The Voices in Our Heads

by Michael Aronovitz

  And I’d never liked Bobby Fitz. Neither did Danny. Not really. The two of them had been hot and cold for years, same neighborhood, same classes, same Little League. The kid lived with his mother at the end of our block in a rather dismal-looking fieldstone flat-top rancher with brambles growing all over the front walk, wild ivy on the picture window. I didn’t know where the father was, but Mom smoked Marlboros, wore bandanas and scarves, and talked with this rusty voice usually saved for New York clichés in the theater world.

  And plainly, Bobby Fitz was an asshole. We’d given him a shot, but he was the type that would be over the house for dinner and demand to Addy, “Put some ketchup on my burger.” She’d give the rhetorical, “Excuse me?” and he’d reply, “K-E-T-CHUP,” and roll his eyes. Then under his breath, “Ya deaf?” Addy and I would look at each other, wounded smiles of disbelief in our eyes, finally saying nothing, because I’d just been talking about spilling a beer trying to catch a fly ball at a Phillies game, and smack in the heart of the story I’d cursed a couple of times, bucking right up on the edge of propriety just to make Fitz feel like one of the boys. Now, it seemed as if it was in the air that maybe I brought this on, keeping it all too loose or something.

  One time when I was late because I had lagged back at school running a gentleman’s etiquette club the mentor hadn’t shown up for, she claimed Fitz had been over looking at baseball cards, playing some darts. Supposedly, he had burst into the kitchen and demanded a glass of water. Addy had gone to the tap, and he’d muttered behind her back,

  “Cunt.”

  She’d called him on it, and he’d had the brass balls to say,

  “Well, can I say pussy? Snatch? Poontang?”

  She’d asked him to leave, and he’d stood there, eyes drifting slightly in what Addy called “the crazy face.”

  “Pussy, pussy, pussy.” Then he swiped over a bottle of cooking sherry before waltzing on out through the door. In retrospect, I should have been in his mother’s living room that night, nipped it in the bud, but I sort of figured the apple didn’t fall far from the tree and my words would fall on deaf ears. I simply told Danny that this particular sixth-grader was never to cross the threshold of my home again, and Danny quietly agreed. I didn’t have much contact with the bastard throughout the next couple of years, and to tell the truth I sort of dismissed him. And he was easy to dismiss. He was the kid in Little League who would miss an easy pop-up and act as if he got hurt diving for it, the type to egg people’s windows even though Mischief Night was long over, the type to steal shit from Kmart, smack girls, lie to himself. The last I’d seen, he was into the punk thing, studs, dirty leather, and the letters “H-A-T-E” scrawled on both sets of knuckles in magic marker.

  That, and fucking with people.

  Danny had told me that Fitz was back with his namecalling, at the bus stop and in a science lab the two shared, sneaking behind and whispering, “pussy,” just loud enough for Danny to hear it in passing, sometimes adding, “Just like your mom likes to lick,” for good measure.

  I drove in to school that day with my teeth grinding down. Gave me a headache. I wanted to act, to solve this, to walk into that junior high school when that rotten bastard least expected, catch him saying something, and bring him to the discipline room by his hair. I was no sixties reject, never a “sensitive man” by any stretch of the imagination, but I despised people who preyed on the good nature of others. They sucked the joy out of life and put everyone on edge. Made you twist yourself up in battle strategies and question yourself.

  I turned down Belmont Avenue. The snow had stopped completely, and there were people waiting at the bus stop with their hats and gloves on. One was stamping his feet. Another spit on the cement. Winter without the benefits. A toss of dead leaves skipped by and did an idiot’s jig in the police station parking lot to the left. I wondered why Danny had inherited this particular abuse from this particular boy, and quickly decided that no one would ever really know except them. Ever ask a fourteen-year-old about his day? You got a shrug. “What did you learn in school today?” “Nothing.” “How do like your teachers this year?” The response: the classic jumble of phrasing “uhehuh,” meaning in earthly terms, “I don’t know.”

