26
My parents were up in their bedroom. I took two stairs at a time and barely stopped to knock at their door, I was so anxious to talk to him.
He’d felt like his old self for three days, and here I was ruining everything.
They were sitting on the bed, my mom facing the door, my dad facing her. The flat-screen television on the far wall was on. As I walked in, my mom stood, gently, and walked over to me. She paused for a second, then squeezed my side before walking out. I didn’t have time or energy to try to decipher what the squeeze meant.
What if my dad hates me now? I stood, frozen, unsure of what to do, until he finally turned around. His eyes were glassy.
I tentatively sat down next to my father, unsure of what to say. I looked at the television and there I was, a clip of me throwing a touchdown pass to Rahim. Then it cut to me being interviewed that morning. I looked like a moron, all wide-eyed and goofy. I could hardly recognize myself, and immediately hated that the world had seen me like that. I opened my mouth to speak, but he beat me to it.
“I . . . am . . . so . . . proud . . .” he said, and a tear rolled down his cheek and I started quaking inside.
I can’t speak, I can’t move. All I can do is look at him and listen and allow my body to quake silently.
“That was the bravest thing . . . I’ve ever heard of.” His words were beginning to come easier, and I stared at him, hoping my eyes could tell him what I could not, that I loved him and that I was sorry if I’d hurt him. “You are so strong.”
“Dad . . .” I said, a thousand thoughts blurring into less than one in my brain.
“You’re the best son I could have ever asked for. I love you, Bobby.”
“I love you, too, Dad.” He smiled and I felt a tenderness for my father that I had never felt before. He was crying, for me. Proud, of me. I could never have imagined.
He put his arms around me and then the sobs began, and I didn’t know what to do but sit there and hold him while he cried. I couldn’t remember ever seeing my dad cry before.
“It’s all gonna be fine,” I whispered, but he cried right through my words and it scared me, how emotional my dad had become.
“Well,” he said.
I laughed. “Well what? Of course it’s gonna be fine. My teammates are cool with it, mostly. I mean, some of them aren’t, but mostly they’re cool. I just know it’s gonna work out.”
My dad pulled away from me and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I’m so glad, Bobby. I’m so glad to hear that,” he said.
“Thanks, Dad.”
He kept wiping, but the tears kept falling. “There’s something else, though.”
“What now?” I asked, too quickly. Because as soon as he had said “something else,” I realized his tears weren’t all about me, but my mouth was faster than my brain.
“I’m so sorry about the timing of this, kiddo. I called you before, but then I thought, let Bobby have his day. My news will still be, you know, news in a couple days. But your mother, she’s a smart woman. And she’s right. You have a right to know.”
No, I thought. No more news. “What?” I repeated, unable to swallow.
He swallowed. “You’ve been so brave. And that’s the kind of . . . inspiration . . . I needed right now . . . to face . . . because . . . well, it’s my turn now to be brave.”
“What?” I asked, not wanting to hear any more.
“The tests came back from the hospital,” he said. “Actually, they came back Monday. My blood counts were all messed up. They called me in for a biopsy and I got the results today. I have lymphoma, Bobby.”
I always hated when people said say their lives flashed before their eyes. It had always sounded stupid as hell to me. Life wasn’t just one thing, so how could it flash? Except that’s exactly what it did. My life, all the things that made up my life, flashed like a series of photographs in my mind’s eye.
And I was unable to talk. I tried counting to ten. My head felt so full of things, like I could pop.
My dad rubbed my back. “We caught it pretty early. I guess that’s why my appetite has been so lousy these last few months and why I’ve lost some weight. It’s also why my blood pressure was so low. I’m going to a hospital in Arizona that specializes in a new type of radiation therapy. I’ll stay maybe a week or two. They think if we do it now, I have a pretty good chance to beat this. Not a hundred percent, but pretty good.”
I started to tremble. And the stupid, asinine first thought I had was, Are you going to miss my homecoming game? I knew that wasn’t the right thing to say and I hated that it came into my mind at all.
“I’m going tomorrow,” he said. “Your mother and I talked and we decided to do this up. I could go in for radiation treatment as an outpatient, but I’m going to the place in Arizona where they’ll really work on me.”
“Oh,” I said.
