Pins: A Novel

by Jim Provenzano

  “No, stupid,” Mike sighed. “You tell Dad to get it for me.” He clutched the box as if he already owned it.

  “I don’t think so. And don’t call me stupid.”

  “You get stupid stuff. Your dumb wrestling shit.”

  “My equipment is not dumb. You shut up or you’re not getting anything.”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “We’re getting our sister’s presents, remember?”

  Mike stormed off to Mermaid Land, abandoning him. A mother with a herd of kids gave Joey a glance. He turned away, his neck twinging with a shard of pain. He caught up with Mike, who’d grabbed a mermaid doll.

  “Do you have enough money?” Joey said as they stood at the counter behind about two dozen people.

  “Duh. I can count.”

  When they finished, Joey said, “Okay, I gotta go get something else. You gotta stay somewhere.”

  “The toy place.”

  “That’s where I’m getting your present.”

  “Oh. Bookstore.”

  “Okay. Ten minutes.”

  Mike saluted in mock obedience. Joey sort of smiled, as if maybe they’d reached a truce. He wanted not to care for just a few minutes.

  Rushing back to the toy store, he grabbed an X-Men action figure he didn’t think Mike had. He walked back to the department store, through Men’s Clothing, trying not to think about how Wolverine and the Pegawhatsit both reminded him of Bennie. He was supposed to have a crush on Dink. Wasn’t that enough of a problem?

  In the Men’s Department, rows, stacks of ties, shirts, suits hung in neat rows. He soaked in the smell of leather wallets, belts, the swirling patterns in the ties, the shirts layered like a dad factory. He thought of getting a tie for his father, but he only wore ties when he went to church, which was close to never.

  Joey moved to a display with fancy underwear, boxers, silk paisleys, even one with a bright yellow smiley face, its tongue sticking out in a silent Yum. He thought it might be a funny gift, but then thought about it. Underwear. I want to buy something that’s gonna be right next to his …

  Almost touching a pair of shorts, a thin clerk appeared out of nowhere, scared him off with a lisping, “Can I help you find something?”

  Mike, surprisingly, was actually in the bookstore, poring over a book on female sexuality. So much for that question.

  “Come on. Let’s go to the hardware place,” he said to Mike, leading him out of the same place where he’d swiped the Marky Mark book. He felt relaxed there, as if stealing something there had made it his turf.

  “But Dad’ll be there!”

  “Not yet,” he said as he tugged Mike along. “That was his way of sayin’ he wants somethin’ from there. We gotta figure out what it is.”

  It wasn’t easy. He put his father’s workbench, neat and orderly down in the basement, in his head. His dad had everything from his years of plumbing. Maybe some new gadget, a drill or a level? No, it had to be special.

  “If we go in together, we can both get him one thing,” Joey offered, trying to erase the option of stealing something again. But Dink wasn’t around to dare him.

  “What? Whaddawe get him?”

  A new toolbox would wipe them both out.

  “Look at this!” Mike pointed. Among the plumbing tools hung a plaque. It was a joke gift, stupid maybe, but just stupid enough to make his father laugh. The plaque featured a man lying in a tub with his bare feet up, a smile on his face, smoking a cigar. Around him were a dozen tangled pipes, a cartoon effort to stop a leaky pipe. Below the cartoon it read, “World’s Greatest Plumber.”

  “We got you something really funny,” Mike teased when they met up with their father.

  “Hey, don’t give it away.” Joey had made his purchases quickly, relieved to forget about the whole thing. It wasn’t that he’d spent a lot of time thinking about the gifts. He’d already had Dink’s present hidden away in his room, and he didn’t have to buy anything.

  “Hey. Merry etceteras!” Dink sang into the phone.

  “I’m dreaming of a gray Christmas!” They laughed at Joey’s joke about the traditional New Jersey holiday drizzle.

  “Mind if I stop by?”

  “Sure, man. I gotta warn ya, though. My mom’s got about a ton of cookies. She’s been force-feeding anyone who comes by.”

  “Ooh, I’m scared. I think my mom’s gonna make me bring over some monster cake thing.”

