City of Margins

by William Boyle

  It was disconcerting, ultimately, but Nick doesn’t want to pass up the chance to meet Phil, who’s been gone from his parents’ house for twenty-plus years and doesn’t come back all that often. Nick’s got clay, he knows that much, and maybe Phil can help him shape it into something good.

  The next call Nick makes, with his last quarter, is to Alice, who should be getting home from summer school soon.

  It rings and rings. Nothing. He gets his quarter back. He’ll try again in a bit. Give her time to get through the door.

  His mind goes back to what Donnie said. Nick highly doubts that this goon was going down on his mother. That’s just Donnie fucking with him, trying to get in his head.

  But now Nick’s got a picture in his mind that he can’t shake, his mother on her four-poster bed with her legs spread, Donnie lurching on his knees in front of her, his head buried in her crotch. Nick doesn’t want to think about it, but he finds that he can’t stop. He keeps seeing Ava’s face, her neck, her hands, her clothes bunched on the floor the way clothes only get bunched when they’re taken off in a fever. He thinks of Ava’s thighs, her butt against the bed. He knows the way Alice looks when he’s down there, the way she bites her lip and grips the sheets, the way she sometimes palms her breasts, the way her eyes seem closed and open at the same time. He imagines those things to be true of Ava now. He never thought of his mother biting her lip or gripping her sheets. He’s thought of her breasts but only in the way that a man thinks of his mother’s breasts—they might as well be wooden spoons in the kitchen—but they never jumped into his mind at a time when they shouldn’t have.

  Donnie saying pussy like that. Nick had never even thought of that word in relation to his own mother. Not really. He’d thought of it in relation to the mothers of other boys, sure. He had started out dreaming of them, after all. Mrs. Torregrossa and Mrs. Loverde and Mrs. Telesco. Even Mrs. Angilletta with that fierce armpit stink of hers. He’d dream of what was between their legs and what wasn’t even before he knew anything with any sort of certainty. Tits you knew right out the gate. They were like the sun and the moon. Institutions. A boy couldn’t help but dream of them, to wonder about them. But down below was a mystery. A lot of early schoolyard talks, between arm wrestling bouts, revolved around speculating on women’s private parts. Could it be that there was something with teeth or claws? Some boys, guided by older brothers, whispered of bushes. This was, he’s thinking, third grade. Other boys had sisters, so they had general information, but general information in those days transformed into wild gossipy news from the edge of hysteria. One kid, Edmund, concluded that women had starfish stuck there and that only husbands could peel away those starfish. Another kid, Lucas, who later became a rabid panty-sniffer, told tales of needing to chip away ice with a hammer to get to a pool of maple syrup deep inside.

  But there was that one time with Ava. He was in fifth grade by then. He came in from playing basketball with his friends. He was sweaty. He wanted a peanut butter and banana sandwich. He opened the back door, ball under his arm, and heard moans. He stopped himself from going in. He took a step back and kept the door open a couple of inches. His father was off from work that day or home early. Either way, he was locked in an embrace with Ava at the kitchen sink. Ava was slouched over his shoulder. His hand was wedged down her pants, and he was pumping it up and down. They hadn’t noticed the door, hadn’t heard him turning the handle or his footfall on the threshold. Now, he was watching them in this strange ritual. “You’re so wet,” his father said. Ava laughed and moaned and said, “You make me wet.” Nick remembers puzzling over why she might be wet. This was the ’70s, and he was still a kid. He didn’t have porn the way kids have porn now, where you can just walk into a video store and look through the big boxes behind the saloon doors in that little private room and bring them up to the counter like a loaf of bread. He didn’t even remember seeing any dirty magazines at newsstands in the neighborhood. His friend Cal had passed along a sleazy novel called Topless Waitress with a great cover. Nick had leafed through but never read it, then he hid it at the bottom of his closet, the cover seeming like the only good part, the words too small and crammed on the crumbling pages. And now his father was saying how wet his mother was and his mother was saying he made her that way between moans and Nick can think back to how strange that sounded then. He remembers thinking they must be talking about the sink or the shower or something to do with washing up. Finally, Nick’s old man stopped for a second, Ava’s pants not allowing enough movement, and he pulled them down around her thighs. Her underwear, too. He licked his hand and put it back between her legs. She was almost sitting up on the counter. Nick remembers catching just a glimpse of Ava’s privates and then letting the door whisper shut and retreating back out into the yard, throwing his ball down, almost hyperventilating.

