City of Margins

by William Boyle

  One time, not long after Donnie Parascandolo clocked him with the bat and his old man had offed himself, Mikey sat here and actually did think about killing himself, too. It was only for a minute. And he didn’t think about the how. Pipe or pills or knife or bridge—none of it crossed his mind. What he really thought about was what it would be like to be dead, if he would see things after he was dead, feel contentment or regret. He remembers wondering about his father, if being dead just meant being nothing forever, or if maybe it meant being a ghost on the streets.

  He should take a shower, but he doesn’t. He just changes his clothes, putting on clean underwear and jeans that his mother washed in the basement and dried on the line in the yard. He finds a yellow button-up shirt. The last and only time he wore it was his high school graduation.

  When he goes back down to the kitchen, all the lights are on. His mother is working on the chicken parm, making the batter, getting the oil going.

  “Happy birthday,” she says, coming over, her hands coated in eggs and bread crumbs, pecking him on the cheek. “You look so nice.”

  “Thanks,” he says. “I’m gonna get Dad’s jacket. The one you mentioned.”

  “You’re dressing up for your birthday?”

  He shrugs. He doesn’t tell her that it’s not for his birthday, that it’s because he’s going to go back to Donna’s to ring her doorbell. He thinks he should bring her something. That’s what a man would do. Flowers. But maybe flowers are too much too soon. What else could he bring that would be a kind gesture? A record? Maybe he could find one in the basement. His father had some jazz records under his worktable, and his mother had stored away Uncle Alberto’s records. He wasn’t sure what there even was. He remembered going through them as a kid, sometimes cutting up the covers to make collages in marble notebooks.

  “Are you going somewhere else?” his mother asks, suddenly suspicious.

  “No,” he says.

  “Is there a girl?”

  “There’s no girl.”

  “When’d you meet her? Just yesterday? You’re different today. That shirt.”

  “Oh, stop.”

  “Is she Italian?”

  “Stop. Please.”

  He opens the door to the basement and turns on the light. He goes down the rickety steps, which could fall apart at any second, holding on to the railing. The oil tank looms like some great lost machine. His father’s worktable is full of tools. The washing machine is running—his mother must’ve put an early load in. At the far end of the room, there’s a closet. He finds his father’s brown corduroy jacket and slips it on. It fits better than he thought it would. It smells like his father. Cheap aftershave and cheap beer. He digs around in the pockets and finds a couple of loose breath mints, toothpicks wrapped in cellophane, and a scrap of paper with bets he was making or had made.

  At the bottom of that same closet are the records. Uncle Alberto’s are in a cardboard wine box, while the ones that had belonged to his father are in a sturdy blue carrying case. He’d thought his father’s records were under the worktable in the back of the basement, where his father would repair radios and Mikey would come down just to smell the soldering iron, but his mother must’ve moved them here. He opens the case first and is surprised by the good condition of the records. He recognizes some of the names. His old man was always talking about Monk and Miles and Coltrane.

  The other box is full of Uncle Alberto’s childhood records, stuff Mikey’s more familiar with. Uncle Alberto is about Donna’s age. He doesn’t really like music anymore as far as Mikey knows, but he grew up loving the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Cat Stevens. The records in this box are in worse shape.

  He’s not sure what to pick. Maybe it’s stupid to show up with a record. Probably Donna already has everything that she wants. He hates the idea of pretending to know a record and just saying, “Here. I think you might like this.”

  A Neil Young record seems like a safe bet. He takes one called Comes a Time and carries it up to the kitchen. He notices now that his mother has stacked Gabe’s books in the corner on the floor.

  “What are you doing with that record?” his mother asks, her hands glistening with oil, blowing a hair out of her face.

  “I’m going to listen to it,” he says.

  “You don’t have a record player.”

  “I’m gonna find one at the Salvation Army.”

  “I had two. One was your father’s, one was Uncle Alberto’s. I put them out in the trash. But I kept the records. I don’t know why. Why do we do anything we do?” She pauses. “The jacket looks good.”

  “It’s not as big as I thought.”

  “My handsome son. There is a girl. You can tell me. What’s her name? You like her? Is it Marilu on the corner? I’ve been trying to get you to ask her out. She’s a sweetheart. She’s got a good job at Main Pharmacy.”

  “There’s no girl,” he says. But he’s thinking, There’s a woman.

  He leaves the house with the record under his arm. He’s not even sure what time it is now, but it’s light and he’s been up for a while. Where he lives with his mother, on Bay Forty-Seventh between Bath and Harway, is about fifteen blocks from Donna’s apartment, maybe farther. He wonders if there’s any harm in walking past, just walking past. He imagines a scene from some shitty romantic comedy: He bumps into her just as she’s coming out her front gate and she invites him in.

  She did say to come by. She probably didn’t mean in the morning. She’s off. He bets she’s sleeping in. He thinks of her in bed. He wonders if she’s thinking of him. Probably not. She’s got real problems to think about. Work, bills, the apartment. Or maybe she’s just drinking coffee and listening to her records.

