Beyond Nostalgia

by Winton, Tom

  Theresa and I headed to my house to watch TV and, hopefully, if the opportunity presented itself, to fool around a little on the couch. Prospects seemed good. Dad would be helping out at a church function, and Ma, after her exhausting days filled with worry, prayer and depression, usually went to bed by eight. Although neither of us brought it up, Theresa and I both anticipated getting it on, as long as Ma went to bed on schedule.

  The light outside the subway turned green and, along with a herd of other pedestrians, we darted across the avenue. Climbing onto the curb on the other side, in front of Woolworth's, I asked, "What do ya say we take some pictures, Theresa?" I was pointing to the booth inside the 5 & 10's plate glass windows. "I've been wanting to do this for a long time but kept forgetting about it."

  I plopped onto the seat first then Theresa climbed onto my lap and sat cross-legged. Both of us giddy and giggling by now, she closed out the store's cosmetic section with the booth's green curtain, took a brush from her purse, stroked her hair a few times, then pivoted toward me, setting me off just a little, and ran the brush through the windblown locks on my forehead. Then she patted my hair, kissed the tip of my nose and cuddled her cold cheek to mine.

  "All set, now. Put the money in," she said.

  Still smiling wide after I dropped two quarters in the slot, as if on cue, we both trained our eyes on the red glowering light. Like all kids do, we changed poses and expressions with each intermittent flash. In one shot I made a goofy face and Theresa playfully slapped me. In another shot, we kissed. Eyes closed, lips locked, we made a hell of a profile, a literal picture of youth. But the one I liked best was the first one, the one of us cheek to cheek, both of us enjoying vivacious, unencumbered, heartfelt smiles. It was a picture of happiness in its purest form, a happiness that can only be felt in the morning of our lives, a happiness that can never be recaptured or duplicated afterwards. Our eyes were radiant with this youthful brightness, and naive hope.

  A few minutes later, a wet strip of tiny black and whites slid magically into the holder outside the booth. Theresa's head leaning against my shoulder, we studied the pictures in earnest. "This first one is like poetry," I said. "You can have all the others, Theresa, if you want, but I'd love to keep this one in my wallet."

  "Ahhhhh! Aren't we the romantic ones, Dean Cassidy, talking about poetry and such things. Never would have known it twenty minutes ago when you wanted to beat up that man on the train."

  "Awright, awright, stoooppp. It's just that I think it's a great picture."

  "I'm just kidding," she said. "Sure! You can have it … my favorite is on my dresser mirror at home. The one Regina took of us at the Copacabana."

  We left Woolie's and headed for Gertz Department Store where the Q-12 bus stopped. It was only about a half block down but, before we got there, we passed the Hurdy Gurdy, a new old-fashioned hot dog and hamburger joint. I noticed four dopers standing just inside a plate glass window. They were looking out at the passers-by expectantly, their noses so close to the cold glass they each produced their own little fog spot. Their nervous eyes clicked side to side, checking out everybody out on the wide sidewalk. I could see they were getting testy, jumpy for their next fix, wondering where it would come from, looking for Mister Tambourine Man.

  A minute or so later, we got on the bus line, and I fished a single from my wallet. That old cowhide wallet still felt alien in my hands, lighter and thinner, even though months had passed since I cleared out all the pictures of other girls. That same night, also to prove my allegiance to Theresa, I made the supreme sacrifice by dumping my 'little black book'. It was a hard-to-find tiny job, so small that it actually fit inside a compartment in the wallet. It had been chock full of numbers and addresses too, so many that, to help my recall, I had to jot where I met each girl next to her name. There was also a rating system consisting of one to four check marks, but, I won't go into that right now.

  While waiting on the bus stop, I slipped the now dry new picture of Theresa and me inside a plastic holder. It was cracked but you could still see us pretty good. Then I realigned an existing snapshot of myself. "I'm sure not crazy about this picture,” I mused aloud.

