Bereavements (24 page)

And the sixth and final time, irritation sharpening his tone: “Miss Evans;
he
don’t have me worried. He’s fine. It’s
you
, you got me worried, callin’ like this,
y’know?
Am I makin’ myself unnerstood? I don’t want t’have t’drag my ass down to no principal about how things are goin’ between the—uh, faculty and the student body. Maybe you wouldn’t like that, either—eh? Anyways . . . tell y’what. He tol’ me he’s goin’ t’school tomorrow. So you’ll see ’im then, right? And there’ll be no reason f’you to be callin’ here again. Okay?”

And that ended it.

But ending it—putting the receiver back on the hook—Aurelio took time and interest enough to stare curiously at his son, who had listened, with barely no expression except for an occasional rapid blinking, to all that had been said.

“So, your—uh, chocolate-chip cookie-maker seems to be running out’a sugar. Or yeast, maybe—eh? With you home”—a good-natured leer—“she ain’t got no self-raisin’ dough.”

Really such a dumb-ass joke, Angel had to smile, but made no reply. His body felt rested, his heart rhythm steady and remote. No extra, erratic beats because his father had begun teasing him again, the man’s eyes restless. Anxiety takes energy, so does antagonism. Angel had little for either. He was depleted, but not in the sense of emptiness and exhaustion. He had grateful, convalescent eyes, and was, at least for this little while, finding it less painful to be alive.

One good thing—

During all the time he’d been sick and getting well, his father hadn’t touched him . . . except in the gentle careful ways a loving father touches a son who is ill and must be made better.

But viewpoints are different! Angel had his. And “Miss Evans” had been given hers—as frustrating, garbled and occasionally obscene as it was. But what about Aurelio himself? He’d quickly tell you that what had happened was easily this:

The kid had been a real pain in the ass for two days; looking bad, too pale, sunken-eyed, with the clear sweat of a fever on his face. But he wouln’t let you near him to take his temperature; you couldn’t even
talk
to him, you couldn’t.

So Auri clung, silent, to his beer, his TV, and twice in the late evening, went to a bar just to get away and, as usual, returned falling-down drunk.

The third night he got home after work, however, Angel was writhing on the couch, half out of his head, with a fever of 105.

Baffled, panicked, Auri stared at the silver streak on the thermometer, shook it down, tried again, and immediately called for help. Then he did what the doctor told him to do until the man got there: gave Angel an enema, and washed his body down with alcohol, again and again, head to toe, for almost an hour straight. By the time the doctor arrived, the boy’s temperature had dropped more than two degrees.

There was no specific diagnosis: only reference to a respiratory infection of some sort that was “going around.” He got shot with an anti-biotic; then a strong tranquilizer that fixed his mouth in a stupid, happy smile until, minutes, later, his head rolled, and he was sound asleep.

Auri straightened the boy’s legs and arms, tucked the sheet between his armpits, then pinned it at the bottom so it couldn’t be kicked off. Finally, he towel-dried a wild tangle of hair so bedraggled and wet, it looked as if, just now, Angel had walked in from the rain.

This done, the man sighed his profound relief, sank to the floor beside the couch, curled his thick calloused fingers through the boy’s, and in minutes, exhausted, was as unconscious as his son.

During a whole week of nights, Angel’s sweat-soaked t-shirts and shorts were replaced with dry ones; damp pillows and wrinkled sheets were exchanged for fresh ones. He was carried like a baby to the bathroom and back again. Cool folded wet cloths were pressed to his forehead, while countless sips of water and cracked ice, sometimes diluted ginger ale, found a way to his mouth, spilling, deliciously—as he gulped greedily—coldly down his chin.

Bruno called, and although Mrs. Evans—her state agitated— was tempted to see him “to pass the time,” it seemed too shameful a thing to do, so she put him off.

Martin telephoned, too, persistently, and they had several long talks, he so witty and inventive she enjoyed him each time. He and his idle chatter seemed to be the only things sufficiently diverting to take her obsessive mind away from Angel. And Jamie. And the aching preoccupation with what had happened, weeks ago now, in the car.

JdeVR.

