Beyond the Yellow Brick Road-Chapter 42-Surrogates-Part 4 of 4
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BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 42-SURROGATES-PART 4/4
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV
is this the real life?
is this just fantasy?
seven weeks later…
It was a pretty normal day that Wednesday when you came from work and were standing in the kitchen getting ready to make dinner when Justin came with his messenger bag slung over his shoulder and leaned on the kitchen counter right in front of the sink, “Okay, I’m outta here.”
"You said you were staying for dinner," you reminded him. He was wearing the one pair of jeans that you detested fashion-wise but found him undeniably attractive in and that just made his announcement that much worse. “I know, but I’m not,” he said. You tried to hide your disappointment, “Why not?” He sighed, “Because my muse has four very flat tires, and if I don’t go do something, I’m gonna lose the fucking car, too.”
“No luck today then?” you asked him as you started to wash the potatoes. Luckily, they were filthy.
“It was like electrocuting a corpse-utterly pointless.”
“Nice image, Justin.”
“Sorry,” he said, “I think I just need to go somewhere where there are a lot of hot, sweaty, needy men and let them fight over me. That usually works.”
“Well, that’s nice to know for the future.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be a cunt; Alan’s here and he’ll have dinner with you.”
“Justin, I realize that it’s rather en vogue for your social set to use that word, but if you ever call me that again-"
“Jesus, I meant ‘bitch.’ Sorry.”
……
……
“Where is Alan, anyway?”
“He’s in your office pretending to talk to Zeek.”
You shook your potato peeler at him, “Why are you being such a you-know-what today?”
“I’m not. You asked me a question; I answered it.”
“I told him he could call Zeek whenever he wanted. He’s allowed to do that.” Justin laughed and picked up the phone in the kitchen and put it next to your ear, “I know that. I’m telling you that he’s pretending. Check the phone bill.” The dial tone droned in your ear. You stared at Justin, and he stared back, and then you walked out of the kitchen and stood outside your closed office door and listened.
Alan was talking a mile a minute.
Justin waved good-bye over his shoulder and walked out the front door.
*********************
I see a little silhouetto of a man
You were very careful not to expose Alan at dinner. He picked at his food, didn’t seem very interested in it; he seemed much more interested in why Justin wasn’t there. “He decided to go out,” you said. “Are you mad?” he asked you. “No,” you lied, “Why would I be mad?”
“Because you want to have sex with him.” The look on Alan’s face was strangely child-like for such an adult conversation. You took a long sip of water before you answered him, “What makes you think I want to have sex with him?”
“Because you’ve had sex with him before.”
“Did Harper tell you that?” you asked him.
“I saw you kiss him in the hall a long time ago.”
“Have you had sex with people that you’ve kissed?”
“I don’t kiss people.”
……
“Do you want something different to eat, Alan?” you asked him. “You’re not eating what’s on your plate.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I have cookies.”
“Okay.”
You cleared the table and came back with cookies and a half gallon of milk and as you poured, Alan rested his head on top of his hands and smiled. “You look really tired today,” you said.
“That’s ‘cause I am.”
“Why? Did you have a hard day?”
“Yeah. I did,” he said, and you were fascinated just watching him regress right in front of you. He was imagining that hard day in his head.
“Is that why you wanted to talk to Zeek? Because you had a hard day?” you asked him and you watched his face very carefully, and he didn’t miss a beat, “Yeah, ‘cause he understands when you have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it and people are hassling you and all that.” He sounded exactly like Zeek when he spoke, so much so that you almost started laughing at the impression.
“It’s nice to have a friend like that to talk to.”
“Yeah, he’s my best friend,” Alan said, “I mean upstairs. He’s my best friend upstairs.”
The cookies were going fast, and you wanted to keep talking to this Alan Harper, so you took a stab at something. “I guess I was kind of disappointed that Justin didn’t stay for dinner tonight.” He stopped chewing and looked at you curiously. “Why?” he asked. “I guess it sort of hurt my feelings,” you explained. “Did you tell him you were mad?” he asked you. “No, not really, but I think he knew.”
“Why?”
“Because we know each other pretty well, and you can just tell those things after a while, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Like if Harper’s frustrated with you, you can probably tell right?”
“She never gets mad at me on purpose.”
You laughed, “Just by accident?”
“Yeah, I guess we have a lot of accidents.” You were both laughing, and you got up from the table and took the dishes into the kitchen, put them into the dishwasher, and when you went back out into the dining room Alan wasn’t there. You called for him, and he answered you. He was sitting on the loveseat in your office with a book in his lap:
Child Development: Nature vs. Nurture
*********************
one is the loneliest number
He looked up at you like a scared little boy as you stood in the doorway. “You okay?” you asked him.
“…I had a lot of accidents,” he said. You stepped inside your office and sat down in the chair opposite the loveseat, “What do you mean?” And then you noticed that although the book was closed, his finger was stuck in the middle of it marking a page. He flipped the book open, turned it so you could read it and handed it to you. You looked down at the heading at the top of the page:
Nocturnal Enuresis
“Bedwetting, you mean?”
“This book says you can’t control it.”
“You can’t. It’s a physical condition-" you said but you cut your explanation short because he was barely listening to you; he was disappearing into his head, and your eyes were wandering to your wall-to-wall bookshelves because you were noticing for the first time that all the books were in different places. He wasn’t coming into your office and pretending to talk to Zeek; he was reading aloud to himself. You closed the book, set it aside, and pulled your chair closer to him, “Alan? You look like you’re very upset.”
“I am,” he said as his face began to redden.
“Can you tell me why?”
“Sometimes I still do it,” he whispered.
“That’s okay. Some people don’t grow out of it.”
“Stitch goes fucking crazy when it happens.”
“What does ‘fucking crazy’ mean?” you asked. He threw his hands up in the air, almost yelling through his tears, “Mad! Mad, mad, mad! He gets very mad,” and then he pulled everything back in like he’d just performed a monologue, taken a bow, and left the stage. You wanted a lot more information, but he was more fragile than a Faberge egg at that moment, so you were careful. “How often does it happen?” you asked him. “When I have a nightmare,” he said.
********************
BRIAN’S POV
because Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
that he didn’t, didn’t already have
As you walked toward the cathedral, you kept yourself focused completely on Justin, your left hand wrapped around his right hand. You thought about nothing else but the next step you had to take; you made yourself forget how familiar that walk felt because you needed to keep your head in the game. As you got within a block of the church, his grip on your hand began to get much tighter. There was a mob scene in his immediate future. The minute Justin saw what you saw, he yanked you into a coffee shop and surrendered. “I can’t do this.” The place was noisy and packed, but you found a place to sit that was right by a window with a view of the church. A minute or so passed, and Justin pointed out the window, “There’s Zeek and Gabe.”
“Yep.”
“They actually look like brothers from far away, you know?” You laughed, “Don’t ever tell them that; they’ll kill each other.” Justin laughed, his fingers fiddling with a pack of Equal until a limo pulled up. No one emerged for several seconds as efforts were made to move the press back, and then finally the door opened, and Sam’s head could be seen-
“God, he’s hot,” you said.
“I know; it’s just wrong.” And then Harper’s long hair appeared, and they were both looking down. Moments later, Amelia could be seen between her parents, the three holding hands and Sam holding a rather large rabbit under his arm as they climbed the steps of the church, very slowly, Amelia quite determined to take her time. She let go of their hands when they got to the top and clapped. “She reminds me so much of you,” Justin said.
“Why?”
“She’s so infinitely proud of herself.”
“I have every reason to be infinitely proud,” you reminded him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Look who I get to fuck every night.”
He turned and smiled at you, and then he kissed you, and then he said, “Do you want me to get you some coffee?”
“Like when we’re at home?” you asked.
“Yeah.”
“No, I want you to tell me why we’re in here.”
He dodged your question, “Can’t we just go back to the hotel and fuck?”
“No. Why aren’t we going in the church like everybody else?”
“I’ll suck you off in the bathroom right now,” he offered.
“I’m touched, but no; you have sixty seconds to answer me or I’m picking you up and carrying you across the street.”
“That’s probably what you’re going to have to do,” he admitted.
“Come here,” you said, taking his hand and pulling him outside the coffee shop so you could hear yourself think, and when you got outside the doors, he seemed resigned to the fact that you were going to hurl him over your shoulder like a caveman, but when you led him over to a bench and told him to sit down instead, he seemed confused, “Am I in time out?” You laughed, “Yeah, you’re in time out.”
“Can I be in time out for the rest of the day?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
“Look at me,” you said, and when he did, you reached down and put your hand on the inside of his thigh as you leaned forward, your mouth right beside his ear, “That courage you were looking for at St. James; it’s not in that locker room; it’s in my hand,” and then you moved your hand forward a little to make your point. You felt him rest his hand on your arm, his forehead on your shoulder as you continued, “And believe me, you have plenty.” And then you felt his hand cover yours and hold it hostage between his legs, and then he looked at you, and you kissed him for a long, long time, and you could tell that he was disappointed when it was over because it somehow hadn’t transported him somewhere else. “Do you know why I fell in love with you?” you asked him. “Because my ass is as pretty as my face?” he answered. A fire truck roared by, sirens on full blast, “…That’s why I wanted you in my bed, not why I fell in love you.”
“Then I have no idea,” he said.
You took your sunglasses off and folded them in your hand. “Because since the moment I met you, I’ve never seen you make a decision out of fear-not even when you probably should have.”
He squinted in the sun, “Really?”
“Really. You’re the only person I know who never lets that factor in. You’re not afraid of anything.”
“I’m afraid right now.”
“No, you’re not; you’re uncomfortable, and so am I. We’d be androids if we weren’t; I mean, after everything we’ve been through together.”
“And apart,” he added.
“Exactly. That’s what I mean; I’m here, okay? Prada didn’t put out an Invisibility line this spring. You do see me, right?”
He laughed at you, “Yes, I see you.”
“Just checking.”
*********************
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV
talk to me
so you can see
what’s going on
In the months and years that followed, you worked to gain Alan’s trust, and slowly he came around, literally and figuratively, and you’d often come home from work as Justin was leaving, and he’d give you a funny look and tell you that Alan was ‘talking to Zeek again,’ and you’d just smile, and, admittedly, it diverted your attention from Justin walking away everyday, and when Amelia was an infant, Harper was rarely in the studio for an appreciable length of time, so the situation was nearly perfect-except for Jonathon’s regular diatribe about the risk you were taking treating, “A guy that lives in the fucking sewer.”
