CHAPTER TWELVE #2
As he got closer, he saw a small figure walking toward him, and he stiffened with fear.
It would make sense for Lillian to have followed him out here, but this person was too small to be Lillian.
It was a woman, someone wearing a dress, with a purposeful stride he thought he recognized.
Closer and closer now, the two of them coming at each other like riders across a desert, Carver’s heart pounding.
It was his mother.
“Mom,” he said, stopping short.
Nora did not stop, she kept coming. She walked right up to him and stood in his way, her face set hard in fear and revulsion. This was the exact expression he’d been afraid of receiving his entire life. He didn’t know what to do with his hands.
“Why, uh,” he said. “What’s —”
“I heard most of that,” she said.
Carver closed his eyes. Okay, so it was over. It had been a good run. Something like twenty-five years of doing his damndest not to let on. Half of him was certain they had always known, anyway, but the other half of him was grief-stricken and wanted to fall to his knees begging her forgiveness.
Neither half determined his reaction, which was to snap in a sudden rage: “Why the fuck did you follow me out here?”
Nora reeled like he’d shot her. “Excuse me?”
“That was a private conversation. What are you doing, fucking following me around?”
“I was worried! I saw you run out of there like a lunatic, chased by Scott, and then you two started shouting! Anyone out here could have heard you! Don’t turn this around on me — what are you doing? What the hell are you doing?”
“I don’t know, you tell me, what did you hear?”
“I heard, ‘passionately fucking my high school boyfriend before I crawled back into bed with my wife’!”
Carver nodded, his spine growing hot and stiff, and then he started walking again, striding past her across the grass.
“Carver,” she shouted, chasing him. “Tell me what’s going on, right now.”
“No,” he shouted over his shoulder. “No thanks! No need.”
“CARVER! God damn you, come back here!”
God damn you, like a clap of thunder. She’d screamed at him before, of course, but she had never damned any of her children, as far as he was aware.
He felt an echo of his earlier giddy defiance.
Finally it would be out, finally it would all be laid on the table, and whatever his parents said to him now would be their responsibility.
He would no longer have to painedly steward their imagined reactions.
Letty’s earlier words came to him, and he decided to head for the parking lot, not the reception hall. He’d planned to have Lillian or Conway drive them back, but this was fine. He didn’t feel nearly so drunk now that he was full of adrenaline. If he took it slow he could make it back safe.
His mother was still behind him, calling his name and urging him to stop, but she was barefoot — holding her heels in her hand — and not nearly as fast as he.
You snooze, you lose! As they got closer to the clubhouse, he heard her talking into her phone, seemingly to his father.
Great, whatever. They couldn’t actually make him talk to them.
He had a car in the parking lot and keys in his pocket. He didn’t have to do fucking anything.
As he crested the hill the clubhouse rested on, he saw his father standing at the edge of the patio, his glowing phone held to his ear. Doug put the phone down and shouted, “Carver! Hold on!”
Carver bolted to the right, running around the clubhouse toward the parking lot. He could hear his father swearing and running after him. He was genuinely giddy now, energized and playful like a loose dog. It was like a game — who could catch him? Nobody! They were all so slow!
He sprinted down the slope of the driveway without remembering that the parking lot was rimmed with gravel, and paid for his hubris when he reached the lot and accidentally ran full speed right onto that gravel edge.
The rocks rolled his feet right out from under him and took him down face first, onto his hands and knees, which skinned instantly.
Carver sat up, wincing, and checked his palms. They were bleeding, but not badly.
It was hard to see in the thin yellow gleam of the street lamps, but it didn’t look like there were any rocks under his skin.
One of the knees of his tux was ripped. He didn’t really care.
He staggered to his feet, digging in his pocket for the keys.
This mishap had given his parents time to catch up to him.
He could hear that they were much closer now.
He limped around in high anxiety, hitting the panic button on his Maybach keyfob, trying to figure out where the fuck he’d parked.
He could hear the alarm going off but couldn’t see the vehicle itself in this sea of Escalades, Range Rovers and G-Wagons.
“Carver,” Nora yelled, sounding shrill and desperate in a way she never did.
Someone strong grabbed him from behind. For a second he thought it was his mother, who could pull terrifying strength out of herself when she needed to, but as Carver instinctively twisted to get out of the person’s grip, he realized it was his father.
