“Now, I am in charge.”
“In charge of what?” said Tommy.
Addison began to answer that, but in the mirror he saw Tommy’s reflection grinning and said, “After eighteen years I finally realize you’re not even a fourth as stupid as you pretend to be, Dwyer.”
“I’m smart enough to know I better be on time to pick up Jill. I’m going to start the engine up. You want a ride to your first day of work, Addison?”
“Yeah. Give me five minutes.”
“Will do,” Tommy headed out of his room and Addison assessed himself in his white trousers, Oxford blue shirt and his newer, shorter, dark hair. He and Mason had cut it together.
“How white do I look now?” he turned to Mason.
“You look upwardly white.”
Addison grinned. “What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s like… here’s my philosophy. All the white people I know are trying to be white, trying to fit this perfect model of whiteness. And before you were grungy, with the hair and the baggy clothes and shit and you’ve still got a few rough edges. You haven’t grown into your khakis and sensible shoes enough. You’re getting white. But you’re not there yet.”
“Is that a good thing?”
Mason took out a cigarette, got off of Tommy’s bed and said, “I don’t know.”
“Is it right to be the manager of your grocery store?”
“It’s my store, the old manager’s gone. I put you in. I say it’s right. Plus, I looked at the other possible people. They’re morons and you only get this for the summer and then you’ll be gone. It’s just to get you money, and you were working at the gas station for three years. The official word is that you were in management at another Darrow’s. People just assume it was Darrow’s grocery store.”
“This is… different. Mason, do you think I can handle it?”
“You better handle it,” Mason told him. “Or I’ll fire you.”
Addison grinned and then said, “Can I tell you a secret?”
“You’ve been dying to go down on me since we were thirteen?”
“Man, that’s no secret,” Addison reached for Mason’s; mouth and took a drag off of his cigarette.
“Then your secret?”
“I wanna quit Bonnie,” Addison said. “I wanna be free so bad, and I don’t know how to get free.”
Mason frowned, wondering what to say. Finally he settled on:
“Shit, Addison.”
“The thing I hate about Walgreens—or at least this Walgreens—is how I can never find anything. Like candles. Just simple tea candles Mom sent us out for,” Balliol was complaining.
“And here’s the crap,” Mason said. “Didn’t your mom say they would be in the candle section? But look, it’s like three candle sections and—holy fuck, what is this?”
Balliol passed the little strip of lights to Mason who said, “Endless tea lights. Just plug ‘em in They’re like the real thing.”
“They’re like tacky is what they are,” Balliol murmured not even bothering to hang them on their rack, just laying them down on the shelf in from of the “Candle warmers?”
“What’s that jazz all about?”
Balliol read to Mason, “Essentially, from what I’m reading they warm the candle so that you don’t actually have to burn it to make it smell—that is, if it’s a scented candle.”
“Well, now that’s just silly,” Mason said. “I mean if you’re going to burn a candle—”
“Fucking burn a candle!”
“Exactly.”
“I was just thinking, my eighteenth birthday’s tomorrow, then I’ll formally be rich. We don’t have to go to Walgreens. Don’t they have like... a rich people’s drug store?”
“You mean with rich people aspirin and all of that?”
“Yeah.”
“No,” Balliol told him. “Rich people just have poor servants who go to the poor people stores so they don’t have to.”
“Except if they’re your mom. Then they have you.”
“Exactly. Ah, tea lights. Grab five bags, will you Mason? Ah—” Balliol’s voice broke off.
“What?” Mason said picking up the bags and pushing them into Balliol’s chest.
“The sign over the next aisle.”
Mason read, “Feminine hygiene, blah blah blah, family hosiery. What the hell is family hosiery?.”
“See, I think it’s family, comma hosiery. They didn’t know what to do with it.”
“The family section?”
“Short for family planning. Which is funny if you think about it,” Bailey considered as they headed up the candle aisle toward the check out lane. “Because if there was any truth in this world it would be called the family unplanning section or the not-family planning section.”
“Or better yet,” said Mason as he put the lights on the conveyer belt and snatched up a Star and two candy bars, “the, ‘Ey, yung uns, we keep the rubbers over here, section.’”
At the look on the cashier’s face, Balliol burst out laughing and he turned to the unfazed Mason and said, in his best impersonation of sobriety: “Ah, yes. But that would be too long of a sentence to get on the one little board.”
“Walgreens, Kroger for apple juice. Stop and get incense for that exorcism I’m performing tonight.”
“Of course. Everyone needs a good exorcism.”
“Followed by a little cat sacrifice.”