In the beginning, Alan was usually in your office with the door closed, and you let him open the door when he was ready, and you never said one word to him about his ‘conversations;’ you’d just go in and see what he had for you-sometimes it was something he’d pulled off of a shelf and sometimes it was something he’d sketched. You kept your office stocked with pads, pencils, charcoal, anything you could think of once you realized how talented he was. Your ‘sessions’ with him were often very superficial; he’d make things up, create experiences to talk to you about, but you just listened because there was truth in that as well, but then fate stepped in and handed you the catalyst you needed-
Your mother died.
Everything was different after that. When you returned to New York, Justin was painting through the night and leaving in the morning-his muse somehow affected by his recent and temporary departure from the city. On the days that Alan showed up, you had to be mindful of Justin’s late arrival, listen for him as he’d wander into the kitchen, grab dinner, and then mosey up the stairs to entertain yet another night of nocturnal inspiration. You became attuned to it and would often just excuse yourself from your office, close the door behind you, make chit chat with Justin for a few minutes, and then feign a mountain of paperwork you needed to catch up on and return to Alan where he was waiting patiently. Your mother’s passing gave you the opportunity you needed, but it was also a risk-one that you didn’t tell Jon or anyone else about-when you left the church bulletin from her funeral in your office in a place where you knew Alan would see it, and it worked, but not in the way you expected.
He began to sketch with the door open.
“May I come in and watch?” you asked him from the doorway.
“If you want,” he said, not looking up.
The first sketch that emerged was very unsettling. There was a boy lying in a bed on his side, naked from the waist down, his legs pulled up to his chest; the view was of his back and his backside not his face, and then there was his hand that was holding onto to a pipe on the wall, but it was a man’s hand, not a little boy’s. “This is you?” you asked him. He didn’t answer you verbally; he just looked up at you apologetically as if to imply that he wished he could answer you, but his voice only existed inside his pencil at that point. He sketched the rest of the bed and although he didn’t draw another figure in it, he drew a deep depression in the sheets, hollowed out right next to him. By the time he finished, his hand was trembling as if it was solely responsible for the revelation and his pencil was dull. You put your hand on top of his and squeezed, removing the pencil with the other. “I want to know what’s going on with this little boy,” you said. And when he continued to shake and was still unable to respond to you, you took a legal pad off of your desk, ripped off a blank page, turned back around and covered the part of the picture that showed the man’s hand. “Not you, Alan. This little boy. What’s going on with him?” He slid the paper out from under your hand, revealing the entire picture again. When you gave him a quizzical look, he said, “This isn’t about him.”
It took several more meetings to get more information out of Alan because the bits and pieces you got were so fragmented that they didn’t make much sense. His sketches were amazing, but the pieces you were able to gather up didn’t really form a coherent picture. But all of the pictures he drew stayed on that one sketch pad that he kept in your office, so you’d often go back and look at older ones when the new ones weren’t making much sense, so one day you went back to that first picture and pointed to the depression Alan had sketched in those sheets and you asked him, “Are those sheets wet? Is that why you’re alone in that bed?”
“They smell,” he said.
“Like urine?”
He nodded, and then he added, “Like sweat.”
“You’re not sweating in that picture; who’s sweating?”
He became nervous, almost sweating himself, “I need to talk to Zeek about this.”
“About what?”
“Because he does it, too.”
“Does what?”
“He has sex with everybody.”
It took one more week for you to get the first layer of truth out of Alan, that Stitch was having sex with him (and not, Alan stressed, the other way around) because every time Stitch had sex with a woman, she got pregnant. It took about a month for you to realize that Stitch had fathered three of the children living in Alan’s underground community, that one of them had died with days of being born, and that Stitch had assigned Alan the task of giving the infant a proper burial. “Because you get used to it,” Alan told you. “Stitch says you get used to it.” It took another two weeks before you were convinced that you were often treating Stitch through Alan, that it was psychiatry by proxy, and that you were in way over your head, but it was too late.
You had long discussions with Alan about Stitch, about his service in the Persian Gulf war, about the personal devastation he faced when he returned home, how he lost his wife and daughter largely because his PTSD was so severe that he couldn’t work. You tried to convince Alan to convince Stitch that because he was a veteran of the Armed Services, there were rights and benefits that he was entitled to, but Alan fought back against you, “He won’t come back upstairs. They won’t help him because he doesn’t have an address. They want to stick in him a loony bin. He won’t go. He needs us.”
“He needs help, Alan. Very serious help. Are you giving him the meds that you’re not taking?”
“Yes.”
“Did he have mental health problems before he went into the service?” you asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“Where was he working before he got called up?”
“He volunteered.”
“Why?”
“Because he couldn’t get a job.”
“Why couldn’t he get a job?”
“Because--,” and then he stopped and stared at you, clearly feeling tricked.
“Because he had mental health issues? I think we're back where we started, Alan."
“Tag, you’re it,” he said.
“No, you’re it, Alan. That’s what I’m trying to get you to see. Stitch has become your new mother. You think if you can take care of him, that will fix all the agony inside you?”
“You don’t get it.”
“The hell I don’t. The only parent you bonded with was schizophrenic or so we think; you think it’s a coincidence that you’re re-enacting that relationship with Stitch? You’re trying to correct it.” Alan stared blankly at you; he knew you were right, and he knew that you knew that he knew. Anger had a way of fizzling out when it got to Alan’s face, disappearing into a child-like ignorance. “Well, I’ll give him this,” you told him, “He’s a little like your father; he takes advantage of you and makes you deal with his emotional crap.”
“He does not.”
“He’s buried himself underground and isolated his ‘family’ the same way your father isolated your family; your father was too inconvenienced to do his manly duty and visit his own wife in the hospital; Stitch makes you have sex with him because he's too inconvenienced to use birth control."
“I don’t mind. It helps us stay warm.”
“Alan, get a blanket and build a fire. That’s ridiculous.”
“He’s happy when we paint.”
“I understand that he’s your friend; that he’s taken you in, but I want you to listen to me. First of all, if he’s schizophrenic, he should’ve never been allowed to serve, but those kinds of horrendous decisions have been made for years, and if he went over there pre-disposed to mental disease and then went through a war, god help him, Alan. No wonder he’s in the shape he’s in. Secondly, there are laws in the state of New York that provide job training and placement for veterans; there are programs that make sure they can find work, that they get all of the care that they need-mental and physical. He’s not the first veteran to go through this and he won’t be the last. He doesn’t have to go through this alone.”
“He doesn’t believe that stuff.”
“Look, tell him if he comes up, I will help him get through the system and get the help he needs. He shouldn’t have to live like this; he fought for our country; it’s disgraceful.”
“We don’t trust people.”
“No,” you corrected him, “He doesn’t trust people. You do. You trust me.”
“He doesn’t know that I trust you. He doesn’t know that I come here to talk to you; he thinks I come here to see Harper and Amelia and Justin because I like his work. That’s all.”
You felt like you were going round and round and round headed for the drain, “Okay, okay. Let’s just forget about Stitch then, okay? Let’s talk about you.”
*********************
don’t punish me with brutality
You told him about losing your father when you were young, about the affect that had on you, about how it made you empathize with him. You reminded him of the first time he spoke to you about his mother’s death years ago, how nothing horrible had happened after that, that it was safe to talk about things. He nodded his head.
“So where did you bury this baby?” you asked him.
“I’m not supposed to say.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody will tell the police, and they’ll dig it up.”
“I don’t want to dig up the baby,” you reassured him, and you didn’t, but you felt compelled to tell him that because of his childhood, he needed to be very careful who he hung around with because there were some people in the world, in his ‘family,’ who were exploiting that vulnerability in him-intentionally or unintentionally. “You don’t get used to going through something horrific, Alan; you become desensitized and unconnected. That’s a completely different thing.” And after learning that sex with Stitch was unprotected, you went with him to a clinic and had him tested for everything. The results were negative the first time around, and you told him that you would take him every six months. He gave you the results to keep because he didn’t want Stitch to know he’d seen a doctor. When you gave Jonathon an update, he went fairly ballistic, “You are out of your mind and your league now, Dan. That guy Stitch is probably half-cocked and ready to blow. You better watch your step.”
But knowledge is power, and Alan seemed better as time worn on. Amelia was toddling around so Harper was back in the studio; Justin was coming out of his funk, so he was starting to keep regular hours once again, and you’d often come home from work to find all four of them playing together. Alan came alive when he was around Amelia; she adored him. Even Harper could see the miracle in their relationship because it wasn’t built on confusion or pain or fear or fantasy, but on laughter and affection and really idiotic dance moves. Everything was born in the moment and never regretted. For Alan, Amelia was living proof that there was pure goodness in the world; she wanted nothing from him but his attention. It was the purest of relationships, and it began to change Alan. Harper commented once that, “He knows that she loves him, and I think that’s the first time he’s ever believed that anyone really did.” Amelia’s hysterical giggling echoed all the way down the stairwell. It wasn’t uncommon for Alan to come downstairs for dinner with whatever hat and jewelry Amelia had dressed him in. He was her favorite dress-up doll.
And then there was a night when Justin was babysitting for Amelia because Harper and Sam were out, and Alan was there, and you were downstairs at your dining room table with paperwork spread out everywhere and Amelia’s squeals of laughter were making you smile; it was time for her bath and you knew she was running away from Justin; you could hear her overhead, back and forth in the hall.
“I’m going to play Yellow Submarine all by myself then Amelia,” you heard Justin say, and then you heard Amelia’s response, “No!” and her little feet run all the way back towards the bathroom, “You’re ‘upposed to wait for me!” And the water started running and the usual commotion ensued, and then you looked up, and Alan was standing in front of you white as a sheet. “Hey,” you said.
“I’m having a nightmare.”
“You’re not asleep,” you joked, but then you realized that he was serious, that something was wrong; his pants were darkening; tears were filling his eyes; he stood there like a stranger in his own body, shell-shocked and terrified.
