Bombora Read online

  “Listen, Liam,” I begin. “I’m not gonna lie and tell you this isn’t happening, because you’re old enough to understand relationships don’t always work out. People get divorced when the problems pile up too high, even if they still love one another. Your mom and I—we still care about each other a lot, but we’ve got issues that aren’t going to fix themselves, no matter how we go about trying to find a solution. The reason I left is because we both needed some time to accept that it’s over.” Breathless from saying so much all at once, I sigh, pausing to find out whether Liam is following along. I clench my hands a bit harder into the sand like it’s an impromptu stress ball. “Believe me when I say it has nothing to do with you. If I didn’t think it would make your life a living hell, I’d be there right now trying to patch things up. You know that, right?”

  From the silence on the other end of the line, I know Liam is trying his best to parse what I’ve told him before he lets himself get angry. A fast temper is a trait we both share, but Liam has enough of his mother’s patience to make up for it. He’s been working through meltdowns on his own since the age of five. Maybe he’ll go off on his own later and rip something to shreds, but I can count on him to stay civilized until that point. Just in case, though, I prompt, “Liam?”

  Finally I hear his voice emerge, small and tightly controlled. I almost don’t hear it over the crashing surf where Callie continues to play, oblivious. “Are you going to go live in another house?”

  “I don’t know,” I admit, meaning, Probably.

  He grunts angrily. “So what makes you think my life isn’t going to suck from now on anyway?”

  “I’m not saying it’ll be easy for any of us, buddy,” I sigh. “You’re right: it’ll probably suck like crazy for a while, but it’d be worse if you had to listen to your mom and I fight all the time. Remember what happened with your cousin Nick?” I ask, referring to Emilia’s sister’s kid. “He had to come stay with us before your aunt and uncle split up, ’cause the arguing was so bad. You know how much it used to upset him. Eventually we’ll find a way to live with the decision and help you live with it too. I know I speak for your mom when I say you’re our main priority, making you happy.”

  “I’d be happy if you just stopped being stupid and got back together!” There it is, that first shout, the sound of tears harsh in his voice. My own eyes sting in sympathetic response, and even Callie looks up from where she’s digging in the wet sand, like she senses a change in the air. She starts to trot back toward me, making me swipe at my eyes in embarrassment before I remember she’s just a dog, and not much in the habit of judging grown men who cry in public.

  “We can’t do that, Liam,” I tell him firmly.

  He makes a frustrated noise like a wounded animal. I see Callie’s ears perk at the sound as she crawls forward on her belly, knowing someone is upset and trying not to be intrusive. She’s a good dog, and I’m kind of glad she’s here, so I won’t have to sit on the beach and cry by myself. A stupid friggin’ thought if there ever was one, but there it is.

  “Why not?” he demands. “What’s such a big deal that you had to go all the way to California and leave us here, huh? If you still love Mom, you should be able to come back and be here. If you were around, you’d find a way to fix stuff again. I know it.”

  Biting my lip, I stare down into Callie’s worried brown eyes—what I assume is worry, anyway—and stay silent for a long minute, trying, and failing, not to picture Liam crying over the phone. I don’t know what decides me in the end, but I realize I’ve made up my mind about what to say next even before my brain can catch up with my mouth. “Liam, can I tell you something secret?”

  “Is it bad?” He sounds so afraid. My poor, terrified kid. I am officially the worst goddamn father on the planet.

  “It’s….” I hesitate again. “No, it’s not bad. But it’s a lot of information, so I need you to listen closely and tell me if there’s something you don’t understand, all right? It’s okay if you don’t, so don’t feel embarrassed if you have to ask a few questions.”

  “Okay.”

  “The reason your mom and I are splitting up, Liam, and why we don’t have much hope of working things out, is because”—here my throat closes up like an allergic reaction to what I’m about to say—“I’m gay.” There is silence on the other end: deep, confused silence, and it occurs to me I have taken a step that cannot be undone, ever. Not for myself, not for Emilia, and certainly not for Liam. It makes me want to throw up. “Liam?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  God, what does that mean? I have a sudden vision of my kid failing to respond because he’s trying to drive a sharpened pencil into his neck. “Do you know what I mean by that?” I don’t intend to patronize him, because I know Emilia has covered an abridged version of the sex talk before—the look on Liam’s face was priceless—but his sudden calmness is freaking me the fuck out. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I decide to elaborate, since I’m probably fucked either way as soon as this gets back to Emilia. “It means that I like men more than I like women.”

