by Tom Perrotta
In my mind, I saw Uncle Ralph at the funeral, kissing the flower he dropped in Aunt Dot's grave, my father grabbing him as he stumbled.
“Hey Buddy,” Caravello said. “You wanna go home now?” He looked at Tina. “It's past Buddy's bedtime.”
“Shut up, Mike,” I said.
“Well, it's after nine-thirty.”
“Fuck that. I go home when I want to.”
Caravello shrugged. “Hey Tina, you go down the shore a lot, don't you?”
“Yeah. We have a summer house in Point Pleasant.”
“You got a boyfriend down there?”
She blew a series of quivering smoke rings at the rearview mirror.
“Sort of.”
“Is he a lifeguard?”
“No.”
“How old is he?”
“Seventeen.”
“Do you go all the way?”
She flicked her cigarette out the window.
“You are so queer, Caravello.”
For some reason, Tina leaned all the way back, as though I wasn't there. I sank down into the bucket seat beneath her weight. She and Caravello started arguing about the radio station, but I was too absorbed in her body to pay attention. I rested my forehead against the ridge of her spine. She smelled like maple syrup, just the way she had on Friday night.
Tina shifted in my lap. “Am I all right?” she asked.
“You're fine,” I told her.
Tina went to Catholic school out of town. When she started showing up at the park that spring, she never talked to me and I couldn't tell if she was stuck up or shy. Now, even after what had happened between us, I still didn't know if she liked me or not.
I closed my eyes and remembered watching her dance. She was wearing a football jersey that hung down past her shorts, number 24. I couldn't take my eyes off the numbers. It was a warm night, but I was wearing an air force shirt that had belonged to my father. I'd recently found four of them inside a trunk in our attic. They were musty from twenty years’ storage, but I imagined I could smell faraway places in them, the Philippines, Korea, Japan. During a break in the music, Tina came up to me and tucked a finger in one of my epaulets.
“I love your shirt,” she said, her voice sweet with Boone's Farm.
I brushed my fingers against the soft mesh of her jersey.
“I like yours too.”
“I'm a little drunk,” she whispered.
The band started up again. They were a bunch of gas station attendants who thought they were the Doobie Brothers. Tina grabbed my wrist and pulled.
“Come on and dance.”
“I'll watch,” I said.
And later, when Tina asked me if I could walk her home, I felt like I was in a dream, it happened so easily.
She lived across town, up in the hills. On the way, we held hands but didn't talk. The world was as still as a photograph. Near her house we took a shortcut through a patch of woods. It was way past my curfew, but we leaned against a tree and started making out. I slid my hand up her shirt in the back and tried to unhook her bra, but I couldn't find anything remotely resembling a hook. After a few minutes of fumbling, I dropped my hands to my sides and collapsed against her, baffled. She reached inside the jersey.
“It snaps in front,” she whispered.
I put my hands where hers had been. We stopped kissing and just looked at each other. After a while I pulled up the jersey and burrowed my head beneath the numbers.
Her father was a dentist, and she lived in a big white house, the kind families live in on television. We kissed good night under a porchlight swarming with moths.
“You want to come in?” she asked. “My parents aren't home.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I have to go.”
She tilted her head; her expression was serious, oddly adult.
“Buddy,” she said. “Is this just one of those things?”
“One of what things?”
“You know,” she said. “One of those things.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess so.”
As soon as she shut the door I started running; my sneakers slapped a steady beat on the sidewalk. The clock in the drugstore window said it was after eleven-thirty, the latest I'd ever been out by myself.
I was panting for air by the time I pushed open the front door. Except for the flickering of the TV, the house was dark. My mother was lying on the couch in her bathrobe, a bunch ofballed-up Kleenexes scattered on the carpet below. I waited for her to say something, but she just blew her nose.
I yelped. Caravello had clobbered me on the head with his ring.
“Go on.” he commanded. “Tell Tina how scared you were when we went looking for niggers.”
