by William Poe
“I volunteered to help at church,” Tony continued. “We’re having a Christmas lunch and a party this afternoon for the kids. After that, Mother and I are going to my uncle’s for dinner. Will you call me tonight?”
“You bet, Tony.” I could barely contain my disappointment that we would be out of contact all day.
When we were talking in his Volkswagen, Tony had mentioned that his first sexual encounter was with an uncle. Was that the man with whom they were having dinner?
Since I wasn’t going to speak to Tony until the evening, I went to Darsey’s, thinking I would help him clean up after the party. I knew I would have to apologize for storming out the way I had.
A terribly disheveled Darsey opened the door wearing a bathrobe. I’d rarely seen him without makeup, and never with his hair so unkempt.
“Oh, I thought it was George at the door,” Darsey coughed, suffering a hoarse throat from screaming over the loud voices at the party—and who knew from what other acts.
George wasn’t a familiar name, but I assumed it was someone who had stayed after the party. Maybe the man had gone to get some take-out breakfast.
“What happened to you last night?” Darsey asked, rubbing his chin as he searched his memory. He seemed to have forgotten about Tony and me leaving the party together. I followed him to the couch. Darsey picked up a silver platter from the coffee table and scrutinized his reflection. He immediately put it down.
“It was a wonderful party,” I rushed to say before his memory returned.
He again looked at himself in the tray, and this time, hopped up and disappeared into the bedroom. I began straightening the chairs and taking piles of dirty dishes to the kitchen. Darsey returned after about twenty minutes, having slipped into a pair of brand-new jeans with the cuffs rolled high. His crisply laundered shirt had sleeves folded neatly to the middle of his forearms. He was the image of a TV maid—dressed for the camera, not for chores.
“Just look at this mess!” Darsey exclaimed. “Those girls get so unruly.” He picked up a feather duster and took a few swipes at the furniture.
Breaking out in laughter, I took the duster from him and said, “Here, Miss Lucy. You go back to bed and wait for George. Let me finish taking care of this mess.”
“Oh!” Darsey screeched. “Miss Thing left hours ago. I was confused because I just woke up. You don’t think I’d contribute to the delinquency of a minor by entertaining a man in bed while you are here, do you?”
I considered Tony’s comment about me seeming so innocent and said, “Maybe I could use some delinquency.”
Darsey puzzled over my statement and then said, “Honey, it’s too early to be abstruse.”
I insisted that Darsey go to his room and relax. Cleaning the apartment would give me something to do until it was time to call Tony. Darsey wandered back into the bedroom until I had everything spotless. When he reappeared, I guessed that he had spent the entire time primping. He came into the front room holding a pair of white gloves, slipped on one of them, and ran his finger over the top of a picture frame.
“Just kidding, dear,” Darsey said. “You did a fabulous job. The room even smells nice.” He came close. “Oh, that’s you! Do I smell Aramis? I love that cologne.” Darsey flopped onto the couch, wiping his brow as if he had done all the work. He made a moaning sound and curled into a ball to take a nap.
“Bye, Darsey,” I said, leaving abruptly. I wasn’t amused.
Back home, I put on the album Jesus Christ Superstar. I had listened to it many times, but never before responded so strongly to the song “I Don’t Know How to Love Him.” After repeating the song five times, it was finally time to call Tony. No one answered.
School the next day was torture. All I could think about was Tony. I managed to write a review for the school paper and to pass a pop quiz in biology. After the last class, I went straight to Darsey’s apartment. There was simply no one else I could talk to about my feelings for Tony.
“How can I be so drawn to someone I just met?” I asked. “What if he was just teasing me and doesn’t feel the same way?”
Darsey barely listened. George was supposed to arrive at any minute, and Darsey was eager to get rid of me. “Call Tony again,” Darsey insisted as I followed him into the kitchen so he could check on the crème brûlée baking in the oven. “Use the phone in my bedroom.”
My stomach tightened as I went to make the call. I pulled the door shut and dialed Tony’s number. His mother answered.
“Oh, Simon. Yes, we just arrived home. I’ll get Tony for you.”
He mentioned me to his mother!
