The Weight of Zero (26 page)

“Michael say she make chicken and mushrooms,” Nonny continues. “You bring me the recipe, okay, Michael's friend?”

After twenty more minutes of chitchat/interrogation and an appearance by a leashed and muzzled six-pound Mitzi, Nonny finally leaves us alone. I help Michael clear the table, and after we rinse the dishes, he asks in a husky voice, “Ready for your surprise?”

He looks especially cute tonight in a white T-shirt and jeans and thick, gray flannel socks that he uses to slide around on the tiled kitchen floor. I think there's even pomade in his hair, and he's shaved his chin. The skin there is smooth and clean, and I fight the urge to kiss it.

“Sure,” I say, smiling back.

“Let's go in here,” he says, and takes my hand in his warm one. Our fingers are so comfortable together, greeting each other in only the way hands can, I am learning. Saying things that we can't.

Michael leads me to a room right off the kitchen that's dominated by a huge TV and a U-shaped leather sofa. He sits me down in the center of the sofa, and I can't help it—I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him in for a kiss.

It feels great—warm and soft—and I breathe in his delicious shampoo-and-soap boy scent. But he kisses back for only a few seconds before pulling my hands from his hot neck and straightening up.

“Hold on a sec, Cath,” he says, backpedaling out of the room. He returns beaming and holding a small box giftwrapped in dark blue glossy paper and topped with an elaborate white bow.

Shit.
I didn't get him anything. Not even a card. I'm sensing a theme with me.

Memo to self: Withdraw head from asshole. Start thinking of others.

Michael looks proud and excited when he hands me the present, which makes me feel even worse.

“I feel awful for not getting you anything,” I say. “Can't you hold on to it until I can get something for you?”

“Didn't your mother tell you that's not the way gifts work?” He sits down next to me. “Go ahead.” He rests his hand on the small of my back and I can feel its heat through my dress, warming my skin. I hesitate and he says, “Please, Cath. I wanted to get this for you.”

I feel awkward. I've never been good with presents. With Riley, I always worried if my gift choices were Swenson-worthy.

“C'mon, Cath,” he says. “Open it.” He rubs his hand up my back and neck and caresses my earlobe with his thumb.

I raise the little, lightweight package to eye level. The wrapping is perfect. “Did you wrap this yourself?” I ask.

“No way. My mom saw what I had done, ripped off the paper and started from scratch.”

I'm careful not to tear the paper, and once I gently peel off the tape, I smooth out the sheet and fold it like Grandma used to do. The small white box screams jewelry.

Michael sighs impatiently. “Cath, if you don't open it, I'm going to do it for you!”

I lift the lid. Resting on the stiff white cotton square is a pair of small silver snowflake earrings. They're kind of modern with a high shine, and they're beautiful—exactly what I would pick out.

My fingers graze the cool smoothness. “I absolutely love them,” I breathe. “How did you know?”

“Seriously? You really like them?” Michael asks, joy raising his voice a notch or two. “Anthony was with me and said I should've gotten this other pair, with these tiny little fake diamonds. But these seemed more you. More Catherine.”

“You shouldn't have,” I say.

“It's a guy's prerogative if he wants to buy his girlfriend something,” Michael says, reaching for the earrings on their little plastic card. “Put them on.”

He hands me the first earring. I haven't worn earrings in two years and four months, and I'm worried that my holes have closed up, but the post slides right through, pain-free. I click the back in place and then put on the other earring.

Michael whistles. “They're even better on. Go look!” He grabs my hand and we head to the foyer, where a mirror hangs next to the front door. He's right. They are spectacular. Perfect size, maybe two-thirds the size of a dime and just right with my short hair. The shiny silver catches the light.

“Oh my God, I love them. I really do.” I turn around and hug him. “You are the best.”

Michael pulls away to look at me. “You know why I got you snowflakes?”

Uh-oh. I'm sure I'm forgetting something of importance to Michael. Something he confided in an earlier conversation when I would sometimes zone out.

I search and come up blank. I shrug.

“Because it snowed the first time I saw you,” he says. “Remember? The night of the holiday talent show? Everybody was worried it was going to be canceled and there wasn't a snow date because it was too close to midterms and break.”

Of course, I have minimal recollection of that freshman-year event. But the fact that Michael remembers that night because of me—
me
—makes me want to cry a little.

I matter to someone besides my mother.

