A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself

by William Boyle

  When Wolfstein was raking it in from the hustle, Mo had her own con going. Real estate thing. Wolfstein never fully understood it, but Mo was good. No shock there. Be it balling on-screen, talking sexy on the radio, or finagling money from wealthy landowners, she was the best at whatever she did.

  A rapping on the door.

  Christ—who’s this?

  She opens up. On the other side of the screen door is Lucia’s mother in a pink tracksuit, the zipper open halfway down her chest. Her hair’s a little greasy. She’s not as much of a looker with no makeup on. But pretty brown eyes and nice teeth. Who the hell’s Wolfstein kidding? She’s a hot dish.

  “Help you?” Wolfstein asks.

  “You had my daughter over here before?” Adrienne says, scratching her cheek with her long nails. A nervous gesture or an intimidating one? Maybe showing Wolfstein her claws.

  “Just introduced myself to her, that’s all. Two years I’ve lived across the street, and we’ve never even talked.”

  “Stay away from my daughter, please.”

  “Listen. Your name’s Adrienne, right? You want to come in for a drink? I just poured myself one.” She rattles around the vodka and ice. Some slops over the rim of her glass onto the webbing of her hand. She sucks it off.

  “I don’t want a drink,” Adrienne says.

  “Well, there’s your problem right there.”

  “You give my daughter alcohol?”

  “Of course not! What do you think I am? Kid’s underage, right? Jesus Christ.”

  “Good.”

  “Come in. Have something. Club soda and lime. Cool down.”

  Adrienne scrunches her face. “Just stay away from my kid.”

  “Hold on one second,” Wolfstein says, pushing open the screen and stepping outside, close to Adrienne. “Whatever our beef was—over blocking the driveway, whatever—it’s behind me. Here’s the thing: I felt bad for Lucia. I hear you yelling at her, I think, Be nice to the kid. She needs it. That’s all. She’s sweet. Already damaged, I can tell, from being around so much toxicity. Try being a better mother, okay?”

  “You’ve got some nerve talking to me like that.”

  “I got plenty of nerve, that’s true.”

  Adrienne turns to go. Over her shoulder, she says, “Just keep away from my daughter.” Then she’s walking across the street, clutching the front of her tracksuit. The zipper’s what, broken, she lets her tits half hang out like that?

  Wolfstein wants to call out, say one last thing, but she takes an ice cube in her mouth, goes back inside, puts in a VHS of one of her old movies—Trashy Dreams with Herschel Stone and Valerie Sugar—and cranks the volume.

  Wolfstein jolts awake as the movie ends, vodka spilled in her lap. Dazed. Last scroll of credits on the TV and then nothing but fuzz.

  Some noise outside. A car pulling up to the curb. A car door whining open. Someone cursing. A woman.

  Wolfstein goes over to the window, peeks out. The wetness in her lap is bothering her. Her mouth is fish-tank scummy. What she sees first is the car, a ’62 Chevy Impala, a black, sleek two-door. “Hoo boy,” she says, taking it in.

  Then a woman pops up from behind Wolfstein’s rosebushes, having retrieved a dropped key from the ground. She’s Wolfstein’s age, maybe a little younger, and wearing a long white cotton shirt and black Capri pants and white Keds. She’s pretty, if a little morose-looking.

  Wolfstein slips out of her vodka-wet shorts, never taking her eyes off the woman. Standing there in her undies, peeping on a stranger; what a sight. She laughs. But she’s not about to stop. Broad’s got her fascinated. Who is she?

  Wolfstein watches as she walks up to Adrienne and Lucia’s door and rings the bell. What time is it? Still pretty early. Four, maybe. The woman rings again, then leans her head against the door, nervous. A minute passes. No answer. Knocking lightly now. And then the door clambers open, Adrienne behind the screen. She starts yelling at the woman, same way she yells at the kid. At first, Wolfstein can only hear it muffled through glass. She cracks the window.

  Adrienne says: “What are you even doing? You call, I hang up. Now you’re just gonna fucking show your face here?”

  “I’m in trouble, A,” the woman says. “I need your help.”

  Adrienne shakes her head, bites her lower lip, her face wire-tense.

  Wolfstein wants some vodka, some popcorn to go along with the spectacle, but she’s afraid to leave and miss anything.

