Got the Blues

Chapter 1 Beau Watkins shoved the key into the battered copper lock and gave it a turn. The tiny box that held his campus mail was jammed full and he had to wiggle the envelopes around in order to get them all. One particularly stubborn item had to be bent in order to get it past the door. He closed the door, turned his key back to locked, and shuffled out of the post office without looking at the double handful of letters, cards, and fliers. Ann-Marie was waiting for him on the steps, sitting two from the bottom. She wore that harried air that most seniors Beau knew had developed over the summer. Her oversized, overpriced milk, sugar, and coffee drink was empty and the cup dangled from her fingertips. The Amazonian blonde girl didn’t say anything, just held her hand out for the mail. He sat down next to her and paused to rest his forehead against hers. From the corner of his eye, he observed a girl looking at them wistfully. Years and years of pretending to be straight—of cultivating a girlfriend to enhance that image—and by his second year of college, Beau didn’t want to pass anymore. Didn’t want anyone to mistake him for anything other than what he was. Maybe that explained why Ann-Marie was so hesitant about physical affection. She didn’t want to pass anymore, either. “Come on, wimp,” Ann-Marie said. She punched him in the shoulder, but it was halfhearted, barely stung. She flipped through the mail as they walked, one card and flier at a time. “Campus crap…a card, return postage is New York. Probably your cousin. Bill you later for a magazine you don’t want. Two cards from Tennessee. Your credit card statement. I know you probably don’t want that. A note from the Pee Oh saying you have a package for pickup. Do you want to do that today, or wait ‘til next week. Never mind, don’t answer that now. And a letter, also from Tennessee.” Beau collapsed onto one of the benches that lined the school’s brick sidewalks between the academic buildings. Far from anyone else. He stared at the ground between his feet. “The letter. Is it?” “From Lee? Looks that way.” Ann-Marie handed him the paper spam, fliers and campus announcements, tucking the cards under her arm and eyeballing the letter the way someone might handle a bomb. “You want me to open this one, or just chuck it?” “Open it.” Beau studied his worn out sneakers with forced concentration. There was a small hole over his second toe on the left side and the right shoe’s sole was peeling off. He needed new shoes, had needed them for months now. Ann-Marie slid her finger under the flap and worked out several pages; Beau tried not to watch, but he couldn’t help it. At least three sheets of paper, crammed margin to margin with his brother’s painfully angular handwriting. There were marks that had bled through the pages, either underlining or words that were crossed out. Ann-Marie glanced at him over the edge of the paper. “Beau,” she said, warningly. “I know, I know.” He turned on the bench, staring away from her. Watching people pass on the sidewalks on their way to class or clubs, lunch or lectures, the library or the coffee shop. People who didn’t have their world collapsing on them. Or maybe they did. It’s not like he often worried much about how other people were doing, just how he was coping. And the answer to that was, right tore up. “He’s still being a d**k,” Ann-Marie pronounced. As per their agreement, she tore the letter up. Beau winced every time the sound of ripping paper reached his ears until he was practically cowering on the bench with his arms thrown over his head in surrender. He wasn’t, not really. On the outside he was cool, detached, as always. Inside, he was screaming, beating his fists against the walls of his brain, tearing great gouges out of his own flesh. “I ain’t hardly surprised,” he said. Ann-Marie crumpled up the shreds and tossed them in the trash can. She cracked open one of the cards. “Birthday card. It’s your birthday? You never said.” “Next week,” Beau said. “How old will you be?” She checked the inside of the card and then dropped it in his lap. “Oh, Aunt Lucy,” he said, reading through the quick note. There was a check, too. s**t. Five hundred dollars? How the hell could she afford that on her retirement income? “Um, twenty.” “Baby,” Ann-Marie said. “I can’t believe we’re not partying it up. Damn, child, you wouldn’t say s**t if you had a mouthful. Can’t wait to tell Vin.” Beau