  His learning picked up after that. More books were passed to him. Eventually magazines. He actually read instead of just looking at covers and pictures. He and his buddies went to Times Square to see movies when they could. They’d all jerk off during the movies, not saying anything about it to one another afterward. Nick’s first sex had been with a hooker in a sad hotel over a liquor store near the Port Authority. Her name was Provenance, no shit.

  He has a story. Everyone has a story. Ava must have one too, a long one that—like so many others—begins with a mix of curiosity and shame, wonder and fear. Her first under-blanket explorations. Rubbing against something. Long showers. Priests and nuns and mothers unveiling their don’ts and won’ts. Was there a boy before his father? Were there back seats? Had there been men since his father died? Desperate sessions in closets at Sea Crest? Now there was Donnie and, whether or not it was real, Nick was seeing it as real.

  Nick is surprised that he’s never given more thought to Ava’s desires. He’s seen her as a mother, as a widow, as someone who works herself to the bone. But beyond cigarettes, he’s never given a thought to what pleasure is for her or what it might be. If Donnie wasn’t Donnie, maybe he could find it in his heart to be happy for her. He feels guilt about going over to Donnie’s, encouraging him in the name of getting close for the script. Maybe Ava does need a boyfriend. But not this guy.

  He goes back to the bar and orders another can of Schaefer. He looks at the pinball machine and half-expects to see Antonina slumped there. She’s not, of course, but he feels like he sees some sort of heat outline of her.

  He heads to the payphone and dials Alice again. This time she picks up, breathy. “Nick?” she says. “Where on earth are you?”

  “Can you come get me at Spanky’s Lounge?” he says.

  “I just talked to Ava.”

  “You did? Is she okay?”

  “Yeah, why? What the hell are you doing at that dive?”

  “It’s a long story. I’m thinking. I don’t feel like walking all the way home.”

  “Sechiano wasn’t happy.”

  “I don’t care about Sechiano. Things have changed.”

  “What do you mean, ‘things have changed’?”

  “I’ll tell you all about it. Just come get me.”

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Please. Just grab your keys, go get the car, and come get me. You remember Spanky’s, right?”

  “Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “Ava, please. Just come get me.” He catches himself. “I mean Alice. Sorry. My head’s a million places. I’ll explain everything, I promise.”

  A dramatic pause. She seems to be holding the phone away from her ear, thinking it through. “Fine,” she says, her voice brimming with derision. She was worried, but now she’s upset. Number one: He’s putting her out. She doesn’t like to get in her car. She doesn’t even really like to drive. He pictures her in that spot on the Belt where Verrazano Bridge traffic empties down from a ramp, and when she’s in the middle lane, as she always seems to be, she has a panic attack about whether she should yield or keep plunging on. Number two: He’s made that slip before, c
alling her Ava instead of Alice, and it freaks her out. Once, after dinner at her place, they were cleaning up and he came up behind her, his hands soapy with dishwater, and he hugged her to him and said, “That was delicious, Ava.” She turned around and looked at him like a cockroach had just crawled out of his mouth. It was an honest mistake, he’d said, their names both starting with A. The next time it happened, they were at a hotel in Atlantic City for a weekend of gambling and to see a show. They were showering together. She was giving him head under the heavy thrust of water. He wasn’t thinking about Ava at all. He wasn’t worried about her for any reason or anything. Relaxed as hell, he’d said, “Oh, Ava.” It’d just wandered from his mouth, and he gasped, shocked beyond words.

