With a Voice that is Often Still Confused But is Becoming Ever Louder and Clearer

by J. R. Hamantaschen

  It made no sense, Alex knew, but somehow his interaction with Kevin, and maybe a text he got from Caroline — Love you Snugglehorse! — played a role in him declining to call Gloria to apologize. When he did follow up with her a couple weeks later, he simply reminded her to keep in touch, report any changes in income or family composition — which came off as ghastly, in light of her third abortion — and to check in again in another couple of weeks.

  So that was how the rest of the month went. Nothing too important, except Caroline retained a bunch of contract attorneys for a law firm to handle a long-term document review project, thereby scoring her a nice monthly bonus. Thinking of all those debt-swamped junior attorneys pulled into working on a brain-deadening part-time contract review project without benefits — he pictured a huge net canvassing Craigslist and capturing poor junior attorneys, snapping and gnawing for escape like crabs — well, it was one of those things that made him glad he went into social work and not law school. So other than that good news — and the extra nights out she insistently paid for — not much else was new for the rest of the month. He continued to love her, and she continued to love him, and their relationship wasn’t sex-less but subsisted on less sex than they’d both prefer, which they chalked up to as an unfortunate casualty of living as two working professionals with long commutes.

  Work was largely the same, too, except there’d been too many group meetings and conferences for his liking. He didn’t dislike his other coworkers, per se; they were a nice enough lot, but hanging out with them for too long made his blood boil. Inevitably, at any office lunch or function, someone would say something so blinkered or so nested on politically correct assumptions that — well, he didn’t necessarily disagree with them — in fact, more often than not, he did agree with them -— but he at least recognized what they stated were opinions, not facts, and shouldn’t be stated as such.

  True to form, his boss, Kaye, made a couple of comments throughout the month about the recent spate of news articles on prominent priests and anti-abortion protestors who recently died of sudden heart attacks, she always said something like “well this will make our job easier” or “won’t have to worry about him anymore!” and the other social workers all laughed and agreed, no love lost there. Alex had a pretty cavalier attitude toward issues of life and death and didn’t consider himself unusually sensitive — hard to consider yourself sensitive when you’ve told a dead baby joke or two — but he just hated how everyone there just took for granted how no one would have any problem with what she was saying, even though, in reality, it seemed no one did have a problem with what she was saying. At another lunch conference, another coworker commented on how great it was how large, sugary drinks were inevitably going to be been banned in New York and how this would do a great job of reducing obesity and diabetes amongst the working poor, and she made these declarations as if there was no counterargument whatsoever to the paternalism inherent in such a proposal. Not that she necessarily had to agree with the counterarguments, but she and his nodding coworkers gave no impression that they could even comprehend that any counterarguments or differences of opinion even existed regarding the topic.

  Be positive, he thought throughout the month. If anything, dealing with his coworkers’ self-assured paternalism helped his critical thinking skills and helped him bond with Kevin, who shared his general distaste for their coworkers’ strong positions and intolerance of dissent. They were nice people, and he just had to pick his battles. That was all.

  So, all-in-all, the month went well.

  >< >< ><

  The next month he was back to the projects in Washington Heights. Actually, to call Washington Heights, as a whole, “projects” was reductive and silly, as there was actually a complicated ecosystem of industrious Dominicans, retired elderly Jews, and young professionals and grad students priced out of the Upper West Side and Morningside Heights. In reality, the average new rent here in Washington Heights was probably equal to or greater than his more remote Bayside, but old buildings in Washington Heights didn’t do it many favors. Someone could — and many a New Yorker did — dismiss Washington Heights out of hand just by seeing the gray, drab and ancient project-style housing,

  Rather than allow himself to feel bad about the fact that Gloria lived in a dirt-cheap, spacious apartment in Manhattan whereas he lived in a distant, suburban-style hinterland in Queens without subway access, he contented himself with pretending the whole area consisted of “the projects.”

  Projects with parking spaces.

  The pretty blue and orange NYCHA signs welcomed him to the Audubon Houses.

  There were some unsavory young dudes loitering about, but for the most part there were just elderly Dominicans with endearing smiles and tottering rolling carts, often times with equally elderly and tottering small dogs, loved but unkempt, schmutz around their eyes and hair uncombed. Project puppies, was how he planned on describing them to Caroline (he anticipated that she would “aww” at that).

  “Hello, sir,” Alex heard from behind. Alex was on the third floor, Gloria’s floor, ready to find her apartment, butterflies fluttering around in his stomach. He turned around to see a thin, wiry man of average height who was strangely ageless. He was half-black, maybe half Dominican — a safe guess, this being Washington Heights — wearing a black Yankees fitted cap, a black Champs sports sweater, navy blue jeans, and black and white Nikes. He had creases around his mouth.

  “Hello.”

  “You that social worker, right?” he said with a knowing charm. Funny, that this guy lived in a project, wasn’t at work — obviously — was dressed like a kid, and yet was able to access some vast reservoir of charm and self-confidence that someone like Alex could never tap into.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “You going to see Ms. Hernandez?”

  “Yes.”

