Fearful Symmetries (10 page)

Back in the day, nobody liked Tom Clement, not even his parents.

They made him stay in the cellar. If they even let him inside, that is—a lot of times, they’d lock him out overnight. He’d have to sleep under the sagging porch of their rented house on Second Street. If he couldn’t get inside the next morning to wash up and change his clothes, he’d just go to school and clean up as best he could in the boys’ bathroom, hurrying to get out of there before the jocks caught him and beat him up for being a fag.

That was the Sixties—peace and love, anti-war and civil rights, but a guy could still get his ass kicked for being a fag. Or even just looking like a fag, which, by virtue of his slight, delicate build, soft voice, and quiet disposition, was Tom Clement’s crime against high school masculinity. That’s a capital offence in places like the old home town.

I’d never been especially fond of the place myself. It was no scenic New England village—factories outnumbered schools and churches. It was a small, dirty town and I yearned to live in a real city, like Boston.

I used to hope that my father would find us so we’d have to move again, the way he had a few times after we’d made our middle-of-the-night escape from the trailer park. I was a little over four then but I remembered it vividly, along with what had happened
before
we left; still do. There were no shelters for battered women in those days. A woman fleeing an abusive husband was more likely to be returned to her abuser and told to be a better wife, the kind a man didn’t want to smack every time she opened her mouth.

The night we pulled off the highway into the Thunderbird Motel parking lot, I’d thought it was just another brief stopover. But either we’d finally managed to lose my father or looking for us cut into his drinking time too much, because there were no threatening middle-of-the-night phone calls. My mother got a job, we moved into a fourth-floor walk-up, and I had to accept the fact that this was home until I got myself out.

That probably makes me sound like a stuck-up brat. I was. In the old home town, that was no distinction.

Catholic school meant wearing uniforms. Sounds awful but it wasn’t really so bad if your parents couldn’t afford much in the way of new clothes. The women in my mother’s office had a round-robin thing going with hand-me-downs. Stuff like dungarees and t-shirts wore out pretty quickly but dressier things could survive up to five different kids. The moms liked it but wearing stuff three or four or even five years out of date quite frankly sucked. “Second Hand Rose” was funny if you were Barbra Streisand, not if you were Rose. Yeah, I was an ingrate. What teenager isn’t?

Well, not Tom Clement. The school provided his uniform; everything else came from clothing drives. Tom was so grateful he wrote thank-you notes to the parish. Someone found one once and passed it around in the cafeteria. Kids screamed with laughter to know that every night, Tom knelt down and thanked God for somebody’s cast-off underwear.

Kids like Tom had a limited number of ways to cope. They could drop out and become juvenile delinquents, they could hide in the library and study, or they could turn to God. Tom was hardly cut out for a life of crime; his first five minutes in juvenile hall would have been his last and most miserable moments on earth. The library had limited value as a refuge—the world was still waiting outside after it closed at six, nastier than ever. There was nowhere he could go except heaven, or at least as close as he could get without dying. Tom had made no secret that after graduation, he was joining the Brothers of Mercy (basically male nuns for you non-Catholics), for a life of prayer and service in Clarence, New York (wherever
that
was).

Adolescence had awakened my inner skeptic, which hadn’t been sleeping all that soundly anyway. But when I saw that kid struggling through the halls between classes, dodging blows from passing jocks or trying to pick up the scattered books and papers some Neanderthal had knocked out of his arms while the rest of the school walked over them pretending not to see, I thought there had
better
be a God, because He
owed
Tom Clement.
Big
time.

Not everyone walked over Tom’s scattered books and papers—I didn’t and neither did most other girls, not even in-crowd queens and cheerleaders (unless they were in a hurry, of course). Guys couldn’t do anything. The only kindness any guy could safely show Tom Clement was not bothering to punch him.

All things considered, I’m more likely to be the psycho in this story than Tom Clement. But I’m not. Although I could be wrong.

We were in the middle of lunch in the cafeteria when Joyce Kilburn said she wanted to go to the prom with Tom Clement. I thought she was making a cruel joke, which wasn’t like her at all. She’d been my best friend since kindergarten.
Cruel
wasn’t in her vocabulary.

