The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (9 page)

“No, yeah, I know what you mean. I like people-watching. Sometimes
I crave beauty, too. Some people—some girls are just so beautiful.”

“That’s it exactly,” he said. “I’m a beauty-craver. I need
to see it sometimes so I know the world’s going to be OK.”

It hurt when he said that because someone who would say
something so personal to a stranger, if he loved me, would’ve already told me
that too.

When the girls noticed us watching we got back on the brick
sidewalk that led to Tremont Street and to the dining hall.

“So do you like Shuster so far?” I said.

“It’s better.”

“Even with Professor Nicole and your gay roommates?”

He smiled. “Yeah, even.”

We sat at a two-person table in the dining hall by the
windows and had lunch; me a ham-and-cheese sub and he a grilled cheese with
bacon. We talked about our Lit class (turned out we got a B on that group
project) and his trip to Florida, and it was fun and easy. Even when the
conversation drifted toward his girlfriend—whose name was Ashley, who he
met at Roger Williams—it didn’t make me nervous. He still seemed like the
guy I’d made up in my mind. Maybe it was because somehow, against all odds, he
was exactly what I expected. Maybe it was because she was so far away.

“So do you want to do it?” he said, wiggling a fry through a
puddle of ketchup, officially broaching the topic. “Room next year?”

“You mean you’ve felt me out enough already?”

“I figure you won’t stab me in my sleep or anything,” he
said. A blob of ketchup dripped from his fry and plopped onto his sandwich.
“Murder is really my main concern. I can put up with pretty much anything
else.”

“Good. I promise not to bring any sharp objects. Although I
do have a bat.”

He grinned and raised his plastic glass half-full of ginger
ale. We toasted to our sophomore year.

Brian was standing on his bed when I got back to
the room. His stereo was playing one of the numbers from the spring musical. I
flung my backpack onto my bed and jumped onto his with him, my shoes still on.
I grabbed his hands and forced him to dance. His lyrics fluttered to the floor.

“What’s up with you?” he said, eyes wide with bewilderment
as I waltzed him across the bed. “Did you just get laid or something?”

“Does it look like I did?”

He looked at me closely and to break his stare I dipped him
so low his head touched his pillow.

“Well, you haven’t had this glow since that night you
sexiled me to hook up with that chick from Eight,” he said. He twirled on the
end of my finger. I liked that he was playing along. He really wasn’t a bad
guy.

I jumped off his bed, making a rockstar splits.

“That was almost as good,” I said. I handed him his lyrics.

“But not quite?”

“We’ll see.”

*

“In the movie version of our lives,” Griff said,
jabbing the poker into the coals and sending a flurry of sparks up the chimney,
“this would be the perfect place for a montage. We start hanging out, we become
fast friends. We go to movies, we crash the dining hall together, we sit on
benches in the Common and watch hot girls play tennis. We talk so much in class
that we’re told repeatedly by Nicole to be quiet and have some respect for the
people who actually want to learn something, boys. We’re only roomies-to-be,
but already after two weeks I consider you my best friend.” He said it
matter-of-factly but I looked up in surprise; I hadn’t known he felt that way
about me, at least not so soon. “And then one night...”

I took a deep breath. It was 4:18 in the morning and we’d
arrived at the hard part.

***

“So what do you want to do Friday night?” Griff
said. “Movies?” He was lying on my bed with the soles of his feet pressed
against the wall, bouncing a red super ball in the rectangle of eggshell paint
between two posters, catching it in my baseball mitt. It was evening.

“Sure,” I said from my desk, and clicked send on a response
to one of my father’s emails.

“Actually, before you log off—” He caught the red ball
a final time and swung his legs away from the wall. “Can I check my email real
quick?”

“Your— um...” His email? But there were secrets on my
computer; I never liked anyone to use it. I knew that if he sat at my desk and
used this, of all programs, my act was done. My heart seized. I was afraid to
say yes, but how could I say anything else? To him it was a harmless request.

