The house is stuffy, filled with dachshunds and ceramic figurines. When Helen steps into a rare patch of light, we see her wings: not feathered after all, but bladelike, fleshy protrusions that jut through slits in the back of her gown. They are hairless, liver-spotted and spiderwebbed with veins. The skin drips from their edges in thin, papery flaps.
Howie and I sit on a sofa lichen-spotted with antimacassars of unlikely sizes and colors, momentarily made a we again by the strangeness of our surroundings. The dachshunds sit in a very straight line and watch us as the Angel rattles in the kitchen, finally emerging with three steaming mugs of Nescafé and a plate of pink wafer cookies on a tray, taking a neat and practiced side shuffle to get through the kitchen door. The dishes clatter as she lowers the tray to the coffee table, a noisy prelude to conversation. The dachshunds race around her ankles, barking, as she settles onto a wide, backless chair. She has pulled a thin cardigan over her gown, put in her teeth, applied the improbably bright lipstick elderly women sometimes wear. She says, “I don’t do Angel shows anymore.”
“We’re not asking you to,” I say. “We want some advice.”
“Certainly,” she says. “Don’t fall in love with a circus man.”
She folds her hands and smiles at us.
“It’s more complicated than that,” I say. I turn to silent Howie, exasperated. “Will you just show her?”
“Show me what?” the Angel asks. I note, with pleasure, that she pronounces the h in what.
Howie glares at me, but lifts his shirt.
The Angel hums. “I see.”
I explain, as delicately as I can, our respective lifetimes of loneliness and isolation, our meeting, the news, my cure, Howie’s book. The Angel swirls sugar wafer cookies in her coffee, takes them between her teeth in precise, ladylike bites.
“So you’re getting better, and he’s not,” she says. “And I was in this book of yours.”
Howie tugs at his hair. “Yes, ma’am,” he says. Helen looks as though she isn’t sure whether she’s flattered or offended.
“We were hoping to ask you some questions,” I say.
“Is that right?” the Angel asks. A wire-haired dachshund has curled in her lap, and she rearranges his ears with care. “Well, I don’t know if I’ve got all that much I can tell you. But you came all this way; you might as well ask.”
Howie becomes intensely absorbed in stirring his coffee. I feel my temper rise to a breaking point.
“Howie,” I say, “if you don’t buck up and start talking, I’m going to ask if she can fly.”
“Why, of course I can fly,” the Angel says.
We both look at her, startled. She holds our gazes, steady, for a beat. Then her face lights up with delight. She guffaws, coffee spilling everywhere. The dachshunds leap up and begin barking again, and in the ensuing chaos, Howie accidentally catches my eye. I smile at him, and he can’t help it. He smiles back.
44
“I loved being the Angel,” she says, three cups of instant coffee later. “Oh, yes. Mr. Wiley discovered me when I was just thirteen. I had—let’s just say a hard childhood. My father was a difficult man. He didn’t know quite what to do with me.”
Her papery face is serene, but I can hear the weight behind the words: the long decades it must have taken to whittle this story down to these few nonjudgmental sentences, to cut out the cold basements, the empty wells, the hunger and beatings. Or so I imagine, watching her face.
She says, “My parents were glad to have me off their hands, to be quite honest. There were too many of us at home already. And at the circus, there was my own car, warm food. They dressed me up every night in feathers and sequins, and when I came on the stage, people cried. Oh, they just cried. They thought I was really an angel come to earth.”
“Why did you quit being the Angel?” Howie asks.
The Angel smiles at him. “It’s not exactly a thing I can quit,” she says.
“No, I mean performing,” he says.
“Oh, shows. I got married,” she says. “To my manager, Lou Boyle. He thought it wasn’t proper to have his wife be a spectacle. And so I gave it all up.”
I’m about to ask how she felt about that, putting her career on hold, when Howie leans in.
“But that was in 1945,” he says. “You didn’t quit until 1948.”
Helen’s smile grows lean.
