“Stop, Fielding.” He pulled back, but I didn’t let go.
“C’mon, Sal. Come out now.”
“I said stop it.”
I pulled harder. His face was out of the cushions and pillows now—so close to mine, I could feel his hot breath. “Fielding, let go or I’ll burn the house down while you’re all sleeping.”
I let go. He slowly lay back down as he gathered the pillows and cushions in a great heap, burying himself once more.
That night I lay in bed and watched the pillows and cushions heave up and down with his breathing. I thought of fire and the house burning. I fell asleep into a nightmare of this. At the part in the nightmare when everyone was burning, their skin oozing off like some sort of goop, I woke out of breath and into the middle of the night.
I used a T-shirt to wipe the sweat off my face as I stared at the pillows and cushions scattered on the floor and leading from the window like a trail. Big cushions, little cushions, big pillows, the little fringed ones, all leading me downstairs. I heard a faint sound, one I thought splattered quite a bit.
I went toward the sound and the dark kitchen, where I found Sal crawling on his hands and knees across the linoleum. All around him were circles of yellow. I saw the emptied mustard bottles piled on top of the table.
As he crawled, he slammed his hand down onto each circle he came upon, causing the mustard to pop and splatter.
“Whatcha doin’, Sal?” I quietly asked.
“Popping all the yellow balloons,” he answered without stopping. “All the yellow balloons in the world so no more will get caught in trees. And no more girls will die because of it.”
“You know it wasn’t your fault, Sal.”
“Wasn’t it?” Pop and splatter. “I stepped on the branch.”
“No, you didn’t.”
What more could I do but lie. What more could I give him but the shortest way to the light.
“I was watchin’ you, and you didn’t even touch that branch. It fell on its own, Sal. Sometimes branches just do that.”
He slapped his hand down on the circle before him, the mustard splashing onto his face. He turned to me with yellow freckles.
“Go to bed, Fielding. You’ve got the funeral in the morning.”
* * *
By morning, the only thing remaining of the mustard balloons were the empty bottles in the trash can. The linoleum smelled of Pine-Sol. The mop still wet in the bucket. Sal didn’t leave the kitchen all night.
I was already in my black suit when Dad walked into my room, saying it was time to get up and go.
“How’s it fit?” he asked of the suit. He’d been the one to buy it for the occasion.
“Fine.” My feet shifted under the weight of it.
“You look … grown.” He felt his tucked tie. “Where’s yours?”
I pointed to the black tie draped over the back of my desk chair. “I didn’t know how to put it on.”
He went over and picked it up.
“Dad?” Grand was in the doorway. “The sheriff’s downstairs. He wants you.”
“Here.” Dad handed Grand the tie. “Help your brother with this.”
Long after he heard Dad go down the steps, Grand stayed leaned into the doorframe, the tie loose in his hand.
“You don’t know how to put it on?”
I shook my lowered head.
The floor creaked under his steps, and I closed my eyes in broken joy as I felt his fingers come gently under my collar. They lightly brushed my neck, and though his skin was hot, I felt the cold disaster of the wound we called being brothers.
“Inside out. Cross. Over and under.” His hands followed his instructions. “Are you listenin’, little man?”
I nodded.
“Pull. Tighten. Take this end here and another pull. Behind this loop. Bring it through the knot. Like this. Then just tighten. Gentle, though. There you have it.”
His hands stayed on the knot before following the tie down to straighten it.
“Fielding, look at me.”
I slowly raised my eyes, but could get no further than his chin.
“What?” Was that my voice that had come out so thin, so vanished in its presence?
He sighed and tilted his chin up, leaving me his neck, glistening with small drops of sweat. “Nothin’.”
The room echoed of this as he left. I could hear him softly close his door. He wouldn’t be going to the funeral. Neither would Mom, for the obvious reason.
I looked down at my tie and picked up its end, smelling my brother. I laid my lips against the silk and said what I couldn’t say to him. I love you.
I straightened it back and went downstairs. The sheriff was gone, and Dad was asking if I was ready. I nodded before following him out to the freshly washed Lincoln.
“What’d the sheriff want, Dad?”
“To make sure we wouldn’t be taking Sal along with us to the funeral. I told him we already sat him down and explained to him why it wouldn’t be wise for him to go.”
“Dad? I don’t know if I wanna go.”
“She was your friend, wasn’t she?”
“She was Sal’s. I was just … someone she knew.”
“Look, son, I wish he could go as much as you. As much as him. But emotions are very high at the moment. No one wants a scene at a funeral. Do we?”
Mom watched us from the window as we drove away. The handkerchief she gave me, folded in my pocket.
“By the way, do you know who used all the mustard?” Dad turned the car’s air conditioner on high. “Your mother was upset. Someone’s used it all. She puts it on her burns.”
“What burns?”
“Burns she hasn’t gotten yet. If she touches a hot pan handle or something like that. Just kitchen burns. Yellow mustard takes the sting out.”
“Dad, look.” I pointed to the field, where Sal was running toward the woods. “Stop the car.”
“The funeral, Fielding.” His hands were sweating on the steering wheel.
