“Excuse me, miss!” a male voice called out. Iris turned her head, but didn’t see anyone. “Yes, you! Over here!” She spun her head around again, nearly losing her balance before turning the bike in the direction of the voice. A guy was standing behind the open door of a blue Plymouth Valiant, waving a hand in the air.
“Can I help you?” Even though she had already punched out, Iris was still in her uniform, and still on McDonald’s premises. She felt a duty to go see if the man needed some sort of assistance.
“That’s what you said to me ten minutes ago, when you served me this!” The man stepped from behind the car door, hands in the air, one of which gripped a large drink cup. The front of his shirt was dripping with chocolate milkshake.
“Oh, my goodness!” Iris said, backpedaling to a stop as she pulled up next to him. The spill must have been her fault; she was aware of her bad habit of snapping the drink lids hurriedly in place when she was in a rush. She vaguely remembered the blue and white polo shirt standing across from her, while she counted out the guy’s change and the minutes until quitting time, anxious to leave before Michael took up his station at the grill and the lunch customers started pouring in.
“I was still thinking about your smile, and the way you said ‘Have a nice day!’ when I got to my car. I squeezed the cup so hard, the lid popped off, and this is the result!” He looked down at his chest, shaking his head.
“I’m so sorry, maybe it wasn’t sealed properly.” Iris felt bad, but she didn’t know what to do. She hoped he wouldn’t report her to the manager. She wondered whether it would sound too weird if she suggested he take his shirt off and give it to her so she could take it home and wash it. “Please forgive me.”
“Who am I to withhold forgiveness?” The guy looked up and, fortunately, smiled at her. He looked younger than she had first thought, maybe just out of college. It was probably his neatly groomed, slightly geeky appearance and his unfashionable glasses that aged him beyond his years. “I like to think this was all part of a plan,” he said. “Thank you for saying ‘have a nice day’ like that.”
“Sure,” Iris said, presuming that meant she was off the hook and free to go.
“I guess I’d better go change,” the guy said, smiling as he got into his car.
“I guess.” Iris smiled back. Before she could catch herself, she said, “Have a nice day.” She said it to everyone.
Five take-out cheeseburgers and chocolate milkshakes later, the same young man extended his hand to shake that of Iris’s father. “Rick Rotula, sir!” he said the first time he set foot in the kitchen at Chestnut Crest.
“Nice to meet you,” her father replied, pumping Rick’s hand enthusiastically. “Nice grip.”
“Thanks, sir. Tennis.”
Iris had no doubt that her father would approve. For a start, Rick was of Italian extraction, as suggested by his olive complexion and dark hair, and confirmed by his surname. As it transpired between one over-the-counter order and another, together with an invitation to see the new show at the planetarium, Rick was a few years older than Iris, in his junior year at a nearby Christian college, where he majored in sociology, and held a summer job at the eyeglass factory. He lived in their old neighborhood in the city with his mother, a nurse who worked the night shift at the city’s insane asylum. When Iris was a child, and the Capotostis drove by the red brick building, they all craned their necks out the car window to look at the barred windows of the “loony bin,” fantasizing aloud about wild-eyed inmates chained to the beds, frothing at the mouth, emitting blood-curdling screams as orderlies restrained them and nurses injected them with powerful sedatives through foot-long syringes, before power-saw wielding surgeons with the sadistic grins of serial killers performed lobotomies on them. Iris wondered what kind of woman would want to work in such a place. At night, no less.
The date at the planetarium did not go quite as planned; there were no seats available, so Rick proposed to go bowling instead. Although Iris rarely broke a hundred and was shy about how she would perform, she went along with the idea, and was fairly satisfied at dropping only five gutter balls. Afterwards, they drove to the frozen custard stand by the airport, then went to park by a few other cars in the spot where families sometimes stopped to watch the planes taking off and landing by day, and, with the same pretext, couples parked to neck by night. When they finished their custards, Rick turned to Iris and said, “I’d like to show you something.”
“Sure,” Iris said, not knowing what to expect, but curious to find out. “What?”