“Beat’s Cat Fancy.”
“Yeah, I know,” Mason continued in a light voice. “Devil worship over cat mags any day!”
“Amen! And Jared gets in when?”
“Jared comes tomorrow night.”
“So you guys really are going to be friends.”
“I think so,” Mason said. “I really love meeting new people. But, Jared’s different. Jared knows exactly what I’m talking about when I’m talking about art. Imagine. I met my first college friend before I even started college.”
“So you’ve already thought about going to Genoa.”
“Oh, I’m going. I like it,” Mason said. “I thought you’d decided too.”
Balliol shrugged and said, “You know what? I might as well. I just wish we could all live together. I don’t know, maybe I’m spoiled, but I don’t like the idea of a dorm.”
“Well hold on,” Mason gripped his hand, excited, as they walked through the strip mall on Monclova. “I was thinking…. Jared showed me this house, not far from his. It’s a rental. It’s in some rough shape, though. And… I think we could go down and look at it and then even… think of us all living there. I mean, it’s a nice sized house. You me, Tommy, Matt, and Sully could all easily live there.”
“Rent a house?” Balliol said. “Have our own house. That’s so… TV.”
“I know,” Mason said. “At least let’s—”
But Balliol’s mind had drifted and he was watching something else. Mason watched too. It was a common sight, a man out of sorts and out of funds asking another man, a well heeled man for money.
“I hate that,” Balliol said baldly.
“Poor people? Rich people? What?” Mason said.
Balliol looked at him incredulously. “I hate seeing Black people begging white people. I hate that. It looks horrible. I can quote this whole conversation. Listen to it and listen to me whispering in your ear and tell me if I’m not telling you the same story.
“‘I got six kids and I can’t find any work. Just the little that you can spare. Just some pennies.’ And then this very well heeled, very well off white man will say, ‘Well, I don’t know what I have. I’m going to go into the store and when I come back I’ll see how much change I have?’ Am I right?”
Mason turned to Balliol: “He had four kids.”
But as the white man was going into the store, Balliol said, loudly, “Enough.”
Mason reached out to stop him. Both men looked at Lincoln Balliol approaching. Neither knew what to make of him. He was so together, so in charge, striding forward.
He reached into his back pocket. Mason was following him/ He pulled out a fifty, put it in the Black man’s hand and said, “The Work One Center is on Madison Street near downtown. Catch the Number Thirteen it’ll take you there. Stop embarrassing yourself,” he said, as he turned away and muttered, “Stop embarrassing us.”
“You’re going out with a chick?” Sully said.
“I’ve gone out with her a few times,” Chris said.
“Really. Since we broke up?”
“Since you broke up with me.”
Sully stood up and shook his head.
“No. Oh, no.”
“Oh, no what? You did break up with me, Sully.”
“No,” Sully said. “I perceived that you wished to break up with me. That’s what happened. And you did and I ask you, how much time passed between us deciding to just be friends and you… Going out with this girl?”
“Are you the Spanish Inquisition?’
“No. I’m the Irish Inquisition. Now how long?”
“I don’t know… About two days.”
Sully opened his mouth and then closed it. He truly looked caught up short. He wanted to say something and Chris knew it.
“Say it. Whatever it is, say it.”
“Did you fuck her?”
“What?”
“Did you fuck her?”
Chris looked at Sully awhile and then he said, “We… I… I stayed some of the night. I didn’t stay the whole night.”
“Is that a euphemism for you fucked her?”
“I don’t like that word, Sully. And you used to not like it either.”
“Ah, Chris…” Sully gave his ex a slightly cruel smile and murmured. “Sometimes it’s just the right word. Sometimes it says everything. Did you fuck—”
“Sully stop!”
“Well, then… did you have sexual intercourse with her?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t even know her,” Sully sounded prudish to himself. He felt a little hypocritical. But more than that, surprisingly angry.
“I knew her from last year. We had something then.”
“Had something. Does that mean—”
“A few times,” Chris said. “Yes. Last summer. I wanted to see… What I was. If I was straight or—”
“You mean you did it as an experiment.”
“I liked her,” Chris said.
“But you did it to see if—”
“I had to know.”
“And do you know? How do you feel? Straight… or” Sully raised an eyebrow. “Crooked?
Chris frowned, and then said: “I feel straight. For now.”
Sully laughed.
“The guy who made me gay is straight. Fuck. Fuck! Tell me something, Chris, when was the first time you…I’ll play along, had relations with this girl?”
“Why does it matter?”
“I wanna know.”
“Fine,” Chris said defiantly. “Graduation night. The night I graduated high school.”
