X I
Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours
Makes the night morning and the noontide night.
Richard III
I slept forever.
The soft warmth between our tangled bodies was something I had thought about and something I had dreamt about for a long time. When it came to me like a gift on that blinding, sun-drenched Christmas morning, I let it sweep over me like the crashing, childhood waves off of Nags Head, North Carolina, the ones that would pick me up and hurl me onto the beach like I was a rag doll, the ones I used to visit with my mother and father, when they still loved each other.
I felt Nicolasha's breath near my face before he kissed me once on the chin. I woke up and smiled up at him. "Merry Christmas, little friend!" He was kneeling beside me on the floor, wearing a ridiculously old-fashioned thermal underwear jump suit that drooped from his shoulders, goofy long-johns right out of a B-western. He took one of my hands and kissed it, before I glanced down at my lap, where a tray of hot food had been placed.
There were four slices of that salty black rye bread, a block of soft white cheese that was as big as a pack of cigarettes, a small carafe of steaming tea, two of Nicolasha's demitasse teacups, and a plate covered with a mound of scrambled eggs, filled with slices of onions, peppers, potatoes, and a sweet pork sausage, not to mention about a pound of garlic.
No sign of any vodka, however.
He peeled off his faded red underwear and crawled into the covers next to me. We ate in silence while Handel's Messiah played quietly in the background. The little speaker of the clock radio didn't do much justice to the oratorio's joyous expanse, but complemented the warm sunlight pouring into the bedroom over us.
And I felt another wave crash over me, a wave of contentment and reflection that aroused and odd, fast-motion meditation of my life as a confidential agent those last few weeks that lead up to my fateful Christmas holiday, making secretive visits, clandestine phone calls, stealth research, and a few private conversations in search of a father-type I could talk to without being slapped or getting mortified into further, acrid silence.
A few days after I met Felix, I made my first, tentative inquiry at the Pilot Institute's normally well-stocked library, but found nothing, except dry and discouraging medical definitions that told me nothing.
Later that week, I moved on to our school nurse, a shy, frail Mexican-American who had served as an Army medic in Vietnam. He listened to my questions and tactfully ignored the anxieties that had to have dripped like rainwater from my timid overuse of genderless pronouns, doing his best not to be judgmental or give me any advice that would indicate his own attitudes on the subject, except that I should continue my inquiries "until I was satisfied with whatever answers materialized".
The following week, I found texts at the University bookstore that were more forthright and spoke to many of the questions I had been troubled with for what seemed like a long time. A few nights later, I got up the nerve to phone the professor who had assigned those books at his office. We talked for hours, and he even invited me to visit one of his classes, but I couldn't think of an easy way to ask Felix to come with me, and was too intimidated to go alone.
With only a week to go before the Pilot Institute let out for the holidays, I showed up to take confession at our local church, a typically suburban, under-architected spiritual banality that wouldn't pass muster as a city church cry-room. Quite unexpectedly, I ran into Brennan, one of the guys I used to play baseball with. I didn't expect him to be waiting for me after I stormed out of the box, angry and humiliated after a thoroughly negative exchange with the priest about guilt and fidelity and sin and some more guilt thrown in, just in case.
Brennan and I walked through our old playing field, a large, grassy corner of one of our local parks. We were chilled to the bone, but kept each other company until the sun went down. I surprised myself by actually talking to someone my own age, live and in person, face to face, about...well, everything. And Brennan listened, and didn't laugh, or hit me, or make me feel bad, or run off. He told me to find some other priest to talk to, and made me promise to call him over the Christmas break.
With a smile, I remembered holding out my frozen hand, and Brennan pushing it away to give me a tongue-tied hug that helped me muddle through the rest of that night.
