Chapter Twenty-Seven

 

 

“HERE, MA, let me help you.”

Thankfully, Ma didn’t protest as Forrester helped her into his truck. “Thank you, bambino.”

“You comfortable? You need anything?”

She frowned at him from her perch in the passenger seat. “I need you to get in the truck and stop asking me questions in the parking lot.”

“Fine.” He shut the door carefully and went around to the driver’s side.

They’d spent the last three hours with Ma hooked to a machine being pumped full of God only knew what kind of chemicals to kill cancer. Half the people in the room didn’t have hair, and the sickening smell of medicine now permeated Forrester’s clothing. He’d hoped for privacy to tell Ma about Kyle and what his brothers did, but he didn’t realize other people would be in the room.

Forrester put the key in his ignition and paused.

“What?” Ma asked. “Is something wrong with your truck?”

He needed to tell her.

Now.

It couldn’t wait a second longer.

He kept his eyes locked on the blue Ford emblem on the steering wheel. “Ma, I have to tell you something.”

“We sat in that place all morning, and now that we’re in the parking lot, you have something to tell me?”

“It’s not something I can say in front of a bunch of strangers.” He tried to keep irritation from his voice. He glanced over at her and immediately back to the steering wheel.

“You look all nervous. Your face is getting red. What is it?”

“It’s about Kyle.” He’d stewed over a million ways to tell her while sitting in the chemotherapy room and was unsure which words would come out of his mouth now. But he figured he would just say whatever and let the cards fall how they did.

“Kyle? What about him?”

“We’re dating.” He let out a breath, those two simple words freeing and terrifying at the same time.

“Dating? What are you talking about?”

Forrester stared at the wheel. Squeezing once, then twice, he took a deep breath. “I’m gay.”

A long pregnant silence filled the car, and Forrester’s pulse pounded in his ears and heat throbbed up the back of his head. His eyelids were dry and heavy, his breathing difficult. As if every normal bodily function had been amplified in some sort of cone, everything louder than it should be.

“What do you mean you’re gay?” Ma said in a flat tone.

Forrester quickly glanced at her, noting she stared straight ahead. “I’m gay, Ma. Kyle is my boyfriend.”

“Since when?”

He shrugged. “He’s been coming to the bookstore for a while. We started dating in May.”

Ma waved her hands. “Not when did you start dating Kyle. Since when are you gay?”

His throat tightened. “Since forever.”

They sat there like that, neither saying anything. He had no doubt she loved him, but could she handle this? Was it right for him to tell her when she was sick? Did he choose the wrong time? Like Dino, had he been wrong about her too?

Ma dropped her head back on the headrest. She let out a trembling sigh that sounded like she might cry. Startled, Forrester faced her.

“Who was it?” she asked.

Not what he expected her to say. “Who was what?”

“Who touched you when you were a kid?” she wanted to know, her voice sad, but stronger. “Just tell me who did it.”

Flabbergasted, he shook his head, curling up his lip. “What are you talking about, Ma? No one touched me when I was a kid.”

“Then explain it to me.” She looked confused or annoyed. He couldn’t quite read her expression. “What happened? How did this happen?”

“Genetics, Ma. Same as how I was born with dark hair.”

“That’s not the same thing,” she said in that know-it-all way of hers. “I must’ve done something wrong as a mother. Did I baby you too much? I just knew you were more sensitive, that’s all. I didn’t mean to turn you gay.”

Forrester took a long, deep breath, closed his eyes, and rubbed irritably at his face. This was part of why he’d delayed saying anything for as long as he did. But the cat was out of the bag, and he wouldn’t play games. “Ma, I was born gay. No one touched me. You didn’t do anything wrong. This isn’t about you. I’m gay and I have been my entire life. Kyle is my boyfriend, and I love him. He asked me to move in with him, and I said yes. That’s why I’m finally telling you guys.”

Well, that was easy….

Ma didn’t say anything. She fiddled with the handle on her purse. “You serious?”

His face was hot, but he wouldn’t back down. “Yes.”

“All this time, you knew and never said anything?”

The similar note of irritation he’d heard in his brothers’ voices triggered his temper. “Why would I say anything?”

