Hello, this is Kaj... I am okay. I am calling say really why yesterday Ragu didn't come out to see you. His sister die last week in that shooting... Yes, that is why we did not talk to you about that article... Thank you for bringing the newspaper like I ask. I saw in your face that you read it... I know you are confused... Sorry, I'm not understanding your question... So? Gandhi was great peace man and Hindu like us. You think Sinhalese going to be nice like Dalai Lama just because buddhist? Anyway, this war not about religion... What you think? Same shit as Irish war, same as Palestine war!... All the people say their religion is for love and peace! You know any religion say "okay, this about war and hate"?... Sorry, I have a bad mood and I'm fucking sick of this place... I know. Don't worry, I call tomorrow and tell you a story.
When I'm flying to Boston I sleep and have a dream of a cobra. That's when I know my luck will be bad. One time I was with two friends walking in a field and suddenly we see a cobra on the ground in front of us. We shoot it. After that we have a lot of trouble. I am arrested, one of my friends has bad family problems and other one has to leave the country. After my father get me out from prison, one day I'm with the friend who's still there and we are visiting a temple and talk to the swami. We ask him why we are having so many troubles. He think about it and say hmmm, did you kill a cobra lately? We say yes, we shot one a few months ago right near here. Oh he got mad! He shout, "That was a temple cobra! You will have only very bad luck for three more years!"... When? That was February 1985... Well I hope I don't have to wait three months more to get out of here!
October 1987Ennis enjoyed Halloween more as an adult than he ever had growing up. His parents had had to drive him and KE and Kathy twenty miles into Garden City to go trick or treating and he'd realized right away that it was more fun for the kids who lived in the neighborhood because the adults greeted them by name and gave them the best candy. They'd only made that special trip twice that he could remember.
At any rate, every year since he'd lived in Boston, something happened on Halloween that was a brand new experience for him. Last year, he and Jay hadn't gone to a party but stayed home and gave out candy. It was Ennis' first time doing this and he'd bought what he'd always wished to receive: whole chocolate bars, not the mini ones. Well, that had been a fiasco. The first kids to come to the door had been amazed and excited by his generosity. But when he went back upstairs, he'd looked out the window and seen them racing down the street, shouting THEY'VE GOT HERSHEY BARS! Thirty seconds later he'd been alarmed to see a mob of at least two dozen kids running towards their house. They'd jostled each other in the doorway, shoving their paper bags and plastic pumpkins at him and he couldn't even see their costumes properly. He'd run out of chocolate with several older boys left; he suspected they were the ones who'd smashed the pumpkin on the porch later.
Maybe this year he would abandon the cowboy costume. The idea of going to the party as Andy Warhol had its appeal; anyone would guess who he was if he could work out the hair. He even called Jack's Joke Shop to see if they had a white wig but all they could offer was a Marilyn Monroe style. So he got out his old blue denim shirt and his father's boots, hat and rodeo buckle, bought a red bandana and became a cowboy again. He added a fringed buckskin jacket against the chill, which he only wore at Halloween because it was so hokey.
The party was in Jamaica Plain, and since he had to take the T there he decided to stop at the detention center on the way to show Kaj and the others his costume. He didn't usually visit them on a Saturday, much less Saturday evening, but he was worried about them. On Monday evening, Kaj had called him, but instead of talking Ennis' ear off he had simply asked him to locate a copy of the New York Times from the previous week and bring it the next time he visited. As soon as possible is what Ennis heard in his voice. The next day at work, Ennis had gone through the stack of papers for recycling and found the issue. Deep inside the front section was a report about a massacre of Tamils in Jaffna. Ennis had read it with sense of foreboding and put off going to see them until Wednesday.
The guard on duty this evening grinned when he saw Ennis. So did the three men when they came out but it was soon clear they didn't understand he was wearing the outfit for a special occasion.
"Now you are looking like a real American," Kaj said.
Ragu looked Ennis up and down and smiled politely. He simply nodded when Ennis mumbled that he was sorry about his sister. Ravi reached out and fingered the buckskin jacket admiringly but otherwise was subdued. Ennis asked how he was.
"Very bad. I have always a headache from the noise and I can't sleep at night because I'm worrying about my wife and daughter," he sighed.
