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The earliest memory David Rose has is of toddling carefully across the linoleum floor of the kitchen in the house they’d brought him home from the hospital to. It had a big ding taken out of it near the stove, but otherwise it was pristine, a beautiful example of 1980s style and practicality. He had liked the linoleum: the plush socks his little feet loved didn’t slide as much here as they did on the glossy wood in the living room.
He reached the refrigerator and tried with all his tiny might to wedge the doors open, but they wouldn’t budge. In desperation to reach the delicious Ecto Cooler contained within, he turned around and made his way back, slipping as he came first to the dining room, then the living room where his mother sat, engrossed in a small magazine.
“Mommy? Can I has a juice box? Pweese?”
“Oh darling, we really must work on your speech patterns: little boys who can’t speak correctly won’t secure roles on the elite daytime series their mothers will, now will they? You want to end up in Soap Opera Digest one day, don’t you?” She waved her magazine at him.
“Well, go on! Your beverage awaits. One must learn to pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps — however miniscule they may be!”
He had absolutely no idea what she was saying. He only knew that she was dismissing him, same as she always did.
His mother looked away from him, back to what she was reading, and David pitter-pattered his way back to the kitchen and its safe floors, plopping in front of the refrigerator and longing for what he had no hope of reaching.
++++++++++
David Rose had just turned four years old when his father sat him down — well, when his father hiked up the knees of his suit pants and sat on the floor next to David on the newly-installed plush living room rug — and used the word “sister” for the first time.
It was 1987, and VCR ownership was growing by leaps and bounds. So, too, was his father’s business, renting out tapes so people could watch movies in their own homes. (David himself was currently on his fifth viewing of Harry and the Hendersons.) He was doing well enough that, David had been told a few months prior, they were moving out of their small ranch house and into a newly-built two-story (David didn’t know what a ‘two-story’ was). His mother had excitedly added that there would be a hot tub (he didn’t know what that was either, but hoped it didn’t mean more baths — yuck).
Daddy never, ever sat on the floor with him, so David paused in his search for the perfect LEGO to add to his masterpiece and listened attentively. “Now, son, there’s going to be a new addition to the family soon. Your little sister is going to look up to you, so we need you to, uh. We need you to do...brotherly things. You understand.”
David had absolutely no idea what was happening, but his best friend, Joshua, had a baby sister. She was no fun to play with: she chewed on his fingers and drooled on his Transformers and smelled weird.
“What are brothery things, Daddy?”
“Well, umm. Maybe you could. Uh. You see, son, you can...no, that’s not. Umm.”
David looked at his father with curious eyes.
“Well, kiddo...maybe your mother can explain it.”
An awful noise came from the dining room, and his father stood up suddenly. “Sorry, son, there’s a fax I’m sure is very important. But I’m glad we had this talk!”
David couldn’t manage a single question before his father was gone.
++++++++++
The much-anticipated new house had slippery floors in every room, and came with a baby sister who puked and pooped and screamed all the time, every day.
David loaded his new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles backpack with fruit snacks and several Berenstain Bears books, then took off down the sidewalk. He wondered if he could find his way back to their old house, with the safe kitchen floors and no smelly sisters in sight.
Just as the sun was setting, a neighbor he didn’t know dragged him back home, scolding him for worrying his poor family with his absence.
Turned out, they hadn’t even realized he was gone.
++++++++++
“David is a wonderful student, Mr. and Mrs. Rose!” David’s grade one teacher exclaimed. He could smell her stinky flower perfume all the way from the corner near the supply cupboard as his parents sat in tiny desks in front of her. “But I’m afraid there’s been, well...there’s been an issue.”
His mother gasped as though she’d just been told a meteor was heading straight for Toronto, reaching out to grasp at her husband’s chest. “Has young David been engaged in hooliganism?!”
“No, no; nothing of the sort,” Mrs. Mulligan reassured them, “though he has been getting...picked on.”
“Picked on?” Johnny Rose roared, standing up suddenly and knocking over his child-sized desk. “Moira, did you know about this? A bully, tormenting my son?!”
“John, please; you’re making a scene!” Moira dabbed at the corners of her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. “Let the woman continue.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Rose. Yes, it’s quite unfortunate: some of the other boys have taken it upon themselves to single your son out. And it’s understandable: he makes for an easy target. Did you know your little David has some. Uh. How shall I put this? More...delicate...qualities? Rather than running around with the other boys, he prefers to play with the girls. Last week I even saw him,” Mrs. Mulligan dropped her voice to a whisper, despite no one but the four of them being present in the classroom on this Tuesday evening, “twirling.”
David’s teacher sat back in her chair and waited for her statement to sink in.
