A Question of Manhood Read online

  I’d forgotten about organ music. Don’t know how I could have, it’s so much a part of the experience. When I used to come here as a kid, the only parts I liked were singing the hymns and listening to the organ. Though it always made me a little crazy when the organist would try to do improv stuff on the last verse. I wanted the music to be familiar all the way through, damn it, and it was like they ruined the end for me.

  Didn’t take long for me to figure out that they were still up to their old tricks. Still ruining the end. In one way, I didn’t mind; I mean, I hadn’t been here in so long I couldn’t exactly have anything to say about how things were done. On the other, I felt a real need for something—anything—to feel familiar. To feel like there was something that didn’t get yanked out from under you. But the service felt familiar, anyway. Different minister from the one I remembered; had Mom mentioned that at some point? She must have. This guy seemed a little younger. And maybe a little more with it, but it was still a sermon.

  It was Christmas season, so the readings were full of things anticipated, a coming birth, the dawning of a new hope. Yeah, right. I glanced at Mom to see how she was taking this. She was looking at me, her eyes moist, but she didn’t look sad, exactly. She looked—wistful, maybe? Hopeful? What do I have to do with hope? I didn’t feel like smiling, but I did anyway, just to give her a little encouragement; at least she wasn’t sobbing, which I’d half thought she might do. I mean, there’s nothing like everyone else sounding cheerful when you’ve been hit by a bus to make you feel even more like shit.

  Several times as I sat there, I felt sure I was supposed to be praying or something. Was there really no place in the service where everyone just sat still and had a word with Jesus? But then I thought, what would I say? Besides, God had probably forgotten about me. So mostly I just sat there and let things wash over me.

  During the last part of the service Mom took my hand. I couldn’t quite remember the last time she did that. She held it until the final hymn was announced and we had to fumble in the hymnals, and I was thinking that maybe she and Chris used to do that. Hold hands.

  So I’m hope now? I’m the hand-holder? One voice in my head said, “Oh, I don’t think so.” Another said, “Why not?” It was like that old comic book image where a devil was on one shoulder, and an angel on the other. “No way.” “Why not?” “You can’t take Chris’s place.” “Why not?” “Because even Chris failed at being the man she thought he was.”

  Well, that shut the angel voice up real fast.

  When we got home, Dad was up and Mom made breakfast. She’d cried a little in church, and a little on the way home, and her eyes were red, but she wasn’t moping as she moved around the kitchen or anything.

  She made coffee and poured some for me. And then we sat there, the three of us, like lumps, carefully avoiding—or so it seemed to me—looking toward the fourth chair at the table. No one spoke, unless they wanted to ask for the jam or something. I don’t know what my folks were thinking, but it was suddenly hitting me pretty hard that this was it now. This was everybody. There would never again be four of us.

  I had sort of got used to it being just me and Mom and Dad while Chris was away, but it was always a temporary thing, you know? There was always that light at the end of the tunnel. But Chris was the light, and now he was gone.

  PART II

  A Question of Manhood

  Chapter 4

  I spent as much time as I could that week in my room. Somehow it was less obvious, when everyone wasn’t together, that the best part of the family wasn’t part of the family anymore. I kind of expected that Mom and Dad would pull together, would help each other out. And I tried to convince myself that was happening, because otherwise I was gonna have to do something. I was gonna have to do what Chris would’ve done. And I didn’t have a clue what that was.

  So as long as I was in my room I didn’t have to see that Dad was just plopped in front of the TV all night, sometimes well past midnight, or that Mom was on yet another cleaning frenzy. The only times she wasn’t attacking any dirt that might be cringing in odd corners or polishing the silver candlesticks and candy dishes, she was in Chris’s room.

  The first time I saw her in there, I’d been in my room, door shut, supposedly doing homework. At one point I had to take a leak, and as I stepped into the hallway I realized the light on Chris’s bedside table was on. With only socks on my feet I moved silently toward the door, which was almost but not quite closed. Mom was in there, kneeling on the floor and leaning on the side of the bed. It looked like she was praying. Like she was at some saint’s shrine. I stood there maybe three minutes. She never moved.

  When I came out of the bathroom, the door to Chris’s room was shut and no light came from under it. I opened it carefully and peeked in; no one.

  She was in there again when I got home from school the next day. I didn’t see anyone downstairs, but her car was in the driveway. It was a bit of a relief not to have her see me come in, not to have her look at me with that face full of sad hope that I’d been seeing lately, and I didn’t try to find her. Just headed up to my room. But Chris’s door was open. And Mom was in there, standing near the bed and looking down at folded clothing. Some were shirts she’d sewed for him, and some were sweaters she’d knitted. I thought she might have heard me come upstairs, that she’d turn and say something, but she just stood there. Then she picked up a soft blue sweater, held it to her face, and inhaled.

  I went into my room to drop my books, thinking I should probably go in there and talk to her, but not wanting to do that. I’d been concentrating on pulling some kind of psychological tarpaulin over my feelings, over what had happened, so I could put one foot in front of the other, shift my weight, repeat the process, and somehow keep moving forward in time away from how I would be feeling if I lifted that tarp. The alternative would have been hiding under the covers on my bed for who knew how long. So I sat at my desk, searching for motivation to pick up a book or a notebook, anything that would let me pretend to be busy, but all the while my mind was in the next room, watching Mom stand there and breathe Chris into herself. I got up.

