Mafia Girl

by Deborah Blumenthal

The first cage has two puppies, probably the easiest to adopt out. The other five are a young beagle, a very alert and wary German shepherd with pointy ears, a senior golden retriever, a skinny black lab, and a graying pit bull named Herbie with a very resigned expression on his face as if he’s a poster dog for discrimination against pits and he has thrown in the towel on anything ever changing for him.

  Everyone with a beating heart who walks by stops and plays with the dogs.

  “I’ll adopt this one for sure,” says a boy I don’t know from school. “My mom loves beagles, so I’m sure it will be okay with her.”

  He thinks they’re going to fling open the cage and let him walk off with the dog.

  “Here’s an application to take home,” a woman from the Humane Society says. “After you fill it out, come back to the shelter with your parents.” Then yada, yada, yada, after paying the fee and getting recommendations from people who’ll vouch for the family as responsible dog owners, they’ll consider letting them take the dog. Then I’m thinking that the lengthy process with all the paperwork is similar to what you have to do to apply to Morgan—without the dog payoff in the end.

  The night goes on and we sample all the food like baby back ribs from a barbecue place that started in Austin, Texas, and Asian fusion noodles with bok choy and pea pods with peanut sauce and an over-the-top macaroni and cheese comfort food from Per Se and jumbo shrimp from the Palm and I don’t know what else, and then we return to the cake box.

  “Yes,” Clive says finally. “Open it now.” He turns to me. “Gia, I want you to share the first piece with me.”

  I look at him like, what? He doesn’t say anything so I stand there with Ro and Candy and Clive while this guy who must have been the baker carefully slices open the box with a long knife. I look at the cake curiously. It looks like a certificate of some kind, only up in the corner is a face. My face. And at the top, in chocolate lettering, is the word scholarship.

  “Clive?”

  “My parents have created a scholarship in your name,” he says. “This coming year, it goes to you. After that, it goes to girls with strong academics who need financial help and can’t afford a school like Morgan.”

  “I can’t accept…”

  “Gia,” Clive whispers to me, his fingers tightening on my arm, “you can, and you have to, because the scholarship is as much for me as for you. I can’t imagine finishing school here without you. You are what I want to celebrate at our school.”

  For once in my life, I’m speechless.

  After about a thousand pictures of me with almost everyone in the school, my scholarship is literally eaten up.

  “We haven’t told the school yet,” Clive says. “I wanted you to know first.”

  “You didn’t have to do this,” I insist. “You don’t have to feel sorry for me.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for you, Gia,” he says. “I felt sorry for me at the thought of you leaving. And anyway, you said you’d be there for me,” he says. “You gave me your word.”

  “I did…”

  “So?” He holds out his hands.

  I wipe away the tears and in a little while the event starts to wind down, but then I see Christy and Georgina, which kills the mood. I feel like spraying them with whipped cream to hide their smug smiles, but they walk away, and five seconds later there’s a scream.

  Christy’s near the pit bull’s cage and she’s shaking her head yelling, “He bit me! He bit me! He’s so aggressive, and I think he has rabies because his mouth is full of foamy saliva.”

  But then a guy from the Humane Society rushes over and says very deliberately, “No, he does not have rabies, and he has had all his shots. Where did he bite you, young lady?”

  “Here,” she says, holding out her hand, and he looks and narrows his eyes and keeps looking, and she shrieks, “Are you blind?”

  Even though it’s barely a scratch, someone says we should call an ambulance and have her taken to the emergency room just in case, which is total manure because she’s just trying to ruin things. Not only that, but who is she taking it out on—poor, homeless Herbie who has nothing left to lose? So I hate her even more for that and maybe she should be tested for rabies.

  The lights come on after that, destroying whatever is left of the mood, and everyone streams out, and the pace of clean-up quickens, and the dogs get picked up and their cages are loaded onto a van outside, which is totally sad.

  “Do you think we should go over to Lenox Hill Hospital just to see how she is?” Clive asks.

  “No fucking way,” I say because I’d rather go to the shelter and apologize to Herbie. If there’s anyone I’m concerned about it’s him and what may happen to him now after the bogus bite incident because you know how things can escalate.

  FORTY

  Something about the downcast expression in Herbie’s face starts eating into me. The sadness, the resignation. And, omigod, he’s been living in the shelter for months. I can’t help thinking of how Clive felt—like there was no one in the world out there for him.

  “You can’t change the whole world,” the man from the Humane Society said. “But you can change the whole world for one dog.”

  “Anthony,” I say, barging into his room. He sits at his computer and ignores me. “There’s this dog…”

  He still ignores me.

  “And not just a dog, but a very sad and pathetic dog.”

  He still ignores me.

  “Anthony, remember how much dad loves dogs? How his face would light up when he looked at one?”

  He takes his fingers off the keyboard and turns to face me. “So?”

  Anthony picks me up at school the next day and looks at me warily. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Anthony…”

  “What?”

  “He has no one in the world and he’s sweet and all good and we’re going to give him a real life and a happy home outside of that miserable shelter and he’s going to help all of us start to…I don’t know…open our hearts and feel love again?”