His parents exchanged looks, then glanced over to the corner where David sensed he was supposed to have suddenly forgotten the English language and been unable to understand what anyone was saying. He traced a nail back and forth over the lightning bolt carved into the wood of his desk until his thumb was raw.
“T...twirling?” His father asked, confused.
“Twirling.” Mrs. Mulligan shot back in a sharp tone. “As an educator of 38 years, I would strongly suggest you stamp this out at home before it goes any further. If David doesn’t wish to be bullied, he’ll need to start acting like his peers! It’s only natural they pick on someone who shows such weakness. Such,” David’s teacher dropped her voice to a near-whisper again, directing her serious gaze back and forth between each of his parents, “femininity.”
She slammed shut a folder and abruptly stood up, extending her hand. “I trust you will take care of this situation. Your boy will go far, I’m sure, if these matters are nipped in the bud post haste.”
Out in the hallway, David’s parents shot worried glances back and forth between the two of them, while David lead the way back toward the stairs.
This was his school, after all.
++++++++++
When David was 7 and his little sister, Alexis, was 2, they moved into an even bigger house. It was scary, at first, because sometimes, he couldn’t find his parents. As his mother directed the men with the big boxes to the East Wing or the West Wing (David had no idea what ‘wings’ she was talking about; he wondered whether the house had come with birds he should take care of), he made his way to the shiny new refrigerator in the new kitchen in the new house, on the new street in the new town.
This kitchen, too, had a slippery floor.
At least he was tall enough to have a juice box whenever he wanted.
Two days of school later — on a Wednesday (Salisbury steak day!) — his father told him their family was getting another new addition. David wanted it to be a puppy: Joshua had just gotten a puppy, and she drooled and chewed like baby Cecily had, but was way more fun to play with, and did her poops outside.
But this time, instead of a little sister he had to protect his belongings from, it would be an adult. A woman, he was told, he should think of like his grade one teacher. But this one would watch him — and Alexis — when he wasn’t at school.
David was, well.
He would have preferred another baby sister.
++++++++++
“Can I have a juice box?” Nine-year-old David asked. He flipped his pencil over and viciously scrubbed out the incorrect answer he’d put down on his long division worksheet.
“May. May I have a juice box.”
“May I have a juice box?”
“You may. But only one, please; I know you had one at school also.”
David pouted. But he loved Adelina — loved? He thought that was the right word — so he did as she said without complaint. Adelina was kind: she helped him with his homework, and blotted away his tears, and kept his nosy little sister away from his most treasured possessions.
“Adelina?”
“Yes, sweetheart?”
“What does ‘love’ mean?”
She smiled that warm smile, the one he’d never seen directed at him by any of the other adults in his life.
“Well, honey, I love you. And I love your sister. It means you’re important to me, and I want to be around you, and I want to take care of you. When you love someone, they fill your heart with joy.”
“Oh.”
“Was that what you meant?”
David studied his shoelaces. “Umm. I think so. Yes, that’s...that’s what I meant.”
Adelina kept a close eye on him as he finished his Math, then Phonics, until Alexis tripped on her Skip-It and hurt her ankle, and Adelina went to take care of her.
++++++++++
Alexis was the worst little sister ever.
“Give it! Give it to me! It’s mine!” A 13-year-old David scrambled desperately after his sister, fully prepared to tackle her to the ground if it meant getting his diary back.
“Nuh uh! Not til you give me your purple glitter!”
“You’re too little for glitter!” David yelled back. “You might eat it and choke and die and then mom and dad would be mad at me!”
“I’m not a baby, duh! I’m not gonna eat it. But Melody’s bowl is boring,” Alexis insisted, referring to the fish David didn’t trust his sister to take care of, “and she needs sparkles!”
“You’re going to kill that poor fish.” David debated the merits of allowing...fishicide?...versus retrieving his most carefully-guarded secrets. There was only one solution.
“Adelina!!” David wailed. He was much too old to rely on their nanny for help, but desperate times called for desperate measures.
He could hear her coming up the stairs, and before he knew it, his diary had been plucked out of his bratty little sister’s hand. Hah!
“Alexis, honey, go to your room; I’ll be in to speak with you in a minute.”
“But—”
“Now.”
Adelina was the sweetest, kindest person he knew, but when the situation called for it, she could be scary. Alexis fled to her own room without another word, crying for effect — like she was the one wronged — and slamming her door.
As Adelina bent over to retrieve David’s brown, leather-bound diary, David considered lunging for it, not knowing what page it had opened to when its clasp had come loose.
“Can— may. May I have my diary, please?”
“Of course, sweetheart.”
Adelina was a good person — Adelina had always, always been a good person. She handed David’s diary to him without looking at the page to which it had opened
“Is there anything you want to talk about? You know I’m a good listener.”
David clutched the diary to his chest. “No. No thank you.” He tried to be as polite as he could before turning around, running to his room, and locking the door. As soon as it shut, David pressed his back against it, and lost a fight not to cry.
