Choir Boy (6 page)

During the dinner break, Wilson talked about race cars and sports cars. “People talk about the Jaguar or the Ferrari but they’re fools. They don’t know what real power is. So on Sunday I’m gonna catch up with Lisa and just ask her out myself once and for all. No other girls, no grown-ups, just her and me. Wish me luck.”

The next day Berry went back to school with a note excusing him from PE. Rat expected him to have done a week’s worth of readings and asked him a question about Jane Austen. Berry mumbled. Toad showed a film about microbes then asked questions about it. Berry hid in his seat. Between periods Berry heard one of the Goose girls whisper that he’d overdosed.

After school, Berry took a long bus ride past the bleak North side to Dr. Tamarind’s cinderblock. Marco had promised Berry an ice cream or something if he went to Dr. Tamarind under his own steam. Berry thought about skipping therapy and lying about it, but he figured Dr. Tamarind would call his folks if he didn’t show up. So much for confidentiality.

Berry walked into the shrouded cavern. Dr. Tamarind looked up at him from behind his desk, his face pale from the light of his single lamp. Dr. Tamarind talked. Berry stood facing the desk, deciding whether to sit. Then instead he opened his mouth and music came out. He hadn’t decided to sing in therapy, but once it happened it seemed a good thing. Once the trained voice flowed, Berry felt in control of the situation for the first time. Dr. Tamarind stopped halfway through a question about testicles and communion wafers. The shrink just stared as Berry filled his musty office with the Glory. He ran through several hymns and the anthems of Stanford, Howells, Byrd, Mozart, and Bruckner without leaving much pause between. Finally, R. Vaughn Williams’s, “Yea, the sparrow hath found her a house, and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young ...” After a while, Dr. Tamarind just leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Berry wondered if Dr. Tamarind had fallen asleep, but he didn’t care.

“That was very lovely,” Dr. Tamarind said quietly after half an hour or so of singing when Berry paused for breath. “You have an amazing gift. I can see why you want to keep it. ”

“I didn’t do that to please you,” Berry said. But he felt delight in spite of himself. The rest of the session, they talked like friends about music and families. Berry left Dr. Tamarind’s office chuckling.

Someone in the waiting room threw a magazine over his face as soon as Berry emerged. Berry only glimpsed Canon Moosehead for a moment. Berry walked over. The Canon held his copy of
Rolling Stone
over his face as if inspecting the Yeah Yeah Yeahs up close. Berry peered over Jem to make doubly sure. The Canon cringed behind newsprint. Berry recognized the meaty face and soft beard, even without a collar. The Canon looked up at Berry, his eyes a plea.

Berry turned and stalked out. It came to Berry what was going on: Dr. Tamarind wanted to spy on Berry, so he was recruiting within the church. Canon Moosehead had obviously come to report on Berry’s movements. So much for Berry’s victory.

Berry took his time getting home. He no longer wanted an ice cream.

But Marco didn’t have an ice cream for Berry anyway. He had “something better, a surprise. Come on.” Marco dragged Berry back out of the apartment. Then they walked a few blocks and waited for the downtown bus. They rode south through darkening streets. Berry’s paranoia sliced deeper. If Canon Moosehead and Dr. Tamarind could plot against him, what could his dad be up to? The neighborhood got nastier around him as they lunged into the darkness. “I told your mother not to wait up for us,” Marco said. “Guy stuff.” Berry wanted to run away, but he wasn’t sure he could find his way home.

Marco led Berry to a big wooden door with a tiny window in it. He pulled the door open and revealed a stone staircase into a brick cellar lined with a bar on one side and small booths on the other. “Surprise,” Marco said. He pulled out a small rectangle and handed it to Berry. In the cellar bar’s gloom, Berry could hardly read the shiny little card. But he recognized a picture of himself from a choir photo, looking serious and mature. And he made out a date that overstated his age by eight years. “It’s not a driver’s license. I didn’t want you to get any crazy ideas about driving,” Marco said. He ordered two beers and handed one to Berry, who held up the fake ID to the bartender. The bartender barely glanced at it. “After this, we’ll go to a strip joint. You’re growing,” Marco said with a smile. Berry started singing, very softly, so only he could hear.

The beer smelled like the woods around the Peterman school after a torrent.

