With or Without You Read online

  I ruffle his hair and he snorts. I’ve never done that. It’s usually vice versa. It feels good to turn the tables. To be the vice versa.

  “Okay,” I agree. “I’ll think about it.” The salmon-colored ticket is neither hot nor cold in my fingers. It’s barely there. I don’t need to think about it. I don’t want to think about it. But for him, I will.

  We’re both quiet. Erik stands, shifting his weight between his feet—back and forth—and nibbling the corner of his lower lip. My gut tells me this is a new entry for the DictionErik: Yeah, let’s talk about that is about to happen. He takes a deep breath.

  “There’s one thing, though. And it’s kind of important.”

  I nod. I know exactly where this is going and there’s nothing I can do.

  Erik smiles. No. Not exactly a smile. He tries to smile but it comes off looking more pained. “Evan, I’ve … I’ve been a good boyfriend, right?”

  I shake and laugh nervously. “Are you kidding? The best.” Does that mean anything from someone who has nothing to compare it to? I can only hope.

  “I mean, I don’t think I’ve put a lot of pressure on you. Well, not before tonight, I mean.”

  No pressure. I feel no pressure.

  He continues. “I’ve tried to be there when you needed to talk and I’ve let you have space when you weren’t ready. I’ve tried to be supportive without butting in.”

  It’s all true. Erik has been close when I needed him and retreated when the time was right. And I’ve allowed this. In many ways, I’ve encouraged it.

  Erik has infinite patience and trust. Given what I know about his past relationships, he should be a paranoid recluse fighting off anyone who tries to get close to his heart with a torch and a pitchfork.

  But he let me in. He saw something in me that could be trusted.

  And I almost interrupt with the need to confess: I’ve taken advantage of his trust. I can see when he wants to question me and then backs off, worried that questions will mean he’s letting his fear rule his life. He refuses to let scars from his past relationships influence how he treats me. And instead of just coming clean and answering his questions, I keep quiet. It’s how I’ve kept who I am a secret.

  It’s how I make this work.

  But I can see in his eyes: That all changes—here, now.

  I nod vigorously. “Yes. You’ve done all that.”

  Erik sighs, nervous words earthquaking from his lips as he looks me right in the eye. “I need to meet your family.”

  When you put white light through a glass prism, it separates and you see it for what it really is: a spectrum. For the first time, Erik’s holding me up to a prism. I’m about to be what I really am. Ready or not.

  “Evan, you’ve met anyone who means anything to me. But I don’t know anyone in your life. I know about your sister, the silly but serious photographer. About your parents, the button-down grocers. About Davis, the goofy best friend. I don’t know them. And I get the idea that none of them even knows I exist. I don’t know if you’re ashamed of me—”

  “Of course not,” I say, drawing him in close, my hands meeting on the small of his back, fingers locking to prevent escape.

  I’ve brought us here and I should put an end to it and explain everything. Being loved by Erik has given me courage.

  But not as much as I’d need to have this conversation. I squeeze. “No, it’s nothing like that.”

  Erik shrugs. “If you were still in the closet, I’d understand. But you’ve been out to everyone for years. You’ve had several chances this past year to introduce me. Yet you never have. I’ve always made excuses for you. Now … I’m out of excuses. I need to know that I’m part of your life. Your whole life.”

  Please don’t make me do this. Don’t make me show you who I really, really am.

  I owe him honesty. I opt for spinelessness. “Erik, it’s not that easy.”

  He steps away from me, nose wrinkled, head shaking. “No, Evan. It’s never that easy. But I’m tired of feeling like a dirty little secret. I think I’ve earned more than that.”

  There’s an edge to his tone that apes fury but is diluted by uncertainty. We’ve never fought, never raised our voices to each other. I feel like all of the confidence I get around Erik is being leeched away. I might as well be back in school with Pete towering over me, laughing and pointing.

  “You have.” I reach out and touch his arm. He doesn’t recoil, so I step up to him again. “I’m sorry. You’re right. This is stupid. I love you so much I should be telling complete strangers on the street.”

  Erik looks at his feet. “No. You should tell your family.”

