I Should Be Laughing: Harry's Best Friend

“Look at this one.” Wyatt followed Harry’s voice to the back room and found him standing before an enormous brass sculpture; an amazingly smooth metal spiral headed for the twelve-foot ceiling. Galleries were like museums, libraries and doctor’s offices; you spoke in hushed tones. Whispering, he reached to touch the monument, but stopped short. “It’s amazing.”
Coming up behind him, Wyatt studied the piece as well. While Harry was more interested in the aesthetics of art, what it looked like, what it might feel like, Wyatt was more intrigued in the construction, the medium, the method. He counted six oversized bolts that held the substantial brass figure onto its granite base; he noted how the mass of stone seemed to spew out the sheet of brass. “What’s it called?” he asked.
“I don’t see a card anywhere.” Again, Harry roamed around the statue, looking for a nameplate or tag. He checked the wall behind the piece and then glanced about the room. “I don’t see it.”
“Did you need some help?” Someone called from the front of the gallery and Harry walked back into the larger main room to find the woman who spoke. Wyatt listened as he asked about the brass sculpture and stood back as Harry and an older woman came into the room. “What’s this one called?”
The woman, somewhere in her mid-to-late sixties, followed Harry to the sculpture and Wyatt tried to hide his delight in her appearance; she wore the standard, albeit avant-garde, art gallery uniform. A flowing pleated skirt, the fabric as soft as air, and woven with every color he could name, fell nearly to the tops of her feet, which were clad in thick gray socks and Birkenstocks. Around her neck were several beaded necklaces, all handmade, and she had three piercings in each lobe, with six distinctive silver earrings dangling there. A belt of men’s neckties circled her ample waistline, accenting the buttery muslin blouse she wore; her hair was pure white and worn long and straight, though tied back with a length of colored cording. She reminded Harry of someone, and he liked her instantly.
When the woman pulled a stool out from underneath a counter so she could sit down, Harry knew they were in for a full history of artist and artistry. Behind the sculpture, taking the view in from a new angle, Wyatt smiled at Harry and then at the woman, who began to speak in a plain, sweet tone.
“It’s one of Wilson Emory’s pieces. He lives right here in town,” she told them while settling onto the stool. “Those are his oils, too, though he prefers to work in metal and stone.” She directed Harry and Wyatt’s attention toward a series of boldly colored canvasses lining the walls of the room.
“What does he call the statue? I didn’t see a placard.” Harry asked as Wyatt walked away from the bronze sculpture to study the oils; painting was more his style, although the sculpture intrigued him.
“It’s called ‘Common Birds Do Fly’. Wil is fascinated by flight and birds, no doubt because he’s lived in this tiny town his entire life.” She said, with a whimsical, mischievous smile. “You see there?” She pointed at the six bolts along the bottom of the sculpture. “He says the bolts represent the ties that hold man to the earth…family…work…secrets; those things keep us from soaring, from living. If you look at the top, the bronze sheet flutters and begins to tear apart as it struggles to free itself from its ties. Just like man struggles to break out of the molds and cubbyholes and niches in which he often finds himself due to duty and fear, responsibility.”
“I just thought it was pretty,” Harry said meekly.
“Oh, it’s that, too.” The woman slapped her thighs and giggled. Harry joined in and stepped near the woman, who tossed off her sandals and propped her sock-clad feet on the bottom rung of the stool. “Where are you boys from?”
“San Francisco,” Harry answered, as Wyatt remained riveted to Wilson Emory’s oil paintings. He paced along the wall, studying each one, while Harry talked. “Wyatt is also a painter. He shows at several galleries in the city.”
“Fabulous! You’ll have to send us some pictures of your work and perhaps we can show you here.” She cheered loudly, giving Wyatt a thumbs up; he bashfully nodded his thanks. “What brings you boys up here in the middle of the week? Too foggy in the city?”
Harry’s face muddied, and Wyatt was instantly at his side. “Harry’s mother passed away last Friday and we’ve come back for the funeral.”
“Here in town?”
“No,” Harry mumbled softly. “Up in The Landing.”
“Honey…” She offered her condolences, holding a hand out to Harry who, without a moment’s hesitation, grasped her fingers in his palm; a small, compassionate gesture. Harry gazed into her bright green eyes. “What was you mother’s name?”
“Barbara Seaton,” Harry said quickly, feeling, somehow, that this woman had heard the horror stories about his mother. Wyatt was taken aback at how quickly death shoved everything into the past; Harry’s mother is no longer. “I’m her eldest son, Harry.”
“Oh my.” The woman held his hand tighter and he thought she might never let go. “I knew your mother, Harry. My boy went to school with you. Sean Cooper. I’m his mother, Mattie…”
A lightening strike of memories flooded the room causing Harry to flinch. He and Sean were inseparable as boys, during elementary and middle school, but once they moved up the hill to Coelho High, things changed. Each boy chose a different path of solitude and loneliness and, while they still said hello in the halls between classes, they stopped eating lunch together. They no longer rode their bikes into the hills on weekends and eventually they stopped talking. They stopped…being. Still, Harry remembered, Sean was the only person who hadn’t laughed at him in school, hadn’t pointed, kicked or shoved.
Sean was his best friend, his only friend from those days, and his mother …Mattie, I remember now…was always inviting Harry to stay for dinner or spend the night; she used to offer him ice cream after school. Living on the coast, she’d heard the stories and might have seen his mother; she knew what was in store for him at the end of Skeleton Road. His best friend and—
“How is he, Missus Cooper?”
“He passed away himself, Harry, last April Sixth, from hepatitis.” Mattie pulled his hands to her face and gave them a gentle kiss. “He moved to St. Louis after school, to work for the railroad and we didn’t see him much. But it still hurts…”
“He was my best friend,” Harry stammered, trying to hold back the tears, struggling not to cry even though Mattie Cooper was weeping.
“He would have liked that you remember him that way, Harry.”

