Someday, page 10
Lucas kissed back. It wasn’t a long kiss. Nor deep. But when he turned back to Mr. Churchill, he saw abject horror on the man’s face. Dalton’s father ripped his gaze from Lucas’s and scanned each of the people around him.
“You’re all freaks,” he rumbled. Then back to Dalton. “One last chance.”
“No, Mr. Churchill, you have one last chance. Take me the way I am, or go away.”
Mr. Churchill shook his head. “Fuck,” he whispered. Once more he looked at Dalton and Lucas and his classmates. “Freaks.”
“Yeah,” said Gabe. “We’re all freaks. Now get out of here. Now.”
Mr. Churchill’s eyes went back to Dalton.
Dalton nodded.
And Mr. Churchill left.
Later, back in the room Dalton had gotten them for the night, after they made love (it was very quiet and sweet and almost sad), Dalton began to cry. It started with one heavy tear that dropped from Dalton’s face to Lucas’s. Then he began to sob, and Lucas held him tight and told him that he loved him and everything would be all right.
Because just like his mother had done for Lucas countless times, that’s what you did for those you loved.
2004—2008
1
DALTON TRANSFERRED from the U of M to Wagner University for his second year. With the residential discounts, he saved quite a bit of money. Of course he had to get a part-time job to pay for his schooling, but with his savings and the scholarships he qualified for, it was all doable.
Lucas could have gone to nearly any college he wanted in the country—even outside the country. Of course he chose to stay in Terra’s Gate.
Lucas’s mother didn’t try to convince him to leave. She told him only once that she thought it might be a good idea, and—in a haunting way that almost echoed the words of Dalton’s father—that a young man needed to leave the nest. To get away from his mother and discover life on his own.
But she softened that with, “Although I’m not sure what I would do without you.”
She made it clear that she just wanted him to stay or go for the right reasons. And as much as she loved Dalton, she really did think they were too young to move in with each other.
But she didn’t stop them.
“I’m not stupid,” she said.
Interestingly enough, when it came to having a gay son (and one with a lover), her life and her decisions on her own life plan were completely different from what Dalton’s parents took—and the parents of some of Lucas’s other friends.
She didn’t use religion to condemn.
She didn’t even use it to find some biblical reason why Lucas wasn’t going to hell.
She turned her back on her Baptist upbringing and instead began to take a two-year nondenominational course to become a minister.
“A minister, Mom?” Lucas asked the morning she told him her decision over a cup of coffee. It was their Saturday morning ritual. Coffee and whatever new recipe for scones or biscuits or muffins he’d found that week on the internet or in a cookbook. He’d had no idea he liked baking until he’d gotten that job at the Sweet Spot, and it turned out he liked cooking as well, which was a good thing since it was easier for him to take on that duty in his and Dalton’s household. Not that he was the only one who cooked, but with Dalton fixing things around their apartment (which gave them a break on their rent), it seemed only fair.
She shrugged and gave him one of her funny little smiles. “Why not? There have to be those who make a difference. Those who start building the bridge to a world where people see that God loves my son—almost as much as I do. I’m going to be one of those people.”
He hugged her tight, and they toasted each other with touched coffee mugs and ate their pecan scones.
2
LUCAS AND Dalton had a small apartment over a garage on the edge of town. Not much. But it didn’t need to be. They were together. It was all that mattered to either of them.
Lucas’s mother made them curtains and a quilt for their bed.
Dalton’s mother didn’t do anything.
It didn’t matter. It was an incredible time. So exciting. Everything Lucas had ever dreamed. Dalton said the same thing, and why shouldn’t Lucas believe him? Dalton had given up everything in the world to be with him. So despite the loss of Dalton’s family’s love, there was still love.
Playing house—but for real.
They didn’t see quite as much of each other as they might have hoped. Conflicting class hours and job shifts cut into that time. But it was better than Dalton living two hundred miles away.
And sometimes Dalton brought him flowers.
When they had the time and schedules permitted, the little things made Lucas so happy. Shopping for groceries, cooking, and doing the dishes—one of them washing, the other drying (their little apartment didn’t have a dishwasher)—even going to the Laundromat was like living a dream.
Lucas’s mother kept asking why they didn’t use her washer and dryer. “You could have dinner here, and we could watch a movie.” Comments that flew in the face of her advice about leaving the nest. It was sweetly amusing. And sometimes they took her up on her offer. But Lucas felt that even the ritual of the Laundromat was romantic. Was there anyone there that didn’t know they were a couple? Washing their underwear together. Smiling at each other as they folded sheets (and underwear).
“Wish my husband helped with the sheets,” said one older lady, hair up in curlers, one night.
Sometimes they shared their rare alone time with friends. Friends made their life together even more real, and they had a surprising number of friends. DVDs, potlucks, games—but most assuredly not spin the bottle, and most especially when Diego came over. Diego. Wild that somehow what had happened that night was nothing but a foggy memory and they were all friends now—good friends.
