“Yeah?”
“He’s not famous. Mostly, he does commercials.”
“Will I have seen any?”
“There’s a dog food commercial running now.” I wished I’d changed it to breakfast cereal, I look a lot like my dad.
“Tell me something else about yourself.”
“I’m shy,” I said.
“Uh-huh. Athletic?”
Careful here, I thought.
Remembering Mr. B’s recent enthusiasm, I said, “Skiing.”
“Skiing is sexy.”
“Skiing is a one-way ticket to frostbite and a runny nose.”
She laughed. “You’re cute, Aldo.”
“Now, that you can’t be sure of. And one name per call.”
“One letter per call, that’s our rule. I can try as many names as I like.”
Our rule. I liked the sound of that. “We’ll see.”
“Very in charge, are you?”
“I’m the only one with a number to call,” I said.
“I think you’re short and you have an inferiority complex, Andreo.”
“Italian is not French with an o at the end.”
“I bet you get good grades.”
My gut tightened. “Sometimes.”
“So you’re in my classes?”
“Not.”
“You’re sure?”
“There must be dozens of guys in your classes. Why would I need to lie about that?”
No answer.
I breathed a little easier. I said, “Don’t go away mad.”
“I’m not going away.”
“You always go away. I just have to say something dirty.”
“So go ahead, say it.”
I didn’t speak.
“Say it!”
I whispered, “Filthy, filthy, filthy.”
She hung up.
I laughed, I couldn’t help it.
TWENTY-FIVE
Late the next morning, Mom made scrambled eggs, then fried them, and finally tossed them into the wastebasket. She forgot to turn on the broiler, so the bacon didn’t burn, but the toast did. This was the point at which Mr. B entered the kitchen, his hair still wet from the shower.
I pulled on a zippered sweatshirt, getting ready to go outside. Plucking the Sunday paper off the lawn was my small contribution to family harmony. “You can’t go out like that again today, Vinnie,” Mom said as she put some frozen sausages into the toaster oven with a couple more slices of bread. “Put on your heavier jacket.”
“It looks warm out.”
“The sun is shining. That doesn’t make it warm out.”
“I think that’s how it works, Mom.”
“Don’t be smart. Was that you sneezing? Maybe you caught a cold.”
I hated that jacket. It made me look like the puffy Michelin Man. I hoped the day would warm up, like it had the day before.
“A cold, maybe,” she said, shaking the jar of vitamin C pills.
“Let the boy alone,” Mr. B said, contemplating a cup of coffee he clearly didn’t approve of. “I sneezed, and I don’t have a cold either.”
Mom playfully, but also meaningfully, clipped him on the shoulder. “I’ll be the mother here.”
“And I’ll be the stepdad,” Mr. B said with a grin as she set out an open box of donuts—plain, soft white sugar, and cinnamon. I grabbed one and dipped it into Mom’s coffee.
“Vinnie will be the stepson,” Mom said as Mr. B reached for a cinnamon donut. But mine fell apart before I could get it into my mouth, plopping with a wet smack onto the floor.
Stepson.
It was a word that came up with distressing frequency. Each time it did, my heart thudded to a halt. Mr. B and I would be sitting across from each other at breakfast and dinner for the next couple of years, maybe more. We’d spend holidays together, vacations, and even a Saturday-night movie here and there.
Today, for instance, Mr. B had a free day. Sunday at home. So when Mom asked him what he planned to do with it and he said he wanted to clean the kitchen, I said, “I’ll help.” Mom had already made plans to go into the city for an art show with one of those divorced girlfriends she used to hang out with. She gave us a horrified glance and took flight. “See you guys later!”
When I finally headed outside for the paper, I left the puffy jacket behind. I was glad I did. As I turned to come inside with the paper, Patsy stepped outside in a soft green skirt all full of folds, and a lacy blouse. Like something out of the pages of a magazine. She carried her coat over her arm. It was chilly enough for her to have worn the damn coat, but no doubt she didn’t want to spoil the effect.
I strung out the walk up the driveway. A Lincoln pulled up in front of Patsy’s house. She ran to the car and got in. I heard her talking happily before she slammed the door shut.
I figured the Wall got the old man’s car.
I was assigned the refrigerator, while Mr. B took the enamel top off the stove and scrubbed it with a steel pad. I could see he was likely to go straight through the whole house this way.
The kitchen was only the tip of the iceberg. Mom didn’t have Dad’s touch with the house. Our bathtub drain was often clogged, creating a pool of marshy water. The dining room floor was sticky, and sneakers made a crickly noise as we crossed it. Dust lay in the corners of the dining room chairs because Mom dusted the way I used to do it. Dad always made me do it over.
This is going to sound funny, but I didn’t mind that Mr. B expected me to help, sharing a little elbow grease. We started to clear the kitchen counter, which immediately necessitated rearranging the cabinets above and below. I talked fish tanks and he talked food.
One thing I’d noticed about Mr. B—he was neat. No. He was meticulous. I wondered if Mom had ever noticed his office during those parent-teacher meetings last year. White gloves had nothing to fear.
