Carl surprised me by coming home from work early. About seven-thirty. I'd been home from Stella's for a couple of hours. But it really hit me hard.
First of all, any surprise from Carl is hard. The more things go just according to plan in this house, the better. Second of all, he had this big smile on his face. Like this was some big happy surprise. But I couldn't help wondering if this was his way of reminding me that he could show up anywhere, anytime. Carl has this way of delivering a couple of different messages—or more—all at one time.
“What are you doing home?” I asked. Trying to sound like it was a good thing.
“It's a surprise. I got a half day off work. Just for you. I'm taking you out on a date. Just like the old days. Like we used to do back before the kids. Just the two of us. It'll be very romantic. I thought we'd go to that steak house we went to on our anniversary.”
“Just the two of us?”
“Yup. Just the two of us.”
“We can't just leave the kids alone.”
“And that's another surprise. I got us a babysitter.”
This was one of those moments when my stomach starts doing acrobatics. Somersaults and loop-the-loops and some kind of aerial spins but I have to try to hide it. When Carl says he has a happy surprise, you do not want to rain on that parade. Things can take a bad turn real fast. But Natalie and a babysitter was just not going to work out.
“What babysitter?”
“The girl the McCrimmons use.”
The McCrimmons were our neighbors two doors down the hall.
“But we don't even know her.”
“But they know her. They've been using her for years.”
“But Natalie doesn't know her.”
“Natalie will be fine.”
But it was clear by the way he said it that he knew perfectly well she wouldn't be.
He knew it just as well as I did. But he had made up his mind that she should be fine. So he was going to twist the world around to be what he wanted. He was going to insist that she be exactly what he thought she ought to be.
“I've never left her.” She needs me.
“My point exactly. It's time.”
So, it was time. If Carl said it was time, it was time. But, oh my God. This was going to be bad. This was going to be fifteen different kinds of bad. Maybe more.
CARL ORDERED US a bottle of wine.
I was trying not to fidget.
I said, “First a cab, now a bottle of wine. What'd you do, rob a bank or something?”
It made me kind of sick to see so much money fly away. In a couple of weeks I'd have to break it to Carl that C.J. was outgrowing his shoes. And Carl would say he'd have to wear them a little longer, because he isn't made of money. It made me sick to see all this money go for something I didn't even want.
“Just relax and enjoy it,” he said.
But I wasn't relaxed. I wasn't enjoying it. And he knew that. And it was starting to tick him off. I was supposed to be having a good time. So I tried to pretend like I was. But I was just about to jump out of my skin, thinking of poor Natalie at home, wailing. She'd wailed and hung on to my leg until I was all the way out the door. Carl had to peel her off me. The girl he got to babysit wasn't strong enough. Or brave enough. I could hear her all the way down the hall. Until we were in the elevator and starting to go down. Carl kept looking at my face, like a reminder that I wasn't allowed to feel what I was feeling.
In fact, he was still doing that as we drank our wine.
If I knew Natalie like I figured I did, she would be losing her voice right about now, or at least very soon.
It was all I could do to just hold still. I have never had a harder time staying in a place, in a moment, in as long as I can remember. I think even life with my father was better than this.
Natalie should have had more practice before I left her alone.
Meanwhile Carl took my hand and was looking into my eyes. Or trying, anyway. I wanted to take my hand back. I felt like it was on a hot stove. I let him keep it, but it was torture. I was trying not to think about the subway guy. So of course, whatever you try not to think about, that's all you can think about. Everything else disappears, except for that one thing you don't want.
“Look,” Carl said, “I'm not spending all this money so you can sit there and be a million miles away. That's not why we're doing this.”
“Why are we doing this?” That was a brave question. So I followed up real quick by saying, “Not that it's not nice. It's really nice. I just wondered.”
He still had my hand. It still took every ounce of everything I had to not fidget. I tried not to think about Sebastian. I tried not to think about Natalie wailing. I wondered if Sebastian was the kind of guy who would go get takeout as a surprise. Because he would know it would be too hard on me—and on her—to leave her alone.
