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Todd has got a bone to pick with elephants. And also Knox’s old van which does not know how to cooperate with the way Todd likes to drive—it rumbles and sputters and has already broken down once during the short trip. How Knox can drive this thing with kids in the car will remain a mystery, at least until he returns it tomorrow.
As for the elephants, it seems Todd has found himself in rooms with them against his will, as of late. Even now there’s an elephant that sits in the backseat while Neil is reading the back of one of the five CDs stored in the glove compartment. (Which are all The Beatles, by the way.)
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one,” Neil mutters, and Todd glances over to read the title as the other man holds it up. It’s a fully black cover, save for the words ‘The Black Album’ in white, slightly off-center.
“Oh, yeah, Ask Knox about that one,” he almost laughs to himself at the thought of Neil unknowingly opening that pandora’s box.
The elephant remains.
See, the whole ordeal, at least for Todd, had begun the moment Neil started dating Julie.
Todd had gotten home to the apartment he shared with Neil and Charlie, located on the corner of 13th and Broadway, and saw Neil sitting on the couch with a journal in his lap and one glaring difference since they had seen each other that morning: his hair. It was cut short. Cleanly, and it reminded Todd of Welton. Before Todd could get any words out, Neil announced that he made it official with Julie, the woman he’d been seeing, and Charlie had come out of the hallway and made his loud congratulations so characteristic of being Charlie; although however much Todd smiled when they celebrated with pizza and beer that night, he couldn’t focus on anything but the hair. Neil has cut it that way ever since.
Nothing more changed until Neil had actually gotten married, just a little over eight years ago. He moved out of the apartment (which later down he line had lead both Charlie and Todd to get their own places), Todd had begun to see him only weekly, then every other week, and next thing he knew they were catching up once or twice a month. During one of the rare times the poets held a meeting as their schedules seldom lined up (Neil couldn’t even be there), Pitts made an offhand remark that stuck to him:
“When I invite you, now I have to account for both. I used to just ask either you or Neil and I knew you’d both show.”
After having seen each other so infrequently, Todd had forgotten that Neil began wearing his hair short. Maybe it was due to how often Todd dug up his photo albums that the image of college-aged Neil crawled out from the recesses of his memory and took over; however, Neil had shown up on Todd’s doorstep two months ago and this sudden appearance served as a reminder of this Neil that exists now—the sides of his hair were growing out, with the front still short, he had worn a well-tailored suit, with one thing changed since they’d last seen each other: he had decided to get divorced. Todd wouldn’t say this in front of him, but Neil looked the saddest he’d ever been, with his mournful eyes and melancholic smile. Neil asked, Can I come in?
Never mind that it was Todd whom Neil had chosen, not Knox who lived in Greenwhich, they lived so close they were practically neighbours. Neil drove all the way to Brooklyn. Todd didn’t allow himself to read into it.
The two months during which the divorce papers were processed passed by quickly—Neil, that day he showed up, sat on Todd’s couch with a mug of hot chocolate, and clarified that Julie didn’t want any of his assets, nor did she want their shared house, so they decided to sell it and split the money.
So, what’s next? Todd had asked reluctantly, after making sure Neil was okay.
I need to move, was Neil’s response.
That’s exactly what Todd has been helping him with in the past while: moving. Somewhere along the way Todd helped Neil with the announcement to the poets, considering Julie had been a dear friend to all of them, and let them know she may not be in contact for a while. Todd even let him use the guest bedroom (guest bedroom, Todd internally scoffs at the person he’s become to have a guest bedroom instead of a couch to crash on), until Neil found a place. Then Neil began waking up in the middle of the night, and Todd was the one who helped him get through those. And he filled up the space in the guest bedroom like he’d always been there, with his books and his tapes and his posters.
