TEN
THEY
“I’m just glad you all are talking again,” Russell said.
He amended, “I’m just glad you’re talking to us all again.”
Mark gave a slight embarrassed grin.
He said, “I got depressed.”
Then he said, “I get depressed.”
“I get it. I’ve been there too. I’m sure I’ll be there again.”
Mark Young looked around as if making sure Gilead still hadn’t come back into the room.
“I thought about killing myself,” he said.
“I don’t mean to sound like my mom,” Russell said, “who is a psychologist, but have you ever thought about—”
“Seeing a shrink?”
“Well, that too. But telling your friends, I mean,” Russell said, bending to twist a shoe lace, “I didn’t think I had any friends, and I thought I was the only person who felt the way I did. I felt like I was—”
“Drowning.”
“Yes.
“But I wasn’t drowning,” Russell said, “And I wasn’t alone.”
“Thanks, Russell.”
“Thanks Russell what?” Gilead said, coming back to his living room.
“Russell was just helping me be a sane person.”
Gilead grinned at Mark, and Russell watched how Gilead buried his hands in Mark’s black waves, how Mark touched his hand and they sat side by side, their long legs touching.
“I do have one question, though,” Russell said.
“Yes, Gilead is my boyfriend, and yes the sex is wonderful.”
Gilead frowned at Mark.
“Well, it is,” Mark said, swinging Gilead’s hand. “And Gilead is also amazed at the size of my penis.”
“Please stop.”
“He actually said he didn’t know white boys could be that big.”
“I’m about to throw you out.”
“I think girthy is the actual term he used.”
“And now you’re actual question?” Gilead prompted.
“It’s about Chris.”
“Knapp?” Mark frowned.
“Yeah. It’s not even my business, except Ralph said something that I don’t think is true.”
“Ralph is an idiot,” Mark said.
“He said Chris had an affair with his teacher back in K through 8, when he was fourteen or fifteen. And… it can’t be true,” Russell said. “Which makes me think… something else has to be true. Something worse. And he’s our friend.”
“Chris was molested,” Mark said baldly.
Russell remembered the look on Mark’s face when he’d heard Russell had been betrayed by Ralph and Jason. The same angry look was on his face now and his fists clenched while he spoke.
“How does a twelve year old have an affair?”
“Twelve?” Gilead said.
“We were in seventh grade, and yeah, Chris looked older than he was, but that’s like maybe he looked fifteen when he was twelve. He didn’t look like he was… A grown up. That bitch was sick. We all knew she wasn’t right. I… I even felt like she was trying something with me. You felt uneasy with her. We all did. Chris was unsuspicious and obedient and…. It’s gross. I don’t really know the details. I’d have to ask him, and I would never do that. But you know people. Everyone knew what had happened and they made it a joke. Sometimes he made a joke of it too, But that’s where all the rumors come from.”
Gilead’s face was blank, and Russell was sick and angry.
“Cameron was afraid to ask.”
“She should ask,” Mark said. “She’s probably the person Chris would tell, and he probably needs to.”
“She didn’t understand why he was so…. Well, why he’s not pressing her into anything, why he’s being a perfect gentleman.”
“Chris is a perfect gentleman,” Mark said, almost angry, though Russell understood the anger wasn’t at him.
“I’m pretty sure that except for whatever that cunt did to him, he’s still a virgin.”
It had been cold for so long the usual flow of life itself seemed to have frozen. They had been weird, Mark with Gilead, him with Cody. The Dwyers and the Armstrongs split up. Patti, who knew so much, seemed not to know quite what balance to strike with Cody. Russell thought it would have been best if none of them had known the truth.
And how he felt for Ralph was weird. In December, Ralph had come to him and the Ralph who had been his enemy once, and then his new friend, and then the friend who had confused him, had become his lover, and now Ralph just seemed like the dumb friend who said silly things, and he couldn’t believed they’d shared the same bed or made love.
Jason was everything he had ever been. Jason was the same musky smell of cedar, tobacco and adult cologne, and to Russell, summer or winter, Jason’s room was always warm, warm enough with the scent of sandalwood, and his kisses tasted like spearmint. A welcome retreat from this strange, frigid year, Jason was open, warm and inviting.
His cousin Jimmy called and asked, “How’s that whole situation was going?”
When Russell told him, Jimmy said, “Well, now, Cody is unavailable and off limits—and holding himself off limits. But Jason isn’t, so it seems like Jason’s the way to go.”
Jimmy was unsentimental about sex, or rather he loved sex so much he would never let sentiment get in the way. All Christmas he’d said, quite firmly, rubbing his hands together: “I’ve got the biggest boner for that Meg Rice, and I wanna put it in her.”
The night after Christmas, when Russell had come home, he’d heard his uncle Fenn and Meg going at it in the spare room where Cody had stayed, Meg moaning and crying shamelessly. He’d gone downstairs for a glass of water only to hear his mother going on about how Finn had taken Cody to the bar.
