August and Then Some (13 page)

Three little taps poked through the silence. Dani's fist on
the wall wanting to know what was up. We had no code for:
Just beat up Dad with hammer, having trouble breathing
, so I answered with four quick knocks:
All clear.

 

Mom only left her room, and that niche in her bed that outlined her body, to go to work. A princess trapped in the second-floor suburban tower who long ago told her prince and his rope ladder to go to hell. At night I could hear her talking to herself—I couldn't make out words, just sounds. We only saw her when we brought her food. By “we” I mean me.

Apparently the last thing my father remembered of that night was hitting my mother and he spent his first week home from the hospital clammed up and on the couch. He wouldn't open his mouth for any kind of help, not for tissues, food, water to swallow his painkillers or for someone to change the TV channel. He knew better. Instead he set up a line of chairs from the living room to the kitchen, little islands he could hop to for access to the refrigerator and bathroom. He held to his no crutches rule. These were some quiet days. I'd pass him in the morning on the way to work and at night when I'd go upstairs to sleep and we didn't even give each other the courtesy of a grunt.

With a bowl of soup in my hand I knocked and heard nothing, which was her way of letting me know it was OK to bring her dinner. She was in the same blue terrycloth bathrobe she'd been in for the past four days. It's not like she was catatonic or all weepy and shit, she was just playing up the rock-hard silent treatment. And she was paying bills. Fucking bills. Had them spread out on her bed with her checkbook next to about a week's worth of newspapers that I had refolded and delivered to her after my father finished with them. I had laid them next to her and on my way out I'd say, “What, no tip?” And she'd give
me a dismissive look that didn't have the hint of a smile in it. But when I walked in this time it seemed she was ready for jokes.

“Two things you have to do in this life: pay bills and die.”

“In that order?”

She thought about it. “Only God knows.”

“Well, you gotta eat too. Keep up your strength to write checks.”

“Cute. And true.” She probably hadn't washed her hair since she went into hiding, because when she scratched her head little white flakes fell off her scalp.

“Chicken noodle?”

She pushed the papers out of the way. “Put it here.” I walked to her and laid the bowl down. “Where's your sister?” she wanted to know.

“Swimming. I'm picking her up in a half hour.” Then she gave me this loaded stare and I knew I wasn't going to like one inch of what she was thinking. I thought to just get the hell out of there, but you had to see her in that worn-out bathrobe with the bills, the dry scalp, and the dinner that would probably go cold—she was like a dog locked out in the rain. So against instinct, I bit. “Why? What's up?”

She said, “You really hurt your father.”

I fuckin knew it. Here's this chick just got slammed around by her husband, who I, in turn, put in the hospital. You'd think maybe I'da gotten a thanks for balancing out the score a little bit. Nooooo. I got sent to the principal's office. Only a twisted statement like hers could have reached so far down my throat to pull out the line I'd never thought I'd say: “Yeah, well you really hurt my sister.”

A tremor of fear flashed over her face, but she didn't back down. “Don't be smart.”

“Don't be dumb.”

“Don't act tough, I'm still your mother.”

“Too bad for all of us.”

“Hey. You want me to get the police in here and have you charged with assault?”

It felt like the insults were rolling on their own and we were just following them. This time I put my finger in her face. “You want me to get child services in here and have you charged with neglect?”

“Don't you dare lay a hand on me.”

“Do you?”

“Don't be so goddamn dramatic.”

And my father, who heard that all the way from the couch, goes, “The hell are you two doing?”

“Mind your business,” I yelled down to him. Then so only my mother could hear, “Ya cripple jerk off.”

“Why did you beat him like that?”

“Why did you let him mess with your own daughter?”

“What the hell are you talking about? You make no fucking sense.”

“BULLSHIT, MOM.”

“You wanna be tough?” she said springing off the bed to the door, robe flapping behind her. Holding the door open she said, “Then go downstairs and yell at your father, since you're being so righteous. I'm done with you.”

I didn't budge. She called me out and I didn't make a move. Not a fucking inch. I wanted to, man. I wanted to blow the whole thing open. But I just fucking froze. Watching her stand there holding the door open daring me, calling me out, made me even more pissed. So instead of making the scene with my father I grabbed her by her arm and flung her back on the bed.

“You hurt my arm. Damn you.”

I got on the bed with her and cuffed my hands around each of her wrists so she couldn't move them. “You watched her childhood go to shit.”

“Let go of me.”

“You see that picture on your night table.”

“LET GO.” She kept her eyes locked on me.

