Pins: A Novel

by Jim Provenzano

  “Oh, you have children?” Marie’s face brightened as she scanned Miss Pooley’s wall for baby pictures. Marie turned back to her son. See? Babies. Family. Just try it.

  But Joseph was reading Miss Pooley as another sort of woman, just before she said, “Oh, my sisters do.”

  It was then that Joseph found an ally in Miss Pooley.

  While she stood, showed off a few pictures, Joseph reached into his backpack to get out the little 1994 appointment book his mother bought him. His old wall calendar had been filled with weight changes, carb intake, workout times, exercise schedules. Now scribbled in were: Health Report on Drunk Driving, due Monday. Miss Pooley, Case Worker, Second floor, Tuesday 3:30pm. School Guidance Counselor, Wednesday, 3pm. Bring list of goals.

  “Come on.” His mother was already out the door Miss Pooley held open.

  They all shook hands as Miss Pooley reminded them of their next meeting. He trailed his parents through the hallway. One kid, a white boy skatepunk, sat alone. The other three boys were all African-American, all with their mothers, a sister maybe.

  Before they headed down a larger echoey hall of the County Family Court door, Joseph looked back. Miss Pooley had already moved on to another group, welcoming the next fractured family.

  “Sup,” one boy said. Joseph nodded, realizing that Dink’s jeans were hanging on him excellently. Even if he was a mess inside, at least he was fly.

  6

  As Mister Clutter defined “fallout,” Joseph cracked a tiny grin nobody else could see, his gaze intent on his left hand. Like one of last semester’s lab experiments that failed to die, his third knuckle erratically twitched.

  Although the smallest, it was the more fascinating of his injuries from the previous week, including his ear, which had inflated and been drained of blood. A very colorful shin bruise had flattened to a dull yellow. His neck injury, or, more accurately, re-injury, was fine, with a daily five hundred milligrams of Motrin, courtesy of Mom.

  The day’s science class discussion had shifted from energy to atoms to bombs to Nagasaki to anti-war protests and on, anything but Anthony-rama. That, apparently, had been discussed the day Joseph had to leave early to donate a small jar of his pee.

  Joseph felt his absence creating opportunities for conversations about him. He quickly mastered the trick of ducking through halls quickly enough to get in class early, thus avoiding the wall of eyes and whispers he got after being late for English. Keeping his head down at about a forty-five degree angle kept the false “Hi”s away. He looked at kids’ chests, hunching down.

  The comments bounced off the halls, another version of locker room swipes one of the JV runts sputtered about someone “losing all his butt buddies.”

  It could have been during his Family Court hearing that conveniently had to happen on Wednesday, the day of the match at Haledon, his first forfeit.

  In classes, Joseph could listen, or pretend to listen, and no one noticed him. He was just someone to look at.

  He’d become what Dink had termed a Zone Case, kids like Russ Hershler, who returned from a drug rehab program with short hair and speech like a zombie, or Stacey Andress, rumored to have received an abortion for Christmas. There were kids at school with magenta hair, two with nose piercings. They seemed disappointed that no one thought of them as radical, so they just pouted. They were all Zone Cases, and he could feel himself shifting. He didn’t need pot, or speed or mascara, like the stoners, the skatepunks, the other world that didn’t wear varsity jackets, the kids who walked down the halls trying to be invisible or freakish. He saw them all for the first time, they saw him, understood each other in brief silent glances.

  As Mr. Clutter rambled about radioactive particles, Joseph kept his arm over his notebook while he converted a swirly doodle into the shape of a boy’s body rising from a box. He didn’t notice it was really a drawing of Anthony’s spirit rising up to heaven until Greg Fletcher leaned over to peek.

  He turned to a blank page, looked up, thought back to a day at St. Augustine’s, one of the few times he’d asked a question, “Where do souls go? Are they like atoms?” Brother Michael had burned with anger, saying science had nothing to do with faith. He then explained why, for the next week. The other boys blamed him for the lectures. Joseph learned to shut up after that.

