The man coughs, which might or might not signal something, and spends the next game courteously—or perhaps evilly—disregarding the fact that his son pokes at the ball without taking aim and that, if he manages to sink a shot, drops the cue ball right behind it. CJ has done no wrong but feels that he has and hates his baseless, fathomless guilt, and his father for engendering it, and his own weak will for not casting it off. Meetings with his father are tests of a part of himself that his father wants to destroy, that CJ must use all his intelligence and cunning to preserve.
“That’s two flawless victories for you,” CJ says. “Want to go for three?”
His father’s hand rises to his mouth, slow and terrible like a drunk faking sobriety. CJ’s pulse speeds up. It’s his personal goal to see his father at a loss. Even in Auschwitz, CJ believes, his father was in utter self-control—this slight, pale, balding, righteous man, tapping the floor with the end of his pool cue the way God wanted Moses to tap the rock. He sets the stick down, casts a glance at his watch, and says with the mildness of authentic sobriety, “At some point in our discourse as father and son, you could oblige me with respect. In the meantime, courtesy will do.”
He sits down at a leather-topped table, opens a drawer, and takes out a stack of envelopes addressed to deans of admissions at various universities. Open, already stamped, each holds a signed check and a stapled sheaf of questions with the responses typed in. “Since you apparently haven’t found the time yet, I’ve taken the liberty of organizing your college applications. I hope you don’t mind.”
“You’ve gone beyond organizing.”
His father, of course, lets the remark pass. Back to his normal briskness, he arranges the envelopes in order of preference. On the bottom is Michigan State, where his father earned his B.A. and then his M.D. and where CJ is almost certain of admission. He hands him the first packet. “Please sign by the X?”
Suppressing a roll of the eyes, CJ scans the sheets that show Princeton University how desirable he is. He has—honest, really—nearly perfect scores on his Scholastic Aptitudes. His extracurricular interests do indeed include tennis, literature, and film. He speaks and reads German (Entschuldigen Sie, wo kann man die Toilette finden?). Under the entry Describe an incident that changed your life is a long, single-spaced paragraph, typed, no doubt, by his father’s secretary, describing how he learned to “move on” after the death of his grandfather, who drove in from Lansing on Sundays to play chess with him. CJ loved his grandfather, and he still misses him, but he smiles coldly. “I was a sensitive lad.”
His father nods, overlooking the irony. “The most selective schools give considerable weight to the personal essay. It provides an indication—”
“If I’m psycho or not.”
“Not at all. But it will tell them something about your emotional range and how effectively you can express yourself. Your level of maturity…”
CJ shakes the page in his hand. “I didn’t feel that bad when Grandpa died. It was worse when Adelman moved to Seattle. And I didn’t even like Adelman.”
“Do you think your confused anger at the departure of one of your shrinks will get you into a good college?”
CJ glances over the application. “To my knowledge, I do not and have never felt ‘bereft.’ ” He fans himself with it. “What are ‘mores’? Like those chocolate marshmallow things you eat around the campfire?”
His father coughs, a sound as precise and conscious as his gestures. “Feel free to change it as you see fit. We can retype.” He holds out a pen. CJ waves it away.
“And why the fuck did you name me Christopher? You should have come right out and called me Jesus! Do you really think people don’t know you’re Jewish? Man, I’m surprised I was circumcised.”
His father looks at him, but so briefly that the glance is lost in the quick-flowing words. “Please, Chris. Don’t speak of things that you don’t understand.”
Now his angry energy is suddenly gone. He goes through the stack and signs everything Christopher Joseph Walker, although the name is so phony he sees directors of admissions laughing at it. CJ considers slipping the U of Michigan letter into the envelope addressed to Michigan State—it would be interesting to see what, if anything, ensues—but any pleasure in the prank sinks in the marsh of his father’s determined serenity. The man is actually humming to himself.
“We want the best place, naturally, for your abilities, which we both know are considerable.”
“Good thing they didn’t ask for a photo.” CJ presses his lipsticked lips together, extends his slim legs.