  It was, obviously, a far worse offense, and Alice ceased what she was doing and stormed out of the shower. “Do you want to fuck your mother, weirdo?” she’d said. “No, of course not,” he’d said. He begged and pleaded and said it was just his brain messing with him, wanting to wreck the moment. He remembered how upset it had made her last time, and it must’ve been his subconscious doing the very thing he knew not to do in that moment. In psychological terms, it was self-sabotage. He was prone to it. She seemed to buy this and things settled down, and he never did it again until now.

  Funny, he was just thinking how sexless Ava has always been to him, and now he’s remembering these times, making the mistake again.

  “I’m sorry, Al,” Nick says over the phone to a hanging silence.

  She lets out a desperate breath. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” she says, and hangs up.

  He brings his beer over to the same table he’d sat at with Antonina and drinks it down fast and then orders another one and gets a buck changed to quarters for the pinball machine. He tries his luck, beer up on the glass, lights flashing. He’s nowhere near as good as Antonina.

  AVA BIFULCO

  When Ava convinces Don to take a walk, that some fresh air will be good for him, she doesn’t tell him she’s got a destination in mind. She changes into a pair of jeans and her own T-shirt, one she bought at a ninety-nine-cent store on Eighty-Sixth Street a few summers before, right when the Gulf War started. The shirt’s got a drawing of Saddam Hussein on it with a green missile going through his ears like a knife-through-the-head prop, and it says THIS SCUD’S FOR YOU in big, blocky green letters. Don compliments her on it. Nick always makes fun of her when she wears it.

  Tired of her work shoes, she puts on sneakers. She takes Don’s arm as they head out of the house. She can tell he’s getting shaky for a drink.

  They walk up West Seventh and make a left at Bay Parkway. They pass the Marboro Theatre, continuing on Bay Parkway and circling through Seth Low Playground like high schoolers playing coy. That’s the way she sees it, anyway. She’s not sure what Don sees. She knows he’s got deep, deep darkness inside. She let herself get carried away with him. She tells herself it’s understandable. She’s sympathetic to her own sudden desperate desires. God will forgive her for acting irrationally. She’s been a decent person her whole life. A little indecency isn’t going to sink her.

  Ava looks around the park. Old-timers playing chess. Kids on the jungle gym and playing basketball and being pushed on swings. A woman in a big pink hat is sitting on a bench under a tree with pink flowers, feeding pigeons stale bread. Ava thinks back to taking Nick here when he was little. She’d sit on a bench, smoking, and watch him play. He’d get picked on. She’d try not to intervene. Maybe she should’ve intervened.

  “We could go to a bar,” Don says. “Good one I know right on Kings Highway. Not a bad hike from here.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ava says.

  “What then? Just take in the sights?”

  “Sure, what’s wrong with that? All the sweets I ate. I need to walk it off.”

  “Nothing’s wrong with it, I guess.”

  They leave the park and take Stillwell Avenue. Ava’s idea is to make a right on Twenty-Third Avenue and bring them past St. Mary’s school, where they both went, years apart, to reminisce about that a bit more, and then to turn onto Eighty-Fifth Street and stand in front of the church. She’s there every Saturday night and on every holy day. It’s been like that her whole life. The original church burned down when she was in her twenties. For a couple of years, while they rebuilt, Mass was held in the auditorium. Anthony always went to church with her. He had his own rosary beads. He was an usher for about a decade. She knows Don doesn’t go to church anymore. She just wants him to see the place. Someone who’s been away from it for so long just gets close, things tend to come back. That’s the way she feels, anyway. You see the stained-glass windows, you smell the smells, you see the cross, how can something not get stirred up? She won’t pressure Don into talking to Father Borzumato about his son. Maybe she’ll just try to talk him into going inside and lighting a candle or kneeling quietly and saying a little prayer. Now she’s got that song in her head. I say a little prayer for you.

  “Can I ask you something?” Don says.

  “Oh boy, what is it?” Ava says. “I’m nervous. Go ahead.”

  “You said yesterday you’ve never been out of the city except for Jersey.”

  “Right.”

  “Would you want to go out of the city with me?”

  “Go where?”

  “On a trip. I just came into some dough. I don’t know. Maybe Italy. You were saying you wanted to go back to the old country.”

