“‘Deep in the vee of her V-neck sweaters,’” said Kirk. “You said that the way the people of Metropolis say, ‘It’s Superman.’”
“And look at this one,” I said, pulling another record in a paper sleeve out of the box. “‘Michelle.’ There was a girl named Michelle in my sixth-grade class and I’d—”
“Joe, please,” said Kirk, and the puppy opened an eye to look at his master and then closed it again. “Give me a break. If you’ve got a story for each of my records, we’ll be here all night.”
“Sorry,” I said, rifling through the box but silencing my commentary.
I don’t know how many 45s we listened to, but when the record player clicked off after playing the Byrds’ “Turn, Turn, Turn,” I realized I didn’t hear the dryer anymore.
“I better get my clothes,” I said.
After I changed in the tiny mildewy-smelling closet that was the basement bathroom, Kirk met me at the stairs.
“Hey, are those Kristi’s drums?” I asked, seeing a drum set on the other side of the furnace.
“Well, they’re officially mine. I got them the Christmas I turned eight, but they’re the ones Kristi learned on.”
“She’s a great drummer.”
“I will give her that,” said Kirk, nodding. “It’s kind of an idiot-savant thing, I think. She grabbed the sticks out of my hands one day, sat down, and started playing like Keith Moon.”
The puppy, sleeping in Kirk’s arms, stretched out a paw. “Come on, I’ll walk you out. Just in case my parents wake up and think you’re a burglar or something.”
His mom had joined his dad in the living room, echoing his snore with one of her own. She was half sitting, half lying on an easy chair; he was in the same position on the couch, his hand still reaching for that spilled drink.
As we walked softly past them, Kirk shrugged, a what-are-you-going-to-do gesture, before pulling the afghan up over his mother’s shoulder.
“Thanks again for the ride,” he said, opening the front door for me.
“Anytime. Thanks for the laundry service. And for playing all those records. I don’t know when I last heard ‘Monster Mash.’”
“A true classic.”
As I closed the front door behind me, a car door slammed and suddenly, as I was walking down the walkway, Kristi was running up it.
“Joe?” she said, surprise stretching her voice thin. “What are you doing here?”
“Hi, Kristi,” I said, breathing in the fresh, rain-washed night.
She stood inches away from me, looking at me with, I don’t know, sort of a panic in her eyes.
“Were you out with Blake?” I asked conversationally.
“Joe, I asked you a question: What are you doing here?”
“I gave Kirk a ride home from work,” I said, nodding toward the house. “Then Heinz was loose and I helped—”
“You were inside?” she asked, her voice matching the look in her eyes.
“Yeah, Kirk played me a bunch of his records and—”
“That asshole,” she said, marching past me.
“Hey, he’s a nice kid.”
She whirled around.
“Listen, Joe, not everyone’s family sits around the piano singing show tunes.”
“Kristi, I don’t know what you’re—”
“All I can say is, if you open your big mouth about anything you saw in there, well…well, then I’ll tell everyone about your aunt being a dyke.”
Staring at me for a split second, she wore the same look of cold triumph I’d seen on her face in Miss Rudd’s classroom.
She had raced up the cement stairs and into the house before I even had time to formulate a simple What’s that supposed to mean?
I stood there like an idiot, staring at the door and trying to figure out what and who had just gone inside it.
Eight
My mom and aunt were in the kitchen, playing Scrabble. As usual, the coffeepot was on—they knocked back caffeine any time of the day or night, with no visible side effects that I could see—and while my mom studied her tiles, my aunt dug at something in a cake pan.
“Hey, Joe,” said Beth as I shut the back door. “Sit down and have a brownie with us.”
“Maybe you’d better not,” said my mother. “We’ve got lousy dental insurance.”
Beth laughed and set down the spatula. “It’s the first time we ever made these. They’ve got caramel in them, and the caramel sort of hardened.”
“Eighteen,” said my mom, laying down the word retire. “Not much for a triple word score.”
