In the Nick of Time

by Laveen, Tiana

  Fuck! I’ve really done it now…

  “Nick, you’ll need to come with me please,” Frieda said dryly.

  Ten minutes later, he was signing paperwork after receiving a verbal and written warning, a list of removed privileges for the following week as a consequence of his violent actions, and an agreement, a promise, to behave himself. He knew damn well he should’ve been kicked out after such an incident—most people would have been—but for whatever reason, the woman had mercy upon him. He glanced at her with a discerning eye, a bit jaded as his heart pumped hard and heavy within him.

  Frieda and the two males stood with him in the office, hovering over him like buildings, letting him know that his actions were completely unacceptable over and over again.

  Chumps…

  Should another altercation take place, he’d be kicked out of the program, never allowed to return. He could also face assault charges from Oliver, should the man choose to move in that direction, per his threat. In addition to other privileges, he also lost cell phone rights for the next few days. His cellphone was confiscated; end of discussion.

  A small cost to pay in retrospect…

  He walked back through the now empty halls alone, clutching his copy of the reprimand. His footsteps echoed against the polished floor as he reached his room, and he simply wanted to crawl further into his skin and disappear from the evil eye of the world. Removing his key from his pocket, he opened his door and entered the pitch-black chamber. Keeping the light off, he carefully navigated past his small plywood dresser and modest bed, then sat down on a metal chair with a worn periwinkle blue seat mat.

  Losing control…

  He’d come there to gain control again, but instead, he was falling further apart.

  I’m so damn disappointed in myself. Today was horrible…

  Suddenly, he heard a knock at his door. He hissed, certain it was Frieda to reiterate to him how he wasn’t allowed at dinner that evening, and that his food would be dropped off as if he were some damn dog in a cage. Another penalty of sorts for his ferocious conduct; he accepted it as such. A stream of bright light erupted, causing him to shield his eyes as he opened the door.

  And there stood his little green blossom, Taryn. He looked down at her ebony, shiny shoes. Her toes were no longer twitching and he harbored an internal smirk.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” he whispered, sticking his head out the door to check if the coast was clear before turning his attention back to her.

  “I know.” She smiled. “I just wanted to make sure you were still here and… that you were okay,” she whispered back.

  “Yeah, I’m still here. She gave me another chance. I just blew up, lost control.” He huffed. “I hate that. I don’t lose control; I stay calm under pressure. Something is going on with me, something I don’t understand.” He paused, briefly reflected.

  “Sometimes you have to lose control, Nick, to gain it again.”

  He marinated in her words then nodded in understanding.

  “Sorry if I upset you… If I scared you, I’m sorry for that, too.”

  “I was worried for you, Nick. Concerned about what would happen to you.” She pressed her fingernail gently into his chest as they locked eyes.

  “Well, you better get going before you get in trouble, too.” He grimaced as he placed his hands on his hips.

  “Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, and by the way, everyone was applauding you about Oliver. We’re sick of his ass.” She caught her chuckles in the nick of time, covering her mouth just so.

  “Well, in that case, I guess something positive came out of it after all.”

  She nodded, tossed him a flirty wink, and began to walk away.

  “Hey, Taryn…”

  “Yeah?” Pausing, she looked at him over her shoulder.

  “I like your hair. It’s growing in real nice.”

  She smiled coyly as she ran her fingers over the short black curls. “Thank you. That was sweet of you to say.”

  “I’m not sweet, but you sure are. See you tomorrow at breakfast.”

  …And then he closed the door.

  “If you toss that ball as hard as you did the last time, it’s going to bounce over the fence and bust through somebody’s windshield,” Nick teased as he approached her standing outside, gripping a half deflated basketball. “It’s cold out here. What are you doing?”

  “I had to blow off some steam.” She threw the ball down, and the pitiful orange thing rolled a bit, then gave up the lumpy fight as it wobbled back and forth before going still. “Been a bad afternoon.” She huffed, a swirl of cool air pouring from between her lips.