“Alan, it’s okay; it’s okay,” you said as you got up from the table. You put your arm around his shoulders, and he turned and looked at you like he didn’t know who you were. “Let’s just go into the bathroom right here. It’s okay.” He did as you asked; his feet shuffling on the floor, a trail of urine left behind. The tiny guest bathroom was barely big enough for both of you. “Do you need me to help you get out of these clothes?” you asked him once he seemed like he was able to hear you, and he looked down at his pants, and then up at your face, and you said, “It’s over, Alan; it’s okay. Do you need help?”
“I can do it,” he whispered.
“I’ll be right back.”
You went across the hall, opened the linen closet, bent down and unzipped your gym bag, yanking out a pair of underwear, socks and sweat pants that you always kept in there just in case you ever actually went to the gym and then returned to the bathroom. Alan was sitting on the toilet, naked from the waist down, his pants in a ball on the floor. “The pants might be a little short,” you said. “Can you get me a wet towel or something?” he asked. “Sure.” You returned a few seconds later with a warm, damp towel and a dry one, “Just come out when you’re ready, okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, “Okay.”
*********************
you and I collide
“I need to clean up the floor,” Alan said once he was sitting in clean clothes in your office.“I already cleaned it up. Don’t worry about it.” He sat on the loveseat in your office that he’d sat on a million times before, but he looked like a different person; his boyish qualities were receding. “Do you understand what happened?” you asked him, noticing his uneven and dirty fingernails for the first time, his five o’clock shadow. “Uh, yeah, I pissed myself,” he said.
“Right, but I mean mentally and emotionally.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you feel it start?”
“I think so.”
“When you came downstairs, you said that you were having a nightmare. Do you remember that?”
“…Yes.”
You got up and closed the door to your office, dimmed the lights a little in your office because he seemed to be squinting and sat back down, “What was the nightmare? Do you remember?”
“Amelia was in the bathtub.”
“That wasn’t a nightmare; that was real.”
“That was also my nightmare.”
“Why is that a nightmare?”
“Something bad could happen.”
“Like what happened to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you comfortable talking about this?” you asked him, responding to the hesitancy in his voice.
“What if it happens again?”
“I don’t think it will; your bladder is empty, but if it does, it does. I’m not worried about that. I’m dying to replace that couch. Do you want your sketchpad?”
“No.”
You laid it next to him on the loveseat in case he changed his mind, “Let’s try again, okay? We’ll go as far as you want to go; if you don’t feel safe, we’ll stop.”
“Okay.” He pushed the sketch pad off the edge of the sofa and laid down. “Go.”
You pulled your desk chair closer; his arms were crossed over his chest as he stared blankly at the ceiling. “Tell me about the nightmare. Do you remember it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you put me in it?”
“I’m walking into the bathroom; I’m behind myself, not inside myself….”
“Where’s this bathroom?”
“In my house.”
“Is your mother in the nightmare?”
“Yes, but I don’t look at her in the nightmare; I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“She’s… It’s horrible… I can’t….” He started to cry; you handed him the box of tissues off of your desk and his body turned; he held the box the way a child hugs a teddy bear.
The chronology of the nightmare stopped. “Alan, I’m very sorry about what happened to your mother and about what happened to you; no child should ever have to experience something like that,” you said.
“I loved her.”
“Tell me about her; tell me something good about your mother.”
“She babied me; she spoiled me rotten. I don’t mean that she gave me things because we didn’t have money; I just mean that she was always hugging me and she was always smiling at me and tickling me. Always.”
“You were the youngest. She called you something funny, didn’t she? Harper told me-“
“’Alley Oop.’”
“Was your mother artistic like you?”
He smiled, “Yeah, actually she was. She never slept at night when she was home with us; she was always up watching TV, and she was usually doodling, too.” He stopped talking for a few seconds, and then started again, “I miss her.”
“She loved you unconditionally; she cherished you.”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t she sleep at night?”
Alan stretched out, abandoning his child-like posture, setting the box of Kleenex on the floor, “You know she always said she couldn’t, that she had insomnia, but I think she wanted to be awake when my Dad was asleep. They never got along. That was her peace and quiet. She slept while we were at school.”
“What happened tonight, Amelia being in the bathtub, that brought that all of those feelings about your mother back, didn’t it?”
Alan turned, looked at you and sat up, his elbows resting on his knees, “She wanted me to come in and play with her.”
“Is that when it happened?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘it.’”
“Is that when you dug up the real baby you buried?”
Alan’s posture stiffened immediately; his eyes shifting from left to right as if he was suddenly in new surroundings, and he watched you like a hawk as you got up and pulled a book off your shelf, one that Alan was familiar with; he’d been reading it. His eyes followed your hand as it sat the book next to him on the sofa; you didn’t need to open it. “Alan, I think Amelia’s unconditional love and affection for you puts you in a very safe emotional place, and I think that when she invited you into the bathroom to play with her, that unguarded part of you walked in there, and I think-“
“I integrated a dissociative state.” You nodded your head at his answer. “Holy fuck.” You laughed at his reaction. “What do I do now?” he asked you, his eyes opening wide.
You knew he knew because he’d dog-eared that part of the book as well. You leaned forward a little as you spoke to him, “You welcome him in and honor him and help him grieve for the loss of his individuality and purpose.”
“Oh, is that all? Piece of cake.”
*********************
there will be no white flag above my door
When Alan left that night, you were very uncomfortable telling him good-bye, but very relieved to see him sitting outside on your front steps the next morning when you were leaving for work. “Hi,” you said, “What’s up?”
“I told Stitch that I’m babysitting Amelia for a couple days; I can’t be down there right now; it’s too weird.”
“Come on in,” you said, “I have to go to work; are you okay being by yourself all day?”
“Yeah.”
When you came home that night, he’d had an artistic explosion, much of it abstract which wasn’t really Alan’s style, but as you talked with him about it, he explained that it was the calling card of the young boy he was leaving behind. “It’s how he feels,” he says, “It's his chaos; he’s being abandoned.”
“He’s not being abandoned. He’s just going to have learn to get along with everyone else. He needs to talk about what happened to him; he needs to share that with everyone else so they understand him. By understanding him, they’ll understand themselves.”
“It’s too hard.”
”It’s very hard, Alan. A child-state is an escape; it can become no different that drugs or alcohol; it’s the equivalent of running and hiding in an emotional closet.”
“He’s a brat.”
“No, he’s afraid. He doesn’t know the rest of you; he doesn’t trust that he’ll be taken care of, but he wants to; that’s why he came through.”
“And peed on the floor.”
“He got your attention, didn’t he?”
“Fuck him.”
“Don’t treat him like your father treated you.” Alan’s expression changed; he was almost glaring at you. “Well, where do you think he came from, Alan? Outer space?” Alan flopped down on the futon in a dramatic, defeated flourish. “You’re not banishing him; you’re just setting some boundaries. I think the way he came through, peeing on the floor, there’s a reason for that.”
“Yeah, no shit; he has no manners.”
“No, he has no control because children rarely have control over anything in their lives-where and what they eat, where and when they go to sleep, elimination and toileting issues-and very often when a child's experiencing stress, that's where you'll see it. I think your nightmare where you keep wetting the bed is a recurrence of finding your mother, and you’re urinating because you’ve lost the ultimate control in that little boy’s life in that point; you can’t keep him safe anymore, and until you let him in, forgive him, and love him, he’s going to keep peeing on the floor because he’s terrified and alone and he’s trying to get your attention now that you’re old enough to help him.”
“You have no idea how much I hate it when you’re right.”
You stood up, “I’m starving. I’m meeting Jon for dinner tonight, and I’m going to be late.”
“What about me?”
“You stay here and work on your relationship with him; I’ll see you when I get back.”
“God, you suck,” he said, and you laughed at him as you ran down the stairs.
*********************
a heart in New York
When you got home from dinner with Jon, you climbed the stairs to the second floor and found Alan zonked out on the futon in the studio. You walked quietly from easel to easel. The abstract paintings were dry and tossed aside, replaced by a charcoal sketch of a woman you’d never seen before, but the likeness was unmistakable.
It was Ruth.
The image haunts you to this day because he sketched himself as a little boy staring at the back of his mother’s head and shoulders as she sat on the sofa staring at a television that was nothing but static. You had an overwhelming feeling that this was the way that Alan wanted to remember Ruth because the detail in the sketch was unbelievably meticulous. He had drawn a copy of TV Guide propped open on the arm of the sofa, a bag of potato chips showing just above the arm of the sofa with a price tag reading fifty nine cents. As you exited the room, you turned off the lights. When you awoke the next morning-a Saturday-the studio was back its immaculate condition, and the sketch of Ruth was lying on the end of your bed, a post-it attached--
When Alan visited from that point on, things went back to normal. Your ‘sessions’ with him seemed to be over. He was no longer sketching in your office when you came home from work; many times he was leaving as you arrived, and you’d stand on the sidewalk in front of your home and chat with him as you would any other friend you had. He was carrying himself differently; he had an aura of self-reliance about him on the street.
On the days when you came home and found him still in the studio, he was the old Alan, much meeker and still playing the part for Harper; he didn’t stand up as straight or speak with as much veracity, but he was clearly there for Amelia. She saw the real Alan more than anyone else; his guard began to fall with her as time went by. One afternoon when the skies were clearing after a bunch of rainy days, Alan offered to take Amelia for a walk so she could get some of her pent up energy out, and you watched Harper’s face as she accepted the fact that her little brother was in fact a man and could be trusted to hold his niece’s hand and walk around the block. Harper’s grieving process for her little brother began long before he was actually dead.
And then one night when you were in the kitchen after a particularly messy dinner, Alan was helping you rinse off the dishes, and when you asked him how he was doing in your quiet, serious doctor voice, he said, very calmly, “I sleep with my pants on now.” You patted him on the shoulder and smiled.
*********************
if not now
then when?