“Please, Dad, stop. I wanna see where he’s goin’. I’ll meet ya at the cemetery.”
“Fielding—”
“Dad … I just want to see for myself.”
He understood those words and stopped the car, looking straight ahead as I jumped out, slamming the door maybe too hard.
As I followed Sal, I could’ve been as loud as I wanted. I could’ve screamed his name and threw sticks at his back. He wouldn’t have noticed. He was the boy running toward the something he had to do, and everything else was lost to that cause.
When we got to the pasture, the horses seemed to be in the same spot they were in that night we first saw them. They looked at Sal and remembered him. They even seemed to ask where the girl was.
Did they see me?
One did. The black one with the white on its forehead. It kept eyes on me as I fell back behind a tree at the edge of the pasture and watched Sal walk out to the fence. He gathered the candles still on the posts and with them fell down onto the ground, where he held all thirteen candles close to his chest.
I couldn’t hear him from where I was and yet didn’t I know what he was saying? Something like: You were my favorite thing, and in imagination your death will not exist. It’s all as if from now on. As if you are not gone. You will be the girl beside me. Never more than a heartbeat length away. The woman who will be the hill of my bed. A climb to the top and such views to make little things of. Little us that will be part you and part me and whole in those two things. As if you are not gone and will be with me to get the wrinkles, the white hair, the spine shaped like a rocking chair. As if you are not gone and so will have the love of going in my arms, warm and with me. Yes, you are my favorite thing. You always will be.
He slowly laid the candles down while he dug a hole with his hands. It was a frantic tearing of the ground. Sometimes I close my eyes and see his body rocking toward that hole, scooping dirt, shoving it up underneath his fingernails. Over and over again, that grave digging has n
ever passed for me.
In this hole, he placed the candles. The burying of them was a shove away, a short task for a life cut short. As he sat there, patting the dirt, I reached into my suit jacket and took the handkerchief out of the pocket. I rolled it like a long white snake I pulled through my fingers as I sat there, staring out at the grave between him and me.
I was the first to leave. I knew he wouldn’t for longer still. I left the handkerchief rolled on the ground. I thought maybe it might slither its way out to him.
Hours passed by the time I got home. Dad was already returned from the funeral. He was still in his suit, the jacket pinned back by his hands on his hips.
“Fielding, where were you?” He was sweating even more. God, why hadn’t he taken that black suit off yet?
“Fielding, answer me.”
His voice fell behind me as I went up the steps.
“I thought you were coming to the funeral, young man.”
“I did,” I whispered down to him.
“What?”
“I was at her funeral,” I said somewhere.
“Fielding—”
“Leave ’im alone, Dad.” Grand was standing in the doorway of his bedroom. As I passed him, he reached out to me. “Do you know how to take it off?”
I loosened the tie the rest of the way and pulled my head out.
“Hmm.” His eyes had slippery contact with mine. “You don’t need me anymore.”
He stepped back and I should’ve reached, but I let him close his door. I dropped the tie somewhere in the hall. Didn’t mean to. It just fell out of my hand on my way to my room. I closed the door and leaned against it. What was that noise? That tapping?
“You okay, Fielding?” Mom at the other side of the door.
“Fine, Mom.”
“You dropped your tie.”
“It just fell.”
“Where’s Sal?”
“He’ll be home later.”
“You sure you’re okay, sweetie?”
“I’m fine.”
I pressed my ear flat against the door, listening to her walk away. I threw my jacket down on the floor and went to my desk, where I grabbed construction paper and scissors. I sat on the floor and took some red, yellow, and orange paper and began to cut. Oak leaves. Maple leaves. Elm leaves. Ohio leaves. A whole big pile I dumped across the window bed. Then I got a flashlight and sat in the pile and waited.
It got dark and Mom came up, asking through the closed door if I was hungry. No, I said. Darker still. Feet outside the door on their way to bed. Dad. Asking if I’m all right. Fine, I say. More dark. A 3 A.M. dark when my bedroom door slowly opened.
“Don’t turn on the light.”
Sal’s hand dropped from the switch. “Where are you, Fielding?”
“Over here, at the winda bed. Come and sit down.” I scooted some of the leaves over to make a seat for him.
“What is all this?” His hands moved through the pile.
I turned on the flashlight and shined it on the red leaf between his fingers. “It’s Dresden.”
He looked at me and I looked at him, but we didn’t say anything for that long while. He slowly looked back at the leaf in his hand, twirling it gently by its stem.
“Thank you, Fielding.”
And so we were, on into the night, two boys sharing a light and building a way, one leaf at a time.
22
… for ever sunk
Under your boiling ocean, wrapt in chains,
There to converse with everlasting groans
—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 2:182–184
WE WOULDN’T HAVE known about the stones that summer had Grand not fallen for Ted Bundy. Of course, his name wasn’t really Ted Bundy. The journalist. His name was Ryker Tommons.
He left the morning after fucking Grand in the woods. Grand didn’t notice how quickly that was. He had felt the connection of another man, and in the clay of loneliness, he shaped it into something he called love. Before Ryker left, Grand asked for his number.
