by Rick R. Reed
But it seemed life, or fate, made plans for Vito without consulting him.
They walked in silence. Vito figured Henry would say something when he was ready. Or he’d talk when Vito reached his front door, about to head inside, leaving Henry out in the heat of the morning.
Whichever came first.
Already it felt like the humidity hovered around 100 percent. If Vito looked east, he could see the sun coming up, a diffuse orange ball, tarnished by haze.
It was going to be a scorcher.
At his front door, Vito pulled his keys out of his pocket. The girls’ ears perked up at their jingle. They knew from endless repetition that the sound meant they would soon be going inside and getting breakfast. Connie jumped up on Vito’s chest, gave his face a quick wipe with her tongue. He pushed her gently away.
He cocked his head and looked at Henry. Henry couldn’t appear to meet his gaze. He cast his blue eyes down toward the grit on the sidewalk.
“I have something to ask you.” Vito leaned close to Henry.
Henry at last looked up, and Vito’s heart lurched because he could see the pain in the boy’s tender pale eyes. They were watery, red-rimmed. Vito said a silent prayer. Please make him go away. Please. I don’t want to get involved.
Vito knew if there was a God, he was deaf to such petitions. They had never worked in the past.
Vito whispered, “Are you completely nuts?”
Henry laughed then, a bitter little yelp of a laugh, far too old and wise for a teenage kid. “Yeah. I think I am.” Henry shrugged. “Or at least I wish I was. Maybe then things would be easier.” Henry stared down the street, presumably at the rising sun. “A mental institution sounds inviting right now. An escape.”
Vito put a hand on Henry’s shoulder, forcing him to return his gaze to Vito’s eyes. “Kid. What’s the matter?” Inside, Vito cursed himself for asking. The cynical part of him told him, over and over, he didn’t want to know. He shouldn’t get involved.
“What’s the matter? What’s the matter? Maybe it’s the fact you call me ‘kid’ all the goddamn time. I’m eighteen. At least in the eyes of the law, I’m an adult.” He sighed. “And fact is, I mostly feel a lot older than just eighteen.”
“I’m sorry. Would you like me to call you Henry? Old man?”
Henry shook his head. “I don’t care.” He rubbed at his face. “How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Ancient,” Henry scoffed. “But not really. A decade on me does not give you the right to call me ‘kid.’ It’s absurd.”
“Okay, so I won’t call you kid.” Vito smacked the back of Henry’s head. “How about ciuccio? You like that better?”
“Chooch? What’s that?” Henry asked.
Vito laughed. “It’s what my mama calls an idiot, a stupid person.”
“Gee, thanks.”
Just then the homeless woman Vito had spied earlier and since forgotten came up to them. Her eyes were yellow and glazed, her hair a gray flyaway mess, and she smelled bad. Sour. Perspiration and rotten onions. When she spoke, Vito noticed she was missing a lot of teeth.
“You guys spare some change? Or a cigarette?” She looked hopefully from one face to the other.
Vito watched Henry, waiting to see what he would do. His own hand he had in his pocket, where he knew there were a couple of singles and some change. Henry smiled at the woman, although Vito could see him recoil a bit from her stench. He dug in his pocket and brought out a handful of bills. Vito suspected these were his tips from the night before, maybe all of them.
“Here,” Henry said. “This is all I got.”
The woman grabbed the bills and stuffed them into her ripped down coat, too dirty to discern any color and too hot for the weather.
Vito handed the woman a couple of dollars. “Take care,” he said softly.
The woman looked at both of them with something like gratitude. Her lower lip came up and out. In a hoarse voice, she said, “Thank you.”
Vito watched her walk away. “She’ll probably use that for booze,” he said.
“Or drugs,” Henry agreed.
“I guess it’s none of our business.”
The dogs clawed at Vito’s legs. “Do you want to come in?”
Henry looked around, as if maybe Vito’s reluctant query was directed at someone else.
“The girls here need their breakfast.”
