The Domino Effect (3 page)

Not a bad guy, Dr. DeFuso. His house off Queens Boulevard had an office around the side. It was very brown in there, with slanted shades and a wooden desk and lots of books on shelves. We sat across from each other in cushioned chairs and he held a notepad and pen across his thighs. He asked me little questions that were supposed to have answers worth writing down. At first, I hardly said anything. But then I started giving him something to put on his pad, nothing monumental or nothing, but enough to keep me out of another crew cut.

This guy DeFuso was no miracle worker, but talking to him once a week for a few months made things easier at home. Pop and I still had our moments, but we had our peace for the most part. The best thing about going to the shrink was his suggestion that boarding school might be good for me. He talked to my parents, and one night they came up to my room with these brochures with pictures of nice looking kids studying and playing sports, posing with their arms around each other’s shoulders. It seemed so safe. So easy. I remember holding the brochures and thinking,
yeah, yeah, I can do this.

So we went out for a visit. Took the car straight across Jersey, past fields and rolling hills, past exit signs for places ending in “burg” or “ville.” We glided down a winding road into a half-assed town called Hamdenville. Outside of town, we went through a high gate and up a higher hill onto the campus of Hamden Academy. Ivy covered the stone and brick buildings, and tall, tall trees threw shadows over the road. The air smelled new.

Some happy kid named Brian gave us a tour and, more than anything, I remember him saying “hi” or “hello” to a lot of the people we passed: Hi, Scott. Hi, Stephanie. Hi, Karen. Hello, Mr. Taylor. I wondered which ones would be my teachers, my friends. When we went into the underclass dorm, up to the floor for juniors, I picked out a room that I hoped would be mine.

There were some meetings with admissions people and a guidance guy. I met the baseball coach, too. But my mind was made up before any of them even opened their mouths. On the car ride home to Queens, I fell asleep and dreamed of myself somewhere else.

Third Year

T
hat next year, on my first day of school at Hamden Academy, I walked around campus like I already belonged. I didn’t really know where I was going or anything, but it felt like I did. It must have been all the time I spent that summer imagining myself there. And once there for real, I liked it right away.
These private school kids got it made,
I decided, walking under the high ceiling of the academic building, amongst all the fresh faces.

One face, in particular, stood out right away. I remember seeing her from across a classroom: deep auburn hair and a freckled nose, eyes that glowed green. Her eyebrows were the color of caramel. Her mouth was wide and, I could tell, easy to make smile. There wasn’t this “Ah, Ah, Ah...” soundtrack playing or anything, and she didn’t cruise up like a vision of the Venus on a clam shell painting they had at Catholic school, but the sight of this girl was like a miracle to me. I swear. I gave her a nickname on the spot: “Bella Faccia” for her beautiful face.

Each day, I moved closer and closer, row by row, desk by desk. I felt like a secret agent. After a week, I settled in right next to her. I sat up straight, caught my breath, and started to think of something clever to say. When I turned to deliver, she was waiting for me.

“So,” she said. “You finally made it.”

I almost fell over.

Through class, I tried and tried to keep my head straight ahead, but couldn’t help but sneak a thousand peeks. Afterward, on the way to next period, I worked the little routine I had used for charming the girls back in Queens:

“So,” I began, “tell me your name.” (Brenda Divine)

“Where are you from, Brenda Divine?” (Connecticut)

“Do you like it there?” (Yes)

“Do you like it here?” (So far)

“Do you like me so far?”
(giggles)

“Who’s your favorite singer?” (Prince)

“What about Bruce Springsteen?” (Well, only “Thunder Road,” but I’ve listened to it, like, a thousand times)

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” (A doctor or a teacher)

“Where do you want to go to school?” (NYU)

“Who’s your favorite player on the Mets?” (Umm…pass)

“All right. One last question,” I said, leaning into the door frame of her next class.

“OK,” she giggled some more, hugging her books.

“What are we doing Saturday night?”

She smiled, but there was this sideways-thing with her mouth that cut that grin in half. “Well, actually,” she said, “I’m taking the bus to meet my parents in the city, and my...my boyfriend’s coming, too.”

“Ohhh!” I cried from the boyfriend-bomb but still managed to keep my cool. “Can I come, too?” I asked. “I’m from the city. I could show you guys around.”

“Maybe some other time,” she laughed and walked into class.

She had a bouncy step and her right foot pigeon-toed a little, giving the impression she might be clumsy or something until you saw what a jackrabbit she was on the soccer field (I never missed a game that fall). I watched her skinny legs moving in fresh blue jeans. As she turned to slip into the seat, I envied the fuzzy sweater that hugged her slender upper body. Once seated, she tilted her head toward the doorway, blinked a few times, then smiled at me with surprise.

“How about next Saturday?” I asked. “You free then?”

There was something in her dimpled smile. Something I didn’t know for sure, except that it was something I needed more than anything in the whole world. I swear.

Boyfriend or not, I sat next to her in class every day, taking the same walk down the same hallway afterward. We hung out after school and in the evenings, too.

I met other people. My roommate was a good guy named Sam Soifer, sort of a pale kid, always in need of a shave, with a body that drooped toward the floor like the
bazoombas
of a big old lady. Sammie had been at Hamden Academy for a year before me, and he took real pride in showing me around. He made it his job to point out everything and everyone he knew. It was kind of nice, at first, but it got old fast, especially after some kid asked him, as we walked through the common area of the dorm, “Hey, Soifer. When you crap, does he wipe?”
Good one,
I thought, but I also thought that I should find some other people to hang out with besides Sammie.

