Pins: A Novel

by Jim Provenzano

  “So, your mother tells me you’re recovering quite well from all the …unpleasantness.”

  “Yeah, well, I suppose so.”

  “I’m sure it’s been very difficult for you. I think you’ve also been a little difficult with your parents.”

  “Yes, and for that I am truly sorry. Are we–should I do the–”

  “Oh, no, no. I’ll take your confession, but let’s just talk. You said you had some questions.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Some questions of faith, now that you’ve suffered the trials of public school.”

  “That’s one problem, yes, sir. I got a few tough ones this time.”

  “Yes, well?”

  “Um. Theological question first.”

  “Okay.”

  “How does someone become a saint?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I was thinking of…Somebody made a joke about Anthony. Anthony Lambros. They called him Saint Anthony.” Joseph did not say that the joke was his own. “I was wondering if it might be possible to have somebody from now, like these days, be elected or nominated to be a saint. I mean I heard about the Vietnamese woman who was–”

  “Just a minute, Joseph. I think–”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, no. It’s a valid question. The problem is, a person’s suffering, it has to be for the faith, for the good of the Mother Church, for Our Lord. First, they have to be beatified.”

  “Oh.”

  “But it’s not just suffering. Now, I’m sure you’re aware about…your teammate’s death being problematic. Of course, since he was so brutally murdered, of course he will ascend to heaven.”

  “But if like he was gay or something.”

  The priest’s eye blinked. He waited. He thought. “That’s different. It’s …that is not …God does not like it when we willfully sin, and if someone lives a less-than saintly life . . .”

  “Right. So?”

  “So, that would pose a problem with the sainthood proposition.”

  “I guess so.” He wanted to ask, why then did the saints voluntarily suffer, lay on beds of rocks, allow themselves to be burned and whipped? And if they were heretics then, wouldn’t somebody who disagreed with the church now be the same kind of person? Someone like Anthony?

  “You have to think of it this way,” Father Scanlon continued. “Think of the Pope and the Mother Church as your grandfather or your grandmother. Now, we know how wonderful your great-grandmother is. I think she was even at my first communion,” he joked. “But they’re very set in their ways, you know, being their age, and well, they’re just not quite ready for some of the new ideas you kids have got going. D’ya understand?”

  “Sort of.”

  “Good.”

  “But what about the thing that…See, Anthony, he, um, well, you read it in the papers–”

  “Saw it on the news. Yes.”

  “And I was, like thinking. Would God not let Anthony into heaven because he was gay?”

  Nothing. Father Scanlon’s eye didn’t even blink.

  Joseph let the silence fill the room. He knew the impact his words would have. He knew the soft warmth of the room would daunt him, the leaded glass, the books, the curtains, all the cool curving columns would woo him and charm him back to submission. That was why he’d practiced his questions. He knew that one word would blow away a lot of dust.

  “Joseph, my boy. You’re on the wrestling team.”

  “Well, uh–”

  “Okay. Well, think of it this way. You have a set of rules. You don’t cheat when you compete, do you? Or when the ref blows the whistle.”

  “Right.”

  “So, when we… misbehave, or cheat, or don’t play by the rules, we can’t play the game, right?”

  “But what about if Anthony loved somebody and really really felt a closeness and wanted to only be with that person. I mean, what if he just wanted to–”

  “Joseph, are we talking about Anthony or you?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, then, I suggest you consider playing by the rules.”

  “I don’t like those rules anymore.”

  “Well, that, my boy, is a problem.”

  “Why can’t the rules change? Wrestling rules change all the time.”

  “We don’t work so fast here, as you may recall.”

  They both forced out smiles, tried to find a way back.

  Back was not an option.

  “Do you think it’s evil, Father?”

  “What is?”

  “You know. Being, like…“

  “Joseph. You know what sin is. You know what damage it wreaks. Look at those boys. See what their lives have become. Thank your parents for raising you honorably, to tell the truth, in Anthony’s memory.”