  “Word, no doubt, don’t get it twisted, I ain’t meant to take up none of your time or nothing. I heard about FEPS. She on that? I’m only asking because I heard about that and I want to get on that FEPS.”

  FEPS? Oh, Family Eviction Protection Supplement, Alex remembered. “Well, I can give you my card, and you can come into the office and if you qualify for it, we can help you get on that.”

  “Hmm.” Despite his cocksureness, disappointment was evident. “Is she on FEPS? Is that what she gets?”

  “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t divulge —”

  “Right, can’t divulge, can’t divulge. No disrespect, just, how about this. I’ll talk to her myself then, and whatever she is on, that’s what I want. If she tells me what she’s on, can you help me out? I want to get on her plan.”

  “Ok.” Alex handed over his card.

  “Good looks, son. I mean sir,” he chuckled. “I’m Keith Ortega, nice to meet you.” He looked down at the card. “Alex, this your number?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Indeed, I like that, I like that. Good looks. I hope you don’t forget about me because I’m going to hit you up soon.”

  “Okay, nice to meet you, Mr. Ortega. Look forward to hearing from you.” Back in high school, if any of his more knuckleheaded friends said “good looks,” he’d respond with ironic earnestness: “well, why thank you, I just bought this shirt,” or “how kind of you, I just got this haircut.” He wouldn’t pull that stance with this guy, and wondered, with some concern, why he was so desirous of the affections of cooler, more confident males.

  >< >< ><

  Gloria’s apartment. The boxy rooms; the ugly off-blue couch with the incongruous doilies; even her son playing with trains in the living room felt faintly familiar. The apartment was cleaned up a bit, though, and without the clutter he could confirm his suspicion: yup, this project apartment was bigger than his own apartment out in Bayside. Everything was cleaned, scrubbed, put away, closed and sealed. Even the doilies seemed to be in the right spot (assuming there was ever an appropriate spo
t for doilies).

  Post-abortion Gloria moved with newfound vigor, her load lightened, literally and metaphorically, attending to her son, maintaining eye contact, nodding that was actually connected and related to what Alex was saying, a respectable show of pantomimed interest and concern for whatever Alex was going to say. He didn’t know what to say or how to deal with the abortion issue, or whether to avoid it outright and say nothing at all, which should have been fine by him. He had no moral objection to her having an abortion, or anyone having an abortion, but he wasn’t sure if she was supposed to feel some sort of guilt about it, and whether he was supposed to console her about anything. That she gave no indication of overcoming any inner turmoil — or even any indication that she had been suffering any inner turmoil to begin with — left him feeling somewhat … expectant and perhaps underwhelmed, like something was unfinished, like he should be waiting for something.

  But everything was fine, which made the one discrepancy about her apartment all the more glaring. Shit, it wasn’t really even a discrepancy, unless she was being judged against some unattainable containment-bunker level of cleanliness. But to Alex, it was jarring in its conspicuity.

  Two jacket sleeves — belonging to two separate jackets — were sticking out of the otherwise closed closet door. From his angle, one of the jackets appeared to be hung on the door knob inside the closet; the sleeve was wedged, constricted tight in the door frame. From the look of the other sleeve, the other jacket had been unceremoniously thrown into the closet at a moment’s notice. And the oddest thing of all? Unless those coats had accumulated obscene mutant mothballs or something, they were most definitely fur coats. His whole time in her apartment, while he was sipping his tea — she offered him tea, since when did she drink tea? — he kept eyeing those jacket sleeves as if they were waving at him. He only stopped when sex came to mind — he still had that high school talent of transmogrifying anything and everything into a porn metaphor — the too-small closet trying to contain everything hidden underneath, the sleeve like a nipple slip … Jesus, he was slightly hard, when’s the last time he …

  He snapped awake.

  “And I do truly appreciate your concern, especially you coming up to visit me —”

  “You’re going to ruin those jackets,” he said while pointing and not thinking.

  There was something in her response — her eyes widened by a degree that could only be intuited, an irregularity in her breath, the momentary retreat of her put-upon smile back to its usual mask of low wattage impatience — there was something there, but somewhere between turning her head and meeting Alex’s gaze, everything seemed normal and he felt, for a moment, like a fool for thinking otherwise.

  “Hah, oh those, no, it’s nothing but just old coats.”

  “None of my business.”

  He dropped it. But still, fur coats.

  Inexplicably, she brought up the abortion later in the conversation. “It was a tough thing to do, but the right thing to do.”

  “I understand,” he consoled.

  “Things have been so tough, you know? Raising Javier, alone. It’s been hard. Money has been tight. It’s always been tight, you know?”

  “I know.”

  “It’s tight for everyone, you know, but for me, for me it’s been real bad, you know? My mom has been around to help me, a little bit, here and there, you understand, right, but she doesn’t have anything either, she lives on disability.

  “I ended up paying for it — you know, the procedure — by myself. You understand, right?”

  “Yes. You don’t need to explain anything to me. It’s your affair, it’s your business. I am just here to help you, provide you social services. As you know, part of that requires checking your eligibility for time to time, discussing your … prospects, as it were, your finances, but, you know, that is a personal affair. You don’t need to explain yourself to me, or to anyone.”