“Well,” she says, and though there’s not an h in this word, she pronounces it, too. “Someone’s done his research.” She closes her eyes for a moment, considering. Then she sighs through her nose, reaches for her cane. “You came this far,” she says. “Come out back. I’ve got something to show you.”
In the sloping backyard, cutting upward through the forest, are four gravestones: three little ones and a big one. Helen stumps forward, her wing lumps pale in the last of the day’s light. She brushes the leaves from the largest headstone.
Lucius Abernathy Boyle. B. Apr. 29, 1903 D. Jan. 3, 1961.
“Lou was a good man, and he loved me,” she says, hardly to us at all: to the stone, the trees, the darkening sky.
“He never understood what it was like, the burden of having people stare. He adored the attention. At first, I think that’s what he liked about me—when we were together, people stared at the two of us. I was a special something, and that made him feel like he was, too.
“But after a while, he got tired of it. He wanted it to stop. I used to tell him, ‘Sweetheart, it doesn’t stop. I can’t hang up these wings.’ But it was like he felt I could somehow. He was a good man,” she says again. “He tried. But that was the wall between us. That he couldn’t know what I was living through.”
She looks toward the smaller headstones. My breath hitches in my throat.
Clarence William Boyle. B. Dec. 1, 1948. D. Dec. 1, 1948.
Mary Lucinda Boyle. B. Jun. 30, 1949. D. Jun. 30, 1949.
Isaac James Boyle. B. Nov. 3, 1950. D. Nov. 5, 1950.
She says, “Losing them was the closest Lou came to understanding what it was like to have wings. To lose a child like that, that gross kind of tragedy. It’s an awful spectacle you can’t get away from. Everyone looking at you, wanting to touch you, to tell you their story.” Her voice is husky, walking the delicate tightrope of composure. “It undid him. People say it was other things—a bad liver, bad heart. The Devil come to claim him for taking their Angel off the stage. But it was that. I know.”
Howie shifts, leaves crackling underfoot. The Angel turns to him.
“And now here the two of you are,” she says. “Put onto this planet with someone else who knows exactly what it’s like to be the way you are. Isn’t that something?”
Howie says, pained, “But Morgan’s getting better.”
Helen says, “And you’re not happy for her?”
“Of course,” he says. He looks at me: at my stomach, at my face. He says to me, “I just don’t want to be left behind.”
There’s a wind in the trees. I look out over the three little gravestones. All the space between.
“Howard,” the Angel says, sounding weary, “do you really believe this girl’s going to forget her entire life story just because she grows a new stomach?” She shifts forward, her cane staking out familiar territory as she turns toward the house. “You’ll have to forgive my language, but you’ve got someone in your life who understands all the supreme and beautiful horseshit of your existence. That’s not a thing to let go of.”
She turns back to look at us one last time. Then she spreads her wings and lifts into the sky.
45
No, not really. But wouldn’t that be amazing?
46
Really, the Angel announces that it’s long past time for supper and, pointedly, that she’s only done the shopping for one. We nod. We take our leave. I think she might hug us, but she just waves us through the door, br
ushing off our thanks.
We sit for a moment in the car. Then Howie says, “I can’t believe you asked if she could fly.”
“I can’t believe I drank so much instant coffee. I think I’m going to die.”
He says, more quietly, “I can’t believe you drove me all the way out here.”
I want to say, I can’t believe you sulked the whole way. But he leans forward and kisses me, instant coffee breath and all, and nothing else needs saying.
The mountain air is cold, but Howie cranks his window down as we pull onto the highway, then reaches for the radio and switches it off. The car fills with the buffeting of wind, the chill familiarity of old times.
I ask, “How come you never listen to the radio in the car?”
“So I can listen to you,” he says. He gives me that grin: shy, mischievous, bright. My cheeks, despite the chill air, warm.
“What about when I’m not there?” I ask.
“Then, too.”
“Your car must be really boring ninety-nine percent of the time,” I counter.
