Mike and Winston - 8. Chapter 8

Mike stared at the ceiling as he listened to the sounds of the house. It was nearly noon. He had lain awake for some time, trying to ignore the fact that this was Sunday. He could hear neither his father nor Steve; there was only the sound of the stove fan's hum. Mike wondered if his father had told his mother already, and could not decide if that was preferable or not.

He got up at last. A few minutes later, he wandered into the kitchen and was surprised was surprised to see Steve, not his mother, standing in front of the stove, with a skillet in hand.

"Hey," said Mike.

Steve turned his head and nodded. He had probably heard nothing, Mike thought, noting the iPod earbuds sprouting from his brother's ears. He was about to raise his voice and ask where everyone was when Steve turned around, slid a surprisingly well-made pancake onto a plate, and pushed it across the table.

"Oh," Mike said, recovering himself. "Thanks." He stared at his brother's back. This was certainly unusual behavior for Steve. Unusual in a good way, of course. He could cook too if he had a stove, Mike thought defensively, poking the lightly browned surface with a fork.

"Where is everyone?" Mike asked.

"Dad left."

"Where?"

"France."

It took a moment for him to process that. "What?"

"He's on a plane back to France."

"But he's supposed to stay this weekend and leave on Tuesday."

Steve shrugged and slid another pancake on another plate. "His flight left at nine."

Almost three hours ago. The mouthful he had just swallowed seemed to have gotten stuck. He wanted to ask if their father had said goodbye, but kept silent. It was not as if they remembered to say goodbye after every visit-in fact, it had probably slipped both their minds last time-but after what had happened last night, it felt, as ridiculous as the notion was, as if his father intentionally said nothing to him. It was silly. It was probably just a business thing, Mike told himself. It always was.

"Where's Mom?"

Steve paused. "She went to talk to Mrs. Chou."

"Mrs. Chou?" Mike remembered a dumpy woman with hair done a different style ever time he saw her. "Why?"

Steve mumbled something. Mike frowned. "What?"

"To talk about divorce!" Steve repeated crossly, after which he banged the skillet into the kitchen sink and switched on the water.

Mike stared at his brother's back. "Divorce? You- How do you know?" He stopped. "You eavesdropped, didn't you?"

Steve took his iPod from his pocket and made a show of turning up the volume. Mike gritted his teeth, wanting to tear the stupid earbuds from his brother's head. Divorce. His parents were getting divorced.

Mike crossed his arms over his chest and tried to force himself to calm down. Divorce- he really hated the word. He couldn't think when his mind was being drubbed over and over by those two stupid syllables. Tons of people divorced-he could immediately think of three or four people he knew whose parents had separated. Just not his parents.

"Are you sure?"

Steve nodded.

Mike sat back, feeling suddenly empty. Divorce meant failure. His family had failed. He wondered if this meant that he was abnormal-here was a reason for his homosexuality: a dysfunctional family. Then he laughed. His mom wasn't the one who was supposed to be getting a divorce-Winston was. The irony was pungent.

He caught Steve looking at him as though he had sprouted an extra head. "Nothing," he muttered. "So." He looked down at his half-eaten pancake and took another bite. It might have been made of cardboard. "Are you okay?"

Steve shrugged and turned his attention to his meal.

Mike sighed. Divorce. Those two damn syllables again. He was just glad he was old enough that it did not matter so much. And Steve... What went on in Steve's head was anyone's guess. Mike studied his brother a moment more, and gave up.

"Did Mom say when she'd be back?"

Steve shook his head. Well, there went his plans for the day, Mike thought. He took his plate to the sink, then washed it for good measure. Steve did not need to make lunch and wash dishes both. Mike turned and headed back for his room, but stopped halfway down the hallway.

"Hey Steve, you have my cell number right?"

Steve nodded after a pause.

"'cause you always can talk to me if-you know. You feel like it. Or whenever." Mike waited until Steve gave an irrevocable nod. He hesitated another moment, and was rewarded by Steve making an indistinct sound that Mike interpreted to be "I know."

He flipped open his laptop, told himself not to get his hopes up, and checked his email. A penis enlargement advertisement. Mike deleted it, closed his browser, and stared at the walls of his room. Divorce. His mother. His father, somewhere first class and, he could help having the thought, flirting with the air stewardess. Winston.

