Chapter Forty
TAD SHUTS off the car. Bitter cold immediately seeps in from outside. It’s unseasonably frigid for the end of February, and Mom reminded him multiple times to make sure he had blankets in the car in case he stalled along the freeway and enough hand and foot warmers so he didn’t get frostbite in his extremities—and was his coat warm enough? Did he have a hat and scarf?
The back seat is piled high with blankets. A single duffel bag packed with clothes for one night is beneath them. Maybe it’s dumb, but Tad likes doing these little things for his mother.
“You doing okay?” Lewis asks, sliding a hand onto Tad’s thigh.
“Um, no?” Why did that come out in a vocal register he hasn’t hit since he was pre-pubescent? Tad concentrates on his breathing, because if he isn’t careful, he’s going to spiral into a panic attack. That’s why he drove. Lewis offered, but Tad said he needed something to focus on for the hours between Manhattan and Watertown.
“No,” he tries again—as a declarative, just to prove he can.
Lewis squeezes his leg. “What do you need from me right now? What’s the best way for me to be there for you?”
Tad doesn’t say, wrestle me into the passenger seat and drive us out of here before my parents realize we’re sitting in the driveway. He counts seconds as he takes deep, grounding breaths, holds them, and lets the air out slowly. “Just be ready for me to be a complete mess.”
There’s such love in Lewis’s eyes that Tad’s heart slows. His lungs open and make it easier to breathe. “I’ll be right here,” Lewis says.
Giving him an appalled look, Tad says, “What? Right here? No—it’s freezing!” He sounds like his mom. “Come in with me.”
“You want me to? You’re not just worried about me getting cold?”
“I want you to.” Tad kisses the back of Lewis’s hand. “Don’t hate me, but I’ll have to introduce you as my friend. Until I. You know. Tell them.”
“I could never hate you, baby.” Lewis’s voice is fierce. “Never. If you need to tell them I’m your friend, that’s what you need. I’ll do anything you need.”
Tad squeezes his hand—maybe too hard, because Lewis’s smile gets a little fixed. “Thank you for coming with me,” Tad says.
The front door is unlocked. When they step inside, Tad calls, “It’s me!”
“Oh!” comes Mom’s exclamation from upstairs. The TV is blaring in the basement as usual. What sport is even on in February?
The stairs creak as Mom descends. Her arms are already open to hug him before she gets to the bottom, but when she spots Lewis, she stutters to a stop and says “Oh!” again.
“Mom, this is Lewis.” Tad does his best to keep his voice from shaking. His stomach is in knots, his heart is racing, and there are damp patches under his arms.
“Well, we’re happy to have you, Lewis.” Mom gives Tad a questioning look that she probably thinks is subtle.
He hugs her. “He’s my….”
Friend? Is Tad really going to say that? Lewis may be okay with it, but that doesn’t mean Tad is. “He’s… er, Lewis,” is what comes out of his mouth, like that’s any better.
Lewis holds out a hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Pierce.”
“Kathleen, please,” Mom says, shaking his hand. “How nice of you to drive up with Tad to keep him company! Do you need a place to stay? We could make up an extra bed.”
“We’re actually staying at a hotel, Mom,” Tad cuts in. “Both of us. I didn’t want to put you out.”
She looks confused. “We have the space—Lewis can stay in Walt’s room. I’m sure you can cancel your hotel rooms.”
Sweat sticks his shirt to his back. Maybe he should let this go.
Except if he can’t hold the line on not spending the night here, how is he going to hold the line on anything that matters? It’s time to start asserting himself with his family. It’s time to stick up for himself and to stop worrying they won’t love him if he makes them unhappy. If the cost of their happiness is his unhappiness, their love isn’t worth having.
“Thanks, but we’re going to stay at the hotel,” Tad says.
Mom looks disappointed. “Is it one of those places that won’t give you the deposit back if you cancel with less than twenty-four hours? Which hotel is it?”
“It’s not about the money. It’s just….” Tad’s brain spins uselessly. Now he knows how his work computer feels when he loads too many flat plans and pages in his magazine editing software. “That’s just what we’re doing,” he finishes. When he takes a chance and darts a look toward Lewis, the pride on Lewis’s face bolsters him.
Before Mom can object about the hotel again, Tad says, “I actually wanted to talk to you and Dad about something.”
“That sounds serious,” Mom jokes. When Tad swallows hard, her smile fades to concern. “Oh, honey, is it—what’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine,” he says firmly. Tries to say firmly. “Just want to talk.”
