—I have a taste in my mouth, he said. He walked back to the couch. I noticed what I had already guessed would be true—the watch was gone from his wrist.
—A bad one?
—Like. Copper.
—Decomposition? I asked sweetly.
—I wish I didn’t like cruel women.
—Perhaps you’d like a mint.
—It’s no use. I’m sorry you lost your parents too young.
—Thank you, Lenny.
—I like it better when you call me Leonard. But that’s another sad, old story.
—Lenny, I said, thank you.
13
I DREAMED, THAT NIGHT, OF the Poconos. I didn’t dream; that’s not accurate. I closed my eyes and played the reels that couldn’t exist in daytime.
My parents and I were out to dinner with a couple and their adolescent son, the Ciccones. We dined with this family often when we were in the Poconos—they had a home near ours, larger though tacky, with shiny black furniture and gold accents—but there was one night I remembered in particular.
The boy’s name was Joseph Jr. and he was about my age though there was nothing romantic or even friendly between us. He was the type to sling cats down stairwells. Whenever I’ve wondered what rapists were like as children, I think of Joseph Jr., his black fleck eyes across a table from me.
Joseph’s mother, Evelyn, was plump, with very dark, big hair. Her husband, Joseph Sr., was an oral surgeon. He, too, had inky hair, plus a long, swollen chin and a sexuality that has always stayed with me. We begin to form our opinions of sex very young, and for me, Joseph Sr. maintains a looming post.
I suppose it was on account of my mother, Pia, who had an inner tube of extra skin around her waist from her cesarean section but otherwise dripped with sex. Her breasts, I’ve mentioned before, were audaciously large and white.
We were sitting down at a Shaker-style table between the bar and the fireplace. A broomstick hung from the brick wall beside the fireplace alongside family pictures of the owners. Over the mantel was that reproduction of the bull. It had frightened me until just that summer.
My parents didn’t drink much. My mother generally had a light beer with dinner and my father drank red wine but never more than a glass or two. Sometimes he had a Bloody Mary with a plate of raw clams. Joe and Evelyn, on the other hand, drank vodka cocktails. I remember Evelyn’s big fingers sliding pimiento-stuffed olives off of toothpicks. They both had rumbling laughs. All four adults smoked cigarettes and the men would light the women’s, whichever woman was closest.
This night I was seated next to my mother, and Joseph Sr. was on her other side. My father sat across from me, with Evelyn beside him and Joe Jr. beside her. I was always beside my mother. It was imperative that I could smell her and taste her food at will.
She was wearing a salmon-colored sundress with a belt of tiny tin leaves. A natural brunette, she dyed her hair blond and curled it twice a week so it was golden and spiraled. She wore these huge red-rimmed eyeglasses and a pretty shade of coral lipstick. All of her lipsticks were drugstore brands and all their tips were ground down to flattish mounds. She took out her soft pack of Marlboro Reds, and Joseph Sr. got ready with the lighter.
—Mariapia, he said, to get her attention. This was the name spelled on the gold necklace she wore. She’d been Pia in Italy, but after coming to the States she’d begun to go by Maria. It was easier for Americans to understand. After a while she started missing her real name, but because too many people at that point knew her as Maria, she couldn’t simply and quickly change it back. My father got her a Mariapia necklace to ease the transition. Joseph Sr., who would have met her as Maria, was poking fun, flirtatiously.
My mother laughed. Even her laugh had a heavy accent. She turned away from me and toward Joseph Sr. with the cigarette between her lips. His Zippo had a pinup girl on it. Long brown hair with bangs and a pink bikini. My youth was marked by such images—seeing them on playing cards or drawn crudely on bathroom stalls. It’s possible I was just poised to notice them.
My father was telling the story of a friend of his, an Indian doctor named Madan. His wife, Barbara, who suspected him of having an affair, had placed a tape recorder in his big black Mercedes. My father was speaking in the conspiratorial and hushed tone he used when he was telling a story around me that wasn’t suitable for children.
It still hurts me to even think of my father’s face. He was short and he had a big nose and he was partially balding even then, in his early forties. But he was incredibly magnetic. He was always having a good time, always laughing, but he was also responsible. He could fix anything on a car or in a house. And because he was a doctor, he could save your life. In terms of his being a father, I know I am biased, but I can’t imagine a man loving his daughter more than he loved me. Whenever I walked into the ocean—even just a few feet in—every time I turned around, I could count on him to be propped up on his elbows, watching. He had a smile on his face but really he was just waiting to save me.
—So? said Evelyn. Did she catch him?
My father took a noisy drag of his cigarette. Joe Jr. was singeing pieces of dinner roll over the flame of a votive candle. I saw my mother listening to something Joseph Sr. was whispering. My father saw this, too. But the smile never left his face. I sidled closer to my mother. She’d put on her silky navy blazer with the pussy bow. I loved the feeling of her warm flesh through dainty material. She smelled like smoke and L’air du Temps. I pressed close to her to let her know I was there.
—Oh, she got him, my father said with a crooked smile on his face. She really got him.
For years afterward I would try to make sense of that. How had Madan’s wife gotten him? What did she pick up on the tape recorder? Was it the noises of sex? How did she know the other woman would be in the car with her husband? For a very long time, whenever I saw a Mercedes, I would imagine black panties stuffed into glove compartments and silver tape recorders slipped under passenger seats, their tiny red lights blinking.
The waitress brought a bruschetta appetizer to the table, plus a plate of too-thick mozzarella sticks for Joe Jr. and me. I didn’t like food meant for children. I always wanted to eat whatever my mother was eating; this included kidneys in mustard sauce, which she’d ordered a few times in Little Italy. The kidneys smelled like urine, tangy and old, but there was something about the way my mother held her fork, the way she enjoyed food, not voraciously, like my father, but picky and graceful.
I watched her select a piece of the bruschetta, drizzled with condensed balsamic vinegar. She had very white teeth and opened her mouth wide so as not to disturb her lipstick. I watched Joseph Sr. watch her. There were always at least two cigarettes lit at any moment, even when everybody was eating. It made those dinners last a long time. Unlike me, Joe Jr. ignored the adults and entertained himself. He had a mini pinball game and another little game box wherein the objective was to get miniature marbles into certain holes. He didn’t share any of his toys, but I didn’t care. I had both my parents to look after. That whole year had been tricky; I could tell there was something I didn’t know, and I felt I couldn’t miss a moment of observation.
What followed, I didn’t fully grasp at the time; like most of childhood, some darkness is downloaded, but you can’t decode it until later—after losing your virginity, for example. My father’s beeper went off. He left to call his answering service back. For short, it was service. So that any time I picked up the phone at home and it was for my father, I’d yell, Daddy, service!