“I’ll leave early tomorrow morning. I’m so, so sorry I’m going to miss your game, Bobby. You know I want to be there, but I feel like I have to get this going. Knowing I’m sick makes me feel like I need to get going on getting better right away.”
I nodded, because that made a lot of sense. “Of course. You have to do that.”
“This can get me better, Bobby. And you’ll have plenty of big games in college, and the pros.” He smiled when he said that, so I did, too.
“Right,” I said, a stabbing pain behind my eyes. “Okay. Right.”
“God, am I proud of what you did yesterday and today,” he said. “That’s just about the bravest thing I’ve ever heard of. If I can be half that brave . . .”
I started to roll my eyes, but he stopped me. “No, I mean it. Putting yourself out there when you know it could put a big wrench in your dreams, that’s . . . that’s something, Bobby. You have great character and people will see that.”
I didn’t have the energy to correct him, tell him how it all had happened. “And you’re fine with it?”
He took a deep breath and shrugged. “I’ve never had a gay friend before, let alone a son,” he said, laughing ruefully.
“That’s what Austin said. I mean, not the son part. He said he’d never known a gay person and I was like, well, you’ve known me for a long time.”
My father took this in. “Right,” he said. “I guess that’s right. You have an interesting path ahead of you, that’s for sure.”
I realized then something that until that moment I’d never fully understood. I realized that I was my own person, separate from my dad, separate from my mom. And I was gay. I was alone in this no matter how much other people cared, or supported me. This was my thing. We aren’t going to make it better. Like it or not, I’m going to get through this, or not. Myself. The pain behind my eyes throbbed.
“We don’t need to talk about this. It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Let’s just focus on you getting better, okay?”
He wiped his eyes, sniffled, and rubbed his nose. “I think we can do both,” he said. “This is really all going to be okay.”
I nodded, praying he was right. I gave him a hug and he put his chin on my shoulder and kissed my cheek. “I love you, kiddo. Let me get some sleep now, okay?”
I kissed him back and walked out of the room, feeling entirely lost, unsure if I was sad or happy or what I needed to do to make the throbbing in my head go away.
I went down to the porch to talk to my mother.
“Hey, Ma.” I said, sitting down on the other end of the peach love seat from her.
“Hey, Bobby Lee,” she said. She was staring into space.
I inched closer to her. “You okay?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m medium.”
“He’s going to be okay,” I said.
“God, I hope so,” she said. “God, I hope so.”
I rubbed her knee. “Are you still mad at me?”
She massaged my fingers. “No, Bobby. I’m not mad. I mean, I’m glad your father took it all so well. I’m surprised, frankly.??
?
“Me, too,” I said.
“Your father . . . surprises me all the time.”
“I know,” I said. “I thought he’d have trouble with it and you’d be fine.”
My mother laughed a little. “I guess I like to surprise you sometimes, too.”
We sat in silence for a moment. I was playing back Dad’s words. He loved me. He was proud of me. I could never have predicted. And now he was sick.
“Why’d you do this, Bobby Lee?” I turned toward her and she looked at me in the way she does when she really doesn’t understand something. Her lips tightened, and her eyes became tiny slits. Her face looked so small.
“I didn’t mean to, Mom. Really. Finch outed me.”
“I know, darling. But all the interviews?”
I sighed. “If I didn’t, I’d look like the gay quarterback who wasn’t brave enough to go through with what he started. I guess the world will never know that this wasn’t planned. Now I just have to live with it. I mean, I can’t deny who I am, right? And now I guess I can do it up right, I can start being the brave guy Dad thinks I am.”
My mother paused for a moment, as if she was taking that all in. “It’s good your father reacted as he did. I think a lot of my reaction was fear that it would really hurt him, Bobby.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Are you okay?”
My mother laughed softly, a sad laugh. “I don’t know, Bobby Lee. This isn’t what I had planned for you, you know.” I knew my mother was half joking. She often claimed to have planned every aspect of my future. I laughed sadly, too. “I guess I’ll just need to deal with it, won’t I?”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
She sighed. “I think I was just full, you know? You probably don’t know what I mean by that.”
“I think I do,” I said. “I’m full, too.”
She smiled and nodded at me.
“Mom?”
“That’s me.” She reached for my hand. I crawled over to her and we hugged.
“I love you,” I said.
“I love you more,” was her response as she cradled my head in her chest.
