November 19th: Nothing Gold

The Knoll at twilight just might be the most peaceful place in the world. Just the grass and the purple sky and the end of the sun... I hug my legs to my chest and rest my head on my knees. This is how things ought to be, I decide. No fatherhood, no marriages, no delinquent nephews, no problems I can’t fix. Just me and something so much bigger than me it’s almost painful to think about.

Next to me, Ty shifts. “This is good, Xavier. This is real good.”

I nod. “I’ll miss this place, someday....”

“Are you guys going to stay here?” he asks. “When you get married?”

I shrug. “Shhh.”

It’s so much better, when you don’t bring your problems. When you can just sit back and sigh and watch the clouds drift through the swirls of grey and purple and pink and blue and every other color, everything no man could ever paint... You get so used to being a cynic, to scoffing and refuting and hating, and then you get here and see this and you think maybe the world isn’t so bad after all... That you just have to accept that it will never look as beautiful in black and white.

Sometimes you get so caught up in everyone else that you forget about yourself. You want to help her with this, or him with that, or just do that one last thing... You don’t let yourself breathe, don’t let yourself learn. You don’t care if you get enough sleep or eat three square meals or have a good day. You define yourself by how you are with other people. And then you get to see something like this, something that is beautiful on its own, that you were never a part of, and you wonder if maybe there is more to you than how you deal with everybody else.

I think it’s the most humbling thing, to understand that the world can go on without you. And I only get that, for a few seconds, sitting here watching the end of the sunset, sitting here watching darkness fall. In ten minutes, I’ll need to be needed again. But for now, it can just be me. For now, I’m just a speck of something beautiful and wonderful, something that could be just as beautiful and wonderful... Without my help.

* * *

My mother is sitting on the couch when I walk in the door. She’s by far the last person I would have expected to see.

“Xavier,” she says softly, putting her magazine down. She pats the seat next to her. “Come here, mí amor.”

I sit down carefully.

Mamá puts her arm around my shoulder. “Mari told me that you must for to tell me something. That something you must tell me is there.”

“Mamá, English. You’ve been here for years, you can...”

She puts a finger to her lips. “Do not try to distract me, Xavier. What is this thing? Do your studies not go well?”

“They’re fine, Mamá,” I sigh.

Her eyes are pained. “Xavier, do not for to hide...”

I stare at her for a long moment.

“I got a girl pregnant,” I murmur.

Her eyebrows lower. “I cannot for to hear you, mí amor.”

“Alice. I... Alice and I are going to have a baby,” I repeat, louder.

She gasps. “No, Xavier... Your school... You cannot for to have...” She cradles her head in her hands. “But you are so young, so... I gave you everything I had to you could have a chance...”

“Mamá,” I say quietly, putting my hand on her back. “Mamá, we can do this, we can figure it out... I can still go to school, later, but...”

“You have a family now,” she says quietly. “You go for to marry this girl and to care for your baby. And you hope he know better to do what... To make good of the opportunities...”

“Mamá, please... This... This isn’t the end!” I protest.

She shakes her head. “Seventeen, you do not to understand family. You do not to understand you must do everything for your family.” She looks up at me, her eyes shining, her face streaked with tears. “Xavier, that baby will look at you, and you... You will understand.”

I groan and close my eyes. “I’m not going to be the poor son of a poor immigrant, Mamá...” I say slowly. “I can still be somebody, I can still do...”

She sighs. “I wanted you for to have better... Your studies, Xavier... They have always been the most important. But now your Alice and your child and your family will be the most. You will not want to continue your studies. The most you want be to feed them and give the child the keys to everything you gave away.”

I lay down slowly and put my head in her lap. She strokes my hair. “You are my boy... You are the strong. You will to be okay.”

But I’m not sure anymore. Alice makes it sound so much easier than this.

* * *

“Hello?”

“I just told my mother,” I say quietly.

Ty whistles. “Wow. How did it go?”

I sigh, staring at the wall. “She told me in fragmented English that my life is fucked up and I squandered all the opportunities she gave me and now I’ll never be anything.”

“God. That blows.”