“Drain it,” said Marco. Marco acted scary-jolly, the way he did after one of his rages. Berry stared into his beer. After he drank enough, Marco fulfilled his threat to take Berry to a strip bar. They huddled at the side of a rounded stage with a fire pole at its front. Berry wondered whether a fire station somewhere was missing its pole and the firemen had resorted to jumping downstairs. As the night stretched and woman after slender woman came out and whipped around the pole, Marco put his hand on his son’s shoulder and drew Berry’s head into his chest. Berry watched the women dance from under his dad’s arm until he fell asleep. Then his dad roused him and they took the bus home.

Berry slept through Judy’s first two attempts to wake him the next morning. “You can’t miss school so soon after your big absence. Now get some clothes on.”

Rat sensed Berry’s half-awake state and made him stand in front of the class and explain why Mr. Darcy might be a good match.

At choir rehearsal, the boys overheard Berry telling Wilson what had happened. He started out describing it as an ordeal. “It was ass-dark down there and that beer was so big.” Then Berry noticed the other boys gathering around. They started giving him thumbs up and hooting when he told about the strip club. Berry soon realized this story was best told as a victory.

“Oh man,” Teddy said. “Can we trade dads?”

Berry described all the impossibly top-heavy and skinny women in greater and greater detail, until the boys accused him of making it up. Luckily, Berry had pocketed a strip club matchbox.

Berry sat at the cool boys’ table at dinner. Teddy and Randy kept stroking the curves of the matchbox stripper picture. After dinner, the full choir rehearsed in the cathedral for acoustics. Berry saw Canon Moosehead staring at him from the balcony at the cathedral’s far end. After rehearsal, Berry passed the Canon in the hallway, but the Canon wouldn’t meet Berry’s eyes.

On Saturday, Marco took Berry for a “nature walk” in the basement of their apartment building. “Look, a bug. And there’s some stuff growing under that leaky pipe. And I think I just saw something furry in the corner.”

Sunday’s sermon, by Dean Jackson, was called “The Church is Your Gang.” Hoping to reach out to the inner city, the Dean compared different denominations to rival gangs. “We wear different colors, but we all run with the same crew in the end. We are all homies in Christ.”

When Berry’s solo came, he reached down deep to fill every part of himself with breath. He sang not just from his diaphragm but from his hurt scrotal sac. Berry breathed so deep he could imagine his ball sac puffing like a balloon. He focused on the pain, then released the voice of him who cri-eth in the wilderness. Mr. Allen looked amazed.

Teddy brought Berry a cookie after the service and said his solo had rocked the party. Berry took the napkin full of crumble and said thanks. Then he saw Wilson making his move on Lisa.

Berry caught up to Wilson. Both of them still wore cassocks and surplices. Berry never wanted to take his robe off. In regular clothes, he saw the rust that would swallow him eventually. But every time he caught his reflection in robes, he felt permanently stainless like the knife he wasn’t thinking about.

Lisa stood with her mom outside the cathedral steps. Lisa and her mom were a few inches taller than Wilson and Berry, but Lisa’s mom was way heavier. She wore a thick woolen jacket and skirt, even in the September heat. Mrs. Gartner kept talking to Lisa, even after Wilson approached. “Hello Lisa. Hello Mrs. Gartner.”

“He should be here,” Mrs. Gartner said without acknowledging Wilson. “He’s rationalist about everything except being on time.”

“That was some sermon, huh?” Wilson said. “I guess Confirmation is like a gang initiation.”

“Don’t forget we need dill if we’re going to marinate those mushrooms. Remind me to tell your father.”

“So Lisa, there’s this dance next week, and I was wondering if you’d like to, uh . . .”

A black Lexus pulled in front of the church in a smooth arc. Mrs. Gartner stomped to the passenger side and got in front. She immediately started gesturing at the driver, who was probably Mr. Gartner. Lisa got in the back seat without saying goodbye to Wilson and Berry. The car pulled out and ran a yellow light escaping the cathedral.

“I wonder why Lisa’s dad doesn’t come to church,” Berry said.

“So Lisa’s mom and her friends all hate me,” Wilson said. “It’s obvious she should date me. It’s the most rebellious thing she could do.”

Berry asked Dr. Tamarind about Canon Moosehead in their next session together. Dr. Tamarind merely sighed and changed the subject. Berry could tell it wouldn’t help to keep asking, so instead he went back to ignoring Dr. Tamarind’s questions and attempts at conversation. About halfway through the session, Dr. Tamarind seemed to run out of energy or ideas. The two of them sat in silence for twenty minutes or so. Berry watched the sunlight redden in the window and imagined it was the glow of stained glass.

