36. Pass The Fruit Crisp #2
How was this his life?
Dinner came too soon.
He hadn’t spent nearly enough time with Cashew, hadn’t had the chance to talk to Jonathan who was working late shift, and had barely had time to shower.
But suddenly, it was dinner, the moment of truth. It might be—no, it definitely would be—awkward, but his mother had promised it would also be okay, and yet for some reason he felt undecided between running away, throwing up, and going to his room.
No.
Grownups with jobs, mortgages and significant others did not run off to their rooms, so he joined his family at the table and nodded and passed the food as required.
He lifted his knife and fork and started on the plate in front of him, letting the others’ conversation drift across the day.
Despite the July heat, his mom had whipped up a roast chicken with rosemary salt-crusted skin, really good sauteed green beans with bacon, so good he was going to ask her to explain how she made them, and his father’s favorite, smashed red potatoes.
Connor had reprised his childhood role of crushing each nugget-sized boiled potato with the bottom of a water glass, then peppered them before his mother roasted them to blacken up the edges.
And she’d popped the apricot crisp in the oven as soon as she’d pulled out the chicken. How had she done all this?
He took a gulp of water and looked around the table.
Jess gave him a wide-eyed, eyebrows-raised nod, appearing to barely restrain herself from flashing a thumbs-up.
His mother might have brushed her hair before dinner, and she’d definitely changed her shirt.
It gave her the look of a mom in a pharmaceutical ad.
“Chicken’s good, Mom. Really good.”
Three faces looked at him. No one spoke. Under the table, Ribby nudged his leg, but he wasn’t going to get food unless someone broke the rules. Everyone took another bite of something. How was his father not asking suspicious questions?
He couldn’t endure more silence. He wanted to say it would literally kill him but imagined Jonathan’s face when he misused that word. “So, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow, Dad?”
His father looked at him and smiled weirdly wide and showed his teeth, then sort of paused. While everyone stared, he blinked a couple times. “That’s a great question Connor. I really appreciate it when you talk to me. I mean, I like to talk with you. About anything. We can talk about anything.”
Jess coughed into her napkin.
“If you need more water, Jessica, take yourself to the sink.” His mom sounded steely.
In the pause, Connor looked around the table yet again. His mother and sister were leaning forward and staring at him. His dad was looking at his plate, and a few extra lines creased his forehead, but maybe those were left from wearing a hat all day.
He didn’t think he was mistaken to assume expectations of a big statement from him had been raised well before dinner had been set on the table.
Jess made jazz hands. He mouthed what the fuck across the table at her at the same time his mom swung her napkin at his sister.
He cleared his throat. “So, perhaps you’ve already heard this, but I’m gay.”
Silence.
“That’s me. Gay. Always have been.”
His dad looked at him and opened his mouth to speak. Connor felt like he could see words turning over inside his father’s head, reminding him of a power take-off shaft spinning and spinning without having first been hooked up to anything. All those splines rotating into a blur.
Connor waited, trying to ignore the churning in his stomach.
His mother had promised. She’d promised, and she was his mom.
Then his dad also cleared his throat. “I love you. Your mother and I both love you. We’re glad you trusted us and uh, that’s, ah, that’s all cool. Yeah, that’s cool.”
He glanced at Connor’s mom, and Connor caught her nodding at his father before she picked up her glass of water.
“Whoa, totally a spontaneous statement of love and support there. Not rehearsed at all.” Jessica wasn’t even trying to stifle her laughter. “Well done, Dad. You’ve nailed twenty-first century parenting.”
That broke through, and his dad lifted his hands and shrugged in a familiar gesture.
“What was I supposed to say? Connor used to ride wearing a red sash, a plastic sword, and some of Grandma’s pins because he wanted to be one of those royal princes.
This took me two minutes to think about when your mother said—”
“David.”
“They know you told me, Jennifer.”
“Look at this full-naming going on here.” His sister wouldn’t keep her mouth shut.
Ribby had apparently had enough of being ignored, and he crept out from under the table to beg more openly. Connor immediately reached for his ears, but Ribby went directly to sniffing his fingers.
His dad stabbed his fork into one of the crispy flattened potatoes and shoved it in his mouth. “Connor’s gay. Sun will come up tomorrow. Herd has to eat. And maybe now someone in this house will have a date and make your mother happy. God knows it’s too much for me to do on my own.”
His glare bounced between Connor and Jessica both, then he ate another potato.
