by Lola Swain
“Man, I would have never in a billion years guessed,” he said and whistled. “So you were a real phony baloney, huh?”
“Completely,” I said and chuckled. “The irony was that I was also extremely sensitive. When my mother bullied me, it broke my heart. And yet, I still had cruel thoughts about others.”
“Well, Dr. Newlander says that people who have been abused often become abusive.”
“Oh, I wasn’t abused.”
“Yes, you were,” Anthony said, as if his was the last word on the subject.
We sat across from one another in silence for a moment and it came to me that Anthony Porcco may be more intuitive than any other person I knew.
“So, do you want to play Secrets? I mean, if you have time?” he said.
“What’s Secrets?”
“Golly, Sophia,” he said and shook his head, “you’ve never played Secrets? It’s simple, really. You tell me a secret, something that no one knows and then I tell you one of mine.”
“Well,” I said and took a deep breath, “I don’t think I have any.”
“But you must,” he said. “Everyone has secrets. Tell me how you were cruel.”
“Okay…um, I was a pretty horrid person.”
“Nah, I don’t believe it,” Anthony said and laughed. “I don’t believe that at all.”
“Well, it’s true,” I said.
Anthony shifted side to side in his chair as he squeezed his hand into the front pocket of his corduroys. He pulled bits of tissue and some change and scraps of this and that and put it all on the table. And finally, he reached his prize—a handful of lint-covered, hard candies.
“Butterscotch?” he said and brushed a piece of candy off.
“No thanks,” I said.
“Okay, go on,” Anthony said and popped a dusty candy into his mouth. “What did you do?”
“I was a bully just like her,” I said and picked at the corner of the Latin dictionary. “Really just in my head, but I was pretty awful.”
“Like how?” Anthony said and sucked on the butterscotch.
“I really don’t like thinking about it,” I said.
“Go ahead. I promise I won’t tell.”
“Okay. I’d look at the pictures of some of the girls I modeled with and I thought awful things about them. How one was too fat to be a model and another was too ugly…worse stuff, even. But it was really all jealousy because no matter how mean I was, they were all very successful and seemed wildly happy. Two things I was certainly not.”
“What else?”
“Isn’t it your turn now?”
“I have a juicy secret to tell,” Anthony said. “Something I did that was pretty terrible. Your secret is about as controversial as shoe polish.”
“Ouch…shoe polish? Okay Anthony,” I said. “I looked at people on the street and made fun of them in my head. Homeless people, minorities, unfortunate looking children, for fuck’s sake. I had no sense of justice and even less of a sense of empathy. Yet, I always had to appear perfect.”
“You were a real c-word, huh?” Anthony said and smiled.
“Yes, Anthony,” I said and smiled, “I was a real cunt. I cry for those people now. It comes out of the blue too. I’ll be walking along and all of a sudden something triggers a memory of my cruelty, a certain sound or a smell, and in a flash, I’m right back in that place. And when I’m brought back, it feels as if Jake LaMotta just drew back and slugged me right in the stomach.”
“I know just what you mean,” Anthony said and looked at me with wide eyes as if he never knew there were others like him.
“Anthony, do you want something really juicy?” I said.
“Heck yeah,” Anthony said and slammed his hands on the table.
“I don’t know if you can handle it,” I said.
“Hit me with it, sister!”
“One day, I walked with my mother near Faneuil Hall. It was a very cold day and I was wearing an obscene long sable coat that I hated. There was a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk, leaning against a street lamp on the corner of Congress and North. He wore rags. As my mother and I approached the corner, I glanced down at the man and he stared back at me so intensely that even though I tried, I could not look away.”
“Like he had magnets in his eyeballs?” Anthony said.
“Exactly. Anyway, as our eyes locked, I saw everything that this man used to be before he became what he was. We stood there staring at each other for at least five minutes. My mother hollered in my ear and tried to pinch the fat of my arm to pull me away. And then, I took off my coat, this thing that I absolutely hated and didn’t give a shit about, knowing it would have made a tremendous difference to this man.”
“He could have covered himself with it or even sold it,” Anthony said.
“That was my thought,” I said. “But when I took my coat off, my mother really blew her stack. She started screaming about pneumonia and how I was going to catch scurvy from being so close to the filthy animal. And I looked at her and laughed because I’m pretty sure she meant scabies not scurvy.”
“Yeah, I don’t think Vitamin C deficiency is contagious,” Anthony said and giggled.
“Because I was laughing hysterically, she thought this man was trying to steal my soul or something because then she started yelling for the police officers patrolling the street close to us.
“The man then reached toward me and smiled the most genuine smile anyone ever gave me and I smiled back. It was as if we fell in love with each other, not sexually, but genuinely.
“I began to pass the man my coat and a cop ran between us, pushed me aside and wacked the man in the head with his nightstick.”
“The cop knocked the man out?”
“For a bit he was,” I said. “He fell over like a fucking stone hitting the bottom. As the cop who hit the man tried to make him stand, my mother said, ‘Sophia, tell the officers how this animal tried to steal your coat!’ I just shook my head. So she got right in my face and said through clenched teeth, ‘People are staring, goddamn you!’
