We moved apart. Josh said, “Mom, Dad, you’d better sit down. There’s something I have to tell you.”
Over the next eight hours, Josh not only told his parents that he was gay but that we were lovers and about the result of the antibody test. Mr. Mandel ordered me out of the house, relented, and alternately screamed at and wept for his son. Mrs. Mandel seemed to have been rendered catatonic.
Then, after the hysterics came the hard talk. Josh’s sisters were called, one in Sacramento and one in Denver, and consulted. They came out heavily pro-Josh. His father brought down the Bible and read to us the passage in Leviticus that condemns homosexuality. That led to a long, rambling discussion about biblical fundamentalism which ended, predictably, in a stalemate.
Mrs. Mandel mourned for her unborn grandchildren. Josh said that he planned to have children. This silenced her. Silenced me, too. We talked for a long time about Jim Pears and how having to hide being gay had probably led him to kill someone. We talked about AIDS. This was the hardest part for all of us.
I argued that AIDS wasn’t divine retribution on gay people any more than Tay-Sachs disease was God’s commentary on Jews. Mr. Mandel bristled at the analogy but his wife diffused the tension with a series of surprisingly well-informed questions about AIDS. It occurred to me then that she had known Josh was gay all along. Even so, they both remained worried and frightened. So was Josh. So was I.
In the middle of all this, Mr. Mandel ordered pizza and we had an involved argument over the relative merits of anchovies. He and I wanted them. Josh and Mrs. Mandel resisted. The three of them went through a bottle of wine while I guzzled Perrier.
And then it was three o’clock in the morning and Mr. Mandel was apologizing for being sixty-two and needing his sleep.
Knees creaking and head throbbing, I got up to leave. “I need my coat,” I said to Josh who was sitting on it.
“Wait,” he said, amazement in his eyes. “You’re not going to drive all the way back to Silver Lake now, are you?”
A long complex silence ensued.
“It’s not that far,” I said.
“Come on, Henry. You’re exhausted.” Josh looked at his parents. “You can’t let him go out at this hour. The roads are full of drunks.”
“Joshua,” his father began.
“Dad,” he said in a whine he must have perfected as a child. “It’s just a matter of common courtesy. Let him sleep on the couch down here. Mom?”
“Silver Lake is — far away,” she said, tentatively, looking at her husband. Then, more confidently she added, “The sofa folds out and there’s a bathroom down here.”
“Well, I’m going to bed,” Mr. Mandel said “You want to stay Henry, stay.”
“Thank you,” I said to his back.
Mrs. Mandel opened a closet and pulled out some sheets and blankets. She put them on the couch.
“It folds out,” she said.
“Thanks.”
We looked at each other, then she looked at Josh. “Go to bed, Josh.”
“In a minute, Mom,” he said. “I’ll just help Henry with the couch.”
Defeated, she murmured her good-nights and slipped out of the room. We listened to her footsteps as she climbed the stairs.
“What a little brat you are,” I said.
“It isn’t over yet, you know,” Josh said.
“I know. I know.”
“It might go on forever.”
“One day at a time,” I said and nuzzled him. “I’m really tired.”
“Do you mind us not sleeping together?”
“This is their house,” I said. “Let’s make it easy on them. They’re probably upstairs awake as it is.”
“How do you know that?” he asked, smiling.
“Years of legal training,” I replied and kissed him. He kept his lips closed. “Josh, that’s not how to kiss.”
“My saliva,” he said, biting his lower lip. “It might carry the virus.”
“In negligible amounts, if at all,” I replied. “Let’s not let this thing run our lives.”
We kissed again, properly.
“Go to bed, Josh, and let your parents get some sleep.”
He pulled himself up from the floor and said, “You know what’s really going to drive them crazy, is when it sinks in that you’re not Jewish.”
I smiled, then, remembering, asked, “Josh, the night Jim tried to kill himself and you called me, you didn’t actually speak to me, did you?”
He shook his head. “No, I hung up before you answered. Why?”
“Because someone else called, too,” I said, “and I now know who it was.”
“Is it important?”
“Could be,” I replied. “Good night, Josh.”
“I love you,” he said, and slipped quietly from the room. I watched the last embers spark and burn themselves out. When I finally arranged myself on the couch, my last conscious thought was not of Josh but of Jim Pears.
20
I heard someone rattling around in the next room and sat up on the couch. It was eight in the morning and I felt as close to hung- over as I had in two years. I put on my trousers and shirt and followed the noise into the kitchen where I found Mr. Mandel pouring himself a cup of coffee. He seemed startled to find me still there.
“You want a cup?” he asked.
“Thank you.” I studied him. Short and slender, he so resembled Josh that it was like looking forty years into the future.
“You want some cake?” Mr. Mandel asked, unwrapping a crumb cake.
“No thanks,” I replied. It made my teeth ache just to look at it.
He caught my expression. “I have a sweet tooth,” he said. “So does Joshua.”
“He likes chocolate,” I volunteered, remembering a box of chocolate cookies I’d seen at his apartment.
“Anything chocolate,” Mr. Mandel agreed. “And marzipan. He likes that.”
He brought two cups of coffee to the table and then went back to the counter for his piece of cake. We sat down. He blew over the top of his coffee before sipping it. I noticed the thin gold wedding band he wore. The kitchen was filled with light and papered in a light blue wallpaper with a pattern of daisies. Copper aspic molds decorated the walls. All the appliances — refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, Cuisinart — were spotlessly clean and new- looking. We were sitting at a little pine table.
“Your house,” I said, tentatively, “is very nice.”
“Selma,” he replied, referring to his wife, “puts a lot of work into it. She wallpapered this room by herself.”
“It looks professional.”
“You sure you’re not hungry? There’s cereal, eggs.”
“No, I don’t eat much.”
He looked at me appraisingly. “You are on the thin side. So, you live up in San Francisco.”
“Not exactly. I live in a little town down the bay. It’s where Linden University is located.”
“Yes, Linden University,” he said, impressed. “You go to school there?”
“Law school.”
“Good,” he said, taking a bite of his cake. “I wish I could get Joshie interested in something like law
