A Density of Souls (19 page)

“I sent you a postcard yesterday. That was before someone bothered to tell me this hostel has a phone in it.” A pause fell between them.

“It’s bad there, isn’t it?” Melanie finally asked gently.

“Yeah,” Jordan managed.

“Your brother?”

“Mom, too,” Jordan said.

“Look. Take down the number here. Just to talk. Don’t worry. I’m not keeping tabs on you or anything. I know we had a good run. Besides, I’m growing accustomed to rude, off-putting artist types.”

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Jordan let out a slight laugh, to satisfy her. As he took down the number, something occurred to him that brought his mind into alignment with their conversation. “Melanie, what was it you said that time? It was on our first date. About freaks . . .”

“Freaks?”

“Something about how I was a freak because . . .”

“Wait . . . Yeah, I remember . . . Freaks have a better vantage point from which to view the world. Something like that. My dad said it to me once. Only he was talking about writers. People who live outside society are the ones who can see how it works.”

“Right,” Jordan said, looking down at Stephen’s picture. He told Melanie good-bye and promised to call her soon.

Jordan stared at Stephen’s picture for several minutes. The boy’s blond bangs falling across his forehead, his delicate features and his blue eyes, would have made him the enemy of other high school boys.

Jordan felt he knew why.

Jordan had messed around with two guys in high school. Neither of them had looked like Stephen; both of them had been teammates, stocky and well-muscled. The shared blow jobs were drunken and almost utilitarian, defining Jordan’s opinion of sex between men as a natural but emotionless act. Boys like Stephen stood in contradiction to Jordan’s experience. Prettiness in males could lure a person into thinking sex between men was something other than simply letting off steam.

Jordan shut the yearbook.

“Is he good to you?” Monica asked.

Jeff and Stephen had overslept that morning. She had run into Jeff as he crept out of her son’s bedroom, eyes still hooded from sleep.

Monica had managed a polite hello. Jeff had nodded and descended the staircase. Monica had found Stephen in bed, still asleep. His naked back and a glimpse of bare hip were exposed from beneath the comforter. She had shut the door quickly.

“Yes,” Stephen replied.

They were sitting in the rocking chairs on the front porch. Monica had returned from lunch with Elise an hour earlier. Elise had been sullen, uncharacteristically quiet. Monica needed talk from her son.

“How long have you known him?” she asked.

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“He went to Cannon,” Stephen replied, a glass of iced tea between his legs.

She nodded with numb surprise. “Are you being careful?” she asked quickly.

“You don’t get AIDS from being gay, Mother,” Stephen mumbled.

“Careful with your heart, I meant,” Monica said and then giggled.

“Motherly advice courtesy of Hallmark.” Stephen gave her a wry smile. “His name’s Jeff.”

Monica did not say what she wanted to—that Jeff certainly wasn’t the boy in the picture she found in the back of his closet several weeks earlier.

She had been removing a pair of Stephen’s loafers to be resoled when she came face-to-face with a shockingly handsome young man amid a pile of old tennis shoes. She had shut the closet door quickly, thinking she had stumbled across a photo of a secret boyfriend. Now she knew she was wrong. Who was the boy buried in the back of Stephen’s closet?

8

S
tephen drove down over Bonnet Carre Spillway at eighty-five miles an hour. Interstate 10 emerged from New Orleans and into the real Louisiana, its black water lit by the distant fires of oil refineries.

Beneath the interstate, dams and locks contained the swamp water, occasionally unleashing it into the lake during heavy rains. His foot nudged the gas pedal, kicking up the Jeep’s engine to nearly ninety.

Stephen had an erection that he thought could split the seams of his blue jeans.

Jeff wasn’t working that weekend and didn’t feel like driving in from Baton Rouge, so he asked Stephen to visit him. He had offered a single instruction: “Don’t dress gay.” At first Stephen had been offended.

He could feel a monologue building in his chest as Jeff dictated what Stephen was to wear. “Jeans, polo shirt, and a baseball cap. Wear the cap backwards,” Jeff said, his voice excited.

Desire. Balance. Hunger. Their relationship had blossomed in the weeks following their unexpected reunion. In each other’s presence they felt filled, each man answering some question that had been nag-ging the other all his life. They attacked each other’s bodies with a mutual ferocity.

And now Jeff was taking Stephen to a frat party.