The guys next door seemed kind of cool. They played music and talked all the time about
“Bettys”
(which I figured out, soon enough, to mean “girls”). One was a loudmouthed kid, skinny with freckles, orange hair and a ton of confidence, like he didn’t know he was a skinny, freckled kid with orange hair. His roommate played the guitar, playing the part of musician with a piled-up hairstyle, sandpaper stubble on his cheeks and chin, and the right clothes faded and unbuttoned in all the right places.

Those guys, Geoff Meeks and Johnny Grohl, started talking me up in the bathroom and in the halls. They would knock on our door, sometimes, and ask me to come over and “hang.” They knew Sammie, like a lot of people, but, like a lot of people, they didn’t seem all that crazy about him. And they never asked him to come over with me.

One day, on my way next door, Sammie whispered “Don’t go.” It nearly broke my heart, hearing him beg me like that, but I wasn’t the same kid anymore who brought everyone along and picked the worst guy first. A lot of good that had done. It had cost me everything and got me nowhere. And I had some catching up do with a lot of things. So when Sammie begged me to stay, my heart might have stopped, but I kept walking.

Meeks and Grohl had another friend. A real cool guy named Todd Brooks. He was a prefect on the underclass floor of our dorm and always upstairs with Meeks and Grohl. Todd had some serious manners, wavy hair and broad shoulders, too. If we had a football team, he’d have been the quarterback; instead, he destroyed people in soccer and lacrosse. I learned, soon enough, that ours was a school of small circles, with no real center, but I was pretty happy to be in with those guys. They were about as cool as it got at Hamden Academy.

And Todd Brooks was the coolest of all. He wasn’t just any old student. He’d been there since freshman year – which was something on its own, since kids came and went all the time. He also served as the big man around campus, at least of the nonwrestlers — our only major sport — which made this guy Todd even more important, because the wrestlers were about as charming as vomit. And with Todd Brooks in the lead, the four of us made our presence known around campus.

“Here comes your girlfriend,” Meeks would crack whenever Brenda Divine approached my new group of friends. I loved the way she would slide into our booth in The Can (the makeshift soda shop on campus), help herself to a handful of French fries, and join the conversation. She was smarter than rest of us put together. Sometimes she’d challenge me to Foosball in the game area up the stairs. And we’d play for hours, spinning those little plastic men.

“You score there yet,
Paesano?”
Grohl would ask when I came down for more quarters.

“Get bent, all of ya’,” I’d say every time, but I wasn’t talking to Todd.

Todd knew my plans for Brenda. I was waiting for her and her boyfriend to break up. That’s it. There were other girls around, but she was my Springsteen. I didn’t like anybody else. We talked about it all the time, Todd and I. We talked about everything. I even told him about what happened to me back home. He was my guy, my buddy, my friend. My pal. We hung with Meeks and Grohl, but when it was time to divide, they went their way and we went ours. Until Todd went away with Brenda. And that hurt a hell of a lot more than getting hit in the head with a baseball bat.

It had to have been lacrosse in the springtime. They both played, and the teams traveled together. So somewhere, I figured, on those bumpy bus rides through the Jersey countryside, with the windows open and the spring air pouring in, they must have found each other and forgotten about me.

I had no idea, not a clue about any of this until an early evening in the end of spring. Crossing campus after a late baseball game, I saw my best friend and my best girl come giggling out of an empty building. The air got punched right out of me as I staggered behind a tree and watched them disappear into the twilight.

Nearly as painful as that torturous moment was watching Todd and Brenda fall for each other. Over the last few weeks of school, they became the pets of campus, and if we had a prom they’d have been the king and queen. As it was, everyone just fawned with approval as they pawed each other in public. It made me sick. The thought of what they might be doing out of public was too much for me to even think about.

Knuckling some salt into my gaping wound was the fact that neither of them said a word about this whole relationship. Not a word. Brenda and I were officially “only friends,” but great friends, all year. And it was more than that, too. We spent a ton of time together, and chemicals, or something, bounced back and forth when we were alone. I was funny with her like nobody else, and she had a special smile just for me. I’d never been in love before, but I knew when it was happening to me.

And I knew when it wasn’t happening anymore, too. Brenda and I stopped hanging around alone together. And she stopped smiling at me like she had before. We had conversations, I guess, about things, but nothing important. Like normal friends, I guess. Todd, on the other hand, disappeared altogether. Spring was busy, with sports and everything, and we only had a few weeks left before summer, but he never came to our floor in the dorm and, when he saw me around campus, he’d just go the other way or walk right past. He’d walk right past with this smirk on his face. I swear.

So another school year ended with me lonely and let down. And another summer was spent at home in Queens, mostly in my room, hoping for better days to come my way in the next year of high school. My last year. My last year and my last chance to make all those things I dreamed about real. They would come, and they would hurt, and it would all be worth it.

The Domino Effect

Chapter 1

T
he tree line whizzed past. Pop played a jazz station and tapped out a tune on the steering wheel. My mother had given me a thousand kisses before we got in the car. She also mauled my cheeks with giant pinches. She couldn’t make the trip because of some big case she was working on, and she must have felt bad and took it out on my poor face. I felt bad, too, beyond the face job, because it left me alone with Pop for a couple of hours — me, staring out the window… him tapping out jazz on the steering wheel.

We hadn’t spoken since the George Washington Bridge, when we picked up the highway that cut across Jersey. We hadn’t spoken, but Pop looked over at me about a hundred and fifty times. I slouched down in the front seat of our fancy sedan and kept my eyes out the window, wondering about what waited for me at Hamden Academy.

The summer had been long but not in the good way. Our house was quiet, with my mother working lunatic hours as a new lawyer, and Pop and me still without much to say to each other. He did his thing. I did mine, which was going back and forth to a summer job at a supermarket and, at home, sitting in my room listening to Springsteen records and reading comic books. Good times.