Little Boy (32 page)

Maria’s past shielded my eyes, preventing me
from navigating and flying myself toward a beautiful destination in
the distance. I could muster few thoughts beyond those pertaining
to Maria’s life before me, and her drinking binge Upstate.
Helplessly, aimlessly, I gripped Maria’s hand, hoping that she’d
guide me away from my endgame, and toward a destination that she
alone could see.

But for the moment, our destination was F. A.
O. Schwartz, the largest and most extravagant toy store in
Manhattan. We stood in a line brimming with wide-eyed children and
their patient parents, in the concrete square at Fifth Avenue and
59
^th
Street, directly across the street from the Plaza
Hotel.

Maria and I shuffled in through the revolving
glass doors and immediately heard the sound of children singing.
Welcome to our world. Welcome to our world. Welcome to our world
of toys
, caroled the choir of plastic children above the door’s
entrance. They were sitting atop a decorative, swirling carousel
perched on an ornate tower near the entrance. F. A. O. Schwartz
pleases the eyes and ears, if not the wallet, more than any other
attraction in Manhattan. I have always loved it there. Quickly, we
dove into the store’s corner display, a large mountain of colorful
stuffed animals, $19.99 to $129.99, depending on the size.
Surrounded by the heaps of bean-filled velvet animals, we playfully
smacked each other with dolphins and apes and laughed and giggled
like toddlers.

We raced up the escalator to the second
floor, hoping to unearth more juvenile treasures. What we
discovered awed us both. There before us stood two large,
battery-powered toys: a red Corvette and a gray F-14 Tomcat, each
designed to fit one youngster. For $6,899, I could have my very own
jet and Maria her very own sports car. I checked my wallet.
Eighteen dollars. Oh well.

“Let’s get inside them,” Maria gasped, “and
have our pictures taken.”

“But there’s no vagrant Santa Claus with a
tripod in sight,” I quipped.

“A.J.!” she said, excitedly. “You know what I
mean!”

I had, in fact, brought my camera with me to
Manhattan that afternoon, hoping to capture a moment in Winter
Wonderland with my Wonder Woman, Maria Della Verita
.
Amidst
the toys and children I suddenly felt cheery, and was happy to be
with such a beautiful girl who loved me so much.
We’d better
take a picture
, I thought.
We forgot to take one in front of
the tree
.

Maria’s little body fit snugly into the
driver’s seat of the shiny red Corvette. Although her tits were
smooshed against the steering wheel, I could tell that if she had a
charged battery—and, of course, that $6,890—she would peel out
right then and there, and zoom down Fifth Avenue.

I still remember how beautiful she looked.
“Turn this way,” I said. She smiled a toothy smile as her hair
draped the sportster’s trunk.
Flash!
I snapped the picture
and saw a thousand butterflies.

She vacated the Corvette with great ease and
graciously accepted the camera from my hand. “You’re turn,” she
said, gesturing for me to board the F-14. It’s WEFT, in real life:
high-mounted, variable wings; duel exhausts and two turbo fans; a
long, slender fuselage and bubble canopy; twin tail fins. It was
similar to the F-15 and F-16, although the F-16 had a single tail
fin, unlike the others. Also, in real life, the F-14’s wing span
was 64 feet, it’s length 62. The model before me: length, 6 feet;
width, 5 feet.
Shit
, I thought,
I’ll never fit into this
thing
.

But Maria encouraged me to give it a shot. I
placed my right foot in the cockpit, then my left. My knees cracked
as I squatted, setting one ass cheek on each tail fin. No matter
how hard I tried, I just couldn’t fit in that damn plane.

“That’s the best I can do,” I said,
regretfully.

“That’s okay,” she said.
Flash!
Startled by the light, I toppled out of the cockpit and onto the
floor. Maria chuckled.

“You should’ve seen your face,” she said.
“You looked like you didn’t know what you were doing there.”

“I didn’t.”

