Page 14 of Exquisite Things

“You’re a bore,” Jack says, matter-of-fact.

“Boys, come look.” Jack pulls a bag of costumes out from under his bed.

He throws dresses and gowns around the room haphazardly.

Ruffles and sequins. Scarves and hats. Gloves and heels.

The boys cluster around him, fascinated by the illicit feel of these fabrics.

Their bright colors. Their feminine softness.

“Tremendous,” one of them coos.

Cyril drapes a dazzling velvet cape around himself. “It’s incredible, isn’t it? The power a frock can have to transform you

into someone else entirely.” Catching his reflection in the mirror, he adds bittersweetly, “Someone without a care in the

world.” He throws the cape off and grabs a corset.

In the opposite corner of the room, Shams finds me staring at them in quiet contemplation near Brendan’s bed. “How have you

been?” he asks.

“Oh, fine, busy.” I glance at him quickly. The warmth of his gaze discomfits me. I glance away. “I’m sorry I didn’t return

your phone call.”

“No apology needed,” he insists. “I was only calling so you had a way to reach me. If you wanted to. But if you don’t want

to reach me, that’s perfectly all right.” His eyes gleam. “It will leave me devastated. Despondent. Hopeless. But it’s all

right.”

“Stop, please,” I beg. “I deal with enough guilt as it is. Always trying to be perfect for Mother.”

“ Trying to be perfect?” he asks. “You are perfect.”

“Hardly.” I giggle nervously. “I have so many flaws.”

“For example?”

“I’m horribly afraid of... so many things.” Before he can ask for an example, I give him one. “Like calling you back. I

wanted to. But I was too scared. I’m not brave like you.” Gazing at Jack, Brendan, and the boys, I add, “Like all of you.”

He offers me his hand. There’s red nail polish on it. “There’s more than one kind of bravery,” he says. “The way you express yourself. Your emotions. Your vulnerability. The way your heart speaks through the music you play. That’s bravery too.”

I hold his hand. Run a finger along the satiny crimson of his nails. “I almost called you so many times,” I confess. “But

each time, I put the phone down.”

“Why is that?” he asks.

“I—” I think of all the easy excuses I could make. I was too busy with school, with wrestling. I wasn’t feeling well. I had

a big test. “I told you. I was scared.” He seems to bring out the truth in me.

“Of?” he asks.

“Do I need to say it?” I ask.

“I find that when we speak our fears aloud, they lose a little bit of their power over us,” he says.

“Really?” I wasn’t raised to speak fears. I was guided into hiding them.

“Try it,” he says firmly.

“Well, I—” I search for the words. “I suppose my biggest fear is hurting my mother. She’s already lost her husband, and she’s

sacrificed her whole life for me. Works herself to the bone all day, and then comes home and cooks and cleans for me. My brother

as well, I suppose. But he’s in New Haven now. And besides, he never cared for her like I do. If she knew that I...” I

drift off, unsure how to form the words.

“That you...”

“That I am...”

“The way you are...”

“It would destroy her,” I declare with finality.

“May I make an observation?” he asks. “With a disclaimer that I know very little of your situation and will be making some rather large assumptions.”

“Sure.” I turn my gaze to him now, waiting.

He smiles before he begins. “From what little I know, your mother is strong. You say your father is gone, and still, she holds

her head high, working to raise her family alone.”

“That’s right.”

“I would also wager she’s kind and deeply intelligent, because she raised you.” He bats his eyelashes quickly. They’re thick

and long even without mascara, but with the makeup, they’re like wings taking flight each time he blinks. “You, Oliver, strike

me as a person who was raised with love.”

“I—” I nod. “My father was... I feel sick speaking ill of him when he’s gone, but he was harsh. And selfish. But Mother...

She... Yes, she always made me feel loved. Makes me feel loved. And I love her too. Too much to be a burden to her, ever.”

“It shows.” He moves a little closer to me. At the other corner of the room, the boys are gathered around Brendan, who squeezes

himself into some kind of Elizabethan gown that looks worthy of Lady Macbeth. “I would hope a woman like your mother, a woman

who loves her son and always did, would continue loving him no matter who he chooses to love.”

“She won’t understand it to be love,” I argue.

“Perhaps in the beginning,” he suggests. “But what I see is that your deepest fear is losing her love. The fear of losing

love is... well, it’s a fear I don’t understand, I suppose.”

I look at him with real sadness in my eyes. “Your parents—”

“Didn’t love me.”

“Brothers? Sisters?” I ask.

