The Cranberry Hush: A Novel

by Monopoli, Ben

“I don’t know. For being close to you. For being your friend.” I feared that every glance he would think I was mentally undressing him, every handshake an excuse to touch him. That when he came out of the bathroom wearing only a towel, I— Or when we sat side-by-side at the movies—

  “Then apparently you didn’t know me as well as I thought you did, Vince.” He was angry, but in his eyes there was also relief. At least now he knew it hadn’t been his fault. “I told you it was cool and I wasn’t lying.”

  “I know you weren’t. It’s my problem, not yours.”

  “Well Vince, man, you need to fucking get over yourself.” He bounced his fist like a gavel on the plump arm of the chair. He got up and kneeled down on the brick hearth, worked busily at the embers with the poker. I watched his shoulders rise and fall with a deep sigh. Finally he put the poker down and slid across the floor, leaned against his chair. “OK,” he said, looking up at me, “if the email was the problem, let’s just go through it. Let’s just get it all out in the open. Isn’t that what I told you the night I figured out your little secret? Maybe if we’d gotten it out a long time ago we wouldn’t have all these—” He looked from me to the fire. “Whatever. How did it start? You saw me in some class we had or something.”

  “Rebellion in Literature,” I said.

  “Ah, that’s right. Rebellion in Literature.” He gestured come here with a wag of his fingers, and my living room became a time machine.

  ***

  Spring semester of my freshman year—that’s when, as they say, the magic happened. It really did seem like magic that first day of class. Magic, lightning, fate—whatever you want to call it, it was it. It was magic when he came through the door, backpack slung over his shoulder—magic when he strode across the scratched tile with a cocky swagger I’d later understand was a clever disguise for his shyness. The chairs were arranged in a circle, filling slowly as students trickled in. He took a seat on the other side of the circle from me, almost so we were facing each other across the empty middle. When he looked up I looked down at my hands, felt my face redden.

  I learned his name when the professor, a young woman named Nicole, not yet jaded by experience and who still believed she could change her students’ lives (and, via them, the world), took attendance the first time.

  “Ariel Dean,” she read from her roster, then looked up to scan the circle.

  Griff raised his hand. That act of drawing attention to himself permitted me to look at him full-on for the first time since he sat down.

  “I go by Griffin,” he told her. “My middle name. Or Griff, less formally. Uh.”

  “Griffin Dean it is, then.” The professor noted it on her attendance roster and I began doodling a capital G on a sheet of loose-leaf paper.

  After attendance Nicole made us go around the circle telling what our favorite book was, making an effort to remember our names but actually only remembering Griffin’s. His favorite, he said, was The Positronic Man, by Isaac Asimov, which he added was turned into a bad movie starring Robin Williams. I agreed aloud that it was bad.

  “I’m glad it’s not just me!” he said, and he pointed at me and smiled. I perceived the flip of his finger as a mind-blowing and unqualified show of affection and blushed, thinking it was obvious to everyone else in the class that our souls were entwining before their very eyes.

  When I got back to my dorm room after that first class I looked him up in the student directory and was heartbroken to find no Deans at all, Griffin or otherwise. In the days before Facebook the thin booklet was all I had, and apparently I had nothing. During the next class, though, I received a consolation prize: a list of the whole class’s contact info, which the well-intentioned young professor provided so we could get in touch with each other outside of class. Griffin had written his name and his email address in tiny, cramped letters. I ran my finger over his letters even though they were only photocopies.

  For more than a month I lived and breathed for Mondays and Wednesdays—for class days, Griffin days—and every other hour of the week served only to anticipate, to prepare. I arranged my laundry schedule so my best jeans would always be ready for Rebellion in Lit. I got up earlier on those days so my hair could be carefully messed according to current style. All in case that day was the day we were to speak.