But some of Lucas’s favorite times were when they would simply sit at their kitchen table, a small round wooden thing that had needed a few screws for one of the end hang-down leaves (it had cost them a mere twenty dollars at a garage sale, including three chairs), having dinner. Or sit tangled together on the couch watching a movie, eating microwave popcorn. Hanging the print they’d bought of a breaching humpback whale over the mock fireplace (Lucas had saved up for it because when Dalton saw it at a print shop, his eyes and grown wide because he loved them so). That was magic. Lucas would look at his lover, and he’d be happier than he ever thought he could be.
And of course there was making love. In any room, over their fragile little table, up on the kitchen counter—thank goodness Dalton was tall—the shower (and one hurried time in the alley, Dalton fucking him up against the rear wall of the garage, and the excitement that they might get caught was fire).
But especially in their bed—not childhood twin beds but a queen they’d found on Craigslist. Making love. Falling asleep in each other’s arms. Waking up and making love again. Lazy weekends when neither had to get up and rush out to go to class.
“You realize how lucky you are?” Sam asked him one evening. They spoke on the phone because she had moved to New York and somehow been one of those rare people who was in the right place at the right time and was now some kind of big-time DJ at a big-deal club. “Because I’m telling you, finding this dyke a real girlfriend, and not some crazy freak, has been insane. I think I used up my luck getting my gig at the Phaze.”
Lucas smiled. “Yeah. I know.”
“Good.”
“Is it really that hard to find a girlfriend?” he asked.
“Not finding them. The joke is true. When lesbians meet, they’re trying to move in the next day. At least they want to move in with me. I’ve learned to wait after letting one chick move in and discovering she was bringing about a hundred cats—”
Lucas had to fight a laugh. Sam hated cats.
“—and another wanted us to get matching clit piercings to prove our love, and I was like, fuck that shit. Can you imagine how much that would hurt?”
Lucas didn’t have any idea. He wasn’t even sure what a clitoris looked like. “Bad?” he ventured. He certainly wasn’t interested in either him or Dalton getting their dicks pierced.
“You’re fucking-A right! I don’t even like a little nibble down there. Ms. Pierce-My-Clit liked hers bit. Christ!”
Lucas laughed and tried not to picture the images Sam was conjuring. “God, Sam. I miss you so much. It gets lonely around here.”
“I know, baby,” she replied. “But it’s not forever. I know it seems like it. But it’s not. Remember we thought high school would never end? Can you believe it’s been almost two years?”
Sometimes he could. Sometimes it seemed longer. Especially on long lonely nights. But he told her he didn’t anyway.
They talked a little longer, then had to sign off because she had to get ready to head over to Phaze, and they made promises that someday he and Dalton would visit her.
3
BUT TRUE magic came those nights on the couch together when they watched the world changing on their little TV.
They watched New Jersey pass its civil union law—Dalton scoffed at that, said it might as well be a Holy Union, but Lucas saw hope. He never gave up hope.
They watched Kurt Hummel come out on Glee, and Lucas was both dizzyingly happy… and a little bitter. If only there had been a Kurt Hummel on television for him when he was in high school. What a difference it would have made.
But then he remembered all those kids standing up for him the night of prom. He really had, in the great scheme of things, little to be bitter about. Especially after what they had already survived.
The year Lucas graduated from college, California passed same-sex marriage.
And Lucas’s hope rose ever higher.
I’m going to marry him someday came the echo of a voice, a memory that went back as far as he could remember.
It sounded good. And he knew it was true.
One day, somehow, he just knew he would marry Dalton.
But then in November of that same year, the citizens of California voted to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage by 52.2 percent; same-sex marriage was overturned.
It was the second-most crushing event of Lucas’s young life.
Lucas asked if he could leave work early, and his boss, Bob Thuttle, let him go without hesitation. And as he left the bakery, Bob stopped him, looked at him with tears in his eyes. “Never give up,” the middle-aged man told him. “Love will win.”
“You believe that?” Lucas asked him, a man who, astonishingly, who had turned out to be gay and someone Lucas could talk to through the years.
“I do,” he said. Despite the fact that he was single himself.
If he can believe, can’t I?
When Lucas got home, he found Dalton sitting in the dark, watching some moronic black-and-white movie. There were five empty beer bottles on the table in front of him. He’d been crying.
Lucas went into their small kitchen. There were seven bottles of Budweiser left. He suddenly felt the overwhelming need to have one. Did Dalton need another?
What the hell.
He opened them both, took them into the living room, sat next to Dalton, and handed him one of the beers. Dalton looked at it for a moment as if he didn’t know what it even was, and then chugged down what must have been half of it. Lucas simply sipped at his. He’d never grown a fondness for beer.
They sat for a long time while Lucas tried to make sense of the old show. A man kept referring to an elegant woman as Nora. They drank a lot. There was a dog. Apparently they were trying to solve a crime?
“This is why I didn’t want us to get married,” Dalton said, almost startling Lucas despite how quietly the words had come. “Can you imagine? Being one of those couples that got married and had fucking homophobic voters take their marriages away? What must they be going through?”
“They can’t take their marriages away,” Lucas replied, just as quietly. “Their marriages are here.” He touched his chest. He touched Dalton’s. “In their hearts. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me all along?”
