Random Page 11

  Dean’s other list that followed in a second e-mail included all the slang terms he could locate for gay men. He said he was just preparing himself for whatever might be thrown at him. I will spare you the list. Some were insulting. Some were funny. Some slightly endearing. The Australian one, however, stood out. A gay surfer in Australia might be called a “Nancy boy” if he showed his gayness while out amongst his mates, sitting in the ocean on his surfboard. Depending on how you took this, it might not be that cruel at all. And, just for the record, if anyone is listening, Dean’s mental jury is still out as to whether he really is gay or not. I have a feeling he is not going to resolve this one easily. I’m his sounding board, though, so I will keep you up to date.

  But I digress. And I digress because I am thinking of the living room scene a while back. I digress because I have yet to process that and because I think it is a step along a path that I am not sure I am ready to take. I did not tell Will and Beth about it. I think it might scare them. It could make them think I still want my old parents back (and I do) but that might hurt their feelings. They could think I am rejecting them. (And I am not.) I just want to bring my first parents back from the dead. I really do. I want a full resurrection. I want that.

  But I remain skeptical that any of this adds up to anything. Do you know what a true skeptic is? It is a follower of yet another Greek philosopher, not quite of Aristotle’s rank, but a fine intellect, nonetheless. And no, he was not named Skepticle. His name was Pyrrho of Elis. He and his students down through the moldering centuries doubt that it is possible to acquire real knowledge of any sort. They feel that there are no adequate grounds for the existence of truth of any kind. The word itself comes from the Greek meaning to “look around” or to “observe.”

  Just one cold, hard look at the world is enough to send you off to join the legion of Pyrrho. Just join the parade.

  We use the word somewhat differently today and usually it means someone who doubts things. I am both a skeptic and a doubter. But I am also apparently my own hero with a thousand faces, which is why I may confuse you so much. Say one thing, do another. Of course, how human of me. The “skeptick,” as Sir Walter Raleigh once noted, “doth neither affirm or neither denie any position.” Walt said this was a bad thing. This from a man who gave England—and hence the rest of the world—tobacco to be smoked and, ultimately, cigarettes. Think of the generations to whom he gave the gift of lung cancer. Had he been more of a skeptic, he would not have believed that the tobacco given him by Virginia native folk was a health remedy. A skeptical Raleigh might have saved us a lot of grief.

  Which leads, of course, to the notion that belief leads to action whereas doubt leads to inaction. These are my musings at the end of a week without school. A week that turned into a kind of quest. Maybe the truly important truths of life are (to use Joe Campbell’s word) “unknowable.” But if that is the case, why do we keep seeking answers and connections?

  And that, dear diary, is what this diary is all about. It seems I can travel in any direction—mentally or physically—and discover something. But it is not always forward. It is forward, then backward, into the future, and then into the past. And all the while making tangential side trips. Places. Theories. Names.

  I admit to some disappointment about the Joe list—famous men named Joe, that is. Certainly, it is not as interesting or formidable as the Dean’s List. But I’m pleased with my connection to this Joseph Campbell guy. It seems that he was actually misquoted somewhere—supposedly saying something like: each of us should be following our own “bliss.” Oh, boy. He was talking about a character from a book, unhappy because he did not follow his bliss. Bliss as in happiness. How can you follow it if you don’t know what it looks like? If I can find mine, I may try to follow it, but it seems that, by going back to Riverside, my quest was to follow my own unhappiness. Perhaps we cannot let go of our past. We must always go back. Even if it is painful.

  And that took me on another tangent. Had a slow first day back at school. Everyone kind of wonky—students and teachers—about being back in harness. Me just a bit dazed. Deaner seeming not so fidgety. Gloria looking okay in a medicated sort of way. I thanked them both for the trip down memory lane. I apologized about the crying. When I had cried, they both cried, too—Dean a little, Gloria a lot. All of us taking off our masks at once. Wow.