His father, who has never acknowledged in CJ anything either obnoxious or humorous, nods without looking at him. “You ought to be welcome anywhere you want to go, but it is competitive. Your recommendations will be mixed. Activities are nil, unfortunately. I’m trying to be realistic.”
“Varsity tennis, ninth grade.”
“You were good.”
“Danny’s better.”
“What are you talking about? He can’t beat you.”
“In two years he will. Next year.”
“You should have continued.”
“I despise tennis.”
A flash of something that CJ reads as contempt tightens his father’s mouth. One by one, the man checks the envelopes, taping over their seals. CJ lounges in the brocade chair, kicking his feet on the wooden legs like a little kid. He wonders what Saint and Vera are doing. He can picture Saint watching TV with his younger siblings, their mom coming into the room and sinking into a chair, but he has no idea about Vera. Then he notices the absence of his father’s favorite school from among the applications. In an exaggerated Boston accent he says, “Where’s Harvard?” pronouncing it Hah-vad. “Aren’t I Harvard material?”
His father’s eyes shut, then open again. “Do you know how many senior class presidents will be applying to Harvard? Boys who play football and volunteer to help needy people and still earn their A’s?”
“Isn’t there a chance?”
“It is not impossible. Is it what you want?”
His father sounds suspicious but hopeful, but CJ is on a roll. “Harvard or nowhere. Harvard or the U.S. Navy. Join the Navy and see the world. Harvard or”—a brilliant idea strikes him—“a kibbutz in Yis-ra-el!” He grabs one of the envelopes, addressed to a school that isn’t Harvard, and tears it in half. Deliberately. With dignity. His father sucks his cheeks in.
“If you wanted to go to Harvard you should have followed my advice at the beginning of high school.” He looks off into a corner. His eyes, nose, and mouth are small and fine-looking and give the impression of letting one another discreetly alone. “Well, who knows? We’ll send for an application. As people say, it’s only money.”
“Ha, fooled you!” cries CJ. “Fuck Harvard. Who wants to go to any crappy school?”
His father stands, pushes his chair against the table, stacks the rest of the envelopes, and sets off with them across the room. “Please control yourself.”
“I have control! I have total control! It was a waste to fill out those stupid forms! Really, since in about thirty-six hours I’m going to kill myself. Thursday at dawn, to be precise. So, Dad, you can tear up those checks. I’m dead serious!”
CJ tosses the speech like a kick at his father’s retreating back. But when the man turns, gazing full upon him with an open, sad, vulnerable face, CJ’s arms reach out. Part of him labels the gesture stupid, pointless, humiliating, inane. Like he needs a hug? But for a moment in the middle of the game room, he sways back and forth, arms extended like the leaves of a plant on the verge of animal movement. Evolving.
“CJ, your mother would be upset if she heard you talking like this.”
He could cry now. He is supposed to cry. The very thought helps him rein himself in. “She’s given up on me.” It comes out less wry than he intended, but he plunges on. “Danny’s her one hope. Her last, best hope.”
His father’s mouth compresses, as if he’d just bitt
en down on something hard. Then his hand gives a slightly absentminded wave. “Keep this up and we’ll have to call Dr. Lowe.”
CJ closes his eyes until the tears go back to wherever they came from. He rocks for a moment in the wake of his father’s leaving. Then he addresses himself to the game of pool with a hypothesis to test: Will he play better with his father gone?
—
He is racking the balls when Danny walks in, nodding his usual universal approval of everything. “Play me, brother?”
CJ squints along the cue, banks a stripe into a side pocket. “Are you dressed appropriately?”
“I want to play with my clothes on, okay? Mom could come back anytime.”
“Mom’s in New York. Do you know how far away that is?”
“There’s Dad?”
“At rehearsal. Seven to ten. Strip, sonny. And chalk your cue.”
CJ sinks two—clip, clip. In neutral, cleansed of feeling, incapable of error, he observes Danny forsake his reluctance. Danny is often unforgivably stupid, but sometimes the light of courage shines from his face. The boy wriggles out of his T-shirt, unsnaps his jeans. Goosebumps raise a patch of hair on top of CJ’s head. “Hold up, boy. We’ll both do it. Every miss we take something off, you and me both. That’s fair. How’s that, brother of mine?”
