In the Nick of Time (24 page)

“I called out to her. I said, ‘Maaaa!’” He slapped his knee with his hand. “I called out like the shit was real important. She was in the kitchen washing dishes, listening to La India and ironing her shirt for work while the food cooled down. She cleaned houses and worked part time at some dry cleaners’, too. I said, ‘Ma, does mi abuela make spaghetti sauce?’
Abuela
means grandmother. I said the whole thing in Spanish actually; we spoke mostly Spanish in our house but you know, for the sake of me talking to you about this, I’m not…so you can follow along, but I might slip up a bit, start talking Spanish, so just pat my arm or something if I do.”

She smiled and nodded at him, and he kept going.

“So, she says to me, calls out real loud, ‘My mother passed away, Nicky. She died way before you were born, back in Puerto Rico.’ I say, ‘No, Ma. I’m talking about my
father’s
mother.’ And then, she got real quiet, right? So, being the kinda kid I was, I didn’t take that as a cue to stop. I asked again. And then she said, ‘I don’t know, Nicky. I never met the woman.’ That always stuck with me, you know?” He glanced at Taryn, his eyes narrowed on her as the old pain became new.

“It stuck with me because even though I was little and kinda stupid at times, I wasn’t incapable of putting two and two together. I wasn’t a complete idiot. Like, someone could tell me only a fourth of a story, and I’d figure out the rest, but I needed that fourth, you know? Somewhere to begin… Her saying that to me let me know that she wasn’t sure if the lady was dead or not, but more importantly, that my father didn’t think my mother was good enough to meet his mom. It made me wonder why he treated Ma like that, you know?” He looked at Taryn as he sucked his upper lip and rocked back and forth. His heart beat a bit faster, and if he wasn’t mistaken, he could be on the verge of a goddamn nervous breakdown.

This is too much… Did she trick me? Was this her plan all along? To make me talk about this shit? Well, I guess, so what if she did. I don’t really want to get into all of this right now. I gotta find a way out of this.

“Keep going,” she urged
.
She gave a subtle nod as she slowly swung her foot back and forth and he took a moment to coax himself, soothe the beast within and stay the course.

“Did my mother do something wrong?” He raised his hands in a ‘I don’t know’ sort of fashion. “I mean, I knew pretty early on what sex was and how it worked. We all did. Things you wouldn’t think kids would be doing, discussing—hell, we were. We were light years ahead.” He waved his hands lazily around. “So, I knew that my father had slept with my mother at least twice, obviously, because there was my brother and I. Didn’t she earn a little respect by having his kids, me and Marco? I mean, I’m pretty sure he didn’t even send money. It’s like we never existed. Yo, Taryn, this is stupid, alright?!” he barked, looking away from her as he white knuckled the damn bench.

Let me go, let me outta this!

“No, it’s not, Nick. You can trust me, you know that, right?”

Her voice sounded like melodic church bells. He wanted to move inside of her for service.

Sacrilegious. God is going to strike me down…

“I think that’s pretty fucked up, honestly!” He laughed loudly, though he found not a damn thing funny as he continued. “In my mind, I was tryna figure all of this out.” He pointed to his temple as his eyes narrowed. “Because that’s how my mind works. I want explanations for
everything,
Taryn. But I was a kid, so my reasoning was faulty. Or maybe, kids have great reasoning skills and it’s us as adults who make things complicated, crazy, and unreliable.” He huffed, briefly closed his eyes and ran his palm along his forehead. “I guess my father was just using her and maybe she was too in love with him to see what he was doing. I always wondered why my mother never demanded better.” He took notice of a stack of old magazines across the way, neatly piled up, their pages dog-eared here and there on a table. He needed to look at something once again, anything but her eyes, for if he did his vulnerability would be witnessed, and he couldn’t quite bring himself to do that. “I lost some respect for her after that, Taryn. And I hated that I had.

“I hated her for messing with a married man, and then having his kids. And I
knew
that’s why he never took her home to his mother after some years had passed, got a little older. I felt like what she did was wrong. Not really sure why, wasn’t like I was a moral having motherfucker. I rarely went to church and prayed ’nd shit.” He grimaced. “…It just kind of bothered me. Sometimes I hated her for having me, too, because my life was no good, or I at least believed at the time that it wasn’t. I disappointed her, but always fought telling her that she’d disappointed me, too!” He beat his finger into his chest, his chin raised high. “What type of son blames his mother for giving him life, huh?” He quickly turned away from her; his eyes welled with warm tears. His lower lip quivered, and he felt so ashamed…so very ashamed.

