by J. J. Murray
“It is true.”
“It’s…true?” Oh, shit.
“Yes. It is why I take the class.”
“The class?”
“Yes, the writing class.” He touches his head. “The things I know. Bestseller for sure. Then I can live life again, return home. There was safety in being a made guy. More safety in being known to the world.”
I’m eating Chinese food with the Italian Studs Terkel. “Um, I knew you didn’t look like a Johnny Smith.”
“Johnny I kind of like. Smith, no.” He leans forward. “Guess my real name.”
“I don’t know…Jeno.”
He blinks hard. “I am Geno. How you know?”
“With a J or a G?”
“A G. Now, how you know I am Geno?”
“I’m clairvoyant.” This is spooky. I was thinking of the Geno’s frozen pizzas turning to cardboard in my freezer.
“You see my last name, too?”
What I see is me humping the hair off this man’s chest. “Does your last name end with a vowel?”
He rolls his eyes. “Yes.”
“Sorry. Is it an O?”
“Yes.”
“Does it have more than three syllables?”
“Yes. Four.”
Maybe I am clairvoyant. “Da da da oh. Accent on the…third syllable?”
I see sweat beading on his forehead. “Yes.”
I feel a moistening under my new Levi’s. I should be betting something with this man. “What, uh, what do I get if I get your name right?”
“It begins with N,” he blurts out.
Oh…daa-em. He wants something, too. “Geno Nuh-da DA-oh. You’re from New York, right?”
“No. Long Island.”
“Same thing isn’t it?”
“Not if you’re from there.”
“You like basketball?” And maybe a sexy, tall, chocolate, former college basketball star wrapped around your hairy body?
“Yes, but what does this have to do with my name?”
“Are you a Knicks”—I slide my hand slowly across my jersey—“or a Nets fan?”
“Ah, so. A Knicks fan.”
I’m so smart. “Nic-da-DA-o. Hmm. Nic-oh…bello.”
“No.”
Shit. “Uh, Nico…retto.”
“No.”
Damn. “Nico…wafer-o.”
He laughs. “No.”
“Nicoletto.”
Johnny blinks. I’m right!
“Geno Nicoletto.”
“Yes.” He takes my hand. “Is a secret, yes? You must still call me Johnny…in public.”
Oh, sooky-sooky now! “What about”—oh God, my nipples!—“what about in private?”
“You may whisper my name in the dark.”
Thank you, Jesus! “Your dark or mine?”
He looks at his watch. “Oh, no. I must go.”
No way! You moisten me then leave? “Um, Johnny, I’m…no, no. I’ll see you in class.” SHIT!
“What were you going to ask?”
“Um, are you busy tonight?”
“I write at night.”
“Could you…” I touch his hand, rubbing his scar lightly. “Could you maybe…write in the morning this time?”
“What do you have in mind?”
“I want to whisper your name all night.”
He sits back. “I would like that very much, but I am never sure if it is safe. I do not want you to come to any harm.”
That isn’t the coming I want to do, Geno. “I can take care of myself, and how do you know that the harm to you won’t be coming from me?”
He doesn’t answer. He merely throws a crisp fifty on the table, takes my hand, and leads me outside. “Follow me,” he says, getting into a beat-up candy-apple red Pinto with bumper stickers holding up the back bumper. What the hell is this? Draw more attention to yourself why don’t you!
I follow that ugly red bomb to a warehouse on the south side. I doubt I will ever be able to get here again. And once inside his apartment, I don’t have a chance to whisper his name.
Because I do me some holy-spirit-hit-me shouting.
I shout “GENO! GENO!” all night long until my voice is hoarse, and I leave that man with more scars than thirty-two boxing matches ever did.
Henry will red-pencil that chapter to death, especially the last part. “Could you go into more detail in this scene, please? I don’t want a blow-by-blow account of their lovemaking, but give me something more than shouting and scars!”
If I tell Henry that I want to leave it up to the reader’s imagination, he’ll reply, “An author is the reader’s imagination. Do your job!”
