by Dan Chaon
“Of course, he’ll always need to be taken care of,” Mrs. Fuller said at last. “Like a little boy.” Then she was quiet again, stroking Cal’s hair. He was watching the movement of her hand as if mesmerized.
“Do you see how his forehead is scarred?” she murmured finally. A kind of thrum went over Hap’s skin as she brushed Cal’s bangs back to reveal rows of reddish, rounded strips. “It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? That’s the pattern of your car seat. And he was pushed forward with so much force that the imprint is still there.” She was moving her hand slowly through his hair, as if thinking of something far off, but her eyes were fixed on Hap. He couldn’t meet her gaze; he could only look at Cal, who was enjoying the touch of his mother’s fingers over his brow. He had his head tilted back, his expression relaxed, staring up as if he were stargazing. And for a moment, Hap felt as if they were seeing the same thing, up there in the distance, a meteor shrinking into the stratosphere, layers sloughing off in fiery husks until it was just a speck, plunging into the dark. They stared up toward some distant point, and it seemed, it was almost as if Hap, or even Cal himself, were about to remember something important. Something he’d forgotten. But then it was gone.
No more than a few words passed between them as they drove home. They each took a corner of the car, each tilted in different directions. Russ held the steering wheel in both hands, staring out at the signs, the road. Eric turned his face away from Hap, resting his head against the window, pretending to be asleep.
It was almost as if it were late at night, and the world was calm and dark. But it was still daylight when they got back, and when Hap closed his eyes, orange flashes beat irregularly against his closed eyelids: the sun, flickering through the trees.
On the very edge of sleep, Hap could feel the shape of a dream. It was a party, and Hap had just joined the fraternity. He could see someone moving toward the dancing crowd, clapping, shouting. Everything began to stop: the music faded, the lights came up. One after another, the dancing couples separated, began to clap in rhythm, and the men from the fraternity emerged out of the dark. Then he felt himself being lifted. He was up above their heads, carried on a rippling of dozens of hands. Their chanting echoed beneath him as they poured out into the open air, under the night sky. He was floating, and when he looked down he saw a boy waving at him, at the end of a long tunnel of people. Cal! he thought.
He started up with a laugh.
TRANSFORMATIONS
The first time I saw my brother Corky in women’s clothes, I was eleven and he was fourteen. He came out of my parents’ bedroom in my mother’s good dress, the one with bird of paradise flowers patterned on it, and her high heels and lipstick. I thought he was kidding. He chased after me, talking in a Southern accent, and I ran off laughing. Corky was always pretending to be someone else, dressing up in clothes he’d bought at the Catholic rummage house or found in the garage, imitating the mannerisms of his math teacher, or Uncle Evan, who drove semitrailers and stuttered, or some disc jockey on the radio. I didn’t realize then, not for years and years, actually, that he was gay and all.
“He is still your brother,” my father told me when he showed me the picture. This was the second time I’d seen Corky in women’s clothes. In the photo, he was wearing a large, wavy wig, a blue-jean skirt, pumps, and a blouse with fringe. He looked like a country singer. My father asked me, “Do you know who this is?” All I said was, “Yes,” and, “It figures.”
My father shook his head at me. He liked to pretend that he didn’t care what Corky was, just so long as he was happy. That was the official line. But I’d seen the kind of cloudy distance that came into his eyes when he talked to Corky on the phone. I’d noticed him, once, studying an old Polaroid of the three of us, pheasant hunting, examining it as if looking for clues. I’d seen his expression when one of his buddies from the electrician’s union asked, “So how’s that boy of yours doing back East?” My father shifted from foot to foot. “Oh, fine, fine,” he said quickly, and looked down.
But he looked me sternly in the eyes. “He is still your brother,” he said. He folded his thick hands, staring glumly at the glossy black-and-white photo.
“My sister, you mean,” I said.