“Cool,” says Danny, resnapping his pants without self-consciousness. “Or how about this? When you sink one, I take something off and vice versa?”
“You got it.”
Danny rams his head back through the neck of his shirt. “Sometimes men take off their clothes and women watch. There are places.”
“Who says?”
Danny’s eyes shine, though his shirt is inside out. CJ feels slightly sick. It’s frightening how easy it is to make his brother happy. A person shouldn’t be so exposed and vulnerable—it puts the burden on everybody else. On the other hand, Danny loves the game of pool. He can play down here for hours, just angling balls off the table walls. And recently Danny beat him for the first time, sinking perfect ball after ball in his birthday suit, with the grace of a little baby Greek god.
Tonight Danny promises to be as good. His break sinks one and sets up a second. CJ removes his watch, a shoe. He feels the burn of adrenaline; he’ll have to work now. When Danny misses shot number three, CJ takes command and manages to relieve his brother of both shoes and his Batman ring. The game proceeds with equivalent successes and failures until one ball remains on the table along with the cue and the eight. The boys, six years apart, are both barefoot in their jockey shorts. “Gerald and Rupert,” says CJ, not that Danny will understand. The boy is giggling.
“This is fun, isn’t it?” Danny says, and looks at him. “Hey, you’re wearing lipstick.”
“So it would seem,” CJ replies, his voice ringing highbrow and phony in his ears like his father’s.
Danny guffaws. “And you have a tattoo! When did you get a tattoo? It looks cool. I’m going to get one.”
CJ wonders then what would happen if Dad left his music at home and came back suddenly. What would their mother say if she saw them? We’re sick, he says to himself, soothed by the “we,” the league of him and brother Danny. In league. Complicit.
He is still in charge, although uneasily. Danny’s last miss lined up the balls, but on the far side of the table, a setup if his arms were a foot longer. He calls the corner pocket, stands on tiptoe, reaching for the angle he can see as if traced out on the green baize. Then behind him comes the breath of a giggle. He turns his head: The chalky tip of Danny’s cue stick points at his butt. CJ grabs the stick and flings it across the room. “Fetch!”
Danny is laughing like an idiot. He covers his mouth; giggles spill out between his fingers.
“See that stick?” CJ says. “Bring it back to me.” Still laughing, Danny sets off. “Not like that. Like a dog. Fetch, Rover!”
Danny drops to his hands and knees, making his way around the table along the edge of the Oriental rug. The boy sometimes gets like this, so silly it destabilizes the kingdom and CJ has to find new and creative ways to restore order. Now Danny is crawling back with the long stick between his molars. The stick is about as long as he is tall; it’s tough, maneuvering between the wall and the table legs. The stick falls and Danny labors to pick it up with his teeth, like a real dog. He doesn’t cheat. Spit drips down his chin. “Good lad!” CJ cries.
CJ’s heart is beating crazily. In the way, way back of his mind, eyes narrow on him with disapproval. But the game has power over him. It’s not about to let him go. He reclaims the pool stick and pats his brother’s doggie head.
Having reestablished his authority, CJ draws back the stick again. But when he tries to hit the ball, the stick won’t move. He turns to find his brother’s hand on the end of the shaft. Danny tries to squelch his laughter, but it keeps coming. He seems unable to let go of the cue stick. He squeaks with hilarity.
“You know, boy, the Vampeer committee has sanctions for such as you. Who dishonor the Great Chain of Being.”
Danny drops to his knees as CJ has taught him. Laughter at last is vanquished. “I’m sorry, Majesty.”
“Do you deserve forgiveness, earthworm?”
“I sincerely hope so, Lord of the Planet.”
CJ checks for irony in his brother’s sweet-voiced delivery. “You are without redeeming facet.”
“I know that, Lord.”