Berry’s mind wandered and he thought of Lisa mimicking her mom’s deaf act after church. “What do you know about Roland Montreux?” Berry asked Dr. Tamarind.

The question jolted the drowsing therapist. “Why do you ask? No, of course. You ask the questions around here. He was a psychologist who made a splash, pardon the pun, in the early seventies. A kook. Tried to salvage the Skinner box.”

“What was that?”

“Long story. Basically, Montreux believed the maturation process for children recapitulates evolution, from oceans to land. He was into underwater birth, and he thought children misbehaved because their reptilian, or aquatic, brain got out of control. He wrote this book called
The Shore of Reason
that told parents to submerge their children in water until they behaved better. Sort of aversion therapy. You relive the aquatic existence and progress beyond it. Not a very popular theory any more.”

“I saw a diagram of one of his tanks on the Internet.”

“I hope your parents aren’t thinking of experimenting with his ideas.”

“Nah. My dad’s all about Rousseau. My mom sometimes talks about Ayn Rand.” Then Berry shut up before he said too much or sounded too smart.

“You know,” Dr. Tamarind said, “maybe it’s time we got your parents in here with you.”

Berry shook his head slowly.

“Why not?”

“They’d just fight.”

Dr. Tamarind tried to draw Berry out some more, but Berry shut up. The more Dr. Tamarind probed him, the more nervous he got. He still wasn’t sure why Canon Moosehead had been there.

When Berry finally lurched out of Dr. Tamarind’s office without saying goodbye, he found a beautiful woman in the waiting room instead of the Canon. She had long hair the color of altar linen. Her square face shone with natural glamour and cosmetics, and jewelry glimmered from her neck, ears, and wrists. Her jeans jacket and denim skirt showed off a body almost as sleek as the strippers Berry had seen the w
⁷
eek before. She gave Berry a starlet’s smile.

“You look frustrated,” she said. “I can’t blame you. He’s such a pill miser. Takes that whole ‘gatekeeper’ thing way too seriously.”

Berry nodded without grasping anything.

“You think you’re ready, right? You sure look ready. It would make passing a whole lot easier, I can tell you. But he doesn’t care. I wish I hadn’t started with him. You know, there’s a much easier way of getting what you want.”

Berry nodded again. He waited for the woman to make sense. She definitely sounded encouraging. But just then, Dr. Tamarind chose to poke his head out and say, “Maura, come on in.” The woman got up, waved at Berry, then disappeared into the spymaster’s lair.

Berry got halfway to the bus stop when he decided he couldn’t go home without understanding what the woman, Maura, had been talking about.

He turned and walked back to Dr. Tamarind’s office building. It had two exits, so Berry had to go upstairs and stand outside the suite door to be sure of catching Maura. He waited around there for half an hour, before Dr. Tamarind and Maura walked out together. They were talking about surgeons.

Berry hid behind a large red donut sculpture. Dr. Tamarind and Maura disappeared into the stairwell. Berry waited a moment, then crept down after them. But by the time Berry reached the ground floor, he couldn’t find his therapist or the mysterious woman. He walked around the building twice, but they’d both disappeared. Berry screamed. Then he ran to catch the bus home for a late dinner and parental questioning.

Maura turned up a couple of weeks later, after an extra unpleasant session with Dr. Tamarind in which the therapist actually sang to Berry. “You see, a grown man can still have a wonderfully mellow and lilting voice,” Dr. Tamarind said between renditions of “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy.” Berry squirmed.

In the waiting room, Maura wore a really short red skirt, go-go boots, and talon-like press-on nails.

“Listen,” Berry said. “I need to know about the stuff you were talking about when we met before. What did you mean, there’s an easier way? Please tell me.”

Maura agreed to meet Berry after her session. He took her for a beer at a nearby karaoke bar, using his allowance and fake ID. Berry drank cola and realized being a man had advantages. He could go to places like this bar, buy drinks for people like Maura, and listen to sophisticated grown-up conversations. It proved to be a big change from sitting around the Twelve Step room swapping fart jokes with the choirboys.

“God, Dr. Tamarind is such a nut case,” said Maura. “It drives me crazy that people like that are in a position of power over people like us.”