28. Gerard
Gerard
Back in the stuffy confessional, after the obligatory song and dance of “Bless me, Father,” Gerard launched into the real reason he was back. “I did some research. On Saint Gerard. Like you told me to.” His words came out halting, like the screech of old car brakes in stop-and-go traffic.
“Did you run here?” Father Daniels asked.
He’d had a couple of Emory’s books to covertly return to the library, and while he was there, he wanted to fulfill the final part of his penance. Bouncing from book to computer, he absorbed as much as he could about Saint Gerard until he glimpsed the time and bolted.
Theoretically, afterward, he could’ve asked to see Father Daniels in his office but this was more comfortable with the illusion of privacy the box and latticework window provided.
Besides, after almost a month away from the gym and his training regimen, the cardio did him good, especially given how sweaty and out of breath he was. “I jogged.”
“Very well. What did you learn?” Father Daniels asked.
It felt a lot like he was about to give a book report. “Beyond the Italian impoverished upbringing and his devotion to joining a monastery, all the reports of him claim he had ties to mystic powers.”
“Are you referring to the handkerchief Saint Gerard gave to a young girl who later in life laid it on herself in childbirth and it abated her pain?” Father Daniels asked.
Gerard shook his head until he recalled the wall between them.
This must’ve been what Emory experienced often, like there was a partition between them all the time unless they were touching.
“No. I’m not even referring to the miraculous wheat supply for the hungry farmers or the boy who fell from the cliff that he prayed back to life.
Those are in line with all the water-into-wine stuff in the Bible.
I’m talking about the levitation and bilocation. ”
There was shuffling on the other side of the wall, as if Father Daniels was preparing himself to finish for the day. “What about it?”
“Isn’t that … I don’t know … too pagan or magic that’s unfit for the church?” he asked, thinking about Emory’s invisibility and how he’d assumed it was supernatural at first.
“Those gifts are bestowed by the Spirit and are shining examples of holiness and sainthood. They serve as reminders of the divine goodness that can come from living in servitude to God.”
“How do we know these gifts are … real?” Certainly, it was easier to ask this than the other question he’d heard flung around by their tour musicians.
Before a show, Gerard’s dad would make everyone participate in a “nondenominational” prayer circle.
As they held hands, he’d say things like, “May He bless us with strength, safety, and the energy to put on the best show possible.”
Later, the keyboardist would be out back smoking a cigarette while Gerard was getting some air, and she’d posit, “Is God even real?” While he knew it was a rhetorical question, Gerard always fought this nagging urge to answer it, to dig for evidence and find proof one way or another, the way he and his brothers used to set “traps” for Santa Claus on Christmas Eve until their parents told them that if they kept that up, they’d be permanently put on the naughty list.
“We are not to judge the veracity of gifts. The clergy takes the lead on deciphering miracles, and witnesses observed these miraculous gifts. Is that not enough to warrant belief?”
Father Daniels hadn’t sounded like he was expecting further resistance, but Gerard couldn’t help himself. “I guess I’m wondering how some of these people were deemed holy and others were burned at the stake?”
Sometimes, the media made him feel like he was being tied up and lit ablaze.
Back before he learned better, he would Google himself and was shocked to discover countless uncredited conspiracies, blogs, and groups of people claiming We the Wells was part of the Illuminati and that all pop music was satanic, which caused a severe crisis of conscience until, with the help of his therapist, he untangled the sticky emotions.
“Catholic mysticism is about direct communion with God, not the devil. That’s the difference.” The statement was a firm rap like a judge banging a gavel.
“But how could they tell?” Rapidly, he sensed he was losing his audience, which he was used to, given his penchant for a thousand questions that led to a thousand more. Nevertheless, it always discouraged him. Being curious shouldn’t have been a bad thing.
“The confessional, my son, is for hearing confessions, the time for which has passed. Come and see me in the parish office another time. My door is always open,” he said, leaving Gerard in the wooden box that could’ve burst from the stress of his ballooning inquiries.
“Let’s start with scales today,” Gerard said that evening after dinner, still trying to shake the uneasiness from Father Daniels’s abrupt departure from the confessional that morning.
As Emory skillfully performed scales on Pascal, Gerard marveled at how quickly Emory caught on. While he considered himself a good student, he’d never picked up a new instrument this fast; however, teaching Emory illuminated the shadowy cavern where he’d banished his musical enthusiasm.
When first learning any instrument, Gerard was eager to hear songs in the disjointed sounds he was making. Any hint of recognizable melody turned him into a canteen of hope, powering through the pain of practice to get to the good stuff, so he taught Emory “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” by Bob Dylan.
“You’re really getting the hang of this,” Gerard said during Emory’s first attempt, murmuring the down-up-down-up-down strumming pattern under his breath. If he could’ve seen Emory’s face, he imagined focus lines etched around his mouth smoothing out into a smile.
Emory fumbled a chord after the compliment, sighing and sagging back into the couch.
“You’re just saying that so I don’t give up.
This is hard work. I wish I could force my neurons to work faster.
My coordination since becoming invisible has taken a sharp downturn.
I never considered that drawback.” He pivoted to a notebook he kept stationed on the arm of the love seat and scribbled something entirely unintelligible to Gerard.
“I try not to give out compliments when I don’t mean them,” Gerard said. His general fondness for Emory might’ve been skewing his reactions, but his encouragement was genuine.
Emory seemed to not hear him. “If only there were a way to speed up myelin production in my brain. You know what? Let’s start eating more fish. I’m also going to add nuts and seeds to our grocery list. Not much I can do by way of my vitamin D intake, given I’m stuck inside all day, though.”
“Once the weather gets warm next year, you could always take up nude sunbathing.” Immediately after saying it, he flushed.
