You Can Say You Knew Me When Read Online Free PDF Page A

unequivocal, that separates everything into before and after.
    It went like this: My father’s eyes sweeping from me on the floor, wiping my mouth, to Eric, yanking up his jeans, the clasp of his belt rattling as he turned his face away. My father shouting “What the hell are you doing?” though I could see he knew exactly what this was. I tried to throw it back at him: why did he push the door open, why didn’t he knock? “No way,” he bellowed. “No, no, no, no way,” negation repeated like a chant, disapproval and denial in equal measure. No way could this have happened, no way would it happen again, no way is my son this kind of boy. Eric was banned from our house—the official punishment—but worse than this was the scornful silence that descended like a sudden downpour.
    “I love him,” I said.
    “There’s no way you can,” said my father.
    We didn’t talk it out; there was no way we could, or so it seemed to me.
    I managed to see Eric a few more times that summer before I went to college and he to the Navy—furtive, tongue-tied encounters at the edge of group activities. Each locked gaze was more wrenching than the last, until we learned to avoid each other’s eyes, to fake indifference, as was needed, to get away from each other and the mess we’d created. At some point, Deirdre asked me, “How come you aren’t hanging out with Eric?” and what I told her was, “We were getting on each other’s nerves.”
    My father never saw me the same again. Before, I’d been a problem child—one to boss around, bargain with, try to fix. After, I ceased to be a child at all. Just a problem—permanent, irreparable. Before, I’d thought it possible to fall in love with a boy. After, I lived with the knowledge that genuine love didn’t spark revulsion in others. My first month in college, I got myself a girlfriend.
    “Jimmy?” Diane was waiting for an answer. “What about you?”
    “Sorry—what?”
    “Girlfriend? Someone special?”
    I looked at Nana, who sat stiffly under Diane’s kneading hands. My relationship with Woody wasn’t a secret from her; still, it wasn’t something she probably cared to see dropped into the boiling vat of Diane’s gossip-stew. “Someone special,” I replied, and left it at that.
     
     
    Ryan’s Funeral Home had apparently decided that mourning went down easier in pastel: mint-green cushions, rose-flocked wallpaper, a beige rug. The chairs, cream colored, had been lined up in a semicircle around the coffin, as if the deceased might rise up and recite to the crowd. Most of the guests hovered in the back, near the door, or in the hallway, conversing. The surprise was the music, all old, cool jazz, which my brother-in-law, Andy, had compiled from my father’s CD collection. “I forgot he liked this stuff,” I said to Andy as we stood side by side beneath a wall-mounted speaker amplifying a melancholy version of “My Funny Valentine.” Andy was an accountant. His suit was an accountant’s suit, his haircut an accountant’s haircut. Years ago, my friend Colleen had dubbed him Average Andy.
    “It was all I ever heard him listen to. This is Chet Baker,” he said. In Andy’s voice I heard a hint of pride, as if my father’s connoisseurship had rubbed off on him.
    “I think he only started listening to jazz after Mom died,” I offered.
    “No, he told me he liked jazz when he was young.”
    “Oh, right.” I dimly recalled my father tell of seeing Thelonious Monk play live, in San Francisco, where my father had lived for a handful of months at some point between high school and marrying my mother. We’d hardly ever spoken of his time there; what might have been something that bonded us to each other became just another point of contention. A lousy place to make a life, he’d said, writing off his entire SF experience, and by association, mine, as wasted time, a youthful lark. A dart of jealousy pricked my chest as I pictured Andy and my father together: Andy