“Hey,” his father said, twisting with him, clenching his fists in the fabric of his tux. “Hey, hey. Where are you going?”
“I’m going home.”
“No. You’re drunk and upset, you’re not going anywhere.”
This sent Carver spiralling into sheer animal terror.
He tore himself away from his father so hard that his momentum sent him bouncing painfully off the hood of a Jeep Wrangler.
Doug tried to help him up, but Carver slapped his hands away and scrambled to his feet again, then shimmied through the tight space between the Jeep and the SUV next to it.
Here he had an advantage over his father: slenderness.
“Carver!” Nora said. “Stop it! My God, you’re acting like a child!”
Doug raced around the row of cars to meet him when he came out.
Carver looked back the way he came and saw his mother blocking him off.
His terror increased. Where the fuck was his car?
He pressed the panic button again and heard the alarm go off again, closer now than it had been before.
He was slightly less afraid of his father than of his mother, so he went in Doug’s direction, hoping he could just shake him off again.
When he slipped out between the two cars, Doug grabbed him by his upper arms.
“Listen,” he said, in an urgent undertone. “You cannot do this shit. I know marriage can be hard, okay? It can be unbelievably hard. Women can be incredibly trying, I know, but it doesn’t mean you’re a homosexual.”
“Please,” Carver said, struggling. “Dad, just let me go.”
“I can’t let you go, you seem like a danger to yourself, and if you get in that car you’ll be a danger to others too. Do you want a felony DUI? Do you know what that does to a person’s life?”
In the background he could hear that Nora was on the phone again, but he couldn’t tell who she was talking to.
“I’m not a danger,” Carver said. Now his teeth were chattering from adrenaline. “I’m safe, I promise.”
“You are not a homosexual,” Doug said, squeezing his arms. “You’re not.”
Carver felt wet heat sweep down his cheeks. He was crying? “I am, though,” he wept.
“No. No. You’re married to a woman, son, you’re just confused and acting out. You’ve always been very confused, you’ve always felt this need to put your hand right on the hot stove.”
“I’ve been gay my whole life.”
“No, you haven’t. It’s very common for a person to have some homosexual experiences, but you’ve always liked girls. When you were little, when you played with girls, you chased them around.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yes it does,” Doug said madly, his eyes shining. “It’s just your wife is a very strong personality who wants to call all the shots, and she’s driving you crazy. You’re a strong personality too, Carver, I wish you’d understand that. You can’t keep knuckling under for everyone.”
“I knuckle under for both of you! You taught me to do that!”
“We were trying to teach you about the world. I’m sorry if it — I’m sorry. I know we were tough on you sometimes.”
“You treated me like a fucking alien in your house!”
Doug looked wounded by this. He closed his eyes, continuing to restrain Carver as he struggled, and let out a sigh. “No,” he said. “No, no.”
“You did!” Carver screamed at him. “You knew I was gay and you hated it, you always have! So don’t fucking deny it now!”
“That’s not — no.”
Nora came jogging over to them, her phone in her hand and her gauzy green shawl tossed over her arm. “Carver, please,” she said. “Please stop screaming. Now, what was that stuff about high school? Did Scott lead you into something when you were younger?”
“Oh, my God,” Carver exclaimed, his voice hoarse.
“He came from a strange home. Those people were like gypsies, they normalized a lot of odd things. Dot bragged to me once that they started discussing sex with him when he was seven years old, as if that made them, what, enlightened? And he’s a sensitive boy, your father and I always thought he might have been preyed on by one of the weirdos that came through that house. Did he introduce you to something?”
Carver half-wept, half-laughed, tears streaming down his face. “What the fuck is wrong with you people,” he said. “We’re at a fucking lesbian wedding —”
“Stop swearing at your mother,” Doug said.
“We’re at a fucking lesbian wedding! How come it’s normal for them, but it must have been that Scott —” His breath caught, and he hiccuped. “Scott got molested, then molested me —?”
“It’s just unusual for teenagers to have gay sex,” Doug said, “without learning the mechanics somewhere. The mechanics aren’t intuitive, that’s all.”
“Especially for boys,” Nora said. “I’m not saying anyone was molested. I meant when he was a teenager, a man in his twenties may have taken advantage of him. It’s very common. It happened to Sally’s brother.”