Blackbird

by Larry Duplechan

  I just sat for a minute, letting some of this stuff digest, before asking, “Whatever became of your mother?”

  “She’s dead,” Crystal said, very quickly and evenly. “She hung herself in a closet a couple of years ago. She was between mental institutions at the time.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  She smiled with one side of her mouth.

  “I’m not.”

  And I thought, Boy – this is gonna be some week.

  Chapter Three

  I somehow managed to get through the rest of my morning classes – which, considering just how completely scattered my mind was after talking to Carolann and/or Crystal, was nothing short of miraculous. Lunch was almost as bad, because I was itching to tell Efrem about the whole Carolann thing, and I couldn’t. I’ve been called a lot of things, but never a blabbermouth. So I just sat there on the whitewashed wooden porch of the Drama building, thoughts weaving in and out of my head, with Efrem on one side of me reading Jacqueline Susann and making short work of a pepperbelly (which is a split-open bag of Fritos topped with chili and cheese – they’re all the rage around here) and Cherie firmly attached on my other side, not eating – she was dieting, as usual. Skipper Harris and Paul Brecher were squatting on the other end of the porch, doing this Cheech and Chong routine for the six-thousandth time:

  “Hey, man, it’s me! Dave! Lemme in!”

  “No, man, Dave’s not here!”

  “No, man, it’s Dave!”

  And so on. Not my personal idea of high comedy – give me The Philadelphia Story anytime – but Paul and Skipper (and a lot of other kids) obviously think these guys are just the limit, and so they’ve memorized all of Cheech and Chong’s albums, and you can’t get the two of them together without them kicking into one of these stoned-out comedy routines. Either that, or they’ll go on for hours and hours about the Kennedy assassination – John Kennedy, that is – the Warren Commission, and how could Oswald have fired from that angle and the whole enchilada. And, frankly, given the choice, I’d just as soon have Cheech and Chong.

  So I’m sitting there trying to eat, thinking about Carolann and watching (if not listening to) Skipper, who’s wearing tennies with no socks, and I’m thinking, God Bless, even his ankles are sexy, when suddenly Cherie whispers, “I have to talk to you about something,” in this way that I know means This Is Important.

  So I said, “Alone?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  So we get up and take a little walk behind the Drama bungalow, which is way out on the outskirts of the campus, past the football field – we often refer to it as the Leper Colony.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Cherie said.

  “What about?”

  “I think we should make love.”

  “Cherie, I believe we’ve been through this.”

  “Would you just hear me out, please?”

  “All right.” I stopped walking and we leaned up against the chain-link fence standing between us and the street. “Hearing you out.”

  “All right.” Cherie crossed her arms over her bosom and stared straight out as if trying her best not to look at me. “You think you’re gay.”

  “Cherie, I’m gay. Really.”

  “How do you know?” She turned and cocked her head to one side.

  “I like guys, Cherie. I’m pretty sure that’s the first warning sign.”

  “But you don’t really know,” she insisted.

  “Of course I know, Cherie. I mean, this isn’t something I just thought up this morning, like ‘I think I’ll wear my blue shirt, my white tennies, and oh yeah I think I’ll be gay.’ I know I’m gay, Cherie. All I’m waiting for is to get the hell out of this one-horse town and down to L.A., where I can go do something about it.” I did a big shrug. “I’m gay, Cherie. Honest.”

  “Okay,” she said, pointing her chubby forefinger at me, “but you’ve never made love with a guy, have you? You’ve never even made out with a guy, have you?”

  “Cherie, I’ve never made love with anybody.”

  “Exactly. So how can you be sure?”

  “Cherie –” I was trying not to become exasperated. I had a lot on my mind, and this was shaping up into one of the silliest conversations I could remember. “I don’t have to make love with a guy to know that’s what I want. And I don’t have to make love with a girl to know that’s just not for me.”

  “I disagree.”

  “All right then, disagree.”

  Suddenly, she slapped me hard on the arm, probably as hard as she could swing, because it really stung.