“This is good, Nick… This is really good what you’re doing right now.”

“What are you?! A damn counselor?” he snapped. “You don’t know!”

“Nah, I’m no counselor, Nick…just a friend…just a friend.” She winked at him, kept her calm, kept her peace, and paired it with that sexy ass smile.

I wanna kiss you so fucking bad, Taryn!

“Keep going…” she whispered.

“My mother did the best she could.” He swiped at his eyes before they had the chance to fall. “I knew those rumors were true though. Sometimes, you don’t need someone to send you a photo of reality. In your heart, you just kinda have it all worked out; you get the picture. My father was a married guy with a wife and other kids, Taryn.” He smiled sadly. “He lived right there in Brooklyn and probably walked past me all the goddamn time.” His jaw tightened with renewed hatred. “His other kids were probably dressed to the nines. And I bet his wife didn’t even have to have a job, while my Ma was on her hands and knees scrubbing some filthy floor. I bet his wife got to stay at home and watch soap operas ’nd shit and prance around on the phone gossiping and then at night, she’d lay there and let him fuck her even though he had a Puerto Rican mistress across town… I bet she
knew
, too.” He hung his head and swallowed hard.

“After my mother died, I apologized to her for those bad thoughts I had of her.” He tiptoed his fingertips along his knee as his internal battle for redemption continued. “Hell.” He shrugged. “I didn’t know her story; she never told me. And the way she grew up, that was grown people business, you know? Maybe she didn’t know he was married, and even if she did, that was a long ass time ago. She used bad judgment, I guess. There was no sense in getting all upset about it. She still was a good person and she loved me, and was good to me. She was a real good mother, a damn good mother, and all I did was break her heart, just like my father had.” He’d had enough. One tear budded in his eye, and when he went to swipe it away, Taryn grabbed his arm in a firm grip. He slowly turned to her as she forced him to let it fall. No, this time, he was not allowed to escape. He felt the slow trickle baptizing his cheek.

Am I now saved?

They simply stared at one another. She forced him to stay in the moment, stood by his side as it happened, but blocked his exit—made him feel it, accept it, release it, and watch it fly away.

“Nick…”

“Yeah.”

“I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

“Have you ever met your father?”

“You just… you just don’t stop, do you?” He shook his head and smirked, looked away from her. “Taryn, you’re doin’ too much. I’m not really tryna get into all that right now.”

“Why not?”

“’Cause it’s not a good time,
that’s
why not.” He couldn’t hide his anger; it oozed forward, soon to cover them both in tar.

“It’s the right time. You’re already talking about him. Do it now while the iron is still hot.”

“How can I like you so much and hate you right now?” He grinned sadly.

“I must be on the right track then.” She laughed lightly.

“I have no idea where my father is, Taryn, but I suspect I saw him one day.” He turned away from her, took a deep breath. “I’ve never told anyone about this…
nobody
, Taryn. You’re the first. It was the last straw for me, I believe.” He clasped his hands together. “I was in the seventy-third precinct, still fairly new, and sitting at my desk. These two men walk in, right? And one is tall and thin. He stands there talking about he had parked on a street, I forget which one, but then he went into some establishment and when he came back out, his car had been stripped to the bare bones, the goddamn frame.” He chuckled.

“We’re talking car assembly style, baby! I look into this motherfucker’s eyes, and they were just like mine, Taryn… just like mine.” He paused. “Some say my eyes are blue, some say they are gray, but they are a combination of both and depending on how the sun hits ’em, they’ll look more like one or the other. He had those
same
eyes. The same color, same shape, everything.”

“They’re beautiful, your best feature.”

“Thank you. Anyway, my curiosity got the best of me. After a minute or two, real cool and nonchalant, I get up and look down at the paperwork being filled out by another officer taking his statement and uh… I look down, Taryn and…” He shut his eyes real tight. His brain felt like it was swelling in his goddamn skull and threatened to shatter like the currently fragile thing that it was. Suddenly, he burst into tears.

