Intruder

by Peter Blauner

  “Look, it’s not any big deal,” she says. “I have a brother who’s like that and he’s terrific.”

  “What are you saying? I’m not gay.”

  He stares at a dark spot on the rug, trying hard to control himself.

  “Hey, if that’s the way you feel, no problem.” She puts her hands in the pockets of her skirt.

  “You think I’m gay?”

  She straightens her shoulders. “It’s none of my business.”

  “But is that what you think?”

  She licks her lips and stares at her shoes. “I just know that sometimes if you’re not honest with yourself things can come out in funny ways.”

  “What are you saying to me?”

  “Oh come on, Philip, look at yourself. You assault a gay man with a crowbar, you cut off another man’s nipple . . . God knows how you get along with women . . . You’re an intelligent person. Haven’t you ever asked yourself what that’s all about?”

  The bedsprings stop squeaking.

  Philip just looks at her. Is it possible she’s right? The light coming through the drapes changes. For years, he’s been telling himself that what he did with Diego in prison didn’t count; you were only a faggot if you sucked a prick on the outside. But maybe there was more to it than that. Maybe he is that way. Maybe that’s why he’s gone through life with a fist cocked back over his shoulder. Maybe that’s why he smacked his wife. Maybe that’s why he beat the living crap out of Isabel that day in the warehouse when she teased him and called him a maricon—just because he couldn’t perform with her. Maybe that’s why he feels so torn and angry sometimes when he looks at other men’s bodies. Maybe that’s why he has to work so hard to prove he’s a man.

  But then he thinks about what his uncle and the rest of the Bath Avenue crew would say. No, it’s unacceptable. He’ll kill someone else before he admits that’s what he’s about.

  “Listen,” he says to Ms. Fusco. “If you’re not sure about me, come sit down on this bed. I’ll show you.”

  “Oh Philip.” She brings her hand up to the side of her face. “Just forget I said anything.”

  75

  Alex Schiff and his friend Paul Goldman are having lunch at a hamburger place across the street from their private school on the Upper West Side. Greek cooks work over the grill like men digging a grave. Frankie Valli sings “Sherry Baby” on the radio. Smoke and humidity fill the room.

  “I just got my tongue pierced. You wanna see?” Paul opens his mouth.

  Alex ignores him and stares straight into the vat of pickles in the middle of the table. Life sucks.

  And now that his father is about to go to trial for murder, it sucks even more.

  His grades have been going down the drain for weeks. He can’t concentrate in class anymore. And he constantly has the feeling people are looking at him.

  Until just lately, he hadn’t even thought of his father as just a guy. He was a dark powerful force to be resisted, like the Shadow King in an X-Men comic or the disco revival. An embarrassment. An object of ridicule. And maybe once in awhile someone he loved. It was only in ninth grade that Alex stopped to consider that his parents might have had lives of their own before he was born and might still conceivably have sex. But the idea of his father frightened and vulnerable, an ordinary man in trouble, is more than he can get his mind around.

  A slightly older white kid wearing a Snoop Doggy Dogg T-shirt under a purple warm-up jacket and a Cat in the Hat striped cap sidles into the booth next to him.

  “Excuse me,” he says.

  “Hey, we’re already sitting here.” Paul opens his mouth, revealing the lump of metal on his tongue.

  “Now I’m sitting here too,” says Philip’s cousin Ronnie. He looks at Jake’s son. “You’re Alex, right?”

  “Yeah. What about it?”

  Ronnie studies the menu for a second and then sets it aside. “I got a message for your father,” he says. “Don’t go where you don’t belong.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “He’ll know.” Ronnie gets up and looks down at Paul, whose mouth is hanging open.

  “Damn, boy!” he says. “You got a fuckin’ paper clip on your tongue!”

  76

  Jake arrives home just before midnight that night and heads straight up to his son’s room.

  “How you doing?”

  Alex is lying on his bed with the headphones on, Kurt Cobain screaming wordless adolescent fury into his brain.