It was time for economics, Mike decided, and pulled up the textbook that felt as heavy as an old bed waiting to be thrown out with all the memories that had sunken into its surface.

He ended up not coming out to his mother that Sunday.

It was rather late, at half past four, when she returned. The first thing she did was take out string beans and proceed to trim them. Steve asked and was granted permission to go see Elaine. Mike, whether out of cowardice or hopeless disquiet, announced that he was going to the basketball courts.

"Don't stay out too long," his mother said. She had not, Mike noticed, made the same warning to Steve when he had lumbered out. "I'll have dinner ready in less than two hours."

Mike nodded, said that he knew, and lingered miserably in the doorway before he, too, fled.

There was no one else on the basketball courts. He was glad for the time alone. Not that he was not alone at home, holed up in his room. But he needed distance and something both physical and numbing to keep himself distracted.

It did not work out as well as he wished. He was jogging to where the ball had stopped rolling when his mind decided to settle on Winston-who had not replied, who had not come online, who had stayed silent even after that last email Mike had sent, the one that practically screamed for a response. Winston might have had gotten in an accident or kidnapped by marauding bums, Mike conceded, but that was unlikely. There was only one alternative left: Winston had backed out.

For the second time that day, Mike wanted to laugh. It didn't matter. Who cared if Winston backed out? It was, of course, not the best outcome, but this silence-that was just stupid. At the back of his mind, Mike had to admit that he not expected success. Even to himself, last night had been a surprise. What mattered most was not the coming out. It was the end result, something incidental, still important, but what really mattered was- He tried to search for the right word. It was friendship, he decided. That was what was important. And he was not in love.

Mike held the ball in his hand, motionless. The pavement was a shade of gray nearing black. The basketball hoop on the other side of the court was bent, rusted. Even if they were more than fuck buddies, Mike thought, even if there was a bond between them, the in-love-ness was not there. Perhaps he did miss Winston; perhaps that man did occupy his thoughts more than anyone else; perhaps his bed did feel cold at night. But that did not mean anything beyond his own inherent loneliness.

Mike stared at his shadow, stretched by the sun into a long and alien thing. What did it mean to love someone anyway? He loved his mother and he loved his father, and Steve of course, but saying it was like declaring that he breathed. What was it supposed to mean? He stared at his hands, blackened with asphalt, and felt tired and defeated.

Dinner that night was tomatoes fried with eggs and string beans on the side. His mother heated leftovers from last night and made sure everyone finished them first. The meal almost seemed normal.

"Do you want to take back some of the oranges?" his mother asked.

"Yeah," Mike said. "I'll get it," he added, when his mother got up.

"Better do it now, or you'll forget," she said as she began filling a plastic bag with oranges from the fruit bowl.

"Not too many," Mike said ineffectually.

Steve gulped down his mouthful. "Mom, don't take them all!"

"Your brother doesn't have anything good to eat there," she said sternly. "We can always buy some more."

"I'm fine," Mike said, and decided to put some oranges back before he left.

When he finally said goodbye to his mother at the train station, he felt only vaguely guilty for not having come out to her as well. He wondered if he would feel better or worse if Winston had done it, too. His mother had made no mention of her visit to Mrs. Chou. The normalcy of dinner almost convinced him that the last few days had been the same as the other weekends in the past.

He tried to sleep on the train because he was sick of studying and wanted to avoid thinking. He managed to restrain himself when he got back, telling himself to check only right before bed. It was past midnight when he did. Nothing. Lying under his sheets, eyes fixed on the familiar cracks of the ceiling, he tried to keep his mind and body as still as possible.

Last Wednesday, now almost a week ago, he and Winston had decided to wander after dinner through the university because neither had felt like going back to Mike's room.

"I can say you're my uncle," Mike had said, "in case anyone asks."

Winston had snorted. "Uncle?"

Mike had agreed with a shrug that it was absurd, but not implausible. And they did need a cover story. The thought of running into Dan or Professor Hubbell made him nervous. Winston had let the subject drop.

