Fallow Park Today Read online

“I know more than you think,” she whispered finally, deciding to forego any effort at apologizing while potential enemies were within earshot.

  “Really? I’m starting to wonder why you are even here. It’s nice that you’ve found an ‘acceptable’ reason to visit me. And I’m certainly glad you’ve finally met my partner. Carl, by the way, likes you. But I am sick with disgust that you are participating in a movie—or whatever it is—like this!”

  She paused, assessing the space between them and Dr. Makepeace. He had continued to walk along the corridor, but she was unable to ascertain whether he was within hearing distance. Alex, the eager to please intern, had already fallen back and was waiting for them to catch up. “Anything I can do to help, Ms. St. Claire?” he called out to them.

  “Just what are you doing here?” Tyler demanded in a well-enunciated hiss.

  “Why, I’m here to see you darling!” she projected in her commanding, sincerity-to-the-balcony voice. “It’s a working holiday.” Beneath her breath, in a guttural tone closer to her real speech she added, “But you and I must talk—and soon.”

  Chapter Seven

  Meredith settled back into the corner of a shabby couch with her second cup of tea. It was upholstered with an orange, velvety fabric, turned shiny in spots from wear and friction. Time and dust had not been kind to it either. She expected a fair amount of life had transpired on the old couch. She assumed that it, like all the furniture original to the park, was now fifteen years old. She wondered how many times Tyler or his partner had fallen asleep on it with the idiot box blaring into the night. The couch was so worn it invited speculation about how much sex had occurred on it and how many times late-night fights resulted in one of the two camping out on it until feelings were soothed and transgressions were forgiven. She did not like to envision her son engaged in sexual activity and hated the idea of him fighting with Carl. Maybe the couch was beat up by the sheer passage of time and ordinary, everyday, perfectly upright use. Or maybe the men were quite the social creatures; she imagined the room full of friends watching the television or playing parlor games. This was a far happier image for her. She could see seven or eight people, young in her mind, perhaps because the suite felt more like a dormitory room than a home, as they sat in the small room, three on the couch, another perched on one of the arm rests. She could hear the gang chattering away, some of them speaking loudly to be heard over the others, while the silent ones stuffed handfuls of popcorn in their mouths. It was a picture of contentment, but, she asked herself, did such evenings ever transpire? There must have been some good nights, some moments of amusement. And Tyler and Carl were resilient, resourceful men who could make the best of their circumstances. But all of this was just idle speculation. It was, after all, just an old couch.

  She turned her attention to her mug. Ordinarily, she was not a hot tea drinker; few beverages appealed to her less. But when her host offered it, she found herself jumping at the change of pace. Carl, just behind her to the left, stood in the archway of the hall that led back to the bedroom and bathroom. Several minutes earlier he had said that he was going to “freshen up,” but since then had apparently been torn between biological need and the inane program Meredith was ostensibly watching with him. Tyler was receiving dialysis and was expected back within the hour. It seemed his health and her schedule were conspiring to prevent her from having a private audience with him. She contemplated burdening Carl with her information. She was certain he could be entrusted with it and would faithfully share her story with Tyler, but she preferred to speak to Tyler by himself first. Witnessing his reaction was a reward she had earned. The conversation, when it finally happened, would be an important memory for both of them for the rest of their lives. Of this she was certain, having played the scene in her head no less than twenty times. As for Carl, she convinced herself it would be best if Tyler filled him in on all the details.

  She had suggested accompanying Tyler to his treatment, but he had vetoed this idea. “As ugly as you think this experience is,” he had said, “The real thing is worse. You’re better off not witnessing it.”

  Perhaps he was right. And almost certainly there would have been no opportunity for a quiet conversation in the infirmary; Tyler described it as a madhouse. She sipped her tea and directed her attention to the small screen.

  “Wheel it in boys,” Dr. Lindsey said on the show.

  “Why, Doctor Lindsey, what in the world…” Dr. Campbell started to protest, but the laugh track drowned out his last words.