  So school was just school and I started thinking about last names. Born a Campbell. What exactly did that mean? Hadn’t I kept my names, both first and last when adopted? I must have thought it meant something to keep the name I was born with and not become a MacDonald like my current parents. There had been talk of hyphenation. Joseph Campbell-MacDonald. Kind of like soup and hamburger. It may have hurt Will and Beth’s feelings, but I did not want to be a hyphenated boy. It just didn’t feel right.

  I was dawdling in a study period in the library, walking among the shelves, when I closed my eyes and pulled a book at random from the shelves. An old book about the history of Scotland—of which I must say I knew very little. I opened to a random page and discovered that there was something there about the “Clan Campbell.” We had a clan?

  All right, so I discover that my name is of Scottish origin. No one ever told me that. So now I have roots. I find a seat at an empty table and, suddenly, I am tossed back into the quagmire that is the history of the people who once shared my family name. These are my ancestors.

  I learned that Clan Campbell was an ancient Celtic family traced back to Colin Mor Campbell, who was killed (there was a lot of bloodshed in those days) in 1294. Campbell means, get this, “a wry or twisted mouth” in Gaelic. Not exactly something to be proud of. (I looked later in the boys’ bathroom mirror at my mouth and decided it was neither wry nor twisted, traits apparently bred out of the Campbells down through the generations.)

  It gets worse, though. Not better. We Campbells were a nasty, churlish lot, it seems. The name has been hated by many—especially, it turns out, by the MacDonalds—right up to today. No kidding. I’d be better off changing my last name if I was to tour around Scotland. And for good reason. Here’s why.

  There was feuding between families—between clans. Way, way back, the Campbell folk supported a leader named Robert the Bruce who dominated most of Scotland in the fourteenth century, and he had to continually battle the clans who did not like him. The MacDonalds, for example, were enemies of the Bruces. Keep in mind that, as usual, religion got its thorny barbs into all this. The Bruces and Campbells were Protestant and a lot of other clans like the MacDonalds, especially in the Highlands, were Catholic. Many small clans were literally annihilated by the Campbell warriors. Wholesale slaughter was part of the Campbell family tradition. The book added that the Campbells’ “persecution of the Mac-Gregors, in particular, leaves a stench behind.”

  So, fast forward to the seventeenth century where the Campbell folk did one decidedly nasty deed that left an even bigger stink down through the centuries. The Campbells, by then, had sworn loyalty to the English—King William of Orange, to be specific. The MacDonalds wanted nothing to do with the English.

  A contingent of Campbell men was sent by the king to the Highland village of Glencoe in the winter of 1692, supposedly to collect taxes. Strangely enough, the MacDonalds in Glencoe offered food and shelter that bitter cold and sleety February to the Campbells. After two weeks of this good hospitality, the Campbells turned on their hosts (as they had been instructed to) at five AM one morning and murdered the Glencoe MacDonalds.

  Thirty-eight unsuspecting men were massacred, and forty other MacDonald women and children died afterwards from freezing and starvation as they fled.

  And so it is, ages hence, that an orphaned Campbell boy, his own parents dead as the result of faulty brake lights, is adopted and taken into the home of a MacDonald family. What do you make of that, I ask you, in this riddled random universe?

  And that’s all I have to say about that. School again tomorrow. Big test in biology. Boy to bed. Over and out.


  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Part of me was still stuck back there in my old living room. It really was. I gave in and tried to talk to Will and Beth about it. They tried to help me but it was awkward. “You can talk to us about anything,” my mom said.

  “We’re here for you,” my dad said. “Just let us know what you need.”

  That didn’t make it any easier. Maybe what I needed was the nasty version of parents. The ones who would say, “Get over it.” But I didn’t have the get-over-it type of parents. I changed the subject and asked them if they ever heard about the Campbell-MacDonald issue. They hadn’t. But that, too, was a piece of the puzzle. My puzzle. And oh, yeah, here I go again. The puzzle of me. What do I mean? Who am I? What do the events of my life add up to? If it really was a puzzle, there would always be pieces, big pieces, missing. So, get over that, too.

  Still, with a name like mine, I must be on a quest. All I have are clues. Many of which do not add up. So what does a boy do but follow some deep, primitive need, some instinct, maybe?