Ho. There's a stupid thought. If he even knew there was such a thing as Natalie he would run like the wind. What an imagination I have.
Carl said, “Lately I feel like we're not close. Not like we used to be.”
“We're close,” I said. Trying to hold still. Trying not to take my hand back.
“Not like we used to be.”
“We're fine,” I said.
“Look,” he said, “I know it's hard for you. Don't think I don't know that. Working a job and then taking care of two little kids while you're off. It's a lot of work. I know that. That's why I wanted to give you this little vacation.”
“Thank you,” I said. Gearing up to lie big. “It's very nice.”
A long silence, during which I mostly willed him to let go of my hand. He didn't.
Then he said, “I'd be nothing without you. I couldn't live without you. I need you. You know that, right?”
I didn't answer. I didn't know how to answer a thing like that. What do you say to a thing like that? I didn't know.
“Well? Do you know that or don't you?”
I was looking down at the table. Not into his face. Which I know is wrong. Bad. But looking up would not have been a good plan either. “I know I'm important to you,” I said.
“I don't want to have to be afraid of losing you,” he said. “It has to be like it was before.”
“It is. It is like it was before.”
“Okay. Okay, good.”
He let go of my hand, thank God.
We said very little else for the rest of the meal. Every now and then, I looked up at him and smiled a little. That seemed to be enough for him. I guess because he really wanted it to be.
He insisted on having dessert, which nearly killed me.
? ? ?
WE ENDED UP WALKING the twelve blocks home. After getting a look at the check, Carl decided that the weather was nice and we needed more exercise anyway.
He was also finding more and more reasons to slow us down. The more he could see how bad I wanted to get home to Natalie, the more he came up with new ideas.
“The market is only two blocks out of our way,” he said. “Want to stop in and say hi to the gang?”
Now, that is a very many-layered question.
By the market, he meant my work. The market where I used to work. And where he thought I still did. But he didn't like the people I used to work with, and he never, ever called them “the gang.” There was just no real reason for him to make a suggestion like that one. Except for the hidden ones.
First off, he was challenging me not to rush home to Natalie. That's just an obvious one off the top.
Secondly, he might have had some kind of suspicion regarding something around my work. I don't think he'd guessed that I got fired. If he had even suspected I was having experiences on the subway at night instead of going to the market, believe me, I'd know it. That would hit the fan very big. But I do think he might have thought I was having something going on at work, like a customer or some new employee I was getting overly close with. He was reading me to some degree.
All this happened in my head very fast, just in a split second before I said, “No! God, no!”
“Why not?”
“Because it's my night off. Why would I want to go to work on my night off? Would you want to go to work on your night off?”
“I guess not,” he said. And I started breathing again. Then he said, “What's with your paycheck?”
I knew this was my moment. Either tell him now or go into bald-faced-lie mode. So far I hadn't exactly lied to him. I'm pretty sure. I just hadn't volunteered the truth. Beyond this moment I'd be lying to his face.
I opened my mouth to speak and thought about Sebastian. Pictured him. What he looked like and how he felt. Not how he felt physically, but more like how I knew he was. Like the kind of guy who would go out and get takeout for a surprise.
“It's just delayed.”
“They're always good about paying you on time.”
“That's why I thought I should be patient this one time.”
“What's the delay?”
“I forget. Danny explained it but I forgot just what he said.”
“A few more days and I'm going to call them. Get the story.”
“No. Please don't do that.”
“Why not?”
“It's embarrassing. You should let me take care of it myself.”
“But you don't. I know you. You don't take care of things. You're always afraid to speak up.”
“I will if I need to.”
“A couple of days and it will be time.”
“Okay. Okay, already. Let's just walk home.”
“SEE?” CARL SAID as we stood outside our door. “She stopped fussing.”
