Free Night Kites by M. E. Kerr Page A

something. I’m not Dad, Pete. I told Dad last night: It’s just another way of being. It’s not a crime. It’s not anything to be ashamed about.”
    Pete got up to play the other side of the tape. “I thought you sort of knew anyway.”
    “How would I sort of know?” I said. “You sort of know about someone like Charlie Gilhooley, but how would I sort of know about you?”
    Pete went back and sat down. “I never brought any women home. I never talked about any women. I’m twenty-seven years old.”
    “You talked about going out to discos, dancing all night.”
    “Yeah, I guess I did. I didn’t say they were gay discos.”
    “What about Belle Michelle?”
    “That was ten or eleven years ago,” Pete said. “Michelle always knew about me. I never tried to fool her. I didn’t want her to think the reason I didn’t make any passes had anything to do with her.”
    “We always thought she was your big love. Dad thought she threw you over and you never got over it.”
    “Michelle and I were just great pals, at a time when we both needed pals. She was in her wheelchair, and I was in my closet.” Pete smiled. “Michelle said as long as I stayed in my closet, she’d understand perfectly if I parked my car in a handicapped space, too.”
    “So when did you tell Mom?”
    “Right before I went to Europe last summer.”
    “Dad made it sound like she’d always known.”
    “Maybe she did, deep down—I don’t know … Getting up the courage to tell Mom was the hardest thing I ever had to do,” Pete said. “How many times have you heard Mom say we were the perfect family? She and Dad never played around on each other, never even had a fight that lasted overnight … and while all their friends’ kids were raising every kind of hell, we were the good boys. We didn’t do drugs, or drink, or cheat in school, or wrap the family car around trees.”
    “You came close,” I said.
    “I got a few speeding tickets.”
    “I know what you mean, though,” I said. “Mom always thought we were the Waltons, or the Lawrences on Family. ”
    “My God, the Lawrences!” Pete winced. “I forgot how Mom loved to watch the Lawrences: Buddy and Willy and Kate and Jim, et cetera, happy ever after in that big blue house, wrapping up every problem from adultery to abortion in sixty minutes flat, with time out for commercials.”
    “She still watches the reruns,” I said. “Yeah, I always thought I was going to be the one to blot the family record.”
    Pete chuckled. “Not your big brother, hmmm?”
    “I didn’t mean that you’re blotting the family record, Pete.”
    “I know you didn’t,” Pete said, “but I’m not exactly enhancing it…. So I kept thinking, why do Mom and Dad have to know? I managed to grow up without opening that boil. Why start all the guilt/blame machinery going now? I was never crazy about self-revelation, either. I always hated people who got on the tube and confessed they were alcoholics or anorexics or Jesus freaks or some other damn thing!”
    I said, “When I’d watch gays on talk shows, I’d wonder why they’d announce it. Dad said they were exhibitionists.”
    “I thought they were, too,” Pete said. “I used to sit watching those things hoping to God they’d look as straight as possible. I used to hate seeing any Charlie Gilhooley’s coming out of the closet.”
    “Poor Charlie just got beat up at the Kingdom By The Sea bar,” I said.
    “I’m sorry, but I’m not surprised,” Pete said. “I used to stay as far away from Charlie Gilhooley as possible. Sometimes, when I was a kid, I felt like beating him up. I’d tell myself I might be gay, but I’m not a Charlie Gilhooley fairy!”
    “Well, you’re not,” I said.
    “So what?” said Pete. “Do I get extra points for not looking it? … I used to think I did.”
    “Then what changed you?” I said. “What made you tell Mom?”
    Pete took a fast gulp of coffee, and it sloshed down the side of his mug to the