  “Yeah, but where’s Anthony going? Seems to me like he keeps hanging around me.”

  “You’re just feeling sad about his death.”

  “And plus I’m thinking that the church is like booting him out for being, what is that, intrinsically evil.”

  “You don’t know–”

  “Yes, I do. I do, Father. I knew Anthony and I know what the church says about it and I’m thinking I can’t agree.”

  “Now, don’t get in a dander.”

  “The Pope said that, he said, ‘intrinsically evil.’ What’s intrinsically?”

  “Well, it means, well, by nature, that by nature, the act, um, not you yourself–” His words faltered, became a jumble. Joseph looked away. He wasn’t going to find an answer. He knew the answer. It was the same with Assistant Coach Fiasole, the same with the Ass Prince, the same with Miller and everybody else.

  “I know you’re tryin’ to be nice to me an’ all since I like suffered all this, but ya see I’m really having a problem seeing this the way it’s told to me, like I gotta be somebody else or dead before I’m gonna get some slack.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m not …I already… I know what I am. I mean, I’m not …gonna go march in a parade.” Yet. “But I gotta be honest with myself, right?”

  “Yes, if that’s what you call it.”

  “Because it’s what everybody’s thinking. It’s what everybody’s saying behind my back. I turned both cheeks and then some, Father.”

  The priest waited for Joseph to say more, but when he said nothing, Father Scanlon started again. “If you want to be what you say you are–”

  “Want. What is to want?”

  “You are settin’ yerself up for a lot of problems, suffering and humiliation. Think of your family.”

  “Sir, I am, but see, there’s this other family. This family I can’t see.”

  “I don’t getcha, Joey.”

  “Um…”

  “Well, would you care to explain it to me?”

  He wanted to talk about the other Joeys. He wanted to say how some of this suffering should come to some good, as he imagined, or had imagined any saint’s life to be worthy of. But all he could see was more suffering. He wanted to be home, wherever that was, or outside, breathing the cold spring air. He needed a little bus exhaust, some more of Grandmama’s lasagna, spiraling DNA balloons in all colors taking flight.

  Sunday afternoon, Marie nodded as she drove by their old house. “There it was,” she sighed.

  He gazed through the car window at the house, the worn slats of aluminum siding, the windows and doors, a box of memories, one-eyed photographs.

  After leaving Grandmama, who loaded them down with food to take home, Marie and Joseph visited Marie’s old high school pal Angelina, who had been their neighbor in Newark, but had moved down the block to a better building and kept meaning to come up to Little Falls to visit.

  After Angelina asked a third just-curious question about “the tragedy,” Marie asked if her son could leave the room and watch some television.

  “Oh, sure. I’m sorry.”

  As the women talked over coffee in the strangely unfamiliar kitchen, he channel-surfed in the basement
den, found a re-run of Saved By the Bell’s Hawaiian Holiday, with one scene of Mario Lopez in a Hawaiian skirt and nothing else.

  That time he used his own sock.

  13

  The pasta maker, exiled to the cabinet, was replaced by economy bags of the dry stick version. Sauce arrived in bulk cans. The lasagna became more frequently black around the edges. Lopsided chunks of carrot sunk down into bogs of dressing. Take-out menus began to fill the napkin rack by the toaster.

  When Marie Nicci became pregnant with Mike, then Sophia, her own health shifts and eating habits taught him more than the basic birds and bees. He learned something more important; how to gauge his mother’s mood by her cooking.

  “Why don’t you clean the basement?”

  He’d been hovering in that way that usually got her talking, got them talking about it, whatever It was. But now It was not up for discussion.

  “The basement?” What, have her lock the door? Keep him in the cellar? It could lock. He’d done it to Mike twice. “Okay.”

  “I just think since you’ve been hanging around the house so much you could do a little more. I’m very busy right now.”

  “I said okay.”

