With or Without You Page 5

  Davis. Davis is complicated. I sometimes think that my dating someone would be like abandoning him. Or at least, that’s how Davis would see it. I never said a word, even when things got serious with Erik and I wanted—needed—someone to talk to about all the incredible and horrifying feelings of having a first boyfriend. Part of me wants to think Davis’d be happy for me. But I’m afraid of how it might change our friendship. So, until I can figure out how to do this, Erik remains mine and mine alone.

  So far, my stories have gotten me out of every scrape. Davis believed I couldn’t make it to the RYC’s latest rave because Mom and Dad were making me work, when actually I was doing yoga with Erik. Mom and Dad bought that I couldn’t work Sundays in March because I needed more study time at the library, when I was really helping Erik cram for his anatomy midterm.

  But a story won’t allow me to drive to the airport, pick up Shan, take her home, then race across town in time for my date with Erik. And now that it’s Saturday, that’s exactly the story I need.

  Here’s the master plan: I work at the grocery store from open to five. Ditch the arm sling, shower quick, change, and I’m on the road to pick up Shan at the Dane County Airport by six. Take her home. Scarf down a light dinner with the fam. Make an excuse (Davis needs help?) and leave at six forty. Hop the six forty-five bus to Thompson Boulevard and arrive at Erik’s Studio in time for our date at seven. No problem.

  Problem. The universe counters with a series of cataclysms aimed at undermining my Perfect Plan. Mrs. Nash calls at three forty-five with her weekly grocery order. She’s close to ninety, so it takes a while for her to go through the list of everything she needs.

  Then Jason, one of the college kids my folks hired to help at the store, shows up twenty minutes late for his five o’clock shift. It’s five thirty before I’m on the road. I smell up the car; I worked behind the meat counter all day and I stink of dead. I stop by Mrs. Nash’s and then I’m off to the airport. I arrive at five to six. No problem.

  Problem. Shan’s plane is late. It won’t be in until quarter after six. I recalculate. We can be home by six thirty, I’ll skip dinner, take a quickie shower, and still meet Erik on time. He’s been dropping hints for weeks about tonight. I’m not good with anticipation. Erik’s not good at making anticipation easy on me.

  Near the baggage claim, I mentally scroll through the Ten Commandments. “Thou shalt not strand thy sister at the airport” is nowhere in sight. But another mental calculation tells me I have more to fear from Shan’s wrath than anyone waiting for me in the Great Beyond. Erik has never been angry with me. Shan is another story. I opt for the lesser of two headlocks and continue to sit in the airport waiting area.

  Text Erik to say you’ll be late, my brain says. I tell my brain to shut up because texting Erik means explaining that I’m picking up Shan, when originally he just knew she’d be in town. Which means he’ll tell me to bring her over so he can meet her. Which means full-on DEFCON 1 panic alert. No texting. Erik will be cool if I’m late. He gets me.

  Shan arrives. Her usually long cocoa hair is shorter than I’m used to, falling just under her chin. We share our father’s nose—short without being pug—and our mother’s high cheekbones.

  “Spud!” she yells, throwing open her arms to greet me, but I grab her carry-on, snatch her suitcase from the baggage belt, and lead her, running, back to the car. Under normal circumstances, shouting that nickname in public is grounds for a Wet Willy. But I want to see my boyfriend, which makes me benevolent. Then we’re in the car and on the road.

  “Some brothers get all happy when their sisters come home.” She sulks, fastening her seat belt. She’s four years my senior but has an uncanny ability to devolve into our mother with just the right acid-laced tone in her voice.

  “Some sisters make it to their brothers’ graduations,” I counter, matching her acid with a base. She looks away and I win.

  I can tell you exactly when Shan and I first started to act like a real brother and sister. Growing up, we hated each other. She was older and favored; I was the boy so I did all the work around the house and in the store. She was the outgoing cheerleader and popular kid; I was the quiet, sensitive one. Every room we occupied together became a battleground.

  But when I came out to my family, that all changed. It was like every piece of my personal puzzle finally fell into place for her. I wasn’t weird. I was trapped. She appreciated that and we became allies.

