by RJ Martin
“Hey.” Rusty stumbled into my room, shutting the door behind him. “Your grandmother is home.” He turned his back as he reached in his pants to reposition his hard-on, then spun back around with his sweater and coat hung over his wrist like they weren’t there to cover his bulge.
Through the door we could hear Mémé rattling on about her confession. How she thought the number of rosaries in her penance was a bit high, that Father Svi seemed even more distracted than usual, and a little annoyed too. Maybe his dislike for me was spreading to my whole family.
“Your sister didn’t tell me you were here.”
“I was sleeping.” I nodded toward the afghan and unmade bed behind me.
“Until you woke up.” He shot me a wide dimpled smile.
“Mémé, I should go study.” Angie tried to peel away.
“You help with dinner.”
“I think Mom was going to make something when she got home.” Angie made the wrong word choice.
“Is your mother here? Hé, elle est ici? Do you want a decent meal or some hamburger in a bag?” Actually that was sure to be way better than anything Mémé cooked. My grandmother baked well. Sugar and butter were necessary in cookies and pies and the more the better. Other than that, her culinary skill was gone or maybe had never been. We all knew she was just trying to still matter, do the things she’d always done. To say anything seemed mean, so we suffered her in silence—well, except Mom.
“I don’t think she likes me.” Rusty slipped the sweater back over his head. It had a thick collar that framed his sharp jaw and reminded me of Shakespeare but not Mrs. Ng.
“Angie likes everybody.” I didn’t intend to make her sound slutty, but I did. It was a mean thing to do. She’d been nothing but nice today. Ding went the tote board.
“I meant your grandmother.” My star-crossed Romeo needed a shave and had a ponytail.
“Mémé doesn’t like the English.” I started to stand up, but Rusty sat beside me on the end of my bed. “It’s a Quebec thing.”
“Do you speak French?”
“Un peu.” It made me almost blush to do it. “That means a little.”
“Cool.” He lay back on my bed. The last sunbeams were almost flat out and just caught his neck and face. “You’d think I’d know some but….” He shrugged.
“I’m learning Spanish too.”
“Is that a priest thing, to know lots of languages?” He said it like he was telling a joke.
“It helps.”
Rusty sat up on his elbows. “You really are into this stuff, aren’t you?”
“It’s not like gaming or a hobby.” I looked down. “It’s a calling,” I barely whispered and had to clear my throat afterward. I didn’t want to talk about it with him just like I didn’t like JC seeing how nervous Rusty made me.
“Do you want to be called?” He sat all the way up, next to me at the end of my bed and its race car sheets. These were the twins’ but when Mémé made beds she didn’t care.
“Yes.” It was an involuntary response by now. I still believed. I just needed to remind myself.
“I think that’s really cool.” Rusty looked over to my desk, and the collage of photos and clippings from the Holy R church bulletin on my overflowing corkboard. Pictures from working on the various drives we did: food, boots, blood, etc. “You know, wanting something.” Rusty slid down the wall to sit on the floor next to my bed. The dirty bottoms of his too-white socks were a testament to what bad housekeepers Mom and Mémé both were.
“What do you want?”
“To want something.” He itched at his scruff as the last of the daylight completed its fade-out. I reached for the lamp. “Don’t.”
“We can’t just sit here in the dark.”
“Why not?” I couldn’t see him anymore. I used to fantasize about hearing a man’s voice in the dark, but it was JC’s, not my sister’s boyfriend.
“Are you staying for dinner?” I slid down to join him on the floor.
“I’m not here, remember?”
“What do I smell cooking?” My mother burst in the back door already spoiling for a fight.
“Jonah, Jonah!” The twins made a beeline for my room.
“You poop first!” Mom ordered. That stopped them and without comment both my brothers piled into the bathroom down the hall. “They stunk up my car so bad I wanted to open the window but in this cold….” Mom wouldn’t dare do anything that might affect their lungs, no matter how minor the risk.
“It’s the junk food.” Mémé rang the bell. Round one.
“I’m making dinner.” Mom ducked the punch. Thank God. This was all typical banter in the Gregory house. To Rusty it probably sounded like a podcast from crazy land. How messed up we must’ve seemed to any outsider, especially a summer person off-season.
“I told her,” Angie chimed in.
“It’s dark outside. The children need to eat, hmph.”
“My children.” Here we go again. Mom striking back. “Where are you going?”
“To my room.” Angie continued to struggle for a way to get to Rusty.
“She doesn’t know you’re in here?”
“I guess not.” He flashed a light in my eyes that blinded me because my pupils were super dilated from trying to see in the dark.
“What is that?” I used my hands as a shield.
“Key chain.” He flashed the beam across the wall, the absence of art, my crucifix. “I can’t believe you people hang those up.”
“I thought you said it was cool.”
“I said wanting something was okay. I’m just not sure I like what it is you want.”
“You don’t believe in anything?”
“Me sometimes and others, nothing.” We had an angel flyby, and then Rusty light-splashed me again.
“Did you check on your brother?” Mom’s voice was low, but in the dark all sound amplified.