I went back to Holy Rosary the next day. A little old lady in the office sent me to see a visiting priest from Poland, of all places. He was a young guy with wavy blond hair and a wiry build who had just finished giving morning Mass when I arrived. He sat us down on the marble steps leading down to the front door of the church, and, in surprisingly good English, urged me to speak freely to him. So I did. He was either the best actor in the Warsaw Pact or genuinely cared about me and my stupid little problem, because we talked for an hour, stopping only because he had to perform another Mass for the other ten Poles still living in Roseland. He invited me to attend, but I chickened out.
Instead, I insisted he give me absolution. Just in case. The young priest was convinced I had nothing to be forgiven for, but grudgingly obliged.
He sent me off to school with parting words, rich, sublime words that kept ringing in my ears: "You are God's child. He made you what you are. He loves you as you are, no matter what people may say. Be what you are, or you will indeed be a sinner against Him."
So this was it, I mused. Being what I am.
What is it about superb food or being naked with someone that makes it so easy to ruminate over the vital emotions and key moments in your life, like you were watching them over and over again, ala instant replay on television?
I cut a slice of the cheese and swallowed it with a mouthful of eggs, and let another wave of tranquility flow over me as the meal and the morning and our time together continued.
I decided to call the professor, the priest, and Brennan to wish them a Happy Christmas before my flight to sunny Florida departed, to thank them all.
Maybe Uncle Alex would come down to Florida with me, I speculated. God knows what sort of tangled plots and conspiracies would emerge from Jason and my uncle getting together.
Nicolasha lifted the tray from my legs and leaned across me to set it down on the floor beside the bed. "What would you like to do now, little friend?"
I considered the question with mock gravity. "Do you have any more Mr. Bubble?"
I sunk back into the covers and let my teacher take me in his arms, content to stay there with Handel's chorus in the background, singing to me and my tovarisch:
Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yokes from us.
*
The air was clear and wonderfully fresh. There was no wind coming off of Lake Michigan, only a few blocks away. It was still below freezing, but not by much, a veritable heat wave compared to the Ice Station Zero temperatures and wind chill that had besieged Chicago much of that December. Nicolasha lived on a quiet street by Hyde Park standards, but the neighborhood itself was a busy and vibrant one. You could always hear traffic going past on South Shore Drive, buses coming to a halt or crawling away from a stop, commuter trains clattering along the overpass tracks that bisected the neighborhood, the occasional police siren, or some combination thereof. But the street was unusually soundless. You could almost hear the drops falling from the cluster of icicles that had formed on the corners of the porch roof. The sunlight bounced off of the fresh, fallen snow, making both of us squint as we stood next to each other outside the building's glass front door.
I didn't immediately notice the colorless sedan parked behind Nicolasha's Volvo, even though it was the only car on the block that had no snow over it.
"Thank you, little father." It had been some time since I had taken a bath, rather than a shower. I had certainly never taken a bath like that one. I felt like I was still sopping wet under all my clothes.
Nicolasha shifted uneasily on his feet, his eyes fixed on the deep, cloudless blue sky flying above us. I touched his arm, and he sm
iled, but not at me. "No, little friend, thank you. Thank you for coming...for being here."
I laughed quietly and reached up to pull an icicle off of the gutter. "I didn't have any other place to go!" I examined the icicle closely before tasting the tip of it with my lips, making sure there wasn't too much air pollution frozen into the thing.
"You could have gone home."
I snapped the icicle in half with two fingers and glared at my teacher, who seemed small and timid, all of a sudden. "But I didn't. I came here because I wanted to." Or needed to, I wasn't sure.
Nicolasha put a hand on my arm and smiled. It was a careful smile, perhaps a tired one, but definitely sad. "And I am glad you did."
But...?
My music teacher took a deep breath and crossed his arms over his chest with his head down. Slowly, he began to pace over the chipped paint of the wooden porch. "There is so much in my mind and in my heart, little friend, so much I would like to say."
I shrugged my shoulders and leaned against the railing. "I'm not going anywhere," I said in a matter-of-fact way, the same emotionless voice I'd used so much with Mom and Dad of late.