  None of which was helping Gloria. And she did need help. I skipped class and went looking for her. She was not in school—again. I phoned. Nothing. I asked Dean if he’d seen her. He hadn’t.

  Field notes on the Deanster, by the way. His jury is still out on the gay guy thing. But, he now has four gay friends. Two guys—Tim and Devon—and two girls—Lee Anne and Clarisse. They’ve kind of adopted him. Dean likes that. He seems more relaxed and at home in his Deanness, gay or straight. His uncertainty about his sexual persuasion has vastly improved his social life. Go figure.

  But Gloria. Gloria was not in Excelsis. Gloria, I discovered, was in the Children’s Hospital. I stopped by her house after school. There were both of Gloria’s parents together, answering the door.

  “The meds were not working,” her mom said somberly.

  “We had to help her somehow,” her dad added. They were unhappy parents but they did not seem like they were unhappy with each other.

  “Can I see her?” I asked.

  Her mom looked at me rather severely. “She says you two slept together. Is that true?”

  “Yes,” I said rather matter-of-factly. “So can I see her? Is she here?”

  “She’s in the Children’s Hospital.”

  “What?” I asked, feeling the blood drain from my face.

  “It was what her doctor recommended,” her dad said, looking now like an entirely defeated man.

  “She’s just depressed,” her mom added, making it sound like she had a cold.

  “Very depressed,” her father added. “And it’s our fault.”

  “Don’t say that,” her mom said, with an edge to her voice.

  “I know she’s been hurting,” I said. “I thought I could help. Maybe I still can.”

  “I don’t know,” her father said. “Might be best to let the doctors do what they can.”

  But I already knew where she was. Sounded odd. But I guess they put kids in a “children’s hospital” right up until they turn seventeen.

  Mom disagreed with Dad again. “I think he should go see her.”

  Dad shrugged, didn’t want to argue.

  “I’ll call ahead,” Gloria’s mom said, “and tell them it’s all right for you to visit. Room 354. Follow the blue line on the floor.”

  I hadn’t been in the Children’s Hospital since ... well, since I’d been a child. I’d fallen off my bike when I was eight and had a bad cut on my leg that wouldn’t stop bleeding. It took some stitches and some hollering on my part to get through it. My parents bought me ice cream afterwards. Bubblegum-flavored ice cream that I later threw up on a beige carpet. Do you have any idea what bubble gum ice cream vomit does to beige? I do.

  Sure enough, there was a blue line on the floor as soon as you walked in. And it led to the third floor—the psychiatric ward, I supposed, although they didn’t have that posted anywhere. No one asked me who I was or anything. I just walked to 354. The door was open. I knocked anyway on the frame.

  Gloria was fully dressed and sitting in a chair by the window. She was reading.

  She looked up. She seemed happy to see me but even the half-smile couldn’t mask the injured look in her eyes.

  “What are you reading?” I asked.

  “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” she said.

  “That sounds cheery.”

  “It’s good. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. He’s from South America.”

  “I always liked South American authors,” I said.

  “Liar.”

  I smiled. So did she. Not much of one. But a smile.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  “I’m here. How can I be okay?”

  “Right. What do they do for you here?”

  “They talk to me.”

  “That’s all.”

  “So far.”

  “But why are you here?”

  “I couldn’t find the courage to go to school.”

  “You didn’t want to go to school? Big deal.”

  “I couldn’t get up for school.”

  “Did it have something to do with me? That whole scene in Riverside?”

  “Maybe. But that was maybe just what triggered it. I just woke up and didn’t feel like moving. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I had fallen into a very deep, very dark pit. And I had no desire to try to climb out.”

  “I talked to your parents.”

  “They’re back together.”

  “I noticed.”

  “They are doing that for me. I don’t know if it’s going to work. Believe it or not, they’re talking about staying in the same house—my mom upstairs, my dad in the basement. There’s a bedroom and bathroom there and he’s talking about putting in a kitchen. They think they need to do this for me.”

  “Can it work?”

