With weeks of time on my hands, I worked on myself. My job at the bookstore allowed me to read more and learn more about the publishing business. The store owner gave me books for free now and then and I was in heaven. I suspected Tony wouldn’t like it since it had nothing to do with him, and I decided I would only tell him if I felt like it. After all, he had his private life with the guys. Why shouldn’t I have my own?
Now, when the doorbell rang, I went to the living room to greet Tony. I caught my breath when he waltzed in. He looked as good as I’d ever seen him, his soft hair just so, his wonderful physique exaggerated by tight pants and a shirt that was tucked in to reveal his narrow waist. What a looker! I beamed. Just like that, any bad memories and doubts I had about our relationship faded away. How could love banish all the bad? I just wasn’t strong enough to turn him away. That was my problem.
Tony waved at Mom and Grandma and complimented me in front of them before taking my hand. “C’mon, Sam,” he said as the others looked on without saying a word. “I don’ want ya makin’ us late for my sister’s party.”
I fought the urge to scoff. Who had kept whom waiting? I asked myself. He sure knew how to kill a mood, I thought. I grabbed my pocketbook and gave Mom a kiss on the cheek. She snarled under her breath. I know she just wanted to scream at him, “Stay away from my daughter, you loser,” but she didn’t; frankly, she just didn’t have the strength. That was all she did after New Year’s Day when Tony was around or was mentioned. She must have seen something on my face then, some little clue, I thought, or her own experience as a battered woman helped her interpret my body language and mood. Or maybe it was just her convictions about who Tony was and the neighborhood he came from, I thought. Whatever the reason, Mom had refused to talk about Tony Kroon. She had made up her mind that he was no good for her daughter, and she would continue to hold her ground. She’d tried to prevent me from ever seeing him again until Grandma reminded her that Grandma herself had tried the same thing before her daughter had gotten married. The resistance had done no good at all then, and wouldn’t work with me, either, Grandma had said. Besides, I was too smart and would be able to handle myself.
Mom lit a cigarette as I kissed Grandma’s soft face. “Do I look okay, Grandma?” I asked.
“You’re my little beauty, bubelah,” she said with a smile, and stroked my cheek. “You have a good time.” She looked at Tony and her smile disappeared. “You be good to my granddaughter,” she ordered in her usual raised voice.
“Yes, ma’am,” Tony said without shame. “Always.”
Despite my family’s misgivings, and my own concerns, I was happy to leave with Tony and felt as good as I had before when he opened the Porsche’s door for me, even though that only happened in front of my apartment building. We were silent as he drove a few blocks and then he pulled over to the side of the road. Tony looked me over and smiled.
“What’re ya doin’, Tone?” I asked. “We’re already late.”
“I got sumthin’ for ya,” he said. Tony reached into his pocket, pulled out diamond earrings, and dropped them into my hand. They glistened in the daylight.
“Oh my God,” I said. I rotated them in my palm and rainbows danced around the car’s interior. “They’re so beautiful.”
“Damned right they are,” Tony said, and then he put them on my ears. He sat back and smiled. “What do ya think of your boyfriend now?” he asked. “Maybe this’ll show your mother how serious I am about ya.”
My mother would not be impressed at all by him trying to make up for violent and still unknown criminal behavior with jewels. I knew better, too, but this was a moment, my moment, so I went with it. I looked from Tony to my ears in the rearview mirror. He hadn’t apologized for any of his behavior, but weren’t the earrings the next best thing? I pondered. The words “I’m sorry” were not in Tony’s vocabulary, but didn’t an expensive gift prove how much he cared? Wasn’t it a sign of how things would be someday? But as happy as I was at that moment, I considered telling him that if he ever hit me again, he’d be saying good-bye, just like I’d planned. I decided not to ruin the mood. He might think I wasn’t grateful, and I was. And I was sure that his inattention to our relationship was because of his struggle, and the smack that night had to be a fluke. He was still young and he just needed to learn a little self-control. Isn’t that what he was trying to say with the earrings? I constantly found myself in my very own war of contradiction. My brain would say one thing and my body would do another.
Tony looked calmly over my shoulder through the window and then back at me. He eyed me up and down. “Take off your clothes,” he said.
