The Agony of Bun O'Keefe
Page 11
“What does that mean?”
“It’s an expression—meaning you can always find something good in something bad.”
“I don’t get expressions. If you have something to say, you should say it.”
“I see your point,” he said. “Why beat around the bush when you can cut to the chase?”
He had a big grin on his face. I didn’t know why.
“Does what happened in the attic have a silver lining?” I asked.
He flinched, like he’d stuck a knife in a toaster.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No. You’re just abrupt, that’s all. There’s never any warning.”
“I’m sorry.”
He smiled. “Don’t worry. I should know by now to be prepared for anything where you’re concerned.”
“Like a boy scout,” I said.
He laughed. “Yeah. Like a boy scout.”
I stared at the ceiling. “I think about the attic a lot, do you?”
“I try not to.”
“I think the answer is no,” I said. “To the silver lining question. ’Cause as hard as I look I can’t see one.”
He was quiet so I guess he couldn’t see one either.
“Who’s Shekau?”
He got a pang. I could tell.
“Shekau’s my sister.”
“What’s she like?”
“Beautiful inside and out. Just like you.”
“Did she wear her hair in a braid?”
“Sometimes.”
“Was the landlord mean to her too?”
“Another day, not now. Okay?”
“Can we read some Al Purdy?”
He pulled the book out of his duffel bag.
“Can I ask you a question?” he said. “Before I start reading?”
“Okay.”
“Now that your mother is gone, will anyone be coming here to look for you?”
“My mom told the school I’d left with my dad. No one knew I existed. Even if they did, they’d have forgotten me by now.”
“What about your father? If he finds out your mother has died, he might come back to get you.”
“Don’t worry; he’s forgotten me by now too.”
Busker Boy opened the book and thumbed through the pages. “How could anyone forget you, Bun O’Keefe?”
—
Big Eyes stood over a sink of soapy dishes.
“There’s a pot of oatmeal on the stove. It’ll be ready soon.”
“Wow,” said Busker Boy, “you’ve been busy.”
“This house won’t clean itself, you know.”
For the first time in my life I could see the kitchen table.
“What time did you get up?” he asked.
She opened a package of paper towels and started wiping the bowls. “I don’t know.”
“You look tired,” he said. “Why don’t you take a break?”
She turned away from him. “I’m fine.”
He laid a hand on her shoulder as she dished up the oatmeal.
She shrugged him off.
Busker Boy said, “Bun, why don’t you tell Chris that breakfast is ready?”
As I walked up the stairs I got that lost book feeling. Big Eyes was grumpy and I didn’t know why.
Chris wouldn’t budge from his bed.
“Come have a cuddle,” he said. “It’s friggin’ freezing.”
“But we’re having oatmeal.”
“Five minutes, then we’ll go down. Promise.”
His wool coat felt itchy against my cheek.
“Do you like it here?” I asked.
“It’s fine for now.”
“What do you mean, for now?”
“Well we can’t live here forever.”
“Yes we can. It’s called squatting. I saw it on a documentary about punks in England who took over an abandoned house. If we stay long enough, we’ll get rights to this place. It’s an actual law.”
“And what will we live on? I don’t think there are many drag queen positions out here in the middle of nowhere.”
“Who needs a job when you live rent free?”
“And what about food?”
“The punks didn’t care about any of that stuff.”
He propped himself up on his elbow. “We’re not punks. We’re normal people.”
I raised my eyebrows at him.
“Okay, maybe not normal. But we deserve a nice life just like anyone else.”
“We can have a nice life here.”
“No, Bun, we can’t. I’ve lived a good part of my life in hiding and I don’t plan on doing it again.”
I played with one of the big buttons on his coat. “When did you live in hiding?” I asked.
“When I pretended to be straight to my family.”
I didn’t want Chris to have to live in hiding again, but what he didn’t understand was that if we went back to St. John’s I’d be living in hiding. Unless Dragon Man was dead, which I hoped he was.
I thought of Doc’s fraternity brother on The Love Boat. “Did you ever pretend Jasper was your cousin?”
He looked surprised. “How do you know about Jasper?”
“I saw you on his bench once.”
“You never said.”
“Chef said it was your story to tell.”
“You could have asked. It’s no big secret or anything. It’s just hard to talk about, you know?”
“Did he kill himself, like Chef?”
“No, my ducky, he had AIDS.”
“I know about AIDS. It’s been all over the news.”
“Epidemics usually are.”
“Did you have sex with him?”
“Jesus Christ, Bun. You and your questions.”
“If you did, you could be HIV positive…are you?”
His mouth didn’t move, but his face said yes.
“Don’t worry. I’ll still be your friend. I read this article, about the surgeon general. He says you can’t get it through casual contact, but no one believes him. They think you can catch it, like a cold. There’s this kid, named Ryan White, and he got AIDS and wasn’t allowed to go to school. It’s the whole strange alien being all over again. People are stupid. The surgeon general says we’re fighting a disease, not people, and I agree. His name is C. Everett Koop. Isn’t that a funny name?”
He didn’t say anything again, and when I looked at him he was crying.
