Habillés pour l'hiver

When my family first moved to North Carolina, we lived three blocks from a family named Tomkey, who did not believe in television. To say you did not believe in it was different from saying you did not care for it; it implied television had a master plan and you were against it. Word spread, and it was speculated that just as a blind man develops a keener sense of hearing, the family must somehow compensate for their loss. I wanted to know what this something was, and so I began peering through their windows. They were forced to talk during dinner, and had no idea how puny their lives were. When Halloween arrived, they were away at the lake, leaving only a coffee can of gumdrops on their porch with a sign reading DON'T BE GREEDY. The night after, they appeared on our doorstep in full costume. Asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it angered me that they did not understand this. My mother, trying to spare their feelings, sent us to fetch our own candy. In my room, panicked, I began cramming my best chocolate bars into my mouth, a pig gorging himself so that others may be denied. For months I had watched over these people, but with one stupid act, they had turned my pity into something hard and ugly.

The winter I was in the fifth grade, snow fell and accumulated, canceling school for five straight days. Our presence had disrupted the secret life my mother led while we were away, and when she could no longer take it, she threw us out. “Get the hell out of my house,” she said, shoving us into the carport. We returned a few hours later to find the door still locked. Through the window, we could see her in the kitchen, a goblet of wine and a mug of coffee on the counter before her. “That bitch,” my sister Lisa said. We pounded on the glass and threw snowballs at her bedroom window, but she only pulled the drapes. As dusk approached, it occurred to us that we could possibly die. It was my sister Tiffany, the youngest, who agreed to lie in the middle of the street. After a few cars passed, we saw our mother, a puffy figure awkwardly negotiating the crest of the hill, her legs buried to the calves in snow. “Are you wearing your loafers?” Lisa asked. In response, our mother raised a bare foot. “I was,” she said. “I mean, really, it was there a second ago.” And just like that, we were rooting around in the snow, looking for her left shoe.

As I got older, I found myself back in Raleigh after dropping out of college, living in my parents' basement until my father told me to get out. “I think we both know why I'm doing this,” he said, but I didn't, not really. My mother drove me to my sister's apartment, and on the way, she started to cry, not in an “I'm going to miss you” way, but something sadder. I wouldn't know until months later that my father had kicked me out not because I was a bum, but because I was gay. My mother assumed I knew the truth, and it tore her apart. “I'm sorry,” she sobbed. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.” Here was a defining moment, and again I missed it entirely, wondering only if the passing drivers saw us as just another crying mother and her stoned gay son, or if they imagined, for one moment, that we might be special.

My attempts to find my own way were often disastrous. I rented a cheap apartment next to a single mother and her nine-year-old daughter, Brandi. The girl had no father and invisible eyebrows, and her mother, a bartender, left her alone most nights. A neglected girl comes to your door and what are you supposed to do? My mother's advice was simple: “Throw her the hell out.” But I couldn't. I tried to be a good example, but my obsessive-compulsive routines and little lectures only fueled her resentment. After I confronted her about stealing small things from my apartment, she broke into my room while I was out and systematically destroyed my photographs and art slides, scratching “Yur a as-hole” and “Suk my dick” into the film. Her mother slammed the door in my face. Then, Brandi began whispering through my keyhole at night. “Faggot. What's the matter, faggot?” My own mother was terrified for me. “All she has to do is go to the authorities, saying you molested her,” she said. “One little phone call and your life is ruined.” She helped me pack, and as we carried boxes to her car, Brandi's little moth voice came from behind her door: “Bitch.” My mother didn't even pause. “Sister,” she said, “you don't know the half of it.”

Eventually, I made my way to Paris, where I lived with Hugh. One night we went to see a tragic love story, and he sobbed from beginning to end. Such movies are a danger, as falling in love is something most adults have actually experienced. It encourages unhealthy comparisons, raising the question, “Why can't our lives be like that?” Hugh and I have been together for so long that in order to arouse extraordinary passion, we need to engage in physical combat. Our lives are the predictable Part II no one would pay to see. At the cafe afterward, he looked as though his life had not only passed him by but paused to spit in his face. I wanted to tell him that movie characters might chase each other through the fog, but that's for beginners. Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you're offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone's feelings. My hand puppets were at home, so instead I just pulled my chair a few inches closer, and we sat silently, looking for all the world like two people in love.

My sister Lisa and I spoke on the phone before a visit, and she left the key “under the hour ott near the ack toor.” She was speaking in code, convinced that all telecommunication is potentially life-threatening. She is afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I'll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I'm like a friendly junkman, building things from scrap, but my family sees it differently. More and more, their stories begin, “You have to swear you will never repeat this.” I always promise, but it's understood my word means nothing. After watching a movie that eerily reflected our own lives, we sat in her car, and she told me a story so quintessentially Lisa - a story of an accidental, heartbreaking act of mercy involving a wounded animal. As she fell apart against the steering wheel, I instinctively reached for my notebook. She grabbed my hand. “If you ever,” she said, “ever repeat that story, I will never talk to you again.” My immediate goal was to change her mind. “Oh, come on,” I said. “It's not like you're going to do anything with it.” Your life, your privacy, your occasional sorrow - it's not like you're going to do anything with it. Is this the brother I always was, or the brother I have become?

My brother, Paul, was the first of us to have a child. We called him “the Rooster,” and his wedding was a spectacle of Dudes, dogs, and a psychic from the phone book. I went to his motel room an hour before the ceremony, expecting a supreme masculine moment. Instead, my father, the best man, attached my brother's cummerbund while they both stared at a TV special about a flood. “Water like that will fuck the shit out of some hardwood floors,” Paul said. “Those sons of bitches are looking at total replacements.” My father agreed. “All right,” he said, turning from the screen. “Let's get married.” After the reception, Paul and I were alone for the first time, walking the dogs. I wanted to force a moment, to say something memorable. Just as I cleared my throat, his elderly pug squatted in the grass. Paul whistled for his Great Dane, which thundered across the lawn and ate the feces in one bite. “Accident, hell. I got this motherfucker trained,” he said. “Sometimes he'll stick his nose to her ass and just eat that shit on tap.” Forget the tears and brotherly speeches; this was the stuff memories are made of.

Years before, my parents had almost bought a cottage at the beach. For fifteen minutes on the coastal highway, we were a happy family, competing to name our good fortune. I suggested “The Ship Shape,” and my sisters offered “The Wait 'n' Sea” and “The Nut Hut.” The house was perfect, but my father, as always, backed out. The beach house became a pool, which became a finished basement with a bar. The promises never stopped, but we grew unwilling to play our parts. As if carried by a tide, my mother drifted farther and farther away, first to twin beds and then to a room of her own, decorated with seascapes and sand dollars. It would have been nice, a place at the beach, but we already had a home. Besides, had things worked out, you wouldn't have been happy for us. We're not that kind of people.