He frowned. “You’re getting pretty smart-mouthed,” he said. He laid the photo on the kitchen table between us, like some important document I was supposed to sign. “He does this as entertainment,” my father said. The words CABARET BERLINER, NEW YORK, were printed on the bottom of the picture.
“I’ll bet,” I said.
My brother worked at a bar in New York City. We’d known that. We also knew he was gay. He’d told my parents over the phone after he’d been away for a year. I wasn’t sure how they reacted at first, though they seemed calm by the time they got around to telling me. “Corky has come to a decision,” my father said, and my mother nodded grimly. For a long time afterwards, my father wouldn’t refer to it at all except as “your brother’s decision,” though he also pointed out to me that the words fag and queer were worse than swearing, as far as he was concerned.
Corky was going to college in New York at the time, but he dropped out shortly after to audition for plays and to work in bars at night. He hadn’t been home since he told them. Instead he sent clippings, pictures, lists of productions he was trying out for. “One thing about Corky,” my father remarked to me as he looked through the packets Corky sent. “At least he knows what he wants, and he’s not afraid to go after it.”
I was in my senior year in high school, and my father thought I had no ambition. Maybe that was true. In any case, I wasn’t like Corky had been when he was in high school. His senior year, there was always something about him taped to the refrigerator—a certificate of merit or a clipping from a local paper about a scholarship he’d won. He pinned the acceptance letters from colleges in neat rows on a bulletin board in our room, as if they were rare butterflies.
That was why I was surprised when he called to say he was taking some time off to attend my high-school graduation. I went to the Catholic school as Corky had, but there was no chance of me ending up valedictorian like him. For a while people wondered whether I’d be a teacher’s pet like Corky, and in the beginning they even called me by his name. But it didn’t take them long to figure out that I wasn’t going to leave any brilliant reputation in my wake. My father always said I didn’t “apply myself ” like Corky did. Out of ninety-six seniors, I was ranked forty-ninth. I would just be a vague, doughy face in the middle of the third row. There was no great cause for celebration. I hadn’t found a job or a college to attend in the fall. But at least my parents had a son who could give them grandchildren; they could appreciate that. And as for that fat, mustached drama teacher, Sister Vincent, who continually remembered Corky’s beautiful singing voice and his performance in South Pacific, well, I wished she could see his new song and dance at Cabaret Berliner.
Corky came home two days before graduation. My mother and father and I went to pick him up at Stapleton Airport in Denver. The whole way there, I worried. I couldn’t help but imagine Corky appearing in a feather boa and an evening gown, or something, trotting down the ramp to meet us with a big lipsticked grin. I told myself I was being low-minded and ugly, but that image of him kept popping into my head. My face felt hot.
Meanwhile, my parents acted like everything was wonderful. The full moon reflected off the early May snow that still lay on the fields, and my father kept howling like a wolf. It seemed to amuse my mother, because she chuckled every time he did it, and she laughed aloud when he grabbed her around the waist and growled.
I was sitting in the backseat, watching the car drift toward the center of the road while they horsed around. “I hope we wreck,” I said.
The three of us stood there in the waiting area, watching the planes land. We didn’t recognize Corky when he approached us, but at least he was wearing normal clothes. He’d dyed his hair bright red—it was shoulder-length, tied in a ponytail. When he was c
lose enough, I noticed the little crease in his earlobe that meant it was pierced, but he didn’t have an earring. He hugged my mother, kissing her lightly. Then he turned and kissed my father. My father always kissed us on the lips, and he wasn’t afraid to do it even in public. He puckered up like a cartoon character, and it would’ve been funny if he wasn’t so earnest about it. Here he was, this big, middle-aged construction worker, smacking lips with his son. He didn’t even hesitate, knowing Corky was gay, though I looked around to see if people were staring.
When my brother turned to me, I stuck out my hand. I didn’t want him kissing me. “So,” he said, and squeezed my palm, hard. “The graduate!”
I shrugged. “Yeah, well,” I said. “I’m just glad it’s over.”
He kept hold of my hand till I pulled back a little. He grinned. “Congratulations,” he said.