Henry looked down at them. “Right. Sure.”
Vito turned to unlock the door. “You can’t stay. But I’ll make coffee.” He could feel Henry’s breath warm on his neck, he stood so close behind him.
Vito smiled.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WITHOUT BEING asked, Henry collapsed gratefully on Vito’s couch. It was old, but that was not a drawback. The leather was worn and stained at the tops of the cushions, where Henry imagined heads resting. The thought should have been repugnant, but it seemed homey to Henry, who had grown up in a house where everything was always pristine, and if it wasn’t, it was replaced.
He sank into the couch, and it was like the embrace of someone who cared. He looked around the room while Vito went into the kitchen to make coffee and get the dogs their food. He could hear their toenails clicking on the kitchen floor linoleum as they paced impatiently.
The room, like the couch, was warm and comfortable, maybe even comforting. Newspaper littered the coffee table. The two windows, facing the street, had wooden blinds that were slatted partially open, letting in defined angles of light, in which dust motes danced. Across from Henry was a crowded bookcase, with books stuffed in every which way. It looked like the wood would burst or tumble down from their collective weight. Most of the books were, not surprisingly, cookbooks.
Above the bookshelf was a simple mirror with beveled edges in a gold wooden frame. It helped make the room appear larger.
On top of the bookshelf were several framed photos. Henry listened as Vito moved around the kitchen, heard the slap of the refrigerator door closing, kibble being emptied into metal bowls, an excited yip from one of the dogs, the whir of the coffee grinder. He crept over to look at the photos, and something went through him—a frisson of understanding, of wonder, of curiosity, and a hope that the photos were not signposts to memory, limited only to the past.
There were lots of pictures of Vito, but this was another Vito, different from the scowling, taciturn creature Henry had grown accustomed to working with over the summer. This Vito wore, in many of the shots, a big, carefree smile. His dark eyes sparkled, crinkled around their edges from laughter. Even his body had a looseness about it Henry had never seen.
Here was Vito with a blond man on a beach, their arms wrapped around each other, squinting into the sunlight that lit up their faces but beaming, joy radiating from their wind-chapped and sun-kissed faces. Henry lifted the photo in its frame and thought how the blond man bore a certain resemblance to Henry himself, as Henry might look in only a few years.
One thing that was obvious from the photo, though—this pair were not just friends. They were in love. He closed his eyes for a moment, and he could see them on the beach. Perhaps it was not far from here, at the eastern edge of this very street, where it dead-ended at Lake Michigan. Henry saw the two of them running on the sand and then the gentle burst of electricity as they joined hands, as their eyes met, and they knew they’d be walking back home together.
Other photos showed the couple with a little dark-haired and dark-eyed boy. In one, he reached up to hold each of their hands. Trees surrounded them. The sun was setting behind them, making of the three a silhouette, yet no one could mistake the photograph for anything other than what it was: a family portrait.
And here was one with just Vito and the little boy, snuggled on his lap, a big picture book in front of them. The boy was grinning at the camera, showing off the front tooth he had probably just lost. His cheeks were fat, rosy, yet the resemblance to Vito was obvious. Was this his son? A nephew, perhaps? The boy had to have
been family of some kind.
But Henry opted for son. He could see as much from the way Vito didn’t look at the camera but stared down at the boy with wonder and love, one hand on the book, one laid tenderly on the top of the boy’s head.
“What are you doing?” Vito’s voice, behind Henry, was cold.
Henry’s spine stiffened, and he felt a stab of heat at his face. Why he felt guilty was beyond him. Wasn’t looking at framed photos out on display in someone’s living room a relatively inoffensive thing to do?
If so, why did Vito sound so harsh, so brittle?
Henry turned to see Vito glaring. Vito set the two mugs of steaming coffee on an end table, rushed over to Henry, and snatched the photograph out of his hand. He replaced it on the shelf facedown. He then turned each of the photographs facedown on the bookshelf’s top, slamming them down with a bang that made Henry jump a little every time.
