There Will Be Cake

Chapter 1

There Will Be Cake

By Kim Davis

My father is arguing with his boyfriend. They’ve been at it for about ten minutes now. I retreated to my bedroom when dinner was over, and the drama started soon after that. I’m watching some black and white detective movie on television when I hear the sound of glass breaking. About a minute later, I hear more glass break. Figuring something really bad must be happening, I head to the kitchen where I find Craig and my father yelling at each other. Jagged pieces from a broken wine bottle and a shattered wine glass cover the tiled floor between them.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Craig asks my father, who stands leaning against the dishwasher with his arms folded tightly across his chest.

“What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell is wrong with you? You’re the one throwing wine glasses!” my father shoots back.

“I didn’t throw it! It slipped out of my hand!”

“I suppose the bottle of Shiraz just slipped out of your hand, too, huh?”

“Yeah, I suppose it did!”

It’s at this point that both Craig and my father realize I’m standing in the doorway, watching them.

“Go to your room, Nick!” my father yells at me, like I’m ten years old. I’m nineteen and in college.

I ignore him and ask, “Is everything all right?”

“Does it look like everything’s all right?” he snaps.

I start to ask if there’s something I can do to help, but my father cuts me off and tells me to get the hell out of there. So I do. The fighting goes on, with Craig and my father each accusing the other of being drunk and arguing about who’s going to clean the glass from the floor. Then, after a while, I hear the front door slam shut.

I must have drifted off because when I wake up, the detective movie that had been on TV has been replaced by a western. I leave my room and head to the kitchen. No one is there now. The room is empty and totally clean. There’s no glass on the floor and no dirty dishes on the table or in the sink. I go to the closed door of the master bedroom and press my ear against it. I don’t hear anything, but I can see that the light is on, so I knock lightly, and someone tells me to come in.

Craig is sitting on the massive bed he and Dad share, drinking a beer. He’s changed out of the jeans and polo shirt he had on during dinner into a white T-shirt and a pair of ratty pajama pants.

Craig is a good-looking man. Even though both he and my father are in their late forties now, they take care of themselves and look great as a result. Craig’s curly blond hair is streaked with gray, but he still has a full head of it. And, although he wears glasses, he has clear blue eyes that bore into you.

“Did Dad leave?”

“Yes.”

“Where did he go?”

“I don’t know.”

Craig moves to put his beer bottle on the night stand beside the bed, but it slips from his hand and falls to the floor. Thankfully, it doesn’t break, but some of the beer spills onto the rug.

“Oops,” he says with a laugh. Seeing him drunk upsets me. Craig is usually the responsible one in the relationship.

Twenty years ago, my father married my mother, but it was a sham marriage because my father is gay. He was still in the closet then and figured having a wife would help him overcome his love for men. A year after he and my mother were married, I was born. Ten years after that, they divorced. He and Craig started seeing each other when I was in high school, and they’ve been together ever since. I’m visiting because they’re getting married in two days. Since gay marriage is legal now in all the states, my father and Craig decided to make it official and get married.

When my father called to tell me the news, I was surprised. I never thought he (or my mother) would remarry. Even though my father and Craig aren’t legally married, they live like a married couple. They own a house together, they take vacations together, they entertain as a couple, and they seem to love each other. Since my father works as a managing director for a business consulting firm and Craig is an HR manager for a pharmaceutical company, their combined income allows them to have a beautiful home and a comfortable life.

Craig reaches for the fallen beer bottle and tumbles out of bed onto the floor. I go to him and place the bottle on the night stand before helping him back to bed.

“Your father’s an asshole,” he says.

“I know.” It’s true. He is.

“He makes me crazy, but I still love him.” Craig smiles and musses my hair. “You look so much like him.”

My father and I do look a lot alike. We’re both tall and dark-haired, with gray eyes and the same oval-shaped head. I look nothing like my round-faced, brown-eyed mother, who’s blonde and of average height. When we’re out together, people often ask if she’s my stepmother. My mother hates the fact that I look so much like my dad.

“It’s like Tim carried and birthed you himself when I’m the one who did all the work,” she complains frequently.

Their marriage didn’t exactly end amicably. For years, I never knew exactly why it didn’t. Soon after my father came clean and told me the truth, my mother and I had a talk. She told me how furious she was when she found out Dad was gay. His s****l orientation wasn’t what angered her. She was upset because he’d married her knowing he was gay. Over the years, her anger subsided, and she and my father now have a cordial relationship. They’re able to speak on the telephone or see each other without arguing. She’s also met Craig and seems to like him.

“Your father has good taste,” she told me.

She isn’t coming to the wedding (even though she was invited), but she has no problem with me attending.

“Having you there means a lot to Tim,” she said.

I’m not just attending the wedding, I’m also serving as the couple’s joint best man, and I’m expected to give a toast to them at the reception. Why my father and Craig are entrusting me with this role is a mystery. Sure, I love my father and I guess I love Craig, too, but I’m not convinced I’m the best person to talk about their love for each other.

Craig is snoring. I take his glasses off and place them on the night stand. Craig is a good guy, and my father is lucky to have him. He’s always treated me kindly, and I appreciate that. While I’m sure my father saw other men after his divorce, Craig is the only boyfriend of his that I’ve ever known.

When I went to stay with my father after the divorce during our court-appointed visits, men would call the house, looking for him. I’d hear him on the phone, talking in hushed tones with some of them.

