Shawn died in a hospital with a tube shoved down his throat. I didn’t want to die in New York—I didn’t want to die in a hospital—
I don’t want to die.
June 15, 1986
I haven’t seen as much of my cousin Gus as I thought I would. I thought he’d be around more, maybe make things easier between me and my dad. But he always has an excuse about work, or else it’s something with his kid. But, today he came over to pick me up, and we went to the Dairy Freeze in Colby. Listen, I have to admit, I was thrilled. I’ve been feeling pretty desperate to get out of the house and be around someone my own age. When I left, there was no reason to stay in touch with anyone from high school, so I’m not surprised none of my old teammates have come by or called me up. The only one I’ve seen is preacher boy, Josh Clay. He and Gus are buddies now.
I asked Gus about that. I said, How the hell do you stand that guy?
Josh played for a couple of seasons. Benchwarmer and right-field. He never fit in. Probably didn’t help that his dad was a minister. He was always trying too hard and wound tight, even when he was quiet—like he was keeping track of everything people said so he could use it against them. He’d get on his high horse in class, making simplistic arguments about the death penalty or abortion. I’m pretty sure he was the one who ratted out a few of us on the team for smoking pot.
Gus said their wives were close, and so the four of them get together to play cards or watch a ballgame on TV, their babies sleeping. Gus said Josh wasn’t so bad. He’s changed, Gus tried to tell me, he’s a nice guy.
Well, Jess sure thinks the world of him, I said.
At church, I didn’t like the way Josh kept smiling at her, reaching over to knead her neck or squeeze her shoulders, and her eating up his every word.
Anyway, we went to the Dairy Freeze, and sat at a table outside. The girl behind the counter called our number, and Gus went up to get our food. He’s a big guy with thick, tree-stump legs and giant feet, a football player turned soft. I try to imagine him in New York, lumbering through crowds, stepping on feet, apologizing. He wouldn’t last a day. Most people in Chester wouldn’t.
As we ate, Gus talked nonstop about his wife and daughter and job. He’s usually not much of a talker. Sometimes, I’d call him from New York, and he’d hardly say a word, but his silence was strangely comforting. Now, he didn’t leave any room for me to say anything. I started to feel—sick to my stomach. Gus shoving in fries, talking with his mouth full. Telling me all this bullshit. Look, I wasn’t planning on it. I just couldn’t stop myself.
I said, I have something to tell you.
He’d just taken a bite of cheeseburger, and a trail of mustard ran down his double chin. I used to tell him about the guys I spent time with, the actors and artists, and I’m sure I mentioned, once or twice, that someone was gay. But I never came out to him. I have no idea what Gus knows. He’s a nice guy, but not the brightest bulb. Sorry, Gus, if you’re watching.
I told him I’ve been sick.
He set the burger down and dabbed at his chin with a paper napkin. He wanted me to shut up, I could see it in his eyes.
Gus, I said, I have AIDS.
He started to pick up the burger, then set it back down. I said it again. Not too loud, but loud enough. There was a table of teenage girls not too far from us, but they weren’t paying any attention. You bitch, one kept saying to the other, all of them laughing. I wish I was young again.
Gus looked like he might cry. He wiped his eyes, his mouth working but no sound coming out. Then he goes, I heard my dad say something.
His dad?
I remember when we were little, playing Superman and Wonder Woman—guess which one of us was Wonder Woman—and Uncle Wayne walked in as I was twirling around in one of Mamaw’s aprons. He didn’t touch me, but he grabbed Gus by the back of the neck and told him if he ever caught him acting like a little girl, he’d whip him good.
Gus told me his dad didn’t know anything for sure, he’s just saying shit, making guesses about what’s wrong with me.
Then Gus said, I won’t tell anyone, except Pam. I can’t lie to her.
I said that was fine with me, I’m sick of the lies.
Then Gus started grilling me. He was worried about Allie, his baby. You held her, he said, accusing me.
I had to talk to him like he was a small child and explain I’m not contagious. Nobody is going to get HIV from me, not unless I sleep with them or transfer my blood into their bodies. You can’t get it from doorknobs, you know, I said. I tried to tell him that actually, I’m the susceptible one. I’m the one with the weakened immune system, and his baby is more dangerous to me than I am to her. I could tell he didn’t believe me.
