Read Online Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? by Erica Orloff - Free Book Online
Authors: Erica Orloff
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person. A man who might become president or, better yet, a starter for the Yankees. And I wanted to be part of creating that.
Ordinarily, I would have gone home that night, changed and cruised the bars. I had safe sex since finding out I was HIV negative, but though I had sworn to change my ways, I hadn’t. I mean, yeah, I wore a condom, but I still didn’t allow myself to stand still for very long. I was always running. Running from what? The past, I guess. Everyone but Lily, who knew so much about me that running from her would have been futile.
But instead of going back to my apartment, after Noah was born, I slept on the couch in Lily’s birthing room, and while she slept, I held him and whispered, “Whatever happens between your mom and dad, Noah Michael, I will be here for you. I’ll never abandon you. I’ll never judge you. Whoever you become, whoever you are in that soul of yours, I’ll accept. I may have a problem if you don’t like baseball, but we can work around that.”
David left Lily six weeks later, for good. No looking back. She had gone to the grocery store and by the time she made it back home, his bags were packed. The fact that I had been an usher in their wedding made me not want to believe what she had been telling me throughout the pregnancy. I told her what I wanted to hear—what I thought she wanted to hear—not the truth, which was that any guy who had as many excuses for not making it home from the city as he did was surely fucking someone on the couch in his office.
Lily was a mess. If it hadn’t been for me and the kids—especially this new little infant all baby-smelling (they really do smell perfect)—I think she would have curled up and quit. But Lily is a fighter. Lord knows she is a fighter.
His girlfriend-on-the-side, the Child Bride as we call her, was an exchange student from London, and he moved there to marry her as soon as the divorce was final. Noah, in some ways, was mine. David never looked to the past, and I never wanted him to. Lily was better off without him. And instead of Noah’s real father, it was me who witnessed all the miracles. The first tooth, the first step, the first day of school. And wrapped up in this package of childhood was a gift. A gift of my own mortality.
Where some men might see their son and think they are immortal, for they are now passing on their genes, I saw so clearly how I would one day die. Noah was the future, and from the moment he grasped my pinky in his little fist, I wanted to pass along all my knowledge of the batting averages for the entire Yankees lineup since 1972, the secrets of a perfect soufflé, the stance when you’re at bat, my record collection that I refused to part with—including The Village People and Etta James and Beverly Sills. I wanted him to learn it was okay for a boy to like opera and baseball. I wanted to read David Copperfield aloud to him. I wanted to take him to the Metropolitan and show him Chagall and Degas, and my favorite, Goya. I wanted to save him from Lily’s deadly cooking. I wanted to live on, through Noah.
After all the death I had seen. All the funerals, all the bed sores and Karposi’s scabs. All the dementia and pneumonia that was so much a part of the AIDS crisis before the cocktails that keep them all alive now, I was ready for a gift of life. So Noah was a gift of my mortality, of seeing I would some day be gone and knowing I wanted to leave my mark, and also a gift of life and innocence in an age lacking those very things. He was my boy then and now. He changed me forever.
I thought Lily and I had shared the toughest stuff there was. The good stuff, too. We had danced on tabletops in the Palladium, and we had taken a cruise together to the Bahamas. And we had survived her marriage. I mean, for a lot of friends, marriage is the death knell. They drift apart. But we didn’t. Secretly, I think David always had one foot in, one foot out; he never committed with his whole heart to
Ordinarily, I would have gone home that night, changed and cruised the bars. I had safe sex since finding out I was HIV negative, but though I had sworn to change my ways, I hadn’t. I mean, yeah, I wore a condom, but I still didn’t allow myself to stand still for very long. I was always running. Running from what? The past, I guess. Everyone but Lily, who knew so much about me that running from her would have been futile.
But instead of going back to my apartment, after Noah was born, I slept on the couch in Lily’s birthing room, and while she slept, I held him and whispered, “Whatever happens between your mom and dad, Noah Michael, I will be here for you. I’ll never abandon you. I’ll never judge you. Whoever you become, whoever you are in that soul of yours, I’ll accept. I may have a problem if you don’t like baseball, but we can work around that.”
David left Lily six weeks later, for good. No looking back. She had gone to the grocery store and by the time she made it back home, his bags were packed. The fact that I had been an usher in their wedding made me not want to believe what she had been telling me throughout the pregnancy. I told her what I wanted to hear—what I thought she wanted to hear—not the truth, which was that any guy who had as many excuses for not making it home from the city as he did was surely fucking someone on the couch in his office.
Lily was a mess. If it hadn’t been for me and the kids—especially this new little infant all baby-smelling (they really do smell perfect)—I think she would have curled up and quit. But Lily is a fighter. Lord knows she is a fighter.
His girlfriend-on-the-side, the Child Bride as we call her, was an exchange student from London, and he moved there to marry her as soon as the divorce was final. Noah, in some ways, was mine. David never looked to the past, and I never wanted him to. Lily was better off without him. And instead of Noah’s real father, it was me who witnessed all the miracles. The first tooth, the first step, the first day of school. And wrapped up in this package of childhood was a gift. A gift of my own mortality.
Where some men might see their son and think they are immortal, for they are now passing on their genes, I saw so clearly how I would one day die. Noah was the future, and from the moment he grasped my pinky in his little fist, I wanted to pass along all my knowledge of the batting averages for the entire Yankees lineup since 1972, the secrets of a perfect soufflé, the stance when you’re at bat, my record collection that I refused to part with—including The Village People and Etta James and Beverly Sills. I wanted him to learn it was okay for a boy to like opera and baseball. I wanted to read David Copperfield aloud to him. I wanted to take him to the Metropolitan and show him Chagall and Degas, and my favorite, Goya. I wanted to save him from Lily’s deadly cooking. I wanted to live on, through Noah.
After all the death I had seen. All the funerals, all the bed sores and Karposi’s scabs. All the dementia and pneumonia that was so much a part of the AIDS crisis before the cocktails that keep them all alive now, I was ready for a gift of life. So Noah was a gift of my mortality, of seeing I would some day be gone and knowing I wanted to leave my mark, and also a gift of life and innocence in an age lacking those very things. He was my boy then and now. He changed me forever.
I thought Lily and I had shared the toughest stuff there was. The good stuff, too. We had danced on tabletops in the Palladium, and we had taken a cruise together to the Bahamas. And we had survived her marriage. I mean, for a lot of friends, marriage is the death knell. They drift apart. But we didn’t. Secretly, I think David always had one foot in, one foot out; he never committed with his whole heart to
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