  “Some kind of space-age coffin?” the bland side-kick asked. He knocked on the top, apparently a lid to the oblong fiberglass box. “Hello in there,” he said in a deep voice.

  “This, Doctor Campbell, is your isolation tank, or should I say your sensory deprivation tank,” Dr. Lindsey proudly declared.

  The line, by no means funny, was followed by a warm, medium laugh.

  The characters’ jaws dropped as the scene faded out. The station, an International Falls station affiliated with a network, cut to a loud, local car dealership commercial.

  “I knew it was the isolation tank episode!” Carl announced. “How many years later did Dr. Campbell, the actor I mean, kill himself?”

  “Dex,” Meredith said, “just a couple.”

  “The gay suicide the media characterized it to be?”

  “Almost certainly. He was in his late thirties; I knew he had concerns about the test—not that he went into any details. We weren’t that close. We sort of lost touch after we were cancelled.”

  “What about the other guy, his friend? Is he in one of the parks now?” He was unable to wait for an answer, his bladder taking control of his actions at this point.

  “No,” Meredith answered. She raised her voice so he could hear her from the other room. “Straight, it turns out. We were all surprised. He was kind of a pig about it, revealing his genetic test—his results—to the tabloids, to the entertainment media, really anyone who would listen. I wonder if he was as surprised by his test results as the rest of us!”

  Meredith looked for a remote control, but gave up after a minute and stepped to the television to mute the commercial. She settled back with her tea as Carl rushed back, hand towel in hand, shirt half untucked, and fly still open. Not until he ascertained that the commercial break had not ended did he right himself and walk the towel back to the bathroom.

  “Carl,” Meredith began cautiously when he returned and sat beside her, “We really haven’t had much of a chance to talk. Would you mind very much if we didn’t watch the isolation tank episode for the, what, one thousandth time?” Meredith read his silence as disappointment. It never ceased to amaze her that new acquaintances frequently wanted to watch her old work with her. Seldom did they realize she derived zero pleasure from watching herself or focusing on the past.

  She took Carl’s hand in hers. “I can tell you how it ends if you’ve forgotten. Lucy gets stuck because the tank is air tight and her powers don’t work. Doctor Campbell realizes he’s taken her for granted. Doctor Lindsey looks foolish before the Board of Directors. He promises the members of the board that he’ll take a long, long vacation or get his eyes examined, or probably both.”

  “Sure,” he said in a surprisingly agreeable voice. “Truth is, I’m not a big fan of Pots of Luck.” He shook his head at this. “That didn’t come out right. I mean it’s always the same.” He frowned at this, and he seemed determined to continue in this vein until he landed on the right combination of words. “That’s not it either. I’ve seen them all; I know what’s going to happen.”

  Meredith looked at him for several seconds before breaking into a smile and shaking a scolding finger. “Why…you don’t like it at all. In fact, I think you hate it! I’ll bet you always have.”

  “I have,” he confessed with some semblance of embarrassment.

  Meredith laughed. It was a full-throated, healthy laugh. This, she realized, was an important moment. Establishing some kind of rapport with Tyler�
�s partner was not her highest priority this week. It was, nevertheless, something she hoped to accomplish. “Okay!” she exclaimed. “Now at least we’re really talking.”

  Carl was, essentially, her son-in-law, and this was a fact well established between them for more than a decade. This was a fact she knew well—he was part of her immediate reality, someone she reflected upon often, but she scarcely knew the man at all. They were strangers. Circumstances, the demands of Meredith’s career, but mostly the threat of a scandal which infused every deliberate act and colored every conscious gesture, had prevented them from any meaningful communication. There had been the notes at Christmas—a sentence or two scribbled under Tyler’s lengthy passage. She had written frequently, but as with her letters to Tyler, had been restricted by the likelihood that his mail was reviewed by someone else before it was delivered. Now, at last, they were able to speak, could conceivably embrace. She moved closer to him on the couch and settled for holding his hand.

