A Density of Souls (5 page)

“When will it stop?” Stephen asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“When are they going to leave me alone? They don’t have to like me. But I just want to know when they’re going to leave me alone,”

Stephen said.

He raised his eyes to meet Nurse Schwartz’s pained gaze. There was no answer to his question.

After the final bell rang, Stephen spared himself the torturous walk down the English Hallway, which he knew would be crowded with juniors and seniors heading to practice on the field. The Administrative Hallway afforded a quiet and easy escape. The pine office doors and framed pictures of prominent alumni would not snicker or giggle at him.

Stephen shuffled toward a framed eight-by-ten portrait of the Headmaster’s Award winner, vicious white smile shining from half a hallway away. Hesitantly he passed the closed door to the headmaster’s office.

A small bronze placard was affixed to the bottom of the frame. Its cal-ligraphic script announced the name of the previous year’s recipient: JORDAN CHARBONNET

Stephen stared blankly at the name. At first it didn’t register.

His eyes traveled up to the young man’s face. Jordan Charbonnet’s black hair was as sculpted as the proportioned, muscular figure that was clearly contained beneath his blazer and tie. Jordan’s brown eyes and slightly full, auburn lips gleamed against immaculate olive skin.

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Dread left Stephen. As he gazed up at Jordan Charbonnet, he felt a sudden quiet pass over his soul. Jordan Charbonnet was a vision, a god, and Stephen Conlin was hungry for the divine.

Jordan Charbonnet.

Finally, it registered. Brandon’s brother.

Stephen had only glimpsed Jordan several times, years before. His only knowledge of him had been the tales of his sexual conquests that Brandon had related to all of them—stories that repulsed Meredith, fascinated Greg, and flushed Stephen with an excitement he could not yet understand.

On that November day, Jordan Charbonnet stood before Stephen Conlin smiling with a pride that Stephen felt had been stolen from him. The purity of desire filled him for the first time with sustenance rather than envy. Jordan Charbonnet’s beauty spoke to Stephen louder than the whispers of the three friends who had abandoned and branded him. And Stephen knew that a feeling so strong and so immediate could not be destroyed by the cruelty of others. His desire offered him promise. It would, he hoped, armor his soul, protecting the most vital parts of who he might someday be allowed to be.

I must dream about you, Stephen thought, I must take you from this picture and place you firmly in my soul.

Five minutes had passed. Stephen thought it had been an hour. He gauged the distance between himself and the picture, and the front doors. He took one step forward, and then lifted the picture off its nails. Without a single witness, Stephen walked out of Cannon with Jordan Charbonnet under one arm.

4

M
eredith’s fifteenthbirthdaycameonemonthafterThanks-giving and her father gave her a car, a brand-new Toyota 4-Runner fully equipped with CD changer and leather seats, to which Trish Ducote commented, “He could at least have waited until Christmas!”

As Meredith would realize later, her father had an ulterior motive for making a gift of the car. When Ronald Ducote divorced Trish, he un-protestingly departed their Garden District mansion, the Dubossant residence, which had originally belonged to Marie Dubossant, Trish’s grandmother, and surrendered any claim to Trish Ducote’s sizeable inheritance and mutual funds. The car was meant to prove that Ronald now had money of his own and Trish could finally just give in and go back to her maiden name. Why Trish kept her married name baffled most people, but Ronald had told Meredith he thought it was a deliberate gesture meant to intimidate his girlfriends. Ducote was a

“yat” name, indigenous to the less wealthy residents of New Orleans who were more Italian than French and lived in the suburbs hugging the shore of Lake Pontchartrain. A “yat” had a Brooklyn-esque accent, a mother with big hair, and a tendency to use the expression “Where y’at?” when inquiring about someone’s well-being. Hence the term yat, and hence the reason Meredith’s parents had divorced. Meredith knew her father had been a yat, much in the same way that Stephen’s mother, Monica, had been a poor Irish girl from the wrong side of Magazine Street. While Trish Ducote had spent her youth at debuts and Mardi Gras balls, Ronald had attended crab boils and gone on fishing trips to Manshack.

