Carry Me Home

by John M. Del Vecchio

  “Let us open it up, Man,” the man with the flashlight said. “Then you can do your thing.”

  Now Tony stood with Quentin Pomeroy, watched. A metropolitan ambulance had taken the driver of the first car; a wrecker had flipped the car and was towing it. One eastbound lane opened. People gawked, drove by very slowly, then accelerated away.

  For forty minutes the firefighters worked—finally cutting holes through the floor and removing first one dead child, then a second and a third. Then they found the infant, and Tony and Quentin took over and strapped the small body to a backboard and applied tourniquets to one leg that had been severely lacerated and crushed and to one arm with an amputated hand, neither of which had bled the baby to death because both the amputation and the lacerations were beyond the crush points.

  Linda heard the keys in the dead bolts. She glanced at the desk clock. Two twenty. She pursed her lips, thought to get up and release the locks but didn’t move, feeling peeved, suspecting Tony had gone for a drink with his coworkers. She had been anxious every night since the accident, had been doodling instead of studying, sketching big plump flowers on her notebook’s inner cover, circling her pen over and over the petals, adding weight and refining details. Now she covered the sketch, hunched down over the text, Medical Care of the Surgical Patient, highlighting normal hemoglobin and hematocrit value. Time had seemed to both accelerate and stand still. They were doing a thousand things, yet nothing seemed near completion. Two weeks after the fatal accident on Storrow Drive Tony had notified AmbuStar he’d be starting full-time at BU and could only work part-time. To them he’d proved himself and Charnowski wanted him full-time, but Alvin Lewis and Quentin Pomeroy had convinced Charnowski that a guy like Tony Pisano was too good to hold back—that he’d only stick around if Ken backed off. Linda too had had a major change, an unofficial graduation to the equivalent of RN, which allowed her more responsibility at work, but in her Family Nurse Practice program there would be no real graduation, no certificate, no degree, until the program was completed eighteen months hence. And Tony and Linda still had not decided on a date, a church, a hall, or even a city for their wedding. “That you, Babe?” Linda called.

  The door was shut, rebolted. “Naw, not me. It’s the boogie man.” Linda stifled her anger. “Did you and Quentin go up to Mondo’s?” “Naw. I don’t like that place. Too many kids. All the kids are coming back. Shee-it! I don’t know how I’m goina be a freshman with these ... teenyboppers.”

  “You won’t see them so much when classes start. Want to quiz me?”

  “Sure.” Tony leaned on the door jamb, stared at Linda, flashed a lecherous grin.

  “No way!” Linda snapped. “I’ve got to finish this.”

  “Finish what?”

  “Thrombocytes and hemostasis. Ask me what needs to be excluded by diagnosis before a thrombocytopenic patient can be operated upon.”

  “Okay. What needs to be excluded before the thrombocyto ... before a trombone can be tooted?”

  “Thrombo ... never mind. Leukemia.”

  “Oh yeah. I knew that!” Tony chuckled.

  “You’ve been drinking!”

  “Oh, just a wee tad.”

  “At that Irish pub ...”

  “Aye! Cept I don’t think it’s a real Irish pub. It’s, ya know, a bar without ... a working Joe’s bar without a million kids.”

  “When are you going to finish the EMT material? Tony, classes start in less than two weeks. You’ve got to get the EMT—”

  “I’ll finish it. Geez! I gotta whiz.” Tony left the doorway, entered the bathroom.

  “Your mom called earlier.” Linda’s voice was controlled, neutral. “Did you send your grandmother a birthday card?”

  Tony returned. He rebuckled his belt as he spoke. “Look, I can’t deal with this now. Do you have any cigarettes? It’s been one more bullshit day. Money’s great but I can’t wait till these doubles stop.”

  “More accidents?” Linda grabbed, shook the Winston pack.

  “Yeah.” He watched her tear the top off.

  “Bad?” The pack was empty. She crushed it and tossed it into the grocery bag that was their trash basket.

  “Aw ... not really. Not like that first Storrow one. But Jesus God, don’t ever let anybody tell you gettin shot is the worst thing possible.”

  Linda stood. She came to him, wrapped her arms around him, buried her head in his chest. “They’re lucky they have you out there,” she said. “And I’m lucky to have you in here.” He hugged her back. They stood still in the center of their study for a long moment. Then Linda leaned back and said, “This won’t go on forever. We can deal with it.”

