Homework

Chapter 2: Dinner for Three




 

Justin

It’s nearly six when I get the text from Brian. He’d sent it around 4.30, but I was in a good place with the love&hate painting that I want to have ready for the Warhol and I totally lost track of the time.

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t just that I was completely lost in my work, maybe part of it was that I just didn’t want to deal with things for a while; didn’t want to deal with Brian dealing with Lindsay’s latest drama. I guess some people think that it’s all Brian’s family shit and the damage it did that are the most difficult things to get past in our relationship. But they’re wrong; the most difficult stuff is the emotional damage his friends have done, and are still doing a lot of the time. Sometimes I just need to escape from it for a while; and I guess that’s what I did this afternoon.

Anyway, the text said he was on his way to pick up Gus and what did I want for dinner?

Shit!

Gus. He needs to eat soon or he won’t be able to get to bed on time.

I call Brian and he sounds kind of frazzled when he answers. But there’s no use asking if he’s okay – that’s the sure way to set his teeth on edge and bring out that bitter, sarcastic side that neither of us needs right now. So I tell him I’m on my way home and ask if I should get food on the way. He says that he’s ordered delivery and that it should be there soon. I wonder what he’s ordered. I hope it’s not Thai – that could be too spicy for Gus. Oh, well! I can always do some scrambled eggs for him.

“So, you’re okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” I tell him. “Of course. I was just working.”

“Good,” he says. “Good.”

And something in his voice, when he says just that one word, makes me realize that the reason he sounds so frazzled is because he was worried about me. And maybe worried about my reaction to the Lindsay stuff.

Of course, he can’t admit that.

Or even admit that he would have appreciated me responding to his text earlier. Because that would violate a whole chapter of rules from the Kinney operating manual; not just the bullshit ones about not showing that he gives a damn, but rules about preserving independence – mine as well as his; especially about not infringing on my freedom to paint whenever I need to instead of being caught up in what he undoubtedly thinks of as domestic bullshit.

He does make life complicated!

But then so do I.

Because if it had been the other way around – him just not letting me know when he’d be home and not responding to my texts, I’d have been stewing too. And I wouldn’t have been able to admit it either.

That’s not just because saying “I expect you to phone me when you’re going to be late” would totally be like pulling out a matador cape and waving it in front of a very easily agitated bull, but because …

Well, because.

Because deep down I agree with Brian that all that stuff is bullshit. That it’s not necessary. That it’s just crap people tie themselves up in because they’re frightened to feel alone for five seconds of their lives. And because I don’t ever want to be one of those people. I don’t ever want us to be those people.

If that means that sometimes we’re not all that thoughtful of each other’s feelings – at least in the little things – then that’s okay.

With the big things, we’re solid.

And we both need the freedom not to have to sweat the little things.

At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.

But I still feel a bit guilty. Because not sweating the little things when it’s just Brian and I – that’s one thing. I guess that’s okay.

But it’s not just Brian and I right now. And, Brian aside, Gus needs to know that he can count on me to be there for him.

I know how hard it was for him that before JR was born he really didn’t see all that much of Mel during the week. She worked long hours and mostly he’d be in bed before she got home. Linds told me once how much she hated that, how sad it made her when Gus would ask where his Moma was.

I don’t want it to be that way for Gus with either Brian or me. I mean, I know it will be sometimes; that’s unavoidable. But tonight it wasn’t unavoidable. I could just as easily have stopped an hour ago.

I guess I’m still beating myself up over that when I pull up outside the house. It’s not full dark, but it is kind of twilight and the lights are shining from Gus’s room and from Brian’s office/ study.

The house looks …

It looks like home and I find myself shaking a little as the garage doors open for me.

I have a home.

A real home.

For the first time in a long while, really.

Since I was a know-nothing kid.

Since then I’ve had places I’ve lived; even places I’ve loved, like the loft.

And I’ve had Brian. And I guess I always thought of wherever he was as home.

But this … this is truly my home.

Well, our home; which is even better.

I scurry inside and find Brian and Gus in the main room. From somewhere Brian has found a table and chairs. The table is only a small round one – big enough for the three of us and maybe one guest. It’s made of some kind of metal that is sort of shaped to look like bamboo. The top is a kind of bubble glass. The chairs seem to match – well, the frames are the same metal-bamboo style and the seats are made from what looks like woven strips of bamboo.

They are totally nothing like what I’d ever imagine Brian choosing as even temporary furniture, but I’m glad he got something. It’s much better for Gus not to get into the habit of eating all his meals in front of the TV. Then it hits me that they’re really perfect outdoor furniture. We could put them out on the deck or even in the pool area if we wanted.