“He ate and kept it down.” Angie gave just the facts.
“How does he seem to you lately?”
“The same,” Angie scoffed. “St. Jonah the good, you know?” That was her favorite nickname for me from way back.
“He’s a teenager now, Angelique.” My mother used her troubled tone. The one she reserved for my sister far more than me. “He should be acting out at least a little.”
“He should masturbate,” Mémé chimed in. “That is how they learn self-control. Don’t go putting it just anywhere, hmph.”
“Mémé!” Angie read my mind. My blush was so intense I felt like I must be glowing red like a lava lamp.
“Je sais,” Mémé continued. “I know. He’s not in the shower long enough. Your father was in tout le temps at that age.”
“Mother, stop.” Mom only ever called Mémé that when seriously displeased but not quite in a rage.
“What? I didn’t not to do good by him. Hmph?” She used her smothered hiccup as a question. “Has my Hank ever strayed from you?”
“You’re taking credit for that because you let him pleasure himself?”
“I gave you a good man.”
“Thanks?” Mom said with as much sarcasm as she could muster. Cooking sounds took over. Cabinets opened and closed, a meat hammer repeatedly swung, the electric can opener got its usual nightly workout. Peace was at hand. Rusty kept his light turned off, I think so I could hide my shame.
“Jace once told a TV interviewer I wet the bed.”
“How old were you?”
“It was last year.”
“No.”
“You’re damn right no, but I was older than I should’ve been. The therapist said it was separation anxiety.”
“What did your mom do?”
“She took me with her on the book tour.”
“That must’ve been cool.”
“I think it would have been better if she hadn’t. That was when I saw just how little of her was really mine.” He gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You’re really lucky.” He stood up, and I almost fell sideways because without
realizing it, I’d started to lean on him. Without asking permission, Rusty reached in my backpack and took his flask.
“I’ve got to go.” His pants were already tight, so he had to work to get the flask in his back pocket without ripping it.
“You can’t go out the front door.”
“The window.” Rusty struggled to lift the sash without being too noisy. “A little help.”
“Sorry.” I stood next to him as we each had both of our palms against the sash. “It hasn’t been opened since it was warm out.”
“When was that?” he whispered through gritted teeth.
“August.”
“How do you people live here?”
“We all can’t go to New York.” I wished I didn’t say it right after I did.
“Who says?” As little cracklings of ice fell to the ground Rusty leaned over and studied the distance to the Styrofoam-like snowbank beneath my window. My room wasn’t on the second floor or the first either. In my weird house it was kind of in between.
“It’s too far.” I leaned out next to him. Maybe it was, or I didn’t want him to go.
“You got anything we can put on the other side for me to land on?”
“The ladder is in the garage.”
“A stool?”
“Kitchen.” I shook my head. “Mémé uses it to reach the cabinets.” The voices of the women in my life had grown less hostile as Mom and Mémé negotiated a truce over a casserole; the sticking point as always was the acceptable amount of butter and salt.
“I need to go to the bathroom,” Angie pleaded.
“The boys are in there. Don’t rush them or they won’t go.”
“Do they really have to do everything together?”
“You and Jonah used to share the tub.”
Rusty grinned as he aimed his too-bright key chain flashlight at my old toy chest. “How about that?”
The toy chest’s wooden top split with a thwack so loud I was sure Mom, Mémé, and Angie would all come running. Rusty tumbled to the ground as his boot slipped through the opening. “Goddamn it,” he hissed.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” Already on his feet, Rusty wiped the gritty snow from his stiff-looking pants. “See ya’round, kid.” He jogged across the lawn and just missed the oncoming headlights of Dad’s truck.
“I’m not a kid.” But he was already gone. I kicked the pile of old toys.
“Rusty?” Angie burst in.
“He said good-bye.” I half lied. To me he had anyway. The tote board froze, awaiting a ruling by the judges.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“JUST A little more.” I leaned as far out the window as I could and not do a header into the slush. Chad’s work boots sunk into the gray muck over the tops of his laces as he strained to heft my old toy chest up to me.
“Maybe you should junk this thing.” His arms started to quiver. He grunted and the edge of the chest hit the windowsill.
“By throwing it out the window?” I grimaced and got enough of the weight to tip my way over the frame. “Don’t you think Hank would have a thing or two to say about that?” The old box of varnished pine with a chipped-up circus wagon on the side crashed to my floor. Luckily, the faded cable rug deadened the impact. Mission accomplished, Chad slipped back into my room unnoticed by my parents.
“Hank?” Chad peered around as if the room were bugged.
“He can’t hear me.”
“For your sake I hope that’s true.” I never dared to even think of my parents by their names before, but now it seemed unimaginable I didn’t. They were people. People had names.
“So where are the toys?”
“In the closet.”