His dad was good with this, it seemed, all good, so he felt empowered to say, “I am seeing someone, by the way. Since June. It’s kind of serious.”
Clearly his mother had already told his father that, too, because he nodded and put a lot of green beans in his mouth.
“Has Connor shown either of you photos of his boyfriend?” Jess never butted out.
“Oh!” His mother looked at him eagerly. “I should have asked.”
He shot his sister the evil eye, but she totally didn’t care and didn’t even shut up. “He’s hot. Looks really young, too.”
“He’s twenty-seven already! That’s older than me.” Jonathan would love to know all that skin care had paid off.
“Jessica Marie, stop trying to cause trouble.” His father weighed in, then ate more chicken.
“Full-naming!” Connor was happy to lob the comment back at his sister.
Jess ignored that. “And I looked him up. Guess what, he used to be a figure skater.”
”I told you that.”
“Well, I looked up his competition videos.”
“Like the Olympics?” Now his mother sounded really excited and his dad looked confused.
“No, Jonathan didn’t make the cut for the Olympics in 2018, and then with the pandemic, he stopped skating to finish college. He competed mostly in the US and Canada, some Junior Worlds, a few times in Europe. He never got to a Grand Prix.”
Jessica’s expression should have warned him. “Oh, I was really hoping you would mispronounce that, Connor. Really hoping.”
He spelled the letters p-r-i-x in his head and realized what she meant a second before she added, “I wanted to hear you make it rhyme with the breakfast cereal.”
He immediately felt himself turn red.
“Jessica!” That was his mother, but his father looked a little uncomfortable, maybe thinking about the stereotypes of skaters.
“Now Jonathan’s a librarian in Eugene,” he hastened to divert the conversation.
“Oh, that’s perfect!” Connor’s mother had one hand pressed to her heart and was leaning across the table toward him, probably as relieved to ignore Jessica as she was excited to hear more about Jonathan. “A librarian! Connor, you love books.”
His mother could hang a relationship on anything. Two gay men who liked reading, trigger the fated mates alert.
“When can we meet your Jonathan?” his mother asked.
“Yes, Connor, when can we meet your boyfriend?” Jess parroted.
In the unexpected pause while they waited for his answer, Ribby yawned loudly and far too close to Connor’s face. “Toothbrush tonight, dude. We’re doing your toothbrush.”
“Ask him down for next weekend.” Abrupt silence followed his father’s words.
Connor, his mother and sister all stared at the head of the table.
“It’s River Days. Good time for a visit.” The older man kept his gaze on his plate, lifted a fork of glistening thigh meat to his mouth, and chewed slowly. He looked almost smug when no one else spoke. “Just putting that out.”
“Yes, Connor, ask him for River Days!” His mother had caught the crazy now.
And his sister was grinning. “Yes, Connor!”
“I’ll ask. But he might—I mean, he might not really—”
He started to lift his hand and realized he had no idea how to finish the sentence in a way that didn’t throw Jonathan under a bus, as if his boyfriend wouldn’t want to meet his family, or insult his family as not being good enough to meet Jonathan, so he shut up and dropped his hand.
After a breath, he continued, “He has a kitten. He’ll have to find someone to watch it.”
Lily or even Lauren would watch Pawsley in a heartbeat, but at least this way they had an out if Jonathan didn’t want to come.
“I’ll ask him.”
What a fucking plot twist. Now he had something new to worry about.
Connor and Jess offered to clean up the kitchen, but their mother told them to take a walk because she and Dad were going to do it together. Hot date with a sponge, she said, and that guaranteed they fled out the back door.
The swifts had left off swooping after insects, so he and Jess were the only things chasing away bugs from their arms and faces as they sat at the picnic table.
Connor heard the nightjars call in the close-by dark, their poor-will, poor-will, poor-will-low song one that he remembered listening to through his open window.
He’d never seen one of the elusive, tiny gray birds, but their song was part of his childhood.
Jess had apparently been quiet as long she could endure.
“What the actual fuck, Connor, ten minutes after coming out, they practically order you to bring a guy home to River Days. Mom is probably already on the phone with Aunt Rebecca, bragging, and even though I still live here, I am never, ever going to be the golden child. I will not let you forget this.”
There were a fuck-ton of Rebeccas and Beccas in his life right now.
“Duh. I’m not going to forget I’m gay.” He couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands. He needed a stick or a pencil or something to twirl.