Rising to his feet Danny bows and steps back. CJ sinks the shot. Without a complaint Danny removes his jockey shorts. CJ watches the boy’s lower body emerging from his clothing, the small globes of his butt white as marble below his sturdy brown back. On an impulse, CJ drops his own shorts, exposing his body, its lean, neat muscles. He and Danny are equal now—naked, proud young gladiators. “Beautiful,” says CJ. “Gerald and Rupert!”
“Who?”
He tells Danny about the two main male characters in Women in Love, who love women and each other too. In his favorite scene they wrestle in the library in front of the fireplace. “On a polar bear rug in front of a fire,” he says. “I might have made it up, the rug, but it’s a scene to pay attention to. By a guy you’re going to start reading on the Vampeer program. D. H. Lawrence.”
“Was he a homo?”
“You schmuck! What’s the matter with you? Just because you love men doesn’t mean you’re a homo!”
“Do they marry the women? What happens in the end?”
“One of them gets married.”
“What about the other one?”
“Read it and find out.”
CJ won the game. He could rest now in the fullness of Danny’s trust in him. While they dress, though, preliminary to a second game, CJ gets an idea. “How about this? Same game, no stripping. Whoever makes a shot gets to make a command. Not just me. You too.”
“You’ll do what I say?”
“Yup. Even steven.”
“What about a time limit? Not forever.”
“Five minutes.”
“And we can only command one thing. Not two things. One thing with each turn.”
When Danny at last falls silent, CJ makes the break, but as usual the so-called random universe aligns against him and nothing falls. His brother drops the first shot. “Go, boy,” says CJ. “I am yours to command.” Danny looks delighted and a little frightened. “Go ahead. Do your dirtiest.”
After a brief hesitation Danny orders CJ to get down on his hands and knees and bark three times. CJ complies, emitting three sharp barks and a fourth for good measure. “That’s it?”
Danny nods, but when his next shot goes in, he directs CJ to skip around the room with his hands on his hips. After one circuit CJ is to curtsy before him and say, I am a sugarplum fairy.
“Is that fairy as in fag, Master?” says CJ. Danny screams with laughter.
“Come on, just do it!”
CJ does it fast, the small shame passing quickly up and out of him, like a burp. Danny applauds, eyes watering. His face is red. He’s giggling h
ard, choking. Then he misses, and CJ sinks his shot; CJ is in charge again.
Now that the scepter of government is back where it belongs, CJ is aware of his brother without looking at him—sturdy and handsome, at ten nearly as tall as he is. He has a square chin, a good chest for his age. He looks like their mother, who is as tall as their father, prettier than their father is handsome. When they grow up—were they both to grow up—Dan would be taller by far. CJ discovers, then, a staggeringly miraculous idea. “Go up to Mom’s closet and bring down a dress.”
Danny looks at him, measuring with his eyes.
“Something kind of fancy. With a brassiere. The Kommandant commands you.”
“She won’t like that.”
“Go, boy-o. You know how the Vampeers regard people who go back on their word. And bring down some of her makeup too. It’s in the bathroom.”
Danny returns with a lipstick, a brassiere, and a white sleeveless summer dress with a zipper in the back. “It’s time to get dressed,” says CJ. “You have a dinner date. The bra goes on first.”
Danny holds the bra at arm’s length, as if gauging the scope of the transgression. CJ thinks only of the power he has acquired, whose boundaries and limitations he has yet to investigate. The bra is huge even on the tightest pair of hooks. CJ discards it but helps his brother into the dress and zips it up. It’s a little loose, but with the belt buckled it doesn’t look bad. CJ’s heart is knocking around in his chest. “You’re looking good,” CJ says, “but a woman can’t go out without her makeup.” He applies lipstick to his brother’s lips and smears a little on his cheekbones. The brothers breathe shallowly, the only sound the conditioned air coming through the vents.
The transformation touches CJ. Dan’s dark hair curls over the top of his ears. His face is smooth and hairless. In a hat and earrings he’d look like a beautiful young girl. A sound is coming out of CJ unlike any he has made before, like the screak of the rusting door to an ancient dungeon where prisoners were disemboweled. “Danielle,” he says, “you’re gorgeous! You should look in a mirror!”
Once, in Lourdes Page 19