  The woman’s crying now, saying, “My own daughter treats me like this. What’d I ever do? I’ve gotta sleep in the car?”

  So she’s Adrienne’s mom, Lucia’s grandma.

  Adrienne says, “Come on. Go home. You’ve lost your fucking mind, showing up here like this.”

  The door closes in Grandma’s face, and she trudges back to the Impala, trying hard to collect herself.

  Wolfstein pushes the window up farther, calls out in a whisper-yell, “Hey, Grandma. Over here.”

  Grandma stops in her tracks.

  Wolfstein says, “Across the street.”

  Grandma looks over, sees Wolfstein in the open window, makes a motion like, You talking to me?

  “Yeah, you,” Wolfstein says.

  And soon Grandma’s at her door and Wolfstein’s opening up and inviting her in, still wearing only her undies, the smell of vodka heavy in the air. Big-time hesitation on Grandma’s face. She looks around, notices a couple of pictures on the wall: Wolfstein glammed up on the set of Hard Waitresses; goofing with Ginny McRae poolside at one of Mac Dingle’s famous parties.

  “Sorry I’m in my underpants,” Wolfstein says.

  “It’s okay?” Grandma says, making it a question.

  “I’m Lacey Wolfstein. Call me Wolfstein; all my pals do.” She comes over and extends her hand.

  Grandma shakes it. “Rena Ruggiero.”

  “Looks like you can use a drink.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “You’re okay, you sure? I’ve got a lot of vodka, some beer floating around. Whiskey. You like whiskey? Coffee or tea?”

  “I’m okay. Maybe a glass of water.”

  “Water it is.” Wolfstein goes into the kitchen and turns on the tap, lets the water get cold. She puts a couple ice cubes in a tumbler and fills the glass, bringing it back out to Rena.

  Rena takes a sip. “Thank you.”

  “Of course. You gotta take a squirt or anything, feel free to use the can. I just cleaned in there yesterday.”

  Rena nods.

  “Have a seat.”

  Rena moves over to the sofa, a curbside rescue. Uncomfortable as hell. Wolfstein never sits there. She opts for her usual: the recliner, already kicked into relax mode. It’s the color of pink-champagne vomit.

  “I really appreciate you giving me a minute to get my head together,” Rena says. “I’m assuming you heard everything.”

  “Your daughter’s a bitch,” Wolfstein says. “Had a run-in with her myself earlier.”

  “I don’t know where I went wrong.”

  “Just happens sometimes. Nothing you did or didn’t do, I’m sure. I’ve got every reason to be like that—hard-ass upbringing, bad decisions, blah blah blah—and I’m not.”

  Rena drinks some more water.

  “Your granddaughter’s an okay kid, though,” Wolfstein says. “Talked to her for the first time today, which is why, in turn, your daughter was not happy with me. Two years I live here. I hear the kid getting yelled at, I call her over, thinking she could use a friend. ‘Don’t talk to my daughter,’ your daughter says to me. I feel bad for the kid, I really do.”

  Rena looks defeated.

  “So, where do you live?” Wolfstein says.

  “Brooklyn,” Rena says.

  “Tell me about the car. It’s beautiful.”

  “Old Impala. I don’t really know anything about cars. A friend let me borrow it.”

  “Let you borrow it? A car like that?”

  “Long story.” Rena disappears inside herself. />
  Wolfstein’s touched a nerve, easy to tell. She lets it go. They sit there in silence for a few minutes, Rena bringing the water glass up to her lips every few seconds and sipping.

  “I guess I should go put some pants on,” Wolfstein finally says.

  Rena half-smiles.

  “You’re welcome to hang out here if you don’t feel like driving back to Brooklyn yet,” Wolfstein says. “You’re worked up. That’s how people get in accidents. Hell, I’ve got the sofa and some extra pillows, you feel like crashing. You do that, you go across and try again in the morning when everyone’s fresh, you want to.”

  “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know your daughter’s being unreasonable.”

  Rena sets down her water glass on the coffee table next to a perilously stacked pile of Wolfstein’s crossword puzzle books. “I’ll stay a little while and try to figure out a plan,” she says, standing. “Thank you so much.”