“Not at all,” he says. “I just listen to you from far away, that’s all. I’ve got a pretty simple system rigged up. That’s why I keep the windows down. It’s amazing what you can hear. Try it—listen.” He cups a hand to his ear, squinting into the middle distance. “Right now . . . there’s a storm blowing in over Kansas.”
I play with a penny in the cup holder. “Uh-huh. And how do you know?”
“All that wind,” he says, simply. “Don’t you hear it?”
“That’s because we’re driving fifty-five miles per hour.”
He just shakes his head, looking sad. “Ah, such cynicism in one so young.” I take my eyes off the road for a second and find myself squarely in his gaze: the prime meridian in a world of soft brown. “You know what I hear in your voice?”
I flip the penny over between my fingers: heads, tails, heads, tails . . .
He slips his hand in mine, takes the penny. “I hear the voice of someone who’s always had people in her life to talk to,” he says. “Someone with friends. The rest of us, we’re just wind-listeners.”
I think about the first time Caro ever saw the Hole: walking in accidentally while I was changing into my nightgown at her house. We were nine. I blurted, You can’t tell anybody, and she said, shakily, I won’t. I gulped, I mean it, it’s a really big secret. Staring at the floor while I waited for her to send me away. To run crying to her mother. But she just folded her little arms across her chest. I said I won’t. So I won’t. Duh.
“Well,” I say. “You’ve got at least one friend now.”
He toys with the tips of my fingers. “At least.”
Howie falls asleep just past Winston-Salem, leaving me alone with a quiet car and a jangling brain. There’s so much going on—bailed on Dad, gallery show next week, the treatment, those flyers—but all I can think about is the Mansion. How sad it is that it’s closing. How it meant so much to me, but also to so many other people. I can’t imagine what will happen to them all. To Viking Girl or Face Tattoo Guy, or the old-timers and the new kids and everyone clashing together under the rainbow lights and gabled roof. Or what Frank will do with all of his sublimated feelings when he doesn’t have drinks to garnish anymore. There are other clubs, always, other homes. But that doesn’t mean that this one doesn’t matter. That it won’t leave a big hole in our lives to fill.
I glance over at Howie, passed out in the passenger seat. I reach over and lace my fingers through his. His eyes flicker open, and in the brief moment before coming fully awake, he looks at me with the pure peace that filled his face the night I made him snow angels. A field of holes that made us both, briefly, into something whole.
That, I think. I don’t care about the gallery show at all. I want to make something that can do that.
The moon races us down the highway, jumping in and out of puddles and ponds. I follow Howie’s gaze for a moment and see, improbably, a horse galloping in the moon-painted pasture beside us, dreamlike in the dim light, as if etched with graphite.
I brake suddenly, pulling to the side of the road. In the passenger seat, Howie jolts fully awake as we bump to a stop on the shoulder.
“What’s wrong?” he croaks, alarmed.
I say, “Graphite.”
“What?”
“Shh.” Because I’m thinking. About art and holes and pencil sketches. About mindthegap, and her finely detailed drawing of our community. All of us holding hands. Brought together because of, not despite, our holes.
I lift my cold fingers from the steering wheel and reach up toward that cool coin of the moon. I press my thumb out against the sky, squint my eyes. And I see it all coming together.
Howie’s voice crosses from worried to irritated. “Morgan, what are you doing?”
I say, “Realizing what I was missing.”
47
I drop Howie off, then leave a voice mail for Dr. Morse, asking her to call me back in the morning. At home, I flip my phone to selfie mode and snap a shot. It’s a little dark, and it’s not my best angle, but the Hole is clearly visible, and there’s no denying it’s me.
I log into Public Scrutiny as MissAbyss and look for the WHAT’S YOUR HOLE? thread. It’s inspired its own mini-forum: There’s a section for eating disorders, for depression, for grief, for the miscellaneous lonely and sick and sad.
I start a new thread. Title: SHOWCASE YOUR HOLE.