We left F. A. O. Schwartz, crossed Fifth, and
found ourselves near the pond that we’d gone to on our first date.
We embraced, passionately, and celebrated the marvelous day, and
rolled around in our puffy winter jackets on the cold grass. Once
again, I felt a lonely emptiness swelling within me. I wish I could
explain how I felt—I loved Maria so much, but I just couldn’t stop
thinking about her past. Even as I am sitting here writing this,
after all that’s happened, I am angry at her for having a life
before me.

Embracing Maria, just when I thought I’d lost
all sense of direction, all perception of romance and wit, I looked
into Maria’s innocent eyes. They inspired to take my house key from
my coat pocket and key our initials into a giant London Plane tree.
As I carved, pieces of bark fell to the ground to make way for our
initials. And those fresh initials—JJL + MD—represented a new
beginning for us.

I extended my arms and smiled and announced,
“Look how beautiful this place is!” The gray webs of tree branches
could have been the back-drop for a horror movie; however, they
could have just as easily been the scenery for a romantic one, too.
I preferred the latter image. Some things, like jets, were almost
too amazing to have been created by man. That day, the remarkable
beauty of Central Park was too ravishing even to have been produced
by nature.
Maybe there is a God
, I thought.

“From this moment on, this is our tree,
Maria. And we’ll come here—to this wonderful winter
wonderland—every Christmas from now on and stand here, and reaffirm
our love. I love you, angel.”

My words were corny, but they reduced her to
tears. Good tears, for once. We embraced beneath the pine tree, and
barely felt one another’s bodies through our jackets. We were
still, and had only our frozen, moving breaths to remind us of our
existence. I peered at the carvings on the tree bark. I felt as if
my eyes were shooting a red-hot laser beam into its frigid husk.
Maria and I will remain in this blissful state
, I thought,
as sure as those initials will stay carved in that tree
.

***

“Why don’t you come over my house for dinner
on New Year’s Eve?”

That’s how Maria began our phone conversation
the night before January 31
^st
that Christmas vacation.
I’ll never forget it. It was that night, New Year’s Eve, when so
much happened.

With that phone call from Maria, I realized
that this was my chance to get to know her father. I’d met him
before but never really had a chance to speak with him much. He’d
gazed into my eyes almost as if I was the son he never had when
Maria opened up her Christmas gifts before him. But that was the
extent of my relationship with him for the six months or so that
Maria and I were dating. She never wanted him to spend too much
time with me. She was embarrassed by him.

He was a nice man, it seemed, and he always
referred to me as “friend” or “guy.” He was very friendly and
relaxed. At first I thought that maybe he knew he was a drunk, and
he knew Maria told me so, and he was amicable to compensate for the
negative image I’d already established in my mind. But then I
realized, somewhat reluctantly, that he was a proud man. He was
proud of his Maria. He also was proud because he was finally
getting help. And with that help came a more loving relationship
with his family, as well as a better perspective on life, I
suppose.

Donning a pinstriped blue suit New Year’s
Eve, I strolled into Maria’s home around eight o’clock like a
prosecutor set to make his final argument of a case. I was going to
have sex with her that night. I just knew it.

Maria’s family owned a house in Ridgewood. It
was modest and well-kept, but not ostentatious, unlike the homes of
many Italian-American families in Queens. On the foyer wall of
Rick’s stubbornly Irish house, there hung two photographs: a
picture of the Pope, and a black and white image of President John
Kennedy. Maria’s Italian house was slightly different. Her parents,
also devout Roman Catholics, had hung a picture of the Pope as
well. To its right, however, were two more framed photographs: one
of Joe Di Maggio, and one of Frank Sinatra. I chuckled silently to
myself as I promenaded confidently through the foyer. It was the
first time I’d ever noticed those pictures because usually I
entered Maria’s apartment through the basement entrance.

When I walked into the living room, I noticed
the long, vertical mirrors along the wall behind the couch. I
looked at Maria, and looked back at the mirrors, and looked at
Maria again. She knew what I was thinking, and she appreciated my
remembering them.

We sat down and ate a pleasant dinner of
London broil, stuffed shells, fresh broccoli sautéed in olive oil
and garlic, and a salad. Of course, we ate the pasta first and the
salad last. Maria’s chubby sister wolfed down her food in a frenzy,
all she could do to avoid eye contact with me. At first I figured
the big fat pig had heard so much shit about me from Maria that she
felt I didn’t deserve the respect of her conversation.

