Chapter 13
SPIKE
When the ground was white and the sky obscured by heavy clouds in winter, Papa was a fireplace. And when the seawater called and the sand boiled beneath Oscar’s bare feet in the summer, Papa was the sun.
On the day of Papa’s funeral, Oscar remembered feeling cold, like someone had reached inside his body and put out all the candles, like someone had taken all the softness to pad Papa’s coffin with it.
Oscar hadn’t minded then. He wanted Papa to have a soft, comfortable bed to rest in forever. He wanted to keep him away from the maggots. He wanted him to have candles so he could see in the dark—more than this, so the dark could see his face and learn how to smile.
“He fixed every scrape,” Oscar said, “kissed every scratch I got on my knee from trying to learn how to ride a bike. When I ruined the precious long hair my mother wanted me to keep, he cut it shorter than it needed to be because he saw my growing smile, and he chose not to ignore it.” Oscar sniffled.
“Papa saved my life every day he lived and every day after he died.”
“He really sounds amazing,” Aaron said, running his fingers through Oscar’s waves. “Tell me more.”
So Oscar did. He told him about all the early morning drives on Papa’s only day off in the summer so he could take Oscar and Lina to swim.
He told Aaron about scrapbooking, because Oscar couldn’t cut a straight line to save his life, so Papa would cut up all the pictures, and Oscar would stick them to his scrapbook, full of hardened glue where it had oozed around the edges.
Oscar laughed through his tears when he told Aaron about the time Papa had washed Oscar’s only white dress with the reds and the wink he’d given Oscar after, forcing his mother to accept that Oscar would have to wear pants and a shirt to an all-white-clothes party they’d been invited to with some of their family friends.
“He’s the one who called me Spike,” Oscar said. “Since forever. Since he realized, I think. You know, I don’t think he ever called me by my other name after the first time. Never referred to me without saying Spike. Spike this and Spike that.”
“I’m sorry, Oscar.” Aaron bent down to kiss him on top of his head. “He sounds like a wonderful man.”
“Papa was everything to me,” Oscar murmured.
“For a long time, I was upset that I had to be unlucky enough to have to watch him die.” Oscar cleared his throat, sniffling, his chest swelling as the memory of him on that sidewalk assaulted him again.
“I’m glad now that I could be with him, that he was looking at me when he went. ”
Oscar’s sniffles turned into sobs, his forehead pressed into Aaron’s bare chest, still curled up naked together on his bed, knees pressing into Aaron’s thigh.
“I’m so sorry.” Aaron pulled him in and let him cry uninterrupted.
Oscar thought about his father and how much he would have loved this man for him.
“He paid for my transition. Papa left me and Lina everything from his small savings account. Mom got the house. We got his savings. He’d been putting away every extra cent, worrying about college for both of us.
But I refused to use them for anything other than becoming me.
I know he would have wanted that.” Oscar shook his head.
He had never imagined he might grow comfortable enough with another person to tell them about his time jumping from one shelter to the next, begging for a bed or even a mattress on the floor. It moved out of him like air with Aaron, easy, natural, like these were ears meant to hear his story.
“One night, there was nowhere for me to stay. I didn’t want to touch the account.
I couldn’t pay for accommodation and Laura was closed.
She let me sleep under the stairs more times than any other person would have.
” Oscar chewed on his lip. “I swallowed my pride and walked for half the night, knees knocking in the cold. I woke Grandma up at half past three in the morning. And she didn’t even ask. ”
“I guess we know where he got his kindness from then. Where you did.” Aaron tilted his head to look into Oscar’s face. “You know you’re just like him, right?”
“I wish,” Oscar replied, but he kept his gaze fixed on Aaron’s as Aaron smiled down at him.
“I’m so lucky,” Aaron whispered, leaning in to press a soft kiss to the tip of Oscar’s nose.
Oscar nestled deeper into his neck, resting his cheek on his shoulder, and drew in a breath. He told him about the time he’d spent with Grandma, all the weeks he’d stayed with her until he managed to find a job and an apartment.
“I started college a little late,” Oscar said.
“I had to finish school, and I took night classes to make up for the time I’d lost. And then I had to get into someplace that did Computer Science.
” Oscar traced a line down Aaron’s thigh, circling his knee.
Aaron jerked alive, laughing. “You’re ticklish. ”
“Very,” Aaron said.
