The Value Of Rain Read online

  “But you had a choice,” Snow prodded.

  “I guess,” I answered. It never seemed to me that I had a choice about any of the events in my life. They merely were.

  “The Turtle says all fags are made like I was. That we’re all the product of some form of emotional or sexual abuse,” he said.

  I rolled my eyes. “And you believe this from a guy that pushes more drugs than the average street corner peddler? Come on, Snow.”

  “So you don’t think Charlotte created you?” he countered.

  “No. If anything, I think she saw my sexuality as another victory over the male species.”

  Snow curled up at the end of my bunk and studied me. “You don’t believe a word of this shit. Where’d you hear it?”

  “I… in a group a while back. That counselor that was here for about three weeks, remember her? She said it.” I stared down at the floor. “But you’re right. Whether it’s true or not, Charlotte never gave a damn, straight or gay.” I was silent for a moment. “You know, I used to be able to tell how my day was going to be just by the lipstick she wore.”

  Snow’s eyebrow curled up in curiosity.

  “It was like a mood ring on her coffee cup. A light airy color meant I was going to have a good day. She would conquer me quick and bloodlessly.

  “But on the dark days, when she wore something like the smudged sclera of her eye, I knew she’d be hammering down on me all day. It was like… I don’t know, she would radiate this essence of menace, studying me like a bug under a microscope.” I remembered knowing that I should say nothing on those days. I knew what she was doing. She was calculating my worth in her life. All tabulations coming to zero.

  I shrugged. “Maybe she was just too complex for me to ever understand,” I told Snow.

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything. Yet his gesture made me reflect on the fantasy I’d been creating over the years to try to pull myself from my constant black pit of despair and rejection. And that made me realize that I’d done nothing more than grope around the bottom of that pit pulling out raw wet clumps of confusion and mistaking them for a rampart for my escape. In actuality, there was no escape, this was reality.

  Snow found me on my bunk several days later, the razor glistening in the light of the rose purple air of dusk.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” His anger was sharp and acute; the muscles in his arms small and tight as he grabbed the razor from me and flung it out into the common area. He took a deep breath, turned back to me and sat down beside me, kissing each of my still naked wrists.

  “Why?” he asked, his voice a small brown waver.

  “Why not?” I answered. How could I explain that even when we were together I still felt a hidden loneliness lurking beneath my skin; a crude groping that seemed receptive only to the tactile weight of unhappiness?

  “Because Charlotte expects to bury you,” Snow replied. “All that will give her” he said, nodding at my wrists,” is an end to her embarrassment. Do you really want to give her that satisfaction?”

  I looked at him. His comment made me think back on her note, the audacity of it; the weight of it. I would not buckle under it. I could not.

  Two hours later we found out that the Turtle was dead in his office; his head parked on his shoulders, Lester gyrating outside the office screaming about how the vending machines had struck, but missed him, and killed the good doctor instead.

  Chapter Six

  April 1979

  His name was Caufield Smith, pronounced “Co-field”, which he insisted on being called, Doctor of Psychiatry. He took over the case load of the Turtle only two weeks after the Turtle’s death.

  He seemed a compassionate man with an effective talent of quiet extraction. He didn’t practice like a dentist; breaking things apart and ripping them out in a froth of bloody nerves and saliva. He was more a florist, selecting one flower at a time, admiring the beauty of its petals, relishing the power of its perfume, placing it just so, before drawing back and saying ‘Look, look here. This is the beauty of your arrangement.’ If it was all shriveled roses and decaying baby’s breath, he still revealed in it; still loved the mental tesserae depicting that hidden id. For him, even insanity had a suffused beauty to it.

  He was in his sixties, but by the use of various dyes and gels kept himself looking in his mid forties. Dark chestnut hair and a slightly lighter beard accented hazel green eyes and softened his linear features enough to make his gaze bearable.

  I learned quickly that he used silence like a weapon. He simply refused to fill the void of our own muzzled cries and kept looking at us expectantly, his finger tapping our file while his eyes bored past our mental walls and saw the ugliness inside. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. On me, it worked.

  Unlike many of the other professionals I met over the years, Caufield didn’t stand on convention. He tried to learn from each of his patients and, in turn, expected each of us to take something of him. As if he could parcel out his soul and tidbits of his sanity and make us whole again.

  But why he ever showed up at the Birch Building at all was a question I pondered many times before I finally asked. He shrugged in reply and informed me that he loved the clinical aspect of his job too much to chase the prestige so many of his peers craved. In fact, he found it a hindrance in his exploration of the human mind and intimated, without actually saying so, that this mislaid importance on fame was what had narrowed Freud’s scope to such an extent that he was ultimately vilified by his own theories. Not seeing the forest for the trees, as it were.

  “Why are you here?” he countered during our fourth session together, nearly four years after I had entered the Birch Building.

  He looked at me closely, his already heavy gaze picking apart the layers of protection I had built up over the years. “Sexual behavior modification,” I finally answered in a blurt.

  His eyebrows shot up past the gold wire frames of his glasses and he burst with laughter. I cowered immediately; my fortitude curling in on itself because it sounded too much like Jarrel’s braying.