  “I know what ‘gay’ means, Dad,” snaps Liam, with an edge of bitterness to his voice I’m not prepared for.

  “Okay, well… that’s good. So you know it means I can’t stay married to your mom, because she isn’t a dude.” Deciding to go all in, I swallow so heavily I know he’ll hear it on the other end. “I’m gonna be honest, Liam. There’s someone else—a man—I’ve been in love with for a really long time.”

  The strangled sound that emerges makes me cringe. I’m not sure what’s pissed him off more: the fact that I’ve come out of the closet, or that I’ve more or less admitted to messing around on his mom. Probably both. “Does this mean you’re with this new guy now?” he demands. “Is that why you left?”

  “No!” The word comes out sharper than intended, but at least it’s not total bullshit. “I told your mom the same thing, okay? Trust me when I say there’s no chance in hell of fixing things with him. But my answer would be the same either way.” Realizing I might be harping on about the wrong thing, I hurry to add, “It’s totally my fault I wasn’t honest with Mom from the beginning, okay? Full blame there—I had no excuse for keeping things from her, which is another reason why we probably shouldn’t be together. A good husband wouldn’t have lied for so long.”

  “So why did you?”

  Scrambling for a good answer—good luck, Nate—I venture, “Same reason why you didn’t like to admit you broke your mom’s favorite bowl last Christmas. I was scared to admit the truth and what she’d say. Don’t make it right.”

  “I don’t get it,” Liam interjects. Good, a question—hopefully something I can work with. “If this is something you can’t change, which Mom told me gay people can’t, why don’t you just come back and… I don’t know… talk to her about it? Why you gotta be all the way on the other side of the country? She said herself that being gay is nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “She’s right.” That Emilia covered this part of The Talk so effectively—Liam doesn’t remotely appear to be struggling to sympathize with or understand homosexuality—makes me want to bash my head open for how much of a tool I am by comparison. “It isn’t shameful, and that’s not why I left. But the situation is kind of different when the person you’re married to suddenly announces he likes dick.” I immediately cringe at my choice of words.

  Apparently, Liam does too. “Dad, gross!”

  “Sorry. But my point is, your mom has a right to be upset at the information, because it kind of affects her in a big way.”

  “Can’t you just talk to her about it and say you’re sorry?”

  Oh, to be ten again, when apologies solve almost everything. “I have. And maybe eventually she’ll listen, but right now I think she needs a bit of time to let it sink in.” I wrack my brain for an analogy that will explain exactly what I mean, that will communicate the depth of what Emilia is going through to Liam as much as myself, but smooth marketing pitche
s were always much more Phelan’s forte. Even Hugh could probably explain this better.

  “Look.” I take another deep breath on the windup; at this rate I’m going to start getting light-headed from too much oxygen intake. “It’s like… it’d be like if Babe Ruth had left the Yankees in the middle of his career to go play hockey in Canada or something.” An awful start, but when Liam doesn’t object, I forge ahead. “It’s not that hockey is any less of a respectable sport than baseball, but a lot of people would feel betrayed and disappointed because they had all these expectations of him as a great ball player, right?”

  Liam says, “I guess…,” and I wait to hear if there’s anything else before I continue. There isn’t.

  “I’m sure there would be some people out there who would have been encouraging and supportive of the choice, because in the end Ruth has to do what makes him the most happy, but there’d still be a lot of resentment, a lot of shattered hopes.” This is either the worst analogy of all times, or I deserve a Pulitzer. “You see what I mean? I’ve changed teams, and sports, kind of, and there’s nothing that could convince me that hockey is less awesome, but I’m not gonna delude myself everyone is thrilled with the decision. Like your mom.”

  “Is that why she won’t let me talk to you?” asks Liam.

