The Domino Effect (18 page)

“Hey,” he said, taking my chin in his powerful grip. “I believe in you, Danny, you’re a great kid, and I know you had some tough times, but you gotta get over them or them memories are gonna eat you up.
Capisci?”

I slowly removed his hand from my face, though I had to admit, it felt good there. I sat back and frowned.

“You’re doing alright, Pal,” he said, nodding. “Just keep it up.”

“How do you know how I’m doing?”

“It’s my job to know these things,” he said with a wink. “Now help me with this food.”

After some silence around the table, I asked Pop if he thought I was a decent enough human being to go away — for one night — to Connecticut. He laughed and said I was. We finished our sandwiches together, like we had a hundred times before, and I couldn’t help thinking back to when Pop was my hero.

Chapter 11

I
fidgeted for three hours on the train, flipping through magazines. As I got closer, the seaside and the coastal towns relaxed me enough to establish some sort of cool as I stepped into the arctic air. I squinted, trying to adjust to the blinding light.

Brenda waited under cover in the center of the open platform. She had on a tan cowboy hat and a massive down jacket. It felt like I hadn’t seen her in years.

“Hey, Sweetie,” she sang. “I can’t believe you’re here!”

“Me neither,” I said, giving her a hug. “I’ve never been to the North Pole before.”

Our breath came out in huge clouds, and it seemed like everything around was ready to shatter from the cold.

“Come on,” she said, taking my arm.

We climbed into a shiny black Jeep Wagoneer and slammed the doors. Brenda started the car and the dashboard lit up like rocket ship. The Bangles played.

“You got a CD player in the car?”

Brenda nodded.

“You got any other CDs?”

She shook her head. I blew into my hands and rubbed them together in front of the vents.

“Here, I have something for you,” Brenda said. She lowered that “Manic Monday” song and motioned to a small package on the dashboard.

“I thought we weren’t doing gifts”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s nothing really.”

Inside the package — covered with red paper and wrapped in a green ribbon, was a black wool hat. She snatched it away to put on my head.

“Ohhh!” I laughed as I looked in the rearview mirror. “You’re a riot, Bren.”

“I know you don’t like hats, but you could really use one, especially with this cold snap we’re having.”

“Right now, I’d wear a helmet if you had one.”

She put the car in gear and left the station. In her town by the sea, a flock of seagulls swam above the storefronts lit with holiday decorations. A policewoman directed traffic without a whistle. We crossed a drawbridge and drove through winding streets with Indian names. Stone walls curved in front of white-washed homes.

Brenda turned down a lane where I could see the ocean through the trees. The setting sun shot a streak of orange across the horizon. We pulled around a circle at the end of the block and straight into the driveway of the wooden house at the end. Nice place. Two levels with a good-sized lawn out front and a basketball hoop over the garage. A giant wreath hung on a bright red door.

“Hi,” Brenda announced to the living room. “We’re here.”

“Why, hello
thaire,”
her mom chimed in a blistering Boston accent. When she darted into the room, my first thought was that Brenda must be adopted or something, because her mother was a mousy little thing with dark hair and eyes. She had on a tomato-stained apron over a silk shirt and black pants.

“Pleasha’
to meet you, Dan,” she said shaking my hand.

“Thank you, Mrs. Divine,” I said. “Thanks for having me.”

“Of
casse,”
she insisted. “Don’t think of it. Now come out of
this foya’ befoua’
we all freeze to death.”

Brenda hung up our coats in a nearby closet then took me up the short flight of stairs to a hallway that branched off into three bedrooms and a bath. We left my things in her brother’s room. Then we went to where Brenda slept. Her double bed had a purple shag comforter piled with stuffed animals. A shelf on the wall held a bunch of trophies. There was a poster of a waterfall with a rainbow over it, and one of a kitten covered in spaghetti. UConn paraphernalia had been spread around. Her desk was lined with framed photos, which I immediately scanned for the presence of boys.

“Whatcha’ looking for?” Brenda asked.

“Nothing,” I said, straightening up. “Nothing.”

“Good,” she said, approaching me.

We kissed in the middle of her room. It felt so safe and private and completely overwhelming that I cupped her backside and baby-stepped us toward the bed.

“Oh, no,” she insisted, pulling away. “Relax, mister.”

“You started it.”

“We better go back downstairs,” she said. She looked sad, like maybe she regretted bringing me into her home.I followed her down the hall.

In the kitchen her mother stood over a cast iron pot, folding in ingredients from a platter piled with fish. It was a big kitchen with plenty of cupboards and shiny appliances.

“What are you making, Mrs. Divine?” I asked, leaning into the granite counter by her side.

“This is Portuguese fish soup,” she said, her head held high. “We have it every New
Yea’s fa’
good luck.”

“You’re Portuguese?”

“That’s right,
my fatha’ was a fishaman
from Fall
Riva,
Massachusetts.”

“No kidding,” I said, now understanding the little bit of Mediterranean in Brenda’s eyes and skin. I thought maybe I’d been imagining that.

“So, what’s in the soup?” I asked, crossing my arms.

“Well, we have mussels, clams, squid, shrimp, some
cawd’,
of
casse.
”

“Cod? You mean baccala?”