Ennis asked Ravi some questions about his family because he sensed he needed to talk about them. Ravi explained that his wife had moved in with her brother, who also lived in Dusseldorf, when she and their daughter were sent back to Germany. The brother had been Ravi's best friend since childhood and that's how he'd come to know Vimala. Theirs was a love marriage he said proudly, as if it were an achievement.
"I didn't even ask for a dowry. My parents and friends think I am crazy for that." His smile faded when he added, "But I can't forgive myself that I do such a stupid thing to come here. Vimala didn't want to leave Germany. When they catch her in Ireland I should not get on the plane, and then I should not throw away my passport.
"And now I have a bad lawyer. He come here yesterday and say he need a medical report about my injuries from when they beat me. He think the Sinhalese doctor is going to make a record about that? So I ask my wife to ask our German doctor for a letter. That will take more time."
As he listened to his story, Ennis kept his eyes on Ravi but it was Kaj who held his attention. The two detainees were sitting side by side opposite him as usual, but for once Kaj didn't participate in the discussion. Normally he continually interjected himself into an conversation with a joke or explanation, but this time he was silent and pensive, staring into space. His face in repose seemed even more handsome. As Ennis willed himself yet again not to shift his gaze even slightly to the right, realization came at him like a fastball: He's the reason I come here. He batted the thought away.
"He should've said he needed that when he told you to get the other documents!" Ennis exclaimed, his voice rising, when he realized Ravi had finished. "I'll call your lawyer next week and talk to him." He realized he sounded more exasperated than he felt.
Before he left he handed them Hershey bars and explained where he was going, dressed the way he was. For the first time that evening, Kaj smiled at him.
It had rained as well as turned to night while he was inside, and Hanover Street was glistening with reflected neon. The sky was beginning to clear, and though no stars could compete with the city lights, the half moon was shining brightly. Ennis stopped for a slice of pizza before leaving the North End, even though he wasn't hungry. He needed to think. He sat by the window and watched people strolling along the sidewalk and studying the menus outside the Italian restaurants. A vampire walked by arm in arm with a zombie.
He was being sucked into other people's lives and it made him nervous. He only ever got close to one person at a time. His mother used to sing that old song, You Are My Sunshine, to him after Kathy and KE left home. It drove him crazy, but maybe he had taken that sentiment to heart because that was the way it was with him. One person became his sun, whose warmth drew him closer and closer. And then he got burned. But maybe he was learning how to handle this thing, because it was good with Jay – an even, steady warmth.
As he walked from the T stop to Phil's house, he could see the winking orange lights of jack o' lanterns on porches all the way down the block. Knots of kids in Halloween costumes roamed up and down the streets; he could hear their feet shuffling through the dry leaves and tromping up the wooden stairs of the two-family houses. They were escorted by a mother or father, who lingered on the sidewalk under the streetlight as they stood on the porches of the two-family frame houses and rang the doorbells. His own parents had simply dropped them off in a neighborhood in Garden City and gone off to a movie while the three of them went from house to house dressed as tramps and a princess.
As he walked up the steps to the front porch of the house where Phil shared the ground floor apartment with two other guys, Ennis saw several familiar faces through the living room window, including Michael Jackson. He was attempting to do the Moonwalk for Margaret Thatcher and a few other people who looked familiar, but not because they were friends.
No one seemed to notice Ennis as he slipped inside. That didn't bother him, because he prefered to ease his way into a social gathering, ever since that Halloween party in sophomore year. Tonight he didn't feel like talking to anyone, anyway. The Tamils' grief, frustration and longing weighed on his heart and he didn't know how to shake it off, didn't even know if he was supposed to want to.
The party was crowded already so he had to wend his way slowly to the kitchen to find a beer. He didn't see Jay anywhere. He must know some of these people, he thought, because Phil's roommates had also been at BU, but they only looked familiar because of the people they were impersonating.
He pushed his way back into the living room; the rug had been rolled up against the baseboard and the furniture pushed against the wall to make space for dancing. The beanbag chairs had been piled onto the couch so Ennis stood against the living room wall with his second beer and watched people dancing to Devo. God, did that bring back memories. Then somebody switched the tape and put on Depeche Mode, which changed the energy. Many people drifted away, but Ennis didn't move. The song gave him a pang.
