Grampa Nicci got away with telling that joke at the dinner table only once. Joey never forgot it, because it was the only time he ever blew milk threw his nose. Years later, Joey’s father told him that Grampa Nicci dragged out the joke so that everybody would laugh the moment Joey gulped his milk.
Grampa Nicci was a funny guy.
He usually sat engulfed by the great red chair that cushioned him from his increasingly frequent hacking coughs. By then, he wasn’t so funny anymore.
Grampa Nicci died messy.
Joey still feared his memory. Moving away had made it less scary, simply mysterious.
With all the pictures of Grampa in Vietnam, Grandpapa in World War II, Grandma in Newark, Grandmama as a girl in Milan, then in New York with her new husband, mementos hanging, looming, the den was more fascinating this time.
The initial reason for his fear was also a family joke. As a young child, Joey was afraid to go in the room when he heard Grampa Nicci say that “Grandpapa was killed in our den.”
Joey didn’t remember misunderstanding that his great grandfather, then only twenty, with a pregnant wife back in the states, was an infantryman in World War II, killed in the Ardennes, the dense forest in Belgium. It was one of those non-memories that relatives told him he experienced. Someone might mention it on a visit to Grandmama or Aunt Lilla’s little home in Nutley. It was just another repeated bit of conversation between people who were very close, but really had nothing much to say to each other. It filled the time, reminded them why they loved each other.
Sophia and Mike had each been allowed to bring a toy to Grandmama Nicci’s to keep them occupied for the drive down to Newark. Sophia sat her Little Mermaid doll in her lap, the hem of her best dress peeking out from under her coat. Mike occasionally made pre-emptive strikes on Joey’s head with his new Wolverine. Joey couldn’t exactly bring his new Asics, so he wore his varsity jacket over his suit, which felt dumb, so he left it in the car. Joey hoped he’d see some of his old friends. Part of him didn’t want to see them, though. He didn’t understand that fear.
He could tell how nervous his mother was by the way she and his father were quietly arguing in the front seat, or else not speaking at all, except to Sophia or Mike, telling them how nice everything would be if they would just behave. It was as if his parents talked to each other through their children when they didn’t want to talk to each other.
His mother was more nervous, since it was his father’s relatives they were visiting, like she had something to prove, to show how happy they were, now that they’d moved away from “the rest of the family.”
The house was as he remembered it; dark, musty, but with sweet smells of cooking food, furniture polish, every table covered in doilies. Grandmama liked the radio, couldn’t see a television well enough even if she had one, so the kids had to find something better to do.
Other relatives crowded the kitchen, talking loud, frightening him off with fawning adulation every time he entered. Aunt Joyce’s husband, Uncle Harry, who wasn’t Italian, was being especially nice, as if still seeking approval, even though he was a rich executive with some accounting firm in Elizabeth. Joey and Mike secretly called him Uncle Boring.
Joey’s father’s brother, Rico Nicci, had moved with his family to Atlanta years before to work in hospital management. He acquired a large house they had yet to visit, but had seen pictures of. They were called to the phone to be nice with the relatives they rarely saw. Mike got shy all of a sudden, his eyes dull, saying only “Uh-huh,” and “yeah,” reciting his list of gifts. Joey made a face while Mike held his finger in his ear.
When it was Joey’s turn, he talked with his Aunt Alicia, being polite, wondering if she remembered what he looked like. Then his Uncle Rico got on the phone, asked how his wrestling was doing.
“Pretty good.”
“You gonna be a champion, ah?”
“Sure.”
“Like Hulk Hogan, ah?”
“Actually, I’m more the Kendall Cross type.”
“Who?”
“Or Terry Brands.”
“What?”
“Tom Brands, on a good day.”
“You have a nice Christmas, ah? Putcha father back on the phone.”
“Dad.” Joey handed it over, relieved of another duty, eavesdropped on his father’s brotherly talk, realized his father was the Mike of his family.