“I have your number, kid. I’ll call you,” Ryker promised as they stood in front of Ryker’s car.
“I thought you liked me.” Grand was doing his routine, the same one I’d seen him use on girl after girl.
“I do, kid.”
“So, give me your number.”
Was that Grand reaching into the man’s pocket? Pulling out the notepad and pen?
“C’mon, Ted Bundy, write it down for me.”
Ryker had no choice but to take the pad and pen. Grand had forced them into his hands, even wrapping Ryker’s fingers around the pen. It was as if Grand thought Ryker’s hesitation was just a continuation of flirtation.
“I sure will be happy to get away from this heat,” Ryker sighed, and wrote with such reluctance, the number looked written by a child just learning.
“Call me whenever.” He passed the number to Grand. “Well, so long, kid.”
Grand stood watching the car drive away. Stood there long after it went, gripping the paper in his hand and the phone number that would dial through to a pizza shop in Brooklyn.
Grand was convinced Ryker had meant to give him the right number. By Grand’s thinking, there was only one number not right, so he’d dial over and over again, sometimes changing the very last, or the very first, or one of the numbers in the middle. He called the entire state of New York, but never Ryker.
Finally it occurred to him he could just ask the operator for the number to the New York Times office building.
“New York Times, how may I help you?” a woman’s overworked voice answered.
Grand gave her his name. Said he would like to speak to Ryker Tommons. Said he was a very close friend. Grand waited, curling the phone cord around his finger.
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Tommons is unavailable at the moment, Mr. Bliss. Would you like to leave him a message?”
She would take many messages on behalf of Mr. Tommons, who would never return any of them. It was at some point while on the phone to her that Grand ordered a subscription to the newspaper, as Ryker never lived up to his promise of getting one for us.
When the paper came, Grand would shower, cologne his neck, put on Saturday night type of clothes like he was fixing himself up for a date.
He read only Ryker’s articles. Reading them over and over again like they were new each time. Articles about gays in theater, film, and music. Culture coming at Grand full speed in a language he’d been learning to speak all his life. The foreign cutting away to the shape of his America.
He could spend an entire afternoon reading and rereading one article, afternoons previously spent on the baseball diamond. He hadn’t been back to the team since that day they ran him off. He was officially replaced by Arly. The team would suffer. Three losses in a row. No playoffs. No championships. You could see the team looking down into their gloves, seeming to ask if they had made the right choice. Was winning worth playing on a team with a fag?
Empty gloves always said it was, but then the ball would come sailing their way. They’d catch it. Say to themselves, Of course we don’t need him.
Dad tried to find out from Grand why he was no longer on the team.
“I just don’t wanna play anymore, Dad.” He shrugged. “Is that okay?”
“I thought you liked baseball. I liked watching you play, but if you don’t want to anymore, well, sure that’s okay.”
And then Dad hugged him and Grand sighed in his arms. “Thanks, Dad.”
The team stretched the baseball diamond far that summer, and the things said there went to gossip in town.
“Have you heard about Grand Bliss?” they whispered.
“I can’t believe it. He doesn’t talk like them. Doesn’t walk like one of them. How can he be?”
“But he is. I heard he kissed another boy. You just never know who is or isn’t anymore. I mean, look at Rock Hudson. There’s always rumors about him. I remember watchin’ him in the old films. I never would have guessed he wanted anything
more than a good woman. You just never know what a man wants. No, you just never know who a man is.”
Dad was never caught in the circles of gossip. Mom could sometimes be, but only because of Fedelia, who brought that type of news into the house during her visits. Though in regards to Grand, she brought none of it up. Instead she would sit across from Mom and say Grand is a very special boy.
“Hmm-mmm,” Mom would say, not knowing what moved in the deep.
“I’m scared for him, though, Stella.”
Mom would make a noise, something like a chuckle. “Don’t be silly, Auntie, he’s a strong boy.”
Fedelia would rub her hands together. “I know.”
Ever since that night Sal cut her hair, Fedelia no longer spoke profanity. Her tone was calm. Like thawed-out honey. Her anger had been cut out with the ribbons and was swept up and dumped into the trash. She stood taller. Walked less clumsy. She’d even lost weight and was planning a cruise for the following spring. She would say Scranton’s name only to say, “He was my husband. He left me. That is that. I am over it, and I wish him the best.”
Unlike the bags she wore before, her clothes clung now, no longer afraid to touch her and her self coming back.
Maybe it was the hard journey to her own identity that made her feel for Grand so deeply. The boy struggling with his own, and she knowing exactly what it feels like to live under the weight of the world.
“I hear Grand is interested in journalism now.” Fedelia crossed her slimmed-down legs while she patted a handkerchief above her lip to get the sweat. Her makeup more subtle than before, more becoming, just like that short crop of white hair.
“Yes, it seems that way.” Mom chuckled. “Must’ve been all those reporters comin’ here. He must’ve found that quite interestin’.”
Grand didn’t want to become a journalist. I knew that much about him. He was just trying to build the connection between him and Ryker, the first man he ever met who was like him. It’s hard not to fall in love with the only blanket in winter.
The Summer That Melted Everything Page 24
