Chapter Forty-One Clinging Part One: To A Life 3 страница

I rolled my eyes at her humor, but I knew exactly what she was talking about.

“Trust me; I’m way ahead of you on that one.”

“Good.” She gave her head a little tip forward into a nod, and then deviously reached into her lab coat pocket. “But just in case, take this one for the road.” She handed me a silver and blue wrapper into my open palm, and all I could do was laugh. It would be a long damn time before I had sex again, especially since I still ached a little from her invasion.

“Now, if you will excuse me,” she stated after we had been in a blissful silence for awhile. I looked up at her, my bewildered and ecstatic expression not changing, even as she said her next words. “I need to go talk to your mother for a second, since she chose not to join us.”

“What are you going to tell her?” I asked, not accusing, just wanting more validation to make my heart keep beating.

“That you weren’t rape, but the kit still needs to be processed,” she answered, her words rolling right off her tongue. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

“Okay,” I breathed, trusting her fully. She smiled to me as she left, giving me a small wave before the door shut behind her and the small murmuring started. I twirled the condom in my fingers for awhile, before I placed it inside my jeans pocket, and began to get dressed.

When I was finally left alone with my thoughts, it occurred to me that Bonnie probably did realize who exactly my boyfriend was. She didn’t know the situation, like she had said, and probably thought my parents had caught me and a high school friend messing around, and flipped out. She was wrong, but her wrong insight had made me realize something.

I didn’t need to write off the entire thing about me having gay sex. I didn’t have to pretend that I had never had it before. I couldn’t just pretend anyway, there was proof now. But the proof that everyone had now could no longer be used against me or Gerard. He had not been (and probably wouldn’t be) found on my body. He was still my art teacher and nothing more. It was just a coincidence that we were both gay. I may have had gay sex, but that didn’t mean it was with him. I had been at a cottage for three days. I could have hooked up with a guy there. No one knew. No one had to know; what I did inside my own home, inside my own life, was my business. If I was gay, my parents didn’t need to now. All they needed to know was that I wasn’t being hurt. And I wasn’t. The rape kit was behind me there, and so was this doctor I had never met before today and probably wouldn’t meet again. I had only known her for the however many hours it took to complete the kit, but I already felt like I owed her so much, and like she knew me so well. She had seen me naked, poking and prodding me for hours, but she seemed to know me as a person. She answered some of my questions before I even thought them, and she treated me like a human. Not an object. Not a passion. Not a child. More importantly, after all of this fucking ordeal, she gave me concrete answers. I was not raped. I was just gay. Being gay was not a crime I could be arrested for, and neither could Gerard.

I met eyes with Bonnie as I left the clinic, my mother at my side, her spirits a little better repaired. I could tell she wasn’t entirely convinced just yet, that she would need validation from the lab, but she was improving. I was so grateful; I had a smile on my face and my head held high. The doctor mouthed ‘good luck’ to me as I left, and for once, I didn’t feel like I needed it. I didn’t feel like I was in hell anymore. I was finally climbing back up from my descent, and even if the truth she was basing it on wasn’t the entire thing, at least it was something to cling onto.

 

Part Two: To A Passion

I walked away from the clinic with a new light feeling in my footsteps. My mother wanted to do some errands after the hospital trip, now that she had the car out. She was much happier than before, even smiling and breathing a sigh of relief as I offered to take the bus home so I wouldn’t get in her way. She was still semi-cold and unfeeling, giving me a warning that if I wasn’t home by five, then I would be in big trouble. She didn’t want me to go to Gerard’s place, but never said the man’s name. I had no plans of sneaking off however, no matter how tempting it sounded. There was no way I could be with him while he was under restraints and I was more into just plain walking and fucking living.

