Back at the house, I filled a plate with food and moved toward the back porch, an enclosed room off the kitchen where I could blow cigarette smoke out the window. The room wasn’t insulated, but putting up with the winter chill was preferable to hanging out in the living room, dodging Aunt Katie. Tommy saw me heading out and quickstepped behind me. “Hurry, before Amy decides there’s something I should be doing right now,” he joked. “Let’s make a break for it.”
Tommy and I were the same age, and as kids we liked to slip away from his bullying brothers and go off on our own, coming up with gentler alternatives to the older boys’ games: bike riding instead of ball playing, gin rummy instead of “I Dare You!” Over the years, on those rare occasions when we were both at a family gathering, we usually found ourselves, without quite planning it, one on one. That day, I had a bottle of vodka and a bottle of tonic at my feet, and Tommy was soon matching me drink for drink and cigarette for cigarette. We made small talk—real estate on Long Island, where he lived, versus in San Francisco—and caught up on each other’s lives—the refrigeration business had indeed been sold, and Tommy was working for a venture capital firm in Manhattan. We even talked a little about the wake. “Don’t pay no mind to my mom,” he said, lowering his voice. “She’s just broken up about it, is all.”
“She’s pretty hard to ignore,” I said. “If looks could kill—”
“If it was you in that coffin, Deirdre would be lookin’ for someone to take it out on, too. You know?”
“Yeah, I know.” It was true, my sister was loyal. Wasn’t that why she had done the hard work of caring for our difficult, declining father, and why she was so frosty with me now—because I’d stayed away? We weren’t always like this. We were allies through high school, hanging out with some of the same kids, bitching about the same teachers, helping each other with homework (she had a head for math, I was better at English). Then Mom died, and Dad sued the hospital, and Dad found me with Eric, and I went off to college, freaked out and heartbroken—and I couldn’t tell you what Deirdre was doing during any of this. In most families, a mother’s death draws the survivors closer, but when we looked at each other, we saw our wounded selves reflected back, and we kept our distance. Years later I finally told Deirdre about Eric. About me. She was more accepting than anyone in the family had been, but I was already living a separate life in New York, while she was dating Andy in New Jersey, pitching her tent in the camp I had fled. I no longer saw her as my ally but as my father’s; her proximity to him seemed a judgment against me. You and your sister push each other’s buttons, Woody would say, listening in on my end of a phone call with Dee that had gone suddenly brittle. I knew I shared the blame; I knew she wasn’t blameless. What I didn’t know was what was left between us.
My conversation with Tommy was interrupted by Amy, poking her head through the back door to complain about his absence. “I’ll be in when I’m in,” Tommy told her.
A few minutes later their eleven-year-old, Brian, showed up at Tommy’s elbow. “Mom wants to know if you’re still smoking.”
Tommy looked at the cigarette in his hand. “Whaddaya gonna tell her?”
“I don’t know.” Brian looked to me for help. I just shrugged.
Tommy roped his arm across Brian’s shoulders. “Let me ask you something. Who took you to see the Islanders last weekend?”
“You.”
“Right. And who picks you up after basketball?”
“You.”
“And who took you and your friends to see The Matrix?”
“Yeah, okay, Dad—you.”
“So next time your mom tells you to go do her dirty work, to bug your dad, your pal, whaddaya gonna do?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re gonna ignore her.” Ignaw huh.
“OKay,” Brian said agreeably. “So, can I try your cigarette?”
“I ever catch you smoking I’ll smack your mouth,” Tommy said with a quick swat at the air. Brian darted back inside.
“Wow,” I marveled. “You rule the roost, don’t you?”
“It takes everything I got, lemme tell ya,” Tommy said through a weary exhalation of smoke. “I work hard. I pitch in around the house. I keep Brian and Lorrie out of the way when Amy’s taking care of the babies. She plays this game, though. Gets them to side with her. She can be a real ballbuster.”
“Maybe you should stop having kids?” I offered tentatively.
“It’s Amy who wants ’em. She wants five. But I’m through. The only times I’ve had sex in the last five years, out pops a kid.” He took a big swig, burped faintly and whispered, “Only time I had sex with her.”
“Whoa, Tommy.” I peered around to see if anyone had been in earshot.
“Oh, come on. You understand. You’re a gay guy. You know what it’s like to mess around.”
“You think so?”
“Look, I work in Manhattan. I know about this stuff. The fags at work—sorry, gay guys—they get a lot of sex. Even the ones in relationships.”
“It’s a testosterone thing. No female hormones to balance things out.”
He looked over his shoulder to see if the coast was still clear. “I use an escort service. A call girl. Classy. Clean. She meets me at a gentlemen’s club, I buy some drinks, go back to a hotel. I’m home by one a.m., a satisfied customer. I’ll tell you the truth, Amy’s better off with me blowing off a little steam.”
“So she doesn’t know.”
“I deny it when she asks. You understand.”
“Hey, I’m in a monogamous relationship.”
“Yeah? You make some kinda vow?”
“Not quite,” I said, wondering what that would be like—taking a vow, making public expression of what had previously been a private arrangement. The forever of it, the weight. “Woody’s a great guy, but he’s one-hundred-percent opposed to cheating. I don’t want to screw it up. Based on the way I’ve played around in the past, it hasn’t always been easy.”
“Trust me, you got it easy,” Tommy said. “Being married to the opposite sex is work.”
A moment later, Amy reappeared, flashing him a look that said enough already, and this time Tommy extinguished his cigarette and headed back into the living room. I lingered in the cold air until my fingers started to feel numb, and then I, too, went back inside, a little tipsy now, a little less anxious facing the gathered clan.
The next day, after the funeral mass had come and gone, after a trip to the cemetery and another round of food and drink and sneaked cigarettes, Tommy reached past my hand, extended for a farewell shake, to pull me in for a hug. “Don’t be a stranger,” he whispered in my ear. “Family is family.” And for the second time in two days he moved me right to the edge of tears.
“You ever come to San Francisco, Tommy?”
“I’m working on a couple of West Coast accounts, so who knows.”
I smiled at the idea, imagining Tommy making a little time for his black sheep cousin before heading out for a lap dance. “Sure, come for a visit,” I told him. “We’ve got plenty of places to blow off steam.” He gave me a knowing wink and headed down the shoveled walkway to the street, where Amy had their minivan warming up and the kids corralled, all of it waiting for him.
But first: The night of the wake, drunk on vodka after everyone had left, I was enlisted by Deirdre to find my father’s wedding ring. “Find it where?” I asked.
“Search the house. The hospital doesn’t have it. The mortician doesn’t have it.”