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The whole kitchen drooped. The pans melted off their hooks and the shelves bowed. The weight of Dicky’s absence dripped from every drawer and filled the kitchen. More than any other room in the house this is where Suzanne missed her son the most. All this time later, not even Dicky’s room missed his presence the way the kitchen did. But that could have simply been because she had not stepped a foot within his bedroom since the week he’d been gone.
Even now Suzanne could still see him bustling around. She could see him as a toddler, standing on a chair to reach the counter and helping with his first pie. Or at eight when he’d told her he didn’t need help and could make dessert all on his own. Then years later, when he had spent hours in the kitchen working on his vlog or helping her through the holidays. But mostly she saw him the way he’d looked his last day in the house. Sad and deeply afraid.
The fact that Eric had come out as gay should not have been a surprise, at least not in the traditional sense. Looking back she could see the signs she hadn’t wanted to see before. The bullying, the baking, the Beyonce, and the skating to top it all. The lack of girls brought home during those early high school years. But that was all looking back and she couldn’t help it now.
She’d been crushed at first, when he’d sat Richard and her down at the table. Her boy would never have the future she had always imagined for him, he would never be normal. And so she’d simply sat shocked and unbelieving, as her husband had yelled. Had told Eric that he was not welcome at this house until he’d reconsidered, realized that being gay was a sin and changed his ways. And when Eric left she expected him to come back. But he hadn’t. Not in a day or a week or a month. And now it had been two years and he was who knows where.
She had been so sure. Sure that he would see how what he was doing was wrong. And Richard had had to guide her away from his room and finally close the door. But when he claimed it was best that way, all she could think was that she missed her Dicky and could still see him crying in the kitchen.
So now Suzanne baked alone. And where she might have blown soap bubbles at Eric while washing dishes in years past, all she did now was stare out the window and think. Hoping Eric would walk up the drive.
She watched the rabbits jump through the yard and clouds of dust zip past the house towards town. And when one of these clouds pulled up to the house and revealed two trucks, she put her dishes down, pushed her sadness aside, and went to meet them. Because son or not she was a good southern woman.
The first truck was white. And that was the best thing she had to say about it cause it was dirty, rundown, and had clearly seen better days. All four doors squeaked as the swung open and a jumble of boys came tumbling out. At first Suzanne thought they might be some of Richard’s boys, but they were all to old really. Each tall and muscled, one supporting a better mustache than a high schooler would ever be able to grow.
The second truck was black, the kind that men liked to admire in magazines. Only two doors this time, and the passenger side revealed a tiny little girl, so small she had to slide off the seat because her feet didn’t reach the running board. The driver was mostly hidden from view only a mop of black hair visible over the door as he turned to speak to whoever else sat in the cab.
When the large tangle finally started towards the door she greeted them before they could ring the bell. There were so many of them, all so broad that they blocked her view, and so tall she had to stretch her neck to look them in the eyes. Expecting some sort of fundraising pitch she stood there waiting. But instead one of the boys in front, covered with red hair and freckles asked, “Mrs. Bittle?”
“That would be me,” Suzanne was confused, apparently these boys knew her, but she would swear up and down that she’d never seen them before in her life.
But as she heard another car door slam and more voices coming up the walk, the boys slowly parted and revealed the final occupant of the second truck. And so her only child stood before her for the first time in years
“Hi, Mama”.
She was stunned to silence. Eric looked good, better than he had during those last months at home. And she didn’t have the chance to say a word before another one of the boys asked if they could come in. She didn’t know which one, she couldn’t take her eyes off of Dicky.
As they entered the focus did not shift to her as the host and her presence did not change the conversation, all eyes were on her son. The mustached man turned towards him, “Where to?” he asked. Eric looked towards her and than away quickly, refusing to meet her eyes.
“My room mostly,” he said “I’ll show you” and then he turned towards the stairs not giving her another glance. The boys followed him and she realized they were all holding collapsable cardboard boxes. A few met her eyes on the way up and none of the looks she received were particularly nice.
