34. Gerard
Gerard
From the moment Gerard woke up, he didn’t want to leave Emory’s side.
The night before, finally, Emory had shared the hurt that had simmered beneath everything he’d said and done since Gerard arrived. The clearest takeaway was that Emory thought himself both Dr. Frankenstein and Frankenstein’s monster, yet to Gerard, he was neither.
Gerard’s heart ached for young Emory left alone on that bench, watching the Halloween party clear. He could not fathom the pain of having a family member you loved disappear without a trace.
As he got ready for the day, guilt was a self-playing drum kit banging inside his head. Hadn’t he done that to his family? Decided it was all too much and ran? Everybody he’d left behind was an adult (though some didn’t act the part), but still.
Before he went out, he considered waking Emory, but after the sex and the egging and the sharing, he figured the man could use the rest. It would’ve been cruel to force him to confront a day he wanted to skip.
In the back of Gerard’s mind, he wondered if blocking out Halloween only gave the holiday more power in Emory’s psyche. As a gesture, Gerard left the costume he bought for Emory hanging beside the door with a note pinned to the cloak.
I hope you slept well. Thank you again for trusting me with your story last night.
I’m leaving this here in case you want it. Maybe making new memories around the holiday will help you heal. No pressure either way. I’ll reprise my performance for you when I get back.
Love,
Gerard
PS: I stored the candles and matches in the cabinet above the fridge in case the storm knocks the power out. See you tonight!
After one final choir rehearsal that lasted most of the morning and an afternoon spent in the library reading up on admittedly more concerning facts about Saint Gerard, the unsainted Gerard made his way to the school after the final bell.
The masquerade had been moved up to 5 PM, given the weather forecast. Gerard trudged on with a heavy load—costume in a bag, a couple of books, the dulcimer under his arm.
By the time he arrived, he was huffing and puffing and the sky was bruised with clouds.
Sergeant Adye was posted outside the door. At first, this gave Gerard pause, until he thought about how rambunctious Halloween could get and how the whole island was expected to attend the masquerade.
Inside, two blue doors were propped open beneath a banner reading HAPPY HALLOWEEN.
Bracketing the doors were windows coated in decals of witches, ghosts, and zombies.
To the side, a long table displayed jack-o’-lanterns, entries in a school-wide contest. Buckets for donations had been placed in front of each one to decide a winner.
Having the time to spare, Gerard browsed the various creations.
As he deliberated which one to give his dollar to, a blond woman with bouncy hair came up beside him. “You are James, right? Regina’s tenant?” Though the word tenant came out like tent.
“That’s me.”
“I’m Linda. My son, Simon … See, he went out last night with his pals and a carton of eggs.” Judging by her steadily pinkening cheeks, she was embarrassed. “Just wanted to say sorry, that he’s sorry for what happened.”
“It’s all right,” Gerard said, feeling weird about his graciousness when he hadn’t even been awake for the episode. “It was just kids having fun. They got carried away.”
“Exactly,” she said with a small smile. He assumed the interaction would end there, but she stepped closer, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“This might sound a bit odd, but Simon says when the door opened and he threw the egg that he saw a robe hoverin’ in the air without a body inside it.
That he, uh, that he didn’t see a face.”
Gerard rolled his eyes performatively. “Kids have such active imaginations.”
“’Course, ’course. It’s just, Simon’s not much of a liar. Not like his brother Shawn. Simon came home scared. Said the robe sleeves moved without any visible arms or hands. He wouldn’t let up ’bout it.” Her voice rose in pitch as if she were experiencing secondhand fear.
“It was late.” He kept his tone even. “Probably just a trick of the light. I promise you it was me at the doorway and me that he hit.” Gerard held up his hands as if to say, see?
Linda let out an audible sigh. “’Course, ’course. That’s a relief. I mean, not in so much as you got hit, but that … I don’t know if you’ve been on the island’s neighborhood app, but we’ve been havin’ some unsettlin’ activity. I got worried. A case of me being too much of a mom, I reckon.”
Shame took Linda’s place beside Gerard once she’d walked off.
He didn’t enjoy lying, and in a strange way, her protectiveness of her son reminded him of his own mother.
Was she worried sick about him? He hoped he wasn’t putting her through any sort of torment.
