by Caryl Rivers
But what really distinguished Davy from any other kid I ever met was the fact that he had tried to kill himself-three times, in fact. Once he slashed his wrists with a penknife in the boys’ bathroom at Hoover. I was fascinated with his wrists, and would stare at the crisscrossing of small cruel canals of scar tissue, some of it old, white, and faded, and some of it a reddish color.
“Does he really want to kill himself?” I asked Mollie.
“Sometimes,” she said.
“Can you make him stop doing it?”
Mollie shrugged. “You can’t make Davy stop doing something if he wants to do it,” she said.
When he wasn’t trying to kill himself or tinkering with his car, Davy went to movies. He saw everything: adventure films, three-handkerchief Bette Davis specials, Biblical epics. If he liked a movie enough, he’d see it so many times he’d memorize the dialogue, and he’d do complete scenes for us, with background music. For some reason, he was intrigued with a circus movie called The Greatest Show on Earth about acrobats, and he’d seen it thirty-two times.
“Fucking good movie,” he said.
He made that critical comment one night when we were all at Sean’s house watching T.V. Dr. McCaffrey and his wife were out at a banquet someplace.
“Come on, let’s do the movie,” Davy said.
“Which one?” Scan asked.
“The Greatest Show on Earth, natch.”
We were all pretty bored, so we said O.K. Davy assigned us our parts. I got the Betty Hutton role as an acrobat, and Mollie got to be an animal trainer.
“You got to look the part,” Davy said to me. “This has to be authentic.”
I said I had a bathing suit I could use for a costume, so Davy sent me to my house to get it. It had a picture of a duck on it, and Davy said the duck was really ugly, but it would do. Sean got the Jimmy Stewart role of the clown who never takes off his makeup. (Turns out he was really a doctor who had performed an abortion as an act of mercy on an unmarried girl, and was wanted for murder.) Sean thought it was a juicy part; Mollie and I painted up his face with lipstick, and he put on his flannel pajamas, which was as close to a clown suit as he could get. He also dug up an old pith helmet someone had given to his father for Mollie, the animal trainer.
Davy, of course, got the most dramatic role-the Cornell Wilde part as the star trapeze performer. He called himself The Great Zoltan, because Davy had seen a sci-fi flick with a character named Zoltan, and he thought the name was really cool. Zoltan was obsessed with doing a stunt no one else in history had ever done—a triple somersault.
Davy stripped down to his undershorts and declared that he, Zoltan, was going to do the triple, without a net!
“No, Zoltan, you can’t!” I sobbed. “You’ll be killed.”
“Zoltan, don’t do it!” Sean implored.
“You’ll be all over the floor-splat,” Mollie said.
“The Great Zoltan knows no fear!” Davy cried. “No fear!” Then he said, “Oh shit, wait a minute.” He disappeared into the kitchen and when he came back he looked as if he’d just made a quick trip to a leper colony. His whole arm was pale white, thanks to the fact that he has just dipped his arm in Mrs. McCaffrey’s ten-pound sack of flour.
“Zoltan knows no fear!” he repeated, and climbed up on the arm of the sofa. I climbed up on the arm of a chair across the room.
“Hey, this is fun,” Sean said.
“Beats the shit out of the Life of Mother Marie Claire,” I said.
“Doctor,” Motile said to Sean, “if Zoltan falls, can you save him?”
“Not me,” said Sean, “I’m a urologist. If he breaks his back, tough shit, but if he has trouble peeing, I’m your man.”
Meantime, Zoltan was flexing his muscles, way up at the highest point of the Big Top, and he reached up to catch his imaginary trapeze.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I cried, “your attention please! The Great Zoltan is going to attempt a stunt never before performed successfully in any circus, anywhere. He is going to perform the triple somersault-and without a net!”
Zoltan reached up, put both his hands on the trapeze, and bent his knees slightly. (We had piled all the couch pillows up on the floor, so our Zoltan wouldn’t land as hard as Cornell Wilde had.)
“Dum Da Dum Dum!” Sean hummed.