I was appalled. Once again, he had spoiled things for me, I thought, right after I had taken pains not to dampen his mood. “No, Tony,” I said softly, “there’ll be plenty of time for that after the party. You don’t want to disappoint your sister, do you? She really looks up to you,” I said. “If we don’t make it, she’ll be devastated. And so will your mom.” Mad as hell, too, no doubt. And she’d blame me, I knew … He cut me off abruptly.
“I don’ give a shit about my fat sister. I need ya right now, Sam. It’s been too long.”
I resisted until Tony gave up. It reminded me of the times he had done that before we’d gone all the way. He started the car and didn’t look in my direction or say another word the rest of the way. We arrived late and Pamela was so upset that she ignored Tony. He whispered to me that he wished his mom would just lighten up. He didn’t see what the big deal was all about.
Philip nodded to Tony and me with a half smile. I wondered if he felt proud of his daughter, and how he really felt about taking a backseat to Tony, whether he minded how Pamela fawned over their son. But even though I tried to know and fit in better with Tony’s family for his sake, I felt detached from them. My mind wandered. I looked forward to my high school graduation and associating with a different group of people. I could hardly wait to get away and start my real life with those who had broader ideas and visions. I thought it ironic that with all our differences, there was one thing—getting out of Bensonhurst—that Mom and I had in common. I took Tony’s hand and he squeezed mine.
For the first time it occurred to me that Tony could never come with me. I, on the other hand, was plenty determined.
Katrina pranced around the living room, showing off the low-cut ruffled dress she’d bought at what the locals called the “Mafia Princess Shop,” a glitzy boutique named Amore, on Eighteenth Avenue. If Katrina really cared how she looked, I thought, maybe she could try losing a few pounds. I felt it was hard to like Tony’s sister but promised myself I would do my best because Tony wanted me to consider his family as my own.
The celebration was an elaborate affair. If Pamela knew how to do anything, hosting a party was at the top of the list. A local Italian restaurant, Monti’s, had catered the birthday celebration right down to a sumptuous white cake with cannoli filling and yellow frosting from the Luigi Alba pastry shop, which was a Brooklyn landmark. Tony nearly gagged when he read the cake’s inscription: To the prettiest, smartest, kindest daughter. “They must have been talking about someone else,” he muttered to me—not his mean-spirited sister, who only had bad things to say about everyone. His mother was happy, though, and his dad was, too—a rare occurrence in the Kroon house-hold—so Tony refrained from offering his opinions to anyone else. That was rare, too.
When the party ended Tony and I left and got back into his Porsche, which was parked at the end of a dead-end street. I primped my hair in the rearview mirror and waited for him to start the engine. I felt good. We had been a relaxed couple in his family’s house, comfortable and natural together. Tony had behaved himself and I had to admit that I’d gotten satisfaction from flashing around my diamond earrings. Tony was turning over a new leaf, he had to be. I had believed in him from the day we met, and I decided I wouldn’t stop then when he was sagging under the weight of his own crosses. I knew that with my help he could grow into the powerful, succes
sful-but-loving man that he was meant to be. I recalled the expression “Behind every great man is an even greater woman, encouraging him to succeed.” I reset the rearview mirror and turned to Tony. “Why aren’t we going?” I asked.
“I’ve waited long enough, Sam. Get in the backseat.”
“Now? Can’t we wait until …?”
“No,” Tony said, and he glanced at the earrings.
I sighed, opened my door, and got out of the car and into the cramped rear. I scrunched into the corner, reached up under my skirt, pulled down my panties, and dropped them on the floor. Tony wedged in next to me. I was not up for sex, but I knew that if I didn’t take care of my guy, he’d go elsewhere. Tony ripped off my top and pawed my breasts. “Jesus, Tone,” I said, “that hurts. They’re not goin’ anywhere.”
He seemed distracted, as if he were in a trance. “They’re mine …” he breathed. “All mine.”
It was over in record time, and I ran my hand over the floor to find my panties. I felt something metallic. I picked up a silver lipstick tube that puzzled me for a few seconds. “What the hell is this?” I asked. He was ruining everything, I thought. Again.
