A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself

by William Boyle

  A FRIEND IS A GIFT YOU GIVE YOURSELF

  A NOVEL

  WILLIAM BOYLE

  For the libraries and video stores where I spent my childhood.

  Remember, no matter what, it’s better to be a live dog than a dead lion.

  —Motel philosopher in Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild

  (screenplay by E. Max Frye)

  Let the people know I am not dead.

  —Lisa De Leeuw, in an interview with Richard Pacheco

  We walked around looking for ghosts.

  —Conor McPherson, The Good Thief

  A FRIEND IS A GIFT YOU GIVE YOURSELF

  Dear Wolfie,

  You hanging in there? House good? How’s the Bronx treating you?

  Monroe is a piece of shit right now. I need cigarettes. I usually keep a carton in the freezer, but I forgot to stock up, and I don’t feel like going out. My mother’s on the ropes. Eighty-nine yesterday and she can barely see or hear. We celebrated her birthday with some Hostess cupcakes I bought at the gas station up the street. She tells me about all the dead people who come over for parties that don’t exist. Freaks me out.

  She sees these little kids. Says they’re sleeping on the couch. Says they won’t eat. She cooks for them. “Cooks” is a strong word. She makes them butter sandwiches, mayonnaise sandwiches. The other day, I go out to ShopRite for two fucking minutes, I come home, and she’s buttered all these pieces of paper and left them around the house. Just regular pieces of paper, no sliced bread, and she’s slathered all this margarine on there, saying, “The kids must be hungry.”

  I tried going to church, you believe that shit? You picture me in church? I got worried, thinking I take Communion, the fucking host goes up in flames in my hand and the priest gets one of those crazy, I’m-in-the-presence-of-a-demon faces. I don’t know why I went. My mother, she has these moments of clarity, and they’re always about church. Usually this biddy brings her Communion in the morning once a week, but I got the notion church might be a break. A snooze, that’s all it was. Found myself thinking of that girl-on-girl scene we did in that deconsecrated church in the Valley. I was a nun, you were a Jayne Mansfield knockoff. I’m looking at this stained-glass Jesus behind the altar, thinking of that. What a fucking life.

  You know what I found the other day? A stack of your pictures in a green envelope full of tic-tac-toe games we must’ve played one bored afternoon. Not L.A. stuff. Your marks down in Florida, that’s what the pictures are of. Like four or five of that one, Bobby. He was a sad case, and I almost feel sorry for him. He looks like someone drowned a sack of his beloved rabbits in all these pictures.

  I also found my Stevie Nicks stub from the White Winged Dove Tour. Best night of our lives. If I had the opportunity to live one day over and over—like that movie Groundhog Day—it’d be that one. Everything was perfect. Me and you getting lunch at Rhonda’s, our nails done after, hair done, drinks at Frolic Room, the show, later in Mac’s limo with the champagne. And I’ll tell you what: I really remember the stars that night. I close my eyes, I can still see the sky I was looking up at through Mac’s moonroof. Magic forever.

  Come visit me, huh?

  Best bad love,

  Mo

  CONTENTS

  Rena

  Wolfstein

  Lucia

  Rena

  Richie

  Wolfstein

  Enzio

  Rena

  Lucia

  Wolfstein

  Richie

  Rena

  Enzio

  Wolfstein

  Richie

  Lucia

  Rena

  Wolfstein

  Lucia

  Rena

  Richie

  Lucia

  Wolfstein

  Rena

  Lucia

  Wolfstein

  Rena

  Acknowledgments

  RENA

  BENSONHURST, BROOKLYN

  SUNDAY, JUNE 11, 2006

  After Sunday morning Mass and her regular coffee date with her friend Jeanne at McDonald’s, Rena Ruggiero is back on her block, Bay Thirty-Fifth Street. So strange to be from a block, to feel at home on only your block while all the others, even the ones directly surrounding you, feel so foreign. Her whole life spent on this block. Growing up in the house, staying through her time at Brooklyn College, and then moving into the upstairs apartment with Vic when they got married. And when her parents died, taking over the whole place. It was big for three people. Even bigger for one. Sixty-eight years the house has been in her family, bought eight years before she was born.

