The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (27 page)

We lurched down a couple of inches and then began a steady
descent. The Jeep inched back along the curb.

Suddenly the front lights blazed on like interrogation
lamps.

“Shit,” Zane and I murmured in unison.

A moment later the door opened and Zane’s father stormed out
in sweatpants and slippers. His eyes followed the rope stretching across the
yard and landed, finally, on us.

“Um, hi Dad.”

“Oh dear god,” he groaned and put both hands over his face.
“Irene, Ralph, stay in the house. Irene—”

“Why, what was that—
Peter!
” his mother yelled. “What are you doing? Get down from
there!”

“Mom, I’m safe. Look who I’m with!” He wrapped his arms and
legs around me and my cape.

“You’re such a homo, Zane,” Ralph said.

“Go close your brother’s window,” their father said, pushing
Ralph back inside the house.

Zane’s mother looked after Ralph and she seemed to be
deciding based on his language that this stunt was not only dangerous but had
something to do with
gay
, as well.

“Peter, this— This is
wrong
, Peter!” she shouted. “What do you think you’re
doing
? You! Vince!” She pointed at me.
“Are you a homosexual too?”

“No, um, I’m bi.”

She wandered off the steps with her hands spread stiffly at
her side like an action figure. His dad sat down on the stoop and crossed his
arms over his knees.

“Wh-what does
that
mean?” she said.

I didn’t know what kind of answer she was looking
for—by the expression on her face it didn’t seem the question was
rhetorical. How could I sum up myself while I was hanging with her son fifteen
feet above the ground, the yard and house revolving around me? “It means I can
fall in love with both men and women?”

“Love!” She looked down and shook her head as though she’d
just been fed a spoonful of suspicious broth.

As soon as our feet touched the snow, Griff came running, in
a more dramatic fashion than it probably warranted, through the hedge over to
us, the hood of his sweatshirt flapping behind him like a cape. Zane’s eyes
darted to the rope, to Griff, who was rapidly unbuckling us.

“Peter, you’re not going with them. If you go with them...”
She looked speechless. When she finally found her voice again, it came out as a
whisper. “I’m your mother. You’re not like those people.”

“What people? These people? A comic book nerd? An architect
who’s not even gay?”

“You know who I mean, Peter.”

“Mom, I’m just trying to be happy. That’s all anyone ever
does, isn’t it?”

Zane yanked the buckle on his harness and it dropped to his
feet. Griff was unhooking mine, untying the rope with quick fingers.

“But this isn’t happiness,” she said, holding her open hands
out in front of her, as though in them sat a crystal ball showing her Zane’s
whole life. “This isn’t
love
.”

“You guys bounce out of here,” Griff said, handing Zane the
keys to my Jeep. “I’ll take care of the props.”

“Thank you, Griffin,” said Zane, and he took off across the
yard.

“Peter, don’t run away. You’re just
confused
,” his mother said, putting her hands on her knees as
though she were going to lean forward and puke into the snow. “You’re not gay!
They’ve
brainwashed
you!”

Zane stopped short a few feet from the hedge. “Brainwashed?
Mom, come on. Do you really think I’m that weak? That easy to manipulate? That
naïve
? I’m stronger than you’d ever
believe. I’m as strong as him.” He pointed at me and I didn’t know whether he
meant me or the comic book character I was dressed as. And then, just when I
thought he would explode, because I thought he had every right to, the anger
fell off his face like a mask and he smiled, the kind of smile that sticks in
your mind forever. “Someday you’ll see that and be proud of me, Mom,” he said,
and then he disappeared through the hedge.

“Peter!” she called again.

“That’s enough, Irene,” his father said tiredly. He stood
up, put his arm around her shoulders and steered her back inside the house.

I stood watching the door close behind them.

“Go,” Griff said, nudging my arm. “He’s waiting. Don’t
forget to take the rope off the car, you’ll be dragging the whole neighborhood
behind you.”