  “As long as it’s not a fruit…”

  “Cake.”

  The canopy of crossed arms, the flex in the legs, the effort; he’d captured it. He almost wanted to keep it, but then knew. He’d made this drawing of the two wrestlers just for Dink. It was a picture of the two of them.

  Using a piece of cardboard and some brightly colored paper, he carefully wrapped his first masterpiece, which he’d labored over for days.

  When Joey heard the doorbell, he deliberately waited upstairs, shoving away the scissors, tape, savoring Dink’s arrival. He tingled with anticipation, heard the cheerful chatter below, then waited for the thud of steps bounding up the stairs.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.”

  “Ta da.” Dink held out a little gift-wrapped square box. His face and varsity coat glistened with droplets of melted snow.

  “Gee, I wonder what it is.”

  “Can’t open it till tomorrow.”

  “You too.” He handed Dink the gift. Dink’s look was one of curiosity, as if he hadn’t expected anything.

  “Hey man, thanks.”

  “It’s nothing.” It was everything.

  They were inches apart, alone. The moment where they could have shared a first kiss passed like a toy train.

  “So! You into some Grinchness?”

  “Sure. Not.” Then Dink fell back on Joey’s bed, his varsity jacket and sweatshirt slid up, showing a peek of belly. Joey wanted to tumble down on top of him, just playing. He didn’t. He satisfied himself in knowing that the sock he’d stolen lay under the mattress, once again inches from its owner.

  “So, you havin’ all the relatives over?” Then Joey cut it off. “Oh, sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Really, it’s okay.” Dink sat up, peeled off his coat, tossing it on the floor. “Actually, I’m doin’ Christmas early with Mom, then Dad’s pickin’ me up for the afternoon. Lucky for me, her parents are back in Michigan and Dad’s mom is makin’ dinner so we don’t have to cook and she’s so old she falls asleep. Then Dad an’ me drink a glass of brandy.”

  “Where’s she live?”

  “Metuchen.”

  “Hell of a ride.”

  “Yeah, but it’s neat. Streets are like empty. We zoom. We’ll be back day after tomorrow.”

  “We’re goin’ to my Grandmama’s in Newark. They’re havin’ this big dinner like always.”

  “The big Eye-talian dinner.”

  “Whaddayou, makin’ fun of me again?”

  “No, man, chill, I just–”

  “It’s okay. I was jokin’.”

  There followed a predictable pause that Dink knew to break. “How old is she, your Gramma?”

  “Actually she’s my great-grandmother. ‘Bout eighty.”

  “Grampas all gone?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The men always die sooner.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “It’s a medical fact.”

  “Is not.”

  “Is so.”

  “You’re so weird sometimes.”

  “Don’t call me weird.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not weird, dude. I’m like, just elsewhere sometimes.”

  “Like when you’re stoned.”

  “Look, I don’t…shit.” Dink sat up. “Do I push it on you? Do I? No, I respect your space, awright? What I know, and what Coach don’ know, and what you better not tell him, is remember those pins I got, those times I was so relaxed, all the times I won?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I was slightly stoned th
en, okay? I say it works, that mellows me, an’ I don’t hurt, which is okay.”

  While waiting for Dink to unhurl, to toss off the words he needed to say, Joey stared at a corner of his desk, wondering if any stains showed, if there was anything Dink could do to make him stop hurting for loving a guy so messed up. Joey’s face and ears burned the way his whole body burned after practice. Troy once said that it was the team’s germs burrowing into him.

  Dink tried to shrug off the silence, but he was up, walking around Joey’s room. “So, when all the ‘family’ time’s done, we could go out, y’know. With Bennie and Hunter.”

  Joey tried to hide his surge of, what? He didn’t know. Fear? Jealousy? He just wanted to spend time with Dink. “I dunno. Those guys are buggin’.”

  “You don’t like doin’ that punk stuff, do ya?” Dink’s face fell slack, without a trace of teasing. “Aw, don’t sweat it. They just like, get dopey. ‘Sides, once wrestling’s over, they’ll forget we existed.”

  “So why we go out with them?”