“Oh no…” He groaned.

The torrential outburst completely took him off guard. He quickly shielded his eyes with his palm, heaved uncontrollably, and leaned forward—dying… dying… dying…

He heard his own sobs, but internally blamed them on someone else. It couldn’t be him! No way! Her loving empathy surrounded him as she no longer gave a damn about his warnings and embraced him, threw her sparse but warm weight upon him, wrapping him up in her arms, giving him exactly what he needed. After a few moments, he composed himself, caught his breath, and continued.

“I’m fine… I’m fine… It uh, it said on the paper that his name was Franco…and his last name was Vitale, just like mine.”

He sighed and sat back up. She let him go, but she stared at him with such intensity, holding on to him in a different sort of way. “For a moment, I would’ve liked to pretend I’d never seen him. My heart was racing, Taryn. Even if he wasn’t my father, I knew that man was some kind of kin to me, he
had
to have been. I never even knew my father’s address, or where he lived, nothing. I’d ask, my mother wouldn’t answer. I only knew his name. I don’t think it was ’cause she didn’t want me to know, but because she knew I’d go looking for him and then get my heart broken. Little did she know I’d already tried to find him. I was happy that I hadn’t… She didn’t trust me though, wanted to protect me. I loved hide-and-seek too much.” He laughed mirthlessly. “Regardless, the eyes don’t lie, Taryn. I knew it as soon as I looked in his face. All my mother gave me was her hair and lips; the rest was
all
Vitale! He had all of his hair, but most of it was threaded with silver. I could have said something right then, maybe solved the mystery, but I chose not to.

“I preferred to not know, because he’d never come for me and whoever this bastard was that had been robbed, his car picked apart until there was nothing left, he probably knew where my father was if it wasn’t him—and whatever he had to say, I was certain I probably didn’t want to hear it, you know? Shit, maybe you don’t know.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to take the risk ’cause it could go wrong. He could reject me all over again, Taryn. And then, I’d be rejected in front of
all
those people, all of my peers! The same people that looked up to me, treated me like I was the greatest!”

“You were afraid you’d lose their respect. It’s amazing the tricks our minds play on us when we seek to protect.”

“Yeah… like this entire conversation shouldn’t be happening, but it is, because maybe like you said, it needed to happen. But yeah.” He shrugged. “I needed their admiration. I couldn’t risk it. I’d be fuckin’ mortified if he stood there and told me he was not related to me, had no kids in B-Ville.
Everyone
in that place would know I didn’t know who the fuck my father was but more importantly, that I
still
cared.”

He was quiet, watching the minutes dance and spin around until he’d caught the next train holding a bounty of ‘
speak now or forever hold your broken pieces of a heart
’…

“Here I was, this grown man still wanting his daddy, Taryn. Standing there in my uniform, still wanting my fucking father to love me.” A tear streamed down his face, and then another.

Ain’t no use in wiping them away anymore. I’ve blubbered in front of this woman, nose all snotty like some little kid forced to go to bed early… Jesus Christ!

“The damage was done. When I looked in that man’s eyes, I could see he wasn’t going to give me what I needed. It was too late to be loved. There would be nothing that could make it alright, Taryn. Because he
knew
he had two sons. He had to have known one died. He knew the other one was alive… But to him, we were both one and the same.”

His heart was a pine box, and that’s where Nick and Marco lived!

“…And he never came to get me. No ballgames, nothing. He did
NOTHING!”

He never came to tell me everything would be okay.

He never loved me… and that’s the hardest part of all.

“Holidays.” He shrugged and laughed sadly. “I hated holidays because they’d show those commercials of families all piled around tables for dinner, a big, brown turkey in the middle and smiling faces everywhere. Christmas trees with fancy ornaments passed down from generation to generation… I never had any of that shit, Taryn. Family, huh?” He shook his head, wiped another tear away. “The damn holidays… yeah, great. He never came around at all. He didn’t respect my existence. He didn’t even acknowledge me, and that’s the
worst
kind of disrespect a man can
ever
receive. Is there an expiration date on love? Probably not, but none of us are promised tomorrow.” He sucked his teeth, pulled back from the pain, and continued his trek down the lonely road that had turned his world inside out.