  Ahead of him, the tips of Sharon Falconi’s brown hair barely grazed his desk. Why do I not like that, he wondered. Why do I like guys’ heads, short crewcuts with ears sticking out? Was it because he’d spent so many years rolling around with guys? Then why didn’t it make all the other guys gay, like Walt or the twins? Maybe they were, but didn’t say anything.

  As if.

  Six o’clock and ten o’clock became the dreaded hours when everybody in the northern tri-state area got updates on the condition of “the Lambros killing,” “the teen assault” or the more popular “varsity murder.”

  Thursday night’s news included the fact that Anthony’s body was still at the morgue, pending an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Bennie’s public defender, it was said, wanted to consider the possibility of death by asthma attack.

  “Yeah, right.” Joseph took up the habit of talking back to the television.

  By Friday, practice continued to creep him. Everybody had finished patting his shoulder, pulling him aside to say how sorry they were about everything, and they were glad he’d stuck it out, done the right thing.

  Some had been interviewed in the parking lot, supporting him without naming him; Raul, the Shiver brothers.

  What shocked him were the students interviewed who claimed they “didn’t see how Ben would do something like that,” how he was a “prize athlete,” one administrator said, a guy Joseph had never even seen at a match.

  Before warm-ups, a few guys rolled around, playing, doing everything in their power to ignore the invisible beast of their teammates’ absence. Joseph wasn’t paying attention while he tried to pry Walt’s arm up to turn him. Walt tousled with Joseph a bit, accidentally elbowing him in the nose. Walt apologized profusely. Joseph waved him off, ignored the pain.

  Coach Cleshun clapped his hands, bringing everyone to order. “Start stretching. Stop horsing around.”

  “But we’re Colts,” a Shiver brother joked.

  Cleshun glared them to silence, except for a few grunts and groans as the boys were led through stretches. Joseph noticed how much more space surrounded him.

  Brett Shiver had said that Cleshun had been “put through the wringer” at a special meeting of the school board. Troy Hilas used more colorful terms. “He got his ass totally reamed. They’re this close from cutting the team,” Troy hissed, pinching his fingers close just like the “crushing your haid” guy.

  When Troy later offered to show Raul and Joseph a cradle, Joseph felt wary. He couldn’t tell sometimes with Troy.

  “So, you miss him?”

  “Who?”

  “Khors.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You were close.”

  “Huh?”

  “I heard you were really…close.”

  He just found himself grabbing Troy in a headlock, holding it pretty well, until Coach Cleshun pried him off, dragged him to his feet. Troy lay on the mat, flushed, overdoing it. “What a psycho!”

  “Shut it,” Cleshun barked. “Hilas. Twenty laps. The rest, showers.”

  Cleshun took Joseph into his office. At some point shortly after the new year, the “Destructive? Prone to Violence? Have we got the shoe for you!” Asics poster had mysteriously disappeared from its honored place on the wall.

  “Sit down, Mister Nicci.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. I just, he was–”

  “Look, I don’t care about that, or what he said. You have a lot of pressure now goin’ on, and I understand that, but you are going to have to behave like a regular person. You can’t just blow up with whosever tickin’ you off or don’t understand what you’re goin’ through
.”

  The boy nodded, gaze to the floor.

  “If you’re feeling pressured to keep some kind of normalcy, maybe it’s just time to relax. Maybe you want to take a break, when you feel pressure isn’t so hard. Do you want to just maybe take a break?”

  He felt a shudder. He would have nothing, no one. His face began to cringe. He couldn’t cry in front of Coach, he couldn’t. “No, sir. Please don’t.”

  “Awright. Then you will behave. You will obey. You will take all that negative energy and you will convert it to attacking your opponent and only your opponent. Can you do that?”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll try.”

  Cleshun sighed in Yoda voice. “Do or not do.”

  He had to smile as he returned to the practice room just to sit and stretch, let those who didn’t want to see him get a head start. Cleshun slowly passed behind him, then pressed his arms against Joseph’s back as he stretched over his legs. Joseph soaked up the warmth and silent sort of hug his coach gave him, the ripping tingles down his legs, the feeling of relief to be touched without the intention of doing damage.

