Boy Crucified (10 page)

That evening, I sat alone at my kitchen table, eating a TV dinner, thinking about Daniel Qo. It had been a long time since I’d been with a man. Really been with a man, not just a quick one-off at the bathhouse, but at home, in bed, with someone real.

I thought about Billy sitting opposite me at this very same table. His smile. His laughter. His thing about nudity—he was an exhibitionist. He would come down to the table in the morning completely nude. How could I complain? I loved his body. I loved his soul too. I loved everything about him. Never before had I experienced such pleasure in the company of another.

I missed that. Missed him. Missed what it was like.

That morning, watching Daniel eat breakfast, watching the flash of his white teeth, the brownness of his skin, his slender waist—it had all come rushing back to me. The kitchen had been alive, for those thirty, forty minutes. I had forgotten Billy, forgotten everything else. For the first time in years, I had felt alive, filled with energy and life and happiness.

Now the house was still, silent like a tomb.

I could easily picture Daniel sitting across the table. Sitting there each and every morning from now on. Sitting there, bare-chested, wonderfully brown, flashing those pearly whites. What would his cock taste like? It would be heavenly, of course.

I don’t fall in love easily or often, but when I do, it’s complete and sudden and unrelenting. After last night, I was in love with Daniel Qo.

My dick got hard just thinking about it. Thinking about him.

What would it be like to love someone again? To have someone hanging around, filling up the empty spaces, the empty silences of my life? I had just begun to think it would never happen again, and now….

CHAPTER THREE
And then there were two

I

I
WOKE
at just after four in the morning to the ringing of the doorbell.

I sat up in bed and wiped at my eyes, confused.

What the hell?

The doorbell rang again, insistent.

I threw on a bathrobe, grabbed my service revolver, and hurried downstairs. The house was dark, full of shadows. I did not turn on any lights.

On the other side of my front door stood my mother, her stringy hair flat on her forehead, an angry but anxious look on her face.

“Tommy!” she exclaimed, catching sight of me. “Open the goddamned door!”

She hit the buzzer again, for good measure, as if to make sure I was really awake.

They had obviously not found a placement for her and had released her, so now we were back to this. She would still be in jail if I had pressed charges, but I could not bring myself to do it.

“Tommy, please,” she said, more gently, squinting through the glass of the front door at me. “Where am I supposed to go, huh? You tell me that!”

Where
was
she supposed to go? That was always the problem. I had a million and one reasons to ignore her and go right back up the stairs, but instead I unlocked the door and let her in.

She walked over the threshold, somewhat sheepishly, as if surprised by her good luck.

“Look, it ain’t gonna be like last time,” she said straight off. “I’m gonna get things together now, Tommy. You’ll see. Just help me out a bit, huh?”

“Sure,” I said softly.

She gave me an anguished look, all sorts of emotions sliding quickly across her face.

“I’ve missed you,” she said, and the sentiment seemed genuine. “You never visited. I was worried about you.”

I said nothing. I was waiting—stupidly, I knew—for an apology. In all likelihood, she had already forgotten that she had stabbed me with one of her needles.

“Oh, don’t be like this!” she snapped. “For Christ’s sake, I’m your mother, not some goddamned stranger!”

I continued to say nothing and my stomach tightened up into a painful knot, a slew of thoughts and memories going through my head.

“It’s no bother?” she asked, giving me a wounded look.

“It’s no bother,” I said. “Why don’t you take a shower, and I’ll get you settled on the couch?”

“It ain’t gonna be like last time,” she said again, removing her coat. “You’re all I got, Tommy. Give an old woman a break, huh? Why don’t you give me a kiss?”

I did not want to give her a kiss, made no move to do so.

“Okay, fine,” she said, pursing her lips together angrily. “I’m suppose you’re still mad about that.”

I certainly was. Neither of us needed to specify what
that
was.

“It’s not like you weren’t enjoying yourself!” she snapped.

