The Great Believers Read online

  ALSO BY REBECCA MAKKAI

  Music for Wartime

  The Hundred-Year House

  The Borrower

  VIKING

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, New York 10014

  penguin.com

  Copyright © 2018 by Rebecca Makkai Freeman

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Excerpts from F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Short Autobiography by F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by James L. W. West III. Introduction and compilation copyright © 2011 by James L. W. West III. Reprinted with permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  ISBN 9780735223523 (hardcover)

  ISBN 9780735223547 (ebook)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Also by Rebecca Makkai

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  1985

  2015

  1985

  2015

  1985

  2015

  1985

  2015

  1985

  2015

  1985, 1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  July 15, 1986

  2015

  1986

  2015

  1988, 1989

  2015

  1990

  2015

  1990

  2015

  1991

  2015

  1992

  2015

  Author’s Note and Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “We were the great believers.

  I have never cared for any men as much as for these who felt the first springs when I did, and saw death ahead, and were reprieved—and who now walk the long stormy summer.”

  —F. Scott Fitzgerald, “My Generation”

  “the world is a wonder, but the portions are small”

  —Rebecca Hazelton, “Slash Fiction”

  1985

  Twenty miles from here, twenty miles north, the funeral mass was starting. Yale checked his watch as they walked up Belden. He said to Charlie, “How empty do you think that church is?”

  Charlie said, “Let’s not care.”

  The closer they got to Richard’s house, the more friends they spotted heading the same way. Some were dressed nicely, as if this were the funeral itself; others wore jeans, leather jackets.

  It must only be relatives up at the church, the parents’ friends, the priest. If there were sandwiches laid out in some reception room, most were going to waste.

  Yale found the bulletin from last night’s vigil in his pocket and folded it into something resembling the cootie catchers his childhood friends used to make on buses—the ones that told your fortune (“Famous!” or “Murdered!”) when you opened a flap. This one had no flaps, but each quadrant bore words, some upside down, all truncated by the folds: “Father George H. Whitb”; “beloved son, brother, rest in”; “All things bright and”; “lieu of flowers, donatio.” All of which, Yale supposed, did tell Nico’s fortune. Nico had been bright and beautiful. Flowers would do no good.

  The houses on this street were tall, ornate. Pumpkins still out on every stoop but few carved faces—artful arrangements, rather, of gourds and Indian corn. Wrought iron fences, swinging gates. When they turned onto the walkway to Richard’s (a noble brownstone sharing walls with noble neighbors), Charlie whispered: “His wife decorated the place. When he was married. In ’72.” Yale laughed at the worst possible moment, just as they passed a gravely smiling Richard holding open his own door. It was the idea of Richard living a hetero life in Lincoln Park with some decoratively inclined woman. Yale’s image of it was slapstick: Richard stuffing a man into the closet when his wife dashed back for her Chanel clutch.

  Yale pulled himself together and turned back to Richard. He said, “You have a beautiful place.” A wave of people came up behind them, pushing Yale and Charlie into the living room.

  Inside, the decor didn’t scream 1972 so much as 1872: chintz sofas, velvety chairs with carved arms, oriental rugs. Yale felt Charlie squeeze his hand as they dove into the crowd.

  Nico had made it clear there was to be a party. “If I get to hang out as a ghost, you think I wanna see sobbing? I’ll haunt you. You sit there crying, I’ll throw a lamp across the room, okay? I’ll shove a poker up your ass, and not in a good way.” If he’d died just two days ago, they wouldn’t have had it in them to follow through. But Nico died three weeks back, and the family delayed the vigil and funeral until his grandfather, the one no one had seen in twenty years, could fly in from Havana. Nico’s mother was the product of a brief, pre-Castro marriage between a diplomat’s daughter and a Cuban musician—and now this ancient Cuban man was crucial to the funeral planning, while Nico’s lover of three years wasn’t even welcome at the church tonight. Yale couldn’t think about it or he’d fume, which wasn’t what Nico wanted.

  In any case, they’d spent three weeks mourning and now Richard’s house brimmed with forced festivity. There were Julian and Teddy, for instance, waving down from the second-story railing that encircled the room. Another floor rose above that, and an elaborate round skylight presided over the whole space. It was more of a cathedral than the church had been. Someone shrieked with laughter far too close to Yale’s ear.

  Charlie said, “I believe we’re meant to have a good time.” Charlie’s British accent, Yale was convinced, emerged more in sarcasm.

  Yale said, “I’m waiting on the go-go dancers.”

  Richard had a piano, and someone was playing “Fly Me to the Moon.”

  What the hell were they all doing?

  A skinny man Yale had never seen before bear-hugged Charlie. An out-of-towner, he guessed, someone who’d lived here but moved away before Yale came on the scene. Charlie said, “How in hell did you get younger?” Yale waited to be introduced, but the man was telling an urgent story now about someone else Yale didn’t know. Charlie was the hub of a lot of wheels.

