Believing is Seeing

The day I discovered that the old queen had a ton of money hidden in a box behind his collection of Hummel figurines, Lance figured out a way I could take it. He decided I should give notice, make up a story about moving to my sister’s to help her out with her kids. Leave on good terms, and take the money my last day.

Lance made all the plans—first we’d drive to Tahoe to celebrate, then off to Montana where we could live anonymously on acres and acres of cheap land. We’d buy or build a ranch, maybe get a couple of horses, drink champagne every night and eat lobster shipped in from Maine. He said he could show me a great life with that kind of money. I had a hard time picturing Lance’s vision, but he told me to have faith in his mind’s eye.

The last week, as I brought the old queen his tea and read his horoscope to him, I felt bad. I was the only person who spent any time with him—and that was because he paid me. But Lance convinced me it was all okay. David, he said, it was meant to be that you found the money; for all intents and purposes it belongs to us. Lance swore the old guy was rolling in dough, that the money behind the Hummels was just one of many such stashes in his double-wide trailer. So he could easily get another caretaker and for certain pay them more than the paltry sum he paid me. Or he could buy his way into one of those old folks homes where they plump your pillows and keep chocolates at your bedside and treat you like you’re at a fancy hotel.

But I still felt funny about everything, especially when I saw the old guy staring out the window at the rain, not noticing that his oxygen tube had fallen from his nose onto his chest. His sad skinny legs stuck out from his lavender silk robe.

I suggested to him the day I gave my notice that he could go to the gay and lesbian community center on Thursday nights for the Plus-60 Coffee Chats. They even had someone who’d come pick you up if you didn’t drive. Or he could afford a cab, for god’s sake.

“David, you know I hate all that fake chatting about bullshit,” he said, scratching the papery skin on his cheek with a bent yellowed finger. “Just because it’s a bunch of homos getting together doesn’t mean they have anything worthwhile to talk about.”

“Well, Chester, what are you going to do with yourself now that I’m leaving?” I asked, pulling the tea bag from his cup and mixing in sugar.

“What do you care, you traitor?” He lifted the cup to his lips with a shaky hand.

That word hit me hard.

“What the hell is your sister’s problem, anyway?” he continued. “Is she really worse off than I am?” Chester slammed his hand down on the end table, spilling tea on his robe. I grabbed a hand towel.

“Isn’t she the one . . .” he paused for a breath as I dabbed at the spilled tea, “ . . . who lives in that million dollar house?”

“A million dollars doesn’t buy much in Atherton,” I said.

“Fuck Atherton. Get me a straw.”

I handed him a plastic straw from the package on the coffee table. He poked the straw into his tea cup and sipped.

“Can’t she hire herself one of those nannies?”

“Of course, but I’m family, so she trusts me. She needs me now that she’s got another kid on the way.”

“Too bad she’s not one of those sisters who doesn’t want her fairy brother near her little boys.” He set his tea down and leaned back in his barcalounger.

In reality, Gina was one of those sisters. We hadn’t talked since our mother’s wake, when between bites of egg roll she’d made it clear she didn’t want me alone with my nephew. I felt uneasy with how close to the mark Chester seemed to be. I could feel my armpits getting damp. I tried to change the subject.

“What about you? You can hire someone to replace me, right?”

Chester readjusted the oxygen cannula in his nose, picked up the remote control, and turned on the T.V. to The Price is Right. I stood there for a few minutes until I realized he wasn’t going to respond. He just sat there, rattling out his exhale, his eyes on the frantic game show consumers.

I removed the feather duster from its hook and walked down the narrow, paneled hallway into the bedroom. There on the bookshelf stood all those Hummel figurines that he wanted me to keep dust-free, which was actually a satisfying activity. He didn’t even have a dresser in the bedroom, just a twin bed (that I rarely had to make since he often slept in his chair in front of the T.V.) and a massive oak bookshelf crowded with Hummels. He also had lots more in boxes stuffed in his closet. Every so often he’d ask me to hold his arm and walk him to the bedroom, where he’d sit on the bed and direct me to take out box after box. He’d read aloud the title from the box then remove the figurine, holding it up for me to see. Last time he had me put up some Christmas Hummels.