He stood up, dropped the mitt on the bed. “Ashley was
supposed to let me know if she’s coming up.”

“OK.”

“Cool.”

I got up from my desk and he sat down in my place. I walked
over to my bed, sat down hard, put my elbows on my knees, leaned forward
waiting for everything to unravel. He would click the little dropdown button on
the screen name menu. He would see the other screen name in the user history.
Truman08.
He would see it and know. And
then what? Would he punch me? Break my jaw, my nose—blind me? Would he
not want to room together next year? Would he stop being my friend? It wasn’t
that I was bi, but that I had hit on him, that I had initiated our friendship
based on a lie.

A lie I could’ve kept up. Options popped into my head. I
could tell him some guy from our class had come to my room for homework
purposes, had checked his email. Truman08 was not me at all, but that guy.

My stomach churned with all the fear of discovery I’d ever
felt, all the close calls combined. My hands were shaking. I wanted to run to
the computer and yank out the power cord before he could click that little
button—the one that would unroll the secret I’d kept so carefully for so
long.

I closed my eyes.

“Who is this?” Griff said. I opened my eyes and found his
looking at me, the dark eyebrows above them scrunched.

I could lie, I could lie. It was that kid from class, the
one who is maybe a little gay. It wasn’t me at all, it was that kid.

I could lie.

“It’s me,” I said.

My vision blurred and I felt dizzy, nauseous. I got up from
the bed and walked over to the desk, steadying myself on the way with a hand on
my roommate’s bureau. I leaned close to the laptop screen, as though to make
sure, like a witness picking a criminal out of a line-up, and I said again, “It’s
me.”

For a long time I could hear every atom shivering in the
room. Griff’s brain must’ve been churning as hard as mine. It’s him, it’s him,
it’s him
, I was sure he must be
thinking. But when he finally looked up at me there was no hate in his eyes, no
shock or even confusion. Instead he asked if I wanted to go play pool.

“OK,” I said.

The T we took to the pool place in the Fenway was
crowded; it was especially awkward now being pressed against him, both our
hands fighting for space on the railing. I tried to act as straight as
possible, with an extra-steady voice and slow, confident movements, in hopes
that I could make him doubt what he’d learned.

We played pool for two hours without saying anything more
than which ball was going into which pocket. It was both reassuring and agony.
Maybe rage was bubbling inside him and would soon burst forth,
Hulk
-like, and blow me across the place.
The silence allowed for too much information to be sketched in with guesses and
assumptions. He knew I was Truman08, but how much else did he suspect? And how
much did he suspect incorrectly?

“I’m about done,” he said finally, dropping his cue into a
metal barrel. He offered to cover our game because my wallet was empty. “You
can pay me back later,” he said and pushed a few bills across the counter.

Later
was a
comforting word. There would be a later.

Close to midnight now, we were walking back to the
dorm from the Arlington Street T station. It was the end of March, and while the
temperature had been close to fifty during the day, the night was bitter cold.

I watched my breath, watched Griff walking a half step ahead
of me, his arms stiff, his hands in his pockets—and I wondered, after all
the silence, whether he’d really made the connection at all. Maybe he had never
even gotten the Truman email. Maybe he had deleted it without reading it,
thinking it was spam. Maybe he—

“Vince,” he said, turning to me, spinning from his hips without
taking his hands out of his pockets, “I think it’s best if we get everything
out in the open.”

I stopped short in the middle of the sidewalk. He continued
several steps before stopping and turning around. A woman passed by with a dog.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted. I didn’t know what else to say. My
voice felt heavy with the weight of the whole thing and with the years leading
up to it. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“It’s OK,” he said, not in a tone of forgiveness, but in one
that meant he didn’t think there was anything to forgive. “I didn’t know you
were gay. I mean, it’s totally fine, I have no problem with that. I just wish
you’d told me.”

“I know. I never told you because I’ve never told anyone.” I
was standing directly under a streetlamp and felt exposed. We started walking
again. “So you’re the first to know.”