I caught a tear with my thumb, like Busker Boy did for me during the whole Wish Book thing. “I’m sorry. I’m too abrupt. I want to change but I don’t know how.”
He wrapped his arms around me.
“I wouldn’t have you any other way, Bun O’Keefe.”
After breakfast, Big Eyes gave us jobs to do. I was to sort the books, Chris was on clothes duty and Busker Boy was to get rid of any expired food.
“I’ll do movies and music,” she said. “If you’re not sure about something just call out, Keep or toss? and we can help each other decide. We’ll chuck all the tosses out in the backyard and at some point we’ll take it to the dump.”
“First things first,” said Busker Boy.
He put batteries in an old ghetto blaster and popped in a tape. The Clash blared from the speakers.
“Jesus Christ,” said Chris. “What the hell are they even saying? Wah-rah what?”
Busker Boy laughed. “White riot.”
“They should learn to enunciate. And why are they always so angry?”
“They’re not angry. They’re passionate.”
Chris pointed to the pile of tapes in front of Big Eyes. “See if you can find a Cher or a Babs so we can turn the angry punks off.”
“Who’s Babs?” I asked.
“Someone we won’t be listening to,” said Busker Boy. “Because if there’s a Streisand tape in this house it’s an automatic toss.”
Chris wiped away an imaginary tear and sang, “You don’t bring me flowers…”
Busker Boy rolled his eyes. “Here we go.”
He grabbed the garbage bag of old food out of Busker Boy’s hand and threw it aside.
Busker Boy laughed, and when Chris belted out the final, heartbreaking line, he laughed even harder. Chris ended his performance by collapsing into Busker Boy’s arms.
“Can we just get back to work?” said Big Eyes. She picked up a VHS tape. “ABBA: The Movie. Keep or toss?”
“Keep,” said Chris. “Duh.”
“What about this one?”
Chris squinted at it. “The Agony of Jimmy Quinlan? Never heard of it.”
The words in my book pile ran together, like someone had dumped a bucket of water over them.
Busker Boy sat up. “Can I see that?”
Big Eyes held it out. “Looks like a boring documentary about some old drunk in Montreal.”
“Sounds like a load of shit,” said Chris.
“It is,” I said. “One of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.”
I could feel Busker Boy’s eyes on me as Big Eyes dropped the tape into the toss pile.
Poor Jimmy, he never had a chance.
—
Chris picked up a loaded laundry basket. “How about we go to the Laundromat, clean the bejesus out of this bedding?”
“No,” said Busker Boy. “We need to lay low.”
“We need a break,” said Chris.
“They might be looking for us.”
“Who’s they?” asked Big Eyes.
“The landlord, the cops, your father.”
Chris rolled his eyes. “My father’s not looking for us.”
“You took his car,” said Busker Boy.
“My car.”
Big Eyes sighed. “Can you guys stop bickering? It’s all bad enough.”
“I think we should stay put,” said Busker Boy. “Until things settle down.”
“We need bedding,” said Chris. “We’ll freeze to death without it.”
“We’ll be fine,” said Busker Boy.
“Don’t worry,” said Chris. “We’ll keep a low profile.”
Busker Boy stood up, knocked the basket out of Chris’s hands. “Screw the bedding!” he yelled. “I could be in deep shit here.”
He sat down and put his head in his hands. It was dizzy on the merry-go-round.
“Look,” said Chris, “I’m worried too. But I don’t think he’ll report you. He’s got too much to lose.”
“He hates my guts. He’d love to see me behind bars.”
I imagined the nearest town swarming with cops, on the lookout for our unlikely foursome.
“He’s the one who should be behind bars,” said Big Eyes. “And if we had any sense, we’d report him.”
“Don’t be stupid,” said Busker Boy. “Bun is a runaway with no family. She’ll be put in foster care so quick your head would spin.”
I wasn’t good at thinking ahead ’cause there was barely ever anything to think ahead to. But Busker Boy, he had it all thought out. And I was glad. I didn’t want to go into care. In A Long Way Home three abandoned siblings named Donald, David and Carolyn get put in homes and it doesn’t work out that well, for any of them. It was a good movie, though. The guy who played Donald also played Conrad in Ordinary People. I wondered if he ever got any happier roles.
Big Eyes told Busker Boy not to call her stupid and he said, “Well, don’t say stupid things,” and I tuned them out until their voices sounded like the adults in Charlie Brown, all muffled and weird.
I sat by the laundry basket and brought a blanket to my nose.
“These don’t smell too bad,” I said. “I’d use them.”
Chris knelt beside me. “Don’t worry. I won’t go to the Laundromat.”
“Promise?”
He looked at Busker Boy.
“Promise.”
—
Big Eyes went to her room during lunch. Busker Boy passed me a plate. “Why don’t you bring this up to her?” I balanced it on my hand like a waiter in a cartoon. I knocked on the door three times and said, “Would Mademoiselle like some tuna on crackers?”
Her voice was hard and cold, an echo to my knocks. “Go away, Bun.”
She didn’t come out for an hour.
—
We worked all afternoon until Chris said he’d had enough. He collapsed into a patch of sunlight on the living room floor. “Let’s have a siesta.”
