Little Boy (41 page)

On one such murky, hazy late night, as Frank
Sinatra was just beginning to sing at the end of the Yankee game,
Megan called me up and said she had a great idea. “Why don’t we go
to Central Park tomorrow?” Central Park? I thought. I’m there.
Immediately I knew fate wanted me back at the place Maria and I
fell in love. It was my destiny. “Lemme check the schedule,” I
said. The Yankees weren’t playing until seven the next day so I’d
be home in time for the game.

“Don’t say no, A.J.! You’re coming out with
me!”

“Okay, babe. I don’t mind traveling into the
city even though school’s out. It’ll be fun.” I sighed.

I still can’t believe I said yes.

***

…So there we were, Megan and I, amidst the
lush Strawberry Fields of New York’s Central Park. We were
exhausted after having walked all over Manhattan, chatting
incessantly. Don’t ask me why, but despite my previous reticence
I’d decided to talk to Megan a lot, at least at first. I guess what
all of that talking confirmed for me was that Megan was not Maria.
And it’s funny, because I didn’t even contemplate her being The One
until I decided that she wasn’t. Nevertheless, it was a
disappointing discovery.

But by late afternoon, I was so bored. I
really did feel like strangling myself. About to bolt, Megan
broached a topic that I loathed to consider: our plans for the
future.

Megan had recently decided to apply to law
school. She was really excited about it. And she must have thought
that I cared about it, too, because she became enthusiastic about
it and delved into the topic in great depth.

Trying to feign interest, trying not to fall
asleep, I looked up at the trees above. They were beautiful.
“Hello,” I said to the trees, silently. “Remember me? I used to
visit you with another woman, a beautiful woman named Maria.” I
started humming “Maria” from
West Side Story
. The canvas of
leaves and branches did not respond.

Muh-reee-uh!
The canopy was so tight
and motionless that the little light piercing through appeared more
like twinkling stars than sun rays.
Muh-reee-uh!
The dinning
and humming of the traffic and people created a bustling wall of
silence that separated me from Megan and everything beyond the
tress.

Hoods and yuppies and weirdos walked by us,
rushing in one direction or another. They seemed happy, so I peered
at them in disgust. As Megan chatted away, I thought:
None of
them know what I’m feeling
,
and none of them could possibly
understand my condition
. I studied each passer-by intently,
searching for reasons to hate them. I heard the rumble of a
Concorde in the sky above, probably on its way to Paris, glanced at
it in disgust, and returned my gaze to the pathway before me.

That’s when I saw Maria.

She hurried by Megan and me; she made eye
contact with neither of us. I wanted to run up to her and ask what
she was doing there in Central Park that day.
Oh, my dear, sweet
Maria,
did you travel into the city in hopes of finding our
initials in our tree? Did you recognize me on the subway ride that
morning, hoping to confront me one last time, and spit in my
face?—or shoot me?—or hug me? Yes, that’s it! Maybe you saw me on
the R train and wanted to declare that you’d finally read my poem
and desired to be my present love once again?
Sweating, I
contemplated these and other questions for a few moments. I never
unearthed the answers, though, because, upon my second look, Maria
had vanished.

I tensed-up. My flesh turned cold and hard.
My body hair stood on end. The homeless man reappeared, the one
that was singing
A Hard Day’s Night
just a few moments
before. I could have sworn I heard him change his tune, and begin
singing—yelling, actually—the words to
The Long and Winding
Road
.

How does he know?
I wondered.
How
does he know?

Did Maria spitefully give him a buck and
request that song after noticing me on the bench with Megan?
I
hated her for doing that. And I felt as if all of Central Park’s
visitors were covering their mouths, smothering their giggles, not
because they were happy, but because they were laughing at me. As I
sat on that goddamn bench, with a goddamn girl I didn’t want to be
with. The sounds of the park became a drum playing a slow roll,
taunting me, mocking me.

