Choir Boy

by Unknown Author

  Mr. Fennimore laughed. He wore a blue flannel check shirt and a black tie. “So it must have been a pretty amazing model car meeting if you wound up out here,” Mr. Fennimore said to Wilson.

  “Yeah,” Wilson said, giving Berry a shut-up look. “Long story. We kind of got separated.”

  “Speaking of which, whatever happened to the Bishop?” Berry wondered.

  Mr. Fennimore took Wilson and Berry to a burger joint at last. Berry called home from a payphone. Judy sounded ragged with fear. “Marco said he was bringing you right home. Where have you been?”

  “Oh, he tried to kidnap me and Wilson to Vermont. We ran away. He still has your car.”

  “Fuck! The fucking bastard. Vermont? Why Vermont?” Judy asked a bunch of questions. Berry gave short answers. Just when Berry was getting ready to hang up, she said, “Oh yeah. Mr. Allen is here, from the church. He wanted to talk to me about the choir.”

  Berry skipped all the way back to his table at the restaurant. Not even Mr. Fennimore’s attempts to make Wilson and him discuss aesthetics could damage Berry’s high. Wilson just looked down and mumbled as Mr. Fennimore threw out conversational openings about some chick named Edith Stein. Wilson shot Berry a disgusted look as his dad droned. Berry shrugged. Mr. Fennimore was a nice guy, even if he was wound pretty tight and his breath smelled like isopropyl.

  Then Mr. Fennimore started rambling about his poetry and how he’d won some award once, and how he was doomed to have no respect in this lifetime because of his day job in advertising, but if only his own son would respect him it would make the whole deal bearable.

  Wilson muttered under his breath, “Ivy League. Phi Beta Kappa. Marry a doctor,” over and over.

  Finally, Mr. Fennimore drove Berry home. Berry said, “See ya soon,” to Wilson, then ran upstairs three steps at a time.

  The apartment lookeci clean again. Judy had a glass of wine in one hand and wore a tight-waisted long skirt and lacy top. Berry wasn’t used to his mom looking so foxy. It made her slender face and wispy auburn hair look way younger, and her cheeks had a coal-fired exuberance. Berry licked every one of his bottom teeth one by one. When she saw Berry, she ran over and hugged him. He felt the sweat on her arms and chest.

  “I’m so glad you’re home safe,” Judy said. “Vermont?” “It’s almost Canada,” Berry said.

  She made Berry tell the whole story twice, tense at the first hearing and maniacally giggly the second time. “Oh my God, you couldn’t make something like this up. I hope he goes to Vermont on his own. I’m changing the locks first thing tomorrow morning. Vermont. Well, I married him because he made me laugh. Who knew I’d divorce him for the same reason?”

  Judy had never mentioned the “D” word before. It felt like the cathedral’s storeroom filled with moldy hymnals. “Uh. Are you sure about that? I mean, just a few days ago, you guys had this new lease on love and now ...”

  “A lot happened in the past few days.”

  Berry could only think of one thing that had happened in the past few days. “Uh. You know that thing where the kids feel responsible for the parents splitting?”

  “Stockholm Syndrome?”

  “Maybe. I saw an after school special about it before Marco broke the TV. Anyway, I kind of feel like this is my fault.”

  Judy put one hand, fingers spread like a spider, on Berry’s forehead. “Oh, Berry. Even if it was partly your doing, it’s for the best. He’s such a maniac. And it’s worth it to gain such a pretty daughter.”

  “Oh.”

  Berry almost forgot to ask how Mr. Allen’s visit had gone.

  “Oh, Mr. Allen . . . he’s a terrific guy.”

  Berry wished he was watching the DVD of his life so he could switch to the commentary track and understand what Judy was saying.

  “I think Mr. Allen’s great too. So when do I go back to the choir?”

  Judy looked as if a bug had turned up in her wine. “Oh, you’re not going back. Mr. Allen and I talked it over and decided it would be totally inappropriate. You need to move on. He was disappointed at first, but he got over it.” She laughed.

  Berry screamed. He didn’t make words, just shrieked at the top of his range. Judy tried again and again to shush him. Finally, she encouraged him instead. “That’s right, hon, just let it out, primal scream your pants off, it’s the best thing, it’s okay to mourn the old life.”

