Lunchmeat

by Ben D'Alessio

  “You okay, Ma?”

  “It’s just these bastards.” She shook her head as she looked at the television mounted on the wall. “These sick fucks.” She naturally lowered her voice to swear. “They’re already getting out. These sick… could you imagine? They only served a few years in juvie and now they’re back on the streets. Do you remember what they did to that girl? That could’ve been… I can’t even say it, Victor.”

  I walked over to the microwave and watched as she wiped away a tear. I looked up at the television—MEMBERS OF “SUMMIT SEVEN” RELEASED TODAY—and curled my hands around the rim of the bowl.

  You’d think a few years in the pen, the can, the big stink, would’ve taken their toll on the boys, beaten ’em up a little, like an old catcher’s mitt. But they looked as squeaky-clean as the day they appeared on the news back in 2002, bursting with big-toothed, radiant WASPiness.

  “Look at how smug they are. This one, this one—Harrington, I think—his father still has the fuckin’ nerve to get in front of the camera and claim his son was a product of some system or part of some conspiracy. I honestly can’t keep up, Victor. I just can’t.” She turned off the TV and sat across from me at the kitchen table. “Hey, everything is going to be fine—stop playing with your hair—I know it doesn’t seem that way right now. Here, ya know what? This is just a chapter in your life. Actually, it’s like a book. You ever finish a really good book and wish it wasn’t over? Well, that’s what relationships are like sometimes. They end, but you need to look back on the good times and be happy that you had them, that you experienced it and enjoyed it while you could. But guess what? Victor, look at me, this is important. Guess what, my son? There are other really good books.”

  “Thanks, Ma.”

  I retreated to the depths of the basement balancing my soup in one hand and my RAZR in the other. For the next three days and nights, I barely left the pullout couch and would wake up intermittently to Tom Jones Cleaver laying the finishing touches on a particularly fiery sermon. “Rise, my lovelies! Reach to the sky and pull at the power of the Lord!”

  I had grown so accustomed to the pastor and his histrionic tirades that the roar of his flock and the screech of his microphone soothed me to sleep, and I could hear his voice in my dreams.

  My father didn’t care that I continued to sleep in the basement, as long as I started working out again and took phone calls from the football recruiters at small schools from Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. Mom would check to make sure I wasn’t hanging from a belt—I was surprised she didn’t go down to the train station and nab one of those “Don’t Kill Yourself” signs off the platform to hang in my room.

  Text from Tony: Yo yo what you doin this wknd?

  Text to Tony: idk

  Tony’s ringtone was the chorus to the Millburn Hockey team’s song, “That Was a Crazy Game of Poker” by O.A.R.

  “Hey Tony.”

  “Hey man, listen. You gotta get out there. I know it sucks right now, I’ve been there. But you gotta get back out there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re a senior, ya know? Ya know, like, you’re never gonna have this year again.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You didn’t have your eye on any underclassmen?”

  “No. I mean, yeah. I have, but…”

  “Get on it. Think of this as a… a… a liberation! Ya know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Alright then. Go enjoy yourself and keep me posted. Love ya, buddy.”

  “You too, Tony.” Click.

  As if my brother’s words were the breakers of chains, I flipped open my RAZR and began to mish-mash, mish-mash, click-clack, click.

  Text to Ivanka: Hey :) what are you doing this weekend?

  My father was renowned throughout the Garden State for the intricate, Arabesque doodles he drew on whatever piece of loose scratch paper he could find while he sat on the phone mhmm-ing and ahaa-ing while the speaker on the other end prated on.

  “Mhmm. Well… mhmm, I don’t know what to tell you, Mark. The coach and I don’t really have any other choice.”

  The pencil-gray mosaic cascaded down the left-side column of the high school basketball scores and updates in the Star-Ledger. My father rushed off the phone when he saw me coming down the hallway.

  “Alright, Mark, I gotta run. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I’ll tell him. Ciao.” Click. “Buon giorno (translation: good morning), my friend!”

  “Buon giorno.”

