A Question of Manhood (12 page)

By way of response I dug into my pack and pulled out the test. He smiled and reached for it. I sucked on the straw in my milk shake while he read, going through the multiple choice like lightning, making just one mark with his pencil. He handed that page to me.

“Paul, read this question one more time, and let me know if you want to stick with this answer.”

Fuck. I knew there was gonna be something tricky in here.
But when I read it, there wasn't a trick. I must have just read it too quickly on Saturday. “I read it wrong the first time. Can I change the answer to B instead?”

“Considering all the others are correct, yes. And B is the correct choice.” He put that section aside and started in on the essay questions. He wrote a couple of comments but didn't say anything. Then he started the fourth one, the one about the besieged castle.

Every once in a while, he pointed out something with his pencil and said, “What's that word?” I finally had to apologize for my penmanship. He grinned. “It kind of looks like you were rushing to get all the words onto the paper. This one engaged you, didn't it?” He looked down again, didn't wait for me to answer.

I was a little anxious about what his reaction would be to the ending. Since I'd written it from my supposed deathbed, the last sentence was incomplete, like I'd died before I could finish. I watched his eyes, which stopped moving when he got to the end, and he just stared. He didn't shift his gaze from that blank spot after my last written word for maybe half a minute. Then he set the paper down, his eyes still on it.

He's gonna say something I don't want to hear
.
He didn't like it.
But when he looked up, what he said shocked me.

“Are you taking creative writing next semester, Paul?”

I blinked. “No. Why?”

“Even if you don't want to make a future out of it, writing can help cleanse your spirit. It can help you figure out what your priorities in life are. What's important to you.” I shrugged; I wasn't sure what he meant. “Well, just think about it. Maybe for next year. Though I think you might find it helpful with what you're going through presently.” He laid his hands flat on the table, on either side of the paper. “Now let's talk about your grade, shall we?”

He did all right by me. I ended up with a B overall for the semester, which was fine by me. Now all I had to worry about was whether I could meet with his concept of “normal attention,” which I was supposed to get back to by January.

 

I wish I could say I used the time in the next couple of weeks constructively, though what that would have meant I'm not sure. I did accomplish getting gifts for Mom and Dad, anyway. I walked to the bus stop and rode into town, heading right for the largest department store there so I could just wander around until something inspired me. I didn't have a clue. It didn't help my mood any to realize that I wouldn't have to strain my brain trying to come up with something brilliant for Chris. A new album was the only thing that had occurred to me earlier, when it was still something I'd need to do, but I wouldn't even have known what he liked anymore. 'Nam changed people.
It sure changed Chris,
I thought, as I fingered men's leather wallets, contemplating getting one for Dad.
Changed him right into worm food
.

In the end I picked up a bath set for Mom—bubble bath, salts, powder, that sort of thing—and I left the department store to get what I'd decided on for Dad. But that was a bit of a problem, because at his smoke shop, when I'd found a gift selection of various pipe tobaccos, the old geezer of a clerk took one look at me and said, “ID?”

Shit. Think fast.
“Is, um, is Mr. Chandler here?” He was the store owner, and I'd been in here a few times with Dad and had met him. I figured he'd be my only chance at getting out with this stuff. He was in the back office, where the clerk pointed me with one hand, keeping a firm grip on the gift pack with the other.

“Merry Christmas, Mr. Chandler,” I said, hoping to set a friendly tone.

“Paul! Well, hello. You here with your father?”

“Actually, um, no. I was hoping to get a tobacco assortment for him for Christmas, but I have this problem.”

He chuckled, which I took for a good sign, but he said, “You're quite right, young man. That is a problem. I wish I could help you, but the law has my hands tied.”

I stood there shuffling my feet a minute and then said, “What about this. If I give you some money, you can buy it, right? And then, say, you step outside for a breath of fresh air, and we say Merry Christmas and all that stuff?” I held my breath.
Am I suggesting something illegal?

He eyed me for a minute. “This gift pack you wanted. Is it the one with a pipe in it?”

“No. Just the packets.” I'd thought about buying just a pipe, which wouldn't be illegal, but the idea felt like I was trying to do better than the one Chris had given him in November.

“And you aren't buying a pipe, or any papers, or anything like that, right?”

“Right.” I saw where he was going, and I kept my mouth shut.

He thought about it for a minute and then winked at me. He stood up, draped an arm on my shoulder, and walked me slowly toward the door to the shop and stood there as I went through it. “It was really nice to see you, young man. Though I was very sorry to hear about your brother. Give my best to your father for me, will you?” He stood in the shop doorway, grinning at me, while I moved away from the windows. I went to the corner and waited. Very shortly afterward I saw him coming from around the block; must have gone out the back door, no coat even.

“You are a character, Paul. Here,” and he handed me a bag. “Now you come back after Christmas with some money for me, and I want to hear how your dad liked these. Got it? And next time I see him, I'm going to ask how he liked them. If he just stares blankly at me, you're in a heap of trouble.” He was grinning. “Got that?”

“Yes, sir. Thanks, Mr. Chandler. You don't want the money now?”

He slapped his hands against his arms in the cold. “You can't buy tobacco from me, young man. Whatever are you thinking?” And he turned and ran back the way he'd come.

So at least I got that errand done. But mostly I slept as late as anyone would let me, though Mom usually made me get up by eleven if I wasn't out of bed already. And I was jerking off all the time; it was about the only release I could think of that wouldn't get me into trouble. Mostly I did it in bed, and even though I tried to catch the mess in tissues my sheets got disgusting. One day, maybe the Thursday before Christmas, I ripped them off the bed and was just about to carry them downstairs to leave them in the laundry room when it occurred to me that I didn't really want my mom to see how bad they were, and I should wash them myself, but I didn't know how to run the washer. So I picked up a bunch of clothes and added them to the pile.