  She put her arms around Berry again and she felt moist and soft like the warm towelette at the fancy restaurant Judy and Marco had taken Berry to on their twelfth anniversary.

  “Oh, baby, my miracle changeling child. This is all so salty and perilous.” She breathed loudly. “The ground won’t settle beneath our feet, but I know this is right. You’ve always been more beautiful than any boy should have to live with. Now you’re going to live up to it. I’m so proud of you, my sweet girl.” She held Berry until his shrieking turned to crying and the crying went dead. Then she let go and made root beer floats.

  All that sugar so close to bed made Berry brush his teeth twice. It also meant he lay in bed watching the flicker of outside lights against his choir posters. He couldn’t begin to take in everything that had happened. Sometime around three in the morning, Berry still couldn’t sleep.

  My tears have been my meat day and night . . . Berry hummed to himself. Would God I had died for thee . . . He went into the sitting room/kitchen and stared at the television without trying to turn it on. In its opaque grayness he thought he saw Lisa’s father, face down in his own psychiatric lagoon, and then, flooded almost to death, laid up in a hospital bed with tubes into every opening or limb. Berry wondered if Marco was halfway to Vermont yet, if he drove all night.

  He imagined himself at dinner with Wilson’s dad, at the burger joint. He should have warned Mr. Fennimore, “Stay away from me. Don’t you know? I’m the father-wrecker. My own dad or other people’s, no matter. I’m poison.”

  Berry took off his clothes and examined himself. His naked body swirled in the dead TV screen. He saw weirdly pasted porno. Tits and a dick at a standoff. Was it any mystery why everything in his life bled shit? Berry felt nauseated, not just by his body, but by the realization that he’d been enjoying himself. He’d kicked and complained, but a big part of him had enjoyed everything, the clothes, the attention. When he’d started to enjoy his freakish not-this-not-that life, he’d cut it all to shreds.

  He wished he were looking at his body in a toilet bowl and could tug the flush to send it away forever.

  He looked older in the gray image, tired and grime-coated. Maybe he was seeing a twentysomething version of himself, homeless and desperate like the Lambda Youth girls. If he couldn’t sing at the cathedral any more, maybe he’d visit the soup kitchen and throw up on the choir. Berry found some lipstick Anna or Maura had left him and drew on his reflection in the voided screen. He put circles around his breasts, for containment. He drew red crosses over his eyes’ reflections.

  “I miss when I thought I was just going to prison forever,” Berry told the television.

  Morning loomed. Sunrise would hold everything in place, like an extra helping of gravity. Things that shifted in the dark would be permanent by day. Berry would be out of the choir forever. And his family would be wrecked for good.

  Berry ended up in the kitchen again, holding the same knife he’d used to attack his balls last summer. This time he held it to the ridge beneath his breasts. Berry took a deep breath, worth a minute underwater or a long phrase, then he raised the knife to bite at the softness beneath his alien growths. He bit his lip and promised himself to make no sound this time. He sawed until the pain felt like an animal clawing inside him. Then he sawed some more. He used his anger to counterbalance the burning. He felt rivers flow down his stomach to his lifeless pubes. He held the knife in place until his hands lost their strength. Then he let himself fall on the kitchen floor until the cracked ceiling drifted down onto him.

  16.

  “Self-mutilation as a means of self-ex
pression has certain intrinsic limits, particularly if you resort to it each time life gets hairy. After a time you run out of limbs. I’ve seen it a few times; psych wards full of fingerless malcontents trying to dislodge their teeth with calculated falls into furniture. It’s hard to believe you grew breasts just to gain two extra easels for your art. Okay, so maybe it’s not art, art implies technique, which you lack. Unless tormenting others scores as an art form. I can talk all day, you know. That’s what these framed papers on my wall attest to: my ability to fill an hour with words. But speaking of psych wards, you’re lucky you’re not locked up under observation right now. To cut yourself once and all that; but the Wilde reference goes over your head, huh. You know, it’s in your interest for me to feel in the loop. I can do a lot for you if I know what’s going on. It’s not about power. It’s not. It’s about prudence. I’ve already gone out on a huge limb for you. Not a huge limb, a very thin and ill-supported limb extending a few feet over a bottomless drop. Allowing sex-changes in barely pubescent kids isn’t exactly in the mainstream of psychiatric thought, you know. It’s been done in a handful of cases, where the patient seemed especially, I should say suicidally, determined, as you did. But I guess one shouldn’t confuse determination with random self-destructiveness. Trying to discern a meaning in the jumper’s descent only distracts

  from the need to position a net. Speaking of suicide. Have I mentioned I’m out on a limb?”

