City of Boys (25 page)

I wake when Teddy comes home and I listen to him move through the tiny rooms of our apartment. Finally he goes to bed, but in the dark I can feel him start at each noise; he sits up and stares into the corners of his room, but there is nothing there except the simple empty eyes of animals.

* * *

Teddy has decided to stay at the meat department in the Safeway, despite the raise he’s offered to go to the abattoir. Every night he brings home meat instead of discarded fruits and vegetables; the meat seems to breed roaches, or at least attract them, and because I cannot seem to learn to cook it well, we end up throwing most of it away. It smells like something rotting in the heat, and I would like to take the garbage out after every meal, but Teddy says it would be a waste of plastic bags, so I just add whatever we don’t eat to the garbage, sliding it on top of what we didn’t eat the night before, and the night before that; sometimes I think I see little dark things moving around under all the big chunks of brown and gray, although it could be a trick of the light. Along with the meat, Teddy brings home odd things, like hearts of palm and pomegranates, foods we never eat. I put them in little bowls that sit on the table between us as we chew at our steak.

Tonight, Teddy has brought home a coconut, which he rolls toward me on the table. —You have to poke it in one of these holes before you can crack it, he says. —Those are the eyes. He stares at the television set; the VCR is recording a Yankees game right now; he has missed the first few innings, but, as usual, he wants to see the whole game all at once, so he watches the little red arrows run forward, and wonders when it will be safe to turn on the TV. I put the coconut in the icebox.

—So, I say. —Maybe I can come to see the store tomorrow. He looks up at me. —The store? he says. —No, I don’t think so. He looks back at the television. —I don’t think you’d like it. It’s not very clean.

He rubs at an oily spot on his pants. —It’s really not very clean at all.

* * *

From the outside the store looks clean and pleasant. I go first to the produce section, to see if it has changed in Teddy’s absence. It looks different somehow, although the bananas seem to be where they were before, next to the apples. Donny stands in a corner and watches a woman as she looks quickly around and breaks two bananas off a bunch. Just as he is about to approach her, his yellow eyes fall on me. He smiles a kind of smile and wipes his hands on his apron, but before he reaches me, I turn and walk toward the back of the store.

I stand in the middle of the cookie aisle, where I can watch the meat department. From here the meat case looks clean and orderly: shiny rows of red steak, white pork, yellowish halves of chicken; behind it, through the window, the butcher’s area looks almost surgical, all white walls and polished metal. There are no people back there, no one anywhere, until Teddy comes through the steel doors, carrying several packages of meat. He arranges them all carefully in the meat case, and turns, wiping his hands on his apron, which has become bright pink in front. He looks around, and his eyes meet mine; even at this distance I can see that he has not shaved today. He looks away immediately, and goes back through the steel doors. I turn and there is Donny, watching me with yellow eyes, smiling his yellow smile.

—Yo, a voice calls from the street. —Yo, Ted.

Teddy looks up from his steak and glances at the television.

A game is starting soon, in just a few minutes.

—Don’t let him in, Teddy says. —He’ll talk all the way through the game.

I go to the window and look down onto the sidewalk; Donny smiles up at me.

—Yo, he says. He holds up a six-pack in one hand and in
the other a bunch of flowers. I go to the door to let him in, and Teddy slips his steak into the garbage. By the time Donny reaches the top of the stairs, Teddy is on his knees in front of the television. Donny smiles at me over the flowers, the kind they keep cold in a huge bin of ice at the Safeway. He pushes them at me as he comes in, and I bring them to my face, but they have no smell, only a kind of cold supermarket chill.

—Teddy, he says. —How’s it going? He sniffs the air. —Smells like steak in here.

He winks at me. —Coming up in the world? he says, and pulls a beer from the six-pack. —Teddy, how about a beer? Teddy shakes his head, not looking away from the television, though it’s only showing a car commercial.

—Okay, Donny says. —Just thought I’d stop by and say hello, see if you were watching the game. Just like old times, he says, and winks again. —Huh?

He pops his beer open and sits on the couch. I sit beside him and the three of us stare at the television, but none of us is really watching the game. Donny drapes his arm like a wet towel across the back of the couch, and Teddy draws figure eights with his finger in the carpet beside his knees.