  “You got a car? Or a driver’s license, even? Can you go out an’ buy a six-pack? Can you get into an R movie ever?”

  “Well, no, but–”

  “So, let’s just have fun with them while it’s fun, okay?”

  Joey could have argued, but he didn’t want to. If Dink had said, let’s go jump in a pile of mud, he’d have done it. So he just growled a line from a Nirvana song, “Forever in debt to your priceless advice.” That got Dink grinning again, but he stood up, grabbed his coat.

  “Be real nice to your parents now, so when you ask to go out, they let you outta the cage.”

  “Right.”

  “So, what’s this you said about Ton ‘o Cookies?”

  Dink thanked Joey’s parents graciously, his gifts secured in a plastic bag. His mom once again said what a nice friend he had. Joey agreed.

  Before Sophia and Mike were sent to bed, Joey helped them set a little plate of cookies and a glass of milk on the dining room table. It was really for Sophia that they were doing it, since Mike kept making wisecracks about “the fat guy getting stuck in the chimney.”

  Sophie peeked up, her chin just shy of the table. “You gotta leave him something too, Joeeo.”

  “Well, Sophio, I’d leave him a protein smoothie but it would get all gloppy by the time he gets here.”

  “Joey, don’t be obnoxious.”

  “Whoah. Where’d you get that one?”

  On TV, Bing Crosby sang with David Bowie. His parents lay at opposite ends of the sofa, their legs entwined in the middle, Marie the recipient of a long-promised foot massage.

  “Didn’t we see him at the Meadowlands?” Dino asked.

  “That was Bob Seger,” she corrected.

  “Oh, right.”

  “How could you confuse Bob Seger with David Bowie?”

  “Who did I see Bowie with?”

  “Sharon Kelly.” She kicked him. “Who he dated twice before he met me.”

  “Oh, yeah,” his dad said. “Wonder what happened to her?”

  “I took you off her hands and she lived happily ever after.”

  Sitting across the room from them, Joey tried to see his parents as the kind of kids who did things like that. Joey wondered if they’d partied, if that little nudge his mother gave his father said, don’t talk about that. That was when we were wild.

  Sensing another rampant heterosexual display of affection, Joey kissed his parents goodnight, hightailed it up to his room, ripped the wrapping paper open to see what he knew Dink’s present was.

  Four cassettes, each one a special music mix. Dink had even listed the songs on the inside and used pictures from wrestling magazines to decorate the outside of the cassettes. There were four titles: GRAPPLE!, AAURGGH!, PSYCHE UP! and one called ZONE OUT, all written in Dink’s neat handwriting, the tapes full of different tunes Joey had heard at Dink’s place, music Dink knew he’d like.

  He’d tried to listen to them all before he fell asleep around midnight, but ended up listening to ZONE OUT, which had all slow songs, love songs, sad songs that had nothing to do with Christmas, but made him feel a warm joy that took him off to a half-dream where he and Dink were competing for the world federation championship, cheered on by a crowd, both winners, which he knew was impossible, since he’d never done tag team.

  20

  “Drops your cocks and grab yer socks! It’s Chr-r-ristmas, sold-juh!!”

  Joey woke up with his earphone wires wrapped around his neck, his batteries dead, a pajama-ed Mike bouncing off his bed, a bell-ringing Sophia doing a jig up and down the hall.

  Under the tree, little and middle-sized gifts surrounded a big box in the middle of the room wrapped in reindeer-striped paper.

  After too many mornings of sweaters, stockings full of Pez, stick and ball sports equipment, he’d learned to make lists, get what he wanted, within reason, be happy to watch Mike and Soph do the screaming while his father took pictures. Stuff didn’t matter much to Joey.

  But the big box sat in the middle. Even though everybody knew what it was, his dad said, “Wait, that’s for everybody, from Santa.”

  His mother was appreciative, happy with her presents; clothes his father had picked out secretly, on his own, wrapped in a quartet of matching different-sized boxes. His mother had gotten him nice clothes.

  Sophia’s toys were all pink and plastic girl stuff. Mike made a point of showing his disapproval, making her whine a bit, until Joey promised to play Little Mermaid games with her later. Sophia had made paper angels for everybody.