  From Chris’s doorway I said, “Mom?”

  She wheeled around like I’d frightened her. “Oh! Paul, I didn’t hear you come home.”

  Well, that says it all. Her thoughts are only on the son who won’t come home, not the one who actually has. I said, “What are you doing in here? Why are Chris’s clothes all over the place?”

  By now she was moving around quickly, picking up piles and putting them back into drawers. “Just reminiscing, that’s all, dear. What would you like for a snack? What can I get you?”

  I stood there silently, waiting to see if it would dawn on her that I hadn’t responded. She finished putting the clothes away and turned a big smile on me. One that I didn’t believe. Then she went around me and into the hallway, where she waited, smiling that fake smile. Is she trying to pretend that she hadn’t been acting like some forlorn lover? Or maybe pretending she was glad to see me? Or both?

  “Paul? Come. Let me close the door.”

  I stood where I was, which was definitely still in Chris’s room. “You can close it. Maybe I’ll reminisce some myself.”

  Her smile faded a little. “Come on, let me get you a snack. Would you like some soda?”

  “I don’t suppose you made any cookies today.” She hadn’t made cookies in weeks. She used to make them all the time. For both me and Chris, or so I’d always thought.

  “No, dear, I didn’t. Would you like that? Maybe I’ll make some tomorrow. Come, now.”

  I moved toward the door, but I didn’t step out of the room. Instead I took hold of the knob and started to close the door, leaving her in the hall. Suddenly there was a pressure from her side.

  “Paul, what are you doing?”

  I didn’t let her pressure move the door. I couldn’t see her face now. “I told you. I’m going to reminisce a little.”

  She pushed harder, b
ut I held firm. “Paul, come out of there. Come have a snack.”

  “I don’t want a snack. I want to spend a little time in here.”

  There was silence for a moment. When she spoke, her tone was sharp. “Paul! I want you to come out of there now. Leave your brother’s things alone.”

  Suddenly it was a battle I had to win. I would not be forced out of Chris’s room. But I couldn’t exactly push my mother down the stairs. So I acted like I was leaving. I stepped into the hall, pulling the door closed behind me. She took this for obedience, but when I figured she was far enough away, toward the stairs, I whipped the door open and was inside with it closed and locked before she got to it.

  “Paul!” She twisted the knob and then banged on the door. “Paul! Get out of there!”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t want his things disturbed.”

  “You disturbed them.”

  “I’m his mother!”

  “Was. You were his mother.” This was cruel, I knew even then, but I couldn’t help it. “And I was his brother. Don’t I have any rights?”

  She banged louder, shouted louder. “Paul! Please!”

  I yanked the door open and glared at her. She looked panicked or something. I shouted, “He was no saint, you know!” And I was so close to adding, He was a coward and a queer!

  She slapped me. I could hardly believe she’d done that. She’d never hit me. Not that I remembered, anyway. If my folks thought I needed physical punishment, it had always been Dad who’d delivered it.

  I think she couldn’t quite believe it, either. She stood there for a few seconds, hands over the lower part of her face, and then she wrapped herself around me.

  “Paul! I’m so sorry. It’s just that I want him to be in there still.” She sobbed into my ear. “Can’t you understand that?”

  I pulled away from her. “Do you think I don’t want that, too? Do you think I like that he’s gone forever? Do you think I don’t count?” I got into my room as quickly as I could and slammed the door. And I stayed in there, through the sounds of what must have been her throwing herself onto her own bed, through noises that convinced me she was sobbing, through hearing her go downstairs later, through hearing my dad’s voice as he came home.

  He was home maybe five minutes before I heard him coming up the stairs. He didn’t knock, he just threw my door open. I turned in my desk chair to face him.

  “Do you have any idea what your mother is going through?”

  You know what went through my mind? It was this: Dad’s angry with me, and maybe I wasn’t blameless, but he’s gonna overreact. I need to get Chris involved.

  “Answer me!”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I don’t see how you could.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “Don’t talk back to me, young man. Now, you listen carefully. Your mother is going through hell. She’s just lost a son. Until you’re a parent yourself, you can’t know what that means. So you need to take my word for it and behave as though you understand how much pain she’s in.”

  “What about your pain?” By which I also meant, What about mine?

  That stopped him in his tracks. But not for long. “I’m not here to talk about me. We need to straighten this thing out between you and your mother. Will you agree to be more sensitive and not cross her when she tells you she needs something?”

  “Dad, y’know, I didn’t chase her out of Chris’s room. She chased me.”

  “And what did you do then? You locked her out! Out of her dead son’s room.”

  “She was locking me out. She didn’t want me in there.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “She didn’t want me in there dirtying things. Messing things up. Spoiling the shrine.” I lost it a little. I stood up. “What does she think, that I’m the dirty son, that Chris’s room was, like, pristine? Holy? And that the bad son—that would be me—can’t even breathe the air without ruining it?”