  He saw my reaction and sobered instantly. “Sorry. Good one though. I mean really, why are you here?”

  “Because my mother couldn’t tolerate the insult of having a faggot in her house,” I answered precisely.

  He cocked his head a bit and studied me, his finger tapping the unopened cover of my file. “Your records indicate quite a bit more.”

  “I haven’t had any reason to conform socially, doc. Shock treatment does wonders for the personality.”

  “Shock treatment was rejected decades ago,” he informed me.

  “And homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973,” I countered,” but here I am. I guess that means I must be delusional.”

  He looked down at my file but didn’t open it. “Where’d you come from?”

  “Sanctuary. Four years ago.”

  A look of apprehension overcame him and he gave me the feeling that I might actually be communicating with a human being that wasn’t plugged in to the psycho-babblic machine of so-called modern psychiatry.

  “Your file says you came from a private institution down south,” Caufield told me.

  I raised my eyebrows at the prospect, but said nothing.

  He looked at me for a moment. “I found your father. He’d like to take you home. Maybe.”

  He let that sink in. “Now the bad news.” He prodded my three inch thick file toward me on the desk. “This is a smoking gun. Were I to get you out of here and have you do something stupid….” He didn’t need to say anymore, I knew the risk he’d be taking. That file covered eight years of outbursts, rejection and rage. Someone else wouldn’t even think about it, the key would have already been thrown away. And that was only with what I knew I had done; there was no telling what Minot had written in that file to justify his actions.

  “Think about it,” he told me as I got up to leave. “We’ll talk about it some more.”

  When I told Snow about it la
ter, he said it was great, but from the shattered expression on his face I should have known it wasn’t.

  Chapter Seven

  November 1980

  Five years at the Birch Building had passed when I finally realized that the oil of my living had baked into its walls; my crude black shadow enjoining the tide pool of insanity that surrounded me.

  Outside, in the sky, small fists of white unfolded into snowflakes, the brown winter wind whisking them away like fallen angels. I looked through the barred windows with the rest of the inanimate at the first heavy snow and wondered how I had made it this far; how I had survived and not succumbed to the undertow of Charlotte’s final note.

  But my friends had not survived.

  The procession carrying Snow through the snow was a testament to that; his white shrouded body shouldered by white shrouded orderlies in a white shrouded world.

  Two days ago I found him in a steam filled shower, the tiny brown tiles pitying the decay of feet above them; the ceiling peeling a grey relief into the black cloud of hopelessness and mildew. A flower of red had bloomed under the white white rose of Snow, one opened by the silver petal of a razor.

  I sat down slowly, holding myself against the wall as I pushed my body down into the warmth of the shower. His hand was pale and rubbery when I grasped it; warm, yet lifeless. All I could do was pull him close and wail.

  As I watched his procession leave the building a tear slipped, then two. The flood following it pushed those with me at the window back a few feet; the raw sanity of the emotion throwing them even more off kilter.

  Lester, who hesitated on the periphery of the crowd that had formed around me, finally pushed through; his normally restless eyes steady and pink. “We’ll get them for this. I promise! We’ll get the sons-of bitches!” He patted me on the shoulder and pushed back through the circle.

  Yes, I thought as I turned back to the window. We would get them, every fucking one.

  A faint odor of ginger and daikon washed over me and I turned to find Thai at my side, knowing it would be him without looking. He pointed outside with a look of concern tangling the wrinkles of his face.

  I nodded and made a slashing motion at my arms. He knew Snow, everyone had.

  Thai shook his head no, and pointed outside again, up at the sky this time.

  “The storm?” I asked. This intangible flaky mooring anchoring me to the concept of an outside world?

  He nodded excitedly, pushed the window up an inch and came back with a handful of snow. He pointed at it and I threw my hands up to show him that I didn’t understand.

  Frustrated, he dumped the snow on the floor and stuck his hand through the bars again. This time he came back with just a few flakes balanced on his fingertips. He pointed at them before they had a chance to melt to their element.

  I shrugged again. I hated charades. I looked around the circle but no one else seemed to understand either, and at this particular moment I just didn’t care.

  “Coin of the Gods,” a voice rumbled outside our small group of miscreant mourners. The circle parted like a wave. It was Tiny.

  “Water is life.” Tiny said.”Coin of the Gods. It has value. Its absence equals death.”

  I looked at Thai who nodded enthusiastically. The gods were displaying their reverence for that tortured young soul by filling the world with his namesake. I put my hand on Thai’s shoulder and thanked him. The circle broke up and I was left alone to watch a silent ambulance penetrate the mute night and disappear in a dance of angels.

  *****

  “He wasn’t stable Charles. It wasn’t your fault,” Caufield told me first thing the next day.

  I said nothing. I stared at the floor in his office. All the tears I had to shed had fallen. I knew Snow’s death wasn’t my fault, yet I still felt responsible, as if I had failed him somehow; the news of my possible release pushing him to the very act of permanence he had always sought to avoid.

  “Are you ready for this?” Caufield asked me.

  I looked up at him. “No.”