“Stop lookin’ at my stuff,” Tony said.
“Your stuff?” I scoffed. “You wearin’ makeup now?” He stared at me for a moment and then at the lipstick case.
“Give it to me,” he said.
I flung it out the window. “Ya want your stuff, you jerk,” I said, “ya better go chase it.” There was fire in Tony’s eyes but he said nothing.
I labored to get dressed and then returned to the front. I slammed my door as Tony got behind the wheel. My breath was short and my heart ached. Hot tears burned my eyes and I tried to hold them back. I’d been so ready to believe in Tony but my mother was right. He was no good and I had no business being with him.
Tony put the key into the ignition and turned to me. “Look, Sam,” he said. “Ya need ta—”
“Look yourself,” I said through clenched teeth. “I’ve had enough of this. All I ever wanted was for you and me to be together and now look what you’ve done.” He reached for my hand but I pulled it back. “No!” I shouted. “Don’t you touch me or talk to me. Don’t even breathe on me.”
Tony reddened. “Give me a break, Miss Fancy Pants. Like you’re the only woman who ever found a tube of lipstick in her boyfriend’s car,” he said. I stared through the windshield as Tony rambled on. “I don’ know where it came from. It might be Katrina’s, or maybe it’s even your mother’s. She was in the car that night when I took you all to Monti’s.”
“We were in your mother’s car that night,” I said.
“Whatever,” Tony replied. “Anybody coulda dropped that fuckin’ lipstick.” He scanned me from head to toe. “Just look at yourself. Freakin’ out like a goddamned idiot. Looks like I hit a nerve. Maybe you’re the one who’s cheatin’.”
I turned to him and my fiery eyes narrowed. “Tony Kroon, you’re not getting out of this one so fast,” I said. “You know I don’t believe in cheatin’ and I thought you didn’t either. But I guess I was wrong … about a lot of things.”
“C’mon, Sam,” Tony prodded, turning on the magnetism. “I’ll take ya to Spades. Ya always wanted ta go there.” I knew that Tony and the guys never took their steadies to a club where they hung out alone, but desperate measures were in order for Tony right then. He would have some explaining to do to them if I showed up at Spades, but I wasn’t buying his pitch, anyway.
“You wanna take me to a place where you pick up your whores? No, thank you.” Tony’s face contorted but I didn’t care. “You know what else?” I said as I stared into those blue eyes that faded with my every word. “I don’t ever want to see you again.”
“Ya don’ mean that.”
“Yes, I do,” I said, gathering courage. “You can get one of your whores to take care of your dick ’cause I don’t ever want to see that disgusting thing again, either.”
Tony grabbed me by the hair and slammed my head against the dashboard two times in rapid succession. He let go and watched me sit up and touch my face, tears and blood streaming down my cheeks as I screamed out in fear. He then leaned in and opened his glove compartment to reveal a handgun. I didn’t know what size it was. I just knew it was a gun. He took it out and waved it at me. And placed it by my cheek, hard. My life flashed in a way I never knew before. I was consumed with fear.
“Is this what you want me to do. ’Cause I will.”
At this point I didn’t know what he was capable of or how much. I reached into my purse to get some tissues and pressed them against my forehead. For a moment, Tony looked as stunned as I was. “Oh shit,” he said in a soft voice. “I don’ wanna hurt ya, but don’ ever say sumthin’ like that again, Sam. I love ya, baby. I really do. I mean it,” he said in rapid succession. “I don’ hit girls but ya make me so crazy, I can’t control myself. It’s ’cause I love ya.” Tony ran a fist across his mouth. “Ya ain’t never goin’ ta leave me, Sam. Never. You’re mine until the day ya die.” His words were not of love, rather of obsession.
The tone of his voice and the saliva in the corners of his mouth frightened me. When he tried to put his arms around me, I pushed him away and cowered against the door. “Just take me home,” I said. “Right now.”
“Sure ya don’ wanna go out?”
I glared at him. “I need to go home.”
“Ya sure, Sam?”
I turned away from him and looked out the window. “I’m sure.”
