The group met in the auditorium where the boys stole cookies and punch on Sundays. A dozen kids, almost all girls, sat in folding chairs in a semicircle. Canon Moosehead faced them, wearing his “regular guy” uniform: jeans and a sweatshirt.
“Well, personally,” said Wilson, oozing sincerity, “I just can’t picture sex without the bond that can only come from his-and-hers face towels. I can’t get my mind around it.”
Berry glanced at Canon Moosehead, who coughed and tried not to look at anybody. Canon Moosehead fidgeted a lot these days. During the Canon’s worst fit, Wilson handed his note to Rebecca, the girl to his left, and indicated she should pass it to the other girls whose chairs faced the Canon in a semicircle.
“But what if you marry some guy, and he has elephantiasis or whatever it is that makes your weewee act weird?” asked Lisa. “I mean, say you’ve never seen one before and you think it’s normal for his thing to look for peanuts and drink water? What if he does that thing the Bible talks about and spills his seed on a pillar of salt?”
While Lisa spoke, it was Berry’s turn to cringe. She’d brightened when he’d shown up at the TLW meeting. He still didn’t know what Maura had told Lisa. The fact that a popular girl wanted to talk to Berry struck him as a scourge.
Bad enough that she talked about obscure French perverts to him. Worse that she seemed to flirt.
Canon Moosehead uncrossed his legs, crossed them again, gripped his knee in both pink-knuckled hands and pulled it up to his ribs. “Well,” Canon Moosehead said, “Many married couples face ... That is to say, back when I was married, we . . .” He actually managed to pull his knee to his chin, so it covered his mouth for a moment. “Jung! I mean, if you look at what Jung said . . . And yet St. Paul ...”
Berry raised his hand. Ten girls, Wilson, and a flustered minister turned. Canon Moosehead nodded for Berry to speak. He realized he had no clue what to say.
Berry tried to imagine Marco and Judy, their marriage, and how it made sex better, worse, or nonexistent. “Sex can be scary as well as fun,” Berry said. “All kinds of bad things can happen. But it’s easier and nicer to deal with that stuff if you’re married. Married people work together and keep each other safe and stuff.” Everyone smiled. Wilson gave Berry a thumbs up. Lisa’s smile cast approval or lust, Berry wasn’t sure. Eloquence in the cause of abstinence might actually get Berry laid.
The “sleepover” note made the rounds with no trouble. One or two girls giggled despite themselves. Afterward, Canon Moosehead came up to Wilson and Berry and put his hand on Wilson’s shoulder. He avoided Berry’s eyes. Wilson and Berry were late to meet Maura. “You were both great,” the Canon told them. “I’m really glad to see nice young men here in TLW. I wish more choirboys would show up and take an interest. Sex is a wonderful thing, a God-sent fulfillment, but ...” The Canon trailed off, as if distracted. “I mean, Jung.”
The boys finally escaped the Canon and ran to their “date” with Maura. She sat, pleated miniskirt fanned around her thighs, in a coffee shop. Several coffee drinkers stared, and one guy drew her portrait, but Maura paid no notice to them. “Berry! Wilson! How’s it going?”
“Pretty good,” Berry said.
Wilson seemed nervous about something. Even after all his boasting about his “new girlfriend” he seemed a little hostile to Maura. Finally, when Maura went to the bathroom, Berry asked Wilson what was up. “Uh, nothing,” Wilson said.
“Seriously, man. What’s bothering you?”
“I made the mistake of mentioning Maura to my parents. Now they want to meet her.”
“So what’s so bad about that?”
“I know they’ll totally freak out if they see her. My mom’s totally uptight and my dad’s a wreck. And she’s ...” Wilson made a gesture with his hand. “Nasty.”
When Maura got back, Wilson started talking about his future, aggressively, as if building a wall in a hurry between him and Maura, and maybe Berry too. “I’m probably off to boarding school for high school, then I’m shooting Ivy League. Columbia maybe, or Brown.” He’d major in English and public health, then a masters in journalism. Soon, Wilson would be writing great disease books or fascinating articles for glossy magazines. He acted like he had it all worked out, but Berry could tell his plans were half made up on the spot, half stuff his parents had fed him. After all, Wilson had told Berry often he expected to be dead by college.
