Halfway Home

by Paul Monette

  "Was that a Polish wedding or an Irish wake?" I wonder aloud. They shake their heads grimly, ready to declare martial law on Disney World. I reach to the desk for a tissue and gamely wipe my cheek. "Has anyone got some peroxide? I think I just got exposed to rabies."

  "You don't have to do this," Kathleen declares emphatically. "We can all go home."

  "What—not perform? Because of them?" I hook a thumb over my shoulder, insolent with disdain. "Please. Think of Noel Coward at the Savoy, singing through the blackouts. Bombs exploding on every side." I cross to the closet and lift out my caftan, holding it close against me as I tilt my head and give them a noble profile. "We play for England."

  Then I make a shooing motion at Kathleen. "Go tell Mona five minutes. If she wants to pitch the angels, she should keep the telethon short."

  Kathleen rises from the orange crate, throws her arms about me, and plants a kiss on either cheek. "Tom of Arc," she whispers proudly into my ear, then turns and hurries out to do my bidding. My very own nun.

  As I fling off my sweat shirt and peel my jeans, Gray is fetching the sandals, wig, and crown from the closet shelf. It's as if we've been playing the provinces for years, him dressing me, a combination manager and front-man. "You can do ten minutes if you like," he says, fluffing the Dynel curls. "No one expects the whole show."

  "How come? They think I'm half-dead or something? Of course they get the whole show." I'm rooting around in the top drawer of the file cabinet, where the chaos of dusty makeup tubes and broken pancake suggests a mortician's palette. I pull out a red grease crayon and toss it to Gray. "Okay, Daddy, whip me please."

  He looks confused, till I turn and hunch before him, offering my back. He draws a tentative stripe along my spine. "More—more," I urge him on. "Think Jackson Pollock." He gets a little more enthusiastic, slashing and doodling. "We'll have to make do with these," I declare ruefully, checking out my Jockey shorts for stains. "My loincloth is long gone. In a reliquary, no doubt, somewhere in Orange County."

  "Okay, you're a bloody mess," he laughs, dropping the crayon back in the file drawer.

  I duck into my caftan, letting it fall to my ankles. As I turn to face Gray, curtseying slightly so he can tug my wig into place, I can tell he understands now the paradox of my drunken mood, that I am playing tonight for keeps. The fracas outside has merely given the final goose. I'm Merman on the last night of Gypsy. Prospero giving his powers away, to be a mortal man again. Ariel, I free thee.

  "Ouch," says Gray, pricking his finger on my crown. Carefully he places it on my head. "You're a vision," he pronounces wryly, sucking his punctured finger. Then he kneels to do up my sandals.

  In the theater Mona has called for attention. Her sob story and plea for funds are second nature by now, but tonight there's the added weight of the First Amendment to defend. Mrs. Beaudry and her Coalition are always a boon to our bank account. Mona lays it on extremely thick, what price freedom and all. They came for the blasphemer and I stood silent and then they came for me. Go, partner.

  I gaze down tenderly at the top of my lover's head as he fastens the straps. His beautiful vanishing hair. It all seems unbearably blessed right now. No dying for miles around.

  "There—you're all shod." He's up off his knees, an effortless grin, as eager as I to get on with this.

  We step from the lamplit office into the theater's shadowed dusk. It's a six-step grope to the corner of the bleachers—I can do it blindfolded. What I don't expect is Merle, standing mute as a cigar-store Indian, holding my cross erect. Close up he doesn't look so comfortable, clasping the central implement of the Passion, though I'm sure he's done an ace job on the toggle bolts. Gravely he hands me my toolbox. I've never had a crew before, and I like the feeling. A star's retinue at last.

  "Our special guests tonight are from Salva House in Venice," announces Mona McMahon, shamelessly calling the press's attention to our good works. She introduces Sister Kathleen to a scatter of polite applause. "And as for our performer, he needs no further introduction than the reception you got coming in."