“Mom, don’t even start.”

She pursed her lips together again. “You ain’t never gonna forgive me, are you?”

“It’s not likely,” I said. “Are you taking your meds?”

“You think I got money for meds?”

“If you’re going to stay with me, you’ve got to take them.”

“I can’t afford them.”

“I’ll buy them for you.”

“You do that,” she said, throwing her coat on the chair where Daniel had left his clothes the other night. The sight wasn’t nearly as comforting.

I watched her walk into my house and gritted my teeth.

II

I
COULD
not go back to sleep, so I dressed and went into the kitchen to make a pot of coffee. I suddenly felt very unwell, and I remembered that feeling from my childhood. It was the feeling of walking on eggshells, of waiting for things to explode, of waiting for fists to fly or curse words to be hurled or some sort of cruelty to come out of nowhere and fall on my head. With my mother, it wasn’t a question of whether these things would happen or not. It was a question of when. The meds kept the worst of it in check, from what I understood. She had not been diagnosed until I was fourteen and taken away from her—she had been arrested for breaking my arm and three of my fingers with a frying pan, not to mention fracturing my jaw and knocking out two of my bottom teeth—so I did not have much experience with her while she was on her medications. Still, from visits here and there, I gathered that the medications kept her calm and less volatile.

I sat down at the kitchen table, letting a cup of coffee warm my hands.

The bathroom door opened, and my mother appeared, completely nude, striding into the kitchen while wiping at her hair with a towel.

“Mom, do you have to?”

“Oh, like you ain’t never seen my tits before,” she said.

That was certainly true.

I fetched a bathrobe and made her put it on.

“Do you have a prescription for your meds?” I asked.

“Somewhere,” she said, waving her hand in the air, as if it could hardly matter less.

“Why don’t you find it and I’ll have it filled?”

“I just sat down!”

“Find it,” I repeated.

Rolling her eyes again, she pursed her lips and stood up, in the way that said she was humoring me, was allowing me to boss her around. She dug through her ragged brown backpack, eventually produced the necessary slip of paper, and handed it to me without comment.

I called it in to an all-night pharmacy that made deliveries.

“You happy now?” she asked when I sat down.

“I’ll be happy when I see you taking your meds.”

“Ain’t you got anything to eat in this dump?”

“Help yourself,” I said, nodding at the fridge.

She got up and did just that, making herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and pouring a large glass of milk.

“Where’s that little faggy friend of yours?” she asked. “I forgot his name.”

“Billy?”

“Yeah. He dump your ass or what?”

“He died.”

“Oh.”

If this information disturbed her, she did not show it. Instead, she all but swallowed the sandwich and gulped down the milk, as if she hadn’t eaten for a while. She probably hadn’t.

I did not know what to say to her, how to make conversation. I was surprised by the feelings of intense dislike that sprang up within me. Dislike and not a little bit of hatred. Everything about her disgusted me: the way she looked, the way she talked, the way she ate, the way she ridiculed everything that was important to me, sometimes with little more than a sneer or a curl of the lips. I did not see how it was possible that this woman was my mother.

“Look, it ain’t gonna be like last time,” she said again, after taking a huge gulp of milk and wiping at her lips like a child. “It’ll be different now. You’ll see. I know I fucked up. I know that. Ain’t gotta rub my goddamned nose in it every chance you get. I got a condition, you know. It ain’t my fault if I’m seeing things that ain’t there.”

No, it wasn’t.

“So, look, Tommy, just give me a chance. Okay? Just fucking cut me a break here.”

“You’ve used more profanity in the last five minutes than this house has heard since the last time you were sent away,” I pointed out.

“Oh, forgive me, ‘Father Ascension’. It’s been twenty years since my last confession. I’ve been a naughty fucking girl. I’ve been sticking things in my cunt again.”

“Do you have to swear in my house?”

“Oh, who gives a shit?”

“I do,” I said.