“Something I invented.” Rick said, drawing her close, then bending her backwards to place his mouth on hers. His lips were ice cold on contact, and as he pushed his tongue into her mouth, the taste of the chocolate custard he had licked off his cone with remarkable avidity contaminated the purity of the delicate vanilla flavor Iris had been savoring. Rick’s tongue darted around the inside of her mouth, slipping and sliding over teeth and gums like a lizard trying to scramble its way out of a glass jar, then came abruptly to a halt. Rick cradled her head in the palm of an open hand, and gripped her jawbone with the other. Pressing his mouth firmly over hers, he inhaled and exhaled through his nose, constraining her to do the same if she wanted to breathe at all. She wouldn’t have minded him kissing her, was in fact expecting it, but was disturbed by the forced intimacy of breathing together. His nostrils flared with each deep intake of breath, then flattened as he exhaled through his nose into hers. He thrust his tongue deeper and deeper into her throat, pushing the slippery organ back and forth rhythmically, cutting her lips with his teeth as he battered her mouth with his.
Iris was wondering how to wrestle herself out of the stranglehold, when Rick abruptly detached his mouth from hers, grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her away.
“Forgive us!” he cried, holding her at an arm’s length.
Iris gulped for air. Perhaps it was the lack of oxygen, but she was feeling confused. What was he talking about? Why was he speaking in the plural? Was he schizophrenic, like one of his mother’s mental patients?
“Please, please forgive us!” he croaked again in a hoarse voice, as he clasped her hands in his, and raised them to the roof of the car. They were both panting from the exertion of the intense kissing exercise, chests heaving, hearts pounding wildly. Now that she could finally breathe again, all Iris wanted was to extricate herself from his grip, and regain control of all her body parts.
“Thank you!” Rick’s words crumbled under the strain of emotion, as he bowed his head, letting their four arms drop to his lap. Iris was moved by his capacity for passion, flattered that he would apologize for being a bit rough, touched that he would thank her for letting him kiss her.
He continued to hold her hands, finally relaxing his grip as he looked into her eyes and said, “Let us both give thanks, Iris. We were led to temptation, but the power of our Lord and Savior has prevailed. He has driven Satan away. And we are forgiven.”
Iris looked into Rick’s eyes, focusing first on one, then the other. The twin wells of darkness were on the brink of overflowing. The whining engines of a plane coming in for a landing made the car vibrate, as flashing lights reflected in its windows and in Rick’s eyes, which flickered eerily in the darkness.
Although her first encounter with Rick Rotula left Iris feeling rather uneasy, the more she thought about it, the more impressed she was by his maturity and flattered by the respect he showed toward her. She had never gone all the way yet, and had been slightly worried that Rick, already a college man, would want too much from her, too soon. She was relieved when, after a few more dates, it became apparent that her virtue would not be tested beyond the limits of the reasonably well-behaved Catholic girl she considered herself to be. Iris still went to Mass every week, as everyone who lived under her father’s roof must, and silently recited little prayers whenever she needed a special favor from God or a boost from the Madonna to make it through the day. She could probably learn a lot more about b
eing a good Christian from Rick, who involved Jesus in every single aspect of his life. He prayed frequently when they were together, suddenly bowing his head or raising his arms to praise the Lord for the beautiful day, even if it was raining, or to ask for His guidance when they took a wrong turn while driving through an unfamiliar part of town, or scoured the jammed parking lot by the movie theater for a good spot.
Rick soon developed the habit of stopping off at Chestnut Crest on his way to work at the eyeglass factory, where his shift started at six in the morning, at the same time Iris punched in for her daily tour of duty on the breakfast crew. After letting himself in through the unlocked kitchen door, he would deposit his lunch bag and a freshly cut flower in the fridge, then slip away as quietly as he had entered, to return at exactly twelve noon to consume his lunch and visit with Iris for fifteen minutes before returning to the job.