“Silence, ladies and gentlemen! Silence, please!” I said dramatically.
Zoltan drew himself to his full height, flexed his legs, and swung out, way out, into space. His body twisted into a pretzel, trying for the vaunted triple, trying, trying, but he missed the bar and plunged like a falling star to the earth. Zoltan let out a horrible scream as he plunged earthward, and then he lay groaning, his arm a twisted claw beneath him.
I screamed.
Mollie screamed.
Sean screamed.
Mrs. McCaffrey screamed loudest of all.
I whirled around and saw them standing there: Mrs. McCaffrey, Dr. McCaffrey—and His Excellency, the Reverend Matthew Hanlon, archbishop of the diocese of Washington and Baltimore.
Oh shit, I thought.
Dr. McCaffrey had gone white as a fish’s belly. He took one look at me, standing on the arm of the chair in my bathing suit, at Sean with lipstick all over his face, and at Zoltan lying on the floor in his underwear, and he looked as if he were going to pass out, right there on the spot. The archbishop just stood there, his mouth gaping open in a most unecclesiastical way.
“Sean!” his father croaked. “What is the meaning of this!”
“Oh hi, Pop. Mom. Your Excellency. We’re doing The Greatest Show on Earth.”
Davy got up, his arm still twisted into a claw. “Hi, I’m Zoltan. Zoltan the Great.”
“Davy, this is my mom and dad. And Archbishop Hanlon.”
“Hi, Your Honor,” Davy said.
“Excellency,” Sean corrected him.
“Whatever,” Davy said.
Davy stuck out his floured hand to shake the hand of the prelate.
“Sean, you are in your pajamas!” Dr. McCaffrey hissed. His eyes had narrowed to slits. I was sure that if he had had a machine gun in his hand at the moment, he’d have mowed down all of us, starting with Sean.
“Oh, I’m a clown,” Sean said. “I’m really a doctor, but I’m wanted for murder.”
“It’s a B-movie,” I said. “It’s not condemned or anything.”
“Want to see it? From the top?” Davy asked, his eyes bright with anticipation.
Dr. McCaffrey turned faintly green, but the archbishop said, “I’d love to see it,” and he turned to Dr. McCaffrey and said, “I think you are to be congratulated, Liam. It’s nice to see teenagers getting interested in something as wholesome as dramatics.”
Your Excellency, I thought, you have saved our asses! So we ran through it, from the top, and the adults all applauded when Zoltan made his final, terrible plunge—Dr. McCaffrey loudest of all. After all, the archbishop had said we were all right, had put his imprimatur on us, and that was that as far as Dr. McCaffrey was concerned. We could have been standing there stark raving naked, but if the archbishop had approved, he would have clapped just as loudly.
After that, Davy started hanging out with Sean a lot. Dr. McCaffrey wasn’t too happy about it, because he said Davy looked like a juvenile delinquent, but he just grumbled a bit. One night, when Sean and Davy were watching T.V., Sean asked him, “How come you always used to go out the window?”
“I dunno. I felt like it. Sometimes I feel fenced in, y’know, like in Flash Gordon. Y’know those walls that move in on you? I feel like that. Then I got to move. I can’t stand it when that happens.”
“You going to college or anything, Davy?”
“Nah. I was thinking, I might drive out to Hollywood after I graduate, get some kind of tech job in the movies.”
“That would be cool.”
“I dunno. After a while, I’d probably feel just like I feel here. Maybe I’ll
bum around for a while.”
The future didn’t exist for Davy; it seemed to be like some formless, floating cloud. He was so different from most of the boys at Sacred Heart, who had already started to draw the maps that would carry them into the future: college choices, careers selected, dreams already born. Davy was a creature of the present, and he was like the sea, moving, restless. He couldn’t be still, but motion didn’t seem to bring him joy. Sean was drawn to him, and with those finely honed pain sensors of his, he picked up Davy’s inner turmoil.
“I feel bad for Davy,” he said.
“Why?”
“He doesn’t seem to belong anywhere. And he knows it. But he can’t do anything about it.”