  He imagined a desperate woman trying to pay for an abortion on a maxed-out credit card and shook his head. Then, for some reason, he imagined a ghetto Chinese restaurant taking out a lien on the fetus for use as a cheap protein supplement and made a face like he smelled something foul. Gloria looked at him cockeyed.

  “Thank you for understanding,” she said, speaking a little slower, wondering why he was making that face.

  He came back to the reality before him.

  “No problem. None at all. No reason to thank me. I hope the recovery is going well, and I will keep in touch.”

  He hadn’t asked her about how she’d paid for it, and the cynical side of him suspected there was some strategic gamesmanship going on there.

  >< >< ><

  Later that week and several home-cooked meals later, he found himself being seated at Sushi Samba with Caroline. She’d made another big commission recently — booked about 70 contract attorneys to work on a huge, six-month document review — so this was a special treat. Sushi Samba was her favorite restaurant in the city. To make the whole experience sweeter, they’d booked the reservation using her OpenTable account: she loved clocking up redeemable points.

  At the table, she put on her airs of excitement. She did love this place, true, but Alex suspected she played up her enthusiasm for his benefit. She cooed at the fare on the menu, the crab and lobster dishes particularly. She took a drink from her glass of water, put the stylish cup up to her face, and struck a playful pose halfway between Strike a Pose and Blue Steel.

  As a condition of going out to dinner, Alex had insisted that he be allowed to pay for it.

  The pleasant, ethnically ambiguous waiter came over and took their order. After placing her order, Caroline playfully clapped with the tinny speed of a flapping hummingbird.

  “Yay! I’m going to wash my hands,” she said, practically on cue. She always brought up hand washing soon after they ordered food at a nice restaurant: she never left to wash her hands until they ordered (“efficient!” as she said, her upright finger the proxy for the implied exclamation mark).

  “Cool. I’ll wash my hands when you get back.” He knew the drill.

  “Ooh,” she cooed. She loved it when he washed his hands.

  “Anything for you, Lil’ Panda.” He gave her a cheeky finger-point.

  “For you, Big Lion!”

  First course, naturally, was going to be the yellowtail taquitos, her favorite. Sushi Samba was a Japanese-Peruvian-Brazilian fusion restaurant that took the fusion angle straight to its decor, a mélange of bright colors, glass and sharp edges and reflections, lots of reflections. The restaurant was crowded — it was around 8 p.m. on a Tuesday in the West Village, after all — the clientele typical weekday Manhattanites, young urbane professionals without the baby baggage; disparate snatches of conversation, inside baseball-type bitching about young professional life.

  He bided his time by skimming through the menu and gazing around at the other patrons. They looked more put-together than him, more deserving and more fit for this environment. He didn’t think that pejoratively, just noted it as an observation.

  The ambient din of the restaurant mixed well with the unobtrusive Latin American music that registered somewhere in the background, to the extent they sounded like part and parcel of one another. He saw plenty of brightly colored, fruity looking cocktails on several tables and thought, “suckers.” That’s where these restaurants make money, $12 bucks for some vodka and grenadine and blue curacao.

  Caroline came back from the bathroom.

  “My turn!” Alex said. He gave her an air high-five. “Tag team! My turn!”

  “Yay!” she responded. “Get in there!” She knew he couldn’t care less about washing his hands — he had the prevailing ‘ignorance is bliss’ mindset about invisible vector-spread bacteria — but he knew she appreciated the gesture. He stuck to just washing his hands before meals out with her, just one thing he knew he could do to make her happy
, just like how he always pointed out cool-looking thrift stores, and just like how she’d sometimes point out comely models in her fashion magazines with a knowing wink, or push her shoes away from their bedroom door so as not to block the entrance, or stock up on coconut waters because she knew he liked them. In short, they had a loving relationship, something that sounded almost quaint nowadays.

  Both children of divorce, both having grown up witnessing the silent power struggles, passive aggressiveness, and quiet resentments of their parents’ doomed relationships, they’d somehow managed to create something genuinely heartfelt between them. Alex’s parents’ relationship had been a leaking relationship — any empathetic love from his father toward his mother had leaked out well before Alex was cognizant of the power dynamics of coupledom — and at some point Alex’s father treated his mother less like an active partner and more like a passive responsibility, an additional obligation to be endured until she was out of the house or out to lunch and he could decompress by himself. To his father’s credit, that his mother was completely oblivious to any of this — or indifferent to any of this, as long as she was provided for — gave his father some understandable grounding for his feelings. Alex, having always felt like an unloved son of a harried, depressed father and self-absorbed mother, had pledged himself early on to love earnestly and affectionately. As a child, he had love for his friends, and still did — he was quite adroit at keeping in touch with people — but he learned early on that such platonic love had to be held in check, lest it be misinterpreted. So his capacity and desire to love was withheld, stored inside him, bestowed in the interim on appreciative dogs and small animals, just waiting to be lavished on the right person.