A Very, Very Bad Thing

by Jeffery Self

  Outside the church, people were already filing in. Two news vans were stationed on the curb, eagerly broadcasting the story of the conservative preacher’s gay son who committed suicide. Audrey’s was the first face I saw in the crowd, and she threw her arms around me. She was crying.

  “I’m so sorry, darling,” she said.

  I squeezed her tight and wondered if I should pull her into the bathroom right then and there to explain everything. Maybe then this paralyzing guilt would weaken and I could breathe.

  “There are Christopher’s parents. We should pay our respects,” Dad said, walking over to them.

  “We don’t really know them,” I said, uncomfortable.

  “We should pay our respects,” he repeated. Because we were there, he didn’t add.

  I had no choice but to follow him over.

  “Jim, Angela … we’re so sorry,” he said. They looked up at him, then Mom, then me with a look of growing horror. “I don’t know what to say, except that you’ve been in our thoughts and prayers all week.”

  Christopher’s mother looked to his father, as his father looked around at the people nearby with one of his forced million-dollar smiles, and then eventually toward the news vans. He cleared his throat, staring down at his shoes.

  “May I speak with you privately?” Christopher’s father asked my father. Dad followed the reverend a few feet away. It was unclear what they were discussing as I stared from where I was standing. I looked to Christopher’s mom but she was already turned away and walking into the church.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “It’s all right, love,” Mom said, putting her arm around me. “Audrey, how about you go inside and find us some seats?”

  Audrey nodded and disappeared into the aggressively quiet sanctuary. Soon after, Dad returned to us, his expression pale and confused.

  “What was that about?” Mom asked.

  Dad shook his head in disbelief and said, “He asked us to leave.”

  “Leave where?” Mom asked.

  But I knew. Dad’s next words were a punch in the gut, but they weren’t a surprise.

  “Here. The funeral.”

  “What?” Mom raised her voice, then looked around, embarrassed.

  People were passing us, headed inside. The crowd had thinned out. Who were these people? Did these people even know Christopher?

  “Let’s just get in the car,” Dad said; his face was becoming less pale. In fact, it was becoming red with rage and humiliation.

  “I don’t understand,” Mom said.

  “Those assholes,” I muttered under my breath. “Those complete and total assholes.”

  Dad took my hand. “It’s all right. Calm down.”

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” Mom repeated, over and over, as we walked across the parking lot toward the car.

  “I do,” I said, my voice rising. “And they can’t do that. I was with him. I was his boyfriend. I loved him. I …”

  The church doors shut and I heard an organ begin to play some depressingly monotone hymn. Dad was staring at the news cameras, which had been focused on us for who knew how long.

  “Let’s just get in the car,” he said, turning his confused face away from the gaze of the cameras.

  I didn’t get to say good-bye to him. I didn’t get to be there as he was carried from the church and laid into the ground. I didn’t get to hear the things that were said about him—even if they were lies, even if it was incomplete, I didn’t get to hear his name said over and over and over again. I didn’t get to be there in the middle of everyone else’s grief. Audrey, who had never really hung out with Christopher, got to be there. But I didn’t get to be there. It might have been easier if they’d done it to punish me. At least punishing me would mean recognizing that I played a role in their son’s life, but no.

  Instead, they opted to make me disappear.

  “What in the world is wrong with those people?” Mom wondered aloud as we walked through our front door. She hadn’t stopped talking since we’d left the church and I hadn’t tried to stop her because then I would’ve had to speak and I didn’t know what I’d say. “I know they’re hyper-religious, but the audacity to tell us to leave a funeral? I am dumbfounded!”

  Dad was already taking off his jacket and tie, tossing them onto the back of the sofa.

  “You hear about these kind of people on TV, but you never think you’ll actually run into them,” Dad said. “We’ve met our fair share of conservative Christians, but this is something else altogether. How many of these camps or retreats or whatever they call it did they put that boy through?”

  “Is it even legal for them to forbid us from entering a funeral?” Mom paced back and forth, barefoot now, her heels kicked off into a corner.

  “What kind of interaction have you had with these people?” Dad sat down on the sofa, looking at me.

  “Very little. I met them at his aunt’s party and then again the other night at the water tower,” I told them.

  It was an odd feeling to be so hated by two people I’d barely ever spoken to. My phone was lighting up with a string of texts from Audrey asking where we’d gone. I started to imagine the funeral that was taking place a few miles away. I thought of the casket containing Christopher’s body. I wondered if it had been open or closed, if they’d covered him with makeup and putty to hide the bruises and scars from the fall. If they’d tried to make him seem as lifelike as you can make a dead body seem. What was being said about him? What was the story his parents were making sure he left behind?

  “I need some tea.” Mom headed off into the kitchen, a ball of nerves.

  “Dammit,” Dad said after a while. I’d only heard him curse maybe five or six times ever. Usually when attempting to install electronics. “I don’t understand people sometimes. Humans can be such monsters.” He took a breath, closing his eyes for a moment, and opened them again as he exhaled, calmer. “I’m so sorry you’re going through this, buddy. Losing someone is unexplainable enough, but the hatred these people are showing … it’s unimaginable. I don’t know what to say. I wish I did.”