I honestly felt like Dr. Lansing, Bonnie, had given me my life back, or at least a small, small part of it. I was still missing Gerard, but I no longer felt as weighed down as I had been. I felt like I had been drowning before, everything surrounding me, flooding me and making me do and think things that I didn’t want to. I had been struggling against the waves for so fucking long, I was still thrashing against them though I was somewhat liberated. I walked faster than I was used to going, and nearly tripped over a few curbs. It started to rain the moment I stepped out from the thick metal doors of the hospital, but even that could not dampen my spirits. I just kept walking too fast, seeing the bus stop a few blocks down and just knowing that I would be okay. A little rain never hurt anyone. In fact, I had forgotten how much I loved the stuff. The way it barely touched or stained some days, and I didn’t even realize I was wet until my clothes hung onto my bones. Sometimes thick fat drops would come down, knocking me back into reality and leaving a mark in their place. The way the water beaded and collected at the end of my fingertips, then flowed down into perfectly sinuous dripped beads. It was the warm rains that I liked. The winter ones were always accompanied by a wind that would cut right through me. It was spring now though, the showers taking effect and making sure all things grew again, like my newfound hope. It was just a mist when I stepped outside at first, but as I walked, kicked pebbles for the sheer fun of it, zigzagging and crossing to reach them, it started to pick up, just like the rain falling on top of my head. I was wearing my zip-up hoodie, only half drawn to my chest, draped casually as I walked. I only pulled the hood over my hair, feeling the warmth of the fabric line my neck and give way into cloth seclusion.

When I got to the stop, I didn’t even bother to go inside the glass shelter, choosing to lean against the bus pole as I waited. I wasn’t to thrilled at first that I was taking the bus home – I hated public transit – but now that I had possibly the best news ever, I didn’t really give a fuck. My mother could have told me to walk home backwards on my hands and I wouldn’t have cared. I was not a rape victim, and Gerard was not my rapist.

I stayed outside to enjoy the rain, feeling it pick up and watching it run off my fingers. It wasn’t storming just yet, but I already saw people on the other side of the street freaking out and running, brandishing umbrellas and newspapers over their heads to shield themselves. It wasn’t even raining that hard, and I let a low laugh go under my breath at the people’s frantic nature.

There was no one else at the bus stop, at least not yet. I took notice of a woman coming from the opposite direction I had been. She was just turning the corner of the sidewalk, carrying a small buggie cart behind her, stacked with groceries she had bought at the local Price Chopper. I watched as she dragged the heavy pushcart effortlessly behind her, only stopping every once in awhile to gather herself, fix her coat and take a breath before continuing. Her dark and drabby black hair was pinned down by a plastic water barrier, but I could still spot rings of curls falling out from under, dried up from years of wear and tear. As she got closer and closer, I realized how small she actually was. She was nearly the same height as the cart she was carrying, the handle she grabbed it by coming up to her shoulders when it was stood upright. Her body was strong and stocky though, her stubby legs poking out from under her red raincoat and coated with black leggings. I saw her face as she drew nearer and discovered how aged she really was. Just judging by the vigor in her movements from before, I wouldn’t have thought she was in her late fifties to early sixties, but as I took note of the deep lines that littered her face, running deeper around her eyes and mouth, especially when the cart seemed to exert extra force in her, I changed my original assumption to much later years in life. She had thick glasses with white frames, barely visible until I was nearly face to face with her as she passed by to go into the bus shelter. I was angled to my side slightly, so I could watch her drop her cart with a heavy and full-bodied sigh and sit down on the tiny bench inside, without staring directly at her.

For some reason, this woman fascinated me. I had never seen her before, or maybe I had, but she had been washed into the drab background of Jersey. She was a drab background herself; she was old, wrinkled, but was still making an attempt to stand out, her red raincoat and darkly died hair speaking volumes. She was even older than Gerard, I thought suddenly, and it fueled me to look at her more. I had never been around people older than myself out of context. I had been around my parents, but they were different. There were the doctor and police officers, but I was associated to them by their profession, not their person. I was around Gerard and Vivian, but they were different too. I knew them by their person, but I had sought them out. There was never a chance occurrence with them. I may have met them by chance, either by a liquor store or naked on a couch, but the events succeeding those had been purposefully crafted. This was the first time ever I had been around someone that was clearly older than me in a social situation. It was a bus stop, but it still counted as a place where social interaction could occur. If I knew how to start it.

