Loose Screws

by Karen Templeton

  Now it’s over.

  All three places said the checks were dated well before the fire, which means he could’ve gotten in touch with me, if he’d wanted to. That he hadn’t could only mean one thing, which was that he wasn’t going to change his mind. Or even give me the courtesy of a face-to-face explanation.

  The past month, I realize, I’ve been like a person sitting by a deathbed, praying for a miracle, unwilling to let go as long as there was even a shred of hope. Well, honey, the body done been carted off and buried now, and there ain’t nuthin’ left to hang on to.

  My grandmother looks up from her work, frowns. “Are you all right?”

  I shake off those last shreds of false hope and smile for her. In a way, I feel relieved. Free, even. Depressed as hell, but free.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine,” I say, then head back to my room, for the first time since my return taking the time to reabsorb the place I’d had no choice but to call “home” for the first two-thirds of my life to date.

  The apartment is one of those grand old dames common to so many prewar buildings north of 96th Street, the rooms spacious and high-ceilinged, the wood floors wood slightly slanted, the hundred-times-painted over walls and ceilings trimmed with cornices and molding. The windows were replaced seven or eight years ago, but as a child, I remember my father joking that you could practically gauge the wind velocity by how far the curtains would blow out from the sills.

  I don’t suppose I should be surprised that being here makes me think of my father. But now, as I regard a collection of photos hanging crookedly on the wall outside the kitchen, my eyes burn at a picture of the three of us on what I think is my fifth birthday, right after we moved here from the tiny three-room apartment on 114th Street.

  Next to my father, Nedra looks almost petite. Leo—short for Basilio—Petrocelli was six-three or four, with thick, curly black hair and a full beard and moustache. Gee, if he’d lived long enough for his hair to turn white, he would have made the perfect Santa Claus, complete with the booming laugh. Dressed in almost identical fisherman’s sweaters and jeans, we’re all smiling like goons in the picture, my father possessively hugging my mother to his side, his cheek nestled in her hair. I’m standing between them, one of their hands in each of mine.

  I certainly look happy enough in the photo, don’t I?

  I turn away, shaking my head at the living room, which is one of two rooms Nonna gave up on trying to bully into order years ago. “Less is more” is not a concept with which my mother is familiar. Piles of books and papers and magazines, like a drunken city skyline, take up most of whatever space isn’t occupied by furniture that was comfortably worn when I was little, but is now simply pathetic and threadbare. Because she’s still giving her salary away, I wonder? Or because she simply can’t be bothered calling her daughter to help her go look for something less disreputable?

  Nedra’s bedroom, the old dining room, is right next to the living room. Through the slightly open French doors I catch glimpses of discarded clothes and more piles of books, competing with the magazines and papers scattered across her unmade bed.

  I have to smile. Yep, that’s my mother, a woman too busy being to be bothered with cleaning up after herself.

  And then there’s my grandmother, I think as I stop in front of a room that would put a Marine recruit to shame. Or a nun. Underneath a crucifix (a large, gaudy, gruesome thing I found totally fascinating as a kid) stands a single twin bed, tightly made, keeping company with an armless upholstered rocking chair she brought with her from Italy more than fifty years ago. The dark wood dresser is bare except for a statue of the Madonna centered on a tatted lace doily; there is not a speck of dust on the damn thing.

  How on earth have these two women managed to live together this long without driving each other nuts?

  And how odd that I am like neither of them.

  Once back in “my” room, I turn on the fan on the dresser, then crawl back onto the bed—which I haven’t yet made—and sit cross-legged, elbows on knees, chin in hands, and take stock of how I feel. I decide not bad, but not good, either. This is when, logically and true to my nature, I should be recouping, planning, figuring out where I go from here. For some reason, it’s not happening. Although whether it’s because I’m feeling rebellious or because I’m simply worn out, I can’t quite tell.

  I should call a Bitchfest.

  Then again, maybe not. The way I feel right now, Terrie’s cynicism would push me over the edge.

