“Winter is boring,” Cameron said. “I need basketball to start back up.”
“Huh?”
“Then cheerleading starts again.”
“Oh, I forgot,” Chris, who was on her floor on his stomach with his legs in the air as he did his calculus said. “I mean, I always think of you all cheering for us.”
“We cheer for basketball too,” Cameron said,
“You know what? It’s not that I like cheering so much… No, that’s a lie. I like the acrobatics of it. I don’t really care who wins. Though.”
“Heresy!” Chris shouted, pointed a pencil at her.
“I don’t,” Cameron insisted. “I don’t even know how to play football.”
“Say it ain’t so.”
“But I love the dancing. I love the acrobatics. And I love having something to do. And right now there isn’t a thing to do.”
“Except spend time with me.”
“Well,” Cameron rolled off the bed onto the floor, and lay on her back. She stuck out a finger and touched Chris’s nose.
“Boop.”
He shook himself like a dog.
“Mr. Knapp, spending time with you is the highlight of my day.”
“Your dad seems pleased.”
“My dad is pleased. He loves you.”
“When am I going to meet the rest of your family, though?”
“Uh…” Cameron let things hang uncomfortably in the air a moment. “I don’t know that you will.”
“But… Your mom? Your brother.”
“Niall you can meet. Hell, Niall goes to OLM. But my mother… I used to say we had a difficult relationship, but now I can safely say I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me.”
“Oh, I’m sure she—”
“No,” Cameron said. “Do not do that. It’s gaslighting, and it’s not for me. It’s because you don’t want to believe that a mother like her could exist.”
“I’m sorry, Cam. It’s just…”
“I think she resents the fact that getting pregnant with me made her miss out on college, even though I’m not the one that chose to sleep with my father or drop out of school. I think when she sees me she sees my father. I don’t know. But as long as I’ve known her, she’s always sort of hated me.”
“Well, then I hate her.”
“That’s good of you,” Cameron said after stopping herself from laughing at the force of Chris’s words.
“I mean it, I hate her. If I ever meet her, I’m going to tell her that.”
Cameron was moved, but she also didn’t know how to express it, so she said, “Well, in that case, you’re definitely not going over there for dinner. It’ll just be you me and Dad. Maybe Niall.”
She said, after reflection, “Actually, most of my family is pretty great. Especially Uncle Dave. Dave and my dad are like actual brothers, and what happened at Christmas kind of drove them apart, so that’s what I worry about. And, of course, Lee really is Dad’s sister.
“I thought that your mother was David’s sister.”
“She is.”
“Wait… then like… your father’s sister married your mother’s brother?”
“Yeah, I know right?”
“Is that even legal.”
“Russell’s father’s sister, one of them, is married to his mother’s brother. I mean, it just happened, but there it is.”
“Well,” Chris shook his head. “What a world.”
“I just hope Dad and Dave make up,” Cameron said.
Chris looked out of the window where day was turning to dusk.
“Is your dad still at work?”
Cameron shrugged, returning to the bed and her French homework.
“I don’t really know where he is.”
The spotless kitchen was empty as was all the first floor. The furnace clicked on at 1737 Breckinridge, and it roared from the basement where, in semi darkness, Bill Dwyer sat, his face turned to the pipes and wooden slats above him, eyes shut tight, almost weeping. His lips moved in something like prayer, his face changed in something like sorrow and regret. The washing machine roared loud so that when he gave a sharp, painful cry, he could not be heard.
But though he wept, it was not in sorrow, and though he cried out, it was not in pain. The chair squeaked against his naked buttocks and, trousers and underwear down, he cried out again as, straddling his waist, Lynn Messing rode him.
In the days of winter break, Gilead had wondered if he and Mark would tire of each other. After all, they were always together. But then the rhythm of school and normal life took over and Mark was at OLM till nearly five everyday with a job on the weekend. Gilead, tired of looking shiftless and unaccomplished, but having no desire to be at OLM any longer than he had to be for things he perceived to be frivolous, took up after school tutoring. Except for Friday nights and some Sundays, the time to lie in Mark’s arms and be with Mark Young alone was short, and now, as January progressed into February, the closet on the fourth floor became their place of meeting.