Knowing Rick would be arriving shortly after she did injected energy into Iris’s tired legs as she pedaled home from work. The first thing she did when she walked in the door was open the refrigerator. The sight of a flower waiting for her always made her smile; today it was a yellow rose edged in pink that peeked out from the second shelf. The rose sat atop a brown lunch bag, creased from reuse, whose contents never varied: a slice of American cheese sandwiched between two slices of white bread spread thick with mayonnaise, and a shiny red Macintosh apple. Though she never mentioned it, she found it slightly depressing that a college man would eat the same boring lunch that she had packed for herself every day during grammar school. She picked up the rose and held it to her nose, closing her eyes to fully appreciate the scent of the full bloom, but was disappointed to find it smelled more like leftovers than rose. When she opened them again, she was startled by the sight of a big black bug nestled in the flower. She let out a yelp, and shook the rose by its stem until the bug fell to the floor in a shower of petals. She squashed the bug with her foot then plucked the previous day’s already withered white rose from a bud vase on the counter, and replaced it with the fresh rose, yelping again when she pricked her finger on a thorn. “Non c’è rosa senza spine,” she heard Grandma Capotosti whisper in her ear, suddenly missing the interjections of Old World wisdom the woman had always been ready to offer on every occasion, as she sucked the droplet of blood from her finger. Grandma was right, all roses had thorns, but wouldn’t it be nice, just for once, to find one that didn’t?
Glancing at the kitchen clock, Iris realized there was no time to waste on old Italian maxims; Rick would be arriving in exactly five minutes. She wished she had time to jump into the shower to scrub away the odors of the fried bacon and sausages and eggs and coffee in which she had been steeping all morning, but she also wanted to get rid of the pile of laundry which, although washed and tumbled dry, still looked unseemly sitting there on the kitchen table. She contented herself with quickly changing out of her uniform and into a pair of cutoff denim shorts and a smock top. She was folding a pair of her father’s faded blue boxer shorts when Rick appeared at the kitchen door. He froze on the threshold when he saw her.
“Oh, my Lord. Thank you for this vision,” he said, bowing his head and closing his eyes. After reopening them, he stood still for a few seconds longer, staring at her. “Iris, you look so beautiful like that. So exquisitely feminine. I can already see you, tending to a family of your own.” He paused for a second, then grinned. “Of our own.”
Iris blushed at what she took to be a compliment, and at the rather premature allusion to the future of their budding relationship. “Thanks for the rose,” she said. “The one you brought today was just gorgeous.” No sense telling him about the bug, it would only make him feel bad.
Rick walked over to her, kissed her on the top of her head and said, “Oh, yummy. You smell like an Egg McMuffin.” The changes in his tone of voice and in the curve of his smile were barely perceptible, but Iris was sure they were there, unless of course it was just her, being overly sensitive as usual. She blushed, and was still trying to decide whether to laugh at the remark although it had embarrassed her, when Rick turned away to retrieve his lunch bag from the fridge and sat down at the table. “That’s absolutely amazing,” he said, between bites of his sandwich, his eyes once again soft with admiration, as he watched Iris continue to hand-press boxer’s shorts.
“I picked it up from Auntie Rosa,” Iris said, glad the conversation was shifting from how bad she smelled to how well she could do something.
“Now that’s a woman who knows how to set an example,” he said, wiping a gob of mayonnaise from his chin with a finger, then licking it. He and Auntie Rosa had hit if off right away, which was no surprise. Everyone loved Auntie Rosa, and she loved everyone.
Rick was making Iris nervous, sitting there on the bench, watching her every move and chewing his sandwich in slow motion. She was puzzled by the sense of relief that washed over her when he finally left, and wondered how it could be that the fantasy of being with someone you really liked, possibly even loved, could be so much more delightful than actually being together. Even as this thought flitted across her field of reason, she found herself looking forward to that very same evening, when she would be seeing Rick again.
“Great, you’re back!” Lily said ten minutes later, as she trudged up from the basement and into the kitchen, where she dumped another load of freshly laundered clothes onto the table for folding. “Ricci is down there talking to himself, or rather I should say, playing with those ‘friends’ he’s been inventing. William and Charles are out behind the chicken coop with a couple of neighborhood kids horsing around on that slippery slide thing Dad made for them. Either that or trying to set the chicken coop on fire like they did last week.”
