Chapter Text
Thanksgiving, 1989
Kevin stared out into traffic, from the passenger seat of the 1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza Spyder. "We can't take the Cross-Bronx. It's going to be awful."
"Considering the day we just had," Raymond said, beside him in the driver's seat, "I think a little more awful is, on the whole, negligible."
"I apologize," Kevin said, in genuine apology, but the gesture felt as empty as he did. "Had I known my family would be so unwelcoming, I would have declined to participate."
Kevin wasn't sure whether that was true, but it felt true enough.
"They didn't demonstrate any signs of hostility prior to our arrival for Thanksgiving dinner?"
"No," Kevin said. "They really didn't."
“He’s a policeman?”
Kevin knit his brows ever so slightly at the phone receiver, to no avail. The crisp but thinning voice of one Mrs. Abigail Cozner did not sound disapproving, but confused.
“He’s a detective, Mother,” Kevin explained. “He’s very intelligent.”
“I wouldn’t have thought a policeman,” Abigail continued, over-articulating her words in a way which betrayed great mental effort. “I suppose I would have expected, you know, another academic, or someone in the arts --”
Something more obviously gay, Kevin mentally translated. Or at least less blue-collar, goodness.
Abigail then went on to mention a certain bachelor uncle, as she usually did when Kevin's romantic life (or, until recently, lack thereof) came up, indicating that his mother understood the nature of his 'companionship,' but did not quite have the words for it.
“How did you meet?” she asked.
“Through the New Yorker,” Kevin said, keeping things as simple as possible. “You’ll like him. He’s funny."
"Shall I turn on the radio?" Kevin said, absently.
"I am attempting to put the radio back on," Raymond said, tersely. "It is not working. If it were working, I would not be in the mood for our typical classical music listening, considering the Fünf Gesänge debacle."
"What?" Kevin said.
"I mis-labeled Brahms' Opus 104 as Opus 106. I wouldn't be surprised if your parents never forgave me."
Kevin stared, flustered, as Raymond continued ruminating on his own so-called stupidity.
"Raymond!" Kevin sputtered. "I’m not blaming you! How on earth could I blame you?"
"You and your mother disappeared shortly after my gaffe," Raymond said. "I could only presume it was my doing."
Kevin set his jaw, thinking unkindly of the conversation which followed. "This was not your fault."
Raymond seemed cooler now, possibly fishing for information. "So it wasn't about Brahms?"
"Goodness, no."
Kevin recalled the looks on his parents' face when they had arrived; something was wrong, something other than the stress of a relatively small holiday dinner. At first they were tense, but tolerant, in the way that someone tolerates a pain in their side until they are unable to tolerate it any longer.
As Raymond went on about Brahms -- he was blustering, sure, but so were his parents, that was normal -- he placed his hand, without thinking, on top of Kevin's on the table. It was an automatic gesture, one they made without thinking, several times a day. Kevin almost regretted it. If it had been a touch on the leg, something out of sight, perhaps it wouldn’t have set her off.
But he did not regret it. Because he knew that was nonsense.
His mother had seen the hand and then snapped at Raymond about Brahms. Kevin had met her eyes, defiant, and she had called him out of the room. Kevin could hear his brother Marty and Raymond, loudly, trying to have a polite conversation about the particulars of dentistry, to drown out their voices. Kevin was alarmed that whatever it was about Raymond was so very appalling that his mother had broken her cardinal unwritten rule: one behaves oneself around company .
"I don't understand," said Kevin, who understood more than he preferred to let on. He understood that an individual who might, say, fit in better at the country club would have been permissible, but Raymond, as he was, was not. Kevin bitterly resented her insinuation that Raymond was doing some type of harm to him, and that poor, confused Kevin did not know any better.
"You’re not yourself," his mother insisted. "You haven’t been yourself."
Kevin gave her a look of unbridled befuddlement. "Who did you think I was?"
"She broadly disapproves of our relationship," Kevin summarized. "And apparently hadn't made up her mind to do so until we showed up."
"I should have anticipated this," Raymond said. "They’re called WASPs for a reason."
"Touché," Kevin said. He almost smiled at his Raymond, attempting wordplay at a time like this.
Kevin, still fiddling with the jammed radio switch, had accidentally activated the tape deck.
You have placed a chill in my heart, Annie Lennox sang.
"I anticipated they might be distant," Kevin explained. "Uncomfortable, even. I didn’t think they would misunderstand our relationship completely. I was unable to imagine it."
A whole heap of nothing for you and me, Annie continued.
"I don’t understand," Raymond said. Part of him truly did not understand. Part of him understood that Kevin was deeply shaken, and he was feigning ignorance, to let Kevin talk.
Kevin did not say: She assumed the worst of you, and I can’t stand it. You mean the world to me, you are the one who is here for me every day, and they don’t care about that. They won’t listen. Now I think they never will, and that is the thing that is breaking my heart.
Love is a temple, love is a shrine, Annie sang.
"She thinks you turned me gay," Kevin said, because it was the easiest of her absurd sentiments to repeat. He tried to turn it into a joke. "As if I, of all people, would have needed convincing."
"That’s ridiculous," Raymond said, sensing something concrete he could argue with. "You can’t turn a person gay. What would they think I did? What could one even do?"
Raymond was monologuing about potential corrupting influences. Was it his devilish good looks? Magic genitalia? He might have been trying to make Kevin smile, but Kevin seemed far away, haunted.
"It upsets me," Kevin said, "that they think this is something I am doing to them."
I’m gonna leave this love behind, Annie Lennox sang.
"I thought estrangement happened to other people," Kevin said. "How do you end a relationship you’ve been in all your life? And all of a sudden, at that?"
I JUST WANT SOMEONE TO HO-OLD...
"Have we been listening to popular music?" Raymond said.
Kevin shrugged. "I like her, but it isn't strictly necessary," he said, clicking off the finicky tape deck.
I prefer to drive in silence, Kevin would decide, some time later. As long as you are here with me.