Alexander Chee - Edinburgh

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 oil 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.

They’re headed this way, my father says. And he pulls us up short around to a cove where he has taken me on occasion to see seals. We wait. I shiver.

There are three dolphins here. They hang just under the water’s surface, as if they were frozen in a leap. Two more arrive and the four push the sick one to the surface again and again, where its blowhole plucks at the air. Occasionally, a belly flashes white through the dark water.