It was during this period that Todd could finally process the inevitable whiplash he’d felt upon hearing the news from Neil. Divorce. Getting a divorce, which meant Neil was available once again. Todd couldn’t lie to himself anymore—the acceptance wherein he resigned himself and these feelings, the reconciliation he’d gone through, the annulment of a past self—it had all come undone. In other words, his feelings for Neil resurfaced, and he was a fish out of water. This part was where the guilt came in, the one that, oddly, seemed to give Todd an arm rash. He realized that all this time helping Neil he’d been desperate to become his best friend again, like a hail mary fuelled by nostalgia, he became a factotum for Neil to rely on. It felt…immature. Juvenile.
“Something on your mind?” Neil asks in the present, in this car, bringing to his attention how hard he’s been gripping the wheel.
“Uh, no. No, not really.” Todd pushes against the urge to see what Neil looks like right now, just to gauge what he’s thinking, because he’d only be met with the disappointment that he can never read Neil’s face anymore like he used to.
“What’s on your arm?”
Todd glances at it, and shakes his head. “Nothing, just itches.” It’s red, and Todd feels guilty. Not because it’s red. But he just feels guilty in general.
“You get it checked out? What if it’s a new allergy?”
Now Todd is distinctly aware of the prolonged staring at his arm, making him drop it and hold the wheel with the hand that has got nothing on it, at least from what Neil can see.
“What about you?” Todd inquires. At Neil’s hum, he continues, “How are you feeling?”
The divorce was finalized just yesterday, and they haven’t talked about it. He had driven Neil to the firm and he stayed in the car until Neil came out unmarried. He briefly wonders how it’s so easy for them to have gotten to this moment: almost middle-aged and discussing divorce in the family van owned by one of their lifetime friend’s. Over a decade of adulthood in the working has led up to this.
“She just said goodbye and wished me luck,” he monotonizes.
“That’s not exactly how you’re feeling, Neil.”
“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to say,” he shrugs. It’s this Neil that he doesn’t know—quiet, reserved, even moreso than the version of him in Welton. Like the one who had spoken to Mr. Perry, and called him sir, and played the golden boy for all to see, but multiplied. “I’m okay. We’ve talked about it.”
They spend the rest of the ride in silence, until they reach Neil’s new place (a few blocks from Todd’s): a basement a friend offered him until he got back on his feet, and when Neil told him this a few weeks ago Todd had protested and said you could keep staying with me, to which Neil insisted he needed his own place. Todd didn’t ask any further, because what else could have been the answer other than, I just don’t want to live with you anymore?
“Right here?” Todd asks, putting the car in park.
It’s a nice little neighbourhood, Neil thinks, and it’d be good for him to finally get out of Todd’s hair. They unload the car in silence, taking turns getting the boxes to the sidewalk. It’s strange, having to move again. Neil thought he’d never have to move when he got married. This divorce is the exact thing Charlie warned him about and the thing Knox assured him wouldn’t happen, and both these conversations took place at his “bachelor” party. (Which was about an hour of drinking at the bar and then a quiet night with the poets.) You should’ve waited a few more years, Charlie drunkenly voiced, while Knox, the last one out the door, said, I think you’ll be together forever, Neil, really.
At the thought of Charlie, Neil remembers something. “Todd,” he says as the man puts the last box down, labelled TAPES in blocky printing. “How’s Charlie’s matchmaking going?”
Neil desperately attempts to hide the lack of casualty in his voice by taking initiative and moving one of the boxes down the stairs, during which he shakes his head at himself, thankful Todd can’t see the way he cringes at his own actions. When Neil surfaces, however, he’s met with a stare.
“It’s good, I guess.” Todd replies after a suspicious second, picking up one of the boxes and taking it downstairs, too.
They alternate taking boxes down, all the while having this conversation:
“It’s good? Has Charlie actually improved?”
“I think so. I’ve got a second date next week.”
“Oh, yeah?” (Neil’s heart breaks just a little.) “Where to?”
“What’s this about? Say, Neil, I’ve got an inquiry for you.”
“Shoot.”
“You still haven’t told me why you really got divorced.”
