by Brent, Cora
I was slightly overweight in high school, a fact which I congratulated myself on hiding underneath overlarge LL Bean shirts. I realized later that my adopted fashion style only made me look pitifully shapeless despite my generous chest. Plus my older brother Tony had made it known in no uncertain terms that anyone caught touching his sister would get to shake hands with his terrible temper. Funny because Tony bragged to no sordid end about his own conquests. So widespread were my brother’s threats that Keith French nearly cried after I slapped his hand away from my shirt. He begged me not to tell Tony.
In retrospect, my big brother’s brutish manners may have been the only favor he ever did for me.
CHAPTER FOUR
Saturday dawned green and honeyed, just the sort of invigorating day in which the fresh air of the mountains filtered down and mingled with the sweet promise of summer. I stretched languidly in bed, feeling nostalgic for the thousand mornings I had awakened to the season’s freedom and possibility.
Grace had to have been knocking herself out for a while. I smelled bacon and beneath that the yeasty hint of freshly baked bread.
There must be some primordial sense mothers own which advises them when their children open their eyes, no matter how old those children get. Before I’d even fully stood on the worn hardwood, my mother was knocking on my door.
“Angie,” she called. “Breakfast!”
Breakfast indeed. The round polished table which had been handed down from my grandmother was covered with pancakes and eggs, cinnamon rolls and freshly cut fruit. My father sat in his chair quaintly reading the newspaper.
As I munched absently on a slice of bacon I looked out the window. Specifically I looked across the street at the Bendetti house. What I didn’t notice yesterday was that it had improved from the last time I had paused long enough to take a good look at it. Mary Bendetti had always been married to the bar and without a man around to help certain things had long fallen by the wayside, particularly after she got sick. My father was among the stalwart neighborhood men who used to do what he could but between the store and looking after his own home and family there were only so many hours in the day.
But now, someone had treated the shabby house to a fresh coat of paint. The shutters, which I recalled as perpetually crooked, had been repaired and rehung. The older Bendetti brother, Damien, used to grace his mother with his finely suited presence for the big holidays before running back to civilization. I could understand that. Damien was five years older than his brother. Thin as a rail, he had always struck me as far too serious.
And Marco? He hadn’t been around in so long the mention of his name was akin to legend.
My father yawned and turned a page. I watched him over the rim of my orange juice glass. When I was a kid he’d seemed old, though that was likely my assessment for everyone over the age of thirty. But in the severe light of morning, I sadly realized he really was getting old. Not only the years but the harsh realities of life weighed on him; estranged son, absent daughter, failing business in a waning town. For the first time I thought about how often and how loudly I’d sworn to get the hell out of Cross Point Village. And I felt sorry.
I cleared my throat. “Hey Dad, you put up the cones already?”
It was my father’s annual duty to officially close off Polaris Lane on block party day. It was really more ceremonial than anything else, considering the street concluded in a rounded dead end. But kids came from surrounding neighborhoods anyway, relishing the opportunity to play kickball on a carless street without interruption. The Polaris Lane block party had been a tradition since the mid-sixties, always held the first Saturday of July. In a few hours the air would be thick with the smell of charcoal-crusted red meat and there and again the crackle of early firecrackers.
He didn’t look up from his newspaper. “Hmm? Oh yes, of course.”
My mother’s hands were covered in something that looked like sour cream. She nodded at me. “Krista’s stopping by today. She’s excited to show you the new baby.”
Inwardly I groaned. Krista was my cousin. And she was a pain in the ass. We were the same age and so went through school together in sort of a mixed friends/enemies fashion. I never knew what I did to that girl but she always relished any opportunity to make me feel like shit. Krista was not especially pretty but she had the right body and the right phony attitude and from the age of thirteen always had a boyfriend or three hanging off her arm.
I would watch Krista smear on dusky pink lipstick in the broken-tiled girls’ bathroom at CPV High as she waxed poetic about her exciting future. She was going to go to New York, she was going to marry a millionaire, she was going to drive a Lamborghini. Then she would smooth her shiny blonde waves and stand sideways, preening into the cloudy mirror, irreverently pleased with herself.