I wanted to talk to her for the same strange reason out of fascination, but I had no idea what to say. I didn’t even know why I wanted to talk per se; maybe to see if she was real, or if all older people were the same. I glanced over at her in the little shelter, actually facing her. She was sitting with her hands folded over her lap, twiddling her thumbs incessantly. I smiled; she looked really cute then, like a kid again.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” she declared right away. I looked up from her thumbs and saw her staring right back at me astutely. She wasn’t angry or even scared (considering a male was staring at her intensely in a bus stop on a rainy day, if I had been in her shoes, I would have been a little scared) that I had been staring; she just smiled at me sweetly, wisely, unfolding her hands and putting them to the side.

“Oh,” I uttered, looking around as if I had just noticed I was standing in the rain, and not trying to do it on purpose. I had been startled by her voice at first; it wasn’t what I had expected. I thought from her age, her voice would have come out stretched and dry, but instead it was robust. It was strong and loud, hearty – like she was still young.

“I don’t mind,” I answered her statement about the rain. I turned my body to fully look at her now, hoping we would continue the conversation. I wanted to hear her voice again.

“Suit yourself,” she said poignantly, shrugging her shoulders a little bit. She went back to twiddling her thumbs, looking around the perimeter of the glass shelter like it was an art museum. “Just the mothering urge in me, I guess.” She chuckled at her own remark, and I couldn’t help but smile.

“You have kids?” I found myself asking right away.

She glanced over at me slowly, as if shocked that I was still talking to her. When she saw my earnest face, she shrugged and continued. “Yep. I’ve got a few. Grandkids too.”

“Really?” I asked, genuinely interested. I had never talked to anyone about their grandkids, unless of course I was one of them. But I hadn’t seen my grandparents in ages; most of them were in a home, for all I knew in another state, or they were dead. We didn’t really associate with them all that much. My mother and father had bashed them, telling me horror stories about their conditions and attitudes. I had heard their stories enough, but this woman’s was a fresh slate in my mind.

“How many do you have?”

Again, the old woman gave me a look, surprised I was even caring. “I have four children, two grandkids. One on the way.” She smiled at the thought of a new life being added to the collection of photos on her walls at home. I returned the gesture, just as happy as she was, and again sending her to shoot another odd look my way.

“What are their names?”

“My, aren’t we a talkative one today,” she commented, adjusting the rain hat she had tied underneath her chin.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I was really getting too nosy; I had to remind myself that not everyone was as open as Gerard was.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she insisted, smiling.. “I’m just not used to young men taking an interest in me anymore.” She giggled after his statement, keeping her teeth bared. Her laughter was infectious, and I found myself joining her.

I loved the way this woman talked, the way the words came out of her mouth, and the way her actions disputed her age. She was still full of life, laughing and teasing like she was still a girl in high school. It amazed me how the oldest people that I knew could also be the youngest at heart.

“How old are you?” I found myself asking, after she had listed off a few names of children, some in their upper years of thirty.

“Don’t you know you should never ask a lady their age!” she teased unabashedly, waving her hand in front of her face. I laughed with her, mumbling another apology only to have her correct me again. “Honey, stop apologizing! It’s okay. I don’t mind answering. I’m sixty-three years young and darn proud of it.” She puffed her chest out proudly, like the robin that just scattered across our path.

I smiled widely at her mannerisms, feeling my cheeks start to ache.

“Now, return the favor,” she commented, returning to her normal stature. “How old are you?”

“I’m seventeen,” I answered unashamed and even a little proud. “Eighteen in a month.”

“Wow. Almost a grown boy,” she chided, elbowing into the air. She took a deep breath after, becoming nostalgic. “I remember when I was seventeen. I was engaged.”