I'm taking a ride
With my best friend
I hope he never lets me down again
He knows where he's taking me
Taking me where I want to be
I'm taking a ride
With my best friend
The first time he'd heard it, just a few months before, he'd been driving the East West van along the river on Memorial Drive so naturally the Citgo sign was in full view. What timing. Now he couldn't turn off the music, and it was so loud he couldn't ignore the words. He drained his beer and set the bottle next to the other empties on the book case next to him.
We're flying high
We're watching the world pass us by
Never want to come down
Never want to put my feet back down
On the ground
He retreated to the kitchen and got a third beer from the fridge, drinking it right there so he wouldn't have to fight his way through the crowd to get another. It was getting hot with all the bodies and the air was thick with smoke of many types. The music was very loud now and people around him were shouting at each other to be heard. It was starting to give him a headache and he wished he could find Jay. He was standing in the space between the propped open kitchen door and the refrigerator; through the gap between the edge of the door and the doorframe he watched a guy dressed as a baseball player kissing Madonna, the platinum blonde version. The man had a cigarette between his fingers as he held her slackly. Ennis could hardly take his eyes off them, they made such an odd pair.
I'm taking a ride
With my best friend
I hope he never lets me down again
Promises me I'm as safe as houses
As long as I remember who's wearing the trousers
I hope he never lets me down again
Suddenly a flash of light lit them up. The couple broke off the kiss and jerked away from each other and Ennis saw Jay standing between them. She was holding her camera and wore a loud flowered shirt under a black leather jacket, amber tinted sunglasses on her head and, most fascinating to him, a thick, black mustache. He couldn't help grinning at her idea of a paparazzo. She continued snapping photos, getting right in their faces and peppering the "stars" with personal questions in an obnoxious nasal voice. Other people noticed and started laughing, but then she pivoted and gave them the same treatment. Someone turned the music way down so everyone could hear.
It was one of the things Ennis admired about Jay, the way she threw herself into whatever she decided to do, and bravely. He knew she was tired after a day's work, and had come to the party as a photographer because it was convenient but she hadn't been lazy about it. She wasn't afraid to say the most surprising things to people. Whereas with him it was mainly accidental.
Suddenly someone that Ennis recognized for two reasons barged through the crowd, making his way toward the kitchen. He was a tubby, dark-haired guy dressed in a rumpled suit and wearing black hornrimmed glasses. He did an exaggerated mincing walk toward Jay.
"Aren't you going to take my picture, young man?" he lisped to her, flapping his wrist. "Ooooh, don't you recognize Barney Fag?"
Ennis remembered this guy from his freshman year and wished he didn't; he'd lived in Warren Towers. He moved from the doorway to get a better look at him and felt his anger rising as the guy - Mike was his name - sidled up to Jay and began to coo at her.
"Wouldn't you like to come back to my place and suck some cock?" he said in a loud whisper.
God he hated this guy! Memories of that first Halloween at BU came surging to the front of his mind, of Mike's sneering taunts to Ennis and Joe about their costumes, comparing them to the Village People, his twisting of Ennis' words the next morning about the girl he'd slept with after the party. Anger began to bubble up in him like a geyser about to erupt. He felt short of breath and his hands clenched and flexed, clenched and flexed. Then he glanced at Jay and the fierce look on her face shocked him. He saw she had her camera strap looped over her wrist, the heavy Nikon swinging back and forth as her eyes blazed.
He took three stomping steps into the room and slammed his fist into Barney's nose, feeling it crunch under his knuckles. Mike's head snapped back as his leather soles slid forward on the varnished wood floor and he landed with such a deep, shuddering thud that the empty beer bottles on the shelf trembled and clinked and one toppled to the floor. Blood gushed from his nose and the sight of it didn't sober Ennis, it enraged him further. He bent and seized the downed man's jacket lapels and made to heave him up but other hands caught at his own and someone hissed Jesus, Ennis! He fought against the restraining arms – he wanted to bash that fucker's doughy face so hard it collapsed, shatter his glasses till his eyeballs went pulpy...
"Ennis! Ennis! Stop!" Jay was at his side, speaking into his ear. The sound of her voice brought him back to reality and he let himself be pulled back. Mike was being raised to sitting position and Madonna pressed a hand towel to his nose. Someone placed the cowboy hat back on Ennis' head; he hadn't even realized it had fallen off.
"He'll be alright," someone said. "You'd better just leave, Ennis."
"Ennis, tell him you're—" Jay began, but Phil was suddenly before them and flapping his hands, shooing them off.
