The Secret Year

“Hi.”

  “I saw you walking down by the river yesterday,” she said. “I waved, but you didn’t see me.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Near the Higgins Farm Bridge.”

  I’d been there, all right, but I hadn’t seen anyone else. Then again, I hadn’t been looking.

  “I like it there,” she said. “Especially now that all the partiers go to Oldgate Road instead. Do you know the stretch of river south of the bridge? That’s my favorite part.”

  “Well, I live on the north side. I usually walk down as far as the bridge and back.”

  “Oh.” She put her hand on Michael’s thigh or knee, I couldn’t see exactly which. “What are you reading, Michael?”

  “Still Desolation Angels. Kerouac.”

  Kirby turned back to me and smiled. “We should go for a walk sometime, Colt. Especially since I can’t drag this guy away from his books.” She patted Michael’s leg as she said it. I wondered how long they’d been together. Not long, I thought. Julia or Syd would’ve mentioned it.

  “Colt likes it down at the bridge, too,” Michael drawled. It was the first time he’d hinted about Julia and me, and I wondered why he was doing it. Did he want Kirby to find out? What for?

  She smiled and raised her eyebrows at him, as if waiting for him to explain. I wondered what I had expected from Michael anyway. I stood up then and said, “I have to go. See you.”

  Dear C.M.,

  I think I asked too much about your family tonight. Is that why you got so quiet? The thing is, I want to know what the rest of your life is like, not just the time we spend together.

  That probably doesn’t sound fair. I know we’re only supposed to be having fun. I said so myself. But the truth is, you’re more than that to me. And I think I’m more to you, even though you never say it.

  What happens between us is amazing. It’s not just the sex. Sometimes I wonder: If we came out from under the bridge and tried to be together all the time, would it still be this good, or would the whole thing fall apart?

  It probably doesn’t matter, because we’re not going to come out from under the bridge. But I want to know you inside out.

  chapter 9

  My brother, Tom, came home for Thanksgiving, the first time we’d seen him since school started. He made his usual Tom kind of entrance, late Wednesday night. Dad was watching TV in the living room. Mom and I were in the kitchen, both with our feet up, thanks to long shifts at Barney’s. It was the first shift I’d ever worked with her, and it would be the last if I had anything to say about it. I didn’t need two bosses at the restaurant.

  Tom flung open the front door and announced, “I have returned!”

  “Hell yes you have!” Dad yelled, and gave him a big hug. Mom jumped up and ran into the living room. I stayed put. I figured Tom would find me as soon as he’d peeled our parents off of him.

  He finally made it through the kitchen door. Mom trailed right behind him, saying, “I’ve got some roast beef in the fridge, if Colt didn’t eat it all . . . and some ham . . .”

  “No, I ate the ham,” I said.

  Tom whacked me on the shoulder. “Hey, stranger!”

  “Hey, Tom.”

  “I can make you a sandwich,” Mom said.

  “Sit down,” Tom told her. “I know how to work the refrigerator if I get hungry.” He sat across the table from me. “So, Colt, I hear you’re discovering the joys of minimum wage.”

  “Yeah, it’s a thrill. . . . How’s school?”

  He launched into a story about his roommate making a mobile out of empty beer cans, and another about how he’d talked his math professor into giving him extra credit for writing an essay called, “Why Do We Need Math?” Those were only warm-ups for the full saga of Tom Goes to College. Nobody else said anything for a good hour or two, but I didn’t mind. When he was on a roll, Tom was better than TV.

  In the back of my mind, I was thinking that I might tell him about Julia this weekend. I was starting to feel like I would explode if I didn’t talk to someone about it, and I could trust Tom. He might even have something useful to say. He had such an off-the-wall way of looking at things, he could come up with ideas that would never occur to me.

  The whole family stayed up until midnight, listening to Tom, and then Dad set the alarm for five A.M. so he could put the turkey in the oven. Turkey was the one thing my father knew how to cook. He made it every year no matter how hungover he was, and he spent the whole day fussing over the stuffing and the basting. Once the bird was carved, his job for the year was done.

  Tom grabbed the back of my shirt as we walked down the hall toward our rooms. “How are things around here lately?” he asked in a low voice. “They in a good mood?”

  “Pretty good. Why?” I was about an inch taller than Tom now. It felt strange, not having to look up at him.

  “I have some news for tomorrow.” His eyes glinted. Knowing him, the news could be anything. He was going to ride on a space shuttle . . . he was fathering triplets . . . he’d decided to leave school and live naked in the desert . . . anything.

  “Good or bad?”

  “Oh, good, definitely good.” Turning toward his room, he said, “At least, I think so.”

  Dear C.M.,

  Just had a Family Dinner, like Mom insists on having at least once a week. She’s ecstatic when we’re all home at the same time. I think it lives up to some fantasy about Happy Homes: candles in Ye Olde Family Candlesticks and smiling people chatting about their day.

  She gushed about Austin over dinner—she says he’s so polite. She doesn’t know he drinks himself blind. I love my mother but she’s so naive sometimes!

  I’m trying to picture you having dinner with your family, but I can’t. You don’t talk much about them. I know who your brother is—everybody knows your brother. I can’t imagine your parents, though. There are too many blanks.