“Lots of kids are like that; they get straightened out.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it with Davy. I think he’s like—a Martian would be. Always out of place.”
“You mean there isn’t any place for him, anywhere?”
“I don’t know. I asked him why he tried to kill himself?’
“You asked him? And he didn’t get mad?”
“No. He says that when he gets to feeling like he did when he went out the window at Sacred Heart, he has to get out, only there aren’t any more windows.”
“Except one.”
“I guess so. He says he can’t breathe, even the air hurts, and he has to bust out.”
“He’s a kid, Sean. He’ll grow out of it.”
“I hope so.”
But Davy was pretty normal all through vacation, and we had a lot of fun, going to movies and parties. Toward the end of the two weeks, just having fun started to pall, as it always did. That’s why I was glad that Con dropped back into our lives again. The U.S.C. sophomore had gone south, and she regaled us with tales of life in the fast lane.
“I passed right out on the couch!” she said. “I mean, everybody passed out. It was a blast!”
“Con, you shouldn’t pass out. I mean, somebody could rape you!”
“Everybody was too drunk to rape anybody. Oh, did I tie one on!”
Sean turned to me and said, “Were you ever drunk?”
“Oh yeah. At Suzie Meadows’s slumber party. We drank her father’s stuff. I think I put a lampshade on my head.”
“I’ve never been drunk,” Sean said glumly.
“Well, that’s something to be proud of,” I told him.
“I ought to know how it feels, at least. They don’t let you get drunk in the seminary.”
“They don’t let you do anything fun in the seminary,” Con said.
Sean began to brood about the fact that he had never been plastered.
“I’ve never even been high,” he said. “I’m a wimp!”
He went on and on about it until Con and I finally got fed up and Con said to him, “Sean, you want to get drunk, we’ll get you drunk. You can get plastered among friends.”
“Would you?” he said. “Really?”
So, the last night of vacation, Sean and Con and I climbed in the black Ford and drove to Sligo Creek Park and Con pulled out a whole bottle of bourbon and we all got in the back seat. Con handed Sean the bottle. “Better you than my father.”
Sean took a big swig of bourbon. “Ugh!” he said.
“Haven’t you ever had hard liquor before?” Con asked.
“Sure. But my father drinks Scotch. I never had bourbon before.” He glugged down some more.
“Careful, that’s hundred proof,” Con said. “You’re not supposed to swill it like beer.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Sean said. He chug-a-lugged some more bourbon. A quarter of the bottle was gone.
“Feel it?” Con asked.
“Nothing,” Sean said. He tipped the bottle again. “I don’t feel a thing.”
“God, Sean, you’re a sponge,” Con said. Sean drank again. Half the bottle was gone now.
“Oh damn,” Sean said. “I bet I’m immune. I bet I can’t even get drunk.” He took two more swallows. “Wait a minute, I think I’m starting to feel warm.”
I put my hand to his forehead. “A little bit.”
“Kiss me!” he ordered. I kissed him.
He took another drink. “Ummmm,” he said, “do it again.” I did.
“Oh this is swell,” Con said, “a ménage a trois and I’m not even the trois.”
“A what?” Sean asked.
“Three people having sex,” I said.
Sean giggled.
“He’s getting high,” Con said.
“O.K., you kiss me,” he said to Con.
“Why not?” She leaned over and kissed him. Then he took another big swallow.
“Sean, I think you’re having too much of that stuff, too fast,” I said.
“Shut up and kiss me again,” he said. I did, and then he tipped the bottle up again. “Now you,” he said to Con. He gave her a long, lingering kiss—and he opened his mouth, I noticed.
“Hey!” I said. Sean giggled again.
“He’s a good kisser,” Con said.
“Yeah, he is.”
“Too bad he’s going to be a priest.”
Sean giggled. “The kissing priest, that’s me!” he said, and he grabbed me and kissed me again, hard.
“He’s a sex fiend,” Con said.
“Umm. Sex fiend.” Sean took another swallow. His words were starting to slur, I noticed. “Both kiss me,” he said.