Had it been an exchange?—Angel’s ring of crude cut-glass for Jamie’s chiseled gold? Regardless, she could feel it still: the cool thick band that held the raised initials was unmistakable, but also (and she thought of this much later) curiously vulgar—a kind of “evidence” so material it was almost “cheap,” in no way required, indeed puzzlingly offensive . . . until she remembered that Jamie wore the ring on his
left
hand, and
he
was left-
handed.
He had not
intended
the ring as evidence, a “sign”—only the warm loving grasp of his hand—thoughtlessly the left hand, of course! which he naturally favored.

An illusion? All of it? An hallucination? A mistake? The kind that had happened before: the “Jamie” Mrs. Evans had seen and cried out to and so wildly kissed on Christopher Street in Sheridan Square?

If not, then the sick, drugged dream of a madwoman. Better still: an erosion of grief, a slow self-murder of the mind.

Don’t believe it.

It was Jamie. Unsurprisingly. Without wonder. In no way strange to the faithful, the perfectly loving. An event as normal as the sun in the morning, as familiar as the break of the sea on the shore.

She had held Jamie’s hand—as she held it a thousand times before: from infancy through childhood, to the boy he became, to the man he could have become. And the man he might still sometime be.

Jamie.

Unlike Bruno, who had a peculiar urgency, even a desperation in his voice, Martin didn’t press, his tone was lazy and playful, even containing (put-on or real) a nuance of game-playing seduction.

Finally, she gave in and made a date—dinner and the theater, no less: “a wonderful little bistro” he’d discovered; “expensive but superlative”—and then the opening night performance to a play, the tickets for which a producer-friend had supplied. And—”oh, yes!”—she could “dress” if she liked. He would, too. Wouldn’t that be fun?

She spent two hours dressing. Then, when Martin appeared in the immaculate black-and-white of his tux, carrying a small white orchid in a plastic box—something she wouldn’t have worn though the gesture was sweet—she had Rose turn him away at the door.

“I’m sorry. Madam cannot go.” Nothing more.

He stood there stupified, his face first white, then red.

Rose, as mortified and outraged as he to have done what she’d been so curtly and sharply been instructed to do before Mrs. Evans slammed her bedroom door, added, on her own: “She said she’d call you later—to explain.”

He
was
called later . . . though no explanation was adequate, no apology sufficient.

Her sinuses? Her nerves? A spell of vertigo? A touch of ptomaine? She went through the list and decided against all of them, offering nothing beyond, simply “how sorry” she was and that she would “make it up” to him.

Martin liked people in his debt. In Mrs. Evans’ case, he could count it a blessing. So the evening, the flower, the taxi fare, the dry-cleaning bill to freshen his tux—more importantly, his anger, his hurt pride, his humiliation—all this would be paid for, in time.

It hadn’t occurred to Angel (before he’d been taken ill) even to think about it, but both Martin and Bruno kept wondering how many replies Mrs. Evans had received from her ad. They looked through the
Voice’s
“Bulletin Board” every week, as well as its classified-ad Personals to see if the advertisement was repeated. It never was.

Grateful, both of them nonetheless then confined their concern and curiosity to this: how
many
letters had she received from the original insertion? How many did she answer? How many “boys” had she seen and/or was now seeing?

When and if she finally chose one, what would his qualifications be, the few or many qualities that had led her to decide in his favor?

Could the final boy (Bruno wondered) be a dwarf? And the frantic, heart-stopping answer:
no.
He was truly a fool to think it likely at all. Or even possible. And was that the meaning of his growing anxiety? That he had detected, however subtle, in her excessively gay manner, her “
Dear
Bruno’s” and many “see you soon’s” an unmistakable—however kind and gentle—rejection, an easy let down?

Given the choice of a whole and wholesome—surely even beautiful—straight-backed boy (so many could have answered her ad!) why would she choose the deformed creature he was?—a large wobbly head atop a mere fifteen inches of tortured, hump-shouldered spine (a “broken angel” a kind teacher of his once called him). But even if he were in heaven, where angels are alleged to be, surely God, too, tidying up, would have considered him a bit of refuse and swept him from that golden floor.

Refuse . . .

And in His infinite mercy and justice, He didn’t even have the decency, like Chrysler and Ford, to call back defective models—models, that, if driven too far or too fast too soon might prove fatally dangerous, might possibly kill . . .