“Don't make me turn your head myself.” Then she looked. “You remember that fairy outfit? Remember what a riot she was, Mom? She used to perform. Remember? People used to look at her and say, ‘What a great kid. Such wide eyes, and such a quick mouth for her age. Way beyond her years.' Have you looked at her lately? She's not so funny anymore. Her eyes are like slits and she's afraid to open her mouth. I mean … Did you bury your head so far up his ass all you can see is black? Whudid you get so used to pleasing him that you just lay under him when he tells you to, and shut up when he makes you?”

“Now you have to stop it.” She tried to wiggle her wrists free from mine, but couldn't. “You're being disgusting and you're making no sense. Let go of me.”

“You chose him over her.” Again to the closed door I said, “And you son of a bitch, you let her do it. You're dead. I'll fucking kill you. You're dead, you're dead—” I kept saying that he was dead and every time I did I got less mad and more sad. It got where I started crying. I let go of her hands and slid off the bed, right under her feet. My mom just let me sit there until I got my breathing back together. “Look,” she said after I'd come down a bit. “I'll be the first one to admit your father can act like an insane person, especially when he's drunk. But everything is so much worse in your head than it is anywhere else, Jake. You've always been that way.” She rubbed her wrists where I had held them. “No one ever cried so hard because their ice cream dripped out of the bottom of their cone. You even yelled at the Good Humor man for it.” She shook her head with a little smile and I felt disappointment and acceptance all in one. Like some day I would learn pain is better avoided. “Don't you know happiness isn't in what we have or what we want? It's stuck somewhere between those two.” She let out a sigh like there was nothing she could do for me. “Jake, stand up.”

“No.”

“Come on. Please, just get up.”

I stayed on the floor, so she stood up, got me a tissue and laid it on my shoulder. I grabbed it.

“Blow,” she said.

I did.

“Always the nurse,” I said. “Sometimes for the wrong people.”

She slid down the bed and sat next to me. “You know, Jake …every dying patient I see at the hospital gets to a point when they're out of the doctors' and nurses' hands. It's right before they go. In those last few minutes they seem completely alone, but they're not. Something is there. To keep them company and give them peace and quiet, because we can't. Yes, it sounds crazy, but trust me, I can see it. Sometimes I think that if I got myself as alone as they are I could know what that kind of company feels like …”

“So is that what you wanna do? Cut out and get some peace and quiet?”

“On a nurse's salary?”

“Yes?”

“Jake …” She gave my arm a firm squeeze and held it. “You have no idea what alone is.”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

She let go of my arm. “Maybe you do.” Which was one of the smartest, nicest things she ever said to me.

“Mom, are you thinking of leaving?”

Nothing.

“Mom, seriously?”

Nothing felt more like yes than no. But I wasn't sure she had the guts.

“Look,” I said, “do whatever you gotta do. And don't stay here cause of me. I can go live with Nokey or someone else. I'm making some money, I'll be fine.” She checked my face for whether or not I was serious. “I mean it. Get out. Avoid some pain for yourself and Danielle.”

Her eyes exploded with shock like remembering she left her oven on and her house was miles away and on fire.

“Jake, do you know what it feels like to try to pray to God every day and the only thing you wind up saying to him is
Are you kidding me?
”

“No, I don't pray to God.”

She threw a “Why not” at me.

“I'm only saying this once. If you leave, don't leave Danielle here alone. We all know you don't even want her here for a couple hours with the guy, so don't think about leaving without her.” She stayed with her long-distance stare. “You hear me? You got no one to cover your shift on that one. Don't leave her here.”

She put a hand over her mouth.

“Did you hear me?”

She nodded.

“Say it. Say you won't leave her here. Ma, say it.”

“Your sister …” Her eyes turned so red they might as well have been bleeding. I don't know what to do with her. She's in this phase … All her black bracelets and her … She won't talk to me ever.”

A fucking phase?
“Say it, ma.”

“I won't leave her. OK? I said it. Don't ask me that again.”

“All right, take it easy. Come on, you're gonna knock over your soup.”

She snapped, “I don't want the soup.”

“OK.”

It took a few deep breaths for her to get to where she could talk again, and in a high-pitched voice she added, “I want a family.”

Since we both knew her family had just been reduced to one can of lukewarm soup, two bruised ribs, a husband on a couch, a daughter she was terrified to mention, a son who could live without her—we figured it was better to stop talking.

In the foyer of an apartment building on Horatio Street I push the 8E button. Stephanie's voice crackles through the intercom. “Who is it?”

“It's me.”

“Me who?” she says, playing guard dog.

“JT.”