  Thanksgiving morning I went for a walk along the river. Then I took down the orange cone, and Tom and I shot targets in the backyard. He waited until we were all sitting around the table and had spent the usual five solid minutes praising Dad’s turkey before he made his announcement.

  “Because it’s Thanksgiving,” Tom said, spreading his arms wide, “and because I’m grateful to have such a wonderful family, who has always accepted me as I am, I wanted to share with you, on this special occasion, things I’ve learned about who I am.”

  “What?” Dad said. His mind was still on the turkey, but I don’t think he could’ve followed that speech even if he’d been paying attention. It was pretty convoluted, even for Tom. I thought I knew what Tom was getting at, but I wasn’t sure.

  “Don’t tell us you’re joining a cult.” Mom dumped a load of mashed potatoes onto his plate.

  Tom laughed. “Not at all, not at all.” Beaming, he said, “I just wanted you to know that I am gay.”

  Yes, I had guessed right. Mom and Dad froze, staring at him. I helped myself to the green beans.

  “Now, there’s nobody special in my life right now, but I wanted this out in the open, you know, in the interests of family communication.”

  “What the hell is this?” Dad growled. “Some kind of experiment?”

  Tom’s smile had begun to twitch. “Uh, no, of course not. Fact is, I’ve always been gay. I just didn’t feel comfortable admitting it until recently.”

  When I thought about it, I realized that Tom had never had a girlfriend. Not that I’d bothered to think about it until just now, when he started babbling about knowing who he was. He’d gone out with girls once in a while, but usually in situations where he had to have a date, like proms or parties where all his friends had dates. He’d kissed Corrie Smith in the tree house, but he hadn’t exactly raved about that experience. Well, now I knew why.

  My parents s
tared at him while their dinner cooled. It was the first time I’d ever seen my mother fumble for words. “Tom,” she finally said, “if this is one of your jokes—”

  “It’s not a joke.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Dad said. He stood up and walked in a little circle behind his seat.

  “I didn’t think it would be such a shock.” Tom glanced over at me. “Colt, you don’t seem surprised.”

  “Not much.” I looked at my father. “Come on, Dad, sit down.”

  “Tommy,” Mom said, “are you sure?”

  His smile faded. “Yes, Mom,” he said quietly. “I’m sure.”

  “But—hell, you’re so young, and you’re always trying crazy new things—” She noticed me then, and slapped the fork out of my hand. “How can you eat?”

  “It’s dinnertime, that’s how.” I bent under the table to get my fork. “You know, he’s not dying or anything.”

  “Tommy, don’t you want to get married? Have kids?”

  “I’d love to have kids someday. That’s not out of the question.”

  “I need a drink,” Dad said. He went over to the refrigerator. I hoped he wouldn’t notice that Nick had snuck a couple of his beers yesterday.

  “You don’t need a drink,” Mom said.

  “Oh yes I do. I most certainly do.” He snapped open a beer. “Christ. My own son—” He gagged. “You know what those guys do to each other?”

  “Dad, I’m one of ‘those guys.’ And this is about more than just sex. It’s about compatibility and love and—”

  “You shut your fucking mouth.” My father pointed the beer at him. “I don’t want to hear that shit.”

  Tom looked at Mom. “What about you? How do you feel about this?”

  “I’d like to know why the hell you sprang this at Thanksgiving dinner,” she said. Behind her, Dad gulped his beer.

  “Is it that big a deal? Is it so hard to accept?” He turned to me. “Colt. What about you?”

  I struggled to swallow a mouthful of stuffing. “What?”

  “I’m still your brother, right?”

  “Sure.”

  “Who cares what that little snot thinks,” Dad jumped in. “He’s not paying your college bills. It’s not his name you’re dragging through shit.”

  My name was the same as theirs, of course, but logic was never one of my father’s strengths.

  “‘Through shit?’” Tom said. “That’s a little strong, don’t you think?”

  “I’m this close to kicking your ass. Don’t push me.”

  “Dinner and a show,” I mumbled. I only meant for Tom to hear, but my mother turned on me.

  “We don’t need your mouth right now, Mr. Smart-ass,” she said.

  I considered saying, “Let me know when you do,” but decided to take more cranberry sauce instead.

  “You are not my son anymore,” Dad told Tom.

  “Dad, hey, just give me a—”

  “All right, enough,” Mom cut in. She stood. “I’m going to lie down for a while. If I hear a sound from any of you before my head stops pounding, I’ll kick some ass myself.”

  She went down the hall. Dad guzzled the rest of his beer, threw the can at Tom, and reached into the refrigerator for another.

  “Dad,” Tom said.

  “Don’t,” Dad said, opening the beer. Then he took it out onto the back porch.

  Tom sat there and watched me eat for a minute. I looked up and said, “Well, that went great.” And then we both started to laugh. I hadn’t laughed that hard in months. “This’ll be a Thanksgiving to remember.”

  “Stop,” he choked. When we finally stopped laughing, he began to eat. We both had as much as we wanted, but every now and then we had to stop and laugh again.

