A Charm of Finches

by Suanne Laqueur

  Cufflinks and tie clips. A battered pair of moccasin slippers. Nathan’s leather shaving bag. His heavy wristwatch and his favorite fountain pen.

  “You don’t have to decide on everything today,” Vern said. “Do a little at a time. However much time it takes.”

  Zoe came back to Vern’s on another day, this time with an appraiser, to go through Analisa’s jewelry. Her engagement diamond, gold wedding band and Nathan’s wedding band were unquestionably for keeps. But Analisa had a few other pieces that made Allen Goldschmidt smile below the loupe crammed in one eye.

  “These are lovely,” he said over a pair of diamond earrings. “Two carats each, perfectly matched. Beautiful.” His one free eye looked at Geno. “Keep them.”

  “For your fiancée,” Zoe said. “Or a daughter, if you have one someday.”

  Allen admired a sapphire necklace. Praised the craftsmanship of a brooch shaped like a peacock with emeralds studding its tail. He spent a long time squinting at a gold chain bracelet with a pendant.

  “I think you’ll want to show this to a numismatic,” he said.

  “A what?” Geno said.

  “Someone who appraises currency,” Zoe said, eyes wide and bright.

  “The chain alone is high quality,” Allen said. “But the pendant appears to be a Mexican coin. An extremely old one.” He straightened up and took the loupe out of his eye. “Hold onto it. Get it appraised by a professional. You might have yourself a little treasure there, my friend.”

  After he left, Geno and Zoe sat in the kitchen, eating ice cream.

  “Is there anything of Dad’s you’re keeping?” he asked. “Or want to keep? Not that I’m the one to give permission. I mean, he’s your father, too.”

  Zoe smiled around her spoon. “When Matthew has his bar mitzvah, I may want the tallis.”

  “Take it now,” Geno said. “I want him to have it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “All right.” She pulled figure eights with her spoon through the melting ice cream, her eyes blinking rapidly. “I feel bad I didn’t know you all that well,” she said. “That it took this to make me… I mean, let me get to know you.”

  “Same. I sometimes wonder why we didn’t see you that much. I thought maybe because of my mom.”

  Now Zoe’s expression turned puzzled. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know. That she was the other woman.”

  “The other woman?” Zoe’s laughter filled up the kitchen. “Are you serious?”

  “Wasn’t she?”

  She laughed harder. “You dope. My mother left Nathan.”

  “She did?”

  “My stepfather is the other man.” Consumed with giggles, Zoe pressed a napkin into her streaming eyes. “Oh my God, where did you get that idea your mother was a home-wrecker? Don’t tell me that’s the story you were told.”

  “Nobody told me anything, I just thought that’s what it was.” Shaking his head, Geno pushed his bowl away, feeling both dumb and strangely happy.

  His sister planted her hand in his shoulder and gave him a shove. “You funny thing.”

  “Why didn’t we see you more?”

  “You saw me a lot, Geno,” she said. “I just don’t think you saw me.” The laughter had drained out of her face, leaving a wistfulness. “Then again, for a lot of years, I went out of my way not to be seen.”

  “Tell me about it,” Geno said, staring. Because right at that moment, in that light, from that angle, Zoe looked so much like Nathan, it was as if Nathan were using her as a channel. Borrowing her body to sit with Geno in the kitchen for a minute. Just for one precious minute to look at his son.

  “Are you all right?” Nathan asked in Zoe’s voice.

  Geno’s heart tore down the middle. He wanted so much to say no, he wasn’t all right. He wanted his father to be at peace and not worry. He drew a long breath through his nose, trying to find something honest that wouldn’t kill Nathan one more time.

  “Getting there,” he said.

  Zoe leaned and pressed her lips against his temple, and her hand ran soft over the cropped hair. Geno hesitated, then let his head fall on her shoulder.