  “Yeah,” Tony said. He released her. “You’re losing more weight, aren’t you?”

  “A little.”

  “How much?”

  “I’m down to a hundred and seven.”

  “I don’t think you should lose any more.”

  “Four more pounds. I think one oh three’s my ideal weight.”

  “That’s too thin.”

  “Oooo,” Linda blustered playfully. “You want me to be a big fat mama like one of your Italian aunts!”

  “Aw, come on,” Tony said. He yawned. “That’s the last thing I want.”

  She grabbed his hands, pulled him in close, stood on her tip-toes to kiss him. “Go get us some cigarettes, okay? Winstons. Not those awful Pall Malls. Okay? I’ve got at least two more hours.”

  Tony had not been drinking at an Irish bar. He had been downstairs in the first-floor apartment of Tom McLaughlin, a returning senior at BU, smoking dope. Now as he passed by he paused, listened to see if Tom or the other guys he’d met were still up. There was no sound. He went to the foyer, stared through the door glass. He clenched his teeth. His respiration rate jumped, his muscles tightened. The street was calm. There were a few people walking on the far side, a couple sitting on the stoop of the building next door. Tony’s breathing came fast, shallow. There was an all-night Purity Supreme market up on the corner of Commonwealth and Harvard avenues. Tony grabbed the door handle, froze. His jaw quivered. The door handle was warm, warm like the infant’s blood, like the blood of the children at Dai Do, like the blood on the ignition key on Storrow Drive. He released the knob. His arms were shaking uncontrollably. He wobbled, pushed himself against the wall to keep from falling. A dark figure, man, head down, walked by and Tony knew it was Manny, Manny who’d been shot, whom he’d cradled and who’d been shot again while Tony cradled him. Warm like Manny’s blood oozing through his fatigue pants. Tony squatted, peed in his pants, thinking without control, he’d left this all behind; thinking of severed heads, chopped off, scraped off. He opened his mouth, sucked air over his teeth, saw the floor rising up, he falling. Then—FLASH—out.

  Then pain. He looked up. He felt his head. He felt dizzy. He raised his torso from the floor. He looked at his hand. It was wet. He put it back to his head, felt the cut, brought it back before his eyes. There wasn’t much blood. Some had already coagulated. He was not shaking, not breathing hard. He stood, looked out the door. It was still dark. No one was on the steps next door. Tony turned, climbed the stairs back to his apartment.

  “That you, Babe?” Linda called. She’d been unable to settle down, to concentrate, had again been doodling, now cute plump cats with big heads and big eyes and navels, round and round over the lines. “What took so long?”

  “Ah ... I’ll be there in just a minute.” He headed straight for the bathroom.

  “What took so long?” she repeated.

  Tony removed his pants, tossed them in the tub. He quickly wiped his legs with a damp washcloth, then grasped the exposed cold water pipe that ran from ceiling to floor and leaned in toward the mirror. The cut was in his hair two inches above his forehead. He flushed the toilet to mask the sound of his washing off the wound. He dried quickly, combed his fingers through his hair to cover the small gash.

  “Tony!” Linda was in the kitchen. He could hear her open the coffee pot
, hear the water running in the pipes as she filled it. He walked quickly to the bedroom, grabbed a pair of gym shorts, put them on.

  “Tony?!”

  “Yeah, yeah. I just had ta go. You know what beer does. God it’s hot! I can’t believe it’s still this hot this late.”

  “Where are the cigarettes?”

  “Cig—Oh shit. I ... I ran into that guy we met dancing. You know, the guy with the acne.”

  “So?”

  “Oh, we started to talk ... I guess he’s been up here for four years. The Red Sox won the pennant two years ago. Did you know that?”

  “Tony, what are you talking about?”

  “We were talking about baseball. I musta left the cigarettes on the counter. I’ll go back and get em.”

  “Oh, forget it! Baseball! Let’s just go to sleep.” With that she turned off the unit under the coffeepot, then she glanced up at Tony’s face. “Are you okay? You look really pale.”

  “Do you love me?”

  “More than anything.”

  “Why don’t men say, ‘I love you’?”

  “Because those are just words.”

  “But a woman likes to hear it.”

  “If you hear a guy say it, it’s probably cause he wants to screw you and he knows that’s what you want to hear. He’s probably lying so he can get laid.”

  “Tony Pisano! That’s just more of your bullshit.”

  “I love you.”

  “Oh, see! You just want to get laid.”

