Inclination (2 page)

Breakfast at my
house is always something of a zoo combined with a mob scene, with the added
twist of a relay race. Mom and I work as a tag team; I make whole wheat toast
and she pours juice. I smear peanut butter on
Resa
and Lulu’s, jelly on
Frannie’s
, and honey on Mary’s
toast. Mom puts the cover on Lulu’s
sippy
cup.
Resa
and
Frannie
eat their toast
while milling around the kitchen, collecting school items they’d left here and
there the night before, and then shove them into the shadowy depths of their
leopard-print backpacks. As Mary sticks
her nose into whatever paperback book she is currently wrapped up in, I sit
down to cajole Lulu into eating her breakfast, while Mom puts together four
nutritious bagged lunches. Lulu doesn’t need a bagged lunch as she stays home
with Mom all day.

“Anthony,
baby—you look awful. Like you didn’t sleep even a wink last night.” Mom is
always very aware of little details like this. She can sense an oncoming head
cold before my first sniffle. It’s a true gift.

“I had trouble
falling asleep, that’s all.”

Mom steps over to
the kitchen table were I’m busy pulling apart Lulu’s toast into little pieces
so she can make a heart shape with them. She takes my face between her hands,
and she’s not too gentle about it. “It’s not right that you can’t fall asleep,
sweetie… you must have something on your mind. Tell your mother.”

I look up into
the dark eyes I know so well, staring down at me from under a long mop of
brownish-gray curls that haven’t yet been tamed by a hairbrush this morning, a
worried frown on her lips.

Mom, I’m not
myself this morning because last night at midnight I did an online search for “Roman
Catholic policy on homosexuality” and my greatest fears were confirmed. It
appears that your straight-A, youth group treasurer, Wedgewood High School
varsity boy’s tennis team first seed, devoutly religious and always obedient
South Korean/Italian American son is likely going to burn in hell for all
eternity for being gay. Really, it’s nothing for you to get all worked up
over—no big deal at all. But the concept of everlasting flaming (excuse the
play on words) torment isn’t exactly conducive to a good night’s rest.

“I had a cup of
coffee last night when I was studying…probably at about ten. Just couldn’t fall
asleep with all of the caffeine in my system.” That technically isn’t a lie.

“How many times
have I told you—
decaf,
Anthony! Drink
decaf after dinnertime, yeah? Or hot cocoa…that’s a good substitute for coffee.
As a matter of fact, I found a gourmet brand at TJ Maxx the other day….” She
goes off one of her typical tangents, detailing what she plans to feed me,
which will, in her mind, make all of my problems go away. “And we’ll have pasta
and gravy for dinner…with plenty of meatballs and sausage.”

I’d been adopted
into a large and boisterous pasta and gravy—the term for
real
Italian spaghetti sauce—eating Italian family. The Del
Vecchio’s
are family people, through and through. And after
adopting me, Mom and Dad turned into baby-making machines. Within six months of
my arrival, Mom was expecting. Along came Maria. And eighteen months later,
Teresa. And a mere year later, Francesca. And surprise, surprise… my baby sister Lucia made her appearance in the
world when I was in seventh grade—took us all by surprise. And so, just like
that, Anthony Duck-Young Del
Vecchio
had four little
sisters

“Sounds great,
Mom.” If she knew the truth about me, she’d be so freaking disappointed.

“And when you’re
at school today I’m going to make you a Sweet Pie. Nana Del
Vecchio’s
recipe. It will go very well with the hot cocoa….”

Guilt floods in
on me as she details the delicious contrast between the flavors of milk
chocolate and ricotta cheese. I need to get my condemned butt out of the
kitchen that is brimming over with my mother’s adoring love and my four
sisters’ innocent purity. “Mom, you don’t mind if I take off before Lulu’s
finished with her toast, do you? I have to pick up Lazarus earlier than usual
today.” So maybe I bend the truth there.