“Wow.” He seemed honestly surprised, maybe even intimidated
by the weight of being the first. “How long have
you
known?”

“I don’t know, since middle school.” I kept my eyes straight
ahead but in my periphery I could see he was still looking at me. “It was never
a surprise. When I started to like girls I was starting to feel different about
the boys, too.”

“Girls? So...?”

“Yeah. I like girls and I like guys too. I guess I’m—
I mean I
am
— I
am
bi.” I watched the word flow as white
breath into the air in front of me. I half expected it to crystallize and drop
like a brick onto my toe, but it just became part of the air, released.

“I was just thinking that you were pretty into girls for a
gay guy,” Griff said and he laughed. “Or else you were a really good actor. So
we can still go babe watching?”

“I just like watching the guys too,” I said. I inhaled, deep
and staccato like a person finishing a good cry. I was beginning to realize
that I would come through this OK.

“Whatever floats your boat,” he said. “So you never told
anyone? How do you hold in something like that?”

I laughed. “Fear.”

“Of what? Getting beat up?”

“Of saying,
I’m
different
. And,
I’m not who you think
I am
. And that feels worse, I think.”

He took that in, cleared his voice. “Well you don’t have to
be afraid anymore. Not with me. And I don’t know other little details about
you—I don’t even know your favorite color!—but that doesn’t mean I
don’t know you.”

“It’s blue,” I said. He smiled. “Thanks Griff.”

“Thank you for being honest,” he said.

“I
wasn’t
honest
though.”

“You wanted to be, you just needed a little help.” He put
his hand on my shoulder, gave me a playful shove. When we had come to the tall
iron gate of the dorm, he asked if I wanted to walk a little more.

“OK,” I said.

I was glad because I wasn’t ready to leave him yet. It was
beginning to dawn on me, the idea that the guy I’d picked out of a crowded
classroom and labeled
perfection
based on his smile, the way his jeans fit his ass, and fifteen minutes of group
work was the same guy who was right now changing my life. Had I somehow known
he was special? Was it fate? It seemed sillier to think it was only chance.

“It’s weird that I never seem to have straight
roommates...,” he mused.

I felt a rush of relief. “So you still want to room next
year?”

“Of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

I thought surely he was the only person in the world who
could be this accepting, this cool. I felt so lucky. He’d known me ten days and
knew more of me than people who’d known me nineteen years. And I was OK with
that. I’d always been afraid of people knowing too much, but now Griffin shared
my biggest secret, my only secret—because if I’d had any others they were
all rolled up in that one. It felt funny that now there was nothing I had to be
afraid of him knowing. There was nothing I couldn’t say. I felt completely free
and completely
myself
, and the more
that what had happened began to register, the more I wanted to run and stretch
out my arms and leap up into the sky. Surely this exhilaration was enough to
let me zoom across the face of the moon.

“Sorry if this sounds lame,” he said. “But doesn’t it feel
weird to have the potential to fall in love with every person you meet? All
your friends?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I think it’s weirder to only be
able to fall in love with half of the people you meet.”

“Hmm.” He looked a little taken aback. “Maybe. I guess it
is. Like, as much as I care about my guy friends, I know there’s always going
to be that distance between us.”

“I don’t have a distance,” I said—and then I was afraid
he would think I couldn’t separate friendship and sex. “I mean I
do
. But it’s not automatic. It’s about
individual relationships, not just gender.” It began to sound confusing even to
me. “This is the first time I’ve ever talked about this with anyone. I don’t
know what I’m saying. I’ve never had to describe it. I have no automatic
boundaries.”

“Nah dude, I get it,” he said. “You can love everyone. Everyone
could be your soulmate. I think, if anything, you’re a few steps ahead of the
rest of us.”

*

He was leaning back deep in the chair; he’d pulled
his hood up a few minutes ago and now it framed his grin when he looked at me.
“I can’t believe I really said
Let’s go
play some pool
,” he said.

“So many possible responses went through my head...”