She wrote down her score and reached over to touch my arm. “How was work?”
I shrugged, watching as my aunt laid chunks of the excavated brownie on a napkin and pushed it toward me.
“No thanks,” I said, holding up my hand.
My aunt looked at me, and I could see in her face that she saw something in my own.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Joe,” said my mother, “you didn’t do anything to Beth’s car, did you?”
I almost laughed; would that things were as simple as putting a dent in my aunt’s Mustang!
“Do you like women?” I asked, knocking over decorum and censorship at the same time.
I watched the color fade from Beth’s face as I heard my mother ask, “What did you just say?”
Feeling reckless and angry and tired, I turned to her and said, “I asked Aunt Beth if she likes women. I want to know if she’s a homo.”
My mother’s eyebrows and jaw dropped, and then she began to recite my name, a timeworn signal that I was in deep trouble.
“Joseph Rolf Andreson—”
“It’s okay, Carole,” said my aunt, offering up the kind of smile the clowns in those velvet paintings wore. She looked into her coffee cup for a long moment before meeting my eyes.
“Well, since you asked, Joe,” she began, “yes, I do like women. So I guess that makes me homosexual—although we prefer to use the word lesbian.”
She couldn’t even muster up a sad clown smile now, and I wondered if the lump in my throat was going to dissolve or if I was going to be asphyxiated right there at the kitchen table. I thought of our request nights, how her living room would turn into a little piano bar, with me playing songs she and my mother asked for. Just the other night, my aunt had stood behind me, her hand on my shoulder, singing “Let It Be.” My mother’s and aunt’s musical tastes hadn’t ossified in their youth; they both loved the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, especially their ballads, and a request night inevitably included “Lady Jane,” “Norwegian Wood,” “Angie,” or “Hey Jude.” I thought of the presents Beth liked to surprise me with: the book—Cat’s Cradle, The Moviegoer, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test—she’d wrap in gold paper and leave on the dining room table; the sports coat from Dayton’s she’d draped over the hallway chair, the note pinned to the plastic garment bag reading, You’ll look sharp in this! (and she was right, I did); the imported wafer cookies from Germany she kept buying because I liked them so much.
She was funny and kind and had welcomed us in with open arms, but as I met her stare, sharp little pieces of disgust and betrayal pierced the lining of my stomach and worked their way up to my throat as I realized I hardly knew her.
“Joe!” said my mom as I jumped out of my chair and raced across the kitchen.
“Joe!” she called again as I ran up the stairs two at a time and I heard her call my name a third time as I slammed the door to my bedroom.
Two weeks after my dad’s funeral, my uncle Roger took me camping at Lake Superior. Our little fire, a ragged triangle of red and orange, was the only color in the dark nightscape, and I remember the unease I felt that I couldn’t tell where the black lake left off and the black sky began. I was cold, but I didn’t know that I was shivering until my uncle put his arm around me.
“It’s okay to cry, you know,” he said.
“Why do you say that?” I snapped, angry that he was giving m
e permission to do something I was desperate to do and just as desperate not to do.
“Because I’m concerned about you.”
“Did my mom tell you to say that?” I said, leaning forward to poke at the fire with a stick, but my intent was to shrug off his arm. “Because really, she’s crying enough for the both of us.”
“She’s sad.”
“Well, duh.” The fire snapped, and I was surprised at the thought that jumped into my head: I hate you as much as that fire is hot.
“Would you rather she didn’t cry?”
I prodded the fire with my stick.
“I just don’t like to see her so sad,” I said finally.
“She’d be just as sad if she didn’t cry. But she knows it hurts even more.”
“What does?” I said, jabbing at a chunk of red-hot wood until it spit back sparks.
“Not crying. Crying’s turning a valve, Joe. Turning a valve to release the pressure.”
“In that case, my mom should call in a plumber, ’cause she doesn’t know how to turn it off.”
He didn’t say anything, and I crouched there, my chin resting on my knees, attacking the fire with my stick and feeling a lot younger than fourteen.