  Speaking of which. He heads to Eighty-Sixth Street and stops for coffee at the first deli he sees, the Corner Joint. He’s still got money left over from the teller. He also gets a buttered roll. The guy working the counter is in his fifties, wearing a Mets caps and reading the Daily News. “You have a good one now,” the guy says to Mikey, pushing across the buttered roll wrapped in cellophane.

  Mikey thanks him and goes outside. He sits on the curb, the record in his lap, and eats his roll while letting the coffee cool.

  He remembers what his birthday used to mean to him as a kid. The feeling of being special. His mother hanging streamers from the wall, a “Happy Birthday” banner over the TV in the living room, taping balloons to the ceiling fan. Opening presents. His mother making chocolate cake. His father trying some stupid magic trick.

  He throws out the cellophane his roll was wrapped in and walks toward Donna’s place, sipping coffee.

  When he gets there, he stands across the street and stares at the barred window of her ground-floor apartment, shades pulled, light glinting off the dirty glass. Another miracle would be her opening the shade, not surprised at all to see him.

  Having spent time inside, he now considers the outside of the house. It’s a two-family job. Yellow siding that’s in rough shape. A roof that’s missing shingles. Sagging gutters. A front yard overgrown with weeds and neighborhood debris, a hose half-covered in dirt and not attached to the water valve snaking along the perimeter by the rusted iron fence. The black mailbox hangs from a single nail, the names Bonsignore and Rotante written in bleeding Sharpie on a piece of laminated paper taped to the front. It’s a big house, but like so many big houses in the neighborhood, it’s neglected and feels small, and Donna’s apartment is the smallest part of it.

  He wishes he was the kind of guy who could volunteer to help fix something, anything. He doesn’t know his way around a paintbrush or a hammer or any tool of improvement. As his father used to say, he’s pretty goddamn useless. There’s no point hiding it, pretending to be something he’s not.

  He gets nervous standing there, like it’s wrong or perverted to be watching her window, so he does a lap around the block. He studies other yards, other mailboxes, considers garbage piled at the curb, passes an old woman pushing a shopping cart.<
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  When he comes back, there’s a slight change. Donna’s front door is ajar.

  He looks down at the sidewalk and thinks about going over to knock. Before his next thought, she’s outside with a bucket of water, emptying it over the side of the stoop onto the driveway. She’s wearing blue sweatpants, heavy-looking slipper-socks, and a purple sweater that hangs off her shoulder. Her hair is up. She looks over and sees him. His shitty romantic comedy is coming to life.

  He waves, drops what’s left of his coffee, so it splatters his boots. He picks up the Styrofoam cup and sets it on the hood of a parked car.

  She waves back, smiling.

  They meet in the street. He notices that she has a wrench in her pocket. “What are you doing here?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I was just out walking. I got some coffee. I found this record in my basement. I thought you might like it.”

  “That’s sweet.” She holds up the bucket as a way of explanation. “I have a leak under my sink. I’m not very handy, but I’m giving it my best. Getting Suzette to call a plumber is like pulling teeth.”

  A car turns onto the block, beeping for them to get out of the street. They go back on the sidewalk, close to her fence.

  “Happy birthday,” Donna says.

  “You remembered,” Mikey says.

  “Do you want to come in? I can make you another coffee.”

  “Definitely,” he says.

  She looks surprised but not put out. He follows her inside. She sets down the bucket inside the door. “As you can tell from what I’m wearing, I wasn’t expecting company. I’m sorry.”

  “I can go. You said come by. I thought early might be okay.”

  “Oh, it’s fine. I’m not doing anything. I’m just a mess.”

  “You look great,” he says.

  “That’s nice of you. You actually look great. You’re all dressed up. Are you doing something with your family?”

  “Just my mom and uncle.” He holds up the Neil Young record. “Have you heard this?”

  “I love Neil Young.”

  “You already have it?”

  “I have a ragged old copy. This is in better shape.” She takes it from him and puts it on the turntable, blowing some dust from the record and then dropping the needle on the first track. She takes the wrench out of her pocket and leaves it on top of the right speaker. She props the record sleeve against the other speaker.

  “I remembered there were all these records in my mom’s basement,” Mikey says. “Some were my dad’s, some were my uncle’s. They’re just sitting there. I saw them, and they made me think of you.”

  “That’s really sweet.” She points to the couch. “Sit. I’ll make coffee.”

  He sits on the couch and pulls a red pillow into his lap. It’s a nervous thing he does. On the school bus, he’d always sit with his backpack in his lap. At Ginny’s house, he’d do it and always worry that people would think he was trying to hide a hard-on.

  He listens to the record, which he’s never heard before. He’s heard some Neil Young but not this particular one.

  He watches Donna through the doorway as she fiddles with the knob on the stove, turning the gas up under the percolator. He’s trying to get a sense of whether there’s any interest on her part. Interest, that is, in the way he’s interested in her. She’s not checking herself in the mirror. She’s not putting on makeup. She’s not doing the things he’s seen girls do when they’re getting ready for a date. She’s not self-conscious. But maybe that comes with age.