“How can I just—”

“Don’t worry about them. They’ll come around. Now go. I’ll
drive around for a couple hours so you can have the house.” He winked.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s OK, I have some thinking to do anyway.”

I walked through the yard. The night was clear, and in the
sky a billion witnesses to our escapades sparkled. I could hear the Jeep’s
motor running. My cape snagged in the bushes and tore off as I went through. I
immediately felt silly without it, and I went back for it, and then got in the
car with Zane and drove home.

With the night he gave me we went to my bed and
finished what we’d started the night before. It hurt a little but it was smooth
and warm and he told me I was beautiful. Afterward we were sweaty and chilly.
When I pulled the blankets back up over us, the air they brought with them
smelled like Griff. I breathed it in and felt like crying so I rubbed my face
against my pillow, to be silly. We lay face to face, sharing the pillow. A
strip of hallway light came in from under the door and lit the room in an
underwater glow.

Zane brushed his thumb across my forehead, as he might’ve if
my hair had been long enough to fall into my eyes.

I laid my hand in the soft groove above his hip and let my
fingers open and close on his bum. “I’m sorry about your parents,” I told him.
“I don’t know why people have to be like that.”

“They’re just worried for me,” he said. “They think I’m
destined for unhappiness. I’m not. Tonight made me happy.”

I kissed him. “Good.”

Below each of his collar bones was a row of three dark
shapes, each about the size of a dime. They looked like a bit like pips on a
military uniform.

“I like your tattoos,” I said.

“My superhero symbol tattoos.”

“They’re cool.”

He took my hand from where it lay on his hip and pressed my
fingers against the tattoo closest to his right shoulder. “The
S
symbol,” he said. “You know about
Superman. He’s very strong, but he’s lonely—but he loves everyone and
belongs to everyone.” From there he moved my finger to the next tattoo.
“Batman’s bat signal.” He moved it again. “Wonder Woman’s
W
.”

“And over here?”

“This is the Flash’s lightning bolt,” he said, putting his
hand on mine again, moving it across his chest as though he were teaching me
Braille. “And Green Lantern’s symbol. And the Martian Manhunter’s globe or
whatever it is.”

“I always assumed it was a Trivial Pursuit piece. Or a
pizza.”

He laughed. “Because those make more sense than a globe?”

“Well, he’s Martian, who knows what they value.”

He laughed again. “Well that’s the tour of my tattoos.”

“I like them.”

What they really reminded me of was Griff’s joshua tree.
Although Zane was naked and snuggled against me, the bed still smelled like
Griff and it was hard to think of anything else.

I woke up later and my mouth was desert-dry, my
lips raw from Zane’s stubble. (That was a drawback to sleeping with
guys—girls were so much softer.) My stomach felt empty too and I realized
I’d never gotten around to eating supper. I pulled back the covers and rooted
around in the costume tangled on the floor until I found my boxers, and then
pulled on the shirt part of the costume too. I started to tiptoe out of the
room, but thought of something and stopped. From the bureau I grabbed a photo
of me on a whale-watching boat and put it on my pillow in case Zane woke up, so
he’d know I was coming back.

The kitchen light was on and Griff was sitting at the table
with a beer, his interstate road atlas spread out in front of him. The sight of
it stung me. He belonged at that table.

“Hey, Mr. Dandro,” he said, snickering. “Finally have to
come up for air?”

“Screw you.” I could tell I was blushing under the yellow
ceiling light. I grabbed a bag of Goldfish crackers and poured a glass of water
and sat down with him. His t-shirt had a hole in the shoulder that suggestively
revealed a patch of skin. Beside him was a legal pad scrawled with the names of
cities and with numbers written small.

“This would be a lot easier if you had the Internet, you
know,” he said, thumbing the eraser head. He slipped the legal pad between the
pages of the atlas and closed it. “I guess the Internet doesn’t exist in your
cranberry hush?”

