The Healing (9 page)

chapter eleven

Summer 1988

Karen's kitchen window in Massapequa looked out over the backyard. As she washed the lettuce for the salad, she could see Mike and his three friends working on their latest group project. They were building an elaborate jungle gym for three-year-old Lori, and by the looks of it there wasn't going to be any lawn space left when they were finished. As it was, one whole half of the modest yard was already taken up by the large deck off the dining room and the aboveground pool, and now a complex puzzle of pressure-treated lumber and kiddie park amusements was usurping the other half. They had only lived in the house for two years, and already Mike and his buddies had transformed their humble split-level on a quarter of an acre into a family man's heaven. Tools, wood scraps, and open beer bottles were strewn all over the place, yet the guys worked together like the gears of a well-oiled machine.

The window was open, and Karen could hear them laughing and talking as they worked, mostly about trivial daily matters and the task at hand. Once in a while she could hear Mike singing or whistling to the radio as he swung a hammer or stretched out a wooden ruler or buzzed the power saw. Every now and then there was an expletive or some unintelligible muttering followed by a gale of laughter and some good-natured wisecracks.

“Hey, Einstein,” said Vinny Bovino, Mike's lifelong friend from Richmond Hill. They had gone to school together, played ball together, and stood up as best man for each other. They were closer than brothers, which was why they were able to get away with talking to each other the way they did. “Use that level. I can see from here the damn thing's crooked. Asshole.”

Vinny was a successful general contractor and the foreman of the backyard construction team. He was the product of a solid upbringing—the oldest of five children raised by a no-nonsense, streetwise father who was a master carpenter, and a saintly Irish mother who kept her family in line with tough love and rosary beads. Mike, who was like an only child because his sister was so much older, had fond memories of Vinny's busy household, where there was always room at the table for one more. Mike used to describe Vinny's house as his home away from home, and after meeting the Bovinos, Karen understood.

“Which one's the level, Mr. B.?” Mike asked, using his best falsetto to impersonate a little kid. The rest of the backyard crew cracked up.

“Asshole,” Vinny said again.

Karen looked over her shoulder at Vinny's wife, Lisa, who was slicing tomatoes. “I guess we'd better have the food ready soon,” Karen said. “Before it starts to get ugly.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “It's already ugly,” she replied wittily.

Karen laughed.

The best thing she and Mike ever did was move out to Massapequa. Vinny and Lisa had nagged them for years to get out of Queens, but Mike and Karen waited until they had a reason to invest in a one-family home and commute to the city. Then Lori came along. Now they lived only fifteen minutes from their best friends, and life was good.

“They're worse than the kids,” Lisa said. She was well into the years when her kids overwhelmed her and her husband drove her crazy.

The Bovinos were way ahead of Mike and Karen in the way of family life. Even though the two couples were the same age and had gotten married the same year, the Bovinos had two daughters who were already in school. The Bovinos even looked older than Mike and Karen. But while Vinny may have had a little more experience in child rearing and his hairline may have been prematurely receding, his connection to Mike went beyond rooting for the Yankees or helping out with home improvements. It even went beyond their common values or their common challenge of surviving in all-female households. Vinny had known Mike fifteen years longer than Karen did. And that counted for something.

Karen rinsed off the lettuce, but her gaze remained fixed on the antics in the yard. She watched as Richie Lyons, a fellow firefighter whom Mike had befriended when assigned to his first engine company, wet his head with the hose. Then he sat on a pile of lumber and lit a cigarette.

Richie was the playboy of the group. He was a golden boy—tall, blond, and green-eyed—but he partied too hard and loved his beer a little too much, which resulted in a recent divorce from his attractive, career-minded wife. She said he never grew up. Maybe she was right.

Vinny barked at him for slacking off, and Richie casually turned the hose on him.

“Hurry up with those burgers, Janice,” Karen said to her neighbor, who was sitting at the table forming the meat patties. “I think the beer is on its last brain cell.”

Lisa heard her husband hollering, and she came to the window to investigate. “I think Richie used up his last brain cell a long time ago.”

“I heard the divorce is getting pretty nasty,” Janice said, her voice dropping so only the ladies could hear.

“They never really got used to living out here,” Karen said.

Janice slapped the chopped meat in her hand. “I feel sorry for the kid.”

Richie's thirteen-year-old son, who was acting out with textbook adolescent rebellion, was the real casualty in the breakup. His mother sent him to psychiatrists and therapists, which sent Richie into his own form of rebellion. It was a cycle that no amount of counseling was going to break.

Mike and Karen never took sides in the Lyons fiasco. They were just old friends who provided a few hours of wholesome companionship and who, on occasion, steered Richie away from unsuitable women who appeared to have one foot in the gutter. “Hey, man,” Mike would tell him, “your judgment on this one is a little clouded.”

A roar of laughter erupted outside, and Karen looked back to the men. This time Vinny was laughing, too. Janice's husband, Joe, was being chased by an ornery, determined bee. And because he was a dark, stout Italian who grew up on tough Brooklyn streets and resembled a well-groomed gangster, seeing him dancing around and waving frantically because he was scared of an insect struck everyone as hilarious.

Mike knocked the bee out of the air and squashed it in the grass. Joe started laughing, too.

“My hero,” he said to Mike, causing the guys to howl even louder.

“What happened?” Janice asked from the table.