Christmas break was several weeks away the day Meredith skipped cheerleading practice and drove to an area along the Mississippi River known as “the Fly”, a stretch of grassy, hillocky riverbank that was 34

A Density of Souls

home to middle school soccer games and several jungle gyms. Meredith came here to contemplate most things she wouldn’t dare think in the halls of Cannon School.

An unseasonably cold winter stained the air. The sky was a flat gray and the oaks of uptown New Orleans stood out in a ferocious shade of green against the stone-colored clouds. After the final bell, Kate had snuck her a Marlboro Light she had stolen from her father’s hidden pack. Kate was taken aback when Meredith put the cigarette in her coat pocket and said she wanted to smoke it alone.

By the time she was fifteen, Meredith did not feel awe for many things. The Mississippi River was one exception. Staring at the river from where she sat on the 4-Runner’s hood, her cigarette smoldering between her fingers, Meredith thought of a poster Mr. Carter had on his classroom wall—a drawing of a man in a black trench coat poised on the edge of a cliff, staring out at a stormy sea. She thought the man was supposed to be a poet but she wasn’t sure. Now she felt slightly like the man in the picture: the thought occupied her mind and eased the lingering burning sensation in her lower jaw. Only the wind wasn’t strong and the Mississippi was quiet and sluggish.

Meredith and Greg had not said a word about the note in the month since Greg had written it and Brandon had taped it to Stephen’s book bag. The night before, she and Greg had been studying, which usually consisted of looking sidelong at their books for a while, and then falling back onto Meredith’s bed, where Greg would lift up her shirt and start gnawing her nipples through her bra, then manage to yank the cups down over the bottom of her breasts before finally undoing the hooks and taking it off. He had taken his shirt off, which made it better than usual.

But then Greg had started in. Baby, baby, baby—over and over again, in low breathy moans. She had finally retaliated with an impatient, “What?”

“Huh?” Greg gasped, his mouth still pressed against her breasts.

“Baby . . . What?” Meredith asked.

He hopped off the side of the bed and retrieved his T-shirt, which was dangling on the back of Meredith’s desk chair. He stabbed an arm through one sleeve. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it. If you don’t want to, then just say so . . .”

“I didn’t say that,” she answered, her head hitting the pillow again.

“No. You were just being a bitch!”

The Falling Impossible

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“You know what, Greg . . .” Meredith began and then stopped, bringing both hands to her forehead. Greg shot her a look of baffled frustration. Five more seconds and she knew he would be angry.

“Whatever,” she whispered.

“So you think I’m some moron?” Greg asked.

He had read her mind. For an instant, Meredith thought that she might be wrong about him. Greg knew things the way she did, but he just couldn’t articulate them. Maybe she and Greg often shared the same thoughts, but neither of them could know for sure because they were always too afraid to express them.

“Yeah, whatever!” Greg was getting breathless with fury. “You know, like, since we started high school you’ve become, like, this totally different person. It’s like you think if you’re as bitchy as Kate then you’re going to . . .”

“I am not a different person!” Meredith cut in, jumping off the bed.

“Jesus. Just go before my mom comes in.”

“Meredith, if you think being a bitch is going to make you homecoming queen in four years, then just forget it because—”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean? Homecoming queen?” Her anger was rising uncontrollably. She had been reaching for her bra, but now her arm had drifted to her side and she no longer cared that her breasts were still exposed. Greg had cut deeper than he realized. She liked to think that there was still a part of herself that was sanctioned off, a small portion that still connected her to the girl she had been before entering Cannon. She was outraged that Greg would be the one to try to convince her that her connection to the past did not exist.

“So you’re exactly the same?” she asked, harsh as she could make it.

“You haven’t changed at all? Yeah, right! Why don’t you ask Stephen’s opinion?”

Meredith looked away from him. Silence followed. When she finally looked back, Greg had gone rigid. His face was fixed, like her own mother’s, indignant and speechless, to let her know that she had violated something—gone too far and cut to the bone.

Suddenly, his arm arced through the air in a clean sweep, his hand forming a fist in the instant before it struck her right beneath the jaw.

When it hit, she felt her mouth rear up, pressing her right eye against its socket. Then she was staring into her bedspread.