  Not to mention Shelby’s serene little smile.

  On a sigh, I haul my butt off the bed, decide—because it’s not as if I have a pressing schedule or anything—to see just how much of my past my mother has managed to hang on to. The cedar-lined closet is a fairly big one, with lots of shelves and crevices. When I was little, I used to torment my mother by hiding inside, refusing to answer when she called me…until the tone of her voice warned me she was no longer amused. But it was nice, even if just for a few minutes, pretending that no one could find me, or bother me, or disturb my thoughts. By ten or eleven, though, I’d outgrown the practice, which was sad because then I really had no place to be by myself.

  I pull the cord to turn on the overhead light. Criminy. Here are my teenage years, tucked away for all eternity—the clothes, those posters, all rolled up inside each other in a corner, boxes of books.

  And on the top shelf, a splotched, banged-up wooden case that still smells of linseed oil and turpentine.

  Something stirs in my blood, something I’d thought long since dead and forgotten. I yank down the box, nearly beaning myself in the process, then carry it to my bare desktop to open it. My heart rate speeds up, my fingers tingle, like a lover disrobing her beloved after too many years apart.

  The bent, squashed tubes huddle together, deformed and smeared. I pick one up, gently squeeze it to find it still pliant. Most of the other kids in my art classes preferred acrylics, with their brighter colors and faster drying time. Not me. I loved the way oils smelled, the subtle depth of the colors, their patience with a neophyte’s experimentation with blending and shading, even the different textures and feels of the different pigments. A pathetic romantic then, I even loved the sense of connection with artists from centuries before.

  I’d turned to painting about the time I’d outgrown the closet.

  I’d let myself wander around for hours in the world I’d create with my brushes, oblivious to the comings and goings in the apartment. My parents encouraged my explorations, never hesitating to buy me whatever supplies I needed, no matter how expensive a tube of Alizaron Crimson or a pure sable Number 10 round brush happened to be.

  Even during those weeks when all we ate was macaroni and cheese.

  Gee. That wouldn’t be guilt pricking my conscience, would it?

  Further rooting around in the back of the closet turns up a stack of canvases, some half finished, some only primed. And my old easel, too…

  I find myself wandering into the third, now-empty bedroom, the one Nedra had said I could use as an office. Or something.

  It’s the one room that faces north, due to a funny jog in the building. A battered chest of drawers, a couple of chairs are all that break the monotony of bare floor, unadorned walls. The old roller shade snaps up when I pull it; clear, bright light floods the room.

  “Found your paints, huh?”

  Despite its softness, my mother’s voice makes me jump, crashing out of my dream. God—what was I thinking? That I’d start painting again? As if the reason I’d given it up to begin with has changed?

  “You should have ditched all that crap years ago,” I say, my voice shrill, hollow, in the empty room.

  “Wasn’t my crap to ditch.” A floorboard creaks as she comes into the room, her arms crossed. She crosses to the window, struggles with it for a minute before coercing it open. A hot, airless breeze drifts into the room, spiked with sounds of traffic, voices, a child crying somewhere in the building. “This would make a great studio,
wouldn’t it?”

  I glance around, shrug. “I suppose.”

  Nedra drops into one of the chairs, an old Mission-style thing I’d always hated. “You were good, Ginger. I never did understand why you gave it up.”

  Her words provoke simultaneous pride and annoyance. Nedra’s not one for empty praise. Neither is she much for seeing something from someone else’s vantage point.

  “You know damn well why I quit.”

  “Because you’d rather take the easy way out.”

  “Because I’m not the starving artist type. Which you know.”

  “Not all artists are starving.”

  “No, only most of them. Come on—how many of those friends of yours ever made it even past the bottom rung of the ladder, let alone to the top? You know damn well what the odds are against becoming a success. Or even simply making enough to live on. I’d’ve had to have a screw loose to even think about pursuing a career as a painter.”

  “So you were afraid to even try.”

