Child of My Right Hand (24 page)

Genna smiled and raised the casserole, as if doffing her cap. “Thank you so much. This is really thoughtful.”

“Forty-five minutes, a three-fifty oven.”

Genna thanked her again. She'd always hated turkey casseroles but she'd be sure to try this one, or perhaps she'd keep it in the freezer to be taken out when she needed a bite of human kindness.

“Marge.” The heavy blonde paused before climbing into her mini-van. “I'll see you at soccer practice.”

“You bet.”

***

Friday after lunch, Simon was headed towards his locker, just keeping his nose clean, as Dad said, when Fleming and several of his Smokers dragged up behind him.

“Hey, faggot.” Nick preened for his buddies. “You got me in shit with Lindstrom.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Then why'd she call me to her office and tell my parents?”

“How should I know?”

Nick's hottie face twisted. “People like you,” he paused, and Simon felt he was repeating what someone else had said, who knows, maybe his parents, “you live in Tipton, but you don't know shit about it, what it stands for.”

Crackerville, thought Simon.

“Next time, it won't be a cross.”

Simon was in no mood. Fourth bell, he'd learned he was failing French. At lunch, Rachel said it was his fault Rich's father beat him so badly he had to miss school.

“Next time,” Fleming grinned, “maybe someone will torch your whole freaking house.”

Suddenly, Simon had Fleming by the shoulders and was slamming him into the lockers. “What's wrong with you?” he shouted into Nick's handsome face. Simon outweighed him by fifty pounds and he slammed him into the lockers a second time. “Leave me alone, asshole!”

Hands grappled, and he swatted them like bugs, like no-see-ums, never taking his eyes off Nick, who struggled to come back to himself.

“Ooh, I'm scared of you, faggot. Ooh, ooh, I'm scared.”

But Simon had seen the hot, embarrassed light in Fleming's eyes. “Grow up,” he said and walked away.

***

By the time rehearsal started, everyone knew.

“No, no, no,” he said to Tina, “there wasn't any fight.”

They huddled in a dark corner of the auditeria. On stage, Will Travers, who played the king, and Tom Jennings, the prince, rehearsed a second act number, in which the mute king, using winks and gestures, explained the facts of life to his clueless son. Will was a natural clown, but Tom, a good-looking doofus—type-casting!—still hadn't learned his lines. He'd been having particular trouble with this scene in which he had to keep guessing what his father was trying to tell him.

“Boy flower? Girl flower? Oh, father, I think I understand.”

Tina whispered, “Be careful. Nick doesn't like to be shown up.”

“He calls me names all the time. He's such an asshole.” Sadness pinched Tina's narrow features. “Of course,” Simon admitted, “he is totally hot.”

Tina covered his hand with hers. “I'm thinking about breaking up with him.” She moistened her lips, her tongue a small pink rose. “Should I?”

“I wouldn't throw him out of bed.” He waited to see if Tina appeared shocked. No. “But he's definitely an asshole. So drop him like a hot penny, hon.”

Tina squeezed his hand. “Have you always liked boys?”

“I had a girlfriend at my old school.”

“Really?”

He remembered Janet's living room, all the hours watching television with her family, how the last few months she kept wanting to have sex, but he wouldn't do more than fondle her big floppy breasts, how queasy that had made him feel. “But she wanted to wear the dress in the couple.”

Simon grinned to let her know he was kidding. Tina's hand still grasped his. “Last I heard, she was pregnant and marrying her cousin.” Tina looked as if she didn't believe him. Simon said, “Her family's from Kentucky.”

Tina laughed. Actually, she snorted. You wouldn't think a thin, pretty girl would make such a sound, and loud enough for Ms. Cherry, who was on stage working with the nitwit prince, to turn around and shush them.

Moving her lips to his ear, Tina whispered low and breathy, “Did you and your girlfriend, you know, mess around?”

Simon gazed at Tina in the near-dark. Narrow nose, cheeks, eyes so blue and washed-out they were almost without color, the light stringy hair. She's flirting with me. “Of course.”

“Did you feel anything?”

What it had mostly felt was wrong. Janet's soft breasts and moist hands, her urgent needs. Tina was flat-chested. Simon had bigger ones than she did. “Of course I felt something.”