And all the while Alan was finding his voice, Justin had been finding his heart, and when he announced that he was leaving the city and reuniting with his partner, you reluctantly admitted to yourself that having Justin around to massage your ego when he wasn't the least bit interested in massaging anything else had been nothing but a very attractive crutch for you, and when you put it down, you realized that you weren't really yearning for another 'Justin' to take his place. And when it was time to tell him good-bye, when he thanked you for everything you'd done for him, you felt the real hole in your heart. You missed him-yes; he was a true friend, but when Alan stood in the doorway of your kitchen one day in March of that year and asked if he could, "Maybe use Justin's studio space, if it's okay? You know, maybe just to try. I don't know; do you think I'm good enough?" you felt it fill up again.
"You're more than good enough," you told him, "Are you serious?"
"Well, I mean, it would be nice to have sunlight when I draw, you know an actual window.”
You smiled, "I'm sure it would be.”
"I don't know if I want to sell it or just fuck around with it; I don't know."
"Doesn't matter. Art is a lot like therapy; sometimes you don't know why you're there, but you show up and just see what happens."
"And I'm so done with therapy," he said.
You laughed, "Then art it shall be."
……
You didn’t tell Harper that Alan had asked for Justin’s vacated studio space or that he was considering spending much more of his time ‘upstairs’ because you felt it was his decision and his place to tell her if and when he was ready. You were expecting his answer any day.
Never did you imagine that it would forever stain your sidewalk.
*********************
sitting in his Nowhere Land,
making all his nowhere plans
for nobody
Having reviewed your notes on Alan for the last time, you rose from your chair that Friday morning, left your bedroom and walked into Harper’s studio and removed an open cardboard box from one of her shelves. It was full of half-used tubes of paint and boxes of charcoal and pencils and everything else that Justin had casually left behind, “Harper or Alan, they can have this stuff if they want it. It’s not worth packing, Dan.” You sat the box on Harper’s desk and began to tear the folder and all of its contents into a million little pieces, watching them fall into the box like snowflakes, and when you were done, you carried the box downstairs where Jon was waiting for you with your nice eyeglasses in his hands, and you switched pairs, leaving your old ones on a table in the foyer.
“What’s in the box?” he asked you.
“Trash.”
He knew you were lying, but he didn’t argue with you; he just followed your lead and walked with you down the sidewalk until you stopped and said, “I have to get rid of this before we get there, okay?”
“Whatever you say.”
And you crossed a busy street and walked some more until you came to a subway station, “Come on,” and Jon followed you down the stairs and stood with you in silence as you waited for a train to come, and after it came and went, you walked up to the edge of the platform by yourself, hugging the box in your arms as you faced the tracks, and said a quiet good-bye…
“Alan, I want you to know that I’m proud of you; that you did some of the hardest work I’ve ever seen on the couch. I don’t know if you know that or not; you did something that very few people are ever able to do.” You stopped because you were starting to cry. Jon was watching, he could tell so he started to approach you, but you shook your head and he backed off. And then you heard his voice, “You’re too close to the tracks, Dan. Back up.” And when you looked back over your shoulder, you saw transit cops standing with him and a few nosy bystanders, so you took a few steps back, re-focused and continued, “I don’t understand why they did this to you; maybe I’ll find out someday, maybe I won’t…but I hope that wherever you are, you’re at least as happy as the last time I saw you.” The crowd behind you was growing and the noise in the tunnel was getting louder, “I don’t know if it matters to you, but you were…,” the platform began to vibrate, “You were more than a patient or a friend to me, Alan; I feel like….” You looked up and saw the steel force heading your way. “Every time we talked, I heard that familiar echo inside you, a boy growing up without a father; I’m so sorry that I too let you down, that I didn’t get to you in time- Alan, I’m sorry, but I have to go,” you told him, “A train is coming.” And with that, you turned the box over and dumped everything onto the tracks-the paint, the chalk, the torn scraps of your notes and his sketches, and when you turned around, there were two transit cops towering behind you, and you handed one of them the box, and said, “Could you throw this out for me, please?” and the officer looked rather taken aback, but then he looked at your face and said, “Uh, yeah, sure.” And there was a reporter in the crowd, and he pushed through and tried to get in your face, “Dr. Cartwright, are you aware that the officers--?”
“Kindly get the fuck out of my way,” you said, and you could feel Jon on your heels as you pushed your way back up the subway stairs, headed for the street and the sunlight, trying to convince yourself step by step that Alan had finally found his window.
********************
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV
sometimes I’m right then I can be wrong
Upon reaching the top of the stairs, Dan took off, walking faster than hell toward the church, and you had to work to keep up. You asked him to slow down, but he wouldn’t, responding, “We’ll be late,” and took off again, so you spoke to his back, “I’m twice the shrink you are; you know that right?” He stopped and turned around, and before he could say anything else, you finished your thought, “But you’re ten times the man I am, okay? I get it; it’s over. You win.” He stared at you, looking tired and confused. You kept talking, “I couldn’t have done what you just did; thrown it all away like that. Never, not in a million years.”
“It’s his recovery; it belongs to him, not me.”
“That’s what I mean,” you said. “That’s exactly what I mean.” He continued to stare at you like you were boring him to death. “I thought I knew who you were, okay? You’re my best friend, and I thought I knew you inside and out, but I didn’t. I guess…I underestimated you.”
Daniel looked down at his wrist at the watch he forgot to put on and then back at you, “Beautiful, eloquent speech. Can we please get a move on?”
You looked at yours and threw your hand up--your second surrender in five minutes--to stop a cab.
********************
BRIAN’S POV
some are quick to take the bait
Forgoing the traditional Brian Kinney limo-arrival of late had been the smartest decision you made that day. You and Justin were barely noticed as you crossed the busy street and blended into the crowd in front of the church. Your timing was perfect; Alan’s underground family was getting all of the press attention when you arrived. Once you entered the sanctuary, you both immediately saw Zeek, tall, dark and playing the role of God’s bouncer in his imposing black suit, his hands clasped in front of him.
“You’re in a church, not Babylon,” you said as you approached him.
“Both are rather biblical if memory serves,” he reminded you, still standing at attention like he was at Buckingham palace.
“You look nice, Zeek,” Justin said, and Zeek immediately returned the compliment and then stood at attention again.
Justin let go of your hand when he saw Harper walking in his direction, her hand outstretched. Zeek stopped your forward motion; his hand on your bicep, “Boss man, wait.”
“What?”
“You read the paper this morning?”
You were watching Justin when you told him ‘no,’ and when Zeek said, “Here,“ you looked down at the folded paper in your hand and flipped it open so you could read the headline: New York’s Finest Plead Guilty: No Denial, No Trial. When the expression on your face didn’t immediately change, Zeek prodded you, “C’mon, man; this is good news.”
“As if there’s such a thing as no denial,” you countered.
A very thin, pretty girl approached the two of you as you finished your sentence, touched Zeek’s arm, smiled, and walked away; her dress was so tight, her butt squeaked. “When did you find time to tap that piece of ass?” you asked your newspaper when she was out of earshot.
“Front door at about a quarter to two; back door about two thirty.”
“You must be exhausted.”
“Nah, she rode; I watched.”
You knew just from looking at the lithe little sparrow that Zeek was full of shit. “There’s no way that little matchstick’s caboose rode your joystick. She’d be in the ER.”
“Eggo been telling big fish stories again?” You slapped him with his newspaper, so he amended his tale, pointing to the woman you’d met earlier in the week who was chatting up the little sparrow in a pew in the middle of the sanctuary. “We use the buddy system,” he declared proudly. “And besides, her name’s ‘Trinity.’”
“And you know what that word means?” you asked him.
Zeek’s eyes cut sharply in your direction while his head stayed exactly where it was, “You’re just jealous now that you and your wife are homogenous.”
(Well, at least he got the ‘homo’ part right…)
‘I would just like to remind you both that we are in church,” came a voice from behind you, and when you turned, you saw Gabe standing there in a suit that looked exactly like one you owned-two years ago. “You done primping for Jesus, ‘Cakes?” Zeek asked him.
“It’s nice to see you, Brian,” Gabe said.
“Well, ladies, the Armani-angel Gabriel has forced me to see the error of my ways,” you told them both. “I shall take my leave of both of you.”
“And I of you,” Gabe said to Zeek, “You lecherous heathen.”
“Oh, bad news, ‘Cakes,” Zeek warned his little brother, “God just heard that. God. Just. Heard. That.”
And so you abandoned Gabe and Zeek and entered God’s house to rejoin Justin, the cathedral smelling like every other church you’d ever been in; it had that musty pious smell that competed constantly with the colognes or lack thereof of its parishioners. All of it changed in intensity as you moved from aisle to pew to aisle and back again, the sound of false pleasantries was drowned out-quite nicely-by Nate at the piano.
He was playing Yesterday.
Beyond the Yellow Brick Road-Chapter 43-Congregate
I can be nothing but grateful and appreciative to all of you who read and wait and read and wait. Please know that I feel the agony just like you do; this story reveals itself to me in the strangest of ways sometimes, and then one day I just know it's right. Until that happens, I just write, read, revise, wait and repeat. Your feedback means so much to me; writing is a lonely occupation. That being said, I don't expect the next chapter to take 6 months to write. No, the next chapter will not be the finale. ♥
Lyrics taken from Bryan Adams’ Here I Am, Nelly Frutada and Timberland’s Promiscuous, Bob Seger’s Still the Same, Bryan Adams’ Heaven, The Beatles’ Nowhere Man, The Talking Heads’s And She Was, Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready, The Talking Heads And She Was again, John Cougar Mellencamp’s Crumblin’ Down, Kate Bush’s Running Up that Hill, Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, The Band’s The Weight, Tears for Fears Don’t You Forget About Me, The Beatles’ Lady Madonna, Maroon 5’s She Will Be Loved, Blues Traveler’s Hook, Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, Whitesnakes’s Here I Go Again, Greenday’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), The Dave Matthews Band Ants Marching, The Band’s The Weight again, Billy Joel’s An Innocent Man, The Band’s The Weight again, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody three times, Three Dog Night’s One is the Loneliest Number, America’s Tin Man, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? twice, Howie Day’s Collide, Dido’s White Flag, Art Garfunkel’s A Heart in New York, Tracy Chapman’s If Not Now, The Beatles’ Nowhere Man again, Sly and the Family Stone’s Everyday People, and America’s Tin Man again.
