didn't realize that. “You're through! Is that clear?” Lionel nodded his head numbly, and staggering toward the door he had come in only moments before, Ward almost fell blindly down the stairs as he left. The shock was too much for him. He went straight to the nearest bar, had four scotches straight up, and at eight o'clock Faye called Lionel with a worried voice. She hated to bother him, but it didn't make sense. They had been expecting guests at six o'clock and Ward hadn't come home. They said he had left the studio early that afternoon, and she couldn't imagine where he'd gone.
“Darling, did your father call you today?” Lionel was still numb. John had been sobbing on the couch for hours, aghast at what had been said, the end result, and the fear that Ward would tell his parents too. Lionel had tried to calm him and had forced him to put an ice pack on his swollen cheek and nose, and he felt an anguish in his own heart that no one could soothe now. His voice was still trembling when he answered the phone, and he couldn't answer her at first. And then suddenly, with an icy chill, she realized something was wrong. “Li … sweetheart, are you all right?”
“I … yuh … I…” The words were unintelligible, and suddenly he began to sob too, as John sat up and stared at him. He had been so calm, so strong, and suddenly he was falling apart. “Mom … I … can't …”
“Oh my God …” Something terrible had happened to him … maybe Ward had gotten hurt and they had called Lionel. She felt panic rise in her throat. “Calm down. Now come on … tell me what happened …”
“Dad came … by…” There were great terrible gulping sobs locked in his chest and they were begging to come out. “He … I …” And then suddenly she knew.
“Did he find you and John?” She imagined the worst, that he had found them in bed and she felt faint at the thought. She herself wouldn't have enjoyed that scene no matter how tolerant she was of her son. And Lionel was beyond being able to reassure her as to what his father had seen.
He could only force out a single word before collapsing totally on the phone. “Yes …” It was moments before he could speak again. “He said he never wanted to see me again … that I wasn't his son …”
“Oh my God … darling, calm down. You know none of that is true, and he'll come to his senses eventually.” She talked to him for over an hour, their guests having gone home after several cocktails some time before. She offered to go over and talk to them, but he wanted to be alone with John, and she was just as glad. She wanted to be home when Ward returned.
When he did, she was horrified by the condition he was in. He had stopped at several bars after the first one, and he was drunk and staggering, but he still remembered having seen Lionel and John and what he now knew of them and he looked at Faye with hatred and despair. He had turned on her too.
“You knew, didn't you?”
She didn't want to lie to him, but she didn't want him to feel there had been a conspiracy to keep it from him for years. “I suspected about John.”
“Fuck that little sonofabitch …” He reeled toward her and she saw that there was blood on his shirt. He had fallen and cut his hand on the way out of the last bar, but he wouldn't let her come to him. “I mean you knew about our son … or should I call him our daughter now?” He reeked of booze and she fell back as he approached and grabbed her arm. “That's what he is, did you know that? Did you know?”
“Ward, he's still our child, no matter what he does. He's a decent human being and a good boy … it's not his fault if that's the way he is.”
“Whose fault is it then? Mine?” That's what he was really worried about. Why had Lionel turned out that way? He had tortured himself over it from one bar to the next, and he didn't like any of the answers that came to mind … he had let Faye have too much of a hand with him … he hadn't spent