  "Which one?" Theresa asked, resting her head on my shoulder while looking into the wallet.

  "This one," I said, pulling the tattered billfold closer to her. It was a wallet size of my senior picture, the one they took for the school yearbook. I had on my only sport jacket. The green and white madras Sylvester had handed down to me along with his Jade East when he was getting ready to report to basic training.

  "I got a haircut at the 75-cent joint down in the subway the day before it was taken," I said, "and the bargain-basement barber butchered me up real good."

  "Is that supposed to be a tongue twister, Dean?"

  "Whaaat?"

  "The bargain-basement barber butchered me up real good. It's almost like the blue bug ... "

  "How'd you like a punch in the nose, young lady?"

  "What picture? Lemme see," Theresa said, leaning closer, pressing a breast to my elbow, holding my wrist now. "Ohhh…you look so cute."

  "Yeah, sure. It was raining like hell that day, and I had to walk six blocks from school to the photographer's studio in that shit. It was the worst bad-hair day imaginable. Not only was it cut too short to begin with, but it looked even shorter when it crinkled up in the rain."

  "It looks fine … handsome," Theresa said, clinging to my arm with two hands now, looking up at me with exaggerated goo-goo eyes. “And, anyway, it's a lot longer now," she said, flipping it in back where it laid a few inches over the collar of my varsity jacket. "You're starting to look like a certified hippy."

  And, it was true. My hair now obscured my ears, which was just fine by me since I'd always thought they were a bit too big and too high up on the side of my head. I liked the way I looked. And there was that statement my appearance made. My hair told the world I'm a nonconformist, anti-establishment-against the Viet Nam War, excuse me, the Viet Nam conflict. Against any rules or laws enacted to stymie one’s individual rights and all forms of public manipulation by the profiticians.

  I'd become old enough to vote the previous spring but had no plans to exercise this right, responsibility, privilege, or whatever else the media was calling it at that time. I couldn't devalue my convictions by voting for one of two phonies. The old 'lesser of two evils' is in reality the 'evil of two lessers'.

  One of the few differences Theresa and I had was that she was apolitical. Maybe she, like so many other Americans, preferred not to think about what was happening to them. They trusted 'their' government would protect them, wouldn't let them lose their dream. Sure! By 1967 rumors were already circulating that within ten years there would no longer be a middle class, but Americans still believed justice and fairness would prevail, the good guys would always win, just like in the John Wayne movies. But this over-optimistic belief that the good guys would always prevail was slowly dying, along with 'the Duke'.

  Just as the bus pulled up, a raw-boned, middle-aged man, a burn-out, started ringing jingle bells in front of the entrance to Gertz's. You could see in his expressionless eyes, his creased face and slack body that he'd been to hell and now was trying to find his way back. Sitting behind a tripod with a metal kettle hanging in the center, he looked so pitiful in his baggy Salvation Army uniform. With my perpetual heartfelt pity for lost causes, now magnified by the holiday season, I told Theresa to stay on line, and I went and dropped a buck in his kettle. The guy didn't say thanks, but I understood. As I walked back across the sidewalk, I noticed a guy in a different kind of army uniform, The U.S. Army's. He was a young soldier, home on leave, striding by with two friends in civvies. The kid wore a Vietnam Campaign Ribbon on his chest and, on his face, a look that was much too solemn for his years. Theresa glanced at him and then back at me. She could see how bummed out I was. I feared that things were going to change. For the past nine months since we'd been dating, everything had been going all too well in m
y life. Good things never seemed to last for me. I had these bad vibes that I too would be in a uniform before I could matriculate full time at school.

  I said to Theresa, "I got a feelin' my hair's not going be this long for much longer."

  "Let's not talk about that now, Dean," she said looking down at her shoes. With the toe of her little suede chukka boot she meditatively rolled a discarded cigarette filter on the sidewalk a few times. Then she mashed at it.

