Sara Jaffe - Dryland

He said, No, look, I realize that I’m the one that opened this can of worms. Can of beans? Which is it?

I said, I don’t know.

He said, What if I give you, like, five questions. Or five minutes?

I said, You’ll answer them?

He said, I guess I’d have to.

I forked through the spinach ends. I said, So you’ll be like the genie in the lamp.

He said, Allow me to be your genie for five minutes.

I said, Five questions. I had to make them matter. I hadn’t come over to tell Ben about what had happened with me and Alexis, but he was the person I could most imagine telling about it. Anyone else would decide that they knew what it meant or didn’t mean, that they had a name for it. I said, How did you know you were gay?

Ben said, That’s your first question?

I said, Or when?

Ben said, Usually when people ask me that question, I like to turn it around and say How did you know you were straight?

I coughed, to cover whatever sound might have come out of me if I hadn’t. I said, You’re right, that was a stupid question. I looked at him as quickly as I could. I couldn’t tell if he was laughing at me.

Ben said, Stupid questions still count.

I said, I know. I wanted to get away from that question as quickly as possible. I said, Do you have a boyfriend?

Ben said, Not currently. Next?

I said, I’m sorry.

He said, Don’t be. He said, Next?

I was asking the questions but I felt as if Ben were leading the conversation. This was my chance to find out things I needed to know. It felt like a door he could see through but I couldn’t. I said, What was the other magazine?

Ben said, What magazine? Then he said, Oh. Am I allowed to pass?

I said, No.

He said, You’re right, that’s not fair. This is just between us, right? He said, It was what I guess you’d call a porn mag.

I said, No.

Ben said, It wasn’t super hardcore or anything. He just needed to make some money after the swimming thing ended and he split with his sugar daddy.

The spinach left silt on my teeth. It had seemed okay at first but it was actually disgusting. I said, A porno, like there were naked pictures of him in it?

Ben said, Is that your fourth question?

I said, No. I didn’t need to know. I couldn’t believe Ben had told me. My parents couldn’t have known. They would have given him money.

Ben said, As far as I know, he only did it the once. It’s not that big a deal.

He was lying, but I let him.

Ben took a big forkful of eggs. He said, I’ll tell you one thing. Jordan would not have abided my spinach ends. He had the worst sweet tooth of anyone. He’d get those little mini boxes of Froot Loops and just throw them back. He said, But you knew that.

The loud record had ended. I put my lips to my coffee.

Ben said, Just so you know, it’s okay that there are some grounds in there. It’s Italian.

I said, What about the necklace my brother gave you?

Ben said, Which one?

I said, The one you always wear. The one you’re wearing.

Ben said, This one? He ringed his fingers around the bead as if he were protecting it. He said, This isn’t from Jordan. I got this necklace from my friend who died.

I didn’t want to ask any more questions. I said, How did he die?

Ben said, He had AIDS.

A dark sewer surged up in me. It had been there and I’d pushed it down and now it came up so fast I thought it might black me out. I had to make myself ask before it flooded me. I said, Does my brother have AIDS?

Ben rubbed the bead the way I’d seen him do before. He was thinking of his friend. He said, I don’t know. He could. He pushed on a smile. He said, But he probably doesn’t. He was always really safe.

Blood transfusions, since Ryan White, were safe, and AIDS didn’t come from toilet seats. We’d all seen the photos of the thin men with sores. I let Ben lie. My brother could have been calling from anywhere. He could have looked like anything.

Ben’s face was a pale knot. He was loose-holding his necklace. Then I felt really sick, a sour mash of coffee and dirty spinach. I said, Do you?

Ben said, No. For now. He slapped his hand against the table, hard enough to make the plates jump. He said, Knock on a motherfucking slab of wood.

WHEN I GOThome I told my parents I wasn’t feeling well and was going to lie down. I switched off the ringer on my extension. I lay on my back on my carpet. With my eyes closed or open I saw pictures of men with sores on their faces. Their hair was buzzed short and they wore dirty gray clothing that hung off their emaciated bodies, part AIDS, part Auschwitz. They leaned against tiled walls in dingy bathhouses. They wanted me to help them and I couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Their skin, if I touched it, would flake off in my fingers. I wanted a book with those pictures in it. I wanted to look at the pictures and keep myself from looking at them.

I went back down to the living room. I stood in the doorway. I said, Remember how Jordan was in that magazine, before the trials? I said, The swimming magazine. I pressed down my nausea. I’d never sounded more normal. I said, I was just wondering, do we have a copy of that magazine somewhere?

My mom said, It’s probably in the file.

I said, What file?

My dad got up from the couch and I followed him down to his office. He moved some things around in the closet and pulled out a box made of cardboard patterned to look like wood. It had a wood-patterned top that lifted off, and in it were file folders, some with folded newspaper poking out the top. My dad reached in and came up with Swimmers’ World, Summer 1987. It was pressed tight and thinner than I’d remembered.

I said, Did Jordan leave this box here? The closet had been his closet. Maybe he forgot the box, or left it with my parents for safekeeping.

My dad put his hand between my shoulder blades and patted me softly once, twice, as if I were a baby or a pet. He said, I don’t think Jordan knows about this box.

I said, Is it okay for me to look through the whole thing?

In Swimmers’ World, I looked first at the section with photos of swimmers in and out of the pool. My brother wasn’t a big enough deal to be in that section. He was deeper into the magazine, one of ten Faces to Look Out For in the upcoming trials. Each of the faces had been asked the same questions. For favorite food, my brother said Caesar salad with extra croutons. For lucky charm he said some old dog tags his best friend had given him. I had no idea who that could be. His hometown was listed as San Diego, CA. They must have interviewed him in San Diego and forgotten to ask where he was really from. The photo showed him from the shoulders up. His shoulders were muscular and not particularly broad. His height was listed as 5'8". I was almost that tall. He had bleached blond hair growing out at the roots. He had a huge grin on his face, clear, healthy skin, and someone’s hand clasped on his shoulder. His coach’s? A guy from the team? I stared hard at the picture. I looked at my reflection in my dad’s computer screen. In a way I looked like my brother, and in a way I didn’t.

The other files in the box held newspaper clippings from state and county meets, the program from the big meet in San Diego. My parents and I had stayed in a fancy hotel suite on the water with a whirlpool bathtub and a basket of fruit and champagne. The grapes were as big as golf balls. The pool was so huge I couldn’t keep track of my brother. It was an important meet, maybe the last one before the trials, and my brother had placed in all of his races. He’d stepped up onto a platform to get his medals and everyone in the stands, people who didn’t know him, or who I didn’t know knew him, were clapping for him. I remembered that there had been a plan to go out to dinner with us and the coach and my brother, but for some reason it hadn’t happened.