“Close your mouth, Ruth, before something flies in,” she said. “I really like him. He’s a nice guy.”

She sat back, looking around as if waiting for someone to contradict her. It was the usual foursome at the table—her, me, Kate St. Denis, and Mary McCoy. Kate had gone all through school with us, but Mary had transferred last year from San Diego and she was both culture-shocked and homesick for the weather.

“I
know
he’s a nice guy,” I said. “But if you really
do
like him, why would you want to subject him to something like that?”

“Something like
what
? I’m a nice person
and
a fun date,” Joyce said defensively. “And I’m not a dog, either.” True enough—she was dark-haired and dark-eyed, and unlike most of us, she had perfect skin, no acne. She also had a nice body—chubby by today’s standards, blossoming back then.

“I don’t mean it like that.” I glanced at Kate and Mary, who were both wide-eyed. “What do you think will happen if he goes to the prom?”

Joyce lifted her chin belligerently. “We’ll dance, everybody’ll get their picture taken, and either Theresa Guilfoyle or Debbi Belliveau’ll be prom queen. Then everyone goes out to eat or to a party.”

I wanted to shake her. “Have you missed what’s been happening to him every day for the last four years?”

“But all the guys’ll be in
tuxedoes
,” Mary offered, a bit timidly.

“
Rented
tuxedoes,” Kate added. “They’d have to pay for any damage—”

“So they’ll pay,” I snapped. “You think they’re afraid of having to cough up for a few rips or bloodstains?”

“But Ruthie, their dates’ll
kill
them if they get all messed up,” Mary said. She was the only person allowed to call me
Ruthie
.

“Only if they do it
before
the photo.”

Joyce folded her arms. “I already talked to my folks about it. They said they’d pay for his tux and everything.”

I shook my head. “If you
really
want to do a good deed, join the Girl Scouts and read to the blind. If you go through with this, all you’re gonna do is get Tom Clement
killed
.”

“Not if we double with you and Jack,” she said slyly and with that, she defeated me. I couldn’t refuse to double-date with my best friend and she knew we weren’t already doubling with someone else. Jack and I had met last summer working at the Crazyland Amusement Park. Now he was a freshman at the local teacher’s college, which made him as invulnerable as Superman; the laws of our particular jungle weren’t even real to him. I was becoming less real to him myself as we grew apart and I knew it. But he never pressured me for sex and he was gallant enough not to break up with me till after my graduation. He’s definitely not the psycho in this story, although he was cute enough to have made a particularly creepy one.

Jack agreed we had to double with Joyce and Tom just to make sure the poor guy didn’t end up getting his head flushed in the men’s room. High school bullies wouldn’t pick on anyone with a friend who could fight back. I praised his insight and compassion.

“I do appreciate your keen perception of my character,” he laughed, “but maybe I won’t have to play bodyguard. He might say no.”

That hadn’t even occurred to me. “You’re right,” I said with a relieved sigh. “If I were him, I wouldn’t go if my date were the Virgin Mary and we were doubling with Jesus.”

“That sounds like a fun car to be in,” Jack said dryly. He was unfettered by matters of faith, which was so refreshing. “If Tom says no, introduce Joyce to the Big JC. I just hope the Virgin Mary’s already got a date, though, or you got a dress for nothing.”

By the time Joyce actually asked Tom Clement to the prom, it was all over the school. That didn’t surprise me; what did was how little the grapevine had distorted it. Perhaps it was so juicy that even the biggest gossips were stumped for a way to embellish it. Or maybe it was just the girl involved.

Joyce, like me, Kate, and Mary, belonged to that group of kids who were neither in-crowd popular like cheerleaders and jocks, nor preyed-on outcasts like Tom Clement, which meant we were almost never talked about. But this was something else. A girl asking a boy out at all was iffy. But
Tom Clement
? To the
prom
? That was more than outrageous, it was unprecedented. There was no telling what could happen.

