He had been made fun of in school and out of school and in the movie theater sometimes by the people who should have been grateful to him for helping them find their seats. The making fun of had taken many forms, some of them the kind that Leo had performed at the restaurant table, the imitation of his particular way of holding his head and his particular way of speaking, and some of them crueler than that.
“What did you do?” Leo said. “When people made fun of him?”
“When I was young,” I said, “I didn’t always do anything. Sometimes I was embarrassed. Sometimes I looked the other way.”
Leo was very still.
“I’m telling you this because I want you to understand that I know what I’m asking you to reckon with,” I said. “I have been where you were tonight. I have sat next to someone I loved and felt the particular discomfort of other people seeing him and responding to him with less than he deserved, and I have looked away. I have also sat next to him and watched someone make the face you made tonight, and felt what that feels like from the inside.”
I put the photographs on the table between us, spreading them.
Danny at ten in the school photo.
Danny at fifteen at a birthday party, laughing at something outside the frame with his whole body, the way he laughed.
Danny and me at my high school graduation, him standing beside me with the specific pride of a younger sibling at an older sibling’s milestone, his hand on my arm.
Danny and Marcus at what I recognized as a football game, both of them in team colors, both of them in mid-sentence to each other about something.
Danny at thirty, outside the movie theater where he worked, in his uniform, smiling the smile that was fully Danny, the one that contained no reservation.
Leo looked at each photograph.
“He looks happy,” Leo said.
“He was happy,” I said. “Genuinely. Not because his life was easy. Because he was himself, completely, and he was surrounded by people who knew that was enough.”
