Chapter 14
SUNFLOWER SUITE
Aaron had been fidgeting with his clothes for the last hour, standing in front of the mirror checking his hair, which he’d begged Oscar to cut for him.
When Oscar had panicked and said he couldn’t even color inside the lines, Aaron had looked up at him with those big blue eyes, mouth wobbling, and Oscar knew he was done for.
“Baby, come on. Like your papa used to do,” Aaron had murmured.
So Oscar had trimmed away the extra-long strands crowding Aaron’s nape and anything else that looked a little too overgrown, but that was where he’d drawn the line.
“You look wonderful. Come on.” Oscar slipped his hand into Aaron’s and tugged him out of the apartment, blowing a goodbye kiss to Luigi as he pulled the door shut.
Aaron was in a daze all the way down to the street, picking at his shirt, straightening it and pulling it askew within seconds, getting on the bus and not even looking at the driver as he passed.
“I promise he’s got a card,” Oscar said, mumbling an apology. “He’s anxious to see someone at the hospital.”
The bus driver gave him a nod, slowly blinking as though to reassure him she believed him.
Like a cat; like Luigi. Oscar recognized her.
He and Aaron had been on her route several times, although they’d never gone past the cathedral together, and this time, they’d be riding for more than an hour into the next city.
Oscar hurried to Aaron’s side, taking his hand, rubbing each knuckle. You’ll be alright, he thought, and tried hard not to focus too much on how badly he wished he could see his papa in a nursing home instead of the still pictures that immortalized his smile but not his laugh.
But this wasn’t about him. It was about Aaron. And he couldn’t be focusing on his unreasonable envy. Because it wasn’t fair that Papa had died. But it wasn’t fair that Aaron’s mother had this disease, either. It wasn’t a competition, and if it were, then both he and Aaron had lost.
As Oscar glanced to his left, eyes fixing on the face he’d come to love more than any other he’d ever known, he realized that he had also won. Oscar pressed Aaron’s hand and leaned in, kissing him softly on the temple.
“I’m so excited to meet her,” he murmured, and by the way Aaron melted into him, Oscar knew that something about what he’d said had worked.
For the rest of the ride, Aaron didn’t say a word, but he was no longer fidgeting. Instead, he played with the wild strands of Oscar’s hair, tugged on the strings of his thin hoodie, because Oscar would take any excuse in the world to wear one, and it being mid-September counted.
Fifteen minutes into the ride, Oscar remembered he’d brought headphones, that he’d spent the early morning meticulously cleaning them so he could share with Aaron, but Aaron didn’t even glance to check when he offered; he popped a bud into his ear and rested his head on Oscar’s shoulder.
They listened to the Call Me By Your Name soundtrack, and Aaron didn’t even say it was cheesy or corny or that Oscar must just have a crush on Timothée Chalamet, even though Oscar had said a million times that it was Jonathan Bailey for him.
Maybe it didn’t help he recommended watching Call Me By Your Name every film night.
For the rest of his life, Oscar would remember listening to “Visions of Gideon” as the bus pulled up in front of the care home and Aaron bristled, fingers twitching and neck stiffening the moment the large vehicle hissed its arrival.
“Is it a vid—” Sufjan Stevens was cut short as Oscar retrieved his earbuds and stuffed them tangled in his pocket.
The air was crisp, the sky a pleasant cornflower blue that matched Aaron’s eyes, and a soft wind blew, tickling Oscar’s neck with his loose waves.
“What about these?” he asked, nudging Aaron in the direction of a stall where a woman was selling bunches of pretty flowers for visitors to take in to their loved ones.
“It’s a rip-off,” Aaron said, eyes snagging on the hefty price tags. He was right, too. Oscar could get flowers like these for half the price from Paulie on a Sunday, but now they were here.
“Would she like them?” Oscar raised his eyebrows at Aaron, casting him a knowing glance.
Aaron shrugged, nodding. Oscar wished he could be the metal rim around his glasses, that he could sit on the bridge of his nose and kiss the space between his eyes.
Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet, handing the woman a twenty and picking the sunflowers wrapped in green, passing them to Aaron.
There was no need for a thank you. Oscar knew Aaron was grateful, that he was too nervous right now to say it.
