“I see.”
“The park’s just up on the right,” Hayden says, pointing.
I remember it now. I drank an eight-pack of Miller ponies with a buddy in that park when I was about fifteen.
I find the little alcove between two buildings. Behind a low wrought-iron fence, two heavy park benches stand on weathered flagstones. The ornate green benches face each other. Tim Hayden takes the right-hand one, and I, the left. Looking into his still-boyish face, I suddenly wonder whether the pitch about Adam was a pretext, and he’s my secret source for the Poker Club material.
“This is hard for me,” he begins. “Do you remember me from Adam’s funeral?”
Something in me goes still. I don’t know what he’s getting at, but bringing up Adam’s funeral puts me on guard. Over a thousand people came to the high school for Adam’s memorial. Athletic teams from nearby cities caravanned in on school buses. “I’m sorry, that day is mostly a blur for me.”
“I’m sure. Of course.”
“What’s important about that day?”
“It’s not that day, really. I got to be good friends with Adam when I coached at St. Mark’s. We were only four years apart in age. I’d just graduated from college, and I helped out there as a favor to my old coach. I wasn’t on staff or anything. St. Mark’s never took tennis that seriously.”
“I know. Same with swimming.”
Tim smiles wistfully. “I remember your swimming medals, by the way. If you’d kept on . . .”
I wave my hand. “After what happened to Adam, I couldn’t do it anymore.”
He looks down at the flagstones and shakes his head. When he looks up, his eyes are wet. “I don’t know how to say this. I don’t even know if I’m right to say it. But I imagine you’ve spent a lot of time wondering about your brother, what his life might have been like if he’d lived.”
“Sure I have.”
“Adam was very confused during his senior year.”
“Confused?”
“Yes. He thought he might be gay.”
I should have realized sooner where this was headed. My conversation with Russo and Buckman must have knocked me off-balance. But the truth is, I never once suspected that Adam might be gay.
“Should I go on?” Hayden asks.
“Yes. Please.”
“Adam got so much attention from girls, remember? And women, too, my God. I think every female teacher under fifty was in love with him.”
“Oh, I remember.”
“He was lucky because of that, though. All the female attention, plus him being a star athlete, kept everyone from guessing he might be anything but straight. But late in his senior year, he started asking me questions. He sensed that I was gay, and about halfway through the tennis season, he got up the nerve to ask me about it.”
I nod to encourage him.
“I told Adam about my own experiences in high school. How tough it had been with the father I had. I was still in the closet, but a small number of people knew. My mother was one, thank God.” Hayden shifts his weight on the bench, then winces as though what he’s thinking about causes him physical pain. “The thing is . . . near the end of Adam’s senior year, he and I had an experience together. Then one more. That was it, just two times. He drowned shortly after that.”
A strange numbness is moving through my limbs.
“Adam was eighteen,” he goes on, “but I feel very ambivalent about what I did. Technically I was his coach, even though I wasn’t being paid. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about. I just . . . I feel like there was a side to Adam—not a side, really, but his essence—that no one knew about. On one hand, he was worshipped by everyone, but that didn’t mean much to him. Because no one really knew who he was. At least I don’t think so. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. To find out whether you knew that side of him. Or even suspected it.”
I’d like to be able to tell Hayden that I knew, that Adam had trusted me with his secret. Or failing that, that I’d known my brother well enough to figure it out on my own. But I hadn’t. I remained at the same distance as the other mortals. Perhaps a little closer . . . but not close enough.
“I didn’t know, Tim. I had no idea. He dated Jenny Anderson for two years, and I just assumed—”
“Everybody did.” He nods and smiles wistfully. “Their relationship wasn’t sexual, believe it or not.”
“I can’t believe I was that blind. I knew how sensitive Adam was, especially for a jock. Not that he was ever a jock, in the simplistic sense. He just had the talent. But there was something else in him. Empathy, I guess. And a kind of magnetism that pulled people to him. Men and women wanted to talk to him, to be around him. Old or young, it didn’t matter. Adam was just . . . different.”
Tim is nodding, his eyes bright with tears. “This must be strange for you. And hard. I hope I didn’t presume too much. I was afraid you might be furious at me.”
I shrug, then shake my head. “No point being angry now. Was he confused by the experiences? Or relieved? What?”
“All the above. Adam carried a lot on his shoulders. The hopes and dreams of a whole school, a whole town. And of course your father’s, too, heaviest of all.”
“Don’t I know it.”
Tim sits with his head bowed. Dark spots appear on the stones beneath his face. I’d like to comfort him, but I’m not sure how to make him feel better. Sitting mute, I flash back to the night before Adam died, the night we climbed the electrical tower beside the river. All that night, the Matheson cousins ragged us with the usual litany of high school insults. As I watch Tim Hayden crying in this little park, the main Matheson theme comes back to me with painful clarity: faggots, homos, queers. Even the stupid “Casey Jones” parody they jeered at me had homosexual references. I took those insults like water off a duck’s back, but Adam didn’t. For once, the taunts of idiots got under his skin. Was he in the grip of a sexual identity crisis on that night? Was that what drove him to the top of that tower to dance along the light strut like Dooley Matheson, six hundred feet in the air? Was that what pushed him to try to swim the river with me?
No, I tell myself. The tower, maybe. But Adam went into the river to protect me, his little brother. I still remember his words: If you drown out there, I can’t walk in our house and tell Mom and Dad I watched it happen. He couldn’t have imagined that it would be me rather than him who would face that soul-searing ordeal.
“Do you know when I think about Adam the most?” Hayden asks.
“When?”
“When I hear Jeff Buckley sing Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah.’”
“Yeah? Well, that’s a great song.”
“It is, but that’s not the reason. Jeff Buckley drowned in the Mississippi River. Did you know that?”
I feel like someone walked over my grave. “I didn’t. Where did he drown?”
“Memphis. When I hear Buckley singing ‘Hallelujah,’ I always hope that his soul and Adam’s found each other in that river.” Hayden smiles through his tears. “I sound crazy, right?”
“Actually no. I loved him, too. And I used to be a musician.”