But when I got out of his truck, Gus leaned over and gave me a big hug. You’ll be all right, right? he asked.
What could I say? Him looking at me like that, all teary-eyed. I said yes.
Uncle Wayne, what does he know? Maybe he figured out I was queer a long time ago, before I did. I didn’t know how to say the words to myself until I was living far away from here. That was when I discovered another language, not my family’s tongue, but one that was older and bigger. I found another home. Now that home is burning down and nobody wants to put out the fire.
Jess
I’ve never gone on a run like this, just on my own. At first it feels strange, like I don’t know how to make my legs work. I conjure Rocky, jogging through the streets of Philadelphia. I think of Josh Clay, who goes on long runs, he told me, to clear his head. I picture Wendy Rooper, the fattest girl in school. I picture Brandy White, stretched out on her beach towel, surrounded by boys. I’m making changes. This summer, I’m going to lose weight. I’m going on a diet. I’m going to look different.
It’s the middle of the day and Chester is a ghost town. My tennis shoes slap the sidewalk as I run by the dentist office where my mother works. She is probably on the phone or organizing files. I never want a job like that. People around here gravitate toward boredom.
My grandmother’s car, the Queen’s Ship, sits outside of Dot’s Diner, and I turn off High Street, so she won’t see me. She wanted me to go with her and Brian to lunch, but I told her I was meeting up with friends at the pool, even though I haven’t been back since that day with Molly and Carrie.
I lied to her because I don’t want to be seen with my brother. When he came to church with Mamaw, everyone stared. I run harder. Janet Jackson sings in my ears. I’m in control.
An old woman on her porch watches me go by. Then I see Principal Gleason in his yard watering flowers, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, and I cross the street, embarrassed by his pale hairless principal legs.
My breath moves up into my mouth, my heart drumming against my chest. As I pass the Green Valley Trailer Park, a guy in jeans and a black T-shirt walks out of a trailer. He sees me and waves and I slow down. I know him. Nick Marshall. He moved away a few years ago.
“Jess,” he calls.
Pretending not to hear him, I run faster. Sweat trickles down my back. My legs and stomach jiggle, the fat burning away. My feet hit the ground again and again, and my hands clench into slick fists.
I cut across a field and run over to the old drive-in and collapse next to the concession stand, my heart thundering. The headphones slide off my ears and I close my eyes. My body feels heavy and light at the same time, and I wonder if this is how a whale feels. Only water can carry their immense weight.
A shadow dances across my eyes, and I open them with a start. A boy stands over me. I scramble up and he laughs.
“Scare you?”
“What did you do, follow me here, weirdo?”
“No.” Nick Marshall’s smile disappears. “I didn’t follow you. This is just where I like to hang out.”
He smashes a cigarette into the dirt with the heel of his boot. I’ve heard that he’s a hood now, and that’s exactly what he looks like. He’s wearing a T-shirt with the name of a band I’ve never heard of printed
in red slashed letters, jeans busted at the knees. Same little ferret face, but now he has a dark fuzzy smear of a mustache, a few zits on his chin. His hair is longer than most boys, tips tapping his shoulders.
“This is my spot.” He points to the concession stand, and I see a little transistor radio, like my dad listens to when he’s working on his truck, and a few empty beer cans. “You can stay if you want.”
“Oh, wow, thanks.”
Nick’s cheeks redden. He takes a pack of cigarettes out of his hip pocket and fumbles to get one out. “I know you don’t want one,” he says.
“I’m in training,” I say, hear how stupid it sounds.
Nick snorts. “For what? The Olympics?” He cups his hand when he lights his cigarette even though there is no breeze. His hands are small and dirty, fingertips smudged gray, like he’s dipped them in ashes.
“I hate this place,” he says. Nick’s parents divorced a few years ago, and his mother took Nick with her to live in Madison. He was one of the first kids I knew whose parents were divorced.