“You mean the night you came to my door and asked for me again.”
“Yes?”
“Before or after?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes.”
“Before,” Chris said. “It just sort of happened.”
“Oh, God!” Sully banged on the table, smiling nastily. “I don’t even want to know where or how it sort of happened—”
“Hey, fuck off, Sully!” Chris was snapping now. “I never asked you where or how you ended up getting blown by Justin Reily! You were probably getting sucked off by him the same time I was with Christine.”
“She has a name,” Sully said.
“Yes.”
“And was that supposed to hurt me? What you just said?”
“No,” Chris said. “Well, yes… Maybe. But… Don’t expect me to be higher and loftier than you. Like, I know you Sully. Did you screw some dude when you went up to Genoa?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I know you. I know I’ve been with Christine a few times and I’d be surprised if you hadn’t been with somebody. You’re a good looking guy and—”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Sully waved it off. “I feel fucking numb and sick and I’ve been feeling like that a few days now. But right now I really feel it.”
Chris was quiet awhile and then he said, “Do you need me to leave?”
Sully wasn’t looking at him. He was looking out the curtains over the kitchen sink onto the next yard.
“Yeah,” he told Chris, “I think I do.”
“I need you to stop doing that,” Sully said, sitting up in bed and pulling his feet under him.
Jared was stretched out on the bed and recovering from sex. He blinked up at Sully and said, “Doing what?”
“Calling me Mason.”
“I—”
“What is with you two?” Sully thought of reaching for his underwear, of covering up but chose not to, he only pulled the sheet up around him a little more.
“Do I call you Mason?”
“You know you do. You did the first time. Does he know you’re here?”
“In town?” Jared Parker’s smile was disingenuous.
“No,” Sully said. “In here. With me?”
“Sully, that’s got nothing to do with him,” Jared’s voice was a little sharp.
“I mean, when you come to Cartimandua to hang out with Mason you start your visits by fucking me and that’s how they end. And—”
“I don’t recall you ever saying you had a problem with that,” Jared told him.
“And—”
“And, Sully,” Jared said in a voice that was silencing, that sounded very old and mature, “I’m not sure what it has to do with you, Sully? My relationship with Mason. I don’t think if Mason knew about us he would ask.”
“But he doesn’t know about us.”
“Why would he?”
Sully clutched is hair suddenly, and let out a frustrated noise.
“I’m getting dressed.”
He climbed out of bed.
Sully was putting on clothes. In the bed Jared was lying down larger, nude, covered in black hair. Sully said, “You can get dressed too.”
Jared shrugged and climbed out of bed. Sully turned to look at him in longing for just a second, the longing quelled by the knowledge that Jared might fuck him, but Jared didn’t really feel a great deal for him. And—Sully reminded himself—he had seduced Jared in the first place.
“When you’re with me,” Sully murmured, not looking at Jared, looking at this wall with the light of the window beside him reflecting the shimmering patterns of the leaves, “Are you pretending I’m Mason?”
“That’s not a very nice question, Sully.”
“How come it isn’t? It’s a legitimate question, right?”
“It’s not a very nice question because you and I both know the answer’s not what you want.”
“You’re thinking about him?”
“Yes.”
Sully turned around looking a little shocked. A little disgusted.
“I—am white. I am almost six feet tall.. I am thin. I am blond, how the fuck can you think of Mason Darrow when you’re with me?”
Jared was dressed now. He was smoothing his tee shirt over his stomach.
“It’s more like… he’s sort pure, Sully. I love being around him. But there are these things in me that… aren’t so pure. Those feelings that come up and—”
“You’re saying I’m like your exorcism?”
Jared looked at him strangely and Sully said, “An exorcism is when-”
“I know what an exorcism is, Sullivan.”
Sully blinked. For that moment Jared seemed very angry. Very cruel.
“I know what it is,” he repeated. “I just think it’s a very cruel way to view our relationship.”
Cruel is the only way you can view this relationship.
Privately Sully wondered what the fuck he’d gotten himself into… Again.
Swain MacDonald barged into her boyfriend’s room and asked him, “What the hell are you doing, Mason?”
Mason put down the long incense stick and explained to her, “A Zuni cleansing ritual. For when Jared gets here”
“Oh,” Swain said, and the voice she used meant she accepted it.
“Does he have bad chi or something?”
“No,” Mason told her in a measured tone. “But everyone could use better chi.”
Mason walked up to her, kissed her and said, “Something’s on your mind. The way you stormed in here… Light of my life.”