  After dinner, Tom and I stuck the leftovers in the refrigerator and sat out on the back-porch steps. My father had gone around front to look at his wrecks, which is what he did whenever he wanted to feel better. I guess the cars were for him what the river was for me.

  “So you’re okay with this?” Tom asked me.

  “Why should I care who you sleep with?” I didn’t see how he could want to have sex with another guy, but hey, it was his life.

  Tom looked out over the backyard, at the bleached weeds and the bare trees, the targets and the two dead cars. “You think he meant it when he said I’m not his son?”

  “Nah, he was just being an asshole.”

  “I don’t know.” Tom pulled at his lower lip.

  “Who cares, anyway? What do you think he’s gonna do, make you turn in your royal title and your share of Windsor Castle?”

  Tom rubbed the rough wood of the steps. “He mentioned the college money. You think he’ll cut me off?”

  “You’re already paying for most of it, aren’t you?” Tom had scraped up his tuition from scholarships and loans and a job at school.

  “Yeah, but they’re paying my living expenses. I suppose I could take out more loans if I had to.” He shook his head. “I honestly thought it would go better than this. It’s not like I ever pretended—well, I never had girls crawling all over my room.”

  “No, but you went out with them.”

  “All my friends were into girls. I kept waiting to feel the same way. I thought I’d wake up one day—” He took a breath. “Then I realized it was never going to happen. I liked guys, and that’s the way I was going to stay.” He frowned. “I hoped Mom and Dad would catch on without me having to make a big announcement.”

  “Who are you kidding?” I said. “You love big announcements.”

  He grinned. “Maybe. But I thought they’d figure it out when you started seeing Jackie. The rest of us kept falling over you two making out in every room of the house. I was sure they’d ask themselves, ‘Hey, why doesn’t Tom have a girl over? Why isn’t Tom swapping spit with his girlfriend on the living-room couch?’ But I guess people see what they want to see. At least you noticed something, didn’t you?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. I never thought about it, but it didn’t shock me or anything. It’s like I knew it without thinking about it.” I pointed to his twelve-foot wooden tower in the backyard. “Now I have new insight into your sculpture, though.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, we learned about phallic symbols in psych class—”

  He laughed. “The symbolism wasn’t intentional, believe me.”

  Mom opened the door then. “Colt, Syd’s on the phone for you.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I went inside and found my parents picking through the leftovers. Apparently they’d gotten their appetites back. My dad scowled at a bowl of squash, but it was my mother’s face I watched. When Dad got upset, he would sulk on the sofa or drink until he passed out. Mom was the one who flared up and sometimes gave a whack or two to whoever was nearest. She also cooled down faster than he did, though. He could hold a grudge for years. I left plenty of room between them and me as I passed through the kitchen to my room.

  I told Syd about our Thanksgiving to Remember, and she told me about her split holiday (morning with her mom, afternoon with her dad). “Should I come over tomorrow?” she said. “I can’t wait to see you.”

  “I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve seen my brother in a couple of months.”

  “Tommy won’t mind. He knows me.”

  “I don’t know, Syd.”

  “Don’t you want to see me?”

  What could I say to that? “Sure. I have to work at four, though.”

  “I can come over at noon. How’s that?”

  “Okay,” I said, trying not to sound like I was making an appointment to have my teeth drilled.

  “See you then.”

  I hung up and threw myself on my bed. I’d judged Julia pretty harshly for alwa
ys saying she was going to break up with Austin Chadwick and never doing it, but now I was starting to see that it wasn’t so easy.

  chapter 10

  Syd, Tom, and I shot targets in the backyard when she came over the next day. After she left, while I was getting ready for work, Tom came into my room and said, “So, you’re going out with her now?”

  “Sort of.”

  He sat on my bed. “Well, don’t sound so excited.”

  “I kind of got dragged into it.” Then I told him about how Syd had reached out for me the day her parents broke up, how I hadn’t wanted to pull away from her then.

  “So you don’t like her?”

  “Not that way.”

  “You’re not doing her any favors, you know.”

  “Probably not.” I plowed through my closet, looking for the bottom half of my uniform.

  “The longer you let this go on, the worse it’s going to get.”

  “I guess so.” For some reason I didn’t want to face him, but I finally turned around. He gave me that wise-older-brother look that used to give me a pain in the ass. It didn’t bother me as much today, maybe because I knew he was right.

  “Believe me,” he said, pointing his finger at me like a gun, “no good comes from lying about what you really want.”

  The restaurant was busier than I’d expected. Apparently people were sick of their leftovers already. Michael Vernon came in around eight. He had coffee and a doughnut and read a book while he ate. “Where’s Kirby?” I asked him.

  “At her grandmother’s,” he said, without looking up.

  “How’d you get here, anyway?” I was pretty sure he couldn’t drive yet.

  “Rode my bike.” He turned a page, still without lifting his head. I left him alone after that. I could never quite figure him out. Sometimes he talked to me like a normal person, and other times he acted as if every word out of his mouth would cost him a pint of blood. I used to think maybe he was just uncomfortable with me because he knew about Julia, but I’d seen him treat Kirby the same way at school. It was as if he had an invisible igloo to retreat into whenever he felt like it.