  Mike didn’t get his Evil Pegasaurus, but with all the other toys and stocking candy, he must have forgotten about it.

  Ankle-deep in wrapping paper, by the blinking tinsel and ornament-encrusted tree, Joey sat content before his new pair of white Converse shoes wrapped in virginal plastic, his new sweater, a pair of jeans he could actually wear to school, since his mother “found out they were supposed to be baggy, even though I did not understand, this lovely boy at the store said all the kids were wearing them like that, so anyway, if they don’t fit, you can take them back.”

  “No, Ma, I’m sure they’ll fit. Thank you.”

  His father laughed at the plaque, said he would hang it up over his workbench, exactly where Joey had imagined it.

  “We gotta open the big box!” Mike insisted.

  “First, everybody gets a little something else.” Dino, in a show of theatricality he only made at Christmas, wedding anniversaries, maybe a birthday, pulled a quartet of similarly shaped boxes from behind the sofa. He doled them out like playing cards, and had everyone open them at the same time.

  Sophia, of course, shrieked with joy upon unwrapping her copy of The Little Mermaid. Mike howled with glee at his own Batman, which he would immediately memorize and quote constantly. Marie got The Sound of Music, and Joey Olympic Highlights.

  Only then did his father allow Mike to shred the wrapping paper open to reveal what Joey knew was inside, a new VCR. Everybody clapped, hooted. Showtime.

  Mike became more interested in the Styrofoam packing for a while. Joey was intent on plugging it all in ASAP. The sooner they got bored, the sooner he could study his real homework; matches.

  Then his father said, “Marie, did we forget something?”

  His mother tried to act confused, but as she arched her eyebrows too high Joey knew something was up. What was it this time, a car? A dog? Probably something so overblown it would surely be a disappointment, like the time they led him out to the driveway in Newark blindfolded. He was supposed to be excited about a new bike, but it was totally wrong for him, more the kind Mike would have wanted, did and quickly inherited.

  Instead it was a box. Inside, his already broken-in varsity jacket lay neatly folded. Joey got it. They were reminding him that they had paid for the coat. He would definitely have to get a job after wrestling. He owed them.

  “Thanks.”

  He was about to get up for the round of thank-you kisses,
but his mother said, “Wait, wait. Inside.”

  He looked down under the folds of his jacket. Nestled deep inside like twin babies lay a pair of new black suede Asics International Lyte wrestling shoes, with orange laces already entwined through the holes.

  “Those old ones you wear were really getting smelly,” his mother said.

  “Yer mother went crazy tryin’ to find them.”

  “Well, I had go with Irene all over. Why don’t they sell them in stores? Maybe the size number’s different than your regular shoes, I thought, and the number was all faded away. . .”

  “She went while we were shopping.”

  “Besides, I thought these would look better with your uniform.”

  Dit. Dit. Dit. The sound of his tears christening the shoes.

  So very embarrassed about it, he got up, hiding his eyes behind his parents’ faces, letting the gush pass while he hugged them. He wanted this moment to last for a long time, so he even posed for extra pictures to finish the roll so they could drop them off at the Photo Hut on the way back to Newark.

  21

  “A priest and a nun are riding through the desert on a camel.”

  “Where are they going?”

  Laughter.

  “I dunno. They’re, they’re escaping the Philistines.”

  “Why didn’t they take a horse?”

  A little less laughter.

  “That’s not the point. They’re going into the desert. It’s very dry. The camel passes out from lack of water.”

  “That’s impossible–”

  “Shhh.”

  “So the nun says, ‘What are we gonna do?’ The priest says, ‘Pray.’ So they pray, but the camel’s getting worse. Finally the priest turns to the nun and says, ‘You know, Mother Superior, we might die out here. Is there anything you’ve always wanted to do before dying?’ The nun says no. The priest says, ‘Before I die I would like to make love to a woman just once.’ The nun says, ‘What’ll that do?” and the priest is flustered, totally desperate, so he says, ‘It’ll give us eternal life.’ So the nun says, ‘Forget about me. Go fuck the camel!”