“I’m not done with you yet,” I said to him. “Say anything you want to me. And next time you get the urge to beat up a faggot, you come to me. We’ll do it when Father isn’t around to rescue you.”
“Rescue me!” Haoa said indignantly, as I walked out the front door.
Reporters rushed me as I hurried to my father’s truck. “Kimo, do you think you were framed?” one asked.
“When’s your hearing?” a woman asked, thrusting a microphone at me.
“Are your brother’s problems related to yours?” another called. “We know he was arrested outside the Rod and Reel last night.”
“You’ll have to ask him,” I said. I got into the truck and gunned the engine, and started backing down the driveway fast, scattering them in my wake. It felt good to see one of them stumble and fall onto the lawn.
By the time I got down to the highway I was sure none of them were following me. I drove over to the hospital where they had taken Tico, and got his room number from the clerk at the front desk. When I walked in, Tatiana was sitting by his bed talking to him in a low voice. When she saw me come in, she got up and hugged me.
“Kimo, I’m so sorry,” she said. “Howie’s an asshole. I think it’s great you are who you want to be.”
“Mahalo,” I said.
She stepped back and looked at me. “What happened to you?”
“Haoa and I spent the night at our parents’ house,” I said. “We got into it this morning after breakfast.”
She shook her head. “Jesus, the man never stops.”
“You should see what we did to our father,” I said, and Tatiana gaped, knowing how much we usually respected him.
From the bed, Tico said, “Tatiana, can you give us a couple of minutes?”
“Sure. I need a cup of coffee anyway.”
She walked out, and I took her place on the chair by the bed. Tico didn’t look too bad, though he winced whenever he moved too fast. He was in his mid-fifties, his thin brown hair cut short. His right wrist was bandaged and he looked pale.
I didn’t know Tico well. I’d met him a few times at parties at Haoa’s house, when he’d always behaved, I don’t know, a little over the top. I didn’t like swishy men, but I recognized in him a kinship that was closer to me in some ways than my brothers. “How are you doing?” I asked.
“Mezza-mezza.” He shook the good hand from side to side. “How about you?”
I was about to say “Fine,” when I stopped. “Well, in the last twenty-four hours I lost my job, got outed in the media, and had a fight with my brother where we both ended up punching our father. I’d say on the whole things are not going so well.”
“It’s a hard thing to go through.” Tico struggled to sit up a little higher on the bed, and I adjusted the pillow behind him. “It’s why I left Puerto Rico, you know?”
“I didn’t know.”
“I was working nights in a bar, still living with my parents. My father came home early from work one day and found me in bed with a boy from down the street.” He shook his head. “He went crazy. I had to leave. I wandered around for a while, New York, Florida, California. I learned to do hair. I ended up here.” He smiled. “Like Tatiana. That’s why we get along so well. Both wanderers washed up on the shore here.”
“You ever go home?”
He shook his head. “I wish I could, now, but my father died. About five years after I left. We never talked again, never made up. I still have this empty place inside.”
“I’ve been lucky,” I said. “My parents have been great.”
He nodded. “Good. That’s the first step.” He looked down at the bed, and then back up at me. “I forgive Howard, you know. He was angry, he wasn’t in control. He didn’t really mean to hurt me.”
“He wanted to hurt me,” I said. “You were just a convenient stand-in.”
“That may be true. But still I forgive him, and you should too.”
“I don’t think I can. I feel like it would be condoning what he did. And I can’t do that, not for myself, or for anyone else who wants to be free to go to that bar, or be out in the world, without worrying about assholes like Haoa.”
“There’s a difference between forgiving and condoning,” Tico said. “What you have to do now is educate him. We all have to, you know. One by one, the gays of the world are educating the straights that we’re people too. Your job is to go on with your life, living it in a way that makes you comfortable, and by doing that you show your brother that you’re still a good person, that you still love him, that what you do in bed or who you do it with doesn’t change who you are. And gradually he’ll change.”
“Do you think he will?”
“I think each of us has the potential to change,” he said. “Sometimes it’s painful, like what you’re going through.” He took a sip of water from a foam cup on the bed tray. “You’re very lucky to have such a warm and loving family. I look at Tatiana and Howard together and I think, that’s what I want, someday. I want someone who will love me the way they love each other. I can’t bear to think their love will be lost because of me.”
I knew what he meant. I had often seen Haoa and Tatiana together and envied them the kind of visceral connection they had. He loved her fiercely, with more dedication than I had ever seen him apply to anything, even football, and when he was a teenager he lived, breathed, ate and talked football. It was so much a part of him I couldn’t imagine him not playing. Nor could I imagine him without Tatiana. He would die. It was as if she gave him some essential nutrient he couldn’t live without.
“And you love him, too,” Tico said, looking at me. “You know you do. So you have to forgive him. Because if you don’t, you’ll have an empty place inside you like I have. And trust me, darling, you don’t want that.”
I reached out and took his good hand in mine, and squeezed. His grip was surprisingly strong.
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?
I sat with Tico for a while, and then as I was leaving I met Tatiana in the hallway. “Howie’s not a bad person,” she said as we leaned up against the antiseptic green wall. “He just doesn’t think sometimes.”
“I know. And I know some people are going to treat me differently now that I’m out of the closet. But it’s hard when the trouble comes from inside your family.”
“He doesn’t do well with change,” Tatiana admitted. “I remember when I found out I was pregnant with Ashley I went running out to this job he was working on with your father. I was so excited! I jumped out of the car and ran up to him, screaming ‘I’m pregnant! I’m pregnant!’”
She laughed. “He had a cow. He was going ‘Oh, my God, how did this happen!’ and I said, ‘It’s sex, Howie, we had sex,’ and all the other guys were laughing, and God, he was mad at me for a month.” Her face got somber then. “And he went on a drinking binge and didn’t come home all night. I know he’s got problems, Kimo, and he really doesn’t drink that much anymore, only when something really upsets him. And you know he does love you, and this has all been kind of hard for him to take.”
“So you’re forgiving him?”
“I have to. I was really mad at him when I found out he beat up Tico. I mean, that man is like my brother. At first I thought he knew it was Tico, that he was mad at me about something and taking it out on him. Tico got me to understand.”
“Yeah, that it wasn’t your fault, it was mine.”
“It’s not your fault.” She faced me, pushing a big crest of ash-blonde hair from her forehead. “Howie overreacted. That’s his problem, not yours.”
“But I can’t help feeling it is my problem.” I started to walk down the corridor and Tatiana came with me. “If I hadn’t gone to the Rod and Reel Club none of this would have happened.”
An orderly passed us, wheeling an elderly Chinese woman with a tube coming out of her nostrils, connected to an oxygen tank on the back of the wheelchair. Her claw-like fingers gripped the arms of the chair, like she was holding on and wouldn’t let go.
“That man would still be dead,” Tatiana said when they had passed. “And you’d still be investigating his murder. And you’d still be stuck in your closet, and maybe you’d never get the chance for the life you deserve.” She took my arm and I stopped walking and turned to face her. “Everything happens for a reason,” she said. “I believe that. You have to forgive Howie, and you have to forgive yourself.”