groaned but didn’t protest. The other cards were from his mother and his cousin, Kate. Kate’s card was filled in completely, both inside flaps and half the back, with neat, rounded letters. He read through her news—confused at first until he realized that she’d started writing on the signature page and moved backward through the card. Weirdo. “Oh, Kate got a new gig,” he said. “She’s got a role in an ensemble cast television show.” A gift card was glue-dotted on the inside of the envelope. He pocketed it without looking at the amount. “Leading lady?” “Doesn’t look like it,” he said, scanning through the details again. “Some gothic horror thing called Victor. I expect I’ll get more info later.” “I like your cousin.” “Everyone loves Kate.” Beau tucked the card in his backpack. His mom hadn’t written a note at all in her card. She’d signed it Love, Mom, but that was it. There was scarcely any communication between them. Beau shut the card, pressed the paper against his chest, and closed his eyes. It had to be hard for her, he thought. His father had been furious. About what? So much to choose from: Beau’s coming out; the fist fight he’d had with his brother Lee the night before Lee’s wedding; and the matter of eight thousand dollars that Joanna Watkins had given to her youngest son after his father disowned him. Gerald probably considered her actions outright theft. Disowned? Disavowed, more like. What son? Gerald only had one son. He didn’t know any Beauregard. Between Gerald’s utter silence and Lee’s prolific hate mail, Beau’s mom had to be in emotional turmoil. Beau gritted his teeth. She made her choice, it wasn’t his responsibility. It wasn’t his job to make his family happy. Maybe if he kept telling himself that, he’d believe it. Eventually. “All right, if I’m done playing mail censor for you today,” Ann-Marie said, “we can pick up that package, what? Friday?” “It’s a birthday present from my aunt,” Beau said. “She said I ought to expect it, in her card. A scarf, probably. She took up knitting last year. I’ll get it tomorrow mornin’.” He wanted to get up and couldn’t. His legs were trembling and weak as a newborn colt. He tipped his head back and gazed up into the cloudy Chicago sky. “I don’t know why you don’t just let Vin do it,” she said. She threw herself down onto the bench next to him and dragged him into one of her hard-armed dyke-hugs. Vin. His boyfriend. His lover. The one blessing, Beau thought, that made all of this anguish worth anything at all. “He gets pissed off,” Beau offered up as an excuse. Which was true. Vin was prone to becoming completely ballistic about anything that upset Beau. “And I get all conflicted.” “About what?” She’d been reading Beau’s brother’s letters all summer, after the second of these had resulted in Beau breaking two fingers against the brick wall he’d punched in his rage. Beau actually looked at her. She was very butch, her hair cut brutally short and multiple piercings up her ear, two in her nose and the snakebites on either side of her mouth. Not pretty; even if she’d dressed more feminine, Ann-Marie would never have been called pretty. Striking, maybe. God knew she had a tendency to strike people. Her mouth was twitched up in a cynical sneer, but her eyes were soft and concerned. “They’re still my family. And…I dunno.” Beau shrugged. He couldn’t stop the helpless flow of defense; Lee wasn’t so bad, his mom meant well, his dad was old and set in his ways. Which just made Vin more angry and the diatribe against Beau’s redneck, f****d up, stupid family stung more than he expected. Watkinses are all stupid, but you’re okay. It sounded like, “I don’t hate homosexuals, my best friend is gay.” Beau was a Watkins. It didn’t matter that his family was stupid and shallow and awful and…he still loved them. Listening to Vin snipe and harp was unbearable. Certainly, it didn’t make their ostracism of him any less painful. “Nobody gets to insult your brother but you?” Ann-Marie suggested. “Yeah, something like that.” Ann-Marie got it. She’d been thrown out of her own house three years ago. At least a third of the Gay Student Association—The Rainbow Connection—had some serious family issues. Beau sighed. “And I just don’t want to fight with him about it. I don’t need more fightin’.” “At least you’re smart enough not to read Lee’s letters anymore,” Ann-Marie said. That Beau should just trash them straight out of the mailbox was advice she’d given