  “I’m not self-destructive or suicidal,” Berry said. The bandages bear-hugging his chest only covered a scorching pain that made it difficult to think about anything else. The hospital had released him after just forty-eight hours, but Dr. Tamarind could send him back any time. He was on pain pills and antidepressants, and off hormones.

  “It speaks,” Dr. Tamarind said.

  “I’m not an it.”

  “So what are you?” He tapped a pen on his legal pad.

  Berry shrugged. “You talk too much.”

  The heat beneath Berry’s sternum flared as he twisted in his seat as if to escape Dr. Tamarind’s deep black eyes. The bandages reminded him of the ones he’d used to hide his breasts for so long. Only now, the new wounds meant Berry couldn’t repress his chest for months, if ever.

  Berry started to tell Dr. Tamarind about his parents’ rec-onciliation-turned-divorce, his near-murder of Lisa’s dad, the discovery his maybe-womanhood had helped turn Wilson gay, and his exile from the choir on the eve of recording. As he spoke, pain flared. It comforted and terrified Berry, because it jarred his mind away from his usual terrors, but also reminded him where they led.

  Berry was forever scarred, the doctors said.

  Dr. Tamarind seemed to reflate as soon as Berry gristed his machinery. He had a slice of cake with too much fruit and frosting on top to eat chaotically. He had to eat some fruit and frosting to make it less top-heavy before he could scoop at the sides. He started with Wilson. “You don’t really think you could have made your friend gay, do you? I mean, you may be attractive, but let’s keep a sense of proportion. You may have helped him become more conscious of something that was always there.” Then he tossed out a lot of questions about Mr. Gartner’s special swimming pool, and whether Berry had intended murder. Then there was the divorce.

  Berry’s guilt lessened a little, replaced by annoyance. Berry thought a makeover might be fun compared to Dr. Tamarind’s droning. “You’re missing the point,” Berry said in the middle of a long sentence about the difference between thought and deeds, or faith and works. “It’s my fault because I was starting to enjoy this.” He gestured down at his femaleness.

  Dr. Tamarind’s precarious cake had turned out to have a delightful creamy center. “So you have started to enjoy it all. The clothes, the bangles, the makeup. But the price was too high, eh? The price is always high for truth, often higher than you could know.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “Maybe we went too fast.” Dr. Tamarind clasped hands in mid air, then let them fall in his lap. He breathed through his nose. “Okay. So first I need you to promise me no more cutting anything but coupons and paper dolls. Or else it’ll be the observation ward for you and night shift at the county bughouse for me. That’s number one. Number two: do we keep you on the hormones and geegaws? Going on and off hormones is dangerous, but maybe you should quit for good.” “I don’t want to stop.” Berry hadn’t expected to be so sure. “Okay. If your parents want to come in and talk to me about it, maybe we can help them through this. Your dad especially. Meanwhile, I’m going to talk to your mom about letting you go back to your choir as a boy for now.”

  The fire-pins inside Berry swept like pennants. He started to sob and shake. “I’m going to sing again,” he let out between gouts of wet air. “If the other choirboys don’t kill me for being a fairy.”

  “You’re not a fairy. You’re an incredibly brave person, way braver than most kids your age, who should stay away from knives for a long, long time.”

  Judy had bought a book called Your Self-Lacerating Teen, complete with heartwarming pictures of recovered selfslashers and a “Blade-Free Pledge” you could ask your kid to sign. She read it cover to cover several times. From the book, she learned:

  • More teenagers cut themselves than people realize.

  • If they stay away from wrists, neck or other arteries, this is a Good Thing.

  • This behavior usually means something.

