Wednesday Briefs - Return to Aurora: Micah’s Story
This week's story is part of my next book, as yet untitled. In today's post I revisit the setting from What Binds Us. In the two years since What Binds Us was published, many readers have asked what happened to Matthew and Thomas-Edward after the book ended. This is not meant to be a sequel but it does provide a glimpse into their lives after their original story ended.
Return to Aurora: Micah's Story
I was late, the last to arrive, I knew, but I had to make
sure the animals were fed and walked and settled before closing up the shelter
for the night. It was my birthday weekend, and the start of the summer season.
I saw my dads in the distance strolling down the beach hand-in-hand,
passing a bottle of champagne between them. They always seemed complete within
themselves, yet they had opened their circle of love to encompass us, their
three adopted children.
I’d been the last to be adopted. My dads, reading of my
discovery, abandoned, tied to a subway bench, unattended save for a battered,
soiled teddy bear, and clutching a plastic baggy of animal crackers, a box of
raisins and a sippy cup half full of apple juice, had chartered a jet, and flow from London to New
York, determined to rescue me. They arrived early the next morning, jet-lagged
and anxious, with my future brother and sister and my Uncle Colin, who’s a
lawyer, in tow.
Standing at the water’s edge, I glanced up at the house
which lay on the beach like an immense white beast sunning itself. Aurora. The
house in East Claw that had been in my dad’s family so long it seemed
positively ancestral.
It was summer so we were all ensconced at Aurora― It was also our first summer
without Mrs. Whyte, our grandmother, and, I suspected, we would later be
surprised to realize we missed her, her icy reserve, her wintry elegance, her
forbidding presence which was like
the chill on the late September air that signaled the season’s end.
Piano music tumbled out of the open French doors of the
music room, its echo skipping down the beach on the breeze, tickling my ear. I
wondered who was playing. Curious, I started towards the house.
It was in the music room, then, that I first saw Gatsby. It
was a room of pearl grays and faded gold damask, whitened wood and pale
carpets, all whitewashed in a bleach of sunlight. He was seated at the rosewood
Steinway concert grand piano that dominated the room. Gatsby himself had a pewter finish: silvery
hair swept back, eyes like pieces of ice, pale cheekbones that gleamed. He was cool and pale, champagne in an ice
bucket. Playing selections from A Chorus Line for a crowd of stalwart
admirers, he was radiant in that colorless room. He was gorgeous and
charismatic, a charmer of snakes and men.
He caught me staring at him and winked at me with
exaggeration. There was something
antique about him; he looked like a 1930’s film star perfectly preserved on
silver nitrate.
I walked across the room to the bar. I could feel his eyes
on me as I walked. Drink in hand, I turned to watch him. He rose, closed the
piano’s lid, and thanked his audience. Keeping his gaze on me, he moved towards
me like an argentine gift of inestimable value.
As he approached, I was discomfited to find myself trapped
between a Federal sideboard and a brazen South African—a great dark beauty
named Kilrain.
“Pardon me,” Kilrain said in a clipped British accent, “I’m
not usually this bold, but I’ve had four Kir Royales!”I was unable to decide
whether he was pretentious, drunk or merely strange.
“I’m thinking of moving to England,” he said, apropos of
nothing.
“Oh? Really?” I said feigning interest. I had no idea why he
thought his curious statement bold.
“Yes!” he cried enthusiastically. “Really, it’s the perfect place. It has everything in common with America
except, of course, titles and language.”
When I didn’t answer, he turned his attention to the food
laid out on the sideboard. Looking over the assortment of cheeses, wild grapes
and petit fours, Kilrain regarded the contents of a silver bowl with contempt.
“Are those…animal crackers?”
“They are,” I confirmed. I did not tell him they were for
me.
“How odd!”
I caught Gatsby’s eye again and he drifted closer, bringing
with him sepia tones and a martini. He said something to Kilrain who seemed
flattered by his attention. As he continued talking to Kilrain he casually wedged
himself between us slightly touching my arm as if to say wait. Their conversation over, Gatsby turned to face me. “You
looked like you needed saving,” he whispered. A smile, fragile as tissue paper,
framed his words.
“I did. Thank you.”
Up close with the sunlight behind him, he seemed carved out
of silver and sorrow.
“I’m Gatsby Calloway.” He made me a present of his hand.
“You’re one of Matthew and Thomas’ sons aren’t you?”
I am half black, half white, with eyes the exact opaque
silver of mercury and soft reddish brown hair that is almost too straight for
the dreadlocks it was twisted into and which fall caressingly over my ears and
forehead. If Matthew, who is white, and Thomas-Edward, who is black, could have
had a son together, he would have looked like me. “I am,” I said, “Micah—”
“Ah! I remember you. I used to visit often when you lived in
England.”
I wondered if he was remembering the troubled, surly me, the
only one of the three to give our dads cause to worry, the only one of the
three to turn out gay.
“You look like them,” he said.
I stared at him as he reflected on the absurdity of his
statement. He laughed. “Gosh, that was stupid on my part.”
Before I could respond, Gatsby declared with no small amount
of excitement, “Animal crackers!” Then reached into the bowl and scooped out a
handful. Noticing the small silver tongs beside the bowl, he blushed. “You won’t
tell will you?” he asked me.
“No,” I said. “No one eats them but me, anyway.” I smiled,
raked the dreadlocks off my forehead.
I was gay, had slept with men but I had never had, or wanted, a boyfriend. I’d watched my
friends falling in love, moving in together, falling out of love, moving out,
reconciling; through it all, I’d stood on the sidelines as at some fantastic
banquet, hungry, but more afraid of obesity than starvation.
Looking at Gatsby now, I wanted him to be my boyfriend. I
wanted to have with him what my dads had with each other.
Copyright ©2014 Larry Benjamin
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ReplyDeleteYour writing has the effect of making the reader trip along after each sentence as though chasing a peacock down a lavendar path.
ReplyDeletePolly Johnson
Oh Polly that was lovely. Thank you. I think ;-)
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