Edinburgh Read online

  Did you ever tell anyone, Peter asks.

  I didn’t. Guys like Eric can be dangerous, for one. And then my parents would have to know, which I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t.

  Dangerous how.

  Violent. I read about it in the paper.

  I had actually gone to the library and looked up everything I could find on pedophilia and homosexuality. I knew that Eric was a pedophile. I remember sitting in the aisle with the book, sure the librarian would find me. There in the card catalog were two neatly printed, plain-faced titles: Greek Homosexuality, Homosexuality in Ancient Greece. And then one day I opened the paper to a news feature that told of how sometimes, a pedophile, fearing discovery, will turn to murder. Little girls and boys turned into silent, bloody bits.

  The grass around us rises and falls, rippling like waves coming in off an ocean that won’t move, won’t spray, and the coats pop up and down.

  I want him dead, Peter says. I want it to end.

  And then I feel the beginning of rain, raindrops pulverized by winds near the ground. I imagine the drops coming behind them taking the pieces in, welcoming these pieces as they make themselves heavier to speed their passage to the earth.

  Don’t tell anyone, Peter, I say. Please.

  He watches me as I say this. His mouth a hard flat line, he says, Okay. For now.

  The field flattens in the rain, but I know by tomorrow the grass might be even three inches taller. Things grow so fast, it is amazing we don’t all lie awake at night, listening to it all happen.

  Eric’s demeanor is nearing normal again, now that Ralph has been properly buried at a service in Lewiston. He is now intent on resuming the camp’s routine. And so after dinner, after dark, it is another naked story hour in Cabin 1.

  Eric B., in the bunk beneath me, asks, Do you ever want to be down there?

  Sometimes, I say.

  Me too. Sometimes. I mean I like those guys. But I don’t get it.

  Mm. I slide off to the floor and pad softly to the door. I am tempted to go right in and sit down. Now that I have a solo. When Eric passed out the sheet music today, I looked over the notes and lines. The solo began each section of the four sections with a complete phrase alone, and then the choir joined him: the sopranos for the next first two stanzas and then the full choir. The choir echoed him and answered him. You had to hit your notes quickly and surely and get off them to the next ones or get tangled in the verses of the others. The song was from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, set to music by Ralphe Vaughn Williams, and arranged by Big Eric to create a solo for me. The song frightens me. Still, I like the way it fits my voice like a sleeve of words.

  I stare at the dark distance between the cabins, the golden light filled with golden boys behind mosquito screens, like a lamp made from fireflies. I turn and get back in my bunk.

  What were you going to do, Eric B. asks me.

  Shhh.

  Zach in the dark. All smooth dryness, salty. I am like a deer at a salt lick. He giggles. I am stern, and he likes it.

  One, two, three, fou—

  Full fathom five thy father lies;

  of his bones are coral made;

  these are pearls that were his eyes;

  Nothing of him that doth fade,

  but doth suffer a sea change

  into something rich and strange.

  Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.

  Lies, Eric pauses here. Lu-Hies. Enunciate. Or you’ll sound like a Chinese laundryman saying Rice. Those soft consonants need to fire out.

  Chinese laundryman, I say.

  Quiet oils the room. The other boys know I am quick to avenge insults to my race and wait for a reaction.

  Fee, he says, head cocked.

  Chinese laundryman, I say.

  Are you ready to start again?

  Yeah.

  Full Fathom Five my father lies, of his bones are coral made, these are pearls that were his eyes, nothing of him that doth fade, but doth suffer a sea change into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell.

  And the choir joins me. A tear pushes out. Peter points to his sheet music. In the margin he has written, DICK.

  —Full Fathom Five my fah-th-her lies, of his bu-hones are co-rhal mayd—

  And the baton comes up and flat, Eric’s fingers scissoring against his neck.

  What do I have to do, he says, to have your full attention? Do I have to wear a clown hat? Do I have to beg? Do I have to come around, and with that he proceeds to walk toward us, and then circle from behind. Peter turns his page.