  I nod. “Yes. And …”

  I can’t fucking believe I’m saying this.

  “… and how’s this to start? With Dad laid up, the ’rents are crazy. But … dinner with Shan. How about Tuesday? Tuesday night?”

  He scans my face, looking for something to collar his fears. I smile a meek promise: This is just the beginning. I swear.

  Then he rolls his eyes. “If you weren’t so damned cute …”

  I fake a jab to his chin. “But here’s the deal. You’re cooking. I want your famous chicken cashew. And there shall be no broccoli. Thus spake Evan.”

  I’m pushing it—you don’t tell a nurse/fitness guru to hold the broccoli. But he squints with a threat that carries all the potency of a casual breeze.

  “You drive a hard bargain. Okay. Tuesday. Six. Here. Chicken cashew.”

  I raise an eyebrow and he slumps exaggeratedly.

  “No broccoli,” he whimpers.

  The storm has passed and I’m able to breathe again as we hug. Erik’s back muscles are taut beneath my fingers. He’s still on guard, afraid I won’t go through with this. I don’t know how to fix things except to go through with it … so I know what I have to do.

  I glance at my watch. “I should get going. I have to open the store tomorrow.”

  Usually when it’s time for me to leave, he asks, “Can you spend the night?” When I don’t have to open the store the next morning, the answer is always yes. But even when he knows I have to work, he asks, knowing I can’t. He likes to ask. And I like that he does. I wait for the question, if only because it forces me to take a moment to remember how it feels to lie under his battered quilt, spooning until sleep takes me. Tonight, he doesn’t ask.

  Tonight, he takes my hand and leads me back into the living room. I notice, for the first time, the tall silver mirror framed in antique oak leaning against the wall near the windows, discarded to create my new easel. I bet it cost him a fortune.

  Erik opens the door and as I step over the threshold, he slips the plane ticket and brochures into my hand. My other fist is closed tightly around the key ring. We stand on opposite sides of the door, painted two mismatched shades of blue, and I can’t help but feel that my smile is warmer than his.

  “Thanks,” I whisper, not because it’s late and people might be sleeping, but because that’s what you do when you’re reverent. “I love all my presents.”

  “You’re welcome.” He leans on the door and finally some of the old familiarity of BF (before fight—does this qualify as a fight?) returns. Neither of us wants me to go. “Want a ride home?”

  “Nah. Great night for a walk. And a nice, slow think.”

  He laughs. We stare into each other’s eyes, waiting for one of us to be the killjoy.

  I volunteer. “Love you. See you soon?” I take a step back.

  He nods. “We’ll check on Mr. Benton.” As he slowly closes the door, I catch a whisper: “Miss me.”

  The door clicks shut.

  Every minute I’m not with you.

  I swing by his Jeep and retrieve my new easel: the perfect gift. In my free hand, I grip the plane ticket.

  My plane ticket.

  I start the long, long walk home.

  TITLE: Doorways

  IMAGE:

  The antique doorknob on the front door

  of the Rainbow Y
outh Center

  INSPIRATION:

  Grant Wood’s Return from Bohemia

  (1939)

  PALETTE:

  Door = heliotrope

  Doorknob = chrome

  Shadows = olive drab

  Wood started painting rural scenes as a reaction to Europe’s abstract art. Basically, he gave Europe the finger and kept his art simple. The doorknob itself is a large letter S on its side, with decorative curls at each end.

  Almost a year after we came out to each other while waiting in line for Rocky Horror, Davis decided it was time we came out to our families.

  “If they kick us out,” he reasoned, “we can sue them for child endangerment or something like that.” I didn’t think that was quite how it worked, but the Boing was in full force, so who was I to argue?

  The RYC had just opened, so we swung by there, looking for advice on how to tell our parents. That’s where we met Malaika. She took us under her wing, introduced us to counselors who offered advice on what and what not to do when coming out to your family.

  Don’t come out on a holiday. Have a support network. Be sure you’re emotionally prepared.

  We spent an afternoon in May psyching ourselves up before we each went home, determined to tell our folks.