  “I didn’t want to try. That’s not the same as being afraid to.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Jesus, Nedra!”

  “Sorry.”

  I let out a bark of laughter.

  “All right, I’m not sorry. Because it kills me that you’d rather spend your life decorating other people’s houses, executing somebody else’s vision, than expressing your own.”

  “And has it ever once occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, I like what I’m doing?”

  “I think you’ve convinced yourself you do.”

  My arms fly up in defeat before I spin around, tromp back to my room. Seconds later, the guard chain rattles against the door as my mother leaves again.

  Why do I argue with her? There’s a better chance of settling differences between the Palestinians and the Israelis than between my mother and me, yet I keep falling for the bait, over and over again.

  My throat inexplicably clogged, I cram all the stuff back into the closet. When things settle down a bit, I’ll see about chucking it completely—

  “Is everything all right, cara?”

  Nonna stands in the doorway, her hands loosely clasped in front of her stomach, her still-dark brows tightly drawn. I sigh.

  “Nedra and I had a fight.”

  “That much I could tell,” she says with a slight smile. “The apartment, she isa not that big. She wants you to take up your painting again, sì?

  “As if I could.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because that’s simply not what I do anymore, Nonna. Or who I am.”

  She comes into my room, perches on the end of my bed, reaches up to pull me down beside her. “You think your talent, she is no more?”

  I wasn’t ready to think about that too hard, so all I said was, “Painting was a part of my life at a time when I needed an outlet for everything I was going through after Papa died. I don’t need it anymore. That’s all.”

  I’ve outgrown that closet, too.

  Her hand feels weightless and soft in mine. But when she squeezes it, she passes to me what feels like the concentrated strength of every generation of womanhood that has come before her. Her eyes, dark and far too assessing, find mine.

  “Your mama, she is not—Come sei dice?—diplomatic, no? But I think maybe she speaks more truth than you are willing to hear.” She pulls me over to place a whisper of a kiss on my forehead. “Your painting, she comes froma your soul. I also do not think it is a good thing to deny your soul what it needs to say.”

  You know, all I ask of life right now is a single ally.

  “Nonna, I—”

  My cell phone rings, hidden somewhere in the room like a phantom cricket. While we both search for the damn thing—Nonna finally unearths it from underneath the bedclothes—I try to compose myself. Only to have that tenuous composure shot to hell the minute I say hello.

  “Christ, it’s about damn time you answered your cell! And what’s this I hear about you gettin’ smoked out of your new apartment?”

  Now I know what it feels like to be in direct line for an asteroid hit.

  Nonna has shuffled out of the room, taking a thousand years of woman strength with her. “Please don’t yell at me, Nick,” I say softly. “I’m not in the mood.”

  I hear an expelled breath on the other end. “Hell, Ginger, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to come on so strong. But Jesus H. Christ—I try callin’ your regular phone and get nothin’. So I try the cell, still get nothin’. So I get worried, thinkin’…” Another sigh. “I don’t mean to sound negative, but it’s like every time I turn around, somethin’ else has happened to you.”

  “Tell me about it.” Then I say, because it’s taken this long to work through, “You were worried about me? Why?”

  “Because, like I said, it’s like you got a sign on your back or something that says Kick Me. So I figure it wouldn’t hurt to check up on you. And Paula’s been on my case, big-time, wanting to know how you’re doin’.”

  “So how come Paula didn’t call?”

  “If I couldn’t get through, how could she?”

  Good point. “So…how’d you find out about the fire?”

  “I finally went over to your old apartment this morning, hoping maybe one of your neighbors might know something. One of the guys who lives across the hall from you—the black dude?—said you’d just called them, that you were back with your mother?”

  “Oh. Yeah.”

  “I take it this calls for condolences?”

  “Hey. You’ve met my mother.”

  “That was for two minutes, maybe, more than ten years ago.”

  “And I bet you remember, with crystal clarity, every second of that meeting, don’t you?”

  He chuckles. “Now that you mention it, yeah. I do. But people change.”

