Little Boy

by Anthony Prato

  In lieu of a kiss, I whispered in her ear, casually, so her father couldn’t see, “I want to kiss you. But I won’t. I won’t kiss you until I break up with Lynn. I would never cheat on her no matter how bad things were going.” I wanted to let Maria know that I was seriously interested in her.

  “What?” she said. “You’re crazy.” I don’t think she believed me. I was crazy for saying it, but for whatever reason that night my instincts led me down daring paths. When I think I about it I realize that that night represented the birth of a new me. To her, who the hell knew? Maybe she had no desire to ever see me again. Maybe she danced with me as, perish the thought—a friend.

  “What I mean is...” I said, and I anxiously trailed off. “Listen, just go home now, and we’ll see each other again, okay?” I swear, I was about to say I love you, when she interrupted: “Promise?” Smiling and shivering and looking as though she’d give me one final hug if it weren’t for her father being so close by, she turned toward the van. “Promise,” I whispered.

  And then—hocus pocus!—she was gone. That was it. The best night of my life had come to an end. Amongst hundreds of students and parents and teachers amassing as the dance let out, I stood there in the cold, alone once again.

  ***

  New York City winters are brutal, but I didn’t move from that spot for at least ten minutes or so. Cemented to the pavement, I felt like an electric fan, spinning so quickly that I looked still to those around. You can’t avoid that feeling when you’re with a girl you love, just as you cannot avoid it when flying in a B-52, right over ‘Nam, frightened as hell, fearless as a shark. I only wish my dad could have seen me that night. Hey, Dad! I yelled silently within. Look over here! I’m flying your plane, and I’m doing so well! I was so happy that I again almost cried.

  Jeff, his sister, and Lynn whisked by me. Lynn looked over her shoulder toward me, intently, as if I’d wronged her in some way. I suppose she’d seen me dancing with Maria. They didn’t even say goodnight. For the moment I’d totally forgotten about my ride home. My mother was supposed to pick me up nearby, but I didn’t want to leave.

  While standing there I gawked at the dark nothingness in front of me, even though probably hundreds of my classmates passed by and said “sup” as the dance let out. I was swaying one hand out, one across my body, dancing with Maria time and time again.

  This time, however, I was alone and cold rather than connected and warm. Dreading myself for that emotion, that awful uncertainty following an evening of faith, I looked desperately at the clouds above my school. Now I was soaring through those clouds in an F-15, the jet I would someday fly as a U. S. Air Force pilot, the epitome of American aircraft. I was carpet-bombing all the hoods and losers that had the chutzpa to call themselves my peers. Everyone around me was blasted away for good. I had the girl, I had the best girl there was to have. She danced with me. I knew I’d see her again.

  Chapter 4

  My Way

  That night, after the dance, I cried. I’d been holding back tears all night, but once alone in my room, I couldn’t help it.

  I smoked a cigarette to calm myself down, but I kept on crying. All at once my nerve endings deserted me and I couldn’t feel a thing except for an intense pain in my forehead and the smoke wheezing into my lungs. I felt like I’d been hit in the head with a wrench, my skull compressed on all sides. When I closed my eyes, I saw lightening and heard thunder. My arms and legs felt like tired lead, my stomach like a black hole. It was a cold night outside but I was sweating anyway. I reclined on my bed, pressing my face into the pillow, which grew damp from the perspiration on my brow and tears on my face. I turned over onto my back and the sweat from my brow mixed with the tears slowly streaming from my eyes, producing a road-slick of saltwater on my cheeks.

  I fought with you that night, Mom, remember? It was about my smoking, which you always suspected and I always denied. As usual, you randomly brought it up at the worst possible time— during the car ride home. “Girls don’t like boys who smoke,” you said. “It’s disgusting.” It was typical of you to ruin a good night by mentioning something like that. You are good at that. And you are such a hypocrite, too, because you used to suck down two packs a day. The result was the same old scene on a different day: I yelled at you, you yelled back, and then I kicked the dashboard as we parallel parked in front of the house. You didn’t say a word after that.

  But that’s not what upset me to tears. To be honest, I’m not sure what exactly made me cry. I remember sprinting straight up our creaky wooden staircase to my room once I got home. I didn’t bother to turn the stairwell light on as I ascended, because I knew the stairs well enough the climb them with no problem. As usual, I felt like someone was chasing me up the stairs, like a hunter, so I hopped up two steps at a time, trying to escape.

  As I reached the top step I was already out of breath, and some tears had started falling from my eyes. I turned quickly and tried to stare down the stairwell toward the bottom step; I saw nothing but murky darkness. I was still scared, though, as if someone had followed me up the staircase, crawling on his belly, eager to snatch my legs out from under me.

  Reaching toward the wall I felt for the light switch and flicked it on. Suddenly, it was so bright that I was forced to squint my eyes for a moment, simultaneously releasing what seemed like a thousand fireflies behind my eyelids. My heart was still palpitating, and as I turned to walk away from the stairs toward my room, I looked back one last time to check for the hunter. But all I saw was my shadow waning as I turned the unlit corner toward my bedroom.

