Choir Boy (27 page)

“So where we eating? I figured the burger joint.”

“We’re not stopping for dinner, son. I’m kidnapping you and taking you to Vermont. I’m taking you away from all these bad influences and back to nature. We can do home-schooling and herd goats.”

“Can I put in a vote for burgers instead of goats?” Wilson said from the back seat.

Marco almost crashed into the on-ramp’s metal guardrail. “What the fuck? Who’s that?”

“You remember my friend Wilson. You came to his house once,” Berry said. “He’s just come out as gay or something.”

“Hey, label-freedom. Supportiveness,” P-Fac said. Berry turned to see both Wilson and P-Fac in back. “Hey, I thought we were going for food,” P-Fac explained.

“Peter’s the bishop of a really lame religion,” Berry told Marco.

“God dammit! I’m trying to abduct my son here!” Marco swerved between two lanes on the freeway, trying to fake out other, slower cars. Several cars surrendered the left two lanes to him.

“Ya know, this whole abducting your kids thing is so old school,” P-Fac said. “My church teaches that children nurture their parents and forgive them for their mistakes. Parents give life to their children only once, but the children give life to the parents over and over after that.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll fucking pull over and let you out,” Marco said. “Just don’t talk any more.” He chose an offramp at random, zoomed through the exit and took a hard right into a gas station lot. The pumps looked rusted past the point where anything could flow. The lights were smashed and the lot held no other cars. Across the road was a deserted junk yard, past that some untended fields. “Okay, here you go.” Marco stopped the car.

“Where the Hell are we?” Wilson asked.

“North of the Dead Zone,” P-Fac said. “A mile or so out of town, but way further than that from anywhere you’d wanna be.”

“Good enough for me,” Berry said. He lost his seat belt and jumped out. Marco grabbed at Berry’s arm, but he shook his dad off,

“Come back here!” Marco screamed. Berry ran toward the gas station. Behind it was a tiny church, the Floly Day Revival Shack. Berry could hear singing and tambourines inside, even on a Monday night. It wasn’t European choral music, more like Elevator Gospel, dominated by a cheap synthesizer.

“Your dad’s crazy,” Wilson panted. He ran right behind Berry.

“Why are you running? He’s not trying to kidnap you.” “He doesn’t seem too jacked in. I don’t want to risk him deciding to take me to Vermont instead.”

Berry looked at Wilson running with him in the dark and felt joy out of nowhere that his friend was with him. “So this gay thing,” Berry panted. “Did it start... I mean, when you and I . . . Did I make you?”

“I started figuring it out before that,” Wilson said. “That’s why our kiss freaked me out.”

They reached a parking lot, beyond which an alley led to a construction site, with a hole in the ground and rusty girders in uneven piles. They ran through the alley and stopped at the edge of the hole.

“Where are we running to?” Wilson asked.

“Not sure,” Berry said. He sat down on the border between lot and hole. Wilson sat next to him. “Do you think I could ever get back in the choir? If I don’t get dragged to Vermont.”

“Maybe,” Wilson said. “We’ve been going over some new music. There’s this Schutz piece where we have to divide into two choirs, it’s way intense. I think Mr. Allen must have been nuts to give us this piece right after losing you and Teddy. Check it out, there’s this part where Treble A comes in and then Treble B comes in half a measure later and the melody gets fucked like a dog.” Wilson found the sheet music in his knapsack and spread it on the tarmac. “Yo, I be Treble A, you be Treble B.” He counted it off, and

Berry picked it up pretty quickly. It wasn’t a fugue, more like two bugs chasing each other or mating. One bug would lunge and then the other one would swoop. Berry squinted at the music under the one lamp hanging nearby.

The second time they sang it, the top tw
^r
o Schutz parts meshed way better. Wilson’s voice led, still strong but with cracks. But Berry was right there and they blended, two instruments tuned just the same way and stained with the same brush. Their voices filled the dead construction site like a really dirty cathedral. When they finished, Berry and Wilson sat side by side looking into the hole. Berry felt like he was smiling for the first time in years.

“Thanks,” Berry said. “I’ve missed singing.”

“Cool,” Wilson said. “Can we get out of here?”

“Sure. Maybe we can call your dad. Or I know this chick who has a car. Listen, Wilson. You know Lisa? I killed her dad yesterday.”

“Huh?”

“Mostly by accident.”

“Well, she wasn’t at school today. But they told us her dad was in the hospital but he was going to be okay. And they totally said it was an accident. They didn’t say anything about a killer choirboy.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, like get over yourself, fuckin’ pimp daddy killa at large.”