But, save a few visits to Albany and Boston, Krista had not left CPV. I’d thought I had one up on her, finally, but then she married Keith Freaking French and starting popping out offspring like the species was endangered.
During my brief visits Krista made it her business to search out an occasion to deposit a slobbering baby in my arms and ask, “So how’s the boyfriend status?” with fake interest. Then she would smile at my noncommittal response and cluck some variation of “Always a bridesmaid,” as my mother stood nearby and gazed upon Krista’s growing brood wistfully.
I was less than jazzed about having Krista inflicted on my day. But of course I’d expected it so I managed a limp smile as my mother rinsed her hands off in the kitchen sink.
Once I’d showered and pulled on a pretty summer weight dress I paused in front of the rectangular mirror affixed to my closet door. When I was in high school I used to paper that mirror with city postcards and Tiger Beat clippings, partly because I liked the way the Cassidy brothers looked and partly because I didn’t like the way I looked.
I was thankful to have grown out of that self-doubting teenager. True, I would never be the kind of pencil slim craved by certain guys like Brian Hannity, but I was rather pleased by the womanly curves which stared back at me. Though there really wasn’t much point in flaunting them today. Cross Point Village meant slim pickings; I’d lived here long enough to recognize that every worthwhile man was married (though not every married man was worthwhile) and the only ones left standing were grimly out of shape losers who mooned into their beer six nights a week and wondered what happened to the good old days they’d been promised.
I fixed some dangling turquoise earrings and rolled on some cherry lip gloss. Then I kissed the mirror in Krista-esque fashion and braced myself for a day of well-mannered interest in friends and relatives.
The block party was in full swing by mid-afternoon. My mother presided over the gigantic potluck table which spanned the length of the Johnson’s curb. A never ending parade of food seemed to land there courtesy of Polaris Lane ladies.
Old Lady Johnson wiped a dribble of blueberry pie from her chin whiskers and gazed at me doubtfully. “You got a fella, Andrea?”
I concentrated on cutting perfectly equal slices of pie. “It’s Angela, Mrs. Johnson. You used to babysit for me and my brother all the time.”
Her desiccated face broke into a frown. “Your brother. He and that lousy little Bendetti shit popped the tires of my Chevy.”
I pushed a slice of pie from the server with artful precision. “They popped lot of things, from what I’ve heard,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Johnson. Here’s another slice of pie. Would you like some Reddi-wip on that?”
After a few hours I was dizzy from greeting people I remembered, people I didn’t remember, and people who I wished I didn’t remember. Although I always made my way back here for Christmas, I hadn’t returned for the block party since college.
Krista floated by long enough to shove her grubby baby into my arms while my mother hovered nearby with shining eyes. Krista’s little rosebud mouth was smugly pursed and I noted with some chagrin that her lithe f
igure didn’t suffer any from the repetition of breeding.
Aunt Becky was my mother’s younger sister. She’d become pregnant her senior year in high school and dropped out to marry the presumed father. It was something of a scandal as Benjamin Kaminski, owner of Kaminski’s Hardware, was ten years older and already happened to have a wife. Luckily things sorted themselves out when the woman signed some paperwork and departed in humiliation, clearing the way for Becky and Benjamin to marry and produce a houseful of kids. Aunt Becky had an inexplicable year round tan which was rather difficult to come by in a northern climate and she often dispensed thoughtful nuggets like “Black is very slimming, Angela.” I’d never liked Aunt Becky. I especially didn’t like her when she tapped my mother on the arm and spoke in her singsong voice.
“So, when’s it your turn to be a grandma?”
And that’s when I decided to excuse myself. I needed to get away. I needed a beer. I needed to get that damn baby off my hands since he’d crapped himself in his sleep. I handed him back to his mother and wandered in the opposite direction.
