The Time Before #2
“Come on, we’ll only go for a bit,” Norman would say of a party or gallery opening they felt obliged to attend in L.A. “We can do the Irish goodbye.”
“I’m more a fan of the Irish hello.” When Norman cocked his head, confused, Jesse clarified, “That’s when we don’t go at all.”
But here, already their blood pressures were lower.
They unpacked their most precious things from bubble paper and valued memories along with them: a ceramic plate from a fondly remembered trip to Croatia, a lacquered box from a special anniversary, a framed photo from their first New Year’s together.
They looked for new places to display these totems, Norman carefully editing the whole time.
“Is this important?” he asked as he unwrapped a random tchotchke.
“Of course not,” Jesse replied, wanting Norman to feel free to choose a home for it. He even held his tongue when the home Norman chose was the trash can. But he couldn’t withhold a look.
“What. That was from West Elm, wasn’t it?”
“Jonathan Adler, but go off.”
Norman felt contrite and pulled the little figure out of the trash. “Okay, but this home is unique. It should have unique things.”
“It has us,” Jesse offered with a smile.
“It has us,” Norman agreed, and Jesse swept the Jonathan Adler sculpture back into the garbage. They had agreed: nothing mass-produced.
After the bed was assembled, the two of them christened the house by having sex in the new rain shower, as it felt important to break routine, then ate cold pizza naked behind the house, since there were no neighbors to see.
They fell asleep that first night listening to the sounds of the desert and the hum of their new home.
Everything was new, but for one night at least they felt like their old selves, happy.
When they were settled, they developed new hobbies, playing elaborate board games like Wingspan, a card-driven engine-building game where you attract birds to one of three habitats in your growing bird sanctuary as you acquire food and lay eggs while learning interesting facts.
As a ground-nester, the killdeer will fake a broken wing to lure prey away from its young.
“That’s like when you faked a sprained ankle to get out of gay skiing,” Norman said.
Jesse shook his head. Gay skiing. It had indeed been a gay ski trip he had gotten them out of, a weekend in Big Bear called Ski Dazzle.
Soon they were watching the real-life birds that made a home of their property.
Roadrunners and hummingbirds and shrikes.
They became obsessed with a pair of nighthawks who appeared after dusk like clockwork, seining the air for insects, which in fact were technically not hawks at all, but a class of bird called goatsuckers, because long ago people thought they flew into barns to drink milk from the teat.
“Do you think it’s weird how obsessed with birds we’ve become?”
Norman did not. “I suppose we’re just at that age.”
Norman read books and plotted projects for the yard that he would begin when the heat broke, vowing to only take on clients and jobs that interested him.
Jesse wrote (or said he would write, procrastination being a big part of the task), while he enjoyed the home’s modern amenities: the kitchen they redid with a dual-fuel stove that was perfect for both cooking and baking, and the bathrooms in bright turquoise and rose-colored tiles that felt like they could be found in luxury hotels.
When one would go for a hike, the other would say, “Try not to die,” a gentle reminder of their new home’s unforgiving conditions and the rattlesnakes that made nests nearby.
They prepared meals together to eat at a table, slowly while sharing a bottle of wine—something they had stopped doing in Los Angeles, each preferring to grab overpriced salads with trendy ingredients (Lebanese cucumbers, candied nuts, dried figs) from the place on Norman’s commute home, eating over the sink or in front of the TV.
They debated the merits of calling the waiter but honestly felt too content.
Each night they dozed off quickly and without struggle, the stresses of the day now fewer and no longer in need of processing; they once fell asleep holding hands.
In short, their relocation from L.A. had been a success, both for themselves and for their relationship.
In many regards they were like newlyweds, minus the passion.
“What do you like in bed?” Norman implored, as if they hadn’t once been intimately familiar. He wrapped his arms around Jesse from behind; because Norman was shorter it looked like he was giving the Heimlich. “It’s been a long time since we tried something new.”
“You mean like the waiter?”
“Fuck the waiter.”
Jesse laughed. “I think that’s what he wants us to do.”
“Come on,” Norman urged. “I’m being serious.”
“Seriously?” Jesse asked, but before Norman could say any more he replied, “Sleep.” He wriggled free of his husband’s grip, laughing in that way that meant We’re okay, aren’t we?
