Little Boy (34 page)

“Damn it, Maria. Do you think he’s cute or
not?” Rather than answer, she watched me intently as an expression
of self-doubt came over my face.

I turned my head to either side, first the
right, then the left, still clasping her hand with my glove. I
heard our voices echo down the serene, snow-covered street as a
yodel does off a cliff side. The only thing moving was the frozen
air roaring in and out of our noses and mouths. We were both
shaking; whether it was the product of nerves or fright or frigid
air, I don’t know. The air was like a wall between us. Silence
shouted between our bodies.

It was at that moment that I felt lower than
I had in months. It was the first time in a while that I’d actually
voiced my innermost worries. Until that instant, I’d tried like
hell to hold them all in. Until that moment I’d
wondered
many things, but seldom wondered them out loud. But my cover was
blown. The jig was up. My most intimate and frightening jealousies
had been revealed; I no longer could control my thoughts or my
words. I was enslaved by my fears. I was a fool, a wimp, a pussy. I
was a charlatan mind-reader who, when his E. S. P. was proven a
sham, tried to coerce the desired answer from his client. I was a
little boy fleeing from his own shadow, only to discover it behind
him once again each time he glanced back—because you can’t get rid
of your shadow.

But, the thing is, if Maria had waited just a
minute longer to answer that question—if I’d had the time to
thoroughly taste the bile of shame swelling within my gut—I still
would’ve said what I wound up saying anyway. I couldn’t help
it.

“Please just tell me if you think he’s
cute.”

“No,” she answered, lifelessly.

***

January is the worst of all the months of the
year. Not only does it begin after a week-long Christmas vacation
which makes school all the more difficult to get used to, but it’s
also fucking freezing. The January of my senior year was especially
bad because of all the goddamn snow we got in New York. A few
inches would’ve been acceptable, we got twenty inches in January
alone. It was so bad that for a three-day stretch end of the month,
all the schools in the city had off.

Everyone in my family was home those days.
The snow began on a Tuesday evening. Spending the next five days in
a cozy-warm house watching rented movies and TV provided a welcome
relief to frigid air outside.

I’d always liked blizzards. Not being in
them, but watching them. Slowly, but deliberately, each square inch
of terrain gets covered with these mysterious white particles
called snowflakes. Watching those snowflakes fall, I thought of
good old Mr. Dick. Attempting to jolt some interest into his
ordinarily mundane class, Mr. Dick used to wave his arms and say
that we were pummeled daily with “billions and billions” of
different wavelengths of all sorts, from ultraviolet to cosmic
waves. He squealed it, in a high-pitched voice. Mike and I used to
laugh about it during class. As I walked home from the grocery
store, I kept thinking about the
billions and billions
of
snowflakes that fell to earth and covered up everything that was
familiar to me. All of the dirt and shit on the streets was gone.
Old and new cars, Cadillacs and Fords, were identical beneath
sheets of snowdrift. Children on my block burrowed through snow
dunes and raced down their front lawns in garbage can covers.

A part of me hated those kids for upsetting
the equality and peacefulness that immediately followed the
blizzard. When my father asked me to clear the driveway and
sidewalk, I balked at first not because I hated shoveling, but
because, somehow, the snow looked like it belonged there, at least
for a while. It concealed the city’s stains, and I liked that.
Removing it was like waking a little baby when he’s asleep.

After a snowstorm, the sun is always so
bright white and the sky so azure. I guess I just felt that the
snow should naturally melt away as the sun glistened through the
great blue sky and melted it, snowflake by snowflake. And then,
within a few weeks, barring further snowfall, the neighborhood
would return to its old self again. You always knew that sooner or
later you’d see again what you’d seen before.

I thought of all this as I shoveled the
sidewalk and steps in front of my house. As I did that, the mailman
trudged up the street toward my stoop with a fistful of envelopes.
I wondered why he was forced to go to work on a day when everyone
else off. And I sort of felt bad for the guy.

***

To every guy in Queens, and all across
America, February 14, 1993 was Friday. For women, however, it was
Valentine’s Day, the most meaningful day of the year.

In light of this, I was determined to give
Maria my best and most unexpected present yet. I would cook her
dinner that night, that much was sure. But I had to do more than
that.

I sat at my bedroom desk a few days before
Valentine’s Day with one thought in mind:
I won’t leave this
back-breaking chair until I have written a poem about Maria.
Three hours and a hand cramp later, I’d churned out the most
truthful, accurate poem of my life:

Once upon a time, a time more dark than
now

You were a little girl, but more than you
know how
.

You had your energy, and those same brown
eyes

Your voice sounded the same, but your head
told lies.

You didn’t lie to friends, or people that
you knew

Your lie was even worse. You told a lie to
you.

Cloaked by a trick mask, where you did not
belong

You knew it felt so wrong, but you went
right along.

In this land of tears, from which you could
not part

You had but one bright light, and it was
your heart.

For in your heart you knew of your deadly
sin

And one more day of lies was sure to do you
in.

So all that you did, after all that
while

Was listen to your heart, and give yourself
a smile.

It looked the same to them, your audience of
friends

But it was not an act. You’re part came to
an end.

Your past can’t be destroyed—Be that as it
may

A lesson still remains to this very day.

Don’t compromise your smile to please
someone else

For it is tough enough just to be
yourself.

I didn’t read this poem to Maria. I didn’t
give it to her in a typical off-white envelope. Instead, I had it
published in
New York Newsday
. Each February
14
^th
,
Newsday
published a special classified
section devoted not to used cars and help wanted ads, but to
romantic blurbs sent in by readers, one buck per line.

