Free Heart's Desire by Laura Pedersen Page B

scrutinizing your every move?” I ask. “Or with your job?” I nod toward his broken wrist. It’s a known fact that Gil would like to be a full-time director, or at least do something that involves theater.
    “No . . . I think I’d like to get married.”
    “You mean, to a
woman
?”
    “Well, yes, when you put it that way.”
    Damn Bernard! He
knew
this and he didn’t tell me.
    “I see. I mean, I didn’t know. Because I just thought . . .” But I don’t know what I thought, unless it was that once you declared yourself gay it’s illegal to switch sides. All I can think to say is, “Do you . . . do you have someone in mind?”
    “As a matter of fact, I ran into an old high school friend at Clifton’s funeral. Her name is Doris. She’s divorced, no children. We’ve sort of started dating.” Only he says this more as a question than a statement of fact and doesn’t smile or look well pleased by this turn of events.
    Oh gosh, it suddenly flashes into my mind what Bernard might say if he’d just heard that last line, and as a result I accidentally laugh out loud. But I quickly cough to cover it up.
    “What’s wrong?” Gil asks, not sure if I’m laughing at him or truly hacking.
    Obviously I have only a split second to convince him of the latter. “Coffee went down the wrong way.” For additional emphasis I stand and pound my chest while coughing some more.
    Gil appears relieved. Only I can’t control my laughter at the “What’s wrong with this picture?” absurdity of it all—Gil dating a woman! So the scene becomes a bit like the funeral of Bernard’s father, when we couldn’t stop laughing because Bernard made me check to see if there was really a body in the casket, after Olivia had secretly donated it to science, and the lid slammed down on my head.
    Every time I stop laughing I imagine Bernard sitting here while Gil, with the same incredibly bewildered look on his face, announces that he has a girlfriend. And the second I do, I burst into giggles again and have to immediately fake more coughing. Because there’s no doubt in my mind that Bernard would correct him and say that “having a girlfriend” is another one of Gil’s management euphemisms, and what he’s really trying to describe is a
hostage situation.

Chapter Thirteen
    ON THE DRIVE BACK FROM CLEVELAND A LIGHT RAIN FALLS, making the night cool and filling the air with the blended sweetness of flowers, trees, and damp earth. Despite the fresh scent of spring rushing in through the car window my mind is stuffy, like an overly warm house in wintertime, and my body is anxious, straining forward in the driver’s seat. I try to relax and breathe more slowly but every nerve is quivering with restlessness. Ray and his ultimatum, Louise going berserk, the cash crunch, Bernard stalking Gil, Gil dating a woman—what will happen next? Watch, it will turn out that my father is a cross-dresser. Actually, that’s impossible. His knees are so bad from playing football when he was younger that he can barely walk in loafers. High heels would be suicide.
    I do the HALT self-therapy that Debbie learned in her group for children of bipolar parents. It supposedly enables you to focus on exactly what’s bothering you rather than succumbing to a general nervousness or rage. In H-A-L-T, H stand for hungry, A equals angry, L means lonely, and T is for tired. I race through the list and decide that I qualify for all but hungry. Every time there was an uneasy pause in my conversation with Gil I ate another cookie and now feel as if I should be heading to some sort of Pepperidge Farm detox facility.
    In an attempt to take my mind off the letters A, L, and T, I consider the design competition, which is for a dishwashing detergent. If I could just be certain that I’d win the full-year scholarship, there’d be no reason to offer to freelance for Cappy in his bookmaking business. And the guidelines sound simple enough. Contestants need to create a