She jerked her head back in shock. “Yeah, why didn’t you say anything?”

“Did you or did you not hear all the things Dad said about fags? My. Entire. Life.”

That solitary word made his mother cringe. “Yeah, he was kind of old-fashioned that way. But he loved you.”

“No,” he said calmly, fighting the tremble in his lip. “He loved Frankie. He didn’t know Forrester.”

“He would’ve learned to be okay with it.”

“No, you would’ve told him to get over it. He would have pretended to, but I would’ve known he didn’t love me the same anymore,” he said, voice cracking. “Or love me at all.”

“Don’t say that.”

“You know it’s true, Mama.”

She was quiet again for a long time. Then she fanned herself with a hand. “It’s hot in here. Can you turn on the air-conditioning?”

Rubbing his face, Forrester hastily started the truck and cranked up the AC. He pointed a vent at his mother and one at himself.

“You could’ve told me,” she said after a while.

“Yeah, I suppose I could’ve.”

“I wouldn’t have told your father.”

Frustrated, he slammed his hands on the steering wheel. “That’s the point. Yeah, I could’ve told you, but I never could’ve told Dad.”

“Maybe you should go visit him,” she suggested. “You’re the only one who hasn’t been to the cemetery.”

“Why? So I can beg a hunk of marble to love me? To not hate me for how I was born?”

“Your father never hated you. In fact, he tried the hardest with you, I’ll have you know,” she said, defensive. “Every time he tried to get close to you, you just pushed him away.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He used to ask me all the time, ‘Why doesn’t Frankie like me?’ I just told him it was teenage hormones making you antisocial, but he knew you weren’t comfortable with him, not like your brothers. That’s why he was always trying to get you to do things with him. Like work on the Shelby or go to a ball game. You always said no. It hurt him.”

Forrester remained quiet, absorbing her words and trying to understand them from his parents’ perspectives, not his own. He had avoided being alone with Dad because he’d been terrified Dad would figure it out. Then when he went to OSU, he only came home if the whole family would be there, never if it was just Dad. A few weeks before he died, Dad wanted Forrester to go fishing with him. Forrester said he had plans, because he hadn’t wanted to deal with the anxiety of being alone with Dad. He never thought his actions might have hurt Dad.

Not once.

And now it was too late.

God, it’s all just so fucked-up!

“I loved Dad,” he finally whispered. “But I was relieved when he died, Mama.”

“What?” she burst out. “No, don’t say such things.”

Pleading, he turned to her, trying to contain the sudden swell of emotions. Painful truths he pretended weren’t real, but always lingered in the darkest part of his mind. “It’s true. Those guys, they had a different father than I did. They knew he loved them, no matter what. But not me. Not me.”

“He loved you.”

Eyes stinging, he shook his head furiously. “Every time he said something about fags and queers, it was like he was kicking me in the stomach, Ma. Just like some kid getting beat by their old man, I wanted him to love me anyways. But I just kept getting kicked. Over and over. Do you have any idea what that was like?”

“Probably awful.”

“It was,” he admitted, wiping at the tears. “It is awful.” His last word was lost in a choke he couldn’t contain.

“Don’t cry, bambino mio,” she muttered, and then she cursed. “C’mere, I got a bad arm, I can’t hug you.”

A tidal wave of grief hit him as he leaned across the console for the hug he so desperately needed. Ma twisted, wrapping her right arm around his shoulders. He tried to be careful of the port in her left arm and ended up almost on her lap. At the sound of her cooing whispers in Italian, the dam broke.

Letting it all go, Forrester cried. He cried for the weight of the words he’d never voiced about Dad, and how badly they hurt because they were true. He thought he’d be embarrassed as Ma patted him like he was a child, but he wasn’t. He didn’t know if he’d received such succor from her since his infancy, but he needed her so much, her support, her love.

Most of all her forgiveness.

“I hated him so much,” he managed when the tears settled.

“Oh, bambino mio, no, don’t say that,” she cried.

“I know it sounds bad, but I can’t help it. I’m sorry!”

Brushing his hair off his fevered brow, she cupped his face and made him look at her. “You’re gonna have to figure out how to forgive him. Or you’ll never be at peace.”

“How am I supposed to do that?”

She stroked his cheek and gave him a teary smile. “That’s for you to figure out.”

He let out a breathy, mirthless chuckle. “That’s not really helpful, ya know?”

She patted his cheek. “But it’s the truth.”

Wiping his face dry with the front of his T-shirt, Forrester sat back in his seat. He turned a second vent on his face and tried to collect himself. He couldn’t believe he’d cried like that, but he felt better. Confessing his unresolved issues with Dad removed a weight from his chest.

“This makes me so sad.” Ma dried her eyes with a tissue.

“What? Me being gay?”

She waved a hand and adjusted her purse in her lap. “No, you and your father. Thinking about what the two of you lost out on. A mother wants her family to love each other. Now, after all this time, I learn that you thought your father hated you, and he thought you hated him. It hurts me.”

“Me too.” His heart ached, but there was no TARDIS or time portal to go back and fix it. What was done was done. Ma was right, he’d have to figure out how to forgive a dead man for sins he wasn’t even aware he’d committed.

And he had no idea how to do that.

He put his truck into reverse and backed out. As he exited the labyrinth of parking lots at the hospital, neither of them said anything.

Finally, when he came to yet another Stop sign, Ma asked, “Do your brothers know?”

“Yeah. Joey outed me to everybody at Smitty’s on Saturday, Tony made a bet that I was gay, and Dino just laughed at me.”

She chuckled. “That sounds about right.”

“How do you figure?”

“Joey is…. Well, he’s Joey. He’s got a heart of gold, but he’s not the sharpest tack. Antonio’s got a gambling problem, and Dino has the emotional maturity of a ten-year-old.” She smiled at him. “Lemme guess, you just yelled at everybody and ran off?”

He managed a smile. “Yeah, kinda.”

“So now what?”

“What do you mean?”

“Now what?” she repeated. “You’re gay, you have a boyfriend. What do you want me to do? How am I supposed to act? What am I supposed to say? What do you want?”

“I just….” A million things went through his mind, but in a low, wobbly voice he said, “I just want you to still love me.”

She reached across the truck and whacked him on the back of the head.

“Ow! What’s that for? I’m driving!”

“Why would you think I wouldn’t love you?” she demanded. “That’s stupid.”

Her heartfelt scolding brought tears to his eyes, and he slanted a look at her, then back to the road. “What was I supposed to think?”

“Not that I wouldn’t love you, ya big idiot.” She sat back and crossed her arms, then flinched in pain. “I know your father said stuff, but I never did,” she muttered. “At least nothing that should make you think I wouldn’t love you. What are you thinking?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted, fighting down a smile. He didn’t bring up her love the sinner, hate the sin line because her fierce declaration of loyalty felt too good. Nothing was worth shattering this newfound level of their relationship.

“Why’d you have to tell me this the first day of chemo? It’s too much. You should’ve told me months ago. Years ago.”

“You should’ve told us you found a lump at Christmas,” he countered.

Their eyes met in challenge, then softened. They both chuckled.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“I could eat.”

“I froze a bunch of meatballs and some lasagna. I’ll make some when we get home.”

“You didn’t have to do that.”

“How else would your brother eat anything? Nonna can’t cook anymore. She uses salt instead of sugar.”

Forrester smiled. Nonna did that last Thanksgiving with the pumpkin pies.

She sighed. “All those beautiful tomatoes you’re growing for me, I’ll be sick when they’re ready to pick.”

“I’ll pick them all and can them for you,” he said, though in all the years he’d watched Ma can, he’d never done it.

“You gonna watch a YouTube video first?”

“Maybe. Or you can just tell me how to do it. You should see these plants, they’re getting huge. Kyle planted pots of basil, oregano, and thyme around them too. And marigolds to keep the bugs away. It looks really nice.”

“He did, eh?” Ma said, sounding impressed.

“Yeah, he’s really got a green thumb. You should see how beautiful our yard looks. He has flowers everywhere. And I mean everywhere.”