  A voice in Yale’s ear: “We’re drinking Cuba libres.” It was Fiona, Nico’s little sister, and Yale turned to hug her, to smell her lemony hair. “Isn’t it ridiculous?” Nico had been proud of the Cuban thing, but if he knew the chaos his grandfathe
r’s arrival would cause, he’d have vetoed the beverage choice.

  Fiona had told them all, last night, that she wasn’t going to the funeral—that she’d be here instead—but still it was jarring to see her, to know she’d followed through. But then she’d written off her family as thoroughly as they’d written Nico off in the years before his illness. (Until, in his last days, they’d claimed him, insisting he die in the suburbs in an ill-equipped hospital with nice wallpaper.) Her mascara was smudged. She had discarded her shoes, but wobbled as if she still wore heels.

  Fiona handed her own drink to Yale—half full, an arc of pink on the rim. She touched a finger to the cleft of his upper lip. “I still can’t believe you shaved it off. I mean, it looks good. You look sort of—”

  “Straighter.”

  She laughed, and then she said, “Oh. Oh! They’re not making you, are they? At Northwestern?” Fiona had one of the best faces for concern Yale had ever seen—her eyebrows hurried together, her lips vanished straight into her mouth—but he wondered how she had any emotion left to spare.

  He said, “No. It’s—I mean, I’m the development guy. I’m talking to a lot of older alumni.”

  “To get money?”

  “Money and art. It’s a strange dance.” Yale had taken the job at Northwestern’s new Brigg Gallery in August, the same week Nico got sick, and he still wasn’t sure where his responsibilities started and ended. “I mean, they know about Charlie. My colleagues do. It’s fine. It’s a gallery, not a bank.” He tasted the Cuba libre. Inappropriate for the third of November, but then the afternoon was unseasonably warm, and this was exactly what he needed. The soda might even wake him up.

  “You had a real Tom Selleck thing going. I hate when blond men grow a mustache; it’s peach fuzz. Dark-haired guys, though, that’s my favorite. You should’ve kept it! But it’s okay, because now you look like Luke Duke. In a good way. No, like Patrick Duffy!” Yale couldn’t laugh, and Fiona tilted her head to look at him seriously.

  He felt like sobbing into her hair, but he didn’t. He’d been cultivating numbness all day, hanging onto it like a rope. If this were three weeks ago, they could have simply cried together. But everything had scabbed over, and now there was this idea of party on top of everything else, this imperative to be, somehow, okay. Merry.

  And what had Nico been to Yale? Just a good friend. Not family, not a lover. Nico was, in fact, the first real friend Yale had made when he moved here, the first he’d sat down with just to talk, and not at a bar, not shouting over music. Yale had adored Nico’s drawings, would take him out for pancakes and help him study for his GED and tell him he was talented. Charlie wasn’t interested in art and neither was Nico’s lover, Terrence, and so Yale would take Nico to gallery shows and art talks, introduce him to artists. Still: If Nico’s little sister was holding it together this well, wasn’t Yale obliged to be in better shape?

  Fiona said, “It’s hard for everyone.”

  Their parents had cut Nico off at fifteen, but Fiona would sneak food and money and allergy medicine to the place he shared with four other guys on Broadway, taking the Metra and then the El there by herself from Highland Park. At the age of eleven. When Nico introduced Fiona, he always said, “This is the lady that raised me.”

  Nothing Yale could find words for was worth saying.

  Fiona told him to check out the upstairs when he got a chance. “It’s Versailles up there.”

  Yale couldn’t find Charlie in the crowd. Despite exuding tremendous height, Charlie was only a bit taller than average—and Yale was always surprised in situations like this not to spot his crew-cut head, his neat beard, his droopy eyes, above everyone else.

  But Julian Ames was beside him now, down from upstairs. He said, “We’ve been going since lunch! I’m sloshed!” It was five o’clock, the sky already inking itself out. He leaned against Yale and giggled. “We ransacked the bathrooms. He has nothing, or else he’s hiding it. Well, someone found some old poppers in the back of the fridge. But is there any point to poppers if you aren’t getting laid?”

  “No. Jesus. Poppers?”

  “I’m asking seriously!” Julian pulled himself straight. He had a lock of dark hair in front that Charlie maintained made him look like Superman. (“Or a unicorn,” Yale would add.) He brushed it out of his eyes and pouted. Julian was too perfect, if anything. He’d had a nose job when he left Atlanta—better for his acting career—and Yale wished he hadn’t. He’d have preferred an imperfect Julian.

  “I’m answering seriously. There’s absolutely no point to doing poppers at a memorial.”

  “But this isn’t a funeral, it’s a party. And it’s like—” Julian was close again, conspiratorial in his ear. “It’s like that Poe story, the Red Death one. There’s death out there, but we’re gonna have a fabulous time in here.”