As I surveyed the various bobbing heads I felt a little dizzy, as if I were walking through a dream. I’d been in this place before, with these people before, and if I squinted I could make myself believe it was all but unchanged.
“Having fun?” The voice at my back was deep and amused.
I turned around and couldn’t control the theatrical drop of my jaw.
When I’d last seen him he’d been a loutish delinquent, always scamming for sex and alcohol. But the years had been good, broadening his chest and arms, further defining his chiseled jaw. He scanned the varied clots of people and casually lit a cigarette.
“Hi,” he said, turning his attention back to me.
I swallowed. “Hi.”
“You want a beer?”
I did want a beer but my voice wasn’t cooperating with my mouth. “No.”
“Well, I don’t know how you fucking stand it then. Takes a keg’s worth to put up with some of these phonies.” He’d been leaning on the edge of a mottled redwood table, a beat up plastic cooler at his feet. As he reached down and began rifling through the ice I saw the stark black tattoos which circled his thick arms like lean snakes.
He noticed me looking. “I knew a guy on the inside.”
I blinked. “Inside of what?”
Marco Bendetti lit a cigarette. “Lockup.”
“You were in prison?” I was shocked. “I didn’t know that.”
Marco took a drag from his cigarette and looked at me coolly. “Why would you know that?”
I blushed, feeling rather self-conscious and rather like the squirming version of myself which had hidden in the shadows throughout adolescence. Oddly enough, I wasn’t sure if Marco knew who I was. And I didn’t know whether to take that as a good thing or a bad thing. I cleared my throat. “So what did you do?”
Marco took a long swallow of beer and eyed me up and down. He gave no hint as to whether or not he liked what he saw. Finally he shrugged. “I was a reckless idiot. Now I’m smarter.”
“Less reckless?”
He smiled thinly. “Still reckless at times. I just don’t get caught.” Marco’s dark eyes rendered a slow burn over my bare legs, rising higher over my hips and lingering on my breasts. “You look different.”
I tried to stay nonchalant but the fact of the matter was he was having a dramatic effect on me. The heat between my legs was unbearable and I was sure if I shifted position, even slightly, he would know why. And that he’d be entertained by the fact that he’d managed to work me up. “So you do know me.”
Marco smiled and took another swallow of beer. “’Course I know you, Angela. We were in the same goddamn place from diapers to graduation. You always wore glasses. You’re not wearing glasses now.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. Marco’s deep gaze was making me feel positively unclothed. “Contacts.”
“I like your glasses better.”
“Well I’ll just go run and put them on then.”
Marco had shifted, moving a few inches closer, so damn close I could easily inhale the heady mix of smoke and alcohol. Once I’d heard Tony brag to his friends that the combo of booze and tobacco was a beeline into any girl’s pants.
“Doesn’t matter who the fuck she is,” he had preached to his captivated minions. “Even the smart ones get unzipped.”
Tony, for once, was dead on right about something.
As Marco cracked open another beer, I noted how his jaw was shadowed with a two day beard. I fought to urge to reach out and stroke his rough cheek. We’d never been buddies and indeed he rarely seemed to even notice my existence. But as we stared at one another in the midst of our reveling neighbors I saw how he took in the way my dress clung to my body and there was no longer any mistaking that look. In fact, there was something vaguely menacing about the crude way he was appraising me. My panties were becoming damper by the second. It wouldn’t have taken much for me to follow him anywhere.
Then a troupe of rowdy boys buzzed past us waving sparklers as if they were Star Wars light sabers. Whatever spell it was which prompted the fire of lust in his eyes seemed to have broken and he took a step back. In the next moment he only nodded at me mildly and exhaled a plume of smoke. “Tony in town?”
Even though Tony was two years older, Marco had been cool enough to run with his unruly crowd. They were some pair, committing beer runs at the McCaffrey’s gas station on the edge of town and defiling the CPV High virgins on the track field.