It turned out that Winston had more to show Mike on the Berkeley campus than Mike had to show him. In fact, Winston provided a critique of every cafeteria and restaurant they came across, even the faculty club that Mike did not know exist.

"I get it from my dad," Winston had said. "He's a food critic. He used to take me along to restaurants."

"That must've been fun."

"Not really. I wasn't allowed to order anything I wanted to eat. All I wanted were burgers and ice cream. He made me get roasted lamb and crème brulee."

Mike talked about his father as well. It was very factual: his father was from Wisconsin, had a sister in accounting, and made business deals in Europe. Winston sounded interested. Mike found that, as he elaborated on the numerous inconsequential facts about his father's travels, the presents his father brought back, the stories his father told, and so forth, he began to feel wistful and sad, as if every word scratched away the paint hiding the fact that the Louvre souvenirs and miniature Eiffel Towers were actually cheap substitutes.

"I'm a lot closer to my mom, actually," Mike had explained. "I used to really idolize her. Weird, I know."

"No, I know what you mean."

They had been walking down a line of trees with strange and knobby branches. Mike had often wondered what they were called and who had loved them enough to plant them all over the campus.

"Now, though, I see a ton of things I didn't see before. Like the fact that she's narrow minded. And she's a bit racist."

"Yeah," Winston had said. "You get disillusioned when you get older. It's the hardest with parents." They had walked for a moment in silence. Then, "Actually, I was very close to my brother when we were kids."

"Younger or older?"

"Two years older. We did a lot of things together-baseball, swimming, boy scouts. He always let me do things with him, which was pretty unusual for kids that age. I probably thought of him as my hero." The last part had been said with a chuckle.

"Yeah."

"We drifted apart when he went to college. He got a scholarship to one of those East Coast schools." Then Winston had shrugged, a gesture that Mike now knew meant the opposite of its intent. "Got married at the end of his freshman year."

"Wow," said Mike.

"Yeah."

Mike had wanted to ask if that was part of reason why Winston had married, but the words had stayed in his mouth. Instead, he had said, "I know someone who go to an Ivy League school." He paused. "A Thai kid."

"Yeah?"

And then Mike had found himself telling Winston about Petch: how they had been homework buddies and innocuous friends until Petch had tricked him into playing a game of truth or dare; how Petch confessed later to having known that Mike was gay from the cached files of his internet browser; how they had had their first time Mike's room, and the close shaves they had to being caught. Then when Mike had gotten to how Petch's family had moved away, the story had dwindled to a stop. He knew that Winston was as aware as he was of the thorns in the silence, and he was glad that Winston remained quiet.

"Have you heard from him?"

Mike had shaken his head no. "Not since, like, six months ago. It's kind of sad, really. I mean, even though I didn't like him that way, we were friends, and..."

"Yeah," Winston had said. Yeah. And now, it was the same story-the silence, the pretense, the waiting disguised as daily life. It had been so easy to feel a connection with a stranger, and yet so easy for the connection to disappear. It was quite pathetic, really. There was nothing like loneliness to make one vulnerable.

It didn't matter, Mike told himself. Not because he was unbothered, or that he was optimistic. It didn't matter because, truly, it didn't.

He intended to study all Monday, with a break or two for a shower and some solitary indulgence, of course. But Mike had just dumped his backpack on the ground when he noticed someone sitting on his bed.

"Jonas?" Mike said incredulously.

"What's up, dude?" said Jonas.

"Uh, hi."

There was an awkward pause, before Jonas confessed on his own volition. "I split up with my girlfriend."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"Nah. I couldn't stand her anyway."

"Ah," said Mike. He broke from his daze in order to move to the closet where he kept his bath towel, and stopped. Maybe he should reconsider his plans of taking a shower. He usually stripped down in his room and went down the hall with a towel around his waist, but getting naked in front of a stranger...

"Hey, since I'm going to be here for a while, d'you think you could help me move some stuff in?"

He needed to study. He had two midterms the next day, and he was about to take a shower. "Sure," said Mike, and regretted it as he followed Jonas out the door and down the stairs. "So how far away is your ex's place?"

"Uh, not too far."

By the time they were on the other side of the campus, Mike was thinking that Jonas's perception of distance needed checking.

"You're not planning to haul everything over by hand, are you?"