When Suzanne finally recovered from her surprise she desperately wanted to speak to Eric. He was home again for the first time and she had not uttered a single word to him. But as she started up the stairs she was met with the two largest boys coming down. Each was over six feet and carrying a box heavy with her son’s belongings, his clothes, and books, and memories. But as she moved to let the by they did not continue down.
“You shouldn’t go up there,” the blond one said and when she did not respond he finished with “he doesn’t want to see you”.
And so they stood on the stairs until Suzanne realized they would not be moving and eventually turned and walked back down. And the large boys walked behind her, basically herding her, until she continued into the next room and sat down. And when they left to take her son’s things away she wondered what on earth she was doing.
As the boys continued to haul boxes she waited for Dicky to come down. And when he did not she simply watched the boys, boys who were clearly Dicky’s friends. Friends who, for the first time, she did not know. They all walked confidently, they joked and laughed and she could hear them speaking to Eric. They asked him questions and helped him pack away his childhood possessions. They called him Bitty.
And as she watched all of this , all of them together, she realized it meant that Eric was probably never coming back. She wondered if they knew he was gay.
And later when the last of the boxes had been had been filled in Eric’s room, he moved to the kitchen. He took down the pans he’d received for christmas, and the heirlooms passed to him from MooMaw, his first rolling pin (the one she’d given him for his seventh birthday), and all the other signs that Suzanne had ever had a son who loved to bake.
And at some point, as she stared at what was left, she stood and tried again to find her son. To say only a word to him. To ask him about his life, his friends, and interests, and loves, the way she had used to. Ask him if he would ever come back to her.
But as she approached she could hear him speaking in the hall. He stood with the driver of the black truck, blue-eyed and handsome. They were so close together that Eric’s nose nearly touched the boy’s chest. And she stood there and listened, even though she knew she no longer had the right.
It was the middle of the conversation and Dicky looked so close to tears that Suzanne was ready to cry as well. “We shouldn’t have come here Jack, I don’t know if I can do this. What if I’m wrong?”
The other boy, Jack apparently, reached out and cupped Eric’s cheeks. “Bits, you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. We will still support you, Shits, and Lardo, and Katya, Ransom, and Holster, and all the frogs. We all support you”. He turned Eric’s head up from where he’d looked away, “I support you,” and then he placed a tender kiss on Erc’s head.
And in these words Suzanne saw everything that had happened today. The large boys on the stairs, Dicky refusing to meet her eyes. The small girl who had kept guard in the doorway and directed boxes, who had hugged her son tight. The mention of Katya, who she had heard had moved north to continue coaching, and which explained the unfamiliar accents of all these boys. License plates from farther north than she’d ever been. And the boy Jack, who had touched her son with a gentle hand and left him with a kiss she’d was never supposed to see. How he had looked at Eric and answered so many of her questions. If he could ever be loved now? The way he was? If he was loved now?
And he so clearly was. By these boys who looked so much like RIchard’s boys. But had never shoved him in a closet and clearly never would. And so now she was here with a son she hadn’t spoken to in years. And may not speak to ever again if something didn’t change.
But as they all stood in the yard and finished securing boxes, she did not go running to him. And as the other members of the group looked her in the eye, Eric did not. And so she stood on the porch, watched them all climb back into their trucks, and watched them drive away till they disappeared from view.
But when Suzanne went back into the house there was a note on the table.
Mama,
I hope that maybe you decided to accept who I am. Because I’ve realized that I do, and others to do, even if you never will. But if you can, then I hope maybe you would want to talk to me again, I can’t promise anything. I’m putting myself first now. But I do miss you. And I hope that me having to leave was as much on Coach as I always imagined it was.
-Eric
And then an email address, impersonal and indirect. But it was something. And as she sat at the table and read it again and again and again, she hoped that maybe Eric was right and his leaving had been as much on her husband as he’d imagined. That maybe her husband was wrong, maybe what Eric had decided to become wasn’t such a bad thing.
And when Richard finally arrived home and realized that Eric had been there and had taken his things away, he told her it was for the best. That they didn’t want his kind there. But at night she pulled the letter out again, and tried to work up the courage to write back. And each night she built up a little more. Because above all of this, she missed him too. And wanted desperately to see all the love that had entered her son’s life.