“I avoid computers when possible.”

He smirked. “No more Truman angst, I hope.”

I shrugged.

“So did you have fun with Zane?”

“Yeah...”

He looked at me, pressing the pencil against his lower lip.
“How much?”

“Home run.”

“So you mean you—?” Suppressing a smile, he formed two
fingers into an
O
and pushed another
one through it.

“Yeah.”

“Who was the—?” He held up the
O
.

“Me.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Sorry. What’s that like?”

“It’s just sex.”

“Must be pretty—um. Intense?”

“Yeah. It can be.” I wanted to show him. I wanted it to be
him.

“Hmm. Well I’m not sure you look like a person who just
rounded the bases with someone he cares about.”

I gulped some water and ran my finger around the lip of the
glass. I felt so full of tension that the low
oooo
from the glass might’ve actually been coming from my vibrating
skin.

“Should I not have put you up to it?” he added.

“You didn’t put me up to it, you just drove me there. I
wanted to go up. I wanted to do everything I did. It’s just— I don’t
know. I wish it was clicking better than it is. I feel like it can, but I don’t
know what I have to do to make it— Or
feel
to make it.” I took a sip of water and dragged a finger through the wet ring on
the table. “Just my typical shit.”

“Maybe it’s time to let that go.”

“What makes you so sure I want to be with him?”

“Um. Last night you told me you loved him. I’d say that was
my main clue.”

“But beyond that. Is it something I show? What makes you
know? How do you know for sure when someone’s in love with you?”

“Because I’m your lifebuddy, that’s how. I know everything
about you.”

My lifebuddy.

He got up from the table and pulled a bag of chips from the
cupboard. “And we still need to have our adventure,” he said. “Tomorrow’s my
last day. I need some us time. A couple of hours. It’s important.”

I wondered what he had planned that would only take a couple
of hours. A couple of hours seemed like a short time, or a long time. What I
needed from him would only take a minute, a moment. We could do it right now. I
could show him right now. And then he’d never want to leave.

“I can try to have Marissa cover my afternoon shift
tomorrow,” I told him, and he nodded.

Let me kiss you, Griff. Just once. Let me touch you. Let me
undress you and take you to bed and show you how it can be to be in it
together, not just side by side but through and through. Let me do these things
and I
know
you’ll realize this can
work. I know you will.

“So,” he said, “you better be getting back to your man.”

“Oh. Yeah.” I got up, put the glass in the sink and the
crackers away. “Oh— Hey Griff?”

“Hm?”

“How’d you know it would work? With Zane, I mean. The ropes
and everything. The suit.”

“Oh. Well I figured you and Zane are a lot alike—and
that’s what I would’ve done on you.”

“...”

“Sweet dreams, Vin.”

I turned and started up the hall, thunder clapping in my
chest. I didn’t have to look back to know how he looked, what he was
doing—tipping the beer bottle to his lips, brushing back the hair he used
to hide behind but which now seemed more to frame his face, looking at his
maps.

He’d be gone by the weekend. I didn’t have much time.

T H U R S D A Y

“Again,” Zane said, his lips against my shoulder.
“Snooze it again.”

“I can’t.” I reached for the other button, the smaller one,
pressed it. “I snoozed it three times already.” I unwound myself from Zane and
got out of bed, yanked the covers back up to his chin. I rubbed him hard
through the blankets, the way you rub someone who’s just fallen through the
ice. He grumbled and rolled over.

The door of the spare bedroom was open and the floor was
cluttered with piles of clothes and the boxes of Griff’s stuff. His backpack
stood empty, waiting to be filled. I looked farther in. He was sleeping, his
arm hanging over the bed as though he was making sure the floor was still there.
He seemed so far away now. The existence of another bed made sharing one
impossible.

Later, Griff rinsed the cereal bowl I’d left on the
counter and filled it again with Cocoa Krispies. “...Just lounge around until
you call me, I guess,” he said when I asked what he was up to this morning. “I
need to finish figuring out my route, too.”

