The Leaving

by Gabriella West

  The shutters opened a little. He saw a figure, heard it gasp.

  “It’s me,” he said softly.

  The window flew up. “Stevie!!” Ron poked his head out. “Christ—I thought it was a burglar! Then I saw your face. Are you OK?”

  “Glad to see me?” It was an idiotic question; he wished he hadn’t asked it. In reply Ron kissed him. The warmth of his lips made Stevie realize how cold he was, how desperately cold.

  “Can I come in?”

  Ron paused for a moment. He said gently:

  “Stevie, why didn’t you ring? You know I have a phone in my room.”

  “Is it so terrible to be surprised like this? Were you asleep?”

  “No. Try to be quiet, though. Mum and Dad went to bed late. I did too, we were watching a film.”

  He took Stevie’s arms and pulled him in. It took a minute or two. Stevie collapsed on the floor. Ron shut the window.

  Stevie got up slowly. He wandered towards the bed, sat down on it.

  He raised his eyes to Ron’s face. There was silence for a little while.

  “I had a bad evening,” Stevie said finally, “with my father. He was practically asking me to admit that I was gay, and grovel about it. He told me that he hadn’t raised me to be “like this.” He seemed disgusted with me. I didn’t know what to say. I nearly blurted out what I felt. I wouldn’t have mentioned your name, of course. I’m going to have to tell him sometime. I’m just afraid of getting physically attacked.”

  “Oh God,” Ron said in a whisper. “That’s dire. You never told me he was like that.”

  “I don’t like to talk about him. I’m ashamed of him. And he’s ashamed of me. Who’s right?”

  “You are, Stevie.”

  “I’ve never seen you in pajamas.”

  Ron blushed. He was wearing a pair of light green pajamas. He approached the bed hesitantly. “Silk,” he said. Stevie touched the sleeve.

  “Nice.”

  “I like them.”

  Ron put his hands on Stevie’s coat. “May I take your coat?”

  “You may.”

  “You’re staying, aren’t you?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “Mind!” Ron repeated. He shook his head wordlessly. He slung Stevie’s coat over a chair. Then he was at his side again. “I’m honored you came here. I mean, flattered.”

  Stevie reached out and touched his skin, moving his hand up under Ron’s pajama top. He began stroking Ron’s nipples. For a moment they stood together, touching gently.

  Then they kissed. Ron put an unsteady hand out and turned off the lamp. Darkness enveloped them. It seemed to give them extra time, and Stevie took his time. The sounds of their kissing had never seemed more erotic. Even the taste of Ron’s mouth was different at night: slightly metallic, slightly minty from toothpaste. He ran his fingers through his friend’s hair.

  Ron broke off with a gasp. “I wish we could ... make as much noise as we want,” he whispered breathlessly.

  “Do you ever hear your parents?”

  “No. Thank God. Do you?”

  “My parents don’t have sex. I think they found it produced children, so they stopped.”

  Ron laughed softly. Then he said: “Stevie?’

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m glad you came. I’m really in the mood.”

  Stevie sat on the bed, removing his shoes. “What else?”

  “What else? Well... I miss you around now. Every night. I always think of you before going to sleep. Do you think of me?”

  He couldn’t see Ron’s face. “Yes,” he said simply.

  Ron flung himself down on the bed. “Do you jerk off?”

  “Sometimes. Just thinking of you, without touching myself.”

  “God.” Ron sounded awed. He sat up and said: “Let me do it,” pulling off Stevie’s shirt and undoing the buttons on his jeans.

  Stevie lay back on the bed and let Ron strip him. He sighed with pleasure as Ron’s hands moved over his body. Ron began to kiss his neck, his chest, his belly button. Then he moved lower. Stevie closed his eyes. He let his mind empty of his father, of the Leaving, of his own future. He enjoyed the new, exciting heat in his body, the tingling, the sweat. Oh God, let it last, he prayed. Let us last. He caressed Ron’s face with his hand. It was usually he who initiated the lovemaking, not Ron. But he loved it this way.

