Object of Desire

by William J. Mann

  Brother Pop was passing back our tests. He paused after handing me mine, his doughy hand splayed on my desk.

  “You failed, Danny,” he said quietly. “Your grades are falling way off this year. I’d like you to start staying after school on Wednesdays for extra help.”

  “I can’t,” I said. “I have play practice on Wednesdays.”

  “You won’t be in the play if you can’t bring your grades up.”

  I panicked. I couldn’t get kicked out of the play. I absolutely couldn’t. I had landed the part of Mr. Brownlow, just as I’d been planning to do since last year. All summer long I’d practiced for that part. When I walked into the audition, I knew every line of the part. I didn’t even need a script. Brother Connolly, the director, had been very impressed. He gave me the part right there on the spot. I was ecstatic.

  Now there was a chance I’d lose the one bright spot in my miserable, dreary existence at St. Francis Xavier, and all because of Brother Pop and his fucking American lit class. The test had been on The Scarlet Letter, and while it was true I’d read only the Cliffs Notes, I thought I knew enough about stupid old Hester Prynne and that crazy reverend who’d fucked her to pass the thing. Clearly, I was wrong.

  At lunch I slammed down my tray, almost upsetting my paper cup of Coke.

  “What’s eating your ass?” Troy asked.

  I told him. Troy listened, nodding as he ate his bologna sandwich on white Wonder bread, which his maid had prepared for him.

  “Well, looks like you’re gonna have to actually start reading your books,” he said.

  For a while, I’d tried to distance myself from Troy. I knew Chipper thought Troy was a big fag, and I didn’t want him getting the same idea about me. But I hadn’t seen much of Chipper lately—it was football season—and there really wasn’t anybody else to sit with at lunch. Besides, I got horny a lot, and I liked the blow jobs Troy gave me in his car. A couple of months earlier, Troy had turned sixteen, which meant he could drive legally now. So he gave me rides to and from school, happily putting an end to my schlepping home on foot. So I realized pretty quickly that I couldn’t completely discard Troy as a friend. And, perhaps most important, he was still pretty useful to Mom.

  In the last few weeks, Troy had taken us all over the place, from New York to Boston to New Hampshire. And just a couple of days previous, we’d driven up to see the Rubberman again, who told us the “bitch” with Bruno was indeed Becky. But he didn’t dare let her or anyone else know that we were looking for them. We’d have to get to Becky by ourselves. Problem was, every time the Rubberman found out exactly where Bruno had gone, he’d skipped on to somewhere else. Mom began to worry that Bruno had begun to suspect that someone was looking for him and was determined not to be caught.

  The Rubberman had admitted she might be right. “He may have a sense someone’s after him,” he told us, still in the same chair, still smoking like a fiend, looking even more frail than before. This time, however, the television was dark; in fact, all the power in his little house seemed shut off. “And I’ll bet he knows it has something to do with his bitch.”

  Mom no longer recoiled when she heard Becky described as such. “I just don’t want him thinking I’m bringing the heat down on him,” she said. “Then he’ll go on the lam.”

  “Did you bring me my communication fee?” the Rubberman rasped. “I need to pay my electric bill.”

  “Yes,” Mom said, handing him another envelope of cash.

  The Rubberman took it and peered inside. “All right. I’ll send word through a couple of guys that we could maybe make a deal with Bruno that would prove beneficial for him. But like I said, lady, money talks. You understand that.”

  “I do,” Mom said. “And Bruno needs to know he’ll get a lot of dough in exchange for Becky.”

  I frowned. Just where that “dough” would be coming from was not obvious to me. Dad was out of work, fired for showing up drunk too many times. Father McKenna had taken pity and given him a part-time job as a handyman at the church. But even though Dad had told Mom that he’d quit drinking, I’d seen the empty bottles in the basement, and I still smelled whisky on his breath. I knew it was only a matter of time before he lost this job as well. Meanwhile, the brothers of St. Francis Xavier had deferred my tuition for a year, though they couldn’t promise anything indefinite.