“Making New Friends,” he announced, holding up a ceramic boy in winter clothes and a hat, his scarf sticking straight back to simulate wind. The boy was building a snowman. The cute factor was sealed with the fact that the snowman towered over the kid who stood tiptoe on a stool, shoving a carrot nose into the snowman’s face.

“Ride Into Christmas” portrayed another little boy in a knit cap seated on a sled holding a big Christmas present in his little arms. “The Gift” depicted a boy kneeling in the snow, offering a huge acorn to a tame squirrel.

“Do these remind you of when you were a kid?” I asked.

“You’ve got to be joking,” he said. “They’re not even dreams I could’ve had.”

During this holiday setup I had noticed the box nestled behind the bookshelf. Later, when Chester was snoring in front of the T.V., I came back into his room to check it out. When I lifted the lid and discovered stacks of hundred dollar bills, a chill ran up my neck. Where did he get all the money? He couldn’t have made much running a self-storage facility, the last place he told me he worked before he got too sick. I knew he was on Medicare and received a small check from Social Security each month.

And why did he keep so much cash here? Pleasant Sands Mobile Home Park was not a safe place. It backed up against the freeway, its only protection a joke: a flimsy chain link fence and a neighborhood watch staffed by octogenarians. The neighbors a few doors down had their T.V. stolen not too long ago when they went out to a doctor’s appointment. And cars parked at the curb rather than in carports often lost their radios and loose change at night.

I wondered if I should let on that I knew he was keeping the money here and maybe help him get it into a safety deposit box. I was tempted to take it out to count it, but I worried the old queen might have the bills in some kind of order and know what I’d done. I made sure I put the box back in the exact same spot. It never really crossed my mind that I could take the money until I told Lance about it.

But now, as I dusted the Hummels and bent down to touch the box, just to feel its presence, I figured that Lance was right. It was meant to be that the money had crossed our path, and we should grab this opportunity to change our lives.

Lance was reading when I came home, Liza curled up next to him. I wasn’t too fond of this one-hundred pound black lab shedding and slobbering on the couch I’d inherited from my mother. But Liza was part of the Lance package.

“Hi hon.” Lance looked up from his book and kissed the air in my direction. He wore his favorite possession, an old Madonna “Like a Virgin” tour sweatshirt that he found at the Goodwill. It had frayed cuffs and an orange stain on the shoulder.

“How’d the old man take the news?” he asked.

“Not too good,” I said, leaning over him and kissing his neck. His five o’clock shadow scraped my jaw. “I’m worried about him.”

I sat on the floor cross-legged. I could smell Liza’s breath, even over the pine scent of our Christmas tree. The tree lights flashed off and on, lighting up Lance’s face. He was halfway through a bottle of chardonnay, which was dripping condensation onto the coffee table.

“Don’t worry about him. The universe is working as it should.” He tapped his book, Seeing is Believing by Dr. George Georgeson. Liza was working up a pant. I picked at black dog hairs on the carpet.

As Dr. Georgeson suggested in his books and tapes, Lance visualized and affirmed every morning. This involved lying in bed upon waking and (before opening his eyes) picturing himself surrounded by piles of greenbacks and gold bars. But, as he told me, he didn’t stop there. He visualized the kind of life he wanted: a big ranch tended by a handsome ranch hand; a small airplane to get to the city when he had country fever; and dinners with closeted movie stars at fancy homes in San Francisco and L.A., golden wine poured all evening. He’d become an expert at visualizing down to the last detail. Which was why he wasn’t surprised when I told him I’d come across the money. Dr. Georgeson swore that when you’re focused, getting what you really want takes only a matter of time.

“How can you be sure that everything’s working as it should?” I asked, reaching over to slip a coaster under his wine glass.

“You have to have faith. Whatever path you lay out before you in your mind is the one you will follow. Come on, I’ve been talking for months about ways to think outside the box about money. Do you really think it’s a coincidence that a huge bunch of cash just crossed our path? And in a box! Get it? Outside the box!” Pleased, he patted Liza’s blocky head.

It was true that Lance had been obsessed with ways to make money. My pay from the old queen was our only income. Juggling our monthly credit card payments was getting tricky.

“And the key is to make money without working regular jobs,” he added. “Without selling our souls to some company. What is it with this country?”