  “Well, I’m sorry. Perhaps I can make an appointment with your counselor to ‘access your needs.’“

  She was on medium peeved mode, sort of waiting for the conversational match to ignite her. “Whatever I did today or yesterday or tomorrow, I’m sorry, awright?”

  Her eyes started welling up, which made Joseph think that was just a scream or a shout being held back. “All I could think is this, in the middle of all these problems, when your father told me. . .” The hand to the face, the wiping away. Joseph held fast. “All I could think was, my first born son is never gonna get married.”

  Joseph found himself in her arms, comforting her, just swaying in the kitchen with her, dancing slowly.

  They pulled apart when he joked, muffled into her arm, “You just want a big wedding.”

  She acted shocked, pulled away, wiping her face. “You. . .”

  “Well, don’t worry. Ya got two more chances. Besides, if that thing in Hawaii ever happens, maybe I will be a honeymooner.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “That, um, lawsuit. They got like a lawsuit to try to get married, these, people, these, these gay people.”

  “Oh,” she said, looking around her kitchen, as if searching for the place where the word stuck, so she could wipe it off. “And?”

  “And, well…” He didn’t understand how only a moment ago they were a Hallmark card, and now he was on trial again. “I mean it would be a good thing, right?”

  “To another boy?”

  “That’s what I was saying.”

  His mother heaved a sigh, put her hands on her hips, then crossed her arms. It was as if she were trying to learn how to talk to him differently.

  “You know, your father is having a tough time. I am, too. Sophia’s teacher says she might be dyslexic. The other day at recess your brother bit the head off a worm to show off. We are all having a tough time. I think you have to think about other people a little, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Laundry first. He started by shoving all the wet clothes from the washer into the dryer. He plucked white sheets, towels, socks, his father’s T-shirts, underwear, his underwear, his mother’s bras from an overflowing basket into the washer. She didn’t want him ruining anything. He’d received more detailed instructions than the weeks preceding his confirmation.

  He dropped in Dink’s sock. To avoid losing it he’d kept it hidden, made a little mark on the inside with a permanent magic marker for washing. As much as he wanted to savor the memory of Dink, it began to smell like a dead fish.

  The double churning hum of the machines comforted him, as did the oily feeling on his fingertips after pulling out a strip of fabric softener.

  With a dust mop Joseph swirled the webs of dryer lint clustered behind the machine, around the ducts to the high windows where spiders lived. “Cotton Candy for the Dead,” he joked to himself.

  He thought about the toads, wondering if they were happy, then went to check on them. They both sat in the terrarium, still except for the movement of their gullets oscillating. He wanted to find a bug to feed them, tried to pick up boxes quickly, find some silverfish to smash. There weren’t any.

  Looking up to the basement window, now nearly blocked with snow, he wondered what it would be like to freeze to death. The once-fun snow had became a chore to be pushed around in the driveway, off steps.

  To compensate for the chill, or the grief, or the discomfort of having a son they no longer knew, his mother had begun to pray more, buy more little items; rosaries, ceramic praying hands, decorative devotional objects to fill the undecided spaces of their new home. His father bought equipment for projects that were soon abandoned, or delayed; furnace filters, drainage pipes, garage wall shelving, caulking kits.

  The plaque still hung over his father’s workbench. Tools hung neatly on beaverboard pegs above the wooden table. A hundred strange metal secrets lay clumped in its drawers. Joseph toyed with his father’s power drill, wondering if maybe Freddy Kreuger could just stop in for a visit and screw a hole through his skull.

  No, too messy. They’d never get it cleaned up. They’d have to abandon the basement, have the laundry sent out, sell the house amid clouds of rumors.

  He found a can of lubricant, began wiping his father’s tools, giving them a shine, smoothing away bits of rust or sawdust. He toyed with wooden handles of saws, nubbled tips of rubber-handled pliers, a heavy crescent wrench.

