Giovanni continued to speak, but Cord tuned it out, took long inhales of the lavender-and-cigarette-scented air.
“I know you can hear me,” said Giovanni.
“Sorry, what?” said Cord.
“I said,” said Giovanni, “we’ve been together for over a year. We’reengaged.When am I meeting your mom and sisters?”
“I’ll keep you posted,” said Cord. He sat up. “I’ve got to go in.”
Giovanni looked pensive, clearly deciding whether he was going to drop the subject. He sighed, then said, “Are you having a meeting about the super-duper secret company that’s going to make us rich?”
“I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Yeesh. When can I retire?” said Giovanni, who was twenty-five, and had been teaching middle school art and Italian at Dalton for three years.
“Soon,” said Cord. The IPO for 3rd Eyez was fast approaching, and with his firm’s stake in the company, Cord was going to be very rich.Ifthe 3rd Eyez virtual reality product was as amazing as Cord was pretty sure it was. He’d allegedly “experienced” the product 535 days ago, during his last booze blackout.
Giovanni put out his cigarette in an ashtray Cord had stolen from the Plaza in his youth. “Are you just with me for my money?” said Cord, his tone joking, but the lonely voice answering,Yes.
“I’m with you for your body,” said Giovanni.
Cord smiled. He did try to make the most of his appointments with his personal trainer, Thatcher.
“You’ll keep me posted?” said Giovanni. “About meeting Charlotte Perkins?”
“Please stop calling her that.”
“What should I call her?”
“I don’t know,” said Cord, climbing from bed. “I just don’t know.”
“I’m not the type to wait around,” said Giovanni. Though his tone was light, the words felt like a slap. (The lonely voice would repeat them all day.)
Giovanni had come out to his Italian American family when he was thirteen. He’d been president of his high school LGBTQ club. Savannah Country Day had not had an LGBTQ club. Officially, in 1980s Savannah, there was no such thing as being L, G, or B, and certainly not T or Q. Cord had kept his worlds separate for so long that he’d become two people: the Cord who existed in Manhattan, and the Cord he became when he visited Savannah.
Holiday Cord: a straight man, just picky, a person who glossed over real questions and flew back to New York when he couldn’t take another minute of subterfuge. By ignoring the pain he was causing his mother, he hadn’t been Holiday Cord in seven years. But he couldn’t stay away from his family forever…or could he?
He could certainly try.
His relationships with his sisters were limited to emailing and texting. They’d send photos, chain-letter jokes, bons mots. (Never copying each other—Cord’s sisters’ Shakespearean feud was a brick wall between them.) Regan texted animated GIFs of women in various stages of disarray—pulling their hair out with acronyms such as “OMG” or “WTF” superimposed above them, hoisting giant glasses of wine (“TGIF!!!”). Lee and Cord exchanged photos of unfashionable strangers every few days, adding snide commentary—amateur Joan Riverses on the red carpet of life. Were these even relationships, or just data trails, vestiges of the love between people who had once been family?
Did all siblings revert to their childhood selves when they were together, or was there a way to transition to functional adulthood even while being in one another’s lives? Was estrangement normal, healthy even? And if so, why did it feel as if he were missing a limb sometimes? Missing two limbs—two appendages that wouldn’t speak to each other because of a surgeon named Matt.
Matt! Most of the time, Cord just felt sorry for the guy, caught up in the Perkins girls’ web of drama. But Cord would be lying if he didn’t admit that once in a while he wished Matt dead. What a joyful reunion they might have, at Matt’s funeral!
Cord tried not to mind that no one in his family asked about his personal life, and didn’t want to examine his own motives in keeping his orientation under wraps. It was probable that his sisters knew he was gay and just didn’t care. The dysfunction almost certainly lay inside Cord, a snake of self-loathing and childish fear. It was something he should “unpack,” in the words of his AA sponsor, a former child actor called Handy. But Cord was just fine with his emotional suitcase remaining zipped tight and locked.
“Did you hear me?” said Giovanni, following Cord into the kitchen, where (of course) his phone showed three missed calls from his mother. “I said, I’m not just going to wait around. This is sick, honey!”
“I hear you,” said Cord. He hoped that Giovanni would drop the issue eventually, because Cord’s feelings about a meeting between his mother and his lover werehell no, never ever, not happening.
That evening, Cord bought a bouquet of pink roses in Grand Central as he waited for the 5:54 train to Rye. He was nervous, even though he’d met Giovanni’s enormous family before and they’d always been kind to him. Giovanni’s father, Cosimus, spent his free time on his La-Z-Boy couch, watching football and accepting the food and drink set before him by Giovanni’s mother, Rose. Their small house was always filled with relatives, friends, and the smell of baked ziti. Still, Cord wasn’t sure how the Lombardis would take the news of their gay son being engaged.
Oh, how he wanted a beer, or seven beers. It was still hard for Cord to “feel his feelings.” He ate a Twix as the Stamford local rumbled out of Grand Central. If he waited, he knew, the edginess would fade on its own. And Giovanni, his salve, would be picking him up at the station.
“I told them,” said Giovanni, as soon as they were strapped in his mother’s Toyota, heading for the house on Mead Place.
“Please,” said Cord. “Tell me you didn’t.”
