Chapter 40 Making Amends #2
“No, dahling,” William said. “It’s my fault we’re in this predicament, hurtling towards a precipice of my own making.
I was merely observing that our options are rather limited.
There aren’t many off-ramps remaining, are there?
I mean, let’s be honest: we’re past the point where a mere apology from me would suffice. ”
Matt nodded.
“If that’s the case—and a handshake is off the table, and scotch hasn’t done the trick, would you indulge me one last favor?”
“What is it?”
“Carry our glasses and the scotch up to the balcony. I’ll join you in a minute.”
And that’s where Matt was sitting, a few minutes later—on the balcony—tumbler of scotch in his hand, admiring the waxing gibbous moon, when William joined him—and offered him a cigar!
“Fathers are curious creatures,” William said, sitting. He crossed his legs primly. “Mine has never suffered from the delusion that I would bat on the same team as he. Truth be told, he probably never envisioned me as any kind of batter. More a catcher, you know?”
Matt was too shocked by the cigars to pay much attention to anything else. He sat there stunned, holding his—as yet unlit one—remembering Celeste’s admonition. “Smoke the cigar,” she had said.
William lit his cigar, puffing until the end glowed red and a tendril of smoke snaked upward. “Still, fathers being fathers, mine has tried to impart the wisdom he’s gleaned from a career in business, which, again, is probably as wasted on me as batting practice would be.”
Uh-huh. Matt felt the scotch tugging at his sobriety, felt his thoughts skidding sideways, finding a familiar groove: Fathers, their gay sons, and bats…
William leaned over and lit Matt’s cigar, coaching him through the initial puffs, explaining that one shouldn’t inhale as with cigarettes.
Matt took a puff. The smoke smelled of oak leaves in the fall, soggy piles of them, sweet with decay.
“Drinking scotch? Thank my father. When I was thirteen, he introduced me to the stuff. Said it’s good for impressing some people, intimidating others. He also said it would put hair on my balls, which horrified me, because they were already a topiary nightmare.”
“That’s what this is about?” Matt asked. “Intimidating me?” Part of him had wondered why William was drinking scotch. Everyone in the GM knew that William’s drink of choice was bourbon, neat—same as his idol, Tallulah Bankhead.
William shook his head. “Like anyone could ever intimidate you, dahling. You’re fearless. Besides, I didn’t know you were coming. I was just feeling sorry for myself and trying to channel my father’s wisdom, you know?”
Matt did not know. Could not imagine it.
Matthew Griffith, Sr.’s idea of wisdom was summed up in the phrase he had engraved below the mounted baseball bat: “REAL MEN STEP UP TO THE PLATE.” They step up and swing.
They keep swinging ‘til the other guy is down and begging for mercy.
They swing some more just for good measure.
No one outside of Matt’s family—and the youth pastor, of course—knew about the bat. Matt had told the GM about his rape, but nothing more. Adam didn’t even know that much…
William puffed. “My father told me to always keep a couple of cigars handy, that it’s impossible to share a smoke with a guy and stay mad at him. I guess I’m hoping that’s true.”
“So why didn’t you break out the cigars weeks ago?”
“Weeks ago, dahling, I was livid with you.”
“For accidentally telling Molly about the GM clubhouse?
“That, plus you can be infuriatingly smug. It’s a bit much for us mere mortals.”
Matt ventured another sip of scotch, which, this time, dispensed with the soft kisses and went straight to the face slap. “No one’s ever called me smug before.”
William swirled his tumbler, took a sip and winced.
“This really is nasty stuff,” he said. “Maybe smug was the wrong word. Self-assured on steroids? Is that better? Tell me one other freshman who would take on an entire college administration just to get a lady’s job back?
Who would call a special meeting of the GM and announce an elaborate plan to take down the president of the SGA? ”
Matt didn’t think of himself as being self-assured. He’d failed the ultimate test of character when he’d buckled to his father’s demands and taken the bat—and swung. He’d been haunted by the memory ever since.
The rape did not define him; that night in the park did.
All of his heroic bluster since—standing up for Paul, fighting to get Debbie re-hired, taking down Colton—all of it had been a pathetic attempt to redeem himself. And still he was lost, forever back in that park holding a bloody bat.
William puffed and sipped, sipped and puffed. “I am sorry, you know.”
“I know,” Matt said. He stared at the glowing embers of his cigar, remembered the bonfire he’d made of that fucking bat. Smiled at the memory of his father’s rage when he’d discovered the crime…
“Oh Matthew!” Matt’s mom had exclaimed, addressing her husband, “Give it a rest! The boy is never going to play baseball! He’s….”