The Nova’s clock says 2 A.M. This is insane! Monday night and she’s not home? She hasn’t been home in two days? Where is she staying? Why—
—is there a flashlight blinding me?
I turn sharply to see a burly Huntington town officer. Whoops. I roll down my window. “Good evening.”
“Let’s see some ID.”
I fish out my license and hand it to him. “Anything wrong?” I know how this looks: a strange Pennsylvanian is parked near a dark house in Huntington in a rental car at 2 A.M. “I’m just waiting for a friend to come home.” Someone had to have called this in. Damn neighborhood watch folks. Don’t they know a romance is soon to be in progress?
He shines the light from the license to my face and back to the license. “And who would you be waiting for at two A.M., sir?”
“Ebony Mills. She, uh, lives here.” She just doesn’t come home to do any living.
“So you’re just sitting here waiting for Ebony Mills.”
“Yes, sir. We, uh, grew up together over on Preston Street and went to Huntington High together. I haven’t seen her—”
“For two nights, sir?”
How’d he know I was here last night? “Uh, yeah, I know it sounds strange. We just, um, keep missing each other, I guess.”
“For two nights.”
“Yes, sir.”
His light beam travels across the front seat until it rests on the laptop. “Doing a little surveillance, Mr. Underhill?”
“Oh, that. I’m a writer. Just passing the time, you know, doing some writing while I wait.”
“A writer.”
“Yes, sir.” This is getting me nowhere, and the officer doesn’t believe a word I’m saying. I look past him to Ebony’s dark house. “It doesn’t look like she’s coming home tonight, so I’ll be going.”
He hands back my license. “Good idea, Mr. Underhill. And it wouldn’t be wise to be seen around here anytime soon.”
“Excuse me?”
He hunches down and leans on the car door. “Sir, we received a call on a strange vehicle at this address last night, but you were gone before I could get here. We got another call tonight—”
“From whom?”
“From the lady who lives here.”
Oh, shit. “From Ebony?”
He nods.
I feel a cold knot in my stomach and have trouble taking my next breath.
“You don’t want this to go any further, now, do you?”
“No.” I can barely speak. Ebony called the cops on me. Ebony actually had the nerve to call the cops on me. She must hate me—but why?
“I’ll be blunt with you, Mr. Underhill. If I find you here again, I won’t be so nice. I’d have to cite you for harassment, and Miss Mills would most likely file a restraining order. You don’t want that to happen, do you?”
“No.” Jesus, what did I do to her?
“As it is, I’m citing you for parking on the wrong side of the street.”
Which will give a judge “proof” that I was “stalking” Ebony at two in the morning. I cannot believe this shit!
I remain silent while he writes me up for the parking violation and says, “Have a pleasant evening.” Then he waits until I pull away from Ebony’s before doing a U-turn and speeding off in the other direction.
It’s past 3 A.M. when I get to the
yacht club parking lot. Since I won’t have access to a taxi for another five hours, I sleep yet another night in a parking lot in a rented Nova, this time with a heart made of broken glass.
11
When the sun rises, I feel so obsolete. I had a purpose in life yesterday, but this morning I can’t think of one. My heart aches.
And after I trudge into the yacht club locker room to sit on a shiny bench to check my e-mail, it aches even more, because three e-mails from Destiny ask, in one way or another, “Did you find her?”
Yes, I found her, and I found her…angry. Vindictive even.
I write Destiny a quick reply, sparing her the details of my near arrest:
Destiny:
I found out where she lives, but I haven’t seen her yet. I’ll keep trying.
Peter
As soon as I shoot my lame e-mail off into cyberspace, Mr. Cutter walks in holding a manila folder. “Saw you in your car this morning, Pete. Your father’s ghost keep you awake?”
“No.” A lost love that called the cops on me did. “I came back too late, and there wasn’t a taxi.”