He walks past the empty speaker poles over to the playground, and after a few seconds, I follow. I don’t know why. Nick Marshall wasn’t anyone I ever paid attention to. The other kids made fun of him because he was so poor—his jeans were too short, floods that hit above the ankle, and he gave off a sour, eggy odor. Whenever a teacher called on him, he never knew the right answer. But he was good at drawing, and probably the only kid in our grade who could solve the Rubik’s Cube.
There isn’t much left of the playground. A rotted teeter-totter. A swing set without swings—just a couple of rusty chains dangling. We sit on the weed-mauled merry-go-round and look up at the blank movie screen. The sunbaked metal burns my thighs, and I’m conscious of sweat dripping down my face. Do I stink? The summery smells of sweat and sunshine roll off Nick. A few years ago, he was a shrimpy, dirt-poor kid. He’s still small, and probably still poor, but looks older than most of the boys in my grade—like he’s been out in the world, like my brother, and seen things.
“Did you move back to Chester?” I ask.
“I’m just here for the summer. Living with my dad.” Nick picks at a hangnail. “My mom got remarried. My stepdad is a dick. He’s worse than my dad.”
Nick holds the cigarette between his index and middle fingers, and takes a deep drag. I’ve been watching my grandmother and aunts and uncles smoke all my life. My brother started at thirteen, and my mother smokes too, but she doesn’t know I know. Josh Clay warned us not to start down the wrong path. If he saw me here, he would be disappointed, even angry. There is something thrilling about this.
“Give me one.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
Nick lights the cigarette for me and I inhale and get a mouthful of smoke and explode into a coughing fit. He doubles over laughing.
“Shut up,” I say, and this makes him laugh harder. He’s snorting, slapping his thigh.
The smoke tastes old and thick, like musty carpet or heavy old lady drapes, but I like how the cigarette looks in my hand.
He finally stops laughing, but I can tell he’s holding back. He points to my Walkman. “What were you listening to?”
“It’s a mix tape.”
“Let me hear.”
It’s one that Brian made for me. Nick puts on the headphones for a few seconds, then hands them back. “What is this?”
I bring one of the foam circles to my ear. “Pet Shop Boys.”
“It’s kind of gay.”
“No it’s not.”
Nick prefers metal and hard rock. “Ozzy Osborne is my favorite. Next is Ratt. Then Mötley Crüe.”
This is the most we’ve ever talked. Nick tells me that his new school is better than Chester, but still sucks. He wants to leave Ohio.
“As soon as I get my driver’s license, I’m busting out of this stupid state.”
The cigarette combined with the running makes me light-headed. Words flutter out of my mouth like little moths before I can suck them back in.
“My brother used to live in New York. But he came back.”
“Why?”
The cigarette burns between my fingers and the ashy tip flutters to the ground. “I don’t know,” I say.
The ground spins, but the merry-go-round, stiff with rust and choked by weeds, remains still. Nick stretches out on his back, and then I do too. Nobody knows we’re here. We look up at the movie screen, at the drifting clouds, the electric blue sky. The tops of our sun-kissed heads touch. Everyone has secrets.
I listen to Horses on my Walkman while everyone else is asleep. The red digital numbers on my alarm clock say 1:23. When Brian first played this tape for me, I wasn’t sure if I even liked it. But now I close my eyes and pretend to be floating in the middle of the ocean, waves gently rocking me as whales glide beneath me. When a humpback whale sings, it sometimes hangs upside down, like a giant bat. Whale songs can travel thousands of miles across the ocean.
Patti Smith’s voice gets bigger and bigger—angry, desperate, demanding. I cross my arms over my chest and shadows of purple darkness explode behind my eyes, and Patti’s moaning gets louder, until I realize I’m not hearing the song but something else. I hit pause. The noise is coming from downstairs. I creep out of bed and out into the hallway where the nightlight plugged into the outlet turns the carpet a glowing amber. The moaning intensifies, and the back of my neck tingles.
Brian.
A light is on in the basement family room. From the top of the stairs, I can see my brother huddled on the couch under a pile of blankets. My mother sits next to him, rubbing his back. They don’t notice me until I’ve come downstairs and I’m standing in front of them.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just got a little sick,” Brian says in a high voice. “Don’t worry.”
His face is as white as eggshells and slick with sweat. He moans, he shakes. His eyes are pink and swollen, like he’s been crying.