“Only child.” He shrugs.

“But—But there must have been a kind aunt or grandparent who loved you... A best friend...”

“No, never.” He shakes off the gloom. “Don’t pity me, please. I’ve plenty of time to find love. Isn’t that right?”

“Of course that’s right,” I assure him. “Of course it is. You’re just a kid, really. In fact, we’re the youngest two people

in this room. When’s your birthday? Mine is July seventh. Let’s see which one of us is the youngest.”

“Will you give me a birthday present if I tell you?” he asks.

“Of course I will,” I declare. “What do you want?”

“Just this,” he says. “To be in your company, speaking the truth to each other. I’m so tired of hiding.”

“I feel exactly the same,” I say, excited by the connection. “I’m always hiding, and it’s so exhausting. Always wondering

if someone will find me out. Afraid that some small slip of the tongue might give me away.”

The boys who are masquerading are all dolled up now. Brendan is in Elizabethan dress and a frilly red wig. Cyril wears nothing

but boots and a corset, his figure cinched into tight curves. “Howest doth we looketh?” Brendan asks, and everyone laughs

and claps.

Shams turns to me with a smile. “You don’t want to masquerade?” he asks.

“Oh... I... It does sound fun, but—”

“But you’re scared?” he asks.

“That, yes.” I stare at Jack, who places a floral hat atop a classmate’s head. “Also, I don’t want Jack touching my face.”

Shams laughs, and I notice a red smudge on his front teeth. “There’s lipstick on your teeth,” I say.

“Which ones?” he asks.

“I can fix it,” I offer. “Smile.” He smiles big, and I rub my index finger over his two front teeth. When I’m done, he briefly

closes his lips on my finger and pushes his tongue toward it. The wetness of his tongue on the tip of my finger sends warm

shivers through my body, like I’m hot and cold all at the same time.

“What if I did your makeup?” he offers. “Then Jack wouldn’t touch you.”

I nod shyly. Shams crosses the room and snatches the makeup from Jack’s desk. Jack is too busy dancing in the center of the

room to mind. Shams returns to me and begins the process of transforming me from Oliver into whoever I’ll become when he’s

done. Someone new, with no past, only future. Shams puts rouge on my cheeks. He draws a line around my lips before filling

it in with a ruby-red lipstick. As he works on my eyes, framing them in smoky mystery, I whisper, “It’s strange, isn’t it?

I’ve never been more honest with a person as I just was with you, and yet we’re hiding behind these... disguises.”

“ Man is least himself when he talks in his own person ,” he says, like he’s reciting. “ Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth. Do you know who wrote that?”

I shake my head.

“Oscar Wilde.” He speaks the name like he’s summoning a ghost.

“Perhaps Oscar Wilde felt that way because he was forced to wear a mask,” I propose. “Maybe if he had been luckier... to

live in a time when men like him didn’t have to... I don’t know...”

“I know what you mean.” Shams turns me toward the small, dirty mirror above Brendan’s desk.

In the foreground of the mirror is my unrecognizable self.

In the background are the dancing boys, some dressed as girls.

The reflection of us appears so joyful. Like we’re frozen in this room, in this moment, far from all the fear and judgment outside.

“He did what he felt he had to do, in his time. The wife. The children.”

“I want children,” I declare, shocked by my words. “I do. I want to love a child the way Mother loved me. But I don’t...

I don’t want a wife. I don’t want to deceive the people I vow to love. I feel cursed sometimes. Fated to have a family who

will never know the real me.”

“That may change,” he suggests quietly. “Look at how society has changed in just this last decade. And what’s family anyway?

Perhaps this is a family.” He throws his gaze toward the dancing boys. “A family we get to choose for ourselves. A brotherhood.”

“I wouldn’t want to exist in a brotherhood,” I say. “I much prefer women to men. Can’t we be a personhood? Not men and women,

but simply people. Just the word man is so limiting.”

“I think the maquillage has freed a piece of you,” he says with a smile.

“Maybe.” I look deep into his glowing eyes, under the spell of their browns and oranges. “I suppose I don’t want to be limited

to a world of men just because I am... what I am. Mother is the person I love most in the world. Even at the Rooster, the

person I connected to the most was Edna, the sapphic Radcliffe girl.”

“Not me?” he asks, only a hint of hurt in his voice.

“Of course, you.” I squeeze his hand to make up for my thoughtless comment. “I suppose... I put you in a different category

than Edna.”

“And what category would that be?” he whispers in my ear.