Part 39: Robert

“Mom, Dad,” Robert began, having sat them both down at the kitchen table while he remained standing, leaning against the counter, wanting to feel superior but also comfortable. “I’ve got something to tell you. Or I’ve got a couple different things to tell you, really, but they’re also all part of the same big thing, like one of those pictures where each part of it replicates the whole, or like -”

“Can we please just skip the preamble this time, Robert?” his mother interrupted. His speeches had been growing gradually longer throughout his teen years.

“Actually, that’s a good enough place as any to start,” he said. “It’s not Robert anymore, I’ve decided I’m gonna go by Bobby from now on.”

“Ah,” his father said, grasping the whole situation at once. His mother, though, would need each part spelled out for her individually.

“I’m also moving to New York to go work in the entertainment industry, and I won’t be going to church anymore, not even physically, oh and also I’m gay.” He looked back and forth at his parents' faces. His father nodded grimly, as if to say, “Yeah, sounds about right”; his mother looked aghast. He repressed a smile. This was a somber moment for her, maybe even a tragic one. The loss of her son. “You ever see Rent?”

“Of course not,” his father said firmly. He was a stern man, who sat in hard-backed wooden chairs and never let the foods on his plate touch.

“Right, but you know what it is, don’t you, you know the basic premise, you don’t have to actually see the play to get what I’m talking about here,” Robert - Bobby, now - went on. “Well, that’s gonna be my life, basically, just without all the AIDS stuff. So when your friends ask about me, you can just tell them that, and it’ll save you the trouble of having to call. Oh, and one more thing -“

“Robert. Come on, you don’t have to do this,” his mother pleaded.

“Trust me, it’s better this way, I’ll be out of your way, I’ll be off living my sinful life with all the other sinners instead of ruining your reputation. Out of sight, out of mind. Tell everyone you kicked me out if that helps. Picture me in a nightclub surrounded by drug users and prostitutes and all that prodigal son type of shit. But I want to be super clear this isn’t a prodigal son thing, it’s not rumspringa. I’m not doing it just so I can come back later. I’m actually leaving.”

“Well, son,” his father said, rising to shake his hand. “I’m sorry to hear it. But I wish you well out there.”

His mother just cried, told him she loved him no matter what, and kept on saying he didn’t have to go, like one of those dolls that only has a few catch phrases when you pull its string.

As usual, Bobby was telling about two-thirds truth. The exact percentage varied based on the conversation, but he tried to keep it hovering in the sixties or so. In baseball, he’d be a legend; in school, he’d pass. He was going to start introducing himself as Bobby, since he needed a way to mark his transition to adulthood and he hadn’t thought ahead and saved Robert for that; he was moving to New York to ingratiate himself in the entertainment industry, a process which he figured would first involve getting a job as a waiter or something; but he wasn’t gay. There was actually a girl he was moving to New York with, an aspiring actress who he had been sleeping with for nearly a year and to whom he even said “Love you, too.” (New York chosen over LA by a rigged coin-flip.)

But thinking he was gay would help his parents make sense of the situation. They could write his whole identity off now, instead of having to sort through it and find the pieces they liked and those they didn’t, which was a time-consuming project, and an especially torturous one for his mother. If he had just told her he didn’t believe in God, she would have asked why over and over again, but not as a real question because there was no answer that would satisfy her. Much easier to let her think that God didn’t believe in him.

Ten years later, Bobby answered her monthly calls on a semi-monthly basis, and gave them a version of his life (in conversations that always lowered his average) that would make them feel like they were doing the best they could to maintain a relationship with their lost, wayward child. An interpretation that everyone at church - especially Jacob and Christina, now married, justifying the age difference with all sorts of Scripture - would gleefully echo.