And Then the Gray Heaven Read online

  B and I were waiting for Alvin to be done in the gift shop, and I noticed he had been standing very still in a corner over by the gemstones for awhile. So I walked over to see what he had found. But when I got there I saw his shoulders convulse a little and heard crying sounds.

  I said, Hey Alvin, you okay?

  And he said What? and his voice cracked.

  When he turned to me I saw his face contorted in a kind of tortured disbelief, and he looked just like a lost little baby. His fingers were curled around something in the palm of his hand, which he stuck out awkwardly now that he had turned. So I looked and saw his fingers pull back to reveal a small jade marble figurine, an alligator. For the life of me I did not know what to ask next, so I just said again:

  You okay?

  He did some shaky breaths to get his crying back to regular breathing. Then he looked up at me with suspicion and said, look, I don’t really want B to know.

  And I said, well it’s a good thing we are separate people then, which did not make him laugh. I mean, you can tell me and I don’t have to tell B.

  That’s cool? he said

  Cool by me, I said. Unless you know, you’re in danger. I did a thing with my eyebrows to let him know I was kidding but not kidding.

  Well, at the Wonder Gardens, we’re all a little in danger, he said. He looked at the alligator in his hand.

  So what’s up with this alligator, I said.

  When I saw this, he said, nodding to the alligator figurine, I thought about getting it, for JP. Because he collects them.

  Marble figurines? I said, wondering who this JP was.

  No, alligators. Alligator stuff, he said. He’s always had a connection with alligators. They find him. And this one time I got to see it happen—when we were skateboarding, a gator followed us through this tunnel, just waddling along slowly with its mouth kind of open, like hey hop in. We weren’t really scared, just it was weird. It kept following us until we had to jump a fence. It was like our own demon. So alligators are kind of our thing now too I guess.

  Okay, I said. And who is JP?

  Alvin’s eyes welled up again, and he turned away from me. He’s...I mean, he was like, my boyf—we had this thing.

  So I said Oh Alvin, and I threw my arms around him. Sweet babe, we are all fucked up this way.

  Then he put his hands up on my back and sobbed some in my arms. Suddenly I felt like I had a lot to offer him in the way of understanding and support and actual survival tricks.

  After a minute, he dropped his arms and looked worried. Don’t tell B, he said. So I assured him he could trust me.

  I am an excellent secret-keeper, I said. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve never told anyone, I said. No way to prove it though.

  Then he smiled.

  And I said, hey you want that alligator? So on my birthday I gave Alvin a little gift.

  I wonder what happened to that little alligator. I wonder if Alvin even remembers that day. This was all before he got straight and tedious forever, forgot how to talk to B except to ask for money. Then he moved to Atlanta to get a middle management seat in a pyramid scheme, a rider mower and lifetime supply of Coke Zero: see also, when we lost Alvin. This is why I’m good on people. I think I’ve had some good relationships, done enough caring. On top of the irreversible loss of death and disappearance, it’s so strange to also have to grieve people that aren’t gone but aren’t here either. When what you hoped for in people replaces the people, though they are still somewhere in this world. A dotted line for family. A looking around that makes sunny days heavy. A grief that feeds on itself. Hungry-ass ouroboros of disappointment.

  When I finally get myself back to the kitchen, Theo’s not there, and there’s this old part of me that flares up with big gloom and also self-righteousness because of course no one wants to stick around for me. Then the front door opens, and it’s Theo with dinner, and I feel stupid grateful.

  See? they say, like they know what I’m thinking.

  Yeah, I say. Thanks. Feel like going for a swim after? I just cleaned the pool.

  Theo falls asleep on the couch while we’re watching infomercials, and I’m actually relieved there will be somebody else in the house in the morning.

  I dream I show up to B’s cremation service late and with two pockets full of ripped homemade paper from B’s scrap drawer. A little bit of every color, recycled a thousand times. I hug B’s parents, and they hold me for a long time. Alvin is there in a weird captain’s uniform. The cousin the hospital called who had never heard of me recognizes me instantly, and contrite, takes my hands to kiss them. Then I go over to B’s coffin, which is for some reason open so I can see their face one last time. There is a tattoo of a crow with its wings pulled back on their cheek, which steps mournfully over the bridge of their nose to the other cheek. This crossing means it’s time. I take the two fistfuls of paper out of my pockets and hold them over the coffin. B’s family claps for the ritual.

