Tom Mendicino - Probation

The box couldn’t hold me for long. It took a while, six months, until one night, alone in a hotel room in Dallas, the King of Unpainted Furniture safely snoring in a suite on a different floor, I called a cab and gave the driver the address of a bathhouse where many hands touched and stroked me before the sun came up.

The urge would lie dormant for weeks, months, only to rear its ugly head when I was stranded in a room in a budget motel, not because the King of Unpainted Furniture scrimped on the expense accounts but because moldy carpets and damp bedspreads were the best the town had to offer. The voices on the television at the foot of the bed sounded as distant as a conversation in a different state. I’d stand in the shower, listening to the eleven o’clock news, hoping the hot water would induce drowsiness and dreams.

Still wide awake, I’d log on to my laptop, find a chat room, and send my room number to aging lonely hearts, down-on-their-luck hustlers, even the occasional hunky college boy with too many hormones charging through his bloodstream. Or I would put on a clean shirt and navigate the rental car through the side streets of the seedy section of a town I didn’t know. I’d debate myself-go back, stay here, go back-until a beat-up Honda or Toyota vacated a parking spot a stone’s throw from the entrance to the “Buddies” or “Players” or “Side Traxx” in every town or small city with a dealer for Tar Heel Heritage pine furniture. I’d chug the first beer, chase it with a shot of tequila, drain another bottle, not relaxing until the room was in soft focus and I found the nerve to light the cigarette of the man sitting next to me. I’d struggle to make conversation, waiting for an indication of any possible interest. If I found it, I’d rush, growing anxious because the clock was ticking away, desperate to seal the deal, dreading driving back to my motel alone.

There was no turning back, not even when Nora Wilkins called to tell us that Brian had passed away, stricken by a pneumonia from which he never recovered. Nora had left Pittsburgh and was back home in Minnesota. She and Alice made a vague promise to see each other soon, a sentimental gesture appropriate to the moment.

“I don’t think she was telling me everything,” Alice said later that night. “At first she said yes, when I asked if he went quickly. Then later she said he hadn’t been well for a while. I guess we’ll never know.”

I knew. Immediately. There’s only one kind of pneumonia that would strike down a man in his prime. A man who was having sex, lots of it, with other men.

I wandered outside, needing a cigarette, my hand shaking when I tried to strike a match. Jesus, please God, I pleaded, sucking smoke deep into my lungs. Please, please let me be okay and I promise I’ll do anything you want.

It was divine retribution for the baby. I deserved whatever I got. I could live with the consequences. Take me, I begged, trying to redeem myself through noble sacrifice. Just let Alice be okay. She doesn’t deserve this. Don’t punish her for little Jack. She’d be bouncing him on her knee today if it hadn’t been for me.

I spoke to God on an hourly basis while I waited for the lab to report my results, promising, pleading, negotiating. And after the test came back negative, no nasty little HIV antibodies to report, the Good Lord must have sat by the phone like a jilted lover, incapable of accepting that my ardent pursuit and seduction could end so suddenly. I’d been ridiculous to worry. Leave it to me to turn the simplest story into a melodrama, infusing Puccini and Verdi into every nursery rhyme, creating a crisis out of every small problem. What the hell had I been so worried about? How many times had I been with him? Five, six at the most? But I’d learned my lesson.

“What do you think I am, some kind of fag?” he’d protested, insulted when I dared to question whether I should slip on a Trojan before I shoved it up his ass.

I’d never be so naïve again.

“I made a memorial contribution for Brian Wilkins today,” Alice said a few weeks later over dinner.

I looked down at my plate, unnerved to hear that Brian Wilkins was still lingering in her thoughts.

“Oh yeah?” I asked. “These potatoes are awesome,” I declared, trying to steer the conversation in different directions.

“Yeah, I really didn’t know where to send it so I made it out to the Horticultural Society. Nora and I volunteered there together. I didn’t really know him,” she said. “Can I be honest? I didn’t really like him.”

“Really?” I said, squirming in my chair.

“You seemed to cool toward him at the end, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” I said, feeling the tension in my shoulders.

“I don’t know. There was something about him,” she said. “Full of himself. I think he had a mean streak.”

“I bet he could be a prick,” I said, thinking back to the afternoon I locked myself in the john at Tar Heel Heritage, the water running full blast, crying my eyes out after I hung up the telephone, knowing I’d just finished my last conversation with the man I was sure that I loved.

“Are you going to finish your potatoes?” I asked, closing and locking the final door on Brian Wilkins.

Everyone is titillated by the prospect of snow. Everyone has an opinion: It’s definitely coming. It’s not coming because it only happens when it’s completely unexpected. Everyone’s preparing, stockpiling toilet paper and milk. One school of thought says it would have been welcome two days ago. It would have been the first White Christmas in thirty-five years. Now it will just ruin the rest of the holidays. Another school of thought says better late than never and at least all those gruesome New Year’s celebrations will have to be cancelled.

My window is open. It’s definitely colder than last night. If it’s coming, at least it waited until my sister packed her husband, two sons, and daughter into the SUV and headed south, back to the palm trees and tennis courts of Boca Raton. I finish knotting my tie and lick my palm to flatten my stubborn cowlick. Not so bad, I think. Why have I never seen a picture of myself where I resemble the man I see in the mirror? The camera never lies, they say. Out there, somewhere, my mug shots, full face and profile, are in the public record.

I pass my mother’s bedroom on my way downstairs. She stands perfectly still, transfixed, as if stunned by her reflection in the mirror, gripping her pearl necklace, her yellow satin jacket burnished by the white winter sunlight.

My mother, by Vermeer.

She blinks like a startled bird and comes out of her trance. She seems puzzled, as if she doesn’t recognize the brushes and combs and jewelry box on her dressing table. Feeling like an intruder, I go downstairs and wait for her to join me.

She disapproves when she sees me with a vodka and soda in hand. She usually doesn’t comment on my drinking since she comes from the generation of women who nurse a single glass of wine or a very weak cocktail, if they partake at all, while their men drink themselves into oblivion. But this afternoon she reminds me the roads could be very hazardous in a few hours. I laugh and tell her it’s bone dry out there and not a cloud in the sky. Nonetheless, she wins. I take one last long sip and pour it in the sink.

My mother and I are going on a date. I return from the kitchen, expecting to find her in the foyer, all buttoned up and pocketbook in hand. She isn’t there. She’s in the parlor, resting against the arm of the sofa, studying the Christmas tree, touching one of the glass balls, smiling at a memory of a long-ago holiday. Each and every ornament has a history. Only she knows all of them. After she’s gone, they’ll just be anonymous trinkets tucked in tissue paper.