“Wow – really?” I gasped. I could not even fathom being married, or asking someone to marry me, at my age. Sure, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Gerard and probably be content for the rest of it, but marriage seemed so real, so permanent. Something I knew I couldn’t handle just yet. I was still too focused on destruction.

“Yes, of course,” she sighed, continuing to draw upon her experiences. “People married a lot younger than they do nowadays, especially the women. I didn’t have money for college, and there was nothing else for me to do. I wasn’t ready – heck no. But I was willing!” She gave me a wink at the end.

“What happened?”

“Well, what does happen when you get married?” she asked me back, adding another wink. “We had a wedding. We had children. I looked after them and he went to work. And then, we lived happily ever after.”

Again, another wink.

“Does it really work that way?”

“What do you think?” she questioned right back, the teasing nature still present. This time, however, there was no wink; she merely sighed. “No, it doesn’t actually work that way. Happily ever after stays in books, and sadly, we are not books. But I can pretend, can’t I? Sometimes pretending is the only thing that keeps you around this long. And trust me, sixty-three years is a long time.”

There was a slight sadness hidden in her voice, something I didn’t want to probe out. I didn’t want to ask why happily ever after was overrated, or where her husband was, or even his name anymore. I just wanted to her be, like her words of pretending. No matter how valid she or them may have been, they were said, and that was that. I had learned how to ask questions from Gerard, but I was learning by myself when to stop asking them. I even started to learn from her, wondering if I should follow her philosophy of fabrication. If I pretended nothing was wrong, that I didn’t have a rape kit and that Gerard could be arrested at any moment, maybe I would have been a lot happier. But I would never get the answers for my questions.

Some questions never have answers, Gerard’s words flooded my mind, making me smile and hurt at the same time.

The bus came quickly after that, and let the two of us on. She flashes a bus pass like it was some special VIP card, while I let my money clank into the drop box. I got on first, and then hung back and helped her lift up her cart of groceries onto the bus floor. She smiled at me when she got up, grabbing my arm without invitation to steady herself.

“You’re a such a gentleman,” she observed, poignant grin draped across her wrinkled skin. “That is hard to find these days.”

I nodded, feeling my cheeks flush. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so I kept walking with her through the maze of poles and people. I was determined to stay by her side and guide her until she got into a seat (being the gentleman that I was). There were a few sparse people like flecks of paint against the blue hue of the seats, all of their eyes on me. Apparently they had never seen a gentleman before either. They probably thought I was her grandson, or something, and not a complete stranger. I didn’t even know this women’s name yet.

Whatever her name may have been, I continued to help her, but grew confused as she kept walking, by passing vacant seats. I had expected that she wanted to sit at the front for easier access, but she plowed through, and was now leading me instead of the other way around. She had me in one arm, and the cart on the other, and I was getting worried that she wouldn’t be able to sit down before the bus started up again. I could hear the distinct shifts and sighs of the bus gears, and was about to open my mouth when she finally stopped – in front of two seats. The ones we had passed before had been singles, something too small to fit both of us.

She wanted me to sit with her, and for some reason, I was about as honored as I was surprised.

She sat down first, wheeling her cart to the side of her, and blocking part of the aisle. She started to fix herself up, adjusting the buttons on her raincoat, and removing the water barrier from her hair. When she did, I saw her black hair was most definitely dyed, and tied together at the back in a bun, white roots poking through. When she finally took note of my staring, she gave me a funny look.

“You didn’t think our conversation was over, did you?” she teased. “You can’t fire off questions and then expect me to shut up now. That’s not how it works.”
She gave me a devious smile, which I was about to return, until the bus started to move again. I was flung forward a bit, but caught myself by grabbing onto a nearby pole.

“Come sit with me now before you fall again,” she chided, grabbing my hand that wasn’t in a death grip on the metal object and lulling me to the space beside her. Luckily, she didn’t have to pull hard. I went willingly, and not just for my balance sake. I wanted to keep talking to her, too, I had just got the impression before that I was being a pest with my constant questions.

