We Contain Multitudes

by Sarah Henstra

  Watching him it suddenly hit me how rare and amazing it was to be able to see something being made out of nothing. Up close like that. It reminded me how it felt watching you sing when you didn’t know I was in the room. Halfway between dirty and holy. I don’t know. But I suddenly found myself smiling like an idiot and looking all around the room and thinking, Anything, anything is possible in this life. This moment is everything. Right now.

  I mean you must have felt it too, because when I looked over at you there were tears on your face.

  So I guess I get it now. I get why the Decent Fellows and the girls and you and everyone else at Paisley Park believes this man is a god. It’s because when he’s onstage Prince believes he is a god. He is a god onstage, maybe. I mean I’m willing to say that.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Tuesday, October 27

  Dear Kurl,

  You’re right that watching Prince up close like that, with that degree of intimacy and intensity, is an experience only the tiniest percentage of his fans will ever get to share. Now that a few days have passed, I can appreciate that it was a memorable experience. I have to admit, though, that I found the whole night somewhat deflating.

  I felt more and more self-conscious as the event wore on. When Prince slow-danced with one of his singers onstage—Shayna and Bron would know her name, the taller one—the lights came way down, and he told us, “Look away. Ain’t nothing to see up here.” And there we were in the dark for two or three minutes, with nothing to see and nothing to hold on to. You and the girls and Lyle had drifted away from me, so I just stood there feeling too small for the room.

  Finally the lights came up a little, and Prince announced, “This here’s your prom, children. Couple up now, couple up.”

  I don’t think you noticed, because you were speaking to Bron and the others, but someone had been chatting with me in the line outside. He came over and asked me to dance. Rogan, his name was.

  God save us, I thought, it really is like the prom. Except that Rogan was older than high school, more like in his midtwenties. Too old for me, technically. But I said yes anyway.

  While we slow-danced Rogan complimented the suit that the rest of you had thought so ridiculous for Paisley Park. He said my clothes reminded him of Under the Cherry Moon, so we talked about that movie, how we both thought Prince was expressing a great deal of sorrow on that whole album despite the bubbly, retro vibe. Rogan said, “I’m utterly enamored of this place.”

  I told him I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard anyone use the word enamored out loud, in a sentence, before. He asked if that worked in his favor or against him, and I said, “In. Definitely in.”

  So I was dancing with Rogan, and I was finally starting to feel a little happier—a little less bored and irritable, at least, flattered that someone in the room was interested enough in my existence to seek me out, to find a reason to touch me and talk to me—when I caught sight of you, Kurl.

  You’d paired up with Shayna, and over her shoulder from eight, maybe ten, feet away you were staring directly at me and Rogan. I can hardly recollect your expression without shuddering, let alone try to describe it in writing. Your face was perfectly smooth and neutral as usual, but tensed, taut, as though it took everything in your power to keep it that way. There was something around your eyes, something locked down and pissed off and shadowy.

  I half expected to see your fists clenched for attack, but your hands were resting open and relaxed on Shayna’s hips. When you noticed I was staring back at you, you dropped your gaze immediately, and the next time I looked over, Shayna was talking in your ear and you’d lowered your forehead to her shoulder to hear what she was saying.

  Kurl, if you will recall, I informed you that I was gay in one of my earliest letters to you. You know that I have never tried to hide who I am. If you have a problem with my sexuality, I need you to be honest with me and admit it. Because if seeing me on a dance floor in a man’s arms is enough to generate that intensity of disgust and hatred in you, and you aren’t willing to deal with it openly and directly, then I’m afraid you and I are going to have a longer-term, larger-scale problem on our hands. There’s no point in you denying it, either. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve become somewhat of a self-taught expert at reading your face.

  I am fighting an impulse here to tell you about my sexual history. I feel the need to make excuses, to exonerate myself, to impress upon you the fact of my relative innocence. In terms of physical experience, I’ve had very little: a couple of dare-based, fumbling grope sessions and one affaire du coeur at music camp that dragged itself out halfway through the summer. Painfully heavy on the overwrought text messages, painfully light on the actual physical contact. In fact, that middle-school melodrama is the reason I no longer carry a cell phone.

  It makes me furious at myself to divulge any of this to you, Kurl. I know it’s my own sense of shame and humiliation prompting me to do it. Probably it’s my internalized homophobia as well. But how else am I supposed to feel? What else am I supposed to say? How else am I supposed to defend myself against being regarded as if I were something stuck to the bottom of your shoe?

  Yours truly,

  Jo

  Wednesday, October 28

  Dear Little Jo,

  This is my third letter. I tore the other two up because it took me a while to calm down. I really regretted that one letter I sent you early on when I was angry, that one when I called you a nosy little bugger. I wrote you another letter right away to try to make up for it, remember? And you never forgot the insult either. You mentioned it just two letters ago: At the risk of being called a nosy little bugger again, you said.

  At least now I know why you wouldn’t talk to me at school these last two days. Not that we talk much anyway. It’s more like Bron and Shayna talking and us standing around with them getting the occasional comment in. But these last two days at school you barely even looked at me. I was wondering what was going on.