  “Doggone it, what are you afraid of?” she said, her voice as loud as I’d ever heard it. “Afraid you’ll like it?”

  “God Bless America!” I rubbed the place where she’d slapped me. “What’s gotten into you, anyway?”

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice softened again. “I love you,” she almost whispered.

  “I know.” I took her into my arms and held her for a minute.

  How could I be sure, she says. Here I was with a pretty, sweet girl in my arms – a pretty, sweet girl with incredible boobs – and it was about as sexual as my meat-loaf sandwich. I got more excited looking at Skipper’s ankles, for crying out loud.

  “I can’t turn my back on you two for a minute, can I?” It was Efrem. “C’mon back,” he said. “I’m lonely.” He smiled that great toothy smile of his and headed toward the bungalow.

  I took Cherie’s hand and started after him, but she stopped and held me up.

  “I’m supposed to go visit my Aunt Lou Ella in Saugus with my folks this weekend. I’ll tell them I’m not feeling well. We’ll have the whole house to ourselves.”

  Her eyes looked so intense. I wondered if she had any idea how sad this was making me. She could have any guy she wanted, and here she was casting her pearls before – well, tossing herself at me this way.

  And then I thought: Hey, what’ve I got to lose. I was a virgin, after all. I was pretty damn sure I really was gay, even without ever having touched a guy; but either way, I might just enjoy making love with Cherie. In my way, I did love her.

  “Okay.”

  She squeezed my hand as we walked back to the bungalow.

  Cherie insisted upon massaging my shoulders all through Mr.

  Stebner’s class (while she was supposed to be separating subjects and predicates and I was supposed to be correcting sentence diagrams) over Mr. Stebner’s periodic requests that she stop it – which, far from relaxing me, kept me as tense as ever. By the time I got to my own English class, my last class of the day (not counting Drama, which isn’t much of a class), I don’t think I’d ever been so glad to get to the end of a school day in my life. Here I had auditions coming up, I was planning to go to bed with Cherie Baker, and Carolann Compton was really two people. And it was only Monday.

  Fortunately, Mr. Galvez had decided on a free-writing hour, something he does once or twice a week, where he brings in a record player and plays records – sometimes his choice, sometimes ours – and we just write. Anything we want. See, English 4 isn’t required, so anybody who takes it is probably planning to major in English in college (like I am) or is at least more interested in the subject than the average. So Mr. Galvez seems to have a lot more respect for us than some of the other teachers do. Like, he doesn’t take roll. And if we don’t want to turn in what we write in free writing, we don’t have to. All in all, Mr. Galvez is about the coolest teacher in the whole school.

  Anyway, Mr. Galvez put on The Joker – Marcie Vandeventer had brought it in – and he sat and did some work or other at his desk, tapping his feet to the music while we wrote. I could hear his leg braces clicking a sort of counterpoint to the beat. Mr. Galvez had very severe polio as a child, so he has heavy metal braces on both legs. He still walks rather slowly and with what looks like some difficulty. Plus, he’s only about five-foot-two, and wears glasses so thick his eyes look huge. But, you know, he’s just about the cheeriest person I know. Best sense of humor. For inst
ance, if you mention him by name in class, he’ll say, “Please – you are speaking of the man I love.”

  While Steve Miller sang “I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker” (with Mr. Galvez singing along softly and just slightly off-key), I tried to work on my short story, but my mind kept wandering. Skipper and Cherie and Carolann and the auditions and then Skipper again. Finally, I wrote this little poem – about Skipper, naturally. It just came out, all at once. I never even erased a word.

  And now

  Once again

  I see your beautiful

  Funny face,

  And your cartoon kitty-cat smile

  Makes me smile.…

  Oh, my love,

  If you knew how many times

  I went to touch your hand,

  Your hair,

  But was afraid,

  And didn’t.…

  Not exactly “Dover Beach” – poetry is Efrem’s thing, anyway – but I liked it. I even turned it in.