"Nah," said Jonas. "I got a van. I just need some help putting things in."

"Okay," said Mike, wondering, if Jonas had gotten a van, why they had were not now driving to his girlfriend's place.

The reason became apparent a few minutes later. By van, Jonas had meant a moving truck so large that Mike doubted could fit on their street. How many things did Jonas have anyway?

"Fuck, those are my clothes!" Jonas yelled. Mike followed Jonas's gaze to see what looked like a department store cleanout on the driveway. "That bitch!"

A window opened, and Mike could vaguely make out an anorexic-looking girl with too much eye shadow. He waited as patiently as he could as Jonas and his ex-girlfriend, whose name was Janie, went through an embarrassing list of insults and past wrongs that Mike really did not want to know. Finally, he stood pointedly at Jonas's side and, when that did not work, cleared his throat.

"I've two midterms tomorrow," he said flatly. "I really need to go."

"Yeah," Jonas said. "You heard me, Janie! I don't care if you slept with Josh!"

"Go fuck yourself!" she shrieked.

"Jonas," Mike said.

"Dude," Jonas said, pulling the "u" like a yoga mat, "chill, will you?"

Mike glanced at the sun, turned around, and left.

He supposed that Jonas would get annoyed, if not angry. Of course, he knew nothing about Jonas; his roommate might simply shrug, smoke a joint, and forget it all. Or he might make life the living hell it was promising to be. Dan's offer was looking more and more attractive. There was only one cinch in the matter. He knew as much about Jonas's drug preferences as he knew about Dan's attitude towards homosexuality. But that could be resolved without trouble: he could simply not say anything. Dan did not need to know. And since Jonas was now moving in, there would be no privacy to speak of. So Winston was no longer a factor.

He had known all along that Winston had been the only real factor. His crush on Dan was hardly a reason for refusing the offer-really, it was an incentive. Dan seemed like the sort of person it would be good to hang around with, do things with that he had maybe done when he was younger, before he had felt so markedly different that any effort to be like others had reeked of pretense.

But Winston had been enough to forestall that. Not that it mattered now. The whole thing would have come to a stop sooner or later, Mike told himself. Plus, Winston was clearly the type who hid things and could not stand up to himself. Really, it was for the best.

His cell phone rang. It was his mother. Mike dismissed the momentary spike of unease. She was probably calling to ask if he had remembered to bring the oranges, he thought.

"Hello? Mom?"

"Mike."

He slowed to a stop. There was something different about his mother's tone, although he was unsure what it was. It sounded sparser, more threadbare.

"Are you in your dorm right now?"

This was not unusual; she usually asked this right before moving onto his eating habits.

"No, I'm walking back."

"Did you have lunch, Mike?"

"Yeah." He proceeded to describe the food, how the fries were a bit soggy and the lasagna reminiscent of cardboard. "It's okay though," he concluded. "I was kind of hungry, so I ate all of it."

There was another pause. This was beginning to get unnerving, he thought. And he hated it when she used his name every time she addressed him.

"Mike, I talked to your father today."

Mike felt his breath catch. "Oh," he said. He looked around; he was on the street, and people were walking past him in droves. "Yeah?" he said. He let another pause run its course until it felt like a marble spiraling endlessly in a cup. "Did he say something?"

A pause. "Your father said that you--told him something."

"Oh." Any doubts he had had--maybe this was about the divorce, the adulterous affair--vanished. Mike licked his lips. "Yeah?" he managed.

"He said-he said that you told him you thought you were--" Her voice tightened at the end and rose, even though the word itself never came.

Mike nodded and had to remind himself to speak. "Yeah?" The pause was almost unbearable. The words tasted like bile on his tongue, but the silence was cutting off his air. "I am."

One heartbeat. Another.

"You're not--" His mother made one of those peculiarly Chinese sounds that he had heard so many times in the past, but never so despairingly. "You-- It's not possible."

"Mom--" He should have gotten angry, maybe, or annoyed, but his throat seemed bent on closing itself, and he could hardly get a word out.

"You're my son, I know you, Mike!"