  “I doubt it. But I feel guilty that I’m making things worse for them—with all this.”

  “Guilt is a waste of time,” I said, suddenly flashing on something. Something big. I shoved it back into a closet.

  “I don’t think they can help me,” Gloria said, nodding at the busy staff people out at the nurse’s station.

  “Don’t say that.”

  Gloria shrugged. “I’ll stay here for a while. Gives me time to read. I don’t care about school.”

  “You ever feel this bad before?”

  “Yeah. A few times. Growing up. I’d fall into the pit but could always get back out. This is different.”

  “Deeper pit?”

  “Something like that.”

  “When you look up, what do you see?”

  She set her book down and looked directly at me. “I see you leaning over. You’re yelling something to me but I can’t hear it.”

  “You’re sure it’s me?”

  “Yes. And I’m yelling to you to be careful. Not to lean over too far. I’m afraid you might fall.”

  “I won’t fall,” I said.

  I came closer to Gloria and touched her cheek with my hand. She held it there and I felt important and helpless all at the same time.

  After that, I told her about Dean and about my research into the Campbells and the MacDonalds. She was pleased about Dean and somewhat disturbed by the activities of my ancestors.

  And then one of the nurses was telling me visiting hours were over. “I’ll be back,” I told Gloria. “I’ll come every day.” But the truth was that being around Gloria, seeing the dark look in her eyes, the sadness, was not good. As I left the room, I felt relieved. As I left the hospital, I felt free. All my good intentions were flushed down a toilet. All I could think about was getting away from there. So I found myself running down the endless sidewalk until my lungs felt like they were on fire. I let myself fall over on someone’s lawn and lay there, breathing hard, having a hard time getting the picture of Gloria’s sorrowful face out of my head.

  I knew then that I wasn’t strong enough to help her. I felt really rotten. A loser, a failure, a fraud. I stumbled on back home and locked m
yself in my room.

  I fell asleep and didn’t wake up from some truly bad dreams until somewhere around midnight. The knocking mixed into what I was dreaming. It was the police knocking at the door to the house. Coming to report what happened to Henry and Seal. But, as I awoke to darkness, I realized where I was and that it was just Will and Beth.

  I got out of bed and opened the door. Something harsh but important was forming in my thoughts.

  “We heard you shouting something in your sleep,” Beth said. “Are you all right?”

  I rubbed my eyes and tried to hang onto what my brain was screaming at me. I’m sure I looked very confused.

  “Yeah. I think I am. I think I know what I have to do.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Before I tell you about what happened today, I confess that I am still shaking. It may take me a few days to calm down. Maybe a month. Maybe it’s going to take me a lifetime. Why I had the courage to do it today, I’m not sure. Something to do with Gloria. Seeing her in the state she was in. Realizing that the medication and probably even the professional staff at the hospital were not going to be able to help her. I was the only one who could climb down into the darkness and help her find a way up.

  I know what you must be thinking. Boy with a hero complex. Only he can save the girl.

  Yes. That’s exactly what I was thinking. Is that so foolish of me? But first, I knew I had to face my own demons. Not demons, really. Just memory. And not really even memory. Images of something I did not see, even though I lived it over and over a thousand times.

  I told no one what I was up to. All I had to do was go there.

  I could try to give you some reasonable psychological explanation about why I was going there today, this otherwise nondescript Saturday in my life. But I won’t. You connect the dots. If the dots connect at all. It’s better that way. I’ll just report the events.

  Here goes.

  I got up and I brushed my teeth, put on jeans, a long sleeve T-shirt, socks, and running shoes. Will and Beth weren’t up, so I left them a note. “Out for a bit. Will be back later,” it said. Vague and ordinary. But brave, really. Very brave. Was it the Campbell in me or the MacDonald? Certainly the sound in my head was the guitar. Henry’s full-throttle distortion guitar— one big monster chord. But I was also feeling Will’s confidence and sense of purpose. When he knew a thing had to be done, he just set himself to do it. No complaining, no matter how menial or tedious or difficult. With those two fathers in my head, I truly felt hyphenated.