I wondered if he ever mentioned to her that each of his gym classes this year have devoted two periods each to climbing over the lockers with a wet rag, cleaning off years of tarlike dust deposits and the occasional ragged sneaker or balled-up sock. We’d disinfected shower tiles. We’d wiped out our lockers only to have Mr. B point out the curled lips of metal inside the vented door as a dirt catcher. He planned to start on the gym supply closet next week.
The janitorial crew must love him.
Mr. B turned on the TV to watch televised reruns of famous games.
I set the fish tank in the living room, in front of a bank of three windows. I laid everything out on the floor around the tank—the air filter, the water pump, the heater, and the light—and started reading a variety of instruction booklets. It would be a couple of weeks before I’d be ready to put any fish into the tank. Maybe a month before I’d get the salt water just right.
It was good the windows happened to be on the north side of the house. No sun to overheat the water. Also, while feeding the fish or cleaning the tank, I’d be able to watch the comings and goings over at Patsy’s.
Mom came home carrying a small watercolor. She held it up for Mr. B and me, then spent about an hour walking it around the house, deciding where to hang it. During this time, Patsy’s mother made the garbage trip. I looked up as I placed a crystal cave into the blue gravel. I smiled and waved, feeling very boy-next-door.
Mr. B asked, “What are we having for dinner, hon?”
“Dinner? Haven’t you two eaten yet?”
Mr. B shook himself out of his sports daze. “Have you?”
“I grabbed something to nosh on the train,” she said. “But I think there must be some eggs. Some breakfast links in the freezer, maybe?”
TWENTY-SIX
The thing Patsy got me thinking about, once the lights were out and the dial tone brrrrrred in my ear, a kind of alter ego took over when I called her. It wasn’t really me she was talking to. No. It was Vincenzo.
At first this felt kind of scary. But the more I thought about it, the better the whole idea looked to me. I couldn’t be held responsible for anythin
g Vincenzo said. And Vincenzo could say—well, anything.
Besides, he only existed for ten or fifteen minutes a day.
At midnight Patsy picked up, opening the conversation with a question. “Have you ever had a girlfriend, Bernardo?”
“Of course I have.” I chuckled. I hated myself immediately.
“Do you have one now?”
“Are you asking, am I cheating on her?”
Silence.
“Currently, I’m only seeing you,” I said. “In a manner of speaking.”
“And I see you, probably every day.”
“Or not.”
“I see you and don’t know it. That’s part of the game you’re playing.”
“Let’s say that it is. You like the idea I’m looking at you whether or not you know which observer I am. And you like to play this little power game on the phone. The one you’re playing now.”
“If I’m so terrible, why don’t you call somebody else?”
“You know it’s me calling. Why are you picking up?”
Silence.
Still silent.
“You can tell me anything,” I said when she didn’t hang up. “You can open your most secret self to me. Fearlessly.”
There was another short silence. “You do get a little weird now and then.”
I grinned. It wasn’t like she was meeting me in a dark alley or anything, but she showed a kind of courage I liked. I was her obscene caller, and she had some mouth on her.
She added, “I can quit picking up the phone anytime.”
“You won’t do that. You like foreplay.” “Foreplay” is a word I would never have used face to face with Patsy.
“I pick up because we’re not faking it with each other,” she said. “I don’t have to be perfect for you. If I’m screwed up it’s okay, because we both are. I don’t have that with anyone else.”
“That’s your definition of being real? That you don’t have to be perfect?” Who was she kidding? I get the imperfect Patsy and Biff gets the girl. I couldn’t help laughing—a harsh noise, really.
“Laughter is like a fingerprint,” she said. “I could recognize you from your laughter.”
“If we were ever in a room together and I laughed,” I said. “I’m not worried.”
“I checked with the operator last night. This is a local call.”
“It took you long enough to think of that,” I said. My voice was steady, but my heart skipped a beat.
“I’ve been giving you a lot of thought,” she said. “I know quite a bit about you.”
I didn’t like the turn this call had taken. “For openers?”
“Oh, don’t try to sound so tough,” she said with a delicate sneer in her voice. “You’re much nicer than you want me to think.”
“Just your local neighborhood pervert.”
She answered, “You apologized for that, remember? You never say anything really devastating, even when you’re being nasty.”
“It’s nice to hear you think so,” I said on a sudden surge of emotion, but it didn’t come out sounding all that nice. “You’re not as self-centered as I thought, either.”
She didn’t react. At least, she didn’t hang up.
“That’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it? To get to know me.”
I wanted to answer that with a resounding “maybe,” but nothing came out. Originally I’d wanted to ask her out, but now she talked as if nothing was going on in her life but these calls. And I knew different.
She said, “It’s hard for me to accept that I can be so terrifying, you have to resort to this. I don’t have pointy teeth or long fingernails—”
“You think I’m scared of you? Is this your latest theory? Let me tell you, you do not lack for amazing ideas—” Okay, so I was getting a little out of hand.
“You trust me more than you know.”
“How do you figure that?”
“I told you I spoke to the operator and you didn’t hang up,” she said, all blithe spirit. “You trusted me not to have this call traced.”
She hung up. Quietly.
I had the feeling I’d lost this round.