“You’re a degenerate, Sean,” Con said, but she kissed him on the earlobe and I kissed him on the neck, and he let out a sound that was half a moan, half a sigh.
“More,” he said.
“More what?” Con said. “Booze or kissing.”
“Both,” he said, and giggled again.
“Let’s give him what he asked for,” Con said, and she pushed him down against the armrest and she started to nibble on his ear while I kept kissing him on the lips.
“More more more,” he said, and giggled again. And Sean was definitely not a giggler.
“Con, he’s getting schnockered,” I said.
“That’s not all he’s getting,” she said, nodding in the direction of Sean’s trousers.
Sean burped, then giggled. “We’re having a manage, a manage—what are we having?”
“Let’s get him out in the fresh air,” I said.
Sean took another swig of bourbon and started kissing my neck.
“Come on, Sean,” I said, “we’ve got to get out,” and Con and I literally dragged him out of the car. He just stood there, leaning against the fender, his eyes unnaturally bright.
“Shit, I’m drunk,” he said, and then he giggled again. “I did it.”
“How does it feel?” I asked.
“Drunk.” He let out a hoot. Then he giggled again, and said, “Can’t catch me!” and he took off at a zig-zag run across the park.
We walked quickly after him. “He drank practically the whole bottle,” Con said. “No telling what he’ll do.”
“Yeah, we better get him home.”
“Let’s go to the beach!” Sean yelled, and before we could get to him he had pulled off his shoes and socks and waded into the filthy, frigid waters of Sligo Creek. He just stood there, grinning at us, up to his knees in water.
“Sean, come back here!” I yelled.
He hopped around in the water. “The beach!” he giggled.
“Peg, if he stays in that cold water too long, he could get pneumonia.”
Now he was flapping his arms like some kind of big, goofy bird, stomping around and giggling.
“Sean, please come out of there. You’ll catch your death of cold,” I called.
“Death of Cold,” he chuckled. He was grinning, and then he started dancing around, splashing and chanting in a crazed version of a Gregorian chant, “Death of cold, death of cold, death of coooollllddddd—”
“I guess I’ll have to go in after him,” I said, so I pulled off my sneakers and socks and rolled up
my jeans and waded out into the cold water. I advanced toward him, my hand extended.
“Come on, Sean, we’re going home.”
“No we’re not!” He giggled.
“Come on, Sean.”
“Death of Cold. Co-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-ld.”
I made a grab for him, but he giggled and hopped away.
“Sean, stop this!”
“Death death, death, cold, cold cold!”
I made another lunge and he tried to jump away again, but his foot slipped and down he went, face first in the freezing water.
“Oh God!” Con shrieked, and she plunged in too, shoes and all. Between the two of us, we dragged him up and helped him stumble to the bank. Sean was shivering as the cold air hit his soaking body. I ripped off my jacket and put it around his quivering shoulders.
“Quick, back to my house!” I said, and we helped the stumbling Sean back to the car and shoved him in. His eyes were glittering. “I don’t feel good,” he said.
Con made it home at breakneck speed, and we pushed Sean, still shivering, out of the car and marched him around to the back door of my house. I called upstairs to my mother, “Mom, Con and I are going to be in my room playing records.”
“All right, dear, just don’t forget to lock the back door,” she called down.
We hustled Sean into the bathroom next to my bedroom and then stripped off all his wet clothes except for his underpants. We shoved him into the shower stall and I turned on the hot water.
“That’ll warm him up,” I said, and I went into the bedroom and put nice warm wool socks on my freezing feet. I went back to the shower and peered in at Sean. He was leaning against the wail, his eyes closed, and his skin starting to turn lobster red from the hot water.
I turned the water off. “Sean, come on out.”
He just stood there, his eyes closed. “Ohhhh,” he moaned, “I’m dying!”
“Sean, you are not dying.”
“I am. Ohhhhhh!”
Finally Con and I had to grab his arms and pull him out of the shower. “Going round,” he said. “Everything.”
I took a big towel and dried him off. He just stood there, swaying and moaning.
