As I headed to a conference with Mr. Wainright at the end of the day, I wondered, too, if Tony respected me. I had given myself to him; did that lessen me in his eyes? I asked myself but dismissed that thought right away. If nothing else, Tony sure had a powerful regard for my virginity, I said to myself as I recalled the scene in the bedroom after he had taken it. But would he be able to respect the line I had drawn? I pondered as I turned the knob outside Mr. Wainright’s office and entered.
The cramped room was filled with bookcases and a small, worn couch that was against the wall opposite Mr. Wainright’s desk. I sat on a wood armchair across from him. Dust particles were suspended in the rays of light that pierced the multiple panes of a tall window behind him. The room smelled and felt like the bookstore.
“Well,” Mr. Wainright began, my pages in his hand, “I see it wasn’t just partying for you over the last week.”
“No, sir. Writers write … right?” I smiled at my play on words.
Mr. Wainright’s face was expressionless. “It’s nice to see you so upbeat, Sam.”
“The whole place is,” I said.
“I’m not talking about holiday cheer,” he said. I scrunched my eyebrows. Mr. Wainright placed the pages on his desk and looked me in the eye. “Writers write what they know, too, Sam,” he said. “I can read between the lines, too.” I sat back in my chair and he continued after a downward glance. “There’s some heavy stuff in there.”
“Too much bleeding?”
“No, realism brings people into a story. Makes them relate. Makes for good writing.” Mr. Wainright sat back in his large swivel chair and clasped his hands behind his head as was his wont. He raised an eyebrow. “I have some concerns about your reality.”
“I can only write about my life,” I said.
“That’s the point, Sam,” he said, and then rested his arms on his desk. “I know all about what goes on in the neighborhood streets. I don’t want to see you get sidetracked.”
“You know me, Mr. Wainright,” I said with smiling eyes. “I’m just passin’ through.”
“I hope so. But don’t hesitate to come to me—or someone else you trust who has your best interests in mind.” I nodded as he grabbed the pages and stood. He squeezed around his desk and put a hand on my shoulder. “Now, let’s get this published,” Mr. Wainright said.
I did my best to concentrate on my work at the bookstore—had to, returns were still pouring in—but that had become increasingly harder to do over the previous weeks. My life and my writing demanded more and more of my attention, and I found myself easily distracted, as I was on that Monday. I just couldn’t get Tony or the people who made reference to who he was out of my mind.
I hadn’t heard from him since he had dropped me off, and he wasn’t outside the school that day to drive me to work. Not that I looked that hard at the usual gathering of vehicles at the curb; I didn’t really expect him to be there after hearing the way Richie talked about a meeting that seemed pressing and exciting to him. Tony and Vin would no doubt be worked up about it, too, I thought.
I was glad when closing time came and I bolted out the door. I only gave a cursory glance to the vehicles outside before huddling under my coat and heading for the subway. I knew Tony wouldn’t be there, either.
I didn’t make any detours that day on the way to my apartment because I didn’t want to miss his call. I waited as long as I could after arriving there before asking Mom and Grandma if I had any messages. When told there were none, I threw myself into dinner preparations and decided that I would enjoy another evening at home. When life deals you lemons, make lemonade, I reminded myself. I chuckled inside as I thought that I had sure been handed enough of that yellow citrus.
“First day back go okay?” Grandma asked as we worked at the kitchen counter, side by side. Mom had shown no interest in making it a threesome and had remained on the living room couch, wrapped tightly in her robe.
“Great,” I said. “Writing’s going better than expected.”
“We didn’t have much of a chance to talk about New Year’s. That Pamela behave herself?”
“She was fine. Why do you ask?”
“I saw how she barely tolerates you. She lives for that son of hers.”
“Like I don’t?” I chuckled.
Grandma let go of her mixing spoon and turned to me. “That’s fine, Samelah, as long as you live for each other.”
I gave her a quick hug. “I’m the one writing the story, Gram, remember?” I said.
I was startled after school the following day when I found Janice waiting for me outside her Camaro at the curb, and was concerned the instant I approached her and saw her dark face. She barely said hello before waving me into the front seat.
Shock is the only word to describe my reaction when Janice dumped the reason for her unannounced appearance as soon as her door closed. “Richie’s been shot!” she shouted, on the verge of tears. From the looks of her eyes, it seemed like she’d been bawling for a while.
“Jesus Christ! Jan,” I exclaimed as I reached for her across the console. “Is he okay?”
She started to sob. “No, Sam, he’s in Methodist,” she said, her chest heaving, “and … he … might not … make it!” The floodgates opened and Janice wept bitterly. I held her for a couple of minutes until her shaking body calmed down.
“What the fuck happened?”
“Haven’t ya seen the News?” Janice asked, and reached for the paper on the rear seat. I hadn’t; that daily, for the most part, reflected Brooklyn. I had always made it a point to scan the Times instead, in the school library. It described the world I was headed for, even if I didn’t know half the words and spent as much time with the dictionary as I did with the broadsheet.