“I’ll get Dad,” Mom says. She looks scared. This is going great. “We can talk in the living room.”
Tad leads Lewis to the living room and almost motions for him to take a chair while Tad sits on the sofa out of stupid, self-hating habit. Instead, he forces himself to sit on the floral-patterned loveseat, holding out a hand for Lewis to sit next to him.
Leaning close, Lewis says close to his ear, “You’re doing great.”
With a breath of only mildly hysterical laughter, Tad replies, “I’m not, but thanks for saying it.”
When Dad appears in the living room with Mom, Tad feels faint. There’s still time to back out, but Tad stands and says hi to Dad. Handshake, back slap, et cetera. Lewis’s presence seems to confuse Dad but all he does is eye him.
Mom and Dad sit on the sofa and Mom asks worriedly, “What’s wrong, Tad?”
“Nothing’s wrong!” Tad wipes his palms on his jeans. “It’s not a bad thing. It’s….”
His parents stare. Helplessly, Tad’s eyes find Lewis’s. He centers himself in their whiskey and sunlight brown, the little crinkles at the corners that are going to turn to fuller and deeper laugh lines as he gets older.
And oh, how Tad wants to be around for that. This, right now, is something that has to happen, or he doesn’t think he’ll get that chance. Lewis deserves someone brave.
Tad takes a deep breath. “I’m gay.”
A second ticks by, then another. Mom has a weird, fixed smile on her face. Dad looks… still kind of confused. Tad might as well burn everything down.
He grabs Lewis’s hand tight and holds it up for his parents to see. “Lewis is my boyfriend.”
Mom jerks her head to look at Dad like she thinks he’s going to be able to explain. Like maybe she thinks this is a joke he and Tad are in on together.
Dad’s the first to break the horrible silence. “Are you being funny?”
“Um.” Tad’s hairline is damp, his skin icy. When Lewis squeezes his hand, he manages to answer. “No. I’m, um. Very gay. I like men.”
Dad glances at Mom for guidance. It’s impossible to tell if she even notices—she’s staring at her lap, fingers clasped together and knuckles white and bloodless.
The helpless look on Dad’s face reminds Tad of himself one of the times they camped in the Thousand Islands. As they rowed to Canoe-Picnic Point, Tad and Walt in one canoe and Dad in another, Tad fumbled his paddle and couldn’t grab it in time before it splashed into the water. That hapless moment where he just sat, gaping at his paddle floating on the surface, sunshine yellow against the greeny-brown-blue of the water, as Walt’s paddling in the front of the canoe carried them farther away.
Of course, Dad always kept his eye on them, so when he saw what happened, he swung around and retrieved the paddle. Problem solved, paddle rescued!
Now Dad’s the one looking for help, but this is a lot bigger than a wayward paddle.
“Like those Schitt’s Creek kids?” Dad asks.
It’s not the time to correct him that David is actually pan, so Tad nods, his mouth dry.
“Well.” Dad clears his throat. “Well, if that’s what makes you happy.”
The words hit Tad like a punch to the chest. His next breath is more of a gasp, like he forgot how to breathe. There’s a temptation to take this faint… praise? and consider it support, because it could be worse. Dad could have shouted slurs and told him never to set foot in this house again.
He makes himself wait until his breath is back—sort of back—before saying, “It’s not really about whether it makes me happy or not. It’s just who I am.” The pressure from Lewis’s hand increases. “But,” he adds, and now he does look at Lewis, “I am happy.”
Pride doesn’t really describe the expression on Lewis’s face. He looks fierce and adoring, and god, Tad is so happy he made a stupid, horny decision that night in Vegas. Lewis has changed his life.
Dad looks at Tad, then at Lewis, then back at Tad. He nods. “Okay.” There’s a gruff note to his voice. “Lewis? Lewis. Never thought I was going to meet my kid’s boyfriend, but I guess that’s life.” Even though they already met, he pushes himself off the sofa and holds his hand out. “Bill. Don’t know if I said that before. You treating my kid right?”
Gamely, Lewis shakes Dad’s hand. “Nice to meet you, Bill. I hope so, but you probably should ask Tad.”
That seems unspeakably awkward for some reason, so Tad just volunteers, “Yes! Yeah. You are. I mean, he is.” When Lewis looks at him again, Tad wishes he could pull him into a hard kiss. Baby steps, though. First, it would be nice if both of his parents would say something.
