Hideous Beauty

by William Hussey

  “Dylan, wait. What your parents did, it was cruel and thoughtless.” She sighs. “But they’re still your parents.”

  I tell her I’ll come round soon, that we’ll go through your room together, El, and that I’ll help as she packs your life away. And then I hang up and turn back to face them.

  Another secret you kept locked away in your journal, El. Why didn’t you tell me? Because it would smash my family to pieces? Didn’t you understand that some things are already so broken a little more smashing won’t do them any harm?

  I can’t rage at them any more. I just ask my questions.

  “Why did you hate him?”

  “Dylan…” Mum begins, her face ashen.

  “Here we go,” Chris cuts in, “melodrama hour.”

  “Shut up, Chris,” Dad says, which seems to startle both Mum and my pea-brained sibling. Dad spreads his hands like he’s making an appeal to the jury, except he isn’t that kind of solicitor. “Look, son, we thought you might possibly find out about this. That Ellis’s aunt might let something slip. That’s why we’ve been trying to sit down with you these past couple of days, in case you heard it from someone else and got the wrong end of the stick.”

  “The wrong end of the stick?” I brandish the cartoon. “How am I possibly misinterpreting this?”

  My mind flies back to the night of the Easter dance and my conversation with Mike. “And they’re cool with El?” he’d asked, and I’d cut him off. Because even to Mike, who knows the McKees and their funny little ways, I couldn’t straight out admit that they weren’t cool with you. That look Mum and Dad shot each other when we told them, the look you didn’t catch, it said it all really. By then they had already tried to bribe you so that you’d stop seeing me.

  “When did all this start?” I say. “Did you suspect we were together at the barbecue? I guess you must have. Then, what? You popped round to Mount Pleasant for a little word with El? You’re all such bloody hypocrites,” I mutter. “You signed the petitions to give people like me the rights we should have had anyway. You pretend to hate the people who hate us. But you’re as bad as they are. You only really want to accept the ‘safe’ gays, like me. The ones who find a nice quiet boyfriend and go away and do our gay stuff out of sight and don’t insist upon ourselves.”

  Chris laughs. “Have you been taking your mental pills, bro? Because it sounds like you need them.”

  This time it’s my mum who surprises herself by telling Chris to shut up.

  “I want to ask you something,” I say.

  Dad nods. “I’ll give you an honest answer, if I can.”

  “Always a qualification, isn’t there, Dad? Always a get-out clause. All right, here it is: if any of you had been there that night at the lake, would you have let him drown? Just because you thought El monopolized me and made me gay and that sort of disgusted you.” I look directly at Chris and he looks away. “Or because you thought he was corrupting me somehow?” I turn to Mum, who has her hands covering her mouth. “Or because, on the basis of one meeting, you decided he wasn’t good enough for your precious son?” My dad returns my glance but I see something change in his face. A certainty gone, a doubt creeping in. “You won’t know this, but El’s parents beat him senseless and disowned him when he told them who he was. They threw him onto the street and forgot about him. You’re not as bad as them, not even close, but by rejecting him you’ve rejected me too.”

  “We thought we were doing the right thing,” my dad says slowly. “We didn’t think he was… Yes, all right, Dylan, yes, we didn’t think he was good enough for you.”

  “And he wasn’t!” Chris spits through drawn-back lips. “We all said it. Who knew where that dirty little estate rat had been putting his prick. Did you want to end up with AIDS or something, lying in a hospital bed next to Mike?”

  “Get out!” my dad roars at him.

  Chris looks dumbstruck. He turns to Mum, who has no words for him. After a few miserable seconds, he lopes out of the room.

  “We just thought, if we could put a bit of distance between the two of you, this whole obsession would blow over.” Mum begins to move towards me, then sees something in me that clearly frightens her. I don’t want my mum to be frightened of me, but I don’t know how else to look. “I was just concerned about your safety, Dylan. To look at you, no one would know…but Ellis? I was frightened that by being with him you were putting yourself at risk. You know how people can be. But maybe we were wrong.” She pauses and glances at my dad. “I think…I think we were wrong.”