I could hear in his voice that he was winding up.

“You have to work so many goddamn hours just to put food on the table. Not to mention medical care. We need socialized medicine, like the civilized countries, like Canada and all the European countries. There, people live life more slowly, more humanely. The French take three hours to eat lunch, which Americans would consider lazy. Everything here is rush, rush, rush. Buy, buy, buy. I want to live differently, and no capitalist system run by a bunch of Family Values breeders is going to force me into indentured consumerist servitude!”

He was shouting by now. Liza slinked off the couch and heaved her heavy body to the floor, leaving behind a wet slobber spot on the couch.

There was something really cute about Lance when he got this way: his skin pinked up, his blond hair framing his face. That’s what I loved about his look; it was so fresh, like he had just walked into a warm room after spending an hour shoveling snow. It struck me that resembled one of those Hummel figurine boys.

“See, Dr. Georgeson gets it.” He poured some more wine into his glass and sipped daintily but somehow dripped a few spots onto his sweatshirt. “Listen to this.”

He read aloud from the chapter titled, “How to Live Without Giving In and Selling Out.” It doesn’t take much courage or strength to live as society expects you to, Dr. Georgeson said in this chapter. It’s those who want to live differently, who are creative and free-spirited, who must not give in and sell out. And getting what you want is not necessarily a matter of working for it in the traditional sense. That kind of work—day in, day out—really doesn’t get you where you want to go if you want to fulfill your soul. The key is to tap into the energies of the universe that will take you where you are meant to go.

“That money is ours,” he said. “It has crossed our path for a reason. Chester has no need for lots of money. He has no family. When he dies, that money will just go to the state anyway. Who deserves it more than two young love birds like us who have their whole lives ahead of them? If Chester wasn’t out of his mind like he is, he might even just give us the money and his blessings. Unfortunately, we can’t count on that happening.”

Lance always did make sense.

That night I lay awake in bed, listening to the Liza’s and Lance’s synchronized snores. The star appliqués on the ceiling glowed green. Lance had plastered stars all over the house the minute he moved in. He said they made him feel one with the universe.

It seemed Lance always knew what he wanted, and now—with the help of Dr. Georgeson—was working on ways to get it.

What did I want? A trip to Tahoe sounded great. We could have a white Christmas. I loved watching the snow. But to be honest, I was a bit worried about the prospect of buying a Wyoming ranch. I didn’t know much about the outdoors, much less horses. They kind of scared me the way they could just kick you off their back if they were sick of you, and you could get paralyzed.

And I was anxious about leaving my house, the house where I grew up, the house where I nursed my mother until she died three years ago. It felt like my house, even though we never owned it, just rented it all these years from the Swift family, first Randolph and now his son, Rick, who was a year ahead of me in school. I slept in the same bedroom my whole life. In fact, when I met Lance at a coffee shop and he moved in, spending night after night with him in my bed took some getting used to, as much as I loved him.

I was beginning to regret that I’d found the money and that I’d said anything to Lance. What did I want? I wanted Lance. I guess that meant that I had to want whatever he wanted. He was the strong one, the smart one. He knew the direction to go in. Before I met Lance, my life was focused on caring for the old queen, and my main goal was completing my collection of old 45s. I had collected almost all of Firefall, Toto, and Elton John. I loved to imagine I was at a concert in the front row, dressed in 1970’s bellbottom cords. There were a few TV shows I looked forward to as well, and a few friends I liked hanging out with at Club Verbatim. But it had been a pretty empty life. I think. I couldn’t remember it that well. Somehow it was impossible to recall life before Lance.

I turned to my side and snuggled up against him. I could hear the wind picking up outside. He moved his arm around me, and his snoring didn’t miss a beat. I closed my eyes to try to visualize what I wanted. Images of the Christmas before my mother died played behind my eyes, my sister with her new husband at the table, me serving homemade chestnut stuffing. But when I tried to switch the pictures, to visualize what I wanted for my future with Lance, all I saw were echoes of green ceiling stars.

Two strange things happened the morning of my last day working for the old queen, what Lance would call synchronicity. First, on the front page of the morning paper, was a story about the phenomenon of Dr. George Georgeson. How Believing is Seeing sold more books last month than the Bible. How his lectures were selling out to stadium-sized crowds.