  “Hail Mary, full of slowthefuckdown!” she screeches, reaching for the Jesus Bar above her door as I charge another yellow light.

  “Sorry. M and D are anxious to see you.”

  “Bet it’s been rough with D laid up.”

  “‘Joan! Joan, I can’t reach my feet. Did you buy me navy blue socks?’”

  She laughs and we finish my dad’s terminal lament together. “‘Jesus fricking Christ, woman, you don’t buy a color-blind man navy blue socks!’”

  Shan casts a few surreptitious hairy eyeballs my way. My face still speaks of my close encounter of the trog kind. She’s probably been itching to ask since she first saw me at the airport. But years of conditioning prohibit her from inquiring. She knows she’d only get a story.

  She gets very quiet and then says, “Look, Spud, I have something very Big to tell and I don’t want to clue in M and D just yet. But I have to tell someone. To tell you.”

  I look over and her face is this odd gradient of terror and joy. I don’t know what that means.

  “No,” she insists, “I mean this is really Big. So Big that I need a ransom.”

  “What?”

  “You have to tell me something Big too. I need a Big that I can use as leverage.”

  I’ve never had a Big that could match any news Shan ever had. Things like, “Well, I went to my first Chasers meeting for lessons in gay history and watched some Asian kid get the crap choked out of him” don’t exactly qualify as Big.

  Then I realize: For the first time, I have one. I have the biggest Big. I don’t know what she wants to tell me, but I’m pretty sure news of my first relationship trumps it. But I’m not ready to give up my secret yet. I like having Erik right here, inside, where he’s still just mine.

  I sigh. “I don’t have any news. You know that.”

  She scowls and narrows her eyes. Launch Serious Sis Mode. Her eyes glisten, the look she gets when she’s out doing her photography, and her face flushes.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  The car nearly swerves off the road as I slam on the brakes. Shan screams, clutching the dashboard. Horns blare around me as I meekly pull off to the gravel shoulder and slip the car into park.

  I grin. “Oh my God, that’s totally Big!”

  We hug and she starts to cry. It’s not long before I’m sobbing too. So we sit with the car running on the side of the road, blubbering at each other.

  “Why is it a secret?” I ask. “You have to tell M and D.”

  She grimaces. “You just graduated. This is your time. I’ll tell them before I go home.” Shan used to eat up all of our parents’ fussing. She lost her appetite when I came out. Now she prefers to stay out of the spotlight, hoping a little will spill on me. It’s a nice gesture, but it hasn’t worked yet.

  I take the biggest breath I’ve ever taken. She trusts me. And if I’m going to pull things off tonight, I have to trust her. I must be fucking crazy.

  “Okay. Listen. I’ve got a Big too.”

  Shan wipes her eyes. “You little turd, holding out on me—”

  “You know, if you don’t want to hear—”

  “Okay, cry havoc and let slip the Big.”

  It sticks in my throat. It’s like coming out all over again, only that was something I had to say so I could go on with my life. I’m afraid that if I reveal this, my life won’t go on. Everything will come to an end. But she’s trusted me with something huge (okay, something that time and an expanding belly will betray) and I feel obligated to respond in kind.

  When I he
sitate, she ups the ante with, “I mean, it’s not like you could top my Big but, hey, take yer best shot and we’ll—”

  “I have a boyfriend.”

  I have only ever whispered this to myself in bed at night.

  I have a boyfriend.

  I have a boyfriend.

  I, Evan Daniel Weiss, have a boyfriend named Erik James Goodhue. And he rocks.

  Here, now, in full voice, the sentence detonates and resonates. The car fills with noise, like the brakes squealing again. But it’s Shan shrieking, hands flailing. She reaches out and gathers me in close for another hug, this one spine-threatening. My stomach does a samba—she’s happy for me. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I’m glad this is what I got. Then she pulls back with a skeptical look.

  “Um, Spud … we’re not talking COD, are we?” Cauldron Of Desperation. That’s her code name for Davis. It’s not that she doesn’t like him. Even during the years she and I were fighting, I think she’d always been grateful that I had a friend. But she’s said that she doesn’t like the effect Davis has on me. I don’t know what that means.