  “You got any more messages for me from the knuckleheads?”

  Alex shrugs. If the visit from Philip’s cousin Ronnie bothered him that much, he hasn’t let on about it yet.

  “You mind if I turn this down a sec?” Jake asks.

  The boy’s eyes remain motionless. His mouth twists slightly. A heavy secondhand feeling lingers in the air, like all the oxygen in the room has been through his lungs twice already.

  “I’m sorry you had to get involved with all this crap.” Jake turns down the volume a little and sits at the foot of the bed.

  No response.

  “You know, starting on Friday, things could be kind of different around here.”

  Alex still doesn’t say anything. Kurt Cobain is just murmuring at the moment. At least Jake has a shot at his attention.

  “Once this hearing is done, I could be in a lot of trouble. There’s going to be a lot of talk about filing motions and revoking bail and making sacrifices to pay for lawyers’ bills.”

  Alex rolls his eyes a little, as if to say, Tell me something I don’t already know.

  Jake puts a hand on his son’s leg and then takes it away as if spikes had just shot out of it. “I suppose where this is all leading is ...” He pauses to put his thoughts in order. “Is to talk about the possibility that I might be going to jail.”

  The air doesn’t just seem heavy anymore; it feels leaden. Alex’s mouth goes tight. Nirvana’s music grows quieter on the headphones. Jake’s stomach feels as if it’s just filled up with cold water.

  “You’ve thought about that, I’m sure.”

  “Yeah,” the boy says, sounding tentative and surly.

  “Well, I just wanted to tell you—I’m sorry.”

  Nirvana’s music explodes again into raging guitars and feedback. Jake realizes he had it backwards before. Alex isn’t so much listening to Kurt Cobain; it’s more like the earphones are somehow broadcasting the angry soundtrack in his mind.

  “Is there something you want to say to me about that?” Jake asks.

  His son’s mouth stays closed and defiant. At least he’s not wearing that nose ring anymore.

  “If my dad was going to jail, I know I’d have something to say about it.”

  Still no response from Alex.

  “I would’ve said: ‘Bout time.”

  Not even a half smile. The black Nike on Alex’s left foot jiggles, keeping time with the frantic music.

  “I hope I’ve been a better father to you than that,” Jake says, doleful but still striving for connection. “Remember about the bananas?”

  “What?” Caught off-guard, the boy seems mildly interested and then irritated.

  “I was just thinking how when you were little you wouldn’t eat a banana until I came over and took all those little fibers off the side. You used to call them the strings. Remember?”

  “Sort of.” Alex sits up, just a little. The headphones slip and the music shrieks into his neck instead of his ears.

  Jake moves a little and sees he was sitting on an empty packet of Bambu rolling papers.

  “So?” says Alex, trying to distract his father from the discovery.

  “I was just thinking about all the things we used to do together, just you and me when your mother wasn’t around. Like the first time I took you to a baseball game. Remember? You were all nervous because you didn’t think you’d be able to follow what was going on.”

  Alex’s eyes get far away. “There was a fight.”

  “Yeah, I think G
ooden threw at somebody’s head or something and they all came piling out of the dugouts.” Jake shakes his head. “Baseball players trying to punch each other. It’s like ballet dancers trying to drink beer.”

  “No, I meant in the stands,” Alex says. “There was a fight in the stands. Two guys in the next section started hitting each other and coming up the aisle toward us. You grabbed me and pulled me out to the hotdog stand.”

  “I was probably just trying to protect you.”

  “Yeah, but I wanted to watch.”

  “I buy you a hotdog at least?”

  “And a Mets cap.”

  “Well, that’s not bad for an afternoon, is it?”

  “I guess you were trying to look out for me,” Alex says grudgingly.

  “I feel bad I didn’t do more of that,” Jake says. “Spend time, I mean. Just you and me.”

  “It was all right.”

  Jake can’t tell if Alex means that he was a good father or that the time they spent together seemed quite sufficient to him.