“Ah,” (Neil tsks. He knows why.) “Story for another day. Or maybe later. So what’re you doing for that date?”
“Uh, bowling.”
“Hold on,” Neil stops him as he puts down the last box at the bottom of the stairs. “Bowling?” He says incredulously.
“Come on, Neil.” Todd closes the door, exploring the space as he turns away.
“Come on, what? You hate bowling.”
Todd doesn’t reply, and now Neil thinks he might have said the wrong thing. Has he paid so little attention to him that he hasn’t noticed Todd taking a liking to this sport he’d said he hated less than a decade ago? It leaves an unpleasant taste in his mouth, this unasked question becoming a film of uncertainty that coats his tongue, which then comes out as, “Don’t you?” He stares at Todd with narrowed eyes.
“I—I don’t…hate bowling,” he shrugs. “It’s been a long time. I might like it now. What—what’s this even about?”
Neil shakes himself out of it. “Nothing,” he opens the fridge and takes out two cans of beer, handing one to Todd. “You’re really going to try bowling?”
“Might be fun.”
Neil hums.
“Remember when we thought Cameron was gonna get divorced?” Todd laughs, and Neil laughs along with him because the air between goes from overcast to something a little brighter. “You know, part of me thinks he’s still crazy for marrying that young. But obviously it worked for him, so far.” He shakes his head in disbelief, but there’s a cadence in his voice that sounds a bit proud.
It had been Cameron who married first, out of all the poets. Before he even finished university in ‘65, he had chosen to shock everyone by sending invitations for his wedding that took place in the summer of ‘62. It hadn’t been Todd’s (or any of the other poets’s) proudest moment, but they ended up betting on the duration of Cameron’s marriage—At that point, the poets were young and dumb college kids with unmoored resentment toward a dear friend for falling in love and starting a family of his own, ruining the sanctity of their unsaid vows to chase their ambitions first and foremost as initiates of the society.
(Cameron and his wife are still married today, proving them all wrong. They had given the winning pot to him on their tenth wedding anniversary.)
Todd hums in contentment, so Neil continues.
“I think it’s just—just part of the motions in life, you know? You connect, get married, then it doesn’t work out so you split. I did love her, it was real in the moment. At least, I had all the things someone needed to make that commitment: trust, admiration, respect, etcetera.”
But Neil trails off, and so Todd cocks his head. “What about love?”
“I said I loved her, didn’t I?”
“Do you, still?”
He grimaces, letting a sip of his beer answer the question for Todd. This way, he can interpret it however he wants, and Neil won’t have to tell him the truth.
“You should really get it checked,” Neil gestures to the (somehow worsening) red spot on Todd’s arm.
“No, uh, I really think it’s just—how do you say it? It’s just in my head.”
“Psychosomatic?”
“Yeah,” Todd clears his throat. “We should unpack.”
Unpacking proves to be a not-so-quiet affair, unlike Todd had thought originally, from the few times he’s moved in his lifetime. Neil is putting his tapes and CDs on one of the bookshelves as Todd keeps an eye on the air mattress slowly rising on the floor, that Neil once again brings up the topic of bowling. The conversation happens again:
“Why do you seem so irked about me trying new things?” (Todd does not mean it to come off this hostile.)
“I’m not—irked, and bowling isn’t new for you. You tried it before, remember? Knox’s birthday party in ‘66, you almost broke your fingers.”
“You still haven’t told me why you got divorced, by the way. Just saying.”
“Why do you want to know so badly??”
“I just—I feel like I can’t be there for you, Neil. You’re so…secretive. It’s like you chose me to help you, and I want to, but I feel like you’re in pain and you’re not telling me the whole picture.”
(Silence. Todd continues.)
“We’re best friends, right? Are we, still? It’s been a long time.”
“Of course we are.” (Neil isn’t looking at him.)
