by F. P. Lione
A part of me didn’t want to move to Long Island and lose the part of me that’s from Staten Island. I like the house I’m moving to, but except for Michele and Stevie, I’m not sure I’ll like living out there. I like living in a neighborhood, and once you move out of the city you don’t have that.
“It’s good we’re working a day tour tomorrow. At least we’ll get some sleep the night before,” Joe said.
We also wouldn’t be playing catch-up for Sunday when we went fishing.
“It should be fun now that my whole family’s gonna be there,” I said.
Fiore barked out a laugh.
Donna’s minivan was gone when I dropped him off, so I didn’t stop in to say hello to her.
“Have a good one, buddy,” I said as I shook Joe’s hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Thanks, Tony,” he said, still groggy.
I drove back to the LIE, enjoying how the traffic got less and less as I headed toward exit 70. I’ve never lived anywhere this quiet and rural. There are a lot of farms out here and a lake not too far from the house. One morning a few weeks ago a family of mallard ducks waddled right up to our house while I was sitting outside smoking a cigarette. I got so excited I made Stevie go inside and get a loaf of bread, and we started feeding them. We stayed a little ways away from them because when I tried to get closer they moved, almost as one, and shuffled away from me. A couple of days later they surprised me by coming back, and I fed them again.
I know they’re just ducks, but you don’t get much wildlife in Staten Island other than the rats, the pigeons, and the seagulls. I’m not saying we don’t have ducks; we do. But not the mallards. We have the big honking white ones. They’re in Wolf’s Pond Park, down in Richmondtown, and a few other places, but they’re mean ducks. The minute they see you have food, a pack of them swoops in and attacks you. They bite your hands and go after little kids trying to feed them; it’s terrible.
The ducks weren’t around when I pulled up. I grabbed my pack and surveyed the house. The addition we put on was done. We added a second story, putting in three bedrooms and two bathrooms. We bricked the bottom half of the house and put up cream-colored siding with green shutters on top. With the landscaping and brass light post it really looked nice. We spent a lot on the mailbox, almost 150 bucks. In Staten Island our mailman walks from house to house to deliver the mail, and the mailboxes are small. Out here the mailman drives up. We got a nice big post with a green mailbox that matches the shutters on the house.
When Michele bought the house her taxes were over four thousand dollars a year. When we put the addition on they shot up to seven thousand a year. By the time I retire I probably won’t be able to afford to live here.
I put my key in my new twelve-hundred-dollar door and felt my blood boil when I saw a bunch of indentations in the wood at the bottom, just over the brass kick plate. The door was beautiful, oak and frosted glass that complemented the brick, and now it had marks all over the bottom of it.
“What is this?” I said out loud. “Are you kidding me?”
The marks weren’t scuff marks. They were imbedded into the wood. I was glad that at that minute I remembered all the times my old man went berserk over something getting broken, and I calmed down. I couldn’t picture Stevie purposely gouging the door, and I thought maybe Michele pushed it open with a pair of cockroach killer shoes, but that’s what the kick plate is for. The door was solid oak, a hardwood; it shouldn’t get marked up that easily.
Since Michelle was at work, I wouldn’t be getting any answers about the door till she got home. I went upstairs to the bedroom first and put my gun in the safe in the closet so I wouldn’t forget. I was tired, but I didn’t want to sleep too much or I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep tonight.
I went back downstairs to the kitchen and looked in the fridge. There was half an artichoke pie, still in the foil plate, wrapped in plastic. I could see the chunks of artichokes and salami mixed with eggs and cheese. I cut a piece and ate it cold. It didn’t taste like my grandmother’s; it had a bite to it, like maybe she used some jalapeno cheese. Plus, my grandmother makes hers with pepperoni, and it’s a lot greasier. Personally, I like Michele’s better.