“Congratulations to you, too,” I said, though I didn’t know why.
As we drove back to Mineral, I watched my brother suspiciously. Ever since we were little he’d always been the center of things, and I doubted that he’d come all this way just to congratulate me. I kept expecting him to take over at any minute. I remembered how when we were young, we had a place behind the house, an old shed we’d furnished with lawn chairs and cinder blocks and such. This became the plantation from Gone with the Wind—Corky was Rhett and Scarlett, I was the slaves; or a rocket—Corky was the captain and the alien invaders, I was the crew that got killed. Once, when I was eleven and he was fifteen, and he was going to play the lead in South Pacific, he got me all excited about trying out for the part of his little Polynesian son. He gave me the music and then made fun of me, standing by our bedroom door and warbling like an old chicken.
Yet maybe, I thought, Corky had changed. It had been a long time since I’d really spoken to him. It had been several years since I’d seen him, and I seldom felt like talking to him on the phone. Even when my father put me on the line, I couldn’t think of what to say. “What’s new?” Corky would ask, and I’d shrug: “Nothing.” Maybe he’d become a totally different person, and I hadn’t known.
But I couldn’t tell. He was so motionless as we drove that he hardly seemed real. He just stared, like some stone idol, out toward the passing telephone poles and fields and the grasshopper oil wells nodding against the moonlit sky. His hands remained in his lap, except once, when he suddenly touched his hair with his fingertips as if adjusting a hat. When my parents asked him a question, he leaned forward, smiling politely: “What? What did you say?”
It was late, nearly one in the morning, when we got home. Corky went to the bedroom to unpack—our old room, my room now—and when I came in he was already stretched out on the upper bunk. It used to be that I slept on the bottom and he slept on the top, but since he’d left I’d been using the lower bunk to store papers and laundry and stuff. He looked down at me and smiled.
“That’s my bed,” I told him.
He sat up and his bare feet dangled over the edge, swinging lightly. He was wearing silky-looking pajamas. We’d always just slept in our underwear, and I imagined that this was what he wore when he lay down next to another man. “That’s rich,” he said. “You know, all these years I wanted that bottom bunk. I suppose you always wanted the top.”
“I didn’t care one way or another,” I said. I began to take handfuls of dirty laundry from the bottom bunk and put them on the floor. “You can sleep there if you want.”
He nodded and lay back. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard any news from you.”
“Yeah, well,” I said. “My life isn’t that exciting.”
“You’ve really changed the room around.” He gestured to a poster of a model in a white bikini who was holding a six-pack of beer. “She’s sexy,” he said.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”
He looked from the poster to me, his lips puckered out a little. “So,” he said at last. “Do you have a girlfriend, Todd?”
“Yes,” I said. “Sort of.” I didn’t. I had friends that were girls, and one of them I took to most of the dances. But I wasn’t like some of the guys in school, who’d been going steady with one girl since eighth grade. All the girls I liked had either paired off or weren’t interested. The furtive gropes and kisses after dances hadn’t amounted to much. I was afraid that even if I got a girl to do more, I’d be clumsy, and I couldn’t stand the thought of her laughing, maybe telling her friends. “You know,” I told Corky. “I date around and stuff.”
“Good for you,” he said. He pulled his feet up onto the bed the way a fish would flip its tail. Then he laughed. I could feel my ears warming.
“What’s so funny?” I said.
“Nothing,” he said. “Just the way you said it.” He deepened his voice to a macho swagger. “ ‘I date around and stuff.’ ” He laughed again. “You used to be such a little high-voiced thing.”
“Hm,” I said. He leaned back, and I turned off the light. I moved over near the closet, where it was darkest, so I could undress without him seeing me. The hangers made wind-chime sounds as I brushed them.
“It’s so weird, being home,” he said. His voice floated from the top bunk as I took off my shirt. I decided to sleep in my jeans. I didn’t have any pajamas. “You can’t believe how strange it is.”