"I don't want to hurt you, or...confuse you."
Nicolasha still wouldn't look me in the eye. I hated that. It made me feel colder inside, a little blue flame of anger deep in my heart that came out through the computerized tone in my voice. "I'm not a little kid."
"No. I know that." Nicolasha's arms dropped to his side as he glared at some invisible dot floating around in back of my left shoulder. "There is very little of any 'kid' left in you."
"I'm going to be seventeen in August."
"And I'm going to be twenty five next week." Next week? An edge had crept into his soft voice. Our eyes finally met and stayed locked together, while our bodies didn't move an inch. "I do not know if that should matter. Or what does, anymore." Well, nothing, if you want to be existentialist about it, I responded to myself, thinking about Camus' The Stranger, which we were reading in Mister Granger's ball-busting Literature class. "All I can be sure about is what I am feeling." Which is...? "I believe I love you." Flash. "I do not know how, or why. But it is what I feel, and I am afraid of that."
My voice sunk to a murmur. "How come?"
"You are so young. You are my student, as well." His eyes begged for me to look away, or make a joke, or push him aside and walk off, but I didn't. I stood my ground and stared back at him, making him say what I couldn't even bring myself to think. "Because I feel so alone so often, and it is less so when you are with me." I could see his eyes begin to fill. "I would like us to be together, even though I know we cannot, or should not. Or..." His eyes closed tightly. "But I love you, and do not know how to stop from feeling that in my heart."
And the last warm wave I would feel inside of me for many, many days came teeming down like a burst dam onto my soul, the defenseless little Mitteleuropan village below.
I heard a car door close behind me, but didn't turn around to look. I took a step closer to Nicolasha, and touched his breast under his leather jacket with the tips of my gloves. My voice was still a whisper, but was no longer unvarnished with emotion. "I love you, too." I couldn't help but smile. Perhaps it was my groping use of one of the great romantic cliches of all time. More likely, it was the sense of power I felt, watching Nicolasha's trembling, bare hand reach up and wait for my gloved fingers. "Nicolas Mikhailovitch Rozhdestvensky."
"So that's your real name."
We spun around to see the old police Captain from much earlier that Christmas morning. He wore a plain white t-shirt under a loose, overstuffed yellow parka, fading blue jeans, a yellow stocking cap, and a battered pair of work boots, whose laces hung loose. His face had a strange mixture of relief and seriousness about it. Nicolasha visibly recoiled upon recognizing him. I stood my ground, again.
"I was pretty sure this was the house we dropped you off at, son." He winked at me like a proud father might. I was confused. "Merry Christmas."
"Yeah. You, too, Captain."
"Thanks." His eyes glanced over to Nicolasha, who had backed up against the front door of the three-flat. I looked at my teacher with a smile.
"He's from Russia, Captain. They're scared of the police over there."
The Captain nodded, as if he already knew that. I heard the hydraulic doors of a bus open down the street. It broke the awkward silence that had crept between the three of us.
"Mister Rozhdestvensky was about to drive me home."
The Captain's rosy red face crinkled with what looked to me like a painful indecision. "That's what I came here for."
Nicolasha hurriedly spoke up. "Please, officer. There is no need." He tried to smile at the old Captain, whose narrow eyes scrutinized Nicolasha's face with the beguiled cunning of a veteran Irish cop.
"Son, I think it'll be better if I take you home."
"Why?"
Ignoring my question, the Captain's eyes continued to size up my teacher. "Got a call into the station this morning, some older guy asking about a teenager that looked a lot like you do." He pointed his thumb at me. "Says he was your Uncle Alex."
"Strasse?"
The Captain nodded once. Instinctively, Nicolasha drew closer to my side, while the policeman continued. "My partner dialed me at home and told me about your uncle's call. So I came out to look for you."
In Chicago, old neighborhood cops did lots of things in funny, personal ways, but, for the life of me, I couldn't imagine what had brought him here. Another car, this one a proper squad car, pulled up in front of the three-flat. The Captain waved him off with a smile that disappeared when he turned back to face me.