  I shower my beloved with confetti. It’s our version of that little flag triangle they fold and present to the families of soldiers. For us, it’s bright tatters. We pledge allegiance to silence and fragmentation. We know we burst apart.

  In the dream, the crematory folds or opens up into a beach. We all stand at the water to watch B’s body roll majestically over the waves, then into the fire on the horizon. Right before I wake I see a crow fly up, straight up, into all that atmosphere.

  10

  At college, B didn’t fit in with the other art students because B wasn’t making things with mirrors or decoupage or self-portraits out of lipstick, and they already had an art practice that was as illegible as it was private. They were studying sculpture but were not interested in any of their assignments, rooted as they were in a rigid canon of idealized forms.

  B had taken art lessons as a kid with an eccentric neighbor. Over those few years, they came to love and admire this neighbor deeply because he, as B put it, “made art like it was sex or a sandwich, nothing more nothing less” and also, he consistently confirmed their reality. Their family knew him from their church. He was in his late fifties and had been married, but he was always entertaining grad students, cute art theory twinks visiting from Fort Lauderdale for an overnight or a weekend—and these boys, they worshipped him. A couple of the boys even honest-to-god called Mr. Nguyen daddy, so young B had to work hard at first to decode what exactly their relationship was from all the pretentious art talk over tea. When the boys weren’t calling him daddy, everyone called him V, which is where B got their B from. But B just always called him Mr. Nguyen.

  Mr. Nguyen taught B lots of things including but not limited to drawing, painting, welding, cooking, printmaking, sewing, plumbing, electrical, paper-making, spoon-carving, choreography, bartending, carpentry, opera, and of course, the craft that delivered B to me, airbrushing. He also taught them how to order something in the mail, call a company to claim it never arrived, and then get your money back. This, he called “collecting crumbs,” which was thrilling and terrifying for B to witness.

  Oh my goodness! he would say into the phone, touching the back of his hand to his forehead dramatically for his audience (B, rapt). He spoke slowly but emphatically, and with such silly brio, B thought there’s no way they’re buying this, but they always always did.

  I’ve waited and waited by the door, but nothing for weeks! Now I’ll have nothing to offer my poor aunty who so loves your scarves. She has a collection. Mhm. Well anyway she’s been in bad shape lately and we were thinking this might be our only chance to give her a boost before she goes in for the...what’s that? No, that’s okay. I just want my money back so I can get something at the store before it’s too late. Oh, of course. Thank you ever so much. Yes, I still get the catalogue. Thank you.

  Mr. Nguyen would turn to B and grin and take a deep bow.

  B spent three afternoons a week over Mr. Nguyen’s house, while their mom directed the church youth choir. B’s relationship with their mother, which
up to that point had been close despite mutual misunderstanding, ramped up to a particularly adolescent point of detonation when B dropped out of church youth choir and started taking free art lessons (hanging out) with the obviously gay neighbor—though B’s parents would insist they never knew knew about Mr. Nguyen.

  Also, because B’s art lessons with Mr. Nguyen were so much more about process than product, they hardly ever took anything they made home, which seemed strange somehow only after B finally asked for a welding mask and gloves for Christmas. It was a beautiful nearly four years B had with Mr. Nguyen before B’s parents discovered they weren’t just learning landscape watercolors, making a little cha ca, and listening to audiobooks.

  Mr. Nguyen had only three principles that drove all of his art-making across media and concept and methodology, and he’d go over these guidelines with B at least once a week to reconnect whatever project B was working on back to the root of it. He would make them coffee with sweetened milk, and while they sipped and talked, he would roll himself cigarette after cigarette so he could chainsmoke later while working. B used to talk about this being the iconic pose of Mr. Nguyen: hunched and going crazy over a little plastic cigarette rolling machine on the coffee table, all the while prompting B to talk about their art practice in terms outlined in the Nguyen House Rules.

