On Archimedes Street (5 page)

“Yes,” Frenchy blurted. “It started in Boys’ Choir. I used to hate it. But I guess I don’t mind it now. Honestly, Maman…. Leo?” He pronounced it in the French way: Lay-o. “No one is named Leo anymore! What possessed you and Papa?”

Maman shrugged. “It’s a fine name. You will grow into it. But for now, I like ‘Frenchy.’ It’s sexy. Just like you.” She smiled at her son. “So—hate, hate. You hate Dutch. You hate M. Avelallemant.” She gave that piercing look Frenchy hated. “Tell me why.”

Frenchy didn’t answer directly. Instead he said, “Yes, I remember the skinny Dutch. He was
so
obnoxious in Boys’ Choir. Always goofing around and telling dirty jokes. He goosed me once during my solo. I was glad when his voice broke.” Paule Saint-Paix looked speculatively at her son. She could almost smell the frustrated hormones of recently reached sexual maturity.
Oh God
, she thought.
Was this “hated” Dutch the source of all this?
She ached for her son. Dutch fairly screamed “straight.”

Frenchy watched Dutch dismount and noticed, and not for the first time, that his childhood tormentor had a stunning span of shoulder and a muscular ass. “He has grown, hasn’t he, Maman? Where did he get all those muscles?”

“He bought them, I think”—Maman wriggled into a sleeveless raspberry woolen sheath, so sheer it looked like a T-shirt—“from a personal trainer named—Gigi? No—Mimi—no—Lily. Oh, I can’t remember! Say-Say Abbott was over the moon about this Gigi/Mimi/Lily and the miracles she could work. Have you noticed how Say-Say has slimmed down? I think that’s the trainer’s work too.”

“Too bad this Gigi/Mimi/Lily couldn’t give Mrs. Abbott’s closet a makeover too.” Say-Say Abbott freighted her face with foundation overlaid by pancake before appearing in public. And when she dressed up, she was a walking, talking, crystal-dripping chandelier.

“Wicked! Wicked boy! Say-Say Abbott is a saint, a blessing!” But nonetheless Maman snorted some unladylike giggles. Then she rooted around in a drawer and withdrew a tissue-paper bundle. It contained an odd, amorphous white thing that turned out to be a collar. She brought it up to the high circular neckline of the raspberry sheath and expertly fitted it around her neck. It looked like the flat white of a fried egg, but it was lopsided and came to an asymmetrical point, like the origin of a cartoon speech bubble. Frenchy drew his breath in in admiration. The dress was as simple and arresting as an exclamation point.

“Maman!”

“Yes. I know. Balenciaga. I bought it when your father and I were on our honeymoon, and it was already vintage then. It’s the first time I’ve worn it in ages. It’s soigné, isn’t it?” Frenchy nodded his agreement as his mother sat at her vanity. She deftly drew her dark-brown hair into a french twist and secured it with sapphire-studded hairpins.

“All this for M. Avelallemant?” he asked.

“He doesn’t have your eye, Leo. No—Frenchy. I like ‘Frenchy’ better each time I say it. He’ll just register that I look good. Men can’t put it together; they have no clue.” Paule Saint-Paix suddenly checked herself. She didn’t want to push her son into the disclosure of his homosexuality before he was ready. That remark had been uncharacteristically ham-fisted and she frowned, vexed at herself. “I dress to please myself—and you.” She winked at her son. “And M. Avelallemant? Surely he didn’t goose you during your solo….”

He smiled. “No. It’s just….” To Frenchy, M. Avelallemant looked like a handsome, money-hungry lizard.

“Yes.” Maman smiled back. “Just what?”

“Maybe he’s after your money, Maman.” As soon as he said it, he regretted it, looking at lovely Maman, thirty-nine and looking twenty-five.

“M. Avelallemant is very rich in his own right, Fren-
chie
.” She smirked at her son.

“As rich as us?”

“Frenchy, be serious.” Paule Saint-Paix readjusted the sapphire pins. “No one is as rich as us. At least not in this state, and several neighboring ones. Not even the Abbotts.” Frenchy frowned. Maman continued, “Do you think it will be different for you? A sweet, handsome boy like you? Your money will only be part of your charm. You can’t escape it, Frenchy.”

“Maybe M. Avelallemant wants to be even richer,” said Frenchy.

Paule Saint-Paix looked evenly at her son. “I am the daughter of a minor Parisian bureaucrat and a small-time milliner. The very definition of petit bourgeois. Yet your father married me. Do you think I married him for his money?”

