The Great Believers

Asher brings Yale intermittent updates on Charlie’s physical health. To cope, Charlie has been doing a lot of cocaine, and Asher is deeply frustrated that he’s wasting his money on drugs (rather than social justice). While high, Charlie sometimes writes odd rambling letters to Yale with titles like, “Dreams I’ve Had About You” and “Ways I’ll Kill Myself If The Republicans Win This Fall” (349). Yale believes Charlie’s sending these rambling letters to others as well.

Yale is making his own preparations for the latter stages of his illness. He has found a home for Roscoe with Cecily. He has found a (boring) desk job with DePaul University (which has enabled him to procure AZT). He is afraid that he won’t live to see Nora’s gallery opening, as Bill keeps pushing it back. Nora herself was unable to attend because she passed away last winter. Asher convinces Yale to participate in a gay rights protest. Yale agrees, but namely because he feels a strong attraction to Asher and wants to win his favor.

When Yale finally goes to see Charlie (in the hospital where he’ll likely end up himself), he is deeply pained by Charlie’s extreme thinness. Yale sits by Charlie’s bed and feeds small droplets of water into his mouth, silently forgiving him.

Julian explains that he managed to hold onto life “until the good drugs” were introduced. Fiona deals with complicated relief and mixed emotions, feeling as though she has encountered a ghost. She is very happy to see Julian, but she wonders why—of all the people she knew with AIDS—Julian was the one to survive.

Julian himself has often felt like a ghost. He experienced a great deal of survivor’s guilt, having survived almost all of his friends. When he confesses this to Fiona, she understand that they share this feeling of ghostly survivor’s guilt. She exclaims, “I’m so glad you’re here” (361).

Yale goes to a protest march led by ACT UP, a gay rights group Asher participates in (with legal counsel and direct action). Fiona joins Yale and marches alongside him. She tells him she’s in love with one of her professors—Damian—and Yale feels happy for her. She also tells Yale that she is aware he has a crush on Asher, and she has heard that the crush is mutual.

Yale finds the protest cathartic, allowing him to express his frustration with his friends’ deaths, his own illness, and the government and medical establishment’s prejudice toward gay men. Asher and Teddy join him in the march, and there is some romantic tension between Yale and Asher. The tension culminates as cops swarm closer, and a local newsperson focuses the camera on them. Yale grabs Asher and kisses him on camera, much to Fiona’s squealing delight.

This tender moment is immediately followed by police violence. A cop violently seizes Yale to arrest him, and breaks one of his ribs in the process. As Yale loses consciousness, he focuses on the warm memory of his kiss with Asher.

Fiona Skypes with her therapist about her emotions surrounding Claire. Her therapist suggests that it’s time for her to let go of her blame, Claire’s blame, and the whole idea of blame.

Fiona meets up with Jake for casual sex. Afterward, she discusses her complex feelings surrounding Claire, the terrorist attacks, and Julian’s reappearance. Jake suggests that all the “weird stuff” that happens in life comes from “the collective dreams” (377) of dead people. Fiona disagrees:

You think the dead control us? […] We’re in charge of them. I mean, my friend Julian? When I thought he was dead, all the things we’d ever said to each other, all my memories of him, they were mine. One of the weirdest things about seeing him again was that something left me. Some kind of energy. Like the air whooshing out of a balloon (377).

Soon after, Fiona receives a message from Claire. Claire wants Fiona and Cecily to come babysit Nicolette.

As his broken rib begins to heal, Yale returns to the old apartment and goes through Charlie’s belongings with Teresa. He sets aside Nico’s orange scarf to give to Fiona.

Asher picks him up to go for a walk. He tells Yale that he’s moving to New York, where he can make a much bigger impact with his activism. Yale is sad, but he realizes he can’t ask Asher to choose love—“temporary, fragile, illness-laden love” (381)—over the fight for justice.

Yale pauses, however, in front of the house he once imagined buying with Charlie. He imagines an alternative life with Asher, picturing an intimate dinner gathering at the house with Fiona, Nico, Terrence, Teddy, and Julian.

Fiona is so overcome by the sight of three-year-old Nicolette that she weeps. She explains to Nicolette that she is “sad at the world” (387). She also tells Cecily the story of her complex feelings on the day of Claire’s birth. As Yale was dying and barely conscious, his estranged mother showed up at the hospital. Fiona had power of attorney, and she sent Yale’s mother away. Soon after, she went into labor, and had to be whisked away from Yale so she could give birth to Claire. While she was away, Yale died. Thus, Claire’s birth was surrounded by Fiona’s guilt. She regrets that she sent Yale’s mother away, knowing that if she’d allowed her to stay, Yale would not have died alone.

Fiona explains to Nicolette, “Your mama came out of my tummy, and your daddy came out of Cecily’s tummy” (391). Cecily suggests that Fiona move on from her guilt by trying to “make up for it” (391) in the future. Fiona muses that she might make up for it by moving to Paris.

Fiona takes Yale around Nora’s gallery show in a wheelchair. The trip is very emotionally and physically demanding for Yale, who is in the late stages of AIDS. Dr. Cheng stands outside the building prepared with a new oxygen tank.

Yale is especially moved by the restoration of Ranko’s paintings, including the “self-portrait” done by Nora. He observes that the painting really does look like it was created by the same artist’s hand, though there is a certain hesitance to the lines: The work of someone “desperate to get something right” (394).

Fiona goes to Richard’s art opening with Claire and Julian. At the art show, she tells Julian about how she turned Yale’s mother away on the day Claire was born. Claire confesses that she has harbored bitterness and sadness over the fact that she was born before—and not after—Yale died. She muses, “There was a part of me that thought if only I’d been born after he died, she’d believe I was him, reincarnated or something. Then I could believe it, even” (400).

Fiona tells Claire she’s thinking about moving to Paris. Claire replies that she can’t control where Fiona lives. Julian wisely replies:

If we could just be on earth at the same place and same time as everyone we loved, if we could be born together and die together, it would be so simple. And it’s not. But listen: You two are on the planet at the same time. You’re in the same place now. That’s a miracle (401). 

Fiona sits with Yale in the hospital. He is in very poor health, but they’re still able to joke and commune together. Yale tells her:

I keep thinking of Nora’s stories about the guys who just shut down after the war. This is war, it is. It’s like you’ve been in the trenches for seven years. And no one’s gonna understand that. No one’s gonna give you a Purple Heart (405).

Yale also reflects on the irony that he will likely die of congestive heart failure, which was the cause of Nora’s death.

Just before Yale’s death, Cecily and Kurt come for a visit with Roscoe (Nico’s cat). Yale is greatly comforted by their presence. Just before he dies, he tries to pronounce Fiona’s name, and they tell him she’s having a baby. In his final moments, Yale dreams he is having a conversation with Fiona about “baby Nico” being reborn.

Fiona is greatly moved by the photographs at Richard’s show, which feature her gay friends from Chicago in the prime of their lives. She is especially touched by a video showing Yale, Charlie, Nico, Terrence, Teddy, and Julian happy together. The video plays on loop, suggesting an eternally continuous cycle.