—So, Ted, Donny says, —how’s the butcher business? Teddy turns. —Did you come to watch the game, he says, —or to talk?

—Hey, Donny says. —Hey. Just trying to make conversation. He smiles, and Teddy turns back to the game just as the batter pops out to end the inning.

—Hey, Ted, Donny says, —haven’t you heard about how you can get cancer if you sit too close to the TV? Some kind of X-ray poisoning or something.

Teddy gets up and takes a beer from the six-pack Donny has brought. —No, he says. —I hadn’t heard that.

—Like the gas from bananas, I say, and they both look at me as if I have said something in a foreign language.

—Oh, Donny finally says. —Yeah. He nods. —You know, Ted, he says seriously, —that can really be a problem.

Teddy stands in the middle of the floor running his finger around the top of his can of beer. He stares at a spot in the middle of the rug, and Donny and I wait for him to say something, but then the game comes on and he sits back down.

—So, Donny says, looking at the back of Teddy’s head, moving his arm along the couch toward me. —So, he says again, and rests his hand beside my head, then drops it down to my shoulder, where it rests a moment. I can smell the faint rotten smell of apples just turning. Donny smiles at Teddy’s back and moves his hand to my neck; each cold finger feels like a spider creeping across my skin. Teddy stares straight ahead as Mookie Wilson fades back into the outfield after a fly ball; he hits the fence hard, but comes up with the catch. Now that he is no longer a Met, he is one of Teddy’s favorite players, even though he’s not a Yankee. Donny laughs.

—Look at that dumb spade, he says. —Mookie. What the hell kind of a name is Mookie?

He flips my hair back, over the couch. —Baseball used to be a different kind of game, he says to me. —
You
know what I mean.

I pick up my magazine as the play is shown again, in slow motion. Teddy watches it closely, nodding, and I turn to an article about recapturing the magic in a lifeless relationship.

—Hey, Donny says, —whatcha reading?

—Nothing, I say, but I show him the magazine. He reads the title, then makes a little snorting sound through his nose.

—Magic, he says. —Shit.

I go back to the article and try to pick up the thread. But
after a moment Donny reaches over and closes the magazine.

—So, he says. He leaves his hand in my lap, on top of the magazine, and I am surprised at the way it looks, long and thin, almost delicate.

I close my eyes and tell myself that he has the clean handsome features of one of the men in the pictures in my magazine, but when I look up at him, it is his same face, his same greasy smile.

—What? I say, but he says nothing, only nods toward the closed bedroom doors. I look at Teddy, stiffly alert in front of the ball game.

—Teddy won’t mind, Donny says. —Will you, Ted?

—Do you mind? Teddy says, not turning. —I’m trying to watch the game.

Donny looks around at the things in my room. He picks up a picture of Teddy and my mother and me. My mother is looking distantly out at whoever is taking the picture, and even then it is clear that her mind was on something else. —This your mom? Donny says. —She looks zonked.

He puts the picture down and smiles. —Well, kiddo, he says, and his eyes turn green with excitement. His hands on my shoulders aren’t rough, but they are firm, and I imagine these same hands moving over bananas, onions, yams. When he touches me, I can tell that he has done this a thousand times before, and that not one of these times has been different from any other. He closes his eyes to kiss me, but I know he is thinking of his mother, and as his hand crosses my skin, what it touches disappears: my mouth, my eyes, my bones, they all disappear, and what he says to me–honey, baby, sweetheart–these words are what I become. His skin grates against mine until I cannot differentiate between skin and the fragile flesh beneath. After what seems
like only a moment, he pulls away, and when he stands, he looks down to see that the sheets are stained with little splashes of blood. His face changes, but just for a second; then he grins.

—Well, well is all he says, and he bends to put on his shoes. As he leaves the room, a thin trail of blood follows him, trickling across the floor behind Teddy, who is watching the slow-motion replay of a perfect bunt and so does not notice. Blood trails Donny out the door and falls through the thin cracks of the ceiling. A drop falls on the face of a man downstairs; he looks up and then at the woman in front of him, who smiles and wipes it away; he closes his eyes and feels nothing but the soft touch of her hand upon his skin.

Teddy tightens his tie in front of the mirror.

