“No,” Mark said. “It just... it wasn’t… anything.”
“And now it is, and now you’re trying to understand. And I’m your guinea pig. I’m your coming to grips. I suppose you feel like you have something on me because I told you how I felt. About you.”
“Look,” Mark said, suddenly angry. “I never asked you to have anything for me, and quite frankly, I think I’m dealing with it a lot better than most people would. Most straight men would have... they would have never talked to you again.”
“You were going to say most straight men would clock me in the face.” “No I wasn’t,” Mark said. “Violence is never the answer.”
That sounded stupid.
“Well, then fine,” Rick said. “You know what?” He didn’t move. “Tell me why you don’t walk out. Tell me why you’re not going to clock me in the face. Tell me why you’re still here.”
Mark gritted his teeth. His eyes withdrew. They looked blank and yet, at the same time, angry. Like he was contemplating the idea of killing someone.
“Fine,” Rick said, “How about this? How about you get the hell up right now and then we don’t bother with this because obviously you think you’re above me. You think you’re so superior and so damn good and liberal for talking to me. Well, don’t bother, Mark. The cat’s out of the bag and...” Rick apparently couldn’t think of anything else to say. He stood up and said, “I have to get back to the school. Unless you want to call them up and tell them everything, and then I guess I’ll be unemployed. Don’t worry,” he told Mark. I’ve got the bill.”
And Mark sat there, eyes still distant like Sidney would say. He didn’t say or do anything. And then Rick Howard was gone.
“You’ve got to be kidding me, Mason, please tell me you’re kidding me?”
“No,” Mason told Balliol.
“We just went on a retreat.”
“No,” Mason corrected him. “Actually we went to a conference. And this will be different.”
“Are we going to be wearing white robes and shit, eating tofu? I bet we can’t smoke,” Balliol said.
“You know in your heart that it’s going to be fun,” Mason said.
“I must not be in touch with my heart right now then.”
“And that,” Mason seized the moment, “is exactly why you need a retreat. It will be great, and my aunt Savannah’s paying.”
` “Have I met her?”
“Beautiful, loose, crazy? I don’t think so.”
“Well, she sounds like my kind of girl.”
“She’s getting her life together. That’s why we’re going.”
“How long is the trip?”
“Well, we’ll be in Pennsylvania, so I think it’s about four hours. The place is supposed to be all hidden away in the hills.”
“Like Deliverance?”
“It’s Pennsylvania, not Appalachia.”
“They have hillbillies everywhere.”
“Come on, Balliol!” Mason said, “Are you going to go with me or not?”
“My options are to go with you and have a dreadful time that I’ll be able to tell stories about for years and years, or sit here and clip my toenails?
“Naturally I’m going with you.”
“Where are you going?” Bobby asked her when he came through the back of the house to Savannah’s room that night.
“To the Om Ni Si Gay ohhh Whatever The Fuck It’s Called meditation and retreat center.”
“Really,” Bobby said putting his hands together and making a smug face, “You goin’ to do some of that meditation some of that OMMMMM, OMMMM.”
“Yes,” Savannah stopped packing her back, “Om, Om, shant shanga and whatever the hell else is part of it. I’m going to do it.”
“You, at a meditation place. By yourself.”
“I won’t be by myself,” Savannah said.
“Oh, who are you taking?”
It seemed lame to say, “my nephew”, so she said nothing. She just threw another tee shirt into the suitcase then sat down on it, trying to shut it. No good.
“You’re taking Mason,” Bobby said.
Savannah’s eyes flew open.
“You gon run off to the monks with your nephew. You crazy, Savannah, crazy.
“But I tell you what, baby, I love you anyway.” He leaned down and kissed her. “I’ll see you when you get back.”
He made a face and left the room.
Savannah discovered something at that moment:
“I hate him.”
“I miss our lunch dates,” Mark was saying that afternoon.
“Yeah, I know. It’s the only time I get to see, Shelley, though,” Joel shrugged lamely, “you know?”