  “Julian.” Yale drained the Cuba libre and spat an ice chip back into the glass. “That is not the point. That’s not how the story ends.”

  “I was never one to finish my homework.”

  Julian put his chin on Yale’s shoulder—a thing he was prone to do, one that always made Yale worry Charlie would glance over right then. Yale had spent the past four years reassuring Charlie he wouldn’t run off with someone like Julian, or like Teddy Naples, who was now leaning out precariously over the railing, his feet off the ground, calling to a friend below. (Teddy was so small that someone could probably catch him if he fell, but still, Yale cringed, looked away.) There was no reason for Charlie’s insecurity, beyond both men’s looks and flirtatiousness. Beyond the fact that Charlie would never feel secure. Yale had been the one to propose monogamy to begin with, but Charlie was the one who dwelt on its possible unraveling. And he’d picked the two most beautiful men in Chicago to affix his anxieties to. Yale shrugged Julian off his shoulder, and Julian smiled dopily and wandered away.

  The room had loudened, the sound bouncing off the stories above, more people flooding in. Two very pretty, very young men circulated with trays of little quiches and stuffed mushrooms and deviled eggs. Yale wondered why the food wasn’t Cuban, too, to match the drinks, but Richard probably had just one plan for every party: Open the doors, open the bar, boys with quiche.

  In any case, this was infinitely better than that strange and dishonest vigil last night. The church had smelled nicely of incense, but otherwise there was little about it Nico would have liked. “He wouldn’t be caught dead here,” Charlie had said, and then he’d heard himself and tried to laugh. The parents had carefully invited Nico’s lover to the vigil, saying it was “an appropriate time for friends to pay respect.” Meaning, don’t come today to the actual mass. Meaning, don’t really even show up for the vigil, but aren’t we generous? But Terrence had gone last night, and so had eight friends. Mostly to surround Terrence, and to support Fiona, who, it turned out, had convinced her parents to issue the invitation; she’d told them that if Nico’s friends weren’t invited, she’d stand up during the service and say so. Still, plenty of friends had bowed out. Asher Glass had claimed his body would revolt at setting foot in a Catholic church. (“I’d start yelling about rubbers. Swear to God.”)

  The eight of them sat shoulder to shoulder in the back, a phalanx of suits around Terrence. It would have been nice if Terrence could have blended in anonymously, but they weren’t even seated yet when Yale heard an older woman pointing him out to her husband: “That one. The black gentleman with the glasses.” As if there were another black guy in this church, one with perfect vision. That woman wasn’t the only one who kept glancing back throughout the service to observe, anthropologically, when and if this gay black specimen might start weeping.

  Yale held Charlie’s hand low down—not as a statement, but because Charlie was so allergic to churches. “I see kneelers and hymnals,” he said, “and five tons of Anglican guilt lands on my neck.” So, far below anyone else’s sightline, Yale had rubbed his wide thum
b over Charlie’s bony one.

  Family members told stories only about Nico as a child, as if he’d died in adolescence. There was one good one, told by Nico’s stoic and ashen father: Fiona, when she was seven, had wanted twenty cents to buy a handful of Swedish Fish candy from the bin on the counter of the convenience store. Their father pointed out that she’d already spent her allowance. Fiona had started to cry. And Nico, who was eleven, sat down in the middle of the aisle and, for five minutes, twisted and yanked at his barely loose molar until it came out. It bled—and their father, an orthodontist, was alarmed at the jagged root still attached. But Nico pocketed the tooth and said, “The Tooth Fairy’s bringing a quarter tonight, right?” In front of Fiona, Dr. Marcus couldn’t say no. “So can you give me a loan?”

  The crowd laughed at this, and Dr. Marcus barely needed to explain that Nico gave the money straight to his sister, that it was another year before the permanent tooth grew in.

  Yale looked now for Terrence. It took a minute, but there he was, sitting halfway up the stairs, too surrounded for Yale to chat with him yet. Instead, Yale took one of the mini quiches off a passing tray and slipped it to him through the balusters. “You look stuck!” Yale said, and Terrence put the quiche in his mouth, held his hand out again, said, “Keep ’em coming!”

  Fiona had wanted to trick her parents, to exchange Nico’s ashes with fireplace ones and give the real ones to Terrence. It was hard to tell if she was serious. But Terrence wasn’t getting any ashes, and he wasn’t getting anything else either, besides Nico’s cat, which he’d taken when Nico first went into the hospital. The family had made it clear that when they began dismantling Nico’s apartment tomorrow, Terrence would be excluded. Nico had left no will. His illness had been sudden, immediately debilitating—first a few days of what had seemed like just shingles, but then, a month later, moon-high fevers and dementia.

  Terrence had been an eighth-grade math teacher until this summer, when Nico needed him around the clock and Terrence learned he was infected himself. And how would Terrence get through the fall, the winter, with no Nico, no job? It wasn’t just a financial question. He loved teaching, loved those kids.