Page 166 of Two Marlboros

“You convinced yourself that Jimmy is your replacement, but it’s not like that. Your father and I have been trying for a long time to have more children. A couple seemed like they were due, but...”

Her voice dropped, then stopped. She tried to put on a knowing smile.

“...But they didn’t make it.”

Sure, maybe it wasn’t the kind of thing to say to a young boy in the most turbulent years of his life, but I felt like a worm in knowing that she had suffered, perhaps even when I was gone, while I had been so caught up in myself that I hadn’t realized it.

What had my mother really felt when my father had found out all about me? Perhaps she had continued to suffer, when I had believed that he had tried to double-cross me, laughing at me behind my back.

How many people were suffering, at that very moment, while I stood around thinking about me and my mother? I thought back to what she had said to me, the choice she had had to make, and I imagined the sleepless nights trying to find the lesser of two evils and perhaps the fights with my father to find a compromise, the pain of losing an unborn child, the need to lower their voices so Jimmy wouldn’t cry too much... And me standing on the other side of town, thinking about how bad and mean the world was for picking on me. What about my father? Was he suffering, too? What about Jimmy, who at only five years old had had to endure that whole situation?Maybe he had wondered a lot of times what he had done wrong to be treated with contempt by his big brother. And the point was that he hadn't done anything at all, because I was too busy believing that he was my replacement, the favorite son to be adored and hailed.

"It is possible that I made some bad choices, and it is likely that I would change something if I could go back. However, know that I have made all my decisions trying to make you and Jimmy suffer as little as possible, because you both are everything to me. Everything.”

New tears ran down my dry skin in a silent, orderly way. My mother held me in her arms, like the shield I had sought all that time. I reciprocated the embrace and smelled her perfume, which left me with a feeling of sweetness and firmness at once.

A few minutes passed before I dissolved that contact. Then she threw the empty bags over my legs, after which came the elusiveclickof the door, the one I had so hoped to hear. She went around and came to open my door as well, with a reproachful smile laced with an undertone of tenderness.

She was indeed my mother.

I spent the shopping time locked in my silence, except for a few monosyllables blurted out here and there. I was still caught up in my reflections, so much so that I observed each person and wondered if they were suffering in some way. Maybe there was someone who had serious health problems or had lost a child; in comparison, my homosexuality seemed almost like a small thing.

When we got back into the car on the way home, I instinctively thought of Alan. He had lost the love of his life, and not even by choice of either of them, but only by a nasty twist of fate. He was a caring and kind guy, especially to me, always ready to listen to my every problem, from Plastic matters to my father. Where did he find time to suffer in silence? Maybe in the evenings, when he would be alone and come face to face with that damn gun he kept under his pillow. Had I really ever been interested in how he felt? Or had my only interest always been just to get him to notice me?

It was with these thoughts that I went home, alienated from the world; and it was with the same thoughts that I picked up my cell phone, composed a text for Alan, and wrote in it the first honest question of my life:

How are you?

30

Light and Shade

(?Kylie Minogue - Can’t get you out of my head)

“You’re out of luck: I found it!”

Nathan paused in the doorway of the French window and drew the lighter closer to the cigarette, then put one hand in a shell to keep the wind from extinguishing his flame. I heard the click of the lighter and a gray cloud crawled away from him, toward the fire stairs that led upstairs from his apartment. He removed his hand from his mouth, pointed his eyes above his head and let the smoke take a piece of him away.

He stretched his arm with the cigarette down his body as the burning went on and I wondered how it was possible that those three inches made him feel so good.

He kept looking up, and I, sitting against the railing on the clearing that opened from his French doors, followed his gaze, not noticing anything. A gust of wind arose, and a glance fell on a part of his skin that I could glimpse under his shirt. I forgot about the smoke and my eyes turned to the sky, to think only of that pale skin and a blond stripe that perhaps started from the center of his chest and went all the way below his navel. Likely, it continued even further below, beyond the conspicuous edge of his panties; there I remembered that my suggestions to use a belt had been to no avail, but that thought vanished to make space for other sensations that I was learning to accept. The wind calmed soon after, however, and that flap of skin became hidden again; so, did the trembling that had shaken me in those few moments.

Nathan took a few steps toward me, then sat down to my right, in the sort of niche created by the railing of the fire escape. The staircase gave onto an inner courtyard and touched all the floors and, near each apartment, opened into a small balcony where there was just enough room for two people to sit, just as we were.

“Aren’t we going to bother other people here?” I asked.

Nathan turned toward me, and his smoke landed on my face. The damn bastard smoke that had a power yet unknown to me. He shrugged.

“Nobody ever comes through here, trust me.”

“Really? How come?”

Nathan looked up again at the clearing above our heads, and I followed the trajectory drawn by his index finger.

“See up there?”

I looked to where he had pointed and saw dangling a string about ten inches long. It was moving in the gentle breeze, and I wondered what it had to do with anything else.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” he continued. “But it’s the tail of a dead mouse.”

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