  They laugh at her droll delivery, but under the laughter there's tension, a collective brace for a pipe bomb through the door.

  "But let me add that he's done more for my family values than anyone I've ever known. My first real brother." She swallows thickly. Mona honey, please, it's not my memorial service yet. "Ladies and gentlemen, the best of the breed. Won't you welcome the Second Coming.Miss Jesus to you."

  The plain-chant tape hisses on over the clapping. Gray shifts the cross from Merle onto my shoulder, bending close to murmur in my ear, "When you're done, I'll be right here. You can't miss me. I'll be the one ready for summer."

  I can't even turn to blow him a kiss, now that I'm yoked to the cross. Besides, I'm already moving out into the light, on automatic pilot. The applause is enthusiastic from the start, no loxes in evidence. They get the Jeffrey Hunter joke and guffaw when I call my first incarnation a wet dream. They're right in the palm of my hand, almost too easy. I drag my burden upstage and prop it against the platform. They continue to hoot appreciatively as I run through my flouncing warmup. Then I strip off my caftan, and the quiet is swift and palpable.

  Not because of the whip marks. It's an extratheatrical response, like Liz Taylor sporting one of her rocks onstage, except in my case it's AIDS. Guiltily, maybe unconsciously, they're scanning my body for lesions. Yet their scrutiny neither bothers nor inhibits me tonight, as I climb on the cross and begin the crucifixion. I use their squeamish sympathy the same way I use Mrs. Beaudry's shocked disgust—to up the ante. And so I proceed to hammer the nails in my hands, groaning with pleasure. This is the part that makes even the liberal Westside vicars cry uncle.

  Yet I'm only half-there. Not exactly detached, and certainly giving no less than 100 percent to the show. My carnal writhe on the cross pulls out all the stops. By the time I hit them with "I bet you never realized I liked it," I can hear the strain in their laughter.

  But all the while I'm breaking the first rule of acting, drummed into us back at UConn: no picking out friends in the crowd. Foo's in the front row, far left, chin on her owl-headed cane. Kathleen's three rows up in the middle, surrounded by her girls. Gray and Mona stand at either end of the bleachers like sentries. I feel an irresistible desire to break the fourth wall and wave, like a kid in a Christmas pageant.

  As the Mormon Choir hallelujahs in the background, I climb from the cross and head downstage for a stand-up riff. Miss Jesus the revisionist, explaining how the whole idea was gay from the start. I reel off the Apostles, enumerating their kinks. Now I'm watching the I-and-A contingent, clustered about the grinning figure of Kathleen. The battered ladies are riveted by my irreverence, too startled to laugh but clearly delighted. I'd still prefer a few ringers from Mrs. Beaudry's flock. There's not enough potential here for outrage. Given my own abstractedness right now, I suppose I'm better off without the rotten tomatoes. It's just that it feels so tame.

  "Have you noticed that Catholic men prefer to fuck their daughters rather than their sons?" The I-and-A's are at the edge of their seats. Yes, they've noticed. "Whereas your average priest is much more into diddling boys than girls. This is what's called the separation of church and state."

  Then I'm off to set the table for the Last Supper, rattling off the particulars of my on-and-off with Judas. It's all there, graphic as ever, down to the smegma on Judas's uncut knob, but the shock's gone. Oh, not for the audience. They're laughing and gasping in all the right places, as I tick off the proper etiquette for serving blood at dinner.

  "Fingerbowls are a must. And lemon wedges, to cut that gamma globulin aftertaste."

  It's myself I can't shock anymore. The naughty boy has lost the thrill of flashing his dick in church. Though I feel no special overwhelm of regret, I'm glad it didn't happen any sooner, or else there might never have been a Miss Jesus at all. Besides, I didn't require a whole life of being happy. I like it this way, dancing behind the end credits. And it
doesn't surprise me that I'm giving a splendid performance tonight, because I'm really acting. It's not life-and-death anymore, the way it used to be.