  Wolfstein goes up to her bedroom and puts on her vintage Wranglers. Not vintage like she bought them in some shop but vintage like she’s had them since 1980. They didn’t fit for a short stretch, but now they’re as comfortable as ever.

  The way the day’s gone, Wolfstein’s happy to have company, happy to be able to stick it to Adrienne, happy to be able to help, genuinely happy about that, and also kind of desperate to find out more about the Impala.

  LUCIA

  Lucia is standing outside Uncle Pat’s Deli on Harding, right near St. Frances de Chantal. She’s drinking an orange juice and eating a buttered bagel, hoping to shake down someone for a smoke since she couldn’t score one from her neighbor. A girl comes out of the deli, tapping a pack of Camel Lights against her palm. Latina. Tattoos. A few years older than Lucia.

  “Can I hit you up for a cigarette?” Lucia says.

  The girl shrugs and hands her one.

  “Thanks,” Lucia says. “Got a light?”

  The girl passes her a red Bic. Lucia puts her bagel back in the brown bag it came in and sets it down on the sidewalk along with her orange juice. She lights the cigarette and exhales.

  “I started smoking around your age,” the girl says, grabbing the Bic back and lighting up one of her own.

  “That’s cool,” Lucia says, not sure what else to say.

  Just then, this group of nuns in habits roller-skates by out in the street. She can’t believe it. Like something from a dream. They’re in a V, like a formation of birds. Lucia’s mouth is open, the cigarette just hanging there, spit-stuck to her bottom lip. They’re graceful on their skates, these nuns. She and the girl ogle the nuns together as they go looping onto Hollywood Avenue, headed for the convent there.

  “Crazy shit,” the girl says.

  “Thanks for the smoke,” Lucia says, picking up her things and walking away up Harding, flicking the cigarette at the side of a passing bus.

  On Pennyfield, she gets catcalled by an ugly high school boy wearing an A-Rod shirt. She gives him the finger. She started doing that in sixth grade, and it always feels like a powerful thing to have in her arsenal. She hops a drooping chain linked between white posts and cuts onto Beech.

  When she gets home, she notices that her neighbor’s not outside anymore. Wolfstein. That was a weird encounter. Or maybe what’s weird is that they haven’t talked before. She imagines that people used to talk to their neighbors a lot more. She wishes Wolfstein would’ve given her a beer.

  An actress. Lucia’s not sure she buys that. Why would an actress be living in the Bronx like this? Don’t actresses live in Hollywood and have houses on hills all made out of glass where they dance in front of their windows in sexy red robes even when they’re old? That’s how she pictures it. She was an actress, she’d ride around in a limo. She was an actress, she’d have cute guys bringing her beers on platters. Oh, yes, Joseph, thank you, that’s just the right amount of cold. Is that the way she’d say it? Amount of cold sounds wrong.

  She’s had a couple of beers. Once at a picnic down by SUNY Maritime, this kid from her class took her over behind a parked car and passed her a Coors Light. It was really cold but didn’t taste like anything. The other time was at Alfie’s Place over on the Cross Bronx. Big Paulie from Skyville, Adrienne’s boyfriend for a minute, he was so happy the Yankees won, he bought everyone beers, including her. No one said anything because they were all drunk. She can’t even remember why she was there. Some dumb event. Big Paulie and Adrienne were so wasted they made Lucia drive them home to Silver Beach. Big Paulie told her what to do. She was thrilled to be behind the wheel, sitting on a stack of newspapers, listening intently to his commands.

  Back in the house, her mom’s in the kitchen, talking on her cell phone, wearing that hideous pink tracksuit she got last Christmas from whoever she was dating at the time. No shirt or bra on underneath it, the zipper half-open over her boobs. Seeing her mom’s boobs, even just in a low-cut blouse, has always been a source of anxiety. She remembers being at Alfie’s and the Clipper, Adrienne pressing them on the bar, pushing them up, making eyes for free drinks.

