The day after our traumatic Thanksgiving had its own peculiar twists. In broad daylight, it was easy to tell that Richard had left. It was also apparent that he hadn't told anyone he was going. We only knew for sure because Allen knew his car and the car was gone.
By the time I got up, so had Jay (Robert?) and Milton. However, they had not gone in to Gilroy, as I had thought they would. Jay was sitting in one of the gardens, drinking a beer. Milton was working on his truck. They would have left earlier in the morning, he told me, but they found out his truck wouldn't start, so he was fixing it. Apparently, nobody else had offered to take Jay into Gilroy. I asked about this and Milton told me they weren't going in to Gilroy anyway. They were going to Milton's place in Pacific Grove.
This made no sense to me, but after the goings on the night before, I was in no position to parse the possibilities. It became a Milton-and-Jay thing, and I left them to figure it out.
While changing CDs in the stereo, Barry asked me if his behavior last night was odd. I told him, yes, I thought trying to make up a bed while there were still five people lying on it was odd. I told him that it struck me as a deliberate move to break up what was going on, and I couldn't figure out why he had wanted to do that.
He apologized. He said he had been very confused by the evening. When he said he was going to bed, he thought everyone else would, too. When we just continued to lay there on the bed, something came over him. He couldn't quite explain it, either, but he realized now that it must have seemed odd.
I said it did.
He apologized again.
I said it was a stressful evening for everyone, and that we were all probably just trying to comfort each other in some way. I apologized too, saying that my behavior might have led him to believe I no longer wanted to spend the night with him.
We both accepted each other's apologies and even repeated them once more for good measure.
Later that afternoon, Barry, Allen, tenent's boyfriend, and I all drove to seacliff, where we strolled along the beach. It was pleasant and clear. Allen and I ended up separated from Barry and the tenent's boyfriend, who walked at a much brisker pace than either of us felt like indulging.
Allen was feeling pretty good. Peaceful, yet expectant. Like someone who has been told to expect good news tomorrow and had nothing to do today but wait happily for it.
As the sun set, we climbed the stairs up the bluff and looked out across the Pacific Ocean. On very clear days like this, I explained to Allen, one can hope to catch the "green flash" just after sunset. The green flash is caused by the bending of the sun's rays through the atmosphere. When the sun dips below the horizon, only the longest rays can still bend through the atmosphere and strike the eye as a brilliant, almost neon-bright green. It isn't a flash like a photographer's bulb, but a flash in that it lasts only a few brief seconds.
We waited expectantly on the cliff. As sunset approached, we were joined by others. You could hear one or two of them talking excitedly about the possibility of seeing a green flash as well. The last one I had seen was on this very beach, two Thanksgivings ago. Apparently, this is a good spot and a good time of year to see them.
It happened. And it was spectacular. One of the longest displays I have ever seen. "It means good luck," someone said. Just as it was fading, a pod of dolphins swam by below us. I had never seen dolphins so close to shore before.
"Wow," said Allen, quietly ecstatic.
Barry and the boyfriend soon joined us. We mentioned the flash and the dolphins. They had missed them both.
We had dinner at a local Thai restaurant, then the group broke up. Barry went back to Aromas, Allen and the boyfriend returned to The City, and I drove back to Palo Alto. The strange holiday was over, and I had to get ready for the Body Electric workshop I was attending on Saturday and Sunday.
No, not quite over. Monday evening, Barry called me to update me on the situation with Jay. Apparently, Jay told Milton that his wife had made the whole thing up.
"So the little girl isn't dead?" I said.
"Apparently not," said Barry.
"Well, that's a relief," I said.
"And his wife made up the whole thing," he said. "She told the story to Jay's mother just to upset her and Jay."
I thought about that for a moment. "Well," I said, "Jay told me things that, if true--and I only have Jay's side of things to go on here--if true, she's a very unhappy and vindictive woman. But I don't think she would have made it up."
"Why not?"
"Well, she sounds like a classic nacissist, and while I'm sure she would be perfectly capable of wanting to ruin Jay's Thanksgiving, I don't think she would have cast blame on herself."
"What do you mean?"
"Jay told us that his mother told him that his wife had been drinking and that his wife hadn't put the seatbelt on the girl. That makes the girl's death her fault. If she really is the way Jay describes her, she would never let herself be blamed like that. She would find someone else--Jay, probably."
Barry conceded that I had a point. "But why would Jay make up such a story? Just to get attention? Did he feel left out somehow and he wanted us to focus on him?"
I didn't know. And I really didn't care to speculate. It was way too weird when it was happening, and I suspected any explanations would not reduce the weirdness factor.
Barry and I then repeated our apologies from Friday, and I told him about the wonderful time I'd had at the Body Electric workshop. Then we said good bye.
I haven't heard from Barry since. I've run into Tom a couple of times. He said that Barry had some bad back problems towards the end of the year. I set Barry a get-well card and left him messages on his answering machine. But I have heard nothing from him to this day.
When I found out from Barry that the whole child-mourning thins was a hoax, I telephoned Richard in Santa Cruz.
He didn't believe me.
"But she must have died," he said. "There were all those signs."
"What do you mean?"
"There was that cloud," he said. "And it felt like someone died."
"Huh," I said. I couldn't begin to say how stupid this sounded to me, so I shut up.
"Well, maybe we all just thought she died," he said. "Maybe that's what made it real."
We chatted a bit after that. I asked him how he felt about the scene in the bedroom with Barry running around, practically frantic.
"Well, I don't know if you know it or not," Richard said, "but Allen and I have been trying to get something going. At least, that's what I thought was happening. When he left with Barry, it really screwed my head up."
I said I thought he was upset, but that I was very surprised when he left without a word.
He apologized for that. He then said he was very sorry, but that he had no feelings for me "that way," and even though we had been sexually entangled on the bed together (along with Tom and the boyfriend), he wasn't really into it. He had been after Allen, and when Allen went away, the whole evening kind of deflated for him.
Funny, I said, the same thing happened to me when you went away.
We agreed it was all a very peculiar Thanksgiving. I said I'd like to come visit him in Santa Cruz some time, even if it weren't for a date. He said that would be nice.
I haven't heard from him since.
Allen sent me New Year's wishes via e-mail shortly after I returned from Wisconsin. For some reason, I felt hesitent to contact him. I found myself busy with one thing or another, and before long three months had gone by.
When I finally returned his e-mail, I apologized. He said he understood, that he had been busy, too. Then I told him about Jay and that the automobile accident had been a complete fabrication.
He was surprised. It was the first he had heard about it.