  * * *

  Later, as they lay close together breathing almost in unison on the damp tangled sheets, Stevie whispered: “Did I hurt you?”

  “No...”

  “I love you.”

  Ron laid his head on Stevie’s shoulder.

  “I mean it,” Stevie said dreamily, as if Ron had questioned him or as if he were answering a question he had asked himself.

  “More than anyone?” Ron asked.

  “There’s not a whole crowd of people I love, you know.”

  “Me and your sister.”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish it was only me.”

  “Well, it is. In this way.”

  They kissed, hard. “I love you too,” Ron said. “We’ll be together one day. No more dodging around.”

  Chapter 5

  Stevie and Ron’s involvement, relationship, there were so many words, had to me become a thrilling romance. Pitted against the two intrepid lovers was the dark, threatening figure of my father. And I was stuck on the sidelines, watching the drama with some discomfort and jealousy, but with serious interest. In fact, I became obsessive about it in those months, as it got clearer that my brother himself was taking it more seriously, was thinking of it as a thing that would endure long into the future. I found it easier to focus on Stevie and Ron as protagonists in an erotic, potentially tragic performance than on my own aimless, rather farcical existence, which seemed to be winding down, emptying itself of meaning, as I approached the Inter, turned 15, and for the first time had to deal with the feeling of being different and alone.

  I had been lucky. Up to a few months before, Stevie’s presence in the house and the routine of walking home with him from school had nourished the illusion that my life was—well—happy enough, and that someone cared for me. The fact that I cared more had not really got through to me; I didn’t think of it in those terms. But now it seemed that I was supposed to follow Stevie’s lead, as I had always done, and focus on someone else. The irony was that no person I chose would have the same meaning for me as a simple interaction with my brother himself. And there seemed to be only two choices for me: this embittered state of aloneness, or else the decision to go out with some boy just for the sake of being seen to go out with someone and gaining peer approval. But it was not a thing I wanted to do. There was something dishonest about it. What I might have aimed for—the intensity of Stevie’s thing with Ron—seemed impossibly far away. Instead of ecstatic romance I would have to deal with joyless multiple encounters.

  Not that I would sleep with these boys. Nobody Susie or I knew “slept around,” as we termed it. But the thought of kissing a boy was alarming enough. Or being kissed. One would always be in a passive, wary position, fending off unwanted advances from someone you undoubtedly wouldn’t like. But you’d be flattered, because they liked you, enough to bring themselves to touch you in the dark of a cinema or unlit corner of a disco, that is. This was also called “getting off.”

  I was surprised that other girls didn’t seem to think about it this way.

  What seemed to me unnatural behavior was completely natural to them, obviously. I couldn’t help judging them harshly. So little communication or real respect went on between the sexes. I wanted someone I could really talk to, trust, rely on.

  If I fantasized at all, it was not about me and another person, but about characters in books I had been reading. I would extend their romances (usually terminated with a discreet dotted line or white space in the novels) and have them repeatedly fight, and make up, and kiss passionately, and make love—that part was very vague.

  It was ine
vitable that thoughts of Stevie and Ron would creep into my list of fantasies. I added them to my list of couples. I fictionalized their relationship, but as Stevie became less real to me the interactions that I conjured up between the two boys took on an authentic quality. I would have been surprised had I been told that they said different things to each other when alone, were less tender.

  It seemed to me, watching Stevie, that what he had achieved I could never achieve. But the thought of love held my imagination. I ruled it out for myself in the short term but I did think that at a certain stage someone would appear. And that, of course, would magically be it. Meanwhile, all I had to do was be patient and wait for this person of curiously uncertain gender. It would take a long time, I knew that. In the meantime I could self-righteously ignore the goings-on of Susie and her friends. I could hold out until I felt something, really felt something, for a person. It worried me that I hadn’t yet.

  * * *

  Joe was not that person, needless to say. He was perfectly nice, though. That was the annoying thing. If I could have hated him it would have been better. As it was I felt guilty for not liking him more.