  I roll my eyes and we sit on the roadside for another ten minutes as I tell her about meeting Erik and his square-egg-shaped head and getting his phone number and calling him and going on that awkward first date and the less awkward date when he kissed me outside the Orpheum Theater and I skip over the dates in between and I tell her that he bought me flowers every Friday during the month of my birthday and about the stupid stories I told M and D about where the flowers came from and I share the silly list I’ve made in my head, alphabetizing his best features (Awesome kisser, Beautiful smile, Considerate, Dimples …) and how his friends all like me and the reason I’ve been driving like a nutjob is because we’re getting together tonight.

  “I wanna meet him!”

  For just a moment, I can’t hear the cars rushing by outside. I can’t hear the radio, which has been playing softly the entire ride home. I can only see the flashing red light on the dash, reminding me the hazards are on. It takes me roughly an hour to swallow and I gulp like I’m in a Tom and Jerry cartoon.

  “Yeah.” I laugh nervously. “I’m gonna vote that idea off the island.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Why?”

  Trouble is, I don’t have a reason. But I can’t tell her that. “I dunno …” Once again, I see the pentimento. My home life seeping through the life I’ve forged with Erik. I can’t explain that I’m still not ready to make Erik real to anyone else. “Erik’s busy with school and stuff and … We’ll see.”

  We stare at each other.

  The last fifteen minutes of pent-up joy, everything I wanted—needed—to share fades. It’s like we’ve both woken from a dream, neither of us sure what just happened. I hate the consequences of happiness.

  I lick my lips, slip the car back into gear, and merge into traffic. We’re six blocks from home before she speaks again.

  “Evan, I understand why you haven’t mentioned Erik to M and D. I know you’ve got your own life to live, but I also hope you know you can trust me. I’d really like to meet this guy. I won’t snitch.”

  “I know,” I whisper. I want to leap back in time and take it all back. Keep Erik to myself. Now he’s not just mine. Now he’s Shan’s, too. “We’ll see.”

  We’re home and Mom is fawning over Shan. Mom tells Shan she’s lost weight. Shan stomps on my foot when I choke on a laugh. Dad rolls out to the living room and the three begin talking about New York and grad school and Mom says she’s made Shan’s favorite—shepherd’s pie. I slip into the shower, then fresh clothes. On my way out, I say, “Don’t wait up. Davis and I are going to a late-night show.”

  Shan smiles and mouths, Have fun. Mom and Dad don’t even notice. They continue to talk to Shan. I leave without a sound.

  I always have a story. The only thing worse than needing one is when I don’t.

  gift

  I’ve changed since Erik came along. I know it. The single most draining effort during the last year has been trying not to let all the changes show. I used to be a sloucher. Since Erik introduced me to yoga, I have great posture—back straight, shoulders square, head up. Mom noticed but couldn’t articulate it.

  “We need to get you checked,” she said one day at the store, frowning and eyeing my perfectly straight spine, “for scoliosis.” I wanted to correct her, explain what scoliosis was, but she was showing concern and I didn’t want to spoil the moment.

  Dad had a whole different take. “Are you giving me attitude?” I was helping him unload a delivery truck when he noticed. Instead of always looking down, I kept my head up. Between that and the posture, Dad thought I was looking cocky. Couldn’t help but smile. I was going for confident, but whatever. In a weird way, I think he started giving me more respect. I’m always more conscious of my posture now when he’s around. Not necessarily because I want that respect, but because I think it freaks him out a little.

  Davis was the only one who could really pinpoint the change, even if he didn’t know where it came from.

  “You’re different,” he said. “It’s like you’re up to something.” Leave it to your best friend to know stuff he doesn’t even know. So I try to slouch and cast my eyes down whenever I’m around Mom or Davis. Let them see the old Evan. Somehow, I think my life works better when I’m less real to them.

  I’ve also seen a change in my gait. Now, as I bound toward Gorham Street, my stride is sure and strong. If the trogs saw me now, I don’t think they’d recognize me. On the other hand, I worry that seeing a trog would bring out the other Evan, the one I banish when Erik’s around: meek, shy, acquiescent. This straight-backed, bouncy-gaited Evan is the only Evan Erik knows. I want to keep it that way.