“No,” I said as Janice spread the paper on the dashboard. I wondered for the first time whether circumstances would keep me stuck on the wrong side of the bridge.
A drug deal gone bad was spread all over page four. A photo of a covered body on a sidewalk dominated the adjacent story. My eyes flew over the article. “I don’t see his name anywhere,” I said.
“That’s a black coke dealer there in the picture. Cops found a gun and said it was fired three times.”
“So?”
“Aldo said they took three slugs out of Richie last night.”
“Did his brother say it was connected?”
“Didn’t hafta. What else would anyone think?”
“Listen, Jan,” I said as I stroked her tousled hair. “There’s a lot of shootings in this godforsaken borough.”
“Do the math, Sam,” she grunted.
“Okay, even if Richie was there, maybe it was self-defense,” I said, and shuddered as I thought that maybe he wasn’t the only one who had to defend himself. “Were Vin and Tony with him?”
“Nobody knows,” Janice said, “or is sayin’ anythin’ if they do. Aldo couldn’t reach out to either of them.” She began to sob and shake again. “What am I gonna do if he dies, Sam?”
“He’ll pull through. I just know it,” I lied. I had no idea how this unplanned chapter was going to work itself out. I opened the glove box and pulled out a few tissues that I stuffed into her hand.
“I’ve … got … to go … see … him,” Janice said with labored breathing. She wiped her eyes and pulled herself together as best she could.
“Want me to drive?” I asked, though the thought scared me. I had gotten a license but had driven only a couple of times since my road test.
“No, but can you come with me? I’m so scared, Sam.”
I hugged my best friend again. “Of course,” I said. I was plenty scared, too. And not just about Richie, though that was more than enough. I pictured Tony in some cell again or, worse, holed up bleeding somewhere, and I was afraid all of this was becoming too much for me to handle, too much to carry across the bridge that was in walking distance from the hospital where we were headed. But I forced my worries into the recesses of my mind; my friend needed me then.
Richie’s family was gathered in the small waiting room adjacent to the CCU. Their grave faces told me how critical his condition was. I let go of Janice’s hand and stood near the doorway because I didn’t know Richie’s family well and wasn’t comfortable enough to approach them. Janice hugged everyone as she sobbed anew. I fidgeted near the door for a long minute and then decided to go back downstairs to the small chapel off the main lobby.
A peaceful feeling enveloped me as I knelt in silent prayer, alone in the bosom of a facility that had been constructed decades ago. It seemed I was far away from the torment that was being endured only a few floors above that I was powerless to alleviate, and my lifelong goal seemed to be slipping from my grasp in the Bensonhurst world that was all too real that day. I bowed my head, closed my eyes, and sought the Blessed Mother.
Ten minutes later, I looked up at the chapel’s large wood cross. The suffering all around me, I knew, paled in comparison to Christ’s. I vowed to endure my own, and to do whatever I could to help others do likewise. I bowed my head again, made the sign of the cross, and clasped my hands for a moment longer on the pew in front of me.
I left the chapel and headed for the elevators, where I saw the back of a priest who was waiting. That wouldn’t be unlikely, I thought, in a hospital with a religious affiliation. But I knew who he was, and that seemed appropriate to me, too. “It’s good to see you, Father,” I said as I reached his side.
Father Rinaldi turned toward me. His face was all business. “’Twould be better if I saw you and those upstairs in my parish.”
I glanced at the descending lights above the elevator door.
“I suppose saving souls can happen anywhere,” I said, and turned my head back to him.
Father Rinaldi’s face brightened. “Out of the mouths of babes.” He smiled as the elevator chimed.
On the subway an hour later, I knew I’d be hunching over my Smith-Corona for a long time that night. Still no word from Tony; was he involved, was he on the lam, was I insane having these absurd thoughts? I just didn’t know anything at the moment. I had sat with Janice in the corner of the waiting room until she had had a chance to see Richie. She came back after a two-minute visit at his bedside and moaned about the tubes coming out from all over him. It made me think about how some connections were really tough to sever. And that, in turn, made me think about Tony again. In the swaying train, I decided I’d call his house as soon as I could steal away to my room after dinner. The clanging wheels beneath me marked the passing time until I reached the stop near my home.
Mom and Grandma were in the living room, sitting on the couch, when I arrived. Grandma’s socks were rolled beneath the simple, faded housedress she always wore and Mom was wrapped in her robe, whose random stains had never come completely out in the wash. The News was spread open on the coffee table.
“Nice crowd ya hang with,” Mom said through a haze of cigarette smoke.
“You should talk,” I murmured as I headed for the kitchen.
“What was that?” she called after me.
“Nothin’,” I said as I disappeared. She couldn’t wait to say I told you so. Then the unexpected came from her.
“Whatever I did in my life you do exactly the opposite! Look at me. You know why I’m sick and poor, because I abused myself. Going out with the wrong guys, drinking too much. Finding myself in situations I wasn’t very proud of. This is what happens when you wind up with the wrong man. If I can tell you one thing and one thing only, that’s it.” My mother exhausted herself with her words, yet continued on. I could see it within her red swollen eyes. “Do you think I like being on welfare? Having to walk around with those fuckin’ food stamps? It’s a horror.”