  That’s not the page, Eric says, from above him. No wonder it sounded so awful. Let me turn your page for you. His finger drops low, toward Peter’s lap.

  I can turn my page, I was just looking back. Peter meets his gaze.

  The finger hovers. Have I made my point? he says. And the finger hooks the paper, peels it over slightly, and then pushes it flat to the other side. Mmhmm. Love notes.

  The other boys giggle, lightly.

  I don’t want to separate you but I will. Am I understood? Am I?

  Yes, we both say, a sigh.

  All righty, then. Five minutes for water and then where we were.

  The boys slip from their chairs. The late-summer heat exhausts us more than usual, and even the cool hall today stifles. By unspoken agreement, Peter and I wait with Big Eric.

  When does it stop, Eric says, softly. As if I don’t have enough to deal with. Is it that you don’t feel I’m giving you enough attention? You are forcing my hand here, boys. I like both of you more than I like the rest, but you are antagonizing me now. You really are. You will have to show me your pages when I ask to see them, at any time. And they should be eminently readable.

  He sweats as he says this. He reaches in his back pocket for a linen handkerchief, and wipes energetically his shiny forehead, his red cheeks. And then he grabs Peter’s music sheets, hands him a clean copy, and throws the other away.

  Who’s Ariel and who’s Caliban, I ask, when he tells me this is Ariel and Caliban’s song.

  Ariel’s a magical servant, he says. A wizard’s helper. Shape changer. Could ride lightning, stand at the bottom of the sea, or impersonate a storm.

  A girl, I say. Inside, I think of the fox. How Ariel was perhaps a fox, far away from home and lost.

  A boy, he says. He’s a boy. Funny, isn’t it, how Ariel is this girl’s name now. But it was a boy, for the play. Caliban’s a monster. They are both Prospero’s servants.

  12

  TONIGHT, AFTER THE lights are out, I remember. Or is it remembering?

  The pale screen. A golden head, resting against a larger, darker one. The sound of pages turning. My heart pounding so hard I am sure it can be heard over the crickets and frogs. A large furry hand touches tentatively, to check to see if the golden one is asleep. And strokes down the leg.

  The smaller head turns up. No.

  The hand comes back the way it has gone. And Peter rolls out of his lap, turns, facing him. No.

  Eric stands, a wall of pink skin. He makes no move. Peter turns his head.

  Were you there, I ask myself. Around me: the damp night floats through the screen, the boys smell bitter in their sleep, as if as they slept, nightmares made them sweat. I turn my face into the pillow, the familiar scent of me still warm there. Pull the cover up higher. Were you there, did you watch that night? Had you snuck down, and watched. And done nothing. Or are you making this up.

  Outside the cricket hum embroiders the lake hum and here and there, a boy sighs. I hear Luke start to mumble in his sleep and decide to watch, crawl from my covers and slip past Eric B. to the floor. Down the hill I can see that Cabin 1 is asleep, all the gold laid out on pillows, all the lights off.

  I don’t know what I remember or what it is I imagine right now. I don’t know why that is. I go back to my cabin, lie down, sleep takes me in a swipe.

  Light and thunder. I wake up and open my eyes. Above me, in the air, a ball of lightning. So this is wh
at it looks like, I think. I apparently had been asleep in a storm and now the light and then the thunderclap follows so quick behind, the cabin shudders, is engulfed. I half expect to shatter, the bunk bed to fly up. My hair stands up. I don’t dare breathe, as if I could somehow inhale it. As if, without thinking it, I exhaled it.

  And then it goes, winks out against the wall above my head. The dark falls in where it used to be.

  I stand slowly, in my bed, to peer out the window. The storm lightning falls to the ground. I climb down and begin waking the boys to go out and unroll the tarps again. The rain soaks everything. The trees look cast in gunmetal and oiled. The lake, I can see in the distance, rises and the boats, tied to their mooring, tilt nose-down, end-up, the mooring now well under water. Soon they will turn over in the wind.

  13

  THE FALL IS almost here. We go back to our towns, to our families.