  But no matter how I tried to align the planets or bribe fate, each class was a bigger disappointment than the one before. There was no conversation with Griffin, no chance encounters before or after class, or in the dining hall, or on the sidewalk. Class after class my hopes were pummeled and even though I was naturally optimistic it began to wear me out, made me feel numb and indifferent and bitter. And sad.

  At the end of February, our earnest young professor scheduled one-on-one meetings with her to discuss the progress of the course. When I arrived at her office for my meeting Griffin Dean was sitting in a chair outside her door. I took a deep breath. Six weeks into the semester, we would talk. My heart started to slam in my chest even as my muscles quieted into a rehearsed steady-cool slowness.

  He had a U2 baseball cap on backward—above the strap were the appropriate words Achtung Baby!—and a paperback open on his lap. His right leg was crossed over his left, ankle to knee. His jeans were torn up and dirty at the heels where they dragged on the ground.

  I sat down beside him. “Hey,” I said, the simple word I’d wanted to say to him for weeks.

  “Hey,” Griffin said. His voice, for the first time since that first day, was for me. The sound as it entered my ears was as lovely as a field of sunflowers, something to treasure like a mint copy of Action Comics #1. He jiggled his sneaker and uncrossed his leg.

  What was he reading?, I wondered. It was hard to look at the book without appearing to be examining his balls. Was it the book for class? I shifted in my chair and used the motion to disguise a glance. The book had a flying saucer on its cover.

  “She running late?” I said.

  “A little, yeah.”

  “Figures— I thought I was going to be late.”

  He smiled and returned to his book. I stared at the bulletin board on the wall opposite the chairs. A flyer announced auditions for the spring musical. Think of something else to say, I screamed in my head. This chance of a lifetime took weeks to arrive and likely would never come again.

  “Good book?”

  He stopped reading and marked his place with his thumb. “Yeah, but it’s not really spacey enough.”

  Not spacey enough. I didn’t know what that meant, so I just agreed.

  “I’m reading this amazing book about dogs,” I added. “I mean, it’s called Dogwalker. About mutant puppies. Or—well some of them are. And this mole who hides under the couch and sings but turns out to be a tiny man.”

  “A tiny man, huh?”

  “He hides and sings. And there’s another one about a mattress. He has to find a mattress.”

  “The tiny man?”

  “No, the narrator.”

  I heard the scrape of chairs moving inside the office and then the door opened. Fuck. Not yet! I hadn’t had enough time with Griffin yet. Take longer, damn you! But a girl pulling on a Shuster Tennis jacket came out with the professor following her.

  “Griffin, hi—I’m sorry—about the time,” Nicole said. She had a red pen behind her ear. The cap was chewed.

  “No problem,” he said.

  “Eliza was giving me loads of great feedback. I’ll be with you in a minute, Vince. Thanks for waiting.”

  Eliza nodded at us and walked away toward the elevators. Griffin stuffed his book in his backpack, got up and went into the office. Just before he closed the door he turned around and winked at me.

  *

  “I think I just meant, you know, about Eliza giving the teacher feedback. They were both pretty foxy.”

  “I probably knew that and chose to ignore it.”

  “Man. I had no idea I was such a charmer. I can go around seducing people with just a mere bat of the eyelash, huh? I’ll
have to keep that in mind. So what happened next?”

  “It drove me insane.”

  ***

  I had to know what the wink meant. Was it a secret signal from one closeted dude to another? It could be! I waited for more signals. In class I watched Griffin’s hands and sneakers for discreet taps, for a queer Morse code. Tap tap I think I love you tap tap tap ask me out tap tap.

  When I figured I wasn’t picking up anything I decided to send out signals of my own. I made tiny attempts to copy his movements: I crossed my arms when he crossed his, sat on my leg when he sat on his. I hoped he would see this synchronicity and know I’d noticed him. It was never blatant, though. It wouldn’t do just to attract his attention. He had to be watching for it. Closely.

  But nothing happened. Not that class or the next or the next or the next. And I began to realize that my whole semester was unraveling waiting for something that wasn’t ever going to come. Never unless I did more than scratch my nose when he scratched his. Never unless I just grew a pair and asked him out.

