I nodded and pulled away from Cal. I didn’t know what to do and I sure as hell didn’t know what to say, but I approached Rosie anyway. Kneeling beside the sofa, I mustered a semblance of a smile. “Hey Rosie.”
He regarded me with wide eyes and a quivering lip. “Hi.”
“We’re happy to have you home,” I said, and it wasn’t a lie. After worrying about the waif for months, it was a relief to have him back.
“Thanks,” he breathed, rubbing his cheek against the cloth of his pants to wipe away the tears that were falling.
“Are you in pain? Does anywhere in particular hurt?”
Rosie stared at me as though he couldn’t process such a stupid question. How could he identify a source of pain when sorrow reverberated through his body, hitting every nerve?
“Does anywhere in particular hurt worse than everywhere else?” I amended, earning a shake of his head. I turned to Cal who was standing behind me and shrugged my shoulders.
“Do you need help getting ready for bed?” Cal asked his friend. “I washed your sheets and pajamas.”
“I think I’ll stay here,” Rosie stated, “like this.”
“It’s cooler in your bedroom,” Cal reminded. “If you want, I’ll sleep on the floor beside your bed.”
“I would like to stay here,” Rosie repeated, “like this.”
“Would you like me to sleep in here, too?” Cal offered. I could see he was growing desperate, needing to be there for Rosie, to mend whatever was tattered just as he had before.
“I need to keep the lights on. I don’t want to be in the dark, can’t be in the dark again.” Something about the statement tore Rosie apart, and he wept wetly into his thighs, body shaking violently as he cried.
Instinctively, Cal wrapped Rosie in his arms, attempting to provide him with comfort. The touch had Rosie recoiling, choking on his tears.
“I’m sorry,” Cal bawled, backing away as though his body was burned by the rejection. “I’m so sorry.”
I stood frozen by the sorrowful scene unfurling in front of me. Willing my wobbly legs to move forward, I took hold of Cal and held him close as he sobbed, swallowing down the thick lump of emotion swelling in my throat.
We didn’t sleep that night, instead we sat silently on the sofa, under the flickering light of a bulb that had nearly burnt out.
27
October 1936
I always liked Halloween. As children, Maks, Igor, and I had raised hell around the city, getting into mayhem of one type or another. My favorite act of mischief was to don a mask and go to the Irish sections of the South Side to bust pumpkins with baseball bats. Back then, the Irish were the only people who put them out. It had something to do with carving potatoes to ward off evil spirits back in Ireland or whatever. I didn’t look too deeply into their reasons for having pumpkins, I just liked that I had the opportunity to smash them to smithereens. It was an epic release to squash the squashes. I loved watching the flesh and seeds splay across the stoops, making a sloppy mess. When the homeowners switched their lights on due to the ruckus, we would run like lightning, laughing all the way to the next block.
Sometimes, when we were feeling particularly cocky, we would position ourselves in the middle of the street and prepare to play a delinquent game of baseball. Squaring up on a manhole cover, I would wait for Maks or Ig to pitch me the pumpkin. The weight of the squash guaranteed it wouldn’t go far, but that didn’t stop us from running after each other, trying to lob the mush for an out.
Halloween as I got older was decidedly less destructive but that didn’t mean I liked the holiday any less. Cal and I had made a habit of spending Halloween day in Bughouse square, a tradition established over the years when we had nothing better to do than hang around and look at people in crazy costumes. I was glad we’d decided to go to the Square even though we didn’t know if anyone else would show. They did. As we lounged in the grass, listening to orators and watching the two-legged parade, things felt sort of normal.
Over the past several months, there had been increased incidents of men being hauled to the fruitcake factories for wearing women’s clothes. The umbrella term of “indecency” was utilized with more frequency to punish pansies for being different, and the number of arrests in the community continued to climb by the day. It seemed, however, that on Halloween, Chicago had dipped back into the “anything goes” mantra that the city had flourished under with the flappers. My guess was that the coppers were too busy with mischief-makers to worry about queens in corsets. It was convenient to pretend they were in costume, at least for a day.