  I would be nineteen in May, but wouldn't complete the rest of my required courses until June. They'd been drafting guys as young as eighteen. Although neither of us would admit it, deep down Theresa and I both knew they'd probably get me. This gloomy knowledge had been tearing at me more and more frequently lately, and accepting such a dismal fate grew more difficult rather than easier. I'd be losing everything - my freedom, my hair, friends and family, a college education and, most of all, the love of my life, my Theresa. The chance that I might get killed, never see her again, was genuine. And we had so many dreams yet to fulfil: marriage, kids, a house with a green lawn and white picket fence out on the island. But now, despite still being just a teenager, all of this was in jeopardy.

  All along Theresa had acted as if avoiding talking about the draft might prevent it from happening. Intelligent as she was, she preferred to lock such negative thoughts out of her mind just like she did the cruel injustices of self-serving politics. But, lately I'd noticed her eyes going off to faraway places with increasing regularity. More and more often she was getting lost in her troubling thoughts.

  As the Q-12 labored away from its stop, I caught her again. Taken hostage by those thoughts, peering out the window into the Queens night, she desperately searched for solutions to an unsolvable problem.

  Chapter 12

  After getting off the bus a block early on Bowne Street, Theresa and I picked up some snacks at the German deli. I bought a couple of 16-ounce bottles of Pepsi, a box of red pistachio nuts, two Devil Dogs and a big bag of cheese-covered popcorn.The store clerk unveiled her accent when she said, "A dollar and forty-nine, please." A buck forty-nine … boy, those were the days.

  When we got to 1B, I shifted the brown paper bag to my left hand and dug into the right-front pocket of my jeans for the key. I've always been that way, methodical. Change in the front left pocket, key in the front right, my wallet always in the right rear. Small habits never change.

  Theresa stood by my side as I slid the key into the lock. She liked my mother and she felt very sorry for her, but each time I brought her home turned out to be a bigger fiasco than the last. She was apprehensive now. I could see it in her movements. Don't forget, we had been dating for nine months, so I'd learned to read her pretty well. And this night she was not her usual poised-beyond-her-years self. Now she was fidgety, unbuttoning her coat, tugging her sweater down around her waist, drumming her fingernails into her shoulder bag, all before I got the door unlocked. I'd never seen her so uneasy. It was uncanny, as if she knew something would go very wrong this visit. As I said earlier, I don't believe in such bunk, but it was as if she was having a foreboding premonition of what waited for us inside the apartment.

  "It's OK," I said gently, "she'll be going to bed around eight. That's only a half hour from now."

  I pushed the door open and stepped back to let her in first.

  Instantaneously, Theresa spun back around at me. "Dean, there's no lights on!"

  I looked over her shoulder. It was pitch dark in there. I flipped on the hall light and we stepped lightly to the living room. The lamp on the table next to Ma's chair was off and there were no candles burning on the tea-cart altar.

  "Ma?" I said tentatively, my own voice sounding eerie in the silence.

  No answer.

  Again I called out, louder this time, "MA, where are you?" My tone was a mix of agitation and concern, justifiable concern. This was scaring me. Mom had been threatening to kill herself for almost five years now. Countless times she'd said she was tired of it all, that she was someday going to jump in front of a subway train at the Main Street station. And lately she'd been making these nagging threats more frequently.

  With this knowledge shrouding my nervous thoughts, I cried out again, "GOD DAMMIT MA, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?" With my concern quickly turning to fear, you could hear the transformation in my voice – twice, once when I said it, once when it bounced back off the walls. That dark demon, fear, had set up inside me and was expanding like a malignancy with every quickening breath. As I bent to turn on the lamp, all kinds of horrid scenarios raced in an out of my head.

  My words were laced with panic and dread when I said, "Let me see if she's in the bedroom." It sounded to me like someone else had spoken the words, not registering until after I'd heard them. Then, as if I had injected it into my veins, a terrifying panic rushed through my body.