  Faced with all this financial uncertainty, Mom had decided to sell the house. Dad made no protest; he knew his part-time job wouldn’t cover the mortgage payments. I think Mom also hoped that we might make a little money in the sale—money she could use in her hunt for Becky.

  It had now been a little over a year since my sister had disappeared. My fifteenth birthday had come and gone without comment. It was, after all, the anniversary of Becky’s disappearance, too, and that, quite understandably, took precedence. Mom had sobbed from morning to night. Sitting up on my bed in my room, watching Doctor Who, I imagined I was explaining the story line to my little boy, Joey. “The Doctor is actually the fourth doctor,” I told Joey, “having been regenerated into existence after the third doctor contracted radiation poisoning on the planet Metebelis 3.” I liked imagining Joey in my room, safe from all the chaos downstairs. “Don’t worry,” I told the boy. “You don’t have to go down there.” I would keep him safe, and that made me glad.

  But as engrossing as we both found the Doctor’s search for the Key to Time, I couldn’t forget that it was still my birthday.

  I was continually drawn back to that day a year ago, the party with the cake and the M&M’s and the friends I no longer had. I remembered what I had seen that morning at the pond, and I knew I could never reveal it. What importance did the memory hold, anyway? That Becky disappeared an hour or so later than what the official report claimed? What possible good would it do to know that little nugget of information?

  Of course, the thing that worried Mom most about selling the house was that Becky might come back and find us gone and not know where we were. She might escape from Bruno and make her way back to our house, only to discover a different family living there. Whoever bought the house, Mom insisted, would need to have our new number and address, and would need to keep a sign posted on the door at all times. Without such conditions, Mom said, she wouldn’t agree to the sale.

  Just where we’d live after the house sold, however, was unclear; Father McKenna assured us he’d help us find something. But the decision to put the house on the market did make one aspect of Mom’s life easier: Nana was placed in a nursing home. It broke my heart the day we dropped her off there. We packed up her clothes filling two little suitcases. She sat in the backseat of the car with me, Mom and Dad up front. “Where are we going?” she kept asking, and Dad kept telling her that we’d found her a good place to live, a place where she’d be happy, where she’d be taken care of, and where she’d have many, many friends. But all she’d say in response was, “Where are we going?” And when we finally got there, the place depressed the hell out of me. Old people in wheelchairs sat in the lobby, their necks crooked, their eyes staring vacantly. We didn’t even get to see Nana’s room. Two nurse’s aides greeted us, one taking Nana, the other taking her suitcases. The last thing I heard was Nana asking them, “Can you take me home?” I think even Mom cried a little bit on the way back in the car.

  I was thinking about Nana in that place, and I was worrying about having to drop out of the play, so I never even unwrapped the Ring Ding I had bought for lunch. I just sat there, staring off into the cafeteria. Troy noticed.

  “You gotta eat something,” he said. “You still have geometry class to get through.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “Do you want pizza? I’m going to go get a slice. I’ll get you one if you want.”

  “No, thanks.”

  He shrugged and headed off to the cashier.

  My eyes spied his book bag. I knew what he kept inside. I knew exactly in which inside pocket he kept his pot. If I was going to do this, I had to act f
ast. I made sure Troy was far enough away, then I pulled a plastic Baggie out of my pocket. I’d stuffed it in there this morning. Quick as a flash, I yanked Troy’s book bag off the chair and got it onto the floor, and in almost the same motion, I unzipped the top. It was a good thing no one sat with us at lunch to see what I was doing. Inside the book bag, my hand felt for the interior zipper and pulled it open. Gripping the bag of pot, hidden by the tabletop, I shook about half of it into my own Baggie. Then I replaced it, zipped up, and returned the bookbag to the chair.

  Troy was such a stoner that even if he noticed he had less pot than he had this morning, he’d probably just chalk it up to having smoked a doob and forgotten about it. I’d performed this little sleight of hand before; I knew I could get away with it. I didn’t really consider it stealing. Troy always shared his pot with me. I could smoke as much of it as I wanted. I was just taking my share now, instead of waiting until after school. Besides, he was a rich kid with a prodigious allowance. I didn’t know where he got his pot, but I knew he didn’t have any trouble paying for it. It wasn’t like I was taking it from some poor kid who had to save his pennies to buy his weekly dime bag.