“Shoot, Pete, just take one next time. As a matter of fact, we’re not busy anyway, so why don’t you keep one of the Zodiacs for a while?”
A glimmer of hope today? “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it.” He hands me the folder. “Got some of your father’s things in here. Just stumbled across them last night in the office. Don’t know how they got there.”
“Thanks.” I open the folder and rifle through an assortment of clippings, documents, and photographs. Why’d he keep these here?
“Say, how’s the Argo looking?”
I look up. “Clean as a whistle.”
“That girl does a nice job, doesn’t she?”
“What girl?”
Mr. Cutter shrugs. “The girl that cleans your daddy’s boat.”
“I thought it was part of the service here.”
“It isn’t.”
I’m at yet another loss. “Who is she?”
He shrugs again. “You know, I never caught her name. Funny. She just shows up every now and then, I take her out to the Argo, she cleans a while, radios for a taxi, and I go get her. She’s been doing it for about three, four years now.”
I’m afraid to ask the next question. “Is she, um, black?”
“No, no. She’s white. Pretty, too. Reminds me of a little shaver who your daddy used to take out on the boat a long time ago. Let’s see…think your daddy called her…Dee.”
I’ve lost the feeling in my hands. Dee? A nickname for Destiny? She almost looks white, but she’s most definitely not. Mr. Cutter’s getting old, though. Maybe his eyesight is going. And Destiny was going on and on about seeing the boat the other night. But what’s the Captain doing with a little kid?
“Um, is she about my height with brown hair that has streaks of blond and red?” With a figure that only God could have made.
“That sounds about right. You know her?”
Why in God’s name would Destiny do that? Wait. She knew I was coming, and she cleaned the Captain’s boat before I arrived—but she’s been doing it for three years? “Uh, yeah, I think I do. But tell me about the little girl.”
“Dee? She was a handful, let me tell you, but your daddy was patient.”
He was? The Captain was patient? My Captain was patient with a child?
“She couldn’t have been more than six or seven when they first started sailing together. They did okay in the Frostbite races, too. I remember one time she brought a half a dozen flounder right into the clubhouse, even slapped them up on the bar and told the bartender to fry ’em up because she was hungry.”
“When was all this, Mr. Cutter?” The Captain never said a word about any of this, but then again, we didn’t speak to each other again after my wedding in eighty-six.
“Oh, just before he died, back in eighty-eight, eighty-nine.” He pauses. “She was the, um, one who…”
“The one who what?”
“You don’t know?”
“No.”
“Hmm. Surprised no one told you.” He scratches his head. “Well, she showed up like she always did every Saturday morning, and since your daddy wasn’t here to pick her up, we decided to sneak up on him.” He looks away. “She, uh, she found him. I mean, I didn’t know he had…passed away. I would have done anything to spare that little girl that awful sight.”
Dee discovered my father’s body, and now Destiny is keeping the boat clean. They have to be the same person. Was she at the funeral? I can’t remember. “Uh, yeah. Must have been quite a shock.” Which is what I’m feeling right now! “Mr. Cutter, do you remember how the little girl got here every Saturday?”
He laughs. “No one around here will ever forget that. A red Pinto covered with bumper stickers brought her every Saturday morning. Surprised it still ran.”
Candace brought her? “Did the…did the driver ever get out?”
“Every time. Older black lady. I thought she was probably little Dee’s nanny or something. She and your daddy used to talk for hours right here in the parking lot at the end of the day.”
Candace brought a little girl, a little…mixed girl—oh my God! Does that mean…Destiny is my daughter?
“I’m sure her picture is in that folder there. Your daddy took more pictures of that child…”
I dump the folder on the bench, sifting through military records, Mom’s picture, one of my baby pictures, some faded letters—
And a stack of color pictures of the cutest little girl in the world. She has Ebony’s eyes and my nose. Jesus, thank You, and I’m crying and there she is—my daughter!—and we had a date at Xando the other night, and I thought she was twenty-eight, and she asked if I had any other kids, and oh, dear Jesus, I hit on her! I hit on my own daughter! And she did say “jump your bones,” just like her mama!