Fussing was a bit of an understatement to describe what she'd been doing.
“I guess,” I said.
When we opened the door, the babysitter was already halfway there, rushing to greet us. She looked like she'd been though a couple of car accidents and maybe a small war. And as soon as the door was open, I could hear Natalie. She was still wailing, but now it was just coming out as a hoarse little croak. She had wailed herself into full-on laryngitis. She had not been about to stop until I came home. If I had stayed away two hours longer, she would have wailed her near-silent wail for another two hours, easy.
I went in to her and held her and lay on her little youth bed with her, where I don't really fit. And told her I was sorry. Very quietly. So that Carl, who was out paying the poor frazzled babysitter, couldn't possibly hear.
She went silent, her thumb in her mouth and her other tiny hand holding a piece of my shirt sleeve with surprising strength. I listened to the wet sounds of her thumb-sucking, and to the easy breathing of C.J., asleep in his bed on the other side of the room.
A few minutes later, Carl stuck his head in the door.
“You spoil her too much,” he said.
I said nothing.
“We're going to stop spoiling her so much,” he said.
“Look, I'm trying to get her down, okay?”
He stepped out, closing the door behind him. I breathed deeply, knowing our date night was finally over.
Natalie fell asleep in a matter of a couple of minutes. But I stayed with her, on that tiny uncomfortable bed, until I was sure Carl must be asleep.
For some reason I got it into my head that we'd fly into each other's arms. You know, see each other across a crowded platform and run in seeming slow motion. I guess I'd been watching too many old movies. Well, one. But my father would've called that one too many, I guess.
The real scene was a little less dramatic. I was sitting on a bench, my back snug up against the slats. Just for a minute I'd looked away from the direction of the stairs. Then I looked up, and she was standing over me. Smiling, but shyly.
She said, “Hi, Tony.”
My heart just fell. I thought, She doesn't even remember my name. Here I've been thinking I actually meant something to her, and she doesn't even know my name.
I think she saw my face fall. I thought I saw my own disappointment reflected back to me in the mirror of her face.
“It's Sebastian,” I said.
She just kept smiling. “No, silly. I said I'd give you a nickname. Remember?” She sat down next to me, purposely bumping her shoulder against mine. “I know it's not exactly short for Sebastian. Then again, what is? But it's still the right one for you. And I'll tell you why. Because of that movie, West Side Story. My mother named me Maria because of the Natalie Wood character in that movie. And Tony was the name of the boy. So, that's us. Tony and Maria.”
I just sat there, looking at her eyes. They were so dark I was wondering if they were actually black. Or just really dark brown. And underneath that I was thinking how handicapped I was, not knowing about all these movies that everyone else seemed to know. So I just nodded, like it was all very fascinating. Which it was. While another part of me was wondering how old she was, and if she thought I was older than I actually was. Because I'm tall. And whether she would lose interest altogether if I told her the truth.
“So, is that okay?” she asked.
“What?”
“If I call you Tony?”
“Oh. Yeah. That's great.” It sounded like a compliment. I couldn't wait to find out.
Then she said, “Walk with me, okay?”
She got up and held out her hand and I took it. I could feel a jolt of current run up my arm, like she was plugged into a high-voltage wall socket. I wondered if she felt the same thing the same way. I got up, and we walked up the exit stairs and out into the cool Manhattan night. Holding hands.
The city at night is actually more comforting than the subway at night. It's anything but deserted. At least, in that neighborhood. There are so many people out on the street, it's almost like broad daylight. Just darker. Everything is open. Everything functions pretty much the same.
I watched people walk by us. Pass us going the other way, or overtake us and pass in the same direction. We weren't walking very fast. They looked at us the way people look at each other on the street: not for long. Just looked, then looked away. It struck me that they accepted what they saw. They looked at Sebastian and Maria—Tony and Maria, I mean—and saw us as a couple, walking down the street holding hands.