BEYOND THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD-CHAPTER 42-SURROGATES-PART 4/4
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV
is this the real life?
is this just fantasy?
seven weeks later…
It was a pretty normal day that Wednesday when you came from work and were standing in the kitchen getting ready to make dinner when Justin came with his messenger bag slung over his shoulder and leaned on the kitchen counter right in front of the sink, “Okay, I’m outta here.”
"You said you were staying for dinner," you reminded him. He was wearing the one pair of jeans that you detested fashion-wise but found him undeniably attractive in and that just made his announcement that much worse. “I know, but I’m not,” he said. You tried to hide your disappointment, “Why not?” He sighed, “Because my muse has four very flat tires, and if I don’t go do something, I’m gonna lose the fucking car, too.”
“No luck today then?” you asked him as you started to wash the potatoes. Luckily, they were filthy.
“It was like electrocuting a corpse-utterly pointless.”
“Nice image, Justin.”
“Sorry,” he said, “I think I just need to go somewhere where there are a lot of hot, sweaty, needy men and let them fight over me. That usually works.”
“Well, that’s nice to know for the future.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be a cunt; Alan’s here and he’ll have dinner with you.”
“Justin, I realize that it’s rather en vogue for your social set to use that word, but if you ever call me that again-"
“Jesus, I meant ‘bitch.’ Sorry.”
……
……
“Where is Alan, anyway?”
“He’s in your office pretending to talk to Zeek.”
You shook your potato peeler at him, “Why are you being such a you-know-what today?”
“I’m not. You asked me a question; I answered it.”
“I told him he could call Zeek whenever he wanted. He’s allowed to do that.” Justin laughed and picked up the phone in the kitchen and put it next to your ear, “I know that. I’m telling you that he’s pretending. Check the phone bill.” The dial tone droned in your ear. You stared at Justin, and he stared back, and then you walked out of the kitchen and stood outside your closed office door and listened.
Alan was talking a mile a minute.
Justin waved good-bye over his shoulder and walked out the front door.
*********************
I see a little silhouetto of a man
You were very careful not to expose Alan at dinner. He picked at his food, didn’t seem very interested in it; he seemed much more interested in why Justin wasn’t there. “He decided to go out,” you said. “Are you mad?” he asked you. “No,” you lied, “Why would I be mad?”
“Because you want to have sex with him.” The look on Alan’s face was strangely child-like for such an adult conversation. You took a long sip of water before you answered him, “What makes you think I want to have sex with him?”
“Because you’ve had sex with him before.”
“Did Harper tell you that?” you asked him.
“I saw you kiss him in the hall a long time ago.”
“Have you had sex with people that you’ve kissed?”
“I don’t kiss people.”
……
“Do you want something different to eat, Alan?” you asked him. “You’re not eating what’s on your plate.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“I have cookies.”
“Okay.”
You cleared the table and came back with cookies and a half gallon of milk and as you poured, Alan rested his head on top of his hands and smiled. “You look really tired today,” you said.
“That’s ‘cause I am.”
“Why? Did you have a hard day?”
“Yeah. I did,” he said, and you were fascinated just watching him regress right in front of you. He was imagining that hard day in his head.
“Is that why you wanted to talk to Zeek? Because you had a hard day?” you asked him and you watched his face very carefully, and he didn’t miss a beat, “Yeah, ‘cause he understands when you have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it and people are hassling you and all that.” He sounded exactly like Zeek when he spoke, so much so that you almost started laughing at the impression.
“It’s nice to have a friend like that to talk to.”
“Yeah, he’s my best friend,” Alan said, “I mean upstairs. He’s my best friend upstairs.”
The cookies were going fast, and you wanted to keep talking to this Alan Harper, so you took a stab at something. “I guess I was kind of disappointed that Justin didn’t stay for dinner tonight.” He stopped chewing and looked at you curiously. “Why?” he asked. “I guess it sort of hurt my feelings,” you explained. “Did you tell him you were mad?” he asked you. “No, not really, but I think he knew.”
“Why?”
“Because we know each other pretty well, and you can just tell those things after a while, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“Like if Harper’s frustrated with you, you can probably tell right?”
“She never gets mad at me on purpose.”
You laughed, “Just by accident?”
“Yeah, I guess we have a lot of accidents.” You were both laughing, and you got up from the table and took the dishes into the kitchen, put them into the dishwasher, and when you went back out into the dining room Alan wasn’t there. You called for him, and he answered you. He was sitting on the loveseat in your office with a book in his lap:
Child Development: Nature vs. Nurture
*********************
one is the loneliest number
He looked up at you like a scared little boy as you stood in the doorway. “You okay?” you asked him.
“…I had a lot of accidents,” he said. You stepped inside your office and sat down in the chair opposite the loveseat, “What do you mean?” And then you noticed that although the book was closed, his finger was stuck in the middle of it marking a page. He flipped the book open, turned it so you could read it and handed it to you. You looked down at the heading at the top of the page:
Nocturnal Enuresis
“Bedwetting, you mean?”
“This book says you can’t control it.”
“You can’t. It’s a physical condition-" you said but you cut your explanation short because he was barely listening to you; he was disappearing into his head, and your eyes were wandering to your wall-to-wall bookshelves because you were noticing for the first time that all the books were in different places. He wasn’t coming into your office and pretending to talk to Zeek; he was reading aloud to himself. You closed the book, set it aside, and pulled your chair closer to him, “Alan? You look like you’re very upset.”
“I am,” he said as his face began to redden.
“Can you tell me why?”
“Sometimes I still do it,” he whispered.
“That’s okay. Some people don’t grow out of it.”
“Stitch goes fucking crazy when it happens.”
“What does ‘fucking crazy’ mean?” you asked. He threw his hands up in the air, almost yelling through his tears, “Mad! Mad, mad, mad! He gets very mad,” and then he pulled everything back in like he’d just performed a monologue, taken a bow, and left the stage. You wanted a lot more information, but he was more fragile than a Faberge egg at that moment, so you were careful. “How often does it happen?” you asked him. “When I have a nightmare,” he said.
********************
BRIAN’S POV
because Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
that he didn’t, didn’t already have
As you walked toward the cathedral, you kept yourself focused completely on Justin, your left hand wrapped around his right hand. You thought about nothing else but the next step you had to take; you made yourself forget how familiar that walk felt because you needed to keep your head in the game. As you got within a block of the church, his grip on your hand began to get much tighter. There was a mob scene in his immediate future. The minute Justin saw what you saw, he yanked you into a coffee shop and surrendered. “I can’t do this.” The place was noisy and packed, but you found a place to sit that was right by a window with a view of the church. A minute or so passed, and Justin pointed out the window, “There’s Zeek and Gabe.”
“Yep.”
“They actually look like brothers from far away, you know?” You laughed, “Don’t ever tell them that; they’ll kill each other.” Justin laughed, his fingers fiddling with a pack of Equal until a limo pulled up. No one emerged for several seconds as efforts were made to move the press back, and then finally the door opened, and Sam’s head could be seen-
“God, he’s hot,” you said.
“I know; it’s just wrong.” And then Harper’s long hair appeared, and they were both looking down. Moments later, Amelia could be seen between her parents, the three holding hands and Sam holding a rather large rabbit under his arm as they climbed the steps of the church, very slowly, Amelia quite determined to take her time. She let go of their hands when they got to the top and clapped. “She reminds me so much of you,” Justin said.
“Why?”
“She’s so infinitely proud of herself.”
“I have every reason to be infinitely proud,” you reminded him.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Look who I get to fuck every night.”
He turned and smiled at you, and then he kissed you, and then he said, “Do you want me to get you some coffee?”
“Like when we’re at home?” you asked.
“Yeah.”
“No, I want you to tell me why we’re in here.”
He dodged your question, “Can’t we just go back to the hotel and fuck?”
“No. Why aren’t we going in the church like everybody else?”
“I’ll suck you off in the bathroom right now,” he offered.
“I’m touched, but no; you have sixty seconds to answer me or I’m picking you up and carrying you across the street.”
“That’s probably what you’re going to have to do,” he admitted.
“Come here,” you said, taking his hand and pulling him outside the coffee shop so you could hear yourself think, and when you got outside the doors, he seemed resigned to the fact that you were going to hurl him over your shoulder like a caveman, but when you led him over to a bench and told him to sit down instead, he seemed confused, “Am I in time out?” You laughed, “Yeah, you’re in time out.”
“Can I be in time out for the rest of the day?”
“No.”
“Damn.”
“Look at me,” you said, and when he did, you reached down and put your hand on the inside of his thigh as you leaned forward, your mouth right beside his ear, “That courage you were looking for at St. James; it’s not in that locker room; it’s in my hand,” and then you moved your hand forward a little to make your point. You felt him rest his hand on your arm, his forehead on your shoulder as you continued, “And believe me, you have plenty.” And then you felt his hand cover yours and hold it hostage between his legs, and then he looked at you, and you kissed him for a long, long time, and you could tell that he was disappointed when it was over because it somehow hadn’t transported him somewhere else. “Do you know why I fell in love with you?” you asked him. “Because my ass is as pretty as my face?” he answered. A fire truck roared by, sirens on full blast, “…That’s why I wanted you in my bed, not why I fell in love you.”
“Then I have no idea,” he said.
You took your sunglasses off and folded them in your hand. “Because since the moment I met you, I’ve never seen you make a decision out of fear-not even when you probably should have.”
He squinted in the sun, “Really?”
“Really. You’re the only person I know who never lets that factor in. You’re not afraid of anything.”
“I’m afraid right now.”
“No, you’re not; you’re uncomfortable, and so am I. We’d be androids if we weren’t; I mean, after everything we’ve been through together.”
“And apart,” he added.
“Exactly. That’s what I mean; I’m here, okay? Prada didn’t put out an Invisibility line this spring. You do see me, right?”
He laughed at you, “Yes, I see you.”
“Just checking.”
*********************
DANIEL CARTWRIGHT’S POV
talk to me
so you can see
what’s going on
In the months and years that followed, you worked to gain Alan’s trust, and slowly he came around, literally and figuratively, and you’d often come home from work as Justin was leaving, and he’d give you a funny look and tell you that Alan was ‘talking to Zeek again,’ and you’d just smile, and, admittedly, it diverted your attention from Justin walking away everyday, and when Amelia was an infant, Harper was rarely in the studio for an appreciable length of time, so the situation was nearly perfect-except for Jonathon’s regular diatribe about the risk you were taking treating, “A guy that lives in the fucking sewer.”