Ma glanced over, brows raised. For a moment Forrester wondered what she would say, hearing him talk about “our yard.” But she only sniffed. “Well, if you have too much basil, I’ll make you pesto. That garbage they sell in plastic tubs is no good.”

“That would be nice, grazie.” He smiled, still feeling awkward in his skin, exposed yet oddly comfortable with Ma’s chatter about food. He rubbed the back of his head, smoothing down his hair.

Things were different, but they would be okay.

When they arrived at home, he put the truck in Park and turned toward Ma. Before she could say anything, he cupped her face. “Thank you, Mama,” he said. “Thank you.” He kissed her on both cheeks, then on her forehead, and their eyes met. He could see the confusion, the irritability in her gaze, but more importantly, he could see the love.

Then a moment later, she pushed his hands away and brushed the tears from her face. “Don’t be getting all sappy. I’ve cried too much today, and all these chemicals are making me hormonal.”

Love and hope burning in his chest, Forrester got out of the truck and went around to open the door for his mother.

“You gonna tell Nonna?” Ma asked as he helped her out.

“Why the hell not,” he said with a laugh. “Are you gonna tell her?”

“About you or me?” she asked with a wry smirk.

“Take your pick.”

Ma paused and looked up at Forrester. “We’re a pair of fools, aren’t we? Keeping secrets like this.”

“I get it from you.”

She scoffed. “Look who thinks he’s funny.”

“Maria, sei to?” Nonna called when they came into the kitchen. She shuffled in from the living room, wearing her blue housecoat inside out and her silver hair pulled up with a colored pencil.

Ma and Forrester exchanged a glance, and he shrugged. “Flip a coin on who goes first?”

She laughed and sat. When Forrester helped her with her shoes, she didn’t protest.

“What’s the matter with her?” Nonna asked in Italian. “More food poisoning?” Shaking her head, she walked over and took a pot out of the cupboard.

Ma and Forrester exchanged glances.

Nonna set the pot on the stovetop and faced them, a hand on her hips. “Why do you both look so guilty? You hiding something?”

“Um,” Forrester began, his face heating as he set Ma’s shoes to the side. When he stood, he towered over Nonna, but that stern look in her eyes made him feel three feet tall and four years old.

“Don’t look at your nonna like that, Frankie,” the old woman scolded in Italian. She tapped her temple. “I know that you know I know.”

“What?” He shook his head in confusion.

“That boyfriend of yours already told you,” Nonna said with a smirk. “I knew he wouldn’t keep his mouth shut.”

“Kyle? What’d he tell me? Wait? What?” Had she said… boyfriend?

Nonna sniggered at Forrester’s stunned expression as she took spices out of the cupboard. “So he kept his mouth shut, eh? I guess my evil eye still works.”

Forrester gaped at his grandmother. “What did you say to Kyle?”

“Non sono affari tuoi, Frankie.” She pointed a wooden spoon at him as she said it was none of his business. “Now set the table for dinner before Giuseppe gets home.”

“Sì, Nonna.” Instead, he hurried over to hug the tiny woman.

“What’s this for?” she demanded in Italian, and then she chuckled and hugged him too. When he pulled back, hands still on her frail shoulders, his face was wet again. She pinched his cheek lightly. “Now, now, bello, you didn’t think you could fool me, did you?”

He couldn’t believe his ears. “Did Gramps know?”

“Of course.”

“And you guys were okay with it?” He needed to know.

Nonna waved the wooden spoon and shooed Forrester away. “Why wouldn’t I be? You know I loved Rock Hudson. Best-looking actor to ever be on the silver screen. They say Cary Grant liked the fellas too. Tell me this. Are you happy?”

“Sì, Nonna, sono davvero felice.” Forrester was very happy.

She gestured to herself with the spoon. “Then I’m happy.” She pointed at Ma, standing in the doorway by the shoes, looking as shocked as Forrester felt. “Sit down before you pass out, Maria. You just rest after your chemotherapy. Frankie and I can handle dinner.”

“What?” Ma cried.

Nonna clucked her tongue in disapproval. “You all think I’m senile, but I know what’s going on around here.”