“Your hair was long then and you had it in a ponytail with a red ribbon, and you were wearing a really short red skirt. You were so beautiful,” Michael continues, his voice almost hushed. “That one girl, Riley, and the other one, I forgot her name, brown hair, they were always moving to the front, but you stayed in the back. Even though you were the best one on the stage.”

I feel my throat tighten. I guess perception is everything. Michael only saw this: a girl with a long chestnut-brown ponytail wrapped with a red ribbon. And he liked her. Liked the way she looked, the way she danced. If only he knew that that girl was zoned out from a desperate prescription roulette to fend off Zero. He never suspected that for that girl, life as she knew it had ended along with her grandmother's.

Yet here I am. Still standing. From somewhere deep inside, I feel the tiniest swell of something like victory.

“Stay here,” I tell Michael, and run into the kitchen for my phone. “I need a good picture of us. For my home screen.” After finally getting a good shot, Michael and I use the same photo on our phones. Now, every time I turn my phone on, our two smiling faces pressed together will be the first thing I see.

We're about to return to the TV room when Michael halts me. “So, Michael's friend,” he says, holding both hands out in front of him, palms facing up and pressed together, cupping them, as if preparing to receive a gift. “I'm ready for my present.” He closes his eyes. “Tell me when I can open my eyes.”

I start laughing. “Oh man, you're great at this guilt thing. Stop! I already feel bad enough.”

He opens his eyes and smiles. “You can do one thing for me. To make up for your appalling lack of manners.”

I smile and walk closer, rising on my toes and tilting my face up to kiss him. But just before our lips meet, he pulls away an inch. “Oh no,” he says. “I want to see those pirouette-y turns. Just one, Cath.”

“Seriously?” I ask.

“Yeah, just one,” he says, making puppy-dog eyes. “They're so cool.”

“I think I can manage that.” The floor in the hall is tile and there's enough room here. My heart picks up its pace. I've actually been practicing a little, ever since that day at the library. Still, I can't believe I'm doing this.

I take a deep breath, center myself, chin up, feet turned out in first position, shoulders back and squared. I bring my right foot up to my left knee, passé position. And then I do seven fouetté turns. Automatically, my body instinctively remembering how. I spin on the tiled foyer of Michael Pitoscia's house during our Saturday-night date, my new earrings catching the light. My boyfriend counts each turn, clapping as I spin.

I could've never predicted that scene in a million years. Later that night, it becomes entry number eight on my list.

“How about a four-way? Me, you guys and this Jane chick?”

Sabita had come over to my desk following the end of history class. To see if her book had helped with my project. “Was there anything on Jane?” she'd asked.

And then Farricelli leaned toward the two of us and launched that line, the latest winner from his sexual harassment tour.

For a microsecond, Sabita and I can only stare at Louis Farricelli, our minds resisting comprehension. Around us, kids file out of the room. Sabita says something first. “You know Jane is the subject of Catherine's project, right? Jane was a soldier in World War Two?” She pauses and lets the unspoken “you fucking idiot” hang in the air.

Louis at least has the decency to flush.

Sabita laughs that patronizing laugh again, but I can't join in. I'm still disgusted by Farricelli's comment. I just stand there, shaking my head. Not Sabita, though. She's laughing harder now, and attracting the attention of the remaining kids. “Oh my God, I didn't think…you could pull it off, Louis. But you did. You outdid yourself today.” She slides into a desk, doubling over. “Just brilliant…really.”

Farricelli, accustomed to the spotlight and admiration, flounders. Gathering his binder and iPad, he has nothing to say, only growing redder and redder by the second.

“What…what I want to know is this.” Sabita wipes under her eyes, glancing at her fingers for smudged mascara. “How did you even get into an AP class?” One of Sabita's friends arrives, a tall senior who also plays football, and I take this as my cue to leave. Sabita is protected by her big friend, but I have no allies inside the room right now. Michael left while I was talking with Sabita.

I catch Sabita's eye. “I'll talk to you later,” I say.

She shakes her head and smiles at me before turning to her friend. “What's the deal, Steven? Do all you football players get free rides in upper-track classes? Make you more appealing to the scholarship committees?”

At the door, I can hear Sabita's clear voice ringing through the classroom. “Listen to what Louis just asked me and Catherine. He wants—”

Damn, that Sabita is fearless. What must it be like to have confidence like that?