  He walked over to the boxes, some still unpacked, or repacked with toys, games that had too soon proved boring, or were out of season. Mike’s (now Sophia’s) Big Wheel, Joey’s (now Mike’s) Mousetrap game, nobody’s broken Speak n’ Spell.

  Toys made him feel old. Everybody kept saying he had to think about the future, that he had a full life ahead of him. He felt like a little old man. With Dink, the memories were soft, sweet, every moment from their brief few hours crystallized into glorious dreams.

  He wondered every day why Bennie chose Anthony to wipe out, not him. He felt very guilty about that. He also felt guilty about thinking sexual thoughts about Bennie, about being tortured by Bennie, being forced to do things.

  That stuff was strange. He had to put it away.

  He shoved boxes around, found a cluster of half-burned votive candles that had been placed in windows or bathrooms, above the fridge, back in Newark. Marie liked to call them “decorative,” until they moved to Little Falls. They looked stupid in the new house, so she’d put them away. He thought she believed they actually did something. Maybe they could. Even if they didn’t, they’d look nice all lit up if he turned the lights off.

  He returned to his father’s workbench, rooted around for it. Near the solder gun, or maybe the acetylene torch. There. Matches.

  Before he lit the first candle he hauled out the little fire extinguisher, just in case.

  He carefully extracted more than a dozen votives, arranged them in a circle. He was about to light the candles, but something was missing. Tunes.

  But when he got to the top of the basement stairs, he was afraid to enter the kitchen, so he just cracked it open. Seeing no one, he reached his hand around, turned the handle, locking himself inside. He flicked the light off, felt his way back down. He’d have to settle for singing in his head.

  He lit the candles, saying the name of each member of the team, the twelve chosen, the lost one.

  Standing in the middle, then crouching, then kneeling, one hand dug into his sweat pants, Joseph prayed for the souls of Anthony, himself, the coaches, even his friends in jail, that everybody still on the team would have a good season, not get hurt or killed, or in two cases, out on bail.

  He wanted to feel them all again, smell them, some more than others. He wanted to hurt in his muscles, not in his head or guts. He longed for the good pain,
somebody on him, pressing him down, forcing him to push up for survival. During some moments, his hips rising off the floor, he thought more about Dink or Fiasole. It was the circle he was making love to, not any one guy, but the space between them, what connected them.

  He felt a surge, pressed it down to keep it from rising up in him. He didn’t want to cry. He wanted to feel the good pain again.

  He knelt, began to tug blood into his cock. He rolled, lay on his back, but the basement floor was too hard for a bridge. He settled back up on his forelegs, humping air, riding an invisible partner. He didn’t want to spill all over himself, or the dirty floor, so he stood up, looking for something to contain it.

  In a box of his old toys, he found a tiny white football helmet, one he bought for a quarter at the Woolworth’s in Newark on Market at Broad. Or was it the Gristede’s? He couldn’t remember.

  He took the helmet, remembering when he first heard the name of his new school’s mascot. The next day, he’d popped a quarter in the machine and this Indianapolis Colts helmet tumbled out in a plastic bubble.

  Putting the helmet on the head pinched his dick. He twitched, held the helmet upside down, clutched himself more, spurted into it, offered it up, slurped. It tasted like snot.

  “What the hell are you doing?” His mother looked afraid to even descend the stairs.

  When he heard the basement door jiggle, then again, then open, he had just enough time to pull up his sweat pants, blow out a few candles, give up on that, hide his dick between crossed legs.

  “Praying.”

  “You pray in church.”

  “I wanted to pray now.”

  “What is this? Are you some kind of devil worshipper now? Is that it? I’m calling ya father.”

  “No. I’ll clean it up.”

  “You betcher ass you will.”

  “I already cleaned everything else up.”

  His mother scanned the basement. Aside from the strange glowing circle of votives, everything was more orderly. Even her husband’s tool bench seemed to shine.