  She stands out front now, as she often does, and considers the house’s flaws. It needs new siding. That was a project Vic had been in the process of setting up before he was killed. Probably needs a new roof, too. The porch sags. Posts and railings need to be scraped and painted, a lot of the wood rotten. The windows are old. Too much cold seeps in. She could sell it—the Chinese are buying up houses in the neighborhood like crazy—but selling seems like such a hassle.

  And the stoop. She still sees Vic slumped there, as he was on that awful day nine years before. She remembers the exact way the blood pooled on the steps. She looks hard enough, she can still see spots where it has browned the cement forever. Poor Vic. Probably watching the pigeons on the roof of the apartment building across the street, Zippo the landlord guiding his kit in formation with a big black flag. And then Little Sal approaching with his gun raised.

  Rena had been inside at the stove, frying veal cutlets. She heard the shot, figured it for a car backfiring, maybe some dumb kids with an M-80. She didn’t come out until she heard screaming and sirens and tires screeching. Walking out of the kitchen, down the hallway, the way she remembers it, was all in slo-mo. She wasn’t thinking something had happened to Vic. He was just sitting there; he wasn’t off at work. The fear had always lingered in her, but it wasn’t there just then. They had a ballgame to listen to, cutlets to eat. Little Sal was long gone when she made it to Vic.

  Rena remembers how she crouched over him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, crying, holding her rosary. Vic, who was in a bad business but had a soft voice and thoughtful brown eyes. His associates called him Gentle Vic. He’d raked it in for the Brancaccios. A huge earner. What had gone wrong had nothing to do with his work, just a beef with a punk, a kid named Little Sal trying to make a name for himself by knocking off a made guy. Shot Vic as he sipped on espresso, squash flowers from Francesca up the block in a ziplock bag on the step next to him.

  Everyone knows about Vic, what he did, how he died, but no one talks to her about it in specifics. No one asks her what it’s like to see your husband bleeding to death. Or what it’s like to hose dried blood off your front stoop after burying the only man you’ve ever loved. The Brancaccios took care of her after the fact, paid for the funeral, gave her some money, but no one comes around anymore. She was never very tight with any of the other wives.

  Rena goes inside and turns off the alarm. The alarm was Vic’s idea, after some break-ins on the block back in the early nineties. He was gone a lot and wanted her to feel safe. She takes off her coat and puts on water for tea and then decides she doesn’t want tea and shuts the burner. The phone is right next to the stove, an old yellow rotary mounted to the wall. A picture of her parents is encased in the plastic center of the dial. They’re smiling. It’s their thirtieth-anniversary dinner. They’re younger in the picture than she is now.

  Her friend Jeanne had to go and bring up Adrienne over coffee at McDonald’s. Adrienne is Rena’s daughter, who lives over in the Bronx. Rena hasn’t seen her since Vic’s funeral. Hasn’t seen her granddaug
hter, Lucia, either. Lucia’s fifteen now; she was six the last time Rena held her, in tears, standing in front of Vic’s casket.

  Rena wasn’t happy when she found out—in the middle of everything else—all the details about Adrienne and Richie Schiavano, Vic’s right-hand man, and she let it be known. Turned out they’d been an on-again, off-again thing since Adrienne was in high school. A kid, that’s what Adrienne was when they started up. This all came out at the funeral. Rena was floored by the news. She couldn’t believe it had gone on behind her back, behind Vic’s back. She couldn’t believe that Richie would disrespect their family like that. She couldn’t believe that Adrienne was such a puttana. Sure, she had bigger things to worry about, but she channeled much of her anger toward Adrienne. A natural reaction. Still, Adrienne holds this grudge against her for speaking up about the relationship with Richie. Rena was just concerned with the order of things, that’s all, what’s right and not right in the eyes of God and everyone. She remains concerned.

  But it goes back longer than that, too. Adrienne was always either embarrassed by her mother or hating her for something. Not right. Rena’s more than a little sick in her heart over all of it, especially Lucia being caught in the crosshairs. High school age now and she doesn’t even have a relationship with her grandma. Shame.

  Rena picks up the phone and dials Adrienne. She’s written hundreds of letters over the years, tried calling thousands of times.

  One ring. Adrienne picks up. Rena hasn’t heard her voice since the last time she tried calling a couple of months back. “Yeah?” Adrienne says, sounding sleepy.