I sat down at the table where Michele had her Bible open to 1 Corinthians 13. The love chapter. She was always reading it, and I could see notes she had written in the margins. “Love suffers long, puts up with, endures, and is patient and kind while enduring.” The passage was highlighted in yellow and pink, and when it came to the part that says, “When I was a child,” she had added, “When I was a child of love.” She wrote, “Love overlooks faults and is slow to expose. It believes all things and is ever ready to believe the best of someone.” Stuck in the page was a picture of me, her, and Stevie from the church picnic she dragged me to out on the North Shore last month. I picked up the picture and stared at it. Stevie was up on my shoulders. His nose was sunburned, and his cheeks were red from the game of touch football we played with Joe, his boys Josh and Joey, and a few other people. I was holding Stevie’s ankles, and Michele was leaning up against the both of us. You could see the waters of the Long Island Sound behind us. We were smiling, looking relaxed and happy. I started thinking about that day, feeling guilty about that “Love is eager to believe the best of someone” part.
It hit me then that it was after that day I stopped wanting to go to church. I don’t know if I felt like I didn’t belong there because I was cynical and jaded or if I just know something when I see it.
What happened the day of the picnic was I had come back to our table to get a bottle of water out of the cooler after we played football. Fiore, Donna, Michele, and the kids were playing by the water. There was a group of people from the church standing together talking. Our pastor was there too, standing back from the group, and when I went to throw him a wave he had a funny look on his face. Even though I was in his line of vision, he didn’t see me. His eyes were fixed on something behind me. The look bothered me, and I turned to see what he was looking at.
It was Nicole—I forget what her last name is—the woman who sings in the choir. They call it a “worship team,” and she’s always singing the solos. To be honest, I don’t like her. I mean, she sings great, but she’s in love with herself, and no one but me seems to notice it. They’re always sucking up to her. I remember one Sunday she sang some song, and Donna went up to her after the service, telling her how beautiful the song was and how great she sang it. She didn’t answer Donna, just smiled at her and nodded. The smile was indulgent and condescending at the same time.
Anyway, when I saw Pastor looking at her, she was looking back, and something passed between them that made me raise my eyebrows.
I’m not saying that one look between two people means they’re fooling around, but it looked like something was going on, and I remember it bothering me for the rest of the day. The following week when I went to church things sounded different to me. I noticed how many times during his sermon Pastor mentioned Nicole. Her voice, how God gave her such a beautiful gift and it was an honor to have her lead the worship. He talked about a recording project they were trying to put together. Then he started talking about the pressure that pastors are under and how good men of God are struggling. I remember looking over at the pastor’s wife, but she had her head down. And my gut told me she knew something was up too.
Then Joe gave me the tapes about David and how he was supposed to go off to war and instead got in trouble with a woman. Give me a break. I felt like I was being spoon-fed, and to be honest, I was choking on it.
When I first started coming to the church, Pastor used to talk about his wife a lot. They had met in China on a missions trip, and he would say how he fell madly in love with her and how amazed he was that she spoke fluent English. It turns out she’s Chinese from Brooklyn, not Chinese from China. They have two kids, a boy and a girl, who are fourteen and sixteen years old, with a mixture of Irish and Chinese features.
I didn’t know what to
make of the whole thing, and I’ve had an excuse not to go to church ever since. I haven’t talked to Joe or Michele about it. They think the pastor is great. I felt guilty for thinking something was up, but I knew something was. Then I felt brainwashed, like maybe this God stuff isn’t real and we’re just programmed out there in the seats while the lead guy tells us what to think and do. And I guess the worse thing is if this guy, who’s supposed to know God better than the rest of us, can’t walk the straight and narrow, how was I gonna do it?
A hard, rapid hammering on the door interrupted my thinking, and I jumped up, ready to pound whoever it was that was blasting on my new front door that way. I stomped toward the door, and the knocking started again. The sound was sharp and fast, definitely not a knuckle knock.
“Hey!” I yelled as I whipped the door open. “Get outta here!” I screamed, scaring the group of ducks I was so happy about feeding last week.