Very predictably,
Mom ruffles up my longish silky black hair, which is profoundly different in
color and in texture from that of her other four light brown, curly-haired
children. “Of course, I’ll sit with Lucia. And don’t forget to grab your lunch
bag off the counter. I wrote
mio
figlio
on yours.” She sends me her buck-toothed grin
and my heart flutters.

My son.
She wrote “my son”
in Italian on my lunch bag. For a moment, I wonder how you’d say “my homo son”
in Italian. Pushing that disturbing thought out of my mind, I jump up and head
for the island in the middle of the kitchen.

“Tony! Tony! Come
back ‘ere, Tony!” Lucia detests change, even in the slightest measure. “Mama,
make my Tony come back! I
makin
’ him a big heart with
my toasty!”

I glance back at
her, noticing how her adorable her chubby little fingers look all covered in
peanut butter and whole wheat breadcrumbs. “Make a heart for Mama instead,
Lulu.” With her new focus in mind, Lulu
drops her curly brown-haired head down and gets back to work on her
toast-heart. And when Mom smiles at me, I’m again reminded of the day we
painted my bedroom with blue skies and clouds and kites, which makes my
traitorous heart flutter again.

Be cool
, I tell myself and
then I grab my lunch, hoping Mom hasn’t put in any of those brightly colored
Italian cookies from the awesome bakery near Nana Del
Vecchio’s
house in Revere, because I’ve given up cookies, along with watching all of my
favorite old classic television shows, for Lent. I step out the front door,
head down the walkway past the bathtub Madonna in our front yard, and only
breathe once I get into my car.

Somebody forgot
to send the memo to Scott Cartwright: These days, basketball shorts are
supposed to touch your knees.

“Earth calling
Anthony—come in, Anthony.” It’s not the most original way to capture my
attention. Some people might even call it hokey. But since I pay close attention
to all retro television references, it does the job.

I shake my head
to clear the cobwebs. “You rang?”
Take
that, Elizabeth!
I borrow Lurch’s catch phrase from TV Land reruns of
The Addams Family
—if Elizabeth can be
trite and quote from
Mork
and Mindy
, I can cite my own choice of
classic TV show.

Elizabeth
O’Donnell, the president of the Catholic youth group at Saint Mark’s leans over
and nudges me with her elbow. This is not the first time in recent days I’ve
felt its unyielding sharpness poking into my ribcage.
Ouch.
“We’re talking about the car wash that Our Way is sponsoring
on Saturday.” She speaks in a low tone so as not to embarrass me in regard to
the fact that I’ve been
yet again
attending a private workshop-for-one in my brain rather than paying attention
to the group meeting, of which I am treasurer. “We want to know how much
additional money we need to pay for our trip to Boston for the Catholic
Pilgrim’s Tour this summer.”

“I…um….” I straighten
up in my chair and clear my throat, making absolutely sure to remove my gaze
from the muscular legs of Scott Cartwright, who’s obviously come to Our Way
straight from basketball practice in
shorter-than-should-be-allowed-at-youth-group gym shorts.
Isn’t that some kind of sin? If it isn’t it should be.

I blame Scott’s
athletic legs as the catalyst to my frivolous mental straying. Yes, those hairy
limbs have practically forced me to reflect on what I’ve come to think of as
“The Problem”. My
official
recognition of “The Problem”, however, had first come to
town two years ago during Freshman Honors Biology class, on a Tuesday morning
in late November. I’m very good with times and dates.

I find the
presence of mind to glance over at Mrs. Martine, the adult in charge, to see if
she caught me staring at those amazing legs and/or zoning out as I dwelled on
“The Problem.” Thankfully, she is wrapped up in her knitting and my laptop is
already open, conveniently displaying the correct page, so I force my attention
there. And ignoring the fact that eighteen sets of eyes are now fastened to my
heated face, I muster sufficient composure to answer. “Well, there are twenty
of us going, including chaperones. The trip is thirty-six dollars per person,
which means we need $720.00, including what we have to chip in toward the bus,
and now we have $475.00. Which translates to this: between now and June we need
to earn $245.00.”

