Why does anyone go home? You come back to be seen, to be accepted, and to be loved.

Mike Sisco, The Oprah Winfrey Show, AIDS Comes to a Small Town (1987)

The seed of this novel was planted nearly thirty years ago in an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show about Mike Sisco, a gay man living with AIDS in a small town, who decided, despite facing stunning prejudice, discrimination, and homophobia, to go for a swim—to live his life openly and courageously.
(p. 273*)


In AIDS years, does age even matter? Before New York the only funeral he’d ever been to was his grandfather’s, a man he hardly knew. In the last two years he’s been to nine—all men between twenty-five and forty-five. How many others does he know who are sick? They don’t always tell each other. He doesn’t want to go to any more funerals. (p. 10*)

The West Village used to be where you went to see manicured, muscular, moneyed men. Now, it was turning into a hospital, a graveyard. Ghosts glided beside him. He passed one ghost pushing another ghost in a wheelchair, probably neither over forty, but their sunken faces and shriveled bodies were that of very sick, ancient octogenarians. The one in the wheelchair had glassy, sightless eyes, his head tilted toward the treetops, and his companion, who was pushing the wheelchair, looked out from a face ravaged by a hideous map of purple-black lesions. Another emaciated ghost-man leaned on a cane. Two others held hands, their eyes big and dull and resigned. City of ashes, city of bones.
(pp. 11-12*)


[Brian]

It’s bizarre to be back.
Nothing has changed, everything has changed.
(p. 59*)

Talking to the camera like this is a new thing for me. Back in New York, I was trying to capture everyone and everything else around me. But since there isn’t anything to do in Chester, I thought I might as well set up my tripod and talk to you—whoever you are. I’m going to tell you about who I am, and tell you about my family. Record everything, Shawn said. For posterity. The camera will be my diary, my shrink.
(p. 59*)

The world is ignoring us. We’ve got to document, even if it’s just me talking to the camera in my parents’ basement. At least I’m here. A face, a voice. The world wants to silence and disappear us. Well, here I am. Look at me. (p. 87*)

Here, everyone worries about what everyone else thinks. Once you escape that mentality, you don’t ever want to go back. (p. 88*)

My dad doesn’t want anyone to know I have AIDS because he doesn’t want anyone to know I’m gay. (p. 101*)

Where are all my beautiful men? (p. 105*)

In the darkest moments, it’s hard not to blame past lovers. You want to lay blame. You want to feel innocent. I probably was infected one of the first times I had sex—maybe that first guy, even. There is no reason that explains AIDS, Shawn told me, You’re not being punished. But it’s a hard thing to let go [...] (p. 149*)

Nobody wants to acknowledge I have AIDS because then they have to think about how it’s transmitted. They have to think about body parts and sex. They have to think about men fucking men, men loving men. (p. 167*)

Sometimes, during the thick, oppressive New York summers, my body would crave the sound of crickets, the smell of honeysuckle, the green hills. Homesickness for the place I thought I’d never see again. I’d stand at a window looking out at a city that was never dark, and then a man, Shawn, or a stranger, or a lover, would call me back to bed, and I could find home there: an earlobe, a crease in the stomach, a shiver of breath.
It feels like a dream, sometimes, the men I loved, and who loved me too.
(pp. 187-188*)

The truth is, I hardly visited him. He was in the hospital for two weeks. He had a lot of visitors. His friends and lovers and ex-boyfriends, and Annie, and all his admirers. I went a few times, but I couldn’t bear to look at him. It terrified me, how sick he looked, the tubes and the beeping machines and the stink of death in the air.
I stayed out of the room as much as possible. I was getting a goddamn coffee when he took his last breath.
He must have been so scared.
The truth is, it isn’t just that I couldn’t look at him. I hated how the doctors and nurses looked at
me. I was ashamed—ashamed to be gay. I betrayed him, like Judas, but without a kiss, even. I didn’t put my arms around him and tell him everything would be okay. (p. 188*)

I lost my lover. My friends.
I could have swam to the bottom. Could have drowned in the Hudson.
But I came back here. Why?
(p. 201*) 

Listen, I wasn’t always sick or afraid of dying.
Before all of this, before I owned a camcorder even, before Shawn was sick, before we knew what was in our blood, before so many deaths, I was just living my life. We all were.
(p. 257*)


[Sharon, the mother]

After Brian left, Travis didn’t say much, but whenever he’d come upon me crying, he’d tell me, “He’ll be back,” always with conviction. As time passed, he stopped saying those words and pretended not to see my tears. I don’t know if he ever cried when he was alone. He grieved silently, and did not let me in. (p. 20*) 

This isn’t supposed to happen, we raised our kids right, we weren’t perfect but we were good, and now here I am sneaking out in the middle of the night and our son, five hundred miles away, is dying from what is in his blood, dying because of what he did, dying because of what he calls himself, and what if he comes back here and what if people find out the truth, then what will happen to us? What will people think? (p. 32*)

Lettie ushers Brian inside, and he goes straight to the kitchen, commenting on how good it feels to be back in her house, and although I don’t want to leave him, not even for a second, I can already see how it is between the two of them. There is no strangeness, no lost time. Lettie always had a soft spot for Brian, who reminded her of her younger brother killed in World War II. “He was artistic too,” she’d say. (p. 55*)

He’s told me about her before. They lived together, but she wasn’t his girlfriend. I wished she was—that they were living in sin, but a different kind of sin, a normal sin. (p. 58*)

He’s been home almost a month. We are figuring out how to be a family again. I hoped it would be easier, like he would simply step back into place. But I don’t even know what that place is anymore—too much time has passed, too much lurks in the unknown. I find myself studying him, wanting to ask how sick he is, but unable to speak. (p. 77*)

