BEFORE I LET GO: BOOK II: CHAPTER 7: BLAME IT ON GOOSE, GOT YOU FEELING LOOSE, BLAME IT ON PATRON, GOT YOU IN THE ZONE, BLAME ON THE ALCOHOL... BUT NOT ON MY MICHAEL!!!
JENNIFER:
I swear trying to get through to Deb is worse than trying to tell a drag queen that they are applying their makeup all wrong! At least they will take a suggestion or two, but this woman right here… She could try the patience of Jesus himself with the amount of ready-made excuses she gives for her Michael’s bad behavior.
“You have to admit that Brian is responsible for all of this!” she yells.
“NO HE IS NOT!” Melanie yells back, before taking a deep breath and dropping her head. When she looks back up, I can tell she’s made a decision within herself to lay it all on the line for Deb. “Debbie, you’ve been like a mother to all of us. I can admit that, and whereas to all the rest of us, Michael has been like a bratty- VERY BRATTY- little brother, to Brian he has been a lot worse. In fact, we have a word in law which describes Michael perfectly…”
“Well, what is it? I mean, since you want to think that you know my son better than I do, please enlighten me with your wisdom, Melanie.”
Mel uses the same sarcastic tone Debbie just used with her to answer. “The term we use for Michael’s behavior is STALKER, Deb. That’s what Michael was, is, and if you’re not careful, he always will be.”
“How can you say that?!”
“Very easily, and trust me it gets easier by the second! Let’s just take a little bit of his past actions where Brian is concerned into consideration, shall we? Well let’s see, there were the twenty-five calls to Brian’s home, job, or cell phone…”
“That’s not excessive enough to be considered stalking!”
“That was just before fucking NOON on any given day! We won’t even count any of the other times; there would just be too many. Then there’s the repeated invasion of his loft…”
“Brian had given him a key!”
“FOR EMERGENCIES! Since when is an invitation to Woody’s or Babylon considered an emergency, Deb? Then there are the times when Brian was in a meeting. Since when should anyone be allowed to enter any place of business, screaming to the top of their lungs because their best friend wasn’t readily available to take their phone calls? Oh, and let’s not forget why all of them are away at a resort right now. Here’s what you don’t know, Deb. Michael is smack dab in the middle of all their problems! Emmett, Ted, and Brian are having major issues with their partners right now because YOUR SON took it upon HIMSELF to employ the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature on each of their phones when their partners were trying to reach them during that bullshit excursion that Michael set up!”
“That’s not Michael’s fault! They should have been adults and talked their problems out, just like everyone else!”
“How could they when every time they turned around, Michael’s homing detector kicked in?” I ask, quietly. She looks at me in confusion. “According to Justin, every single time within the last year that Brian and Justin would either need to talk, or they were doing… other things within the privacy of their own home, Michael would show up without calling, and use his key to interrupt them. Or if he wanted to be really annoying, he would lean on the buzzer while calling the loft phone, leaving message after message on the answering machine until they gave up. I’ve witnessed a few of those episodes myself when I was over to discuss some real estate ventures with Brian and Justin for their businesses.”
“Face it, Deb. Your son is a menace!” Diane says, daring the woman to contradict her. “The night I arrived here in Pittsburgh, I was getting to know the guys when Michael showed up unannounced, and uninvited…”
“Well there you go! The guys should have included him,” Deb justifies.
“Why? To listen to him whine all night, or to make an uncomfortable environment for all involved?” Melanie asks, exasperated. “Deb, I was there at LeMont the night they were all arrested. Michael instigated the entire episode from beginning to end. He started with Justin as per usual, and then made loud, derogatory statements about Blake. Unlike Justin, who has just been dealing with it so long that he’s probably sick of it all, Blake talked back, which Michael didn’t like. Then as always, Brian, Ben, Ted, and Emmett did what you are doing right now; they tried to excuse his loose tongue and supposedly thoughtless musings. Only problem with that is while he tried to brush his unwarranted comments off as jokes, each and every fucking one of them knew good and hell well that Michael meant every single malicious word. It’s something he’s learned to get away with from you.”
“What the fuck do you mean by that?!” Debbie screeches, and I just want to slap her. Melanie didn’t mince words, so there couldn’t possible be a misunderstanding unless it was being deliberately so.
“God, you really are willfully blind, aren’t you?” Diane asks, rhetorically. She shakes her head in disbelief. “You’ve got your head so far up your son’s ass you can’t even have a thought of your own, can you?”
“Look here, Missy…”
“No. You look! The funny thing is that I would probably feel sorry for you if I thought you weren’t just as guilty as Michael is. But the truth is that you’ve conditioned those men your son calls friends so that you wouldn’t have to deal with him. What gave you the fucking right to turn them into your permanent built-in babysitters for the whelp you birthed? Is it that you couldn’t go into the places he would follow them into, like the backroom at Babylon, or the Baths where they went to get laid? Is that it? You couldn’t be there to hold Michael’s little weenie for him so you thought the others should do it for you?”
“You’re way out of line!”