“I wasn't scared. You're the one who freaked.”
“He shit his pants,” Caravello told Tina. “You shoulda seen it.”
The weeding implement was on the floor by my feet. I imagined raking it across his face.
“Don't lie,” I said.
“You wanna go back?” he sneered. “Or is it past your bedtime?”
“I don't care.”
He looked at Tina. “What about you?”
She shrugged.
When we got back to Cherry Street, only the kid was left. He was shooting free throws at a basket near the school. You got the feeling he'd still be there when the sun came up. Tina giggled.
“Let's take his ball,” Caravello said.
He whispered the plan. I didn't object, even though I had to do the dirty work. Caravello and Tina were supposed to distract the kid while I snuck up from behind.
I slid out from under Tina and shut the door. The car drove off, and I felt alone and vulnerable, hiding behind a tree near the curb. My head still smarted from Caravello's ring. I had to stamp my feet to get the blood flowing in my legs.
For one rotten moment, I was sure that Caravello had abandoned me, but just then the Camaro swung around the corner and stopped in the street on the other side of the school yard, directly across from me. Caravello honked the horn. His voice carried through the night with awful clarity.
“Hey Tyrone,” he shouted. “Is that you?”
The kid stopped shooting. He turned toward the voice with the ball held loosely in the crook of his arm, the way you might hold a book walking home from school. I was surprised to see him wearing long pants on such a muggy night.
He heard my footsteps and whirled around when I was just a few steps away from him. When I saw his frightened face, I screamed. The sound that erupted from my throat was shrill and startled. His eyes got bigger when he heard it.
I drove my shoulder hard into his stomach and took him right off his feet—a perfect open-field tackle. He made just one sound, a gasp of amazement, before his head bounced heavily on the pavement.
The ball was rolling slowly toward the out-of-bounds line. I scooped it up and sprinted for the Camaro. As I ran, I couldn't shake the feeling that I held his head in my hand, clutched tight to my body.
Back in town, we pulled over to the side of the road. Now I was sitting in Tina's lap.
Caravello slapped me five. He was laughing so hard he could barely catch his breath.
“Did you hear that motherfucker scream?” he asked.
“He couldn't help it,” I said.
We passed the basketball around as though it were some strange new object, something we'd never seen before. Its surface was worn completely smooth from overuse; it must have been slippery and difficult to play with. Tina stared at the ball for a long time, like someone gazing into the future.
“Spalding,” she said finally.
“I better go,” I said.
“You want to come swimming at my house?” Tina asked. “My parents aren't home.”
“No thanks. I'm late as it is.”
“I'll go,” Caravello said. “I could use a dip.”
Tina poked me in the back. “You sure?”
“Yeah,” I said. “It's past my bedtime.”
Caravello laug
hed. I hated him then, in a way that made me feel dumb and helpless.
“Buddy's all right,” he announced.
When Caravello dropped me off, I rushed across the lawn without looking back. I didn't want to watch them drive away together. The car peeled out just as I opened the front door.
My parents were both reclining on the couch, heads on opposite ends, legs tangled in the middle. They looked like some giant, two-headed monster of unhappiness.
“Do you know what time it is?” my father asked.
My mother answered for me. “It's twenty after ten. Where were you?”
“Little League, McDonald's, all over. I saw Uncle Ralph in McDonald's. He's worried about the Russians going to the bathroom in outer space.”
“Don't change the subject,” my father said. “Who's the hotshot that drove you home?”
“No one. I walked.”
“Don't He to us,” my mother said sadly.
“Stay out of older kids’ cars,” my father said. “I'm warning you.”
“We heard something about a race riot,” my mother said. “We were worried about you.”
My parents had recently bought a police radio, so they knew everything that went on in town.
“There wasn't any race riot,” I said.
“Where'd you get that basketball?” my father asked.