Frenchy pictured handsome, golden Papa, and his beautiful golden body.

“N-No….” He was ashamed.

Paule Saint-Paix chose her words carefully. “You will find a person”—she chose the word over “girl”—“who will light you up from inside. You will know. And then nothing else will matter.”

The stupid, trite, and obviously untrue things parents always said.

“Tell me about your new friend.” On Thursday, on an impulse, Paule had ordered the chauffeur to drive her to Leo’s public school just as classes were dismissed. She had meant to take Leo out to Galantine’s for an early dinner. He emerged, and a handsome monkey clung to her son. She saw the freckled hand slung so carelessly and affectionately around her son’s shoulder. She told the chauffeur, “I’ve changed my mind, John. I want to go shopping.”
It was a predatory hand
, Paule thought,
and, if given the chance, it would soon encircle her son’s frustrated cock. So much better
, she now reflected,
than impossible dreams of Dutch Abbott
.

“Dominic? He’s the best!”

“I approve of this Dominic. I liked his looks. Spend some time with him.”

Maman went to her cavernous dressing room to choose her shoes. Frenchy saw the perfectly matched raspberry heels. But he knew she wouldn’t choose those. Instead, she fingered a pair of medium-heeled aquamarine shoes, a shade lighter than the sapphires in her hair clips. “These?”

“Yes,” said Frenchy.

And then she put sapphire studs in her ears and a square-cut but unostentatious ruby ring. They then performed their ritual.

“Which goes away?” asked Maman.

Whenever Maman dressed up, she asked her son to tell her what to remove. “Get dressed perfectly,” she’d say, “as if nothing could be added or removed—and then remove one thing. Less
is
more. Well, at least for the rich.”

Maman always made it difficult. Had she put on a sapphire bracelet, the choice would have been easy. But there was no bracelet to remove. Now the choice was between the sapphire ear studs and the ruby ring. The theme was red and blue, Frenchy now saw, and he wavered between the sapphire studs and the square-cut ring. “The ring,” he finally said. Maman removed it and gave her son a light kiss.

“I love who you are,” she breathed in his ear.

F
RENCHY
DECIDED
that the move to a public school had been a good one. Maman had insisted, saying it was the best school in the city. But Frenchy didn’t care about that. He liked that he didn’t stand out. Everyone was different. There were blacks, Vietnamese, Jews, Hispanics, even a girl from Damascus. Everyone was brainy, and no one (yet) had called him a sissy or a fag. And, best of all, there was Dominic. Who lived on the West Bank. And to whose home he was headed, for the second visit.

Frenchy loved taking the Jackson Avenue ferry. As on the previous ferry crossing, he went to the frontmost rail, where he lost himself in memory while looking at the swirling Mississippi, seemingly so slow-moving. Frenchy had never met anyone as friendly, open, and goofy as Dominic. A natural boy, so adept at throwing balls and doing boy things. Imagine Dominic seeking out his friendship! Frenchy knew it wouldn’t last, but he would make the best of it for now. Maman approved, saying he should be more independent and he should seek out new friends, friends from various backgrounds. “It will broaden you, Leo.” And she definitely approved of his taking public transportation. “You don’t see enough of the real world.”

Frenchy tried to imagine kissing Dominic, as he had imagined kissing many boys before him, but he couldn’t. He wanted to be Dominic’s friend. No—the truth was he wanted to
be
Dominic, or at least as much like Dominic as he could be. Maybe what they said was true, that homosexuality was a stage, and maybe he was passing through that stage with Dominic’s help.

When had he known? He loved Maman, but Papa had fascinated him. He loved for Papa to cuddle him, and he loved to breathe in Papa’s tobacco and the smell of his skin. And he remembered his excitement at seeing Papa in the tub, his prick so fascinating and fringed in gold.

And then there was Tarzan. When had the Tarzan thing begun? When he was eight? Nine? His juvenile mind had made quick work of Jane, Frenchy remembered, leaving him, Boy, sole caretaker and protector. He had devised fantasies in which Tarzan would need Boy to touch him, feed and wash him, and generally tend to him. Such a helpless Tarzan naturally had to be wounded. His younger self had carefully considered the location of this wound. Frenchy had wanted Tarzan dependent, but not maimed or deprived of his great beauty. He had finally decided that a chest wound, covered by a nice clean piece of gauze, would be the least disfiguring. Frenchy smiled at his younger self.