  But not only did I not know whether he was interested—I didn’t know whether he even could be interested.

  How could I find out whether Griffin Dean liked guys?

  *

  “My turn,” Griff said. He returned to the chair and curled up with his legs under him. “So you were a lovesick swain trying to figure out what to do. Finally you came up with both an idea and the nerve to put it in action, so you’d know whether to expect to get smacked if you asked me out. Although why you thought that was a possibility is beyond me. But anyway, anyway— You made a special screen name and sent me a nice and, I must say, well-written but extremely anonymous email asking me if I dated guys. Am I right so far?”

  “Yes.” I pulled the blanket down tighter on my shoulders. “Maybe we should skip this part?”

  “Vince, if you can’t see the humor in this you’re taking life way too seriously. Right? Yeah, you know I’m right. So you sent the email. I got the letter, and yeah, I was weirded out. Not so much about it being from a guy, but I didn’t know which guy. I would’ve been flattered if I’d known it was you. You’ve always had enviable biceps. But you could’ve just as easily been that dipshit with the hacky sack who was always blocking the front door. Remember him?”

  “Ryan Sedgwick.”

  “Yeah, what a fucker. I hated that kid. So anyway, I didn’t respond.”

  ***

  As the week went by I felt more and more guilty about sending the email. On top of everything, on top of my weird and overwhelming attraction to Griffin, I liked him. I cared about him. And the last thing I ever wanted to do was make him uncomfortable.

  If he didn’t like guys the way I did (and that was likely, right? like ninety-something-percent likely?), was he just totally confused about why some mysterious person going by the name of Truman thought he might? And if he did like guys but was closeted, was he afraid he’d been discovered? Was he scanning every face wondering if any of those people were Truman? Did he sit in the dining hall glancing around while his food got cold and his soda went flat? Did he lie awake at night? The whole thing made me feel lonely and villainous and sick to my stomach.

  Nicole started the first class of March by announcing a group project and then began counting around our circle, dividing us into groups. I tried counting ahead, my eyes racing past the pen she was ticking against desks, desperately trying to figure out whether Griffin and I would be assigned to the same group—but Nicole’s counting kept messing me up. Griffin got labeled a four. If I’d known about the group project I would’ve tried rigging the outcome. I thought, as it was, that my chances were not one-in-five, but somehow much closer to zero.

  But at last fate had been bribed and the planets were aligned and when Nicole clicked her red pen on my desk and said four it felt like getting knighted.

  Ninety-seven seconds later I found myself sitting directly opposite Griffin, our desks pushed together front-to-front. My happiness was bittersweet, though, because even in my happiness I felt guilty knowing what I’d done, and fearful too that he’d somehow uncovered my deceit, that he would at any moment reach across our desks and slug me. Ah, but he was here and it was worth it. There were two other people in our group—just scenery, just mannequins.

  Maybe we would eat lunch together, I thought, nervously rolling myself up in the fantasy. His eyes were green and seemed to hint at things he wanted to say but couldn’t, at least not here. I watched his hands as he jotted notes. He had nice fingernails and a very even skin-tone. Maybe we would hang out in each other’s rooms, sixty-nine for hours while our roommates were away, become life partners, adopt foreign orphans.

  While I was daydreaming of these things I could feel my mouth moving, could vaguely hear words coming out of it. I had some awareness of books being handed out, and of listening while Nicole gave instructions. But it was something Griffin said that blasted apart my reverie—the worst thing a guy who likes a guy can possibly hear:

  “My girlfriend read this book last semester.”

  At first I thought maybe it was one of the mannequins in our group speaking, but—oh man, oh no—it was Griffin. The rest of what he said—the things the girlfriend had told him about the book, and how we could use that now in this project so we wouldn’t have to actually read it ourselves—all blended into a monotone hum like that emergency alert tone they test on TV.