and he’d ignored previously. She didn’t waste words reiterating. Beau cast a longing look at the trash where the shredded remains of Lee’s vitriol still reached out to him with tempting hands. He wanted to read them. Wanted to brand his heart with those terrible words, needed them to keep him up at night, wishing for everything that never was. He wanted to compose long angry drafts of letters to his brother, never sent, to burn everything that ever lay between them. It was destructive, life-altering behavior. He wouldn’t do it. Not again. Lee could open the door, but Beau wasn’t obligated to walk into that hell with him. “I don’t need to end up in the emergency room,” was all he said. “You do have that tendency.” Ann-Marie checked her watch. “Well, fun as this has been, kiddo, I gotta scoot. Carson’s class in twenty minutes.” Beau grabbed her hand as she got up from the bench and squeezed it between his. “I know this is hard for you. Thanks.” “Hey, Lee’s not my asshole brother. I can stand hearing a little gay-bashing from time to time. He sounds like a f*****g stereotype. Really, he needs to get some original material, if he’s going to get my outrage these days.” Beau snorted. He dropped Ann-Marie’s hand; she was uncomfortable with physical affection, or sincere, fond words. She was already looking for another excuse to hit him. “I’ll see you at the meeting?” “Wouldn’t miss it,” she promised, crossing her fingers over her heart. Beau rubbed at his arms, watching her as she strode away, not the least bit ladylike. He amused himself by counting the number of people who jumped out of her way before she turned the corner. Ann-Marie was a Valkyrie of a woman, near to six feet tall, blonde, and fierce. Stereotypical, she’d called his brother. Pot, meet kettle. Ann-Marie was so butch that she had straight football players questioning their masculinity. God, he wanted a cigarette. Beau chewed aimlessly on the side of his fingers, ignoring the pain in his nailbed as his abused cuticles protested his oral fixation. But he’d quit—mostly—over the summer. Not for any health reasons, and certainly Vin hadn’t encouraged it. Vin was the champion of self-destructive behaviors, drinking, smoking, driving like a maniac. The truth was more prosaic and somewhat depressing: Beau simply couldn’t afford it. He had no income, aside from gifts from those members of his family who hadn’t disowned him, and that was going to dry up rapidly. Beau needed every penny he could get his hands on just for tuition. As it was, he was going to have to apply for financial aid and student loans before he got his degree. He eyed the trash can. A few of the shreds waved in the stiff mid-west wind. Tangled down by other student trash. Recyclables in the wrong canister. Empty and mostly empty coffee cups. Old papers. Fliers. Chewed gum and candy bar wrappers. Yesterday’s newspaper. He was going to get up right now and go off to his afternoon classes. And then spend some time in the library, getting his homework done. It was impossible to get homework done in the apartment he shared with Vin. Vin was careless and crazy, but super smart. Studying didn’t come natural to him, but he still got mostly As and Bs, whereas Beau had to study several hours a day to maintain his B average. Vin was particularly adept at convincing Beau that he didn’t need to study, he would rather go out, hit a movie, have s*x, grab a bite to eat, have s*x, and watch some television. And have s*x. Beau couldn’t help the smug grin that tugged at his mouth. Damn, Vin was a fine, fine man and Beau knew just how lucky he was. He wasn’t going to snatch those shredded pieces of letter from the trash. He wasn’t going to consider that. Beau scrubbed his hands over his face, feeling the rasp of his three-day stubble under his fingers. No one else could see it; Beau was as blond as Ann-Marie. It took effort to grow a beard that someone could see without a microscope. Mostly, Beau kept his face shaved, but a few days of slack wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone except Vin. “Walk away, asshole,” he muttered to himself. He cast one last, desperate look behind him, and then matched words to actions, shouldering his pack and heading off toward the northern quad. The remains of his brother’s letter were buried a moment later by a freshman with french fries still sticking out of her mouth who shoved her crumpled fast food bag down on top.