  He picks up his son’s Bambú packet. “You know, back in the nineteen sixties, people thought you could get high smoking banana peels.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  Jake raises his left eyebrow. “It is, isn’t it.”

  The Nirvana song ends and Alex rolls onto his side.

  “Your mother thinks you’re smoking too much pot and that’s why you’re having trouble in school.”

  The boy looks up at the ceiling and his whole body tenses with rage.

  “It’s not fair,” he says. “It’s not even true.”

  Jake cocks his head to one side more indulgently than he would with a client telling a similar lie. “The truth is, most people would understand it if you started getting into bad habits. Oh, no wonder he dropped out and started doing drugs, his father went to jail.’ ”

  “Fuck you.”

  Jake looks at his son for a long time.

  Alex casts his eyes down, not quite ready to deal with the consequences of what he’s said. “I just don’t like it when you try to psychoanalyze me,” he says in a low, sullen voice. “No one else knows what’s going on in my head. You can’t tell me how to feel.”

  “That’s true. But I’m asking if you want to put yourself into a position where you’re relying on other people’s pity.”

  “ ‘You’re the little man in the house now, Timmy, it’s up to you to look after your ma,’ “ Alex says, imitating some virtuous square-jawed family man from prime time TV.” ‘I’m not gonna be around much anymore.’ ”

  “So I can’t kick your ass if you fuck up,” his father interrupts. “I have to rely on you to do the right thing.”

  “And what do you know about that, Dad?” His son looks up, his brown eyes challenging him. “You’re the one who’s going to jail. Right? I haven’t killed anybody.”

  “And neither have I. Jesus Christ! You’d think I could get a little understanding out of my own family.”

  His throat aches and his voice sounds harsh. Somehow he’d assumed this would be easier. But why should it be? Everything in his life’s experience tells him that nothing ever comes easily between fathers and sons.

  “Look,” he says, trying to sound conciliatory. “I know this has probably been tough on you. I don’t know if people talk about it at school ...”

  “They do.”

  Silence like a wound opens up between them. A mournful cello sighs through the headphones, replacing the abrasive guitars.

  “All my friends know what’s going on,” Alex says after a few seconds. “They’re all like, ‘Man, I’m really glad it’s not my father.’ And I start to laugh along and then I think: Wait, it is my father. So now I’m different from them. And it’s not the way I want to be different. I mean, there are ways I want to be different, but this isn’t one of them. It’s not fair.”

  “I know.”

  “So why’d you kill him? That’s what everyone wants to know. They ask me if you talk about what it’s like to kill somebody when you’re home.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” Jake stares at his son, wishing he could reach over and touch the boy. “Now is not the time to get into all of it. Maybe one day when it’s over.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  The cello in the headphones fades, as the guitar and drums launch one final desperate volley. Kurt Cobain stares down from a poster across the room that says I HATE MYSELF AND WANT TO DIE.

  “All I can say is I tried to do what I thought was right for you and your mother.”

  “Gimme a break.”

  The boy hoists the headphones back over his ears. Jake wonders if he’ll have another chance at making things right between them. The thought that he won’t moves the ache from his throat down into his chest.

  “I love you,” he tells his son.

  But Alex is lost in his own private universe and the words can’t penetrate the cyclone of sound in his ears.

  Jake goes back to his office downstairs to look at his papers and law books, headachy and as frayed inside as Kurt Cobain’s voice, hoping against hope to find something other than the words of a deranged man that will help him stay out of prison for the rest of his days.

  77

  Hey, c’mere a second!”

  When John G. comes out of his Brooklyn work shelter on Wednesday morning, two days before he’s supposed to testify, there’s a red Dodge van parked across the street.

  “I wanna ask you something.” The driver waves him over.

  John doesn’t recognize the man until he comes right up to the driver’s side window. Then he sees a brand-new aluminum baseball bat lying flat across the passenger seat.

  “How’s your memory?” says Philip Cardi.