  As I fell on my bed more tears seemed to fall with me. I was helpless. I’ll never see Maria again, I thought. I would die that night, I just knew it. There is nothing, I thought. Nothing. No God, no hope. No fate, no destiny. I was alone in the world. Had I been in a crowded room, I would’ve felt like Robinson Crusoe. I couldn’t face challenges. I couldn’t win. I couldn’t kill the hunter, he would always be chasing me. I was strengthless.

  I lay prone on my back for a while, looking at this poster above my desk—the same one I’m looking at now, although back then I didn’t know what it portrayed—of a plane flying through thick clouds high above what looked like a city. Below it was a caption that read: V-J Day! Dad, you gave it to me on Victory in Japan day a few years ago, because you knew how much I liked aircraft and how fascinated I was by World War II. Right next to the poster was a black and white photograph of you holding your combat helmet under your arm in Vietnam, standing at the nose of a B-52. What a cool fucking picture.

  You said it was taken right after your last mission, right before you left for Hawaii, and then back to New York. You looked so proud, so strong, so dignified. You looked like a man who could jump the highest hurdles. And you did. You hated the war but ran your mission while there. You never complained or even cursed about it. You did what you were asked to do by an unforgiving country, a deceptive President, and an arrogant commanding officer. And you persisted with your mission once he got home. Only weeks after your plane landed in New York, you married mommy and bought a brick colonial in Queens.

  You wanted to leave Queens but mommy wanted to stay. So you drove to Newark every day and put in forty hours a week, not counting the commute. You never once bitched or moaned. You did your duty for family just as you had for your country. You worked silently, day-in and day-out, without recognition, like a gymnast who trains endlessly for the Olympics and doesn’t even win a bronze, but trains even harder right afterward.

  Hey Mom and Dad, I often wonder if you guys really went through the same stuff as me when you were my age. You may think so, but I say probably not. Hell, I don’t even know what you guys saw in each other when you met. These days, no two totally different people would ever fall in love like you did. When thunder marries lightening all you get is a storm.

  Occasionally, I blow the dust off of your old, musty high school yearbooks in the attic and stare at your pictures. Mom, you beamed like Megan Tyle
r Moore. And Dad, you glared defiantly like James Dean. You guys actually look normal and attractive.

  But, Mom—and this is where I get so fucking confused—you must have been a mental case back then, too! That’s an awful thing to write, I know. But it must’ve been true. As far back as I can remember, you were always a little crazy. You never beat us, and you bought us everything we wanted, but you just couldn’t control your mouth.

  You were never like all the mothers I saw on TV. On all the other shows the moms were the same—pleasant and gentle and caring. But you were never like those moms. I’ve always been pissed at you for that. I mean, there was dad who had fought in the war, and he was really cool and collected. Even when me and Tracy were bad, dad always understood and never went crazy. But you, Mom—holy shit! If you couldn’t control yourself, why did you bother to have children in the first place?

  I admit that I forgave you, Dad, for your mistakes very early in life. Any other woman for a wife and you never would’ve cheated, I know that. Your flaws never affected me. You always kept yourself in control. Mommy, on the other hand, even though you didn’t hit as much, you never had any control of yourself. I remember one time you got angry and actually went at me with a fork. Maybe I was bad that day. I don’t know. But why couldn’t you just hit me and send me to my room? Why’d you have to go crazy like that? And that’s no exception to the rule. That shit happened day-in and day-out. You couldn’t control her mouth, either. All the moms on TV would ask nicely for something the first time, and then yell later if the kid didn’t do it. Not you. You’d yell the first time, or even curse, and never asked nicely for anything.

  Most of the time, I guess, it was the alcohol talking. When you were sober, you weren’t as bad. You always bought me and Tracy clothes, and gave us tons of presents for Christmases and birthdays. As a matter of fact, you gave us too many presents. If I were a parent, I’d never waste so much money on buying so many goddamn toys each holiday. But that’s the thing—you’d shower us with gifts all the time, but all I ever really wanted was for you to be nice and stop drinking and cursing. You never understood this. And I never bothered explaining it to you, because I didn’t know how to back then.

  It’s not like I never loved you. I did. But when I was a kid I hated you more often than loved you. I loathed you for having no control over yourself when you drank. I know that soon you’ll start seeing your shrink every day, instead of just once a week, after all that you’re going to discover about your beloved son. Take this journal to your shrink, mommy. This is my official statement.

  Growing up with an alcoholic, I came to recognize and anticipate your routine. One rum and Coke induced a few moments of passivity. Two, and you started to talk a lot, with a look in your eyes that said, “Why isn’t anyone listening?” By your third your eyes were glossy and your voice spewed quick and obtrusive half-sentences. By your fifth rum and Coke you were loaded: One hundred and nineteen pounds of simulated supremacy, like when Charlie Chaplin dressed up as Hitler and kicked a globe around. You’d screech petty orders and hurl ugly expletives at me, Daddy, and Tracy. Six or seven drinks and you were gone, passed out, occasionally in a puddle of vomit in the bathroom, but usually on your bed. The sound of your bedroom door slamming shut never came too soon.