On many days it felt more like they were agreeable roommates than spouses.
But they were okay. Better than most, worse than some.
What more could one reasonably expect after thirty years?
A shift happened when Norman downloaded the app, noticeable and all at once, like a change in the wind when the heat came that could suddenly blow the doors off a house.
Jesse found Norman one night behind the house in the farthest of three new teak lounge chairs they’d just had delivered, one for them both and a guest. It was a cloudless night, the air just cool enough to suggest that an end to a brutal summer was in sight; Norman was holding his phone to the sky.
“What are you doing?”
“What does it look like I’m doing?”
Jesse frowned. This was reminiscent of their conversations when they lived in L.A.
, questions answered with questions, peppered with annoyance and a dash of frustration; he thought they’d left that behind.
“If I could read your mind, I wouldn’t have asked.
” He wondered how a spouse could be such a stranger.
“I’m sending signals,” Norman said, relenting after a silence. He rubbed his elbow like it was sore, then wiped sweat from his brow. The desert could be cold at night much of the year, but it was surprising to them how it didn’t seem to cool much at all in the longest of the summer months.
Signals that you’re an idiot. Jesse wondered how long his arm had been raised like that; they’d finished dinner two hours prior.
“I downloaded an app.”
Jesse bit his lip. In his life he’d maybe downloaded a handful of apps that did not already come loaded on his phone.
An app to do what? “I once saw a photograph of a monk that kept his arm aloft for fifty years to prove his devotion to god.” It was the kind of thing that Norman always responded to.
“Where?” he asked, taking the bait, and as he turned to his husband, so did the bright screen of his phone.
Jesse covered his eyes. “Online.”
“No. Where was the monk?”
“Oh. In the Himalayas, I think. Or Bhutan.”
“Bhutan is in the Himalayas. You just said two places that are the same.” Jesse ignored this swipe, and Norman returned his phone upright so that the screen was facing the sky.
He then repositioned his phone in his hand, holding it in his very fingertips as if the extra two inches were important. “What did it look like?”
“Bhutan?” Jesse struggled to remember. The photo had been taken just outside a monastery. He had expected to see mountains, but there wasn’t much in the way of landscape he could recall.
“His arm.” Once again they were talking past each other.
“Oh, right,” Jesse said, even though the arm in the photo had been the monk’s left. It had long atrophied, the fingers curled into the palm as if whispering for help. After five decades, the appendage was little more than weathered skin clinging to bones. “Mummified.”
“Maybe I should try that,” Norman said, and then, defiantly, he held his arm even higher.
“Try to make your arm look mummified?”
“No. Prove my devotion.”
“Devotion to what, though?” Jesse asked, but he did not want an answer. Norman had been looking for meaning with increasing thirst, but if he should be devoted to anything, Jesse thought, it should be him, since they had both taken vows.
Fortunately, Norman just shrugged.
“Want to play Wingspan?” Jesse asked, figuring Norman wouldn’t last fifty more minutes—let alone fifty years.
“I could set up the game to give you more time.” When Norman declined, Jesse went inside the house to watch an old episode of Six Feet Under, but lost interest after the episode’s hallmark opening death.
How could he focus on TV when his husband was sending signals into the sky?
Signals to whom? It generally bothered Norman that much of humankind clung to the idea that nothing soared the skies above Earth beyond the ISS and humanity’s imagination.
But Jesse was not one of those. The universe was vast, bigger than anyone could imagine, so he was a firm believer in intelligent life.
But he also believed that what made them intelligent was their determination to steer clear of here.
But Norman always wanted to know more.
And that was how it went for the next two weeks. After dinner Norman would quietly take to the yard, phone held aloft, and after an hour or so of this nonsense, Jesse would follow, offering blankets or snacks.
“Why do aliens avoid Earth?” Jesse asked one night. His go-to: a joke to lighten the mood. “The reviews are terrible. It only has one star.”
“That’s funny,” Norman said without laughing.
“Maybe we should find a therapist here.” He said it in as gentle a voice as he could muster. He hadn’t loved the therapist they had in L.A., who had often taken Norman’s side, but it did help them when things seemed darkest. And…weirdest.
“What do you mean? We’re cured.”