  He held out until the showers. By then he was so tired he couldn’t even imagine not doing it. It worked. And if he might stay a little late, nobody would notice how red his eyes were. It was the soap, he would say. Just the soap.

  When the date of the funeral was announced, kids at school waited in line for passes to get the afternoon off. Joseph stormed past them, brooded outside, awaiting his ten-block escort.

  His after–school daycare, should Marie Nicci be foraging out in the hinterlands, Irene DeStefano always had food ready, and Joseph was ready. Without Dink around, the 130 slot was his. Big Woop.

  But he didn’t talk shop with Mrs. DeStefano, whom he suspected of being quite the gossip. He bottled up telling her or anyone else about the day’s troubles. To avoid future punishment, he would continue this tactic.

  Her idle afternoon gossip proved useful, though, connected to some invisible network he decided he’d better not inquire about. He just compared facts with those on the tube and in the papers.

  He learned that while the Khors parents continued their custody battle, Dink was shuttled off to juvenile hall somewhere in Paterson. Irene’s version: “The mother drinks a little. She’ll lose.”

  Bennie had been “remanded into custody in Paterson County for attempted sexual assault, attempted manslaughter, reckless endangerment with intent to harm, plus drunk driving charges,” the news said. What the defense was still going off about was determining if Bennie had even killed Anthony.

  The steroid issue hadn’t been mentioned, but Irene knew more. “The step-parents are trying to sue the guy who sold Bennie the steroids, like it wasn’t his fault, since he was on drugs, which I find ridiculous.”

  Hunter’s father’s lawyer sprung him on bail, was remanded to the custody of his parents, until some “domestic situation” flared up. Irene’s version sounded more colorful: “The boy and his younger brother were fighting and the older one, Andy, he knocked the lights out of him, so his own parents called the cops on him. Apparently the father is a big development honcho, really rich, that sort of thing.”

  Joseph spent the first Saturday after Anthony’s death in what Dino Nicci joked as “being under the remainder of your father,” helping him work in Cedar Village on a new development of ranch houses with nightmare bathroom configurations. He jokingly threatened to complain to his father’s union, until his father half-smiled and threatened to smack him with a wrench.

  The thing was, he liked doing it, working with his dad. He forgot everything for a few hours. At home, he’d always had chores. Now he got to do the dishes, and the laundry, forever.

  Actually, it was supposed to be until he graduated from high school, but he figured if things went well, he might be able to take a few weeks off sometime around his senior prom, where he’d bring Dink, and they’d both wear tuxes, then just leave, forever.

  Sometimes he had hopeful thoughts amid the desperation, but mostly it was trying not to think again about the moments that led to Anthony’s death. Different imagined possibilities kept ending up the same way. Then Joseph would hear his own breathing, a panting, and he’d find something, anything else to distract him: the headphones, the tube, some food, anything to stop wondering if Anthony had started to turn green or if some creepy guy was injecting him with fluids on a slab somewhere or still poking around for microscopic bits of Bennie.

  “I’m going over to Irene’s,” his mother said. Dino was upstairs giving Sophia a bath. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Awright.”

  “Don’t answer the phone.”

  “Huh?”

  “Just let the machine pick up.”

  “Shields Up!” Mike called out.

  “Mikey, put on your PJs on and get ready for bed!”

  She slapped the kitchen door shut. Mike yanked his shirt off and began a strange sort of hip-swaying strip tease. Joseph watched, dumbfounded.

  “Get upstairs.”

  Mike mooned him as he tripped up the stairs.

  The phone rang. He didn’t wait for the machine to pick up. He unplugged it.

  They’d been calling again. The news people. The principal’s assistant. A bill collector or three.

  Watching through the window, he saw his mother cross the driveway, stand at the back door, saw Irene DeStefano’s arm extending out, holding the screen door open, sweeping her in.

  He sat on the couch, leafing through the latest bundle of forwarded mail; magazines, People’s Most Beautiful People, a Catholic Digest. “Is It a Sin? Improve Your Confession.” “Pilgrimage to Lourdes: One Man’s Story.”