When Jasmine had gone away to college, her pony had been traded to a local contractor in partial exchange for aluminum siding, which Iris hated, but which put an end to her father constantly cursing the peeling paint. Since then, the chicken coop had been sliding back into its original state of abandonment, and the area behind it cleared of manure. Out in the farthest corner of the yard, Henry had strung a hammock from the limbs of two shady oak trees, a good ten feet off the ground. He sometimes climbed up there at night with his guitar and a joint or two, and occasionally even slept there, despite its height from the ground. During the day, the hammock was usually free, and Iris loved going there to read. Climbing the tree and hopping onto the hammock was tricky, and she had even fallen out once, landing flat on her tailbone, and gotten the wind knocked out of her. But the privacy and solitude of the perch were not to be found anywhere else on the property, indoors or out, making it well worth the risk.
“Looks like there will be nine of us for dinner again, unless someone invites someone else to stay,” Lily concluded her report. John was home for a visit, having just finished his third year of medical school; Henry was still drifting between day jobs and girlfriends; Louis spent his evenings tinkering in the basement, working on a secret invention he was sure would make him rich. The only ones who left home and never came back were the girls.
“OK, thanks, you can go. I’ll take over from here,” Iris said, her hands delving into the pile of laundry, while her mind conjured up dinner ideas. She disliked planning menus in advance, preferring to keep the shelves of the pantry stocked with basic ingredients, and deciding what to cook according to her mood and how much time she had available to spend in the kitchen. A horn honked twice, and Lily headed for the door.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Iris called after her. It wasn’t necessary for Lily to specify who was picking her up; it was obvious by the sparkle in her eye and the spring in her step that the car in the driveway was James Gentile’s Oldsmobile. Iris could totally understand Lily’s attraction; she and James had been in the same trigonometry class, and Iris knew he was a bright student. On top of that, he had a solid, athletic build, without looking aggressive like most football players, and a lost puppy-dog look in his eyes that would make any girl want to cuddle him and resc
ue him from the potential dangers of a cold, cruel world.
Lily seemed to think Rick was pretty nice, too, though Iris had never shared with her sister what had happened on their first date. It wasn’t that she wanted to hide it from Lily, she just wasn’t quite sure how to translate into words the potpourri of sensations she had experienced during that weird kissing session: arousal, disappointment, embarrassment, confusion. At times, she wondered whether she may even have imagined the whole incident. She had figured the best thing to do would be to classify the airport escapade as a trial run, and file it away in the cabinet of experience.
And now that Iris was pretty sure she was falling in love with Rick, she found herself more prone to think of the future, rather than the past. The more time she spent with him, the more she found him attractive. Years of tennis playing had shaped his well-coordinated form, which was lean and strong, as opposed to Michael’s block-and-tackle physique. He was also older and more mature than the boys at high school, and took a protective interest in her and her family. He was particularly attuned to the needs of her father and younger brothers, and often engaged in conversations with them. Once, he had come to pick her up for a date, and spontaneously invited the boys along. They had all piled into the car and gone to the County Fair, where he bought everyone cotton candy and paid for rides on the Ferris wheel.
But what delighted Iris most was his romantic side; the flowers he brought her every day were just one example. Not long after they had met, he had even presented her with a cassette tape of a song he had composed and played for her on the piano. Whenever she managed to sneak in a few minutes’ quiet time in her room, she would lie on her bed with her eyes closed and the portable cassette player on her tummy. At the sound of the first sweet notes, her imagination swept her away to a grassy meadow filled with wildflowers and butterflies, where she could feel the tepid sunshine kissing her face, a soft breeze tousling her hair. As the song’s intensity escalated with a crescendo of passionate chords, Rick burst into her fantasy. He ran toward her in the meadow with outstretched arms, and she flew into his embrace. When the tape ended, she rewound it so it would be ready for her next break from reality, then returned to her duties of cleaning and cooking and breaking up fights with renewed energy.
The Complete Series Page 38