  A girlfriend. He had one. At worst he was straight. But even if he was bi, he was taken. He was someone else’s. Of course. Of course he was.

  The tiny pessimistic devil who usually sat on my shoulder and who’d warned me not to even bother with Griffin in the first place suddenly conjured himself in my stomach and began crawling up my throat, making it tight. I wasn’t sure whether to cry that fucker out or throw him up. I thought I might do both, and collapse in a puddle of tears and puke.

  By the time class was over, though, I’d talked myself into being thankful that I’d made no real connection with Griffin before finding out he had a girlfriend. Somehow not having him in my life right now made it a little easier to know he’d never be in it at all.

  One week later I laid my arms across the window sill and rested my chin in the crook of my elbow. Through my fifth-floor window and across Beacon Street, over the row of brownstones on the other side, were the tall glass buildings that made up Boston’s ever more jagged skyline. Waning sunlight lit up the Hancock and Prudential buildings with blazing orange. As the sun descended behind the horizon the light crept down the sides of the buildings, burning them up, until finally it disappeared into dark embers at the bottoms. I tried to watch the sunset as often as possible.

  “God I hope I get it, I hope I get it,” sang my roommate Brian. He was standing on his bed. His strawberry hair was pushed up severely in the front. “Oh god I really, really need to get this job! Wait, fuckadilly—how’s this go?” He reached for a sheet of lyrics that lay on his pillow.

  It was mid-March. Room selection for our sophomore year was in less than a month and I did not consider it an option to spend another year living with Brian Lauder (pronounced louder). My few other friends were either seniors or girls or both. As a freshman I wouldn’t have a chance at getting a single. I was shit out of luck.

  I needed a roommate.

  *

  “There’s that total hunk you still have the crush on,” Griff suggested as he poked the fire.

  “You mean the one I just found out had a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, him. You could ask him.—No you couldn’t.—Yes you could. You play Gollum/Sméagol for a while and finally decide that you’re young and ridiculous—”

  “And desperate.”

  “—and desperate—OK mostly desperate—and you do. You send me another email, this time from your real Shuster address, telling me that since we got along fine during groupwork and since you have no one else to ask, you wonder if I’m looking for a roommate for sophomore year.”

  ***

  I se
nt that second email on a Saturday morning (taking pains to use a different font from the Truman email) and all weekend waited in a state of near panic for Griffin to reply. I clicked refresh on the browser like a gambling addict at a slot machine, hoping, believing, that the next click would be the jackpot. But by Sunday night I was bitter and broke.

  On Monday morning I sulked to class not wanting to see Griffin at all. I was angry not only because he’d given me no answer—again!—but because he was continually breaking my heart. The worst part was that he didn’t even know it.

  I chose a desk in the circle and sat down to read the homework assignment I’d been too busy refreshing my email to read the night before. When someone took the seat beside me I didn’t look up, didn’t so much as raise my eyes. The person was fidgeting with a click-pen, that much I could hear. Clicka clicka clicka.

  “Hey, I got your email,” the person said after a minute or two, mid-breath, as though he’d only just sat down. Or as though he’d been rehearsing.

  I put my book down. “Oh, cool.” Something was different about him. His eyes were brighter or his skin was darker. Yes, it was his skin—he had a tan. In March. It took my breath away.

  “Sorry I didn’t reply,” he went on. “I was in Florida this weekend and I just got it this morning. A few minutes ago, actually.”

  “That’s OK,” I said nonchalantly, as though his response was of minimal interest. “How was Florida?”

  “It was all right. My cousin lives there, so... Would you want to hit the dining hall after class?”

  “Sure.”

  “Cool.”

  That was all. He put down his pen and folded his hands in his lap. I picked up my book and read the same sentence of Letters From A Birmingham Jail over and over. Goosebumps rose on my arms. It used to be that I savored every minute of this class because that was Griffin Time. But now that Griffin Time was about to extend beyond class, outside of class, and be better, I was desperate for the 105 minutes to be over.