Boys of Life (32 page)

I remembered Carlos's apartment, that tent bedroom we had there—how with just a mattress and some good fucking we managed to till the place up with ourselves, and that was enough. Sometimes I'd hear Carlos saying one single word to me: baggage. And I knew what he meant.

I said something like that to Monica once—not about Carlos, because she never heard that name pass my lips, but about the furniture. "1 sort ot liked it better empty," I think is what I said. We'd spent two hours lugging this ugly green second-hand sofa up two flights of stairs.

ica looked at me and said, "Sometimes you're just weird, Tony. Do you know that.'" It was her theory that New York was what had made me weird, but now that we were back home, as she called it, things were going to get better.

The one thin^ I was excited to get was a big color TV. I think I told you how, the whole time 1 was growing up, we didn't have a TV. And Carlos never did either, tor different reasons. So when we got a TV I thought, This is it. I've arrived. I'd spent my whole lite thinking about how ordinary people came home trom work at night and watched TV, about all the great shows they could watch, all the channels there were to choose from.

It was the way everybody else could live except me. up till the day

I bought rh.it Zenith.

I have to say this—TV's the most disappointing thing that ever happened to me. Mas be when I was yOUTtgeT if would've been perfect, but by the time I was twenty-three and got my tirst TV I was I

tor it anymore. The waiting tor it had worn it out.

I L;uess it I'd never met Carlos, I'd prohablv've been duped like • .body else. Monica could sit tor hours and u rhin^—ir

one things that made me realise she'd never be able to under*

D PAULRUSSELL

stand anything about me, really, if she was somebody who could sit and watch TV like that. It was her upbringing, I guess. Her parents liked nothing more than for the two of us to come over for an evening of TV watching—Thursday night was the best night for that, they claimed. All the good shows were on then. I'd take one look at what was on, and go in some other room like it was something I was allergic to. I'd work on fixing the leaky faucets around the house, or wiring a new telephone jack—any kind of tinkering to keep my hands busy and mv brain out of the reach of the TV set. One look and I could tell the big secret: TV was just another kind of drinking, and there're lots worse kinds oi drinking than booze.

During a commercial one Saturday night, Monica turned to me and said, "I think you and me should take the old plunger." I've told you how Monica had her own words for things.

"What's the old plunger?" I asked her. I thought maybe the WM referring to some clogged drain I hadn't gotten around to yet.

She looked at me with this sort of smirk. "Get married, stupid." She was sipping beer through a straw—which always drove me cra:v to see, but she liked to do that sometimes.

I was a little surprised. "Oh," I said. "Says who.'"

She shrugged like it'd been my idea Instead ot hers. "We're not

gettii linger," she said. She was three soars older than me.

"What's thai gOl to do with It?" I asked.

"Well, it's true. It's a tact oi life."

Are you trying to drive me • flicked her strati ai me. "What's wrong with us getting mar ried? It wouldn't change anything."

"It it's [KM broke, don't fix it," I said.

" I hat's as dumb as me saying 'We're not getting in) youn

ut. Which was true. I liked li when she wouldn't let me get iwa) with things.

"It wouldn't li.o he said ild think

"1 ike h«>w long .« while?" We'd been living in Memphis al

■

■ while," tun 1 1.. i to

hes like von .1 lot, tin

• honeymoon I hint about

•; ul

B O Y S O F L I F E □

"I don't want to go to Mexico," I told her. "What's in Mo

I-r a bunch of desert?' 1

"We can go anywhere," she said. "It doesn't have to be Mexi Plus," she added, Like it was some afterthought, "they'll give us some

money to buy a house."

"They really said that?" I couldn't believe they'd do something like that.

She only nodded. She was playing with that straw in her beer bottle.

"You mean, a house to own. 7 " I could still hear Carlos's voice saying, "baggage." At the same time, it was like some door opening up, a door I'd always thought would be shut. I'd never in my life lived in a regular house, except that thing that leaked before we got the hoi^e trailer in Owen. The idea of a house—lots of rooms, a yard to mow, maybe space in a garage where I could build things in my spare time. Some wood> in hack where I could go be alone and think.