She buzzes me in and I push through double glass doors. They shut behind me and silence the street noise. I walk slowly through the lobby, my boots echo off the marble floor. I come to a mirror with an antique-looking bench at its feet, and take a second to check my look. I really can't wait for my hair to grow back in already. It's in that fuzzy, too-long-for-military-too-short-for-civilian phase. The length doesn't bother me as much as the memories of sleeping in Tompkins Square Park. I try to pat it down, and for a second it submits then pops back into its electric shock routine. OK, I do wish it looked good right about now. There, I said it.

I hit the
up
button in a small mahogany elevator that someone some time ago crafted with painstaking detail. I hear a few clangs in the shaft and the car rises smooth and slow, delicately
beeping from L to 8. The doors separate like curtains. I step off and I appear in another mirror, this one flanked by two round tables that hold flower arrangements. A dog that sounds like it's the size of a baseball barks from inside an apartment whose welcome mat asks that people wipe their paws upon entering.

“Papi,” I hear from my left. Stephanie stands in the apartment doorway with a dishtowel in her hand next to an empty brass umbrella holder almost as tall as she is. I walk to her. “Nice place.”

“Got that right.”

She closes the door behind me, the cool air hits my skin, and the living room expands in front of me. Two windows, practically floor-to-ceiling, look south to Tribeca and the Financial District. Between those windows a TV and stereo system with enough CDs to build a small bridge are racked—a couch flanked by two leather chairs faces them. One entire wall has been turned into bookshelves. And a plant, or a tree I guess, reaches almost to what's probably a ten-foot ceiling. Off right a bar with three stools separates the kitchen from the living room. To the left a hallway leads to three other rooms.

I look back to Stephanie who's getting a smile out of how dazed I just got. “What do these people do?” I ask.

“She's some kind of dancer. I don't know what he does, I only met him once. He's on the road a lot.” An upright piano with brass pedals stands against a wall and holds pictures of well-dressed, important-looking people with their arms around other important-looking shoulders. “They play?”

“Guess so.”

“You play?”

“Someday,” she says. And I believe her.

“I feel like I should take off my boots.”

“Yeah, you should.”

I move back to the door to flip them off and I see a painting
of what looks like a fish hanging above a piano. In my socks I step closer to the picture and see it's signed on the bottom right. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

“Is this real?”

“It's a real painting.”

“No, I mean is it a real Warhol?”

“Who's that?”

“He was a painter.”

“Thank you.”

“Sorry. He was the guy who designed the Campbell's soup cans, and he did those paintings of Marilyn Monroe that look like cartoons. Someone shot him. I seen a movie about it.”

“Don't know him.”

“Well, this is him.”

We stare into it for a few seconds.

“But check this out,” she says like she's about to show me the best thing in the whole place. She leads me down the hallway by my hand. As we walk she flips the dishtowel over her shoulder. It's a movement so natural and habitual—she becomes someone who is used to not worrying about themselves, their marriage, or their money. Like someone who's comfortable wearing a killer dress, a dishtowel, or a kid over their shoulder. Like someone who owns a place and a life like this.

Down the hallway we get to the third of three doors. Stephanie puts her hand on the knob and lets out a smile the size of an eagle's wingspan, holds a finger over her mouth reminding me to keep quiet, and cracks the door open.

A girl sleeps in a white bed. She's got a window that from eight stories lets her scan the tops of brownstones and offers her a small view of the Hudson River. Against a pale purple wall she's got a wooden toy chest that doubles as a bench; it's painted with an underwater theme with a red seahorse as the main character.
Dolls and stuffed animals sit on the window shelf and above her head a corkboard displays her crayon masterpieces. “She sleeps like she trusts everything,” Stephanie says like a woman who easily recognizes that kind of trust, but is not sure she'll ever feel it.

Stephanie closes the door, and I hold the picture of this sleeping girl in my mind as we walk back down the hallway. “Veronica,” Stephanie whispers. She looks back at me. “She's four.” She looks at me again. “You OK?”

“Yeah, why?”

“You look like you're somewheres else.”

I shake my head. “No, it's … she's just cute.”

“No doubt. We gotta make her dinner. She'll be up soon.”

We walk into the kitchen. “What does she like?”

“Same thing all kids like. Macaroni and cheese.”

“I like that, too.”

“Yeah?” she says, all happy and surprised. “Will you eat some with me?”

“Definitely.”

“Ah-ight, grab that pot.” She points over the stove where the pots and pans hang off the hood by heavy hooks. I reach for it, bring it to the sink and fill it up with water as Stephanie makes for the fridge. She gets out the butter, holds it up, says “Mantequilla,” and throws it right at my heart. I catch it. She grabs a hunk of cheese: “Queso,” and hits me with another strike.