“I wondered why I hadn’t been arrested yet.”

It took ages to find a payphone and call Mr. Fennimore. They went through some more of the choir’s other new pieces and Berry felt less out of the loop. Finally, the Rabbit pulled up. “I feel bad—this is the second time I’ve been stranded and needed a pickup,” Berry said.

Mr. Fennimore laughed. He wore a blue flannel check shirt and a black tie. “So it must have been a pretty amazing model car meeting if you wound up out here,” Mr. Fennimore said to Wilson.

“Yeah,” Wilson said, giving Berry a shut-up look. “Long story. We kind of got separated.”

“Speaking of which, whatever happened to the Bishop?” Berry wondered.

Mr. Fennimore took Wilson and Berry to a burger joint at last. Berry called home from a payphone. Judy sounded ragged with fear. “Marco said he was bringing you right home. Where have you been?”

“Oh, he tried to kidnap me and Wilson to Vermont. We ran away. He still has your car.”

“Fuck! The fucking bastard. Vermont? Why Vermont?” Judy asked a bunch of questions. Berry gave short answers. Just when Berry was getting ready to hang up, she said, “Oh yeah. Mr. Allen is here, from the church. He wanted to talk to me about the choir.”

Berry skipped all the way back to his table at the restaurant. Not even Mr. Fennimore’s attempts to make Wilson and him discuss aesthetics could damage Berry’s high. Wilson just looked down and mumbled as Mr. Fennimore threw out conversational openings about some chick named Edith Stein. Wilson shot Berry a disgusted look as his dad droned. Berry shrugged. Mr. Fennimore was a nice guy, even if he was wound pretty tight and his breath smelled like isopropyl.

Then Mr. Fennimore started rambling about his poetry and how he’d won some award once, and how he was doomed to have no respect in this lifetime because of his day job in advertising, but if only his own son would respect him it would make the whole deal bearable.

Wilson muttered under his breath, “Ivy League. Phi Beta Kappa. Marry a doctor,” over and over.

Finally, Mr. Fennimore drove Berry home. Berry said, “See ya soon,” to Wilson, then ran upstairs three steps at a time.

The apartment lookeci clean again. Judy had a glass of wine in one hand and wore a tight-waisted long skirt and lacy top. Berry wasn’t used to his mom looking so foxy. It made her slender face and wispy auburn hair look way younger, and her cheeks had a coal-fired exuberance. Berry licked every one of his bottom teeth one by one. When she saw Berry, she ran over and hugged him. He felt the sweat on her arms and chest.

“I’m so glad you’re home safe,” Judy said. “Vermont?” “It’s almost Canada,” Berry said.

She made Berry tell the whole story twice, tense at the first hearing and maniacally giggly the second time. “Oh my God, you couldn’t make something like this up. I hope he goes to Vermont on his own. I’m changing the locks first thing tomorrow morning. Vermont. Well, I married him because he made me laugh. Who knew I’d divorce him for the same reason?”

Judy had never mentioned the “D” word before. It felt like the cathedral’s storeroom filled with moldy hymnals. “Uh. Are you sure about that? I mean, just a few days ago, you guys had this new lease on love and now ...”

“A lot happened in the past few days.”

Berry could only think of one thing that had happened in the past few days. “Uh. You know that thing where the kids feel responsible for the parents splitting?”

“Stockholm Syndrome?”

“Maybe. I saw an after school special about it before Marco broke the TV. Anyway, I kind of feel like this is my fault.”

Judy put one hand, fingers spread like a spider, on Berry’s forehead. “Oh, Berry. Even if it was partly your doing, it’s for the best. He’s such a maniac. And it’s worth it to gain such a pretty daughter.”

“Oh.”

Berry almost forgot to ask how Mr. Allen’s visit had gone.

“Oh, Mr. Allen . . . he’s a terrific guy.”

Berry wished he was watching the DVD of his life so he could switch to the commentary track and understand what Judy was saying.

“I think Mr. Allen’s great too. So when do I go back to the choir?”

Judy looked as if a bug had turned up in her wine. “Oh, you’re not going back. Mr. Allen and I talked it over and decided it would be totally inappropriate. You need to move on. He was disappointed at first, but he got over it.” She laughed.

Berry screamed. He didn’t make words, just shrieked at the top of his range. Judy tried again and again to shush him. Finally, she encouraged him instead. “That’s right, hon, just let it out, primal scream your pants off, it’s the best thing, it’s okay to mourn the old life.”