Everybody talked, chatted, eating, drinking. Joey wanted a beer, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to find one. Sneaking wine was OOTQ, which was pronounced “Ooty-cue.” It stood for Out Of The Question, a term Dink taught him.
Maybe just one beer after dinner, if he asked.
After hiding outside until it was too cold, he found his father in the den, standing with–how convenient!–a beer in his hand, talking with Uncle Boring, who was smoking a cigar. Joey tried to dodge the cloud, but his father caught his eye.
“There he is.” He collared him with one arm. His dad would make something up, as they did sometimes, instant secret jokes.
“So, how long have you been wrestling, Joe?” Uncle Boring seemed interested, for the moment.
“This my third year.” He squinted through smoke.
“You’re getting pretty good, I hear.” He nudged Dino’s elbow, spilling a bit of his beer.
“I’ll get you another,” Joey said.
“No, no, it’s fine.”
“Nineteen-two,” Dino said. Joey noticed his father was a tad drunk. Marie, with the women in the living room, the desserts and lots of coffee, would be driving.
“Scuse me?” Uncle Boring cocked his ear.
“His record. Nineteen wins, two losses. “
“Twenny,” Joey corrected.
“Oh, sorry,” his dad patted him.
“Our boy’s on the football squad,” Uncle Boring said, then, “Right Guard.”
Joey often wondered if he had some sort of allergy to the sport. His eyes went glassy anytime someone mentioned football. He didn’t get it, couldn’t follow the rules, could admire the butts, but in more situations, found the need to at least pretend to listen to the men gossip about certain players’ private lives, stats. He heard there was a gay one, tried to think of his name, figure out where to find out.
All the while, through the stiff shoulder of his jacket, he felt his father’s hand, felt a warmth, a pride of ownership.
Napkins delicately cradled silverware in little china holders that were taken out only once a year. He heard the rattle of his cousins in the hall, the mumbles of over-friendly relatives pretending to enjoy each others’ company, even though after every gathering his parents would sigh with relief once they were in the car, away, or his dad would fart and his mother would roll down the window in disgust while the kids all laughed. He longed to be gone, finished with this show. He knew the script. He craved Dink. Dink was unwritten.
A steaming bowl of glazed carrots preceded his mother. She set them on the side table. “Why don’t you go be with your cousins?”
“Be? Be with?”
“Don’t get smart.” She headed back to the kitchen. “Just go.”
“Awright.”
But adult talk was dumb, and the other kids silly. Bratty Matty and Theresa, snooty since they went to a private school, sat in the living room with Grandmama, probably hoping to get some extra presents for good behavior. Joey had gotten a tie and shirt. His mother got a sweater. Uncle Boring gave his father a bottle of whiskey in a fancy box, which may have explained why they were being so nice to each other.
Joey wound his way around the old house back to the Our Den.
His glanced at the more recent formal portrait; Sophia’s christening. A little bundle in her mother’s arms, his father beside her, proud, beaming, Joey and his brother stood stiff in suits, dwarfish sentries to their parents.
In the baby pictures, the young portrait photos of his father’s high school graduation next to another of his Uncle Rico, who was thicker around the face, Joey saw his father,
then maybe eighteen, and saw part of himself.
Joey looked along a small bookshelf, spied a few photo albums. He took one out, an old one he remembered seeing once, years ago. He flipped through the black paper pages. The photos had wavy edges snug in little corner frames. Some of them had fallen out, leaving ghostlike squares.
People stood in front of row houses, like the one where he’d spent the first fourteen years growing up in Newark. There was a succession of children who became mothers, soldiers, plumbers, lawyers. Aunt Nina, who died before he was born, somewhere in a group photo at a factory in Linden, had made planes in World War II.
He felt glad his father never had to be a soldier, but a slight longing came over him. Where would he be on the wall if he didn’t come up with a wife, babies? Would they still include him if he never did any of that? Would the pictures just stop?
Joey nearly dropped the album. Photos fell to the floor as he turned to see Grandmama Nicci standing in the door. Bratty Matty and Theresa guarded either side of her.