  “You want eggs or pancakes? Sunny-side up? Over easy? Scrambled? Hey, you want toast? Oh, Vito, I got some real good Italian bread. Have it with your eggs. It’s excellent.”

  “Okay. Dad, I’m gonna have a friend over tonight.”

  His phone went off. He picked it up and shook his head. “Maanuggia. Hold on, pal, I gotta get this. Athletics. Yes. Hi, Larry. Mhmm. Uh-huhhh.” Robotically he sat back at the table, located the pencil, and began where he left off with the mosaic web. “No, the coach and I are still deciding. It is his team in the end. Pardon? Well, they got caught. I don’t know what to tell you. Mhmm. Okay, we will let the parents know. I know Jeremy wasn’t there. Uh-huhh. Well, then he has no need to worry. Okay. Mhmm. Ciao.”

  “Jeremy Finklestein?”

  “Yes. If you haven’t heard, the soccer team had a party and the police showed up. It’s been a whole thing. A real pain in my you-know-what. The coach and I are deciding what we want to do. It’s the off-season, so he isn’t sure. I had parents say it’s nothing and everyone does it. I tell them, I tell them, ‘What do you want me to do?’ Someone’s dad… Greenberg? Greenfeld? Something Jewish. He compared it to those Summit kids who raped that girl. Like, this is nothing compared to that. Well, they’re still underage! Hey pal, you want ketchup? The salt and pepper is already on the table.”

  “Dad, I said I’m going to have a friend over tonight.”

  “A girl?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That’s greaaaaaat, pal,” he said, swinging away from the stovetop, smiling from ear to ear.

  “So…”

  “Oh, we’ll make sure to leave and be out of your hair. We’ll go out for dinner. I’ll call your mother after breakfast. Who is she? A Millburn girl? She play any sports? Okay, you don’t have to tell me. Maybe you’ll take her to prom? Okay, okay, we’ll see. But I think that’s just great, pal.”

  I picked up Ivanka in the Little Moscow parking lot. Her electric-blonde ponytail exposed skin so white it glowed a pale purple in the February darkness; the rest of her was covered in black. She spoke perfect English but had just enough of an accent to let me know it wasn’t her first language.

  We exchanged greetings and sat in awkward silence until I took the right at Saint Rose of Lima church and accelerated up Short Hills Avenue.

  “Wait, I brought this,” she said, pulling out a crinkling plastic water bottle from her purse. “Oh, it’s vodka. I took it from my brother. It’s from Ukraine.”

  We went into the basement through the garage. I took the plastic bottle of vodka and poured it over ice and mixed it with cranberry cocktail that had been sitting in the basement refrigerator since Christmas—a cultural violation I completely overlooked, but the freshman didn’t give me any grief for my sin.

  “I don’t know how you guys drink it without a mixer,” I said, turning the whole of Eastern Europe into one united bloc.

  She stood and scanned the framed All-Division, All-Conference, and All-Area cutouts that hung above the couch. “I still do not understand American football.” She tapped on the glass of the recruitment letter from the University of Hawaii I had meant to take down when that dream crashed after a lackluster junior season. “Wow. Are you gonna go there?”

  “Not sure yet,” I said, lying to her face.

  She sat back on the couch, a little closer this time, and I offered to fix her a new drink in a ne
w glass free of cranberry cocktail, but the freshman didn’t answer. She looked at me the way we often looked at each other when we passed in the halls or when we discussed the meaning of James Dean’s red jacket from Rebel Without a Cause in Film 101—one of the few classes that cross-pollinated seniors and freshmen.

  “So wait, were you on the slut list this year?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did they say about you? Was it nasty?”

  “Not really. Something about being a refugee, or something like that. It really wasn’t that bad.”

  “Jackals.”

  “No, it’s okay. A lot of those girls are like, super nice to me now.”

  “Well, at least you guys made history. You’ll likely be the last slut-listed class in Millburn history.”

  “What a pity.”

  Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons interrupted our conversation.

  Click. “Hey Dad.”

  “Vito? It’s your father. Just letting you know we’ll be home in about… forty-eight minutes. We’ll use the front door. Do you need anything?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “Vito… do you have… condoms?”

