Page 77 of Hamartia
As if on cue, my phone vibrates in my back pocket. Lifting it out I see his name.
JH: I am leaving for the airport now. I will dream of you. See you in Tokyo xx
My mom doesn’t miss the stupid ass grin that spreads over my face as I read it over and over and over again.
Thanksgiving at my mom’s is tradition. She’s always cooked for the family and despite how stressful it always appears to me from where I sit drinking beer, she loves doing it. Even when we were in the smaller house, Mom, Gavin, Aunt Rebecca, Uncle Lyle, Gramps and Grandma Jane, and I would crowd around the dining table crammed with enough food for a road crew on tour. I’d only missed two Thanksgivings with the family which I thought was pretty damn great. I was in a rock band. I toured most of the planet. But I still made it home for mom’s mac and cheese, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie once a year. It was birthdays and Christmas I wasn’t great at.
For the most part, it’s normal. My aunt and uncle ask me about the band like it’s a normal job (how are the people you work with, is there health insurance?) which I always find amusing. My niece and nephew—seven year-old twins—are getting close to the age where they’re going to realize what I do for a living and think I’m cool. I’m looking forward to it. There was no gramps and Grandma Jane anymore, even though there’s plenty of room at the dining table in the Granby house now, but it still feels like they’re around because we always talk about them.
I snap a few pictures of mom’s table, the food, the snow outside—which did come down as he predicted—and send them off to him. I work it out quickly and see it’s about 5 a.m. and I know his flight was getting into Seoul late and so I don’t particularly want a reply right away. I want him to be sleeping.
As the table talk amongst themselves I imagine him here, sitting between Aunt Rebecca and my mom as they admire his earrings and rings and style. I imagine going for a long twilight walk with him as the dogs run around our feet, the tip of his nose pinking in the cold. Fuck, I want it. Could I have it? Doesheeven want that? He talked about things that were possible like there were things that weren’t. What did that mean?
Tokyo is everything to me then. It’s almost five weeks away and I’ve been away from him about thirty two hours and I don’t know how I’m gonna do—my brain also works this out quickly—another eight hundred and forty.
After dinner is the usual food coma and NFL game that Lyle and Gavin invite me to watch with them after doing the washing up. Mom and Aunt Rebecca drink wine on the porch, the log burner blazing, laughing like teenagers while I wrap up the leftovers that I’m already eyeing with want.
Mom hadn’t asked me anymore about him. Not last night or this morning while we set the table and laughed about the time gramps had thought the creamed corn had been ice cream and ate it with his pecan pie without complaint. But after everyone is gone and I’m sitting on the porch with a beer, she finds me.
She hands me another bottle and sits down, reaching forward to throw another log into the grate. It crackles and pops, hissing its warmth up into the dark chilly sky.
“I love this house,” she says with a deep sigh. “I think that every single day I wake up here.” She reaches over and squeezes my knee. “I’m so grateful for it. For everything you do, you know that, right?”
I smile over at her. “I’m glad you’re happy here, mom. That’s all I wanted. For you to be happy.”
She was sad for a long time, my mom. Around the time when I cried a lot, I think. I thought maybe me crying so much was what made her sad. But I know now that it wasn’t that, and that maybe deep down it was knowing my mom was so sad that I cried so damn much. It’s one of the reasons I hate Finn. It’s the main reason.
“You’ve always made me happy, Raphael,” she says, like she can read my mind.
Fuck, I always forget she does that. The way I can sometimes feel something before it happens, she can read my mind. I used to think it was because I lived inside her once. But I think it’s because it was just the two of us for so long.
“I’ve always been so proud of you, sweetheart. Every single day. I am sooo stinking proud of the man that you are.”
I’m going to cry again, I think, so I close my eyes and turn my head, groaning.
“Please stop. Too much emotion. No one’s dying.”
“Heterosexual Raphael died, and I’ll miss him. Even if you won’t.” She pouts.
“Jesus! Seriously?” I choke on my mouthful of beer. When I look at her she’s giving me this sad face. “I don’t know how I feel about you talking about my sexuality like it’s a dead relative.”
“Wait until you see my new painting of it. It’s gonna be so incredibly sad. So much death, it’s going to leap from the canvas! Alive but dead, you know? At the same time. It’ll sell for thousands once you come out.”
Then we’re laughing and everything feels fine.Ifeel fine. Everything will be fine. Because no matter what the fuck happens out there, how much Camille is going to hate me, I still have this, with her.
“It’s serious,” she says, as she takes a drink of her wine. “You’re serious about him.”
“I think so. I mean, it hasn’t been long at all. Not really. Not us being…together. But yeah, it feels really serious, mom. I just…” I trail, gulping half the bottle as I stare out at the view. She waits for me to finish.
“You just what?” She prods, gently.
I’m scared if I say this, then it will color him in her eyes, and I don’t want to do that. But I want her advice. Because I think this must be how women often feel in relationships. A little lost. Like men are a different species where the behaviors and patterns are sometimes predictable but sometimes not. Jae and I are the same species, but we’re fucking worlds apart.
“I just…don’t think he feels the same way.”
Mom frowns, like I worried she might. “What makes you think that?”
I’d have to tell her. Everything. About how I’d fantasized and pined over this guy for two years. About how I met him the very same night I met Camille, and yet his was the number I wish I’d gotten at the after show. How I’d studied him and followed his career and socials, maybe even about my disgusting fuck up in that venue bathroom.