"No kids," I told her. I'd seen too much happen to want kids.

"That's not something we have to talk about right now," she said. 1 remember she put her hand on my knee. "So what do you say?"

I still wonder whether she knew that a house was the one button she could punch with me. Probably she did—Monica's always been smart that way.

I remember I was a little pissed she'd been talking to her parents about it, and they had everything planned out, but the idea of a house totally did me in.

I took a deep breath. "Okay," I said. "We'll do it."

"So do you love me?" she asked. In general, she wasn't too pushy on things like that. What she didn't know, I think she always figured, wouldn't hurt her.

I took the straw out o\ her beer bottle and flicked it at her. She jumped when the little drop of beer spattered on her face.

I knew even when I said it that I didn't really mean it. It I'd thought I did, that would be one thing. But I didn't think it tor insrant, even at the rime. "I love you," I said.

I'd never said anything like that to Carlos. I never said it to anybody in my life, and I'm sorry I said it to Monica. Monica, I'm sorry. There're things I'm sornj about, but I'm sorriest about that,

Monica. You won't believe me when I s (1 y rh.it -and I wouldn't either it I was you—but I really am sorry. It's the m able thin^ I ever

did.

D PAULRUSSELL

Looking back on everything, I'm a little surprised her parents were so set on her marrying me—they must've seen what a scruffy, sullen sort of guy I was. But then who knows what they were thinking? Monica always told me her mother thought I was charming— which is a hoot if there ever was one. At least I managed to get through the wedding without upsetting anybody too much, except myself. All I kept thinking was—the last time I was in a church, it was in the South Bronx, and it wasn't exactly a wedding. I kept thinking about the cool damp smell in that church, and the pools of rainwater where the floor had sunk and the pigeons flapping in the rafters.

At the little reception at the Nolans' house, I didn't even get drunk. In fact, I didn't have a single drink. They were serving champagne, and I guess it was some kind of luck that the only time 1 evei drank champagne before, I got the worst hangover oi mv lite, so this time I wasn't even tempted. Plus I must've known if I had anything to drink, I'd probably have kept on drinking till who knows what 1 might've done?

I smiled and shook a lot of hands ot Monica's relatives. You could divide them into the ones with high cheekbones like Monica and her mother, and the round-faced ones like Hon. Everybody in America does this, I told myself. At some tune in their lite, everybody has to A^ this.

The only time I nearly lost it was driving away from the reception Lid the airport: our honeymoon turned out to be a week .it IVnev

rid, which was okay with me definitely better than Mexico. Along

both sides ( .t the highway, Don's company \\aA put up thes C - huge bill

looking at those s^ns, thinking how ugly the\ were but .ilso how it was the moncv from them that was paying fol m\ new

house and everything when the next one 1 sa* said, In big script

letters, his i WISHES TO MOM I the l\k kgTOUnd then- \s.is

this pastel picture <>t wedding bells and ■» church steeple. 1 nearlj had

lc At the same time Monica was saying, "Dad's totally

1 le's p • 'be sweetest thing?" And

I gut In m\ lite, SO

I'll i < md those things.

mention it t" bun when we get bat I is telling

....

I n lh, he'll I

iii. ilc ii,

B O Y S O F L I F E D

All I cm sa) i- I was wrong. We flew back from Disne) World a

week hirer and that stupid sign was Still up, and it staved up tor the

next six months. I'd see it whenever 1 drove by there to deliver sturl

down to Smith Memphis tor the lumhervard. Hon was always trying to

figure out ways to tell Monica he loved her—which 1 guess is .ill anybody can ever di\ even it it's billboards.

B O Y S O F L I F E D

wouldn't c\cr have bought flowers just tor herself, but it made hei so

happy rh.it there was somebody our there to huv them tor her. Plus 1

always thought flowers made the house look nice. I'd go In a florist's

and wish I could huv B pickup truck load ol flowers to put everywhere

through the house so you wouldn't even be able to tell it was a house anymore—you'd think it was the outdoors, only It'd >ri 11 he indoors.

