I drank some champagne from a bottle being passed around. Bron flagged down some green, but she wouldn’t share it with me.
“You need to stay sharp,” she said to me. “This is crucial. This is important.”
Less than twenty minutes after we arrived, she shoved the mando into my arms and dragged me over to Rich. She bent down and switched off some guy’s boom box. “Play ‘Alphabet Street,’” she ordered me, and then stood and waited, hands on her hips, ignoring the guy’s girlfriend saying, “What is your problem? Turn that back on.”
I started to play “Alphabet Street,” and after a minute Rich took it up on the guitar. As soon as people nearby recognized the tune, they started to sing. Another guitar joined in, and before the song was over, an upright bass had appeared out of nowhere.
So it became an acoustic jam. There was a trombone, a harmonica. Scarlett had her tambourine, so that was the next song: “Tamborine.”
“Sing it, Jojo!” Bron yelled, so I went ahead and sang it—I just let all those high notes loose on that crowd, and I suppose people liked it, because there was loud cheering afterward.
At one point while we played, Bron gave one of her revival-tent speeches: “Prince changed us; he altered our DNA. Prince flows in our veins. Prince changed life on Planet Earth.” The gospel according to Bronwyn Otulah-Tierney. People loved it, though. There was so much weeping!
Later, Trudie came over to me and took a photograph out of an envelope in her purse and handed it to me. She said she’d brought it in hopes of seeing me today.
It took me a few seconds of staring at the image to recognize Raphael standing there on the sidewalk between Rich and Cody. There was hardly any of her left. Her white legs stuck out of her skirt like broomsticks. The black dye had grown partway out of her hair, and the lighter-brown part lay like dead grass against her scalp. Her face under her makeup was a skull.
“We tried to bring her home,” Trudie said.
“She’s so skinny,” I observed.
“She was very fucked up, honey.” Trudie put her arm around me and looked at the picture with me. “We went to LA four times over eighteen months. Lyle went alone, the first time, but she wouldn’t see him. So the second time he bought a plane ticket for me to go with him. Rapha and I were pretty good friends, once.”
I saw Bron and Rich heading our way, and I tried to give the photo back to Trudie, but she said I should keep it. I didn’t really want it, but I slid it into my back pocket so Bron wouldn’t see it. I didn’t want anyone else to see that horrible picture, ever.
“Lyle kept begging us, and buying us the tickets,” Trudie said, “and so we kept trying. It took us longer to find her every time we went down.”
I’d started crying, and I turned my back to Bron and Rich to hide my tears from them. I kept my voice low: “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Because you need to forgive your dad, honey.”
I looked at Trudie. “For what?”
“He’s really hurting right now. He knows Shayna blames him for your mom’s death, and he’s worried that you do, too, and just aren’t saying.”
“I don’t blame Lyle,” I told her. But even as I said the words, I realized that I am quite angry with my father. Savagely angry, in fact.
On the way home I told Bron about it—not about Trudie’s photograph, but about being angry with Lyle.
“You didn’t realize you’re angry at Lyle?”
“Why would I be angry?” I said.
“Because he tried to control the story,” Bron said, “obviously. He lied to you guys for basically your whole lives.”
“To protect us, though,” I said.
She shrugged. “And look how that’s worked out.”
Yours truly,
Jo
PS: Mark must be amused at all these old-fashioned letters arriving in his mail. Did Bron tell you she’s started writing letters to Shayna in Moorhead? She’s sent three or four already and swears she’s going to keep doing it even if Shayna never replies. The US Postal Service is abuzz with the missives of sad, solitary, estranged teenagers.
Wednesday, June 8
Dear Little Jo,
I’m in. I got in. I mean I still don’t know whether to thank you or to kick your ass for going behind my back like that. And for not telling me even when you knew I was going up there for an interview.
It was only driving home from Duluth today with Sylvan and Mark that I put it all together, how you must have done it. I’d already figured out what you did. You packaged up all the letters I sent you—every one of those private, soul-baring letters, from day one to the end—and sent them in to the Admissions Committee as my Autobiographical Creative Essay submission. I mean I still can’t believe you did that.
The thing is you must have done it not before but after I wrecked everything between us. After everything with me and Shayna, and the butcherboys, and your mom, and then with Mark at the Texas Border—after all that. Because when you sent in my letters you must have already known about Uncle Viktor kicking me out of the house. You listed Mark’s apartment as my mailing address, and so that’s where their reply letter arrived. I mean I’m still trying to get my head around all of this, Jo.
So Sylvan and Mark and I drive up to Duluth together this morning, and we get an official tour of the whole place. I go into the interview without the slightest idea what to expect. I mean I am deathly nervous, but the three committee people—two women and one man, whose names I forgot two seconds after they introduced themselves—are nice right off the bat. Not in a fake way either. They’re each looking me in the eye, saying they’re so glad I came and they’ve been so looking forward to “putting a face to the voice.” Those are their words, putting a face to the voice. Which of course makes no sense to me at that point, but only later in the interview.
We sit down, and one of the women tells me they aren’t looking for particular, correct answers to any of their questions. They just want to get a kind of live confirmation of who I am.