“Yeah,” said Mark. “So how are things going with Shelley, whom we haven’t met?”
“That’s right! Tell you what? I’ll bring her by your house. Or all of us can have dinner one night. You, me, Sidney, the kids.”
“If she’d like that,” Mark said.
“She should meet the family.”
“The family,” Mark made a face.
“Well, we are.” Joel said. “After all these years.”
Joel waited a moment and then he said, “This means that you can tell me whatever’s bugging you.”
“There’s nothing bugging me.”
“Why are you lying to me?”
“I’m not.”
“You are,” Joel said. “You’re glum. You look like you lost your best friend. And I’m your best friend, so that couldn’t be it. Unless you lost your other best friend, and it’s hard to shake Sidney. So I’m guessing it’s Rick Howard.”
“What?”
“Am I wrong?” Joel cocked his head. “Nope, not wrong. What the heck happened? He’s the only other friend you’ve ever had.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes it is. And now you all fell out?”
“I’m not twelve,” Mark said sounding a little petulant. “I don’t fall out with people.”
“But you have fallen out,” Joel said.
“Joel, can it, all right?” Mark said, and that was the end of it. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Joel shrugged.
“Fine,” he said. “But it must have been a really big fight.”
“Welcome to Say Ya Om Gay Yom’s Center For Health and Well Being,” the man said, “I’m your weekend counselor, Deep Mountain River.”
“Get out,” Balliol murmured from the side of his mouth.
“And you will be able to attain your heaven name after this retreat.”
“Oh,” said Balliol.
“Here is your white robe, the man handed one to Balliol and one to Mason and finally one to Savannah. “And we will be having a tofu lunch in around one half hour. Relax,” he said. “Enjoy!”
And Deep Mountain River was gone down the hall of the retreat center.
Balliol began tittering to himself while Mason and Savannah looked at him trying not to laugh.
“The good thing,” Mason told them, “is that he didn’t say we couldn’t smoke.”
When Mark came over that evening, Sidney said, “Joel isn’t here. Joel won’t be here. He’s on a date with the lovely Shelley.”
“This is turning kind of serious, isn’t it?”
“I think it turned serious a while ago,” Sidney said. “By my count this is the second woman in Joel’s life. Third if you count Blowjob Carla.” Sidney shrugged.
“Sid!”
“What? That’s what I called her. Not to her face though.”
“And I bet not to Joel’s either.”
“You bet right.”
“The house is empty?”
“Mason and Savannah went on some retreat,” Sidney said. “Savannah’s getting her life together and I guess Mason’s either having a mid-teenage crisis or just in need of a good laugh at his aunt’s expense, and God knows she’ll give it to him. Where’s your little friend?”
“My little...?”
“Your partner in crime,” Sidney said. “Rick Howard, Dean of the illustrious Saint Vitus?”
“Oh,” Mark said.
“That was a loaded o.”
“It was not a loaded o.”
“It was too,” Sidney told him. “It wasn’t just an o, not a round o. It was an o with a gunshot through it, like, ohhhh. Did you all have a falling out?”
“Sidney?”
“Did you?”
“Sidney, don’t talk to me like a teenager. I’m not Mason—”
“No,” Sidney agreed, “if you were I’d never have to address you like a teenager. You’d be addressing me. What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I don’t want to hear it. But something happened, you’re my friend, so spit it out.”
Mark opened his mouth. Sidney did this to him. Sidney was the only one.
“Yes,” Mark said at last. “We had a brief... I don’t know what it was.”
“Sit down and tell it to Sidney.”
Mark frowned at Sidney.
“Who else are you going to tell it to?”
Mark blew out his cheeks and sat down.
“I don’t really know what happened. We had a... he blew up for no reason. He just got a really angry, and I got really angry and then he... sort of said that we just shouldn’t see each other—”
“See each other?”
“I mean, hang out.”
Sidney said nothing.
