Paul’s careful y composed expression of skepticism col apsed. He looked suddenly stricken, as if a great pain had descended upon him. “I loved him, too, you know. I just never
… never…”
He let out a great sob, then immediately brought his hands to his mouth to contain the noise. He wept silently into them.
Two minutes ago, Paul was a cocky son of bitch who was trying to buy me off. Now, he was a sobbing mess. People who have mood swings like that always make me nervous. Was he mental y il?
Paul took a silk handkerchief from his pocket, squinted hard, and wiped his face. He took a few deep breaths and continued.
“Do you know how long it’s been since I told my own father that I loved him? That’s why I was going there that night.”
Randy told me Al en was meeting one of his sons the night of his death. Now, I knew it was Paul.
Another mystery solved. I was good at this detective stuff!
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Freddy giving me a thumbs up.
“I’ve made so many mistakes,” Paul said quietly.
“My own father.” He blinked away more tears.
“Al en told me you hadn’t talked in years,” I said.
“It’s true. But you have to understand what my mother did to me and Michael. She blamed my father bitterly for leaving us. She made it clear we’d be betraying her if we didn’t feel that way, too.
“She always told us that the life he’d ‘chosen’ was destructive and sick. That he picked it over his own children. What we didn’t know was that he was reaching out to us al during our childhood, but my mother wouldn’t let him near us. It wasn’t his homosexuality that wrecked my family, it was her hostility.
“By the time Michael and I were old enough to make our own decisions about contact with our father, we had been brainwashed into seeing him as the enemy. We were just kids, we didn’t know any better.
“She forced us to choose between them, and we chose her.”
I nodded. “But it must have been especial y hard for you,” I said, “what with, you know, liking guys and al.”
Paul reached across the table and grabbed my hands. “You do understand,” he said. “It was hel. I was so confused, my whole life. I knew what I wanted, what I was, but it was the very thing I had been taught ruined my family’s lives. That it was shameful and sick and wrong.
“I hated myself for so long.” More tears rol ed down his cheek. He took his hands from mine and wiped his eyes.
I felt a lump in my throat, too. Even if he were nuts, I felt his pain.
“Is that why your brother does what he does?” I asked. “This whole thing he has about making gay people straight?”
“Michael’s a very complicated man,” Paul said.
“But yes, I’m sure that’s a part of it.”
“Complicated how?” I asked him.
Paul shuddered. “I don’t want to get into that right now.”
I tried a different track. “You were going to see your father the night of his death?”
“Yes,” Paul said. “I was going to tel him about myself. I was going to ask him to forgive me for al those years of neglect. I wanted to explain things.”
“What happened?”
“I’d thought of cal ing my father for years. I never had the courage or the strength. But I started therapy recently, and I was real y starting to see things differently. My mother moved to Florida, and so I didn’t have to hear her constant critiques of my father. And with Michael’s work getting more demanding, I was seeing a lot less of him, too.
“Michael has a lot of influence over me. A lot of control, you might say.”
Again, he gave a little shudder. There was something going on between him and Michael that troubled him.
Or scared him.
“I final y cal ed him the evening of his death. It was so hard. But the moment he heard it was me, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to talk to him. How kind he was, how forgiving. I told him how sorry I was, what an idiot I had been, but he wouldn’t even hear it. He said I was his son and always would be.”
Paul stopped for a moment to compose himself.
“He told me to come right over. I got there as soon as I could. But when I arrived, I saw the body on the ground. I stopped for a moment like the rest of the crowd did. Typical NY rubbernecking. I didn’t know who it was. Not until you arrived. What to hear something funny?”
I nodded.
“When I first saw you, I thought to myself ‘what a cute kid. I wonder if I could bag him?’ Of course, this was before I knew you were sleeping with my father.”
“Listen,” I said, “I never slept with your father.”
Paul tilted his head in disbelief.
“OK, let me just clear this up once and for al.” I told Paul the true story of how Al en and I met. I explained how we became friends. How I loved him like a father, not a lover. How I thought some of the attention and guidance he gave me was because he was denied the opportunity to give it to his own children.
Paul sighed. “That makes me so sad,” he said.
“But I see now that you gave him a lot of happiness.”
He took my hands again. “Thank you for being there when I was too stupid to be a good son.”
“You were tel ing me about the night you went to meet your father.”
“Right. When you said my father’s name, that’s when I knew it was him. I ran away and headed right over to Michael’s house. I told him what happened and total y broke down.
“Michael cal ed Alana, my wife, and she came over. They sat with me for hours. First, they told me that I should never have cal ed my father. That he was an evil man and that I had brought this pain upon myself. Then, they told me this was our father’s ultimate ‘fuck you’to me. That he jumped knowing I was coming over, knowing that I’d see him, just to mess me up even further.”
“And you believed them?”
“You have to understand, Michael has a way with me. Maybe he has it with a lot of people. When he says things, they just make sense. He’s very persuasive.”
I’d seen that for myself at The Center. He had that crowd in the palm of his hand. And later, in the hal way, he almost convinced me to go with him to his office, despite the fact that I was afraid of him.
“The things he told me were the things I had heard my entire life. He made me hate my father again.
That’s why I was so awful at the reading of his wil. I thought he kil ed himself just to hurt me.”
“Paul,” I said gently, “I know you didn’t know him, but I did. I don’t believe that he kil ed himself. Not for a minute.”
“I don’t think so, either,” Paul said. “I’ve been replaying our conversation in my head ever since that night. He was looking forward to seeing me. I know that. Why would he take his own life? Why then, of al times?”
“So, if he didn’t kil himself, what do you think happened?” I was sure now that Michael was the kil er, but I wanted Paul to be the one who said it.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Maybe it was an accident?”
“What kind of accident?”
Paul looked like the child he had been when his father left them. “I don’t know,” he whined. “Maybe he fel.”
“Doing what? Practicing his balance beam on the ledge?”
“I don’t know!” He banged his fist on the table, causing his gin and tonic to soak the cuff of his shirt.
He didn’t seem to notice.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Freddy turn around to face us. He started to get up from his stool.
