ELEVEN
ELEGY TO
LOVE LOST
AND
LOVE FOUND
Niall Dwyer was scratching the back of his head and looking away from Bill, and Cameron sat looking at Dena in the Armstrong living room.
“Dave,” Lee whispered, “stop spying.”
Dave Armstrong came back from where his head peeked around dining room entrance, staring into the living room that overlooked Breckinridge.
“I’m not spying,” Dave whispered, and Lee gave him a withering look.
“Niall,” Bill said. “Maybe this would be better if we went to another room? Took a drive.”
“I don’t wanna take a drive,” Niall said.
“Sweetheart,” Dena said, “oblige your father and go upstairs to your room, alright?”
Niall nodded and pulled himself out of his slouch, walking ahead of his father and up the stairs.
“This is a nice room,” Bill said after a while.
“I guess,” Niall said.
“Uh… yes,” said Bill.
He didn’t quite look at his son and Niall sat on his bed, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Whose idea was this anyway?” Niall said.
“I think it was Dave’s,” Bill tried to laugh.
“That figures,” Niall said after a while. “I mean, I wouldn’t expect it to be yours.”
Bill wasn’t sure how to answer.
“I’m not afraid of you anymore,” Niall said.
“I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”
“Sure you do. Why else would you be so awful? And you were awful. I mean,” Niall said, “you were an awful parent. You are an awful parent.”
Bill had nothing to say.
“It’s so strange,” Niall said. “I keep waiting for you to grab me by the collar or shove me around. It’s so different being here, in this house, and people knowing about you.”
Bill had not known what to expect, and he had nothing to say. He felt in a sort of panic that didn’t show on his face, that hadn’t made it to his body. He wanted to say something in response, but he hardly knew how to reply.
“Is it true?” Niall began, “that you’ve got a girlfriend? That you’ve had her all the time you were stealing my weed and telling me what a piece of shit I was?”
“Where did you even get weed from?”
“Who cares?” Niall shrugged. “Really, who cares? Unless you’re trying to find where to score some for yourself?”
Bill ignored this.
“Is it true? About Sonia?”
“You know it’s true,” Niall said.
“Son…”
“Please don’t call me that.”
“What’s done is done,” Bill said. “I can’t take back what happened, but… We can start now. Do things over.”
“Look,” Niall said. “Things didn’t just…. happen. You did them. You did them and I did them. I got Sonia pregnant, and I got the… And you…. You were just an evil asshole every chance you got.”
“I know!” Bill said. “I know. But Niall…. Niall, listen to me. You’re sixteen. We’ve got a lifetime. You could… you could come back home and we could—”
“Come back to that house? Come back to your house where you can get at me—”
“I don’t want to get at you,” Bill said. “I want a second chance. If you’d come back—”
“You get your second chance here, old man,” Niall said. “I was scared every day of my life living with you. I will never, ever live in your house again. And if you bring that skank you’re dating there, I bet Cameron won’t either.”
The room actually seemed colder once Bill and Niall had left and Cameron finally said, because Dena wasn’t saying anything:
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Yes, Cameron, of course you can ask me a question,” Dena said in that annoyed tone she generally reserved for her daughter.
“You love Niall, right? I mean, you really love him.”
“I love both of you.” Dena said.
“I wonder,” Cameron said.
Dena looked at her.
“I mean, I try,” Cameron said. “I’ve always tried, but now I don’t really want to try anymore. I don’t know why I should.”
“Cameron, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“What I’m talking about,” Cameron said, “is…. Do you even like me? A little bit? Do you like me?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“Okay, well then do you love me? Not, do you think you should, but do you actually love me? Because you appear annoyed by me.”
“Cameron, this is nonsense.”
“No, please be honest. Be honest with yourself and just say how you really feel.”
“I didn’t want you,” Dena said, in frustration. “I got pregnant and then college ended and my life was interrupted and I made due. I made due. I did what I was supposed to. We put a roof over your head. What more do you want? I didn’t want you. You didn’t need me. Niall, I wanted. I wanted Bill to have a son, not that he appreciated it, and I wanted a baby to keep me company. So… that’s the difference. Between you and Niall.”
Cameron stared at her mother, feeling her face prickle with… shame? Hurt? Anger… definitely a combination. Her eyes stung. Her throat hummed.
“Cameron—” Dena begin.
“You,” Cameron began, “are a horrible… old… bitch.”
Dena’s eyes widened.
“I hate you,” Cameron continued, making a quiet discovery.
“I’ve hated you for so long, but felt so bad about it. I can’t wait till you die so I can burn you and toss your ashes in a trash can.”
All of her feelings fed the fire she was riding on and Cameron leaned into Dena’s face, breathing out violence as Bill was coming down the steps, looking dazed.
“You listen to me, you wicked old hag. You’ve resented me for your own mistakes and I’ve wanted to say this for years: It’s not my fault you got pregnant or dropped out of college. That was all you, but since you’ve hated me for no reason all these years, from now, look at me, look at me and know it this minute, from now on I will give you every reason to hate me. Any since of duty I ever had, any bit of love I ever tried to cultivate—is gone.”
Cameron rose and turned to leave the room, but before she departed she fixed her eye on a terrified Dena while Bill stood there with his face drained of color.
“The next time I see you, I’ll see you in hell.”