“You always were a pious little prick,” she said, making a face and shaking her head back and forth.

“Tone it down a bit. That’s all. Most normal people know how to hold a conversation without constantly using foul language.”

“Yeah, well, who ever said I was normal?”

She had me there.

“Anyway, if you knew half of what my dad did to me, you’d probably wonder why I’m not crazier than I already am.”

If you knew what my dad did to me. If you knew what it was like. If you knew what he put me through. If you knew how many times he came to my room at night. If you knew how many times he beat me. If you knew what it was like when he was drunk. If you knew how my fucking mother sat back in silence and let it happen….

Whenever the subject got around to what she had done to me, off she went with the “If you knew” routine. I let this pass in silence. I did not want to be drawn into a pissing contest.

“That was the happiest day of my life,” she said, “when that old fucker wrapped his truck around a tree. You think I cried so much as one tear? Not a fucking chance.”

How many times had I heard that one before? How many years would go by before she would start singing a new song? Or would she sing this same tune for the rest of her life?

“You’re quiet,” she said, with uncharacteristic sensitivity.

I said nothing.

She shook her head back and forth. “You know, that’s the problem with you. You don’t say nothing. I got no fucking idea what’s going on in there. What, I gotta play games with you, try to read your mind since you can’t be bothered to talk to me?”

“I just don’t have much to say.”

“Fucking liar.”

“Would you stop cussing?”

“Well, you’re a fucking liar.”

“Well, maybe what I have to say isn’t very nice.”

“Well, say it anyway, you stupid faggot. You think I give a shit? You think words are going to hurt me or something? You think I ain’t been through worse? You think I don’t know how much you hate me, how much you blame me for your miserable childhood? You’re just like every other fucking spoiled little brat—give you the whole goddamned world and all you do is fucking whine about it. You think you’re actually going to say something new, something I ain’t fucking heard a million times already?”

I retreated into silence.

“You know what I think?” she demanded, aggressively. “I think it’s time you got over it.”

Again, there was no need to specify what
it
was.

“Get over it?” I repeated.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding her head. “Fucking get over it. You’re how goddamned old now? I mean, you’re not a fucking baby, so get over it.”

My gut tightened up.

“It doesn’t make any difference,” she said. “The past is the past. What are you going to do about it now? How long are you gonna whine about this? If you knew what my father did to me! Now, that was abuse.”

There we were again.

She had yet to take responsibility for anything she had done. It was part of her sickness: she did not understand the consequences of her actions.

Without comment, I turned around and headed up the stairs.

“Where you going?” she demanded, hurt in her voice.

“I’ve got to go to work.”

III

I
GOT
to the office early.

Despite the publicity for the “crucified kid,” no one had come forward to identify Earl Whitehead or suggest where he might now be found. A report sent to my inbox said tips had come in concerning sightings of Frankie, but none had panned out.

I took out the notes I had made the day before and looked through them, refreshing my mind on the business of traditional Catholicism and all its many groups and splinter groups. I cranked up the Internet and began searching for traditionalist groups in Missouri and was quickly surprised to see how many of them there were. In Kansas City alone, there were about a dozen addresses to check out. Statewide, there were numerous friaries, nunneries, schools, seminaries, monasteries, Mass centers, churches, and whatnot, with no immediate way of knowing whether Frankie Peters had been involved with any of them. If we had to look nationwide….

I did not want to think about that.

As the Reverend Mother Helena had told me the day before, these folks had a thing about the New Mass, some going so far as to describe it as a “sacrilege.” Other adjectives: perfidious, loathsome, diabolical, insane, deceitful, an affront to God, an insult to Jesus Christ, a joke, a bastard rite, a bastard sacrament, a mortal sin.

Since there was a time when I used to say this “New Mass,” I found these comments quite disturbing. Were there really thousands upon thousands of Catholics in the United States on the cusp of the twenty-first century who thought the mass in English was a joke, an insult to Almighty God?