  We stood there, practically nose to nose. I could hear the breath whistling in and out of his sinuses. Then he closed his eyes and stepped back, a small bob when he stepped with his bum leg. He looked at me, stern but quiet. “Paul, here’s the thing. You and I cannot understand what a mother goes through at a time like this. What this family needs is calm. And when you rile your mother up like that, it’s the wrong thing to do. I’m asking you to act like a man. You’re not too young to understand that. Let your mother have her grief.”

  And mine means nothing? But I knew that he was making his own grief mean nothing, compared to my mom’s, anyway, and if his meant nothing—or at least had to be buried—then so did mine. The big difference, of course, was that my grief included things they didn’t even know about. Things they couldn’t know about. I was already letting my mother have her grief by keeping her from the worst of it.

  “Paul? Do you understand?” There was a threat in his voice.

  “Yes.” Chris would have said I’d have been stupid to say anything else at that point.

  “All right, then.” And he turned and limped out of the room. He didn’t close the door. Without turning around, he said, “Dinner will be a little late tonight.” Meaning, That’s your fault, Paul.

  I threw myself back into my desk chair and sat there, trying and failing to concentrate on schoolwork, until Dad called up that dinner was ready.

  I’d just sat down at the table when Dad said, “Paul, don’t you have something you need to say to your mother?”

  We hadn’t talked about this. Not anything specific, anyway. What did he expect? I looked at Mom. She was sitting there, eyes down, and she looked so sad.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said. It’s what Chris would have told me to do.

  I could barely hear her reply. “That’s all right, Paul. It’s hard for all of us.”

  At least she acknowledged that. Maybe I had been a little hard on her. But, damn it, I have grief, too. I have suffering. And on top of that, I’ve got Chris’s secrets to carry.

  Midnight, and I was lying in bed, eyes wide open. I was almost dizzy from going back and forth between feeling like a shit for making things harder for Mom and feeling like I was being deprived of Chris a third time. The first had been when he’d told me the truth, about his fear and about his…well, you know. The second was when he’d died. And now I couldn’t even go into his room! What I’d told Dad earlier? I really did feel like that. Like my just being in Chris’s room would damage it somehow, dirty it, render it unworthy of the worship my mom seemed to think it deserved. Maybe I thought she’d gone a little too far, kneeling in prayer at the bed, laying out all his clothes, but I understood why she wanted to be in there. It was the most Chris-like place in the house.

  And suddenly I needed to be in there. I stood in the door to my room and listened carefully: no sound from my folks’ room. I would have felt better if I could’ve heard Dad snoring, but I would be quiet enough even if he wasn’t quite asleep. I tiptoed to Chris’s room and turned the knob slowly in case it squeaked. No sound. Once inside, I closed the door slowly so it wouldn’t bump and make noise. Slowly and silently I released the knob.

  I sat on the bed, facing the pillow, imagining Chris lying there. I reached out a hand and caressed the bedspread, imagining the surface was uneven as though his body lay asleep beneath it. When I felt my throat tighten I stood up and went over to the desk across the room. I sat in the chair sideways, facing his record collection, realizing with a slight shock that it hadn’t even occurred to me to raid it. Mom wouldn’t know, that’s for sure. And he had lots of stuff I might want. I reached for the desk light, stopping myself just before I turned it on. Bad idea to advertise my presence, and there would be a chance to look through those platters by daylight at some point. So I just stared in their general direction through the dark.

  For some reason the Cat Stevens album came to mind. The one he’d been playing when I got home after torturing Anthony. I’d been kept out in the hall then
, too. There was some kind of disconnect going on in my head about that series of moments, when I’d knocked at his locked door. He’d had someone in here.

  He’d had a girl in here! So he couldn’t be…No, wait. It had turned out to be Jim Waters. Right. So Jim Waters is a fag, too?

  I stood up, too quickly, and the chair bounced a little. In a panic I reached for it, and then I stood there leaning on it, my breath shaking with every inhale. Then I heard the door open.

  “Paul?” Dad whispered.

  I could barely see him move into the room and close the door. Silently he limped over to the bed and sat down. My head felt unnaturally light and my ears rang in the silence, which went on for maybe half a minute. It was like we were inhaling some life-giving essence that we couldn’t get anywhere else. Then I heard a soft thudding sound as Dad’s hand patted the bed beside him. I moved over and sat down.

  More silence. Then, “Son, your mother and I both understand that this hurts you, too. Losing your brother. It’s just that these things hit women harder. Maybe you’re a little too young to understand this, but it’s true. And what she needs right now is actually something that might help you, too. She needs you to be a man.” He heaved a sigh, and then went on. “The thing is, you might need to grow up a little faster than you would have if this hadn’t happened. If you were still a child, if you could really cry about this, then it would be different for her. She could hold you, and you could hold her, and both of you could cry together. But you’re too old for that. So you need to take one more step into manhood. You need to be strong for her.”

  He shifted his weight on the bed and was quiet so long I wondered if he expected me to speak. And maybe he did, ’cause he said, “Do you understand what I’m telling you?”