I noticed that she glanced a lot at the ground in front of her, and stepped carefully, like she was worried about tripping over something. But I didn't ask and I couldn't find it in myself to care.
I got this feeling in my chest like my heart was getting bigger and bigger, until it almost hurt. I kept thinking in a minute it wasn't going to fit. That my chest would rupture or explode.
I looked up at the sky, and it was clouded over. It had been cloudy all day. All of a sudden I wished it would rain. All of a sudden I felt like Gene Kelly. I wanted to get soaked in the pouring rain like an idiot, and break into a song and dance instead of running for cover. I actually wanted to dance in the rain. I felt that good. And I don't even dance.
“I'm hungry,” she said. “The vendors are still out. Not sure why, but I thought maybe we could get a hot dog.”
She indicated the hot dog vendor on the next corner with a flip of her chin.
My stomach turned to ice.
I had never, not once, not in my entire life, eaten food sold on the street. My father had convinced me that you would pretty much clutch your stomach and die on the spot. To him it was about the equivalent of jumping in front of the cross-town bus. Somewhere in my head I knew people must eat hot dogs and survive. Then again, I figured they were sick for days with food poisoning, off in a place where I couldn't see them.
I said, “Have you eaten hot dogs from a vendor before?” Trying not to sound too unsure.
“Yeah, lots of times. Why?”
“No reason.”
If Maria wanted a hot dog, Tony was going to get her one.
We walked right up to that cart like we owned the world. On the outside. On the inside, I hated to even have to tell a stranger what I wanted. And I sure didn't want to die young.
Maria said, “Two with everything.”
I paid for two. Praying that meant she was hungry enough to eat two. The guy spoke very little English, but he seemed to understand “Two with everything.” I guess you'd have to, in his business. He heaped two hot dogs with mustard and ketchup and relish and onions, and handed one to each of us.
We started walking again, but of course we needed both hands to hold the hot dogs, which seemed like losing ground. And she was looking over at me, waiting for me to take a bite. So I took a deep breath, and I did. It was good! It was really, really good. Not like the soups and stews my father made, night after night. Organic vegetables and free-range chicken. You are what you eat. He actually says that. Often.
I thought, Okay. So I'm a New York all-beef frank with everything. Named Tony. And I have no regrets. Because it's so entirely better than what I was before.
I ate the whole thing in about six bites. I didn't feel sick. I felt wonderful.
And even though in my head I knew it takes a while for food poisoning to strike, I somehow instinctively knew it wouldn't. Once again, my father was just wrong.
I vowed to try even more forbidden experiences.
She finished her hot dog a little slower than I did. We threw the papers and the napkins into a trash can as we walked by. Then we walked on and I felt her hand slip back into mine.
I felt another electric shock, but this time it was different. Deeper and mellower. Not something that would make you jump. More just something you'd feel and then smile.
“I know I don't really know you,” she said. “But I feel like I can trust you.”
“You can.”
“I should have answered your question. I know you asked out of caring. I should've answered. I'm sorry. I was afraid if I told you, you'd never want to see me again. I still am. Afraid. That you'll never want to see me again.”
I could feel the shift in the energy of the conversation. I searched my brain trying to remember what question I had asked her that she hadn't answered. I could feel her looking over at the side of my face, so I looked back. She still had a little line of scab on her lower lip.
Oh. Right. That question.
“There's nothing you could tell me that would make me not want to see you again.”
“Nothing? Promise?”
“Well, unless you savagely murder people for fun or something.”
“No. I never killed anybody.”
“Then whatever it is, I'd still want to see you.”
“Promise?”
That actually caught in my stomach for a split second. Because it could be anything. It could be something awful. But of course I said, “Promise.”
“Okay. But remember, you promised. The reason I had some bruises on my face … and that I wear long sleeves … and that I ride up and down the Lexington line at night …”
There was a long pause. I was thinking, Long sleeves? It was a disjointed thought, I guess. But I'd never dreamed that the long sleeves were part of the picture. I waited in agony for her to go on. I felt like there was an anvil teetering over my head. Just in the process of being dropped out a window.
