Sensing Light by Mark A. Jacobson Page B

He really should go.
    He promised to check his schedule and steered them back to a familiar trail by mentioning the weather. As Francine chanted her litany of Boston’s winter horrors—treacherous black ice, merciless cold winds, unreliable coal furnaces—he thought of how a trip east would also mean having to deal with his sister and brother-in-law. That could be as bad as seeing his father.
    Kevin’s childhood with Katherine, a willowy attractive girl precociously adept at making friends, was a peaceful coexistence despite her ignoring him in elementary school and treating him with icy superiority in high school. His animosity came later, while he was an undergraduate at U Mass still living at home. By then, he had a circle of gay friends, kept secret from his family. One Saturday night, he was strolling across Harvard Square with a couple holding hands. They ran into Katherine and her fiancé, Ben, a Vietnam veteran. It took Katherine a brief inspection for the nickel to drop. Kevin watched the corners of her mouth turn down in disgust and her lips form the words, “This explains everything.”
    To Ben, having a faggot as a future brother-in-law was a joke, at first. Then Kevin graduated from U Mass and was drafted. At his induction physical, Kevin was graphically credible in describing his sexual preferences. He fabricated a weak story for his family. A bad knee, the same implausible excuse he had employed to avoid gym class, made him ineligible. Ben saw through the charade. Having risked his life in Vietnam, he was furious. Kevin’s father and mother didn’t press the point, but Katherine did. Kevin lashed back. His anti-war sentiments came roaring out of the closet. He berated Katherine in front of them, challenging her assumptions about who the real aggressors were in Southeast Asia, knowing she wouldn’t play her trump card. Outing him would devastate their parents, and she would have to bear the consequences. He could leave South Boston. She couldn’t.
    After two years of working construction, Kevin started medical school. A scholarship and loan allowed him to move from the brick row house to an apartment shared with other students. Yet he was still uneasy about being openly gay. There was always the possibility he might run into his parents or someone they knew. The simplest solution was to go away for residency training.
    Ironically, just before he moved to California, his father overheard him telling a friend on the telephone how he could finally be out of the closet in San Francisco. Since then, his father had refused to speak to him. That was doubly ironic now. Kevin had found being a single, gay man here more lonely than liberating.
    His mother signaled she was ready to end with her standard remark about how expensive long distance calls were. Departing from the script a second time, she pleaded with him again to return for his nephew’s confirmation.
    She’s never asked me twice in the same call to come to Boston, he thought. Is there something she’s not telling me? Could she or Dad have a terminal illness? Despite his aversion to seeing them, Kevin hadn’t abandoned all hope of salvaging these relationships.
    â€œI love you, Mom,” he said in a rush. “I’ll try to get to Douglas’s confirmation.”
    He hung up the phone and headed out to a bar in the Castro. Kevin was exhausted. He didn’t expect to meet anyone who would be interested in more than a quick fling, which no longer appealed to him. It only exacerbated his loneliness. But he did think another drink or two and the opportunity to talk about anything other than medicine, however superficial and awkward, would distract him enough to fall asleep when he came home.

XIV
    T HREE MONTHS LATER , K EVIN ran into Gwen outside the City Hospital auditorium.
    â€œHey,” he said, pleasantly surprised, “What are you doing here?”
    Before she could reply, he deduced