  Although my parents and I danced around each other, I knew this might actually prompt an emotional reaction. I hoped for anger, which I could deal with. I had no idea what to do if they chose hate.

  I cried in my room for fifteen minutes before I told them. I took about a thousand diversions, with headlines ranging from LOCAL TEEN SWALLOWS OWN TONGUE TRYING TO COME OUT to PARENTS ARRESTED FOR AX MURDERING NEWLY OUT TEEN. I prepared for every reaction.

  Except the one history told me to expect.

  Mom and Dad sat at the kitchen table with a deck of cards, working on their bridge strategy. Shan was in the living room, reading one of her photography books. I planned to start slowly, ease into the story, make it a discussion of feelings and experiences rather than politics or religion. Instead, I just blurted out, “I’m gay.”

  The implosion, the lightning strike, the tsunami—whatever I expected—failed to arrive. They looked at me as though I hadn’t spoken.

  “I … thought you should know.”

  And when the silence—not even stunned silence, just run-of-the-mill, everyday, boring-family-life silence—continued, I got mad. I wanted outrage. Just this once, I wanted a reaction other than disinterest.

  Mom frowned, turning her focus back to her cards. “This isn’t the time to try to get attention, Evan.”

  “This isn’t about attention,” I insisted. “I’m telling you this because you need to know.”

  “You can’t be gay.” Dad grunted, shaking his head. “You’re too damn young to even know what that means. Where did you hear that word? Is that something Davis has been telling you?”

  Where did I hear the word? Were they living in the Fifties?

  “No …” The voice, barely a whisper, was Shan’s. “No, it makes sense.”

  That’s when fourteen years of enmity shattered. She understood everything I’d gone through to figure out who I was. She had gay friends who’d done what I was doing now. Friends she’d celebrated with when it was over … or comforted when things went wrong. She was on my side.

  I tried for another ten minutes to get my parents to talk to me about it. Even Shan meekly tried to suggest they hear me out. But they kept insisting it was a bid for attention. So I went to my room and slammed the door. I crawled out my window and spent the night sleeping on the roof, spitting “Fuck!” at the stars until I fell asleep.

  The next day at three o’clock, I went to the RYC to meet Davis. He arrived two hours late, tossing his bike aside before sinking down next to me on the front step, back against the door.

  “C’mon,” I prompted, “how’d it go?”

  He reached up over his head, fiddled with the antique doorknob, and mumbled.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I didn’t tell them.”

  In that instant, I relived all the anxiety and hysterics from the night before. All because of Davis. This had been his idea. We’d made a pact to tell. Together.

  “You … ASSHOLE!” I screamed. I jumped up. I kicked the sidewalk and stomped. “You fucking asshole! You asshole! Do you have any idea what I went through last night? You son of a bitch!”

  Davis ignored my rant completely. His eyes fixed into space, his arm over his head, absently twisting the locked doorknob up and down.

  “My mom tried to kill herself last night.”

  My breath arrested. When I imagined Davis telling his parents, I only ever pictured him telling his dad. I’d forgotten about his mom. She’d always been this wispy nonentity in his life, fading in and out of reality. She was a shadow of a woman, taking antidepressants the way most kids ate SweeTarts. It never occurred to me how she might react to the news.

  “I never got a chance to say anything.” Davis shook his head. “I got home and found an ambulance outside. We spent the night in the emergency room. This morning, the bastard took her to Mendota.”

  Madison sits on an isthmus between two big lakes: Monona and Mendota. But everyone in Wisconsin knows that when you’re “taken” to Mendota, it means one thing: Mendota Mental Health Institute. Davis’s mom had been committed.

  Davis’s twisting of the doorknob became more agitated; it clanked loudly with each sudden jerk of his wrist.

  His dirty hair had fallen so far down his face that it took me a moment to notice his cheeks were shining with tears. Snot caked on his upper lip.

  I sat next to him and put my hand on his knee, squeezed it gently to remind him that I was there. His entire body shook. This was the first time I lost Davis. The first time he became unreachable. I had no idea what it would take to get him back.