“I like it when people pay attention to me,” she started talking, her hand unlatched from my own, now resting in between our bodies on the cramped seats. She seemed to have heard my thoughts, and went on correctly me verbally. “I’m so tiny and small, it’s sometimes hard to see me, and have much to say. But I like it when people ask me questions, because it gives me direction in what I talk about. I could ramble on endlessly about nothing, but I’m sure everyone would leave. I like to talk, as I’m sure you’ll find out.”

She patted my knee all of a sudden, purely affectionate and platonic, making me look at her with a smile. When I was up close to her, I realized she didn’t look as old as I had first thought. Or maybe she did look the same, but the grave nature of her age was removed from the situation. There was a light in her eyes that was truly fascinating, too.

“You remind me a lot of my husband, you know,” she stated, just as the bus took a large turn down the long Jersey streets.

“I do?” I asked, finally making my own vocalization. My air of nervousness was washing off of me, mostly because I started to realize that she needed help to tell her stories; direction. I needed to break out my inquiry mind and start leading her in the way I wanted her to go. She was a really interesting person; I could tell that from the way she spoke, and the way she hinted at all of these stories unearthed. I wanted to hear them all, I realized, but knew I wouldn’t have time on this small bus ride. I had to settle for this one, and maybe start taking public transit more.

“Yes,” she nodded, looking out the window and back to me every once in awhile. “When he was younger, of course. Right around the time we got married.”

“Why do I remind you of him?”

“You know,” she stated breathlessly. “I really don’t know. You two don’t look alike at all. He had red hair; it looked like fire on some days, especially when he was angry. He was a bit taller too, and built different. But there is something about the two of you together, if you two were put side by side at seventeen – almost eighteen – and I was blind, I wouldn’t know which one was which. I’m not even sure how to explain it.” She waved her hand in the air, trying to push the whole concept away. She was rambling, I could tell, and she didn’t like the way it was going.

“No, you’re doing a good job,” I encouraged. “Keep going.”

After a skeptical glare, she believed me. “Maybe it’s that tough exterior you both put on.”

“Tough exterior?” I questioned, nearly coughing. I thought I was far from tough; I had just come back from the hospital checking to see if I had been ass raped. And I had nearly cried when they found out. That didn’t sound too macho or too manly, did it? Oh, and I was gay – that was probably the farthest thing away from being tough.

“Let me finish, honey,” she chided at me, batting my arm, and gaining resilience once again. “It’s not polite to interrupt your elders.”
“Sorry.”

This time, I gave her a wink.

“Anyway,” she breathed, waving her hand back into the past. “You both have this tough exterior, trying to fight away people who won’t understand you, or people who hurt you. But it is just an exterior – that is, or was, I should say, what you were like on the outside. Inside, there is this soft part to both of you. My husband would never admit this to anyone but me and our kids, but he loved to make things out of wood. He made dolls a lot of the time, for our daughters, which was probably why he didn’t want his friends knowing about it. I must have at least seventy old wooden dolls and puppets and cars inside my house – all from him. He was always a very angry man, but when he did his wood working, he was happy. I’ve never seen him look that way before with any other activity. It was really amazing.” Her voice dropped off at the end, her mind recollecting back to a time where her husband came back to the house every night with wood clippings in his clothing. He would shed them as he came up the stairs, and once even got some into their bed.

“I even got a splinter from him and his damn wood,” she huffed, waving her hand in the air. I laughed with her, and it was when I made the vocalization that she turned her attention towards me for the first time since reminiscing about her husband. Her face drew back to its original countenance, stopping her ramble.

“I don’t know what you’re hobby is, but I know you have one that not many people know about.” She gave me an all-knowing grin, and I felt my cheeks flush.

I used to have a hobby that no one knew about. It was painting, it was Gerard, it was guitar – it was everything. But I didn’t have that anymore. I couldn’t have it again because everyone knew about it now. My soft side was exposed for the world to see, and so far, all people had done was trample it. No wonder I felt such a weight inside my chest. People were walking on my heart.