  John G. is still trying to process the threat in his mind when he shows up at the employment office an hour and a half later. His interviewer, Mrs. D’Alessandro, sits behind her worn battleship of a desk, eating an egg salad sandwich on wax paper.

  “I’m sorry I kept you waiting,” she says, half rising to shake his hand. “But I’ve hardly had a chance for lunch today.”

  Her fingers feel moist and soggy.

  “It’s all right,” says John, sitting down and trying to find a way to get comfortable. “I wasn’t going anywhere.”

  His left arm starts to itch. He doesn’t want to be here today, but Ted Shakur insisted it was part of his Lifesmanship Training Course. He has to learn how to reintegrate himself into society by working on the “fun-da-mentals,” as Ted calls them. Going to job interviews, opening bank accounts, getting himself a telephone.

  But the whole time, he keeps hearing the words: Jesus fucking Christ I’m not ready for this. His mind’s been in an uproar since he agreed to testify for Mr. Schiff. And now he has this threat to contend with. How’s your memory? Jesus fucking Christ.

  “So what kinda work are you looking for?” asks Mrs. D’Alessandro, glancing down at the resume John’s given her.

  “Anything.”

  “Anything?”

  She looks up, alarmed. Is he sounding too desperate? Be relaxed, Ted told him. Wear a clean shirt. Shave. Be yourself. But what if the real you isn’t a clean shirt and a close shave? What if the real you is a bum going through garbage cans for crack money?

  “Well, maybe you can narrow it down for me a little,” Mrs. D’Alessandro says in a voice like honey and thumbtacks. “What kinda work are you interested in doing?”

  Outside, Eighteenth Street traffic is clogged. Trucks blare their horns and foul the air with black smoke. A cop with a loudspeaker keeps telling everyone to move.

  “I just meant, I was willing to do anything,” John G. says, fidgeting as the itch moves up his arm. “I could drive a van. I could do construction. I could handle rubbish removal ...”

  He tries to remember the rest of what Ted told him to say, but the words won’t come. He’s aware only of the truck horns and the egg salad dribbling onto the wax paper. How’s your memory?

  “Well, how we
re you previously employed?” asks Mrs. D’Alessandro.

  “I was with the TA. I drove a train.”

  “Yeah, but what have you been doing for the past year?” She puts on a pair of black-rimmed glasses and frowns at his résumé. “The Shaker Realty Company. What’s that?”

  It’s a lie. That’s what it is. Ted told him that any employer with brains would wonder what he’d been up to lately. And he hasn’t picked up references, smoking jumbos and pissing in the gutters the last few months. “Sometimes it’s necessary to just stretch the truth a little,” Ted told him.

  But now John finds he can’t get right with that. The itch has moved to the center of his chest.

  Mrs. D’Alessandro takes off her glasses. “I never heard of this Shaker group. What’d you do for them?”

  Come on, Ted told him. Everybody lies. It’s the way of the world. It’s dog-eat-dog in the offices, just like it is on the streets.

  But John still can’t adjust. Something inside him has been rigged to go off when he lies. Maybe it’s what the nuns taught him or maybe it’s the fact that telling the truth is the only thing that’s anchored him for most of his life. But right now the itching in his chest is unbearable and he begins to claw at his heart.

  “You all right?” says Mrs. D’Alessandro. “You’re lookin’ kinda pale.”

  He’s not all right, though. Why does everyone expect so much from him? He isn’t prepared to go back to a world of car insurance and bank accounts and having two forms of ID on you at all times. And he’s certainly in no shape to stand up to threats. It’s too much responsibility. They want him to testify in court and he can barely order a Happy Meal at McDonald’s.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, getting up quickly to leave. “I think I made a mistake.”

  It’s ten after six when he gets back to the Brooklyn Redevelopment and Reclamation Society. The sun is like a flickering candle, casting guttering light into dusk over the Bed-Stuy rooftops and water towers.

  He walks into the community room and sits down, berating himself. What’s the matter with him? Doesn’t he want to be back in the world again?