Most distinctive in my left ear was that bum
singing that goddamn song; most distinctive in my right was the
little, stupid conclusion to what was until that moment Megan’s
soliloquy.

“So, that’s it,” she said, “I really want to
be a corporate attorney. My dad’s not just a Deacon. He’s an
attorney, too, but he works mostly on cases involving very poor
people. It’s not like we’re rich or anything. He said I should
shoot for something better, for a job where I can not only have my
own office and make good money, but also defend high class people.
The money’s not that important to me, though. I won’t owe much
after college, because I’m in the Air Force ROTC program at Hunter,
and it pays most of my tuition.”

My ears perked. I felt as if I’d been given a
steroid injection.

“I never mentioned that I was in the ROTC,
did I? I guess that sometimes I’m sort of embarrassed about it, you
know, because I couldn’t afford to go to school without it. And I
never had much of an interest in the Air Force. To be honest, I
really just do it for the financial aid. It’s not bad, though; I
get to fly planes at Camden Air Force Base in Jersey. It’s pretty
cool. And when I graduate from college in a few years, I have to
serve in the Air Force for a while. But that’s okay. I heard that
it’s good to take a few years off after college before you go to
graduate or law school. It should be a good experience. Hey, didn’t
you mention once that you were really into planes and stuff? A.J.?
A.J.—are you all right?”

She’s in the ROTC? Megan’s a fucking
pilot?
The blaring drum roll engulfed my trembling body. It was
anticipating something or another, though I didn’t know just
what.

Megan sounded so—what’s the word I’m looking
for?—
sure
. Sure about herself and about her plans for a
bright future. She was confident, but not cocky; happy, but not
idealistic. There was nothing about her that I could have possibly
hated that moment, and that’s precisely why I loathed her so.
That’s why I didn’t respond for a few moments, hoping she’d think
that I wasn’t listening, that I didn’t give a shit about her
goddamn plans.
She’s a tease
, I thought. But what she was
teasing with exactly, I had no idea.

She was as confident and hopeful as my old
friends from high school seemed to be. And it killed me. I thought
of all of them at that moment. Kyle and Paul and Rick and
Mike—they’re all doing well. Kyle, currently the youngest DJ in the
history of Long Island’s WNHR, is destined to be a famous comedian,
I’m sure. He always managed to be crass and make people laugh
without offending and harming people, and now on his morning show
he’s being paid to do just that. Paul’s doing an internship with
Chase Manhattan Bank this summer. I guess those extra math classes
finally paid off. Mike’s the editor of New York University’s daily
newspaper—a first for a freshman—and he reviews two movies per
week. His dream is to review movies for the
Daily News
, and
I have no doubt he’ll realize it soon. Rick’s at the New York
Restaurant School, majoring in restaurant management. He co-manages
a bar in Greenwich Village part-time between classes.

And Maria? Well, I ran into Lynn last month
on the R-train and she updated me on Maria’s life.

“So, A.J.,” she said, “where are you going on
the R-train at 8 a.m.? To morning work out at the Air Force
Academy?” She chortled, vindictively, like the Wicked Witch of the
West as she set upon Dorothy’s ruby slippers. But I had no
lightening to zap her away.

“No, I go to Hunter College now. I decided to
take a year off before the Academy.”

“I see,” she said.

“What are you doing on the subway so early?
Gonna catch a train in Grand Central and head up to Saratoga to
race?”

Unfazed by my sarcasm, she responded: “No,
actually, I’m on my way to a bridal shop on Central Park South. I’m
going to be a bride’s maid in a beautiful June wedding. June
21
^st
, to be exact—the first day of spring. Isn’t that
romantic?” She spoke as if there was a viper up her sleeve.

“Not really,” I said. “I think marriage is a
waste of time, no matter what month it’s in.”

“But don’t you want to know who the bride
is?” she asked.

“Sure.”

She smiled. “
Maria
.”