  “No!” Not that it feels counterintuitive to defend my soon-to-be-ex-wife’s honor, but a little part of me wonders whether she’d do the same if Liam asked her about me. “She’s pissed ’cause I went about it the wrong way, quit the league without telling anyone first, started dabbling in hockey before I said I was through with baseball. That’s the real problem here, the real reason I fucked up—it’s not being gay, it’s that I was an asshole about it. Okay? So while I’m sure you’re gonna hear plenty of stuff at school about how being gay is bad or wrong, if you haven’t already, whenever you’ve got questions or doubts, you just think about me, or better yet pick up the phone and ask me yourself. Even ask your mom, because despite the fact that she’s pretty upset with me right now, she isn’t a bigot. She’ll never try to convince you that being gay is a bad thing. Like you said.”

  I’m running out of things to say. Despite the rampant stereotypes out there about homosexuality, talking about my feelings isn’t one of my strong points. Just ask Hugh or, Christ, Phel. The number of times that guy accused me of “not sharing” exceeds that of even Emilia, though in all fairness there’s no question of who’s more uptight. Phel got away with it by virtue of being Phel, a fact he didn’t often overlook. No word of a lie, I would have walked out on anyone else. He once accused me of withholding so much the relationship felt one-sided—this not even to do with my infidelity, and I remember how that fight wound up being not so different from the conversation I’m now having with Liam.

  Phel and I reached a point, several months into the affair, where a system fell into place to establish when and where we spent time together. Meaning, I was the one imposing all the rules. This was both intentional and not: to me, it was pretty cut and dry why I couldn’t be cavalier about the whole thing, but I guess I never stopped to think how this came across to Phel. Not until he brought it up, anyway, which he did one night over baseball.

  Now, Phel is obviously a guy, and he isn’t stupid, so I knew right away he was making a point by raising a touchy subject at a time most likely to rile me up. Emilia would try to start Important Conversations all the time when there was a ball game on TV, and later wouldn’t understand why I was distracted or annoyed about missing the last inning. With Phel, it was purely strategic. It wasn’t even that he was looking for a way to get out of watching sports, because I’d been getting him into the Rangers and he was on his way to being a knowledgeable fan.

  I knew something was up the second he said, casually, “We should watch the next game in Mount Vernon so you don’t have to drive home after,” in this tone that dared me to contradict him. The words were clipped and calm, practiced. “Or you could come to Chicago.”

  Freezing with my beer halfway to my mouth, I slid a sidelong glance at him. As he was curled against me under a blanket, the most I could see of his face was a fuzzy profile and that shock of dark hair. “You know your TV here is about a million times better than anything I can afford at home,” I pointed out, “so what’s that actually supposed to mean?”

  Phel sighed and guiltily chewed the inside of his lip. “Can I mute this?” he asked in answer. “The Rangers obviously won’t be winning this game.”

  Though I bristled at his lack of good faith in my team—our team, I thought—I didn’t protest when he grabbed the remote and switched off the television altogether, like he knew one or both of us had the propensity to become distracted under fire. He also divested me of my beer, which he set down on a coaster atop the glass coffee table.

  “I can’t believe I’m about to say this,” he began, “but I’m starting to feel a bit put out by the fact that we’ve been dating for months, and I’ve yet to see the inside of your house.” His nose wrinkled in a way I tried not to find adorable. “Maybe I’m new at this relationship thing”—here, he made air quotes—“but that seems odd to me. Isn’t it? Considering you live less than an hour away?”

  “Is your question about whether it’s weird, or why you haven’t seen the inside of my house?” It was a long shot and kind of a cheap one as well, but this seemed like one of those conversations where any opportunity to prevaricate was best taken advantage of. I was good at avoidance when I wanted to be. Emilia hated it, but Phel, thankfully, detested talking about this shit almost as much as me. I figured I was doing us both a favor by dragging it out, like easing a Band-Aid off a sensitive patch of skin.

  Scowling, Phel folded his arms and turned his body a bit more to face me. “Fine,” he grumbled. “I’m asking why I’ve never been to your house.”

  Shit. I tried again. “Is that, like… a deal breaker or something? Dual residence or nothing? You want a new space to decorate?”