  She returns with two mugs of steaming coffee and hands him one. “I’d already made some,” she says. “Just had to heat it up.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I love the record. This sounds less scratchy than my copy. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He takes a sip of coffee, burning his upper lip and the roof of his mouth.

  She must notice that he’s winced. “Be careful. It’s really hot.”

  He nods.

  “Tell me more about your mom,” Donna says, out of nowhere.

  He wasn’t expecting this. He doesn’t want to talk about his mom. “There’s nothing to tell, really.”

  “There must be something.”

  “I don’t know. She’s fine. She works at Sea Crest in Coney Island. She’s a mom. She does mom things.”

  Donna laughs. “I’m a mom. I was a mom. What are ‘mom things’?”

  “I don’t know.” He pauses, trying to weigh his words carefully. “Cooking, cleaning, worrying, being on my back.”

  “I figured that’s what you meant. That’s not how all moms are. You know that, right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I bet your mom has all sorts of dreams.”

  “I guess,” he says. And then without thinking, or even meaning to: “You’re really pretty.”

  She laughs awkwardly, spilling a little coffee in her lap. “What?”

  “I said you’re really pretty.”

  “You’re messing with me, right? I’m almost twice your age. I could be your mother.”

  “You would’ve had to have me pretty young.”

  Donna shakes her head. “No way,” she says. “No way you’re hitting on me.”

  “Things happen for a reason, like we were talking about yesterday,” he says. “I found Gabe’s books and then I called you and we met and we had all this stuff in common.”

  Donna stands up. The first side of the record ends, and the needle skips in the final groove, making a dusty noise. She goes over and pushes the tonearm back in its cradle. She sets down her coffee. She doesn’t look at him.

  “You should probably go,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. He stands up, cradling the coffee against his stomach. “I didn’t mean to make things weird. I really didn’t. I’ll go.”

  “Thank you for the record.”

  He puts down his coffee on an end table next to the couch on top of a pile of Redbook magazines and stands, his arms dangling awkwardly. “I’m sorry again,” he says.

  She turns to him. “It’s okay,” she says.

  “Do you really want me to go?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  AVA BIFULCO

  Ava wakes up with a start. A bad dream. Something about Anthony choking to death at the kitchen table while she sat across from him, unable to move. She can still feel it in her bones. He’s dead already, and she’s paranoid about him dying again. She looks at the clock on the bedside stand, illuminated by her dusty little Virgin Mary nightlight. It’s four in the morning. The stillness of the house fills her with a new dread. She likes to be up no later than five so she can shower and have coffee in her robe and sit at the kitchen table with the radio on for a while before she leaves for work. But she knows she’ll never get back to sleep now. She’s wearing the thin summer nightgown she put on after changing out of her robe.

  She still can’t quite wrap her head around what Nick told her. Don’s the ex-cop from the papers. And he apparently knocked Rosemarie’s son in the head with a baseball bat over Antonina Divino. Rosemarie must not know about it, because Ava never heard that story from her.

  Nick snuck out of the house for a while after they were done talking, and she’s not sure where he went. Not Alice’s. She puts on her slippers and goes out to the living room and sees that he’s passed out on the couch, snoring, still in his work clothes, his hand shoved down his pants. She’s got to talk to him about his drinking. Maybe she should ask Father Borzumato to talk to him. Not that Nick will listen. She hopes he gives up this idea of writing a script about Don. She can’t see it leading to anything but trouble. Trouble for them or trouble for Don. She puts on coffee in the kitchen. When she’s upset or sad or overwhelmed or when she feels like she’s losing it and has no sense of what God’s plan could possibly be, she sometimes picks up the phone and talks to the dial tone as if she’s talking to Anthony. She does that now as she waits for the coffee to perk. “Anthony,
I’m lonely and I’m tired and I’m sick of work. I miss you so much. I miss the way you touched me and talked to me. I miss your hair and your hands. I miss your dirty laundry. I miss the smell of your work clothes. I miss watching you eat and your smile. I miss being in church with you.” She hangs up the phone and watches the coffee.

  A rustling in the living room. The snoring becoming a cough. Nick’s up. He comes out to the kitchen, clacking his dry tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Can I have some of that?”

  “Sure,” Ava says. “Where’d you disappear to last night?”

  Nick rubs sleep from his eyes and yawns. “It’s all coming together.”

  “You’re still going on about this script?”

  “I’m gonna talk to Paulie and Nina’s son. Local Hero Phil. I know he’ll help me out.” Nick sits down at the table, yawns more dramatically, throwing his arms up over his head and smelling his armpits. “What are you doing up?”

  Ava shrugs. She tends to the coffee, pours two cups, and brings them over to the table, sitting in the chair next to Nick. He thanks her.

  “You’re gonna shower and change before you go to school, right?” Ava says.

  “I’m not going to school. I’m taking off. Call in for me, won’t you? Tell Martha the secretary I’m sick.”

  “I won’t do that.”

  “I need the car today. I’ll drop you off.”

  “The car’s in the shop.”

  “Damn, I forgot. I’ll take the train with you to Coney.”