“As you know, the Bridge to Education program is designed for a very specific kind of student,” she says. “We’re looking for a special blend of resiliency, adaptability, and tenacity. We call it fire in the belly.” This woman who is saying all this has got the biggest front teeth I’ve ever seen in real life. There’s a gap between them that somehow is making everything she says seem not ridiculous and corny like it’s sounding now, as I’m writing it out, but sincere and heartfelt. I don’t know how that works, exactly—how a gap between someone’s front teeth can make her seem sincere—but it’s working on me in the interview.
They ask me about my goals. Where in the world would I like to travel and why? If I were going to make a documentary film, what subject would I choose?
It’s surprisingly easy to answer these questions. I mean I just make things up. I don’t even remember exactly what I told them. Things just came into my head and I said them, and they were somehow true.
And then the second woman says she’s surprised I’m not talking more about becoming a writer. She says how enchanted they all were by my letters. How moved. “It was such a bold decision to send in your correspondence with Jo as your ACE piece, Adam,” she says. “I mean, for me, that’s the fire in the belly, right there. That decision in itself.”
“Not to minimize the literary quality of the letters themselves,” the man says. “The way the voice emerges slowly, over the span of months. Coming out of its shell.”
“Like a butterfly from a chrysalis,” the second woman says.
I mean writing this down now, it sounds like utter bullshit. But somehow I swear it didn’t sound that way in the interview room.
I was in a bit of shock I guess. I had been sort of panicking all week about not having written the ACE thing. I’d wanted to write something to bring with me, but I hadn’t been able to think of anything. In the end I’d brought my Walt Whitman essay with me, which I knew wasn’t personal or creative enough but I figured wou
ld be better than nothing.
But halfway through the interview they still haven’t asked for it. Instead they’re all complimenting me on my skills as a writer and a storyteller, and saying how brave and open-hearted it was of me to share my story with them. And they’ve said your name: Jo. Not just your name, Jonathan, but my personal name for you, the one that only I use for you. I mean it’s taking me forever to figure it out, but eventually I realize that you must have done it. I realize that it was you, Jo. All of it. You did it.
Sitting there in the middle of the interview, I shove the thought away as soon as it occurs to me. It’s too risky. I mean I can’t risk cracking wide open again like I did the other day with Mark. That black hole of missing home and missing you, all that homesickness blended viciously together? Not in front of these people.
But anyway the interview was pretty much over at that point. They asked me to wait outside the room. Mark and Sylvan were right there, all over me: What happened, what did you say to them, did they tell you one way or the other?
But it was less than a minute before the door opened again, and all three of them came out wearing these gigantic smiles. I would get an official phone call within twenty-four hours and written notice within five business days, but they were confident everything would work out, and they were delighted to offer me a spot in the program.
“Full ride?” Sylvan asked, and the man laughed and said, “Full ride. Tuition, residence, meal plan, laptop, textbook stipend. He just pays for his beer.”
“Once he’s of age, of course,” the first woman added, and everybody laughed.
I have to say the best part of the entire day was seeing that both my brothers were really happy. They were happy for me. That was already a big enough deal. I mean I always thought Sylvan wanted me to work with him and Uncle Vik. On the way home we stopped at Wings ’n Things and got a pitcher of iced tea. Sylvan made a toast to me, and he said, “A scholar in the Kurlansky family.” So I guessed he was happy not just for me but also because of me.
And I knew Mark had already told him about me and you, about me being gay. Mark told me weeks ago that they’d had that conversation. And so I knew the information about who I am was in the background of everything for Sylvan, but somehow it wasn’t diluting his happiness about me at all.
I’m trying not to think about college, Jo. Now that it’s all over and I’m writing this letter here on Mark’s sofa. He’s got this clock in the kitchen that makes a hollow ticking sound even though it’s a regular electrical clock. It sounds loudest when Mark’s working late, like tonight. Did you notice it when you slept here? You slept on the couch I’m sleeping on.
Jo. I’m trying not to think about college, and I’m trying not to think about you. I’m trying pretty much every second here not to fall into that hole again. I just keep trying until I’m so sore and exhausted from all the trying that I fall asleep. It’s taking a long time tonight though. What does Walt call them? Sullen and suffering hours. This goddamn clock.
I guess I am writing this letter in order to thank you though. After I showed you the worst of me, treated you in the worst way possible. Like always, you still kept in mind the future—my future even. There is no way in which you could have sent in my letters to benefit yourself.
It was for me, after everything I did. After everything, you were still generous. Vastly, extravagantly generous.
What is it Walt says? You said it to me when we first started writing, when you were introducing yourself. Spending for vast returns. Bestowing yourself. Not asking the sky to come down to your goodwill, but instead scattering it freely forever.
Jo, I shouldn’t even be surprised you were generous where it wasn’t deserved. It’s just who you are. But thank you anyhow. Thank you. Thank you.
Sincerely,
AK
Wednesday, June 8
Dear Kurl,
Yesterday at school, when I walked past Maya and Dowell and a couple of the other henchmen sitting outside on the stacking chairs by the gym door, Maya said, “Oh, hey, it’s Kurlansky’s buttplug.”