____________________

The Grey Whale Bar, inside the MacCallum House Inn, was bustling with an afternoon crowd sipping wine and Bloody Marys, the house specialty, when Wyatt and Harry slipped into a small table in the corner. Flames snapped and popped in the rock fireplace, warming the paneled room on this cool afternoon and when the waitress coasted by, Wyatt asked for a couple of snifters of warm Courvoisier.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked once he and Harry were alone; it felt as if he’d been asking that question a lot lately. The day started out so wrong, with Renny in the kitchen and then in the attic, yet, while the time on Harry’s rock had been perfect, the two of them holding hands and talking about nothing, back in the house, the conversation with Harry turned chilly and distant, then angry. Making their escape from Skeleton Road, the short drive to Mendocino was nice, but after talking to Mattie Cooper at the gallery, Harry disappeared inside himself again.
“I keep thinking about Sean.” Harry nodded to the waitress who left their drinks and quietly strolled away. Pulling the snifter over the shellacked surface of the table, he stared at the liquid twisting and dancing inside the glass. “We were best friends, Wyatt. We did everything together, through grade school and junior high…. But when we got to high school it all turned—.”
“People change, Harry, especially at that age. I grew my hair to my shoulders and almost never came out of my room. All I did was paint and listen to the Sex Pistols.” He chuckled. “I can’t believe my parents didn’t disown me. I tried all sorts of new things, I made new friends.”
“It was different for us, Wyatt. We didn’t make new friends!” Harry said firmly; he jerked the cognac to his lips, sipped forcefully, then instantly apologized. “I’m sorry. I’m really giving it to you today.”
Wyatt merely smiled and he continued.
“Sean and I were loners in high school. I remember seeing him in the lunch room, sitting alone by the door like he might need to get out quickly…I took the last table in the corner, hoping no one would see me and I could eat in peace. Why didn’t we sit together?” Harry raised his glass, almost in a toast, and gazed through the amber liquid at Wyatt; he drained it and signaled the waitress for another round. Wyatt refused the offer and, instead, asked for a pot of tea.
“I haven’t thought about him a lot…not since high school,” Harry explained, taking hold of his second cognac, “not in years.”
“But,” Wyatt stirred a small jar of honey into his tea, “seeing his mother today…?”
“Yeah,” Harry answered before Wyatt could finish his thought. “It makes me wonder what happened to him. I can’t help but think he was gay, too. And maybe that’s why he was my friend, you know? Because we knew…” Harry’s eyes closed; a small tear stained his cheek, and the saddest, sweetest smile crossed his lips. “We would ride our bikes from his house in town all the way up into the trees. We’d sit under the branches in the rain and talk about what we wanted to do with our lives. I told him I wanted to write great stories, and he wanted to be a musician. We shared all out secrets but one.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“It was…until…for no reason…we stopped being friends…and I can’t remember why. All I know is that one day we didn’t say hello, and then he ate by himself…and we just…” Harry fell silent, shaking his head as though trying to jar the memories loose; he absentmindedly ran his finger around the lip of the snifter, causing it to moan. Then, all of the sudden, his face lit up with a fresh thought. “What if we were so afraid to admit to each other that we were gay…What if we ended our friendship so people wouldn’t talk about those two,” he lowered his voice a notch, “fags. I mean, how sad is that?”
“I know…” Holding the dainty teacup in his hands for warmth, Wyatt couldn’t say another word. He, too, had a ‘Sean’ in school; a great friend who disappeared from his life, who may…or may not…have been gay; just another painful memory from those days of shame for being different. Even as he thought back on his friend, Wyatt felt it best to let Harry sort out what happened with Sean.
“I never even knew he left town until today. He moved to St. Louis after graduation, while I was still here, and I didn’t even know. I lived…feet from him and didn’t know. We were the same. I ran away to San Francisco to avoid my family…to keep from telling them I was gay…and he disappeared into the Midwest.”
“So he moved away?”
“But he never married—.”
“Whoa,” Wyatt disagreed. “There are a lot of straight people who don’t get married.”
“Mattie said he died of Hepatitis C.”
“Lots of people do Harry.” Wyatt was growing exasperated. “Stop reading between the lines here. Straight people get Hep C, too, and not just from unsafe sex. He may have been gay, but you don’t know—.”
“Okay then, what about his friend…the one Mattie said came back here with the body? His friend? Jesus, Wyatt we all know what that means!”
“Maybe it means that Sean had a good friend who was nice enough to bring him back to The Landing so he could be buried at home. I’m not saying he wasn’t gay…. He might have been, but don’t take a bunch of unrelated facts and hints and turn them into this story of…of two gay boys who drifted apart. This isn’t a Showtime movie.” Wyatt smiled at Harry’s naiveté while reaching across to hold his hand. “You kill me! You truly think everyone is gay until you find out otherwise. Well, sad to say, my friend, but there are straight people all over the place.”
“Don’t I know it! They’re like the Visa card…they’re everywhere e you want to be!” Harry loved that joke.
“FINALLY!” Wyatt shouted, raising his hands over his head and eliciting stares from the small crowd at the bar. “I was wondering where your sense of humor had gone.” He had finished his tea, and began pulling some money from his wallet; he set two tens on the table, stood up and stretched. “Let’s go home, Harry. I saw a sign for fresh swordfish in the market on the corner. I say we buy some and take it home to make dinner for the family.