She put her arms around Berry again and she felt moist and soft like the warm towelette at the fancy restaurant Judy and Marco had taken Berry to on their twelfth anniversary.

“Oh, baby, my miracle changeling child. This is all so salty and perilous.” She breathed loudly. “The ground won’t settle beneath our feet, but I know this is right. You’ve always been more beautiful than any boy should have to live with. Now you’re going to live up to it. I’m so proud of you, my sweet girl.” She held Berry until his shrieking turned to crying and the crying went dead. Then she let go and made root beer floats.

All that sugar so close to bed made Berry brush his teeth twice. It also meant he lay in bed watching the flicker of outside lights against his choir posters. He couldn’t begin to take in everything that had happened. Sometime around three in the morning, Berry still couldn’t sleep.

My tears have been my meat day and night . . .
Berry hummed to himself.
Would God I had died for thee .
. . He went into the sitting room/kitchen and stared at the television without trying to turn it on. In its opaque grayness he thought he saw Lisa’s father, face down in his own psychiatric lagoon, and then, flooded almost to death, laid up in a hospital bed with tubes into every opening or limb. Berry wondered if Marco was halfway to Vermont yet, if he drove all night.

He imagined himself at dinner with Wilson’s dad, at the burger joint. He should have warned Mr. Fennimore, “Stay away from me. Don’t you know? I’m the father-wrecker. My own dad or other people’s, no matter. I’m poison.”

Berry took off his clothes and examined himself. His naked body swirled in the dead TV screen. He saw weirdly pasted porno. Tits and a dick at a standoff. Was it any mystery why everything in his life bled shit? Berry felt nauseated, not just by his body, but by the realization that he’d been enjoying himself. He’d kicked and complained, but a big part of him had enjoyed everything, the clothes, the attention. When he’d started to enjoy his freakish not-this-not-that life, he’d cut it all to shreds.

He wished he were looking at his body in a toilet bowl and could tug the flush to send it away forever.

He looked older in the gray image, tired and grime-coated. Maybe he was seeing a twentysomething version of himself, homeless and desperate like the Lambda Youth girls. If he couldn’t sing at the cathedral any more, maybe he’d visit the soup kitchen and throw up on the choir. Berry found some lipstick Anna or Maura had left him and drew on his reflection in the voided screen. He put circles around his breasts, for containment. He drew red crosses over his eyes’ reflections.

“I miss when I thought I was just going to prison forever,” Berry told the television.

Morning loomed. Sunrise would hold everything in place, like an extra helping of gravity. Things that shifted in the dark would be permanent by day. Berry would be out of the choir forever. And his family would be wrecked for good.

Berry ended up in the kitchen again, holding the same knife he’d used to attack his balls last summer. This time he held it to the ridge beneath his breasts. Berry took a deep breath, worth a minute underwater or a long phrase, then he raised the knife to bite at the softness beneath his alien growths. He bit his lip and promised himself to make no sound this time. He sawed until the pain felt like an animal clawing inside him. Then he sawed some more. He used his anger to counterbalance the burning. He felt rivers flow down his stomach to his lifeless pubes. He held the knife in place until his hands lost their strength. Then he let himself fall on the kitchen floor until the cracked ceiling drifted down onto him.

16.

“Self-mutilation as a means of self-expression has certain intrinsic limits, particularly if you resort to it each time life gets hairy. After a time you run out of limbs. I’ve seen it a few times; psych wards full of fingerless malcontents trying to dislodge their teeth with calculated falls into furniture. It’s hard to believe you grew breasts just to gain two extra easels for your art. Okay, so maybe it’s not art, art implies technique, which you lack. Unless tormenting others scores as an art form. I can talk all day, you know. That’s what these framed papers on my wall attest to: my ability to fill an hour with words. But speaking of psych wards, you’re lucky you’re not locked up under observation right now. To cut yourself once and all that; but the Wilde reference goes over your head, huh. You know, it’s in your interest for me to feel in the loop. I can do a lot for you if I know what’s going on. It’s not about power. It’s not. It’s about prudence. I’ve already gone out on a huge limb for you. Not a huge limb, a very thin and ill-supported limb extending a few feet over a bottomless drop. Allowing sex-changes in barely pubescent kids isn’t exactly in the mainstream of psychiatric thought, you know. It’s been done in a handful of cases, where the patient seemed especially, I should say suicidally, determined, as you did. But I guess one shouldn’t confuse determination with random self-destructiveness. Trying to discern a meaning in the jumper’s descent only distracts