  I had gone over to Susie’s that Saturday afternoon and she had lent me makeup and given me a scarf to wear as a brave attempt to smarten me up. “Keep it, I have dozens,” she said. She herself had spent what seemed like hours changing in and out of outfits, talking on the phone with friends, doing her hair.

  I was so nervous that I could hardly speak. We were all going into town for something to eat and then we’d go to a popular American comedy film that was playing, and after that, Susie had said, “We’ll sit in a pub and get pissed. That’s the way these things usually end.”

  She had offered to let me stay the night at her house, but I had a terrible feeling that this meant that I would have even more time to spend with Joe alone while she said goodnight to Jeff nearby, and refused. It relieved me that there would be little time for us to be alone together: I would have to talk to him, but I wouldn’t really have to do anything else...

  The evening began quite predictably. We sat at a table in Pizzaland downtown. Jeff and Susie smoked, laughed, told jokes. Joe and I listened, unable to compete with our friends, but glad to have someone to listen to so we wouldn’t have to begin to talk to each other.

  He had blond hair that he was letting grow, and freckles, and he blinked a lot and flicked his hair nervously. I examined my nails, flexing and clenching my long fingers. There was a lot of throat clearing, and I kept trying desperately to think of something to ask him, but no inspiration came to me. Finally, after staring at his denim jacket for a few minutes it occurred to me to ask: “Do you have a bike?”

  He shook his head. “No, but me Dad says, after the Inter, if I do OK, I can get one.”

  He had a low voice, with a fairly strong Dublin accent.

  “You go to Gonzaga, don’t you?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Gonzaga was a Christian Brothers’ school where the academic record was quite good and discipline—compared to Fintan’s, anyway—was notorious for its strictness.

  “How do you know Jeff, then?”

  “We’re neighbors,” he said. “I wanted to go to Fintan’s too, but my father said— ”

  “He told Jeff he’d become a layabout like me,” Jeff cut in, grinning. “I’m forbidden to set foot in Joe’s house now. The poor lad has to study.”

  Joe looked embarrassed. I saw that unlike Jeff, he worked hard. And he actually seemed quite intelligent. Why did he hang around with Jeff, then? My vague interest in this was banished by Jeff’s next comment.

  “Yeah, Fintan’s has gone to shit since the nuns left. That’s what my mother said. But I think it’s having a woman as head. She can’t keep the teachers in line. That’s why we have flakes like Casey running around. She’s the one who hired him.”

  I stared at him, furious suddenly. I liked Mrs. McHenry, the Principal, a tired-looking woman of about 45 who was doing her best, I thought, to change the school from a run-of-the-mill convent to a type of comprehensive, Irish style. That way a few interesting students had trickled in, like Ron, for example, whose parents wouldn’t have sent their son to a Catholic school. And young teachers like Mr. Casey who wouldn’t have been hired at a Catholic school. What was Jeff’s problem?

  “Sorry, I forgot you liked him,” said Jeff, gesturing at me. “Don’t look at me like that, Cathy, I just think he’s daft, that’s all.”

  “She thinks he’s brilliant.” Susie gave me a condescending smile that I did not return, looking down sullenly at my empty plate. It had not taken us long to devour our pizza and we were now filling in time before the show.

  “I hate his classes. They’re so fucking boring. I’m not doing Honors English next year. All this stuff about symbol and metaphor. I don’t know what he’s on about half the time.”

  Jeff seemed to be directing this comment to me. I was clearly supposed to sympathize, mutter “Yeah, he does go on a bit,” but instead I found myself saying: “It’s quite simple,” in what must have sounded like a maddeningly arrogant tone of voice.

  Even Susie couldn’t cover this one up. She gave me a warning look. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. There was a long silence.

  “How’s your brother?” said Jeff suddenly.

  “Oh... fine.”

  “I don’t see him around much.”

  “No?”

  “Her brother doesn’t like me,” said Jeff with an exaggerated sigh. He scratched his head. “‘Course, I’d be worried if he did!”

  “Coffee?” said the waitress, appearing at our side. We all ordered coffee.

  Susie cleared her throat. “I can’t believe you said that,” she remarked in an amused voice. She then smoothly changed the subject.

