by A. J. Benza
“A.J., Gino . . .” my mother shouted up the steps. “Peter and some other friends are at the door. Come on down.”
“I’ll put these right back in the same spot if you ever wanna look again,” I said. “You don’t have to ask me, just reach way in the back, inside the Candy Land box.”
“Umm, okay,” Gino said. “What does Pete want to do? Do I have to play if it’s kickball?”
“Believe me,” I said. “After last time, kickball is the last thing we want to play.”
Most of the bad things we did that summer were hatched next door in Pete’s spit-shined two-car garage. Whenever Pete’s father was walking the beat on an overnight shift in the city, his mother was usually busying herself with housework or long chitchat sessions on the kitchen phone. Sometimes she’d be upstairs with her eldest daughter, Joanna, watching Kojak or whatever popular TV show was on that night. The last place she’d visit was the garage. Maybe she was afraid of what she’d see. For whatever reason, she never ventured in. Never knocked on the door, nothing. But it was the kid who was suddenly tagging along with Pete that made this night a bit more dangerous. I didn’t want to scare Gino, but the “new” kid among us was Vinny D’Avanzo. Vinny was a kid who had moved into the neighborhood a year ago, and he was still convinced he had to do some stupid, daring things in order to be accepted in our clique. He had a cute eleven-year-old sister named Tina who was always like a shadow to him. On this particular night, Vinny was dying to hang out with us but he couldn’t shake his sister. So, in his own twisted, little mind, he devised a plan that we could all hang out in Pete’s garage and be okay with Tina’s company.
On many occasions, Pete’s garage was like an after-hours club. There were nights we all sneaked in bottles of any type of liquor we could smuggle out of our houses. One night we even passed around a bottle of old, spoiled vermouth. Another time, we watched Richie Tischler blow smoke rings with his brother’s unfiltered Camels. When we felt really crazy, we’d creep to the hallway on the second floor of his house and jump down the laundry chute and land in the heavy-duty hamper in the corner of the garage. It was a straight drop. I don’t know how we didn’t break our backs.
But that night was different. Gino and I followed Pete and Vinny to the garage and were quickly met by Richie and Perry, who were flipping baseball cards on the driveway. Vinny took us all aside before we entered the garage and gave us the skinny. Only God knows how he got this out of his mouth.
“Hey guys, hold up, hold up,” Vinny said, with a slight smirk on his face. “Tina wouldn’t disappear. I can’t shake her tonight. And my mom says I gotta watch her . . .”
Tischler was the first to pipe up. “Then what the hell are we gonna do with that little cockroach snooping on us all night?”
Vinny took an approach that put a stink on diplomacy, let alone family values.
“Listen, listen,” he said. “I told her she could hang out for a little while, but I asked her what price she was willing to pay.”
“And what’d she say?” I asked.
And here’s where nothing makes sense at all, but—years later—it would become one of those handful of nights a boy never forgets. However she figured it out—maybe with a shove from Gloria Steinem—but Tina knew she, as a young girl around a bunch of boys, was holding a better hand. She laid out her deal points to big brother, and he explained them to our confused, frightened, and timid souls.
“So . . . Tina wants to hang with us guys tonight,” he said. “And we all know my little sis is cool, right?”
“Yeah, right, yeah,” we all mumbled.
“Well, here’s the deal,” he said. “She said if we let her hang out with us for a night, she’d take her shorts off and show us . . . her beaver.”
And there it was. One minute you’re sitting in your hot bedroom flipping through Playboy, trying to figure out life. The next, your cute, little neighbor—who you’ve known since kindergarten—is offering up her private parts as a way to fit in with the boys. Between Debbie’s promise and Tina’s offering, I was happy, excited, and sick to my stomach all at the same time. Gino was as white as the sheets in the hamper.
One of us, I can’t remember who, started laughing wildly. “What the fuck are you talking about? Where? When? She’s just gonna pull her shorts down in the garage?”
“No,” Pete said. “Here’s the deal: she’s behind the azalea and rhododendron bushes right now. She won’t do it in the garage with all the lights on.”
She had her scruples.
So, once we composed ourselves the best we could, we all marched quietly to Pete’s backyard and lined up right by the giant bushes, where Tina was lying on a blanket, out of our view, with her shorts off. Fortunately, for us, the moon was glowing strong enough that we didn’t need the bright lights of the garage.
Pete parted the bushes and we ducked in one by one. None of us had seen one in the flesh before. Tischler went first, Perry second, I was third, and Gino last. It was like a receiving line. Tischler was already in and out and laughing really loudly as Perry dipped behind the hedges for his ten-second view. By the time I walked in and knelt next to Tina, I could feel the other boys’ faces staring at me through holes in the bushes. I didn’t like the predicament I was in, since I really liked Tina. She was a brown-skinned, pretty girl—almost as dark as I was—because I think she was Sicilian on her mother’s and father’s sides. When it was my turn to do whatever it was we were supposed to do, I sat down beside her and touched her tight, flat belly and I looked in her eyes and tried to figure out her motive. It was nothing like the Playboys up in my room. Tina’s area was so small and delicate and, with her little bikini lines glowing in the dark, I could barely make out any hair at all, but I took a good, long look. As beautiful and vulnerable as she was, I did what all the boys did: I just stared at what she was nervously presenting to us. She looked me in the eyes and giggled uneasily, then covered her area with her hands as if to say, That’s it, show’s over.