  Occasionally, when you drank and lost all control of yourself, Dad would glance in my direction and nod furtively as if to say, “Hey, kiddo, I know she’s messed up. Don’t worry, she’ll be asleep soon.” Amazing, but you never let her bother you too much. You gave Mom’s drunken ravings as much attention as I give a strong breeze, allowing it to take its course and then settle down. And no matter what she did, no matter how crazy she was, you always took Mom’s side. I never liked that, of course. But, looking back on it now, I understand why. You didn’t want to make her even more crazy by siding with me. You always knew how wrong she was, but you tried to be a good husband and father.

  Tracy never flinched when Mom went berserk. Two years younger than me, she was still sharp enough to realize early on that Mom was unmanageable. She never reacted the way I did. For some reason or another, Tracy never seemed to be bothered by that type of stuff. But I always was. Sometimes Tracy would say to me, “Hey, A.J. , why do you let mommy bother you like that? Just ignore her when she drinks.” It was good advice, I guess, but easier said than done.

  Rum and Coke and Smoke—that’s what I called you one day. I was eight years old, and I suppose the rhyme sounded cute to me. You mashed your cigarette into a crystal ashtray and called for Daddy to reprimand me. As punishment, dad smacked me with his belt. To a little kid, watching your father unbuckle his belt—hearing the clank of the brass and the rip of the leather—was like having a cocked revolver put to your head. The sounds hurt more than the leather. Nevertheless, Mom, you always accused Daddy of going soft on me. God, I despised you for wanting to see me punished more severely. And I always wanted to say or do something that made you rethink your behavior and grasp how viciously you treated us all. But nothing ever got through to you, sober or otherwise.

  ***

  As I thought about all this, overlay images of Maria, and the life we could spend together if I only could forget my own past. I kept watching the poster like it was a movie, and then switched back to the photo. First one, then the other, and then back again. I smoked a few more cigarettes, and cried one more tear for you, Dad.

  I thought a lot that night. I thought about this guy named Richard that I worked with in an office the summer before. Richard was a short little man with thick black glasses and a big shaggy beard. He was a real slob, even more of a slob than my friend Kyle. Hell, he practically never had his shirt tucked in. And, even though he never wore a tie, he always kept his shirt buttoned up to the top. Fucking weird. Worse, sometimes he’d tuck the front part of his shirt into his underwear and then his belt-less pants would fall a few inches, displaying an elastic band that read Hanes. He was thirty-five, unmarried, and living with his mother when we met. He hadn’t shaved his beard for almost twenty years, and he hadn’t left the island of Manhattan since he was eighteen. I once asked him why he hadn’t gotten married, and he responded: “Because I don’t want to lose my freedom.” What freedom? I thought.

  I used to pick on this guy non-stop. It’s not like I made him cry or anything; he always knew that I was just busting his balls. I started little arguments with him about everything. I argued for everything that he was against. He was one of those orthodox Jews who justified moral righteousness by quoting Biblical passages.

  I also busted his balls every time he asked me for help. At least once daily, he'd approach me timidly and say something like, "A.J., can you show me how to use the photocopy machine?" or "Please help me turn on my computer. I forgot how." My response was always the same: "You've been here fifteen years and you can't operate the copier? Yeah, right!" I thought he was trying to unload his work on me, the bastard.

  Despite these exchanges, we were friends in the office, and he knew I never meant any harm. But one day, about halfway through the summer, my supervisor pulled me aside and said something like, “Don’t be so hard on Richard. He’s retarded, you know.” At first I thought this was funny, because everyone knew that Richard was more than a little retarded. But then I noticed the somber look on my supervisor's face, and suddenly it all made sense. Richard had been working at the same office job for almost fifteen years; he lived with his Mom; he acted like a weirdo; he dressed like a hobo with bad taste. It hit me: Shit! I've been making fun of a retarded guy! A guy with actual Down’s Syndrome! My stomach sank like the Titanic and my mouth went dry. I couldn’t believe that I’d been making fun of a real retarded guy all along. Poor Richard! I thought. I had been dissing the weakest person available. I don't think I spoke to him once after I found out what he was.

  I thought about all this stuff for a while. Finally, after an hour or so, I regained my composure.

  I smoked a few more cigarettes, wrote about the dance in my journal, and
I fell asleep right there in my clothes and sneakers. Lucky it was a Friday night, because I didn’t wake up until around noon the following day.

  ***

  At school, two days later, I told all of my friends about what happened at the dance. The response was what I expected: Kyle asked, “Did you bang her?” knowing full-well that I only danced with Maria. Rick tried to drown out my story with his own, but had failed. Mike smiled like a big dope, because I knew he’d never even talked to a girl much less danced with one. Mike had so little experience with girls that he thought I exaggerated the whole story, even though I didn’t. But Paul’s reaction was different. He wasn’t like Mike. Paul was in disbelief because he knew that everything I said was true, and he couldn’t believe that I’d had yet another success with yet another girl.

  “What’s her name?” Rick asked.

  “Julie McCormick,” I said. Mike laughed his ass off. Rick laughed harder. Kyle laughed the hardest. Paul frowned and looked at his shoes.