Downstairs I put the sheets into the machine and studied the controls, but I wasn't sure whether to use hot water or how much detergent or what else should go in there. I piled the other stuff—jeans, school clothes, socks, underwear—on the floor. This way it wouldn't look so much like I was just washing sheets, and maybe Mom wouldn't ask embarrassing questions. I went to find her.

“You're washing your own clothes?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. Thought it was about time I learned how.”

She smiled kind of sadly and touched the side of my face. Then we went to the laundry room and I got a lecture on everything from water temperature to load limits. I washed everything I'd taken downstairs, and even though I already knew how to make my bed all this activity took me most of the afternoon. At least that was one way to kill time. And it must have met with Mom's approval, 'cause after Dad got home he came to my room, where I was reading some stupid science fiction book.

“Paul? Son, I just want to say that was a good thing you did today. Taking responsibility for your own laundry like that.”

The only reply I could think of was, “Trying to make things easier for Mom.”

He smiled, nodded, and limped off.
Now you've done it
.
You've managed to get your name attached to a new chore
. And I realized that what this must look like to Dad—instead of me hiding something from Mom—is my stepping up to being a man, like he'd told me I had to do.
Yeah
,
I'm a man, all right. And I've got the cum-stiff sheets to prove it. Just as long as I don't have to die like Chris, being the man
you
wanted to be
.

And then I felt like a shit. He was just trying to be nice to me. If only he hadn't got Chris killed.

On Saturday, after killing some time with a nasty bike ride through half-frozen puddles and lumpy mud, it occurred to me that Charlie, my friend with the baseball glove, would want to know about Chris. About what had happened to him, anyway; not everything. I started to get up and ask Mom if she had his address anyplace before I remembered she was at the grocery store.

Charlie and I had exchanged a couple of letters just after he'd moved, so I figured I had his grandmother's address, if I could just find the letters. I was pretty sure they were in a box in the back of my closet, so I went rummaging through all the junk in there. I located the box I wanted and tried to slide it forward, but it kept getting caught on something. Frustrated, I reached blindly into the dark and yanked at things. I'd littered the floor of my room with all kinds of crap from my closet before I figured out what the box had got stuck on. It was one of the Ho Chi Minhs. I fell backward onto my ass and sat there staring at it until I couldn't see it anymore for the tears in my eyes. I just let them run down my face for a minute, then I fell onto my belly, head on my arms, and sobbed.

I was still hiccupping when I sat at my desk and opened the top drawer, where I kept the five pellets from the SADEYE.
Sad eye. Yeah, that's about right.
I held them in my left hand, shifted books with my right to get to a notebook, reached for a pen, and began to write, sniffling frequently at first, then less and less as I wrote.

It started out as a letter to Charlie. It ended up as a letter to Chris. And it went round and round and round. Why this, why that, why the other. I'm keeping his secrets, I'm praying for him in church, I'm praying that I'll get some of the good parts of him so I can make life at home a little less shitty for everyone. How did he keep Dad happy, what did he do that Mom liked best. I put that I knew he couldn't answer but that I really needed to know, blah blah blah. And what in God's name, I asked, could I do to convince Dad I was acting like a man.

When I started to circle back again and ask some of the same questions I'd opened with, I sat back hard, slammed my left hand—pellets still clenched tight—down on the desk, and heaved a shaky sigh. I threw the pen down and crumpled all the pages I'd written on. They went into the wastebasket. And then I wrote to Charlie.

I had to put the pen down and close my sad eyes for a minute while I got my breathing under control.

I'd just gone downstairs to find an envelope and a stamp when I heard my mom's car pulling in. As soon as I'd dashed upstairs I realized I should probably help her with the bags, so I shoved the letter into my top drawer and headed down again. Afterward, back in my room, I stood in front of the desk, watching dusk get duskier outside, wondering why I'd felt it was necessary to hide the letter. It's not like I shouldn't write it, and it's not like I'd said anything my parents shouldn't see. I figured maybe it was because I'd cried; a man wouldn't do that, right? Or maybe because a man wouldn't do anything to remind Mom how sad she was, so he wouldn't want her to see the letter?

Plus, there was that crumpled ball of what I'd written to Chris, in the wastebasket right beside the desk. I bent over and retrieved it. Turning around in circles, I scoured the room for a good place to hide it until I could figure out what to do with it. I settled on a spot under the mattress, since I'd probably be changing my own sheets again in a day or so, what with the mess I was still making of them. One arm stuffed between mattress and box spring, it occurred to me that if I did the trash myself, I could sneak it in then and no one would ever see it. My job had always been taking the trash outside, but Mom had always collected it. I'd have to do both, which could be a good thing; if my folks had liked my doing my own laundry, even though it was for the wrong reasons, they'd probably feel the same about the trash. Also for the wrong reasons.

Is deceit part of being a man?

As quickly as I could, I found Charlie's letters in the box I'd pulled out of the closet. Then I sat at my desk, addressed and stamped the envelope, and stowed it and the SADEYE pellets back in the drawer; I'd get the letter mailed somehow, probably on another bike ride. Next I threw everything except the Ho Chi Minhs back into the closet. The sandals went under my bed; I didn't want to lose track of where they were.

 

Sunday I drove Mom to church again. I was beginning to wonder why Dad never went with her anymore, but I knew better than to ask a question like that if I wasn't real sure I wanted to hear the answer. Don't stir things up, is what Dad had told me; we need calm. So I didn't ask.