Chapter Twenty-Two
BEING IN his parents’ house is excruciating, but Tad learned how to knuckle through this kind of agony a long time ago. The trick is to become a colorless version of himself. It could be worse—he could have a healthy social life to water down and straight-ify. But there’s no social life, so he doesn’t have to pretend his circle of gay friends doesn’t exist. They don’t.
The hard part is biting back the person he’s grown into since he moved to NYC. He’s less funny, less biting, less smart. He doesn’t know how to be less gay, so he just makes himself less of everything.
Imagine if Lewis met him like this. If they’d run into each other in Vegas when Tad was still tagging along with Walt and his friends. Lewis wouldn’t have looked twice at him. Even if he had, Tad would have been sober and way too shy to approach him.
Maybe they didn’t make great choices while they were drunk, but they’re in each other’s lives, and… well, Tad hasn’t really regretted the drunk marriage this whole time. Now that Lewis and him have whatever they have, he really doesn’t regret it. He’ll take as much of Lewis as Lewis is willing to give, because it’s not going to last forever.
Every time he thinks about how it isn’t going to last forever, he wonders why he came up to Watertown for this whole week—which is why he says, “I was thinking I might leave on Friday instead of Saturday.”
Mom looks at him like he just introduced her to her grandchild and immediately murdered them in front of her. “But you always stay until Saturday.”
“I know, I just….” What? I just have stuff to do? Like what? He’s made an art of presenting himself to his parents as someone who never does anything.
Obviously he has to do Lewis, but he won’t be telling Mom.
“Just thinking about traffic,” he finishes lamely.
“If you moved back up here, you wouldn’t have to deal with traffic,” Mom says, not so much a hint as an anvil landing on his head. “You’ve been working from home since before the pandemic, haven’t you? So there’s no reason you can’t move back.”
Nightmare. Complete and utter nightmare. Move back to Watertown? It sounds like a sentence of life imprisonment. “I like the city,” he says.
“To visit ,” Mom says.
“No, to live,” he snaps. He bites back on his tone and scratches a fingernail on the counter. “Mom, my life is there. That’s where I want to live.”
With a defeated sigh, Mom says, “Oh, I know. I just wish there was something that could tempt you to move back.”
Unlikely, and growing exponentially more unlikely with every moment he spends with Lewis Mancini-Sommer.
She goes back to her Thanksgiving prep. She does most of it on Wednesday, and ever since he can remember, Tad has helped. Right now she’s making dough for the pies, and they’ll make the fillings together after that—pumpkin, pecan, and apple. There’s nothing in the world like Mom’s pecan pie. He has no idea how she does it, but when he’s tried to make it at home, it never tastes right, even though he’s the one who always makes the filling here.
It doesn’t make sense, but Tad just accepts it. He wants pecan pie, he has to come to Watertown.
“Do you remember Nathan Pettis?” Mom says as she kneads the dough.
“Um.” Tad scrunches his nose in thought. “From high school?”
“Wasn’t he in your first grade class?”
“Oh, maybe.” Is this a special parent skill, where they can remember everyone their kids ever came into contact with? “He was kind of a jerk.” Yeah, he used to call Tad fag . Their lockers were next to each other in high school, so he had lots of opportunities.
“Was he?” Mom asks. “Well, boys will be boys. Anyway, I was talking to Barb Collins and you know what she told me? Nathan moved to the city a few years ago, and the last time he came home, he brought his boyfriend. Can you believe it? Apparently now that he moved to the city, he’s”—her voice lowers to a near whisper—“ gay .”
It feels like rainbows are shooting out of Tad’s pores. Surely his own gayness is obvious, from the way he’s sitting with one leg crossed, to the way one of his wrists is hanging just a bit limply, to the way he’s gone completely and utterly still.
“Huh,” Tad says, because he has to say something.
“His poor parents,” Mom says. “They must have been so shocked.”
Tad wants to curl inside a shell like a hermit crab. He wants the tide to come in and wash him away. This isn’t the first time he’s heard stuff like this. It barely even hurts anymore.
Okay, that’s a lie. It hurts. But what is he supposed to do? If he argues, he’s afraid the truth will be all over his face, or blaring in a neon sign over his head. Defending the gays is the same as being one of them. And then it’ll be his poor parents that are so shocked.
What would it be like to have parents like Lewis’s? Parents who see their son’s queerness as normal?
Tad is so sick of straightness and cis-ness being “normal.” But he’s not doing everything he can to change it, is he? He’s sitting at the counter in his parents’ kitchen, twenty-nine years old and in the closet, and he’s keeping his mouth shut as his mother dips her toes into some casual homophobia.
