32. Emory #2
“I wouldn’t worry about it. I’ll say it was me the kid hit. Nobody can deny that I’m perfectly visible.”
“Sure.” Those four letters were nearly impossible to push out.
“All that sex worked up an appetite. I know this is bad, given you just got hit with one, but scrambled eggs sound really good right now.” Gerard moved over to the fridge and ducked his head inside. “Can I make you some? A little midnight snack?”
“No thanks.” Emory’s stomach walled itself off.
“Suit yourself.” As the eggs cooked on a sizzling pan beneath the whirring fan, Gerard offered Emory hot tea or warm milk, both of which he declined.
The egg situation slunk to the back of his mind when he realized this was the first Halloween he was spending in the presence of another since he went to grad school.
While he was required by the state to have his own room at the various foster homes he passed through, avoiding people entirely on Halloween was a nonstarter.
He could reject hand-me-down costumes and offers to go out trick-or-treating with the other children, but he couldn’t skip meals or neglect his chores.
As he sat at the kitchen table, it was impossible not to feel like that helpless, lost little boy, face still slightly dewy and breath still ragged.
“I have a question for you,” Gerard said, bringing his heaping plate of eggs to the table. “Since I’m performing the solo at the masquerade tomorrow—or now, later today—I was wondering if you’d like to come see me perform it.”
“You want me to see you perform?” Emory’s heart took on the speed of a sports car, vrooming away from him.
A distinct pink flush painted Gerard’s bulging cheeks as he chewed. He’d gobbled up nearly half his eggs already. He must’ve been really hungry. “I do,” Gerard said after a big swallow.
“I … I’d love to. But…” Emory drummed his fingers against the table, uncertain how to approach this.
“Hold that thought! I know what you’re about to say, and don’t worry—I already got you a costume.
” Gerard grabbed the shopping bag from beside the door and dumped the contents out on the rocking chair.
“Jeanie really came through. Since it’s a masquerade, I got you a full-face mask and a cloak with a hood.
” The material was a jade-green velvet that fastened around the front.
A pair of matching gloves fell from the seat of the chair and hit the floor.
The mere thought of leaving the apartment on Halloween turned Emory’s blood cold. Fighting back panic, he said, “What about my voice? What if someone recognizes it?”
“I hadn’t thought about the voice thing.” Gerard tapped a finger to his chin. “We’ll be singing, so there won’t be a lot of opportunity to talk. Plus, the mask will obscure some of the sound.”
The rising tide of Emory’s worry grew without pause. “What if my hood falls?”
Gerard returned to the table. “We could pin the hood to your hair to keep it up.”
The mention of pins reminded Emory of the ones his mother wore in her brown hair sometimes. No, those were barrettes. They were colorful. That much he remembered. Hadn’t he just been dreaming of them?
Bored, he’d steal them from the outer pocket of her purse when he was sitting outside one of her many job interviews.
He’d snap them back and forth, tickled by the sound, delighted by the way they caught the light.
Back then, he was so easily entertained, so easily convinced everything would work out because the world was a weird and wonderful place that could all be explained by science.
What about the day his mom left him? How could science explain that?
“Pins fall out, Gerard,” he snapped, feeling stripped raw.
Shock slammed Gerard’s eyebrows upward. “Right. You’re right. Okay. What about a hat? I know I have a few in my bag.”
“Hats can be knocked off, too.” He didn’t intend to make his voice louder, meaner, but that’s how it came out. A tremulous staccato like a basketball slamming a backboard. His nerves split off in thousands of directions, creating new pathways for anxiety to overtake him.
“What if the hat was more like a helmet?” Gerard posed. “Like the one with the thermal binoculars.”
“Enough!” Emory barked. “Enough. Please. It can’t be done. It can’t happen, okay? I can’t leave here just to see you sing. I’m invisible, and I’m wanted for theft, and that kid probably just compromised my position and my research—don’t you get that?”
His own words reared back at him like a provoked horse liable to strike at any moment.
I can’t leave here was a blunt hoof to the head, knocking loose a memory of him saying that exact sentence while sitting on a cold bench outside a firehouse in North Carolina to a pair of adults dressed as police officers.
Or were they actually police officers? It was all still repressed, locked up tight in an inaccessible vault.
Until tonight.
Until his dream spun the dial and swung open the vault door.
“Do you think because I’m famous I don’t get things?” Across the table, hurt visibly sizzled in Gerard’s big eyes. “I’m not stupid just because I don’t know what a refractive index is or know about the Lorentz oscillator model.”
“Of course I don’t think you’re stupid,” Emory said, throat mostly clogged with a cluster of unswallowable memories.
“Real convincing.” Gerard stood and crossed to the trash can, where he scraped the rest of the food off his plate. The tines of the fork squealed as the gloppy yellow eggs tumbled off, roiling Emory’s empty yet upset stomach.
“Don’t be like that,” Emory heard himself say.
Gerard scraped faster, harder. “I don’t think you’re in any position to tell me how to be.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Emory asked, operating on high alert.
“It means that—”
Gerard lost his grip on the plate. Out of sight, it plummeted into the trash can. Crack. They both stopped their arguing. For a moment, Gerard stood there without moving. Emory wanted to help but sensed that might only make matters worse.
“I’m going back to sleep,” Gerard said, crossing to the bed.
But Emory couldn’t allow them to go to sleep angry, so he crossed to the bed, sat again, and said aloud what he’d been holding back. “Before the kids woke me up, I was having a dream.” Gerard paused before turning out the light, but he didn’t look over. “It was about my mom.”
“One of your foster moms?” Gerard asked, eyes still cast down on the bedside table.
“No.” Emory shook his head, which further unblocked his thoughts. “My birth mom. The one who gave me up.”
“When you say she gave you up, you mean…?” Gerard asked, turning toward him.
Emory’s body trembled with a sudden wave of tears.
Gerard inched closer, then clearly second-guessed himself. “Is there anything I can do for you right now?” he asked.
Emory needed physical touch so it didn’t feel so much like his body was becoming scattered atmospheric particles. He was already unviewable; he couldn’t bear to be intangible too, so he reached out his hand, certain the sleeve of his robe extending would be enough for intuitive Gerard.
Emory shut his eyes to the room, hoping maybe that would stop the sudden spinning sensation. But as soon as Gerard clasped his hand, Emory’s insides took off like the propellor on a motorboat. He could’ve sailed across the bay on Gerard’s support alone.
“I’m right here,” Gerard said.
“Thank you,” Emory croaked out.
“Of course,” Gerard said, tightening his hold. “Do you want to tell me about your dream?”
“Yes,” Emory said, realizing fully that it wasn’t a dream.
Out from the mental vault slunk a hellish Halloween demon that needed to be exorcised.
He was half tempted to ask Gerard if he still had that rosary and bottle of holy water from Father Daniels, but instead, he simply spoke his way through the hurt.