  “People, maybe. Nedra, no.” I flop back on my bed, the back of my hand draped dramatically over my eyes. You know, I have no idea why he called. And you know what else? I really don’t care. Sure, the man’s pushy and borderline obnoxious, but at the moment he’s all I’ve got. It occurs to me, if I let the tears come right now, he wouldn’t consider it a sign of feminine weakness. I might, but he wouldn’t. So I let them come.

  “I’ve had it, Nick,” I say, my voice all wobbly. “Up until a month ago, things were going great, you know? Then bam, bam, bam—no wedding, no job, no home, no home—again—no dog…”

  “The dog? What happened to the dog?”

  I explained about Curtiss and the will. I wasn’t sobbing or anything, just occasionally sniffling. Just enough to apparently make the big old tough cop on the other end of the line go all gentle and stuff. Which was fine by me.

  “Hey,” he says. “How’s about you come out here for the Fourth?”

  Tissue pressed to my nose, I say, “Out…where?”

  “Here. Brooklyn. My place. Well, Paula’s and Frank’s, actually. I mean, somehow I got the night off, and they’re doin’ this whole cookout number, and you wouldn’t believe how well you can see the Macy’s fireworks from the roof. So come on. It’ll be fun.”

  God. Where had June gone? But the Fourth was only five days away. I give this shaky sigh. “Gee, I don’t know…”

  “Ginger, if there was ever anybody who sounded like she needed a change, a break—somethin’—it’s you, okay?”

  I roll onto my side, propping myself up on one arm. “I…can’t.”

  “Because?”

  “Because…because I just…can’t.”

  “Because you haven’t had three months to think about it and decide whether or not this fits in with your plans for your life, what?”

  I almost laugh. “I’m not that anal.”

  “Then what? Oh, hey, if you’re hesitating because of Amy—”

  “No, of course not,” I lie.

  “—that’s over.”

  “Oh?” I sit up. “Oh, crap, Nick…I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I knew it was comin’. I just didn’t want t
o admit it.”

  He’s trying to do that male stoic number and failing miserably. “What happened?”

  “One word. Kids. As in, she doesn’t want ’em. I mean, to be fair, she’d been up-front about that all along, I guess I just thought…I dunno. That maybe, if things got goin’ good between us, she’d change her mind.” He sighs. “I guess she figured it was better to end it now. Well, actually, she’s been tryin’ to end it for some time. We didn’t date. We argued. Finally broke up that night after I was at your place. You know, when I brought over the Chinese food?”

  As if I needed a memory jog. Of course, paranoia immediately kicks in. “And…that’s why you invited me to come out there? Because you’re suddenly at loose ends?”

  “No. No, I swear. I mean, okay, I can understand why you might think that, but in fact, I hadn’t even thought about inviting you, since I figured your reaction would pretty much be what it was. But after we got to talking and I heard how upset you were, I thought, What the hell, right? It was worth a shot.”

  I go silent.

  So Nick says, “Hey, I like you, okay? I like being around you, being around someone who’s different from all the other women I know. But honest to God, there’s nothing more to it than that. Of course, if the feeling’s not mutual, if you don’t like being with me…”

  I’m still absorbing what I’m pretty sure is a compliment when I realize I’ve almost missed my cue. “Oh, no, Nick! It’s nothing like that. I like you, too.” Probably more than I should. “It’s just…oh, crud, I don’t know. I’d be really lousy company.”

  “Then that makes two of us. So whaddya say?”

  Oh, God. I’m weakening, I can feel it. I stare at my toenails, contemplating what they’d look like purple. Or maybe blue. “As long as it’s not a date or anything.”

  “There you go again with the date business,” he says wearily. “Look, you can call it anything you want, Ginger, okay? I really don’t care. Hell, you can hang out with Paula and the kids all night if you want to. I mean, I’ll just go off and quietly hang myself, but I’ll understand.”

  A giggle bubbles out of my throat.