  “Tyler has told me everything about you,” she said. “Well, every specific he considers salient. But our Mr. Travers is a romantic. I know daytime-drama details; I know about your moodiness in the morning; I’ve heard about your pet peeves; I’ve been treated to a monotonous litany of your virtues (‘He’s too good for me,’ ‘I don’t know how he puts up with me!’); I have listened to the (much shorter) list of your shortcomings (‘does he think the toilet paper magically replaces itself?’). Domestic trivia like that. His letters read like soap opera dialogue. They’re wonderful, but his descriptions are filtered through his perceptions. His descriptions of you are more about himself than anyone else. Consequently, I know what he thinks is important about you, but I don’t really know anything else. I’m missing the basics, the cold biography, the episodes and adventures that predated your life with Tyler.”

  She commended herself for selecting this line of questioning, and articulating it as she had. It seemed to strike the right cord with her host. His eyes flashed and a wide grin revealed a smile so white and even it hinted at expensive dental work. (Work performed, she knew, before he had come to live here; such services were unavailable to a resident in an internment camp. But she reminded herself that it was possible he had been genetically blessed. Some people are, she acknowledged.)

  Carl took a deep breath before launching into his story.

  “Your youth,” Meredith encouraged when she began to worry that he had been holding his breath too long.

  He exhaled like he was emerging from the depths. “My youth,” he repeated as though it were the title of a presentation. “I don’t suppose my youth was any more traumatic than any other gay boy’s—or girl’s. Unique and horrifying at the time, but once I met gay people my age, I appreciated how ordinary and inevitably sad it was. Of course, that makes me sound like a classic ‘tragic homosexual,’ and I don’t see it that way at all. I’m about the same age as Tyler,” he said. “Actually, I’m fourteen months, once week, and one day older.”

  Meredith smiled at this. She could imagine the numerous faux arguments in which this detail was recycled.

  “Boys and girls of our generation were like a dying breed,” Carl continued. “Is that too cliché? We were the last of the don’t ask, don’t tell kids. Nowadays, gay kids know everything they need to know right off the bat. I suppose because most of them—the few that there are—are raised in foster care or institutions. Kids of my generation were still sheltered. We were permitted to live on the outside and contemplate what we would be when we grew up and claimed our places in the world. You have to remember, this was something like twenty years before the parks, the contemplation of mass segregation.

  “Until I was five or six years old, I didn’t even know what gay was—straight either; I just thought the pairing off of men with women was the normal course of events. Gay boys, just like straight boys at that age, have no interest in the opposite sex. So I didn’t see myself as different from any other boy I knew.” He paused, sipped his tea, and seemed to reflect on this. “I guess by the time I was eight or so I began to understand that gay people were real. I understood that ‘faggot’ wasn’t just a derogatory term, but a word used to malign an actual person.

  “There was an incident,” he said ominously. “It isn’t my earliest memory—I was at least eight or nine when it happened—but it’s certainly my most indelible childhood memory. I suppose because it came to represent a clear transition; everything that’s happened to me since dates back to this moment. It was an afternoon in third grade. The class had been broken into groups of five or so. We were working on some kind of math problem that involved assembling pieces of paper to form a picture. It was confusing; it had something to do with adding the points written on each scrap of paper to determine how they connected to each other. I never got the hang of it. I’m an Asian guy who has no head for numbers. Whatever. Now try to picture this: five or six groups, about five kids in each group, sitting on the floor with these bits of paper in front of them, all a little unclear what the project was about. We were a bunch of kids, each of us struggling, trying to figure out what was expected of us. It turned into more of a gab session than a learning exercise. The teacher ran from group to group trying to keep the kids on task. In our group, the conversation turned to heterosexuality after one boy announced, “I’m straight! My parents told me so.’ ‘So am I,’ another boy in the circle said, ‘my parents found out when I was born.’ ‘My parents found out before I was born,’ one of the girls said. ‘Mine, too,’ the other girl in the circle said. And then there was silence. Four sets of eyes looking at me, with wheels spinning behind them. I had no reply. I was completely out of my depth. I was so clueless about their statements I didn’t even know how to bluff my way out of it.”

