Edge by M. E. Kerr Read Free Book Online

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    â€œI was his only daughter, Mother.”
    â€œAll the more reason. … We dreamed of the day you’d bring our grandchildren to us.”
    â€œThat’s still an option. I may bring a grandchild to you one day.”
    â€œDon’t.”
    â€œDon’t?”
    â€œNot if it’s one of those test-tube/artificial-insemination children. I’m talking about a real child, a child of our blood, with a mother and a father. I don’t care to have one of those kids I see on Donahue who was made with a turkey baster or some other damn thing! Alison, what you’ve gotten yourself involved in is not just a matter of me saying Oh, so you’re gay , fine, and then life goes on. What you’ve gotten yourself involved in is serious !”
    â€œThat’s why I’m telling you about it.”
    â€œThat’s not why you’re telling me about it!”
    â€œWhy am I telling you about it?”
    â€œYou want me to say it’s okay with me. You gays want the whole world to say it’s okay to be gay!”
    â€œAnd it isn’t.”
    â€œNo, it is not ! Okay? I’ve said how I feel! You are what you are, okay, but it is not okay with me what you are!”
    â€œSo where do we go from here?”
    â€œI’ll tell you where not to go! Don’t go to the neighbors, and don’t go to my friends, and don’t go to your grandmother!”
    â€œWhat do you think Grandmother would say?”
    â€œWhen she stopped weeping?”
    â€œYou think she’d weep?”
    â€œAlison,” my mother said, “it would kill your grandmother!”
    â€œYou think Grandma wouldn’t understand?”
    â€œI know Grandmother wouldn’t understand! What is to understand? She has this grandchild who’ll never bring her great-grandchildren.”
    â€œI might bring her some straight from the Donahue show.”
    â€œVery funny. Very funny,” my mother said. Then she said, “Alison, this coming-out thing isn’t working. You came out to me, all right, I’m your mother and maybe you had to come out to me. But where your grandmother’s concerned: Keep quiet.”
    â€œYou think she’d want that?”
    â€œI think she doesn’t even dream such a thing could come up! She’s had enough tsuris in life. Back in the old country there were relatives lost in the Holocaust! Isn’t that enough for one woman to suffer in a lifetime?”
    â€œMaybe that would make her more sympathetic.”
    â€œDon’t compare gays with Jews—there’s no comparison.”
    â€œI’m both. There’s prejudice against both. And I didn’t choose to be either.”
    â€œIf you want to kill an old woman before her time, tell her.”
    â€œI think you have Grandmother all wrong.”
    â€œIf I have Grandmother all wrong,” said my mother, “then I don’t know her and you don’t know me, and we might as well all be strangers.”
    â€œTo be continued,” I wrote in my diary that night.
    My grandmother knew … my mother knew … one day my mother would know that my grandmother knew.
    All coming-out stories are a continuing process.
    Strangers take a long time to become acquainted, particularly when they are from the same family.

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON
    â€œM aybe you’d like us to call you something else,” my father said to Harley.
    â€œWhy?” Harley said. “Because it was a Harley my folks were riding when they were killed?”
    â€œI know your real name’s Ken Jr. I just thought—”
    Harley waved away the suggestion. “I’m used to my nickname,” he told my dad. “Anyway, it wasn’t the Harley that killed them. They’d been celebrating their anniversary at Jungle Pete’s, and Pop probably couldn’t even see the road.”
    â€œOK. Harley it is!”
    And Harley it was. In my room, while I slept on