Oscar wanted to learn new things about him every single day for the rest of his life.
“I had to settle for online college. I mean, it’s a physical college, but it’s far away, and I didn’t want to let go of my rent-controlled apartment.
Or move too far from Grandma. Or have to stop seeing Lina again.
” Oscar shrugged. “It was the only free college that offered all the courses I wanted to take, so I settled. I could have paid for it with Papa’s inheritance, but I wanted to carry Papa’s money with me forever, his final gift.
So I became his Spike.” Oscar nibbled on his lip.
“He would be so proud of you,” Aaron said, rubbing his shoulder.
“I know,” Oscar replied. “And he would love you. He’d take you to the beach with us and call you by some other silly name.”
“And I’d love every minute of it.”
Aaron leaned back, legs curling as he turned to face Oscar, nudging him up so he could look into his eyes. For a moment, there was silence. A string sat taut between them. Oscar thought if he plucked it, there would be music, Papa’s guitar in the basement of their house.
“What are you thinking?” Oscar asked.
“I think I want to talk about my family, too,” Aaron replied. “I want to tell you everything.”
“Then tell me,” Oscar said. He brushed Aaron’s cheek, picked at a lock of hair poking out over his ear. “I’ll go make that fancy coffee I promised you, and you find something comfortable to wear. It’s getting a little cold.”
“I haven’t given you…” Aaron’s voice trailed off.
“We have time,” Oscar replied, pausing to smile as he clambered off the bed. He took him in, this gorgeous temple of a human being, and it was enough to get him to walk all the way around the bed to kiss him again. “All the time in the world.”
Aaron’s mother had dementia, and Oscar watched him crumble as he said it, as he described her disease and how it had taken so much of his only champion, the first person who had ever loved him as he was, no questions asked.
Luigi lay sprawled on Aaron’s lap, purring softly as Aaron rubbed his soft velvety head and sipped coffee in the warm sweats he’d borrowed from Oscar, because autumn was approaching, and with it the cold chilly nights that warranted blankets.
“It’s rare, too,” Aaron said, his breaths chattering as he inhaled.
“And she was so young when it began. I was seventeen. Mom was forty-seven. She fell over in the kitchen. I was doing homework, and Robert was there, my brother. He was having a sandwich. I remember it was chicken and mayo, and the mayo was spilling out the sides, and it bothered me how sloppy it was. It was all I could think about, even after Mom fell.” Aaron sniffed.
“We didn’t think much of it at the time.
Assumed it was low blood pressure or something like that.
Mom wasn’t forgetful or anything and Alzheimer’s was the only dementia we’d ever heard of. ”
“We focus on strange things when important stuff happens,” Oscar said.
“Christina told me that. Because every time I talked about my father, I always focused on how I couldn’t stop remembering that he had a grain of pepper stuck in his teeth from the night before and that the suit he’d bought me had a tag coming out of the bag. ”
“I felt like a piece of shit,” Aaron—the furthest thing from a piece of shit—replied.
“But, yeah. I clung on to that memory of the mayo. And then the next time something was clearly off, she couldn’t say ‘spoon.’ She kept saying weird shit.
Like ‘clock.’ She wanted a clock to stir the coffee. It was…”
“Shit, yeah. That sounds awful.” Oscar couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to be confused like that, to have a brain that wouldn’t comply. He couldn’t imagine going through something like that and not breaking every damn thing in the house.
“She’d get strange moods. Mom was always the brightest person in every room. Sunflowers. She was a sunflower. Always will be, to me.”
Oscar remembered Aaron telling him they were his favorite.
He listened to him now, talking about this woman who had loved him so well, who had sat with him when he’d wanted to come out.
Oscar wanted to cry as Aaron told him about bursting into tears and how his mother had hugged him and said she loved him and that if he wanted to know, she would have named him Aaron if he’d been born in the body that matched his heart and mind.
So after that, he had been Aaron, and when his brothers and his father had kicked up a fuss, his mother had shut them right up and said they could be respectful or sleep in the garden without dinner.
“You know, that’s actually the reason I reacted like such an idiot when you got me that book,” Aaron said, nibbling on his lip.
“I wouldn’t call you an idiot.” Oscar tapped Aaron’s nose, leaning in to kiss him on the forehead. “Maybe a little stubborn.”