Things felt oddly calm, and I noticed there were more smiles on people’s faces than I had seen in nearly a year, Cal’s included. The months since Rosie’s return had been trying to say the least. Little by little, Rosie had warmed to Cal, but he was different than he had been before. While he never spoke of his stint in the asylum, it was evident that whatever had happened within those walls had changed him. He rarely left the apartment and when he did, he only ventured out accompanied by either Cal or myself. Most of his days were spent pacing the floor of the living room and sitting on the foot of his bed. Sometimes, Rosie helped Cal make moonshine, but the pressure that built in the pot had Rosie too nervous to stand close to the stove for long periods of time. He’d slowly back away, afraid the lid would blow, and shut himself in his bedroom until Cal was done. Cal felt guilty about doing something that caused Rosie stress, but his partnership with Maks was going well, and the demand for his moonshine was greater than ever. Between the clams Cal was pulling in and my numbers game, we were doing well. When Igor informed me that unemployment was lower than it had been in six years, hovering at around fourteen percent, I knew it would be good for business. With more people making money, there would be more money making its way around, which meant more in our pockets.
Regardless of how successful Cal’s moonshine racket had become, it was only a matter of time before he picked up his pots, and Rosie, and made his way across the country to California. Though Cal maintained that he wouldn’t go without me, I knew it wasn’t true by the sheer amount of time he spent begging me to reconsider. And I did reconsider. I spent slews of sleepless nights trying to understand what held me back from escaping a city that had long since abandoned me, a family who didn’t know who I was, and an outfit that would easily replace me with a new numbers runner at Ricky’s. What was worth staying for if he was away? There was no good answer, yet I was unable to shift my perspective enough to believe I deserved the chance at being free in San Francisco with Cal. Maybe I was always meant to meet him and lose him, another Tunguska event that would frame the remainder of my life like the first had defined my childhood. From destruction to obstruction, something would forever stand in my way, even if it was just myself.
Proving I was a pussy, I didn’t tell Cal to leave though I knew it was the right thing to do, but I did make him promise he would never let me know when he did decide to go. I wanted him to disappear while I was out selling numbers, slip away so I didn’t dread the impending day. Without goodbye, and a final moment between us, it would be as though our love hung in the air, stretching from here to there, never ending even if it could not go on. I wondered how long it would be before I realized he was gone, how many hours would pass with me trying to grasp at hope I knew was just beyond my reach because I had put it there.
“Do you know what I feel like doing?” Cal asked, sitting up and abruptly nudging my knee with the toe of his boot. “Hey. Wake up.”
“I’m not sleeping,” I groused, unsure if I had been or not.
“You were snoring.”
“I was thinking.”
“It’s called dreaming when you think during your sleep,” he corrected with a grin. “Maybe nightmaring if you’re thinking about bad things.”
“That’s not even a word,” I chided, deciding what I was doing could be considered nightmaring.
“Does it matter?”
“Probably not,”
I relented, raking my fingers through his pumpkin-hued hair.
“So, do you want to know what I feel like doing?” Cal repeated, but I was so far in my head I replied with the first thing on my mind.
“I feel like smashing pumpkins tonight,” I mused, watching the way the autumn sun glistened off the bend of one of his curls. “I would imagine each one was a Cubs player’s head and give them a big whack, try to beat some wins into them.”
“I think that would be counterproductive,” he chuckled, “and it seems like you’re harboring a lot of anger about the season.”
“When am I not?”
“That’s a good point,”
“You know, your head looks like a pumpkin.”
“You’re a dick,” Cal laughed, scrunching his face as if he was trying to determine where the hell the statement had come from.
“A good-looking pumpkin,” I clarified, smirking. “You’re the prettiest one in the patch.”
He laughed harder and shook his pumpkin head. “You’re off the cob.”