  Not that Danny was incommunicado all day, every day. He was just fourteen, that’s all. We still watched television together, still made cheese bagels with extra butter on Saturdays, still went bowling every weekend and ate stale soft pretzels with extra mustard, our standard. But that was all stuff on the fringe by then. Kids were fast, changing friendships quicker than the seasons, keeping under your radar, it was a fact of life.

  The only thing I could assume from my little corner of this thing was that the fall ball game a month and a half ago might have triggered this. I was surprised to see Fitz on the other team, actually. The boys had moved up to the big field, and I’d assumed he wouldn’t be able to handle it. Besides, I thought I had heard he’d been banned from the league for throwing his bat in the dugout after a costly strikeout a year before.

  Anyway, he had been pitching for the other side, a real wild Injun, untucking his shirt in a sloppy flap in the back, kicking the mound dirt, spitting straight in the direction of the batter instead of back behind the rubber. Then when things started going south he started in with the other crap we’d seen so often with him, bitching to the ump about the strike zone, snapping off the tosses back from the catcher, throwing his hat if one of his fielders missed a hard grounder. They relieved him in the third and re-entered him in the bottom of the seventh to pitch to Danny, two men on, all tied up, two outs. My boy whacked a fastball right over the center field fence. Almost hit the American flag. His team swarmed him at the plate.

  But why on earth would Fitz take that personally? As soon as that thought ran through my head I realized how silly it sounded, but still, the bastard would have to have been from another planet to think that a fall-ball homer was anything significant when compared to the big picture. He’d been on Danny’s team, the Renegades, when they were nine, and he’d been lined up across the diamond on enough of the opposing squads through the years to have known the drill by heart. Danny Taragna comes up to the plate, and the defending coach comes out of the dugout. Says to his players, “For this guy . . . infielders get your heels on the grass . . . outfielders, back up . . . no, turn around and run . . . no, not a few feet, try thirty or forty.” Danny was the number one hitter in South Marple, possibly in southeastern Pennsylvania. His hand-eye was literally awesome to behold, and except for an occasional lunging problem when he got too hungry seeing a strike right out of the hand, he was the toughest out any of us had ever seen.

  So what else could Fitz possibly expect? His own father was out of the picture, and he was known for never practicing, trying to live off being a hot dog. On our side of the fence, I’d thrown Danny six thousand pitches a summer since that day at three and a half when he hit a whiffle ball back at my face so hard he knocked me down. I mean, Jesus, at four and a half he was hitting tennis balls a hundred and ninety feet. We used to measure the distance, count it step by step out loud, side by side, heel to toe from the ball back to the plate. Each time the record was broken I’d lift him by the underarms and spin him. Want to see joy on a boy’s face? Try it sometime.

  I turned left on Montgomery, flipped on the radio, and found a Cars song, then the Talking Heads. Skinny ties and poor vocals, as if the latter was a conscious choice. Pure bullshit. Turned it off. Maybe it was something else that had sparked bad blood between these two, a passing glance that rubbed Fitz the wrong way, a girl he liked that Danny cut in on, disco-boy versus the punker, whatever. Sometimes boys threw their shoulders back and socked each other around a bit to show who was boss. I only hoped they didn’t have a scuffle and suddenly try to become best bosom buddies as so often happened when dudes duked it out. Last thing I needed was to be fighting with Addy over whether we should have him over for dinner and remember to stick K-E-T-CHUP on his fucking burger.


  I got to school and soon forgot about the issue altogether. Someone had defaced the listening center with spray paint, and a neighborhood gang invaded the yard during senior recess. I was turned into an emergency security guard helping out with lockdown, watching kids all day, monitoring the halls, supporting the staff in the lunch room.

  By the time I got home, my head was absolutely pounding.

  And my son’s face had been destroyed.

  “Hi Dad,” he said. “I’m fine, so don’t rag, all right?” He was sitting on the couch in the dark. I closed the front door and pushed off the Chipster, whose tail was wagging so hard her whole back end was swaying.

  “Let me see you.”

  He stood, winced, looked at me straight. I gasped.