  “I don’t know…”

  “I do know Anthony. And Daddy would be proud of us, you know that. He loves dogs. He loves to save dogs. You remember that, don’t you?”

  Anthony looks away.

  “Don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he says, biting his lip.

  “A pit bull?” my mom says, stepping back to the couch and grabbing onto the arm. “A pit bull?”

  “Mom, he’s not a pit bull, he’s Herbie. And he’s ten years old, Mom, which makes him a senior, and he’s friendly. Don’t stereotype him.”

  She sits there and watches Herbie, and Herbie watches her back.

  “Is he Italian?” my mom asks.

  “What?”

  My mom starts to laugh, then so do I, and so does Anthony, and we’re laughing so hysterically that we can’t stop, and Herbie’s just watching all of us like, what? And then I try to remember the last time we all laughed like that and I draw a total blank.

  I fill the dog food bowl I bought Herbie with a cup of his senior diet chicken kibble and put it in front of him. He practically inhales the food.

  “See, Ma?”

  “He’s Italian,” my mom says. Then she goes over and pats Herbie on the head. “You’re a good boy,” she says to him. “A good boy.”

  Herbie looks up at her and licks her hand. A moment later her eyes fill with tears.

  FORTY-ONE

  With everything going on with the school fraud bullshit and my dad not here and Frankie turning and Michael breaking my heart, my skin starts to get red and itchy and all across my stomach and up my arms I break out with a gross, blistery rash.

  “It could be stress,” says the derm, studying my skin through a magnifying glass.

  I’ve now met the one person in the world who doesn’t know that my dad has been put away for life. She writes me prescriptions for hydrocortisone cream and antihistamine pills and then looks up at me.

  “What do you do
to relax?”

  Relax?

  I don’t have an answer to that so we talk about exercise, and she tells me that after her mom died she started running and now she’s addicted. She’s lost over ten pounds and has a tighter body. She says it totally helped her deal with all the shit of being a doctor with the insurance reimbursement mess, never mind that being the mother of a six-year-old makes her nuts.

  I guess because I’m listening so hard she tells me that she doesn’t sleep with her husband anymore and that they’re heading for divorce because he met someone online, and I’m thinking about telling her that she needs a shrink more than I do, but running does sound kind of cool, and after I get into shape I could learn to box, which would be totally out-there.

  I pay the twenty dollar co-pay and leave with the prescriptions and at the front desk scoop up about twenty freebie samples of Eucerin cream and Neutrogena SPF 50 and slip them into my purse. Then I realize that the nurse was watching and she shoots me a dirty look.

  FORTY-TWO

  “I’m going to start running,” I tell Ro.

  “Gia, people like us are always running.”

  “I’m tired of it, aren’t you?” I say, broadening the subject.

  “That’s the way it is, Gia.”

  I don’t really accept that, but Ro does. She isn’t haunted like I am and doesn’t walk around with a black sheep mentality. I only realized that one Christmas when I sent her a card that showed a tree filled with birds that were all looking in one direction.

  Except for one of them.

  And because my brain is so buzzed I actually didn’t even notice that except on some level I guess I did because why else would I have chosen it? She looked at the card and crinkled up her nose, pointing to the odd-ball bird.

  “That is so you, Gia.”

  I try running with Herbie, but he prefers walking or, actually, sitting in his bed in the kitchen where he can watch my mom and get food treats, so I go by myself. But first I go online and look at all these stretchy outfits with great leggings and tops and jackets. Then I close the screen. What am I thinking? I can’t buy clothes anymore. I can’t buy anything anymore. I put on a pair of running shoes from the back of my closet and walk around my room. It feels funny to have my feet flat on the ground. I go outside and walk/run for about three blocks and realize that I am totally out of shape. I’m seventeen, not seventy, so hello, exactly what is going on with my cardiac situation?

  The next day after school I go running again and the next day after that, even though I don’t tell anyone about it, because, let’s face it, no one exactly sees me as Miss Jockette, and anyway, when you want to get into something like running, suddenly everyone you know has other stuff to do.

  So I take the bus up to the track around Central Park, and who do I see but Jordan the Jock, and I really don’t know why he’s so nice to me these days unless he’s relieved that he lost. He’s running too and he slows down.

  “Hey, Gia. I didn’t know that you run.”

  Does that make me more appealing to him? I don’t know what to say because, I mean, do I run?

  “I’m starting to get into it,” I come up with and then kind of look away. He gets the message that no, I do not want to have him for my new running partner, so he sprints ahead and I’m left behind huffing and puffing, which is pathetic, and wondering whether this is worth it, you know?

  But I never give up, so I keep the running thing going for heart health and relaxation or whatever and even try to convince Clive for the eightieth time to come with me, but he very politely says, “hmm, no, I don’t think so, Gia,” because I think Clive doesn’t like to sweat and doesn’t care about runner’s high and endorphins—whatever they are—and getting into the zone.

  Every day I go a little farther and within two weeks I’m going about three miles a day, usually around Central Park. The rash is better even though I think it has nothing to do with the exercise and everything to do with the hydrocortisone cream because if you’re more relaxed, you should feel that way, right?