  The Nguyen House Rules of Artmaking (or how B interpreted them fifteen years later and wrote them on the mirror in their studio):

  Take a break. Lie down in what you are making.

  You are part of an artistic lineage. Remember who and what made you. Make to summon. And when you feel yourself losing direction, pay tribute.

  Don’t wait for anyone to open the avocado. Just open the avocado.

  That third rule has always thrown me for a loop. When I’d ask B to say more, they would do that thing where they ask me questions until I arrive at some personal revelation of my own, which never happened because I resisted the exercise. Open the avocado. What am I supposed to do with that now? So I guess Mr. Nguyen loved avocadoes. And being opaque. And also decorative hand towels, many of which in the Nguyen house apparently featured avocadoes.

  In year three of B’s lessons, one of the art theory boys came to live with Mr. Nguyen, and B used to say “that was the year I was born again and came out queer.” Fran was a little younger than the others, stylish and ultra-confident and kind. He loved pop music and had so much to say about it, and he and B would go over and over a new album like they were gossiping about people they knew. B said Fran was like a sister stepdad to them or some safe thing that straight people don’t have a word for, someone looking out for you without being expected to, that queer affection whose namelessness is its power.

  Fran and Mr. Nguyen spent the summer together shouting to each other about what they were reading from different rooms of the house and drinking long island ice teas, which Fran “took the long island out of” for B. They hosted a few wild house parties that B could hear from their bedroom window and longed to attend. But there were pool parties earlier in the evening or on a Saturday that B was invited to where they would meet all kinds of men who laughed raucously and wore their shirts open and lots of gold necklaces. Men who talked to them in ways men never had before, completely un-creepy and knowing warm ways that had nothing to do with their body. When Fran was around, it was the only time B said they ever saw Mr. Nguyen soften and act like he wasn’t the expert on everything. The way he listened to Fran talk about whatever, anything. The way he would reach up and pet the tiny hairs on the back of Fran’s neck: that was love.

  When Fran and Mr. Nguyen took B to see The Bodyguard at the drive-in, B cried into their French fries in the backseat. The three of them talked about the movie for weeks afterward. Mr. Nguyen had always been a Whitney fan, but he was worried about her. He kept saying “Whitney just needs somebody to talk to, somebody real.” “But what about Robyn?” Fran said, raising his eyebrows. Then Mr. Nguyen would sing in the kitchen and do his really good Whitney vibrato, and they’d drop it.

  When B’s grandmother had a heart attack, Fran drove B to the hospital and “I Have Nothing” was playing on the radio. They agreed that it was the most powerful ballad they knew, and Fran called it a “top torch song,” insisting that Whitney was an iconic top, and it took B years to know how right he was. When they got to the hospital, Fran helped B pick out a bear from the gift shop that had hot glue gun honey all over its paws and face. He waited with their parents while they presented the honeybear proudly at their grandmother’s bedside, and all the other grandkids brought nothing and were afraid of the oxygen tubes in her nose.

  11

  Fran and Mr. Nguyen were collaborating on a sculpture garden in the backyard, towering structures of wood and bottleglass and iron: some things B could climb inside and some that had rungs: one dome-like metallic thing had holes on the sides for two heads and little singing chambers where voices would blend and ricochet. B’s contribution was a rain barrel that would collect water and then disperse it through a system of tubes connected to sound and light sculptures that B installed around the garden, which each time the water was pumped through, would make the whole backyard scene come to life like Disney. For sound there were chimes and a kind of self-playing pan flute and even a flat stone marimba that would resonate in the rhythm of drips from an IV catheter tube that B stole from their dad’s lab. For light, the rainwater turned a small mill wheel that powered spinning prisms, which reflected the light from strategically placed mirrors in the flowerbed and spun color around the pool. Mr. Nguyen’s friends said it was the best day disco they’d ever been to.