  Chapter Four

  The auditions started out pretty much as expected. Hooray for Love required a cast of eight – four guys and four girls – and considering there were probably six people in the Drama department with any talent at all, it wasn’t too difficult to guess what the cast list would be before the auditions even began. For me, the hardest part of the whole thing was watching Skipper play with Kathleen Morgan all through it. Skipper had picked up this big white feather from somewhere – the props closet, most likely – and he was tickling Kathleen’s face with it, tickling her neck. And she was giggling, and saying, “Stop it, Skipper,” and giggling, and it just about made me puke. I mean, as if it weren’t enough just being totally nuts about Skipper and not having a Popsicle’s chance in hell of ever getting my hands on him, without constantly having to witness the spectacle of Skipper falling all over Kathleen.

  Did you ever notice how when you’re lonely, it seems like the whole bloody world is suddenly determined to make sure you never for one minute forget how lonely you are? And I don’t just mean the Skipper and Kathleen thing. You can’t walk two steps on campus without tripping over a couple of kids rolling all over each other on one of the lawns, slurping up each other’s lips like they were about to declare prohibition on smooching or something. Sometimes I’ll see some couple just going at it like there’s no tomorrow, and I feel so lonely and so jealous of them that it throws me into the most awful melancholy, and I could almost cry. And I feel like if I had the atom bomb, I’d just drop it right on these kids laying around sucking face, just so I don’t have to friggin’ see them.

  Even some songs can make me feel like the loneliest man alive. “Killing Me Softly” is like that. I’m not even sure what it’s about, but I swear, it just kills me. “Just Walk Away Renee” by the Four Tops – Boo-hoo City. “Popsicles and Icicles,” by the Murmaids – every time those girls sing “these are a part of the boy I love,” I get a feeling in the middle of my chest like a balloon inflating inside me, and I feel like if I don’t find a guy to love me, I’ll just, I don’t know, explode.

  Anyway, I sat there watching Skipper playing with Kathleen. Which for me was just about as healthy as using ant stakes for lollipops. But I watched them. It was like a car accident on the freeway: I couldn’t seem to look away. And there was Cherie (a girl with absolutely no intention of auditioning herself, of course), clutching my arm and watching me watching Skipper.

  And don’t think I couldn’t see the humor in all this, because I could. I mean, Kathleen was no more in love with Skipper than the man in the moon. She was just toying with him. He was never going to get anywhere with her, since she’s a Mormon and is saving herself for marriage, after which she’ll have a litter of little Mormettes and be able to help create celestial kingdoms after she dies (I swear – she told me this herself). So there we sat in a little row: Cherie in love with me in love with Skipper in love with Kathleen in love with, I don’t know, the Archangel Bony Moroni or something. Very Midsummer Night’s Dream. And Efrem, our very own Rex Reed, who also showed up just to watch, sitting behind me and (I had no doubt) thinking, “Lord, what fools!”

  So first off, Brock has some of the real hopeless cases read, a few of the real no-talents with no chance of ever getting a part in anything. Then he had me read a scene with Jenny Borders – a mercy reading, I figured – something set in the twenties, with a husband and wife, and the wife is going off to vote for the first time. It was a pretty lame scene, but Jenny’s pretty good, and I think we read it well. Then Skipper, Kathleen, and Paul read the opening Adam and Eve scene, with Skipper playing the snake. He fluttered his tongue like a snake while he read, which was just about the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life.

  After a few more readings, Brock had Skipper and Kathleen read the Romeo and Juliet scene, and it was direct from Puke City. Skipper and Kathleen are two of the most talented people in the department, but between making goo-goo eyes at each other and trying to come off like the Royal Shakespeare Company (doing these lame Diana-Rigg-in-The-Avengers British accents), they ended up looking like a couple of broken-down music-hall players. It was really quite embarrassing.

  After they’d finished, Brock said, “Stay up, Kathleen. I want you to try the scene with Rouss.” Meaning me. Brock always called me Rouss. Well, you could have knocked me over with Skipper’s feather. Skipper smiled and said, “Show ’em how.”

  So up I went, and Kathleen looked almost as surprised as I was. I sort of shrugged, and gave her a “Well – here goes nothin’” look.