  Lucia wonders who Adrienne’s talking to now. She’s got that new maybe-boyfriend, Marco. And Richie’s always in the picture, somehow. Richie’s not her dad, but he’s the closest thing she’s ever known. Her real dad, Adrienne won’t talk about. Lucia wishes she knew something about him, anything. She’s dug around in Adrienne’s papers, looking for a name, at least. He’s not even on her birth certificate; the father part’s just blank. She has no memories of him. He was gone before she could remember him. If she had a name, maybe she could find him. She wants to know what he looks like, what his voice is like, why he’s never come for her. She’s afraid he’s dead. He could be, and she’d never even know. She doesn’t like to imagine him dead, without ever having had a shot at being his daughter.

  Richie’s come and gone over the years. He was the one who hooked them up with this house in Silver Beach. He stays back in Brooklyn, where he works, but he knew Adrienne wanted out of the old neighborhood. And Silver Beach—well, it’s the city, the far reaches of the Bronx, but it feels like something out of a movie. Trees, views, wooden street signs. You had to know someone to get a house here. It’s a co-op situation—way she understands it, the house is owned and the land is rented. Richie knows everybody. A firefighter who owed him a ton of money got her and her mom set up here. This was years ago. She doesn’t really remember living anywhere else, even though they were in a few apartments scattered around the boroughs during her early years. Staten Island. Queens.

  Watching her mom yap into the phone, Lucia wishes she had one. A phone. All the kids in her grade are getting them. She’d call some number where you can just talk to a stranger for hours.

  Adrienne flips the phone shut.

  “Who was that?” Lucia asks.

  “Kids shouldn’t ask their mothers who they’re talking to on the phone,” Adrienne says, puckering her lips.

  Lucia feels that seething hate she can feel only for her mother. Her mother has always taken pleasure in being mean, and that meanness has seeped into Lucia’s blood. She pictures Adrienne hanging from a meat hook like in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. She gives her the finger.

  Adrienne gives her the finger back. “I don’t want you talking to that bitch across the street,” she says.

  “Why?” Lucia asks.

  “What’d she want?”

  “Nothing. She gave me a drink.”

  “She gave you a beer?”

  “A ginger ale.”

  “Now I’ve gotta go have a talk with her.”

  “Don’t, okay?”

  “What she said to me back when she moved in, I remember correctly, was, ‘Your boyfriend parks in my driveway again, I’m gonna slash his tires.’ I said, ‘You know who you’re talking to? You know who I am? You know who my father was? You know who Richie Schiavano is?’ And now she’s meddling with my daughter.”

  “I’m going to my room,” Lucia says.

  The house is a mess. C
rumpled clothes hurled on the steps. Damp towels piled in the upstairs hallway. Lucia can hear the water running in the bathroom sink, and she goes in and twists the knob as hard as she can to make it stop. A hamper overflows with more clothes and towels in the corner. The mirror is dotted with fingerprints and toothpaste splatter. The shower stall is grimy. Two broken bars of soap have congealed near the drain. Lucia sits on the toilet and opens the window. It’s warm out, but there’s a nice breeze. Still a few hours away from getting dark. Lucia loves the summer because it gets dark so late. She doesn’t understand why the winter is the way it is, sometimes dark by four thirty. She’s read about how there are places, like in Alaska, where it stays dark all the time. That sounds horrible.

  She can see Wolfstein’s from where she is. She’s thinking of how she jumped off that stool in her kitchen like a little kid. She wishes she hadn’t done that.

  When her mother goes storming out of the house, she’s not surprised. Adrienne’s not shy. Butt your nose into her life, and she’ll come out swinging. That’s what happened with Grandma Rena, as far as Lucia knows. Said something Adrienne didn’t like and she was cut off. No holidays. No birthdays. No calls. Nothing. Lucia remembers making struffoli with Grandma Rena at Christmas. She remembers waiting in long lines at bakeries with her. She remembers her smile. She knows that Grandma Rena tries calling and sends cards, but Adrienne hangs up on her and rips up the cards even though they’re sometimes addressed to Lucia and probably have cash in them. Cash.

  Adrienne rushes across to Wolfstein’s, her head tilted up. In her tracksuit, she’s a pink blur. When she gets up on Wolfstein’s front stoop, she cracks her knuckles, her long crimson nails flashing like knives.

  Lucia wants to call out to her, but she doesn’t. She just watches. Adrienne pounds on the door. Wolfstein opens up. Angry words pass between them. Lucia closes the window, afraid to see something she doesn’t want to see. She’s not sure what Adrienne’s capable of.