—You know, he says to me,—I might like a lover. His eyes meet mine in the mirror. —I might like a lover too. Did you ever think about that?

I say nothing and go back to watching the morning news.

—But, he says, —I have my responsibilities. He runs his fingers gently over his cheeks.

—You know, I say, —I could leave here. I could leave here anytime.

He puts his face close to the mirror and turns it from side to side. —You’re only seventeen, he says. —And you can’t
do
anything.

—I could learn, I say. —I could learn lots of things. You never know. I could do anything.

He laughs. —You could, he says. —But why would you?

He clenches and unclenches his jaw, holding his fingertips against his cheek to feel the muscles pop in and out. He nods at himself and turns. When he walks by the kitchen table, he stops and looks down at the flowers Donny brought.

—You know, he says, —these are just supermarket flowers. They’re not from a flower shop or anything. We sell them in the store. He bends and sniffs them, then straightens and laughs. —They don’t even smell, he says.

When he passes me, he smiles pleasantly, and closes the door gently behind him.

At this moment, Donny must be waking up, putting on his shirt, brushing his teeth. He may cut himself shaving, and as he blots away the blood, he may think for a moment of me, but my face is lost in a wash of women’s faces, and he smiles at himself in the mirror. It is already clear to me that he will not return. And so, I tell myself, I will find another lover. I will find another. As I scrape the bacon left from Teddy’s breakfast into the garbage, I can already feel the touch of my new lover, tracing the pattern left by Donny’s hand against my skin.

When I call my mother, Stan answers the phone.

—Well, he says. —Well, hello. How are you, honey? And Teddy? How’s Teddy?

—Fine, I say. —We’re both fine.

—Good, he says. —That’s really good. He pauses for a moment. —I guess you called to talk to your mother, he says.

—Yes, I say. —I guess so.

He is quiet for a moment. —She’s a little tired, he says. —She’s not really herself today, so maybe just a short talk. I can hear the soft brush of skin against the phone as Stan puts his hand over the receiver, then my mother’s voice.

—Hello? she says. —Hello?

—Mother, I say. —It’s me.

There is another sound, a squeak or a little murmur, a cat sound, and I know I have lost her for the moment. —Smokey? she says.

—It’s me, Mother, I say again, but she is looking down at Smokey, at the blue marks running up and down her arms. From the shadows of her room, the faces of her children smile dimly out at her, but she cannot feel her arms.

—Mother, I say again. I know there must be something else to say, but when I look around me at the walls, the tables, the television, I can’t imagine what it could be.

—Honey? my mother says. She strokes Smokey’s pale fur, and together they stare at the fish. Smokey stretches, and she smiles down at him. —Who’s my cat? she says. —Who’s my baby? And then there is silence again until Stan takes the phone from her hand.

Teddy comes home from work while I am watching a baseball game, the Mets and some team from California.

—Hey, he says, glancing briefly at the game. —Look. He pulls me to the window and points out at a shiny blue car parked by the curb. —Look, he says again. —I rented a car. We’re going on a vacation.

—A vacation? I look back at the game. Teddy smells of blood and there are red rings around his fingernails.

—Yeah, he says. —To the Poconos.

—The Poconos?

—Yeah, he says. —They’re mountains. Upstate. Everybody at work always goes there.

—We don’t have enough money for a vacation, I say.

—Vacations are expensive.

—Hey, he says, patting his pocket. —I got a bonus. A big one. He turns off the game and looks at me, his eyes glowing. —Let’s go, he says. —Let’s go right now.

—Isn’t it beautiful? Teddy says when we get to the car.

—This is just like the car I’m going to buy.

He opens the door eagerly; there is a grocery bag on the
front seat, a long bottle of wine resting on top. He moves the bag to the back seat and I get in and roll down the window. From behind her door, Madame Renalda watches us in our new rented car. She could save us, but she watches us through a tiny hole in her door as we pull away from the curb into traffic; then she turns away to look into the eyes of another man. —Don’t travel, she says. —Not today.

Teddy switches the radio on and pushes buttons until he finds a ball game. We drive straight north up Broadway, and as we leave New York, children lean against fences and watch us, until their mothers call them in; they turn back to the high walls of the city, but we drive ahead into green mountains.