The phone rang at about nine-fifteen, and I rushed to pick it up, fearful it would wake up my father.
“Bobby Framingham, please.”
“This is me—he,” I said, correcting myself, thinking of Bryan.
“Hi, Bobby, my name is Vincent Morley. I’m the executive editor of Out & Proud magazine.”
“Don’t know it, sorry,” I said.
He laughed. “We’re the largest gay and lesbian magazine in the country. And we’re about to make you a gay icon,” he said.
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Excuse me?”
“Picture it, Bobby. Your picture on the front of our magazine, maybe shirtless, cradling a football. A huge feature article on you. You’ll be famous. You’ll have guys writing you from all over the world, asking for dates.”
I wanted to hang up on him, or curse him out, but I knew that wasn’t the right thing to do. “Mr. Morley,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I’m not ready for that.”
His voice had an edge to it, cold, calculating. “Why not?” he asked.
“Are you serious? I’m seventeen years old, Mr. Morley. I’m still a—” I stopped myself, embarrassed to be talking to a stranger about my personal life. “I’m seventeen, okay. Isn’t that enough?”
“I’d have to check with legal,” he said. “When do you turn eighteen?”
I hung up on him, my stomach queasy. I looked at myself in the mirror. Bobby Framingham, cover boy. I thought of that, and then thought of Austin’s reaction, and soon I was laughing. Right, good career move, I thought. What was next, Playgirl?
27
Dad has cancer. That night I fell into one of the deepest, darkest sleeps I’d ever slept. I felt my body slipping into it and then free-falling, falling through the bed. Usually that would wake me, but I was too tired.
I kept falling until I hit something that felt like a beanbag and my body splayed out on it. And it seemed like then I would be able to just rest, but then my head began to tremble like it was full of something and I didn’t know how to get rid of it all.
I got this idea that if I could just dampen the thing stuck in my head, I could cry it out of my eyes, and I squeezed as hard as I could to make water, and as hard as I squeezed, my eyes stayed bone-dry. But I wouldn’t stop pushing despite the dryness and then a syrupy drip started pouring down my cheeks and I kept waiting for it to end. But my head stayed full, like the syrup could drip down forever and I’d never be done with it.
When I next opened my eyes, it was just after 11 A.M. It was Friday, a school day, so I was three hours late to school and my mom hadn’t woken me up. Then I remembered Dad.
I got up slowly and it felt like the inverse of Christmas, the opposite of when you want to run downstairs and see what’s there, under the tree.
I went down to the kitchen and my mother was sitting at the table, across from my aunt Roberta. They were drinking coffee. Roberta was a very small woman, with dark graying hair and a huge smile.
It felt so weird, like my dad didn’t live there anymore. What if he didn’t get better?
As I walked into the room my aunt rushed over to me and enveloped me in a hug.
“The average person needs twenty hugs a day,” she said. “Today, let’s go with thirty for you, okay?”
I let her hug me. “We let you sleep in,” my mom said. “You just seemed so out of it this morning.”
“Where’s Dad?” I asked, knowing the answer but not knowing what else to say.
Roberta sat back down. “He’s off to Arizona,” she said.
“How are you doing, honey?” my mother asked, sipping her coffee.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“I don’t know is a valid answer,” said Roberta, standing and giving me the second of thirty promised hugs. I stood there, taking the hug, feeling empty inside, wasted.
“So it’s okay I missed school?” I asked.
My mother took a sip of coffee. “I couldn’t bring myself to wake you this morning. You’ve been through a lot, sweetie.”
I went back upstairs to rest some more and then showered. Everything seemed to take me twice as long as usual, which was weird. At about one-thirty I told Mom and Aunt Roberta I was going out for a drive. My mother looked concerned.
“Where exactly are you going?” she asked.
“Rahim’s,” I said. I hadn’t known for sure until I said it. He always went home on Fridays to rest before games. “I guess I’ll go straight to the game after that.”
My mother looked at my aunt and I realized my mom didn’t want me to play. That wasn’t an option for me.
Roberta looked back at her and something was communicated. My mother said nothing more about it. I gave them both quick kisses and went off to Rahim’s house.
Rahim’s car was in the driveway when I arrived. His mother came to the door and smiled her wide toothy smile when she saw it was me.