Page 70 - Some Dance to Remember
P. 70
40 Jack Fritscher
now, what is, is. When I did Carousel, there’s this song at the beginning:
‘What’s the Use of Wondrin’?’ You know, like wondering if your last reel
will be sad, wondering if you should quickly break it off and run away
now, before the ending, but you know you can’t, because he’s your own
true love, and that’s that.”
The helicopter swooped off south toward the City and connected
Kick back to LAX. Ryan stood for a long time in the field watching
the sun-raked distance into which the man who said he loved him had
disappeared.
14
Ryan was captive of a secret promise.
He had fled his family in the Midwest, but first Margaret Mary and
then Thom had followed him to California. For twelve years, their father
had struggled through a death-defying illness. His agonized lingering
terrified Ryan. He recognized his father’s decaying body as his own Death
threat sent from someone, sent from somewhere. In the tenth year of his
sickness, and after his twenty-first major surgery, Ryan’s father held onto
his eldest son’s hand and said, “Take care of them all for me.” Charley-Pop
meant his wife, Annie Laurie, and he meant his young daughter Margaret
Mary. “But especially,” and he was very clear, “take care of Thom. No one
knows like I do how much help your brother needs.” He squeezed Ryan’s
hand. “A father knows,” he said. “Promise me, Ry.” He looked directly
into Ryan’s eyes.
This was it, Ryan knew: his father after this long fight was admitting
Death, was letting Death waft like a small breeze in through a door he
was slowly opening. If his father died, there would be no male generation
left between him and his own Death.
“Ry?” Charley-Pop said, and he held his son’s hand tenderly, “you
don’t have to say anything. I know what you’ll do. You’re the man in the
family now.”
Ryan wanted to say, “I’m the faggot in the family, dad.” But he knew,
whether his father knew or not, that for all that he was no less a man. For
ten years, he had taken care of his sister and his mother, and, in a warmly
affectionate way, his father. Thom, with his mercenary heart, was always
gone, killing time in one military installation after the other. Thom fought
the war in Nam. Ryan fought against the war in the streets, always com-
ing back to his father’s bedside, sometimes at home, more often in the
intensive care unit of Saint Francis Hospital.
©Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights Reserved
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