  “Me either,” he replied. I stopped looking through him and looked at him.

  He shrugged. “It’s a big step. I want you out of here and I want you to succeed, but that lever you hold against the dam of malice you think no one sees is liable to snap once you get beyond these walls.

  “And you don’t think it’s justified?” I demanded, suddenly red faced and hostile.

  “I think it’s very justified,” Caufield answered quietly. “But I don’t think exchanging this institution for another is a very wise choice. Do you?”

  I stood and held my arms out, the same pose I would strike for Charlotte a decade later. It showed the strength of my weakness. Like Charlotte, Caufield didn’t buy it either. He motioned me to sit, an unamused frown on his face.

  “We have a hundred men here who’ve committed acts more savage than you would think Tiny capable of. Most of them had much less provocation and substantially less time to brood.” He let that sit between us for a moment before we moved on to the true reason for me being in his office this morning. “What are your expectations from this meeting?”

  “None. I don’t expect shit.”

  “So you can’t be disappointed.”

  “Exactly,” I answered.

  “Valid, but not exactly honest, is it?”

  I queried the floor again with my eyes. He was talking validity, and I was thinking about how all three of the men I had grown attached to were putrefying in the ground somewhere. How everything I attached myself to was yanked away from me.

  There was a hesitant knock on the door and I looked up at Caufield in a panic.

  “You have nothing to fear, Charles. We’ve spoken dozens of times. He just wants to reassure himself that you’re not some raving madman.”

  “But I am.”

  Caufield froze me to my seat with a look before he got up and answered the door.

  When it opened I heard the whispery paper noises of a handshake but could not bring myself to turn around; my neck was too stiff and my eyes deadened by all the accolades and frustrations I had poured on this stranger over the years. All I could focus on was the snow trickling down through the window behind Caufield’s desk.

  My father had been many things to me over the years, but at the moment I could not think of one of them. The number of times my imagination had honed him into the molds of hero and villain and back again were beyond count. Thus, my fear was that if I looked upon him he would forever be cemented into one of the arduous and implacable castes I had designed for him.

  When he sat in the chair beside me I began to feel his gaze hot on my skin. Assessing me, analyzing, with his naïve eye, the tics and marks my commitment had left upon me; this dirty crazy fag in the green jumpsuit beside him.

  “Charles?” Caufield queried with an irritated eye motion toward my father.

  I turned only my head. “Do you think rain has any value?” I asked him.

  I thought he would take a quick what-the fuck-is-this look at Caufield and shorten his stay down to a few brief moments, but he didn’t. He glanced past me at the falling snow outside Caufield’s window.

  “Do you mean besides its inherent beauty and cleansing properties or as a mere monetary valuation?”

  Caufield smiled at his response, his look of angry disappointment at my question fading with the realization that my father would not be so easily maneuvered.

  I turned and looked at him fully now. Henry Rathborne was old. Very old, it seemed to me; too old to be my biological father. He was short and stooped and handling a cane that I had not heard thumping against the floor when he came in. His hair was sparse and white and his skin was aged with wrinkles. But his eyes were young and they sparkled like sapphires in shallow caves.

  “Cancer,” he told me after searching out the question in my face. “Dr. Smith told me you lost a friend yesterday. I’m very sorry.”

  I looked at Caufield hatefully before I turned back to my father. “
He was a lover, not just a friend.”

  The shock I intended didn’t seem to faze him any. “A lover, or a loved one?” he asked closely, pushing for a change of rhythm in our conversation.

  I looked down at the hands he had steepled on his cane and began a study of his well manicured nails. Was I trying to vilify this man for his abandonment or to make myself more easily rejectable?

  “A loved one,” I admitted quietly.

  He watched me silently for a moment. “I arranged for a funeral. It seems he had no family.”

  “That cared,” I snarled.

  My comment seemed to embarrass him somewhat. “But you cared, wouldn’t you like to attend?”

  “What’s your interest in this?” I demanded, suddenly pissed off at his interference.

  “You’re my son.”

  “And after twenty fucking years you’ve suddenly decided to take an interest?” I barked.

  He blanched and glanced at Caufield. “I didn’t know,” he said to me. “Charlotte never said a word. We were only married a few weeks when I realized what a mistake I’d made. She changed so fast after the ceremony it was like I’d married the evil twin by mistake. I couldn’t stay. I…”

  He stopped and looked down at his hands, knuckles white around the cane like a driver on the verge of misfortune. I followed his gaze and met the same sight; my mind’s eye contemplating him as an engineer, the long slow bridge beneath him crumbling into a ditch of moving filth. A sign, miles back, would have read: Charlotte’s Bridge Works: Under perpetual destruction.

  My grandfather’s description of Henry came to mind and I thanked him for the invitation before I jumped up and walked out. My first trip to the outside world would be to attend the funeral of the latest victim of my love. The final one.

  *****

  A week later I had a pass in my pocket, clutching to it like an elementary student on an emergency run to the bathroom. Caufield had laughed when I asked for one, claiming it unnecessary, but had finally acquiesced when I became demanding. He wrote it on a piece of plain cream colored stationary, the Birch Building logo stenciled on top.