Her voice had trailed off as she searched for the right words. Then: “He’s a soccer player, and I’m going to his next game whether you like it or not!”
Matt’s heart had swelled! Nora Griffith—his mom—had openly defied her husband for the first time in their long marriage—and had affirmed her knowledge that her son was gay and that she loved him.
True, she had not used those exact words, had retreated into euphemism, but Matt had known what she meant all the same.
It hadn’t been the unconditional love that every gay boy craved, but it had been a start.
Life really was about baby steps, Matt thought. You came to a crossroads and sometimes made terrible choices, and the only way back was one tiny step at a time. Maybe, somewhere the youth pastor was trying to redeem himself. Matt hoped he was.
Matt felt the moon seducing him—or maybe it was the dizzying haze of the nicotine and having been slapped around once too often by the scotch. He set his cigar and scotch aside, stood—and stripped naked.
“Did I miss something, dahling?” William asked. “I thought we’d established that sex was off the table. Not that I’m necessarily opposed to a creative exception.”
“It is,” Matt said, “off the table. Luna is waxing gibbous. A wise woman told me that I need to absord Luna’s healing rays.”
William arched an eyebrow. “Mind if I join you?”
He stood and stripped as well.
They sat there naked, sipping and smoking.
“Slanj-a-va!” Matt said, toasting his friend.
“Slanja-a-va!” William returned.
Saturday, March 30, 1996. 10:02 a.m.
As usual, Debbie’s yard was hard to miss. On one side stood two Harvey-sized Easter Bunnies surveying a scattered clutch of plastic eggs that, but for their colors, were large enough to have come from the set of Jurassic Park.
On the other side of the yard stood a cross outlined in Christmas lights.
Arrayed around the cross were the plastic shepherds and angels who, a few months earlier, had stood vigil at a plastic manger.
Whatever else could be said of Debbie, this much was true: what she lacked in taste, she compensated for with quantity.
As far as she was concerned more was always better.
Matt hesitated at her front door. He had not been there since January. He probably wouldn’t be there now had Debbie not called and asked him for a favor. She needed him to move something heavy.
He felt like shit. He was hungover from last night’s drinking bout with William. Plus, he’d been a lousy friend to Debbie. The last time he’d seen her had been when he’d mediated her reconciliation with Nicholas.
He’d known then that he had to come out to her, had told himself he would, but had put it off. How exactly did you come out to a woman whose most life-shattering event had been when her closeted husband divorced her?
So here he stood, weeks later, having daily kicked the can down the road, where each day’s procrastination had made it that much harder to imagine telling Debbie his secret, that much more necessary to kick the can again the next day.
He’d been borrowing time from a loan shark, paying his debt in shame, and the interest kept snowballing.
Debbie’s front door swung open. She bounded out and smothered Matt in her arms. “MUSTANG!”
“Hi mom,” Matt said, his voice flat. He was the prodigal son.
Debbie sniffed his shirt and looked up at him. “Rough night?”
Matt nodded sheepishly.
“Come inside. I’ll get you some coffee and aspirin. That’ll have to do. My cats wouldn’t approve of any hair of the d-o-g stuff in their home.” She gave a quick glance over her shoulder to make sure the cats hadn’t deciphered her spelling.
Matt chuckled.
Debbie directed Matt to take a seat on the couch while she fetched the coffee and aspirin.
She raised her voice while banging around in the kitchen.
“Growing up in a teetotaler family, I never knew what that meant: ‘hair of the d-o-g.’ Then, towards the end of my marriage, Nicholas started drinkin’ heavily.
That’s where I learned it—that phrase. Looking back, I think he was under a lot of stress because of… well, because of who he was.”
“Do you think that’s why?” Debbie asked, returning to the living room and handing Matt a cup of coffee. “Nicholas’s drinkin,’ that is?”
Matt shrugged. It was odd hearing Debbie talk about her gay ex-husband.
They sat on the couch while Matt waited for his headache to abate.
He tried petting Cleopatra, but she retreated to Debbie’s lap and stared at him—with her one good eye—accusatorily. Butch and Sundance, who had never warmed to him, perched atop the back of the couch, tolerating his presence in that half-lidded, dismissive “you-never-fooled-me” cat gaze.
“Congratulations on your election!” Debbie said. She was all smiles and twinkling eyes, not a hint of reproach for his weeks-long absence from her life.
“Thank you.”