your day?
Horny, is his quick response. And I laugh.
I dream about that fucking penguin. And the next day passes slowly. I take my parents out to lunch, which isn’t so bad. But my dad goes back to work afterwards, leaving my mom and I alone to struggle for conversation in the afternoon.
At five o’clock my mother suggests that I put on a nice shirt for dinner. “I’m making a taco bake,” she adds.
I hesitate, trying to follow this logic. As far as I know, faux-Mexican food doesn’t require proper attire. “Who am I dressing up for?” I ask. If she’s trying to fix me up with a “nice girl” from church, it’s going to be a long evening.
“Father VanderBeek is coming over,” she says. “He loves my taco bake.”
Her pastor.
Shit.
I go into my bedroom and open the closet door. I take out the lone button-down shirt I’ve brought and slowly put it on. Then I sit down on the familiar bedspread and listen to the bed springs creak in the silence.
Maybe Father VanderBeek comes for dinner a lot. Maybe it’s nothing. But I have a bad feeling about this dinner.
I get up and go back to the kitchen. “Mom? Is there any particular topic on the agenda for tonight? Or is this just a friendly visit from the pastor?”
She adjusts the flame under the saucepan of refried beans she’s heating. “Of course it’s a friendly visit. But he will also minister to our needs while he’s here.”
“And what needs might those be?” I ask, irritation creeping into the question.
She turns and pins me with a stare. “He wants to talk to you about therapy, John. Just a chat about your options.”
“My options,” I say slowly. “I don’t need options. I’m good the way I am.”
She sighs and stirs the beans. “Just hear him out. It’s an hour of your time. He only has your best interests at heart. We all do.”
My blood pressure spikes, and I turn around and walk out of the kitchen.
Back in the bedroom, I unlock my phone. My hands are actually shaking. You around? I text Graham.
No response.
Shit.
I grab my suitcase off the floor and set it on the bed. From the bathroom I retrieve my shaving kit and my toothbrush. Those go into the bag. Then I slip into Mom’s laundry room and open the dryer mid-cycle. The two T-shirts I’d thrown in with her load this afternoon are still damp, but I take them out anyway, restarting the dryer afterwards.
As I push the black button, I feel certifiably insane. After all, it’s only polite to restart the dryer when you’re making your escape from Crazyville.
It takes me about three minutes to pack completely. Then I just sit there on the edge of the bed for a little while longer, checking in with myself about what I’m about to do. Is it worth getting cut off financially by my parents to avoid a really uncomfortable couple of hours with a bigot who believes I’m heading straight for hell?
I take a deep breath and blow it out.
Yeah.
This was never going to work.
On shaking legs, I stand. Then I walk slowly through my parents’ little house for the last time. My mother has disappeared, probably into her bedroom to change. So it is without confrontation or ceremony that I let myself out the front door, my bag on my shoulder. The walk to the Grahams’ place won’t take long at all.
