Relatively Honest (10 page)

“Hi, Sinter.”
I walked into our dorm room, and breathed the familiar scent of stale cloves and leather.

“Hey, man.” He was sitting on his bed with a book, and lifted a hand to me, which I slapped in passing. “How was break?”

I put down my bags with a sigh. “Oh, kind of awful. Never mind. How about you?”

“Same.”

“You must have missed Clare.” She lived in Calgary, Alberta, and had gone home for the vacation.

“Yeah. She’s due back pretty soon.” He closed the book. “God, I was bored. And my parents drove me insane.”

“Mine too, in their way.”
And it’s a gift of insanity that keeps on giving.
Had to stop dwelling on it. I sat on my bed, and decided to focus on Sinter’s problems. “What were your folks hounding you about?”

“Oh, the usual. They don’t like that I’m a theater major, they don’t like the eyeliner – oh, and they think I’m gay, and they don’t like that either.”

“Really? Don’t they know about Clare?”

He shook his head. “It’s easier not to tell them. They’d just want to meet her, and…well, Clare’s not exactly the kind of girl you take home to your uptight banker parents.”

“Hah. Suppose not.”

“They would see she’s an inch taller than me, probably stronger, wears no makeup, and they’d think, ‘Ah. Sinter really does want to date a man.’”

I laughed. It felt good after the tense week I had just been through. “So they think you’re gay? Just because you haven’t brought home any girls?”

“No, it…uh…” He picked up his lighter and started playing with it. “Remember that guy I mentioned, from high school? The one my parents thought was a bad influence? Started my whole rebellion thing?”

“Your worst experience ever.”

“Yeah. Andy. He, uh…” Flame on, flame off. Sinter’s eyes focused on it. “He was my best friend. Totally responsible, normal guy. Then one day when we were fifteen, he told me he was gay.”

“Oh.”

Sinter flicked his finger through the flame. “And that he liked me.”

“Oh.”

“And even though I said I didn’t like him the same way, he asked if I could do him one favor, and then he’d never bug me about it again.” The flame went out; he rubbed soot off his thumb. “He asked me…if I would kiss him.”

“Oh.”

“So I did, and he kind of held me there, and…that’s when my parents walked in. We jumped apart, but they knew.”

I winced. “Crap.” His reluctance to talk about his first snog was making more sense now.

“I guess I could have sold him out. Could have told them it was all his idea, he was forcing himself on me, I wouldn’t hang out with him anymore, whatever. But I didn’t.”

“Good for you,” I said. “Your best friend, after all.”

He nodded and threw the lighter onto his desk. “Life pretty much sucked after that, though. At least as far as the parent-child relationship went.”

I pulled my schedule book out of my knapsack, and batted it between my palms. “You know, despite what they say about English schoolboys, I’ve never actually kissed another bloke.”

Half his mouth curled in a smile. “Hey, no coming on to me. I’m spoken for.”

I threw my schedule book at him.

He caught it and flicked it back. “So now you know. I’m even more twisted than you thought.”

“Hah. Er, no. I hardly have the right to call anyone else twisted.”

“I wouldn’t say you’re twisted. A little ‘pervy’ is all.”

“Right, that’s because you don’t know…” I shook my head. “I shouldn’t tell you this. But – fuck, I have to tell someone.” I sat forward on my bed. Looking intrigued, he did the same. “Okay,” I said. “So over the holidays, my mum tells me about this sister of hers, right?”

I gave him the short version in ten minutes. His black-lined eyes were wide, and his hands were stifling shocked laughs throughout.

“Holy shit,” he said. “Holy
shit
. Oh, my God. That sucks. So – Julie knows, right?”

“No! No. I don’t think so. She’d have said something by now, wouldn’t she?”

“Probably.”

“We can’t tell her. My mum doesn’t want me to ‘approach’ their family.”

“But you have. Approached her, I mean.”

“Not as her cousin. Anyway, I didn’t tell Mum I knew her. Or that I…well…”

“That you were crushing on her,” Sinter filled in.