“You don't want to know,” Lisa replied, and then sat back down to finish slicing the tomatoes.

Joe and Janice lived two houses down with their three teenage kids. Joe worked for a real estate management company in Queens, and as soon as Mike and Karen moved into their handyman special with their infant daughter, Joe hit it off with them and all of their down-to-earth, sports-loving, hammer-wielding friends. Since Joe was the only one among them who wore a suit to work and who jumped when a moth flew too close to his head, he took his share of ribbing from the rest of the crew. It was male bonding at its best, and Karen assumed it was more of a tribute than an insult.

On occasion there were other neighbors and firemen who congregated at the Donnelly house for a night of cards, and sometimes they offered their handyman skills wherever needed on a Sunday afternoon, especially if they could end the day with a few beers and a barbecue. But the “Four Misfiteers,” as their wives affectionately dubbed them, were a mainstay at such gatherings. Mike, Vinny, Richie, and Joe. Four New York boys who viewed the world through similar eyes and took pleasure in passing time with those they cared about.

Karen smiled as she watched them. As always, her gaze settled on her husband as he whistled, worked, and laughed with his friends. His shirt was off, exposing his powerful back and arms to the midday sun, and his dark hair was hugging his head in sweaty ringlets. He was suntanned in the way a fair Irishman gets suntanned—the light freckles on the tops of his shoulders were multiplying and becoming more pronounced on reddish brown skin that was meant to be milk-white. Over the years he had simply forced his love of sunshine and the beach on his inherited Irish complexion. While the Italians grew darker and evenly tanned as the summer went on, Mike and Richie always looked like two ruddy-faced heatstroke victims.

But standing next to his buddies, whose beer bellies were expanding and whose jawlines were softening into the jowls of middle age, Mike was still as striking as he was when Karen first saw him perched on the lifeguard chair. His waistline was still hard because he worked out at the firehouse, and neither his youthful face nor his hairline had been altered by the passing of time. Joe had salt-and-pepper hair that was already thinning. Richie's features had been hardened by too much stress and too much self-destructive behavior. And while they were both a few years older than Mike, even Vinny, who was the same age, had added more than a few sizes to his belt and a few inches to his already high forehead.

Mike, on the other hand, never seemed to change.

He looked up at the kitchen window, and Karen could see the bright blue of his eyes across the yard. He winked at her, and she blew him a kiss.

Lisa Bovino came up behind her with the tomatoes. “Why don't you wave a dollar?” she said. “Maybe we can have our own Chippendale show.”

“That's all right,” Karen replied. “I've seen enough Chippendale dancers to last me a lifetime.”

Lisa laughed. So did Janice. The previous week, Karen had been dragged off by five of her friends to a club in the city where the entertainment was provided by male dancers in G-strings. It was Janice's fortieth birthday, and things had gotten a little wild. But the highlight of everyone's evening was when Karen, well known for her adorable blushing and borderline goody-two-shoes modesty, became the focus of every dancer's fancy. Nobody owned up to tipping the maître d' or cueing the dancers that their group had a demure little beauty in their midst, yet every G-string was waving in Karen's face or trying to sit on her lap. Maybe they spotted the crimson in her cheeks or the mortified averting of her eyes, luring them to her table amid the screaming laughter of her friends. Everyone thought it was quite a hoot, and they weren't going to let Karen live it down any time soon.

Even Mike had heard about her adventure, from Vinny, and he had been teasing her incessantly every night for the past week, jumping on their bed and peeling off his T-shirt while bumping his hips to a self-sung stripper rhythm. Karen had pushed him off the bed and suggested he get a job at the club. “You might as well earn some money if you're going to act like an idiot,” she told him. “I'm sure they'd love a real fireman.”

Lisa nudged Karen's elbow. “I know deep down you were burning with lust,” she said. “I always say it's the quiet ones you have to watch out for.”

Karen never felt the need to look at another man. But she was a good sport about it. “My secret's out. Get my bag.”

“Well, save your dollars,” Janice said, jerking a thumb at the window. “Seeing those guys in a G-string would turn Chippendale's into a comedy club.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Lisa said. “Mike's still in pretty good shape.”

A secret smile twitched at Karen's mouth as she pictured Mike in a G-string. He had looked pretty sexy dancing on the bed in his briefs.

Janice picked up the platter of hamburgers. “Well, Karen gets that show for free!” she said, as though she had read Karen's mind.

Karen turned red, and all three of them laughed at their own silliness. They clammed up when Mike strode into the kitchen.

He stopped in his tracks. “What's wrong?” he asked.

Karen glanced at her friends. They looked like a clique of young schoolgirls caught doing something naughty. “Nothing,” she replied.

He looked from one to the other with a twinkle in his eye and spotted the platter of raw burgers Janice was holding. “Should I fire her up?” he asked.

The three women exploded with laughter.

Karen felt contentment ooze into her muscles like a drug. She looked around the patio and realized there was no other place in the world she'd rather be. For her, it was a perfect summer evening. The seven friends who had worked together and eaten together were now kicking back—some on chaise lounges, some munching chips at the table, some leaning back on chairs with their feet up on the railing. The air smelled of grilled burgers and chlorine from the pool, a perfect complement to the beer that was still flowing freely. There was even enough of a breeze to ward off mosquitoes as dusk dimmed the Long Island sky.