Twenty-Four
Mrs. Biggs from two doors down was watching me with amusement. We had put up a sign to leave the newspaper on the porch, but someone was rebelling because they continued to leave it in the mailbox, or they were simply an asshole.
She called out to me from where she stood on her lawn that was decorated with various gnomes and woodland creatures. “Need a hand?”
“I’m good, but thanks. Have a nice day!”
“It’s supposed to be a beautiful sunny day for the Marshall’s annual picnic. Will we see you there?”
“I’d love to, but I’ve had my fill of hot dogs for the year.”
“Oh, well, maybe next year.”
I saluted her and turned my chair so that my back was to the neighborhood busybody.
Solitude has been a shitty companion. I feel like I’m living outside of my body, staring down at myself as if I’m already dead.
I expected Alex to call and arrange a time to pick up the rest of her things and especially her blessed crucifix, but no one has called in the last three days.
Feelings of concern sometimes overpower feelings of disgust. I have no idea where she is and the part of me that still loves her is desperate to go and find her.
Then foul images of her body wrapped around that of another man push their way to the forefront of my mind.
I didn’t need to turn my chair around to know who pulled into my driveway. If I could, I’d run inside and barricade the door.
Nick grabbed the newspaper from the mailbox and let himself inside the house.
He left me on the porch, knowing I had no choice but to follow him.
In a different lifetime, he’d show up randomly with a twelve-pack of beer and a couple of steaks and we’d sit in the backyard talking and catching up on each other’s lives.
Without his encouragement and support, I probably wouldn’t have become a boxer, and in a twisted sort of way, I blame him for where I find myself today – alone in Nowhere Land.
“Yankees are doing pretty good this year.”
I found him standing at the island in the kitchen, head poised as if reading the paper.
“What do you want?”
“What do I want?” he asked, pushing the newspaper to the ground. “I want you to stop being a jerk.”
I once sparred with Nick to prepare for a fight with an underdog. He was strong, but not strategic. Standing in my kitchen, he was insulting me with his very presence, and I ached to knock him out in a good, old-fashioned fist fight, but these days, I weave through life with words.
“Too bad I’m not feeling generous to your needs. I want you to leave.”
“Tough shit, buddy. I have a lot more to say. She’s fine, by the way. In case you were wondering.”
“You talked to her?”
“Yeah, I talked to her. She came to me.”
Relief washed over the part of my heart where she still lived, probably would always live.
“You fucking lied to me. About the money.”
“So what? She asked me to. She was trying to help you, you miserable prick. Don’t ask me why. Oh, wait a minute. Maybe it’s because she fucking loves you?”
“You don’t know the whole story,” I said, wheeling myself to the living room. “If you did...”
“I know the whole fucking story.”
I’ve taken a lot of blows in my life, but I’ve never taken a blow to my ego. It was embarrassing to know that Nick had the same sordid images in his head. I was embarrassed for myself, and most of all, I was embarrassed for Alex who was the star of her own triple X-rated film.
“Jesus Christ. You knew this whole time? And you kept me in the dark?”
“I didn’t know until yesterday. I was clueless too.
She confessed everything when you kicked her out.
” Nick sat on the couch and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees.
He looked haggard. Then again, I wasn’t about to win any beauty contests.
“When she first came to me, I asked her where she was getting the money from, but she begged me not to ask questions. ‘What you don’t know, can’t hurt you’, and all that. ”
“You still lied to me.”
“Get over yourself!” Nick got off the couch and stuffed his hands deep into his pockets.
He stood by the main window and stared outside where a sign went up in the location of the playground to announce a new business opening, because the world needs another tanning bed salon instead of a safe place for children to play. “What would your mother think?”
“Don’t talk about my mother.”
“Why the hell not!?” He asked, spinning around. “I’ve known her pretty much as long as you have. You think she’d be proud right now? Think of all the sacrifices she made to take care of your sorry ass.”
“Are you fucking comparing Alex to my mother?”
“A sacrifice is a sacrifice, buddy. And Alex didn’t mean to hurt you. How are you managing by yourself?”
I thought about the remnants of the clay pot in the trash.
It was the only thing I kept that belonged to ma.
Everything else was either thrown out or donated.
Ma used to tell me stories about slow-cooking beans in it.
Pop would heat the coals, and they’d sit together and stoke the fire.
Light streamed through threadbare curtains while they dreamed the impossible dream.