Once the new glass walls are in, that will be almost like a sun room we can enjoy even during the winter.

But right now my two Kinney men both look up at me with smiles and my heart does this weird little thud-skip.

“Sorry I’m so late,” I say. “What’s for dinner?”

Shit!

I sounded almost like my Dad.

 

*****
 

Brian

He’s home; and if he’s been stewing about Lindsay’s latest fuck up, he seems to have gotten over it now.

I feel something tight-wound inside me loosen a little as he comes up to me and gives me a quick kiss – just a brush of his lips against mine, but … it’s enough.

For now.

Then he’s attacked by the Gus-meister and after much hugging and kissing, they go off to wash their hands while I dish up the lasagna and put the bowl of salad Gus and I have prepared into the middle of the table. Gus was in charge of tearing up the lettuce, so it’s mainly greenery, studded with some cherry tomatoes. But that’s not a bad thing. Jenn gave me a big container of fruit salad we can have for dessert.

I realize that I, who only take notice of what I eat to assess it for carbs and fat, am almost morbidly conscious of the fact that Gus needs a balanced diet. And also that he’s going to be affected by watching what Justin and I eat, so I resign myself to eating at least some of the lasagna.

They come back; Gus is chattering away, like he has been ever since I picked him up from Jenn’s. He’s told me all about his day, and now he’s telling his beloved Dus – how this kid called Leroy or Leonard or something had swapped a sandwich with him at lunch time and how one kid in his class had black hair that was really tightly curled and someone else had bright red hair, except it was really kind of orange, and one girl had hair so long she could almost sit on it and most kids had blue eyes, but some had brown but no one had blond hair like Dus’s and no one had eyes like mine.

He also complained a bit because apparently he’s been learning “weird” spelling in Canada and he spelled ‘color’ wrong when they were writing about what color hair and eyes everyone had.

I’d forgotten that the Canadians spell like the Brits.

We get to hear all about the great time he had at Grandma Jenn’s too. How he had some fruit and then a fresh-baked cookie for a snack with a glass of milk and then they had a little quiet time while he did some reading practice and then he was allowed to go upstairs and try out some of the stuff in his playroom.

“And then Daddy came and got me!” he announces, like it was … I don’t know … a really amazing thing in his day. “An’ we came home an’ Daddy heard my reading and then we made salad.”

“And then you came home,” he finishes happily, and beams at us both.

Fuck me!

My kid is … happy.

He’s happy to be here with me, and maybe at some point I’ll fuck things up, but today … today was a good day for him.

I guess I should hope that he’ll remember it.

But fuck that! I want him to have so many good days like this, so many days that are full of ‘happy’ that they all meld into one another and by the time he’s my age he won’t be able to remember any one particular day as a ‘happy day’ because there have been so many of them.

 

*****
 

Justin

Gus starts to flag a little by the time we’ve finished dinner, so he makes no protest over having a bath and getting ready for bed. By eight o’clock he’s out like a light.

It should really have been a little earlier. We need to make sure that we don’t delay his dinner time just so both of us can be home. If one of us can’t get home on time, the other should just go ahead with Gus’s dinner anyway.

Tonight it was my fault. But honestly, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that Brian’s been home by six from Kinnetik since I got back. Unless we were dealing with some drama or other, of course.

Once Gus is in bed, I make sure that his stuff is ready for the morning while Brian checks his email and does a little work on the computer. He’s already told me that he’ll have to leave really early tomorrow because he has a client presentation and he doesn’t feel properly prepared for it, thanks to today’s dramas.

I wonder if I should bring up the white elephant subject, or just ignore it for tonight. But the thing is that with Gus in the house we aren’t going to be free to talk about this shit all the time, only once he’s in bed.

But it’s been a long day. Nothing is going to happen in the next day or so, I hope.

Well, unless Mel blows a gasket when she hears. She’ll probably try to blame Brian, but fuck that. As much as anything it was her moving them to Toronto that fucked things up so badly. When things went wrong they had no support network, and Lindsay was so busy refusing to admit that they’d made a mistake, that she couldn’t talk about it to any of her friends back here. No wonder she started to lose it.

I just wished she’d been honest with us. But I think I can understand why she wasn’t.

I guess it was kind of like when I was with Ethan.

I couldn’t admit to anyone that I’d made the biggest mistake of my life – not to my Mom, or Daphne or Debbie or anyone; especially not Daphne, because she hated Ethan anyway.