  When Fran left that winter, B was devastated. It was clear that there had been some kind of breakup between Mr. Nguyen and Fran, but Mr. Nguyen wasn’t about to talk about it with B. He threw himself into a morbidly lyrical kind of photography practice where he would travel to campgrounds and rest stops along the highway and take pictures of wildflowers crushed in tire treads and vending machines. B later realized he was going there to cruise and then making some shots on his way out of each spot, which made the pictures a mopey filter for whatever thrilling brief encounters were calling him there. Every now and then B would see a snapshot of some man’s legs dropped in with more dusty side of the road detritus. Poor heartbroken Mr. Nguyen made for an oppressively melancholic documentarian, and he made lots of slideshows that he would narrate all afternoon while B sat and tried to be supportive. B would, for example, see images like:

  (slide 1) four trucks lined up with multicolor cabins against a gray sky with their drivers standing blurred in the distant background, hands in pockets, staring at the ground

  (slide 2) a rainy windshield from the interior, headlights from two sides

  (slide 3) a gas pump out of order, a family’s worth of burger trash

  (slide 4) rocky debris on a long slope down to the highway, metal netting over the rocks, with one Slim Jim wrapper stuck and flapping

  (slide 5) truck tire flat with a bent nail next to it, some man’s hand with wedding band tan visible

  (slide 6) green wig spread out over a rumble strip;

  while Mr. Nguyen monologued about cosmic innocence, the crudity of broken toys, twicelived moments (what he called deja vu), and “making a friend of horror.” B learned some things but mostly just nodded. At one point, Mr. Nguyen stopped talking and bent down with his hands behind his head. He stayed like that, grimacing until the veins in his head popped out. So B reached out like hey it’s going to be okay, and they said Mr. Nguyen looked up at them with this sudden recognition of how bad things were because this kid was taking care of him. Then he said, okay. Okay. Okay, let’s have some coffee and you can tell me about your new painting, and he shelved his slide projector for awhile.

  B made plans to visit Fran in New York while they were still in high school, and their parents found their carefully mapped directions under their bed and took their car away. Then they found the bus ticket and grounded them. Then they staged
a full-on intervention. B’s aunts and uncles gathered around to tell them about how much potential they had and the reverend came over to talk to them about Fran’s lifestyle. Then B decided they couldn’t stay at home anymore, and left for New York with nothing but a rolling suitcase full of art supplies and clothes, a Walkman, and Fran’s address.

  12

  It was Fran who told B about Mr. Nguyen’s life as an artist. More specifically, Fran told Mr. Nguyen’s best story, which became Fran’s best story as well as B’s best story, and now is my best story because nostalgia is metastatic—and how better to honor our gay dead than sensationalize?

  I’m not saying we didn’t go to the moon. Fran’s voice merges with B’s voice in the retelling in my head. But that’s not what people saw in their living rooms that night. What America watched was a carefully curated propaganda film, and yes, the most stunning piece of theater ever made. A couple of things: don’t be so sure we actually did win the space race. The cosmonauts had already been up there awhile, and they were unrelenting, perfectionist. See, the moon, she’s not so telegenic. Hard to get a camera crew to do magic up there in 1969, but what we did have was a group of incredible miniatures artists, and an installation artist who was doing wondrous things with this new material, polyurethane. That was Mr. Nguyen (or V, as Fran and everyone else called him).

  The story goes that Mr. Nguyen was NASA’s first artist in residence, and he had big plans for building immersive installations in orbit. But instead, NASA dumped him into this project, and he was working with the American Museum’s diorama artists for the Hayden Planetarium. They were to build a believable moon set. Mr. Nguyen and his team worked around the clock, cutting wall-sized blocks of styrofoam with hot wire, melting it to shape, and painting it with a spray hose. Mr. Nguyen was the visionary behind the whole thing. He did the costuming, worked with NASA scientists to build realistic equipment, and even directed the actors in rehearsals. At one point right before they were supposed to start shooting, someone showed up with a gun and was threatening to kill everyone there for making this fake moon in collaboration with the Communists to help them beat us in the space race (Fran told B the conspiracy theory about the fake moonlanding would surely have taken off if it hadn’t been conflated with this other nonsense). This is the moment Mr. Nguyen walked right up to the gunman and said, if you let these people go, I’ll give you a cameo. Now that’s the guy from mission control who says “Tranquility, we copy you on the ground”—and all because he threatened Mr. Nguyen. Later that year, he donated a fortune to Mr. Nguyen’s work at NASA.