  Ava stops walking and looks at him. “Italy?”

  “Right.”

  “You serious? We barely know each other.”

  “I like you. I mean, obviously. You get older, a day’s like a year. You know how it is. I don’t need more information. I like you. I want to get out of here. I want you to come.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She pauses, looks up at the telephone wires, a pigeon perched on a streetlamp. “Can I ask you something? You said you have an off-again on-again girlfriend, didn’t you? Who is she?” Ava’s surprised at herself for not thinking of the woman Don mentioned yesterday before now. She doesn’t think he said her name.

  “She’s nothing. Forget her.”

  “You said you were off-again?”

  “Way off. Never to return. She’s nothing. She was always nothing.”

  They make the right onto Twenty-Third Avenue. She’s steering him without him being aware of it. She’s thinking he must really like her to invite her to Italy. And buy her a car. She’s struck by the insanity of it all. Things like this must happen to people, opportunities for adventure must arise, but it’s never been there for her. The neighborhood has been it. She’s thinking people must cross paths for a reason. She’s thinking it was maybe destiny her car broke down and Don picked her up on the Belt. She believes that could be true. God’s got a plan. Don needs her, and she needs him. Don and Ava. Got a ring to it. She sees them sitting at a table in a fancy restaurant, a white tablecloth between them, Don cleaned up, Ava dressed to the nines. They could be good together. They could have adventures. She could get his head straight. She loses her train of thought and can only think how he could do what he did to her back there in the kitchen every day, make her feel good. Nick’s a grown-up. Let him fend for himself for a while. Let him propose to Alice. With her and Don together, maybe he’ll let go of this stupid script idea. She’s got some vacation time saved up at work. A couple of weeks in Italy would be a dream come true.

  “You’re not messing with me, are you?” Ava says. “Please don’t mess with me.”

  “I’m serious,” Don says.

  She’s trying not to think too much about what Anthony would have to say about Don. Oh, he’d hate him. Such bravado. Anthony wasn’t a big talker and he definitely wasn’t a big bullshitter. No one was more straightforward than him. She could imagine him calling Don a chooch. She wonders if they ever crossed paths. Walking under the El. Getting pizza. She’s sure she herself must’ve crossed paths with Don before, even if only in passing at one of the markets on
Eighty-Sixth Street or maybe both of them on line at Meats Supreme or buying scratch-offs at Augie’s.

  “Where we are right now,” Don says. “You remember what happened here?”

  They’re on Twenty-Third Avenue between Eighty-Second and Eighty-Third Street, standing in front of a chain link fence plastered with Beware of Dog signs.

  “What?” she says.

  “Big mob hit. The Brancaccios whacked Vin Volpe. This was ’83.”

  “Sure, I remember that. He was sitting in his car, right?”

  “Waiting on his goomar. She lived in Apartment 2C. Right there.” Don points at a red door on the ground floor of a three-family house. “Stacey Lombardozzi. She was eighteen. Her claim to fame was she fucked Travolta. Supposedly.” He pauses. “Banged. I’m sorry. Excuse my language.”

  Ava swats at his arm. “You think you’re funny. I remember the Daily News the day after that. That picture of him in his car. I was working. Otherwise, I probably would’ve walked over and been part of the crowd that gathered.”

  “I saved that paper for a while. ‘A Bloody End for Vin Volpe.’”

  “Were you on duty?”

  “I didn’t work in the neighborhood. My precinct was in East New York. Fucking war zone over there.”

  “Right. I knew that.”

  As they pass in front of St. Mary’s school now—it runs from corner to corner between Eighty-Fourth Street and Eighty-Fifth Street—Ava stops and looks up at the red brick, the high, dark, stained-glass windows of the convent. Not that high, in reality. As a kid, she thought the school was the tallest building in the world. It was, after all, at three floors, one of the tallest in the twenty blocks or so she lived within. And she thought the sisters lived so high up and watched over everything. She remembers waiting out here, on these weathered gray steps, in her plaid checkered jumper and cross tie and kneesocks, for the doors to be thrown open by Sister Maura. Her world was so small. Her world is still so small.