“Shit,” Greg whispered.

Meredith lay with her face pressed against the comforter. Maybe 36

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she had gone too far. Stephen’s name could propel both of them back into anger.

“I didn’t . . .” Greg stammered, “I didn’t . . .”

“Go,” Meredith said.

After he slammed the door behind him, she righted herself. She lifted her bra off the comforter and strapped it on. She didn’t bother to put her shirt back on as she crept to her bedside mirror and stared at the first signs of a bruise beneath her bottom lip.

Greg had a dozen good defenses he could use against the mention of Stephen. Brandon had made sure of that. Stephen was a fag; he broke the rules; he betrayed the world they now lived in, and had never even apologized for doing it. Why did Greg have to hit her to prove that?

Hadn’t the note they taped on Stephen’s book bag made it all obvious?

I know things.

The thought struck her instantly. She cocked her head as if fascinated by the developing bruise. I know things. Greg’s fist had shown her that her words were more powerful than she realized.

Now, the Cotton Blossom was rounding the bend in the river, just off the bank of the Fly, its brightly lit decks and harsh calliope music a sudden disruption. She felt the winter chill in the air and shivered before the smoldering butt of the Marlboro Light stung and she released it from between two fingers with an angry hiss.

The Cotton Blossom cruised down the river in front of her, a trail of wavering light on its wake. She tried to focus on it. She was being forced back toward memories she didn’t want to face.

It had been a Sunday during the summer before their sixth-grade year at Polk.

Meredith’s mother had left her with Aunt Lois, who wanted to teach Meredith how to make macaroni picture frames. Meredith had called Brandon’s mother. No, the boys weren’t there. She’d called Miss Angela, Greg’s mother, and got no answer. So she went to Greg’s house, where she plucked out the hidden key from beneath the geranium pot on the back porch. (Stephen’s hidden key was buried in one of the flower beds outside the back door; Brandon, as far as she knew, didn’t have one.) As she walked down the side driveway of the Darby residence, she noticed the family mini-van was missing, which meant The Falling Impossible

37

that Mister Andrew and Miss Angela had probably taken Greg’s younger brother, Alex, to the aquarium. Had Greg, Brandon, and Stephen gone with them? And if they had, why had they gone without her?

Once inside the house, she was overcome by the giddy sensation of trespassing in empty rooms. Her only company was the stuffed Mr.

Toad perched precariously on the piano bench in the living room.

(Alex was infatuated with The Wind in the Willows.) Then she heard the boys upstairs.

She craned her neck and stared at the plaster molding around the crown of the chandelier. She continued to listen—but voyeuristic excitement collapsed into an icy bath. What she was hearing was not laughter. It sounded like a series of giggles, but it was too urgent, and there were too many in a row. She couldn’t recognize any voices. If only one of them would talk.

She heard what sounded like a dog’s yelp.

“For the love of God . . .”

It was Greg’s voice. But something was wrong with it. He didn’t sound like himself.

Then she heard Brandon’s laughs, high pitched yet striving to be the loudest. Angry tears stung her eyes. What was there for them to laugh about without her? What would the three of them be doing that they had to shut her out?

Meredith locked the back door to the Darby residence behind her and slid the key back under the geranium pot. She started to run down Philip Street. The faster she ran, the harder it was to cry.

The muddy river sprawled before her and Meredith thought once again, I know things.

“Hey!”

Greg was standing ten feet away from where she sat on the hood of the 4-Runner. His father’s Bronco was parked comfortably far away.

He had wanted to take her by surprise. Despite the chill, Greg was wearing his practice shirt with the sleeves shorn off, revealing his bulking shoulders and broadening forearms. His hair was sweaty. If Greg was going to endure this conversation at all, he’d do it only after he had spent two and a half hours on the football field proving he was invincible.

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“Look, I get it if you, like, don’t want to talk to me right now . . .”

Greg said.

“How did you know I was here?” Meredith asked.

“Kate.”

Meredith’s breath hissed between her teeth.

“What I did was stupid . . .” Greg trailed off, his hands fumbling, trying to clasp one another. He studied the patch of pavement between his cleats. Meredith had never seen him so deflated, so in need of something from her.