  “I’m okay, Dad. See ya later.” Click.

  She moved closer still, and as if preprogrammed from Freshmanning 101, Ivanka dropped to her knees and undid my belt. I remembered when the girls in my grade started giving blowjobs to condoms filled with water at the end of eighth grade as practice for the upperclassman. I remembered barely seeing them outside of school, sometimes when the upperclassmen on the football team brought me to parties, but even then they were merely an extension of a senior’s arm. Now it was my turn. Now I sat atop the social hierarchy with my pants rolled down to my ankles.

  Ivanka took me as much as I would’ve expected the freshman could, just enough for me to go “Awww” as she lifted her head up and gave a coy smile, as if to say, “Let me try that again.”

  I tried to picture Ivanka’s tight body in a strap-heavy lace concoction from Spencer’s, but all I could see was jet-black latex that went squeak, squeak, squeak while she cracked a whip—I have to jettison these preconceived notions of Eastern Europe!

  “Vic, are you… okay?”

  I had gone soft! To battle against the forces of gossip and rumor-spreading throughout the halls of high school, I pushed Ivanka onto the couch and began to kiss the white of her neck and shoulder. Surely a surprise to the young Ukrainian, whose freshman manual did not surpass the equation of Senior = Vodka + Blowjob. She lifted her hips so I could tug down her black jeans and underwear, and from the waist down, she was bare. I tried to fit a couple of fingers in and—stopped. I tried to fit one finger in and—stopped, swatted. She was the Martin Brodeur, the Dikembe Mutombo gate-keeper of the box.

  “I can’t, Vic. Just kiss me.”

  Just kiss her? Kissing was for lovers, the chivalric knight and the maiden faire, not half-naked high schoolers fooling around on the basement couch. Ivanka must’ve still carried the notion—poor girl—that there was a certain timing for sex, that sex was beautiful. There was no good time. Sex wasn’t beautiful—it wasn’t supposed to be. Sex was supposed to be savage, dirty, intense. Art was beautiful. The naked body can be beautiful and therefore can be art, but not when it’s engaged in the throes of sex. I couldn’t imagine something less beautiful than sex—medieval torture, perhaps.

  I guided her hand back to my penis—hard as an obelisk—and she began to tug, dry. I attempted to subtly push her head back to position one, but she resisted—truly an unprecedented feat. I attempted once again, but the Ukrainian was locked to my lips, tugging and chafing and tugging and chafing as if there were a genie inside.

  When I had figured that all hope was lost, when I had just begun to accept that the freshman had gone rogue and realized she never had to suck a dick again, a finger must’ve slipped over the tip or dragged down the base, because I felt a bolt of orgasm cut through me, and that was when I choked her.

  “What are you doing?!” she screamed as she popped me in the ear.

  “Shit, I’m sorry. Some people are into that.”

  “Like who?! Your crazy ex-girlfriend? Yeah, I heard she was nuts.”

  “Well, no. You see, I just said she was crazy so…”

  “I don’t care. I’m leaving. I’ll call someone to pick me up,” she said as she put on her underwear and pants.

  She grabbed her bag and the crinkling water bottle of vodka off the coffee table and headed for the door.

  “Hey, please don’t say…”

  But she slammed the door shut before I could finish. The sound reverberated around the basement and knocked the framed recruitment letter from the University of Hawaii to the ground, breaking the glass.

  I picked up the broken shards and tossed them in the garbage can over by the wet bar. I could see Ivanka surrounded by cigarette smoke in the darkness out my window. Then a blinding light pulled into the driveway and when my eyes readjusted, I saw the bumblebee-yellow Hummer H2 of Pierce Stone idling at the threshold of West Road as the pretty blonde stomped out her cigarette.

  Luckily the buzz around Millburn High School had not been the asphyxiation debacle that occurred in the Ferraro basement Saturday night, but the suspension of a handful of soccer players, for drinking.