In the beginning, Alan was usually in your office with the door closed, and you let him open the door when he was ready, and you never said one word to him about his ‘conversations;’ you’d just go in and see what he had for you-sometimes it was something he’d pulled off of a shelf and sometimes it was something he’d sketched. You kept your office stocked with pads, pencils, charcoal, anything you could think of once you realized how talented he was. Your ‘sessions’ with him were often very superficial; he’d make things up, create experiences to talk to you about, but you just listened because there was truth in that as well, but then fate stepped in and handed you the catalyst you needed-
Your mother died.
Everything was different after that. When you returned to New York, Justin was painting through the night and leaving in the morning-his muse somehow affected by his recent and temporary departure from the city. On the days that Alan showed up, you had to be mindful of Justin’s late arrival, listen for him as he’d wander into the kitchen, grab dinner, and then mosey up the stairs to entertain yet another night of nocturnal inspiration. You became attuned to it and would often just excuse yourself from your office, close the door behind you, make chit chat with Justin for a few minutes, and then feign a mountain of paperwork you needed to catch up on and return to Alan where he was waiting patiently. Your mother’s passing gave you the opportunity you needed, but it was also a risk-one that you didn’t tell Jon or anyone else about-when you left the church bulletin from her funeral in your office in a place where you knew Alan would see it, and it worked, but not in the way you expected.
He began to sketch with the door open.
“May I come in and watch?” you asked him from the doorway.
“If you want,” he said, not looking up.
The first sketch that emerged was very unsettling. There was a boy lying in a bed on his side, naked from the waist down, his legs pulled up to his chest; the view was of his back and his backside not his face, and then there was his hand that was holding onto to a pipe on the wall, but it was a man’s hand, not a little boy’s. “This is you?” you asked him. He didn’t answer you verbally; he just looked up at you apologetically as if to imply that he wished he could answer you, but his voice only existed inside his pencil at that point. He sketched the rest of the bed and although he didn’t draw another figure in it, he drew a deep depression in the sheets, hollowed out right next to him. By the time he finished, his hand was trembling as if it was solely responsible for the revelation and his pencil was dull. You put your hand on top of his and squeezed, removing the pencil with the other. “I want to know what’s going on with this little boy,” you said. And when he continued to shake and was still unable to respond to you, you took a legal pad off of your desk, ripped off a blank page, turned back around and covered the part of the picture that showed the man’s hand. “Not you, Alan. This little boy. What’s going on with him?” He slid the paper out from under your hand, revealing the entire picture again. When you gave him a quizzical look, he said, “This isn’t about him.”
It took several more meetings to get more information out of Alan because the bits and pieces you got were so fragmented that they didn’t make much sense. His sketches were amazing, but the pieces you were able to gather up didn’t really form a coherent picture. But all of the pictures he drew stayed on that one sketch pad that he kept in your office, so you’d often go back and look at older ones when the new ones weren’t making much sense, so one day you went back to that first picture and pointed to the depression Alan had sketched in those sheets and you asked him, “Are those sheets wet? Is that why you’re alone in that bed?”
“They smell,” he said.
“Like urine?”
He nodded, and then he added, “Like sweat.”
“You’re not sweating in that picture; who’s sweating?”
He became nervous, almost sweating himself, “I need to talk to Zeek about this.”
“About what?”
“Because he does it, too.”
“Does what?”
“He has sex with everybody.”
It took one more week for you to get the first layer of truth out of Alan, that Stitch was having sex with him (and not, Alan stressed, the other way around) because every time Stitch had sex with a woman, she got pregnant. It took about a month for you to realize that Stitch had fathered three of the children living in Alan’s underground community, that one of them had died with days of being born, and that Stitch had assigned Alan the task of giving the infant a proper burial. “Because you get used to it,” Alan told you. “Stitch says you get used to it.” It took another two weeks before you were convinced that you were often treating Stitch through Alan, that it was psychiatry by proxy, and that you were in way over your head, but it was too late.
You had long discussions with Alan about Stitch, about his service in the Persian Gulf war, about the personal devastation he faced when he returned home, how he lost his wife and daughter largely because his PTSD was so severe that he couldn’t work. You tried to convince Alan to convince Stitch that because he was a veteran of the Armed Services, there were rights and benefits that he was entitled to, but Alan fought back against you, “He won’t come back upstairs. They won’t help him because he doesn’t have an address. They want to stick in him a loony bin. He won’t go. He needs us.”
“He needs help, Alan. Very serious help. Are you giving him the meds that you’re not taking?”
“Yes.”
“Did he have mental health problems before he went into the service?” you asked him.
“I don’t know.”
“Where was he working before he got called up?”
“He volunteered.”
“Why?”
“Because he couldn’t get a job.”
“Why couldn’t he get a job?”
“Because--,” and then he stopped and stared at you, clearly feeling tricked.
“Because he had mental health issues? I think we're back where we started, Alan."
“Tag, you’re it,” he said.
“No, you’re it, Alan. That’s what I’m trying to get you to see. Stitch has become your new mother. You think if you can take care of him, that will fix all the agony inside you?”
“You don’t get it.”
“The hell I don’t. The only parent you bonded with was schizophrenic or so we think; you think it’s a coincidence that you’re re-enacting that relationship with Stitch? You’re trying to correct it.” Alan stared blankly at you; he knew you were right, and he knew that you knew that he knew. Anger had a way of fizzling out when it got to Alan’s face, disappearing into a child-like ignorance. “Well, I’ll give him this,” you told him, “He’s a little like your father; he takes advantage of you and makes you deal with his emotional crap.”
“He does not.”
“He’s buried himself underground and isolated his ‘family’ the same way your father isolated your family; your father was too inconvenienced to do his manly duty and visit his own wife in the hospital; Stitch makes you have sex with him because he's too inconvenienced to use birth control."
“I don’t mind. It helps us stay warm.”
“Alan, get a blanket and build a fire. That’s ridiculous.”
“He’s happy when we paint.”
“I understand that he’s your friend; that he’s taken you in, but I want you to listen to me. First of all, if he’s schizophrenic, he should’ve never been allowed to serve, but those kinds of horrendous decisions have been made for years, and if he went over there pre-disposed to mental disease and then went through a war, god help him, Alan. No wonder he’s in the shape he’s in. Secondly, there are laws in the state of New York that provide job training and placement for veterans; there are programs that make sure they can find work, that they get all of the care that they need-mental and physical. He’s not the first veteran to go through this and he won’t be the last. He doesn’t have to go through this alone.”
“He doesn’t believe that stuff.”
“Look, tell him if he comes up, I will help him get through the system and get the help he needs. He shouldn’t have to live like this; he fought for our country; it’s disgraceful.”
“We don’t trust people.”
“No,” you corrected him, “He doesn’t trust people. You do. You trust me.”
“He doesn’t know that I trust you. He doesn’t know that I come here to talk to you; he thinks I come here to see Harper and Amelia and Justin because I like his work. That’s all.”
You felt like you were going round and round and round headed for the drain, “Okay, okay. Let’s just forget about Stitch then, okay? Let’s talk about you.”
*********************
don’t punish me with brutality
You told him about losing your father when you were young, about the affect that had on you, about how it made you empathize with him. You reminded him of the first time he spoke to you about his mother’s death years ago, how nothing horrible had happened after that, that it was safe to talk about things. He nodded his head.
“So where did you bury this baby?” you asked him.
“I’m not supposed to say.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody will tell the police, and they’ll dig it up.”
“I don’t want to dig up the baby,” you reassured him, and you didn’t, but you felt compelled to tell him that because of his childhood, he needed to be very careful who he hung around with because there were some people in the world, in his ‘family,’ who were exploiting that vulnerability in him-intentionally or unintentionally. “You don’t get used to going through something horrific, Alan; you become desensitized and unconnected. That’s a completely different thing.” And after learning that sex with Stitch was unprotected, you went with him to a clinic and had him tested for everything. The results were negative the first time around, and you told him that you would take him every six months. He gave you the results to keep because he didn’t want Stitch to know he’d seen a doctor. When you gave Jonathon an update, he went fairly ballistic, “You are out of your mind and your league now, Dan. That guy Stitch is probably half-cocked and ready to blow. You better watch your step.”
But knowledge is power, and Alan seemed better as time worn on. Amelia was toddling around so Harper was back in the studio; Justin was coming out of his funk, so he was starting to keep regular hours once again, and you’d often come home from work to find all four of them playing together. Alan came alive when he was around Amelia; she adored him. Even Harper could see the miracle in their relationship because it wasn’t built on confusion or pain or fear or fantasy, but on laughter and affection and really idiotic dance moves. Everything was born in the moment and never regretted. For Alan, Amelia was living proof that there was pure goodness in the world; she wanted nothing from him but his attention. It was the purest of relationships, and it began to change Alan. Harper commented once that, “He knows that she loves him, and I think that’s the first time he’s ever believed that anyone really did.” Amelia’s hysterical giggling echoed all the way down the stairwell. It wasn’t uncommon for Alan to come downstairs for dinner with whatever hat and jewelry Amelia had dressed him in. He was her favorite dress-up doll.
And then there was a night when Justin was babysitting for Amelia because Harper and Sam were out, and Alan was there, and you were downstairs at your dining room table with paperwork spread out everywhere and Amelia’s squeals of laughter were making you smile; it was time for her bath and you knew she was running away from Justin; you could hear her overhead, back and forth in the hall.
“I’m going to play Yellow Submarine all by myself then Amelia,” you heard Justin say, and then you heard Amelia’s response, “No!” and her little feet run all the way back towards the bathroom, “You’re ‘upposed to wait for me!” And the water started running and the usual commotion ensued, and then you looked up, and Alan was standing in front of you white as a sheet. “Hey,” you said.
“I’m having a nightmare.”
“You’re not asleep,” you joked, but then you realized that he was serious, that something was wrong; his pants were darkening; tears were filling his eyes; he stood there like a stranger in his own body, shell-shocked and terrified.