He looks at his lap, despising himself. Stupid, hypocritical coward .
Words force their way through his clenched teeth before he can stop them. “It’s not like he’s doing something wrong.”
His stomach rolls sickeningly, and sweat breaks out on his palms. He doesn’t look up. That’s it. He just exposed his secret. Mom will know he’s gay.
“Well, no, of course he’s not doing anything wrong ,” Mom says, as though she didn’t just dolefully sigh over Nathan Pettis’s parents and their tribulations. “But I can’t imagine, your son goes away to the city and comes back dating a man! I suppose that’s normal there, though.”
It’s normal everywhere , Tad wants to say. Instead, he mumbles, “He was always gay.”
“What?”
Tad clears his throat. “The city doesn’t make people gay. Maybe it just helped Nathan realize that about himself, when before he didn’t?”
“Isn’t that the same thing?” Mom says. “He always dated girls, but living in the city made him think he should date men too. Anyway, Tad, I thought you didn’t like Nathan?”
“I don’t. I didn’t. Maybe he’s changed.”
“Speaking of people who have changed,” Mom says, which is such a clumsy segue that Tad is immediately suspicious, “do you remember Jenny Clark?”
No. Then Tad’s brain kicks into gear. “Sydney’s younger sister?”
“Yes!” Mom beams. “I always thought Sydney and you might date. You were such good friends in middle school.”
They were such good friends until it became obvious that Sydney had a huge crush on him, and Tad told himself he had a crush on her too, and they made out because Tad was desperate to be Not Gay. They weren’t friends after that. Her younger sister, Jenny, was still in elementary school the last time they hung out.
“We grew apart,” Tad says vaguely.
Mom pulls a pie plate closer and drapes the rolled-out dough in it. “I want you to keep an open mind, okay?”
Alarms blare in Tad’s head. “About what?”
Mom concentrates on shaping the pie crust. She did something she already knows he’s going to hate, and she thinks if she’s not looking at him, his hurt or anger won’t count.
“I set you up with Jenny. You’re having dinner with her tonight at Vescio’s.”
In the silence, the commercials blasting from the TV downstairs seem extra loud.
“You what?” He heard wrong. He misunderstood. Mom talks about meddling, but she’s never actually meddled at this level. She wouldn’t do this.
“Jenny got out of a serious relationship, and she’s been having trouble meeting people. You just—”
Also got out of a serious relationship, but you don’t know that, do you, Mom, because my relationship was with a man .
Mom hesitates. “You have trouble putting yourself out there.”
“Mom, I’m fine . I don’t need you to set me up!”
“Well, she’s expecting you, and you wouldn’t want to disappoint her.”
Suddenly Tad’s on his feet with no memory of standing. “Text her. Or call her. Or however you set this up. I’m not going on a date with a stranger!”
Looking at him like he’s dense, Mom says, “Tad, dates are always with strangers at first. They only become not strangers after you go out with them!”
Like the stranger he invited to ride a mechanical bull with him. Like the stranger he slept with. Like the stranger he went camping with. And now Lewis isn’t a stranger, and Tad doesn’t want anyone else. Even if Mom knew he was gay and set him up with a man, this would be beyond the pale.
Tad doesn’t want anyone but Lewis.
He’s in love with Lewis.
“I’m not going,” Tad says.
Mom gives him that look of complete and utter Mom Disappointment. How Could You. I Didn’t Raise You Like This. “You might like her.”
“I’m sure she’s fine, but I’m not… I’m not looking for a girlfriend.”
Beautiful! Not a lie. 100 percent the truth. He is definitely not looking for a girlfriend.
“Thaddeus.” Mom pauses her crust shaping. “You live so far away. You only visit twice a year. You hardly ever call. Would you do this one thing for me? I’m just asking you to have dinner with a woman. I don’t see why it’s such an issue.”
Because I’m gay. Because I’m seeing a man. Because I’m in love with him.
His mouth is open and the words are right there. This is it—he’s going to come out.
“It’s not” is what comes out instead. Of his mouth. Because he’s a coward. A spineless embarrassment. “I’ll go,” he adds.
This isn’t the right time to come out anyway. But… what if he walks into Vescio’s, sits down, and tells Jenny Clark he’s gay and he’s sorry for the misunderstanding? And then what if he comes back to the house and tells his parents? Finally, at last, tells his parents who he really is?
Mom pats his cheek. It’s sticky with dough and powdery from flour. It’s the childhood he’s always prioritized over his true self—baking and hominess and the special bond he has with his mother, which he’s always been afraid to destroy by telling her he’s gay.
But if she doesn’t know who he is, how special is that bond?