On the other side of the hedges, I had to adopt the macho stance. There were high fives all around, and I remember me and the other boys trying to suppress laughter from our brimming smiles. But that wasn’t really how I felt. I really wanted to wrap a blanket around her and put a stop to it, but my stupid standing among the boys made that choice harder than what you’d expect.
“Let’s go, Gino,” Richie shouted. “You’re up!”
By the time Gino walked into the hidden area, smelling of pine needles and fresh earth, we were all poking our faces in to see what he’d do. I watched him kneel down, touch Tina’s face, pluck a nearby dandelion, and awkwardly place it on her privates while whispering, “I’m so sorry.” Tina’s expression changed on a dime as she hiked up her panties in record speed, got up, and headed out of the yard and down the block. I also saw Gino bolt for the front door of my house.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” Perry said. “That’s it. Show’s over?”
“Yeah, man. Let her go,” I said, with a little bit of anger. “What the hell else you want her to do? Huh?”
The guys just backed up and acted as if it were time to move on to the next thing. Obviously, for Gino and me, it was something more important.
“What’s up with Gino?” Perry said.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe it freaked him out. I keep telling you guys that he’s only ten.”
I left the boys behind and caught up with Gino at my house. I took the steps upstairs two at a time, where I found him in our bedroom, pacing back and forth.
“You all right?” I asked.
“That poor girl,” he said. “I can’t believe that’s the way he treats his little sister.”
“It ain’t like that. He loves his sis,” I stammered. “But, did you at least like it? Was it something you’d like to do again?”
“No,” Gino said adamantly. “I don’t understand the big at
traction. It’s just not something I enjoy seeing—in a magazine or in person.” We continued the debate as best a twelve-year-old and a ten-year-old could, but it went nowhere, and before long Gino crashed on his cot.
I tried reasoning a bit. “Gino, I don’t know what it’s like in New Jersey or with any of the boys you hang around with,” I said. “But, I’m telling you, that was something that a guy dreams of. I mean, I feel bad for Tina and all, but she volunteered. And we got to see her bush in person, right up close. I’d never seen one, had you?”
“Maybe some boys are like that, but I’m not one of them,” he said. “I don’t know how I’m going to be able to look at her tomorrow.”
“It’ll be a little weird,” I said.
He turned his body toward the wall and asked if I could shut the light on the way out. “I’m really tired. Let’s just forget it for tonight.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” I said. “It’s been a long day. I’ll come up a little later.”
When I got downstairs, I could hear the unmistakable snippets of my mother gossiping with Aunt Mae and Aunt Mary around the kitchen table. With a large Entenmann’s crumb cake before them and their second pot of coffee brewing, chances were good they’d be occupied for a while. Rather than walk into that sit-down, I decided to follow the sounds of the living room TV, where my father was all settled in his recliner, with our wonderful mutts, Sonny and Pippen, asleep on his lap.
“Hey, Dad,” I said.
“There he is,” he said. “The man with the plan. What’s the plan tonight?”
“I don’t know,” I offered.
“Well, I do,” he said. “You’ve got two free hands and your father needs ‘magic fingers.’ ”
“Yeah, sure, Dad,” I said. “The lotion is right here.”
“Good.”
“But . . . Dad,” I stammered. “Is it okay if I ask you some advice about what happened tonight with Gino and some friends of mine?”
With that, my father sat up, pushed the dogs away, and let me know his mind was 100 percent there for me.
“But of course,” he said. “Tell me what’s what.”
To his credit, my father never made it difficult to discuss things of this nature. And so I began, while spreading all sorts of lotions on his tired body and giving him the right type of rubdown.
“So, it goes like this,” I started. “Tonight, Vinny D’Avanzo allowed Tina to show us her beaver behind some bushes in their backyard. It felt weird and all, but I just did it because all the other guys were doing it.”
“Was it more embarrassing for you than for her?” he said.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “She didn’t seem too upset, but it really seemed to screw up Gino’s head.”
“How so?”
“Well, the minute he saw it, he put a flower on it and told her how sorry he felt for her. And then he just ran back home and crashed in his cot.”
“Have you talked to him?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I tried, but it seems like he wants to block the whole thing out of his mind.”
“Let me ask you a question,” he said. “Do you think, after spending some time with Gino, that he’s the same kind of boy as you and your friends?”
“No. He’s not,” I said. “He’s a great kid, but he’s different.”
“Yes,” my father calmly said. “And I’m pretty sure he’s going to stay that way because he doesn’t have a choice.”
“That’s okay, as long as it’s okay for him,” I said.