"Later," he whispered. "Just go."
The crowd parted for Ennis and Jay as they headed for the door. The cold air outside was a relief as they walked down the block to Jay's car.
"What happened to you, Ennis?" Jay exclaimed. "I've never seen you get so angry. It's not like you to sucker punch anyone like that!"
Ennis looked at her and smiled to himself. She still had the mustache. "I did it so you wouldn't hit him with your camera. You would've killed him with that thing!" He grinned at her. "Besides, bashing a guy even if he deserves it is against your religion."
Jay stared straight ahead for a few seconds, then looked up at him. "God, I was mad! It's worse when you know Barney, or anyway know a lot about him because of Joe, because he's so brilliant and brave..."
"But you know what really pissed me off?" Ennis grumbled. "Barney doesn't even look like that anymore. He looks really good now that he's lost weight and I can even…"
They had reached the car and Jay went around to unlock the driver's side door. She got in and flipped up the lock on his side. He took off the cowboy hat and tossed it into the back seat before sliding in.
"You can what?" she said as she started the engine. The mustache was crooked and seemed about to fall off.
Ennis slid close to her and cupped her face in his hands, pressing the mustache back onto her lip with his thumbs. Then he kissed her for a long minute, until he couldn't remember what he'd meant to say.
Chapter 11b
First and second weeks of October, 1980
'So whadya think of Fenway Park? It's the oldest ballpark in the country still in use... Yup, there's our friend the Citgo sign peeking up there. It's too bad it's not lit up anymore; the governor is such an asshole. Yeah, it's cozy in here... Noooo, that green part doesn't open out for more seats! That's the The Wall!... Sorry, the bleachers are the cheapest seats but I brought some binoculars. Anyway, it doesn't look sold out so maybe we can find some better seats in a little while... See that red seat over there? That marks where the longest ever home run was hit in 1946. Ted Williams whacked the ball way up in the air above the bleachers and when it came down it hit this guy on the head and that's where he was sitting. You gotta pay extra to sit there... Hey, I've gotta go do something, be right back... No, you just stay right here, okay?"
The next month passed quickly with classes and work filling my days. Joe's candidate won the Democratic primary on September 16th, two days after my Car Talk debacle. He was happy about that and wished he could work on the campaign for the six weeks between the primary and election day on November 4th, but he knew he'd be relegated to indoor work as long as his hair looked so weird. It had grown some and now half an inch of black roots were showing and he looked a bit too... non-mainstream. It wasn't the college kids that Barney Frank needed to win over but rather the blue collar workers in Fall River.
At the very beginning of October, I finally went to a Red Sox game with Joe. It was the first of a four game series against the Toronto Blue Jays (which later struck me as ironic) and Boston's last win of the season. We had tickets for the bleachers but the game wasn't sold out and in the third inning we managed to find better seats closer in. Fenway Park was much smaller than it looked on television. It was my first baseball experience as a live spectator rather than as a player, or as just some guy watching it on TV at home. And it seemed strange to me. So many distractions! People talking all around us, chanting, cheering, passing hotdogs and drinks and change down the row… I was used to either being in my bubble of concentration or watching quietly in our living room with only my father for company.
Before the game started, Joe disappeared for a little while and wouldn't say where he was going. When he returned, he handed me a program. He'd gone to the seats near the dugout where Sox players were signing autographs to get the catcher, Rich Gedman, to sign his photo. It was his first season in the major leagues. He was barely older than me and he would stay with the Red Sox until 1990. Because of that autograph, and what it came to mean to me, I paid attention to Gedman's fortunes. I hadn't thought of him since 1989, when he was demoted to replacement catcher and my life with Jack began. But recently I looked him up on one of those baseball sites that has every fact and figure about every player and team since the beginning of time. His highs and lows didn't exactly mirror my own from that decade, but they brought back memories as I read through the dates.
I had an essay writing class with Sandy that term and found myself talking to her more often outside the dining hall. She was a big reader too, and we often discussed books. I told her about my childhood obsession with islands and Robinson Crusoe. Sandy knew how to sail, and her uncle was on the board of directors of Community Boating on the Charles River; she had a pass to use a sailboat anytime and offered to take me out in one.