“Yeah.” I put my head in my hands.

“Man, that sucks. I guess that’s over, huh.”

“Er…I don’t know. Not exactly.”

“Dude.” Sinter laughed. “She’s your cousin. You can’t go out with her. It’s incest.”

I lifted my head. “No. Legally, it’s not. The state of Oregon defines incest very specifically, and it involves a whole lot of relatives, but
not
your cousin.”

“Oh, my God. You looked this up.”

“Apparently one in a thousand couples in America are first cousins. That’s more than I expected.”

“Yeah, and they’re probably all in Louisiana.”

“Actually, no. The states that allow first-cousin marriage are pretty widely scattered. They’re not all in the South, and in fact some of the states in the South don’t allow it.”

“It’s kind of scaring me how much you researched this,” he said.

“And it’s legal in my country. Everywhere in Europe, in fact.”

“Okay, so it’s legal. But – come on. Say you get together with her – assuming she doesn’t mind sleeping with her cousin – and then you break up, and you have to live the rest of your lives seeing each other at family reunions, and knowing you did…incest-type stuff.”

“True. Whether or not we work out as a couple, we’ll always be cousins. I’ve thought of that. But – well, look at you, for example.”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t mean you’ve done anything with your cousin.”

“That’s good, because I haven’t.”

“I
mean
, look at the way you get on with your parents. Or don’t get on, rather. You’ve had a big row about something, and you still aren’t the best of friends, and you probably won’t be for a while yet.”

“If ever,” he muttered.

“If ever. So what I’m saying is, people dislike or detest members of their family for lots of reasons. Having one of my cousins be an ex-girlfriend wouldn’t be any worse than that. In fact, I tend to be very tactful about breakups, and I’m still on good terms with nearly all my exes.”

“I believe you, but…you’re not serious? You’re not really going to keep chasing her, while at the same time
failing
to tell her she’s your cousin?”

“Well…” It did sound evil when he said it like that. “It depends how everything goes. When will my mum say it’s okay to tell her? And so forth.”

He fell back, resting his elbow on his pillow, and crunched some of his gravity-defying hair against one hand. “Okay, yes, you win the ‘twisted’ award.”

Someone knocked on our door, then opened it. Clare walked in, flopped onto Sinter’s bed, and hitched an arm around him. “Hey, dork.”

“Hey.” He kissed her. “Just walk right in, huh? What if Daniel had been changing?”

She regarded me casually. “Then he’d just have to add me to the long, long list of girls who’ve seen his knickers.”

“They’re only ‘knickers’ on girls,” I corrected.

“What are they on boys?”

“Pants.”

“Then what are these?” Clare grasped the black cloth at her knee.

“Trousers.”

“Glad we got that straightened out.” Clare kissed Sinter again. “So what are you pants-wearers up to? Hear any good gossip over the holidays?”

“Uh…” Sinter’s gaze darted to mine. I gave him an urgent, discreet headshake. “Nope,” he lied, turning sweet and innocent blue eyes to his girlfriend. “I mean, except that we were making out before you came in here.”

“Yeah? Sounds hot.” Clare leaned on him so they slid toward the horizontal.

They clearly needed some time alone. I got up. “Think I’ll go out for some groceries,
darling
. Need anything?”

“Pop-Tarts,” Sinter said. “I brought a toaster back.”

“You did?” Clare sounded excited. “Seriously?”

“Yep.”

“That rocks! We can steal bagels from the dining hall. And bread. And, like, those waffles…”

I paused at the door and caught Sinter’s eye again, while Clare was continuing her rhapsodic list of stuff that could be stolen from the dining hall and toasted. I gave him another headshake and a zip-the-lips gesture, and begged at him with both hands clutched at my chest. He reassured me with a blink of smudgy eyelids and a ripple of fingers.

Off I went to buy Pop-Tarts and other toastable items, leaving Sinter and Clare to their little reunion. I trusted him; we had exchanged dirty secrets and all that. But I couldn’t help feeling uneasy. What if he did tell Clare about my newfound relative? And what if Clare told Julie? As I trudged along in the chilly darkness of an Oregon January, toward the luminous red and white lettering of the Safeway, I prayed I hadn’t made a mistake.

Not that it would be my first.

I knew
Julie was returning to the dorm on Monday morning. I looked up at her window when I returned from my 10 a.m. Western Lit class, but couldn’t see her. Should I ring her? Drop in? Given how cozy we had been before the holidays, would it seem strange if I
didn’t
drop in?

I decided I would let her or fate make the first move. No sense actively pursuing my own cousin, as Sinter had reminded me. (
Yeah, but it’s legal! Mostly! Go on, what are you afraid of?
)

Fate, or rather Clare, orchestrated our meeting. I was having breakfast with Sinter and Clare on Tuesday, holding a floppy round waffle in my fingers and talking to Sinter about the possibilities of toasting it in our room, when Clare waved her long arm in the air at someone. “Yo, French,” she called. “Over here.”

At the name, my stomach (and the waffle) dropped. I looked up and saw Julie approaching us with a tray. A new blue jumper I hadn’t seen before showed off the curve of her breasts. Tight khaki trousers did the same for her backside. Her hair was damp and loose, more red and wavy than usual from the shower. She gave a bit of a smile at Clare. Her gaze met mine and flashed away – or maybe it was mine that flashed away.

She slid onto the padded bench beside me, as it was the only place for her to sit.

“Hey, guys.” She shook a packet of sugar, tore it open, and sprinkled it into her mug of tea.

Tea. Very English. Thinking of me, maybe?

Fuck, Revelstoke, get over yourself.

“Hi,” I said. My voice sounded froggy.

She glanced at me. “See you got back all right.”

I trolled my spoon around in the cereal dish. “Yes. No problem. Thanks.” I couldn’t eat. My throat was closed up.
Christ
.

“What class do you have this morning?” Sinter asked her.

“Art history.”

The other three talked about classes a while. I calmed down just enough to swallow some grape juice and eat a few crumbs of waffle. I even said a word or two about my own classes. Could barely look at Julie, though, or at least not without panicking.

Maybe she sensed something was up, for she didn’t try to talk to me much either. I hoped she didn’t think I had decided to dislike her, or anything. Or – an even more depressing thought – maybe she had decided over the holidays that she disliked
me
, or at least liked Patrick better. I couldn’t decide whether that would be for the best or not.

At least the torture couldn’t last; we had to get up and go to our classes. We all walked together, as we were going the same general direction, but Julie and I traveled opposite edges of the pavement, with Sinter and Clare between us.

Then Sinter and Clare split off from us, toward the science buildings, leaving Julie and me together. Sinter gave me an anxious smile over his shoulder as they walked off. I finally had to look at Julie. She looked at me too.

I cleared my throat. “Where’s your class again?”

“Gilbert. Yours?”

“Chapman.” Right across the street from Gilbert.

“Ah.” We kept walking. “Cold,” I remarked. “Does it snow down here?”

“Sometimes. A little.”

“Mm.”

Onward we went, kicking through damp leaves under bare trees, dodging other students and their knapsacks. Total agony.

“So you had a good Christmas?” I asked, though we had covered this at breakfast.

“It was okay. You were right. New Mexico
is
pretty this time of year.”

I tried to smile. Huge failure. I looked away.

Chapman Hall loomed ahead. “Well,” I said. “This is me.”
Me, an utter wreck, thanks to fate and to you
.

She nodded. “See you later, Daniel.” She crossed the street to Gilbert Hall, and I lost sight of her in the river of students.

“Do you
think anyone could take me seriously while I said, ‘You are all light, I am all shadow, how can you know what this moment means to me?’” Sinter asked. He was lying on his bed, with a slim paperback open under his hand.

“It really all depends on the context.” I took off my coat. It was Wednesday and I had just returned from this term’s least favorite class: biology. “Any reason you ask?”

“I’m thinking of auditioning.”

“For what?”

He held up the paperback so I could see its cover:
Cyrano de Bergerac
.

“Think I know that one,” I said. “Bloke with the nose, right?”

“Bloke with the nose,” Sinter confirmed.

“Bet your parents couldn’t object to that. It’s a classic.”

“They still think it’s gay.” He turned a page.

“How could it be gay?”

“Have you seen the clothes they wore in France back then?”

“Oh. Good point.” I hauled my desk chair over and straddled it. “So are you trying out for the lead? Cyrano?”

“Well, that would be nice. But I’m pathetic and would take any role they offered me.”

“Hm. Campus production, I assume?”

“Yep. Auditions start Monday.”

“You ought to do it. Theater major and all.”

He nodded, reading more lines. “I will. Just have to wig out a little with stage fright first.”

I settled my chin on the back of the chair and gazed out the window. I had seen Julie walking to class earlier today. My heart rate had “wigged out” merely from glimpsing her at a distance of fifty yards. How long could I live like this? I would have to get used to her presence again someday, wouldn’t I?

“I need a new hobby,” I said.

“Mm,” Sinter grunted, still studying
Cyrano
.

I looked at him, and tried to picture him got up in French Renaissance costume. (Was it Renaissance? Couldn’t recall.) “Think they’ll want any help backstage?” I asked.

“Probably. You could come along and ask.”

“Think I will do. Moral support for you, at least.”

He glanced at me. “You could probably even try out for Christian.”

“Which one was he?”

“Young good-looking guy who gets Roxane. With Cyrano’s help. Even though Cyrano loves her too.”

I shrugged. I was feeling oddly indifferent to getting the girl, unless it was one certain girl. “I’ll come along, in any case.”

He leafed a few pages back. “By the way, thought you might be interested in this.”

“What?”

Sinter shook a lock of hair out of his eyes, lifted the book, and quoted from it: “‘Roxane…an orphan…cousin to Cyrano of whom we spoke just now.’”

That did indeed snag my attention. “Roxane is Cyrano’s cousin?”

“Yep.”

“Didn’t you say he was in love with her?”

“Yep.” Sinter started turning pages again. “And her with him, in the end. Nothing unusual about it back then.”

I grimaced, annoyed I had been born into a less permissive time when it came to lusting after your cousin. “Well, they were
French
,” I said. “No standards whatsoever.”

He grinned. “I love it when you get all English.” He rolled off his bed and stood up. “Think I’ll go see Clare.”

“All right.”

He went out, taking the book with him, which was a shame since now I had got rather interested.

Luckily everything is online. It took maybe one minute to find a webpage with the full text (English translation) of
Cyrano de Bergerac
by Edmond Rostand. An hour later, having skimmed the whole thing, I had the picture.

Cyrano is this French guy in 1640 – I was right: Renaissance – and because he’s got an enormous nose, all his life he’s had to be a good fighter and a sharp wit, to show up the blokes who pick on him. He’s become completely fearless, a legend in his own time. But he’s got one weakness: he’s in love with the most beautiful girl around, his cousin Roxane. They get along fine, but he figures he doesn’t have a chance, since she could have anyone. Besides, he finds out she’s got a crush on this cadet named Christian. Naturally Christian has a crush on her too, so Cyrano decides he’ll do some matchmaking and put them together.

Thing is, Christian’s a good fellow but not too bright, and needs Cyrano’s help in writing love notes. Together they win Roxane by using Christian’s good looks and Cyrano’s wit, and Roxane drops everything and marries Christian. But about five minutes later the men get called off to war with Spain, and Christian gets killed. Roxane mourns him for ages, till finally learning at the last possible hour that Cyrano was really the one writing the letters back then, and it’s him she loves. Which of course is the signal for Cyrano to drop dead himself, but at least in a good mood.

I liked the play. It was both tragic and comic, and looked like tremendous fun to act out. But most of all I noticed that Sinter had been right: no one, anywhere in the whole story, seemed to think it strange that first cousins should be in love. It barely even mattered to the plot, except to give Cyrano and Roxane an excuse to visit each other often. And this play wasn’t
written
back in the Renaissance: it was written in 1897, not nearly so long ago. (Fine, my grandparents weren’t born yet in 1897, but I would grab any bit of hope I saw these days.)

