Mark looked hot, taking a drag on a cigarette. He leaned back in the passenger seat of his car and by the night light Gilead saw his Adam’s apple, saw the smoke lift from his nostrils, saw the little lights of the Brigham Street Bridge stretching ahead of them and over the water, shining on Mark’s wavy dark hair.
He said it out loud.
“I should never have taught you to smoke.”
Mark made a noise with his lips and shrugged, a jet of smoke leaving his nostrils.
“You gave me a cigarette and I lit it.”
He gave the rest of it to Gilead and sat up straighter saying, “Besides, if I’m going to teach your ass to drive, I’d better have a cigarette.”
“Are you calling me a bad driver?”
“I’m calling you a new driver.”
“Well, should we even be doing this in the winter?”
“Gil,” Mark said, sensibly, “winter is always going to come. Why learn in spring or summer and then get fucked up by winter? This is the best time, and we’re in a fucking empty dock yard so…. Get to driving.”
There was no driver’s ed at Our Lady of Mercy, and Sharonda Story had never had time to teach him. Mark was relaxed and patient about everything. Once, when Gilead had hit the gas meaning to hit the brake, and they skidded clear across the parking lot and nearly crashed into a school bus, the only thing Mark said was, “Not bad, but you could do better.”
“You wanna drive us home?” Mark said after they’d done some turns and stops in the parking lot.
“Whose home?”
“I’ve got three siblings and two parents,” Mark said, “and live all the way in the north of town so I was thinking yours.”
“I was thinking you could drive.”
“Nonsense,” Mark said.
His long leg reached over and his foot lightly lay on Gilead’s. His arm touched the wheel and then touched Gilead’s hand.
“Whatever happens, whatever mistakes you make, and I don’t think you will, I can correct them.”
Gilead relaxed, but he didn’t stop being vigilant. He turned out of the parking lot, looking both ways before turning onto Brigham Street, and heading up the bridge. They were really less than ten minutes from his house, and Mark would stay there tonight. They would kiss and link arms on his bed, and Gilead would taste the ash on Mark’s mouth and like it. He would smell the cigarette smoke mixed with pomade and the cologne Mark had worn, and not be able to get enough of it. As they reached the top of the bridge and headed down toward Riverview and the stretch toward downtown, Gilead allowed himself to rejoice in being in love with Mark Young.
He had always loved him, and it’s not even that he hid this from himself, just that it had to be buried somewhere deep, kept in a holy of holies so far back he could not even think about it. He had loved him when he saw him in the hall, all quiet, talking to his friends, his khakis rolled, wearing a red cardigan over a white shirt, his dark wavy hair looking especially dark and wavy, a private joke always dancing in his green eyes. In those days after Joe Smith had died, Gilead caught himself looking for that light, looking for that something, worried about a boy he was barely friends with. There was something embarrassing about not only being infatuated with a white boy, but one who was so very, very white. The day Mark had swiped his journal, and Gilead had put him in a headlock, felt the warmth of Mark against him, the heat of his head coming through his wavy hair, Gilead had to do everything to keep a frown on his face, and this year, when he’d come into class and Mark had casually leaned over his desk and said, “Hey, study buddy,” Gilead had felt a sort of doom because he knew he was in love with this boy, and what in God’s ass did you do with such a feeling your senior year at Our Lady of Mercy High School in Geschichte Falls, Michigan?
So that night in Mark den, that night, when Mark had almost awkwardly stated how he felt and his fingers had drifted toward Gilead’s and they had finally caught hands, that was the night when, not long afterward, and with an equal awkwardness, Gilead had leaned forward and kissed Mark.
Kissing Mark had been strange because he had expected it to be a quick peck and was surprised when Mark returned it, hard, demanding, greedy like a lion. There they were, making out, Mark’s body pressed to his. Gilead had never understood kissing, but right then it felt good and crucial, Mark’s lips, Mark’s tongue, Mark sucking on him, kissing eyes and ears, running hands through hair, the pressure of Mark’s body, his strong arms under the tee shirt. They’d made out hard until Mark, with the ears of a kid in his parents’ house, had shot up just in time before his little sister came in the den.
“Mom said not to bother you—” she started.
“Then why are you?” Mark sounded surly, and Mark was never surly.
His sister said something about how the other TV had bad reception and did they mind if—
“We don’t mind at all,” Gilead said, graciously.
“Thank you, Gil.”
Charity smiled at him, and Gilead had taken the popcorn, instructed Mark to take the drinks, and then led him upstairs.
The Christmas party had been a surprise. Gilead had spent the first part of the day with his mother and his family at LaVelle and Terrence’s house in Westhaven. But after seven, Mark had shown up, and though Gilead had made no announcement about Mark to most of his family, and the majority of them didn’t even see him when he came, there was a thrill that ran through Gilead when the tall slim boy stood at the door in his black overcoat.
“The two of them almost look like twins,” Chayne noted to Rob who was one of the only other white people at the gathering.
“Reverse twins?”
“Um,” Chayne said.
“You know Mark is just a white version of Gilead.”
As Mark watched Gilead slipping on his own overcoat, Chayne said, “I wouldn’t say that’s all he is.”
In the car, Gilead said, “Seeing Mark Young on Westhaven Avenue is an interesting experience.”