In the hallway, I walk into an amicable yet heated debate between Michael and Tyler on how they'd prepare for a zombie apocalypse. They're both pumped about the new zombie blockbuster opening Thanksgiving weekend. The three of us have planned on seeing it together.

“An RV is just flat-out dumb,” Tyler is saying. “Runs on gas. You think there's gonna be working gas stations every two hundred miles?”

“But it's mobile and a lot better than your fortified compound,” Michael busts back. “Like a moat is a good defense?”

“It's one of those flaming moats,” Tyler responds. “Lit with the gas from your RV.”

Just then, Farricelli limps out of the classroom alone, cane in hand and his backpack hanging off one broad shoulder. Mid-laugh, my eyes connect with his and hold, and something dark crosses his face. Maybe he thinks I'm telling Michael and Tyler about his stupid four-way comment and we're laughing at him. Who knows? But he comes right over to us, almost snarling like a feral dog. He stares at me and I swear there's heat coming off him. I'm waiting for a string of curses to rocket my way. Michael takes a step forward and diagonally so he's partly shielding me. “What's your problem, Louis?” he asks.

But Farricelli stays silent.

His beady eyes move quickly over Michael and then lock onto Tyler. With no warning, Farricelli unleashes a barrage of words at Tyler. Words that cut to Tyler's core, the beating heart of his greatest tragedy: his skin. “Dude, do us all a favor,” Farricelli hisses. “Just fucking get homeschooled. Think of it as your community service requirement.” Tyler shrinks into his hoodie as Farricelli's voice rises. “You know why? It's your face, man. It's beyond repulsive. Nobody can look at you while they're eating. I'm ready to puke just standing here.”

It is horrifying, all of it. Farricelli's astonishing malice, the pain in Tyler's eyes, the morbid interest of the crowd that gathers to watch this act of verbal terrorism.

I can't take it. And neither can Michael. Just as I'm screaming, “Shut the fuck up, Louis!” Michael steps forward and takes a swing at Farricelli. But the punch never lands. Farricelli effortlessly blocks it and then lightly pushes Michael backward. And that's when things get really bad. Michael's heel catches on a backpack on the floor and he falls sideways. The open metal door of the bottom half-locker catches Michael's chin as he falls to the floor, slashing it wide open. Immediately, there is a deluge of bright red blood down Michael's gray shirt. His hands cup his chin and look like they've been dunked in a bucket of red paint. He slumps against the lockers, blinking a thousand times a second.

I fall to my knees beside him just as his eyes started to roll backward. I quickly lay him back. Mom always told me to put my head down if I ever felt faint, to get more blood into my head. I talk to Michael the entire time, telling him it's okay, everything is going to be fine. Mr. Oleck appears next to me and waves smelling salts under Michael's nose. Unlikely Good Samaritan Olivia presses a roll of paper towels into my hands and I use it to sop up the blood as we wait for the school nurse to arrive. Given that we don't know if Michael has a concussion, she calls an ambulance. Through it all, Michael's eyes hold mine, only breaking contact when he gags a few times.

I refuse to turn away when he does that. When his body humiliates him in public. I would not do that to him and further compound his loss of dignity. I didn't do it to Grandma and I will not do it to Michael. By not turning away, I hope he knows that it's okay and that I won't be turned off. That I understand the body's rebellion and its social malfunction. Because that acceptance is exactly what I wanted from Olivia and Riley and never got.

This is the third time in less than three years that I'm at the Yale–New Haven Hospital Emergency Room. And I am mentally kicking myself. Because the warning signs were there. I had been feeling the change in the Farricelli atmosphere like a barometer detects the drop in air pressure due to an incoming storm. I should've said something to Michael. Maybe things would've ended up differently if I had. For now, I can only keep squeezing his icy fingers as we wait for the doctor to come.

“You're doing great,” I say to Michael for the fiftieth time. “Really great. The worst part is over.”

He gives a small nod, his face bleached of color and almost blending into the white sheet on the examining table. He's still shaking underneath the blue hospital blanket and blood seeps through the white square of gauze on his chin, saturating it, but I won't tell him that. The minute he crashed to the ground and his chin began gushing, his eyes latched on to mine and clung. He looks at me like he's drowning.

And Catherine Pulaski is his life raft.

A nurse in green scrubs walks in, a stethoscope looped around her neck like a towel. “How you holding up, Michael?” she asks. “Still feeling woozy?”

“Okay,” is all Michael says. I know he's afraid to talk too much and make himself bleed even more.