The night before, as they made out, they’d knotted the sheets by rolling around so much, switching up who was on top.
While Emory sat on his lap, it was impossible not to notice Emory’s hard length stretching over his stomach.
Similarly, there was no way he was hiding his own erection inside the thin fabric of his boxer shorts.
Yet any time he considered moving a hand from the small of Emory’s back to the unseen yet surely impressive tent at Emory’s front, his arms seized up.
A phantom pen squirmed in between his fingers; a ghostly stack of papers dropped from his father’s hand and thudded onto the bedside table.
Boner gone. Mind abuzz. Moment lost.
His body went static, and not in a good way.
Was he forever going to be neurotic about sex?
“The dopamine levels in my brain rise every time you teach me. So there’s good in here, too. Are there any other easy songs we could play together?” Emory asked. “Maybe with you on the dulcimer? Or something you know that you could sing?”
“Probably. Why?” Gerard asked.
“Making music together releases oxytocin, which reduces stress and anxiety. It also helps with memory. I think it might aid me in keeping my chords straight. Also…”
“What?”
“Never mind.”
“Tell me.”
“Oxytocin is a building block of social bonding.” A sheepishness made Emory’s voice wobble.
“Why didn’t you want to say that?” Gerard asked.
“Because I have a hypothesis, but it’s untested, so I don’t think it’s right to share.”
“It’s not right to harbor an invisible fugitive, either, Louise, but here I am, so spill.”
“Oxytocin born of playing music together creates group cohesion,” he explained. “You said nobody in the band knows about your sexuality or your neurodivergence, right?”
Gerard shrugged with the heftiness of confessions yet to be made on his shoulders. “If they’ve guessed, they haven’t said anything.”
“I only ask because,” Emory started, taking on an erudite tone, “if there’s a mental block between you and the people you’re playing music with, I venture to assume that this block disrupts the production of oxytocin during a usually oxytocin-producing activity.
Perhaps I’d go even further to say that instead of producing oxytocin, the act of playing music with your brothers is producing higher levels of cortisol, which is a stress-response hormone. ”
“First my cholesterol, now you’re concerned about my cortisol?” Bristling, Gerard felt overly pathologized. “Should I give you my insurance card so you have somewhere to send my bill?”
He expected to receive a sassy reply, but Emory, perhaps sensing Gerard was disguising hurt under snark, said simply, “Hypotheses must be tested to be proven. I’m sorry for speaking out of turn.”
The easy, sincere apology disarmed him. Not only that, but it made him want to hold Emory close and kiss him senseless.
There was something supremely sexy about a man who could confidently apologize, and even if Emory was new to the concept like he was with guitar playing, he brought to it a genuine vigor that stirred Gerard’s emotions.
When a song they could play together popped into mind, Gerard offered Emory the capo on the table as an olive branch and instructed him to place it on the first fret.
They tested the hypothesis. On a piece of scratch paper, Gerard wrote out the sequential chords E minor, G major, D major, and A major.
Down, down, down, down, up was the beginner-level strumming pattern he taught Emory.
They drilled it until Emory got it without looking at the sheet.
The tune of the song teleported Gerard back to the time before We the Wells when success felt impossible, and loneliness was constant.
The lyrics poured out of his open mouth without hesitation; his voice swerved overtop Emory’s relatively confident strums. The lyrics described walking lonely roads.
Gerard possessed none of the emo swagger Green Day’s front man was known for, but what he lacked in hard rock punchiness he made up for in pure connection to the lyrics.
At one time, it was as if Billie Joe Armstrong had done an invasive procedure to extract Gerard’s innermost thoughts and feelings, making him less isolated in his loneliness, which he knew was oxymoronic.
For the most part, then, he kept his eyes closed, too focused on the simmering passion vibrating through him, but as he hit the last refrain, he delivered the line about wishing someone out there would find him directly to his guitar-strumming invisible roommate.
Playing a song with someone was a bit like running a three-legged race; the music was a red bandana tied around their inside ankles.
If they lost step with one another, they’d never make it to the finish, but Emory played a last resonant chord, and Gerard imagined fervent applause for them.
Gerard exhaled those old, dusty emotions unboxed by the song before registering how relaxed he was.
Part of him had assumed revisiting that song would disprove Emory’s hypothesis, that anxiety would fire through him at unparalleled paces and tighten his vocal cords, causing his soft palate to clamp down and make high notes impossible.
Rather, catharsis wrapped him in an unexpected bear hug.
“The data is in. The results align with the hypothesis,” Gerard admitted in a spent voice. “What’s the next step in the scientific method?”
Emory wordlessly slipped his hand in Gerard’s. The invisible heat and delightful softness of his palm grounded Gerard in the moment. “Communicate the results…”
Communicate. Of course. The one thing he couldn’t do without disclosing his location and being shuttled back to the spotlight before he was ready.
Beyond Halloween, he had to brace himself to rejoin reality. Iping might’ve felt more like reality than his celebrity life, but divorcing himself from it completely was a far-flung fantasy.
“I will. I’ll tell my brothers,” Gerard said finally, squeezing Emory’s hand back. “After Halloween and once we finish your song. I can’t leave until then.”
Obviously, Gerard couldn’t see Emory’s look of judgment over his loosey-goosey response, but he sensed it all the same. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to voice anything about his growing feelings for his roommate, his student, his cowriter, his partner in crime.
Gerard added, “I’ll think about what I want and the steps I need to take to reintegrate myself into society and come clean with my family, but for now…”
Playing one of his all-time favorite songs with Emory had whipped up his desire, only further proving the stated hypothesis about music fostering connection, so he suggested they relocate to the bed, where they fell into each other’s embrace and showered each other in slow, tender kisses.