After a while my uncle said, “Well, I for one could go for a s’more,” and for a few minutes I did nothing but concentrate on toasting my speared marshmallows to a perfect golden brown, but the bottom marshmallow caught fire, and even though I tried to blow the flame out, it burned black, and I remembered all the campfires I’d sat around with my dad, all the marshmallows he’d purposely stuck right in the fire to be charred black—Don’t ask me why, but it seems the more burnt the outside, the better it is on the inside—and at first I thought I could swallow that gasp, that great big mournful hiccup, but as the rest of the marshmallows caught fire I dropped the stick and cradled my head in my arms.
And man, did I cry. My uncle made his s’more sandwich, and it was only when he was done eating it that he brushed the graham cracker crumbs off his jeans and moved close to me.
I stayed in that little nest his arms made, stayed with my face against his chest and cried, my loneliness and grief as big and black as the lake and the night sky around me.
Hey, Joe, the creek’s frozen. Get your skates and we’ll go shoot a few pucks.
Hey, Joe, come with me to Grudem’s and help me pick out a birthday present for your mom.
Hey, Joe, come sit and look at the stars with me.
Hey, Joe, didn’t I tell you to rake up those leaves?
I’m not telling you again, Joe—get to bed now!
How many invitations both bad and good had my dad extended to me, how many questions had he asked me, how many orders had he given? I sat there, my thoughts turning into a math class, trying to remember everything he’d said, trying to count the sentences, the words. Trying to count the times we’d played catch, the number of episodes of The Dean Martin Show and Bonanza and I Dream of Jeannie we’d watched together, the canoe trips we’d taken, how many of his “famous Hawaiian” hamburgers (a simple recipe—a hamburger topped with onions and pineapple) he’d grilled in the summer, how many times after I’d cried out as a little kid in the middle of the night, he’d stumbled into my bedroom with a squirt gun to shoot the boogey man who hid under my bed. How many, how many, how many?
“I’m scared I’m going crazy,” I said, trying to catch my ragged breath. I explained to my uncle how I tried to count things I’d never be able to count. “Like how many times he said my name. How could I ever count that—and why would I want to?”
“You’re just trying to find a way to hold on,” said my uncle.
“I don’t know how long I can hold on.”
“I’ll help you. And your mom’ll help you.”
Nodding, I wiped my nose with my palm and moved away from him, not so much because I wanted to but because I felt like I should. I was fourteen, after all, not four.
“If counting things helps you,” said my uncle, spearing a couple of marshmallows on a stick, “keep counting.” He handed me the stick. “But if you’re counting just to keep from crying, hell, I’d try crying.”
I did, and it did. Help, that is. I started crying myself to sleep, and even though it drained me, it didn’t drain me and make me nervous, the way the counting had. I didn’t become a big crybaby like poor Laird Pitoski, who sealed his fate as the kid to pick on when, in the third grade, he sat sprinkling his desk with tears because he spelled the word write wrong. It wasn’t in my nature to cry in public like that, but in the privacy of my bedroom—man, I could let loose.
That night, in my room at my aunt’s house, it didn’t take long at all before I had to turn over the soggy bog my pillow had become. I hated the picture I had in my head of Beth’s face when I asked her if she liked women. I hated making her feel bad—but why hadn’t she and my mom told me her big secret? It’s not like I had anything against queers—I just never suspected my own aunt was one. Why had Kristi known, and why would she tell me the way she had?
In school, I didn’t go out of my way to run into Kristi and she didn’t go out of hers to run into me. I knew the golden age of blow jobs was over, but I was glad, not wanting to sully myself with a mean, snaky girl like Kristi. Ha! The truth was, as much as I mourned the loss of those blow jobs, I missed Kristi. Yeah, she could be mean and snaky, sure, but being with her was like sledding down an icy hill on a thin piece of cardboard—fast and dangerous and wildly fun.
Once I saw her studying in the library, and until I drew the flint-eyed attention of the librarian, I hid behind the stacks for a while watching her.