“I was wondering, about our kiss.” Her lips so close he felt her feathery breath. “If we could make it feel real.”

“Definitely,” Simon whispered. “We have to.”

“Then we should definitely rehearse. In case you're out of practice kissing girls.”

She moved her lips near his. For a moment, panicky and confused, Simon thought she was going to kiss him. Then she did, brushing her mouth against his.

“What do you think?”

Simon shrugged.

She said, “We can do better.”

She kissed him again, harder. Her lips were thin, like the rest of her. There was a fruity taste, strawberry, that must be her lipstick.

She grinned. “Definitely better. But on stage, you have to kiss me.”

She positioned his left hand on her right shoulder, as if she were a dance instructor.

“With your right,” she whispered, “brush my cheek, as if you're amazed how soft and wonderful it feels.”

He obeyed, wondering what kind of game she was playing, if she were secretly making fun of him, so she could tell her asshole boyfriend she'd kissed the faggot. Then Fleming and his Smokers would have even more reason to kick his ass. Tina smiled, lips slightly parted, and Simon moved towards her, thinking of Danny and the night of sex in Sweets's house. He felt a tingle, down there, and leaned forward stroking Tina's cheek, pressed his large lips against her thin ones and closed his eyes as if he were Justin kissing Britney Spears. That was when the house lights must have come on, and everyone started hooting their names. The first voice he recognized was Ms. Cherry.

“Simon, Tina, may I see you?”

He followed Tina, as if she were the snake head and he were the rattle, weaving through the large room of empty tables and chairs, past the other cast members, every eye on them. They mounted the stage, and with Tom and Will close enough to hear, Ms. Cherry brought her small face near theirs.

“What the hell is going on?”

He was too embarrassed to answer. Tina said, “Honest, Ms. C., we were rehearsing.”

Ms. Cherry's eyes nearly spun out of her head. “That's the lamest ever.”

“Think about it.” Simon grinned, first at Ms. Cherry, then at Tina. “What else could it be?”

“Okay,” Ms. Cherry said slowly, and Simon could tell she didn't know exactly what to think. “We'll do your scene next.” Then she leaned close and whispered fiercely, “But no more rehearsing in school.” Ms. Cherry stepped back and barked, “Five minute break, and I do mean five!”

Thirteen days to opening night.

***

Jack sat in his office Sunday afternoon thinking about Rajiv Menard. That's what he'd wanted to tell Genna. That in San Francisco Rajiv had kissed him flush on the mouth, and though he hadn't kissed him back, he often found himself wondering, what if he had? He could feel the man's lips, the bristle of his moustache. Or was he imagining the moustache? Yes, Rajiv was clean-shaven. Jack had stumbled backwards against a piece of stainless steel equipment, a glistening liquid nitrogen specimen tank.

Rajiv said, “Oh, don't look so shocked.”

Jack muttered he wasn't.

“You shouldn't be. You've been leading me on.”

That had shocked him. Now Jack wasn't sure, and sitting in his office, he remembered something long forgotten or, he supposed, repressed. The September he was twenty-two, driving to California to start Stanford, he'd picked up a hitchhiker outside Salt Lake City. The boy was his age, perhaps a year or two older. Jack hadn't thought about him in twenty years or more, the memory slumbering like a princess until awakened by Rajiv's kiss. Phillip? Mark? Willowy, a tumble of light hair falling into his eyes and past the collar of his short sleeve work shirt. When this boy, this Mark, climbed into Jack's rusty Bonneville, he emitted a faint stink of sweat. Too many hours under the Utah sun. Jack announced he was Palo Alto-bound, and the boy replied, Cool, I'm hitching to my sister in Berkeley.

Mark carried almost nothing, a sleeping bag, a small pack, while Jack's material possessions overflowed the trunk into the back seat. Even more than sweat, a whiff of street smarts hung on this Mark, the way he said, Sorry he didn't have any bread to chip in for gas. Sorry too, if he smelled funky. By the way, could he bum a smoke?

No, no, Jack didn't, and if Mark was worried about smelling ripe, why didn't he crack the window? Jack paid for the gas, and later, when it was time for lunch, he purchased Mark's meal.

“I can't pay you back, I'm kinda broke.”

But Jack had money and a new life waiting at the end of I-80.