A rush of relief
that I answered so efficiently washes over me. But finding the answer itself
has never been the tricky part. My personal challenge has always been
formulating the audible expression of said answer, and imagining the entire
listening audience sitting in front of me in its collective underwear had long
ago lost its effectiveness in relieving my anxiety over public speaking. And
just like that, I’m again reminded of the day I’d recognized my big problem,
because on that day Jacob Ryder had similarly been experiencing difficulty
providing the class with oral answers. As poor Jacob had stood at the
whiteboard in the front of the classroom, intellectually wrestling with the
Population Growth and Decay Equation, I’d strived to subdue a level of
excitement that had surpassed the emotional and was fast approaching the
physical realm.

I didn’t even
have to ask myself what had been the reason for my heady reaction to a fellow
student who was visibly struggling to determine population growth based on
generational number. And no, I’d never been overly passionate about the concept
of offspring per parent in a single generation. In any case, the explanation
for my predicament wasn’t quite as dignified as that, and it went something
like this: Jacob Ryder definitely didn’t belong in honors bio as his skills of
analytical deduction were significantly lacking, and I safely wagered that he
was
never
going to manage to work out
exactly how
N
_n
= N
₀
Q
^n.
But at the same time, I’d long been glad his father had made the “put my son in
Honors Bio, or there’s
gonna
be trouble” phone call
to Principal
Craigson
, because Jacob Ryder was hot.
It was that simple.

Despite the fact
that she raises it with characteristic tentativeness, Kerry Curry’s bony hand,
feebly swaying back and forth on its skinny support system of an arm, still
manages to catch my attention. I automatically look toward Elizabeth to set me
back on course, and she nods, in effect, directing me to answer the girl. So
with my customary obedience, I point in Kerry’s direction, calling on her like
a teacher would do in class.

“Um…does that
amount include lunch?” she asks, licking awkwardly at her chapped lips between
words.

I lick my lips in
chapped-lip empathy and then shake my head, hoping that will suffice, but
Elizabeth raises her eyebrows, tosses her thick auburn hair back behind her
shoulders, gives me
that look
, and
asks me with evident patience, “How much more will we need per person,
Anthony
, if we want to have lunch at one
of the tour stops? Like maybe at Quincy Market?”

“We could
probably do lunch and dessert for twenty dollars more per person and.…” I start
poking figures onto the calculator on my laptop in an attempt to make my escape
into a welcoming state of mathematical oblivion, but unfortunately the topic of
dessert is now on my mind. And again I’m reminded of that ominous day freshman
year, when I’d first acknowledged that
a
boy
had been my idea of
visual
dessert
. Yeah, Jacob Ryder, I’d admitted to myself that day, was eye candy
personified.

“Well, it’s
gonna
be cold, everybody, since it’s February—I’d suggest
you dress warmly. I’d suggest layers. But we have the use of one of the two
indoor bays of the Wedgewood Self-serve Car Wash, which the Ramirez family has
very kindly loaned us and….”

As Elizabeth goes
on with her car wash pep talk, sounding like a high school cheerleader rather than
a youth group leader, my mind once again wander
s
back to Freshman year when I’d finally made myself read the
signs—the signs of my inexplicable and undesired “gravitational pull” toward
other boys that
popped up
in more
ways than one, every now and then…and unfortunately, again and again. Not being
one to go looking for trouble, I’d long found it fitting to shove those
feelings, and that other persistent entity, back down. It had been, however,
becoming increasingly difficult to live the lie, particularly since up until
last year I’d been living my untruth beneath a jet black cassock with a chalk
white surplice draped over it—I’d served as an altar boy every Sunday at St.
Mark’s Catholic Church, in downtown Wedgewood, Massachusetts.

“Let’s make this
car wash rock!
Woohoo
!”

S.U.C.C.E.S.S.!! Our Way Youth Group is the best!!
I don’t shout it out, but I will admit to thinking this overly
peppy thought. But it’s the sharp sound of meeting-concluding clapping that
drives me from my contemplation.