So, after cooking Maria breaded veal cutlets,
curry rice, and fresh cauliflower, I gazed across the twin candles
on the table and into her fiery eyes.

“I have another present for you,” I said,
smiling.

“A.J., you don’t have to give me anything.
What you’ve done for me tonight is more than I expected. In fact,
it’s wonderful.” She walked over to my chair, grabbed my hand, and
led me downstairs to her bedroom.

Standing beside her bed, she spoke softly, as
if she had just made an important but pleasant position. “I want to
thank you for your gift, and show you how much I love you.” She
unbuttoned her blouse, exposing a transparent, lacy pink bra. She
began to unzip her jeans when I stopped her.

I was horny as hell. But I had to stick to
the plan. “Wait a second. I have another present for you.”

“You’re amazing, A.J. You really are.
Whatever it is, I don’t deserve it.” She was half-naked and looked
so goddamn hot.

“Yes you do.” My voice trembled with nerves
and hormones. But before we do anything physical, I want you to
open my last gift.” With that, I handed her a copy of the morning
edition of
Newsday
.

Confused, she smiled, politely. “Is there an
editorial in here that you want me to read?”

“Actually, yes there is. It’s on page C-23,
in the upper left hand corner.”

She opened the paper up to C-23 and began to
read the poem. She mouthed each word as if she was in church
reciting prayer. Then she placed the paper on her bed and jumped
into my arms, legs and all.

“Oh, A.J.!” she exclaimed. “How did you know
all of this, how did you know?” She was thrilled beyond my wildest
expectations, wrought with rapture and nostalgic reflection.

“So, I guess what I wrote is true?”

She started to cry. “Absolutely. And, without
you, I would’ve never found my real smile, or the real me. Thank
you so much,
hopeful
. I love you so much.”

I heard a door slam upstairs. Her parents had
just returned from an AA meeting.

“Do you mind if I show my parents this poem?”
she asked. “It would help me explain so much to them.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

She galloped up the stairs and I sat,
satisfied with my triumph, anticipating the passionate sex to come.
Not that I’d written the poem to get great sex. I wrote it because
I loved her and believed my words to be authentic. But hell, if hot
sex was a consequence, who was I to complain?

I couldn’t hear their exact words through the
floor, but the happy sounds indicated Maria was making a hubbub of
my poem.

I sat on her bed, silently awaiting the bliss
to come. I was, for that moment, happy. Even doubts about her past
could not penetrate my concentration. Smiling, I looked around her
room. On the wall across from her bed I noticed something I’d never
noticed before: a window frame. It wasn’t a window opened up to the
outside. In fact, Maria’s little basement hideout had no real
windows whatsoever. The window I noticed that night was a simple,
glassless, mahogany frame adorned with a pair of silky yellow
drapes which opened up to the cinder block wall.

Before I had another second to ponder my
discovery, Maria fluttered back down the stairs, poem in hand.

“So, did they like it?” I asked.

Maria beamed. Tears rolled down her eyes as
we embraced.

“Maria, I was just wondering what that was,”
I said, pointing to the non-window.

“Oh, I guess you never noticed that before,
huh? Well, in case you didn’t realize, I don’t have any real
windows down here. Long story short, there’s a second-floor
apartment upstairs above my parents’ place. When I was a little
girl, I used to live there. Back then, I had two real windows in my
room and both allowed the sunlight to stream in all day. But when
my father lost his job and my family was short on money, we had to
rent out that floor. So me and my sister moved down here, to the
basement.”

“Where’s your sister’s room?” I asked.

“It’s back there,” she said, pointing to a
splintery wooden door leading to what I thought was the boiler
room. “But she’s never home. She’s always at her boyfriend’s house
around the corner. She sleeps there all the time. So I have this
little basement all to myself. And we have it to ourselves.”

“But what about the window?” I asked.

“Oh yea, the window. Anyway, when I was about
nine years old, I begged my mother to let me move back upstairs. I
didn’t understand why we had to give up the second floor. I told
her, ‘Mommy, I want to look out my window again.’ Sympathetically,
she said I couldn’t have my old room and old window back, but she’d
give me the next best thing: my very own special window, one that I
could look through and see whatever I wanted, not just Ridgewood.”
She chuckled and then continued. “My mother always promised that
someday I’d have a real window to look through. But it’s been seven
years and, well, you know the rest.”

“Maria, that’s the most touching story I’ve
ever heard. If I could buy you a house with a big bay window I
would. Maybe next Valentine’s Day.” I smiled.

“Don’t worry,” she said, “I don’t need a real
window anymore. Until tonight, I’d never realized just how much you
understood me or my life. Your poem has opened up a window to my
heart tonight. And only you and I have the privilege to gaze
through it, to see what’s inside.

“I love you, A.J.”

“I love you, too, baby.”

***

I should have made every day thereafter like
Valentine’s Day.

Instead, weeks passed, more snowfall came,
and I couldn’t stop worrying.
Don’t you know
, I asked the
snow one day while shoveling,
that Maria is lying to me?
But
the snow didn’t respond. It just melted, slowly, day after day,
ultimately revealing the old neighborhood once again. Shoveling the
snow each week, I thought of a zillion creative ways that Maria
could lie to me. It’s all I could think about.

Images of her laughing and joking with her
old friends and boyfriends struck me like lightening each moment I
was awake. As I lay in bed each night, aching to fall asleep in
peace, elaborate conspiracy theories involving Maria bounced like
racquetballs within my head.