  His face, his beautiful angelic face, was that of a monster. There was a sickly purple bruise high on his right cheek, merging into three others that puffed and blotched all the way to the jawline. The right side of his top lip was twice its original size. His left cheek was a hard yellow with two sets of angry red knuckle marks branded across it. His right eye had blood in it, blackened underneath in a wide swab, and the left was swollen shut completely. His forehead was cut in three places, and blood was crusted around both nostrils. My fists were shaking, but miraculously my voice didn’t follow suit.

  “What’s his face look like?” I said quietly. Danny regressed, went from one foot to the other.

  “I got him real good, Dad. I think I knocked out his tooth.”

  “That’s it?”

  He looked down.

  “I hit him in the jaw. Lots of times. He had the better angle, he’s taller.”

  “Where’d it happen?”

  “Bus stop. Just an hour ago. Kept calling me a pussy, kept begging me to hit him. I threw the first punch when he called Ma a cuntlicker. I missed.”

  He looked up at me.

  “He didn’t.”

  I moved a step closer.

  “How many times did you hit him, Danny?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Think.”

  “I don’t know!” His bloody eye was tearing now. “I tried, Dad, I tried to hit him and hit him, but he kept punching me, geez!” His nose was running, blood trails in it, and he wiped it ungracefully with the back of his hand. I grabbed it, a bit rough, and turned it, looked at the knuckles. No marks. Baby smooth. Slowly he took his hand back and rubbed his side gingerly. It was a feminine gesture, and he couldn’t look me straight in the eye.

  “Didn’t I do like I was supposed to, Dad?”

  My voice came through my teeth.

  “Truck. Now.”

  I thought I was pissed when I tripped on a loose piece of flagstone along their darkened walkway, and more, when I hurt myself a bit hammering on their front door with my fist in the cold, but that was nothing compared to what raced through my head during the short visit inside. It all went by fast, in flashes, and I was honestly lucky I didn’t kill someone.

  She opened the door, I barged in, it smelled like cabbage and cigarettes, I said, “Look at his face,” she said, “What’s that to do with me?”

  When Fitz came down he was wearing a ripped T-shirt that said “Pink Floyd sucks,” black jeans, and motorcycle boots. He looked big to me, at least a head taller than Danny, and his face was unmarked for all but the nest of blackheads on both sides of his nose, and a small cut at the corner of his bottom lip.

  “Anything special happen at the bus stop today?” I said. He looked at Danny, smirked, and shrugged. I took a step toward him. He turned a shoulder slightly, but the smirk stayed.

  “Just came home and did my math homework.”

  “You deny this?”

  “Nothing to deny.”

  I turned.

  “He do this to you, son?”

  Danny tried his best to look away. The swelling had gotten worse, and the purple marbling had deepened.

  “Yeah.”

  “Prove it.”

  That came from Mom. There were bird’s-eye glasses hanging around her neck and they had dandruff on them. Gray hair pinned back, a wrinkled peacock lighting a cigarette.

  “I’m going to report this,” I said.

  “I think you should.”

  On my way out, Fitz said after me,

  “Better get him to the hospital.”

  Back in the car, I was thinking that we had to call the Newports, the Gosslingers, the Graystones, the Cohens, all who had kids that were assigned to that bus stop. Or maybe just the police, let them ask the questions, see if Fitz would smirk then. In the morning I’d go see Principal Wheeler, find out who Danny’s counselor was, maybe set up some private therapy sessions so he could get his self-confidence back. I thought all those things, but didn’t say them. Instead, I said,

  “I thought you said you hit him, Danny. I had the impression there were even blows thrown, or at least close.”

  “I did,” he said. “I thought . . . I don’t know anymore.”

  We drove the rest of the way in silence. Addy came home a bit later with two bags of groceries. She saw Danny and dropped them on the floor. She cried hard. We raised our voices. Chipster wouldn’t stop barking. We told Danny to lie on the couch and had him hold bags of frozen peas and cut corn to his face. Addy tried to get him up to go to the hospital, and I almost complied.

  “No,” Danny said.

  “Not your choice,” I returned. “And lie back down. You still have four minutes. Fifteen at a pop, it’ll get that swelling down.”

  “It’s cold.”

