As if a stranger lived within the silvered glass of the
master bedroom’s mirror, Adam Joshua Goldberg watched the reflection straighten
his tie. The man’s chest rose and fell rapidly. He looked pale, a frightening
contrast to his dark hair, eyes, and suit. His lips moved, pressing into his
memory what he planned to be a short speech for the cameras and microphones at
Gracie Mansion.
What would happen after that, he had no idea.
“Joshie, you don’t have to do this.” Deidre's words,
and the nickname only she and his mother called him, fell softly on his ears.
She sniffed and reached toward the nightstand for a tissue, dabbing carefully
beneath her eyes to preserve her makeup.
He almost laughed. Don’t
have to do this? Yeah. I do.
“We could…just,” she threw her hands up, “disappear. For a
while. Until it blows over. People do that. Move upstate. Find a new school for
the kids…”
“Deidre…it’s…” He turned to her, knelt beside her, and rested
his feverish head against her pink-skirted knees. “Something…I need to do. If
you want to disappear, I wouldn’t blame you. I can handle it on my own.”
“A promise is a promise,” she said. “I agreed to stand
beside you.”
The laugh strangled in his throat. “Isn’t that how we got
into this in the first place?”
Her face softened.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just…ready to jump out of my
skin, here. After…hiding…for so long, I need this.” Like a baptism, he thought. Washing
away my sins.
She patted his head. “Adam. Come up here. Sit with me.”
Reluctantly he rose and perched next to her on the bed. Her
bed, technically. He’d been sleeping in the guest room for the last two years,
brought in his favorite things, made it to his taste. The move was not out of
her anger; on the contrary, she’d offered it to him as a courtesy, out of
respect.
He took her hand, squeezed it.
“It’ll be okay, Deidre.”
“It most certainly will not be okay. Do you have any idea
what they’re going to do to you? To your family?”
“Dad already knows.”
Her eyes widened.
“That’s where I was last night. You were asleep when I got
home.”
She patted his arm as if to convince herself that he was
still there. “Well. He didn’t kill you, so I guess that’s good.”
He felt a corner of his mouth crook up. “I can’t say that he
was thrilled. But we had a nice talk. Of course, after he tore me a new one
about keeping it secret for so long. And what it would do to his grandchildren.
And you, of course.”
She didn’t answer.
He turned to look out the brownstone’s window at the terrace
garden. “I can keep the press away from you. Anything they want to ask, they
can ask me.”
She didn’t answer.
“Like I said, you can keep the house,” he said. “I won’t
contest it. I’ll move into that apartment Dad’s firm keeps near Columbus Circle.”
“That’s such a horrible little place,” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s just for now. I…I want you to be happy,
Dee. You deserve so much more…”
She didn’t answer.
“I know I’m in no position to make demands, but I’d like one
thing. I want to see the kids. I want to be part of their lives.”
Her lower lip began to tremble. Tears streamed down her
face. It undid him, and he curled her into his arms and cried with her. After a
while she sniffed and said, “You’ll be late.”
“For my own hanging?” He smirked. “I think the press will
stick around.”
When Deidre went off to freshen her makeup, he found his
phone and sent a text, a favorite quote from Ben Franklin: They who
can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve
neither.
The reply from
Charlie came within moments. He glanced down, expecting a quip, but nearly
teared up again when he read: When
strength and fear shake hands, it can move mountains. Go move mountains, my
friend.
The words pulsed in
him, confirmed that he was doing the right thing. Trying to keep his hands from
trembling, he wrote back: When they speak
of me, remember me well.
The phone trilled
with a reply: Unforgettable…that’s what
you are. (smiley face)
He grinned. That was
the Charlie he knew.
High heels clicked
into the doorway. She was staring at the phone in his hands, the remnants of
the smile on his face.
Her voice barely
broke into sound. “I envy you.”
“Aw, Deidre…don’t.”
“No. It’s true. When
this is over, you’ll have…support. You’ll have a community. I’ll have…pity.
Contempt. People looking at me everywhere I go, wondering how in this day and
age a woman could be so clueless not to know that she’s marrying a gay
man…or…worse, that I did it on purpose. That I’m some kind of political
golddigger…”
He crossed to her
and took her in his arms. “Screw what they think. You’re none of those things,
and I’ll defend you with my dying breath.”
She pushed away.
“Stop. I don’t want to fix my makeup again. Just…let’s go.”
Very nice! I like it!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Rich! :D
DeleteThis is a great, poignant piece. So much love and confusion.
ReplyDeleteLife is love and confusion, yes? Thank you, D.
DeleteWord.
DeletePerfect. I sensed what was coming but that was likely already obvious in an earlier bit. I felt such sympathy for both of them - good people caught in an untenable situation.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Yvonne. These two just break my heart.
DeleteI forgot how much I love your writing!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Jim! :D
Delete