“I’m going to have my operation and marry a rich guy,” Maura said. “He’ll be a surgeon who’ll sculpt my body into his ideal, and we’ll travel around the world rescuing endangered species and building the world’s biggest lizard sanctuary. You know, everybody always wants to save cute birds or baby seals, but what about all those lizards and insects that are fizzling to nothing? So, we’ll buy a Pacific island nobody lives on and fill it with every type of lizard. Finally, I’ll write a book about all the lizards we’ve saved and it’ll become a major motion picture starring me.” She leaned back, satisfied she’d trumped Wilson.
“How are you going to find this wealthy lizard philanthropist? Is he going to rent your ass and fall for you, like in Pretty Woman}” Wilson said. Apparently Maura had told him what she did for a living.
“I don’t know,” Maura said. “You can’t plan these things.” “That’s because they don’t happen except once in a million years. What happens is people grow old and ugly and die,” Wilson said. “Or they just die period.”
“Wilson, shut up,” Berry said.
“I guess you read that somewhere,” Maura said. “Or maybe your folks told you. I should ask them when I come over for dinner.”
“Both of you, cool it,” Berry said.
Wilson bit his lip and looked down. “Please don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?” Maura said. “Don’t ask about your morbid world view, or don’t go to dinner with your parents?” Wilson shrugged.
“Can we change the subject?” Berry asked. “I got a new robe the other day.”
“Don’t worry,” Maura said with a laugh that reminded Berry of Judy mocking Marco. “I can tell you don’t want your precious parents meeting me. I’ll stay away. From them and from you. I prefer Berry here anyway. At least he’s accepted himself. You’re a bigger freak than he is, but you keep it under wraps.”
Maura got up and stalked out, way speedier than Berry would have expected on her high stilettos. Berry and Wilson watched her go, then sat in silence for a few minutes. “Again with the hella weird,” Wilson said at last. “What did she mean, I’m a bigger freak than you?”
“I dunno,” Berry said. “Want some hot chocolate?”
8.
The powers at Orlac Junior High chose to have Sex Ed and Career Day on the same day. Because Berry had Career Day in the morning and Sex Ed in the afternoon, he ended up with a Swan’s career prospects and the sexual knowledge of a Goose.
Berry settled uneasily in his desk chair, dead center in a classroom full of Swans in khakis and Skechers. Some of the kids had neat little plastic binders marked “Career Goals”—the kids who made a binder for everything, probably even PE. Berry had no binder, nothing to put in a binder. He imagined metal coils clutching air. He thought of Wilson’s career plan.
Rat announced the class was lucky to have a professional motivational counselor, Gray Redman, come talk to them. Gray wore Gap just like the kids facing him. He had starch-fed middle-aged features and a neat hairline that started on the top of his skull. Gray Redman didn’t give a speech. Instead, he just asked the kids, “How would you like to stay sitting where you are for the rest of your lives? Raise your hands.” Nobody raised a hand. “You sure? Those little desk-chair things sure look dope to the max.” When Gray Redman tried to talk like a kid, it came out sounding like he’d recorded a sound bite from YH1 and dubbed it over his own voice. “All righty then. Anybody who doesn’t want the crappy chair and wack view for the next fifty years needs a career plan.”
The kids had to write five adjectives that describ
ed their good qualities, five verbs they were good at or enjoyed, and five nouns they hated. Berry stared at his pad nearly the whole time, then wrote five adjectives that jumped into his head from music he’d sung.
That left verbs and nouns. For verbs, Berry wrote, “sing.” Then, “chant, descant, process, bathe.” For nouns, Berry wrote: “teacher, psychiatrist, bear (he was thinking of the investment bears Marco complained about), testosterone, secrets.” He looked up just as Gray spoke again.
“Sweet. So, act like you know. You want a job where they value those five qualities about you. You want to do the things you like. And you want to avoid the things you hate, at all costs. Those fifteen words are your keys to destiny if you know how to read them. Now who wants to read theirs aloud?” Hands rose, except Berry’s and a few other kids’. Gray called on Sabine, a girl in a turquoise cashmere sweater, leggings, and a hair-twist.