  Another soul memory, haunting and intense. When he was thirteen and too old to cry, his frustrations and fears either erupted in anger or festered inside. But sometimes things built up, didn’t go his way, didn’t make sense. It got to be too much. Those times, when Analisa hugged him, he didn’t shy away. He didn’t fall on her, bawling, either. He just leaned on her. Leaning was acceptable. Staying in her arms a minute and letting the tears quietly dissolve out of him was okay. Letting her presence soothe him was permitted.

  Geno didn’t cry now. But he exhaled, leaned and let Zoe be both sister and mother.

  Just for a minute.

  Geno burned a lot of midnight oil in Vern’s study. In the moony light of the computer monitor, he surfed the internet like a legal clerk, looking at laws about sexual assault. Searching for sites that could put the wordy, circular and frustrating language into terms he could understand.

  He spent a long time reading article 213 of the Model Penal Code. Developed by the American Law Institute in 1962, the code wasn’t law in any jurisdiction in the United States, but it played a significant role in codifying and standardizing the country’s penal laws.

  Section 1 of Article 213 defined “rape” as a male who had forceful sexual intercourse with a female not his wife.

  With a female, Geno thought. Because men don’t get raped.

  Rape was a second-degree felony. According to the next clause, certain circumstances made a man who had forceful sexual intercourse with a female not his wife guilty of “gross sexual imposition,” a third-degree felony.

  Again, a male with a female.

  Because you can’t rape the willing.

  Sexual imposition. It sounded more like a nuisance than a crime.

  I beg your pardon, I didn’t mean to rape you. Sorry for the imposition.

  Gross sexual imposition sounded like a social blunder made by an up-talking surfer.

  Like, gross, I tripped and had forceful sex with you? Like, sorry?

  Geno rubbed his eyes, then let the words on the screen come into focus again.

  Section 2 was harder to grasp. His tired, sandy eyes kept coming back to the phrase “deviate sexual intercourse.” Forceful sexual intercourse between human beings who weren’t husband and wife.

  “Meaning male and female,” Geno said, eyebrows pulling low. “Everything else is…”

  Deviate sexual intercourse.

  He rubbed his face. “That can’t be right.”

  The code shrugged back at him and pointed to the words that insisted, in black and white, what happened to Geno wasn’t rape, but deviate sexual intercourse.

  Geno sat back, mouth slightly agape, not sure what to make of this. The open-mouthed bewilderment followed him back to school, where his already hyper-situational awareness started noticing things. Like flyers for women’s self-defense courses, one of them hosted at the Flatbush Y by none other than that prick Wayne.

  Geno made a point of tearing the flyer off the bulletin board. He stuffed it in his backpack and strode off, muttering under his breath. He went from one end of the campus to the other, but found no such invitations for men to learn to defend themselves. He did find a flyer announcing a coffee hour at the campus center, to discuss date rape in the digital age. Geno parked himself on a couch near the conference room where the meeting was to take place, surreptitiously noting who walked in.

  No males attended.

  He called a rape crisis hotline, pretending to be a sociology major doing a research paper on rape. Could he ask a few questions, get a few statistics? He was put through to a supervisor who handled the call center data. After a few obvious questions he�
��d prepared ahead of time, Geno casually asked, “How many calls do you get from men?”

  The silence that followed was so familiar.

  “I…don’t know,” the woman said. “Um…”

  “If you did get a call from a man, would your staff have the means to help?”

  “Well, I’m sure we… Although it might require additional training… It’s unusual to the degree that… I’m sorry, I just had someone walk into my office with an emergency, could we continue this another time?”

  Geno hung up, already having the answers he sought. He held them in his lap as he stared out at nothing and felt less than nothing. Just as he did on the long-ago day at Zoe’s house, when the phone was slammed down on him and his experience,

  Nobody knows what to do with you.

  What happened has no place in this world.

  Which is why we don’t talk about it.

  From his backpack pocket he drew the crumpled-up flyer for Wayne’s self-defense course at the Y. He ought to write on the back, Men get raped too, and mail it to Wayne anonymously.