There were detractors, though: from people who thought he was downright silly, to people who thought he was the antichrist. Much to Lance’s and my surprise, those who thought he was the antichrist had two main reasons: His claim that we are all as powerful as God. And the rumor that he was gay. He was scheduled to be interviewed by Oprah next week to confirm or deny the gay story.

“People are so hung up on these labels,” Lance said, feeding Liza his toast crust, which the dog gulped down without chewing. “The guy is a fucking guru, and people are worried about who he screws. He’s probably too evolved to even have sex. He’s probably transcended the realm of the body.”

Once again, Lance was putting new ideas into my mind. I had never before thought of the possibility that desiring sex meant you weren’t very evolved.

“How could someone transcend the realm of the body?” I asked, wiping a spot of orange juice off the chrome dinette with my napkin.

“Lots and lots of mind and spirit work.” Lance was chewing and talking at the same time. He had a smudge of jam on his cheek. “It’s all about making reality through the mind.”

I leaned across the table and licked his cheek. “Mm, blackberry,” I said.

He smiled his amazing white-toothed smile. He twined my fingers through his and kissed my hand. My stomach flipped.

“Tonight, my love,” he said, “is the beginning of the rest of our new life.”

My throat got tight at the thought of what I had to do in a few hours at the old queen’s house. Before I could dwell on it though, the phone rang: the second synchronistic event of the morning.

“Hi David, it’s Gina.” It was my sister. Hearing her voice after three years shot fear through me. Had someone died? Had there been an accident?

“Is everything okay?”

“Yeah, everything’s okay.”

I took a deep breath. Out the kitchen window, I saw white frost sparkling on the lawn.

“Well, I’m just calling to say hi. It’s been so long since we talked.”

“Yeah, you basically told me to stay away, remember?” I felt a twinge of guilt for talking to her like that, but I didn’t want to make this easy for her.

“Oh, David, no I didn’t, I didn’t.”

“Really?”

She was breathing hard into the phone. I could see her so clearly, her round freckled face framed by thin brown hair, her French manicured fingernails, her skinny wrists.

“Okay, I did. I’m, I’m so sorry.”

The catch in her voice alarmed me. “You are? What’s going on?”

“Everett and I are getting divorced.” She began sobbing on the other end of the line. I heard a baby scream. She asked me to hold on for a minute. The phone clunked down. Now more than one child was crying over the line.

“Oh, god, I can’t talk now,” she said back at the phone. “But I really miss you. I miss you.” She choked out her words between sobs. The babies screamed so hard I held the phone out from my ear. “Will you please, please come see me? Harry is almost four now, and the twins are ten months. I’m so sorry.”

The twins? I felt dizzy. My sister’s voice in the same room with Lance—it was as if each represented a different world, two parts of me that had never before come together. I felt, as Lance would say, completely non-integrated. Like a photo cut in half. And on top of it all, could it be that in a few hours I was really going to steal a bunch of money from an old man and leave the only home I’d ever known?

Gina kept saying “please” over the screaming of the children. I flashed on Gina at age eight, riding on the handlebars of my bike, her hair getting all tangled up. Then at age sixteen, bringing a joint into my bedroom and talking me into smoking it with her. We’d stayed up half the night, playing slow games of backgammon.

“We’ll come by tonight, my boyfriend and me, around seven.” By throwing in “my boyfriend” so brazenly, I was testing her sincerity. Lance lifted his eyebrows at me as though to remind me we were going to be criminals escaping town tonight and wouldn’t have time for side trips. As if I needed reminding.

“Oh, yes, your, your boyfriend.” She paused, sniffling. “Thank you, yes, David. See you soon.”

An echo of the chaotic children buzzed in my ear after she hung up the phone. I was struck by the quiet of my life. The clock ticking on the wall. The refrigerator softly humming. Lance sitting there waiting for an explanation. I filled him in on the saga of Gina’s life.

“How serendipitous that you told Chester you were leaving to be with your sister, and now, on the very day you’re leaving the old guy, here she is, calling you with this news.” Lance’s eyes wandered around the room as he spoke. “Hm.”

“Are you saying I caused my sister’s call to happen?”

