Free Faggots by Larry Kramer, Reynolds Price Page B

wouldn’t go. You paced all night in your room…” She was referring to a night over twenty years ago.
    “You remember?”
    “A mother remembers.”
    “He was in love with me and I was frightened.” Brave as a Green Beret today, are you, Fred?
    St. Joan on the Cross looked around for some words. “I only want you to be happy,” she finally said.
    “I’m happy! I’m happy! I want you to know I’m happy. I wouldn’t have it any other way. If I had a choice today, I would choose to stay the way I am.” Good for you, Fred! Good courage! Stout lad! (Stop calling yourself stout! You’re thin, now. You’re thin!) What did it take for you to get all this out to her? Twenty-one years of Shrinkery for you to get it up guiltlessly?
    “You promise me you’re happy?”
    “Yes. I’m happy. I’m happy.”
    “You promise me?”
    He took her hand, which was through his arm anyway, and held it. “Yes.”
    “Well, anything that makes you happy makes me happy.”
    Lies on both sides were gratefully accepted. He walked her back to her room and helped her into her bed.
    Six months later, same hospital, after her other tit had been biopsied and reprieved, she lowered her voice to ask him: “What do you want me to do with that book?”
    “What book?”
    “You know the book,” she lowered even lower.
    “The one about homosexuality you asked me to get you so you could read and learn and try to understand?”
    She nervously looked to see if her roommate was listening and had heard. “Yes,” she said, clearing her throat.
    “What do you mean, do with it?”
    “I’m finished reading it.” Her voice still remained much too confidential.
    “It’s yours to keep,” Fred chirpily answered, full-throated, fortissimo, molto voce, bravo. “It’s not something you have to tuck away in a bottom drawer. Where is it?”
    A reply was not forthcoming.
    “You haven’t? In the bottom drawer?”
    She busied herself with smoothing blanket and coverlet and quilt.
    “I’m ashamed of you,” he said. “What did you think of it?”
    “It made me sick,” escaped her lips.
    Well, that’s just wonderful. Thanks a heap. That really makes me feel just swell. Thirty-nine floors up and Fred once more wanted to jump.
    “What do you write about, young man? Your mother tells me you’re a writer.”
    Algonqua’s eyes blinked rapidly, avoided Fred’s, ran around the room and walls and ceiling.
    “My life,” Fred said to the neighboring bed, a gall bladder tomorrow morning, “Jewish,” Algonqua had identified her, “despite her name,” which was Lincoln.
    “How interesting,” Mrs. Lincoln said. “What about your life?”
    Algonqua coughed and looked toward heaven. Perhaps, like Clare Boothe Luce in the Holy City, some plaster would fall and change the subject.
    “And what has been so awful in your life that you have to write about it?” Mrs. Lincoln, a definite gall bladder, persevered.
    A crossroads. He was torn. Should he be strong and honest, what care?, the bold, brave pioneer? Was this not what he was trying to stand for, The Hero in Action, since he had, a lifetime ago, dealt with his now ex-Mother?
    Or was it Mature to Avoid the Issue, hiding under that rug any iota of opportunity for either Mrs. Lincoln to sympathize with Algonqua or Algonqua to feel sorry for herself?
    Or should he give the old Ma one more stab of the scalpel? Take that! you old switchboard operator with your connections still plugged in! Take that! Take that! you Gobbling Turkey who’s not giving me Thanksgiving! Take that…It was quite obvious that Algonqua the Altruistic was shitting in her hospital gown that this son she no longer recognized might peel off (for the camouflage it was) her prideful labeling of “My son, the successful writer.”
    Yes, Fred, anxiously desiring either a jump or a number of Greenberg’s brownies, had to decide at this moment whether to add another helpful label to her list.
    Finally he answered Mrs. Lincoln: