Monday Rent Boy by Susan Doherty

Author:Susan Doherty [Doherty, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House of Canada
Published: 2024-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Despite Miss Phillips’s care with me, reading about the suicide of the lost altar boy burned a hole in my gut. Unlike my reckoning with Ernie at the science sink, there was no tap I could turn off to stop my thoughts, which also turned to Declan Entwhistle, another suicide, and the boy on the bench in Bath who had sent Ernie off the deep end. During my own sleepless nights, I’d put a pillow over my head to test out suffocation. I’d wonder if one razor blade was enough to do the job in a bathtub filled with hot water. I’d consider whether the light fixture in the living room would hold my weight after I kicked away the kitchen chair.

I stayed away from the hulking stone walls of St. Nick’s, whose bells rang daily at noon, reminding me to recite the Lord’s Prayer—“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” When I was little, my mother said the ringing of the church bells drove out demons, but I had ample proof that they didn’t work. At least my mum didn’t bother me about why I’d stopped attending mass, putting it down to me missing Ernie. When she leaned on the sink while doing dishes one night and said to the streaky window, “Where’s Ernie? Arthur, you must have an inkling,” all I could say was, “I don’t know, Mum. I promise you, I don’t know. And wherever he went, I thought he’d be back by now.”

We both craved answers. I couldn’t tell her that Ernie had been pushed out of his own life for speaking the truth. That the naked truth about me was that I was nothing but a rent boy.

Ernie had given the money he earned or stole from the Zipper and the church collection plate to his mother to pay the bills or saved it up to pay his brother’s fine. I had tucked the hundreds of pounds the Zipper had given me over the years in a shoebox carefully hidden from sight. While the warden had never come after Ernie and me for thieving from the plate, he had taken measures to stop us. And the Zipper often reminded me that I’d already stood in front of the judge in youth court for stealing, that a second court appearance would be less forgiving and would likely land me behind bars.

Ernie worshipped money because he didn’t want to be a charity case. I had no excuse. Some days I longed to carry the box outside and release the pound notes to the wind, but cowardice deterred me there too. I could picture the neighbours calling out, What did you do to get all that money, Arthur?

When I was little, the Zipper had told me that nobody looked out for me like he did or cared for me like he would. He said, “I will never hurt you.” At eight, and nine, and ten, I lived for those words.

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