  She’d gone robotic when she’d taken Berry back to the emergency room. She’d alternated between crisis mode resolve and exclamations like “Oh my God oh my God . . . what are we doing Oh my God ...” Seeing the terror and crippled emotions in her face, Berry’d felt worse than before he cut himself. But she hadn’t scolded Berry. Instead, she’d stroked from neck to collarbone, kissed his nose, and said, “Oh baby, please be okay, please don’t do this again, my sweet baby. Please . . .”

  Marco had show'ed up at the hospital on Wednesday, halfway through Berry’s; stay. Judy had seen someone it was okay to blame. “Come to finish the job, macho kid-rejecting asshole fiend?” Marco glared and would have thrown a telephone at Judy if the nurse hadn’t watched him. “Fucking creep, you’d rather beat our daughter than see her as she is.” Marco had left without talking to Berry.

  Judy’s pattern of alternate panic and dead-eye stillness had continued after Berry’d left the hospital. “Oh Berry,” she’d say after staring into the shiny kitchen floor an hour or two, “you’re such a perfect blessing and 1 love you. I wish I’d said that before.” She’d hug Berry so tight his stitches almost popped, then return to staring.

  Berry felt Judy needed Dr. Tamarind more than he did. The two of them spent an hour together after Berry’s session. Berry sat out in the waiting room trying not to think about what they might be saying about him. Instead he leafed through Judy’s self-laceration book. For fun, he went through and crossed out the word “not” with a chewed-end ballpoint pen. “This behavior does mean your child is a Satanist. Your teen does know what he or she is doing. You should leave your teen alone with sharp objects.” Then Berry felt guilty for his “not” crossings. Anything he did to battle his guilt just made him guiltier.

  Judy came from Dr. Tamarind’s office looking bloodless. “Hey mom.” Berry hid the defaced book behind his back. “You look like you should eat.”

  “We’re having dinner with Mr. Allen.”

  Once, two years earlier, Wilson’s parents had invited a bunch of St. Luke’s people over for a dinner party. They’d summoned Mr. Allen, Berry and his parents, and a few others. Mr. Allen had shown up looking like the victim of a beautician’s assault. Somehow, he’d sprayed his mane into a neat dome over his head and trimmed his beard, mustache, and eyebrows. He’d swapped his normal thick glasses for a special pair with flared steel rims. He wore a square blue tie with white stripes, a tweed jacket, and dark pants. Berry had dropped his stuffed mushroom on his good pants at the sight of Mr. Allen tamed. Mr. Allen was always the wild musician who played forty men
and boys using gentle hysteria as his bow.

  But even weirder, Mr. Allen had brought a girlfriend to the Fennimores. She’d been younger than Mr. Allen, a few7 years at least, with tanning booth skin and bleached hair, plus square glasses. Berry couldn’t remember her name, but the other choirboys had called her the Fox. That was the first Berry had heard of Mr. Allen having a life away from church.

  Staring at the choirmaster had distracted Berry from watching his parents struggle to act sophisticated in front of Wilson’s. Marco had thrown a fit before the party, taking an hour to find a stain-free tie. He’d finally dug out a power tie from his broker days, creased but not blotted. At the Fennimores’, Marco had sloshed dip on the Power Tie anyway. Berry had listened to Mr. Allen discussing politics with his mom, and ignored Marco’s attempts to impress Wilson’s parents. Marco had stayed sober and tried to sell Mrs. Fennimore on one of the Spiritual Growth Funds he’d peddled at the time. (Biotech stocks plus animal guide consultations.) Mr. Fennimore had gotten roaring drunk and shrieked at Dean Jackson about subjectivity. The Fennimores hadn’t invited Berry’s parents to another party, if they’d held any. Berry had never seen the Fox again.

  “So map out the Mr.-Allen-and-you thing for me,” Berry said to his mom on the bus. Marco still had the car. Judy had threatened to sic the cops on him to get it back, but she wouldn’t mind if he drove out of town and kept driving in one direction.

  Judy leaned over and lowered her voice. Across the aisle, a large woman made a show of not listening. “I just enjoy talking to him,” she said. “He’s passionate about music. And I know he’s had a big influence on you. It’s nice to have him around.”

  “So he’s my dad now?”

  Judy laughed. “Let’s not jump the gun.”

  Berry imagined vaulting over a gun that fired wildly, halfaimed at pubes, legs, or torso.