When Neil doesn’t reply, Todd finds himself back in that day when he first started accepting that his feelings for Neil were best kept somewhere hidden. It had been shortly after meeting Julie herself, and in ultimately becoming her friend Todd realized that she was nothing like him. While she liked many of the same things, things that Neil also liked, her smile was never bashful. She was confident, outgoing, and Neil loved her. (And maybe he still does.) It had been the confirmation Todd needed to move on.
“If you can tell me why,” Todd sighs, “I might actually be able to help you move on.” He ignores the guilt gnawing at him, the thought that he may not have the purest intentions of helping his friend. You’re doing this because you want to be with him, it says. But it doesn’t have to be real, for now. He can push it away from his peripheral until it’s time to do it all again. An elephant unaddressed. He wants to help Neil, truly, because he senses the turmoil radiating off him, as it had been particularly potent on the drive here.
“Forgive me for saying this,” Todd starts again. “But she seemed so perfect for you. She was supportive, you both always agreed, and you were…you were—” so romantic, Todd holds back.
“Perfect,” Neil slightly chuckles, almost darkly. “Yeah, it was perfect.” There’s a sneer in his tone that gets snagged on a corner of Todd’s brain.
“You don’t really believe in that ‘too perfect’ crap, do you?” He says quietly, then a bit louder, “Don’t tell me you got divorced because you thought it was too good or too perfect. You were doing what you loved, with a woman that you loved, or—or so i thought! I don’t know what I know about you anymore, Neil. Just tell me whatever it is so I can actually be there instead of playing a guessing game.”
“It happened because of her,” he puts down the last tape on the shelf.
“What happened?”
“It wasn’t my decision—to get divorced. It was hers.”
And just like that, Todd’s world changes. “All this time?”
“I never…said that it was my decision. The poets assumed and it—it was easier to let them,” he puts down the empty box and grabs another beer. “You thought it too, didn’t you?” His voice breaks.
“I’m sorry for assuming.” He goes and grabs a box, labelled books, and begins taking them out.
Neil feels defeat in the bitterest way. It makes him sit beside the bookshelf, looking at Todd who is sorting through the books on the floor. “I don’t hold it against anyone,” he says.
“You could’ve at least told me. But I know I shouldn’t have pushed, it’s not like you owe me any kind of information.”
He really gets a good look at Todd—he’s got some sort of shadow on his face, a sad smile on his lips. It’s this Todd who’s known how to take care of himself for years now, but Neil’s desire to care for him lingers. He thought it would change, especially after getting married, but it hasn’t. The urge is still there. And it’s like his (now ex) wife had seen it, and maybe that had been the reason.
“Please don’t do that,” Neil almost whispers.
“Do what?”
“You’re my best friend. I don’t want you to think any of that—that I don’t owe you anything. I owe you everything, gladly.” And the words are just tumbling out of his mouth, “The truth is I don’t know why. She just told me what was happening. And we fought, once, about why, and I realized I didn’t want to fight any further, and I thought maybe if I didn’t want to fight it this badly then I must not love her enough.”
“That’s not—you do love her, though. You just hate fighting,” Todd replies, and they both know why, and it’s about that lightless evening in ‘59 that Neil had given up on fighting his parents, so lightless that it had been like the stars didn’t even show and the clouds cast on him as he’d run out past midnight when it snowed. It was life or death.
“That’s the thing,” Neil shakes his head, ridding that image from his mind. “I don’t…I don’t think I wanted to fight it. Some part of me, however guilty, felt relieved. Isn’t that terrible of me?”
He’d fought with his life to do the thing he loves: acting. He ran until he got away so he could do it. But he didn’t want to fight for his marriage, the very thing to which he’d supposedly committed his future. It may have been just that—a thing. An image, a concept. He loved the idea of it, maybe just not her.
He only now notices what Todd is holding. The anthology Todd had published just last year, with a dedication to Keating. Neil’s copy is a special hardcover that Todd made just for Neil, with a green cover and gold engravings.