“That’s right!” she said. “You
famila’
with baccala?”

“I’m Italian on both sides. I’ve had it at least once a year since I could chew.”

“Of
casse,”
she said. “You have it on Christmas Eve with
yoa’
seven fish, right?”

“It makes my father crazy.”

“Not a fish
lova
?”

“Well, it’s more all of the rigamarole, like he would say. All the cleaning and soaking and everything.”

“Don’t I know it,” she said, shaking her head.

“Then there’s all the courses, which is tough on me, being the dishwasher.”

“I’m
shooa,’”
she laughed.

“But it’s tradition,” I pointed out. “And that’s important.”

“That’s right,” she agreed, swiveling her head to look me in the eye. She had this natural warmth that made you want to be hugged or fed by her. Or both.

“Hey, you should give me this recipe,” I said. “All we need to do on Christmas Eve from now on is have some soup, and then we can send everybody home.”

“I’d be happy to help, Dan.”

She called me
Dan.
That cracked me up.

“Thanks,” I said, counting with my fingers. “But we need one more fish. Do you put anything else in?”

“Just chorizo sausage,
afta’
the fish is cooked.”

“Perfect,” I declared. “Sausage is Pop’s favorite fish.”

While her mother laughed at my unbelievable wit and charm, Brenda eyed us from the other side of the kitchen, sipping a soda. I winked, and we shared a moment interrupted by the slam of a car door. Brenda straightened and waited for her father. He was a big guy with a big head of curly golden hair. His face was a paler, rounder version of Brenda’s.

“Hi, Daddy,” Brenda sang, rising on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. “This is Danny.”

“How are you?” he asked with a flat tone before crushing me with a he-man handshake.

“Fine, thanks,” I said, fighting the urge to shake the hurt out of my hand.

He brushed past in a denim shirt and, a mustard-colored work jacket under his arm. He had on construction boots, but they weren’t dirty.

He took a beer from the refrigerator, stooped down to kiss his wife at the stove, and walked into the giant family room that covered the whole backside of the house. There was a swoosh-and-pop of a can tab opening, followed by the sound of scrunched leather.

“Don’t get too
comfa’table,”
Brenda’s mother called out.
“Dinna’
will be ready in a minute.”

We ate around a table in the corner of the family room. Brenda’s brother was away skiing, so I sat in his chair. The soup was good, and I hoped for some of that luck it was supposed to bring. Her father told me about the building supply & home heating oil company his family had owned for three generations. Mrs. Divine told me how she had met her husband, cleaning and cooking at his fraternity house at UConn. The conversation moved along from school to New York to the fact that they had a party to attend that evening. That got my attention.

“So, where we going anyway?” I asked Brenda after we’d seen her parents off in their party clothes. The kitchen clock read 11 p.m.

“It’s a surprise,” she said. “But you might want to bring your new hat.”

“Why don’t we just stay here,” I suggested, looking around the family room with its big, blazing fire, comfy couch, and giant TV.

“I want to be alone, Danny.”

“We are alone.”

“Yeah, but my parents aren’t far, and my father’s not much for parties.”

“Alright,” I agreed. “So where we going?”

“Go get your things and you’ll find out.”

We bundled up and left through the sliding back doors, down the steps of the deck into the quiet night. The sky was clear and it seemed less cold than during the day. Everything was still. After crossing the stone wall that bordered their backyard, we walked the woods, guided by the moonlight shining through the trees. I wondered what bulged in the knapsack thrown over my shoulder.

“Careful,” Brenda warned as we approached a creek that rippled between icy banks. We walked through reeds that snapped against our shins, following the reflected light against the tide until we reached a road lined with little pine trees. Car lights sent our shadows ahead of us as we walked. We stopped in a parking lot. Beyond the cars was a string of small, wood buildings. Above them, in the wide open sky, an enormous moon glowed.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“It’s our club,” Brenda said.

I thought of the time I’d visited Meeks’s club. “Where’s the golf course and the pool? And the big wooden bar?”

“It’s a boat club,” she said. “A family club, really. Not very big, but I practically grew up here.”

More cars arrived and parked on the grass. Music and light came from the middle building, drawing people like moths.

“I thought you wanted to be alone,” I said.

“I do,” she replied, and took me by the arm.

We cut between the cars and avoided the music by going around one of the dark buildings. Across the flat surface of the ocean, buoys bobbed and lights blinked at various points in the distance. Just off shore, around the end of a long wooden dock, a dozen sailboats, stripped and covered, waddled in the tide.

Brenda pointed to a rocky jetty that shot out from the shore.

“That’s where we go crabbing,” she said.

“Crabbing?” I asked. “Sounds contagious.”

“It’s so much fun,” she said. “You tie a piece of hot dog to a string and drop it in the water, and when it moves, you pull it up slowly and then catch the crab with a net.”

“Then what happens?”

“You collect them in a bucket and eat em’ for dinner.” She crinkled her nose. “The fun part’s really catching them, since they’re sort of hard to eat and there’s not a lot of meat.”

“Why don’t you just cook the hot dogs and forget the whole thing?”

“Oh, Danny.”

“I’m just joking,” I said, thinking of my summers on concrete. “Sounds fun.”