I shook my head. “Tony’s in Hartford these days. Working in a warehouse or something, trying to stay out of trouble.” I pushed my thick hair behind my ears and softened my voice. “Hey, I’m sorry about your mom.”
He didn’t answer, only lowered his head and stared at the cracked cement. I started to reach out to touch his arm. His incredibly tanned and well-muscled arm. But I pulled my hand back before I got halfway.
“She was always a real nice woman,” I said.
Mary Bendetti had raised her two boys herself. I’d always gathered that behind it all was a sad story which didn’t bear discussing. My folks weren’t ones to gossip, but I’d finally heard from Krista that old man Bendetti was a mean son of a bitch, much older than his wife and prone to a violent temper which got the better of him when he keeled over during a bar fight in Springfield.
I meant what I’d said to Marco about his mother. Mary Bendetti looked old long before her time with her grueling schedule at the bar, trying to scrape together an existence for her family. She was soft spoken didn’t even raise her voice at me when I was three and picked all of the yellow marigolds out of her window box garden.
“Here, sweetheart,” she said, plucking the last two out herself. “You don’t want to miss any.”
But she was fierce when it came to her sons and never stopped trying to rein in wild Marco. I’d heard she found the first lumps in her body five years earlier and though friends like my mother urged her to seek more aggressive treatment, Mary would shrug that she didn’t have time. Her house was long since empty but she had the bar, always the bar. My father used to say that bar was like a son to Mary, that she would die for The Cave.
“Yeah, she was a nice woman,” Marco finally said so softly I barely heard him. Then he seemed to shake off his gloom, crushing one cigarette and immediately lighting another.
I liked my lips. “Hey, can I bum one of those?”
Marco handed me the one he had just lit and retrieved a fresh one from the back. “No good to keep a lady waiting,” he said, watching me while I inhaled.
I could not say what I was thinking when I grabbed that cigarette. The second I recklessly took a deep inhale the smoke burned my lungs and I began to cough violently, dropping the cigarette in the street and attracting the attention of the pastel-clad potluck crowd a few dozen yards away. My mother was among them and I didn’t miss her frown when she saw Marco looming over me.
He patted my back ligh
tly, his chuckle deep. “You don’t smoke.”
I shook my head, feeling so fucking foolish I might have been fifteen again, a listless nerd girl sidling up to the cool kids.
Shit.
I hadn’t felt like this much of a goddamn daft idiot since, since…yesterday. Without looking at Marco again I turned away and cut through all the crowded gaiety to get to my house.
There, in the comfort of the hideous yellow and avocado-colored kitchen I poured a large glass of cool tap water and drank it down in big gulps. I was unhappy with myself. As if the whole specter of the Brian mess didn’t make me feel inadequate enough, now there was adolescent awkwardness and Marco Bendetti haunting me.
“Angela.”
I hopped and shrieked and dropped the glass. Marco had let himself in through the side door and was standing under my mother’s gigantic rooster wall clock. He looked so much larger standing there in my parents’ bright kitchen. His eyebrows rose as he surveyed the mess on the floor.
“You okay?”
“Fine.” Well really, I felt entirely out of sorts, like maybe if I ran in three separate directions and screamed for a while everything might make a little more sense.
I pulled the dustpan from the upper cabinet where it had resided for a good thirty years and bent to deal with the broken glass. My face was hot and, I was sure, quite red.
You see, it just wasn’t fair.
I mean, you graduate, you move away, you leave all the old insecurities behind and grow up to earn a nice paycheck and even join the mysteries of sex. But what does it matter? Marco Bendetti could still say a few meaningless words and you’re instantly altered into a lake of throbbing lust.
The old equations never changed, it seemed. No matter how you tried to rewrite them.
I began industriously sweeping up glass shards, trying to ignore the fact that the boy nicknamed ‘Banger’ had become a hell of a man and was now hovering over me and taking the broom out of my hands. The brief jolt of his touch gave my panties another workout as I wiped my hands on my dress and tried not to stare at the way his muscles bulged out of his shirt.
