Page 95 of Pansies

Alfie thought about pointing out his dad had turned sixty-five that year but had the feeling it wouldn’t make any difference. Tohis mam, he was just the man she’d married. So Alfie didn’t say anything at all. Just stared at the envy-inducing decking, with its hand-carved balustrade.

Behind him, he heard the whoosh and the bubble of the kettle. The clatter of mugs.

“He’s doing well, ye know. Your dad.”

“Yeah?”

He turned back. Picked up his cuppa. It was exactly how he liked it: too much milk and too much sugar—not that he usually took it that way. Out of nowhere, he remembered Greg the morning after, sprawled across Alfie’s bed, demanding tea.I like it like I like my men, Alfredo: hot, strong, and very, very sweet. Alfie cradled the mug between his hands, letting the warmth creep into his palms, and thought,Me too.

“Ye should talk to him, Alfie. He misses ye.”

“You saw the way he looked when I told him.”

“Aye, but ye gave him a geet big shock, love.”

Alfie’s heart was overspilling, hot and liquid, like he was scalding himself on the inside. “You had two kids. There was a nineteen percent chance one of us was going to be gay. That’s not a thing that should shock you. It’s just a thing about one of your children.”

He’d been shouting a bit at the end there. And now his mam was looking upset. Shit. Shit. Shit. He shouldn’t have come.

“Ye didn’t give him a chance.”

He didn’t give me a chance, Alfie wanted to tell her.He just wrote me off. Like I wasn’t his son anymore. But there was no point. She wouldn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain. How bad it felt to be a shock. To be an idea people had to get used to. To be a moment of hesitation. A flinch when someone touched you. A wariness in their eyes. How much it fuckinghurt.

“Sorry.” He pulled out a chair and sat down next to her. “How are you doing?”

She seemed a bit startled. He guessed it wasn’t the sort of question he usually asked. But she answered readily enough, sharing the small pieces of her life with him. Alfie drank his tea, and listened, and let the cadences of his mother’s voice comfort him a little.

“And what aboot ye, love?”

“What? Me? Oh, I’m fine.” That sounded unconvincing, even to Alfie. And his mam gave him a look that confirmed it. “I’m just on holiday, that’s all.”

“But ye never tek holiday.”

“I decided I was owed some.”

“And ye came te Shields?”

He laughed. She had a point. “I…sort of met someone.”

There was a delicate kind of silence.

“A lad?” she asked.

“Aye. A lad.”A man.

There was a blank sort of silence this time, and Alfie didn’t know how to help. He knew what he wanted to hear, but he wasn’t sure it would count if he asked for it. At last, he got an uncertain-sounding “I’m happy for ye.”

“Mam, you went for my girlfriends like the blummin’ Spanish Inquisition.”

“Well, I had te know they were good enough for ye.”

“Right, and because I’m gay, anything with a knob will do?”

“Alfred Junior!”

“Sorry, I’m sorry. Just”—he couldn’t quite keep the pleading from his voice—“don’t you want to know what he’s like?”

After a moment, she nodded.

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