“Alan, it’s okay; it’s okay,” you said as you got up from the table. You put your arm around his shoulders, and he turned and looked at you like he didn’t know who you were. “Let’s just go into the bathroom right here. It’s okay.” He did as you asked; his feet shuffling on the floor, a trail of urine left behind. The tiny guest bathroom was barely big enough for both of you. “Do you need me to help you get out of these clothes?” you asked him once he seemed like he was able to hear you, and he looked down at his pants, and then up at your face, and you said, “It’s over, Alan; it’s okay. Do you need help?”
“I can do it,” he whispered.
“I’ll be right back.”
You went across the hall, opened the linen closet, bent down and unzipped your gym bag, yanking out a pair of underwear, socks and sweat pants that you always kept in there just in case you ever actually went to the gym and then returned to the bathroom. Alan was sitting on the toilet, naked from the waist down, his pants in a ball on the floor. “The pants might be a little short,” you said. “Can you get me a wet towel or something?” he asked. “Sure.” You returned a few seconds later with a warm, damp towel and a dry one, “Just come out when you’re ready, okay?”
“Yeah,” he said, “Okay.”
*********************
you and I collide
“I need to clean up the floor,” Alan said once he was sitting in clean clothes in your office.“I already cleaned it up. Don’t worry about it.” He sat on the loveseat in your office that he’d sat on a million times before, but he looked like a different person; his boyish qualities were receding. “Do you understand what happened?” you asked him, noticing his uneven and dirty fingernails for the first time, his five o’clock shadow. “Uh, yeah, I pissed myself,” he said.
“Right, but I mean mentally and emotionally.”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you feel it start?”
“I think so.”
“When you came downstairs, you said that you were having a nightmare. Do you remember that?”
“…Yes.”
You got up and closed the door to your office, dimmed the lights a little in your office because he seemed to be squinting and sat back down, “What was the nightmare? Do you remember?”
“Amelia was in the bathtub.”
“That wasn’t a nightmare; that was real.”
“That was also my nightmare.”
“Why is that a nightmare?”
“Something bad could happen.”
“Like what happened to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you comfortable talking about this?” you asked him, responding to the hesitancy in his voice.
“What if it happens again?”
“I don’t think it will; your bladder is empty, but if it does, it does. I’m not worried about that. I’m dying to replace that couch. Do you want your sketchpad?”
“No.”
You laid it next to him on the loveseat in case he changed his mind, “Let’s try again, okay? We’ll go as far as you want to go; if you don’t feel safe, we’ll stop.”
“Okay.” He pushed the sketch pad off the edge of the sofa and laid down. “Go.”
You pulled your desk chair closer; his arms were crossed over his chest as he stared blankly at the ceiling. “Tell me about the nightmare. Do you remember it?”
“Yes.”
“Can you put me in it?”
“I’m walking into the bathroom; I’m behind myself, not inside myself….”
“Where’s this bathroom?”
“In my house.”
“Is your mother in the nightmare?”
“Yes, but I don’t look at her in the nightmare; I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“She’s… It’s horrible… I can’t….” He started to cry; you handed him the box of tissues off of your desk and his body turned; he held the box the way a child hugs a teddy bear.
The chronology of the nightmare stopped. “Alan, I’m very sorry about what happened to your mother and about what happened to you; no child should ever have to experience something like that,” you said.
“I loved her.”
“Tell me about her; tell me something good about your mother.”
“She babied me; she spoiled me rotten. I don’t mean that she gave me things because we didn’t have money; I just mean that she was always hugging me and she was always smiling at me and tickling me. Always.”
“You were the youngest. She called you something funny, didn’t she? Harper told me-“
“’Alley Oop.’”
“Was your mother artistic like you?”
He smiled, “Yeah, actually she was. She never slept at night when she was home with us; she was always up watching TV, and she was usually doodling, too.” He stopped talking for a few seconds, and then started again, “I miss her.”
“She loved you unconditionally; she cherished you.”
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t she sleep at night?”
Alan stretched out, abandoning his child-like posture, setting the box of Kleenex on the floor, “You know she always said she couldn’t, that she had insomnia, but I think she wanted to be awake when my Dad was asleep. They never got along. That was her peace and quiet. She slept while we were at school.”
“What happened tonight, Amelia being in the bathtub, that brought that all of those feelings about your mother back, didn’t it?”
Alan turned, looked at you and sat up, his elbows resting on his knees, “She wanted me to come in and play with her.”
“Is that when it happened?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘it.’”
“Is that when you dug up the real baby you buried?”
Alan’s posture stiffened immediately; his eyes shifting from left to right as if he was suddenly in new surroundings, and he watched you like a hawk as you got up and pulled a book off your shelf, one that Alan was familiar with; he’d been reading it. His eyes followed your hand as it sat the book next to him on the sofa; you didn’t need to open it. “Alan, I think Amelia’s unconditional love and affection for you puts you in a very safe emotional place, and I think that when she invited you into the bathroom to play with her, that unguarded part of you walked in there, and I think-“
“I integrated a dissociative state.” You nodded your head at his answer. “Holy fuck.” You laughed at his reaction. “What do I do now?” he asked you, his eyes opening wide.
You knew he knew because he’d dog-eared that part of the book as well. You leaned forward a little as you spoke to him, “You welcome him in and honor him and help him grieve for the loss of his individuality and purpose.”
“Oh, is that all? Piece of cake.”
*********************
there will be no white flag above my door
When Alan left that night, you were very uncomfortable telling him good-bye, but very relieved to see him sitting outside on your front steps the next morning when you were leaving for work. “Hi,” you said, “What’s up?”
“I told Stitch that I’m babysitting Amelia for a couple days; I can’t be down there right now; it’s too weird.”
“Come on in,” you said, “I have to go to work; are you okay being by yourself all day?”
“Yeah.”
When you came home that night, he’d had an artistic explosion, much of it abstract which wasn’t really Alan’s style, but as you talked with him about it, he explained that it was the calling card of the young boy he was leaving behind. “It’s how he feels,” he says, “It's his chaos; he’s being abandoned.”
“He’s not being abandoned. He’s just going to have learn to get along with everyone else. He needs to talk about what happened to him; he needs to share that with everyone else so they understand him. By understanding him, they’ll understand themselves.”
“It’s too hard.”
”It’s very hard, Alan. A child-state is an escape; it can become no different that drugs or alcohol; it’s the equivalent of running and hiding in an emotional closet.”
“He’s a brat.”
“No, he’s afraid. He doesn’t know the rest of you; he doesn’t trust that he’ll be taken care of, but he wants to; that’s why he came through.”
“And peed on the floor.”
“He got your attention, didn’t he?”
“Fuck him.”
“Don’t treat him like your father treated you.” Alan’s expression changed; he was almost glaring at you. “Well, where do you think he came from, Alan? Outer space?” Alan flopped down on the futon in a dramatic, defeated flourish. “You’re not banishing him; you’re just setting some boundaries. I think the way he came through, peeing on the floor, there’s a reason for that.”
“Yeah, no shit; he has no manners.”
“No, he has no control because children rarely have control over anything in their lives-where and what they eat, where and when they go to sleep, elimination and toileting issues-and very often when a child's experiencing stress, that's where you'll see it. I think your nightmare where you keep wetting the bed is a recurrence of finding your mother, and you’re urinating because you’ve lost the ultimate control in that little boy’s life in that point; you can’t keep him safe anymore, and until you let him in, forgive him, and love him, he’s going to keep peeing on the floor because he’s terrified and alone and he’s trying to get your attention now that you’re old enough to help him.”
“You have no idea how much I hate it when you’re right.”
You stood up, “I’m starving. I’m meeting Jon for dinner tonight, and I’m going to be late.”
“What about me?”
“You stay here and work on your relationship with him; I’ll see you when I get back.”
“God, you suck,” he said, and you laughed at him as you ran down the stairs.
*********************
a heart in New York
When you got home from dinner with Jon, you climbed the stairs to the second floor and found Alan zonked out on the futon in the studio. You walked quietly from easel to easel. The abstract paintings were dry and tossed aside, replaced by a charcoal sketch of a woman you’d never seen before, but the likeness was unmistakable.
It was Ruth.
The image haunts you to this day because he sketched himself as a little boy staring at the back of his mother’s head and shoulders as she sat on the sofa staring at a television that was nothing but static. You had an overwhelming feeling that this was the way that Alan wanted to remember Ruth because the detail in the sketch was unbelievably meticulous. He had drawn a copy of TV Guide propped open on the arm of the sofa, a bag of potato chips showing just above the arm of the sofa with a price tag reading fifty nine cents. As you exited the room, you turned off the lights. When you awoke the next morning-a Saturday-the studio was back its immaculate condition, and the sketch of Ruth was lying on the end of your bed, a post-it attached--
When Alan visited from that point on, things went back to normal. Your ‘sessions’ with him seemed to be over. He was no longer sketching in your office when you came home from work; many times he was leaving as you arrived, and you’d stand on the sidewalk in front of your home and chat with him as you would any other friend you had. He was carrying himself differently; he had an aura of self-reliance about him on the street.
On the days when you came home and found him still in the studio, he was the old Alan, much meeker and still playing the part for Harper; he didn’t stand up as straight or speak with as much veracity, but he was clearly there for Amelia. She saw the real Alan more than anyone else; his guard began to fall with her as time went by. One afternoon when the skies were clearing after a bunch of rainy days, Alan offered to take Amelia for a walk so she could get some of her pent up energy out, and you watched Harper’s face as she accepted the fact that her little brother was in fact a man and could be trusted to hold his niece’s hand and walk around the block. Harper’s grieving process for her little brother began long before he was actually dead.
And then one night when you were in the kitchen after a particularly messy dinner, Alan was helping you rinse off the dishes, and when you asked him how he was doing in your quiet, serious doctor voice, he said, very calmly, “I sleep with my pants on now.” You patted him on the shoulder and smiled.
*********************
if not now
then when?