Dalton looked away from both his beer and the TV, studied Lucas. Another tear rolled down his face, shimmering blue in the light of the television.
Neither said anything for a long time.
Finally: “Then I guess we’re already married, right, Lucas Arrowood?”
Lucas nodded. “Yes, Dalton Churchill.” Even if he did want that piece of paper.
Dalton kissed him then, and they abandoned their beers and Nick and Nora and the dog, Asta, and they made desperate love, and Dalton—who took a long time to cum (although Lucas didn’t really mind; he needed to be taken long and hard that night it made him feel alive)—fell asleep almost immediately afterward.
Lucas lay in the dark for a long time, though.
I’m going to marry him someday came the echo once more.
It was going to happen.
It was going to happen if Lucas had to will it into being.
2009
1
LUCAS’S MOTHER found the lump early that year. When she broke it to Lucas, all she could say was that she didn’t want to believe it. She’d simply been taking a shower. She felt the BB-like knob, and she gasped and came fully awake.
“Have you gone to the doctor?” Lucas asked. It was the only thing he could say. Part of his brain had completely switched off. He felt drunk—and not in a pleasant way. In that way when he’d realized he’d drunk too much and couldn’t figure out how to put his socks on, let alone answer an important email. Like he was trying to swim up out of a deep, dark place, and tying his shoes took major concentration.
Cancer? Isn’t that what a lump means?
“I have an appointment in two weeks,” she said and took a drink of her coffee. It was Saturday morning, their ritual get-together, and Lucas had made eggs Benedict. A product of his truly learning to cook as well as his love of baking.
“Two weeks? Mom! Two fucking weeks?”
“Lucas! Language.”
Lucas stood up, nearly knocking over his cup of coffee. “Fuck watching my language! You can’t mess around with this stuff.”
She sighed. “I know, baby. But it’s going to be okay. God’s got a plan for me, and I don’t think it’s for me to die.” She reached out and touched his hand. “Sit, baby. Sit. I’m going to be okay.”
He sat, heart pounding in his chest, stomach clenched, throat working. He didn’t believe her.
You can’t. You can’t die, Mom. You. Can. Not.
Lucas looked at his mother. Studied her face. Suddenly noticed lines around her eyes he hadn’t seen before, a shimmer of silver in her blond hair.
When had she gotten older?
Same time you did.
But he had been doing nothing but playing for the past couple of years.
Well, and working his ass off to get good grades. There was that. College had been different than high school. He had to maintain a good grade-point average if he wanted to keep his scholarships, and he needed them to afford school. And there was his part-time job. And keeping the apartment up. “Playing” wasn’t really what he’d been doing. Yes, being with Dalton was a dream come true. But it wasn’t always easy-peasy.
Which was why he hadn’t noticed the lines on his mother’s face, the silver in her hair.
“Mom,” he sighed. “I’m so sorry.”
Her eyebrows rose. “For what? You didn’t do anything. It’s not your fault.”
He sat there for a long time, trying to absorb what was happening. It was not how he’d expected that morning to go. Why, he’d made eggs Benedict to celebrate.
Now how did he tell his mother?
She reached out and patted his hand. “It really is going to be okay, honey. ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,’” she quoted.
You could put the New Age in his mother, but you couldn’t take the Jesus out of her, Lucas thought.
He swallowed. Hard.
“It’s not that, Mom. It’s Dalton. He’s gotten a job offer. A really good one.”
She sat up straight, beaming. She clapped. “Oh, Lucas! That’s wonderful! What will he be doing? Certainly not creating the zombie apocalypse virus you’re always teasing him about?” She laughed.
Lucas shook his head. How could she laugh at a time like this? It was why he loved her so much.
Lucas shrugged. “Something about microbocal or -bobal or -crobial diseases? Shit. Surveillance? Pathogens?” He shook his head. “I don’t get it. I never really have. That’s why I bake cakes.”
“You two can finally get out of the crappy little apartment.”
“I like that crappy little apartment.” He managed to keep from snapping.
She laughed. “Of course you do. It’s got your wedding bed in it. You’ll always love that apartment.”
Lucas’s face blazed, which only seemed to tickle her all the more. “Mom! You don’t understand. We’d be living in Oakland. Oakland, California.”
Her smile faltered for less than a second. If he hadn’t known his mother better than he knew even Dalton, he might have missed it. “Well, I’ve always said you needed to fly from the nest. And halfway across town, especially a town like Terra’s Gate, is hardly flying the nest.”
“Well, I can’t go,” he stated.
“Why not?” she asked.
“I can’t let you go through what you’re about to go through alone.”
A sweet but sad smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and she reached out and touched his cheek. “Oh, baby. Don’t you see? We don’t even know what I’m about to go through. It could be simple. There’s no telling. We don’t know if it’ll be surgery or a mastectomy or what the treatment will be. We don’t even know for sure that it’s cancer.”
From the look on her face, Lucas could almost believe it.
“Mom?” he said. “Mama?”
And then they held each other tight.