“Mom, I understand,” I blurted out to her.
“No, you don’t, and hopefully you never will! Now go and get me another box of cigarettes.”
Her talk was genuine; however, it seemed to revert back to self-destruction, and cigarettes were a part of that. So I got them for her; sometimes I felt that was all she had left. My heart ached for my mother.
Grandma sat quietly. I knew that at this moment there was a bigger issue: Richie fighting for his life.
That struggle served as the start of the next chapter that I felt I had to get on the page as soon as I entered my bedroom, before I made that call to the Kroon residence. The later the better, anyway, I reasoned. There would be more of a chance to catch Tony there.
At my desk, I felt that Richie’s struggle trumped my own and I filled pages with my ruminations about perspective. In the scope of things, how important was my quest to reach the other side of the river? I wondered. Did it matter, and did it matter if Tony was with me? Would not making it across make any difference in either of the two worlds that I was straddling? Would crossing it even change anything?
Thoughts raced through my mind as I questioned everything. An hour later, I had sorted it out in my mind and on the pages advancing in my typewriter. It came down to building something, brick by brick, cable by cable, until it was finished. So what if it wasn’t easy? I asked myself. The struggle for life never was, I felt. Even those born with a lot more than I was given had their battles. The movie stars and rock stars, whose posters Tony wouldn’t let me hang in my bedroom, carried their own crosses. Everyone had to fight to get somewhere, I reasoned, and use every means of support, whether it was fans or family money. Or the loved ones I had, I thought as I wrote. I decided that my towers and my roped wire were as real as the life that was waiting for me.
I spun the last filled page from the carriage and clipped it to the rest before reaching for the phone. Pamela answered.
“Oh … hi, Sam,” she said after my greeting.
“Is Tony there?” I asked. Please, God, I said to myself.
“No.”
“Do you know when he’ll be home?”
“He said not to wait up,” Pamela deadpanned. At least she’d talked to him, I thought. “So ya’s don’ know where he is, huh?” she scoffed.
“Will you tell him I called?” I asked.
The phone went dead.
Katrina Kroon’s afternoon birthday party in early February was starting in thirty minutes and Tony was late. I set my hand mirror on the dresser and looked into the full-length one on the inside of my bedroom door as I assessed both my appearance and the events of the weeks that had followed New Year’s.
Tony had finally showed up at school two days after Janice and I visited Ritchie in the hospital. He swore the lump above a blackened eye was the result of a “discussion” that had taken place at Cue Ball. I didn’t mention days later that Janice had been unable to confirm his story with information from her father, who alternated between his pool hall and Rocco’s below. Not that he would be likely to blab, anyway, I had thought, not even to his own daughter.
I knew that Tony wouldn’t be any more forthcoming than Mr. Caputo and I didn’t want to add to the stress he always appeared to be under, but I needed to know what happened. Richie had taken a turn for the better and was out of danger. Maybe I can create a story, I thought when I eyed myself up and down and recalled that frantic episode in Janice’s Camaro.
I knew that Tony was on his way because he was obligated to be at his sister’s family celebration and his mother would never forgive him if he didn’t show up. It seemed like he had been busy more often than not since New Year’s, and distracted every time I saw him, which hadn’t been often. I had asked him numerous times about this drug thing; I mean it made the papers and television. Still, I got no response, not even his usual bad temper. I felt that something was brewing, something that even I couldn’t get out of. For once I was beginning to actually feel trapped. I’d be with him for only a few hours, but when the sex was finished he dropped me off at home and told me he had to meet the guys. His phone calls were abrupt and he always said he’d call back but usually didn’t. Was his business consuming him, I wondered? Even though the usual wad of C-notes was ever present in his pocket
or his hand. What business? I wondered more. Were the legal proceedings against him and the visits from cops for questioning about Richie’s incident, which he let slip once to me, getting to him? Or was Tony losing interest in me? Was there someone else? I wondered.
That whack across my face still gnawed at me. Janice had suggested I forget it but I couldn’t. It seemed like all the girls overlooked their guys’ bad behaviors because one wrong word or glance would cost the women plenty. Like it had for me. Those girls didn’t want to lose their Bensonhurst world, but I desperately wanted to lose mine. I didn’t want to follow in my mother’s footsteps and end up sick and bitter from trying to find happiness with a batterer and philanderer. I needed to keep myself fresh and creative, not only to make it to Manhattan but to stay there. It was waiting for me, I knew. I could see my name in bookstores and I wanted everything to work out with Tony so he’d be by my side when success hit.
It seemed like Tony “knew a guy” just about everywhere and I thought that maybe he really did have contacts in publishing. But that wasn’t the only reason I wanted to keep seeing him. He was handsome, strong, confident … and had taken my virginity. I loved the guy and wanted him to be proud of me, but I made a vow to myself: if he ever hurt me again, I would dump him. I would tell him that, too, and if he didn’t like it, that was too damned bad.
Brooklyn Story Page 20