I decided I would come along and offer my assistance in the production. It would give me something to do, and possibly even ammunition to use in my pursuit of Julie. (“Cyrano de Bergerac did it; how bad could it be?”) At the same time, I hoped it would take my mind off Julie, but I didn’t have much faith that anything could do that.

Monday, then. A hobby. Good. A cousin-related hobby, of course, but one step at a time is the only way any of us can make progress.

On Monday,
upon returning to our room after lunch, I found an almost unrecognizable Sinter. For one thing, he was wearing a white shirt, buttoned neatly and tucked into his trousers. For another, no makeup.

“Who the hell are you?” I said.

He glanced at me with clean-washed blue eyes, from where he sat trying to detangle his wet hair with a comb. “Ha ha.”

I sat in my desk chair, grinning. “Well, don’t you scrub up nicely. What’s the occasion?”

“The audition. I can hardly try out for Cyrano looking like an ’80s goth.” He grimaced as he tugged the comb through a knot.

“True.” His hair, though still unruly, was no longer its tumbleweed shape. It was starting to look shoulder-length and choppy – almost romantically rugged, you could say. “Now it’s more like ’90s Britpop,” I observed.

“You can shut up anytime.”

“Have you tried conditioner?”

“
Yes
, I’ve tried conditioner.”

“But you have to leave it in. Smooth it through to the ends.”

“Could this conversation get any gayer?” he asked. But now I’d made him laugh, which was all I wanted, to ease his nerves about the auditions.

As for myself, I didn’t care. I had no particular interest in a future in the theater. I was just going along on a lark.

So imagine how discombobulated I became when Julie turned up for auditions too.

I was sitting beside Sinter in the seats of Robinson Theater, filling out an audition form (I thought I might be able to snag a role with a few lines; why not?), when a familiar voice said, “Hi, guys.” The scent of flowers and apples swept my nose as she sat beside Sinter. I nearly misspelled my own name.

Luckily, Sinter’s new look took the limelight for the moment.

“Sinter!” she said. “You look great! You’re all GQ now.” She reached out to play with his hair.

He smirked. “You guys are having way too much fun with this.”

“Hi Julie,” I said.

“Hiya.” She clicked a ballpoint and started filling out her own audition application. “Didn’t know you were trying out.”

“No, I, uh…didn’t know you were, either.”

As she wrote something down on the form, I took the opportunity to catch Sinter’s eye and give him a silent
What the hell?
look.

He seemed guilty. “Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “I was talking about it, down in their room, and Julie said she wanted to come too.”

“Oh. Uh, great.” I looked at the form and tried to remember details like my name. My mind was scattered. I glanced once more at Sinter, who mouthed, “Sorry.” I shrugged, resigned. What could he have done? Told her she wasn’t allowed to try out?

“Which character are you auditioning for?” I asked her.

“Roxane,” she answered, “but I’ll take anything. You?”

“Same. Er, anything, I mean. Not Roxane.”

They both chuckled. My blood had started thundering in my ears. A very wrong idea had occurred to me: if she were Roxane, and I were Christian, we would get to kiss. We would
have
to kiss. Lots of times. With impunity.

I lowered the pen to the page.
Which role are you auditioning for?
asked the form.
Any
, I had written. Now I added, shaky and quick,
pref. Christian.
Before I could come to my senses, I jumped up and turned in the form to the director.

He was a wiry gray-haired man named Bob, with huge brown-rimmed glasses he put on when reading our applications. Near him milled a handful of confident, sleek people who all seemed to know each other – theater majors, most likely. Sinter eyed them distrustfully. “Do you think it’s totally obvious we’re just a bunch of clueless freshmen?” he muttered.

“Maybe,” Julie said, rising to turn in her form. “But if you let that stop you, I’ll be very disappointed in you.” She ruffled his hair again on her way by.