  I finally ate my Ring Ding just as the bell sounded for my next class. Riding the wave of a sugar buzz—I’d washed the Ring Ding down with Coca-Cola—I made it through geometry, chemistry, and French. And then the last bell of the day rang, and we all scrambled to our lockers. I told Troy to wait for me, that I’d meet him at his car in fifteen minutes; there was something I had to do first.

  Out on the field, the football team was in their helmets, shoulder pads, and cleats, gathering for their afternoon practice. They were either running in place or doing push-ups on the grass. I gripped the chain-link fence with my fingers and called across the field. “Hey, Paguni!” I knew it wasn’t cool to call the football players by their first names in public. “Hey, Paguni! Come here!”

  Chipper lifted his helmeted head and came jogging over to me. The sight made me very happy indeed. I’d been to every one of his games this year, just as I’d promised. It hadn’t been a good season; the team had yet to win a single game. Chipper mostly sat on the bench, but the couple times he’d been called in to play, I’d rushed out of the bleachers and come to the fence, just as I had right now, calling, “Go, Paguni!” One time I’d seen a flash of his white teeth from inside his helmet when he heard the words, and that had thrilled me. To think that I, Danny Fortunato, had encouraged Chipper Paguni. There was nothing like the feeling. Nothing at all.

  I think I love you. Isn’t that what life is made of? Though it worries me to say, I’ve never felt this way.

  “What’s going on?” Chipper asked as he reached the other side of the fence.

  “Is your car unlocked?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I got you something.”

  He pulled in closer to the fence. The chin of the helmet actually dinged against the chain-link. “Shut up,” he said. “Don’t say anything else.”

  “Okay, okay. Nobody heard.”

  “Just put it way down under the seat mat.”

  “Will do.”

  I could see his eyes moving like brown spotlights within the helmet. “Sure you don’t want me to pay you?”

  “No. It’s cool.”

  “Why are you so nice to me, man?”

  I shrugged. “’Cause you’re nice to me.”

  “Whatever. Come over later.”

  “I will.”

  He ran back to the team, and I headed out to the parking lot, where Troy was waiting for me. But first I stopped at Chipper’s car and slipped the bag of pot under the mat in the front seat. I couldn’t wait for tonight, when I could sit on Chipper’s red shag floor, our feet stretched out and toes touching. The shades would be drawn, and it would be all dark, and we’d smoke and get really high, and then he’d ask me to walk on his back again. Lately he’d been taking off his shirt when I did it. He said it was better that way. I’d walk on his naked back, his tight, hard shoulder muscles flexing, and I’d have the biggest boner in my pants I’d ever got. I think he knew. How could he not see it?

  “You wanta come over?” Troy asked as I slid into his car.

  “No, we can just go to my house. Mom is out with Warren today. Dad’s at the church. Nobody will be home.”

  “Where’s your Mom going with Warren?”

  Troy was bugging me. I didn’t like how much he knew about Mom and her crazy schemes.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “Going to various biker hangouts, asking about Becky. What else does she do with her life?”

  We rode in silence. When we got home, the real estate agent—Dad’s old secretary, Phyllis, in fact—was just finishing showing the house to a young couple. The woman was pregnant. It felt odd to think of a new family living there.

  “Tell your mom these folks are very interested,” Phyllis whispered to me, the smell of her orange hard candy on her breath.

  Troy and I flopped down on the couch and switched on the TV. I flicked through the channels until I found a rerun of Gilligan’s Island. It was the one where Mrs. Howell dreams she’s Cinderella. I had always liked that one. Troy was rolling a joint. He didn’t seem to notice any pot was missing from the bag. I told him to hurry, that I didn’t know when Mom would come walking in. We had the Lysol can ready.