The ducks waddled away from me across the lawn, making that warbled quacking sound as they went. I yelled after them, “What’s wrong with you, pounding on the door like that? You dented it!” They stopped in the middle of the lawn, and I ran after them, yelling, “Don’t let me see you around here again!” They waddled faster this time and shot across the street toward the lake.
I looked down at the door to see the damage. A few more divots were in the door, and I tried to think about what to put over the door in case they came back. I couldn’t think of anything, so I went back inside.
As I closed the door I saw the yellow Post-it with Michele’s neat print in bold black magic marker. “Do not feed the ducks!!!!”
“Yeah, now you tell me,” I muttered.
I went upstairs and set the clock for 3:00 so I could shower before Michele and Stevie got home.
Since the alarm clock is on the other side of the room and I had to get up anyway to shut it off, I was actually up at 3:00 and not snoozing for eighteen minutes. I showered and put a pot of coffee on before Michele walked in the door at 3:45.
“Hey! Look who’s here!” she said with a smile.
I leaned in and gave her a kiss just as Stevie yelled, “Tony!” and hurled himself at me.
“Hey, buddy,” I said as I got him in a hug. “How was school?”
“It’s good,” he said, nodding seriously. “We get to play outside, and we get snacks, but we have to take a nap on our mats.”
“I wish I got to take a nap,” Michele said, looking tired and gorgeous in a black skirt and black-and-white shirt.
“I get to take a nap,” I said.
“How could they make the police take a nap?” Stevie asked, scrunching up his face.
“It’s all part of the job,” I said.
“Are you hungry?” Michele asked.
“Starving,” I growled, grabbing her and chomping on her neck.
She laughed. “What are you in the mood for?”
I looked at her and raised my eyebrows.
“I mean for dinner,” she said and smiled again.
“How about pizza? We’ll grab a pie and relax tonight.”
“Sounds good to me,” she said.
I didn’t like the pizzeria up on 111. A cop from my precinct, Giacomo, has a pizzeria in Yaphank, right off the expressway, that makes a good pie. I called and ordered a plain slice for Stevie and a gavone for me and Michele. The gavone is basically a garbage pie with meatballs, pepperoni, sausage, peppers, mushrooms, and olives. The correct name in Italian is cafone, which is someone who is an embarrassment because they have no manners, someone who eats with their hands, hocks up spit, and passes gas in public. I guess, on a smaller scale, if you’re eating a slice of pizza with this much garbage on it, your father would slap you in the back of the head and say, “Whatsamatter wit’ you, eating like that? You gavone!” But you’re only a gavone if you eat the whole pie. Plus, Michele eats it with a fork and knife, and I limit myself to four slices. She usually brings the leftovers to school with her and leaves it in the teachers’ lounge, and they get eaten the next day.
Michele wanted to take a shower before dinner, so I took Stevie with me when I drove over to Yaphank to pick up the pie. If Giacomo was there I’d be stuck talking to him for a half hour while Stevie used up my quarters on the gumball machine. The machine was a pinball game, and when you lost you got your gumball. If you got enough points you got a bonus gumball, and more times than not, Stevie went home with his mouth blue, green, or whatever color from gum he stuck in his mouth. Once he got bored with the gumball, he’d get the slime stuff and throw it at me, laughing like crazy until it stuck to my face or arm or whatever he could hit.
Giacomo wasn’t there, but his wife was. She was pregnant with their fourth kid and couldn’t get close to the counter with her stomach sticking out in front of her. The other three kids were there, all boys who looked like mini Giacomo’s. She gave me the pie and threw in some garlic knots for free. Stevie played two pinball games and whacked the slime against the back window of my truck the whole way home. There were smudges against the window where the slime stuff hit, and it didn’t even bother me. As kids, if we ever did that to my father’s car, he would’ve had a stroke. Actually, we wouldn’t have done that to my father’s car. We knew better.
We ate the pizza, or actually, Michele and I ate the pizza. Stevie pulled the cheese and the crust off and ate just the inside of his slice. The three of us stayed outside until the sun went down. Michele watered the lawn and the flowers, and Stevie and I played stoop ball with a pink Spalding ball I picked up in the city.