Which is something Verbena might've done tor a movie set. I have to admit that every once in a while I'd think hack to those movies we made. And I'd just have to shake my head. 1 wondered what had ever happened to them—if Verbena was still designing ^ets, and Seth still poking around with his movie camera, and if Carlos was our there somewhere making ir all up for them as he went along.

Whenever I'd get to thinking about that kind of stuff, I'd go out to my workshop in hack. Working at Mad Joe's, I could pick up tools for a discounr, so I had a bunch. Plus scrap-ends o( lumber thar other-wise were just going to get tossed out. Only trouble was, I never knew what ro build. I'd start things—a coffee table, a cabinet tor the kitchen, even a canoe—but then I'd lose interest. Most nights I'd find myself sitting out there with my pocketknife and some stick of wood, whittling away at it, not sure what it was I was making. Sometimes what I ended up with looked like a little stick figure of a person, or a face, hut most rimes it was just curves and corners and things that'd keep changing their shape the more I'd whittle them down. Because I never knew where to stop. I'd just keep seeing how the wood kept changing under my knife blade, and before I knew ir, I'd whirtle the stick down to nothing.

I think I mentioned that 1 used to jerk off our there a lor, to

Monica would joke with Lisa about how I spent all my time in rhar workshop bur I never seemed to get anything done.

"I'm a slow worker." I told her. But I think she somehow must've understood something, because even though she wanted that coffee table and rhar kitchen cabinet, she never got on my case about them, and, for the record, I give her credit tor rhar. 1 wasn'r the easiesr person ro live wirh. I never hit ir off with her parents, <>r her Friends like I and 1 never had any friends of my own. I wasn't there tor her the way a regular husband is supposed to be. You could say I didn't Ugh

about our marriage, bur thar's nor true. Monica saved me from >ome-thiny, or at least she almost did, and I never stopped hen .1 ro

her. We never talked about rhinos like rhar. Ir wasn't the way we were with each other, not even in the beginning, and the longer rime p,\-

□ PAUL RUSSELL

the los> uc were like that. Bur I think she guessed more than she ever said, and so we didn't need ro ralk.

Since I've been at the Eddy, I've gotten one letter from her— which, to tell the truth, is more than I expected and more than I deserve. I sort of wish I still had that letter, hut I don't. When 1 got it, I let it lie around about a week at least before I finally worked myself up to open it. And then I read it really quickly, just skimming down the pages, afraid to look at it too carefully. It made me think about when I was little and the tew times 1 ever went to see a movie: it it was a horror flick, in the scary parts I'd sort of squint mv eves so I could just barely see what was going on, And it something happened that 1 didn't want to see—like somebody Opening a closet door and there was the zombie—I could shut my eves in no time. That's the way it was with Monica's letter. I read it in kind of a squint, BO 1 could hurry and pass over the parts I didn't want to see.

I have to say she let me off easy. She told me she supported me

totally, and 1 had all her prayers. She told me she thought she knew

me, but HOW she knew she never did, and th.it hurt her a lot, but she

»ed I had my reasons and finally they probably hurt me more than

they hurt her. She said she thought I'd understand it she told me she

had to pick up the pieces and get on with her Lire, The counselor she'd

been going tO had given her this book about the seven Stages oi grief, and it was doing her good tO read it.

I understood .ill that. 1 remember I tore the letter up into these

httle squ.ires not emotional or anything, |ust feeling like u was what 1 had to do. rhen 1 flushed k down the toilet

Actually, I think 1 was afraid it 1 left that letter lying around I'd

Wake up in the middle oi the [light tO tind it glowing with SOmC blue

light, «»r the pages rustling around the room like ■> whirlwind had taken then ■ know the kind oi dre.uns | have 1 wasn't about to I

fh.it letter in there with mr |v li I'd Squinted, I kneu

ud 1 didn't have to evet read that letfl iin

hut tint's .,n in the future. During the thru mat

rdinar) kind <-t life She'd taken to v ailing me I iirud i .IK when I'd Kcsu

ha talk! rone this and rone tint But what could I

nd it

a I h.id • I piii h ii