I nod. “It’s like... I get why Brady ate his gun, now. You want so badly to do the right thing and then everyone who supposedly loves you is telling you that your life is over.” I roll over on my bed and sigh again. “How am I supposed to be a father? I don’t even know what a father is supposed to do.”

“You okay?” he asks quietly. And I know what he means. Are you going to be Brady? You going to do something stupid? Are you trying to tell me something?

“I don’t know,” I say. To all of it.

Ty sighs. “I have to go, man. Dad thinks I’m talking to Garrett.” As if to prove his point, I hear a voice yelling in the background. “Doesn’t want any faggot phone sex in his house.” He laughs. We both know there’s nothing funny. “Pick me up tomorrow morning. We’ll talk.”

He hangs up the phone before I can say anything.

I replace the phone in its cradle and bury my face in my pillow. Downstairs, I can hear my mother crying. But I doubt she can hear me.

* * *

“This baby is ripping my life apart,” I tell Ty as he climbs in the car the next morning.

He collapses into his seat and slams the door shut, then closes his eyes.

“Ty?”

He shakes his head, then slowly, painfully opens his mouth. “Drive.”

His face is still a mess. But not so much a mess that I can’t tell.

“Dude, you’re totally crying...”

He opens his eyes and stares at me. “X,” he says sharply. “Just fucking drive.”

“Where? School?”

He shrugs, leaning his head against the headrest. “Anywhere.”

I look at him, step on the gas, and go. It takes four minutes and thirty-eight seconds to get home.

* * *

Ty’s been asleep on the couch since we got here. He stumbled inside and collapsed. When he wakes up, I’ll make him explain. For now, I can live with my guesses. I’m sure they can’t be too far from the truth.

Life is such a game, sometimes. You have no real control over what happens to you. You just roll the dice and go. You rolled an eleven? Not bad. You’ll do fine. A seven? You’ll survive, barely. A two? You might as well give up now.

It takes you years to figure out how to throw the dice so you’ll get good numbers, the kind of numbers you need to make it through. And then one day, you use your tricks and roll a twelve, and that’s when they tell you the rules changed – twelve is bad, one is good. Sucks for you. Fucking loser.

It’s not fair. When we were ten, our parents gave relieved laughs when we told them we didn’t want to have anything to do with girls. Now it’s suddenly some sort of cosmic sin. The kind of thing your father kicks you out of the house over. The kind of thing people get stabbed over.

Ty stirs, sighing in his sleep. He looks younger, sleeping. I think everyone does. Innocent and fragile and small. It scares me to think that soon there will be someone in my life who is innocent and fragile and small all the time. Who will need me more than anything. Who will expect me to be a father, a man, a role model. Someone who will expect me to know who I am and what I want and how to get it.

How do I become that person, in just over seven months? How do I learn to be a father? What is a father even supposed to do? And how can I think I’ll make a good father when I’ve never really been good at anything, before?

* * *

Ty yawns. “Dad kicked me out.”

I nod. “I know.”

He sits up slowly, stretching his arms above his head. “My mother’s not really going to leave him. She never thought he’d actually do it. Never thought she’d actually have to keep her promise.” He laughs bitterly. “People suck.”

“You can stay here,” I lie. He knows I don’t mean it. Knows that we don’t have the money to keep him here, that we’ll never have the money.

He shakes his head. He knows it too. “I think Garrett will convince his mother... I hope.”

“Yeah,” I say slowly. “Me too.”

“I don’t get why it means so much to people. Who I love, I mean.” He shakes his head, as if trying to wrap his mind around such a foreign prejudice. “It has nothing to do with them. Why should it matter?”

“You’re his son,” I say quietly. “He just wants you to have what he has.”

“And why can’t I have that? Because I’m gay? I can still have a family, I can still be –“

I hold up a hand. “When he was our age, that wasn’t true. All they knew about gay people was that they got AIDS and were sick and promiscuous and...” I shrug. “It’s outdated, but he’s your father, and he wants better than that for you.”

“So how the hell do I tell my father that he’s wrong? That I’m not like that?”

I shake my head. “How do I convince my mother that teenage fathers can grow up to be successful, happy men?”

He shrugs.

“We’re in the same boat, now,” I say softly.

Ty smiles weakly. “Okay.”

And for at least a minute, I think it might be.