  “It’s supposed to be cold.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Ain’t supposed to feel pretty.”

  “I go to the hospital, I’ll never be able to show my face at school again, Dad.”

  We never went. He was fine, just battered. Addy tossed up a last Hail Mary, claiming this was more about me than my son, and I wasn’t hearing it. I made for the stairs, for my “office,” where I was going to pour myself a shot of Jack D., maybe two or three, and brood about the unfairness of the world. Bullies were cowards, fakers, terrified of being exposed, and when you punched one in the nose he was supposed to move on to the next victim. Back in the day I stood up to around half the guys who bullied me in school and never lost a pushy-pushy. I always felt I should have stood up to the rest of them too, always sort of kicking myself for not having a perfect record.

  I was sickened by this family loss. I thought of my Danny, out on the corner of Boxwood Avenue after school in the bitter cold, swinging wild for the fences, for his father, with Bobby Fitz just raining down blows at will. How many times did he strike my son directly in the face? Were the sounds meaty or flat? Did Danny cover up at some point, curl in, and cry Uncle? Were there onlookers in a semicircle egging this on? Did they follow Danny home in support or rally around their new thumper?

  “Dad.”

  I was half up the stairs.

  “Yeah.”

  “Stay.”

  I kept walking without turning around. He was with his mother and I wasn’t any good for him now. I had to reevaluate things, come up with a way to work this into an emotional configuration that was somehow acceptable. I wanted to rationalize, but couldn’t. I’d play nursemaid and teddy bear in the morning when I had some perspective.

  I drank too much and slept like a stone.

  Next morning, I went to the downstairs bathroom, crapped with my head in my hands, made my way into the basement. I thought about doing the “whub-whub,” but I didn’t want to aggravate a sensitive area on his face. I was feeling a little dizzy. I gave his shoulder a gentle shake, and he didn’t respond. Tried it again and got nothing. I turned him over, and the purples had turned to maroons and pale oranges. There was spittle at the corners of his swollen lips.

  He was in a coma.

  At 3:19 p.m., at Bryn Mawr Hospital, tubes up his nose and hands curled in, he passed quietly. The doctor said it was a result of massive blunt force trauma to the brain and a clotting issue, but it wa
sn’t either of those things. He died of a broken heart, of shame, of not living up to his father’s expectations. All day that day I’d held his hand, first hanging off the edge of the gurney, and then dangling off the side of the adjustable bed cranked to a forty-five-degree angle, held it on that second round until my fingers went sweaty, tingly, numb. He never squeezed back. I’d had my chance to comfort him, but he was gone, long before the rush to the emergency room, the hurried sign in, the tests, the X-rays, the machines beeping intermittently, the hushed voices coming from all around like some maddening shroud.

  I’d killed him.

  And all for nothing.

  Now, I look outside the window and wonder as I do every year what would have happened if we’d been snowed in that day. I was never much for philosophizing, but I still can’t help running the equation through my head, the possibility that somehow time and space worked in some rhythmic continuum, so that changing one little aspect of your life could yield alternate results. What if Danny never went to school that day? What if we shoveled the driveway together, made an igloo, played cards? What if Fitz suddenly put another kid in the crosshairs, or fell in love, or found God?

  But that’s all for nothing too.

  My legs are constantly in pain, and the arthritis in my back flairs up more often than not. I live above the Gladstone drugstore and eat canned food off a hot plate. As you might have guessed, I lost Addy after the trial, not Fitz’s, ours. Lost my teaching gig two months later, mostly because I just couldn’t handle being around kids anymore; their laughter made me cry in the faculty bathroom and their meanness made me weep in the janitor’s storage closet, or the audiovisual room, or right there out in the hallway. I went back to the trades, but drank away most of my money. By the time I was fifty I was swinging a sledge. By fifty-five it was a twelve-ouncer for the oddball finish work, but by fifty-seven, any boss willing to have me wouldn’t trust me with anything more than a spade shovel for ditches. I kept fucking up the measurements, losing time and money, making my co-workers mutter shit behind my back knowing I could hear it loud and clear, talk about your ironic, poetic justice.