++++++++++
His relief lasted all of six months. Alexis, that miserable brat, now knew there was definitely something worth seeing in David’s most treasured possession.
He should have known nothing short of burning it would stop her.
“Give it!” David screamed, sitting on top of Alexis and pulling at her hair, trying to loosen her grip on his diary, “I’ll tell!”
“No you won’t, you homo! Cos then Adelina will read it and she’ll know all your stupid secrets!”
David froze. He dropped back, keeping Alexis’s legs pinned but no longer grasping for what she was holding.
Would Adelina read it? She hadn’t before, but what if…?
“Okay you two, that’s enough.”
David wasn’t sure if he was relieved, or terrified.
“Alexis, I don’t know where you heard that word, but it is one I will not allow in this house, period, and there will be serious consequences for using it. You may not fully understand what it means, but you knew it was bad, and we will be discussing this issue. Now give me David’s book.” Adelina shot out her hand and gave Alexis a look that brooked no arguments; Alexis would never get another (doomed; RIP Melody) fish again if she didn’t listen.
“Now what do you say?”
“Sorry, David,” she sing-songed monotonously. Her apology was total crap, and they all knew it.
David slumped back against the wall at the top of the stairs, clutching his diary to his chest.
Adelina looked to Alexis’s room, then back at David. “How about some ice cream? What do you say?”
He almost refused; all David wanted to do was slink back to his room and bury himself under the covers. But. Ice cream. Sure, he could sneak it himself, late at night when no one was looking, when his mother wasn’t there to make pointed comments that contained words like ‘tubby’ and ‘corpulent’. But guilt-free ice cream, with Adelina providing just the right balance of whipped cream and sprinkles and, if he was lucky, hot fudge, was something he couldn’t turn down.
David shoved his diary in the waistband of his jeans, nodded, and followed his favorite person in the world down the stairs.
As he climbed up onto the stool at the marble counter, he bit his lip and counted to 100 before he spoke. “Hey Adelina?”
“Hmm?” she replied, distracted as she stood on her tip-toes to reach the jar of sprinkles in the cupboard.
“Does everyone think I’m gay?”
The tub of sprinkles clattered to the floor.
Later, David Rose would look back on this moment, all the way back in 1997, and marvel at how it shaped his life for decades to come.
There was nothing wrong with being gay; David was uniquely placed to know this, having gone through puberty at the feet of his mother’s many male stylists and wardrobe consultants, who spoke openly of their boyfriends and life partners, of Sunday brunches and long weekends on Fire Island.
He stared at the back of his nanny’s unmoving auburn head and waited as she gripped the sink briefly, then turned as if those seconds of silence had never taken place and directed at him that smile that was home and comfort and safety and everything.
“Would you be upset if people thought you were gay?” She asked, trying to sound casual as she walked a small glass bowl of chocolate sauce toward the microwave positioned above the six-burner stove. “I won’t insult you,” she continued as she punched some buttons and the appliance whirred to life, “by asking if you know what that means.”
David stared down at his as-yet-untopped chocolate ice cream. “I know what it means. And. And I don’t think I’m gay.”
“Okay,” Adelina replied, picking up an ivy-printed oven mitt to remove the glass bowl from the microwave.
“Do you remember Joshua?” David continued cautiously.
“Joshua, your best friend who tracked his muddy footprints up to your room on no less than five separate occasions? And set off a bottle rocket in the garden? And ate so much Halloween candy that he threw up in your rain boot? That Joshua?” God, did Adelina have a long memory. “Yes, I would say I have a vague recollection.”
David refused to meet Adelina’s eyes as she spooned the now-warm chocolate onto his dish of frozen goodness.
“I...I think…” David pulled his ice cream treat toward himself, spoon hovering above the dish, “Umm. You once told me what ‘love’ meant? I wrote it down and everything.” David gestured to his waist, where his diary was still safely tucked away. “And I think I loved Joshua?” Joshua had moved with his family to Boston in grade six; David still thought of him often. “But.”
“But?” Adelina prompted, pulling up the stool across from David’s and digging into her own dish of rainbow sherbet.
“Isn’t a gay guy someone who only likes other guys?”
“Hmm,” Adelina pondered, licking her spoon, “I think so. But I’m not an expert.”
“Well. I don’t only like guys. There’s this girl in my class, Kristen? And I...I can’t stop looking at her. I think I want to kiss her...maybe? But she’s so pretty, and I just want to be close to her. So...so what does that make me?”
Adelina set her spoon carefully against the edge of her dish.