So Oscar squeezed his hand, and they started walking up the path towards the front doors of the care home where Aaron had been forced to sign in his mother years before he’d ever imagined it would happen.
It was a pretty enough place, its exterior painted a vibrant peach color with darker frames around the windows.
The scent of freshly mown grass tasted like the approaching autumn, the large tree close to the entrance tingeing yellow and orange, a few leaves the exact color of Aaron’s hair as it caught the sun.
Farther away were flower beds and ornate benches, where families sat with grandparents, children chasing each other around and laughing.
Grandparents. His father would never be one.
He would never know the joy of running down a hallway with the child of his child on his back.
He would never sit in a nursing home and wait for them to visit with a bag of chocolates he’d had the nurse go and buy from the mini-mart by her house.
Oscar didn’t like the bitterness that assaulted him as the thought spread its blankets and made a home inside him, stinging.
“It’s freezing in here,” he mumbled as they passed through the front doors. At this time of the year, the air conditioning didn’t have to be that strong. Especially considering most of these people would be old and frail. What were these nurses thinking?
Nurses.
Oscar glanced at Aaron, who had given up his dream of nursing for the necessity of being who he was.
He wondered now just when he had decided that he would like to be one of these people walking around in pretty scrubs with flowers on them and comfortable clogs on their feet, smiling at the people they aided and wheeled, helping them.
He wondered just how much this cruel disease had torn from him, whether he’d had to battle the ugliness and grief through the worst days of his dysphoria.
Oscar knew about grief. And he knew about dysphoria. He knew about carrying them both across his shoulders, about being hunched over by their weight until they got him on his knees, begging his therapist for an appointment.
He didn’t say anything, but he held Aaron’s hand as they walked up a flight of stairs and down a quieter carpeted corridor with pretty bright green doors and lots of children’s drawings on the walls, some of them faded with age.
He wondered how many of these belonged to grandchildren who were now grown, who couldn’t remember painting them, whose grandparents had passed.
Aaron had been so young when his mother had come here. Not quite a child. But not quite grown either. His fingers twitched in Oscar’s as they approached a room with a decorated door spelling out GEMMA in colorful letters stuck to the wood, two painted sunflowers underneath.
Maybe if Oscar wanted to be motivational, he would have said something like go on or you can do it to Aaron.
But Oscar wasn’t too good at that part. And this was not the place for deflective humor.
In any case, all traces of it were gone.
The bright colors of this space immersed in low-volume upbeat music and laughter from the other rooms did nothing to lift the somber mood Oscar could feel jumping off Aaron’s skin like fleas Oscar had caught.
Let me have them, Oscar said. He knew as well as Aaron how to carry pain, and if all he could do was bear some of the load, Oscar would have it.
In the end, Aaron knew to walk in by himself, first knocking on the door, then passing through, Oscar following quietly behind him.
“Aaron!” Gemma was a beautiful woman, and of course she was; she made up half of him.
It was the softness of her chin he had, the same blue eyes and pretty nose, the same curve of a smile that brightened Oscar’s days.
She had blonde hair, straight and thick to her shoulders with bangs that brushed her eyebrows, and she was wearing comfortable loungewear, sitting on a chair in the corner of the room, watching a crime show on a TV in the corner.
Oscar remembered seeing her in that picture in Aaron’s room. She didn’t look much older now.
“Hi, Mom,” Aaron said, his voice a little wobbly. “Here.”
The room wasn’t too big. In three steps, he’d reached her and was handing her the sunflowers. Gemma eyed them, smiling, fingers fiddling with the green wrap, but she wasted little time on them, turning again to Aaron.
“Come, lovely,” she said.
Aaron bent down to hug her, squashing the flowers between them, and she wrapped her arms around him, too, pressing kisses to his cheek.
Oscar lingered in the doorway, bouncing on his feet as he watched Aaron have the one thing he had always wanted: a mother. Aaron deserved it. He deserved every good thing. He deserved more than this, more than having the only person who loved him so out of his reach, so sick.
Not the only person.
“You brought a friend?” Gemma’s tone was suggestive enough to indicate she already suspected the nature of their friendship.
Oscar sucked in his lips, cheeks heating as he mustered a polite smile.
“Cookies, Aaron,” she said. “For your friend. And for me.”