“Don’t say that it makes us sound all old and married.”
“You don’t like sounding all old and married?”
“I like sounding young and sexy, but… that’s not my point.”
Mason raised his eyebrow.
“You have to… put this out of your mind,” she told him. “Because I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone and she hasn’t told anyone.”
Mason just cocked his head.
“I mean, Mason. It’s terrible. Well, it’s not terrible. Really, it’s beautiful, but I wouldn’t want the shit to happen to me. I wouldn’t want it to happen to anyone. But still… glorious.”
“Are we talking about the Virgin Birth again?”
“Mason, don’t joke. And, no, you’re not far off.”
“The Virgin Mary’s in town!”
“Look, Mason—”
Mason covered up his mouth and began to laugh.
“Virgin has nothing to do with it,” Swain told him.
“I’ve been talking to Bonnie.”
“Bonnie Metzger.”
“Do we know any other Bonnies? And she… Miss, ‘I know my body so well I’m so natural. I… this that and the other…’”
While Swain went on, Mason’s brow knit and he touched his girlfriend’s shoulder.
“Please don’t tell me Addison got her pregnant?”
Swain stopped and said, “Well, fine, Mason. I won’t tell you. I won’t tell you anything.”
And then she added.
“And you have to promise me that you won’t tell him.”
Where’s Jared?” Swain said.
“Who’s Jared?” asked Savannah.
“Mason, who everybody loves,” Keisha filled Savannah in before her son could speak, “has managed to make friends before the year even begins. With another artist. Jared… Parker is his name?” she turned back to Mason.
“You don’t forget anything, do you?”
“Not much,” Keisha smiled.
There was that look again on Balliol’s face. It was brief it didn’t last long. Mason remembered when they’d been leaving campus, everyone parting ways. Jared was there. He’d said goodbye to everyone and he’d shaken Balliol’s hand. Balliol had that same look on his face. Jared commented on it to Mason later, over the phone. It wasn’t.. disgust. Not exactly. Jared spoke to him.
“Balliol doesn’t dislike gay people, does he?”
“That’s impossible. He and Sully are best friends.”
Mason returned to the conversation at hand.
“Well, I figure we can all have a party or something,” Keisha said. “Since Dan’s back in town. Since he’s been back.”
“Mason can help cater,” Dan said, and Mason replied, “No he can’t.”
He lifted up Swain’s hand. “We’re going up… or down…”
“Out actually,” she amended
“Out,” Mason agreed, “to Genoa.”
“So you’re going? To Genoa?” Sidney said..
“Yes.”
“Your son tells me nothing,” Sidney said to his wife.
She shrugged and muttered, “First I heard.”
“I just figured you already knew,” Mason told him.
“And now you’re going too, Swain?” Alex said.
“No. No. I’ve got senior year, Alex. But I’m gonna look.”
“Oh, then you can go next year!” Keisha said. “Me and Sidney went to school together. The best thing you can do is go off with your boyfriend.”
“I agree,” Savannah remarked. “It’s keeps you from being a ho.”
They all looked at her.
“It does,” Savannah said. “Come on now, yawl. Ain’t you heard of the Thanksgiving Breakup.”
When no one answered, with a look of apparent glee, Savannah continued, “That’s when you have this great boyfriend—or girlfriend—from high school days. The one you think you’ll love forever. And then you go off to school. Right? You’re in this completely new setting, right? Right. And you meet someone new. Then—if you’re a little bit of a ho, you think, maybe that relationship back home isn’t real. But this new guy’s dick is.”
In another household, with other elders and parents, someone would have said, “Savannah!” but here everyone just laughed and Sidney, looked across at Dan and they both rolled their eyes.
“And so you do something you shouldn’t, come back home at Thanksgiving and tell your old flame how you’ve found someone new.”
Alex was looking at her askance, but he still supported her saying, “There has been a survey that documents how the most breakups occur around Thanksgiving from people going off to school and finding someone new.”
“So,” Keisha took up the theme, “Swain needs to graduate real soon and then the two of you need to go off to school together.”
“We’re going to look at this house,” Mason said. “It may be a rental. I can’t remember, but we were all thinking about living in it.”
“And next year Swain would live with you?” Sidney said darkly.
“Sidney,” Keisha told him. “We’ll be forty-five minutes away. It doesn’t matter where Swain lives, the two of them could do whatever they felt like.”
“But we won’t,” said Swain, a little alarmed that she had become the subject of discussion. “I mean... We will do what we feel like. But what we feel like right now is not… ”
“Sex,” Savannah said frankly.
They did all look at her now.