  I shrug. “It’s too late now, Mum. He’s already dead. But there is one thing I want you to know – Ellis was determined that he’d never, ever tell me what Dad tried to do. Because he wanted to protect me from my own family, I guess. This kid you doubted and despised? He was better than all of us.”

  I start towards the hall and Mum reaches for my arm.

  “Dylan, what are you going to do? Please, we just didn’t realize how deeply you felt about Ellis. If we had—”

  “If you had? You’d have done exactly what you did. Mum, do you know what I thought when I saw that note on the fridge this morning? I thought you might be getting ready to throw me out.”

  “No! We wouldn’t. Not ever.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I was too much of a coward to take this step before, but I’m not frightened any more. I guess if you had anything to hate Ellis for, it might be this.”

  I shake off her hold and head to the stairs. Chris is sitting there sullenly on the bottom step.

  “I have to go,” I tell them over my shoulder. “This isn’t my home any more.”

  The next twenty minutes pass in a blur.

  Dad remains stationed at the bottom of the stairs, still in his work clothes. Chris is playing thrash metal in his room, his way of screaming for attention because, just for once, no one is giving him any. Mum stands in the hall outside my room, watching me throw clothes into a backpack. I know she wants to help – it’s what mums do when their kids are making a mess of packing – but I think she understands now that I won’t be coming home from this particular sleepover. When I go to close the door on her she rocks back against the wall.

  I move to the desk, pull out the drawer and untape the sketch you gave me the day of Mike’s party. I can’t look at it. Not this misguided perfection you saw in me. I fold it up and slip it into my top pocket.

  Only Dad remains when I head back downstairs. We stand in silence for a minute, listening to Metallica drown out Mum’s crying.

  “I can wait at the bottom of the drive,” I say.

  “This is still your home, Dylan,” he answers. “You can wait here, if you like.”

  I want to say something to him, comfort him, I don’t know. I can almost feel you willing me to, El. But your heart was an ocean and mine’s the meanest little pavement puddle. So we stand and wait.

  This doesn’t feel like the huge moment it should. I was actually born in this house, my mum too far gone to get to the hospital, paramedics delivering me, furious and screaming and disgusting, on the kitchen floor. I chipped my front tooth on this stair post, playing Star Wars with Chris, him as Han and me as Chewy – which was ironic, as chewing was painful for a week afterwards. Dad’s office across the hall was the scene of the infamous “sex talk”, a cringe-fest that lasted three minutes and that has haunted us both ever since. My mum taught me how to tie my shoelaces on this bottom step, patient and consoling and ridiculously proud when I accomplished that first bow. And under the stairs was where Mike and I practised kissing. It wasn’t a gay thing, Mike insisted, it’s just we couldn’t convince a single girl in our year to teach us how it was done.

  I have never fancied my best friend, but I still remember his mouth on mine, warm and trembling. I thought of it every night for months afterwards, touching the place where his lips had been, grateful in ways I couldn’t understand for that moment between us.

  All these memories, acres of them, each in their way defining who I am.


  A knock. Big Mike stands on the doorstep, looking awkward as hell.

  “Hey, Gordon,” he says, waving and then closing his fist.

  “Michael, thank you for doing this.”

  “No problem. We’re always happy to have him, as long as he’s still house-trained.”

  The two dads share a smile that you probably have to be a dad to understand.

  “C’mon then, kiddo. Mike’s got some popcorn on the go and some movie that would’ve scared the hell out of me when I was your age.” He grabs my bag from my shoulder and stands back from the door. “Say hi to Barbara for me.”

  I glance over my shoulder, wondering if Mum might appear. She doesn’t.

  We walk in silence to Big Mike’s four-by-four and I climb up into the passenger seat.

  “Buckle up, Sonny Jim,” he tells me, and starts the ignition.

  I don’t know what to say to Big Mike. Within minutes of sending the text to Mike, I got the green light to come and stay at the Berringtons’. I’m family, after all. But I know I’m imposing. Mike needs his rest, and all I’ve brought him these past few days is a barrelful of my unrelenting crap. I feel awful about it, but I just don’t have anywhere else to go.