  I wanted to say something to Jeff, but I couldn’t find the words. I didn’t dare to say what I felt: that he wasn’t fit to lick my brother’s boots. And Jeff, seeing as he was supposed to be on his best behavior, didn’t press it any further. He slurped his coffee, told more jokes. This time I didn’t laugh, or even bother to listen. I sat feeling far above them, wondering what Stevie was doing and what he thought I was doing, or whether he’d be thinking about it at all.

  For a few minutes Joe and I discussed the Inter Cert English syllabus. That was about all we had to talk about and we drew it out as long as possible. Meanwhile Susie and Jeff grew more animated, their talk more outrageous. Susie seemed to burst into shrieks of laughter every few minutes. Jeff’s rough, drawling voice grated in my head. I was grateful to Joe for talking to me, but the fact that he was Jeff’s friend made me think less of him. Where had Susie’s standards gone, I wondered.

  * * *

  I felt as sorry for Joe as I felt for myself. There we were in the cinema, aware of Susie and Jeff sitting beside us holding hands, giggling and crunching crisps. The cinema was filled with couples. I could sense that and it didn’t make me feel any more comfortable. Joe, I knew, was just as uncomfortable.

  I understood the problem. He went to a boys’ school and so had no opportunity to meet girls. Jeff had set him up with me because it was the easiest thing to do; I was Susie’s friend and therefore it seemed appropriate to Jeff and Susie that we should be pushed together.

  I remember very little of the film. The whole evening had been quite depressing, yet I distinctly recall feeling a fondness for Joe; at least he was trying and so was I. But we were both longing, I imagined, for it to be over. And time passed so slowly.

  Finally the film ended. Jeff made approving comments about it. Susie said she’d loved it; I could tell she was lying. Joe and I were silent. We all sat squeezed together on a bench in O’ Connell Street and passed a can of lager back and forth. It made me feel vaguely nauseated at first. I leaned back and looked at the stars. Around us groups of chattering people drifted home, lingering in little clumps. It was a warm, damp April night. Drunks stumbled up and down the street muttering under their breath, occasional
ly bursting into hoarse song. I could smell the rank Liffey air.

  Jeff, his arm around Susie, suddenly began to sing. After a moment Susie joined in.

  I kissed my love by the factory wall

  Dreamed the dream by the old canal

  I kissed my girl...

  He trailed off. “Where did I kiss my girl?” He enquired. “I forget.”

  Susie went into a fit of laughter. “Come on, the chorus is good. Let’s all sing the chorus. Come on, you two!”

  So we all sang the dirgelike lines

  Dirty old town, dirty old town

  Down the street we could hear someone getting prolongedly sick.

  “Well,” I remember Jeff saying, “It’s been another lively night in the cosmopolitan capital of Ireland.”

  “Yeah, that thriving center of industry, fashion, music. Where all the trends start. It’s great to be on the cutting edge, isn’t it?” Susie said.

  “Oh, ’tis great,” Jeff answered, lighting a cigarette.

  Joe and I smoked too. A philosophical silence had fallen on the group, and relaxed by the drink, I no longer felt the need to make nervous conversation. Joe, slumped beside me, evidently felt the same. What does it matter? I thought suddenly, looking up at the stars. What does it all really matter if I speak or don’t speak?

  “When do you have to get home, Cathy?” Susie asked me.

  “Eleven.”

  “Fuck. It’s passed that now.”

  I glanced at my watch in surprise. “Oh, yeah.” Now that the evening was drawing to a close I almost felt I’d enjoyed it.

  We stood at the bus stop together, Joe and I, while Susie and Jeff kissed nearby. I could sense the tension coming from Joe. Finally he said awkwardly: “Can I see you again?”

  I was dumbfounded.

  “You mean ... with Susie or Jeff?” I asked.

  “No, not really. I mean, I’d rather see you alone.”

  I thought about this for a moment. The brief flattered feeling had worn off; I felt unenthusiastic about repeating the experience.

  “I’m really busy now. I’m studying a lot.”