I'd forgotten that I was holding the ball. I'd also forgotten about the garden tool, which I'd left on the floor of the Camaro. I imagined Tina using it to scratch Caravello's back.
“I found it,” I said.
I glared at them, and they frowned back. Somehow I thought that everything that had happened was their fault, not mine. I bounced the ball once on the linoleum hall floor. The sound it made was hard and hollow. I wanted to say something in my own defense, to explain or apologize, but my head felt as empty as the ball in my hand, a round container of air.
Snowman
Two days ago the snow had swirled and sparkled as it fell, but now it lay hardened on the ground, packed into dirty gray lumps the color of cigarette ash. I was wearing ski mittens and clumsily dribbling a basketball down Grand Avenue while my teammate Neil Duffy strummed air guitar on a snow shovel he'd borrowed from his parents’ garage.
We knew we looked stupid. That was the whole point. So it didn't really bother us when this kid in a sheepskin coat zipped by on an English racer, riding against traffic, and shouted, “Assholes!”
“Fuck you!” I shouted back.
Neil's guitar-shovel turned into a machine gun as he whirled and blasted the jerk, who was already receding into the grimy distance, an extra in the movie of our day. Then we laughed, as much at ourselves as at him. Of course we were assholes. Who else would be playing basketball outside in 20-degree weather, just two days after the biggest snowstorm of the year?
It was Neil's idea. Even then, in ninth grade, he had a clear vision of his future. He believed he would someday be a basketball legend, the next great white guy with a deadly jumper, a steady team player who respected the refs and always came through in the clutch. He was preparing for the day when a TV announcer would be able to say: “You know how bad Duffy wanted it? Duffy wanted it so bad he used to go out after blizzards, shovel off the court, and practice until his fingers froze. Then he'd go home, drink a cup of hot cocoa, and head back for more. Now that's dedication, Marv.”
Basketball didn't mean that much to me. I was a football player and only dabbled in nonviolent sports to keep in shape during the off-season. I was tagging along that morning because I had nothing better to do and liked the idea of participating in Neil's fantasies of fame and glory. He was good enough that you could almost believe they might come true. He went into these streaks sometimes where every shot that spun off his fingertips dropped through the net with a sweet silky whisper. A look came over his face in these moments that was so distant and serene it seemed almost religious. Watching him, you might have thought he heard God calling his name, or one of Charlie's Angels.
We were down by Premier Electric when I felt the hand on my shoulder. It was weird how quietly he'd managed to sneak up. He was straddling the crossbar of his English racer, smiling in a way that might have seemed friendly under other circumstances.
“What did you say back there?”
His voice wasn't angry, but I knew he must have been mad to turn around and ride all the way back. He was a full head taller than me and a couple of years older—at least a junior, maybe even a senior. He looked like a rich kid, with his shaggy blond hair, sleepy eyes, and winter tan, the type that went on ski vacations and spent his summers gazing down at the world from the stilted height of a lifeguard chair. I bounced the ball to show him I wasn't intimidated, crunching the rock salt on the sidewalk.
“Come on,” I said, making my voice as reasonable as possible. “You called us assholes.”
He smiled a little harder, shaking his head in this slow, arrogant way, like he felt sorry for me. A voice in my head said stay calm. There were two of us and only one of him. And besides, he was wearing that beautiful sheepskin coat. Who would want to fight in a coat like that?
“Just tell me what you said, asshole.”
“You heard me.”
“I want to hear it again.”
I pondered my options. I didn't want to fight, but I didn't want to back down, either. Rules were rules. If someone calls you an asshole for no reason, you definitely have the right to respond.
“I said, 'Fuck you.’”
I felt brave and defiant just then, as though I were standing up for an important principle, but I made one big mistake: I figured he'd have to get off his bike to start something. As a preliminary, I turned to give Neil the basketball.
That was when the psycho lifeguard smashed me in the face. It wasn't the best punch in the world, probably because he threw it flat-footed, but it caught me square in the nose. He wasn't wearing gloves, and it felt like I'd been whacked with a frying pan.