  There are stories in Cape Elizabeth of seeing someone fly through the air at night. I think of them as Zach and Peter and I tie the birch trees down to ride them. We are out on a hill, across the road from a graveyard and the marsh. I wonder if one of them is out in the woods late doing this by himself. Peter and Zach tie me on, because of my cast.

  You shouldn’t be out here, Zach says.

  There’s always a moment when it seems like it won’t work out. Like the whole thing’s a fake. And then the tree rises up and you head for the sky. Scream as you go. And then the tree sets you down again, and then brings you back up. I scream as I go up. This time, I do not fall.

  Peter leaves to go home on his bike. Bye, he says. Are you leaving, he asks Zach.

  In a bit, Zach says. See you later.

  Zach stays. We wander around my dark house. My parents are watching the evening news with my grandparents and my younger brother and sister. How long before dinner, I ask.

  You have half an hour, my mother says.

  We slip out the back door and head down the road.

  The greenhouse has been deserted for years with the exception of Zach and I using it as a kind of clubhouse. Overlooking the marsh, through its many broken panes, we can see my house in the far distance, above which clouds parade, today, toward the sea. Zach and I ride our bikes out here on Route 77 and drop them in the tall grass just outside the door. We stand now, facing each other under the patchwork of light coming through the smashed roof. The floor under our feet has cracks and saplings have pushed through.

  What’s wrong with you, Zach says. I have said nothing since arriving.

  Above us gigantic clouds careen through the deep sky and the summer sunset bleaches the long marsh grass. The nearby sea colors the air, preparing to send us a fog later, and in my hand I hold a sea rose I have pulled off a hedge along the road.

  This is for you, I say, and hand Zach the rose.

  He holds the bloom lightly, the stem between his fingers.

  Did you know, before? Zach twirls the flower and then puts it behind his ear. Ouch.

  I did know. A wind change brings a sea wind passing through, a memory of something better. I thought I knew what Big Eric was. I thought I knew because I thought it was the same as me. We are both in love with boys. I know what Big Eric watches, now, though, in me. He sees that I know, we are not the same. I did not know before and now I do, and so he watches this knowledge in me, a light moving closer slowly through some faint dark.

  I lean in and Zach does not close his eyes, even when I kiss him lightly on the mouth. The space between his lips is wet.

  Back at home, after dinner, my quiet parents are now watching television comedies with my grandparents and my siblings are in bed. From where I sit on the floor, I can see, they think I am still here. They can’t see that I have a secret as big as me. A secret replaces me.

  My solo rehearsals with Big Eric take place on Fridays. Today is the day before my birthday, and so after the rehearsal, the boys from the choir will be over for cake. My mother drives me over to his sad downstairs house on Munjoy Hill and as his wife plays outside in the yard with their big-headed baby, Baby Eddy, we sit at the upright piano. I practice my solo. My voice stays strong, clear, cooperative. The solo is the harder for being a cappella: no guide except the memory of the music in my mind. No piano music to surround me. Just me.

  Full Fathom Five my father lies, of his bones are coral made, these are pearls that were his eyes, nothing of him that doth fade but doth suffer a sea change, into something rich and strange . . .

  In the yard, the baby is trying to learn to walk. He bounces up and sits down, up and then sits down again, his knees not quite strong enough.

  . . . Sea nymphs hourly ring his knell . . .

  In the yard, the baby suddenly stands, as if tethered to the sky by a sunbeam. And then falls, as if tugging the light down with him.

  Fee, Big Eric says, and turns the pages back to the beginning.

  Yes, I say. On my chest now, a weight, like Big Eric standing there. His two feet, pressing into me from above.

  Fee, your mother tells me she’s worried about you. She called to ask me some questions. He turns and looks at me as he says this. In his eyeglasses, my grim reflections.

  My heart hammers, a frog under my ribs. I’m fine, I say.

  But your mom doesn’t seem to know this. And neither do your teachers at school. They don’t know you’re fine. And if your behavior becomes more disruptive, or strange, then there will be not only questions, but people will do things. Like, for instance, you won’t be able to be a part of the choir anymore. And I know we both would regret that.

