Page 37 of Summer Lessons

Skipper squinted back. “I had to see his driver’s license. We did not suddenly grow close and bond because it was four guys in a hotel room. But still, yes, I do know his first name is Terry. I know his dad left when he was still a baby, and I know his mom’s a piece of fuckin’ work.”

Oh good. An opening. “Mm… could you maybe, you know, define that a little more specifically for me?”

Skipper chewed his rice thoroughly and regarded him with suspicion. “I need to know why you’re asking.”

Mason took a bite of his own curry—he’d gone with half green and half pumpkin and was wishing he’d gone with all pumpkin, because it was delicious. He swallowed and wondered how much to trust this sweet young man who had, thankfully, not tried to have him hung out to dry for sexual harassment.

Well, when he thought about it that way….

“I’m… well, we’re sort of involved?” Oh yeah. That was mature.

“Sort of?” Skipper frowned at him.

“See, that’s my problem too.”

Skipper’s frown was not unfriendly—it was more… contemplative. “Well, I didn’t know he was gay, but Richie had a feeling, so I’m not really surprised.”

“So, he’s not… out?” Mason had figured this out for himself.

Skipper shook his head. “See, that’s….” He flailed with his fork, flinging rice indiscriminately. “It’s that whole….” He flailed again. “See, Richie and I were doing it for weeks before we even said the g-word.”

“Goal?” Mason was actually busy ducking rice—it was the only thing he could come up with.

“Gay, Mason. I mean, thing about guys like me and Richie? Sixty years ago and we wouldn’t be working in an office. We’d be working in a factory or a mill or someplace. World changes and we end up in IT—but we’re not suits. We’re not you. There’s this whole… thing—you know and we don’t.”

Mason closed his eyes and tried to think like someone hehadn’tgrown up with. “Schipperke—”

“Likethat,” Skip said triumphantly. “Like what that damned dog is called! Like how to wear a suit—”

“My dad taught me—”

“See!” Skipper bounced in his seat—and he wasn’t a small, bouncy man.

“Skip, I’m still not—”

“Money, Mason. But not just money, because I met some of Carpenter’s rich people, and they were douche bags.”

“I’m really starting to hate that stereotype,” Mason muttered.

“But see, you’re the good kind of stereotype. You send your secretary down with TheraFlu. You agree to be on my soccer team even though we’re just a bunch of hosers who like to get dirty. You’re a nice guy. But….” Skipper closed his eyes and shook his head like he was coming to a reckoning. “My mother drank herself to death in our apartment, Mason. While I was in school. I had to get a job at a burger joint so I could eat, and all I ate was burgers, and I was a mess! Now I’m not saying everybody don’t—doesn’t—have their baggage. For all I know, your pain is way worse than mine—”

“No,” Mason said numbly, thinking there wasn’t enough Thai food in the world. “Not even.”

“Well that’s good to hear, because mine is bad enough. But guys like Jefferson, like Richie and me, that’s the hand we’re dealt, and we don’t have a safety net to help us get our shit together in a paper bag. So whatever Terry is dealing with, he’s not used to help. He’s not used towordsthat’ll help. All he’s used to is what he’s got, and he might not even have a picture in his mind of anything better than that.”

Mason’s turn to flail. “Movies—television, books—”

“Well, yeah. But I watch shit blow up on my TV and that never happens in real life. For all I know, those TV people in happy families are just that—TV people.”

Mason found he had to still his breathing, and suddenly words—hateful words spoken by the people Ira used to invite to their dinner parties—hit him full-on. Things likebackgroundandeducation, uttered in tentative tones, like these things were lacking in whomever they were talking about. For the first time in his life, Mason realized what wealth and privilege really were.

And that there was a barrier between the people who had them and the people who didn’t.

The barrier wasn’t money itself, like most people thought. It wasresources—it was the belief that the world out there could help you instead of just kick you in the teeth.

This was the thing that he had and Skipper and Richie and Terry did not.

It was the thing Carpenter had been trying to tell him.