  “But I do love you.”

  “I’m on to this now.” Linda rolled over onto Tony, pinned him against the sheet. “How much do you love me?”

  “Seven inches worth.”

  “Oh!” She punched him on the chest. “I swear you’ve got a penis obsession.”

  “My penis is obsessed with you.”

  “What if I wasn’t sexy?”

  “Who said you are?”

  “Oh!” She punched him again. A weather front had come through late in the night and finally cooled the city. Sun blazed in through the French doors. “Maybe a little, huh?”

  “Maybe a little. Can you really stay home today?”

  “I never have before, so I think it’s ... you know, they’ll think I really am sick. And I am. What about Charnowski?”

  “Let Carlucci pull a double for once. Geez! He owes me....”

  Linda slid down, licked Tony’s nipple making him shimmy. “Do you really love me?”

  “Yes.” Tony mimicked her tone. “I really love you?”

  “Really? I’m serious. Enough to live with me for the rest of your life? I mean ... it’s about one hundred days that we’ve ... you’re not sick of me?”

  “Miss Balliett,” Tony intoned. “I am more infatuated with you every day.”

  “Enough to love me when I’m old and gray and I’ve got a fat stomach.”

  “Why are you doing this?”

  “Maybe I’m feeling, you know, insecure. You’re going to start classes. There’ll be a lot of pretty girls in those classes. You’ll be the man of the world. You could sweep any one of them off her feet. Just like you did me.”

  “Linda, I love you. You are absolutely everything I ever wanted in a girl and more. You’re—you’re—I mean, with all the stuff you know, with the nurse practitioner stuff, it’s more likely you’d meet some rich doctor.”

  She hushed him with a kiss. “Then let’s not put it off anymore. Let’s get married.”

  “Today!”

  “No, silly. But ... maybe in November. Let’s get married here in Boston in November. I could call Ruthie. I’d want her to be my maid of honor.”

  “I’d want Jimmy as the best man.”

  “Your cousin?”

  “Yep!” Tony rolled onto his side, propped his head upon his hand. Immediately he jerked his head away. “Ow!”

  “What’d you do, Babe?”

  “Oh ... ah, yesterday I was getting supplies in the storeroom and I banged my head. It’s nothin. But hey, Jimmy, I think, is back end of September. We could get married next month.”

  “Really?”

  “Would you want to?”

  “We couldn’t get a hall or a church or anything in a month.”

  “We don’t need a hall.”

  “Yes we do. When I get married I want to have a nice reception. I’m only going to do this once, Tony. I don’t believe in divorce.”

  “Neither do I. I don’t even believe in foolin around.” Tony kissed Linda. His hard-on touched her leg.

  “Now put that thing away. We have to talk. I’d want my folks and sisters. And Judy Reardon.”

  “Yeah. I’d want my family, too. But most of all I want Jimmy. I can’t get married unless he’s here.”

  ***** URGENT *** SPECIAL DELIVERY *****

  Sergeant James Pellegrino

  United States Marine Corps

  4th CAG

  FPO San Francisco 94900

  JIMMY: There is truth to rumor Linda & I getting married. Invitations mailed—yours to your folks. 27 SEPT. You are best man. Hank & Norma want to give us r-t tickets to Europe for X-mas h-moon. Don’t know how to blow it off. Need your ass home ASAP. Understand, L is great. Double that. Is maybe pregnant, too! H & N don’t know. I love her much. Need your ass here to advise, celebrate w/ me.

  Tony

  Through the entire month leading up to the wedding, Tony couldn’t get over how, on such short notice, both families had thrown time, energy and money into the hundred details he thought he did not care about until they began happening. Henry Sr. somehow convinced the Lenox Hotel on Copley Square to free up the small ballroom for the reception; and Linda, against her own family’s beliefs, and enough to make Josephine Pisano lament for years, somehow arranged with the pastor of the United Universalist Church on Arlington Street for a marriage ceremony on Saturday, September 27th, 1969, at eleven o’clock in the morning.

  All month Tony had attempted to think of something he could give Linda as a wedding gift—something that would have meaning. He was still struggling with it when Jimmy arrived, met him at BU on Wednesday, and convinced him to skip his last class, to see Jimmy’s new bike—a ’68 Harley-Davidson FLH-tourer, 74 CID shovelhead. “The ultimate V-twin,” Jimmy quoted the salesman—and to go for a ride and a drink until they were both wasted. Since Wednesday Tony had not taken the time to think further on the topic of a wedding present.