  "C'mon," I said, rushing into the bedroom. "Shit … she's not here, either!"

  The window shade was still up. She must have left before dark. God knows why, but one of the few things she did around the house, other than praying and scrubbing her hands, was to draw our three shades when the sun went down. Maybe she thought she was closing out the devil or something. The glow of the street light penetrating our tissue-thin curtains cast a dusky rectangle on my parent's bed. It was empty and still made.

  Theresa broke the unnerving silence. "Take it easy, Dean. Maybe she's out with your father somewhere."

  "Nooo, Theresa. She's not out with my father," I snapped as I rushed for the phone in the hallway.

  My hands shaking uncontrollably I looked up the number of the church hall in our battered address book. Hastily I dialed the black rotary phone, misdialing the first time, getting it right the second.

  After a thousand unanswered rings, a familiar voice finally answered. "St. Leo's."

  "Father, is this Father Bianchi?"

  "Yes," he said, calmly.

  "Father, this is Dean Cassidy. Is my Dad there?"

  "Yes. Is something wrong, Dean?" He read it in my voice.

  "It's my mother! She's not here! I just got home. She's not there with my father, is she?"

  "Oh, good father in heaven, no, she's not," he said. Father Franco was my Dad's best friend and he knew all too well about my mother's problems. I heard a breath riddled with despair from the other end of the line, then Father said, "OK, Dean. Here's what I want you to do. Call the 109th Precinct. Tell them that your mother is missing. Tell them your mother's mentally ill and explain the situation, you know, the death threats and the fact that she never leaves the apartment. I'll get your Dad. We'll be there in ten minutes."

  "OK, Father. Thanks." I hung up and called the police.

  When the duty sergeant told me they couldn't file a missing person report unless someone had been missing for twenty-four hours, I had a shit-fit. I had explained the whole deal to the cop but, still, he told me, "We can't do the report yet, but I'll tell you what..." The guy seemed OK, for a cop. There was actually a hint of concern in his hardened voice when he went on, " … see if you can find out what she's wearing. Ask your father when he gets there, maybe he knows. If he doesn't, check her closets and dresser drawers. If you can ascertain what she's wearing, I'll put a call out, have the units keep an eye out for her."

  "Alright, thanks a lot. What's your name again?"

  "Sgt. D'Amato. Just ask for me."

  "C'mon, Theresa," I said, hanging the receiver in its cradle, "let's check the bedroom closet." When I said that, I realized exactly what we had to look for.

  Stepping quickly to the bedroom, I told Theresa, "She's got this dress. It's a pale, pale blue. Kinda plain but kinda formal. A silky material." I pulled the string that turned on the bare 40 watt in the closet then I turned to Theresa, my voice breaking when I told her, "It's the dress she kept tellin' us she wanted to be laid out in, you know, like in a casket, when she dies of the cancer she thinks she has or … or … OHHH, Chrrrist … or when she kills herself!"

  Theresa la
id a hand on my chest and said, "Take it easy, Dean. She might be OK." Then she really stretched it. "She's probably fine."

  "Nooo … ," I said jerking my head in quick little half rotations, "she'll never be fine!"

  Abruptly, I began sliding hangers. One after the next, I shoved aside old skirts, dresses, sweaters and blouses, and my father's dress clothes which he only wore to church. Pushing everything to the right, I worked my way left, back to where the closet continued behind the wall for about five feet. It was like a cave back there. You could step inside the door, turn left, and go the five feet behind the thick plastered walls. But rather than step on the dozens of shoes strewn all over the floor, mostly my mother's, all second hand, I reached back in there and searched around.

  "Is this it?" Theresa asked. She'd pulled a powder blue knit dress, one of ma's favorites, from the days when she liked to wear them tight and sexy. Ma had been a real looker before she'd gotten sick and begun her perpetual fasting.