“I’m sure it won’t be too bad,” I said, though I was dizzy with nerves now.

Flat laugh from Sinter. “Don’t you know what they say about auditions?”

“No. What?”

“‘Life is unfair. Theater is less fair than life. Acting is the least fair part of theater. The audition is the most unfair thing a human being can subject himself to on Earth.’”

“Oh,” I said. “Brilliant. Tally ho, then.”

Bob started off our torture session with monologues. He shuffled the papers and called names, one at a time, and each person hopped up there alone, on the scuffed black-painted stage, to speak for two minutes. This, at least, wasn’t a problem for me. In secondary school we had to do the same. I had three speeches burned into my memory: two Shakespeare and one from a 1950s short story. Since the first five people in a row today did Shakespeare, I decided I’d do the short story.

Bob called my name as the sixth. With shaky limbs, I climbed the steps to the stage. Fortunately, once you were up there, the lights in your eyes made it hard to see the people staring at you from the house.
Project from the diaphragm
, some former teacher’s voice reminded me, and so from my diaphragm (or somewhere around there) I announced the piece, and began. It was an “eyewitness account” of the London Blitz, alternately funny and sobering, as told by a working-class Cockney fellow, which is an accent I find easy enough to do. The two minutes sped by. Bob thanked me, and as I returned to my seat, Sinter and Julie beamed at me.

“Good job,” they both whispered.

“Cheers,” I whispered back, and, in my flush of pride, winked at Julie, who was kind enough to look girlishly flattered.

When it came their turn, they each did fine – better than me, actually. Julie, too, had chosen something modern: a clever ramble from some play I had never heard of, about why a girl would choose to study mathematics. She absolutely sparkled up there. None of the other females compared. (All right, so I was biased.)

Sinter went up and performed a piece of glibness from Molière. Good thinking, that: using another French writer.

Next up were readings from
Cyrano
itself. People went up in all sorts of combinations, twos and threes and fours, to read scenes Bob indicated, all of us carrying the same edition of
Cyrano
sold at the university bookshop. I acted as Cyrano once, while some bloke stood in for his friend Le Bret. I got swapped and read Le Bret’s part another time, then read for Christian while someone else was Cyrano. Then I sat in the house and watched while Julie charmed everyone to pieces as Roxane, and while Sinter delivered Cyrano’s elegant lines, and Christian’s despairing ones, both equally well.

The three of us walked back to the dorms together that evening. I had temporarily lost my fears around Julie after going through all that.

“No, you were excellent,” I told her in honesty, when she moaned she had been awful.

“You were great,” Sinter assured her. Then he sighed. “But I’m not getting called back.”

“Of course you are,” she said.

“You are, absolutely,” I told him.

“I won’t get Cyrano, though. That Blaine guy totally has it in the bag.”

“He did seem pretty chummy with Bob,” Julie said.

“Wanker,” I sympathized.

Blaine was a tall, robust fellow, built like a lumberjack, with floppy golden hair and an unfairly well-trained voice. He had “projecting from the diaphragm” down pat. Even his whispers could be heard at the back of the house.

“Suppose it helps that he looks like a grown-up,” Sinter said.

“No kidding,” said Julie. “He looks about twenty-six. He’s probably a senior.”

“Even if only one or two of us get called back,” I proposed, “I say we all go to auditions, all the way to the end. Moral support for the others.”

“I’m there,” Julie agreed. “I’ll even volunteer to help with costumes.”

“Same here,” said Sinter. “Though maybe the props department, for me.”

Distracted by the idea of Julie sliding a measuring tape up my thigh, I did nothing but hum a sound of approval.

No need to worry, as it turned out: we were all three called back. The numbers had been pared dramatically for the women, as there were few parts for them other than Roxane. But Julie was among them, and Bob kept calling her up to read with us lads, in some combination or another. She did fine with Sinter, she did fine with Blaine, she did fine with everyone.

As for me, I did fine until I got paired with her.

“Okay,” Bob called, “the same scene, Christian and Roxane, with Daniel and Julie.”