#5: "That Wasn't it Either"

. . . B.J., we can't imagine why you chose to bestow us with this information but we think it's best if you come home for a little while. We promise not to ask any questions.

Do you remember Reverend Barber, your youth pastor? He says your weren't an abnormal child in any way, so your Dad and I think this is simply all about that business in Korea. You may think this man is your friend, but he's sick, he's just confusing you -

"Beej?"

B.J. shoved the letter under the blotter.

Hawkeye wandered in from the hall like cowpoke coming in from the field. It was finally Indian summer in October, drippingly hot a month later than Hawkeye expected. B.J.'s new lover was wearing his old cutoff uniform trousers and a Stanford basketball tank he must've found in their shared bureau. It was too small for B.J. now, but it was a keepsake of halcyon days; despite his nerves, he was touched by Hawkeye borrowing his memories.

Hawkeye sat on the desk next to the letter, unaware, and put his feet all over the furniture.

"What's up, Doc?" Hawkeye said.

"Nothin'."

Hawkeye looked him over. "C'mon, you're sweating more than me and I just hiked up that goddamn hill -"

"I thought I saw a puddle of Colonial in the street." B.J. went for a grin.

"Beej."

He smoothed his mustache as he looked out the window. There was a whole neighborhood beyond their four walls. Eventually, someone will figure it out. Will he lose Erin? If they have to move, will Hawkeye go with him? He was reminded of the parable of the man who sacrificed all his resources to build a castle on the sand, only to see it wash away. B.J. watched his trembling hand retrieve the letter hidden under the blotter. He felt numb all over, a sure sign that his nervous condition was getting out of control.

B.J. paced while Hawkeye parsed his mother's handwriting, postmark from a little town between Pittsburgh and Sacramento. He wrote his parents months ago - even before Hawkeye had left Maine - telling them why he was getting a divorce and that he was a homosexual. He thought his parents had a right to know. After all, they raised him, they were a part of the family he had created with Peg. They might want to know why he was destroying all the hopes they'd had for him since he was a child. He had only mentioned Hawkeye to say that he had a friend in all this, to assure them he wasn't frightened or alone. (Who, over the age of twenty-one, doesn't protect their parents from the truth?) Meanwhile, when he was running around like a kid, going to night clubs patronized by homosexuals, making huge life decisions without even informing them, taking in a bisexual roommate, and completely forgetting who he was and where he came from, he had pretended he didn't have parents who were probably going nuts over the letter he had sent them from the Martian that had eaten their son's brain. God, they even talked to the pastor.

B.J. let all this out in a long monologue while Hawkeye attempted to both read his mother's response and corral his increasing craziness.

"She seems to have a strong opinion about you," Hawkeye said.

"They want me home," B.J. said. "I can't do that, Hawk. I - oh, God, I'm out of Valium."

Hawkeye flipped the letter over. "Sometimes I forget how young you are."

"You're only five years older, grandpa." B.J. picked up a pen, broke the clippy part, set it down again.

"Says here they know a psychiatrist who does 'very gentle' therapy," Hawkeye read. "So that's the car battery hooked up to your temporal lobes instead of your ball-sack."

B.J. stared. He laughed. A little. Okay, that was funny. It felt good to laugh, he loved that Hawkeye could make him - what the hell? Hawkeye crumpled up the letter and threw it in the trash. B.J. sputtered. His mother wrote that! His mom!

Hawkeye grabbed him by the astonishment and pulled him into a tight embrace.

"You are home," he said. "Do you feel confused?"

"Yes," B.J. said.

Hawkeye kissed his eyebrow. "About me - us. Are you unsure about us?"

Everything went still. B.J. closed his eyes. "I - I feel . . . I love you."

Hawkeye was silent so long, B.J. almost took it back. But then it was Hawkeye's arms and his lips and his fingers in his hair.

And it was Hawkeye saying, "I love you, too."

He was home.

end