  Jimmy was already wasted. He’d started drinking even before he left Mill Creek Falls. He drank all night Wednesday, the 24th, first with Tony and, after Tony crashed, with Tom McLaughlin. He drank on Thursday. On Thursday night he, McLaughlin and Quentin Pomeroy took Tony bar-hopping in the Combat Zone and they all got wasted and McLaughlin got them stoned and for hours Jimmy said over and over, “She dumped me! Man, she dumped me! She dumped me. I ... ‘I don’t fill her needs anymore.’ What kind of way is that to talk?”

  Jimmy was wasted; Pomeroy was wasted; Tony was tipsy. “There’s a chick I know....” Pomeroy swayed with Jimmy. “Cool chick. Long legs. Big boobs.” He had both arms on Jimmy’s shoulders, their foreheads touching. “Lucy Green. Lucy Goosey Green. Big Boobs. Long legs. Likes to do it. We gotta get Tony laid one last time. Fore he does the dirty deed.”

  “Lucy Goosey.” Jimmy laughed. “Let’s get Lucy Goosey. She per ... pert-ee as Tony’s girl? Where’s Tony? Did I tell him Linda’s great? Great. I love her. She’s a knock out.”

  “Big boobs.” Pomeroy stumbled, laughed.

  “Don’t you say that.” Jimmy shoved Quentin’s arms from his shoulders. “Dohnn say that bout my cousin’s girl. Take that back.”

  “No. No. No. Lucy Goosey’s. Not Linda. She’s a saint. Linda’s a saint.”

  On Saturday morning Jimmy drank, now Bloody Marys at Tony and Linda’s, until Judy Reardon and two Boston friends—Rachel and Gina—and Linda’s sisters Ruth and Joanie, drove all the boys out so Linda could get dressed. Quentin Pomeroy and Alvin Lewis had used the ambulance to pick up tuxedos a
nd deliver them to the Lenox where the Pisanos were staying, and to the Holiday Inn for Henry Balliett Senior and Junior, and finally to Tony’s for Jimmy and Tony and John Jr., Tony’s oldest brother, who’d attached himself to the group so there’d be at least one sober head.

  The boys, in their tuxedos, took the T up to Arlington Street, walked to the church, then waited for the limo to bring the bridal party. Jimmy, Quentin and Tom McLaughlin got stoned and hawked out the arriving girls—Tony’s cousins, Linda’s sisters and friends—and laughed at Tony’s 15-year-old brother, Mark, making an awkward attempt to talk to Linda’s 14-year-old sister, Cindy.

  Tony was neither nervous nor tipsy. He’d gotten up at five thirty, put on his old jungle boots and run from the apartment, up Commonwealth to BU, then across the BU bridge into Cambridge, then upriver to the Larz Anderson Bridge and back through Allston until he was sweating profusely, yet still exhilarated, adrenaline rushing, knowing he was marrying the most perfect woman God had ever created.

  When she came down the aisle, when everyone rose, Tony saw nothing except Linda. She wore her mother’s dress from twenty-three years earlier, an ivory brushed-satin gown with sweetheart neckline, cinched waist, and chapel-length train which had been shortened considerably. She carried a bouquet of white and wine roses surrounded by ferns and ivy, and in her auburn hair she wore a tiara of ivory stephanotis and green ribbons that brought out the green in her eyes, those exquisite eyes, and Tony knew he would love her forever and the proudest moment of his life would always be the moment she said, “I do.”

  Now Jimmy was miffed. They were at the Lenox and it was nearly time for him to give the toast and he’d just found out that Linda’s father, that Quentin Pomeroy, that Tom McLaughlin and Charnowski and Carlucci and even Tony’s own brothers, none of them knew anything about Tony’s Marine Corps time. Even Reggie Williams, who’d been stationed with Tony in Philadelphia and who’d come in just for the reception, didn’t know. Jimmy was miffed and stoned and wasted. Linda was bubbles and smiles and laughs and shining eyes as she and Tony moved from table to table talking to the guests. “Doctor Tagesaubruch, I want you to meet my husband....” “This is my uncle Joe, Roseanne’s father. You met Roseanne, Vinny and Sante over ...” “I remember ...” “Uncle Joe was always my hero. He was a Marine in the Pacific during the big one.” “Oh! I’m impressed. You’re where Tony gets his spirit from....”