  "God shouldn't date," I declare with a wagging finger I learned from Foo. "Unless it's the Pope, in which case it's infallible. Hail Mary full of dick."

  What's next? The Jesus game show. I'm floating from bit to bit, totally painless. I can already see the first barbecue of the summer, out under the pergola. And then suddenly I'm feeling rather chilled. Without skipping a beat about partying at the Vatican, I sidle upstage and scoop my caftan off the floor. I don't usually put it on again because it's so tricky getting my head through the neckhole, my crown like a bristle of antlers. Tonight I have no choice. I'm shivering now.

  "We usually do it in the Sistine Chapel." I slip my arms in the sleeves and gape the neck. "All those musclemen on the ceiling. The first Colt video."

  My head disappears in the folds of the garment as I ease it over the thorns. I don't know what it is that hits me, but I realize with a jolt that I've forgotten Brian—I mean Aaron. My upper body is shaking with the cold, and the wool is snagged on a thorn. I can't imagine what I look like squirming headless under my tent, but the crowd ripples with laughter anyway, since everything's part of the act. Aaron my brother—where did he go? And what was the bit exactly?

  The fabric slips free of the thorn, and my head pops out as the caftan settles on my shoulders. I stare at the tide of faces, no one-liners ready. Am I still freezing? Yes, but the shroud of the caftan hides the shakes.

  "If you ever need a carpenter, by the way, you should call my brother Aaron. He's the best in Nazareth."

  Do they care that I dropped the Pope story cold? They don't seem to, but then I'm trying not to look at my friends now, for fear they might be frowning, as if something's not quite right with me.

  "Aaron never believed in me that way. I mean, if I'm such a miracle worker, then how come I can't hit a baseball?" I laugh, and it sounds like I'm the only one, a hollow reverberation in the rafters of a pen factory. "I wish he'd come back like I did, so we could go into real estate together. See, I don't have to pay taxes. All you have to do is put a steeple on it, and bingo, you got a money machine."

  The last time I did this I saw him so clearly, down to the scruff of the beard and the laborer's massive forearms. Now I have no picture of him at all—except for Brian, who doesn't fit in this story anymore. I'm aware of the silence around me and wonder how many seconds have passed since I dropped the ball. I take a deep breath and try to jump-start.

  "He used to say he was an only child, 'cause he couldn't stand all the publicity. I can't say I blame him. Everyone out there wants to be cured of something, and they think the God juice runs in the family."

  It's not a chill now. It's a wave of unutterable fatigue. I've been working too hard for days to get everything ready, and now I'm paying. Just at that moment my random gaze happens to fall on Foo. Her goggle eyes behind her glasses are shimmering with tears. It's as if she wants to reach out her cane like a branch to a drowning man. And I feel a flail of longing to take care of them all and reassure them.

  "His son's the only child," I say, trying to push through the last mile. "Nice kid. Didn't get much from my side of the family, except maybe his gorgeous looks. No, seriously—I'm glad he doesn't have all this transcendental baggage. He's just himself. His name is... uh..."

  When do you know you can't do it anymore? When you can't think of one more alias. I flash on Daniel—studying his jigsaw, thrown by the swerve of the pickup, staring at me in terror as I fought the stroke. Even half a continent away, he's more real than anything I can say here. Or else I've come to love reality too much to be making it up.

  So I'm standing there unblinking, gaping for all I know. The stillness is unnerving, the hush that follows a head-on crash. They're going to think I've had another stroke. Which makes me look over at Gray, so he won't be scared. But no, his smile is as wide as his shoulders. It seems he's followed my train of thought better than I. The fourth wall shatters soundlessly when he speaks.

  "Let's go home."

  I almost stagger with relief, nodding like a puppet till I find my voice. "Okay," I reply in a whisper. Then I look at them, sitting so quietly in their rows, hardly daring to breathe. I shrug and lift my brows expectantly, as if to ask is it all right. In a burst they begin to applaud, a paper audience if I ever heard one. But that doesn't mean I don't enjoy the fuss.