“You don’t need to look at these.”
“I’m, I’m sorry,” Henry said.
Vito bowed his head and pressed his hand to his eyes. When he looked back up, there was a grim attempt at a smile on his face. It didn’t work, not at all. It did, however, manage to convey a hint of sheepishness. “No, you don’t have to be sorry. You didn’t know.”
Didn’t know what? Henry wanted to ask. But something compelled him to keep his mouth shut. Maybe it had something to do with the tension hanging in the air as thick as the humidity outside.
“Your coffee’s ready. I didn’t know how you took it.” Vito gestured toward the end table, where he had left the two mismatched mugs.
Even though Henry liked coffee with lots of cream and sugar, he took the cup and sat back down on the couch with it. “Black is fine.” Henry sipped and tried not to grimace at the bold bitterness.
“I like you a little better already.” Vito took his own coffee and sat next to Henry. Silence hung in the air like haze.
Henry ached to ask about the people in the photos—who they were, where they were now. He assumed Vito lived alone, but what did he know? What was the story behind the little family? But he could tell, from the obvious pain on Vito’s face and the way he had reacted to Henry seeing them, that now was not the time.
The dogs came in and found places on the floor to lie down.
Vito, after what seemed like an hour had passed, finally broke the silence. His coffee, after the first sip, had gone untouched, and the way he stared into the distance, not seeming to see anything, indicated even to a “kid” like Henry that Vito was very upset.
“I’m so tired,” Vito said, his voice soft. He stretched, yawning and lifting his arms above his head. “I feel like I didn’t sleep at all. Dreams.” He turned his head and didn’t meet Henry’s hungry stare but gazed at a point over his head. “Have you ever had such vivid dreams you wake up exhausted?”
Henry nodded.
“I need to go sleep. We have work again in a few hours, and I’ll be useless if I don’t get some real, honest-to-goodness shut-eye.”
“I get that.”
“You should sleep too.”
For a moment, Henry’s heart leaped. Maybe Vito would tell him he could sleep there. Even if it was only on the couch, it was a start.
But then Vito said, “Finish your coffee. And then you should go home.”
He stood up and stretched again. His T-shirt rose up, exposing a taut, hairy belly. Henry felt a stab of shame for the excitement he felt at that glimpse, which was more erotic, he realized, than if Vito was standing before him completely naked. Vito turned and took a few steps toward a door that Henry imagined must be his bedroom. The dogs, attuned to the movements of their master, rose to their feet, ready to follow.
“You can just pull the front door shut on your way out. It’ll lock behind you.”
And with that, Vito disappeared into the bedroom, followed by the girls. He shut the door firmly behind him.
Henry sat on the couch for a long time, letting the mug of coffee go cold in his hands. He listened to the stillness in the apartment, thinking he should feel tired, but he didn’t. After a time, he got up and crept to the bedroom door, angling his head so he could listen better through the wood. He heard snoring. Whether it was Vito or the dogs, he couldn’t be sure.
He turned back and eyed the photos, lying on their faces, and it made him sad. It was as though Vito wanted to shut out the memories they represented. But why have them at all, then?
With a feeling that he was doing something very wrong, Henry crept back to the bookshelf, stopping and stiffening when a floorboard creaked under his feet. He expected the bedroom door to swing open and Vito to stand facing him, enraged. The thought should have been enough to put him off his task, but it didn’t.
One by one, he set the photographs back upright, taking a moment to brush the dust from the glass of each with the bottom of his shirt. He got to the last one and realized this was the only one he hadn’t had a chance to look at. It was an old picture. Vito looked very young in it, his hair pulled back into a ponytail and wearing the checked pants most chefs wore. In front of him was a young girl, who couldn’t have been out of her teens. She had long black hair, almost to her waist, and wore big hoop earrings. Her dark eyes stared at the camera almost with an air of defiance. She was definitely Italian.