“You’re out of your gourd,” I retorted.
“Alright, alright,” he said, holding his side, his cheeks tinging pink. “Enough.”
I never considered myself a funny guy, but the way I amused Cal made me believe that I was more hilarious than I had initially thought.
“I want to go to the Jewel Food Store to get a Snickers,” Cal decided, gesturing for me to stand up. “I have a craving.”
“When do you not?” I teased.
Cal’s sweet tooth would make me porky one day, but I could not deny I enjoyed a chocolate bar or two. Cal, on the other hand, enjoyed a higher quantity than that.
“You know they sell full boxes, too, right? We could buy a box and have enough for the week. We won’t even have to walk to the store to get more,” Cal explained as we headed over to the market.
I laughed as I opened the door and followed him to the candy aisle. It felt like months since we’d last laughed and I was relieved we’d achieved some levity.
“I need to get a few for Rosie too,” he said as I eyed his handful of candy bars, amused.
“Of course,” I indulged, knowing damn well Rosie hadn’t been eating much of anything.
We walked back to the apartment, snacking on our Snickers, and chatting about nothing of consequence. It was by far my favorite type of conversation. Easy days were hard to come by, and I relished in the simplicity of the afternoon. I should have remembered that above frothy lightness was where the darkness liked to loom.
As soon as we crossed the threshold to our apartment we knew that something was wrong. Rosie wasn’t in the living room, and a quick peek into his bedroom told us he wasn’t there either.
“He wouldn’t go out without us,” Cal said, panic raising his voice an octave.
“Maybe he’s taking a shit,” I suggested, dropping my candy on the counter as I made my way to the bathroom. When my eyes caught sight of the note taped to the door, I knew what Rosie did:
Call the police.
“No,” Cal howled over my shoulder. “Tell me he didn’t … no!”
“Go,” I yelled, practically kicking him away as he crumpled to the floor. “Into our room. Go in there right now.”
He was crying so hard that the words he punched out were incoherent, but I didn’t try to understand. I needed to get him away from the door and to our room, so I could process what the fuck had happened, what Rosie had done.
Bending over, I threw Cal’s lanky form over my shoulder and carried him to our bed where I deposited the pieces of him. He was a fractured soul, crushed heart, and boneless body all lying in a lifeless heap.
Steeling myself, I broke open the door to the bathroom and gagged at the sight. Through all the years I had spent in Vlad’s outfit, I had never seen a dead body until that day. Beside the base of the tub where Rosie lay was my gun, a Colt M1911 that used to make me feel ten feet tall, dwarfing me to mere inches. I should have never left a firearm in the apartment with him. I should have read the writing on the wall. I should have protected him. I should have protected Cal. I should have told them to leave, set them free. I should have known everything would come crashing down because hope was a son of a bitch and hoping things would get better was a surefire way to make them worse. Moving further into the room, I noticed a note on the counter and sighed at the words scrawled across the paper:
I’m sorry I made a mess.
Unable to stop my stomach from churning and flipping, I crouched over the toilet and emptied my guts into the bowl. There was too much to take care of, too much to do. Most importantly, I had to figure out a way to make sense of the horrific tragedy for the mess of a man in the other room. I was overwhelmed and instead of attempting to sort it out, I dropped to my knees and vomited again. It was awful to realize how much you valued a person’s life only after he took it away from you.
A familiar melody floated into my mind as I recalled the first time I saw Rosie and lived the last:
The night was splendid. And the melody seemed to say, "Summer will pass away, take your happiness while you may." There 'neath the light of the moon, we sang a love song that ended too soon. The moon descended, and I found with the break of dawn, you and the song had gone.
Gone.