The others laughed. At first I kept walking, but then I looked back to see whether Dowell was laughing along with them. He wasn’t—he glanced away from me, across the parking lot at the empty school buses.
I turned around and walked back to Maya.
“What happened to your buttplug costume?” she said.
Kurl, I will confess that I was terrified. I had no desire to face any more physical pain. But the stakes seem to have shifted, somehow, since the last time one of the butcherboys made a crack at me or tripped me or jabbed me with a sharpened pencil. It’s not been that long, just a few weeks, since the party at Bron’s. Dowell is still in his arm cast, though he always wears his hoodie sleeve with the cuff slit open and pulled down over it. Partly my newfound courage must have come from the news that he’ll be switching schools after this year. Bron told me she heard that his parents are sending him to a boarding school in Connecticut, that he has an aunt there with gobs of money who offered to “step in.”
So what does this news mean for me? A foreseeable end to the threat, I suppose, or a fundamental shift in the nature of the threat, at least. The butcherboys without Dowell—without the enforcer, the muscle behind the operation—are purely a psychological menace. I suppose I decided, right at that moment, that I was finished allowing my psyche to be menaced. And as this was Maya’s first overture since the party at Bron’s house, her first attempt at post-cataclysm humiliation, I felt it was an important juncture.
Anyhow. I was terrified, but I still walked right up to her. And when she asked about the buttplug costume, I said, “Listen, I really need to know what more you want from me, Maya.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Maya said. She hopped down from the stack of chairs, and Liam and the other butcherboys followed. Dowell stayed where he was, though.
“I would just really like this to be over,” I said. “Maybe you could tell me what you want from me, in order for us to be finished.”
Maya laughed so that the others would laugh, which they did, except for Dowell. “Oh my God,” Maya said. “Do you think you can take us now, or something?”
“Of course not,” I said.
“So what are you going to do, sic Kurlansky on us like he’s your dog? Do you have him on speed dial or something?”
Laughter, but Dowell wasn’t laughing.
I said, “Maya, you’ve been siccing your friends like dogs on me for nearly two years straight. I’ve gotten hurt. Christopher’s gotten hurt. I’m not that interested in keeping it going, and honestly, I don’t think Christopher is, either.”
“Shut up, Jonathan,” Dowell said, but he wasn’t getting down off the chairs. Also, he’d used my name. Not a name—not a derogatory name—but my name.
Maya looked up at him. “What are you, friends now? Wait. Are you fucking him now?”
Laughter, laughter. “Shut up, Maya,” Dowell said.
“Maybe he’s your buttplug. Is he your buttplug now, Chris?”
“Shut the fuck up, Maya!” And now Dowell got down off the chairs. He stood there a moment looking from me to the others as if he was trying to decide whom to punch first.
The others had stopped laughing, distracted by anticipation. Then Dowell shifted his weight, shuffled a step back, and drifted casually away along the wall.
“Where are you going?” Maya said.
Dowell didn’t turn around. He used his cast to shove off from the wall and struck off across the parking lot. He lifted his good hand to shoulder height. His middle finger poked up out of his hoodie sleeve.
“See? Nobody is interested,” I said. “I’m actually not that interesting of a person, to tell you the truth.”
Liam laughed at this—accidentally laughed at what I’d said—and Maya had to shoot him a look so he’d stop.
It occurred to me that it must be something of a slog, heading up the butcherboys. Maya’s a hateful, vicious litt
le reptile, but she’s also surprisingly intelligent. In Geography last year she gave a presentation on water conservation, and her slide show impressed me with the depth of its analysis and the elegance of its design.
“My clothes were interesting, maybe,” I told her, “but that’s over now, too. I’m just a boring, scrawny little gay kid. Nobody’s interested.”
It was unprecedented, Kurl. I couldn’t read Maya’s expression. If I had to guess, I would have said wary. It was as though she was suddenly waiting for my next move, rather than making the next move herself. It was nothing I’d experienced before.
Even as I turned around and walked away I was bracing myself for attack. I was certain she’d see her mistake, feel the ground she’d lost, and attempt to recuperate it by ordering Liam to give me a punch to the back of the head or at least a good hard shove to send me sprawling. “Now you’re interesting,” she’d say, or something. Anything, to get the butcherboys laughing at the correct person again.
Miraculously, though, at precisely that moment Mr. Kwan rounded the far corner of the building and came strolling toward us, straight for the gym door. By the time he was past, I’d put enough distance between the butcherboys and me that I knew I was off the hook, at least for the time being.
Kurl, I need to give credit where credit is due: It’s you I have to thank for my newfound perspective, for my sudden awareness of the relative triviality and irrelevance of the butcherboys as predators and me as prey. You told me right from the start that I was drawing fire for my aura, for the bubble I was in. And I kept making a case for deliberately living in a bubble over the gruesome realities of high school. Well, the evidence is in: You were right and I was wrong. There is no advantage to remaining inside a bubble when all it does is leave you floating around delusional, isolated, the object of everyone’s sharpest weapons. I like to think I’ve finally, officially burst out of my bubble once and for all.
We Contain Multitudes Page 25