“Why don’t you come with me?”

“To work?”

“Yeah, why not? We can hang out, I can show you the place in
the daylight. Then I’ll get Marissa to take my afternoon.”

As he’d said, his week was nearly up and I wanted to pack
more into it. The best way to make time slow down was to do a lot of things, be
a lot of places, so at the buzzer you can look back and wonder how you managed
to cram everything in. I wanted to have every second and all the possibilities
they afforded.

“We need to leave soon, though,” I told him. “I have to get
Zane home. He has a class at ten.”

Griff was about to pour milk on the cereal but stopped just
as the first drops sloshed out. “Cool. I’ll skip breakfast.”

Zane, wearing a towel, emerged from the bathroom and walked down
the hall to my room slowly, as though he knew my eyes were locked to the cotton
stretched tight against his ass.

“My turn,” Griff said. “I’ll be quick.” He knocked back the
last of his juice and slid the glass to the edge of the sink. It hit the
stainless steel lip, teetered, did not fall in.

From the back seat of the Jetta I leaned forward
into the front as we were driving Zane home. They were talking about classes
and dorms, grades and professors, the trials and tribulations of college life.

“You’re so lucky you’re graduated and done with this crap,”
Zane said.

Griff looked in the rearview mirror and caught my eye and
delivered an expression of shocked bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”
he said to Zane, stabbing his finger into Zane’s knee. “You’re so lucky you’re
not
.”

“Why? It sucks.”

Griff looked back at me again. “Sucks? Sucks? That’s
blasphemy! Vince, what have you been telling this guy? College is a fucking
paradise. It’s a fucking golden age. I’d give up everything I have to go back.”

From behind the counter and through the window I
could see Griff leave the Dunkin’ Donuts and cross the street. He came
in—jingle—with a chocolate donut hanging from his lips and dropped
a pink and orange bag on the counter.

“Breakfast,” he mumbled. “You call Marissa yet?”

I grabbed a chocolate-covered donut. “Doing it now.”

I rummaged in the drawers for the address book, found it and
flipped to her info. “She’ll probably be glad to do it,” I told him as I
dialed, “to make up for her snow day. But of course this is Marissa so she’ll
need to put up a stink first, just for effect.”

She answered. “OK,” she said, groggily and with the expected
dramatic reluctance after I’d made the offer, “but I can’t get there until like
noon.”

I told her I’d see her then.

“We good?” Griff said when I hung up. His fingers crept into
the bag and he looked away as he withdrew another donut.

“She’s coming but she needs three more hours of beauty
rest.” I finished the last bite of donut and licked chocolate flakes off my
lips.

“You don’t have an extra one of those GA shirts lying
around, do you?” he said, pointing to the logo on my chest.

“Probably. Want one?”

“Eh, sure, why not.” He pushed the last bite of donut into
his mouth.

I brought him into the back and found him a new shirt under
a box of bags and boards. He ripped it out of the plastic and pulled it on over
his hooded sweatshirt. It was creased and tight over the sweatshirt; the hood,
trapped beneath, gave him a hunchback.

“Looking good?” he said, rubbing his hands down his chest
and over his hips.

“It’s sort of
Michelin
Man
chic.”

“Haha. Nice. I’ll just go stand on the street and let the
poon roll in.”

I heard the bell jingle and went out front. When Griff joined
me a minute later he was minus the sweatshirt. “So what do we do now?” he said.
“Just wait?”

“I don’t know. Whatever. Straighten up the trades if you
want. People paw through stuff and get it all out of order.”

I brought him to the island of paperbacks, each one a story
arc collected from a half-dozen or so monthly comics. I ran my hand against the
books, sliding them back so their spines met.