“Well, A.J., it might not always be okay for him,” he said. “But if he’s brave enough to get through this himself, then I want him to always feel it’s okay for him to be who he is whenever he’s around this family. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, sure, Dad,” I said, somewhat confused but satisfied with my father’s on-the-spot verdict.
“Hey, Dad,” I said. “Mommy said aunt Geneva is feeling better from her operation and might be driving to our house in a few days. Maybe that will make Gino feel better.”
This is where my father had had enough of the charade. “I’m sure it will. But A.J., listen to me, your aunt Geneva didn’t have cancer like your mother had two years ago,” he said.
And staying true to his form of never hiding the bitter truth with a sugar coating, my father decided it was time to cut me in on it.
“She had a voluntary hysterectomy.”
“But why?” I said, remembering all the pain my mother endured during her illness. “Why would someone go through the pain Mommy suffered if they didn’t have to?”
He held his tumbler of Scotch, resting it on his belly, before letting me in on a dark family secret. “She didn’t want to have any more of my brother’s children.”
I stood there in the silence, stunned by the violent honesty of what he said. I reached for more lotion and continued his rubdown.
12
MIDNIGHT AT THE OASIS
God only knows we had our share of neighborhood arguments and physical altercations during the summer, and as much as my father wanted to show us his calmer side, there were some situations that had to be handled in his inimitable style.
Enter George Coulter, an unfortunate man, though a man of considerable wealth, who lived on the canal and just happened to be hosting a catered affair in his backyard complete with a waitstaff in black suits and white gloves. The party was occurring one Sunday afternoon, a beautiful August day, about twelve houses down the canal from where we lived.
If I could get into my father’s head, I’d imagine he was holding the piece of information from us that had really set him off in the first place. Apparently, as the story goes, Mr. Coulter was unhappy with his recent home-carpet installation, but rather than speak to my father man-to-man, he had the nerve to drop a note of his disapproval in our mailbox and refer to my father as a “hotheaded guinea” in the process. Mind you, my father was merely the manager of the carpet store. He had nothing to do with installation.
I’ll never know how long my father let this bit of information fester in his brain, but I don’t recall anything different when it came to prepping the boat for a fishing expedition. Everything was the same. While the men got the boat stocked with the correct fishing poles, nets, and baits and also made sure we had a half dozen or so clamming bags on board, the women prepared tin-foiled sandwiches to bring to the boat, as well as water, soda, and various bags of chips and stuff. And, of course, several flasks of Scotch were lowered into the boat.
When we pushed off the dock, I couldn’t help but see a glint in my father’s eyes.
After he instructed Jack to man the anchor minutes after we had set off down the canal, we knew something was up.
“You want me to grab the anchor, Pop?” Jack said. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t worry, just listen to your father-in-law,” he said. “We’re gonna drop anchor right around the corner. Teach this fucker a lesson in front of his family.”
“What’s going on?” Gino asked me.
“Just don’t worry about it,” I said. “The old man knows what he’s doing.”
Soon as we drove about one hundred yards and were smack-dab in front of Coulter’s fancy backyard party, my father instructed Jack to drop anchor in the canal.
We sat there for a few moments, watching the Coulters’ fancy party, from twenty yards away or so. “The Girl from Ipanema” was playing on his fancy, backyard hi-fi system.
“Is this going to be a fight like at the Coogans’?” Gino asked me.
“You never know,” I said.
After a few minutes of watching champagne served with finger sandwiches, my father had seen enough.
He cupped his mouth with his hands and shouted at the host and his guests.
“Attention, ladies and gentlemen. Attention all. George Coulter is a cocksucker! The man whose
house you’re at is a scared cocksucker who’d rather stick notes in people’s mailboxes than talk to them in person.”
With our boat drifting toward the dock, my father was attempting to climb atop the guy’s property. That’s when Coulter appeared at the dock and did all he could to appease my father and beg him to meet him the next afternoon.
“Al, please, there are women and children here. . . .”
“Attention, women and children . . .” my father started.
“Please, God, stop,” Coulter said.
“I’ll stop,” my father said. “Do your friends know about your fuckin’ letter-writing skills?”
“Al . . . please. I was wrong. Let’s please settle this tomorrow.”
“Say you were fuckin’ wrong again”
“Al . . . please!”
“Say, ‘I’m a cocksucker and I was wrong!’ ”
“I was wrong. Jesus Christ, I was wrong.”
“Say it or I’ll hop up on your fuckin’ deck right now.”
“I’m a . . . cocksucker, Al, okay?”
My father put one foot on his dock.
“Okay, okay. I’m a cocksucker . . . and I’m wrong.”
“Good boy, George,” my father said. “Come see me at noon or else I’ll show up at your house with a fuckin’ baseball bat. Understood?”
Needless to say, Mr. Coulter complied, quickly saw things our way, and apologized profusely.
After we lifted anchor and had traveled a few minutes down the canal, Jack laughed. “Hey, just another lazy Sunday afternoon.”
“The thing that gets me,” my dad said. “There was no stamp on the letter. That means the prick had the balls to stand on my porch and drop it in the mailbox.”