  He didn’t need to say anything. All I wanted in that moment was to go back to my room and be alone all over again. If I hadn’t lied, I wondered, would I have been able to walk into that church? This, however, was a pointless question, because the answer was clearly no. Christopher’s parents wanted nothing to do with me and they wanted me written out of his story no matter what.

  I texted Audrey and explained what had happened. She was just as furious as the rest of us and went on to tell me all about how Christopher’s dad got up and gave a eulogy where the blatant focus was debunking the rumors that his gay son had committed suicide because of his family’s disapproval. In fact, he went on to explain that Christopher wasn’t even gay but psychologically imbalanced and that his suicide was something they had feared would happen for a long time.

  And just like that … Reverend Jim Anderson and his wife, Angela, got their wish. They got to remember their son as the person they always wanted him to be instead of the person he really was. They fixed their problem. They got to show the world that they were, despite tragedy, as perfect a family as they seemed on TV. My strained and albeit insane attempt to make Christopher’s death mean something had been in vain. The story’s ending had been rewritten by yet another lie, as Christopher’s parents sat in a church with all their friends, fans, and followers and pretended to understand.

  I COULDN’T BEAR THE THOUGHT of going to school. My parents told me I could take the rest of the week off, to “acclimate.”

  But there’s no way to acclimate to a hurricane. You just have to suffer through it, and even then it’s unclear how things will ever settle down again.

  I stayed at home. Or not even that. I was home, sure. But really, I stayed in my own head. I refused to leave it, despite how claustrophobic it was beginning to feel. I replayed every moment I’d had with Christopher, and was traumatized when I r
ealized I was already forgetting some of them. His voice—what did his voice sound like? I didn’t even have a voice mail to remember him by. Just texts—texts that I read and reread. Then I moved on to the letters, to his handwriting. I was devastated by every sentence, every letter, even every emoji. And the whole time, I was also ridiculing myself, calling myself all sorts of awful things, telling myself I had no right to Christopher, since I’d only known him for a little less than a month, as if time has the power to dictate one’s heart. But grief didn’t care about any of that. Grief didn’t care about months or minutes. Grief had its own measure of importance, its own measure of time.

  There had been witnesses. I knew people at school would be talking. They would know what we were. They would know that we’d been together. His parents couldn’t erase that. Kids would talk and, despite normally hating gossip, a part of me took comfort in the fact that at least Christopher would be kept alive in the hushed lunchroom conversations of my peers.

  And I was right—the kids at school did talk. I knew this because that Sunday evening, the day before I was supposed to return to school, our doorbell rang. I heard it from my room and didn’t think much of it. I’d been in bed all day long, which, if it weren’t for the soul-crushing sadness and guilt I was experiencing, would’ve been my idea of a lovely day.

  Ten or so minutes after the bell, Mom tapped on my bedroom door.

  “Marley?” she said in the kind of soft voice you’d use around a sleeping baby. “There’s someone here who wants to speak with you.”

  “Ugh. I told Audrey I needed to be alone,” I said without sitting up from my mattress, which had become a graveyard of dirty dishes and crumbs.

  “It isn’t Audrey.”

  “Then who is it?” I asked with a little too much sass for the occasion.

  “His name is Harrison Holbrook and he says he’s here to help you.”

  The ridiculousness of the name Harrison Holbrook aside, how could anyone help me at this time? Unless of course he was somehow going to bring Christopher back to life.

  “Just put on some pants and come out here for a second,” she said, gently shutting the door behind her.

  It was the first time all day I’d noticed I wasn’t wearing pants. I begrudgingly threw on the cargos that lay crumpled by the bed. They smelled like stale peanut sauce and body odor. I headed into the living room.

  Mom and Dad were quietly talking with a man who was sitting on the sofa. When I walked in he immediately stood up and faced me. He had a handsome face that was heavily manicured and wore a fitted, expensive-looking suit.

  “Harrison Holbrook.” He projected as if onstage, thrusting his hand toward me. “Holbrook PR.”

  I shook his hand and couldn’t help but notice his fingernails were the cleanest I’d ever seen.

  “Hi,” I said, looking at my parents to find out what the hell was going on.

  “Harrison just arrived from New York and has a lot to talk to you—well, all of us—about. Are you good on tea?”

  Harrison patted his mug with a contented smile. “All good, Sharon.”

  Mom smiled back at him.

  I had no idea what was going on.

  Harrison leaned in. “Marley, I run a public relations firm that handles highly sensitive yet politically important cases and stories. Your situation was brought to my attention by a colleague who is reporting on the death of Christopher Anderson. You were his boyfriend, correct?”

  I was frozen with suspicion but nodded nonetheless.

  “And you were with him when he committed suicide?”

  Those words had yet to settle into the fabric of my mind. They still conjured something deeply upsetting inside of me every time I heard them.

  “I was,” I lied, staring down at Harrison’s very polished shoes.

  Harrison glanced at my parents, then back at me, then back at my parents. Then he let out a pronounced sigh.

