13. After the Silence
AFTER THE SILENCE
His teeth had been clenched since three o'clock. The washing-up had been autopilot. He'd put four things in the wrong cupboard and corrected three of them.
The evening was still. Gemma had taken Freddie to hers for the night, the arrangement made weeks ago.
The flat was empty. Clean. The balloons still taped to the walls, the streamers hanging limp, the paper plates in the recycling.
The Spider-Man painting on the fridge, held by four magnets because three kept losing their grip.
Rory stayed. As Neil had asked. He didn't push and didn't ask questions. He found the moka pot on Neil's counter and made coffee. The hiss and gurgle filling the flat for the first time here. He handed Neil a cup and sat on the sofa beside him and waited.
The coffee was the same. Dark, the crema intact. The same in his flat as in Rory's.
'Tomorrow. Or Monday. She'll ring and she'll say something constructed to sound like concern. Or she won't ring, which will be worse.'
'What will she say?'
'She won't say gay. She won't say partner or relationship.
She'll say this situation. Or your choices.
Or what's best for Freddie. She'll weaponise Freddie because weaponising Freddie means she doesn't have to make it about me.
She doesn't have to say: my son is gay and I've known for years and I've been pretending not to know because the pretending was easier than the conversation. '
'How long has she known?'
Neil was quiet for a long time. The coffee cooling between his palms.
'Maybe before I did,' he said. And the sentence, once it was out, surprised him.
'She watched Gemma and me for years. She saw it failing, saw me stop touching my wife, saw the distance grow.
And she filed it neatly, silently, in a drawer she never opens.
But maybe...' He stopped. Started again.
'I've never told you this. When I was fifteen.
There was a Pride march on the local news.
Colourful footage, men in shorts, rainbow flags.
My father said disgraceful. One word. The tone reserved for potholes, benefit fraud.
But my mother. She'd reached for the remote before he spoke.
Before. She was already changing the channel.
Which means she was already watching me.
Already reading something in my face that I didn't know was there. '
'Neil.'
'She might have known before the word existed in my head. She might have watched her son draw a boy's shoulders and not know why, and she knew why. And she changed the channel. And she never said a word. Thirty-three years of not saying a word.'
The anger at the coat buttons, at the leaving, at the decades of channel changes, shifted.
Made room. The image of his mother at forty, watching her teenage son and recognising what he couldn't see in himself and choosing silence.
Out of fear, not cruelty. The same fear Neil had carried for twenty years.
'That's... Christ,' Rory said. Quiet.
'Yeah.'
'That's sad, Neil.'
'She's been carrying it longer than I have. The carrying made her cold. The cold is how she copes.' He paused. 'It doesn't excuse the coat.'
'No.'
'But it explains it.'
He drank it. Lukewarm now. Still good. Rory's recipe, Neil's pot.
'And your dad?'
'My dad will sit in his armchair and let my mother handle it. That's the division of labour. She manages the emotions. He manages the garden. The hedge gets trimmed. The feelings get ignored.'
'He trimmed your hedge today.'
'He trimmed my hedge because trimming hedges is what he does instead of talking. Every snip is a sentence he can't say.' Neil paused. 'He'll die with a perfect garden and a son he never knew. And the terrible thing is, I think he knows that.
I think he trims the hedges because the alternative is sitting down and looking at me and having the conversation and the conversation would require him to feel and Malcolm Ashworth does not feel things.
He maintains things. He maintains hedges and cars and standards and the absolute fucking fiction that his son is fine. '
Rory's hand found his. Laced their fingers.
'I wiped the paint off your face,' Neil said.
Rory looked at him. 'What?'
'In the hallway. You had paint on your jaw. Orange. I reached up and wiped it off. I didn't even know I was doing it.'
'I didn't notice.'
'I know you didn't. Neither did I. My hand just... went.' He stared at the coffee. 'My mother was down the hall. She saw.'
Rory was quiet. Processing.
'That's what she saw,' Neil said. 'Me. My hand. On your face. In my own hallway. The gesture of someone who'd been wiping paint off your jaw for months. Whose hand didn't know the difference between your flat and mine.'
'Neil...'
'My body did it.
Without permission. Do you understand? The body I've been controlling for thirty-three years. The body I trained to not reach, not look, not touch. That body reached up and touched your face in front of my mother because it's forgotten how to pretend.'
'Is that a bad thing?'
'It's terrifying.'
'Is it bad?'
Neil looked at him. Green eyes in the lamplight. The jaw he'd touched, clean now, the paint gone.
'No,' he said. 'It's not bad. It's the most honest thing my body's ever done.'
'Then don't apologise for it.'
'I'm not apologising. I'm telling you what happened.
My hand reached for your jaw in my own hallway with my mother watching and I didn't flinch and I didn't stop and I didn't even know.
And that's the thing, Rory. That's the whole thing.
I spent four years building a system to prevent exactly that.
And my hand passed through it like it wasn't there. '
'Because it isn't. Not anymore.'
'No. Not anymore.'
They were quiet. Rory's grip tightened on his fingers.
'The most honest thing your body's ever done,' Rory repeated. Quiet. 'That's what you said.'
'That's what I said.'
'And your parents?'
'My parents will do what they've always done.
They'll manage. They'll rearrange the furniture.
My mother will find a way to frame it that doesn't require the word gay and my father will trim something and neither of them will ask a direct question because direct questions lead to direct answers and direct answers require engagement and engagement is the one thing the Ashworths have never been able to do. '
'Sounds like you're ready.'
'It sounds like exhaustion.' Neil put his coffee down.
'I've been avoiding things since I was fifteen.
I avoided the drawing. Avoided the feeling.
Avoided the word. Avoided the strangers.
Avoided Gemma's question for eight months.
Avoided you for three weeks. Avoided the birthday party.
Avoided my mother's eyes.' He paused. 'I'm done avoiding. '
'You're done.'
'I'm done. You're my partner. I wiped paint off your face in my own hallway because that's what I do, because my hand knows your face, and my mother can put on her coat and button every button and leave and the leaving is her choice. Not mine.'
Rory's hold closed around him. He blinked once, hard.
'Alright then,' he said. Rough. 'Alright.'
They didn't have sex. They didn't need to.
They sat on the sofa and drank the coffee and Rory's feet were in Neil's lap and Neil's hand was on Rory's ankle and the flat was quiet and still and the lock was unchecked and the wall had a painting on it and the man beside him was not leaving and Neil was not asking him to.
Tomorrow, the phone would ring. His mother, in that quiet house, already choosing her words.
He had no idea which ones she'd pick. He'd been wrong about her before.