Tony sounded cheerful. “I’m so glad to hear from you. We got in late last night. I phoned your house earlier, but your sister said she didn’t know where you were. I thought maybe you’d forgotten me.”
“Not likely,” I said. “You say my sister answered?”
“Yeah. She mentioned something about trying to find you. Where are you?”
“At Darsey’s.”
A long pause followed.
“The apartment was a mess. I’ve been helping clean it up.”
Another pause, then, “Watch out for Darsey, Simon.”
I glanced toward the door and saw Darsey’s shadow at the threshold.
“Want to join me tonight?” Tony offered. “Our school’s choral department is putting on a Christmas program. I can pick you up.”
“Let’s meet at the school,” I said. Tony attended North Little Rock High, which was on the other side of the county.
“Okay. Park in front of the auditorium around seven thirty. I’ll be watching for you.” In a quiet voice, he said, “I’m really glad we met.”
“Me too. See you tonight.”
Darsey scurried away from the door as I hung up the receiver with a loud clack. He had already taken a seat at his writing desk by the time I entered the front room and picked up my coat from the couch.
“Tony and I have a date tonight,” I said, offering no details.
“How quickly they grow up,” Darsey said with an air of resignation.
Driving home, I wondered why Connie was trying to find me. Whatever it was couldn’t be good—a fear reinforced as I approached the mansion and saw the driveway crowded with cars I didn’t recognize. I drove across the yard and parked under a sweet gum tree that Mandy and I had planted the first summer after we moved to Sibley.
Connie greeted me at the front door with a curt “Have you heard?”
“No,” I replied, though I guessed what she was going to say.
“The nursing home called not long after you went to school. We didn’t want to interrupt your classes.” Then she added in a suspicious tone, “But you didn’t come home.”
“I rarely come home after school, Connie. Vivian could have told you that.”
“Well, she’s been too busy to think. I saw you drive up and thought I’d tell you before you went inside.”
“How’s Lenny?”
“He’s not taking it well. I’m worried about him. Be nice, Simon, for his sake.”
“When am I not nice?”
Connie smirked.
“I’ll come inside in a minute,” I said as Connie closed the door.
I followed the line of trees to the spot near the creek where years earlier Mandy had collapsed on her way to the Corleys’ house. The cypress knees at the shallowest end of the swamp had grown in recent years. Earlier, they barely broke the surface; now they stood well above the waterline. Sparky, my faithful collie, died in my arms one terrible night when I was eleven. He now had a new life through the oak tree I planted on his grave. Was Mandy to become a collection of chemicals lacking consciousness? Her death challenged my notion that we live again. Isn’t death simply the ceasing of existence? Mandy definitely would continue to live in my thoughts. I heard her voice clearly: You’ll remember when I’m gone.
Vivian was busy setting food on the table when I came in through the back door. Dozens of people milled about the h
ouse, including second and third cousins I barely knew. Even the minister from Immanuel Baptist Church, the one Lenny so disliked because of his dogmatic attitudes, came to pay his respects.
Lenny sat with his brother, who was the only person in the room sobbing. I dutifully hugged Lenny, telling him I was sorry to hear about Mandy, and then announced that I planned to go out.
“You ought to be here at a time like this,” Lenny grumbled. “It’s not right.”
Eyeing a plate of steamed vegetables on the table, I recalled the time Lenny had scolded me for yanking up his precious bell pepper plant. I wanted to say something like, I always disappoint you, don’t I? But I simply offered, “Don’t worry, Lenny. I’ll make it to the funeral.”
Vivian set down a casserole dish steaming with macaroni and cheese, and came to Lenny’s side. “Don’t you think Mandy would want you to be with us, Simon?”
“No doubt,” I responded.
Vivian, always dreading confrontation, didn’t press the point. She drew a deep breath and returned to serving food. Lenny continued to console his brother. I’d never seen a Powell so overcome with emotion.
I avoided seeing more relatives by going outside and climbing the trellis to my room. As I dressed for my date with Tony, I wondered about Ernie. I hadn’t heard anything about him in a very long time. It made me angry that I still missed him.
