The Prettiest Star

by Carter Sickels

  Naomi asks, “What happens when a son comes back home, and he’s sick with the most feared disease of our time?” A close-up on the empty swimming pool, the water so still, untouched.

  Jittery, I light a cigarette. When the TV crew was in town, people were on their best behavior. There weren’t as many prank calls, or people driving by yelling. Ever since Naomi left, things have been strangely quiet. The town holding a collected breath, waiting to see themselves on television.

  The scene shifts to Lettie’s kitchen.

  “Good God,” Travis says.

  It’s a shock to see Lettie sitting across from Naomi, her good china coffee cups in front of them. She’s also put down the tablecloth that she only uses for special occasions—yellow, pink, blue flowers over a white weave.

  “Well, I guess Mom got her chance to be on TV,” Travis says. He still can’t believe that he has lost control of the story, or that he never had control.

  Lettie wears her favorite pink blouse with a white cardigan, and clip-on earrings. Her hair, newly dyed, shines in the sunlight. She went all the way to Madison to get her hair done. She’s boycotting the beauty shop in town, the one she’s been going to for thirty-some years, because she heard the owner was “spreading lies” about Brian.

  Naomi, in a smart navy blazer, smiles at Lettie. She must use hot rollers every night because her brassy red hair is fluffy and airy, and held perfectly into place. Big silver shell-shaped earrings shimmer in the light, and her lips do too. She’s wearing enough foundation and blush to hide the wrinkles, but I know she’s no spring chicken. Naomi Cook was a newscaster before she had her own show, all through the ’70s.

  “Lettie, how did you feel when you found out Brian has AIDS?” Naomi asks in a hushed tone, as if it’s impolite to say the word.

  Lettie isn’t wearing her glasses, too vain for that, and her eyes are clear and blue—she doesn’t carry around the guilt or shame that makes a person look so old, tired, hurting. “Well, I already knew before they told me. I knew, but I didn’t say anything.”

  “You’re a religious woman. Do you accept homosexuality?”

  Lettie looks surprised. She stutters, stops. “I love my grandson,” she says.

  “But, do you think it’s wrong? I mean, many in this town have said that AIDS is a punishment—”

  “Well, I don’t believe that.”

  Naomi tilts her head, practiced concern. “But, do you accept homosexuality?”

  Lettie fiddles with the cross on her necklace, and looks shockingly like she might cry. Naomi often makes her guests cry, but I didn’t think she’d get to Lettie.

  “Jesus loves everyone.”

  “But, do you think—”

  Lettie cuts her off. She’s composed herself. No tears fall.

  “Who am I to judge?” Lettie looks directly into the camera. “Everyone in Chester must think they’re God, by the way they’re acting. Well. They maybe ought to stop talking about the speck in their neighbor’s eyes and take care of that log in their own.”

  The faces on TV grow bigger and brighter, as if they will shatter the screen. Lettie and I have never talked about Brian’s homosexuality. I’ve never talked to anyone about it, ever. Travis pops his knuckles. His gay son on TV—it’s humiliating, it’s shattering. I could go sit next to him, put my hand on his knee, make promises. But I bring the cigarette to my lips and watch Lettie, the only one in this family—other than my son—who is not afraid.

  “Have you and your family thought about moving somewhere else that’s more accepting?” Naomi asks. “Maybe to a city?”

  “I’ve lived here all my life. I tell you what, this has shown me who my true friends are.” Lettie lightly slaps the table. “I’m not going anywhere, and neither is my grandson.”

  During commercial break, Travis and I don’t speak or move. From upstairs, Jess’s music pounds through the walls. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop—for a knock at the door, for something to come flying through the window. Sadie looks up and thumps her tail.

  When the show comes back on, the scene has changed to Naomi standing with Wanda Spellman in front of the swimming pool. Looking sloppy in a T-shirt, shorts, and flip-flops, Wanda takes a long time telling the story, adding flourishes and lies. I squeeze the inside skin of my arms, relieved to feel physical pain.

  “I tried to reason with him,” she says. “But he wouldn’t get out. I couldn’t let him contaminate the swimming pool. I had to make a quick decision.”