“… is because of Carl.”
Bang. The anvil landed. On me. Direct, painful hit. Good shot.
“Carl?”
“Yeah. The guy that I … you know …” I didn't want to know. I wanted to beg her not to tell me, but it was too late. “… live with.”
I stopped walking. She stopped walking. I looked at her face but she wouldn't look at me. She was looking down at the sidewalk. I was vaguely aware of people spilling around the obstacle of us. But only vaguely.
I can't tell you what I was thinking here. Nothing, I guess. The anvil had knocked out every thought on its way through. Now it was lodged firmly in my stomach. Where I figured it would sit for the rest of my life.
“He kind of loses his temper. But it's partly my fault. You know, if I could just stay out of his way. If I wouldn't always say the wrong thing at the wrong time. He comes home from work at eleven. And he hates his job. So until he settles down … you know … unwinds … that's a good time to be somewhere else. So usually I'm on the subway. And then things are okay. Pretty much. Usually. Pretty much okay.”
I looked at her face again. She still wouldn't look at me. But I saw a last little trace of the bruise on her cheek, and the line of scab on her lip. And then for the first time I noticed a couple of old scars. One near her eyebrow and one on her chin.
It seemed like a weird definition of pretty much okay. But I didn't say so. I didn't say anything. I'm not sure I could have. Even if I'd tried.
She looked up at me suddenly, and it surprised me. “So what about you?”
“What about me?”
“Why do you ride the Lexington line at night? Who are you running away from?”
I had trouble getting my head to take the sudden turn. The news that she lived with some guy named Carl was like an eclipse of the brain, blocking out everything else. When I finally hauled my mind around to her question, I realized I didn't want her to know the answer. I was afraid to tell her my secret, too. That I was under the thumb of my father because I was only seventeen. Just a minor, a kid. Not even in control of my own life. It seemed almost as horrible as her secret. I thought, If I tell her, she'll never want anything to do with me ever again.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “After what I told you, how bad could it be?”
“Why don't you leave him?” I asked. The words came out too strong. Too angry. I wanted to grab them back again. Pull them back in and erase that history.
“And go where? And do what? I've been with him since I was fifteen. I don't know where else I would go.”
I wanted to have an answer for that. Wanted it badly. And I wanted to be part of the answer. But nothing came. I couldn't exactly sneak her into my room and hope my father wouldn't notice. And I didn't know anyplace else I could go, either.
She said, “You didn't answer my question. Who are you trying to stay away from?”
“My father.”
“Oh. Couldn't you move out?”
“Well. Yeah. I guess.” But the truth had to come out. Sooner or later. She'd told me her truth. Because she trusted me. And now I had to trust her in return. “When I'm eighteen.”
If she was shocked, she didn't let on. “How long will that be?”
“Almost four months.”
“Well, that's not so bad. You can sit on the Lexington line for four months, I guess.”
Then we started back up walking, and she took my hand again. I thought I saw her glance over, to see what my face was doing. But I'm not positive. I didn't look back.
Out of all the dark clouds in the sky, I felt like the darkest one was sitting about six inches over my head. My own personal disaster, raining on me everywhere I went.
We walked for a long time like that, in silence. I didn't know what she was thinking and I didn't ask. I don't even know what I was thinking. But my earlier thought about the anvil in my stomach was correct. It wasn't going away. Maybe not ever. And it wasn't the hot dog, either. It was definitely not the hot dog. It was definitely Carl.
After a while I saw the subway sign, and the stairs, and I realized she had walked me back so I could catch the train home.
I said, “You've been with this guy for seven years …”
“Almost eight.”
“How come you never got married? If you've been together so long, why did you not get married?” I was hoping, I guess, that there might somehow be good news hidden in the answer.
“Carl thinks marriage is a crock.”