  I respond with a low bow, as deep as Gielgud, and the tilt causes my crown to tumble to the floor at my feet. A surge of laughter swells their applause, as if the fallen crown is a master stroke of slapstick. Entirely too easy, but of course they mean well. I'm still feeling dead on my feet. I fling out my arms like I did on the bluff, embracing the sea, only this time I'm beckoning Gray and Mona from their sentry posts at the corners. Both of them balk, reluctant to steal my thunder. I make a face at Gray, lolling my tongue as if I'm about to fall over. In two long strides he's beside me, an arm around my shoulders. Mona's quick to buttress the other side.

  The audience, loving a theater tableau, gives us a fine extended burst. My arms are draped about their necks, allowing me to sag nicely. Sweat pours down my face, so my sudden fever must have broken. I can see Kathleen beaming as she claps her hands. Foo's stick drums the floor. I raise a limpid hand from Mona's shoulder to call for quiet. They stop applauding instantly, as well behaved as the middle school at Saint Augustine's.

  "Now listen carefully," I instruct them in a low voice. They all lean forward, creaking the bleachers. "We're going to slip out that way, me and my boyfriend." I point stage right, to the darkness by the loading dock. "You guys stay right where you are for about five minutes. Keep the laughs going, so they think I'm still out here blaspheming." I hook a thumb at the front entrance, where Mrs. Beaudry's minions wait for the exit crunch. "You got that?"

  Dutifully they laugh as one, following orders to the letter, especially the I-and-A girls. For them my leaving is pregnant with drama, like the Trapp Family waltzing off, over the pass to Switzerland. I feel a tug of regret, thinking I've somehow failed them by collapsing in the middle. Did I make any dent at all in the brute scar tissue of their lives? They appear completely satisfied with half a show, as they pick up the ragged end of applause to send me on my way.

  "Thanks, baby," says Mona, smearing my cheek with a cherry-red smooch as she stands aside to let us pass.

  Gray steers me by the elbow, heading off right, and I feel the old perversity kick in. Drained as I am and wafted by applause, I'm not sure I want to go off now. I forgot to tell them never to give up hope. Would they figure it out on their own, seeing me leave on Gray's arm? That if I could find it, right in the middle of dying, without Miss Jesus or even a car, then anyone could.

  We're just at the edge of the arc of stage light, by the corner of the bleachers. If Gray notices any friction of resistance in my exit, he doesn't show it. I turn and shoot up my hand in a last wave. They retort with a laugh to cover my tracks. Then we're groping across the pitch-dark wastes of the loading bay, skirting dusty cartons of novelty pens. Just ahead, there's a clunk as the back door opens, held by the mute and stalwart Merle. We slip past him without a word, and the night air enfolds us, sharp with the tang of ocean.

  We step across the platform to the rim of tires. Instinctively we both look over to the entrance ramp, where a straggle of the Coalition waits in the blue neon glare, placards propped by the door. We're in shadow and draw no notice. Gray climbs over the tires, silent as a Chumash, and eases himself to the pavement. Then he holds up his hands to lift me down.

  I fall toward him and feel him grip my sides, as he sets me down lightly on earth. At the moment I'm too exhilarated to remember what my symptoms are. The pickup's only a few cars away, and we more or less skulk toward it, ducking in on either side. I stay low, and as soon as Gray's got the engine running, I tuck into my first position, head on his thigh. I'm still in my Jesus wig, the swirl of hair in
my face coy as Veronica Lake.

  As he pulls us in reverse, I look up through the windshield and see the sliver of moon. Then as he turns in a half circle, the shaggy tops of the royal palms come into frame. Gray checks the rearview mirror to make sure no one's following.

  "You ready for a little summer?" he asks.

  I laugh, rocking in his lap as he hangs a sharp left and makes for the beach. "Oh yes indeed," I tell him. Home is the place you get to, not the place you came from. "Haven't I told you? Summer's my middle name."