“You like to see old times, eh?”
“Yes, Grandmama.”
“You gotta siddown,” Matty said.
“Go eat someting. Andate.” She waved them off like servants. Joey bent down to retrieve the fallen photos, stole a glance at his Grandmama’s feet as she delicately stepped into the room. Her shoes were dark black. Her hose sagged a bit at her ankles.
He stood. She smiled, her skin crinkling around her eyes. He could see the curve of her skull under the wisps of white hair.
“I’ll put these back in.”
“Sokay. I do later. Lemme see.”
He held out the photos, found one of his Grandpapa.
“You see. You look just like him. Bello.” She pointed a bony finger at the photo, then put her frail hand to his face. Joey blushed, returned his gaze to the picture. His great-grandfather grinned, no more than a teenager, standing in the snow, a tarp over his shoulders, a gun strapped to his shoulder pointed upward from behind his back. Joey peered into the blurry image, let out a little sigh.
“Some boy, un compagno, took dat. He send it when my Guisseppe, he froze in da woods waiting out da goddamn Nazis. Dint find him until de snow gone. Many month. We come all way here to have him go back there and die. A crime, no?”
Joey wanted to laugh, hearing his Grandmama swear, but he knew she still hurt after all these years.
“You take.” She pushed the photo toward him.
“Huh? Oh, no Grandmama, I couldn’t.”
“I gonna die some day. They all take, take,” she nodded toward the door. “I give you now. For Christmas, extra, ah?”
He couldn’t refuse the link, the fragile bond from one generation to the next, the lost pieces, the lost men. “Thank you.” He hugged her, delicately. He put the album away, carefully placing the photo in his suit pocket.
They had set the table, the kids were running around, getting excited. Everyone sat to eat, Joey at the far end of the big table, no longer at the little folding card table with the kids. He didn’t have to talk. He just ate and ate, forgetting Coach’s warning about “over-indulging during the holidays.” He would sweat it off.
22
“Bitchin’ drawin’, dude.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m getting’ it framed.”
“Great.”
“Hangin’ it right over my bed.”
Joey wished he could work some sort of spell, like in a movie, where he could peer out from the drawing, watch Dink all night long.
Dink hadn’t called for three days. Joey decided he wouldn’t call first. That would make him seem like he was itching for a compliment about the drawing, or like he was a grabby girlfriend. He didn’t want that. He’d waited.
“So, you like the tapes?”
“Like ‘em?” Joey said. “Man, they are awesome. I got my ears plugged up all day.”
“And?” Dink hinted.
“And what?”
“Something else?”
Joey didn’t want to tell him about the Asics. He wanted to show them off in school, but he told Dink anyway.
“I called your mom about them,” Dink giggled.
“You did that?”
“Well, I didn’t think they’d know to do it, so–”
“You’re like my fairy godmother.”
“Hey, I’m not your godmother.”
Joey just laughed, nervous, giddy. “So, look, I’m like sorry about the other night. It’s like I just don’t–”
“Forget about it, awright? You don’t wanna. I am not askin’ you to. I’m just like–”
“I know it’s like, really.”
“Awright.”
That pause, that reaching together again, like when they locked up on the mat, tested the waters. Joey realized they hadn’t touched in over a week. He craved it.
“So, ya wanna get together for New Year’s?” Dink asked.
If Dink tried to hump him this time, he knew he wouldn’t push him off. He imagined their first kiss starting off 1994 with a real bang.
“Saturday night?”
“Sure.”
“Be at my house at eight. Bennie’s pickin’ us up at nine.”
Damn. “The posse?” Joey whined.
“What? What is wrong?”
“I just…Dink, I don’t like those guys. Do you … do like Bennie and Hunter get stoned?”
“Hunter? Hell, he’s so dumb he’d catch fire if he tried. Naw, man. And Bennie? Naw, but I think he tried juice.”
“Oh. Juice?”
“Roids.”
“Oh.” Then, “Let’s be friends with some other guys.”