  Yes, I say.

  So you’re fine. He rests forward on the piano, on the lip above the keys.

  I’m fine.

  I’d hate to lose you, he says, setting his fingers back out, spread over the chords.

  I understand, I say. I do. Outside the baby plays on peekaboo sunbeams, up and down. Clouds rush over on their way out to sea. Baby Eddy laughs. He presses a key, to give me a note to start on, and I sing again.

  After the lesson concludes, Baby Eddy is returned to the crib for a nap. Leanne leaves, the screen door clapping as she goes. Big Eric takes me into a sort of music room, with books. Let me play you this, he says. It’s Holst’s The Planets. We sit there listening, and so I forget what happens to boys who have solos, up until he slides a book, hardbound, from the shelf. He sets it out in front of me. I look at it sideways, not turning in my seat. The book falls open into the middle, shiny pages of boys sliding around naked on carpets with dark-haired, bearded men who look so much like Big Eric that I can’t believe it isn’t him. It almost looks like they are helping each other to exercise, do sit-ups, leg-raises. It looks like certain athletic manuals I have seen.

  I raise my head and we exchange a glance, and whether it is the deadness in me that he can see, or whether I have somehow raised the strength to repel him, I don’t know. But he pauses, unsure. The music surges. This is Saturn, he says. Do you like it.

  I recall a painting I saw printed once, in a book, called Saturn Eats His Children. To prevent the new race of gods from overtaking him, Saturn ate his children whole. They cut themselves out of his stomach, and went on to rule the world. These boys on the carpet look like they are trying to escape being eaten.

  I love it, I say. It’s beautiful. We both know I mean the music.

  What about these, he asks.

  Where are they from, I ask.

  Sweden, he says. Much more liberal there. They care about human life and feeling there. I met my wife there, while hiking one summer.

  And so the afternoon walks away from us, and then the other boys arrive, driven by their mothers. The book has been put back for an hour by then, all the Planets have played, and I am ready to leave, but now is my birthday party. I feel a shield around me, like the gods did for their favored ones, and so I walk to meet Peter’s mother’s car pretending I am a favorite of the sun, with a possible future as a flower, and that Apollo himself is glaring at Big Eric. The other boys arrive in groups
of four and five, piled into a few cars. Hey, says Peter. Loser. Who says you’re special?

  I laugh. I want to say, Get out of here. But I don’t. All the shouting in me hides in my smile.

  We go into the house for cake. The birthday song is tightly sung, harmonized, even, and too loud. The boys laugh as we slip discordantly into harmony. Here I am. Thirteen at last. Someone should kill me now, I think, as I blow out the candles. Before the damage spreads. You are fools not to, you will all regret that I lived. All the boys sign HAPPY BIRTHDAY FEE on my cast.

  Did you make a wish, Zach asks.

  Yes, I say.

  Afterward, I go into a room I don’t recognize. A rug askew here, boxes repacked in some rough manner, as if whoever searched them was not done. A quick review places the room as having been Ralph’s. His death still providing disorder.

  14

  THE MORNING OF my birthday my father comes and wakes me up, early. The sky outside my window is a dark door with light peeping under the crack. Son, he says. Wake up. We have dolphins in Falmouth, beaching. He is dressed in his wet suit, a snorkel against his neck.

  An hour later, I eat a cheese sandwich, peeling the crusts off and dropping them in the water as our Boston Whaler skids over wave crests that slap the bottom of our boat, my father driving us across the waves at an angle, his hand firm on the outboard engine. He smiles at me as I chew. How you doing there, he asks, as spray fans in bursts behind him. He knows he looks silly there and is waiting for me to laugh. I know I don’t have to answer if everything is fine. I hold my arm cast so it doesn’t shake. Behind my father blue sky burns pink at the bottom, where the sun floats, red-orange, clearing the horizon. The waves are glassy and long, brown-blue like kelp. The wind is a cold hand against our heads. We wave at the other boats that pass, my father speaking occasionally into his portable marine radio to the other dolphin rescue members.