  I passed Ivanka in the hall between second and third period and attempted to get her attention with a light—just the faintest, gentlest touch on the arm—but she looked through me like a ghost with what can only be described as a perfected, cold Ukrainian indifference.

  And it wasn’t just Ivanka who dismissed me like some throwaway piece of garbage, but the Jew Crew (closely linked to the soccer team with significant overlap) also completely ignored me when I attempted the slightest bit of human connection, as if I had rendered the verdict on their compatriots—why are sons punished for the sins of their fathers?!

  I approached Silas in the weight room during fourth period, a typical second-semester senior free period, where I liked to get a lift in before going home for lunch.

  “Hey man, you know this was totally out of my control, right?” I said, as if I, in fact, had any power whatsoever being the athletic director’s son.

  “Yeah, brother, no worries. I know that. They’re not even gonna get suspended for a game or anything. It’s just symbolic. Really left up to Coach.”

  Silas spoke like a true African, wise beyond his years.

  We took turns spotting each other on the bench press. Silas had envious upper-body strength and could match me set for set, even though he was known primarily for his (regrettably named, completely distasteful, utterly ironic) “slave feet.” Coach Porcello attempted numerous times to entice Silas to play on the football team, even attempting to strike a chord with his Namibian roots and likening the sport to rugby, but to no avail.

  “Eyy! Ferraro!” Coach Porcello called out from his office. “Eyy Badenhorst, would’ve been a heck of a player for me. I heard your little brother plays youth ball? Real American sport, Badenhorst. But hey, you’re a good kid.”

  “Thanks, Coach P. Come on, Vic. Seven… eight… nine…”

  “Eyy Ferraro, I got a call from Wyoming,” he said as he approached the bench.

  “Wyoming?” They played in the Mountain West Conference and were one of the smaller Division One schools, but it was still big-time ball. My Jersey heritage would be exotic to the wholesome women of the Great Plains. Plus their nickname was the “Cowboys”—far more respectable than “Millers.”

  “No, no. Lycoming. Small school out in Williamsport.”

  “Oh…” I said, racking the weight.

  “Coach seems like a great guy.”

  As Silas and I started to switch positions, Jabie, my Dominican comrade, trotted into the weight room short of breath. “Yo, Vic, you…you gotta see something.”

  “What?”
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  “Dude, someone…someone put up a pic of you on your dad’s office door.”

  I left the bench, almost dropping the barbell on Silas’s chest, and met Jabie in the middle of the weight room.

  “Of what?”

  He looked at Coach and shook his head.

  “What, Jabie?”

  “You drinking,” he said, lowering his voice, “when you were in Boston visiting your brother.”

  Jabie followed me as I rushed out of the weight room, down the hall, and up the steps, knocking over unsuspecting underclassmen with oversized backpacks that pulled them from one side to the other, to my father’s office on the second floor.

  “Did you take it down?”

  “Uh… no, man.”

  “Why not?!”

  “Shit, I don’t know! I didn’t know what was going on!”

  I came to a screeching halt, knocking more underclassmen, who had formed a semicircle around the printed-out photograph taped to the glass, out of the way.

  There I was, in my drunken glory, yellow stains on my white t-shirt, with my eyes barely open, half-empty bottle of Hayman’s whiskey in hand. I ripped down the photo and swung around to yell at the group that had gathered around the door, but they had already scattered. Only Jabie stood behind me, silent. I peeked through the glass, but my father’s chair was empty. His secretary scribbled away about something with the phone tucked between her shoulder and ear.

  “Carol, why didn’t you take this down?” I said, swinging the door open, the crumpled picture in my hand.

  “What’s that, dear? Whatcha got there?” She had no idea. Carol was a yacyadonne, constantly on the phone with her “movie star” son out in California who was “on the verge” of “making it big.” “Sorry, dear, I’m on the phone with Jimmy. Your father is in a meeting.”

  Perhaps I caught a break. Maybe the picture went up after my father had left for the meeting and this whole thing will blow…

  Fuck you, Frankie Valli!

  Click. “…Hey, Dad.”

  “Vito, it’s your father. What the… what the heck is this I’m hearing about a photo of you drinking?”