  Let’s get one thing straight though. You are not a mind reader. You don’t know anything about what I was thinking on that dance floor at Paisley Park. I mean I apologize if I looked at you strangely for a second. Or whatever the expression on my face was.

  But it was not because I have a problem with your sexuality. Your words. If I had a problem with your sexuality don’t you think it would have come up by now? You make it sound like I’ve been hiding these terrible gay-bashing thoughts and you caught them right there on my face. You are not a mind reader. You don’t know what’s in other people’s heads. You have no reason to jump to conclusions like that. No right, in fact.

  You and Lyle both. It’s ironic really, because I figure Lyle jumped to conclusions right about the exact moment in time that you did.

  Did you even notice how Lyle sort of cornered me after I danced with Shayna? He takes me by the arm and goes, Just because my daughter is dressed like that doesn’t mean she wants that kind of attention from you, Adam.

  I tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about. So then he starts going on and on about how teenaged girls will test out their sex appeal on boys by dressing up, sometimes, and it makes them vulnerable to sexual attention they’re not ready for.

  And the whole time he’s lecturing me he’s looking me up and down with this look on his face I’ve never seen before. I can’t even describe it.

  How about I take your approach, Jo, and tell you how it made me feel. It made me feel like Lyle Hopkirk was looking straight past my face into some secret place in my head that even I didn’t know existed. Someplace ugly.

  I don’t even know what I said in answer. I shoved my hands into my pockets and mumbled something like, Yeah, no, of course, I would never.

  But the thing about Lyle is that he’s no mind reader either. He had no idea what was in my head while I was dancing with Shayna. So how about both of you stop acting like you have everybody figured out, because you don’t.

  Sincerely,

  AK


  PS: I only asked your sister to dance because that college guy asked you. I mean it seemed like the thing to do. He was already touching your hair and fixing your bow tie for you when I asked Shayna. You were already laughing. I mean let’s at least get the facts straight.

  Thursday, October 29

  Dear Kurl,

  A confession: I am fairly certain it’s my fault that Lyle chided you for dancing with Shayna. He wasn’t attempting to read your mind so much as acting on notions I’d recently put into his mind. I owe you a double apology, Kurl, both for accusing you of homophobia and for inadvertently setting you up for trouble with my father.

  It was when Bron and Shayna and I were upstairs getting ready for Paisley Park, after the schnitzel dinner and just before I sat down to write you that letter. You were downstairs with the others, and I was lolling on Shayna’s bed while they tried on clothes. I was trying to figure out how much Shayna likes you, telling her I thought she should go for it, teasing her about how obvious it was to everyone that you two are crushing on each other.

  It was incredibly immature of me, I’m aware. Classic annoying little brother behavior.

  “He’s not my type. He barely talks,” Shayna said, and I jeered at that, because isn’t that the classic defense a girl will offer when she’s so extremely attracted to a boy that it’s disconcerting to her? I adore him as a person, but he’s not my type.

  “He reads a lot, you know,” I said. “And he’s an excellent writer.”

  “Like I said, not my type,” she said.

  “He really likes you, Shayna. I’m just saying you should give him a chance.”

  “Who likes Shayna?” Lyle was suddenly standing in the bedroom doorway.

  “Adam Kurlansky,” I said.

  “To be clear,” Bron said, “we’re working with little evidence and lots of speculation, here.”

  “Is that why you’re dressed like that?” Lyle asked Shayna.

  “Like what?”

  “Inappropriately,” Lyle said, gesturing to her short skirt. “I want you to change before we leave.”

  “Uh, I don’t think so,” Shayna retorted. “And anyway Jojo’s just jealous. It’s pathetic. You’re pathetic, Jonathan Hopkirk!” And she shoved past Lyle, stomped down the hall, and slammed the bathroom door.

  And so I was exiled to my room, where I had plenty of time to contemplate the events of the evening and write them up for you. And, well, you witnessed firsthand how ineffectual my father’s effort to censor Shayna’s wardrobe choices proved to be. She’s never put any effort into her clothes or makeup before this, so Lyle may simply be trying to come to terms with the transformation.

  Another confession (be real and be true, Jonathan, be real and be true): My sister was correct about me. I am jealous. I’m envious of the easy options all the rest of you enjoy. To date someone or not to date someone? Does she like him? Does he like her? You can try out whatever you like and change your minds at any time. Everyone is available to everyone else. Me? I might be permitted to admire someone from afar, to harbor a yearning in secret, but to act on it would cost me everything.

  Anyhow. I am truly sorry, Kurl, for the mess I created for you at Paisley Park.

  Yours truly,

  Jo

  Thursday, October 29

  Dear Little Jo,

  There’s no school tomorrow so you probably won’t pick up this letter until Monday. Remember that PSA I had to write on what to do in an explosion? I mean it’s not only the Taliban. Look at that marathon that got bombed. In an explosion what you do is get under a table or desk until things stop falling. If you can’t get out from the rubble you wait. Use a flashlight or whistle to signal for help. Or tap on a pipe. You have to avoid shouting as it will dehydrate you and make you inhale dust. You breathe through your shirt. You avoid windows, mirrors, glass-fronted cabinets, elevators, electrical outlets, gas lines, kitchens.