“I can’t tonight. My kid’s here. Call me next week, okay?”

He never had men over while I was there, and whenever I returned from one of my visits, my mother would quiz me about what happened. What did you and your father do? Were you alone? Did he have anyone over? You’d tell me if someone else was there, right?

At the time, I didn’t understand why my mother was interrogating me, but years later, after I found out why my parents really divorced, I put two and two together. Although my mother never came out and said it, she was concerned that my father’s “friends” might be a little too friendly with me. She worried unnecessarily since Dad never had any “friends” over while I was visiting anyway.

My father didn’t tell me he was gay until I was a teenager. Maybe he (and my mother) felt I was old enough by then to understand. He made the confession during one of my weekend visits. He and I were at his house, eating pizza and watching a ballgame (Cubs versus Tigers), when he suddenly turned the game off, looked at me, and said, “I’m gay.”

I laughed in his face. I must have been around fourteen at the time. “That’s funny,” I said, reaching for the remote to turn the game back on.

My father snatched the remote from my hand and tossed it across the room. “I’m not joking,” he said. “I’m gay. That’s why Beth and I divorced.”

I realized then that he was serious. “What are you talking about?”

He told me he’d known he was gay since he was about my age and that he “experimented” while he was younger before deciding he was better off hiding his sexuality and being with women, at least publicly. So that’s what he did. He met my mother after college, they got married, I was born, they tried (and failed) to have a happy marriage, and they divorced. Looking back now, I should have realized my father was gay. After the divorce, I never saw him with any women, but then, I never saw him with any men either. I just thought he didn’t have many friends. I remember asking him soon after the divorce if he would get married again and him laughing and shaking his head.

“I don’t think so.”

“But don’t you want a wife?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “not really.”

I assumed he figured no woman could replace Mom in his life. How naïve I was. My mother never let the cat out of the bag either. She’d always say vague things about her failed marriage like “Tim and I just weren’t compatible” or “Your father and I want different things out of life,” but she never came out and told me, “Your father’s gay.” When I asked her why she’d never told me, she said it wasn’t her place to do so.

“Tim needed to tell you himself,” she said. “It’s his issue, not mine.”

* * * *

I’m still sitting on the edge of the bed beside Craig when I hear the front door open and close. My father walks into the room. He looks at me, then at Craig, then back at me.

“What is this? A slumber party?”

“I was just keeping Craig company.”

He looks at Craig, who’s still snoring, and asks, “How long has he been out?”

“Not long.”

Dad rolls his eyes before turning back to me. “Go to bed. I’ll see you in the morning.”

I feel like I should talk with my father about what happened earlier, but I don’t really know what to say to him. Besides, it’s clear he’s ready for me to leave, so I rise from the bed and head for the door.

I turn to him in the doorway and open my mouth to speak, but the only thing I can manage to say is, “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he says before practically pushing me out the door and closing it.

I return to my room, wondering what, if anything, will happen next. Will Dad and Craig kiss and make up, or will they just sleep through their anger and deal with it in the morning? I hope they can work through their issues, but I worry that the wedding may be called off.

Later that night, I stare up at the ceiling, listening for signs of life coming from the master bedroom across the hall. I’ve heard my father and Craig having s*x before. Through the walls, I’ve heard the moaning and cries of “yes, baby” and “don’t stop.” But there’s none of that tonight. The house is eerily quiet.

* * * *

The next morning, I get up and find Dad and Craig in the kitchen, having coffee. They both eye me warily as I approach.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hi,” they both say at the same time.

It’s weird and awkward between us, and I feel like turning around and going back to my room.

“Is everything all right?” I ask them.

“Sure,” my father says with a shrug. “Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Well, after last night…”

“That’s over and done with,” he says, rising from his chair. “I’m going to get dressed.”

After he leaves, Craig and I look at each other.

“Things were a little out of control last night, and I’m sorry you had to see that,” he tells me.

“What were you two fighting about?”

“Stupid stuff,” he says, pouring himself another cup of coffee from the carafe on the counter. “It’s not always easy to live with someone no matter how much you love the person.”

I think we both know what “person” he’s referring to.

“Then why do you do it?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment.”

I grab a bottle of orange juice from the refrigerator. I’m about to pour myself a glass when I hear my father calling me from down the hall. When I go to him, I find him in the bedroom, looking through a dresser drawer.

“We’ve got an appointment to have our hair cut at eleven, and then we need to pick up the tuxedos,” he says.

“So the wedding’s still on?”

My father pulls some clean underwear from the dresser drawer and closes it before turning to me. “Of course, it’s still on. Why wouldn’t it be?”

I hesitate before asking him, “Is everything okay between you and Craig?”

“Everything’s fine. Why do you ask?” He smirks then. “Are you worried about us?”

“Well…yeah. I don’t want to see you two break up or anything.”

My father laughs. “Christ, you’re just like your mother. You worry too much. Craig and I are not breaking up. We’ve had fights much worse than the one you saw last night.”

“He loves you a lot.”

“And I love him a lot. Stop worrying about us. We’ll be fine.”

And with that, my father disappears into the en suite bathroom and closes the door behind him. When I hear the shower water running a few seconds later, I return to the kitchen. Craig is gone, but he’s poured a glass of orange juice for me and left it on the table.