  “Hey,” I whispered. His jaw trembled, emitting a machine gun of faltering sobs. His shaking became so violent, I thought he was having a seizure. I panicked, not sure what to do.

  “Can anyone help?” I asked as people walked by. But they wouldn’t even look at us. No one wanted to get involved. It was all on me.

  I knelt directly in front of him, put my hands on his cheeks, and forced him to stare at me.

  “Davis,” I said, trying to sound stern, but my voice cracked. “Davis, listen to me. This isn’t your fault. You know that, right? What your mom did. What your dad did. You couldn’t stop it. Okay? Davis?”

  I held his face, refusing to let him look away.

  “She’s gone,” he whispered. “Totally gone now … totally gone …”

  I was practically in tears myself but I stayed strong and tried to turn his focus back to me. “I’m so, so sorry. But I’m not going anywhere. Okay? Like it or not, you tardmonkey, you got me. Okay? Please, Davis? Okay?”

  I reached up and pried his hand from the doorknob. His fingers, so colorless I could almost make out bone through his skin, were locked in a withered claw. I folded his arms across his chest and hugged him. We must have sat there just like that for an hour. The tears stopped; the snot stopped; he went limp and let me be there for him.

  “Don’t,” he rasped finally. “Really, Evan, don’t. Go, I mean.”

  I flashed back a year to that night at Rocky Horror. I still didn’t feel that kind of love for Davis, but I wished I did more than anything. If only to give him what he wanted. Or needed. I didn’t know if my friendship would ever be enough to fulfill any of his wants or needs.

  “Right,” I guffawed, “like you’d last five minutes without me, tardmonkey. Hell, I give you three minutes before total system failure.”

  He hiccupped a laugh and threw a halfhearted punch at my shoulder. “Tardmonkey I may be, but you’ll always be Lord Emperor of All Tardmonkeys.”

  opening

  The alarm bleats and Sunday begins with a fusillade of Huge Thoughts:

  HUGE THOUGHT #1: I hate opening Sunday mornings.

  My feet meet cold hardwoo
d floor.

  HUGE THOUGHT #2: I get to work with Shan.

  I shut the bathroom door and quietly beat my head against the wall.

  HUGE THOUGHT #3: Why the hell didn’t you just say, “Yes, please take me to California,” Weiss, you complete and total loser?

  But now’s not the time to worry about what I should or shouldn’t have said to Erik. Now’s the time to face the dread of Sunday: M and D’s one completely non-working day of the week, when I’m left in charge. Today the store is mine.

  Bwah-hah-hah.

  In reality, running the store on my own is a colossal pain in the ass. But Shan’s home to help, so today is destined to rock. I get to hide out in the freezer and do the cold-case inventory while she helps people out on the floor. And, of course, there’s the Game.

  When Shan and I are in charge, we pick a code word and, as we help customers, we get points every time we can get them to say the word. I am the reigning champ, having made Mr. Blazejewski, one of our regular customers, say “walrus” over seven times in one fifteen-minute visit. This is a grocery store. Working “walrus” into a conversation about fresh kohlrabi is murder.

  I throw on work clothes, scarf down a piece of dry toast, and meet Shan downstairs. We go through the familiar opening ritual: switching on lights, counting the cash drawer, sweeping the floors, sweeping the sidewalk, hauling out the “Specials Today!” sandwich board, rolling out the awning, and a hundred other mind-numbing tasks. We finish with the most important task of all.

  “The code word,” Shan says, searching over her shoulders for imagined prying ears, “is ‘daffodil.’”

  “Ouch.” I wince. “Game on.”

  At nine sharp, we open.

  “Okay, I’m gonna hit inventory,” I announce, grabbing my coat and wool gloves.

  “Did you have a good time last night?” Shan asks.

  I smile. “Yeah. It was great. Remind me later and I’ll show you what Erik got me for graduation.”

  “Are you guys serious?” She’s going for casual. She manages suspicious.

  Condition: Red. Our childhood flashes before me. Shan knows about Erik. Something that no one else knows. History says that I’m in trouble. Emotional blackmail is a Weiss family tradition.