Little Boy

by Anthony Prato

  “Well, it’s time to disown me, A.J. Time to free your little slave. So I’ll tell you one last time before I get my father to come down here: Get the fuck out of my house, you maniac, and never come back.”

  I was still on my knees, crying. It wasn’t her words that wounded me, but her tone. Maria spoke to me as one might speak to a little child: angry and condescending and firm. She was practically taunting me with her words. I tried begging again. I tried apologizing. I tried. But she responded with a grin of all things, almost as if every word that left my mouth buttressed her opinion of me. She didn’t even ask me who I had kissed, and that angered me most of all.

  Helpless, I stood up and turned toward the door to leave. But something overpowered me—a feeling that for a long time afterward I didn’t even regret. I wanted to hurt Maria. Because she was right, I’d lost all control.

  I thought about thrusting my clenched fist toward that beautiful, angelic face, and punching her, hard, with not a slap, but a smash. I wanted to see blood pouring from her nose. She’d cover her face with her hands, and they’d become bloody, too. She’d sniffle and pant heavily, as the blood obstructed her breathing. She wouldn’t cry. She’d just moan and wheeze.

  That was my final plan for Maria, but I refused to carry it out. I couldn’t do it. I loved her too much. So instead, my fist loosened slowly, and my arm dropped to my side as a leaf falls from a tree limb. Without speaking another word, I got up and turned toward the door and left. Casually, I strolled to Fresh Pond Road and waited for the Q58 to come. Quietly, I peered through the window as the bus rumbled along. It went by many places that Maria and I had been together—Stern’s, the European-American Bank, Queens Center Mall—and each became frozen in the distance, at the end of a long and winding road. I hummed that song all the way home. I thought about the Academy. I thought of what Kyle had told me so many times before: “I always win, A.J. I always win.” Finally, I thought about fucking Maggie in the back seat of my car just a few days before.

  I concluded: Neither Maria nor I had won the war. It was a tie. And that was just fine by me.

  Chapter 19

  Little Boy

  I never saw Maria again.

  I haven’t hated her even for a brief moment since we last spoke. I know it’s all my fault. That’s why every moment since I was last at her side has been absolute torture. I’ve never had an operation, or had any sort of organ removed, but I sure as hell know what it feels like. As trite and cheesy as it sounds, Maria amputated my heart—meticulously, like a surgeon—and I haven’t seen it since.

  It’s not just my heart. It’s my soul, and every other amorphous part of my conscience and mind, which elude you until you actually lose them. I don’t know what to think. I constantly speculate what a joy it would be to get whatever it is that’s missing back.

  It’s been a long and winding road away from my life with Maria. At each turn in that road—and there are many of them—I break down and cry. The tears may not even form, but I’m shedding tears within each day. They refuse to pause, even for a second.

  Shortly after our break-up, I called her up and quietly said “hello.” She hung up. I called a dozen more times over the course of an hour until, finally, she disconnected her number. There won’t be a L’Enfant Reformation or New A.J. this time, I thought.

  One day, a few weeks after Easter, just as the weather was beginning to warm up again, I drove over to Maria’s house and rang her doorbell. I saw her peek through the blinds and see me but she didn’t answer. I left this poem in her mail box:

  The present is a memory, still living in my heart.

  I maintain your timeless love, as if we did not part.

  You claimed that it would be with me until the bitter end.

  But where’s your smile and guiding faith, my present love and friend?

  I’ve survived our separation, by oceans and by land.

  But wasn’t wary of the rift I’d dig with my bare hands.

  Where are you, my present love, so precious and so new?

  You’re with me each and every day, but am I with you?

  Maybe it was meant to be, our love felt by one.

  My eternal agony, to be shared with none.

  Present love, you are still here; I know that I’m not there.

  Please let me in your present life; be more than a prayer.

  I don’t know if she ever read it. But the words are true to this day. Maria is with me each moment, every second. I said earlier that ever since Maria and I parted I’ve felt like I was missing a vital organ. But that’s only somewhat truthful. Much of the time I feel as if I’m carrying something extra—a hefty load, a back-breaking guilt.

  Often, I sense that the hunter shadowing me is for real. Never before was he anything more than an image, a phantom. But the moment Maria abandoned me, he transformed himself into an anchor. He no longer hides in the darkness; instead, he drags behind me and weighs me down. He’s on my shoulder, whispering into my ear, annoyingly, persistently. And his tone is terribly high-pitched and condescending and cruel, much like Maria’s the last time I saw her. I couldn’t even tell you exactly what it says, but I’m forced to listen. When my ear strays even for a moment, the voice briskly transforms and resembles my own.

  I die each day when I hear that voice, but I never resurrect. I just continue to die, over and over again. I wish I could get it to stop. I wish I could call Maria explain how much I love her and how sorry I am. And I do love her dearly. I’ve always loved her. How can you love a woman and hurt her at the same time? I don’t know the answer to that question, but I search for it each minute of the day to no avail.

