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“Not to be rude, but how old were you when you met? We have a big age gap, too, and people ask me all the time. I don’t mean to be offensive.” Lawrence didn’t actually know if he meant to be offensive or not, but he was curious. He hated when people asked him the same question—young men phrased it in such a way that meant they thought Charlie was old, and old men phrased it in such a way that meant that they thought that Lawrence was nothing more than a blow-up toy, available for sex at all hours, in any orifice. It was nothing like either of those things. Lawrence never thought about the ten years between them except when they were playing Trivial Pursuit and Charles suddenly knew which actors were on which television shows, and who had been whose vice president. In their practical, daily life, the age difference mattered as much as who finished the toilet paper and needed to remember to replace it with a fresh roll, which is to say, if it ever mattered, it was only for a split second, and then it was forgotten. They had worried about Charles’s age, for the birth mothers, and now that they’d made it past the first round, Lawrence hoped that it wouldn’t be the thing standing in their way. They could change apartments, or neighborhoods, lots of things, but they couldn’t change that.
“Well, I’m forty now, so I guess I was thirty-four? Maybe thirty-three? I can’t remember what month he joined the gym.”
“And were you pretty serious right away?”
“I guess.” Carmen closed her legs. She reached up and pulled the elastic out of her ponytail, shaking her hair loose. It hung in awkward damp curls around her shoulders, kinking out at fu
Lawrence didn’t, and shook his head.
“I mean, we’re exclusive, but for the first few years, it was more like, we’ll see. Now we’re really solid, though.”
“I gotcha.” It sounded like bullshit, like the sort of thing men with several second-string girlfriends might say. Lawrence had a dozen friends of just that description, men who refused to commit, because what was the point? But his friends were older, and only a handful of them were interested in having children. Life would be so much more interesting if one could ask all the questions one wanted to and expect honest answers. Lawrence just smiled with his lips closed.
Carmen pushed herself up to stand. It was still light, but the needles on the pine trees had started to shift from glittery to dark, which meant that the sun was saying farewell for the day. “What about you? When did you guys decide to get married? I mean, when did you know you were ready?”
“When we could.” Lawrence would have had a thousand weddings to Charles. They’d had a party each time a law passed, and one with their parents at City Hall, followed by a giant party at a restaurant in SoHo where Charles had drawn murals on the walls, so they were all surrounding themselves, smiling in two places at once, Lawrence and Charles and even Fra
“That sounds nice,” Carmen said. She wasn’t really listening anymore, but instead halfway into her own Dream Wedding. It would be a small affair, maybe on the beach, with a reception inside afterward. All of her Cubano relatives would want a band, and so they would have one, the men in their guayaberas, the women with flowers behind their ears. Even though Carmen herself didn’t eat sugar, her mother would insist on a cake—tres leches—and everyone would have a piece. Bobby would pretend to shove it into her face, but instead feed her the tiniest bite, knowing full well that each swallow meant fifty more jumping jacks the next day. But on their wedding day, she would eat a whole piece and not care, she’d be that happy. Together, she and Bobby could be a training team, maybe someday leave Total Body Power and start their own gym. Carmen had already started thinking about names.
Clive. Clifton. Clarence. Lawrence had always imagined the baby being a boy, maybe because they were both men, maybe because he wanted a girl so badly that it felt like bad luck to even daydream about the possibility. Alphonse wasn’t right, but they could change it. C names felt natural, and slightly old-fashioned in a way that he liked. For a girl, he liked something more whimsical: Luella, Birdie, or maybe even something cinematic: Scarlett. A couple they knew had recently been chosen by a birth mother and were now delirious from lack of sleep, happy as clams. That was all Lawrence wanted—the chance to stare through bleary, four a.m. eyes at a slumbering Charles, wishing that he’d wake up and feed the baby. He could smell the sour spit-up, the foulness of the soiled diapers. He wanted it all.
Sometimes it was pleasant to sit in silence with a near stranger, both of you lost in your own thoughts. Once the pressure to speak was gone, the quiet could hover for hours, covering you in a sort of gossamer cloak, like two people staring out a moving train’s window. Both Lawrence and Carmen found that they liked each other far more than they imagined they might, and they quite happily sat together without speaking until the sunset was complete.
Fra
They’d cooked and eaten di
“You wash, I’ll dry,” Charles said, setting out a dish towel on the countertop. Bobby had vanished into his bedroom, and Sylvia was sitting at the dining room table, hypnotized by her laptop. The house was as quiet as ever, though outside the wind was picking up, and occasionally branches tapped against the windows.
Jim dampened the sponge and dove in. They worked silently for a few minutes, an assembly line of two. At the table, Sylvia gave a loud snort and then a louder laugh. Both Jim and Charles turned to her for an explanation, but her eyes stayed glued to the screen.