"It's up to you if you wanna bring your...teacher...back with you." What if I didn't want to go back, I thought? The old Irish bastard must have sensed me wondering that. "You need to go home, though."
Nicolasha's hand squeezed my shoulder. "What has happened, officer?"
"Tell me." My voice became cold all over again.
The Captain stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets and looked at the sky, Nicolasha, the steps in front of him, and the sky once more before meeting my eyes. "Your parents, son. They...they're dead." Nicolasha's arm slid across my back, holding me up as my legs weakened. "Some drunk at a stoplight, last night. I don't know." The Captain's voice was trapped in the back of his throat. "I'm sorry, son."
My eyes drifted to the icicle I had snapped in half. It laid there at my feet, slowly melting in the sunlight that still hung over the porch, the bright sun's unsullied veneration to the birthday of the son of God.
God...some divinity I suddenly felt I couldn’t hear, or touch, one that had left me in the mists of that daylight, deadened by the frost of a winter afternoon in hell itself.
My God.
*
I sat in the back of the Captain's unmarked Chevy and let Nicolasha hold my gloved hand as we drove to the southern suburbs. The sun was beginning to set. The passing noise of the expressway and the occasional crackle from the police radio were the only sounds that broke the silence I had imposed on everyone.
My mind had wandered to a night last summer, when I had invited all of my baseball buddies to stay over at my place. None of the other parents wanted a platoon of young teenaged boys in their house, but I was "lucky": Dad was downstate on business, while Mom was working that night. The next morning, everyone complained about how I was the last one to go to sleep, and the first one to wake up. Mom teased me in front of the guys, reminding me about how I would never go to sleep when I was a baby unless my little fingers were wrapped around someone's hand.
Nicolasha leaned forward and whispered directions into the Captain's ear. He sat back gently and turned his head sideways to look at me. I paused for a moment before deciding not to return his stare. I couldn't make out his features in the dark of the car, anyway.
Whenever we used to drive someplace, Dad would always insist on traveling at night. Traffic was lighter, moved faster, and there weren't nearly as many State Po
licemen out when it was late, he reasoned. I thought it had to do with his favorite kind of music, jazz, which always sounded better at night. I used to fall asleep with my body curled sideways against the front seat and my head resting on his thigh, that is, until he bought his Stingray, which had its gear shift mounted on a large center console. He purchased it around the same time we stopped doing road trips.
I took my gloves off and put a bare hand back into my teacher's.
*
The wide circular driveway in front of our pristine home was filled with cars, few of which I immediately recognized. The Captain had difficulty finding a place to park. He and Nicolasha flanked me like bodyguards, and walked me slowly toward the front door.
Some idiot had turned on all of the Christmas lights that lined the house and hung from the naked branches of the young trees Mom had planted last spring.
My cousin, excuse me, Mayor Lawrence Poiregaz, peered out from one of our living room windows and pointed at us. He opened both sides of the front door and met us about ten feet from the house. There were a cluster of relatives staring out from within the doorway.
"Thank God, you're here. We were all worried sick."
The Captain cleared his throat, about to speak, but I cut him off with a slightly raised hand and my very best, ice-cold tone of voice: "Who is this...'we'?"
Lawrence the Laughing Lawyer, Dad's contemptuous behind-the-back nickname for his Aunt Hilly's pride and joy, was stunned. I think my bodyguards were, too, but the little blue flame inside of me, smoldering through the ride from Hyde Park, had become rather fierier. He diplomatically ignored the visible bruises on my face. "It's your...we're your family."
Damn my family. I jabbed my finger toward the house. "Is that mine now?" I ignored Nicolasha's gentle hand on my shoulder.
"Uh...what?" Lawrence sputtered.
"The house. You were my Dad's lawyer, weren't you? Is this house mine or not?"
Miles Page 10