My heart fell to the subway’s filthy floor. I
stared at the ground and searched but it had already degenerated.
The train screeched to a halt at the Fifth Avenue and
59
^th
Street stop.
Ding-dong
went the bell,
signaling everyone to board or get off. “Toodle-oo,” I heard her
say. I looked up and she was gone.

To this day I have no clue if Lynn was
telling the truth or not. Hell, what are the odds that Maria got
engaged and was about to get married all in a little over a year?
Regardless, it stung. Regardless, it made me realize how much of a
shmuck I really was, how pathetic I was.

I used to think I was so cool. But the more I
reflect on my mistakes, the more obvious it becomes that I was a
putz. I think a lot about Maria getting married, wearing that
beautiful white dress, and how she told her new husband what an
asshole her ex-boyfriend was. I think a lot about the time that
Mike and Rick dumped water on my head, how Kyle reacted so coolly
as I screamed in anger. Only now do I realize that they weren’t
laughing at us. They were laughing at
me
. All of these
realizations and thoughts struck me like lightning bolts at that
moment in Strawberry Fields.

Megan remained silent, wondering what the
hell had just shaken me. I ignored her as every second of the plan
Maria and I never shared together exploded before my eyes—every
detail that I’ve just described, every memory that should have
been. It’s been a long time since Maria and I met at that dance,
well over a year since we laughed and played and talked near the
pond in Central Park. One year condensed right before my eyes, like
a movie on a giant screen, with Dolby surround sound. I was all
alone watching that movie, as sure as I was alone in the blackness
of my room each night watching the baseball game.

I longed to show Megan the movie, to grab her
back of her head, and force her eyes toward the colorful screen
before me, like when they force Alex’s eyes open in
A Clockwork
Orange
and make him watch those movies. Only then would she
understand. Only then would she shut the hell up and hold my hand
not as a stupid friend, but as dear a confidant as Maria might have
been.

But I knew that that was too much to ask for.
She refused to watch the pictures flying toward my eyes in vivid
color and fascinating sound. Her smile, she felt, was an honest
defense of her ignorance and innocence.
She’s a phony
, I
thought,
like everyone else, pretending to be blissfully
uninformed as sure as Maria was conveniently unaware of my presence
when she scurried past the bench just a few feet away
.

Any parent knows that the worst thing a child
can do is lie to them straight in the face. “I didn’t spill the
milk.” It sounds so innocent; however, it’s deadly poison when you
know it’s a flat-out lie. And I was being choked with such poison
by Megan’s calm and friendly composure. Every muscle in my body
screamed for a solution to my plight.

It was time to issue Megan her Last Rites. It
was time to punctuate this relationship with an exclamation point,
so I’d never have to think about it again.

Megan turned toward me and asked, “Is
anything wrong?” But all I heard was: “I didn’t spill the
milk.”

I rose, cocked my fist, and smashed my
knuckles into her face.

For a moment, she didn’t scream. In that
moment, I admired her beauty. The warm, red blood flowing from her
nose and the acrid tears streaming from her eyes seemed to blend
nicely with her strawberry-red hair. Right then and there in
Central Park, Megan was transformed into the only genuine confidant
I’ve ever had in my life. She was not only watching the movie; she
was viewing it in 3-D.

As she whimpered, her face was frozen in a
look of surprise even though she was frowning. “Why?” she asked,
over and over again. “Why?” She looked confused. As Megan tried to
wipe away the blood, she wailed like a freshly-shot elephant and
the bellowed like a beached whale inhaling its last breath. Both
clichés, I know, but true just the same. Trust me, I was there.

Had someone done that to me, I would’ve
punched back. Or, at the very least, run away. But Megan didn’t
attempt to retaliate or flee. She knew as well as I that she needed
that punch to learn the secrets she never even knew had existed
before. Megan had no right to plan her future in a neat little
package, not until she knew I was out there. Not until she saw what
I had been through. Not until she became aware that life was not
the perfect bundle of joy she thought it was.