  “Adrienne? It’s Mommy.”

  Click. Adrienne slamming the phone down without hesitation.

  Rena hangs up and just stands there. She takes a few deep breaths. She’d prefer not to cry. She thinks about a horrible article from the Daily News she read the day before, about a man hacked to death with a machete on the D train. A machete. Thinking about it keeps the tears back. What kind of person thinks this way?

  The doorbell rings. She wonders who it could be on a Sunday. Or any day, really. Maybe those Watchtower people. Or a real estate agent trying to get her to sell the house again. Sundays don’t really matter anymore. Not what they used to be. Like everything else.

  She goes into the hallway and sees a bulky figure through the tattered curtain on the window in the door. “Who’s there?” she calls out, refusing to get too close.

  Sound of throat-clearing. A man. “It’s Enzio!”

  She moves closer and pushes back the curtain to look outside. Her neighbor Enzio is standing there wearing a Members Only jacket, his hair slicked back, blowing his big nose with a white handkerchief. He’s holding flowers in his free hand—daisies, her favorite. This is no coincidence. Over coffee, Jeanne had been hounding her to get a boyfriend again, saying she was only sixty and far from dead. All the eligible bachelors in the neighborhood had come up. Enzio from the corner was one. Eighty, if he’s a day. He washes his beautiful old car with no shirt on in his driveway. He wears his shorts high, the button often undone over his belly. He calls her baby and honey and dollface when she passes his house. He’s got the skeeviest smile.

  “It’s Enzio,” he says again, softer this time. He tucks his handkerchief into his pocket.

  “What do you want?” Rena asks.

  “Just to talk.”

  “What’s with the flowers?”

  “Come on, open up, huh?”

  She hesitates but makes a move toward the lock. She’s what, gonna be afraid of a sad old man like Enzio? All he does is wash that car and read the racing forms in a booth at Mamma Mia across the street. A widower. But a different kind of widower. His wife, Maria, is fifteen years gone. Long as Rena knew her, Maria was a shut-in, wore a housedress and watched TV all day, doped on meds. Whatever the problem was, Rena was pretty sure it was made up. The whole neighborhood knew that Enzio ran around on Maria. Could’ve been that Vic had a goomar or two over the years, but he kept it quiet if he did, showed Rena respect. Still, everyone forgave Enzio his indiscretions. A wife like that, gone in the head, someone who’d totally cashed in her chips—well, a man needed a little excitement. Rena had always heard the gossip and didn’t give it much thought. Disgraceful on his part, sure, but a wife had certain duties.

  Enzio had a few out-in-the-open girlfriends over the years. Jody from the bank was one. Jody wasn’t her real name. She was Russian. Pretty. It didn’t last. Enzio was loaded but cheap. Jody found a guy who took her to Atlantic City every weekend and wasn’t afraid to spend. Now Enzio is after Rena. The world in all its strangeness. She pulls the door open.

  Enzio pushes the flowers at her. “Daisies,” he says. “Your favorite.”

  She accepts them, but instead of hugging them to her chest, she lets them dangle from her closed fist. “You know that how?”

  “A little angel told me, dollface.” He smiles his terrible smile. She feels like she’s never seen it this close before. His teeth are glommed up with food. His lips wormy. He’s missed spots shaving around his mouth.

  “Jeanne’s a pain in my ass sometimes.”

  “Your friend has your best interests in mind. She knows I’m a good guy, a good catch. All these years, we’re dancing around each other, and now here we are. Vic gone, Maria gone. Last two standing.” He puts out his hands. “Don’t get me wrong. I respect Vic. Respected him. Everyone did. ‘God bless Vic Ruggiero,’ I always said. Gentle Vic. Hero of the neighborhood. Can I come in or what?”

  She steps aside and waves him in. “Come on, I guess.”

  He walks into the kitchen and takes off his jacket and folds it over a kitchen chair. They stand across from each other.

  “You know me a long time,” Enzio says. “You know I’m nice. You know I’ll treat you nice.”

  “I bet you treated all the girls you ran around on Maria with real nice.”