  One day I’m running in the park and I decide that instead of going home, I’ll go to Clive’s and have dinner with him. So I call him up and he says, “cool, we can go out for Japanese,” and when I get there, I sit down and drink an entire bottle of water and then try to wash up and make myself look human again, and Clive is changing into another shirt, and I kind of stop dead in place and stare at him.

  “Do you ever just think, fuck it, I’m not going to wear a scarf anymore?”

  His face turns dark and as serious as it was when he first told me what happened, and my stomach tightens.

  “No,” he says. And a moment later, “If it were you, Gia, would you just let everyone see the scar?”

  That’s the kind of question I never asked myself because why would I? I don’t know what to say at first and I think about it for a few seconds. “Yes, I would because I don’t think you have any reason to hide it and you shouldn’t have to because it’s part of who you are now.”

  “Hmm, maybe. I don’t know, Gia. I don’t know if I can.”

  I look at him some more and get totally emotional, which I hate. “You know something, Clive?”

  “What?”

  “I love that scar,” I whisper, my voice cracking.

  He narrows his eyes and kind of slumps a little as he looks at me like he doesn’t understand.

  “The scar means that it didn’t work. You healed. You’re here now, alive, with me, Clive, and that is so, I don’t know, life affirming? It’s such a symbol of then and now.”

  Then Clive gets teary-eyed too. “You’re right, Gia,” he says, nodding. “I never thought about it that way.”

  Then we curl up together, and I guess Clive is in the mood to open up because he starts talking about his parents, who he never talks about.

  “Ten years after I was born, my mom became pregnant,” he says. “I guess it was unexpected and it made her happy…so happy.” He pauses and looks off in the distance and then turns back to me.

  “But a few weeks after birth…my baby sister died of a heart ailment. They had all these doctors come in to the hospital…from all over the world. And still…nobody, nobody could do anything.” He stares out the window and shakes his head. “My mom was nearly destroyed by that because she always, always wanted a girl. She was so depressed she was almost institutionalized.” He scratches the back of his head.

  “And after that she withdrew from me and changed so much. I just couldn’t reach her anymore. I felt…I felt like my parents were blaming me for living after the baby died…Then they sold that apartment and bought this one, but that didn’t help, and so they started traveling all the time after that…trying to run away, I guess…and leaving me here with a governess while they were starting more magazines everywhere…and I felt like I was being punished.”

  “Oh my God, I can imagine,” I say. That makes me feel horrible and so sorry for Clive even more because you’d think they’d hold on to him even tighter, but people don’t always act the way they’re supposed to. Then I think about my dad and mom, and even though our lives are not like anyone else’s, I know they’d both kill for me, and that means everything and keeps me grounded. I look over at Clive and think back to being in Paris with him and remember that in passing he said something about starting therapy with his parents when they got home, so maybe people can change…

  “You know what you said…in Paris…about room service and fancy hotels and everything not making you happy?”

  He nods.

  “You were right. That’s all bullshit. It’s all staging. None of that matters.”

  “Hmm, staging…I would never have thought of it that way,” he says, the corners of his mouth turning up.

  FORTY-THREE

  I go home and pretend I don’t see the cartons. There are more of them each day as my mom and Anthony start to pack up the house. I’ve been putting off packing mine and they lie flat against the wall of my room.

 
; While I can’t deal with packing up my life and giving up my room and especially my princess bed, I go to my closet and pull out six pairs of fabulous heels. I carry them into Anthony’s room and put them on his desk.

  “Time to eBay these.”

  “I thought you loved—”

  “They’re shoes, Anthony. Just shoes.”

  In the middle of finally going through all my stuff the phone rings.

  If it isn’t enough that Dante has a 911, he is now the owner of a Harley, and I mean how cool is that?

  “Wanna go for a test drive?” he asks.

  And duh, do you think I’d say anything but yes? Even though my mom is shaking her head and going, “Gia, I don’t like motorcycles. You could fall off. You could kill yourself,” I’m like, “Ma, Dante loves me, he’s going to crawl. He’ll be careful. Do you think he wants to kill me?”

  I put on jeans and a leather jacket to kind of look the part. And even though I hate helmets, I run over to Ro’s and borrow one and put it on even though it flattens my hair. In the meantime Dante is sitting in front of the house waiting impatiently and, like a complete asshole, he keeps revving up the engine over and over, which is totally stupid, but kind of funny. And then Mr. Giancana from across the street comes out and yells, “Keep the noise down, keep the noise down, you stupid kids!” And Dante mutters something under his breath, and then we take off and go up the FDR.

  He’s getting off on weaving all around the traffic instead of being stuck in it, which is always what happens, even with the 911, which can go from zero to sixty in four-and-a-half seconds, which Dante always reminds us, like it matters in Manhattan, and then he turns around to me and keeps saying, “How cool is this, huh, Gia?” And I’m like, “Yeah, unreal,” and hanging on to him and telling him to go faster. Then a cop car goes by so Dante slows down and when it passes he goes faster. A car nearly cuts us off, and Dante curses him out and then cuts him off and gives him the finger, and after about an hour of intense speeding, I say, “I have to go back and do homework.”