When the movie
Carrie
came out a few years later, I imagined a lot of my former classmates sitting in a dark movie theatre, staring up at pale, delicate Sissy Spacek and thinking,
Shit, that’s Clement in a dress!
And maybe one or two nudging each other and saying,
Damn, why didn’t
we
think of that?
when the blood came down.

Tom Clement said yes, Joyce told me breathlessly. She looked happy, thrilled even, but also a bit taken aback. Had
she
thought all along that Tom would say no, I wondered . . . or maybe even hoped he would?

“He was
so sweet
when I asked him,” she said as we headed over to her house after school. “So
shy
, so
cute
. He’s never been on a date, you know. And then he insisted on giving me these—” She showed me two tiny gold-colored crosses. Cheap little charms, no better than something you’d get out of a Crackerjacks box. Catholic Crackerjacks; there were a few tiny bumps on the surface of each cross that was supposed to be the body of Christ. “One for you and one for me. As a token of his appreciation and for good luck, he said. Isn’t that
sweet
?” She barely paused for breath as she dropped one into my pocket. “You
have
to go shopping with me. Help me pick out a dress that’s different from yours but won’t clash. So we’ll all look nice together.”

She went on about stuff in fashion magazines, apparently oblivious to the other kids walking past us in twos and threes. They’d part to go around us, walking fast to get ahead before looking over their shoulders and talking to each other.

The weird thing was, hardly any of them were laughing. A few were, and there were some disdainful sneers and withering looks but most kids just seemed kind of spooked. When my mother looked like that, she’d say,
Goose walked over my grave
.

All the while Joyce continued prattling about empire waists and sweetheart necklines and dotted Swiss as if we were the only two people on the street, or even in the whole town. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore and asked her if she really didn’t know people were staring.

“Oh, for God’s
sake
!” Joyce rolled her eyes. “Of
course
I know, I’m not stupid. Hey,
you
! Yeah, the three musketeers up there!” she yelled just as three big guys ahead of us looked over their shoulders. “Take a picture, it lasts longer!”

There was never a bottomless pit to fall into when you really needed one, I thought miserably. But to my surprise, they only walked faster, dropping their heads and hunching their shoulders like they were afraid someone—Joyce? Me? Both of us?—might hit them. Joyce looked back and gave a single harsh laugh. “Aw, whatsamatta—you guys forgot
your
cameras, too?”

I peeked over my own hunched shoulder. A small gaggle of girls behind us had slowed down so suddenly that some boys had run right into them. Books and ring-binders hit the sidewalk, shedding papers; a timely gust of wind scattered them in every direction. Well, except for the ones they stepped all over—accidentally, of course. The lucky few who hadn’t dropped anything were dodging traffic to get across the street as fast as possible.

“Yeah, now we know why the chickens crossed the road—because they’re
chicken
,” Joyce laughed. “Come on, Ruth. And close your mouth before something flies in.” My shoulders were up around my ears but the taunts I was waiting for never came. I should have been more relieved than I was but my best friend suddenly intimidating people was too weird.

“Didn’t any of that bother you at all?” I asked after a bit. “Even just a little?”

Joyce laughed, her hair bouncing around her non-hunched shoulders. “Doesn’t what happens to Tom Clement every day bother
you
?”

“But the way everyone was staring—”

“Are you
kidding
?” Joyce elbowed me. “That’s
nothing
compared to what he gets
all the time
. If you can’t handle it, maybe we’d better not double.”

“But we’ve already decided—”

“We can
un-
decide. I’ll get my dad to drive us. Maybe that’d be better anyway.”

“No, come on, Joyce, you already told Tom we’re doubling, right? Don’t change plans without even talking to him about it. He might not want to go if it’s just you two alone.”

She hesitated. “You’re right. He wouldn’t say yes till I told him we’d be going with you and Jack.”

I felt guilty for wishing she hadn’t told me that, but not as guilty as I should have.

Two Saturdays before the prom, Joyce and I went downtown to LaFleur armed with a swatch my mother had cut from a seam of my dress. LaFleur had the largest formal/bridal wear department in town. Joyce had no intention of buying anything from them—by now it was too likely someone else would have the same dress. But we figured we might as well see what everyone else would be wearing.