Sigma Phi Kappa had been booted off the LSU campus after a pledge drank himself to death during a hazing session. Jeff had been a pledge that year and amid the accusations and disciplinary hearings, his decision to decline the fraternity’s bid went unnoticed. He was still welcome at the parties. “Sig Kap”, as it was called, was now headquartered in a Victorian house on the shores of a shallow pond, flatter-The Bell Tower

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ingly named East Baton Rouge Lake. The pond was so shallow that the drunken students who drove their cars into it found that the water didn’t rise up halfway past the doors.

When Stephen and Jeff arrived, the Sigma Phi Kappa house was a pounding blaze of light reflecting off black water. The house’s paint was peeling. Cars were parked at odd angles across the front lawn. Stephen could hear shouts and bellows that conjured up memories of the Cannon locker room.

“Are you sure about this?” Stephen asked.

“Nobody knows who you are, Stephen.” He curved one arm around Stephen’s shoulders before tracing his hand down his boyfriend’s back.

“Besides,” left whispered, “you’re with me.”

Stephen straightened his back. His voice dropped a decibel. He held his arms firmly at his sides, not permitting his hand to wander and clasp. In the course of one minute, Stephen became a frat boy. Thick-necked football players shook Stephen’s hand with a “Wassup dude?”

or a “Good to metcha” and in response Stephen delivered an Oscar-caliber performance.

They stationed themselves on the stairs, looking down on the living-room-turned-dance-floor. Jeff recognized who Stephen was gawk-ing at. “Señor Ass”, he explained, had earned his nickname by always wearing the same pair of blue jeans with a large patch missing in the seat, revealing his bare skin. An LSU linebacker, “Señor Ass” was gyrating with a girl so drunk she looked like she was about to writhe out of her Gap tank top.

Jeff watched Stephen watching.

At Tulane, Stephen had steered clear of the objects of his desire, but Jeff had led him into the lion’s den and now he was swollen with almost frantic longing. When Stephen’s attention finally returned to Jeff, he was beaming. “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

Back at his apartment, Jeff pointed to the bed as he headed for the bathroom. He shut the bathroom door behind him and stripped down.

Behind the shower curtain was his Cannon football uniform, shoulder pads, and jockstrap. He quickly dressed, starting with the awkward shoulder pads, which he thought would be necessary for girth. He 140

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fastened the Velcro straps, slid on the jockstrap—minus the cup—and wiggled into the blue Cannon jersey that read Haugh 33. He avoided glancing into the mirror, knowing if he glimpsed himself in costume he’d lose all his nerve.

Jeff cracked the door, stuck his hand out, and flicked off the switch for the bedroom light. He kept the bathroom light on and as he slowly opened the door a rectangle grew across the bed. Stephen squinted at him, fascinated by the effect. Jeff knew he was backlit by the overhead bulb and the outline of the shoulder pads had to be unmistakable.

Stephen rolled onto his elbows, looking as if he’d been caught in the wrong apartment. Jeff stepped toward the bed, his crotch level with Stephen’s eyes. Jeff saw Stephen’s chest rising and falling with rapid breaths. “Just do what you’re good at, cocksucker,” Jeff growled.

The pitch of his voice was porn-star perfect.

Jeff grabbed the back of his neck so hard that Stephen lurched forward off his elbows, coughing as Jeff tightened his grip on the back of his neck. Jeff was trying to force Stephen’s head into his crotch but Stephen’s neck had grown taut, bone-rigid. Stephen’s breath hissed through clenched teeth. His face wrenched forward, grazing the fabric pouch of the jockstrap. “That’s it,” Jeff grumbled. “That’s the way.”

Stephen’s mouth opened, his breath flushing Jeff’s growing erection. He grunted again, louder, pressing the back of Stephen’s head into his crotch. Suddenly, Stephen’s upper teeth dug in just above the shaft of Jeff’s penis, his lower jaw pinning Jeff’s scrotum.

“Fuck!” Jeff screamed. He stumbled backward, bright swaths of light dancing across his vision, and fell against his dresser so hard it knocked against the wall. His arms went out to his sides and he found himself sliding butt-first to the floor. As soon as he hit the carpet, Stephen’s bare foot jabbed into Jeff’s jaw, pushing his head back against a drawer handle. Jeff thought he was going to vomit. What have I done?

he thought.