In her arms, she held a swaddled baby. But it was odd, Henry noticed, the way she held the baby. Where he would expect her to cradle it close, she held it out and slightly away from her body, as if she hoped someone would come along and take over for her. Henry picked up the photo to peer more closely at it. This must be where the little boy came from, Henry thought. Vito was married at one point, or at least involved enough with this girl to have a baby with her. Henry shook his head. Vito doesn’t look much older than I am right now. Hell, he barely looks old enough to drive.
He set the photo back down, thinking he could be wrong. But all the evidence pointed to what he was supposing—the protective way Vito had his hand on the girl’s shoulder, the pride and terror in his expression, which could very much indicate a new father.
It was an old story, Henry thought, and with Vito’s background, he could see it making sense that, once upon a time, he had been married. His family would have wanted it.
He looked to the other photos, all taken later, all representing, Henry imagined, a different family with a couple of the same actors. What had happened to the young girl?
Henry picked up the photo of the three of them, the one in which Vito and what Henry guessed was his son and lover, partner, maybe even husband, stood as silhouettes on a woodland path. He took it with him and sat down on the couch, still fearing that at any moment, Vito would awaken and catch him.
He stared down at the photograph until the shadows fell away, until each of their faces was lit up by sunlight. He imagined them talking, discussing where to go next on their hike. He pictured the exchange between Vito and the blond man, the happiness at this simple pleasure, and the way their eyes communicated that joy to each other with a simple glance above the boy’s head.
He put the photo back on the shelf. He cast his gaze around for something to write on. On the coffee table, there was a takeout menu from Giordano’s, the pizza place over on Sheridan, and he picked it up. He quickly found a pen atop one of the newspapers, where Vito had half completed the crossword.
He wrote Vito a note.
Dear Vito,
Don’t be mad, but I looked at the pictures again. I guess you know that, since they’re all upright now.
I don’t know what your story is, and I hope that one day you’ll trust me enough to share it, but the pictures I saw touched me. And they made me hurt, deep inside. Hurt for you—if these photos, as I suspect, remind you of a loss. And for me, because these photos, these happy family shots, remind me of something that maybe I never had.
And they made me realize something.
I came here to talk to you about a family trauma, a shock I had last night that shook me to my core. An
d it’s bad, but not as bad as what I fear may have happened to you. So I realized that whatever our hurts are, someone else might have it even worse. I was thinking like a kid. I admit it. A kid thinks the entire world revolves around him. And I’m no different. So you weren’t so far off calling me kid.
But I grew up just a little here this morning. Black coffee and realizations do that to a person.
I’m going now. I apologize if my looking at your family photos upset you. I hope you and I can talk someday. I still need to tell you what happened to me.
And I think it would do you some good, if I can be that out there, to tell me what happened to you.
I’m listening.
Your friend,
Henry
Henry set the note back down on the coffee table and crossed to the front door to let himself out. He stopped and then went back to the note, scratched out “Your friend,” and wrote, in its place, “Love.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE QUALITY of the light filtering in through his bedroom miniblinds told Vito it was late afternoon. He sat up wearily in bed, the sheets slithering off his bare chest, and rubbed his eyes. He felt as though he had been drugged, the deep sleep he had fallen into earlier that morning clinging to him like some kind of leaded cloak.
He frowned. It still happened. Even though the car accident that took Sal and Kevin away from him was over a year ago, he continued to wake sometimes from a very deep slumber with the feeling they were still there. His hand, almost as if it had a mind of its own, would reach out to touch Kevin’s shoulder or pat his head and come away empty. Or he would listen, alert, as any parent would, to see if his child was awake and stirring.
He slumped back in bed as he realized, for the thousandth time, that he was alone. The only things he heard were the sounds the dogs made—not all of them pleasant, the traffic rushing by outside, the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Sometimes his neighbor upstairs played his music too loud, and the hip-hop rhythms, annoying at best, would filter down to Vito. But now it was quiet.