  And so I launched into, “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks,” trying my best to make it sound as much as possible like a regular kid saying regular things. I didn’t have to worry about the lines: I knew the scene pretty much by heart. Kathleen seemed to pick up on what I was doing right away – she’s a pretty fair actress, as I’ve said – and she got into it, too. And the scene was good. Really good. I could feel it in my bones.

  When we finished, both Kathleen and I laughed out loud it was so much fun, and everybody in the room applauded. Brock said, “Nice job.” When I sat down, Cherie squeezed my arm and nearly smiled her lips off. Skipper turned to me and whispered, “Way to go, buddy. You’re in like Flint.”

  I got home feeling pretty darn good about life. My showing at the auditions had me pretty cocky. Efrem had said that my reading was so good, Brock had almost no choice but to cast me. “Maybe,” he said, “they’ll cut out some of the kissing and stuff.” Why I actually let myself believe such a well-meaning crock, I shall never understand. I guess it wasn’t until the reading that I’d let myself admit just how much I wanted to be in the show, to do that friggin’ Shakespeare scene. I wanted it so much, in fact, that by the time I got home, I was actually convinced that I had a chance, a good chance.

  I could smell Mom’s sausage-and-rice cooking, which is one of my favorite foods. I could hear Walter Cronkite’s voice coming from the den, so I knew Dad was becoming one with his favorite rocking chair and sucking up the evening news, full of President Nixon and Watergate and blah blah blah. Mom and Efrem’s mom were in the kitchen talking; they’ve been best friends practically from the minute we moved here just over two years ago. Their voices sounded like a duet from some spoken operetta, Mrs. Johnson’s soprano and Mom’s low alto taking turns and overlapping.

  I thought I heard Mom say the name Todd, and my ears pricked up. I walked into the kitchen and said, “Hi Mom, hi Mrs. Johnson,” and both women clammed up and turned to me, coffee mugs halfway to lips, with these looks on their faces, almost guilty. And I knew something was up.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing is going on,” Mom said in a tone that was as good as telling me something was going on.

  “Come on, Mom.”

  “If you don’t mind, Shirley and I were discussing something that’s none of your business.”

  “Clara,” Mrs. Johnson said, finally putting her mug down on the kitchen table, “you might has w
ell tell him. He’s sure to hear about it at school tomorrow, anyway.”

  “Well, since you’re sure to hear about it at school tomorrow anyway” – Mom sniffed a breath – “your friend Todd Waterson went and got the pastor’s daughter pregnant.”

  So that’s it, I thought. Why Todd seemed so strange this morning. I said, “Todd’s not exactly my friend, Mom.” Which was true.

  Though heaven knows, I would have liked to be his friend. She just snorted, as if she knew I was hiding something. Mom has this funny attitude about kids my age. Somehow, whenever some kid in town does something wrong, she always acts as if every kid in town did it, including me. Especially me. “I guess they have to get married now,” I said.

  “Married?” By Mom’s tone of voice, you’d have thought I’d suggested they jump off the top of the Empire State Building hand in hand.

  “Yes, Mother. Married. You know – here comes the bride and all that.”

  “Now, don’t get smart with me, Little Mister.” Mom wagged a warning index finger at me. There was a Band-Aid on her fingertip from where she’d cut it while chopping okra for gumbo. It was all I could do not to laugh. Mom’s about half a foot shorter than I am, Afro and all, and weighs about ninety-five pounds soaking wet, so whenever she tries to get tough with me, it’s really kind of funny. I managed to say, “Sorry, Mom.”

  “All right, then. They’re sending the girl away.”

  “Sending her away? I don’t get it.”

  “Well, she obviously can’t have the baby here,” she said, as if that should have been obvious to any mongoloid.

  “All right, I give up. Why can’t she have it here?”

  Mom rolled her eyes heavenward in this way she has that means, “My dear, dear son – all that book learning, and not an ounce of common sense.”

  Finally she said, “Johnnie Ray, it’s a disgrace.”

  “Aw, c’mon, Mom.” It sounded a bit on the medieval side to me.