“I looked around and a huge crowd gathered. And then I did what I always did, I lied to make my mother love me and I told the cops that the man tried to steal my coat.”
“And they arrested him?” Anthony said.
“Yep,” I said and looked down at my reflection in the table.
There was nothing but silence between Anthony and I for the longest time as he pushed his pennies around the table and arranged them in a straight row.
“Well,” Anthony said, “if you wanted to see a bright side, maybe it would make you feel better to think that at least he was off the street, that he was being fed and kept warm.”
“You would think, but I promise, I did not think that at the time. At the time, I hated that man after my mother untangled us from that most embarrassing scene. I hated him for being the reason I fell out of favor with my mother that day.”
“Wow,” Anthony said.
“Yes, wow,” I said. “Okay, your turn.”
“Can I ask you something first?” Anthony said as he stacked his butterscotch candies.
“Yep.”
“Do you think we, all of us, are here as punishment for the bad things we did in life?”
“I don’t know,” I said and sighed. “James seems to think the magic of this place is the reason we are here and not because we are being sentenced. Being here doesn’t seem like a punishment to me. It feels like a second chance to make things right.”
“A chance to right the wrongs.”
“Maybe,” I said and shrugged. “Okay, it’s definitely your turn now. Tell me your secret. I have to be honest, you don’t strike me as the type who was a bad guy.”
“I was different then too,” Anthony said and removed his glasses and cleaned them with his sweater. “I had a rage inside me.”
“A rash?” I said and moved forward.
“No,” Anthony said and giggled, “a rage. It was as if someone tied one end of a cor
d around my ankle and the other to a metal spike nailed into the ground. I walked around the spike until that cord was wound around my body as tight as too small underwear. The rage built and built and built until I used all of my strength and snapped the cord that tethered me to the spike. It was then, when the cord snapped, that I did my bad things.”
“What did you do, Anthony?” I said.
Truthfully, I expected sweet Anthony to confess he jacked off under the covers to his Archie comics and not—
“I tortured animals.”
“What?” I said and pushed away from the desk.
“Am I scaring you?” he said and knocked over his tower of butterscotch candies.
“Of course not,” I said. “I am—”
“Because you moved away,” Anthony said and pointed at my chair.
“Stretching,” I said and shook my head.
“I’m not like that anymore, Sophia,” Anthony said and grabbed a fistful of tissue and tried to shove it back into his pocket. “You know, Adelaide wouldn’t have given me my job if I was.”
“Job? No, Anthony, I swear,” I said and moved closer to the table. “Please don’t go. It just doesn’t seem like you.”
“I know,” he said and put his glasses on. “It wasn’t like me most of the time, they were my only friends. But when the rage came, well…”
“Yes,” I said and reached across the table toward him.
“Dr. Newlander says it was because of my mother’s berating. That I felt so powerless and small when she made fun of me, I was helpless against her and sought to dominate. What else could I dominate, but a helpless animal?”
“Yes, I understand,” I said. “You know, if you want to look at a, well, brighter side, at least it wasn’t a child.”
“Oh, that would have come. I have no doubt,” he said and nodded. “I just happened to die before I did that. See, sometimes abused people gut themselves and sometimes they gut others.”
“Yes,” I said.
“But, like I said, I’m different now and if I weren’t, Adelaide wouldn’t have given me my job.”
“What’s your job?”
“I take care of the dogs,” he said and restacked his butterscotch. “It is one of the most important jobs at the Battleroy.”
“There are dogs here?”
“You haven’t met the dogs, Sophia? Well, it’s not really surprising, not many have.”
“You know what’s strange? The first night, when they…anyway, I dreamt of a pack of wild animals pacing under me when I was in the rafters. I dreamt I was scared to come down because I thought they would rip me to bits.”
“That was no dream,” Anthony said and brushed another candy off before popping into his mouth, “that was real. They were absolutely there.”
“It seemed so real,” I said.
“Because it was real. They were guarding you. They came to protect you and ensure your safe passage.”
“Passage?”
“Here, dumb-dumb,” Anthony said and laughed. “They do it for everyone. Always have. And dumb-dumb is just a term. I don’t really think—”
“No,” I said and smiled, “I get it. Where do they stay? Down there?”
“In the basement?” Anthony said.
“No, further down, Anthony,” I said and pointed at the ground.
“With Hades? No. I think he has his own dogs,” Anthony said and leaned in toward me. “But I don’t think those are the kind of dogs we’re used to, if you know what I mean.”
“No, I wouldn’t imagine,” I said. “So, where do the dogs that you take care of live?”
“Oh, on the Fairy Tale Island,” Anthony said and grinned.
“The guests can see them?” I said.
“Good gravy, no! Can you imagine the terror?” Anthony said and laughed. “No, only we can. Haven’t you been to the Fairy Tale Island?”
“No,” I said and sighed. “Believe me, everyone always asks me and then looks at me as if I’m insane when I say I haven’t. And then the look is always followed with—”
“I can’t believe it, Sophia. You have to go to the Fairy Tale Island,” Anthony said. “It’s magical.”
“Yes, they say that, exactly.”