When he pulled up to the curb in front of my apartment, I bolted from the car with Tony close behind. He grabbed me around the waist before I had gotten very far and I froze. I felt unseen eyes on my body and I moved a hand to my damaged face.
“This’ll never happen again, Sam,” Tony pleaded in a gentle voice. “I swear it. I just lost it for a second but it’s cuz I love ya so much. Not many women can say their guy loves them that much.” I knew I would never be able to trust him again. I said nothing and waited for him to let me go so I could escape to the safety of my crazy Jewish-Italian home. At least I never got physical abuse there, I thought. “Say we’re okay, Sam,” Tony continued. He sounded so pathetic, I might have taken pity on him if not for the dried blood on my forehead. He kissed me and I held my breath.
“I gotta go now,” I said, desperate to get away.
“But we’re okay, right?”
“Sure, Tone,” I nodded, just to get rid of him. “We’re okay.”
“That means we’re still together, baby, right?”
“It means whatever you want it to mean,” I said. “Will you please leave now? I have some explaining to do.”
“Can I walk ya ta the door?” I shook my head and cringed when Tony kissed me again. I turned around and tottered to the steps of my building. I exhaled when the door closed behind me. I had gotten away from him but my anguish wasn’t over. I had to face my mother and grandmother. I shivered when I realized that Tony had actually thought he could fix the trouble between us. I knew better. No amount of fixing could ever make it right again. Hit me once, your fault. Hit me again, my fault. I shuffled up the stairs with another bruise and a broken heart.
Mom and Grandma rushed to me and skipped the hellos. “We were on the expressway,” I explained in answer to their frantic queries, “and some idiot stopped right in front of us. Tony slammed on the brakes just in time and my face plowed into the dash. Of course, you know me, not wearing a seat belt and all. Good thing nobody got killed.”
No matter how many times I swore that my banged-up face had been caused by a tailgating accident, Mom didn’t buy it. Grandma did. Unless she was in denial that the same thing that happened two decades earlier to her daughter could happen again to her smart granddaughter. I couldn’t look her in the eyes.
“I never thought you were the type of girl not to use precaution,” Grandma said. Mom just shook her head and helped me with my wounds.
“I was there myself, you know, more than once. An
d you know something, Sam, I knew every excuse in the book.” Mom’s tired red eyes pierced me as if she saw right through me. She knew all too well that I had come home with a battered face and a broken spirit. “How many times I pretended to fall down the stairs or walk into a door. Shit, let me fuckin’ count.”
“Don’t swear again.” Grandma added her two cents.
“Oh please, Ma, as if she doesn’t curse by now.”
There would be no changing Mom’s opinion about moving us out of Bensonhurst to Bay Ridge, which she had more than hinted at for months. Maybe, just maybe, it was a good thing.
Bay Ridge was a historical neighborhood that was sleepy in comparison to ours. It was proud to have been the home of such personages as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, and its old stone houses mixed with newly built shopping centers and eight-lane intersections made people there feel like they were straddling two unrelated worlds, as I always felt wherever I was in Brooklyn.
Grandma and I saw a resolve in Mom that we hadn’t seen in years. After what had happened to me she made up her mind that I was heading in a bad direction, the die was cast, and it would be better to move sooner rather than later. Even though Bay Ridge was only three miles from our place on Seventy-third Street, mom thought it would make a world of difference to be in an area that was filled with a mixture of religions and cultures.
I knew she hoped Tony wouldn’t come to see me there but that was stupid, I thought. Ridiculous. Picking up and moving to a different location in Brooklyn wouldn’t stop someone like Tony.
It would be up to me to do that, or, at this point, God.
Sooner came a couple of days later. Mom’s friend from high school, Cynthia, her husband, Fred, and their young daughter, Justine, lived a few blocks away from where Mom planned to move. Although Mom and Cynthia hadn’t always gotten along when they were growing up, Mom was grateful to her for a job minding Cynthia’s baby and her loan of nine hundred dollars on short notice for the move to Bay Ridge. Mom’s conviction remained unchanged that the multicultural atmosphere there, as opposed to the homogeneous Italian neighborhood where she thought I was hanging out with the wrong people, would be a chance for us to have a better life.
Brooklyn Story Page 21