  There is a condition of emotion that lies somewhere between weeping and laughing. It is, I think, a temporary state within which most people rarely find themselves. Practically everybody drifts abruptly between a smile and a frown. That’s it, day-in and day-out. You’re always where your circumstances guide you—either sorrow or elation. Most people probably don’t realize it, however, because most people have never been in my situation. Nobody has.

  I haven’t tasted euphoria in a long time; I haven’t been depressed in just as long. Both euphoria and depression are feelings others experience constantly, but I’m trapped like a mosquito in a cobweb between those two extremes. I only wish I could feel…feel something…just to know I’m alive. I would kill to feel happy or sad—either one would be fine. Never before Maria did I think there even was such a condition. I always thought there’d be an ideal and content medium, if anything at all. There isn’t—there’s just this—and I loathe myself for having discovered it. I haven’t been to a psychologist since Maria and I broke up. But I’m damn sure that he would tell me: “A.J., don’t worry, life will get better as the days go on.” And he’d be full of shit.

  Well, maybe not full of shit. Actually, he’d probably believe in his own words, not realizing that nobody has ever been in my situation before.

  I’ve never tried to explain my life to anyone before tonight. Nobody, not even Kyle, knows about the real me. I’ve never told you about what happened between me and Maria. Not while it was happening, for sure…not until now. I didn’t want to make you guys cry. And I didn’t want to hear you say “I told you so.” I didn’t even tell Kyle, Rick, Paul, or Mike any of the details about our break-up. I simply told them all that Maria and I had broken up, too ashamed to admit the truth.

  I sometimes think about that Italian phrase Maria taught me—Amici con tutti, confidenza con nessuno—and how I should put it on my tombstone. There is no confidant beside Maria. Her imperfections made her perfect. She was comfortable with herself. She knew she wasn’t flawless, only she didn’t let the world know it. And she could have been mine had I just offered myself to her as she offered herself to me. If I had the chance to do it all over again—from our very first date in Central Park—no, from the moment we first spoke at that goddamn high school dance—I would reveal my true essence to her.

  I ponder how Ma
ria and I would’ve turned out had I been true to her. And I don’t mean faithful in the sexual sense of the word. I mean truly devoted to her as a lover and friend, as someone to grow old with. I lay on my bed a lot, mulling it over. All of those wonderful moments we shared could have been certified by truth and love. I believe that had I chosen to be my true self, Maria and I would be in love and married at this moment.

  But what is love? Is it a blessing from the heavens, a state of unanimity that may be experienced by only two people on Earth who may or may not find one another? Or is it the Devil’s hex, a wicked prank that brings people together under some evil guise for the sole purpose of procreating more pawns to play the joke on?

  I doubt very much that either of these postulations is true. What’s more likely is that there’s no distinctive God or Devil, but rather a singular creator and destroyer who laughs as humans run around the planet like chickens without heads, not knowing what the fuck to make of all that happens around them. No good. No evil. Just a spectrum of emotions and sensations that drive even the tamest people to do the most insane things, some too good, some too bad.

  I’m the proof. I know that I’m not a bad person. But I feel no good within me. I feel nothing. I am the creator’s lost son, discharged to Earth to endure every unit of the spectrum, good and bad alike, finally settling on my mean. I’ve always considered myself an atheist, but I think I’m more spiritual now than ever before.

  I still remember learning about a chemical called Argon in Mr. Dick’s Physics class. It is an inert chemical, meaning it does not react with anything else. It’s just there, in the air—

  —and I’m just there, too. I move, and yet I am immobile; I hear and yet I am deaf; I speak and yet I am mute. For this reason, since I can’t possibly interact with anyone even if I wanted to.

  I am always alone. People speak to me, but—I swear to God—I don’t hear them. Their voices are just resonations, echoes. I don’t know whether they notice or not, but I do. I say something—I feel my mouth move—but I barely know exactly what will come out next. And I don’t care. It’s like being constantly drunk, only with no side effects other than that the intoxication never ends. I’ve been drunk. Usually, I enjoy being drunk. But nobody wants to be drunk each second of every goddamn day. For once I’d just like to be sober, both in thought and in mood.

  I like to lay down a lot more than I used to. I feel more comfortable lying on my bed, for example, where my body’s movement equals my mind’s. With all of these memories sweeping in and out of my head each minute, you’d think I’d be jittery, like a person who’s had too much coffee. But I’m not.

  As in a trance, I commence movement physically feeling as if I’ve already reached my destination before I’ve departed, as if gravity has pushed me down before I begin to jump. They were frightening at first, these feelings; but now I’m used to them.