  Maybe that was what he needed, a pilgrimage. He thought that might do something for him, remind him what it was all about. Then he saw an ad for the Pope John Paul II doll, a tiny potato-faced version of the pope dressed in a tiny miter, chasuble. “Six convenient monthly installments of $29.”

  He tossed the magazine back onto the coffee table, replugged the kitchen phone, turned pages in the phone book to look up the Lambros’ number.

  There were seven. He picked one.

  An older woman answered.

  “I’m really sorry about what happened,” he said.

  “Thank you. Who’s calling please?”

  “Joseph. Nicci.”

  A hand covered the phone. He heard mumbles.

  “Was that you on the news the other day?”

  “Um, I think, yeah. I mean, I don’t know about that.”

  “Well, thank you very much for your condolences. The funeral is at eleven.” The phone clunked down.

  Their house must be even worse than mine, he thought, with people moaning and crying. Anthony would never graduate, never become the person he thought he would be, okay with it, Tony.

  7

  “Are we going to the cemeterrarium?”

  “No, Soph, we don’t have to go to the cemetery.”

  “But why?” Mike was obviously disappointed.

  “I’m a scared. I don’t wanna go.”

  “Hush. We’re not.” By the time they were in the car, Joseph gave up arguing with his mother about bringing Sophia after she gave the glance that said, If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be going to this funeral, so keep your mouth shut.

  He knew where Anthony would be buried, since the news showed it like a movie opening; Cedar Grove Cemetery. A statue near his family plot stood proudly, a stag in bronze with the words around its square base, among other phrases, BROTHERLY LOVE.

  He got that one on tape, planned to visit someday.

  Mike was told that he didn’t have to go if he didn’t want to. He countered, “Are you kidding?” It was later discovered that he had smuggled in a disposable camera.

  Dino had to park so far away they could have walked, if it hadn’t been five degrees above freezing.

  Joseph thought about lying to his mom again, saying he was sick, but she was too busy squeezing into a black dress tha
t she’d been trying to find time to press since dawn.

  Anthony. The contents of that thing in the aisle.

  He stopped at the entrance just long enough to let his eyes adjust. A copied program was handed him by someone. They stepped down the aisle. He was about to sit down, but then knelt on his way in the pew, only to face the short end of it.

  The casket seemed unusually big, a shiny black sandwich with gold handles and a funny skirt below, as if little puppets might pop out.

  Behind him, rows of familiar faces; three rows up, Chrissie Wright turned back. Joseph dropped his head, dodged stares but heard the whispers.

  Everybody on the team, everybody from his school, it seemed, people showed up who never spoke to Anthony, never looked at or even touched Anthony, just to get the afternoon off from school.

  He was spoken of as a model of perfection. Every time a pair of eyes met his, Joseph gazed down. The program curled in his hand. He unfolded it. The words began to swirl in his vision as he looked down, waiting for a tear to drop onto the paper. Then he folded it neatly, placed it inside his jacket pocket, next to his wallet, which, he remembered, had about four dollars inside. He wanted to take a train somewhere, buy something. He felt in his breast pocket, found the picture of Guiseppe of the Our Den.

  Joseph kept his head bowed, his lips tightly shut, as he heard one after another person or priest talk in wonder, justifying why a young boy should be taken, a good boy, a devout Catholic, a loved boy, an athlete. Joseph squeezed a hand from his parents, who bookended him for support.

  Anthony’s brother stepped up to the podium. His hair slicked back, his brown and bloodshot eyes darting around, he sought familiar faces.

  With one vindictive bleary glance, he brought the rustling, fluttering audience to silence.

  “I don’t know why you’re all here. Most of you didn’t know my little brother,” he said into a microphone. “At least the way I did.” And there his throat choked, but he held back. He was magnificent, what Anthony might have become if thicker, tougher, better off.

  “He wasn’t what everybody wanted him to be.” The brother sniffed. Joseph wondered, is he saying what I think he’s saying?