Sabine breathed in. “Well.” She folded her hands in her lap and glanced only briefly at the paper on her desk. “My adjectives were: organized, motivated, playful, creative, and focused. My verbs were: write, draw, power-jog, conceptualize, and empathize. And my nouns: pessimists, dead weights, slackers, phoneys, and bureaucrats.” She smiled wide and tight, leaned back.
“Great list, Sabine. You could be a career counselor yourself, and I totally mean that as a compliment. So what are some other jobs Sabine could have?” People offered advertising, creative writing, journalism, court reporting, and some other things.
Hands climbed again. Other Swans recited their fifteen defining terms. Berry sank deeper into his desk-chair. That shyness grabbed Gray Redman’s attention. “Why don’t we call on someone we haven’t heard from yet? How about you there?” He pointed at Berry. “The brown-haired kid in the baggy sweater. What’s your name?”
“Berry.” It came as a whisper. Already, several Swans giggled. Brandon, an athletic straight-A student, snuck a text message to his friend Todd.
“So Berry. Tell us your five adjectives.”
“Um. The first one was ‘goodly.’”
The class detonated into laughter. Gray laughed a little too, then waved his hand. “Hey, let’s not be mean, here, huh? Goodly. I like that, yo. It’s creative and, you know, unusual. I’m not sure if it’s a real adjective or what. But it’s cool. What else you got?”
Berry’s voice, which could fill a cathedral, barely carried. “Uh. Humble. Uh. Fruitful. Contrite. Many-eyed.” That last word had come to Berry in a final moment of desperation, from an anthem about cherubim and seraphim dancing in Heaven. By now Gray Redman’s half-hearted attempts failed to staunch the laughter hemorrhage.
“Hey,” Gray said. Nobody heard. “Hey. Hey. Kids. It’s good to be different.”
Berry covered his face with his notebook and prayed for Redman to move on to someone else. Berry wasn’t sure he believed in God, but at this moment he would have pledged anything if the supreme being would just step in. If God turned the Swans into locusts, Berry would believe forever. Or if Berry had any real faith, at least this pain would be a martyrdom.
Gray seemed determined to finish Berry’s “life assessment” before he picked on some other loser. “So hey, what kinds of careers could our special guy aim for with such a great list?”
A voice from the back of the class piped in: “The exciting world of toilet-bowl cleanser.”
Gray shouted over the laughter. “Hey, come on. That’s not funny, guys. I mean, there are as many exciting careers out there as there are people in this room. How about tech support? Or teaching?” More laughter. Berry had already stood and walked halfway to the door. It was nearly time to turn into a Goose anyway.
Berry hung around the hallway and stared at anti-drug posters for half an hour or so. Their smudgy black-and-white photographs of wan faces gave drugs a fascinating glamour. School made Berry feel as though he’d taken some not very good drugs. He had all the attention-sapping side effects, but without any happy brain fur.
The bell rang. Berry was just about to head for lunch when Gray Redman tapped him on the shoulder. “Hey, kid. I’m really sorry about the career thing. Listen, here’s my card. You need any motivational counseling or anything, give me a call, okay?”
Berry nodded. He shoved the card—gray with red letters—into a jeans pocket. “Thanks, I guess. I already know what I want to do, and that’s be a choirboy.” Berry waited for Gray to laugh at him.
“Are you a choirboy now?” Gray asked instead.
“St. Luke’s,” Berry said.
“You may not be able to keep doing that forever, and it’s hard to feed a family on choirboy wages. But, hey, maybe if you figure out what you like about choirboying, you can look for that in another job.”
“I like the radiance.” Berry wished people would stop telling him he couldn’t do what he did forever. “I don’t worry about anything when I sing in church.”
Gray smiled and patted Berry on the shoulder.
Berry ate lunch alone. The kids from Swan class watched him and laughed. His fifteen words had obviously become a major topic. Berry had attracted ridicule and sometimes violence before. But this was different. His stomach sank to the root of his still-sore testicles. Berry sensed a turning point.