So one afternoon in October when our professor was out sick we went sailing. It was one of those perfect autumn days when Boston seems like the best city in the world. The sky was cloudless, the air clear and only a little cool. The Hancock Tower reflected blue on all sides and seemed to almost disappear. The trees were ablaze with color. The leaves turn in Kansas of course, but the few trees that grew where my family lived were dwarfed by the sky. The trees in Boston seemed more assertive, more in your face; that first autumn in the city I felt as though each one was shouting at me.
Sandy reminded me of those trees because of the vividness of her copper hair and the clothes she wore to set it off – deep greens, rich browns and gold. I could always spot her a long way off, which gave me time to decide whether I wanted to talk to her – and take evasive action if I didn't. So whenever our paths did cross, I was receptive and had my wits about me. In hindsight, I think it would've been better if she'd had more experience with the real me.
I enjoyed that afternoon on the river, sailing back and forth between the Mass Ave Bridge and the Charles Street Bridge. It was oddly soothing to have open space around me again. Sandy and I talked a little about what we were reading; she was taking an English literature course and loved Tennyson. I didn't even know who that was then. She recited some lines from a poem about a woman in a boat going to Camelot. It did nothing for me, but she said there was a famous painting based on it and she was going to go as that woman to the Halloween party in the Student Union. Her aunt was an expert seamstress and was making the dress for her.
I was only half listening. I kept looking over her shoulder at the scarlet and gold trees on the Cambridge side and then back at her. Her hair clashed mightily with the orange life vest, but even so she reminded me of the maples and oaks, with her tan windbreaker and dark yellow bandana holding her hair back from her face.
She looked at me quizzically."What?"
I tried out several responses in my mind. You look just like those trees. Those trees look remarkably like you. But I couldn't sit there like an idiot forever trying to find the right words, ones that wouldn't startle, so I just shrugged and smiled.
"I'd like to learn to sail one of these," I said.
"I'll teach you in the spring."
I'm sure she was smiling when she said this, but I wasn't looking at her. I was taking in the city skyline, listening to the water lapping, watching a Red Line train trundle over the Charles Street Bridge, the other white sails gliding past us and the three towers of our dorm in the distance. A big package had arrived for me that day and I knew it contained my father's rodeo things. That evening I'd be able to give the cowboy boots and hat to Joe and watch him try them on. He'd started sneaking albums from the radio station and we were going to tape some that night. It would turn out to be a really great day, I was sure.
If I'd looked at Sandy, maybe her expression would have told me it was also a good day to fall in love. All the ingredients were there: a sailboat, perfect weather and a pretty, smart girl who liked many of the same things I did. But I didn't look at her, didn't even think about her at that moment.
This past November when Jack and I had returned to London after our travels through Spain, we went to the Tate Gallery the afternoon of our last day before flying back to Boston. We wandered into the rooms with the Pre-Raphaelites and as I turned a corner I stopped in my tracks before a painting. I'd never seen it before but I knew immediately it was The Lady of Shalott. Sandy's aunt had made a perfect replica of her dress.
I must have said "Oh my God" because Jack came up to me and asked what it was this time. He was used to this by now: everywhere we'd gone in Europe there had been odd reminders of my life before he entered it for good.
"Tell you later," I muttered and continued on, while Jack stood for a moment trying to decrypt the picture of a sad redhaired woman in a boat.
When we were back outside, I told him about the first girl I slept with and what had happened afterwards. By the time I'd finished the story, we were standing on Vauxhall Bridge watching the barges pass beneath and the street lights blinking on as the gray sky darkened.
"If only the world had been like it is now when I was eighteen," I sighed, smoothing my hand down his back for emphasis. "Maybe I wouldn't have had to humiliate that poor girl."
Jack rolled his eyes. "Christ Ennis! It's not what you did but what you said! No wonder she pasted you good. I woulda done the same thing, you said that about me."
"Like I would've, dumbass! And anyway, she didn't hear what I actually said."
"It wasn't a whole lot better, Ennis."
"I guess not. Wish I could tell her I'm sorry."
"You never did?"
"She changed dorms, dropped the class we both took and then transferred. I don't even remember her last name and neither does Joe so I can't Google her."
"Maybe there's a way," Jack said after a moment. "But we need a postcard."
We went back to the Tate and bought a card of that painting. After our farewell dinner with our hosts that night, I wrote the message while Jack went online to find the address. I mailed it just outside of Victoria station, not even waiting until we got back to the US.
I've been checking ever since.
See the postcard: /tate-postsecret