This woman though, she didn’t know about this hobby. She was just a stranger I had met in at bus stop, but she was so much more than that. I couldn’t even put my finger on what was so different about her of all people, until the realization hit me thickly, like the fat raindrops that had landed on my body before.

This woman didn’t know about what had been going on in the past twenty-four hours. She didn’t know I had been caught drinking and driving, and that my affair with a forty-seven year old artist was unfolding bit by bit. She didn’t know who Gerard was, who my mother and father were. She only knew me, and that seemed to be all that mattered on this bus.

When she looked at me, she didn’t see pedophilia. She didn’t see a rape victim. She didn’t even see a teenager anymore, or a child or even an adult. She saw what she wanted to see, and the image I portrayed. She saw her husband from years ago, when they had first gotten married. She didn’t see the negative; she saw the positive in her mind, and she pretended. She pretended because that was what she was good at.

I wasn’t good at pretending, but I was learning. I could pretend that the past twenty-four hours never happened, and I could let his women into my tough exterior, and tell her what my hobby was.

“I like to paint,” I started to speak, slowly, carefully constructing what I wanted to say. I didn’t know how much I would tell this women – essentially, this stranger – about my life, but I was going to start with a large part of it. “I also play the guitar.”

She nodded at me diligently, waiting for me to continue. It was my turn to ramble now.

I never went into too much detail, I just told her a lot about one area. I told her I had an art teacher, and that he had been teaching me to paint for the past little while. I avoided talking about Gerard directly as much as I could and focused on the real art. As I talked, I began to realize I didn’t have as much to say as I thought I would. I ran dry with art terms and purposes and pieces I had painted, and instead of filling the bus with awkward silence, I decided to move onto guitar. Even there, I found it was a struggle to just keep rambling about it. It saddened me, especially as I started to realize that Vivian was right. These two things were not my passion. I could barely hold a conversation about them, and I didn’t love them with every once of my being to keep rambling without rhyme or reason.

She didn’t seem to notice as my voice slowed with comprehension. “It all sounds very creative. I like that.” She gave me another smile, but I was unsure how to proceed.

“Yeah, thanks,” I finally uttered, rubbing my hands over my jeans awkwardly. They were wet still, and they had begin to feel sticky and itchy. I bumped over a lump in my jeans pocket, realizing that I had brought my CD player and never used it. I had thought there would have been a lot of waiting today, and though there was, I had passed the time quite easily without the aid of white noise. I realized I needed batteries though, especially if I was still going to be stuck in my house. I got up briefly to ring the buzzer that I wanted the next stop, watching the old woman’s face fall as I sat back down.

“So soon?”

“Yeah,” I said shrugging my shoulders.

For the first time since we had met, we were silent. There was a melancholy feel to the air around us that wasn’t just a manifestation of the rain. It was as if we both knew that this was probably the last time we would ever see each other. I could start taking the bus more, and I would probably be able to spot her from a mile away in that rain coat, but it didn’t always rain. And there were hundreds of buses in this town; there was no guarantee that I would meet with her again. I almost didn’t want to per se, to not be disappointed with a second meeting and find out that we had nothing to talk about. What we had in this moment was good, solid, and pure. I would remember this for what it was, and that seemed okay with me.

There was just one thing still missing.

“Hey,” I stated suddenly, just before my stop. “I don’t even know you’re name.”

“I don’t know yours, either,” she fired back without missing a beat. We laughed for a moment, before she responded. “Elisabeth. With an s instead of a z. Old-fashioned and British. Can’t get much more pretentious than that.”

“Frank,” I smiled, finding it endearing that she needed to spell out her name for me, even though I may never see her again. She held out her hand for me to shake it, and I took it in my own, shaking solidly. It surprised at how cold her skin felt, and how it was balanced out by the soft quality of the wrinkles possessed.

“Nice to meet you, Frank,” she greeted, though this was our departure. She paused for a second, her eyes darting around, debating if she wanted to say her next part. “I’m glad you could let me into your tough exterior.”