  “Your parents hadn’t told you,” Meredith surmised.

  “Exactly,” he confirmed. “I was so naïve, I didn’t know back then that parents knew their kids’ genetic make-up at birth, or prior to it. I was in third grade. What was ‘genetic’ to me? Straight? Gay? Bisexual? Transgendered? These words meant nothing to me. I think that was true of most kids my age—back then at least. Even those kids that afternoon in third grade. I don’t think they knew what ‘straight’ was, only that it was a word that applied to them, and that it was apparently a good thing to be.”

  “Well, no one has ever figured out what is the proper age to tell a child,” Meredith agreed with a nod. “And back in the day there was a new report coming out of one think tank after another saying ‘tell them early,’ ‘tell them before puberty,’ ‘don’t tell them at all—let them tell you.’ It seemed like there was a different school of thought propounded every week.”

  “I’m glad Tyler was spared all of that,” Meredith observed. “As you know, or at least I hope you know, I gave him up because I was so young. I may sound disloyal to my hometown, but Tyler grew up in what is properly described as the sticks. And because he was born ‘out of wedlock’,” she formed air quotation marks with her fingers to assure Carl this was not her term, “there was no one requesting that kind of testing at the time. I don’t know how much Tyler has told you about his adoptive parents. They were wonderful people, my parents’ best friends, and the sort who would never have voluntarily subjected Tyler to that. But most people in our community didn’t anyway. Testing children was still controversial, and the practice was, if you’ll forgive the term, still in its infancy. I guess he was luckier. He had the opportunity to grow up and recognize on his own that he was gay, and then later verify with the test. I think that’s less traumatic.”

  “I’ve always envied him his childhood,” Carl remarked. “He talks about small town Ohio like it’s some kind of purgatory, but he had loving parents, the Traverses, and you and his secret grandparents across the street. When he talks of those days, he makes it sound like a fairytale.”

  “Yours is a horror story,” she said, acknowledging the contrast, “the kind we used to hear about all the time.” She intended the observation to so
und sympathetic. Instead, she feared, as she heard it out loud, it seemed to minimize the significance of his particular experience. “It’s heartbreaking that so many became numb to the childhood you just described, as it was playing itself out in communities all over the country.”

  “It still happens; gay kids are still born in the U.S.”

  “Though, as you pointed out, in much smaller numbers. Most are aborted, of course.”

  “Even that period is close to expiration,” Carl added. This was a topic he seemed to have given considerable consideration. “Now gay kids are rarely even conceived. They’re still out there, though. They all go to Felker Park; that’s where all the juveniles are housed. But we never hear about any of them—at least that’s my impression from our limited access to ‘the outside world’: newscasts and newspapers. The media stopped chasing that story years ago. To the child living through it, it seems like you are the only one in the whole world dealing with this situation. Maybe now it’s easier for the kids in the orphanages, the group homes, and ultimately out at Felker.”

  “What did your parents finally say to you?”

  “Well, naturally, I went home that day with a lot of questions. My folks weren’t ready for it. God knows why!” he added, raising his eyes to the ceiling. “They knew the day would come. How could they not? The inevitability of that day, that scene, does beg the question why didn’t they have a plan? Logically, they should have spent a little time preparing how they were going to react. My parents…my parents,” he paused again and assumed a pose of reflection. He proceeded with care as though his parents were present and his words might hurt them. “My parents are who they are. My father is sixth or seventh generation American and one hundred percent Chinese. My mother is mostly Korean, with some Japanese. There’s some white—Caucasian—in there, and some African American. I don’t know the percentages. For my father’s family, retaining the Chinese heritage was important. Anyway, here they were, confronted finally with this issue they knew was staring them in their faces since before I was born, and they basically dropped the ball. They were so overwhelmed with the situation—and still so conscious of the fact that they never planned on having a gay kid. They struggled for an explanation, a justification for sending me out in the world with no warning. Suffice it to say, it seemed as though the situation was all about them—and how dare I press them? What right did I think I had putting them on the spot about it?”