28
December 1936
The weeks that followed Rosie’s suicide were a blur of melancholy madness. Cal and I were zombies whose brains had been devoured by memories of the days before and after Rosie’s death. We spent hours recalling the warning signs we stupidly ignored and days second-guessing every decision we made in his absence. There had been so much to consider, the most difficult decision being whether or not to reach out to Rosie’s parents to inform them of what had happened. At the time, it had seemed like a given that they should know, but after their reaction, Cal felt as though he betrayed his friend in telling them. One of Rosie’s sisters had answered the call, handing the phone over to her mother before Cal got a chance to leave her with the information. Somehow, he mustered the wherewithal to break the news and cried as Rosie’s mother wept on the line. Unexpectedly, Rosie’s father had taken the phone from his wife and told Cal he had the wrong number because their son had died years ago. In his devastated state it was difficult for Cal to understand that Rosie’s father was referencing the fact that his family had mourned the death of Roberto when he’d become Rosie, but when Cal repeated the statement aloud in confusion, I understood it just fine. Grabbing the phone from Cal’s hand, I gave the asshole a piece of my mind for Rosie, for Cal, and for me. Most of my rant was delivered to a dead line, but it didn’t sap me of the vindication. A few days after the confrontation, I asked Cal if he remembered what I’d said, and we laughed for the first time in a while when we realized neither of us could repeat a single word.
“All I know is you hit every point,” Cal said, resting his hand on my knee. “It was the best speech nobody will remember.”
“I remember how it made me feel,” I admitted. “Like I was taking a twenty-pound weight off my shoulders.”
“Imagine how you’d feel if you said the same to your father,” he suggested. “You’d feel like you shed one hundred and twenty.”
“Fuck off,” I said with a shake of my head. “My dad would be like his, not yours.”
“Well then what do you need him for?” Cal asked, the question hanging heavy on my heart. If I’d been scared before, Rosie’s death and his family’s subsequent reaction had me petrified. I spent years working my way into my father’s good graces, and somehow, I had gotten there. Experiencing his rejection at such a young age had made me fiend for positive reinforcement, whether I admitted that I craved it or not. Gaining my father’s approval had allowed me to reach a goal I hadn’t known I needed to meet.
“I don’t,” I answered, as though it was a simple statement when it was anything but. I wanted to believe I didn’t need him, that I didn’t desire his pride, but I knew it was deeper than that. I wanted to tell him the tr
uth, that it was impossible to erase my thoughts of decades of time, but that doesn’t mean I hadn’t tried. My life would never be simple, but I did wonder how much better it would be if I didn’t worry about what my father thought of me.
Just as there had been with Rosie, there were blaring sirens around Cal when his behavior began to change. Whether it was a conscious decision or otherwise, I once again ignored the signs, not wanting to believe the inevitable was coming. Cal had given me every opportunity to tell him I would join him, but I didn’t take the bait. Instead, I kept my head down and my fingernails buried in my palms, half-moons of anxiety indenting the skin, the mark of the weak.
It was Maks who first uttered the concerns aloud. “Cal’s been slow with the product,” he said on Thanksgiving while we sat in Igor and Millie’s living room digesting our turkey. “Is there something going on with him.”
“His friend died,” I said, not wanting to get into the details regarding the circumstances surrounding Rosie’s death.
“That’s horrible,” he sighed. “Did you know him?”
“Not really,” I replied, and it wasn’t a lie. Though I had lived with Rosie, I could not say I knew much more about him than I did any other acquaintance. I knew his background story through Cal, but aside from that and some day-to-day musings, there hadn’t been much shared between us. In hindsight, I wondered if I should have asked him more about himself. Things would have been harder if I had and they were difficult enough as it was. The distance between Rosie and me had allowed me to comfort Cal, who had deeply understood Rosie in a way I had never been able to.
“Well, I’ll give him some time before I give him guff,” Maks decided.
“You’re a real altruist,” I teased.
“You know me.”
I did, and I wanted him to know me too. I was tormented by so many thoughts I needed to expel, but I mustered every ounce of my resolve to hold them inside. The longer I kept them, the more toxic they became, rotting my organs and poisoning my blood.
In the City by the Lake Page 18