“It’s not terrible,” Todd rasps, shelving it. “But you’ll probably see it that way for a while.”
Neil knows there’s a bubble waiting to burst. It’s about what he thinks Julie had seen, and she realized he couldn’t love her the way she needed. Neil is urged to pop that bubble himself, in fear it’ll come out when he doesn’t want it to—he doesn’t ever want it to, but it’s better to choose now than have it come out later; he wants so badly to say I’d fight for you, I would’ve fought for you had it been you.
Neil is sorry he couldn’t see it sooner.
“You sound like you know it firsthand,” comments Neil after everything that they’ve needed to do is done.
Neither are looking at each other, with Neil at the end of the mattress and Todd sitting against the adjacent wall.
“Know what?”
“When I told you I felt relieved. You told me it’s not terrible, but I’ll see it like that.”
There’s a silent, brief war that takes place in Todd’s mind. “I mean—I guess so. I think I’m pretty familiar.”
“You’ve been in love?”
He hums in agreement. He wonders what Neil thinks, if Neil wants to know who it is (or had been), and why they’d never talked about love before (they’d talked of dating, and seeing people, but not this) except those few times Charlie brought it up in casual conversation and got brushed off. He wants to know if Neil is conflicted as he is, with what to reveal just enough to satiate each other’s curiosity but not enough for the other to know the truth. It seems Todd’s curiosity won’t give until he knows the real reason. He wants Neil to be the same way. He wants Neil to pry the information out of him. He wants Neil.
“Would it be fair to ask who it was?”
How is it that Neil hesitates now, and when they’d first met he had no problem breaking Todd out of his shell?
“Not really.”
There’s a long pause neither of them know what to do with, until Neil breaks it.
“Have you…ever…” Neil grimaces, drumming fingers on his thigh. “Cheated?”
This makes Todd’s neck snap in his direction. “Neil—what?” He racks his brain for any other reason Neil would be asking, but he can only come up with one. “You cheated on her?”
“What? No, God no,” Neil meets Todd’s eyes, unbelieving in the way his eyebrows furrow, but what else could he have meant? “Sorry, I just meant. I felt like I was cheating, on, um—”
“On Julie?”
Maybe Todd prefers the elephant to be unaddressed, actually. It can stay. Because as Neil briefly places his hand on his mouth (presumably, reasonably, to stop himself from revealing more than he already has) and throws himself back into the mattress in affliction.
“It’s not…her. I just can’t say it.”
“Will you stop being so cryptic?”
Todd does not want to ask whom had been cheating with. (But he does, however, as the thought of his best friend being unfaithful to someone Neil so clearly seemed to love leaves a burn on his skin. It begs the question, if they had been together, would Neil have done the same thing?)
“I kept having these dreams,” Neil says. “I still have them sometimes.
“The dreams—they’re—they’re usually on a platform, on a train station somewhere. Not here, but it’s out in the open, and I’m inside the moving train. There’s an announcement, something that says I’ve just arrived, right? So I get up and walk to the doors. Then…”
Todd imagines Neil in his dream as he tells it. It’s unsurprising that he sees Neil with the long hair.
“I see you. You emerge from the crowd on the platform, and you don’t see me, but I see you and I know it’s you. I feel…excited, like it’s my first time seeing you in a while.”
Todd knows the feeling, and it had been the exact one he’d felt every time he got a phone call from Neil asking if he wanted to meet for coffee to catch up.
“And this train, it’s getting really crowded. People are struggling to get out, and here I am, looking forward to seeing you. I push and I push, and I’m almost at the doors when they close. They just—they close. And the train starts moving.
“I start banging on the windows. I see you out there, and it’s just this thick glass between us. By now, you look…disappointed. Like—I failed, somehow? And it’s just weird dream logic where my knowledge is somehow omniscient. And I know I’ve failed you. And then when I get your attention, the train is moving too fast for me to even indicate that I just couldn’t get out in time. So I’m thinking that you think I left you on purpose.” Neil’s voice breaks, and Todd can’t, for some reason, cry. He doesn’t want Neil to cry alone.