  “All right, here’s the deal. We all know that Christopher’s parents are two of the most homophobic people on television. They’ve built an empire on despising people like you and me. I know people who witnessed you and your parents being barred from his funeral and I know what was said in the reverend’s eulogy. Have you seen their statement to the press?”

  I shook my head.

  “Here, let me read it to you. ‘It is with great sadness we announce the death of our only son, Christopher, who took his own life last weekend due to his severe mental health issues. Christopher had been at a counseling facility in the week leading up to his death. Despite great efforts from talented therapists and pastors, he resisted progress and eventually ran away from the facility with the intention of taking his own life.’ My sources also tell me that they’re saying to people that Christopher’s body was found by a stranger.”

  A stranger. Just when I didn’t think I could hurt more, I did.

  Harrison shook his head. “Their statement to the press is nothing but an attempt to bury their son’s story deeper than the casket he’s currently in.” He stopped, contemplating his words, then added, “What I’m saying is that they’ve decided this story ends with the burial of their son and the continuation of their homophobic beliefs and efforts to harm our community, from their endorsements of gay brainwashing therapy to their support of every antigay bill we’ve seen passed in the last decade. Now their son is dead, a suicide. And from what I hear, this was after a week in one of those pray-the-gay-away treatment places. Funny how they don’t mention that, isn’t it? Tell me, Marley—did you love Christopher?”

  “I did,” I whispered into my lap.

  “I can tell you did. Marley, a horrible and terrible and frighteningly inexcusable thing has happened. But with this tragedy comes an opportunity. A chance to right years’ and years’ worth of the wrongs his parents have caused our nation, our people, their son.”

  I could still feel the softness of Christopher’s lips on top of mine. I could still smell his face as I kissed his cheek.

  “Despite tragedy, you’ve been given a chance to help kids like Christopher. You’ve been given a responsibility to help fix things, once and for all. And if you’d like to pursue this kind of change, I would love to help you do it.”

  The room and everything in it seemed to spin around me. I understood exactly what he was saying. He wanted to take down the hypocrisy of Reverend Jim and he wanted to use me to do it. And despite a nagging feeling in my gut, I agreed to follow along.

  For Christopher, I told myself.

  Everything would be for Christopher.

  I was not going to let his side of the story die with him. No matter what it would take.

  HARRISON BOUNDS INTO MY DRESSING room. I can smell that he’s been heavily partaking in the open bar at the party below us. Fancy gay events have seemingly endless open bars, and it has yet to become clear to me whether the fancy people attending said events are there for the cause or the free vodka.

  “I just bumped into Robert Watson from Gay Lives magazine. I don’t know what he’s been pumping into his face, but it’s not making him look any younger.” Harrison blows through his insults like the breeze through a wind chime, easily and with clatter. “I think I might have just secured you a cover story in two months!”

  His smile is inescapable, so I force one of my own.

  “That’s nice,” I lie.

  “Nice? Are you kidding me? It’s fantastic! Last month they had that lesbian chef who invented zero-calorie chocolate, and before that those triplets who came out on Ellen!” Harrison plants a big, wet, boozy kiss across my forehead. “Baby’s first cover shoot! Mazel tov!”

  At some point, this all stopped being about Christopher’s death.

  “It’s bigger than that,” people keep telling me. “It’s bigger than one person. It’s bigger than one suicide.”

  But here’s the thing: It doesn’t feel bigger.

  Christopher’s death will always be, to me, the biggest thing of all.

  I know what I’m doin
g might help other people.

  But it’s not helping me. And I worry it never will.

  IT HAD BEEN JUST OVER a week. The world had existed with one less person for that little time. I still hadn’t been back to school—I wasn’t ready, and, with Harrison around, there were suddenly other things to do. Audrey came by the house after school on Monday with some assignments for me, but I couldn’t really talk to her about anything other than homework—the first time she and I had ever done that. I had a hard time pretending around her; she knew me too well. A true best friend is like a walking diary you’ve scribbled all your hopes and fears into. The issue, however, is that when you don’t want to face these hopes and fears, you don’t want to face your diary.

  I could tell she suspected something was up, but she never would’ve asked because it was also possible that I was just upset. Asking someone who just watched his boyfriend commit suicide what was really happening was just not something she could do.

  Tuesday morning was tightly run by Harrison, who had set up camp in our guest room as if that wasn’t weird at all. My parents too seemed unfazed by this. Everyone appeared to be far too focused on getting my side of the story heard to notice that our lives had been turned upside down.

  I was seated on our sofa, wearing a wireless microphone running underneath a starched button-up shirt Harrison had given to me from his own suitcase that morning.

  Harrison’s assistant, Alex, a perfectly agreeable twentysomething girl with layers upon layers of makeup covering more acne than any adult should be physically capable of having, was testing the camera attached to Harrison’s laptop. Alex had arrived in town on Monday afternoon and everything had moved incredibly fast since then.

  “His skin looks green. Can we get him a different shirt? Red isn’t his color. And are those our only lights?” Harrison rattled off, eyeing two enormous lights on tripods, looming over our sofa like vultures.

  “I’ve got two more in the van,” Alex said, heading outside.