  “She makes me sick,” I say. Travis doesn’t respond. We never talk about that day, but I think about it all the time. Everyone staring at our son. Wanda herding him out. The police. It stunned us into silence. Now, I think, it was a hot day. Why shouldn’t he go for a swim?

  The scene changes again. Wearing a business-style dress with a wide belt, Naomi walks briskly into Dot’s. She talks to a handful of customers who promise they don’t hate Brian, they just don’t want him living here. Judy Dawson, our postmaster, who I’ve never seen wear a smidge of makeup, has dolled herself up with chartreuse green eye shadow and red lipstick, and she’s let her hair down.

  “He should have stayed in New York, where people are used to that kind of thing. His parents can’t get him the care he needs here in Chester,” she says. “They know better.”

  An old leather-faced man eating a stack of blueberry pancakes calls Naomi “ma’am” and listens carefully to her questions. He uses his knife and fork to cut the pancakes into impossibly tiny pieces. “The chickens are coming home to roost,” he says. “You can’t go against God.”

  The owner of Dot’s Diner, Jack McCarthy, looks like he’d rather be anywhere else. He’s standing next to the cash register, his hair slicked back, his shirt buttoned higher than he usually wears it. When Naomi asks him about kicking Brian out of the restaurant, he shakes his head. “No, ma’am, it didn’t happen like that. I didn’t kick him out.”

  “Didn’t you make him leave?” Naomi raises her eyebrows.

  “I don’t have nothing against that boy, but customers were complaining. And, well, I know Lettie Jackson. She’s a good woman, but she likes to stir things up. There wasn’t no reason for her come in here with him. She wanted to get a rise.”

  Lettie will never step foot in Dot’s again—none of us will. Lettie will do it out of loyalty to Brian, and Travis won’t go because he’s embarrassed. What is my reason? I take a long drag on the cigarette, wishing the electricity would cut out all across Chester. I want us to sit in the dark and hear nothing except our own breath.

  Two young men appear on the screen and for a second I’m confused. I know them, don’t I? Travis groans. Shocked, I watch my nephews, Matthew and Kyle. They’re in a booth, wearing stiff, new shirts. Wayne didn’t want Lettie to go on TV, but here is his son and Paul’s son. They answer Naomi’s questions with controlled, quiet voices. Yes, they’re kin. Yes, they grew up together.

  “I can’t believe their nerve,” I say.

  Travis moves up to the edge of the couch, his hands balled in fists, the knuckles little white eggs.

  “I wouldn’t let my little girl get in that pool if I’d been there, I can tell you that,” Kyle says.

  “We just want people to know what he’s done has nothing to do with us,” Matthew explains. “I’m not saying I want anything bad to happen to Brian and I don’t think people should be mean to him. But don’t blame our family. It’s not our fault.”

  My father used to say everything gets worse before it gets better. But things never got better for him after my mother died. He held onto God in a small, miserly way, and hid himself in a duplex in Columbus. He used to say that my mother swept him off his feet. Maybe what he mistook for love was only heartache.

  Only Anita Brewer, the church pianist, says we shouldn’t leave town. “I don’t know much about AIDS. But we’re all God’s children,” she says. “And, they’re a good family, good people.”

  The camera cuts to our church. Reverend Clay and Josh, bo
th wearing ties, sit side-by-side. “He knew exactly what he was doing,” Josh says. “He wanted people to notice. It was like he wanted to shove everything in our face. He wanted us to react.”

  Reverend Clay has styled his hair in a new way. It’s slicked back and shiny, as if he just stepped out of the shower, his bald spot expanding under the thinning strands.

  “Homosexuality doesn’t belong in a town like this,” he says. “That’s for big cities.”

  On commercial break, the phone rings. We don’t pick up. Advertisement after advertisement for products that could make our lives better. Cars, laundry detergent, coffee, vegetable soup.

  When the show comes back on, they’ve returned to Lettie’s kitchen, but now it’s Naomi and Brian at the table like old friends. My son wears a bright blue dress shirt that Lettie must have bought him, and it floats around his arms, exposing his thin neck, his gaunt face. The earring embarrasses me. Couldn’t he have taken it out just this once?