“And that was that,” Mark shrugged. “Things ended kind of badly. I felt like a kid all over again, like when you’d have one of those really bad fights with your friends.”
“You all should do something about that,” Sidney said, sharply.
“What?”
“I said you all should do something about that, Mark. Kids have tiffs and stomp away, not men in their forties. The both of you are too old.”
“I’m not old.”
“You’re missing the point.”
“Well, then what am I supposed to do, Mom? Am I supposed to go to his house and apologize? Did you want to make a pie for me to take to him?”
Sidney looked at his friend witheringly and said, “I hate it when you try to be witty. Hold on,” he said.
He left the kitchen, Mark looked around. Why didn’t they ever leave this fucking kitchen? When Sidney came back he said, “You
don’t have to do anything, because Rick’ll be here in about fifteen minutes.”
“Sidney!’
Sidney was almost, but not, quite afraid at the look on Mark’s face.
“How could you! That’s enough. Sometimes I’ve really got enough of you. You think you can tell other people how to run their lives and just interfere, but you don’t understand—” Mark got up and followed Sidney into the living room. Sidney was going down the hall, indifferent to him.
“I’m talking to you,” Mark said. “You don’t have any respect for—”
Sidney closed his bedroom door and shut the lock.
“Sidney Darrow, I will stand here until you come out.”
“Just stand there until Rick Howard comes,” Sidney said from the other side of the door. “And then let him in.”
When the knock on the door came, Sidney heard Mark swearing on the other side of his bedroom door.
“You’d better get it, Mark,” Sidney said, lightly.
“I hate you,” Mark told him.
“No you don’t. Go get the door.”
Mark humphed and went down the hallway. A few seconds later he opened it to Rick Howard who was standing there looking surprised.
“Sidney told me...”
Mark realized.
“Did Sidney cook up something about how he was worried about Mason’s academic situation or—”
“Actually, yes,” Rick said, dazed as he stepped into the house. “That’s exactly what he said.”
“Sid lies when it suits him,” Mark told Rick.
“I don’t—”
“He thinks we need to talk,” Mark said. “He thinks we should make up.”
“My God, did you tell him—?”
“No,” Mark said. “No, I didn’t. I just said we had a falling out, and he said that we were both too old to have falling outs… fallings out… whatever you call it—and that we should make up. You know.”
To Mark’s surprise, Rick Howard actually cocked a smile.
“That’s really kind of sweet,” he said.
Mark considered this and then said, “Well, I suppose that in a nosey and overbearing way… it is.
“Look, Rick, I don’t know what to say. I really... I really try to take the blame for the things I do, but I don’t even know what I did the other day. I felt like maybe you were trying to find a reason to get rid of me.”
Rick said nothing at first, and then he said, “Mark, listen. You’re a wonderful person. You’re a good guy, really.”
“Thanks,” Mark said sarcastically.
“That’s not coming out right,” Rick said, putting hand to his head.
“You know that you’re more than that for me. You know it. And I can’t be that to you, and... to me that doesn’t feel fair.”
“Me liking you isn’t enough?” Mark said. “I’ve been doing everything I can for us to still be friends, and that’s not enough.”
“It’s not going to work,” Rick said. “Look, I’m glad Sidney played his little game. Just so I could tell you this isn’t about you at all. It’s me. People say that a lot, but you know it’s true this time. I... I have spent the bulk of my life thinking I couldn’t find someone, or I didn’t deserve someone, that I wouldn’t even have friends, and then I had you and you mean a lot to me. You really do. But you’re always going to be… I mean we will only be just friends, and I’m always going to want you to be more, and I hate to admit that. I hate it, but it’s true. And this is going to be bad for us. It’s not fair to you. Really Mark.”
Mark stood there saying nothing.
Rick went out the side door into the night, and then Mark saw the lights of his car flash on and he headed own the driveway and up Owens Street.
A few seconds later Sidney came out of his room looking expectant.
Mark’s back was to the kitchen door and he let out a deep sigh.
“Shit,” he said.
“Shit.”