“Fuck you!” Stephen screamed. His voice ripped through the room as he fell back onto the bed. Jeff lay sprawled, back propped against the dresser, legs splayed out in front of him.

“I’m sorry . . .” he said between gulps of air, ready to cry.

“What?! You were proving yourself?” Stephen barked. “You had to prove you were still one of them!”

Jeff shook his head no, no. He opened his eyes and through tears he The Bell Tower

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could see Stephen rising from the bed, blocking the bathroom’s light.

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Didn’t mean to what?” Stephen’s voice was harsh, more anger than tears.

“I thought it was what you wanted,” he said back, his voice desperate. “A football player.” He could make out Stephen sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his fists.

“That night on the Fly, I thought you were . . .” Jeff grasped for ad-equate words, “I thought you were an angel. I thought you made the snow fall. But whatever that was, it’s gone. Brandon and Greg . . .”

“Don’t say their names! Why do you always have to say their names?”

“. . . they took it from you. I thought maybe if I looked like them I could bring it back.”

Stephen peered up from his palms. The light from the bathroom glanced across a sheen of tears on his face. Jeff rose, gripping the top of the dresser with one hand, tugging at the jersey with the other. The shoulder pads hit the floor with a thud.

Stephen’s breath whistled. Jeff leaned over and took Stephen’s hands in his before bringing them to his chest and holding them there.

“Tell me what they did to you.”

Stephen did not finish his story until the sky outside had turned pale, pre-dawn gray. By the time the sun rose, he had nodded off to sleep against Jeff’s shoulder as they lay on top of the bedspread, Jeff still in his jockstrap and Stephen fully clothed. Jeff held one arm around Stephen, unable to sleep for fear of any dream summoned by what Stephen had told him about a winter where snow drifted down, young boys died, and lives fractured.

9

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he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic after she was admitted.”

Debbie’s dour voice startled Meredith as they marched down the staff corridor of Bayou Terrace Hospital. There were no lunatics pounding on padded walls. The hall was lined with half-open doors to doctor’s offices, through which Meredith could hear low, even voices.

They passed a lounge, where the boisterous laughter of nurses struck Meredith as somehow sacrilegious. Debbie was leading Meredith through the “safe part” of Bayou Terrace, where those who worked daily among the mentally ill established their own niche of stability with laughter and pots of coffee.

Bayou Terrace Hospital had no bayou or terrace to speak of. Located several miles outside of New Orleans, the U-shaped building was concealed from the street by a hedge of oak trees. The hospital consisted of two starkly modern wings bridged by the Greek Revival original building. A haggard courtyard lay at its center. It was visiting day at Bayou Terrace, and Meredith could see a small congregation of pale-faced families waiting to visit their children in the Adolescent Ward.

Debbie walked, carrying a manila folder that Meredith assumed was Angela Darby’s file. “Schizophrenic? Can someone just become schizophrenic overnight?” she asked quietly enough.

Debbie didn’t answer.

Something wasn’t right. First of all, Debbie had lost her authoritative calm. For a woman who had spoken with such expertise at dinner, Debbie seemed awkwardly silent on the subject of Angela Darby. They rounded a corner before halting in front of an oak door bolted with several locks. A plaque over the doorway read THE BORDEAUX WING.

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“The Bordeaux Wing is the original hospital building. Built in 1856, I think. It’s currently under renovation.” Debbie fished her key ring from a pocket.

“They keep patients in here?”

“I’m sure you’re aware of the circumstances under which she was admitted,” Debbie said as she fit a key into a lock.

“Yes,” Meredith replied.

Once all three locks were undone, Debbie pulled the door open and motioned for Meredith to pass through. The Bordeaux Wing was a long hallway with plaster moldings and paint peeling in thick curls from the walls. A scaffold littered with empty paint cans blocked the exit at the other end.

Meredith was acutely aware of the circumstances under which Angela had been admitted. She had been sitting in the pew behind Angela Darby when she yowled and clawed at her husband’s arm. By the fourth time Angela had cried out, “They did it!” the priest paused in his eulogy and waited until Angela was escorted from the church.

That night Andrew Darby was said to have discovered a draft of a letter Angela was composing to the mayor of Thibodaux, apologizing for her performance in the pep rally skit and asking the town’s citizens to admit that they had orchestrated a plot to kill her younger son.