  I break into a run and hammer on the back of the Number 14 as it tries to pull away from the bus stop without me. It squeals and jerks to a stop. I slip my bus pass into the reader and take a seat. Twenty minutes later, I’m south of town, two short blocks from the Studio. I run the rest of the way.

  Erik’s Studio is a self-storage unit he rents off the Beltway. On the outside it’s just another sky blue garage door set in a wall of chalky concrete blocks. But throw open that door and it’s like you’ve raised a periscope up into his brain. This is where he stores all the stuff he finds at rummage sales, estate auctions, and flea markets: a trove of spigots and toasters and blenders and mixers and rusty egg whisks, fused in combinations of two, three, four items. His creations hang from the ceiling by piano wire, jut up from the floor, and cling to the walls like postmodern tarantulas.

  Erik, my beautiful boy, my nurse, is also a sculptor.

  My favorite sculpture is in his friend’s gallery (it wasn’t just a pickup line; he really knows someone with an art gallery) in Milwaukee. He took two antique iceboxes and turned them into robots. One has mixer beaters for eyes, toilet plungers for arms, and mops for legs. The other is meant to look incomplete. It has no eyes but a spiral mouth—a discarded burner from an electric stove—rolling pins for arms, and one leg made from a tower of fused pork-and-beans cans. Two strategically placed potato mashers assure you each is male. They’re holding each other. And you get the idea that the one with the beaters wants to look into the eyes of the other robot—eyes that aren’t there. Erik calls it Some Assembly Requited. It’s the first image that pops into my mind whenever I think about us as a couple.

  It’s a toasty night. I navigate through the labyrinth of cloned garages toward the sounds of Gregory Douglass singing “Hard.” Erik’s choice of music on any given day acts like a road map, guiding me to his mood.

  I’ll miss you hard enough to hide it,

  I need you hard enough to try,

  I love you hard enough to move on …

  “Hard,” in Erik’s world, means caution. Curves ahead, slow down. It tells me he’s been brooding today and he’s working his way out of a funk. It tells me he’s remembering past boyfriends, bad relationships. But that’s about to change. Because I am here to ne
gate all funks. The caring boyfriend has arrived.

  I turn the corner to Unit 481. As expected, he’s standing in just his favorite pair of paint-spattered, ripped jeans. I have seen the man in a business suit, in swim trunks, and totally naked, but nothing gets me revved like seeing him in those jeans, shirtless and barefoot. He even makes the colossal welding mask that swallows his head look sexy.

  The space reeks with industrial backwash; singed metal and pungent magnesium. The familiar hiss of the welder blends seamlessly with the music’s synthesizer as the squeal of two chunks of steel fusing together threatens to drown out both.

  I lean on the entryway and gape at the work in progress. This is one of the biggest things he’s ever done. It’s unlike any of his other sculptures; very literal, not at all abstract. He’s created a skeleton of pipes, around which he’s wrapping long strips of steel sheeting that he’s first run over with a buffer so they’re coated in circular grooves, giving them a tarnished, scratched look. This sculpture is of two angels holding spears overhead in their outstretched arms, one foot off the ground as though they’re leaping into the sky together. Their wings, like mirrors, shoot out with a width twice the statue’s height. He calls it Fierce Angels.

  “Why ‘fierce’?” I asked when he first showed it to me.

  “Angels have to be fierce nowadays,” he reasoned. “We’ve come up with a thousand new ways to be crappy to one another since Biblical times when angels roamed freely. You’ve heard about people going ‘where angels fear to tread’? Not these two. Nothing scares them. They’ll go anywhere to help somebody out of a jam.”

  Erik calls this his hobby. His heart, he assures me, is in medicine. He’s the top of his class in nursing school and he puts in more hours than any other intern at University Hospital. But even though he doesn’t call himself a “serious” artist, I know Erik is pouring everything he’s got into this piece. It’s his first commission. At the end of the summer, the city is going to unveil it down at Reid Park as the celebration of their “clean up the neighborhood” project for that area.