“Who? Walt and the twins are like those Simpsons neighbors.”
“Who?”
“You know, ‘Hide-el-ee Ho!”
“Oh, yeah–”
“The Flanders, fer chrissake, and, I mean Buddha and the little guys are nice, but I mean they’re totally–”
“What?”
“Dweebs.”
“So?”
“And the others are either the God Squad or JVs who can’t even tie their own shoes–”
“They ain’t that bad–”
“Okay, but–”
“I mean other guys too.”
“What? Guys who don’t wrestle? Forget it.”
“Whaddayou mean, forget it?”
“They don’t have a clue of what we’re going through.”
Joey was silenced by the truth. If they weren’t brothers, they weren’t friends. Wrestling wasn’t just something they did. It was a different world, a different language.
“The thing is, Neech, we already picked our friends for the year, you know? I mean, wasn’t it the same way in Newark, except they call them, uh, gangs?”
“You are such the jerk.”
“And you love it.”
Joey waited, hearing Dink’s breath catching up. He couldn’t say anything. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe Dink. He did. He knew the ranks, the barriers, how he had moved away from the boys who, in younger grades he’d befriended, but eventually pulled away from; geeks, fags, wimps. Wrestling had pulled him out of that. He was now a proud geek, or something.
“Neech?”
He had new shoes, a best friend who might put out. He was gonna rock the mat once school got back in session. Even those muscleheads couldn’t mess things up.
23
The “huge-ass party” Hunter boasted about turned out to be a private affair in Alpine with a bunch of rich college kids. The guy who invited Hunter was nowhere to be found. They didn’t know anybody else, and no one else was wearing a varsity jacket, so the four of them stood out in a way that made Joey want to leave immediately and just walk home.
He would have explained it to Dink later. But even Bennie relented, promised other amusements.
Since he sat in the back seat, didn’t have a door, he had to ride along. Besides, Bennie drove them. Bennie took them places they’d never been, never admitted wanting t
o see.
They kept drinking beers. Hunter produced a bottle of holiday peppermint schnapps he’d swiped from the party. They goaded Joey into gulping a shot, then another.
“Aulgh. Tastes like cough syrup.”
They laughed, each took a swig. Joey felt more than drunk. He was getting dizzy, not saying much. His gut rumbled as if it might fall through the low seats down to the ground below. Joey tried not to think of moving things, but the car kept hitting bumps. Bennie kept gunning the motor, making Joey’s stomach lurch. Where were they? Weren’t they going home? He saw a large lake to his right. A sign. Cedar Grove Reservoir.
“Where are we?” Joey moaned.
“Are we there yet?” Hunter mocked him. Dink’s eyes were glazed. Maybe he felt as awful about bashing the car window as Joey did. Maybe he didn’t feel anything.
“Near home, Neech. Hold tight.”
“I gotta piss,” Joey mumbled.
“Let it flow.” Bennie scanned his right, then veered off. The Mustang gurgled low. Hunter pulled his seat forward. Joey stumbled out, momentarily afraid they might leave him on the roadside as a sick joke. Then he thought that might not be so bad.
“Hurry up,” Hunter shouted.
He couldn’t just do it in the middle of the road with the guys watching. He found a shrub, ambled over to it, his vision blurred. He looked out at the water, saw his breath escape in cold whirls, fished out his dick. After a few sputters, it gushed for minutes. He kept swaying, having to right himself.
He tried to trot back to the car, but had to steady himself, moving slowly to stumble into the back seat. “Man, you musta had a whole gallon in there,” Dink said, still sipping his beer.
Joey said nothing.
Hunter pointed ahead at a pair of passing headlights. A white subcompact slowed as it passed. The driver glanced at them, accelerated, sped off.
“Hey, look at that car.”
“Which one?” Bennie asked.
“The Pinto!”
“Pinto?”
“Could it be?”
“Our little Whiner?”
“C’mon.”
Bennie wheeled the car around on the road. Joey felt his guts slide sideways. Dink spilled beer on his coat. “Shit, man.”
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