“Mom?” Tad asks hesitantly. “You, um… you haven’t said anything.”
The skin over her knuckles is stretched tight. Dad says, “Kathleen.”
“What? Oh!” She looks up, and though her gaze lands in the vicinity of Tad, she doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “What your father said. If that’s what makes you happy.”
Tad doesn’t realize his heart had lifted with Dad’s reaction until it plummets again with Mom’s.
“I mean, yeah, I’m really happy right now,” he says.
She nods.
Then she nods again.
Then she says, “I just don’t understand how you could be gay all of a sudden?”
Somewhere in his digestive tract, his small intestine knots itself around his large intestine. “I’ve always been gay.”
“But you’ve never—” Her lip trembles. “What about Sydney Clark?”
The one girl he kissed in high school to try to turn himself straight? “Mom, that’s ancient history. And we were just friends. I was gay then too. I’ve always been gay.”
“But if you only found a boyfriend now, maybe you’ll change your mind.” She sounds hopeful.
There’s a buzzing at the edge of Tad’s awareness and he finds himself concocting an elaborate fantasy where a giant swarm of bees is approaching and he’s very allergic so he has to get out of here right now. “I’ve had boyfriends before,” Tad says, which is better than I’ve had sex with six men in my life and even when it hasn’t been great it’s never made me want to try sex with women. “I just never told you.”
He’s not going to ask if she’s upset. He’s not. It’s her problem if she is, and it’s definitely not his responsibility to coddle and comfort her through his coming out.
“Are you upset?” he asks.
“No!” Mom objects. Tad really wants to be imagining her defensiveness. “You know how much I love you. How could you think I’m upset?”
“You seem sort of upset.” Tad’s voice shakes. Maybe this is good enough. He told them, and nothing really horrible happened.
But then Lewis squeezes Tad’s hand hard enough that his bones creak. It’s probably driving Lewis crazy to sit here silently. He said on the drive that he’d do whatever Tad wanted him to—either speak up or keep his mouth shut. Tad said he needed to do this on his own.
What he didn’t say was that he had to do it on his own because he wants Lewis to be proud of him. He wants Lewis to see that he’s the kind of man who will stand up for himself—and stand up for them.
“I don’t really get why you’d be upset, Mom.” Tad straightens his shoulders and looks her in the eye, even though he feels like he’s going to throw up.
“I told you, I’m not . It’s just a lot to take in! And you brought your—” Her eyes skitter to Lewis. “Don’t you think this should have been a family conversation? The three of us could have worked through this.”
Tad tastes bile and metal. “Worked through what?”
Mom’s mouth opens and closes a few times, and finally she says, “This is just a shock. I wish we were talking alone.”
“Hon, I don’t think talking just the three of us is going to change his mind. It’s like he said, he’s always been gay,” Dad—Dad!—says.
“No, I—of course I don’t think that, I just”—Mom’s talking fast now—“this is so much all at once… I always imagined a normal life for you, Tad, and you have to understand what it’s like to suddenly have that taken away—”
Finally, something snaps inside Tad.
“I didn’t take anything away from you!” Tad stands and immediately regrets it, because his knees wobble and almost give out. But Lewis is there, standing next to him and holding him up. “And I’m not going to apologize to you for being gay! I’m not going to apologize for bringing my boyfriend here! I’ve been forcing myself back into the closet every time I’ve visited or talked to you. I’ve been fucking apologizing for my existence for the past twenty years and I am done. I didn’t do anything wrong. This is who I am, and how dare you say I’m not normal when I have someone who makes me happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life? How can you sit there and say you love me and then tell me I’m not normal because the person I love is another man?”
His voice gives out on a crack. He feels light-headed. When was the last time he took a breath? He’s having trouble getting one now, and he realizes he’s headed straight to panic attack city.
He starts hyperventilating and turns away from his parents, pulling Lewis with him. “Let’s go,” he manages to choke out.
Dad follows them. As Tad pulls the door open to a blast of arctic air, Dad says, “Give her some time, Taddy. Of course she loves you.”
Tad makes a noise that isn’t words. Awkwardly, Dad pats him on the shoulder.
Then, even though the door is wide open and flooding the house with cold, he wraps his arms around Tad in a real hug. Tad can’t remember the last time Dad hugged him. “I love you, kiddo,” he says gruffly. “Mom does too. It’ll all be fine.”
“Love you too,” Tad manages. “And um. Sorry for swearing.”
He doesn’t believe it will be fine, but he can’t make the words come out.