That pignata crossed oceans with them from Italy.
For years, ma had it displayed on top of her refrigerator, and it only took seconds for me to bump into it with my chair and knock it off a pedestal table.
Its fragments represented my shattered dreams.
“I’m managing.”
“Yeah. Right. Did you eat today?”
‘Why the fuck do you care?”
“Because Alex isn’t the only one who loves you, you dumb fuck!” Nick found his place back on the couch. Again, he sat leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “Do you know that if you confess a crime to a Catholic priest, he can’t rat you out?”
“Fun fact of the day?”
“Yeah. It gets better.” He leaned back and crossed his arms so that Jesus met Elvis. There was a message in there somewhere. “I stole a car. Took it to a chop shop. The parts are harder to trace that way.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Brenda was pregnant with Trixie. The bar was failing. The bank wouldn’t help me. I was desperate. What the fuck was I supposed to do?”
My life was unraveling; life’s frayed rope. Everything I thought to be true turned out to be a fairytale of the Brothers Grimm variety. “Why am I only hearing about this now?”
Nick smirked to tell me without words that I can be a dullard. “You think I’m proud of it? My wife doesn’t even know. I pray that my kids never find out. We do what we have to do for the people we love.”
Stony. That’s how I felt after hearing Nick’s story, because in my eyes, no crime is worse than that of the heart. “She fucked other men.”
“And suffered for it.”
“I’m sure.”
“I am sure! Look at all she’s been through. Her husband dying, the baby she lost... then you... Besides, how is it any different than some college kid who has a one-night stand every weekend?”
“You mean like you.”
“Like me, yeah.”
Nick used to tell me about his questionable adventures in dating.
Unlike me, he did go to college and lived in student housing.
I used to lose track of all his girls’ names: Mindy, Clarisse, Rebecca, Nancy.
There was one girl who he fell hard for, but like most young romances, theirs was short-lived.
“Fuck love,” he had said at the time. “It’s not worth the trouble.
” By the time he graduated, there were so many notches in his bedpost, it looked like an intricately carved Totem Pole.
“The difference,” I said, pounding on my legs, “is money!”
“Thanks for reminding me.” Standing, Nick pulled an envelope from his back pocket and tossed it onto the coffee table.
It was so full of cash, it was impossible to close.
“That’s the last of it. She told me she quit.
For good. She’s waitressing for me now, and staying with us until she can get back on her feet. ”
As he walked away, back towards his cozy little life, I coveted the last of my dignity. “I don’t want it.”
“Don’t be a Goddamn fool and get the fuck off your moral high horse. You know what’s funny?”
“I can’t imagine.”
He spoke with his hands when he said, “You were the best man at our wedding. Not because of some bullshit reason like I’ve known you forever, or because our mothers were best friends.
I made you my best man because you were always the best man.
I looked up to you, Pippo. You were the best man I’ve ever known.
And now,” he said, getting emotional. “I’m ashamed to call you my friend. ”
“Go to hell.”
“I’m already there, brother.”
The carnage Nick left behind was more than just about the fact that I trashed my own place. Whatever was in reach, I smashed to smithereens to match what was happening inside of me. I was entertaining thoughts that were so wicked, not even a priest could forgive me.
Wheeling myself into the bathroom, I closed the door, and by the amber glow of a night-light, I chastised the wretch in the mirror:
“See that? That’s your shadow, you lily-livered piece of shit. Embrace it. No one cares about you. You can expire today, and they’ll dance on your Goddamn grave.”
I fell asleep that way, sitting next to a toilet, and in my dreams, I visited with pop.
There was no white light of revelation. Pop didn’t offer me any words of wisdom.
He was simply there. When I woke up, I felt abnormally calm.
The feeling didn’t bring me solace. I imagined that it’s what a psychopath feels before he embarks on a killing spree.
Pop’s face before my eyes told me otherwise.
He built a life for us, me and ma, before he lost his own.
I was throwing my life away. I was throwing our life away, mine and Alex’s.
Eventually, I found the phone book underneath an overturned chair. There’s one thing I didn’t tell Nick. When I was pounding on my legs in rage, I could feel the blows.
“Para-Taxi, how may I help you?”
“I need a cab that can accommodate a wheelchair at 11 Marcel Lane.”
“Certainly, sir. And where are you headed today?”
“St. Anthony’s General Hospital.”