  “Past is past, you know? The way I behaved was in direct correlation to Maria forsaking her wifely duties. The marital bed was cold. Ice-cold. And a man gets heated up. Besides, who we kidding over here? I got one foot in the grave. I’m trying to find someone for company. A nice dinner at Vincenzo’s. Maybe a movie.” He pauses, looks around. “You gonna offer me anything?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Coffee? Maybe a cookie.”

  “I’ve got instant coffee and Entenmann’s.”

  “That’s no way to live.”

  “It’s not how I live. It’s what I happen to have right now.”

  Enzio puts up his hands. Always with the hands up. “Okay, okay. Take it easy. Come over to my place. I’ve got good espresso and cookies from Villabate.”

  Rena finds a pitcher in a cabinet over the sink, fills it with water, and puts in the flowers. “Thanks,” she says. “For these, I mean.”

  “See, I’m a nice guy. I’m not scared to buy flowers.”

  “They’re pretty.”

  “See.” He moves closer. “Come over to my place for coffee. I don’t bite.”

  Rena touches the flowers and wonders where he got them. Probably the florist up on the corner. Vic always bought her daisies there after they fought. She wonders if Enzio ever saw Vic coming up the block with the flowers. Enzio and Vic rarely talked. Vic wasn’t the chatty type, and Enzio knew better than to try to get deep. When they did talk out by the fence, Enzio passing on his way home from Eighty-Sixth Street, it was about garbage pick-up or someone parking illegally in a driveway or the Yankees. Strange how you could live on the same block as someone forever and barely know him beyond small encounters and through-the-grapevine gossip.

  “I don’t drink espresso,” Rena says, forever remembering it as Vic’s last drink. “It makes my heart race.”

  “A little won’t kill you. Have an adventure.”

  “Drinking espresso’s an adventure?”

  “I have wine. Maybe we can share a little wine. Homemade. From Larry around the corner. You know Larry? Nino and Rose’s son. He makes t
he good stuff.”

  “I don’t drink wine.”

  “At all?”

  “Not really. I used to have a glass at dinner when Vic and I would go to Atlantic City.”

  “Pretend you’re in Atlantic City. Loosen up a little. Nothing better than a blast of good homemade wine.”

  Rena sits down at the table and puts her head in her hands.

  “I upset you?” Enzio says.

  “I don’t know,” Rena says.

  “You don’t know if I upset you?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “If I said something wrong, I didn’t mean to—”

  “It’s okay.”

  He comes over and rubs her shoulders.

  “Please stop,” she says.

  “It’s no good?” he says.

  “I don’t like it. I don’t like being touched.”

  “At all?”

  “No’s no, okay?”

  He takes his hands off her and lets out a big, gusty sigh.

  Rena tenses up.

  “You’re a tough nut,” he says. “You don’t want any companionship? I’m just trying to be a nice guy here.”

  “Okay, okay,” Rena says.

  “Okay? What’s okay got to do with it? I’m lonely. You’re not lonely? We could be lonely together. Watch a movie. Drink some wine. Eat some cookies.”

  “Enough with the wine and cookies.”

  “A goddamn tough nut.” He sits down across from her. “You want me to leave?”

  “I don’t care what you do.”

  “I’m not leaving unless you come with me, how’s that?” He laces his fingers together and cracks his knuckles. It’s loud, a tiny thundering, like stepping on Bubble Wrap. “Maybe I’ll tell you a story? That’s what I’ll do. You know Eddie Giangrande? He was involved in that Fulton Market heist back in the seventies. He lives over on Twenty-Fifth Avenue. You know him, right? Sure you do. His wife’s Madeleine. Vic must’ve crossed paths with him.

  “Eddie, he’s a big guy. Two-eighty, two-ninety. And he’s a happy-go-lucky sort. Every time you see him, huge smile from here to here. Molars showing. Sure, why not? He made out big time with that heist. Never got collared either. Don’t ask about the details, by the way. I know—I know a lot—but I’m sworn to secrecy.” He mimes locking his mouth and throwing away the key. “Still, Eddie—with all he’s got, I mean, what more’s he want, right?—gets in with these Russians. The Godorsky brothers. They cross him; he crosses them. Again, the details aren’t important. The short of it is he winds up out at Dead Horse Bay with a gun to the back of his head, the Godorsky brothers telling him to make his peace with God. Don’t repeat this story, by the way. This is for your ears only. I know you have experience keeping quiet with sensitive information.”