The first time it happened, Gilead had been scared out of his mind once it was done. Mark had taken him to the little bathroom on the fourth floor and together they had cleaned up, straightened each other’s ties, made out and felt each other some more, and then headed to lunch. But the lunch room was the same place it always was, full of boys who lived in a small world, and Gilead kept wondering if anyone could tell by looking what he and Mark had just done. Surely someone must have known he was having sex with Mark on the fourth floor three days a week. OLM and sex did not go together. OLM and gay sex, the freedom he felt, naked in Mark’s arms, did not go together. If it had not been the only time in the day where they could be together, he would not have done it.
He remembered his cousin Pethane saying, “Once you have sex, you’ll be over it. You won’t understand what’s so great about it and you’ll calm down. And once you see somebody naked, all those feelings will wear themselves out.”
But that had not been the case. The truth was the exact excitement that had been in him the first time he’d seen Mark, and the time when Mark had swiped his journal and he had given him a headlock, or the swell of tenderness when he’d seen him alone and sad at Joe Smith’s funeral, was in him now. The excitement was still in him when Mark looked at him across a room and gave him the nod. The crush, the nerves, the anticipation, the infatuation did not disappear, and the moment when they undressed and their bodies joined, Gilead did not get used to. As February approached he still felt as much like a giddy virgin around Mark as he had the day they’d first touched hands.
One very grey morning, Gilead climbed the stairs to the fourth floor and found Mark not waiting at the banister overlooking the winding steps, but reclined against the wall across from the chapel, hands jammed in his pockets.
Gilead kissed him lightly, but Mark seemed distracted.
“Do you mind if we just sit here today?” he asked.
They went into their closet and sat down side by side.
This didn’t bother Gilead. They’d begun their lives together like this and spent a great deal of time in silence anyway. Even when they made love, the rest of the time was spent being quiet with each other, but there was a different quality to this silence. Gilead wanted to ask, “Are you alright?” but he remembered what Mark had said, about sometimes needing to be quiet and alone. At least now, at this moment, he wanted to be quiet, but with him. So they sat that way, and when it was 12:15, they rose and went to lunch.
Chris Knapp looked different that day, and Gilead couldn’t tell what it was until he was standing beside his locker.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey, Gil,” Chris said.
When Chris didn’t move, Gilead said, “Your hair.”
“Yeah,” Chris touched it. “I combed it down. I’m going to dinner with Cameron and her family tonight. At her uncle’s house.”
Gilead was going to point out that this wasn’t until tonight, but Chris looked nervous. He didn’t imagine it was about Cameron. After all, why would he be here, at his locker, worried about Cameron Dwyer?
“It’s Mark,” Chris said. “How is he?”
Gilead looked at Chris, and Chris said, “We’re friends, but you all are… closer.”
Gilead wondered if Chris knew how close and simply wasn’t saying it, or maybe he didn’t know how to say it. Hell, Gilead scarcely knew.
“We’ve always been friends,” Chris said. “But… we always let each other do our own thing. You know. Never press.”
“Right.”
“A few years ago I got into some trouble, and Mark was right there for me. I wanna be there, but I don’t know how. He’s not talking.”
Gilead had known Chris since seventh grade when he started coming to the basement parties his classmates would throw, but he and Mark had gone to Evervirgin, and Gilead had gone to Saint Celestine’s a year ahead of Ralph and Jason. There had been whisperings about Chris and some school teacher and her being fired, and there had been more than whispers, but Gilead had always ignored them. Chris was a kind boy who, as he did now, approached him with friendship when many wouldn’t, and Gilead had always returned that. Apparently Mark knew more about Chris’s past, and Gilead had decided to not ask Mark what the more was.
“I’m not sure, Chris,” Gilead said.
“But—”
“He’s shutting me out. I’ll talk to him, but he’s been shutting me out.”
Chris bit his lip and looked troubled.
“Look,” Chris said, “can I talk to you?”
“Uh…” Gilead knew Chris meant someplace private, but he wasn’t sure where that place was.
“Sure.”