“Because it is! Don’t you like fairy tales?”
“Um, I suppose they’re starting to grow on me,” I said and stared Alexander Battle’s journal. “My entire world seems to be a fucking fairy tale.”
“Well, you absolutely have to go,” Anthony said and closed his eyes. “It’s a magical place.”
“Yes, as you and everyone else indicate,” I said and watched Anthony’s thick lips smacking against his candy and thought of the dogs. “Want to take me?”
“Now?” Anthony said and smiled. “Sure! Hey, you can meet the dogs too.”
As Anthony and I stood from the table, James walked into the library.
“Hello, Anthony,” James said as he walked past him toward me. “I got these great apples from the orchard.”
“Hey, James,” Anthony said and looked at the ground.
James kissed me and stared at the books on the table.
“Working hard, beautiful? Apple?”
“Sure,” I said and James handed me an apple the size of a giant tomato. “Anthony is helping me with some research.”
“Oh, yeah?” James said and took a bite out of his apple. “That’s nice of you, man. Hey, look, I can see your tit prints in the table.”
“Lovely,” I said and pushed one of the notebooks over to cover the impression.
“So, well, I’ll see you tomorrow, Sophia?” Anthony said.
“Wait…tomorrow? Aren’t we going?”
“Going where?” James said.
“You still want to?” Anthony said. “I just figured—”
“Going where?” James said.
“Of course I do,” I said and turned to James. “Anthony is taking me to the Fairy Tale Island.”
“He is?” James said through a mouthful of apple. “I thought you said fairy tales were creepy.”
“Did I?” I said and walked toward Anthony. “Well, I should see it, no? Everyone keeps asking. Besides, Anthony is going to introduce me to the dogs.”
“The dogs?” James said.
“Sophia’s not met them,” Anthony said and stared at his shoes. “It’s really best for me to be there when they meet new people. You know, since I know them best.”
“Yes, you sure do, Anthony,” James said and chuckled.
“We better be going,” I said and grabbed Anthony’s arm.
“Okay, take good care of my girl, Anthony.”
“I will,” Anthony said “Goodnight, James.”
“Goodnight, Anthony. See you later, Sophia? Good luck with your exploration,” James said and winked.
“See you later,” I said as I dragged Anthony out of the library.
“A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.”
Jean de La Fontaine
Shiny copper lanterns hung from stakes illuminating our path as Anthony and I trudged through the snow into the forest.
“It’s funny,” Anthony said as we walked, “I used to be terrified of the dark.”
“I wasn’t a fan either,” I said.
“When we came here, me and my mother, when I, you know…well, she tried to get me to walk this very same path the night before. I refused and she had a darn fit.”
“Even with her beside you, you were scared?”
“Especially with her,” Anthony said and nodded. “I knew if a homicidal maniac jumped out from the trees, Mother would surely push me in front of him and run. I guess the only homicidal maniac that was here at the time, was me.”
“You weren’t a maniac, Anthony,” I said and rubbed his back. “You were abused.”
“The pines sure smell strong tonight, don’t they?” Anthony said and took a deep breath.
“Lovely,” I said. “Maybe because it’s so cold?”
“It smells
like Christmas,” Anthony said.
“Yes, it does. Oh, look how beautiful the arbor looks.”
Anthony and I came out of the forest and stood at the mouth of the arbor. A million small, clear Christmas tree lights were strung through the branches and gave the conjoined trees the appearance of a glowing tunnel.
Our feet crunched over the gravel as Anthony and I walked through the arbor toward the lake. I looked over at Anthony and he was deep in thought and smiling.
“What are you thinking about?” I said.
“I was thinking about the night before…anyway, one of the reasons I was scared to come out here in the dark was that I heard the dogs that night. A terrible, terrifying snarling when I was still alive.”
“Get the fuck out of here!” I said and hit Anthony in the arm.
“Ouch!” he said.
“Sorry, but I heard them too. The day we got here, I even made a comment to Brandt. Want to know something else that happened hours before I died?”
“What?” Anthony said.
“I saw James,” I said. “I mean saw, saw him, even before I was dead. I talked to him.”
“Holy crud!” Anthony said and tried to punch my arm, but missed and slugged me in the left tit, knocking me to the ground.
“I’m okay,” I said as I tried to get up.
“Oh crap, Sophia! I’m so sorry,” he said and helped me up. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine, Anthony” I said as I brushed off my dress. “So, did you see James too?”
“No. I saw May Gaspar,” Anthony said.
“May?” I said. “Wait…who?”
“You’ve not met May? She’s very shy, but the most beautiful girl. Bellissima. That means beautiful in Italian.”
“Yes, I know,” I said. “Oh, the girl with the brown hair, brown eyes and black glasses?”
“Hazel,” Anthony said and shook his head. “Her eyes are hazel with gold and green flecks. She was the third Mr. Conway’s secretary.”
“Yes, I remember now. She sat on the ground near the purple rose bush at my ceremony. She is very pretty, Anthony.”
“Beautiful,” Anthony said and sighed.
“How did she di—”
Anthony held up his hands and frowned.
“Don’t you want to talk about it?”