A few months went by before I heard from Brian again. He asked if I’d read the letter. He sounded nervous—his voice high-pitched, the words clipped.
“I read it,” I said. That was it. I didn’t tell Brian he
couldn’t visit, that he couldn’t bring this man with him. But I refused to indulge. The anger was easier than the pain.
Brian stopped calling. I hid the picture in my jewelry box, never showed it to Travis. Then one day, out of the blue, Brian called and told me his friend was dead. I’m sorry, I said. He said, You have no idea what’s going on.
(pp. 79-80*)

I remember how I felt that day at the swimming pool, for just a moment: I saw my son floating on his back, and he looked so peaceful. For a few seconds, I didn’t care what anyone else thought; I just wanted him to be happy. (p. 183*)

“Homosexuality doesn’t belong in a town like this,” he says. “That’s for big cities.” (p. 194*)

Travis would never say this aloud, but he’s convinced himself that Brian is better off wherever he is, that he’s getting the care he needs, that he did this for himself, not for us. He’s telling himself an easier kind of story. Maybe Travis shouldn’t have painted over the garage door at all—then every day we would have to look at that hideous word and remember what they think of us, what they think of our son. I don’t want to start over, I realize. I just want Brian to come back.
(p. 205*)

I realize, that’s what I’m most scared of, that everything will be the same after all. (p. 206*)
She doesn’t ask questions about Brian. She knows he’s sick. She knows he’s sick with AIDS. I should talk to her about death, but words elude me. And, if I don’t speak them, then I won’t make them come true. The doctor told us we had to prepare ourselves—a month or two at most, probably only weeks. Travis looked at his shoes. I held back sickening sobs. He wasn’t certain, I told myself, nobody could predict the future
. (p. 225*)

I look awful. My hair hangs dismally around my face. Puffy eyes. Lines around my mouth. I haven’t worn makeup in weeks. I’m ugly but it’s okay—I want to look ugly. I want people to look at me and feel guilty about how they treated my son. I want them to see how I wear my own guilt. (p. 243*)

I’m trying to get used to her being here. She makes Brian happy, I tell myself. Still—it irks me, seeing her so comfortable in Lettie’s kitchen, like she’s here to take my place. I know Brian relies on her, trusts her more than me. (pp. 244-245*)

Liz brought carnations. A few cousins came by. Gus, without Pam, stayed for a few hours, crying into his hands. I no longer care about who comes to see him and who doesn’t. I wish everyone would leave us. I want to spread open my arms like giant wings and enfold my son, so it’s just the two of us.
Travis never stays long. He stands too far away from the bed. He looks out the window at the parking lot. He fiddles with the remote. He couldn’t look at Brian before because of his earring, but now he can’t look at him because there is no more pretending. He is a creature with only the slightest resemblance to our son.
(p. 248*)

People who didn’t talk to him before now come out of duty. They stand far away, don’t get too close. Most of the time it’s just the five of us, and that is fine by me. Lettie, Annie, Jess, Andrew, and me—this strange family that Brain has built. (p. 262*)


[Jess, the younger sister]

When I was younger, I told kids at school about the movie stars and rock singers he hung out with, the parties, the money. I never knew any of this. I made up a life for him. I had to. Because he just disappeared. Like those missing kids on milk cartons. But nobody kidnapped him. He just went. My parents, except for those early lies about college, don’t talk about him. Nobody does except for my grandmother. She tells me stories about my brother and has never doubted one day he’d come back home. (p. 35*)

When he left, he was moody and handsome and funny, a know-it-all. He slurps the tea, and the intimate noise jolts my memory, nothing specific, but just a deep feeling of knowing—he made the same sounds as a boy. For so many years I recognized his every sigh, movement, flicker of the eyes. Then he left, turned into someone else. (p. 53*)

Brian says that people in Chester don’t know how to dream. He left all of this. He went to live on another planet, one that’s burning bright, but now he’s back—faded, broken, frail—and no one will tell me why. (p. 76*)

Maybe I should have been more demanding. Begged him. Gone after him. But I didn’t know how to swim across the river between us. He drifted further and further away, and I let him go. (p. 79*)

Sometimes I feel scared, like I’ve been left behind in a stranger’s house. Other times, I’m enraged—at him, the lies, the illness. The anger is better—sharper, like a barbed wire wrapped around my hands. I try to hold on because it makes me stronger. (p. 111*)

He thinks I’m apologizing, but I’m not. I want to hurt him the way he has hurt our family. There is an ache behind my eyes.
“I wish you’d never come back,” I say. “I wish you’d just leave.”
Brian flinches, surprised. My heart beats wildly. I feel powerful and awful, like I just made the room go dark. I turn and walk away. My brother, except for Sadie at his feet and a beautiful mermaid on TV, is alone. He doesn’t call me back.
(p. 198*)

When I’m running, my thoughts are clearer than when I’m at school or at home. Sometimes I think about Brian and wonder where he is and if he’s okay. Sorrow pushes out through my hot breath. My muscles burn with the truth. I miss my brother. I think about how one of the last things I ever said to him was that I wished he’d never come back. (p. 208*)

I tell myself he’s going to die, remembering I already knew this the day he came back. But I still don’t want to believe it. I want to believe that somewhere there is a door and when he walks through, the sickness will disappear, and he will be healthy again, like the kids on TV who have cancer but always go into remission and live long lives.  (p. 251*)

[Travis, the father]

It wasn’t just that he was embarrassed—there was that, but it was more. He was scared. He didn’t know how to protect his son, how to save him. That’s what went wrong: he let him down. The things people said, the way they acted. They helped kill his son. His silence. He helped kill his son. (p. 267*)
(*as indicated on my reader)

Carter Sickels - The Prettiest Star (Hub City Press, 2020)

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