Swimming to Chicago Read online

  Martha went to the sink and turned on the faucet, rinsing off her hands. “And you?” she asked. “Where were you born?”

  He shot her a look, tucked the package of cookies under his arm, and stacked the two soda cans together into a single tower. “In a hospital.”

  She let his words roll right off her back. “I was thinking…maybe I could take you shopping. You know…for school clothes…and supplies.”

  He sighed with solid irritation. “Why would you do that? You hardly even know me.”

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Who else is going to take you, Alex?”

  He wouldn’t hold her stare. He looked out the kitchen window. “Suit yourself.”

  He started to leave the room. She stopped him with her words. “You and my son have been spending a lot of time together.”

  He froze in his steps. Slowly, he turned back. “Yeah? So?”

  “So…I’m happy…I mean, for the two of you…that you…found each other.”

  In other words, I know you’re gay and you’re probably having a relationship with my son. I’m trying to be a nice person, here. I’m trying to give you my blessing.

  If Alex was nervous, he didn’t let it show. “So are we,” he replied. “Very happy.”

  Martha swallowed. She didn’t want him to know he intimidated her. “It seems like the two of you get along really well,” she said. “That the two of you like each other.”

  Alex took a step toward her and she backed up against the counter. “We’re not sleeping together…yet…if that’s what you’re asking.”

  Martha bit her tongue, holding back the torrent of words she wanted to pelt him with.

  Alex leaned in and whispered, “Robby wants to, but I’m insisting we wait.”

  Martha winced when she felt the cold aluminum of one of the soda cans gently graze against her arm. He was standing too close to her. She felt cornered, trapped.

  “I suggest you do the same thing…with my father.” He disappeared then, back to his bedroom where Robby was waiting.

  Martha stood in the kitchen motionless for a moment. She reached for the faucet handle and turned it. She cupped her hands together and collected a scoopful of water. She lowered her face and welcomed the sudden sting of the cold against her skin.

  Alex

  “Your mother wants to take me shopping for school,” Alex told Robby when he returned to his bedroom with cookies and Cokes. “Apparently she thinks we need to bond.”

  “I’m sorry,” Robby offered from where he was lying on the bed. He had one arm crooked underneath his head. “She’s usually not this annoying, I swear.”

  “I can handle your mother,” Alex said with a grin. He leaned over Robby, bent down, and lowered his mouth to Robby’s lips. The kiss was soft but fast. Robby turned away before their tongues met.

  “Not yet,” he said. “I want to, Alex. More than anything. You know that.”

  Defeated, Alex slid to the bedroom floor and pressed his back against the edge of the bed frame. “What are you so afraid of, Robby?”

  “I’m not afraid of anything,” he said.

  “Bullshit,” Alex countered. He reached back and handed Robby a soda. “You’re scared to kiss me.”

  “I’ve kissed you,” Robby said. He cracked the can open and it made a fizzing sound. He slurped at the soda bubbling out of the aluminum mouth.

  “But not a serious kiss,” Alex reminded him.

  “What if we can’t stop at one kiss? What if we want things to go further?”

  “I’m not gonna lie to you, Robby. I won’t fight you off.”

  Alex could hear the smile in Robby’s voice when he said, “I know.”

  *

  Robby LaMont had taken over Alex’s life. For the last month, Alex had found every excuse possible to be by Robby’s side. They spent hours listening to every Metric song ever recorded, poring over Alex’s collection of comic books, watching classic horror films with the lights out, holding on to each other in the dark, and lying together in silence blocking out the world around them.

  Nothing else mattered to Alex, except for Robby. Even Jillian seemed like a distant memory now. And it had been days since Alex had thought about his mother.

  Two days after they’d met in the driveway, Alex walked into the pizzeria and quit his job. While Bunny stood by stunned and Sue Ellen lingered around the register, probably hoping for a good-bye kiss, Alex turned and looked at Tommy and said, “See ya around sometime,” before walking out the door.

  “What gives?” Tommy texted him later that day.

  “I met someone else. I hope you understand,” Alex texted back.

  He hadn’t heard from Tommy since.

  Alex devoted the next month to discovering all he could about the new guy in his life. Robert Joshua LaMont was a complicated boy with a sensitive soul and a penchant for saying the corniest things. He rarely talked about his life back in Pittsburgh, hardly mentioned his mother and stepfather, and didn’t usually speak unless spoken to. He preferred to blend in with the crowd, disappear in a room full of strangers, keep his thoughts and observations to himself.

  Physically, the two young men were a sharp contrast to each other. Robby was smaller, softer, and amusingly awkward. He always looked disheveled: baggy shorts hung from his hips, an oversized T-shirt draped his body like a bedsheet, his hair needed to be cut since the start of summer and his bangs half covered his deerlike eyes. He moved as if he were wounded, like someone had hit him one too many times.

  Almost like he was permanently damaged.

  Yet Robby thrilled Alex. Just one glance at the guy, and Alex felt high. Robby gave him an incredible rush, and he was feeling addicted.