“What?”
“Yeah. They’re out on that damn motorcycle and better return in one piece.”
When Russell had returned upstairs, Meg, hair a mess, was trotting out of that spare room with her head down and a moment later, pleased and smiling, Jimmy had come out in his boxers, his hair plastered to his head. He came toward Russell in a slower walk and embraced him, smelling of heat and sex and contentment and murmured, “I fucked her like the Second Coming was at hand. It was awesome.”
Jimmy always made him feel sexual and open, and he could smell sex and amorality on his cousin. He wondered, if he kissed him, how would Jimmy respond. But there was more than enough incest in his life, and so he had taken this desire three blocks down the street. It was one of the first times he had put Jason’s knees behind his head and spent the morning fucking him, rejoicing in the clapping sounds of body to body and sweat running down his face and back, rejoicing in Jason’s hands up rushing up and down his body, clutching his ass.
It was like that this morning as Jason urged him on and the sweat beaded on his brow and rolled down his nose. He had come to Jason, and in the midst of standard sex they kissed and clung together, and emotion welled up and there was nothing between them. The coldness Russell had felt, he knew was in him, and he had held himself away from Jason, from the way his touch, his fingertips, his lips, opened him. Russell almost shuddered and sobbed at his reopening. It was when he penetrated Jason that Russell himself felt penetrated. When he blinked he saw fairy lights in the dark room, and when he bowed down he kissed Jason’s wet mouth. When he came, he did it roaring through gritted teeth and feeling the thin rivulet of sweat run down his spine to the cleft of his ass. The very weakness he showed in the spilling of his seed was like a confession. He came so hard he stayed lifted up on his arms, like someone about to fly, before slowly settling down.
In the aftermath they lay face to face, knees drawn to knees and Jason said, “Russ, whatever happened before, and wherever your heart is, do you think we could love each other? We were loving each other right then. Do you think we could do it again?”
Russell pulled Jason to him, kissed him deeply, and held Jason in his arms, surrendering.
“I just keep wondering if I’m going to hell.”
Anigel blinked and looked at Cameron on the other side of the table at Noble Red.”
“What the fuck for?”
“I know this is silly—”
“I bet it will be.”
“But for picking up Niall from the abortion clinic. I don’t know. I just feel like I had a hand in it.”
Anigel was about to burst in with something, but decided to take a second and wait for wisdom. When wisdom gave her nothing different, she said, “Look, a woman does what a woman has to. What Sonia did she felt like she had to do and I wouldn’t want to have a kid at sixteen and, not to be a bitch, I definitely wouldn’t want to have a kid by your brother.”
“Fair.”
“As for what you did? You were there. You were there for two people when they needed you, and no one’s going to hell for that.”
“Ani?”
“Um hum?” Anigel thought she was through with the French fries, and then decided she wasn’t.
“Russell said you were an atheist, but you aren’t, are you?”
“I’ve seen a lot of shit,” Anigel said. “When you start calling yourself things because of what you believe, it’s like you’re saying you have something to do with it.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Well, you know, if you’re a Christian you’re supposed to believe in all these things, just believe in these things that people tell you, and it’s supposed to mean something that you believe in them. But why should it? Why should it mean anything to anyone, especially God, that you… believe? I think you just have to live and be open. If that makes sense?”
“I wish,” Cameron said, “someone had said that to me some time in the last seventeen years.”
When Anigel was dropping Cameron off, she said, “Looks like you’ve got a visitor.”
“I have no idea who.”
“You’ll tell me tomorrow?”
“I may tell you tonight. Goodnight,” Cameron jumped out of the car. “Have fun at class.”
Anigel had moved only five feet when the front door of 1735 Breckinridge opened, and Patti Lewis came running out.
“Okay,” she said as Anigel rolled down the window, “so here are my psych notes. I mean, the ones for teaching, cause you want to be in that teacher’s mind. Some teachers like you to have your own thoughts, but some like you to have theirs. And then here is my first collection of Carl Jung’s essays. I mean, you won’t need them in an intro to psych class, but you’ll feel his good energy. Have a great time. Psychology is amazing.”
“Damn, thanks, Patti.”
“You know,” Patti said, “I think you’d make a hell of a shrink.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Patti said. “You listen well. You care a lot, but at the same time you don’t give a fuck, and that’s pretty important.”
Anigel was just about to drive away when the door opened again and she slammed her foot on the brake while Russell came out.
“Goddamnit, Russell, I love you, but if I don’t get to class—”
“You actually left your textbooks here.”
“Oh, fuck. Oh thank you,” she rolled down the window.
“You are officially my favorite white person.”
“Am I such your favorite that you’ll drop me off at Chayne’s on your way to class?”
“Get you coat,” Anigel said. “But be quick.”