  “Hmmm.” He slicked his hands in his pocket. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She bent low, tied her white and black high-top converse shoe then stood erect, hands on her hips. “Let’s just say my father is in dictator mode again.” She huffed. “I swear he makes me feel three damn years old sometimes.”

  “Hey, let’s go inside and talk about it.” He pointed behind him towards the front doors of the building.

  “But I don’t want to talk about it.” She wrapped her electric blue scarf around her neck a little tighter.

  “What if I said I didn’t believe you?” He offered her a half grin, served with a slice of empathy. She stood there for a moment or two, smiled back, and walked with him inside the building. They found a bench to sit on in the lobby by the window with fake paper snowflakes taped to the thing.

  “Alright, lay it on me,” he offered.

  “Long story short,” she said, taking a deep breath and looking out into the distance, “My parents don’t trust me after what I put them through.” She shrugged. “Who could blame them? I did some pretty messed up stuff… I think they believe I should be nostalgic I guess about the ‘good old days.’” She rolled her eyes and put her fingers in quotes. “Like, my father keeps talking about before the pills, before the addiction… like everything was all beautiful. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I had a good childhood, but he and I have always had issues on and off. It’s like he is romanticizing it, acting as if I somehow had amnesia and forgot about everything that happened. I haven’t, Nick. We just… we just don’t always see eye to eye.”

  They were quiet for a while as he watched people walking to and fro. Some held conversations with one another while others lingered about, seemingly lost in thought.

  “Nick.”

  “Mmmm hmmm.” He leaned back on the bench and leisurely crossed his legs.

  “Tell me a little bit about your childhood, like a good memory…” She smiled at him, her eyes wide with expectation.

  “Nah.” He smiled, shaking his head as he pulled his black ball cap down lower onto his head. “Let’s keep talking about you and your dad.”

  “…I already did. There’s nothing more to say about it. He doesn’t trust me, wants to make all my decisions for me. Next topic.” She burst out laughing, causing him to grin. “Come on! Please?” She placed her hands together as if praying, laying it on thick.

  “Awww, man…” He ran his finger along his chin. “Okay, I mean, I don’t know what to say. I don’t think of just one incident, you know? It’s more like a feeling. Just random thoughts…”

  “That’s fine, I just like hearing you talk. I like what you say, how you say it, and when you talk about your experiences, I don’t know,” she said with a shrug, “it makes me feel closer to you…”

  He simply looked at her for a moment or two, and then, he obliged.

  “Does it? Well, in that case, let me get started.”

  She smiled a bit wider.

  “Okay, let’s talk about my old apartment that I shared with my mother and brother, right? I can remember it so vividly.”

  The woman nodded, her interest in his words written all over her face. She crisscrossed her legs on the bench. “What did it look like?”

  “Along the walls were the vejiante masks; some were pretty big; massive, actually. The Puerto
Rican flag…” He looked away, laughed a little. “It was in our living room, sprawled across the wall. I had one in my room, too. I took it for granted, you know?” He glanced at her and turned away. “I took having a place to lay my head in for granted, too, and all of those memories that are scribbled on my brain, I couldn’t shake ’em loose if I wanted to. So anyway, I still stayed in the room my brother and I had shared, and every year, in his memory, on his birthday, I’d get a cupcake for him. I’d put a candle in it, a red one if I could find it—that was his favorite color—and wish him a happy birthday…

  ‘Happy Birthday, Marco!’

  “That is really sweet, Nick. I swear I could listen to you all day… all day long.” Her words sounded like wine, without the depressing dependence…

  …You make somebody wanna slide you against something hard and kiss you as if it would be the last damn time…

  “Sometimes, Mom would fix fried plantains. I loved those; they were my favorite.” He grinned up at the ceiling and ran his hand over his stomach, as if awaiting his plate right then and there.

  “I love those, too.”

  “Do you?” He raised a brow in surprise. “Maybe we can get someone in the cafeteria to fix us some. Well, anyway, one night she’d made a big plate of them, along with pastelitos, and I was sitting in front of our old television. My jaws were all stuffed, cheeks poked out like a squirrel. I was so happy.” He didn’t miss the smile on Taryn’s face. “I can remember that night real…well…” And then, he paused, stopped short.