So that meant I was so busy pretending to everyone that things were great that I totally lost myself in all the lies I had to tell myself to keep up the pretense. When things finally crashed and burned it was such a … relief.

I mean, it was devastating, because it made me face what I’d really walked away from with Brian. But at least the devastation was real. I wasn’t living in some kind of shadow world anymore. I’d escaped from all the lies – Ethan’s lies, sure; but mainly mine. And once I’d done that, I could start putting things back together.

So maybe this is the time for Lindsay to do that; a chance for her to work out what she really wants and how she wants to live her life.

I’m curled up in the media room trying to think of what she needs from us to help her to do that when Brian walks in.

“I called the Petersons today,” he announces.

Of course he did.

I try to hold on to the epiphany I’d had earlier about how I would feel if it was Daphne in trouble, and just nod to show I’ve heard him and I’m not going to go ballistic over it. The last thing either of us needs is for this to escalate into some big drama between us.

He comes over and sits on the floor near my feet, staring off into space. I gently start rubbing his shoulders and he almost starts purring.

“I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t going to be any problem with the money for any medical bills. Fuck knows how much it costs per day in that place. I don’t want her to have to leave before she’s ready just because the money runs out.”

Fair enough.

“They didn’t want to know at first, but finally we came to an agreement that I’d pay them the next year’s support payments up front.”

The support payments she shouldn’t even be getting while we’re the ones looking after Gus, but what the hell! It’s a small price to pay for Brian’s peace of mind.

Of course, if she does get out of that place with her head screwed on … well, if not straight, then at least not as fucking off-kilter as it’s been lately – and she takes Gus back, Brian’s going to be shelling out more money, because there’s no way he’d let Gus go without. But that’s okay too.

“And her father says that if there’s any problems with the money, he’ll call me.”

He tilts his head to look up at me then, kind of sideways and upside down at the same time. I just smile at him and nod.

All of this I can live with.

Then he takes a deep breath.

“Her fucking mother wouldn’t even talk to me, but her father says he’ll let us know when she can have phone calls or visitors. It won’t even be calls for at least a week – maybe longer. But once she can …”

He pulls his knees up and starts playing with the seam on his pants. “I think you should handle all that – for a while at least.”

 

*****
 

Brian

I’m leaning against his legs and his hands are working magic on the tension in my shoulders, so I feel it when he goes rigid and his hands still, even though it’s only for a second.

I guess he’s fucking shocked.

So am I.

But I’ve been thinking about this all fucking afternoon; even while I’ve been home here with Gus.

All my instincts are to play some kind of white knight and go charging off to make things better in Lindsay-world.

But that’s not going to work.

It’s like we’re stuck in some weird version of Man of La Mancha, where it’s not the Don who’s deluded, it’s Dulcinea. And by tilting at windmills on her behalf, all I’ll do is to reinforce the fucking delusion.

So it’s best that any contact from … me, us, whatever, is done by little Sunshine.

It seems like a long time before his hands start moving on my shoulders again, and I can tell just by the relieved tone in his voice that he has been stewing about this.

“Should we tell anyone else?” he asks.

Fair question. I guess there might be some fucking expectation of confidentiality, given that we were only given the information because of Gus.

But if it’s left to Lindsay’s fucking parents … I don’t think that any of her actual friends would be told anything at all. She’d just disappear. And she’s going to need support when she gets out – not more pressure to just walk away from her "decadent lifestyle".

“Maybe we should tell Deb,” he says hesitantly.

I turn around then and look at him. We both know what a crap shoot that would be. On a good day, Deb would be the best thing that could happen to Lindsay; on a bad day, she’d be a fucking disaster and would broadcast the poor bitch’s problems across the whole of the Liberty Avenue Network News.

But if anyone can deal with the Petersons …

“What about if we tell your Mom?” I hear myself ask.

Then I want to laugh because he looks totally dumbfounded.

“Look,” I say. “They almost kind of bonded or whatever over the move into the apartment. And if anyone can get through to Mommy and Daddy Peterson …”

He stares at me for a moment, then he grins.

“You so love my mother,” he crows like the little shit he is. “I think you want to marry her. I think you want her to have your babies.”

There’s only one adequate response to that. He's giggling by now and already trying to squirm away from any reprisals, but I'm having none of it.

I grab him and drag him down to the floor with me and all the fucking stresses and problems of the day get consigned to the Trash Bin in my head by the sheer heat and passion and fucking joy of fucking Justin.
 

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