  He tells his version of that day at the pool, speaking with ease, more articulate than anyone else who’s spoken, enunciating his words. The camera doesn’t make him nervous. But his brown teeth and the dark gap in front make him look like he’s from the hills. I feel a screw spiraling into my chest. I should have taken him in to see Dave. I know what people think. But he’s not disgusting. My son is not a monster.

  “I think people are more scared of me being gay than they are about me having AIDS,” Brian says.

  “What do you mean?” Naomi asks.

  As they talk, pictures of Brian—taken from Lettie’s photo album—appear in the corner of the screen. Brian as a two-year-old with his hands in his birthday cake. A sixteen-year-old, sunglasses on, slouched in a lawn chair, grinning. A picture of him playing baseball, holding a trophy, posing with his glove.

  “They’re homophobic,” he says. “That’s why the government isn’t doing anything. It’s gay men dying, and drug addicts, and black people. Reagan could care less—”

  Naomi interrupts, gently but firmly steering him back to Chester, the pool, the gossip and prank phone calls and meanness. “Let’s not get into politics,” she says.

  Brian suddenly looks tired. “I don’t really care what they say about me,” he says softly. “But it’s not just me they’re hurting. It’s my whole family.”

  The camera closes in on Naomi—her teeth so straight, so white. She’s got a whole staff to make her look pretty. Nothing out of place. Her eyes are pale green, intense, knowing. Her voice drops conspiratorially.

  “Brian, are you scared of dying?”

  I pinch the soft skin under my arms. Brian looks right at me. “Yeah,” he says. “I’m scared.”

  Jess

  The green second hand on my watch ticks by. It’s past midnight. Nick is twenty minutes late. I sit on top of my duffle bag and change the tape in my Walkman. I’m practically shaking with adrenaline and excitement and fear, and I don’t want the feeling to stop—because I know underneath the buzz, there is something big and still and sad, and it might just swallow me whole. Prince sings in my ears, and I think if he came to Chester, the town would explode in glitter. “Purple rain,” he cries, “purple rain.” I feel sorry for my brother, but I can’t stay here.

  My grandmother thought On Location With Naomi would make things better, but it only made everything a hundred times worse. Since the show aired, the phone calls won’t stop. It’s not just pranks, but other TV shows and newspapers calling to talk to my brother. We’re famous, in a bad way. Last night, while we were all sleeping, someone spray-painted FAGGOT on the garage door. This morning, as I watched my father try to scrub the word away, I called Nick. “I can’t wait anymore,” I told him. My pockets burn with the one hundred and twenty dollars I stole—sixty from my grandmother’s purse, forty slipped out of my father’s billfold, and twenty from my mother’s top dresser drawer.

  I’ve already thought about what it will mean to be on the road with Nick. He’ll want to have sex. I’ve always just accepted what my mother says, that you should wait until marriage. But what’s marriage? I’ve never dreamed about it, not like Brandy White used to—she’d pour over catalogues, gush over wedding gowns. She already knew what kind of flowers she’d have (pink roses and purple tulips) and what color the bridesmaid dresses would be (lavender). I never cared about any of that and still don’t. I want to be my own person. Josh Clay told us that premarital sex would lead to disgrace—we’d become sluts, or get pregnant, or kill our babies. We’d live on the streets selling ourselves.

  I sling my duffle bag over my shoulder and walk up to the gas station on the corner, staying away from the road and close to the line of trees. I’ve never been to Nick’s, and I’m not sure which trailer he lives in. Nobody drives by.

  A big part of me regrets not meeting Naomi, a real celebrity. I could have shaken her hand and sat down with her at my grandmother’s kitchen table. I could have told everyone what I was thinking. But nobody wants to know that. My grandmother taped the show, of course, but I haven’t watched it yet. I don’t think I ever will.

  The dim, greenish light at the closed Shell station shines over four pumps. I dig a quarter out of my pocket and punch the numbers on the pay phone. I’m about to hang up when a deep voice says hello.

  “Is Nick there?”