She holds up an opened carton of milk and I say, “Leche. No throw.”

She brings it over to me, looking impressed. “Donde aprendiste hablar el castellano, chico blanco?”

“Um, that was something about me being white.”

“That was something about you being white and speaking Spanish.”

“Well, you know, I kill a lot of time in coffee shops. Some of the lingo sinks in.” I slap her on her ass and she doesn't even blink. Just says, “Pasta.” And points to a cabinet. I put the pot of water on the stove; she turns on the fire.

The cabinet is stacked with five different kinds of pasta. “Elbows?” I ask her.

“Claro.”

I throw her the box; it shakes like a muffled tambourine when she catches it with two hands.

Cautiously I say, “Um, I don't like macaroni and cheese with breadcrumbs on it.”

“What?” She spits that word at me. “What the hell kind of American pussy are you? You got some seriously stupid-ass taste buds, and no cool at all. Get the fuck out this house. I don't want you here.” I look for a smirk on her face but she's dead serious. “Now,” she adds.

“Whoa.” I'm kind of stunned. “Sorry.”

She holds a scowl on me. “Naw, I'm just fucking with you,” she says. “I don't like that shit neither.” She laughs.

I exhale. “Damn that was good. You had me.”

“I know, your face was ten years old, like your momma was yellin at you.”

“You're scary, man. I don't want to be the guy who fucks you over.”

“Then don't.”

 

The kitchen windows steam over. I stick a fork into the pot, spear an elbow, blow on it then feed it to Stephanie. She chews. Assesses. Swallows. Shakes her head. “Another minute.”

“Aren't you supposed to throw it against the wall to see if it sticks?”

“That's spaghetti, and that's stupid, and you ain't throwing
no food, on no wall of no kind anywhere in this place.” She pokes me in the ribs. “Let's set the table.”

 

Stephanie turns the burner off. From the oven I throw her two mitts, she uses them to lift the pot. I put the strainer in the sink, she pours the water and pasta into it, we both grab for the cold water tap at the same time and both let go. “You,” I say. She turns the cold knob and I swirl the strainer around.

“Don't call me a stupid American, but I like it kind of soupier.”

“Yeah, just mixed. Not baked and sliced.”

“Exactly.”

“That's how Veronica likes it. Me, too.”

At the stove I dump the drained elbows back into the pot and she slices a hunk of butter on top of them and stirs. “I need the—”

“Cheese grater?” I say.

She points to a cabinet with her chin. “Second from the left.”

“Got it.” As I reach in it feels familiar and unfamiliar. Scary and relieving.

Over a low flame she grates in the cheese while I stir. We watch it melt. Then she pours in milk. She stops, and looks at me for approval. I say, “A little more.” She drops in some more. “Perfect.” We let it heat till it bubbles and smokes. I kill the flame, blow on another bite and feed it to her. Then I take a bite. We both chew looking at each other. “More salt,” I say with a full mouth.

“You right.”

 

Veronica sits at the table like a bobble-head version of herself, eating with her fingers. Stephanie goes through about eight napkins keeping her clean. I now know that Veronica also likes to eat eggs, except the crunchy parts, that she will own two
horses when she gets older, that her daddy likes the Yankees and she likes me because I like them too, that one day she'll go to camp, that she likes the taste of stamps, orange (the juice and the color), and the movie
Antz
.

After dinner we all sit on the couch, Veronica in her
Little Mermaid
pajamas, and watch Sharon Stone and Woody Allen, as ants, pontificate on individuality, free will, and the true nature of love, while searching for Insectopia. Veronica falls asleep between me and Stephanie, but Stephanie keeps running her hand through Veronica's long blonde hair.

Stephanie's cell phone rings Gwen Stefani's “Let Me Blow Ya Mind”. She whips it out of her back pocket and answers it before it wakes Veronica. She takes it halfway down the hall and in a whisper says, “Hi … I'm still here … Because she's sleeping …Late … Me and the kid, who you think?… Watching a movie … Yes, by myself … Yo, I ain't playin that with you. I ain't gonna start yelling and wake up the kid, OK? So, goodbye …Goodbye … Good. Byyyye.” She sings that last word and snaps her phone closed. “Damn.”

She comes back to the couch. We're not saying anything about it, but it feels like Nelson is sitting in the chair next to us.

After a while I ask, “Should we put her in bed?”

“No,” Stephanie says, petting Veronica's hair. “She's good here.”