  “Okay, what happened?” She smiled, leaned in closer to him.

  The sickening feeling in his gut roiled within, pushing, prodding and pulling.

  “This…this is pretty fucked up. My mind, uh, it played a trick on me.”

  “What’s wrong?” She leaned in a bit closer, concern in her expression.

  He turned away, looked up the hall, feeling like a damn fool. “I was going to tell you a story, a happy story, but I just remembered that uh… it’s not a happy story. I think I kinda merged two memories that didn’t fit together, didn’t go like that. I have a real good memory, Taryn.” He turned, looked at her, trying to get that sinking feeling to leave him be. “…Not sure how this happened.”

  “Do you want some advice?”

  “Not really.” He chuckled, causing her to smirk.

  “Well, I’m going to give it anyway. Whatever it is that popped into your mind, that means it wants to be told. It’s ready, and so are you. It totally bogarted your mind, ran your initial idea out of there for a reason. Let it do its thing…” She cocked her head to the side. Her gorgeous eyes glistened as she invited him in, and gave him a spot to lay his cards on the table.

  “Mmmm, okay… okay.” He looked straight ahead, needing a bit of space between them as he began.

  “Look at me…”

  “What?” Arching his brow in confusion, he shot her a glance from the corner of his eye.

  “I said, look at me. Don’t turn away and duck and hide. Make eye contact with me the entire time.” She unfolded her legs and pierced his damn soul. There she sat with her coat off, in her green sweatshirt at least two sizes too large, and her skinny, dark blue jeans. She swung her foot back and forth, and her tiny silver hoop earrings sparkled, almost brighter than her eyes. Turning sideways in her seat, she leaned back lethargic like and grinned a bit wider at him.

  She’s perfect. Just perfect.

  “So anyway.” He cleared his throat. “As I was saying, my mom was cooking that night, as she did most nights on the weekends, and I could smell it and was really looking forward to it, had already been sampling it along the way. A commercial came on about some pasta sauce, right? An old Italian woman, the stereotypical kind, you know… She had the big gray bun on her head…” He made a circular gesture around his head. “Anyway, she was on the screen talking about her tomato sauce was the best. I got to thinking, ‘I wonder if my father’s mother looks like her. Does she make homemade spaghetti sauce, too? Is it thick and dark red, or runny and tastes like it is from a can? So I did what any kid would do at that moment—I asked my mother.” He shrugged, leaned forward, and stared down at his shoes.

  “I called out to her. I said, ‘Maaaa!’” He slapped his knee with his hand. “I called out like the shit was real important. She was in the kitchen washing dishes, listening to La India and ironing her shirt for work while the food cooled down. She cleaned houses and worked part time at some dry cleaners’, too. I said, ‘Ma, does mi abuela make spaghetti sauce?’ Abuela means grandmother. I said the whole thing in Spanish actually; we spoke mostly Spanish in our house but you know, for the sake of me talking to you about this, I’m not…so you can follow along, but I might slip up a bit, start talking Spanish, so just pat my arm or something if I do.”

  She smiled and nodded at him, and he kept going.

  “So, she says to me, calls out real loud, ‘My mother passed away, Nicky. She died way before you were born, back in Puerto Rico.’ I say, ‘No, Ma. I’m talking about my father’s mother.’ And then, she got real quiet, right? So, being the kinda kid I was, I didn’t take that as a cue to stop. I asked again. And then she said, ‘I don’t know, Nicky. I never met the woman.’ That always stuck with me, you know?” He glanced at Taryn, his eyes narrowed on her as the old pain became new.

  “It stuck with me because even though I was little and kinda stupid at times, I wasn’t incapable of putting two and two together. I wasn’t a complete idiot. Like, someone could tell me only a fourth of a story, and I’d figure out the rest, but I needed that fourth, you know? Somewhere to begin… Her saying that to me let me know that she wasn’t sure if the lady was dead or not, but more importantly, that my father didn’t think my mother was good enough to meet his mom. It made me wonder why he treated Ma like that, you know?” He looked at Taryn as he sucked his upper lip and rocked back and forth. His heart beat a bit faster, and if he wasn’t mistaken, he could be on the verge of a goddamn nervous breakdown.

