Pivot

Chapter 2-2

Once we were seated at the restaurant and drinks had been ordered, we talked. The conversation started very comfortably. Deena told me about her late husband Jason and her daughter Ashley and I told her about my job and my family.

“You’re the middle child of two sisters?”

I nodded. “Yes.” My older sister Laura lived in Wisconsin with her husband and two sons and my younger sister Catherine lived in Chicago’s northern suburbs with her husband and daughter. We weren’t particularly close and only saw each other a few times a year, usually during the holidays.

“Well, at least you’re not the baby like Darren,” Deena said. “My brother is very hard-headed. I’m not sure if you’ve seen that side of him yet, but you will. I blame our parents. They spoiled him because he’s the baby.”

I actually had seen that side of Darren although not, obviously, to the extent that Deena had. The first time I witnessed Darren’s stubbornness was about a month after we’d started seeing each other. He’d come to my place one night after work and we had dinner together before retiring to the bedroom. I was under the impression he’d spend the night, but he decided around eleven he needed to get back to Evanston. Snow was falling like crazy outside and the roads were terrible. I tried to convince him to stay with me, not just because I wanted him to, but for his own safety, and he flatly refused.

“I need to be home to help Deena with the snow,” was his excuse.

Now that I’d actually met Deena, she certainly didn’t strike me as the damsel in distress Darren made her out to be and she seemed perfectly ready, willing, and able to deal with a typical Chicago snowfall.

As Darren climbed out of bed that night and got dressed, I pleaded with him to stay and leave early the next morning after the snow had stopped and the roads had been cleared, but I might as well have been talking to myself. He was determined to go back to Evanston that night and that’s exactly what he did. Still, I wasn’t sure why Deena was sharing information about Darren’s flaws with me. Was she trying to be helpful, or was she being vindictive? Darren had never really said much about his family’s reaction to his homosexuality. I recalled him mentioning they were disappointed when they found out he was gay, but that’s it. Maybe Deena was trying to sabotage our relationship before it went any further.

“I hope you’re not here to try and talk me out of seeing your brother,” I told her.

She laughed. “Oh, God, no, I’m not. In fact, I hope you keep seeing him. Maybe being with you will be the push he needs to get on with his life and out of my basement.”

Deena’s last statement surprised me. Darren had led me to believe his sister depended on him a lot and that was why he never stayed away from home for too long. Clearly, this wasn’t the case. I started to wonder if he was using Deena as a crutch to avoid getting more seriously involved with me.

“You don’t want him to live with you?” I asked.

“It’s not that I don’t want him with me. I love Darren and my door is always open to him, but he needs to live his own life and get out of mine.”

“And you think I can help him do that?”

“Well, he’s spending a lot of time with you, so that’s a step in the right direction. But I think he’s hesitant to get into another full-blown relationship after Carlos.”

“Did you like Carlos?”

Deena shrugged. “I liked him well enough, I guess. He and Darren had a lot in common and they seemed happy together most of the time. Our parents hated him though.”

“Why?”

“Because they thought Darren could do better. It took a while for them to come around to the fact that Darren’s gay, but seeing him hook up and move in with a mechanic who barely finished high school really disappointed them.”

I knew from Darren that his parents, both retired educators, worked hard to ensure that he and Deena excelled in school. “Skipping college was not an option in our family,” he’d told me.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a mechanic,” I told Deena. I don’t know why I was defending Carlos, but I felt compelled to. Darren had told me that Carlos owned his garage, inheriting it from his father after his death. Yes, he was a mechanic, but he was also a boss and a small business owner. And so what if he only had a high school education. He wasn’t some loser doing nothing and going nowhere. Besides, Darren probably loved the guy at one time. How awful could he be?

Deena let out a short, dry laugh. “Tell that to our parents. To them, being a mechanic is one step above collecting garbage.” Her eyes flickered over me and she smiled. “But you don’t have to worry about that, Dr. Cross.”

“Your parents must be pretty hard on people.”

“They are when Darren is concerned. Only the best for the baby.”

The spite in Deena’s voice was quite evident but, rather than making an issue of it, I decided to ignore it entirely. Every family—mine included—had issues, so who was I to judge Darren’s? Plus I didn’t want to get into an argument with Deena. She did seem to genuinely care for her brother and he certainly cared a great deal for her, too. Whatever sibling rivalry they had between them was overshadowed by their obvious love for one another.

In spite of our impromptu dinner and sometimes awkward conversation, Deena and I parted ways that evening on a good note. She appeared to like—or at least not hate—me and I hoped we’d eventually become friends.