My brain is a yo-yo
at the end of a string—up and down, past and present —I can’t keep doing this
much longer.

Despite the
casual attitude Elizabeth’s let’s-get-pumped-up hand clapping might suggest,
she is about the most devout person I know, other than Mrs. Martine, Father
Joseph, and my mom, of course. She actually makes a sign of the cross before
eating her chicken burger and tater tots in the school cafeteria. You
gotta
respect that devotion.

“Where was your
brain, Anthony? You’ve sure been spacing out a lot lately.” When the meeting
breaks up, Elizabeth comes over to me, wrinkles her freckled nose and scours my
face for signs of distress. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, E. I’m fine.
I’ve got two tests tomorrow and I’m a couple of hours behind on the studying,
that’s all.”

“Well, then, I
guess I won’t ask you to go to Friendly’s to share a banana split with me, as
I’d planned.” A still hopeful, and bright crimson, blush rises up her neck
quickly, cluing me in on the fact that Elizabeth has placed all of her cards on
the table—a straight flush, all hearts. I can actually see the color encroach
upon the pale freckly skin of her cheeks. No matter how hard I pretend
otherwise, I know that Elizabeth O’Donnell has it bad for me. And although she
is what you might call a direct person, this overture has clearly cost her a
major emotional expense.

“You were sweet
to think of me, E, but AP U.S. History and Calculus are calling my name.” I
shift my posture so all my weight rests casually on my left hip, in an effort
to display a glib combination of regret and nonchalance.

However, I’m
“saved by the bell”—which just so happens to be the name of a classic Saturday
morning television series I’ve tracked down on YouTube—when my best pal,
Laz
, makes his entrance. He slides across the floor and
does what resembles a hockey stop beside Elizabeth’s left foot. “Duck-Young! Duck-Young! You must study us!”

Just a wild and crazy guy
—the
1980’s
Saturday Night Live
reference
does
Laz
Sinclair justice. Oddly, his pious and
straight-laced parents named him after Saint Lazarus, the Biblical poor man at
the gate of the rich man, but
Laz
is only poor in the
monetary sense. He’s quite full of piss and vinegar, like
Grampa
Simpson sometimes says on another of my TV favorites.

I’m getting
completely carried away with my nerdy TV land references. Focus, Anthony,
focus….

Laz
drops his big paws onto my
shoulders and shakes me hard enough to make my bones rattle. Although he’s tall
and well built, with dark shaggy hair and perpetually-tanned skin—not to
mention he has these killer wide, brown eyes I used to have to try hard not to
get lost in back in middle school—he’s also the class clown.

“Study us if you
want to be valedictorian next year!”
Laz
speaks in a
squeaky high-pitched voice, which, by itself, without the added notion that
it’s my AP classes calling out to me, is rather comical. I stifle my laughter.

“Need a lift
home,
Laz
?” I ask. Elizabeth’s chin drops a few
inches and it hits me that she may have wanted me to offer
her
a ride. But that would lead to nowhere healthy for either of
us—I already know that for a fact. I wish she’d turn her attentions to the
devastatingly handsome Lazarus, instead of me.

“You kidding,
dude? Course I do!” He shakes me again, which forces a tiny drip of saliva to sail
from between my lips, landing in the vicinity of Elizabeth’s left forearm, and
I allow myself to get dragged away.

To be honest, we
are both what people might call
the poor
guys
, like the saint
Laz
was named for, but
I
am the poor guy with a beater 2010
white Chevy Malibu. I’d been gifted my own car the very day I got my license,
seeing as it was easier for my parents to have me cart myself around town than
to leave all of my little sisters and cart me around themselves.

“The new total
Our Way needs to come up with is $645.00, so we need to make $32.25 per
person.” And then I call out over my shoulder as
Laz
pulls me in the direction of the door, “President E, make a note of it!”

I sincerely hope
that my intense relief to be leaving Elizabeth in our dust doesn’t ring out in
my voice.