They stopped in Elko, Nevada. Jack bought a room in the Starlight Casino Motel. Fifteen rooms. Slots, one craps, one blackjack table. Their own room was pretty rough. Twin beds with dirty spreads, a large stain on the rug in front of the door that looked like dried blood. The bathroom reeked. Disinfectant or bug spray, he wasn't sure, but after ten hours on the road, Jack craved a shower, and he wanted Mark, whose smell had ripened during the afternoon, to have one, too. It was Jack's first time in a casino and he aimed to show he knew a thing or two about blackjack.

When Jack came out of the bathroom in a towel Mark eyed him, but Jack didn't think much about it. When this Mark emerged, a cheap motel towel (white, a blue stripe) wrapped around his waist, dirty blonde hair, water-darkened, swept back from his face, the layer of dirt and stink scrubbed away, Jack saw he was pretty good-looking, but thin as a nail, without a single hair on his chest. A line from his one Shakespeare class floated in Jack's mind. A lean and hungry look.

“I'll wait in the hall while you dress.”

“You don't have to.”

“I'm in a hurry to gamble,” Jack answered, wondering if he were getting a sex vibe or imagining it.

At the table, Jack caught fire. He won fifty, eighty, then a hundred, a lot of money then. This Mark stood beside him and when he was ahead one hundred-twenty, Jack handed him four five-dollar chips. “Hold it, okay, so I don't lose it all back.” Then he passed Mark one more. “Play the slots, whatever.”

How great to be young and lucky. When Mark edged away, Jack wondered if he'd see him again. Before Jack stopped playing, he'd lost some back, but he still had sixty, not counting the chips he'd given to Mark, who soon returned and stood behind him. Jack took them both to dinner, great big steaks, which cost almost nothing, a gambling town, and a bottle of red wine. How thrilling to be traveling to a new life (where he'd meet Genna), cash in his pocket, red wine in his head.

In their room, Mark said, “I've never been gambling before.”

“Me, either.”

“You were so good at it.” Mark's eyes glowed, half a bottle of wine in him, too.

Jack draped his pants on a chair, conscious of his bare legs, his tight BVD's. He climbed into bed and closed his eyes, the wine and the night's winnings swimming inside him. When he opened them, Mark knelt beside him.

“You've been so nice, paid for everything,” his words tumbling fast, dirty blond hair flopping in his eyes. “You can have sex with me, if you want.”

Jack remembered being scared and flustered, maybe a little excited, but mostly flustered. No, no, he didn't want to.

This Mark said, “You've been so kind, it's the only way I can pay you back. Are you sure?”

Yes, he was sure.

This Mark said, “You're not mad?”

He wasn't mad.

“My body is all I've got, and I just thought…”

Jack slept uneasily and drove straight through the next day, dropped Mark in front of his sister's house, said, No, no, he didn't want to come in, he had to get going. Then he motored off thinking, and thought for the next few months, he remembered now, until after he met Genna, If I want to, I can. I was just scared. If I want to, I can.

Then he forgot all about it, forgot that naughty Mark, as if he'd closed and locked that door, and had regarded himself always as the most heterosexual of men, like his father, which perhaps he was. Most likely, he would never have thought of it again, if Rajiv Menard hadn't smooched him, and said, Don't look so shocked, you've been leading me on.

Perhaps he had been. Perhaps he was implicated in his new project in more ways than he cared to admit. Not that he had discovered his essential sexual nature, as if he'd bitten into the core of a nut meat hidden inside a shell, and thought, Gadzooks! Or found a pair of socks, Jack thought, gazing out his office window at the wall across the courtyard, a pair of pink socks hidden in a dark closet.

What he had discovered was that for some men, certainly for him, homosexuality, or homosexual acts, were indeed a choice and not destiny: a door, okay, make it a closet door, stepped through, or pulled tightly shut, unopened. And if that weren't an original or rare insight in the larger world, it was a liberating one in his own life, as well as his work.

Think about how different the choice, or lack of choice seemed to be for Simon, and what that implied about the genetic underpinnings of sexuality. What if the gay gene were only controlling if there were input from both gametes, and sexuality remained a choice if there were only input from one? That might explain the 65 percent concordance rate in Whitam's identical twin studies.