"Look, Mom--" He hardly knew what to say. It would have been easier if his mother did not sound so helpless. "I..." The endless stream of people was making him feel disoriented, but he realized that talking in his room-which was where he was heading-with Jonas a few feet away was probably not a good idea. He let out a breath in exasperation. "There's too many people here."

"What did you say?"

Not where he was heading; the crowds only got thicker. North campus, then. "Mom?" he said.

He walked furiously. It difficult to think over the pounding in his head, but he had to try. He had to say something to make her understand. But there was nothing he could say-except that he was sorry. But he wasn't sorry! It was not his fault. Was it? There was nothing wrong in what he was-was there? His tongue felt swollen in his mouth, and he realized that there was nothing he could say with confidence. He had spent too long living in shadows

"Has someone... been bullying you?"

Mike almost laughed at the choice of words. "No! No, nothing like that's happened." Six years ago, it had been harassing; now, it was bullying. "Mom--"

She made that sound again, part sigh and part exclamation. "You are not like that, Mike! I watched you grow up--you're normal, I'm your mother, I know you--"

"Mom," he interrupted, "being... gay"--he glanced around unnecessarily--"isn't weird or... or abnormal..."

When she spoke again, it was once more after a long pause. "You're not like that, Mike!"

"Mom--" What could he say?"

"You're not, you're not--"

To his horror, she began to cry.

"Mom? Mo--"

He froze. Coming up the street was Dan.

"You're not like that... I know you're not..."

Mike looked away quickly. From that brief glance it was impossible to tell if he had been seen, but he could not stay. He jogged through the campus gates and blindly followed the road at his feet.

"Mom?"

She said something, but it was impossible to make out. She was weeping in the quiet sort of way that he knew too well himself.

"Oh Mom, please, don't cry?"

His mother made an incoherent sound.

"Mom? Are you okay?" He waited, listening helplessly. "Do you want me to go back now? Mom?"

It was a while before he managed to make out what she was saying.

"Yes," he replied, trying not to sound as though he was only managing to force the words out by using all the strength he had, "I'm still your son, Mom. I love you too, Mom."

She was still sobbing. "Jesus, Mom," he hissed when he could stand it no longer, "it's not like I died or something!" He wondered if she even heard. She was still blubbering something about him being her boy, her baby, that nothing else mattered to her but that. He ran a hand through his hair. He couldn't handle this right now. If he let himself think about it he'd go mad. Dan had probably seen him. He had two midterms tomorrow, midterms he was unprepared for- Fuck the midterms.

"Mom, I'll be back, all right?" He had to make sure. "You do want me back, right?"

He could not make out what she said, but it sounded like an affirmative.

"All right, I'll see you in about an hour, okay? I'll be home right away, okay?"

Twenty minutes later, he was sitting on the train with one of his textbooks lying open next to him. The familiar scenery rolled past. Houses, streets, the backs of stores, warehouses. Mike forced his attention back to the pages in front of him and took in the words, one by one, like a blind man touching the walls he had once been able to see.

He was dreading the train station. It was one thing to hear his mother cry, and another to see it. She almost never cried. From the rare fights he remembered her having with his father, it was actually his father who ended up teary-eyed. He wondered, too, about Steve. It was too much to hope for that his brother had not eavesdropped. Although it might be for the best that Steve had overheard. Everything out in the open, Mike thought numbly. A new life, a new world.

His mother was waiting for him in her car. He approached nervously, wondering if he would find her crying inside, or if she had recovered enough to launch into hysterics the moment he got in.

But after he slung his backpack into the backseat and slid into the front with a simple, "Hi Mom," he found himself enveloped in a hug. Mike let out a breath and put his arms around her as well. "Mom?"

She withdrew after another moment, not meeting his eyes. He found himself wondering, after they had left the station, when was the last time she had hugged him like this. When he was just leaving for Berkeley? He had never seen her this raw. Whatever people said about mothers being more emotional than fathers was wrong; his mother had always been the stone, reliable and worn.

A moment later, the silence threatened to become unbearable. Mike, looking out the window unseeingly at the passing cars, thrashed about for a subject.

"How's Steve?"

"He's at home," she replied. Her voice, Mike noted with relief, sounded normal.