  *

  The moment school started, everything changed for them. No longer could they spend the entire day together. They had to settle for text messages between classes, secret looks exchanged across the cafeteria, and long-awaited reunions after school in Alex’s bedroom. It was only the second day of the semester and Alex found himself already living for the weekend when their time together would be unlimited.

  “I hate being apart from you all day at school,” Robby said, as if he were reading Alex’s mind. “It sucks.”

  Alex opened the package of cookies, slid the plastic tray out of the colorful wrapper. “Yeah,” he said, “but it would suck a lot worse if people found out about us.”

  Robby sat up in bed, propping himself up on one arm. “What do you think they’d do to us?” he wondered aloud. “Do you think they’d kill us? Or do you think they’d even care?”

  Alex offered Robby a cookie. “I hope we never have to find out,” he said.

  “I’ve been hit before,” Robby confessed nonchalantly.

  Alex tried hard not to let the surprise on his face show. Why in the hell would somebody hit you? “By your stepdad?”

  “No,” he said. “He’s harmless. By people at school. Other guys.”

  Despite the bad taste forming in his mouth, Alex bit into a cookie. “Why’d they hit you?”

  Robby lay back down. “Why do you think? Nobody likes a fag. Not even in Pittsburgh.”

  Alex stood up then. He stayed by the edge of the bed for a moment, just looking down at Robby. Their eyes met and Robby reached up, extending a hand to Alex. “Come be next to me,” Robby invited.

  Alex slid into the bed and curled up against Robby. He wrapped an arm around the boy’s small frame and held him tight. “I won’t let anyone ever hurt you again,” he promised.

  Robby blinked back his tears and said, “I know that.” He wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand and added, “That’s just one of many reasons why…I’ve fallen in love with you.”

  Robby

  “I want you to be careful,” his mother said to him. Robby stood, motionless on the bottom step of the staircase. His hand was frozen midair, just an inch or two above the banister. His backpack was heavy. His shoulders ached. He just wanted to go to his room, put on his headphones,
lie down, and think about Alex.

  Until dinner.

  Then he’d be forced to sit at the table, surrounded by the awkward silence floating between his mother and Harley. There would be no sound but silverware tapping against plates. Harley chewing the ice from his glass of sweet tea. His mother occasionally drumming her manicured nails on the tabletop. She was bored. Harley was restless. They were maddening. He tried to skip dinner with them as often as he could. Just to avoid the dim hatred they tried to hide from each other, but that still showed in their eyes.

  Robby turned to his mother. She was standing in the living room, bathed in afternoon sunlight pouring in the bay windows. She wiped her hands on a dish towel before placing them on her hips. “You know what I’m talking about,” she persisted.

  He shook his head. “No…I don’t.”

  “You…and Alex,” she continued.

  Robby looked away, avoided her eyes. His mother was the last person in the world he wanted to talk to about Alex. She wouldn’t understand. Besides, there was no way he could put into words the way he felt about Alex. “What about us, Mom?”

  “Are you…” she began, but stopped suddenly. She moved closer, slid her fingers through the spindles in the staircase. “Are you sure this is what you want, Robby?”

  Robby waited for a moment, hoping his mother would leave him alone and go back in the kitchen to finish making another one of her tasteless casseroles. When it became clear she wasn’t getting the hint, he let out a big sigh. He turned around, slipped his backpack off, and sat down on the third step from the bottom. “Why do you want to talk about this?”

  “Because I’m your mother.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “It’s embarrassing.”

  “What are you embarrassed about?” He could hear a smile in her voice. “So…you’re gay…I get it.”

  Robby felt a sudden wave of nerves rock his body. “I don’t want Harley to find out. He’ll make a big deal about it…like in Pittsburgh…when those guys painted those words on our sidewalk.”

  “Okay, okay. We don’t have to tell Harley. In fact, you probably won’t see him much tonight. He’s decided…not to have dinner with us anymore.”

  “Good.”

  “But…I think he already knows.”

  Robby looked his mother in the eye. “He does?”

  She nodded. “Yeah…I’d say so.”

  Robby felt his body relax, but only a little. “Mom…does everybody know? I mean, do you think people can tell…just by looking at me?”

  “Why should that matter?”

  “Because…I’m tired of people making fun of me…I’m tired of getting hit.”

  “Has somebody hit you? Who? Who did this to you?”

  “Nobody here,” he said, then added, “yet.”

  “Well, if they do…”

  Robby stood up. “But you can’t protect me, Mom. No one can.” He moved quickly up the stairs. When he reached the top, he turned back and his words drifted down to his mother. “Except for Alex.”

  Jillian

  From the moment he entered the room, greeted the class with a delicious smile and a smooth-as-silk “Good afternoon, class. I’m Mr. LaMont,” Jillian hung on his every word.

  The way his mouth moved when he called her name sent heat spiraling through her body. She raised her arm from where she sat in the front row of the classroom and answered, “Here.”

  On that first day of class, Harley LaMont became a new hunger for Jillian. By the end of the first week, she was feeding herself on the coy winks he tossed to her, the way his gaze drifted down to between her legs, attempting to catch a peek. She kept her knees together and tried her best to pay attention to his longwinded lecture on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it. Hester Prynne had an affair with a married man. Big deal. She knew what she wanted.