He dropped his dollar bill in the bucket in front of a jack-o’-lantern carved with a lifelike bat and went to the bathroom to put on his costume.
By ten past five, the Halloween party was in full swing.
The ceiling of the multipurpose room was strung with garlands of autumn leaves and orange fairy lights.
Tables overflowed with snacks and drink selections.
At the back, there was a stage where wavy black curtains hung.
A decorative skeleton wore a top hat and a bow tie at center stage with a swirling spotlight on him.
Beside the stage, a high schooler wore plush headphones while he manned a playlist of Halloween hits on his laptop.
One by one, the members of the choir rolled in, though it was hard to pick them out in the crowd at first, given they all wore masks over their faces.
Gerard had gone for a theatrical look with a stark-white mask, evoking the Phantom of the Opera from the musical his parents took him to on Broadway as a child.
He paired the mask with a ruffled white shirt and a red-lined cape.
Among the choir, there was a jester, a fairy, a ballerina, and other ambiguously “spooky” looks that were a welcome change from the usual outfits of T-shirts and jeans at rehearsals.
The only person not wearing a mask or costume was a surprise attendee. “Father Daniels, I didn’t expect you to be at this,” Gerard said.
“I had to come support the choir,” he said with a small, polite smile.
Most of the others had left them behind at the entrance as they filtered to various stations around the room. “Are you, uh, off duty right now?” he asked, thinking back on what he’d learned at the library.
“The collar comes with me everywhere, my child.” He tugged the stiff, white fabric at his neck. “What’s on your mind?”
“Saint Gerard still,” he said, then remembered to keep his voice down or he’d blow his cover. “I learned that he did work to help poor women collect a dowry to enter the convent. I don’t see why a woman should need a dowry to become an unpaid servant of God, but that’s beside the point.”
“His work sounds quite commendable regardless,” Father Daniels said.
“I thought so too at first, but one of the women he helped was named Neria,” he said.
“After three weeks, she left the nunnery. All the reports say she was homesick and started spreading lies about her time away. She accused Saint Gerard of having an affair with the daughter of a family he was staying with while he was on a mission trip, despite his vow of celibacy. Instead of responding to the allegations when asked about it by his superiors, he went silent, which they praised as the holy thing to do so he didn’t speak ill of someone. ”
“I’m not familiar with the story,” Father Daniels said. “What about it is troubling you?”
“The whole thing is troubling. The fact that Neria—on her deathbed—said she’d made the whole thing up. She died disgraced, and he went on to become a saint. I don’t like that,” he said, worrying his bottom lip.
“How come?” Father Daniels asked.
“If you read between the lines, it seems a bit like he did have the affair, and instead of owning up to his actions, he gaslit everyone into believing Neria was the problem. Why would a woman make that up?” he asked.
“Why would Saint Gerard break his vows to God?” Father Daniels challenged.
“Do you believe the story?” Gerard asked, seriously questioning this man’s morals. Everything he read felt too biased toward the saint, and Father Daniels was supposed to be an expert on spiritual matters.
“I believe in the word and power of God, who is right and just.” Gerard wondered what it would be like to have unshakable faith, to not question every little inconsistency in the universe.
But he supposed his curiosity and neurodivergence were what made him unique and such a good artist. Wishing those qualities away would’ve been wrong.
“Saints are human, and humans are fallible. May I ask why this upsets you so much?”
“Because … because…” He grasped for words that even scratched the surface of his emotions.
“I guess because, well, I write songs, and when I do that, I always put a lot of thought and energy into naming them. Names are powerful. They project messages and values, and I don’t want to share a name with someone like Saint Gerard, even if he did live three hundred years ago. ”
Father Daniels nodded, face not giving away whether he understood. “God wants us to accept that which we cannot change, use our courage to change the things we can, and have the wisdom to know the difference. Use your wisdom, Ger—I mean, James. It won’t steer you wrong.”
Left to puzzle over that, Gerard ventured toward the food, even as an icky sensation slid around in his gut.
The underlying issue remained that he couldn’t suffer the cognitive dissonance (a word he’d learned from Emory) needed to devoutly follow religion, which left him unmoored without a written rule book to follow.
Life, as he got older, grew more and more complicated.