The Year I Stopped Being Invisible - 45. Chapter 45

BLAINE MAXWELL'S JOURNAL

So I went and picked Taine up from Polk around 3:45 this afternoon. Rick was just standing there with his back to me when I pulled up, and never turned around. Taine ran to get in my car and didn't say a word the whole way back to our new house in Alamo Heights. I didn't push him, because I knew my little bro well enough to know that he would talk to me or Dad about it when he was damn good and ready, and not before. So I just drove, although I really wanted to comfort him, because I could tell he was all torn up about the convo.

When we got home, Taine went straight up to his room. I thought about going up there to talk to him, but figured we would maybe go out by the pool later. This new pool we had was twice the size of the one at the house in Brookwood, and the whole deck was done up in inlaid Italian marble. There was a bar just like at the old place, but much nicer, made of onyx, glass, and gleaming chrome.

I went out there looking for Dad, but didn't see him so I went back inside the house. I heard grunting from the dining room, and found Dad in there trying to move our giant china cabinet around to the long side of the dining room table. I took off my jacket and hurried to help him. Dad likes to do everything himself, even though he's had a few problems over the years with his lower back. Formula 1 racing isn't exactly kind on the spinal column!

Anyway, I knew why he was moving it there. He needed the wall above the foot of the table to be clear so he could hang Mom's picture. I couldn't decide if the tradition he and Taine had started of having Mom looking down on us as we ate and setting a place for her at the table was heartbreakingly sweet or kind of creepy, but if it made them happy, who was I to judge?

When we had moved the china cabinet, Dad took a nail and hammered it in the wall above the foot of the table, then carefully hung Mom's picture, walking around to the head of the table to see if it was straight. He nodded to himself, apparently satisfied, then grabbed us a couple of beers from the fridge and gestured for me to join him at the pool outside. We had sat down in the deck chairs and cracked our beers before he spoke.

"So, how'd it go over there?" he asked, trying to be casual about it.

"I don't really know," I said. "I pulled up, Rick had his back to me, and Taine didn't say anything the whole way home. I don't think it went too well."

Dad nodded, sipping his beer, and then said something that shocked me.

"This is your mother's fault," he growled, waving one of his meaty fingers in the air for emphasis. "After Patty died, Peggy got all religious. It was her way of coping with it, I guess, but I couldn't stand it. Practically the only time she ever left the house was to go to that damn Baptist church over in Hudson Falls."

"I don't get it," I said. "Mom being Baptist made Taine gay?"

"No, Blaine," Dad said patiently, as if talking to a child. "She got really conservative. She railed about sin and liquor and promiscuity and drugs and gays...she wouldn't even have sex with me anymore."

I winced. One of the worst things about being an adult was when your parents started to talk about their sex lives to you. Even the lack of them. You didn't even want to think that they had those desires, unfulfilled or not. But Dad was on a roll.

"I'd wake up every morning like this," he said, raising his fisted arm tensed hard. "And all I got was lectures about the Bible. We were married, for Christ's sake! Anyway, I couldn't control what kind of crap she was putting into Taine's head when I was on the road."

"Ohhh," I said, finally getting it. "You think she's why Taine is conflicted."

"Must be," Dad replied, finishing his beer. He went over to the bar and began fixing himself a margarita. "I sure never raised a child who would be ashamed of who he was."

"Why do you think Taine is ashamed?" I asked, downing my own beer and joining him at the bar. "Can you make me a Manhattan? I don't know how."

"Sure." Dad finished making his drink and fished out some bourbon and sweet vermouth. "I'll tell you why I think he's ashamed. I saw the way he looked at Rick. I saw the way Rick looked at him. Those two are as in love as any two people I've ever seen in my life. And they...well, who do you think does the laundry around here?"

"Oh, jeeze." I winced again. "Too much information."

He looked over at me and grinned, shaking the bourbon and vermouth in a steel ice-shaker and pouring it into a martini glass.

"My point is," he continued, adding a few dashes of aromatic bitters and a cherry to my drink, "all of a sudden Taine starts asking me all these questions about your mother...right after we had that talk and he went upstairs with Rick. It was an emotional day, remember, and I think it brought back some memories of her for him, too."

I remembered. Dad had already told me about the talk he had with Taine and Rick in the parking lot of the old auto parts store on Walden, and then that got followed up by reintroducing my sorry ass into the family at the Brookwood house pool. Taine and Rick had gone upstairs for a long time, and I figured they were doing more than talking. Then they came back down, and Taine gave me a huge hug, and pretty soon all four of us were hugging and crying. We felt like a family again.

But Dad told me later that Taine had come to him in his study and wanted to talk about Mom. And, come to think of it, it was shortly after that when I heard Taine and Dad talking about what house we were going to buy.

I'm not the kind of guy who eavesdrops on private conversations, even with my own family, but I happened to be working on my Charger in the garage, and you could hear conversations in the kitchen through that door pretty well. The acoustics in the garage even amplified what was being said. So I really couldn't help it.

Okay, that's a lie. But cut a guy some slack...I'd been out of the family for a long time, and I was interested in learning as much as possible, about both Taine and my Dad. So I listened. Sue me.

Here's what I heard:

DAD: So I've been looking at some houses in Windcrest. They're pretty nice, and you could go to private school if you wanted over at St. Gerard and still see Rick.

TAINE: I don't really want to live in Windcrest, Dad. Can't we look in some other places? And private school you have to wear uniforms, don't you? I'd freaking die.

DAD: Well, I don't want these lowlifes at Polk harassing you all the time. One more thing with that Gorman kid and I'm going to end up in jail, what I'd do to him.