Yes, a stage. He wanted to roughhouse Dominic, not kiss him. And he would become less of a sissy. Today, Dominic had promised, Dominic’s dad would play ball with them and show them the finer points of throwing a ball and fielding it. Maybe Frenchy could learn how not to throw like a girl. Happy, Frenchy got off the ferry and walked the three short blocks to Archimedes Street.

Chapter 4

R
ITA
,
OF
course, had been right. She was always right. Not only was “Abadie” a name, but it was a well-known name in Southern Louisiana, a gallicized version of Abadía and other variants, from the time Louisiana had been ruled by the Spanish. But in the event, Honoria need not have worried. She had relished the assigning of benchmates.

“I’m assigning benchmates alphabetically,” she told the milling students, without explanation. Several students moaned, having already hooked up with each other informally. Looking at the roster, she said, “Abbott….”

Both Flip and Dutch moved forward, and Flip looked at Dutch speculatively. Dutch in his turn regarded Flip in surmise.

“Abbott, Filiberto….”

“Yo,” said Flip.

“You’re with Abbott, Pieter.” Dutch beamed at Flip.

“Becker, you’re with Davis. Oh, and Abbotts, take that single bench at the back of the room. People can’t see over you two giants. Ebert, you’re with Francis. Guerrère, you’re….”

As Dutch and Flip moved to the back lab bench, Dutch squealed in a high whisper, “Filiberto?”

“Shut up,” said Flip. “It was someone who saved my uncle’s life, pulled him out of the water.”
Why couldn’t John or Dave or Keith or anyone besides Filiberto have come to the rescue?

“Filly-BEAR-toe,” sang Dutch, savoring the syllables sarcastically.

“I swear, Dutch, I’ll haul off and pop you one if you ever say it again.”

“All right, all right. So you and I and old lady Abbott are all in the same club, eh?” Dutch appraised Flip’s features. “You know, you have the Abbott schnoz, just like me.” The Abbott schnoz was straight and descended without interruption from the brow in the manner Greek sculptors approved. The Abbott eyes were light—blue-green and gray, in these incarnations—and the Abbott eyebrows were almost straight, with just the merest arch.

“Pizzalotta, you’re with….”

“Where are you bunking, Flip?”

“Not a good situation. Room on Soniat Street. Gotta go through the damn family room to get there, and soap operas blaring all the time. But it’s all I could get on short notice. I’m looking for a place of my own.”

“Shit! Me too,” Dutch invented on the spot. “Say-Say is driving me crazy. Let’s look together!”

“And Taylor, you’re with Zachary. Hee-hee-hee,” Honoria tittered to the mute incomprehension of the class.
They know less history every year
, she said to herself.

After the class had settled down, Honoria went into her opening spiel, practically memorized after so many years. “Understanding science,” she said, “is like getting to know a person you’ve just met and who might become a friend. You could learn a lot about that person by reading a résumé or an autobiographical essay, but you can never really
know
that person unless you make personal contact. And so it is with science: to understand it well, you must be intimate with it, and the setting for this intimacy is the laboratory. And just as you get to know someone through conversation, you converse with science by applying the steps of the scientific method: observation, hypothesis, data collection, data analysis….”

Flip took notes assiduously while Dutch fiddled with the knobs on the microscope. His hands, Flip noticed, were always in motion.
Could he have ADHD?

Honoria followed her initial spiel with explanations of proper lab cleanup procedure, the use of autoclave bags for tissue samples and other possibly dangerous substances, safety precautions everyone had to observe, and the location of supplies. Then she wrapped up the first class. “Next session, I expect you to have read all of Unit 1 and come prepared to define ‘anatomical position’ and name both the anterior and posterior body landmarks.”

Dutch harrumphed and chortled into his hand. “Dutch!” hissed Flip. “Cut it out!”

As the class disbanded, Honoria walked to the back of the room and greeted Dutch and Flip. “I expect great things from you two,” she said. “We have to burnish the honor of the Abbott name. Have we played the ‘Are We Related’ game yet? Actually, you two could pass for brothers.”

“Pretty sure not,” said Flip. “I’m from Ohio, and Dutch is from—”

“Right here,” said Dutch.

“So, you’re all settled in?”

“Actually, that would be no,” said Dutch. “We’re apartment hunting. We’re gonna be roomies. Isn’t that right, Flippie?”

“Flippie” seethed inwardly.