“Hey!” said Neil.
My knees buckled and the world went fuzzy, but I surprised myself by not falling down or dropping the ball. I just stood there, my head vibrating like a gong as he set his bicycle on the ground, then turned and raised his fists. He smiled dreamily, itching to hit me again.
“You've got a pretty smart mouth, don't you?” he asked, as if he hadn't started the whole thing.
At first I tasted just a trickle of blood, but then something happened. There was a rushing noise in my head, followed by a sudden release of pressure. Neil told me later that he'd never seen anything like it, the way the blood just erupted from my nose.
The lifeguard was startled too. His mouth dropped open and his arms fell to his sides. I took advantage of his shock by whipping the basketball at his face. He cringed as it whizzed past his ear; I made my charge. When I slammed into him, we both lost our footing on the icy sidewalk.
We rolled around like wrestlers in the dirty snow. He pounded me ineffectually on the back while I bled profusely on his coat, rubbing my nose with malicious pleasure back and forth across the sheepskin until I was almost drunk from the smell of it, the animal softness. It took him a while to catch on.
“Shit!” he wailed. “My coat!”
“Had enough?” I grunted.
His body went limp. “Yeah.”
We untangled ourselves and stood up. He looked down at the dark smears and swirls and splatters on his chest and made this pathetic whimper. He wiped frantically at the stains but they'd already become part of his coat.
“Fuck,” he said. “My mom's gonna kill me.”
“Serves you right,” I told him.
“Yeah,” said Neil. He was holding the shovel aloft with both hands, the red scoop trembling in the air like a battle flag. “Serves you right.”
The lifeguard looked at me and rolled his eyes, almost like the fight had made us friends. Then he picked up his bike, climbed on, and pedaled off to show his mother what he'd done.
I hadn't seen Andy Zirko for two y
ears when he materialized in the doorway of the Coin Shop and came rushing across the street to see if I was okay. The fight had just ended, and I was sitting on the curb with one hand cupped under my nose to catch the dripping blood, waiting for Neil to return from McDonald's with some napkins.
The Zirko I remembered was as pretty as a girl, with long dark hair that fell like a shadow across half his face, but there was nothing pretty about the kid who squatted down next to me and told me to tilt back my chin. Someone had shaved his head and I could see through the fuzzy stubble to the tiny razor cuts on his scalp. Despite the weather, he wasn't wearing a coat, just a blue and gray flannel shirt with the sleeves ripped off.
In a calm voice, he told me that he'd seen everything—how the big kid had sucker punched me and my friend had let me down. It was disorienting to hear his version of events. I felt like I'd bled my way to at least a draw, but Zirko made it sound terrible, like I'd gotten the shit kicked out of me in a dirty fight.
“You wanna get that guy?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, not really meaning it.
The word was barely out of my mouth when he jumped up and waved his skinny arm. It seemed to me that he somehow conjured a car out of thin air, a jacked-up Monte Carlo that skidded to a halt in front of us, the back passenger door swinging open just inches from my face. I heard Neil calling my name from down the block as Zirko helped me up and shoved me into the car. We swung a U-turn on the busy street and accelerated toward Cranwood.
“Kid on a bike,” Zirko snapped at the driver. He snatched an oily undershirt off the floor and pressed it to my nose.
At the first red light I reached under my butt to remove the hard piece of cardboard I'd mistakenly sat upon, and found myself staring at a pretty little girl with ribbons in her hair and elaborate braces on her arms and legs. The poster child was smiling bravely, floating on a field of blackness, the words “WON'T YOU PLEASE HELP?” blazing above her head in bold white letters. It was a fund-raising card for muscular dystrophy, with rows of tiny slots cut into it for nickels, dimes, and quarters. Most of the slots had coins in them. Zirko yanked it out of my hand and kept on talking.