Shaking off the memories, I made my way back down the trellis. Jumping the last ten feet, I scurried to my car and sped away.
Wind blowing off the Arkansas River coursed through the parking lot of Tony’s high school; the cold air gave me a jolt as I stood beside the car, wrapped my scarf snuggly around my neck, and buttoned my overcoat. Tony greeted me before I got halfway to the entrance. We hugged, damning anyone who might see us, and hurried inside, taking seats near the back.
The house lights darkened, and the performance began with a choral version of “Angels We Have Heard on High.” Tony and I hardly listened. We locked arms beneath the overcoats piled on our laps and held hands. Tony dropped his program at one point and used picking it up as an excuse to tease me by pulling down my sock and wrapping his hand around my ankle. I nearly burst out laughing.
“That’s ticklish,” I whispered. “Stop it.”
Tony sat up, grinning. A few parents, seated in front of us, cocked their heads disapprovingly.
“I know someplace where we can go to be alone,” Tony said, motioning toward the door.
Tony led me down a flight of stairs that ended at what had been the school’s fallout shelter. We put our coats on the floor to make a bed and lay beside each other on top of them. In the middle of our lovemaking, I noticed a yellow-and-black radiation sign on the wall.
“Tony, this is too weird. I don’t think I can have sex in a fallout shelter. It’s like being in an X-rated public service announcement—fuck and cover instead of duck and cover.”
We both laughed, and then Tony kissed me. “I’ll duck and you cover,” he said, continuing his way down my chest and over my stomach. Once done with his attentions, he rose up and kissed me. The aroma was intoxicating. I wanted to voice the words that were in my heart, but was afraid to say them aloud.
Suddenly, we realized that the concert had ended.
“Quite a performance,” I said. “The best Christmas program ever.”
As the audience upstairs applauded, Tony and I clapped with them.
“We better go,” Tony cautioned. “Someone might see us coming out of here and wonder what we were up to. ’Course, they’d think we were doing drugs or something.”
“True,” I replied. “They’re too pedestrian to come up with something more imaginative.”
Tony grinned. “You’re too cute.”
Getting dressed, neither pointed out that we had switched undershorts. It was accidentally on purpose. I wanted to take home something that belonged to Tony, and he clearly had the same idea.
The last members of the audience were filing from the auditorium by the time we made our way upstairs and out into the parking lot. I pulled my Chevy beside Tony’s Volkswagen. We ran the engines for a long time, gazing at each other, neither wanting to be the first to drive away.
Later that night, Tony and I talked on the phone. Tony explained how his father had died when he was in elementary school. His mother remarried when he was ten. The stepfather’s brother was the one who had abused him when he was eleven. Tony told his mother what had happened with his step-uncle. She expected her husband to be on her side, and filed charges. Police arrested the man. Tony’s stepfather accused Tony of fabricating the story. He demanded that Tony’s mother drop the charges, but she wouldn’t, so he paid his brother’s legal defense. He also filed for divorce. Tony’s mother used her personal savings to hire an attorney, who won a conviction. She remained single after that, relying almost completely on support from her brother, the uncle they’d had dinner with the day before. As Tony matured, he told his mother he was gay, assuring her it had nothing to do with the abuse by his step-uncle. She was happy that her son could be honest with her.
I told Tony about Mandy’s death and explained what a hovering presence she had been during my childhood. Tony asked if he could come with me to the funeral, adding, “As long as your family won’t think it’s strange.”
“Just don’t look for the church basement,” I teased.
“That’s too macabre. It’s a funeral.”
It wasn’t the best time to say it, but I couldn’t wait any longer. “I have to tell you something, Tony…I love you.”
During the silence that followed, I thought, Oh God, it’s too soon; I shouldn’t have said it.
Then came the response: “Me too.”
Lenny decided not to hold a wake at the mansion, as many of the relatives wanted. Mandy was to have a simple funeral, held in a chapel at Immanuel Baptist Church. Light snow had fallen the night before, placing an icy shroud over the landscape. Tony waited on the front steps of the church as Vivian, Lenny, and I walked from the car. I wanted to throw my arms around him, but merely shook Tony’s hand. I introduced him as a friend. Vivian thanked Tony for caring enough to attend the funeral.