“No, that particular stigma belongs to you, Deborah! You were out of line to use their innate ability to love for your own selfish purposes! You were out of line when you took their loyalty to you and demanded that it be extended to that fucking little ingrate, who causes the bullshit but isn’t man enough to accept his own consequences. You were way out of line to demand that their partners either silently put up with that petulant pissant that slid out of you, or get the fuck out of Brian, Ted, and Emmett’s lives. But then that’s what you’ve wanted all along, isn’t it? It’s the only way you could keep the umbilical cord tethered to your son beyond your womb, right? If his friends have partners who are self-assured and make sure that their men are well-satisfied, then you lose the ability to use them to keep Michael in line, don’t you? My mother does the same thing where my father and brothers are concerned, and it works for her. But the difference between you and her is that she’s an overtly sour bitch. You? Well you hide behind smiles and false platitudes of love until you don’t get your way. Then you become the bitch you really are- the one you’ve hidden well throughout the years.”
“How dare you?”
“Very much, thank you. You see, I’m NOT one of your lost boys. You don’t have anything to throw in my face. You didn’t take me in, feed me, or anything else that you use as a club to beat those men over the head with. Hell, you didn’t even try to help my brother the first time he tried to get clean, so I don’t owe you shit. In fact, in lieu of this conversation, and how you acted out in MY diner earlier, I think it’s time for you to take an early forced retirement. No way will any of the patrons who were present want you waiting on them again, knowing how you feel about the men they hold in high regard along the Avenue. And don’t even think that word of your harsh statements from earlier hasn’t already spread around by now. The gay community is a very small world, but very communicative. I’ll take a look at the books tonight and issue you a final check, including your pension. I don’t want you to have any reason to come there again.”
“But, but… Mel, can she do that?!” Deb asks, shock written on her face.
“Indeed she can. Your conduct in the Diner earlier was absolutely atrocious. The fact that you still can’t see that you and Michael are wrong is a testament to where your son learned to be an emotional bully. On a personal note, I’m deeply offended by your words and actions today. It doesn’t help that I know for a fact that Michael was responsible for my son’s death and Lindsay’s condition in the later months of her pregnancy with Gus. We tried to tell you, even before we left Pittsburgh, but you just wouldn’t hear of anything that didn’t fit into your view of your son. So while me, Brian, and Lindsay mourned the loss of our son, you and your precious boy began a hate campaign against all three of us, calling us selfish assholes for needing time and distance in order to grieve. You never took into consideration how we all were feeling, so don’t expect any fucking sympathy from me now that you are losing your job, and the family you constantly guilted into being there for you and Michael. You’re not entitled to any.”
With that said, Melanie alighted from her seat in the living room and walked out. Diane followed her, calling her name as she reached the top step. Deb turned to me, looking for some type of reassurance that I was still her friend. I took a deep breath and began to speak to her. “I want to thank you for what you did for Justin. I know that I met you under some rather trying circumstances, and you were a mother to him when I wasn’t able to be the one he needed. But Deb, I have watched you manipulate Brian, Justin, Ted, Emmett, and Ben for many years, and I stayed out of it for as long as I could. What I witnessed when you came into Brian’s office the other day is something I never expected. I never knew you could be so malicious, so tyrannical. But then I heard you today, and you know what? I realized that I was seeing the real you for the first time in all the years I’ve known you. You are as fickle as the weather, Deborah, and that’s something neither of my boys need. In a world full of bigotry and hatred on a much larger scale, none of them expected to find it within their association with you…”
“I love them!”
“No, you don’t. You love what they all represent for you, but you don’t love them. You may love the idea of them, and maybe even wish that your Michael was like them- successful, smart, savvy in business, and the like, but the men themselves? No, you don’t love them. If you did, those vicious words would never have passed your lips.”
“I was upset! They…”
“Finally got a clue to what you and Michael were doing to them and their relationships. The two of you played games with their lives, and in Brian and Ted’s cases, even their livelihoods, and they decided to stop it before you could cost them what matters most to them- their partners. Here’s a newsflash for you, Deb: YOU and Michael did NOT make them into the men they are; their partners did. They are the helpmates which have given Ted, Brian, and Emmett the will and drive to succeed, NOT Michael. You and Michael may have been the bridge that helped them over some troubled waters in their lives at one time, but then you all became the trolls demanding a neverending payment for safe passage along life’s journey. And they have all paid in ways that I cannot even begin to imagine, but I have a guess or two.
“Well now, the one thing you feared is coming to fruition, and now you will have to deal with Michael on your own until he grows up. Ben is leaving him, and I say it’s about time he does! No couple can survive a ghost in their bed, and Michael has put Brian in between them one too many times. Michael did that, NOT Brian! And what’s worse is that you’ve seen it, and did nothing to stop it. You are the very definition of an ineffective parent, and Michael is your shining example. I will have Michael’s things delivered to you, courtesy of Ben. Since the house is solely in his name, and he wants to put it up for sale as soon as possible, he’s left the particulars of getting it ready up to me. Outside of that bit of business, you and I won’t have much to talk about. Take care of yourself, Deb.”
As I’m leaving the house of a stunned Deborah Jane Novotny-Horvath, I see her husband coming up the stairs. His face reminds me of a thundercloud, with the normally placid blue eyes as stormy as I’ve ever seen them. As I’m getting into my car, and the door to the house already slammed shut, I hear him yelling, “Deb, what the fuck were you thinking with that tirade of yours?!”
“What? What are you talking about?”
The next thing I hear is the loud, screeching tones of Deb, hurling insults and issuing orders. Apparently, Emmett recorded Deb’s rant from earlier, and then forwarded it to Carl.
I certainly don’t envy being a fly on the wall for that conversation at all.