“Are you kidding?” said Big Eyes. “Look at all this work we have to do.”
“Twenty minutes,” said Chris. “We can have a communal nap, like a bunch of hippies.”
Busker Boy laughed. “First of all, you are the least hippie-ish person I know. And secondly, you sleep on the floor?”
“Just goes to show how tired I am,” said Chris. “It was so cold last night I barely slept.”
“I’ll have a siesta with you,” I said.
Busker Boy nodded toward Big Eyes. “I don’t think anyone will be having a nap as long as Sergeant Major’s in charge.” He took The Clash out of the ghetto blaster and put in an ABBA cassette. “Come on, Chris. If this doesn’t get you going, nothing will.”
Chris went back to his clothes pile, belting out “Mamma Mia” as he worked. When “Chiquitita” came on everyone sang, even Big Eyes who was still grumpy, and Busker Boy who didn’t even like ABBA.
Just when it got to the chorus, Chris said, Holy frig! and ran out of the room with a small plastic bag. A few minutes later, it was Cher who returned, making an entrance like a beauty queen, all smiles and twirls in a snug-fitting dress. I jumped up and hugged her. “I’ve missed you!”
“It’s a bloody Christian Dior,” she said. “Can you believe it?”
She strutted back and forth, her long black hair swinging in time with her hips.
“Can you breathe in that thing?” I asked.
“Of course I can. It’s like a second skin.”
“It’s a nice purple.”
“Aubergine, darling, aubergine.”
“It’s probably from some dirty old thrift shop, you know,” said Big Eyes. “Like all the other junk around here.”
Cher adjusted the bust. “Guess what? I don’t give a shit.”
I said, “Isn’t it making your skin crawl?”
“Skin doesn’t crawl in Dior. It erupts in goose bumps.”
Cher sat in Busker Boy’s lap. “What do you think, hand some?”
“You look beautiful.”
“Give it a feel, then, hot stuff. Pure silk.”
Busker Boy laughed and stroked her thigh. “You don’t give up, do you?”
“On you? Never.”
The rest of us got back to work while Cher sat in a chair, legs crossed and chest out, her fingers running up and down the fabric.
I unearthed my old Merck Manual from the book pile and passed it to her. “Here. If you’re not going to work you might as well read.”
She held the book in both hands and stared at the cover.
“You never know,” I said. “There might be something medical you don’t know.”
She said thanks, but I think she may have had that lost book feeling, and as she ran her fingers across the cover, I pressed rewind to see where I went wrong.
—
I went to Chris’s room later that night. “I didn’t give you the book ’cause I thought you didn’t know enough medical stuff.”
“I know.”
“Do you wish you were a doctor?”
“Sometimes. Especially when my mom got cancer.”
“I thought she died of disappointment.”
“She did. I told her I was gay while she was in remission. She relapsed shortly after.”
“My mother was disappointed in me too. She didn’t care enough to die from it though. She ate herself to death instead.” Chris opened his arms and I crawled into them.
I said, “You’d be a good doctor.”
He smiled. “Too bad I’d have to be straigh
t to become one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dad cut me off when he found out about Jasper. Said he’d start paying tuition again once I ‘straightened up.’ I had to drop out of school. Drag queen wages don’t go very far.”
“At least you had Jasper,” I said.
Chris smiled. “Yeah.”
“Too bad he had to go and die.”
“Jesus, Bun.”
“How did he get AIDS anyway?”
“He had a number of boyfriends up in Toronto, before I met him.”
“Do you miss your canopy bed?”
He laughed. “Talking to you is like playing Ping-Pong.”
“You play Ping-Pong?”
“Well, no. But the ball pings and pongs all over the place, right? Just like your conversations.”
“You’re going to leave soon, aren’t you?”
“I can’t live out here in the boonies. You know that.”
“When will you go?”
“When things settle down.”
“When will that be?”
“Soon, I hope.”
I said, “Just so you know, there’s nothing in the Merck Manual about dying of disappointment.”
“I know. I’m sure the sadness didn’t help though.”
“Was she really that sad? About you being who you are?”
“Yes, my ducky. She really was.”
I shook my head. “Too bad she never saw you in that aubergine dress. One look and she’d have totally understood.”
—
The next morning Chris was gone. Big Eyes too. At first, we thought they were still sleeping until Busker Boy noticed the car was missing.
“He just had to go and clean that stupid bedding,” said Busker Boy.
“What if they left ’cause they hate this stupid, stinky house?”
“They wouldn’t do that.”
“My father did.”
“Come on, Shadow. Follow me.”
We went to Big Eyes’s room first.
“See? All her stuff is still here.”
Chris’s room was next. His fancy wool coat was on the foot of his bed.
My father wanted out so bad he took off and left his stuff behind. I wanted to believe Busker Boy, but I wondered if Chris and Big Eyes did the same.
We had a granola bar each for breakfast and went back to our piles. My book stack was getting smaller ’cause there were more tosses than keeps. I saved all the celebrity biographies for Chris. The cookbooks made me sad.
I wiped my hair out of my face. “Maybe they took a carload of bags to the dump.”