  “You’re being a jackass,” he told me firmly. Maybe joking about gay stereotypes wasn’t the way to go here. “Obviously it’s not a deal breaker, and I pay people to decorate.” I snorted. Phel punched me in the arm. “Quit it, Nate. It’s bad enough having to hide you from my friends and family, or feeling half the time like I missed the class on relationship ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’. But whenever I try to show an interest in your home life or suggest going to Mount Vernon, you brush it off without much explanation or become cagey. I don’t appreciate being made to feel like you’re hiding something as well. Like there’s a reason you don’t want me to see where you live.”

  My whole body went still, mind racing from Does he suspect? Did he follow me home? to Does his ridiculously rich family have spies on my tail? Even though I knew it was a stupid thing to think, by that point I was on such high alert for any sign of suspicion from either end—Emilia, too, had started to wonder why I was taking so many business trips lately—I didn’t feel comfortable brushing off these kinds of questions. Until I laid each and every one to rest, I could barely sleep at night. Half the time I lay awake wracked with anxiety anyway, clutching Phel to me the way Liam used to cling to his battered stuffed elephant as a toddler.

  They say fear is proportionate to guilt, and I was one hell of a guilty, terrified motherfucker. I thought about Phel all the time, thought about how I was lying not just to him, but to Emilia and Liam too. I’d started thinking a bit about the D-word, and whether it was feasible to stick around in a marriage that was coming apart at the seams. Whether it was feasible to pretend I didn’t leave a massive part of myself behind in Columbus each time I left. Emilia and I barely touched each other anymore, or at least I did a pretty good job of finding excuses to put off having sex whenever she came to bed wearing new lingerie or tried to pack Liam off for a sleepover. It killed me to carry on with something that would end worse for everyone the longer I kept it hidden. I just hadn’t figured out the logistics yet—not about how to broach the subject with my wife, and cert
ainly not with my boyfriend. At that stage, the only thing I was clear on was who I wanted to be with, and currently he was staring at me and interpreting my silence as proof I was about to break his heart.

  “Is this not working out for you, Nate?” Phelan asked quietly. He smoothed his fingers down my cheek, then withdrew. “Maybe that’s not something I’m supposed to say, I don’t know. I hate to ask where we stand, but if this isn’t what you want, it’s probably better to get it out in the open now.”

  I sighed. While Phel might have been 100 percent wrong about me wanting to end the relationship, I knew this was what he was most afraid of: getting unexpectedly shit-canned from a relationship he’d tried to resist in the first place. There was no denying that neither of us expected to end up here after that first weekend. But he was also offering me an out, an opportunity to make a clean break without weeks—if not months—of lying and waiting for the right time to spring the bad news.

  It wasn’t going to happen, though. That much I could deny with a clean conscience. Even my dysfunctional male brain knew I was in love with him, the feelings sincere, though I hadn’t yet worked up the nerve to say it out loud. Still, it was equally clear he needed a show of good faith to make him believe it, to reassure him of the crazy risk he’d taken on me with his heart. That, more than anything, made me want to step up and start thinking about taking a risk of my own. I wanted to prove Phel wrong, show him I was worthy. Maybe I still didn’t believe it myself, not while I was married to Emilia, but I was determined to give him as much as I could. Hell, if my wife and son’s feelings hadn’t been on the line, I’d have given him everything already.

  I found Phel’s hand beneath the blanket and gave it a squeeze, lacing our fingers together in a way I’d long stopped feeling self-conscious about. “You’re amazing,” I told him, trying not to chastise him for thinking otherwise. “But there is something I haven’t told you. It’s got nothing to do with how I feel or how much I want to be here, okay? Because we’re good. I love being with you.” I wished I could have done away with the “being with” part, but dropping the L-bomb right then would have looked suspicious, like I was trying to divert him from the topic at hand or buy him off. Instead I took a deep breath and wound up for the pitch. “Fact is, Phel, the reason I haven’t felt comfortable bringing you to my home is because I don’t live there by myself. I’ve got a son—Liam. He’s nine, and he has no idea I like men.”