“Oh, come on yawl, say it with me,” she urged. “Everyone at this table—” And then she coughed and excused Mason and Swain, “Nearly everyone at this table has had it.”
Dan was shaking his head and Savannah said, “What?”
“Remember when I was the crazy one and you were—”
“I was never not crazy,” Savannah said, offended that anyone would attempt to call her sane.
“But you weren’t crazy like you are now.”
“I can’t imagine that,” Adam said, touching her hand. “Savannah… not crazy.”
“Not not crazy,” Dan corrected raising a finger, “just not as crazy.”
“This house you all are looking at,” Keisha said. “What’s it like?”
“I don’t know, Ma, sort of like… shortbread striped, kind of lodgy, has a slightly raggedy front porch. If it’s a rental, then—”
There was a knock at the door and no one, because everyone was used to anyone of consequence simply barging into the house without permission, answered. Then Mason remembered Jared wouldn’t know this rule, and got up to answer the door.
They embraced quickly, laughing, happy to see each other, Jared saying. “I didn’t meant to be so late. I got entangled in other stuff and then looked up and realized how much time I’d lost.”
Mason closed the door saying, “You didn’t miss anything,” and led him into the kitchen.
“Everyone, this is Jared. Jared, everyone. You already know Balliol. This is Swain,” he reached out and touched her hand.
“The marvelous Swain MacDonald,” Jared kissed her hand giving her an ironic smile. “I have heard so much about you.”
Swain caressed her hand where Jared had kissed it and said, “Too bad you’re gay.”
Jared was caught off by that and coughed up a laugh while Mason remarked above the laughter around the table: “Aside from her beauty the thing about Swain is that you’ll never be bored.”
“Or comfortable,” Balliol added, ducking as his cousin reached out to swat him on the back of the head.
Mason introduced Jared to everyone who, having been shown off, asked to be shown to the restroom was.
“It’s right down the hall,” Sidney told him. “It’ll be the room with the toilet and the bathtub.”
Jared grinned, gave Sidney a thumbs up and Mason said, “I’ll take your bag to my room.”
“Well, Jared’ll remember if it’s a rental or what,” Balliol said as they were headed down the hall.
Mason and Jared came back a few moments later and that’s when Sidney asked Jared about the house.
“It’s not a rental,” Jared told him, coming down the hall, and taking his seat back at the table. “It’s for sale.”
“Oh,” Mason sounded deflated.
“Well, hold on,” Balliol interrupted, putting up a finger. “Do we know how much this house cost?”
“Is it nice?” Keisha asked him.
“Frankly,” Balliol reported, “it needs work. We haven’t seen the inside, but it needs work. Mason’s looking at it dreamily—Mason style. I’m looking at it as it really is.”
“I don’t know, Jared said, shrugging. “A little expensive once upon a time. But now it’s so dilapidated.”
“I mean, I could just buy it,” Balliol said.
Mason looked at him.
“You could too.”
Mason stammered, and then said, “That’s so… ostentatious. That’s what rich people do.”
“Yes, Mason,” Balliol said. And the way he said it made Keisha and Sidney laughed.
“But we don’t…” Mason began. “We ride the bus. We go to Osco. We don’t… run around buying fancy cars and houses just to buy them—”
“But we’re not doing it just to do it,” Balliol said. “We’re doing it because we want that house, and we can’t rent it and there’s no point putting on a poor face. And incidentally, we’re not doing it. I’m doing it. I have to check with Mom first. I’m still not in my majority yet. I get a good allowance, but I don’t know that I can just write a check for a house.”
“Well,” Mason thought for a second. He was forgetting, he always forgot that he owned that supermarket down the street. He remembered it whenever he looked into his bank account. “I think I could…”
“I think we were talking about getting you a car,” Sidney said. “And you didn’t want that, and we were trying to send you off with so much, right? And you don’t want most of it, and I think your grandparents never gave you what they wanted for your birthday.”
“I know I didn’t,” Savannah said.
He looked at them.
“What we’re saying,” Keisha told him, “is don’t touch that money from the store for now. In fact I think your father and I would both like you to leave it alone.”
“Grocery stores are sacred places,” Dan remarked. “A grocery store was the first place I learned that I was Black… But not really.”
“I think we can go half and half on this,” Sidney told Balliol. “Then you and Mason would be able to buy that house. How’s that sound?”
“We need to see it first,” Balliol said steadily. “Really get a look at it. But… yes.”
Jared watched the whole transaction in amazement.
“It must be nice to have money.”
Sidney looked at him and said, “It’s nice to have enough money.”