“Well, nothing has changed,” I said. I groped across the dim room to my bed. I could see the lump where he was lying, a shadow bending toward me.
“No,” he said, “no.” And then, slowly, “So did you see the picture I sent?” The house was still. I could hear water whispering through the pipes in the walls. I could hear him breathing.
“I saw it.” I tried to make my voice noncommittal. I sighed deeply, like I was already almost asleep.
He didn’t say anything for a long time, and I thought he might have drifted off. When he spoke out of the dark, finally, his voice sounded odd, twittery, not like him, and it made my neck prickle. “Sometimes,” he said, “I’m glad I sent it and other times not.” I didn’t say anything. “Todd?” he whispered.
I waited. I recalled the way we used to lie on our bunks when we were little and tell jokes and make up songs. I remembered how I used to go to sleep to the sound of his murmuring, crooning.
“What,” I whispered back, finally.
“How did Mom and Dad react?”
“How should I know?” I mumbled. “They don’t tell me anything.”
“What did they say?”
“What did you expect them to say?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard to explain.”
But I didn’t want him to explain. I didn’t want to keep picturing him in that outfit, swishing and singing, maybe kissing a member of his audience, leaving a bright wing of lipstick on a bald forehead. “They didn’t say much of anything,” I told him. “They don’t care what you do in your personal life.”
“Do you?”
“Why should I?” I whispered. I rolled over, pretending to be asleep.
When I woke, my brother was already up. I could hear him talking in the kitchen, and the sound of eggs crackling on a skillet. I went to the bathroom to shower, and when I came back to dress, I couldn’t help but notice Corky’s suitcase. It was expensive looking: dark strips of leather bound around brick-red cloth. Through the walls I could hear the vague whisper of conversation, and I bent down, running my hands along the sides, finding the zipper.
Most of the things had been taken out. He’d put them in the dresser drawers my mother had cleared out for him. But there was a compartment along one side, and when I opened it, I found what I figured I’d find. It gave me a fluttery feeling in my stomach: a skirt, a flowered blouse, pantyhose, a box of makeup with the colors arranged chromatically. Beneath that were more photos—Corky gripping a fireman’s pole, his shaved leg sliding along it, his eyes looking seductively away; being lifted by a group of men in tuxedos, his head flung back, his arms open wide, jeweled necklaces in his clenched fists. There were two clippi
ngs of advertisements for Cabaret Berliner: a drawing of a man’s hairy leg with a high heel on his foot, and underneath, in small letters: CORKY PETERSEN AND SISTER MARY JOSEPHINE ⁄AFTER TEA DANCE PARTY, and a photo of Corky in his cowgirl outfit. I wondered if he was planning to show us a sample of his act. I closed the suitcase quickly.
They didn’t look up when I came into the kitchen. They were sitting at the table, eating toast and scrambled eggs. Corky was telling my father that New York City was in a state of collapse, and had been ever since Reagan took office. He said the homeless filled the streets, that a bag lady had died on his doorstep. My father kept nodding very seriously, frowning, “Mm-hmm,” as if he were talking to a grown-up. He never spoke to me that way. Then Corky began to tell about the semis that parked outside his apartment at night, and how his whole place filled up with diesel fumes. He was afraid to light a cigarette. In the middle of this, he looked up and saw me standing there. “Well, hello, Sleeping Beauty,” he said, and cocked his hand on his hip.
I glared at him. “Mornin’,” I said in my deepest voice. I slid into the chair at the far end of the table.
“You hungry, punkin?” my mother asked brightly.
I looked sternly at her. I wanted to tell them that my name was Todd, not Sleeping Beauty or Pumpkin. But all I said was, “Nope.” Then I looked at Corky. “So how come you live in New York if you don’t like it?”
Corky shrugged. “Frankly,” he said, “there’s no other place I could stand.” Then he leaned toward my father and lowered his voice. “I’ll tell you what’s really scary,” he said. “This AIDS thing. Out here I’m sure no one realizes, but it’s really terrifying.”