“I remember you.” Chad retrieved Caleb Jon from the pile. He was part of a line of orphan dolls that were soft-bodied with big heads, came with clever names, and every kid—boy or girl—wanted them way back when I was just learning to walk. They were completely sold out in the States that Christmas, but my dad had gotten a tip from a colleague in the Canadian Forest Service and scored one each for Angie and me from a store in Montreal. My father liked to tell the story because it was from back when he was a US forest ranger. It was a job he loved because he got paid well to be in the mountains, and it had good benefits. Dad got laid off when the last paper mill closed. No paper meant no logging and that meant they needed a lot fewer men to keep an eye on things. That’s when he got lucky and landed the job at the motel. A lot of other guys didn’t find work and had to move away. The luckiness of our being able to stay in Lake Henry was kind of lost on Angie and me. Neither of us saw it as such a treat to live in the frozen boonies.
“We’ll take it out to the garage after dinner,” I said. “Break up the rest of it.” The split top lay in two pieces inside the empty box. There wasn’t much left to put in it anyway: just a mildewy stuffed dog that had once been black-and-white but now was just kind of filmy gray. We couldn’t have a real one because of the twins. A couple of big jigsaw puzzles were in there, but they were missing pieces.
“What about this guy?” Chad held Caleb Jon like a real baby.
“Him too, I guess.” Lie, bluff, no way.
“If you do, I’ll just fish him out.”
“What are you going to do with my old doll?”
“Keep him for you.”
I remembered why Chad was my best friend. He set Caleb Jon on my pillow and flopped over the side of my bed. He dumped out his knapsack and handed over a folder from school. When you were sick at NC3, Sister Margo, with Gestapo-like efficiency, gathered all your assignments and sent them home with a sibling—except Angie was suspended—or closest neighbor, best friend: Chad. I’d been out all week and started to get stir crazy. Rusty hadn’t come by again either. Poor Chad was my only link to the outside world.
I shifted some clothes around in my dresser and made a new bed for my old doll. Angie left hers—Martha Ann—at the town beach years ago and was so distraught we made missing dolly posters with our crayons, but she never turned up. That was another reason I kept Caleb Jon hidden. My sister liked being the center of her universe. Her kind, funny side would be happy I at least had my doll. Her competitive, fame-hungry, want-to-be-diva side would be jealous and perhaps even dangerous. At least that was how my younger self had seen things. I was wiser now, but I still kept my boy out of her sight and Tragic’s and Magic’s too. It was maybe the only thing from my youth that I’d keep booger free.
“It smells like whiskey.” Chad sniffed my backpack.
“Cognac,” I corrected.
“Excuse me!” Chad tossed the backpack toward the pile in the closet. “So, he’s a delinquent with refined tastes.”
“You haven’t even met him.”
“What did he say about Caleb Jon?”
“He didn’t see it.” I left out how I practically hurled the little guy under my bed so he wouldn’t. Instead I changed the subject if only just a little bit. “Has your mom read any of Jace Naylor’s books?”
“Carol doesn’t read.”
“Carol, huh?”
“She can’t hear me.” We shared a grin. “You worried about tomorrow?” Chad meant school, dealing with what Bart had said.
“The Ng will be back.” I tried to act disinterested, but really all Bart had to say was gay and my world would crumble worse than the taillight on Rusty’s sweet ride. “It’s no big deal. He just thought he was being funny.” I couldn’t help worrying Chad wanted me to make the leap for him. If good-guy Jonah came out, that would be such huge news he could skip into open gayness right behind me without much interest, at least from our peers. To the powers that be at NC3, it would be like begging for expulsion. Maybe Chad wanted to go to public school and was afraid to leave without me. We had done everything together since we were little, except serving JC. Chad never signed up for it. I think mostly because his parents didn’t have the time. They weren’t very hands-on. “It’s no big deal, dude.” I did my best to convince him and myself too. “Real
ly.”
Using Chad’s geometry book, because mine was still at school, I plotted the points on the X and Y axis and tried to connect them into an acceptable ray. Our teacher Mr. Strong was a veteran of two wars and talked like he was shouting over incoming fire. He told me once my notebook looked like it had been strafed on some beach. I still preferred to erase and start over rather than waste a new sheet of paper. This I had to do a lot because the twins had used my ruler as a sword and the straight edge had lots of dings.
Chad broke the silence. “I’m glad you’re not, you know, freaking out about it.” I glanced at his Spanish homework. He must’ve been watching me this whole time because he hadn’t conjugated a single verb.
“About what?” I tried to concentrate, but my ray fizzled and I started to erase.
“This whole Bart thing.” Chad lowered to spy tone. “Darcy and I were at the mall yesterday, and she was worried too.”
“Tell Darcy I’m totally fine.” I wasn’t really, but that was my business. Now I had something new to chew on. Since when did Chad and Darcy hang out without me? I was the glue that cemented us, most likely because they were both into me. I mean Chad could never say it or act on it, but he was by my side all the time, and I never took step one near the girls. Darcy and I had made out once at a seventh-grade party, but that was the extent of our physical relationship. She knew I wanted to be a priest. It was supposed to be okay, my not wanting to touch her and stuff, but I don’t think it really was. Whenever Darcy would suggest I come over, like she did on every snow day, I wouldn’t go unless Chad did too. Both of her parents worked, and I dreaded being alone with her.