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I’d always heard the first step is the hardest, and once you take that first step, all the ones that follow are infinitely easier by comparison. I contemplated that first step for what felt like ages, but in the end, my right foot lifted slightly off the floor and the step was taken. Then another. And another. It did not become easier.
Doc Heward held the door open for me, his eyes filled with so much pain for me. I made it through the doorway and into the long, cold gray hallway. The door closed behind me, but not before I heard my mother gasp and shatter again, the quiet murmurs of the Trio, the only family I had left in the world.
Doc started to speak, but I couldn’t hear his words because I was so far away. I was so far away and I almost couldn’t tell which was the dream and which was real life. I heard my father’s voice in my head, like so many memories rising at once, the cacophony so brilliantly loud that it caused my—
eyes to water as my father said, “I got a guy, Benji. I’ve got a guy who can get us a V8 cheap for the Ford. He tried to swindle me a bit, but I reminded him we don’t do that kind of thing here and he
“—told me he understood and gave me a fair price,” I whispered aloud.
“What was that, Benji?” The Doc asked kindly.
I shook my head. “You think you can give me a moment?” I asked. “I’ll meet you down the hall. I just need a moment.”
He nodded sympathetically and moved slowly down the hall, pressing his hand up against the wall as if he couldn’t support himself.
This was getting more real by the second, and I almost couldn’t catch my breath. My vision narrowed as I took another step, and bile rose at the back of my throat. “It’s not real,” I said. “It’s not—
going to be easy, but I think we can swing it,” my father said with a laugh. “Look, I know I said this was going to be just an office, but think about it, Benji. What if… what if we could just build a whole other house? It won’t be as big as ours but just… what if? If we really buckled down and agreed to do this thing, it could
—be yours one day,” I said as I took another step. “It could be yours one day, if you wanted to stay here, that is. I know there’s a big wide world out there, but sometimes… sometimes, you just want to come home, you know?”
I did know. Oh God, how I knew.
I followed Doc’s silent advice and pressed my hands against the wall to help support my weight. The concrete was cool underneath my hand, and didn’t the hallway seem longer somehow? Didn’t it just seem like the longest hallway ever to have been built? It went on for miles, it seemed. I didn’t know if I could make it. I didn’t know if I could travel that great distance, realizing more and more what waited for me at the end. “I’ve always thought,” I started then paused. I slid my fingers over the stone, rough against my skin and it—
was so funny to see Big Eddie dressed in drag that Halloween, getting ready for the Roseland Chamber of Commerce’s big party. He came down the stairs in the ugliest dress I’d ever seen, plaid with greens and blues and oranges and red. I burst out laughing as he tried to squeeze his gigantic feet into what had to be the biggest pair of high heels in existence. My mother collapsed against a wall, holding her sides, tears on her cheeks as she laughed so big. Big Eddie glared at the both of us and said, “What’s so flipping funny? I’m going to show the town how much I support my son. My big old gay son, because he is my son. If he is gay, then I want to show I’ve got his back. I’ve always—
—got his back,” I said as a tear slid down my cheek. “Even if I look like a big old tranny, the people here are gonna know that my son isn’t going to take shit from any of them.”
Memories like knives. Memories like ghosts.
I was haunted all the way down that hallway. I felt stabbed repeatedly as I heard his voice in my head again and again. I couldn’t stop the memories, no matter how much I wanted to. I hated myself for all the good I remembered, because I wanted to let my anger consume me so I could focus on all the bad. I wanted to scream and shout at him, to let him hear my fury. To let him hear my fury and wake the fuck up, to stop playing this dangerous game that was breaking me apart.
I was six when he picked me up and threw me over his shoulder and tickled my sides.
Another step.
I was… I don’t know. I was some age somewhere when he looked at me and smiled for no reason at all. He reached over and ruffled my hair and said, “You’re going to be a good man, you know that?”
Another step and I didn’t know that, not anymore.
He sat on the patio beside me at Little House as we watched the sun go down. After a quarter-hour silence, he said, “Sure is a great night.” Then he grunted that sound that meant he was happy. I could only nod.
Another step, and I opened my eyes to see I was almost at the end of the endless hall. The doc waited for me near a door that looked like black iron. He had his hand on the handle, and he didn’t know I saw him wipe
his other hand across his eyes and take a shuddering breath.
It was almost real.
I heard my father singing quietly to himself as he sanded a piece of wood that would become the trellis up the side of Little House. It was something I’d heard him sing many times before. An old Seven of Spades song. “Float,” it was called. Some bluesy riff from the forties. Covered by many others through the years, but the Seven of Spades one was always his favorite. It was the song he sang when he was content and lost in his own little world. He—
I stopped. This couldn’t be real.
“Sometimes I float along the river,” I sang quietly to myself, my voice cracking. “For to its surface I am bound.”
I took another step.
“And sometimes stones done fill my pockets, oh Lord,” Big Eddie hummed. “And it’s into this river I drown.”