  Fat lot of good that would do.

  Nobody can help because there’s nothing to help.

  He wasn’t female. So it wasn’t rape.

  He refused to be the deviant.

  So all of this was just a gross imposition.

  Like, sorry…

  “Hanging around for MLK weekend?” Ben asked.

  “Don’t I always?” Geno said.

  “I’m hanging around too. So is Natasha.”

  “What, it’s on?”

  Ben grinned like one who was getting spectacularly laid. “Guess where her new piercing is?”

  Geno held up a palm. “Pass.”

  “Anyway, remember my buddy Jason, you met him on Thanksgiving? He’s got a new apartment on the Upper East Side. He’s having a housewarming thing. Want to come?”

  Geno didn’t, but he didn’t want to sit in the empty dorm on a Saturday night either. He took a Xanax, slipped two Valium into his jeans pocket as backup and went along.

  Jason’s one-bedroom apartment was crammed tight with Broadway hopefuls. Dancers, chorus boys, musicians. Geno couldn’t pick up a hammer to join in the shop talk, so he kept to the perimeter of the open room. Back to the wall, he moved toward the kitchen, where Jason was performing at the little island, plating up appetizer after appetizer.

  “Mo, baby, what’s going on?” he called over the crush. “Get your ass over here, I need a slave.”

  Grateful, Geno slipped behind the barrier of stove and sink. Like a surgical nurse, he handed Jason what was needed and cleared away what wasn’t, noticing Jason seemed perfectly happy to stay put, provide food and let people come to him.

  “Mo, I was kidding about the slave thing,” Jason said. “Go mingle if you want.”

  “I’m not a mingler,” Geno said, washing up some pots and pans.

  “I hear you. I like a wall between me and the crowd.”

  Geno looked over his shoulder. “You get up in front of crowds for a living.”

  Jason looked back as well, grinning. “Ever hear of the fourth wall?”

  Lounging on the other side of the island, Seth was telling Ben and Natasha about riding Kingda Ka, the world’s tallest roller coaster at Six Flags.

  “Four hundred and fifty-six feet,” he said. “Straight down.”

  “Straight up, no thank you,” Natasha said, shuddering.

  “You must’ve been shitting your pants at the top,” Ben said.

  “Worse,” Seth said. “I was so scared, I had a fucking erection.”

  Natasha screeched a laugh and Jason pointed a wooden spoon at his boyfriend. “I don’t believe you said that,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I sport wood all the time on roller coasters. I thought it was just me.”

  “I get a boner at horror movies,” Ben said. “And it’s not because I’m turned on.”

  Natasha leaned on her elbow, looking thoughtful. “Maybe fear is a different kind of arousal.”

  A chill touched the back of Geno’s neck.

  “Nah,” Seth said around a mouthful. “It’s fight or flight. All the blood’s going to your muscles.”

  Jason snorted. “Like your dick is useful in a fight.”

  “Your body’s not choosy,” Seth said. “It’s all hands on deck.”

  “All hands on dick?”

  “You wish.”

  Geno crossed his arms tight and suppressed a shiver, listening to the blithe, casual banter. Suffused with a weary jealousy. He’d never be able to joke about boners and hands on dicks this way. Sex would always be a thing with him. A thing to guard or hide or lie about. Even in seven years time, when his cells replaced themselves and he’d be, in essence, a new man, he wouldn’t be a normal one. Ever again.

  He pressed his teeth hard, refusing to let them chatter.

  I just want to be a regular guy.

  Who knew being average could be so enviable?

  They left Jason’s apartment around ten and hit a bar on Third Avenue called The Study.

  Not a good idea, Mos said as he got a look at the loud crowd within.

  It’s fine, Geno thought. I’ll practice situational awareness.

  Mos dug in his heels. Not good.

  It’ll be fine.

  “You okay, Mo?” Ben said.

  “Would you mind if we stood near the door?”