I hear Mr. Cutter mumbling something like, “I’ll leave you to your memories,” and when I look up, he’s gone.
Ebony and I had a daughter, Destiny, who is…nineteen now. God, that explains so much! They weren’t on vacation back in eighty-one. They were…somewhere, maybe Brooklyn? Ebony was pregnant and gave birth to Destiny in the early spring. That last time, in the hotel before I left for college, we made a child.
I look back at the laptop and reread Destiny’s latest e-mail. I close my eyes. It’s been in front of me the entire time. “Ebony31582.” Destiny was born on March 15, 1982.
I have a daughter. I’ve had a daughter all this time—and no one told me!
I don’t know whether to be happy or pissed! The Captain got to see her grow up, but I didn’t! Why didn’t he tell me? I know the old cuss was the stubbornest man ever born, but he wouldn’t have been that stubborn unless—
Unless Ebony or Candace told him not to tell me. That’s probably it. They’re the two stubbornest women ever born, and they out-stubborned him. But why didn’t Mr. Cutter give me this folder at the funeral? Why has he suddenly found it after all this time?
Destiny. The day she cleaned the Argo she must have left it in Mr. Cutter’s office. She’s pretty slick, and that means…that at least one person in Ebony’s family wants to see me!
But how did she know that I was her father? Has she known from the start?
I feel sick to my stomach. God, the things Ebony could have told her about her deadbeat daddy, and yet Destiny still wanted to see me.
So. I’m a father. I have a dancing daughter who’s almost twenty but looks and acts so much older. She has been raised right, but the artist mother of my child doesn’t want to see me, the wheelchair-riding grandmother of my child has been withholding information, and only the great-aunt of my child has been helpful.
My child—my child!—has cried for me! She cried before she left me.
Okay, now what? How do I handle this? It is obvious that Candace and Ebony want nothing to do with me. Fine. But Destiny…maybe the two of us can soften them up.
I t
ry Instant Message, but Destiny isn’t online, so I write her a letter I never thought I would ever write:
My dearest Destiny,
How is my daughter today?
I can’t stop the tears now, and I’m glad the locker room is empty.
We have a LOT of catching up to do, and this time I’ll interrogate YOU.
Your mother and grandmother, however, don’t seem to want me around. Your mother even called the cops on me last night and has threatened a restraining order.
You KNOW I want to see your mother again. You KNOW I still love her. How can you and I get the two of us back together?
This is starting to sound like The Parent Trap. What did those twins do?
Destiny, you are the most beautiful, graceful, wonderful child a father could ever want. I am SO sorry I wasn’t there for you, but I would have been if I had known! No one ever told me.
Let me know what we can do to make all this right.
Your loving, though long-absent, father,
Peter
I send the e-mail and dry my tears on my sleeve. The glass in my heart is starting to fuse together.
I’m somebody’s father.
And my own father was okay with it. That man who didn’t want Ebony and me together was okay with it. I can see Candace presenting Destiny to the Captain for the first time, saying something like, “This here’s your granddaughter, Mr. Underhill. Her name is Destiny, but her mama calls her Dee. It’s your turn to mind her, and you’re gonna be minding her every Saturday from now on.”
And he did, happily, according to Mr. Cutter, even turning her into a sailor. I should have figured it out when she showed up at Xando in a sailor’s outfit. I’ve got to keep my eyes open wider from now on.
I set Destiny’s pictures aside and look closer at what else the Captain held sacred.
I see a faded newspaper clipping from The Marietta Times—where’d he get this?—raving over sophomore third-baseman Pete Underhill: “In the ninth, Underhill’s second homer of the day, a three-run shot to center field, sealed Marietta’s victory.” It was my best day as a college baseball player, and here it is. Damn, the man had some pride in me. Why didn’t he ever say so? I flip the clipping over and see the date “5/17/83” written in some very familiar cursive.