This week, the place I learned to live my life openly is closing its doors for good.
This is the first place I showed the world the Hole, and the first place I felt like I could live in my own skin. It changed my life. Let it change yours before it’s too late.
FINAL DANCE PARTY AT THE MANSION. NOVEMBER 25. COME BARING YOURSELF.
I upload the photo and click publish. I check the time. 7:15 a.m. Good enough. Then I wrap up in gloves and a hoodie and head back to my bike. There’s one more thing I need to do.
Boring Todd does not look bored when he opens the dorm room door. He looks miserable. Also terrified.
“You have to tell her I’m sorry,” he blurts, immediately. “I’m—I was so, so stupid. How can I—”
I cut him off.
“There are at least fourteen reasons for me to kick your ass right now,” I say. “After that, maybe we can have that conversation. But first, I need to ask a favor.”
I conduct my first official interviews with the press over the next few days. Dr. Morse is displeased when I elect to ignore the national media, focusing on local television stations and a handful of radio shows. As soon as I open my mouth, the interviewers are even less pleased. The pretty blond WRAL anchor is visibly disconcerted when I refuse to talk about my budding romance with Lump Boy and stick instead to my own message.
“So it’s a benefit concert,” she says, uncertainly. She chatted with me anxiously before we went live about how this was her first week on air, how she interned all through college and was so excited this could be her big break. She walked me around the studio when I arrived, and I could see bright red spots on her heels where her shoes rubbed.
“It’s not a benefit, necessarily,” I say. “We’re not collecting money for anything. It’s more of a tribute to a place that helped me become the person that I am today.”
She leans in, ears perked, sensing a good sound bite. “And who’s that?”
I smile at her up to my eyeteeth. I say, “Morgan Stone.”
There’s a fresh wave of myholestory.com flyers when I leave the WKNC radio station with Frank, who came grudgingly with me to talk with two student DJs about the Mansion’s closing and the final party—a conversation that meandered into a list of every drug Frank did in the 1980s (most of them) and that the hosts had done in their first year at State. (Frank snorted and looked away, unimpressed.) I’ve got a two-hour break before I’m due for
a more sedate interview with the local NPR affiliate. I could spend it working on the press release, but my blurring eyes focus on a telephone pole of bright pink flyers, fluttering in the wind.
These flyers are different from the last ones. I catch one and pull it down to examine it: a black-and-white photocopied photograph of a sequined bikini top, bearing stars and a moon. Beneath, in small print: Get the Hole story at myholestory.com.
I have a flicker of a memory: a golden grin against a long brick sidewalk. A voice, Thinking of signing up for marketing classes?
“What is that?” Frank asks. “Goggles?”
“It’s a shirt,” I say. “My shirt.”
Frank snorts. “That’s a shirt?”
“Hey,” I say. “It’s a bikini top. It’s a thing.”
“Ah, Jesus,” he says. “You kids.”
“I’m sure you’ve seen worse,” I say.
He studies the shirt. “Is that a moon?”
“And sequins.”
Thinking of signing up for marketing classes? Because I can tell you now, Intro’s a doozy. You’re pretty hard to catch up with.
I thought everyone wanted to go viral.
Frank rubs his eyelids with a thumb and two fingers. “Okay, Goggles,” he says. “I’ve got to get to work.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Me too.”
He chugs away on his Harley and leaves me there with the whole of my future fluttering in the wind around me. Then I reach for my keys.
48
I don’t have his phone number, and I am half afraid if I go public to ask, Chad will be swept up and bundled onto talk shows, that someone will press a book deal into his hands while I’m shouting, I need to explain to you how you violated me. So I do the only thing I can think of. I drive to Chad’s apartment complex and knock on the door.
After a long minute, he answers. I wordlessly hold up the pink flyer, and at least three emotions flicker through his face. Maybe one of them is surprise. Maybe not. He closes the door and returns, moon-and-stars bikini top in his hand.
Hole in the Middle Page 27