TAINE: (laughing)

DAD: What about Chamberlain? The kids over there aren't so...rough, but it's close enough that Rick could still hop a bus over here to see you. Look, the VIA goes right from the mall by Polk to Chamberlain Estates. It runs until nine, but he could spend the night whenever he wants and get straight to school in the morning.

There was a long pause. I clunked some tools around just so they didn't get the wrong (right) idea, but was straining to hear Taine's response.

TAINE: I don't want to see Rick anymore. I told you already. I want to go farther away. What about near Jefferson or Alamo Heights? Please?

There was another long pause.

DAD: You're sure about this?

TAINE: Yes. I'm sure. And please don't say anything to Rex or Rick's mom.

I toed off my shoes and went back in the house then, and the conversation stopped, but I saw Dad with a strange, perplexed look on his face at Taine's request. Still, he nodded slowly and began looking at the realtor's catalog again, this time in the Alamo Heights section. We had all settled on this gorgeous house -- mansion, by my standards -- within an hour.

I sipped my Manhattan in the deck chair next to Dad, still not really clear on the situation.

"So you think Taine suddenly remembered some anti-gay junk that Mom was talking about, and that's why he pulled this weird break-up with Rick?"

Dad shrugged. "I really don't know what else it could be, Blaine. They settled the whole hat thing. They didn't fight. They didn't cheat on each other. Hell, I have never seen Taine this happy, and then all of a sudden he wants to move in the dead of night? He wants to never see this kid again?"

I nodded, contemplating the cherry bobbing in my drink. I was just starting to like Rick, too. After our little family-bonding session, I even looked at him as a brother. A friend. A guy who would kill or die to protect my little bro when Dad or I couldn't.

And I saw how they were with each other. They were gentle. Tender. They treated each other like the most precious things on Earth, and the few times I saw them kiss...it was...well, it was about the sweetest thing you ever saw. I had talked a little about Rick with Taine the next day after our group powwow, and he said that the first time Rick had hugged him, he hadn't known what to do with it, because Rick was the first person he'd hugged who had needed it as much as he did.

So it was a puzzle. Dad accepted Taine's and Rick's relationship. So did I. So did Rick's dad -- "Old Blood and Guts," of all people -- and all of their friends at school. Rick's mom didn't ever know, so the only person who didn't seem to accept their relationship was Taine. But I wasn't sure that my late mother's religious rants were the real reason.

"Dad," I said. "I don't think it's because of Mom. As much as he loved her, Taine always had his own opinions. And I was there when you weren't for a while. Taine always complained about her religious nonsense. He thought she'd flipped her wig with some of the stuff she started saying. That's not it."

"Then what?" he rasped. "What would make him suddenly throw Rick away? Throw love away? Nobody's rejecting him or picking on him, we'd kill anyone who tried. Blaine, I'm completely okay with it, and once you started to know Rick, you were too. So what could it be?"

"I'll tell you what I think, Dad," I said quietly. "Taine has always been different. Unique. Sensitive. Very, very sensitive, and very smart...perceptive. As far back as I remember, there has been something...something that hurt him about this world."

Dad nodded. "When he was born, the doctor said he'd never delivered a baby like Taine. He didn't cry, didn't smile. Just stared around the delivery room with big, wide eyes. Like he was shocked to be here. Like he didn't know what was around him, but he was both afraid of it and...I don't know...disappointed by it."

"Yeah," I said. "And when he was a kid, other kids saw that he was different. And kids...I mean, Dad, there are so many great things about kids, but they can't handle difference. So they picked on him. They bullied him. They didn't let him play their stupid reindeer games. And it hurt him, Dad. It hurt him bad. And over the years, he had to construct an identity, like everyone else does, but his had to be completely false. He had to put up brick walls to cover the sensitive kid inside, while still maintaining just enough of a front to keep the bullies at bay. And when that didn't work, he decided to become invisible."

Dad nodded, taking in what I was saying. For all his great effort at being a real father now, I still knew Taine better than he did. So I continued teaching him about his younger son.

"But inside, Dad, he was also going through all the pain, the self-doubt, the fear, the anger, the self-loathing that comes from that kind of rejection. It almost hurt him too much to be alive. But over the years, he was able to carefully, piece by piece, assemble an identity that he could live with, if only barely. He came to create the internal Taine, to know who Taine Maxwell was, and to at least be comfortable enough with that to get up out of bed in the morning, even as much as it hurt him."

Dad went to refill our drinks, but was still all ears as I went on.

"And then," I said, "here comes Rick. And now everything that Taine had believed about himself, this carefully-constructed identity, this fragile defense against all of his doubts, his fears, his pain at being so sensitive and so different...all of that is now up for grabs. His world is rocked, and suddenly he's that scared kid again. On top of all that, he gets bullied. His knight in shining armor has his dog slashed to fucking ribbons. His Dad gets his brand-new Lambo trashed. And...his brother shows up out of nowhere, stirring up all those memories, all that pain. So what would you do?"

Dad handed me my drink and sat back down in his deck chair, thinking.

"I tell you what you'd do, Dad," I concluded. "You'd cling to the only life-raft you could. Like you did with racing when Patty died and Mom flipped. And that's what Taine is doing. Only he doesn't have racing to cling to, or anything external. All Taine has to cling to is what was inside him, that identity he built to protect himself, to get through each day. And being even more different, loving Rick and spending his life with a man, that's not part of that shield. He sees that as making him twice as vulnerable, twice as different, twice as weird. And all the acceptance we give him, or anyone gives him, won't help unless he accepts himself. And that's not going to be easy for him right now."

Dad ran a hand over his sad, bulldog mouth and pulled it up over his face, rubbing his eyes.

"So," he said at last. "What do we do?"

I had to admit that I had no idea.