“It makes you David Rose, the most wonderful boy I’ve ever known. I don’t know enough to help you with this — though I wish I did — but I’m pretty sure whatever you’re feeling is normal, and you’ll work through it. If you want, we can try to find someone you can talk to. Or maybe go to the library? And whether you like a boy, or a girl, or both, or neither, I will still love you just the same.” She reached her hand across the countertop. “Okay?”
It wasn’t cool for a 14-year-old guy to cry, but David couldn’t help himself. He held on to Adelina’s hand with everything he had.
“Th...thank you, Adelina.”
“Don’t mention it. Would you like more sprinkles? What you’re eating looks pretty good; I think I’ll make some for myself.”
She got down off her stool, picked up David’s dish, and bussed a quick kiss to his temple before returning to the freezer.
++++++++++
David Rose was sixteen years, four months, one week, and one day old when his mother — Television’s Moira Rose — informed him that their nanny was being dismissed. Alexis would be twelve soon, and the Rose children would be able to care for themselves; they’d have no use for a nanny.
David sobbed his eyes out for a full day, refusing to see Adelina as she began getting ready to leave them. On day two, Alexis picked the lock on his bedroom door, coaxing him out of his clothes and into a bath to help him maintain some semblance of normality, going so far as to apply his nightly facial moisturizer and under-eye cream for him before finally dragging him back to clean sheets.
Alexis had never really needed Adelina.
David absolutely had.
+ + +
The small moving van came on day three.
David had no more tears left to cry and a sister who was coming up with increasingly creative threats to his person (and, worse, his wardrobe; that glass of red Kool-Aid on his dresser had been a warning) he knew she’d follow through on. He dragged himself out of bed, carefully avoiding all mirrors, and pulled on his largest, softest hoodie before thumping down the stairs
In David’s mind, this moment should have been staged like a movie funeral: black-clad mourners standing in the rain, the husbands and fathers holding matching long-handled black umbrellas as women wept and their children tried to comfort them.
What he found instead as he stepped out onto the portico, knocking the festive autumn wreath off the front door and going out of his way to crunch it with the heel of his slipper, was a sun that dared to shine as brightly as it ever had. Not a cloud in the sky.
“Oh, David!”
His mother fell into his arms, faux-weeping and pounding pathetically on his chest. As though a great wrong had been done to her rather than by her. He shoved her off in the direction of Alexis, who leapt out of the way with an, “Eww!” Moira caught herself on the doorframe and slunk back into the house, standing inside the foyer and waving her (clean and dry, no doubt) handkerchief as though she were seeing off the Titanic.
“David! Son! Welcome back to the land of the living!” His father chuckled, pleased with what passed for a joke in Johnny Rose’s world. David rolled his eyes and looked past him to the circular driveway.
In front of the moving van sat a familiar maroon Volvo. It was the one that had taken himself and his sister to countless stores and doctor’s appointments and after-school activities. The one in which he’d had his first driving lesson (and run over his first traffic cone). David thought about this being the last time he’d ever see that car...and burst into tears all over again.
A door slammed shut and Adelina came running around the car, wrapping her arms around him as best she could. She wasn’t a short woman, but David was already taller than her all the same, so he crouched just enough to stoop down a few inches and hoped his knees wouldn’t buckle and crash them both to the rose-tinted paving stones.
“Oh sweetheart. I’m so glad you came to say goodbye. But I’ll see you again! Maybe not every day, and maybe not for a while, but you can call me any time you like.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand why.” David stomped his foot like a petulant toddler.
“Nothing lasts forever, honey. Things change. People change. Look at you! I used to be able to carry you kicking and screaming out of the craft store, and these days you could probably carry me!”
David let out a snotty burst of laughter.
“But do you know what will never change? My love for you. And for your sister, but especially you. Don’t tell her I said that, though. One of our secrets, right?”
Secrets.
Fuck.
“Umm, Adelina?” David swiped at his mouth and nose with the back of his hoodie’s sleeve, silently thanking it for its sacrifice. “The secret…thing?” David whispered as he tilted his head very slowly to one side.
“Don’t hurt yourself, sweetheart; they’ve all gone back inside and my brother over there,” she gestured to the moving van, “is half deaf from that screaming music he plays. Yes, I know what you mean.”
“What...what do I do? I can’t...I can’t tell anyone; they wouldn’t understand. Not like you do. They would ask questions and they would say I can’t—”
Adelina reached up and grabbed David’s face in both hands, forcing him to look her in the eye. “David, listen to me: this is yours. Do you understand? It’s very personal, and only you get to decide if and when to tell anyone. You don’t owe anyone any part of yourself you don’t want to give. That’s why I’m so very honored you decided to share it with me.”
He didn’t remember much after that day. Her warmth. Her smell. The easy conversations and easy silences. That feeling that there was someone in the world that got you. Adelina was gone, but she would get him through the dark days to come all the same. David never stopped loving her, and kept her words so very close to his heart.