There were old storefront churches and a tall, grey stone Methodist one, old clapboard two storey houses with gravel alleys behind them. There was an air of abandonment and the highway in the distance, and then the strands of shops, half painted Mexican restaurants, boarded up bars, money exchanges with locked gates pulled across them.
“Well, I just drove from my place,” Mark said.
”Westhaven goes all the way up to Stonybrook. In fact, I think it goes up into Saint Gregory.”
“Huh,” Gilead had said. He didn’t say anything else. They never talked to fill the space. Mark made a left and turned east on Salem Street until they reached Brigham and headed south and crossed the river into Little Poland.
But that was all done now, and Gilead parked the car silently in front of his and his mother’s house and Mark smiled at him as if he had just landed them safely on the moon.
They went up the walkway and the steps Gilead had shoveled just that morning after the big snow, and then Gilead slipped his key in the front door. They kicked their expensive shoes off on the mat and arranged them under the coat tree, then slipped off coats and gloves and scarves and silently went up the stairs into Gilead’s room. There, in the dark, they kissed and undressed and make love on the surface of the bed without turning back the covers. It took less than ten minutes, and they both lay on their backs breathing heavily, clenching and unclenching hands.
Sometimes his desire for Mark built up so it was terrifying. Arriving home, there had been swiftness, but not hurriedness, and in the room, neither one of them had asked what the other wanted. They just kissed hard before undressing in the dark and joining their bodies together.
Gilead Story was tremendously sleepy. He remembered being fourteen, just a freshman at his locker, and hearing Chuck Gibson, the good looking boy who always wore tight, checkered pants and had a man’s body but a boy’s voice, say something about having sex with his girlfriend and passing out on top of her, not waking up for two hours after. Gilead had gone red with shame on hearing what he knew he wasn’t supposed to hear. It was junior year when he learned that his other friends didn’t say certain things around him, that there was some sort of understanding that, in some ways, Gilead was and should be kept innocent.
But he had discovered with Mark that there was a sudden rush of weariness after things happened—which is what he called it—things happening. Only this was more. Orgasm was always startling, and orgasm with Mark especially startling. They were both winded when it happened, and delighted to be in each other’s arms, but now it was as if the whole of the last day, Midnight Mass, slipping Mark’s hand in his in the dark of the church, waking up early to spend the morning with his mother, the afternoon over at Mickey and LaVelle’s, and the evening party at the Balusiks had all combined to make this moment of utter exhaustion when it all caught up with him. With them. For Mark, on his back, had already started a funny snoring.
The furnace clicked and there was the soft whir of the heat. Gilead’s body was cool and he could feel the semen on his belly and on his sex. There had been none of the preparations, and he separated himself from Mark now, and went to his closet, pulling on his housecoat and going out into the hall, closing the door behind him. He thought of checking on his mother, but he’d no intention of doing that half hard and covered in the mutual come of himself and his boyfriend, so he cleaned himself in the bathroom and returned to Mark with a hot, damp cloth. While the heat whirred through the vents of the house on Riverview, Gilead looked with love on Mark’s body while the other boy slept with his mouth half open and his neck tilted at what looked like an uncomfortable angle.
He had known Mark was corny, silly, quiet, subdued, tall but not very tall, but it was only the first time he’d seen Mark naked he remembered Mark was an athlete. Gilead saw himself shirtless all the time, had seen Russell shirtless, changing at his house, had even, in gym class, seen Jason Lorry and Ralph. But of them all only Ralph played a sport and it was football.
As he ran the cloth over him, Gilead adored his beautiful Mark—his Mark—the beautiful boy inhis bed, the track star with his strong thighs, well made calves, and muscled arms, strong under his soft skin, a joy to feel pressed against him. Gilead wiped the muscles of Mark’s stomach and Adonis belt, the V line traveling to the black stratus cloud of hair around his tender sex, the penis Gilead in his hands, kissedso tenderly. He was filled with was a protective love, as if Mark had been nothing more than a baby. He wiped the semen away from him, wiped the sweat from his body, whispered for him to get up and get under the covers, argue whispered like a mother with a child. Mark blinked, realized he was being a child, grinned out of his sparkling eyes and let Gilead put him under the blanket. It was while Gilead was folding the cloth and going toward the door that Mark made a plaintive noise.
“What?”
“You’re leaving?”
“It’s my house. Of course I’m not leaving. I’m just going to the bathroom.”
“Hurry up, okay?”
Gilead was about to say yes, but Mark had already turned his back on him and gone to sleep.
The protective love he felt for Mark, he also felt for his mother. He pushed open Sharonda’s cracked door and looked on her, sleeping. This was a sort of private agreement they’d made long ago. His door was often shut to indicate privacy but hers never was. She snored peacefully, and Gilead walked in and kissed his mother lightly on the cheek. He was afraid he might wake her. He didn’t. He watched over her a little longer, then went back to his room and Mark. He went under the deep, heavy covers just as the whir of the heat whined off, and he was only a little surprised when Mark shifted under those covers, and his strong sinewy arms pulled Gilead in as he pressed his chest and stomach and groin into Gilead and, linking their arms limbs like vines.
END OF CHAPTER, END OF CHRISTMAS, AND END OF PART ONE