  Early in my relationship with Maria I began to get the impression that I was losing knowledge. That feeling has been facilitated by our breakup. In fact, I feel as if now I know nothing other than my own emotions. So many people go to school or work in order to gain a special skill or expertise in some field. Some become architects, some doctors, some electricians. But I have no special skill. A new born baby just one year ago, this affliction has swiftly grown me into a frail old man. And a frail old man whose life has meant nothing, whose labor has been fruitless, whose talents are few—that’s a very sad person indeed.

  Only recently did I discover the nature of my problem of losing knowledge. It’s not that information has been swept out of my brain, leaving a vacuum in its place. Far from it. I now understand that knowledge has been eliminated only to have thoughts of one person take its place. I’m permeated by memories of Maria. I know nothing of the world around me beyond that of which I discovered with Maria. She is in the forefront of my mind whenever I attempt any task at all, no matter how trivial or minuscule it may be.

  I have shaved with Maria, showered with her, eaten dinner with her, studied with her, watched TV with her, slept with her, cried with her, walked with her, sung with her, and scratched my head with her. And not just once or twice each time. Each one, all of the time.

  Who am I? I don’t know.

  Each morning, when I wake up, I must literally tear myself from the bed to begin the day. It’s troublesome having to face others when I have no face to show. I don’t know what I look like, only what I feel like. I am my emotions. I’m not myself, whatever that is, unless I’ve thought of Maria, and what I did to her, and what I should have done instead, and felt her presence rattle my soul. And then I enter my trance, my mean. I’m not gratified until I’ve reached that mean. And only then have I sedated myself to the point that keeps me from drifting from bliss to sadness and back again, the two states that would affirm my humanity. Only then can I rise from bed and light my first cigarette of the morning. Or afternoon.

  Focusing on whatever it is I am is a task in and of itself. I’ve attempted time and again to classify myself as something, some type of being, or another. Mirrors mock me, for they only reflect a shadow of emptiness. Although what I am is an enigma, I need only glance at my World War II poster each morning to realize what I could have been. That is enough for me.

  I am not what I could have been. That is my existence. I am not.

  Only recently did I learn exactly what that World War II V-J Day poster portrayed. A short while ago I was reading a book that my dad had given me when I was younger: Great Events of the Twentieth Century. He said it had vivid accounts of all the major wars of the century, and he was right.

  I was especially interested in the World War II chapter of the book, which had photographs of about a dozen military aircraft flown by the Allies during the war. There was the B-17F Flying Fortress, a seventy-foot long plane with a six-thousand pound bomb load. There was the B-29 Superfortress, which could fly at a top speed of four-hundred miles per hour; it was such an effective plane that over four-thousand were built. There was the Chance-Vought F4U-1D Corsair. A naval attack plane, and one of World War II’s most effective dive-bombers, it was called Whistling Death because of the whistling sound it created as it swooped through the sky. There was the British Spitfire, a Royal Air Force combat plane, which was responsible for thwarting the German air attack during the Battle of Britain in 1940.

  And then there was Enola Gay.

  Enola Gay was a Boeing B-29 Superfortress. It’s WEFT: gigantic 141-foot permanent wings; four propellered, 2,200-horsepower engines; a cigar-shaped fuselage which was tapered at the rear; a thick, high-mounted, immobile tail. With Curtiss Electric four-blade sixteen-foot, seven inch propellers, it could fly up to 360 miles per hour at 25,000 feet.

  With an eleven-man crew, Enola Gay departed Tinian Island in the Marianas on August 6, 1945 at 2:45 a.m. and arrived back twelve hours and thirteen minutes later. During those thirteen hours, it released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan, at 8:15 a. m. local time.

  Atomic bombs are amazing. They depend upon the release of energy in a nuclear reaction known as fission, or the splitting of atomic nuclei. With a release of energy a million times greater than an equal weight of chemical high-explosives, they’re invention is the most impressive and disturbing application of science in human history. As the atom splits, it creates neutrons. Neutrons striking the heavy element uranium cause it to fission, producing fragments which have less mass than the original atom. Allowed to progress unchecked, a chain reaction releases energy rapidly and with explosive force.

  And it did.

  It’s official number was 44-86292. But the book said that the pilot, Lieutenant Colonel Paul Tibbets, named the plane Enola Gay after his mother. The atomic bomb it released had an explosive capacity equivalent to twenty-thousand tons of TNT. The bomb’s code-name was “Little Boy.”

  Its direct hit on Hiroshima killed seventy-eight thousand innocent citizens almost immediately. Another seventy-thousand were injured, and about ten-thousand were never discover
ed. But it wasn’t just the number of people who died, but the way they died. Thousands of people were instantly carbonized in a blast thousands of times hotter than the sun; further from the epicenter, birds ignited in mid-flight, eyeballs popped, and internal organs were sucked from bodies of victims.