Pug Hill - Alison Pace [85]
“I CANNOT!” Rachel shouts and looks over her shoulder, says, more softly, “I know.”
Beth Anne looks flustered, and smoothes down the front of her skirt. Everyone else has started staring at the floor. “Okay, Rachel,” she says, “I understand.” Rachel says nothing and Beth Anne says to us, more brightly, “Okay. So we have Lawrence and Lindsay and Hope.” Lawrence, and Lindsay, and Hope. Oh my.
Lawrence’s hand is up in the air before Beth Anne can even ask who would like to go first. Lawrence, possibly worried that Beth Anne may ignore him, as she has taken recently to doing, jumps up out of his chair. He clasps his hands demurely in front of himself and announces, “I’m ready Beth Anne!”
“Wonderful, Lawrence,” she tells him.
He smiles, tilts his head, and says, “And I would like Alec to be my partner.” Alec looks tremendously uncomfortable, a bit pained as he follows Lawrence, who has just skipped out the door.
Upon their return, Alec looks even more pained. Lawrence looks ecstatic as he takes his place proudly in front of the room. Then, suddenly, his expression changes, becomes quite serious, as he looks at the index card in his hand. He looks back up at us.
“I would like to tell you tonight about my wife,” and I think what I imagine everyone must be thinking, well what Amy and Alec and Lindsay must be thinking because really, I’d rather not think about what Rachel must be thinking. I think to myself, not for the first time, wife?
“I loved her. She was my life,” Lawrence continues and though the rhyming is distracting, he is such a poised and proud public speaker, has been it seems from day one, that it’s easy to sit back and listen. As I listen to his poem, part of me, for a moment wants to cry. Though rhyming and rhythmic, it’s also so sad. It’s about how he loved his wife and wanted to make her happy but because he was gay, it could never work out. He talks about how she said she’d never forgive him and never wanted to see him again. As I listen, I look around: everyone, even disturbingly freaky Rachel, looks touched, sympathetic. I think about Lawrence, such a showman, so endlessly entertaining, the sparkly disco ball equivalent of a person, and I think about the sad things, and how enduring them can get you to a far happier place.
“And so, for her I will always wear this ring.” He flips his wrist around, holds his hand up for us to see.
“I couldn’t hold on to any part of her, but I hold on to this one thing.”
He looks down at the floor, briefly traces a line on it with his Capezio and then looks back up. I remember how he stood and clapped for Amy, how he said, “Bravo!” to her, and how that seemed to make her happy. I stand up from my chair and start clapping. “Bravo,” I say. “Bravo.”
When Beth Anne asks Lawrence what his anxiety level is, he inspects his fingernails, and only says, “you know,” before returning back to his chair, with a new spring in his step.
“Okay, wonderful job, Lawrence, and thank you for sharing that with us. Lindsay? Hope? Who would like to go next?” Neither of us makes a move. I don’t really want to follow Lawrence, because he was so good, and I’m pretty close to sure that no matter how deeply I remember Benji Brown, I won’t be that good. But at this point, I feel like I’ve been waiting so long. Longer, I imagine, than I even know.
“I’ll go,” I say, as I raise my hand high.
“Wonderful, Hope. Who would you like to be your partner?” I look around the room.
“Lawrence,” I say, and we walk together out into the hall. “You’re poem was really good,” I tell him once Beth Anne has shut the door behind us.
“Thanks, Sweetie.”
“I’m, um, I’m sorry it was so hard.”
“Oh.” He waves his hand in the air. “Don’t be. It’s all hard, sugar, and figuring out who you are might be the hardest part of all.”
Wise words, I think, wise words indeed.
“Okay.” He claps his hands together twice, right