  We smoked and kissed at the same time, keeping our eyes on the TV. Mrs. Howell dreamed of going to the ball and the Skipper, in drag as her stepmother, laughed at her and called her ugly. I had a nice buzz on, and Troy was a good kisser. I had to give him that. Almost as good as he was a cocksucker, and my pants were already tenting in anticipation. But this time he didn’t immediately drop into my lap, but instead moved his lips to my ear, and then down my neck. His tongue left me tingling. He returned his lips to my ear.

  “Danny,” he whispered. “I love you.”

  I didn’t know what to make of the words. I was high. They seemed unreal. They seemed to have some sort of meaning, but I wasn’t sure what. I didn’t reply.

  Then the phone rang.

  I never answered the phone anymore. Mom still did, of course, convinced every time it was Becky. But when Mom wasn’t home, I just let the answering machine pick up. If it was about Becky, then it was better to have the message left on the machine than to put myself in a situation where I might screw it up or not ask the right questions, as I had done before. I had never forgotten the slap Mom had given me across the face.

  “Danny,” Troy said again in my ear, ignoring the ring. Perhaps he thought I hadn’t heard him the first time. “I love you.”

  The answering machine clicked on. Mom’s voice sliced between us: “This is Peggy Fortunato. If you are calling about my daughter, Rebecca Ann Fortunato, please leave a message and please, please, please leave a phone number. Thank you and God bless you.” Then came the long beep.

  “Listen good.” A deep growl resonated through the living room. “You keep going after Bruno, and you are a dead woman. One warning. That’s all.” There was the sound of a phone hanging up hard.

  My blood froze. I stood up, knocking Troy off me. “Jesus Christ!”

  “What was that?” Troy asked.

  “Didn’t you hear it?” Now my face was hot as I hurried over to the answering machine, the little red light blinking. “It was Bruno! And he wants to kill my mother!”

  “You don’t know that was Bruno. Maybe it was somebody else.”

  “Who cares? Bruno wants my mother dead! He’ll kill her if she doesn’t stop!”

  I started to cry. I couldn’t help it.

  Troy stood up and put his hands on my shoulders. “It’s okay, Danny. Just tell her and she’ll stop.”

  “No, she won’t! She’ll never stop!” My tears were flying off my face as I pushed Troy away. “They’re going to kill my mother!”

  Troy didn’t know what to do or say. He just stood there, looking hopelessly clueless as he replaced his dumb-ass blue-tinted aviator glasses on his face.
I wanted him out of the house.

  “You gotta go,” I told him. “Mom is going to be upset when she gets back.”

  “Maybe she’ll want me to drive her somewhere….”

  “No!” I screamed. “No more driving anywhere anymore! They’ll kill her!”

  “Well, I’ll stay until she gets back….”

  “No!” I screamed even louder. “You’ve got to go now!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  I turned my back on him and didn’t look around until I heard the front door slam. Then, from the living room, I heard Troy start his car and squeal out of the driveway.

  I cried harder then.

  I didn’t move off the couch for an hour. I just sat there, bawling like a little baby. I hoped Dad wouldn’t come home, because there was no way I could keep this from him. He’d want to know why I was crying, and I’d tell him, and then he’d confront Mom, and they’d have a huge fight, and then he’d get drunk. Mom needed to come home first, so I could tell her, and we could keep Dad out of it. It was up to me, and me alone, to get her to agree to stop looking for Bruno. We’d just have to let the police handle it. I knew she didn’t trust the police, but there was no other way now.

  Then I began to worry that she was already dead, that they’d already gotten her. Maybe that was why she still wasn’t home even as the sun began to set. I was freaking out. I rushed from window to window, hoping, praying, that I’d hear the sound of Warren’s motorcycle. And finally, thank God, I did. I watched as the bike rounded the corner, Mom on the back. She was wearing her leather jacket, emblazoned with a Harley Davidson patch that I didn’t remember seeing before. Warren pulled into the driveway, and Mom got off the bike. She reached over and put her arms around Warren and kissed him. On the mouth.

  I turned away from the window, sickened.

  She came through the front door as Warren roared off down the street. She saw my tears. “What’s wrong?” she asked sharply.