“It’s okay,” my mother says. “Go back to bed.”
“But—”
“Jess, go.”
Neither of them will look at me, and rage blazes through me. Going back upstairs, I stomp. I make a lot of noise, my entire body burning, and expect my father to come out of my parents’ bedroom, but he doesn’t. Nobody comes after me.
I push the screen up and climb out my window onto the roof and look up at the stars pulsing through the darkness. People used to use the stars as a map, as a way to navigate the world, but now they’re just something to look at. I find the bright points of the Big Dipper, curved over the woods like it’s not very far away at all. It’s the only constellation I know. I wouldn’t know how to get anywhere.
At youth group, I still taste smoke in my mouth. I hung out with Nick Marshall earlier today. We smoked and talked and listened to music. It’s easy to be around him. I don’t feel worried that I’ll say the wrong thing, the way I do around Carrie and Molly. But now guilt and shame beat like a drum inside me as Josh Clay looks at me from across the table, tears in his eyes.
He’s telling a story about someone he knew in high school who had an abortion. “It’s ruined her life,” he says. “She won’t ever forgive herself.”
I told Brian about the stories Josh tells, and he says they’re bullshit. He doesn’t like Josh. “He was such a little rat,” he says. “He was only on the team because of his dad. He couldn’t field for shit.”
“Not everyone’s a jock like you,” I said, and Brian rolled his eyes.
On my way out, Josh stops me. “Jessie, you want a ride?”
It’s not a far walk, but I say okay. He smiles big. I don’t care what Brian says. At least Josh isn’t hiding anything, he isn’t lying.
I get in the passenger seat of his Corolla. Josh doesn’t turn on the radio, and I wonder what kind of music he likes. Not heavy metal. Not Bowie or Patti Smith. Amy Grant, probably. Christian music. A yellow teddy bear sits at my feet, and I pick it up.
“Is th
is yours?” I ask, trying to sound the way Brandy White does when she talks to boys. It works—Josh laughs, then I do too. We’re flirting.
“It’s my kid’s,” he says.
Josh lives on the other side of town, a few blocks from my grandmother. I wonder what his wife thinks of boring little Chester. Jennifer has long, full hair that cascades around her face like a model’s and shiny teeth that my mother says she gets whitened. They met at the Christian college.
Josh pulls up in front of my house, and turns the key and the engine dies. “I was thinking of coming in to talk to Brian.”
I picture my brother, lounged on the couch, watching MTV or one of his own weird videos. He’ll say something embarrassing, do the wrong thing.
“Um, he’s not here,” I say. “I think he’s at my grandma’s.”
Josh frowns. “I think Brian’s avoiding me. I mean, we weren’t close in high school or anything. To be honest, Jess, your brother was kind of a jerk—one of the popular kids, you know what I mean?”
I nod, not surprised.
“But now we’re grownups, we’re different people, and I’d like to talk to him. I feel like he wants to, like he needs to talk.” As Josh chews his bottom lip, he looks shy and sweet. “Jessie, I need to ask you something. Is Brian okay?”
I’m squeezing the little yellow bear, practically strangling it. “Yeah. Why?”
“Well.” Josh shifts in his seat, cracks his knuckles. “It seems like, I don’t know, like he’s been through a lot. He just looks a little…a little skinny, like maybe he’s sick or something.”
“He’s fine. Um, I better go.” I reach for the door handle and get out as quickly as I can, dropping the yellow bear on the seat. “Bye!” I call.
Like a gentleman, Josh waits until I get to the front door before he drives off. My heart is racing, but I’m not sure why. There’s nothing wrong.
It’s been raining all morning. Instead of going on a run, I put on my mother’s Jane Fonda workout tape. Wearing a shiny leotard and matching blue wrist and ankle weights, Jane smiles and doesn’t break a sweat. I lift my knees, swing my arms in and out from my chest, twist and turn. I do a set of leg lefts, sit ups. Sadie watches from the couch. I don’t look any different, but the scale says I’ve lost three pounds. The hunger pains are sharp and satisfying. Today I’ve eaten only a banana and half a grapefruit. I’m wearing a new sports bra.
The Prettiest Star Page 10