What did he mean? Was he going to give her a kiss? Right in front of her parents? There was a street-sharp danger that accompanied him and you never knew quite what he would do.
Johnny was more nervous than she was but his demeanor was deliberately cool. Inside, he swelled with the love he felt for her and the awe he had for her family. A real American family, he thought, his orphaned heart pounding. Just like on television, with no one on drugs or drunk and all of them casually sitting down to home-cooked meals together as if it were the most normal thing in the world. Hell wasn’t being one of twelve kids in a tenement flat the way they showed you on “Eyewitness News.” Hell was being out on your own every last morning in a different burger joint, greasy spoon, whatever. They were all the same. He’d heard a poem once, in passing, on some jerkie’s radio. He didn’t remember the whole thing, but part of it had hit him like a hammer: “Nobody playing piano … in somebody else’s apartment.” That was him. That was his life. These people here, they didn’t know what they had. He stood up, knocking over the heavy oak chair, then picked it up as though it were some featherweight. Mary didn’t even glance at her linoleum. Claire clasped the robe to her chest in a panicky gesture but he turned and went out the door. Then back he came with a shopping bag from Lipschutz Quality Camera Store. He laid the whole thing down on her empty plate, obliterating her from view. “What’s this?” she said.
Her family, eyes bit as buttons, nodded her on.
“Go ahead,” he urged her. “Open ’em up.”
Uncertainly, she tugged at a ribbon.
“Not like that,” Zinnie yelled at her. “Rip the mother open!”
“Here’s a knife,” Mary sang.
Stan, a veteran of too many birthday parties throughout the years, went back with one eye to Jimmy Breslin’s column. He hated Breslin. Or so he said. The columnist’s heated opinions held his devoted daily fury, though. Some hates were indeed akin to love.
“Here,” said Johnny. “Open this one first. This one’s the main one. Maybe you’re gonna like it. Maybe not.” He said this as though it didn’t matter to him one way or the other. Claire peeked into the box. It was an Olympus. A good old Olympus, just like the first thirty-five she’d ever shot with. She hadn’t had one in her hand for years. Professionals all used Nikons nowadays and she had followed suit, but many a time she’d had a yearning for the downright lightness and practicality of her old manual Olympus. She broke into a smile, such a smile that he knew he’d done the right thing. Whatever he’d done wrong with her so far was wiped out good by this. He knew he shouldn’t have jumped on her like that last night and he was sorry. But not too sorry.
“Such an expensive camera,” Mary touched it tentatively.
“I had a little luck at the track,” he offered humbly.
Claire opened the next package. It was a seventy-five-to-one-fifty zoom. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe you knew just what to get.”
Johnny shrugged. “I saw you up in the woods with that kind of lens. At least I hoped it was that kind. I mean if you don’t like it or it’s wrong you can take it back.”
“The lens is wonderful,” Claire said.
This news was met by the rest of them with satisfaction. They knew how picky Claire could be. Next she opened the flash. She shook her head with wonder. Johnny sat back down for the rest of his waffles.
For some reason Claire was overcome by a sickening sense of suspicion. Her mother dalloped the last of the sour cream onto Johnny’s plate and she watched their eyes meet conspiratorially. It hit her as the signing of the deal. She had no idea why she felt that way, but there it was, strong and real in her, the witness to the signing away of the proverbial truant daughter. She burned with shame. And Johnny. He looked so damn smug. Suddenly she couldn’t stand the sight of him.
“I can’t accept this,” she told him in her gravely voice.
They all stopped talking and looked at her.
“It’s much too kind of you. I … thank you … but I’m sorry. I can’t accept it.”
“Can’t accept what? What are you talkin’ about?”
“I can’t. It’s just too much when I hardly know you. I’m expecting some money shortly … a great deal of money … and I’ll be able to replace my cameras myself, you see.”