  Big Mike reaches out and shakes my shoulder. “All good?”

  Trees rustle by, budding now that the long winter’s finally over. Life invading all this death. I shake my head and look down.

  “Nah,” Big Mike murmurs. “Silly question. But you know you can talk to me and Carol, right? About anything. Carol’s great with advice and I can cook a mean double-bacon cheeseburger, which is even better than good advice. Am I right?”

  “Right.”

  A few minutes later, we’re home. That’s how the Berringtons’ feels. How it’s always felt. A refuge when my real home became confusing and unbearable. Big Mike grabs my backpack and waves to Carol and Mike, who are waving back from the open doorway. Honestly, I want to just sit here and cry my eyes out.

  In the end Mike comes to get me, pulling me out of the car with diverting talk about popcorn and horror movies. Mumzilla ruffles my hair and says it’s dinner first, then popcorn, which makes Mike wonder aloud if she might have been a torturer for the Inquisition in a previous life.

  “Yes, Michael, I’m a bloodthirsty tyrant, and waiting thirty minutes for popcorn is my modern version of the rack. Now go and wash your hands.”

  “Sadist.”

  I’m about to follow Mike when Carol calls me back.

  “I just got off the phone with your mum.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “No, sweetheart. I’m not sure how she could be. Look, I don’t know what’s happened tonight, and maybe it’s not my place to know, but one thing I’m certain about: your family love you.” Big Mike puts both hands on my shoulders and Carol lifts my chin, so I’m forced to look at her. “Even that idiot brother of yours likes you quite a lot. Now, I want you to give your mum a call tomorrow, just a few words to tell her you’re okay. It’s my only condition.”

  “And she will kick your arse if you don’t,” Big Mike adds.

  So I say I will, and I don’t think I’m lying.

  We eat Mumzilla’s trademark dish: incredible home-made pizzas with curly fries. No one talks about the elephant in the room, even though it’s parading around the breakfast table, leaving huge steaming dumps in its wake. Big Mike regales us with his collection of lame dad jokes and we all laugh in the right places, mainly because we’ve heard the routine a million times before.

  After dinner we head up to Mike’s room and grab our beanbags, bowls of warm popcorn nestled in our laps. After half an hour of serial-killer carnage, Mike pauses the movie.

  “How’s stuff?” he asks.

  “Stuff sucks.”

  He nods and flips the remote like it’s a six-shooter in an old Wild West movie. He’s about to restart the film when I catch his eye.

  “All this time, Mike, everything we’ve found out, every secret El kept from me, you know what I keep coming back to?”

  “What?”

  “It’s us. Something rotten in us. You know how we like to present ourselves in Ferrivale? This brilliant, modern, tolerant community? Just so lovely and friendly and accepting of everyone. So we’re super-nice to the gays but we’re also accepting of that church group that pushes their It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve fliers through every letter box. But we can’t be okay with everything. In the end, we have to choose. And I’m not talking about freedom of speech – let the haters hate, let them post their fliers – but we need to have some idea of what we stand for and what we oppose. Because if we don’t decide, then we leave these gaps where good people get swallowed up.

  “We all wanted El to be something he could never be. And we thought us wanting that was somehow acceptable, but it’s not. It’s not about El fitting into some idea of what he should be. Tolerance isn’t conditional. It’s absolute. It’s not on your terms, it’s on his. Even I wouldn’t accept El for who he was. Not at first. And that’s what makes kids like El feel rejected and puts them in danger, because we’re not strong enough to say, ‘This is where we as a community stand. Ellis Bell is one of us and we will look out for him. Even those among us who would never be his friend and don’t like his choices, we stand with him because he has a right to be whatever he chooses to be and he lives here, in this town, where our tolerance isn’t this shallow thing that makes us feel virtuous. It’s real. It’s powerful. It protects.’”

  I don’t know where these words are coming from, but they feel like they go to the bone of me.

  “We’re all responsible,” I say. “But I have to know who it was, Mike. Who left him to die like that? Who hated him that much? It’s killing me.”