Then I thought:
No, she must be jealous of
Maria
. After all, Maria was gorgeous. She had an hourglass
figure, huge tits, and a perfect face. Her sister—I wasn’t sure if
her name was Leslie or Lizzie—was revolting. She looked like Elvis
Presley in the mid-1970’s: ancient and bloated. As I munched on my
salad, I strived to avoid gaping in disgust at her hideous
sideburns.

She’d been dating a guy who lived around the
corner with his mother, a guinea named Lester, for the past five
years. Lester wasn’t a Mafioso. He was worse. He was a greaseball
who longed to attain the status of a Mafioso. He owned a beat up
Iroc-Z and two T-shirts. That’s it. He was a plumber’s assistant, a
high school drop-out…and I was A.J. L’Enfant, a good-looking,
well-spoken gentleman about to enter the U. S. Air Force Academy.
Boy, was I on top of the world that night.

It was a pleasant evening for all until we
brought in the New Year with a toast of champagne. The moment was
frozen in time. Maria didn’t know whether she should drink the
champagne or not. Mr. Della Verita was equally hesitant, but for
different reasons. Not a second had gone by when, just like
that—
gulp, gulp, gulp
—the frigid moment melted away as both
Maria and her dad drank up. So did I.

Maria’s father had more than one glass of
champagne that night. I felt bad for the guy, because I knew he
shouldn’t have been drinking. Mrs. Della Verita quickly lit a
cigarette, perhaps to help overcome her nervous jitters after
witnessing her husband’s loss of self-control. Within minutes, or
so it seemed, Mr. Della Verita was wasted. Maybe he wasn’t; maybe
he just wanted to be. Either way, that’s when he started asking me
about the Air Force Academy, shooting one question after another,
seldom giving me a chance to respond completely. I told him that
I’d been to Colorado recently and he seemed pleased.

Despite the champagne, his tone was lucid and
polite. And although he was born in Italy, forty years in Ridgewood
had diluted his foreign accent. After dinner, he eased comfortably
into a stuffed rocking chair, rocked to and fro, and fired an
intelligent question at me almost every time he leaned forward. I
sat awkwardly on a brown hassock about five feet before him,
fielding the questions as gracefully as Di Maggio played
centerfield.

Mr. Della Verita ceased rocking and stared at
me intently. “You know much about jets, A.J.?”

“Sure,” I said, “I know a little, Mr. Della
Verita.”

“Hey”—he snapped his finger at me and
winked—“call me Mr. D.”

“You got it, Mr. D.”

“When I was just a little older than you, I
flew an F-4D Phantom in Vietnam. Ever hear of it?”

“Sure, one of the most versatile jets used in
the war. It’s the first U. S. Navy jet to be accepted for service
by the Air Force. And you know how strong the rivalry is between
the Air Force and Navy.”

“Navy men are a bunch of pussies!” he
bellowed. Maria and her sat silently, startled at his burst of
profanity. Mrs. Della Verita lit another cigarette. Not too drunk
to be embarrassed, Mr. D glanced at his wife and daughter and
quietly apologized.

“I know what you mean, Mr. D.,” I said,
trying desperately to continue the conversation unabated. “The Air
Force did the real work in ‘Nam.”

“You bet, guy. And that F-4D Phantom II did
more work than any two battleships combined. It carried two
laser-guided bombs and three air-to-air missiles. We blasted
Charlie to hell, I tell ya. The Phantom could do it all: photo
reconnaissance, bombing missions, anti-radar assignments. I can’t
think of another jet that did so much.”

“My dad said he always wanted to fly the
Phantom, but he got stuck with a B52D Stratofortress.”

“Stuck? Are you kidding me? If I could’ve
flown any other aircraft in Vietnam, it would’ve been the
Stratofortress. Hell, the Phantom flew close to the ground, almost
got us killed a hundred times over. But the Stratofortress dropped
its bombs from what, 20,000 feet?”