They said nothing for the rest of the drive, but Mike hoped, tentatively, that it was not an ominous silence. The house was quiet when they arrived. Steve was probably in his room. Mike sat at the kitchen counter, watched his mother make tea, and realized with a jolt that this was almost the same setup as the last time he had tried coming out: in the kitchen, while his mother went about doing normal things. All he needed was Steve to peer around the corner, and even the spectators would be the same. Mike swallowed a shiver of nervous laughter; the outcomes, though, could not possibly be the same.

He tried out his voice. "Mom?"

She had sat down at last, her eyes on her cup. Mike knew he had to talk. Otherwise, his mother would start crying again, and he could not bear that. "I know it's a-surprise, but it's not-it's not the end of the world." He said something else inconsequential. She opened her mouth to say something, and perhaps that was why he said, trying to distract her in the only way he could, "Do you remember that time I tried to tell you, maybe six years ago?"

He waited. His mother frowned. "That was about this?"

Mike nodded.

"You're not like that," she insisted, and Mike felt something crumple inside him. "You're not, I know you--"

He cut her off harshly. "Mom!" There was a silence, and then his mother scrunched up her face, turned away, and began to cry softly.

"Oh, Mom..."

He listened to her words with only half his mind as he rocked her in his arms. He was still her Mike, her baby, she knew him, and he was not like that. Nothing mattered to her as much as he did, and he was not like that. He considered interrupting her. He was like that. Why couldn't she just accept it? But he stayed silent. He realized, in the half of his mind that was unencumbered by the numbness over his body, that she still loved him, even if she did not understand yet. So he kept quiet and held her.

Eventually she drew back and took a sip of the tea. A distraction, Mike thought. "I'm hungry," he lied.

His mother seemed to brighten. "I'll get Golden Dragon then."

Mike watched his mother finish her tea. There was something he wanted to ask, but he could not break the truce that they had settled in.

"Tell Steve I'll be right back."

"Yeah," Mike said. He slipped off his chair and gave his mother a quick hug. She returned it, the brief tightening of her arms, and then she was gone.

He'd wait until later to ask about his father. One family trauma at a time, Mike thought. He poured himself a cup of water and stared down the hallway, the unopened door on both sides closed to the darkness of the corridor. There would about half an hour before his mother returned.

He went to the computer in the living room and turned it on. The wait felt interminably long, and he messed up his password before he managed to log onto his email.

Hey Winston, he wrote.

I hope you're well. I notice you haven't emailed me back. I guess you must be bogged down with something. It would be nice to know if you're still alive.

As for me, remember how I told you I came out to my dad? Well, he outed me to my mom. It's all right, I think. She's having trouble accepting it, and it was kind of weird to see her crying as though someone had died. But I think it'll work out.

If you ever get around to reading this, I hope you'll reply. I don't care if you didn't manage to tell Michelle, or if something has happened and you think it's best to call us off. I just want to know.

Yours,

Mike

He left his mother in what he hoped was stable condition. He ended up neither mentioning his father nor talking to Steve, both of which he knew would have to happen. But not now. The trip back was exhausting, and supply-and-demand curves swam in front his eyes like butchered fragments of modern art.

It was a good thing that Jonas was not in the room when he entered, because one of them might have ended up in the hospital. The room had been transformed. It was now stuffed to the gills with mounds of clothing, a television set, CDs, papers, blankets, pillows, and, oddly, bottled water. The crowning jewels, of course, were the empty pizza boxes spread haphazardly on top of his bed.

Mike disposed of the pizza boxes. He considered disposing everything else as well, but decided it would be too much work. He retreated to the library and had his takeout on one of the café tables scattered around campus. It was well past midnight when he returned. To his surprise and relief, Jonas was not there. He undressed and went to bed, and sent a fervent prayer to the ceiling that his exams would be doable. And that Dan would not be a homophobe. And that- He stopped himself before his mind could sink into the specifics. That it would all work out. That he would sleep without dreams.

You said no relationships.

Is this a relationship?

Is it? What is it? Are we just-- I dunno. Fuck buddies? I don't want us to be fuck buddies.

We don't have to be.

Winston, am I in love with you?

Are you?

How am I supposed to know?

Does it matter?

No, I guess not.

It'd have to end some day.

I guess so... But did you sort of love me, Winston?

Winston?