And all the while Alan was finding his voice, Justin had been finding his heart, and when he announced that he was leaving the city and reuniting with his partner, you reluctantly admitted to yourself that having Justin around to massage your ego when he wasn't the least bit interested in massaging anything else had been nothing but a very attractive crutch for you, and when you put it down, you realized that you weren't really yearning for another 'Justin' to take his place. And when it was time to tell him good-bye, when he thanked you for everything you'd done for him, you felt the real hole in your heart. You missed him-yes; he was a true friend, but when Alan stood in the doorway of your kitchen one day in March of that year and asked if he could, "Maybe use Justin's studio space, if it's okay? You know, maybe just to try. I don't know; do you think I'm good enough?" you felt it fill up again.
"You're more than good enough," you told him, "Are you serious?"
"Well, I mean, it would be nice to have sunlight when I draw, you know an actual window.”
You smiled, "I'm sure it would be.”
"I don't know if I want to sell it or just fuck around with it; I don't know."
"Doesn't matter. Art is a lot like therapy; sometimes you don't know why you're there, but you show up and just see what happens."
"And I'm so done with therapy," he said.
You laughed, "Then art it shall be."
……
You didn’t tell Harper that Alan had asked for Justin’s vacated studio space or that he was considering spending much more of his time ‘upstairs’ because you felt it was his decision and his place to tell her if and when he was ready. You were expecting his answer any day.
Never did you imagine that it would forever stain your sidewalk.
*********************
sitting in his Nowhere Land,
making all his nowhere plans
for nobody
Having reviewed your notes on Alan for the last time, you rose from your chair that Friday morning, left your bedroom and walked into Harper’s studio and removed an open cardboard box from one of her shelves. It was full of half-used tubes of paint and boxes of charcoal and pencils and everything else that Justin had casually left behind, “Harper or Alan, they can have this stuff if they want it. It’s not worth packing, Dan.” You sat the box on Harper’s desk and began to tear the folder and all of its contents into a million little pieces, watching them fall into the box like snowflakes, and when you were done, you carried the box downstairs where Jon was waiting for you with your nice eyeglasses in his hands, and you switched pairs, leaving your old ones on a table in the foyer.
“What’s in the box?” he asked you.
“Trash.”
He knew you were lying, but he didn’t argue with you; he just followed your lead and walked with you down the sidewalk until you stopped and said, “I have to get rid of this before we get there, okay?”
“Whatever you say.”
And you crossed a busy street and walked some more until you came to a subway station, “Come on,” and Jon followed you down the stairs and stood with you in silence as you waited for a train to come, and after it came and went, you walked up to the edge of the platform by yourself, hugging the box in your arms as you faced the tracks, and said a quiet good-bye…
“Alan, I want you to know that I’m proud of you; that you did some of the hardest work I’ve ever seen on the couch. I don’t know if you know that or not; you did something that very few people are ever able to do.” You stopped because you were starting to cry. Jon was watching, he could tell so he started to approach you, but you shook your head and he backed off. And then you heard his voice, “You’re too close to the tracks, Dan. Back up.” And when you looked back over your shoulder, you saw transit cops standing with him and a few nosy bystanders, so you took a few steps back, re-focused and continued, “I don’t understand why they did this to you; maybe I’ll find out someday, maybe I won’t…but I hope that wherever you are, you’re at least as happy as the last time I saw you.” The crowd behind you was growing and the noise in the tunnel was getting louder, “I don’t know if it matters to you, but you were…,” the platform began to vibrate, “You were more than a patient or a friend to me, Alan; I feel like….” You looked up and saw the steel force heading your way. “Every time we talked, I heard that familiar echo inside you, a boy growing up without a father; I’m so sorry that I too let you down, that I didn’t get to you in time- Alan, I’m sorry, but I have to go,” you told him, “A train is coming.” And with that, you turned the box over and dumped everything onto the tracks-the paint, the chalk, the torn scraps of your notes and his sketches, and when you turned around, there were two transit cops towering behind you, and you handed one of them the box, and said, “Could you throw this out for me, please?” and the officer looked rather taken aback, but then he looked at your face and said, “Uh, yeah, sure.” And there was a reporter in the crowd, and he pushed through and tried to get in your face, “Dr. Cartwright, are you aware that the officers--?”
“Kindly get the fuck out of my way,” you said, and you could feel Jon on your heels as you pushed your way back up the subway stairs, headed for the street and the sunlight, trying to convince yourself step by step that Alan had finally found his window.
********************
JONATHON MASSEY’S POV
sometimes I’m right then I can be wrong
Upon reaching the top of the stairs, Dan took off, walking faster than hell toward the church, and you had to work to keep up. You asked him to slow down, but he wouldn’t, responding, “We’ll be late,” and took off again, so you spoke to his back, “I’m twice the shrink you are; you know that right?” He stopped and turned around, and before he could say anything else, you finished your thought, “But you’re ten times the man I am, okay? I get it; it’s over. You win.” He stared at you, looking tired and confused. You kept talking, “I couldn’t have done what you just did; thrown it all away like that. Never, not in a million years.”
“It’s his recovery; it belongs to him, not me.”
“That’s what I mean,” you said. “That’s exactly what I mean.” He continued to stare at you like you were boring him to death. “I thought I knew who you were, okay? You’re my best friend, and I thought I knew you inside and out, but I didn’t. I guess…I underestimated you.”
Daniel looked down at his wrist at the watch he forgot to put on and then back at you, “Beautiful, eloquent speech. Can we please get a move on?”
You looked at yours and threw your hand up--your second surrender in five minutes--to stop a cab.
********************
BRIAN’S POV
some are quick to take the bait
Forgoing the traditional Brian Kinney limo-arrival of late had been the smartest decision you made that day. You and Justin were barely noticed as you crossed the busy street and blended into the crowd in front of the church. Your timing was perfect; Alan’s underground family was getting all of the press attention when you arrived. Once you entered the sanctuary, you both immediately saw Zeek, tall, dark and playing the role of God’s bouncer in his imposing black suit, his hands clasped in front of him.
“You’re in a church, not Babylon,” you said as you approached him.
“Both are rather biblical if memory serves,” he reminded you, still standing at attention like he was at Buckingham palace.
“You look nice, Zeek,” Justin said, and Zeek immediately returned the compliment and then stood at attention again.
Justin let go of your hand when he saw Harper walking in his direction, her hand outstretched. Zeek stopped your forward motion; his hand on your bicep, “Boss man, wait.”
“What?”
“You read the paper this morning?”
You were watching Justin when you told him ‘no,’ and when Zeek said, “Here,“ you looked down at the folded paper in your hand and flipped it open so you could read the headline: New York’s Finest Plead Guilty: No Denial, No Trial. When the expression on your face didn’t immediately change, Zeek prodded you, “C’mon, man; this is good news.”
“As if there’s such a thing as no denial,” you countered.
A very thin, pretty girl approached the two of you as you finished your sentence, touched Zeek’s arm, smiled, and walked away; her dress was so tight, her butt squeaked. “When did you find time to tap that piece of ass?” you asked your newspaper when she was out of earshot.
“Front door at about a quarter to two; back door about two thirty.”
“You must be exhausted.”
“Nah, she rode; I watched.”
You knew just from looking at the lithe little sparrow that Zeek was full of shit. “There’s no way that little matchstick’s caboose rode your joystick. She’d be in the ER.”
“Eggo been telling big fish stories again?” You slapped him with his newspaper, so he amended his tale, pointing to the woman you’d met earlier in the week who was chatting up the little sparrow in a pew in the middle of the sanctuary. “We use the buddy system,” he declared proudly. “And besides, her name’s ‘Trinity.’”
“And you know what that word means?” you asked him.
Zeek’s eyes cut sharply in your direction while his head stayed exactly where it was, “You’re just jealous now that you and your wife are homogenous.”
(Well, at least he got the ‘homo’ part right…)
‘I would just like to remind you both that we are in church,” came a voice from behind you, and when you turned, you saw Gabe standing there in a suit that looked exactly like one you owned-two years ago. “You done primping for Jesus, ‘Cakes?” Zeek asked him.
“It’s nice to see you, Brian,” Gabe said.
“Well, ladies, the Armani-angel Gabriel has forced me to see the error of my ways,” you told them both. “I shall take my leave of both of you.”
“And I of you,” Gabe said to Zeek, “You lecherous heathen.”
“Oh, bad news, ‘Cakes,” Zeek warned his little brother, “God just heard that. God. Just. Heard. That.”
And so you abandoned Gabe and Zeek and entered God’s house to rejoin Justin, the cathedral smelling like every other church you’d ever been in; it had that musty pious smell that competed constantly with the colognes or lack thereof of its parishioners. All of it changed in intensity as you moved from aisle to pew to aisle and back again, the sound of false pleasantries was drowned out-quite nicely-by Nate at the piano.
He was playing Yesterday.
Beyond the Yellow Brick Road-Chapter 43-Congregate
I can be nothing but grateful and appreciative to all of you who read and wait and read and wait. Please know that I feel the agony just like you do; this story reveals itself to me in the strangest of ways sometimes, and then one day I just know it's right. Until that happens, I just write, read, revise, wait and repeat. Your feedback means so much to me; writing is a lonely occupation. That being said, I don't expect the next chapter to take 6 months to write. No, the next chapter will not be the finale. ♥
Lyrics taken from Bryan Adams’ Here I Am, Nelly Frutada and Timberland’s Promiscuous, Bob Seger’s Still the Same, Bryan Adams’ Heaven, The Beatles’ Nowhere Man, The Talking Heads’s And She Was, Curtis Mayfield’s People Get Ready, The Talking Heads And She Was again, John Cougar Mellencamp’s Crumblin’ Down, Kate Bush’s Running Up that Hill, Tracy Chapman’s Fast Car, The Band’s The Weight, Tears for Fears Don’t You Forget About Me, The Beatles’ Lady Madonna, Maroon 5’s She Will Be Loved, Blues Traveler’s Hook, Eric Clapton’s Tears in Heaven, Whitesnakes’s Here I Go Again, Greenday’s Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), The Dave Matthews Band Ants Marching, The Band’s The Weight again, Billy Joel’s An Innocent Man, The Band’s The Weight again, Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody three times, Three Dog Night’s One is the Loneliest Number, America’s Tin Man, Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On? twice, Howie Day’s Collide, Dido’s White Flag, Art Garfunkel’s A Heart in New York, Tracy Chapman’s If Not Now, The Beatles’ Nowhere Man again, Sly and the Family Stone’s Everyday People, and America’s Tin Man again.