  “Why?”

  “I like it near the door.”

  “Same here,” Jason said. “I don’t walk into a place unless I know how I can get out.”

  “Because you’re famous?” Geno asked.

  “Because I’m gay.”

  Geno blinked at him. Jason’s smile was wide above an exaggerated shrug of his shoulders. “I mean, come on,” he said. “I’m basically wearing a sign that says, Start some shit with me and prove you’re a man. Believe me, I know where the fucking exits are. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Come on, Mo, let’s carve out some territory.” The side of Jason’s fist lightly struck Geno’s upper arm as he headed toward the bar. He staked out one corner, planted himself on a stool and held court there the entire night. People of all persuasions came to pay homage, while Geno stood by like a bodyguard and nursed a single beer.

  “You cool?” Ben asked occasionally.

  “Yeah,” Geno said each time. It was the truth and it took him by surprise. Standing with his back to the bar, the door within view, nobody touching him, relaxed and situationally aware, Geno did feel cool. His do-not-disturb aura was being respected. Any gazes in his direction were weightlessly curious and without intention. He was a normal, somewhat shy guy out having a beer. Present and invisible at the same time.

  “Hey.” Jason leaned close to be heard over the music. “What’s Mo short for?”

  Geno felt so good, he could flirt with the answer. “Take a guess.”

  “Maurice.”

  “No.”

  “Morris,” Seth said.

  Geno gave him a side eye.

  “Mohammed?” Jason said.

  Geno pointed the bottle at him. “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  Jason laughed and socked Geno’s shoulder. “Come on, what is it?”

  “Geronimo.”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  “Swear to God.”

  “ID, please,” Seth said.

  Geno tucked his beer into an elbow and got his wallet. He slid out his driver’s license, being careful not to dislodge Carlos’.

  “Geronimo. That’s fucking awesome,” Seth said. “So do you, like, jump off shit and yell your name?”

  “No,” Geno said. “But I’ve made a lot of girls do it.”

  A
split second and then Jason, Seth and Ben howled with laughter.

  “Holy shit, you’re fucking human,” Ben said.

  “What?”

  “Dude, I’ve never heard you make a crack about sex.”

  Warm pleasure flooded Geno’s face. Happiness like a nostalgic memory curled around his chest. He was at a bar with friends. He made a joke about sex. He was just a normal guy.

  How about that shit? he said to Mos.

  Mos crossed his arms, uncommitted.

  Oh come on, Geno cajoled, flirting with himself.

  Mos sighed, relenting. We may be having a good time right now.

  “Be right back,” Ben said and shouldered through the crowd. It was getting tight in here, but Geno was all right. He could see the door. His back pressed against the bar so nobody could get behind him. Everything was great. He wished he could bottle this feeling up. Compress it into pills he could swallow.

  He turned his gaze down the bar, people watching. Mostly young couples. One solitary Asian girl with a martini, looking straight ahead, her expression thoughtful. Maybe even a little lonely. Geno stared, considering going over to say hi. Then his attention was caught by a girl a few stools closer to him. She was pretty.

  Soap and water pretty.

  “Geronimo,” Kelly Hook cried, shoving Geno over the side of the couch. A long time ago.

  The girl kissed her date and ran her hand through his hair before sliding off the stool. Her date called to her, pointed at the bar, did she want another? From where he stood, Geno could see her mouth shape a reply: just a Coke.

  “I’m driving,” Geno said, a long time ago. So Fox got him a Coke instead.

  Geno’s gaze followed the girl through the crowd. Her date leaned back a bit on his stool to track her as well. One hand went into his jacket pocket.

  The bartender set down the glass, still bubbling. A bit of froth sliding down the side.

  How about a Coke instead?

  Geno was suddenly and situationally aware. His focus sharpened into a pinpoint beam, the rest of the bar shuttered out and silenced. His tongue pressed the roof of his mouth, remembering the sweet, carbonated taste of betrayal.