I wasn’t sure I trusted her, either.
Melanie and I had been at the bus stop for about five minutes. We said hi, and then nothing. Brown Bunny and Patsy came from opposite ends of the street at the same time. Patsy didn’t appear to have lost any sleep over my phone call.
“So how was dinner with the uncle?” Melanie asked when Patsy got to the bus stop. “What’s his mom like? And his dad?”
“His parents weren’t there.”
She and her friends talked about the most personal stuff in a normal voice. This made sense in New York City, where everyone was used to talking over the sound of traffic, but these neighborhoods were quiet. Everyone standing within twenty feet of these girls knew their business. Although Brown Bunny could not have looked less interested.
“Sort of boring,” Patsy said. “He asked all the standard questions—what classes do I like, what are my plans for college, that kind of thing.”
“Cool.”
“No, just boring. He wanted to know if I mainly dated guys who were on a team. That bothered me, if you want to know the truth, and I got a little rude.”
Brown Bunny came to life. “What did you say?”
“I said I had just started dating, I hadn’t had time to become a groupie.” This got a laugh, but I could see Patsy hadn’t really been looking for that. “His wife kind of took over from there and talked about movies. It really wasn’t an occasion, just a meal. I helped with the dishes.”
“Did you get the feeling you were being checked out?” This was Melanie. “Like, are you good enough for him?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Hey, I got a call on Sunday,” Patsy said, clearly finished with the dinner conversation.
“What kind of call?”
“An obscene phone call.”
“You’re kidding.”
Patsy’s expression squelched any doubts Melanie might have had concerning the seriousness of her statement. “I’ve gotten a few of them. They started after that party I went to in Bayside. It could be one of those boys.” She didn’t add any pertinent details, like And we’re having conversations.
Brown Bunny said, “Obscene callers are cowardly. Probably impotent except when they’re on the phone.”
“Not so loud,” Melanie said. “It could be someone we know.”
“I doubt it,” Patsy said.
She didn’t feel absolutely certain I went to school with her? I mean, she kept hammering away at making me admit to it. But maybe she wasn’t as sure of herself as she seemed.
Patsy said, “Here comes the bus,” and Brown Bunny said, “Hey, you didn’t say. Did he ask you out for a real date?”
“Saturday.”
Brown Bunny sat down with a guy who was already on the bus. Melanie and Patsy each took possession of two seats, setting their books on the empty one. A girl got on the bus at the next stop, carrying a couple of posters with pink frills. Talk turned to the Valentine’s Day dance.
I sat at the back of the bus. I didn’t let what Brown Bunny had to say about obscene callers touch me. It had nothing to do with me. She would understand that if she got to know me any better.
Which didn’t seem very likely.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Mom called to say she was getting home late, so I made dinner.
Buttered pumpernickel bread, some kind of soft lettuce that I found in the crisper, canned sardines with red onion and lemon. More of the lettuce as a salad.
Beer for Mr. B, a Coke for me.
Mr. B came to the table with a kind of quiet mood on him. He made some approving sounds as he chewed and then asked me, “So what’s your thinking on basketball? You’re tall, agile. You like basketball?”
Putting me on the spot.
I was not especially interested in dropping balls into baskets, not that it seemed a good idea to be that blunt.
&
nbsp; Track.
Dad had an idea there. Nonviolent, big plus. At least I only had to worry about what I was doing, instead of a whole team. Also, I’d have the rest of the winter to get fit for spring meets. Longer if I couldn’t qualify until next year. “I’m thinking track sounds like a possibility,” I said, hoping to ease past making an actual commitment again.
I remembered then that Mr. B didn’t actually coach the swim or track teams. The dean did.
“Are you fast?”
Who knew? I angled away with a question of my own. “What would I have to do to sign up?”
Mr. B said, “Consider yourself signed up.”
It was almost a relief to be calling Patsy. Vincenzo might fail with Patsy, but his would not be a public embarrassment. Like failing at track. I’d spent most of the evening picturing the various ways in which I could humiliate myself on the track team.
She answered, saying, “Guess what?”
“I don’t dare.”
“Carlito!” she warned.
“Just tell me. Don’t keep me in suspense.”
“I’m on the Valentine’s Day dance committee. It’s going to be a masked ball.”
I sensed something in the air, the way wild animals smell a trap. “Little eye masks?”
“Whole costumes. Romantic ones. Literary figures or theater characters, that’s what they used to do. The drama teacher said we could do movie couples because it’s, like, modern times.”
“I guess that’s cool.”
“You could ask me to dance. Anonymously, of course.”
“I don’t dance.”
“Unless you really are afraid of me.” Terse. All business now.
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?” she wanted to know. She’d begun using this demanding tone. “Well?”
“Maybe I don’t want to see disappointment on your face.”
“You’re very pessimistic tonight.”
“That’s one word for it.” She was right. Since committing to track, my mood had been low. I was contemplating taking up skiing after all, in hopes of breaking a leg.
“You’re assuming a lot of not very nice things about me,” she said. “That I wouldn’t like you because you’re … because you need to work, or because you’re not very popular—oh, I don’t know, whatever you are that you think I don’t like.”
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