The nearly gleeful tone in Bernard’s voice surprised me. I’d never known him to revel in someone else’s pain, particularly if that someone was a friend. Donald’s expression had shifted from discomfort to near-frenzy. He glared at me, and I tried to convey a look that told him it was all right, that everything would be OK.
“I always wondered who you thought you were punishing,” Bernard went on, his lifeless voice cutting the silence. “You’re the smartest guy I’ve ever known, Donny, and one of the most unhappy. Remember when we were kids and you’d talk about moving away when we grew up? You used to talk about going to Paris and Berlin and London—all these places that seemed so impossibly far away back then. You wanted to teach, remember? You had it all planned out. A teaching job in some little European village, where it was quiet and you could sit and read and be at peace, that’s the dream you talked about. The dream you should’ve realized but never did, because the demons got in the way, then the booze fucked everything up. But we all know the booze wasn’t the real problem, don’t we, Donny?”
Donald’s eyes had grown moist. “He has no right,” he whispered, “no right to do this to us.”
“Imagine a good Catholic boy turning up faggot.”
“Jesus,” I groaned.
The pain on Donald’s face was nearly tangible. He’d heard the slurs and hatred for years, just never from Bernard.
“You are what you are, Donny,” Bernard said. “You just couldn’t seem to go with it, to be what you are and be OK with it. Eventually, it’ll probably kill you. Nobody to love but that goddamn bottle, hiding from yourself and from all the shit everyone always gave you. So you hit a bar now and then, find someone to share a few hours with—maybe a weekend—then it’s back to work at that office, wasting away and typing up someone else’s thoughts, not even able to make the ten-minute drive home without stopping at the package store first. That’s how bad it is, Donny. Most people would give anything for your brains, and you tossed them aside like garbage. You met a guy once, some secret lover you had, but it didn’t work out like you thought, like you hoped, like you needed it to. You were in love, you told me so, but he was just experimenting, right? Just pretending, just drunk, just anything but queer. And you were still hurt when you got to college. You brought your bottle with you when it all went to shit, and you couldn’t shake it, couldn’t cope, so you walked away from school like some whipped puppy and you’ve been pining for him ever since, living like some goddamn drunken monk or something. I always thought you were better than all that, I always thought you’d be the one who’d make it out, who’d really be something. We all knew what the deal was, man, you never had to make any big announcements, and when you did you weren’t telling us anything we didn’t already know. We accepted you, man, shit even Rick did. For all the crap he talks and all the arguing between you two, he always stood up for you. Besides, you’re not so different from the rest of us, not really. Not when you get right down to the bare fucking bone. You’re lonely… and angry. Rage, man, always the rage. Always there to remind us how unfair life is, how when we open our arms it kicks us in the teeth every fucking time.”
The tape clicked, and Bernard’s voice was silenced.
Donald sank slowly back onto the couch like a deflating balloon, and Rick braced himself against the window casing, his eyes still trained on the falling flakes of snow.
“Turn it off,” Donald said softly. “You don’t have to listen, Alan.”
But I didn’t turn it off, and neither did anyone else. Instead, another click signaled the monologue was about to continue. I settled deeper into the chair, felt my bowels quiver and the beginnings of perspiration seep through my palms.
“Alan,” Bernard said fondly, “you didn’t think I’d forget about you, did you? How could I, you and I were friends first, remember? Do you, do you remember the first day we met? I do. We were seven, and it was just a few days before Halloween. My mother and I had just moved into the neighborhood and I didn’t know anyone. I was playing on the front lawn in a new costume I’d gotten—a tiger costume—do you remember? Great costume, man, head to toe, built-in feet, the works. I was playing, and you were riding your bike. You stopped to say hello, and I was surprised how friendly you were, how you just talked to me and seemed to want to be my friend. You never even mentioned my glasses, or how thick they were, or how skinny I was, how much shorter I was than most kids our age—none of it. You just told me your name and pointed up the street at your house and said that’s where you lived. Then you told me my costume was cool and you had to be a ghost again for the second year in a row because your mom couldn’t afford a good costume. Plus, she’d cut up a perfectly good sheet making the eyeholes so there was nothing left to do with it except leave it a costume or shred it for rags.”
I was stunned that he had remembered such detail. I looked to the floor, my memories of that afternoon as clear and bright as the day it happened.
“Then the two Berringer twins showed up on their bikes, came to a screeching stop right in front of the driveway, like they came out of nowhere, scared the hell out of me. And I knew by the look on your face that they were trouble. Those little motherfuckers, Christ I hated them, terrorizing the whole neighborhood, always picking on kids younger than them. They were thirteen; we were seven. Jackie and Johnny Berringer. Cocksuckers. I remember you told me to go in my house, but I didn’t get it and just stood there. Then they started making fun of me, calling me all kinds of names because I had that costume on. I was so scared, and I kept hoping my mother would hear them and come outside, but she never did. You told me to go inside again, then the twins got off their bikes and started pushing you, telling you to mind your own business and that I was a baby for dressing like that. Do you remember, Alan?”
I felt myself nod, as if somehow he could see me.
“Jackie grabbed me and pushed me down,” Bernard said, his voice shaking. “I started to cry—shit I was a baby then and they were a lot older than us but… but then all of a sudden you went wild and started attacking them.” Bernard’s tone changed and it suddenly sounded like he was stifling laughter. “You weren’t a hell of a lot bigger than I was physically, and… Christ, they wailed the piss out of you that day, right there in my front yard. But you just kept getting up. They’d hit you and down you’d go; lip all busted up, nose bleeding. But you kept getting up, and you’d come back swinging. I tried to help but they pushed me down again and tore my costume and… I was crying and screaming for my mother, and you were lying in the driveway all bloody but on your way back for more… then the Berringer twins took off. I guess they were afraid my mother would hear all the screaming. They didn’t know yet that she drank too much and usually slept in the afternoons. I never forgot that, Alan. You didn’t even know me, but you defended me because you knew those two little sick fuckers were going to beat somebody up, and you didn’t want it to be me. Nobody had ever done anything like that for me. Nobody.”
At only seven, I’d seen some cruelty and brutality in the world, but not much, and nothing quite like what I witnessed that day. Bernard was so innocent, so small and weak and trusting. A little boy in a special tiger costume his mother had made, playing in his yard, minding his own business, the new kid in town totally unaware what the local bullies had in store for him. Welcome to the neighborhood. And even years later, I was still unable to understand what joy the Berringer twins derived from stopping and terrorizing a little boy who had done nothing to provoke them, a boy they didn’t even know. And yet, the concept that they had so quickly determined Bernard was somehow less human, less important and thereby expendable was both repugnant and curious.