“We used to have a yard sale like every summer when I was
little,” he said. “And people would come browse, hemming and hawing over like
the quality and value of our whatever, our items. And I remember being so
offended if they didn’t buy anything. Like nothing we had was worthwhile or
something.
Oh this is junk
. Which I
guess it was, but still.”

“I felt like that here at first. Like what do you mean
you’re not buying this issue? Are you a dumb-ass?”

He laughed. “You dig it, don’t you?”

“The store?”

“Mm.”

“I do.”

“How come?” He asked it not interrogatingly, but with
curiosity. Pulling out a book and pushing it into its proper alphabetical place
a few spaces over, he said, “What is it about this place that does it for you?”

“I guess I like having something to escape into. There’s so
much continuity to learn in comics. It’s a good hobby.”

But it was more than a hobby. The world of comics was a
refuge, a safe house. I thought of the slim, gay teenage boy perpetually in
black clothes and eye-liner who came into the store almost every Wednesday
morning, definitely during school hours, and headed for the shelf of new arrivals.
His name was Abe; he was the kind of cute that made me feel like I missed
something by not coming out until college.

“Hey, Vince,” he would say somberly, sliding an
X-Men
across the counter. I’d take it
and ring him up. If it was raining out, or snowing, he’d want a bag; otherwise
no. Usually he’d ask about some other title he hadn’t been able to find on the
shelves, and if we were sold out, or if it had been delayed, I’d feel bad.

I knew why I liked being among comic book characters, and it
wasn’t about a hobby. The X-Men are mutants, freaks—hated, hunted, cast
out—but on the other hand, practically gods. Kids like Abe, digging out
his wallet, pushing three dollars across the counter with skinny fingers and
nails of chipped black polish, might be called a freak every day at
school—on the days they could tolerate going—but in secret, in
disguise, who knew what wonders they could create with waves of ice, what havoc
they could wreak with their unbelievable strength.

“A lot of the queer kids like
X-Men
,” I explained to Griff.

“Not you?”

“Sure, but for me it’s always been Superman.”

“I don’t think of Superman as being angsty, though.”

“That’s the problem. Most people don’t. But really he’s pure
angst. He has a Fortress of Solitude, you know? What do you think he does
there, throw parties? No. He broods.”

“Good point.”

“But that’s not what I really like about him, though.”

“What do you like about him?” He smiled. He’d probably heard
this a million times. A billion.

“You know, in the first movie, the scene in Lois Lane’s
apartment? Right after Superman has taken her flying? He’s dressed up as Clark
Kent now and he loves her and he wants to tell her his secret, he wants to
share this giant secret. He takes off his glasses, straightens up, becomes an
entirely different person—becomes, I don’t know, beautiful.
Lois
, he says,
there’s something I have to tell you
.”

“That part is good.”

I nodded. “I can always feel how much he wants to tell her,
you know? How
desperate
he is to.
This powerful man who can lift continents and shoot laser beams from his eyes.
But then he gets scared. I can see the fear in his eyes, and I can feel that
too.” It was the same fear I had when Griff sat down at my computer that night,
when he clicked that little drop-down menu and learned that Truman and Vince
were one and the same. “He puts his glasses back on—I know his heart is
pounding—and his voice gets squeaky again. He calls the whole thing off
and he feels both relieved and disappointed about not actually crossing that
line he’s made for himself, you know? He’s the most powerful man in the world
but he’s perpetually in the closet.”

“He just needs a good buddy to help him come out,” Griff
said, and with a smile he moved another book to the right place.

I was ringing up a customer when Marissa arrived.
According to the angle of the beam of sunlight coming through the glass door,
it was a little after noon.

“Yo,” she said.

“Thanks for doing this,” I told her, sliding a credit card
through the machine.

“No thanks necessary. I will extract payment at a later
date.” She went to the back and I heard her say, “You new?”

And then Griff: “New to you. I’m Griff. Vince’s friend.”

“Ah, the ambiguously straight roommate. I’ve heard about
you. I’m Marissa.”