  This is too much… Did she trick me? Was this her plan all along? To make me talk about this shit? Well, I guess, so what if she did. I don’t really want to get into all of this right now. I gotta find a way out of this.

  “Keep going,” she urged. She gave a subtle nod as she slowly swung her foot back and forth and he took a moment to coax himself, soothe the beast within and stay the course.

  “Did my mother do something wrong?” He raised his hands in a ‘I don’t know’ sort of fashion. “I mean, I knew pretty early on what sex was and how it worked. We all did. Things you wouldn’t think kids would be doing, discussing—hell, we were. We were light years ahead.” He waved his hands lazily around. “So, I knew that my father had slept with my mother at least twice, obviously, because there was my brother and I. Didn’t she earn a little respect by having his kids, me and Marco? I mean, I’m pretty sure he didn’t even send money. It’s like we never existed. Yo, Taryn, this is stupid, alright?!” he barked, looking away from her as he white knuckled the damn bench.

  Let me go, let me outta this!

  “No, it’s not, Nick. You can trust me, you know that, right?”

  Her voice sounded like melodic church bells. He wanted to move inside of her for service.

  Sacrilegious. God is going to strike me down…

  “I think that’s pretty fucked up, honestly!” He laughed loudly, though he found not a damn thing funny as he continued. “In my mind, I was tryna figure all of this out.” He pointed to his temple as his eyes narrowed. “Because that’s how my mind works. I want explanations for everything, Taryn. But I was a kid, so my reasoning was faulty. Or maybe, kids have great reasoning skills and it’s us as adults who make things complicated, crazy, and unreliable.” He huffed, briefly closed his eyes and ran his palm along his forehead. “I guess my father was just using her and maybe she was too in love with him to see what he was doing. I always wondered why my mother never demanded better.” He took notice of a stack of old magazines across the
way, neatly piled up, their pages dog-eared here and there on a table. He needed to look at something once again, anything but her eyes, for if he did his vulnerability would be witnessed, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that. “I lost some respect for her after that, Taryn. And I hated that I had.

  “I hated her for messing with a married man, and then having his kids. And I knew that’s why he never took her home to his mother after some years had passed, got a little older. I felt like what she did was wrong. Not really sure why, wasn’t like I was a moral having motherfucker. I rarely went to church and prayed ’nd shit.” He grimaced. “…It just kind of bothered me. Sometimes I hated her for having me, too, because my life was no good, or I at least believed at the time that it wasn’t. I disappointed her, but always fought telling her that she’d disappointed me, too!” He beat his finger into his chest, his chin raised high. “What type of son blames his mother for giving him life, huh?” He quickly turned away from her; his eyes welled with warm tears. His lower lip quivered, and he felt so ashamed…so very ashamed.

  “This is good, Nick… This is really good what you’re doing right now.”

  “What are you?! A damn counselor?” he snapped. “You don’t know!”

  “Nah, I’m no counselor, Nick…just a friend…just a friend.” She winked at him, kept her calm, kept her peace, and paired it with that sexy ass smile.

  I wanna kiss you so fucking bad, Taryn!

  “Keep going…” she whispered.

  “My mother did the best she could.” He swiped at his eyes before they had the chance to fall. “I knew those rumors were true though. Sometimes, you don’t need someone to send you a photo of reality. In your heart, you just kinda have it all worked out; you get the picture. My father was a married guy with a wife and other kids, Taryn.” He smiled sadly. “He lived right there in Brooklyn and probably walked past me all the goddamn time.” His jaw tightened with renewed hatred. “His other kids were probably dressed to the nines. And I bet his wife didn’t even have to have a job, while my Ma was on her hands and knees scrubbing some filthy floor. I bet his wife got to stay at home and watch soap operas ’nd shit and prance around on the phone gossiping and then at night, she’d lay there and let him fuck her even though he had a Puerto Rican mistress across town… I bet she knew, too.” He hung his head and swallowed hard.