That night the rain started, and Bill Dwyer sat in the darkness of his room, looking out of the window as late winter rain made trails across the window pane. Of course he could not bring Lynn into this house. Not now, at least. But he needed her. He needed her because he had ruined his life so badly, and maybe turning to her was a part of that ruining, but there it was. He had tried to hold himself together today at David and Lee’s house, and the practice of holding together was such an old one that it was only now he felt the pain rising in him that could not be contained. He had ruined things. He had gotten Dena pregnant, and he loved Cameron more than the sun and more than the moon, but he’d given her a loveless mother, and he had been an unloving father, just like his own, a bully, someone that Niall was afraid of and could not trust. This same afternoon, while Niall told him how much he despised and feared him, Cameron had, like a sorceress of old, lain a venomous curse on a mother who, Bill realized, could use a venomous curse. How in God’s name had they gotten to this place?
And before he knew it, a sob had escaped, and he couldn’t stop it, so he jammed his pillow into his mouth and lay on his side, weeping for the damage he could not be repair.
When Cameron Dwyer woke the next morning she felt messy, the way you do when you’ve gone to bed in your clothes. She had gone to bed in her grief, and told herself not to cry, and she had lain in bed rumpled in her own misery until the storm had broken, and in the midst of the thunder she felt free to shed her tears. She had to get rid of them, but they were treacherous things. How could she cry for Dena or for the knowledge that her mother didn’t love her? She’d always known that. And what was more, what was more, how could she grieve for what she knew now, that she did not love her own mother either. But she did weep. She sobbed until the pain left her tight chest and fled her muscles. She cried until she couldn’t cry anymore, and she remembered being a little girl, sobbing, and her mother coming to her room and saying, “Young lady, if you don’t stop crying, I’ll give you something to cry about,” but saying it with no real anger or care, just weariness, the same weariness with which Dena greeted everything. And Cameron remembered weeping in front of her and Dena being unmoved as stone and, at last, exhausted and perversely comforted from her tears, Cameron passed into sleep.
This morning, the very grey sky, heavy with blue and black, seemed to take up her weeping for her, and Cam lay immobilized until she could smell cooking from downstairs, and then she got up, put on her robe and came to the kitchen. Her father was in his housecoat, his ginger hair sticking up, and he was making eggs and bacon and biscuits from the canister, and coffee was brewing. She got herself a cup.
Quietly he made her plate and put it down in front of his daughter before serving himself. They did not say grace, but he crossed himself, and after chewing on a bit of bacon, Bill said, “I’m sorry. All of this is my fault.
“All of this is my fault and I can’t put it back together again, at least not right away. I never wanted to cause you pain. Or anyone. I just sort of lost who I was, I think.”
They were quiet a while and Cameron said nothing, not because she was angry, but because she couldn’t think of what to say.
“If you don’t mind,” Bill said. “I’m taking off work, and I’d like you to take off school. I’d like to spend the day with my daughter.”
“Yes,” Cameron said, quickly.
Bill smiled, and she knew she was his girl, and she loved him, She always loved him, and she knew this love was one of the reasons Dena couldn’t love her. Whatever her father’s faults, he did love both of his children. Whatever he had done to Niall, he would try to make amends.
“Where should we go?” Bill wondered.
Cameron said, “Anywhere but here.”
“Are you going to get up?”
“I’m not the one running,” Gilead said
“But you are the one watching.”
“I don’t have to shower to watch. Come to think of it, you don’t have to shower to run.”
“Gross,” Mark said.
“But you’ll be gross by the time it’s over.”
Gilead spoke lightly, lying on his side, the heavy blankets of Mark’s bed still around him. Mark sat up in the sunlit Saturday morning, and Gilead traced a finger down his spine, in love with his long back.
“I can’t decide if I like your soccer uniform better or you track one. I know I like the shorts. Certainly. I miss last year, you in your soccer shirt running across the field—”
“I honestly didn’t think you were paying attention.”
“I used to sneak to the games and watch.”
“Remember when I just asked you to come?”
“And you would do a… something—”
“Score a goal?” Mark turned and grinned at him.
“Yes, or something. And you would look all cocky and give me the nod. That nod.”
“I think I may have been showing off.”
“For the school, no doubt.”
“No, dummy. For you. Like you would see what a bad ass I was, which is crazy cause, as you’ve already demonstrated, you know nothing about sports.”
“I couldn’t stop looking at you, though, in that polo shirt, or soccer shirt I guess. Those shorts, those calves. Then you would lick your lower lip and look aggressive.”
“I guess it worked, then.”
“I guess it did.”
“How long did you like me, Gil?”
“I probably always did, and just didn’t know how to say it.”
“Same,” Mark said.
Gilead started to say something and then stopped, but Mark, kneeling over him said, “What? Tell me?”
Suddenly it flashed before him, the first time they’d made love. How Mark had undressed, and looking serious, like a man, turned to him, turned back the bed and climbed onto him, touching him gently, as if he’d done this several times before, kissing him gently, drawing him to him. Mark reminded him of some hero from a 1940’s movie when men were men and…. Gilead’s mind went to laughter and then back to Mark, looking at him seriously, requiring an answer.
“When you… wouldn’t talk to me—”
“I’m sorry for that.”
“No. It’s only…. And I haven’t been able to tell this to anyone, I realized my father left and never came back, and I assumed that you were doing the same, that after all this long build up, after me… giving myself to you…. You to me…. You were just ending it. You know. Some people do. I’ve heard of it. Guys who are like, it was all a mistake. This never happened. I thought that might be what was going on. I’ll admit, I felt a little abandoned.”
“Oh, my God,” Mark said quickly.
“Oh, my God. No. I never… I’m so stupid. I didn’t even think about that. It’s just… Gil, you’re the strongest person I know. I just…. I didn’t know how to talk to anyone. I never had plans of getting rid of…. Anyone. I just didn’t…
“I love you,” Mark touched his face. “Fuck, I love you so much. Don’t you get that? I’m sorry.”
“Yes,” Gilead said sitting up and not wanting to cry or do anything foolish. “I know.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Mark said. “I’ll try to remember that.”