The other choirboys at Orlac didn’t exactly let the choirboy relationships carry over at school. Randy had once stopped a bunch of Geese who were beating Berry—after they’d already bruised a few ribs and knocked the breath out of him, but before they got around to dislodging teeth or cracking fingers—on the grounds that he’d had enough.
That’s not to say Berry had no friends in the Geese classroom. He did sometimes chat with Marc from choir, and Zawa, a boy who was deaf in one ear and invented clothing out of paper, cloth, and scrap metal, would pass Berry halfnonsense notes. And some others acted friendly on occasion. Junior High social life seethed with uncertainty. Someone might be friendly one week, neutral the next, and hostile a week after that.
“Hey, how was your career thing?” Marc acted surprisingly friendly. “I found out I could be a food service worker or self-destructive gambler. Randy could be a bus or taxi driver.”
“That’s great,” Berry said. “I wasn’t sure what they ended up deciding for me. I think it’s a mystery.”
“I’m going to be a metal bird,” Zawa scribbled on a notebook page.
The adulthood double-whammy of careers and Sex Ed had the Geese acting more like kids, clowning and tussling. Randy used another kid’s butt to erase the blackboard, holding him by his belt. Berry found a seat in the magic middle but close to the window.
The other theme of the day seemed to be Teachers’ Day Off. Toad introduced two volunteers from the Sex Ed Council, a local non-profit, and practically sprinted for her break room.
A tall, skinny guy in a too-small sports jacket, tie, and jeans talked about diseases, while his colleague, a short, round woman with curly hair, listened. “Insanity, heart problems, brain damage, and death. Sure, gonorrhea is treatable if you catch it in time—just look out for a foul discharge from your opening—but a lot of people don’t know if they have it until it’s too late. And then there’s chlamydia. Chances are somebody in this room will have it in the next few years.”
Berry liked diseases and gruesome stories of limbs that rotted off or brains that failed. But the Sex Ed man’s disease talk was too boring, it was all pill bottle stuff: side effects and symptoms in dry words. Berry imagined a voice like the stentorian tenor from the start of “Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence” by Bairstow intoning that a plague of genital warts came upon the people and they wailed in the depths of despair and the Lord said unto them: “True Love Waits.” The woman was better than the man. For one thing, she was kind of cute—she had Maura’s sensuality, but without the live-wire energy. “Abstain doesn’t just mean a spot on your stomach,” she said. “It’s a way of life.” Nobody laughed at the “ab stain” pun. She talked for a while about ways to say “no,” because you respect yourself too much, or because
virginity is not just the potential for something else, but a promise in itself.
The last bell approached and Berry heard laughter in the halls, the machinery of clean young violence clattering to life. Berry felt needles stab his gut. He suddenly knew he wouldn’t get away from school without serious beating. What if Brandon and some other Swans just wanted to crack some of his ribs, but then they found his breasts? What if his pills fell out of his backpack? Berry pictured his neck snapping against Brandon’s quarterback knee.
He jumped up before the last bell even sounded and ran for the exit. Berry ran a few blocks until he felt he’d outpaced anybody who wanted to kick fifteen kinds of shit out of him. Then he headed for the cathedral. If Randy and Marc ever heard of Berry’s big moment, they’d already forgotten about it by the time rehearsal started. They were too busy getting jazzed about that night’s sleepover in the Twelve Step room.
Four girls turned up for the sleepover, but no Lisa. Rebecca and Jee both had been at the True Love Waits gathering. They gave Berry warm head-tosses when they arrived at the pizza joint where the gang had agreed to gather. Berry knew Julie from Choir Camp, but didn’t know the fourth girl, Betty, at all. All the girls wore little backless blouses tied with strings in back, petal skirts, and platforms.
Berry studied the girls for clues. Mr. Allen and the older choirboys drilled the younger boys endlessly on how to walk, sit, and stand. How to look skyward and keep up with your music. The right facial expression. How to kneel or take communion. But Berry couldn’t see any such choreography in the girls’ movements. One moment they’d belch and giggle like guys, the next they’d strike exaggerated poses, legs just so, chins tilted, eyes a little wide. It was like Rebecca and pals kept forgetting to give a performance.
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