“After that I just wake up next to Julie and It’s like I’m a million miles from her.”
When Neil finally turns his head toward him, Todd has no words to offer; there’s nothing to be read on his face, blank, and he’s still. Neil sits up, now seemingly determined to get something out of him.
“So I got something to do with it?” Todd does not want to seem like he has anyone to blame. What else is there though, to what Neil is saying? “Am I reading you correctly? Did I do something?”
“I’m sorry.” Neil sounds dejected and looks it. He’s helpless, and Todd does not know how to be here, when it’s all he wants, he doesn’t know because Neil skirts around it.
“I just felt…guilty.” He shrugs, as if trying to brush it off, but it’s failing.
The dam has not broken yet and Todd is trying to glue it as the cracks come along. “Can you please just tell me what I did?”
This is when he stops skirting around it: “I felt like I was cheating on you, Todd. That’s what.”
Todd can’t help but put his hands over his eyes, pressing against them, maybe he’d wake up. “Christ, do you even know what you’re saying?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t—I don’t wanna hurt anybody. I wasn’t planning to tell you now, if ever. It was just there.”
“Please stop apologizing.”
“S—shit, Todd,” He shakes his head. In disagreement, Todd can’t tell to whom exactly. “Can you let me? I’m sorry. I feel like I’ve hurt everyone.” Neil’s voice shakes and falters, and he hasn’t heard him like this since Neil confessed about the time he attempted suicide. The small fire burning in Todd’s heart feels as though it now bursts rather than sparks, and he almost springs into action to Neil’s side when they’re interrupted by three short raps on the door.
“That must be the food. I ordered some for us…earlier,” Todd quickly heads over and tips the delivery guy, thankful he’d come before the tears started falling.
He sets it down on the counter, facing away from Neil, and he doesn’t want to turn back in fear it’ll break something.
“You understand what you’re saying, right?” Todd says.
“’Course I do. I…” He takes a deep breath, “love you. I always have.”
Todd should feel happy. He should. It’s a logical reaction to feel joy when the one he’d secretly loved for decades finally says the things he’d been wanting to hear. But his heart burns, and it burns in a not good way, and it burns as if the redness in his arms has finally reached his heart. There’s no time to process any of it even when in the back of his mind Neil’s words only just confirmed what Todd had been thinking ever since it was his door Neil chose.
“Please say something,” Neil begs, pathetically if he must add. “Anything.” Even if it’s just to reject me.
“I—I can’t. I need time to process this.” The worst part is that Todd doesn’t sound angry for all that Neil has sprung on him in the past few minutes, let alone the past few months. He’s leaned on Todd for too long, pushed him, even. But Todd has been patient, and now Neil has confessed because he can’t control himself.
Todd is already apologizing, heading out the door with I’m sorry, Neil. I really am. Neil barely hears the words until the sound of the doorhandle had meant he’s already out of there. Neil finds himself standing in front of the door, wondering if he should go after him, but this unambiguous rejection may just be all he needs to move on.
But it’s not a rejection, not really, when the door opens and almost hits Neil and they’re standing in front of each other with flushed faces. There’s a second, a gap that Neil doesn’t get a chance to fill with words before he stumbles back from something warm—Todd. He doesn’t reciprocate it right away but when he processes what’s happening he’s tightening his arms around Todd, who’s shaking like he’d been out in the cold awhile.
“I’m sorry too,” Todd sniffles.
Todd pulls back for a moment, and Neil’s instinct is to tighten his hold at the ache he feels, but Todd comes closer, puts his forehead on his, and they breathe.
“Walking out just felt wrong,” says Todd. “So I…I still need to process it, but can I just—um, stay with you while that happens?”
Neil laughs for what feels like the first time in years. “Long as you want.”
And this, Neil thinks, is what feels right.