  Mike nods. He’s taken the amulet you gave him for his birthday from under his shirt and is stroking the protection symbol.

  “Dylan, I just…” He looks away. “I wish I could help you.”

  “You are helping.” I throw a cushion at his head; he doesn’t smile. “You’ve always helped me.”

  Eventually, we continue with the movie. When it’s done, I unpack my night stuff and we make up the camp bed. Mike strips to his pants and T-shirt and turns off the light.

  “Need anything?”

  “No,” I lie. Because what I need, he can’t give me.

  I’m still wide awake when Becks snuffles into the room and curls up beside me. I run my fingers through the white fur of his belly and he stretches up and licks my face. It doesn’t matter. It was already wet.

  I wake to find Mike’s bed empty and Becks gone. The alarm clock on the window sill blinks back at me: 10.56 a.m. It seems unreal that your funeral was only four days ago. In that short time, I’ve learned so much more about you, El. Now I wonder if a fourth picture will find me here and what new secrets it might reveal.

  It always makes me feel weirdly guilty when I sleep in at Mike’s, probably because the Berringtons have this “up and at ’em” attitude, though no one’s ever said anything. Wandering downstairs, I give Mumzilla a smile and sink into “Dylan’s seat” at the breakfast table. I’m instructed to sit and drink tea and eat toast. Sounds good.

  “Don’t forget our deal,” she tells me, pouring tea from the arse-end of her comedy cow teapot. “Call your mum.”

  I nod. “Where’s Mike?”

  “Taken Becks for a walk. He’s feeling a bit groggy so I’ve let him skip school.” I start to say something when she holds up her hand. “Dylan, he’s fine. He’ll be back soon…”

  So I’ve read about “pregnant pauses” in books, but I never experienced one until now. There’s this almost unbearable pressure slowly building up between me and Carol, and I have no idea what it is, but I get the feeling that whatever’s about to be delivered will be painful, for both of us.

  “I’m so sorry, Dylan,” she begins, “I really don’t want to have to say this.”

  My gaze is fixed on my cup. “It’s okay.”

  “No. No, i
t isn’t okay. Not one tiny bit. Because we love you very much and we all hate what you’ve been going through. You know you’re like a second son to us, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I croak. “Yes. Thanks.”

  She grabs my hand across the table. “Don’t thank me. Thank you, Dylan. Thank you for being the best friend Mike could ever have asked for. God.” She wipes her eyes with the corner of a tea towel. “This house is as full of you as it is of any of us. You know I still check around my feet when I’m carrying food to the table, just in case little Mike and Dylan are playing tag under me. That’s what makes this so hard.”

  “It’s all right,” I tell her, because I know what’s coming. “Don’t worry.”

  She takes a huge breath and exhales. “You can’t stay here, sweetheart. I wish you could. But Mike, he’s my little dude, you know?” I nod and she erupts into floods of tears. I get up from my chair and hug her as tight as I can. “He’s still got such a long way to go,” she sobs. “That last chemo was brutal on him, and he should be further ahead anyway, but he—”

  “I’m not good for him,” I say, straightening up. Outside I can see Mike’s old trampoline, rusted and silvered with webs, its creaking laughter just a memory.

  “You are good for him. Of course you are. But, Dylan, it’s taken such a toll on you. Me and Big Mike, you know we love you and we’d do anything, anything to make this better for you, but I listen to my boy crying himself to sleep every night and I… Mike has to be our priority.” She closes her eyes. “We can’t have anything distracting from his treatment and I just—”

  “Please, Carol, you don’t need to say anything. I shouldn’t have asked to stay. It was selfish.”

  “Don’t be silly, of course it wasn’t selfish. And you can stay, for a while. Until you fix things up with your parents or find somewhere… And me and Big Mike, we can help with that. We can talk to your folks, contribute something towards rent for a new place for you. I don’t know. But we won’t abandon you, Dylan, not ever. It’s just right now—”

  “Carol, it’s okay. Really. I’ll sort something out. Please don’t worry.”