Stoop ball is played against cement steps, and you throw the ball against the steps on either a fly or a bounce. You get points if you catch it on a fly or a bounce, and you get a hundred points if you catch a line drive that could take your eye out if you missed it. Everyone has their own way of playing it, and Stevie was new at it, and he kept sending the ball out in every direction. It was quiet, not like where I live. The sounds are different out here in the country. Instead of sirens, people screaming, and horns honking, I heard the pop of the ball against the steps, the spray of the hose, and a million crickets. The lightning bugs were putting on a show, and the mosquitoes were eating me alive.
We went in about 8:30 and put Stevie in the tub. He fell asleep by 9:00, and Michele and I sat and watched a documentary on Elian Gonzalez. I never watched documentaries, and if the Yankees weren’t off tonight we’d be watching the game. The show chronicled the whole story, the fishermen rescuing Elian a couple of miles off the coast of Fort Lauderdale, his mother and eleven others dying on the trip over, the fights in the appellate courts over custody and political asylum, Fidel Castro, the protests in Miami, and that famous scene with the soldiers in their green riot gear, gas masks, and automatic weapons as they stormed the house to take the kid who was hiding in the closet.
“I don’t want to see this,” I finally said. “It’s depressing. Look at the kid’s face, he’s scared out of his mind,” I said as I stretched.
“I know, there was no reason for that,” Michele said.
That picture was so famous someone made it into an email with the faces of the soldiers changed to Bert and Ernie, Bill and Hillary, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Spiderman. Then it was Michael Jackson holding Elian—that would scare any kid. There was another picture of Janet Reno with a blacked-out box in front of her like she was posing naked; it was ridiculous. Maybe it’s just me, but if the kid went through all this crap to get here, let him stay. I know the father made a big thing about wanting to stay in Cuba at his press conferences, but I bet if the camera pulled back a little you’d see the rest of his family blindfolded with cigarettes in their mouths waiting for the firing squad to shoot them if he didn’t say whatever Fidel’s henchmen told them to.
“So are you ever coming back to church?” Michele asked as I hit the off button on the remote.
“Yeah,” I said, not looking at her.
“What’s bothering you?”
I shrugged.
“If you do
n’t mind, Tony, I’d like to keep things honest between us right from the start,” she said with half a smile.
I looked at her, thinking how beautiful she was. Not showy or made up. She looked the way she was, honest and open and probably too good for me not to tell the truth about why I haven’t been there.
“The day of the picnic at the beach I saw something funny between pastor and the woman that sings at the church,” I blurted out.
She didn’t say anything at first, and then she nodded. “Oh.”
“Oh? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’m sorry, Tony,” she said. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Is something up with them?” I asked, a little tight.
“I don’t know.”
“But something is?” I asked.
“I don’t know. It’s funny, Joe said something to Donna about it too. I think right now we should be praying and not judging or getting offended,” she said. “We really don’t know if anything is going on.”
“Joe knows this, and he didn’t tell me?” I asked, raising my voice.
“He didn’t want this to throw you,” she said.
But it was throwing me.
“Tony, this is exactly the kind of thing I mean,” she said, managing to smile. “You’re telling me you aren’t going to church because you’re working, and it’s really about something else. That’s not being honest.”
“No, I guess it isn’t,” I said with a shrug.
“But you can still tell me, even if you’re not sure. Whether you realize it or not, your decision not to go affected me and Stevie. I thought maybe you weren’t as interested in serving God as you once were, and that’s very important to me.”
“But I wasn’t 100 percent sure about it, and I didn’t want to throw it out there. I don’t wanna believe something’s up with Pastor, but I think there is.”
“That’s the thing about being married. It’s not just about you anymore, there’s other people involved,” she said. “I realized that when I had Stevie. Every decision I made affected him. I’ve been much more careful in my decisions since then.”