  Sylvan told me that Mark said suicide bombers were something you had to not take personally in Afghanistan.

  I asked Sylvan, How is that even possible?

  He said that according to Mark it’s easier over there because you don’t have to make any choices. All the choices are made for you. Back home is harder.

  I asked Sylvan if that’s what Mark had said. Back home is harder. Were those his exact words?

  Sylvan said maybe it’s time I asked Mark some of these questions myself.

  I mean you might be following the procedure exactly. You might be hiding under the right furniture and signaling with your flashlight and not be taking the bomb personally at all. But there’s a specific thing that happens to your internal organs when you’re exposed to a bomb. The tissues of your organs vibrate and spray cells in every direction, like dust from a beaten rug. Like dust from a beaten rug. I remember reading that exact phrase. All the inmost personal parts of your body rattled and bruised.

  Sincerely,

  AK

  Sunday, November 1

  Dear Kurl,

  You probably don’t remember much. In fact, it’s possible you don’t remember anything at all.

  I couldn’t quite believe you had been driving in that condition. I consider it a miracle that you made it safely all the way to our house and managed to park, albeit more on the lawn than the driveway, before passing out. Maybe you passed out long before arriving, and the car drove itself to our house; as far as I’m concerned that would hardly have been more miraculous.

  Some years we stay home on Halloween and hand out candy, but this time Shayna and Lyle and Cody Walsh and I had spent the evening at the Fright Night Movie Marathon at the rep cinema. I’d endured The Shining and The Blair Witch Project with them but had begged off Saw, the late-late show, and Cody drove me home. When it comes to horror movies, my father and sister are insatiable and omnivorous. I can’t keep up, even physically: My eyes start to sting, staring at the screen for that long.

  So it was me who found you in our driveway with your forehead resting on the steering wheel. Headlights on, driver’s-side door ajar, radio set to AM and reporting the weather, the whole car reeking like a distillery.

  I said your name and jostled you a bit. Your head rolled along the wheel, but you couldn’t even straighten up.

  And then you said, “I have to go.”

  “What?” I said.

  “This is my mom’s car,” you said, slurring. “She leaves for work at five. I have to go.” And you turned the key and started the engine.

  I stayed wedged in the open car door. “You’re drunk, Kurl. No way you’re driving like this.”

  You lifted your head and looked at me. “Hi, Jo,” you said. One of your eyes was swollen shut, the bruising spread all the way to your cheekbone. Your lip was split, oozing.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Did you get in a fight?”

  “Of course I got in a fight.” You smiled at me, which only brought fresh blood to your lip.

  “Come inside,” I said. “Let’s get some ice. I’ll call Lyle.”

  But hearing my father’s name must have spooked you, because you straightened up and put the car in reverse.

  “Wait! Kurl, wait.” I didn’t know what to do. The car was rolling. I’d already been forced to take a couple of quick steps sideways so the door wouldn’t sweep me off my feet. “Stop the car and move over. I’ll drive,” I said.

  Immediately you slid into the passenger seat and curled up with your cheek against the headrest, as though me taking the wheel was what you’d been planning all along.

  “Put your seat belt on.”

  You groped around for the buckle, all obedience.

  As you must be aware, I am several months away from being eligible to apply for my regular driver’s license. I’m fairly sure my learner’s permit doesn’t allow me to drive with a heavily inebriated eighteen-year-old for a copilot, either. Luckily, Lyle has made a point of putting me behind the wheel for practice whenever we have occasion to take the car outside Minneapolis, so I’m already a decen
t driver, even at night. Also luckily, I had recently studied the map, curious about the location of your Outer Sanctum, so when you mumbled your address I knew approximately how to find your street.

  You were so quiet that I suspected you’d passed out again; I wasn’t sure, because I was utterly absorbed in the task of not committing any traffic infractions. I turned onto your street, but I was worried that someone might look out your front window, so I parked the car at the curb a few houses down from your address.

  Your face was turned away, to the window, and you didn’t respond when I said your name, so I got out and walked around to your side of the car and opened the passenger door. I was relieved to find you bleary but conscious, at least, awake and looking up and blinking at me with your one good eye. Your face was like meat.

  “Maybe I should have driven you directly to the hospital,” I said.

  “Come here, Jo,” you said.

  You were asking for assistance, I thought, so I leaned in and unbuckled your seat belt for you. You grabbed my arm and swung one foot to the ground, and I braced to take your weight.

  Instead of trying to stand up, though, you took my wrist and waggled my hand back and forth. “Hi,” you said, as though we’d just now happened to run into each other, and I was waving at you.

  “Hi.” I laughed despite my worry.

  You lifted my wrist with your fingers around it like a bracelet. “Fine-boned,” you commented.

  Kurl, there are all kinds of reasons for you to have done what you did next. You were still deeply in shock from the fight, from your injuries. Or it was simple curiosity. Or you thought I was someone else. You thought I was Shayna, maybe—you’d driven half-unconscious to her house, after all.

  You moved your hand to my waist, to my belt, and gave the end of it a little tug.