“I’m saying that when you’re on the right path, such synchronicity occurs.” He slapped his thighs and Liza lugged her front legs onto his lap. He scratched her ears, and she drooled onto his jeans. “My question for you, however, is: how are we going to have time to visit your sister when we’re supposed to be on our way to Tahoe?” He set his coffee cup down on top of the burn mark he’d created the week he moved in when he lit incense on the table.

“Just an hour. Let’s just stop for an hour. Please, she needs me.”

“Great, just great.” He frowned. “The minute the little homophobic breeder calls, you’re there. After how many years? And on the day that’s supposed to be the first day of the rest of our perfect life. The breeders rule the world, no question. They get all the medical benefits, legal rights, and social affirmation. Put ‘Mr. and Mrs.’ in front of anything, and somehow you walk on water.”

But the minute he saw I had tears in my eyes, he stood behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, kissing my ear.

“It’s okay, baby,” he said. “One hour off-path will not implode the cosmos.”

When I walked into Chester’s house that morning, he wasn’t in his barcalounger. I followed his oxygen tube to the back of the trailer, where he sat on his bed, staring at his Hummels. He looked up when I walked in.

“Hey Chester,” I said. “How’d you get back here?”

“Walked, what do you think?” A string of snot hung from his nose. I handed him a tissue and he wiped it away.

“Now, Chester, you know you have to be careful about walking around for no reason when someone’s not here with you. What if you fell?”

“I’d shout, ‘Help, I’ve fallen, and I can’t get up!’” He cackled at his joke, gasping for breath.

“It wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to get one of those Lifelines,” I said. A picture of him on the floor, helpless, shot through my mind. I shook my head to try to erase the image.

“I was thinking,” he said, “that I want to bring the Christmas ones into the living room.” It took me a minute to realize he was talking about the Hummels.

“Okay, sure,” I said. “And I could get you a Christmas tree today, too, if you wanted.”

“Hate the smell,” he sneered. “And a fake one is just that. Fake.”

After he pointed out the Hummels he wanted me to bring into the living room, I helped him walk back to his barcalounger. While I arranged “Ride into Christmas” on the coffee table so that the sled was facing Chester, he flicked on the T.V. with the remote.

“This is such crap!” he yelled. I was astonished to see Dr. George Georgeson’s face on T.V, an advertisement for his upcoming interview with Oprah.

“That guy is a con artist. I don’t care if he’s a homo, he’s no good.”

For the second time that morning, I felt two split parts of my life bang together. Lance would say this was more serendipity. But to me it felt like shock treatment; my skin was crawling. I took a deep breath and tried to listen closely for a message that this moment could be sending to me.

“What do you mean he’s a con artist?”

“He’s just trying to make people feel good with all his mumbo jumbo.”

“So? What’s wrong with feeling good?”

I stepped into the kitchen to fill the tea kettle, my heart pounding. I could see him breathing hard through his open mouth.

“People don’t need to feel good!” he shouted in my direction. “They need to feel bad, to face reality. Feeling good just means jerking off, pure selfishness. Feeling bad means facing the world’s crap and maybe even trying to do something about it.”

I’d never heard him string that many words together in such a short time before. He sat there, panting, as I set down his tea. I thought about what made me feel bad: My sister alone in a cavernous house, strapped with those kids, trying to juggle all the divorce paperwork, mourning the loss of it all. Chester, alone and sick, falling down and helplessly flailing for hours, perhaps days, until someone arrived. And I thought about what made me feel good: Lance. Lance kissing my hand this morning at the table. Lance reaching out to hold me in bed.

The old queen hadn’t even taken a sip of his tea. When I looked at him I could see he was asleep, breathing shallowly, his head lolling to the side. His silk robe looked like it was wilting.

I went to the bedroom and pulled the box out from behind the dresser and shoved it into my backpack. It was a tight fit. I thought he might notice how bulky my backpack looked, so I slipped out and tossed it in the trunk of my car. When I came back in the trailer my head was pounding. I took four aspirin and spent the next few hours washing the dishes, scrubbing the ring from the bathtub, and polishing up each Hummel so there wasn’t a spot of dust in any of the crevices.

When Chester woke up, I told him it was bath time. As I helped him undress, he looked down at his concave chest, with its wiry gray hairs poking out, and his bony knees. He said, “This is the body that used to drive men mad, can you believe it?”