  “Who is this?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Is this that Jackson girl? Listen, he’s gone back to his mom’s. I don’t want my son getting mixed up in—”

  I hang up.

  He’s gone.

  Moths fly toward the street lamps, burning their wings. I don’t let myself cry. Maybe I knew all along I’d never go anywhere.

  The strap of my duffle bag digs into my shoulder. I use my key to open the front door, trying to be quiet, but Brian hears me.

  “Who’s there?” he says in a hushed voice.

  He is the last person I want to see, but I walk to the top of the stairs. In the basement, all of the lights are turned on and the room blazes like it’s on fire. Brian looks up, holding onto the banister, an old crocheted afghan draped over his shoulders.

  “Jess, it’s you.” He looks relieved, then confused. “You going somewhere?”

  I remember my duffle bag. “No.”

  We’re on the staircase, whispering. Brian’s face shines with sweat, his hair matted down. I don’t know what the disease is doing to him now or what it’s going to do. I wish we could just walk back in time and start over. If I could, I would take away Naomi’s show and the guy who threw the Coke and Wanda Spellman kicking him out of the pool and me telling Josh Clay, but most of all, I just want to take away this illness.

  “Come here,” Brian says.

  I set down the bag and follow him downstairs. Splash is playing on TV. The volume is turned down too low to hear it, but I’ve seen it before. The mermaid, Daryl Hannah, crouches on a sidewalk in New York City, her long tailfin exposed, slapping sadly against the cement, while her boyfriend, Tom Hanks, stands back from her as reporters snap pictures. He refuses to help her—he’s too devastated by her secret, her lie.

  Brian pats a space next to him on the couch, but I stay standing. He’s shivering, rocking back and forth, eyes wild like he just woke up from a nightmare.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Night sweats. They happen sometimes. It’s okay.”

  He doesn’t look okay. I ask if he wants another blanket, and he shakes his head.

  “Hey, remember when you couldn’t sleep, we’d listen to records? You always wanted to hear ‘The Prettiest Star.’ It was like your lullaby.” He’s smiling, hopeful.

  “I don’t remember,” I say, a lie.

  Brian’s smile cracks, and he seems unsure what to say next. He stops rocking, but he’s still shaking—his entire body, even his face jiggles. Sadie sits on the floor in front of him, leaning up against his legs. On TV the mermaid is hooked to wires and stuck inside an aquarium, and scientists and government men in lab coats circle her,
point and write things down.

  “Jess, listen,” Brian says. “I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “The pool. Just, all of it.”

  I know how the movie ends. If the mermaid stays too long on earth, she can’t ever go back home. The government people and scientists and reporters will chase after her, and Tom Hanks, her love, tells her to save herself. So she dives into the ocean, and her legs transform into an iridescent tailfin. After a moment of hesitation, he plunges in after her—he gives up his life, his home, to be with her. They’re free, but they’ll never be the same.

  “I’m the one who got you kicked out,” I say. “It was me. I told Josh Clay you had AIDS.”

  Brian looks up, blue eyes burning, electric. It’s like all the light in the room starts with him. His shivering has stopped. He is calm and cool. He speaks with kindness.

  “People already knew, kiddo,” he says. “It doesn’t matter now.”

  He thinks I’m apologizing, but I’m not. I want to hurt him the way he has hurt our family. There is an ache behind my eyes.

  “I wish you’d never come back,” I say. “I wish you’d just leave.”

  Brian flinches, surprised. My heart beats wildly. I feel powerful and awful, like I just made the room go dark. I turn and walk away. My brother, except for Sadie at his feet and a beautiful mermaid on TV, is alone. He doesn’t call me back.

  Brian

  August 17, 1986

  Everything has changed.

  I shouldn’t have done the interview. Now the ugliness won’t let up. I can’t leave the house. People stare. They hate me because I’m gay. Because I’m sick. Because I’m here. The story isn’t going away.

  A few days ago, my mother lost her job. She says she quit voluntarily but I don’t believe her. My little sister can’t stand me. My grandmother hasn’t said anything to me about friends she’s lost, or how her own sons or grandchildren no longer come over. I’ll never forget the look on her face when those fuckers threw that cup of soda.