I squeeze his hand again.

“Just a few more minutes,” the nurse says, collecting new bandages from a cabinet. “Let me freshen this up. Maybe you want to look at your girlfriend or close your eyes.” She knows that Michael loses it at the sight of blood. I told her as soon as we got here.

“I'm really proud of you,” I tell him again. Michael squeezes my fingers harder as the nurse replaces his bandage. He covers his eyes with his free hand. This is pure hell for him.

Michael's phone buzzes in my lap. It's Tyler. I answer. “Hi, Tyler. It's Catherine. We're just waiting for the doctor in the ER.”

“Holy shit!” Tyler shouts, still rabid. “I still can't believe it. Is he going to be okay?”

“Yes. Absolutely,” I say in my best everything-is-fine Mom voice. “He's just got the cut on his chin.” Michael is listening, so I omit the fact that stitches are a certainty. Many of them.

“Are the Pitoscias there yet? Anthony's gonna freaking kill Farricelli. What I did to him today was nothing. Maybe I better tell Anthony myself. He cannot get into any more trouble. His probation office—” Tyler cuts himself off, unclear as to how much I know about Anthony and his DUI arrest.

“That's probably a good idea,” I say, and then quickly fill Michael in.

Michael nods and says in a raspy tone, “Anthony can't do anything. Tell Tyler to tell Anthony I said not to do a fucking thing.”

Lorraine and Tony Pitoscia should be here any minute. In the ambulance, Michael gave me his phone and his new passcode (1011 for our October 11 anniversary) and had me call his mom. Technically, I shouldn't have been allowed to ride with Michael, but one of the EMTs had graduated with Anthony and said it was okay.

Lorraine flies into the room and blanches as she absorbs the scene: her youngest son lying on a gurney and me sitting alongside him, the sleeves and front of my pink sweater stained with the dark maroon of Michael's blood. I recognize the raw fear in her eyes from having seen it so many times in Mom's. But Lorraine doesn't fold. She leans over Michael, her hands smoothing his hair from his face. She croons softly, but there's steel in her voice. “I am going to neuter the son of a bitch who did this to you, okay, baby?”

“Jesus, Ma,” Michael moans. “Relax.”

Lorraine comes around the foot of Michael's bed to me. I stand and she further takes in the mess on my sweater. She gives a little head shake and pulls me in close for a hug. “Thank you, Catherine,” she says, her voice trembling. “Thank you for being here and taking such good care of Michael.” She pulls away, her eyes watery. “Soak that sweater in cold water when you get home. Do you have any of that OxiClean? It works really well on bloodstains. Now tell me what happened. Who did this to my son?”

Michael tries to sit up, but both Lorraine and I gently push him back down. I don't want him blacking out.

“Was it Louis Farricelli?” Lorraine asks like a Mafia don, casual but with deadly intent. “That's all I want to know.”

“I don't want to talk about it,” Michael says.

Lorraine turns to me. “It was Farricelli, wasn't it?”

I don't want to annoy Michael, especially now, but there's no way I can avoid Lorraine's question. “Yes,” I say. “Sorry, Michael. Your mom wants to know.”

“Son of a bitch,” Lorraine breathes, pecking a text on her phone. “I told your father he was too soft on those Farricelli turds.”

I'm totally confused. Why did Tony Pitoscia talk to the Farricelli clan? And when?

Lorraine reads my face. She explains, “That asshole Louis used to bully Michael. All freshman year.” Michael groans with embarrassment. “Michael, hush now. My husband, in his infinite wisdom, wanted Michael to handle it, but that didn't work. Not really. So Tony went to speak to Louis's father.”

“Ma, stop it. You're making me look like a complete loser in front of Catherine,” Michael says angrily.

“It was Anthony who got Louis to back off,” Lorraine continues.

“Can you just fucking shut up already!” Michael's words rip the air, and Lorraine takes a step back, her face awash in hurt.

She doesn't understand yet that Michael has been humiliated again by Farricelli. “I better text my mom,” I say. “Let her know what's happening.” I exit so Michael doesn't have to say in front of me how he got hurt.

Outside of the examination room, I text Mom to let her know I'm not at school. I tell her Michael had an accident and that I'm at the hospital with him. She calls immediately and I give her a quick rundown. She asks two questions—“How is Michael?” and “How are you?”—and that's it.

I tell her I'll text when I'm ready to get picked up, and before we hang up, Mom tells me she's proud of me.