I lowered him into the tub. As I poured warm water over his shoulders, he closed his eyes and hummed a creaky verse of “Jingle Bells.” I wondered what he was seeing behind his closed eyes.

When he was all clean and settled into his chair in the living room with a meatloaf T.V. dinner on his lap, he asked me to sit on the sofa.

“Here,” he said, shoving a manila envelope in my direction.

“What is it?”

“Can’t you read?” He took a bite of meatloaf, his dentures looking dangerously loose as he chewed.

I opened the envelope. Inside was his will. From what I could gather, he’d left a bunch of stuff to me. Sweat popped out of every pore on my body.

“Do you know how much all these Hummels are worth?” he asked, poking his fork at the gelatinous cherry cobbler. “Last estimate, about $40,000. That doesn’t include the ones in my storage shed. And there’s much more. But you’ll just have to wait until I croak. And you get half of everything.”

“Chester, no, you really shouldn’t do this,” I stammered. “I mean, you’ve only known me for a couple of years. Isn’t there –”

“Shut up, or I’ll take it back and donate it all, instead of half, to Big Brothers.”

“But I don’t need –”

“Goodbye now, so long.” He waved his hand at me then shoved some mashed potatoes into his mouth. “Have a great life. Call me from your sister’s once in a while.” He fixed his eyes on the T.V. where a claymation Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer was attempting to placate the pointy-toothed Abominable Snowman.

Apparently I was dismissed.

I could barely squeeze in the front door with suitcases cramming the narrow entryway. Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” blasted out of the boom box in the kitchen. The Christmas tree lights illuminated the bookshelf, which was bare except for tufts of dog hair. The couch looked stranded next to the empty bookshelf. The couch where my mother used to sit and crochet Christmas stockings. The couch where Danny Evers pinned me down and stuck his tongue in my ear in seventh grade. The couch where I used to sit and sort out my 45’s.

Lance came running into the living room and threw his arms around me, almost throwing me off-balance.

“Hi sweet thing,” he said. He kissed me with warm wine breath.

“I don’t have it,” I said.

He dropped his arms from around my waist.

“I knew it. I knew you wouldn’t be able to do it.” His eyes shone red and green in the flashing Christmas tree lights. He took my hand and led me to the couch. We sat. He pulled a newspaper clipping from the pocket of his sweatshirt.

“Your horoscope this morning read: ‘Keep options open; last-minute instructions command change of itinerary. Stick close to home. Decisions will be reached concerning money and possible change of residence.’ That made it rather clear to me.”

“I just couldn’t take his money.”

“I know. I know you think that way. Even if it’s really just as much yours as his, in the big scheme. But you never read Dr. Georgeson. I left his books by your side of the bed, and you never cracked one. We just think differently, my love.”

He stood and called to Liza, who lumbered after him into the kitchen. I followed them. Lance was placing a bottle of wine and a box of saltines into his knapsack while moving his feet to the music. He threw a few crackers to Liza, who crunched loudly, spraying crumbs on the floor. Then she lapped them up with her long red tongue.

I sat down at the dinette, my head aching.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I was hoping you’d drop me off in Cupertino on your way up to your sister’s. I have a friend there who will take Liza and me temporarily.”

“Who? What friend?” My face was burning.

“Just a friend, darling. It doesn’t matter anymore, does it?” He tied up the knapsack.

My mind turned to my backpack in the car. I could run out there and bring it in instead of returning it to Chester tomorrow. We could throw the money around the room like snow, then gather it to count it. We could load the car, jump in and take off to Tahoe. We could gamble all night long, drinking wine and singing Christmas songs. Then what? My mind drew a blank. I just couldn’t see the next step. The vision of the ranch, of eating exotic foods, of flying around in a private plane was like watching T.V. static.

As Lance rooted through the cabinets, pulling out cans of dog food, I put my pounding head in my hands and closed my eyes. In my mind’s eye, the static began to turn to snow, muted white drifting down. My sister and I were there. She held the twins, bundled in blankets. I was patting snow onto a snowman, building it with her son Harry, whose cheeks were pink and puffy as a Hummel boy’s. And somehow we were all encased in a snow dome, held in Chester’s hand. He watched us through the glass.