  And Jillian knew, without a doubt, her middle-aged English teacher wanted her in the worst way. He wasn’t very tall, was losing his hair, and had a bit of a beer belly, a permanent five o’clock shadow, and big hairy knuckles. But there was something about him that electrified Jillian’s body with white-hot desire.

  She watched him like a moving target, pacing back and forth, enrapturing her with every gesture he made. She felt heat swim between her legs when he became so intense about Hester Prynne’s crime of passion, he broke a piece of chalk in two while writing on the board.

  On a Wednesday night, Jillian tore a piece of paper out of her binder, scribbled a sentence on it, and slipped it inside the Chinese wish box that sat like a trophy on her bedroom bookshelf. Her words read: I want Harley LaMont to realize he can’t live without me.

  He smelled like sex. That sweet and spicy combination of soap, aftershave, and sweat was a wild aphrodisiac to her. It made Jillian want to get as close to him as possible to inhale, the need for her touch emitting from his skin. He made her want to touch herself.

  Constantly.

  She found any excuse she could to go to his desk, lean in, and ask him about a word in Hawthorne’s classic novel. All the while, she was imagining licking his neck, biting his skin.

  She raised her hand and he came to her and kneeled down beside her desk and she showed him the haiku she’d written titled “Harley.”

  She asked him, “Is this what you’re looking for…Mr. LaMont?”

  And he answered in his deep and soft voice, “You’re definitely on the right track, Jillian.”

  John

  John was stunned. It showed on his face. Martha stood, framed in the arched entryway leading to his kitchen. He knew she regretted her words, her observation. Her blond hair was down and hung loosely around her beautiful face. She was dressed for her morning run in gray sweats and a black hooded sweatshirt. Her pale green eyes looked tired, stressed, but still shimmered with a deep desire for him. She took a sip of late-morning coffee from the oversized mug in her hand and said, “I’m sorry, John. Did I just say something wrong?”

  He was in the living room, standing near the antique coat rack and the old grandfather clock—heirlooms passed down to him by his mother, before the nursing home and the Alzheimer’s. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Siran: her face, her smile, her long, thick ebony hair. He blinked and reminded himself it was just a photograph. She was gone. Long gone. They had buried her a month ago.

  Has it already been a month? Jesus, Siran, when you coming home? Me and the kid need you here.

  “Wait a second,” he said, half to the family photo on the mantel and half to Martha. “You think my son is…gay?”

  Martha stammered. “I’m sorry…John…it’s not my place…I shouldn’t have…I thought you…”

  “You thought I knew?” he asked her, hearing his own voice start to rise. “I don’t understand, Martha. Did he come right out and say this to you? Did you catch him doing something? I mean, what the hell happened?”

  “John…I think you should talk to Alex. He’s your son. I’m just—”

  “Just what? Our new neighbor? Come on, Martha, you’re more to me and you know it. I took the day off to spend with you…in private.”

  John was worried Martha might start to cry. He could hear it in her voice, the strain to hold back her tears. “I don’t know what I am to you.”

  He shook his head, frustrated. “I need you tell me about my son. I don’t understand this. I thought him and Jillian—”

  She turned away from him and returned to the kitchen. He followed her. “It’s not for me to say,” she said, facing the window above the sink, the hot September sun streaming through it. The beautiful golden light on her face was like a halo. It made John want to reach for her, hold her, make love to her.

  Damn it, Alex. What have you done now?

  “Don’t leave me in the dark here,” he insisted. “We’re talking about Alex. He’s my kid. If he were…a…queer…I think I’d know about it. I mean, I’m his father, for God’s sake.”

  Martha took a st
ep toward him. He noticed her grip on the coffee mug tightened, her knuckles paled. “And I’m Robby’s mother. I had to face the truth a long time ago. I can’t change the fact he’s gay. And I wouldn’t want to. This is no one’s fault, John. We can’t look for someone to blame for this. It is what it is. But we’re their parents, and we need to be there for them.”

  Martha exhaled, let out a heavy sigh of sorrow and regret. She put the coffee mug down on the counter and released the handle from her grasp as if she were giving up, letting something go.

  In that moment, John saw the truth, the reason she wanted him to know about Alex. Why it was so important for him to really see what she already had. Although he knew he was in love with Martha, John missed his wife more than ever as he stood in the middle of the kitchen. He wanted her there. Siran would’ve known the right words to say to Alex. She would have held him and reassured him they still loved him, no matter what.

  John knew he needed to say the words Martha couldn’t. He had to articulate them, give life to them so they would be real. So the truth would finally be out there. He swallowed and his mouth felt dry, his words were cracked. “You mean…are you trying to tell me…Alex and Robby…our sons…”

  Martha placed a palm against his cheek. He was so overwhelmed by her soft touch, he had to close his eyes and breathe. “They’re in love with each other,” she said through her fresh tears. John blinked his eyes open as if her words were stinging his sight. He nodded to let her know he understood what she was saying, the important meaning of her words.

  Martha leaned into John, mouth first.

  John closed his eyes again, and inside, he imagined he was holding on to the round edges of the Earth for dear life.