One of Kristi’s hands was splayed through her streaky blond hair, the other tapping a pencil on the table in one of her elaborate rhythm schemes. Surrounded by books, her face was scrunched up in concentration, and it gave me a little thrill to see that she was struggling.
I’d see her waltzing through the hallways, the queen on a walking tour, greeting the serfs with a halfhearted wave, a little smile. And I couldn’t not see her at pep rallies, punching her pom-poms in the air in an attempt to force the student body to believe that the upcoming golf tournament or track meet was just as exciting as a football game.
But while it was easy to avoid someone in the halls of a big school, I did not have the same success in my aunt’s house.
“What do you think you are, a burglar?”
“Oh, hi!” I said, startled. I had been so absorbed in closing the door as quietly as possible, in tiptoeing across the floor, that I hadn’t seen my mother on the chair by the fireplace. “Well…see ya!”
“Don’t even think about leaving this room until I’m done talking to you.” My mother’s voice was quiet, but in the way Marlon Brando’s voice as Don Corleone was quiet. “Now sit.”
I sat.
“Have you apologized to your aunt yet?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t seen her.”
“I’m not surprised, the way you’ve been sneaking in and out of the house.”
“Mam, I—”
“Well, you’ll have a chance to apologize tonight. Now go and change into some nice clothes—Beth’ll meet us at the concert.”
“What concert?”
“My concert,” said my mother, and her smile had the bite of a raw onion. “Remember? I’m a music teacher? At a junior high school? And tonight’s our big spring concert. Now hurry up—go get dressed!”
It didn’t matter what I screamed at myself: Tell her no, man! What are you, a mama’s boy? Don’t be such a pussy! Ultimately I knew that in the annals of what my mother considered important, her spring concert and an attempt at conciliation with my aunt were important. And despite any evidence to the contrary, I did not like disappointing my mother.
Spring had sprung and the world was giddy with it. Tulips splashed color all over the neighborhood, and the tight shiny buds dotting the branches had burst open into leaves. The air was sweet with the cologne of lilacs and crab apple blossoms.
/> After we got out of the car in front of the school, my mom jumped over a muddy part of the boulevard she just as easily could have walked around and then tagged me, shouting, “You’re it!” and I chased her into school, both of us laughing like dorks.
In the auditorium, behind the curtain, I helped her arrange with more precision the chairs the janitors had placed onstage, and the giddiness factor rose as the junior high kids rushed in, grabbing at the music stands their instrument cases bumped into, shouting at one another and at my mom.
“Hey, Mrs. A., do you have an extra reed?”
“Hey, Mrs. A., I can’t find my Love Story music!”
“Hey, Mrs. A., you look nice!”
She did too—all flush-faced and excited, unable not to smile, borrowing a reed from one clarinetist to give to another, finding the missing sheet music, thanking her complimenter, a pimply trumpeter.
“Joe, my man!”
I turned around to see who belonged to the hand that clapped my back with a little too much enthusiasm.
It was Kirk Casey.
“Please don’t tell me my mom gave you a solo.”
He had been drumming at our jam sessions, but he played the trumpet in the school band.
“Didn’t she tell you? This whole thing”—he swept the air with his trumpet—“is just accompaniment. To me. I’m going to be playing the entire Jethro Tull oeuvre.”
“Oeuvre,” I said, laughing. “Looking forward to it.”
I could have pretended I didn’t see my aunt wave, but I did.
“I should have saved us seats up front,” I said, sitting next to her. “I didn’t think there’d be this many people.”
“Carole’s reputation has preceded her,” said my aunt, looking around at the auditorium filling up with people.
She had come straight from work and was wearing her corporate attorney clothes and looked, well, nice. I mean, you’d never guess she was a lesbian, not that I ever did. I was ready to get all mad at her again for her secret little life that she thought she had to hide from me, but I was distracted by the two people getting into—or trying to get into—the row across from ours.
The View from Mount Joy Page 10