Connie and Derek arrived late and scooted next to us in the pew. Connie desperately tried to keep her young daughter, Cheryl, from crying. Tony reached over and set her on his knee. Cheryl cooed and laughed, kissing Tony on the cheek.
“Looks like you have a girlfriend,” Connie said.
I had to look away to refrain from saying, That would be a first.
The minister came to the pulpit and began issuing well-rehearsed lines about the sanctity of life, the meaning of death, and the expectation of eternal life. Despite our talks, I didn’t know what Tony believed, only that he was involved with his church. He had not commented when I explained my tenuous ideas based on reading the likes of Edgar Cayce. In a nutshell, I figured that souls existed without gender and that homosexual feelings arose from latent emotions experienced in past lives. As the Christian minister spoke, Tony seemed uneasy. He reluctantly held my hand under the coats laid between us. It seemed a fitting way to bid Mandy adieu. She was the one, after all, who had applauded my prepubescent antics. I never felt strange when dressing up in her presence.
Memories flooded my thoughts as I considered Mandy and those early years of my childhood. I had felt such confusion when I saw Ernie in school. My sadness was so great when he turned his back on me. What a horrible summer when he slugged me in the jaw. How could Ernie have been so calloused as to soil Mandy’s fox stole. I slipped out of the pew and rushed toward the door. I felt as though I were drunk, and I started laughing. People in the chapel must have heard me. Oh God, let them think it’s grief. The notion made me laugh harder. I opened the church’s bronze door at the main entrance and let the brisk air slap my face. Regaining my composure, I went back inside. Poor Tony. What must he have been thinking? I put on a solemn face and returned to the chapel. The funeral was closed casket. I was glad I didn’t have t
o look upon Mandy’s sunken face.
Vivian smiled as I returned to my seat. Throughout the service, she looked as though a great weight had been lifted from her shoulders. From Vivian’s viewpoint, there would be no more dirty diapers, no more soiled nightgowns to wash. My eyes let her know I understood. It was a rare moment of acknowledgment between us.
After the final prayer, I rode with Vivian and Lenny in the limousine to Roselawn Cemetery. Mandy would lie next to Bart in the vault he had purchased when the Powell family held high status in Little Rock society. She would not be Aunt Opal’s companion in the graveyard across from the mansion.
A rise in the temperature had turned the snow into misty rain. Sharp winds ripped through the cemetery as mourners trouped along the path to the vault. Pallbearers placed Mandy’s casket on a bier at the entrance. Tony held an umbrella over Connie’s head as she clutched Cheryl in a bundle of blankets. Connie glanced over her shoulder and smiled.
The pastor read an ambiguous passage about a body’s dying corporeal and rising corpuscular, or something to that effect; I didn’t quite catch the terms. I hoped Cayce was right—that we all strive for an original state of being, seeking release from the great cycle of rebirths. Few have made it—perhaps Siddhartha and Zoroaster, maybe Madame Blavatsky and Edgar Cayce. I wondered where Mandy was in the process. Farewell to this life, Mandy.
CHAPTER 11
Tony’s schedule made it difficult for us to get together as often as we would have liked. Mostly, we spoke on the phone, sharing our hopes for the future and, sometimes, opening up to each other about our worst fears, which were largely solved by our having met—loneliness and rejection topping the list.
Greeting my telephone calls, Tony’s mother often said he was attending a prayer meeting or had gone to choir practice to accompany them on the piano.
During one call, I broached a subject with Tony that had been nagging at me: I didn’t see how he could feel like part of a congregation. To attend a Christian church, Tony must have chosen for himself what to believe, which seemed to be true of many Christians. Vivian’s Jesus was a prince of peace. Derek related to a judging lord, come to separate the wheat from the chaff. Lenny’s Jesus was the ultimate sacrificial lamb—once saved, always saved. Connie desired little more than a Jesus who got her the husband she wanted. I rejected Christianity altogether, instead seeking to understand the varied ways that humans relate to the mysterious and unknowable.