“I’ve heard about you too,” Griff said. “Vince says you’re
angsty.”

“He projects.”

The customer left the store with her bag and a puzzled
expression. Marissa came out pulling her hair out of the neck of her Golden Age
t-shirt, bedazzled with blue sequins on the sleeves. Griff followed her.

“You guys met, I heard?” I said.

“We’re practically engaged,” she said. Griff put his hand
over his mouth to be silly but his surprise looked genuine. “OK boys, you can
scoot out on whatever little
Tour de
Vince
you have planned.”

In the back room Griff and I exchanged our t-shirts for coat
and vest.

“Thanks again Marissa.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She smiled and waved us away.

Melting snow ran in little streams across the sidewalk Zane
had shoveled so carefully last weekend, washing his sprinkled sand into the
grass and the parking lot.

“She’s interesting,” Griff said as we climbed into the
Jetta. He started it up. Cold air blew from the vents.

“I think she likes to make a strong first impression,” I
said, cranking up the heat. “But she’s cool.”

“I couldn’t tell whether she wanted to make out with me or
stomp on my toe.”

“Exactly!”

He was idling at the edge of the lot. Traffic rushed by in
both directions. “OK, Vinny, where to?”

“You mean you don’t have some big plan?” I pushed my gloves
into the compartment in the door.

“The
adventure
was
my idea. I’m not expected to come up with all the details too, am I?”

“The destination is hardly a detail.”

“It’s the
journey
,
my friend.”

“Well, let me think. ... We could... Hmm.”

“What?”

“...”

“Any ideas?”

“No, I don’t fucking know!”

Even in college we never knew what to do. We used to sit
around in our room, increasingly whiny and antsy as it became more and more
evident that we were going to end up staying in for the night, watching movies
or playing Trivial Pursuit in the common area with Gia. But those nights often
ended up being the most fun. So it worked out.

“Just drive,” I told him. “See where the road takes us.”

“OK.” He pulled out of the lot and a little way down the
street we stopped at a red light. Sun glinted off the shiny hood. “It’s fucking
bright,” he said, lowering his visor. “I may crash us.”

“Please no. I don’t want any more wounds.”

“Looks better, by the way,” he said, jabbing his finger at
my chin.

He put us on Route 6 and we headed northeast up the crook of
the Massachusetts elbow.

***

From my desk I watched the door of room 907 open
and Griff quietly enter, but I didn’t say anything and neither did he. He
dropped his backpack onto his bed and sat down. He took off his sneakers and
peeled off his socks, wincing in disgust as they unrolled down his clammy
shins. They looked like he’d stepped in a puddle.

“So fucking hot out,” he said after sitting there a minute
with his socks in his hand. “I hate being sweaty. I’d prefer anything to
dampness. Frostbite, fine—but dampness...”

“Yeah.” I looked back at my computer, resting my chin in my
hand, my palm slick with sweat. The windows were open but it was doing
jack-shit.

He walked barefoot to his computer, laughed at some
forwarded email joke he didn’t share with me, poked around in his desk for a
little while, and then asked me if I’d forgotten about the concert.

“The concert?”

“The Elsewhen show tonight.” That was all he said. He didn’t
precede it with a
duh
and he didn’t
shake me by the shoulders or playfully slap me across the face for forgetting.

“I guess I must’ve, yeah.”

“Oh.”

We bought the tickets months ago—eons in college
time—stood in line for them out in the cold the morning of the
welcome-back party. Now it was the last week of the semester. Classes were
either over or winding down, and the same could’ve been said of our friendship.
Room selection was three weeks ago. Griff, with his lucky number 13, took a
single on the third floor of the little, less-nice dorm down the street,
because there was no one else he wanted to live with. The remaining singles
were long gone by the time my 947 rolled around, as I knew they would be. I
took a double by myself and by that point Griff didn’t ask about trying to work
something out with Housing.